Hello Everyone! We’re now wrapping up our 36th newsletter! Here’s a preview of the upcoming month of topics!
September Newsletter Previews
As always, my ideas remain fluid, but this is the general direction we’re heading this month with content. A mix of friends, music, life experiences, and of course, wrapping it up with a heavy deep dive of investing/stocks.
September 7th: “Q1: What’s the key to raising a family? Q2: How would you fix the USA education system?”
[Podcast]
Chase and H are both incredible parents with a large family, Ben and I are not yet, but we grew up with the Midwest lifestyle in Michigan. So we’re going to cover advice and experiences. We’ll spend the entire episode only focused on those two questions next week.
We agreed the other day, “nobody wants to listen to 4 friends talk more about interest rates, Trump, Iran, and all the other stuff that millions of podcasters with no edge continue to talk about...”
So we’re going back to the drawing board of format iteration.
We feel the smart direction is to find something UNIQUE in which no podcast currently offers, or at least not at scale.
My idea is for each of us 4 to present something per episode to the other 3 friends; a business idea, stock, life problem, whatever it is we usually talk about as friends. And then we spend that full episode working through how to help on another with the goal/problem they presented.
Could be cool. and valuable for us and ya’ll. TBD.
Our other format concept, is to select two questions per week, and explore each of them for 30-45 minutes. You can get a preview of this format at the end of this newsletter with a new 1-hour long episode available today.
September 14th: “Bring Ppl Together with In-Person Music”
[Music Experience]
Taught myself to write lyrics over the first 15 years, then learned to produce sounds over the last 5, and most recently I’m learning to bring it all together DJ’ing (for fun).
This past weekend I hosted my first DJ experience (it was just 4 friends, as I’m new to this). But 2 speakers, 100 glow sticks, and a LED mood light set the tone.
The coolest part is I could not do any of this just last week…. it took me <2 hours to learn this so far. I’m a natural!
People keep asking…. YES! I ALSO WROTE, PRODUCED, PERFORMED (then altered my live recording with AI), AND IDEATED EVERY SONG!!!
I’ll also share updates about a ‘songwriter event’ I attended where local artist got on stage to sing what they wrote, then discuss their thinking.
Again, just one of the many activities I’m saying ‘yes’ to without worrying about what might or might not happen. At the same time, I’ve made about 75 songs this year.
Brining that all together, I’m working right now to find a venue to host a 25-50 person ‘music experience’ that will be one-of-a-kind.
September 21st: “From 224 LBS to 180 LBS”
[Fitness]
I’ve been showing up to the gym 3-5 times per week now, for almost 5 years straight. This includes 241 ClassPass classes, and that’s not including most of the spinning and gym sessions I did outside of ClassPass. (receipts below).
During that time I went from a peak weight of 224 with no muscle, to around 180 with muscle. It wasn’t smooth of course, but it proved to me that consistency, not intensity is the key to success. A lesson that was also taught to me in the form of both investing, and dating, this past year.
My only goal for fitness was just to show up; that included some days where I got dressed, drove all the way to the gym, put my right toe in the building and then turned around.
I didn’t work out that day, but I showed up.
In the same spirit, some days I’d drag myself to the gym, fully expecting to just dip my pinky toe in and then leave… Some of those days resulted in the best workouts of my life.
And that is the difference, those days. When you didnt’ want to, and it works out better than expected.
I’ll share some easy strategies I used to keep myself on track, anybody can do it no excuses :)
September 28th: “Returns Before vs After Heartbreak (very good!)”
[Returns + Valuation Methodology]
I’m going to walk through my entire portfolio holdings, explain why I own each company, and how I value the business.
I’ve created a valuation methodology suited for the way I think about companies, which is built on the back of Warren Buffet’s Owner Earnings Methodology, David Swensen Yale Portfolio strategy, and something I’m calling Owner Networth (which helps me separate cashflows value from assets value). My AI system is helping a TON.
Metrics: We care about Owners Earnings, Owner Net Worth, Owners Earnings Expansion Rate. Thoughtful EV (our MC - ONW formula), Owner Earnings Yield (thoughtful EV / OE), Owner Earnings Multiple, RONW Return on Owner NW (ONW/OE).
I’ll dive deeper into this at the end of September, as I’m taking all month to ensure this strategy continues to work at this pace, and at the same time codifying my philosophy as our core investment principles for the fund.
So far, so (very) good.
Fingers crossed.
Watch Last Weeks Episode! 4 Friends, 2 Questions, 1 Pod:
Q1: Is Trump good or bad for USA?
Q2: What is the purpose of life?
We spend about 35 minutes per Question:
Chase: “How do we define good? If we think USA was on bad path, then I think he’s great, yes.”
Ben: “But a counter argument, internally in the USA we are more divided than ever.”
H: “Categorically across Europe you hear negative sentiment in polls for Trump. yet still, Europeans buy American weapons, airplanes, we hold Dollars, we’re not shifting our money elsewhere, we still rely on USA cloud (Amazon for example), every company I ever worked with does. Our kids consume American food, and culture. So, it’s a hard question to answer.”
I did my best to moderate it fairly to get multiple perspectives out there :), enjoy!
~Don & Friends
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