Happy Holidays

posted by   Ian Wyatt   |    December 29, 2008

Posted in   Vermont Living   |   Comments

Happy holidays to all friends, family, colleagues, and partners who read my blog.

2008 has been a challenging year as an individual investor and an entrepreneur leading a company that is in the financial media sector.

The extent of the housing market collapse and subprime mess caught almost everyone off guard, myself included. Like many investors, I knew that housing was overpriced (one of the reasons I held back on buying a condo in DC in recent years), and thought that prices would decline after five years of +20% annual appreciation in hot markets like Washington DC where my company is based. What I didn't realize was the widespread effect that this would ultimately have on the overall economy and the stock market. Predicting crisis like this isn't easy to do, and very few people correctly called this recession. If you're looking for some good reading on the housing crisis and the collapse of investment banks, check out "The End" by Michael Lewis in the recent issue of Conde Naste's Portfolio Magazine.

Everyone knows that media companies have been having a difficult year with pullbacks in advertising spending (even in the online channel, which represents the bulk of our business). And the fact that we're a media company in the financial / investment category makes things even more difficult, as individual investors are becoming less responsive to advertisements selling them investment services. All in all, it has been a challenging year as an entrepreneur and investor. Too bad we can't simply turn back the clock and have another 2007 all over again.

This year has been incredibly rewarding personally. Carrie and I were married in October, and have enjoyed the first few months of married life. We spent three weeks in October on honeymoon in Italy, followed by two weeks at Thanksgiving in Washington and Oregon visiting family.

Carrie and I have been having a wonderful Christmas at our home in the Green Mountains in Vermont, enjoying the holiday with my parents and sister (my brother couldn't make it home from China for the holidays). The weather has been typical of Vermont at this time of the year - cold and lots of snow, followed by warm days and rain when the temp rose to 55 degrees yesterday, melting the 18" of snow we had on the ground earlier this month. I'm a bit bummed that we didn't get out skiing when the snow was good, but hoping to hit Sugarbush later this week. We're expecting eight friends from Washington DC and Chicago for New Years at our home in Vermont.

I look forward to connecting in 2009. Happy New Year!

Teamwork results in quick launch of Trademaster video webinar

posted by   Ian Wyatt   |    December 15, 2008

Posted in   Business Financial Publishing   |   Comments (1)

In the investment newsletter / content industry, there has been an increased push in recent months to begin using video as a means of delivering content and marketing messages to current and prospective users. In our industry, we are targeting individual investors, typically men who are 45 - 75 years old.

Three weeks ago, I was talking with Lee, the Director of Marketing at Business Financial Publishing. Together we decided that now was the time to stop talking, and start acting on this video web seminar (also known as a webinar) opportunity. Two days before Thanksgiving, we decided to go ahead, and launch our first ever video as a marketing video webinar for our Trademaster Daily Stock Alerts Service. In less than three weeks, we have accomplished this goal with a great video seminar event titled "Stock Summit 2008: Profits After the Fall." The event will go live at 6pm eastern time today, Monday December 15. To register for the event, please visit Trademaster.tv.

This event was complicated for several reasons. We had never previously professionally produced a video. There were the issues of staging the event, developing the content for the presentation, finding a videographer, selected a video hosting service (we selected Amazon Web Services, an inexpensive cloud computing service), compressing 30 minutes of video for web format, and finding suits and ties for the participants (our work environment is usually very casual).

I am extremely impressed with the level of teamwork displayed by everyone at Business Financial Publishing in order to pull this off. It is truly amazing what a small team of people can accomplish in a very short period of time when they set their minds on a single goal. Our goal was getting this marketing video webinar done by today so that we could market our great service and generate new subscriptions for our Trademaster Daily Stock Alerts Service.

The video presentation focuses on what has been happening in the financial markets in recent months, including the decline of the stock market. Most individual investors have seen the value of their equities and investment portfolios decline by 30% - +50% in a few short months. Our surveys and interaction with subscribers indicates that they are very concerned about the value of their investments, and the future recovery of the stock market. These individual investors are looking for investment opportunities that will provide them with the ability to make money in this market today.

