Tips to improve your investing from the top professionals

I am the former partner of a Tiger Cub hedge fund, which is a club that numbers some of the most successful investors in the world. I now run a firm which trains professional investors in-person and over Zoom and I have an online investment training school.

The podcast is intended to help investors improve their skills by learning from some of the best in the business. Although at the outset, I imagined that many of the listeners would be students looking at a career as an equity analyst, in fact my audience now includes many professional investors who like the quality of my guests, many of whom have never done a podcast before.
 

I have been a long time fan of investing podcasts and was inspired to start mine by listening to a couple of bad ones!

My goal was to help people. My business is about educating investors and this is a way of extending that for people who may not be able to afford my training courses. And I have learned a lot as well!

I originally tested the idea by doing a series of 5 shows, most of which I had completed before I launched. That took 3 months. I was having great fun with the show so I decided to continue.
 

I only release monthly because it takes so much time to produce a show. I like to do my research so that there are no surprises on the day. Often my guests have written books, or a newsletter and it can take 2 days to do the research or sometimes longer. Then there is the recording, done in person or over a video link, the editing and producing the web page. It's a lot of work.

It's also not cheap but fortunately Stream by Alphasense sponsor the show and that allows me to pay for the editing and the studio and all the ancillary costs plus make a contribution to the cost of my time.
 

I have a sponsor and I simply reached out to them, explained my guest line-up and they were happy to take a chance on the initial 5 episodes. They found it one of their most effective returns on investment - it's a specialist product selling into a niche market and there is additional benefit from my implicit stamp of approval.

And the podcast has been beneficial to my wider business as it has introduced me to a new set of institutional investor clients.
 

I use Riverside and sometimes Zoom for remote recording but I prefer to record in the studio. Rose, my fantastic engineer does all the editing.

I prepare by reading the guest's books, newsletters, reading, watching and listening to any interviews they have done, researching their career history. I like to come up with a list of 20 questions. I will not use them all, but I am then prepared for whichever avenue the conversation takes.
 

Listeners find my show mainly by word of mouth. It's a small group of professional investors globally and often listeners will share with their colleagues in their own firm or friends outside it.

I have a Substack and each month we feature the podcast. I also regularly promote each episode on social media which is my main method of acquisition. It helps when you have a guest with 1-200k Twitter followers which has happened.
 

I hadn't realised before I started that it's difficult to interview someone you don't know and haven't met before. I now try to have a pre-call or if in person, allow enough time for a coffee and a chat before we start. Then everyone is relaxed and we can just continue the conversation. But with important and busy people, I am always cognisant of their time.
 

You can find the podcast at https://behindthebalancesheet.com/podcasts
I am on Twitter at @steveclapham and often post about the latest episode there
Thanks!