On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig back to the show. Doc is the new permanent CEO of Stansberry Research's parent company MarketWise, as well as the editor of five newsletters at Stansberry and a member of the Investment Committee for Stansberry Portfolio Solutions.

Doc kicks off the show by asking Dan about his recent river cruise vacation on the Mississippi River and sharing stories about his own trip to Lisbon, Portugal a few weeks ago. This leads to a conversation about Doc and Dan's first meeting in 2007 and how Dan was a "diligence check" for Doc joining Stansberry in the first place. Doc also talks about his permanent appointment as MarketWise CEO after almost a year holding the interim role...

I survived a few months and spent some time wandering around and I was like, you know what? This could be an interesting challenge... It took a while to come to an agreement, but it took a while for me to kind of imagine that I could do it.

Next, Doc discusses the financial-newsletter industry and what sets Stansberry apart in this era where anyone can self-publish content – including free content and AI-generated content. "I want us to be known as a trusted source," he notes. As Doc emphasizes, Stansberry is good at finding talented analysts who work hard, know their stuff, and can meet deadlines. He also looks back on the company since its "disaster" going public, previous leadership that didn't respect the company's history, and what matters most to him as CEO...

Someone asked me today at a tech meeting [about] the stock price. I'm like, "I don't care about stock price. I care about having fun at work, care about you guys having fun, us enjoying what we're doing." [I care about] going to an Alliance meeting and having people come up to us and say, "Doc, I know your investment advice is good, and I know [Dan] Ferris is good, but the best thing about this company is your health advice. My wife and I follow your health advice." That's what it's about.

Finally, Doc explains that caring about what you're doing and the experience you want to give is the most important thing in business. He gives shout-outs to several folks at MarketWise who are doing just this, from Stansberry's Executive Editor Carli Flippen overseeing everything that gets published, to the marketing team and copywriters who care about the customers more than making a sale.

A couple young [copywriters] I've worked with on a couple projects now, I mean, it's so fun to sit with them. Because I'm learning stuff from their research on topics that I think of myself as savvy – not expert, but knowledgeable. Like, how fun is that?... Many of these [senior copywriters] now, they're bringing it.

Click here or on the image below to watch the video interview with Doc right now. For the full audio, including Dan and Corey's post-interview thoughts, click "Listen" above.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

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This Week's Guest

Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig is the new permanent CEO of Stansberry Research's parent company MarketWise. He's also the editor of five newsletters at Stansberry (Retirement Millionaire, Income Intelligence, Retirement Trader, Prosperity Investor, and the Health & Wealth Bulletin), as well as a member of the Investment Committee for Stansberry Portfolio Solutions. Doc has been with Stansberry since 2008.

Before that, Doc worked as an elite derivatives trader at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, spent a decade on Wall Street with several major institutions (including Chase Manhattan), completed a research fellowship in molecular genetics at Duke University, and became a board-eligible eye surgeon. Along the way, he has been published in scientific journals and helped start a small biotech company, Mirus, that was sold to Roche for $125 million in 2008.

Doc received his bachelor's degree from the Carleton College in Minnesota and his Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, graduating on the Dean's List with a double major in finance and international business. He later graduated from Columbia University's post-baccalaureate pre-medicine program and eventually earned his M.D. with clinical honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On top of everything else, Doc has published five books and also owns and produces his own wine (Eifrig Cellars) in northern Sonoma County, California.

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Dan Ferris:                 Hello. And welcome to the Stansberry Investor Hour. I'm Dan Ferris. I'm the editor of Extreme Value and The Ferris Report, both published by Stansberry Research.

Corey McLaughlin:    And I'm Corey McLaughlin, editor of the Stansberry Daily Digest. Today we're talking with the man in charge of MarketWise, CEO David "Doc" Eifrig.

Dan Ferris:                 We've known Doc for many years. He's our friend, he's our colleague, and now he's our boss. So let's not delay any further. Let's check in with the boss and find out what's on that mind of his now that he has been elevated to the position of permanent CEO of MarketWise. Let's do it. Let's talk with Doc Eifrig. Let's do it right now.

                                    Doc, welcome back to the show. Good to see you again.

Doc Eifrig:                  Hey, nice to see you, Dan, and thanks for having me. Corey, I think last time I was on, I don't know if you were a sidekick to Dan. Do you guys recall?

Corey McLaughlin:    I don't – wasn't on it, so I do believe this is the first time.

Doc Eifrig:                  And maybe I shouldn't call you a sidekick either. I don't know, but –

Dan Ferris:                 Co-host.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, co-host, there we go.

Corey McLaughlin:    I like to think of myself as a sidekick, so.

Doc Eifrig:                  OK. All right. Well, thanks for having me. Can I – I'm going to harass you a little bit, Dan. You're back from vacation allegedly. Where'd you go on vacation?

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Allegedly. [Laughs] I'm here. I'm not really back. My wife and I took a cruise up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Memphis.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh, on the thing that I see advertised on like Kiplinger's magazine and like a wheel?

Dan Ferris:                 Yep, paddle wheeler.

Doc Eifrig:                  What's it? What's the name of the one that you went on?

Dan Ferris:                 It was the American Splendor. Yeah, the Splendor.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh, very cool. How long of a trip?

Dan Ferris:                 Nine days. We stayed in New Orleans for a couple of nights and went to a couple good restaurants, which turned out to –

Doc Eifrig:                  And how high up did you go?

Dan Ferris:                 How high up? To Memphis. Memphis.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. OK, so New Orleans to Memphis. Corey, I have a question for you. Do you know where the Mississippi ends up north?

Corey McLaughlin:    Oh.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh yeah. See, he's a sidekick, if he doesn't know this.

Corey McLaughlin:    I'm going to say Canada.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh. Boo.

Dan Ferris:                 The basin goes into Canada, but the river –

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, the initial –

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, the river originates in, I think it's called Lake Itasca. Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

Doc Eifrig:                  Lake Itasca, that's right. This is why I joined Stansberry Research, because of Dan Ferris' exquisite knowledge of things.

Dan Ferris:                 And the river itself, while we're on the topic, if nobody minds, is –

Doc Eifrig:                  Let's keep the flow going, Dan.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, let's keep the flow going from the river.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 It started like 50,000 years ago, when the North America part of it was covered by an inland sea, and so it kind of drained that inland sea. And it looks like an old river. Like there are oxbow lakes all up and down the river, and it's like you're never going north – you're always going sideways. And it's amazing. And you can see on the map I was using, like all the places that used to be river, many of which are lakes now, and little sidelets and things. I found that fascinating, typical of old rivers.

