Discover the dynamic fusion of fitness and entrepreneurship as we delve into the compelling story of Tay Sweat.
In this captivating episode, join us as Tay, a prominent figure in the fitness and entrepreneurial space, shares his journey from a fitness enthusiast to a successful entrepreneur and day trader for stocks. As the founder of Secure The Bag, Tay not only transforms bodies but also navigates the intricate world of stock trading. Gain insights into the unique balance he strikes between fitness and day trading, and uncover the keys to his success in both realms.
Don't miss this engaging conversation that explores the synergy between physical well-being and financial acumen with Tay Sweat.
Discover the dynamic fusion of fitness and entrepreneurship as we delve into the compelling story of Tay Sweat.
In this captivating episode, join us as Tay, a prominent figure in the fitness and entrepreneurial space, shares his journey from a fitness enthusiast to a successful entrepreneur and day trader for stocks. As the founder of Secure The Bag, Tay not only transforms bodies but also navigates the intricate world of stock trading. Gain insights into the unique balance he strikes between fitness and day trading, and uncover the keys to his success in both realms.
Don't miss this engaging conversation that explores the synergy between physical well-being and financial acumen with Tay Sweat.
So what is like, what are the goals and kind of the benchmarks that you're looking for to motivate somebody that's not a gym guy or not somebody that likes working out, to hang on and see those results?
Speaker 2:I'd actually say finding out that it needs to be a really deep why. What is your why? Why are you doing this? If you're doing it because you want a six pack of abs so you look good on the beach, it's not a good enough why? And at the moment when pizza's in front of you or when it's a hard day and you don't feel like going to the gym, that's going to outdo your why. Because abs on the beach, whatever, this is a hard day, I'm not going to the gym. So it's not a deep enough why. If we did not identify a deep enough why they almost always failed?
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Calvis. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Millionaire Show. We're here with Tay Sweat coming from Puerto Rico. How you doing, tay Doing? Well, my man, how are you? We're good, we're good, just over here freezing our butts off and thinking about how do we get to Puerto Rico too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Come on down, man. It's nice and warm.
Speaker 3:Which part of Puerto Rico are you in? Dorado, okay.
Speaker 1:Nice Dorado Beach, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Is that where Jay Paul has a house?
Speaker 2:Yes, so Jay Paul's here and a bunch of other people. So yeah, it's a lot of people here.
Speaker 1:Nice, it's a lot of crypto people down there, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Crypto stocks, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. So give us like an intro. Where did you originate from? How did you get into stocks? Did you go to school for this kind of thing? Or is this something that kind of came out of the blue?
Speaker 2:Actually it came out of the blue man I did not see. Let's say, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you told me I'd be trading stocks. I definitely can see it. I call you a liar, honestly. I started as a personal trainer back in 2008. 2008 crash I lost my job. I was working a warehouse job, making decent money for a younger guy, but of course, everybody pretty much got hit by this crash. 2008 crash I lost my job, lost my house that I had Lost my car, literally went back to square one.
Speaker 2:And number one thing I kept telling myself was I need to be in the position to control my own income. So, no matter what happens, it's up to me. And I just did a bunch of research on entrepreneurs, business owners, millionaires. What do they do? And of course, I came by. I think everybody has rid, at least the people who are at the next level rich dad, poor dad. I think everybody has read the book or heard of it, and so, yeah, man, I come by the book, I read it and it just unlocks pretty much everything in my head. And so, yeah, I start getting into personal training, nutrition. And the reason why is because, maybe four years before this prior, I was maybe 320 pounds and I ended up losing 100 and maybe 30. So I'm thinking, hey, if I can do it for myself, I'm sure there's a bunch of people out there that need the same love and care. Let me see if I can help those people. And that's pretty much how I got into personal training and nutrition.
Speaker 3:That's pretty impressive losing all that weight. What motivated you to lose it? Because you know there's people out there who maybe want to do it. But what gave you that motivation to continue doing it when you don't see results, when you're working out for months, sometimes years?
