Ready, Fire, Aim: I Blogged for Myself and Here's What I Didn't Expect
Writing online has given me immense pleasure and I hope to continue doing so.
I started blogging in 2010. It was long before content creation became a thing.
It started purely as a reflection of my investing journey.
A place to put my thoughts into words, have clarity of mind, and reflect upon past investing mistakes.
It was also a place to hold myself accountable for my investing decisions.
But writing online came with the benefits that I didn’t expect.
Opportunities came knocking, such as writing stints for the now-defunct The Motley Fool Singapore and so on. My blog became what I call a living résumé.
Post that, I wanted to start my own newsletter as I found the idea cool.
And that was how The Compounding Dad was launched in late April 2024.
It’s been just over two years now, and it has been the most focused creative project I have taken on.
One of the first things I nearly fell into was overthinking the tools.
Should I go with Beehiiv? How about ConvertKit? Oh, there’s Substack too.
But honestly, that’s a trap.
I decided to make it straightforward and zoomed in on Substack.
I bought my own domain — thecompoundingdad.com — through a hosting provider and just got started.
Last year, I also briefly considered building a brand new website, but decided that it wasn’t the best use of my limited time.
I experienced that just getting started and figuring things out along the way is the way to go.
The other thing I have learnt over the years is to write what I genuinely care about from the heart.
What has surprised me most is the response to my articles.
Those reader pledges, kind notes from readers saying how they have benefited from my sharing, and unexpected restacks from the Substack community have all come as happy surprises and keep me going.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. There have been lazy days and busy days (you can see from the long breaks between posts).
However, the why behind what I do and the support from readers have always pulled me back (like this post).
Overall, writing online has connected me with genuinely interesting people all over the world I would never have crossed paths with otherwise. People have also reached out saying how they have benefited from my sharing.
So if there’s one experience that I would like to pass on, it would be this: ready, fire, aim.
It’s a theory I learnt a couple of years back through a book of the same title. The idea is instead of overthinking it, just ship out your first piece of work, and keep on improving it from there.
If there’s something you would like to start, just take the first step.
Executing imperfectly, in my opinion, is always better than planning perfectly and never starting.
Here’s to compounding your growth!