Succeeding Long Term As A Trader – Brian & Etienne of Desire to Trade – Episode 053

Hello and welcome to the Consistent Profits podcast brought to you by Inside out trading and Brian McAvoy where the focus is on consistency because when you have the consistent part down, profits become easy. Hi, Brian McAvoy here and this week we've got a little bit of a twist on things again. My buddy Etienne Krett, who runs Desire2Trade, Great guy, excellent interviewer. He's. I've had him on my podcast a couple of times. I've been on his a couple of times and just recently as well. And I wanted to share this one with you because it was really fun conversation. What we were talking about is you know, how to have a business mindset when you're taking a look at your trading and how you're approaching it and what that can mean for you as far as your trading being not only something that where you make money now, but you know, really making it into that long term ass financial asset that you want it to be. This is a really good conversation that we had. Again, I was on his podcast Desire to Trade, which I recommend you check out. He has a lot of good traders on there. Good, lots to learn there. So anyway, that's what this week's episode is going to be about. Just because it was such an excellent conversation with Etienne, I want to make sure that you know, you got in on this. If you're not already following him, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Onto the podcast, the first section is always the executive summary. Who are you going to have running the business and who's going to make the business successful and are they qualified? And so even if it's you starting your own business and it's just you, then you have to say, you have to look at it and say, all right, what skills do I bring to it? What skills am I missing? And I need to go fill those gaps so that the person running my trading business has the proper skill set to make it successful.

All right, so welcome to one of the things Today with Brian McAvoy, a full time trader who's got a lot of experience in the market trading, of course, and also helping traders to succeed kind of trading market business. So Brian, welcome to the podcast. Good to be here. Looking forward to talk with you on how to trade better. So good to have you here again.

Hey, hey, thanks for having me on again, man. It's always good to chat with you.

Definitely. For sure, for sure. As always. So tell me kind of what's going on these days? It's been a while we spoke. So tell Me kind of where you're at with trading and all the things around that kind of curious to hear.

Well, I mean, you know, it's going to be an interesting year. 2023 was interesting with all the buzz about AI and you know, early on last year with the bank failures and stuff like that. That was like the big topic with the bank failures early last year, a lot of people were, you know, expecting a crash right after that. But we do have some things that maybe, maybe you know, in store for this year. Of course, with the election, US elections and they're going to be a lot of elections around the world. My understanding is that there are like 20 or, excuse me, 64 countries that are having elections this year around the world, which is, could potentially make things really interesting. So, but anyway, now as far as the, as far as trading, for me, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just because, you know, there has been more focus on talking about trading as a business and a lot of people that are coming to me lately are wanting the long term help. In one of your YouTube videos that you put out recently, you were talking about how it's pretty easy to get profitable. The tough part is staying profitable, which is absolutely true. And so it's real important for traders to be thinking beyond just this month or this week and looking at the long term and making sure that yeah, I get profitable, I can stay profitable and where am I going to take it after that? So that's what's going on lately. That and some different perspectives on the psychology of trading. So we can have some fun with this today.

Yeah, definitely. What do you think is the difference between the guys who get profitable versus those who stay profitable long term and kind of make trading their main thing for the long term?

Well, the biggest thing, and I know it sounds like super elementary, but it's a simple fact is really even just having a plan a lot of times and you know, traders, people will jump into trading and it's like, you know, I just want to get making some money. And even if they do one of the things that cracks me up from a psychological standpoint, it's like, okay, I'm making money now what do I do and how do I, how do I keep it going or you know, and then, and then they're just kind of randomly, you know, it's a whole new world and they're trying, they're trying stuff and they wind up screwing themselves up. And, and part of the reason that I've found that that happens is their subconscious because they don't have a long term plan sorted out. Even if it's just a general plan. Their subconscious says, hey, wait a minute, you're beyond your skill set right now, so we're gonna smack you back down and make you rethink. You've heard of the book the E Myth by Michael Gerber, right?

