The School of Greatness - 69 Timothy Sykes: Creating the Next Outrageous Millionaire Lifestyle

Episode Date: May 28, 2014

If you could source a millionaire to work day and night in to get you to your goal of a million dollars, would you follow them? Our next guest on the School of Greatness turned $12,415 in $3.93 million in less than 3 years. His story is amazing. To see videos, get show notes and connect with the School, please visit lewishowes.com/69

This is episode number 69 with Timothy Sykes. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, greats? Thanks so much for saying hi to me today and listening to this episode. I've got a special guest on today.

His name is Mr. Timothy Sykes. And Tim is a buddy of mine that I've known for a number of years back from my New York City days living there. We would connect every once in a while. And he was always doing some big things with his penny stock trading. He was making a lot of money trading penny stocks and teaching other people how to do this as well, how to take a few thousand dollars and turn it into hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And on this episode, we dive into his story about how he took just a few thousand dollars

when he was a teenager and built it into a few million dollars a few years later. And then the strategies along the ways of how he's been teaching people to do the same. We talk about marketing, we talk about building a business and dive into what it's like for him to be hated so much and to be criticized a lot. And he's criticized a lot for his marketing style and the way he promotes things. But he's done extremely well at the same time. So we dive into his internal battle with that and also a lot of other fun things along the way.

So make sure to get out your pen and paper, take some notes. Tim's an awesome guy. I think you're going to really like this interview. I've got a big, big month ahead of me. I'm actually going to Uruguay and Brazil to compete with the USA national team in the Pan American Championships in Uruguay

at the end of June. So I'm very excited about this process. We just won the national championship with my New York City team, handball team. It was an amazing tournament that we had, and the whole team came together winning the championship game. It was a lot of fun. My first time being on a championship team. Actually, I've been to a lot of championship games,

playoff games, things like that, but never actually won a national championship. So this was a first and it was humbling. It was fun. It was exciting. A lot of different things happening. So it was a blessing and I'm very grateful for that experience.

Now I get to go represent my country, wear USA across my chest, which for me gives me chills every time I get to think about wearing that and representing my country and the journey over the last three and a half, four years of taking on this new adventure of team handball to represent my country. So I'm very excited about this to come back together with my teammates from all over the world, train with them, go to Brazil and compete for a while, then in Uruguay for the tournament. So if anyone's down there in Uruguay, make sure to say hi at the Pan American Championships. I will keep you guys posted on what's happening with that process and the journey along the way in these episodes. So make sure to subscribe over on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud

and continue to share this with your friends. I really appreciate you guys staying so connected with me, with your posts on Instagram, where you are listening to the show, posting on Twitter and Facebook constantly. So thank you guys so much for subscribing, for listening, for sharing these guys, so much for subscribing, for listening, for sharing these episodes, and I hope they continue to get more inspiring for you each and every week. So with that, let's dive in to today's episode with Mr. Timothy Sykes. What is up, everyone? Thanks so much for checking out the School of Greatness again. I am sitting with a good buddy of mine, Mr. Timothy Sykes. What's up, brother?

Hey, how's it going, man? It's going good. And for those that don't know who Tim is, he is really well known for being an amazing penny stock trader. And he's outrageously good at marketing because he's outrageous at it. And he has a great story. So I want to have you share your story for those who don't know you, because some of

my audience probably knows you because we interact online every now and then, so they'll see that. But then there's a whole lot of people that have no clue what penny stocks are, what stock trading, the market. They don't know anything about it, and they don't know how you became so successful. So just kind of like your brief story about that. Yeah. First, thanks for having me on. It's good to see you. It's been too long. Um, you know, first, thanks for having me on. Um, it's good to see you. It's been too long. Secondly, uh, yeah, I've had a wild kind of journey. Um, my parents gave me my bar mitzvah gift money, $12,415. Uh, when I was in high school, um, I was a tennis player and I was playing every day and my weak Jewish genetics gave out and, uh, I got injured and I had two casts on my arms. So they gave me control of this money to basically

invest. They thought I would lose it all. They thought that it would be a good lesson for me. And instead, by the end of senior year of high school, I turned the $12,000 into $120,000. Then after freshman year, it was $800,000. And before I graduated college, it was nearly $2,000,000. Wow. So in like five years or something. Four years trading penny stocks, which are stocks trading under $5 a share, very speculative stocks, not like Google, not Apple, not GE, small companies. Stocks you don't know of. Yeah, stocks you don't know of.

