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Experienced traders will tell you, and newbie traders will soon find out that the skill of trading has a very long learning curve. It's commonly said that it takes around six months for a trader to get comfortable and become consistently successful in the markets.  Unfortunately, we don't even begin to count these six months until we're done with our initial education and/or training which could easily add another six months to the timeframe. As mentioned earlier, becoming a consistently successful trader is a long, painful and often depressing process. Each day is truly a battle and the cliché "only the strong survive" is 100% relevant in our field.  

So the question is how do maintain the mental energy to fight this battle everyday for weeks, months and years? My answer is to set goals, set goals, set goals. Anyone who has ever trained under Jason Stapleton, knows that he starts off all of his presentations with a goal setting exercise.  During this exercise he likes to focus on the big picture goals of what you want to accomplish in the long run and although these goals are very important, it's the short-term, simple and easily achievable goals that will help you with those daily battles.
Having a list of goals to attack everyday is a great way to stay motivated day in and day out.  Also by making these goals tough enough to test you, yet easy enough to achieve each day, you allow yourself to get that feeling of accomplishment at the end of each trading day and trust me, that can do wonders for your psyche. As a kid in elementary school, I remember having a foreign language teacher that would reward us with candy each time we used a word correctly. Although it was my long term goal to learn how to speak this language fluently, I centered my focus on simply learning one new word each day so I could receive more candy (Kaizen aka Continuous Improvement). Setting and achieving these small goals kept me motivated throughout the year and before I knew it I was close to reaching my bigger goal.  

Trading isn't any different. Before each day I feel as if we need to set a goal for ourselves. Again, this goal can be extremely simple, as the point is to give us something to focus on. Give it a try and I think you'll be surprised at how coming to the markets with an increased level of focus can positively affect your trading. 

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Progressing in the trading world is an extremely difficult task. Trading is hard enough to master by itself, but what I feel is even tougher to deal with is staying motivated. I think I speak for every trader out there when I say that we've all had a period in time where we've honestly felt as if we just weren't good enough.  This is normal with anything in life so it's not a bad thing. However, what makes it difficult to deal with in the trading world is the fact that we often have nobody there to pick us up when we're feeling down. First of all, many of us trade alone with little to no contact with the outside world (at least during our trading hours). Secondly, most of our friends and family members have no idea what trading is, so it's hard for them to pick us up when we're down simply due to lack of knowledge on the subject. Lastly, and it may sound bad but, I would bet that most of us don't get a lot of support when making it public that trading is something we want to become serious about.  I know I didn't. I'm not going to go as far as saying I got laughed at, but I'm pretty good at reading body language and my best bet would say that the majority of people I told my plans too thought my idea was "cute," meaning they would humor me with false encouragement on the outside, but deep down they wanted to say "come on Akil let's be realistic."  Now I don't believe that they thought like this because they wanted to wish me bad luck or anything like that. I think that as a species we are creates of habit, therefore whenever something out of the norm takes place, we automatically think of it as being something negative.  The entire problem starts with that word "realistic." Anthony Robbins said it best when he wrote "Most people who say, "Let's be realistic," are really just living in fear, deathly afraid of being disappointed...Great leaders are rarely realistic. They are intelligent, and they are accurate, but they are not realistic by other people's standards."  

My advice is to create big goals for where you want to be in the future because what may seem unrealistic now may turn out to be your reality a year from now. I forgot who said it but one of my favorite quotes is "Everything was once impossible...until it was done."


 
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"Beliefs are not limited to impacting our emotions or actions. They can literally change our bodies in a matter of moments. I had the pleasure of interviewing Yale professor and best-selling author Dr. Bernie Siegel. As we began to speak about the power of belief, Bernie shared with me some of the research he'd done on people with Multiple Personality Disorders. Incredibly, the potency of these people's beliefs that they had become a different person resulted in an unquestioned command to their nervous system to make measurable changes in their biochemistry, The result? Their bodies would literally transform before the researchers' eyes and begin to reflect a new identity at a moment's notice. Studies document such remarkable occurrences as patients' eye color actually changing as their personality changes, or physical marks disappearing and reappearing! Even diseases such as diabetes or high blood pressure come and go depending on the person's belief as to which personality they're manifesting (Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within)."

