Ep696: Neville Medhora – Hot Stock Tips Are Generally Unreliable

Andrew Stotz 00:00
Literally Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community we know that the winning investing you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to join me go to my worst investment ever.com and sign up for a free weekly become a better investor newsletter where I share how to reduce risk and create grow and protect your wealth. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Neville Medora. Neville, are you ready to join the mission?

Neville Medhora 00:44
I am nine o'clock at night over here. Thank you for doing this. I look forward to it. Let's see what we

Andrew Stotz 00:48
can do. Yeah, well, let's see how this man can bring out the energy at the end of the day, which at nine o'clock, I'm pretty exhausted. So let me introduce you to the audience. Neville has been starting businesses and side projects since high school, and as learn a bunch about what works and what doesn't work. He's an adviser to numerous software companies and teaches copywriting and his business, copywriting course.com. You can find him at Neville Medora, across all socials, and also just click on the links in the show notes so that you can go to all the exposure that he's got out there lots of stuff. Never take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing into this wonderful world.

Neville Medhora 01:34
Starting off heights. I think the one thing that a lot of people have told me this about myself, that I break things down clearly. And I think I'm a dumb guy. And I have to break things down to very like individual building blocks to understand it. So if people are using large words, words like equanimity, indebtedness, all strung together, I'm like, I don't know what that means. I mean, I have a vague understanding where you're going. But I don't know exactly what you mean. And therefore I need to break down each of these things into very simple terms. And I think people like that. And I started publishing online a long time ago. And I would break things down like that. And that's what people liked. So I believe that's what I bring to the world, that I'm dumb needed to be simplified, and people appreciate that.

Andrew Stotz 02:13
Yeah, it's, it's remarkable how many people can benefit from that, because they're all sitting there and confused, but nobody's telling them. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, you got to break that down. I remember. I used to go ahead. Sorry. Sorry.

Neville Medhora 02:27
Quick story. Do you know how like your school, college, high school, whatever, and the teachers talking about something droning on, and no one's saying anything? They're like, you understand? And everyone's like, Go, so I do. And then I would be the guy with no shame be like, I don't know he talked about. And then once I said that, everyone else would say it. Yeah. I'm like, Well, no one else knew what was going on either. What the hell, no one said anything. So I learned a long time ago that it's okay to just be like, Yeah, I don't get what you're saying, or I don't buy it. Like, I'm not convinced yet.

Andrew Stotz 02:54
Yeah. And the lesson we learn as we get older is there's no difference between that high school class and real life.

Neville Medhora 03:02
Zero, same thing. No one knows what they're doing.

Andrew Stotz 03:05
Exactly. And, and even worse, people who do know what they're doing, can't do it, for different reasons, and pressures and all that. And it's hard for people to think, clearly, I was watching a document not documenting what it is. It's a series on Netflix about Lenox Hill and hospital in New York. And it's very good. But the last episode was about when COVID hit, and one of the doctors on there says I've been training my whole life for this. You know, I know how to handle this. And I said, huh, then I guess why was it that you threw out logic and reason right from the bat right off the bat? Why did you resort to fear and panic, as opposed to reading the research that was going around already being done on what was happening in Italy, on what was being seen about the effects of other you know, treatments where there was no vaccine, and people were coming up with early treatments and protocols, you weren't doing any of that. So even though they even think that they know, there's a lot of people that, you know, either don't know, or they can't do. And so it's really an important thing to to

Neville Medhora 04:15
work or worked in a different generation. Well, right. going out and starting a business on your own was considered a very stupid thing when I was a kid. And the reason was, it was an unproven path and a path to perhaps problem poverty. Whereas becoming a lawyer or something like that was the proven path to making some money. But it had this limit, but that didn't matter in that generation. And then the next generation had more technology, more opportunities, more opportunities to talk to people around the world, just like we're doing now. This didn't exist a few years ago. And so things change. So even what worked for some people may not work now. It could, but it may not.

