Rewriting Family Financial Stories Through Education and Empathy with Marcus Howard
Are you shaping your children’s financial future without even realizing it? In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Marcus Howard, a hedge fund manager turned education reformer who’s on a mission to revolutionize how families approach money and investing.
Marcus shares his remarkable journey from a childhood dream of business success to founding TradeCology, an innovative platform helping parents and kids learn about trading, investing, and wealth-building together. We explore how early financial experiences and family dynamics profoundly impact our relationship with money well into adulthood.
Key Takeaways:
- The power of dinner table conversations in shaping financial mindsets
- Why traditional financial education often falls short
- How to identify and overcome limiting money beliefs
- Strategies for teaching kids about investing in engaging ways
Breaking the Cycle of Financial Illiteracy
Discover how Marcus is working to:
- Bridge the gap between classroom theory and real-world money management
- Empower parents to become effective financial mentors
- Leverage technology and gamification to make learning about money fun
Building a Legacy of Financial Wisdom
Learn about Marcus’s insights on:
- The importance of understanding your personal “money language”
- How to align your financial goals with your values
- Creating a family culture of open communication around money
This conversation is packed with practical wisdom for parents, educators, and anyone interested in breaking generational cycles of financial struggle. Whether you’re looking to improve your own money mindset or hoping to raise financially savvy kids, you’ll find actionable advice and inspiration in Marcus’s story.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a fresh perspective on family financial dynamics and the power of intentional money education. Tune in now and start giving a heck about creating a legacy of financial empowerment for generations to come!
Apple Podcast link:
Spotify Podcast link:
YouTube Give A Heck Channel:
Connect with Marcus Howard:
Website: https://tradechologyjr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063478569695
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/marcushowardhq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tradechology/
Connect with Dwight Heck:
Website: https://giveaheck.com (Free Book Offer)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/give.a.heck
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Giveaheck
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@giveaheck
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-heck-65a90150/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giveaheck
X: https://x.com/give_a_heck
Chapter Summaries(Full Unedited Transcript follow):
00:00:02
Introduction to Marcus Howard: From Hedge Fund Manager to Education Reformer
Marcus Howard, founder of TradeCology, is introduced as a hedge fund manager turned education reformer. His platform helps families learn about trading, investing, and building wealth together. The conversation will explore how to break cycles, raise wealth creators, and rewrite family money conversations.
00:02:28
Marcus Howard’s Origin Story: Early Financial Aspirations
Marcus shares his unique childhood vision of having CEOs work for him. He recounts two pivotal moments: his mother introducing him to stock market simulations at age 12, and having his identity stolen in college, which led to developing a credit-building business for students.
00:07:44
Childhood Influences and Entrepreneurial Mindset
Marcus discusses his innate entrepreneurial spirit, despite lacking entrepreneurial examples in his family. He attributes his business mindset to a gift from God rather than environmental factors, highlighting the importance of recognizing and nurturing innate talents.
Full Unedited Transcript:
[00:01:07 – 00:01:13]
Oh, Dwight, thank you for that wonderful introduction. For sure. You’ve given one of the better introductions that I’ve had in these podcasts.
[00:01:13 – 00:02:27]
Thanks. Oh, you’re welcome. You know, I find that the introduction sets the stage, right? Sets the stage of whether or not people are going to continue to move forward to hear your fabulous origin story. As I mentioned to you, one of the things that is really important to me is a person’s origin story. And when I started to realize myself as a young person, growing up, becoming a dad, having a lot of kids, dealing with business and dealing with other people, that my origin, from my earliest recollections to now, how many things were actually, you know, key things that made me go certain ways in life, become a different kind of a compassionate person or maybe close myself off a certain way that I didn’t realize that learned behavior had created? I know writing my book was. Was quite the cathartic thing because it forces you to dive into your origin even more. But yourself, Marcus, I was, you know, what would be your origin story? What would, what would have caused you as a young person to be where you are today? Is there any specific things that have happened in your life that you would like to share that that molded you or somebody in your life as you were growing up, that took you in the direction you are today?
[00:02:28 – 00:07:44]
Yeah, absolutely. There were so many things that I could point to for sure. But to save time, I think some of the more important and pivotal things in my life was. Let me just first start by saying that I was always, I always had a weird vision for myself growing up. Like some people there, you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a fireman, or you want to be a princess or ballerina like you, you come with These or frog. Like I’ve heard all the run the entire gamut of like what you want to be when you grow up. But Since I was 3 or 4 years old, this vision has always stayed the same in my mind, which is like whoever I was when I grew up, I was a person where CEOs worked for me. What weird thing is that for a kid at 3 or 4 years old to think that like businessmen would be working for him as opposed to like he would be someone who ran a business. And so that has kind of stuck with me. That’s been a through line throughout my entire life. And as I, although I can’t necessarily say I’m there yet, I’m definitely progressing down that path where I know that that’s ideally where I could have. I’m already investing in some businesses, so I guess you can say that I am there in that sort of way. But just in my day to day with the hedge fund in the school, I’m like, that step right before, I think that that part is going to happen. But when I think about like the formative years of my life, that kind of got me to the point of like, well, how did I end up running an investment business? How did I end up starting this school? There were probably two pivotal moments that I can speak think of in my life. The first one being that when I was about 12 or 13 or so years old, my mom came home one day with a CD romp from work and it was all about like the stock market. So it was a stock market simulator that was on the cd and she was like, hey, you know, I don’t know much about the stock market, but they gave this to me at work. I feel like if you got really good at this, that like you could basically save our family best. Kind of the way she phrased it. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but as a young kid who, you know, my mom was my favorite person. If she said that this would be something that would save the whole family, I was all the way in. So I was with it. So I downloaded the cd. I like learned as much as I could about what stocks were. I didn’t know any of that. And so I essentially tried to use the program. And let me tell you, I did terribly. Like, I lost all the money. I failed. Like, it was just, it was a failed exercise altogether. But I never lost that idea in the back of my mind that being able to invest or trade stock stocks or something like that would be the thing that could create generational wealth or legacy, you’ll be able to save the family. So fast forward four or five years now I’m in college. And unfortunately, when I was in college, this is the second pivotal event that led me to where I am today. Unfortunately, my freshman year of college, I got my identity stolen. And so in that process of figuring out how to fix my credit, I learned that there was a way for you to build credit for someone who was just starting. And so this wasn’t something that I invented. Essentially it’s been used by the mortgage industry for however many years to help people to get enough credit to be able to finance or get a loan for a house. And so I adapted that concept, but I applied it to 18 or 19 year old kids who were freshmen in college. And so if you came to my business as a freshman, as a starter freshman, by the end of your first semester, but definitely by the end of the school year, you had a 700 plus credit score which allowed you to do things like if you want to get a car loan, if you want to get an apartment, in your upperclassmen years, especially if you want to get an internship and they check your credit, it kind of set you up so that you were in a good place and that you were more viable candidate than others that weren’t that basically got that, you know, credit card that they gave away for a Frisbee. And now you’re in all of this sort of debt, you know what I mean? And so with that there were two big innovations that were there. So it was that part of it, which I was a friend of mine who was a computer science major at school, he rudimentally developed what was, you know, now is called SAS software as a service. But before the term didn’t even exist. But he had coded me up a little piece of software that we could use to like once we got the loans from the banks, to then go and pay those things in a systematic way so that the student never messed it up. So I had that part. And then the other part is I wrote a book that was about, the first half of it was about personal finance, the second half of it was about the credit system and how to do essentially what we were going to do for you with our, with our tool and our service. So that was probably a game changer for me because in writing that book that led me to be able to do lectures at different universities across the country, like I became not famous because I’m not, I’ve never been that. But like, more known in this space for doing the personal finance thing. So I ran that business for about 12 or 13 years and then after that I was like, I’m just a really creative guy. And I’d done run a couple of different businesses in between then. But like at that point I was like, I’m ready to do something different. So I ended up, you know, essentially selling or merging and exiting from that business. And with that I had a little bit of money on my hands, but a lot more time. And that’s when I really gave a real look back at investing again. So it kind of went to that full circle moment where the thing that I had learned with my mom when I was 12 or 13, let me see if I can really figure this out now. And lo and behold, I did. So, you know, that was four years ago. Four, four and a half years later, I run the multimillion dollar hedge fund and I’m starting a school kind of teaching the things that I’ve been able to gather. So that is what I can say as best. It’s like my origin story of how it came from a 12 year old kid who was trying to save his family to actually doing it now today, which is a pretty cool and interesting thing to think about.
[00:07:44 – 00:08:17]
Oh, it’s fabulous. It’s beyond cool. Like we’re going to break down some of that. I like the fact that at 3, 4 years of age you have the mindset of the CEO I’ve never heard right, where you’re the boss. So you, what would have, what was your life at that point like at that age? What was going on around your family that would have made that thought process be there for you beside like it was all your mom, Was it just things that you overheard in conversations? What do you think happened in your life when you were young to make you have that mindset?
[00:08:18 – 00:08:54]
Yeah, I. So if, if I were to look at the examples around my life, there was nothing that was going on in my life that would have me think like that. So to me, if I’m honest with you, I feel like I was kind of born that way. Like that was a gift that was given to me from God that this is the kind of person that I would be like. Of course I chose my family and I love my family, but there were no entrepreneurial examples, businessman examples in my family. My mom, even to this day is a social worker. I’m not sure she’s ever made more than $60,000 a year. You know what I mean? Like she’s always been in the service of others. So where this kind of business mindset, entrepreneurial mindset came from, I could tell.
[00:08:54 – 00:10:43]
You, wow, that’s awesome. And you’re right. Things happen for us, right? Not to us. God acts and ways that we can’t even understand. And you might. You were a product of an environment that didn’t necessarily encourage what you were thinking or, you know, getting up to that age of 12, 13 where your mom gave you that CD ROM and you wanted to check it out. You were. You were born with an inquisitive mind and something that a lot of people don’t realize. God hands out tenacity. We don’t know how to grab it and realize it’s a superpower that he’s given us to never give up, to move forward, to always have a mindset of. Of happiness, health, and then wealth, right? You can be. You can have wealth, people listening and be a great person. Right. But absolutely have some core values. Right. Myself, it’s faith, family, work. Right? Wealth, work. All that’s at the bottom. Because if I’m not happy at the top, you know, I don’t think I’m going to be continued to be blessed by God. Right. To continue to have people come into my life where I can make a huge impact. And you know what, Marcus, too, dealing with all these people, as a side note, it helps me grow continually. Right. Every person that I touch touches me. So it’s just a mindset. I like the fact that you. You went to college and you had your identity stolen. Like, not that I like that. It’s like, wow, you through all these different things in your life and you get your identity stolen. I can’t even imagine I’ve had it happen to people I know and, and the trauma surrounding it. How did it affect you? Did it slow you down at all in your life? Like, you talked about what happened after it, but what was your mindset when that happened?
[00:10:45 – 00:11:01]
It was. I guess it was a little bit more motivating, as weird as that sounds. Because, again, this was after my freshman year of college, so I went to. I went to Georgetown in Washington, D.C. it was a school that I knew that I wanted to go to since I was 11 years old.
[00:11:02 – 00:11:02]
Wow.
