an author and a trader with over 20 years of market experience and the most viral trading educational video on earth. If you don't lose weight, it's easy to blame the fitness trainer, but it really is you. You just haven't done the work. The people that kind of say that system must be better, you've got nothing to go on other than the fact that someone on Instagram is telling you you should be doubling your account every week. So now you're putting yourself down believing your system's crap. Jason Greystone reveals not only his investment thesis from his book, but reveals how to connect trading to financial freedom. Bitcoin, for instance, is doing 50% a year. Stocks doing 15% per year or 20% per year. Doesn't mean you're going to earn that. The way that you allocate your capital should be directly correlated to your knowledge on each of the things. If you're staying up at night checking your phone, you've got too much money in that thing. So, the key is to you can't just pick a strategy off the shelf and trade it into the sunset and it's going to work forever. It's about taking it and then seeing where I'm leaving money on the table, where I've made mistakes. Am I in trades that I should have been in? Am I not in trades that I shouldn't have been in? As long as you're doing that, you're going to maintain a level of profit because you're on top of it. Because we have your book, which is about to come out. It's around financial freedom. And it seems to me investing is one of the strongest roots towards it. What else would you say is arms of building financial freedom? And more importantly, why it is so important in this day and age? For me, you know, I've learned Ladies and gents, welcome back to another episode. This might be the most spontaneous episode ever. Jason and I, we just met like an hour ago and here we are in the studio. Thank you very much on your last day in town to to make this happen. Such a pleasure. Thanks. So, usually I'm a little bit more prepared cuz I I know the guest prior, but this has this has come on a last minute. So, we're going to explore your life and your trading career together. But what what strikes me is you started your journey 20 years ago or 20 plus years ago and you've probably seen the rise and fall of many a guru. You've seen the CFD space develop the prop firm space develop and and now becoming an author. It's it's a lot has happened in your career. So there's so much to touch on but I want to start off with your strategy you mentioned is is almost a timeless approach. you haven't had to pivot or change too much which uh too many would I see comments all the time of panic of you know I'm learning this strategy but what if it changes in two years and and I have to relearn it again it's a common fear that a lot of traders have what has it been like in your experience in navigating many economic cycles and the market is going up and down yeah do you know whatever I hear well for starters every successful trader that I've ever met personally um when I ask them what they trade they tell me about strategies that they've learned and the first strate strategy they learn and then they jump to something else and they went to something else and they end up going back to the first strategy and making that profitable and the reason they picked the first strategy in the first place is because it resonated with the most and it suited them as a something clicked right so for me you know I've learned lots about the markets over the years I've learned lots of different strategies I've seen it all I've really have and um what I learned was it you can't just pick a strategy off the shelf and trade it into the sunset and it's going to work forever But it's about then taking it and then optimizing, keeping on top of it, right? So I only trade strategies that first of all I've tested and verified to be profitable in historic data. And then once I'm trading it, my journaling then becomes my testing. So I'm constantly journaling, constantly refining, constantly reviewing, constantly doing quarterly reviews and six month reviews and annually reviews and and seeing where I'm leaving money on the table, where I've made mistakes. Am I in trades that I should have been in all the time? And am I not in trades that I shouldn't have been in? And am I making zero errors, you know, technically and mentally? And as long as you're doing that, you're going to maintain a level of profit because you you're on top of it. If you just trade it and then suddenly it's not profitable anymore and you haven't been tracking all of that data, you don't know why you're not profitable anymore. And now you have to go back to square one and start again. And I think the only people that say that that they're worried that it's not going to be profitable anymore are people who are not journaling their trades and not optimizing as they go. It's like a business, right? You don't just you know your numbers in and out. You know, you track the leads and the sales and the, you know, and you and you tweak what's not working and what is working and you end up staying on top of it and making it profitable. So trading's no different really. You just I I don't really understand when people say that. It's It doesn't make sense to me. Something I find pretty interesting is there's a lot of words that are thrown into the mix with this idea. Number one is intuition. Uh where intuition is arguably something real, but someone with two weeks of market experience probably doesn't have intuition. So let's say somebody's in a situation where they they had an edge that was working, but they maybe got a few payouts, let's say, and now they've just hit a losing period and it's all going wrong. What is the difference between my intuition tells me I need to change my strategy versus this is a losing streak this is factored in continue trading the plan how would you know when to pivot uh when you do review your data and it's it is negative let's say yeah so I for me personally I have a risk tolerance and a maximum draw down limit and historically I know when my you know when that's going to be um jeopardized when it's going to be violated I know my maximum loss monetary figure. I know my maximum loss in percentage. I know how long uh my average draw down goes through historically. So if any if I get close to that, then the alarm bells can start to ring and I can say well actually I best tweak this. But unless it gets anywhere near that, I'm not worried. You know, I'm I'm just trading the plan. And this is on a quarterly basis. You will you'll make decisions. I do a mini review on a quarterly basis, but the major review is on an annual basis. So, I'm I'm I'm looking for like profits over 12 months. Like, I'm at a place where I'm really not worried if I don't make a profit for a month. Like, that's where I'm at in my trading right now. It's very much long-term. It's very much swing trading. It's very much um profit over time. And and you know, I I don't worry if in summer, for instance, I have a particularly quiet period and and I'm just I've just learned that that's the way it is. Back in the day when I hadn't had as much experience in the market, I might have got a bit worried or concerned and thought. But now I've got that time in the market, I can go ah you know it's been like that for 5 years or it's been like that for seven years. And it doesn't mean it has to stay like that. You can develop a complimentary strategy that is good in the summer, right? And you can add that to the arsenal and you can start to capitalize on opportunities there on that quiet spell. But for me, I'm just in a place in my life where I just I'm happy with what I'm doing. And I'm in I'm incrementally increasing my strike rate over the years. Um, I went from a 55% I'm at about 62% right now. Um, increasing my reward to risk profile. I went from a 1.5% I'm average 1.8% now. It's not major, but it but it it keeps up with my mindset, you know? it keeps up with I wouldn't want to go from 1.5 to 155% trader to 100% trader. I just wouldn't be able to, you know, I just wouldn't I think also this pendulum approach uh breeds no longevity because uh it's short-term. It's it's kind of let's say random uh momentary momentary highs. I want to I want to pin this word uh longevity because time in the market isn't necessarily an indicator of success because I've also come across traders who have been trading for 5 to 10 years and lost money for 5 to 10 years and it's rather bizarre uh because you would in any other field in life if you commit something time and effort and resources for 5 years usually there is a positive outcome the markets is not the same. So what what do you believe is the key to longevity in the market and also making your time worthwhile as opposed to just 5 years wasted on left, right, and center? It's just not try not knowing your numbers, not testing the system and not journaling your system. That that's literally it because they're just if you don't lose weight, it's easy to blame the fitness trainer, right? But really, it's you. You just haven't done the work. Like you just eat less than you burn and and walk