Speaker 2:Absolutely man, I think for me I'm pretty common in my thinking, very simple or logical, I guess. What most people say but my common sense is very common is what I usually tell people. And so I'm watching people around me who look like me. They're overweight, like me, they have. You know, I had diabetes, type two diabetes. I'm looking at the people who have the same things, but maybe five, 10 years older, and I'm noticing they're dying. They're, you know, losing limbs or whatever it may be. I didn't want to go there. So I'm thinking okay, they are 10 years ahead of where you're going. Do you want that result? And I didn't.
Speaker 2:At that point it became pretty much life or death. So I couldn't. I couldn't actually eat the pizza because it meant getting closer to death. I couldn't eat the cookies. I couldn't keep doing that because I felt that it would get me closer to dying. So that's how I was able to just stick with it. Keep going. You know, carry my look. I still still do the same thing. I keep my water with me. And you know, honestly, man, that was the number one thing is just not wanting to go down the same path. I saw other people going down.
Speaker 1:Nice. So did you have like goals and milestones when you're trying to lose all that weight? Because I know a lot of people that are overweight and they're. You know, I feel like so I'm a. I was actually a PE teacher. I was a gym teacher for 10 years of my life before I, before I, went full time in my businesses and you know, you see the same people that if, if you're a guy that works out, you're a guy that works out, you go to the gym every day. It's just like part of your routine. But if you're like 30, 40 years old and that's not part of your routine, it's really hard to make it part of your routine because you don't like it. Obviously, if you liked it, you'd do it right. So what is like, what are the goals and kind of the benchmarks that you're looking for to motivate somebody that's not a gym guy or not? You know somebody that likes working out to get those, just to hang on and see those results.
Speaker 2:That's a good question, man. I'd actually say finding out that it needs to be a really deep why. What is your why? Why are you doing this? If you're doing it because you want a six pack of abs so you can look good on the beach, it's not. It's not a good enough why? And at the moment when pizza's in front of you or when it's a hard day and you don't feel like going to the gym, that's going to outdo your why. Because abs on a beach, whatever, this is a hard day, I'm not going to the gym. So it's not a deep enough why.
Speaker 2:And what I used to see from a lot of my clients was if we did not identify a deep enough why, they almost always failed. It can't be vanity reasons, from what I've noticed. So some of the whys that I saw got the best results were, of course, not wanting to die or extending your life. At least A few other things were. You know, people want to be around and healthy for their kids or grandkids, so that's a deep enough why to? When you know, when things get tough or you get challenged with, you know something you shouldn't be doing, your why is such a strong why that nothing can reach that level of why you should stick to it, so for me it's always been fine. The big why? Why do you want this goal? And it usually is a help in the back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And are you somebody that likes to write down your goals and make them visible for yourself? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's funny. You say that I have my pad right next to me. Every day, probably for the last 14 years, I've written down my goals. I usually do about five different goals and I try to write them down every day and as I look back, they all pretty much came true. So I think it's a way to manifest what's in your head and bring it to reality. So yeah, that's exactly what I do.
Speaker 1:Nice. So this is a question. So I was, like I said, a public school teacher for 10 years and in that there's a lot of people that are overweight, that don't care about their health as much, or maybe they give up on their health a little bit because they have kids. They get busy this and that. When I got into full-time entrepreneurship and I started meeting with investors and people that were highly successful, I felt like I found less and less people that were overweight, that more of these people that actually had less time in their day, arguably, than somebody that works just a regular nine to five, but they're somehow the ones that are in tip-top shape, and there hasn't been a lot of these super high achieving entrepreneurs that I've met that have been really overweight. Do you see a correlation with that as well?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's funny you say that because one of the biggest things that I've heard, probably last 10 years, is how you do anything is how you do everything. And I really believe that. And the reason I think we see this correlation is because if you're disciplined enough to show up, do the work, stay on the course to financially get to a certain level of the next level, then usually that same discipline, hard work and stay in the course, it spills over into health.