Andrew Stotz 04:52
And tell us about copywriting course.com. What does somebody get when they go to them? I love it. I'm such an amateur at that. So part of what I wanted to talk to you about when I got you on here was telling us a little bit about what that's all about, and maybe helping us understand how to improve our copywriting.

Neville Medhora 05:13
Yeah, quick answer and longer answer. The quick answer is copywriting course, like a community, it's a course essentially, it's what you pay monthly. And you get access to all our programs. So how to write good emails, how to get good newsletters, how to use all the AI stuff in copywriting, all that kind of stuff. And then also, our writers will go punch up your copy yourself. So if you post an email or write electrical punch it up. And every Thursday I get on calls with people and directly interact with their copy. The longer story is I was running an E commerce business years ago, just out of high school, and also in college. And that's kind of how it paid my way through college. And I was selling things through email occasionally, because everyone said you got to have a newsletter at 7500 previous customers. And I was sending them newsletters every week. And I spent a lot of time on these newsletters. I was writing, making images, writing the copy for them, getting it all set up. And no one bought anything. This is the 7500 people who'd already paid me, right. So I was just like, well, these numbers aren't good email marketing must be bad. And then one of my buddies told me about copywriting. And specifically, it was this guy named Gary Halbert, legendary, very controversial kind of copywriter guy back in the 70s and 80s. And he wrote these letters called the boron letters from jail. Now, he wrote these to his son while he was in jail for mail fraud for something he wrote a copy for this. So take that for what you want. But he wrote these great letters that were then transcribed and because they were just so good. And so what I did was I printed these out, because that's the way you have to read them, like in their original format. And you watch what I noticed was how he would make people turn the page, like he would trail off a sentence, right as it was getting good. And then you'd be like, Well, I have to turn the page. And he's like, and then he would say, like, you see how I made you turn that page? And I started thinking, Oh, that just trailed off. And then I want to know more. That's an interesting thing to notice. He talked about marketing, he talked about all these concepts. Like, let's say you had to send a yet send a piece of mail to someone, and it was you have to get it open. If it doesn't, if they don't open a piece of mail, you die, you get killed for some reason? How would you send them thing? Would you send them a piece of bulk of mail with like the bulk mail stamp on it? Or would you send a hand stamped envelope, but that's slightly askew? So it looks real, weird, handwritten note? Or the number one way what if you just sent them a UPS package, everyone opens a package that's 100% open rate. So he talked about things, I never even thought of it like that, right? So I started thinking of it as like, oh, email, open rates, those types of things, how to get people to open an email, how to get people to look forward to an email, that's a big thing. You can always trick people into opening something, you can't trick people into reading it being interested in buying. And so I started reading about that. And that's where copywriting came from. So that same e commerce company was talking about, all of a sudden, when I wrote my first properly copywriting email, went from overnight overnight and SEO company, because that would get SEO traffic. And then people buy from the blog, to email marketing. That's how it made most of my money from sending out emails overnight. And it kept working. And I was like, well, there's something to this. A buddy of mine, Noah Kagan was building commercial apps similar at the time, I applied it to his company, and that started working really well. And then I, you know, was part of that company for a while too. And we were sending out emails to about a million people a day. So it was amazing. Yeah, so I have a lot of experience sending two large email lists. And then also, I helped create the voice for a company called the hustle, which at the time was also a million plus now it's like, almost 3 million plus. And so I've been trying to make emails that go out or content that goes out and makes people want to read it. And that's in copywriting is a big part of it. So back to that. So like I said, there's a long answer. Copywriting course, got started from AppSumo. When I would send out the emails and people say, You're sending me an email every day trying to sell me something. I know, you're trying to sell me something. But I keep opening your emails, what the hell's going on? And I was like, Well, this is a thing called copywriting. And I explained it a million times. And I thought, Okay, well, it might be time to make this some sort of digitally amplified form of Neville, aka video and of course form. And that's where the copywriting course came out, that kind of blew up and turned into its own thing.

