Behind the Podcast: Flirting with Models | Corey Hoffstein

[00:00:00] Welcome to Excess Returns. We'll be focused on what works over the long term in the markets. Join us as we talk about the strategies and tactics that can help you become a better long-term investor. Justin Carbonneau and Jack Forehand are principals at Bolivia Capital Management.

[00:00:14] The opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Bolivia Capital. No information on this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed in the podcast may be holdings of clients of Bolivia Capital.

[00:00:24] Hey guys, this is Justin. In this episode, we go behind the scenes with Corey Hoffstein, founder of Newfound Research, and host of the investing podcast, Flirting with Models. We are big fans of Corey's podcast and research, and we want to have him on to talk about how he

[00:00:35] thinks about podcasting, his goals with the podcast, how he prepares for his interviews, and other lessons learned from the multiple seasons of the podcast he's produced. Not surprisingly, Corey takes a very pragmatic approach to podcasting

[00:00:47] in the creation of Flirting with Models that I think you'll find very interesting. As always, thank you for listening to this special episode with Corey Hoffstein, founder of Newfound Research and host of Flirting with Models. Corey, thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:00] Thanks for having me, Gents. Appreciate it. So we usually have you on to talk quantitative investing, return stacking, or maybe doing a deep dive into your investment portfolio. But we're going to go a very different direction today, and we appreciate you coming on and agreeing to this

[00:01:18] because what Jack and I have decided to do in the spirit of some experimentation, but also in talking with other podcasters and peers that we admire, respect, and sort of have been inspirations for us with excess returns is talking to people

[00:01:36] like you who are podcast hosts and sort of going behind the scenes with how you think about your podcast, why you watch the podcast or the nuts and bolts of doing a podcast.

[00:01:48] And I think, you know, Jack and I were talking about this before we jumped on with you, and it's like when you're doing an investing podcast on a topic like return stacking, people obviously are interested in that idea and that concept. I think the people that are

[00:02:02] sort of will likely be very interested in this are the people that sort of follow you and follow the podcast and probably have often asked themselves, you know, how does Corey actually pull this off and actually do it? So, you know, for those people that have, you know,

[00:02:15] asked that question for the last couple years, I think this is going to be a great discussion with Corey and also just for anyone looking to think about doing a podcast. I mean,

[00:02:24] a lot of this stuff is going to be the stuff that you need to think about. So, really cool that you agreed to come on and join us, Corey. Well, I appreciate it. And before we get into all that fun podcasting stuff in the spirit of

[00:02:36] experimentation, I just want to say I love the series that you guys do where you talk to investors about how they build their portfolios. I think that is one of the best questions

[00:02:44] you can ask any portfolio manager because it really speaks to how they think about the world. And I love that series. I hope it's taking off for you guys because I think it's one of the best series out there in investment podcasts.

[00:02:58] Thank you very much. Yeah, it is. You know, our most watched episodes are pretty much all that now. You know, yeah, people like... And I've been really surprised, you know, at the beginning

[00:03:06] it was like a little bit surprising about, you know, how do you get people to do it? So, the problem is people think you're going to be like show us your fidelity statement

[00:03:14] and we're going to go through all your holdings. And so, we had to put... We had to demonstrate a few times how it actually works. You know, we're not going to ask you about your actual holdings. We're not going to ask you about the value of your portfolio.

[00:03:23] We had to sort of demonstrate that stuff. And so now it's easy to get people on. But at the beginning I think it was like, you know, we're not doing this. I'm not telling you about my portfolio. Everyone's a little nervous, right?

[00:03:31] Despite the fact we work in the money industry, money remains a taboo subject and they don't want to disclose too much about what they do personally. And I think also people are concerned that it maybe restricts them from potentially

[00:03:42] changing their mind in the future. But again, I think it's such a wonderful insight into how people think about portfolio construction, which is such an important topic. So I love it and I hope it continues and I look forward to listening to more. That's awesome. Thank you, Corey.

[00:03:54] So let's go back to the start of your podcast. And I think you first started it in, like early to mid-2018 if I had my timing, correct? I honestly have no idea. Well, I know it was back then. At least that's when you've launched the first episode.

[00:04:11] I mean, walk us through your thought process on what initially led you to launching it. So I had been writing a research blog, a research commentary for years. I wrote it weekly pretty much without fail. I think if you went back and then took all those

[00:04:29] research commentaries and compiled them together, it would be thousands and thousands of pages of text. And this was a year or two after Patrick O'Shaughnessy had launched his podcast. You saw that accelerate with the launch of his crypto episodes.

[00:04:48] The guys at Ritholtz had launched a podcast and you saw that taking off. Now, remember having a conversation with both Patrick and Michael Batnick at Ritholtz? And one of the things they both said to me was, look, there's an element to podcasting that can't

[00:05:05] be replicated just in writing. First, you need to acknowledge that people learn different ways. You can put all this great content out via text. If someone doesn't learn by reading, if they don't love reading, they're never going to care about what you said.

[00:05:21] If they learn by listening, you need to deliver the content in the way that they want to receive it. And then two, that there's a very different connection made with your audience when they can hear your voice versus just reading your text.

[00:05:38] And even though you don't actually know them, they feel more connected to you as the host when they hear your voice and then eventually most people have moved to video when they start to see you, right? And those two things together at least got me to think,

[00:05:54] you want to know what? I'll try it. I'll try it for a single season. And I think my first season was just six episodes. We'll see how this works. And you want to, if it doesn't work,

[00:06:03] I'll pull the plug after that first season. And that's sort of what got me into it was just sort of this idea of experimenting with a new medium with which I could deliver content.

[00:06:12] So I think I've heard you say this or I've heard somebody say it, but it's definitely happened with me when I've had on my podcast feed, your podcasts get show up, get populated in.

[00:06:25] And the title is flirting with models. And you know, my wife actually looks at it and says, what are you doing? Why are you listening to a podcast that's like, no, no, no, no,

[00:06:34] this is a, this is a quant guy. Trust me. And then thankfully to cover image of like someone that you're having on and not some hot girl in a bathing suit or something. So I don't really some hot quantitative model. Yeah.

[00:06:50] How did you, I mean, it's a really, it's a great title. It's a great play on words and it captures like kind of what you're all about with quantitative investing. But how'd you sort of come up with that?

