If I were to ask you, what your largest expense is? What would you say? You know, what is the thing? The one thing that costs you the most money? Is it your mortgage? student loan payments, car payments, credit card? health insurance? What is it? Well, if you saw the title of this episode, you probably guessed that I'm talking about taxes. And, I mean, you can name them right with all the different types of taxes that we pay. It adds up, we got income taxes for federal and for state, we got payroll taxes, we got property taxes, we got estate taxes, we've got gift taxes, we've got sales taxes, on and on, there's a lot more that I can't even think of. I mean, it is estimated that most Americans pay somewhere close to 50% of their earnings on taxes. Now, I'm guessing that if you're the one that pays the bills, that's not shocking to you. I mean, maybe the 50% is kind of like eye opening, like really? Is it that much? Yeah, unfortunately, it really is. But in this episode, I wanted to talk about taxes and options, and one simple change that you can make to lower the taxes on your trading games. Now, let me start off with a disclaimer, I am not an accountant, I'm not a CPA, not a professional on taxes, nor do I want to be. So make sure that you talk to your tax person about anything that you hear. Right. Now, when it comes to federal income taxes, there are two types that deal with options trading. Now, here we're talking about, you know, your gains on your trading. So if you're making gains, there's two types of taxes that you could pay. The first is regular income taxes. And the second is capital gains taxes. So capital gains is normally the tax that you pay, when you have held an asset for a year or more. And then you sell it for a profit, you would pay capital gains tax on any profit. So if you have a stock, and you own it for over a year, when you sell it, that's the tax that you would pay capital gains. Compare that to if you held the asset for less than one year, then you would be taxed at your regular income tax rate, whatever that is. Now, capital gains is usually much lower as a percentage. Okay, I don't want to go into the actual percentages here, because they keep changing depending on who's in the White House and all that other politics. But for our purposes, capital gains is lower, and is preferred, because of course, it's less. So, of course, the best way to deal with taxes is to not have them at all, to not have to pay them at all. And those of you who are trading in your Roth accounts, will never have to pay taxes on the gains. So if you can, that would be preferable to trade your options in your IRA so that any taxes that you have will not be taxed, you don't ever have to pay taxes on those. So that's really cool deal. Now, if you have a regular IRA, you will have to pay taxes when you eventually withdraw the money, but you don't have to pay it now. And if you're trading in a in a regular trading account, then yes, you will have to pay the taxes depending on your tax situation, quarterly or year. Okay. Now, there is a piece of the tax code that most traders don't know about. That actually helps options traders pay less taxes. It's called section 1256 of the IRS code. Now securities regarded as 1256 investments include non equity options, foreign currency contracts, regulated futures contracts, dealer equity options, and dealer securities futures contracts. Okay, so now what's the difference between section 1256 and non section prophetesses? Well, every section 1256 security, if you have a gain or loss, it is treated as being 60% long term, and 40% short term, no matter how long you own it. Now long term means that your cap is your capital gains tax rate. Okay. And the 40% short term means your personal income tax rate. So, for example, if we have a Joe Schmo trader, he makes $1,000 on an options trade, okay, and if this was a section 1256 security option, then his capital gains tax is 15%, let's just guess. And his personal tax rate is 22%. Okay, for this example, now, he made $1,000 on his trade, right, so 60% of that would be long term 40% of that will be short term. So long term, he would be paying $90 for taxes, and short term, you would be paying $88 for taxes. So for a total gain, or total tax of $178, on his $1,000 game, okay, so he's paying about 17.8% total, on $1,000. But if this was a non 1256 Options trade, and he still made the same $1,000, he would be paying 22% in taxes, which is his personal return rate, and he would be paying $220. So he would have saved $42, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's just one trade, you got to add it up. But if you look at it percentage, it's 4.2%. So he actually kept 4.2% more money in his pocket, because he's trading 1256 options, instead of not 1256 options. So just by simply switching, you can save or you can keep about 4%, more than you already do. This is money that you've already made. But you didn't have to pay the government. Right. So if you trade for a whole year, let's say, and you make 10% for the year, well, a big chunk of that goes to taxes. This way, you're actually saving 4% of that of the total that you would pay. So instead of paying maybe, you know, 22%, you're paying 17%, or it could be less depending on your personal situation. Or it could be more, though most of the larger traders that we have in our in our movement, in our coaching programs and whatnot, they're usually trading with a lot more money. And so the percentage might be the same. Or it might be more because their income tax rates are different, are probably higher, right? So their tax rates will vary, that amount will be more, but the dollar amount increases significantly when it's non 1256. So now that you know what that is, now that you know what the benefit is, how do you make the switch? Right? How do you go from non 1256 to 1256? And how do you know which options are which? Well, most stock options are non 1256. And by most I mean the options in any company that you trade, or any ETF that you trade. So if you're trading Apple options, IBM options, Microsoft, whoever whatever company option that you're trading is going to be non 1256. ETFs are also non 1256. So if you go into the GLD, the USO, the IBB, any of those ETFs are non 56. And you'll know by looking at the name of it when you're going to try and trade it if it says ETF, it's non 1256. Okay, the main ones that get the 1256 treatment are indexes, and futures options. This is one of the reasons that I have moved a large portion of my trading funds over to my futures options trading account. Because when you trade in size, you know the savings are enormous. So I've been moving more and more money over to my futures options trading account so that I can pay less on taxes even if I'm making the same amount of money. So I do have a special announcement on that. If you are interested futures options and the way I trade them and what I do, we're having a one day live event called futures options live this month, on July 30. So one day events going to be live, it's going to be a lot of fun. You can get your tickets today at www.futuresoptionslive.com. And if you're listening to this episode close to when we publish it, there should still be tickets left. If not, maybe you can, if you're new, we're still interested, maybe you can email us. And if we have the recordings, for sale, or available, we'll let you know. At the live event, I'm going to be going over exactly how futures options work, how they're different from stock options, you know, taxes are just one of the many benefits that they have, and how you can get started with them. Okay, so hopefully, I'll see you there. Now, the other kinds of 1256 options that I mentioned, the ones that I trade are also they're called Index Options. So these are cash settled options on the actual indexes, like the S&P 500, the Russell 2000, the NASDAQ 100, and others. These also get the 60-40 tax treatment. Okay, so if you're a member of our Options Genius advisory, you'll notice that we trade SPX, and we trade rut every month, those are indexes. Those are SPX is for the S&P 500. And the RUT, the rut is for the Russell 2000. You can trade those with ETFs. But the indexes have much greater benefits, taxes being one of them. And so you'll notice that any hedge fund that is doing say iron condors on the s&p 500, or they're probably trading the Russell or the NASDAQ or whatever, if they're trading options, if they're a large trader, you know, they're a hedge fund. If they're a money management fund, if they're Warren Buffett, they all trade the indexes. tax treatment is one of the benefits. Okay, the other benefit I mentioned, there's that they're cash settled, meaning there's no early assignment, that can be a big one, depending on how much you're trading or what you want with your strategy. There are also many other benefits that we are going to cover in a future episode. So stay tuned for that. So let's say right now, if you are trading SPY, if you're trading IWM, for trading QQQ, if you're already trading these, these are ETFs, they don't give you the 1256 tax treatment. So you can do the same trade in an index. And immediately start saving on your taxes. Okay, now, the index options, the S&P or the SPX, the RUT, those are obviously much larger than the ETFs. And so it helps if you have a little bit larger account. But most traders can make the switch today, you do have to get approved by your broker. So you do have to have a higher level, the highest level that they allow. But if you have a track record, that shouldn't be a big problem, you know, you can let them know that, hey, I'm becoming more sophisticated, I want to try these indexes, I want to get the tax treatment, I look at my trading history, I know I can do this. And they'll they should allow you to trade indexes just not much of a big difference. Okay, now again, there are many other benefits to indexes or ETFs. We'll cover those in a future episode. But as you saw in our simple example, with Joe Schmo trader right trader example, just by switching to 1256 options instantly helped the guy make 4% greater returns. And I said, like I said, the larger you trade, the more you're going to save. And this is like free money. I mean, it's just it's, if you don't know about it, you're gonna pay it. Right. If you don't know about 1256, you're just gonna be paying the money in taxes, and you're never even gonna think about it never even notice that oh, my God, I'm paying too much. Unfortunately, most CPAs don't know about this, they have no clue what 1256 is, because most of their clients are not options traders. So you might have to go to your accountant, your CPA, and educate them. And you might have to tell them, hey, these options are 1256 options, and they're not regular options. So they need to be taxed differently. Now, it does mean more work for your accountant, so they're not going to be very happy about that. Truth be told, they might try to take some shortcuts and group them all together. So you have to be very on top of it. And that's why I'm doing this episode so you can realize that there is a difference. And, you know, if you're trading futures options, then it's a little bit easier because you will get a separate tax paper for any futures that you trade and futures contracts themselves or 1256, as well as futures options. Okay, now, mostly all the time, I'm only trading the futures options, not the futures themselves, because there's, there's differences. But if you trade futures or futures options, you will get a separate tax paper at the end of the year, that pretty much lets you know it says it out. These are futures, these are 1256. So that's easier for your broker. But if you are mixing SPX and SPY trades in your regular trading account, you're going to have to separate those and make sure you tell your broker or your CPA, what the differences and how it's going, Okay, because they might not always catch it, they might not know about it. So you have to let them know. I hope that it saves you some money. And I hope to see you at futures options live, the live event that we're having on the 30th. All right, have a great day trade with the odds in your favor. And I'll see you 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.

Hey Passive Traders. Welcome back to another episode of the Option Genius Podcast. I'm gonna switch things up a little bit today, we get a lot of questions via email or on Facebook from our people reaching out to us. And I wanted to take this episode and to take one of those questions and to answer it. So the question that I am answering on this episode, and I want to do this for future episodes, so if you do have a question, something about related to options, or trading, or anything really, in that realm that you think I can help you with, go ahead and email us at Help@OptionGenius.com, send us an email, ask your question and you never know if we get enough people to ask it, we might get it on on an episode. Now, you know, we'll definitely do our best to answer your question via email when you send it in. But if we get the same question over and over again, for multiple people, then we'll try to answer it here so that it helps more people. Because if you're thinking of something and you have a question, there's probably like five or six other people out there, or probably more depending on the question that had the same question, can't find the answer and your question might help them as well. So go ahead and reach out to us, let us know. And I'd like to be doing more of these episodes where there'll be a little bit shorter, not too much in in length as a regular episode. But we'll get the questions answered in a brief period of time that would help you out. So this question is, the question is basically, what is the difference between a layup spread, and a credit spread? We get this answered a lot. I mean, we get we get it a lot. Because there is a difference. Even though the layup is built on the credit spread, the layup is different, it's a different way of doing it. And so that's what I'm going to be answering on this episode. The reason I am doing this is because lately, we've had a lot of interest in a program that we called credit spread mastery, where we teach the layup spread, as well as other methods of trading, credit spreads. And so because we've had so much interest, we get this question over and over and over again. Now, that particular program, we've had amazing, amazing results since we started it in January of 2021. Incredible results, really, we're with the second batch of students right now. And what we've been doing is for three months, we have one batch and then to the break, and then three months for the second batch. And you're not allowed, nobody's allowed to come in during the class during the batch, right? So we are thinking of opening up a few more spots. Because I do know and I do think that the market is going to get a little bit more volatile, coming up this year. And so it's going to help a lot of people to have someone to bounce ideas off of to get coaching from to see how they are trading through the volatility. So I definitely think that this year, it's gonna be a little bit different from last year, it's not gonna be so easy to make some money. And so that's why we're opening up some more spots in the credit spread mastery program. If you're interested, all you got to do is reach out to us, we'll get you some more information about that, and how you can join up if you're interested. And if you qualify, because everybody doesn't qualify, you have to be able to take advantage of it. So with that in mind, let's cue up the music. And then on the other side, I'm going to answer the question, what is the difference between a layup spread and a credit spread? Take care. So what's the difference? between a credit spread and a layup up spread? They seem very similar Allen. What's going on? What's the difference? Let's go and talk about it. But before we do, I gotta show you our trusty disclaimer. Remember, don't trade with money you cannot afford to lose. You don't want your spouse kicking you out of the house. I love that. I think I'm gonna say that every time from now on. Sorry. It's like so unprofessional for me. Alright, but hey, you signed up for this it you gotta you got to put up with my corny jokes. Alright, to put it simply, the layup is a type of credit spread. Okay, the layup takes the best features of the credit spread and then improves on them by stacking the deck in your favor more and more and more. Okay, so if the credit spread is your strategy. The layup is the trading plan is going to tell you exactly the best way to find the trade, the best way to enter the best way to manage your trade. And obviously, the best way to exit is part of the management process. But remember, the credit spread is the strategy. The layup is the details. You know, how do you find the stock? How do you find the Options that you're going to trade? How do you know if it's a good trade or not? How do you know when to get out? How do you know what to do? All that stuff is the details of the layup. And that's what the layup gives you. So the layup is time tested through bull and bear markets with real trading results. So we've been doing it this way, for years and years and years. And so we know that over time, this process works, right. And if you follow the layup rules, then you're going to be on your way to being a consistently profitable options trader. Because we've already done it, we've done it for you, right, we've done it in the past, hopefully now again, obviously, the disclaimer is there. And past results do not equal future performance. We get that, right? So I can't guarantee that it's going to continue to work. But until now it has been working. And if it stops working, I'll let you know, right? But as of this recording, the layup does work. And it's a way not only to help you be more consistent, but it's a way that doesn't take a lot of time. And that's what I really enjoy. That's what I really like the fact that hey, this is part of passive trading, because it's very simple to do. I can put my trades on, boom, boom, boom, I know exactly when to get out. And I don't have to mess with it. And the fact that we stack the odds in our favor in so many different ways. It's not just probability of profit. You know, anybody can do that. Anyway. Oh, yeah. Find a find a 20 Delta, find a 15 Delta, find a 10 Delta. Okay, I gotta probably profit. No, it's not that simple. Right? That's one way. That's one thing. But that's not enough. You got to look for other things. And we go with me. And we do that in a different video where we tell okay, exactly how are we going to stack the deck and also in different different different different ways? The more ways you can stack the deck in your favor, the more the odds are 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.