Andrew Stotz 09:13
And for someone, let's just take myself as an example. I have products and services, I have emailed this and all that. But I know I could improve pretty significantly. I could improve probably if I just made offers, you know, because I have lists of people that know like, and trust to some extent and just say, Hey, I've got this, Hey, I've got that. And I'm just curious, when you talked about how you changed by starting to get better at copywriting and you started to generate income. Was it just simply that you were making offers and you weren't previously or that you were really changing? You know, the way that you were writing

Neville Medhora 09:55
your great question, you could probably start by doing an offer the problem is the first First time you do it, you'll do great. The second time you do it, it'll do a little less great, or maybe maybe a little bit better. The third time you do it, it's going to start to get a little bit annoying to people that this guy's only sending offers. It's just the beginning pitched left and right, right. And then sometimes people might not be interested in what you're selling at the moment, maybe they don't have the money for it at the time. Maybe they don't have the type of business, you're selling ecommerce advice, and they don't have any commerce companies. It's not a right fit. And so the point of copywriting was, how do we get things opened all the time. And a lot of that form comes in the form of content marketing. So for example, you're putting up this podcast all the time people are listening to you. And if every once in a while, you made some sort of pitch that like, Hey, I have some consulting or service or product, they would probably listen to you, they wouldn't get mad and be like, Oh, my God, Andrew selling me something, if you just mentioned it a little bit, right. So that's what copywriting is how to keep people's attention for a long period of time, years and years. And then eventually, in occasionally pitch. And that was the way that I would approach email marketing with 70% content 30% sales, I found that that's the limit, that if you send people all the time, every single day 70% really good content, and throw in about 30% sales or less, then they never get mad at you. Now if you do 100% sales every day. Yes, they get mad at you.

Andrew Stotz 11:14
And one last question about the copywriting course I'm thinking about myself as an example. But for others that are listening. What there's a couple of things I'm kind of worried about joining any course these days, you know, on Udemy, they go 45 hours of content, and I'm like, oh god, god, yeah. Can you cut it? I'll take the one with 4.5 hours.

Neville Medhora 11:37
But not even Yeah, not even Exactly. Hey, can you learn a lot of this from like, tick tock size videos, you know, I certainly do eyebrows up, I don't really browse it tick tock per se, but I browse Instagram a lot. And I learned a lot from these videos, and their sub one minute each. And I learned a ton of stuff. And I'm like, do I need a 45 minute video for this? I mean, but maybe to get to full mastery, you will need a lot of time. But to get the gist of something, do you really need more than 10 minutes even. And so that's what the copywriting is, it's mostly, I've got shorter and shorter form videos over the years. In fact, when we first started selling courses, way back in yesteryear, people wanted a lot, there were like 50 hours of material. And the reason was, you may remember this, YouTube didn't exist in its current form, right? YouTube was like a basically like a free video host for your cat videos. That's kind of what it was, it was like, it was like just junk videos here and there Simpsons clips, right? That's what YouTube was. And now it has become this like platform, we could pretty much learn anything. And so now in the world, there is all this free information. So whenever people come to us, there's like distill it all down and just tell me what it is. So I pride myself on short videos. And now whenever we release like a new, quote unquote, horse, it's almost actually just like one page with two or three short videos on it, write some content, I tried to get you to where you need to be in the shortest amount of time. Also, I think the other thing that differentiates us a little bit is that we actually have a community inside with writers and myself. So if you were to post an email saying, here's an email, I'm going to post to my email list, how can I make this better, our writers go up and punch it up. And that's what I do all day. And then like I said, every Thursday, we also talk to people directly and do that. And that's really fun for me, as well, to just see the inside of all these different companies and what they're doing.

