High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 258: The Mindset of Investing with Expert & Podcaster, Chris Hanson

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

Chris Hanson worked in sales for IBM for nearly 20 years. At 28, he began spending nights and weekends learning the stock market; the goal was time freedom. He got there in 2002 at age 40, and walked away from the j-o-b. Not long thereafter, people began approaching him saying, “I want to walk away like you did, show me how”, so he started www.ProfitsOnWallStreet.com, a stock market workshop that teaches the methods he uses. Around the time he was leaving, a 21 yr old co-worker was also studying the stock market; he retired at 30. They started a podcast, Investing From The Beach, where they discuss the mindset that is required to achieve time freedom. Whether it’s real estate or the stock market, most people only focus on the “how to do” of investing. Starting out, they both also made that same mistake. They both realized that to achieve time freedom, the "how to think" is the most important ingredient. Most people don't ever recognize that; that's why so few people are able to achieve time freedom. The reality: one's mindset is about 95% of the equation. In this podcast, Chris and Cindra talk about: · “How” to think when investing · Why so few people invest in their mindset · A failure that costed him $30K · How he retired at age 40 · How to dominate the process of a successful trade · Best ways to overcome failure

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I am grateful that you are here, ready to listen to episode 258 with Chris Hansen. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best. The world's best leaders, coaches, experts, consultants, all about the topic of mindset so we can really reach our

potential in whatever field that we are in. So we can be our best self every day. And today I talked to Chris about the mindset of investing. Something that I learned quite a bit about today since I'm not an investor, but as I talked to him, I realized the mindset of whatever we're doing has very similar qualities and similar strategies in terms of how to be at your very best. So Chris worked in sales for IBM for over 20 years. And guess what? At age 28, he began spending nights and weekends learning the stock market. The goal was really time freedom, and he got there in 2002. At the age of 40, he walked away from his J-O-B. Now, not long after that, people kept on asking him, you know, I want to walk away from my job like you did. Show me how. So Chris started ProfitsOnWallStreet.com.

It's a stock market workshop that teaches the methods that he uses. And around the time that he was leaving, a 21-year-old coworker who was also studying the stock market, he retired at age 30. And they started a podcast called Investing From The Beach, where they discuss the mindset that's required to achieve time freedom.

And so whether it's the real estate or the stock market, most people only focus on the how to invest. But really what they talk about is the how to think, and that's the most important ingredient. We're going to talk today about how that and mindset is really 95% of the equation, how most people don't really ever recognize that and why so few people are really able to achieve time freedom. So there's a lot of things that we talk about

in this podcast. Chris and I talk about the how to think when investing, why so few people really invest in their mindset and what's holding them back, a failure that costed him tens of thousands of dollars and what he learned from that, how he actually retired at age 40, I'd like to do that, and how to dominate the process of a successful trade and what the process really means and how you have to stick with it, and then ways to overcome failure in trading. And what you're going

to find is that this podcast really relates to all areas of your life. Whether you are a trader or not, you're going to find really golden nuggets in terms of how to dominate the process in your own life, how to overcome failure, and really how your mindset is essential to everything that you do. So I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to Chris. You can find the full description of the podcast over at cindracampoff.com slash Chris. And I'd encourage you to head over there. All of the podcast episodes are up there along with show notes and descriptions,

as well as information about my Beyond Grit Academy and the book and workbook. So you can head over to drcindra.com or the book is also available at beyondgrit.com. All right, I can't wait to hear what you think about Chris. Again, you can reach us on Twitter and social media. I'm at mentally underscore strong and we'd love to hear what stood out to you about this podcast with Chris.

All right, without further ado, let's bring on Chris. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining me here today on the High Performance Mindset. I know you're there at Waikiki Beach, just like living it up there in Hawaii. So welcome to the podcast, Chris. Oh, thank you so much for the invitation. It's fun to be here. And living up at Waikiki, it's, I guess, well, we'll talk more about the background and we'll give you the word that we'll use on that as we go through this. Oh, that sounds awesome. So Chris, to start us off, just tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now. So passion, maybe we start with the background. So I grew up in Southern California, that's where

I went to school. And I came out with a computer science degree, got hired by IBM, was working in sales. I've been there about six, seven years and living in Southern California at the time, this was back in the late eighties, early nineties, huge population of aerospace work and defense work. And this was during the cold war. And when you had the first, the same as a alone crisis back in the late 80s early 90s ibm had never had a layoff and they announced a layoff and i saw people that at the time were my age now so these guys were in their 50s and concerned about losing a job and i remember looking at them thinking wow i never want to be in your position at that age that just didn't it didn't relate.

