Nov 5, 2017
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Imagine giving the gift to your kids of them being able to follow their calling, whatever it is. Maybe they want to be a social worker, maybe they want to be a missionary, maybe they want to be a world traveler. Right now, if they go get a marketing degree or an accounting degree or whatnot, they can't do it. They don't have that freedom. Imagine them having the ability to follow their heart and their freedom, not worrying about money because they know how to go into the markets and just take it out at will. That's what option trading, the way we do it, gives you that opportunity, that ability.
Good morning, Genius Nation! Woo. That was my tribute to Robin Williams and Good Morning, Vietnam. I loved Robin Williams. He was a great actor. I didn't think he was always funny. He was very funny, not always. Amazing actor. I liked his more serious roles a lot, as well. Recently, we just, on Netflix the other day, I was just flipping through and they said, "Hey, Dead Poet's Society." I was like, "Oh man. I'm going to put that on my list because I'm going to watch that one, man."
I remember that one. That was one of the movies that really shaped or ... It's one of my favorite movies. I don't know how well I have lived up to its message. When I saw it, I was young. I don't know how old I was. We saw it in the theater, with my parents. I didn't get the message. Only later on, did I get it. If you haven't seen the movie, I'm going to spoil it in this. I'm going to spoil it for you today. It's an awesome, awesome movie. "Gather the rosebuds while ye may." I don't remember the poet who said that, but it's an amazing line and it sums up ... That line sums up the whole movie.
Basically, in Dead Poet's Society, Robin Williams is a teacher. He goes to, I think it's a prep school. They're not in college yet, but it's a boarding school for really rich high schoolers. Either that, or it's like some small little college, a liberal arts college somewhere. He is a teacher there. I think he's an English teacher, and he takes the class, and it's all boys. The whole school, it's an all boy school. He takes the boys, and these guys are ... They look pretty rich, they look like nerds, virgins probably most of them. Nothing really adventurous about them. He takes them to this trophy case in this school and there's this picture of one of the older teams that, decades ago, where they were standing there with their little football uniforms on or something. At that time, they didn't have helmets and pads and whatnot, so they're just wearing these little leather caps on their heads and cleats. I think they had cleats.
He's telling them to look at that picture, to really look in the eyes of the people that were in that picture. Every single one of the people in that picture is already dead. The message that those people, those dead people have, for these young kids, is to gather the rosebuds while ye may. Meaning, to carpe diem or seize the day. Don't let a day go by where it's just another boring day. Live for the moment. Live your life to the fullest, is the message. That's the whole message of the whole movie.
He shows them this in different, different ways. One of the ways that he shows them is by getting them to change their perspective. Think back to when you were in high school or college and whatnot, and you had assigned seating. You would go and you would shuffle into the room and you would go to your little desk and you would sit down. That is the image that you have of the room. That's what you see, whatever's in your vision, that's what you see around. What if you turn it around and you go and you sit at the teacher's desk? Most of us have never done that. If you go and you sit at the teacher's chair, the whole room is totally different. You can see so many different things that you didn't notice before.
One of the things that Robin Williams does, is he has them come to the teacher's desk and then he has them stand up on the desk, which they've never done before. They're all rule followers. They don't break the rules, they're all rule followers. He gets them to stand up on the desk. Standing up on furniture, with your shoes on. That's a big concept. Not only that, but you got to stand up on the teacher's desk. You could get thrown out of school for something like that. He has them standing up and looking around and seeing the new perspective, seeing how everything looks different. That's just one little tidbit exercise that he had them do.
It's a great, great, great message, great, great, great story. One of the things that I definitely, I want to see it again. I definitely want to see it again, because I haven't been living it. We do think that we are living it and we try to live it, but then day to day grind gets to you and you forget. You get tired. One of the things that is so awesome about having little kids, and this probably happens at the older ages too, but you notice it a lot more when they're little, I think, that they grow so fast. They learn so many new things so quickly. It's like every day I come home, and there's something new. We have three kids, six year old boy, five year old boy, and one and a half year old daughter. She's at the age right now where she's shooting up. I still remember the days when she couldn't even walk, where you'd have to carry her everywhere.
