Podcasts about so tj

Welcome to part two of our website series! Today we’ll be discussing how to build an effective website. What should you have on your website? What are the best practices for building your website? How can you use your website as a marketing tool? All that and more coming up next! So in the last episode, we discussed the techy side of your website. We talked about SSL, TLD, Hosting, and applications for building your website. But today we’ll be diving into building your website and what you need to do to have a successful website. So TJ, what do you think is the most important thing to have on your website? Intro thoughts: What is the most important thing to have on your website? 5 Things That Every Photography Website Needs Your Work As Your Style - Show what you want to shoot, you can only sell what you show. What does your website convey What look is on brand for you? Layout, colors, fonts Customer experience (Simple and Easy Navigation) Contact Page - This is the Key to Local SEO (https://neilpatel.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/intro-optimal-local-landing-page-layout.pdf) Map Contact Form Hours of Operation Social media links Call to action About Me Page - Short, the story is about them not you. Remember they are the hero, you are their guide Blog - Traffic driver Great place for education Where to photograph your engagement shoots in your town http://www.coffycreations.com/9-great-photo-spots-ashland-ohio/ Answerthepublic.com Consistency SEO Tells the Algorithm that your page is up to date Showcase events you shoot in real time (pros and cons) The Most Important? A CALL TO ACTION! Action Items Create a file on your computer and segment your best portfolio images Find a topic you feel confident about and write out your first blog post Start to think about your workflow. What are you going to do when you get that first contact form submitted? If you aint first, your last Answer Who, What, Where, and How? Who You Are. What you shoot. Where you are located. How do you do business? https://neilpatel.com/training/ Recommended Reading: Crushing It - https://amzn.to/3dKBRYA Youtility - https://amzn.to/2y2pPuk Content Inc. - https://amzn.to/3bSN2xJ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkingpixelspodcast/message

TJ Klune releases his next novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea, tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17. And due to very real concern for public safety in light of the Coronavirus, his book launch party and subsequent tour have been postponed. So TJ is depending on those of us who already love him now more than ever. What can you do to make sure this book launch is still a huge success? Listen and find out!

We sit down with TJ and talk about his path to joining the tech industry and what people of color can do to engage it further.Learn more about tech: ROOTsTechnology.infoConnect with us: https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateTRANSCRIPTAde: I'm sure many of our listeners can relate to the concept of familial pressure, and as many immigrant or first-generation young adults may know, the career path for us is often limited to that of a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. I chose the path of a lawyer when I was younger. However, as I've evolved as a person so have my interests, and I'm not alone in this. Many of us have seen leaps in technology that have piqued interest in previously unexplored fields. So with that in mind, it should be of no surprise that it is one of the fastest growing industries in the world with revenue within the industry projected to reach $351 billion. It also makes it an inviting field for groups that have been underrepresented in this industry until now. The question is what does it look like to make the pivot? My name is Ade, and you're listening to Living Corporate. [intro]Ade: So today we're talking about non-conventional entries into tech. As many of you may know, this would resonate with me. I've shared at least two or three times this season, but for those of you who are new, I'm actively making the career pivot into software engineering, which was not my focus in college. The journey so far has included some extremely long hours, some late nights, a ton of mistakes, a couple of wins--a couple of little wins--and many, many failures. Zach: Yeah. You know, we could've done a better job promoting your journey through Living Corporate's Instagram because your IG stories are great. Like, I'll see you posting pictures of your laptop screen with a bunch of code on it, you being in all these all-day workshops, books you're digging in to help build your technical chops. It's been inspiring to see.Ade: Thanks. Thank you. Part of what I am interested in is making tech more accessible. It's all around us, and engaging in tech means often--more than just being a coder. Being a coder is awesome, but there is so much more to tech than that.Zach: Right. I mean, to your point, because there's technology in everything that we do, there's a myriad of ways to work in tech. As an example, I'm a change management consultant in technology. I don't know how to code a thing, yet, but I'm still actively engaged in the industry because I bring other skills to the table to help implementations and things of that nature to be more successful.Ade: Right, and along that train of thought, there's space for all of us at the table--word to Solange--but it comes down to exposure and engagement. For me, I had two primary barriers. One, I didn't know what tech meant. It seemed like this vague, really nebulous space, and that was scary. I like when words mean things, and I like when I understand what those words mean. And the second big barrier for me was that I did not know how to get there. I had no road map. I had graduated from college, and there was no counselor, adviser who was like, "Take these classes and you'll get there," and "These are the steps." I had to figure it out for myself, but in figuring it out for myself I came to understand that the tech space is made up of people, some really amazing people, and therefore completely accessible. Just like you are a person, they are people, and so this is a space that you can absolutely find your way in. Zach: Right, and as you alluded to in the intro, professionals of color as well-served to seek entry into industries that are growing and positioned to be on or around the top, but it would be great if we could speak to someone more about this topic, right? Someone who--maybe they're, like, a first-generation American who changed their career, made a career pivot after college and got into tech, but not only that, they leveraged their passion and network to teach other ethnic minorities skills to get them into the tech space as well.Ade: Wait, you mean like our guest TJ Oyeniyi?Zach and Ade: Whaaaaaaat?Zach: Sound Man! [makes air horn noises] Come on, drop 'em in. You know it. Just put 'em right in there. Let's go. Ade: [laughs] All right. So next up we're gonna get into our interview with our guest, TJ. Hope y'all enjoy.Zach: And we're back. TJ, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for joining us.TJ: Thank you. Thank you so much, Zach. Appreciate you.Zach: Hey, no problem, man. So look, for those of us who don't know you, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?TJ: Yeah. So my name is Tolu Oyeniyi, and most people know me as TJ, which I completely made up while watching Smart Guy one day. I was born in Nigeria, [inaudible], and I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I did my undergrad at UT Austin and grad school at Arizona State, and I am currently in the second year of my career switch as a software engineer. Zach: Man, that's amazing. So look, today we're talking about non-conventional entries into tech. Before you got into technology or the tech space explicitly, what were you doing? And what spurred your interest in the tech space?TJ: Ah, what was I doing? So I was working as a business analyst at a small health tech company in Austin at the time, and I was also a really big volunteer in Austin. Like, when I moved back to Austin from Dallas for work, I told myself, like, "Anything black," like, just anything dealing with underrepresented groups, I wanted to volunteer time to just help and, you know, just try to, like, give back any way possible. And I ended up, like, volunteering for a host of different events 'til I stumbled upon this one event called hackathon at Huston-Tillotson University, which is an HBCU and actually the first higher education institute in Austin during South By, and the purpose of the hackathon was to basically introduce black and brown students to tech, and I volunteered as a mentor to basically help students flesh out their ideas and, you know, ultimately try to build, like, a working product at the end of those two days for the hackathon. And what, like, really triggered the idea of, like, learning to code or just teaching people how to code was when I parked in front of this, like, brand new house across from, like, HT in east Austin, which, you know, used to be, like, an old black neighborhood in Austin. And, you know, this house was a reminder that this area was being gentrified, largely by a lot of people that are--that come into Austin because of tech, and just kind of, like, thinking, "Man," like, "All these black and brown kids," and just, like, families in these areas are being priced out of here because they don't really have access into this industry and don't really know, like, the basics, you know, to even be able to try to, like, you know, have a chance to, like, try in this industry. And that kind of frustrated me a bit, and I thought one day, "You know what? It would be real impactful if somebody was teaching these kids to code," and I just, like, jokingly mentioned to a friend--you know, to my friend at the event, like, "Bruh, you know, I think I'm gonna mess around and learn how to code so I can teach these kids to code."Zach: Wow. [laughs]TJ: The guy I was talking to was a software engineer for IBM. He was like, "Oh, really? Can you code?" I was like, "I do," but I didn't know anything about coding, bruh. I worked as a business analyst. I did, like, design software, but I don't actually build it. But yeah, I had the crazy idea of learning to code so that I could learn to teach black and brown kids to code. And I didn't really learn to, like, make a career switch. I just wanted to basically help other people, like, break into the industry. And I did that for about a year until I basically got this useless promotion at work. [laughs]Zach: Why was it useless? [laughs]TJ: It was useless, man. I was--I was working as a business analyst, making--you know, for a health tech company, making 37,500 in Austin--Zach: Wow. Wow, that's really low.TJ: Ooh. Man, you said wow and it just--it brought back all the pain from those days. [laughs] Oh, God. But yeah, and I had gotten a promotion to senior business analyst, right? You know, big time. I'm thinking big time. Everything got a promotion [inaudible]. My [inaudible] got a promotion, my responsibilities. Everything but my salary.Zach: Oh, no. But that's really what happens though.TJ: Yeah. I'm like, "Hold on, bruh." [laughs] "Hold on, bruh. Wait, what's going on?" 'Cause my, you know, coworkers got a raise. Why in the world did I not get one? So I started having this, like, back-and-forth with my manager like, "Hey, man. You know, I've been doing all this," you know? "My output is looking really good," et cetera, et cetera. Like, I've been here for over a year, you know? What's up? And I just got promoted. So he eventually went to bat for me with the CEO, and they got me a promotion. Like, I--man, I remember that day well. He came into the office and we had a meeting, and he was so happy to, like, announce to me that I had gotten a raise. I was like, "Okay. What's that money looking like, bruh?" He's like, "Yeah. So TJ, we're gonna take you from $37,500 to $39,998."Zach: Oh, no.TJ: I was like, "Hey, bruh. You guys really couldn't have added a couple dollars more?" [laughs] You know, to at least make it 40K, bruh. Really? I was--I was like, "Okay, wow. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it." I mean, I went back to my desk with this look like, "I'm leaving." I was, like, mid-twenties, just thinking, "Man, I'm not gonna be fighting for 40K." Like, "I'm not trying to build my life and career off of that," 'cause--you know, 'cause the question then was how long 'til I reach, like, 60K?Zach: Right. No, it's a real question. Right.TJ: Yeah. I'm like, "Bruh." Man...Zach: God forbid six figures, right? Like, come on. Right, yeah.TJ: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, "Jeez, I'ma be, like, 40 to 50 years old before I see any kind of money where, you know, I can just kind of be at peace?" Basically, right? 'Cause I had, like, a lot of loans coming from grad school 'cause I also did grad school out of state. But yeah, so I was very, like, frustrated by that, and by this time I had been learning to code for about a year and, like, you know, teaching it as well, but at that time I basically just knew the basics of building, like, web pages and websites. You know, just simple HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap. You know, that type of stuff. But I went home and I was just like, "You know what, man? I'm not gonna be here fighting to try to make 40-something K." Like, my financial goals were way bigger than that, and I was like, "I have to make a change," and all of my software engineer friends are banking, and, you know, so far this stuff seems pretty straightforward. So I basically went to this event or something at IBM I think, and I saw this printout of a job posting for an engineer role at IBM, and it had all these skills and requirements. You know, just basically all this stuff on there, and I basically used that posting to update the curriculum that I was using to teach.Zach: Oh, wow. Yeah.TJ: This happened, like--man, I think this happened around June or July 2016, and I basically took that job posting and I put it, like, right next to my desk in my room, and I put a date on there. Like, December 2016 was how long I gave myself. I was like, "By December 2016 latest, I should be working as a software engineer. Period." Zach: Let's go. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing.TJ: So yeah, basically that is what kind of spurred me making that career change, and it's just crazy how it all started, how I actually only started learning to code so that I could teach other people so they could break into the industry and make more money when I was over here broke. [laughs] Maybe I should make the switch.Zach: Right. You know, I'll say this. It's funny. I truly believe any time you attach your purpose with people you're going to see rewards on the other side, right? TJ: Oh, yeah.Zach: Right? So your whole angle, your whole mission was "How can I serve someone else?" And then as you were building to serve others, the fates came together to make sure that you were taken care of. So that's really exciting, and I think something else that I hope our listeners are picking up on is that you were tenacious about it, right? So the information was out there, you did your own research, you put yourself out there, you were willing to be uncomfortable, and you drove to get there. Let me ask you something about this program that you started to teach other folks, specifically youth, how to code. What is the program, and why do you believe coding is so important? Why do you do it today? Like, why do you continue to do it today?TJ: Well, so the program was called ROOTs Technology, and I was basically teaching classes on Saturdays at the time in, like, a lower income part of Austin. Yeah, and for me, at the time I thought it was, like, a really good chance to provide an opportunity for kids that were already interested in tech somehow to just learn more of the hard skills to try to, like, pick up the chance to try to break into the industry or to ultimately start, like, their own stuff on the side in terms of, like, building websites for people or just, like, building--or just building their own app ideas [inaudible] actually. So yeah, I mean, that--man, teaching is hard, bruh. Teaching is very hard. I always knew that our teachers were undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated, but that, like, knowledge took a different form when I actually, like, experienced being in the shoes of a teacher for just, like, a couple hours once a week, because there were some students in my class that they didn't know where they were going to eat unless they came to my class because Subway, like, sponsored lunches. You know? So it was like--there were so many, like, hurdles outside of the actual class that basically made it hard for students to retain information and to basically achieve the goal that they set out to achieve. So yeah, that was tough, and I ultimately had to, like, pull back on the program. So now I have the curriculum online, and it is open to any and everybody to use, and I just make myself available as a mentor to help people to get unstuck as they are working through the curriculum, you know? Because everything is online and self-paced, so.Zach: So let's make sure that we'll--we'll make sure to put those resources in the show notes because I think that's amazing. I think--you know, certain people--for me as an example, right, I'm a good Googler. Like, I don't have an issue looking something up and figuring out or, you know, reaching out and talking to people, but that isn't always--that's not everyone's strong suit. Having a place where all of that information is consolidated and available I think is a big deal, and there's plenty of people out there that really see tech as, like, this big, just amorphous thing that you can't really wrap your arms around or that it's only for super, super quantitative math geniuses and things of that nature. So let me ask you this. If you could give people, especially minorities, who don't have a tech background but want to get into the space three tips, what would they be?TJ: One, decide what you want to do, and if you don't already know what you want to do in this industry or you just don't know anything about tech, just start looking for local tech meet-ups in your area and start attending and just--just ask questions. Like, you will always find people that are willing to just, like, answer questions and at least help you and point you in the right direction. And two, like, find people that want--once you figure out what you want to do, find people in this industry that are where you want to be and approach them to basically help you come up with a plan to get there. And then three, you have to really, like, sacrifice and grind. Like, set a timeline and let other people know to basically help to keep you accountable to your goals and get to work, you know? Like, this--this, like, took me over a year and a half of just, like, teaching myself and just grinding, and my last, like, five months, I actually--like, once I decided that I wanted to make the switch into being an engineer, I think I spent about, like, seven months of just, like, really sacrificing and grinding. No more happy hours. No more brunch. Dollar mimosas, and God knows I love, like, dollar mimosas. Like, I--Zach: Dollar mimosas, yeah. [laughs]TJ: You know? I basically I had to give, like, so much up. Like, I was working full-time and coming home, and basically from 6:00 P.M. to, like, 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. I was just studying. Seven days a week. Just grinding and sacrificing. The only people that saw me on a regular basis were my coworkers and my sister 'cause she lives with me, but that was it, you know? I basically went into a hole to, you know, try to put in the work to achieve my goals, and I basically showed up with a brand new software engineering job a few months later.Zach: Well, see--that's just so inspirational, right? Because, again, I think we talk a lot about things we say that we want to do, but the reality is it takes work. It takes sacrifice. Anything that you want to really build that's gonna be sustainable, not a fad or not something passing in any way, it takes time, and it takes actual work. And it's funny because, you know, you didn't pull those hours out of nowhere. You had to give up some comfort so that you could eventually get where you wanted to go. So that's--that's just amazing. I'm really encouraged by this story. This has been a great conversation. Before we wrap up, TJ, do you have any shout outs?TJ: Man, I have a lot of shout outs.Zach: Go ahead. Get it going.TJ: [laughs] So yeah, first shout outs will be to Dara Oke and Sammy [inaudible]. They were my engineering friends at the time that basically helped point me in the right direction when I was coming up with this self-paced curriculum to, you know, teach people, and then after that, shout out to Yusuf [inaudible] and the African-American Youth Harvest Foundation, which is where the classes for ROOTs Technology were at, and Yusuf was another engineer at the time that basically started learning to code back then like I did and wanted to make the switch over, and he would actually volunteer with me to help teach the class as well. And yeah, again, he achieved it as well. He has been working as a software engineer for the past two years. And also shout out to [inaudible] for just being, like, a really big support--just a really good friend and mentor in this, like, tech journey. Like, E is an engineer. He's worked at IBM on the Watson project, DO doing, like, [inaudible] stuff, and now he's over at GitHub, and he always does a very good job of just, you know, trying to help lift as he's climbing, and I was, you know, one of those people that he, like, really helped along the way in my own journey. And also a big shout out to my fiance Queen and my sister [inaudible], who gave me a place to live while I was--while I didn't have my own place for a few months. And just a really big shout out to all of my family and friends that were there to support me and to, like, push me on throughout this whole journey.Zach: Man, that's beautiful, man, and again, we thank you for your time. We love your story. We definitely consider you a friend of the show. We hope to have you back, man.TJ: Awesome. Awesome, sir. Thank you so much, Zach. Appreciate you.Zach: All right, man. Peace.Ade: And we're back. I can tell that you and TJ had a lot of fun on that one, and to be frank, I was incredibly energized by his story. It was really motivating to hear because he's out of the old, so to speak. I'm definitely still in "stay low and build" mode, but hearing his story is encouraging, and it's motivating, and it lets me know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Zach: Yeah. I think his story comes down to the power of execution. He made up his mind to do something, and he didn't use any excuse. He researched, he studied, he prepared, and then he went for it, and he didn't take years and years. It's really--frankly, it's been a super short journey for him, and I'm happy for him because I know he's just getting started.Ade: For sure. We'll definitely need to make sure to list all of those resources and contacts in the show notes because, like you said, there are so many of us out here who are interested in a genuine approach to the industry but aren't necessarily sure where to start. We'll have a starting line for you.Zach: Absolutely. Well, with that being said, we're gonna be right back with our Favorite Things. Can't wait to share.Ade: Awesome.Zach: And we're back with our Favorite Things. So folk who know me know that I am a blerd, or a black nerd. Two amazing games dropped this month. One was 2K19. Yes, like many younger black men, I loves my 2K, my NBA 2K. For those who are not in the know, NBA 2K is a basketball simulation game. This isn't even an ad. I really enjoy 2K, especially My Career, where you take a player--you make one, you create one, you take him through the journey of being a rookie to a Hall of Famer. And Spider-Man dropped. Both for PS4, so I'm really--I'm enjoying myself.Ade: 2K, huh? Okay. So what's your style? Are you a shot-creating slasher? A playmaker? What's up?Zach: I'm actually a slashing, shot-creating small forward. I'm 6'10" on there, and so if you want to catch a body, you want to be put on a poster, you find me at the park. My gamertag is RevNunn, R-E-V-N-U-N-N. I'll see you out there.Ade: RevNunn gonna put you on a poster. All right. This week my favorite thing is a book called Weapons of Math Destruction. Yes, I did say math. It's a book that came out in, I believe, 2016, and it just examines the societal impact of algorithms and big data. We tend to think of--kind of following in the conversation we were having about tech spaces, but we tend to think of data and tech and science, the STEM space, as a relatively bias-free zone because it's presented to us that way. However, this book just talks about those spaces can actually--and that work, the creation of algorithms, actually can be used to reinforce pre-existing inequality and systemic inequality. I love it. It's by a mathematician known as Cathy O'Neil, and she talks about, you know, the reinforcement of discrimination using systems that we would otherwise consider or would otherwise hope are unbiased. So it's been a fun read. Okay, maybe not fun. Fun is definitely not the term I'm looking for, but it's been a very illuminating, insightful read, and I encourage everyone to take a look at it. Oh, that reminds me. Before we go, we are actually going to be opening up our Favorite Things to you, our listeners. So if you have a favorite thing, please get at us. DM us through IG or hit us up at our email address, which we'll list later on at the end of this show. You can also contact us through the website or Twitter, and we'll make sure to shout you out.Zach: Dope. Well, that does it for us. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. You know what? Also, we actually bought a bunch of other domains. That's right. Sound Man, go ahead and drop some air horns right here.[Sound Man complies]Zach: That's right. We bought livingcorporate.co., livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org. We are everywhere except livingcorporate.com. So if you type in Living Corporate you will find us, okay? If you have a question you'd like for us to answer on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. And that does it for us on the show. This has been Zach.Ade: And I'm Ade.Ade and Zach: Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

There’s no school like the old school… On today’s episode Russell talks about plans to use what he has learned from TJ Rholeder while on an anniversary trip in Hawaii, in his business once he arrives home. Here are a few interesting things you will learn in this episode: How Russell is able to still learn while on an anniversary trip with his wife, and make plans for business once he’s home. How Russell plans to use the 50,000 letters a week rule in his own business. And how he plans to add urgency and scarcity to his core products. So listen here to hear Russell’s upcoming plans for his business, or watch the video version so you don’t miss out on the beautiful scenery of Kauai. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, that is in the rain here in Kauai. Alright everybody, I want to welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, it is raining on me right now. I don’t know if you can see that over here, if you’re watching the video version.  But it’s beautiful here and I wanted to do an episode, this is going to be really good, I’m going to come and hide under the bush or something. I’m just going to sit here and get wet, it’ll be more fun this way. Anyway, we’ve been in Hawaii almost a week now on my 15th anniversary, which is amazing being married to my beautiful wife, Collette for this long. I’m trying to get to do an episode with you guys, hopefully on the flight home or something, on what it’s like living with and being married to an entrepreneur. We’re trying to pick our keynote speaker for this year’s Funnel Hacking Live, and it’s funny because we got tons of people voting for everybody. Somebody posted Oprah, and someone put Russell’s wife and my wife got more votes than Oprah, which is pretty exciting. So we’re trying to get her at least to jump on the podcast. So that’s the goal and the game plan. What I want to share with you guys today, the rain’s gone that fast, but there’s birds right behind me. Let me clean my phone off real quick. So what I wanted to share with you guys, I’ve been listening to a whole bunch of cool marketing stuff between the long drives around the island, all the cool stuff we’re doing. The course I was listening to was TJ Rohleder and if you don’t know TJ, he’s one of the legends in our business. He is one of the direct mail kings in the Bizop world, and he’s become a friend. We had him speak at one of our events a while ago, which was amazing. What’s interesting, the course I was listening to was How To Become Super Rich in the Opportunity Market. He teaches people how to  make money in the teach people how to get rich market. What’s interesting, as I was listening to it, if you read the Expert Secrets book, I talked about three core things you gotta do to build a mass movement. Number one you gotta have the attractive character, the attractive leader. Number two you have to have a future based cause. Number three you have to have a new opportunity. What’s interesting is as I was listening to this, he’s talking about how to sell opportunities but basically if you’re doing a mass movement the way we’re talking about, it’s always a new opportunity. Everything he’s talking about, the opportunity is the way he positions it is how to get rich, how to make money, here’s the opportunity market as he calls it. But in my mind every market is the opportunity market. So I’m going to see if I can interview TJ and dig deeper in that because his stuff was brilliant, it was all targeted towards selling people stuff, how to make money. But if you look at it from the lens of the Expert Secrets book then it kind of works for all of them. Because every single opportunity, everything you’re selling should be a new opportunity. So I’m going to try to see if I can do that. Plus, TJ launched his company, he lives out in Kansas and he actually bought a hospital and renovated the whole thing and that’s where he runs his company out of, an old hospital, which is kind of cool. I kind of want to go down there and see his whole operation. It may come to an episode of Funnel Hacker TV soon. Where I go down there and tour