Episode 061: Timothy Sykes - Penny Stocks, Traveling The World, and Impacting Others

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What's going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome to episode 61 of the Rise of the Young podcast. Today I have a special guest for you guys, Timothy Sykes. I really appreciate you coming on, man. I know that you've made millions of dollars trading penny stocks, traveled the world, and I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on the Rise of the Young podcast.

No, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely, man. So I want to start it off because I know I've learned a lot from you, followed you on social media, and I know I did a brief little intro. But for everyone that may not know what you're up to nowadays, I just want to catch them up to speed just so they can kind of know who. Who you are and what you're currently doing.

Yeah, you know, as you said, I made millions from penny stocks. I started with my bar mitzvah money of roughly $12,000. Penny stocks are pretty much universally hated. I didn't choose to be a penny stock trader. I'm just fucking good at it. Oh. Can I swear? Yeah, you're good. You're good for young people. I don't want to corrupt my swearing. You're good to go. I'm good at it. And I've been doing this for, you know, nearly 20 years now. I've been teaching for 10 I have several millionaire students now. My top student has turned 1,500 of his own money into over 6 million in seven years. It's not some get rich quick scheme. It's not about hot stock picks. It's about learning how the stock market works, how penny stocks work, how to spot scams. That's what I teach. I have over 5,000 video lessons, probably about a thousand live webinars now, all archived for my students. I've got students now in 100 plus countries. And I travel, I visit with the students. And now I have my charity, the Timothy Sykes foundation, which I've donated $4 million to in just three years. And my goal is to build a thousand schools. So far we have about 40 of them. So, you know, I'm teaching, I'm traveling, I'm trading, I'm living.

Amazing, man. So it seems like you're super busy and like I said, I definitely appreciate you hopping on this quick 20, 25 minutes we have together, man. But so like I said, I know that this entire podcast is called the Rise of the Young Podcast. There is a lot of young entrepreneurs, people that are making stuff happen when it comes to this current social media age. But real quick, before we kind of dive into it, number one, where are you originally from, just so the audience can kind of get some past preferences?

Yeah, I'm from a small town in Connecticut. Almost the entire town is still there, fucking doing nothing as usual. Connecticut is fucking boring. I'm grateful for the Internet. This is the most exciting time to be alive. My top student just graduated college. Most of my millionaire students are still in college. There are studies that say you learn your best before you're age 25 and it's all fucking downhill. I encourage people to learn as soon as possible. Learn about finance, use the Internet. This is the most exciting time to be alive because of the educational potential. And most people just aren't taking advantage of it. They're putting little fucking filters and little cheetah ears on their videos and they think that's what the Internet is for. That's like maybe caveman, like caveman used to draw little things like the cave. That's what like Snapchat and shit reminds me of right now. We gotta take it to the next level. Like, use it to expand. Use it to change your life just as it's changed mine 100%.

It's funny that you brought that up because I'm from a small town of Virginia and everyone just doing the same thing. And it's funny that you bring up college and stuff because I graduated high school in about three weeks. And over the last year and a half I've been traveling, meet a lot of amazing people. And I just want to kind of touch on your point of like, when it comes to, you said you're from a small town and you're the oddball that kind of did things differently and obviously you've gotten completely different results than anyone. So I know that we have not that much time. But a question before I kind of dive into everything you got going on when it comes to schooling, was that for you? Not for you? Did you love it? Hate it? How was that entire process?

I mean, schooling serves its purposes. Like you get connections, you learn how to like socialize. Like it's fun. I mean, I learned how to drink and still function. Yeah, I think that it's good structure, but at the same time, like, you know, I love that you're doing this straight out of high school. You don't need to go to college. You don't need to pay, you know, six figures to go into student loan debt, which even if you declare bankruptcy, you still have to pay your student loan debt. Like, it's a pretty sentence. I would not go to college if I had it all to do again. I took night classes with weird ESL students and 40 year old people who had saved up for college because I was trading stocks during the day. So even when I was in college, I had a different experience. I just think that this is such a new age and new technologies allowing you to learn on your own. You don't need to pay. You don't need to pay that much. I do encourage you to pay a little to invest in your education. My courses cost money. I also have a thousand videos on YouTube. So if you're totally broke, you can still learn. I have several homeless students. My videos keep them warm at night. But the Internet is such a game changer. This is like the printing press. The printing press changed the world a few centuries ago. The Internet is changing the world and it's not even really like 22, 23 years old. We forget how new this invention is and how it's going to keep evolving. There's going to be many more millionaires and billionaires created if you utilize it. If you follow me on social media, I post a lot of photos and videos of my travels. It's to inspire people to study. It's inspiring to people to see that I can still make money. When I'm in the rice fields of Bali, I'm going Back to Bali in a few weeks. I have three new schools being built because I love building schools. Because again, in the third world countries they don't really have Internet, so they need education. But we're in the First World. And in the First World you can take advantage of this new technology and you should. If I was in high school, if I was in college, I'm not saying drop out. Many people are just talentless. So they need those degrees to fall back on. They're not that smart, they're not that they don't have that much of a future. They can study as much as they want, but they're still going to be mediocre. So college is good. The world still needs nine to five people. But if you think that you have the potential to break out of the system and break out of the Matrix, you know I'm fucking Morpheus.