and lift some weights, right? And and the people that kind of say, "Oh, well that system must be better." are the people that just jump again and again and again. And what you do by doing that is lose consistency. The moment you lose consistency, you're pissing in the wind. You've got no, you know, where do you go from there? It's it's just going round and round in circles. And like you and I've met millions of not millions, but I've met it seems like a millions of people that just go around in circles. And I say to them, "Well, what's the positive expectancy on the system?" and they're like, "Well, I don't know." Why don't you know? Well, I haven't tested it. Well, that's where you should begin. That's where you should begin because you need a you need a reference point to try and approximate. And if you don't have that reference point, you've got nothing to go on other than the fact that someone on Instagram is telling you you should be doubling your account every week. So, now you're putting yourself down believing your system's crap. So, now you've got to go and find another system. It must be the system. But it's, as I said before, the best traders I've ever met have gone back to the first system they learned and made that profitable and and that's the key. In your career, um, a couple of decades, you've seen not only the industry change, you've also seen the rise and fall of people and and strategies and, uh, not not to put names out there, but you know, there is certain trading approaches that are very lower time frame, M1, high risk reward. Then you've got the people that are super swing trading. There there's many buzzwords and strategies that go around. Um just because that's probably the cause of what you're saying of people bouncing around and not knowing what's going on because they're just pulled from from different direction. Exactly. So what would you say is a dose of reality of what is a realistic achievable consistent win rate, risk-to-reward, trade frequency, uh you know rate of return, what is achievable growth in terms of percentage gain per month, per year just so someone knows or can see okay if someone is telling me this ground yourself here is more is more reasonable. What would you say that is? So, the traders that I've met, you know, I've met some anomalies that do say 6% a week, right? Which which in my opinion is an anomaly. Um, between two and 4% for per month, 4% being impeccable, 2% being very good. And I've worked with very, very reputable prop firms in Midtown Manhattan where I've spent two weeks on their prop desk with teams of people and that has been the case there as We're talking real prop firms, not the real prop firms. Real prop firms, not wolf in sheep's clothing. 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So they'll be okay, I'm not profitable right now, but things are going okay. Let me focus on riskreward. Let me focus on win rate. trying, you know, trying to squeeze the juice out of one thing or another or maybe it's profit taking systems or maybe it's risk management. Do you think it's something that is the 8020 to focus on or it's it's a holistic approach? I think um when it comes to picking a strategy that suits you as a trader, it is those three. It's like win rate, you know, do you like being right more than you're wrong or wrong more than you're right? You're going to have a personality defect around that somewhere, right? um or do you like a big reward to risk profile? So, you're happy being wrong more than you're right because you're getting a 10 to one, right? But bear in mind, you're going to have a lot less trades doing that. You're going to be, you know, you're not going to have as many opportunities. And then opportunities is the third one that I think people struggle with because people have climatized this idea that you clock in, clock out, and you exchange time for money. So, when you go into trading, you feel like you should be doing more. So, there is a a comfort level to how many opportunities you get. And sometimes having more opportunities can make you feel more at ease that you're doing something because you feel productive. You feel productive, right? But it's obviously it's not it's not correlated to trading at all. You can earn as much trading for 20 minutes a day as you can spending all day at your charts, you know, theoretically depending on what system you've got. So those are the kind of components that suit the personality of the trader. And then after that, it's just really about um strategy. So consistency is the key. When can you be in front of the charts that will allow you to be consistent and not break consistency? Um that's a key. You know why pick a strategy that plays out in the London to New York crossover if you're doing a school run at that time or you know you're doing some meeting at that time because a lot of retail traders are doing this part-time or, you know, trying to fit it into their life or around their life. Um, so unless you're doing it full-time, you need to bear in mind the consistency as aspect as well. And then after that, it's just optimizing for better reward to risk profile, less a risk manager, money management strategy. Um, that's I know people who have very good trading systems, but but barely break even because of a poor risk poor money management strategy. I know traders who have a average strategy that make lots of money because of a good money management strategy. So the money management is kind of the magic around how the real money's made in trading. Uh which not many people talk about if you can elaborate money management would that go into risk what are you defining? Yeah. So risk management is how much you're you're risking of your entire portfolio on any one trade. what that like so for instance a lot of people say um you know 1% a trade right what that doesn't take into consideration is how many trades you're in at one time so if you take 10 trades you've now got 10% of your uh exposure exposure right so money management is how you apply your capital uh to that exposure so it's it's similar but two different things um but understanding that is crucial to to uh to do you believe that certain trades warrant greater risk if you have more confidence or it has a higher win rates and let's say a B+ setup that is not your bread and butter but it's still worthwhile half a percent risk or should risk be standardized on all trades? No. Yeah. So I have a dynamic way of approaching the markets being that depending on the quality of the setup you can become more aggressive on your entry, more aggressive on your riskreward profile, more aggressive on your position size, more aggressive on your risk, more aggressive on your target taking. So so depending on the quality of the setup, I will either have a different entry which is more aggressive or less aggressive. I will have a tighter risk uh tighter stop loss or a wider stop loss for more breathing room. I'll have a a bigger target. I'll shoot for a bigger run rather than a smaller run or I'll split the position in two. Um or I will increase my position size so I'll have a a higher overall capital exposure to that one trade depending on the quality of the setup. And I think that's a great that served me really well, but it's it's a concept that I don't think many traders open their eyes to. um you know they're so closed and fixed on I have to trade this way and you know rules rules rules but actually if you can dynamically adjust your approach to every trade but but don't confuse that with not having rules you know everything has to be rule based because that keeps the consistency but as long as you've got those rules there and you've tested those rules then you can really become this kind of you can get more opportunities you can be right more a lot more and you can yeah make more money. If you can describe to me the pillars of your A+ setup in terms of what are you looking for in the technicals? So support and resistance is a is is is crucial. I'm a technical trader, right? So um number quantitative analysis would be number of number of tests of major support or resistance zones. Okay, even handle numbers um things like uh how previous structure was tested. So for c for for instance some support levels or some resistance levels are tested on support more than resistance. So there might be a price point that is historically every time it's tested as support it tests it three times but historically on the way up it's resistance 10 times. Um and that will be a more aggressive short trade than it will uh an aggressive long trade. Um and then for entries I'll look for some kind of confluence using um support and resistance. Um I use a MACD indicator for reversals. I use exponential moving averages for uh convergence or for trend convergence divergence on the MACD. Um, and depending if we've got that confluence, I'll either use double tops or three bar reversals or literally a candlestick formation of some kind depending on how many times structures been tested in the past. And then discretionary price levels. So, I've got a list of my own discretionary price levels that I've just noted down over years and years of saying, well, last time, you know, I waited for a double top here. Actually, I missed out on that trade. 