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... 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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... 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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.

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.  --- Wouldn't you want to be successful, right? Of course, right? Who wants to be a loser trader? Everybody wants to be a successful trader. But the thing is you might already be successful or do you even know what success means? Now to me, when somebody asks me, "Hey, Allen, are you a successful trader?" And I would say, "Yes and no." I mean, I'm doing okay, but I'm not where I want to be yet, right? And then that yet part is the problem. That is what's keeping me from saying, "Yes, I am successful. I am happy as a trader." Because I'm not at the level or I have not hit the goals that I've wanted to do or hit or set for myself. And actually, this revelation came to me as part of a coaching program. It came from my mentor. So, I have different people that I learned different things from, and I currently am in a coaching program. It's a very expensive coaching program where the person in charge of it, she teaches us about business and sales and how to do better with Option Genius and how we can improve the sales and make an impact for more people. And she learned this from her mentor, so I'm learning from her. She's learning from someone else. That person is learning from even another person up the food chain. So, it's amazing how even people that we look at and say, "Hey, yeah, this person is successful. I want to learn from them," but they are constantly learning too. The most successful people I know are always investing in themselves, just like we are investing in the stock market. We're investing in options, but we need to also be investing in ourselves by learning more, by being in a community with other people that have the same goals or similar activities and similar visions that we do. So, I'm in this coaching program, and she's already taught us a lot. It's group coaching, so we get together once every so often on Zoom, a couple times a year in person, well, whenever we can, whenever she arranges it. And she talks about different things. One of the calls, the last... It wasn't the last call. It was the call before that. She was talking about mindset. And she was talking about how she learned lesson from her mentor, who learned it from a book. The book is, I believe it's not available anymore, but you can get the audio book. It's by a guy named Dan Sullivan. Pure Genius is the name of the program. You might be able to get the audio book from Nightingale Conant if you want to pick it up. But the idea there was that when people set goals or when people think about productivity or when they think about themselves and how successful they are and how they're doing, they always look to the future. They always look to the horizon. That's the example he gives. And so, if you're walking along or driving along on the road, it's a straight road. You're driving, driving, driving. You see the horizon. And no matter how far you go, no matter how long you go, you never reach the horizon. So if the horizon is your goal, you're never going to get there. Does that make sense? I mean, yeah, the Earth is round, and so it's constantly turning, but the same thing happens to us. When we set goals, when we set activities for ourselves, the goal or the result, the future final result always seems to end up changing. And this is human nature. So for example, a few years ago, I was in a business owners mastermind group. And there were about 12 of us, I believe, in the group. And in the meeting, in one of the meetings, we did an activity. And we went around, and everybody had to say what their number was. Basically, a number is how much money do you need to have in order to maybe sell your business and retire, right? So, how much money do you want to have to be able to say, "Yeah, you know what? I'm financially secure. I'm safe. I'm happy. I'm going to retire. I'm going to go do whatever the heck I want now. And I don't have to run my business anymore"? So, what is the end goal? And there were different numbers thrown around, 10 million, 12 million, 15, 5, whatever. The number wasn't important. But I did happen to write some of them down. And we were in this group. I was in this group for eight years, and there were several others that were with me when we were there. Some people would come and go, but most of the group was intact. And so the next year, we did the same activity where you had to say your number. Now, a lot of them had done really well that year, right? And so, their perspective had changed. And so when we went around and everybody was writing their numbers or saying their numbers, I was writing them down again. And I happened to go back and find the page when I wrote the ones from the year before. So, I see what they had said before, and then I'm writing down what they said this year. And everyone's number had gone up. Some of them, there was one particular person, he said, "I want to get to 5 million. That's when I'm going to sell my business. My business is doing 5 million a year. I'm going to sell it. I'm going to cash out. I'm going to take the money. And I'm going to retire." That was what he said. And he had already told us that his business is already doing $5 million, so then he changed it. He goes, "No, no, now I want to do 10 million. So if my business is doing 10 million a year, then that's when I'm going to sell it. And that's what I'm going to retire." So, he changed it. He changed the goal. He changed the vision. He is now moving towards the horizon, which he's never going to get to because if he gets to 10 million, then he might go to 15. He might go to 20. He's going to keep increasing it. And that's what we do. I mean, when you first started trading, maybe your goal was hey, I want to make a thousand dollars a month. That's a great goal, very attainable. You could probably do that within the first couple of months, right? I want to make a thousand dollars a month. That's a great goal. After you do that, then what happens? Oh, the goal changes. Okay, now I need to make $3,000 a month. Okay. Then I need to make five. Then I need to make 10. Then I need to make a hundred thousand dollars. Then I need to make a million dollars. Then I need to make a million every year, every year for the rest of my life. You see, the goal just keeps going further and further and further. That's not a bad thing. You got to improve. You got to strive. If you're not growing, if you're not motivating yourself, then you're going to die and wither away and lose interest. And it's going to all go to pot anyway. But my point is, a lot of people look at their success based on if they've hit their long-term goals. And so if you say, "Hey, I'm not going to be successful as a trader unless I make a million dollars a year," well, then you will never be successful because you just have to do it again and again and again and again and again until you die, right, because you never put an end date. There are other people who say, "You know what? I want to make this much. And that's it. That's my goal. I'm going to make that much." Well, if they get there, that's great. They celebrate. And then they're like, "Okay, now what?" Then they have to form a new goal, so they keep striving, and they keep doing that. So according to this guy Dan Sullivan in the Pure Genius program, what he's saying is that what people do is they never hit their goal or they do hit the goal and then they make it larger. But they never hit the horizon, right? So, what you want to do instead to be successful is you want to compare, what he calls, your actual two to your actual one. So, actual one is where you were, before when you started. Actual two is where you are now, right? So, what we're doing is we're not comparing ourselves now to our goal, which is in the future or the horizon. We're comparing where we are now to where we were before. So if your goal right now, or if you just hit your goal of making a thousand dollars a month, you're not going to feel bad and say, "You know what? I got to make 3,000. Oh, my God, I only made a thousand this month. I need to make three." No, you're going to say, "Wait a minute, two months ago, I wasn't making this thousand dollars a month. I hadn't heard about passive trading yet." Maybe, you're brand new. Maybe, you're brand new to the podcast. So, you're just listening, and you're like, "Oh, I started, and in a couple months, I'm making a thousand bucks. Great." You compare where you are now to where you were before. And if you do that, you're going to be ecstatic. You'll be like, "Yeah, really, I am making a thousand dollars a month. That's amazing. That's awesome, right?" You're going to be happy. You're going to be excited. You're going to be wanting celebrate. But if you compare today to the future, "Oh, man, I still got to make that 3,000. Man, I'm only making a thousand a month. I got to make 3,000. Jeez," you're going to be full of stress, anxiety, and unhappiness. So if you want to be successful, what you got to do is change your perspective, as long as you're being profitable, okay? That goes without saying. If you're passive trading, you're probably going to be profitable, okay? If you're not, then reach out to me. We'll figure out why. But if you're doing passive trading, you're probably profitable. The only matter is, the only question is, how profitable are you and how consistently you are profitable, okay? So, that's your goal. Now, what people say is the secret to be successful is to feel amazing all the time. The way to feel amazing all the time is to compare yourself now from where you were before. And to me, that was like, "Whoa, that is so true." Because in Option Genius, I keep saying, "Okay, I want to help more people. I want to help more people. I want to help more people." And we get success stories coming in, but it's like, man, we need to do more. We need to do more. You read the newspapers. It's like, oh, so many baby boomers are having to work until they're seventy years old, and they don't have any money for savings. And all these people are in trouble right now during the coronavirus. They might not get their unemployment checks anymore, and they're going to be kicked out of their