I just took some of your fellow Outsiders on a “team building exercise.”
No, we didn’t partake in one of those insufferable corporate retreats where you wander into the woods, take turns falling off a log, and hope to God your coworkers don’t hate you enough to let you fall and break your neck. We didn’t do some lame scavenger hunt to “test our synergy” or “brainstorm” or any other mindless business cliché. And we certainly didn’t get ourselves “out of our wheelhouse” and hit the karaoke bar in order to embarrass the 90% of us that can’t hold a note much less carry a tune…
We simply grabbed some drinks and went to see the new Anthony Bourdain documentary “Roadrunner.” You see, as a fellow writer and traveler, I have yet to witness another person convey the sense of wonder and curiosity that the world has to offer like he did.
Anthony Bourdain was able to take complex issues — Middle Eastern wars in Lebanon, hunger epidemics in Africa, wage disparities in New York restaurants — and boil them down into human interactions spent over the one thing we all have in common: food.
It’s amazing what happens when you sit down with someone over a meal and actually talk to them. More importantly? Listen to them.
It sounds simple, right?
But in this age of divisiveness, hatred, and fear, I think we could all learn a lot from sharing a table with someone, whether you love them or hate them. At the end of a sumptuous dinner, everyone can feel satiated and enlightened by what the mouth can do. It is actually built into the experience: talk, chew, listen. Repeat.
I’ve enjoyed meals all over the world, from Morocco to Romania to Uruguay. I always made it a point to sit down with the people who live there and let them tell me their stories. As Bourdain once wrote, “I never wanted to be a tourist, I wanted to be a traveler.”
I’ve tried my best to live up to that sentiment.
In my years captaining The Crow’s Nest advisory, I’ve brought you dispatches from around the world with the best financial advice that I learned for these listening sessions. I’ve traveled to the West Coast to Collector’s Universe, where I handled signed Mickey Mantle bats, Muhammad Ali’s gloves, and priceless Beatles 45s.
Here’s me holding the famous “Inverted Jenny” stamp, worth over a million dollars.
I dined on fresh dungeness crabs with the founders, spent time in their homes, and drove the Pacific Coast Highway with them chatting about underpriced California watercolor paintings.
As a result, we banked 715% on Collector’s Universe before they went private.
But that wasn’t my biggest winner.
At the drop of a hat, I called one of my best friends and told him we had to leave for Canada in the morning. He agreed. “Just bring your camera” was the only instruction I gave him. We packed up and drove all the way to Smith Falls, Ontario, to visit a cannabis company that was just setting up in an abandoned Hershey Chocolate factory.
It was called Tweed at the time, now famously known as Canopy Growth.
Again, I met with everyone at the factory, including CEO Bruce Linton. But my friend and I also had meals at the nearby restaurants, sat down for poutine with the blue-collar workers, and chatted up the bartenders. We had coffee with the local police officers. I asked them how they felt about a cannabis factory opening up in their sleepy Canadian town.
Everyone agreed that they were thrilled about it. It would breathe life into the hospitality industry that had been suffering for years. It would cut down on the crime rate from petty marijuana charges. It would bring back hundreds of factory jobs that had been shipped overseas.
I immediately sent a stock buy for Canopy to you. We banked as much as 3,200% on that trip.
I could go on and on…
I’m not saying any of this to peacock about all the fun adventures I’ve had. Sure, I’ve had the time of my life. But I’m not paid to go on exotic vacations. What I am saying is that I do this for you. If I didn’t have the results to show for it, my boss would have stopped bankrolling these trips years ago. They are expensive and time consuming. Some analysts can just stare at stock screeners and give you a half-assed pick within an hour.
I don’t operate that like, and I never will.
So I went to the company brass and straight up told them: “I want to be the Anthony Bourdain of the investing industry. But I need a lot more money and freedom to do it.”
It was a bold move, but I wasn’t that surprised when they gave me the green light right away.
“You do you, Jimmy. We’re all on board.”
I was both flattered and humbled when they told me to launch a brand-new service with a new budget and the flexibility to bring my readers the research they deserve. I’m calling it The Adventure Capitalist, and we’re holding our launch party at 3 o’clock today!
If you’ve been on my Crow’s Nest crew over the last decade, you’ll understand why this is so important. You already have the profits to show for it. I know because you’ve written to me countless times letting me know what this kind of research — and laid back style — has meant to you personally.
We’re ready to take it to the next level. I hope to do for your weath what Anthony Bourdain did for food travel — that is, completely reinvent it.