Now she doesn't want to be carried. Now, she runs everywhere ever since she started learning to walk, she wants to go everywhere, and she wants to go quick. She learns all these things, and she's learning to talk right now. Every day, it's a different word. It's so cool. Her mom keeps telling her, "You're so cute, I just want to eat you up. Can I eat you up? Can I eat you up?" She goes, "No, no." She shakes her head. Now she's wagging her finger. She's like, "No, no, no. You can't eat me up, you can't eat me up." It's just the cutest freaking thing.
For those of you who have little kids and those of you who have kids, I'm sure you remember this. I go home, I used to work from home. Recently, I just got an office. I used to work from home and I had my separate room there. I had my office room, and I have my library, so I got two rooms in the house that are all mine, kids aren't allowed to go in. When my older son, my two sons, when they were young, when they were born, they were in the house. We had a nanny for a while, for them. My wife was there for the first one, we had a nanny for the second one. Whenever I got bored or whenever I got tired or whenever I heard them laughing or crying or whatnot, I would always run down and pick them up and hug [inaudible 00:06:52] and feed them and put them to naps. It was such an awesome, awesome time.
For this one, I'm not there. We do have an nanny for her, and the nanny's awesome, but I'm not there every day. It was like, "Man." That was the biggest thing of why I didn't want to get an office. I wanted to get an office, it just got too loud at home and I couldn't get any work done. My hours of work were shrinking because I'm not a morning person. I don't really start my day until 10:00, 10:30. I would go upstairs at that time, start working, and then the kids would come home at like three o'clock, and then that's it. Hey, I'm going to go play with my kids, because I could do that. The style of trading I have, it doesn't take that long. For a while. For several years, it was awesome. I had that opportunity to spend with my kids, to watch them every day as they grow up, to learn what words and to teach them.
All the little things that I was teaching them and helping them with walking and talking and eating and wiping your butt and all that kind of stuff. It's just awesome. Now after the time, I just hit 40, and I don't know if I'm going through a midlife crisis or what, but I'm like "Hey you know what? I really need to get this message about there. It's great that I can trade this way, it's great that I can live this way, but if I can put in a couple hours extra more and help other people to live the same way, that would be my legacy. I think my kids are going to be my legacy so I'm not really worried about that. I don't want statues or anything for me. I think helping more people is, for me, the next stage of growth. I've had Option Genius, the website, I've had weekly training system, the website, I've had other things.
I wasn't really paying that much attention, as I should have, to growing it. It people came into the system, if people came to our website, they had became members, I would do everything I can, or I still do, everything I could to help them out, to teach them, to help them out, to guide them. Now I think it's time to push the limit to open it up, to get more stuff out there and to help more people. For me, that's how I'm seizing the day. I'm making new goals and I'm getting out there, and I'm putting the time in.
I'm still trading obviously, I got to pay the bills, but I am able to, now that I got an office, I'm actually trading a little bit better than before, now that I have an office. I'm in front of the computer more. I'm also helping more people and I'm seizing the day in that sense. I do miss things with my daughter, but I spend time with her when I get home. I spend a good three hours with her every day at home. That makes up for it, I think. She's too little, she's not going to remember anyway.
I noticed that with my older boys, I don't remember a lot of the things that they used to do. I'm getting older or what, maybe there are just too many memories in my head now. I'm not remembering as much. We go back to the movies and I'm like, "I remember you used to say, "Ba-na-na-na-na," like that, man, that's so cute. Really, I'm now looking at the future and what my legacy is and how I'm going to help more and more people, and that's what I want to do. That's why we're getting the word out there. That's why we're doing recordings like this one. That's why we're doing videos. That's why we're doing blog post and more products and more trainings, just to help other people.