A lot of very sketchy companies. If you've ever seen the movie Wolf of Wall Street, those are all penny stocks. So there are a lot of scams out there, so you have to be careful. But there's also some good companies that you know they have like these groundbreaking technologies and big companies want to use these small companies so I kind of

have a talent of finding you know what is a good company and what is a bad company and I separate the two and now I actually teach people

because I made so much with my own money they want to know from you they want to know and I was on this TV show called to know. And I was on this TV show called Wolf or Wall Street. I was on this TV show called Wall Street Warriors. And it's now in like 20 countries was like kind of like a reality show. And so I started teaching and now I have

5000 plus students in over 60 countries and two students just recently passed a million dollars in trading profits um one of them he started with 1500 of his own money he's now up to 1.73 million in three years since becoming my student tim grittani big shout out to him and he was just like he just passed one million like four months ago right he passed yeah he passed one million um and we were featured on cnn and that was kind of crazy because he got like 5 000 social shares shares. So everyone's like, oh, I want to make a million dollars. So I teach my strategy and not everyone's going to become a millionaire,

but what I do is teach rules that I've learned over 15 years of trading. And if you learn these rules, you're better off. It's, people say, oh, I'm scared of the stock market. I'm scared of penny stocks. What can you do to help me? Well, I teach you rules. Like I'm like a driving instructor. Driving

is scary if you don't pay attention to red lights, stop signs, lanes, basic rules. If you just get in a car, if you're like a baby and you're driving, you're going to go crazy. So that's what's very similar in the stock market. So I teach rules and I share them and I kind of antagonize people with how proud I am of the money that I've made and what it can buy and the lifestyle. Yeah. What's your Instagram handle? It's just Tim Sykes? Timothy Sykes is my Instagram handle.

And I post pictures. And YouTube, we have nearly 300 videos. And when you make this kind of money, I've been making six figures, sometimes seven figures a year, every year for over a decade. And that adds up and you can basically do it from anywhere. All you need is an internet connection. So I trade from the Maldives. I do like a video. I made a stock trade from my Lamborghini.

So like you see me like doing this trade and people come up to my window and they're like, hey dude, nice car. And I'm like, not now. I'm making a stock trade. And I make like a thousand dollars from the Lambo. And so I rub it in because it's, it's kind of cool to be able to be able to work from anywhere. Um, man, woman, child, it doesn't matter if you're American international. So it's kind of a cool thing. The thing I like about Tim is a lot of people, you know, I have friends who are like, just Tim's the biggest douchebag marketer. Like, he's so, you know, over the top.

It's ridiculous. And when they actually meet Tim, when I get to hang out with Tim, he's like the most loving, humble, nice guy. It's really weird because, like, meeting you and being friends for a while, you've let me stay at your place for, like, three months over the last three years in New York City. You're always very welcoming. And, you know, before we even really knew each other that well. And so that's what I really like about you. It's like, sure, you're this like type of marketer that's over the top, but you're like really care about people's success and you care about your friends.

100%. And you have to, you know, you have to be aggressive on the internet or else you don't stand out. Okay. I've made a few million dollars, big whoop. But, you know, by giving visuals, by showing off my Lamborghini and my mansions and my crazy trips and showing people, this is why you should work so hard. It offends some, but most people are like, oh my God, I want this. I want to do what it takes to get there. So that's what I am online. And people

make all these judgments about who I am. And as a person, it's totally different. You know, if I was just totally humble and nice and you know myself online i was that for the first year or two and no one cared because everyone's like oh it's just like a guy that's cool that's nice a nerdy dude who's just making money but you didn't show i didn't show the carrot you know i no one wants to really learn finance no one wants to learn about the stock market it's not exciting but if you see the rewards of what you can possibly get and you're you know inspired to study look through all my dvds and video lessons and webinars and you know try and see the intricacies

um you know then you're then you're encouraged so my job is like inspiration just to give people this hope that they can actually get there and they can if they actually follow the rules as evidenced by my two millionaire students so far you've got a lot of students who've had you know probably multiple six figure years and they make thousands of dollars every month lots of students right yeah but you know that's not inspirational so i could say oh i probably have i don't know maybe two or three hundred students who have made 10 grand in the past few months right that's cool but no one cares that's not life-changing yeah then you knowani, $1,500 into $1.7 million in three years. And he's doing it all off my patterns. And he's from Columbus, Ohio.

He's from my hometown. We saw each other at the airport. I saw you in Ohio. I was in Ohio trying to be there to witness him crossing a million dollars in trading profits. I had to go back freaking twice because I kind of put pressure on him. It's kind of tough, like with a camera in your face. Um, but we got it and, uh, he crossed a million and now he's at 1.7. So he's just an average kid. But the cool thing is that he does it all on himself. Like he's not just blindly following my picks. He, one day he made $200,000 in one day. Uh, when I was in Japan, I was filming, uh, in Japan, I was sleeping because of the time zone difference. And I woke up and I got like an IM from one of my other students. They're like, Tim made 215 today.

I'm like, I don't care if you made $215. And he's like, no, 215,000. And it was off straight off a pattern in my DVDs. And he did it all while I was asleep. So self-sufficient students is I think even better. So a lot of your students, do they follow you? You're like online for a certain amount of hours. And you're like, here's the trades I'm

about to do, or here's like what you need to look out for today. Or do you teach them the stuff and then they're on their own? So every day, I mean, since the last time you've seen me, I've gained 40 pounds because I have a lot more students and I work my butt off for them. Every day I give a watch list of like stocks to watch before the market opens. And I give commentary usually 30 to 40 times over the course of the day i'm making trades too you know i'm i'm trading and teaching wow um and showing okay this pattern you know fits this dvd i hope you've watched this dvd and you know and we try and see and i don't win 100 of the time i win about 73 of the time

um but i just showed this yeah it's a good percentage and there's rules like even if i have a loss i cut the losses quickly. I let the winners run or I try to. I have patience problems. So I'm not exactly a perfect trader. But I show what I did right and what I did wrong. Like Friday, yesterday, I lost like $14,000. But for the week, I still finished up $22,000.