Speaker 2:And I think also what we see in that is we realize that as entrepreneurs, millionaires, whatever you consider yourself, you notice a correlation between your health and your performance. So if I need to perform better and I'm noticing that I'm getting sick often, I'm sluggish, I'm tired, I'm lethargic, whatever it may be, and I can't perform, which means I can't make as much money, then you start to make that shift. So that's a why, a lot of people's big whys I need to be able to perform. So I need to be able to perform. So, hey, maybe I should clean up my diet, I should sleep a little bit more, I should go to the gym a little bit more often, because that is going to translate to more dollars and that for me has always been that correlation that I see with a lot of my entrepreneur friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. What do you think, Nick?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with that as well. It's exercise is important. I feel like there was a time where you're just, you know, you're in the grit, you're in a day to day, growing and building your business. Then you get to a point to where you have a little bit more freedom, a little bit more flexibility and you want to focus more on your health. At that point, and I feel like that's, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs do. Maybe at the early stages they're just grinding, grinding, grinding, not really paying a lot of attention to it. And they get to a point to where, like, wow, time is my biggest factor now and that's my most valuable asset. So how can I extend my time? And that's by, you know, eating right, getting healthy and getting in good shape. That way you can live a longer and better life, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So so, tay, what when you're in stock investing, are you focusing on a certain amount of money, or are you focusing on a certain sector and was there like one trade that kind of changed your life, or one like group of trades that changed your life and and set you, you know, apart and gave you, you know, some sort of cushion to keep building on? Or have you been just grinding away? You know, at a reasonable rate, at what people get. What do they get? Eight to 10% a year, you know. Naturally, you know what's what's kind of your strategy and what's been your experience with that.
Speaker 3:And just before we get to that, can you tell us, like, how does you even like, stumble upon? You know, how'd you get into stocks? Was it somebody that you looked up to and you just decided, hey, I want to get involved with that? And then how was the transition from whatever you were doing prior to that to you doing that full time? What did that look like as well?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. As I went through the personal training journey, I get really, really good. I kind of cap out at maybe $80,000 a year as a trainer, which I think most high end trainers get to about 80 to 100k a year, and they, you know, they pretty much get tapped out unless they innovate. So I kind of, you know, was one of the first trainers to go into the online space and create, you know, dive plans, workouts for my own line for more online client base, and so I was able to go from 80,000 a year to so I started a membership and I had 300 clients, you know, at the highest, at my peak, I had 300 clients paying about 330 books a month, and I was able to keep that going for a pretty good amount of time. So I started making seven figures a year.
Speaker 2:However, I was pretty smart with my money. I didn't, you know, increase my lifestyle. I didn't go by a Lamborghini. I didn't do any of that yet, and I'm still driving my Camry. I'm still, you know, standing in the same apartment, but I have all this money left, though. So I'm thinking to myself hey, what do people with A lot of disposable income tend to do? They invest real estate, stock market or some type of other investment oil, you know, whatever it may be. So I'm asking myself. So actually, I wrote a goal down saying hey, you know I need to enter the stock market, but I want someone who's really good you know to, you know teach me. And so I'm writing down you know, I am a stock investor and I am taught by the best. That was one of my goals, Well, one of my affirmations.
Speaker 2:And one day I get a call from a really good client and now actually a really good friend of mine Manny is what we call him and Manny goes hey, there's this guy who's so? Manny's a surgeon and Manny has a patient that he worked with. And he goes hey, I have a high end patient that I worked with and he wants more of a personal training, you know, approach to healing after his surgery. Go work with him. So I go work with him and Manny tells me don't charge him anything though. Huh, okay. So I go in. I see who this guy is. His name is Charlie. Charlie tells me hey, if you can help me and you can help me heal, I'll give you $5 million. I'm thinking, wait a minute, who does that? And how much money do you have to be able to just throw that much money around? So I asked a few questions and I come to realize that Charlie is a billionaire. Charlie is a billionaire and he's a private equity investor.
Speaker 2:So I decided to continue to work with Charlie, no cost, but in exchange I want him to teach me the market, teach me about equities, teach me about balance sheets, income statements, pes and things like that, and maybe I could take the money that I already have and I can grow it. So Charlie takes me up on that offer. He teaches me a few things, and I took it from there and basically it was almost. It reminds me of the Mr Miyagi wax on, wax off type of thing, where it's like he's given me certain tasks to do that doesn't seem to have anything to do with stocks, but they, but it did, it ended up coming together, and so that's what led me to this space, and as I took what he taught me and what I was learning, just from just sheer experience and what we call backtesting. So, going and looking back into history, I realized that one of the best things to do if you're going to be in the stock market is to trade, especially if you want to trade in and out of the market, to trade something with a lot of liquidity, which is what I do, and of course, that's going to be any type of index S&P 500, nasdaq, iwm is something the Russell we trade that as well.