                                    And also, it was busy, man. And it wasn't busy with any – there were like four guys fishing, and I was like, "Hey, don't eat that. It came out of the Mississippi River. Don't eat that." But otherwise, there were no pleasure craft, really. It was just all barges loaded down, many of them with coal and like aggregates, like stone building material. We passed by what looked like an aggregate quarry that was loading up, they were just loading up barges.

So it really, for the first time it truly impressed upon me that this phrase that we – the economy, we said, "the economy is doing well." I may never use that phrase again to refer to the entire U.S. economy, because I realize things can be really humming like crazy on the Mississippi River, and yet, other people in other industries can be struggling, and some people can be doing even better. It made me want to go a level deeper as an [inaudible].

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah. We're going to stay on the river thing for a minute. So I don't know. I know your wife – we've met a couple times. We've been at a couple of company events years ago.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  And I know that she's – or was in the travel agency business.

Dan Ferris:                 Was, yes.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yep, was. And I don't know how romantic you are or not, but my question is, did you find – was this a relaxing experience? Romantic with a spouse and stuff? Was it a chill kickback, like everything's provided? Like what was the level – let me say this, I've always wanted to do that cruise, I've always wanted to do barges and river stuff in Europe. I just can't find anybody that'll go with me.

Dan Ferris:                 So I wouldn't sell it as the most romantic thing in the world, although there is a certain romance to the plantations and like old Civil War antebellum townhomes and things that we visited. And 2 of the 4 or 5 of these homes that we visited were occupied – people were living there. The owner was, it was a private residence, and they were just letting the public come in and take a look at it. So, these people are living there, and they've maintained these places, they're obviously quite wealthy, and they've collected artifacts from their families going back generations. One house where somebody was living, on the property, maybe not in the house, was Rosemont, the home of Jefferson Davis, the former – the guy who was the president of the Confederacy for a little while, as long as there was a confederacy. And another one was just an old plantation house that, I think it was like a fourth or fifth generation occupant. Pretty cool. I found all that very fascinating, lots of history. So there's that.

And the food on the ship, on the American Splendor is not good. Yeah, that's a reason not to go. But we went to dinner in Natchez at a place called the Magnolia Grill, right there, right by where the ship pulled up and docked. Just a quick two-minute walk up the hill and there's Magnolia Grill. Best shrimp and grits I've ever had, and I've had a bunch of them.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Now, do you know if this is the Magnolia Grill from Chapel Hill, where the shrimp and grits – I can't think – was first put on the map? Or maybe I have it backwards, maybe this was the place where shrimp and the grits was put on the map. But there was definitely, in the time I was at med school in Chapel Hill, even before that, since the '80s, there was a Magnolia Grill that had shrimp on it. I don't know. I don't know.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I don't know if there's a connection.

Doc Eifrig:                  You say Natchez. I once drove the Natchez Trace Trail, which was a fascinating experience. There's another story. I want to say something about the Mississippi. There's a fascinating law case about, I think it was in Iowa, where the Mississippi River changed and moved an island. It wore aware – do you know the story?

Dan Ferris:                 No, but it doesn't surprise me.

Doc Eifrig:                  Someone has fought over that land and that space and then the land popped up on the other side, the island moved essentially, right, from the landmarks. And the other state claimed the property and, I don't know, just it's fun. That's a really cool river.

I've spent time being in Minnesota, Red Wing, Minnesota, and there's a Lake Pepin, which is where the Mississippi goes super-wide between Minnesota and Wisconsin. You can't see the other side of the – and it's this giant lake that's this time of year filled with boaters and sailors and water skiers and canoes and, well, fun. And nine days you say?

Dan Ferris:                 Yep, in July in the South.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, cool. Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, you cool back in Washington yet?

Dan Ferris:                 I'm cool. Yeah. Yeah, I'm cool back in Oregon here. It's only like 85 degrees here. It was like 95 degrees there, so. [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  I had the joy of being in Lisbon. I got back two weeks ago.

Dan Ferris:                 Oh, nice.

Doc Eifrig:                  But I was there during that heatwave. And Lisbon, the first part of it we were at a Marriott, which was fine, because you had a pool and you had air conditioning. The second part was with friends and family had a Vrbo kind of thing with a house that had no air conditioning, and it was 104 degrees during the day. And I don't know, it's been a long time since I've had to try to sleep when the air temperature and the bed temperature is in the low 80s at night. That was not fun.

Dan Ferris:                 No. No.

Doc Eifrig:                  They had fans, and you were blowing fans and splashing water on, but oh man, that was tough.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  That was not a vacation for me either.

Dan Ferris:                 No.

Doc Eifrig:                  And the food in Lisbon, eh, it was good to be back in the U.S.

                                    All right. I'm acting like I'm in charge, but I'm sure you guys have an agenda.

Dan Ferris:                 No, we just talk. You know, I pride myself – Doc, I pride myself on not preparing for these interviews, I'll have you know.

Doc Eifrig:                  [Laughs]

Corey McLaughlin:    He does. That is true.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, no, no, I believe that. But listen, if people don't know this already about Dan, you were one of the diligence checks I did. And Dan's heard this before, so he'll tune this out. But I went out to Medford, Oregon, met your wife, met your dog, maybe doggies, sat with you, saw your layout, saw that you had, like me, usurped the kitchen or dining room area for your own workspace. Your wife was not happy with that fact, but that's where it was. Your garage was wall-to-wall books. I think she was also not happy with that. And then – I love this story – you were like, "Would you like lunch?" and I'm like, "Sure. What are you having for lunch?" I think it was Coke, and you took hot dogs, you split them and grilled them on the stove. And I was happy you had mustard and ketchup. And I had hot dogs with you.

But I was so impressed with all the books you had. You know, you can look at someone's bookshelf and see if they've actually looked through them and read them, and you had all of my favorites you'd gone through. And then you knew stuff about lots of different things, so I found you and the Stansberry Group worthy of me coming and joining us. And you were an integral part of that. I know you've heard this before, so you have a special place in my heart.

And in fact, by the way, I just reset the flight policy today formally. So, you know, you and I – I don't want to get into this publicly, but –

Dan Ferris:                 Probably not.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, yeah, probably not. [Laughs] Yeah, so I loved that experience. And you've gone back, you went up to Washington, to Vancouver, Washington, right?

Dan Ferris:                 Oh yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  And now you're back. Are you back in Medford now?

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, we moved back to Southern Oregon in June of 2021, after eight years in Vancouver. Which I liked it up there, Lori did not. She was too far away from where her children were having grandchildren, so we had to move back.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, there's something about the Northwest that I really, really love. My family, who have a place on Vancouver Island and going out there next week for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I love the Northwest. Fantastic.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I agree.