houses, and all this stuff is going on. It's like, oh, my God, I can help these people. They just have to know about passive trading. Why can't we help more people? Why can't we do it fast enough? And so with that stress, it drives me nuts. I can't sleep. I'm grinding my teeth at night, and that's what's keeping me up. Not the stock market, stock market's doing great. I've done better this year than so many years before, even in the midst of this coronavirus. But the thing that's keeping me up is that the horizon is so far away that I don't know if I'll ever get there because I don't even have a number in mind, how many people I want to help. I want to help 10,000 people. Okay, that's a big number. How many have you helped so far? Not even close. We helped a lot of people, but I don't know for sure, right? I know a few people that have told me their story, so we have all those people that, yes. Okay, I took this guy. I helped this guy go from where he was before to now financial independence. Okay, so that's one. And we've got a whole bunch of people like him, but we don't have 10,000. We've helped a lot more than that, but they haven't actually written in or called in and said, "Hey, you know what? Now, I'm financially independent." Okay, great. Because I know a whole bunch are, but they haven't told us. But when I look at where we are now compared to where we were before, compared to a year ago, two years ago, or 10 years ago when I started Option Genius, I think it started 11 years ago, but if I started from the beginning, looking at what was happening in the beginning, I feel great. Because when I started Option Genius, it was really as a way to keep myself busy. It was going to be one membership site where I was just going to be sharing trades with a few people. I didn't expect it to blow up. I just wanted to keep busy. So, I was doing some marketing, Google ads, and putting up a website, doing some trades, iron condors, this, that, the other thing, teaching. People were asking questions, so I'd make a few videos answering their questions and help them along. I never expected it to grow to what it is now. This podcast is over 250,000 downloads. Thank you for listening. That's amazing. I still can't believe it. That many people, you're listening to me that much. It's like, holy cow, right? Yeah. It's amazing. We just launched a passive trading book, and we're already sold over a thousand copies. We haven't even done any advertising, and we've already sold over a thousand copies. I can't wait what's going to happen once we start advertising. So, the mission is going to continue, and so I need to look at where I've been compared to now. When I started, even when I started trading, the anxiety, the stress, the depression of not making money trading compared to now where I have too much money in a sense. My wife was telling me, "Hey, you know what? The money's piling up in the bank account. What are we going to do with it?" And she's like, "Why don't you trade it?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we kind of have a lot of money in the stock market already." And that's not something you would actually expect to hear from a trader, right? We already got a lot of money in the stock market. So I mean, that's a mental limit that I need to work on myself, but I never even thought I would get to this point. So, what I'm saying here is in terms of to be a successful trader, chances are, if you're doing passive trading, you already are successful to some degree, meaning that you're already putting on trades. You know some strategies. They're working. Now, you just need to fine tune it, right? But to be successful in your head is a whole different story. To be happy with your success is a mental game. And so to win at the mental game, in anything, in trading or in parenting or in a relationship or whatever it is, look at where you are now, actual two, compare it to actual one. Maybe, compare it to a month ago, a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. Compare it to where you were, see the growth, see the progress, the momentum that you've made. See the things, the challenges you have overcome, and you will be happy. You'll be successful in your own mind, and that will take you to the future. One of the things that we started doing this year for my kids is every year on their birthdays, my wife and I, we make them a video. And so, we just started this one. So, we did it with the eight-year-old, and we did it with the four-year-old. And we made him a video and it's basically just me and my wife talking and saying, "Happy birthday. We're so proud of you. We love you," all this stuff. And then we list off the things that the kid did that year. So for our eight-year-old, I don't remember exactly, but some of the things were he learned how to snorkel. He went parasailing for the first time. He learned to ride his bike. What else did he do? He finished, what was it, second grade, right? So, we listed off his accomplishments and then we gave him the video. And right now, he's eight years old. Video wasn't a big deal. But as he grows older, we're going to keep those videos. And then when he's maybe 18, 20, 30, 40 years old, he can actually, maybe if he wants to, he can watch those videos and see his own progression to go from year to year to year to year all the accomplishments that he's made in his whole lifetime. And I think that might be a really, really cool gift worth more than any toy or video game that we could buy for him. And so that's something that we're starting. I just want to share that. Might be cool to do. If not, it's okay. But I know that if my parents had documented what things I had done when I was little or growing up or what they were proud of me about, and maybe even documented their life lessons, things that they learned in their own lifetime, and if I had that as a library or as a book or a set of videos, I would cherish it like no other thing. It'd be more valuable to me than anything else. So, that's the kind of things that we're trying to do for our kids. That's a whole nother topic. We can get into that later. But right now, if you want to be successful, don't think about the horizon. Don't think about the future. Work towards it. You always have to keep striving, try to keep improving. Otherwise, you're going to get bored and wither away. So, we want to keep getting better, but in order to be happy, we need to celebrate. And we just celebrate the milestones and the wins that we've already accomplished. So, look at where you are now, compare it to wherever you've been, and see the difference, and feel happy, and celebrate because we're only here for a short amount of time. And when it comes to trading, it's only money, right? So, enjoy yourself. Enjoy your life. Be happy. Be proud of yourself. Be happy with who you are. And always 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.  --- Greetings Passive Ttraders. Welcome to another edition of The Option Genius podcast. In today's edition or episode, I wanted to talk to you about watch lists and the importance of having a watch list. Now, the importance, even though I do preach about having a watch list and sticking to your watch list and trading the items on your watch list. There are times when I invariably will not listen to my own advice and then go ahead and start trading companies and instruments that I have no idea about, never heard of before. And so I was reminded of this recently, when I was doing a bonus for the Passive Trader book. For those of you who don't know, the Passive Trading book is out and it is available, you can get on Amazon for, I think it's like $20 or $25, or you can go to our website, which is passivetrading.com/freebook. And you can get the printed version actually for free. We've already paid for it. We have a limited supply of copies. All we ask is that you pay for the shipping and handling. If you do that, we'll send you out a book for free. But when we were coming out with the book and this whole little offer, we wanted to go a little bit further and created several products, or I guess they're called products. But they are things that can help you get faster results in your passive trading. So if you don't know anything about passive trading, if you've never traded before or if you want just more information, get the book. If you want to go faster, maybe you already know a little bit about it. Maybe you already know about how to trade, but you want better results. That's where these other extras come into play. And so one of the things that we created is a crash course. And so once you buy the book, the next page that it takes you to is an offer. It's an offer page and it's a video of me and it tells you about the crash course. And basically the crash course is after I already written the book we went through and I took notes on the entire book and I turned it into a video format where I went deeper into the elements that I thought were the most important. So now everything in the book is important and we've already taken out... It was a lot longer before. It was maybe double or triple the size before. And we had to cut it down to make it manageable because I didn't want to have like a 500 page book. But there were some aspects that I wanted to go in deeper and I could do it better in a visual format. So that's why we made a video course. It's a crash course. The average person to read a book of this size of passive trading would take about 10 hours. That's the average person to read it. And now this is a more detailed book. So there are numbers and there's things that you have to understand. You might have to read it back a couple of times to really get the gist of it. And so it probably take even longer than 10 hours. So what I wanted to do is a crash course just focused on the most important things. Boom, get it done with in like an hour or so, a couple of hours. I'm not sure how long the video is. I don't know. I think we broke it down into several. So I don't know exactly what the length of the video is, but it's really, really good. And I'm really happy. I'm really proud of it. So that is something you might want to pick up. But in addition to the crash course, what we offer as part of that package is videos of actual trades. So now in the book, I do cover several trades that I've made in the past. So you can see how each trade goes, by strategy, by strategy and see how they actually work