And people were really nervous. And I remember they were offering, and this sounds weird, almost comical today. They were offering a two-year severance package if you left and lifetime medical. Oh, wow. You think, oh my gosh, everyone I know today would say, I'll take it. But at the time, the IBM was considered a womb to tomb company. You came out of there at college and they wheeled you out either with a gold watch or on a gurney. And people stayed there until they were done. But anyway, so at that time I thought, boy, I better

figure out how to learn to make my money work. I didn't really know what that meant. And kicked around, I stumbled on the stock market and I tried something, read it and read something and tried it and it worked. I made a little money and then I lost it. And then I made a little more and I lost it. And I just, I got the itch and I kept working at it and just kind of set this weird goal. I think I was about 28 at the time. I said, why would it be neat if I could get to the point of making enough money that I could retire at 40. That was about a dozen years from then. And it's weird when you write stuff down, it's almost like the brain says, well, let's make it happen. And I got to the point where when I was 40, I would have been making more money trading than I was working. And then I thought,

wow, that'd be really neat. If my boss would say something that would annoy me, I could pick up and walk away. And sure enough, not long thereafter, they said something that annoyed me. I thought, wow, that'd be really neat. You know, if my boss would say something that would annoy me, I could pick up and walk away. Nice. And sure enough, not long thereafter, they said something that annoyed me. I thought, you know, I'm just going to walk away. And just said, all right, I'm out of here. And I didn't give a two-week notice. I had probably a two-month notice. And at 40, I walked out.

And that was at the end of 2002. And so I've been, you know, I guess unemployed by choice for what's that 16, 17, 18 years, something like that. So I worked at IBM 18 years. I think, and I think about it, I've been unemployed almost as long as I was employed. Wow. And not living in a refrigerator box. So this is pretty cool. Yeah, this is pretty cool. And now you have profits on Wall Street and a podcast and you give seminars on how to trade. So tell us, you know, how did that start? So when I left, I probably didn't, well, it sounds nice to be able to just walk out the door. I'm looking back, if I could back up the clock, I would do it differently. I would have planned the exit a little bit better.

I didn't really have this grandiose plan. At first I thought, you know, I know how to manage money. Maybe I should go find people that really need the help. And I didn't think that the wealthy folks needed the help, but maybe I should go find somebody kind of the down and out that they were, nobody goes to approach them to say, Hey, let me show you how to manage money. And tried that for a little bit. And I realized the issue is when you get somebody in that, and it's probably not the most PC thing to say, to broad brush someone in that socioeconomic category. But it's not a money problem. It's a money management problem. And it's a delayed gratification issue. And so tried that for a little bit. It's like incredibly frustrating.

And somebody came up not long thereafter and said, Hey, you always are wearing shorts and a t-shirt and you've got this smile plastered on your face. I don't think you won the lottery. What the hell do you do? And he said, well, I trade the market. And he said, can you show me how it's like, sure, let me try. And so literally sat with them over a number of weekends and showed them what I do. And they got it and they got pretty good at it. A few months later, the phone rang and somebody said, Hey, you taught my friend how to do this. Can you teach me? And said, okay, I will, but don't tell that guy what I'm teaching you because he made some wrong direction choices on the path. And that was my fault because I didn't tell him where not to go. So your instructions will be a little bit different. And we, and that guy told somebody and it just slowly grew, slowly grew. Eventually I

got smart and I wrote down this manual that I was creating without rather than just me talking it through. One of the guys that I taught was a, and I never charged people for this. And one of the guys I taught was a Hollywood talent agent. I live in Southern California. And he'd heard about me. I stumbled onto him somewhere. And we're talking with him. I was complaining because someone had canceled on me that morning. It was like a Saturday morning.

I was meeting him in the afternoon. And he said, he looked at me and he said, you know, you're doing this wrong. I said, okay. And he said, what you need to do, he said, why don't you charge people? They won't cancel on you. And he said, you have a business here you're just not charging for. And I thought, I never even thought about it. And he said, you need to do he said why don't you charge people they won't cancel on you and he said you have a business here you're just not charging for it i thought i never even thought about it and he said well wake up charge somebody i said okay and he said what do you think is a fair price and me who had been in sales should have seen this coming i said i don't know a thousand maybe fifteen hundred dollars he said cool and he pulled out his check and he said here's a check

for a thousand dollars and charge everybody else500. And lesson number one, kid, is you never give two prices. Somebody will always take the lower one. I thought, oh. And I went out and I watched them. I'd gone to tons of seminars, always with the eye of being a student. I never paid attention to what they did as far as setting up the business. And so I went to one, looked around, and all the things that I disliked, I wrote down that I'm going to do a complete 180. Okay. I liked that. Let me just copy.

