Ep757: Kimberly Flynn – Don’t Put All Your Savings Into a Single Idea
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Quick take
BIO: Kimberly Flynn, CFA, is a founder and Managing Director of XA Investments, responsible for all product and business development activities.
STORY: Kimberly put all her $2,000 savings into a single telecom-dedicated mutual fund at the peak of telecom valuations and saw it go down to 30 cents on the dollar.
LEARNING: Don’t put all your savings into a single idea. Be diversified, especially when dealing with active manager selection. Know yourself and your risk tolerance.
“You’ve got to feel comfortable making investment decisions, and if you’re not, get advice from somebody who can give you the right guidance.”
Kimberly Flynn
Guest profile
Kimberly Flynn, CFA, is a founder and Managing Director of XA Investments, where she is responsible for all product and business development activities. XA Investments has a proprietary closed-end platform and a consulting practice to assist clients with developing US and UK-registered closed-end funds. Previously, Kim was Senior Vice President and Head of Product Development for Nuveen Investments’ Global Structured Products Group.
Kim received her MBA degree from Harvard University and her BBA in Finance and Business Economics, summa cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame in 1999. Kim earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and is a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society of Chicago.
Kim was recently selected to serve on the Notre Dame Wall Street leadership committee. She also serves as secretary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Women’s board executive committee and on the advisory board of Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man program. She is an active member of the Harvard Club of New York City and the University Club of Chicago, where she serves on the Finance Committee.
Worst investment ever
Kimberly made a $2,000 investment into an Invesco telecom-dedicated mutual fund at the peak of telecom valuations. This was in 1999, and very quickly rode it down to 30 cents on the dollar. Kimberly was assured that the telecom sector would be hot based on the research she was doing at the time at Morgan Stanley. This was Kimberly’s first investment after graduating college.
Lessons learned
- Be diversified, especially when dealing with active manager selection.
- Know yourself and your risk tolerance.
- You’ve got to feel comfortable making investment decisions, and if you’re not, get advice from somebody who can give you the proper guidance.
Andrew’s takeaways
- Set a long-term plan and methodically contribute to it.
- Find your investment style and follow it.
Actionable advice
Take 80% of the amount you plan to invest and put it into a diversified portfolio. Then, take 20% of it and buy a telecom or crypto fund because experimentation is sometimes helpful. If you lose 20% of your investment, you can recover.
Kimberly’s recommendations
If you’re working in the financial space, Kimberly recommends checking out resources on her website, XA Investments, to learn more about alternatives. She also recommends reading The Economist or The Financial Times to gain a global perspective.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Kimberly’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to launch new products and take on new prospective consulting clients so she can grow her business.
Parting words
“Stay positive. Even if you make a mistake, you can always start again and take on a new challenge or a new investment opportunity.”
Kimberly Flynn
Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to winning investing, you must take risk. But to win big, you've got to reduce it, ladies and gentlemen arm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank you for joining that mission, including all of the listeners in the United States and particularly in the city of Chicago. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Kimberly Flynn. Kim, are you ready to join the mission?
Kimberly Flynn 00:39
Yes, I'm ready.
Andrew Stotz 00:41
Thanks. I'm excited to have you on and one of the things that you're doing is closed ended funds. And that's such an interesting thing. So I want to talk about that. But let me go through that. Kim is a CFA charter holder like myself and a founder and managing director of x A investments where she is responsible for all products, product and business development activities. XA investments has a proprietary closed end platform and a consulting practice to assist clients with developing US and UK registered closed end funds. Previously, Kim was senior vice president and Head of Product Development for Nuveen Investments, global Structured Products Group can take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.
Kimberly Flynn 01:33
Absolutely, well, I mean, I work with asset managers every day, in the product strategy and product development role that we we live in. And primarily, our focus is on alternative investments, so alternatives to stocks and bonds, which is really an area that US investors are focusing on, just given the poor performance of stocks and bonds in 2022. So I think there's a different philosophy around portfolio construction, that advisors are having, the conversation that they're having is different than in the past. And the work that we do is in that space of helping individual investors, you know, save for retirement, and figure out better investment alternatives.
