How I Started A Membership Site & Grew To $20 Million

Gaining Trust As A Teacher

I’ve spent my career for the past two decades as a stock trader, but finance can be a very tough industry. Especially as an independent.

A lot of other traders I know lose when it comes to the market.

When I started out I had just a couple $1,000s and now I’m trading with millions.

My journey getting to this point hasn’t been easy, so now that I’m at the other end, I really want to give back to others as the mentor I wished I had when I started out.

I started sharing videos of my experiences working as a professional trader.

I would share videos about both winning and losing trades, and the funny thing is it’s actually the videos about my losing trades that do the best online.

I think that’s because I always try to be real and when I’m talking about some of my recent mistakes it really proves that authenticity to my audience.

There are so many people trying to sell get rich quick schemes and other BS claims. I can actually back up all my success with audits.

I show my trades live and I also make prediction videos that can then be verified after the market moves.

I’m not right 100% of the time, but over 20 years there’s a definite track record that you can’t deny.

I mention this because this was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome as I began teaching.

Building that deep level of trust and relationship with my audience. It wasn’t until my seventh to tenth years as a teacher that my business really started to grow.

Now I have around 5,000 students in my membership with 1,000 of them making up my core dedicated audience.

I even have several students who I’ve helped become millionaires and they also work with me now as fellow mentors.

I offer several membership packages for the different levels of commitment and experience I see among my students.

The main problem I run into is students not showing up and studying my material. It’s similar to a gym membership where 80% of the revenue is coming from people who don’t show up.

Most traders do lose money, so presenting a continual path of education is important for my students not to get discouraged.

I created my own software where customers can “paper trade” as practice. This way they always have a reason to stay on the path.

For me, I don’t want to be known as having the most students out of any financial teacher, I’d rather have a dedicated audience that sticks with me.

I got started when I was featured on a reality TV show that showcased my trading style, and from there I started getting messages from potential students wanting to learn my craft.

I had no intention of becoming a teacher, but fortunately, I fell into it.

There was a platform that allowed me to show the results of my trades and I was very successful with it so that became part of my track record that I’d show to students.

You don’t have to be number one in the world to become a teacher. I’m a niche player, I focus on penny stocks which a lot of the financial world won’t touch anymore. You just need to feel like you have a real degree of expertise and a market you can serve with it.

Another route to take is to partner with an expert who can give you that credibility.

It’s much easier to be real and honest with where you’re coming from than to try fancy tricks that are going to backfire on you.

 

Action Steps

1. Find a way to showcase your expertise to your audience that brings them along the journey with you.
2. Talk about both your successes and failures, document the process.
3. If you don’t have enough credibility, find a partner who can add that to your business.
4. Be patient, it can take several years to break through the “trust barrier” in certain niches.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Gain trust among your audience by being authentic and backing up your claims to expertise.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.