[00:07:01] So funny side story before I tell you, I came up with this. I've been fortunate enough to get some big players at large institutions and most of the institutions when you start to talk to them, right, they've got compliance and legal and they've got their own marketing

[00:07:13] teams and they want to get someone on that they can then use the podcast and promote it. And I went through the whole process of, you know, the pre-work with the compliance team, getting someone on recording, editing, letting their compliance team listen to the post edit

[00:07:28] before I launched. And it finally got around to legal. And I guess the legal team said, under no circumstances will we be sharing this podcast with anyone. We're not going to prevent you from launching it, but our team will not go anywhere near this because

[00:07:42] of the name of the podcast. We're just like, we don't want our firm brand anywhere near the name of flirting with models. And I said, well, man, you must be an old stodgy firm with no humor.

[00:07:55] But because I never say which models I'm flirting with, right? Anyway, where did I come up with the name? I honestly don't remember. What I do remember is it was originally the

[00:08:04] title of a personal blog I wrote back in the early 2010s. It then became the name of my corporate blog at Newfound Research. So when I was writing all those weekly research notes,

[00:08:16] they were published under the blog named flirting with models. And then when I launched the podcast, it became obviously a natural extension to bring there. But I honestly cannot tell you where or how I came up with that original name other than I just thought it was

[00:08:30] kind of funny because it was all my, all my writing was always about quantitative models. It was all about trying different things and, you know, and another word, you know, play on words both with models and flirting, right? It was all about experimentation with

[00:08:46] these different quantitative models. And which is just sort of another way of thinking about flirting with them. So again, I think no one's, no, it's no one's lost on the double entendre with that name. But where it originally came from, I wish I had a better recollection.

[00:09:04] It's funny that, you know, I think with a lot of the people that are in this sort of investing podcast space, you know, we started with, sort of started with writing first. And like you

[00:09:16] said, and then eventually, you know, getting into audio or getting into video and doing the podcasting. But I think, you know, the writing as quant investors, you know, we're obviously developing quantitative strategies and testing strategies and refining the process and building new strategies.

[00:09:32] But, you know, you also have maybe more time to experiment or pursue different things like a podcast or work it into the schedules, into the overall work, you know, that we do day in and day out.

[00:09:48] It's like quantitative investing by day, podcasting by night maybe, but even though it's, we're doing the day here podcasting itself. But what do you, you know, when you think of like the mission of what your podcast is all about and what you're trying to accomplish? Do you

[00:10:04] have any like North Star that sort of guides you? How do you think about that? Yeah. So there's a couple of ways I think about this. I mean, the first is ultimately that what

[00:10:16] I'm trying to do is expose sort of the human factor behind the quantitative model, right? So you get all these quant factors. I'm trying to expose the human factor because ultimately there is a human, we always talk about quant process being unbiased. There is

[00:10:30] a human who's building this stuff and getting understanding what biases are being embedded, what views are being embedded. I think that's a fascinating process. Insofar as like, why do I do this? Look, I'm not going to say it's not a largely selfish endeavor for me. While I do

[00:10:50] at times sit in my ivory tower as an investment manager and researcher, I also own and operate an asset management firm. And it's the same reason any asset management firm publishes any sort of content.

[00:11:01] It's brand marketing, right? And so insofar as I can make people, I can provide them really good content and an interview series and get them engaged and listening to the podcast. And that

[00:11:14] gets some people to ask the question who is Corey Hofstein and what does he do and what does his firm do? And that ultimately leads the business. That is the selfish end goal.

[00:11:24] But I'll also say for me personally, the other selfish end goals are I get to meet all these fascinating investors that I probably would never get connected with otherwise. That builds my personal reputation, but it also builds my network and the ability for me to have these

[00:11:41] guests on. And then when I'm running into an investment problem or I'm thinking about something that I know someone in my network is an expert on and I've had them on my podcast,

[00:11:51] it makes it really easy for me to reach out and say, hey, this is something I'm working on. Is this something you've come across before? Can you give me any leads? And so it's

[00:12:01] really helped expand what I like to call my outer brain, which is just all the things my network knows that they're willing to share with me. Selfishly, the podcast has been really good for that as well. Yeah, you touch on something that's probably been one of

[00:12:15] the biggest benefits for me of our podcast too is if I want to just talk to someone in the investing world, it's a little bit weird to reach out and just, I mean, some people will do and say,

[00:12:22] let's just jump on the phone for an hour and talk. But we've been able to talk to people through the podcast that would have never said yes otherwise. We're able to do it in

[00:12:29] the podcast format and it allows us to learn and talk to so many investors that we wouldn't otherwise be able to talk to. Absolutely. And ask all sorts of questions that they may not otherwise have entertained. I get to do really deep dives with people

[00:12:43] on their investment process and their thinking process and their methodology that ostensibly, like one could argue people who come on to my podcast are actually competitors with me in many ways. Now I tend to just from a business perspective, take a very friendly view,

[00:12:57] like grow the pie for everyone. But one could argue like some of the insights people share with me and some of the stuff that doesn't even make the podcast. It's like, well, that actually is some secret sauce you're giving a competitor. But again, under the

[00:13:11] guise of the podcast conversation that stuff naturally comes up. And I do find a lot of researchers just like to be friendly with each other and help out. So if I'm writing a research piece,

[00:13:21] I now have a network of people I can send it to and get their collective feedback and thoughts on, which is incredibly valuable. I want to ask you about getting guests because one of the things

[00:13:30] you do a really good job of, if you look at a lot of podcasts, including ours, you'll see a lot of people that are on a lot of different finance podcasts. You'll see

[00:13:37] the same people coming around. But especially in your later seasons, one thing you've done a good job of is when I see your guests every week, I've typically never heard of them. And that's

[00:13:44] really good because they're typically somebody who has a lot of insights, but has not done other podcasts. So how do you think about getting the guests? So I very purposefully try to avoid people that show up on everyone else's podcast. Or if they are on everyone else's

[00:14:01] podcast, I very explicitly try to ask very differentiated questions. I'll make sure I listen to all their other podcast appearances or a bunch of them. And if someone wants to come on and talk their book, or talk about the same thing they've talked about in other podcasts,

[00:14:17] I usually just say no, I won't do it. And so far as finding guests, I've found that that's gotten easier as the seasons went on. Early seasons, it was a lot of me going to my network

[00:14:30] and saying, hey, you know, I might get covered by a wholesaler at a certain firm, because I also invest in ETFs at my shop. Like, are there any PMs at that firm that could be

[00:14:42] interesting? And then I'll try to network my way in. It's a lot easier now the podcast has a bit of a reputation in the quantitative circle that I get people reaching out to me. And in fact,

[00:14:53] that's that's one of the harder parts now is I get people reaching out to me. And I have to proactively screen them. And I'll do background checks and reputation checks among my peers and friends to try to figure out, like, is this person a good fit? Like,

[00:15:09] what's their reputation? So it's gotten a lot easier. That said, I struggle, I still struggle immensely with getting enough women on the podcast representation for me has still been a huge issue.

