25k... Now What?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]This is going to be a very different sort of video because I really want to talk about two things which is what is the purpose of this channel and where do I want to take this channel in the future. Now, if you don't want to listen to this whole video, that's fine. This is the only takeaway you need to know, which is that all of the content that we've been doing in the past that you really love, we're going to continue to do it in the future, but that is only going to be about half of the content that we do. The other half is going to be this sort of new format thing that we're trying to solve for, which I'm going to talk about in this video. Now, it's kind of interesting thinking through when you start something and why you start it because I I was trying to think of my motivations as to why I went on YouTube in the first place. And you would think that I had a very clear idea, a clear reason to do it, and I had a business plan, and it was something that I'm now just executing on. But it's not how it happened at all. Um, the truth is, and it's funny cuz I guess motivations are always a little bit uh hazier than we kind of realize. Um, I think one of the biggest motivators for me was, and I don't know that I'm proud to say this, but I remember just looking on YouTube at all of these other people that were talking about investing in finance and kind of getting upset at how bad a lot of the information they were giving out was. And I just kind of thought, you know, perhaps egoically that I could do better. And so that was really the initial impetus of starting to put investing educational content out on YouTube. And it's interesting because when you start something, you never really know where it's going to go. And then once you start in a direction and the direction becomes a little clear, then it makes sense to kind of reassess and think through again, you know, what is the point of this? And so, uh, to not be blindly driven by perhaps some of my subconscious motivations, um, for for too long, I wanted to reassess what the point and purpose of this YouTube channel is. And so, it it's definitely true that I like educating and I like the educational aspect of it because it I don't know. I guess it feels gratifying, but I guess it also it just feels like, you know, something of value. like there's not too many things, at least I've ever done, where I felt like I could share something and someone else was getting value from it. And um I don't know how you turn that necessarily into a business to be honest because I don't have an interest in becoming, you know, an influencer and doing all of those, you know, different ways they try to monetize. Uh that's not something I I really want to do. Uh, but I know I still want to teach and I I know I still want to talk more about investing. And so I'm g we're gonna keep doing that.

[00:02:50]And you know, maybe just a bit of background on and how I got here is well, as many of you know and are probably sick and tired of me saying it, I used to work at uh yeah, fill in the blank. And the thing that was interesting to me was I don't think I was that great of an employee there. And I think a large part of that was because even though I knew I loved investing and finance and all of that, um, what we the kind of work we ended up doing or the work I ended up doing, it just didn't feel like any of the things in investing that I liked. I always liked this sort of like treasure hunt aspect of investing where you're discovering new ideas and you're trying to be analytical. And it's really one of the only fields I know where you're able to constantly learn new things and you have an excuse to learn things about all sorts of different fields. You know, in in no other business that I could think of are you learning about, you know, semiconductors and electrical engineering one week and then the next week how the mortgage market works and then, you know, the next week about Brazilian e-commerce competition. And I just I love that variety and I love the ability to analyze all these different things basically. And so I didn't really get that when you are put in a seat and you're giving coverage and there's only a limited number of stocks that you're covering and they're all the same. I covered regional banks and as much as management teams will want to tell you otherwise uh their businesses are all very very similar. They're basically commoditized and so uh the not the most interesting competitive analysis you can do on that. And so that was my first sort of inkling of an idea that if I wanted to actually invest and be able to look at companies the way I wanted to, I I'd have to do it, you know, probably on my own. I I didn't think there'd be too many other places that would give me that level of autonomy. And so, you know, when I did work on the buy side afterwards, uh I got more of that. I did get a lot of coverage and I was able to look at a lot of different sectors and I also was able to see a lot of investors and learn how a lot of different investors invest and it wasn't just the company I was at uh prior but it was also you know there's a network of investors and so I've talked to investors at different companies as well too and it's interesting because I don't think this is a criticism to any one company I think this is true of most large companies if not all um and you know some companies very vocally try to fight against this but uh when you get very big you get bureaucratic and when you become bureaucratic different incentives uh come into play. There was this aspect in a lot of these big investment firms of uh it kind of being a little bit of a a politicking element to it where you know how good you were at kind of navigating a system could you know bring you career benefits uh something like that and I knew I was not good at that nor had any interest in in kind of playing those games and so I kind of saw like eventually my time would be you know I don't want to say done or limited but if I wanted to keep progressing it made sense for me to be on my own. And so that's why I left um Capital Group and I I started Speedwall Research originally uh basically making the kind of research that I wish kind of existed when I was at the buy side or on the sell side. So where does that lead us now? Which is that a a lot of the content we're making, which is, you know, I really think that a lot of people are getting value from it. um the investing educational content, the business breakdowns. Uh I want to keep doing all of that, but there's a broader audience that I also want to talk to. I want to talk to a broader audience about the more basic finance stuff, the more basic investing stuff. And I know in order to do that though, I'm going to be alienating a little bit of my existing audience because all of you guys are way up to speed beyond that. Now, there's some content that could kind of fall in the middle that I still think could be useful, but I also want to just talk about the real basics in investing in finance. And if you had $3 million, what do you do with it? If you had $100,000, what do you do with it? And that does kind of get a little bit more into like the wealth management sort of content, which is what I kind of want to add into this because again, I think there's a much broader audience to benefit and talk to. And I wanted to make this video in order to kind of explain my thinking behind all of this and kind of how I ended up here. And you know, if we're thinking about what are my incentives because I think it makes sense to always wonder what someone else's incentives are is that uh in terms of the YouTube channel, I don't really want to monetize it directly. And I don't love this idea that other people have where, you know, they'll bring people into a group and then they'll like give them different tips or something like that. like I wouldn't be allowed to do that anyway um because my license but I wouldn't want to. I feel like I like the idea of having just as much information out there and just letting people have it for free without any sort of payw wall because again one of the reasons why I started doing this was because I felt a lot of the information out there um could be better let's say so it wouldn't make sense for me to then you know payw wall it right uh but then that means you know it's not really a business right so then it has to serve something else and as I mentioned probably not the right fit this uh research company I have you know do I create a different sort of research product. I don't know. I my my sense and another reason why I'm on YouTube is I feel like uh appetites to read are a lot less than appetites to listen or watch and you have more time in the day to do that. So, I also kind of just don't want to fight against that trend. Then there's a question, okay, well, do you have sponsors on the channel? Well, there there's a couple that I think could align with me in what I want to do, but I don't really like this idea of and I get emails too all the time of telling you to use something I've never used myself, uh, something I've never heard of until before they offered me money. You know, I just don't like that. And so, that's also not really an option. And so then it's kind of just left with why don't you see if you know talking about investing and the way you like to think about investing and invest helps find people who align with me and maybe want to be a prospective client. But ultimately if you want to say it's my strategy uh it's basically to just talk to say everything I know to showcase my analysis how I think about businesses and to see if it resonates with someone because I I think that's kind of all you really can do.

