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Timestamps
Episode Transcript
John Newtson:
All right, hey everyone, I’m excited because we have John Carter here, who has been one of the guests that I’ve wanted to have for quite a while now. So, john, thanks for being here. Yeah, awesome, it’s great to be here, john. So anyone who doesn’t maybe hasn’t been in the industry very long may not be as familiar with you as everybody else that’s been in the industry for a long time.
You founded a simpler trading. You’ve got one of the strongest, I would say, trader education groups in the business, in the industry you have, I’d say you’re one of the groups. You’ve charted kind of your own course, whereas a lot of people have kind of tried to copy everyone else and get kind of overwhelmed by saying, hey, this is what Agora is doing or this group is doing, and you have built, I think, a very stable, strong, healthy business, kind of doing it your way. And so that’s what I want to kind of dig into is to start off with is let’s just kind of quickly walk through your history of Simpler Training and how you got to where you are today.
John Carter:
Now, Sure, and I’ll do. You know. I guess you know there’s a long version and the short versions. I’ll kind of do the short plus version, just for, you know, people that don’t know and I always found, starting off too, it was always interesting finding out, like, what are other people doing? Because I just didn’t know.
John Carter:
And the way I’d started was, you know, when I was, when I was in college, I was trading. I got the bug from my stepfather who’s a broker, so I was doing options stuff like that. I had no idea what I was doing. I went to an investor’s business daily conference. I bought a stock called Iomega and this was gosh. This was dating me, it was in the 95 or something like that. But this is a stock that went. I remember it went from like 5 to 60. And then I decided to sell covered calls on it and then it went to 100. So I just basically locked in a profit, got out and split adjusted. Six months later it was $300. The good news is that I made about $100,000 on that, and in college I was being a multimillionaire at that point. But had I held on, it would have been something like a $1.5 million trade, and so that always got me into this whole idea of what’s that fine line between trading and being patient and stuff like that. So, anyway, as I’m going through corporate world, I’m realizing that that’s not for me. So, anyway, as I’m going through corporate world, I’m realizing that that’s not for me, learned a lot about running a business, but I just realized that it wasn’t a thing.
John Carter:
And so, as I was trading for a couple of years on my own kind of ups and downs, I started thinking like, well, gosh, wouldn’t this be cool. I’m kind of just sitting here talking to my arowana. So I just started posting stuff online and I remember, like on Yahoo Finance, started posting stuff online. And I remember, like on yahoo finance, and I remember, um, I decided to get a website and it cost me twenty five thousand dollars to put together this cold fusion website and it took six months, you know, for developer to build. You know, pretty hilarious considering all the stuff that you get going today. So, anyway, fast forward. Um, I think, uh, for those of you that know hubert centers, he and I partnered up and that was a great partnership for gosh four or five years, and then we kind of went our separate ways. But he was, we learned. I think we learned a lot from each other and we worked really well together during that time, during that kind of sweet spot along the way.
John Carter:
So we just really focused on two things. It was subscriptions and classes, and that was kind of our thing and I remember it’s like gosh if we could just get 100 subscribers. And the whole idea was that I knew from my experience that there was a lot of people out there that were working that were either bored of their jobs or hated their jobs and they’re just like what I wanted. And so I was trying to provide what I wanted. And when I was in corporate America, it would have been so amazing to have someone to say like, hey, we’re buying calls on Micron right now, versus just kind of like I guess you know, for lack of a better term, I had no idea what I was doing for a long time. So my goal was just to provide that service and to say, hey, this is what we’re doing. This is what I’m doing Doesn’t mean it’s going to work or not. Here’s an alert.
John Carter:
And at the time it was like email and it was great and it caught on within I think the first year of business did $100,000 that year, 3 years later had a nice business doing a couple million dollars, and it was me and like four other people and it was great. And so I think for back literally seven or eight years, I just would call it a lifestyle business. And again, now I’ll shorten this a lot but then at some point it’s like okay, how do you turn this into a real business? And from about 2013 to about 2020, really focused on expanding offerings. Here’s some options learning more about digital marketing, building out a team which is hard, and at its peak we got to about 120 employees. I found a great CEO with Brittany Burns and just really had a stellar team, and that was what really facilitated us to grow. And then we did do an exit in 2020. I’m still I still own a third of the company, but I went from being a majority owner to having a third of the company and that’s been a learning experience as well and just seeing how different people view the business and stuff like that. So I mean that’s kind of.
