Watch
Listen
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
James Baldwin
I spent 3 years with zero income before my first pre-sell flopped.
7,000 subscribers got the email. Nobody bought.
My savings were running low, but having no product gave me total freedom.
With nothing left to lose, I changed the model for Trends.vc. I gave away half the report for free and charged for the rest.
People bought within minutes.
Wellington Management fired John Bogle as chief executive on January 23, 1974.
The mutual funds Wellington managed had separate directors. They kept him on and handed him Vanguard.
On August 31, 1976 Vanguard launched the First Index Investment Trust.
It tracked the S&P 500 and tried to beat nobody.
Wall Street named it Bogle’s Folly. One critic called it un-American.
The underwriting raised $11.3 million against a $150 million goal. Bogle described it as an abject failure.
Over its first 20 years the fund’s assets compounded at 53% a year.
A man with no firm left to run proposed something the people running firms found offensive. What they defended was the fee on beating the market.
He could afford the insult because Wellington already took what it could take from him.
When you have no position to defend, you can afford to take big swings.
Bogle’s downside was a fund few people believed in. My downside was a report nobody bought.
In each case the worst outcome was to stay where we already stood.
When an idea hasn’t taken off yet, starting from zero gives you the freedom to try big experiments.
🔓
Where could you take a wild swing because nothing is working?