I found the passage above to be very interesting. I'm not sure how much I buy the whole physical change part seeing how I've never witnessed it, but I agree entirely with the notion that beliefs indeed have an effect on the nervous system and can cause people to change. With that being said, I think it's possible for someone to become an entirely different person when trading. I've always said to the traders I worked with that I believe ones trading style should somehow match their personality. Meaning that if you are a naturally a laid back individual then you should be more of a passive and conservative trader who waits for retest of structure to enter a position and if you have more of an impatient, I want it now type of personality, then you should be more of an aggressive limit order type of trader. However, as I read more and more of this Awaken the Giant Within book, my views on this topic are starting to open up a little.  Is it possible that my normal impatient, I hate to wait for things self is able to somehow transform into a very calm, cool, and relaxed conservative trader 3 hours a day during the live room? I think so! After all we see professional athletesdo it all of the time. So let's assume that making this change is possible and that we do have the ability to leave ourselves and become a different person. How do we trigger this change? Is it like superman where we simply enter a booth, change clothes and we come out as a super trader? Maybe, after all I trade from home and I did go through a phase where I would dress up in a suit and tie each day just to trade the markets from my bedroom. Unfortunately, professional looking was still the only professional part of my trading. Or, maybe it's more like the incredible Hulk where a certain emotion has to trigger before we can transform into an ultimate trading beast. Well, I've gotten upset at the markets plenty of times, but it usually ended in be losing even more money. So what's the key to making this transformation? One word, affirmations. 

Affirmations are positive statements that describe a desired situation. These statements should be repeated in order to impress the subconscious mind and trigger positive actions. For those who are a regular to this site, you're aware that every day I put up a positive quote. By going through many quotes each day and picking one I think is good for the site, I am starting my day by putting myself in a positive place. I then follow that up by reading through my trading plan which has many affirmations in it such as "I am a professional currency trader" and "I will be successful because..." Reading these statements (along with some motivational music) pumps me up each day and transforms me into a confident trader. I did the same thing when playing sports.  Before each game I would say to myself "I am the best player on this field, nobody can stop me, I will catch every ball thrown my way" etc. In real life I am a very humble individual so I would never tell anybody that I was better than them, but in order to go out there and give my best I had to transform myself into somebody else.  Of course simply telling myself these affirmations didn't work by themselves. Eventually I had to do something real in order to make these saying believable. 

"What is a belief, anyway? Often in life we talk about things without having a clear idea of what they really are. Most people treat a belief as if it's a thing, when really all it is is a feeling of certainty about something. If you say you believe that you're intelligent, all you're really saying is, I feel certain that I'm intelligent. That sense of certainty allows you to tap into resources that allow you to produce intelligent results. We all have the answers inside of us for virtually anything-- or at least we have access to the answers we need through others. But often our lack of belief, our lack of certainty, causes us not to be able to use the capacity that resides within us. A simple way of understanding a belief is to think about its basic building block: an idea. There are a lot of ideas you may think about but not really believe... How do we turn an idea into a belief? Let me offer you a simple metaphor to describe the process. If you can think of an idea as being like a tabletop with no legs, you'll have a fir representation of why an idea doesn't feel as certain as a belief. Without any legs, that tabletop won't even stand up by itself. Belief on the other hand, has legs (Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within)."

Affirmations are a great start by themselves but they mean nothing if you can't attach a personsonal experience to them and back up your claim. "I am a great trader because last month I followed my rules and increased my capital." "I will have a good trading day because I am confident in my system and it has proven to make money over time." Maybe not the best examples in the world but the idea is to attach a personal event to your claim. So what do you do if you're a newbie trader who has just started out and hasn't had the chance to gain those positive experiences needed to turn that idea into a belief? My advice is to be creative. Remember the example of an affirmation that I shared with you from my trading plan. What I didn't mention was that this affirmation was in there before I placed a single live trade. Earlier I wrote "I will be successful because..." Well the full affirmation is "I will be successful because I have successfully completed a professional trading course. With this experience, discipline,  knowledge of the markets, and the hard work put into mastering my craft, I know that I will be successful and that I deserve to be." 

