What Build Invest Live is all about
Build Invest Live aims to be the absolute best place to learn about stock investing. No judgement, no hype, no nonsense. We’re about honest and balanced information mixed with realistic expectations. I share my own personal results as a transparent example you can follow along with as you learn and build your own strategy.
Learning about investing changed my life for the better, but it took me 15+ years with many lessons and mistakes along the way. Build Invest Live is about making that process easier and more accessible for others so they can change their lives for the better as well.
About Me
Hello, my name is Matt Derron and I’m not a financial advisor. I’m not a CFA, CFP, CPA, or licensed professional in any way. But here I am with a website about stock investing. So why should you trust me? You shouldn’t. Let me explain.
Most “experts” will show you their credentials but not their actual results. The reality is that having a degree or certificate in something doesn’t mean you’re actually good at it. I do have an education - I have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA. I also worked in payments infrastructure and technology for a Fortune 100 company for 15+ years in my corporate career. But none of that is a reason to listen to me about anything.
Instead of asking you to blindly trust a credential or my bio, I’m taking a different approach. I share with you the experiences I’ve had in 15+ years of learning how to invest, my portfolio goals and strategy, my stock analysis process, and my actual results. You don’t need to trust me at all, because what I do is available for you to see and follow for free.
That way you can make the decision for yourself if my style, strategy, and results are a fit for what you’re looking for before you ever decide to spend a dime.
How I Got Here
We all have a unique story about how we got to wherever we are, and there’s too much to rehash everything here, but I’ll hit on the parts you’re probably interested in.
This was me in 2004. Yup, I was THAT goofy looking. I was working a $9/hr data entry job even though I had a Computer Science degree. Why? I thought that just my degree by itself would be enough, and I didn’t build up my resume with additional skills. Plus, I struggled with social anxiety and was terrible at representing myself in interviews. When I finally got my first professional job, they laid me off after automating their process more than 90%. Amazing.
So there I was on unemployment with no job, no savings, and rent being due. That's when I started taking money and investing seriously. I read every book I could, every blog I could find, and I started taking the steps I needed to change my situation.
The reality is that I needed a good income. When people say “income isn’t the key to wealth” they’re either lying to you or delusional. It’s just like “money doesn’t buy happiness”. It doesn’t GUARANTEE happiness or wealth. But it’s almost impossible to get there without it.
Here’s the quick version of what happened next and how it relates to investing:
I worked whatever jobs I could get and started improving my resume with certifications and other things.
I kept applying at one of the best employers in the city until I finally got in. This is when I really started investing because we finally had money to do so.
I worked my tail off at my job to keep progressing and increasing my income while continuing to invest - mostly in my 401k retirement account and only in a S&P 500 index fund (simple and effective).
Once we were more comfortable financially and had extra money to invest, we started to take bigger risks in individual stocks and other assets like Bitcoin. Some of the risks paid off and others didn’t - but the point is that we had the ability to do so with the foundation that we built by increasing our income and investing in index funds.
In 2021 I left my corporate career with some money that we had built up through investing to build something on my own. Learning about investing changed our lives for the better and I wanted to try and make it easier so that others could experience a similar change in their own lives.
I talked about this journey in a little more detail in one of my videos. If you want to watch it, it’s here.
Now when you see this all written out that way, it doesn’t seem to be a very exciting or interesting story to me. But learning about money can be such a tough and taboo subject, that any time a person can go from struggling to pay the bills to being comfortable financially it should be celebrated as an amazing success story.
Because success with money isn’t just about millionaire status, or 8 figure paydays, or glorified stock trades. It’s about waking up every day knowing that your family is taken care of, and doesn’t have to struggle through basic needs anymore. Getting to that step is huge, and anything above that is only limited by your effort and imagination.
What Made it Possible
So how did I learn how to do all that stuff? I read books. I watched videos. I made absolutely horrible investment decisions and learned from them. Then I did all those things again, for YEARS. It was a combination of many things over the 15+ years that I’ve been investing that I learned through research, effort, and my own personal experiences.
If you’ve watched any of my videos, you’ve probably heard me talk about why learning about investing is hard. Everyone’s opinion seems biased, or lacks nuance. Any comment you make online about investing or a stock is met with people wanting to make fun of you or tell you that you’re wrong. Just asking a simple question as a beginner will have people saying you’re dumb. It’s pretty ridiculous. For anyone who is just starting out, that can be intimidating and turn them off completely to investing.
I struggled with some of that as well, but I was really lucky to have a support system in my life that I know not everyone has. These are the things that made it EASIER for me push through those obstacles, learn about investing, and make mistakes:
1 - I had amazing parents
I grew up with 2 great parents who loved me and showed me what hard work and determination could do. My parents worked hard to go from where they started in life to where they ended up, and I got to see that firsthand. They had expectations for me, which made me have expectations for myself. It cannot be overstated how important that is for anyone growing up. When I was struggling to pay the bills, I felt like I was throwing away all the hard work and sacrifice they experienced to give me better opportunities. That helped drive me to fix my situation.
2 - I have an amazing wife & kids
My wife met me while I was unemployed and loved me anyway. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of person she is. She’s smart, an amazing mom to our kids, of course beautiful - and she has always believed in me. When you have someone like that in your life it really puts things in perspective. I didn’t care what anyone else said about what I was doing. I didn’t care if I asked a dumb question about investing or made a mistake. My actions had purpose because of her so I just didn’t care what anyone else thought. Having kids only made that stronger, because my focus was on building a life for them.
I never talk about being “self-made” because I’m not. I’m the product of the folks that came before me and those that have and continue to support me. Not everyone is lucky enough to have those things in their life right now, and I get that.
Why This Matters
This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about me. But I’m telling you this for a reason. Learning about investing has been one of the most important things in our life in terms of the positive impact it’s had on our family. I was lucky to have the people around me that helped it happen.
With the internet, it should be easier than ever to learn about investing in whatever way makes sense to us, but in a lot of ways it’s even harder now. There are thousands of YouTube channels talking about stocks, probably hundreds of thousands of Twitter profiles with CFP, CFA, and CPA designations in their names telling you what to do with your money.
But most don’t share their results or provide nuance and context to the comments they make. That’s how Build Invest Live is different.
You don’t need to trust me. You know my story, you know my investing strategy, you can see and are following my results. If what I do and how I talk about investing makes sense to you, we have plenty of options available here to help you in your learning process.
No judgement. No hype. No nonsense. Just balanced and transparent information so you can keep learning the skills and mentality to become more financially independent.
If you have any questions feel free to reach out on the Contact page. Glad to help any way I can.
The best first step if you haven’t already done it is to check out the options on our homepage!