his hospital and see his whole organization. In the last ten years they’ve sent out 9500 different direct mail campaigns, which is crazy. Some people will get on his list and they might get between 2 or 300 letters in the mail per year, depending on what sequence they take, what offers they say yes to and no to and all sorts of stuff. Super inspiring. But what I want to talk about is a couple of core things I learned from him that I think are really good for all of you guys. The first one is not from TJ it’s actually from a Bill Glazier thing I was listening to. So Bill was partners with Dan Kennedy at Glazier Kennedy and he was my marketing dad for five or six year that I was in his inner circle. And one of the things that was cool that I was studying from Bill this week, he was talking about how at the very beginning of the year they have their big thing. So they do two events a year, they did InfoSummit and Super Conference. For me, I do Funnel Hacking Live, that’s my big thing. They said they categorized all their promotions based on the importance. So number were their two events, number two was this, number three…they had it all mapped out and mapped out the entire year, the promotional schedule at the beginning of the year to make sure they fill the events and all these other things fit in there. I was thinking about that, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not super good at mapping out my promotional calendar and schedule and things like that. I kind of just go week by week, month by month and do stuff. And what Bill does in this course, and it’s an old course, but he maps it out and then they do everything. So It started thinking about this and at one of our inner circle meetings, Justin Williams was talking about with his stuff now, as you guys know if you’ve been listening to our podcast for any length of time, the two magic things that marketers have are urgency and scarcity. So he started doing with his is, he re-launched courses throughout the year and he’d open and close them. So he’d have the urgency and scarcity close. That’s where most of the sales always come in, during the closing of the thing. Also if you listened to when Stu launched Tribe, he’s talking about Michael Hyatt when he launched his membership site, the big secret they had was opening and closing. So twice a year they’d open up the membership site and then it was closed. I started thinking about that and I’m like, right now most of our programs are open all the time, which is good. But the urgency and scarcity is not there. So I think what I’m going to do is start calendaring it out where twice a year our things are available. So twice a year people can buy our certification program, twice a year people can join Funnel University, twice a year they can get Fill Your Funnel, twice a year….all of our core offers are only open twice during the year, and they’re closed down other than that, which is kind of fun. It gives us the ability to have urgency and scarcity and build up the hype and the buzz, and it gives me each month, something to focus on. This month is Funnel U month and we’re going to open and close it. The next month is this, we’re going to open it and close it and all content and all things can be related back to that one thing. So that was the first thing I kind of started re –thinking through when I was listening to Bill Glazier talk about how they structured their promotions around their events. That’s the first cool thing. Now with TJ, a couple of cool things that he does, I think it was good for me to hear again, it’s good for all of you guys to hear again. So TJ is in the business opportunity market, mostly through direct mail. He has 50,000 letters he mails every single week. Week in and week out consistently, they know 50,000 letters will go out every single week all for new customer acquisition. New customer acquisition, 50,000 letters every single week. And that’s just the schedule. I think for a lot of us we get in this thing where we have these front end funnels, these break even funnels where we bring people in, then we have our monetization funnel. So I think a lot of us, we create a really good webinar funnel let’s say, and then that becomes our focus. And then that’s it, we’re driving traffic and that’s the business. TJ if you look at this again, he’s got his frontend lead gen offers and he’s mailing 50,000 pieces a week. He said at his peak, he was selling a $50 course from his frontend lead gen stuff, and he said he would spend up to $500 to sell a $50 course.  From there you go into all the backend funnels and the backend things he was selling. But he had this consistency of 50,000 pieces every single week. I started thinking about that. He’s mailing 50,000 new names every single week, what’s the equivalent of that for my business? I need to make sure I have something consistently doing that every single week to one frontend offer. He talked about one of the big things also is he’s not mailing 2 things or 3 things to that 50,000. They have one offer, the hottest converting one and that’s where they drive all their energy, all their money, everything. And for us, I think all of us, we have our hot offer, we need to be spending as much as we can to get people into that thing consistently every single week. Just knowing I spend 50 grand a week, or 10 grand a week or a thousand bucks a week, whatever it is for you, into that frontend thing. If you break, if you think about this, break it down, there’s kind of two sides to this, or three sides depending on how deep you want to get. We talk about this at this upcoming Funnel Hacking Live, but there’s a process. There’s basically three types of funnels. There’s acquisition funnels, getting people in. There’s ascension funnels, ascending up within your membership. Then there’s monetization funnels. But for this argument today, I’m just going to talk about the two. So there’s an acquisition funnels, so what is your one acquisition funnel that you can consistently do X with? For me it might be I need to sell at least a thousand books a week, or I need to spend 10 grand a week, or whatever that thing is for you. You just know that and you have to do it consistently. We have to sell a thousand books a week and we should build a whole team of people whose entire goal is to sell a thousand books a week, or 5 thousand, or whatever that number is for you. Back when I had a call center, that’s how it was. We had free plus shipping leads and we had to get 8 thousand leads a month to get enough leads for our sales floor and that became the focus of the business. For you it’s like, think about TJ, what is the frontend offer that’s consistently bring people in? And then from TJ, it’s so crazy. I’m hoping I can go down there and film his whole operation for you guys because I want to see it to. But like I said, as soon as someone gets through the frontend then he’s got all these direct mail campaigns that go out offering these two step things. So he’ll send out a letter for a free cd about whatever to the existing customers. So he’s only sending it to people that already bought his $50 thing, then he’ll put them onto a sequence that gets a free cd. Then if they respond to the free cd he puts them in a sequence to sell the thing that that cd upsells to. Then he puts out the next offer and the next offer and he keeps putting out all these frontend lead gen, I guess their acquisition and monetization letters to the buyers of his 50,000 a week thing. So 50,000 a week bringing people in. And after they come in and bought the $50 thing, then he starts sending them letters trying to get them to raise their hand about specific opportunities that he’s going to sell them. If they respond to those then they go into a whole other sequence. They might get 10, 15, 20 letters to sell a 2 or 3 or 5 thousand dollar course on the backend. And that’s kind of the process that he does over and over and over again. So for me, what I’m looking at, what I want my focus to be, is somebody comes into my world, and again I’m focusing way more effort consistently on this, I’m going to call it 50,000 letters a week, but for us we’re not doing direct mail right now, so it’s not that, but that’s the concept. The frontend lead acquisition. Then if they come in, we’re taking our core courses and we’re opening them and closing them, opening them and closing, opening and closing them, opening and closing them throughout the year. So those are our monetization funnels after people come in. So that’s kind of the game, and I’m really excited for it. So that’s the game I’m going to be playing and I hope you guys model that. The other cool thing I’m going to be doing, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this for probably two weeks. It started at Scout camp and it’s been in my mind even here as we’ve been in this beach house. Having one really good follow up funnel sequence that takes people through my offers in a very strategic way. So we have igniteyourfunnel.com, which is right now, we’re using it for something completely different, but I’m going to be changing that to where this is an opt in form where we get people to opt into and then it’s going to take them through a sequence. I haven’t quite mapped the whole thing out, but first thing I want someone to buy is what? For my business the first thing I want someone to buy is Expert Secrets, so I’m going to be like, have a video of me explaining why they need Expert Secrets and why it’s step number one. Actually, let me step back, step number one is not going to be the book. Step number one is going to be, on the podcast you guys heard a little while ago, the two episodes on You’re one Funnel Away, I’m going to show that video to build connection with people immediately after they opt in, from there I’ll tell them to get the Expert Secrets book and then from there, what do they need next? I’ll logically build out a really long sequence that’s going to be this ascension funnel that takes them up through our core offers in the middle. And then the big thing that our team is going to be focusing on is RKPI’s how many opt in’s a day are we getting inside the Ignite Your Funnel funnel, the Ignite your Funnel ascension funnel, ascending them through all of our offers. I’m trying to think how this whole thing works together. It might be when someone opt’s in the first time they go through this ascension funnel, that all those offers will be open to them, open and close, like in Evergreen format. And after that they’ll bump over to a monetization funnel. Our longer term email sequences that then they’ll be on when we open and close them each month. I’m not positive on that, still figuring out the details. But it’s fun to think through it. Anyway, that’s the game plan. So those are some of the fun things I’ve learned and been thinking about while I’ve been here having some fun in Kauai on my 15 year anniversary. I hope that gives you guys some ideas and things to think about. So kind of to recap the important things. Number one is focusing on consistently bringing new blood into your business. 50,000 letters a week rule, should we call it that? 50,000 letters a week rule, consistently bringing new blood in. I remember Garret White at the last Funnel Hacking Live talked about people that make it rain, the rainmakers are the ones who dominate this world and this business. You gotta be focusing on making it rain. If you want to learn how to make it rain, right now the program is closed, but depending on when you’re listening it might be open, is our Fill Your Funnel course. Fill Your Funnel is all about how to make it rain, how to get new customers into your funnels. So that’s number one. Number is then after they come in, what’s the monetization?  So maybe number two is the ascension funnel, which is for me it’s ignite your funnel, which takes them through our offers in chronological order of when I want them to see things, opening and closing them in Evergreen format. And at the end of that, then put them into our monetization team, monetization funnels, which then would be taking our core six offers and opening and closing them twice a year. That’s going to be the business. That gets me really excited. Really, really excited. So anyway, that’s the game plan guys. I’m glad I had a chance to talk this out with you guys, it’s making it clearer and clearer in my mind. I hope you guys something of value out of that too. But like I said, I don’t just talk about this stuff, I practice what I preach so you will see me implementing these things in the very near future. Hopefully you guys will see them and enjoy them and model and funnel hack them for what you guys are doing because I know this stuff is going to be amazing. So that’s all I got you guys. Anyway, here’s one last view. Here’s the beach house we’ve been staying in. It’s an AirBNB, we were going to get a hotel and we looked at AirBNB and we found this. AirBNB or BRB, I can’t remember which one. It’s like 5000 square feet, my wife and I are up here and Brent and Amber are over here. There’s all this open space and there’s even like huge guest house over here that we got massages in the other day. It’s crazy. We’re literally, this is our beach. It’s just ours. And it’s crazy. I was flying the quad copter today, I learned how to finally fly the quad copter. I took it out over everything. So if you’re watching Funnel Hacker TV, which hopefully you are, you’ll have a chance to see above this place and beyond, it’s insane. It’s probably a little expensive, but for your 15th anniversary you go all out. Look at that, that’s our beach. We rented these paddle boards too, I guess if you’re listening on the podcast you can’t see this. But a couple of cool things also, just so you guys know. This is obviously on the audio podcast, which right now as of today, we’re number 5 in the business category, which is awesome. We’re still killing it there, we just also released this as a video podcast, if you go to iTunes at the very top there’s audio podcasts, you can switch to video podcast. We also have Marketing Secrets as a video podcast now too. So if you want to watch the videos, or if you want to watch the videos you can go to marketingsecrets.com and they’re all listed there along with the transcripts, see if you want to listen to what I’m saying and read along. The transcripts are at marketingsecrets.com as well. With that said, I would love it if you guys would give me a review and a rating over on iTunes. Like I said, we’re number 5 in the business category, the other guys above me still have more ratings, it’s not fair. I’m killing myself giving you guys the best stuff I got, I need some more ratings. So if you can take 5 seconds out of your busy day, stop everything, go over there, leave a rating and review, tell me what you think about Marketing Secrets, let the world know, that’d be awesome. And then the other thing is please subscribe to the video podcast as well. Feel free to watch the videos there if you want, that way you can see some of the beautiful scenery behind me. Yeah, that’s all I got you guys. Thanks again for listening, have an amazing day and we’ll see you guys soon. We’ll be back in Boise next week, back to a normal schedule. I got some cool stuff I want to publish and share with you guys. I gotta finish my anniversary and then get back to you guys soon. Appreciate you all, see you guys soon. Bye.