Our brain is a powerful tool. We've seen athletes transform on the field of play, we've seen soldiers transform on the battle field, we've seen parents transform in order to protect their children in dangerous situations. If this is all true, then shouldn't it be possible to will ourselves into becoming successful traders?  I'll leave that open for debate. 


 
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Yesterday evening I had the honor of being a guest at a business meeting of America's number one selling brand.  Now before you jump to any conclusions, no I wasn't there to join them, nor was I there to speak. Being the business minded person I am, I was simply there to observe, learn, and most importantly support my fiancée who was involved in the meeting. During the meeting I heard a very interesting story. One of the group members recalled a time where they were struggling and felt as if their business was stuck and going nowhere. She then called up her superior in hopes of getting some advice on how to improve, thinking to themselves that she would be given all of the right answers to instantly fix her problems. As the superior drove up in her fancy car, the women greeted her eager to make this quick fix. As she explained her issues to the superior, hoping to receive pity for her situation, the superior responded with a single question; "well what are you going to do?" The women responded "work harder I guess" and that was the end of the meeting.  This story really hit home with me as I was able to easily relate it to my trading journey. Just like in her business, there was a set way to achieve success in trading. Nobody promised it would be easy, and nobody promised it would be quick, but it was proven that if you follow the steps laid out, success would eventually be mine. The only variable involved was how bad I wanted to be successful and how hard was I willing to work in order to achieve it. 

After graduating from The Pro Trader Course, I was given not only the tools to succeed, but I was able to build a plan that if followed correctly would lead me to success. Again, it wasn't easy and it wasn't quick, but it was proven. Like many other rookie traders, I tried to shortcut my plan and I ended up getting bit in the butt because of it. There is a reason it's commonly said that it takes a trader at least 6 months to become consistently profitable, and most of it has nothing to do with technique or strategy.  After a massive failure, I decided to start over from scratch and follow my plan step by step and what do you know, I've had success ever since. 

I learned the hard way that there are no shortcuts to success and if you follow your plan then the only thing separating failure from success is how hard you're willing to work.  Remember trading isn't like playing a professional sport where at the end of the day you have to be born with a certain level of genetic ability to make it to the highest level. Making it as a trader depends all on you. I'll leave you with this story. In high school I was one of the best football players in my state. However, one of the main reasons I didn't get many scholarship offers from big time colleges was because of my height.  I literally had a coach tell me "son if you were 3 inches taller, we'd love to pay for you to come here."  Yes I probably could have tried to walk on to the team, prove myself through practice and workouts, gained a starting position and eventually go pro. It's a long shot but who knows, it could've happened. The point is, I didn't and in hindsight I probably used what that coach said as an excuse not to. It's sad to say this but failing is much easier than succeeding and many of us are just looking for an excuse to justify quitting. In professional trading there are no excuses. Either you want to be good or you don't. 


 
Hey traders, have you ever asked yourself this question. How can I work a little bit more sleep into my schedule?  I know I do. With that being said, I often find myself waking up earlier and earlier as the year goes on. My original plan was to wake up at 6:30 every morning but somehow that has now turned into 5:30.  I'm honestly worried that before I know it I will be back to waking up at 4am everyday and if the past is any predictor of the future, then that won't be a good thing. 