100%. 100%. So that being said, so you've been to over 100 countries in how long? Because I know you've been everywhere. So what's the timeframe of traveling to those 100 countries?

Yeah, I mean I've been trading for 19 years. I got started traveling a little earlier. I did tennis, Europe, I was a tennis player. So I went around all of Europe playing little semi pro tennis. Then I got injured. And this is what my dad calls the million dollar injury. That's what got me into stock. I did a semester at sea. I highly encourage you to do that. If you are in college, you go around the world on a cruise ship. I don't know if they're still doing that. I think they are.

I haven't heard of it, but that's cool.

A few people fell off the boat during happy hours. So they don't do happy hours anymore really. But it was fun while it lasted. I think that you need to go out and see the world. I've been so fortunate to see rich, poor, history, modern skyscrapers, the stuff that my people built in Egypt 3,000 years ago. Because the Jews are good at construction and we're good at being slaves, but we're enslaved no more. So I think that you need to see everything and you get a better sense of what the world is and what you can do 100%.

Because for me, I started traveling a year ago and I went to Beijing, Hong Kong, couple places in China, Xi', An, Shanghai. It completely opened up my eyes. And I kind of want to ask you a question because I know someone like you.

This is the Terracotta Soldiers in Xi'. An. Amazing did you walk on the Great Wall?

Yes, Y. Yes, absolutely.

One of my favorite things.

Oh yeah, me too, man. I think we spent like four hours there, just like up walking along the Great Wall. It was amazing.

And that was amazing. You gotta go there. You can't watch the Matt Damon movie the Great Wall. It's shit. It's shit.

It's shit. 100%. It was tripping me out just based on like how steep it was at some points. Like you see it on cameras and pictures and I was like, damn, bro. Like, this is for real.

That was an amazing experience. And it's stuff like that when I look out at some of these wonders that we built over the years, it's only going to get better. That was brand new technology back then. So you have to keep everything in perspective and think about how the Great Wall, it's fun to go to, it's nice to walk on, but it's totally useless now. If you ever go to Italy, Venice, Italy used to be the number one city in the world because they were the big port and all the spices and everything came in through ships. Now ships are for fucking Carnival Cruise Lines and rich billionaires who like to raise yachts. Like, basically useless. So technology is always improving and changing and what once was the biggest thing in the world is now dead. So you always have to evolve, otherwise you're dead too, for sure.

So when it comes to you documenting and traveling, social media, building the brand that you have now, when was the kind of transition period for you when it comes to, like when you first started trading to then actually showcasing your journey, telling your story, showing your travels? When was that initial pivoting point?

Yeah, I mean, I never meant to tell anybody. I was trading pretty well. I turned roughly 12 grand into 2 million before I graduated college. And then I started a hedge fund like a cocky, dumb motherfucker that I was thinking I could do anything. And I lost roughly a third of it by investing instead of trading. I didn't know my rules. So actually I'm grateful for my loss. But at the time I just was really depressed. And as I alluded to several times, I used to drink quite a bit. I wasn't always extroverted. I was very introverted and drinking helped me come out of my shell. Then I was on this TV show called Wall Street warriors in 2007, roughly a decade ago, that show took off. I was drunk in every episode, so I was more entertaining than the other boring finance people tried to be all classy and one of them turned out to be a total fraud. Ginda Shamay is in jail right now. Can't trust tv. But that stupid little TV show blew up and everyone started asking me, how do you turn 12,000 into 2 million? I got started teaching on the Internet because of a reality show. Even though I was drinking, even though I had lost a third, I knew that my strategy was still good because I had lost a third of my money on something that I wasn't good at. And I didn't know the difference until I lost it. You lose, and those become your best teachers. A lot of you guys are making mistakes. You got it. You have to make a mistake. You have to learn what the limits are, and it will make you value your success more. That's what I tell my students. Success, no matter what you do, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And everybody wants to avoid the mistakes. No one likes failure. I think failure is good. I think making mistakes is good. So that's why you really should get on social media, you know, track your whole journey, be transparent, share your ups and share your downs. And that's what I've, you know, always done. And now I built my teaching business now to over 5000 students because. Not because I'm like the best trader in the world. I'm good, I'm profitable, which makes me, you know, pretty unique. Most traders lose money, but I also show my losses. And when I have my losses, I make a video lesson about them. Like, here's exactly what I did wrong. And. And those are my best most popular video lessons. So learn from everything and share it all openly on social media. You will be shocked at how supportive your social media followers are. If you're transparent, don't pretend perfect.