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

Well, it's funny because in that book, it's like the theme of the book. He talks about the small business owner's journey, the entrepreneur's journey, and how most entrepreneurs, you know, they'll be, you know, they'll be getting, it's like somebody, they get downsized out of their corporation and so they'll go start a business doing the thing that they used to do at the company. And they're thinking, well, I know how to do this, let's all just start a business. But they don't know how to run a business. And so they'll, they'll go through a cycle where, you know, they're starting off, they get it off the ground and then it hits kind of like the adolescents and that's where they start to fail. And then they wind up having to scale back or it does utterly fail, but then they have to scale it back and get help, the right help, and launch it on a proper trajectory. And traders go through the same thing. And so it's really cool because yeah, even if you do get there, your subconscious will be sitting there saying, well, no, you don't have a plan, you're just messing around now. Now you're just gambling, you're playing on luck, even though, yeah, you figured out how to make you make a buck. And so we're going to reset you back to amateur status, starting over. And traders and business owners repeat that cycle over and over again. And I just find it kind of funny from a psychological standpoint, you wouldn't think that actually starting to make money would result in something that ultimately gives your subconscious a reason to sabotage you.

It's interesting how most traders don't see trading as a business. It's just like a cool way to make money as something they can start to, to do on the free time and kind of get rich with. But none has a real business where you kind of have to structure it properly and kind of run it correctly over time. What are some things you think people can do to kind of make this more of a business?

Funny thing is sitting down and writing a business. Well, actually the very first thing you need to do is look at it like a business and not just something to do to make money because. And this, this is one. I'm glad we're getting to this topic because it's really important that you do look at it like a business. Have you ever bought a business?

Never bought, no.