[00:11:02 – 00:12:08]
As weird as that sounds, it was more of a basketball. Allen Iverson was at Georgetown, you know what I mean? But, like, I knew that I wanted to go to that school. I worked very hard in high school to be able to go to that university. I had turned down full scholarships from other schools that were essentially paying me to go there. So it Wasn’t just a full scholarship, but like they gave me a stipend, they gave me a travel budget. Like they were really trying to recruit me to go to the university. But I chose to go to Georgetown and to pay to go to Georgetown just because I knew that that’s where I was destined to be. That’s where I really wanted it to be. So when that identity theft moment happened, it was more, okay, this is something that’s trying to take my dream away from me and I’m not going to allow it to. And so I just switched into another gear because, oh, by the way, I had a new tuition payment coming up at this start of the school year, you know what I mean? So I was just really thinking through how do I stay in school? Because I saw that process of so many people that would go away to college for a year, go for a year or two, come back home, try to do the community college thing. They never do and they never end up fulfilling their lives. And I did not want that to be my story. So it was just a motivator.
[00:12:09 – 00:12:57]
Wow. It just proved my point. God blessed you with tenacity. You don’t give up, brother. That’s good. The reason I asked that question is I guarantee there’s somebody out there, more than one person that would wonder, how does somebody deal with that? You know, when you’re faced with adversity of losing your identity and somebody stealing it, how do you deal with it? Well, you stayed focused on the prize of what you had to do while you were at school, what you’re going to do and you’re going to continue to push forward and move forward, forward. And that’s, that’s honorable. Good job. Thank you. I don’t know if people have recognized that, but I think that’s amazing, that tenacity and in your just who you are as a person. We’re just going to continue to move forward. But people listening, watching, it dials right back to the fact of him being three, four years of age. Right. You can all, you can see the signs, right?
[00:12:57 – 00:12:58]
Yeah.
[00:12:58 – 00:13:01]
You know, success leaves clues, doesn’t it? Right?
[00:13:01 – 00:13:02]
Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:13:02 – 00:14:08]
All right. A lot of people don’t get that, that they call it that corny phrase or whatever. But hey, those that, those that that are connected know that it’s not corny, that it’s true. You just got to be open eyed to see what’s going on around you. So you know, you talked about the fact of going to Georgetown University and the reason I want to talk about that A little bit is a lot of people I talk to and I’ve coached over the years, young people going to university, college or whatever, they have to settle, like you said, they go to a local college, a community college. A lot of them don’t finish. They get into. They get massive student loans and then spend the rest of their lives trying to pay it off. Oh, yeah, you know, how do you. Do you have any recommendations? And how did you. So did you get grief from your family for choosing Georgetown or friends? How did you deal with the circumstances? You must have people trying to encourage you. Like you said, you were offering stipends, you were offered all this stuff from all these schools. But how did your family feel about the fact that you went to Georgetown? And was it all positive?
[00:14:10 – 00:14:21]
Yeah, I can’t really say that there are too many people in my family or that I keep too many people in my orbit that don’t clap when I win. I think that’s an important thing to have in life.
[00:14:21 – 00:14:22]
Oh, absolutely.
[00:14:22 – 00:14:50]
Yeah. And so, no, my family was pretty encouraging. I mean, I feel like my mom would have probably felt better if I would have went to the other school where they were essentially paying me to go there. But at the same time, she could see the fire in my eye and I wasn’t asking her for help. I wasn’t asking her to pay my tuition. I was going to pay my own tuition. And so there was like this independent streak within me that she was like, well, my son’s going to do what he’s going to choose to do, so who am I to stop him if he’s going after his life and his dream? So that was really encouraging.
[00:14:50 – 00:14:51]
That’s great.
[00:14:51 – 00:16:27]
But for other people, and I get it. I have, you know, I went through what I would consider to be my ideal first 21 or so years, minus identity, that thing happening. But even if that doesn’t quite happen, we never know what God has in store, what the plan is for us. And so if you don’t get into the school that you thought that you were going to get into, or if you didn’t go into college, that’s perfectly okay. I know plenty of millionaires that never went to college. I know plenty of C school, I mean, C grade college people that have way more money than I do. It’s not really about the education. What I found, especially at a liberal arts school like Georgetown University, is that they really teach you how to be able to think critically enough to be able to take whatever job you may get after graduation. So they’re teaching you a certain set of skills on how to be the right kind of person that can fit in the modern society to be able to work. So that isn’t something highly technical like you go to school for computer science or any of these other things, but more, how do you just become a regular citizen that can really communicate, think critically and be able to do the job? Because once you get hired at a new job, they’re going to train you anyway. They’re looking for are you trainable, which is what universities a lot of times do teach you. And so with that I say don’t get discouraged if you find that what is happening in your life may not necessarily fit with that said life plan. What if God has a better plan and you’re trying to fight and get him to do yours or her? You know, you’re trying to get God to do what you want to happen, but God’s like, but no, there’s this whole big other thing over here that I’m trying to push you towards, but you’re not really listening and pay attention because you think you have the right answer.
[00:16:27 – 00:18:31]
Yeah, I love that your focus is on being guided through God instead of money because at the end of the day, most people would take the easy route of not having the financial responsibility of going to university or college. Right. So good for you. Most people are just, I’m going to take my full ride scholarship. And I know people that have done that in both the US and Canada. And I think it’s about 50, 50 or that are actually engaged because now everything’s too easy. It’s given to them. Yes, they have to work to a certain extent to keep that. But I think you appreciate it more when you have to earn it. I don’t know if that’s true because there is people I know that have done very well in scholarships. I do agree as well. So many people today that I know that are wealthy, have high school, some of them are dropouts, they were C students. The thing that they had was what you mentioned, that ability to have critical thinking. So Georgetown, you learning that sort of thing and being that critical thinker. And obviously you’re continuing to develop it. Every time we do something, our critical mindset can be added to or subtracted to. It all depends on the associations. Like you talked about that earlier. Who we associate with and who’s in our sphere, in our orbit is so important to our critical mindset. And that doesn’t mean you’re not going to deal with difficult people. It means that you’re going to deal with them in a different way or possibly fire them out of your mindset. Goodbye. Right, So I like that. Thank you for explaining that. Was there any. So you talked about the cd. You talked about the fact that there wasn’t really anybody that was an entrepreneur in the sense of what you have become. Was there any early financial things that you learned besides the cd? Like, were there things that you did in your childhood to gravitate toward money? Like, what did you, what did you do? And like, did you change this? It was high school, like, you know, something that was attracting you more to the money type of courses.
[00:18:32 – 00:18:39]
So I don’t think it was. It was high school per se. That kind of started to develop a bit more in my college years.
[00:18:39 – 00:18:39]
Oh, okay.
[00:18:39 – 00:21:25]
To be honest, in high school I thought I was going to be a lawyer. So that’s why. Yeah, that’s why I went to Georgetown. I had taken pre law classes in high school thinking that that was the route that I was going to go. Then when I got to Georgetown, I kind of realized that I wasn’t unique in that. That like kind of most of the kids there kind of wanted to be a lawyer and that I didn’t necessarily want to be one. I just thought I did. And so I had to make a pivot in that moment of like, well, what is it that I really want to try and figure out? And I had always again, been a little business minded, so I kind of went in that direction. But to answer your question directly, the catalyst that I can point to was that I took a specific class at my university that just changed all of this for me. So the way that Georgetown is set up is there are different schools. So you’ve got the normal college, which I was in, then there’s the business school, then there’s a school of foreign service, there’s others, but like, those are the main ones. And so I couldn’t just because I knew I wanted to do business, I couldn’t just go and take all business classes. You need to be in the business school. And I didn’t, like, that’s like transfer to a whole entirely different school. So I couldn’t do that. I stayed in college. But I did take this one course by Professor Mike Bryant, which is called the Fundamentals of Personal Finance. And in that class, not only was he an amazing professor, which I think changed everything in terms of like, he was able to take some of these very complicated concepts and bring them and distill them down to something that made sense to a 20 year old kid, which is exactly what I needed. But it was more he was teaching you things like time, value of money, compound interest. If you had $10,000 today and you invested in the stock market at 12%, what does that give you at 40? What does that give you at 50? Do you know to be more aggressive when you’re younger versus more moderate when you’re in your 40s to being conservative when you’re in 50s and 60s in time for retirement? Like those sorts of things that we wish that they taught us in school and high school about like how to be a proper adult. He had a class where he taught that at a collegiate level and that just changed everything for me. One because it gave me the skills. But then more importantly it was just how good of a professor that he was, that he just, he just made you feel encouraged that you can actually figure life out. Because he was a guy, I think he worked for Danaher, you know, was kind of like mid level management kind of guy, wasn’t. I mean he had a mass, you know, success for himself. He definitely had money. I’m not sure exactly how much but like you can tell he was doing well for himself, but that wasn’t what it was about. You can see a person who cared for his kids, cared for his family, cared for his students. In a way I was like, I really want to emulate and model a person like that. And so as I look back at my career now, man, have I done so many things like Professor Ryan did because he was so pivotal to me in that moment of time where like I was looking for that direction in terms of what sort of adult I should actually be.
[00:21:25 – 00:22:01]
Wow, I love that that’s the goal that was looking for. People don’t realize how one individual. Well you may, you realize it obviously, but we don’t really feel the passion. I can feel the passion of you talking about this gentleman and what he’s taught you and how it’s molded you and, and some of the things and processes that you learned from him that you utilize today. Life that’s powerful, people listening and watching. Do you ever give credit or due to the people in your life that really like everybody says I’m self made, nobody helped me, give me a break, somebody along. You, you’ve never heard that? There’s lots.
[00:22:01 – 00:22:22]
I mean I hear it, but it’s a lie. Like who has ever done everything on their own? Like even if you aren’t consciously aware of the people that are helping you, like you didn’t build a Mechanism by which you didn’t build Facebook to do the ads, bro. So like where. How are you saying you’re a self made man in any sort of way? Like, we live in a community, so there’s no way that anybody can do anything on their own.
[00:22:22 – 00:22:57]
It’s just, well, it’s, it’s a melting pot of ideas and you know, people say, oh, that’s amazing what you’re talking about and blah, blah, blah. That’s so, you know, innovative. Well, no, I’m a culmination of personal development, mentorship, masterminds, talking to other people and being open minded enough to realize that even though they are younger than me or maybe haven’t done what I’ve done as long, or maybe they don’t do what I do, they still have value, I can still learn from them. And so many people just don’t give credit where credit’s due. I hope someday if you haven’t done that, you send a thank you note to your professor.
[00:22:57 – 00:23:12]
That is absolutely. I have. He, he knows, he knows my story for sure. He knows just how pivotal he’s been in my life. And when I go back to Georgetown and if there’s ever an opportunity to take him to dinner or other people, like, I do it all the time. Oh, people, yeah. That got me to where I am for sure.
[00:23:12 – 00:23:46]
Well, that’s it. And that’s the reason I bring that up is you just proved my point. You’re tenacious, you’re respectful, you acknowledge people in your life and you’ve done it already. So, you know, people watching and listening do that, do those little things. Because that might be the highlight of his, his career. Not to say that you’re the only person that’s talked to him, but to still respect him this many years later, it speaks volumes for your character. So congratulations on that. Thank you. At one point in time you had Wall street in your mind, didn’t you?
[00:23:50 – 00:23:56]
No. And that’s the weird thing about the fact that I run a hedge fund is like. No, explain that.
[00:23:56 – 00:23:57]
Yeah, that’s why I asked the question.