Speaker 2:And from there I just started to take off and I made a few single invest, investing big pops. But the biggest lesson that I've learned, believe it or not, was a loss that I took. I took a really big loss. This was back in maybe 21. I started to short Google. I saw the market needed to fall and I went to short Google why would I do that? And I put a really big position size on and this was an option trade. So, of course, with options for anybody who doesn't know, options expire, so you have an expiration date that you have to sit and say, hey, this stock needs to go to this point by expiration date. Well, I didn't have enough time on the option and I ended up losing almost $1.2 million. Wow, and that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and this loss was such a monumental time in my trading career, though, because the big losses from my experience show or expose where you're going wrong, if you actually take time to go over. So I went over the trade. I decided to say, hey, I'm gonna just look at this Google trade and see what I did wrong, and from there it allowed me to see life so much clearer and things got so much better. Of course, I ended up making the money back, but I was grateful for the loss regardless, because it definitely helped take me to where I needed to be.
Speaker 3:So do you do day trading or is it kind of like mainly options, where you don't have to sit there and watch it all day long, for example?
Speaker 2:Me personally, I no longer day trade because the risk to reward is horrible. If you're good you may be able to pull one, two I don't know three. So for every dollar you put in you may be able to make $3 on day trading. But with swing trading I have certain plays that for every dollar I put in I can make I don't know 50?. So I like the risk to reward of swing trading. Now I do. I run a Discord where some people still wanna day trade, so I day trade for them and I go live and I do live trading to where I show my charts and I say, hey, this is what. Looks like it's gonna go up, looks like we should buy here and then it should go up here. We'll take our 10, 20% and we'll get out of there. But me personally, I don't day trade because the risk to reward is not as good as swing trading.
Speaker 3:And is it also just too time consuming as well?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I feel, with swing trading, I have a fresh baby boy, 17 months, and I just wanna hang out with him. I wanna hang out, hang out with my wife. We travel, we live here in Puerto Rico once again, so we like to go out and just have fun. And so with swing trading, I don't have to watch charts, I don't have to really be here on the screen. I can place a trade, give it some time and find out how long I need, and maybe I check it once a week, twice a week, and I just enjoy life and wait for the money to come piling in. So, yeah, I like it much better than day trading, because it does require you watching the screen for hours sometimes.
Speaker 1:Right. So what was, you said, your biggest loss? What was your biggest pop?
Speaker 2:My biggest pop over I say it took about four to six months was Bitcoin, bitcoin. I was in Bitcoin at. This was back in maybe late 20, maybe mid 2020. So I got into Bitcoin when it fell down to about 3300 and I'm thinking, oh, this is a great opportunity. So I started accumulating Bitcoin at 3300 and then I bought something at 5800 and I think it got up to 80 something, so maybe like 8600, I bought more there and I bought more than 11,000 and I stopped. I said, okay, that's it, and I just held it and I think the highest I took it to was about 56, 57,000 and I started to take off the position, start unloading and on the other side of it, I shorted Bitcoin at 60K. So I started shorting Bitcoin at 60K. I got hit a little bit because it went up to 68,000, but it's fine, that's how I trade and I took it down back to 20K. So that was all in all. It was about a $2.8 million profit. So nice, I was happy with that.
Speaker 1:That's a good one, that's a good one. So Nick and I are real estate investors. That's what we do here. Nick owns a big portfolio of rentals. I have a couple of businesses based around buying and selling real estate. Are you just doing stocks? Are you investing in real estate at all or just sticking with the markets?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely so. I'm actually this year I've started getting a little more active with real estate. So I've closed seeing the last four months because three deals over the last four months, so I'm pretty happy about that. We bought this beachfront property of beachfront condo here in Puerto Rico, used it as pretty much a you know rental. It does really well. So you know, people come down, they want to be on the beach. So we say, hey, let's get a property there. And then I have two more that I'm looking at locking in appearing the next maybe three months, gonna be a multi-family. I'm starting small, so you know, five units and then I want to maybe scale up to maybe 20 to 40 units.
