Like many of us, Ian Wyatt caught the investing bug at an early age. Unlike most of us, Ian turned his passion into a multimillion-dollar investment publishing company at an early age, helping thousands of individual investors along the way.
Ian began his investing career at age two. The year was 1982, and his grandfather had given him $1,000 of Exxon stock, replete with the dividend reinvestment plan. Within nine years the shares had appreciated over 500%, to $7.50 per share, from a split-adjusted $1.20.
By age 11, Ian was sitting on an investment portfolio worth over $10,000 - all in Exxon stock. On family trips his parents would remind him that he owned a piece of every Exxon gas station they passed. This "ownership" concept sparked an interest in stocks and investments, and before his 12th birthday Ian's parents helped him set up a discount brokerage account at Charles Schwab.
After liquidating a third of his Exxon position, Ian set out to diversify. His first purchases included a Midwestern radio media company, a maker of stereo speakers and a leading fastener retailer. Over the ensuing years, Ian bought and sold positions in a number of stocks, some winners, others losers. He began reading the Wall Street Journal book series on investing, talking with family friends about their investments, and reading Barron's weekly. In short, Ian was hooked on investing, utilizing funds from his paper route to feed his preteen habit.
Ian's parents encouraged his investing interest, taking him to the board meeting of one of the companies he "owned." Then came summer internships at the local branch of financial services firm Robert W. Baird & Co. and at a market-making firm on the Chicago Stock Exchange.
By age 18, Ian was an active investor and had a growing interest in the Internet. In 1998, he launched BizFN.com as a free investment website where individual investors could access research and analysis from money managers and financial advisors around the country. While Ian believed himself to be financially astute, he felt that individuals would be more interested in reading articles by gray-haired MBAs and CFAs than a high school student. The website was a hit in the early days of online investing, eventually attracting over 200,000 individual investors to its free email newsletters. With the onslaught of online advertising in the late 1990s, the website became a big money-maker.
After high school, Ian attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, for one year, focusing his studies on economics and business management. But Ian knew he was an entrepreneur at heart, and wanted to be building a business, rather than attending classes.
After the market bottomed following the dot-com crash, Ian started an independent investment newsletter in August 2001 that focused on small-cap growth stocks. The newsletter, named Growth Report, was the first publication launched by his fledgling company, Business Financial Publishing.
Since 2001, Ian's company has grown into a multimillion-dollar publisher of both free and paid subscription newsletters, e-letters, special reports and financial websites. Ian's love is small-cap stocks, those companies that are overlooked by the big investors on Wall Street. His goal is to help other individual investors learn how to identify winning small companies early, before other investors recognize their greatness.
In 2007, Business Financial Publishing launched SmallCapInvestor.com with the goal of building the premier destination website for individual investors seeking independent news, research and analysis of small-cap stocks.
Ian is an active member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the 6,400-member Entrepreneur's Organization. In 2007 he was one of 60 entrepreneurs selected from around the world to participate in the prestigious Entrepreneurial Masters Program (formerly Birthing of Giants) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of business, a three-year executive development education program.