10 times out of 20 because I waited for that double top. Had I taken a three bar reversal instead, I would have I would have got in. So that's years of discretion. Like that's years of taking notes basically. Um when I um in my own journey, let's say, of exploring these kind of concepts, support and resistance and so forth, I often found myself uh getting wicked out uh or maybe not even wicked out. Let's say I'm seeing a resistance level. I might be thinking break test continuation. looking to buy whereas it does the break test and then continues lower. So I got the direction wrong. U therefore you're kind of manipulated on the if you're shorting it you got stop-loss hunt and if you're looking to buy it while it went down how do you navigate these key points in the market where there is a lot of activity resistance support uh a lot of orders in the market. How do you navigate between uh what is a real rejection versus we're just inviting in orders to then manipulate and then the real move uh which a lot of people do end up getting caught on. How do you protect yourself from that? For me, it's um a confirmation bias of of various filters. So, I look at um the market condition, making sure that I'm taking bullish setups or long setups in a prevailing trend that is bullish and I'll use a higher time frame. So, I use multi-time frame analysis to uh look for prevailing trends on the higher time frame. I'll look for the setup on the trading time frame. And again, that will be making sure that we are in a in the right phase of the market. So, if I'm looking for a long setup, we'll have to be in a pullback or a retracement. If we're looking for a um you know, a counter setup will have to be in a run phase. But I only I'm I'm primarily a trend continuation trader. I only tra take certain structure based setups at major support and resistance levels. And what time frames are you hanging out on when you do your top? Daily, 4 hour, and hourly. And hourly, I guess, is for entries. Yeah. Yeah. And trade management. So, okay. Yeah. So, I the setup's on the 4hour um and then the entries are on the hourly and then I'll manage sometimes I do uh I have a rule where I can trail stops on the hourly as well. Um just because it's nicer. I always I also trade the range bars. Okay. So, the eight range bars as well. So, uh that's a completely different animal. How does it sound to have a chance to win a million dollars in evaluations from trusted leading prop firms? 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So, I I remember off camera we were discussing your career and you started off as an investor before you transitioned into trading uh or let's say day trading or or swing trading as it seems you are. Uh let's first of all define the differences. Uh and uh what made you do it that way around because typically people don't have money. they'll go to the markets to try and get some money and then eventually look to invest that money. Is that a realistic route? I don't think from um experience tells me that that's statistically not successful. Um purely because I don't think you should grow your money at a rate that your mindset can keep up with. So where there's higher volatility and higher risk, usually a higher level of skill is required. Um, and most people go into trading thinking that they're going to make money trading. They've had no experience in the market having their money work for them. They're not great managers of money, you know? So, if you're just pulling large sums of capital out of the markets from trading, why would you miraculously all of a sudden become a great manager of money? So, I'm a firm believer that you have to earn your earn your right to higher degrees of risk. Okay? And you have that you do that by getting your feet wet basically, right? So, you know, if you imagine speculation being the tip of the pyramid, trading being the tip of this pyramid, um, and and the bottom, I suppose, being a high interest account, you know, where where you no risk at all. Yes. No risk at all. Um, there are incremental steps along the way that you've then got to earn your right to to that level of volatility and speculation. All right. Now, as you ascend that pyramid, you've you're going to ascend higher returns. Yes. Higher levels of risk, higher skill requirement, and you're going to have to be more involved. There's higher leverage, um, more time required, more, you know, so all these things, everything gets harder basically. Everything is harder. So, so it's like you're trying to build an upside down pyramid and and that doesn't usually work well. It's a very interesting approach. And uh I think the general belief of a typical new trader, I think most people start in their 20s and they look towards online wis to learn and they often think okay well especially now with the rise of prop firms is okay I can now with a small amount of money potentially make a lot of money once I have this 100k magic number then I can put it towards investing. uh and it's just as you saying you don't have the maturity to to be able to do so even if that route is as realistic as it is or isn't the the numbers show otherwise but it is a very correct approach when it comes to investing and and trying to find maturity in it especially for someone who is a bit younger who doesn't have the capital to just deploy hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is a way you can learn from the lower levels of this pyramid without having to, you know, take leverage or or take a loan or other other means is just with the money I have, how can I learn the the skill set of investing? Well, I mean, there's a there's a great quote that says that if you empty your pockets into your mind, your mind will fill your pockets, right? If you don't know what to do, the first thing you need to invest in is knowledge. Um, so I get it. If you're young, you want the quickest path to to riches or to the best return. Um, what I found personally is the higher return that you can get isn't correlated to whether or not you're going to get it. So, I was having a conversation yesterday and someone said, "Well, what about what do you think about stocks over Bitcoin or crypto?" Right? And I said, "Well, yeah, Bitcoin, for instance, is doing 50% a year, right? And let's just say a stock's doing 15% per year or 20% per year, doesn't mean you're going to earn that, right? Because you don't know about Bitcoin. And you might not know about the stock. But the way that you allocate your capital should be directly correlated to your knowledge on each of the things. Because if you're if you're staying up at night checking your phone or something's keeping you up at night or distracting you whilst you're in a meeting, you shouldn't have that. You've got too much money in that thing. you're either overleveraged or you're putting money in you can't afford to lose or you don't understand it. And that's that's really the only reason that you that you're affected emotionally by that thing. And the moment you're affected emotionally, the moment you're going to jeopardize the whole strategy, that's what I've found. You know, I've found that 100% of the time. I've never found that not to be true. So the so the key is to if you don't want FOMO to put money into something that you don't need to understand as much you know maybe an index fund or maybe a large cap stock that you believe in right and then put an allocation of 10% into your trading account right now I appreciate that's not going to be a lot of money for a lot of young guys and this is the problem we're facing with social media where they tell you that you know you drive a Lamborghini and and all that kind of stuff, but the monetary return is just not going to be worth it for most people because they they actually don't want to learn to trade. It's not exciting to them. And I recommend most people don't trade. I recommend it's not for most people. What we've found is the people that come out the like statistically the best with the best results are military IT um you know engineers people who are very processoriented and just know that if I do X Y and Z I'll get a at the end of it and and that's really it and kids don't think like that you know it's interesting I I have a friend of mine who's um who's done very well now but in the beginning in his first year uh he was he was taking the prop firm root And uh it was at the time when profams you needed 10% in a month to pass. already a huge challenge and he failed back to back uh for like a whole year and he was very frustrated with himself and uh we said I just we said okay how was month 1 2 3 and he listed it out it was like plus two plus 4 plus one that your first year in training you netted let's say 20 30% for the year you just didn't pass the challenge but you got to you got to pat yourself on the back and uh he was actually a boxer and uh it was very interesting cuz he his just the phrases he would say to me of like you know I'm not going to go and take a trade cuz I wouldn't go into the