813 episodes

Welcome to My Worst Investment Ever podcast hosted by Your Worst Podcast Host, Andrew Stotz, where you will hear stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community, we know that to win in investing you must take the risk, but to win big, you’ve got to reduce it.

Your Worst Podcast Host, Andrew Stotz, Ph.D., CFA, is also the CEO of A. Stotz Investment Research and A. Stotz Academy, which helps people create, grow, measure, and protect their wealth.

To find more stories like this, previous episodes, and resources to help you reduce your risk, visit https://myworstinvestmentever.com/

My Worst Investment Ever Podcast Andrew Stotz

    • Business
    • 5.0 • 59 Ratings

Welcome to My Worst Investment Ever podcast hosted by Your Worst Podcast Host, Andrew Stotz, where you will hear stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community, we know that to win in investing you must take the risk, but to win big, you’ve got to reduce it.

Your Worst Podcast Host, Andrew Stotz, Ph.D., CFA, is also the CEO of A. Stotz Investment Research and A. Stotz Academy, which helps people create, grow, measure, and protect their wealth.

To find more stories like this, previous episodes, and resources to help you reduce your risk, visit https://myworstinvestmentever.com/

    ISMS 40: Larry Swedroe – Market vs. Hedge Fund Managers’ Efficiency

    ISMS 40: Larry Swedroe – Market vs. Hedge Fund Managers’ Efficiency

    In this episode of Investment Strategy Made Simple (ISMS), Andrew gets into part two of his discussion with Larry Swedroe: Ignorance is Bliss. Today, they discuss two chapters of Larry’s book Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them. In this series, they discuss mistake 30: Do You Fail to Understand the Tyranny of the Efficiency of the Market? And mistake 31: Do You Believe Hedge Fund Managers Deliver Superior Performance?
    LEARNING: Discovering anomalies or mistakes reinforces and makes the market more efficient. Hedge fund managers demonstrate no greater ability to deliver above-market returns than do active mutual fund managers.
     
    “Unfortunately, the evidence is hedge fund managers demonstrate no greater ability to deliver above-market returns than do active mutual fund managers.”Larry Swedroe 
    In this episode of Investment Strategy Made Simple (ISMS), Andrew gets into part two of his discussion with Larry Swedroe: Ignorance is Bliss. Larry is the head of financial and economic research at Buckingham Wealth Partners. You can learn more about Larry’s Worst Investment Ever story on Ep645: Beware of Idiosyncratic Risks.
    Larry deeply understands the world of academic research and investing, especially risk. Today, Andrew and Larry discuss two chapters of Larry’s book Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them. In this series, they discuss mistake number 30: Do You Fail to Understand the Tyranny of the Efficiency of the Market? And mistake 31: Do You Believe Hedge Fund Managers Deliver Superior Performance?
    Did you miss out on previous mistakes? Check them out:
    ISMS 8: Larry Swedroe – Are You Overconfident in Your Skills?ISMS 17: Larry Swedroe – Do You Project Recent Trends Indefinitely Into the Future?ISMS 20: Larry Swedroe – Do You Extrapolate From Small Samples and Trust Your Intuition?ISMS 23: Larry Swedroe – Do You Allow Yourself to Be Influenced by Your Ego and Herd Mentality?ISMS 24: Larry Swedroe – Confusing Skill and Luck Can Stop You From Investing WiselyISMS 25: Larry Swedroe – Admit Your Mistakes and Don’t Listen to Fake ExpertsISMS 26: Larry Swedroe – Are You Subject to the Endowment Effect or the Hot Streak...

    • 39 min
    Chris Kendall - Don’t Underestimate the Funding Needed to Go Big Time

    Chris Kendall - Don’t Underestimate the Funding Needed to Go Big Time

    BIO: Chris Kendall is the CEO of the Australian outsourced accounting group Aretex. Aretex helps businesses grow and scale with best-practice accounting, bookkeeping, and real-time access to accurate financial information.
    STORY: Chris invested in the idea of a reality TV show piloted around finding baseball players. Chris believed in his friend’s vision and was so caught up in the emotional attachment that he didn’t do any due diligence on the idea.
    LEARNING: If you’re going to fail, fail quickly, be honest about the failure, figure out what happened, and then move on to the next step. Don’t underestimate the funding needed to go big time.
     
