I’VE BEEN HIRED!!!

I’VE BEEN HIRED!!!

As you may have noticed, and it looks like a lot of you have since blog traffic has dropped significantly, I have been completely silent for the past month or so.  If you follow me on Twitter you know why, but for those of you who don’t let’s go backwards a bit.

About a month ago I was contacted by someone through my email that wanted to talk to me about a potential job opportunity.  Of course I said sure but I was skeptical since I have talked to many people over the last several years who have either wanted to hire me full-time, to work freelance, whatever.  A couple of days after the email he called me told me what his name was, what he did, about his company and we started talking about some general things like if I was interested in being hired, what kinds of companies I generally like to research etc.

About a week later we talked again and he said he wanted to fly the wife and I down to Florida to talk with them, look around the area, and potentially talk about being hired by them.  At this point I was getting super excited but had to temper that since I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then not get the job.  Again, of course I said yes and we worked to plan the trip.

After rescheduling a couple of times due to time conflicts, my wife and I flew down to South Florida this past week.  We had a great time, met some great people, enjoyed what we heard, thought I impressed them, of course loved South Florida, and flew back hoping to hear from the company soon about potentially getting the job.

Well I heard from them today and got offered the job!

Who Did I get Hired By and What Will I Be Doing?

The company who sought me out, offered to fly the wife and I down there, and is hiring me is the Palm Beach Letter.  An investment/wealth creation/entrepreneurial newsletter that is based in Delray Beach Florida.  It’s a subsidiary company of Agora Publishing and is a very fast growing company.

I will be doing exactly what I do now, researching and trying to find great companies that are undervalued in the small, micro, nano cap, OTC, and ADR markets, and other generally shunned companies that most investors will not or cannot look into and research and write about them for the newsletter.

How Did They Find Me and Advice For Others

You would think that this company is one of the probably 100’s that I sent my blog and book information to in the hopes of getting hired, or that they saw my book and wanted to talk with me.  Nope.

The company was in the process of recommending Unico American Corporation (UNAM) for their Tom’s Confidential newsletter (the newsletter I will be working on now) that I wrote an article about nearly two years ago now and while doing research into UNAM they came across my article, liked it a lot apparently, looked at the rest of my blog, saw my book, and shortly after that contacted me.

UNAM is one of the 30 or so companies I have done full research on and/or have written articles about and one of only literally thousands of companies I have looked into on at least a minor basis.  So even though I think I put out great work, have sent my information to 100’s of people and companies in the hopes of getting hired, it still came down to great luck that they were recommending and researching a company I had chanced upon finding and wrote about.

When other value bloggers have gotten hired I have always asked their advice so I will share mine for possibly getting hired.  Or at least things that should help to increase your chances of getting found.

1. Research, analyze, and write about as many company as possible.
2. Only write articles that are great quality.
3. Get extremely lucky.

As the investment saying goes “The more rocks you turn over the better chances you have of finding a good investment.”  Apparently that is the case for getting found as well.

What Does This Mean For This Blog?

Obviously the blog will be put on the back burner for a while until I get into a routine.  I hope to eventually continue to post educational value investing based content including an entire value investing course based off my book that I was working on before they contacted me, but I do not know when that might happen since this job will take up a lot of my time obviously.  The blog will not go dark as the website and domain name will be kept alive though.

There are pros and cons that come with this readers here:

Pros

• I will be back to writing and researching companies that I have put off because of the amount of work that goes into researching, analyzing, and writing about the companies I research.
• If you are a fan of my work you will be able to still purchase the content that I am writing.
• I will be writing and researching on A FULL TIME BASIS again so once the market drops I should be recommending and writing about quite a few companies.

Cons

• You will have to pay for this content obviously.
• I will not be posting the content on the blog.

I am sure there are more cons but right now I am too excited to think too critically about this opportunity.

If you want to keep track of me more than the very sparse posts I am likely to put on here for the near future, please follow me on Twitter @JMRiv1986 where I am pretty active, and where I will continue to post on a consistent basis what I am doing research and writing wise and what I am learning from.

If you are interested in continuing to see my work on hard to find smaller companies and/or the other work in the Palm Beach Letter please contact me at jmriv1986@gmail.com and I will put you in touch with them to possibly become a subscriber.

Thanks

Thanks so much to everyone who has read this blog, bought my book, and to everyone who has helped me over the years become a much better investor and thinker.

I would like to send shout outs to a few of the other value bloggers who have helped me greatly along the way: John from CS Investing, Jae from Old School Value, Daniel from ValueFolio who now writes for The Motley Fool, Red from the Red Corner Blog, Wexboy, Taylor from Valueprax, Whopper Investments, Jeff from Ragnar is a Pirate, Neil who is Crowdturtle on Twitter, Nate from Oddball Stocks and so many others.  I know I am forgetting some others but I am having a bit of trouble thinking right now due to my excitement so for those of you who I forgot to mention who I have talked with or been helped by over the years I am sorry, and thank you because if it wasn’t for everyone listed directly above, and the others I my have forgotten to mention by name, this wouldn’t have happened without you.  Thank you all so much.

South Florida

If you live in South Florida and would like to meet, let me know as I should be down there full time within a few weeks, hopefully sooner, and would love to meet up with any of you when I get down there.

Why I Do What I Do

Last but not least thanks to my wife, kids (pic below), parents, brother and sister-in-law for everything over the years. You are the reason I have worked so hard the past several years in the hopes of getting an opportunity like this.  Thanks and love you all.