A couple of years ago I got into the acquisition space buying businesses and I learned a lot. I mean, I thought I knew a lot before I got in there and I got into acquisitions. Like, holy cow, this is a whole new world here. One of the things that I thought was really cool was how when you're looking at buying a business, there are two ways to look at the profitability of a business. And it depends on the type of business that it is. If you're looking at a big self sufficient business that's fully staffed and it doesn't need you to be there to run it, well, then you look at the ebitda. Earnings before interest taxes. Earnings before interest taxes, depreciation and amortization. So that's like the top line profit margin. And that's what you look at to say, okay, this is how profitable that company is, that business is. But if you're looking at buying a business where it's owner operated, meaning the owner of the business does the business, like maybe you're a roofer or a plumbing business or a carpenter or something like that, and again the owner's working there, then you have to look at it a little bit differently. You have to look at the profit of the business, but then you also have to factor in the pay for the person that does the business. Because if, if the guy is selling you his business and he's stepping out, either you got to go do that job or you got to pay somebody to go do that job. And if you're paying somebody to go do that job, yeah, there's standard industry standards for that paycheck. And if you're going to go do that job, you sure as heck don't want to be doing it for free. Because if you're buying it as an investment, you want to have your time covered and the profit, it still has to have a good, you know, a good return on your investment of the business. So it actually has two different, you know, profit points that it needs to create. And what a lot of traders don't do is they don't value their time. And here's a good example. I'm going to, I'm going to break this down to numbers so it puts things in perspective for everybody, let's say. And a lot of people come to Me, particularly forex traders, you know, they want to work with like a 5 to $10,000 account starting out. Okay, let's say you're working with a $10,000 account just to keep the numbers, all right? And you look to get a decent return on that. Cool. Well, if you're putting in, let's say, just two hours a day, 10 hours a week with your trading, okay, over the course, and you're getting paid 20 bucks an hour, okay, 10 hours a week, 20 bucks an hour, that's 200 bucks a week. And so over the course of a year, if you're trading full time, 50 weeks a year, that's 10 grand of your time that you're putting in. And you really need to be getting paid for that. Because if, let's say, your return on your trading is okay, you make maybe 10 or 20%, let's say your trading operation, it nets 10 grand profit at the end of the year. Well, it didn't really net that profit because it needs to pay you the ten grand before you consider the profit. Because your time is a cost of the business. And so if you're not factoring in your time, you might actually even be losing money versus one of your other options. You might be better off just putting your money in, like the S and P and let it make whatever the market makes. And you could go mow lawns and make 20 bucks an hour, and at the end of the year, be ten grand richer. Plus your money made money now. So it's important for everybody. And that's for every 10 hours that you're putting in per week. A lot of people are putting in way more than 10 hours a week. Let's say you're putting in 20 hours a week. That's 20 grand a year of your time. And that's only if you're valuing your time at 20 bucks an hour. Let's say you're an engineer or a doctor or something, and your hourly pay actually is like 50 or 100 bucks an hour. That's gone way up. And your time would be better spent at the end of the year. If you're wanting to make money, your time would be better spent again, just put your money over here where it will earn passively without you having to invest your time. You could go put your time somewhere else and make a lot more money at the end of the year, you'd be way better off. I was talking over with one of my clients, and he says, yeah, me and my buddies, there's this store down the street, and we were joking around with our trading. It's like, yeah, we'd be better off working over here because we're not making any money with our trading. So just, you know, looking at trading as a business, even from that perspective, I mean, one of the first things that I do when I take somebody on as a client is I'll say, you know, have you set personal goals? You know, what are your financial personal goals? You know, if, you know, you got some money over set aside over here and you're wanting to invest it, what do you. What do you want to, you know, what do you want to do with that? What are your objectives with that money? If you're wanting, you know, if you're putting it into trading, okay, cool. But have you even just decided, okay, I've got this money over here, I don't want to put it in a mutual fund and only make 7% a year. You got a lot of options. What kind of stuff would you want to put into it? I remember when you ever get calls from people, you know, then they're wanting to pitch you different investments.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as soon as I started trading, yeah, I'm getting calls every week. And I mean, it cracked me up. Some of the ideas that people are pitching, they sounded really attractive. You know, oil wells, cell phone towers. This is back in the day when you can invest in cell phone towers, you know, individually, movies, all kinds of stuff. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff. And they had a real attractive return. And some of them sounded pretty cool, and some of them were really tempting. And just because they were tempting and, you know, they had an attractive business case with them. It's like I found that they were eating up a lot of my time and mental energy. And so it's like, well, I need to be able to stop this because I don't want to be tormenting my brain and giving it too much to do. So it's like what I did is I sat down and I said, all right, if I'm going to look at an investment, I'm just going to make a list of criteria so that in 30 seconds on the phone with somebody, I can decide whether or not to continue the conversation. I said, okay, what types of things do I would I even want to invest in? I mean, you know, somebody comes to me and they say, you know, hey, Brian, invest in our escort service. I mean, maybe not. That's not something I would want to tell my mom about or my kids. So there's certain types of Businesses, even if it's a great financial opportunity, I just plain wouldn't want to get involved in those kind of businesses. Okay, so that's one of the criteria. And then the other thing is, with your money, you say, okay, financially, what am I looking at as far as rate of return on my money? If I put my money into it, how soon can I get that money back out of that investment so I can go put it somewhere else now that this is up and producing? And so there, you know, there's a little handful of criteria that you want to put together and say, before I even talk about trading or whatever kind of business it is, what are some of my personal criteria? So that if somebody does call me with an idea or I just happen to run across it within 30 seconds, I can decide yes or no, this is for me, or hey, let's keep talking. And it really saved me a lot of grief as far as trading as a business, though. And it is a business, anything that you get into where it's a regular activity that involves your time for money, it's a business. If you're not looking at your trading like a business, you're cheating yourself. And you may actually be setting yourself up for regret later on because it requires your time. So that's really the first step, is just looking at it, understanding it is a business and you need to look at it like that. And so once you've gotten your parameters set together, you know, put together, then you can start approaching your trading and say, all right, now I want to lay out a business plan. Because if you're going to be putting your money into something, I mean, you know, if you go to any angel investor or capital venturist or even a bank and say, I got a business idea, they're going to say, where's your business plan? Show us on paper that this going to work. And so you should insist on that personally if you're going to be investing your money into things. So that's the starting point is really just make sure you're looking at it for what it is and then, yeah, put together a plan for it. So that's like the starting point. And I noticed, you know, you do the same thing with your traders. The other thing, and this I really want to talk to, I wanted to talk about and have you do some more of the talking. But with your prop firm, you're really doing a good thing for traders because the other thing a lot of big mistake a lot of traders make is playing too small. They're playing so small, it's not worth their time, and it's not going to be worth their time for a few years, even if it is going well. So as far as Wikiprop for them, I mean, how quickly can somebody get to, say, a $50,000 account?

I mean, that's the thing, and that's the scary thing too is people could get, like in a day, they could gamble it out and kind of get there really fast. But again, that's not sustainable. So that's. There's like a middle ground between scaling up your account correctly, of course, and kind of going at it step by step over time and like go all in and try to go from like 5,000 to, let's say, like $500,000 on their account.