Andrew Stotz 02:18
And, you know, for the listeners out there, let's talk about what is an alternative investment. I mean, some people may say, of real estate as an alternative, some people may say, you know, timberland is an alternative art is an alternative? How do you describe alternative or as an alternative way of accessing something? Yes,
Kimberly Flynn 02:41
I had an old boss and mentor at Nuveen Investments tell me not to use the word alternative, because it could really mean anything. And I think that's what's confusing to the average person. And so every example that you listed, from art investments, to farmland to real estate, these are all examples of things that may not ordinarily be in an investor's savings or retirement portfolio, what we find in the US is that investors are over allocated to US stocks. And so while in the 80s, and 90s, we learned about the value of diversification beyond US companies, there's been sort of a pullback, I think, in terms of investor appetite for risk. And what that leads to is a bias towards large cap, us growing companies. So like the fang stocks, obviously, people are familiar with those. And so where there's familiar there's familiarity, there's comfort. And I think in the world of alternatives, real estate is often a gateway area of investment. We all have lived in a home that we've owned, or grew up in a home. And so people will think of themselves naturally as homeowners, they understand how they know taking out a mortgage works, they understand how purchasing real estate works. And so I think there's some comfort in then extending that into things like purchase of a second home for rental income, purchase of commercial mortgage backed securities because they understand what the underlying assets are. And so we do see a lot of financial advisors in the US, particularly in the last 20 years, they've taken investors who got comfortable with real estate investments, and introduce them to other types of institutional alternatives. And so this includes things like private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, investments, things where you do need a longer investment horizon for that investment. You can't just put money into an infrastructure fund, you know today and expect to get it out a year from now. You do need to have a much Longer investment horizon for some of these alternatives. And so back to your question, alternatives are really a spectrum from, you know, fairly liquid things, you know, take currencies, or, you know, managed futures on one end to that are fairly liquid to the other end, which are highly illiquid, things like infrastructure, that that have many years in terms of the investment horizon. And so there's a lot in between. And that's what we're encouraging investors to consider some of these investment options as fixed income replacements, or as total return replacements. And so that's, that's where the conversation around alternatives in the US has been going.
Andrew Stotz 05:49
And you mentioned something about how let's take an example of infrastructure where you're putting money into something and it takes could take a decade before you get the full value out of that, which kind of brings me into the next question, which is what is a closed end fund, most people just think I own a mutual fund or I have a fun, but they don't know the difference necessarily, between closed and open open ended funds. And maybe you can just give us a little brief run brief on that.
Kimberly Flynn 06:18
Stir. Sure. So there are a couple of different types of closed ended funds. And in the registered funds space, so funds that are SEC registered and, and are governed under the 1940 Act. Right now, there's sort of a growing area of fun development around interval funds, which are a type of closed end funds, it's a little bit of a misnomer, because interval funds are actually open ended. So meaning you can you know, like a mutual fund, you could put an investment in this month, or you could do so six months from now, but they operate in a way that has limited or intermittent liquidity. And so that's why this type of fun, where there's a lot of growth around alternative funds sponsors entering the market with new funds. This is a way for retail investors to get exposure to some of these alternatives, including infrastructure, there's a number of infrastructure interval funds, but the closed and nature of it means unlike a mutual fund, it's not open every day. ins and outs are not done every single day, the way a mutual fund is, you know, mutual fund stands ready to redeem shares and to provide shareholders with liquidity. And so therefore, the rules governing mutual funds do require that those portfolios to be largely liquid securities, things that can be sold in seven days or less. Now, with closed end funds, because that requirement is different. You can have less liquid or even entirely illiquid securities in the portfolio. And so you're not constrained by that limitation. Mutual funds are really restricted to 15% or less of the portfolio, and things that can't be sold in seven days or less. So that's why you don't find some of these alternative investment options in a mutual fund package. Now, individual investors want the protections of an SEC registered product, they want the protections of a fun board looking after their investment. And so that's why this this part of the marketplace, which is considered legally to be a closed end fund, but the interval fund market is really blossoming in the US to allow retail investors exposure to some of these investments. You
Andrew Stotz 08:52
mentioned that mutual funds must have no more than or should have less than 50% of assets in of the amount in assets that can't be sold within seven days was that it? That's right, seven days. So basically, you know what, what the government doesn't want is for mutual funds to be stuck in something that they can't sell, when a shareholder decides they want to redeem their mutual fund shares. And then all of a sudden, you run into a situation where they can't get the cash to redeem. One of the other features about closed ended funds is that they can trade at a discount at times compared to mutual funds, typical open ended mutual funds, which generally never trade at a discount. And so I wanted to understand a little bit more about that. But I also want to understand you've you've mentioned about interval funds, and I'm not exactly sure if I understood I've never heard of interval funds before. Is that the main thing that you're dealing with? Are you dealing with it maybe you can explain a little bit more about interval funds. Sure.
