Right now? Terrible since I haven’t used it seriously in ~12 years plus I have no motivation/time to learn more since I work 80 hours per week

Thanks!

I think my plan was to always raise the prices eventually, but I waited too long, started doubting myself, over-analyzing, etc.

In this case, there wasn’t really a need to get feedback because I purchased everything else on the market and nothing else covered as much as we did in the same level of detail. So it was mostly me being stupid and lacking confidence in the end product. With software or apps it’s more important to get detailed feedback, but training / books / courses etc. are easier to evaluate quickly.

I have just finished Part 3 of your Life Story, and I am hooked the entire way. I am curious though about the process of when you initially under-priced your materials for $97. Had you tried to release your material as a prototype, or to limited amount of customers as a way to gauge early feedback before releasing it to the greater market? I feel that this preliminary results can really gauge how your work compares with that of your larger competitors, and price it more accordingly from the get-go.

Thanks!
~Kevin

Thanks for reading!

Yeah, everything should actually be easier to access now via the categories here: https://mergersandinquisitions.com/articles/ or you could scroll down on the homepage to find the most recent ones.

I had just finished reading the part 3 of “How I Started This Site” (another way of living vicariously when I’m not doing it through Korean dramas) when the new layout of your website came along. I just wanted to say congratulations for your great job (was actually about to ‘complain’ about the fact that I had no direct access to the most recent articles on your homepage anymore before I scrolled down the page and found out that it was still here).

Anyway, thank you for the articles and advice you give here, it helps me a lot in my internal struggle on ‘is IB really for me?’. I usually never write comments on websites partly because I fear that I end up writing nonsense … which is why I’m ending my comment now.

So good luck for everything, it’s so good to see that your hard work paid.

Greetings from France!

Thanks! Don’t give up though… maybe you don’t get into IB right now, but you could always go for related areas like Big 4 valuation / TAS, corporate finance, and so on. It’s actually becoming easier currently to move into IB from one of those vs. the environment in past years.

Nevertheless I still read all your interesting articles. I enjoy your honesty and advise. Thanks Brian! Keep them coming,…You are the next Michael Lewis

Thanks! Glad to hear it. Yes, word of mouth is definitely essential, and a lot of other programs don’t really care much about online learning experience since they’re so focused on classroom training.

Glad to hear everything has been helpful for you and good luck!

I really enjoyed reading this candid post. Like you said, you never hear about the failures in entrepreneurship and start-up stories. The lessons you learned and shared are pretty insightful.

I had always wondered about why WSO switched to Wall Street Prep (Patrick probably getting a better rate offer being a reason aside), especially given BIWS’s popularity and glowing reviews… But even if WSO “officially” backs WSP these days, BIWS is still heavily favored and promoted by WSO users in all the training program-related threads. So goes to show the value of word of mouth.

Despite all your hardships, I’m really glad you’ve kept M&I and BIWS going and I’m sure I speak for many others when I say it’s really the best program out there bar none. The quality and level of care you take really shows, whereas other programs just mail it in. I’ve had access to other programs (TTS, WSP, etc.) via IB training, or school back in the day, and BIWS is really the only thing I still use as a reference because other offerings deal with very basic situations or feel quite dated. In addition to having more bells and whistles, the thing that BIWS does extremely well is not only showing its users the “how” behind modeling, valuations, etc., but getting them to understand “why” something is done.

I’m looking forward to to reading Part 4, and also catching up on some of the recent interview posts on Infrastructure investing. Good luck on expanding the site and realizing returns on all your efforts.