ring and fight if I haven't done my training. So, I'm not going to back test first before I enter the market. These kind of mindsets that are ingrained in someone that is a military person or a or a boxer, let's say. It's in their DNA to know process before being in the in the limelight or in war or something, you know, you got to do your reps uh prior uh with with regard to this uh investing approach. So, regretfully, I didn't start as early as I should have uh only recently where I've gone uh rather heavy. uh but my approach has been I don't know investing it's not my area of of expertise so I've just kind of taken approach of buy the big stocks uh the the names I'm familiar with right now with the tariffs there was a nice uh retracement let's say so it became an opportunity to buy things that are you know they have value for for a long time and then just indexes uh because I'm not striking for 100% a year but 10% a year is is worthwhile with compound interest uh and just dollar cost average do you think someone approaching investing would be the best approaches like this just dollar cost average and buy big names or is there edges to carve out within investing itself? Yeah, I'll give you an edge for like an advanced dollar cost averaging. Um, so what I like to do is approximate the mean growth of the market. Right? So I take a 50-year view on the market. Okay? And I look at the 50-year mean growth of the market like a 50-year moving average. It's a It's the it's the extreme. It's the midpoint between the two extremes on average across across the growth of the market. Right. So you might have heard of mean reversion and things like that. So basically if you're above that versus below that is is a buy sell opportunity. Exactly. Right. So dollar cost averaging is a great strategy where you are regularly depositing into you're buying the market monthly, right? Buy your market like groceries and every month you're putting a certain deposit into the market. Except if you track the mean growth of the market over a 50-year period, what you'll see is when you go 10% over that mean, it means that we are becoming overbought, I guess. Yeah. This could overpric the value is not there. So, what you can do is strip back your regular deposits a little bit, say by 25%. And then if we continue up and go 20% above the mean growth of the market, you can strip it back another 25%. So, you're only putting half in. And what you do is you save that cash for the crash and you're saving this little kitty up. And then as soon as we drop 10% below the mean, you basically divide what you've saved and you put that in your into your regular deposits over about a six-month period is usually optimal. And what that will mean is by the time we come out of that recession or out of that crash, you'll be in profit rather than back to square one as financial advisors will tell you, just ride it out. You know, it's very interesting because as a as a result of that, you're bringing your average price down. uh weighted for how much you're investing. Uh weighted averages are so important. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. I was just back in the UK uh last week and I was with my brother and uh we were just uh through chat GBT. We were just uh brainstorming ideas of investing and one thing was dollar cost average. I'm actually doing on a weekly basis and he asked me what day of the week do you invest because I was trying to encourage him to do the same because he's 10 years younger than me. I was like you got a head start if you just do it now. And uh Chad GPT I was like what is the best day to dollar cost average for the last 10 years? which day of the week was best on this on on on Tesla on uh on the S&P and it just pulled the lowest day of the week o over time. I was like, "Okay, that's my dollar cost average." I like that that was that was a wicked thing. One thing that I really wanted him to realize cuz he had this comment of, "Well, I don't have that much money. I don't have any money right now. I'm a student. Uh what's the point of me investing a tenner or you know 20 pound or whatever." So I I told him, "Okay, when you when you get into a job, £100 a week is a lot, but it's also not a crazy amount. uh 100 pounds a week if you do that for from now which is he's in his early 20s to the age of 60 you would have a portfolio worth 1.6 6 million. I was like, there's no excuse in this day and age to not be a millionaire cuz £100 a week or 50 a week can actually compound to that to that point just by average growth. Like we're not we're not trying to beat the market here. So then when you come to look at trading, you're like okay well you have to now think I'm going to outperform that which is why I'm going to not even bother to learn trading otherwise it's not worth it. Otherwise because people headache because people come into the markets like I don't have money I want to make money but and they thought oh it must be trading or maybe just pull it back and say oh it could just be investing what I have and at least that is stable and that can bring me something whilst I whilst I learn and then I go from there. When did you start investing yourself? 22 years old. Yeah. Very young. And uh what was your approach back then and what is it like now? So my approach was very much uh I started just buying index funds and then I had this idea that I was going to be replace my income from my job in 20 years and that was on the concept of investing 10% of my income at a 10% return per year. Um and then I became obsessed with reducing that time down. So it was like okay well I'll increase my savings every 3 months and then I will look for better yields. So I started looking at ETFs and more kind of um less automated approaches to to funds and things like that. And then I started to learn stocks. So I I learned um how to value invest, how to do qualitative and quantitative analysis by reading financial statements, understanding balance sheets and cash flow statements and income statements. And then I'd use stock screeners and I would kind of basically try and increase the return from 10% to 15. uh you you know investing in stocks the overall percentage return um and then I just kept going and going and going. So it was like earning my rights to higher degrees of risk. So it was like okay well I'll pick a smaller stock now and um then I will look at some I mean I was I've done startups and everything. I've done angel investing and all sorts but real estate investment trusts so more kind of niche pools of companies and honestly I've done everything. So it's basically just trying to increase that overall percentage on my entire portfolio, reduce the uh draw down on that entire portfolio and um and yeah, just just keep growing it and trading was the last piece in the puzzle for me. Super interesting. But with the the pyramid analogy you gave, it makes so much sense. when it comes to a well diversified or a healthy portfolio, what would you say is a an ordinary split between markets and and uh you know you have your bonds, you have your ETFs, you have your property if you property indexes, there's many things you could trade in and then you add in gold, commodities, there's so many things to invest in. What is a healthy way where you're not overexposed to one and also not underexposed to opportunities? Yeah, for me it all comes down to your knowledge in each of the sectors. So how much do you know about each thing? cuz I feel kind like there was one point where I had 40% of my net worth in my trading account and uh you know I didn't it didn't I didn't have that much in there for that long but I you know that means that I'm really confident in trading right what would you say is an appropriate balance between trading accounts versus portfolio statistically for what most like if we're talking about the success rate in traders you know 5 to 10% of your net worth in trading right otherwise you just won't handle it but people think that they can throw their 100% of their net worth into a trading account, you know, good luck and and I hope you do well. But in fact, if you do do well, I'll give you all my money and you can just trade that. But um realistically, it's a it's a minority portion of of their net worth because when your whole net worth goes down by 10%. You are affected mentally. You know, I we can tolerate as humans a positive or negative of 10% fluctuations in volatility in in anything really. That's that anything outside of that, we start to feel really uncomfortable. So, if you're tracking it as your whole net worth and that all goes down 10%, you're going to you're going to struggle. So, the way that I allocate is one based on knowledge, how comfortable you are and what skills you've got in each of the each of the classes. And then two, um what your expectation of that is to go to zero. So, if you're going to put something in Bitcoin, expect it to go to zero. If you're going to put something in crypto, expect it to go to zero. If you're putting it in the S&P, expect a 40% decline, right? So, the worst case scenario in all of them. Okay. And making sure you're okay with that. And if