Month: May 2016

Motley Fooliversary

The Motley Fool is driving me Nuts!

Celebrating my Fooliversary!

It’s my Fooliversary! I’ve been subscribed to a Motley Fool newsletter for a year. Unfortunately, Tom & David Gardner’s Motley Fool marketing machine is driving me nuts!

I signed up for the Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter. The newsletter is OK, focusing on high yielding investment products with a firm-ish base. But I understand now that these individual subscriptions are just “gateway drugs” to continue to offer more and more investment advice and services, and, quite frankly, it’s become annoying.

In the first 6 months of this year, I’ve received nearly 100 e-mails asking me to join, subscribe to, or purchase:

  • Motley Fool Supernova, a premium meta-stock picking service based on the recommendations of two other MF services, Stock Advisors and Rule Breakers,
  • The Motley Fool Independence Fund (Ticker: FOOLX), a low load mutual fund,
  • Motley Fool Pro, a portfolio of stocks, options, hedges and shorts seeking steady returns,
  • Motley Fool Options, for Options trades and guidance,
  • Motley Fool One, access to ALL of MF newsletters and MF Wealth Management, a full-fledged financial management service.

Want to see the whole list of MF products? Aren’t some of these mutually exclusive? How many Income Investors are also looking to trade options on the side? This isn’t new thinking; as long as Motley Fool has been around they’ve had detractors, like Mike Piper at Oblivious Investor.

I’m a believer in John Bogle’s investment advice. As a government employee, my current investments are in the Thrift Savings Plan. My Rollover assets are in a low-cost Vanguard portfolio.

But kudos to MF Customer service – they cancelled the auto-renew and responded to my email in less time than it took me to write this blog post!

Welcome to my Blog!

In a recent blog post, Michael Hyatt convinced me that a blog – a platform – is important for my personal and professional success. He listed 10 reasons for establishing a personal platform:

First of all, to improve your communication skills. Second, to create a repository for your best thinking. Three, to provide thought leadership to your industry. Four, to raise your organization’s visibility. Five, to share your organization’s vision, which is both for the external audience as well as the employees of your organization. Six, to network with people who can help you. Both Michael and I have built so many great relationships simply from blogging. Seven, to build trust with prospective customers. Eight, to build authority in your niche. Nine, to gather feedback from your constituents. Ten, to mentor the next generation of leaders.

So here’s my birthday present to me – a domain that I’ll always remember, because its my name!