086: Creating Millionaires from Pennies (with stock trader Timothy Sykes of Profit.ly)

Background on Timothy Sykes of Profitly:

Timothy Sykes is a day trader by day & co-founder of Profit.ly by night. After an elbow injury eliminated his aspirations as a pro tennis player, Tim set his sights on the stock market. In high school, he used the $12,415 he’d saved from his bar mitzvah money to invest on the stock market. Before he graduated, he’d turned that $12K into $125K. Today, he’s earned close to $5 million in profits, all from trading.

Tim started a hedge fund in college that became the #1 Barclay short-bias fund for three years. He earned a spot on Trader Monthly’s “Top 30 Under 30” list in 2006, and was recognized by President Obama for his contributions. When his hedge fund took a big hit, he decided long-term investing wasn’t for him. He published the acclaimed book “American Hedge Fund” and decided to start talking about finance in his patented no-holds-barred style.

His experience paved the way for his appearance in five of the six first-season episodes of the hit reality show “Wall Street Warriors,” which are now streaming on Hulu. Then Tim returned to his roots, which are pennystocking and day trading. He decided to start teaching others the method behind his particular degree of monetary mastery, which allowed him to help others build great wealth. In fact, some of his students have surpassed his own trades. He now has more than 3,000 students all over the world and has over four dozen students earning six figures per year.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[2:48] Timothy’s parents think that he will lose the $12,000 bar mitzvah gift money he received from them, which will serve as a lesson for him. However, his money grew up to $2 million through trading stocks.
[7:19] Being a millionaire changes your perspective to a lot of things. This is the reason why Timothy turned to philosophy as his therapy in order to deal with the changes in his life.
[10:15] Donating a million dollars to build a school in Laos was the turning point in Timothy’s life. According to him, this gave meaning to his life.
[14:39] His day to day schedule is always based on the stock market. He can be anywhere in the world, but his activities would always be based on the US stock market.
[17:35] In 1999, Timothy started investing in penny stocks because these stocks are constantly moving.
[22:00] At this stage, he is not taking too much risk when it comes to trading. Timothy says that he has a winning percentage of about 70 percent.
[23:40] His educational company has over 40 employees. His main role is teaching and trading. Timothy is also busy making blog posts and video lessons.
[29:35] Timothy is always trying to control is addiction in trading. For him, teaching and working on the content of his educational company is helping him with his trading addiction.
[32:34] According to Timothy, almost all the trading gurus in the internet are just full of lies.
[35:23] “If you create good work, whether it’s a book, or a dvd, or a website, or a video, or whatever, THAT is your new business card.”
[37:27] His first millionaire student initially wrote a blog post describing Timothy as full of bullshit.
[40:13] Timothy emphasizes on the importance of adapting to what works for you and trying out different strategies that are most suitable for you.
[41:10] Talking about what Timothy is passionate about and the things he loves the most, keeps him energetic and lively. Focusing on what you love gives you a lot of energy.
[44:41] Earning a million dollars takes time. Timothy says that it is much better to earn your millions the right way after several years because it is much more fulfilling.
[47:52] Timothy describes entrepreneurship as the “absolute best” with lots of highs and lows, success and failures, and twists and turns. He also focuses on the journey and the process that goes along with being an entrepreneur.

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Reminiscences of a stock operator by Edwin Lefèvre & Roger Lowenstein, Losing my virginity and bold by Richard Branson.
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Tendskin for razor burn
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Zendesk as i get 1,000+ messages/day asking me financial questions, this allows me to organize them.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Too busy, not enough time for everyone, need to clone myself, cloning banned by the UN though 🙁

Key Point from the Interview:

“When you’re getting into something, it’s a journey, and it’s not just about how much money you make, it’s not where you end up, it’s the whole process, it’s the ups and the downs, it’s the wins, it’s the mistakes, it’s the successes, it’s the failures, and it’s life and it’s beautiful. That’s why I love entrepreneurship, this is life on crack.”