And so first class I ran, there were four people that showed up and I didn't recruit one of them. It was some guy I met at a seminar when I tried what I was doing. He went out and he found four people that were there. And I basically poached from somebody else's seminar. Not cool, but it happens. The last time I taught one, there were about 175 people in the room and there's no advertising. It's all referral. So it's just continued to grow. It's really, really fun to share your knowledge. And people come up with tears in their eyes saying, wow, you've changed my life. Yeah, that's awesome. How often do you have the workshops now?

Currently, I run them three times a year in Southern California. I've been asked to take them elsewhere around the country. And I thought, you know, it's kind of nice not having a job. I really don't want to get on an airplane regularly with IBM. it's like, I'm not that interested. In doing that also, one of the people that attended is well-known in the podcast community. He's a podcast producer. I guess he's been in it since they figured out how to spell the word podcast. And he came up one day and he said, you've got a really unique message. And a guy that helps me teach the class retired at 30.

I met him at IBM as well. Wow. You guys have this incredible dynamic. You really should do a podcast. And I looked and I was like, I don't know what a podcast is, but thanks, I think. And so we started a podcast as well. And so it's interesting how it's spreading the word, I guess. And we don't talk about the class. All we talk about is the how to think. And so when I stumbled on what you do, I thought, oh my gosh, there's somebody else that talks about this. So I just

like, I was excited to listen to your podcast. There's awesome stuff that you've got out there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And you mentioned that some of them you've listened to many times. So I appreciate that. So Chris, tell us how, let's just kind of start and talk about what do you see in terms of the traits of a successful trader? So the way I've summarized it, I think you really, when I first, if somebody comes up and says I'm interested in doing this, sometimes they walk in and they have, most of them have greed and you can just see it oozing out of their pores because the the perception is oh i just press a button walk away and i come back and money is there and they just have this dream that if i do it a couple times i'll be rich

and then there's this fear of like oh but i could lose everything so they haven't really thought about the discipline of money management and so there's that aspect, and people are afraid of money or afraid of numbers a lot of times. Yeah. If you're actually saying, well, I'm not really good at math. And I say, well, I learned to be, but I wasn't initially. It's something you can learn, but you don't need it. You can use a calculator. The three traits you really need, if you boil everything down, you've got to be able to follow instructions and describe people. Go find a set of rules that you believe work. And it could be what I do. It doesn't matter who teaches you. I

don't have the secret sauce, but you've got to be able to follow instructions. And then you also have to be able to possess a strong work ethic because this does take time. It's not going to come quick. It's incredibly frustrating. It's very confusing early on. And what makes it confusing is something that's right in your wheelhouse and it's emotions. It's the confusing part is not the how to do. And then the last piece you need is you've got to have a don't quit attitude, which says if you start something, you know, there's a fine line between stubborn and pigheaded and just, you know, relentless in your pursuit of something. But if you've got a don't quit attitude, one of two things are going to happen.

And that's either that you're going to succeed or you'll die first. And dying is acceptable. You laugh, but I'm serious, right? It's a look at it saying, I'm going to get this. And if you happen to, you know, if you start this way late in life and you run out of runway, that's okay. If you start it young and awesome, you've got an incredibly long runway to enjoy the fruits of the labor and the emotion stuff you work on forever. Once you get the how to do part, that's actually pretty easy. It's the emotional, the mindset piece that you've got to work on constantly. And I think one cool thing that I really enjoyed,

this was on your website, and then I saw it in another place in your materials, but you talk about how like 95% of achieving and maintaining time freedom, I like that word time freedom or that concept, is how to think, right? But 5% is how to do. And then you talk about how most people focus on the 5%. So I guess, tell us a little bit more about what does that mean to focus on the 95% and how do you actually do that? Sure. So let me start. I'll even go a little bit further beyond that. Most people will talk about reaching financial freedom. And if you listen to what they're thinking or saying, you know, a common path is somebody might start a small business and hope that it grows into a big one, or they sell