Allen: All right, Passive Traders. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast, we got a real treat for you today. I have one of my long, long time friends with me today and we're actually doing something special, we're going to do a video as well as audio on the Podcast, we will be having some slides, but when we show the slides will describe to you what's going on in the slide so those of you who are listening will not be missing out. And the video will also be on our media channels and YouTube channel. So you can catch it there if you need. I want to introduce my guest today He is Mr. Doug Smith of Hawthorne Funds. Doug and I go back, man, we go back, like over what over a decade or so. But yeah. Doug: 15 years. Allen: So Doug is Mr. Moneybags himself, Mr. Real Estate, you know, he's been doing real estate for years and years, he launched a very successful company called MyHouseDeals.com where if you are a real estate investor, you can go and find all the deals that are not on the MLS. So it's pretty cool. And that site has made a lot of people a lot of money. But today, we're gonna be talking about Doug's newest venture, this is something that he's been doing for a few years now. And you know, whenever you get together with friends, you talk and "Hey, what's up?" "What are you doing?" And we would share stories of what we were doing and, and Doug A few years ago, came up to me, and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm doing all this stuff with land and doing this and doing that. And I was like, Wow, man, you're making a killing. And he made such a big killing that he just like, he just has to get out. And he's like, Alright, we need to do this on a bigger scale. And so Doug went and figured out how to do a investment fund. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. I know back in Episode 94, it's called "How I Invest". I shared that one of my investments is in a real estate fund. And that is Doug's fund. And so I asked Doug, to come on and answer some questions and give us some highlights about what investment funds are, how they work, what to look for, when you're choosing one, making sure that your investment is safe, and all that stuff. So Doug, hopefully, I covered everything. If you anything you want to add, please go ahead. Doug: More or less, you covered all the stuff that makes me look good. So we'll just skip all the other stuff. Allen: Yeah, I didn't want to tell all your dirty secrets. Doug: It's good to see you again, Allen. And thank you so much for having me here on the call. I'm really looking forward to sharing everything I can to educate people help you out. Allen: Yeah, I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. So tell us what are you doing at Hawthorne? Doug: Oh, my gosh, well, I work all the time, which was so funny, because when you and I met, I was like a lifestyle guy. But yeah, for those considering starting up a private equity firm, just know that it will consume you. We buy and sell land outside of Houston, Texas. And so we're buying about a million dollars a month worth of land, sometimes more. And we're selling maybe $2 million a month worth of land, it really just depends on the month. But that requires a lot of people and a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls, a lot of Excel spreadsheets, there's just a lot going on, there's 20 or 30 of us that make all of this happen. So there's always something kind of vying for my attention as it pertains to mining selling land and raising people's money and investing that money properly. Allen: Yep. And so one of the things I do want to point out that Doug, you are doing this for yourself before you started the fund? Doug: Yes, that's right. So not only that, I have my house deals calm going on, I was buying and selling houses, I was selling those on owner financing. And then my business partner and I switched over to land in 2016 started buying that and selling on owner financing. And it was just, it was very profitable, requiring a lot of my capital. And sometimes that capital would take a year and a half or two years to come back. And I was wanting to do more deals as opposed to just sit on sidelines, right and wait for money to come back. So that's when I started the fund around 2018 or so started taking other people's money on as well. Allen: Okay, so you had one iteration, and then now you're in the second iteration, right? Or the second fund?  Doug: Yes, there's the first time that was an equity fund. And then we formed a debt fund, I guess a few weeks ago at this point, maybe a month or two ago and took on 5 or $6 million into that second fund. We've taken out about the same amount into the first one, but there's, they're structured differently, but they The end result is pretty similar for the investors and for us. Allen: So can you give us a difference between debt versus private equity?  Doug: Yeah, sure so that's one thing you said we're gonna talk about on the call is like, what would you want to look for if you're looking at investing in a private equity fund, and the majority of those funds out there are equity funds, and so that means that they're probably buying one or more assets like multi multifamily apartment complex. For example, and they are going to leverage up with maybe 75 or 80% bank money. So that's debt. And then you as an investor, you're a limited partner in these deals. So you're now you're the equity portion, the 25% equity, and whatever it appreciates, you know, force appreciation or just natural appreciation over time, you benefit from that. But that can be a little bit risky. If there's a downturn in the market, or the property's not managed properly, because equity holders can get wiped out, or at least have a lot of their money, kind of like, you know, wiped away. So a debt fund is when you invest in a fund, and that fund becomes the lender against something. So they are now in the bank's position in that first example. So let's say you, Allen, or your friend is wanting to buy a house for $100,000. And you lend him $50,000. Well, he totally mismanaged the project, and you have to foreclose on him, he's not paying you, well, you're gonna become the owner, you're foreclosing become the owner of that house and be able to resell it on the open market, and, and almost certainly recuperate your $50,000, because the house would sell is worth more than that. So that's kind of like a simple way to explain the difference between an equity and a debt fund. Allen: Okay, so now on the first one, the equity fund, you said that they go out and they borrow 75% of it. And they in the investment funds are 25%? Doug: I think there's a fairly typical kind of split, right, equity funds. There are some equity funds that don't take on debt, but the majority do, and that's why they're able to pay out at, well, sometimes the ends up being maybe 15%, internal rate of return over time. But there's, you know, there's some risks, there's some negatives, those are projections, you never quite know how it's going to shake out. Yeah. And your money would be locked up for usually about three, five or seven years, depending on the fund. Okay. And what if you wanted to get out sooner than that? What would you Is there any recourse?   For most funds, you can't. Allen: No, just you can't give it to somebody else, or they won't help you facilitate it change or.. Doug: It might help you, but they're not obligated to do so. The latest fund that we set up, there was finalized one or two months ago, you can get it out. It's an evergreen fund, it is a lot more liquid. So that's one of the advantages of it. Allen: Okay, so now you said yours is a debt fund, right, then and so you are using the funds money to go out and buy the land? Doug: Yeah, so let's say like, let's say we're about to buy some land, and it's gonna cost a million dollars, we're able to borrow from the fund and the fund be a lender on that deal. So my entity that I own - Hawthorne land LLC will borrow. And it's all at the courthouse. It's documented from Hawthorne Income Fund, LLC, which is where all the investors are as members. Allen: Okay, so, okay, so basically, you created your own bank? Doug: Yeah. Here's the deal. Most banks, they do not like to lend on anything that is slightly outside of this cookie cutter box. And what we're doing buying raw land outside of the city, subdividing it and proving it and selling on honor on owner financing there, they've never heard of that most of them. And they're like, we don't know which box to check here on this form. So maybe you can go talk to this or that banker, but we did find bankers, and we saw bankers that will mind on it, but they're a huge pain to deal with. They take weeks to process alone. And there's all these requirements. It's just very, very bureaucratic, so much red tape. So yes, we created our own bank.  Allen: Okay so basically, you borrow the money from the fund, and then the fund gets a set percentage. Doug: Yes, it doesn't get any of the profits or anything. No, it's just the lender. It's very clean. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a lot of people all they know is about investing in some sort of index fund. And then maybe they'll put some of their money in bonds. And so this is like a lot of people that invest with us there. They're familiar with other strategies, like they might invest in other private equity funds that are a little riskier and maybe they're an equity fund, and they will treat us as if we're like, the bonds. So we're the lower stable like steady investment that they feel like if all the crap hits the fan that we're standing Allen: And so say you're paying 10% and that's paid out every month Doug: It's every month or people can check a box and have it automatically reinvested in compound. Allen: Awesome, sweet. Okay, yeah, cuz I know the first time we had it, we had a, that wasn't a possibility. So actually into our investors who wanted that. Yeah. So you're actually growing and learning at the same time. So that's awesome. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. So who is able to invest in your fund anybody or accredited or how's that work? Doug: Accredited investors, and the minimum is 100,000. So who knows? Maybe 95% or more of American population can invest unfortunately. But those who can enjoy it. Allen: So now accredited, that means what 200, I think it's 200. Doug: If you're an individual, you need to be making 200,000 a year or more if it's a married couple 300 or you need to have a net worth of a million dollars, not counting the equity in your house that you're living in, Allen: Okay. And the minimum to put in is 100. And there's like you said, there's no tie up phase. So somebody come in, and then if they need it six months down the road, they'd be like, hey, I need to get out.  Doug: That's correct. So we have provisions that if anybody's trying to get their money back at the same time, there's a slow process of giving it to everybody. But in general, people get their money back fairly quickly, if they need it. We've not even had our first requests yet, everybody, they're putting their money with us, because they want it to be with us not because they want to pull it, pull it out. But it would take a few days to, who knows a week or two to get someone's money back to them on a typical scenario. Allen: Right. And I mean, this is real estate. So people understand that this is not liquid, you know, most times you go buy a house, it's going to take you two months to sell it anyway. This is putting it in a fund that's invested in real estate. So that when if they need to, it takes time. So.. Doug: Yes, but with a structure, it is pretty liquid. Allen: Okay. Okay. Doug: Like it could be the next day, we get their money back to them, but I cannot go. Allen: So, I mean, I wanted to go over some of the reasons for our listeners, why, you know, why I invested in Doug in the first place. And, you know, this was one of the first investments that I actually made in a fund. And, you know, he came to me and said, hey, look, I've been doing this, and I'm starting a fund. And if you'd like to invest, you know, go ahead, these are the parameters, and this is how much we're gonna pay out. And there's risk involved. Of course, there's risk involved all assets, and all investing and trading and whatnot. Doug: My attorney made me say that. Allen: Oh, yeah, there is. So you know, you don't want to have somebody come in and be like, Oh, man, I'm gonna get rich. And then, you know, it doesn't happen. Doug: We do sell for about double what we buy for. So it's just like, with the margins like that, it's kind of hard to mess up. Allen: So I came up with some criteria, I was like, Alright, so number one, you know, who is actually doing or leading this fund, righ? And in this case, it was Doug. And I've known Doug for 10 years, and those of you guys know him, you don't know this, and you can't tell because he, you know, he looks like a really nice guy and everything on the in the video. That guy is I mean, he's a stickler, he, I mean, I only know this because I've known him for so long. But he tracks his net worth on a regular basis, he accounts for every single penny, in his business man, every single point 001% he knows what's happening and where it's going. And this guy is meticulous on his numbers. And he was not somebody that plays loose and fast, you know, he's got every dotted eye, every T is crossed. And so that was really something that gave me a lot of confidence. Like, you know, this guy, he knows what he's talking about. And he's been doing it on his own for a while. And the numbers just make sense. And so, you know, a lot of times people get attracted to these investments, the only thing they know about is Oh, I can make 10%, I can make 50%, I can make 25% in maybe some cases where, you know, it's, it's, it's more of a scam than anything else. There was like a lot of people investing in this crypto stuff. You know, there are crypto funds that I've seen that are like, oh, we'll pay you 30% a month, a month. Wow. And so you get money for a month or two, and then it folds and it goes out of business because it was a big Ponzi scheme. But in this case, you know, I knew Doug, and I trusted him. And that's what one of the things that led me to it. The other thing was, you know, his experience was there. And then the second part was, does the investment makes sense, is like, What is he doing? Or what is the investment. And in this case, it was something I had never heard about, it was pretty unique, where he's buying hundreds of acres of land, and then he's subdividing them into smaller pieces. And then when you subdivide it, and you smell a smaller piece, you get to sell it for a lot more money. So I think some of the numbers were you were buying it for four or $5 a square foot, selling it for $10-$12 a square foot originally. And like you said, it's pretty hard to go wrong with those kind of numbers. This was not like a apartment complex in some other country that we're going to Airbnb it and hopefully people want to go there and stay there. And maybe maybe it's run properly. This is something that he was already doing. The third thing was, what is my risk? You know, I'm going to put my money into this thing. I want to own that land. As an investor, what's my risk? And I was looking at, I think, well, this is raw land. It's been there for hundreds of years, it's not going to go anywhere. If it's not going to burn down, it's not going to go out of business. You know, he can't take it and run away with it. The only thing that might happen is it doesn't sell, you know, he'll buy it, it doesn't sell it'll sit there and maybe 5-10 years from now we'll sell it. To me that was like the only risk is like if the lead doesn't fill. It's just gonna sit there. No, I don't get my return but leaves my money is still safe. And so all those aspects, I was like alright, let's go. Let's do it, you know, and so that's why I feel comfortable. And those are the three aspects, I would look for investing in any other fund. Is there anything, Doug that you want to add? Like, you know, what are the things people should look for when there's questions I should ask? Doug: I can go into that a little bit. So one of the main problems with a lot of private equity funds that they have this projected internal rate of return. And the majority of funds do not meet their projection, really don't say like 15 to 20%, or whatever, but you can, but here's, here's what you do. So that'll be based on a certain amount of appreciation of whatever asset they're holding, you like reduce that appreciation by just .5% per year or something, and that projection all goes to crap. And the reason that it's so effective is that there is some debt ahead of you. And so you're just dealing with that little thin equity margin. So you play with that a little bit and that's a high percentage of your potential return that can be taken away from you. So that's kind of like the main problem. But yes, I do invest in other funds. And you know, private equity funds can be a good way to invest your money, right? Probably just a mix of right, different things like that. You could be doing Options Trading, like maybe you've got some like long term, like buying hopes, maybe you've got one or 2% of your money in crypto, whatever. But it can certainly be part of your strategy. So that's like the main problem I see with certain private equity funds, the less common one is that they're a scam. You'll see that maybe more like if there's like a crypto fund, okay, maybe like that could kind of like maybe be a scam. Oil and gas is kind of notorious for some guys that come and go with a little scam. They're gonna go drill some wells here and there on the wells and of dry or maybe they run off with your money, but pretty notorious. But for the most part, people running private equity funds do not want to go to prison. Like they're not super incentivized to run a scam. But I'm more than happy to tell you about a story where I was scammed recently in a private equity fund. Allen: No way. Doug: Yeah, I mean, if you want me to go into it. Allen: Yeah, yeah let's go. I'm sure people will be excited to hear about that. How the Mr. Smart Guy got scammed.  