Back to my original point with the movie and carpe diem, and it also has to deal with kids. The point I wanted to make is that if you have a teenager or if you have somebody in college or if you have anybody, really, but especially if you have kids. Some pre-teens might be 11, 12, 13 years old. Teenagers, maybe college kids. If you have those, you need to sit together and you need to watch this movie, and then you need to help them, to make a plan or to keep them grounded, because life will make you forget to seize today. I would like you to give them that gift and say, "Hey, you know what? Let's do this together. What do you think about it? What are some steps you can take, maybe on a regular basis, to bring you back and to remember this message?"
One thing I always like you to do is as you are trading and as you are learning to trade, wherever you are on this trading journey, obviously you're probably listening to this because you are trading and you are investing your own capital, teach your kids how to do it. Have them do it with you. They don't have to be masters. You don't have to teach them Fibonacci if that's your thing. You don't have to teach them all that stuff. Give them the basics, show them how it works. Show them how money works. Most kids nowadays have no clue how money works. Most kids who even graduate college still have no clue. The only thing they're taught in college is how to go and be an employee.
Even if you take entrepreneurship classes, even if you take marketing classes and small business classes, one thing is they're not taught by real people who are making things happen every day, small business owners. These kids don't have that frame of reference. Nowadays, with the internet and with all the social media stuff and all this technology that's coming out with the smartphones and the apps and artificial intelligence, the sky is the limit. Kids today can literally change the world and it doesn't even cost that much money. When Facebook started, he didn't pay a lot of money to develop Facebook. He did it himself. He learned to code, Zuckerberg learned how to code, and then he made it himself and then he hired other people that also learned how to do it themselves, and they just built it that way. A lot of apps can be built by kids. They are. There's software out there that can teach you how to make an app.
There was a kid, I was watching these videos the other day. What this guy does is he talks about crypto currencies, which is like bit coin, and Ethereum. There are thousands of them. It's really hot right now, so crypto currency and bit coin is getting very, very popular. It's in the news. What this guy does is he makes a video every day, and he posts it on YouTube. That's what he does. He's went 100% into this bit coin thing, into this crypto currency thing. He spent his time researching it, learning about it, and then he makes a video every day, and he posts it online. He has I don't know how many thousands of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of people are watching his videos, on a regular basis.
The other day, he did one where he talked about how much money he made from bit coin. That was the title of the video, "How I made $100,000 in one year from bit coin." That's what his video was. I was like, "I want to hear that story." I clicked on there, I watched the video, and he was showing how he started with $500. He's a high school kid, he's still living with his parents. He had $500, and he invested in a bit coin and whatnot, but the thing is, that he did not make $100,000 from his bit coin investment.
What he did was he made money, most of his money, probably 95% of that $100,000 that he made, he made from his YouTube channel, where he's making these videos every day, and he's posting them and then he's telling people in the video that, "Hey, you know what? There's this particular broker, bit coin broker, who's really good. You should try them out." You would have a link. If they clicked on the link and signed up, he would get a commission.
He would tell them, "Oh, there's this other company that's doing really well, you can [inaudible 00:14:42] over here." He would get a commission if people bought from his link. He would tell them about something else, and he would get a commission. He made over $90,000 last year, in one year, from commissions from a YouTube channel, without any advertising, without any knowledge, without any education. He would just go online, read the stuff, and then talk about it in his daily video, and then tell people what to do. Basically, he became like an educator. He became a teacher. This high school kid is teaching other people around the world about bit coin. How is he learning?
He's going on the computer and learning and then he's doing the same thing that the people watching the video could do. He's putting it in a video and people want to watch videos instead of going online, learning themselves. They watch his videos and they learn and they buy stuff through his links, and he makes money that way. My point is that it's incredible, the different ways that kids and people can make money nowadays, online.
That old model of going to college and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, and getting into debt, it just doesn't work anymore. You're not going to get that big, cushy job that's going to make you 100,000 or 50,000 or 60,000. Even if you do, you have two or $300,000 worth of debt. That's why we have all these news articles every day, "Millennials don't want to buy houses because they have too much debt," "Millennials are moving back in with their parents because they have too much debt and they're not making enough money."