[00:23:58 – 00:28:34]
So when I was younger. So in college or just in general life, I’ve always been fairly good with numbers, which in investment and stuff like that, you kind of have to be. I know that. So here’s the metaphor I’ll get. In the early 2000s, when the E Trade baby came out, they made it seem like anybody could start a investment account and run your own investment account and make a whole bunch of money again. But that was more a product of the Fact that the Internet was making things more accessible. A similar parallel was like online poker. Just because you can go online and play poker doesn’t make you a great poker player. Like, there are so many things that go into being an amazing poker player that even though you can just pick it up, doesn’t mean that you can be skillful at it, but it’s giving you the opportunity to be able to do so. And so when I was at Georgetown, I mean, I would, you know, sit in on the sessions with like Goldman Sachs and Merrill lynch and all of these other guys who were like interested in getting that level of university student to go and be slaves at their organization. But that was something that was never interesting to me. I think I always felt like, no, well, I already have my own business and I’m making as much as they would like at 21, I’m making as much as these guys would to work 100 hours a week and to hate their job. So why don’t I just continue to do that? And so I went kind of down that path. But how I ended up getting into investments I think was more. It was just, I had a bunch of time on my hands and I just really decided that I wanted to see if I can go and figure this thing out because I felt like it would give me a little bit more independence. And I kind of the reason why I ended up selling that business in the first place was I just kind of got tired of like managing people and the day to day grind of that and just that particular thing. I wanted to see if I can do something that was a little bit more independent. But I say all that to say now that like I’m still managing the team. Like I’ve got two teams now instead of one with the work that I’m doing. But like, that was my original motivation. And what I did was I signed up for like a paper money account, meaning that it wasn’t real money, but all the other things were the same. And it’s like $50,000 in that account. And I committed to, I’m going to study this for a year. And then after a year, if I find that I can do this, then I’ll pursue it, but if I don’t, I’ll go and find something else to do. So after that year I took that $50,000 account and I think I grew it to like 1.5, $1.6 million. And so I knew that I had, I was onto something. But just doing it in paper money is not the same thing as Having real money. Because then there’s psychological things that go on, emotional things. Like there’s a lot that goes into being a successful investor besides just knowing what buttons to click or what to invest in. And so I put about $10,000 of my own money and then grew that to about 150,000. And then from there I was like, oh, okay, I actually know that I can probably do this. Like, there were wins and losses, of course it wasn’t a straight line, but, like, overall, I was like, okay, well, I’m close to kind of replacing an income. I mean, doing $100,000 a year that’s pretty good at doing anything. And essentially I’m working from 8 o’ clock in the morning to 1 o’ clock in the afternoon. So this is a different kind of gig altogether. Now, what kind of got me into a full investment company mindset was I actually made the mistake of telling one of my very good friends who lived in California. I guess it wasn’t a mistake, it was more a serendipity, like what I was doing and how much money I was making. He was a part of a real estate, and they were in between deals, and so they were like, hey, we’re sitting on this pile of cash that we’re not going to use for the next 18 months. Could we give it to you to invest in for us? And then if we get a positive return, like, we’ll, you know, appreciate it. We use that for the next deal. So I’ve always kind of accepted the mantra that if given an opportunity that seems great to you, say yes and then figure it out later. So I said, yes, of course, you know, I’ll try and figure it out. And then was able to give those guys a positive return. Because of the nature of my business, I can’t talk specifically about numbers and returns and things like that, but they were able to get a positive return. And then Those, like, almost 80% of the people that were in that group came back and invested. We. So I went from just trading for myself to then trading for myself in that fund to now trading for, like, 40 people. And so then that became the process of, like, I got to get licensed, I got to get insured, I got to get, you know, attorney. I’ve got to get compliance and all this other stuff to, like, really turn it into an actual factual investment business, which is what I did in 2019, and just been kind of running it ever since. So it’s weird to say that I fell into a hedge fund because most people work their entire lives to get to that point. But it was just something that, again, I feel like just God was pushing me in the direction to ultimately move towards. And I just accepted the opportunity to not go. God, this is what I want for myself. But instead I am leaving myself open for whatever that opportunity may be. And then the universe just showed me that I could have something better than even what I thought that I was going to get in the first place.
[00:28:35 – 00:29:21]
Wow. Going back to God and your faith and, and the opportunities that presented to themselves and in your tenacious ability to figure it out and go and accomplish it is fantastic. Most people just, they aren’t willing to take on risk. Without risk, there’s no reward. If you live inside your comfort zone, you’re never going to succeed. And good for you. Going from 50,000 to over a million bucks. And even though it’s paper money, it’s still. It’s still amazing. And then learning how to do it with other. Your own money and other people’s money, most people would give up. They go back to the nine to five and just, you know, allow themselves to be somebody else’s. How did you put that when you said all these people?
[00:29:21 – 00:29:23]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:23 – 00:29:36]
People come out of school to be a slave to others. Right. In their, in their corporations and help the people above become more wealthy and the shareholders, if it’s a public company or whatever. But yeah, that’s exactly the answer I wanted.
[00:29:36 – 00:29:50]
People. Yeah. So just so people don’t kill me in the comments, like, I understand that slavery means that you don’t get paid for it. So it’s. I’m just saying it facetiously, but it definitely is a version of indentured servitude. Just because you make 50 to $100,000 a year doesn’t mean that you’re not beholden to someone else.
[00:29:51 – 00:30:21]
Well, and you can say you’re a slave to a business or you’re a slave to your significant other, slave to your kids. It all depends who’s listening and how they take the word. So I appreciate you clarifying that. We’re not here to offend anybody. And most of my list, most of my listenership would never ever say anything derogatory. They understand. They give a heck of it. Somebody new watching or listening. Marcus just explained it. It’s just a. It’s a word that doesn’t have to be wielded in a bad way.
[00:30:22 – 00:30:23]
Yeah, for sure.
[00:30:23 – 00:32:43]
Right. So I appreciate that. So we’re going to talk a little bit. You know why financial education should begin in households and not in institutions. And, and this is something I preach from, you know, my soapbox or top of a mountain for my whole career in this industry, because I look at the learned behav we get from our adults around us, our families, uncles, aunts, friends, and as we grow up, we really don’t have a financial knowledge. You talked about goal setting. I talk about that in my chapter on it in my book about smart goal setting and how to utilize it. People still won’t try it, but at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, what do we need to change, Marcus? Like, you know, I know you talk about the fact that, that the dinner table is more powerful than the classroom when it comes to learning about money. And I agree with that. I will add though that sometimes the best place to learn about money though is in the trenches. Like with my own kids, you know, dad, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that a need or a want? Right? They got to a certain age, they hated me asking that. Right, right. Is that a need or want? Okay, where’s. Here’s dad’s budget, right? See at the bottom there, what does that say? Well, this month we’re going to break even. Remember I was one income, raising five kids. Yeah, See that? Okay, what you need is for school or your runners blew a hole or whatever. That’s a need. We got to get that so we can justify doing this right with and getting you a pair of runners, even though it’s not within our break even protocol of a budget. But they got to a point where they wouldn’t even come to me about the wants. Guess what they did. They learned to be understanding that they needed to go out and earn, put in the effort for that want. And then when it was their own money, all of a sudden, is that want still want? Do they spend it? Because all of a sudden, oh my goodness, I just got it before. Now I got to spend that money. I don’t know if I’m going to do it. So as they were growing up, I taught him a mentality and I really wanted to discuss that with you because I know it’s. That’s become very important to you. So let’s talk about that dinner table conversation and all the things that have you’ve utilized or created around that.
[00:32:43 – 00:32:58]
Yeah, I want to talk about that. But I feel like we would be remiss if we didn’t also have the same conversation that you were saying about like educational institutions and being taught these sorts of things in school.
[00:32:58 – 00:32:59]
Sure, let’s go for It. Yeah.
[00:33:00 – 00:33:57]
So there’s two things that I want to address there which are heavily influencing the dinner table conversations. The first thing being that in the United States, Canada, it’s a lot better. But in the United States, there’s only about 25 or 26 states that even mandate financial literacy at all in schools for you to have to even talk about it. And then of those, you typically are only required to do a semester’s worth of stuff. So think, you know, a class a week, four or five months, and that’s it. That’s typically not enough time to learn all the things that you need to learn in order to be a proper adult. So it’s. It’s that these things aren’t necessarily being taught in school. And so students are desperate. It’s not that they don’t want to know this information. They definitely want to know this information. It’s just that they don’t know where to be taught. In a way, that’s the right answer because they can turn to TikTok or YouTube or whatever, but there’s so much information that’s out there. How do I distill what is the right information?
[00:33:57 – 00:33:57]
Information?
[00:33:57 – 00:34:20]
How do I discern knowledge from wisdom? And a lot of times you get a lot of knowledge online, but not the wisdom. And then you look to school because they’re teaching you stuff, but they don’t necessarily teach you the wisdom. It’s kind of boring and outdated. And then once you get to the university level, there’s another level of complexity that we’re talking about here, which is for a very long time, banks were giving donations to universities to teach the wrong thing. Think about that.
[00:34:21 – 00:34:21]
Wow.
[00:34:21 – 00:38:54]
And I know, and I know that firsthand that this is what was happening, because this was the sort of stuff we were up against. When I had that organization that was helping kids to get good credit scores, they were like, hey, man, what’s this about? You know what I mean? So. And you have to look at it like this. So I’ve been in these meetings, these financial literacy committees, where you actually get the numbers from the banks. That 70 cent Frisbee that they give you to apply for your credit first credit card. They know that you will have this card from the time that you’re 18 years old to the time you’re 25. They have already modeled out how much they’re going to get in interest from you. They’ve already modeled out the late fees and all these other things to know exactly what their customer value is. So for 70 cents, they’re going to make $4,500 for you by the time you’re 25. They already know all of this information, and they want you to teach against that information in the university so that they can get their paycheck. It’s. I mean, it’s. I don’t want to call it evil, but it’s definitely some weird stuff that’s going on there at that level of banking. And so that was who we were up against when we were doing this work. And by the way, they have all the money. So you’re proactively being, in a lot of instances, taught the opposite of what you’re supposed to be learning. And so, again, students aren’t dumb. They want to know this information, but they’re trying to figure out where they get the information from. And that’s where it turns to the dinner table conversations. Because a lot of times, and we know this as parents, even though I don’t have children, but I was. I was a, you know, I was a son, I recognize this. I didn’t learn so much from what my mom and dad told me. I learned a lot more from what I saw them do. And so that gave me a lot of insights in terms of, like, this is how people really manage money. This is how people get when. When things are tight, when money is tight in these bills. So it’s these sort of energetic and emotional things that we distill within us that then come out in times in ways that we may not necessarily even consciously know that we’re doing it or why we act this way when we’re 25 or 26 or 27 years old about money is because these things were taught to us subconsciously when we were little. And seeing how our parents responded when we asked them for money or when we talked to them about money. So for you, in your situation with your kids, you were doing it in an empowering way of saying, look, I’m not going to tell you no, because the answer is because I said so, which is a lot of times what the answer is in households. But it’s more, look, this is what we got. This is where I am, is what you’re asking for or need or want, or are we not going to eat dinner tomorrow because you want this? And so it allowed them to make an executive decision to understand the consequences of the things that they were doing. That’s a very strong and healthy way to do that. In most families, that just conversation doesn’t happen in that way. It’s not the same sort of healthy conversation because the parents are also dealing with their own insecurities around money, adequacy, success, bills, all these things that are coming up the number one cause for divorce in most relationships, as studies have shown over and over and over again, money issues, period. And lack of communication around money and other things that are going on in your relationship. And so if money is the number one thing that’s causing friction in relationships, that friction now is being brought down to the level of your kid, where they’re understanding these sorts of things too. And so they want to get the information on what’s the right way to do it. But as a parent, you may not know the right answer. And so you’re worried as a parent, damn, am I even teaching my kids the right thing when I don’t know what the right thing is? Think about that for a second. You know what I mean? Like, how are you passing down the right things if you aren’t even sure what they are? And so you have kids that go into adulthood having mixed messages and mixed signals about what money really is, the responsibility. How do I even pay my taxes? Should I pay taxes? What am I supposed to be investing in? All these questions they just don’t simply have answers to. And it would be easier if we had a generation of parents that had the right answer to be able to teach students in the right way, but we don’t. And I’m not judging or anything like that. Listen, I grew up in the same sort of way. I understand that this is a complicated thing and it’s hard, but then we turn to that next level, which is, okay, well, if it’s not taught, if it can’t be taught adequately at home because of what’s going on with the parents, can it be taught at the institution and the school level? Well, I just told you that 25 states only mandated. And then when you get to college, they kind of teach you the opposite way. So where are they really getting this information from? There’s really a gap in, like, where to get the actual wisdom for how to become a proper adult. It’s not difficult to do. It’s not hard. You can teach people budgeting concepts, how to pay your taxes, how to do the right thing, but it’s more. It’s just. It hasn’t been a priority in the systems that are raising our children to allow them to even know that this is the adequate way to do it. And that part needs to change. And so that’s what we’re working on to change it.