[00:15:22] I think I still if you look at, you know, all the cover art, I tend to skew white male, unfortunately. And I do try very hard to do get as much representation as I can. But I have

[00:15:33] really struggled to get women on the podcast. So if you're a brilliant woman in the field of quant finance, please reach out to me. I want to interview you. Yeah, we've struggled with the

[00:15:44] same thing. You know, it's something we're trying to address too, we're doing our best to reach out to as many people as possible. Because obviously, we don't want to just have, you know,

[00:15:51] mails, you know, our audience, I think when I look at it on, you know, Spotify or something is 95% male, but we don't want it that way. And we don't want our guests to be that way.

[00:15:58] So we're trying to do the same thing as well. Yeah, and I will say it's a small industry. And a lot of the brilliant quants out there aren't necessarily great speakers, or a lot of brilliant quants out there aren't necessarily willing to come on a podcast. So

[00:16:14] when you start to talk about how many quants are really out there that are going to make an interesting episode, you start to talk about a pretty small subset of people. And I don't think I've gotten anywhere near, you know, through them. Like it's not like

[00:16:27] I'm running out of guests, but it's not like a huge population. Because then you also get those people who might make a great guess, but the firm's compliance would never let them talk. Again, anyone at the pod shops, they're never going to talk unless they're on garden leave,

[00:16:42] right? So you got to get people at the right time of their career. You got to make sure they're at a shop that'll allow them to do this. And so it starts to become

[00:16:52] a limited subset. And then you got to push back on the firms that are reaching out because they're trying to market something. And I've had that conversation before with firms that are

[00:17:01] saying, Hey, we're launching a new fund. We really want to come on and talk about the fund. But I'm like, I'm not going to let you do that. I mean, we can get to discussing the fund, but like

[00:17:10] you play by my rules on my podcast. And I'm fortunate enough that I can say that at this point. Yeah, one of the things we've seen that too, like once you get a little bit bigger on the

[00:17:18] podcast side, you know, at the beginning, we had zero inbound, like nobody was nobody wanted to come on our podcast. We were basically begging people to come on. But now,

[00:17:24] you know, you start to get all the emails on a regular basis as you do. You probably do as well. And some of them are obvious. If it's like, John Smith is going to revolutionize the investing

[00:17:32] world and you need to get them on immediately. I mean, you know that that just goes in the garbage right away. But then there's other ones that are kind of on the fence. Would this be

[00:17:38] a great guess for us or not? And we kind of deal with deciding that when that comes in. If anyone is listening that's trying to get on podcast, my best piece of advice, by the way,

[00:17:48] do not use a PR firm. They are horrible. That like that is an instant in the trash. No, for me. They do a horrible job picking the podcast to put you on. They do a horrible job without

[00:18:00] reach. They do a horrible job of pitching your story. Just add the host on LinkedIn and send a personal message and make sure you listen to a few episodes before you reach out to the host.

[00:18:09] So you know it's a good fit. Tell the host why it's a good fit. They'll engage. But do not use a PR firm. It's funny. Some of these pitches we get, we have never covered anything

[00:18:20] reasonably close to the topic this person talks about. 100%. It's not even like if you spent one second listening to our podcast, you would know for sure you should not be sending it to us,

[00:18:29] but we get them anyway. The PR firm just puts together a massive mailing list and they spam it just hoping to get the person on a podcast. And it's a horrible way of going about it because

[00:18:38] it's incredibly impersonal. And it's rarely a fit, right? It's just the wrong way of going about it. One of the unique things you've done relative to us is you've taken a season-based approach, so which I'm a little bit jealous of because we're every week throughout the entire year,

[00:18:51] we're trying to be like who's the next guest? Who's the next guest? So what do you think about that? What have been some of the pros and cons of that? Yeah, so look, it is not

[00:19:00] the right approach if you're trying to grow a podcast. I have tried to use the in between season as like build tension, but in the past the way I've done it is I typically

[00:19:11] launch the season over the summer, which is also a horrible time to launch a season because no one's around. Everyone's traveling, right? So I make all the wrong choices when it comes to growing my podcast. Really, when you think about what you're doing with the

[00:19:24] weekly episodes is you're making sort of a trade-off of you're trying to get people to build a habit, but you're also trying to keep the quality high. Can you get enough guests?

[00:19:35] And so for me my concern and then can you pull it off? Like that's a lot of work. I don't think people realize to do a good podcast how much effort it takes. I get burnt out candidly

[00:19:47] and I just knew this about myself. I cannot do a podcast year-round certainly not at a weekly pace, particularly for the process I take and just how much effort it just drains me too much and

[00:20:01] it distracts me from other things I have to do. So I went for this seasonal approach where I start working in the spring, I try to pre-record as many episodes as I can. I start launching in May,

[00:20:11] typically I'm still recording later episodes through May and June. This year I was and still am recording my seventh season, sixth season I guess because I had a baby in between

[00:20:25] and so like that knocked it all off. So the benefit is I get typically five or six months off a year where I can just sort of sit back and people will reach out and I'll say great I'll add you to

[00:20:37] the queue and I can think about what I want my next season to be like and I get to sort of relax but what I and I see this every time the listener numbers drop way off and it takes a while

[00:20:48] in the new season to get those numbers back up because people forget about the show or they don't know that the new season is coming and then they don't notice the new season until five episodes have launched or maybe they never notice the new season and so

[00:21:01] from like a growth perspective it is a really horrible strategy because I don't think what I do lends itself necessarily to a seasonal format. Like if I were to say that hey this season's

[00:21:10] all vol or this season's all trend following or this season's all value investing that would make more sense but my seasons are just like Corey randomly starts and stops and calls it a season. That's it's not really a season that's just Corey getting burnt out of podcasting.