Corey McLaughlin:    So that was back 2000 – what was that, 2006, 2008 when you had hot dogs with Dan?

Dan Ferris:                 Oh man.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, probably '07. Yeah. Might've been the fall of '07. I remember, picked me up at the airport. Yeah. I think we went by – was there a bar you were playing, like in two nights you were going to be playing guitar in?

Dan Ferris:                 Possibly.

Doc Eifrig:                  Or was there – I don't remember.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Yeah, I was doing a lot more – I was playing a lot more guitar back then. Yeah. Boy, when I think about it the longer ago, it feels [Laughs] It's almost 20 years. [Laughs]

 

Doc Eifrig:                  I'm going to think about that, like 20 years. Well, get this, I just had dinner last night here in Baltimore with a guy that I've known, holy mackerel, I've known for 55 years.

Dan Ferris:                 Wow.

Doc Eifrig:                  And he's a younger – he's a friend of my little brother. I mean, he's a friend of mine now. He's a CEO of a company, IPC Data – I don't know if you know them, they're privately held. But they're the ones that move all the information for banks and brokerages around the world. Like they have most of the market share of this. And yeah, he's up in New York, and he's down meeting with some folks here in Baltimore who run lots of money. Names will not be shared. But god, yeah, we were sitting there, I was introducing him to a chef and the maître d', and I was like, "Wow, we've known each other" Kurt looked at me and I looked at him and I'm like, "Twenty? No. Thirty? Nope. Forty? Nope. Fifty? Fifty-five? Wow." Yeah, so.

Corey McLaughlin:    Wow. I couldn't even know anybody for 55 years. [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Corey McLaughlin:    I don't have that yet.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. So that was nice. Well, I did prepare a bit for anything you want to talk about, but I don't –

Dan Ferris:                 So maybe, we really should talk about your recent appointment as permanent CEO of MarketWise. That's something that we can't... we can't not talk about that.

Doc Eifrig:                  OK.

Dan Ferris:                 That's very recent, just in the past few weeks here. And after what, a year or so as interim CEO?

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, not quite. Eleven months. August 13 was when I took over as an interim, as they call it. I was labeling it as "interim target," because we'd had so many CEOs coming and going that –

[Laughter]

Doc Eifrig:                  And I survived a few months and spent some time wandering around, and I was like, "You know what, this could be an interesting challenge." Yeah. So it finally happened. It took a – I won't say it took a while to come to an agreement, but it took a while for me to kind of imagine that I could do it. I had to have a couple things in check. I had to have a commitment from a couple board members that they were going to support me for at least a year and a half. Yeah, and it's been great. It's been interesting.

It's one of those things that if you'd have told me – I was telling my buddy last night, because we were dining at probably the greatest restaurant within 30 miles of Baltimore, called Charleston's. Cindy Wolf is the chef there. And she – in fact, the restaurant just won James Beard, National James Beard Award for wine and beverage nationwide, which is a huge, huge deal. She's been a bridesmaid so many times as a chef. I think she's been runner-up I want to say nine or 10 times, semi-finalist, regional, nationwide as chef, James Beard chef.

Dan Ferris:                 If you'd told – I would not have believed that Cindy Wolf is not a James Bears Award winner. I can't believe that.

Doc Eifrig:                  I know. No, she's – and I –

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah, she's the Susan Lucci.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, and the irony of the list, I would say in the last – the wine and food list – I mean, it's a good – it's a great. They have a food menu that the pairing is spectacular, if you do that food and wine pairing. You're not required to do so. And they always have wonderful, great wines. And I can tell you this, the other day – in the last year I've been in, and one of the somms there – I'm going to just, I'm going to riff with this here, but they've gotten to know me over the years, and one of the somms said, "Hey, you've got to try this wine." And brings it out, doesn't let me see it, it's a screw cap. I'm like, "What in the world is this going to be?" Pours it in the glass, and it's this light almost rosé-looking thing. No fizz, no spritz. I taste it and I'm like, "What in the world?" He goes, "This is a champagne grape." I'm like, "What?"

And there's only a handful of grapes that I know of that go in to make champagne. Pino Noir is one of them, it's what gives rosé champagne its color. I have no idea. Well, it's Pinot Meunier.

Dan Ferris:                 Oh yeah. Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  They had this Pinot Meunier from Australia. Somebody said instead of making champagne in Australia, or champagne style, has this still Pinot Meunier. Gorgeous, beautiful, roasted strawberries. Went with this tomato gazpacho, like just wow, talk about pairing. But they have weird, weird, weird wines on the list. So six months ago I'm in there, we're entertaining, we're interviewing somebody to come in to work for us. And I start telling the somm and Chef Wolf that years ago I got kind of my – I had just graduated from high school, went on to Napa, where my aunt and uncle lived, and was tasting wines with Joseph Heights in his bar. And Joseph Heitz, Heitz Cellars, for those of you who don't know, is an iconic brand, and back in the '70s was one of the big names in Cabernet Sauvignon. They had a vineyard designation called Martha's Vineyard.

But anyway, I'm sitting, tasting with old Joseph Heitz next to my uncle – my uncle's house, with my cousins, and he's pouring his favorite wines. He didn't care about the Cabernet Sauvignon, even though that was what he was making money off of. He cared about these three Italian varietals: Barbera, Charbono, and Grignolino. And I still have those three bottles today. They were '73 to '74 vintage. And these guys look at me like, "You're kidding?" I'm going, "No, no, I'm kidding." And they go, "Hang on a second." And they go get the wine list and literally they have one bottle left on the list of a Joseph Heitz Grignolino from like 2010. And they're like, "We can't sell this to anybody, so you want to open it with us?" I'm like, "Hell yes, let's open it." And again, beautiful, unusual, rustic wine that's not commercially possible. You can't – you'd have to be a wine guy. So I'm a wine guy.

Anyway, I'm babbling about this. But the point really is what? I don't know. I have a point. A year and a half ago, I convinced her to pair her food with my wine. So we did like – it's about like a 13-year vertical. We had 17 wines in total, a couple whites, a blend that was some Portuguese grapes dry. And she did this pairing, Dan, and oh my god, talk about a night. And I think I endeared myself to her and she to me of the way she did it and the food and the excellence.

But this guy that I had dinner with there last night was supposed to have come to that dinner. And he had this emergency meeting, he had to go out to San Francisco, where these PE guys were hiring him for the CEO job. So he's been waiting to try her food and her wine since that night, where we had my event a year and a half ago. And since then, like I said, I've got this sort of great relationship with her, I feel like, and the staff. So last night she brings out this like special salmon horseradish crème fraiche potato pancake thing for us, because she knows I love it. She hand-delivers it to the table. But what a wonderful, wonderful experience.