Andrew Stotz 13:15
When you say punch it up. You mean like tear it apart? Like, give feedback on

Neville Medhora 13:19
unnecessarily? Actually, if it's really good, I give very little feedback, why change it? If it's good, there's no point. So usually, if it's really good, I give her a little feedback if something's not good. A lot of times people will tell like a long, boring story and not realize it because it's interesting to them. I will tell them, I'll be like, you know, honestly, I'm getting paid to read this. And that's why I'm doing it. But otherwise, I would have stopped a long time ago. So how can we make people care about this topic right away from the beginning. And the cool thing about copywriting is, once you learn these different types of features of writing, copy and keep people's attention, you can apply them to everything that you do, right. So some people are like, Oh, wait, I'm writing a lot of boring copy, I'd have to tell people early on in the copy why they should care about this, why this is important to invest their time into reading this watching this, etc. And once they know that they go, Oh, I can do that for everything I write ever in my life after this. Yeah, I that's why I think copywriting is one of the highest forms of leveraged marketing that you could do in terms of like, it's the lowest effort to change because you're just changing the text on the page, oftentimes, but the highest reward because it could take something that no one buys and make 100 sales versus zero.

Andrew Stotz 14:27
And the other last thing that you hear you hear my objections or my concerns, right, like my first one is all am I going to be overwhelmed with material and all that? You've addressed that the other one that I would say is that, oh, God, I'm already working overload. Now I as the owner, founder, I got to now start writing all these emails and then I'm just I get scared that I'm not going to have the time. So yeah, I'm going to join with a lot of enthusiasm. How do you deal with that type of, you know, well,

Neville Medhora 15:02
actually, you usually people are already doing it. When they come to us, they're generally already writing emails, and they may think it's alright, it's really easy. And then they go, Hey, these aren't these aren't working very well, or they don't. There's all these questions that they don't know about. They're like, I don't know what date day to send them on. And then you looked that up on Google, and you're like, well, there's like a million different answers. You know, what is the guy that sends millions of emails out? Do right? So you just you just get straight to the point. Also, a lot of people will come just for office hours. So it just depends. I've never been able to put because everyone's like, well, what's the primary thing, it's kind of like this 3333 33 split of some people will just watch courses and go, I learned what I needed and leave, or just, you know, not use it as much. Some people will only come to office hours, and some people will use our forum. So whichever way you decide to interact, it just depends on the person. But a lot of people will come for office hours and say, I wrote these emails, they're not doing well. I don't even know why. But what's the first step? And then I can come in and be like, Oh, I see exactly why, and then advise them and then that problem was fixed.

Andrew Stotz 16:00
And what what, what does it costs? What just tell us more about it? Because I 97 questions, because I'm damn interested. As you can see, yeah,

Neville Medhora 16:09
I know where I was, like, are we pitching this? Yeah, I do 97 a month, because that's just like the easiest for people to decide. And then a lot of people upgrade to a year. So that's like, 750 a year. And occasionally, there's some sort of sale or something. But generally, 97 a month is the way that I found most people kind of just dip their toe in the water to see like, you know, is this bullshit, or I'll stick around for one month, get what I need and leave. So and then you would always pause and start your subscription. So I actually made a community several years ago, rather than just like a simple course that you download once. And the problem with the downloading once course, I used to do that. The problem with that I'm not sure if you take the course before, but you download the course once. And now the content just gets like older or the person is not around and you're like is this updated, I don't know. Whereas if people pay me monthly or yearly, I am obligated to update the content and keep it fresh, or keep it new stuff coming out all the time. So it's a much better model for the Creator. And the consumer as well. Although sometimes the consumer doesn't like paying a monthly fee versus a one time.