[00:21:26] You mentioned you have a pretty deep process can you take us through that a little bit like once someone's agreed to come on what happens next what how does that process work? Yeah so

[00:21:34] the way my process works and this is every guest has to agree to this. I will not do an episode unless they do this with me. I made one exception and that's because I knew this person's work

[00:21:47] incredibly well but I have them come on and I do an hour long pre-call minimum and that pre-call is important for two reasons. One it allows me to sort of figure out what

[00:21:58] the passion topics are for the guest. It allows me to understand how they think and what they want to talk about it and it allows me to sort of answer all the questions that I might have

[00:22:10] brilliant and exceedingly dumb alike right and it lets me figure out which rabbit holes are worth pursuing and which ones aren't and I think if if that was just the podcast people would be like this is all over the place it's scattered it never got anywhere deep.

[00:22:26] By doing that I can then spend the time to come up with a set of questions typically 12 to 16. The other really useful thing about the pre-call for me is understanding how the guest speaks.

[00:22:40] It lets me pre-screen a guest to understand not only how long they take to answer a question which if I'm trying to aim for about an hour long podcast tells me how many questions

[00:22:52] to write down but also like let me understand the clarity of thought which they can communicate and if they happen to be someone who's an incredibly good speaker I can ask them incredibly complex questions and let them just go. If there's someone who's less of a clear speaker

[00:23:09] they're a little bit more scatterbrained I tend to make my questions shorter and more isolated so that I can get a really specific answer out of them before moving on to the next thing because what I'm trying to do with that arc is allow myself to go deep

[00:23:24] build whatever foundation I need and then go deep into that passion topic that the person has and then put a bow on it at the end so it really helps me organize the arc of the podcast.

[00:23:35] I then send them the questions for large firms that typically has to go through their compliance or someone has to review it smaller firms I'm just sending it to them to make sure they're comfortable with the questions and sometimes I'll get feedback and say hey that's

[00:23:49] not something I'm comfortable answering on a podcast or hey I'd really rather talk about something else can we reorganize these I'll get feedback probably about 25% of the time we bat the questions back and forth until we're both happy and then we set up a time to record

[00:24:06] the last thing I'll say is people will notice I don't do video and I'm not sure I'll ever do video the reason I like doing audio only and when I and when I record with my guest there is a video

[00:24:19] because I think the video helps the conversation but I only do the audio and the reason I only do the audio is because I said to my guests this will be as edited as it needs to be

[00:24:29] majority of the time very light-handed editing just cleaning up the audio but I want the guests to know that if they are answering a question and they want to retake it entirely or they want to cut a section out later or whatever they need to feel

[00:24:44] comfortable that this is the best presentation of themselves and their ideas we can do that in an audio format in a way in video that would be very obvious and potentially jumpy I have had situations in the past where I've cut out entire sections and re-recorded those sections

[00:25:01] and dropped them in no one's had any idea I've had times in the past where I've said to guests I refuse to to actually do that episode I don't think it was the quality you want me to

[00:25:10] launch and we're gonna either we're not doing an episode or we're going to re-record it and I think people would be surprised as to which of my episodes I've actually done that with

[00:25:21] but again my goal is to have my guests trust me that the output will be an incredibly high quality product for them that will put them in a very good light the sort of last

[00:25:34] thing I'll say about the questions and the reason I like to come up with the questions first and then give them to the guest is so that the guests can trust where I'm going because for me to be able

[00:25:48] to go deep with some of the things I do I don't want the guests to front-run me what I've found in the past is some guests will if they don't trust you as a host they want to make sure

[00:25:59] they get everything in and so it becomes like word vomit and and you go you just front-run six of my next questions and now everything's thrown off and it's not helpful like if I give them the questions

[00:26:11] and they know I'm asking a question about x and they just can stick to x because they know I'm gonna give them an opportunity to talk about that important y part in a couple questions

[00:26:23] they trust me as a host to get there versus if they don't know the questions that are coming they're more incentivized to just get everything out as quickly as possible which I think leads to a

[00:26:34] worse sort of narrative across the arc of the podcast yeah we've got a couple instances where we gave the questions because we give the questions as well we've got a couple instances where we gave

[00:26:43] them but they still answered them you know it's like we start with like five they know what the five questions are and they answer all five in the first question um then you know Justin and

[00:26:50] I are trying to scramble to figure out what to do from there and I will and again I will say right or wrong I will tell the guests like we're retaking that you need to trust me as a host

[00:27:01] I know you want to talk about these things that's why I sent you the questions you're gonna you need to trust that I've done this 70 plus times you're you have not done this

[00:27:12] you need to trust me as a host that I am I'm doing it this way because I want to make you look as good as possible selfishly people tell me all the time how brilliant I am I'm not smart I have

[00:27:25] smart guests on my podcast and then I spend way too much time trying to come up with smart questions but there's a halo effect right and and I say to my guests selfishly I want you to sound really

[00:27:38] really really really really good because then people think I'm really good and so don't worry I'm not there's no I got you I'm not trying to catch you in anything I'm not trying to get you to slip up

[00:27:49] like my reputation is super important as a host trust the process and we're gonna get you a really high quality piece of content I think what you just touched on is the most important thing here

[00:28:00] which is the end result is all that matters the end result and that it teaches people what we're trying to teach them is all that matters because we have people who kind of question us

[00:28:07] sometimes on well why do you send the questions in advance won't it be more spontaneous if you don't or you know you talked about editing stuff out you know all of it comes down to what is that

[00:28:15] end product you know how we get there I don't think really matters um you know so and that's why we send the questions you know we found even like big-time guests have said to us you know I really

[00:28:24] valued that because I could think about the questions in advance I kind of knew what was coming and they give they could answer them without seeing them in advance but they give more detailed

[00:28:32] answers if they know what you're going to talk about well but it can backfire though where guests want to over prepare and the one thing I will not allow a guest to do is read written

[00:28:44] answers and guests will try to do that um and and I have no issue if the guests want to like I've had guests get the questions and write their answers and send it back to me and say hey how did these