you marry up those two things, you should have a good indication of what you're comfortable putting in each pot. Does that make sense? Do you believe in this idea of because investing can be thought of as passive income? Because the way you're describing it is is very active. It's very research and uh stay on top of things and then pulling money out or dollar cost averaging a little bit less so it becomes a full-time endeavor. Uh therefore this passive income idea do you do you think it's realistic? I mean passive income is real. Uh if you put all your money into an index fund and it's managed by someone else, you probably have to that probably takes an hour to do. you can automate it and you'll get paid you know but realistically uh you know stock investing takes a bit of time but there's degrees of passivity I mean it could take me it takes my me to invest um I check I do my investments every six months right so every six months I'll spend a few days in the markets just doing my stock screening and analysis and can I recommend a tool there's a great tool that people forecaster dobbiz you heard of it no I haven't phenomenal it does what I used to spend 3 weeks doing in 10 minutes. And it's and the idea being is finding best buy zones or it does all of the analysis in terms of seasonality, price correlation right now. It does the you know it will do Peter Lynch scoring, Warren Buffett scoring and it collects all that information in the back end. It provides a breakdown of what's happening fundamentally all of the day. So where you would have to go to like Yahoo Finance or MSM money and then go to a stock screener and check through, you know, it does all of that. the PE ratios. It It's phenomenal. I can't recommend it highly enough. And uh it's one of those kicker softwares where you think I just wish I wish I had this years ago, but that is phenomenal. So um so you can get a lot of this information on forecaster. Um and yeah, well it's not passive, you know, you still have to understand. I think trading is well trading isn't passive either. People think, you know, I want to I want to do trading because it's passive income. It's not passive income. I mean, it's it's passive uh if you're swing trading and you're spending half hour a day or an hour a day and it's very mobile as long as you've got a broadband connection, but it's not it's certainly not passive. Um I mean to be honest, even myself there there is passive things or passivity as you said degree of it. But even this idea of like I want to have no input and do no work, it's not even something I desire to be honest. like let's say checking your portfolio once every six months and making decisions. If that's if that's considered work, then that's lucky because it's not it's not so strenuous as as as other forms of income. The reason I spent a bit of time in this episode on investing which we usually don't is because we have your book which is about to come out. Uh and the idea here is or you can describe investment but it's it's around financial freedom. Um and it seems to me investing is probably the one the one of the strongest routes towards it. What else would you say is arms of building financial freedom and and more importantly why it is so important in this day and age? Yeah. So, I mean, you just mentioned passivity, right? So, if someone is if someone's goal is to have passive income, um you're probably never ever going to have passive income because you're you're going into something as an escape, right? For me, I was an absolute geek. I was obsessed with spreadsheets and data and I just sit and look at puzzles and charts and that's been me since I left school, right? And as a byproduct of doing that, I've made some money and and that's really it. Like I'm a I'm in love with this whole puzzle piece. Um same with investing, same with, you know, Rubik's cube. You know, you just kind of fascinated by something and you'll solve the problem. But ultimately, what people really want is freedom. They just want they they want to wake up and do what they want with who they want whenever they want. Right? The problem is most people don't know what they want. They that's the first problem. As we were speaking off camera before, people get pushed into the idea of what they should and shouldn't do and they they think they're going to end up here, but they've ended up here. And the reason they're here and not here is because they've taken decisions that are someone else's values or poor advice or they're chasing some other shiny object, right? And they don't even know who they are. I've met so many people in Dubai are lost. You know, you got loads of money. They they they're born into money. In fact, they're the worst. They're like, "I have no idea who I am. I've got no purpose whatsoever." And um it's a real pandemic, but ultimately all we want is freedom, right? So, we want to be free in mind, free in movement, and free in money. And the financial element of that is how much time you can buy into the future, how much leveraged income streams allow you to pay for the things that are meaningful to you, which is going to be different for everyone. Um, and then being able to do that from anywhere. And then having a mind that says this is how I'm going to spend my money. This is who I am. I don't need to chase this goal or that goal. I often say like I have no goals. And I think the goal in life is to have no goals. The goal is to just live a life every day. That's like if I live today every day like today, I'd be die a very happy person. And I think that's that's the goal. You know, there's a there's a guy called Naval Ravikans. I don't know if you're familiar, but someone I someone I consume a lot of his stuff cuz it's is just uh a lot of wisdom in it. He's a billionaire and a very thoughtful person. And he he some things that I learned earlier on my career of like give yourself a dollar amount of what is my hour worth? And even if you're working a regular job and it's like $30 $40 an hour, put your number way higher. And he said the reason for that is because you're also got the ability to say no of things you shouldn't be doing. um and is just bringing that self-worth to yourself. But beyond that, what what is recently is from a place of luxury. But he goes on to say uh people like have a very structured life and a very structured routine and a very Monday morning is this meeting and then Tuesday is this. And he said that is great but uh if you're in a position where you don't have to do that, you shouldn't because when you now you feel like reading a book, I'll read the book. You don't want to read it anymore, you want to pick up another one, you can. You want to go for a walk, you can. this level of freedom. Uh he he went on to say people do things of like a meeting to have a moment of serendipity where we sit down, we talk and hopefully an idea comes about. And he said when you have no structure to your life, everything becomes serendipity because you're following your true curiosity. And he said that's a real flexible and and a real way to live life because you're not now waking up looking at your emails and now these emails are commanding your time and then you got a meeting booked in that's commanding your time. So it's a true freedom of mind and therefore the ability to explore and therefore grows from absolute flexibility but the undertone is your finances. Of course and what you mentioned earlier about like I I earned money trading as a byproduct of being fascinated with charts right and spreadsheets. I think if you raise your like we all have income goals right and sometimes we might hit those income goals and sometimes we might not but you'll always hit your standards so how many people take a pay cut not many right so you get a pay rise and then that's it that's your new standard and then you get a pay rise and that's your new standard you won't take a cut after that right so it's just about increasing your standards of yourself and and being the person you admire you know and proving to yourself you can do it and then inevitably you will reach higher degrees of wealth because it's just a byproduct of raising your standards. So, so let me describe something to you that I've been feeling lately. Um, I consider myself a very ambitious person and therefore I I put effort in and I put resources in towards my goals. But it it now feels like my goals are no longer aspirational or an achievement. They feel like I have to. And therefore, when I have achieved certain goals recently, it it didn't feel like a a triumph. It felt like a relief or I got it done and therefore my my threshold was no longer the goal equals a sense of achievement. It becomes a minimum standard. So now when you when you achieve something that is uh something you put on a pedestal now you achieve it. For me it became now the new flaw which is maybe a very flawed it is a flawed mindset but I but I can't help but feel like this very often in the last year or so where I think it's maybe a byproduct of being too ambitious. I don't know. But is this idea of always wanting more and then when something is ticked off is very quickly on