I don't know how I got on this.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I think the point here is that if you want to be the CEO of MarketWise you'd better know your food and wine, maybe. I don't know. [Laughs]

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah. [Inaudible] is the CEO.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, and the irony of this is this is the same restaurant that Porter first brought me to.

Dan Ferris:                 OK.

Doc Eifrig:                  All right, so this is flowing. So you know Porter. You guys know Porter, Dan for sure. Dan's lived with Porter, geez Louise. Porter brings me there, and Porter is kind of wanting to be a little showy.

Dan Ferris:                 No.

Doc Eifrig:                  And the somm comes to the table and – yeah, yeah – and Porter says, "Hey, Dr. Eifrig, let's play a game. I'll pick a red and you pick a white." And so Porter picks some Bordeaux that's, I don't know, an obvious choice. Well, I picked – there's a winemaker, he actually is a subscriber to our stuff, a guy named Peter Michael. He's now Sir Peter Michael. He's a British guy and he owns this beautiful, beautiful winery in Alexander Valley, Knight's Valley technically, in Sonoma. Anyway, he makes a Chardonnay called Mon Plaisir, which up until around then, when the last couple of vintages of this wine was made, it was an unfiltered Chardonnay. And so there's stuff floating in the bottom, there's precipitate in a white wine. Nobody in America really wants to drink that except wine aficionados that know it's not filtered. And it's, oh my god, the sommelier is like, "Ohhh." I whispered in his ear, "Mon Plaisir. Your 2004 Mon Plaisir." He's like, "Whoa, how do you know about this wine?" Which immediately impressed Porter. Right?

My point is, the key is you've got to impress the people that own the place and eventually they will make you CEO. But that was my first like could just smash Porter on the ground. And I think what he brought out was like a first or second growth Bordeaux, it was kind of yawn, OK, this is Saint-Emilion, this is Merlot-based. OK, next. And the Mon Plaisir, Porter is like, "What is this? This is beautiful. Fantastic." Anyway. So that's how you get to be CEO, know your food and wine, impress the owners.

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah. So you were right, Dan, that is the point.

Dan Ferris:                 Yep. I'm noting it. I should write it down. Let me get a pen.

Doc Eifrig:                  [Laughs] You should write it down.

Dan Ferris:                 Well, what I want to know is, I think the average person says, "What does MarketWise do?" Well, we publish financial newsletters, among other things. And right now, certainly at this moment, as we speak, it's never been easier for one to publish one's own financial newsletter. And how does that fact really impact the business? How does it impact your view of the business and what you intend to do with it while you're the boss?

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Wow. Sounds like I've got an analyst for Merrill Lynch over on the other side, asking me about the stock in company.

Dan Ferris:                 Well, it is a very generic sort of – it is intended to be that sort of a question, in other words.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Yeah. No, Dan it's a great question. You know, it's if you're going to do a "SWOT" analysis, right, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It's a threat. It's a threat. People being able to just publish anywhere, even give lots of free advice, and you can pick it up. And I would say I want us to be recognized and sell and market it as we are a trusted source of information. And we might take a little while to convince you of that after you get your first letter from us, after you read some free letters. But I really want people to know that that is what we are, and we believe it's a fair deal to pay for that.

My analogy will be like, OK, you can go get health care advice, you can go to a person with multiple different kinds of degrees, and they can claim to be giving you advice about your health, but the fact the matter is if you want to get serious about it, you probably should go to a well-trained M.D., an internist, probably because they've had three years of studying adult human medicine, they've had to be in an ER, they've had to work on people in an ICU. Going to a sports trainer who says you should start taking creatine because it'll help you with your aging, not so much.

So we can get free advice, probably been able to get free advice on lots of different things for a lot of time, but I want us to be known as a real, a trusted source. And you get that by having, I think, real people, real information, curate all the information that's out there. I mean, in addition to having easy to publish, it's easy to analyze and get lots of information. And I don't think AI has got that yet. I don't think AI has wisdom yet either. And you know I would define wisdom as having seen things in certain states and then remembering what happens.

So that's my answer. I don't know if it's good answer. I don't know if you're happy with it, but that's my plan. One of my ideas, I think people who get our free e-letters should be turned off. I think our free content is really good. I think at some point, if you're not going to buy another letter, you've got to pay up for your free content. And I'm probably going to institute that if – I've been planting seeds of that idea, but like it's OK to sell your information.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  It's OK.

Dan Ferris:                 It's more than OK. And more people than ever are doing it, which was the whole point of the question.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 I think that's a great idea. I think it's a good answer and I think it is a good idea. I didn't know you were thinking about doing that with the free letters. It makes sense – somebody gets something for free for 10 years and doesn't spend a penny otherwise, they're kind of sending you a message about the value of the content.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, they're clearly saying – if they're reading it, if they're opening it, I would only go after the people who are opening, they value it. It's like the wine trade, if you have a tasting room, you can't let the manager of the local jewelry store or the owner the local jewelry store come in every Friday night and taste your wine in your tasting room. You've got to charge them something. And so eventually you say, "Hey, look, why don't you buy a bottle of wine? You can just keep it here, and you can come back. If you want to drink in our tasting room on Friday night we'll gladly have you, but you've got to buy your bottle of wine."

Dan Ferris:                 Right.

Doc Eifrig:                  I can't keep pouring you free wine, because you've tasted my wines now. You know all the wines I have, so we're done giving you free tastings.

Dan Ferris:                 Interestingly – this is a bit of a digression, but I can't help noticing that some pretty, as far as I'm concerned, on social media, some pretty important folks, one of them is absolutely important, he goes by the name of Rudy Havenstein, and he has a huge following on Twitter. And he had a paid Substack for a little while, but he's not doing it anymore. He's just, it's for free now, because it was just kind of a hassle for him. And I noticed there was another guy, I think his – I forget what title he goes by, Rational Markets or Rational Investor or something like that, sort of chimed in the conversation, said, "Yeah, I did this. Just, it's easy if you do this and this and this." So these guys are producing some of what I consider the very best content, and they're saying that as a business it's like not worth it to them to bother with it, and they'd rather just do it for free. Rudy complained that having to come up with consistently good content on a regular schedule was difficult. And I can tell you, having my, including the podcast, 10 deadlines a month, yeah, no kidding. It's hard. [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  Right. Right. Right. Yeah, life's hard actually. Yeah, got to show up and do some work, do the grind.

Dan Ferris:                 Yep. Anything that's a business, the execution has to be consistent. Just it has to always be there.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yep.