[00:28:54] answers seem then I go good it's exactly what you said to me in the pre-call so that's sort of what I expected to get out of you sometimes I'll say hey by the way I'll send a question

[00:29:03] and say hey by the way this is what I'm trying to get at this is what I hope you talk about for this arc to make sense sometimes they don't talk about it in which case on the fly I have to

[00:29:12] come up with sort of an interim question to cross that bridge but I've had guests who have written their answers and then try to read that on the podcast and what they don't realize is that the

[00:29:24] way you speak and the way you write the way you speak are incredibly different and if you were to read what you write you sound incredibly robotic it doesn't sound organic it doesn't sound

[00:29:36] natural and so what I've said to guests is I have no problem if you want to come with bullet points but if you want to read from a script we will not publish the episode yeah no we've had I mean

[00:29:51] I don't think we've had anyone read from a script but definitely you can tell people when they over prepare when they have too much in front of them it's not as good because to your point it's obvious if you're reading something on the screen it's very obvious you're

[00:30:01] reading something on the screen yeah and probably much more obvious with you guys who do video like again with me it's just audio but I can tell in the audio it is just less organic the

[00:30:12] pauses are less natural they you don't hear them thinking right and the flow of the words there's no filler words that are typically there it sounds incredibly robotic are there any major lessons you've learned about interviewing like if I saw Cory

[00:30:29] interviewing in the first episode and Cory interviewing now what are the biggest differences so one of the things that I did early on is I listened to other podcast hosts and I wrote down their questions at least the structure of their questions

[00:30:49] one of the things that I found I and this is my personal opinion but one of the things I found I think good hosts do is they ask open-ended questions no yes no questions it has to be open

[00:31:03] ended typically hopefully just one singular question or two or three questions on a narrow topic right just the two or three questions might be ways in which you can attack that topic in different ways but open-ended is really key I think Patrick O'Shaughnessy

[00:31:23] incredibly good at this I don't know what his process is but I think he's incredibly good at asking questions asking questions like how do you think about this or you know just like

[00:31:35] can you expand upon this concept those to me are the the powerful questions and I think early on I was probably a little too narrow in my questions I think what I've tried to do later

[00:31:46] on is be really thoughtful about making sure they're always how or what never something that can be answered with yes no and that I think is is um something I've tried to work on compared to

[00:32:01] early seasons I think that's probably the best answer there yeah to your point the two part questions that's something I still do it's you'll have the question and you'll be like and

[00:32:11] and add this other question to the end of it and then inevitably only one of the questions gets answered and you know I need to learn to like break it up ask the first question then ask the

[00:32:18] second question yeah and I definitely do that even though I pre-write my questions every once in a while I'll still while I'm giving the question I'll go I didn't think this went through enough

[00:32:27] this should really be two questions and I'll make sure again because I have the pre-written questions if they don't get both points I'll bring up the second point but it's a little clunky again it's something I'm always trying to improve on um but the open-ended

[00:32:40] questions I think is key and then for me as a host when I now that I I create transcripts my goal is that I always speak less than 20% of the time ideally I'm speaking less than 15% of the time

[00:32:54] I think if you're doing an interview it it is not helpful to interrupt the guest and interject your thoughts I'm not here for a conversation with my guests I'm here to get my guest thoughts so I think again it's the podcast I enjoy the podcast I enjoy

[00:33:11] respect the guests as the expert they come and ask the question and then you're not giving your thoughts in feedback it's not a 50-50 conversation it's I'm here just to ask questions and and get

[00:33:22] you as the expert to teach me something and so again I don't I think that's something I tried to be good at from the get go but I think it's something I look at from a metric perspective

[00:33:32] like I am super happy when there's an episode that I'm less than 15% of the spoken time so do you actually go back to the transcript and look at the percentage of words you said every time to see

[00:33:41] see how that's how you're doing with that yeah so there's there's ai tools right that'll auto generate transcripts now one of the things they'll tell you is what percentage of the time

[00:33:49] you were speaking now I have to admit I tend to be a slow speaker so if you actually look at the audio time it's different than the word time because it takes me so long to say a

[00:34:00] sentence because I just speak really slowly but I try to look at that audio time and say you know ideally I want to be less than 20% it's to showcase the guests and if I'm over 20% it means I was

[00:34:10] talking too much and some guests aren't comfortable with that I've had guests say I really want this to be a conversation and I'll say well you're on the wrong podcast I'm not here to have a

[00:34:17] conversation I'm here to showcase your thinking do you have I don't want to ask you to pick favorites but I will anyway do you do you have any most memorable guests you know if somebody

[00:34:26] is listening to us right now he's never listened to your podcast before do you have any episodes you would point them to man that's a that's a good one um so I'm gonna I'm gonna barbell this I mean

[00:34:38] Cliff asked this was a really fun one for me just because I have such tremendous respect for him the business he's built and what he's brought to the industry Auntie Ilman in is someone who I

[00:34:48] chased down for years um and was it was a tough one because I did chase him down for years and he was had a new book and he kept telling me hey look I I will absolutely come on your

[00:34:59] podcast um I just want to do it when the time's right when I really have something to talk about and he had this new book and then he did sort of the the podcast circuit

[00:35:08] and he hit everyone else's podcast before mine and I and I ribbed him a little for it I said Auntie what am I supposed to do with this um but that one was was a fun one for me because

[00:35:18] it really forced me to he wanted to talk about the book which I can totally respect but it forced me to say let me listen to all the other interviews you've done and attack this from

[00:35:28] a totally unique direction and then the so that one sort of pushed me as a host like I could have done the very lazy thing which is just like you just flip anywhere in his book and come up

[00:35:38] with a question I really wanted to attack it from a different angle and then maybe Darren Johnson you know Darren is an independent trader who I don't think would think of himself as a quant but he takes a very quantitative approach totally self-taught programmer

[00:35:54] totally self-taught in mathematics um and the opportunity to showcase someone who is you know doesn't consider himself a professional but approaches what he does incredibly professionally and give him a platform to discuss these sort of things was um I think I mean just when

[00:36:12] you look at the episodes one of my most popular episodes and one I'm really proud of because it is very different it's not getting some big multi-billion dollar firm it's just someone managing

