Owe $160,000 for an MBA, or Get Paid to Receive a Masters in Investing?

Do you want to spend two years and owe roughly $160K for an MBA? (I’m not even counting the lost wages of not working during that period – for many, that means tack on another $100k+) Or instead, would you rather receive the equivalent of a Masters in Investing – and get paid to do it?

Still on the fence? Let’s sweeten the deal – your professors will include names like Gundlach, Sharpe, Thiel, and Bogle, among others.

If you’re interested, good, because we want to offer this second option to the right person…

Podcasts can be a fantastic source of education, information, and entertainment. They can also be boring wastes of time. It seems someone launches a new podcast every day, and there are only so many commutes, gym sessions, and dog-walks that one has for listening. Frankly, the return on listening to so many podcasts is rarely worth all the time invested.

But what if you knew exactly which podcasts were offering the most valuable content? And what if you knew the exact points during each podcast you needed to listen?

As an interesting thought-exercise, consider the dollar-value of this service. I listen to about 10 podcasts per week. If the average advisor values his time at $100/hour, that’s an opportunity cost of $52k per year. And half of these podcasts aren’t even worth listening to. Think of how much more valuable it would be – how much time you’d save – if there was a “best of” curated compilation each week.

I’ve been wanting such a service for my personal use for years. I’ve even mentioned it on the blog and Twitter numerous times in hopes some zealous listener would do it. Well, no one has, so we’re going to. We’re building this service for our own in-house use, though at some point, we may offer it up to the community at large.

So where do you fit in? Well, we want you to be the person who helps with the heavy lifting – getting paid to listen to podcasts you probably already listen to!

What We’re Looking For:

This job won’t be for everyone. So, in an effort to find the right person, we’re going to invite whoever is interested to be part of our initial trial group.

We’ll provide all our interested candidates with a list of roughly 30 podcasts. You’ll listen to each one, each week. Then you’ll do a few things:

  1. Rank each podcast on a scale of 1-10.
  2. Identify the best sections from all the episodes (FYI, a great clip could come from an episode that you didn’t rate highly overall). Be sure to label the exact minute markers (start and end times) of the quality content. A great clip could be just a few seconds, or far longer (there isn’t a time cut-off – the issue is quality).
  3. For each podcast section you identify as ‘best,” write-up a short, 1-3 bullet-point sentence description, identifying the subject matter, and what makes it worthy of listening to.
  4. Each week, you’ll throw in one fun/interesting/miscellaneous snippet from a podcast of your own discovery. It can be financial, though it doesn’t have to be – the point is for this snippet to be interesting/helpful/or somehow beneficial for the listener. Be creative.
  5. You’ll send all this information to Jeff each week. We’ll provide a template to candidates on how to do this later.

Who Gets the Job?

  1. In order for us to identify the right people for the job, there will be a 3-month trial period. Because we’re not paying any applicants during this trial period, it will naturally weed out those who aren’t truly committed/interested. That’s intentional.
  2. However, candidates who stick with this for a month will get a free Idea Farm subscription, regardless of whether or not we extend you a job offer. The Idea Farm, with over 400 archived research reports, is worth the effort itself alone – and probably would qualify the reader for a Masters in Investing all by itself.
  3. At the end of 3 months, we’ll evaluate the candidates who have stuck it out. It’s natural that 1-3 people will have risen to the top of the bunch. We’ll evaluate this by who picks the most interesting content and describes it the best. Yes, there is a subjective element to “the best” here, but there’s no way around that.
  4. For the right candidate(s), we’ll offer the job on a permanent, salaried basis (we reserve the right to not make any job offer if it turns out we’re not seeing the work-quality we’re hoping for).
  5. You can work from anywhere, as long as you’re good.
  6. Potentially, for candidates that distinguish themselves, it could lead to a full-time position at Cambria as well.
  7. The worst-case scenario is you listen to hours of incredible content ever week, that will likely elevate your investing skill far above that of the average investor. Best case, you get that same investing skill, as well as a salaried position at Cambria.

Who Will Do Well:

  • You eat, drink, and breathe podcasts
  • You love finance/investing
  • You have amazing attention to detail
  • You’re a good writer
  • You’re a self-starter, disciplined, and excellent with deadlines
  • You want to join the Cambria team

Next Steps:

If you’re interested, please shoot an email to Jeff at jr@cambriainvestments.com. Please tells us:

  • Why this job would be a good fit for you
  • What you’re doing now
  • A quick snapshot of your investing background.

PLEASE – no more than 5 sentences in answering the above. The person who gets this job will be great at expressing ideas with an economy of words, so if you wax on forever in telling us about yourself here, it won’t reflect well on your ability to do the job we need.

Thanks for your interest. We hope to hear from you!