John Carter:
And then so the idea with Simpler Trading was simply like I had built a platform, kind of for myself. So what about other styles? And so we’d have like, say, hubert Centers or Daniel Shea or all these other folks there that could come in and just they would have a platform Instead of. I knew how hard it was to sit there and you’re doing all the customer service, you’re doing all the stuff and you’re trying to trade and you’re trying to educate, and that’s hard.
John Carter:
And so the idea was like someone like Danielle could just come in and say, well, this is what I’m doing and just plug them in, and so that golden was not only serving traders out there but serving I call them content providers, so that they had a home as well. And so that was always kind of the vision and you know it turned into this. You know, fun and wonderful experience. And now, you know, here we are in 2024, having gone through, we were just talking earlier, like I, it seemed like it was 2019 and now it’s 2024. Like that was a really fast moment of time. That was kind of a blur. And now here we are in the markets. You know are the same but they’re a lot different. And you know what are people looking for these days?
John Newtson:
Yeah. So I want to get to that, but I want to keep. I want to kind of. There’s a couple of things that you know in your story that I wanted to kind of dig into a little bit more. One is before the exit, when you were looking to expand and everything, I always kind of thought you had a very unique problem, right. And the problem is is you’re kind of the Bradley Cooper of Finbub, in the sense that he’s a triple threat, right, he can sing, he can dance, he can act.
John Newtson:
I remember like so you’ve got like an amazing real track record that you can show. I remember you would be able to go on a webinar and you could actually pitch which a lot of traders can’t do very well like live pitching. You’re very good at that and while you were pitching you were able to trade and you would often be making money trading live in the webinar while you’re pitching. Like that is not a common set of skills and you’re extremely personable, like you know what I mean Like you build a relationship with people very well. So like didn’t you have like struggles when you’re adding other people, that your marketing model works super well for you and it’s hard to kind of like follow your act.
John Carter:
I would say no, that’s interesting and I think it’s. You know it’s different for everyone, everybody, and I think it depends on their background and my background. In high school I was really in growing up I was really into sports. So baseball, which was a lot of high pressure situations, you know it’s bases are loaded three and two. I was a pitcher and then also I did theater in high school, so you got used to, you know, being in front of a crowd and stuff like that. You know, totally random, right? So so that just got me, you know it was, it was.
John Carter:
It was this almost training for high stress situations, which at the time, of course, I didn’t know that I would be utilizing that in webinars, but everybody has their own. What I found is that, you know is so if you’re, if you’re, have services out there, the most important thing is just kind of you know it’s. If anything that, like the acting part gave me was like I can, you know it’s, it’s really it’s. It’s like look, this is stuff I want to share and maybe if you, you know, if you did theater, you might be able to share it a little bit more. You know, I don’t know concentratedly if that’s the right word.
John Carter:
But you, you know you, under what I learned in acting, has how important it is to like, you know you really got to be focused, like, if you’re communicating to an audience, you have got to be a hundred percent present with whatever you know emotion or point that you’re trying to get across, and that just kind of came naturally. As I’m talking about trading, you know, if I want people to understand what a squeeze is, if I’m, like, you know, looking away and mumbling a few lines, you know so I so, as I’m doing that I really want people to understand like, look, this is really important and it’s important. So that’s my theory is how it works. But in working with people, what I’ve seen too is, you know it’s, if you’re like having a, you know, being able to present, well, it can help, but really it’s the material. So you know, if you’re a great presenter and you got shitty material, you know in the stuff, this isn’t going to work, yeah, it’s not going to last. But I’ve also seen if someone has got really good stuff and they don’t necessarily have to be really personal about it, but they’re just like, hey, this is what works for me Especially. You know people appreciate that too, but I think it’s.
John Carter:
But it is kind of a thing where if you are going to go out there and you know, put your hat on and represent you know yourself out there to the world, you know you kind of want to do it in a way that that it’s that fine line, because it you know, it’s like I always joke it my life would be a lot easier if I was just trading. Right, you know it’s the idea of you know trading, posting a trade, having to answer a lot of questions about a trade. You know that after a while that kind of is like that can get tiring, and so it’s just kind of getting help with that, and so it’s that fine line of you know it’s. You know, look, if you’re getting into this business, part of the appeal is wow, I could you know say you got to.