to the next and making this my new minimal standard. Is this something you experienced yourself? Just yesterday I was speaking to someone who said my next goal in the business is to get 50 million. And I said why? And they said well it's just the next you know the next round number. And I said okay well to get that it's going to take a lot of graft. You know you're going to have to be away from your family and your wife might get annoyed and your kids sacrifice time with them. you've got to put in a lot of work to get to 50 million. Why do you want 50 million? And he's like, well, and it turns out that it's really just to prove his ex wrong or some boss or some colleague or someone said he couldn't do it right. And and it's sad because he's chasing a goal that isn't his. So, he's a slave to someone else's mind. And and that's where people don't know themsel. And I think where it's common, like an example like you just gave, I think it's to prove a point um maybe to a parent, maybe to someone who is, you know, uh Alex Hormosi, I know he I look at that guy, in fact, he messaged me yesterday on Instagram because I hit a nerve where I was like, you will never feel like enough is enough. And he's like, you're right. And and it turns out that he's just trying to prove his dad wrong. You know, he's really trying to prove you see in some of his pods where he speaks about his upbringing and his relationship with his dad. like that's a big trauma in his life and and uh it's interesting how these childhood moments can really brew late into adulthood and it becomes your north star without you realizing and you need it if you're going to be successful. What I found is that's what you need to drive you right that mental leverage. Yeah. They say you're either driven by inspiration or desperation and desperation can come come in forms of hate and hex a break or whatever it is but those those are the better fuels because they keep you driven for longer. Whereas if it's just inspiration it's kind of like a motivation. It comes and goes. Whereas if you have something you're running away from, well, you can use that to your advantage. Where I want to take the conversation next is uh this idea of leverage means you mentioned earlier and a lot of people might be looking towards I'm going to university. I'm getting this great degree which is going to give me a good salary. Maybe later on in my life I can earn six figures with this degree. Uh a path put in front of me and I did follow that path six years of university to become a dentist. And I quickly realized that the the the road is not the same anymore that it used to be for my parents' generation where a good job and a good degree and a good salary would be able to afford me a house and be able to acrewue a level of financial freedom. No longer the case anymore with house prices, inflation, cost of living, everything is has changed. Uh how do you navigate the world now as a young individual who has a road map in front of them of go to school, go to university, get a good job? First of all, question everything. I mean, that's pretty evident that you need to question advice from people and make sure that it's something that you are is truly aligned with your values. It's very difficult to do that as a kid because you're impressionable and you're you're you're hands out for advice and you're being guided. So, I get that, right? But and that's that's a difficult thing to do. But whatever you go into, ask yourself the questions of, you know, how leveraged can this become? So, leverage. The term leverage for me means a unit of passivity and mobility. So the more the more places you can generate that income from, the freer you feel and the less time it takes you to do that task, the more freer you feel. And that is a scale, right? So it's not like a binary thing where I've got passive income, I've got leveraged income or I haven't. It's like, well, right now I can do it from London, but how can I do it from two cities? how can I do it from three cities? And the more close you can do it, the more free you feel. When we had lockdown, we're all locked inside our houses and everyone felt more freer. And the reason they felt more free is because they felt like they could structure their day how they want. They could prioritize their tasks in their and there's a study that says people would have happily taken a pay cut and had more free time or continued working at home. Um, and that proves it, right? So, you feel freer when you are more mobile. And then passivity is like I don't know if anyone's read 4-hour work week. Tim Ferrris basically wrote a book called 4-hour work week. The the first half of the book is teaching you how he become mobile, how he persuaded his boss to let him work from home which co really solved for everyone. And then the second half of the book was how to make it passive by delegation automation systems. And the world we live in today just makes that piece so easy. you know, whatever your tasks are, which if it's computer-based, I mean, it's pretty much you can just get an app to do, you know, you can get whatever you're doing on the computer, you can, you know, reduce increase passivity um drastically, you know, almost nothing. So, if you can work on those two things and make sure whatever it is you're doing as a vocation is aligned with those two things, then you're going to have a level of freedom that you probably won't if you're working in a restaurant or a dentist or, you know, do you think uh this idea of time for money, specifically speaking of a job, is something that people should look to get out of as soon as possible or is there always a place for it? It just depends how much your time is worth. I think there's no time for money correlation in in today's world if you're willing to, for instance, become your own personal brand. I mean, this isn't for everyone, but I'm assuming that people watching this podcast are into some level of self-development, right? So, it's fair to say that they understand the concept of having a brand, otherwise they wouldn't be watching this podcast. Um, I give an example. You know, you could you could be a fitness trainer charging 45 pounds an hour and you're capped by how many hours there are in a day and you probably don't get a lunch break and the most you're ever going to make is £450 a day. You could be a fitness trainer who writes a book and gets some incredible results and becomes this speaker and does some thought leading and does a podcast and all of a sudden the the perceived value of that person is going to go skyhigh and they don't have to compete on price with a fitness trainer anymore. They now charge 10 times the more for working 10 times less. So, uh if you you know teach the teachers, that would be my advice. If you're a dentist, teach people how to be dentists like that. That is the the leverage and the platforms we've got today are just open for that. As a trader, it's very simple. You have to find an edge and then you have to have a mind so you can follow that edge. But how do you know if you're performing correctly or not? You have to know your data. And Tradzeller is going to show you everything that you need beyond the surface level win rates and performance and equity curve. It's going to show you detailed reports. It's going to be your back testing tool, strategy testing tool, playbooks, notes, and it's going to be a full journal. It makes your journaling easier, faster, and more meaningful. Whereas if you were just documenting on an Excel spreadsheet or taking screenshots on your iPhone, you wouldn't be able to pull out the data that you need. The correlations that the AI within Tradzella is pulling out for you. There's so much variety and utility within the software that I think it's essential for any trader. So the link somewhere below is going to take you directly to the Trade Zelda website. I'm not getting paid. This is for you. If you want it, if you like it, go ahead and explore it and probably you'll be using it for years to come. Yeah. I mean since uh when I had my own midlife crisis, let's say at university where I was like I've got my my parents I'm only 29 but this this is when I was let's say 22 I was like I got to have a conversation with my dad cuz he's funding me to go through university and the last thing I want to do is say hey dad I don't want to do this anymore. So it was a very tough it was years in the making to to finally have that conversation and then get his approval and and blessings. But either way, the the the word like you were obsessed with things. Back then I was obsessed with just the word leverage, right? And the way I understood it was like lever. I was like, well, a lever is like if you want to move big things, if you have the lever in the middle middle, you got to weigh heavy to then move something heavy. But if you can move that lever in a certain way. Uh well, it's like our comedians, I think, said if you give me a lever long enough, I can move the world. It's this idea of like, okay, it's the balance of forces. Uh and the idea being if I can put the same input and get greater output well I'm going to pick that over fixed input to fixed output which is a job essentially with marginal growth as you as you get promotions and uh I understood it as it's through naval again it was just there this there's four means I added the fifth which is trading but it's like as you mentioned brand it's code and now more so than ever uh and then it's uh capital labor now not all of these are introductory not everyone fresh out of uni can have capital leverage or have labor leverage because it costs takes But anyone can access a brand, anyone now can use AI, anyone can now at least access the markets through investing or through trading. So it's putting these means in young uh to then at a point as you were think of when can I start to replace my income and uh I just did a calculation for me to replace a dentist salary. I need 2 million in the bank with uh average returns and pulling out a certain amount to not affect inflation. 