out. But that's on paper, right? Visually you can do a lot better. So what I did was I picked, two trades that I've done in the past for each of the three strategies. So six trades total. And I went into backtesting software and visually I did a screen capture of my screen. And I went through how I put the trade on, what it looks like on the screen. What does the graph look like, how it works. And day by day recorded what happened. Now this was with the backtesting software, you can go back in time. So let's say there was a trade that I did three months ago. I can go back three months ago, show you the graph of the stock, the chart of the stock and say, look, this is what the stock was doing. This is what I saw the day that I put the trade on. And then this is what happened the next day. And this is what happened the next day. And then the next day this happened, so I did this. So day by day, you can actually go back and see and say, hey what is Allen looking at? How is he placing this trade? How is he managing this trade? And so I did it for all the three strategies that we talk about in the book. There are six trades in total, and I thought that... If you've never traded before, if you don't understand or if you want to get some behind the scenes kind of information and knowledge, you got to watch those videos. Because you can see me day by day going through the trades. So if you don't understand how these trades work, you want a better idea, watch the trades. And it's a visual interpretation. It's visually, day by day. Even when you're doing live trading, you can't get that because nobody has the time to sit there and go day by day by day. Even for people of our option genius membership, right? They get the trades and that's about it. We don't show them day by day how it's going through. So this is really, really important in that sense. So if that's important to you pick that up, it's on the page right after the book. So you buy the book and then the next page, you get this offer. Now, why am I telling you all this? Is it because I just want to sell it to? Well I want you to get it because I think it's going to help you. But while I was doing those trades, while I was looking for several of these trades, I came across one and I didn't want to find like the easiest trades. I wanted to find where there were some issues sometimes, like okay the trade went against me, how did I fix it? What did I do? And so I wanted to give a real sense of what these trades are actually like. And so I found one trade that I started about a year ago. It was in August of 2019. And I just exited this trade about a week ago or two weeks ago, whenever expiration was. This trade was on a stock that was not on my watch list. The company was Royal Gold, R G L D. Never heard of this company before, don't even know what they do. I still don't know what they do. I was in the trade. I own the stock for this company for close to a year. And I still don't know what they do. They might be a miner. They might be a jewelry wholesaler or they might be a retailer. I have no clue. I don't know what they do, but it has something to do with gold. Now how did I get into this stock? And why am I being so clueless about it? Well, like I said, it's not on my watch list. And so that is part of the problem. About a year ago, a friend of mine told me that there's a pattern in gold. And depending on when you're listening to this, the pattern just might help you to make some money. The pattern is that gold rallies into the end of the year. And so the idea was that it's about August, 2019. This is when he told me and he's like, "hey you know, I'm doing this trade. It's a covered call in the mining on this company, Royal Gold." And he told me what it was. I looked at it, I analyzed it. And I said, "Hey, this is good. I like this." The chart looks good. The stock is going up. And if gold rallies to the end of the year, then there's a very good chance that this trade is going to make some money. But I don't know this company. And I don't think they pay a dividend. So I want to put on the trade, but I don't want to be in the trade for a long time. I don't want to own the stock for a long time. So that's why it was set up as a in the money covered call. And in the money covered call is where the stock is trading at a certain price. Like I was saying, it's a hundred, you buy the shares at a hundred, and then you sell lower than the price. So you sell your call option lower than the price, which was I think it was selling at like a 4 or 5% below where the stock was. So that is the trade that I did. And I don't have in front of me. But the trade was going to make somewhere around 11%. Or I believe that's what it was. It had the ability to make 11% in about a month's time, just the way it was set up. And it had a very, very high probability of profit. Not only that, but I looked at the chart, the stock was going up. Gold is supposed to continue to go up. So that means the chart... This company Royal Gold should also continue to go up. And so if that happens, that's great. That's what I want because I want the stock that I bought to be called away. And I want that money to just be left. And I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to mess with it. It's a simple, easy trade. You don't have to manage it. You don't have to [inaudible 00:09:41] it. You don't have to do anything. You put the trade on, you wait till expiration day and you see, hey what happened with this trade? Most likely the stock is going to keep going up and I'm going to be assigned in my exercise. And my call option is going to force me to sell my stock, which I wanted to do anyway. And I was going to keep the gain. That was the plan. Now, as I already told you, I was in the trade for about a year. So it didn't exactly go according to plan. Instead of the stock continuing go up. The stock went down and then it kept going down. And so my option expired, which was good because I made some money. But now I'm sitting on a loss on the stock, which I don't even want. So now the idea is, okay what do I do now? Do I keep it? Or do I get out and take a loss? Well, I don't like taking a loss, who likes taking a loss. I don't like taking a loss. And who knows gold might also appreciate again. It might keep going up. Maybe this is a short time drop or something, who knows. And so I sold more calls, hoping that the stock would go up and I would be called away, that didn't happen. Sold more calls, expired, sold more calls, expired, sold more calls. And I go through month by month, day by day in the trade in the video. So if you want to pick that up, you can go through and see exactly how it happened and which calls I sold and why I picked those calls, all that. But in the end, it took me about a year to get out of this trade. And after a year I made about 8%. I think it was an 8% gain on this trade. So what should have been a one month trade where I could make 11% turned into a whole year problem, where I had to keep selling calls in order to make 8% for the year. Now 8% in a year is nothing to laugh at. That's a really good return. And that's what the stock market averages, 8% percent a year. So I did that and I took a trade where the stock went down. The stock was down and I still made 8%. So that's one thing to take away. Like, oh wow, how do you make money on a stock that's going down? Well, this is the way to do it. The other thing I want to point out, which is probably more important is that I never should have been in the trade in the first place. Now yes, we're going to place trades and we're going to miss and we're going to mess up, we're going to lose money on trades. That's normal. And then you have to know how to fix it. Fine. I get that. But I had no clue what was going on with this company. Didn't do any research into it. Don't know the company. I still have not looked into it. I still don't know what they do. And so that's not very smart. And that's exactly why I keep telling you to have a watch list. When you have a watch list... A watch list for those you don't know is a list of companies that you monitor, that you watch. And those are the ones that you trade. Now if you don't know how to make a watch list, we cover it in detail in passive trading, in the book. And then even in the passive trading formula, the course, we spent a lot of time on that in the course. And there are over a dozen different criteria to use, to pick the best stocks, underlying ETFs, indexes, all that to put on your watch list. And everybody's watch list is going to be different, unique, because you like trading some things. I like trading different things. We'll make different watch lists. No problem. That's not a big deal. The thing is when you don't stick to the watch list, you make mistakes like this one. And even though at the end of the year, I came out ahead, it was a lot of extra effort that I didn't really need to make. If I had stuck to my watch list, I wouldn't have had that problem. If I had wanted to play gold. And that was the plan. Gold was going up. I should have just played gold and gold is on my watch list. So I watch gold. I watch the chart of gold. I see how it's doing. I know how it behaves. This company didn't behave the same as gold. Gold kept going up, but this company went down and I couldn't figure out why. So the point again, I'm trying to make here is create your watch list. Stick to the watch list. There was another time and I tell this story many times where I traded a stock that wasn't on my watch list. And at that time it was Las Vegas Sands. And I did some cover calls on that one too. And the stock dropped all the way down to $2. And I had no clue why the stock was dropping because I didn't do my research because it wasn't on my watch list. I didn't know that the company was about to go out of business. They were going to declare bankruptcy. That was why the stock went all the way down to $2. Now, luckily for me the stock did not declare bankruptcy and then they recovered and I made all my money back and a lot more. But that's just another way that I lucky. There's no other way to say it. I should have lost all my money on that trade because I didn't do my homework and I didn't stick to my watch list. So even as a professional trader, I keep having to learn the same lessons over and over and over again. And that's normal. That's not a big deal. It happens, but I want you to learn from my mistakes. And