This wasn’t an overnight decision.
After a long, thought out process, today I’m announcing my departure from profit.ly. I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of this decision for quite some time, and I’m sure it’s clear to many that there has been tremendous upside from the partnership. I would not have met so many aspiring traders, including some of my greatest friends in trading, or had as many opportunities without the transparency and ability to share ideas on profit.ly. I credit Tim for a lot of this opportunity.
Those who are members through the profit.ly platform you’ve been emailed for the past week if you have any questions just reach out to nate[at]investorslive.com and I’d be more than happy to help you with the transition if you haven’t been reading scans. This is for Investors Underground subscription holders ONLY, not products.
As the Investors Underground community has grown, I’ve developed a unique bond with each of the subscribers – ranging from members I speak with a couple of times a month to people I speak with every day. These traders form what I believe to be my own “trading support” network, and are some of my closest friends. I met many of these traders through the profit.ly extended network –meeting Tim at a conference, guys like Gregg and Eric , or guys like Derrick and Sandro , who were once members of Tim’s service.
Why I Left Profit.ly
We have different paths and philosophies about what running a trading service means and the move makes most sense for our respective businesses going forward.
My philosophy is “the better trader I become, the more my business will grow.” The more I learn, the more I can share. The educational material I produce helps me, others, and the community grow.
My goal here is about trading well and helping others. I don’t want people to join because they think they’ll mimic returns just by following alerts. We are not an “alert” service and I don’t want to be confused as one. Trading is MUCH harder than many think; it takes time and it takes the ability to bounce back.
Quite simply, our goals and marketing strategies are not aligned.
I am not a guru, I am just a trader continually bettering myself along my journey who happens to share it and help others along the way. Sure, I may have more patience and an incredible ability to multitask but I am not perfect and I’ll never stop learning.
Becoming a Trader
Trading is about developing consistency over time and being patient with trades. If your goal is to make as much as you can as fast as you can, then you’re bound to fail.
My goal is to educate and pass on the lessons (both good and bad) that I’ve learned so that each person who takes advantage of what we offer can have a much shorter learning curve than I did and the BEST chance to succeed.
You cannot DECIDE to become a full time trader. You can BECOME a full time trader AFTER you find consistency in a trading method, and you’re in a financial position to do so. It’s something that takes extreme focus and a desire to become great. It’s something you need to continually better yourself at and never stop learning.
If you want the best chance to succeed, focus on the best education you obtain. The best traders I know are entrepreneurial at heart, self-driven, and extremely focused.
About six or seven months ago I stopped verifying the two accounts I used to verify on profitly because I wanted to focus on MYSELF as a trader. I was inspired last October by Michail at the Traders4ACause conference, and by Gregg in his interview with us, after realizing that I was settling for less than my full potential.
My goal when creating my website was never about ME; it was about developing a community of traders with like-minded goals. My goal is to assist traders who want to become the best traders they can be and help them get there.
The key to IU’s success and growth over the years is the community that we have built. It’s not just one trader; it’s a community made up of seasoned traders, new traders and everyone in between. Chat runs itself, we have a zero off topic policy during trading hours and that is largely what has made it the room it is today.
Trading can be VERY lonely; make it a team and you’ll get a lot more out of it.
Once you find some success and see other traders being successful too, you’ll realize just how good that feels. Nothing pumps me up more than seeing Eric or Derrick smash a trade. It brings me more excitement than my own profits, and that’s what being a mentor is all about. You should be able to live vicariously through those whom you work with daily.
Seek mentors, be inspired not influenced, and work to become the best you that you can be.
Partnership
As I’ve said, trading is always my number one priority. I always wanted to own a business one day, but never knew what it would be. I was lucky that everything just fell into place. The growth of the Investors Underground live trading community was faster than I could have ever anticipated, and it continues to grow to this day. We’re at all-time highs on memberships and we have low turnover; once traders are in the room for a month or two, they quickly realize that this is their home and extend their memberships into an annual subscription.
I cannot do this alone. I partnered with profit.ly in 2012 so I could focus on just doing what I do without having to worry much about marketing or attracting new members: that would all be taken care of. It was great. Tim was extremely lucky to have found Mike Mosseri who really created an amazing back end that does everything for you with one click.
This was an amazing opportunity in 2012 and I will be forever thankful for the chance to boost my presence in the trading community at that time.
I took on a helper in late 2014 after he put in a ton of sweat equity on both products we made and proved his worth through the value he brought to my service. The YouTube channel was born and the overall quality of the service drastically improved. I think most can see how far we’ve come in the past six months alone. That helper is Cam. A team player: someone to be level with, somebody who has a shared vision of what makes a great business, and more importantly a great community.
Cam watched me trade for many weeks, and when he came to visit the U.S., he realized what I was trying to say but never could articulate in webinars. He realized how much of a distraction things besides trading were to my trading activities. He knew no matter that no matter how great the business became, my primary happiness came from solid trading.
Cam took it upon himself to develop a team that would be able to help me so that I could just do what I love to do during the day: TRADE.
Sure, each day I create content, videos and try to add as much value as I can on a regular basis, but this is what I expect as a helper. I want others to think out of the box for me. One thing I learned is you can’t be a “jack of all trades.” If you bring people in who are better than you are at different parts of your business, you’ll prosper much faster.
We’ve developed a new site, and we can now do everything we’ve ever wanted with a great team to help with the transition. This is everything I wanted from a strong helper.
Conclusion
I wish the entire team at profit.ly the best of success and will never forget the help and assistance the entire team gave on the launch of Textbook Trading.
I wish everyone on the profit.ly team nothing but the best of luck in business, and I am grateful for every opportunity we’ve had over the past two and a half years.
Great words Nate! Congrats on all the success, you have built this into something very special over the last 4 years watching you. Can’t wait to see what the future brings for you. Keep it up!
Thank you Nate…for offering your position and manner of character with which you are making decisions. I have been attracted to your service for many of the specific reasons you touched on (becoming consistent as a trader -not just placing winning trades as important as that is, transitioning to actualize success in legitimate and ‘non grandiose’ measures – not just the get rich fast mentality, etc.) I , for one, feel a strong sense of respect and commitment to the core values that have become a part of your expressions as a trader and chat of IU. As I come into my 4th quarter of entering the trading environment, I have a debt of gratitude for encountering IU – with assistance from a helpful conversation at the 2014 PSC in Vegas- and am glad my ears were open enough to hear what I did that led me here. I look forward to my next learning and any ability I might be able to effect positive trending change in the best interest of the IU and trading community at large.
You are a great guy and Cam is to. Your work is impecable. Tim Sykes, on the other hand, is in a different category. If you read the Tao (the Chinese manuscript) you can practically see a picture of Tim on it. He sort of works in misterious ways (simply put). The type of work he does makes people like you possible. The guy is a catalist, which sort of means that makes the event possible but is not part of the event, like driving your car to the movies. The car is not going to the movies, but with out it, you would neither. I see this as another confirmation that we are all onto a new thing, a good thing, a new way of participating in the finances of our society. We need both teams, your team and Tims team and rest assure that this is the way it was intended. Don´t sweat the small stuff. (I mean it, read the f****g Tao. It is weird s**t)