Kimberly Flynn 09:58
So An interval Fund is a type of we call non listed closed end fund. Listed closed end funds are traded on an exchange, many of them are New York Stock Exchange traded. And a listed closed end fund has both a price where the fund will trade and it has the net asset value that's determined by typically the fund administrator. And and most listed closing funds in the US, you know, our daily nav. And so in the listed both in the listed US market, and the listed UK market, these types of funds listed funds can develop premiums or discounts. And those premium discounts depend on supply and demand. So if an asset class is out of favor, the fund will trade at a discount. If, and like in the UK marketplace right now, you have a lot of private equity or venture capital focused strategies that trade at very large discounts, not just because they're out of favor, but because people are questioning the actual value of this the marks on the securities within the portfolio. So sometimes you get discounts developing for multiple reasons, sometimes it's just a broken strategy that needs to be restructured. So in a listed closed end fund, you do see those both a price and an app which can result in a premium or a discount. An interval fun is a type of non listed closed end fund. And so it's non listed. And so you don't have to prices, effectively, you just have one, you have nav, which is like a mutual fund, a mutual fund only has nav which has net asset value. And that's where you get in and you get out at asset value. The same would be true for an interval fund. And obviously, a lot of asset managers, like the fact that interval funds don't have this trading dimension, that in the listed market, you do have that. Obviously, one of the reasons why people, some people like the structure of the listed closed end fund is that the exchange is the liquidity mechanism. So if you're buying or selling, you're doing so on the exchange. And so to the extent you need or want liquidity, you can get it there, just maybe, if you're selling in March of 2020, you know, the market may be at a discount. And so there's a price for that liquidity that you demand. And so once again, it's you know, the exchange is providing a function, which is making a market and providing liquidity. And sometimes that comes at a price. But, but it's interesting, because, you know, it represents market pricing represents volatility, just as you observe in, for example, the the listed REIT marketplace, or the listed Business Development Company, the BDC market, when you have things that are listed and trading, they tend to be a bit more volatile, because you you'll have more buying and selling as opposed to something like If you contrast that with a private fund, like private funds don't have volatility, because you know, there's there's a little typically the shares, trading hands, if you want to sell your interest in a private fund, the GP has to sign off on the transfer those shares. So that's kind of an extreme. But it helps explain why that market pricing particularly on assets, some of them, like you know, you're not doing a daily price on the home that you live in. And the same would be true on an infrastructure portfolio. Is the pricing or the net asset value on that infrastructure portfolio changing every day? Not likely, you know, so that's why I think that, you know, there are questions around how do you price some of these illiquid assets, and the frequency of pricing what's appropriate for some of these assets. So
Andrew Stotz 14:17
just to summarize, for the listeners out there, I would say, the key thing about these closed ended funds that are listed on the stock market is that they issue a certain amount of shares at a period of time, they may increase that or decrease that. But generally, you can think that there's a fixed amount of shares. And when you're buying and you're giving money to buy those shares, that money is not going to the fund management company or to the fund. It's going to a person who owns the share and so it's not causing an additional an increase or decrease in the number of shares whereas with an open ended fund, when you redeem a share, you're actually taking money out of the investment portfolio, which I would think is one of the differences. You know, one of the things you made me think about is, you know, that if, if, if a tree that saying if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, you know, did it actually happen or whatever that saying is? The point is, is that sometimes when you think about risk, and volatility, first of all, they can get confused sometimes. But if you have two assets in one happens to be listed in the others unlisted, you know, we have to ask the question, just the fact that one's having a price every day, is that really risk? Or is that really does that make any difference compared to the same asset that just doesn't have a daily price? Does that mean there's no risk there? How do you see the difference in the way that people should proceed that?