    “There’s a balance between raising enough money to reduce dilution and raising enough money to ensure you can get to the next hurdle.”Chris Kendall 
    Guest profileChris Kendall is the CEO of the Australian outsourced accounting group Aretex. Aretex helps businesses grow and scale with best-practice accounting, bookkeeping, and real-time access to accurate financial information.
    He is also the host of The Anti-Failure Podcasts, which examine the lessons from failure in business and life that ultimately allow us to succeed.
    Worst investment everChris’s worst investment is the one he didn’t make, which was not buying property in the ’90s before he left Australia. His advice to anybody out there is to find a way to get into the property market as early as possible, go through the struggle of pulling together all of the resources you’ve got access to, and put them in a property.
    Chris shares one investment he made through passion and emotional attachment. The investment was a reality TV show piloted around finding baseball players. The TV show was created by a friend who envisioned creating a reality show intended to describe how professional athletes look through the ringers to determine where they end up playing a professional sport. The friend had some of the big names in baseball. He needed money to make the pilot, and his friends (including Chris) and family put some money in and gave it a shot. But he couldn’t get the traction to turn it into the TV show that everyone thought it was capable of.
    Chris believed in his friend’s vision and was so caught up in the emotional attachment that he didn’t do any due diligence on the idea.
    Lessons learnedWhen looking at property, ask yourself: Does this appeal to you? Does it meet your immediate needs? Is there an opportunity to leverage that in a growing market?There’s a balance between raising enough money to reduce dilution and raising enough money to ensure you can reach the next hurdle.If you’re going to fail, fail quickly, be honest about the failure, figure out what happened, and then move on to the next step.
    Andrew’s takeawaysDon’t underestimate the funding needed to go big time.
    No.1 goal for the next 12 monthsChris’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to continue working with small business owners and helping clients get the best information they need to run their businesses.
    Parting words 
    “Have the courage to turn up and give your best.”Chris Kendall 
    [spp-transcript]
     Connect with Chris...

    • 41 min
    Riggs Eckelberry - Don’t Go into Any Industry Unprepared

    Riggs Eckelberry - Don’t Go into Any Industry Unprepared

    BIO: Riggs Eckelberry is a nationally renowned entrepreneur who deploys his personal Break To Build™ process to help rebuild the water industry, which has reached a critical breaking point in recent years despite being essential to the planet’s survival.
    STORY: Riggs met this wonderful lady who asked him to sit down with her money manager. He showed up at this money manager’s office, who told him he had a great business going and advised him to go public. Riggs said that would be impossible because he wasn’t profitable yet. Turning down this opportunity turned out to be Riggs’s worst investment.
    LEARNING: You have to get that monthly recurring revenue. Don’t enter any industry unprepared.
     
    “Your greatest expense is the money you don’t make, the opportunity cost.”Riggs Eckelberry 
    Guest profileRiggs Eckelberry is a nationally renowned entrepreneur who deploys his personal Break To Build™ process to help rebuild the water industry, which has reached a critical breaking point in recent years despite being essential to the planet’s survival. As the founding CEO of OriginClear, Riggs has developed innovative solutions to help businesses face rising water bills by tapping into new investment markets. He is even pioneering the development of “water stablecoins,” a cryptocurrency backed by water assets. With a diverse background in nonprofit management, oceangoing navigation, and technology disruption, Riggs is uniquely qualified to bring change to an outdated and overrun industry.
    Worst investment everIn the early 1980s, Riggs realized that technology was going to be the linchpin for all change, and he wanted to be a part of it, so he moved to New York City. This was the period when companies were moving from the old safeguard ledger to microcomputer-type accounting systems. A lot of people needed help making that migration. Riggs created a series of companies that tried to help these people.
    Riggs happened to meet this wonderful lady who asked him to have a sit down with her money manager. He showed up at this money manager’s office, who told him he had a great business going and advised him to go public. Riggs insisted that would be impossible because he was yet to be profitable. Turning down this opportunity turned out to be Riggs’s worst investment. Unfortunately, Riggs didn’t know that in this industry, they’re not very profitable at the outset, but the real money is in the monthly revenue.
    Interestingly, Riggs gave the business to his best salesman. Years later, he told Riggs that he still had some of the accounts they opened together, and he’d become a millionaire from that recurring monthly revenue.
    Lessons learnedYou’ve got to look for that monthly recurring revenue.Wall Street bets on the future.Don’t enter any industry unprepared; get to know the space first.If you have a great team, you’ll have a life.Put an engineer’s mind to the scaling problem.
    Andrew’s takeawaysYou’ve got to be able to paint a vision of the scalability of your venture.
    Actionable adviceYou need to like what you’re going into because you will be stuck with it for years, especially if you succeed. Also, have a strong familiarity with the trade’s ins and outs.
    Riggs’s recommendationsRiggs recommends reading The Innovator’s Dilemma. The seed of the destruction of every enterprise is in that enterprise, and the...

