One Year In, With a Lotta Wins — Substack Is the Place to Be
When it's right, you know it ...
“When it’s right, you know it … when it’s good, you feel it.”
— Schlitz Beer ad campaign slogan (1970s)
I’m feeling nostalgic this morning …
Very nostalgic.
And with good reason.
A year ago today, we launched Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC) — starting a Substack adventure that’s been fun, enlightening, warming and … well … exciting.
Like the Schlitz slogan tells us, this adventure here on Substack has been right— and we know it.
As is true of most anniversaries, we’ve got lots to celebrate.
Indeed, a few months into our journey, Linda, the Head of Partnerships for Finance and Business Content at Substack, shared an exceptionally kind welcome.
And it only got better from there …
I’m super-proud of all the work we’ve done since that day. Readership has zoomed on our free content. We’ve developed a Model Portfolio, Farm Team Watch List and Special Situation Portfolio for our SPC Premium subscribers. We’ve hit the ammo dump on a slew of our stock picks.
And we’ve been featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, the MoneyShow and more.
Co-founder Jack Delaney and I considered a conventional Internet newsletter. And we looked at rival Beehiiv.
But we decided on Substack.
And I’m glad we did.
As the Holy Grail knight in the “Indiana Jones” movie would have told us …
You’ve heard of the “Law of Unintended Consequences?”
One of our most-valuable new lessons was the “Law of Unexpected Benefits.”
We connected with lots of old friends and longtime colleagues — special people like The Coal Trader helmsman Matt Warder, silver-investing superstar Peter Krauth, The Net Worth Club’s Danny Brody and Bitcoin expert Dave “OG Dave” Zeiler.
And we’ve made lots of new friends: Giles Capital, the OldEconomy’s Mihail Stoyanov, Value Degen, author and financial historian Mark Higgins, Money Talks’ Darnell Mayberry, Six Bravo’s Special-Situation Investing, DualEdge Invest — and more.
Most important of all are you folks — our readers, including a supportive core group who found their way here from my old newsletter, Private Briefing, which I ran for nearly 11 years.
We’ll keep surfing the “Fun Wave” on Substack — a “community” with 35 million active subscriptions and 3 million paid subscribers.
It’s not just a number game: Substack also has a competitive cachet.
You don’t tell folks “I write on Substack” or “I have a Substack newsletter.”
You say: “I have a Substack.”
Now that, my friends, is branding …
When it’s right, you know it …
LONG LIVE “THE WORK”
As a writer, former reporter and professional observer, I see Substack’s
uniqueness: It’s not just a tech-publishing “platform” — it’s a self-contained community that nurtures the writer/reader relationship in a way you’ll find nowhere else.
That community is the richest content kingdom on the planet, with a protective moat that keeps the “good stuff” inside — and the social-media “contagion” — somewhere “out there.”
Real-time reader "votes" showcase the greatest work.
For a writer like me who’s all about “The Work,” Substack has removed:
The hassle of setting up a website.
The (gouging) cost of e-mail list management.
The clunkiness of bolting on a payments processor.
And the annoying minutiae that keeps a writer like me from coming up with great ideas, writing about them and sharing them with an audience that's more engaged than in the "outside world."
The “network effect” of that tremendous Substack community then accelerates the transition from “startup” to “growth” — is growing.
IT’S HARD … BUT IT SURE IS GREAT
This month is the first anniversary of SPC … and is the start of our second year of publishing.
Want to hear something else that’s kinda cool?
This month is also the start of my 41st year as a professional writer.
It comes at a time when making a living as a writer is harder than ever. But as the Tom Hanks character in the baseball flick “League of Their Own” said: “It’s the hard that makes it great.”
Here at Stock Picker’s Corner, I believe we’ve got the right formula to deliver “great” stuff to you folks …
Great investing insights.
Great tales about market history … powerful takeaways from headline events … and contrarian strategies that will keep you clear of the emotional mistakes of the investing masses.
While most of those investors are trigger-happy, options-addicted, knee-jerk reactive Wealth Killers … our goal here is to make you folks wise, take-the-long-view Wealth Builders.
In the face of the potentially the most-uncertain future in decades, the reports and research we share with you are the winning path.
Like most writers, we tell stories.
But we believe that if you find the best stories, you’ll find the best stocks.
That's the Wealth Builder approach we bring you here.
Like that old Schlitz catchphrase says: “When it’s right, you know it … when it’s good, you feel it.”
It also billed itself as “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.”
And Substack is “the platform that made reading and writing great again.”
Cheers, folks.
And Happy Anniversary to all of you — who made this possible.
Congratulations on your anniversary, and thanks for the mention!
Stock Picker’s Corner has been invaluable to me over the past year. Bill, your Hallador call last summer was a real eye-opener — one that should have been a profitable move for me! I can’t recall exactly when I joined, but that moment made me think, “This guy knows his stuff, and I need to pay attention and learn.”
I truly appreciate everything you do. It’s been a great journey learning and growing alongside you all!
The way you frame Substack as more than just a platform but an actual creative ecosystem is spot on. That “Law of Unexpected Benefits” hits hard, sometimes the best moves aren’t just about numbers but about finding the right community. Congrats, btw.