I had a girl who called me the other day, she's graduating from the University of Houston, and she called me. Her mother knows my wife and her mother asked, "Hey, is Allen hiring?" She said, "Maybe, give him a call. Here's the number." The girl called me up, said, "Hey, you know, I'm graduating from advertising. I got a degree, a major in advertising and a minor in marketing. I'd like to come work for you." I said, "You know what? Come on by, let's talk." The girl didn't know anything. She's done. She's out of school. She did her four years in advertising and in marketing, and she did not know the basics.
I asked her, "What have you done? What kind of marketing have you done?" She goes, "I've done SEO," which is search engine optimization. Basically, that's getting your website to the top of Google. I'm like, "That's cool. I know a little bit about that. I've done that before. How did you do it? What was your method?" She's just looking at me, like I asked her some ... Like I'm an alien or something. She didn't have an answer. She told me she did SEO, but she didn't know how to do it. She was like, "Well, we had one project in school, but I wasn't the main person on the project. I was just helping out."
I said, "Okay. Do you know anything about SEO?" "No, no, I don't know anything about it." Cool, so you didn't do anything. "What'd you do about advertising?" "I made logos and I made graphics and I've done that kind of stuff." I was like, "Okay, well that's not advertising. That's graphics. That's graphic design. What do you know about advertising? What do you know about marketing?" She didn't know anything. Her parents have paid thousands of dollars for her to go to school and now she's out, and she can't find a job.
I'm like, "You're pretty desperate for a job." She's like, "Yeah, I really need a job right now." I'm sure there are other people, like bigger companies, that come and recruit at your school, right? Job fairs and whatnot? Have you been to those? She goes, "I've been to those, I've been on interviews, but I still can't find a job." That's the state of where we are today. What I want you to do is not to put your kids into that same position.
A few years ago, we got a testimonial, or an email, which was a testimonial, and I want to read it to you. It was from one of our long term members. Let me pull it up. Basically, this is his words. He goes, "A success story from my daughter, as she has been learning from your ideas. She is currently 14 years old, a freshman of a San Francisco high school. She started to read your free lessons in August of this year. By the help of her Hong Kong uncle, with $25,000, trading in his account, she started selling SBX and Iron Condors, purely from ideas from your membership.
She has been up three months in a row, generating 12.5%, 14.57%, and 15.25%, with margin requirement of $15,000 each month, which is 60% of her 25,000. She has a profit of $6,365. She uses 25% of her profit for her pocket money, and 75% for cash reserve to pay back her uncle. She lets all trades expire as OG, option genius, designed perfect ranges, and far enough strike prices of both SPX and [inaudible 00:19:36], within six weeks of expiration. The option membership is really brilliant." [inaudible 00:19:42] San Francisco, California.
This was a few years ago and she's much older now, she's probably in high school, maybe even in college. Probably not in college, she's probably still in high school by now. No, she was 14 and she was a freshman in high school. She's probably out. She's probably in college right now. I can imagine if this girl, a 14 year old girl, can learn how to trade Iron Condors by following along with me, trading her own Iron Condors and making 12%, 14%, 15% a month, can you imagine the confidence that this girl's going to have in her life? Can you imagine what it's going to be like for her when somebody comes and offers her a job and says, "We'll pay you 30,000 a year ... Or 50,000 a year."
She's going to be like, "I don't want to do that. I can make my own income doing my own trading. I don't need to work in a cubicle." Nobody dreams to work in a cubicle. None of these kids who go to college today, they don't dream of having to work for a big ass company that's going to pay them some decent amount, but they're going to have to work their butts off for the rest of their lives. Nobody wants that. The old American dream where you work until you're 60, 62, 65, it keeps increasing. It used to be 60, where you could retire with a pension and your company would take care of you, and you would just retire, play golf, travel, that American dream is pretty much gone.
If you look at the numbers now, if you look at the statistics, most Americans have ... Over half of Americans today, over 50%, have less than $1,000 in their checking account, saved. That's their savings. It's heartbreaking. The amount of people that are retiring, baby boomers right now, that are living only on social security, that's the only income they have, it just ... It's crushing. It's soul crushing. We get emails every day from people, "I got laid off. I'm 50 years old and I got laid off and I'm trying to get a job but nobody wants to hire me at my old salary and I have all these expenses, and my kids are in college."