So you see what I do right and what I do wrong. And I think a lot of people want to make $20,000 in a week. Yeah, for sure. So how did you learn all these strategies in the first place when you're 16 or whatever? Yeah. Um, just trial and error over 15 years, you know, for the first like five or six years I was developing these rules. I didn't even understand that I needed rules. I was just like, did someone teach you like, Hey, you should check out penny stocks or did you hear about penny stocks somewhere? Or was it like, Oh, let me just, the stock market seems cool.

So totally self-taught there. There were no books. There still are no books other than my books and DVDs on penny stocks because they're pretty much hated by everybody in finance. Um, but I was, I went to penny stocks because I didn't have a lot of money and you know, I wasn't going to trade like a hundred dollar stocks. I couldn't afford it. The stocks don't move that much. So, you know, most people on wall street, they're trying to make 20% per year. Like that's their end goal. Like if you have a billion dollar fund, you make 20% per year, you have a fantastic year. That's great. Average person. If you have five, 10, $50,000 a year, and you make 20% a year, it's nothing. You know, even if you have $50,000 in savings, which very few people do, and you make 20%, that's 10 grand over the course of the year.

It's not, not much. What are you? It's not life changing. Starbucks barista. Like, you know, you don't make that much. It's not life. What are you? A Starbucks barista? You don't make that much. It's not life-changing. You put in a lot of work and that's best case scenario. So I had to be a little different and try and refine a strategy where there's more upside to make it worth it for people with small accounts. And I didn't know that that would be my specialty. I didn't plan on being like a penny stock trader, but that's what I've- But you're like, these are small amounts I could buy a lot in and if they doubled, then I could buy a lot in. And if they doubled, then I could make a lot more money.

Correct. That's the beauty of penny stocks. They can double in like a day or two versus Google. It might double over like two years or three years or Facebook, it might double over two or three years, but you're not going to grow your account that fast. So the vast majority of finance, CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, is irrelevant to people with small accounts. But they don't know that because they just get this fed to them every single day. And they're like, oh, let me invest in good quality companies. That's safe.

And then the stocks sometimes also drop. Like Google and Facebook, it's not guaranteed to go up double. You have these big companies, and sometimes they get cut in half in a year. Sometimes safe mutual funds get cut in half. Lose 50% of your money, and you've wasted a year. So I need to do a lot of teaching to change people's perceptions. What's the biggest attribute or skill someone needs to have in order to be successful trading like over the long term? Discipline. If you get your ego involved, if you don't cut your losses quickly, if you bet positions

that are too big, you're like, oh my God, I know this stock is just going to do amazing things. I'm going to bet everything. And you can't do that because you risk disaster. If you're wrong even just a little bit, you risk disaster and then you're out of the game. The key is staying in the game. The key is being successful over the long haul. Yes, I do have a lot of students who have been successful within a year, two, three

years. But Tim Grittani, 1,500 to 1.7 million so far. Five or 10 years from now, if he's still following my rules, he'll have 20, 30, 50 million. That's life changing. That's pretty good. 1.7 million after taxes,

it's nice for a kid from Ohio. He's only 25. Not bad. But it's not everything. And I want people to see how to get to true wealth and true freedom interesting what's the biggest fear that people have when they get into stocks because i would be probably like you know if i wasn't experienced with this and i lost 10 grand in like a week i'd probably like okay i'm done with. Or it's like, it's not for me or whatever.

Is that the biggest fear? Is just people losing everything? Losing everything and not understanding what's going on. Cause you see all these blinking green and red lights and you're like, I don't understand numbers. I'm not good at math. So you don't know the indicators. You don't know what's actually happening.

And if you're just throwing money into something that you don't know what's actually happening. And if you're just throwing money into something that you don't know what's going on, I mean, that's, it doesn't even matter if you make money. It's scary because you're like, oh my God, I just made 5,000. I don't know what I did. But so I really emphasize learning these rules and cutting losses quickly. Those are my two most important things. Number one, cut losses. Like if you're, let's say you have 5,000 in the stock market and you're down, you know, $500,000 in the stock market and you're down $500. That's a lot of money to some people. Yeah, with only 5,000 in.