While on a run today I was thinking of ways to be more efficient with my time. Many ideas came into mind such as stop checking emails, loading up the charts right away and skipping breakfast to name a few. Unfortunately all of these options would go against the section in my trading plan that says I have to be both mentally and physically prepared before trading each day.  Then around mile 2 of my run it hit me. The task that took up the bulk of my time in the morning (aside from recording a video for The Syndicate Members) was my market analysis.  Since I am both a swing and day trader I have two separate sets of analysis that I must do each morning before trading. Although there is nothing that I can do to save time on my day trading pre market analysis , I have found a way to shorten my swing trading analysis and its actually something I do every once in a while anyway.  All I have to do in order to become more time efficient is not delete my charts. 
The potential setups that I look out for on the longer time frame charts (4 hr/Daily) are far and few. Therefore I've found that if I take the time to do some really in depth analysis on the weekend/Monday, then all I have to do is sit back and wait for the market to reach my zone. For you Pro Trader Course graduates, this means basically doing the I, P and D of our I.P.D.E. This way instead of loading up the chats each morning and drawing out what I'm looking for from scratch (which isn't a bad idea), I already have a reminder on my charts of what's happening and simply have to take the time to look at price actions progress or for any new formations. 

With all that being said, I still believe that for those who have time, it is a great idea to do fresh, full analysis each day. This will allow you to train your eyes for certain patterns a lot quicker as well as maybe pick up something that you may have missed previously. However, there are a few of us that just don't have enough hours in the day to complete everything we need to get done so instead of missing out on a good night's sleep, which is crucial to trading, here is a way that may help you out. 

 
After returning home from a swim workout, (the part I hate most about training for a triathlon), I was delighted to come home to see a very nice email. Reading this email reminded me of the emails Jason would share with us during the Pro Trader Course. This made me realize that it was around this same exact time 2 years ago when I first signed up and started my "real" trading journey.  It seems strange now, but at the time I felt like I was making one of those life changing decisions and well, I guess I was. As I went on to think about the past I asked myself this question "Akil you've have the same tools now that you did when you graduated from the Pro Trader Course so what has changed that allowed you to go from being a bad to a good trader? Well first of all I don't think I was ever a bad trader, just not a consistently good one. Many of you are familiar with my story and it may not seem like it but despite me blowing almost $50,000 dollars of a clients money I did have my shining moments. I think the main differences between myself as a rookie trader and trader I currently am are: discipline, patience, mindset and confidence.

Discipline was the hardest lesson for me to learn. I was fine when I was sitting in the live room with Jason every day, but as soon as I got out on my own my trading psychology started to take a hit. Winners started getting taken off the tables early, stops started getting taken out because of premature trailing.  Trades started being taken because they "felt" good, and of course the big one, trades were passed up due to fear.  As I look back over the past year and a half (the time passed since I rededicated myself to the craft) I can probably count on my hands the number of times that I've made one of the above mistakes. Don't get me wrong I'm 100% certain that they all have happened, the difference was they happened with much less frequency.
Patience was the second change that I noticed in not only my trading, but in lifestyle as a whole.  Despite being told to start off by trading"1 system, on 1 pair, on 1 timeframe" over and over again, when I first started trading solo, I felt as if I had to trade everything that I saw.  I'm telling you, I was a straight up cowboy. Every ABCD, every double top/bottom, every gartley, every fib retracement you name it, I was IN and I was in aggressively.  When I look back at it now I almost feel embarrassed at my actions, but if there is one bright spot I could take from it, it's that taking all of those aggressive losses really helped me to notice the difference between a good potential reversal zone and a fraudulent one. These days, especially in my swing trading, I am a very patient traders. It takes a lot for me to enter a position and because of that I have missed out on a heck of a lot of moves. Fortunately, I now realize that it's not about how many moves I miss it's about the quality of the moves that I do pull the trigger on.  This leads to the next major change that I noticed, which was in my trading mindset.