Dan Ferris:                 And that's really hard to do. I think Stansberry actually does a – I'm tooting my own here or whatever, take it for whatever you think it means, but that has been the amazing thing about it. And that's very much – to me, I see that as a big part of Porter's legacy, because he's relentless. He's a worker, he's highly energetic, highly motivated type of guy. And he's always executing and executing and executing. And he found a bunch of people.

I'm amazed. Like, I was one of the first two or three or whatever – it was like me and Lashmet and Steve Sjuggerud in the beginning. And then like all of these people. We, Bryan Beach and Mike DiBiase and Alan Gula, all three of whom we've had on the show, which is why they're kind of top-of-mind. Greg Diamond, like everywhere you look we've got another really impressive – Gabe Marshank, there's a name I know you know well. I guess it's satisfying and rewarding to me that the place that little old me works for can attract people of that caliber doing the same thing I do.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 It's amazing.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think like we've got another guy, Josh Baylin, I don't know if you've met him yet, Dan. But he is a tech guy that we stumbled across. And talk about somebody who lives, eats, breathes tech. He's here, he's got a – his parents live in Baltimore, so he's coming from the West Coast. And when he stays, we can't put him up in a hotel. He wants to go stay with his parents. And dad is an 82-year-old still-practicing dentist. Josh has gone to make sure and check dad, "Hold your hands out straight." You know Dad's not tremoring, so Josh is OK with Dad doing it. Mom, they're out, vibrant and living life.

But his mom was having like some pain getting up and like a knee and getting around. So Josh was showing me just literally Tuesday in the coffee area, this machine, I forget the brand, and it's a power assist thing. It's like what the company up in Boston – it's like a robotic leg, and there were like four settings on it. But he showed me, putting – a video of him putting it on his mom, attaching, and her moving in it. And like he had to turn the setting down a notch because it was giving her too much assist. But he said his mom was like, "Oh my god, I can walk again and get around and there's no pain." And so here's a guy living, breathing, eating, thinking about tech, buying tech. He bought a little robot dog for one of his kids this last fall so that it could carry his bag, golf bag, on the golf course. I mean, just thinking about tech, breathing it, eating it.

So yeah, we attract these folks that I think are just great. He looks like he's going to be a great storyteller, great analyst. He's done some fun stuff with AI. He's already helped kind of in our back office with AI stuff. Yeah. He's – I agree with you.

Dan Ferris:                 I seen that robot dog thing on the golf course out back of my house. I was like, "Cool." I couldn't believe what I was seeing, yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  I wonder – yeah. Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 That's cool.

Doc Eifrig:                  You don't golf, do you?

Dan Ferris:                 I don't play, no. I live on a golf course, but I don't play golf. But a bunch of my neighbors who live on the course don't play, so it's sort of...

Doc Eifrig:                  Right. Are you on the proper side of a hole, so you're not getting fades on bad shots coming into your backyard or side yard?

Dan Ferris:                 No, I'm not on the proper side.

Doc Eifrig:                  Are you far enough away?

Dan Ferris:                 I'm on the side that

Doc Eifrig:                  Ah.

Dan Ferris:                 I'm on the –

Doc Eifrig:                  Gets balls.

Dan Ferris:                 Right-handers hooking side, yeah. And we've gotten them on the roof, in the backyard, in the pool. Yeah, it happens.

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh my god. Have you thought about putting a stand out there, saying, "Help yourself. You know, take one, pay $1." Put a little cup, collect money during the day?

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] Have not thought of doing that, no.

Corey McLaughlin:    That is a nice idea.

Doc Eifrig:                  It's just it's a Retirement  Millionaire hack, Dan. This is a way. I don't know how many you're getting a day, so maybe it's not that big of a –

Dan Ferris:                 What I thought of was shooting the golfers with a pellet gun. That's what I came up with.

[Laughter]

Corey McLaughlin:    Oh, don't do that. You'll get arrested now.

Dan Ferris:                 Don't worry.

Corey McLaughlin:    If they return, they'll think twice about hooking it into your backyard though, at that point.

Dan Ferris:                 Oh yeah. It would discourage ones from behaviors. All right, so if I could get – I just want to get the last word here on being CEO. I feel like that there was a Monty Python skit where the guy, the punchline – without going through the whole thing, the punchline was "What's it like?" [Laughs] I mean I know what the company's like –

Doc Eifrig:                  "I'm not dead yet."

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. [Laughs] That's right.

Doc Eifrig:                  "Yes, you are."

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. But I know what the company is like, and I've known every CEO to a certain degree, some more than others.

What is your experience? I'm having trouble formulating a question. I just want to – I guess I really know something that you probably don't want to tell me, which is how you're different than other CEOs. But then you'd have to talk about other people. [Laughs] So we don't want to do that. But maybe what you bring to it that is different and better. Because I think I know what it is, but I want to hear you say it. I know what I think it is.

Doc Eifrig:                  Hmm. Hmm. You don't want to tell me first and have me go, "Yeah, I think that – that's it. You've got it"?

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] Yeah. I can give you the answer if you want, but it feels like cheating.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, give me the answer and I'll tell you if I agree or I'll – unless you just want me to take a stab at it. I don't know.

Dan Ferris:                 I just feel like besides Porter, you're the other person who gets it. And of all the other people, I never – some of the folks who have held this position, they're great, intelligent folks. Some did great work for Stansberry, etc., etc., etc. But every time one of them got into the position, I was like, "Hmm, really? Them? I don't know. I don't know about that." But when they put you as interim CEO, I thought, "Interim? God, what are they doing? Just make him the boss. I promise you he understands."

Doc Eifrig:                  Oh, that's sweet. That's sweet.

Dan Ferris:                 Anybody who has produced the body of work that you have, all these publications, and just the nature of the content you produce, like anybody can read your stuff and they'll look at it and they'll just be nodding. They'll say, "Yeah, that sounds right," even though it's something they didn't know before. Right? They're learning stuff, but you have a way of making people feel smarter as they're reading it.

I don't know, I just thought of all the folks – other people have produced great content, but I just didn't think they got it and had the desire and background and sort of leadership quality that you did. I really, I sounded like I knew exactly what I thought, but then when I started saying it, I sound like I don't know exactly. But to me, as soon as they said you were interim CEO, I said, "That's great. Just keep him around for five or 10 years and this thing has got a real chance of doing something great." The same way with Porter. I just think you both understand the business and have a way of telling everyone, "This isn't what we do. This is what we do. We're not in this business. We're in this one."

Doc Eifrig:                  Right. Right.