So. Well, what would you consider a reasonable timeframe then? If somebody's. If some. Well, and the prop firms. The other thing I appreciate about the prop firms, and they're really doing everybody a lot of a big favor. You know, some people bitch and they say, well, you know, prop firms are just scamming everybody, you know, because you got to pay the fees and there's all these restrictions and you can lose your account and you have to pay money to get started again and all this stuff. So the profiles are just scamming everybody. And I'm like, no, they're actually doing you a favor because if you're showing up and you're not bringing the skills, yeah, of course they're not going to hand you their money. So they're making you up your game, which is exactly what you need to do. Show up with the skills. Sure, it's a good deal now. And that's all they're looking for. Show up and prove that you can make money with trading. Here. Here's our capital. Have at it. And so that's really cool. Well, what would you consider a reasonable time frame for somebody to get to, say, a 50 or $100,000 account? Yeah, to do it, you know, immediately or, you know, too fast. But what would you consider a reasonable time frame to get there?

So given that they have the mindset to get there, $50,000 for them is like an extreme amount of money, like not too crazy. Then I think a couple of weeks to a few months is doable. So as long as they can trade, they can achieve the target of the profile, which is in most cases, like 10%. Once they can get there, then that's just the matter of time of getting to achieve a 10% target on the account. So a couple of weeks Maybe a few months.

Yeah, cool. And I agree with that. That is a reasonable time frame and I hope for everybody that's listening, paying attention, if you're not already trading with a reasonable amount of money, with a reasonable amount of capital, even if it's going well, again, you still have to account for your time because otherwise if it's going to take you like if you're trading with your own money and it's going to take you three years to where you can build your account up to where you're making a good paycheck and a good return on your money, that's a whole lot of time that you shouldn't do it. And the prop firms, they can help you accelerate it. So yeah, pretty quickly, like a real business, you get to a sustainable point profit wise that, yeah, you're earning a decent paycheck and the business is sustaining itself and growing in a reasonable period of time. And so many traders take years, like five plus. So. All right, well, if some, what are. When somebody's coming to the prop firm, what other expectations should they have besides, yeah, okay, I need to bring my skills and it's going to take a few weeks to a few months. Are there any other particular expectations they need to have, be ready for?

I mean, the main thing is like being able to lower your size too. Like, you don't want to trade with a proform, like have it like a 2%, 3% risk per trade. That's just unrealistic because like the firm has limits on how much money they can lose for sure, because they can like just throw out all the capital they have on the, the one trader. So most people have to reduce their risk per trade to like maybe 0.5% or maybe a little bit less and just be able to kind of fit in that, that maximum risk that they have the maximum trade on. But from there it's pretty much the same as trading on your own account unless you. Except you have more and more capital.

Yeah, the risk management, that's. And again, that's where prop firms are doing everybody a big favor because they're forcing everybody to give proper attention to risk management. I mean, working with people who've traded their own money. I don't know about you, but. And I'm sure you have as long as you've been trading and working with traders. It kills me how many traders come to me and they're like, yeah, Brian, you know, I've lost, you know, 100, 200, $500,000 over my career and it's like, good, man. It almost makes me want to throw up just thinking about it, you know, because it's like, I know how I felt losing the money that I did. And fortunately for me, it was only 45 grand my first year. But, yeah, I could just. Man. And some man, some traders. I had this one guy call me up one day, and it was so funny. I could hear in his voice as soon as we started talking, and he's like, brian, you know, here's my situation. If I could just get a couple. Couple thousand dollars, I know I can trade my way out of it. I'm like, okay, slow down, slow down. What are you talking about? He says, well, you know, I've been. I've been trading for about a year now, and, man, I'm just. I'm loving trading, but I'm having a tough time with it. And I'm like, so how much have you lost so far? Well, I've kind of wiped out our savings. You know, my wife and I. Savings. And. Well, I think I might have lost our house. And I've also kind of gone through her inheritance. And she's still with you? Well, she doesn't know about it. And I'm like, dude, you. You stop talking about trading. You need to get off the phone and go hide anything around the house that could be used as a weapon and sit down and have a talk with your wife, man.

That's crazy. For sure.

She's not gonna divorce you. She's gonna kill you. And it was funny because nobody had said that to him. It's like nobody had told him. It's like, dude, just stop. So he was thinking big. He's just doing it the wrong way.

Now, I kind of ask you, because some people are gonna take the opposite side of this. They're gonna say, oh, like, yeah, Brian talks about the early salary and stuff, and how, like, it's important to have decent capital, but he just want to rush us. And, like, we have to take time to learn and practice on small accounts, and then once we profitable, once we've proven that we can get there, then go on bigger account. So how would you respond to that? What I've seen is that people want to take their time. They want to learn, they want to be able to practice. They don't mind doing, like, 40 hours a week and kind of learning trading because they know eventually they might be able to make money with it. Not smart in the moment, but maybe smarter for the long game. You tell me.