I notice this mindset a lot with many of the traders in my Live Room, especially with the newer traders. Everybody is focused on making money. I now realize that in trading the best and easiest way to make money is simply not to lose money. But let's be honest, many of us got involved in trading in the first place because we hear stories about average Joe's taking their small accounts and growing them into something crazy. Before signing up for Jason's course I stopped working 2 out of my 3 jobs in order to fully concentrate on trading.  I was smart and put enough money aside to be able to "survive" for a certain amount of time, but always in the back of my head was the idea that I needed to eventually make ___% per month in order to live off of my trading only.  What did this lead me to do, well as noted above, force trades and then try to get revenge from the losing trades that I forced by forcing even more trades.  Once the business relationship between my client and I ended, I began trading my own personal account once again. Due to my account size being so small, the idea of making a living off only trading was pretty much erased from my mind and instead of worrying about making money, my primary focus was on getting better and mastering the art of the trade. 
As I became better as a trader, my confidence as a trader continued to increase as well.  Now I've always had confidence, but there has also always been that little voice in the back of my head saying "are you sure you want to take this?" This was the same voice that was causing me to skip trades as mentioned earlier.  Now honestly, that voice has never gone away. It still whispers in my ear every time I see an aggressive bearish candle heading down to my buy limit orders. The difference is I now ignore it.  I have 100% confidence in my trading system and more importantly, 100% confidence in myself in that win or lose I made the right call. 

So looking back 2 years a lot has changed in my trading career. I now show much more discipline in my trading, I'm very patient when running through my I.P.D.E. (Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute), my mindset is in the correct place, and I have a lot more confidence all around. All of these factors have lead to me becoming a consistently successful trader. However, there is one trait that has never once changed throughout this journey, and that is my level of commitment.  Before ever hearing about Jason Stapleton, or Triple Threat Trading, or any of that stuff I made the commitment to become a professional trader.  Again, I stopped working 2 jobs in order to become completely dedicated to my goal.  I blew an account and got right back on the horse. I blew another big load of money and got right back on the horse. I knew in my head that I was going to do everything necessary to succeed even if it meant going back to cleaning banks and day care centers at night. There was no possible way that I was ever going to quit. Even when I made stupid decisions and thought I was going to go broke, I would tell myself that I would simply work my behind off until I earned enough money to fund another account then try again.  Taking courses and attending seminars is great but without that PURE DESIRE, what does it really mean? Hell of a 2 year ride. I can only imagine what I'll be writing about 2 years from now. 
Thank you for your time. 

 

My trip to Triple Threat headquarters was a lot of fun. The only problem that I had is that it ended to early.  Due to another obligation I had to be in Colorado by Thursday afternoon which meant I had to leave Kansas City almost directly after the Live Room closed.  However before I packed up I did have some unfinished business that I had to attend to and that was beating either Darren, Todd or Matt in a game of P.I.P.S. If you've ever played any basketball then you're probably familiar with the game of horse. Well think of pips as a shortened game of horse on a mini basketball hoop in the office.  I was getting my behind whooped all week and was determined to get some vengeance before I left. (Sigh) Although this didn't happen I did end with a few respectable performances and most importantly didn't have to serve time on the "Shake Weight" (if you want an explanation just let me know). 

Seriously though, when I first arrived Jason and I sat down to have a talk about future goals.  At the time I had a broad idea of what I wanted to do but that was about it. This bothered me a bit because we've had this conversation in the past and in all honesty I should have had something more detailed planned out. Before leaving I did have a chance to run some more ideas by him and they ended up being something that he was interested in. This was good to hear, but I also knew that I was slacking and needed to put a lot more thought into what I want to make out of my future. My future is something I think about often, especially when I have a lot of time to myself and since I had a two hour flight to Denver followed by a two hour drive to Pueblo, I had plenty of this time available.  As I often do, I proceeded to write down every idea I had until something good came out of it. That's been my brainstorming technique ever since I was a little kid. I was never the guy that was afraid to have a stupid idea, I would just shoot out idea after idea after idea out until somebody would "hey that's a good one." Think of it like this. If you're shooting at a target and have a thousand bullets or arrows at your disposal, if you just shoot the general there's a good chance that at least one of those thousand shots will hit the target. And at this point if bullets were ideas, I literally had about a thousand. 

