From Highlands to Headwinds: The McTavish Origin
People often ask me,
“Jock, what in the name of compounding interest is the McTavish Club?”
Well, lean in, pour yourself a dram (something peaty if you’ve got it), and let me tell you how this whole beautiful mess began.
The Early Days
I was born with one foot in the Scottish Highlands and the other in the surf of the Chathams. Mum taught me to respect hard work. Dad taught me that sheep, and cash, need to keep moving, or they get a bit… pongy.
While my schoolmates were busy memorising cheat codes for PlayStation, I was running imaginary hedge funds on my Casio calculator and trying to short the tuck shop’s sausage rolls.
My first investment? A semi-functional espresso machine that funded both my caffeine habit and a 4,000-word rant entitled “Diversification: Why It’s Like a Mixed Grill”.
The Revelation
The lightning bolt struck one night during a questionable triple feature of Wall Street, The Big Short, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Somewhere between Michael Burry’s glass eye and DiCaprio dry-humping a Lamborghini, I thought:
“What if you could have all the energy of high finance, minus the indictments, yachts, and motivational yelling?”
Not just managing money, but demystifying it. Helping people actually understand how wealth works, without the smoke, mirrors, or suits using the word “synergy” unironically. And if that mission could come with a bit of sarcasm and a side of single malt? Even better.
That’s how the McTavish Club came to be. Not a firm. Not a service. But a community of the financially curious, united by a desire to grow their money and their minds, minus the nonsense.
These days, Jock spends his time distilling complex financial ideas into everyday language, sipping the occasional dram, and gently roasting the industry he once escaped—always with love, and occasionally with cheese.
If you’re after straight talk, a bit of wisdom, and the odd metaphor involving sheep, surfboards or Shiraz, Jock’s your man.
The Philosophy
At McTavish, we don’t chase trends, we chase taste. We invest in a bit of everything: shares, property, wine, index funds, boutique cheesemakers. If it has potential, we’re in. If it pays dividends in actual cheese, even better.
We believe in diversified risk, long lunches, compounding interest, and making your money work harder than a Chatham Island cray fisherman on Christmas Eve.