No, yeah, I totally agree with you because I know definitely when it comes to just the documentation, authentic, that wins at the end of the day. And I think definitely for me following you, I've learned a lot of great lessons from you. And. But when it comes to your brand, I know that you just had a million followers or 1.2. Correct.

Yeah.

When it comes to social media, because I know from someone like me, 17 years old, it's like I've been growing up with it. Right. So when it comes to just the social media aspect, pros, cons, obviously everyone has their own opinion. But for you, when it comes to just the growth of your brand, obviously it's Timothy Sykes, well known from the show, then you've built your massive brand for someone that's had some success or tracking their journey, is there maybe One to two tips that you want to give someone when it comes to just them documenting their journey on social media.

Yeah. I mean, be transparent, but don't be boring, okay? There's so many people sharing their lives. Don't be like, oh, here, this is my ham sandwich. Wait, here's my morning coffee. I like coffee. Like, shut the fuck up. Post interesting stuff that is getting spread fire people. You got to think about what people use social media for. They're bored at work, they're in line at the dmv. They're stuck in traffic. You need to be entertaining and you need to stand out from the noise. So I trade stocks, but very little of my social media is focused on stocks because it's fucking boring. I have a whole separate website that's premium where I have the 5,000 video lessons, but I just show a few lessons to my social media. The social media people love seeing my travels. They love seeing my charity. They love seeing my Ferrari and McLaren and big stacks of cash because that inspires them, even if they're not in the stock market. It shows what you can do with enough effort. So think about what your followers want. Don't be so selfish and just post what you want. I love food, and every now and then I post some food. But I had the best caprese salad in Italy. The best. I mean, the best. Like the perfect tomatoes, the perfect mozzarella. It was amazing. I posted it as a post. I'm not talking about your story story. You can post whatever you want, share your life, make it funny. But that can be a little more ordinary. But I did a whole post on this caprese salad. It was my least liked post ever. I don't know. It's like 3,000 posts ago. And I was destroyed. I was like, I love this thing. But that was my own selfishness because I like food. I'm not a good photographer. I'm not like a foodie photographer. So I don't know how to make this shit look good. And that was a good lesson for me. Then I post stacks of cash, and that's amazing. Even though some people don't like it, I don't personally like it. It inspires a lot of people. It got me a ton of students. A lot of rappers stole the cash photos. I've seen that it was theirs. And then I called the rappers out, and then TMZ featured me, and that was my biggest win. Like, Bow Wow stole one of my cash photos, and then I called him out and I was like, yo, Bow Wow I'll teach you the stock market. You don't have to steal my cash photos. I'll teach you to make your own cash. And I signed it Little Juju. And he didn't like that. And so he posted on his Instagram with like 4 million followers. And he's like, go attack Timothy sites. And I was like, oh, shit. I got a little attacking. But then I also got like 300 or 250,000 followers in, like a week. I want more people to attack me. It's weird. What really grows your account, and you have to test and tinker. Everybody's account is different. I give a little just pure obnoxious photos to my crew, to my crowd, because they love that. And then sometimes I post my charity stuff, which I love, which still get the least likes. I'm still trying to tinker to figure out how to make charity more popular, but it's one giant social experiment. So learn what your followers like, learn what you like, and then test and tinker every single day. You can post photos, you can post videos. You don't have to be professional. In fact, the professionals that I've hired like to make these glossy videos, they don't do that well. Like, you could just do something that's real and if it's funny, if there's a lesson, if you can. If people can tell it's from your heart, like, it'll do well.

Yep. Yeah. Well, that's some good advice for sure. Because I think a lot of people do try to, like, make it so polished and try to not be as transparent. But I wanted to talk about your charity because I know that's something you're super passionate about. That's something that I see a huge. When it comes to me progressing in life, I want to start building schools. So when it comes to that for you, you said you have 40 schools currently all over the world. Is that correct?