so I don't want you to feel bad if you make mistakes. I don't want you to feel bad if you make the same mistake over and over again. But we need to get better at it. We need to keep improving. And that's the only way to do it by just getting reminded of it and saying, hey this for me was a great reminder. Like, Oh my God, geez I can't believe I did this again. But I did. And I learned how to fix it. And I did. Luckily I was able to do it. So now I have another reminder of, hey I need to focus on the watch list. Focus on the watch list. Focus on the watch list. I had a couple other trades that came up recently that somebody shared in our group, our Facebook group for members of the Passive Trading Formula. And I wanted to take them, but they were on stocks that I didn't really watch. And so I was like, oh no I can't. Okay, no I'm not going to do it. And then I went and found similar trades, similar strategy to stocks that I already own or stuff that are on my watch list. So I was happy. So I still made money. It's not like you can't make money by only sticking to your watch list, but you're going to make more money because you're sticking to things that you know. So that is in a sense, the gist of this episode. Basically I could have broken down and said, "Hey yeah, just got to, you got to stick to your watch list. But it makes a bigger impact when you hear the story behind it I think. As people, we love stories. We love hearing stories. And when you tell a story, it not only does it stick in your brain and you remember it more, but it shows the importance. Now, luckily I didn't lose any money on this. But if I did, it would have been a very expensive story. And then I would have been like, hey I lost X dollars doing this. I don't want you to lose X dollars. Don't do the same thing. So with that said, thank you for joining me for another edition. Again, the book is Passive Trading. It's out now, limited quantities are available for free. Go check it out. passivetrading.com/freebook. And if you have any questions, you can always email me help@optiongenius.com. If you need anything, we're always here for you. Join us in our free Facebook group, which is called the Alliance, Option Traders Alliance. You can get that at optiongenius.com/alliance. I believe that is the URL. If not just email us and we will get you the name and the URL to that. So you can join us in there, get the book, learn passive trading, start making money. And even on a stock that goes down, I still made 8%. So learn how to do that. Make all your troubles go away. 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.  -- Ho, ho, ho, passive traders. It's Christmas in July, or whenever you are listening to this. Why? Because I have a gift for you. After over two years ... Two and a half, three years? I don't know how long it took, but it took a long time, well over two years. I finished my Passive Trading book. It has been published. It has been printed. It's on sale at Amazon. You can go pick it up right now for $20. Or I do have some copies that I want you to have for free. I want to give them to you. I want everybody to have this book. I'm doing my part by giving them away, a limited number that I have that we got as part of the first run. All you have to do is go to passivetrading.com/freebook and you have all the details there. It is a printed book. We do have to ship it to you, so it will take a couple of days to get to you. It is passivetrading.com\freebook. Now, the book is free. I will need you to cover the shipping and handling costs, if you don't mind that. And you'll get the free book in your mail very soon. People have been asking about the audio book or the ebook version. Those are also available there for a little bit extra. But if you get the free book, you can get those as well. If you're ready to get started trading options, or investing the right way, or making some extra money on the side, you got to get this book. I mean, I call it Passive Trading: How to Make Consistent Money From the Stock Market in Just a Few Hours a Day for a reason, because that's what it is. And it delivers. It's been on Amazon for a couple weeks now. We already have well over a dozen positive five star reviews. Everybody else that's read it has loved it. We're getting some video testimonials in that we're adding to the website, too. So, I just can't wait. I'm really excited. I think this is going to really make a big deal. So again, passivetrading.com/freebook. I don't know how long the books are going to last. And if you want one, please go get one. Pick it up right now. Just pay for shipping. We'll send it out to you. Another announcement is that this show has been rated as one of the top trading podcasts! So we are super excited at that as well. Top Trading Podcast Trading scars. That's the type of this episode. What do you mean, Alan, by trading scars? What is a trading scar? Ooh, sounds dangerous. Well, when it comes to trading, we all lose money. There's nothing we can do about that. It happens on a regular basis, right? It's one of the things that happens. Like when you're playing football, you're going to get hurt. When you're trading, you're going to lose money. You're going to have a losing trade. Okay. Got it. Check. But then, when it happens a lot, or when it happens unexpectedly, or when the loss is especially large, it can leave a scar. It can hurt. It can go deep. That cut can go very deep, and it's really hard to get rid of. It's hard to get over. I mean, it's not a physical scar, right? It's a mental scar. It's something that affects our psyche. And for some people, that affects them all the way down to their core. That's a scar, though, that nobody else can see. You're walking down the street, nobody knows you've lost money in the stock market. You could see it and you can feel it, but nobody else can. And sure, there will be some people around you when you get your scar that will know that you got your scar, your family, your spouse, your kids, whatever, your friends if you tell them. They're going to see it. They're going to know you got it. But then, they're going to move on. You are going to carry that scar for a long time, and hopefully the scar will fade away. For some people, it doesn't. Losing a lot of money can be very painful. And that's what causes the scar, because we put a really, really big attachment to money. And we put a really, really big attachment to winning, and to being successful, and not failing. But normally, failing at something is a good thing. It's great sometimes. It might not feel like it at the time when you fail, but that is how we learn. When I'm teaching my kids, my eight-year-old, he gets really mad every time he gets something wrong. He just like, "I can't do it, Daddy. I can't do it." It's like, "Yes, you can. You got the answer wrong. It's okay. That's why we're learning. We're learning that what we did didn't work, so now we have to try a different way. We can't just give up. We've got to keep going. We got to move forward." So as you progress on your trading journey, you're going to build up these scars. Doesn't mean it's not going to hurt, but it's part of the game. You play the game, you're going to get hurt, and they're going to be scars as a history, as a memory, as a feeling that, hey, this happened. Don't forget. Now, the saddest thing is when a scar impacts a trader so deeply that they give up. Or even worse, they lose confidence in themselves. They change. Their personality changes. The way they feel about themselves, the way they think about themselves, the way they see themselves changes. And when I was learning how to trade, I met a fellow, a fellow trader, who was light years ahead of me. I mean, this guy was awesome. He was brilliant. I mean, he knew everything. He knew all the jargon. He knew all the trades. He was doing all these exotic strategies, and I couldn't even figure them out what he was doing. I had no clue what he was doing. He would explain stuff, and I'd be like, What?" It was like a two-year-old talking to a college student. That's what I was. Some of the things that he taught me I still don't understand. He was that brilliant. But, then he got cocky. He got arrogant. He didn't take precautions, and he screwed up. And It wasn't just a little, tiny screw up. It wasn't like, "Oh, yeah, he had a bad losing year. He lost when he should've won." No. He blew up big time, and he lost it all. Total account blow out. Zero. Gone. Lost all of his money. But then, more importantly than that, he lost his confidence. And because of that, every attempt that he made to build his account back up failed. He just couldn't get that winning touch again. Didn't matter what he knew, didn't matter how much experience he had, he couldn't get the winning touch back. He couldn't get back on his feet. That caused him to be depressed. He looked at himself as a trader. That was his identity. But, he was no longer a successful trader. Now he was just an average, or below average, or loser trader because he wasn't making any money. So, he went into a cycle of self-destruction. He started doing crazy things. He started using and abusing. Eventually, he ended up in rehab. Thankfully, he got out, and he's better now. But, that scar hurt deep. Recently, he reached out to me, and we got to talk. He's a great guy. He's trying to get back into trading now, and he is looking for somebody to stake him. Basically, what that means is he's looking for someone to give him the money to trade so that he can split the profits with them. It's kind of like a hedge fund, but the person who puts up the money gets more of the profits. Now, as a rule, I don't do that. But when I was talking to him, I realized that I was talking to somebody different than who I knew before. He wasn't the same person. He used to be full of energy, and charisma, and super charming. Now he's just boring, blah, no energy, no confidence. If he was the same as before, most likely he probably would have talked me into giving him some money. That's how powerful he was before. Even if I didn't want to, he'd probably talk me into it. But, his scars were still there, and they were limiting his confidence. They were limiting what he was asking for. He never even asked me. That's how scared he was. Before, he had no problems being brash and cocky. But now, he was bringing up ... He's like, "Oh, hey, I'm looking for somebody that can stake me. Do you know