[00:38:55 – 00:42:29]
Well, and, you know, even when you create positive habits and I did what I did with my kids, out of five of them, I’d say two of them are really good with money. Right. So I’m not saying this to be negative, that you need to not work with your families. What you’re doing is increasing the percentage of win within your family. Because once your children leave the fold, and I know you said you don’t have children once they leave the fold. Now they’re inundated with ideas and concepts from their university, from their college, from their, their tribe of people they hang out with. And you know, I’ve had them go, well, such and such says this and that. Okay, I’ll six. You know, what’s their family background? I don’t know. Well, you’ve been taught a certain way. Hopefully you follow that. If you don’t, you don’t. It’s no different than somebody going, you went to, you know, you went to Georgetown and you learned a specific thing that has continued to catapult. You ran into a great professor. How many people within your class didn’t become successful and had the same opportunity, but yet they weren’t key to staying on a path of growth, of decline, and they get trapped in it. So it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t start in school, we honestly should and that we shouldn’t talk about at home. I did. All I’m doing is not, I’m not blowing fluff up anybody’s, you know, behind. When it comes to the fact that you’re giving your family a bigger shot by trying and doing and setting the example. You brought up a good point. Many times examples around them are horrible. Right? I’m not perfect, brother. I had those opportunities, I had those conversations where I had to continually grow and learn. So those listening are watching. It’s okay. Here’s what I’m going to tell people. When you’re having conversation with your children about money, goals, problems at school, it’s okay to say to them, you know, I’m not sure how to answer that. You know, can I think about it? Can I get back to you so we can have that conversation when I’m, when my mindset’s clear and focused on this conversation. But admitting you don’t know gives your kids relief. Because you know what? Quit wanting your kids to think you’re a hero your whole life. You’ll be a hero to them in many ways. But it doesn’t have to be on subjects you really don’t know. You know, dad, mom, you’re a hero. In this way and that way, you sucked with money. So. You know what I mean? It’s. It’s teaching people at school is the biggest thing. Like. And you said Canada is better. No. Or not. I’ve tried. I’ve been in the schools. I’ve been in the schools. Maybe we’re better in some ways with education and money, but I don’t think so. I think in some ways there’s. There’s a lot of growth in North America, not just here. I interview people around the world are running into Australia, around. Around Europe. They’re running into the same problems. We’re an entitled generation that is constantly being manipulated by the. As you talked about, the banks and disinformation and. And, you know, 70 cents to 4, 500. You’re a number. Stop being a number. Start controlling your numbers. Your life will be better. You’ll just live a better life. So I like that the dinner table is. I can remember conversations at the dinner table with my kids. You know, they’re all adults now. I can remember having conversations where I have to create that conversation at the. At the dining table without no dinner. Right?
[00:42:30 – 00:42:31]
Yeah.
[00:42:31 – 00:43:36]
We need to have a conversation. Right. But at one, at some point in time, you just got to cut the strings and let them fly and figure things out themselves. The most precious thing. I don’t know if it happens to you with clients. Probably does. I could imagine you’re being such an amazing individual. You have clients that have said, you know, if not for you, this wouldn’t have changed in my mindset. I wouldn’t have accomplished this. Just like you going to the professor. Right? Yeah. Full circle. Right. I love it when my clients tell me, you know what? We’re starting to get better. You’ve done this for us. You’ve done that for us. And I’ll say to them, no, I didn’t do it. I gave you the information. I helped be your co pilot. You did it. Give yourself credit. Right. So thank you for that. Anything else you’d like to add about in regards to emotional learning at home or school focus? Like, I know one of the things that really irritates me. I think I read about that with you. As we teach math in school, why isn’t it just integrated with math? Like just simple, simple little questions like that. So you mind talking about that more in regards to education and how we could. Better.
[00:43:36 – 00:43:42]
Better. I mean, that’s a. That’s an explosive topic for sure.
[00:43:42 – 00:43:45]
Good. Let’s go for it. I don’t mind, brother.
[00:43:45 – 00:50:58]
This is giving with the education system. So, okay, so here’s what I’ll say about that. And it’s kind of the catalyst for why we started and we run Tractology Academy the way that we do. So my wife is a researcher for the Department of Education. Well, she’s, she works for another organization, but they get contracted by the Department of Education. And she does this at, I mean the, the, the level that you do at the highest level. So just a quick 45 second aside on my wife just because she’s awesome and anytime that I have to pick her up in a public forum, I will do so. She was born on the island of Puerto Rico. Her mom moved her and her entire family to New York where besides the mom, none of the kids knew English. And so my wife was a first or second grader being brought to a brand new place where she didn’t even know what cold was. Think about that. So they moved to New York in the winter and she didn’t even understand the concept of code because she had lived in Puerto Rico her entire life. So flash forward, she learns the language, gets so good at school, where she gets a scholarship to Brown University. Now the reason why her mom moved them from Puerto Rico to the United States is because the education system in Puerto Rico was terrible. My wife, after graduating Brown, gets her master’s degree to then go into research education. Up until, we’re not going to get into the politics of it, but up until Trump kind of closed the Department of Education, her job specifically was to reshape and redo the entire education system for the island of Puerto Rico. So talk about a full circle moment, right? So I tell you that to say a, my wife is awesome and I’m really lucky to have her. But more importantly, in the work that she does, I’ve been able to see and have conversations with people at every level of education. And here’s what I’ll tell you. It’s not that they don’t have the answer. They have the answer and they have the research to back up the answer. They know the models, they know everything that they need to do to fix our education system. We run against budget constraints, political issues and will. Those are the three things that are stopping us from changing our education system overnight. It’s not that we don’t have the answer. And so what we’re looking at in this situation, in terms of looking at the education system is that there just needs to be a fundamental shift in how it happens. When we first started doing the work for Trade College Academy, we really did want to go the route of seeing how we can get this information into schools. And we ran across the same things. We don’t have the money, we don’t have any extra time. And the one decision maker who you need to get to get to say the yes, he has no desire whatsoever to do this. So it’s simply not going to happen. And so my wife is smart enough to say, hey, listen, if you really want to inspire change, we’re going to have to go around the education system instead of trying to go through. And so the work that we do goes around this kind of educational piece to go directly to parents that go through other nonprofit organizations like Junior Achievement and others to be able to get access to hundreds of thousands of millions of students outside the traditional K through 12 classroom space. It’s not that these schools don’t want to do it, but think about what a teacher has to be able to do now. They have to be a therapist, they have to teach. They don’t have any additional money to do all these other things. And now we’re asking them to do one more additional thing, which is to teach the kids how to be proper adults too. It’s kind of unfair seeing as they don’t even make a bunch of money and they don’t even know if they’re going to have a job next year with kind of what’s going on in the political climate and the political situation. So there’s a lot of complex things that are shaping what’s kind of happening here. Well, even if we know the right answers, it’s not necessarily that having the right answer is going to be the thing that is going to help you. The other thing that I’ll say about it in terms of what we do within Trichology Academy, that I think is a bit different. That does help the, that facilitates these sorts of moments that you’re talking about, which is man without traitology, I don’t know what we would have done is two things. First, a lot of times parents don’t even understand what type of money mindset they have. So think about this. If you’re a spend first person versus a save first person, is your mentality in your family to be a legacy builder, a protector, a coach, or just a freedom seeker. Or you’re like, no, I want my kid to have the autonomy to do whatever money is about fun and experiences. It’s not about this. All these other things. And so do you have a match with even the, the type of profile that your student is so you could be speaking one language, but your child speaks a completely different language. And you all are having communication issues because you realize that one person is speaking this way and the other person is speaking the other way. You’re never going to connect unless you have a way for you to understand that. Oh, okay. Like my mom or dad thinks this way, I think this way. How do we bridge this gap? That. So a common way to think about it is like, if you’ve ever done one of those like love language quizzes, right? Like back when I was in the dating pool, I got so tired of getting that question asked to me, like, what is your love language? Like, lady, shut up. But still, it’s acts of kindness, it’s physical tests. Like, I knew the answers to them, you know what I mean? Because it was a great way to be able to understand. Oh, you’re this way. Oh, I’m this way. So if I want this relationship to work, I could try to be like who I want to be towards you, or I can just give you what I know that you need because that’s going to help you to be better. And so we have the diagnostic tools within our organization, within our academy, to not only for the student, but for the parent to understand what their specific money language is. That way you can have more healthier conversations at the dinner table because you’re not speaking two different languages. One person isn’t speaking French while the other person is speaking German. That’s been a really interesting thing to kind of help to heal some of these relationships when you realize, no, we’re not fighting, we’re just different. So that’s a. The other piece to it is that you also need to have access to the data to like understand where your kid is now versus where we ideally want them to be. So what are they? What do they naturally excel at versus what they don’t? And then do you have tools that will help you to be able to facilitate ways to help them to close those gaps? And so it’s kind of happening now, but in the next two to five years this is going to be pretty commonplace. So thankfully we’re implementing it in our academy now, which is to have an AI mentor, not one that sits public facing on the website for you to ask a question similar to ChatGPT, but one that looks at all of your test scores, looks at all of your diagnostics, looks at all of your data to know where you are, what you are doing well at, where your gaps are, and then to know how to in a way that understands you. Because Remember these things. Have a memory in terms of the type of person you are to then guide you in a way to be able to close those gaps that you need that are important, like how to file your taxes and all these other things. More importantly, to identify and steer you in the direction of where your strengths are naturally. So if you are a spend first person, you can be highly successful as a spend first person. You don’t have to be a safe first person. You just have to understand how to be the best spend first person that there is, which is, that’s a different tool set than the person that has a saved first mentality. Most parents are trying to teach them what they feel is the right answer based on their particular language. But our tool goes, no, okay, well, we know that you, you know, growing, you’re looking to do legacy building. So here is the tool set for legacy building. Let’s get you those specific blocks for legacy building versus trying to do anything else. So again, it’s like trying to teach a kid to become a professional basketball player by having them play soccer every day. It’s never going to work. So you have to understand where they’re trying to go and give them the tool sets that will help them to be able to get to that destination versus the destination that we think that they want to be.