40 schools built or, you know, some are in development, but 40 total. I want to build a thousand, so I'm 4% of my way there.

Okay. That's amazing. So for some people listening, they're like, wow, you've built 40 schools. Whether they're in school, they're going to college, they're attending these schools. For someone like you that's built these schools, number one, when did you start your Saturday? I know that you featured it, but then also, I want to kind of know just your why with that. Because obviously that's your impact that you want to create in the world. So to kind of. I know that we have around five, 10 minutes left. But what's your why with your charity? Because I know I definitely. It inspires me that you're doing that, and I want you to just give some advice on starting a charity and just what it means to you.

Yeah, sure. You know, once you're successful enough and you have the ability to pretty much get whatever you want, shit gets boring. Okay. There's a lot of unhappy millionaires. I know a lot of billionaires. They're not happy. You start thinking, what can make you happy? So charity for me came from selfishness of trying to make me happy. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. I did charity back in college. I started a scholarship at Tulane, but that was basically just to make sure that I graduated because my grades weren't that great. So kind of got my graduation there. But then also, I spent some time at Make a Wish, and I learned about that charity. That was a great charity that I worked with. I've recently donated another $20,000 to them. So you kind of want to help people just naturally, whether it's time or money. It's not just about money. You can go to your local soup kitchen on a Saturday and help out. You can donate old sweaters. There's lots of ways to do charity, but to take it to the next level, make your own. The Timothy Sykes foundation is a 501C3. A lot of paperwork, a lot of time. And I made it official because I was like, let me see where I can go with this. I built one school in Cambodia. I liked how that felt. I donated $120,000 to Pencils of Promise, which builds schools all over the world. I went to Laos, and I saw the people. I'm getting hugs from, the kids and the family, and I'm just like, that's amazing. I'm supposed to donate another 250,000, but in Laos, I was so overcome with just emotion. My family was there. We're all crying, and I donated an extra million dollars.

Wow.

My accountant was like, calm down. Fuck it. I live pretty much the dream life, and I have just a few million dollars in my bank account. I never want to be a billionaire. I gave a whole TED Talk on how I never want to be a billionaire. Everyone in the audience was shocked. It's not just about money. You want to help other people because it feels good, and then you start not doing it out of selfishness. You start doing it because now it's a challenge. Like, I've challenged myself to build thousand schools. So I like Overcoming challenges. My most popular tweet ever was my first school in Bali. And again, my charity stuff never does well on social media. So I was like, here's my first school in Bali. You can see this. This is like my pinned tweet on top. And I said, here's my first school in Bali. Every retweet that I get, I'll build another school. And usually my charity stuff gets like two or three, maybe five retweets. This one took off, and I was thinking maybe it'll get 30 or 50, and it's gotten 2,000. So that one on the hook.

That is amazing. So when it comes to the process of building a school, what's the time frame for building a school in these third world countries?

Yeah, it's totally different. I work with a bunch of charities that do it. I don't personally build it Jewish, and my people did build the pyramids, which are still standing. I'm not that good at that. I'm like a digital guy, right? I can't build shit. Like, there's no calluses on my hands. I've got blogger hands. So I hire local charities that are working hand in hand with the communities, too. You can't just build a school. You can't just impose your will and be like, this is where a school is going to be. It'll close. So Pencils of Promise is my favorite charity. I've donated close to 2 million to them now. They've built over 400 schools worldwide in Laos, Guatemala, Ghana. It takes six or nine months. I mean, these are big operations that cost between 30 and 60 thousand dollars per school. I just built my first football stadium in Cambodia. Interestingly, I built a school and a football stadium. The school took nine months, the football stadium, because everyone loves soccer and football. It took three months. And I was like, what's going on?

That's insane.

So the cool thing is that if you build a football stadium as opposed to just a school, education is important. But sports inspires people, and the community uses this as basically an event place. They have concerts there, they have performances, and it brings together multiple communities. It's not just about building schools. I love education, but it's about helping different communities. We're also building playgrounds now in the Ukraine and medical centers with the Cancer warriors foundation in the Philippines. So I'm trying to help out wherever I go, and, you know, that's what it would. I love.

That is amazing, man. That inspires the hell out of me. But last question. I know that we have a Lack of time. So, last question. Just when it comes to just entrepreneurship in general, your journey, obviously, you've gained so much success, helped so many people, but I know there's obviously multiple different lessons that you've taken away. And like I said at the beginning, my audience tends to be anywhere from 17 to 25, thousands of listeners. And what's that? Maybe one or two tips that you'd want to give as an overall statement coming from you. Just when it comes to someone's journey, maybe they're having success, maybe they're just starting. Maybe they're failing right now. What's your $0.02 to these people listening?