Andrew Stotz 17:10
It's great. And I'm gonna definitely check it out and recommend to everybody that wants to get better at that because it's visually communicating is key. I have a valuation masterclass that I teach as a cohort. So it's community and then they can if they go into the professional meaning they make it to the first six weeks, and then they say, I really want to build a skill in this, then they join that community which I call valuation masterclass professional. But what I do is I, once they've gone through a certain level of content, then I say, the assignment that they have is to give feedback on the new students work. And that way, it's not overwhelming for me and my staff. And they now and they're valuing generally the same companies. So they've already been through that one, and they've made this mistake, and now they're feeding it back. So my team oversees the peer review process in that particular group, and then I do the final review of the of the submissions, and all the feedback. But that's one of the ways that I figured out how to scale it.

Neville Medhora 18:15
We do the same thing. I tell people when they join the community and like try to hit 100 posts. And the reason is, you are in a writing class right now. And the best way to improve your writing is by writing. And honestly, the best way to improve is by what looking at other people's stuff. I feel like if I write a sales page, a lot of times, I'll give advice, and I'll go like, well, I saw your sales page and doesn't do that. The reason is, I have blinders on, I've seen it a million times, once I've seen a piece of copy too many times, I lose my ability to make it better sometimes. Whereas if you look at something fresh, you can go oh, this doesn't make sense to me, this looks wrong, that kind of thing. So I actually encourage people to go comment on other people's stuff all the time as well. And it really helps them learn more, it almost seems like I'm trying to just put them to work trying to Tom Sawyer them into painting the fence and getting out of it. But in reality, it really helps them become better writers by commenting on other people's stuff.

Andrew Stotz 19:06
Well, Neville, I don't normally go into this much detail on the people who come in and talk about their business. But I just fascinated with what you're doing. And I know there's value in it. So I'm going to be checking it out. And you know, highly recommend I'll have links in the show notes for others to check it out.

Neville Medhora 19:21
And there's interesting stuff happening in the writing space, by the way in terms of like chat, GPT, Google Bard, all these different types of things. I've invested in a couple of AI writing software's years ago, when GPT three first came out, and it was like suddenly clear that like, whoa, a machine can write pretty well. Yeah. And so I've been used, I use Chet GPT and all these things every day. And so it's a very interesting time with people a lot of writers are shaking in their boots about this. So

Andrew Stotz 19:46
I was asked by by someone could you put in a job description and responsibilities for for this in one of our contracts and I didn't have much time so I went to chat GPT managing director job responsibilities and all Well, that I just cleaned it up and put it in the contract because it had to be done right away. And it's a contract that, you know, it's not as critical. But the point is lots of value there. So, all right, it

Neville Medhora 20:11
makes it makes supporting content very well. Yes, yeah.