[00:36:21] their own pa but doing it incredibly thoughtfully and giving them the platform to do it so um yeah those all those all stand out for me yeah I listened to all three and they're all excellent and I

[00:36:31] actually picked up what you said with auntie because we had done I don't know if our interview with auntie was out at that point but we had done one with him and I'm like Cory's going a

[00:36:37] completely different direction here which is good because you did something the rest of us did not do yeah I think he had he had gone on I knew he had gone on yours and I knew he was going

[00:36:46] on mebs and I I knew he was going on um Adam Butler's and I knew Adam sent me his questions and I was like these are like 70 overlap with me like because and they're all interesting questions

[00:36:59] but I was like how do I how do I go all this other stuff is going to be out there how can I showcase something different and unique and auntie was one of those guys and I love auntie

[00:37:08] by the way auntie is one of those guys who said hey I'd really love to have a conversation and I said I'm not here to have a conversation with you auntie like and I know you want to have a

[00:37:16] conversation because you and I go back and forth on emails discussing research topics from time to time like it would be fun to have that but that's not how my podcast works like I'm really

[00:37:24] here to showcase you as a thinker and let's really focus on that so it was that one was a good fun challenging one for me and again one that I just I auntie is someone who's been

[00:37:35] such an inspiration for me as an investor and a thinker in this field that uh it was just I was really happy that he wanted to be on the podcast how do you think about your stats you know I have

[00:37:47] a tendency probably to look at them more than I should but I also have a tendency sometimes when an episode does really well to think all right we need to shift I need to do more like

[00:37:54] this because this one did really well like how do you think about that I try not to get too caught up in them I sort of look at averages and I recognize that the world is changed pre and post

[00:38:06] covid um there's a lot less commuting and so there's a lot less time that people have to fill with listening to podcasts so I just think right my expectations for podcast growth are

[00:38:19] very different and I also look at it as saying how many people in the world are truly going to be interested in an incredibly niche topic like what I do um well I think we should

[00:38:31] eclipse a million downloads by the end of the year I recognize I shoot myself in the foot by doing the seasonal thing I don't build the habit but I also hope that means I keep quality high

[00:38:41] and that keeps people coming back but I can't point to episodes and say oh I did something right there versus I did something wrong in another episode sometimes there are episodes

[00:38:50] and I'm like that is a phenomenal episode that just doesn't get the listens because it's not a big name person and then other times you know the big name people are normally pretty pretty darn good

[00:39:00] that's why they're big name but there's sometimes I'll do a smaller name person that I say this this episode has some really valuable thoughts in it it just never gets out there the way

[00:39:11] I want it to and if when I'm publishing on a weekly basis it just sort of gets swept out with the tide the end of the day most of my episodes sort of on average minimum get about

[00:39:23] 7500 downloads the really good ones get up to about 15 000 downloads but I don't I haven't found like the growth to be continuing in an exponential manner it kind of grows pretty steadily but you know 10 000 downloads per episode I'm pretty happy with that

[00:39:41] no that's really good I mean you're definitely bigger than us um you know and we found the same thing you know we when we have I can't really judge which guests are going to do well

[00:39:48] sometimes I mean some of you can like if jem croissant is coming on your podcast it's going to do exceptionally well um he just has such a loyal following that like every episode we put

[00:39:55] out with him just has like 20 000 views on youtube or something like that but yeah other times I can't figure it out it doesn't you know like a lot of the hopefully the benefit of bringing

[00:40:04] guests on as they share it and then those people stick around and I love jem don't get me wrong but what I found with jem is his audience doesn't then stick around they they hot they hot podcasts

[00:40:15] to whatever they follow jem but they don't go oh he was on this podcast and I want to listen to other episodes of that podcast right what I'm and nor is his audience necessarily the audience

[00:40:25] I'm trying to hit he has a um a large retail following and I'm more than happy for people who are quant retail investors who want to listen to my podcast like that's what it's there for

[00:40:35] it's out in the public to make those conversations public but for me as a business owner like I I work with rias and institutions those are the people that I need finding out about me

[00:40:47] yeah jem's listeners want to listen in great but they're not they're not like from a selfish business perspective the people I'm trying to get in front of that is probably true and that's

[00:40:57] that's something we probably haven't done a good as good a job of like those types of listeners are probably not going to want to listen to us take a deep dive into value investing the next

[00:41:03] week um so a lot of them are probably going to see all right this is not an options-based podcast and they're going to move on you know after they do the one episode

[00:41:10] um I want to ask you about the pirate stuff the pirates of finance stuff because that's some of the best like the original pirates of finance stuff you did is probably the best thing I've

[00:41:17] ever seen done like on a finance podcast I do I appreciate that it was so exceptionally good and I'm just wondering if you could take tell the story for people don't know it like about

[00:41:25] what that was and how you did it yeah so pirates of finance I think was definitely one of these like COVID fever dreams uh I think saying COVID gets you like canceled on YouTube demonetized

[00:41:38] I apologize um but it was definitely one of these like Jason Buck my co-host and I were really good friends and we were just looking for something to do together and we were both talking about

[00:41:50] as great as a podcast is where you bring guests on um it can also be really difficult of like you can have guests cancel last minute the guests might just not give you a good showing

[00:42:03] it's hard to organize it's hard to find new people and we were talking about how the rest of the industry tends to not adapt as quickly to news to new media sources um YouTube for example

[00:42:17] like as an industry YouTube is like one of the biggest search engines and the finance industry doesn't really put its content on YouTube all that much and so we were saying well what if

[00:42:27] we did something fun what if we focused on YouTube as the delivery mechanism and what if we made sure it was was not guest based and so again during COVID we just had some extra time

[00:42:38] and we said let's do these I think we were doing it weekly at the beginning let's do these like like more well done more edited I don't know stories like we're gonna have a topic and it's

[00:42:53] going to be yeah Jason and I talking but it'll also be us narrating and we'll have more drop-in humor and it's going to be heavily edited and more polished than just maybe a guest coming on

[00:43:06] and it was a ton of fun and also a ton of work but we had the extra time because we weren't going anywhere during COVID um and I think we did that for almost a year I mean I think I

[00:43:17] I look back what is it 2023 I think pirates has been around for three years and it's sort of gone through some iterations where we did a really heavy-handed editing and people really