Yeah, I mean, it's all a journey. It's all a process. It's a marathon and not a sprint. So if you're succeeding, good job. Enjoy it. It never lasts. Push it as far as you can go. Focus on what you love, too. The key to success for me is because I love this stuff. I love stock trading now. I love teaching now. I love my charity. People are like, where do you get all your energy? It's not work for me. I actually enjoy this. I've tried just sitting on my ass and doing nothing and retired and playing golf. That's fucking boring. I live to actually challenge myself and do more. I want more millionaire students because I love teaching. So do what you love. Understand that it takes time. Even if you are failing right now or not doing well, that doesn't mean quit and give up. If you truly love it, you'll find your angle. My hedge fund, if you look at the headlines, failed. I lost a third of it. I still finished up overall over four years, but the headline said I failed. And everyone's like, oh, my God, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'll get back on the horse. I learned not to invest. I learned to focus on trading. The loss crystallized my rules on what not to do. So those of you who are having a tough time, you're learning what not to do, then you adapt, Then you get better. And every single millionaire, every single successful person I know has failed or lost or made a misstep at one time. And that helps you learn. You can't just be perfect throughout life. It doesn't work that way. Because if you are perfect, and I would warn those of you, some of you watching this, like, well, I've never made a mistake. You fucking will, and it'll suck. So you want to make the losses, you want to make the mistakes early on. Like with my top students, I say, start With a small trading account, don't start with like $50,000. If you can afford $50,000 in the stock market, start with 5,000. Start practicing and tinkering. Because everything is adaptation over time. So in the beginning, the mistakes are small, the pressure is small, the losses might be small. When you're on the big stage, you want to be fully prepared. When you have a lot of money, when you have a lot of investors, when you have a lot of a social media following, you want to have everything refined by that. So when you're first starting, focus on refining, focus on learning, and getting so knowledgeable, you learn what to do, what not to do, in whatever field. By the time you're ready for the big stage, you're fully prepared. Because if you get to the big stage too quickly, you'll fuck up. If you look at a lot of lotto winners, they lose, they go bankrupt. If you look at these sports stars, they go bankrupt. If you look at these, like Hollywood teenage stars or kid stars, they get all fucked up on drugs. Success came too easily to them. So you want to grind, you want to hustle. It makes you better. It will encourage you more. You'll be grateful at the end of your journey because you went through the ups and the downs. So you have to struggle. If you find too much success right away, be scared because you are about to come down off of your high perch. So I want you guys trying as hard as you can. When people say, when do I start in the stock market? Or when do I start with my startup or social media, start today, okay? Because you have to learn. Like even my top millionaire student, 1500 into 6 million, it took him six or seven years. For the first nine months. He made nothing. Nothing. He didn't just take nine months to make a million. Okay? The biggest gains come in year four, year five, year six, year seven, year 10, year 20 of whatever it is that you're focusing on. Year one, year two, year three should just be focused on learning the angles and seeing where you fit in, seeing where you have an advantage, seeing where you can make money or find success. A lot of people don't give themselves enough time. They try something for three weeks or three months or even three years and then they give up. And they don't understand that the greatest successes take years and decades. Stick it out. And understand in the beginning it's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be confusing. That way you get better over time.

Amazing. Well, Tim, I just want to say thank you so much for just Taking the time today to really jump on the Rise of the Young podcast is tell about your story. But like I said, all of his social media accounts will be in the description. So make sure you follow him. Make sure you learn from him. I've gone through a lot of your YouTube videos. Never. And it's just really crazy to see what's possible from the Internet, Tim. So I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. I'd definitely love to stay connected with you, man. And I'm sure a lot of the audience got massive value from you, man.

For sure. My pleasure. I gotta go, actually fly right now to the Philippines. Amazing, crazy life, dude. Medical center is opening. Cancer warriors is a great charity. Pencils of Promise is a great charity. Poly Children's Project is a great charity. On Build or Build on is a great charity. There's so many great charities out there. That's what I'm trying to promote. Fuck Timothy Seitz. Timothy Sykes is an egomaniac, narcissist prick. Fuck Tim Sykes. Thanks again. Cheers.

Absolutely, man. Talk soon.

This is a decade of devotion it's hard to stop my movement When I'm already in motion this ain't luck, this is by design I hadn't worked in the dark for my light to shine A lot of people are dope they just quit too soon A lot of rappers a lot of rappers they got rich too soon.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple original series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

Oh, my God. Go, go, go.

Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV.

Plus.