Speaker 3:And are they the 30 that you have? Are they all in Puerto Rico?
Speaker 2:So to Puerto Rico. One in Tennessee, actually okay, tennessee so Nashville is a very booming market. That's actually my hometown, so I'm from Nashville, tennessee, and so definitely looking to get more active in Nashville just because it's such a great opportunity there. It's amazing as far as the state market goes, nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so basically my business is I service out of state and a country investors here in Baltimore Because the the margins are good, the the you know kind of buried, entry is low. You can still buy houses for a hundred K, put 50 into them and kind of have a cash flowing rental. Somebody goes to Hopkins, you know, do a lot of college stuff and it's it's a good market here too. So definitely we should, we should chat after the show, absolutely absolutely, man.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm interested, definitely $100,000.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, exactly so. Nick has 90 of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 90 93 right now and they're all in Throughout Baltimore City, baltimore County and, like Ryan said, like the price point in Baltimore, I I primarily, primarily do the burn method. You know, buy a property needs a lot of work and just renovate it, force that appreciation and and refinance it. And I can do that, like you can do that all day long in certain areas in Baltimore City for, and you can be All in for one hundred fifty thousand. I like to buy properties for like 75, maybe put 50 into it, 45, 40, and just you know that property will appraise for like 180 and you can just you know, cash Refinance it right in term at 75%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just, I just bought one. We bought one on this block and then the agent actually contacted me from a listing up the block on the same road. We ended up buying it for 115 and put 18 thousand dollars into it. Barely needed anything. They just couldn't get to the finish line with their contractors. Wow, they had squatters that moved in briefly. We ended up getting them out, blah, blah, blah. Whatever I just so I was in it for like One was like 135 or whatever. I just got it appraised, but today was a 242.
Speaker 1:It's a home run. Yeah. So I'm really fine pull out 175. I'm still cash flowing like 500 bucks a month and I'm like net positive, you know, on the deal. So yeah, the numbers, the numbers are good, the numbers are good. So what is your daily routine look like? Like? As somebody that's that's trading? You're obviously caring about your health. You have some sort of, you know, exercise routine. Now you have a child, the wife. What's your daily routine like?
Speaker 2:So I usually try to get up before everybody starts pulling at me. That's the best time to get things done. So I'd say maybe 5 am Sometimes, maybe a little bit earlier, I'll wake up. I try to get either some walking in or a run. I have a trend treadmill at the house To actually have two treadmills one is for running and things like that, and then I have one that I'm standing here at my desk. So I have a treadmill desk so I run in the morning, maybe do push up something like that just to get me, you know, up and activate it.
Speaker 2:And when it's time to work and get on the pewter, answer emails, of course, go live and day trade with my discord community.
Speaker 2:I'm walking on this treadmill the whole time and so I feel walking is probably one of the best things you can do, just as a human, to for your health.
Speaker 2:So as far as the workout goes, that first part of the morning to wake me up and walking while I work is probably my go-to, because I can burn 800 to maybe even 2000 calories. Has been on how long I walk Every day, just walking, so that's definitely a big thing in my routine After I usually try to get all my work done earlier in the morning and I reserve evenings for a podcasting, meetings, things like that. So if I can, you know, wrap everything up Maybe by noon, one o'clock, I'm done day trading. By then I can usually eat my first meal. So I do a little bit of intermittent fasting, eat my first meal maybe around 1 to pm, hang out with my family you know just pretty much enjoy life until maybe it's time to do podcast or any any meetings at you know 5-6 pm. So essentially that's my routine and then I try to get in bed by you know 9 to 10 o'clock.
Speaker 3:Is it every day that you jump on the discord to do the day trades with your the students?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so pretty much any. Anytime the market is open, I'm gonna get on live. We're gonna go over charts when explain what's going on, why it's going on, where the market should be going and how we can, you know, make some money as it goes there. So pretty much is the market is open, I'm live. So yeah, that's exactly how it goes and the whole time the markets open. You know enough the whole time. So we usually trade the morning session.