out, or they're going to buy investment real estate. So buy rental properties and all that. And the dream I managed to have a lot of people say, Hey, if I keep buying these rental homes, apartment buildings, whatever it may be, ultimately I'll get enough cashflow off of that, that I could, if I want to leave my job or do a job that I really enjoy and do it for the love and the passion of it and not for the paycheck. And what people often miss is that the amount of time that they then have to spend chasing this quote unquote financial freedom. So now I've got the Cinderella real estate empire with a bunch of rental houses around Southern Minnesota, which sounds really nice if they're all paying you money every month, but now you've got the overhead of managing all that stuff. And so you've built

yourself your own company, which is not time freedom. To me, time freedom is something that I have to spend very little time managing the money to get it to grow. It takes a while to learn how to do that. Again, this isn't something that comes quick. But once you learn how to do that, what's nice now, for example, and I'm notorious for bashing real estate, and I just do it to really shock people. If you wanted to pick a number, it doesn't really matter what the amount is. If you're making a thousand dollars a month in income off of a rental house, and you're doing that off of one home, if you want to double your income, you have to basically buy a second home that has the same numbers. And that's how you

would now get to $2,000 a month. And so that says now that it's going to take double the amount of time that it takes to manage the single house. And if you want to make five times your income, now you've got five times the hours. And if you've got a property management person, that's great, but you still have to manage the property manager. And so I believe you want to find something where you can scale up your income by pressing numbers on a keyboard, as opposed to having to do more time in your day. And so there's a huge difference between time freedom and financial freedom. And then yeah, it's really, once that clicks people,

you can see the light bulb go on in people's eyes. It's really neat when they get it. And then you'd asked about the five and the 95%. What I found when I was learning to do this, and I see it even, and I still go to seminars on that today. I can always learn more. The vast majority of the time, when you listen to people, they're talking about what it takes, what you have to do in order to learn to trade and invest. And they focus the 90, you know, 98% of the presentation is about, you know, we're looking for this, you do this, and it's all the mechanics to how to do one to 2% of their, you know, days long presentation is, oh, by the way, you're

gonna have to deal with emotions too, because they're going to mess you up and be prepared for that. And then they ignore the elephant in the room. The reality is it's about 95% at a minimum is how to think. And it's once you really get into this, it's probably more than 98, 99% of it is how you think. And you end up, you don't realize in trading and investing how driven we are by emotions. And emotions are just thoughts that pop into your head, you know, rightly or wrongly, they just pop up. And so what happens is you end up having to learn to recognize an emotion and

then you have to learn to recognize your reaction to an emotion. And then you have to learn how to deal with the reaction and control the reaction. You don't control the emotion. You control your reaction to the emotion. And so just a real simple example, you know, right now when we're recording this, whether you like Trump or can't stand the man doesn't matter. He's got a wonderful proclivity about putting stuff out on Twitter. Yes. He does it late at night and then you turn on the news the next morning and you'll see, oh, the whole world reacted this way and the market went screaming up, the market went

screaming down. Well, why is that? That's emotions. People are acting fearful or greedy as a result of that. And so I actually love that whether I like not to get into politics, whether you like Trump or not, it doesn't matter. For the way that I trade, you make money off movement. And so when there's volatility in the market, that is awesome.

And so you go to bed at night and go, please, Mr. Trump, say something stupid. Say something smart. Because what it does is it creates havoc. And everybody that reacts emotionally once you know once you can see that like oh there's opportunity all over the place oh wow that's fascinating i never thought about how like a tweet from a president can impact trading i would have never guessed it never would have guessed it but it's wow it's really weird and that if you've watched the movie the matrix yeah there's a famous scene in there where and i I'm going to get the stories right, but the concept is there.

Keanu Reeves is facing, I can't think of the actor's name, but the other guy is holding out a red pill and a blue pill. And he said, if you take the red pill, you'll fall back asleep and you won't even remember this discussion. But if you take this other pill, you're going to see a new sense of reality that is there. It's viewable by everybody, but everybody ignores it and they just don't see it. And it's really weird, but you get that same almost sensation in understanding kind of the underlying stuff of when you see the emotional pull of markets moving up and down and markets moving up and down are just you and me reacting you and me reacting with our you know our couple thousand dollars and it's the you and me's reacting with hundreds of millions of dollars just human emotions playing out every day it's awesome so how do you see the link between the high performance mindset and then trading and investing? Tell us a bit about how you see that link.

Sure. So when I stumbled on what you're doing, I was thrilled. Like, oh my gosh, somebody is out here. They get it. And yet you have, from what I've looked through your materials, the ones that, and I'm sure there are many others. You've got some business folks on there. You've got some coaches. You've got some athletes.

