Interview with Elijah Renner | Journalist: Naomi Grant, Fact After Fact Magazine

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“The thumbnail promised I could retire in five years. I should’ve just hit ‘skip ad.’”

The irony isn’t lost on me. I used to mock people who got duped online. Pyramid schemes, fake crypto coins, shady gurus peddling million-dollar dreams from Airbnb rentals. I thought I was smarter than that.

But in 2022, when the market was still sizzling and I was feeling left out, I clicked on a video titled: “5 Stocks That Will 10X by 2023 (Don’t Miss Out!)”

That click cost me $300,000.

And more than that, it nearly cost me my marriage, my peace of mind, and every ounce of confidence I had in myself as a provider.

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The Hook: A Quick Escape from a Long Climb.

I had been working a cushy corporate job in logistics for almost sixteen years. Not glamorous, but consistent. My wife and I had built a modest life—nothing flashy, but we took pride in paying off our home early and stashing money into a brokerage account. I had dreams of retiring at 55 and traveling with my wife.

But sometime around 2021, watching friends on Facebook post about their ridiculous stock gains, I started feeling like the tortoise in a race I was losing. I wanted to catch up, to leap ahead.

Enter: Bryce Dillard. Or as he called himself on YouTube, “The Wolf of New Wealth.”

He was slick, fast-talking, and everything I wasn’t. His videos had eye-popping thumbnails, dramatic stock charts, and promises of financial freedom through so-called “hidden gems.”

I told myself I was just going to watch, maybe learn a thing or two. But over time, it became an obsession.

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Micro-Mistakes That Added Up.

The first stock he recommended was a biotech firm working on mRNA cancer vaccines. It sounded cutting-edge. Bryce claimed his “sources” said a buyout was imminent.

So I bought in. $50K. It doubled in a month. I was hooked.

That dopamine hit? Unreal. Every morning I’d wake up early just to check premarket. Every dip felt like a buying opportunity, every spike a validation.

I ignored the warning signs. He never disclosed positions. He often deleted old videos. When a pick tanked, he’d just move on and pretend it never happened.

I was in too deep to see clearly.

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The Breaking Point.

The final blow came in the form of a company Bryce called the “Amazon of Web3 retail.”

He did a two-part video series, brought on a supposed “industry insider” (who I later found out was just another influencer in his circle), and said with conviction: *”If you’re not in this stock right now, you’re going to regret it for the rest of the decade.”

I went all in. I liquidated $120K of my conservative investments, took out a $50K personal loan, and dumped it into this stock.

Within six months, the stock was delisted. SEC filings showed the company was being investigated for fraud. Bryce deleted all his videos about it and went radio silent.

The money was gone. I felt like a ghost in my own house.

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The Emotional Toll.

I remember the exact moment it all sank in. I was sitting in my garage, staring at a spreadsheet I had made two years earlier. It had projections, milestones, a countdown to early retirement.

It was now useless.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t look my wife in the eye. The worst part was, she trusted me. She didn’t question the late-night videos or the sudden interest in obscure stocks. She believed I had done my research.

One night, I confessed everything. Every trade. Every lie I told myself. Every penny lost.

She didn’t yell. She just cried. And that broke me in ways I didn’t think possible.

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Desperate Measures and a Strange Hustle.

I knew I couldn’t just sit in the wreckage. I needed to move.

I started driving Uber. Not even under my own name at first—I borrowed my cousin’s account because I was too embarrassed. I sold my watch collection on Reddit. I began flipping old electronics from estate sales. I took a weekend job teaching Excel basics at the community college.

But the strangest, most unexpectedly lucrative thing I did?

Resume editing. A friend posted on Facebook about needing help revising her resume. I offered to do it for free. She paid me anyway. Word got around. Within three months, I was charging $200 a pop and had clients from LinkedIn, Fiverr, and referrals.

It wasn’t glamorous. But it gave me something I had lost: control.

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Lessons Learned.

1. If you don’t know what a company does, you have no business owning its stock. No matter how convincing a YouTuber sounds, if you can’t explain the business model in your own words, walk away.
2. Avoid urgency-based investing. Any sentence that starts with, “You need to act now or miss out forever” should set off sirens.
3. Diversification isn’t optional. I chased returns, thinking I was skipping the boring part. Turns out, the boring part was what protected me all those years.
4. Never invest money you can’t afford to lose based on someone else’s confidence. Especially someone who makes their money from views, not returns.

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Who I Became.

I stopped watching investing YouTube. Cold turkey.

I went back to basics. Index funds. High-yield savings accounts. Side hustles that felt real. My wife and I started having weekly “finance dinners,” where we talk about goals, not just numbers. I listen more. I brag less.

And I’ve become a better judge of character—mine and others.

I still get comments from friends who say, “Man, I thought you had it all figured out.” I just nod. I let them believe what they want. I know what it cost me to learn what I know now.

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Reflections.

I used to think the market was a game I could master. That with the right information and a little nerve, I could leapfrog the system.

Now, I think of investing like farming. Plant, water, wait. Repeat.

The truth is, I’ll never fully recover that $300K. But I’m recovering me. And that version of myself is wiser, slower to act, but quicker to see through the fog.

So to anyone who’s staring at a YouTube thumbnail promising the moon: close the tab. Go for a walk. Talk to your partner. Read a book. Your future self will thank you.

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Told by: Sarah Shamal.
Interviewed by: Naomi Grant, Journalist at Fact After Fact Magazine