[00:51:00 – 00:51:27]
That makes sense. And that’s, that’s great to have tools like that. So if somebody identifies as somebody that’s legacy, is it commonplace for people to change focus as they start to learn about the rules? Right. And they start learning about what they want? So somebody that’s legacy, could they pivot away from, from that legacy because their awareness increases or do you find that it’s, it enhances and makes them stay that way?
[00:51:27 – 00:53:09]
Yeah. So think of these sorts of archetypes as more like a personality profile or like these things don’t change all that often. Could they change? Absolutely. But more, it’s more like these are archetypes that exist within you. So like if you’ve done like Myers Briggs personality assessments, where like you’re these certain letters, that doesn’t really change too much throughout your life. It is kind of who you are. You know what I mean? And I know what you’re saying in terms of like, like, so here’s the thing. Typically when you’re young, you’re liberal, you’re more Democratic, I’m not going to say you’re a Democrat, but you’re more Democratic and progressive. By the time you move into your 30s and 40s, you’re a bit more moderate. You’re, you get more madder at the President a lot more often because you feel like the president is messing up and can really make the things that they have the world go right. And then by the time you get older, you should probably be conservative. If you’re a progressive at 70 years old, something isn’t quite right. You know what I mean? So, like, there are stages in life, life that you go through with these things kind of do naturally change, but you really do kind of have those natural propensities within yourself, and they pretty much stick with you throughout your entire life. And so we, we’re not betting on those things not changing, but we are building tools that if those things are starting to change or we identify the things that are happening, I mean, you can just kind of steer them in other directions. Or you can, for example, we could say, this is what we think you are. And then you, once you see that can go, no, but I want to do this. And then it goes, okay, well, I’m just going to help you to do that. Like, AI doesn’t care what you want to do. It’s going to help you to get to where you’re trying to go. It’s going to guide you where it thinks is the right answer. But if you tell it to do something else, I mean, AI is the ultimate yes. And like the improv acting thing, it’s like, oh, yes, you said you want to do that and here’s how we’re going to give it to you. Like it doesn’t really care.
[00:53:10 – 00:54:09]
Yeah, it’s. That is so true. You talked about, you know, I call it money monsters too. You did talk about that prior in the last few minutes in regards to the things that we’ve, we’ve had in our lives and, and being able to accept them. And your tools are helping people discover where they need to go. And then I, I was thinking about it. You’re saying, well, you know, we’re going to identify this and we’re going to support you where you need to go. Just like AI is. And I think of a gps. What is the GPS constantly doing? It’s correcting us, right? It’s taking us in a path of, of least resistance. But is there ever a time where you dealt with people or deal with people where you, where you have to adamantly say to them that this, you know, your path you’re on is actually right? You’re letting your mind overtake, right? You’re letting it control the fact that you’re doing so well, that you are on the right path and you’re just questioning it too much all the time.
[00:54:09 – 00:54:38]
I mean, you’re going to deal with overthinkers. You’re going to deal with, especially with. With students that are so impressionable, who sometimes insecurity is masked as overconfidence. You know, you think you have the right answer and you don’t want an adult to tell you that, no, you should probably be doing something different or better. And so you deal with that. You deal with it with empathy. You deal with it with understanding. In a lot of instances, you allow the student to make the mistake so that they learn from their own experience that that wasn’t the right thing to do.
[00:54:38 – 00:54:39]
Do.
[00:54:39 – 00:54:54]
Sometimes that’s the best thing to do. It’s not to try to stop them from making the mistake in the first place. You see that they’re going to make a mistake. You tell them they’re going to make a mistake, they do not listen. Then they make the mistake, and then they learn from that. Now, again, it’s not have the kid go to jail or commit any sort of crazy crimes. You know what I mean? Like, they’re.
[00:54:54 – 00:54:55]
Yeah, of course I do.
[00:54:55 – 00:55:31]
Yeah. But in terms of like, life, I mean, that’s how I learned. That’s how everybody learns. We learn through trying stuff out and then if it doesn’t work, to go and adjust and, and adjust course and redirect in that sort of way. So to have students have the opportunity to be able to do that is a. I mean, parents is the same way. They’re also set in their ways. They think that they know the answers. And so you’re dealing with, you know, just egos and personalities and things like that. We do have tools that we utilize with that as well. So some of the stuff, like in our academy, we have, you know, meditation, where every week students start with getting themselves into the correct mindset to be able to visualize the sorts of things that they want to learn. We have exercises that.
[00:55:31 – 00:55:31]
That work.
[00:55:32 – 00:57:43]
I don’t want to use the word controversial, but it’s a bit different from what you wouldn’t normally see in academies. But like, we have exercises that you can do to help you to change habits and beliefs and things that are going on at the habitual level in your subconscious mind. So instead of me arguing with your conscious mind, right. Which I know is already the result of unconscious processes, we can see that there are unconscious processes that aren’t healthy from however you pick them up, whether it was childhood or school or a Dumb example or something that you’ve gotten in your life. Life. And we have a set of proven protocols that will allow you to be able to change those habits if you choose to. Now we’re not going to force it on you obviously, but imagine if when you were growing up, 18, 19, 20 years old, or however old you were, if we said, man, I made the same mistake five times in a row. It’s not that I don’t know that I need to change it, I just don’t know how to change it. And we go, here you are, here’s how you change it. That sort of stuff isn’t. It isn’t so publicly known or publicly available. Like there, there were times or there are times now if you really think about it, where there is stuff that really does work that isn’t on the Internet. And as weird as that is to say, because we think everything is on the Internet, there’s some stuff that just isn’t. So I’ll give you an example. The goal achievement protocol that I use that has helped me to grow this business and grow a multimillion dollar hedge fund and all this other stuff. Like the guy who developed that was the MIT guy who retired over a decade ago ago. So he doesn’t teach it anymore, he doesn’t care. I just happened to have taken his practitioner course like 10 years ago and now I can utilize those same protocols because I remember it back then. But if you go and try to search it online right now, you’re not going to find it. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work or that it’s not one of the most amazing things I’ve ever had in my life. It’s just he’s not selling it for $10,000 on a website somewhere, so you don’t even know it exists. So we have tools like that in our tool chest where you may not know that they are more publicly available, but that doesn’t mean that they work any less. If you try our little stupid 10 minute exercises and lo and behold the habit has changed and you’ wow, this is pretty cool. Or a lot of times what you find is that you don’t even recognize the habit has changed because again, we’re working at an other than conscious level so you’re just behaving differently and somebody has to point it out to you that your behavior has changed and then you go, oh man, you’re all right, that did change for the better.
[00:57:44 – 00:59:31]
That’s awesome. What you’re talking about is honestly is priceless. If we can give people a different thought process. You’re right. You don’t know if they’re going to necessarily gravitate and grasp onto it. But at the end of the day, I look at the fact of what’s gone on in our world in regards to people not having a roadmap and I, you know, think about the fact of my IT consulting industry and flowcharts and we do, you know, I’d work with big corporate companies and they’d want some sort of a flowchart situation, a road map on how to deal with this stuff. And I tell them, okay, well we can put this through, we can have this. But there’s no guarantee where they’re gonna go. Right? There’s all we can do is hope that it’s awareness thing where, where they have a light bulb effect that wow, I can change that habit like you mentioned. So I think it’s priceless what you’re doing, brother. I think it’s amazing. And yeah, it’s, it’s. I didn’t think I’d run into somebody that like yourself, haven’t in years ever really that is that concerned about helping people find their focus, direction and you know, know what their, their journey of life’s going to be like. There’s no guarantee that there’s not going to be hills and valleys, but you’re somebody that is going to give them a road course, right? A road map, part of me and, and be there to be their co pilot when they require it, if they want it, they have to ask, obviously. So what is you, you’ve developed this and you’re reaching across continents now with Tradeologies Academy. How did your global expansion begin? How did you start going from being just in the US to wanting to go globally?
[00:59:31 – 01:02:32]
Honestly, it was just, it was a happy accident. It was a series of serendipities. So we knew that what we were doing translated across different countries. But for each of the countries that we’re in, I mean there was a specific story in terms of how it happened. So, so if we’re talking our expansion into Canada, D2L or D2L Brightspace, the company that houses our course or learning management system, they’re based in Canada. And so we were having conversations with people inside of that organization. We were looking to have our course be hosted by those guys and they were like, we haven’t seen anything like this. This is awesome. There are so many schools in Canada that have financial literacy mandates. Let me get you on conversations with these people so that you can introduce it to them. So in that example, it’s the more successful we are as an organization, the better of a case study and testimonial we have for their company. And so they’re trying to do everything they can to help us to be successful. So in Canada, that’s where that expansion is coming from. With Jamaica, it was. So my chief of staff is of Jamaican descent. He’s based in New York City, and so he’s connected with plenty of the families and the institutions that are out there. So we got a connection with Junior Achievements. We were able to have a meeting with the executive director of Junior Achievement. So she runs the entire thing. And we were able to just be in the meeting, be a person, impress her, which is some of the things that we’ve talked about already. Kind of a little bit prior to the podcast, we did speak, like, for maybe five or 10 minutes. But most of the stuff we’re talking about here’s, like, been in the podcast. But, like, the one thing that we didn’t touch on publicly is just, like, what you need to do in business to, like, really win the person to get them to know, like, and trust you to want to do business. And so we had that meeting with Junior Achievement, and the lady liked us. And then we were able to show her the data point so that she can trust that we actually were who we said we were, that we can do what we said that we were going to do. And so now in Junior Achievement, like, our curriculum is being taught in all of the high schools that Junior Achievement is in. And then next year, we run in Jamaica’s national stock market competition for high school kids. Just the serendipity that ultimately ended up happening. And then with the Indonesia expansion, our technology director, who is a. He’s French, but he lives in the uk, but he’s Indonesian. I don’t get how all that works. So we’re just going to say he’s Indonesian. He lives in Indonesia now with his wife. And so he was having conversations with people that were in Indonesia. He had people connected to his family that were connected to international schools there. And so again, we had the meeting. We won the room. We got them to know, like, and trust us. They wanted to implement what we were doing with their schools. And it just kind of happened. So it’s just really just, you know, communication and just honestly, what we’re. I don’t have to sell what we do to people. Like, it’s. It’s understood that this is something that’s valuable and that you need, you Just look for all the other stuff. Does it work? Are you. Is your heart in the right place? Will you guys actually do what you’re going to say that you do? So once we kind of get those questions answered, people are more than willing to, like, give this thing a shot, just kind of give it an opportunity. So that’s just kind of how the international expansion has happen.
[01:02:32 – 01:04:22]
Wow. I’m gonna have to look up D2L. That’s interesting because what you’ve talked about and what you’ve created and you’re currently, you know, achieving for so many people, it needs to be everywhere and you’re starting to get everywhere, and it’s interesting how you’ve gotten everywhere and it’s because of the associations or people that you employ that work with you. We’re just a melting pot, right? We’re as good as the people that are around us. And our tribe that we hang out with in Canada, they have, you know, we talked about earlier about courses and classes and stuff. They have a basic class they teach in high school, which isn’t enough to help people really do anything because it’s just teaching us some, maybe some factual basics, but it doesn’t address the, the money monsters or the learned behaviors, and it sends them out into the great wide world, like my daughter said. My one daughter went from one university to another in my home city of Edmonton, and she started taking finance classes and stuff. And she says, I, I knew, dad, I’ve been to enough your workshops. I’d heard you speak since I was little and, you know, I understood it, but it was coming from me. And, and when she went to school, things started clicking, right? So we need to get to a level, especially in school system where we have things like you’re doing for junior achievement, where they’re teaching your, you know, utilizing your, your, your fabulous content to change the lives of people. So I’m going to look into it. I want to know more about it because I would push it as much as I can across Canada with the people that I, that I know and utilize because I don’t want to recreate the wheel.