Doug: Yeah, that's crazy. Well, looking back, I can see like, now I can see how the scam and where I went wrong. So like I said, I like to kind of diversify a little bit of my money away from these land deals, not because I'm worried about the land deals, but it is nice to dabble in other stuff. I think we're a bunch of like business people, entrepreneurs on this call, right? So like, when somebody comes to us with something, it seems like "Oh, just plop 100 grand, or whatever it is, and your fund, and you're gonna pay me. Sounds great". So there was this guy, I was at this competition where veterans were pitching their business ideas, and we're all investing in some of their businesses. And there was a guy in the audience, and he actually ran a private equity firm himself, which he was on his maybe 6th fund, and each fund was like only a year. So that's kind of a shorter duration than his normal. So that was a little bit atypical from the beginning. And then his first fund got a return of 63% in a year. And so it's like, of course, like, my eyes lit up. “Oh, my God. Wow, that's awesome”. Like, well, what about your second one? Oh, that was 45%. What about these other ones? And and it was I talked to one of the person who had invested with him, and they were, like, fairly happy at the time. And so I went out and I.. Allen: What was he doing? Doug: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I'll tell you what he said he was doing. He said that he and his team are going out there and buying mineral rights from individuals and then aggregating those, and selling them to companies that were looking to buy larger chunks of minerals into like, they like direct mail and stuff. So that like, you know, old Sue, she's like eight years old, and heritage minerals, she didn't even know about it. And she gets a little direct mail piece from his company saying that they'll buy her minerals, I'm sure at a discount. doing that for a lot of people aggregating them and then selling them in a package. So it kind of made sense, you know, aggregate and sell for a higher price. And so but here's the deal, I'm not an oil and gas guy. And so I was not able to properly vet the investment. I was just sort of going off these other investors seeing kind of happy to seems legit. I went out to his office, and I met with him and his staff out there. He's got like, all these people with firm handshakes and strong like backslaps, you know, like, and I'm just like, maybe a team of 15 or 20 people there are a lot of them were rice, MBA, Rice University MBA graduates, and it just seemed, it seemed kind of legit, you know, the, and here's the deal. They're all almost all veterans. It was a veteran owned and operated business. So like, wow, you go in there. And there's like all these like, swords on the walls and stuff like, you know, and flags. And just like, this guy seemed like Miss Captain America. Like, I was like, you know, 15 years ago, I was running an internet business and this guy was out there like killing terrorists or something. It's like, okay, I was like really looking up to this guy and a lot of other people were too and so over time, he took on maybe 60 million from people over the course of five years or something like that. And ultimately, we found out through an email from him like two months ago that he had squandered almost all of our money and that he was basically using fun money to pay a staff which you cannot you cannot do that the fund money has this very designated purpose, which is to invest in whatever asset you're investing in and had just basically raped and pillaged the the bank account for the fund. And it's very hard for like 30 or $60 million, because I think ultimately the losses were 30 million. But for me, it was like, almost all of my money. The early like first two funds, they mostly got their money back. But beyond that it was it was scam time. Allen: Oh, wow Doug: And so yeah, so like he was holding this managing the funds. And we still don't know if he ran off with some of them on his own. Or if he was just trying to pay his employees and save his company and make desperate business moves to sort of save things or salvage things. And the oil and gas has been going downhill. It's been in a, I guess, a trough over the last year or two. Maybe it's doing better lately? I think it is. But that really hit him. Just, I guess maybe when the pandemic was starting and maybe..  Allen: Yeah it was, you know, oil went in the toilet pretty much. Doug: Yeah. So I kind of like, we're like, he'll go to prison, which I don't know why in the heck, you'd want to do something that would lead him to prison. That's crazy. Like any sane private equity fund manager, their main goal is not to go to prison. So then what do you? How do you not go to prison? You don't do anything illegal? Yeah. Tell that to made off? Yeah, it's crazy. So anyway, so but looking back, I've got some insights as to why I kind of got scammed there. I understand it more now. Allen: Okay, tell us tell us. Doug: Basically, if anybody's really like his disguise themselves, it's like a Veteran Business or Christian business or something like that. That's usually a little bit of a red flag, because they're trying to make themselves seem like a very reputable, or moral and principled, and all that, it's like an overreach. Allen: And they're taking credibility from another organization kind of thing. You know, they're tying themselves to something else. Doug: Yeah. So that's one. I mean, there's many things that came together, when you go on his website, which are websites probably even not even there anymore. A lot of his team members, they had various positions, but their background on LinkedIn, and all ends up being sales. Like they were all in sales before, like the Geologists was in sales. So that was kind of a red flag. He had a huge overhead, like, he's, obviously all these MBAs, I was like, maybe this is a red flag, but I wasn't so sure. And here's what I messed up doing too, is like, I know, his professor at Rice, or that was his professor. He is one of our fellow members. And I could have asked that guy because I asked him later and he said, “You didn't know that was a scam? It was pretty obvious”. He came in here. And every time they were raising money for something, he was dropping $20-$30,000 at a time, everybody else was dropping, maybe 1000s. So I thought, well, he's probably just dropping all the investors money. You see what I'm saying? I was like "Oh I got it". And he was, uh, yeah, he seems like he's maybe trying to compensate for something, make himself look a little bit better than he is. And then I got to know another investor in the oil and gas business later. He's like, "Oh, we've known that was a scam for the last 12 months", just the types of returns he's been paying out are not feasible in this industry. It doesn't make any sense. Allen: Oh wow. Doug: And so basically, I mess up by not asking those two guys before I invested, I just asked that the the satisfied investor that I knew. And actually when I asked him right before I invested, he said he was less satisfied with the fund, and that he would not recommend it. But I went against his advice, because he could not give me a firm reason as to why I should not invest. It was more like a gut feel that he had. My own brother who ended up investing had a negative gut feel about it, too. So basically, in the future, if I get some of these red or yellow flags, I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines, and I'm gonna sit out of that deal. Another problem is like he was, I'm 40 now and he was my same age. And so like, I'm thinking, Okay, this is a guy, like, I've had, like, 20 years of business experience at and so but I'm not sitting across from another guy with that amount of experience, even though it's just it kind of felt like it because he was in the military 13 or 15 years. And so that's life experience, for sure. But like, as far as like business, this guy was green. I'm throwing a bunch of money at this guy that's green and so as everybody else so that's a red flag especially in oil and gas. I think they need to be in the industry for like decades because that's that can it's very tricky, complicated industry and, and very volatile. And a lot of fortunes have been made and loss. I don't want the guy that's like new to the industry. Right? Yeah. So yeah. And also I messed up. I should not necessarily be investing in stuff that I don't understand very well like oil and gas. Unless I'm willing to put the time into that. So the outrageous returns were red flag. Anybody saying we're gonna get you 60 something or he didn't guarantee that but right. I don't know. It's just like, that's not super realistic. I mean, it can be done, I guess. But red flag.  Allen: Yeah, I mean, our traders they can get it but We don't run a fun doing that, you know, they can do it on their own. They hear the trades, he learned how to do it and go for it and do it. And some markets, you do it in some markets, you don't in some markets you lose. But when you have a fund, you obviously have all these expenses, like you said, you know, the staff and the work involved and all that information, all the lawyers that you paid, I remember you telling me, you know how much you paid to the lawyers to make all the documents and the accounting and the photos and all the auditing. And that's done on a regular basis and all that stuff. Yeah. So it takes a lot of money to put this stuff together and actually run it. Doug: Yeah, totally. Oh, here's the company. Here's a couple more things about him. Like, he didn't let his investors mix and mingle. So I never really met any other investors besides that one guy like, there's other guys that run funds, they'll like even sometimes do lunches and dinners or like a group events for the investors because they have nothing to hide, let the investors check. Allen: This, I mean, if you're legit, if you're legit, you want that, you know, you want the happy people to mix with the new people. So the new people are like, Oh, yeah, are you doing it? They're like, Yeah, I do. It is great. You want that to happen if you're legit. Doug: Yes, totally. And we never got any documentation like showing which minerals we owned and what was sold. Like, I want to see like legitimate notarized documents, stuff that was filed somewhere like, so that's the problem with some funds, too, is like they're not obligated to show you all that stuff. Like, who regulates all this stuff? sec. sec. That's not I was thinking that may see that maybe needs to be something that maybe at some point becomes regulated. I hate to like, I don't I'm not like a fan of more regulation. That might be actually kind of handy. You know, like, it's crazy like the if you want to be a scammer with a private equity fund, you can. It does not end well, though. So you're not incentivized in that. That's when I shocking to some people would want to do it. You go to freakin jail. Allen: Yeah, Oh, I mean, you take the money and run to another country and live in it. Doug: There's like international police now. They'll get you anywhere. Allen: You can't go to like some island that doesn't have extradition or something? Doug: You'll be like the only white guy or whatever. Yeah.  Allen: Head on down to Cuba and you'll be the king. Doug: It baffles me that anybody would want to do what he did. But I again, I don't think that's the norm. I asked a couple of attorneys. I said, How often do you see this? And they said not very often? Allen: No, because I mean, I know with your stuff ever since we'd invested with you. It's like, we get regular emails, we get regular update, since like hey this, look, we bought this land and hey, we bought this property. And here's the address. And here's the photo. And and before we before we even invested, I mean, you took us on a tour, like, you know,  Doug: Yeah, we were actually on the land. Allen: Yeah, we saw the land we saw where it was subdivided. We saw, you know, people that were there, you know, that purchased other plots already. And they were building stuff. So I mean, it was everything was on the up and up, and it's still on the open up still, you know, if you want access, you call Doug up, and he'll explain everything. And if you want to go see it, he'll give you all the details and you go take a look and check the deeds are whatever you want to do. Doug: Yeah we'll send our statements or deeds, whatever. Also, some people if they are hesitant about investing in a fund, like for us, we're willing to sell people the notes that we generate. So like, they can get about a 10% return if they just own the notes, but it's a little bit more volatile. Because every now and then you might have a borrower that defaults, and you have to foreclose and then resell, so like investing the fun is just simpler. But if you're one of those people that just like I don't trust like somebody else having control over my money, there's other ways to get the same return with what we've got going on. That's why we changed our name from Hawthorne funds, the Hawthorne capital, because we sell notes, and you can lend against notes or you can invest in the fund, the fund is just the easiest. Awesome, cool, cool. How do people find out about you or talk to you about this? shoot me an email at Doug@HawthorneCapital.com That's D-O-U-G Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Allen: Alright, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And you know, one of the questions that I got after I did that episode 94 was like, you know, if you're making so much money in the stock market in an options, why are you investing in real estate or something else. And right now, at least in this market in this economy that we've had, you know, the stock market is doing amazing, it's doing great. I mean, this year, not so much. It's kind of, you know, going up a little bit last year was really good. But still as Options Traders, were making a killing. And I see my investments in my accounts in there, you know, just increasing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We're at the point now where I mean, it's got to end sometime, you know, and it's time for if you have a bunch of gains in your accounts, it's time to be diversified, especially with you know what they're saying with inflation coming down the road that's gonna be coming pretty hard. Land is a good thing to invest in when you have inflation because you can automatically just raise the price. Things lost more when you have inflation so. Doug: Well for us you know what the way that's affected is land has gone up in value. Big time over the last year, which a lot of us didn't see coming. We thought just you know, in a recession with our heading into a big recession, that would just decrease the value of a lot of stuff. We used to, we used to buy land for about four, or $5,000 per acre. And now we're buying it for eight to $10,000 per acre. Wow, no, we sell it for a lot more to so we're kind of in the flipping game we buy. And then a few months later, or sometimes it's maybe a year, we sell the little pieces because we buy a bunch and we chop it up a little pieces. So we'll sell those, but then we sell them on owner financing. So we collect on my income income stream over about 15 years. But we've seen that the market moving inland for sure. Allen: So who's buying these little pieces from you? Doug: Blue collar individuals who live in the city and want to be able to go out to the country on the weekends and enjoy time with their family and their dogs. And maybe they want some get some animals out there and maybe have a little swimming pool or something like that. They want to be on the country and there was already such a demand for that pre-pandemic, but it just exploded here with the pandemic. But our model works like pre pandemic during pandemic post. It doesn't really matter for us. It just, it changes some of the numbers a little