Khe Hy
Khe Hy has been called "Oprah for Millennials" by CNN and the "Wall Street Guru" by Bloomberg and started his career working in finance. Today, he blogs at Rad Reads about transforming your relationship with time, work, money – and ultimately yourself.
What has been the biggest challenge transitioning from a job in finance to becoming a writer?
The biggest challenge has been giving up financial security. A corporate job comes with some perks that you only realize once they’re gone. A regular paycheck. Employer contributions to your 401k. Access to health insurance… at a subsidized price.
And as a writer - specifically a writer on The Internet - the business models are all quite daunting. Digital media companies are laying off more people than they are hiring. Monetizing impressions/users with advertising requires massive audiences - and still doesn’t really work. Heck, people expect the fruits of your labor to be free.
The result is a tenuous eat-what-you-kill approach to scoring next month’s rent.
While that may not seem like a good starting place, it’s actually an incredible one. For starters, just navigating this freakish landscape makes you anti-fragile. You emerge with the tools and skills to design your life, while engaging in a creative craft that doesn’t feel like work. Can you think of a greater prize for those willing to show up and do the work?
What advice would you give someone that is considering a career change to writing full-time?
Don’t do it! Just kidding :) An aspiring writer has two powerful tailwinds that they can harness.
First, the gatekeepers are gone. You don’t need a journalism degree to publish. You don’t need an agent to write a book. The only thing between you and your potential reader (and possibly client) is discovery.
Second, the entire tech stack has become commoditized. Billie Eilish won 4 Grammys with $1,100 of recording equipment at age 18. You can fire up a beautiful blog, newsletter (podcast, YouTube channel) for close to zero dollars.
The combination of these two forces is that you have the entire world at your fingertips at no cost. What that means is you can “de-risk” your writing career from the outset. All you need to do is start.
Don’t get seduced by shiny new toys. Stop obsessing about domain names, Wordpress plug-ins, or Fiverr logos. Just start writing. Learn to train that muscle and accumulate those reps. Next, be a fast tortoise. Show up. Even when you don’t feel like it. Don’t try to hit home runs, instead opt for walks, bunts and singles.
When you decide to write a new post, what does your research and planning phase look like?
I’d describe my approach as a lightly structured magical junkyard. As a starting point, I consume a ton of content. Easily 3-4 hours a day, ranging from blogs, articles, newsletters, papers, gossip sites, Reddit, textbooks. I take notes in both Notion and Roam with some simple frameworks that help me organize my ideas, anecdotes, quotes, and statistics.
But here’s the catch. It turns out I don’t often refer to those notes. I try to publicly publish something 5 days a week (post, newsletter, YouTube video, Tweetstorm) and the frequency of publishing makes these published pieces “my notebook.”
Instead of taking notes about - say, why Tiger King currently occupies the Zeitgeist - I’ll just write a quick post about it. That instantly forces me to frame my thinking, while simultaneously storytelling AND connecting with my audience. (Three birds with one stone!)
The post may not be the most eloquent, but it serves me as a writer who’s trying to get better AND my audience who wants to read an angle on something that’s dominating the conversation. Down the road, if I need to retrieve an idea, it’s quite easy to find - both on my blog and in my head.
I know you describe your writing as “fluff-free” on your website. How else do you describe your writing style, and how do you make sure you stick to that format?
I use a simple test for everything I create digitally: Would I be excited to read this if it were sent to me?
Full stop.
Posts. Emails. Marketing. Podcasts. First, it’s about respect. Do unto others as you would like them to do to you.
But it’s also good for business. In the sea of content, people are looking for an authentic voice. And they want to laugh. Smile. Feel like they’re with a friend. One of the greatest compliments is when I meet a reader for the first time and they say, “You sound just like you write.”
While we’re currently going through a major crisis with coronavirus, I know you tackle mental health in some of your writing. Is there a post you’ve written that you think is timely right now with everything going on that you’d like to recommend to our readers?
Both my readers and I have struggled with the question of What’s Enough. As a society, we’ve been conditioned to believe that happiness is contingent on that next promotion, the next stay at the Four Seasons, or the new iPad Pro.
In our hearts we know it’s not true, yet we can’t seem to untether ourselves from this delusional thinking. One of the silver linings of the Coronavirus is that we’re learning for ourselves what’s enough - and it’s splendid.