Kimberly Flynn 15:58
I think that doing daily marks on illiquid, assets introduces noise, and the noise is coming from primarily the equity market, which drives the movement of prices in a lot of different markets. And so, if you have the luxury of a long investment horizon, you can, in effect, look the other way, and avoid some of that noise. Because you say, you know, I care about the value of the securities over the long term, I don't care what they are tomorrow, necessarily, you care a lot when you buy your shares, or when you sell your shares. And so some of these pricing mechanisms, you want to make sure that there's good transparency, because you don't want to be buying at a point where prices are artificially high. And to the extent that private funds don't mark their portfolios, what happens is institutional investors back away entirely from that segment of the market, right. So it makes sense that people who are skeptical about private equity pricing, because there is this tendency for private equity sponsors to avoid marking the book because you don't want to mark the prices down. Because you don't want to have a down round of financing. You don't want your company and the valuation to be marked down. And so but if if the pricing is not reflective of the overall economy or where the market is, what happens is if the prices don't move where they need to people back away, but entirely, we see that we see that, you know, in times of market stress, people move to cash for a reason, because they're questioning, we've observed that quite a bit in the last 18 months, as the interest rates have moved moved up, every time we see a move, there's sort of a period of reckoning, we're trying to reprice assets, so that they reflect the full information in the market. So I think that, you know, there's an argument to be made, that daily pricing of illiquid assets is too much. But there's also an argument to be made that something more frequent is appropriate, particularly if you're reflecting macro inputs that are changing quite a bit, you know, you can't have a private equity investment book that is reflecting, you know, 2021 pricing, so, so, yes, absolutely. And so that's why sometimes that increased transparency into pricing results in increased volatility, as an asset class readjust, you know, pricing wise. And I think some markets like real estate are slower to adjust. Private equity is slower to adjust. But if that adjustment hasn't happened, new entrants into that market, new buyers, you know, they're going to be questioning as they should. Where's an appropriate entry point? Yeah,
Andrew Stotz 19:11
one of the things I teach in my valuation masterclass, because I've been teaching valuation, let's see, 31 years now is, if I'm successful as a teacher, when you end this class, you'll feel less confident. And I think whenever you dig deeper into finance, it's, you know, you know, some people may feel really confident that volatility is risk, you know, until you dig deeper and ask, okay, so is the lack of volatility of price mean no risk? Well, there's a lot of, you know, thinking there. Let's just wrap this this up by asking one last question like, maybe you could just give an example of the type of type of client that you you know, the common type of client that comes to you the type of thing that you're doing so that we can understand kind of a typical, a typical day a typical product that you, you know, creating or working on. Or
Kimberly Flynn 20:10
so our clients are alternative asset managers, many of them have institutional clients, and they only run private funds, but they're trying to open up their strategy to individual investors. And the only way they're going to be able to do that, you know, to have, they're limited in terms of how many accredited investors that can come into their private funds. So to do so they need a registered product. But a mutual fund is not going to be a good fit for a lot of these alternative strategies. So you're really left with these types of closed end structures, which are designed to house alternatives. And so what we do is we work with them, we figure out the product strategy, we tried to figure out their pathway to the marketplace. Because there's a lot of effort in the US, it's really a financial advisor driven wealth advice model. And so a lot of these alternative firms, which have been focused on institutional client relations, don't really know what it takes to be successful in terms of serving clients in the retail marketplace, so that's what we do is it we're helping those asset managers get a product to market and then hopefully set them up for success in terms of growing what they're doing. And along the way, we do a lot of education for advisors who are looking to, you know, basically improve their practice. And their a lot of advisors are using alternatives to differentiate what they're doing from the next advisor down the road. And then we do a lot of investor level education on the benefits of at the portfolio level the benefits of adding alternatives. So that's the work that we do. And it gets us into a lot of different alternative strategies and have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years working on farmland, and private equity, and private credit in particular, that's what we've been working on.