Andrew Stotz 20:14
Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment, thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Neville Medhora 20:23
So I have a couple of different things. Worst investment, I think, taking hot stock tips. So I was fortunate that in college, I had a little extra cash because I had started a couple of businesses. So a lot of causes were totally broke, I was not totally broke. And I had a couple of 1000 extra bucks, you know, we're talking about 2001 timeframe. So a lot of money, at least for me at the time. And I started day trading here and there, I feel like every male at least once in their life goes through a training phase of some sort, whether you're day trading some sort of like Beanie Babies, Bitcoin, whatever the hell it may be. So I was trading stocks at the time. And I thought, wow, I could pick a stock when it's low, and then it goes high. So I was doing all the stupid stuff. I was like, looking at all these like medical firms and like FDA approval comes out, the stock jumps up, and I'm like, Man, if I bought it there, I could go higher. And so I tried all that kind of stuff. I would wake up when the bell, I wake up early in the morning, I'm not really a morning person, but I wake up in the morning, catch the bell ringing, and I started seeing started talking to people about stocks. And I would hear friends that you know, lived in New York, and they'd be like, oh, yeah, I heard this, like this hedge fund is buying this and you get like this inside kind of scoop type of thing. None of those ever worked out. I mean, I mean, almost like categorically zero, that which is, which is a little crazy, because I did a lot of those. And like I said, I was putting a little bit of money in each of these. But still, to me, it was a lot. It's just like, none of those worked out well at all, like ever. Like, I never remember getting a hot stock tip from anyone ever, no matter how smart and it just did well. And I think there's a multiple to two things, one that that person probably bought the stock and hyping it up. It could be that also it's like knowing when to sell is important. But also like as Mister Mister market, as Warren Buffett said, is crazy and erratic and doesn't obey timelines, right. So there's a lot of macroeconomic things going on. Whereas if you buy like a good business, that makes a lot of sense. So I was doing all this day trading, and I did my taxes. And after a year, capital gains, all that stuff. I think I made like 5% on my money. And that was like, with all that time, I was even considering a time and stress. Because as you know, when you first start day trading, you think like, oh, I made money, I'm on top of the world, I'm gonna be rich in five days. This is amazing. And then as soon as you started losing money, you started going, what am I doing? This is terrible. I'm gonna lose it all. Oh, my God, I'm stressed, I should sell it. And so I went through the whole gamut of learning that and I'm so thankful I did that when I was a very young man, and not an older person. I've seen so many people screw up when they start working for Google or whatever. And they're making a lot of money. And they're like, literally doing these like dumb trades. Like, Yeah, I heard this company is going to do really well during the pandemic, like, it's gonna go up. And I'm like, you're gambling, you're gambling here. Right? Like I get it. Like, you're sort of going based off of good information. But you're not going, you're not investing long term. You're just doing short term trades, you are gambling. And of course, those people never really make any money. To supplement that though. I started listening to everything I could about Warren Buffett. Okay, it was in geology class that had made a trade where I 12x to my money, which was tremendous for me. And what happened was, do you remember Enron, the whole Enron scandal? Of course, Enron, blah, blah, blah, big gas company went to zero overnight. And it was a big thing in the economy. Back when I was in college, and I grew up in Houston. So Enron was based in Houston. And there was another company called Dinah GE probably never heard of them, they do $2 billion a year of profit. And what they do is they transport gas from one place to another. And they somehow got one of their executives kind of like did some funky stuff with Enron. And I remember reading about this and the company, the stock chart was high, high, high, and then just like zero, and their stock went to like 32 cents or something. It was very low compared to what it was. And so I remember thinking that will happen there. So I did the Warren Buffett thing, I printed out all the reports, all the financials. And what they said was, what they said was, we got hit with a $2 billion, fine. We fired the person, we took care of it, our operations are still in order. So we make $600 million a quarter $2.4 billion a year, nothing changed about that, by the way, nothing changed. They only got a thing. But then I was reading the papers and looking at the news, and everyone's like Dinah G's going bankrupt. And I'm like, Well, I'm reading the report that they wrote and is audited. And they still make the same amount of money. They're just aggressively paying off their fine. So that's like, if I had that, let's say the number was different. I have $2,400 in credit card debt. And every month I was paying off, you know, five $600. Well, in the few months, I'm going to be debt free, right. So similarly, we did that. And every paper reported that's come There's gonna go bankrupt, I'm sitting here going crazy, like, Am I insane? Like, am I just this 19 year old, that's crazy? Or is this company making all this money and like within four quarters, you're gonna make a ton of money. So started adding to my position and sure enough in a geology class 12x in one day, and that was the most amount of money I've ever made. And here's the thing, I didn't do anything. I just placed a trade a long time ago. And then when it went up, I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna take some money off the table. There was no stress in it. I didn't have to track it. I didn't do anything. And that's when I started realizing that these hot stock tips are just terrible lately, none of them panned out. And it's one thing we're actually did my due diligence worked out really well. So that my hot stock tips is one of my worst trades. I got a couple others but