I don't know. Oh, yeah. No. By all means I don't encourage anybody to rush things or to try to shortcut stuff. The main thing that I really want people to be aware of, though, is, again, treating it like a business. If you're starting trading and you're starting your own operation, you're going to be trading and working there. Yeah, it's a business. And so there is going to be a startup phase where you're putting the business together, you're working, you know, getting it working, figuring out the kinks and getting it to a sustainable point. And there is going to be a startup phase, just like with any other business. And so to allow for that and be patient enough to get through that, yes, by all means. I don't want anybody to shortcut that. The main thing is you need to be reasonable about it, though, and say, all right, I'll give it six months or I'll give it a year. But if at a year I'm not where I think I should be or even close, then I need to stop and reassess how I'm approaching it. Because obviously, the way I'm going about it isn't working. And so rather than just keep plodding along and before you know it, five years have gone by and you're still not making money. It's like, no, you should have stopped after a reasonable time and said, I need to assess how things are going and do I need to make changes? You know, instead of maybe trying to learn from YouTube videos, I go get some help and hire a coach instead of trying to do it on my own. I mean, for me, in a way, I was lucky that it only took me a year to blow up my account and get some of the hard lessons, because it forced me to step back and say, yeah, I got to stop and take a look at this. So many people that come to me, man, I mean, they've been at. They've been at it for four or five years, and they're still struggling with the same stuff. And it's like, no, I'm glad that you're on the phone with me or, you know, on a zoom call, because, yeah, it's good that you're finally saying I need to change direction. But the thing is with trading, one of the biggest frustrations so many people have with trading is they look at it and they're like, it looks so simple. It shouldn't be this freaking hard. I shouldn't be three years into this, and I still can't make money. That's one of the biggest frustrations is it looks simple enough. And to actually go and make money with it, it's like, yeah, it's just, you know, I just can't seem to make it work. And I'm not stupid, you know, so most people, again, into trading are competent, intelligent people. And so, you know, they get into trading and they just take a beating. And it's. Yeah, it's frustrating because it's like, I'm not dumb. Why is this kicking my butt? And so I know this is a long answer, but again, to get help is one of probably the biggest things. When I was going through my first year, I was trying to learn on my own and pick up nuggets here and there and thinking, yeah, I'm smart enough, I can handle it all on my own. And what I realized is I was my own limitation because I essentially was the one training myself and I didn't know what I was doing. And so I needed to just be honest about it with myself and say, yeah, I don't know what I don't know and I can't see what I can't see. I need to go talk to somebody who's already, who's made it and figured this stuff out already and learn from them because they're going to be able to fill in the gaps. For me, that's really one of the biggest things. Again, treating it like a business. If you look at a regular formal business plan for any normal business, the first section is always the executive summary. Who are you going to have running the business and who's going to make the business business successful and are they qualified? And so even if it's you starting your own business and it's just you, then you have to say, you have to look at it and say, all right, what skills do I bring to it? What skills am I missing? And I need to go fill those gaps so that the person running my trading business has the proper skill set to make it successful. And for a lot of traders, you know, they've just been employees their entire lives, and so they don't know what it's like to start up and run a business. They're lacking that skill set. They have that learning curve in addition to learning how to trade. And so back to the thing with the time frame. It's like, okay, yeah, allow enough time. Understand? Yeah, I've got to learn how to start up and run a business. I got to learn trading. And also, I'll allow six months for that and pursue that learning. And then at the end of six months, I should be in pretty good shape. I should be able at least 80% of the way there. And if I'm not, again, step back and reassess. So shortcutting it. No, trying to cheat the system. Markets won't let you do that. The markets will keep you in check.

When it comes to strategies. How do you feel, though, to the noise of all these strategies out there? All these YouTube videos talking about, like, which strategy is the best, all that stuff, like trying to guide you to trade, something specific, but then that might not work in the end.

