Trader Training - Setting Yourself Up to Succeed

Hi, Brian McAvoy here with Inside Out Trading. And today we're going to talk about something that you really need to do if you want to make it as a trader. And this will sound a little obvious at first, but I get emails and people contacting me all the time and they're not doing this. And what I'm talking about is really setting yourself up for success. It's so easy to jump into trading not knowing anything that's going on. It's like when I first started, I had no clue what trading was about. I'd never done anything like it before. And so I didn't even really think it through. I had to learn a lot of stuff the hard way. But here's a few things that I'm talking about that really, again, it just will help you set yourself up for success. Thing number one, it kills me how many people. And don't feel bad if this is you, but really wake up, you can't trade if financially your back is against the wall. That's just no way to make it. If you have a ton of financial pressure on you, if you don't have enough capital to trade with, where you can afford to have take a loss on a trade, you don't want to hit your stop. If you can't do that because money is so tight for you, you need to stop trading with real money because the odds are severely against you. If you're not trading with proper capital, seriously, you're putting odds against yourself really bad. First step, make sure that you do have proper capital to trade with and that means enough. Like they say in the disclosures, when you open your account, it is money that you can afford to lo and it won't affect your standard of living, your quality of life, or your ability to put food on the table. So it really does. You need to have enough money so that if you have a bad week, a bad day, whatever, you're okay. You can be okay with it. It's not going to cause you a lot of lost sleep, okay? Second thing is making sure that you do have a method and preferably it's well systemized that you really are fluent with and you have a lot of faith in it. It's something you really believe in and you're good with it. If you don't have a system that you're good with, again, don't trade real money just to be trading. Keep looking until you find something that does suit you. Get good with it. So you establish that confidence. Practice. That's what a sim account is really for. It's not just to play around, it's to go practice your system and get good with it. So when you're taking it to the market, you have faith in what you're doing, you have that confidence that you know what you're doing. Really step one in making sure you have a system that you really can believe in and have that confidence in is documenting it properly. You get it written down, that way you're good and clear on it. You take it to the SIM account, you practice it so you know what you're doing with it, you get good with it, you have that confidence and you run your numbers on it, make sure that you know, don't say it's a good system. In quality and in business world, qualitative words like that don't count for anything. You need to be able to put numbers to things. So make sure you've got your system properly tested, you know your metrics on it so you know what to expect if you don't. Again, don't be trading real money until you do, because you're not here to lose your money. You want to be able to go to the markets with a reasonable confidence that you're going to be okay and that you're going to make money. Not hoping a reasonable confidence that yes, you know, the odds are in your favor. So that's the second one, the third one, and really this one should come first for most people, it doesn't. Locating a system, getting it all proven out, all that kind of stuff is part of putting together a real business plan. A business plan, it's so huge as far as setting yourself up for success, because that's when you've gotten clear on what you're wanting to do with the big picture and how you're going to get there, how you're going to make that vision a reality. That's what a business plan really is. And that's where you work through all the issues, all the details of how to make it happen. You don't jump into it and say, well, I'll figure it out as I go, or as a lot of people, and I've even had a few people actually admit this, which surprised me that anybody would actually admit it. But a lot of traders and even small business owners, they just think, well, if I can just get profitable, everything will be okay. And it doesn't work like that. That's how you get into a business where you're working 70 hours a week and never making enough money. That's a position A lot of small business owners are in my consulting. I have a lot of people come to me and that's exactly the position they're in. Even in businesses that they've had going for five or 10 or 15 years, yeah, they've managed to struggle and survive. But the biggest complaint they're coming to me with is working way too many hours and I'm not making any money. And so just getting profitable to where you can survive is not the way to do it. You need a good business plan. So you wind up working the hours and getting the lifestyle out of your business that you want and the income and it's running the way you want and you can feel comfortable about it and you're not always just struggling to survive. So the business plan really is crucial to again, setting yourself up for success so that you're going into the game, you know that you're likely to win and come out of it in a reasonable period of time in a fashion that you want. Now, if you don't have a business plan, at the very, very, very least, put together a budget for the next 12 months and stick to it. Just say, this is how much I'm going to allot for it. These are going to be my income goals. Give yourself a little bit of time to learn to get yourself together. And like I said, if you don't have your system set up yet, don't trade, live until you do and put some time in there to get that squared away. So like I said, these are three real simple things that you can do that go a long way towards setting yourself up to succeed. First of all, make sure you got enough money to trade with that you can trade and trade comfortably and trade in a manner that you know you should. And it's not going to cause you lost sleep. You can stick to your system because you're not having to make money on this trade and that kind of stuff. So step one, proper capitalization. Step two, a system that you've got, you've documented it well, you have tested it, you know the numbers on it, you've gotten fluent and good with it. So you know, you have that confidence that it will work. And yes, a business plan, at the extreme least, a budget, if you can put together a full business plan, it just helps you even more. The reason I'm putting this together is I've been getting emails from different people, you know, telling me about their different situations and stuff like this. And these are some of the things that people are skipping and don't feel bad if it's you, don't feel bad, I'm not putting you down. I did the same thing. Like I said, I jumped into this occupation not having a clue and so I had to figure it out the hard way. Trying to save you some headaches. I hope you found this video helpful and hopefully you have. If you have, please do share it with your friends. If you like this video. I've produced a number of other videos. I'm going to be producing more. Go ahead and subscribe to my channel. If you want to go ahead and post this on your Facebook, Facebook page, your Google account, but do share it with your friends. If you found this helpful and you think you know other people that would benefit from it, please do share it. You know, pay it forward. Oh and you know, do please leave a comment down below. You know, let me know what you think about all this. You know, if you've got a trading playlist of your favorite trading videos, you know, go ahead and add this to your playlist, maybe start a new one again. Hopefully this has been helpful for you. And if you'd like to get on my email list so that you get notified anytime I publish anything, whether it's an article or a video or an audio or an interview with maybe a podcast or whatever, head on over to InsideOutTrading.com and go ahead and subscribe there. I've got some free goodies for you if you'd like there. And you can also find out about the other things that I have going on that are all designed to help you become a better, more competent and successful, fully self sufficient, really truly independent trader. So if you have any questions, shoot me an email briansideouttrading.com Let me know how I can help you. If you get questions on this. With your trading system getting solid on that, putting together a business plan again, if you want to shoot me an email, let me know how I can best help you right now. Talk to you soon. Cheers.