There was one guy in particular, because I remembered his name, it was Tewksbury. Yeah, the sports psychologist for the Cubs. Awesome guy. Exactly. And so and what caught my eye is like, hey, I remember watching this guy when I was in college and, you know, early career, because he has an unusual name. And I remember seeing this guy pitching. And so when I saw that he had an interview with him, it wasn't the star quality, like, oh, you know, going all gaga. Somebody's like, I remember this guy. He's about my age. It'd be interesting to see what he's doing now. And as I listened to his discussion with you, I went back and rewound it probably four, maybe five times. Because if I hadn't known his name and what he had done for a living, I would have thought he was a traitor. Everything he described gets into the

aspect of money management, on the coaching, the how to think what you've got to do. And then when I went and read through your materials, you talk about the 10, I've got it written down here, the 10 practices of the world's best, right? And you've got things like you've got to have grit. And I love that word, but nobody really knows what it means. That to me just says, you got to work ethic. You're not going to quit. You're willing to grind and you've got to be really clear on a purpose. And in trading that, you've described it. You've got a set of rules, you follow them. And when it works out in your favor, great. And it works out against you. Great. It doesn't matter. And it's all about the process of doing it over and over again. Then also you talk about having to be a master of your

thoughts. That's learning to control your emotions or control your reaction to your emotions. And then owning the moment, you'll have times in trading where you'll screw up, right? We all have, like, I hope we all do it. I have emotional lapses regularly, but now you learn to recognize, you're like, oh, I goofed. No problem, I broke the process. You know, you give yourself a spanking.

Yeah. And no different than somebody in the sports field where you have a penalty. You know, you weren't supposed to do this. They put you in the penalty box. You get a foul, whatever sport it is. But then you get back out on the ice or back out in the game, and you're not worried about, oh, I hope I don't foul the guy again.

You go execute on what you're going to do, and sometimes you foul. Sometimes you mess up, and that's okay. But you're not out there fearful of, or I missed the shot. Oh, well, that means I can't take another shot because I missed the last one. No, you've practiced the process and you do it again and again and again. So the parallels to these two are phenomenal.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, the way I think about it is like the 10 practices of the world's best. That's from my book, Beyond the Grit. And there's quite a bit of research about like, these are the practices of high performers. And then there are also things that I've seen. So it's pretty cool that you maybe can think of trading as a performance, like you are performing, right? Or maybe people think of it as maybe a job or a hobby. But if we think about it as a

performance, then we realize, okay okay we need to use these same mindset principles to be able to thrive in that area i think it's that but the you know there's certain words that people use and i'm sure you get it where the hairs on the neck on the back of your neck just stand up yes and when i hear trading and hobby in the same sentence oh they just stand up it's like oh no no no because if you treat this like a hobby you'll get hobby results like a profession you'll get professional results yeah so once i find a lot when somebody comes at this oh i've got some trading experience that could mean that they bought a stock back in 1992 that they've been afraid to sell for the last 17 years and they

don't really they don't have an exit strategy. And so it really is, there's three questions that you always deal with and it's what to buy and then when to buy, when to sell and when to sell could be, you know, three lifetimes from now, right? It could be for your great grandkids and that's fine, but it's always what to buy, when to buy, when to sell. And so there's always this process that you're following. And as you're working through this cycle and process, whether you're going to hold something for minutes, months, doesn't matter. It's always the same process that you're working through.

And you're fighting your emotions to want to break the rules of that process based on all these other outside, you know, Trump making a tweet that goes against you or Trump making a tweet that makes the move go in the favor you in the direction you want. And now you deal with, oh, well, it hit my exit point. You know, I'd like to take this profit. And little voice in the back of your head says, oh no, but there's going to be more, right? Trump's going to say something even dumber tomorrow. And it'll, you know, something, I guess dumber is not the right word. We'll say something controversial tomorrow. And it will cause it to move in whatever direction it's going. And you have this fear of missing out on more. So your rules say, get out now, but the voice in your head says, but I can be richer tomorrow. And so you have to learn to tell that voice to shut up. It's just a trade. It's not the last

trade you'll ever do in your life. Sports, it's not the last basketball shot you're ever going to take. It's not the last pass you're going to drop. Whatever it may be, there's always going to be another one and you focus on the process. Awesome. So Chris, I can definitely see the parallels. So one thing I'm thinking about is like, how do you see successful traders deal with failure? So let's say it's a Monday, you lose a significant amount of money. Do you see them sticking around, continuing to trade that day? Do you see them taking a break? How do you see them kind of dealing with it emotionally? So let's kind of talk about what do they do and then how do they think after they have failed?