Dan Ferris:                 And that is so important. Knowing all the businesses we're not in, so that you can focus on the one we're really in, that's super-important. And I think you get that.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, thanks. Who do I owe? I owe it to my dad, putting at least sort of adages of time in my brain. I think reading, studying, getting an MBA, and then going to, you know, becoming an overeducated derelict, as I like to say, getting my M.D. degree, doing the biotech stuff, doing the molecular biology stuff at Duke, med school eventually.

I think how it came together for me is it was an intellectual challenge, right? Gosh, you could be the CEO of a public company, one whose execution of the going public you saw nine months ahead of time as going to be a disaster, and no one listened to you, right? So even the friends, the close friend, like just people, sort of ignore me, "Oh, that's Doc, the old grumpy guy in the corner that writes Retirement Millionaire and Retirement Trader. What could he possibly know about our business?" I'm not saying anyone said that formally, but I definitely felt that, I definitely got pushback. When I see now, being in the spot, I get to see stuff, right? I can go and look at old e-mails and flow of information, I can see the actual pattern, because now the legal department has to share this stuff with me.

There's stuff that you would just never – I was brought up to never, ever consider doing. My boss right now – I have seven bosses. It's the board. One of them is Porter Stansberry. So the idea that Porter, as a 20% owner or 25% of the business when we launched, those prior CEOs who drove by his house, within a mile of his house, wouldn't stop by with flowers, a bottle of wine, a gift for his kids, anything on a monthly basis, let alone on a quarterly basis, let alone twice a year or once a year. I dine with him once a quarter at least. I text with him. Like I'm connected to a guy who founded the business in a way that it's just out of respect for the history of this place and his wealth that's in it.

I don't know, so when I had the chance to like, "Wow, I can control the outcome now" and I didn't – I felt, like I said, for a long time others didn't get it, and now Porter I think trusts me for that. Today I got a note from him. He was like, "Bravo. I'm standing and I'm applauding you right now, Doc." To me that's just spectacular.

Now I didn't do it, and he's giving me credit for it, but it's everyone around. It's the guy over here, listening and watching our production show. It's you guys there, doing all this stuff, the day-to-day grind. For me, you ask like back to the original question, what's it like. What I found interesting, it's something I never, ever – I don't think I ever did this until recently, maybe in the last three years, listening to people and not worrying about taking credit for ideas, and trying to find good ideas and make a decision.

Now let me tell you, it took me two years to buy a Subaru Outback.

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] I think I've heard this. Yep.

Doc Eifrig:                  That's the kind of data – yeah, that's the data and information. I'm an information junkie, and worse, I'm a nondecision. I'm imagining that if I wait, in time God's going to come down and give me the thing that says, "Outback." OK.

[Laughter]

Dan Ferris:                 Yep.

Doc Eifrig:                  And what I've had to do here is go, "Hmm. Dan, I see that, yeah. Yeah. Corey, huh. What do you guys think?" And then you tell me, and then I go, "Oh." You echo it back. If it sounds reasonable, I'm kind of blessing and encouraging you to take that jump. And I still find it hard to give myself permission to take that jump, but I'm having fun doing it.

                                    I read a book by Marie Kondo. Do you know this? Called The Joy of – The Joy of Life? The Joy of Organize – she's a Japanese woman, and about organizing your stuff and things.

Dan Ferris:                 Oh, yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  And she's – do either of you know her, Marie Kondo? Anyway.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. They Joy of –

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah, it's – yeah. A minimalist kind of, keeping stuff for –

Doc Eifrig:                  Has to be, because she lives in Japan, so you've got to – your bedroom is smaller than this table here in front of me.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, The Life-Changing Joy of Tidying Up. Yeah. Yep.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Yeah. And she's – she speaks to like, "Hold this thing in your hand. Does it give you joy? If it does, find a place to display it, share it with people, share the joy with everybody. If it doesn't, pass it on to somebody else who will bring joy." And man, that has helped in the last three years. Again, it's kind of like these are all these things that you go through. And maybe as I get older you contemplate what's relevant and important.

                                    But I think being able to listen to people, imagine it's my idea, doesn't get me anywhere, like and saying it's my idea. You saw the memo from last week, right? And I kid you not, there are people in the company who claim that they were pitching these ideas three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago. And when they say that to me, I'm like, "Well, it's fantastic. I am so glad that we've been able to come together and that I've been able to relay it to everybody and we've been coming together and do it." So it's not about me thinking, "Oh, I thought of it nine months and a day before they did," or six months or anyone thought about it. It's like, yeah, we're doing what makes sense for people, to bring out creativity, to improve marketing, to share best standards.

                                    And like I don't – credit, it's weird. It's like I don't – I don't say I don't care, but I don't care anymore. Someone asked me today at a tech meeting the stock price, I'm like, "I don't care about stock price. I care about having fun at work. I care about you guys having fun, us enjoying what we're doing." Going to an Alliance meeting and having people come up to us and say, "Doc, I know your investment advice is good and I know Ferris is good, but the best thing about this company is your health advice. My wife and I follow your health advice in Retirement Millionaire, in the back half. Like yeah, that's – I don't know, that's what it's about, just...

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah. I'll just say, when I joined Stansberry, 20 – what, 2019, one of the first publications I worked on as editor was Income Intelligence. I don't know if you remember this or not. It was like for, I don't know.

Doc Eifrig:                  I hope I scolded you, and I hope I was rude and mean and told you to –

Corey McLaughlin:    Six months or something. But [laughs] no, not at all. But what I picked up on right away was how much you actually care about the reader, the subscriber, the information, all of that, and just accurate, honest information. And that's also what I'm hearing right now, too, from you, is just like – but not taking the credit for what other people are doing, but setting that vision. So yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. Yeah. Well, and being, pure care, I think everyone loves to be around it, because it just – it creates really wonderful, fun experiences in life. I'm going to tie this back to the food thing. So I happened to be across the street at Cinghiale in Baltimore when news spread that Cindy and the Wolf – Charleston's, the restaurant, had won the James Beard Award. And she was in Chicago accepting that with their wine buyer. And Tony Foreman, who was her ex-husband, came through, and he shared the news with me. I'm like, "Oh man, that's fantastic." And then two nights later, Cindy's back from Chicago and, well, first of all, I went over to Charleston's across the street, and they popped champagne, and I got to celebrate with them. And then two nights later, when Cindy was there – and I checked, like, "When is Cindy going to be coming back? What's the first night she's going to be in the restaurant? What's the first night she'll be here cooking again?"