Speaker 2:So you have a decision in the market, right? So you have morning session before noon and then Market slows down at lunchtime. Of course everybody goes out to lunch, you know market slows down. So at lunch we get off, because the sweet spot for trading usually is the morning session. So you usually do about two, two and a half hours and then we call it quits for the day.
Speaker 3:So the, the guy that you connected with that you helped During his recovery process so he taught you day trading and the like the options trading. Is that like specific to what he taught you?
Speaker 2:So actually he, he is more so a you know shares equities type of guy, so he just goes in, keeps it very simple. I want a piece of ownership of this company and as the company does better, I Do, better I make money. I Took what he taught me and I started adding leverage. So I would say you know the options and, of course, you know trade futures. That came later as I got better with. You know charts and you know knowing the direction of the market. So yeah, Nice.
Speaker 1:So your prediction, like the market now, you think we're moving in a green direction, in a positive direction, or is this like that? What do they call it? I'm not big into stocks, but I know they said that false. You know, false something you know, because we see all the green right now.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I think is going on. So I think we're going to get maybe a few more points up. And I'm looking at, I'm thinking about the S&P 500. Right now S&P 500 may move up a few more points. I'd say maybe in the next quarter, I'd say by the end of Q1, I would expect us to pull, not really crash, but I expect a healthy pull back, a few hundred points on the S&P 500. That could create a really good buying opportunity. So I'd be slowly, I do what's called scaling, accumulating or scaling in, where you buy a fraction at a time. So instead of if I have $10,000, instead of putting it all in at one position, I put in 2000. And then, if it falls some more, put in another 2000. And so I accumulate as it falls. So I think we're going to get a pretty good buying opportunity and after that I do see us going much higher over the next maybe two years.
Speaker 1:I've been buying a lot of SQQ, the short on the yeah, so I'm collecting a bunch of that. I got like five leaps I only do leaps, I can't handle the short term options but I got five option contracts on that and then I got like 1500 shares that I just like holding and waiting to see what happens. I'm not as positive on the market. I don't think in the next year, over the next year, I think we'll see some drops and I don't know anything about the stock market, so I'm just guessing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't, but I remember when everything tanked, when COVID happened, and that's when I started like engaging in the stock market and I and anybody a lot of people did didn't know anything like myself, and a lot of people made a lot of money and a lot of people lost a lot of money too, because I was one of those that lost quite a bit of money. Everything kept going up and up and up and I was like, all right, I'm just going to keep holding and then eventually I'm like man. That happened with crypto as well, obviously.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I think you were spot on with the 2020. And I think we're going to see something similar to that this year, something that I'll give you guys that I think can help you big time. There's something called a presidential cycle, and basically what this tells us is that, of course, it's time for reelection. Hey, I need a strong, beautiful economy so I can get back in office, right.
Speaker 2:So what what we tend to see is, on the election year, you go see a strong market because that gives better. You know presidents to say, hey, put me back in the seat, put me back in office, and not even the president itself, but just the party. So if Democrats are doing well for the market, they say, hey, put Democrats back in. So we're going to see almost. I personally think we're going to see something like 2020 where it crashes, freaks everybody out, nobody wants to buy it because, of course, people don't buy when the market crashes, and then I think we'll get that run, just like you did in 2020. Just to justify the presidential cycle, and I think, yeah, once, once we get the elections and everything, I think, right after that, that's when the big fall really comes. So, yeah, that's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 3:I'm just looking forward to the lower interest rates, yeah that's what's killing us right now is the.
Speaker 1:The interest rates kill the cash flow. So the cash buyers, anybody that has cash right now, is great. They're killing it in the real estate market. But anybody that has to take leverage is. It's just crushing. But you've got to got to keep buying and know that eventually you know eventually it's going to come to. Scott, what goes up has to come down. That's how I think about, even if it's wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's how I think about it. So so, on Instagram, you have a buck ton of followers. I got over a million followers. How did you get? How'd you get all those followers? You know, was it just engaging in the stocks? Was it the personal training first? Like, how did you get all those followers?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it actually started with the personal training first. I'd say this is back in the time, because I've been on Instagram or social media period for about almost 14 years and this is back in the early days of Instagram. The follow for follow I don't know if you remember that and on Instagram they had this thing is a app called crowdfire, and at the beginning of crowdfire, before Instagram caught on to it, you could follow, mass follow five to, I think it's, 5000 people. Max is what you could follow and those people would follow you back and then you could mass unfollow them, and that was one way that I started doing it and then from there they shut, crowdfired out. I think I got up to maybe 80,000 followers just doing that over maybe a year. And of course, if you give, you know I had to give really good values. You have to give value. So I'm giving good value, so the people stay and they engage.