Andrew Stotz 25:46
so maybe I'll share what I took away from it. I teach ethics in CFA for Chartered Financial Analysts here. And I was president of CFA society in Thailand. So it's very important to talk about ethics. And people would ask the question, young people were like, how do I'm getting all this information? How do I know what's inside information? You know, so that I don't trade on that? And I said, Oh, that's pretty simple. Like simple. It seems kind of hard to know if it's inside information. I said no, as if you hear it is not inside information. In other words, you're not in the in circle. Yeah. You know, like, you think that the guy that's telling you this is that but no 99% of the time, it's somebody passing on inside information, secondhand, third hand, and it's very rare, that that information is not instantly reflected in the market. And so when you think you're getting tips, all you're getting is just people promoting their ideas, and they're telling it in a couch to voice, like, Hey, I heard that the data management is going to make a big move, you know, and they it's just all the theatrics of that. And then it just is so exciting to think that you're getting something really, you know, unique and valuable. And 99.9% of time, you're not, you're just getting some information that someone's hyping. And so, therefore, now that doesn't mean you don't want to pay attention, if you are talking to an insider of a company who has an uncle, cousin or whatever, and they breach their cause one of the reasons why I can say that most of the time it's not insider trading, is that that insider will need to breach their duty to the company and violate SEC guidelines for you. And it's probably not happening. So

Neville Medhora 27:36
yeah, it's just it's also not like a long term strategy. Hoping random dudes tell you stuff like, it's not, it's not a wise investment strategy. For the longest time, have people made money like this, I'm sure. But you also, it's like the person who goes to the casino all the time, like in the long run, they often lose, are there times when they come home with 25 grand in their pocket? Sure. But I just don't think I've ever seen anyone get rich like that. And I've had enough time on Earth to see that like enough, you think that there'll be some people just rolling in it. The closest thing I could see to that is like someone got lucky with Bitcoin or something like that. That's the closest thing. But those seem like very once in a generation rare types of things.

Andrew Stotz 28:19
And I've done, I've basically categorized all the different mistakes that people have made that they've shared with me. And I've identified six common mistakes. And the number one most common mistake is they failed to do the research. And so what you're teaching us all, is when you did your research, and you came up with a thesis that you felt comfortable with, you stuck with your thesis, and you made money from it. So I think it's a good lesson for all of us. Do your research, don't think that people are nobody out there hand and $100 bills to you, it ain't happening. And so if you're going to invest, either become a person who's kind of dedicated to doing that research, or buy a broad based ETF or index fund that owns every stock and let someone else worry about that.

Neville Medhora 29:11
That's what I used to tell people, because Warren Buffett gave the best advice ever. He's in my will, like 99% of it's just going to my trust. And some of its going to his wife, and hit the letter to his wife is like buy a low cost ETF and just just hold up. That's it, don't do anything else.

