world where you need to apply your brains, every day, it
actually pays to blog about the things that you feel
passionate about, especially if you have no other outlets.
I'm interested in culture, politics, justice, technology and
many other things and nobody I talk to wants to talk about
anything other than the sports scores.
So, what I've found over the last 5 years of blogging is that
I have been able to crystalise my ideas, give purpose to
all my alt media reading (on the crisis, particularly), and it
has made me clearer as to who is on our side, who is not,
and who claims to be on our side, but is really a quisling.
It makes your ideas marketable. I have improved my
knowledge so much that economic and political people,
who should not be interested in me, are actually
responding to my points on Twitter.
It's mind-blowing actually. Twitter is a great leveller.
I also fancy myself a bit of a writer and a bit of a comic,
so I've made myself laugh a bit, and maybe a couple of
others.
This has made me better able to communicate in person
because it helped my confidence.
I've also found that writing is a necessity, and clears the
mind like a good scotch.
I don't know what benefit this has brought me financially,
but it has made me feel better. Now, look at what it's done for
Josh Brown.
check this: The Reformed Broker
“How
Do You Have So Much Time to Blog?”
Joshua M Brown
November 23rd, 2011
This
is the question I get asked more than any other and I get it constantly. Via email, via Twitter, in real life, in the
comment section below a post, on the phone, in meetings, at the bar, at dinner,
at my kid's soccer practice, in more emails and on and on.
I'm
going to address this topic today for the first, last and only time. For all other inquiries on the subject, I'll
simply be directing people back to this post.
The short answer is that I have absolutely no time - to blog or anything
else. But I do it anyway and the
"so much time" comes from all of the things I choose not to do.
As I
write this post, I am on a westbound train, soaking wet from standing on the
platform in the rain. It is pitch black
outside but I've been up for two hours already, reading and writing. I am wedged next to a 400 pound woman who is
playing brickbreaker on her phone with the sausage fingers that have unwrapped
more Chipwiches in her time than there are stars in the sky. On the other side of me is a middle-aged
lawyer who is fast asleep with the NY Daily News in his lap and a pot-bellied
accountant sitting next to him who is trying to steal glances at the sports
page. As I type on my Macbook Pro, the
two dozen other inhabitants of my train car (the ones who aren't asleep) are
glancing over at me. Perhaps my typing
is too percussive and it is irritating them.
Perhaps they recognize me from around town or from TV.
Fuck
'em, I've got things to do.
What
you need to understand about my blogging is the following...
Blogging is essential to my
career; before the blog, I was a jerkoff retail stockbroker. I was always smart but, man, I didn't know a goddamn
thing about anything. I only knew the
stock I was pitching that particular day and how to get people to buy it. That part of my career is over. Now I must know everything there is to know
about why and how markets are moving so that I can effectively manage
allocation and risk for my customers.
Writing
the blog has forced me to learn the
global macro picture and become an asset class maven from the top-down and
the bottom-up. I read (and hopefully
understand) more on a daily basis than 99% of the world. I do two daily linkfests and share between 15
and 25 links a day with you. Try and
fathom how many articles and posts I must wade through to get to those
essential reads. You have no idea. I have no intern or assistant for this, everything I link to I've consumed
personally and have deemed it worthy of sharing with you.
Reading
is only part of the equation, though. it is in the writing that I discover what I
actually think. It is in the writing
and the communicating of ideas and concepts that they truly become mine. This is a cognitive learning thing that is
very widely understood in the education world.
When I'm blogging there are two things that are happening - you, the
reader, are being exposed to something I think might be important and I, the writer, am crystallizing my own beliefs
and understanding of the topic at hand.
The
other thing to keep in mind is that by blogging, I am able to not do much of
what a typical financial advisor spends his or her time on. Go ask the typical FA to be truthful with you about how they spend their time each
day. You will learn that somewhere
between 30% and 50% of an investment professional's time is spent drumming up new clients and business. I
spent 14 years humping the phones, first
for a senior broker as a college student during my summers, then as a
broker building a book (and then another book and then another book and then
another book - keep in mind, it's been one long secular bear market since my
career began).
I no
longer prospect for new customers, by phone or any other means. I prefer to spend my days getting smarter and to do so in such a way that the clients
find their way to me. It's
working. So the things your FA has to
do, I don't anymore. These include the
following:
Networking Breakfasts
Mass Mailings
Email Blasts
Seminars
Webinars
Networking Lunches
Pretending to be involved in some charity
so I can sidle up to rich people
Working my "centers of influence"
like accountants and attorneys and interior decorators or whatever
Handing out business cards at my kids' PTA
meetings
Networking dinners
Hitting up my doctor for an account
Networking cocktail parties
Buying ad space in magazines or local
newspapers
Networking brunches (you'd have to shoot me
in the face first)
I
have also stopped doing a lot of things that I've learned are a waste of time
during the day, like reading brokerage
firm sell-side research on stocks, listening to company conference calls, watching 90% of financial television, going
to 90% of brokerage-sponsored conferences, letting people pitch me
investment banking deals and on and on.
In
my personal life, you should also know that I am in zero fantasy football leagues while my friends are in two or
three each. Instead of playing golf this summer, I wrote a book
- I sat around the house in my pajamas
writing and researching while everyone else was at the beach, I came home
from work and went back out to the library
to author and edit while your financial advisor was on fucking Facebook looking
up his ex-girlfriends.
The
train is arriving at Penn Station. I
will now walk 20 blocks through the rain to my day job, which is helping people
invest and plan for their financial future.
I manage both assets and emotions
for people. I care to the point that
it hurts. And I make it my daily mission to know as
much as I can so that I can be as effective as I can for my clients. Blogging is not a side gig, it is the method
by which I'm becoming what I want to become for myself and for those I'm
responsible to.
And
when the day is done, I'll be back on an eastbound train. And I'll be blogging - you can set your watch
to that, pal.
The
correct question is not how can I find the time to blog, rather, it's how could
I not?