Yeah, and you need to cut it off. Don't try to ride it to be like, it's going to come back. Too many people think that. Too many people use hope as a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. You cannot be down and then say, oh, maybe it'll come back. Maybe it will, but maybe it won't. And you don't want to get into those situations where the odds are less than 50% because then you're, you're going gambling and

you might as well go to Vegas and get some free drinks and at least understand that, you know, the odds are so low. What I want people to do is be more meticulous. 90 to 95% of traders lose money. So it's a sucker's game. If you have no rules, if you go with your gut, you know, people get tips from their friends. Oh, this is a really good penny. They stick it out or whatever. Yeah. They stick it out and they lose and they keep adding really good penny stock. They stick it out or whatever, yeah. They stick it out and they lose and they keep adding, they're like, oh it's only 5,000, I might as well,

I've already held, I might as well hold some more. And I'm just like, oh yeah, yeah, if you're meticulous about it, if you treat it like a business, if you care about every single dollar, like I have several millions of dollars in the bank right now and I still care about every single dollar.

I get pissed if I lose $10 because that's the mindset that I have. That's my training and that's what I want others to think about it. When they're trading penny stocks, when they're trading in the stock market, when they're in the stock market in general, they treat it like a game where it just doesn't matter. It's like, oh, it's fun money. I'm learning. They don't care. You don't learn

by not practicing good trading rules, unfortunately. So give me the three to five things. If you could find the perfect person, individual, that is going to be the all-star penny stock trader, what are the three to five characteristics or mindset skills that they have? You would be like, that's the person I want on my team

to do all my trades for me. Who would that be? Yeah, somebody who is, you know, reasonable and not like aggressive, like someone who's like, oh my K, I'm going to start with $5,000 and I'm going to turn into a million within a year, guaranteed.

That's too aggressive. You can't have any expectations. You have to be reasonable. Understand that, you know, you're going to maybe lose a little if you control your losses. Like my top student, Tim Grittani, lost for the first six months

But he only had losses like 50 bucks 20 bucks and he got better So you cut it real quick and then and he learned so have reasonable expectations Secondly again, you have to be patient like this is not something where it's gonna happen overnight Even though yes, I did have overnight success and many of my students have had overnight success You can't look for that You have to tell you have to think of this as a marathon like if you turn you know 1500 into like 15 000 in year one that's awesome 10 times your money sure you know because then those same kinds of rules that you learn from doing that turning 15 000 into 150 000 10 times next year

and then you do maybe 150 000 into 1.55 million. So you need to learn just the patterns that they can grow your account, but not all at once. The third thing that you have to understand is that it's not based on one hot stock. Don't ever fall in love with a stock. Too many people, they're like, oh my God, this technology is going to change the world. It's amazing.

And maybe there's some setbacks and they're like, no, I still believe it. I still believe it. And you can't do that. You have to understand that the way to grow your account very quickly in penny stocks, the way that I have and my students have, is trading a lot of different stocks. You try and make a little gain here, a little gain there, 10, 20, 30%. You're like a sniper. This is what I say. I say aim small, miss small. So you try and take some profits there, and then you move on to the next, and then the next, and then the next. There's always a new technology, a new company with a new oil technology, a new gold, some

medical innovation. Everyone is trying to pitch these amazing stories. And you have to understand that the vast majority of them are going to fail. But they might be hot for a few days or a few weeks. Like marijuana stocks have been very hot for the past few months with the legalization in some states. So a lot of investors rode that wave.

Unfortunately, too many people rode the wave and they made a lot of money, but they didn't lock in profits. They're like, no, marijuana is going to change the world. So they're still holding and the stocks have now crashed like 80, 90%. They didn't get off. They didn't take profits.

So you have to take profits. You can't just hold forever. A lot of people, I mean, I know people who had turned like a thousand into like a hundred thousand on a marijuana stock and they kept holding and now it's like down to 5,000. So just imagine that making like 99,000 and then losing and you're, and you're still trying to console yourself. Like you're like, well, I'm still up overall. I'm like, Oh my God, such wasted money because they didn't have the rules. They didn't understand to take profits along the way. So what I heard were the three points was first is don't set huge expectations. Second one is be patient. And the third one is don't be attached to a specific result.

Yeah. The key is growing your account, nothing else. Like don't fall in love with these stocks. Don't fall in love with the story. Don't fall in love with the story. Don't trust anybody. Don't trust these press releases of these companies because they're all gonna try and hype themselves up. Try to push the stock up, right? If you've seen like Wolf of Wall Street, the brokers try and pitch a story

and sometimes that works for a few days or a few weeks, but it rarely ever lasts with penny stocks. Most small companies fail and most penny stocks fail. So you can ride the waves up, but just understand that you have to get off the train at some time. Sounds like the same examples you gave are being successful in penny stocks as being successful in anything. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it took me several years to be successful as a teacher and I wanted success all at once. I'm like, I have this strategy

that's can change people's lives. And everyone's like, okay, so? And so I was like, all right, I need to like create some testimonials. I need to show some examples now that I have, but I also needed to give visuals. Like I didn't understand if I'm giving a video lesson on like this amazing stock and it's like a 45 minute video lesson on why I think this stock is going to be good. And I show a picture of like the stock chart as the thumbnail on the video, Or I show a picture of like my Lamborghini, my $235,000 orange 2013 Lamborghini as the thumbnail. Guess which video gets more views? The Lambo. Like four to one, even though it's the exact same video lesson, because people want to see, you know, what they can get. Why should I spend 45 minutes watching this video lesson so you have