I believe that every once in a while we need to do something that gives us that spark and ignites our flame. I'm a very motivated person by nature simply because I'm a hardcore competitor and look at life as a competition that I want to win. However it's hard to have that fire all of the time. Being a trader makes it even harder since most of us are alone during our trading day.  One thing that does motivate me is seeing and talking to other successful people, and although I do have some very successful and well off people that I talk to on a consistent basis, the type of motivation that I received from meeting with the T2t team was a lot different. My uncle is a well off individual that came from nothing to being a very well known name in the music industry. He is a very humble person and if you ever saw him you wouldn't think for a minute that he is worth how much he is worth. However, when I do see him (which isn't too often) I pay close attention to what he has and the life that he created and tell myself "I want that life" which motivates me. This is the same feeling I got when in KC, yet the motivation factor was even stronger because I know that I have a similar set of skills as they do.  Because of this I have no excuses for not achieving that same life.  So to me instead of it being just a dream or a thought, I can actually see the end result of what I've been working for and that makes me more hungry for success than. For three days I had a taste, now it's time to go after the full meal. 
 

After the Live Room closed is when the real fun began. And by fun I mean me finally getting the barbeque that I was craving since I got into town. Just kidding. Although we did order barbeque the fun came when I got to learn a little more about the ins and outs of Triple Threat as a company beyond the trading side of things. I like to think that I've always had a business type of mind. Therefore when Jason and Todd started talking about the marketing side of things it was right up my alley. Now obviously I wasn't able to follow everything that was being said but it sparked my interest none the less. Oh and by the way, I also got to meet Rick from The Pro Trader Network which was pretty cool since we've written for each other's sites in the past.  Anyway, sitting in the team business meeting really allowed me to see how much work actually goes into the presentations that Jason and Todd do. Believe it or not they just don't roll out of bed and decide to do a Ratio launch or something like that. It takes a heck of a lot of time to plan it out in order to deliver the best product possible. Looking back on things maybe this is why I've always enjoyed their presentations more than the millions of other free webinars that I've attended over the years. These meetings were short yet pretty inspirational and gave me a lot to think about since I as well am always thinking towards the future and trying to figure out what's the next move in my career.  I love doing the live room, it allows be to help others that are sitting in the same place I was a few years ago and honestly it has helped my trading as well. With that being said I know that I have much more to offer, I just don't know what yet.  This was a question that both Jason and Todd were very helpful with. They've been doing this for a while and basically told me that my limits are endless in this field and it all depended on how much work I was willing to put in.  It was really great to receive this encouragement from them and know that they're here to help me further my career rather than just using me to help themselves. Not that I expected that, but many of us have had jobs where are bosses or colleagues secretly don't want us to progress because of fear that we may surpass them or whatnot. 


When the trading day was over Todd and I went out to see a movie. Yes we had a date lol. Nothing builds a relationship like seeing the Hunger Games and watching kids kill other kids for sport. With all seriousness I did enjoy the film. Anyway, after the movie we went to grab a quick bite to eat which gave me a chance to really pick his mind on a few things. My questions didn't concern any trading techniques or marketing tactics, I wanted to know about THE LIFE. It was in late 2001 when I told myself that I was going to be a millionaire by the time I turned 30. I don't really like to call it a goal because I didn't want it to feel like something I was shooting for, but would be okay if I didn't achieve it. I told myself that I have to and have kept that mindset ever since. With that being said (and I hope I don't sound cocky, because trust me I'm far far far away from this goal), I plan on being worth a million dollars by the time I'm 30. That's just my mindset. Since I plan on reaching financial freedom in the future, I wanted to talk to somebody that is in a good position about the lifestyle. Todd was the perfect person to talk to this about because he has been doing this for so long. He explained the ups and downs, the good and the bad and even some of the mistakes that he made when he was younger. This conversation may have been one of the most rewarding conversations that I've ever had since I can relate to some of the decisions that he used to make.  I was only a day into Kansas City and I already felt as if I learned a week's worth of lessons. 
 