bit like if we have to buy for more than we sell for more. Right, the demand is there. And we just we do a lot of advertising on Facebook to sell our ranchettes. And we also are on MLS and all these other places. But with Facebook ads, we're able to we spend about $2 per lead, and we're able to ramp that budget up or down and get as many ranchette buyers as we want. So it's just a matter of the sales team handling all those leads. Allen: Really? Doug: That was that was true before the pandemic, we didn't need the pandemic to make our business work. Allen: And what about the land, finding the land? Doug: We look on the MLS, there's a website called lands of Texas, there's one of those for just about every state. So we look at a bunch of land, and we try to get a deal on when we can but usually maybe the best we can do is about a 10% discount. No, we're looking for land that has access to roads on a couple of sides that we can chop it up into where each little ranchette it will have access to a road. So normally we'll buy one or 200 acres at a time, for example. And these are all over different parts. It's not like one all together, it's the subdivision. And yeah, so then we'll chop it up. And we need to give each of those little pieces access to road because it costs a lot of money to build roads. And that would make our deals a lot less profitable. If we had to do that. Allen: Ah, I see. So you buy the properties that already have roads, and you add the utilities or? Doug: Yes, we bring in we'll put in a water well, that costs about $6,000, maybe seven, and they will put in fencing usually cost about 5000 put in a gate for maybe another 1000 culvert driveway. Every now and then a pond that we bring we bring in power can cost one or 2000 per ranchette. So like the typical like 10 acre ranchette, we will have bought for about $80,000. And we will put about 20,000 and improvements into it. So now we're in it for 100. And they will sell it for maybe 180. Allen: Hmm, okay. Doug: And the fund lens as we do these things, it lands on the land, and then it lands on the note that we generate. So that's kind of the margins we're dealing with lately actually are probably selling for more than 180. Actually on that scenario. Allen: And how long do you think this will last? This will run? Doug: I don't see how it would end. Allen:There's plenty of land out there? Doug: Yeah, there's plenty land, plenty of buyers. I've got a lot of investors investing with us. And once a.. Allen: So you're not closed or you're not you're not full, you're still taking investors.. Doug: Okay yeah, that's good question. Fund to opens and closes as needed as so we took on about five or 6 million last month. And we close it because we have to deploy capital for new purchases, because as soon as we take it on, we have to start paying our investors. So we're not going to take on like 10 million when we can only deploy five. So as we're about to buy more land, so we'll open it up, temporarily take all that money and then close it. And we'll just accept a certain amount of money, whatever we need at that time, whether that's 2 million, 5 million, whatever it is, then we'll close it. Allen: So you have basically like a waiting list. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. Cool. Cool. Cool. All right. Okay, I think we've covered everything I had all my questions. Is there anything else that you wanted to share anything else our listeners and our watchers need to know before they go out and invest funds? Because there's a lot of funds on now that you know, with the crowdfunding and all that stuff? What do you think about that? Doug: I think some of the inferior funds are going that route because if you've got a solid fund, you really pull a lot from your own network. And so you don't have to go like I don't have to go like list my fund on some sort of like fundrise or realty mogul or whatever. Because I get all my money just from my like word of mouth. Everyone just talks right. And that's how most like well operated funds are because they will take a cut of whatever you raise and so you get sometimes like slightly newer operators or they don't have. They don't have a network, or maybe there's not as good of word of mouth or something. So I'm not like a fan necessarily of investing in that kind of stuff. There is a cool website that came out called Vera Vest. It's fairly new, and they research, they do this sort of a background check on certain private equity funds. And so you can kind of go and make sure that they're, you can ever be fully sure, right, but make sure they're probably not a scam. But those operators are paying very best a fee. I don't know if it's like a monthly fee or what, for them to be like gold verified, or whatever it is on that website. And then so if they are, they're showing up high on that website, and they get a lot of new business from investors, or even a new investor capital. I say it's kind of like the BBB, you know, the Better Business Bureau where you have to pay them for drinking. To get the young people, people still believe in it. They're like, Oh, well, I mean, not too much anymore. I don't hear about it anymore. But people before were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go check the BBB. I'm like, okay, but, you know, if we pay them, they'll say good stuff about us. That's kind of on my other business My House Deals with, we had had 42,000 something paying subscribers at the time, and we had five complaints in the BBB, that's five out of like, 42,000 something. And these are people that had never even raised the issue with us. First, they just went straight to BBB, because they wanted to refund or whatever. And the BBB gave us a D or F rating. And yeah, we went in there. And they basically said that we were like, poorly operating our company, I said, five, I'd like for you to say here's our list, I printed out like this huge stack, here's all of our customers, by people complained. And they said that basically, we need to pay them some more money. And then we would be like A-Rated. That's like, this is a racket. It is a racket! Allen: It is, it is. Doug: So luckily, nowadays, people can just look at Google Reviews. And those can be manipulated a little bit too. Like if the company is like sending all their customers to leave reviews or.. Allen: For something free. Like they're giving away a free service or something. Doug: Yes, they do that on Amazon too. Like.. Allen: Oh, Amazon full of fake reviews. I mean, they buy the reviews, they don't even give you know, it's like they'll there are companies out there you can hire and they'll just go out and give you like, Yo you want 20 fake reviews, okay, pay us. And we'll go and our people will go and, you know, they have all these fake accounts and everything. And they just yeah, Amazon. I don't I don't trust anything on Amazon like I have. It's super hard to know if the reviews are good. Doug: Yeah, they need to do some coding to kind of look for that. But there are certain plugins you can install. Like if you use Chrome as your browser, like a fake spotter review, and they'll analyze, see whether that they think that Amazon review is legit or fake, and I'll give it they'll give it a rating. That's pretty cool. Allen: Interesting. Doug: Yeah, at least we have that we don't have to depend on the BBB anymore. Allen: Yeah.Yep. Cool. All right, Doug, I appreciate everything you've shared with us. Again, Doug's email is Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Doug: ..or email my assistant Ellen@HawthorneCapital.com. Allen: Okay. Doug: We'll put you on the email list. So like maybe every, every four, six weeks or so you'll get an update that shows what we're doing. So if you even if you're not looking to invest now, it's fine. Like maybe three years from now, you've been getting our updates, and you've been getting educated and seeing what we do. Then if you felt like investing you could. Allen: Yup and full disclosure, I am an investor. I was in the first fund and we were over the money into the second fund. But yeah, so you know if you're, if you're interested in getting into a fund, do your due diligence, please, you know, this is you turning over your money to someone else, hopefully, they have experienced hopefully, they have a track record and they know what they're doing. And they'd like, you know, most of them most of these funds are not scams, because they do take a bunch of money to put together and investment to start up and they have something to show for it. I think the bigger fear is, you know, if the investment goes south, you know, how much of your investment Can you lose? Can you lose all of it, etc? Doug: Yeah, that's gonna be case by case each fund is going to have a different risk reward profile. So you really got to look at that. Allen: Yeah, yeah. How would you know? Doug: Well, ideally, either you're in that industry kind of like sort of like or you have a friend who is okay, you people that you want to run it by people and really get to know the operator, maybe talk to a couple different people who run you know, similar types of funds if it's more it's pretty common as multifamily apartments. Of course there's some commercials there's some office buildings and stuff that has been beat the heck yeah, I was talking to somebody at the gym that he put a put a bunch of money in a fund that invested in hotels. He put in his money and right before the recession. He got hammered. Allen: Oh, boy. Yeah. So do they like do those funds, then they go out of business and then they everything gets foreclosed? Hmm. Doug: The lender forecloses on the fund because the fund has borrowed money. Allen: Okay, so what can the individual investors do and when that happens? Doug: They get whatever's left over after the bank gets paid. Allen: So they can't sue,they can't do anything? Doug: Well, if there was like fraud committed, yes, but a lot. Some of that there was no fraud. It was just gonna be a poor investment. Allen: Oh okay, yeah if you guys do your due diligence. Make sure you know. Alright, Doug I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We’re gonna put this up to everybody and you know, at least my recommendation is that Doug is a stand-up on his guy, most of the time and again, I’ve known him for years so yeah. Thanks Doug again and talk to you soon! Doug: Thanks Allen! Allen: Alrighty, bye bye Doug: Alright, bye

Passive traders, welcome to a very special episode of the Option Genius Podcast. This is episode number 100 hundred. No, it's not a hundred hundred. It's just 100, but yeah, it's one zero, zero. We made it to triple digits, which is a pretty good feat. They say most podcasts don't even make it for the first 15 episodes. So to get to a hundred episodes, I think it's been like two years and to have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads and people listening to every episode? Wow. I am so humbled. I continue to be so humbled. I've said it before, but it's like, I can't believe it. You know, I never thought that anybody would want to listen to me that much, um, much less, several hundred thousand people. It's insane. I did want to do something special for this episode. We did go ahead and let's go be kind of like, uh, the best of, you know, so I looked at all the different episodes, see which one got the most downloads, which ones are the ones that most people email us about and ask questions about. And I went through and I said, you know, which ones do I want to highlight? Meaning that they're so good that I want to, you know, make you listen to them again, take the best things and be like, okay, we don't need the whole episode. Just need little snippets, right? Little pieces of it. So that it reinforces something that maybe you've forgotten, or maybe you didn't know, or you missed it the first time. So things that I thought were really important to get through, things that will definitely help you. And so that's what we did in this episode. So I went through identified eight episodes that I thought were really, really good to re go back and rehashing and go back into them. And then we cut and pasted the most important parts. So each episode might've been my 28 minutes or 30 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever, but there was, but three minutes worth of four minutes worth that really just summed it all up and, you know, hit the spot kind of thing, no stories. Cause I know sometimes I can go on and on with the stories, but I think these stories are important that people say they enjoy that. So there you go. But I also want to take this time to appreciate everybody for sticking with me and for all the wonderful comments and for all of the wonderful reviews that you guys have posted over the years, the last two years or however long we've been doing this, I read every single one. I really appreciated all those reviews. They do help other people find the podcast. They do help tell the different podcast services that, hey look, people like this and it should be shown to more people. And if you have not left a review, please, please go do that right away. It really, really helps. And I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart and it really helps other people because deep down it's about helping to me, you know, I could go out and trade for my own and I don't need to do the podcast. You know, we don't make money from a podcast. We don't have sponsors. We don't, it's just something that we do to spread the word, spread the message and say, hey, if you're stuck in life, if you need to make more money, if you want to have more free time, if you want to have less stress, if you're looking for something and you know that you can do better, then this might be something that would work for you. So come check it out. And if you like it, then we can tell you more. If you don't like it, that's fine too. But even if you just listen to the podcasts, like many people have, they just listen to the podcast, it gives them a little boost and then they go out and they keep doing it. So that's the whole point, you know, it's a motivational home and some people complain. Oh, why don't you tell us all the different strategies and how do you adjust, uh, Forty-five day Iron condor trade that's in the money and all this stuff. And it's like, that's really, really specific. And I think maybe in the future we'll get into those. But I think that that information is already out there in many different sources, right? Many different places. And if you want, and you have to get visual and you have to do a video where you can actually see the trade and all the different details and whatnot. So I try not to get into the more complicated issues on the podcast. The podcast is really about mindset. It's really about getting you to see what's possible, giving you that extra boost of momentum, letting you hear from other people who are doing it, who have done it, we're doing it. And me sharing the things that I wish that people had shared with me when I got started. And that's the really, the big thing about it. You know, we were doing the high probability trading live event this weekend, and there was something that we went through. We went through all of this different content with, through two days of content. And when I was going through my slides and my notes beforehand, I realized that my god, there is really, really good stuff in here, you know, but the person that he's new or the person that is not ready to hear will not notice all the depths that is in the session. And we had several sessions, some of them were pretty basic. Some of them had a lot of content in them. So it was me talking with slides and I just get going on and on and on the surface of it, if you weren't really paying attention, it's like, oh, this is basic. But every single line in there was put there for a purpose. So if you were coming at it from somebody who was on the low end of the option continuum where you're just brand new to options,I put it in a way where it wouldn't confuse you and you could get understand what I'm talking about. If you were in the middle of the continuum, I put it in a way where he could tell you, okay, this is the next step that you need to take. You know, you need to do this and you need to do this. And these are the things that you need to focus on. And then if you're on the upper end of the continuum, you could have really gone really, really deep because I shared stuff in there that I've learned, and he took me 20 years to learn. And I've never seen it anywhere shared anywhere before. I've never seen videos on it. I've never seen any other gurus talk about this stuff because most Gurus don't last for 20 years, to be honest, unfortunately, they're good marketers; they're not really good at trading. So most people don't last 20 years, I've been able to luckily and Option Genius has been around for, I think, 11 years now. So we've been doing this a while. We know the same thing over and over and over again, and it just works. And so I appreciate you guys. It's been a long journey. But we are making a difference now. And I see it every day. I see it from the people that came to the live event. They were the comments that they made, the emails that we got afterwards, the way that they're excited about learning to trade options. And they're excited about what their lives can be like, because they have hope, it really makes life worth living when you can go out and help other people. And I think that is the whole basic of it. So really, if you are listening to this podcast, I want you to understand, listen to it, learn and go take action and go do the things and go do the trades and go make the money and then go help the other people. Cause that's when you'll feel really, really good about yourself, you'll feel good when you eliminate the stress and the, and the bills and all that. And you're doing well and you're feeling successful about that, but you take it to the next level when you're starting to help other people in different ways. So thank you for listening to my little lecture there, but now let's get into the episode. So for the very first episode, I have a clip from Episode 74, which is the Passive Trading Manifesto. And I came up with this, I said, what is a passive trader, you know, define passive trader. Describe what I passive trader is thinking is doing, is feeling, and that is what I came up with for the manifesto. And it's just very, it's very short, but it's something that I think you will see yourself in at least part of it. And you'll be like, yeah, that's me. I fit here. This is the group that I belong to. This is what I want to be doing. That describes me. And I can't wait to get more. So let's listen. 