to adapt you know i i'm still teaching the exact same thing that i taught when i initially began but now i'm having much more success because i've adapted and that's what i would think everybody should do no matter what industry you're in you need to adapt and see what actually works and have no expectations so do you feel like um you know you're basically like throwing a charging horse at someone you're like come for this but i'm really teaching you this do you feel like that goes against some morals or anything like that or do you feel like it's really actually serving people to the best of the the ability so i get this question a lot i make the analogy where like if you see a bum on the street and you know he's like give me a drink right and let's say you have for some reason two

drinks in your hand and in one hand you have a bottle drink. Right. And let's say you have, for some reason, two drinks in your hand. And in one hand you have a bottle of Jack Daniels. In the other hand, you have like a kale, spinach and celery, like green drink. Which one do you think the bum is going to choose? Not the kale one. He's going to choose a Jack Daniels. So I give the bum the Jack Daniels, but I've tricked the bum and I put the kale and spinach juice in the Jack Daniels bottle and he probably spits it out, but I'm still trying to help him.

So that's what I do. You know, I dress up a lot of my stuff with the Lamborghinis in the mansions, but I literally have gotten it from penny stocks. So I don't think it's that too far of a stretch. And then especially since I do have students now. So I'm promoting education. And yes, I'm ridiculously aggressive

promoting my education. And to some people I'm too aggressive. But as long as I promote something that's useful, if I'm like, if I'm selling crack to kids and I'm too aggressive, but as long as I promote something that's, that's useful, if I'm like, if I'm selling crack to kids and I'm like dressing it up, then that's a bad thing. But I'm giving rules that, you know, can change your life. And even if you don't make a million dollars, they're going to save you from making a ton of dumb mistakes in the stock market world. And they're applicable to the real world and business world. Like a lot of startups have told me like, Oh my God, some of this stuff that you say, adapting, you know, cutting losses like this applies to the business world too. So

I promote education and I'm proud of it. And I think, uh, it's different because you're an individual brand as opposed to like a company brand. And so some people may get turned off because it's your personality as opposed to the company's personality where there's, there's other companies that can get away with it because no one's attached to it, and they can be ridiculously outrageous, and it's not as, I guess, looked down upon for some people. But for you, they might look down upon it or judge you or whatever because it's your personal brand.

Yeah, I mean, they think that it's personal. It's not personal, okay? Like whether it's me or a company, I'm teaching a specific set of rules. And people think oh based on your pictures like you're a douchebag right but that's not me that's just my i use social media to market i don't use it to like share my actual life so there's a difference most people like share their lives and i think that's very superficial because you want to like you want likes for your little you know dog your ham sandwich that you're eating for lunch i don't care what you think about my lunch.

I want to inspire you. So yes, I'm aggressive, but I think being aggressive with a purpose is justified. Now, do you ever feel bad if someone's judging you or anything like that? Or when they leave you nasty comments, do you ever feel like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this? Or how do you deal with that internally? In the beginning, I was like offended. Then I kind of got used to it.

You know, I mean, if I wasn't me, I'd probably hate me too. If I'm just looking at all these pictures of me and like, look at this guy. And I'm sitting here like in my cubicle in my crappy life. I would hate me so much. I would be my biggest hater. So I understand their plight. But it doesn't bother me because, you know, if they did research, if they saw what I actually do, I have so many free videos and so many free stuff that just is useful. There's no way to become a worse trader or a worse investor watching my stuff because I teach rules that I've refined, that my students have learned from, and that work, that have been time tested.

I'm not just making these rules up out of the blue. These are rules that I've personally used to make a lot of money. And I made a lot of boneheaded mistakes for five or six or seven years. So I tell people like, look, you can learn all this stuff on your own or invest in me, but it will take you like 10 years. And who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars you'll lose until you realize it. So I have some haters at first and they're like, ah, screw your rules.

I don't, I don't want to listen. You know, I don't need a Lamborghini. I have a good life. And then they come back six, nine months and they're like, you know, hat in hand. And they're like, yeah, I should, I should have studied. I'm sorry. And I get that. And I don't care, you know, as long as people, you know, find out about me, they're going to give in either now or five years or 10 years. I've created're going to give in either now or five years or 10 years i've created two millionaire students so far but in five years there might be a hundred and so it's a question of when will people finally realize what i teach is real because there's a lot of just sketchy stuff with penny stocks and especially with the trading education world

and i just have to show that i'm real and that's that's for me is a marathon and i think uh i think it was seth godin who said something like um if no one's talking about you good or bad then that's bad yeah so it's you know the haters are actually a good thing it means you're doing something right if someone are talking about what they're upset about you it means you're like striking a conversation you're you're you're creating some type of conflict inside of them to talk well if even if you don't believe me like right away and you're like, you hate me, like Howard Stern economics where you listen to me

and you still hate me at first, but eventually you see that I'm gonna be right 73% of the time. So three out of four times, eventually you're gonna see it. My first millionaire student, Michael Good, actually wrote a blog post about me. This is how I found him.