John Carter:
When I first started I was like, well, I’m trading like a $50,000 account or $100,000 account, but I’ve got another 10 or 15 grand a month coming in from subscriptions. That’s great. That means it gives you a little cushion, you don’t have to worry about a job, and so I think that’s the initial appeal. But from there, the only way Customers vote with their wallets and if you got good shit, they’re going to pull out their wallet and pay for it because you have stuff that’s helping them. And if it’s not helping them make money, so why are they there? So I guess that’s kind of a long answer for people that come on that if they’re not personable, that’s fine, but really hone in on how is it what you’re doing? How has it made your life better? You’ve traded before, and if it was really hard and stuff like that, a lot of other people are going to experience that too. So what are you doing? That’s making it easier or making it less emotional, you know, making it less taxing, you know, just just things like that.
John Newtson:
Yeah, that makes sense and with that, like your like, what’s your product model look like? Um, when you say subscriptions, is it, is it a an educational subscription? Is it a trading service or is it any of a lot of courses? Um, so what’s your product model kind of look like?
John Carter:
yeah. So there’s a. There’s a couple different things. So I would say, like our core, um, you know, we have called what’s called a simpler central room. That’s kind of our core room and I would think think of that, as you know, like the hub. So here’s the central, you know, literally, and we kind of that’s where everybody kind of goes initially and in there, you know, I’ll be in there. We’ve also got, you know, a dozen other traders that’ll kind of come through.
John Carter:
You know, it’s almost like a TV station, like from two to three you’re going to have trendy John, you know, from 10 to 11, you’re going to have Sam, and so what will happen is, as a trader, they’ll come in and the idea with that is that I’m a strong believer that you got to find what best fits your own personality in trading, because there’s a lot of different ways to trade. So do you like to scalp? Do you feel better position trading, just finding that sweet spot that you’re not getting too taxed on your emotions but you’re able to make a living doing it, and so by doing it this way, then everybody kind of go in there and kind of get a sense of you know who resonates with them. All right. So that’s a subscription From there. Though, if people really resonate with Henry, well, henry’s got a service. Or if they resonate with David Starr, david’s got a service. You know, here’s something that’s more Elliott Wave based and here’s something that’s more selling spreads, here’s something that’s more aggressive and directional in the futures markets, so like with JR. So the idea with that then is there’s a central subscription and then from there there’s all these offshoots. So I think we have about like 10 different subscriptions, and you know, and a lot of people you know they get more than one and things like that too.
John Carter:
And then from there, the two main things are um, you know, kind of education classes, it’s like hey here’s, and not so much um, here’s an iron condor, because you can Google that it’s here’s an iron condor, and this is when you do it. So you wait for these three things to happen, and then this is a much higher probability setup to do an iron condor, and so that’s really just kind of it’s the when. You know it’s when is this an appropriate tool to use? And so people, and that’s something I think is super important. And then from there, it’s tools, just tools that can help, and I’ve, you know things like.
John Carter:
You know, the squeeze is something that I’ve known for, like quick hits, and it’s just things that here’s something that makes trading easier and I find sometimes, because the financial news can get confusing, I’d say bad news. Is it good news? Yesterday, meta released earnings and they’re okay, but it got annihilated, and so I see people ask questions about that and it’s like the news doesn’t matter, it’s totally irrelevant. And so questions about that and it’s like the news doesn’t matter, like it’s totally irrelevant, and so we kind of have this joke. It’s like just kind of follow the pretty colors and that’s, you know where the tools and things come in, the things that we don’t do, and this is more.
John Carter:
You know we used to do more live events and we haven’t done those and we maybe do one a year now, just because it’s a heavier lift. We’re so plugged in online, you know, to actually, you know, go somewhere, you know set up a computer and all that kind of stuff. It’s just easier to do it online. But it’s also fun doing live events because you get to actually interact with people and things like that too. Yeah, um, and we used to do more one-on-one mentoring, but again, that’s kind of hard. You know it’s it’s it got at some point. I got harder to do when we were smaller. That was that was easier to do.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and so you have. You have quite a mix than a product that you have. You know, the rooms, the subscriptions, um, how many, like how many tools do you think you have at this point?