And I came a day – a night earlier, because I thought maybe she's going to come in but not cook, like she's not on a schedule. But I can't imagine her winning this award and not coming immediately back to the place of the people that did it. So she actually – turns out she was there. And like we talked about caring, like that night, she and I and the staff. And they were teasing me, and I was teasing her, and they were teasing her, that the reason she won the award was – and again, if she hears this by chance, you know I don't think this at all, but they were saying, "Oh yeah, because you did that wine pairing – you did the food pairing with Doc's wine a year ago, and that's why you won." And I was like, "You guys, that's not – that's wrong."

But we laughed and chuckled, like "Oh." She rolls her eyes and goes like, "Yeah, of course you think that's why I won." I go, "You did. I care, you care. That's what the key is."

But we did, we talked about this caring every night, day in, day out, about what it is you're doing and experience you want to give. Man, there's nothing better than that.

Dan Ferris:                 And the ultimate expression of that, that I've learned myself over the years, took me a long time to get it, but I finally got it, you're writing all this stuff, and I've probably published – we publish 10,000 words a month with my name on it, and I don't even know, that's probably per week with Corey. Honestly. And I learned finally that the ultimate expression of caring about what you're doing is like hours from a deadline, you cut out 20% of the thing and say, "It's not good enough" and get to work fixing it. And the first couple times you do that you're terrified, but then you're also – you eventually, like it feels less like you're beating yourself down, and more like you're flexing your muscles. And it feels like this is how you do it, this is how you show that you care and do something better. Like it's not having a great idea and telling somebody about it and then, it's deciding, "This is where I draw the line and anything to the wrong side of it can't be allowed."

Great moment for me, and it made me a much better writer. The stuff that you – and this is another one of my via negativa rants, the learning of life is about what to avoid, and the showing how much you care is about what to avoid, and what's not good enough. You care enough to say, "What's not good enough?"

Corey McLaughlin:    Yep.

Doc Eifrig:                  Well, my gosh, think about someone who cares about words. Carli Flippen.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  I mean holy mackerel, could you like – and honestly, I don't want to say overlooked by management, but I mean if I had to say who's the person of the company who has shaped my success, it's absolutely Carli Flippen has had a huge role in that. Because I know, and I believe and still think I am a sh*tty writer. I know that I want to help people, I know that I want to get ideas across, I know I have a team now that writes a lot of the stuff, but, you know, when I'm editing and trying to fine-tune what it is we're trying to say and get across, it's still Carli cares so much to make it better. And it's just – I don't know, man, it's so fun to be around him.

                                    Dan, you can appreciate this, but one of the routines Carli and I had always had in Retirement Millionaire, this is when we were always in the office, is the day before publishing, the drafts had gone back and forth, some edits, and I accept them, but then I'm like, "OK, I'm going to send this final thing to him." And they're things that I disagree on, like, OK, this is OK to have this pun in here. This pun is a perfect pun. And Carli just has an absolute no-pun rule. But there was always this moment where we would get together and go sit in a room and sit down and – often it's Carli typing, because he types faster than I can, and we're working through wordsmithing the things that we agree and disagree on, changing headlines even, the titles.

And like so my point is when we were doing – I was doing the memo that went out last week to the company, we had that same moment again. And it was just so fun, because I don't know, you know my office, Dan, Carli is on the floor and he's like two banks away, so he can't see me. I'm in my office. And he had gotten up and started walking with his computer in hand, and I got walking up with my computer in hand, and we looked at each other and it was like [gasps] true, like love.

Dan Ferris:                 Right. Right.

Doc Eifrig:                  And we just walked in this room, sat down together, and did this moment again of caring. Right? Carli could've said, like others did – listen, this went out to a couple of people – Carli's like, "No, you've got to do this and this." Others were like, "Oh, it's great. It's great. Send it." Carli's like, "No, do that. No, do that" da da da, and it made it better.

Dan Ferris:                 Yep.

Corey McLaughlin:    Well, I can't remember reading any puns in there, either.

Dan Ferris:                 That's right. No puns.

Doc Eifrig:                  It's very rare that I can get them by.

Corey McLaughlin:    But yeah, I'm totally – totally agree with you with Carli. He's one of the reasons when I first started why I was able to fit in hopefully as well as I was able to. But yeah. So anyway, it's just about the people that – and Dan brought it up, too, who the company has attracted. I can't imagine what you guys think of the whole company as a whole now, just from where it started. It's got to be – I don't know. What is that like, Dan? I don't know.

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] Yeah, it was a different beast back in the beginning.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah. And look, we have all these pockets now in places and sort of verticals, if you want to call them, or brands, and folks in there doing it. But if you look down the list, Marc Chaikin. Marc Chaikin cares as much as anybody about what is going out to his subscribers. Joel Litman, Rob Spivey care as much about as Dan does and I care. Jeff Brown. Jeff Brown writes his daily every morning. It's one of my favorite dailies to read to learn about tech that I just had no idea existed in the world. And he's tapped into it, and he cares, I believe. Yeah, Brett Eversole. Anyway, it's as equally fun, and I just feel like in the background, the marketing, the copywriters, there are several copywriters here that really, really care. And to me, like you've got to get copywriters that want to sell, that truly care not about the sale, but about the customer. And those are the ones that are really starting to see and have success.

                                    A couple young ones I've worked with on a couple projects now, it's so fun to sit with them, because I'm learning stuff from their research on topics that I think of myself as a reasonably savvy, not expert, but knowledgeable. And like how fun is that? When was the last time you could sit with a copywriter where they're teaching you something about anything? And I mean that in the nicest way, other than like I know a lot of stuff, and juniors takes them a long time before they get up. But many of these seniors now, they're bringing it. They're bringing it to the table. Anyway, it's –

Corey McLaughlin:    Yep.

Dan Ferris:                 Yep.

Doc Eifrig:                  I think we've trimmed down from a place where we weren't doing that and we weren't – and there were people around that didn't care.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. This is a great version of us. I agree.

                                    So believe it or not, like we're at the point where we normally ask our final question already. It feels like we've been talking for five minutes here, but it's well more than 50, almost 60. So the final question is the same for every guest, no matter what the topic. If you've already said the answer, feel free to repeat it. So the question is if you could leave our listener with one thought today, what would it be?

Doc Eifrig:                  Wow.

Dan Ferris:                 I get that a lot. [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  Go to www.eifrigcellars.com and buy a 2019, 2021, 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay. Give them – put the code in, Dan Ferris. No.

Dan Ferris:                 We get that a lot, too. [Laughs] Go to my website is a popular answer.