[00:43:26] liked it and I love some of those old episodes but then when the world got a little bit back to normal Jason and I just didn't have time for it anymore and so then we said well what if we

[00:43:37] sort of transition this into like two friends just chopping it up and talking at a bar um so we were on the blockworks platform for a while and it wasn't the right audience for us they're

[00:43:48] more either macro or crypto and we're neither and then we sort of went to our own platform on YouTube and um the feedback was phenomenal I mean we had a great group of people that

[00:43:59] every Friday tuned in and people said it was like listening to two friends just chop it up at a bar uh the real and that was and and it was funny about is like we called the

[00:44:10] Pirates of Finance I'm not sure we ever really talked about markets like we it was it was sort of everything but markets was the joke it was whatever Jason and I just felt like talking

[00:44:20] about ranting about we were so compliance constrained and we still are um that we just sort of talked about really random life stuff we talked about going to conferences we talked about travel we talked about Jason not having more than three shirts to his name and that's

[00:44:35] how he lives his life like just really random stuff and people seem to really enjoy it just as a break in life um I we haven't done it in a while and and the candid reason is one of

[00:44:46] things Jason and I always sort of said is why are we doing this other than just two guys having fun is there a bigger reason it's not a show that ultimately helps our business and if

[00:44:56] anything it's probably a show that is risky to our business um and so with no real purpose or avenue other than just having some creative fun I think we both agreed it was a bit of a distraction from

[00:45:10] the things we're trying to achieve with business and it potentially is just a risk of us saying something stupid on a Friday afternoon that comes back to haunt us eventually in our

[00:45:21] industry and so we said you know we've had a good time I think it's time to sunset this for the time being we might do some special episodes here and there uh but for now unfortunately it is

[00:45:30] it is in a quiet period Jack we finally found someone with less shirts than you I basically have the short sleeve t-shirts for the summer and I've got the long sleeve t-shirts for the winter and that pretty much is the entire podcast wardrobe so

[00:45:46] Jason turned me on to these like marino wool shirts I think he's got like two of them that he just his entire life fits in a small duffle it is incredibly expressive and he makes it worse I

[00:45:58] I don't know how I've got more shoes than could fit in a small duffle so it's impressive Jack and I were joking around we were actually gonna reach out to Jason and have him come in

[00:46:06] like halfway through and like kind of surprise you here but we just kind of said ah we better not have any surprises we don't of course I would have loved it it would have been good yeah

[00:46:19] but yeah on that original pirate stuff I mean one of the things I appreciated doing a podcast myself is how incredibly difficult that must have been like the amount of work that goes I mean

[00:46:27] doing what we're doing now is not that bad but you know there's a little bit of light editing you know you gotta put an intro on at the end whatever it's not that bad but

[00:46:34] starting to piece things together into a puzzle and like put this interview part in here and then put this in it's like it's really really hard I mean that must have taken you a lot of time

[00:46:42] yeah there's always a learning curve with that stuff Jason and I got to a point at the end where at the beginning of each week you know we knew we knew the general arc and concept and

[00:46:51] story and then what we would do is we would just record stuff and send it to each other and I ended up doing a lot of the editing and um just send each other content send each other

[00:47:02] videos and images that we thought fit well I would slap together a rough draft of an edit get Jason's feedback and then sort of polish it up and I think we were doing like a Friday

[00:47:13] release schedule I don't actually remember but whatever it was it was one of those were like it was very collaborative through the week and very incrementally built and then towards the end it was polished I remember the first week it took me hours and hours and hours and

[00:47:26] hours to figure out the editing software but I also had nothing else to do right I wasn't going out at night we weren't going to restaurants so it was just I had the free time

[00:47:36] there's no way I could pull it off in my schedule now with you know work travel and a baby and trying to have some semblance of a normal life with my wife like it just there's no way we

[00:47:47] could do it now but it was the perfect time where I could have that learning curve to get up to speed with editing and then the later weeks it was like we knew the we knew our format

[00:47:58] and we knew how to make the process work that that ignoring outside of the just like the recording of content the actual editing would take me 30 minutes to an hour it really wasn't

[00:48:09] that bad at the end yeah but I would definitely uh I'll hand it to Justin in a second but I would definitely recommend anyone listen to it like there was one where you're like trying

[00:48:15] to find a package or something I believe that was hilarious like you did a really good job so at the time I was living in Grand Cayman and I someone had shipped me a package of rum

[00:48:24] and as it turns out if someone ships you multiple bottles of rum it is not easy to get across customs and so I had to go to FedEx like I don't know eight times to try to get this package of rum and it

[00:48:38] was uh it was a real journey so like again had nothing to do with the world of finance it was just like whatever random stuff we wanted to talk about that's what we were talking about and it

[00:48:46] was it was fun you know a creative outlet for sure the pirates of finance were literally trying to find a hidden treasure yes in that package yeah um when you think to the tangible

[00:49:03] benefits that you've received um as a business from the podcast I mean as there's some that really stand out to you were like okay I'm talking to this guy specifically because he listened to the podcast I mean have you found that to be the case in some instances

[00:49:25] it's really hard to say and maybe I just need to do a better job of asking people where they hear about me but the way I think about our business is content creates sort of this gravitational

[00:49:37] pull and you and you never know what the content is that gets people into your orbit as a business um maybe it's a white paper you wrote maybe it's the podcast maybe it's social media and the

[00:49:49] and the idea for me is they stay in orbit so long as you you sort of have that continuous gravitational pull with content and then eventually there's hopefully something that like either may be an outbound call to them or there's something that like knocks them from orbit

[00:50:06] into collide with you because they go that thing really resonated with me and now I want to talk to you about a solution so to me that like it's very hard to quantify the ROI because someone

[00:50:18] might listen to the podcast for five years and then it could be a white paper that ends up getting them to reach out and it's like how do I attribute was it the podcast or the white paper um

[00:50:30] I will say there there have been some this is less tangible about the industry but some other interesting experiences where I've had people recognize my voice or recognize me so

[00:50:43] I was out to dinner with my wife and a young kid in in university walked by and like was staring at me no and that was like this is pretty weird she didn't want to fight me like what's

[00:50:58] up with us hopefully ten minutes later yeah we were out in an outdoor restaurant ten minutes later he walked back and he's like are you Corey Hofstein and I was like that's pretty cool this is

