ACV29: Turning A Hobby Into A Business (Alvin Chow, CEO of DrWealth, Part 2)

Alvin Chow is the CEO of DrWealth, an online platform providing investor education and portfolio management tools. What started as Alvin’s personal blog has grown to a full suite of offerings, and thousands of followers. He teaches courses on Factor-based investing, and has authored two books – Secrets of Singapore Trading Gurus and Singapore Permanent Portfolio.

In this episode, Alvin and I discuss how he built an online audience and transformed his blog into a business. Alvin also gives a crash course on insurance and investing, and he shares some tips about how he curates the information he takes in.

1. Take advice from those with a similar context – When starting his own business, Alvin consulted the heavyweight CEOs of our time like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. However, he found their advice was not as applicable to himself as a small business owner. Therefore, Alvin advises to seek out advice from people in a similar situation, or in a situation you hope to reach.
2.  Start investing, the earlier the better – when it comes to investing, Alvin says the easiest and most effective variable to take advantage of is time. Starting early, no matter the amount, will almost always put you in a better position than starting later with more capital. Therefore, Alvin advises to start investing as early as your 20’s, when you can afford the volatility of the market.
3.  Curate your email inbox – Alvin has the pleasure of enjoying his email inbox, because he purposely curated it with newsletters he is interested in. In a 24-hour news cycle, we now have our pick of information. Alvin suggests to curate that information into something useful and intellectually stimulating.

• Scaling Up by Vernie Harnish – https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Up-Companies-Rockefeller-Habits/dp/0986019526
• “The Monk Like Warrior” – https://www.drwealth.com/the-monk-like-warrior/
• The Economist Magazine – https://www.economist.com/
• David Perell – https://www.perell.com/
• Taylor Pearson – https://taylorpearson.me/
• Paul Graham – http://www.paulgraham.com/
• CB Insights – https://www.cbinsights.com/
• Ben thompson – https://stratechery.com/
• Benedict Evans – https://www.ben-evans.com/
• Andreesson Horowitz – https://a16z.com/
• Atomic Habits by James Clear – https://www.amazon.com.au/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break-ebook/dp/B01N5AX61W
• Derek Sivers – https://sivers.org/blog
• Dr Wealth.com – https://www.drwealth.com/
• Dr Weath on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-wealth/
• Dr Wealth on Social Media – https://www.facebook.com/drwealth.sg/
• Alvin Chow – https://linkedin.com/in/alvin-chow-20077516a?originalSubdomain=sg

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