Andrew Stotz 22:19
Interesting. And before we go into the big question of the show, I have to admit, you've taken me back to high school, Kim, because I'm looking over your right shoulder and seeing that typewriter over there. For the listeners that can't see it, there's a nice, nice classic typewriter, I don't know, what's the meaning of that for you in that office?
Kimberly Flynn 22:42
You know, It's a Smith Corona, and I did buy it during the COVID quarantine period. I basically used it to type thank you notes and recipe cards, I was making a lot of dips, I didn't make a full meal for my family, I would just make dips, and I would share the recipe with my friends and my family. But yeah, I enjoy. I enjoy antiques, I've got some other antiques in my office, my mom was an estate sale, antique dealer, and learned learn the love of you know, kind of cool old objects. And so you'll see a lot of them in my office and in my home.
Andrew Stotz 23:27
That's very cool. I got a lot of cool old objects. One of them I got which is up here behind me is a gavel that my grandfather used and it was kind of interesting. So cool old objects. But typewriter I remember back in high school when I was you know, in 1980 81, or whatever, where the teacher was Mrs. Banks, and we had to sit there and type away on these typewriters, or, you know, 45 minutes. So that was pretty funny. So it takes me back. 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.
Kimberly Flynn 24:07
Absolutely. So this was my first investment at after graduating college. And so it was basically my first bit of savings and I made a $2,000 investment into an Invesco telecom telecom dedicated mutual fund at the peak of telecom valuations. So this was 1999 that I made the investment and it very quickly wrote it all the way down to 30 cents on the dollar. And absolutely so, I think for me, it taught me a couple of important lessons about thematic investing, but I was assured that the telecom sector based on the research I was doing at the time, it will Morgan Stanley was going to be, you know, the hot.so? You know, I think by far that the worst investment so?
Andrew Stotz 25:12
And how would you describe the lessons that you learned from that? I mean, it's interesting, because as you were saying, You are kind of on the inside or in, in the investment community. So you had some of the skills that but I know, when I was a beginning analyst, I really didn't know much, you know, I learned fast, but you know, let us understand a little bit more about that. Well,
Kimberly Flynn 25:34
I think sometimes personal experience and a little bit of an information advantage can make you overconfident and can lead to an overconfidence, bias. And that's, you know, if you think about the lessons we learned from being diversified in terms of investment portfolio, putting all of your investment savings into a single telecom stock was a highly concentrated bet, obviously, you know, if you're, if you're 22, you can you can tolerate a 70% loss and move on. But I would equate that to, you know, later on in my career, I ended up pursuing a career in the asset management business, not in the investment banking business, which is where I was focused at the time. But I think that, you know, the value, it also taught me that I wasn't necessarily the best person to be making this investment decision. And so, I have a lot of respect for active portfolio managers, having met that many of them over the years, and many of them, you know, aren't worth the fees that you pay for them. And so I spend my time doing manager research in both traditional investments and alternative investments. And then I now I tend to invest in a more diversified way, in those active manager selections, because I know I'm not the best person. There are people who spend all day, you know, researching companies, and they're in much better position than I am. And so, for me, that's how it influenced the way I manage money. But it also influences some of the business decisions that we've made in our asset management business. Because another, you know, siematic investment, which was popular just two years ago, was crypto currencies, you know, Bitcoin and things of that nature. In the US, you know, regulators have long been concerned about those types of crypto oriented products. And so the SEC is not allowed, you know, products to pop up. And so and so in some ways they've protected us investors from disruption of a lot of value, you know, you know, an investment in, in some of the the crypto exchanges, you know, wouldn't be down 70%, they'd be down, you know, 100%. And so I think, I think that, you know, I am a big believer in fundamental research. And that's why also, I'm a big believer in active management. But I feel like, I think with high frequency trading, it's very, very challenging for individual investors, who it's not your day job. And so for me, it's really influenced how I think about manager selection and portfolio diversification. So I think that'll probably prevent me from, you know, being, you know, particularly lucky, but I think that's what when I equate to investing in telecoms or cryptocurrencies. I think there's a lot of luck in terms of the timing involved with some of those investment decisions. And, you know, maybe I won't be lucky because I won't get that timing right. But that's okay. By me. You know, I've learned that lesson. Yeah,