[01:04:23 – 01:04:24]
Yeah, I gotcha.
[01:04:24 – 01:05:25]
Right? Sometimes we need to utilize other people’s strengths, connections, you know, commonality to make a difference. So, man, I think I’ve said this a lot. Congratulations. Like, I’m just, you know, I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve said it this much in a podcast and ever because I’m just blown away by it. Like, I’m a firm, I’m a I’m a God fearing human. I’m a Christian, Catholic Christian. And I believe God brings people to us. And when we talked about why I picked you, it was because what I read and how it connected and the synergy I felt with the mission that I have with give a hack to, you know, help people live life on purpose, not by accident. I think God directs my mindset and my heart to find great people like you. Right. So that we can go out and make a difference. Even if one person watching this or listening to one person goes and checks you out. Vote. I’ve won. You’ve won one more person. Right. Because one person has the power to change many, right?
[01:05:26 – 01:05:29]
Yeah. One person changed my life, man. So I get it.
[01:05:29 – 01:08:34]
Yeah, me too, brother. Me too. Just as a side note, I had, when I got into the industry, I had somebody call me up, good friend of mine, a mentor for years, he said to me, he says, you know, I know you’re burned out in the IT industry. It’s causing health issues. You’re working way too much. I think you should get into the finance industry first and foremost before you get into the finance industry. You know, you’re, you know, we know you make, you know, good six figure income and stuff and you’re broke all the time. We need to help you first. That’s what he said to me. To help you first. Yeah. So that you can help others. And with my tenacious personality and as a serial entrepreneur, I literally fired all my trainers within six weeks and says I’m doing this on my own. You guys are too stuck in the old traditional way. I’m, I’m looking to expand and help people learn how to goal set, how to budget, how to understand needs and wants, how to understand their associations of people and, and things and live an intentional, purposeful life, man. Like, yeah, I’m so, I’m so jacked right now that we are having this conversation and that I’m getting to know more about you because it’s tools that I think I, I can utilize for people. Right. Obviously doing it through the association of D2L in Canada. It’s still you, but it’s something that we need to continually stand on a mountaintop and yell, right? Our young people, even our older people need help. I just started working with people here that are in their late 50s. Never had any of this done. And why do I bring that up? People listening or watching. You’re never too late to give a help check. Never. Absolutely right. You never to. God wants the best for you, right? But you have to carpe diem. You got to seize the day and understand the message that is coming from his children. Or hate saying, hey, we can help you. You can do this. And don’t, don’t get your financial advice. I’m not saying there’s not some good things on YouTube or tick tock reels or stuff like that. Really talk to human being, get to know them so they can get to know you and lay out that proper roadmap. Nobody has how long it’s going to take. Marcus doesn’t know what your time’s going to be. I don’t know what your time frame is going to be. But I do know that every baby step you take takes you to a fast walk to a run to it. You know what I mean? Like just move forward people. Especially when you have all this good information. I’ll make sure all, all your access to your website and all that stuff is in that and the details detailed show notes as well. I wanted to. We’re getting toward the end of the podcast you got a couple more questions. And this has to do with mindset and psychology, right? Of, of. Of what people do. The emotional intelligence and behavioral design that so many people don’t understand. But you teach so you often talk about. From what I was looking right. What I found is you like talking about the psychology I. That drives portfolio is more than strategy. What do most people get wrong about mindset and money?
[01:08:37 – 01:08:38]
So many things.
[01:08:39 – 01:08:41]
Shoot away, brother. We can record as long as we need to.
[01:08:42 – 01:15:19]
It’s so. I don’t, I don’t want to say it in that way. Here’s. Here’s what I’ll say. So before I started the academy, which was dealing with high school students, a couple things I want to say also because like we just had a moment just in and I also want to acknowledge and thank you. Thank you for like just the work that you do and the transparency that you have and the fact that you do leave with heart and give folks like me an opportunity to be able to come on a platform like yours, be able to talk about the sort of stuff that we do. I feel like in a lot of instances it goes back to this no like trust conversation that we know that the information is out there, but we don’t know necessarily what information to trust because there’s a lot of the best information. A lot of times behind the pay wall or how many times if you, you know, wanted to have a conversation which you felt was well meaning and then within three minutes now you realize oh, this was a sales call this entire time, you know what I mean? Which completely decreases the trust that you have with that person. So there aren’t as many opportunities for us to be able to really just come and give from heart without really expecting anything in return. I really came giving looking to give as opposed to looking to try to get something in return. That part makes sense. So thank you for this opportunity. I really do appreciate that, that in the work that I have done prior to starting the academy, I was, I was working with adults. So I was working with retail investors, which is guys that trade in gals that trade a million dollars or less. And with them I was focusing a lot of times on their psychology, not necessarily the strategies, because what I found is that you have a strategy that’s pretty okay. If you don’t, we can, you don’t have to use mine. But there are strategies that work in investing and investing is, it’s not a complicated thing as much as the news and all of these guys want to tell you that it’s impossible to do and you need to have all this. It’s really not. It’s relatively simple to make money in the markets. Hard part is keeping it. And so you have to understand the mechanisms by which to keep the money that you’re making and not to lose exponentially more once you start losing during your compounding those things, those mistakes that you making. 95% of that is mindset, it has nothing to do with the strategy whatsoever. And so if you’re neglecting the 95% of the stuff that’s helping you to lose the money, then you’re just going to continue to lose it and never fix any of these cycles. So the things that we focus on in the adult version of what we do with trachology is things like discipline, resilience, emotional management, money management, all these little tertiary things that we don’t think are important, that are incredibly important. And I’ll give you a story to kind of belabor this point, to kind of bring it home. So when I had started that I went from 50,000 to like 1.5 million or whatever it was. And then I went the route of like trading my own money. I joined this trade group, I won’t give the name of them or whatever, but joined this trade group where basically the trade leader had 5,6000 people in his trade room at any given time. Meaning that you can literally watch his screen as he’s taking the trades. All the same tools, all the same indicators, all the stuff that he was using to make money. You had access to access to all of it. And it was as much hand holding as you can get in me telling you that literally you can copy the guy’s trades and the guy was a million dollar a year trader Verify because he was doing it in the trade room every single day. So like he wasn’t, he wasn’t lying about the stuff that he was doing. But even with all of that hand holding, I had found that there were people in that group that were making a million dollars a year and there were people that were losing a hundred thousand dollars a year. How is that possible? When we have the same tools, the same information, we say the same thing. It is not the strategy. It is always going to be your mindset. So if you don’t adjust your mindset, then you’re going to always find yourself into trouble. Because what you’re not realizing is that especially when you’re talking about something as it’s like investing, where you click a button and then your financial destiny is in your hands. You can either make a bunch of money or you can lose a bunch of money. Then that introduces things like, like, well, what is even your, what is your understanding of what you feel you deserve, what you feel like you’re worth, what you feel like you’re capable of. We haven’t talked about things like your unconscious performance limit, which there’s a number in your head that you’re comfortable with having in your life. You make a dollar more than that, your mind starts to sabotage it because it becomes uncomfortable. Do you have the tools by which you can raise your unconscious performance limit? So let’s say it’s my comfortable number is a hundred thousand dollars dollars. But what if I want to make five hundred thousand? What if I want to make a million once I get the 200,000? Now I’m going to. My unconscious performance limit is being triggered. Therefore I’m going to start doing dumb things to sabotage it to get back to the number that I’m comfortable with. And usually you end up losing way more. These are very real things that are verified and backed by science. I’m not making any of this stuff up. And these are things that you never really deal with. Because in this stage, in this arena that we play in this ecosystem, especially for guys like retail traders, you find that one to many model. So you find a guy. I’ll just use me as an example. Even though I’m not the direct example, what I’m talking about. But like you find a guy who got pretty good at his investing strategy. Now he wants to make more money teaching other people that strategy. That’s fine. But that guy never even is even looking at your traits. That guy doesn’t know how you trade. He’s trying to teach you how to be like him. But in this industry, there are very few people that will go, no, I don’t want you to be like me. I want you to be the best version of you. And so let me look at what you’re doing and what you’re doing wrong and what we can help you to optimize so that you can be the best version of you that you can be. That’s what we do in our coaching company. That’s different than anything that I’ve ever seen. I’m not trying to make you a carbon copy of me. I am me. But you don’t have the same risk appetite as me. You don’t have the same strategy. You may not even want to say, trade the same markets that I do. That part doesn’t matter. I’m good enough at trading where I understand trading enough to help you to become a better trader at the type of trader that you want to be be. That’s just a completely different model altogether that we really don’t see all that often and that we try to employ in the work that we do. So I say all that to say to bring this in for a landing, that although there are a number of issues that we can talk about, we have diagnostics that you can take a assessment with us, it takes like 10 minutes and we can, we can identify the two to three things that are wrong. Because most traders don’t have 10 things wrong with it. They usually have like two or three. And if we can show you a proven way to fix those two or three things, then a lot of times you end up. It’s not always that you make more money, because that’s the misnomer, is that you lose less money. Therefore you’re keeping way more because you’re not losing it. And that’s the, that’s the thing that people don’t understand about trading. It’s not even how much you make, it’s how much you don’t lose that makes the big difference. I’ll give you a prime example. The number one thing that we deal with in our adult coaching company is that most people trade the open. I don’t want to go too far into this because I know this isn’t a trading podcast or whatever.
[01:15:19 – 01:15:20]
True.
[01:15:20 – 01:17:34]
So I’ll just talk about this. It’s like that first moment in the, when the market opens at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time, when people are putting in the orders the day before and the market’s doing this and it’s doing the most, it’s the most volatile time. Most traders participate in that time because that’s the biggest dopamine hit that you’re going to get because the market can do anything. And so therefore you want to participate in that time because you think that’s the opportunity for you to make the most money. But when I go back and I look at your stats, and I also do this with my own company and my own personal training trading as well, I go back and I look at the stats, yeah, you may have made a bunch of money during that time, but then look at how much money you lost. You lost way more money in that time than you should have been losing. Because you’re looking, you’re chasing the dopamine hit versus if you would have just traded literally a lot of times a half hour later, like if you would have just started your day 30 minutes later, you would have made this much more money. And so a lot of times it’s just, hey man, don’t trade in that first half hour of the day, wait a half hour, do the exact same thing and see how much more money you have. And lo and behold, you do. So it’s again, having the tools and the diagnostics to know ultimately what’s going on with people. And then once you do have those, you understand what those emotional things are. It always goes back to having a proven way for you to be able to change them. So those tools that I was talking about that we share with our students, we use it with adults. How do you change the beliefs, the habits, the patterns that are keeping you making those same mistakes over and over and over again? And they may look different, they may look like this this time, but this this time and then this another time, but it’s the same thing each time. It’s just, man, in a different way. So if we can get to the root cause of what it is, plug that out, you stop making that dumb mistake, you might do better. I don’t know how much better. But like, you know, from the work that we’ve done, there are no guarantees. But like, we see a lot of people making a lot of progress very quickly. But because again, it’s just, I don’t, I don’t claim to have any sort of magic, but it’s just more. Most people just don’t take the time to really listen to other people, it’s more, hey, I got something I think is really, really cool. I make money with it. Pay me 15 grand so you can do it too. You know what I mean? Like, that’s basically the model that exists out here as opposed to like now. Let’s just sit for an hour. Tell me how you trade. Tell me what your beliefs are. Tell me, like, let me see your actual trade so that I can see what’s going on with you and be able to diagnose you the same way any professional would. And then see what we can fix, man, what we can work on. A lot of times I don’t even charge for that. I just do it because I like it.