John Carter:
80,. Uh, you know it’s it’s like over the years. So so there’s as hey, here’s some lines on a chart that plot out the expected move in these options over the next 10 days, and that way you could visually see that, and so it could be something like that A lot of support and resistance. It really comes down to momentum oscillators and triggers, and that’s going to be a little different for day trading on futures versus, say, swing trading on a daily chart, and so it’s just kind of finding things that you know that work best on those timeframes.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and I also noticed that, and you have a fantastic copyright of Craig Perrine.
John Carter:
Yeah, Craig Perrine.
John Newtson:
Your copy approach is, I would say, sedate’s not the right word You’re more conservative, you’re more authentic. I guess you’re not doing because it doesn’t seem to be as much of the oh, here’s a crazy big idea, um kind of promotional stuff. Um, it’s much more, maybe that, maybe that’s a function of trading, um, the way that you offer it in the education, but, um, how do you think about promotion?
John Carter:
um, yeah, it’s. You know it’s a good question. It would probably be easier if we did say two big promotions a year and really spent months mapping it out and kind of more of a big idea. But I’d say our promotions are more kind of nuts and bolts. This is hey, we’ve got the market. The market has changed a little bit. It’s a little bit more sideways. Here’s what’s working best in this market.
John Carter:
And so it’s not necessarily like this super exciting thing where it’s like you know you’ll hear like, oh my God, this $5 million webinar. But it can be, you know, it can be, you know, break into the seven. You know the lower seven figures or six feet, mid six figures, and and those are those are important because you know, with something like that. So I would say you know, when you have a company, you’ve got overhead and stuff like that too. But it’s the. I would say that the subscriptions kind of pay for the overhead. And then you know anything that’s above and beyond that. It’s going to be something like classes or mentorships or or different things like that and it’s, you know I go back and forth because it’s like we’ve thought about different things where it’s like you know there’s there’s a dozen services we’ve thought about launching that we ultimately didn’t, just because the just because we know how much work it would be in terms of you know, if we’re going to do like, say, a scalping service, all right, well, that means someone’s gonna have to be there. You know, if we’re going to do like, say, a scalping service, all right, well, that means someone’s going to have to be there, you know 24-7,. You know we’re going to have to have a room manned almost 24-7 to capture the overnight sessions. It’s going to generate a lot of questions from people who are newer, and so you kind of think through how, what’s it going to take to fulfill it too? So swing trading is certainly a lot easier to fulfill than that.
John Carter:
But I think one of the things that we do different than a lot of people is that you know our alert services are kind of live. So as we’re placing a trade or an alert, you know you might have a thousand people in the room all asking questions about it, versus just kind of, you know, shooting it out. So it’s harder work, but you know people appreciate it, and so I always try to think of you know. I try to remember myself when I was working in corporate America. You know what would have been a nice service to have, um, you know, an alert service. Just by itself, is is okay. But I remember like I’d have questions like well, why, why are you doing this? You know what, what makes you think this is attractive? And um, so we try to. You know, we try to do that as well.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and to me it’s. It’s almost seems like you have a cultural difference than some other groups in the sense that a lot of times the publishers will be somebody who was a marketer or a copywriter to some degree first, and so they are there. You know, their first thought is the promotion, and sometimes the editorial and the copy and the analysts run second fiddle to that editorial and the copy and the analysts um run second fiddle to that um, whereas you’ve definitely got an approach of like your customer first, trader first, like what’s going to actually work. So when you’re talking about like the like, just the issue of like, oh well, to fulfill this correctly we would need a 24-hour room and somebody in there all the time.
John Newtson:
Um, some other groups that I’ve seen are well, you know, they won’t go that far. They’re like, be like, well, we can sell this, how can we cobble together a product that is functional enough to sell? And so you seem to have a different culture, and maybe that’s because you are the, the, you know an actual trader who trades, and like your, your, but your approach to it is, it sounds to me, like it’s trading and you add marketing on top of it, versus we are marketers who are going to just choose a trading product because we think we can sell it.