Andrew Stotz 29:28
It makes you wonder even if he should continue his firm. I know that he's convincing everybody that all the people in place are you know, following his mentality, which is possible. But the reality is, he's an anomaly and you know, all that. So let me just take this now down to our listener, who is 19 years old. Parents just gave him $5,000. He's just opened his day trading account. He's sitting in his college dorm and he's so excited right now, and he hears this interview. Now based on what you learned From your story and what you continue to learn, what one action would you recommend that that person take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Neville Medhora 30:09
Well, I don't know if you have a print them out, but some of these financial statements are so boring, you might have to print it out to read it, I sort of read it. So reading about the company, so don't look at charts, right. So don't look at charts of like, oh, this is down in might go up, you know, that's like, that's not a real way to analyze a company. It says her reading about the company and read their, their statements, what they're doing. And so when you start doing that, you start, they have to, they have to, like put what they lost what they made money on, and you start looking at their financials, and you start seeing, like, wow, they'd have no cash in the bank. And that's dangerous, and they spend a lot of money and they barely make any money. And like, this doesn't, you don't have to be a real mathematician over here to figure out that, like, you know, this, this company has too bad months, and they're out, they're done. They're gone. They're toast, that's the big make layoffs are something. And so. So when you start seeing that, you start seeing companies like Apple or something and you're like, they have how much money in the bank, like, like they could go, they could stop selling iPhones or anything and just live for a long time. You're like, that's a healthy company. That's a really healthy company. So I always think that like a company so big, it can't possibly grow more. I remember putting money in Apple, even when it was like a trillion dollars and thinking like, it's like the biggest company, how could it go higher, but then you look at the moat that they have. And you like, there's no one can overtake them right now. It's almost impossible. And you read their statements of their supply chain, and how strong it is, and how like, they basically buy up all the inventory in the entire world of certain pieces of equipment, and you're like, they're going to at least make money for five years. There's no way this could not work. Or you even look at a company like IBM or Microsoft, where you think like, oh, they're old, they're dead. But then you're just like, well, they have contracts with the government for 20 years. So they're gonna at least make this much money for 20 years. So we're gonna wait, they're not the cool google in town. But at the same time, it's like this is cash cash machine. And so you start you start thinking of it different. So I know this company is gonna make money. There's, it is almost impossible for this company to not make money. Whereas some of the new hotter startups, you're just like, Oh, I heard peloton is going to take off during the pandemic, you know that that's the classic, you know, whatever's whatever is going to be like delivery at home. It's just like, Yeah, but when that time passes, then it goes down and gets inflated. But whereas like these companies are like going to make money year after year after year, if you just read about them. So I'd say to that student, great. Use that $5,000. To open a trading account, I highly suggest you make mistakes when you're young. So blow it all if you want, I don't care, because you'll make it back at some point. But I would say don't get caught up in buying something just because it's like cheap right now or something like that. Rather do your and read some of those statements. And you will learn way, way, way, way more about how to analyze a company.

Andrew Stotz 32:48
Great advice. All right, what is a resource of yours or any others that you'd recommend for our listeners,

Neville Medhora 32:54
I would say I have a bunch of social so if you type in Neville Medora and Evi le immediato Ra, you probably find my name somewhere. It's not too many people made that. There's only one other guy in the world named that. And so you find me on Instagram, I posted the short videos, I've been posting him for about six months doing pretty well. You can also find me on YouTube, if you type in Neville Medora. I teach copywriting stuff over there alone and you could probably learn a lot of the stuff I teach. And then I also tweet quite a bit at nev med on Twitter, quite active on there. I mean, a lot of my best friends on Twitter now would just interesting. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but meet a lot of cool people over there. And that's where I keep up to date with a lot of the tech and just I tweet quite a bit of copywriting stuff there as well. And then if you really want I'd say the number one way you join my newsletter, so I have a thing called the swipes email that goes out. And you'll learn little marketing tips and stuff like that everyone says the best thing I ever put out that goes out every Friday. So operating course.com/newsletter And it'll sign you right up.

Andrew Stotz 33:51
We'll have links to all that in the show notes. Last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Neville Medhora 33:58
Oh, interesting. Oh, we weren't prepared for this one. Well, I am now 40. And I decided that the end of my competitive working life was going to be 50. I decided that in college. And the reason was, I thought if I was in a worldwide competitive market, like I don't know, being the best travel YouTuber or something, that there's going to be some 18 year old that's hungry or faster, better and more motivated than I would be at 50 where my priorities will change and shift to where it's family and being lazy. So, I always thought that that would be my goal. So in the next 12 months, I would like to make sure that I am set up for that goal very well.

Andrew Stotz 34:36
Excellent. Excellent. Well listeners there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. If you've not yet joined that mission, just go to my worst investment ever.com and join my free weekly become a better investor newsletter to reduce risk in your life. As we conclude, Neville, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of ACE Dance Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Neville Medhora 35:10
Be well and prosper and don't make stupid mistakes except sometimes you will and you'll just learn from them.

Andrew Stotz 35:16
Just do it when you're young. Well, preferably, yeah, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.