I'm sorry buddy, but you're probably not going to find the same job at a different place, paying you the same salary that you were making. Number one, you're 50. People would rather hire somebody out of college because they're cheaper and they can get pushed around. They can work longer hours. They have more stamina. They remember better. It's just a fact of life. We get emails like that every day. What I want is for your kids to not be in that position. For a lot of these people who email me, it's almost too late. We try to help them, but sometimes you can't. If the only income you have is your social security check, you don't have any money to trade. My thing is not for you. If I was teaching you how to get a second job or something, or get young again, you could use that and make more money. To trade, you have to have some money. You have to have some capital.
For your kids, it's a whole different story, because they have their whole lives ahead of them. Teach them to trade. You're doing it. Teach them what you do, teach them what you're learning. Learn with them. Do it as a project together. Can you imagine the freedom that your kids would have, knowing that they can go to any college that they want? Any college that they can get into? The money will not be a factor. Cost will not be a factor. When I got out of school, when I got out of high school, I got into some really, really nice schools. Ivy league schools. I could not go, because I could not afford it. The school that I went to, Florida State, and eventually I had to drop out of, I went there because they paid me to go there.
At that time, tuition, room, and board and everything was about $7,000 a year. They gave me a financial aid package of $8,000 for the year. They actually paid me $1,000 more than I needed. That's why I went there. I hated that place. Nothing wrong with it, it just didn't fit for me. It's a great school. It didn't fit for me. I applied to NYU and I got in. After my first year, I applied to NYU and I got in. At that time, NYU tuition plus room and board, everything was going to cost about $35,000 a year. Right now, it's a hell of a lot more than that. This is 1994, '95, I'm talking about. At that time, it was 35 and they gave me a financial aid package of about 16,000, which is half, about half.
I told my dad, I'm like, "Dad, dad, you can do it, right? You can pay for it? You can work harder in your business or get loans or something?" He's like, "No. Not going to happen. You can't go." I couldn't go. I don't want that to happen to my kids and I'm sure you don't want that to happen to your kid. If your kid gets into Harvard, imagine you telling him, "Hey, son, I'm sorry. Sweetie pie, my daughter, you can't get in there because I can't afford it. You're going to have to go to a local public school," which is not cheap anymore, either.
Imagine that they can go to any school that they want that they can get into, and cost is not a factor. Imagine that they can choose whatever major they want to study, whatever field of study they want to go into, without having to worry about the money. Some field that excites them. Maybe it's robotics, maybe it's teaching. Teachers don't make anything. People who go into teaching know they're going to be poor. Teachers are pretty much poor. If they really love to teach, they can go and do that because they know that they know how to trade, and that they can go into the markets and take the money when they want it.
I have had people come over our friends come over, and their daughters are ready to go to college. It's like, "So, what are you going to study in college?" That's obviously the first question you're going to ask them. Where are you going, that's the first question, what school are you going to, and then what are you going to study? The response was, "Computer engineering." I was like, "What?" I knew the girl. I was like, "I've never even seen you on a computer. You don't seem to be the engineering type. You're more social, you're more active." She was like, "Well, that's the field that has the hottest jobs right now. That's the hottest industry right now with the best jobs."
I was like, "That's how you're going to decide what to do for your life, based on what industry is hot right now?" She goes, "Yeah, because I'm going to have to take out a bunch of loans to go to school, and then I'll have to have a good paying job to be able to pay them off and have a good future. It was really disheartening. It broke my heart. Being a computer engineer, there's nothing wrong with it. Her father is a computer engineer and he loves his life. He loves his job, he loves his life, but I don't know if that's right for her. It didn't seem like she was too excited about it. I tried to talk her out of it, but at that point, it was too late because that was their situation. That was their thing. Your kids don't have to be in that situation. My kids are too small. They're five, six, and one. I can't teach them right now, but I want to. Eventually, when they're older, I will. I want them to have that freedom to do whatever they want.