Speaker 2:But after Instagram shut crowdfire down, then that's when the early release of Instagram ads, facebook ads, started to come in, and so of course, I jumped on the boat for that just to kind of see how it worked, and I spent a lot of money over time on just running ads and so over time, you know you spend, you know, six figures a year running ads. You know those followers start to collect over time. So I'd say, yeah, over a 10 year period I was able to collect, you know, a few hundred thousand people a year. And then I'd say, once I got to about 400,000, the growth stopped. It was very, very tough to grow.
Speaker 2:And then there was this popular thing at the time where you could get featured on a celebrity's page. So Kim Kardashian was doing a lot of it and I decided, hey, this looks like it works, so I started doing that as well. And Kim Kardashian decides she said, hey, I'm going to give, do a giveaway, go follow all of these people and one person will win this right. So I did that for a while just to try it out. Yeah, I got, you know, maybe a couple more hundred thousand followers and then from there it just it was just a hard grind just trying to get the last maybe two 300,000, which just came from ads. And once again, even to this day, I still run ads. So you know the shortcuts, they work, but they weren't long lasting. So, honestly, for anybody who's trying to get more followers, just post content, maybe run some ads. That's pretty much the best way to do with this. Pretty much worked the whole time.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, the following, like the whole social media thing, getting the following is really, really tough because our audio listeners we have a lot of audio listeners and trying to get them now, because we started later doing video getting them to convert over to video is really really tough. And yeah, absolutely We've been. You know, we've been posting the content pretty religiously and it's just the conversion is super, super tough from audio to, because podcasts especially are mostly, I feel, like, taken in audio, you know, but the money is in the video. So, especially now, you know everything's video, video, video. You can't do anything with just audio anymore. So that's what. That's where we've been. We've been like, just trying to get people to watch the videos is tough, absolutely. We appreciate anybody that's watching right now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, man. I think honestly. For me, what I've seen, unfortunately, work is it's coming, or I'd say it's already been a money game. It's a big money game. The reason why I say this is because they have what's called a view campaigns. So, basically, if you're on YouTube, for example, when you want more engagement as far as views, you can run a views campaign on YouTube and basically you just spend money, you know, just spend more money, of course, and that allows you to reach a larger audience. And, of course, if you, you know you have to have so much stuff, right, you have to have the first, you know, three seconds to catch people's attention and then you have something to make them stay. But if you can do it, you know, right, get a good recipe and run, you know, put a few thousand books, depending on how high or how fast you want to grow, a few thousand books a day or a few thousand books a week behind view campaigns. That tends to be like the sweet spot for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just throw money at it, just like everything else.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Just more money. Everything just costs money. That's it, so, tay. Just one more question from me Do you have goals for this year of like? How do you set your goals for trading? You're trying to make a percentage, or you're trying to make an amount, and or is it just like overall in your businesses? How do you kind of quantify? As an entrepreneur too, like you know, coming from one where you have multiple businesses, it's like you kind of don't really ever know exactly how much you're making. Do you have like kind of a goal in mind?
Speaker 2:Absolutely man. So a lot of my goal is around buying more doors, so definitely have to continue this conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. For me, especially knowing that we're in a high interest rate environment, it's accumulated as much money as possible and be one of the cash buyers. So for me is quantifying the money or quantifying the doors first, which then helps me to quantify how much I need to make. So for me, my goal leaving this year should be I want 100 doors. That's the first, though If I can reach 100 doors I'd feel you know good about it. I want to catch up to my man. 90, was it 93? 93.?