[01:17:35 – 01:18:33]
Right on. Yeah. Our emotional iq, you can be a blessing and it can be a curse, right. When it comes to understanding what’s going on between our six inches between our ears. And like you said, sometimes it’s just two, three things that need to be tweaked. It’s not even something like that’s financially based. You talked about whether or not they wait a half hour before they trade. That’s life too. Sometimes we jump in with both feet because we want that dopamine hit instead of waiting to see all the people that jump in first, first and, and the results of it waiting 30 days, 60 days. Yes, there is, there is luck involved. Well, some people, they started right away and look what they did. But you know, it’s more times that people lose than win. When you jump into something, both feet, without actually knowing all those the things that integrate and those two, three things in any portion of life can, can be.
[01:18:34 – 01:18:40]
I don’t mean to cut you off, Dwight, but like, this is a, this is a really important point that you’re bringing up that I want to make sure that your, your viewers understand.
[01:18:40 – 01:18:41]
Go ahead.
[01:18:41 – 01:19:12]
What happened to delayed gratification? We live in a world where that thing doesn’t exist for people and that’s usually where the riches are. You know what I mean? So, like what you’re talking about right now is the ability to be able to wait and nurture, to have delayed gratification, which in this instant 30 second clip age, it just doesn’t quite. We’re not being, it’s not being reinforced in our mind clients to have those things. But for people that still understand what delayed gratification is and how to use it to your advantage, these are the ones that are really making it work out here. So I just want to applaud you for bringing that part up.
[01:19:12 – 01:22:22]
Well, what really Frustrates me is consumerism. I’ve done, I’ve done solo podcasts where I talk about consumerism and finance. I did one here months ago. How to politically, in a political, you know, turmoil world, how do you deal with your life, your finances? Like I do stuff like that because we really at the end of the day need to put more stock in the fact that consumerism or corporations, credit card companies and banks make it so you don’t have to have delayed gratification for anything anymore. Like look at the credit card companies. I don’t know if they’re doing this in the US Now. Usually we’re, we’re a little bit, you know, forward thinking in some, in some ways there’s two things that credit card companies do that you think would shock people and they’re, they’re forced to do it in Canada. Like if you owe $30,000 and you’re only making a minimum payment. Minimum payments aren’t designed to pay down credit cards. It’s designed to service it first and foremost. And it’ll say based on what you pay year, 29 years, 6 months, 4 days to pay off this debt. It’s right on all our credit card statements. It’s like a giant wake up call to people. Your delayed gratification is causing, you know, now you’re living from, with more month, more days in a month and money. The list goes on. And the credit card companies are out here to give you stuff. Now they implemented last year, I use my credit card for everything, but I pay it off every month because I like the, I like the value of bear miles and points and stuff and I utilize it smartly. They literally now will email me. Let’s say I do a $2,500 purchase. They’ll email me and say, say, oh, because you did over $250, we’ll give you this interest rate and you can pay this off in six months and we’ll give you this interest rate. So the credit card let’s say is 22 to 30%. They’ll do it at 5.6%. That’s something they implement something else they’ve implemented. So what does that do to people? It just drives them to go and spend more. Oh great. Now I can, if I go spend five grand, they’re gonna let, they’re not gonna charge me the higher rates. Wait, they’re going to let me specifically pick that. There’s even a little checkbox, I can check it off saying yes, I want this. Okay, this is what your payments are Going to be at this interest for the next six months. Oh, I got what? I got more money. I can go get another payment. It’s not safe for your future first and then live off the difference later. That’s a purposeful existence. People just don’t understand it. So. Wow. I love that. It’s. This is. We could talk for hours, brother. We really, really could. I’m enjoying myself. Hopefully you are too. I want to get into. Honestly, we’re. I’m gonna have to skip some of this stuff. We’re gonna have to have another show eventually very soon. I’m serious. Like, I have so many things I wanted to talk to you about, but I really want to touch into this. I like understanding examples of. Of things that have happened to people. Can you share a moment when a student or parent breakthrough gave you, like, you know, goosebumps all over that, you know, you had that chill moment or just like that realization?
[01:22:22 – 01:26:38]
Wow. Yeah. There are two that I can think of specifically. So I’ll talk about, like, my. My kind of major breakthrough moment that as a coach was like, oh, okay, this is. This is something that I can do. And it’s proven that I’ve success that I’ve been successful at. And I can talk about the example straight from the academy, which is kind of what we’re working on now. So the first example that I had was Shamika, who was a client of mine. She’s based in Louisiana, and the work that we were doing was again, on the retail side, helping her to become a better investor. Now, it’s one thing to say, hey, I want to do this to make more money, which is, I mean, kind of where she was. But with Shamika, her issue was that her husband and her had gotten into trading together. And during COVID her husband unfortunately passed away unexpectedly. And so for her, she had associated trading and investing with the death of her husband. So she couldn’t really even open the charts without, like, crying or like, you know, she was trying, but there was just this. This trauma that was. Was associated with it. And so I worked with Shamika for, you know, a while. Well, the program was only 12 weeks, but, like, majority of that time, 80% of that time was just helping her by me holding the space to help her to utilize the tools to get over the death of her husband in a way that allow her to be able to look at the charts again. And so in doing all of that work, I mean, it took us a while to get there, there, but we did get there. And then once we did within 30 days, she, Mika, made a million dollars. Now, I’m not saying that to say that every client that I had has become a millionaire or whatever and insert every disclaimer that it is, you know, past anything doesn’t indicate future results. Like, I’m not saying it for that. I’m not saying it to impress you. I’m saying it to impress upon you just how much the emotional and, and just energetic side of all of this really makes a difference in what you feel like you’re capable of and what you deserve. And so for me, that was a great aha moment. Not because of the dollar amount. She could have made 100. She could have made any amount of money. That wasn’t the thing. It’s just, it’s cool to say that she made a million bucks. You know what I mean? But like, that’s not what it’s for. But it was that. It was that kind of confirmation for me that not only does this stuff work for me, not only does it work for others, but it works in situations in which it matters. Like, that mattered to me. That matter. Like, sorry, I’m kind of tearing up right now even thinking about it. Like, that mattered to her and it mattered to me. And we were able to get through that with the tools that were available to me. So that was a big wake up call that, like, you’re actually doing something that really makes a difference in people’s lives, man. So keep going. So that was that moment. And then the second moment was inside of the Academy in our pilot program that we had just when we started in January, hearing like one of our most successful students was actually a kid that was in Indonesia who didn’t know anything really about the US Stock market. But he had that tenacity that you talked about. He had that kind of chutzpah and he really wanted to learn it. And so he dug in to the information, to the content. And at the end of our, the end of our semester, we had a trading competition in which he took first place. Like, he really, he said it in the beginning that I’m going to win first place in this trading competition. I’m going to learn everything I need to learn about investing and I’m going to do this thing right. And lo and behold, he actually did, where the grand prize is like a cash value. Like he actually won cash, which we gave to him. He took that cash a, helped his family out a little bit, invested the rest into the stock market on his own. And now he showed me that he’s made, like, multiples of what we gave him in terms of the prize money. So it just also showed me that, like, not only does it work at that level, at the adult level, but if somebody actually practically applies the stuff that we’re teaching in our course, that they actually will be successful. So it’s not like we’re selling snake oil here, man. We’re giving you the tools that you can really use with, like, partner with interactive brokers, which is the, you know, the industry leader in terms of the work that we do with trading platforms. And, like, the tools that we’re teaching our students on today are tools in which you can open an account and now go and do it in real life. Like, it’s not some toy that you, you know, have to go and learn something else on.
[01:26:38 – 01:26:38]
On.
[01:26:38 – 01:28:10]
So to see him go and apply that to now be able to, like, make contributions in his own life and with his family, it’s like, man, like, this is what we do it for. These are. These are the exact reasons. So if I had to point to any examples, it would be those two, because it. The first one was one that truly mattered to me in terms of, like, I felt like in that moment, I was holding the space that God was asking me to hold to truly help somebody, and I did. So that was the. Then the other one was that it’s an example for me that held in my mind that what we are doing actually works, and it matters, and if you apply what we’re doing, it actually is going to work for you. So what that does is that also shields us from, you know, those army of people that tell you, because they aren’t implemented correctly, that your shit doesn’t work. And it’s like, no, it does. It really does. I’m like, I have an example that it does. So then it gives me a little bit more empathy to think through. Okay, what are they really saying? Like, they’re saying my stuff doesn’t work, but I know it works. So what is the limiting belief that we’re not getting to, that we have the tools to help you to be able to change where. I mean, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you hate us forever and that’s okay, too. Like, I’m not saying that, you know, we’re going to get everybody, but it doesn’t. It gave me the confidence to not. Not turn inward to myself, like, and let the Internet trolls win. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was like, no, we actually do have something that works. So now let me look at it from a different lens, which is that whatever this person is saying is actually asking for help. So how do we help him?
[01:28:12 – 01:30:54]
I wrote down when you were talking because I don’t know if you watch, but I write notes throughout the whole thing. I’m writing bullet to him points down and stuff because I honestly believe I can always learn from others. And I, and I want to not lose that, you know, that thought that I had. And I wrote down before you even said the word empathy, empathy equals your emotional iq. Because if you have the right empathy for yourself, you can learn to have empathy or others supporting you through empathy. Like that that woman that lost her husband, like I can’t even imagine. But you having empathy and helping her with her, her hills and valleys of where her emotional IQ is going through because of the association of trading with her husband to just everything. Again, congratulations. Like that is just phenomenal. Not too many people in my industry have harnessed the power of empathy. I have, I’ve literally had, I’ve had. You’re welcome. I’ve had many. And thank you for your compliment earlier too. I forgot to say thank you. I’ve had many different people in my life, life and I’ve had a few people that I’ve had on that are empathy coaches. And one of them has become a really good friend of mine. I met her down at a conference where I spoke at. She was there as well, and she’s an empathy coach. And she sat me down in between after I’d done my, my speech and I was off to the side and she come over and was talking to me and she says, you’re an empath, aren’t you? I said, well, I’ve been told that a few times that, you know, tell me about your life. And then she asked me these specific questions, questions and she says, oh my God. She says, you are a full fledged empath. She said, no wonder you had such trouble raising four girls and a boy. The girls are all like little, little antennas and I’m the receiver and they could be in the other part of the house and I felt worn out, brother. But when you learn to, when you learn to accept your reality and who you are and how you can help people, it is so powerful in our industry of helping people win the rules of the money game. To understand the rules of the money game, to have confidence. And confidence isn’t always based on, as you mentioned, disclaimers like, you know, the past isn’t indicative of the future, but, you know, some people are going to make the Millions. Some are going to be making that, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars extra. But at the core, the money is in result. The working on the 6 inches and the human behavior and. And they’re emotional and they’re. And their mental and their physical. Because it all ties together is phenomenal. I didn’t think I’d find somebody as young as you doing what I’ve been trying to practice and preach, and I’m not. I’m people listening.
[01:30:54 – 01:30:54]
Watch.