There’s no school like the old school… On today’s episode Russell talks about plans to use what he has learned from TJ Rholeder while on an anniversary trip in Hawaii, in his business once he arrives home. Here are a few interesting things you will learn in this episode: How Russell is able to still learn while on an anniversary trip with his wife, and make plans for business once he’s home. How Russell plans to use the 50,000 letters a week rule in his own business. And how he plans to add urgency and scarcity to his core products. So listen here to hear Russell’s upcoming plans for his business, or watch the video version so you don’t miss out on the beautiful scenery of Kauai. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, that is in the rain here in Kauai. Alright everybody, I want to welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, it is raining on me right now. I don’t know if you can see that over here, if you’re watching the video version.  But it’s beautiful here and I wanted to do an episode, this is going to be really good, I’m going to come and hide under the bush or something. I’m just going to sit here and get wet, it’ll be more fun this way. Anyway, we’ve been in Hawaii almost a week now on my 15th anniversary, which is amazing being married to my beautiful wife, Collette for this long. I’m trying to get to do an episode with you guys, hopefully on the flight home or something, on what it’s like living with and being married to an entrepreneur. We’re trying to pick our keynote speaker for this year’s Funnel Hacking Live, and it’s funny because we got tons of people voting for everybody. Somebody posted Oprah, and someone put Russell’s wife and my wife got more votes than Oprah, which is pretty exciting. So we’re trying to get her at least to jump on the podcast. So that’s the goal and the game plan. What I want to share with you guys today, the rain’s gone that fast, but there’s birds right behind me. Let me clean my phone off real quick. So what I wanted to share with you guys, I’ve been listening to a whole bunch of cool marketing stuff between the long drives around the island, all the cool stuff we’re doing. The course I was listening to was TJ Rohleder and if you don’t know TJ, he’s one of the legends in our business. He is one of the direct mail kings in the Bizop world, and he’s become a friend. We had him speak at one of our events a while ago, which was amazing. What’s interesting, the course I was listening to was How To Become Super Rich in the Opportunity Market. He teaches people how to  make money in the teach people how to get rich market. What’s interesting, as I was listening to it, if you read the Expert Secrets book, I talked about three core things you gotta do to build a mass movement. Number one you gotta have the attractive character, the attractive leader. Number two you have to have a future based cause. Number three you have to have a new opportunity. What’s interesting is as I was listening to this, he’s talking about how to sell opportunities but basically if you’re doing a mass movement the way we’re talking about, it’s always a new opportunity. Everything he’s talking about, the opportunity is the way he positions it is how to get rich, how to make money, here’s the opportunity market as he calls it. But in my mind every market is the opportunity market. So I’m going to see if I can interview TJ and dig deeper in that because his stuff was brilliant, it was all targeted towards selling people stuff, how to make money. But if you look at it from the lens of the Expert Secrets book then it kind of works for all of them. Because every single opportunity, everything you’re selling should be a new opportunity. So I’m going to try to see if I can do that. Plus, TJ launched his company, he lives out in Kansas and he actually bought a hospital and renovated the whole thing and that’s where he runs his company out of, an old hospital, which is kind of cool. I kind of want to go down there and see his whole operation. It may come to an episode of Funnel Hacker TV soon. Where I go down there and tour his hospital and see his whole organization. In the last ten years they’ve sent out 9500 different direct mail campaigns, which is crazy. Some people will get on his list and they might get between 2 or 300 letters in the mail per year, depending on what sequence they take, what offers they say yes to and no to and all sorts of stuff. Super inspiring. But what I want to talk about is a couple of core things I learned from him that I think are really good for all of you guys. The first one is not from TJ it’s actually from a Bill Glazier thing I was listening to. So Bill was partners with Dan Kennedy at Glazier Kennedy and he was my marketing dad for five or six year that I was in his inner circle. And one of the things that was cool that I was studying from Bill this week, he was talking about how at the very beginning of the year they have their big thing. So they do two events a year, they did InfoSummit and Super Conference. For me, I do Funnel Hacking Live, that’s my big thing. They said they categorized all their promotions based on the importance. So number were their two events, number two was this, number three…they had it all mapped out and mapped out the entire year, the promotional schedule at the beginning of the year to make sure they fill the events and all these other things fit in there. I was thinking about that, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not super good at mapping out my promotional calendar and schedule and things like that. I kind of just go week by week, month by month and do stuff. And what Bill does in this course, and it’s an old course, but he maps it out and then they do everything. So It started thinking about this and at one of our inner circle meetings, Justin Williams was talking about with his stuff now, as you guys know if you’ve been listening to our podcast for any length of time, the two magic things that marketers have are urgency and scarcity. So he started doing with his is, he re-launched courses throughout the year and he’d open and close them. So he’d have the urgency and scarcity close. That’s where most of the sales always come in, during the closing of the thing. Also if you listened to when Stu launched Tribe, he’s talking about Michael Hyatt when he launched his membership site, the big secret they had was opening and closing. So twice a year they’d open up the membership site and then it was closed. I started thinking about that and I’m like, right now most of our programs are open all the time, which is good. But the urgency and scarcity is not there. So I think what I’m going to do is start calendaring it out where twice a year our things are available. So twice a year people can buy our certification program, twice a year people can join Funnel University, twice a year they can get Fill Your Funnel, twice a year….all of our core offers are only open twice during the year, and they’re closed down other than that, which is kind of fun. It gives us the ability to have urgency and scarcity and build up the hype and the buzz, and it gives me each month, something to focus on. This month is Funnel U month and we’re going to open and close it. The next month is this, we’re going to open it and close it and all content and all things can be related back to that one thing. So that was the first thing I kind of started re –thinking through when I was listening to Bill Glazier talk about how they structured their promotions around their events. That’s the first cool thing. Now with TJ, a couple of cool things that he does, I think it was good for me to hear again, it’s good for all of you guys to hear again. So TJ is in the business opportunity market, mostly through direct mail. He has 50,000 letters he mails every single week. Week in and week out consistently, they know 50,000 letters will go out every single week all for new customer acquisition. New customer acquisition, 50,000 letters every single week. And that’s just the schedule. I think for a lot of us we get in this thing where we have these front end funnels, these break even funnels where we bring people in, then we have our monetization funnel. So I think a lot of us, we create a really good webinar funnel let’s say, and then that becomes our focus. And then that’s it, we’re driving traffic and that’s the business. TJ if you look at this again, he’s got his frontend lead gen offers and he’s mailing 50,000 pieces a week. He said at his peak, he was selling a $50 course from his frontend lead gen stuff, and he said he would spend up to $500 to sell a $50 course.  From there you go into all the backend funnels and the backend things he was selling. But he had this consistency of 50,000 pieces every single week. I started thinking about that. He’s mailing 50,000 new names every single week, what’s the equivalent of that for my business? I need to make sure I have something consistently doing that every single week to one frontend offer. He talked about one of the big things also is he’s not mailing 2 things or 3 things to that 50,000. They have one offer, the hottest converting one and that’s where they drive all their energy, all their money, everything. And for us, I think all of us, we have our hot offer, we need to be spending as much as we can to get people into that thing consistently every single week. Just knowing I spend 50 grand a week, or 10 grand a week or a thousand bucks a week, whatever it is for you, into that frontend thing. If you break, if you think about this, break it down, there’s kind of two sides to this, or three sides depending on how deep you want to get. We talk about this at this upcoming Funnel Hacking Live, but there’s a process. There’s basically three types of funnels. There’s acquisition funnels, getting people in. There’s ascension funnels, ascending up within your membership. Then there’s monetization funnels. But for this argument today, I’m just going to talk about the two. So there’s an acquisition funnels, so what is your one acquisition funnel that you can consistently do X with? For me it might be I need to sell at least a thousand books a week, or I need to spend 10 grand a week, or whatever that thing is for you. You just know that and you have to do it consistently. We have to sell a thousand books a week and we should build a whole team of people whose entire goal is to sell a thousand books a week, or 5 thousand, or whatever that number is for you. Back when I had a call center, that’s how it was. We had free plus shipping leads and we had to get 8 thousand leads a month to get enough leads for our sales floor and that became the focus of the business. For you it’s like, think about TJ, what is the frontend offer that’s consistently bring people in? And then from TJ, it’s so crazy. I’m hoping I can go down there and film his whole operation for you guys because I want to see it to. But like I said, as soon as someone gets through the frontend then he’s got all these direct mail campaigns that go out offering these two step things. So he’ll send out a letter for a free cd about whatever to the existing customers. So he’s only sending it to people that already bought his $50 thing, then he’ll put them onto a sequence that gets a free cd. Then if they respond to the free cd he puts them in a sequence to sell the thing that that cd upsells to. Then he puts out the next offer and the next offer and he keeps putting out all these frontend lead gen, I guess their acquisition and monetization letters to the buyers of his 50,000 a week thing. So 50,000 a week bringing people in. And after they come in and bought the $50 thing, then he starts sending them letters trying to get them to raise their hand about specific opportunities that he’s going to sell them. If they respond to those then they go into a whole other sequence. They might get 10, 15, 20 letters to sell a 2 or 3 or 5 thousand dollar course on the backend. And that’s kind of the process that he does over and over and over again. So for me, what I’m looking at, what I want my focus to be, is somebody comes into my world, and again I’m focusing way more effort consistently on this, I’m going to call it 50,000 letters a week, but for us we’re not doing direct mail right now, so it’s not that, but that’s the concept. The frontend lead acquisition. Then if they come in, we’re taking our core courses and we’re opening them and closing them, opening them and closing, opening and closing them, opening and closing them throughout the year. So those are our monetization funnels after people come in. So that’s kind of the game, and I’m really excited for it. So that’s the game I’m going to be playing and I hope you guys model that. The other cool thing I’m going to be doing, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this for probably two weeks. It started at Scout camp and it’s been in my mind even here as we’ve been in this beach house. Having one really good follow up funnel sequence that takes people through my offers in a very strategic way. So we have igniteyourfunnel.com, which is right now, we’re using it for something completely different, but I’m going to be changing that to where this is an opt in form where we get people to opt into and then it’s going to take them through a sequence. I haven’t quite mapped the whole thing out, but first thing I want someone to buy is what? For my business the first thing I want someone to buy is Expert Secrets, so I’m going to be like, have a video of me explaining why they need Expert Secrets and why it’s step number one. Actually, let me step back, step number one is not going to be the book. Step number one is going to be, on the podcast you guys heard a little while ago, the two episodes on You’re one Funnel Away, I’m going to show that video to build connection with people immediately after they opt in, from there I’ll tell them to get the Expert Secrets book and then from there, what do they need next? I’ll logically build out a really long sequence that’s going to be this ascension funnel that takes them up through our core offers in the middle. And then the big thing that our team is going to be focusing on is RKPI’s how many opt in’s a day are we getting inside the Ignite Your Funnel funnel, the Ignite your Funnel ascension funnel, ascending them through all of our offers. I’m trying to think how this whole thing works together. It might be when someone opt’s in the first time they go through this ascension funnel, that all those offers will be open to them, open and close, like in Evergreen format. And after that they’ll bump over to a monetization funnel. Our longer term email sequences that then they’ll be on when we open and close them each month. I’m not positive on that, still figuring out the details. But it’s fun to think through it. Anyway, that’s the game plan. So those are some of the fun things I’ve learned and been thinking about while I’ve been here having some fun in Kauai on my 15 year anniversary. I hope that gives you guys some ideas and things to think about. So kind of to recap the important things. Number one is focusing on consistently bringing new blood into your business. 50,000 letters a week rule, should we call it that? 50,000 letters a week rule, consistently bringing new blood in. I remember Garret White at the last Funnel Hacking Live talked about people that make it rain, the rainmakers are the ones who dominate this world and this business. You gotta be focusing on making it rain. If you want to learn how to make it rain, right now the program is closed, but depending on when you’re listening it might be open, is our Fill Your Funnel course. Fill Your Funnel is all about how to make it rain, how to get new customers into your funnels. So that’s number one. Number is then after they come in, what’s the monetization?  So maybe number two is the ascension funnel, which is for me it’s ignite your funnel, which takes them through our offers in chronological order of when I want them to see things, opening and closing them in Evergreen format. And at the end of that, then put them into our monetization team, monetization funnels, which then would be taking our core six offers and opening and closing them twice a year. That’s going to be the business. That gets me really excited. Really, really excited. So anyway, that’s the game plan guys. I’m glad I had a chance to talk this out with you guys, it’s making it clearer and clearer in my mind. I hope you guys something of value out of that too. But like I said, I don’t just talk about this stuff, I practice what I preach so you will see me implementing these things in the very near future. Hopefully you guys will see them and enjoy them and model and funnel hack them for what you guys are doing because I know this stuff is going to be amazing. So that’s all I got you guys. Anyway, here’s one last view. Here’s the beach house we’ve been staying in. It’s an AirBNB, we were going to get a hotel and we looked at AirBNB and we found this. AirBNB or BRB, I can’t remember which one. It’s like 5000 square feet, my wife and I are up here and Brent and Amber are over here. There’s all this open space and there’s even like huge guest house over here that we got massages in the other day. It’s crazy. We’re literally, this is our beach. It’s just ours. And it’s crazy. I was flying the quad copter today, I learned how to finally fly the quad copter. I took it out over everything. So if you’re watching Funnel Hacker TV, which hopefully you are, you’ll have a chance to see above this place and beyond, it’s insane. It’s probably a little expensive, but for your 15th anniversary you go all out. Look at that, that’s our beach. We rented these paddle boards too, I guess if you’re listening on the podcast you can’t see this. But a couple of cool things also, just so you guys know. This is obviously on the audio podcast, which right now as of today, we’re number 5 in the business category, which is awesome. We’re still killing it there, we just also released this as a video podcast, if you go to iTunes at the very top there’s audio podcasts, you can switch to video podcast. We also have Marketing Secrets as a video podcast now too. So if you want to watch the videos, or if you want to watch the videos you can go to marketingsecrets.com and they’re all listed there along with the transcripts, see if you want to listen to what I’m saying and read along. The transcripts are at marketingsecrets.com as well. With that said, I would love it if you guys would give me a review and a rating over on iTunes. Like I said, we’re number 5 in the business category, the other guys above me still have more ratings, it’s not fair. I’m killing myself giving you guys the best stuff I got, I need some more ratings. So if you can take 5 seconds out of your busy day, stop everything, go over there, leave a rating and review, tell me what you think about Marketing Secrets, let the world know, that’d be awesome. And then the other thing is please subscribe to the video podcast as well. Feel free to watch the videos there if you want, that way you can see some of the beautiful scenery behind me. Yeah, that’s all I got you guys. Thanks again for listening, have an amazing day and we’ll see you guys soon. We’ll be back in Boise next week, back to a normal schedule. I got some cool stuff I want to publish and share with you guys. I gotta finish my anniversary and then get back to you guys soon. Appreciate you all, see you guys soon. Bye.