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!  Okay. So for our second clip, we have one of the most popular episodes that I've ever done. It is episode number 26, which is called the Ultimate Options Trading Strategy. Now, there are lots and lots of strategies to trade options. Many of them work. I can't say all of them because I have tried all of them, but I know the ones that we teach, they do work. And if you only do each one individually, if you only do covered put, covered calls or they get books or credit spreads or condos or butterflies or calendars, or if you gonna do any of those or any variations you can do very well. If you're good at, and you practice, you only need to do one, but if you do more than one, that's fine too, depending on what you need. So in this episode, I break down. What is the ultimate, the ultimate options trading strategy? With our account balance what do we want? Do we want up and down roller coasters? No, we want slow and steady increase. In order to have that you have to be trading in a way that is actually boring because you know what you’re doing, that’s why it’s boring. You’ve mastered it, because you’ve excelled at it. The alternative is to do what you’re doing right now jumping around from strategy to strategy. I know what you thinking. Say, “Hey Allen, what about diversification, don’t I need to diversify? If I have maybe some earnings trades over here or maybe I have some naked calls over here or maybe I have some box spreads over here.” Yeah, you should diversify if you have an account that is well over six figures and you are already consistent and profitable. That’s it right there. If you are over six figures, and I’m talking about mid-six figures; $400,000, $500,000, more than that, and you are already consistent and profitable then you can diversify as much as you want. If you’re on the top end of the continuum, level’s nine, level 10, then you are making money so you are going to stick with what you know automatically. You’re going to go to the bread and butter and you’re going to do those every month or every week or whatever your timeframe is. Then with a little bit of extra cash you’re going to try other stuff. That’s the smart way to do it. If you don’t have over six figures, if you’re not consistent, if you’re not profitable already, then forget about diversification. Until you can make money with one strategy month after month, trade after trade. You have to be consistently profitable before you add another strategy to your arsenal, are you getting this? Is this sinking in? Yes? Hope so. Anybody that tells you otherwise is full of it and probably just wants to sell you something, that’s the truth. Stop all the noise, stop listening, stop jumping around, because the noise is there, the offers will always be there. If it’s not options, it’ll be Bitcoin. If it’s not Bitcoin it’s going to be marijuana stocks. If it’s not marijuana stocks it’s going to be sports betting, that’s the newest thing that’s going to come on, right? The Supreme Court just announced on Monday that states can now make it legal to bet on sports. Well, guess what? There’s going to be stocks on sports betting and they might even have options on sports and betting and all this stuff. Who knows what they’re going to come out with in future? That’s going to be the new hottest thing. If you keep jumping from one to another, to the nother, to the nother, you’re never going to get good at anything, you’re never going to be profitable, you’re never going to be consistent. Go back to the basics, back to the fundamentals. Choose one strategy and work on it until you know it inside out and you are profitable because that is the name of the game, that is the goal. That is the only thing that matters. I don’t care what strategy you use, I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care when you do it. If you are profitable you are winning. That’s the only way to know if you are winning, I don’t care how much you know. I don’t care if you know more than me, I don’t know if you know more history than me, I don’t care if you know more math than me, more about statistics, more about options, more about everything. If you are not profitable it doesn’t matter so go back to the fundamentals, go back to the basics, one strategy. You focus on it, you work on it, you back test it, you paper trade it, you real money trade it until you are profitable. That’s it, that’s the answer. Now, if you can’t figure it out, if you already tried, you tried your best and you can’t do it, then reach out to me, maybe I can point you in the right direction. Maybe I can work with you like I did with Simon and we can identify what it was that works best for you or that makes the most sense for you, and then how to actually implement it. In the beginning you don’t need complicated stuff, you don’t need complicated indicators. You don’t need complicated chart patterns, you need a strategy that you understand, that makes sense to you and you need toThen if you can do that then you tweak it. Then you work on it. Then you look at, like Simon did, you look at the entrance of the trade, you look at the management of the trade, you look at the exit of the trade, and then you improve your percentages. That’s how it works. Right now, Simon, like I said, he’s only doing one strategy and, yes, he is well over six figures in his trading account. That’s okay, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to be doing anything else. I know people who only do one iron condor every single month. They do it on the same underlying, they do it on an index, and they trade literally over $100,000 worth of one iron condor every month. That’s the entire trade, that’s the whole strategy, one iron condor, six figures in that condor, every month. I hope this makes sense, I hope this is sinking in. I hope you got to this. Then finally, no matter which strategy you choose, whether it’s the condor, the credit spread, the ratio, the butterfly, I don’t care what it is, whatever it is, no matter which one you choose, make sure that the odds are in your favor. Peace.   Okay now let's get into some serious topics. Okay. This is episode number 96. It's called how fast can you start trading for a living? And really the basic here is that I got an email from one of our students. He got laid off and he needed to know what to do to get up to speed as fast as possible. And this was the advice that I gave him. Just an update for him - he did take the advice he is doing it. He did happen to go back and get a job. But his trading is on par to be doing very, very well. So there's always hope, right? Like it says this too shall pass. So whenever you're in a bad situation, whenever you think everything is falling apart, just remember that everything works in seasons. You know, winter comes and it's hard and it's tough, but then there eventually is a spring. There is a summer and things get great again. So just all you gotta do is get to it, get through it, use the people that want to help you, take advantage of their help and do the best you can to get through it. I got an email from one of our members and I wanted to read it to you because he just got laid off and he wants to know how he can replace his income with trading. It's crazy that we get so many people in this same situation. It's great that when you have a job, right, you have an income source. You want to get into trading. You don't really like the job or you don't really like your business or whatever. You're like, oh man, I wish this trading thing could work out. I could get it. And you know, you, you invest in one of our programs and then you don't really follow through because life gets in the way. And I know how that goes. You know, it's, it's really the why. Right? Your why about trading? Wasn't strung out until something happens. Any jars you can. It's like, you know, it's like you, you might be driving along the street and you're not really paying attention to the road. And then all of a sudden the car comes out of nowhere, almost hits you. So here's, Todd's email. It says CLO Allen, I'm going through a life change. I want to get your opinion. I'm currently a member of your programs. I joined almost a year ago, have not been able to devote enough time due to work and family obligations. Totally understandable. I'm an engineer and work in the construction industry for a healthcare organization or read your book, listen, all your podcast sessions, at least once while going to work. Thank you for that last week. I was laid off from my job. And now I'm trying to decide my next moves. My wife works full-time and we have funds to carry us along for a couple months, but I will need to replace my income fairly soon and relieve the stress on my wife as an aside. Yes, that's very, very, very important because you are not, you know, when you get laid off, you're not the only one that suffered the whole family suffered, especially the other spouse, because that person has to carry the load, right? They're not used to carrying the full load. Now they have to carry the full load, and then they also have to worry about you and your mental status and the pressure on them. You also have to work off, so you don't want to add divorce to your problems. So be very, very careful about how your spouse is handling the situation. Make sure you give them enough time and enough attention to leave their pressure, take some of their work, you know, their homework or whatever other work is off their plate while you can. And if you're looking to go into trading. Discuss it with your spouse, explain what you're doing with them. So they don't think that you're just sitting at home, doing nothing all day playing with computers, watching TV. Okay. So that's a really important point. So let me continue. He says, I'm trying to decide if I should jump back into the construction rat race again, so I can draw a salary and benefits. Assuming I can find a job fairly quickly. Otherwise I would really like to immerse my time into your programs and start trading. I realized I have to get up to speed and take some time to learn your methods and develop my own trading plan. My main concerns are being able to learn your program soon enough and be able to replace my income. I was making 120,000 a year, but need to replace approximately 5,000 a month. Take home. I plan to start paper trading this week and scale up as I learn more, eventually I will have $250,000 in capital that I could scale up into an account. How realistic is it for me to replace my income with this size of an account? I would appreciate your opinion and any comments. Thank you. So that's the email I want to read to you what I wrote to him. And then I want to give you my thoughts on this and a little bit going a little bit more detail. So I told him, you know, Hey, I'm sorry that this happened to you. Very, very, sorry. My first thought was, Hey, you know, you need to get out of where you are. I know where he is. He's in a different state where things might be slowing down. So I'm like, Hey, you know, get out of there and get your butt here to Texas, because we can't find enough people to do construction, but that might not be possible. Um, so I don't think the issue here is if you can generate 5,000 from 250,000, the issue is how long it will take you to get there. And from what you wrote, this is me talking to you from what you wrote, you would be in your best interest, I believe for you to get out of the job for now as a fail safe. Okay. Maybe not a full-time thing, just something to bring in some guaranteed capital and keep the health insurance, if possible. Cause that's a big. Concern for a lot of people trading when you are super stressed out and you have to win is super hard. Trading already is very hard, but doing it with one hand timing on your back, it's much harder while you are looking for the second job, or even after you get the part-time job, spend three to five hours a day on your trading. Do that with the courses and programs you already have. You should be able to have the skills to do it full time in a few months, but having the skills is different from being emotionally ready. So you're going to have to overcome that aspect as well. So if you can start with a smaller goal, say 1000 a month on a a hundred thousand dollar account, that would be a great place to start. And then you can scale it up from there. And then I told him, because he's in the programs, I want to see you on the coaching call on Thursday. I want to see you and your paper trades, you know, groups. I want you to posting that. I want you to get a critique. So I want you to get my opinion, my advice. And I want you to send me a man told him, Hey, I want you to send me your training plan and a concrete plan of how you expect to get to 5,000 a month, including your asset allocation. And this is covered in one of the programs that he's already fired. You can do it, but having a job would relieve a lot of the pressure, but even with a job three to five hours a day, learning and trading, because enough is enough. Screw these jobs. It's time to learn how to make it from trading.    Okay. Here's clip number four. This comes from episode 87 - How to Scale Up Your Trading. So now let's say you've already been doing trading for a little bit. You've been pretty safe. You're being conservative and now it's time to get big, right? You're you're feeling good. You're feeling confident. How do you go from where you are now to the next level? And it's, and it's not what you think.  It's not about more strategy. It's not about more complicated stuff, more trading or more analysis or more software. It's all mental, it's all mental scaling, all mental 90%. There might be some things you need to do a little bit different because you're playing with bigger numbers and then there's less there's limitations to what you can do at bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger numbers. You know, we're talking about in the millions, but when your individual and you're scaling up 99%, I would say is mental. So take a listen.   