Imagine giving the gift to your kids of them being able to follow their calling, whatever it is, whatever their calling is. Maybe they want to be a social worker, maybe they want to be a missionary, maybe they want to be a world traveler. Right now, if they go get a marketing degree or an accounting degree or whatnot, they can't do it. They don't have that freedom. Imagine them having the ability to follow their heart and their freedom, not worrying about money because they know how to go into the markets and just take it out at will. That's what option trading, the way we do it, gives you that opportunity, that ability.
Our trades are done month by month by month. You can if you want, but you can have really, really long one one year, two year trades if you want, but most of our trades are short time frames. You can trade for like three months and then stop, take that money out, and go on a trip. Come back, start trading again. Take that money out, go on another trip or go do something else. You can trade in your spare time. Literally, it doesn't take me more than 20, 30 minutes a day to do my trades and I make a very good income from it. A very good living from it. Imagine that. Imagine your kids had that ability. Wouldn't that be awesome? Could you give them a better gift?
Of course, you can give them a few other things like teach them how to be a good person and how to live properly and respect of other people and how to love yourself and love your spouse and all that, love your kids. The gift of financial freedom? Imagine if you started them on that journey today. Even if you don't teach them about how to trade right now, or trade options, at least get them investing. Open a brokerage account for them, put some money in there. Buy an index fund if you have to. Don't buy an index fund, buy an index ETF, like SPY or IWM. Get them involved.
One thing I did with a friend of ours, she passed away now, but she was like my sister. I'm an only child, but she basically ... We became friends, she became my wife's best friend and I was friends with her husband. The kids were like ours, we would treat them like our own kids. She started calling me her brother, her older brother. She had always wanted an older brother. She started treating me like an older brother. She became my little sister. For her daughter, I think she was 10 or 11 years old at the time, I wanted her to get involved in trading and investing, and I wanted to teach her how the world works, how money works, that you don't have to work for money. You want to get your money to work for you. That was the whole lesson behind it.
I opened up an account for her at Fidelity, and it was a minor account with her mom being in charge of it. Every year on her birthday, she would buy stock. I would tell her, "Pick a company and I'm going to buy you $100 worth of its stock." One year, the first year, this girl was ... She was a normal teenager, but she was a little bit materialistic in things like makeup and clothes and shoes and whatnot. She knew about Ulta. She was like, "I really like Ulta. Does Ulta have a share?" I'm like, "I don't even know." I didn't know about Ulta at the time. We looked it up and yes, Ulta did. Ulta had a shares trading. We bought, I don't know how much it was, but we bought some shares of Ulta.
Since then, that stock has gone up like two, 300%. Every year, she would buy one company. I put in maybe ... We did it for four or five years. I probably put in about 500 bucks. Right now, she just went to college, she just left for college. There is over $2,000 in that account. She was an amazing stock picker for not even knowing what a stock was. That's one way of teaching them. If you don't want to teach them options trading, get them invested in stocks and start with a little bit instead of giving them a big birthday gift or something, that's their birthday present. You can even do that for all types of events, for weddings. Have a smaller wedding, and put that money away for your future. Crazy concept, it might work for some people.
Now that I think about it, I think I've changed my mind. My kids aren't too little. They're five, six, and one. Maybe not the one year old, but the five and the six year old. My six year old already beats me at Chess. I think he could understand how the stock market works. I think it's time to start trading with them, teach them the basics. They won't understand what a [inaudible 00:32:18] is, but teach them the basics. I think they'll get the hang of it. I think they'll be interested. I think they're already interested in what daddy does. They don't know what daddy does, but they're interested. They ask me questions and stuff. I think it's time to bring them on board and to learn. I can't imagine how awesome that would be for them. Crazy.
Folks, that was my message for today. Carpe diem. Teach your kids to trade as you would learn yourself, as you get better. They might even be better traders than you are, which would be awesome, right? Give them that gift. Remember to always trade with the odds in your favor.
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