[00:51:07] really strange and now I'm like yeah I am and he and he turns to my wife and she'll never let me live this down and he turns to my wife and he goes you might not know this but but your husband

[00:51:18] is a mini celebrity and I will admit I'm horrible in those situations I apologize that the news ever come up to me I just I am so bad in those situations I feel so bad but

[00:51:34] it's given like where it's given me the opportunity is it's raised my profile to the point where people tend to know me to a certain degree so if I reach out it's not totally cold if I'm

[00:51:45] trying to have a conversation with an institution or a platform or I get invited to speak at conferences because I am sort of a an entity at this point which is a ridiculous thing for me to

[00:51:58] say but like that my name is associated with something that is decently well known in a space and so therefore right that gives me certain privileges of further promoting myself in conferences and

[00:52:14] writing and social media and all that sort of stuff and it all definitely has an impact on my business like I think my team would tell you they have very very warm conversations with folks

[00:52:25] because they know who I am and the content that we put out but it's very I don't know how you guys feel but I find it very hard to quantify the ROI. Yeah in terms of quantifying

[00:52:36] the ROI but certainly we've had conversations and even recently where like if people jump on with Jack and I you know it's sort of like we have a level of trust and credibility with them

[00:52:50] right out of the gate. It's not like we have to establish that but with you I could see you know you have Twitter, you have flirting with models, I know you're doing some stuff

[00:52:59] which I think is actually very cool. I saw some stuff on LinkedIn with it's like these many return stacking educational videos that are kind of feeding the return stacking content strategy and educational initiative that you're doing so it's all just like the

[00:53:14] ecosystem of content education stuff. Yeah and to the point of where people feel like they trust you and know you like that goes back to the like very initial one of the initial questions you

[00:53:25] asked were again I think Michael Badnik was the one who said to me like there is it there's something different when someone can hear your voice and when people listen to you long enough

[00:53:34] they feel like they know you even if they've never met you. So and I would urge people to sort of think about like the celebrities that they've known their whole life like if there's a podcast

[00:53:45] you listen to all the time or there's someone you've watched in the movies like you will have this weird warm affinity to them and especially like with podcasts if it shares more personal stuff

[00:53:57] like you will suddenly be like I know that person and you can approach them and feel like you know them and they don't know you at all and that is probably one of the

[00:54:06] stranger parts of the interactions is like I'll have people come up to me and be like I've been listening to you for years how's your baby blah blah blah blah blah and I'm like

[00:54:15] you know a lot about me I probably share way too much but I don't know who you are at all and it's a very asymmetric thing selfishly that's great for business right where they you know again you're having those conversations and people really

[00:54:30] feel like they trust you and they know you and hopefully that's for a good reason like you're not trying to mislead anyone here but there's again selfishly like that's that is what the podcasts are for it's to showcase you and build that affinity and get in front

[00:54:45] of people in a way that maybe you wouldn't have gotten in front of them before. You've kind of hit on some of the stuff that you do that you know some other podcasts might not want to do

[00:54:55] like maybe the seasonal thing isn't great for growth or some of the other stuff that you mentioned that you know maybe could be improved on a little bit or whatever that's just how you've

[00:55:03] decided to to run and build the podcast but do you have any other things you can think of that you would sort of tell someone starting a podcast from scratch like advice that

[00:55:16] you give to them as a starting podcaster? Yeah so I what I would say again another thing that shot me in the foot is not doing video. If you look at the stats video is huge.

[00:55:30] YouTube is one of the biggest podcasting platforms right so the fact that I don't do video I do have my audio on YouTube but it's like I don't think about it enough. I would urge people certainly

[00:55:44] consider doing as much video as you can. New podcasters I would say focus on audio quality as much as you can. Get yourself a nice mic like people will literally turn off podcasts if the

[00:55:59] audio quality isn't good. Whenever I have a guest come on especially when they're from a big firm and they sound horrible I always think to myself like why is this massive firm not paying

[00:56:09] the $150 for a really good mic. Like it's not there's not super expensive and it makes all the difference in the world to the listener they will literally change how long the listener sticks with

[00:56:20] the podcast and then the last thing I would think about is like you got to stick with it you really just got to do it enough. I was very fortunate that when I launched my podcast I already had

[00:56:31] an audience of people who were following my writing and following me on Twitter and so I could bring a lot of that audience over with me. I think to myself today if I was starting from scratch

[00:56:43] finding that audience would be hard but I'd be very thoughtful about how long can I do this consistently and how can I make sure the audience that should be listening to this

[00:56:53] is going to find it. What is that discovery mechanism because I when was the last time you just went on to like Apple top charts to find a new podcast right? How do you find new podcasts

[00:57:05] nowadays? Someone maybe shares something with you? Maybe it shows up in your YouTube feed as recommended right but you got to be thoughtful as to like how are people discovering you

[00:57:17] and if you're starting a podcast and you're not bringing an audience to it like that has to be front of mind for you from day one is how are people going to find you.

[00:57:27] We're going to give you a heavy plug at the beginning of the intro so but what we want to kind of end it with is a lot of our audience we certainly have a lot of financial advisors and

[00:57:37] professionals that listen to us and we highly encourage you to follow Corey, subscribe to his channel on Apple or his podcast on Apple, follow him on Twitter, go to New Sound Research,

[00:57:51] read his research that he's putting out because it's all really good stuff and so Corey we really appreciate you opening up sort of this behind the scenes and we wish you all the best in

[00:58:01] future success in the business and podcasting and everything else so thanks man, appreciate it. Well I really appreciate you guys having me on and I look forward to listening to this new series

[00:58:09] hopefully you can get a whole bunch of the other podcasters out there and I can listen and learn some tricks that I haven't picked up yet. We're going to try. This is Justin again. Thanks

[00:58:19] so much for tuning into this episode of XS Returns. You can follow Jack on Twitter at at practicalquant and follow me on Twitter at at JJCarbonneau. If you found this discussion interesting and valuable please subscribe in either iTunes or on YouTube or leave a review or a comment.

[00:58:36] We appreciate it. Justin Carboneau and Jack Forehand are principals at the Lydia Capital Management. The opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of a Lydia Capital. No information on this podcast should be construed as investment advice.

[00:58:47] Securities discussed in the podcast may be holdings of clients of Lydia Capital.