This is the question I get often and got this question recently from a listener. The question says, the one thing I struggle with is constantly being scared out of the market. I have a trading plan with iron condors and credit spreads and failed to follow it by not trading frequently enough or with enough size. How is the best way to scale up your trading to make a bigger income out of it? Basically, the fellow is saying that he does trades, mostly spreads, but he’s hesitant and scared to not do it enough and not do it with enough money when he does do it. He’s thinking about how can he scale up his trading to be better at it or make more money from it? The first thing you need to realize is that fear is not always a bad thing. I mean, it’s there to alert you to danger, right? That’s why we get scared, something dangerous happening, but it’s also there to alert you to opportunity as well. We look at fear as a negative thing, but fear is just a common response, right? It doesn’t have to be something that is bad for us that we are afraid of. Anything outside of our comfort zone can be scary, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad for us. A lot of people are scared of placing their first trade. They’re scared of investing money in the stock market because they’re afraid to lose it, which is one possible outcome. Yes, but you can mitigate that and you can protect against that. When you look at it and you say, look, there are trillions of kazillions of dollars, whatever invested in stocks around the world, what do those people know that I don’t, that I’m afraid to put my money in the stock market? What are the people that are trading profitably and consistently? What do they know that I don’t know that I’m not consistent? That’s why I’m afraid of making trades or making bigger trades. How much do you actually want to make? If you’re trading too small to hit your goal, right? If your goal is a thousand dollars a month, but you’re only doing one trade that can only make a hundred dollars a month, you’re never going to hit your goal. Then the goal will help you scale because that’s just mad. You’re like, oh man, I can’t get my goal. Okay. I need to do more because I need to get to my goal. The other side is to have confidence. That comes with doing the trades over and over and over and over. If you use real money, it can take years as you go through the different markets, right? You go through a bear market. You go through a bull market. You go through a sideways market. You go through a correction. You go through a dip. You go through all these different things. It takes years to understand how to trade through all those different environments. Now, as passive traders, we have the odds on our side and the trades are built in to withstand these shocks, but it can still impact us. The biggest impact is on us mentally.  Number one, like I said is you have confidence in your trading plan. If you’ve put on a whole bunch of trades and you’ve seen them work, you’re going to have more confidence. If you are trading with a group or other people are doing it, or if you have a mentor that’s been doing it and he’s telling you, hey, look, this is the way we trade. This is how it’s going to work. If you’ve seen it work, then you have confidence. Number two, if you have experience doing the same strategy hundreds or thousands of times, that’s basically how you get the confidence in the trading plan. Then step two of scaling is to increase your position sizing, obviously, right? Yeah. I want to scale. Okay. Step two. Step one that we talked about was, what did we talked about? Step one, being able to control yourself. Step one to scaling is being able to control yourself. Step two is to go ahead and then do it to increase your position sizing. Now remember, remember how you thought about going to school or training for whatever you do now for a living, for your job, right? Do you remember getting trained for that? If you had to go to college or get a certificate or go to a seminar or whatever, you did all that, you put up with all that because you were training. You were learning and it took time. It’s the same thing here. Trading takes time to learn, but this puts you in a real life seminar and you are paying your dues every day. The time that you put in, you’re paying your dues. You put your trades on, you monitor them, you debrief them at the end, right? What happened? What went wrong? What went right? What did I do right? How can I change it? How can I make my results better? You rinse and you repeat. You got a good plan, keep doing it over and over and over again. As your account size gets larger, you can go from one contract to maybe two, then maybe to three, then to five, then to seven. You go at your own pace. There is no race. There is no time limit. As long as you’re doing constantly better, you’re being consistent like I said earlier, the account will grow in size and you’ll get more confident and you can trade more. It’s up to you. You want to go from one to five? If you got the money and you’ve had the experience, okay, fine. I wouldn’t advise it. I’d go from one to two, two to four, four to six, six to 10. Take it small jumps. It doesn’t need to be overnight because there’s no rush. It’s not like, oh, my next door neighbor just bought a Mercedes. I got to buy one too so I need to do a hundred trades this month. No, forget him and his Mercedes. Who cares? Right? Be confident with who you are and what you have. Don’t rock the boat. We don’t want to take unnecessary risks we don’t have to. For most people, it’s better to move from say three contracts to four contracts, to six to 10 small increments because there’s no such thing as missing out on the trade of the century. There is no trade of the century. It’s like, oh my God, if I don’t invest now, I’m going to lose. I’m never going to get this opportunity again. No, it doesn’t happen. There’s no such thing. They said that before years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, six months ago, they’ve been saying that forever. As long as you get in and you can consistently make money, you’re fine. It’s just going to grow. Everything is the same. You don’t need to put all your money in one trade when you’re not ready to do so. Okay. Now, step three to scaling. Once you have increased contract size, you need to increase the account size, or maybe you need to do this in the account size before you do the contract size. Either way, but one usually comes after the other. You do this obviously by adding more money to the pot, put more money in your account. Right? Now, you can do it the other way and you’d be like, you know what? I’m just going to grow the account, and whatever I make, I’m going to keep it and just scale that way. Or you can say, hey, look, I’ve got the confidence. I’ve got my emotions under control. I got a good strategy. I got a good mentor. I feel confident to be able to go to the next level so I need to add a few thousand dollars more into my account so I can go from say, two contracts to four or four to eight, right? I’m going to go incrementally higher. I’m not going to go from two to 10. Don’t do that. Two to four, two to five, slowly, slowly, build it up. Go to the next level, trade there for a little while, get comfortable. Then you can go again to the next level. It’s like going up steps, right? Once you’re adding more money to the pot, you can do something or you can add something to your account that’s called portfolio margin. What portfolio margin means is that you get additional leverage and you get the ability to make money quicker where less money tied up actually. For most brokers that I’ve seen, portfolio margin starts at $125,000. If you have that in your account, you get portfolio margin. Normally, when you open an account and you apply for margin, they give you two-to-one margin. If you put in $10,000, they’ll let you buy $20,000 worth of stock, but they charge you interest on the money that they lent you. We don’t really advise that. Right now, when you’re passive trading, you need to have a margin account. If it’s a non-retirement account, if it’s not an IRA, then you got to have margin enabled so that you can do spreads. You can do naked puts. But we don’t borrow the money. Portfolio margin is a little mix of both. Portfolio margin, I believe it’s like four to one or five to one in terms of margin. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can actually trade with $400,000. Big difference. You could buy a lot more, but I’m not telling you to buy a lot more. I’m telling you to do it because on your trades, they can charge you less in margin. What I mean by that is if you do a naked put that is very, very, very, very far away from the money. If you have a regular margin account, they might charge you, I don’t know, they say $3,000 in margin to do that trade for example. I’m just making it up. Okay. If you have a portfolio margin account, they look at it, they calculate that margin differently. They look at the actual risk of the trade. Because they can tell that you’re so far away from the money and that the odds are so far in your favor, there’s not a big risk of you losing money and so the amount of margin that they’re going to charge you or hold for doing that trade is going to be a lot less. It might be, say $500 compared to 2,000 or $3,000. With a regular account, they’ll charge you $500 a margin for a portfolio margin account. What happens there? Well, I can make a much greater return percentage-wise on my money. Right? Dollar-wise, they’ll be the same thing, but then I can decide, hey, what? Do I want to do two of these or three of these instead of one? Because I can, right? Because I have more leverage. I can do that. If the trade goes against me, of course, I’m still going to end up losing money and I’ll lose more because now I have three contracts versus one. I need to be able to know and be good with that. That’s why they only give it to you if you have over a hundred or $125,000. But that’s what I did. Right? For myself, when I started scaling, I went horizontally. I’m going to lay it out, two different types of scaling. What I did, I went horizontally, meaning I put small amounts into many different accounts. I had a Roth account. I had a regular IRA account. I had one each for my wife. I had a SEP account. I had a corporate account for the company. I had a couple of personal accounts. Then I would do different trades in all the different accounts, so I got a little bit, a little bit, a little bit in all of them, right? Yes. I have a lot of money in the market but they’re spread out in all of these different accounts. That’s what I call horizontally. In hindsight, the process worked and now all of the accounts are fairly large, but it took a lot longer than necessary because each account did not have enough money in the beginning to do everything I wanted. I was limited in the trades I could do. I was limited in the strategies I could do in the beginning because each account did not have that much money. If you have, let’s say a hundred thousand dollars, right? You put it in one account, you can do certain things with it that you can’t do if you open 10 different accounts with $10,000 each. That makes sense? What I’ve done now is I still have those accounts, but I went vertically right now. That’s how I’m scaling right now. I’m going vertically. I’m working on growing just one account to a certain level.   Okay. Episode number 64 is next. This is our 5th episode. Title is called Selling Puts Versus Owning Stock. Now I brought this one up because when I first started in options, selling puts wasn't very enticing to me. I really didn't understand it. It wasn't something that I practiced. It wasn't something that I did. It wasn't only until years later when I actually understood the power and the reasoning behind it. I mean, I always understood the theory behind it and why you should do it and why people do it, but it wasn't until I actually started doing it where it came and fell in place. When I came up with the whole passive trading situation and the whole brand and the whole formula and you know, the fact that, yeah, I don't want to be trading all the time. I want to be just relaxed, less stress free and not having to be stuck in front of the screen all day. And for that, the naked put works really good. So in this episode, I compared selling naked puts to versus owning stock and see how we did.   So I am finishing up the book called Passive Trading. Has been taken me I think over two years, but I’m finally getting close to completion. My editor told me that it’s probably better to add a few examples of trades that I’ve done in the past and some examples of the different strategies that we’re talking about. So I was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” So what I did was I decided to go into the past and pick a stock and say, “Okay, this is a stock. What if I did what I’m telling everybody to do? How would it work out without knowing anything about the future or anything like that?” The example was for naked puts, selling naked puts. That’s one of the strategies I cover in the book. I talk about it, say how to do it, this and that. And I said, “Well, what would happen if I take my strategy, how to do it, and go and apply it in real life?” So I picked Walmart because Walmart is not a stock that I own. I don’t follow it on a regular basis. It is on my watch list because it’s a good company and it pays dividend. It might be one that I want to get into, but up till now I don’t own it and haven’t traded it very much. So I said, “You know what? Let me go into Walmart. Let me try it and see.” So 2018, January 2018, Walmart was trading at $98.59. That was really good because in 2017 the stock was up 42%, so had a great year in 2017. What’s it going to do in 2018? I don’t know. I don’t remember. And I haven’t traded, so I don’t know. So what I decided was I am not going to own the stock. I am only going to sell naked puts on it. If I get assigned on those puts, then I will see what I have to do there. Maybe I will sell the stock and keep selling more puts or maybe I will keep the stock and start selling covered calls. Either way, I’m going to have to do something, but I’m not going to roll. That was the decision. I wasn’t going to roll my putts. I was just going to take the stock. So I started on the 2nd of January, okay? First trade I did sold some puts, made 3.6% because the puts expired. Nice. Did another trade in February after that one expired. After the first expired, I did it in February. That one also expired. 3.2% gain. Then I did do one in March. 3.54% gain. Did one in April. 5.54% gain. Geez. This is easy, right? All I’m doing is selling naked puts on Walmart away from the money and I’m getting really nice monthly gains, and I’m not having to watch it. I’m not following. I’m not adjusting. I’m not doing anything. I’m selling the put, waiting till it expires, and then selling another one. That’s all I’m doing. Then, May came. Those puts expired. 2.83% gain. June, 1.85% gain. July, 3.9% gain. August, 2.53% gain. September, 2.75% gain. October, 4.89% gain. And November. Oh, November I finally get assigned. So on December 21st, Walmart closed at $87.13, which was 37 cents lower than my sold strike, so I had to buy the stock at $87.50. Now, you might be thinking, “Oh wow, Allen, yeah, anybody can make money selling naked puts in a bear market.” Walmart went up 42% the year before. It probably went up close to that in 2018 when you were doing it, right? Well, yes and no. 2018 was a year when Walmart traded from $98.59 at the beginning of the year. That’s when I started trading. It went up to $109.55, so it did go up. But then once it got there, it turned around and went down all the way to $82.40, and then it ended the year at $93.15, which means that the stock was actually negative 5.6% for the year. So if you had owned this stock, if you had bought it on January 2nd, first day of trading in 2018, and you held it to the end of the year, you would’ve lost 5.6%. Now, you would’ve gotten the dividends, so maybe it’s an even, but still that’s dead money. You’re not making any money on this stock if you are only buying it and holding it for the whole year. But if you had done what I did and you had sold naked puts the whole way, you would’ve made 34.65%. Let that sink in here. I was selling naked puts on a stock that went up and down and up again and closed down. So this was not a stock that just went up in a straight line. This stock lost money on the year. But because of the naked put strategy, I made 34%, okay? This is without owning any stock. I didn’t own the stock until very end of the year, until December 21 when I actually had to buy the shares. Until then, I didn’t own any stock, and I didn’t really spend much time on it. I just put the trade on, let it expire, and then put on another one every month. Takes literally five minutes or less. Didn’t watch the news on Walmart. Didn’t care about earnings, or announcements, or what they were doing, or how the stock was doing. Doesn’t matter. Didn’t care. All I did was sell a naked put every month. Let the one expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, sell more, let it expire, some more on a stock that went up or down. Now, I understand if this was a stock that had just gone straight up, then yeah, you could say, “Oh, yeah. It just went straight up. Of course you’ve made money.” True, but this was not that. This was a stock that went up and down, right?  The next one's gonna be a little bit weird. This was episode number 54. Learning to trade is learning is like learning how to snorkel. It's like, what snorkel did he say snorkel? Yeah. I said snorkel like snorkling, you know, you put the little two with your mouth, you put the goggles on and you go put your hand in the water and bring it through the tube and you look at all the grass or fish or whatever you could see down there right? So this was a video actually that I shot in Cancun when I had gone with my family and my boys and I, we were, it was an all-inclusive place. So they give you circling equipment if you need it and whatnot. So we took it and were snorkeling, and really, they were learning. I had done it once before, but I had forgotten about it. So I was trying to get used to it again. And then I was showing them how to do it. And they both loved it and it was awesome. It was a great experience. But while I was watching them learn, I kept thinking to myself, oh my God, the stuff that they're saying, there's stuff that the behaving new traders do the same things. And so I saw the parallels and I said, okay, how do I get them to up on how to get them to be successful at it? And at the same steps that you need to take also work when you're learning how to trade. So take a listen and maybe you'll learn how to snorkel, enter it at the same time.   