Well, as far as strategies, and yeah, like you just said, there are a jillion ways to trade. Literally, there are millions of permutations on how a person can trade. If you look at all the different strategies, I mean, years ago I started listing them out, just the general strategies. You know, you got ganttrating, Elliott Wave, you know, trend following, all the different general strategies, I started listing them out. I stopped counting after 40. There are just a ton of ways to trade. And that's like at the high level, that's before you even get into, you know, what kind of time frame am I going to trade, what am I going to trade, what indicators am I going to use, what settings, all that kind of stuff. So there's like a whole pile of variables. And if you look at all the possible combinations of those variables and the different permutations, it's like, yeah, you got a million choices. And so that's part of what I put together about a little over a month ago is I call it the perfect strategy guide. And it's nine criteria, the things that you need to look at. As far as a trading strategy, it's like, okay, go through this checklist and ask these questions. And when you're looking at a strategy, and that'll let you know if it's a good fit for you. The biggest thing that you want to make sure you pay attention to with your strategy is is it a good fit for you? Is it something that you like it, you're comfortable with it, you agree with it, it just kind of resonates with how you think and how you look at the markets in general. And again, you have some, you know, you like it, it resonates with you as a person, plus meeting some other criteria, that's super important. Because if you're trying to work with something that doesn't, you're going to have some internal conflict, and that's not going to be helpful. I mean, if you're, you know, just inherently, you don't trust the trend, don't be a trend follower. It's just, it's going to create some friction points and you don't have to, you have tons of other choices and tons of different ways you can trade. So you don't have to sit there and fight that. And that's the thing, you don't want to be fighting anything. That's part of your nature.

People have got maybe their strategies and they've been finding out something that they did that worked with them. When it comes to the psychology of training for a living, you've got like these ups and downs. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you've got drawdowns. How does someone kind of filter out with. Because there's definitely a business aspect, but it's also the aspect of emotions, like the human aspect of the psychology behind it. Give me an introduction on how that works out and what you can do about it to kind of work with trading psychology better.