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, go to my website. [Laughs]

                                    What's the one thought? Yeah, my one thought is, and I've kind of answered it, but it would be don't waste two years of your time deciding to buy an Outback. Instead, just go for it. Life is filled with these decisions that are bifurcated forks or forks with three or four tines. Just take one and go for it. You'll get feedback soon enough about whether it's right or not. Much of the time it's completely irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. This '21 Outback has 16,000 miles on it. I haven't ridden in it enough to even think about its enjoyment or its function or its gas mileage or its anything. Like just go for it.

And the other side of that is then take your energy not on procrastinating and hoarding but spend your time on sort of finding where there's joy. And whether it's encouraging people to make decisions at the company, which I think I spend a lot of my time sort of listening and saying, "Go for it." But like go for – try to find joy wherever you can, wherever it is. Joking with Michelin-starred restaurant owners. Yeah, just go for – go joy. Life is so short, man, and we're all going to die. That's the worst part about it is, if you don't do that you're – I kind of think losing an opportunity, which is meant for us to have, which is joy.

So that would be my message.

Dan Ferris:                 All right. I like that answer. I like that, find joy, and don't waste time on decision-making,

Doc Eifrig:                  On a Supra Outback.

Dan Ferris:                 All right, man.

Doc Eifrig:                  Maybe color of a Ferrari or maybe color – what are you driving, Dan? This will be [crosstalk].

Dan Ferris:                 The exact same car I had when I met you.

Doc Eifrig:                  A Honda?

Dan Ferris:                 No, it's a 2004 BMW 5-Series with, you know, 100,000-some-odd miles on it.

Doc Eifrig:                  You really had that back then?

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Or I might've gotten it the year after, actually. I got it in 2007, though.

Doc Eifrig:                  I feel like you had – I feel like you had, what was your car before, like a Honda?

Dan Ferris:                 It was like a Corolla before. Did I have that?

Doc Eifrig:                  Yeah, you had a Corolla.

Dan Ferris:                 But that was before – yeah, that was before 2007 then.

Doc Eifrig:                  I haven't seen the BMW.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Because I got that in like the spring of 2007.

Doc Eifrig:                  OK. It could've been. Could've been. Yeah.

I'm not sure what I would've done with you if you'd picked me up in a Bimmer.

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] Yeah.

Doc Eifrig:                  It would've been this mixed message. Wait, the guy splits his hot dogs, his hot dogs for lunch, drives a Bimmer 5-Series. Hmm.

Dan Ferris:                 It was used and it cost –

Corey McLaughlin:    This thing might've gone different.

Dan Ferris:                 I traded it straight across for an almost one-year-old Honda minivan. Because all of a sudden, we had this Honda minivan, it's like we reached the peak of minivan and all the kids moved out. I was like, "Now what do we do?" [Laughs]

Doc Eifrig:                  Right. Right. Go to the Bimmer. Corey, what do you drive?

Corey McLaughlin:    I've got an Acura MDX.

Doc Eifrig:                  OK.

Dan Ferris:                 Nice.

Corey McLaughlin:    Third-row seating that I always forget about, and I've never used it, but it's there if I ever need it.

Doc Eifrig:                  And probably not that functional. Probably can't get an adult foot in there vertically. Has to probably go sideways.

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah. Yeah. But.

Doc Eifrig:                  My dream, by the way, is to own a minivan someday.

Dan Ferris:                 It was in some ways still the nicest car I ever owned. So comfortable to drive. Drove nice and smooth. And you could get in and out of it so easily. And it had the nice captain's chair, you just sat up nice and high. It was great. I loved it.

                                    All right, Doc, thanks for coming around, man. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

Doc Eifrig:                  Thanks for having me, you guys. I appreciate it.

Dan Ferris:                 You bet. Bye.

Corey McLaughlin:    Thanks.

Doc Eifrig:                  I walked away from Wall Street and medicine, refusing to stay part of a broken system. And for 20 years I've shown folks the path to real health and real wealth in the face of rising institutional rot. Now, as CEO of MarketWise, the parent company of Stansberry Research, I'm issuing my first urgent message to all readers. It's a straightforward blueprint to solve the three biggest retirement challenges in the age of the great devaluation, challenges facing you. The path to living a rich and independent life is clear. You just need to take these three steps. Folks, you can find everything at www.retirement2025.com. Again, that's www.retirement2025.com.

Dan Ferris:                 It's always a pleasure to talk with our good friend, and of course, our boss, the CEO of MarketWise, Doc Eifrig. It may be – correct me, I don't know how my memory is serving me here – it might be the least investment-focused podcast we've ever done.

Corey McLaughlin:    I would say so. I think you're correct in that. But it was good. We got into – it's an interview with him about leading the company, so I think that's important for people to hear, too. Which you could say is investing, since we're publicly traded, right?

Dan Ferris:                 Exactly. Exactly. This is for investors who want to know about the guy at the top of the company with ticker symbol MKTW, who is obviously a very smart and thoughtful guy, an overeducated derelict, self-admitted. [Laughs] I thought that was hilarious, when he called himself an overeducated derelict. I'm like "You're a derelict. We should all be so derelict in our lifestyle." [Laughs]

Corey McLaughlin:    I know. Geez. Yeah, we didn't really get into that too much, but I've never met anybody with a background like Doc's. I just haven't.

Dan Ferris:                 It's a little impressive.

Corey McLaughlin:    Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 Maybe a lot.

Corey McLaughlin:    Wall Street, medical school, molecular biology fellowship. Yeah, it's incredible. And, obviously sounds like he's being humble about it as well, continued. So it's – yeah, happy he's the man in charge.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. And the real answer, I think, to my question about why he's such a good choice for CEO for MarketWise, I didn't realize that it was the really good connection with Porter. I think he has a better connection with Porter than any previous CEO. And that is important because that's like the culture and the core of the heart and the soul and the culture of the company right there in one person. And being strongly connected to that, that's what really – when he started talking about that I sort of, I wanted to hit myself in the head say, "Oh, of course, because you're the best conduit. You're the best conductor of that." He's like an electrical conductor and that power just comes right through him. Plus he's a smart guy who can make his own great decisions. But all I can say about him is that he gets it. I've always known he got it. I'm glad he's in charge, because I know he gets it. So if I could vote for CEO, he would get my vote. [Laughs]

Corey McLaughlin:    Me too.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. No one did – just so we're clear, nobody asked me if I wanted him as CEO. [Laughs]

Corey McLaughlin:    Well, if nobody asked you, they definitely didn't ask me.

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] That's right. Not that they should.

Corey McLaughlin:    No.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. All right. Well, that was a fun time, and it was another fun interview, one of our most fun ones yet, of course, because we know Doc so well. And another episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we really, truly did.

We do provide a transcript for every episode. Just go to www.investorhour.com. Click on the episode you want, scroll all the way down, click on the word "Transcript" and enjoy.

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