anybody? I'm doing really well? I got some records and dah, dah, dah. I got this new strategy I've come up with that's working really well. Blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Oh, good luck to you." He never even asked me to stake him once, even though I knew that is exactly why he called me. But, he didn't have the confidence to ask for the sale to go for it. But, that's my point. He was never able to overcome the scar. The thing is that only he could see it. I had forgotten about it. I had forgotten that he blew up. I remember that he was in rehab. That's the thing I remembered. But because the scar was there, and he knew about it, and he thought it was there, he acted differently. Maybe he thought that I still remembered what happened or maybe he thought that I cared. To be honest, what bothered me more was that he spiraled out of control. That was the concern to me when I was thinking about, "Hey, should I stake this guy or not?" Even though he hasn't asked me, I was thinking about it because I knew how good he was in the past. But, my concern was not that he blew up. I didn't even remember that. My concern was that I remember that he spiraled out of control. And to me, that was a bigger issue of not giving him money. I felt bad about it, that he's spiraled out of control, but not that he lost money. Because hey, everybody screws up. Everybody loses money, Some people more than others, some people bigger than others, right? Go big or go home. He went big, and he had to go home. So, I guess he did pay. He did both. But, we all get the chance to get back in. And that's what I love about trading. You always have the chance to get back in. You lose a bunch of money, you learn from it. See what you did wrong. Save up more money. Get back in the ring. It's not rocket science. You can figure it out. Just got to get back in the ring. That's the wonderful thing about trading. The only limitations are the ones that we set for ourselves. The only thing holding us back is ourselves and in our brain. Physically, it doesn't matter. There's nothing physically stopping you from trading. There is no discrimination in trading. There are no limitations. Doesn't matter who you are, what race, what nationality, what gender, what political party, where you live. None of that matters, how much you make, where you went to school, or even if you went to school. Nobody cares. If you have any learning disabilities or handicaps, no. You can still do this. Trading is just trading. It's open to everybody. And you can screw up as much as you want, too. You can blow up your account a hundred times, and you can still get back in the ring. They're not going to stop you. In fact, they're going to encourage you because they want to take your money. I was thinking about this episode. I realized that I have scars that I have not overcome either. It's not easy. Now, personally, I refuse to trade for anybody else. I don't want the headache, at least that's what I tell myself. People in the past, friend ... Just recently, somebody came up to me, a partner in another business. He goes, "Hey, why don't we just take the income out of this business? We got some money sitting in that business." He said, "Why don't we just take it out, give it to you, and you trade it?" And I said, "No, I don't trade for other people. Sorry. I don't want the headache." Is it really about the headache? I mean, it's just one more account. I have plenty accounts. We can even probably have it mirror one of my other accounts. So whatever I do in one account automatically happens in the other one. I wouldn't have to do anything. It wouldn't be a headache at all. I think the real reason I say no is that scar. I can lose money for myself. If I lose money, I'm going to be okay. I can sleep. I can deal with it. But if I lose money for somebody else, if I lose somebody else's money, I won't be able to sleep at night. That's the wrong way to think about it. If I think like that, then for sure I'm going to lose their money. If I go in in advance thinking, "Oh my God, I'm going to lose him money. How am I going to lose? What am I going to do? Oh, no. I'm going to lose." I'm going to go in thinking about the worst outcome. That's what's going to happen. If I did not have a scar, I probably would be a lot more boastful telling everybody that I could trade for them. And who knows, I would probably have my own fund making a lot more money than I am now by trading for other people. So if that's the route I wanted to take, I could have. But right now, that route is not open for me because mentally I am not able to do that, and I think it's because of my scar. It's because of when I lost money when I was starting out. I had a big, big letdown when I first started. Now, I've never traded money for anybody else, so I don't have that particular scar. But when I was trading for myself, I lost a big amount, and I knew exactly how it felt. I don't think I've ever recovered from that particular scar. So although at this day in my life, at this stage, I don't want to trade for other people. I don't need to. I don't need the extra return, the cash. I still need to work on dealing with the scar, though. That's besides the point. Even though the thing is there, the ability I can trade for other people, but I don't want to. I don't need to anymore. Earlier, a few years ago, yeah, the money would have been really nice. Doing the same trades I'm already doing for myself, doing it for other people, the income from that, the percentage of the profits from that would have been really nice because you can ... If you have a $50,000 account, you can only make so much money. Even if you double it, you're only making 50,000. But if you've got somebody with a million dollar account that you're trading, and you double that million dollars to 2 million, and you get 20% of that, that's 200,000 compared to the 50 that I made for myself. And I could do both at the same time. So yeah, if you're trading for other people, you can make a lot more money a lot faster. But, I couldn't. I never got my mind around it. Does that make sense? Because of the scar. And it's funny. Because lately, I have been seeing people post on Facebook about how they have trades that have made 100, 200, 5% gains. That's great for them. 500%, that's amazing. I'm happy for them. But, then they start giving advice, and they start posting about how wonderful they are. The thing is, those people, they don't have any scars yet, but they're coming. Believe me, the scars are coming. So if you're sitting there and this is your first crack at trading and you're making a 100, 200% on the trade, hey, wonderful for you, but be careful you don't give it back, because you're going to give it back. And the scar, you're going to get your scar. It's like a badge of honor. How many scars do you have? Every time we have a huge run up in the markets, we always have these types of fools. I say fool in a endearing way. I'm not trying to put you down if this is happening to you. I'm just telling you, you don't know what you don't know. But, that's what they are. They're still fools, and they're going to get schooled by the markets. Now in 1999, before the .com crash, 1999, everything, all the stalks were running away. Tech, Nasdaq, QQQ, every day, 10, 15, 20% higher. There were a lot of fools because everybody was making money in tech stocks. Everybody was making money in tech stocks. Doesn't matter what you know, what you don't know. You can make money. Just buy it. It going to go up. There was a guy I remember. We used to see him a lot. He was my father's friend. He kept telling my dad, every time he would see him, tell, "Hey, man, you're not invested yet? Man, you got to buy these stalks, man. I just bought AOL." That was his favorite one, AOL. "Oh, man, I just made this much money on AOL. Oh, I just made this much money." Every time we would see him, "Man, why haven't you bought yet? Why haven't you bought yet?" It was great to see him so excited, and happy, and making money. And at that time, we didn't have two nickels to rub together, so it's not like we were going to be investing. But, it sure felt like, man, if we could even borrow the money and put some money into these stocks, man, we could make a lot of money just like this guy. Then, there was the crash. Then, I have never heard that man speak of stocks ever again. I see him. At that time, we used to live in Miami. Now we live in Houston. His family have moved to Houston as well, and we see him from time to time. Never mentioned stocks ever, ever again. His scar's just too deep. In 2017, when Bitcoin got to $20,000 each, there were fools tripping all over themselves trying to prove which one of them was the bigger fool. You probably remember this. Every party you would go to, whether it was a wedding, a birthday party, a get-together, a picnic, whatever, a barbecue, whatever it was, all the guys were standing by themselves talking about Bitcoin and the women are on the other side talking about something else. It was crazy. There was one night, one day, we went from a kid's birthday party to a picnic thing to a dinner at night. And at all three parties, the only thing all the guys were talking about was a Bitcoin. That's it? Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. How many do you own? How many do you own? What'd you do? Oh, I got this coin. Oh, I bought this coin. That's all it was. Greater fools. There was a fellow who they did a news report on. He had a wife with three kids, three young children all under the age of 10. These guys were so fooled up into Bitcoin they sold everything they owned. They sold their house. They sold their cars. They sold all their possessions. They took all of their savings, everything they owned. They bought Bitcoin, and they were living in a tent. Literally. They had a laptop, and they were doing an interview on TV from the laptop, and they were being interviewed on the laptop. They lived in a tent on a beach somewhere. I don't know. It was a national park or I don't know where they were. But, they literally lived in the tent. They sold everything to buy Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin, who knows what's going to happen with it. But I would say, yes, that fellow was a fool and his wife was a fool. And because of them, the kids are suffering. I don't know whatever happened to them, but I can bet you that that guy has a scar bigger than his body. I hope not. I hope he realized his error, got over it, and got back to work and became normal, and realized that, hey, I still need to keep working. I need to have a roof over my head and food for my kids to eat. I can't just put everything I have in Bitcoin. Hopefully he won't make that mistake again. But, what these fools, not only him but all the other fools, what they don't understand is that everything runs in cycles. Good times, they're here for a while. Then, bad times come, and they're here for a while. Then, good times come back. You just have to know that the cycle will change. And it's like that in everything. I've talked about it earlier another podcast where I like to call it waves. The waves, you get a high. You get a low tide. Then, you get a high tide, and you get a low tide. It's just waves. The waves keep coming. This too shall pass. If you're dealing with something bad right now in your life, this too will pass. If you're dealing with ... If you're on top of the world right now, well, be careful because bad times are coming. My wife, uncle. She's got an uncle. A couple of years ago, he got into trading. He didn't want to tell me about it for some reason. Okay. No worries. He would talk to my wife, though. They chatted on the phone every day. He would be calling her. He'd be telling her what he was doing, the trades he made, how much money he made, all that stuff because she was interested. I mean, he's her favorite uncle, and she loved to talk about it. I had taught her enough about trading so she understood. He didn't have anybody else to talk trading with, so he would call her up. One day, the calls just stopped. No reason. No rhyme. None. Just call just stopped, and she didn't even notice. Much later, we found out that he lost the entire amount. He blew up. Big fights in the family, husband and wife, killing each other, screaming each other. I mean, when you lose money, it's not just your money. It's also the family money. And if you have a spouse and there's a fight, that could be a big scar right there. The more emotion you put on something, the deeper the scar. So, losing money is one thing. How you feel about it, how other people make you feel about it, how you make other people feel about it, that increases the intensity of the scar. But just last month, when we got together with this uncle again, he mentioned he's back trading. He's up $40,000 so far in 2020. So in the first half of the year, he's already up $40,000. Now, he doesn't have a lot of money to play with, so I'm assuming he's up at least 100% or more. And now his son who's just out of college, he's trading, too. He told me he's bought a lot of airlines, and cruise stocks, and all of these go-go bet names, gambler, speculator names. And I think I've seen this movie before. Hopefully uncle learned his lesson last time and he doesn't make the same mistakes, but I have a feeling that history's going to repeat itself. So if you have a losing trade, good. Get used to it. More are coming. Learn from them. Learn how to deal with the scars so they don't faze you. And as the kid say, scars are sexy. Chicks dig scars, dude. It means you do stuff. It means you take chances, that you live. You're alive. So, don't let the scar ruin things for you. Realize that you have the scar. Find out what you did wrong, focus on what you did right while avoiding your mistakes. Eventually, the scars will become a memory and fade away, at least that's what I hope for you. Trade with the odds in my favor, folks. Take care. Get Your Free Copy of Passive Trading. -- 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.  -- Hello, passive traders. This is Allen coming to you with another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. Today, I am a proud papa. Not because of something my kids did, but something I did for them. See, what I've already done is, I hope to be, something that will set them up for a very cushy retirement, or a very happy life. Let me tell you what that is. Now, I have three children, nine-year-old boy, another eight-year-old boy, and then a four-year-old daughter. And I don't want to happen to them what happened to me. See when I graduated high school, things financially were not really good for our family. And I was the only child, so going to college was kind of a no-brainer, you were just going to go. And my kids, they're going to go. They don't have choice, they're going. With all the high competition for the job market and everything, you just need to go and you need to learn and get out there and be on your own. And so, when it was time for me to go to college, I applied for several schools. I got into some private schools, but they did not offer me the financial aid package that I needed to go there because basically I needed them to pay for everything. The one school that did though was Florida State. And Florida State gave me a financial aid package where, I believe at the time I do not remember exactly, but I believe it was costing somewhere around $8,000 a year to go there, that included room and board, for two semesters. And they were giving me $9,000 as part of the package. Now, part of that, a couple thousand, that was loan under my name, but still they were actually giving me more money than I needed to go there. So I was going to have everything paid for, and I was going to have a little bit of cash in my hand, in the bank, so that I could spend it on candy or trips or to the beach or whatever. So, that was my only option. Now I'm going to Florida State. Wasn't my first choice and I did not enjoy it there. Nothing against the school, it just, for me emotionally, mentally, I was just not in the right frame of mind to enjoy it and take advantage of it, which I do regret to this day. But, I wasn't there very long because, at the end of the first year I had to drop out and come back home. My dad had just started a new business that he had no knowledge of how to run because it was all computerized, and so he'd basically told me I needed to stay home and work with him in the business, which is what I did. Okay. No worries. I'm not bitter about it, that much. But the point was that we did not have the money for me to afford the schools that I wanted to really go to. And if I had gone to one of the schools that I actually got into, things would have been way different in my life. Now, I'm not complaining because I love my life, so everything I guess happened for the best. But for my children, I would like them to be able to go to the best school that they get into, whichever school they want to go to. Whether it be around the block or across the country. I don't want finances or money or lack of money to be the reason why they don't go to the best school and get the best education that is possible. And so, I don't know what school they're going to go to, but my oldest he asked me one day, he goes, "Hey dad, what's the best school in the country? What's the best college in the country?" I'm like, "Well, probably Harvard." He goes, "Okay, then I want to go to Harvard." And that was it. Since then, anybody asks him, "Hey, where are you going to go to college?" He goes, "Harvard." He's like, it's no big deal. He doesn't know how competitive it is. "Hey, I'm going to Harvard." I love that confidence in him. I told him, "It's going to be hard." He goes, "Yeah, no problem." That's a nine-year-old. Awesome. I love it. So as dad, as the finance guy in the family, my wife doesn't really worry about the finances, I do, so I need to figure out how we're going to pay for Harvard. Which when he gets there, it's probably going to be, I don't know, $300,000 a year? And plus now, I have three of them. So, you know it's going to be close to a million dollars that I'm going to be paying for college. So how am I going to do that? Geez, that's a lot of money.  I started looking into college savings plans. What are the different options out there? You got the 529, you got the Coverdell, you got some other stuff. Doing my research, and I came to the conclusion that, I think that the best thing that I could do for them is to open up Roth IRAs. Now that might be sounding a little weird, right? A Roth IRA for a kid? How do you do that? They have to have income? Right. They have to. They do have to have income. They have to have a job. So that was an obstacle that we had to overcome. Okay, what job can we give them? Well, lucky for me, my wife has another business, which is a daycare. And on the daycare, we have to have pictures of happy children on the website, in the marketing materials, the brochures, the pamphlets, that things we hand out. And so, why not instead of paying other kids for their pictures or stock pictures or whatever, why not we pay our own children? Take their pictures professionally, and have that in our marketing materials? So that is what we did. So, we had professional pictures taken. We do it every year, and we have those pictures as part of our marketing plan. And so the kids get paid for this. Now, currently the tax law says that if your child is working for you or if your child was working anywhere really, they can get paid up to $12,000 a year without having to pay any income tax. Now, going to give you a disclaimer here, check with your accountant on this. Talk to your accountant, and talk to your tax professional, whatever, make sure this is correct. This is what I been told. And so you can do $12,000 a year without paying any income taxes. And, if you're earning money, you can put $6,000 a year into an IRA, whether it's a Roth or a regular IRA. Now for them, obviously I chose the Roth IRA because they're not paying any taxes on the income anyway. And so the money is paid to them tax-free. It goes into the Roth IRA, and there's no tax there. And then later on, when it actually comes out, after they retire or whatever age, 65, they take the money out of, it should come out of their tax-free as well. So you kind of get like a triple whammy here. So I really love this idea. I think it's one of my better ideas I've ever had. And so one of the ways that you can actually pay for college is that you can withdraw the money that you put in the IRA for college. In fact, if you look at the rules of how the Roth IRA works, any money that you put in, any deposit that you put in, you can withdraw that money at any time. So let's say you put $5,000 into it. You can take that $5,000 back. The gains, if that $5,000 goes to $6,000, you