One of the biggest things about the psychology of trading and it's, it's a huge, I mean it's a huge topic, been around forever because yeah, it is one of the challenging aspects of trading. But again, this isn't something that's unique to trading. This, if you think about it with trading, it's a performance sport. It really is. It's just like a lot of other performance sports because when you're trading you have to show up and you have to be bringing your A game and if you're not, then yeah, you're going to make mistakes and it's going to be stressful and it's going to be emotional. And so as far as the psychology of trading, from a general perspective, what you want to do is you want to, don't worry about trying to control your emotions. I mean, if you're an emotional wreck every day, you know, fighting with your emotions, you know, the big four, you know, fear, greed, hope and despair. And you know, it's just a constant battle for you that's telling you something, that's telling you that you need to get yourself together and in the primary regard for most traders. And this will be a little hard to accept at first but if, hear me out on this, it's a performance sport. So one of the biggest things is competence and confidence. If you take somebody, and I love this example because I found this to be absolutely true and again, it's from the business world, Peter principal and stuff like that. But if you take somebody of reasonable intelligence and you throw them into a challenging activity that requires specific skills but you don't Give them the training for it. It's going to be rough and it's, you know, they're not likely to do well. A lot of mistakes are going to be made. It's going to be emotional and it's, it's going to be, you know, impossible for it not to be stressful. But if you take that same person and you give them the proper training where now, yeah, they know what the heck they're doing, they know they're good, they know they're solid. They're just going to go do their thing. And trading is no different. So many traders, they jump into it, they get a basic level education. It's like, okay, yeah, I understand how it works. I understand what I'm supposed to do. And they kind of try to jump right to an intermediate level of trading and they've jumped too far ahead. They've tried to shortcut it, maybe not even intentionally, but that's what's happened. And so they're trying to trade at a level that's really beyond their skills and it's going to be rough. I mean, I've talked to a lot of traders, you probably have to, where it's like they're so frustrated with it. I mean, they're at the point of tears and, you know, they're talking and then their voice is shaking. You can see it in their face. It's like they almost want to cry. And that's the thing. And the cool thing about it is when you skill up and you get the right training, it gets a whole lot easier. I mean, any activity that you're doing, if you're good at it, is it stressful? Is it emotional? Do you have problem keeping yourself, you know, your emotions under control? No, you just go do your thing. But if you're not that good at it, it's rough. And if you, if. And so really it's focusing on competence and getting good at it and not just getting good at placing trades. There are a variety of skills. There's like, I was listing them out the other day. There are actually over 30 specific skills that go with being a trader. A handful. I'm like 10 of them are, you know, with the business aspect of it, but just being a trader, there's over 20 specific skills that you need. And of all the skills that you've got are as, you know how to log into my platform and I know how to place trades and you're missing most of those skills. Again, it's going to be rough. So from a psychological standpoint, if you Just focus on learning all that. You need to learn to do this and be good at it. Where yeah, you can go to the markets and it's like, yeah, I know what I'm doing. And there's not the anxiety. That by itself takes care of 98% of the psychology of trading. I mean, think about it. If you've got a strategy and you've properly systemized it and you've practiced with it, you've skilled up, you've taken care of all the skill part of it and you've, you just plain, you know the system solid and you know that you're solid trading it. You can go to the markets every day and it's going to be okay. And that is, that's the big difference. So many traders are like, well I think I've got a good strategy, I hope it's a good strategy. And man, I've been having a rough time and you know, my record so far isn't very good with the execution part of it. So you know, I hope I do okay. Well, yeah, you're in an emotional state before you even, you know, turn on your computer. And so you need to get yourself where it's like, yeah, you've got a strategy, you know is solid and you know that you're solid trading it. And when you get to that point again, a lot of psychological issues go away. I mean so many people that get into trading, their daily job is so much more difficult and more sophisticated than trading. I mean a lot of people come, you know, get into trading, they're engineers, they're professionals, software programmers, project managers. And they're handing handling these 50 million dollar projects and all this kind of stuff. And so many of the occupations are so much more sophisticated and difficult in trading and they handle it every day without any issue. It's like no big deal, you got to go to the job. Some days are better than others. But you know, nothing wrecking my life trading, holy crap, man, I just losing my mind. It's like it's because you haven't gotten trained yet. And the worst thing about it is for most traders, myself included, not only are they not getting good training, they're getting bad training. And here's what I'm talking about. My first year of trading I was getting bad training because I'm going to go into the trading every day and I didn't know what I was doing. So I'm practicing bad trading, I'm practicing emotional trading, I'm practicing, you know, strategy chasing and all kinds of stuff and that's what I was practicing. And if you think about it, that was my training. That's what I was training myself to do. That's how I was wiring my head and so many other traders. And so really one of the, one of the things that's really important for traders from a psychological standpoint is if you really want to affect change, one of the first things you have to do is change your experience with training, with trading. You have to go about things differently. You can't just keep doing what you've been doing and expect anything to change. At some point you have to stop with the bad training and the bad practices and get that training. So now you can rewire yourself, right, undo some of that damage and rewire your head the right way so that, yeah, now you know how to be a trader and you know how to go to trading and be settled down with it and be okay. And the nice thing about it is when you get settled down and you have that confidence, you can be relaxed going to the market. You can see the market moves without feeling like you have to chase them. So many of the mistakes that traders make is they're seeing all these market moves and because they're not quite as solid as they should be with their strategy and themselves, they feel the need to chase all this stuff that they're seeing. And that's one of the big fomos that kills them.

Definitely a lot of good wisdom there. And I know you do a lot of good work to help traders succeed and kind of put things back in place. So tell me where people can find you or connect with you after this podcast. They want to reach out or learn from you.

Well, best places at my website, Inside Out Trading. If you want to get up and catch me on YouTube. Trader Brian at TraderBrian. And yeah, those are probably two best places, but Inside Out Trading and I got a lot of free resources there and my focus generally is I'm not going to be, you know, pimping, you know, particular strategies and stuff like that. My thing is I want to help you get good at this so that you can enjoy it and it is what you want it to be. But you got to decide that you want to get good at this. And if it's going to be a long term thing for you, you want to do this for the rest of your life, you got the passion for trading, decide that you don't want to just make money, you want to get good at this. Because when you get good at it, the better you get, the easier it gets. That's the best thing about it. If you focus on skills and you focus on yourself and developing yourself, the more you grow and develop, the easier it gets. And that is cool. That is really cool. If you're tired of this being hard, stop chasing strategies, stop chasing tools, focus on, invest in yourself and up your game and it'll get a whole lot easier. And that's the, that's the sweet thing about it.

I'll put those links below the video in the podcast description. People can check out directly. And Brian, appreciate you time as always. Good lessons here. Good talk for sure. And let's do this again and kind of COVID more next time.

Definitely. Thank you for joining us today on the Consistent Profits podcast brought to you by Inside Out Trading. Make sure to swing by InsideOutTrading.com and pick up your free copy of break the cycle 10 things you can do to stop reinforcing the past and get your trading on the right track. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe on your favorite channel and we'll see you on the next episode. Cheers.