    • 38 min
    ISMS 39: Larry Swedroe – Don’t Choose a Fund by Its Descriptive Name

    ISMS 39: Larry Swedroe – Don’t Choose a Fund by Its Descriptive Name

    In this episode of Investment Strategy Made Simple (ISMS), Andrew gets into part two of his discussion with Larry Swedroe: Ignorance is Bliss. Today, they discuss two chapters of Larry’s book Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them. In this series, they discuss mistake number 28: Do You Fail to Compare Your Funds to Proper Benchmarks? And mistake 29: Do You Believe Active Management Is a Winner’s Game in Inefficient Markets?
    LEARNING: Don’t choose a fund by its name. Active management is highly unlikely to outperform even in inefficient emerging markets.
     
    “Don’t choose a fund, even an index fund, by its name. Instead, you should carefully check its weighted average book-to-market and market capitalization levels.”Larry Swedroe 
    In this episode of Investment Strategy Made Simple (ISMS), Andrew gets into part two of his discussion with Larry Swedroe: Ignorance is Bliss. Larry is the head of financial and economic research at Buckingham Wealth Partners. You can learn more about Larry’s Worst Investment Ever story on Ep645: Beware of Idiosyncratic Risks.
    Larry deeply understands the world of academic research and investing, especially risk. Today, Andrew and Larry discuss two chapters of Larry’s book Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them. In this series, they discuss mistake number 28: Do You Fail to Compare Your Funds to Proper Benchmarks? And mistake 29:
    Did you miss out on previous mistakes? Check them out:
    ISMS 8: Larry Swedroe – Are You Overconfident in Your Skills?ISMS 17: Larry Swedroe – Do You Project Recent Trends Indefinitely Into the Future?ISMS 20: Larry Swedroe – Do You Extrapolate From Small Samples and Trust Your Intuition?ISMS 23: Larry Swedroe – Do You Allow Yourself to Be Influenced by Your Ego and Herd Mentality?ISMS 24: Larry Swedroe – Confusing Skill and Luck Can Stop You From Investing WiselyISMS 25: Larry Swedroe – Admit Your Mistakes and Don’t Listen to Fake ExpertsISMS 26: Larry Swedroe – Are You Subject to the Endowment Effect or the Hot Streak Fallacy?a href="https://myworstinvestmentever.com/isms-27-larry-swedroe-familiar-doesnt-make-it-safe-and-youre-not-playing-with-the-houses-money/"...

    • 43 min
    Lark Davis - Take Your Profits and Run Away

    Lark Davis - Take Your Profits and Run Away

    BIO: Lark Davis is the Founder of the weekly crypto newsletter Wealth Mastery, which combines insider insights and in-depth market analysis to offer cryptocurrency investors the best opportunities to grow their wealth, stay ahead of the curve, and avoid costly mistakes.
    STORY: Lark invested in the Terra Luna cryptocurrency, which had a famous implosion. The volatility of the crypto market saw him lose all his profits and part of his capital.
    LEARNING: Never put your profits into something that could go down. Fully understand all aspects of risk exposure.
     
    “The learning curve is massive in crypto, and even after years in the industry, I still get surprised by how I can get screwed.”Lark Davis 
    Guest profileLark Davis is the Founder of the weekly crypto newsletter Wealth Mastery, which combines insider insights and in-depth market analysis to offer cryptocurrency investors the best opportunities to grow their wealth, stay ahead of the curve, and avoid costly mistakes.
    The newsletter has 100K+ subscribers and covers DeFi, NFTs, Altcoins, Technical Analysis, and more. Lark has been a crypto investor for more than seven years and has made millions of dollars—while also suffering significant losses—in the markets.
    He has been featured in leading digital currencies media platforms, including Coinpedia and CoinDesk, providing insights that help audiences consistently make money from cryptocurrency investments.
    You can find him on Twitter and YouTube.
    Worst investment everLark invested in the Terra Luna cryptocurrency, which had a famous implosion. The currency went up, and the investment was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company also had a stable coin worth $1 linked to the Luna cryptocurrency. The more stablecoins were minted, the more the Luna token was taken off, and the market price increased. The reverse eventually, of course, applied as well. But this was the big hype coin everybody was talking about. Big venture capital firms were in it, and the Founder was the poster child on social media.
    It all came tumbling down eventually. Interestingly, shortly before Lark invested, his research assistant, who does the deep dives for the Wealth Mastery reports, did a report on the Luna crypto and concluded that it smelled fishy and didn’t like the idea of investing in it. Lark, however, went ahead and invested.
    By the time the coin started going on a downward spiral, Lark’s Luna position was around $100,000. That went to zero in about three days. Luckily, he didn’t ride them to zero. He sold them for around $6, but his profit fell to zero. He also had about $700,000 of stablecoins, in which he took a 20% loss.
    Lessons learnedNever put your profits into something that could go down.Take your profits, put it in your bank, and run away.Fully understand all aspects of risk exposure.Crypto’s learning curve is massive.
    Andrew’s takeawaysSeparate your wealth or profit from speculation money and put it in a safe place that won’t go down.When it comes to human behavior, always expect a herd mentality.
    Actionable adviceGo slow on-chain and test the waters first before you put 100% of your money into it. You’re not missing out on anything;...