Sarah: “Hi everybody, this is Sarah Potter, from She Can Trade. This is the SCT Podcast, and this is episode 32. Very excited to have you all here, the markets have been moving quite a bit lately, so we’ve had a number of really nice trades in the trading room at She Can Trade. So I have TJ here : TJ: “Hello!” Sarah: “And today’s topic, we’re going to talk about the differences, the advantages/disadvantages of weekly options versus monthly options. Now, you guys all know, (who’ve been following me and TJ in the trading room) that we do a lot of weekly options. We do that because they produce really great results. But we’re going to get into it in a little bit more detail today, why we do that, and what is [sic] the main differences between weeklies and monthlies. So, I think we should kind of start it all off with just kind of giving a bit of context about weekly options, and, for those of you who’ve been trading a while, weekly options is a relatively new feature for trade. I think it’s really only been around, what, three, four years? Since they really introduced weekly options. And really, it’s only been the last couple of years that it’s really gaining in popularity. What I've found is when I go and talk to different people, whether they’re from the COE, or I’m doing different talks, is a lot of professionals, a lot of them out there who will trade weekly options with their own money. I think that’s a really glaring great advantage right there, if you talk to a lot of professional people who are always making money from the market, and where they choose to put their money is in weekly options, to me is just a first advantage that’s’ very obvious as well. If they can make money, we can make money, we can all do well using weekly options. So, that’s something that I think is a pretty good advantage. And then, obviously, thinking about the fact that there’s [sic]lots of people trading it, so weekly options are quite liquid. That can sometimes be a good advantage for everybody when you’re trading; because you want to always have somebody to go back and forth with. So TJ, have you ever had that occasion where you’ve been trading in an option and the stock or the underlying might have moved in the direction you want, but the option doesn’t necessarily produce the financial results that you want?” Sarah: “Ok, well this has happened to me, which is why I was kind of bringing it up, so sometimes when you’re getting involved in trading options that don’t have the same volume, sometimes the stocks can look so enticing on a chart, it looks really good to trade. So, I’ll go and trade the option, but sometimes I get caught in being involved in something that I’ve made a little bit of money in, but had I done something like Apple, or Facebook, or something in a weekly option, then generally I would have made more money in that stock as opposed to something that doesn’t get traded back and forth. There’s nothing more frustrating about being involved in a chart, when you see, and you look at it, and it’s taking off, but that option strike that you traded isn’t trading as much as you want. So I kind of find that weekly options, because there are lots of people trading them, make it easier to get in and out of trades. TJ: Yeah, I think you’ve brought up a good point in that, with the popularity of weekly options, there is a ton of volume in the weeklies. You’ll almost see that in a lot of stocks, there’s as much volume in the weeklies as there is the traditional monthly expiration, in the third week of the month. Some stocks you do see a difference in open interests in volume in the monthlies, but, for a lot of the big stocks, the Amazons, the Googles, people are trading the weeklies and there is a ton of volume, there’s a ton of liquidity, you’re getting great fills in the weeklies, you’re getting all the advantages of a traditional option, but you’re able to trade those options four times a month. So, I think the discrepancy, the disparity between a weekly and a monthly expiration is that gap is narrowing, and really, we should be thinking of monthlies as just another expiration, as just another weekly expiration. Whether it’s the first week of the month or the third week of the month, that expiration for options is really all the same. Sometimes on the monthlies you’ll see a little bit of difference in terms of hitting or in terms of volatility on expiration day, just because it is traditionally the monthly expiration. You also get (on the monthlies) you’ll get contract rollover, you’ll get other types of options, not just equity options expiring as well on some of those dates. So, sometimes there is a little bit of difference but I would argue that right now, the gap between the weeklies and the monthlies is really closing and we just need to realize that yeah, you know what, we’re trading an option. Also, you know, I don’t have the stats with me, but most of the stocks on the S&P 500 right now have weekly options as well, and even now I mean if you look, we’ve started to (on the options on futures, on the cash settle indexes like the SPX) we’re now having three expiration dates per week. There’s sometimes with the SPX a Monday and a Wednesday expiration as well, so, the Exchanges have really looked to add product, and to give people really a lot of, you know, advantages of variety. What do you think the advantages of trading the weeklies are? Trading a short term? I mean, I think one of the biggest advantages for me is just how much the market is moving. I’m able to pick a smaller market trend and and trade that micro-trend that week and not have to, you know, sit through a weekend, or two weekends until the option expires.” Sarah: “Yeah, I mean, the market likes to move, right? I’ll make money because everything goes up and down. So I think when you have more choices of when something expires, you’re able to tailor your trade a little bit more, like almost refine it more, because you can make more money in that, by getting in and out of those trades more often and looking for opportunities to really pop. Of course it depends on the strategy you’re using but rather than sitting in something, like let’s say doing a credit spread on a monthly option, which really doesn’t have the premium decay acceleration that we’re looking for, that you can really take advantage of in a weekly option, it just, to me, seems like you have far less risk. You just analyze and create the reasons for why you want to enter something like the credit spread in the first place, and then you get to place your trade and have an accelerated amount of premium decay in the weekly, as opposed to the monthly where, sure you might say ‘oh yeah, you can get more credit’, but you’re just sitting in it, like you’re just sitting there, a week, or two, and nothing’s really happening. I also think there’s a little bit more ‘give’ in a weekly option versus the monthly. So, with monthlies, let’s just talk credit spreads first : With monthlies, the credit spread has to, um, I think you have to be better at the direction, almost. You have to be pretty sure that, if you think a stock is going down, and you’re selling the call credit spread, you really need that stock to go down, because that’s where you’re going to see the premium come out and where you’re going to make some money off that trade. Versus, in the weekly option, because you already have an accelerated amount of premium decay, you can kind of be a little wrong. The stock can just stay still, and you can still make money in a short amount of time, which I think is so key. You don’t really have that advantage with monthlies. What are some advantages, you think? Let’s talk specifically in terms of strategies like credit spreads or premium time trades.” TJ: “Yeah, as we mentioned before I think the advantage to the weeklies is just – I can get in a trade Wednesday or Thursday that expires Friday, and I can get in that trade and I can pick up, say, 30 cents a contract on a credit spread. If I go out a month, I may be able to get 50 or 60 cents, so it almost, to me, makes more sense to be in the trade a day or two, or three days, rather than three or four weeks, and do that same trade week in and week out, and even generate a little bit more in terms of, you know, if the strategy is working out and more credit – 30 cents a week times 3 or 4 weeks versus trying to get 50 or 60 cents out on the next monthly expiration. I think the advantage is that over those three weeks or four weeks that you’re trading, the market isn’t necessarily doing the same thing every week and you can tailor your trades. If I’m trading Wednesday and Friday there’s less of a chance of the market having a big move or abruptly changing direction than if I’m trading this week for three weeks out. I think we’ve seen it in the S&P, I mean everything looks great, we’re above the 21, we’re above the 8, we’re pushing higher Monday Tuesday Wednesday. Thursday we drop and Friday we drop and it’s completely changed how the market looks that week and by trading a shorter term I think we’re able to stay on the right side of the trend more often than not.” Sarah: “Yeah, and that’s a good point too: the market has been moving around quite a bit, and you don’t want to be stuck in trades in the wrong direction. There’s not much you can do with those other than lose money. Whereas, if you’re getting in and out and actually cashing out of your trades, profiting on them and putting that money in your pocket, and then the following week you look to do it again, you can work with whatever direction the market’s moving in that week, as opposed to trying to hope that over the next few weeks or the next few months it continues to move in that direction. I think there’s far less times when you’ll open your account and you’ve seen that the trade has actually swung down into a losing position, because you’re not holding the trades as long, you don’t need to. You really get to capitalize on the moves. Now, I mean, that’s being said too: Do weekly options work when a stock underlying is moving quite a bit? So, you’re going to have, obviously more premium something as the implied volatility is higher, so things are moving around. Would there be an argument for buying calls and puts in monthlies, then, giving it a bit more time, versus the weeklies?” TJ: “Yeah, I think there is, I think yeah absolutely. So for long puts and calls, yeah, I think you do need to give the stock time to move so I absolutely will buy it, typically buying it three to four trading weeks out, but I’m not going to be looking solely, saying, ‘okay well I can only buy an expiration of the third week of the month, the traditional monthly.’ No, I’ll be buying it, you know, maybe 3 or 4 weeks out, but the expiration will still be in a weekly option a lot of the time. I’m not focused solely on that third week of the month expiration. I’m just going to go out 3 or 4 weeks no matter where that falls. But yeah, I think definitely you do need to give trades a little bit of room when you’re trying to buy a call or a put.” Sarah: “Yeah, I mean you do need some time, but you can still pick your weeks. And, I think the more choice you have, the better. And don’t get overwhelmed by choice, I think a lot of traders, because you do have, in options there are so many different things you can choose, make that a way to really focus on your own strategy, to make it really your own, and test the different ideas so that you’re really maximizing what you’re getting out of the market. There’s no sense in being in one stock when you can make more money in another. I would say that with weekly options, whether you want to trade it within that week or you want to go out a couple of weeks and still use the weekly option as your choice for expiry, there’s way more opportunities to tailor trades based on how you like to personalize things, how you like carry a risk, what rewards you like to work with. Regardless of whether the implied volatility is up or down, regardless of whether the market is moving or not, all of those advantages are still very relevant in weekly options. So, why not get into those and cash out of your trades more often? To me, it just makes way more sense. There’s far less risk than sitting in something and letting it go day after day, after day in the wrong direction when the market’s moving all over the place. So, I think this was a good talk and honestly, I actually believe that moving forward, we’re really not going to see new trading instruments come on, with only monthlies – I just think that weeklies is just the future. Or, it is the way that people trade now and it’s important to be able to adapt to those strategies in a modern market that we’re seeing today, because of all the advantages that we’ve outlined. So I did want to make sure that I’m mentioning in this podcast that reviews are really important and I would really appreciate if you guys enjoy the podcast, then post a review up on iTunes or any place that you like to post reviews about not only our podcast, but of course our trading room for many of you who are also members. Feedback is really important and an honest review is very helpful for everybody so I would appreciate that, if you guys could do that. Do you have any last minute words?” TJ: “No, I think we’ve covered it! I think weeklies… the one thing that I’ll leave with is that I don’t think we should be thinking of them as weeklies and monthlies – they’re just options. Pick the expiration date that you want to trade!” Sarah: “Good point. Alright everybody, have a great week in the market. We look forward to talking with you again. Take care!  

