Paying it Forward

My friend Josh just wrote about his tenth anniversary of blogging.

He feels that it changed his life and I am glad for him, as we have had some great times together and he is a hell of a writer. In the post he lists some of the people that helped encourage him in his first year and it was nice to be one of the remembered. He calls us his first adopters which is true.

These are the people who I would do anything for, all they’d ever need to do is ask. My first adopters. I hope I haven’t let them down in the years since.

Now there is a responsibility that comes along with this. At least, to me there is.

That responsibility is for me to serve as an early adopter of people who are first getting started that I believe in. People whose work I should be reading, linking to and sharing. People whose efforts I should be calling attention to. I think I’ve done a lot of this sort of thing.

If I come across a young or new writer who is saying truthful, helpful and interesting things, I go out of my way to make sure other people see it. It’s literally the least I could do, given how important this sort of encouragement was for me ten years ago.

So thank you to all of my readers and supporters, believers and boosters, fans and friends. Ten years is a long time and lots of things in my life have changed. I’m busier than ever, both personally and professionally, but your readership is like oxygen.

I talk about my mentors here often and I am thrilled when readers email me, many of them peers in the trading and investing industry, to tell me that I have been their mentor or encouraged them in their work.

Like Josh says, it is a thrill for me to pay it forward or serve as an early supporter or adopter of people who are getting started that I believe in.

I was told today that Wikipedia says I was ‘highly accessible’ (by a young founder — a long time reader of my blog and my ‘peloton’ service), who drove down from Los Angeles to meet with me and pick my brain about his startup.

I can live with that label.

Originally published at Howard Lindzon.