Listen Now

80 miles. If you go on a car trip or road trip somewhere and drive for 80 miles, it takes a little bit over an hour. But on a bike 80 miles, whoo it can take all day long. Yep. So last week, I actually biked for 80 miles. Now I didn't do it on one day, I did it over three different days. But with the wind in my face, going up hills, down hills going out about 10 to 13 miles an hour, it took a long, long time. So this week, I didn't do 80 miles. I did 60 miles so far. And I am hoping to do another 35 miles on Sunday. Why you ask why am I putting myself through this? Well, there is a charity ride ride coming up in a week and a half that I have registered for and it's called the MS 150. Normally, it's 150 miles to over two days. But in 2021, because COVID they've changed it. So they made it a one day ride. And you can either do 70 miles, 80 miles, or 100 miles. I opted for the 70 mile one because well, I'm not exactly ready. Last time I did 35 miles in one day, my thighs were screaming in pain. But, I am going to do this ride, no matter what even if I'm not ready. Even if I'm the last one to cross the finish line. They close up the whole race everything. Everybody goes home. I'm the only one there on the road pedaling. I'm going to do that until I finish and I'm going to do it. Why? Because I put my mind to it. It's something I decided I'm going to do. First I thought you know, I want a hobby -join a bike team, sign up for an event, lose some weight, get something exercise, but now it's not about any of that. It's about crossing the finish line and pedaling that whole 70 miles. Is it going to take me eight hours, nine hours. I don't know, takes some breaks, maybe a lunch break and you know, a little time to calm down your muscles that are probably going to be cramping and spasming. Hopefully it doesn't take more than nine hours. But yes, it will take a long time. And it's going to be very difficult. And it's going to be something probably the hardest thing physically I've done ever. But I'm going to do it. It's really mind over body, mind over matter, right? Because I set my mind to it. And I made a decision. And I said, that's it. No, there's no backing out. There's no stopping. There's no quitting, no matter what happens, I'm going to finish this race, because I want to. So what is it that you want? And how bad do you want it? I want this thing. And so when you're out bike riding, you're out there by yourself in the heat for hours and hours at a time sitting on this small little seat that's very hard and your butt is hurting. Your butt goes numb if you're a guy, you know other areas in the groin, they go numb, your arm start hurting, your legs are hurting. It's not fun, especially when you do it that long. But I want it. It's mind over matter. I want it bad. I want to be able to say yes, I finished this ride. I did it. I set my mind to it. I finished. How bad do you want it? There are lots of people that email us, come to us buy some of our products and say yeah, "I wanna learn how to trade, I have to I have to" that's the words they use. And then a very small, tiny percentage of them actually follow through and actually do it. I hope that's not you. What is it that you want? And how badly do you want it? If you don't want it bad enough, it's not gonna happen. It doesn't matter. It's not about trading or exercise or losing weight. This is everything. How badly do you want it? Here's a question only you can answer. But the thing is, it is something that you can answer. And you can change your mind and you can change your desire into making something so badly wanting that you'll do whatever it takes. You'll sit for hours and hours on this hard little bike, pedaling in the heat, sweat stinging your eyes, wind blowing in your face, trying to push you down. legs, cramping, feet hurting, just going going going. I mean, I'm going to do it because I want to. What do you want to do? What do you want in your life and how badly do you want it? That's it. That's all it comes down to that is the secret to success. How badly do you want it? If you want it bad enough, you're going to find a way. If you don't want it bad enough, you're going to find an excuse. Even if you have the most perfect opportunity in front of you. Market has been going up. Markets are up 60% ss I say this, from the time we had the COVID, bear market, it's up 60%. Even if you didn't trade a single option, all you do is throw money in the market, you would have made money. And yet people are still on the sidelines. People are still Oh, I'm, I'm trying to open my account. I'm changing. I'm trying to find a better broker. Oh, wow. Stop making excuses, get it done. Mind over matter, put some urgency behind it. This market is not going to last forever, it's going to change, it's going to start getting more volatile, it's going to go down and up. And who knows what is going to do. Mind over matter? How badly do you want? And that's it. If you want it bad enough, you will figure out a way. And that's my message to you. How badly do you want it? And yes I keep asking because you need to give me an answer. You need to say this is what I want. And this is what I'm willing to do to get it. This is why and I want I want it. I want it. I want you to come up with your own answer. You don't need to tell me. You can tell me if you want. I'll be your accountability partner. You can email me help@optiongenius.com - you let me know, hey, this is why I wanted this, this is what I want. And this is what I'm going to do it. And if you do that, then we will email you back on your deadline and say hey what happened, did you do it? hope you did. Because everything you want can be yours. Everything is achievable. But you got to want it. How badly do you want it? Figure that out, change your life. That's it for this episode. To be honest, I am completely still exhausted. And I still have more training to go. But wish me luck. I'm going to do it. And maybe on the next episode I'll be telling you about all the stuff I learned on my ride. But until then trade with the odds in your favor and answer the question "How badly do you want it?" LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

No sex for you. That's right, I said it, no sex for you. Well, not for me anyway. Like that was ever gonna happen. But still, hey, passive traders, I've been reading a book called Your Next Five Moves. And it's a book about business strategy. So the author of the book is saying that a Grandmaster of chess, when they play chess, they can think 12-14 moves in advance. So if I do this, he's gonna do this, if I do this, he'll do this, if I do, this opponent will do this. For 14 moves, right? In business, the author says, you should be thinking at least five books ahead. I'm reading this book trying to apply it to Okay, you know, that's for a business, how do we apply this to trading? You know, how many steps ahead should a trader think? And how do we apply these strategies to trading? So I'm reading through the book. And obviously, in chess, you kind of have a finite area, right? So the chess pieces can only do certain things, you can only move in certain directions, whatnot. And so when you're a grandmaster, and you do a move, you can sometimes kind of force the opponent to make a conflicting move. So if I do this, he has to do this kind of thing, right? Because if I put him in check, then he has to get out of check by moving this or this or something. So you kind of you can kind of structure that out many, many moves in events, even in business, you know, the guy says, Well, you know, you gotta have, you gotta be in charge of yourself. And you have to know that, hey, if I'm going to ask for a job, or a raise, and my job, then I need to know what could happen. So first of all, I need to be prepared, I need to show my value, I need to ask properly, I need to know what's in the best interest of the company and present it that way. So you have to have your presentation plan, that's like one move. The second move is what's gonna happen if they say, yes. The third move is what's gonna happen if they say no, and then can I back that up? Am I going to give them an ultimatum? I'm gonna do this. And if I do quit, then what am I gonna do that? what's what's my mood that so basically just thinking about, so if this happens, I'll do this. And this, and this giving ourselves options right? Now in trading, we are trying to be in control, and we try to stay steps ahead, but the market does whatever the market wants. So we're more in a reactive mode than in a active mode. That's why it's passive trading, not active trading. If you're a day trader, good luck. You know, I don't have the stomach for that all the time. So, how does a trader think many steps ahead? Well, number one, when you put on the trade, you have to have a trading plan. So that's obviously a step number two, the trade can go in your favor, or the trade can go against you. So you got to know what to do in either situation. Number three, the trade if it goes against you can go against you very wide, violently, and suddenly, or if you go very slowly against and you have to have moves for both of those aspects involved, you have to go thinking ahead for what are the small moves? What are the small things that could upset my trade? And then what are the big things that could upset my dream? Real micro and the macro? And then what are you going to do when the micro ones What are you gonna do on the macro lens? Right? And then you have to worry about not just the trading aspect, but you got to worry about your personal aspect. So what happens if I cannot get to the trade? What happens if something happens to the trader, right? Maybe he has a headache that day, maybe he is sick, and he has to go to the hospital for several days, then what happens to the trades? You have to have all of these things thought out in advance to be the best trader that you can. So yeah, there are several trades that we can do, as are several moves that we can do as a trader, and just really thinking about what is the risk? And what am I going to do to counter that? So I'll do this. This could happen. What do I do with this, this could happen? What do I do? The longer you get into trading, the longer you do it, the more trades you put on, the more you'll see what could happen, what could go wrong? And then you'll have experience and you'll be like, Oh, yeah, I remember that happened one time before. This is what I did. And it worked out. Well. That's why we also do backtesting, the more experience you can get under your belt. The more situations that you see, the more it'll be muscle memory, and then you'll be like, Oh, if this happens, I can do this. If this happens, I can do this. Because when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know. And that's why it's so important to have a mentor to have a coach, have somebody guiding you along and be like, hey, relax, calm down. This is what's going on. How are you going to deal with it? You can do a you can do B, to C to D which one? What are the pros and cons of each? What do you think is the best one proceed that way and let's see how it goes. Now mentor coach is not going to guarantee that he can help you be profitable, or get you the right answer every single time. Sometimes it's just not possible, right, they're gonna be lost, it's, of course, that's part of the game. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any money for us. If it was so easy, you just win every single time, there would be nothing you make, right? That'd be like buying a CD, you get like 1.1% on a CD. So the reason that we make money trading is because there is risk and there are losses. So you have to also have a move for how do you handle the loss? emotionally, and financially? You have to be aware of both situations. So now, coming back to no sex for you. All right. You're probably wondering, okay, how'd you get to this from that? Oh, well, in the book, the author Patrick Bet-David. He was a young kid, and he's telling his own story. And His goal was to become, have his company do a million dollars in sales? And so he was doing well or something. And then he was, I guess he was outside of a nightclub something happened? I don't know. I don't remember the exact story. But somebody asked him, hey, how are you going to know? What's your goal? Are you know that you're successful? Or what are you going to do to make yourself successful? I think that was the question, what are you going to do to make sure that you are successful, and he said that he was not going to have sex until he got a million dollars in sales in his company. And he took him something like 18 months or something like that, that was really cool. You know, because that was for him that was a big deal. Because he was like, in his 20s, or 30s. And he was very sexed-up. Supposedly, that's that's what he says in the book, he liked to party you'd like to hang with women, you'd like to drink. That was his thing when he was younger. And so for him, that was a big, big, big sacrifice. What is the equivalent to you? Right? How are you going to know when your moves are lined up? And how are you gonna know when you hit your goal? And what are you going to do to motivate you to hit your goal? So, you know, part of this podcast is, I'm trying to attack you in different ways to try to get you to take action, try to get you to think about different things that maybe you haven't thought about yet. Or maybe if you have thought about them, but you didn't get my second thought, or you didn't think about them enough. So I'm trying to re-hit you be like, Oh, hey, think about this. Oh, hey, what do you do about this? Oh, eight? What do I do? I can't give everybody the answers, because the answers are different for everybody. So the question is, if you haven't gotten started yet, or if you hadn't hit your goals yet? The reason is probably not because you are lacking all the tools. The reason is something internal. And you can make whatever excuses you want. I don't have the money. I don't have the time. I don't know, the proper education. Those are great. You have the same amount of time everybody else has. You have access to all the education you need through Option Genius. And in terms of money. Well, you know, what are you gonna do? How badly do you want it? What is the goal? Number one, do you know your "why" is it really, really important to you? And what are you going to do to get it? So in the beginning, it doesn't even take money to start, you need to back testing, you need to do paper trading, that doesn't take a lot of money. It's free. For the  back testing, you can buy software, it's like 500 buck, a year, for some back testing software, build up track record. And then you can find the money. There are lots of investors out there that will fund somebody take a chance on you, if you've been shown that, look, I know how to make money. I mean, I've done it, I know other people that have done it. And even if you give them 100% of the gains, you look to somebody, you say, Look, I know how to make money, funded open account, I'll trade it for you, you keep all of the money. I'll do it for you for free. That's kind of weird, right? You get to work for free, make all the money that guy gets all the money or the other investor gets all the money, you get nothing. Yeah, if that's what it takes. That's you're getting your practice with no money at risk in the money with real with real money in the markets. Right? I mean, you can't get like any better, no risk situation and obviously, we lose money, the guy's gonna hate you. That's the way it goes. If you are motivated enough, you will find a way. Now, for those of you who are not motivated enough, that's where it comes to. Right. That's where that's where this question no sex for you or this idea comes from. So if you don't have that motivation to just go nuts and do whatever it takes, then maybe you need to sacrifice something, maybe you need to take something out of your Life until you hit your goal. So you got to carry and you got to stick. So what is it? No fast food? No beer, no TV? I don't know, what is that thing that you spend time on or money on? That is pleasure for you but it's taking away time that you could be spending on learning how to trade and getting better at your trading? Figure it out, and then set your goal and say, Hey, you know what, I'm gonna make XYZ dozen dollars in the next month, or I'm going to make 50 trades and the next two months, or I'm going to make, you know, I'm going to learn this strategy. And I'm going to put on my first trade. And I'm going to make 10% on one trade, whatever, whatever your short term goal is, or maybe your long term goal, you know, the author, Patrick's goal was $1 million in sales. And obviously, it takes a whole while to get to that number, right. So maybe for you, it's a "I want to make $50,000 from my training". Great. I love it. That's an awesome goal. What are you going to give up? Or what are you going to stop doing? To keep you motivated, keep you hungry until you get to that goal. That's what sex is for you. So maybe it is sex. I'm sure your spouse might not agree or your boyfriend and girlfriend, whatever. But if that's what he thinks that's what it takes, and then maybe you'll get some help from them, right? You'll get some extra motivation from them be like "Hello, hurry up here, please and get your gold" and it would be hilarious. But still, what is it figured out? What is the goal? Figure out what you're willing to sacrifice? Until you get triple? All right. So if you do if you do this, I would love for you to email me and let me know what you have decided to do. That would be cool. Just let me know. Email me help at option genius, calm and let me know what you're deciding to do what you're going to what you're going to sacrifice and give up until you hit your goal. So let me know, give me an email with your goal and what you're giving up. I would love to get these emails from you guys. I answer every one of them personally. So just let me know and keep the odds in your favor. Talk soon.

Hey, passive traders. Howdy Ho, how's it going? Today I'm coming to you with a challenge. Yes, I'm actually going to challenge you, I had something I want you to do, or at least try because even if you try, it's gonna be better than not trying at all. And I believe that the word challenge has been watered down, you know, challenge used to be something tough, something hard to do something not everybody could accomplish. But now it's like, challenges in China that this ice bucket challenge, you know, thrives on your head, okay? No big deal. Right. So this particular challenge is actually going to be difficult. And it's not something that you're going to be able to do overnight, most likely, it's going to take some time, but I believe that this is a goal. That is very worthwhile. Now, let me give you a little background before I tell you the challenge, okay? They say, scientists, that is tell us that money can make us happy to a certain degree, right. So if you're making less than 75,000, they say, if you make more money, then you will be happier. Obviously, you'll have a better standard of living, less stress, all that good stuff, right. But after 75,000, the more you make, it doesn't really help that much, your level of happiness doesn't really change, you just stay at the same level. I believe the number is probably 100,000. Now, just because 100,000 - 6 figures is a good goal, everybody's like, Oh, yeah, make six figures. It's like a cool thing. So I would say, hey, that number is 100,000. So if you were making up to 100,000, you know, if you make more, you'll get happier. And then maybe after that, then you don't get happy anymore. But the thing is, that's really I think the point of life is to be happy. And then how do you after you're making that much money, then it becomes not about you, but it comes about how can you help other people, right, and then that's where it comes to the challenge. So I want you to be happier, I want you to be more successful. And I think that this challenge will be able to do both. First off, they have something called tithing, in Christianity. In Islam, they have something called Zakat. In Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism, it's voluntary, I believe, to give money, not mandatory, but to encourage. So all the major religions have some sense of giving back to help, the less fortunate. The need. That's what I'm talking about. How much money of your income Do you give away? Whether it be a religious thing, or to a charity, or local cause? or whatever you want to do? How much of your money do you give away? Now some of you are thinking, Oh, Allen, hold on, they're barely making ends meet as it is. Don't be telling me about me giving away money. That's fine. You don't have to do it right away if you really can't, but I do believe that there is something that you can do. And if you do get it, it'll make everything better. It'll make you happier. And it'll make you more effective and more productive and wealthier. I've seen it with my own eyes. So here's the thing, if you're not giving anything, right now, zero. Now give me anything if you want, you know, tallied up to how much money do you give every month, on a monthly basis? Or on a yearly basis, however you want to figure out figure you know, find out what you make? How much did you give away to journeys to your religious institution? Maybe you know, give a loan to somebody that never got paid back. Because you knew Yeah, it's not very bad, that's also, you know, giving money to a friend or relative or whatever like that. Find out how much you make, find out how much you gave, what percentage is that? If you're not doing anything, if you're zero, I want you to get up to 5% I want you to give away 5% of your income. Okay, now this is for people who are like, really strict wrangling really, it's tight, everything is tight. And I think you should make it a family affair for all of us. The family should be on board with it. Wife, spouse, kids, husband, everybody. And maybe they all pitch in to help decide where the money goes. That'd be really cool thing. It's a good lesson to teach the kids as well. If you are giving something, but you're giving less than 10. Let's bump it up to 10. Okay, because if you already know how to give, then you got to make it a habit. You got to make it consistent. Okay, I'm going to get this much. Now I got to figure out where is it going to go? And that's the fun part. That's the fun part. We figured Oh my god, there are so many great places and great things that I want to help the world in. Which one do I get to help out? Eventually, the goal is to go higher. So for those of you who are giving 10% or more, you're not off the hook. Because the challenge the real challenge is to get you up to 20%. That's right, 20% of what you make your income now I'm not talking about taxes. I'm not gonna make it complicated. This could be before or after-tax, whatever. However you want to do it, that's up to you. But the challenge is to get up to 20% of your income given in a way to whatever you want whatever organization you want to, okay. How do you get there is an issue. So there are two things, two things you can do. Number one, you can lower your expenses, obviously, right? Now, I don't want you to lower your standard of living, I don't want you to live like a popper. So you know, cut the things that maybe you don't really use or need anymore. You know, maybe if you have a Netflix, and if you have an Amazon Prime, if you have a Hulu, and if you have a Disney plus, maybe you don't need all four of them. How much TV Do you watch anyway? Maybe you just need to or want to cut something, save some money. Maybe if you eat lunch out, five days a week, maybe you Brownbag at one day, not only will you be healthier, but you'll save money, you feel better about yourself. So, these little cutbacks, not only will they make you more financially stable, but they will also make you healthier, you know, you'll get out and do active stuff instead of watching TV. So we can only hope, right? The other way is to increase your income. Now 20% is a stretch by anybody's imagination, right? You're gonna have to really put your pen to paper and figure this out, like how much how can I do this, right? Go from 5 to 20 or 10 to 20, it's a big deal. So you're gonna have to make more money. And whether that's income from job income from business, investment, or trading, it's going to give you a logical, tangible, physical goal that look, I need to make "s" because that's the challenges. And then you got to figure out how you're going to do it. Now, it's not gonna happen overnight, like I said, can take some time. But I do believe if you set your mind to this challenge, and if you take it seriously, and if you do it, and you strive, and if you're on a 5%, right now, even if you get to 10, you know, and you'll get all the way to 20. Eventually, you will, if you want to, but even if you get to 10, that's going to make huge differences in your life. And then eventually, you know, maybe you feel like, okay, I don't need to give the whole point. But if you stop, you have 20% of your income just sitting there that you can use to build wealth, to build anything. Right. So it's basically building a financial discipline, to spend less, but also, it's pushing you to grow and to make more. And I think that's the real benefit. So yes, you'll feel better about yourself, you know, you're helping other people, you make a difference in the world. And who knows, by giving more money, it'll probably come back. That's the way it works, right? The more you give, the more you get back. But it will also force you to be thinking about more income. Now, obviously, we all think about Oh, man, I gotta make more money. I gotta make more money. Yeah, but this is a real number. You need to make a real plan. And then enact put that plan in motion. You know, step one, step two, step three, step four, and then you can drag and so how do you how good did I do? And you can make it a game? Because that's what is a challenge. It's a game, I'm throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you, and you get to make the world a better place. Now, for me, I'm right now I am about 20%. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just saying that it is possible. Okay, I didn't get there years ago. Right, it took some time. But we built in a habit in my family, me and my wife, we both had a habit. Okay, we're going to start with, we started with 12 and a half percent. That's what we started with. And then we did a little bit extra, oh, hey, you know, this guy needs some help, we need to, you know, he needs a couple grand to fix his car, or this kid needs, you know, to pay his tuition payment for the month for the semester, give him some money here, or send it to charity or, or whatnot. But we came up with creative ways to do it. One of the things that I do with the kids is I've given money to this organization called Kiva, K-I-V-A-dot-org. Basically, what you do is you loan micro loans to people in other countries. So if you give maybe $1,000, each loan that you give is only 25 bucks, right? So you take the 1000 put it in the website and send it to them. And then you choose who to give the loan to. And you can give each person $25. Now, obviously, the people might need more. So there are several people giving loans. But the people then pay the loans back. So you get more money to lend to more people. Now the point here is not to make interest on it. You've given it the money away, but it gets repaid and then you get to learn it again to somebody else and get repaid and learn again, learn again. So I do this, my kids. And so now my boys, they're 8 and 10 right now, they get to choose who we give the loans And I haven't added any more money into it because the money comes back and we get more loans. And every couple of months, we look at it and say, How much money do we have? Okay, let's make some loans. And they decide who they want. They go through all of the available loans and look at the pictures and look at the description of what they need the money for, what country do they live in? Are they a man or a female? Are they a group? Are they individual? Are they going to be able to give the money back? Does it make does it make sense what they're trying to what they need the money for? They make all these decisions on their own, and then they pick. And then they track, like, How much money did they get back, you know how their loans doing. So they feel good about themselves. But they're also learning how to be a good lender, which eventually is something that I want them to know, because I want them to be making investments, that's part of the job, right, you have to know how to get your capital back. So we're using doing good to teach. So if you have kids, I think that's definitely one of the plays, one of the ways you can do it. But again, the challenge is to get yourself up to 20%, giving the money back or giving the money away. I'd be interested to know how many of you guys would actually check me up on this challenge, and how many are actually going to be able to accomplish it, it's going to be amazing. But if you get up to 20%, the feeling that you're going to feel it's unbelievable, where you actually, you know, you you feel on top of the world really does not only do you want less, like you desire less, it just makes you desire less things be less materialistic, because you're, you're not only looking at what you need, but then you're thinking, Okay, I need to raise, like I say, you're going to give away $20,000 a year, okay? You have to look for places to give the $20,000. And so you have to research. And when you're doing the research, you're going to find out all the things and all the people and all the places that are suffering, and need help. And you're going to feel so grateful for the life that you have. And whatever situation you're in right now, you're going to feel amazing. For a while, you know, I'm really in a blessed situation to be able to give away $20,000. And then you're going to help those people and you've got a few really good budgets. Not only that, but you've also increased your income hopefully. Right? And then the big thing about it is that the way the US taxes are, you don't even have to, it doesn't have to be a full 20,000. If you're making 100,000 You don't have to give away the full 20 like to make 20% because then there's taxes and stuff. So the more money you give, the more tax break you get. So you're not really having to in order to get 20% of your income, you're not really having to give away 20% 100,000 it's because of the tax breaks. So it's really cool. I thought I'd share this with you. It's an interesting idea. I think it'll definitely help you. So yeah, it's not easy. It's a challenge, right? Are you gonna, do it? I hope you do hope you give it a shot. Because not only will it change your life, it'll change your family's life and change the world. So with that, remember to trade with the odds in your favor, and good luck. Take care LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Welcome back. Do you remember a song I don't know, when it came out? It was I think it was in the 60s or 70s or something and it goes something like one is the loneliest number one is the loneliest. Now I apologize for my singing. And I think I was off key. And I don't even think that's how the music goes. The melody goes to the song sounds probably off on that too. And I don't even remember what they were singing about. But the message of the song to me is that yes, one is the loneliest number. I think it was about something that guy was alone, he lost his girlfriend. But the point is, for me is that yes, when you have only one of anything in your life, you don't really have a backup plan. Right? So if it comes to income, you only have one source of income. If you lose that source of income, you're kind of stuck up the creek without a paddle, right? And so I was reminded of this today, I got an email from one of our members, and I wanted to read it to you, because he just got laid off. And he wants to know how he can replace his income with trading. It's crazy that we have so many people in this same situation, it's great that when you have a job, right, you have an income source, you want to get into trading, you don't really like the job or you really like your business or whatever you're like, oh, man, I wish this trading thing could work out, I could get it and you know, you you invest in one of our programs, and then you don't really follow through because life gets in the way. And I know how that goes. You know, it's really the why, right? You're why about trading wasn't strong enough until something happens. And he jars you away. You know, so you you might be driving along the street, you're not really paying attention to the road, and then all of a sudden the car comes out of nowhere almost hits you. And after that you're like the best driver all the way home. You know, just jars you in. So this is a normal occurrence. But the older you get, or the longer you've been in a job, the chances of being laid off are increasing. Unfortunately, it's just the nature of the work ethic. And so you really need to have that backup in place. And unfortunately, for a lot of people, they're not ready with the backup plan when they get laid off. So here's Todd's email, says: Hello, Allen, I'm going through a live change your opinion, I'm currently a member of your programs joined almost a year ago have not been able to devote enough time due to work and family obligations. (Totally understandable). I'm an engineer and work in the construction industry for a health care organization. I read your book, listen all your podcast sessions at least once while going to work. Oh, thank you for that. Last week, I was laid off from my job. And now I'm trying to decide my next moves. My wife works full time and we have funds to carry us along for a couple months. But I will need to replace my income fairly soon. and relieve the stress on my wife. As an aside, yes, that's very, very, very important. Because you're not, you know, when you get laid off, you're not the only one that's suffering, the whole family suffer, especially the other spouse, because that person has to carry the load, right? They're not used to carrying the full load. Now they have to carry the full load. And then they also have to worry about you and your mental status and the pressure on them you also have to worry about so you don't want to add divorce to your problems. So be very, very careful about how your spouse is handling the situation. Make sure you give them enough time, enough attention to leave their pressure, take some of their work, you know their homework or whatever their work is off their plate while you can. And if you're looking to go into trading, discuss it with your spouse, explain what you're doing with them. So they don't think that you're just sitting at home doing nothing all day playing with computers, watching TV. Okay, so that's a really important point. So let me continue. He says I'm trying to decide if I should jump back into the construction rat race again, so I can draw salary and benefits, assuming I can find another job fairly quickly. Otherwise, I would really like to immerse my time into your programs and start trading. I realized I have to get up to speed and take some time to learn your methods and develop my own trading plan. My main concerns are being able to learn your program soon enough, and being able to replace my income, I was making 120,000 a year, but need to replace approximately 5000 a month take home pay, I plan to start paper trading this week and scale up as I learn more eventually, I will have $250,000 in capital that I could scale up into an account, how realistic is it for me to replace my income? With the size of an account? I would appreciate your opinion in the comments. Thank you. So that's the email, I want to read to you what I wrote to him, and then I want to give you my thoughts on this and a little bit going a little bit more detail. So I told him, you know, hey, I'm sorry that this happened to you very, very sorry, my first thought was, hey, you need to get out of where you are, I know where he is, he's in a different state where things might be slowing down. So I'm like, Hey, you know, get out of there, get your butt here to Texas, because we can't find enough people to do construction. But that might not be possible. So I don't think the issue here is if you can generate 5000 from 250,000. The issue is how long it will take you to get there. And from what you wrote, this is me talking from what you wrote, it would be in your best interest, I believe, for you to get out of the job for now, as a fail safe. Okay, maybe not a full time thing, just something to bring in some guaranteed capital and keep the health insurance if possible, because that's a big concern for a lot of people. Trading when you are super stressed out, and you have to win is super hard. Trading already is very hard. But doing it with one hand timing on your back, it's much harder, while you are looking for the second job or even after you get the part time job, spend three to five hours a day on your trading. Do that with the courses and programs you already have, you should be able to have the skills to do it full time in a few months. But having the skills is different from being emotionally ready. So you're going to have to overcome that aspect as well. So if you can start with a smaller goal, say 1000 a month on $100,000 account, that would be a great place to start. And then you can scale it up from there. And then I told him because he's in the programs, I want to see you on the coaching call on Thursday, I want to see you and your paper trades in our groups, I want you to posting there, I want you to get critiques, I want you to get my opinion, my advice. And I want you to send me a bit I told him, Hey, I want you to send me your trading plan, and a concrete plan of how you expect to get to 5000 a month, including your asset allocation. And this is covered in whatever programs that he's already part of, you can do it. But having a job would relieve a lot of the pressure. But even with a job, 3-5 hours a day learning and trading. Because enough is enough screw these jobs, it's time to learn how to make it from trading. Okay, so that was my email to him. You know, you can let me know if what you think if I gave him the right advice or not, really, this brought me back to my situation. And how I got involved in trading full time was also being laid off. And I eventually ended up losing over $40,000 of my wife's money before I got serious turned it around. And I don't know if you know my story, but pretty much that was my story in a nutshell. But really, I was doing all kinds of training and losing money at it. Until really I sat down with my wife and we had like a, you know, come to Jesus moment and be like, Alright, I'm going to give myself three months, if I don't figure this stuff out, I'm going to go get another job. And at the end of those three months, I don't think I've ever shared this. But at the end of those three months, I still wasn't making money, but I wasn't losing money. So that to me was a huge step. So if I'm not losing money, then I can tweak the results I'm getting and start making money. You know, I've overcome the major hurdle of screwing up. Now I just need to screw up a little less, and fix it and start winning and start doing the right things eventually took a while for me to make a full time income from trading. But even for the person who sent me this email, that's not his immediate concern. Right? He was making 120. Now he's trying to get up to five, which is a little bit less than he was making full time. I'm sure even if he can get to four, he would still be happy on the size of his account, it's totally doable. If he had the experience, if he had the knowledge, if he had the strategy. You could do it right now. But that's not where he is yet. Right. So the question really is how fast can you start trading for a living? So I have a few notes here. Number one, the thing you got to understand is that the stress can be overwhelming. So if you have to win like if you have if you say I'm going to put on these trades and from these trades I can make $5,000 and every single one of them has to win in order for me to pay my rent, send my kids to school, get the gas in the car and eat, that's very, very stressful, you are not going to win, you're not going to be able to. Okay? trading is trading, there are losses, it's just the nature of the game, every trade is not going to win every month, you're not going to win. So if you have to win every single month, in order to pay the bills, it's not going to work. Eventually, there will come a month where the money's not there. And then what happens? Well, now you're taking out of your trading account. So your trading accounts getting lower, lower your whatever you make all your gains, you're taking it out to live on all your losses, whenever you do lose money, you're still you're taking money out of the account to survive. So eventually, your account is going to get smaller and smaller, it's never going to grow, unless you're making a lot more than you're spending, which is going to be hard to do, especially in the beginning. Right? When you are desperate to win, what happens? You take more risks. Unfortunately, that's what happens. You don't play conservatively. You take more risk, you do a little bit more, because you're like, yeah, you know, you justified and you allies in your mind, and you come up with some justification to take more risk, even though in your gut, you know, you should. And what does that do? Well, that gives you ulcers, that gives you high blood pressure that keeps you up at night. So you can't sleep and it ruins your mental health, it ruins your life, it ruins your quality of life, you'll gain weight, all of this stuff, you're not going to eat right, you're not going to exercise it, it's just a it's a spiral going downhill, and one that you really really do not want to be on unless you totally have to. That's one of the reasons you know, get a part time job. Even if you don't get a part time job. Get a some you know, right now there are so many companies out there that are looking for like the freelance type people, you can drive for Uber, you can deliver groceries, you can deliver food, and it doesn't have to be a full time thing. You can do it when you want to and stop when you want to. And there's no shame in it. Okay, that's the one thing a lot of people have to overcome, you know, driving for Uber, oh, my god, no, I would never do that. I'm too good for that. No, you're not. Right. What is the end goal? What is the Why? The Why is to get off the rat race, to get off the hamster wheel, to be able to trade for a living and have the life that you deserve to eventually hopefully get your wife off of her job too if she wants to quit her job. Exactly right? So don't feel that you are too good for a part time job no matter what it is, as long as he's bringing them onto the table. Money is money. Green is green. Right? It pays the bills, when you also have to win, the stress, like I said can be overwhelming, you're going to feel worse about yourself, you're going to feel horrible about yourself when you lose, and that's part of the game, losing. But when you feel like you have to win, every time you have a losing trade, the blame is going to be on you, you're going to place the blame on yourself, I screwed up. I didn't, I didn't see that I didn't read the chart, right, I picked the wrong stuff, I picked the wrong strategy. And that's going to lower your self esteem, it's going to lower your confidence in yourself. And when you do that, it's just like a, you know, like a set of stairs going down. You do it a little bit and then gets worse, and it gets worse until you hit the bottom and then you just give up. And that's not what we're trying to do. We try to pick you up, we're trying to move you higher instead of bringing yourself lower. So, unless you absolutely absolutely have to, I would not suggest for anybody to put their back to the wall in this situation and saying, you know what, if you got to eat, you got to win on your trades. That's the wrong way to do it. That's the wrong way to trade, especially for the long term is or growth. The second thing we're gonna say is that it takes time to trade through different market cycles. So we got bear markets without bull markets, we got recessions, depressions we had up, you know, growth. We have now we have pandemics that we need to deal with. We had a tweeting president that we had to deal with and uncertainty about that all the time. There's different market cycles. And so when you think about trading for a living, you are thinking about what the market is doing right now. And as I record this, the market has been moving much higher. It's been moving it artificially, it's being inflated, that's not gonna last. So right now yes, you can put your money in something and have it go up above it, you can take money out and survive up that. How long will that last? If it changes, then what are you going to do that if you don't have the skills, so you need to develop the skills of trading through a bull market, bear market sideways market really fast crazy up and down roller coaster type market and the thing is, if you are trading for a living, and you don't have a cushion, like if you don't have other sources of income, or you have to win a certain amount, and you have to push the limits, you don't have the luxury of not being in the market all the time. Actually, no, I'll say that, again, you don't have the luxury of being out of the market, when you shouldn't be in it. Because times happen when it's not a good market to be in, when things are too volatile. When they're too crazy, when there's too much unpredictability and uncertainty, those are the times when we as option sellers, need to be on the sidelines, and just watching the clown go by, right, which is watching the parade go by, wait till things calm down, and then we get back in. And that's one of the beauties of selling options is that we go on a cycle of a cycle basis of month to month basis, expiration expiration, we don't have to be in the market all the time. But if you're trading for a living, and you're doing it on a limited amount of capital, so you have to extract a certain amount every month, you have to be in the market. And that can also cause you big losses, because if you're in the market at the wrong time, or you don't know how to handle the market when it switches, then that could cause you a big gain of your chunk of your portfolio. And then again, the smaller portfolio you have, the more stress it is to make to make your nut to make your amount of expenses that you have to come up with. Right. So those are the thoughts I had. Now I have some notes here about how to actually do it, what are the steps. So you take all that I've told you into consideration, you know, plan that if you're thinking about switching to quitting your job, or if you've been laid off, and you want to trade for a living, take all that stuff into consideration. Okay, now, here are some steps that you can take number one, I want you to pick one or two strategies to focus on the ones that make the most sense to you, not 100 different ones, we're not the goal is to get as fast as we can to make our expenses. Right? The thing that works the best for you. And if you've been trading for a while, go through all of your trades. Go through all your history for the past several years, what worked for you. What makes sense to you what seems easy to you? Now's not the time for you to figure out the nuances of Elliott Wave, you can learn that later on right now we need to put money on the table, right, we need to put cash in our pocket. What is the easiest, fastest way to do that? To me, I think it's selling options. Number two, have a small amount originally, and then scale it up. So if you notice in the email, I told him, you know, not, I don't have to try to make 1000 on $100,000 account, he'll eventually he says he has eventually like 250 I'm not I don't want him to risk the whole 250 when he doesn't know what the heck