Andrew Stotz 28:59
I think my take away a couple of things. The first is, you know, when things are hot, and it's just everything's booming, you know, that's the last time that you want to be starting to allocate to an industry, but that's the time that you feel most comfortable with that industry, like when you can when you're getting affirming information coming through news and the price and all of that. And so that's why, you know, setting a long term plan and methodically, you know, contributing to that that tries to deal with that. The other thing is that, I would say it's another that another part of it is the idea of follow your, your style, follow your DNA. And I think early on you found from what you said that maybe that's not doing that, that way is not for me. And but it is, you know, for some people, they're amazing. And you know, I had a sell side career as an analyst for 20 years and I met with some of the most Is amazing fund managers who are very perceptive and much more attuned to markets and valuations and stuff than the typical person. And so some of those people are very, very suited for that. But I think for the listeners out there, what you really want to focus on is what's your style? And don't don't feel like you got to do another style, find your style. Any anything you would add to that.
Kimberly Flynn 30:25
I would agree, because I actually spent a summer doing equity research, and studied the toy industry. So I met with the CEOs of Mattel and Hasbro, for example. And, you know, in doing so once again, I had that experience of the telecom investment in the in the background. And even though I knew that I had the calls on those stocks, right, right. But I think that there was a level of discomfort that I continued to feel about making investment calls. And so I think you do have to know yourself, know, your risk tolerance. And for me, that led me to finishing a summer research experience and saying, you know, being a portfolio manager is not the pathway for you. But the love of asset management led me to a different role. And I think the same thing can be true for investors, you've got to feel comfortable in terms of making those investment decisions, and if you're not, you know, get advice from somebody who can give you the right guidance. And I think it's all about, you know, knowing where your comfort zone is, and a lot of that has to do with understanding your risk tolerance. And, you know, losing 70% of the value of an investment, you know, it feels a little like gambling to me. And so, personally, that wasn't something I was comfortable with. But I do appreciate, you know, with greater risk comes greater return. And so you know, it, it can definitely impact your life decisions, but also, your investment portfolio returns over time.
Andrew Stotz 32:06
Yeah, the other thing, one of the things I wrote in one of my books, how to start building your wealth investing in the stock market, I said, the common thing that we say and use, you said it, too, is that you can afford mistakes when you're young. You know, my mother who's 85, if you know, her portfolio was down massively, you know, that's something that she can't afford, you know, and I think that's part of what we're seeing. But on the other hand, the compounding effect of $2,000, from the age of 20, to the age of let's say, 60, is massive. So in my book, I say, don't make mistakes when you're young. And I had a big debate with a friend of mine, because he's like, You're so wrong, you know, it's time you got to take every risk, make every mistake. And I'm just saying, like, the magic of compounding, you know, is a factor in it. So what I want to do now is just go back, you know, think about a young person right now they've got 2000 $5,000, they're out of the university, you know, they see some hot stuff that they think they may want to put money into, based upon what you learned from your story and what you continue to learn what's one action that you'd recommend that they take to avoid suffering the same fate?