    • 34 min
    Sam Primm - Be Intentional About What You Invest In

    Sam Primm - Be Intentional About What You Invest In

    BIO: Sam founded FasterFreedom to teach people like him to quit their jobs, become successful real estate investors, and achieve that same freedom and financial independence.
    STORY: Sam and his partner invested in a self-storage. They fixed the property a bit and built a couple more facilities. They didn’t know this space, and the investment has cost them about $500,000 of potential loss and probably more than they could have gained in revenue.
    LEARNING: Be intentional about what you invest in. Stick to what you know. Think through every expansion.
     
    “Be intentional about what you invest in. You can’t be good at everything.”Sam Primm 
    Guest profileSam Primm was born and raised in St. Louis, MO., to a father who was an engineer and a mom who was a teacher. He followed the path you’re told to do and ended up working a corporate job in the area and making a decent enough living. But there were a couple of problems.
    Sam was working a stressful 50-hour-a-week job for someone he didn’t like, and most of all, Sam wished he had more time and freedom for himself and his family. They deserved better. His wife deserved him to be around more, and he wanted more time to be around his daughters as they grew up.
    Eventually, Sam got into Real Estate, and after trying and failing—several times—he got some wins and started to learn what worked with consistency. This led him to own $45 million in assets, have 150+ single-family rentals, flip over 1,000 properties, and run his own property management company. Sam did it all in under nine years without using his money. But the best part is that it’s given Sam the time and freedom he has always wanted for himself and his family.
    Sam founded FasterFreedom to teach people like him to quit their jobs, become successful real estate investors, and achieve that same freedom and financial independence. Sam prides himself in practicing what he preaches, meaning all his lessons and tips are constantly updated and based on the real investing he’s doing right now- so you only learn what works and not through theory or outdated practices!
    Worst investment everWhen the idea to add a self-storage facility to their assets was first brought to them, Sam and his partner said no. Then COVID hit, and they said yes. They didn’t know much about storage facilities, but the numbers looked ok, so they took it. They fixed the property and built more facilities because they had open land.
    They didn’t know this space, so they didn’t raise enough funds or manage properly because their mind was focused elsewhere. The property is now not generating income nor growing in value like it should. This investment has cost the partners about $500,000 of potential loss and even more in missed revenue.
    Lessons learnedBe intentional about what you invest in.Don’t try to be good at everything; you can’t.Stick to what you know.Have proof of concept in what you want to invest in.
    Andrew’s takeawaysTake good care of your cash flow.Focus on minimal investment and maximum cash flow.Think through every expansion.Don’t think your evidence of the existing success relates to your new idea, even if it seems like it’s the same thing. That’s not proof.
    Actionable adviceDon’t just buy something because it’s cheap. Focus on what you’re good at and what’s proven.
    Sam’s recommendationsSam recommends taking advantage of the many available resources, such as his...

    • 36 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
59 Ratings

59 Ratings

M Edgington ,

Well worth Subscribing

Highly recommend Andrew Stotz’s podcast “My Worst Investment Ever”. Andrew is a generous and considerate host. He allows his guests to share their stories and leads them into excellent conversations. Great job Andrew.
I highly recommend “My Worst Investment Ever”.

My Core Intentions ,

As a guest on My Worst Investment Ever

Andrew, thanks for having me on your podcast. It was an awesome evernt. I hope the sharing was of value to your listeners. I am confident you will continue to have great guests on and offer unmatched advice for your listeners. Thanks again

J Nischwitz ,

Worst Investment … Best Lessons

Love Andrew’s approach and mindset — digging into our worst investments and pulling out the lessons and then the even deeper lessons. No scratching the surface with Andrew and Worst Investment. It’s all about learning and growing through the challenging times created by our investments, whether financial, people or other types of investments. This is a must listen for anyone committed to growth and learning.

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