John Carter:
Yeah, and that’s a good distinction. And there’s pros and cons, because I know a lot of times we’ll put up ads that next to what I would call more marketing ads, and if someone’s coming into the market for the first time and they see our ad next to somebody else’s, they’re probably going to go to somebody else’s because it’s a sexier ad, it’s 98% win rate and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we find that a lot of times people come to us we’re their third or fourth service that they’ve tried and then they finally feel like, oh my gosh, we got a home, you guys are really trading, and things like that. And so there’s pros and cons of that, because we kind of have to, we’re not going to get as, because we deliberately choose what I would simply call reality, and the reality of trading is nobody really knows what’s going to happen next. There’s setups that create a probability, a higher probability of one thing happening over another, and I think the latest kind of hot craze right now is algos and algorithms, which I think there’s some really good ones out there. It’s it’s the same thing in terms of, yeah, algorithms are going to work great in a certain market and then if the market changes.
John Carter:
You know the algo dies and so you’ve got to. You know, if you’re, if you’re doing that, you’ve just got to a have enough market experience to know that. You know you got to change gears when that happens or be, uh, this great algo that worked in an uptrend, you know, and this whole business is built on it it’ll just die if you don’t have experienced traders, and so I do think it’s important that you have. You know people, even if you’re a marketer and you’re like man I’ve been trading for the last year. This is awesome. You know, for the love of God, bring someone on that’s been trading for 20 years. You know they don’t even have to be a personality, but just so you can kind of bounce ideas off of them because they’ve seen, you know, nothing that’s happening in the markets is unique. It’s it’s all happened before, and I think part of just having been around a while is you really just kind of get that reality check. And while it’s not as sexy as some of the ads that are out there, um, you know there’s, uh, there’s a definitely a segment of the population that resonates with okay, let’s just keep it real. You know we’re here to um, this was easy. Everybody would be doing it. So let’s do this in a way that’s and it’s so important to me that you create a community.
John Carter:
Trading is a very isolating kind of a business. A lot of times if you had a bad day, you don’t necessarily want to tell your spouse about it, but you can tell the other people in the room and they’ll understand. But I do think it’s really just. It’s like if you’re a scuba diver, you know, and you’re, if you’re really passionate about scuba diving, you don’t need some glitzy brochure thing. You’re just kind of like oh yeah, I want to go. You know, I’ve always wanted to dive, I want to. I always want to go diving in the Philippines, you know, let’s. Oh, here’s a, here’s a cool company.
John Carter:
You know that excuse me, sorry um yeah, is that long covid, long covid effects?
John Newtson:
no thankfully, thankfully, um. Well, actually I think, like the on the issue of like oh, is it the pros and cons of of aggressive marketing. Excuse me, sorry. I think more and more people are starting to realize that you build a better customer base with kind of the less hyperbolic approach to marketing, because you have a lot of volatility, a lot of things coming in. But if you’re trying to think of this in terms of long-term value or lifetime value the customers who come in on who man?
John Newtson:
I burned out three other places. They suck and I finally found my home that guy’s probably going to stick much longer. I’m having a community building, building that customer base. That’s like actually there for the things that you represent and the culture that you have. Like they’re going to stay longer. And I think that um and I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been were either a publisher or one of the top two, three marketers in the groups that were $200 million, $300 million, and almost all of them at this point are like I think maybe $30 million to $50 million is probably the right size for a pub, not much bigger than that.
John Carter:
I would totally agree with that, because I think to get to a couple hundred million you know you have talked to businesses that have done it. I mean we’ve always kind of that 30 to 50 million has always been kind of a sweet spot. And I think you know, to get beyond that you do have to. There’s things that you have to do that you know, I think you know are a little above and beyond kind of what I would say is like okay, we’re, you know, you know are a little above and beyond kind of what I would say is like okay, we’re, you know we’re traders and we’re trading, um, and you know, and I think that’s something where you kind of feel that pressure of okay, we got to come up with some big idea and then all of a sudden, you know it can be it can kind of start to veer towards snake oil or it can start to veer towards you know you’ve got you’re either at.
John Carter:
The two things I’ve seen the most that we really try to shy away from is, you know one it’s a fear-mongering. You know the world’s coming to an end. You’ve got to buy silver now at the bargain price at $35 an ounce, never mind that they’re bringing. You know they’re mining a billion ounces a year, right? So, or you know all the claims and all the conspiracy theories. You know, to me that’s just that’s just manipulating people and at some point people get tired of it. The other thing, but you know, but it’s a good front end. You know, fear sells, right, we all know that. And then the other thing is that you know who are you attracting. And if you’re attracting a client that’s got $200 to trade and they’re going to be really high maintenance, that’s not worth it. You know that’s just not worth it at all. And so it’s kind of, you know, I kind of like the filters of you know who’s not going to make it.