I just wanted to shoot this quick video podcast to let you know that I learned something yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys and it’s really … Right behind me in the water, we took our kids snorkeling for the first time, the seven year old and eight year old boys. Sorry about the squinting it’s really sunny today, but we took them snorkeling for the first time and I don’t know if you’ve ever been snorkeling, but you get a little mask you put on and you get a little snorkel and you breathe through the snorkel and you look down in the water and you see whatever’s in there.   Now, there wasn’t much to see out here. There was some fish. You go a little bit further over there, there’s some seaweed and stuff. There were some pretty cool fish, a couple of big fish actually. They were really excited about that, but when they first started, I had prepped them ahead of time before we came on the trip. I told them, “Hey, we’re going to do snorkeling. It’s really cool. It’s really cool. You put this thing and you can see all the water and all this different world, all that stuff.” They were all excited. They were wanting to go. When we got here, it’s kind of like trading, right? You hear about it, you picture it in your mind. It’s like, “Oh my God, this is so cool. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah, I’m going to be awesome at it.” Then you get your equipment, you get your mask, your snorkel, you get some instruction. “Yeah, this is what I’m going to do.” Then you go do it for the first time and you totally freak out because it’s not easy and it’s not normal. You’re not used to it because you’re not breathing with your mouth anymore. I mean, you’ve got breathing with your nose, you have to breathe with your mouth. Then if you get a little water in the top of your snorkel, then drinking water and then the water is coming in your mask and your eyes are burning from the saltwater. Believe me, we had that same experience. Basically, we walked them through it. It’s the same thing with trading.  The first thing you have to do is you have to put your mask on, cover your nose, get used to breathing with your mouth. Open mouth breathing, breathe with your mouth. Once you got that done, you put the snorkel on. You got to make sure it’s all tight and snug and then you have to breathe with the snorkel. You’re just breathing with the snorkel. Once that’s done, then you stand in the shallow water, you put your head down and you just look around, focus on your breathing, don’t even worry about what you’re looking at, just focus on your breathing, making sure all your technical aspects are right, making sure you’re following all the rules, making sure step-by-step you’re not making any mistakes. Then once you have all that done, then that’s when you get into the water and you go deep and you start floating and then you can go a little bit farther. First time is going to freak out. You’re going to … It’s going to be like, “Oh, it’s not happening. It’s not happening the way exactly that I planned in my mind.” There’s a fish and you’ll freak out or there’s a piece of thing, something touching my foot. All that stuff happens, especially in trading. It doesn’t go exactly as you want, but if you go back and you stick to it, eventually you end up like my boys. I mean, they loved it. They loved it so much, they want to go again today and they want to go … There’s some shipwreck off the coast of the Island. They want to go over there. It blew me away how I couldn’t get them out of the water. I couldn’t get the snorkel off their faces because they were like, “No, no. More, more, more.” There’s nothing to see here, but they were so excited and that is how I want trading to be for you. Whatever your issues are right now, if it’s not going well, if you don’t know what steps to take, if you don’t know exactly what instruction you need, it’s there where it’s available. You just got to take the simple, simple, slow, slow steps, right? Get your stuff, get all your equipment, practice the easy things. Practice putting on paper trades. Getting on the trade, putting it on, getting out, putting it on, getting out. Practice finding trades. How do I find a trade? What do I go through? How do I make it streamlined as possible? Right? Because I don’t want you to just put on your stuff and just jump in the deep water right away. That’s what most people do. That’s why they get burned. I have a lot of people, a lot of students that told me, “Oh no, I don’t want to do paper trading. I’m going to put … I got $20,000 I’m just going to let it ride on one trade.” You’re freaking crazy because you’re going to lose a lot of money that way and they do. Then they come back and they’re like, “Yeah, I should’ve listened to you.” Well, that’s too late now. You just learned a very, very expensive lesson. Let’s not do that. Let’s do it snorkel time, right? One at a time, because in snorkeling, you mess it up, what happens? You just stand up. You drink some salt water, no big deal, but what could have happened and what almost happened with my second son is that he almost gave up. He tried it the first time. “Oh man, daddy, I don’t like it. This is horrible. I don’t want to do this anymore.” He threw the mask down and he threw the snorkel down and he just stormed away. That’s what we cannot have happened to you because if it does, then you lose out on a passive income stream that has the power to change your life. I mean, take a look around. I’m here on a weekday in Cancun, enjoying with my family and my trades are still working, right? I mean, you can see … There are not there many people here, right, because this is a private beach for a private resort. There’s not going to be a lot of people here. This is not like the cheapest resort on the place as you can imagine. That’s what comes with from trading properly and passive trading and the ability for you to be able to take vacations, not have to worry about your trades as much. I mean, I checked on my trades this morning. It’s actually the same time frame here in Mexico as it is back home for me. I checked on my trades this morning and they’re fine. They’re doing great. I’m making money, my options are … They got [inaudible 00:06:13] going on everyday so I’m not worried. I checked it. It’s all done, but I got to take the chance and the day, or at least a few hours, to teach my kids a skill or have an adventure with them that they are probably going to remember for the rest of your lives because I remember the first time I went snorkeling and it was with a school trip. It wasn’t with my parents, but they were here with their parents and I think they’re going to remember that for the rest of their life, which is pretty cool. All right, for our next clip, I am going to say something maybe a little controversial, maybe, maybe not. It depends on your perspective. Now there's a lot of people out there talking about FIRE, which is financially independent and retiring early. This one is coming from episode 47, where I talk about the same thing, but I talk about it with options. And I talk about why the fire thing sucks the way normally it's taught to do and why using options makes it so much better. You get the same result, but you have a lot more fun and you live a lot better until you get to the results. So if you're interested in retiring early, this one is a really good one for you to listen to.   The title of this episode is “FIRE”, which is Financially Independent Retire Early. That is a new movement. It’s not really new, but it’s a movement that has become popular lately, and you can read articles about it, and people are writing books about it, and blogs and there are even podcasts about it and everything. It’s basically retire early, become financially independent. They call it FIRE. Cool. Okay. This is especially big amongst millennials, because I guess they don’t want to work for the man, and they don’t want to work till they’re 65 years old. But it’s really cute, though, how millennials think that they create things that have been around for generations. It’s like the desire to retire early. It’s like, “Yeah, this FIRE thing. It’s cute that you gave a name to it, but you guys didn’t create this. People have been wanting to do this since the start of time, really.” Anyway, according to the tenants of FIRE, you have to do three things. You have to earn as much money as you can at work. You do have to work. You have to earn as much money as you can. And, you have to get a side hustle. A side hustle, just another name that they gave to a second job. Whether you’re working online, for yourself, as a freelancer or you actually have a second job, or you do something else like trading options, you have to have a side hustle to make as much money as you can. The second thing you have to do is you have to save as much money as you can. And they do this by basically living as paupers. That’s what they tell you to do. Live like a poor person, like a homeless person. You don’t need a car. You can ride the bus to work and take a bike, because that’s healthy for you. Eat less food. Don’t eat so much. Don’t go out to the movies. Watch Netflix at home, all these kinds of things, where you’re trying to save as much money as you can. And then, with that money that you save, you invest it in something like index funds. You put it away, let other people manage it, and that’s the cycle. Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, invest it. Now, if you follow that formula, it works. There are people in their 30s that have enough money saved that they can live off the interest off of their investments. Their investments or whatever they invested in is making money, and they can live off of that interest, which is awesome. They don’t have to work. Most of them don’t have kids. Even if they did, they still have to live frugally, of course. Because even in your 30s, even if you’re making $100000 a year as a job, you’re still not going to be able to save that much that you’re going to be earning a lot of income, or a lot of interest from your savings, from your investments, to live middle to upper class. These folks, they have retired. They’re not working, but they are living low to middle class, somewhere around there. That’s cool if you like that sort of thing. I don’t. I think you can have your cake and eat it, too. I want you to retire early and still be rich. That is doable, if you take control of your money. Now, I agree with the “make as much money as you can” part. I agree with that part. I agree with the “save as much as you can” part. Now, I don’t think you should live like a pauper. I think you should enjoy your life, even now, while you’re working, and you’re saving. I love driving. I love my car. I’m never going to give that up to save a couple hundred bucks in gas and insurance a month. But if that’s something that you want to do and that will get you to your goal faster, then do it. But your side hustle should be to learn to grow the savings you have as much as possible, instead of losing control of your money inside of a mutual fund. Does that make sense? Your side hustle, you have to make as much money as you can. You go to your job, you get your income, you save your money. What do you do with that money? Well, you can give it to somebody, index fund, mutual fund, and let them do it for you, and hopefully the market goes up or maybe it will go down and then pay fees for all that information and whatever. Or, you spend your time, and you learn how to do it for yourself, because there are people out there that will charge you to manage your money that are not going to do anything that you cannot do for yourself. You can actually do it much, much better. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what we’re trying to teach you. That’s the point of this podcast, to help you to learn how to do that. Take advantage of your own future, instead of giving it to somebody else, and then you can fire yourself much faster, years and years sooner. I did some calculations to prove my point, here. Over time, the stock market has averaged about eight percent a year, eight percent yearly return. That’s pretty good. But when you sell options like we do, we have the ability to make 10% a month. A month, not a year. Stock market, 8% a year, options 10% a month. Hmm. Which one is bigger? I don’t know. You could sell options one month out of the year, make 10%, and then take the rest of the year off if you wanted to. But these trades and these option selling I’m talking about is very high probability trades that can make you at least 10% a month. Ten percent, that’s my goal. That’s what I try to make every month. But I know traders that do a lot better than that every month. It’s definitely possible. Now, look. I know right now that might seem like a bit of a stretch to you, maybe if you’re not making 10%, or you don’t understand the strategies. Ten percent is a lot. That’s 120% a year. That is fabulous. If you asked me, “Oh, nobody every does that, Alan.” Uh, yeah. I do. I’ve done it before. It’s not impossible. But let’s be a lot more conservative. Even though 10% is possible, let’s just aim for 5% a month. That’s 60% a year. Still, very, very impressive. There are guys on Wall Street that will chop off their right arm if they could make 60% in a year. That’s really good. If you start with a $10000 account … Let’s say you start off with $10000 in your trading account and you’re making 5% a month, in 5 years, you would have over $186000. Five years from now, $10000 to 186000. That’s really, really good. What could that kind of money do for you? What would your life look like? Would you have a new car? Or maybe a new bike for you FIRE people? A new house? a new plane? I know, okay, okay. Maybe 5% seems a little high right now for you, maybe because you’re new to options and maybe you’ve tried to make it work before, and it didn’t work for some reason. All right. Let’s say you screw it up, and you don’t make 5%. You only make 3% a month. Let’s cut down our expectations. Do you think you could do that? If 5% is possible, and the odds are in your favor, do you think you could make 36% a year? That’s in addition to whatever you’re making on your stocks right now. You take that, and you add it to the 36%. That would be really good, right? Would you be happy with just 36% a year? That’s really good. I’d be happy with that, because in 5 years, if you have a $10000 account, your account goes from $10000 to $59000 in 5 years. That’s almost six times what you started with. We’re still talking about life changing money. It would be awesome, right? But I get it. Okay. Maybe 3% is a little high. How about if you totally, totally screw it up and you don’t even get 3% a month. What if you only get 2% a month? That is 60% less than our goal amount. But that’s still 24% a year. How would your account do, then? Making 2% a month? That would triple your account in five years. Your $10000 account in 5 years goes to $30000. And then, in another 5 years, from $30000, it goes to $98000, because it compounds. Every year, it’s just going to compound and compound and compound. Remember, we’re only starting with a $10000 account, here. $98000 in 10 years, that’s fire your boss money, right there. That is actually 2% a month is more than what Warren Buffet has made. He’s averaged 22% over his life. If you can do 24%, it’s possible you can do better than Warren Buffet. Now, he started with millions of dollars that other people gave him. I’m not going to compare that and say you can be the second richest man in the world, or whatever. I’m not going to say that. But you can do better, have better returns, than he does. These are all hypotheticals. Now, let’s look at a real example. Let’s figure this out. For most people, a really good average income would be about $100000 a year. Is that fair to say, you think? Would you be okay with that, if we used $100000 as an example? Let’s say we want to make that. We want to make $100000 a year income. That is $8334 a month, $100000 divided by 12 months. I’m going to leave taxes out of this, otherwise it’s just going to get too complicated. But first, what we need to do is we need to figure out how much money our account would have to be worth, because we’re trying to make $8334 a month. How much money would we need if we were making 2% a month, to be able to make that? That number is $416700. If you have an account that size, $416700, and you make 2% a month, you would be making $8334 a month. You would be making $100000 a year. We need an account of that size, $416000. But we don’t have that right now. Most of us don’t. You don’t have it. Okay. I get it. No problem. Right now, let’s say we only have $50000 in our account. I think that’s more normal. I think most of us have at least that, or maybe more, maybe a little bit less. It’s okay. But let’s just say we have $50000, and you can make 2% a month. If you have $50000, and you make 2% a month, question. How long do you think it will take you to get your account to be able to give us an income of $100000 a year? You start with $50000, you make 2% a month. How long will it take to get to $416000? You think it will take 20 years? You think it will take 30 years, 40 years, maybe? Well, I did the math on investor.gov. It’s a website. They got all these nice financial calculators that you can play with. It would take just nine years. Imagine that. If you’re 50 years old right now, you could be making $100000 a year in income before you hit 60. When you actually do retire, you’ll still be getting your Social Security, your pension and whatever else that you have in your investments. Sounds like a really sweet retirement to me. Am I right? If you have $50000 right now, and you only make 2% a month without any stock appreciation, in 9 years you would have a 6 figure income from just the income from your option trades. Oh, and on top of that, you’d be working about a couple hours a week. I think that’s the kicker. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. We’re going to be working hard? Uh, no. Now, for some of you, you might not have the $50000 right now, and that’s okay. This is an example. You could start with a lot less. We have traders in our community that are starting with less than $5000. When you have a smaller account, it just takes longer, but you can still do it. Trades are the same, strategies are the same. Everything is the same. But the important thing is that you need to start now. Can you imagine it? No more credit card debt. No more worries about college costs. No more worries about not having enough money for emergencies. That’s pretty cool, right? I think so. It is. It’s an amazing way to live. You could lose $80000 a year and not even be mad about it. My wife got mad, to be honest. She did. I told her it was going to be a slam dunk. I was like, “Yeah, yeah. It’s going to work. It’s going to work,” and then we lost the money and she got mad. I didn’t get mad, but she did. All right. But what if you are super, super new to investing, and you’re just awful at trading. You’re the worst. And you don’t even get 2% a month. What if you only get 1% a month? That’s 12% a year. How many of you guys would be happy with 12% a year. I would. I think so. That would mean that your $10000 account, in 5 years, increases to $18000, and that’s without any stock appreciation. That’s just the income from your option trades. Even if you’re only making 12% a year, 1% a month, it’s still significant money. It’s still better than what you can do in the stock market, because you put your money in the stock market … Stock market is getting 8% average, sometimes 7. Some people say seven, some people say eight. I just went eight. But if you calculate all the fees, all the commissions you pay, you’re going to be looking somewhere around 4%, 4 and a half percent is what most people get out of the stock market. If you can make 12% on your own, and you compound that money month, after month, after month, after month, because when you look at the stock market and when you put your money in an index fund or a mutual fund or whatever, that money doesn’t compound every month. It compounds every year. When we’re doing our option trades, these are monthly trades, sometimes less than a month. If you have $1000 in your account, or let’s say $10000, to keep it simple. Let’s say $10000, and you make 10% in a month, well now you have $11000. The next month, you’re not playing with $10000 anymore. You’re now playing with $11000. It compounds every single month, and that’s why it can grow so fast, much faster than in the stock market if you put it in an index fund. Does that make sense? Good. Because that’s what I want for you. If you want to retire early, if you want to be financially independent, you don’t want to live like a pauper, like a poor person, like a homeless person, then the best thing for you to do is follow the plan that I just laid out. Number one, try to make as much money from your job as you can. Number two, you’ve got to have options as your side hustle. You’ve got to be selling options. You’ve got to be trading options, selling them, not buying them. Number three, save as much money as you can. If you don’t need to go to that five star restaurant, don’t. If you don’t need to go to the movies, get Netflix. It’s fine. You’ll watch the same movies later on. Once in a while, you want to splurge, do it. Enjoy your life. Don’t live like a pauper, but don’t live above your means, either. Save as much money as you can. Spend your time that you have, your free time, your side hustle time, learning how to trade, selling options, practicing, practicing, practicing, getting better, asking questions, getting education. Find other traders that you can talk to and ask questions from, learn from, model what works, because I’ve done it. Others have done it. We have hundreds of people in our community that have done it and are doing it right now. We’ve interviewed people on the podcast that are doing it right now.    Okay. And lastly, we have episode 30. What should my first trade be? So this is for you folks who haven't tried options yet. Usually thinking, Hey, what do I do? What do I do? I'm afraid to get in. I don't want to lose money. I don't understand all this stuff yet. What should your first trade be? And that is the answer that I expose. In this next clip. So take a listen.   Really, what I would say is, okay, if you have an account already and you own maybe 100 shares of stock, okay? Hopefully it’s maybe an ETF, maybe it’s a big company like Coca Cola or Disney or something like that. I would go ahead and just place a covered call. That would be my first trade. That would be my advice to go in, take a look at it and say, you know what, let’s say Disney is trading at $100. In the next 30 days, I don’t think it’s gonna get to 110. That would be a 10% gain, it’s not gonna get to 110. I want to go and sell the 110 call. And maybe I only get $20 for it. That’s okay. This is not about how much money you can make, it’s about just getting your toe wet, just doing it, popping your cherry so to speak.   And so, that’s what my advice would be to be for that. Your first trade, if you have some stock, never done this before, covered call, it’s easy to get approved for. Almost nobody gets rejected when you apply to add options trading to your account if you just say, “Hey, I just want to do covered calls.” Because that’s the one that the brokers for some reason, they really think that’s the safest one even though it has as much risk as a naked put on the risk graph. That’s another story, we can get into that later so, if you have some shares and you want to just do it and you just want to get a taste of it, what option selling is all about, go ahead and sell one call above where your stock is trading at right now. We don’t want to lose your stock, we don’t want anything to happen with your stock, we want this option to expire and we want to take that money that we get, right?   So, let’s say we sell 10% above the price. So, if your stock is trading at 100, we sell 10% above that so at 110, we sell that 110 call option, do it for about a month, maybe a month to 45 days away and whatever you get. Maybe you get $15, maybe you get 30, $40, whatever you get, that money goes into your account. That’s yours. No matter what happens, that money is yours, you never have to give it back. And then for the rest of the time, until that option expires, I just want you to watch it. I just want you to look at it and be like, “Okay, I sold it and I got $30 for it,” let’s say for example. Let’s say you got 30 cents for it, which is $30 credit to you so, you got $30 and every day, that option goes down in value.   Little bit, by little bit, by little bit, by little bit, it’s gonna go down, down, down in value until hopefully, it will expire worthless and you’ll still have your stock, you’ll still have any dividends that you’ve gotten from the stock but you’ve also gotten the $30 that you got from the call option. So, that will give you a nice taste of what option selling is all about. It’s very basic, it’s the simplest trade you can do and if you hone the stock, you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock you can do that. Now, if you do not own stock already or if you have a small account then covered calls might not be the best for you.   There is something that I’ll call the, “Poor man’s covered call,” but that’s a little bit more complicated. We’re not gonna get into that right now. What I would say if you don’t have any stock and you still want to do your first option trade. I would say probably you do something that at our company, we call, “The layup spread.” Now, the layup spread is a credit spread with some twists to it.   The criteria for getting in and if you want to learn how we do layup spreads, then you can go to simonsaysoptions.com/layup and get the guide. It’s really cheap and it walks you through exactly how do you pick a trade, how does a trade work and what are you looking for, okay? So if you need, if you’ve never done it then pickup the guide, it’s really cheap and it will go step by step tell you how to do everything. Now, the reason that we call it, “The layup spread,” is because in basketball, the easiest trade you can make for most people is the layup, right? You’re standing really close to the basket, you just jump up, bank the ball and just throw it into the net and percentage wise, that’s the most made shot.   So, the other shot … we were thinking about calling it, “The dunk spread,” because if you go for a slam dunk, that’s kind of easy, right? That’s probably the easiest … that might be easier than the layup but for myself and for Simon, Simon is the one who wrote the guide and who does these, we really have never dunked in our life and so for us, a dunk is not the easiest trade or not the easiest shot in basketball because we have never done one, we couldn’t do one if our lives depended on it and so for us, it wasn’t the dunk that was the easiest, it’s the layup that’s the easiest and so, we called it, “The layup spread,” because it’s probably the easiest trade you can make and so, that’s why we call it that.   It’s a spread, meaning it has two options, you sell one and then you buy another one but really it’s something simple and basically what you do is you find a stock that you like, you want it to be … for your first trade, you want to find something that’s really big. Like an ETF, you can take a look at SPY, that’s the S&P 500 ETF, that’s a good one. Or find a large company, maybe Apple, Facebook, Google, any one of these large tech companies or just … those would be good to work with and you see the chart. Now, you don’t want to find a chart that’s just moving up and down, up and down all over the place, you want to find a stock that’s moving in one direction, smoothly. So, relatively if it’s going up, you want it to go on your screen, if you look at the chart, you want it to go from the lower left to the top right and you want it to go up slowly, slowly, slowly, not have really, really big moves but small moves and just generally going up, up, up. Or if you want one going down, you do the other way but you don’t want it to have big jumps and big movements.   You want it to be [inaudible 00:11:48] have a decent slope going up but smooth. We don’t want it to look like big hills and have gaps in the middle and what not. So, you go through some charts, find one that you like and then what you do is you want to sell away from the direction. So, if it’s going up then we want to sell some puts. So you take a look at the chart and say, “Okay, in the next month of so, I don’t think it’s gonna drop more than 15% in price,” and I can’t go through all the mechanics here. If you want to know in detail, then you have to get the guide but the answer to the question is what I’m trying to get to here.   So basically, how it works is if the stock is going up, we think it’s gonna keep going up, we don’t think it’s gonna drop but if it drops a little bit, it’s okay. We’re gonna pick a point where we do not think the stock is gonna go so, if it’s training at $100 and it’s just been going up, up, up, up, we don’t think it’s gonna go all the way down to 90 or 04 or 85 or even 80 so, we pick a number or we pick a price where we do not think the stock is gonna go in our timeframe. Maybe 30 days or 60 days, however long we want to sell the option for and then, that’s the option that we sell. That is the put option that we sell and then we buy another put option right below it, the next put option there. And you can get into this trade for as little as $100. The average trade is probably gonna be around $500, sometimes … you do that, that’s the spread you have. The probability’s in your favor, probably 80 to 90% probability of that working out and you can make 5%, 8%, 10, 12% in that short timeframe of a month or so. So, I think it’s a very good strategy because it’s less risk, it’s very calm. Basically, you’re just selling some options, have the odds in your favor, the trend is also in your favor, which is a good thing and then you just sit back and you just watch it and you just let it expire. In this particular strategy though, you have to know when you’re gonna get out. So, you can say, “I’m not gonna do anything. I’m not gonna adjust it, I’m not gonna change it. And so, if I’m risking $100, I have an opportunity to make $10 but I’m gonna risk $100 so if I lose it, I lose it.” So, in this case if you’re putting up $100 as your margin, you’re gonna lose $100 if you don’t do anything and the trade totally goes against you, 100% against you if it goes. If it doesn’t, the other option you have is that you can get out if you’re down a little bit or if you can learn to adjust, you can do that. There are different ways to play the trade in the beginning. If this is your first ever trade, I would probably put up 100 bucks and just not do anything, I would just watch it. That’s it. See how it goes, see how it feels. If you lose the 100 bucks, see how that feels. That’s a learning experience right then and there. You know? It’s like, “Oh man, I just sat here, I didn’t do anything. I lost 100 bucks, this is horrible, I don’t like this. I’m not gonna do this anymore.” But if you understand how it works, most of the time it’s gonna be profitable so, if it’s something that you enjoy doing, then you can look into it further. Because for some people, selling options might just be too boring. Putting on a trade and just waiting for it for a month, man, that sucks. I don’t want to do that. I want to be a gunslinger and I’m gonna be a better, I’m a poker player. I want to just, bet, bet, bet and hopefully I’ll hit the lottery. If that’s you, then option selling is not for you and this is not the Podcast for you anyway. But if this is your first trade, like I said, if you have 100 shares, covered call would be good. If you don’t have 100 shares, the layup spread is something that is right up your alley. Now, of course, you could do other things. You could be selling naked puts, you could be doing condors, butterflies, straddles or something. That is pretty popular, strangles and straddles are good for people but I think if this is your first ever trade, you’re just looking to get in, you’re just looking to get your toe wet, get an experience of what it’s really like, covered calls or layup spreads. And again, covered calls are really simple. You can get more information on our website and credit spreads are … the layup spread is a credit spread with a little bit of the twist and the twist is how Simon actually chooses the trades that he does because you can go into any stock and say, “Okay, I’m gonna do a credit right on this trade, on this stock.” But to really get maximum gain out of it, to make sure you win on most of your trades, you’re gonna have to do a little bit of digging, you’re gonna have to look at the chart, you’re gonna have to look at what stocks should you be trading and what stocks you should not be trading and so, Simon actually goes through that in the guide, in the layup guide and you can pick that up if you want to. It just puts more odds in your favor, so to speak, those are the two things I would recommend. Again, if you wanted to learn about covered calls, you can go optiongenius.com/covered calls, we’ll put the link in the show notes and then, if you want to learn about the layup guides, you can pick it up at at simonsaysoptions.com/layup guide. Alright? If you have any questions, please let me know and remember, trade with the odds in your favor. 

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

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

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

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

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

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