cannot take that extra $1,000 out. If you do, you have to be taxes and you have to pay fees. So that you don't want to, because you don't want to pay the fees and taxes until you can at whatever the age is, I believe it's 65, when you could start taking money out of your Roth IRA. Or 59 and a half or whatever the number is. You find a way to get your child paid for work that they're actually doing. And in my case, they're models. If you have your own business, they could work in your business doing accounting, bookkeeping, maintenance, anything. And that money that they get paid, you don't have to pay income tax on it, and it goes straight into the Roth IRA. And then if you need to, and I'm hoping that I will not need to do this, because I'm also investing in 529s for the children, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the 529s and whatever money I have at that time to pay for it so we don't have to touch the IRA. But I'm investing in the IRA first. And then once I do that for all three of them, then I put money in 529s every year for two of the children. So, I put about $5,000 each, for each child. So currently each child has $20,000 in their IRA. I've been doing it for four years. The accounts haven't really gone up very much in the last four years. They're going up, they went down, maybe I'm picking the wrong stocks. I don't know. But for whatever reason, they're roughly based on where they started. And even this year, we had a 35% bear market. It's still about the same. Now, one thing I briefly mentioned earlier, you can take money out of an IRA that you deposited. So when it comes times to college, we're going to use the 529 funds first. Use up all that money, because that 529 can only be used for educational expenses. And that's why I only have two of them. So, the older kid, he's got his account. And the middle kid, the eight-year-old, he has his account. For the baby, I'm not putting in yet, just in case. I don't want to have too much money in the 529. Because if the three of them don't use it up, then we have to take it out and pay fees on that and all that stuff. So I don't want to bother with that. So I'm going to use the 529 money up first. Then my own money. And then if that's not there for whatever reason, then we'll tap into the IRAs and take money out of there. My hope is, we never have to, and this money just sits there and it grows and grows and grows until age 65. Over the weekend, I got to thinking, I said, "You know, $20,000, that's a lot of money. I wonder how much it can going to be?" So I went to one of my favorite sites, investor.gov, and they have this wonderful, easy-to-use compound interest calculator, investment calculator, whatever you want to call it. And so, I wanted to see what their results would be. And I plugged up the numbers and I said, "All right. For my oldest, he's nine years old, he's got 50, what, 56 years left, until he's 65." So I typed it in, beginning balance $20,000. Monthly contribution, zero. If I don't put in another penny into his account, he's got $20,000 now. If he gets nothing, and since it's invested in the stock market, I think it's going to get about 8% average return for the year. If we don't invest any more money, if he only gets 8%, not more or less, but averages 8%, when he turns 65, he is going to have an account worth about $1.5 million. Without doing anything. The money's in there. It's been put away. It's just going to compound the way the stock market has been compounding for the last couple hundred years, and he should be worth $1.5 million at age 65. And that blew me away. I was like, "Holy cow. That's awesome. My kid's a millionaire. He's nine years old. He's a millionaire. That's going to be, oh, I'm so happy." I'm so proud of for myself that I've been able to do this. So [inaudible] what about the four-year-old? She's going to have even more time to compound. So I added her numbers, and she's going to have over $2.1 million when she turns 65. $2.1 million. Oh my God, that's incredible. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think I would be able to do this for my kids. And by that time, by the time they're 65, is another 60 years from now for her. 61 years from now, life expectancy is not going to be around 80-85 where it is now. It's probably going to be like 120-130 years. That's life expectancy at that time. So, she's just going to be getting to her mid-life crisis. She's got half her life ahead of her, and she's got over $2.1 million in the bank just sitting there that she can use. I hope these three kids, I hope they don't blow it on some fancy, flying sports car or something. Their fancy, flying Lamborghinis or whatever they're going to have at that time. That'd be insane if you waste it. But I'm so excited. I'm so happy. And if I keep adding to the account as I plan to, the results are going to be much, much better. Who knows? For another few years, still add money in. Maybe it's $40,000 that I put in there. They could have close to 5, 8, $10 million. Jeez. And if I trade options for them, which I'm not doing now. Right now, I'm just putting it in certain stocks and ETFs. But if I trade options with them, the results are going to be even much better. Much, much better. But my plan is to use the accounts to teach them how to choose their own stocks and how to trade options on their own. So they're going to have their own net worth. They're going to not ever have that feeling of being poor. They're going to have money. Now, I'm not sure of ... I'm going to have to structure it in a way that they don't get access to it right away. I'm going to have to talk to my attorney about that. Because I don't want them to become 18 years old and be like, "Oh, I got all this money in my IRA. I could just take it out and go blow it." Go get married to some girl and live it up in Vegas or something. I don't know. Hopefully that never happens, but we'll have to figure out a way that they don't access it like that. But the plan is to teach them how to use this money so that they can trade for themselves, and then that way they never have to work for money. They can go to college, whichever college they want to go to. They can study whatever field that they want to go to. And they can get whatever job that makes them happy and not have to worry about having to pick a job for the money. Because there's too many kids out there right now, they don't know what to do. The markets and everything are, in the future, in AI and computers and everything. Robotics is just making everybody go nuts. Nobody knows what's going on. Nobody knows what the future is going to be. And so people are scared and they're full of anxiety, especially college kids. And so I would like to give this skill to my children so that whatever future comes, they know they can go in and they have a skill where they can constantly generate income without having to work for it and without having to go to school for it. So that's the thing that I'm planning on teaching them. But for right now, I'm proud papa. I am happy. I'm excited that my kids are going to have this much money. Originally I was thinking that I was going to get life insurance in large amounts. If anything happens to me right now, I want my kids to have at least a million dollars. So I was thinking, "All right, I'm going to go get a $3 million life insurance added to whatever I have already." And be like, "Okay, it'll go to my wife. But then my wife will know that each kid gets a million bucks, because that's the gift that I want to give them. But then I realized, "Whoa, I've already given them the gift. I've already given them over a million dollars. Each of them." And so, that's something that I'm really excited about, really happy. If you have a young child, you can do the same thing. Maybe you can't do it in a Roth IRA. That's fine. Start with the 529 plan if you have to. Or fill up your own Roth IRA first, and then if you have to, you can give that Roth IRA as, when you pass away, that money can go to them. There are different ways to do it. Talk to your accountant about it, or talk to a tax professional about how to doing it. But time is of the essence. The sooner you start, the more the money compounds. The sooner you learn to trade, the more money you have to do this. And so, I just wanted to share that success story with you. One of the things that they wanted, I told them I was going to do this podcast about them, and they always get excited when I talk about them in the podcast. But I told him I was going to say this stuff, and they told me to make sure that I tell you guys how I picked a stock. So I invest in different ETFs and stocks for them. But now that they're a little bit older, the eight-year-old and the nine-year-old this year, they got to choose what stocks that they wanted. So the nine-year-old, he picked Facebook. And the eight-year-old, he picked Google, because he's really big into YouTube. He loves YouTube. The older one, he's more logical. And so they don't use Facebook yet, but he thinks that Facebook is growing. And so, hears a lot all over the news and everywhere. So he's like, "Facebook is good and I want to buy Facebook." And the nine-year-old, he actually looked at the stock charts. He's actually looking at stock charts. When I watch the financial news on TV sometimes at home, he'll be sitting there watching with me and he'll look at the tickers on the bottom and he'll be like, "Oh, this stock went up and this went down. This went up. This went down." He logged into my Thinkorswim and he looked at different stock charts. And he was the one that picked Facebook because of the chart. And for my four-year-old, I bought some Disney because she is, right now, she's an Elsa fanatic. She's a Frozen fanatic. All day long, every day, she just singing and singing and singing and is driving me nuts. But she is crazy about Frozen, and so Disney is a big thing. So I bought her some Disney, but I also have added some ETFs. Some index ETFs like SPY and IWM to balance it out and we'll see how it goes. But, this is what I'm doing. I just wanted to share it with you and say, "Hey, if this is something you can do, do it." Talk to your accountant. Talk to your tax person. If you have a financial planner, ask them if this makes sense. For most people that are planning for college, it does. You have to be able to have the money put aside in the Roth IRA. The kids have to earn it. But if you could figure out a way to earn it, maybe you know somebody that has a company. Maybe you own a company. Or maybe you even start a part-time company, just so you can do this. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a company. It's not very hard. So I think the rewards of having tax-free money put into a Roth IRA so it grows for 60 years or whatever tax-free, and then you take it out tax-free, you never have to pay taxes on that money or the growth of it, I think is definitely worth it. I think it's one of the biggest loopholes that, for some reason, it's not talked about. Some people know about it. I know definitely the rich people know about it. And so hopefully you can take advantage of it as well. All right, folks. So 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.