He wrote a blog post called Timothy Sykes is full of BS. You can Google this, it's still up. He's updated it, but he made all these remarks on why I was full of BS. And we went back and forth in the comment section and he's like, okay, I'll give you a try. And now he's up to 1.3 million in profits in five years. He's also one of my head trading coaches. So my millionaire students aren't just like millionaires on their own. They actually want to give back. So they each give webinars. Michael Good and Tim Grittani give weekly webinars. To teach to your students.

To the trading challenge students. So we have this trading challenge, which are my VIP students. And all of my top students give webinars. So this week was like a crazy week. They had like seven webinars from top students and just talking about like different strategies and the different rules that they've learned.

So it's a very cool culture where you don't just, you know, make a lot of money and laugh your way to the bank. You make a lot of money and then you try and help others because it's such a good feeling. It's so amazing. Like, you know, I, when I made a, I don't know, I had $164,000 profit week a few weeks ago and that was cool. Um, but I've had that before. It's not like a new thing for me, but I got like, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 emails from people like, oh my God, I made my first $1,000 today. And that's exciting. That is fascinating.

The best. Because they never thought this was possible. They're working like little crappy jobs. I get $1,000 a week. $1,000 a month, some people. I have a lot of young people, a lot of part-time workers, and they see that the stock market, if used properly, can be very good for you. If used improperly, if you just use it as a gambling resource, then you lose it, you don't learn anything, and it actually destroys lives. But

if you use it properly with rules, it can change your life. Let's talk about marketing because, in my opinion, and probably lots of people's opinion, marketing is the biggest key to business success. It doesn't matter if you have a good product or a bad product. But if you can market the right way to get people to buy, that's what makes a difference. There's so many entrepreneurs out there right now that I see who are looking for advice to build their business, to make $100,000 in their company, to kind of get it launched. Why are so many people failing at getting attention? And what are some things they can do either that based on your principles or, you know, even if they don't want to go over

the top, cause that's not their personality, what are some things they can do? Yeah. A lot of people go into a business with predefined expectations. Like, you know, I'm going to do this. This is how the customers are going to react and then I'll have success. And that's not the way business works. Like you have to kind of try and judge based on your customer's reactions how good of a product or how useful it is. So I did a very smart thing. I did a lot of dumb things,

but at first I wrote this book called An American Hedge Fund. I thought it was gonna sell a million copies. And I started my blog, timothysykes.com, just to promote the book. And the blog kind of morphed into this Q&A with my followers at the time. And out of like six months of blogging,

forgetting about the book, the book didn't sell that many. It was sold a little bit. It was cool, but it didn't sell a million copies. The blog grew and I really focused on the blog because that's where all the interaction was. And I asked the people, like, what do you want? And so they're like, we want real-time alerts.

And I had not thought of that. I thought, okay, I'm gonna teach these patterns. I'm gonna show like, we want real-time alerts. And I had not thought of that. I thought, okay, I'm going to teach these patterns. I'm going to show you my success. You go do it. And you're going to go do it. But they wanted to be led in real time. So I created Tim Alerts Real-Time Trades. And that is my biggest product with thousands of people.

Is that a monthly subscription? Monthly subscription, 50 bucks. So basically, people can watch your real time trades. Real time trades and then we, and then I, further interaction on the blog led to penny stocking silverware.

It was Tim Alerts plus daily video lessons. So, you know, it's a little more in price. It's $100 a month but this way you get the video lesson round up too.

So Tim Alerts, you just get the watch list and the alerts in the chat room. Then you can get the video lessons and then, you know, other stuff. But that all came from customers. I did not create that.

So you originally had an idea that wasn't the idea that what people wanted, so you shifted into what they wanted. Correct. I pivoted. I pivoted. And it turned out being very profitable and helpful for everyone else. Correct. So listen to your customers. Try and find what they really want. You can have an expectation of, okay, here's the problem. Let me try and solve it. But then by listening and adapting and refining, you become much more successful.

If you go in and you say, this is the product, this is amazing. It's not taking off right away, but eventually it's gonna catch on. No, screw that. Always be changing. You know, I tried a podcast, as I mentioned, Tim Radio, it didn't take off.

So I cut it after like six episodes. My people don't like it. They like videos. They're visual learners. That's fine. You know, I can do whatever, whatever it takes to be successful, whatever the customers are saying that they love and what they'll pay for. That's what really matters because I just want to educate. I don't care if I do a podcast, if I do a video lesson, I just want to show my rules somehow so that it gets ingrained into the customer's brains. And what's been the most successful platform for you over the last three years in terms of attracting new and potential customers? Yeah. So I posted on Facebook. We have our YouTube channel. YouTube is really good

because I can show like a 30 or 40 minute free video. Like here's a trade, how I made like five grand in 30 minutes. so that's very useful but a lot of people don't want to watch 30 minutes so lately instagram has become huge for us uh where i just show a picture or very short video and i show like a stock chart like here's how i made you know five grand and i show the stock chart with the picture of like you know my my presidential suite at whatever hotel i'm staying at and it's like this is how you get the presidential suite you make trades like this right So Instagram is fast growing. I love social media.