he's doing. But if you can take a smaller portion of that, say 100 and make 1000 per month as a goal originally, that's 1%, that is doable. That is confidence building that is hey, I made money. I'm successful. I'm consistent. I'm profitable. That's the goal. Right. And though that's not his eventual goal, that's not a long term goal. But it is a current goal, I think you should start small, hit your goal over and over again, build up that confidence, build up that muscle memory that you know exactly how to put the trade on, what to look for, how to manage it. And then you can scale it up, you can add contracts, you can add more trades of the same strategy in different stocks or whatever. But you start small and you start hitting it and getting hits, hits after hits after hits, wins in your belt confidence, then you start scaling. So you're not going to go if your goal is 5000 a month, you're not going to you're not going to try to hit 5000 your first month. Unless you've been trading for a long time and you know exactly what you're doing. You're going to start small, you know, 1% 1000 on $100,000 account is doable. Very, very doable. Then, once you hit the 1000 Okay, great. I've done that a couple of months. Okay, now I'm gonna try 2000. Now what I can do is I can just repeat, rinse and repeat what I've already been doing, maybe with a little bit more capital, right, I can take a little bit more of a risk. And I'm not risking, hopefully, you're not risking the whole 100,000. Right, whatever strategy you're using, but you can do it with a little bit more. And so you can get to 2000 and then she can get to three and four, five. Okay, at that point, maybe think okay, five is the limit 5% a month is a is really hard to eliminate for me, I can't do it. That's when you can add more capital to the account, let it grow. And then it goes back to being easy. Okay. 1% is easy. For some people 5% is too stressful. So then you need more capital so that you're only making 1%. So now eventually, if he has $250,000 and he needs to make 5000 then all he needs is 2% if he can learn how to consistently make 2% on a smaller amount like, let's say 100,000, then when he puts in more money and he gets 250,000, he can easily make 2% on the 250. Because it's the same thing. It's the same trades, it's just using bigger knowledge. Maybe it's more spread, maybe it's more contracts, maybe it's instead of two stocks, or three stocks, this four or five stocks. But it's the same strategy, the same trading plan, the same system, just done with bigger numbers. So that's why I want you to hit small start off, and then you can add more money, or you can grow and scale from there. Number three, just like I told him, in the email, three to five hours a day of learning, of trading, and back testing. So the trading, not gonna take you long, right? I mean, yes, you're going to be sitting in front of the screen, you're gonna be watching all the numbers go up and down, and the charts and the candles and whatever you're gonna be watching, up and down, up and down the daily ticks, you move them up to CNBC, or the Fox Business or whatever, on all day, we'll be watching all that stuff, because you have nothing else better to do. Do you need any of that stuff? No. Do you need some further screen watching? No, what you really need to be doing is back testing your strategy, putting on as many trades as you can as fast as possible. And getting that experience getting that no-how figuring out what went wrong. Why did go wrong? How can I avoid that in the future. Now the learning aspect is not as hard as you think it doesn't take as much time as you obviously do. But that will not take you three to five hours a day, for months on time on some hedge, right, it takes a small amount of time to get the basics down, takes a smaller amount of time to figure out the strategy, what takes the bulk of the time is to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And that's why you have the backtest. Because right now he cannot afford to do it real money every month after month, he needs to do it right away, he needs to get experience under his belt right away. And you do that with back testing. So one of the software's that I prefer is option Explorer, it does cost some money, you can get a two week trial or trial or something like that, you know, if you're not working, you sit in front of that screen for six hours a day, five hours of it should be a back test. I mean, you do hundreds of trades in a day, if you sit there for six hours or seven hours or eight hours a day, literally hundreds, that is what you need to be doing. The other thing I have is yours, you don't want to be listening to idiots. I'm not gonna give you any names. But you only listen to people who have done what you are looking to do. Okay, because I know there are Facebook groups out there. I know there's plenty of YouTube videos and YouTube channels and whatnot, everybody tries to sell you their next course and their next prop. If they are not making money, if they don't have results that you can see, they don't have hundreds of customer success stories. Don't listen to it. Okay? Because that's going to take you down the wrong path. We need to focus, we need to dial down, fix one thing that works, and do it over and over again and learn. And you're not going to learn from a group, you'll get small pieces of advice, you might post a trade. And you'll get some people that says Oh, hey, you know, check this out and check that out. That's great, that might help you. But if you do the back testing, you'll figure that out yourself. Because you never know when you get advice from somebody online, what their experience level is, how much they know, how many trades do they put on. Because a lot of times people that are posting comments in these three groups are people that don't know anything. And they have all day to sit around and give other people advice when they're not doing anything themselves. That's the problem with free groups. Now, this fellow, luckily, is in our programs. And we have groups of people who have been through our training. And so they know our methodology. And so if he comes and post something, a question in one of our groups, he's going to get a real answer from somebody who knows what they're talking about, or from me, or one of my staff. And that is invaluable. Right? So it's amazing that he has done this already. He doesn't have to pay for it, because he's already in the program. So he's going to get that where he can take something and say, Look, this is what I'm thinking about doing. Can you critique it, and we will critique it and find out what's going right and what's going on. That is invaluable. Okay. And then the other thing I have is yours, you want to pay for quality information from somebody that you trust, and you have access to. So this kind of goes back to what I said. There's tons of things out there that you're going to see about stuff for sale. People talking about "Oh, you're gonna make a million dollars overnight". Oh, you know, you 500% Oh, we made 500 trades in a row that weren't most of it is all bull crap, unfortunately, and they get away with it. So if you're going to buy something if you don't have a course or If you don't have a program that you're already part of, I think you need to pay for quality information, you pay for something seven bucks, you pay something for 100 bucks, you're going to get what you pay for. Even unfortunately, now, some people charge you 2, 3 or 5,000, and it's junk. But if you don't know, if you're just starting out, you know, the library is a good place, books are a good place. And I would even say, I mean, this podcast, I try to be as real and as honest as I can. Other podcasts are not. So you know, I'm even hesitant to recommend listening to podcasts. YouTube videos are wolves kitchen, any idiot could put up a YouTube and put up a website. So have you figure if you're watching, or if you're going from webinar to webinar, you're gonna realize that most of them are jobs that people don't know the type, but they're really good at marketing, they're not good at trade. You know, and you got to really pay for quality information from somebody you trust, and they don't just have access to, you know, our programs, they have access to me, because that that's like super important. Right? If you cannot talk to somebody who's actually doing what they're teaching you to do, then you're on your own is no better than than a scammy YouTube video. So you really do need that access. But sometimes you have to pay a little bit more and get it. But if you can get access to a full time trader, or somebody who's doing this, somebody who's been through all the different markets, that is invaluable. And so for this fellow, I'm urging him that I want to see him on our coaching calls, I want him asking questions, I want him to post in the group and get responses from myself and the other profitable traders. And I gave him homework. You know, if he had not been part of our program, I would not be able to do that. But as a customer, it's like, dude, I want you to succeed, you showed me that you have an interest in succeeding. Now, I'm going to make you do it. Now you have access to me. So do this work. Right? And hopefully he does. And hopefully I'll be able to hold this in and help him through this. Number four, on my list of how to do it, you need a job. It's not full time job part time job, just to ease the stress, to increase your income. And to relieve the pressure on yourself. And what I would suggest, if you're in the shoes is whatever income you make, from your part time job, I would suggest you take that money and give it to your spouse, don't even keep it, don't pay your bills with it, let her handle all that. Or you just take it and give it to your spouse, say look, honey, you know, this is the money I made from my Uber-Driving. I'm gonna give it you give it to you, anything I make for my trading, I'm gonna take it out, and I'm gonna pay the bills with it. But here, I need you to have this so that you know that I'm not leaving you all alone in it, you are not in this by yourself. Because like I said earlier, you need to pay attention to that person, your spouse's mental status as well. Number five, keep doing what's working and tweak to improve your results. So maybe you're doing maybe you've tried 100 different strategies in the past, find out what's working. And when you find what's working, keep doing it. Don't go away from it, don't deviate, just do what it's working over and over and over and over and over and over. The thing that we have, as human beings, we have this tendency, if something starts working, we think that "Oh, hey, I can make this better". I can improve this. Oh, let me try it this way. Oh, what if I do this? What if I did that, that's great. You do that later. You do that after you're making money. So if you join one of my programs, and I give you a trading plan and say, Look, do this, because this works for me. I want you do it exactly like it says, only until you're profitable and consistent and making money and you have oodles of money in your billionaire, then go play with it and change it and try to fix it and make it better. Until then do what it says because it's been working. If it's not working, I'm not going to sell it. Or if I tweak it, or if I change it, because I'm doing it every day. Then I'll go ahead and change it until you look I changed it. So you don't need to worry about that's like one thing off your door but don't try to fix it. It's not broken. don't fix it. Just do it over and over again. Shake was working and just repeat. rinse, repeat. rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. You're gonna get bored on your mind. Just do it. And then number six, no gambling because you don't have the extra cash. Yes, maybe you'd love to put some money in Bitcoin because it's going to go to a million dollars. He that's wonderful right now you can't afford right now we're working on income. That's what we're talking. We need to get income up. We need to get you to a point where you're self reliant. After you have enough money, then yes, you can go buy a Rolls Royce or or a second house and do it on Airbnb or whatever you want to do. That's fine. For now, there's no gambling. There's no you know, high flying stocks. We're not buying calls or puts or whatever. We're not shorting. We're not buying Bitcoin or any other crypto or whatever that's gonna go to the moon tomorrow. We're focusing and focusing on income, doing the one or two strategies, doing them over and over and over again, trying to hit our goal, our small goal originally, and then increasing it as we show positive results. So we're not risking a lot in the beginning, over getting that experience, and we're doing it over and over and over again, and then increasing as we go. So after, you know, a couple months, if you hit your goal, increase the goal. See, if you hit it again, and increase it again, increase it again, keep going back for feedback, right? If you have access to a mentor, go back, get feedback, hey, this is what I did. This is what I do, right? What I do wrong, get some feedback from somebody who's actually doing what you want to be doing. And then just keep doing it over and over again, and scaling it. And eventually, yes, you can do this really, I don't know how long it's gonna take. But if you can put in the time, and you can do the back testing, and do hundreds and hundreds of trades, then it shouldn't take as long as you think it would. Okay, so let this be a message if you've been laid off. Or if you want to start trading for a living. Can you do it in a month? Probably not? Can you do it within a year? Yeah, I definitely think so. You know, if you're putting three to five hours a day, and it's taking you more than a year, you're doing something wrong, your time is not being spent effective. If you can put three to five hours a day or more, then yes, you can definitely do this. I have 100% faith that you could do. Now, whether it's, you know, anytime after a month or two months, or three months, up to a year or longer, I don't know, it depends on every person. If you're motivated, you'll find a way. And I think if you're listening to this podcast, you already found the way. You know, this stuff works hopefully, beaten in in your head long enough over and over again. Yeah, this stuff works. I'm doing it approve, look. Now you just got to find the motivation. You gotta find the time now obviously this guy before he said, Hey, I joined because I was interested and I liked it. But I didn't have the time because my business and my talent. Okay, great. Now the business or the work is not there anymore. So now you do it. family will still be there, family will always be there. But you're doing this for the family. Right. So that's it for this episode, guys. Remember, always trade with the odds in your favor, I hope you do never get laid off. But if you do have a backup plan in place, or start trading, and doing it in a way so that you get to quit instead of being laid off. It done your time. Don't let other people dictate to you what your end goal is, you should dictate your own. And so don't let one be the loneliest of all. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

How to be a black belt spread master. Black belt. Hiya! Like karate, right? Black Belt, that's the best belt you can get. So how can you be a spread master with a black belt? Let's talk about that. First thing we got to do, though, is go over the disclaimer, of course, trading and falls risk. It's not suitable for everybody, you can lose money, you probably will lose money. So don't raise too much. You don't want the spouse kicking out of the house. Right? Got it. Okay, so the last from the class, right? Karate Kid, the original, with Mr. Miyagi, that one rules. I love Jackie Chan. He did great. But the original Karate Kid, the original Miyagi, it was just kick ass. And I'm gonna have to tell you a little bit story here. Karate Kid. My parents actually took me to see this in the theaters. And I loved it. Right made kind of dates content your whole life, but I loved it. The original one is just a classic story of this guy. He's a little bit nerdy, he's skinny, he moves to this new town, he doesn't have any friends. He meets a girl. And then he gets picked on by this group of thugs, you know, and they know karate. And they're beating him up of over and over and over again. And then finally there's this guy's This is recluse, right? This guy who just takes him under his wing becomes like a father figure to him because he didn't have a father and teaches him how to defend himself and teaches him karate and karate is for defense. That's a very horrible, horrible accent. But, you know, that's what Mr. Miyagi teaches him. The Karate is for defense, and it's about life. And it's about meditation and being calm and peaceful. And all these things he gives him shows him how to do respect, right, how to give respect. And that's what karate is about. But the thugs, all they're talking about is no mercy, no mercy, right. karate used to win and beat in pummel, and, and destroy. And so we have the rest of the movie. And eventually, hopefully, you know, hopefully, you've seen the movie. If not go watch it. But I'm going to spoil that for you here. There's a karate tournament. And, of course, The Karate Kid wins in amazing fashion. Right? And then there's Karate Kid, part two. And so he goes to Japan, I'm not gonna tell the whole story. But that one was good, too. So if you haven't watched them, the originals, you got to go back and watch them again. And then now on Netflix, they have come out with a new series called Cobra Kai. So I guess they wanted to make more money from The Karate Kid. Right? And so they brought back all the actors. And they have a whole new series, where it continues the story. It's I think it's like 30 years in the future. 30 years have gone by since the original Karate Kid movie. And you see, all the actors have grown up, and they're all there except for of course, unfortunately, Mr. Miyagi Pat Morita, because he is unfortunately, he has passed away. But all the other actors are there. And that was I've been watching that. And it was cool. And I love the I mean, the acting is really bad. To be honest, the acting in this series is pretty bad. The story is like ehhh, you know, but I love how they showed the other side of the story. Like in The Karate Kid movie, you see everything from Daniel-san perspective. He's the kid who's just moved here how hard it is for him. You know, he's got a single mom, his mom is annoying. He's trying to make friends. But he's getting beaten up all the time. You see it from his perspective. In the in the Cobra Kai series. It starts you off. The main character is the main thug, the one that was torturing Daniel-san, and it shows you from his perspective, and he's telling the story of how this kid Daniel came to his town and messed up his life. stole his girlfriend, beat him in the tournament, made his sensei hate him, all this kind of stuff. So I loved how they showed both sides of the coin, the flip. And I mean, it was really well done. That part was really well done. Anyway, why am I telling you all this? Because after I saw the karate kid, I, of course, wanted to learn karate. Just like after I saw Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And after I saw Jaws, I didn't go swimming for years. But when I saw Karate Kid, I wanted to learn karate. So I told my parents, I want to learn karate, I'll put me in a glass looking too hot for me in class. So they did, buster, right? And so I joined a karate class. And I'm you see they have these belts. So you want to of course, you start off as a white belt, meaning you know nothing. And then you get a different color belt as you grow and you get better and better and better. And eventually you get to a black belt. And then when you get a black belt, it goes even higher. From there, you can get degrees of black belts. So I started off as a white belt, know nothing. And they started with basic stuff, right? How do you throw a punch? How do you do a kick? How do you Block a Punch? How do you block a kick? How do you block this and that and so you got four or five or 10 you know, basic moves, and you practice and that's what we did. That was the whole glass practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing practicing. Maybe you do a sparring with somebody else a little bit in very, very slow motion. But you're practicing the same moves over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Eventually, I got tired of the same moves, and I'm ready to move up. So I go to my sensei (Sensei, as your teacher) I go to my sensei and Sensei, please show me some of the moves for the next belt because I want to practice at home. And I want to get really good so that I can take the test and I can go to the next belt. And what he told me is that I already know the moves. What are you talking about, Sensei, what I found out was that the moves in karate are generally the same at all the belts. The thing is that there is more complexity at the higher levels. So what he showed me is that in slow motion, he stood in front of me, and in slow motion, he threw a punch, and I blocked it. And I was able to block it, because that's what I learned as a white belt, he did a little kick, and I blocked it. But then he did it a little bit faster. And he pulled me on my butt. Right, because I didn't know how to block it, even though I should have been able to block it. And then he moved to the side a little bit. And he punched me from the side. And I didn't know how to block it. And then he hit me from the back. And he did I don't know how to block it. And then he had, you know, he hit me with to like combination really fast. And I didn't know how to block it. Even though I knew the moves, I didn't know the combinations, I didn't have the speed to block him. So then he told me to do the same thing to him. And he used the same moves to block everything I did didn't matter how fast I did it, or what side I did it, he was using the exact same moves, the block the basic block, the basic, you know, the the basic kick and punch and all that stuff to beat me, it was just the same thing. So that was his lesson for me at the time he goes, you need to focus and work on perfecting the moves that you already know, before you go to the next level. And so he sent me back, right? And do the block do the kick Faster, faster, better, better, crisper, more, more provision. So in The Karate Kid movie, if you if you watched it you remember it you know you remember wax on wax off, wax on wax on paint the fence up and down defense up and down. Those were the moves that Mr. Miyagi was teaching Daniel-san, and he made him do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, until he got so good at these basic moves, that he was good enough to go into the tournament and fight and win. You know, it was the same moves and Mr. Miyagi, he didn't have any belts, so he didn't tell Daniel-san. Okay, now your white belt. Now your green belt. Now your Brembo may even have any moves. He was just teaching karate, or karate, I guess if you say if you say it properly. But it wasn't about going from belt to belt. It was just learning he was about learning how to do the thing. Right? So now when we talk about credit spreads, we talk about learning the trade, learning how to do it, it's about learning the thing. So if you're a basic trader, and you want to get a really, really good trader, is there extra stuff that you got to learn? No, the moves are the same. The rules are the same, the basics are the same. There's more complexity, definitely at the higher levels. It gets scarier when you're dealing with larger numbers. You know, when you're not putting 500 into a trade, but you're putting 50,000 into a trade? Yeah, you can scare the heck out of you. That's more complexity. But the work that you got to do is the same. The basics are the same, you keep doing the same thing, punch, kick, wax on, wax off, that's all the same. It's just more complexity at higher, higher levels. So you got to do the work. Right? Now you take a look at Bruce Lee, the master of karate, right, the king. He's known to say that I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 different kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Because if you focus and you excel and you expert at one particular thing, you can beat anybody else that that's not proficient. Okay, so even Bruce Lee did the same thing. The same exercise is the same, you got to master the basics. Every time I start losing money. The first thing I do is I stopped doing everything complicated. And I go back to the basics. Just take out everything, go back to the basics. That happens in everything I do, whether it's trading, or whether it's with my family, whether it's with marketing, whatever I want to do even like chess, you know, if you're if you're a good chess player, you start doing all the gambits, right, you start doing all the moves, but there might be a time when you start losing over and over and over again and you're like, I don't know what to do. If you don't know what to do, you go back to the basics, right, go back to the beginning. And then you build up again, slowly, slowly, slowly. So just like in karate, just like in chess, just like in anything else that you want to learn. You got to do the work. If you want to be a master If you want to be a credit spread Master, and that's what I want you to be in this program, that's the reason for this program, you got to put in the work. And that's why we do it over and over and over and over and over. And yes, it can get methodical, it can get boring. But that's how you become a master. That is how you become a credit spread black belt by doing the same move 1000 times 10,000 times, being able to put on a trade in your sleep, being able to have the rules ingrained in your brain so that you can recite them. And then eventually, I want you to be so good that you can teach other people, you can teach your kids, you can teach your family, you can teach your friends, your co-workers, you can teach them how to do this stuff. That's how good I want you to be a black belt, credit spread master. That's the point of this program. That's where I want you to be at the end of the program. And we're going to do it by putting in the work. So if you're with me, hey, yeah, we're gonna do it. We're gonna get you there. That's without any doubt in my mind that I can get you there. You have to put in the work. And you already know what that means, right? So if you're ready, let's do this. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Howdy, howdy, howdy, passive traders. This is Alan Sama, back with another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. First of all, I want to say thank you again, for listening, thank you for spending the time with me wonderful to be in your ear. And if you're one of our power listeners, I'm gonna talk to a fellow this week, Matt, who said he has listened to every episode three times. So, Matt, thank you for being a power listener. And for those of you who would like to help the podcast or who have already done it, by leaving a rating and review, I totally, totally appreciate it, it really helps us get the word out there. And if you have not done so, I would please admonish you Please, I'm asking you nicely. If you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts, or it was Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to him, just please leave a review and let us know how we're doing. I love to read them. And we love to, you know, check them out. So they're a lot of fun. Anyway, this episode is called how I invest. So I want to do two things on this episode. First of all, there's a book that just came out called “How I invest my money”. And so I'm going to give you a review of this book, I just finished it. And then secondly, I often very often get asked how I invest my money and how I separate my accounts and what I do with my money. And so I'm going to be sharing that as well at the end first the review then, and then I'll tell you what I'm doing. So that's going to be fun. So stay tuned for that. First of all, there's a guy, Josh Brown, he is almost always on CNBC sees a lot on NBC, either money manager, and he's got a blog, he's pretty popular, he shows up in all of the financial media, and they interview him and stuff. And I like him, you know, he makes a lot of sense the stuff he talks about whenever he gives advice, or whenever he says things, it's always simplified. So it's not doesn't use a lot of Wall Street jargon and stuff. But he looks out and he seems like he's looking at that particular, whatever they're talking about. He's looking at it from the eyes of an individual, you know, somebody who's working and who's given their money and trying to make sense of the stock market and stuff. And so, you know, I think that I kind of do the same. I think that's something that I have, where I can take complicated issues and boil them down and make them really simple to understand and explain them. So I think he does that as well. So it's really great. So one of the things I was watching on CNBC, and the host of the show mentioned that this guy, Josh has a new book out, and it's called, “How I Invest My Money”. And like, Okay, I need to get that. So I got it right away. And, you know, when I got the book, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna be excited, because you know, this guy smart, he's gonna tell me what he's doing with his money. And then when I actually got the book, I got even more excited, because it's not just one guy, it's 25 different people who are money managers, and they're all explaining how they invest their own personal capital. So I'm going to read the jacket, the back cover, it says the world of investing normally sees experts telling us the right way to manage our money. How often do these experts pull back the curtain and tell us how they invest their own money? Never. How I invest my money changes that, in this unprecedented collection 25 financial experts share how they navigate markets with their own capital. Sounds like oh, this is exciting. 25 people, you know, and I started reading about some of these people in the book. And they're like, wow, they're all money managers. They all some pretty smart from really good institutions, or, you know, they went to good colleges. They have been on CNBC, and they have been on Wall Street Journal, and they've been on Barron's and Reuters and interviewed all these places. Some of them have written books, they have all these letters after their name. So CP, FP, and XYZ and ABC and all these different letters that are supposed to mean something. So as your Oh, I'm really excited. So I read the book, and I will tell you on a score of one to five, you know, like on Amazon, one to five stars, I'm going to give it a one. I don't think you should waste your time or your money on this one. You can get it zero probably get zero, but I think one is good. Even if you can give it here. I think I'm still doing a one. Because the people did seem like they were honestly and openly talking about their own investments. Is that harsh? I don't know. I mean, that's my opinion. And I am saying that not because they're not nice people, not because they, you know, don't know what they're doing. But these people are holding themselves out as financial experts. Right? They are even saying this 25 financial experts. That's what it says on the back of the book. And they go on TV and they go on the radio, and they go on articles and newspapers and blogs and they tell people what to do as financial experts, not to me, an expert is not somebody who's struggling, but it is somebody who has already reached the goal that I want to get to. And that can help me - they've already reached the mountaintop. You know, and they're putting their hand out and saying here, hold my hand, I'll pull you up. I don't want to hire an expert that is five levels below me. Does that make sense? Especially when it comes to money management. Now, like I said, all these people have degrees, they all have appeared on TV and magazine. Many of them have gotten awards, like the 40, under 40 Award in their financial, whatever, you know, it's a financial money manager or 40, under 40 in financial management. That means they've been managing money for around 10 years, which is we've been in a bull market for 10 years. So these experts have never even traded or invested or manage money in a bear market - in a really tough market. You know, we had Corona, we had the March, we're on a bear market, but that doesn't really count. Good. we bounced right up in a month. Right. None of these people even remember the.com bubble. They weren't I don't know, they were like, what, eight years old, the.com bubble, they don't remember the S&L scandal in the 80s and how that happened. They don't remember what happened when, in the 70s. When inflation was super sky high, maybe they read books about it, you know. But to me, that's not really an expert, they don't have the experience to back it up. Now, I'm not that old. I'm 44. So I'm a little bit older than some of these people. But I do remember what it was like trading my own money, through the Great Recession, not even play with other people's money. That was my own money, what was on the line. These people, they don't play with their own money, they risk your mind. Because they're managers. They're not investors, they're not traders. They're not wealth creators, right? So if you're looking for really great financial advice or strategies, this is not the book, I would say that out of all these financial these 25 experts, I would say only three of them are actually really wealthy. Three of them could be defined to me as a financial expert, someone who is wealthy, and by wealthy, I mean that they could stop working today, and they have enough income and assets so that they don't have to work for the rest of their lives. That is well, that, to me is the goal. The goal is not for me to retire at 70 years old, and hope the money lasts for the rest of my life. That's the goal for these people. For most of these people, that's what they help people do. That's not the kind of expert I was expecting. So that's why I'm a little ticked, you know, out of the three in the book that are really wealthy, one of them got lucky with venture capital. He has a management company, where he is a partner in the money management company. He doesn't do any of the money management. He is a partner, he made an investment in a money management company. But he's really a venture capitalist, the second guy, he made all of his money in real estate, he admits it. He's like, Yeah, I don't do this. He has another, you know, he's a partner in a money management company. And that's how they made it into the book. But he made all his money in real estate. So he wouldn't know how to manage money. I mean, I don't think you should hold yourself out as an expert until you've actually achieved the thing that you're an expert in. Right? If you're a wealth advisor, you got to have some wealth, in order to be a frickin advisor about wealth. The one thing that all these people said in the book is that almost all of them own their own business, all of them own their own business. And for them, that is their largest investment and their largest asset. And that's really cool. That's great. You're a small business owner, or somebody, they're doing really well. So it's a medium business owner. So these folks, they make money by managing other people's money. They don't make it by investing, or trading. They spend most of their time looking for new clients. And that's probably why they agreed to be in the book for the exposure. You know, it's like being on TV, they get exposure, people see them and like, Oh, this person sounds smart. Maybe I should call them up and see if they can take care of money. So most of these people spend their time looking for exposure, looking to do marketing, looking to make new clients, they need more clients, so that they can have more assets to manage, so they can make more money. And then when they get a client, what do they do? Do they manage the money? Do they trade it invested? Do they come up with a real good plan? Well, they try to come up with a plan, but then they put the money in investments that are managed by others. So they're like the middleman. And that's not definitely not the advisor that I would want. You know, if I want a goal, if I have a goal and say, Hey, I need to get to this location. I wanted to get advice and directions from a person who's already been there before. Who knows the pitfalls, who's been there, done it, hopefully multiple times. That's the kind of person I want to give me directions and leading the way. I'll follow that person. Right. There was one girl on this, bless her heart. She is a financial expert, like everybody else in the book, you know, giving advice to everybody. And then she admits that she is Saving money in a savings account or bank hoping that when she turns 40, she'll be able to afford a trip to Hawaii. That's not what I was expecting when they say financial expert. You know, somebody who can't afford a trip to Hawaii doesn't really have total - what's the word? You know, the total control of their finances? You're not there yet. I mean, you're working hard, you're struggling. There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. That's awesome. You know, save that money. And go, or I mean, if you're listening to this, I got some frequent flyer miles, maybe just just reach out to me, I'll give you I'll send you a new trip on your flight to Hawaii. Really, please. It just broke my heart when I read that. I was like, man, but you know, I mean, they say that money management. The whole business of money management is where people that drive Toyota's are giving advice to people who own Rolls Royces. And it's true. 100% true. I mean, that is why the retirement situation is country's so screwed up. I mean, you got the blind leading the blind. And these people are the ones in this book. They're not average money managers. They're the top of the class, the cream of the crop, right? They won all the awards. Imagine if you don't have one of these money managers, and you just have an average money manager. Ouch, that's really sad. You know, you get some guy from Edward Jones or Ameriprise or something like that, Oh, my goodness, that's painful. But what the the co author of the book and I said, you know, Josh Brown is listed as the author. But he does, he does have a co author and it does seem that the book was done by the co author, Josh brown probably just wrote one little section. But it does look that the co author did hold the work and got all these information from all these people. You know, at the end, he tells you what you should take away from the book. And he says that these are people just like you and me, they have struggled, you know, they have to go through life, just like all of us. And that the important thing is not the money and money is not that important. But the other things that we value is the most important thing in life. And that's great. That's great advice. I love that advice. that money's not that important. But if it was coming from a life coach, that would make a lot more sense. Maybe a spiritual advisor, you know, that would make a lot more sense. Not from a wealth advisor. Okay, not from someone who's managed or entrusted to manage and grow my financial assets. Does that make sense? It's kind of like the doctor, you know, telling you Well, you know, getting healthy. I know, that's my job getting you healthy and keeping you healthy. But that's not the most important thing. Yeah, the most important thing is spending time with your family. Yeah, Doc, I know that. But your job is to keep me healthy. Can you do your job or not? Or do I need to go find another doctor? Same thing with these guys. If you're not wealthy as an advisor, how are you going to make anybody else?  Well, you can't. And that's why most of them are putting their money in like passive investments, not passive trading, but passive as in index funds. And they say that I go, I'm a firm believer in index funds from people give me money, I put it in an ETF. People give money, I put it in a bond fund, they can do that on their own. Why do they need you, Mister financial expert? You know, Vanguard is open anybody, anybody can open an account, the vanguard put their money away. And if they don't want to invest, or they don't want to trade or they don't care, they don't know anything about the market didn't want to know, then that's the great place, they should go put it in Vanguard and they don't need a money manager charging them fees, for no reason. I mean, after reading this book, it really makes me value what we are doing here at Option, Genius, teaching people about passive trading. And how I mean, it's actually making a difference in people's lives. I mentioned earlier that I talked to a fellow named Matt earlier. And this guy, super nice guy works at Costco drives a forklift. I mean, he's a hard working guy, right. But he spent the last year learning how to trade options. Why? Because it can make a difference in his life. He's at the point now where he made $500 in a month by selling options. And it blew his mind. That $500 opened up a whole new world gave him hope, hope that other financial experts are not providing. So we don't have just, you know, passive trading is not a book. It's not just a couple of words. It's not just a trademark. It's an actual movement. And we are changing people's lives. After reading all this and looking at, you know what these people are doing? I mean, I think it might be time for me to start a money management firm, because people need better choices. It might just be time for me to do that. You know, nobody else is stepping up. Me and might as well do it, then.I don't know. Anyway, so that's the book. Don't get it. Don't waste your time. Let's get on to me, right? How I invest. This is a question that I get asked all the time. People like, Hey, you know, you're telling us to do this and do that. And do you actually do all this stuff? Of course, I do all this stuff, what am I gonna tell you do something I don't do myself, right. So a few episodes ago, I did a show on scaling. I talked about vertical scaling, horizontal scaling. And I explained about a mistake I made. I don't know if it was a mistake. But it was just a way my situation was where I started off with several different trading accounts. Many of them were retirement accounts. But because of that, they were very small. So I had several simple small accounts. When you have small accounts, it's harder to have 100 shares, so that you can actually go and sell covered calls or naked puts, right, you can still do spreads, you're on a few shares. But if you take all that money, put it together one account, it's easier to make you grow. But that's my situation. It is what it is, right? So I'll tell you right now, I have currently 14 different accounts that I manage directly, like our retirement accounts. So these are, I have a Roth IRA, my wife has one, my three kids have a Roth IRA, I don't qualify, I make too much to put money in the Roth IRA. So now I have an open regular IRA accounts for me in my life. So that's what four or 567 accounts right there. And then I have several Sep accounts that I have from three different companies that I worked at, probably should consolidate, those just haven't gotten around to it. So 10 accounts are just retirement accounts. And then I also have an HSA account that I can manage. We have other accounts that I just oversee, like the kids 529 plans, I don't get to manage that. So that's fine. I also have Well, let me tell you what to do in the retirement accounts. And retirement accounts is just passive trading, straight up high quality stocks that pay dividends. Dividends are reinvested automatically, you know, I just you go into your account, you check the box and say, Yes, I want dividends reinvested automatically, you don't want to deal with it. And then I sell options on these stocks for extra yield. So whether it's covered calls or naked puts, sometimes even credit spreads once in a while, but in retirement accounts, it's basically plain vanilla, simple, passive trading, okay. And these accounts have been growing and growing and growing up to the point where, you know, there's a lot of money in these accounts. And maybe I need to be diversified, right? less money in the stock market. In addition to these, I also have two accounts where I trade oil options exclusively. So I enjoy trading oil options. It is one of the programs that we offer. And so these two accounts are for that one's a small one that I use in our class. And then the other one's a larger one, I also have a regular trading account that I use for my membership trades. So we have three memberships at option genius that you can join, we give trades, our loads, we have option genius, the advisory, we have Simon says options, and weekly trading system, all of those give trades every month. So I do every single one of those trades in my own account with real money. You know, basically, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, so I give you a losing trade, you know, I lost money on it, too. I think there's only fair, unlike a lot of other gurus and whatnot that you know, they don't really trade, I'm actually doing the trade. And then I have a trading account, that is a much larger trading account that I'm putting more money into. So I want that one to really, really grow. And then in addition to that, I have another trading account, that is a managed account. So it's friend’s, I'm managing that account, and I have complete access to do whatever I want in that account. All right. In addition to that, I do have partnership in a real estate investment company. So that is basically me and my friend, a friend of ours, a friend of mine, actually sorry. And what he does is he does the work, I put up the money. So he goes and he finds houses that are beaten up broken down, and he'll buy them, fix them and then flip them. And then now we're adding rentals to that. So if we don't sell the property right away, then we will rent the house out. And now we're generating passive income from the rental of the houses as well. Secondly, in real estate, I have an investment in a land fund. So this is a friend of mine. He's been in real estate for over a decade, maybe two decades now, the last four years, he's been doing something that he calls, it's called land flipping, but something similar to that where he goes out and he will buy huge amounts of acreage of raw land. So maybe 200 300 acres, you'll negotiate it by that and then he will subdivide it into small tracks. So like 10 acres each, like a little Ranch, and then he will sell those to individuals. So he takes you know, he goes out and buys a whole big thing and cuts it up into little pieces and then sells those little pieces off and he can double or triple his money every time he does. So he's been doing really, really well the last few years and then he decided to You know what, he doesn't have enough money to make it grow really big. So he started a fund in order to get money from other investors, so that he can do really, really bigger deals. You know, so instead of doing like a million dollar deal or $2 million, he and now you do $5 million deal. So he raised the money for that I invested in there, he pays me 50% a year, that's a good investment.  