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, I hope you are well wherever you are. As I record this, corona is still with us. Not the beer, the disease, the virus. And the economy is opening up again almost everywhere. It's open in some form or fashion in the United States, and the stock market is jumping up and down both without any rhyme or reason in many cases. But the Fed is behind us, and with that, I believe with the Fed pumping as much money into the economy, the stocks are only going to rally, and so people are really trying to take advantage. I had a friend who is a friend of the family. He just graduated from college about a year ago. He was working full time and he got laid off. And so I had helped him and walked him through the whole unemployment process of how to apply for it and whatnot. He started getting his checks and his checks were in the vicinity of about $700 or $800 a week. This was more than he was making from his job because he was working on a commission basis as a salesperson. And so now he's got more money coming in than he's ever had before. And when I checked in with him, his comment was, "Yeah, I can't wait to put this money in my Robinhood account." That threw me for a loop. I said, "Wait a minute. You have no income. You have all these expenses. What do you mean you're going to take all your money from unemployment and put it in your Robinhood account? You're going to gamble it? I don't understand." I was like, "No, man. You just graduated from college. Your mom paid for everything. Your mom is working seven days a week. You need to go take this money and give it to her." And that kind of, he was like, "Oh, yeah, right. You're right. You're right." I don't know if he did or not, but that kind of told me what the thought process is of some of these youngsters. I was talking to another relative. He came over and he said, "Yeah, I'm in the stock market now." This one is a little bit older. He was about 26-years-old or so. And he's like, "Yeah, I'm trading. I'm in the stock market." I was like, "Oh, really." "Yeah. I bought some airlines and I bought some cruise lines." And yeah, that's wonderful. But you got to know when you're going to get out. You just can't buy it and hold it forever. These things are probably going to go back down. Anyway, I'm bringing all this up because these youngsters don't really understand how the markets work. And for some reason, with all the advent of these cheap, free brokers, like Robinhood and Webull, and they're really appealing to the younger kids, and they have more of a gambling mentality. My attention was drawn to an article where on June 13th, a fellow named Bill Brewster who works at Sylmar Capital, basically he's in the financial space, he's an analyst, he posted that his cousin had just committed suicide. And the reason for him committing suicide was that he started trading in his Robinhood account. Somehow his account showed him that he was owing about $700,000 in losses because he was trading on margin. So Bill is asking, how does a 20 year old with no income get access to that kind of leverage? And it's incredible. It's true. So if you are a parent and if your child is of this age, in their early twenties, maybe you should talk to them about it because a lot of kids are looking at this as a quick way to get rich. It's all over the internet. It's all over the Facebook groups, Instagram, all these places. And this seems to be like the new gold rush. Everything is going up. The cruise lines are going up 8%, 10% a day. You got to get in, you got to get in and you got to get in with options. You got to be buying options on this thing and use margin to do so, so it boosts your return even higher. These people don't know any clue of what they're talking about, what they're doing, and it's just ending really badly for some already. And it's going to end bad for many more in the future. So if you're a youngster in your twenties, then you need to realize that this is not the way to do it. If you want to do it, go ahead. If you want to gamble, go ahead with money that you have, do not use margin. And even if you're an adult, yeah, if you're twenties, you're already an adult, but if you're in your forties or fifties or sixties, and you're trying to gamble on these stocks, please don't do it with margin. Do it only with money that you can afford to lose because every time there is a financial disaster, there are always people who commit their lives and they commit suicide and it's a horrible story. It's not worth it. It's not worth committing suicide. I had a friend who committed suicide. He was my brother-in-law. He shot my sister, killed himself, shot the kids. And to this day, we don't know why. We could have helped if he had reached out and asked for help. We think it was financial related issues. They had other emotional issues and all that stuff too, but I think the thing that ticked him off and the thing that set everything in motion was his finances, and he could have reached out. And even in that case, it was leveraged. They had borrowed too much money. And so borrowing money never leads to good things unless you know what you're doing. And most cases, if you're looking to borrow a lot of money, then you don't know what you're doing, especially within the stock market. So margin is a good thing as option traders, as option sellers, we need a margin account so that we can sell our spreads, but you don't want to use that margin to be borrowing stocks and borrowing against options. Things are going ups and down right now. The stock market is very volatile. It's very crazy. It can go up, it can go down any day now. There's nobody that knows how to predict a future in the stock market. Nobody can and the people who say they can are lying. And that's it, that's plain and simple. So let this podcast issue episode, and let this young child who unfortunately lost his life to this, be a warning that we don't need to be trading with margin, number one. We don't need to be taking wild bets, number two. And we don't need to be taking our own lives. Our life is worth a lot more than even 700,000 that child apparently had run up in debt to Robinhood. Now, Robinhood did not, they were asked about it. They know about the situation, but they did not share any details of the trading account or how he got so much debt or margin. But they were where of the situation. They did release a statement that they were saddened to hear the news, and they reached out to the family to share their condolences. Let this be a lesson that you need to act prudently when it comes to your finances and suicide is never the answer. So if you're hearing this and you are in some kind of situation, you need help, reach out to somebody who can help you. If you have nobody reach out to me, I'll do my best, whatever I can do. But there is always another option. It's never too late. Everything, there's a book by this woman, Marie Forleo. It's an excellent book. Everything is Figureoutable, that's the name of the book. It's actually a great book. Pick that up if you have to, you get some help, talk to somebody. And worst comes to worse, you owe them money, big deal. There are other things, there are worse things in his life. So please, please don't take your life, get some help. All right? And I don't even know if I should say it on this episode, but trade with the odds in your favor. Be careful out there. -- 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.  -- A PASSIVE TRADER IS A NEW BREED OF INVESTOR. SMARTER, CONFIDENT, RELAXED, AND FREE. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE WINNERS. THEY KEEP THE ODDS ON THEIR SIDE, TAKE CALCULATED RISKS, AND MAKE CONSISTENT PROFITS OVER AND OVER. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE FLEXIBLE.  THEY KNOW HOW TO ADJUST WHEN THE MARKET DOES AND STILL BE PROFITABLE. THEY PLAY THEIR OWN GAME AND USE WALL STREET’S SECRETS TO THEIR BENEFIT. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE INDEPENDENT AND CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES. THEY KNOW THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT THEIR MONEY MORE THAN THEY DO, SO THEY MANAGE IT THEMSELVES, AND BETTER THAN THE EXPERTS. THEY DO NOT RELY ON FINANCIAL PLANNERS, MUTUAL FUNDS, OR ROBOTS TO CHARGE INSANE AMOUNTS OF FESS WHILE PROVIDING BELOW AVERAGE YIELDS. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE PATIENT. THEY SIT BACK AND LET THE GAINS COME TO THEM BY KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE DETERMINED. THEY KNOW THEIR “WHY” AND IT PUSHES THEM TO STAY FOCUSED AND NEVER GIVE UP. IF YOU ASKED A MONEY MANAGER THEY’D TELL YOU THAT PASSIVE TRADING IS IMPOSSIBLE – THE LITTLE GUY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BEAT WALL STREET. YET IT IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY. PASSIVE TRADERS KNOW THAT LIFE IS A GIFT AND SHOULD BE LIVED TO THE FULLEST. MONEY IS NOT THE END GOAL. SO PASSIVE TRADERS MAKE THEIR MONEY WORK FOR THEM, GENERATING AN INCOME 24 HOURS A DAY, 365 DAYS A YEAR, SO THAT THEY CAN SPEND THEIR TIME DOING WHATEVER MAKES THEM HAPPY. PASSIVE TRADERS ARE IN CONTROL OF THEIR DESTINY, THEIR FINANCES, THEIR EMOTIONS, AND IN TURN, THEIR LIVES. PASSIVE TRADERS… DEFINE THEIR OWN DESTINY MARCH TO THEIR OWN BEAT MAKE THE WORLD BETTER LIVE THEIR IDEAL LIFE PASSIVE TRADERS ARE MOTIVATED KNOWING THAT THE ODDS ARE IN THEIR FAVOR.   I AM A PASSIVE TRADER!   Link to Podcast Episode 50: https://optiongenius.com/blog/what-is-passive-trading/   Passive Trading: How To Generate Consistent Monthly Income From The Stock Market In Just Minutes A Day -- 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.