Sarah: Hi Everybody, Welcome to the SCT podcast, this is episode 29 and in today’s show what we are going to talk about is “Selling Puts”, it’s kind of a strategy that everybody seems to know about or have an understanding of how to do it but it is interesting that when you actually get into trading it, is to especially why you want to trade it, everybody has all sorts of different reasons. So, we are going to explore this strategy in today’s podcast and I have TJ here with me TJ: Hello Sarah: we are each going to talk a little bit about how and why did you, you will get both of our perspectives on it, so I think that should be quite helpful for everybody. So TJ can you start us off by just explaining a little bit about what is “selling a put”? TJ: Selling a put is, your assumption is that the market is going where the stock is currently trading and hope that the stock stays at the same price or moves up by the expiration date of the option, what happens is when you sell the put, you collect the premium and if the stock price expires above the strike price of the Put, you get to keep the entire amount of the premium. Obviously if the stock price pushes down below the strike price of the put then the position begins to lose and you actually have to close out the position by buying back the Put for more than you sold it for, which creates a loss. You can also take assignment of the shares as well, if you take assignment on the short Put, you are actually long shares in your account, so there’s a few strategies there that we can use. Sarah, what market conditions do you like to sell Puts in. Sarah: Okay, Yeah, you have actually got into strategy and just for people to summarize about what it actually is, is essentially what you are doing is trying to collect some premiums or trying to make some money by trading at a level where you don’t think that underlying is actually going to go and that’s essentially what a strategy is. Now, people use it for all sorts of different reasons and there is some, certain times that I think is a good time to trade it and other times that I actually think is a really bad time to trade it. But I think it is really important to mention that sometimes if a strategy sounds too good to be true then you can get load into expecting a strategy like this to work a 100% of the time and it is really important that we get into this discussion about selling puts is that you, I think everyone needs to understand that this should be part of a diversified strategy in the market and if all you are ever doing is looking to just sell puts, I think that you are going to run into trades that aren’t going to work and a problem with the strategy is when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work and if you don’t really know how to deal with it at that point, that can really end up hurting an account. So the first thing I guess, I want to mention is, it’s a great strategy, but it can’t be the only strategy because if all you have to do is go out and sell out puts on everything, everything will be fine until it doesn’t work out and I just want to make sure we are making that pretty clear. I think it is a nice way to collect a little bit of premium, I think what’s important though to mention because you're selling puts is it’s a small amount of money that you are taking in and you are basically taking in that amount and you really won’t make it anymore if you are just talking about purely selling a naked put. So that strategy alone when you go and look at the stock, let’s use stocks as an example, you can do it on a bunch of stuff but if you go and think ok, that underlying is going to move higher, so I just want to be able to take advantage of some premium that is sitting below the strike where it is trading and I don't really think it is going to go down there again so I am just going to trade there, then fine and certainly a stock that is trending would be a better stock to trade than naked put on rather than something that is consolidating and moving all over the place, so that will be a good time to trade it, I am assuming you follow the same kind of rule that you are going to be trading in a naked put in a trending stock. TJ: Typically yes, yeah absolutely trading it. I also trade them in a sideways stock too, I think if you can sell naked pots outside of a consolidation range, a lot of the stocks will consolidate for a week or two or even longer and you are able to rip weekly’s, the advantage of Weekly options go in and sell that put a few times, while the stocks consolidating Sarah: Ok yeah, that's true but why would you do a naked put on something that is consolidating instead of doing something that is a little more like an  where at least at that point you are margin requirement is quite less and your risk is less. What would be the advantage of doing a naked put on something that’s moving sideways? TJ: Well typically if a stock is moving sideways, the volatility at that point has decreased, you are not getting as much credit, so the naked put allows you to move a little bit further away from the prices currently trading, giving you and little bit of an extra buffer on one side of the trade so you can go out and you can go, maybe two or three strikes further away than if you were to do iron Condor at that then you need to get closer. Sarah: Yeah that is true and I guess it also has to do with the account size you are trading with too because the reality is some of these naked puts are going to have pretty high margin requirement, Are they not? TJ: That is true, but there is also, if you sort stocks by price as well, for example your radar screen and you watch list, you notice that there is an awful lot of stocks that trade below $100 and if you are trading a stock that’s $18 or $20 or $30, to sell naked puts on it the margin requirement is not that high. Absolutely, I don't sell naked puts on PCL on a $2,000 stock or on Google or on Amazon having to trading up around $1,000 right no. So yeah absolutely the margin requirement is higher. It also has to do with the volatility, so a lot of times we have to keep in perspective to that a lot of these strategies that involve selling put you sell them so and you are literally collecting pennies and for a lot of traders they are barely covering their commissions every time they sell these puts. In short enough 98% of the time, they work out what is that 2 times out of 10 or 2 times out of 20 even were it doesn't work, that ends up eating up all of your profits on those trade, so on the service I think there is a lure of easy money. But we have to look at the price of the stock and the credit you are collecting and lot of the times it’s pennies, it's pennies that you are collecting during that but trade for 3, 4 weeks maybe 5 or 6 weeks with a lot of these strategies. Sarah: Yeah and that is exactly why I don't love selling puts and I would sometimes pick different strategies, you have actually identified it right there, is because once you get in that trade there is no possibility of making more and to me why would you sit in a trade when you are open to risk and you can’t make any more money and all you really have to do is sit there and it is almost like a pile on in the market and say "here I am I really hope you don't notice me, I can't really do anything about it but I am just going to sit here", so to me that kind of bothers me about the strategy, so certainly that’s why, I guess I will stick to trading it when there is something that has a trend because at least then I have that direction to hopefully keep price away from me because I am worried about being that pile on that's huge and everybody is going to see it and I don't really want anyone to see the trade I am in. TJ: Absolutely, everybody thinks that, oh, the put that I have sold is far enough away, price might go through 50 Cent or $1, I will be OK but a lot of times people are trading the strategy around the wrong times. For example, earnings, so they will trade thinking that the stock might move $8, it moves 16,  $8 against you and now you are way outside on this put and I think the other thing as well is that the people that sell it successfully or selling way out of the money and are adjusting there, they are adjusting a 15 Cent credit where it goes down the 12 cents they were adjusting, a very finite adjustments and I think that a lot of traders don't see that there is like the grey area that makes them work and the other thing towards the lure of profits and I think that what happens is that a lot of traders start selling them and the first bunch work out great, and then you say, well, you know what, if I am getting 15 sent successfully well here is 30 or 40 cents and now we are trying to collect 30 or 40 cents or 50 or 60 Cents on trades and it just drops the probability of success and that is going to be on one those trades where you end up getting hurt on the trade and at that point you are kind of bruised and you don't want to trade them again where it is not necessarily the strategy that didn't work but just kind of the greediness or the application of it. Sarah: Yeah and so true to mention that when you are trading, learning textbook of what a strategy is and then actually going out and putting it on in the market can be two very different things because the theory of the strategies sounds fantastic and I think that's why a lot of people say they trade it because it’s kind of easy to get and in terms of options with all of these multi like strategies, it is pretty simple you go and look for an area where you don't think it is going and you just sell the put and hope it doesn't go down there. I mean it is a pretty simple concept in a book, but applying this and making it actually work over a long term in the market isn't as easy and I can't tell you how many times we both have had them. We had emails and discussions with people say that this is the strategy they use, this is the only one they use, this is all they do it and then you just say OK great and then what happens a couple of weeks a couple of months later is we get a horrible email from them later on, it says, Oh Man, probably I should've listened to you because the strategy isn't working for me anymore and I have taken the strategy that worked really well say 10 times, but these last couple of really wiped out all those profits in all those other ones because I was taking such small profit, I don’t know, just a word of caution. I do want to come back to something you said earlier as well which was about trading cheaper stocks, so was curious about what your opinion was. So with cheaper stock, is really selling a naked put kind of the only thing you can really do in cheaper stocks if you want to sell something. TJ: I think it is a good strategy if you want credit. I think it is one of the few credit strategies that you could use on an inexpensive stock and I guess when I am speaking about in expensive stocks, really anything kind of under $50 I think is pretty inexpensive. Obviously other strategies that work are the tried and true but long  puts, long calls debit spreads as well where you are buying but on the credit side I agree with you that it is the selling of the puts that really allows you to a little bit more flexibility. Sarah: Yeah, as I said like it is a good strategy and there's lots of reasons and ways to place it, but it doesn't have to be the only one, so let's talk about getting out of them. So another popular way, obviously everybody just wants to sell the naked put and the trade works that you don’t have to do anything, that’s fantastic. So let's talk a little bit about when you are in the trade and you either made some profit what you do, or you are losing because it has come down to the strike you sold, what do you do, do you want to talk about some of the things you do first or do you want me to go first? TJ: Yeah if I am trading naked puts, really the expiration is either same week, so 2 or 3 days later, trading on a Tuesday or Wednesday for Friday expiration or maybe a Thursday or Friday for the following week, I am typically not adjusting or rolling the trades there is typically not a lot a time to do that, they either work or they don't. I will just end up exiting the trade if it comes down into or close to the strike, obviously depending on, each trade is different when it comes back down into the support, support levels that I previously identified, I am most likely looking to potentially exit trade at that time and just taking a loss and moving on. I think a lot of time if you start adding and changing things, it really changes the dynamic and doesn't necessarily always work out better at the end. And like you said in the previous podcast, most people wish they had the stock option adjustment, the redo button for adjustments that gone down this path. By the time they get to the end of this windy road, half of the time forgotten why they trade in the first place and are losing more money than they realize that they are losing. The other thing that I do frequently do, I mostly trade in selling puts because I want to own the stock, so for me if it pushes through this strike and it still again hasn’t gone through major levels of support, it still looks like a great trade something that I want to own, I will just take an assignment on this stock because it is intended into a covered call strategy or just own the stock if I want to, so for me it is really why do I get into it, most of the time I am showing that because I want to own a stock, I want to take assignment, so I am either getting it for a loss that really breaks below but if it breaks below a little bit I just pick up the stock. Sarah: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to do it and it is a nice backup. It is always nice to have a plan B without having to adjust our role and that’s really what it is, so the same thing, when I am looking to do that, I want to take the trade and a stock that I don't mind owning the stock, sorry, does that make sense, I want to trade the option by selling and then if it doesn't work for me so if we end up having an option that has some value at that point then, I just take the stock instead and then of course you can roll out into all sorts of different trades there and you can keep making money on that. So I think that's something that’s really important and that’s absolutely kind of a great way especially when you are talking about the stock there are 50 dollars and under with that plan in mind to be able to pick up the stock, there is more room for you to deal with in terms of what account size you are trading with. So that is also something really good. So I also just wanted to talk about, I just got out of HD today and I know that by the time you guys hear this, it will have moved on from that trade but I did just sell naked put in HD and I originally have sold it for 60 Cents and then today I got out of it and I made about half, so I think it was about $30 profit that I got out of the trade and that was only really after a couple of days and I want to mention that as well in terms of the positive side of that, so by taking it in something like 60 Cents and I can sell that back at 30 cents that is a really great return and I think it is important that we look at the percentage of return on a trade in order to decide when to get out, when it is working for me. So just because I took 60 cents, it doesn't mean I am going to hold this trade to the very end to make 60 cents. If there is a nice golden opportunity for me to get out of the trade and make $30 in a couple of days to me that makes way more sense to take the trade off and cash out and put the money in my pocket than it is to sit in it for another 2 weeks until the trade expires even if the stock are fine and I didn't really need to get out of it but to me that was just easy money to take off. So do you always hold your naked puts way till the end or do you get out of them quickly for profit I mean? TJ: Typically I am selling them in stocks that I want to own, so the premium I am collecting, it may not at the time be enough to really make sense of selling it so I will hold them till the end. I am collecting 30 cents of premium or 40 cents right after that and I am making 7 or 8 or 12 cents on it that’s probably not enough, that is not going to be enough for me, so I will wait into expiration but absolutely if you are selling if you are able to sell that put for a 80 cents or a dollar and you can make 30 or 40 cents on it in a week or 10 days, yeah I absolutely agree and that is the thing we were talking, we did a course on Cover calls and actually a lot of it is the misconception of  and I think it is the same thing with selling options is that paper profit, so for example your HD, you had 30 cents or 40 cents of potential profit in it, that's what you have today as you mentioned in 10 days who knows, that paper profit may have turned into a loss, so the only way to profit is to absolutely realize the cash out of the trade to turn that paper into paper money, like you said, I completely agree the only real profit is when you sell, so taking that 30 or 40 cents absolutely, like you said 50% profit on the trade is absolutely fantastic and it is much better to take 30 cents on the trade then in 8 days oh well you know at one time I had this paper profit, it is nice to talk about but until it's in your account it is not real. Sarah: Absolutely, unrealized PNL is not the real thing, you want the hard cash you want that profit in your account that's really what we are all after here and that's really what we do I think really well and I think we both can give ourselves a nod here in the trading, I think we do a really great job of cashing it on the trades and profiting really nicely on the trades that we have got. So, I don't know I do think in summary that it is a good strategy I think anyone that's doing it kind of has to have the reason why and again you want to be able to build that case about why that strategy is good to trade v/s another one I think we have outlined a few of them specially in terms of determining the price of the underlying whether or not that's a strategy for you, picking whether or not you like to do it when it is trending market or consolidating. Everyone is going to have a different flavor and a different spin on it but it is the strategy that you and I both use and it can be really great. Of course I do just wanted to throw out that the margin requirement on those are going to be different and some people depending on what kind of accounts they are trading, you might not be able to sell to do that strategy too. So, just to make sure for everybody who is listening today that you go and do that research on it as well. I don't want people getting into something without them really understanding the whole bit. So I hope you guys found this really helpful, I think it was a good discussion, it is actually quite interesting to hear us each explain. I found it very helpful to hear TJ's perspective and how to trade the strategy. And hey, if you want to actually see us trade live in the training room, because we go through everything all the time and was another good week of trades, so I look forward to see you guys next week, please review the podcast and email podcast at shecantrade.com if you have any future ideas that you want to hear us to discuss. Happy trading, everybody.