Kimberly Flynn 33:20
Well, I think that the 8020 rule could help here meaning like, take 80% of what you're going to invest in and put it in, you know, if anything, put it into a diversified portfolio, and then take 20% of it, if you if you want to buy telecom fund or buy a crypto fund, because I think that sometimes experimentation is helpful. exploring ideas can be helpful. And if you lose, you know, 20% of your then current savings, you can recover. If you lose 70%, like I did, and so I think that, you know, it's it's like anything else that if you're experimenting or trying something new, a portion is better than all, particularly if if you don't, you know, if this is, if this is just simply an experiment, once you have some level, you know, of success, then you have to be careful of that overconfidence bias, because I think that's still that, you know, having taking some risk off the table is still particularly helpful if you've got a bigger goal in mind, like saving for a home or saving for retirement.
Andrew Stotz 34:34
So what's the resource either of yours or any other resources that have helped you throughout the years that you'd recommend for our listeners, besides CFA? Of course,
Kimberly Flynn 34:44
yes, yes. For particularly for young people. You know, I tell all the young people on my team that that work in research that they need to read anything and everything that they can get their hands on, you know, that was the advice that was given to me by my mentor when I entered the business And frankly, people these days don't actually read. So that's particularly good advice. And if you're working in the financial space, the other thing you can do is write, what I do find is that, you know, I interview a lot of finance majors, econ majors. Now, the Econ and history majors can write, but a lot of business school graduates cannot. And so if you're going to communicate, particularly in this age of email communications, you need to be, you know, thoughtful and to the point. So, you know, we have resources on our website for advisors interested in alternatives. And xa, investments.com. But, you know, being for me, I find reading the economist or reading the FT gives you a global perspective. And I think, like we talked about earlier, that bias towards us, large cap companies, I think that as a professional in the business, the more you can bring global insights to your practice, the more valuable and frankly differentiated from, you know, the other guy that you will be so read, write, and, and have a global perspective. And frankly, if you're reading the Wall Street Journal, or any other US publications, it is a different, you're gonna get a US focused view. And that's what some of these, you know, the Financial Times is good at giving you a, you know, the European view, the economist is a little bit even broader than that. So I think we need to fold that in particularly for, you know, ongoing, professional development.
Andrew Stotz 36:37
Yeah, it's amazing how hard it is to read these days. You know, I mean, I've read, I estimate between 3005 1000 books in my life, and I've got 750 books in my library currently, which I've read, you know, pretty much all of it. But I find it harder nowadays, you get distracted by YouTube and videos, and this and that, and messages. And next thing, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night, and you think I didn't read anything tonight. So. And speaking of reading, why not go to your website, and I'll put the link in the show notes and read your latest white paper, reframing farmland as an investment? Yes. Interesting that well,
Kimberly Flynn 37:16
that's a great way. Yeah, there's a lot of interest in farmland in the US. And there's a lot of interesting ways for people to get exposure.
Andrew Stotz 37:24
Yeah. Interesting. Well, last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?
Kimberly Flynn 37:32
Well, we as we do, we're launching and God, we launch new products, and we have new prospective consulting clients. So it's all about growing, growing, what we do. I spend a lot of time writing myself. That's the best way for me as a small business to kind of get our thoughts out there on a larger stage. So we, you know, it's kind of that I just published my year in accomplishments for 2023. And we're about to start doing the forward planning for 2024. So it's, it's timely, and it's in process.
Andrew Stotz 38:11
All right, 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. As we conclude, Kim, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of East Arts 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?
Kimberly Flynn 38:36
Just stay positive. Even if you make a mistake, you can always start again and take on a new challenge or a new investment opportunity.
Andrew Stotz 38:45
Stay positive ladies and gentlemen. That's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth 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.
Connect with Kimberly Flynn
Andrew’s books
- How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market
- My Worst Investment Ever
- 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
- Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points
Andrew’s online programs
- Valuation Master Class
- The Become a Better Investor Community
- How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market
- Finance Made Ridiculously Simple
- FVMR Investing: Quantamental Investing Across the World
- Become a Great Presenter and Increase Your Influence
- Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points
- Achieve Your Goals