Dear Reader,
Good morning! Happy Monday - last week of the month. We get to go trick-or-treating Friday.
But today, I’d like to talk about something very touching that happened right before our webinar last week.
One of our long-time members, Harold W., who is a senior church pastor alerted me to a hit piece written about me online.
When you do what I do - when you put yourself out there - there’s always someone with something not nice to say about you.
It comes with the job.
But what surprised me this time was that Harold had taken the time out of his schedule and written an almost 3,000-word, point-by-point response to this person.
I’m so deeply touched.
I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those guys who’s always had trouble asking for help.
When you’re young you think you can conquer the world all on your own.
As you get older, if you’re doing it right, you learn it’s okay to ask for help.
As a matter of fact, you come to realize you can’t get very far in life without good people around you.
It’s really true, that old saying, “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
Now, we have an A-rating with the Better Business Bureau. We have a lot of great reviews there.
See, our customers are mostly 55-plus, and that’s where they go when they want to give us a positive review (or complain).
But we hardly have any Google reviews.
The ones we do have are mostly negative, because we never ask our happy readers for Google reviews as most companies do.
So we just get a drip, here or there, usually when someone’s angry.
Asking for reviews just isn’t a thing I’ve been focused on. I’m busy focusing on our business, on researching stocks for our portfolios.
But apparently, you gotta play this PR game, this review game and ask your happy customers for genuine reviews.
Anyway, I’d like to share with you what Harold wrote.
It’s deeply touching, and I am beyond grateful. I am awestruck and humbled.
Here’s some of what he wrote in response to this bad review, referencing competitor products whose names I will not share publicly:
“I want to state upfront that I found your piece to be highly inaccurate, almost distasteful due to the amount of ignorance.
“I’m not just throwing stones, but of all the above-mentioned services, they all have their strong points and weak points. But none of these services has shown the amount of integrity and competence as Dylan Jovine and his services.
“I can stack them all together, and from experience, I can verify all this.
“That’s why I characterized your article as a ‘hit piece.’
“Tim, did you actually call and speak to Dylan personally?
“The reason I ask is because no one in all these services, (all of whom are much larger than Dylan’s company), has shown the kind of accessibility that Dylan displays.
“So if you’re writing an informed article without speaking to the man, that is what slander is.”
He goes on to say…
“My ‘paid experience’ with all of [those companies mentioned] is that not every stock they recommend turns out to be a winner…
“But as far as integrity is concerned, Behind the Markets produces a full accounting of winners and losers, not just like Stansberry Research and their ‘hall of fame’...
“Dylan has published an independent audit of all [BTM’s] services.
“Who else does that?
“Plus, whether in print or his daily Diary, or in personal contact, he will own where he missed something. I have not found anyone else in the industry who has done that.
“Not only that, but there is a sincere sense of pain that he’s demonstrated when his subscribers haven’t done as well as they could from one of his recommendations.
“This was not performative, but it was genuine.
“As the senior pastor of the same church for the last 52 years, I can read people who are genuine and those who are posing.
“I’m upset with you, Tim, because I don’t believe you’ve demonstrated that kind of integrity in your newsletter’s critique of Behind the Markets.
“The fact you didn’t know or print any of these things tells me your whole newsletter is suspect.
“You yourself may be coming from a good place, Tim, but your research is not.”
If I retired tomorrow, I could live a better life knowing that somebody from around the world actually sees us and what we’re trying to do, in all of our imperfections -
Good, bad and ugly.
Nobody’s perfect.
Especially to be seen by a pastor from a big church in Arizona.
I just read this and thought to myself, “gosh, I don’t think anybody’s ever stood up for me before. Not like this, for sure.”
It’s hard to know what to say when I see the effort he put in.
It’s funny, I remember Harold in particular, with whom I email, when we got our butts handed to us on Spirit Airlines.
I posted a video about how I messed up.
Because, what am I gonna do? I have to own it.
Owning your mistakes is the only way to get better.
And I remember Harold reaching out and saying, I didn’t really trust you or know you until you made a mistake. Seeing you own that mistake…
Because everybody could run around and brag about all the things they do well.
That’s especially true in a bull market.
We can tell we’re at the top of a bull market because all my friends are sending me their 12-month track records.
I always think to myself, “very good for you. Send me your seven-year track record and then we’ll talk.”
We’ve been doing this coming up on eight years now.
And I want to just thank Harold, and all of you who’ve emailed in such nice testimonials.
You have no idea what it means to me and to my team here.
If you feel so inclined, it would mean a lot to my team and me if you do have something nice to say about Behind the Markets, if you would leave a review.
Thank you.
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