[01:30:54 – 01:32:22]
I’m nowhere at the level of Marcus. I don’t have all these fancy tools. I just been doing it me, myself and I. I used to have a brokerage I got. I didn’t want the headaches of training agents. I was a compliance officer. I gave up all that stuff years ago because I just want to be me being on one on one with people like Marcus to connect, to make a difference, to make one more person’s life be intentional and purposeful. So it’s amazing that I’ve met you. It’s amazing that I’ve had you on the show. Wow. If I could have been. If I could have at your age. But again, at your age. You’re in your 30s. Yeah. Yeah. In your. In my 30s, I was. I had five kids. It’s not that I’m not successful. I don’t want you to think that. Right. I’ve cons. I just constantly elevate and climb in my life to be a better version of myself. Till the day I take my last breath, that is. That is my commitment. Right. God put me on this earth and I just keep on discovering more and more what his intention and purpose is for me. Right. So. So thanks, Marcus. I appreciate it. This is the last question we’re going to ask for today, and then we’re going to wrap up the show. Marcus here at Give a heck, we’re all about living life on purpose and not by accident. If someone listening today and thinking, I want to give a heck, Marcus, but I’m not sure where to begin, what would you say then to help them stay committed and never give up in their lives?
[01:32:23 – 01:37:31]
That’s a really good question. That’s a really fun one. Thank God I have an answer. Seeing as this is the last question and I want to make sure it’s a good one. Here’s what I would tell people. I would tell people to always make sure that you focus on your team. And so for me, team is an acronym that I use in my own life and I use in every company that I run, every project that I work on, which is to always take time to focus on where you’re spending your time, your energy, your actions and your money. Because if I have a conversation with you and I’m probing to try to figure out what you got going on in your life, I’m going to ask you questions to get around those four areas in terms of seeing where you are in each one of those areas. Because then that’ll tell me what you’re achieving, why you’re not achieving it, if you’re trying to get somewhere. So in terms of like, if you don’t know how to get there and what you need to do, the first thing I would say is just taking onto the vet. Where’s your time going every single day? Is it going to you actually achieving what you want to achieve or is it going towards busy work or responsibilities that are better for other people? You’d be surprised just how much you can get accomplished by just spending an hour a day for the next 30 days, for the next 60 days or for the next year on something you really want to work on. I’m not saying quit your job, I’m saying just spend an hour a day. When you were on YouTube or whatever it is that you want to really focus on the thing that you want to focus on, you’ll be surprised at just how much more progress you make in that. So where are you spending your time? And can you take an hour of your life to put it towards what you genuinely want to achieve? When we talk about your energy, what are the things that are sucking up your energy on a daily basis now? Again, if you have children, I get your children, you kind of can’t get rid of them, even though sometimes you really want to. Right? But when it comes to like energetically, like your job, projects, things that you have sitting over there that you should have worked on two months ago, that you haven’t and now is just staring you in the face every single day, day. But when you really sit down and deal with it, you realize, oh, that was a 30 minute job that I’ve been sitting and letting it wait for two and a half months just because energetically I didn’t want to deal with it. But now that energy is off of my plate and now I have the freedom and the creativity to be able to do something else. So take a look at your life and look at the things in which there are energy vampires, things that are sucking your energy, that if you just were to check them off of your list, you would get that energy back. One of the great systems that are used is his. I forget what his name is. David Allen, I think it is. But the getting things done protocol. So one of the things that he asked you to do is just sit for like 90 minutes and think of every single task, project thing that you’re supposed to be doing that you haven’t done, get it all down on a piece of paper and then organize it in such a way so that even if you just tackled off one a day, how much better would your life be knowing that you don’t have all of this stuff sitting in your cash? So think about on your web browser, you’ve got all of these tabs open of things that you were supposed to come back to that you never go back to to. And now your computer is running slow and you have no idea why that, like at every single website they’re loading hundreds of megabytes of information. They’re constantly refreshing in the background, doing things, thinking that you’re going to come back to it, and they never do. That’s what happens in our mind, that’s what happens energetically that we never decide to clear the cache in our lives. So energetically, do yourself a favor and clear your cache. Once you do that, then it’s great for you to be able to take inspired action action, which is the a. Because now you’re going to be focused on what you really want to focus on, which is, okay, I got all the other dumb stuff out the way. I got an hour a day. What is. What is that silent voice within me telling me that I should work on? Because at least. And I don’t know if it’s the same way with you, Dwight, but for me, like, my true intuition usually is very. It’s a. It comes in a whisper. It comes in a very silent but confident voice. It’s usually the yelling thoughts that are my ego. Ego. So like that truth is a. Is a silent, grounded thing. So in your life, where is that? What is that thing that, like, it may not even make sense to you, but it’s like, look, take this action. And that’s going to point you to the next step and the next step and the next step. So like, in terms of action, what little inspired action could you take to get you to where it is that you genuinely want to go in that hour a day that you’ve been trying to give yourself? And then finally we turn to money, which is a. Fixing your habits around money. I get that’s important. Having more money, we know is always going to be the Best case scenario, even though that really doesn’t make a difference as well. I thought having a bunch of money was going to make me happy and spoiler alert, it didn’t. It actually made me worse in the beginning because now I have to handle all of this money that I had. Nobody taught me that once you get into another income level that like, it becomes more complicated, infinitely more complicated. So it’s not necessarily the money that’s going to make you happy, but it’s what you do with it. So in what ways can you make, make a bigger contribution to something other than yourself with your money? Are you still following God’s principle where you’re giving 10% of your income away even if you don’t have it, even if it’s just $10 a month? Are you making some contribution somewhere to something other than yourself? So that, that is really energetically going out into the universe in such a way that it’s really ultimately making a difference. So we can talk about this one topic for an hour, but I’ll just go back and conclude if you really don’t know what you’re doing and where you need to go, just take a look at your team, man. Where are you spending your time, your energy, your actions and your money? And if you can fix even a couple of things in any of those areas, I think you’re going to be in a much better place.
[01:37:32 – 01:40:04]
Wow. I’m just writing down you’re coming back because. Wow. Yeah, it’s, it’s not often it’s very refreshing to have somebody. And again, this isn’t about, you know, age making me smarter. It just means that I’m, I have a, a deep respect for the fact of who you present, what you do for people, your empathy, your tenacity, all of it. People out there listening. I’m in my, in my late 50s doing, doing this for 20 some years and elevated to a level that I can continually want to grow. And you have somebody like Marcus in his 30s that has accomplished so much and is continually teaching and educating and helping people and, and your breakdown of team was amazing, right? Most people think of, most people think of team as together. Everybody achieves more. It’s no different than fear. You know, I love Ackerman’s too. People always say, well, fear is false evidence appearing real. No, it isn’t. For me, it’s face everything in rise. Every time I get fearful, I coach people on it. Every time you think of fear, think about it. What’s creating that fear? What’s driving you? How can you face it it and rise above it? Who can you contact? Maybe you have the tools yourself. Maybe you’re at that level that you can combat it with your critical mindset. You can help others get past it. You can help yourself get past it. But at the end of the day, we have to. All these things are great, you know, your time, your energy, action and money. But are you one of the willing that’s willing to apply this stuff to your life? Are you willing to apply the stuff that Markets has talked about? Right. Even if you have a little bit of something holding you back? The best thing you can do for yourself as a human being is reach out to Marcus. Check him out, right? If you don’t want to reach out to him right away, right. Check them out on the Internet. Go look at some of the things that he’s accomplishing. Go check out his website. That’s pretty neat. But anyway, basically start with your family. Build together, learn together. Right? Great. Just move forward. It all starts at the core of our foundation of life and how we were raised. Don’t let that be your monster. Don’t let that thing that slows you down, right? We all have seeds of greatness in us. Marcus. What would be the great way, best way, pardon me, for people to reach you?
[01:40:04 – 01:42:25]
Oh, sure. So you can go to our website today Trade colleges. So think psychology for trading. T R-A D E C-H-O-L-O-G-Y.com There you can, you know, sign up for our free newsletter. You can take a look at the programs and stuff that we have. So if you’re interested as a family and being able to apply some of this stuff that I’ve talked about in terms of money principles and learning how to, you know, deal with personal finance and investing as a family, you can definitely go there. In terms of you want to connect with me personally. All of my socials are Marcus Howard hq. So you can pretty much find me online again. Hedge fund manager running the school. I am fairly busy, busy. But if I do see comments, if people reach out to me, I definitely will respond back. I typically always do. So those are probably the two easiest ways. The other thing that I can say is like as we are ramping up for our launch on September 15, like we’re doing a giving campaign as well. So if you go to and we can put it in the show notes, but it’s giveaway.trecology.com essentially we’re doing a back to school giveaway where the grand prize winner wins an iPad, A$250 back to back to school gift card. And then we have a number of partners that are helping us, like Tom thrive for a student debit card like this, we’re giving away like $2,000 worth of stuff to somebody, essentially, you know what I mean? So like just again, it’s an opportunity to be able to give My motto in life, my mantra in life, and I didn’t make it up. I got it from whether I don’t remember if it was how to win friends and influence people or one of the other ones, but it was, I may only pass this way once. So if I get an opportunity to help somebody, let me do it now because I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. And so I just wanted to be able to give that opportunity, as I’m here now, to know, yes, we’ve given away a lot of information, but then we’re also like, you know, it’s back to school time. So if there’s an opportunity for you to be able to get a new iPad, oh, get a year. Also you get subscription to our school for a year as well. I forgot to even mention that. My team would kill me mention that part. But so, yeah, so like the, you know, year for our school, the iPad, all the things that you would need, need to be able to facilitate this stuff for your family. So that, that as well is another way, you know, that’ll get you entered into our ecosystem where we can email you stuff and then, you know, we see the emails of the team. These don’t go to some automated places. I mean, there’s like nine or ten of us now, but like, we genuinely give a damn about what we’re doing. So like we respond to emails. We do all this other stuff. We’re real human beings, man, here.
[01:42:26 – 01:43:20]
Right on. For those new to the Give a Hack podcast, you can go to www.giveaheck.com. go to the top hit on podcast and you will see a picture of Marcus. You will see detailed show notes as well as the link that he just mentioned. All his social media links will be in there as well as chapter summaries of what is discussed throughout the last Almost hour and 45 minutes. You’re going to be able to see detailed, unedited show notes. I do include them so you can go and check out all of that. Some people like read. Some people want to look at the summaries and go, I really like this, but I don’t know where it is and I don’t Want to fast forward to an hour and 45 minutes? Go check out the show notes. They’re, they’re very detailed and you’ll be able to access and connect with Marcus. Any last final words before I wrap up the show, brother?
[01:43:21 – 01:43:50]
I just want to, you know, just take a moment of gratitude again to appreciate you with the work that you’ve done. And it’s not easy to always in the work that we do, being empathetic and helping people, we also have to shine a very reflective mirror at ourselves to do the things that we need to do to show to be a better person for other people. So I know a lot of times you try to spotlight people on this show that are doing great things, but in order for you to be able to even vibrate energetically at that level, you’ve had to do the work to be able to attract these sorts of people as well. So I just want to say thank you, brother.
[01:43:51 – 01:44:42]
Oh, I appreciate that. Appreciate the kind words. God’s blessed us both by putting us together. So this has been a fabulous podcast us. I’m going to wrap up the show now. Marcus, thank you so much for joining me on Give A Hack. Your insights, your energy, your mission to empower. Families are not just informed of, they’re transformative to everyone listening. If this episode stirred something in you, if it made you think differently about money, mindset, or your family’s future, don’t keep it to yourself. Share this conversation with family, friends, colleagues, anyone you care about. Quote because rewriting your financial story doesn’t happen in isolation. Living life on purpose takes a village. Until next time, thanks for tuning in and keep striving to give a heck and live life on purpose and not by accident.