Sure. So two things, I remember with a hair, we're not on video, so you can't see it, but the hairs on the back of my neck, the neck are now standing up. So two things,

one, the failure and losing. And so if you have a trade go against you, you're not a failure. You cannot, you cannot personalize it. All it is, is that the trade didn't work. And if you follow your process, the process worked, which means it got you out at a loss. This is not an objective of getting a hundred percent correct. You know, best baseball players miss six, seven times out of 10, and yet they end up in the Hall of Fame. They don't focus on the misses. They focus on the three to four times they connect

out of 10. In trading, the focus has to be on the process. I call it making a brick. In trading, it's really about you're looking, the way that I do it, I'm looking for patterns and habits, if you will. And when I see a pattern set up, I take the trade. And I've studied this enough to say, no, odds are it's going to work. But once I'm in the trade, I have no control what this thing's going to do. And so if it hits my target objective, let's say I buy a stock at $100 a a share and I expect to run up to one 10 and I'll take $10 in profit. Or if it gets down to, I don't know, pick a number 97, I'll take a loss. Okay. It's like, no, you executed perfectly. And so the definition of, if you think of making a brick is your objective every time a brick is a proper entry and intelligent exit done according to your plan. There's nothing in there that says winner loss. And so proper entry was there at a hundred dollars. My exit was intelligent at 97. So I lost $3. Fine. I did it according to plan. That's a brick. And I tap

myself on the back on it. I don't look at my bank balance. And it doesn't make me a bad person. I'm not, I don't get less attractive. I don't become ugly or stupid because I had a loss. Go the other way the next day or the next month, whenever your next trade is. Now I buy another stock at $100. It runs up to $110 and I close it. Boy, that's amazing. The emotions that run through you. You pat yourself on the back. You look in the mirror. You just got suddenly better looking. All the wrinkles went away. Your hair lost any gray. Everything about you is roses. And the reality is it's not. Just because you had a winning trade, all it means is that it went in one direction. More importantly, you closed it when

you were supposed to. And you pat yourself on the back for the brick, not for the fact that you made $10 or $100 or whatever it is. It's all about the process. And that's where people get oftentimes tripped up on this early on as they focus on the money. Yeah, for sure. Focus on the process. And do most people trade like every day or tell us a little bit about what your schedule is as a trader? So can you feel the hair standing up? Most people, what I've learned on this is I don't worry about what others do, right? I've got my own, you kind of be very insular, I guess, and you're not worried about what other people are doing. You've got your set of rules and you follow them religiously and rigidly and not worry about

what else is going on. And so the cool thing about the markets, there's all these people, there's activity going on all the time. And I've trained myself to think, gosh, there's movement. I'd like to be in the market because I see there's movement. I want to get some of it. It's greed. But I realized if there's no setup that meets my movement. I want to get some of it. It's greed. But I realize if there's no setup that meets my criteria, I get to tell myself, oh, this is all the other people that don't know what they're doing, setting it up for me in the future so I can go in and take the money. And so you look at it as kind of a competitive aspect. And so what the others are doing, I'm not as worried about. My own schedule, there's times when I can, if I want to, I can day trade.

So I can sit here and be stuck to a desk and catch movement all day long. I've taught people that love doing it. There are times that I enjoy it. It's fun. And I can do it while I'm doing an email or on conference calls, whatever it might be, or cooking breakfast. I don't need to be glued to the screen. I kind of look and you see what's coming. And there's other times where like, no, I may not look at it for a few days, or you look at it once a day. And I know what I'm expecting it to do. And if it doesn't, great. And if it doesn't, if it hits my objective to get in or get out, or get in at a loss, get out, get it, sorry, get out, I lost, get out at a game, I take it, close the trade, go look for the next one. Okay. Awesome. If that makes sense. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah. And Chris, can you think of a time that you failed and tell

us a little bit about what you learned from it? So I'm thinking like what you said about like how in trading, and I think this is very similar to sports and in business, right? Like you are not a failure, but tell us about a time where things didn't go so great for you. What'd you learn from it? In trading, you're going to, there are thousands of them where you have mental lapses and you go through that as you're learning. The one that pops to mind and it's recent. And I suppose if I thought back, I could think of some that are more poignant, but one that pops to mind that's recent. I'll go a little trading speaker and I'll try and keep it at a higher level so people can keep up. I saw a trade sauce set up and there's a strategy that I use and that I teach where you, I think one of