Hey traders. Those of you that have been following me for a while know my back story pretty well, but for those who may just have joined my journey or are reading for the first time I want to remind you that I haven't been trading for all that long.  My first experience with Forex actually began less than four years ago and it was almost two years ago to the day when I was first introduced to Jason Stapleton and 4xTradersLive.  Obviously a lot has changed within the last two years. 4xTradersLive is now Triple Threat Trading, I no longer stay up at night debating if trading will be a key part of my future and I've made the change from being mainly a swing trader to a day-trader, although I still love to swing ;-)... trade that is hahaha. Anyway Despite all of the changes in my life and in the world there is something that stayed constant, and that's the type of person that Jason Stapleton is.

My journey to Kansas City didn't start off to smoothly last week. Due to some major storms in my area my flight was delayed and actually re-routed to another city. Long story short I didn't get into Kansas City Airport until close to two o'clock in the morning. Half asleep when making my way in from the airport I was pleasantly awaken by the smell of barbeque as soon as I crossed the bridge into the city. This is when it hit home that I was actually here. That this was real. That I was really asked to come out to meet the team. So how did I feel you might ask. Nervous? Scared? Excited? Well to be honest, just tired. I knew that I had to be up in about three hours so all I could think of was hitting the bed and making sure I actually woke up on time.

The following day would be my first time in the office as well as my first time meeting the gang in person.  My first contact with Jason was two years ago after I filled out a traders assessment on his website. I remember seeing an unrecognized number pop up on my phone and for some odd reason I decided to answer it which was strange for me since I usually don't pick up if I don't see a name.  Maybe it was luck maybe it was fate, speaking to "the big dog" for the first time was the start of a new life for me. Since that day Jason has become a coach, mentor and a person that I respect greatly. I respected him not only for his ability to teach and trade, but also for the way he dealt with people. Out of the hours and hours spend in his room or watching videos, I've never got the sense that he was saying he was better than us. He was always encouraging and humble yet very confident which is a character trait I believe to have myself.  After joining the T2t team my respect grew even more as I began to tap into his entrepreneurial knowledge.  With all of this being said meeting this guy was suppose to be a big deal. You know sort of like meeting a celebrity. As I mentioned earlier I was supposed to be nervous and all of those other things, and maybe I was a little until Todd Brown (the other half of the Triple Threat Trading Monster) greeted me at the door with a "Hey what's up man, glad to finally meet you." A normal handshake and hug from a person dressed in normal attire made everything seem...well... normal.  At that point I said to myself in my head, "hey man, these guys are just like you." A few minutes later I met the rest of the gang including Jason himself and the trend continued. Nobody was trying to show off, nobody acted as if I was invisible, everything was like I've been there for years.

With less than an hour before I had to start the Live Room Todd showed me to the desk where I would be running the Live Room from and I was ready to rock and roll just as if I was at home. Well... a much nicer home. It's hard to explain the feel of the T2t offices but let's just said it has a very down to earth classic, artsy type feel to it. That and a crap load of computer monitors. Anyway, the room went well and it honestly didn't even feel as if I was away. It wasn't until the close of the live room when the real experience started to happen.

Part 2 coming soon!

 
As you've probably noticed it has been a while since I've written a post. Although this was not intentional, I do apologize more making you wait. With that being said I do have a pretty good excuse. After the Live Room on Monday I started to pack my stuff in preparation for my big trip to the Midwest part of the United States in order to visit the Triple Threat Trading Word command center as Darren calls it.  Unfortunately due to storms in my area my plans ended up changing a little bit. With that being said everything ended up working out fine. I'm now in Colorado coaching an athlete of mine at the NCAA Track & Field National Championships and finally have a little down time for rest and relaxation. I return home this Sunday and I have a lot to write about. Therefore, what I'm planning to do is write a three part series about my experiences of the business portion of my trip titled I Came, I Saw, I Conquered. I'm not going to spill the beans right now, but lets just say I learned a lot in my few days out there.  All three posts should be up next week to give you a little reading material over you memorial day Holiday.  Talk to you soon traders!