Sarah: Hi, everybody this is Sarah Potter from the SCT podcast. We are at episode #28 and I have TJ here with me.   TJ: Hi, everyone.   Sarah: So in today’s podcast, we are going to talk specifically about adjusting, and rolling trades. Doing something with trades, if they haven’t really worked out the way you wanted them to. We’re going to talk about how and why you want to that. So first off TJ, I hope you can explain a little bit about what is the difference between using the term adjusting or rolling when it comes to trading?   TJ: Well, I think they’re pretty generic terms and different traders will use them differently. Usually for me, rolling is taking the same trade and moving it out to a different expiry date or a different strike price. Whereas, adjusting is changing the trade a little bit. So adding a leg, adding some stock to the trade, for example, to turn a short call into a covered call. Something like that where you’re changing what you’re doing, changing the intent of the trade.   Sarah: Yeah, you’re so right. I find that in trading, it’s kind of hilarious how everybody takes a different spin and take on different terms, I do find that a little interesting. I agree, so when you’re doing an adjusting and rolling, they are a different way to look at a trade but ultimately, what you’re doing is looking at an existing position that you have open, and trying to make a decision about whether or not you need to add some more risk to it to have a more favorable outcome than you have now. So TJ do you roll trades and when do you decide to do that?   TJ: Typically, I won’t generally roll a trade because most of the trades I’m doing are in weekly options and I’m only in a trade for maybe three days, four days. So we can adjust the trade or roll the trade but there’s not a lot of time to do it. So generally those weekly trades, we’ll just exit for the loss and regroup either back into an option in a few weeks once the chart pattern gets back to where we like it, for a new entry or we just get out for a loss and move on. And I think what we have to remember too and a really good point for any trader, is that no matter what you call it, adjusting or rolling. It’s placing a new trade, it’s adding risk to the trade, you’re adding an additional, potential of loss in hopes of making back what you lost on the first leg of the trade. But it is a new trade and it is adding risk so you really have to ask yourself, is that something you want to do? Is it better to take a small loss and walk away or is it better to potentially take a medium or large size loss with the hopes of winning back that initial loss. So for the short trades, no I don’t. I usually get out and move on. For some of the longer term long puts and calls, covered call position, protect puts, yes. And even if it expires three or four weeks out or longer is much easier and a much better candidate for adjusting or rolling and yes, on a case by case basis I will. I don’t think there’s any point of extending a trade for months or weeks or even a year or so just to break even at the end. I think it’s stressful mentally and stressful on your wallet a lot of times. What do you think about adjusting versus rolling do you do it? What’s your opinion Sarah?   Sarah: Well my opinion at the very beginning is I don’t ever really want to be doing that. That is never my goal in the trades and I think that is something that’s important to point out. There are strategies out there in the market that basically somebody is setting up the trade and their plan is to adjust as they move through that strategy and that’s really not something that we do in our room and I’d say that we’re both the same way that way. When we’re originally setting up our trade and deciding where we think something is going to go, choosing a strategy, the strike and the timeline accordingly, we’re looking to hit the home run. We’re looking to actually hit those targets from the beginning without having to adjust versus there are some strategies out there where when you place the trade your plan within the timeframe that you’re still in the trade is adjust the legs on either side. So we should mention that that is one strategy altogether. I don’t do that. For me if I’m going to adjust or roll a trade, I will do it occasionally. The only real times that I’m really even going to consider it is when I can still look at the underlying. I’m still going to look at a stock for example, and say yes, I still think things are moving in the same direction than I originally thought when I placed the trade. But along the way something has happened but now when I’m towards the end of the trade my assumption of where I think something is moving is still the same from the beginning I’ve just let’s say, ran out of time. So sometimes, if I still think the stock is going to be moving higher but my option is about to expire or time is influencing too much the price of the strike that I’ve purchased, I might have to roll that trade out or adjust it a little bit so that I have more time. So I will do that. I also will keep in mind how the market’s moving. So in fact if I look at my trades over the last couple of weeks, I actually have adjusted and rolled a couple. I think there’s specific links to why I’ve done each of those trades. I mean in the trading room we’ve talked specifically, because I always do that whenever we’re in trades, I always go through each one of the trades in the room and we talk about why we’re managing some, why am I exiting some, why am I taking profits here, and all that kind of things. But if I look at some of those the reason is one through earnings, so sometimes if I want to take advantage of an earnings announcement and let’s say I’m in a long position and the stock hasn’t popped out yet but I think that earnings is going to make that go a bit higher so I roll because I want to be involved a little bit longer. I will shift the trade. Again, making sure though that my assumption continues to be that I think things are going higher and so I’ll take the time and buy a little bit further out in terms of expiry to now take advantage of something like earnings. I will throw those on sometimes. And then also, if you’re in a trade, and let’s say it’s a couple of weeks out and we’re sitting in that trade and we’re waiting, and waiting and it hasn’t popped up yet but think it’s going to and all of a sudden one day there’s something that has happened that moved the market that wasn’t anticipated. So sometimes like some news events or something that has really changed the tone of the market, then I look at that stock I think okay that day alone really changed the move so let’s say it sold off quite a bit but I think it’s coming back quite strong very quickly. And so as long as the underlying assumption is still true, I still think it’s long, I will roll the trade out again. That’s an example of when I would also roll because I think again, it’s just time that I need on the trade as opposed to strategy. Now, if we talk specifically about adjusting TJ would you say you do more adjusting or rolling more often?   TJ: I do more rolling. And I agree with the premises. Usually, when I’m rolling it’s for extra time. So the stock is behaving the way that we wanted it to however the option, the expiry date that we chose is coming up really quickly. Trend is still there we just need to buy ourselves, literally, buy ourselves a little bit more time in the trade and just extend that allowing us to be in a winning trade. We’re not going to extend for time as if the chart pattern looks completely different than when we entered the trade and then a lot of people use rolling just to extend, extend, extend and kind of deny the fact that the trade’s not working but I think a lot of times it’s just like a bandaid you just have to rip it off the faster, the better and move on. Time that's a really good candidate that we've used with success. A number of times in the ETF, USO, it's a really inexpensive ETF trading anywhere right now kind of between a $9.50 and $11. You can pick up options pretty inexpensively on USO and you can look to, if USO makes a move, percentage wise you're looking to probably make 50-100% on that option's trade. So you're looking to turn that 15 cent option into a 30-40 cent option. And so in that case because you're looking for that to double or a little bit more price of the option you can afford to take that a couple of times. You can afford to adjust that trade a couple of times and still know that okay USO is in a really good trend. We just need some more time. So for example in a USO's bottoming out and I'm buying the call it slows down for a little bit and you know they say the $9 or $10 call that we have in the markets move sideway since we got into it. You know if I paid 20 cents for it, and I'm looking to get 40 or 50 cents out of it when I sell it then I can take that 20 cent trade I can take it twice and break even or more or do better on that trade. So I think there's some stocks in ETF's that really lend themselves to it and for me it is inexpensive ETF's or stocks that can move a large percentage in that USO is that one that we've adjusted with quite a bit of success.   Sarah: Yeah, you have done well with that one. So how many times would you roll something. Like at what point is it just too many times?   TJ:  I think for USO I'd probably take two tries at it. Especially now, how the charts are pretty well kind of locked between that 9.50 and 11 dollar range is if you're buying a call at the bottom at 9.50 or you're buying a put up at 11, you're usually still in the same trend. So I'd be buying my call and usually what happens is it's not moving fast as we thought was going to so I'll extend it. If it reverses for example, if I've bought the call at 9.50 and then all of a sudden USO's trading at 8.75 or 8.50 I might take one more shot at it because it's just broken through support and we might get a bounce but that's about it. If the trend is changed, I'm not going to keep reversing my position on it just to kind of hold on the trade.   Sarah: Okay, I agree I usually find two rolls is really the most for me where, okay I just have got it wrong at that point. So after two times it's just I need to move on from the trade or take a sign with the stock maybe. But I have got something wrong here and it's like you said, time to pull off the bandaid. So that kind of brings me to a good question that I think people want to hear about is, when you start rolling or adjusting, whatever you're doing, are you at that point changing the goal of your trade to just break even or are you rolling and adjusting and you're still looking for a reward or profit on the trade?   TJ: Yeah, I think that's a really good point too and that I hadn't really thought of that too. And it's a lot of how I trade and what I talk about is well is that when you are the premise for me when I adjust or roll is to make back the loss. So I'm looking at if I've lost, say 30 cents on a trade, I'm looking to exit the next trade the adjusting trade at around that 30 or just a little bit more. I'm really just trying to break even, cover commissions,  get out of the trade for 0. I'm not really looking on the second trade to go in and double up or triple up on that second trade and I think that's where a lot of people end up losing in adjustments because they see the profit, they've broken even and then they're trying to make money on that second trade and I think a lot of times, they're trying to make too much and it ends up retracing and they end up losing twice. So I don't know, why Sarah do you think that? why in trader's minds and I've asked myself this and I've asked room too, it never really got a great answer is, why don't people think adjusting or rolling is taking a new trade? Why do they talk about it like it's just extending in it has zero risk proposition with only gains to be had?   Sarah: You're so right actually. Sometimes I think probably because it's another term and I think we hear from brokers a lot like, let's just put out on the table that when you're all trading, were trading through brokers and what do brokers want from all of us? They want us to trade. And so sure they want to trade too, they want to make money, we want to protect our profits, we want to limit our risk, and of course everybody's looking for that one cash cow of a trade out there but we also do hear from brokers a lot that say, that explain rolling and adjusting as not necessarily a new trade but giving that first trade a second chance. And I think it actually relates to who we are as people and I just want to throw trading here on one side. Also look at everybody as a trader and the psychology of it all. I think every time any of us place a trade, we want to give things the benefit of the doubt. That it is going to work out. We all want something to be okay. We never want to set up something for failure. And I think sometimes when you're trading, it's important to be very conscious of that because when we start making those assumptions and thinking oh gosh I really hope it works out, this has to work, this has to work. We've really moved away from rational decision making that you need to make in the trade. And I think people just jump to this idea of it's okay, I can adjust. I can roll and it will just hide that and I don't have to deal with that right now. I can just move it out a little bit further. And I have to say that might be good in the short term but in the long term that can really bite you. I don't know if I'm allowed to say bite in the ass but it can really hurt you. And sometimes like you said, taking the band aid off quick or slow either way it's going to hurt. So what's the best way to actually get back on track? And sometimes because we hear from brokers about how it's okay we can hide this. It's okay, we can move on. I think people stop remembering that it actually isn't a new trade. But I like what you said, I think that's actually a good way to counterbalance that. So a solution into thinking that way is when you do start adjusting or rolling, rather than now looking for profit, is you're just really looking to break even to make back some of the loss and to cover commission. And that's another thing too here. We haven't really talked about that and ‘commissions’ can be another good podcast down the road. It's just talking about how conditions influence trading and that's another topic that we really don't hear about very often but it affects us every month and it affects our bottom line because we are all retail traders and we're paying commission. Let's mark that down as an actual theme to do cause I think that would be a good discussion. And I think that leads me into another idea that I wanted to make sure we're talking about, is that when we're adjusting and rolling, there is no undo button and I think that a lot of traders wish that once they start getting into adjusting and rolling that they're, secretly in their minds, they're thinking there's an undo button. And I would totally admit, I have trade right now that I wish there's an undo button on. So here's an example of a trade that's not working now, with you guys we're completely open and honest about trades, so here is one with DG I am in. I bought a call. It was long in position and then DG sold off. So I decided while I'm going to make an adjustment to that trade, I'm going to sell 72's and hold on to my 74 long position. So essentially creating a credit spread. And then lo and behold, what happened today DG shot up through 72. Like oh my god, man, where's my undo button?  