[00:09:13]And so in terms of how this YouTube channel could look going forward is, as I mentioned, we're still going to do all the content we've been doing. I know people really like the business breakdowns, the educational investing stuff. We're going to keep doing all that. Um, and yes, it's also true. If you guys want to see something, keep commenting because I read all of those.

[00:09:33]So, you may think that it's not actually influencing the content we're producing, but that's not true. uh there's not actually that many people that comment relative to how many views a video may have. They do end up having a disproportionate influence on what content we end up making. And so, you know, you guys are the real influencers here. Um but that is only going to be half the content. Uh because the other half of the content, it's going to move more into this sort of personal finance, wealth management sort of category that we're talking about. And I wanted to make this video to kind of explain this all to you here and the changes you might see there. So if you do see a couple videos uh on sort of different topics you can understand what we're trying to build here and the purpose of all of that here and hopefully some of it is still useful to you but fully understand that a lot of people that watch this channel are a little bit more advanced than some of the basics that we will cover. So you know it is a balance because I don't want to alienate our existing audience. I want to make sure we continue to produce content that they enjoy and are getting value from. At the same time, I know there's sometimes what happens is you end up getting pigeonholed into only making content for the existing audience because the existing audience is telling you what content they like and it's a bit of a feedback loop there. So, I do want to kind of bring in this other element of videos that can hopefully broaden out and just reach more people, help a lot more people learn, even the more basic stuff because uh the basic stuff is really important. If people don't know literally how to invest in the stock market, what an index fund is, it's going to be more helpful to more people getting them that sort of basic info than, you know, helping someone pick a better stock, which we're going to still do. We're going to still talk about how to research a business and all that.

[00:11:14]We'll do it a lot because that's still some of my favorite content to do, but we're going to do both. And so, uh, I hope you guys understand and if you have any thoughts, comments, or anything, feel free to drop them below. And I do also want to take a moment to thank absolutely all of you for supporting this channel, for the awesome comments that you've dropped below, all of your support. Really, really do appreciate it. And it does, you know, help signal that we should keep doing this and the kind of content we should continue to produce. And so just really do appreciate um all of those comments and everything. But if you're curious as to what more personal finance, general finance, wealth management sort of type content can look like, check out this video here that we did or check out this video here on the S&P 500 valuation levels as well as concentration. Thank you.