Our solution, which we present in this video webinar is Trademaster Daily Stock Alerts, a service that uses our proprietary system for screening and ranking +4,500 stocks each day to deliver the best stock picks to subscribers for only $49.95 per month. I won't get into the details of the service or system here - just check out the video at Trademaster.tv to get all the details.

I special thanks to several key team members who have been very involved with this promotion and event.
+ Benson for being the star of the show.
+ Bob for helping us young guys get some credibility on video and great insights into the content of the presentation for the target audience.
+ Brit for writing lots of copy to get people to register for the event, and reminding them to attend. Great copy to drive the sense of urgency.
+ Jason for helping with the research and reports to make this event possible.
+ Chris the freelance videographer for showing us what works and what does not in web video, and executing this event in a very short period of time.
+ Dan and Joshua for figuring out the technical stuff, and getting everything setup well in advance, so we didn't have to worry.
+ Lee for quarterbacking the entire event, and making this happen.
+ And to our late team that stayed at the office until 130am to get this DONE... Dan, Lee, and Chris, thanks for the hard work and dedication.

Thanks to everyone who was involved. The video looks great. This will hopefully be the first of many such video events that we will roll out in the coming months.

Team Polizeo: Alex Roy & Tim Ferriss in BMW M5 - Attempt to Break 30 Hours, NYC to LA?

posted by   Ian Wyatt   |    December 8, 2008

Posted in     |   Comments (4)

This weekend I spent some time reading about Alex Roy and his record breaking car race across the United States. On October 7, 2006, Alex broke the record for the fastest cross country trip by car from New York City to Los Angeles, California in his 395 HP BMW M5 (E39). Alex and co-driver David Maher (an investment banker) crossed the country in 31 hours, 4 minutes, driving 2,800 miles at an average speed of 90.1 miles per hour.

I came across a Twitter post from Tim Ferriss, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Four Hour Work Week, related to his participation in another cross country race with Alex Roy. Tim's Twitter post turned me on to this interesting story. The Team Polizei web site reports "NY to LA. Again. Tonight. Team Polizei. Rene Villeneuve. Tim Ferriss. Stay Tuned." On Saturday, December 7, Tim Ferris posted "I'm doing the ride primarily to see the technology. He's using new tools to gather data/video/stills; think Google Maps on steroids."

Following his cross country record, Alex wrote the book The Driver. His drive was also documented by Wired Magazine, which published a great article titled "The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory." Alex is also an executive producer of documentary filmmaker Cory Welles' 32 Hours, 7 Minutes. The documentary tells the story of the then record breaking 32 hours, 7 minute cross country trip by David Diem and Doug Turner in a Ferrari 308. The film is expected to be released in the coming months, and has been submitted to Sundance.

In August of 2008, Alex presented to Google as part of the Authors@Google in New York City. In his one-hour presentation, Alex shares the analysis of his plan to break down every detail of his recording breaking race across the United States. This great video is definitely worth watching, as are many of the other Authors@Google presentations.

I just love this story, and wanted to share it with others. The Wired article and videos are definitely worth reading and watching. As a car lover and fellow BMW M5 owner (I have a 2003, the last year of the E39, in carbon black with black leather), I think perhaps I found this story more compelling than the average reader. I've driven my BMW M5 at +110 MPH for a short period of time, but never had the opportunity or desire to remove the speed limiter chip and get above 155 MPH (the BMW M5 will do 0-62 MPH in 5.3 seconds, and reach a maximum speed of 180 MPH - it is a great car to drive, and I plan to keep mine forever).

Alex thinks that it is possible to do the same cross country race in 30 hours. Was Alex attemptinng another record breaking run with Tim Terris this past weekend?  It will be interesting and fun to see if Alex or another driver is the one to accomplish this impressive goal. In the mean time, I look forward to watching the movie when its released. And I'll continue to enjoy driving my BMW M5 with DC plates on the back roads of Vermont. Unfortunately, winter has hit the northeast, so it may be a few months before I'm able to safely enjoy the country roads.

Alex and David recently presented to the New Jersey chapter of Entrepreneur's Organization, and I'm exploring the possibility of an event for the Washington DC chapter of Entrepreneur's Organization.

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