I didn't have it. So speaking of adjusting and rolling,  I'm actually working on an example right now in DG and making the decision about what do I want to do moving forward. So let's take the same tips that we just discussed in the podcast and add that into this specific example. So right now when I'm in DG and the price of it is higher than the strike of which I sold. I have to make a decision about where do I think that underline is going. Where do I think that stock DG is going to move as it expires tomorrow. And so right now I'm actually holding the 72. I've been paying a lot of attention to how it's been pricing especially into this afternoon and that's really important when you're trying to decide whether to adjust or roll make sure you take good look at that options chain. Really look at and get a good feel for where is volume coming in, where are people lining up on that options chain, where do they put the stakes in the ground about where they think things are going. Use that information to help you with your trade to decide whether you want to adjust or roll. That's very helpful. And make the decision about okay I don't have an undo button here. I already adjusted the trades so I was long to 74 I added short the 72, what do I need to do now moving into tomorrow? For this specific example, in my mind tomorrow I'm going to evaluate; do I want to look to take an assignment on anything? If something has value, do I want to look for that assignment piece so I might be short in the stock if I keep this short position on or do I just want to get rid of the whole thing and say yeah, this is just a small loss and we'll just get out of it.. Do I want to get rid of just the 72's that I sold? So we're going to go through all that scenarios in the live trade room because I think that's really important. But for all of you in the podcast as well I hope you go through a same process of looking at a position you're in. Something I adjusted. I don't have an undo button. I was wrong about the direction that I thought something was moving and so as I move into tomorrow that is the end for me. I tried doing an adjustment on it. I am not going to go out any further. I confess up to it and say yup I got out of four or five winning positions this week and this one isn't working and that's okay. And I'm not going to continue the risk on this by rolling this out any further. I was wrong, I tried it once, I didn't get it so I have to make a good rational decision to say tomorrow's the end of this trade. Even though I have the ability and the broker's little light will flash and say hey you can do this. I'm not going to do that I have already made that choice one time and it's time to move on to look for other trades that can make me money. Cause I can make more money in the market being focused on the right trade rather than spending too much time on trades that are wrong. I don't know when you look at trades do you ever have a point where you're like I just have to stop here.   TJ: All the time and it's usually you try once, you try twice and then it's time to move on to something with better opportunity and not dwell or focus on the one trade or two trades of eight or two trades of ten that didn't work. Right? We're always focused on that one or two that didn't work when there's seven or eight or nine that have worked really well. But we're still well, like you said, as humans focused on that and I think, I don't know, I'd like to leave this with kind of a thought too and goes along to the last point in it. I think thought it was a really great point was if I'm taking a second. So for example, I have Apple. I take one trade, it doesn't work, I adjust it or roll it, and I'm looking at that second trade. Why does that second trade have to be an Apple? Maybe there's a better opportunity in a different stock in Google. So why do I have to stay in Apple just because I started trading in Apple? Maybe there's a better opportunity and I can make my loss back in a different stock and I think that's what we have to remember that like you said just because there is that rolling button on your brokerage that makes you that one click roll, doesn't mean you need to use it. And you need to really evaluate at the end of the day, is it better to stay in the original stock, and I think there's opportunity there. Or is there more opportunity somewhere else where I can make more money and I think that's kept me on the right side of things for many years.   Sarah: Those are wise words my friend and I'm sure all of you guys listening to this podcast can absolutely relate to this feeling because this is something that we all deal with. And I hope this has been really helpful for you to hear a little bit about how we evaluate trades and what we basically do with them when they're not working. I think it's sometimes really easy cause we are shorter term traders and we have so many profitable trades that sometimes a lot of the learning can come from trades that don’t work and so happy to talk through all of that. So great podcast today I think this was really helpful for everybody. We would love to hear from you though. So one is, send us an email podcast@shecantrade.com if there's a specific theme that you'd like us to talk about moving forward we're happy to take all of those pieces of feedback and then also please post a review. The reviews are what really helped build this podcast up and helped other people benefit from the learning that's here. So please review the podcast. Look forward to seeing you guys all guys next week and happy trading everybody.    

Sarah: Hi everybody. So excited to be back. This is the re-launch of the SCT podcast. So as I said, I am really excited to have all of you involved and I just wanted to let everyone know because I did have a lot of questions about why we stopped the podcast and what was going on and just to let everybody know, I have just had a second child and so, between everything that we were doing, this was something that did need to be put on hold, but we are all back again and we are actually going to take a little bit of a different approach to the podcast, which I am pretty excited about, we are going to talk about that today. So first things first, I just want to introduce TJ here, we have TJ now being part of our podcast. So do you want to say hi. TJ: Hi guys. Sarah: And I think this will be a really nice perspective moving forward because it will be the two of us so we will be able to discuss different perspectives a little bit more about trading. Certainly trading is all about everybody’s different perspectives and remember for any trade to actually happen, there has to be a winner and a loser, there has to be an exchange of two people’s ideas. So it will be really helpful for us to have more conversations moving forward or even debates about strategies, ways to approach the markets and really how to benefit and get as much out of the market as you can. So really excited about the podcast moving forward and also wanted to talk to you a little bit about how things will change. The biggest thing moving forward is that we are going to focus on one theme per show. We got a lot of feedback, where everybody really liked all the content we had in the previous podcast series but sometimes we talked a lot about the things each show. So, what we are going to do now is pick a theme and from that theme we are really going to focus on trading tips, trading lessons, how to improve, what you can pull out of the market, finding better trades, that kind of things. So, this is my request from you, We need to hear from you guys about what are different themes you would like to hear us discuss in this podcast. So you can email podcast@shecantrade.com. What we have done moving forward for the next few weeks is that we have certainly collected a lot of feedback from all the emails we have gotten for a while and we are going to start working away on those and we want to continue to hear from you. This podcast is really all about you guys. We do this so that we can share information and have great real conversations about the markets and the best shows really come from hearing the feedback from all of the listeners and the viewers. So speaking of which, we also need to have your reviews, your reviews really make the podcast and help raise awareness about what we are doing here. So please make sure that you are giving us an honest review about this podcast and as I said, really excited about the re-launch. So TJ, do you want to tell us a little bit about, do you want to talk to them about when we will be releasing it, what dates to expect the podcast. TJ: Yeah, absolutely Sarah. So the podcast, we are going to get it out every week, it will be released on Thursdays and it will be a new topic, great discussions, hopefully you guys subscribe on Itunes or on your favorite podcast network and yeah, check in every Thursday for brand new content. So, with the markets the way they are, I think there is lots and lots of content we can talk about, had a really great time trading a last couple of months. Definitely ever since November, it’s been an awesome market, so Sarah do you have any favorite trades that you have done in the last couple of months? Sarah: Yeah, I mean, it’s true. We haven’t done the podcast but we have still been trading and the live room has continued as well as texting service. In fact, I started trading four days after having my second child, so really got right back to the market right away because there were so many trades out there and in terms of actual stock picking, I continued to really like the high bid of stocks, so pretty well, if you could recognize those stocks, those names. I like those. And then also, I continue to like stocks that have a lot of history and I find that sometimes some of the stocks these days especially new stocks or IPOs come right in the market quickly and can be a little challenging to figure out where they are moving. I definitely like to look at the history of stocks to figure out how I want to trade them. So if I look back on all of them and still probably and lots of the big names that you recognize, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, those are all really great. How about you, what are some of the stocks that you have been doing about the last little bit. TJ: Yeah, I would agree with you although, I think I have fixed them really, we have been doing some really different things, like with a lot of the stocks that we have been looking at, some names, some smaller names on BIDU, IBM as well, selling puts, straddles, credit spreads etc so I am really trying to mix it up. The market is a lot different now than it was six months ago. And I think the best thing is that I know from personal experience is you can’t get too caught up in anyone’s strategy. You really need to be flexible and adapt to what the market is bringing. Sarah, would you think this can happen in the next couple of months, next couple of weeks. Sarah: Well, I think it’s really hard to project and moving forward in terms of the market, as you guys all know I always talk about how it’s not about me guessing or something is going couple of months down the road, I want to pay attention is what’s happening that day so that I am making appropriate trading decisions. So, yeah it’s really just about what things are setting up within that week and then trying to place trades that time. TJ: So would you think you kind of leaving somebody with a great trading tip this podcast, what would your number one tip be going into next week? Sarah: I will probably leave everybody with a tip that I think is pretty crucial and is really not about just useful for next week, I think it’s kind of relevant for any week. And what I think I would probably leave everybody with, is the idea of ‘what a trader is?’ So if you think about the work “Trader” it’s really an umbrella term and there is all sorts of different types of traders, all sorts of different market and then I think whenever I was searching for trades all the time, we got to see how the market is moving, sometimes people forget that a trader is still somebody who doesn’t trade as well. So, it’s important to have really good trades, smart trades to understand why you are entering into trade, Why you are staying in a trade?, Why you are getting out of the trade, and you don’t want to just place trades to place trades. So it’s really important that everybody is always gathering evidence, the market is always going to shift and always going to change. It will always provide opportunities to trade and it is up to us as traders to evaluate which one is the best one and which one we should wait and leave aside, I think that’s my tip moving forward. How about yourself? Do you have a tip for everybody? TJ: Yeah, I think the tip is to follow the market and what the market speaks to you. It goes along what you said too. I kind of agree more is that, definitely catches the positions. Sometimes it’s better not to trade, but I think just letting the market speak to you and following what the market is doing and not trying to guess where in unpredictable times and we need to make sure that we are trading what we see today because in two days, it can be completely different. Also making sure that we live out at our risk and that we are taking the right risks for the right reasons. Sarah: Right, good tips. So that is really exciting or should I say this whole podcast release is really exciting and I am looking forward to our weekly podcast and as I said moving forward, our new style and approach is going to be a little different, so stay tuned, every Thursday this podcast will be released and we will be basing it around one theme in the market to make sure that you are all getting a lots of information each show. So please subscribe, review and we will see you on Thursday. Take care everybody.

In this episode, TJ steps back a few weeks to review a film that’s been out a little over a month since the film he wanted to see is in limited release and not playing in Nashville at this time. But Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’ is a great film and worthy of a little more attention. So TJ dives in with his thoughts on Sandra Bullock’s performance, the majesty and beauty of the film despite being so CGI heavy, the intensity and more.

TJ Klune releases his next novel, *The House in the Cerulean Sea*, tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17. And due to very real concern for public safety in light of the Coronavirus, his book launch party and subsequent tour have been postponed. So TJ is depending on those of us who already love him now more than ever. What can you do to make sure this book launch is still a huge success? Listen and find out!