I don’t have to do anything, I'm diversified. He's gonna pay that money, because that's what he has agreed to. And then, you know, is it risky to invest in a fund for somebody else, it's somebody else's managing? I think it is, you know, you got to always have the mindset of what could go wrong. and in this situation, I gave him the money because A, I know this guy, I've known him for a long time, that doesn't mean he can't, you know, rip me off and take the money and run. But B, this guy is a very meticulous person. So he looks at all the numbers, he's got spreadsheets for everything he knows down to the penny, what his net worth is. And he tracks it all the time. And so he is very careful about every single penny that he spends, and what the fund spends. And so I trust him, he's been a good friend. And he's very meticulous, exactly the way I would want somebody to be managing money to be. And he showed me the results that he's been doing. He's been doing amazing. He showed me the numbers, little black and white Look, here's what we're doing. We just ordered more. And so the money's been in there for a couple years now. And he's been doing amazing. So he makes a lot more he pays 15%. I'm happy with it. I also have investments in cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin that's been doing well, I want to buy more, if it comes back down, right now, it's pretty high. But eventually, I think long term is going to go much higher. So I have that. And then I do have ownership in some small businesses. So I like to help people that are looking to start up their own business. And so if they have a good idea, maybe if they have some experience, people have come to me and say, Hey, this is my idea, this is what I want to do. And I love marketing. That's my thing. You know, I enjoy trading a lot. But I really enjoy marketing, and psychology. So I tell them, okay, I'll invest with you, I'll give you some money, you're going to run the business. And I'm going to help with marketing. And so that's what I did with my other friend with the real estate investment company, he came to me and said, Hey, I would like to start flipping houses, but I don't have the money. Okay, I could put up the money, we'll do have an app, you do the work, I'll put up the money. So that's I have other businesses that I am also invested in, and I get income from there. So the other question that I often get, so that's how I've invested my money. That's what the different things we have. The question I get is, Alan, do you actually make money from trading? Or do you get it from your company? Option Genius? Well, it's a tricky question, because I do both. Right, option genius is growing, and it's doing well, it's helping people. And the only reason that we're growing is because we're helping people. And I believe that our prices are relatively cheap compared to what other people are charging for inferior information. And so what we're doing well, do I take out the money from my training accounts to live off of? Yes, and no, if you go back to the beginning episodes, I talked about the five finger strategy where you get to five different sources of income, so that if anyone gets cut off, you know, you're still okay, you got the four other income sources, and then the fifth one hopefully, will grow back. The other thing you can do when you have that is that if one of them is doing really, really well, you don't have to take the money out. So my trading account, the last several years, have been doing amazingly well, last year was a record breaking year. So I'm just letting the money sit in there and grow and grow and grow. And I don't need to take it out to live. Because I have the other sources. It wasn't always like that, in the beginning, I was living off the trading. Now. I just live off whatever cash flows coming in. If I don't need to take the money out of the trading accounts, I could let them grow. If the stock market starts dropping, then yeah, I'm gonna take that money out, I'm gonna live off that money. I'm gonna take it out and use it. That's fine. But if something is growing, like if I have a new business that I invest in, right, and it starts doing well, I don't want to take that money out. I want that money to be reinvested in the business so that the business continues to grow. It doesn't make a lot of sense to take, oh, yeah, I need you know, I own 50% of this business around 25% of this, I want my money out, I want to, you know, if we made X dollars every month, I want 25% of that. That's not going to help the business grow. You can do that technically, Yes, fine. If you need to you do it. But if you don't have to, that doesn't make any sense. Reinvest the money back in to whatever is working, let it grow. Because what I've seen is that there are seasons, you know, I've talked about the waves. Things are going to be going really, really good. And then they're going to not be going good. And they're going to go down and they're going to get worse and I Oh my god, I can't get any worse, and then that's when things start getting better. So while things are going good, you got to keep your floor your foot to the pedal foot to the floor, whatever, put the pedal to the floor, there we go, put the pedal to the floor, what things are going good. And then when they stop, when they slow down, that's when you can reevaluate and be like, Alright, what am I gonna do? And that's when you take the money out. So it's really a tricky question, hopefully, you know, for being as open as I can. Hopefully, this helps you. And you know, in the beginning, everybody's not going to have this much, you're not going to have all that it's taken me a while several years to get to this point, you know, where I have so many different accounts and the investments in real estate and investment in other companies and the investment, other investments in whatever. So it does take a while. Don't think that you're going to get there right away in the beginning is just pay. Let me find one strategy that works. Let me start generating some cash. And if you need the money, you can take it out. If you already retired. There's no reason to make that count grow. Right? Whatever you make, take it out, take it out, enjoy it. But if you're like my friend Matt, you know who's still in his 40s he's still working. He's paying 500 bucks a month from auctions. Put that money back in your account, leave it there, keep it growing, keep it growing. Let the compound interest grow, and let it compound your account into tons and tons of money exponential growth. So that's my two cents for this episode. Hope you found it valuable. And remember, always trade with the odds in your favor. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Passive traders. Let me welcome you to 2021. One of the resolutions this year was that I was going to have a podcast episode every week. But this is the first episode of The New Year. And you are probably listening to this in February, which means I am behind, I apologize, I'm going to do my best to make it up and catch up and have at least one episode every week, if not more, depending on what's going on in the markets and whatever lessons I need to impart. So hopefully, we'll be able to take care of that and catch up. I wanted to say thank you for having a wonderful 2020. Corona aside, you know, that impacted everyone's lives to some degree, those of you who lost people, I'm greatly sorry, and my condolences. But when you look at the market and overall economy, not the economy, but the stock market economy and the stock market are two different things. We learned that in 2020, the returns and the investments that we made in the markets and our options trades did amazingly well. Amazingly, amazingly, well, I don't know if we're gonna have another year like that anytime soon. Passive trading, just keep but all of the strategies worked amazingly well. We have students that didn't have a losing trade all year, as hard as that to believe. You know, I know I had losing trades, but they showed me their results. And it's like, no losing trades the entire year, and they're doing fantastic. And they've continued to 2021. In this episode, I did want to talk about what we can expect in 2021, and how we can make money from it. So, you know, 2021 started relatively calm. We didn't have any issues with the inauguration, Biden took control, and Trump left peacefully, no big deals, no rights, no, cool, no, nothing big. I mean, we have a little issue at the Capitol for a day. And those guys were beaten back and they left. And now there's investigations and all that going on. But, you know, the government seems to be running smoothly. The Democrats do have control of the Senate and the House and the Senate, they have a 5050 with the tiebreaker. So they can get more stuff passed, but they don't have complete control, because a lot of issues, they do need 60 votes in the Senate. So they're gonna have to get all of their dems to vote in that favor, and then they'll have to have 10 Republicans to vote for them. So that's probably not going to be an easy thing for them, that's gonna keep a damper on things, meaning that they don't get to pass every single thing that they want to pass, which is a good thing. Right? I think when it comes to politics, the less laws they pass, the better the last day and a few of the better. And I will agree with Trump on that, that every time they pass a law, they should take out a loan. No. But it is what it is. And as soon as long as we have, you know, one, either the House or the Senate in one control, and the other party controls the other one, that's fine, that's great, it works best. And the market does the best in those and people are normally happier. When you have both of them being controlled by one party, things can get really out of control. The biggest thing for us is the Fed, the Fed continues to keep saying that they're going to keep rates at zero, they're waiting for inflation to come up. And they're expecting more and more stimulus from the government. So as long as the rates are at zero, as long as the Fed is continuing to pump money, markets are going to continue to move higher. as they've done the last several years, we've had a very fed induced bull market that has just pushed stocks higher and higher and higher. And we're probably going to continue higher. That doesn't mean that they can't go down. In the meantime, we could easily have a 10% correction, we normally get those once a year. easily. We can have overdue for one soon. Does that mean it's time to bail? No, maybe you take some profits. And then if it comes down, then maybe you get back in, you buy the dip, because as long as offense keeping rates too low, it doesn't make any sense for why the market will not go up. We also have the democrats and Biden pushing for more stimulus and more unemployment coming. So that's going to go towards people that are sitting at home and a lot of these youngsters have decided to put their unemployment checks and their stimulus checks and go gamble in the stock market. And so we have a lot of speculation, a lot of pumping of stocks, like what they used to do and the penny stocks really pump and dump that's going on right now. With GameStop and AMC and all these other stocks that are just jumping up for no reason. The beaten up names like those, they are going to continue to be volatile. You know, don't expect similar things in other companies to cruise lines, airlines, all those companies. If there is a small chance, you know that a beat company or company is about to go out of business is going to turn around or have some good news, there's going to be somebody to pilot in there, and then they're going to promote it and say, Hey, this is great good buy this, buy this, buy this, and then the stock will rally. So just keep an eye out for that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, necessarily, it's part of the way the market works, of course, over corrections or whatnot, it's fine. As long as the hedge funds don't get killed, I'm happy. Or if they do get killed, I'm still happy. The only time I'm not happy is when they get killed, and they have to dump all their stock, which leads to a few down days in the stock market. A lot of times in the history, you know, financial news doesn't cover it. But you know, if the market goes down three or 4% 5%, in a couple of weeks, or in one week, especially, it's because there was some very large player that blew up. And they had to sell everything in order to satisfy their margin calls that might be going on right now as we speak. Market was down today. And it might be because of that. So we'll see. Now, what's going to do well in 2020. Right, let me take a look at the agenda for Mr. Biden, the environmental names should continue to do well. So who is that? Well, the electric companies, the companies, anything related to electric power, wind power, solar power, and all of the solar names. So there is a ETF called Tam ta n, which covers them, I own that. It's done amazingly well in 2020. And I expect it to continue to go up as long as Biden is pumping more federal money into alternative energy. I believe the cannabis companies are also going to be doing the marijuana companies, you know, they haven't done well, that launch for the past few years. But the democrats are more favorable towards marijuana and making it legal. Maybe there's a push to make it legal nationwide, I don't know, we'll see. I don't know if they have the votes to approve that or get it passed. But they'll probably be relaxing some laws and make it easier for these companies to do something. So that's definitely gonna, if anything changes in that regard, these companies are just gonna shoot up super high. Infrastructure companies are also going to be doing well. You know, the companies that build the roads, pipelines, all that kind of stuff. Caterpillar is one united rentals. Another one, that's a good quick way to get jobs and people back to work is to start building stuff, looking at building homebuilders and construction companies going to continue to do well, home builders, usually they stay in the suburbs. And that's where everybody's moving to, there is a shortage of homes in the suburbs. And so they are doing really, really well, lumber prices are through the roof. Right. But that's because there's so much demand. And with rates, so low, people are going to continue to be moving to the suburbs, people are leaving California, they're leaving Texas, they're leaving all these states that have very high taxes, and they're moving to places like Florida and Texas and Tennessee, which have zero state tax, and land is plentiful, and there are plenty of cheap properties here. So if you've been thinking about moving to Texas, come on down water, fine. It's hot as hell. But other than that, you know, if the mosquitoes don't get you, you'll be fine. What's gonna suffer is I believe the rates. So if you have a read, it's probably not going to do well probably going to drop and there might even cut the rates or the dividends. Office Building rates aren't going to suffer. Urban Development rates are going to suffer people, you know, reach that focus on properties inside major cities. And the malls are going to continue to do poorly. I just went to one of the biggest malls in Texas are not Texas, but in Houston. And there was nobody there. Weekends are pretty busy. Because we have a lot of people coming in from Mexico to Houston. But with Corona, they've closed the board on again. And so there's less, there's still people coming. But there's less weekday man places dead. There was nobody there. I don't know how they're paying rent. But those are going to suffer the stocks that shot up in 2020. In the work at home stocks, I believe they are going to suffer because they're they're going to be tapped out. There's not that much more demand for something like a DocuSign. And most people that were going to start a Shopify store or you know, something like that they've already done, and they're going to realize that it's harder than it looks. And they're probably going to lose customers because people are going to quit, you know, when they were all excited. And yeah, I'm going to work at home. I'm going to open my own online business and I'm going to go open a Shopify store. Okay, great. And then it takes a few months for you to realize that it's not that easy, and Shopify is expensive, so I'm gonna shut this down. So I think Shopify and DocuSign and those types of companies will do that, or do poorly, not as well, not for me, I guess, but not as well as it did and so the stocks are not going to rise. The unknown. Really healthcare, healthcare is an unknown. We don't know how they're going to react. Some of them are going to do well because of the vaccine rollouts. Others are not because there's a shortage in Drugs, there's a shortage in pills. And so if they can't sell their pills, and they're not going to make a lot of money, also oil companies, that's a strange one, right? oil companies are unknown. Yeah, because oil is trending higher, oil dropped considerably. And then since the drop, it's been going back over, it's up to 60. And at $60 a barrel, a lot of oil companies, they make money. So oil companies, I think will do well, better than they did last year. Even with the headwinds, the reopening trade itself, like I said, I think that's going to continue to suffer. And the reopening trade is basically cruise lines, airlines travel company, you know, entertainment places, all those places are going to continue to suffer, because Corona is not going away. We having the vaccine rollout, that's fine. But Corona itself is not going to go away. And the new variants and the new strains that are coming are coming fast and furious. It's not just one Corona, it's several Corona and then you're having there's one from South America, there's one from Brazil, there's one from the UK, and then who knows, we might have some of our own. So yes, the drug companies and the makers of the vaccines are gonna have to stay on top of this. And probably, they're probably going to start changing the vaccine and make us take more than one next. So that's going to be a very interesting scenario where, you know, oh, you have the vaccine from this company. Okay, great. Well, now you gotta go and get it from this company, too, because this one doesn't cover from that. And it doesn't cover that it's going to be, we're not out of the woods yet. Overall, though, it's still a stock pickers market. I've said that last year, I said it over and over again, every stock did not do good. The markets themselves overall did well, because they were carried by certain stocks, every stock not too well. It's going to be contained, some stocks are gonna be trending higher, some stocks are going to be in the toilet, some stocks are just gonna be going sideways, and some are gonna go up, and then they're gonna go down and they go up, and then most of them should rise until the Fed takes away the Punchbowl. Until the Fed starts making comments, they start changing. When they have their, you know, their meetings and their posts and their speeches, when they start changing their vocabulary. That's when things are going to go south. And if the market gets spooked, and if they think that the Fed is gonna start raising rates, as soon as that idea takes shape, we're gonna go straight down, and it might be more than 20%. So I'm gonna be very afraid, because this move higher has been really, really extended. Probably never liked this anything happened before. And everybody's talking about, oh, are we in a bubble in a bubble in a bubble? Well, if you're talking about a bubble, then you might be in a bubble, right. And it's an artificial bubble created by the Fed, and they know it, and they're looking for it, and they're waiting for inflation to increase while inflation is already here. Right? Well, prices are up food prices are up, I don't know what the hell they're looking for, or why they haven't noticed it. But they're gonna see it, they're looking at unemployment, you know, unemployment is still there, because of the virus unemployment, it's gonna stay there for a while. So I don't know where this goes, I don't know, if they're gonna be able to have a smooth landing. The first time they had QE. And after all that great depression, Great Recession stuff. Janet Yellen was in charge of the Fed, and they kind of had a smooth landing, you know, they were doing a lot of quantitative easing, but then they started taking it away taking away, she's now in charge of the Treasury, which might be a good thing, because she's had experience with this. And she might be able to help the Fed, if there are any issues. So that's positive. But if we see something like that, then definitely I believe the market is going to tank. And so until then, we're free to enjoy the spoils and have the market go up. When that happens, put some hedges on very, very quickly, get out of your, your bullish trades, lower the low, cut back on some of your positions, and then just wait and see what happens. And eventually things will recover. And we will continue to be selling options, our positions. And we will continue to do well. We just might have some hiccups this year coming up. So beware of those, you know, expect, expect the hiccup don't expect to be making money every single month. Expect hiccups to come. And that will keep you on guard and vigilant. Now, that's it for my 2021 promotion or  predictions. I do want to thank everybody that turned out and supported us for the live event that we had a couple weeks ago in January. It was amazing. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of people show up. It went off beautifully. I was you know, nervous and scared and everything went wonderfully well. I mean, the second day in the morning, before we got started, we actually lost our internet in the office. That kind of freaked us out. We're like oh no internet. But then, you know, five minutes later it hopped back on and we were able to start off without a hitch so that was wonderful. We got overwhelmingly positive reviews and comments from everyone that attended. So thank you so much. Thank you for that. I really appreciate And people have been asking, when's the next one? When's the next one? I don't know. So far, I don't have plans for our next one for high probability trading that we did. But I do think that I would like to do one for futures options. So, you know, maybe we'll do a one day, this time, basically cover futures options, and why they're important, why you should be looking at those as a good way to diversify away from stock options, you don't have to leave completely, but I believe there's a lot of that's the new untapped market. And so, you know, a lot of speculators and stuff are really coming in to the stock market game. But in the futures market, it's wide open. And we just have to go in and take advantage of it. So I think I'm going to do a one day live event training on futures options and how to trade them and what to look for, and the differences and the pros and cons and all that stuff, how to get approved and whatnot. So if you're interested in that, please let us know. Send us an email help@optiongenius.com. We'll put you on a waiting list. We don't have one now, but we'll put you on it. And we'll let you know when that comes. In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing year. Merry, merry, happy new year to you and your family. I hope you have another great year. You know, stay vigilant in terms of trading wise it should be in good year, but it might be a little bit Rocky. Other than that, I'll be here. So if you have any questions, you can always email me and we will trade it together. All right. Take care and remember to trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

It's time to get real. This is gonna be the last episode of 2020. We're recording this in early December of 2020, we're going to get it out to the last week. And it's been quite a year. Definitely. And who knows what's gonna happen next year, we never expected all this stuff to happen this year. Hopefully, it's been a good year for you. It's been an amazing year. For those of us who have been in the markets and long markets, and long stocks. It's been incredible. It's amazing. You can't go online and not run into somebody posting how much money they're making, just buying calls, a lot of people are gambling, a lot of people are gambling, that doesn't mean passive traders have not done really well at all, we've done amazingly well. And, you know, the numbers are just astounding to me, as I am on this journey with you, you know, I have enough that the income from my investments allows me to do whatever I want. But it's not billionaire status. And so, you know, as the accounts grow, as the numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger, I'm having a hard time mentally focusing and realizing like, oh, wow, what the heck is going on, it's just keeps increasing, increasing. So I'm facing that issue. But I know a lot of you are facing several different issues. So what I want to know and I want you to focus on is 2020 happened, things happened. Market was the way it was COVID, Corona, whatever you want to call it, market shut down a lot of job losses, there were stimulus fed everything. 2021 is gonna be a way different year. And it's nobody knows what to expect. But it's going to be different. It's gonna be different from this year, vaccines coming soon, hopefully, who knows. And things will get back to normal in terms of people going out and traveling, some of the economy will come back a lot of the economy's not going to come back. How are you going to play it? What are you going to do differently? One of the things that we are doing is in the first week of January, we're having our first ever event. So a live event, it's going to be two days, January 8, and 9th. And I want to invite you to come hang out with me. Let's talk, let's learn, let's trade let's train, please go to optiongenius.com/live to get all the details. Go ahead, check it out, see what we have, we got some guest speakers coming. Got a lot of great content of how to take you to the next level. Wherever you had now, wherever you were, how to get you to the next level. What skills do you need? What do you need to overcome? What's stopping you break through all the boundaries? Make your goals say hey, this is what I want. This is where I'm now. How do I get there? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang? What are the steps 1234. And we're gonna just knock it out. So we're gonna be asking questions when we talking live, there's an opportunity for you to be one on one with me as well. We're gonna have some hot seats, you know, bring people on say, all right, show me Let's go. Let's diagnose it. This is some coaching right right now. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Please, if you can't make it, there's a you can get the recordings. So optiongenius.com/live, I am very, very, very nervous. To be honest with you, and seriously, like, you know, I've told my team like, Hey, we're doing this, but in my mind, I'm like, oh, man, do I really have to do this? Or do I want to do this, but we have so many people on the announcement list. And so we're like, yep, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's plan it. You know, it's not going to be a pitch fest. We got speakers, but they're not selling anything not gonna be having, you know, “buy this product and buy” this product and buy this product. No, none of that stuff is just real live learning, trading, working in like a workshop type event. So I hope to see you there. It would be amazing to show your support. If the podcast has helped you in any way. It would be nice if you came in just gave me some moral support and be like, yeah, you're doing great, good job. We love you or whatever. You don't have to love me but you know what I mean? You know, it's the introvert in me talking. It's the the lack of confidence, I guess in front of getting up in front of people and being like okay on the spot. Let's just talk because it's This podcast is like me, I'm just sitting here. Nobody's watching me. I'm just recording this. I know what to say. And I can say it. But live is a totally different story. You know, you mess up. There's everybody watching you “Oh, no what I do now? Oh, anyway, but it's time to get real. You know, we need to get to the next level a year of our life has gone by, and we've been cooped up. So it felt a lot longer than normal. But how closer are you to your goals? How close are you to the things you want it? Only you can answer that question. And how can we get you to them faster? That's the real thing. You know, whatever it is you want out of life. We can't just sit around and wait. We can't take our time. We want to push the envelope. We want to push the gas pedal down. And we want to fly. Right. And I mean yesterday. Poof last night, I took the family out to go see some lights. And you know, the Christmas lights. And it was it was fun. It was a lot of fun. It was a great we had a great time. But on the way there. The Google Maps took me down like a shortcut or something, was up there made road to digital shortcut. And it was this little lane, not even highways, just a little road houses on both sides, no divider in the middle, nothing. And I'm going pretty quickly. It's dark, not really too many lights. And all of a sudden there's a railroad track that comes cuts across the road. Now, if you've seen railroad tracks you going over them sometimes they're flat, sometimes they're hilly, this one was hilly. And I did not slow down. I did not hit the brake. I went at it as fast as I was going and yeah, man we flew, the minivan flew. And it was fun. It wasn't fun when we hit the ground, the bumper, like scraped the grout, the kids are like they were I don't know what they were sleeping when they were quiet. And we heard them like when we went airborne. And then when the van started going down, and we hit you know, the ground again, you heard the kids in the back, *Kush* fall back down in their chairs were literally up in the air. They had their seatbelts on, thank god knew probably would got heard otherwise. But yeah, you heard that boom, Daddy, what's going on? Yeah, but he was a lot of fun, it's fun to fly. You know, sometimes it's fun. Sometimes you got to put the brakes on. And 2020 was a hard year for a lot of people. But it's time to buckle down and say, all right, we can't do that. Again, it's not time to buckle down anymore. We need to push, we need to get better, we need to do things we need to move forward. And so that's why we're doing this live event. That's why I'm breaking out of my comfort zone, trying something new is like alright, you know, everybody's still at home. Everybody knows how to use zoom, this is great. Everybody can understand what we're doing now. So you don't have to fly. You don't have to rent a hotel, you don't have to buy food, do it at home in your pajamas. That's great. I wish I could be in my pajamas. I might be, who knows? I might be in my pajamas.. but it's making everything so connected more, even though we are not connected physically, we'll be online, we're able to see each other, it's gonna be a very interesting experience. I'm definitely sure that you're going to take something out of it, you're going to learn something, and you're going to get your questions answered, or we're going to work on getting you whatever you need to go to the next level. So I hope you do Join us now. In terms of going in the future, like what do you do? If you haven't, go get the passive trading book. I would start there and say, Hey, what's the roadmap? What's the game plan? And basically, that's what we're doing on the live event. We're like, okay, where are our people now? Where do they want to go? And how do we get there? What are the steps? 1-2-3-4 however many steps are? How do we get there? And that's what we're going to go through. So once you register, email me, and let me know where you are, and let me know where you want to be. And I can use that when we're creating the content. So the steps are, you know, we understand the steps were like, okay, we need a strategy, we need to understand the market, we know how he's going to do, we need to manage our trades properly, we need to have asset allocation properly, we need to be safe, so we're not, you know, risking a lot of money and losing it for what-not. And then we need to build and we need to invest properly. And that's how we do the passive trading. So we're gonna cover those in detail in depth on the training, and I can't wait. So I guess this episode has turned into an advertisement. Live event. I didn't mean to. I'm just really excited about it. So I really appreciate you guys listening the whole year. And we've been doing this episode. I think we're doing this the second or third year of the podcast. I'm not even sure I think we got we're getting close to 100 episodes. So I think it took us three years to get there. But I appreciate everything I appreciate you appreciate our customers, you know, you guys, the fact that you are listening to this, you give me an outlet, and you give me a way to help, and a way to give back so much that I've been given. And I really would love to hold your hand and say, Hey, walk with me, let's do this together. You know, it's an amazing feeling. And one of the things like one of the mentors that I have, he says that you get so much when you are doing it yourself, but you don't really, really understand it, and really, really learn it until you help somebody else do it. And so it's a progression, you know, and that's what option genius has allowed me to do. That's what this podcast allowed me to do. The passive trading formula or oil options program all our memberships, it is just, it's, I am so grateful and amazed. And like, really, you know, we announced a live event a week ago, by now it's been three weeks or four weeks. And we put out and said, hey, you know, if you're interested, go to this website, and let us know, you know, give us your name and email address and get on the list. And we had a ton of people, that first email that I sent out, I wasn't even talking about this. It was just like two lines at the bottom of the email. And we had like, 80 people signed up right away. Like what? That many people are interested in coming to a live event listening to me talk. Wow, I mean, we do have 1000s of people listening to me talk on every episode, but it's just, you know, every step you take is like, Okay, this is a new thing to do. Do people actually listen? Are they gonna show up? That's a no, oh, my god, it's gonna be live. What if nobody shows up? What if they think I'm crazy? What do they all make fun of me? Oh, no, you know. But it's time to go to the next level, it's time to go to the next steps. And you got to get out of your comfort zone as well. So if you haven't been trading, I'm telling you, you missed out on a great, great, great year of an opportunity. Next year, my assumption is that we're going to be the markets still going to be heading higher into the first couple months, at least after that things will very calm down, the volatility will go away. And we might have a correction, we might have a bear market next year or 10% 20% down, I don't know how much. But once the Fed stops printing everything, once the economy starts going back to normal, things will flatten out, we might have an up market next year, but it's not going to be as easy it was this year to just buy stuff and watch it go up every day. You know, that's not gonna happen, I'm almost guaranteeing that that's not gonna happen, there's gonna be a lot of sideways movement, there might be some down moves. If you don't know how to trade it, it can be scary. But we can do it together, we can hold your hand and take you along the way. And it's still, with passive trading, the way we do it, it's still a way that you can still be profitable. So you know, it's amazing. And I am living proof that it works, along with the 1000s of other people that are doing it with us. So hopefully, we'll see you on the live event. I wish that 2021 is an amazing year for you. I wish the best for you and your family. If there's anything that me and my team can do, please let us know. Thank you for everything. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all the reviews and the comments and the emails that we get from you guys. It just makes it all worthwhile.  So Happy New Year! Merry Christmas if you are into that and we will see you in the new year.  LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

What gaps in your trading are you suffering from? Yeah, I said gaps in your trading, not trading gaps. Normally, a gap is something on a chart where the stock, you know, it makes a jump in it, there's a little hole there in the chart, I'm not talking about those type of gaps. I'm talking about the gaps that occur in how well you're trading. So let me explain. Obviously, you want to be a better trader, that means you're going to make more money, that means you're going to be able to do more things in your life, you're going to have more time, you're gonna be able to buy more things that are state of mind, peace of mind, all those great things right now, you already know that hopefully, you already have an idea of what you want the money for. Of course, it's not just the money, it's, you know, break down bottom line, we want to be happier, we want to live better lives. So that's why your trading? I agree. That's great. Awesome. That's step number one, we get to know why. Right? why we're doing it. But then it comes to Okay, this is what I want, how do I get there? And it's like, we're on one side of a cliff. And then there's a chasm, right, a gap. And then there's the goal on the other side of the cliff, which is being a profitable trader. So now you have to figure out, Okay, how do I get from one side to the other. And for everybody, there's a different gap. Everybody doesn't face the same gap, but depends on many different things. So now I'm going to go through several of the gaps that are out there that trip up the most people, okay, then once you understand what your gap is, then you can go and you can fill it in. And you can take care of it. And we have resources to help you. So once you figure out what your gap is, you can email us and say, “Hey, this is my gap, how can I fill this in?” Okay, and we have programs where we look at, we've looked at all of these different gaps. And we've have, okay, in order to somebody has this gap, they get this, somebody has this gap, they get this, if somebody has this gap, they get this. So we've tried to identify every single gap that's out there, and I'm going to cover a few of them here, and how to fill them in. And that's the only way you can really get to become a successful trader is of all the gaps are filled in. Now, these are not like little potholes where you can, you know, just, oh, it's uncomfortable. But yeah, you get through it, no, these are big holes in the ground. And if you don't fill them in, if you don't take care of them properly, then they are going to stop you in your tracks and you are not going to get to your goal, even if you have all the other gaps filled in, but you have one left eating going to get there. Okay, so let me go through them. And then you can figure out which one you're suffering from, or maybe more than one. Now, the first one is the knowledge gap. So this basically means that you do not have the knowledge to go from where you are now to where you want to be. Okay. And there are different phases of the knowledge gap. Because you cannot just say, Okay, I want to be a wonderful trader, just give me all the knowledge in my head, like upload, right? Can't do that. You start slowly, slowly, slowly with the first things you don't know. And then you build on top of that. So if you are in this gap, and if you don't know what to do, if you are new to trading, if you're new to investing, or if you're new to options, whatever, you don't have the information, you start with the book “Passive Trading”, and you can get that for free at passivetrading.com/free. Just go there, get the book, start reading it, start learning it, we get other bonuses that will help you as well. And that is how you start to overcome this gap. It's not gonna happen overnight, you're gonna fill it in, fill it and fill it in enough to get by then you're going to go further and you see Oh, there's another knowledge gap. Because as you go on, as you start this road, you're going to realize what you don't know right now you don't know what you don't know. Hmm, makes sense. You do not know the things that you need to know but you still don't know. And so as you go along the road, those knowledge gaps will appear and you'll be like, Okay, I'm stuck here. I don't know how to do this. Then you find the answer. What I don't want you to do is say I have to master everything before I start. No. Let's not do that. Then you'll never start because nobody knows everything. Nobody masters everything. And especially comes to trading. Nobody masters trading ever. You do really well, but nobody masters it. Okay, nobody masters the market, you trade the market the best way you can. And you hopefully you come out successful if you trade your way, it's a proven way. So yeah, you should work, but nobody masters the market. Okay, so now you have this knowledge gap, start with that book, start with the basics. And it'll give you the information that you need to move to the next level. And then you'll get to another gap. And then you can show that in and then you can fill it in and fill it in. Okay, so that's gap number one, the knowledge gap. And this is not just one time it occurs over and over again. The second gap, very, very important. And this one most people don't have, it's the skills gap. And by they don't have meaning they suffer from this, they don't have the right skills. Okay. So what this means is that you actually know how to do the process, you actually know how to put on the trade, how to monitor it, how to manage it, how to exit it when you should, when you shouldn't, you can get a trading plan to tell you this stuff. And that will give you some knowledge. But it will not give you the skill until you do it until you do the thing over and over and over and over again, until it's in the back of your mind. It's like the back of your hand. And you could be like, yeah, I can do this in my sleep. Even then you probably gonna screw up. The other day, I put on a covered call trade, and I screwed it up. Yeah, I screwed it up. I bought 100 shares and I sold two options against it. And I later on I realized my thing, and I'm like, Oh my god, what the heck did I do, you know, the amount of money that I was supposed to make on that trade, I gave it away when I sold the second option. So now even though if the trade is going to work out, which is going to, I'm still gonna add best I'm gonna break even. So yeah, skills are very important. Okay, even after 15 years of trading, you can still mess it up. So if you mess it up, now, I don't fault you. Right, but you got to put in that effort, you got to overcome the skills gap. And the only way to do that is to just do it over and over and over and over and over again, I can't make you do it. I can't sit there and watch you do it, you have to do it. Okay, I can encourage you and on the sidelines but you got to do it. Right? If you never do it, you'll never overcome the skills gap. And we do have students, and I've seen them, I've talked to them, they want all the education, they want to buy everything. And they go through everything, and they do it multiple times. But when it comes time to actually putting on the trade, they back off, because they don't have the skill. They see that huge skill gap. And they're like, Oh, no, I don't know how to do it. Well, baby steps, baby steps, paper trade, try it, do a small little trade tiny trade, you know, so that if you lose the money, if you lose all of the money on the tiny trade, it's not going to kill you. Right, it's gonna go towards your education. It's like an investment, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna risk $100 to do this trade. And even if it blows up, that's $100, I invested into my education. And I put a trade on and I learned it. Right, I learned what not to do. In that case, if it blows up, but at least you did it you know, once you get over that hump, once you get this skills gap down. I don't know if you ever will. But just like the knowledge gap, there are different skills gap, you know, putting on the trade, that's one skill, managing the trades and finding skill, finding trades, those are all different skills, and you have to do them over and over again. Eventually, they become like second nature, and you get really, really good at it. So you know what you're doing. That's where I need you to get to, to become a really consistent successful trader, you got to overcome that gap by doing actual work. Third, the motivation gap. Now, I talked about this earlier, hopefully, you already know why you're doing this, why you want to be a trader. But if it's only to make money, that probably will not be enough. In the beginning. Let's say you have a lot of debt, you want to quit your job. See that's different. quitting your job is different from I want to make a lot of money. That's a different motivation. And I love that one I love I want to quit my job, or I need XYZ money to be able to send my kid to college, or I need this to because my car is about to die and I need to replace it. Those are better than I need more money. I want to make more money. Because more money in your bank accounts, is gonna do anything for you. You're not gonna be much happier. You're not gonna it's not gonna change the world is just numbers on a screen. So whether it's 1000 or 5000 or 10,000 on the screen, it doesn't make any difference. And eventually that wears off. First couple of times. You'll be like yeah, no a lot of money and then they'll be like, Oh, yeah, it's not that much. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I did it. Okay, I got a lot of money. I got 10,000 in my account. Yay. It'll go away. So You have to understand what is your motivation. So the motivational gap is really big for a lot of people, sometimes they don't feel the need to trade, or they know feel the need to overcome the skills gap. Now give the example of my father, right, he was motivated to make more money. And so if you put in front something in front of him, like a course, or a seminar or two day, like a two day workshop or something, he would buy it, because he was motivated to make more money. And you would actually go and do the thing, you would go and try to get the knowledge because he knew he had a knowledge gap. So you try to fill in the gap of knowledge. But then when it came time to actually doing the thing, he almost never did the thing. He never overcame the skills gap. Why? Because his motivation gap was not filled in. He wasn't motivated enough to make a bigger change, he was motivated a tiny, tiny bit, to invest in something and to try to overcome the knowledge gap. But he was not, his motivation gap was blocking him from overcoming the skills gap. So this kind of gets tricky, right? I told you, there's lots of motivation gaps, there's lots of skills gaps, there's lots of knowledge gaps, there's gaps all over the place. But you can do them if you go through the path, and you fill them in as they go along. So yeah, your motivation has to be really great. In the beginning. For me, my motivation, when I first started was my wife is working two jobs, and I want her to only work one job, and I want to be a provider in the household. I want to take care of my family. I want to have kids, I want to get out of this rinky dinky apartment, right. The only way I can do that is if I'm making money. So that was my motivation along with I don't want to go back to work because I had just gotten laid off. No, I don't want to go back to work. I need this to work. That was my motivation. And that was the same motivation for several years, until we got to the point where the money was there. It was coming. He was flowing. And then I kind of lost my way. And I was like, Okay, yeah, I'm making money. That's great. Okay, I'm kind of tired. I'm sick. I'm like, bored of life. I gotta find something. What am I gonna do? Okay, I went and I raised a, I learned how to race NASCAR's. I mean, it was like a $3,000 for a one day package. You know, we actually go and you you do a NASCAR 200 miles an hour per hour and do that. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's great. You know, I got some adrenaline, but I'm still not motivated. You know, I don't feel like getting up in the morning. Why? What is that be motivation gap, really, really big motivation gap. And I learned that the key to filling the motivation gap, after you fill the little baby motivation, gaps of I need more money, more money. Once you have the money. The next motivation gap that comes is I need significance, I need something in my life that I'm doing that I gain significance from that I feel important that I feel growth that I feel loved. And the only when I started to train people and to teach people, that's when I started getting that. So this podcast is in a way, helping me overcome my motivation gap. So thank you for listening, I do appreciate it. I do appreciate all your support all the comments, all the feedback, emails, all their positive reviews. I appreciate all of that. So thank you very much for that. Thank you so much. Now, after we have the motivation gap, we have the habits gap. Now these are any, you know, daily or weekly habits that you have that are stopping you from achieving your goals. So does proper trading, have habits that you need to have in order to succeed? Yes. One thing is you got to watch your trade. Right? You can't just forget about it. It's not set it and forget it kind of things. Because the marking can go up and down. Even with the odds in your favor, you should still monitor your trades on a daily basis. Depending on the strategy. If you're doing cover calls, then Okay, maybe not every day, maybe you do it once a week, maybe once a month, that's up to you be too many on how aggressive or conservative you are. If you're doing something like our oil option strategy, I would like you to check in every day and see how oil is doing how your trades are doing. If you go 234 days too long, and you're not checking, that could be a bad thing and you might be negative, you might start losing some money. That's not a good thing. That's not going to help you on your goal. So that is a habit that needs to be instilled. And so one of the habits I instill and I tell everybody is you should have a time every day that you check on your trades. Same time every day for me, I do it at one o'clock, one o'clock Central. I have an alarm on my phone, he goes off ding ding ding ding ding, time to check my trades. Now I'll drop whatever I'm doing. And I will log in, and I will check my trades. If I need to adjust or do something, most of time, I don't need to do anything. So it didn't take very long. But that is a habit that I had to instill. I have other habits that I've also instilled, that have made me a much better trader. And we talked about them in our trade hacks program, which is very cheap. And if you want it, you can get it on our website, it's called trading hacks, I don't have the time to go into all of those, that's, you know, several hour program, and it goes through all of them. But if you have a habit program problem, then something like that, the hacks that we have come up with can definitely help you because you don't have to change yourself. Right? You don't have to have the willpower because willpower doesn't work. If you've been on a diet, or being like, yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this willpower doesn't work, you have to change the environment, you have to change your behavior, you have to change your habits, you have to change something other than yourself. Because willpower by itself will not work. And so the trading hacks program that we have, it covers several different easy things that you can implement, that you don't have to change anything about yourself or your trading. But like I said, with the one o'clock check in, right, that's one hack that I've implemented, that has really, really helped my trading. So if you do something like that, that can make a big difference, doesn't have to change my trading, doesn't have to change anything about my style. But it's just a reminder, like, Hey, you need to do this, this is a skill - a habit sorry, not a skill, it's a habit that I needed to implement. And once I did, it made a big difference. The other one is your environment, the environment gap. So where you trade has a big impact on how you trade? Do you have a nice quiet spot that you can trade from? Do you have the freedom to trade, like if you're hiding from your spouse, and you're still trading, that's going to be a lot of stress, that's not a good environment? Right, you got to get your spouse to buy in, don't be trading behind her back, or his back and try to think that Yeah, you're gonna be a great trader, there might work for a little bit. But overall, that is a very negative environment, right? When you're trying to hide it, you're gonna feel guilty, you're gonna feel bad, and Heaven forbid you lose money, oh, man, that's just going to compound everything. So your environment needs to lead you to be successful. Do you have a fast enough internet connection? Now you don't need four different monitors. You don't even need two monitors, you just need one screen that you can trade from. But you need a good enough internet connection that that's there, you need maybe a phone where you can check in on your trades smartphone, you need some basic stuff. But if you don't have it, that makes it much harder for you. And if you don't have a spot where you can actually sit down and learn and go through the environment go through the education, right, if you join one of our programs, there's a lot of information that you're going to get. If you don't have a spot to properly go through it, then what's the point? So the environment is another gap, probably one of the most easier ones that you can overcome. Right. And so that's the last one. So we got knowledge gaps, that are recurring, they happen over and over again, you'll learn a little bit, you'll move forward, then you'll realize oh, I need something I need to know something else. So then you learn the next thing. Don't try to learn everything at once. Learn them in bites, right, move forward, learn some more, move forward, learn some more when you get to a gap, learn some more, fill it in, move on to the next one. Skills gap. There are also several of those because you don't know what skills you need yet. So focus on one skill, work on that move forward, then you find Okay, I need another one. So now you get the education for that one knowledge for that one. And then you do the scale. And you fill that in then you go forward and you go forward. Motivation gaps. This is when you have to figure out for yourself. What is it that's going to keep me focused, keep me motivated, so that I don't give up. That's the thing people give up. They just stop. You know what I'm talking about is passive trading. I've been doing this for a long time. And I've seen the results. And I know this works. And I know it's great in the feeling that you get when you're doing it well is amazing.   So I don't understand why people stop in the middle. Now I know it can take work. I know it can take a lot of time. But if you have the motivation, you should be able to overcome the rest of the gaps. That's probably the most important one that you need to overcome the motivational gap. Everything else I can help you with. Right, I can't help you motivate yourself. Then you got to habit gaps. Right if you know something that you keep doing over and over. And again, that's hurting you, that is a habit that you need to change. You can't break a habit, you need to replace it with something else. Right? So if you have a habit and your habit is Oh, I don't I don't I forget them on my trading plan. I don't stick to my trading plan, or I don't stick to my rules. My rules, say, of the trade is down so much money, I got to do XYZ, but I don't. Well, that's a habit that you need to change. If you already know that, you're that's half the battle, right? Like GI Joe, no knowledge is off the bottle. Yeah, I think you GI Joe. And so now you have the knowledge. Now you got to change the habit. So you overcome that gap. And then the last one is the environment, which is probably the easiest one. So I hope this helped. I hope you can overcome these gaps. If you have any issues, you can reach out to us help@optiongenius.com and trading hacks is the name of the program that can help you overcome a lot of these habit hacks. In terms of education, and skills, we can help you there as well, we have several programs that can help you depending on what you want to accomplish, what you want to be trading. So reach out to us there as well. And again, thank you so much for listening, trade with the odds in your favor, and have a great day. Thanks. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Check this out: High Probability Trading LIVE Hey, passive traders, how's it going today? Listen, we're thinking about doing a two-day live event. Not sure yet if it's going to happen or not, but the information is at optiongenius.com/live. If you want to be on the announcement list, just go ahead and go to that website and put in your email and your name, and we will let you know. And if we've decided that we're going to do it, then the information to figure it out and sign up is going to be there as well. It’s going to be two days of content, hard hitting trading content. And I'm probably gonna bring in some guest speakers as well. So I'm getting excited, the more I think about it, the more excited I'm getting. But I am very nervous because I'm super introverted and for me to do something like you know, we're meeting a lot of people. So that's why it's virtual. I don't have to go in front of a large stage or anything, but it is going to be really cool. So I'm already starting to think of what topics we can talk about what is the, you know, what's the best, that will help everybody. And so if you have any ideas of what you would like us to talk about, you know, go ahead and fill out that the name and email at that page, option, genius, comm slash live. And then let me know what you think. And let me know what you want to hear about. Cool. Alright, so I got an email today from a reader of the passive trading book. And I thought that this could be a pretty good episode based on what she said. So she said that she loved the book, she went through it, it was great, she learned a lot. And she's really, really focused on doing it. And she's, uh, she's already in real estate. So she understands the whole options and how they work and how they relate to stocks. Now, the problem is that she's only got a couple $100 to work with. So what should she do? Now, this is a very common situation, it's a very common problem that a lot of people have, they want to get started, they love the idea, but they don't have money to trade. And obviously, yeah, it takes money to trade, right? This is the one thing it takes money to do everything but especially trading, it does take money to get started. So what do they do, and on this episode, I'm going to give you some idea and it's actually a controversial idea, because it's not right for everybody, it might be right for you, it might not be right for you might be the most awful advice that anybody could ever give you. So I'm not giving you advice, per se, I'm giving you an idea. You have to know yourself. And you have to know if this is the right thing for you. If it's you know, too much or too risky for you, then don't do it. If you think you can handle it, then it might be the opportunity or the idea that finds you the funds that you can go and start trading. And you've probably already thought about this, but I want to go through with you a little bit more. So my first ever trade was not stock. It was a commodity trade. And I was I don't know what I was like 12, 13 years old. And we got this pamphlet in the mail. It was a brochure, it was like a sales letter for a course on how to trade futures. And I read it, I was mesmerized. I'm like, Oh, this is awesome. This is awesome. Dad, we got to get this, we got to get this. So we paid a couple of 100 bucks, whatever got the manual in the mail, opened up a futures account. And we traded soybeans, and I still remember this. We traded soybeans, one contract, and we made $25000. And I was on top of the moon. It was awesome. And then my dad shut down the account. I'm like, What happened? He goes, No, no, no, I didn't want to keep doing this. I just wanted, to show you what it was like and the actual idea that he had was that he was going to open the account, and we were going to lose money. And then that would stop me from ever wanting to trade again. Because he thought that commodities trading commodities was very, very risky and not do it. His whole thing backfired on him because he wanted to teach me he wanted me to lose money to teach me not to do this. And in fact, the opposite happened. We made money and the bug I got the bug - it bit me and ever since then I wanted to trade, but he shut it down. I didn't have any choice, right. I was too little. Fast forward and in the future. I have just dropped out of college. I came back home to help my dad with a new business he owned he just bought and things were really money was really, really tight. I mean really, really, really tight. To the point where like we don't, we're hoping we have enough money to eat every month. Even less than hand to mouth. And so in the mail, I get another brochure about a course about trading futures. And this one was even better than the first one because this one talks about technical analysis and the guy will actually help you with recorded messages to tell you what he's trading and bla bla bla bla. And, you know, times are so tough. I'm like Dad, we need to do something, I want to do this. How do we do this? So we bought the course. And I started following it. And at that time, this was pre website, or pre, you know what, they didn't have websites. We had AOL and stuff like that. But they didn't have Google, Yahoo, any of this stuff. So the charts had to come in the mail, you had to subscribe to a service. And they would print out the charts every week, at the end of the week, and they would mail them to us, he get them by Monday. So you'd have the charts and they would be newspaper size. And then every day, whatever happened, you would have to fill in the chart, you'd have to draw your lines, your support, resistance, all that stuff. And then every week, you would get a new set of charts. So you have to draw the lines again. And that was really a good way to learn for one thing, but I did it for a while and I show my Dad, I'm like, Look, Dad, I'm doing really, really good. I want to do that. So he went ahead, and he borrowed $8,000 on a credit card. So he took a cash advance on a credit card, he gave it to me, we opened up a futures trading account. And I knew that this was all the money we had. So we didn't even have it. Right? We didn't even have it. And at this point for him, it was a like a last-ditch effort. Like hopefully this works. If it doesn't, well, we're not gonna be able to pay off these cards anyway. So credit goes to hell kind of thing. I think this was the last card he had with any remaining balance. So yeah, you know, no, no pressure, right? Anyway, so you know, I'm going through all the charts I'm looking for the perfect opportunity, the perfect trade, the perfect trade. Finally, I find one and I'm like, Oh, this is it. This is gonna work. It's an uptrend. It's going great. Following all the lines, all the sports, everything, okay, Dad, I'm doing this, I put my first trade on one contract on the Japanese yen, Japanese yen was going up, it was gonna make me and I was gonna make a fortune. So I put the trade on close to the end of the day, and put my stop loss in. And that's it, I go home. And at night, I'm thinking man, I'm under how much money I'm gonna make or how much money I'm gonna make. I'm gonna pay all the bills, life is gonna be good. All this stuff. The next day I wake up, you know, I get to get to the office, I check. Oh, Yen is up, Yen is up alright. I'm making money, how much money do I make how much money they make in my account. And there's like $23 in my account. And I'm like, wait, what happened? Where's my Japanese yen contract? And there's no contract. And only wait, I bought a contract yesterday? Well, this must be like a glitch or something. I don't know, am I right? Am I signing in to the wrong account, what the heck is going on. And then I looked further. And it said that it stopped me out of the trade earlier in the day at the open. And when wait this doesn't make any sense. And so then I went back and I looked at it again. And basically what happened was, the Yen had gapped lower at the open. And then when it finally did open, it went up all day. But it opened lower, much lower than my stop loss. And so as soon as it opened, very, very low - hat's when my order was executed. And I was kicked out of my trade. And then that basically took away everything in the account. All eight grand was gone. overnight. One trade. And the sad part was the really frustrating part was that that trade would have made 1000s and 1000s of dollars because the Japanese yen continued to rise. Now, what's the moral of the story? What's the lesson to be learned here? I don't know, if you're gonna trade Yen, you got to have a lot more liquid because it moves up and down. I guess. That's one Moral of the story. But the reason I'm bringing this story up is that the idea is to do what we did. There's a potential to borrow money to trade with. And so I was talking to a fellow. And what he does is he works with companies like mine, where we're selling programs, right coaching programs that are not super expensive, but they're not dirt cheap either. So people might like to finance it. And so this guy, he works with several banks, and basically, he wanted to offer financing to my customers. Now, I don't know how I feel about that. He knows like if you can't afford the program, should you borrow money for the program? I think I'm okay with that. But if you don't have the money for the program, then how are you going to trade? Right, I don't want to take I don't want you to borrow money to buy a program and then not have anything left over to trade unless you know that that's the plan unless you say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to be paper-trading for a while until I learn, and then I'm going to invest the money, and then I'm going to do it. So when I was talking to him, what he was saying is that the way their program works is you, let's say, you come to me and you say, hey, I want to join your program, I want to finance it. So the Okay, so I turn it over to him. And they have a form that you fill out, it's a personal loan, and they they work with the world's largest banks, right. So it's not like some, some little corner shop, these are real big banks, and they look at your information. And then they put give you an offer, they say, all right, we will offer you $10,000, we will offer you 20,000 will offer you 30,000 as a loan, and these are the terms this is the interest that you could pay every month, etc. And then if you like it, then you say yes, or no. Or if you don't want the whole amount, if you don't need the 30,000, you take, you know, I'll say I need 10,000, I need 5000 or 2000, or whatever you want to take, you can you can take that amount. Once you have that money, then my company charges you for our program, whatever the cost is that you agree to. And that's how it works. And then you make the payments directly to the bank. So I was thinking about I think, wait a minute. So you're telling me that the people, the customers, my customers can borrow more than the program is cost? And he said, Yeah, they can. So I thought that was very interesting, I think, well, if somebody wants to, so they have good credit, they can borrow enough to pay for the program, and they can borrow the money to trade with. So that way they take the money that they're trading with, they earn a profit on that, and they use that profit to make the payments. So in essence, they're getting it for free. They're just working for it, but they're using their profits to pay off the loan. And that would be an amazing way to get started very quickly. And he said, Yeah, technically, they could do that if they wanted to. So that's interesting, you know, so I'm still thinking about whether we should do that or not. If you're interested in something like that, let me know the good and the bad, you know, because I'm thinking about it, I'm still debating it, I don't know if it's a good thing. For some people, it can definitely work. I've seen people that it has worked for where they've borrowed money to trade with, and they've done really, really well. And I've seen other people blow up, there was a guy on Facebook. And he he posted that he borrowed $200 on a credit card where he was going to have a 0% interest rate for one year. And he borrowed $200 on his credit card, he's going to use that $200 to trade with. And I'm scratching my head, I'm like, Dude, what are you gonna do with 200 bucks, you're gonna buy some calls, hopefully, you'll make some money, hopefully, you'll be able to pay it off. But you got to make 100% in a year, you're it's a crapshoot, right 50% chance you're gonna make 50 million, you're gonna lose it all. But I don't know, maybe he's gonna make it. But if he's only using $200, I have a feeling he doesn't know what the heck he's doing, he's probably gonna lose it $200. And, well, it's not a big deal, he's gonna have to pay back the credit card, I don't know why you would only borrow 200 though. Geez, if you if your bank is only going to give you a line of credit on a credit card of $200, you got bigger problems, you don't need to be trading, go get a job. But the thing here is, this might be a way for you to get started. So either you borrow money from a friend, you borrow money from the bank, you borrow money from somewhere else, I wouldn't advise you to borrow money from your credit card like my dad did on this, you probably knew that, hey, you know, this is a sinking ship, we might not be able to pay it, that's a bad thing. You shouldn't borrow money that you can afford to pay back. Right? So hopefully, you're not in a situation where you do have to borrow money. But if you are, please think about it before you do. Most of the time, when you borrow money, people are under a lot of pressure. And they feel that they have to pay it off right away. And so they take risks that they shouldn't necessarily take and they blow up, they lose all the money that they borrowed. And then not only do they feel really horrible about losing money, but then they still have to pay back the bank. And that can mess up their credit, they can mess up their relationship with their spouse. So you really really have to think this through before you do it. I'm just putting it out there. It's something you've probably already thought about it.  If you've ever wanted to get into trading and you don't have any money, like, we're gonna get the money, we're gonna get the money, I still think the best way is to paper trade to learn without having the risk. And to build up a track record and the look, you know, I've been paper trading for six months. And I've done all these trades. I've done several trades every month, and I'm consistently profitable even a couple of months where, you know, I could have lost money, I could have lost a lot of money, but I didn't manage it properly. And here's my record. And then you can find somebody that can either borrow, you can borrow the money from or we'll put up the money and you trade their account and you get paid a fee for it. You know you get a piece of the profits. I would rather have you do that than borrow the money. But even if you are about to borrow the money, please paper trade it first. Whatever you're thinking of trading paper traded first, so that you don't end up and do what I did. That's why I told you that story in the beginning because it's a warning, right? I didn't know what I was doing. I had a course. But I didn't have like a live mentor. I didn't have a group, I didn't have any community. It was just me by myself with my little charts that come every, every Monday in the mail, and I'm drawing my lines. And even though I had it, right, even though I had the trade, right, I had nailed it, I knew the direction I knew was going up, I placed the stop loss in the wrong spot. And I was trading the yen when I shouldn't have been, because my account size wasn't large enough to be able to trade the yen properly. Does that make sense? I was trading the wrong instrument. And I didn't have anybody to tell me that.  That's why we have coaching programs. That's why we do coaching calls with students. So they can tell me what they're trading and I can coach them and walk them through and say, you know what, if your account is that big, maybe you're overreaching here, maybe you need to trade more, use your feet, something else. And so we walk you through it so that you don't make that same mistake because I know how painful it can be. I know how you can do every single thing, right and still have it blow up in your face. And so if that's happened to you reach out to us get on the phone with us book a call, we can talk about it, we can tell you what we have to help you. And I think, you know, if we need to, we can even help you figure out how to finance the program. But we'll have to make sure that it's gonna work for you first. And so that's why we get on the phone. And we have to talk to you see what your background is, if you're the right fit for the program, then we will give you an invitation to join. And then if it if need be, we can tell you how to finance it if you have to. But again, that's something that we really don't really push. And we don't encourage you to very much. Just because you're going into debt for something I don't want you to go into debt for. Right, I don't want you to start behind, I want to put the odds in your favor as much as possible. And so when you're dealing with that, you have that extra added pressure. I know what it's like to have a lot of debt. You know, at the worst, I think I had myself I had over $100,000 worth of debt. That's not even including car and mortgage and all that stuff. This was just like credit cards and stuff that I had borrowed from. And it's not easy dealing with debt. It's something it sits on your shoulder every day. And it's a pressure that you feel, you know, you're feeling like Atlas, he was the in the Greek mythology, he was the guy that had to hold up the earth on the back on his back. And that's what it feels like, you know, there's something there on your back all the time, and you feel it. And I don't want you to go through that if you don't have to. So my point here is that I never thought I never talked about this before, I've never really mentioned it pushed it, because it is very risky. But if you need to, if you're the right person, if you feel that you're mature enough, you can handle it, you have a trading plan already that's working, that's consistent. Maybe this is the way to go. And if you need to give us a call, reach out to us help@optiongenius.com is our email. If you want to get on the phone with us, we can explain how we can help you just reach out to us via email and we'll tell you what we can do help@optiongenius.com. Oh, and if you do want to find out about that live event that we might be having, it’s optiongenius.com/live. Alright folks, thank you and trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

I'm thinking about doing a two day live virtual event, we can get together right now because of the current situation. So I was thinking we could do it online and open it up to everybody. The idea is to have two days of content, and collaboration and trading and just talking and sharing a lot of ideas, information and having dialogue back and forth. If you're interested, I haven't firmly decided if I want to do it or not. But we're thinking about doing it in January the 8th and the 9th, it's Friday and a Saturday, it's probably going to be all day for both days. And if you're interested, please go to Option Genius slash live. And you can join the announcement list. Of course right now, I haven't decided to do it yet. So we don't have any of the details. Exactly what we're going to talk about. I've thought of some ideas, but exactly what we're gonna talk about not sure yet. I am planning on inviting a couple speakers. So if you want to be on the announcement list, then go to optiongenius.com/live , just put your name and email address and you'll be on your list there. And then if we do decide to do it, we'll let you know. And we might even let you know on the list. And as for suggestions, like Hey, would you like to learn about this topic or this topic? Would you like to hear from this person or this person, but I do not want this to be a pitch fest. We do have that a lot in the financial industry where they pretend that they're going to give you a lot of information, but all they do is pitch you products over and over and over again. And that's not what this is going to be definitely not at all. So if you're open to that, go check it out. Optiongenius.com/live, put your name and email sign up for the announcement list. You know, you don't lose anything if you do that. Cool. Now, are you sedated? Do you even know what that means? I didn't know Sedated is a medical term. At first I didn't know my wife had explained to me why my wife is a registered nurse. And she likes to watch these medical shows. So you know I'm sitting there watching her with her. And there was this one show where this guy comes into the emergency room and he can't communicate. And he's wildly gesturing and room making noises and all these weird stuff. And the doctors jump on him and say oh is it items an item and they they hit him up with an injection and then eventually, he comes down, he stopped shaking and he's like, are half asleep or something like that, I guess that's what they call sedation, right? Where they give you some type of medicine so that you calm down and you I guess come back to your senses or whatnot. But the thing is that I was thinking about that. And I'm like, you know what, that's the way most people live. If you really think about it, you know, about 80% of people who work for companies are unengaged at work, meaning they're sedated at work. They're not giving 100%. Most small business owners are overwhelmed - either they're doing too much or they don't have enough staff, they don't have enough income to hire the right people, or they can't find the right people or right now, you know, their businesses are so uncertain. They don't know what to do. They're going to open, they're going to close they're going to how are they going to serve their customers so they can have any more customers. And it's very rare to find someone who is actually living life, on their own terms, in a way where they actually enjoy themselves. I mean, I think all through life since when we're born to, you know, when we're adults, we are told to behave in a certain way. We're told to believe a certain thing. We're told to live in a certain way and act a certain way - and I don't think that is helping us. And I think that's why maybe we see record numbers of people going into depression and having mental health issues, record numbers of people not getting along. It seems worse now than I've ever remembered it. And you know, we've had some crazy times I lived through the Cold War. Well, not the Cold War with JFK, but the cold war with Russia and Ronald Reagan - Gorbachev. I lived through that I remember that it was kind of scary. And this seems worse because it's in our own country. People, you know, ready to rip each other apart and why I don't want to get into the politics of it and all that. But the thing is that like when we're born, we're full of energy, and we're happy and we accept everything. And we think everybody loves us because they give us so much attention and encouragement and they're always there for us and they're helping us if we fall down they pick us back up, right? And then as we get older, something starts to happen. And we start hearing the word No, no, no. So many times we start hearing negative things. People are putting us down, people are telling us we're not right. And we're stupid or whatnot. And, oh, you don't look good today, or you don't acting like a right mean, the way you're supposed to act. And it's start sending conflicting signals, like, hey, maybe there's something wrong with me, or maybe I need to conform, then we go to school, it's the same thing. You know, we're told me you gotta properly behave, sit in your desk, do this, do that. Follow the rules. My son, he's 10 years old, and he's learning at home he's doing at home school, he's having trouble with his homework, because he gets a lot of homework, and he has to do it on his own. So up till now, he's done amazing in school, because he knew exactly what to expect. And he knew the rules. He knew how it worked. But now, he's on his own. And there's nobody to watch over him all day long while he's doing. I mean, obviously, my wife is at home or somebody is at home. But nobody's on top of him making sure all of his assignments are getting done on time to time basis. And so he's falling behind. He's not doing assignments, he's, he's goofing off, he'd rather watch TV starting to even lie to us and say, "Yeah, I did my homework" , and then we find out no, it wasn't done at all. That's, I think, what's wrong in today's society, that we are all in a sense, sedated. And we're told what to do, what to behave, what to think, or how to act. And it's really, really insane. One of the things that we are sedated about or is the whole aspect of retirement, right? retirement means that you save up money for the whole life, and then eventually, when you are have enough money, then you can stop working and you can officially retire. And I don't think that's the way it should be at all. It's nothing has nothing to do with how much money you have. It's how much money do you get every month without having to work at it. If you have $10,000 a month coming in, that you don't have to work for, then you don't have to work. Unless your expenses are more than $10,000. You could retire tomorrow, you read a hit song, and you get people paying you license fees for that using that song, then you're done. That's it. It's over. But why do people think that they have to have 1,000,002 million $5 million saved up somewhere invested somewhere so that they can withdraw like 4% a year and live off of that? And that's a requirement? Because that's what we're told to believe? That's the myth that's given to us by wall street? Why do they want that? Why do they want us to believe that? Well, because they get to control the money. The more money they control, the more they charging fees. If you give them 100,000 to invest, that's great. They make a little bit if you give them a million dollars to invest, they make a lot more for doing the same amount of work. Very little work, actually. Right. So it's all about the game. And it's all about the way it is. So if you feel yourself being stated, if you feel that you're not living life to your expectation, if you feel that you're not living up to your purpose, it's up to you to change. A friend of mine was telling me a story. He's like, yeah, you know, I was talking to this guy, and he got a new job. And I'm like, Oh, cool. You know, why do you get a job? He goes, Well, I called him and asked him, Hey, when would you get a new job? because well, you know, I was working at this place didn't really like it. And I'm not a tree. So I left. It makes plenty of sense to me. I've not a tree. So I left. Exactly. I didn't have my you know, I'm not a tree. I don't have roots in the ground. I can make my own decisions as an adult. And I can change. I can change my environment, I can change my situation, I can change what's going on in my life. So what's the point? The point is, you're listening to this podcast, because you want to change, you want things to get better. Your finances can change when you trade options. That's fine. But is that going to change your life to the point where you are no longer sedated, and you're completely happy? That's what you need to work on. So really, the question is, who are you? And if you've never been asked that question, if you never thought about that question, I urge you to take a few minutes. You got the holidays coming up. You have some time off, hopefully. Think about it. Half an hour, hour, whatever it takes. Who are you? Really? No, no, I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. I'm this I'm that I'm a father. No. Who are you? If you're who is in your name, you know if your name is John, who is John? Deep down? What does he want? What makes him happy? And then you can start to design the life that you deserve. Cool. That's it for this episode, folks. And remember, if you are interested in being on a list for the live event, please check out: optiongenius.com/live. Take care, trade with the odds in your favor.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

In this episode, Kori takes over the podcast to share the results of her first ever trade and the results. Hi, traders. It's Cory today, for those of you who don't know me, I'm the customer satisfaction manager here at option genius. I handle everything related to well, you guys from customer service, incoming coaching students. I'm talking to you guys today because something really cool happens like really, really, really cool. And I'm super excited. a month or two ago, I started going through the passive trading formula. It took me a while because halfway through the course portion, I decided I wanted to make a workbook for all of you guys to make learning easier. So all your incoming students, you're welcome. But that's beside the point. Let's get to the exciting stuff. My whole life. I've been worried about finances, my parents' finances, my siblings, and especially mine. I don't know why. But I've always been fixated on them. Because of that, it's always been very important to me, that I'm smart with my finances. I don't want to be you know, I can't be in debt, I need to make sure that I have more than enough to cover my expenses. And saving is a huge deal for me, I always want to be sure that I'm making the right decisions financially. So when I first started working at option genius, which was around nine or 10 months ago, I believe I was super excited. Because that way I had the option and the ability to learn firsthand how to trade options. But despite that, I was really scared. So I kept pushing it off farther and farther. Because I didn't want to lose money. I was terrified of losing money, because when it's in my savings, it's safe. Even though I you know, I'd seen Allen trade and I'd watched his account grow as well as our students accounts, I was still super scared. But I knew logically that if I just did it the way I was taught in the end, I would make money. But again, I was scared. But one day I was watching Allen put on a trade and I decided that if I was ever going to learn how to trade it had to be now otherwise I would just keep pushing it off and pushing it off and pushing it off. So when I got home that day, I decided that I was going to go ahead and go through the course right then in there. While I was going through the program, I decided to put on my first options trade using the passive trading formula. I was super nervous. But I followed Allen's formula to a tee, which was obviously the right call, as you'll see later. My favorite part. So I picked one of my watchlist stocks, Disney, I saw that it was going up on the chart and looked like he was going to continue that trend. So I decided to put on a call credit spread. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to risk. So I made sure to choose one with an 85% probability of profit, I had a lot of confidence in the trade. So I went ahead and put on 10 contracts, which made the margin requirement around $5,000. For that spread, I felt so accomplished after that the initial rush of having put on my own trade was amazing. I don't think I've ever felt something like that in my life. I think it was because it was my first real step in my trading journey and something I'd worried I'd mess up for a long time. You know, because I've been thinking about doing this for a while. And that was it was a big leap for me. The first week I was in the trade was pretty nerve racking. I'm just kidding. I was actually really calm through the whole process. Having worked with Allen really helped me see how well the formula works. And it gave me that confidence that I needed to not worry. Am I checked in on the trade around every four days I believe in the beginning it was showing I was down a couple of dollars here and there. And but as the trade kept going, I saw that it kept going up. Like one day was at $10 the next day was up $45. And then last Friday, it was up $585 that's crazy, right? Once I saw how much it was up, it was around 12% I think I decided it was time to exit the trade. Unfortunately, it was after the market closed. So I went ahead and put in the the closing order so that when the market opened on Monday, I would be out I was a little scared doing that. Because what if the market went down over the weekend and my trade ended up not working out. That was a big concern for me. It didn't really matter in the end, because today when I checked my account, I was out of the trade with a 12% profit. I ended up making $600 on that trade, my first ever all by myself no help from out on trade. I was so excited. I just had to share with you guys. Having a winning trade is always great. But having a winning trade. The first time you put one on is amazing. I'm literally jumping up and down right now in my chair. I feel like my confidence in myself has shot through the roof, not just with trading but everything in general, because now I know that I have the skills to be able to trade profitably for the rest of my life. Thank you guys so much for listening. And as Allen always says, trade with the odds in your favor. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Hello. Hello. Hello. I want to do a little bit different today and I am going to be answering a question that I got from a podcast listener. This is a question that we get frequently, and I do encourage you to send us questions. If you have anything regarding trading or investing that we can help with, I'm more than willing for you to reach out to us. Email us, it's help@optiongenius.com. Hopefully we can help you. If there is something we can do and point you in the right direction, we will, if not, we'll tell you straight out, hey, we are not experts in that. We don't know. Maybe we'll try to find a resource for you or something, but we do our best to help everybody out as much as possible because in the end, we're all in this together, right? Nobody's getting out of this alive. Might as well help each other and make the world a better place. Right? This is the question I get often and got this question recently from a listener. The question says, the one thing I struggle with is constantly being scared out of the market. I have a trading plan with iron condors and credit spreads and failed to follow it by not trading frequently enough or with enough size. How is the best way to scale up your trading to make a bigger income out of it? Basically, the fellow is saying that he does trades, mostly spreads, but he's hesitant and scared to not do it enough and not do it with enough money when he does do it. He's thinking about how can he scale up his trading to be better at it or make more money from it? The first thing you need to realize is that fear is not always a bad thing. I mean, it's there to alert you to danger, right? That's why we get scared, something dangerous happening, but it's also there to alert you to opportunity as well. We look at fear as a negative thing, but fear is just a common response, right? It doesn't have to be something that is bad for us that we are afraid of. Anything outside of our comfort zone can be scary, but that doesn't mean that it's bad for us. A lot of people are scared of placing their first trade. They're scared of investing money in the stock market because they're afraid to lose it, which is one possible outcome. Yes, but you can mitigate that and you can protect against that. When you look at it and you say, look, there are trillions of kazillions of dollars, whatever invested in stocks around the world, what do those people know that I don't, that I'm afraid to put my money in the stock market? What are the people that are trading profitably and consistently? What do they know that I don't know that I'm not consistent? That's why I'm afraid of making trades or making bigger trades. Is there a secret out there that they know that I don't? Well, most likely not. There are certain ways to do things and once you learn those things, you can follow them methodically, but the problem is fear and emotions. I'll get to that. The second thing you need to realize is that being out of the market is not a bad thing either, right? We don't have to be trading every single expiration cycle. You don't have to be exposed all the time. You get to pick and choose. If the markets get scary and volatile, there's nothing wrong with taking a step back, catching your breath and reassessing to decide if you want to get back in, or if you want to wait until things calm down. Now this fellow thinks that it's a problem that he's not trading enough. He wants to trade more and he's not trading with enough size. It would be a bigger problem if he was trading and he was losing money, but that's not what he said. He said that he has a plan, but he's just not doing it enough. If his plan is profitable, then it doesn't matter if he's trading every month because he's making something. As long as you're making something and you're compounding it, eventually it's going to grow and just let it grow and grow and grow. If you're not comfortable in the market all the time, and if you're not comfortable making your trade size bigger doing more contracts, there's nothing wrong with that. You're okay. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Don't think that. Don't think negative. That's a negative. No. As long as you're profitable, you decide how much you want to trade. The gains will be smaller, right? If you have a goal, I need to be a millionaire or have 10 million dollars or whatever, yeah, it'll take you a little bit longer. But you can still compound it, and that compounding is exponential. You might not get there tomorrow, but you will get there. The third thing is called market risk. This is something that nobody ever talks about, which is being at risk because you're in the market. It's hard to take this into account, but when selling options, you have the ability to look at each and every exploration cycle as a separate time period. If you miss one, no big deal. We had one of our students, he was going in for surgery. He's like, yeah, how do I protect my trades? How do you protect your trades is you get out, right? There's no telling what's going to happen in your surgery. Now, heaven forbid something really bad happens to you, but he was expected to come home in a couple days, but yeah, sure. Hey, why are we taking that risk at all? Get out of your trades. Take the time off, recuperate, go through your surgery, get better, rehabilitate. Then when you are back to normal, then you can go back in again, right? We as option traders have that ability. Now fear and scaling are a different thing. For me, it's been a process of focusing on managing your risk and protecting capital. As you slowly gain more and more confidence in your ability to become consistent, you will become more comfortable taking on more risk, which leads to generating more income and obviously growing the account. Does that make sense? Before you scale, or at least when it comes to a point that it is consequential to you, you have to take control of your emotions before you can start doing that. Now, that point is different for everybody. For some people, they can handle losing a hundred dollars. For some people, they can handle losing a hundred thousand dollars. It's different for everybody. I have seen traders freak out. Putting on a trade, they get out when they're down $200. I mean, what happened? Why did you get out? I couldn't handle it. I was losing money. I'm like, yeah, you were technically down on paper for one day, but the thing rallied and you would have been up today. The trade would have worked. Why did you get out? I couldn't take it. I couldn't take it. Okay. Well, then you know yourself, and if you can't handle a $200 loss then maybe trading is not right for you, or maybe you need to get a handle on your emotions. Right? I've seen other traders on the flip side, they risk a million dollars with no trading plan or any understanding of what to do if the trade goes South. I've seen everything in between. I mean, when I started the Option Genius Service, right, one of the first people I talked to, this was like, way, way, this was years ago. One of the first people I ever talked to, the guy said, hey, I just joined your service and you just put out a iron condor. I just put a hundred thousand dollars in that trade. I was like, what? How much is in your account? He goes, a hundred thousand. I mean, you put the whole thing in one trade? He goes, yep. I said, how do you know it's going to work? He goes, well, your site looked good. My site looked good, that was the reasoning that you put a hundred thousand dollars in one trade? Are you out of your mind? I mean, you don't know who I am. Right. Because at the time, I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have my picture anywhere. I told him, I remember I told him like, dude, you don't know who I am. I could be some kid, some teenager sitting in China putting up a website trying to scam people. He was quiet. He's like, oh yeah, I never thought of that. I mean, luckily that trade worked out great. After that, I helped him to not put all of his money in one trade, which would be a good thing for anybody. But I digress. There are people on both sides. There are the ones that can't take any risk and there are the ones that are super risk-takers. The thing is that it's all pretty much mental, it's in your head. It is fear, plain and simple, right? Trading one contract is technically the same as trading 10 or a hundred or a thousand. It's the same trade, just different numbers. The numbers are a little bit bigger, but yeah, it can be a huge block, a mental block. Part of it comes down to knowing your dollar goal. How much do you actually want to make? If you're trading too small to hit your goal, right? If your goal is a thousand dollars a month, but you're only doing one trade that can only make a hundred dollars a month, you're never going to hit your goal. Then the goal will help you scale because that's just mad. You're like, oh man, I can't get my goal. Okay. I need to do more because I need to get to my goal. The other side is to have confidence. That comes with doing the trades over and over and over and over. If you use real money, it can take years as you go through the different markets, right? You go through a bear market. You go through a bull market. You go through a sideways market. You go through a correction. You go through a dip. You go through all these different things. It takes years to understand how to trade through all those different environments. Now, as passive traders, we have the odds on our side and the trades are built in to withstand these shocks, but it can still impact us. The biggest impact is on us mentally. I've done podcasts in the past where you've got trading scars. That was the name of the podcast, trading scars. When you're trading and you take hits, it causes a scar mentally, not on your body but in your brain. Well, not physically but is a memory, and so when you're in that same situation again, you have to learn how to react properly so that you don't get another scar. You don't get hurt again. Now that's with trading with real money. Now, if you're paper trading or you're backtesting, you can get that experience much, much sooner. Even if you're doing one, I would suggest you do the other two. If you're just doing paper, I would expect you to do some backtesting and eventually get to real money so that you can know what that feels like. If you're only doing real money with a smaller account, then do backtesting and do paper trades and get as many trades on as you can handle. Get as many trades on as you can do as soon as fast as you can, that will help you get the experience. Only through that experience will you feel calmness, will you feel confident and be like, yeah, you know what? I can handle this. I traded through the Lehman Brothers collapse in the great depression or great recession or whatever they called it. Right. When the Corona thing came, I was like, oh man, I've been through this. It wasn't that bad. Oh yeah, because I've been through it. I've been through worse. Right. Been through bull markets, been through bear markets, been through corrections. After a while it becomes like a sixth sense. You're like, oh yeah, I know what the market is going to do. If it does this, I'll do this. If it does this, I'll do that. But I feel confident that I can make adjustments and I'm going to get through it. But if you've never been through that environment before, it's like, oh my God, the end of the world, the market dropping every day. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm going to lose all my money. Get out, get out. The worst possible time. That's what most people do because they don't have the experience. Do the paper trading, do the backtesting. The third aspect of having confidence in your system or your strategy. The thing has to work too, right? The way you're trading has to work as well. You got desire, you got experience, you got confidence. Three legs of the stool and you got to have all three. You could also look at this in a different way. If you tell yourself that you have, let's say $3,000 and that you have to make it work. Man, this is it. That's all the money I have in the world. I got to work. It's got to work. It's got to work. I got to make money. I can't lose this money. Under no circumstances can I lose this money. My wife is going to chop my head off or something else. Right? Then it is just too much pressure and you will either lose it or you will not trade it properly, which will end up making you lose it. So yeah, if you have that much stress on you to not take a loss, then you're going to lose it. You can't do that either. That's why we always say, trade with money you can afford to lose. If you can afford to lose it, that takes away a whole negative aspect of it that will destroy you. In order to scale, step one is to be able to control yourself. That includes being okay with losing money. It includes understanding and being okay that you can lose all the money in your account. It includes not freaking out when things get volatile. You do this in a number of ways. Number one, like I said is you have confidence in your trading plan. If you've put on a whole bunch of trades and you've seen them work, you're going to have more confidence. If you are trading with a group or other people are doing it, or if you have a mentor that's been doing it and he's telling you, hey, look, this is the way we trade. This is how it's going to work. If you've seen it work, then you have confidence. Number two, if you have experience doing the same strategy hundreds or thousands of times, that's basically how you get the confidence in the trading plan. Then step two of scaling is to increase your position sizing, obviously, right? Yeah. I want to scale. Okay. Step two. Step one that we talked about was, what did we talked about? Step one, being able to control yourself. Step one to scaling is being able to control yourself. Step two is to go ahead and then do it to increase your position sizing. Now remember, remember how you thought about going to school or training for whatever you do now for a living, for your job, right? Do you remember getting trained for that? If you had to go to college or get a certificate or go to a seminar or whatever, you did all that, you put up with all that because you were training. You were learning and it took time. It's the same thing here. Trading takes time to learn, but this puts you in a real life seminar and you are paying your dues every day. The time that you put in, you're paying your dues. You put your trades on, you monitor them, you debrief them at the end, right? What happened? What went wrong? What went right? What did I do right? How can I change it? How can I make my results better? You rinse and you repeat. You got a good plan, keep doing it over and over and over again. As your account size gets larger, you can go from one contract to maybe two, then maybe to three, then to five, then to seven. You go at your own pace. There is no race. There is no time limit. As long as you're doing constantly better, you're being consistent like I said earlier, the account will grow in size and you'll get more confident and you can trade more. It's up to you. You want to go from one to five? If you got the money and you've had the experience, okay, fine. I wouldn't advise it. I'd go from one to two, two to four, four to six, six to 10. Take it small jumps. It doesn't need to be overnight because there's no rush. It's not like, oh, my next door neighbor just bought a Mercedes. I got to buy one too so I need to do a hundred trades this month. No, forget him and his Mercedes. Who cares? Right? Be confident with who you are and what you have. Don't rock the boat. We don't want to take unnecessary risks we don't have to. For most people, it's better to move from say three contracts to four contracts, to six to 10 small increments because there's no such thing as missing out on the trade of the century. There is no trade of the century. It's like, oh my God, if I don't invest now, I'm going to lose. I'm never going to get this opportunity again. No, it doesn't happen. There's no such thing. They said that before years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, six months ago, they've been saying that forever. As long as you get in and you can consistently make money, you're fine. It's just going to grow. Everything is the same. You don't need to put all your money in one trade when you're not ready to do so. Okay. Now, step three to scaling. Once you have increased contract size, you need to increase the account size, or maybe you need to do this in the account size before you do the contract size. Either way, but one usually comes after the other. You do this obviously by adding more money to the pot, put more money in your account. Right? Now, you can do it the other way and you'd be like, you know what? I'm just going to grow the account, and whatever I make, I'm going to keep it and just scale that way. Or you can say, hey, look, I've got the confidence. I've got my emotions under control. I got a good strategy. I got a good mentor. I feel confident to be able to go to the next level so I need to add a few thousand dollars more into my account so I can go from say, two contracts to four or four to eight, right? I'm going to go incrementally higher. I'm not going to go from two to 10. Don't do that. Two to four, two to five, slowly, slowly, build it up. Go to the next level, trade there for a little while, get comfortable. Then you can go again to the next level. It's like going up steps, right? Once you're adding more money to the pot, you can do something or you can add something to your account that's called portfolio margin. What portfolio margin means is that you get additional leverage and you get the ability to make money quicker where less money tied up actually. For most brokers that I've seen, portfolio margin starts at $125,000. If you have that in your account, you get portfolio margin. Normally, when you open an account and you apply for margin, they give you two-to-one margin. If you put in $10,000, they'll let you buy $20,000 worth of stock, but they charge you interest on the money that they lent you. We don't really advise that. Right now, when you're passive trading, you need to have a margin account. If it's a non-retirement account, if it's not an IRA, then you got to have margin enabled so that you can do spreads. You can do naked puts. But we don't borrow the money. Portfolio margin is a little mix of both. Portfolio margin, I believe it's like four to one or five to one in terms of margin. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can actually trade with $400,000. Big difference. You could buy a lot more, but I'm not telling you to buy a lot more. I'm telling you to do it because on your trades, they can charge you less in margin. What I mean by that is if you do a naked put that is very, very, very, very far away from the money. If you have a regular margin account, they might charge you, I don't know, they say $3,000 in margin to do that trade for example. I'm just making it up. Okay. If you have a portfolio margin account, they look at it, they calculate that margin differently. They look at the actual risk of the trade. Because they can tell that you're so far away from the money and that the odds are so far in your favor, there's not a big risk of you losing money and so the amount of margin that they're going to charge you or hold for doing that trade is going to be a lot less. It might be, say $500 compared to 2,000 or $3,000. With a regular account, they'll charge you $500 a margin for a portfolio margin account. What happens there? Well, I can make a much greater return percentage-wise on my money. Right? Dollar-wise, they'll be the same thing, but then I can decide, hey, what? Do I want to do two of these or three of these instead of one? Because I can, right? Because I have more leverage. I can do that. If the trade goes against me, of course, I'm still going to end up losing money and I'll lose more because now I have three contracts versus one. I need to be able to know and be good with that. That's why they only give it to you if you have over a hundred or $125,000. But that's what I did. Right? For myself, when I started scaling, I went horizontally. I'm going to lay it out, two different types of scaling. What I did, I went horizontally, meaning I put small amounts into many different accounts. I had a Roth account. I had a regular IRA account. I had one each for my wife. I had a SEP account. I had a corporate account for the company. I had a couple of personal accounts. Then I would do different trades in all the different accounts, so I got a little bit, a little bit, a little bit in all of them, right? Yes. I have a lot of money in the market but they're spread out in all of these different accounts. That's what I call horizontally. In hindsight, the process worked and now all of the accounts are fairly large, but it took a lot longer than necessary because each account did not have enough money in the beginning to do everything I wanted. I was limited in the trades I could do. I was limited in the strategies I could do in the beginning because each account did not have that much money. If you have, let's say a hundred thousand dollars, right? You put it in one account, you can do certain things with it that you can't do if you open 10 different accounts with $10,000 each. That makes sense? What I've done now is I still have those accounts, but I went vertically right now. That's how I'm scaling right now. I'm going vertically. I'm working on growing just one account to a certain level. I have a goal for this one account, whatever money I'm putting in is going into this one account. I'm not spreading it out into all of them. I'm putting it all in one and I want to get this one to a certain level that I can use to generate monthly gains that I can either withdraw if I need to, or I can just let it stay in the account and grow. That's my plan now. Get this account to a certain level that I want to, and then when it gets there, then I don't need to put any more money into my accounts. Then I can take that money that I'm earning and make an investment somewhere else. The money that I make in that account, I can take it out if I want to, if I want to invest in somewhere else, or I can just leave it there, I'll let the account grow. I'm at the point now where it's like, you know what? I don't know if I want to have more money exposed in the stock market. Let's diversify. Let's put some over here. Let's put some over here. Let's invest in different things. Now I'm doing vertically. Initially I started out horizontally. It was great, but I probably could have gotten my goals faster if I went vertically from the beginning. Doing it vertically, you're focusing on just growing one account and that were actually shown to get faster results, but it's all based on your own financial situation. I did it the other way because I had different IRA accounts, a Roth, my wife, and there's limits on how much you can put in each every year. Okay, I can only put this much in there. Your Roth, IRA, you only put like 5,000 or $5,500, something like that. I don't qualify for anymore. But when I did, I was putting I think about 5,000 a year and that's the max you can put. If you have $30,000 you want to put in the market, then you have to put five here, five here, 10 here, 10 here, et cetera, et cetera. That's why I ended up with those horizontal accounts instead of putting them all into one main vertical, large trading account. That make sense. The important thing is to get started. The more you trade, the more confident you will get, the more profits you will generate, and the more you will be inclined to add funds to your account. It's just that simple. For some of you, I know that you have a spouse or a partner that's involved in your decisions and it can be challenging when you want to scale and you want to trade larger, you want to put more money in the account. I know that. They may not be on board with it, right? But if you follow this path, you have concrete results to show your spouse. You can show, look, look at the history. Look at my trades, look at this. I'm doing good. That will ease their mind and then it will make them not only okay with the idea, but it will get them supporting your trading a lot more. Right? The main thing they're worried about now is that it's going to not work. But if you have proof, if you can go to your spouse and say, look, I just did 600 trades. Look at this, trade after trade after trade and I made this much money. Then I think they're going to support you. Don't you think? Don't you agree? Like, yeah, but if you show them three trades. Look, I did three trades. Okay. Let's put a million dollars. Let's mortgage the house. No. Right? Cool. So 90% of trading is mental. You master that, and scaling is a piece of cake. All right, folks, make sure you trade with the odds in your favor. Don't ever forget that part of it. Take care and be safe LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

Passive traders, how you doing? What's going on? Hopefully, you are safe and sound wherever you are listening to this and I hope the markets are treating you fairly. Or, better than fairly, because we want what's fair, right? We want, in our favor. So we had a question from someone coming in and the question was, is it still, or is it a safe time to get back into the oil markets? And if you are following us, you might know that I do have a coaching program where we teach people how to trade oil options and these are futures oil options. And I have been doing so for, it's been over five years now, I believe, quite well, actually. And so that's why a while back I started teaching people how to do it. And now we have, I think we have close to over 400 people that have gone through the program and lots and lots of success stories. Lots of people are very happy that they've joined and we do have a few openings and people are still coming in. So really, I wanted to talk about oil and what has happened in oil this year in 2020 and what I think will happen in the future. So the biggest thing that happened in 2020 in terms of investing so far, was definitely the coronavirus, right? Coronavirus hit the US really bad in March, actually hit the markets in March. And we went into a bear market in the stock market and then pretty much a V-shape bounce back. It took about, I don't know, a month and a half or so, or two months, and then after that, we were off to the races, going much higher. Overall for the year, markets didn't do that much, but it dropped 20% and then came back. So that's a big deal. In addition to the stock market, oil also took a tumble from where it was trading. And then there were a lot of headlines in April, lots of headlines, all the news going crazy, oil went negative, oil went negative, oil prices are actually below zero. You can get paid to get oil. And of course, that's a bunch of BS. So let me put some, let me talk about it. Let me explain it. The spot price of oil, which is the actual real price of oil if you were to go buy a barrel of oil, it's the spot price, that's how much you can buy it for. That never went below zero. Never, ever and it hasn't happened, will never happen, because oil is a commodity. It is a physical substance that has cost, right? It is worth something and it has a cost to locate it, to drill it, to get it out of the ground, to transport it, insure it, store it, all that stuff. It costs money to do all that right now in the US, in the shale, it takes about, I don't know, $40, $45, $40 to $45, depending on the company, somewhere in that range, to get the oil out of the ground. If you go over to Saudi Arabia, they're drilling it. Their oil is a little bit easier to extract and so their costs are cheaper, probably somewhere at $12 to $15 per barrel, somewhere around that range, but still it costs money. And so no, there was never a time where anybody could go into the market and get paid to buy oil. So let's put that to rest. And if you look at a chart of oil right now, you will see it never went oil. And when I talk about oil, there are different types of oil. The one that went negative supposedly was called WTI and that is the one that we trade in our program. The other type of oil, which is traded in the United States, is Brent. And Brent oil itself never went, even trading wise, never went below $26 or so a barrel. That is the oil that is used, the crude oil that you get from overseas, the Middle East and such. But in reality, there are dozens and dozens of types of different crude oil. So the ones we trade mostly are WTI, and you can also do Brent in our program. We trade WTI. WTI is the one that is pumped in the United States or drilled in the United States and in Canada. And all of that oil makes its way normally through pipelines and gets to a place or city called Cushing, Oklahoma. That is where they are stored. That's where all the oil is stored. That's WTI, that's the one we trade. So a lot of times, if there is some unease in the Middle East or something like that, it impacts Brent a lot more. It does impact WTI a little bit, but it's not to the same degree. So WTI is a little bit more stable in that sense. There's less risk of an attack or something like that really making WTI go nuts. But if something happens to Brent, WTI does move in tandem, so that's a whole different story. But what happened was, the trading in WTI for one day did go negative. It did. And that was what the headlines were talking about. It's not that the spot price was negative. It never was. It was for one day. Basically what happened is that we have this very large oil ETF, ticker symbol, USO. If you want to trade oil, but you cannot trade futures, like if you're a mutual fund or a hedge fund or whatever index fund type thing, if you cannot trade futures, they created this ETF, which tracks oil prices and it's called USO. Now in order... The way they do that is they buy front month oil futures contracts. Now oil is traded as a future, which means it's a contract and it has an expiration date, just like the options. So you can have a option on a future. So you have an option, which is a derivative and then oil contract futures contract, which is also a derivative. So you have a derivative on top of a derivative on top of oil. Seriously, I'm not trying to lose you. I know it's getting a little complicated here, but really I'm not trying to. I'm trying to make it as simple as possible. So anyway, you have USO. They buy front month futures contracts, and you can, futures contracts go for several months. So you can buy one for now or in the future. That's why they're called futures and the prices are different for all of them. They're all individual, different securities. So they only buy the front month. What happens is every month when they get to expiration day, the USO has to sell all of its futures contracts, and then they have to buy the contracts for the next month. So basically, they just roll it forward. They do not own any oil, right? So there's another ETF GLD, which tracks gold. Now GLD actually owns gold. So they have gold stored. They don't have to play this game. Maybe they do a little bit, but not as much. USO doesn't own any oil. They don't store any oil, so they have to play this game with trading. Now, what was going on is, that oil was decreasing in price because there is a lot of supply. There is a ton of supply right now, and there's a lack of demand, because of the Corona. It was totally unpredicted, markets shut down, country shut down, business shut down, everything shut down. Nobody needs as much oil. And so what happened was, that the drillers are still drilling oil, but now nobody's using the oil and nobody's buying the oil. So the oil was being stored in Cushing, Oklahoma and the storage facilities were getting fuller and fuller and fuller. They were roughly at about 80 or 85% capacity. Okay. Now, if you want to store oil in Cushing, Oklahoma, you have to have a contract, you have to have a deal with them. You can't just walk in and say, I need a billion barrels of storage or whatnot. You can't just do that. You have to have an agreement with them in place. So you have an entity and you have a trader, USO, which has thousands and thousands and thousands of contracts that they have to get out of. They have to sell, right? And it's expiration date, so they got to sell them today. They got to sell them on that day. They don't have a choice. Otherwise, they go bankrupt. They go caput. They cannot take delivery of that oil. They can't. So they have to get rid of the contracts. Who do they sell the contracts to? They can only sell them to people who have capacity to store it, right? You, me, any individual trader, we cannot take delivery of oil. So we do not trade on expiration day. We do not take contracts, our brokers will not let us. It's just not done because you cannot take delivery. Only people who taking delivery are trading on expiration day. And those were the only people who could buy these contracts from USO. Now, normally in a common market, normal market, everything happening, people take those contracts and it's a done deal. It's normal. But, this was not normal. Nobody knew what was going to happen with Corona. Nobody knew when demand was going to pick up again. And so what happened was, all of the buyers that USO normally deals with, they know these guys, they're friends, they work together. They reach out to them and say, "Hey, we need you to take over these contracts from us." The buyer said, "No, can't do it. Not going to do it this month. I still got plenty of oil stored up that I haven't gotten rid of. My capacity is low. I don't have that much allotment. I can't do it." And USO freaked out. So they said, "All right, fine, I know the price is whatever, 30 bucks a barrel, $25 a barrel, $25 a barrel," whatever it was, said, "I'll give it you for $20. Just take it for $20." And the buyer said, "Nope." "All right, I'll give it to you for $15." "Nope." "I'll give it to you for $10." "Nope." "I'll give to you for zero. Come on. Just take it, just take it. Just please just take my oil. Just pay me and just take it from me. Just take these contracts." "Nope. I can't take it because I got nowhere to put it." "So even if you give me the oil at zero, what you're doing, Mr. USO, I cannot take delivery. It's going to cost me to take delivery of this oil. I have to pay for storage." "How much is it going to cost you?" "Well, I don't know. It's going to cost me some money." So USO kept dropping the price. They went to zero and then they went negative. They said, "Here, we'll pay you to take the oil." "Nope." "We'll pay you more. We'll pay you more. We'll pay you more." I think it got down to, at one point, it was like negative $35 or $37 a barrel at one point. That is what they were paying these people to take contracts from them and then take delivery and store it. So we as individual investors, or most people on Wall Street, could not take advantage of this. There were only a few select firms that could have taken advantage of this. So for them, yeah, it was a windfall, right? For us, you and me, it didn't make any difference. For oil traders or option traders, it didn't make any difference. Why? Because number one, oil options had already expired. The options that we were trading had already expired. And because of the rules that we use in my system, we were already out of the oil markets. We were not trading at this time. So that saved us. The rules and my system, it worked, this is proof. It worked and it saved us and we were not trading at this time. Number two, the day after this happened, oil prices went back up, because this was a anomaly. It was a technical glitch in the system. It was just supply and demand. No demand, prices go down. Hey, I need you to get rid of this, here, please take it. So they got paid. Everybody could not take advantage of this. This is not a normal thing that happened. If you look at the price of a price chart, you won't see it on the price chart. And that was gone. That only happened that one day for that one futures contract. Not all of futures contracts, not olive oil. It was that one futures contract on one day and it expired and it went away and the problem was gone. Now I hope USO has learned its lesson. And they did say that they do not, where they were spreading their risk into not trading only the front month option. So now they trade whatever the current month is, they buy some of the next month, they buy some of the next month. That's going to lower their profits and that's going to lower how much USO actually tracks the regular price of oil. So if oil is going up a dollar, USO's not going to go up the same amount because it's not going to track as much, because they're in different contracts. So getting technical here. So just USO is not going to be as efficient tracking the price of oil because now they have to hedge themselves. They have to protect themselves so this does not happen again. Okay? But, so if you're going to ask me, "Hey, did oil prices go negative?" I'd be like, "Not really." Oil never went negative. Technically there was a glitch. If you could have taken advantage of it, you did well. Most of us couldn't. Next thing you know, oil was up the next day, right? And it started going up since then. So what happened? Well, this was a pretty big anomaly, a pretty big glitch. And even before this happened, liquidity, or not liquidity, volatility in oil had increased. And so if you look at OVX, which is the oil volatility index, it's like VIX, you know the VIX for stocks, the SS&P, OVX is the same thing for oil. If you look at that, volatility had increased before this happened, before April 2nd, I believe. And so the, the brokers themselves, the futures brokers, when volatility increases, they start to increase the amount of margin that you need per each contract. So basically what that means is, that things are getting crazy. Things are getting volatile. The market is waking up, it's jumping around, you need to have more money for each contract, which means that you are being protected, right? You're having less money at risk. If you only have $5,000 in the account, you can't be trading two, three, four different contracts. It lowers how many contracts you can trade. So you have to get out of some contracts, which is good because things are acting crazy. That's one of the ways the futures markets protect their traders, us little guys. After this happened, several brokers decided to stop letting individual investors trade oil. That was oil, as well as the options. Was this fair? I don't know. I'm not a broker. I really can't decide. I can't say. But I do know that if you were at a broker that did not, and all the brokers did not. There were several brokers, interactive brokers, trade station, DeCarley trading, which is somebody that we recommend. They are a futures only broker and all the other futures only brokers did not stop trading. If you could have traded, and I could not. I was at Ameritrade, Ameritrade stock trading. A lot of the other big firms stopped trading, E-Trade, Schwab, they all, they stopped it. So I could not take advantage. But you have a security that has just gone down in price significantly. It's lower than the cost, right? Oil is trading at a price that's lower than it costs to create. What is going to go happen to that price? It's going to shoot up. It has no choice. It has to go up. That was the easiest money you could have made ever in the history of the world, maybe. You have things selling and I think if you look at our oil chart now, the lowest they got to was like $6 on the oil chart, right? But let's say it went to $7 or $8. Let's say you could have bought it at $8. If you could buy oil at $8 and it cost $40 to get out of the ground, yeah, that sucker's going to go up. That's easy money. So yeah, we did have people in our program that were trading and they made the easiest money in their lives because you know it's going up, right? You just sit back and buy as much as you can and you hold on for dear life. And since then, that happened in April, right, and oil has rallied. It's been trading for the last several months around $40 a barrel. And it's in a very tight range. It just goes up and down a little bit, little up and down, up and down, up and down. I have been gritting my teeth waiting for Ameritrade to let us back in. They still haven't done it. I'm recording this, it's November, they still have not let us back in as individual investors. Other brokers have and so I had to switch an account to another broker and now I'm trading it over there. I waited and waited and waited, and finally said, I can't take it anymore. I mean, this is the perfect opportunity to be trading oil. It's calm, it's moving sideways. Oh my God, it's easy. Money is just sitting there. Please, let me trade. Please, let me trade. Nope. They're not letting me. Okay, let's go to a different broker. So I took out a large account over to another broker and I've started over there. Two months ago, I started, made 7% in the first month. This month I made like two point something. I got out early because of the election. The US presidential election's coming up in a few days and I have really limited all my positions. I don't want to be in any oil positions. I don't think anything's going to happen to oil because of that, but I'm not taking the risk. Okay? So yes we are back. Oil is back. It is a great way to trade. It is doing really, really well. I mean, it's going sideways. I don't know what else you could want is to be an option seller, right? Very little risk, sell as far away from the money as you can. It's great if you do it properly. And the way we do it is, we do it properly, right? Because we have, back-tested, not back-tested, but actually tested with real money. I have for several years. Different strategies, I found the one that works the best and not only does it work the best, but I came up with the different rules to protect myself and to hedge myself and to make sure that, okay, in this situation, we need to do this, in this situation, we need to do that and that's why we were protected. That's why we were out of the market even before oil went, quote unquote, negative for the day, right? We were already out. And that was because of our rules. So we were protected. So I'm happy, I'm ecstatic. I'm like, Hey, this is it. It worked. This is why we have the freaking rules to protect ourselves. This is why I can say, yes, this program works. And this is why I say you should join the program, right? You should join if you want to trade oil profitably. Yeah, join the program. If not, you can try to figure it out on your own. Good luck, it took me several years to do it. Have at it, be fun, hopefully you don't lose all your money in the process. But yeah, so that's where oil is right now. It's moving sideways. It's doing good. We're going to be making money. I'm waiting until after the election is over and then we're going to go full fledge back into it. Been already doing it for two months now and we did great, very simple, very easy trades. After the election settles, everything goes back, we're going to go 100% back into it and it's going to be a lot of fun. I do expect oil to be very calm for the next year. We'll see how it happens. We'll see if there's anything with the Corona vaccine and all that stuff. We can't predict the future, but from what we are seeing, we're going to make a lot of money. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions So if you've been thinking about our program, it's time to get in now so that you can start paper trading, so that you can start practicing and so you stop wasting time, right? Because every day that goes by is a day that you're missing out on theta, missing out on this money for selling time. Every day that goes by is a day you cannot sell time. So stop sitting on the sidelines, get involved, start paper trading, doing something, and trade with the odds in your favor. Thank you and good luck. https://optiongenius.com/oiloptions LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Podcast Transcript: I hope that wasn't too loud. That's my new toy, and I am super excited about it. I'm stoked about it actually. But first some background, making money could get boring. Now I say that because passive trading can be monotonous. When just about every trade you make makes money, you take it for granted. It kind of loses its charm and the dollars, they just become numbers on a screen. So it can get really out of hand. Like you, just, there's no more fun anymore. And that's good in a way, so that you don't get emotional about it in case you lose money, just, oh, the numbers went down. That's okay, it's not an indictment on me that I'm a bad person or I'm stupid, or anything like that. The numbers went down and then, they'll go back up. And that's how it becomes for a lot of traders, but that's bad because you lose interest. It's not exciting anymore. It's not fun anymore. It doesn't have that same oomph that it had when you first started, you know? And that's when you start to screw up, that's when you start making mistakes, that's when you start falling down and not paying attention. So a few years ago, I added a bonus for myself. Every time I would have a positive month, where I would make money for the entire month, I would have what I called the celebratory lunch, with my wife. And this would be special, maybe once a month, no kids, no distractions, nothing else. It would just be me and her setting time apart, scheduling it and saying, we're going to lunch and we're going to some nice place. And, it was because I had a positive month and I would be super happy. I would love it, I would look forward to it. And it made a huge difference. I actually started trading better, just because I knew I wanted that day off. And yeah, I did take the whole day off. So it wasn't just a celebratory lunch, it was like a celebratory day off. But the big thing was the lunch. I wanted that time with my wife. Now we normally do date nights. You go out at night and you get a babysitter or somebody to watch the kids, but this was different, this was during the day. I mean, we would make the time and we would splurge and we would celebrate. And the cool thing is that we would go to these restaurants where, everybody else there was rushed. People coming in, workers, or they're coming in their suits and ties, and they're in their whatever outfits, or their office outfits. And they would come in and they'd have, maybe like 30 minutes to eat and they'd be rushed. And the waiters would be rushing around and we'd be sitting there for like two hours, just enjoying ourselves, talking and catching up, and relaxing. And the waiter would be like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't bring your food out fast enough. We're like, ah, don't worry about it, we're going to be here for a while. You take care of your other tables. Don't worry about us. And that was another way, where I would be so grateful and thankful. It was a monthly reminder of what I have that other people didn't, because they had to rush back to work. They're on the clock, it's a daily grind, the nine to five rat race, and they couldn't get out of it. Whereas me, I was lucky to be celebrating with my wife, something simple, hey, we made a positive month this month. And it wasn't just that we made money that month, 'cause the worker people, they're making money too, right? But it was the fact that I was able to have the time, to spend the way I wanted to, and so it made it a much bigger deal. So it wasn't just a fact that yes, I made money that month. It wasn't just the fact that I was spending time with my wife. It was a celebration, and it was a reminder of what a wonderful life it is. And it would bring me joy and it would bring me some humility, try not to get over, you don't want to get over-pompous. You want to stay humble, right? You don't want to get a big head. You don't want to be like, oh yeah, I'm perfect, I'm a great trader, I'm a God of wall street, master of the universe type thing. No, that's not me, I don't think I'm ever going to be like that. But that's another thing why I needed to do it. I needed to have that celebration because as an introvert, that's one thing I don't do enough, is to celebrate the wins and to have fun. Or maybe it has nothing to do with me being an introvert, I don't know. But I do know that that is something I need to work on. That is something that I need to change in my life as well. Because now when we have the little ones, the little kids, it's important to celebrate everything, even all the little things. Not every little thing they do, we don't encourage them, but when they do something important, we really make a big deal out of it. Because I know my parents didn't do that for me, everything was expected. I didn't have a high school graduation party, didn't have a college, well college graduation wasn't a big deal, but dropped out of three different schools before I finally graduated. So that wasn't a thing. But, everything was expected, you were expected to get good grades. You're expected to do good. You're expected to not get any speeding tickets. You're expected to behave properly, and all that kind of stuff. So there wasn't a lot of celebration. And so, I think that's carried off into my behavior and I'm a lot more serious than I want to be, and one of the things I want to change about myself is just be more joyful, and be more happy and kind, and all that comes from being happy. And so, if you celebrate more and you get to be happier, in a sense, and so the lunch, it worked great. I got all these reminders. I felt good about myself. My wife was smiling and she was proud of me, and it was a reminder that she was proud of me, and it worked awesome for a while. Problem is, the lunch was only once a month. And so yeah, once a month I would get that. But you want that constant dopamine hit, you want these constant reminders to feel good about yourself and to be happy. And so it's kind of like, all these video games and the social apps, like Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter and all these things. And even slot machines, they are addictive because you get the constant dopamine hit. Every time you make an action, you get a little bell or you get a little emoji, or you get a little like, and those become addictive, because we really crave that. And in our mind, every time you get one of those little messages, there's a little chemical that's released in the brain. And that chemical is even more powerful than heroin and crack. And so, you do become addicted to it. And studies have shown that Facebook and all these things, are addictive. And so I guess to me, this was my "like", that I went to lunch and I got a like, but it was only once a month. So it did what I wanted it to do, but it wasn't often enough. So about a month ago, one of our passive trading formula students, posted in the private Facebook group that we have, that he made eight profitable trades that month. And we encourage our students, post your trades and push your trades before you do them even, so that you can get them critiqued. Other people can give you ideas, to see if you make sure you're doing it right. And we do want to celebrate everybody's trades and everybody's success, right? So he posted, he had eight profitable trades that month, which was awesome. It was great, and everybody's congratulating him and giving him likes. And then the next day, another student posted that she was profitable on 10 trades in a row. And she had done, I think, three trades for three months, and then three trades another month, and then four trades the last month. And so for three months she was profitable on every single trade, and that was wonderful. And that pumped me up even more, right? I got really excited. I'm like, oh, this is awesome, this is awesome. And these, they're having success, they're having great results. That pumps me up more than my own trades. Doing well on my own trades, that's great, that's ho-hum now. But when our students are doing well, that really, really gets me juiced. And so I wanted to figure out a way to congratulate them. You know, I mean, I can't take them out to lunch, but how can I congratulate them in a way where they get a little bit of that dopamine hit, and they feel good about themselves? And so, I saw that in the groups, when you're typing in a reply, you can add these emojis. And one of the emojis is a bell. A service bell, that's what it's called. And so, I gave them one bell for every positive trade. So the first gentleman, he got eight bells. The second lady, she got 10 bells, and then other students got bells as well. So I was looking through, okay who else posted positive trades? Gave them bell, bell, bell, and I got to tell you, it was super fun giving out bells. It was a lot of fun. And they liked getting the bells too. It's like a public acknowledgement that you're doing well and you get one bell for every positive trade. So, it's like a cash register going ch-ching, ch-ching. If you're a retail store owner, every time that cash register rings, hey, you made money. So this is great. The bell goes off, boom, hey, you made money. Ding, there's a bell, you made money, congratulations. And so bells are also a big part of wall street, right? Now that you think about it, right? Every day, the stock market, the New York stock exchange and the NASDAQ, they're opened by ringing the bell, ding-ding-ding, and then they're closed by ringing the bell, ding-ding-ding. Now, right now it's totally, they don't need the bells, especially on NASDAQ. Everything is computerized, automated, nobody's even there, but on the New York stock exchange, they have a floor and they actually have traders. And so the bell tells you, ding-ding-ding-ding, markets open, markets closed. And so it's really cool, the bell is a big part of trading. And so now, I am making the bell a thing at Option Genius, and we are going to give students bells for every positive trade, right? So every time they post a positive trade, they're going to get a bell. And I thought, hmm, what if we rang a real bell? Would that make any difference? I don't know if you ever remember this or if you've been to this restaurant, but it's a fast food place called Long John Silver's and its sea food, and I used to go there when I was little. I don't see anymore around here, where I live right now, in the suburbs of Houston. But when I lived in Miami, there was one near our house and they had amazing hush-puppies, I love their hush puppies. I would just go in there and order like two dozen hush-puppies. Just fried corn bread, but they were super good. But if you've ever eaten there, you go inside and it's like a seafood theme, because it was seafood. And they would have this bell by the door, by the main door, the entrance and exit door. And it had a little plaque and said, hey, if you got good service or if you were happy, ring the bell and it would have a bell that you would see on the ship or on a dock, or something like that. And it was a pretty big bell with a rope tied to the little thingy inside the bell that rings it. And so you're supposed to ring the bell every time you got good service and that'd be cool, because that's positive reinforcement for all the people that work there. That, hey look, somebody enjoyed their visit. Somebody enjoyed their food. Somebody liked the staff. And it also tells all of the other people eating at the restaurant, right? That whole, hey, it's social proof, right? Somebody likes this place, somebody else besides us likes this place. And so as a kid, I would just ring the bell all the time, it didn't matter. I just loved ringing that bell, it was crazy. It was just fun ringing a bell. And so now I've taken it a bit further. So I ordered my own bell from Amazon. And every time I have a profitable trade, I ring the bell and I love it. I mean, it's a constant reminder that I did a good thing, right? I was successful, I made it, I did what I was supposed to do and a trade worked. And it works in two ways. Number one, I need to move. Like I need to actually physically move to go to the bell and press a button, right? And number two, it's auditory. So it impacts two senses. And of course, I mean, on the screen, on the monitor, I see the dollar amounts that I made. So I guess that incorporates sight too, so three senses. So every time I have a positive trade, there are three senses that are involved. One, I see the result on the screen. Two, I actually have to move towards the bell and hit the bell with my finger. And then three, I get to hear it as well, and it's loud, and it's like, there you go. It's loud and people can hear it. In the office building that we're in, next door to me, there is a lawyer and I have been driving him crazy with all the bell rings lately. He's been getting mad. He doesn't say anything, but whenever I see him in the hallway, he's like, hey man, what's with the bell? It's hilarious. But the important thing here is, the only time you can ring the bell, is after a positive trade. And I've been ringing it on the podcast because I just want you to hear it. But it's important that you don't use it unless it's a positive trade. So after you're out, trade is over, you are done. You exited the trade, everything, don't do it before that. Don't say, oh yeah, I made most of the money, I'm getting out, now I'm going to get out. No, no, no. You only get to ring the bell, you only get to take credit, after the trade is over, okay? You can't just ring it whenever you want. Because ringing the bell is special and it's a celebration. If you don't do that, then it's going to lose meaning and it's just going to gather dust. So make sure it's important, it's special, and that it is a celebration. Now it's kind of like, if it's on your birthday and you're blowing out the candles on your birthday cake, that's special. It's once a year, if you do that every day, it wouldn't have any meaning. It would be like, whatever more candles, foof. But the fact that it's a big deal, you got candles, you got a cake, you got people singing, and then you blow it out and everybody claps. It's a big deal. Maybe not for adults as much, but it should be. If you don't enjoy your own birthday, then that kind of takes a little bit of life away. So celebrate, enjoy the little things. Enjoy the big things especially, if you're not enjoying the big things, start with the big things and then start enjoying all the little things as well. So if you want to get your own bell, you can just search for service bell on the internet. I got mine from Amazon. It's like five bucks or something. That's what they're called, they're called a service bell. And they look like, well, it's the bells that you used to see at motels and hotels, even some doctor's offices. So you would ring it in case there was nobody at the counter. So you probably remember them, they are silver and they have a little button on top. They're black on the bottom and you just press a button on top, and it goes ding, like this, ding. So I would urge you to go and get yourself a bell and celebrate every positive trade, okay? If you don't want to do a bell, don't do a bell, do something else, but make something that interacts with your senses. Something that you have to move physically, do it, makes a noise or makes a smell, something that gives you some sensation. And then every time you do that, you get that little bit of dopamine and it becomes addictive, and then you want to get that trade. So sometimes if you're in a trade and you're like, you know what? I can take my money now, or I can get a little bit more. And you're like, no, you know what? I'm going to get out of the trade now because I'm going to ring that bell. So you take the profits and you don't risk it. So, it can work out in your favor as well. So remember trade with your odds in your favor so that you can ring the bell more often. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Podcast Transcript: Hello. Hello. Hello. I had a interesting phone call yesterday. And so I thought I'd share with you, it's an interesting story. A guy calls the office and I just happened to pick it up and he's wanting to know about passive trading, what it is, how it works. And so I asked him, I said, "We have some questions that we normally ask people." And I say, "So are you doing any trading right now? You know anything about options?" And he says, bravely, or very proudly that, "Yeah, I do. I just turned 10,000 into 25,000 trading options." And I said, "Whoa, that's awesome. That's great. Congratulations. Well done, good job. How much do you have in your account right now?" And he says, "Well, I have 25,000." I said, "Oh, okay. So you had 10 before and you turned it into 25?" "Yes." "Oh, awesome. Great, great. What are you going to do with it now?" And he says, "Well, I'm going to take the 25, break it out into five and put 5,000 in each different trade." So I'm like, "Oh, okay, cool. You're going to be smart. You're going to diversify." He goes, "Yeah, exactly. I'm going to be diversifying." So I was like, "Okay, so the first time you did it, you put the whole 10 in one. Right? How many different stocks did you do?" He goes, "Yeah, just one." I go, "Okay, so you put one trade in one stock, the whole 10 and it turned into 25. Now you're going to break it down and diversify." And he goes, "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing." And I was like, "Okay, cool. So, let me see," this is me talking. I was like, "Let me see if I can try to explain to you what you did. Now, what you did was basically you went to the casino, Wall Street's a casino. So, you go to the casino and you end up at the roulette table. Now the roulette table has all these different kinds of bets that you can make. You can bet red. You can bet black. You can red odd, even. What you decided was you going to take all your money and you picked one number and you put it all on that one number and you let it ride. And you hit, which is awesome. I mean, the odds of that are really low, but you hit and it paid off. It paid off big, that's awesome. That's great. So, now what you're doing is you're taking your winnings. You split it up into five little pots and you're going to put them on five different numbers." And he's like, "Okay." I'm like, "Yeah. So, now this is around two. The first spin you hit. The second spin and you put it on five different numbers. What do you think is going to happen?" He goes, "If it's a roulette, I'm probably going to lose." I'm like, "Yeah. Yep, exactly. That's what's going to happen if you do the same thing." And he's like, "Well, well, why is passive trading so different? Why is that so much better? I knew what I was doing. I made a smart choice. I made a smart bet." I'm like, "Yeah, maybe you did. But the chances of you duplicating it, not very big. The odds are against you. Now with passive trading I'm with you in the casino. I came with you, the same car. But I didn't go to the roulette table. I went to the blackjack table and I sat down." And he goes, "Well, blackjack it doesn't have good odds either." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's true. If you play the regular way, black Jack doesn't really have that good odds either. But see, I don't play it the regular way." "What do you do?" I said, "Well, when I play blackjack, or basically passive trading, but when I'm doing blackjack in this scenario, I start with my two cards and I start with either an 18, 19 or 20." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah. I start with either, an 18 and 19 or 20 on every hand. Now, sometimes it gets really, really close to 21. Some trades are really close to 21, but nothing is guaranteed, so I can't say 21. So, we'll just say I start with 18, 19 or 20. Now, how many hands do you think I'm going to win, if I start with 18, 19 or 20?" He goes, "All of them." I'm like, "Well, yeah. You do lose on occasion, but yeah, I win on the majority of them. I win on most of them. So, both of us went to the casino. You went to roulette, you did one swing or one round or whatever it's called and you won big. Then you do the second one and then you lost it all. Now you're busted. You're broke. You're got no money left. So now you have to wait for me to either run out of money or get bored, because we came in the same car. So, you're going to be waiting a long time because I'm doing well at the blackjack table. Now, you know how at the blackjack table they have space for six or seven people or eight people? I don't know how many people can sit there, but they have space for multiple people there." "Yeah." "Well, I'm playing the whole table. I'm playing every single seat. I'm doing multiple hands and I'm starting every hand with 18, 19 or 20. And so the thing is that, I'm going to lose eventually. Occasionally I'm going to lose. But when I do lose, I lose small. I don't lose it. So that gives me staying power. That lets me sit there at the table all night long, just playing, playing, playing, playing, playing until I get bored because most likely I ain't going to run out of money. And that's the difference between buying options and selling options. Now passive trading takes it a little step further. If you're only selling options, you still have some risks you have to worry about. Passive trading takes it even further to the next level. That's why I'm really a big proponent of passive trading." So he goes, "Oh, okay. Where can I find out more?" I go, "Well, just go get my free book. And you can do the same thing. The book is at passivetrading.com/free book. Just go there and pick up the book, learn all about it, see what you think. Learn how to play blackjack with 18, 19 or 20. Depending on whatever strategy you use, that's what number you get." And so, right now I understand what this guy is coming from. There are a lot of people like him in the market. The market is very volatile right now. Stocks are going up, stocks are going down depending on what stock you're playing. And it's a little crazy, but it's a gambler's market. And so if you are a gambler and if you're not in this for the long run, and if you're just in it to make some quick money and hopefully you place a bet and it pays off. This is a great market for you. It's very volatile. That means there's a lot of premium and the stocks are moving up and down really crazy. And then now we have the election coming up. So there's going to be a lot more volatility, a lot more volatility. And so if you're a gambler, then this is great. You can turn your 10 into 25 and then you probably turn your 25 and zero. And then maybe you get some more and come back in and try it again. But if you do hit the 10 to 25, I hope you take some money off the table. Don't risk at all. Just whatever money you came with. Take that 10 off the table, go put it in a savings account and then play with whatever money you made. Because eventually you're going to blow it, if you're a gambler. If you're not a gambler, if you're in this for the long haul, if you're looking for a real passive income, if you're looking for real something stable to do, then selling options is the way to go. Add passive trading onto that, take it to the next level. And you could be there playing all night and it doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter how volatile it gets. It doesn't matter who wins the election. It doesn't matter if there's stimulus or no stimulus. Doesn't matter if this company is doing well or that company is doing well. We play the odds and we just keep rolling. We just keep playing with the money and that's it. That's how it goes. And so, I've been doing this for a long, long time. And in the beginning, when I first started, lost a bunch of money, did all kinds of crazy things. Made money too, along the way. I had some big winners just like this guy did, but you learn that those are few and far between. And so eventually, over time, I realized that. Hey, you know what, I need something sustainable, something long-term, something that's not going to take all my time either. And that's another major factor of passive trading, it doesn't take a lot of time. And so right now, it's a great time to start. Things are going to get more volatile, I believe. We don't know when this Coronavirus is going to be going away, or if it's going to go away, or what the world is going to look like when we returned back to normal. It's going to be maybe a new normal, who knows. But I think eventually things will go back to the way they are now, or they were before. So we'll have pre-COVID and then during COVID, then after COVID. And after COVID eventually things that go back to pre-COVID, and life will go on. And passive traders will still be trading and the gamblers will be gone. So, don't be a gambler. Trade with the odds in your favor, my friend. Take care. LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here! https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here: https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer  Podcast Transcript: Allen Sama: All right there, passive traders, welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. Today I'm here with my good friend, Justin Boyum, who is a US Army veteran. He's also a very successful businessman, speaker and a professional and executive coach. Being a veteran himself, he does look out for the other veterans and their families, and tries to help them find fulfilling careers, create strong relationships, and live joyful lives. How are you doing, Justin? Justin Boyum: Doing great, man. Allen Sama: What you've been up to lately? Justin Boyum: Lately, I have been doing some events, going around talking with other veterans and professionals out there just trying to learn more about how people are dealing with our new COVID era that we're in and dealing with lockdowns and the different strategies that are available to them to accelerate their careers or their business. Allen Sama: Awesome, sweet. So, the reason I wanted to bring Justin on is because as a veteran, he goes through and he's been trained in making quick decisions. As we are traders, we need to have the ability to take limited information and act on that. Some people I've talked to in the past are like, "Well, I want to know that everything is going to be perfectly exactly the way I needed to before I make a trade." That's just not how it works. We need to take imperfect information, we have to be okay with not knowing everything, and that knowing that we might be wrong on our assessment and still be able to adapt. Allen Sama: So, when I was talking to Justin, he was saying the same things. I was like, "Man, this is some really good stuff." So when he talks to his students and his clients, he talks about how to be high performance and how to make those quick decisions and how to make the decisions that will put you in the position that you can excel. So, Justin, tell me something about the stuff that you learn in the military, because you were active, right? You were in a war zone. Justin Boyum: Right, I did a tour in Iraq during Iraqi Freedom in Basra. Yeah, absolutely. So, realistically to talk about exactly what you mentioned, right, being able to make quick decisions. I mean, one of the first things that they teach their leaders and their officers, and the sergeants is the worst decision that you can make is no decision, right? So, they teach you to be able to really make decisions. You got to use the information that you have in front of you. That doesn't mean that every decision you make is always going to work out perfectly, but the worst thing to do is to be inaction. Justin Boyum: I think one of the more beautiful illustrations of this is in the HBO series that they did for Band of Brothers. They showed the Battle of Bastogne, which is very key battle in World War II. They had a new lieutenant that was less decisive, that was going to lead this effort initially. One, the soldiers already knew that too. So, there was a lot of concern about like, "Are we going to be able to handle this?" But sure enough, they go into action. That's when the combat starts, and he completely freezes. It's causing them to take on casualties and have all these issues. So, they send in another captain from another unit just to run in there and take over operations. He quickly figures out, "Where's everybody at? I've got to make a decision, we get going." Justin Boyum: And then they go in, they actually complete this mission, which was effectively you can really pinpoint that that's where the Allied forces really won the war was winning this particular battle. It was because somebody came in, and he just made decisions, right? It wasn't always perfect. He did some crazy things in that. Go watch the series, if you want to see it, or read the book. It's a fantastic book. But I mean, realistically, the difference was that he went and made decisions. He got into action. Yeah, there's going to be risk that you have to take. You have to just do whatever... You have to calculate that in your head quick enough. What's an acceptable amount of risk? You got to go. Justin Boyum: But obviously, in a war effort, you've got to make that decision or you're going to lose a [inaudible 00:04:21], right? So, there's a little bit of a raised stakes there. But I think in general, when I talk with my students, whether they're building a business, following their careers, making more sales for their book of business, wherever it is, they've got to be able to raise that necessity to that warlike effort. If I don't go do this, these are the potential results or lack of results I'm going to see. There are a number of ways to attach meaning to that. But absolutely, you got to be able to make decisions and go. The worst thing you can do is do nothing. Allen Sama: Yeah. So, I mean, there's two things that you mentioned there. One of the things is that we find that people, they want to be successful. They want to make more money trading. They want to live a better life and have a better lifestyle, but they are afraid to get started. They're afraid to make that first step and get in, because it's like, "Oh, I don't know this, and I don't know how to do this. This is confusing to me." Allen Sama: And then there's that other person who's a little bit further down the line. He has put on a trade, and he has followed the rules. He's doing everything properly, but then the market, like the market does or the stock, it doesn't cooperate. So, now, the person doesn't know what to do and they're flustered. They're taking losses. It's not the same as in a war zone. We're not dying here, we're not getting hurt. But when you lose money, it feels the same way. Justin Boyum: Well, you got to think about the ripple effects of that, of course, too, right? What does that mean for your family? What does that meant to the new people you're connected to? Right? What does that keep you from being able to invest in, right? Maybe this person that likes to invest in charities, that like sports things, like my community, like the veteran community or what have you, right? You not being able to perform at a high level, which is why I love to talk about high performance, because in order to be successful at anything, especially when you're dealing with something that can be volatile like a market, you've got to really be very highly clear and be able to take that bolt action, because there's real meaning behind, "What if I don't do it?" Justin Boyum: I looked at this as, say I was somebody who was in cold call sales.  I don't know if you've been in cold calling before, but you got to go and make 100 calls a day and maybe 5 of them will pick up, right, depending on what persons you're calling or how good you are with your outreach. But in general, when people are first starting out, at least you're looking at like a 2 to 5% success rate of even getting to talk to a human being that doesn't hang up on you. That can be difficult, but we'll break that down to say 20 calls. If you stopped at 19, that 20th call might be the person that said yes. Whatever solution is, you're selling product solution, right? Justin Boyum: By not making that next call, you've sacrificed that other person's joy or their ability to get what they want. Who does that effect, right? The people that are not near them, right? So, it's important that you'd be able to do those things and be able to overcome that fear of rejection or failure. You might get in them or "Oh, yeah, I had this happen one time, and it didn't go well," right? Well, what if I stopped cold calling after the first person that called me an idiot on the phone and hung up on me, because I didn't like the way that made me feel? Well, that kept me from making the next call, where I could have served somebody at a very high level and gotten them what they need to do, which not only helps them, but helps my business, helps my family, and all the different ripple effects that go from there. Allen Sama: Okay, so how would you walk somebody through that situation? So, I'll try to put it back in the trading scenario. So, there's a guy who is in a new environment, doing something new, not too experience, hasn't been through the ups and downs before, but he has made the jump. He's very scared, but he made the jump. He's done some trades. But now all of a sudden, because like right now what's going on in the stock market, the stock market has been going up. For the last several years, it's just been going almost straight up. Allen Sama: Now after COVID, we have some turbulence, we have a big market drop. A lot of people got scared. But then even after that, the market rallied back higher. Now everybody and their brother is wanting to trade and buying stocks and telling, "Oh, I'm making so much money." Well, that's great, but I mean, you're not doing it properly. You're just jumping in and you're getting some quick gains, because that's just what the market is doing, just going straight up. It's easy to do right now. But when it turns and I do believe it's going to turn pretty soon, there's a lot of uncertain activities and events coming up, the election and all that. Allen Sama: So, let's say somebody has done that. They don't have that much experience. They got in, they played some trades. They've made some money. They're a little bit maybe overconfident, but now the trade turns around. They're at a point where, "Okay, I need to make a decision. Either I need to get out of my trade, or I need to buckle down and stay in or I need to change my trade or adjust it somehow." Can you walk them through, or do you have some steps that they could take or some questions they could ask themselves? Justin Boyum: Right. So, I think that keys in. So, most people, it's what we've been talking about as we've been going through this. There are three major areas that cause most people to fail or quit at their goals. The very first one I think that we've been talking around now is fear. Fear is something that really drives a lot of decision makings. Sometimes when we're in a place where we're operating with fear, we tend to make bad decisions. We're going to make decisions that don't really serve us definitely. Allen Sama: That's cool. Justin Boyum: Or you might just go quit, right? Hey, I got into this trading, because I wanted to make 10K a month. I don't know what the average person if they really commit to this tends to make, but let's say they want to make 10K a month, allows me to quit my job, allows me to really freelance my time better or manage my time to be able to spend more time with my family or retire, whatever I'm going to do. So, I would come back to what was that original goal that you had? Because fear, sometimes it could be like, "Hey, I'm concerned about what the outcome may be." Maybe it's not what I'm going to be wanting, right? Maybe I go invest this money in trading, and I actually end up losing money. Maybe it's going to be harder than I expect. Justin Boyum: Maybe they're a little bit afraid of the process that's going to be a little hard or maybe they've got some stories in their background films like, "Well, I've always failed at some of these things or I have a bad experience before. So, I'm not going to go and do this again." Even if they've learned a strategy from someone like you that says, "Yeah, this can be successful if you do it right." So how do you overcome that fear? I think that you'd have to really go back and attach that, have the clarity around why you're doing what you're doing. Now, certainly, you want to follow a great strategy and you want to have a really good, effective plan. But just like in the military, right? Justin Boyum: I mean, sometimes we can have excellent plans. We've got the greatest military in the world, because they've done a lot of research. They make sure that they look at what's acceptable risk to them and what we need to do to be okay with something. But even with that, if you read any military book, stuff hits the fan, right? You got to be able to deal with that and be able to make decisions and move forward. Sometimes you're going to take some losses along the way. Sometimes they can really work out great for you. Justin Boyum: So, I would go back and look at somebody... So, in this case of if I was going to work with somebody who's a trader and going, "Hey, I really wanted to make this 10K a month, but I'm really afraid of making this decision because the market is volatile." I'm like, "I don't know if I want to get out of this." I said, "Okay, well, why don't you write me a check for $10,000?" Because by not making the decisions and staying with your commitment, that's what you're doing. You just go ahead, write me that check for this month. You'll tell your family that you wrote a check for $10,000 a year or do you want to play, right? Allen Sama: Right. Yeah, because you're losing, you're leaving it on the table. It's the same as not having it. Justin Boyum: I wasn't working with the trader, but I had that with somebody who was a sales representative. He was a real estate guy. He's like, "Hey, I wanted to be able to sell this much real estate so I could make this amount of income." He was thinking like, "Man, this is really hard. It's very competitive. I live in a major metro, so I can throw a rock and hit another real estate agent right now." He's like, "Man, I think maybe I need to go another direction." But the problem is that that fear was going to follow him to whatever other opportunity he was going to go to. So, it's about whether or not did he really want to commit to this, he got into real estate because he like to be able to help people, find that solution that dream home and that lifestyle. Obviously, allows him to do his lifestyle, manage the time that he wants to. Justin Boyum: But by saying, "I'm not sure about this," or "I'm not going to make that decision, or "I might just get out of this altogether," I was like, "Well, you said you want to make 10K a month, just go ahead and write me that check. Go home and tell your wife that's what you did today." Because that's what you're doing. I've been there too. I've been in a place where I was in a sales role or I was trying to start my business. That's my goals. Justin Boyum: By not taking action, I might as well just say, "That's what I need to just give up today." That keeps me from being able to go to donate to the charities that I think are important, being able to take my kids on the vacations that they deserve, send them to private school if I so choose or whatever, right? That's the ripple effect of not making decisions, right? Sometimes you might step on it, it might not work out what you want. But all you're going to end up happening by getting out is that you have regrets. Oh, that could have worked out. Allen Sama: Right. Yeah, yeah. Justin Boyum: Well, you want to be smart about it, right? Hey, look at the market and look at the information that you have available to you and try to make the best decisions. Yeah, but there's no guarantees, certainly not in trading, just as much as there's no guarantees that my business is going to just do anything, right? I got to go perform at a level and do the things that are important, but actually go out there and do it. Allen Sama: Yeah, right. Yeah, man. That's the hardest part. And then the thing is that we teach all our people to do it in a way where you're putting the odds in your favor. So, you're lining it up. So, you have as much success built in before you get started, but there's always that fear there. There's always that thing. So, I guess what that means is like you bring it back to what the goal is, what the why is, right? So, that overcomes that initial fear. Justin Boyum: I would agree with you about give yourself the best odds. They do that in the military. In basic training, they talk about squad tactics, right? They don't let you go and set schedule like an operation unless we have three to one odds and personnel, right? If you've got a 10-person unit and there's another 10-person unit that you're going to go and ambush, that's not good odds. Then you're like, "We're not taking that risk." Right? You can establish your boundaries of what's good for you- Allen Sama: Right, what's acceptable. Justin Boyum: ... and operate within that system. Okay, but if you said, "Hey, I set this goal." Okay, well, then you need to adjust. Okay, well, what kinds of trades am I going to make? Right? So, when I talked to a real estate agent, I go, "Okay, well, you got to sell this much inventory. Well, what if you just instead worked in a higher level of real estate and you don't have to make as many sales?" Right? Or "Hey, that's a complicated market." Okay, well, maybe you can go into one that sell more inventory, right? But you have to sell more to reach that same goal. Justin Boyum: There's different ways to do whichever one, but you've got to figure out what's your framework that you're going to work within. These are my boundaries. I think, in the military, we called that the left and right limits, right? Okay, anything in this field division is what I'm responsible for. Anything outside of that, I don't go past that. Allen Sama: Interesting. Okay, that's cool. I like that, the left and right limits. So, I'm going to focus on whatever is in front of me. So, one of the things we have people do is we do a personality test and a risk assessment. So, it's like how much risk am I good with? Am I a risk taker, like a real gambler? Or am I just like, "Hey, I'm super conservative. If I lose $1, I'm going to have a heart attack thing"? So, based on that, then they decide what strategies we want to work with them. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. But now, let's say we're in the midst of the battle. Things are not going exactly as we planned. Like you said, the stuff is hitting the fan. Now, what do I do to make the proper decision to help myself? Justin Boyum: Well, I think ultimately, again, you're going to have to look at the parameters of what's your framework, right? So, I love to use this analogy all the time. Have you ever seen the movie Moneyball? Allen Sama: Yeah. Justin Boyum: It's a baseball movie, right? We talked about basically, the order to win a baseball game is I don't need to go get all this flashy stuff, I just need to make sure that I score more than the other team. The best way to do that is to make sure that my guys are getting on base, right? So, basically, what you're looking at is just more turns on base or more at bats or however you want to look at that. So, I always just talk to my people of like if they're looking to build a business, right? So, MLM, trading, whatever you have to have, you have to get on base, right? Give yourself the ultimate opportunity to do that and when. Look, there's military operations where they have withdrawn, okay? Justin Boyum: There's been major motion pictures about it, like We Were Soldiers, right? That was a battle that did not go well, right? They had to figure out how they're going to get out of that and move on or go do the next thing. Sometimes you have to make that assessment, where this particular opportunity isn't working out. We need to cut losses, and you need to be comfortable with that. What that means, "Hey, okay, I might be taking a loss here," but what you don't do is you let that stop you from getting back in the game. Hey, I got to go to this next at bat. Justin Boyum: I'm sure anybody who's in... I keep going back to real estate, because it's an easy analogy, because it's about investing and stuff. But hey, I'm sure not every investment work out, right? So, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't go. You can do the best you can to give yourself the best opportunity to make money. But at the end of the day, when you're making the straight, again, more at bats. The more you do within your framework, whatever kinds of stocks that you use, you can do the backwards math on that and what's it going to take the win, right? The Oakland A's in the baseball didn't win every game. They just give themselves the best chance to win every time. Allen Sama: For those you guys who are listening and have read the book, I did not talk to Justin beforehand, because Justin, I talk about that as one of the pillars, the Moneyball, getting on base? Justin Boyum: [crosstalk 00:18:21]. Yeah. Allen Sama: Because a lot of times... Yeah. Well, what we teach is making very small conservative bets, but just winning over and over again. So, our straitening strategy wins about 80%, 90% of the time. So, we're not hitting homeruns. We're not trying to double, triple our money every time, but we're putting on small, small bets. So, we're making 10%, 10%, 10% in an easy way, in a way that doesn't take up a lot of stress, a lot of time. We're just sitting back and making 10%. That really adds up to a lot of money. Justin Boyum: I mean, that's a fantastic strategy, right? I agree. Using the Moneyball analogy, I'm glad that we see eye to eye there. I love that, right? It's just a matter of you just put yourself in the position to win. That's what the military does. They put themselves in the best possible chance to succeed at admission, right? Back in the World War II times, right, there was a lot different scenario. But nowadays, even more, we go to a military operation, we expect to win, right? It's because they've put in those parameters and that framework to make sure that they'll win. Same thing, it sounds like what you're teaching your students is, "Hey, give yourself the best chance to win. Justin Boyum: And then hey, if something doesn't go well, that's okay. You got to figure out how to cut your losses. You can stick it out. You can determine that, but just be at peace with your decision. Don't let that be the thing that holds you back." Right? Hey, I got rejected at the bar by the pretty girl, it doesn't mean I'm not going to ask another girl, right? Allen Sama: Right, right. Okay, so what it seems like I'm hearing you saying is that in order to get in, to get to bat, you got to overcome that initial inertia. You got to have a deeper meaning. I tell a lot of people this. We ask them, "Why do you want to learn how to trade?" They're like, "Oh, I want to make more money." It's never about the money. There's always something deeper there. It's I want to be more successful, I want to be respected. I want to take my family on vacations or whatnot. So, that's the first step. The second step, once you're in the game, once you're in the field and things are happening, you have your... What was it, the Y and the Z or the X and Y? Justin Boyum: You can say left and right limits. Allen Sama: Left and right limits. Okay, so you have your limits, you focus on what's in front of you. You don't worry about all the noise, because in trading, there's noise every single day. There's, "Oh, Trump sent out a tweet," and this person is doing this and this stock over here. This guy said this is going to happen." That guy said that's going to happen. So, there's tons of noise. So, I like that, the left and the right limits. You focus only on what's in your field of vision. You don't worry about anything else. You have your set trading plan or in your terminology, I believe you called it... What was it when you mentioned that before they go into battle, they have their... Justin Boyum: Well, they just have their acceptable risk, right? Allen Sama: Acceptable risk. Justin Boyum: Or their framework for what is... So, like I said, in that scenario I used, you might be on a small squad and you're going through a reconnaissance, right? You're going through this area? Oh, I see this is an area that we might do an ambush. And then they go, and they see that the enemy element that they're looking at is twice the size of what they have. That's not an acceptable risk. You let them go by. Right? Same thing with you're talking about. Hey, I'm not taking huge risks. I'm taking more at bats at smaller risks. So, I can protect myself long term, right? Which is a great framework to use. It's the same thing, right? Hey, left and right limits. Justin Boyum: Okay, so then I see the shiny object. Oh, this big stock might be something big, but it's in a different market. Well, you better determine, "Is that the thing that's going to be useful to you? Is that helpful?" Is taking that risk moving you toward your goal or using the same strategy to build over time so that you have that protection that you're looking for, right? I would suggest depending on what you're teaching your students or what their goals are, hey, don't go off of that big, shiny object, right? Unless you've done the research and you know that you're going to give yourself the best chance to win, stick to what you've got there. Stay at what's your acceptable amount of risk, right? Allen Sama: Right. So, it's not like- Justin Boyum: When one of my clients come to me and they said, they want to do something crazy or they might think it's crazy to them. I'm like, "Hey, that's not crazy. Let's talk else." Figure how we can make it happen. We're going to figure out what's acceptable. Is this serving your purpose? In the military writing concept, it always starts with mission, right? Hey, this is the mission that we have. Here's our situation that we're in. Here's how we're going to execute that. Here's what we're going to do if something goes wrong, right? It's all planned out, it's all structured in that way again to give them the best chance to win. Or if they're going to lose, they do it without losing a lot. Allen Sama: And then they have the right tools, [crosstalk 00:23:06]. Justin Boyum: Of course, you got to have the right tools and resources and the training in order to go do those things. [crosstalk 00:23:11]- Allen Sama: So, what was- Justin Boyum: ... what's the situation and information? Let's do that. Allen Sama: What was your position in the army? Justin Boyum: So, I had various positions, so I was an officer. So, at the end of the day, most officers are leaders, right? They're more management style, more strategic thinking. So, technically, I was trained as a logistics officer. So, it was really about moving equipment, making sure people have what they needed, how do we move X equipment to Y location. But I also held roles such as company command, where I was dealing with over 200 people with various types of departments and equipment and moving them to missions and goals here and there. When I was deployed, I was an executive officer for an intel in sustainment company. Justin Boyum: So, basically, dealing with all of the super secret squirrel intelligence equipment, making sure it was functioning, and that they had what they need to be able to support the mission in Iraq and do their job. So, it was very unique. It was nothing I expected. When you go in the military, you think you're trained for one thing, and then you deal with something a little bit different. So, you always got to be in that place of dealing with ambiguity. I think the same thing applies outside of the military, we you've got to be able to deal with things. Justin Boyum: Maybe you don't have a huge clear picture of it, but you operate within your framework and the way that you like to structure yourself. You're going to do better than you otherwise would have, which is why I love to teach with my students that idea of high performance. How do we structure you so that you can make sound, clear decisions? You know exactly where you're headed, you know how you're going to get there. Allen Sama: Okay, so let's go to there now, but how do you that? How do you become high performance? How do you have huge success without all the information? Justin Boyum: Sure. So, we can go back to the Moneyball thing. I think this really works best and tied in with the military. So, the military is really the best one in the world because there is almost nothing that's a surprise. Our military doesn't do a lot of things that are shocking, right? Sometimes maybe on a particular mission, something could go a little bit different than we planned, but everything has a structure. There's a standard operating procedure document for everything within every unit all the way down to the individual level. Here's how you're going to operate down to what you wear every day, right? Justin Boyum: I wear this every day. I've got my canteen on one side. I've got my ammunition on the other. So, everybody knows where everything is. You've got a question how something works, there's a book or a regulation to tell them how to do it, right? It's all very systematized, right? They send you to boot camp first, right? The reason they send you to boot camp first, we're going to send you through the wringer of here's what it's like to be in the military, make sure your mind is right. Allen Sama: Because you have to build that discipline, you got to be able to- Justin Boyum: You have to have the discipline. You've got to be able to be comfortable around firearms and dealing with... We always called it embrace the suck. Sometimes you might be sleep deprived, you might have to go through this. You've got to low crawl and get in the dirt. You got to do all those things, you've got to have your mind and your foundations right for that. Well, the same thing applies out of the military, you've got to be highly structured. The world highest performers in the world measured by study, anybody you think of, they all demonstrate certain characteristics and habits that allow them to succeed. It's not a super huge secret about... Justin Boyum: Sometimes you might be lucky. You've invented the super widget that nobody ever thought of. You might get the next iPhone that changes everything. For most people, that's not going to potentially happen. You might be creative and that's awesome if you are. But the end of the day, you also still have to be able to perform at a level that allows you to build a business around that and build that influence. We start on a personal level. Justin Boyum: Again, we go back to clarity. High performers have demonstrated the ability to seek tremendous amounts of clarity. They know specifically what they want, why they want it and how they're going to go get it. They're really connected to it. You go back to the Simon Sinek stuff, Start With Why, right? You've got to be connected to that, right? Justin Boyum: Second thing that high performing individuals are able to do, they're able to generate energy. It takes a lot of energy to be a successful person. Most people won't go do the things that they need to do in order to perform at that consistency type of level, right? If you're able to build your business, it might take you for a little while to go 80 hours a week to go develop all the marketing and everything and put everything in place. Can you maintain the energy on that? Justin Boyum: Again, we get back to the three things that stop you. First one is fear. Second one is fatigue. People will just stop because it's hard either physically or mentally or emotionally. They'll fall back to what's comfortable. While high performers are able to generate energy over that. You imagine what you would be able to do, Allen, if you had like five times the energy you do now, right? Allen Sama: Yeah. So, by energy, you mean the food we eat, the way we sleep, all that? Justin Boyum: Well, yeah, it's not just physical. It's mental, right? It's emotional. Yeah. I mean, how much sleep are you getting? Well, first things I usually talk about when someone's coming to me that they can't reach their goals, I'm like, "How much sleep are you getting?" Right? What are you eating? How much are you exercising? Do you meditate? How do you renew? How do you maintain that level of momentum? So, that you can overcome those times when it feels like you don't want to do it, right? We've got like a multi-billion-dollar industry for teaching people how to lose weight. Secrets, do you know how to lose weight? Allen Sama: Yeah, everybody knows how to lose weight. Justin Boyum: Everybody knows how to lose weight, but you've got all these personal trainers and coaches teaching people how to do it and helping them do it because they can't generate that energy and that mental focus themselves. That's what high performers can do, right? And then the next part that we can use to overcome those challenges is you got to be able to be productive. You've got to be able to increase your productivity. Allen Sama: Okay, what do you mean by that? Justin Boyum: So, when we talk about being productive, sometimes it's like, "Oh, I got to do all these things. I got to work harder." Well, not necessarily. It's more or less, "Am I working on the things that are moving me forward? Am I being productive on things that are actually useful," right? Limit those distractions, stay in that left and right limits? I talk to people and I'm like, "Okay, if you got one project to do, let's figure out what the priorities are. If there's anything on your list that doesn't actually move that project forward, then it's not that important." Allen Sama: Right. So, this is working on the 80/20 or the one thing that- Justin Boyum: Yeah, 80/20 rule, however you want to say it. Yeah. Allen Sama: Okay, all right. So, we got three, right? We got know your why. We got increase your energy, and then we got increase your productivity by knowing what to focus on and ignoring everything else and all the noise. Justin Boyum: Right. And then the next part and here's the thing is... I love this for the military style of analogy here. High performers are able to raise necessity. What do I mean by that? We could go back to the war effort, right? It was highly necessary that they completed that mission because people would die, right? We all might be speaking German. That level of necessity. High performers are able to go, "Hey, I need to complete this mission," "I need to go build this business," "I need to go make those trades," "I need to be highly focused in the way that I operate myself. Because if I don't, my family is going to have to move out." or "I'm not going to be able to go and serve the people that need my help." Lift that up. It's connecting to the why still, but it's really attaching that, this has to happen. There's no turning back. Allen Sama: So, this is like focusing on maybe the negative and burning all the boats, saying, "I don't have a choice. My back is to the wall." It's either do or die time. Justin Boyum: Yeah, and high performers are able to do that, forward their projects, right? Because it might seem like, "Hey, if I don't make this trade, that's not going to be the end of the world." Well, you need to be able to show up like it would be. Allen Sama: Interesting. Cool. So, how long does it take to get all these steps in place? Justin Boyum: Well, certainly depends what you want to focus on. You've got to decide like, "What is it that's really holding me back?" We can always do more of a lot of these things, but it's really about putting together systems. Like military style, let me put structure in place that allows me to put these things in as a habit that I can repeat on process. I can be very deliberate with them. It's not something that I just inherently have. Some people are a little bit more risk averse than others, right? Justin Boyum: Some people are really able to go out there and be courageous and go take bold action, just because that's in their nature. Some people maybe aren't, but we can always be doing more. You can do it as a habit, you can actually make it happen. It's not something that you just inherently have all this, right? I will never be 6'10 and in the NBA. I can't control that. I can't control how old I am. I can't control gender. I can control a lot of things, but I can control how productive I am. I can control my sleep schedule, if my kids allow it, right? But I can do a whole lot of things that I do have control over, that's going to give me a way better chance of getting on base than somebody else. Allen Sama: Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Justin Boyum: Right. So, I mean, in general, I work with my clients, I have a number of ways. I generally start new clients off on a 12-week program where we implement all of these strategies and habits over time and apply it towards what that goal is. Hey, I'm going to go be a day trader and retire. I'm going to make this much money because it's going to allow me to do X, Y, and Z. Great. I really want to go and meet the love of my life and be the best husband and father I could ever be. Great. Or achieve any goal, you've got to be at a level where you're performing as a habit. Can you get lucky and buy a lotto ticket? Sure, you can. Is that repeatable? Probably not. Allen Sama: Which one would you say is the most important out of the four? Justin Boyum: Well, the four that we've mentioned so far- Allen Sama: Are there more? Do you have a lot more? Justin Boyum: I do, I have two more. Allen Sama: Okay. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Justin Boyum: I alluded to it, right? So, high performers also demonstrated a lot of courage. They're able to step outside their comfort zone, right? It's not comfortable to go do something brand new to you or be able to continue to move forward when maybe it's not going so well. So, you've got to figure out, "How can I attach again, go back to that meeting? How can I show up as a more courageous self?" Right? And then the last step, most high performers.... Again, this is something that's obvious when you think about it, I think anyway, but high performers are able to develop influence, right? Justin Boyum: How can I go get the people that are going to help me get where I want to go, and I can bring them along with me? How can I pour into the other people and continue to build my sphere of influence? Think about anybody successful you've ever met, they didn't get there by themselves? I don't care who they are. Even if they're one of those people that seems more independent and reclusive, they got somebody helping them to get to where they wanted to go. Allen Sama: Of course. Yeah. Nobody's an island. Justin Boyum: But I would say the number one reason and most people even if they think that they're mostly clear, and I would be in this boat too, is clarity. It starts there. That's why it's the first step on the journey when I work with somebody and we refer back to it throughout the entire program is that we've got to be able to seek clarity and use it as a habit and continue to develop clarity. Allen Sama: Does that change over time, do you see from people? Justin Boyum: Well, some people start with different goals, of course. So, some people might think that they want to operate in their space in a certain way. And then over time, they mature, and they take advantage, right? The clarity is what they make of it. There's no like set answer, right? So, for instance, so if you told me that you wanted to be a business owner, I wanted to be somebody who really brings enthusiasm, I want to be seen as a leader, great, that's awesome. Well, maybe over time, you realize that you're really much more comfortable being somebody that works more alongside people, right? More of a mentorship capacity rather than that outward leader? Justin Boyum: Well, that's your goals, that's your way that you want to interact in the space. That's not worse than being a leader, right? It's just a different role. It's got to be what you're comfortable with, right? So, a lot of people can have certain personality tests, right? I don't know how I feel about personality test, because you can change that picture. The picture is up to you, and it's what you're comfortable with. So, you asked, "Can it change over time?" Sure. But as long as we're highly clear and we're in it to serve others, we're not trying to cut other people down for us to get ahead, you're going to be okay. You're going to be great. I think most people don't want to disparage other people on the road. Allen Sama: No, no, yeah. Justin Boyum: It's pretty rare that that's the person you're working with. It's probably not going to be in my program. Allen Sama: Can you give me a couple of tips or some questions on how to find that clarity? Justin Boyum: Sure. So, here's what I would suggest to anybody in your following. You can do this, if you're listening to this later. Think about and give yourself a space of a minute or two just to really get centered. Close your eyes and think. I want you to start thinking about three words that describe the best of who you are. These are words that they may be the best of who you are now or who you would like to be. Justin Boyum: If I'm going to ask Allen, I said, "Hey, Allen, tell me about Justin in three words," these are the three words they say and you'd be proud to have someone say that, right? If I go, "Oh, man, I really love to be joyful. I really love to be a leader. I really love to be honest." That's just for an example, right? And then let those three words really drive you and all of your interactions and what you do. So, if what you're doing is not congruent with the three words that you picked, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that. Allen Sama: Okay, interesting. Three words. So, what are your three words? Justin Boyum: Well, mine always tend to change. So, my three words, I don't like sharing them as much, because I don't want people to think [crosstalk 00:37:48]. Allen Sama: Okay, give me one of your clients. You don't have to say the name or anything. Justin Boyum: No, no, I'll share mine. But again, I would love it if you definitely go do this exercise for you, because there's great words. One of mine is bold. I love using bold. And true and leader. They're meaningful to me, because I fancy myself a little bit more of an introvert- Allen Sama: Okay, me too, yeah. Justin Boyum: ... originally. I don't know if that comes across to people or not, but I struggled, like a lot of people, with getting up and speaking in front of people and directing and being seen as that person that people who go to, but that's what I wanted to be and I knew that could be that. So, by embodying that I'm going to be bold here. It gives me that that boost of confidence and being able to be... Again, it gives you that clarity just knowing who you want to be. Justin Boyum: When I first started one of my first businesses, I used networking, like face-to-face networking as one of the ways that I built that business, or going to a room of strangers to go ask them to support my business or whatever would have been something crazy to me when I was younger, right? It's not something I would use to. But before I go in, I go, "Bold, right? I'm bold. I'm a leader. I'm true." Then conversations are just easier, right? Because I'm going to go be who I meant to be. This is the best version of me. Allen Sama: Okay, cool. And then do repeat it to yourself, you put it on the wall? Justin Boyum: So, I would recommend to anybody that I talk, I'll do strategy sessions with someone, gets on the phone, we might do this exercise. I always say, "Hey, look, we've all got a smartphone, we're all using them for our alarms. Go set yourself an alarm for 10:00 AM with those three words." Hey, you look at it and says, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to be bold today." I pick 10:00 AM. It's arbitrary. Some people have different battle rhythms, but 10:00 AM is right for lunchtime. You might be starting to past your peak productivity for the day. Maybe there's another time for you, whatever time you know you normally run out of that energy. Hey, set yourself an alarm that reminds you, put it on the wall, put it somewhere, right? Justin Boyum: Share it with your family. Tell them, "This is who I want to be," right? Even if it's something crazy like, "Hey, before I've never really been enthusiastic," right? That's one of your words, right? "Well, I'm going to start being that way," right? Tell people, "This is who I am." You don't have to, right? It's your words, whatever you're comfortable with. Especially if have a spouse, go tell them, right? Tell them the same exercise. Hey, what do you want to be, right? You get a lot of energy and clarity out of that. Allen Sama: Okay, yeah. I mean, if you tell other people, then if you're not behaving that way, they can actually help you. Or if they tease you about it, then that'll help you as well either. Either way, you get the motivation. Justin Boyum: Not everybody's comfortable sharing with that. I've had people on the phone who were they're a little bit more close to the chest. It takes them some time. Now, they're your words. I mean, ultimately, you get to say, "Hey, this is who I want to be." You chose that. I never judge anybody for the words that they chose, especially if most people are choosing very inspirational words for them. They can change over time, right? Maybe next week, you call me in with a different word, because I've had to tweak in the way that I want to operate. You can change it week to week, year to year, however, you want to do it, or you can stay with them. It depends on what you want it to be for you, right? Because like I said, we can change that picture. Allen Sama: Yeah, I mean, you asked that question. I'm thinking to myself, "I have no clue what my words were." I don't know. Justin Boyum: Maybe we should offline, we can sit there, and we can do that exercise. We can come up with it. It's not as hard as you think. I think most people once they have that space, you give yourself a few minutes to think and then they just rolls off. Just go what's the first thing that comes to mind? That's it. You don't have to overthink it, right? I had one person who had one... I can't remember the three words, but they were all relatively around integrity. So, he was a little bit like, " This seems like the same word. They were not different." I was like, "Hey, these were the ones that are meaningful to you," right? There's a little bit of an angle that you can certainly attach meaning. At the same time, I said, "Hey, these are your words, right? If you want to change, when you can." Allen Sama: Yeah. I know for me, it's not going to be that hard to come up with the words, but it is going to be to keep coming back to them and keep remembering them. Because whenever I have a setback, all of the self-help stuff and all the motivational stuff, all that stuff, I just chuck it out the window. I'm going to go into my little hole. I'm going to feel bad for my job for three days, just leave me alone. Justin Boyum: [crosstalk 00:42:13] personal example, right? That can be easy, right? I go into an event and I'm a coach, right? I want to help people. I want to be able to bring someone into my practice that I can really serve. I go through the process of meeting them at the event. Hey, this is my business card, this is cool. We schedule a call. I go, "Hey, let's book a call, let's talk after this." They go, "No." Well, I could let that affect me or I could go, "Bold, true, leader." Move on to the next person, right? Or address that maybe there's something I've done wrong or whatever. But if I allow myself to be disconnected from that clarity, then what am I doing? I'm not making the next call. I'm not serving the next person I can serve, right? Allen Sama: Oh, I should do that. Justin Boyum: I'm not selling the next house. I'm not making the next trade that's going to allow me to take care of my family. Allen Sama: Right, exactly. Justin Boyum: Or somebody to take care of their family, right? So, yeah, I could be disconnected that way, I can allow those things to help me. But if I'm going to go back to my words and do this, again, as a habit, as a system, as a structure. Put it on the wall if that's where you need it. Have an alarm on your phone, make it the background. Allen Sama: Right. Because not only does it help you get started, but then like you said when there is a setback, when there is a rejection of [inaudible 00:43:26], anything that is a pebble in the way and you trip over it, you can decide to go the negative route or you can decide, "Hey, let me focus on what I want, one of my words." And it brings you almost instantaneously back to what's important. Justin Boyum: All the habits, of course, are important. They're almost required for anybody who's going to be successful. But for me, what was the game changer for me when I started focusing on it was clarity. You can always fall back on clarity, right? Some people need the energy, right? The energy is what drives them. Some people need the productivity. They know that they're making the progress. Some people need to be able to raise that necessity or be more courageous, right? But for me, clarity is one of my favorite topics, because I can fall back on that. Maybe I'm not being productive today, but I can go, "I said I'm going to be a leader today." Allen Sama: Right. You have that cognitive dissidence there as well, because you're telling yourself something and then you don't act like that. Your brain is naturally being like, "Hey, there's something wrong here." You don't feel easy until you fixed it, until you act the way that you said you're going to act. Justin Boyum: Yeah, that's what it's all about. Again, that's the part. Again, that's why I make it basically as the first step into the program. When I'm working with somebody, I'm going to make sure that you're highly clear. So, you're going to come out of my practice depending on what programs you go through, I'm going to make sure you clear. So, we're going to have that after talking to me. Allen Sama: Sweet, sweet, sweet. So, what type of people do you help? Justin Boyum: So, in general, I work with military veterans who are getting out of active duty. That's a really scary time. I was that way back in 2012, 2013. I don't know what I'm going to go do. I only had military experience, right? I was in college. So, I had some college type jobs, but nothing serious. So, I'm coming out with military experience. I don't know how to translate. I know what I'm going to do. I don't know how to interview, right? In the military, especially as an officer, they try to train you not to talk about yourself, right? It's really more mission and people focused. All of a sudden, you're going to go into an interview and talk about how great you are, just a little bit odd. Justin Boyum: That's not knocking the interview process, you had to do it for a reason. But it takes that like, "How can I be very clear?" Right? You could be like me and you think you're clear on something, because maybe you've done some research. Oh, this translates from my experience really well. But you're not clear about what maybe your values are or what that job is going to allow you to go do or what's going to be important to you when you're there. You're like me, and even though I got a great opportunity, I wasn't happy there, right? There was a different set of values and the way they managed people. It just wasn't the right fit. I was miserable. Even though I had a great job for a great company with great people working there, it was just a different mindset. Justin Boyum: So, I love to help people that are going through that phase of transitions. Military, maybe you think about changing jobs. Maybe you think about getting into the trading, right? But you got to be highly clear on what you want to go do. You got to have the system that's going to allow you to be successful, right? That's what I love about my program is because we can talk about a very specific strategy for you to go get what you want, maybe your day-to-day trading, but you're going to have to use the habits that I'm talking about if you actually want to get there. Justin Boyum: I can have map up for you right now on this board how we're going to make a million dollars in the next 12 months. Most people won't have the habits and structure in place to actually go do the things that allow them to do it. So, that's what the power of my program is, it starts with clarity. Allen Sama: Sweet, sweet, sweet. Justin Boyum: So, I work again in veteran space. I mean, truthfully, professionals, business owners, entrepreneurs, anybody that's going to need that level of structure and they're going to support, they're going to need someone there with them that they can share things with. Because sometimes I might want to go do this goal, but my friends... They might think that's weird, right? Justin Boyum: You might be like me, where I was running a trade business. I said, "Hey, I want to go be a coach." That might be seemed weird to some people, right? Because they're comfortable with where you are, but when you're working with a coach, I said like, "Hey, whatever you want to do..." Like I said earlier, "... let's go see if how we can make that happen. Is that realistic? Is that something you want? Is that connected with your mission? What is your mission? Do we need to define that? Great, let's do it." Justin Boyum: That's the power of working with the high performance, because you're going to have that clarity. You're going to have that camaraderie of having somebody that you can be open and honest with that's not going to tell you you're dumb, right? There's nothing as too great. Hey, I've been making $50,000 a year working the line for last 10 years. I want to make a million dollars next year. Okay, great, how we're going to do that? Let's work through it. Allen Sama: Right. Okay. How do people find out about you? Justin Boyum: Well, they can certainly follow me on Facebook or Instagram. Charge Forward is the handle. So, C-H-A-R-G-E Forward. Or you can go to my website, www.thechargeforward.com. So, that's T-H-E chargeforward.com. You're able to follow me there. I have a blog. I put out content. It connects to all my other social media pages. So, you can find all my content there. Certainly, if it's something that I can help you with, I'd be happy to hop on a quick high-performance attraction call. If you've got something that you're struggling with on a goal and you just need some help and support, I'll put you in a totally sales free zone where if I can get you moving in the right direction, I'm happy to do that. You can schedule that call there at the website. Allen Sama: Awesome. Great. All right. Well, Justin, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your service. Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks for helping out our military folks, because yeah, what you're saying is that they go through boot camp. They're normal people first, I guess. They go through boot camp. They get trained in a certain way to think and behave. And then they're dropped back into the real world. It's like a whole different set of rules, and then they almost have to have boot camp to reassimilate into the normal world. Justin Boyum: It'd be like somebody who was raised in Texas, and they dropped them into Paris, France tomorrow. Some people speak English, but it's different, right? Maybe the UK is a better example, because they speak English, but it's different, right? The cues are different. It's not that you can't perform well. It's going to be weird and difficult. It can be hard. Allen Sama: Yeah, exactly. Justin Boyum: Yeah, absolutely. Allen Sama: Appreciate it. Justin Boyum: Thanks for letting me on, by the way. Thank you, Allen, as well for what you do, serving your audience and helping people get and achieve their goals by using your practice and strategies through trading, which is awesome. I love Moneyball. If anybody is using Moneyball as an example, I think that's great. I love that. I'm a numbers guy myself. Allen Sama: Awesome. Cool. All right, Justin. Thank you so much for stopping by. Justin Boyum: All right. Thanks.   LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- I am joined by my good friend, Angela Aja, who is the founder and the CEO of Angela Aja Coaching. She's also a best-selling author of the book Summoned to Fear. She is a certified life coach with well over 30 years of mentoring and coaching experience, training heart-centered leaders to shape impactful lives for themselves and their communities. Now, Angela has been from the pinnacle of success to the depths of despair. After a devastating family setback, Angela has overcome her own adversity, taking advantage of opportunities before her and turned tragedy into triumph, growth, and expansion. Angela's message is clear, that every human being has an opportunity to turn their setbacks into comebacks and soar to new heights. So that is one of the reasons that I wanted to have Angela on, because a lot of our traders, a lot of our community can deal with that same situation, where they were riding high and then there was a setback, maybe they went down to the pits of despair and then now they're crawling back, or maybe they're just getting started and these despair pits are coming into the future. So Angela, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Allen. I'm really excited to be here and speak to your listeners and just really encourage them and inspire them to just live their fullest life. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for coming and sharing your message with us. Now, we mentioned that you had overcome a lot of adversity. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because fear is a very overwhelming emotion. I believe that trading has different parts of it. As a mentor or an educator I can give my traders the how to do it, the step by steps, like hey, do this, do this, do this. What I can't do is actually make them do it, you know? Yeah. Sometimes I'd be great if I could just reach over through the screen and just press the button for them and say, "Here, just do the trade." Right, right. There is something holding them back. So why do you think fear stops so many people on their tracks? Well, that's a great question, and I really love to talk about fear, which sounds kind of crazy. Where we are today is a result of what we've been thinking. So if you want to go somewhere or do something new, or have something new, you have to think something different. As a transformational life coach, for me it's all about mindset. So I believe in all of my experience of dealing with people, fear is one of those things that holds people back. I have found that we actually fear fear. Tony Robbins, I think it was Tony Robbins, he said this one statement that really helped me create a lot of major shifts in my own life, and that is he said that fear is nothing more than the thought that you can't handle whatever comes your way. When you boil it down, that's all fear is. Many times fear is just we're presuming our past upon our future. So when you boil it down, fear really is nothing more than one thought, and that is that I can't handle it. Or maybe it's the unknown, that they don't know what is about to come. Yeah, exactly. And that if the unknown happens I won't be able to handle whatever it is that happens. If you think back over your life, think about all the things that you've handled like a boss. Think about all the things. For those that are listening, I want you to think about for a minute all of the things that you have overcome. So you are capable, you can handle. If you just look at your past track record, you can handle whatever comes your way. So really if you begin to come from the new mindset that it doesn't matter what happens to me, I can handle whatever comes my way, then it takes the sting of fear away. I find that a lot of people have a real fear of failure, right? Definitely. I mean, really that's the big thing. When you talk about fear, like what if it fails and I can't handle it? What if it fails and I don't know what to do? What if it fails and I end up in the pit of despair? But I think when we're afraid of that failure what we're really afraid of is success. The reason I say that is because I believe that in most cases we are equating success with a lack of failure, but if you study anyone that has accomplished anything from a baby learning how to walk to the geniuses of history, their journey to success is paved with a road of failures. Here's what I mean by that, is that when I suffered a devastating divorce, and of course one of those things that I did not think I could handle. I was married to a pastor. So I was a pastor's wife and I would speak from the pulpit. I went from speaking from the pulpit to selling windows door-to-door. Here I was, shy, an introvert, I was just ... I didn't have a lot of formal training in terms of education. I had gone to Bible college, so I wasn't super hireable after my divorce. I can imagine. Yeah. Nobody really wanted a job description with three years of children's education. So I had to get creative and I found a job selling windows door-to-door. I was petrified, but this old school salesman took me under his wing and trained me. So he would pull up to a door and he would say, "Now, walk up to the door and go say this." And I would, and sometimes I would come back to the car crying. He would say, "What did you say?" And he'd say, "Now go do it again." What he taught me was that for every, I don't remember what the number was, but let's say for every nine nos there is a yes. So he taught me get out there and go after your nos, don't go after your yeses. Get out there, if you go get your nos your yeses will be there. What that taught me was that somebody saying no to me, something not turning out the way that I expected it to, something that I had maybe in the past deemed as a failure no longer had the sting that it once had, because I realized this is part of the process. Right, you're paying your dues. That's right, that's right. Now, I get that, and I know that in the beginning we tell just about all of our people that when they're starting, they're going to lose money, right? Because they don't know what buttons to push and they don't know exactly what's going to happen and how to react to it and whatnot. So most likely they're going to lose money in the beginning, so they should start small, start with smaller trades, a little bit of money, not too much at risk. In a sales point of view you can get up and say, "Okay, I'm going to knock on 100 doors and even if everybody says no then that's okay because I didn't really lose anything except maybe a day or two of my time." But I know what some of our traders are thinking is I only have X dollars that I can learn with. So if I do this trade and I lose, then my number, it goes down, so I'm losing and I'm having less, and less, and less until eventually everything goes away. So how do you overcome that type of mentality? Because I know that in the beginning it takes a while to learn and you pay your dues, but how do we overcome that feeling or that fear? The fear I know you said it's a thought, and I agree with that, but for some people they internalize that thought so much that it becomes like a feeling. They actually feel inside their stomach or inside their gut or something like they're about to put a trade on and they start shaking because that feeling that they're going to lose, maybe they're already convinced themselves that they're going to lose. I don't know, how would you handle that? Well, I think that we are used to, again, like fearing fear. We think that if we fear that that should stop us or that that holds us back. You know the old saying of feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear does not ... When you change your mindset about what fear really is, then it no longer has to stop you. It can literally be the thing that catapults you into ... Because it's not fear or lack of fear that actually makes you the money, it's the action, it's pressing that button. Right. The other thing is is that what I teach people that I work with is that loss [inaudible 00:10:50] does not have to equal lack. Okay, could you repeat that? Because you cut out a little bit. Yeah. Loss does not have to equal lack. Okay. Loss could equal investment, that you're investing into your future. You're investing into your knowledge, you're investing into your wisdom. You're getting experience. You're getting experience. By learning what not to do. That's it. That's it. So I think that, again, looking at it from a mindset point that we move in the direction of what we focus on. So really it has to do what we're focusing on. So I still fear. I still feel afraid all the time, but it's what I focus on, and what I focus it on is the end result that I'm looking for and that it's the experience that I want to gain from my actions. So then that gives me the courage to take action because I'm not identifying the ... I'm not letting identifying that fear and loss as failure, but I'm identifying it as hey, this is a part of my process. So it's just steps on the path. That's it. So what I'm hearing is that you're saying that it's more of a mindset than anything else and that we should be instead of looking and saying, "Okay, what's the worst that's going to happen?" We should be looking at it hey, why don't we focus on what's good that's going to happen or what is the best that could happen? Focus on that and not worry about the bad stuff. That's it. That's it right there. A lot of times when people come to me they want to have coaching, want to work with me. They're thinking about all the things that are going wrong in their life, and they're thinking about all their problems, and they're thinking about all the things that are stopping them. I like to ask this one question, because one question can change the whole world. One question can change everything. So this one question really changed the game for me. I was thinking about my setback and all of the wrong that had been done to me. I was thinking about all the bad in my situation, and someone said to me, they said, "What's great about that?" and I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" Yeah. What's great about the fact? Okay, I'm divorced, I'm living on the floor. I went from wearing a Rolex with diamonds to selling windows door-to-door, to standing in the food stamp line. What's great about that? Yeah, I don't know. But it caused me to dig deep and it caused me to really think about okay, how can this serve me? How can this become a stepping stone for me? So when it comes to pushing the button and learning trading, I think if you just realize that if you're feeling afraid it's just the mindset that oh my gosh, if I push the button I might lose this. Well, you can handle it. Loss does not equal lack. That loss means you're investing in yourself. So you start thinking about even if you've had a loss, hey, what is great about this? What are the lessons that you learned that you will apply next time that will lead to your actual success? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there are so many stories that we get. One of the things that I really enjoy is when somebody emails us or calls us and we're talking to somebody about their first trade, the very, very first they put on. They said, "Oh, I did this and it worked exactly like you said it was going to be." And it's like okay, that's great that you made money. I don't really care about that part, but the fact that you took action and that you actually did it, to me that's like breaking the barrier. That's like okay, if you can do that first step, you can break the ice, then yeah, you can just do it over, and over, and over, and over again. I totally hear what you're saying, because even now. I mean, I've been trading for, I don't know, maybe 15 years now full-time. I'll have to check the exact numbers, but it's somewhere around there, and I have a lot of money invested in the stock market, and people ask me, it's like, "What if it goes down tomorrow?" It could go down, that could happen. So we put things in place to protect ourselves, but I know that I can't really control it, but I know that it's a long game. Like you said, it's not just knocking on one door and if you don't make the sale you get shot in the head. It's not like that. Exactly. You get to do it again and again. So I want to play the game where I'm going to be doing this for the next 15, 20, 30 years. So if I'm playing that game, the long game, then I'm not taking as big risks as other people are that get blown up and lose everything. Yeah. If we set it up in that way where we know the risk and we know what the gain is but we focus on the gain more, then even if we do lose once in a while it's not going to totally destroy us. Yeah. Another question that my coach, years ago my very first coach that I had asked me was again, one of those questions that kind of made my mind go like, "What?" Here I was, I had been, again, divorced, and living on the floor with my kids. I had been ... He had made some decisions that didn't include his family and that kind of thing. I was stuck as the victim. Even though I had been victimized, I stayed the victim in my mindset and I wasn't moving forward, because that felt easier for me just to stay the victim. Exactly. She asked me, my coach asked me this one question, and she said, "What was your contribution?" I mean, that question, it made me really mad. What was your contribution? Yes. I'm going to write that down too. So here I was the one that had been victimized in a sense, that I had been done wrong. She asked me, "What was your contribution?" And it made me so angry, but I decided to sit with that question. I realized that my contribution was that I didn't know who I was. I lived my life trying to make everyone else happy and I had completely lost my joy. Because I was brave enough to sit with that question it really opened the door for what I do now and helping people really discover their purpose, why they're here, really shift their mindsets. The reason I bring that question up is because I think that's a great question for your listeners, that if they have lost in the market it would be real easy for them to say, "Well, it was the market's fault." Yeah, exactly. And feel like they're the victim to the market, but if they asked themselves that question, well, what was your contribution? Well, if you've set yourself up, like you said, with protection, layers of protection, then again, that loss does not take you out. So really sitting with that question. If you've lost, what was your contribution? Again, what it does is it pulls those lessons out so that the sting of fear, so that the sting of loss it becomes a gift to you. Yeah. That's big, that's huge right there, how to get over that, because we have so many people who want to, I mean, they sincerely they want to achieve, they want to learn, they want to take the next step, but there's something blocking them. A lot of times it's like well, what's the problem? We've shown you examples that it works, we've shown you other people that it's worked for them, it's been working for me. What is it that's holding you back? And they're always like, "Well, I tried something else in the past and it didn't work." Or, "I tried to learn it and I lost because of the market." Or because of something else, or because of this other course that I took, or the economy was bad, or my spouse wasn't helpful. It's always, like you said, it's always something else. Very few times do I hear that oh, you know what? I just didn't pay attention and that's why I lost money, you know? Right, right. There's very little self-responsibility. It's always something else, something else. So is it that simple, just ask yourself that question and sit with it until you come up with the answer? Well, I mean, yes, it is that simple. I know we make it a lot harder. It comes down to what do you want? As human beings we only have two motivations. We're either going after what we want or we're avoiding what we don't want. Exactly. So if you decide, get really clear about what you want and then go after that, then fear is nothing more, you can recognize fear is nothing more than just an excuse. Because if we make something hard ... Like how many times, I'm sure you hear this a lot, people say, "Well, this is hard." Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you make something hard, then it becomes unobtainable, right? In our minds we say it's hard and that lets us off the hook. So if it's unobtainable then it becomes our excuse. Well, we don't have to do it, we don't have to figure it out, we don't have to go make another trade and try it again because it's hard. Exactly. Either that they say something like, "Oh, I can't predict what the market is going to do or what the stock is going to do." Or, "I don't know how to do X." Whether it's I don't know how to look at the trade, or analyze it, or look at the little lines on the charts that people draw all over the place. It's always I don't know how to do this, so I'm not going to do anything at all. Right, right. Yeah, it is that easy. Focus on what you want. If that's what you want and you want to go for it, then invest in yourself and consider those loses your investment, and feel the fear and do it anyway. Just learn and grow. Like you said earlier, when I was out there knocking on doors I literally came back to the car crying every day my first week. I could have just given up, but because I did not give up I just kept doing it anyway and I would keep making those small little tweaks. I'd come back to the car and he'd say, "What did you say." And he'd say, "Now go back out and say it but don't say that, say this." And I would go do that. I trusted the process and I trusted my coach, and I ended up becoming number one in five states. Wow. Here I was this shy introverted mother of four that had just been divorce. Those thing, fear, and loss, and lack of knowledge, we're used to letting those stop us, but they can also at the same time that they can stop you they can be the thing that fuels you. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So I think in this situation would you say that you succeeded, because anybody else could've done the same thing, right? I mean, if you'll agree with me that- Yes. ... there wasn't anything magical about what you did or what he told you. Right. There are some tricks, but yeah, everybody could learn from him, everybody could go do the same thing. So would you say, and I'm sure this is true in most sales organizations, most of the people don't survive, they fall out, they give up, they quit, they fail at selling. So for you to be number one in five states, would you say it was because of your overwhelming drive of what you wanted or were you afraid of what was going to happen if you did not succeed? I think it started out at first, this was before I understood coaching, so I think at first when I was doing that I think there was a fear of okay, I have four kids to take care of, I have four kids to put through college. What the heck am I going to do? I don't have a good résumé. So I think there was some fear, but I think it did switch, because I remember a point where something rose up inside of me and I decided that I was no longer going to be the victim and I decided that I was going to be a success and that a little failure here and there did not detract from who I was as a person. I decided I am a successful person, so because I'm a successful person I'm going to get out there and take the actions that a successful person would take. So I ended up successful. So I think it did start out that way, but I do remember that moment where there was a shift inside of me and I was like, "You know what? I don't care how many doors I have to knock on. I'm going to go connect with people." I believed in the product, I really did, I loved ... I mean, as funny as it sounds, I loved the windows that we sold and they really did help people. They were triple pane and they cut people's energy bills, and I knew ... What I did is I learned the art of walking up to a house, I learned the art of [inaudible 00:27:08] to the houses that I knew had all the buying signs and they really needed the windows. So I learned my art, and I think that applies to your listeners, is that you do have to learn the art and learn the skill. One of the things that I teach is confidence for women, but confidence, the confidence that I teach is not just walking into a room and feeling good about yourself. My definition of confidence is the way that Amelia Earhart defined it. She defined confidence as the willingness to go after her impossible and the belief in herself that she could make it happen. She was the first woman to cross the transatlantic flying solo, and it had never been done, especially not even by a woman. So she was stepping out and stepping into an arena, there was no path for her. She had to go out and create the path. So it took this bravery, but she decided this is the impossible that I want to create, and I'm just going to go after it and believe in myself that I can do it. That is what she attributes her ability to accomplish such a great feat to, was that right there. So with your listeners, just decide hey, I want to be successful at this, this is what I want and I'm going to put the time in, put the effort in. I'm going to learn the skill, I'm going to learn the art, but I'm also going to believe in myself and I'm going to take the necessary steps to protect myself financially. Obviously I'm thinking, I'm guessing that you're not encouraging people that if this is their last dollar put your last dollar in. No, no. So they have to be smart about it and listen to their coach, but just that belief. A loss is not going to define me and take away who I define myself as successful. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So I do have a followup question on that one, was when you had that epiphany, when you had that switch, that mental switch that you went from victim to I guess victor. Yeah. How did you make that switch? Was it something that just occurred to you, or something happened, or was it something that did you have a coach that was helping you? What was that process like? I think that probably was about the time when I did have a coach, because she really helped me, what she really helped me do was step out of that victimhood and living that victimhood every day. I think before everything happened, before my setback had occurred, I did a lot of reading. I was always studying success and the mindsets of a successful person. So I think there were seeds inside of me that were there. When a seed goes into the ground it's covered up by dirt and sometimes it's covered up by manure, but that manure, the stuff we go through in life is what feeds us and expedites our growth. So I think there were seeds inside of me of success. I grew up in a Christian home, I grew up ... We had success in the ministry right away, so I kind of was in that ... I had the perfect life, so I thought. Really it was that setback, without that setback that became the fertilizer for all of the success, principles that I had put inside of me in my younger years. I think the setback it really did become that fertilizer, and then just sitting in that place of really thinking about what do I want. Here I have basically lost everything. What do I want to do with this? I can even just stay here and kind of stew in this negative spot or I can make something of this. I think that's what I was thinking. Okay, what am I going to do this with? I have an opportunity to reinvent myself. So I decided that's what I wanted, and I started going after that. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I mean, I had a similar story. I don't know, for me when I started investing and trading I lost a lot of money right off the bat. It was at the point where I had lost so much and financially we were kind of desperate. So it was okay, either I need to turn it around right away or I need to go out and get a job. Yeah, yeah. So I had that my back to the wall feeling I had, like you have to succeed no matter what because the alternative was too painful. So since then we've had success and things have been built, but it's interesting, and I ask that question because I don't know if I've actually made that switch yet in my mind. I don't know if I've ... I still, I have confidence in my trade, I know what I'm doing, but if somebody were to say, if someone was introduce me as, "Oh my god, look, here's a super successful trader." I'd be like, "oh, knock it off. That's not me." So I still have issues with that part of it, of seeing myself as the new me that I've wanted to be or that maybe even I am based on the numbers, other people say that all the time, but to me it's like nah, that's not ... Anybody could do that. Yeah. It's interesting. Well, I have to bring it back here. I know this might sound a little funny for your readers, but I have a butterfly necklace on here because I'm known as the butterfly lady, and I did not intend on becoming the butterfly lady, but what happened is is that I realized that I started looking at the journey of my life, and I started realizing that my life, my journey, it mimicked that of a caterpillar going to a butterfly. So I wrote a book called Summoned to Soar: Five Stages of the Rise of a Woman. So in that book I show how every woman, actually every human being has an opportunity to go through five stages to make their greatest comeback. There's something so interesting about the butterfly, and I know most of your listeners are probably guys and they're probably thinking, "What in the world am I going to learn from a butterfly?" But this is really incredible. When the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, most of the times the cocoon hangs upside down. So there's times in our lives when life gets turned upside down, but when life gets turned upside down that means you're properly positioned for a transformation. I don't know if you know this, Allen, but did you know that the caterpillar does not turn into the butterfly? No. That's not what my four-year-old told me. She told me just the other day. She was like, "This happens, and this happens, and this happens, and this happens." Well, listen, let me explain myself. Okay, so the DNA of the butterfly is inside of the caterpillar. When the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, enzymes are released that literally melt her into liquid form, and they actually call it pupa soup. So the encasement, the old encasement has to be melted away so that the DNA of that butterfly can be revealed, reshaped, and reformed. So I believe it's the same with us as human beings, that the DNA of our purpose, the DNA of our greatness is inside of us, but we have to be willing to let go of the man or the woman that was created by fears, failures and disappointments. So this is so incredible, but when the whole time that the caterpillar is in the cocoon she can't excrete, so she can't go to the bathroom. So here she is, she's face-to-face, excuse my language, but she's face-to-face with her own crap. So it's when we take time to sit with ourselves, and look at the old fears, failures, and imperfections that we have allowed to define us as a caterpillar, that's when the transformation can take place. If she goes through the full process, she's this little caterpillar, she's in the cocoon, she becomes liquid form, the DNA of the butterfly starts to go through this transformation and she becomes this beautiful butterfly, and all of a sudden she's like, "Okay, I know it's time to break out." And the only way for her to break out is to kick her way out. Sometimes breakthrough is hard work. So even with your listeners, when they're trying to break through to their next level financially and they're going to use trading as that avenue, this is not supposed to be an easy road. Breakthrough, breaking through your mindsets that have held you captive where you're at, breaking through your ideas of what success is, breaking through all that is hard work, but if you're willing to go through the process then you break free. What happens is is that once that little butterfly, she breaks out of the cocoon, she falls to the ground in exhaustion and she's laying there. As she's laying there then she's got these new things, and she's like, "Hmm, I just feel like I'm supposed to flap them." So she starts flapping, and as she starts to flap her wings all of the excrement that was in the cocoon with her literally gets shot back up into her body and into her wings and hardens. Really. So all of the crap that you've been through is what gives you the strength to fly. So whether it's your traders, whether it's a man or a woman that has gone through a divorce, whether it's ... No matter what it is. What happens is we get used to seeing ourselves as merely a caterpillar, but the DNA of your butterfly is inside of you, the DNA of your purpose is inside of you, and being willing to let go of that old mindset of I'm just a caterpillar, I'm just this, I'm just that. The reason it is imperative for every man and every woman to become a butterfly to soar is because of this one thing, and this is why I wrote the book, Summoned to Soar, is because when the caterpillar, sorry, when the butterfly begins to flap her wings, she can fly, she can go places that she's never gone before, she can do things that she's never done before. Exactly. But something incredible happens. As she is faithful to flap her wings and do what she was created to do, she can catch the tailwind and the tailwind can carry her to places that she can never go on her own. So something magical does happen, something ... That success, when you're ... Think about somebody who they're putting step, it's like going viral. It's like something magical happens where you go from- There's an outside influence that comes in and just takes you. Yes. Yes. So even for your listeners, I just want to encourage them and inspire them. Get in touch with the DNA of your purpose, of that call. Go after what you want. Decide, I am successful, and so I'm just going to do the actions that a successful person would do, and I'm not going to let a loss define me. I'm not going to let fear define me. And stop me, yeah. And stop me. That's it. That's one thing about the butterfly and the cocoon. I know one of our friends had got us one, I guess you can buy them or maybe she got it off the ground, I don't know, but there was a caterpillar and there were some little sticks or leaves in a cup, and she had covered the cup. She gave it to us, and she said, "Look. Here, hold this, keep it, and it's going to turn into a butterfly." Yeah. So we were watching it day after day and the caterpillar is walking around, I guess eating the leaves, and then finally it turned into a cocoon. We're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're waiting and nothing happened. My wife got a little, like maybe it died. What happened? Maybe we should help it. So she took a little, like a pin, and she poked a little hole in the bottom of the butterfly, the cocoon, and it died. The poor thing died, and then we told our friend and she's like, "No, you have to let it kick its way out by itself because otherwise it won't be strong enough to survive outside of the cocoon if it gets the help. It has to do it by itself." Yeah, so Allen, your listeners, they have to push the button. Yeah. They have to do it. You know what I mean? Exactly. You can't push the button for them. Right. So yeah, it's exactly. It's the kicking that strengthens the butterfly for flight. So pushing that button, it's preparing them for the next level of success. Yep. So okay, one final question for you before I know you got to go. So then how do we get clear about what we want? How do I know okay, I'm caterpillar now, I want to be the butterfly, how do I know what the butterfly looks like? Well, that's a really great question. I think that you can do that a couple different ways. I think you can do it just by ... I think there's a lot of breakthroughs that you can get on your own if you listen to yourself think and you listen to yourself talk. Okay. Then I'm a big proponent of journaling, of really just dream building. You have to have that quiet time where you can really sit and think, what do I really want? Because we're not conditioned to sit and ask ourself, what do we want? We're mostly just conditioned to kind of get on the hamster wheel and stay on the hamster wheel. Go through life, do this [crosstalk 00:43:30]. This is what I'm supposed to do, you know? Yeah. My parents expect this, my kids want this, I got to do this. Yes, but I believe that your dreams and your desires, all of that supports what your purpose is, the message that you're here to speak, the hurt that you're here to heal, all of those things. So really just taking the time to sit, and journal, and ask yourself the right questions. You can hire a life coach, which makes it go faster. I help people really identify who they are, why they're here and what they want to do in 12 weeks. So I help them do that quickly because I have a process so that you don't have to ask yourself, well what questions do I need to ask myself? What do I need to be journaling? So I kind of take you on that journey. Can you give us a couple of those questions now? Yeah. So one of the questions that, again, they're several questions that really changed my life. This one blew the doors off of everything for me. This is a big question, okay? Mm-hmm (affirmative). I got my pen. My life coach asked me, she said, "What do you really, really, really, really, really want?" Six reallies, okay. Because what happens is is that we settle for kind of the first really. The superficial stuff kind of. Yeah. When you start digging down, well, why do I want that? A great exercise that I like to take people through is called the five whys. Yeah. Again, it kind of helps you get to the answer to that question that I just asked. Well, what do you want? Well, why do you want that? But why do you want that? What's important about that and why. Yeah, exactly. What's important. That's it, yeah. So it helps you just to drill down, because I think that a lot of times for most of us we just settle and we don't take the time to really get in touch with what is our heart really longing for. When you know that, then you get tunnel vision. Yeah. It's like a horse with blinders. You're no longer distracted by other people's dramas, you don't have to be a people pleaser, you're no longer a perfectionist, you're no longer a procrastinator, you're focused. You work on your own self and you don't worry about anybody else or what they think about you, or what their expectations are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you just go. Awesome. So Angela, how do our listeners find out more about you? You have a website or ... I do. I know your book is called Summoned to Soar. Yeah, yeah. So my book is on Amazon, but really everything is at angelaaja.com, www.angelaaja, A-N-G-E-L-A-A-J-A.com. Okay, cool. A link to my book in on there, coaching, everything. Awesome, awesome. You said you had a 12 week program where they can figure out what they want and who they are and all that. Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. So, I mean, if anybody is interested in that there's a place where they can book a call and- And talk to you to see if it would be a good fit. Yep. You do one-on-one as well if they need that? Uh-huh (affirmative), yes. I sure do. Awesome, awesome. Yes. Thank you so much. Great. This was really fun. No, this was wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I took a whole bunch of notes. All your questions, I got them. Good, good. That was awesome. Great. Thank you so much, Angela. Awesome. Thank you. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  --- Passive traders, guess what? My mind has been blown again.  Maybe doesn't take that much to blow my mind. But I just finished re-reading a book called The Future Is Faster Than You Think. I might have even talked about it before. But this book is written by a guy named Peter Diamandis and I guess you could call him a futurist, but he stays on top of and in contact with all the different technologies, the scientists that are coming up with all... Doing all the research about what's going to happen in the future, how everything is going to be disruptive in different industries. So, what companies are doing what, what scientists are doing what, what new advancements are... He stays on top of all of that, and so in this book, he actually compiles and summarizes all the stuff that's going on in all these different industries, like transportation, health, finances, advertising, retail, all these different aspects of life that are going to change in the next few years. And that is the really crazy part, that in the past, it took years and years and years for things to change. But as we've seen lately, things are changing much, much faster and we really have to adapt to these changes. For example, when I was in high school... What was this? 1994 is when I graduated high school. There were no cell phones. I didn't have a cell phone. I had a beeper, if you guys remember beepers. But I had a beeper. And then came the cell phone and then came the smartphone and now people have smartphones even in the poorest of countries. And with a smartphone, you now have more information in your hands than Bill Clinton did when he was president of the United States. That's amazing. That's the power that we have nowadays. And so, one of the things that he was talking about in this book... And I believe if you're interested in the future, like I am... I think cool stuff. You really should pick up the book. And the thing that I wanted to talk about on this episode is the aspects of health and all of the new technologies that are coming out. For example, there is a company called Gelesis. This is a pharmaceutical company, I guess you'd call them, but they're a new startup health company and they have already gotten FDA approval, which means they can sell this new product to anybody they want, for weight loss. It's a weight loss pill and in their trials, right? They did FDA approved trials with thousands of people. They give you this pill. On average, in six months, the people lost 22 pounds. And this is not a drug. It's an all-natural pill. Actually, it's three pills. You take it with water 30 minutes before you eat lunch and then another three pills before you eat dinner every day. You do that. That's all you have to do. You don't have to change your diet. You don't have to exercise. You don't have to do anything else. Nothing. You do nothing except take these three pills 30 minutes before lunch with water, 30 minutes before dinner with water. That's it, and you will lose 20 pounds in six months. So, 20 divided by six, you're losing about three and a half pounds a month without doing anything. This pill has already been proven to work. It's already FDA approved. It's going to be on the market for sale by the end of the year of 2020. That's their plan. And there are no side effects. Well, there might be a few side effects, but there's nothing artificial in this pill. There's no chemicals, there's no drugs, there's no nothing. Everything in it is natural. The side effects... You might be bloated or you might get diarrhea depending on how it interacts with your stomach, all right? Because that's what it is. It goes into your stomach and this is how it works. You ingest the pills, you drink the water. Whatever the stuff is inside of the pill expands in your stomach and it makes you feel full. And because you are full when it's lunch time or dinner time, you don't eat as much. I mean, it's brilliant, it's simple. It's very easy to come up with this idea, but this company finally found a way to make it happen. Now, there might be others that are following them or even ahead of them. I don't know. I only know about this company and FDA approval is a big deal, right? And it's coming out at the end of this year. What else is happening? Wow. Well, we've already heard about people getting face transplants. We've already heard about people or scientists that are able to grow organs. So, if you need a new kidney, you need a new liver, they can grow the organ. Not only that, but there are other scientists who are doing 3D printing of organs. I don't even know how you 3D print organic material, but they have a way. They are printing organic material, printing organs. This is life-changing, crazy, crazy stuff. These things are going to be hitting the market. Right now they're all in testing. They're going to be hitting the market within the next 10 years, okay? There's a book that just came out from a Harvard MD. It's called Lifespan. Now, I haven't read the book, but basically the gist of the book is that with all the current technological advances that we have, man should easily be able to live to 120 years old. Right now, average life span is, what? In our eighties? Right? Depending man, woman, how old you are, whatnot. But... So, we can expect to live in our eighties. Okay. Great. Now they're saying 120 without much new advancements. But all these advancements are coming, right? Another aspect is a friend of mine who sells insurance, she told me that for cash value life insurance policies or at least for whole value or whole life insurance with cash value... Not term insurance, but with whole life insurance, what they used to do is you... And they still do this, but the thing changed. You put money in, right? Every month you pay the premium and the cash value grows supposedly. When you hit 100, they are like, "Oh, wow. You hit 100. Congratulations. You beat the game. Here's your death benefit." So, if it's a million dollar policy, they're going to give you the whole million dollars and they give you whatever cash value you had. So, they give you the entire policy amount. They give you everything and they cancel the policy when you get to 100 years old. Now, that's pretty cool. That's a really good encouragement to live to 100, right? Here's all this money. Go enjoy it. Go live your life. Awesome. Thank you. Woo-hoo. Right? Well, guess what? That number is no longer 100. The insurance companies have now changed that number to 120 because they are seeing what's happening. They're seeing what's going on. More and more people are hitting 100. They moved that number up to 120 and I believe they're going to have to move it again within the next 10 years or so because people are going to start hitting, getting close to that 120. All right? There is another fellow who was talking, and he is a scientist, he has a company. They are dealing with a certain type of stem cells, right? So, the actual cell name is called the precursor cell and it's a one type of stem cells. It helps develop bones in babies and all that stuff before we're actually physically material as people or... I don't know how you say it, but when the embryo is growing, these precursor cells go and develop stuff and then they turn off or they go away. I'm not sure exactly what happens to them, but they're not there anymore. They're not active anymore. So, this person, this scientist and his team have gone in and found a way to make these cells active again. And so, now they're doing tests on dogs and they are taking a 10-year-old dog, giving it these cells. They're re-activating these cells and the dog body changes to become a young pup. Everything. I mean, the body... It doesn't get... It doesn't shrink in size or anything, but the brain function, the activity levels, the metabolism, the cell structure, everything. How the body of the dog works is as if the dog was only one or two years old. Now, this is a 10-year-old dog. They have started trials on people and they have one video that they show in their talks where there's a woman who's suffering from very late stage Alzheimer's and she's at the point where she's almost catatonic, where she can barely move, so if you... She has... Her eyes are open and she's there, but if you move your hand in front of her face, she won't respond or anything like that. They gave her this therapy and she's up and about, walking, talking, totally changed. Alzheimer's. I mean, this could be a cure for Alzheimer's. When? Next five to 10 years. And when he was doing the talk, the guy was doing the lecture and showing the video. He could tell that the people in the audience were not really... They didn't care too much about Alzheimer's. They weren't like, "Oh my God. That's amazing. It's the best thing in the whole world. And he was obviously looking for investors. So, the people in the group, people in the audience, were mostly men, older. And so, he said, "Well, you know, you guys might not be interested in Alzheimer's or curing Alzheimer's as much, but I can tell you that within the next five years, we will be able to regrow hair in your original hair color." And everybody went crazy. They're like, "What? Oh, my God. You can regrow hair?." So, yeah. You can tell some people, where their values lie. Forget about Alzheimer's patients. But if you can put my hair on my head, all right. I'm going to heavily going to invest in this. But, seriously. If you're interested, look this guy up, Peter Diamandis. Pick up this book, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, and you can read about all these new technologies, all these new companies that are coming out. They're changing the way we use energy. He starts off the book talking about self-driving cars and flying cars and hyper loops and rocket cars, rocket ships that fly around the earth, and take you from point A to point B. Then he goes into artificial intelligence and he goes into virtual reality and how things are changing in that realm and it's just mind-blowing stuff. And, I mean, I got myself a pair of virtual reality goggles just to check it out and they were the gimmicky ones. You know, the $30 ones. But it's really cool stuff. Now for my birthday, I told my wife, "Hey, I want the $500 brand." You know? I want the $500 virtual reality goggles because that is a whole new level. And if you've seen... There's a movie called Ready Player One. It's also a book turned into a movie. Basically, it is set in the future and everyone there... People don't like their life, so everybody goes, puts on these virtual reality goggles and they're always in a game and everybody plays the same game and you play the game, you fight, you do racing. You do all kinds of different things in the game and the way that they show the people reacting in the game... So, you put your goggles on. You are now a character in this whole new world. It's not Earth. It's somewhere else. You can do anything. You can jump, you can kill, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff. But if somebody touches you, you have to have special equipment in the real world. You have to have gloves. So, if you have gloves... You have virtual reality goggles. You can actually buy virtual reality gloves in real life today. You can buy a virtual reality suit and you put that on today. And so, when you're in the virtual reality world and you touch something with your hand in the game or in virtual reality, you will feel it on your fingers. I'm not sure... I'm not explaining this correctly. But there is a group of scientists. What they did was they went into one of the pyramids in Egypt. I think it was Cleopatra's tomb or Tut's tomb or... I don't know where they went. They went to one of the tombs and they went in and they took all the images and they took all this... They video-recorded everything and they turned it into a virtual reality-type experience, and now in schools, the kids can put on the goggles and they can go, transported into the pyramid, walk around the halls of the pyramid, actually touch the walls and feel how it feels inside, feel the slime or feel the rock, and if there's something carved in it, they can trace their fingers on the carving and feel. I mean, it's phenomenal, amazing, crazy stuff that's going on right now. Why am I saying this? Well, I'm excited. I just wanted to share it with you. But, the reality is the future, is coming. It's coming fast and we are all going to live a lot longer than we are thinking. We are going to be healthier. We are going to live longer. Those two things, I'm going to pretty much... We can guarantee it. Life span is going to increase with all this stuff coming okay? And with the new technologies and new scientists and new ways of healing, we're going to be able to live healthy lives until that time. But like in anything else, who gets the best results? The rich. Okay? The rich are going to be the first ones that can afford the treatments. The rich are going to be the first ones that can afford the flying car. The rich are the first ones that are going to take advantage of all these new activities and advancements. That's why you need to do better financially. That's one reason, if nothing else, okay? The other reason that you need to be trading options? Retirement is not coming at 65 anymore. Maybe it still does, technically, legally, whatever, retirement at 65. But you're not going to live only 20 years after that. You're going to live another 40 years after that and the money has to last, and if we are living healthily and our minds are still engaged and our minds are still active or maybe even our minds are getting younger than they are at 80, you need to have a way to constantly make money for the rest of your life. That's trading. There's nothing else that can help you, right? Everything else is going to be changing. They're talking about changes to real estate where real estate values are going to completely change. I had a friend of mine, she used to work at Toyota and she was working on a project where they have this box which is a vehicle. But it's a box and it drives by itself and they are working with companies like Nike, Amazon, Visa, MasterCard. All these big companies are working on customizing this box. So, for example, let's say you want to buy some workout clothes. You call Nike or you go to their website, whatever. You press a button on your phone. This box shows up to your house. You walk inside and all the clothes are already there or you can pick what clothes you want on a screen and it will make the clothes for you in the box. It'll print the clothes for you in your size in that box. You no longer will have to go to the store and try things on. Custom-made clothes brought to you, to your house or wherever you want it to come. You step in the box. You do your shopping. You don't even have to check out. You basically just take the items, walk out the door of the box, and then the box goes to somebody else. And when you walk out, it scans the items you have, charges your credit card, charges your bank, whatever, and done deal. Now, imagine people start doing that. What do you think is going to happen to the retail industry? Who's going to open a retail store? Very few. What's going to happen to shopping centers? What's going to happen to strip malls? They're all going to go away. The other thing he was talking about is transportation, changes in transportation. So, we already have electric cars that are gaining momentum, and almost every major brand is now coming out with electric versions of their cars and they're going almost all electric soon. Maybe in the next five, 10 years. But the self-driving car is where everybody wants to get to and so far, Tesla is the fastest... It's the one that's the most there and that's why they're selling so many, because of the self-driving feature, I think. That's the only reason I want one. But the thing is that the self-driving part is not the only thing that's going to come in the next 10 years. Flying cars are coming in the next 10 years. Not only that, but they have rocket ships that they can fine-tune so that they can travel in the Earth's atmosphere and they can take you from... Let's say you get out of your car. You're living somewhere in the middle of the country. Let's say you're living in Iowa, okay? You're living in Boise. No, not Boise. Boise is in Idaho. Wherever. Fine. You're living in Boise, Idaho. Okay? You get out of your house, you need to get to London for a meeting. Okay. You take your self-driving car to the local air park. You go there, you go up to the top, get into a flying car that goes two, three hundred miles an hour. That thing takes you to the shuttle launch bay, which is in the next, probably in the biggest city nearby. That thing puts you on a rocket ship that takes you all the way to London. You get there within 45 minutes. So, from house to London, 45 minutes travel time. What is that going to open up? People are going to be able to live anywhere they want, right? People are not going to want to live in the big cities anymore with all the congestion and traffic and all that stuff, especially now with COVID and everything. People are leaving the big cities because they need... They want freedom. They want more land. They want to get away from people. So, we've already seen that exodus of people leaving the cities. When transportation speeds up and gets to this level, real estate prices are going to go in the toilet. So, if people are thinking, "Well, yeah. I'm just going to buy a whole bunch of rental houses." It'll work for a while. I can't tell you exactly it's not going to work, but there's a good chance that disruption is coming in real estate. There's a good chance that it's coming. Will it come in trading? It probably will. Something will change. But for now, that's the best option that I think we have. I think you should also diversify. Have some real estate houses, have some other things, other investments. That's great. Do it all. But be able to adapt, be able to change and know that you're going to be living longer, you're going to be healthier. There's no, "Oh, I want to do this tomorrow." No. Do it now and it'll pay off for decades, and then hopefully it'll pay off for generations. Okay? Because you can teach your children, you can generate the wealth for them, you can teach them how to generate wealth, you can build up an empire, you can build up a legacy. Whatever you want to do, because you're going to have plenty of time, okay? Even if... We have a friend, he's unfortunately in kidney failure right now. They've taken him off dialysis. He only... I don't know... We don't know how long he has to live, but if he can last another few years, he can be saved. And this is for people that are suffering with MS, people that are suffering from Alzheimer's, people that are suffering from all these diseases that basically rob you and eventually kill you. If they can survive a few more years, another decade, they will be able to be saved or their lives will be extended enough that eventually there might be a cure in another 20 years or 25 years or 30 years. Whenever the cure comes out. But they will be able to be kept alive and their life will be able to be extended. It's not a death sentence in the same way that we understand it now. And so, yes. The world is changing. Science is going nuts. It's going crazy. I was listening to another podcast about a guy who does, works with health start-ups, a lot of companies that are health start-ups. And what he was saying is that in the past, they had a saying for R&D, for research and development, about health. It takes decades to move seconds. So, what that means is basically that it would take decades to get anything new approved, to get anything new adopted by the health and the medical community because you're dealing with lives and they don't want to get sued and they don't want to take chances. So, when you're dealing with a hospital, when you're dealing with the government to get a new process approved, there's a lot of bureaucracy. There's a lot of red tape. There's a lot of things. You got hoops you got to go through. And so, it would take forever, forever, forever to get one small little thing changed. Now that we have COVID, everything is topsy-turvy. And so, now they are moving decades in seconds. And what I mean by that is they are getting things approved in days that would have taken years. They're trying new things. They're using... They're adapting technology that they wouldn't have even bothered to look at before. And so, in the past... There was a hospital chain that he was talking about. This hospital chain was seeing patients. Seven percent of their visits were virtual. Seven percent were virtual visits to the doctor or the followups or whatever. After COVID, 99 percent of their visits were virtual. It takes a big shift in thinking and process and procedures in order to do that, and these hospitals and these medical communities, they're doing that because in essence, they do want to help people and save lives, right? That's their goal. That's the whole purpose of the medical community, and so they're going to do whatever they have to do to get it done and if that means they're going to accept all these new changes because of the way everything is restricted now, then they're going to make that happen. But the point of this podcast... The guy I was listening to was saying that because of this coronavirus and the changes that all these new companies are putting out and all of the medical community is actually accepting, it's going to really move health care light years in the future. We're really leap-frogging in terms of what is possible, what is doable. And so, all of this stuff is all coming together. They've already making all these advancements, but now you have receptivity by the medical community and they're listening and they're looking and they're saying, "Hey, what else can we do? What else is cool? What else can we implement?" We are in a very, very exciting time, very exciting. Pick up that book. It'll blow your mind. It blew mine. This is the second time I read it. And this is another thing. This book is about a year old, I think. It came out a year ago and it takes about a year or two to actually write a book and publish it and get it out in the market, right? So, this information in this book is two, three years old. It's not even up to date. It's two or three years old. That means we're two or three years closer to the end result. And when I'm talking about flying cars and whatnot, I'm not talking about some small, unnamed company. We have companies like Uber that are putting billions of dollars into this. This is not small time stuff. All of these technologies, all of these advancements, billions of dollars are flowing into these areas and that's why all these technologies are coming faster than you think. So, remember, you are going to be living longer than you think. You are going to be healthier than you think. And so, you need to be richer than you think you need to be. And the thing is, you don't even have to have the money in the bank. You don't need to have $10 million. You need a way to be generating income, and income is more important than what you have in the bank, right? Your net worth or your nest egg? Not as important as how much money you can be generating on a month to month basis. So, let this be a wakeup call. If you have not started saving, if you have not started trading, it's not too late, even if you're in your fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. We still have people in their eighties emailing us, saying, "Hey. I want to get started." Awesome. That is great. Start small. Buy a couple shares. Do a couple options. That's just... You're going to have to do it because you're going to be living a lot longer. And so, that is exciting, but in financial terms, it can be scary because if you're not in a good finacnial place now, you have the time to fix it, but you got to take action. You got to start. So, start today. Start moving. If you want to, if you don't know where to start, get my free book, Passive Trading. It's still free. Go to passivetrading.com/freebook and just get the book. Start reading. Look what's possible. Start implementing, start playing with it, learn more about it and make a plan and start getting to what you need to be. All right? So, again, the name of the book was The Future Is Faster Than You Think. Pick it up, read it, learn, have your mind blown. My book, Passive Trading... Again, that's passivetrading.com/freebook or if you want you can go to Amazon, get it from there, the e-book... Or, not the e-book. The... Well, the e-book is also on Amazon. You can get it from there, the Kindle version. The audiobook is also about to hit shelves. We just uploaded it or got everything done yesterday, and so it will take two weeks, I believe, to get them approved and on all the bookstores. So, it's going to be in Amazon, Audible. It's going to be on iTunes. It's going to be on Barnes and Noble, whatever. The audiobook is coming. Give it a couple of weeks if you're a listener. Obviously, you're listening to the podcast, so you're a listener. If you want to get that, you can that as well. But still, start doing it. Get better, right? And if you want to get better, reach out to us. We'll show you how we will help you, how we can, what we can do for you. And just be excited. Things are going to shift really, really, really fast. So, remember, take care and trade with the odds in your favor. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

People literally ask me this one question ALL THE TIME… “Allen, how did come up with such a lucrative, safe, and easy way to trade?” I explain it all in my new book Passive Trading, get your free book here  https://www.passivetrading.com/free-book! Option Genius was built with you...the individual trader, the breadwinner, the dreamer, the rock your family depends on ...in mind. Because we know what it takes to become a successful and profitable trader. And that’s exactly what we help you do best. Get your $1 trial of Simon Says Options, our most conservative and profitable trading service here https://simonsaysoptions.com/stockslist-ss-trial-offer.  -- How often do you stop and think about how lucky you are? If you're like me, probably not enough. I mean, this thought came to me the other day. I'm going to the office, it's around 11:00 AM. And when you're trading passively, it means that you don't have to wake up early, early in the morning. You can wake up whenever you want and check your trades and move on. So it doesn't take a lot of time trading. So, I'm going to the office at 11:00 AM and it is sweltering. I mean Houston, its crazy heat, just like the desert, it's summertime, it's close to a hundred degrees outside and I see this 11 year old boy, 10, 10 or 11 years old. And he's in his truck. There's a pickup truck standing by one of the houses, one of my neighbor's houses. And he's sitting inside the truck and playing on his little video games. And I see a man and a woman and they're sitting on the grass and they're eating lunch. So I assume they're his parents. And I also assume that they're day laborers, maybe they're cutting the trees or doing some rehab inside or installations or something like that. And you normally see that type of thing, especially in the suburbs. You see people who come out and they do the work. The thing that struck me was that this boy, 10, 11 years old, his parents are going to be out here for several hours. And he's with them in the heat. Why? Well, I mean, the mom was there, so probably nobody else is there at home to take care of him. They can't afford daycare or it's too expensive or it's better that he just stays with them. But what does he do all day? He's a little bit too young to help out really, he might be able to do a little things, but not really much. And he's just wasting his time and sweating and getting heatstroke, but the parents are doing the best they can. I'm sure the parents love the child, that's why they're keeping him with them. I'm sure they're trying to teach him. I'm sure they want the best for this child. But I compare that to my nine year old. And at the same day, while this child is spending all day out in the heat sweltering, my nine year old in the morning, he went to a tutoring class and he just finished third grade. And in tutoring class, he's doing fifth grade work. Math, science, reading, all that kind of stuff, because to get ahead. And then in the afternoon, he's going to go to an art class. And then in the evening, he wanted to take a coding class. So they have this online game called Roblox, if you've ever heard of it. And he wanted to learn how to code and make the games, program the games in that particular game. So what's the difference? Why is one child out in the heat suffering while the other child is in different classes, learning different things, getting new experiences? Yeah, I guess you could say the first thing that pops in your mind would be money. One child comes from a poor family, one child comes from a well-to-do family. But I think it's more than that. It's not just the money. And if you take a look at it, I mean, which child has a better future? I hate to say it, but which child has more choices in life and in everything? Now, of course my child could and mess it up and the other child could do great, that's definitely true. But which one will have an easier time of it, and the likelihood of achieving and having a better quality of life? I think it comes down to not money. Of course money is there, but why? Why, what, how did the money come into place? What's the difference between this kid's father and me, even if you take the money out. Let's say you take both of us and you take all the money away or you give us an even amount of money. I am pretty sure that within a short period of time, I'm going to be able to recapture what I could. I'm going to be able to go up the ladder while the other fellow, what he knows is day labor. He's got his work, he's got his hands and that's how he makes a living. He probably works harder every single day of his life than I have ever worked in my life. I am not a day laborer. I'm not good with my hands. I don't know anything. I barely hammer a nail because I've never done, I never had to. I've always used my mind. But why was I able to use my mind while he had to use his hands, and he couldn't use his mind? Because of education. Knowing the rules of the game and by game, I mean life, helps you play the game better, helps you succeed at the game, helps you play it smarter. And I think that's the main difference. It wasn't the other fellow might have some lucky break or unlucky breaks, I might've had some lucky breaks, get it, cool. But the focus on education that my parents had, the focus on making sure that I get into good schools, that I read, that I excel, I do the best I can. That other fellow didn't have that, right? Knowing the rules of the game allows you to save time, to access different resources, to be able to use the resources that you have access to. If you're in a new country and you don't know the language, you can have a lottery ticket, but you won't know how to read it. It also allows you to speak up and have confidence and say something when the rules of the game are not adhered to. So if someone's taking advantage of you, you know how to fight back, right? And people who are uneducated get taken advantage of all the time. Instead of living in fear and accepting that, "Oh, things are just the way they are. That's the way it is. I can't do anything about it." You can actually do things about it. You can make things happen. Now, just take credit, the whole credit score and your whole credit report, for an example. Somebody who knows how credit works can improve their score. They can use credit cards responsibly. They can get cheaper rates on a mortgage and their insurance. They can manipulate airline miles and card points to get free travel and free trips like I do. Compare that to somebody who doesn't understand how credit works and they mess it up because they don't understand the value, and then they have trouble all along their life, even renting an apartment, they have trouble. So they can't rent one of the better apartments, even if they can afford it. They just won't give it to you because you have bad credit, so what do you have to do? You have to go to a worse part of town to get a crummy apartment. And if you rented there, well, guess what, your child goes to a school district that's not as good as the one in the good part of town. And so the cycle continues because your child doesn't get the same education that he should get. Now I don't want to get into what's right, and what's wrong, and all that stuff. This is the way life is. That's the way the world works, right? That's why I continue to be shocked when people who have a chance to get education, say no. People who want to trade, people who want to learn how to increase their finances, refuse to pay for the training, for the education, to learn how to do that, for the shortcut. They think that maybe they can just get it by on YouTube videos. "Yeah, I'm going to learn everything on YouTube." "Okay." The problem with that is, they don't know what they don't know. You could watch YouTube all day till you're blue in the face, till your eyes pop out. But it doesn't mean you're going to be a great trader because you don't know what you don't know. And even the person on the other end of the YouTube video whose making the YouTube video might not know what they don't know. The real gems, the truths, the gold, is not shared on YouTube videos or any other free information. It's not. Something that is so valuable to me, I'm not going to just give it out because people don't value it. And if there is truly a secret, if there is a secret system or a secret plan, if I go and share with the world, tell everybody about it, "Here, do this, do this." Eventually it's going to stop working. So why would I do that? I know I can share it with a few people. I can't share with the whole world, right? We had one fellow call in the other day. He applied to be part of our oil options program. And he went on and on about how desperate he is for a system that works and how he's been trying for so long and all the things he wants to do and do good stuff with making the money and help the world, all that stuff. He's confident that our system works and he's going to do everything in his power to execute and to do whatever we tell him, how we teach it. But then we told him the investment in the program and his response was like, "Oh, I would never pay that amount." We actually have it on recording. He was funny. We record all the calls. "Oh, I would never pay that on my own." Now keep in mind that it's not like we were asking for a super, super high amount, okay? With a decent sized account, you can make back in a month or two, what we're asking, and then trade that way for the rest of your life. So it's not like we're asking for a million dollars. But the whole idea of paying for coaching repelled this guy. It was like a block in his brain. It's like, "No, no, no, I can't do that. That's not possible." Some people have that for murdering. "I could never murder anybody." Same thing, "Oh, I could never pay for a coaching." It's against my morals. It's against my values. It's against the way I live." Okay. That's why trading, most of it is mindset. If you're not willing to invest in yourself, your investments will suffer. The easiest and fastest way to success in trading, and just about anything, is to find somebody who's already doing well, learn from them, go to the source, see who's doing it right now, that thing that you want to do and learn from that person. Copying them is not enough. If you can't get to the person, you can try copying them, but you're not going to learn everything. It's not going to be the same thing, because you don't know the nuances. You don't know what they've tested and what has worked and what didn't work. You can try to copy them, but trust me, it's not the same thing. You don't know what you don't know, unless you get the education. So if you've been blessed with a college education, I mean, thank your parents or whoever paid for it and be grateful that you had the chance to go and that it allowed you to have a better quality of life. And maybe you didn't go to college, but you still struggled hard. And you made a success out of yourself, but you did get educated some way somehow, maybe you read on your own. Maybe you did it, but you took the time to put in the effort and you learned. But most likely, if you want the shortcut, you go to the teacher, you learn from them, right? That's the way it works. Because who knows where you would be without it. If you weren't educated, where would you be right now? I hate to think about it because I couldn't even make as much money as that day laborer guy because I don't know how to do anything with my hands, seriously. And that is the difference between the trader who is struggling, trying to figure out their way in the trading world and the day laborer. And the trader who understands that he needs to get educated properly so that his trading can improve to get him to the level where he can have everything he wants in his life. There's a big difference, it's a total mental shift. If you show me a successful trader, I will show you a person who either paid their dues and traded for years without real success, or they had a mentor and they took the shortcut, and usually, it's both. You need the mentor and you still need to put in the work, okay? Because when you do, it's worth it because the world is at your feet. Anything you want is yours if you do this right. If you educate yourself, put in the work, there's nothing you can't do. And what is the alternative? You already know the answer to that question. The alternative is whatever you have now. If you don't succeed at trading, okay. For some of you that's okay. For that guy who called on the phone, maybe his current life is okay. And I could go on and on about the many benefits of paying for the shortcut, right? Paying for the education. But it comes down to this. How badly do you really want it? If you don't want it bad enough, take your time, dilly dally, watch YouTube videos. No problem. You might learn something once a week or something, eventually you might learn something. Hopefully the video you're watching is actually the truth and it's up to date and it's not outdated. And that methods, whatever they're teaching or showing you still works. And they show you everything, because that's what they do on these videos, they don't show you everything. They want you to pay. They want you to pay up for the real stuff. But if your desire keeps you up at night, if you know that you were born to live a life of plenty, do the smart thing and get educated, find a mentor, pay for access to him and soak it all up. That is truly the best shortcut you can take in trading. And it's not cheating. Some people say, "Oh, that's cheating." No, it's not cheating. Paying to get ahead of the line is not cheating. When I go to Disney world, I don't want to wait in line, I'm going to pay for that fast pass. I don't want to wait two hours for every single ride. I want to enjoy myself. I want to have as much fun. I want to get what I want as soon as possible. And I'm willing to pay to do that. It's learning the rules of the game so you can apply them to your benefit and that you do by paying for the education. So that's it for this episode. Remember to trade with the odds in your favor. Until next time. -- LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/ WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.