I love how it goes viral. I love how when you do something well or something that's very well received, it just blows up. To be fair, a lot of people want to go viral. I've only had one thing go viral, and that is my second millionaire student when he crossed a million dollars with the CNN article. Forget about going viral. I want to caution everybody like 99.999% of the stuff you do will not go viral even if you think is the best thing ever. Um, but something doesn't have to go viral to be successful. Like you can have, you know, reach, let's say 200 people. And if the 200 people are actually believing in you know, whatever you're you're teaching or selling That's still a pretty good product

And if those 200 people like the product they'll tell their friends and 200 people can turn into like 2,000 sales So you don't need like 2 million sales like people think that you do sure You just need to reach a few people and you have to be genuine That's the biggest thing like there's too many people on the internet who aren't genuine. They don't take pride in their work. That might have worked a few years ago, but now I think there's more and more genuine people like you who are passionate about what they do and they're kind of taking over

because you can sense who actually believes in what they do versus somebody who's just like, ah, I don't care. There's millions of people out there and they have that accent for some reason. ah, I don't care. There's millions of people out there, and they have that accent for some reason. And they just don't care. And they know that there's so many suckers out there. But they'll get more buyers.

And I hate that. And I hate that. And that's not the future. So I want more people to be genuine. If you have a product or you want to educate people about something that you are an expert in, I don't want people just teaching if they have no expertise. There's

too many people in the stock market and journalists. I ripped on this one guy on CNBC. He has no business background. He's writing about stocks. He's a theater major. So he delivers his speech eloquently, but he should be doing Shakespeare in the park. He shouldn't be talking stocks. So be sure that you're qualified. But if you're genuine, qualified, an expert, and it's useful to your customers, then it's a home run. Now, I want to shift into something else that I've been asking a lot of my guests lately because I like to bring on influential, successful experts on the School of Greatness.

And a lot of them range from being single to then eventually getting in relationships or being married. And I'm still a single guy. And I'd like to know what has shifted for you now that you're in a relationship. You're not married, but you've been in a relationship for about almost a year, I think. And before you were kind of living the playboy life a little bit. I won't go that far. But you had girlfriends here and there. And you were having fun. And you were making a lot of money and being successful. Has anything shifted for you now that you have a committed relationship for over a year and with a girl that you're, you know, really into that you're in love with?

Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm very fortunate. I found the love of my life and I'm now domesticated. As I told you, I have like crazy to watch Martha Stewart furnishings. Um, you know, I, I still have my independent streak every now and then, um, like where I have to just go like adventure to some crazy country. Um, but now I have a pet and you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's a new world. It's a, it's a lot to handle. Um, but you know, I'm a one woman man and I'm very happy and it's, and it's changed my life because now it's, you know, everything's just truly fulfilled.

Like my girlfriend is like, why are you always so happy? You know, like even like if I'm having a crappy day, I'm still happy because I have everything. Like I have business success. I'm very fortunate to, you know, have students who are very successful. So I'm fulfilled, not just, you know, monetarily, but philosophically. Now I have, you know, an amazing girlfriend. I have an amazing family. I have amazing friends who I have no time for.

I have, uh, you know, an amazing girlfriend. I have an amazing family. I have amazing friends who I have no time for. Um, it's, you have to set goals and I wasn't looking to find the love of my life. It was just kind of, it just happened. And I think that's like the best thing when it just happens and you, and you aren't looking, but if you have all these pieces, you know, I think everybody wants to find true love. Um, and once you have it, like you, you have to cherish it and you have to respect it because you know, I'm just so fortunate. There's no other word. I'm, I'm blessed. And you have to respect that blessing because you could throw it, I could throw it away if I didn't respect it. And I don't want to do that because it's, it's amazing. Now, how has it impacted your business success? Uh, so do you feel like it takes away sometimes or does it enhance it?

Yeah, I mean, you definitely have to balance having a little puppy and a little four-pound puppy with a girlfriend and a booming business. It takes a lot to balance everything. And sometimes the girlfriend gets left behind. Sometimes the business gets left behind. The puppy never gets left. But it's, it's not a, it's not a perfect science. It definitely has like kind of hurt my business a little bit, but so what, like I I'm having, you know, if I'm firing on like 98% instead of a hundred percent business wise, and I sacrificed a 2% for like a somewhat of a balanced life. Yeah. For a life that's worth it. That's a, that's a worthy sacrifice. You know, if you just have all business

success and no friends and no family and no love sucks, that's not a life, you know? Um, so I think you have to balance and you have to have priorities and, and obviously the, the more balanced it's amazing. You know, if, if you're alone and you have like a hundred million dollar business and you're just sitting at the top of the world, like drinking like a $10,000 bottle of wine, are you happy? No. So it's made me happy. But you also have to manage time. And I haven't done that great of a job.

I'm still getting used to balancing everything. As I told you, I gained a little weight or a lot of weight. I'm like the human jonah hill um you know i try still to be funny but you know now i'm looking for academy award winning films so i don't know i could probably do a better job but you have to keep things in perspective of course so what's the long-term goal for you like how long can you be in the penny stock trading world? Is it ever going to get tiring or boring?