2 million is a huge number, yes, but it's also not a huge number in this day and age. I say that with a big asterisk to to not come across any type of way, but you know, you see 16 year olds in this day and age, 18 year olds making a million dollars online. So, it's it's it's a new era. It's getting around people who have that belief as well, like your environment dictates performance, right? So, when you've got a job, you're in a job and having a job's normal and everyone around you who in the job is normal and if you see entrepreneurs that's weird. When you get around entrepreneurs, everyone who has a job is weird, right? You know, it's so weird. I I feel like I'm in a very blessed position because of this show cuz I sit across people every single week who are all doing 100k a month, 500k a month, million. I've met people doing two $3 million a month at a young age. And the number one thing for me is that normalizes it. Number two is like when I speak to them, they're all normal. Like you would think someone who's making a million is like this super high IQ, super this and that. They're just regular people who chose a better vehicle, more leverage in essence. Which is why I think it's one of the most important things and it can also apply to trading. So, I'm going to bring it back. Uh, I feel the biggest form of leverage right now, I want to hear your take on it, is with prop firms, right? Because now with a $500 or $1,000, which is all that people have access to really, young people, they can now have buying power of $100,000 and caveat if you have the skill set, it can be life-changing. How do you approach this vehicle of wealth creation, which is prop funds? So, I've always been very skeptical of this new found prop firm approach. And the reason being is because um I see a lot of them as wolf in sheep's clothing. Um where they they come across as if they're there as the hero to help you as a trader, but in actual fact they know the stats and they a lot of them have now manipulated the system against the trader because they're looking for the registration fee over the payouts. And I've actually I've done a recent study and I've done a lot of investigation work into those and I'm bombarded daily with people sending me messages of how they resist payouts and that's true how they advertise themsel as a prop firm but actually they're a tech company and then they don't have to meet certain regulations because they're a tech company as they and all this kind of stuff right offshore accounts and all this kind of stuff right so um my biggest red flag with them is I know some very reputable prop f real prop firms who started a business with their own cash and their only priority was to find the best traders in the world so that they could trust them with their hard-earned cash to then split the profits with them. Right? That is what a real prop firm is. It's like one of the most selfish business models in the world. But you know you you get a group of great traders and you cling on to them and you and you give them nicknames so that no one else can poach them, right? That's a real prop firm. And um a real trader, you know, a real approach to trading understands that you it's not time based. You never know how much you're going to make in any period of time. It's just profit over time. So to incentivize for the first for the first incentive to be you need to make X amount in 30 days. It says I mean it's so obvious to me that that's not in the best interest of long-term partnership with a trader because I wouldn't put that on a trader if I was looking for one. I I would be like well why would I want to put that pressure on them when I don't know when they're going to develop a profit. So I started spouting about that on YouTube and all of a sudden I think a lot of them have dropped that 30-day uh thing but now they've manipulated the payouts otherwise. So there is basically the way to look at it is the business model relies on the downfall of traders u but the problem here is you either put the blame on the platforms which is is a fair thing to do. They they hold a level of responsibility but as does the individuals who have no right to trade who are lining their pockets. Um so I think I think the weight is on both sides of course and and the way I look at it from a from a bird's eye view is like it's just certain necessary evils uh where okay now I can do the trip them up because of this trip them up because of that but the model itself is designed where the the losers pay the winners but when I do say that I think well isn't that how brokers work a bug broker and when you zoom out even more you're like isn't that how the market works where it's a closed loop money is not created or destroyed it just goes from one hand to the other. So morally yes there is there is an argument there but in terms of logistics I'm like this is how everything operates no matter your vehicle or platform the market is a zero sum in essence absolutely I I agree with you but if I was to guide someone into one of these prop firms I would just say make sure that they don't have such a an aggressive performance uh thing target in such a short space of time um make sure that they are looking for out for you as a as if they were going to employ you. You know, are they is it that approach? Are they asking those types of questions of you? And is there any resistance on payout? You know, what what are your requirements to get the payout smoothly? And from what I've seen, there's very few that have that have been nice experiences. Um, but again, I don't know if that's the the trader or the Yeah, I mean, the reality is even the biggest of prop firms have these allegations and things going on. But when I look at it on an individual basis of a of a trader who knows what he's doing, he might get a denial of a payout or some rule that messed him up that was a bit unfair, but it they still make decent money. So let's say someone who made 100 grand in payouts maybe they got denied or wrongfully robbed of 10k but they still made that other 90k which they wouldn't have otherwise which is why it becomes a hot debate in the industry of like should you shouldn't you but uh let's let's speak alternatives for someone who is newcomer to the industry. How can they access enough buying power or you know not not make 10% gain on a on a $1,000 deposit then you might as well just go get any old job. How do you make the the effort worthwhile in the markets? It's going to be a difficult thing to believe for someone who hasn't had their eyes open to it. But if you can prove to yourself after 6 months or 12 months that you can make a decent return, there is money out there to be thrown at you. I've just had a trader here who's had a meeting with a series of family offices. They want to chuck 15 million just to try him out, you know? So, uh, so it's really a case of just proving to yourself that you can be consistently profitable because no one else cares if you're going to crack this or not other than you. Trading is like the harshest thing. It's just a mirror of you. And uh, if you can prove to yourself that you can generate a consistent return, there will be people willing to throw money at you. And um, I know that's hard to believe, but that might be a better route. If uh, if it is, you know, and if you want to go the prop firm route, chances are you're going to have a better deal. But as long as the focus is on you proving to yourself that you can do it rather than trying to impress someone or change the way you are to kind of get lucky for a period of time which isn't sustainable then you've got you've got a good shot. The money's there. Like you'll have a newfound confidence as well to throw every penny into the account. So a lot of traders they don't they don't want to put as much money into their trading account because they don't believe in themselves. But when you believe in yourself you're like right I got to sell everything to chuck into here. you get this kind of newound confidence and uh unfortunately you have to prove yourself prove to yourself that you can do it before you get to that point. I want to I want to wrap up the episode on the topic of psychology. Now it's a super broad word but I want