your discussions, you had somebody on where they talked about the word impossible. And that really is I'm possible. You put an apostrophe between the I and the M, and it's really I'm possible. And you have to have that type of approach when you first look at trading, when you realize the opportunities that are there. Yet you can't be so driven by the dollars that it blinds you to reality. And one of the techniques I show people is it's a little bit of a gambling technique. You take a small amount of money that it's okay to lose and you basically parlay it. And you do this after you're able to develop a long win streak. And so if you can imagine, you know, growing, I'm going to speak math here. If you grow 20%, so you make 20% on a trade, the next trade you'd take, say if you did

a thousand dollars, your next trade would be $1,200. And if you made 20% on that, trade you'd take, say you did a thousand dollars, your next trade would be $1,200. And if you made 20% on that, now you'd have $1,400 and change. Your next trade is a $1,400 trade. And so you keep pressing the bet. It's almost like going to Vegas and every time you win, you double your bet. And so I've shown people how to do this. I took a really small, I took a couple thousand dollars into a six-figure sum. Wow.

And I did this in two accounts. I did it in a taxable account and in an IRA. And woke up one morning, saw a great setup, and I put money from both accounts on the trade. And I've told myself many times, if I'm going to be in a day trade, I don't answer the phone. I don't get up. I don't go to the bathroom. I don't go get water. I don't go get breakfast.

Okay. I sit there until the trade is done. Okay. And I was in the trade. It was up to a point where I thought, you know, I probably could take it here. And right then the phone rang. And I looked. I thought, you know, you're not supposed to answer this.

And I thought, no, I think I'm okay. And I know this person well enough, I don't have to tell them what I'm doing, but they won't mind if I interrupt them saying, let me close out a trade really quick. And I took the phone call. And first words out of his mouth were, hey, what's going on? Are you in a trade? It's like, yeah, but I'm okay. And it moved a little bit more and it hesitated. I said, hold on. And I close, let me close half the position. And one of the strategies you take half your position off the table and Murphy's Murphy's law always appears when you do this, because the minute you do that, it takes off without you. And now you're kicking yourself. Oh gosh, I don't have my, as much money as I did three minutes ago on this trade. I closed half the position, watched it run up, and then I closed the second half. And in my mind, made two entries and made two exits. Finished the phone call, market closed not too long thereafter, shut it down, didn't think about it. Woke up the next day and saw a trade set up, went to go to the broker's page. And I thought, wow, why do I have a position on this stock?

And I thought, oh no, do I have a position on this stock? And I thought, oh no, I didn't close it from yesterday. And this is not something I want to be holding overnight. And I took a very healthy six figure account down to a somewhat in the range of five figure account. So I lost an annual, like a huge annual salary overnight. Oh no. Oh yeah. Not a, not a moment of pride, but, and people go, oh my gosh, you were pushing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was like, yes, you get to the point you're comfortable doing that. And it bothered me. What bothered me was not the loss of the money. Cause in my mind at that, well, I had taken this from the market, from the stock market over the last couple of months. It was me just doing a give back. That's how I rationalized it quickly in my brain. I was more furious at myself that I had the ego that said, oh no, it's okay. I can do three

things at once. Manage two trades and talk to this guy on the phone. Even though I've got it written all over my desk, I've got post-it notes all over to say, don't answer the phone. Don't check email. You've got to stay focused on what it is that you're doing. And as a result of that, I don't know if some would call it a failure. To me, it was just a lapse in judgment. It was a lapse in discipline. And I guess it was actually a proof that my rules work.

And I had to burn my fingers really hard on that stove to know that the rules were good so on the one hand I you know some might call it a failure I look at I think you know that was a really good spanking behind the woodshed and I knew better yeah now today if you had called me during the training, I had something going on. I don't care how important you are. I'm not taking the phone call and you learn how to, you learn the hard way. Right. Yeah.

And it sounds like maybe in that moment you're just distracted or, you know, not fully present, which you, you and I talked about earlier, like owning the moment is super important. It's owning the moment, but then it's also, you got to live and let go. I lost it. Cool. But does that mean now that I can't do a trade tomorrow? Nope. Right. You jump right back up on the horse, even though you just got tossed. I call it tasting shovel. You know, the market has this wonderful propensity of, you'll be sitting in your chair, just minding your own business. I give a visual for people that I've taught. So imagine you're just, you go into a bar and you're sitting at a bar stool enjoying a drink, minding your mind, your own business, not saying a soul.