Are you ever going to need some type of new creative outlet? Where do you see yourself? I mean, I have two millionaires created so far. A few other students who are getting close to a million. I want to create as many millionaires as possible. That's what seems to drive the most business success because everyone's like, oh my God, he's actually doing it. Before the question was like, can he actually create a millionaire? All I see is him being rich and nobody else.

Now they see the students. So that's the overarching theme behind everything. How to create more millionaires, you know, is it more DVDs? Is it more books? Is it new, you know, interactive tools using 3D technology? I don't know. Um, I, I want to keep teaching because penny stocks are so unloved and so misunderstood. Uh, the, the Wolf of Wall Street has brought in a lot of new people, but they just think,

Oh, everything in penny stocks are a scam. You're a scam. Everyone's a scam. And that's not true. Like if you look at the details, the Wolf of Wall Street actually took place in 1994 before the mark, uh, internet even was like really popular. So no one could do any internet research back then. That's the difference between now and then. I think the internet is going to continue changing everything, especially education wise and finance wise. Transparency is becoming a big thing in the

stock market and penny stocks. So, you know, people who are full of crap will eventually get exposed, I think, on the internet. So I look forward to helping expose that and, you know, just showing that this is all real. I don't think that you can ever have too much education, especially in a very misunderstood industry. I kind of look at myself maybe a little too egotistically, like Kinsey, who really revolutionized uh the education of of sex you know and I'm doing that for penny stocks it's not nearly as important or controversial but still it exists like there's the education world in finance is is literally in like the dark ages um so I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and you know living life and

trying to keep balance on your last day what do you want people to say about you? Um, I don't want there to be a last day. I really want to, uh, have human cloning become legalized. I know it's not legal, but if any of you guys out there are, are, uh, experts, I feel like there's gotta be some human cloning going on in South America or something. Um, I would love to clone myself and really just continue. There's so much work to be done, so much. I'm really just scratching the tip. And it's frustrating because there's a lot of stuff that I want to do.

There's a lot more rules that I want to teach. There's a lot more technologies and paths that I want to try to do that education. So I don't want there to be a last day. Um, you know, I, I don't even know when my last day will come if the human cloning thing or freezing my brain doesn't work out. Um, but if hypothetically, if it does come, like I'll probably just be in the middle of like doing like a video lesson or working cause it never stops. Like, you know, I really want more experts out there to share their expertise and not be so selfish, especially in finance.

You know, you have all these rich hedge fund managers and rich traders and they don't share anything and they're just do it every year. They keep it to themselves. Yeah, and I hate that and I hate that and nothing changes. And so the stock market is full of like people who just give stock tips and then they go with their gut

and it's like gambling and we should evolve past that. And I know it's not just for the stock market, full of people who just give stock tips, and then they go with their gut, and it's like gambling. And we should evolve past that. And I know it's not just for the stock market. It's every industry. If more experts came forward and shared what they've learned, the world would be so much better. There wouldn't be poverty, probably. People would be able to learn how to do things to take care of themselves.

I mean, there's still going to be lazy people and people who won't do what they should to follow rules. But at least the information should be out there more. And the people who educate right now are more of those who can't do and they teach, you know, that's a saying and that's sad. So I'll be fighting for education until the day I die. And what do you want people to say about you when you die then? I don't care. You know, I really, you know, it's, I can't control what people do. All I can do is what I can control is how hard I work and the type of products that I put out and how it's received. And I'm going to,

you know, keep obviously listening to my customers and seeing what they, you know, want and how to refine better. But, you know, after I'm, after I'm gone, I can't make any new products. So I could care less. I'm working till the day I die, baby. There you go. So final question that I ask everyone, which is what is your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is, uh, you know, achieving your goals and living a fun and great life and helping others. Tim Sykes. I appreciate you for coming on my man. Where can we find you online where can we connect with you and watch all of your extravagant travels on Instagram where can't you find me um no if you go to timothysykes.com uh or instagram.com slash timothysykes or twitter.com

slash timothysykes or youtube.com slash timothysykes.com. You know, just Google me. You'll see a bunch of stuff, and you'll see my students, and you'll see some of the bad stuff that people write about me because they're offended. But I'm just going to keep teaching because I know that it's good, and I see the success that it creates. I love it. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. and I hope you guys enjoyed this interview if you did please do me a favor and share this with your friends go ahead and email a friend if you think they might be inspired by Tim's message, go ahead and share it on Twitter or on Facebook. You get all the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 69. If you want to learn more about what Tim talked about in this episode, there'll be some videos on there, some images, some links, all that good stuff to his website as well. So go check out lewishouse.com slash 69 for the show notes here. Make sure to subscribe over on iTunes. Leave a review on iTunes if you like this interview.

Subscribe on Stitcher and SoundCloud. And thank you guys so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. I said, there's more to life than rush. Not gonna leave this place without us. Drop the game, it's not enough. I said, there's more to life than rush. Outro Music