to hone it in around psychology of investing, psychology towards money in general and psychology in trading. So uh as we alluded to earlier where there's certain childhood things that can ruminate in adulthood. Uh I've also spoke to someone who who interestingly put it. He was like there was a study where if you are born or your financial formative years were during a recession versus a bull market your attitude towards investing would be different because it's it's what you know what you expect your tolerance to risk uh how your parents relationship has been to money where are they spenders or hoarders uh are they living beyond their means or under their means all of these things have an influence so when I say this thing psychology when it comes to investing trading and money management I'll leave it broad and let you navigate but what does that mean to Absolutely. I mean, when I was a kid, um, I used to I grew up on a on a council estate in South London and, um, every Friday, all of the parents used to kind of congregate at the foot of the steps of the block that we used to live in and just talk about the week and moan about money and all of that stuff. It was like, "Oh, boss is why can't he give me, you know, his rich people are greedy?" All this kind of stuff. And, um, I was earwigging, you know, I was a nosy little 13-year-old kid. But what I found fascinating is at half seven this guy called Roy used to come down and take everyone's money and go and do a syndicate lottery and then for 10 minutes their face would light up talking about money. It was like some if I won I'm I buy this and buy that. And I just remember thinking this is weird. You know the they've just moaned about money now they'd love it, right? And I remember thinking it was weird. What I learned later on was is how they use it and and how you use it is really dictated by the language that you're using around money. The internal dialogue that you've got around money. So if you're saying that's a ripoff, you know, that's uh if you're using that type of language, it will dictate your actions towards how you use money. And and really the key to growing wealth is about like dancing with it. is having not such a tight grip on it that you can't allow it in and out. It's about like then you're almost chasing it or it's scarce to you. Exactly. As opposed to abundance and you need to be able to give and receive and let it flow. And that's why it's a currency, right? It's a current and you you need to let it flow. So, um if you've got negative mindset and negative beliefs around money or you're using negative language around money, the language will dictate how you act towards it. And the the irony is you'll never attract any if if you if you have you know people who say you might die tomorrow you know are the ones who chase their entire lives working for money. They're slaves to money their entire lives. That's the irony. 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If you are a futures trader, this thing of like internal dialogue, it's it's uh the most underrated thing even when I it happens more in the UK, I'll be honest. But when I say how's it going to someone, they're like, "Oh, not bad." Not bad. It's like why frame it not bad? Like why not anything good like to come out of that? It's down to these things. Uh just a quick uh tangent, but my youngest brother, he uh he had three elder brothers who all did well at school, good grades and so forth. And and and he felt the pressure of like I got to live up to this reputation. and he just found himself uh in a negative spiral of of talking to himself in the sense of he just had these friends in class which everyone does who don't study and get great grades just naturally smart people and he was like I worked this hard and I don't get the same grades as these so I'm not intelligent and he just started to believe this self you know this self-prophecy of I'm not a smart person I'm not going to get good grades and uh it ended up really being an anchor on him so when I recognized this pattern I I tried to correct him hey man uh you might feel like this and that and the other but the reality is your hard work your effort leads to results and I tried to drill this into him and he ran with it and I remember for GCSE I studied maybe a month he bless him started studying like seven months out and 10 hours a day he he really ran with it but on results day he wanted to go alone uh to pick up the results of school so nobody went with him and it's 8:00 a.m. and that he gets the result and and I get a FaceTime from him. I'm like, "Oh, he's calling me. This this can't be." I don't know. I just felt like I felt nervous for him. And I answer I answer the phone, I see his face, and he's just laughing. He just couldn't stop giggling like, "What happened?" He's like, "I did it." And it was just this moment of relief that my hard work did pay off and it did get the results and it wasn't this anchor of I'm not as smart or whatever. he believed and he just talked himself out of this this negative speaking to be positively speaking and fast forward to A levels. He really ran with it even further. He's like, you know, my efforts lead to my results. So, the world is my oyster. And I remember he was going to the gym before school, you know, UK weather 8:00 a.m. running to the gym in the rain, then running to school and then, you know, in the library. Uh, and set him on a great trajectory. But it all started with correcting that internal dialogue. I think this something we all we can all do better at is really this limiting belief that we all have and as we said earlier of my perception of what is achievable is because of the people I speak to and it becomes normalized so therefore my my path gets carved in that direction such as environment I guess as we are in Dubai and you leave Dubai tonight or tomorrow morning uh let's speak about the topic of Dubai so we we spoke about it earlier of like would you ever move here uh what about taxation and the reason I said that to you is because This financial freedom I look at as a rocket and you have your fuel which is your leverage means your efforts your resource uh your intellect everything that is going to be propelling you forward but then you have the anchors which is gravity air resistance all of these things as as what is throttling you away from financial takeoff quick analogy and uh one of the biggest uh resistances to wealth I see as taxation which is a big reason why I moved out here. Your answer to that was you couldn't care less essentially. What is your views on taxation and uh living out in an environment like Dubai where you have an environment where people are growth orientated tax is not going to be a burden on you. Why do you still choose to be in the UK? Yeah. Yeah. So taxation and inflation those are the two kind of cancers of wealth building. Uh inflation being the hidden one and tax being a bit more um you know obvious. And you know, you you change things when the pain of something becomes worth changing for, right? So I could get overweight and at some point I could get really overweight where I'm going to decide to go running every day. But until that point where I cross the threshold of it being unbearable pain, I won't. And for me, there isn't enough advantage here for me to want to pay less tax than being settled in my life at home. As I say, I'd live my my life every day for the rest of my life. I'd be very very happy. Having said that, I'm 43. If I was 20 20 years ago, this would have been a phenomenal place for me as an entrepreneur to come and make connections. I probably would have tripled the speed at which I could have achieved what I've achieved just from the connections I've seen this weekend. Has been just unreal how it works here. like unbelievable. So fast. Everyone is here to open. We're on this podcast. It's exactly that, right? Um so it's unreal. Um and yes, taxation and all that kind of great stuff and I've got many friends starting businesses here. For me, I've got a family. I'm settled and I would rather pay tax at the moment to a to that is the payment that I'm making for my lifestyle. Exactly that. Yeah. So, uh yeah, who knows? Might move here in the future. Who knows? Yeah. The last thing I want to say is this inflation idea because I only got my head around it through Chachi. I'll be honest. Chachi is raising me these days. But I I tried to understand why is inflation so bad or or what is the the catch 22 of it? is that inflation only affects the poor. And what it means by that is your salary gets eroded away by inflation and things cost you more because of inflation. But a wealthy person who owns the assets, they get asset appreciation because of inflation and debt erosion because of inflation. So the rich benefits from inflation, the poor don't. And that's kind of a very apparent wealth divide and and a a kind of a fault in the economic system, but crazy as such. Thank you very much for coming on the show. This was very spontaneous. I think we touched on a a wide selection of topics, but thank you very much. I've really enjoyed great stuff. Thank you. There we go. Boom.