Let me explain how the term iron rice bowl affectionately originated. Prior to founding Steady Compounding, I had a career in the Singapore public service that is considered extremely stable and unbreakable, like an iron rice bowl.
Why did I leave my iron rice bowl?
Ever since I was 18 years old, I have always been interested in working in the investment industry. But I shelved that dream aside and took on a government scholarship to pay for my tuition fees at the National University of Singapore. The scholarship gave me a really neat allowance that paid for all my university expenses.
I didn’t stop investing or learning about investing after I took on the scholarship. Years of saving and investing helped me build a sum good enough to feel secure leaving my iron rice bowl.
Was it scary? You bet it was.
Coming from a low income family, giving up a secure career and pivoting into something entirely different and risky seemed crazy.
But I think the bigger risk in life comes from the fear of reinventing ourselves. Sometimes, not changing or evolving might be the greatest risk.
How did Steady Compounding come about?
Coming from the public service, I knew pivoting into the investment industry wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Every job application required at least four years of experience or needed connections.
But this experience wasn’t new to me, I was used to hunting for opportunities through what Alex Banayan calls the third door. In life, there are two main paths: the first door, where everyone waits in line and hopes to get in, and the second door, where the VIP’s effortlessly slip through.
But not many realize that there’s always a third door. It may be sneaking through the window or the kitchen in the back. Whatever it is, it will take resourcefulness and guts.
One year before I left my job, I launched Steady Compounding with the goal of sharing what I know about investing online. Writing online is the ultimate leverage, I can write it once and the entire world can read it without putting in another hour of work. The Internet was the ultimate networking tool.
By writing online, I met a lot of other investors and increased my chances of pivoting into the investments business. Within eight months, my blog was gaining a lot of traction. With a sizable audience, I had a lot of fun connecting with investors, thinking about investing, and sharing my thoughts.
I enjoyed the journey of starting Steady Compounding. That was when I decided to see how far I can push myself. Instead of pursuing a job in fund management, I started to plan and execute on monetizing my blog through a subscription model—for an annual subscription fee, readers can gain access and read my in-depth business research reports.
What my readers have to say about my research
After the day I launched, I was thrilled to see more than 40 readers become paid subscribers. I’m glad that my readers found my stock research reports valuable enough to invest both their time and money in reading them.
Today, we have hundreds of paid readers who are enjoying my research reports. Here are what they have to say about Steady Compounding deep dives.
>>>Click here to learn more about my stock research reports
Access my stocks research
My extensive research saves my readers anywhere from four to six weeks of tedious research. The research covers a company’s business model, economic moat, competitors analysis, industry analysis, risks, financials, and valuation.
To truly be a long-term business owner, we need to understand what drives value in our businesses, and an estimation of the intrinsic value of each business to serve as our north star and guide our buy, hold, and sell decisions.
Get access to my research by joining the tribe. Prices will increase for new members who sign up after 31 May 2022 as my research library has expanded significantly.
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How my reader base grew
In the early days of writing online, it was basically just writing into a vacuum. To get readers, I started posting on Facebook groups, LinkedIn, writing guest posts on more established blogs and went on podcasts. Growth was going along well, or so I thought…
On 2 Sep 2021, I met Eugene from Vision Capital for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and he advised me that I should go on Twitter. I was doubtful of its potential at first because it’s another mature platform and I was going to be a late-mover. But since I was already writing on every other platform, there wasn’t much to lose to put my content onto Twitter as well.
And Twitter’s scale blew my mind 🤯
Sep 2021: 0 followers
Oct 2021: 1k followers
Dec 2021: 10k followers
May 2022: 36.7k followers
It’s gratifying that my writing resonates with an international audience and adds value to the investment process. This allowed my work to reach more people and more importantly, it helped me build strong relationships with other investors from all around the world!
Teaching others how to invest
I have always wanted to teach. When I reflect on why I have this strong desire to teach, it probably comes back to the fact that I had to learn many things in life the hard way. There were many things that I had to learn, unlearn and relearn.
Make no doubt, I enjoyed the learning but there’s a cost to figuring things out slowly. And my goal is to help others get there faster.
Through writing online, I have met many brilliant people. Max Koh is one of them. Max is a fellow investing nerd and we share a passion for teaching as well as a similar investing philosophy. Since we receive a lot of questions about investing on Twitter everyday, we decided to start a passion project to teach beginners how to get started with investing.
We had an amazing six sessions of a live course where almost 60 students from 17 different countries joined us as we shared about what we would have wanted to know if we were beginners just starting out with investing today.
Here’s what they have to say:
You can read more testimonials here.
We will be running a second cohort from 27 June to 8 July 2022. If you want to catch us for this round, there’s a super early bird discount if you enroll by 31 May 2022! Grab the SUPER early bird discount for our Investing Course for Beginners here.
Grab the SUPER early bird discount for our Investing Course for Beginners here.
What’s next?
This is a question I receive most often. And I’m letting my readers (yes…YOU!) decide that for me. I am working on writing a book and if you have any questions about investing that you would love for me to address, shoot me a DM on Twitter, Instagram or email me at thomas@steadycompounding.com!
I appreciate your taking the time to read my thoughts about investing and life. I appreciate each and every one of you readers. If you want to access my research, take advantage and lock in today’s prices by signing up today!
Click here to lock-in today’s prices for life and access my stocks research.
Cheers,
Thomas Chua