And it's a little bit of a gungy place, dingy place. There's schmutz on the floor and you know, peanuts and whatever else is down there. And all of a sudden you feel this hand at the back of your neck, and it shoves your face into the floor. And you feel your face being used as a mop across this filthy, disgusting bar floor. And you've got peanut shells and dirt and all kinds of garbage in your face. And finally, the pressure released.

And you're able to stand back up and you look around and you think, what the heck just happened? And now you're able to stand back up and you look around and you think, what the heck just happened? And now you're scared. Do I sit down in that bar stool and run the risk of somebody grabbing me by the back of the neck and shoving my face violently in the floor again? Or do I get up and leave? And what's interesting, you realize, is that that hand that was at the back of your throat shoving you on the floor was your own hand. It was because of your actions that caused you to let the market use your face as a mop. It's almost like you get smacked in the face with a shovel. It's that painful and it's your own fault. And you have to be willing to sit back down in the chair again,

knowing that this could happen again. So it's a fascinating mental exercise. There are lots of parallels to everything we've been talking about the podcast or on the podcast just the different topics so chris i am grateful that you're here today giving us a little snapshot of what it's like in the psychology or the mindset of trading so where can we learn more about your podcast investing from the beach literally here at waikiki i can see the sun behind you and i have to say, I wish I was there. But there is a lot of sun in Minnesota today, which I'm incredibly grateful for. But tell us how we can learn more about your seminars, your workshops, and then your podcast. Sure. Probably the best thing I would say for people is if you're in Southern

California, there's a class that I teach. It's called Profits on Wall Street. You spell it all out. If you don't remember the name, probably an easier place for people to start is to go to the podcast or the website for Investing from the Beach. You can find that at investingfromthebeach.com. There's probably, last time I checked, I think you're in the 200s with the number of episodes. I think I'm in the 60 range. Hey, that's awesome. Yeah. So we've got about 60 of them out there. Just start clicking around, see if any of them grab you. Up at the top, there's a great book list. Most of the books there are not about the stock market. They're about how to think. And it's things, one of the best books I think I found kind of as a starting

point is, I don't know if you've, he might be a great interview for you. It was a guy by the name of Kyle Maynard. And he wrote this book some number of years ago. And someone told me about it. They said, you would love this. It's about a guy that got to the high school. In high school, he was in the wrestling championship for the state of Georgia, I believe. And they said he lost. And then he went on and he set weightlifting records.

And they said, you would love this book. I don't lift weights and I don't wrestle and I'm not in high school. Where's the parallel? I said, no, no, no. You understand this guy is arms and above his elbow and his legs and above his knee. Wow. And he wrestles and he's a weightlifter and his book is titled no excuses. And it's a phenomenal just perspective on you know we all put excuses in front of ourselves as to why we can't do things and that's the i always tell people i don't care what you want to do go read that book because it really makes you realize

all the stuff in life that you put as an excuse as a roadblock is really garbage. It's just your head saying no. Excellent. Love it. On the website, there's a book list and you can find the link into the class as well. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Chris, here are the things that I really appreciated about today's interview. I love your discussion about the 95, 5% and that it might even be 99%, you know, just that so much of trading is really like this mindset of performance. I like how you distinguished financial freedom and time freedom. And I thought that was really eye-opening and interesting. And your conversation about much like other performers and other performances, how it's really about the process, right? And following these rules and the time that you didn't and took that phone call, that was incredibly eye-opening. So I appreciate you just being honest and vulnerable about that. And then even just the

emotional side of trading and how it's really important to recognize your emotion and your reaction to that emotion and then manage that. So I'm grateful for the time that you took on your vacation to spend with us today. Or maybe it's not a vacation. It's just a lifestyle, huh, Chris? Here's the mindset thing. It's not really a vacation. All it is, is you chose to live somewhere else for a couple of weeks. Yeah. Love it. Love it. I said that I was like, I don't even think we should call it a vacation. No, you just, you choose to live somewhere else for a couple of weeks and just do what you do and then go back home a few weeks later

and go on to live life. And I mean, that's really what you, if you think about it, that's what you're trying to get to. We're all trying to get to that point. Yeah. Right, at some point we just, it clicks, it clicks at different times for everybody. Love it, Chris.

So check out Chris at investingfromthebeach.com. Thank you so much for joining us today. Cinder, thanks so much for the, for the invite. I really appreciate it. Enjoy this. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to joining us today. Cinder, thanks so much for the invite. I really appreciate it. Enjoy this. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation

on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Cinder's free weekly videos, check out DrCindra.com.