Speaker 3:I need to get up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's had five years to do it. Though he's had five years yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's basically one of the metrics that I'm using If I can get 93 doors. You know, I feel like a man, you know. But, honestly, as I continue with my trading journey, ultimately is I want to do more as far as percentage wise. I want to do more on my performance with making more and keeping more, because with trading is very up and down, you can win a lot and then you can lose a lot of it if you're not careful. So risk management is a huge thing for me over the last maybe three years, since I took that big you know $1.2 million loss. So risk management, making more money but keeping more of what I make, so getting it out of the stock market and pushing it over to real estate is a big deal Nice.
Speaker 1:That's smart, nice. Well, you got anything else, nick. I appreciate that. I learned a lot about the. Definitely about the market. We're going to have to continue this conversation a bit off there, yeah.
Speaker 3:I have one more question as well. So the program you have for the students, do you have a go for that? Like, do you have a number of people that you want to teach what you're doing?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. For me personally, my goal is so right now, we have about, I say about, 300 people who show up live every day, you know, paying members and essentially, if I could get that to 10X, I want a 10X. And the reason why I say 10X is because I've always had a goal to get 3,000 loyal investors on my team. And reason wise, because if I get 3,000 people who show up consistently, learn how to trade, learn how to, you know, do things right, bigger thinking, we could start some type of crowdfunding or some type of, you know, funding group where we have 3,000 members who could put in, I don't know, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 each, and now we can go buy more doors. So, yeah, 3,000 is our goal.
Speaker 3:So last question for me I think it's my last question, so you mentioned affirmations earlier. Did you go to any type of like events or meetups, that kind of like put you in that mindset at an earlier stage in your? You know your career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I try to get around like minds as often as possible. So I'd say the last one I went to was an entrepreneurship mastermind. This was in Mexico, I believe that was the one in Mexico. So, but yeah, I try to get around, you know, like mind CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, because honestly, and I'm sure you guys know this, when you are killing it 93 doors or whatnot, it's hard to talk to. You know, quote, unquote normal people because their thinking is different. You're thinking about getting as much money as possible so you can go buy more doors. They're thinking about getting as much money as possible so they can go buy some material thing, Right? So you see often this disconnect with normal. You know America and the entrepreneur slash investor, so you're getting around more.
Speaker 1:I feel like you're not even just the material thing. A lot of people say, well, I want to do this so I don't have to work anymore. But really, when you do what we're doing, you're really just working more. You're like literally signing up to work harder and not work less. So I think that's the common kind of misconception you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, man, yeah, you know, and you know people think they don't want to work. They just don't want to do what they're currently doing. Right, but when you find something that you love so, for example, you know what we do I'm never stopping. Right, I'll always buy more doors, I'll always trade the stock market. That's just what I do. So it's, I think, finding your thing so that you can enjoy what you do. So, yeah, man, for us, you know being more on the like mind side, yeah, I definitely look to get you know with more people who think like us and, just you know, bounce ideas off each other. Talk about growth strategies. So, yeah, absolutely Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3:So I've only been to Puerto Rico once, and that was in 2013,. But my next visit I'm going to hit you up. Absolutely, we'll have to get down.
Speaker 1:I actually just had a client in Puerto Rico. We did some property management stuff for her. These was the same thing. I think they created, like you ever heard of that, the imperfect produce business. No, where they like, where they sell, like fruit that doesn't make it to the grocery store.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow so like then it's like a membership and they send all this like misformed fruit but it's fine, or like vegetables, but it's fine to eat, but it just can't sell at the store because it's not pretty enough and they like resold it and they were basically selling a product they were getting from us free and they made a boatload of money and they had like 125 properties and I was managing a part of their portfolio for a short period of time. So so yeah, they're down in down in Puerto Rico as well.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:I think that was what I think, pretty sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you taught me something new today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know that's a real business. I'm pretty sure that's what they. That's the business they ran. It was like getting in free fruit or vegetables and selling. I was genius Wow, damn, I can't. I could not think of that.
Speaker 2:I'm doing the whole thing. I'm doing the whole thing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, everybody, this should come out. We have an event coming up on January 11th, so make sure you're there. Cbps in Towson and Tay. Where can everybody find you on Instagram? It's at Tay sweat. I mean, look at it on Instagram, he's there. It's, you're there. I looked so awesome man. I appreciate it. Yeah, we'll stick around for a second. We'll chat a little bit more, most definitely, all right guys.