In early 2005 I had nearly finished my novel Playing to Win... I'd got to the stage where I was fine reading more books... the stage where I didn't read as much to solely focus on the imagery in my mind for the novel had passed...
2005... you could say for my age I had a decent amount of money, but I hadn't really been interested in earning it, just saving it and not wasting it. I was pretty 'anti consumerism' and played a lot of chess...
Then I read about Tony Buzan's 'Wheel of Life' and how money was part of your overall happiness. So my father Richard Howitt suggested I read The Motley Fool Guide to UK investing...
I did do and it's one of the best factual books I've ever read. The writing style was compelling and funny. The book urged me to get started in investing right away... it was a bit hard to get an account open but by early March 2005 I managed to get a Legal and General index tracker. By June 2005 I started buying individual shares.
Some of you may know this... but I actually had bought shares before in 1998 when I was 15. My dad said I had too much money in cash and should buy some shares. He gave me a magazine and I picked Manchester United shares, thinking they would make money. I actually did make over 200% on my money then... sheer luck as I knew nothing about analysing a company. So being strictly accurate my share journey started in 1998 but I only count it since 2005 as that's when I started to try and understand shares...
I joined the Fool message boards, posted a lot and read the articles every day. In 2007 I managed to get a sales job with Centrica aka British Gas which I earned decent money from... I've worked for or behalf of many of the shares I partly own...
I became pretty interested in shares- since I started buying individual shares until now practically every day I would check the prices and news...
I put a higher percentage of my wealth into shares... there's been ups and downs yet for some shares such as Legal and General I have been up over 700% in capital value before...
Anyway let's get to 2014... that's when my first ever Fool article was published...
I'd read hundreds of Fool articles by this point yet never thought I would be able to write Fool articles... seeing that article up as a main Fool article was one of my best ever writing moments...
So I wrote four Fool articles... my first was one my favourite in terms of writing style and is still one of the favourite articles I've ever written. I've thought about doing one in a similar style and have in some ways in other supermarket articles I've written... don't want to copy the format exactly yet I like the way it flows... I've written quite a lot on supermarkets for various sites and have a new supermarket article coming out soon...
I wrote four articles then sadly I wasn't allowed to write anymore for Fool... it was nothing personal yet my articles hadn't had enough people sign up their email to them...
Also to start off writing for Fool in 2014 as a share writing novice... well it's a bit like a youngster playing in the first team for Manchester United at 18... when Man U were good ;)... All the other Fool writers had much more formal share writing experience...
So I chatted to Rupert Hargreaves and he suggested I may be able to write for other sites... so I did. I've written hundreds of share articles with over 180,000 views worldwide at this point. Yet being directly honest... the feeling I had writing for them never matched the feeling of seeing that first article be main article for Fool... and again being directly honest for the majority of those articles I was much less well paid then I had been for Fool...
I'm not getting paid for this article by the way and haven't been asked to do it... just saying what's on my mind... my life would have been very different if I hadn't found Fool...
Flash forward to 2019. I am working as a share analyst now in paid employment. I had asked since then to write for Fool yet hadn't been able to... I thought I would try again...
The feeling I had of making it... honestly I felt I had about the same chances I had in 2014... not much...
Yet I was able to and am writing articles for Fool now... it's a short term deal with the potential of writing more...
It's my main focus right now- I even convince my boss to allow me to write while I'm at work...
Anyway the market is opening soon... I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who has supported my Fool articles so far... in particular Chris Bailey, Wheelie Dealer and Jonathan Curry... promotion helps ;)
It's my goal to make my Fool articles as powerful as possible so please read them and if you feel there is value... which there IS... please sign up your email for the free report... I am judged on that...
Thank you all for reading!
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