John Carter:
You know, who’s going to look at us and say, oh, that’s not for me. I’m looking for something. You know, I’m trying to turn $200 into a million. That’s not great. Go do that, you know. Go try that somewhere else. So I think it is the customer that you want, and then from there you know what kind of company and what kind of culture do you want. You know, and it should be something that’s. I always found that it’s like the more traders that you have in your company, the better, because then everybody is aligned and everybody understands. You know what the client’s challenges are and things like that too. So you know if they call and they’re frustrated, you know they’re like, yeah, hey, I get it I was.
John Carter:
I was in that Google call too and you know it didn’t work out. Um, so it’s really just. You know it’s kind of a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a trading culture and you just want it that wanting that, to permeate through. You know that. They know they understand like what. You know what the hopes and dreams and fears are of our clients, because, man, you know there’s you get really passionate about things like not only is it money related, but you know success in trading means so much and failure in trading is there’s extremes of more than about anything. You know if you’re in a job and it’s not really that exciting, you can find another job. But, man, if you’re six, if you succeed at trading and creating a consistent income that opens up a whole world of interesting possibilities, and then if you fail, not only is it frustrating but it really crushes a very big dream, and so I think it’s just important to have a team in place that also understands that and kind of embraces that.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and the last few years back in 2019 to now, we’ve had a lot of things happen. To now we’ve had a lot of things happen. We had COVID and with COVID the you know the trading boom, kind of the investing trading boom that happened and then we had a pullback after that. That, industry wide I would say, is probably the worst since we since 2009, 2008, 2009. What’s been your experience of that and kind of what, of what? How do you see the state of things right now in the industry after that kind of?
John Carter:
Yeah, so yeah, and I remember 2008 very well and we were, you know, we were a much smaller company then, but I remember, you know, revenues fell about 30% and it took about two years to recover, and you know the difference then. So with 2008, the difference then was that you didn’t have suddenly a bunch of new people trading. You know, you just had a group of people that had been trading for a while and then 2008 happened, and I remember that was actually a fun year to trade, but, you know, not everybody was prepared for that kind of volatility. Okay, so what’s the difference this time around? This time around, you just had a bunch of new people coming to the market I mean, how many millions, I don’t even know but all of a sudden, everybody’s at home, it’s work from home, everybody’s trading, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So when that party came to an end, I know lots of friends who leveraged up and they had a hundred thousand dollars and it’s like you know, a million bucks gone, you know. And and when the, when the downturn started, they kept. You know, they kept their margin in place, whether it was Bitcoin, you know, different stocks, all those things, and so the things that I’ve noticed this time around what the two things that stood out to me is one how many people that came into the markets that had never seen a prolonged downturn, so they didn’t understand things like shorting or stop losses, it’s oh, it’ll come back, and so that was super delusional for a lot of people. So that wiped out some people. But the other thing that happened from there is that you’ve got a group of people now that they got their feet wet and they loved trading and they want to learn about it. So now it’s kind of like all right, so they want to learn. They want to learn to do it the right way.
John Carter:
And so what I’ve found you know I’d say a slight difference now in kind of the general market in terms of traders versus, say, 10 years ago is that it’s kind of this almost done for you kind of a thing. They’re like okay, I get it, but I don’t want to spend the next 30 days learning how to set up these charts and understanding. I get the idea, can you just send me an alert? And I’ve seen that more and more Alerts have always been popular, but I’ve just found more done for you, kind of like yeah, I love trading, but I don’t know if I trust myself emotionally to handle these ups and downs, but if you could just say like, all right, you’re trading a $100,000 account and we’re going to buy $5,000 worth of calls, that’ll help me understand position sizing and stuff like that too. And so that’s one thing that I’ve seen understand position sizing and and stuff like that too. And so that’s one thing that I’ve seen and you know, and from there it’s.
John Carter:
You know, it’s almost kind of like being a sounding board to kill bad ideas. And you know I it seems like once a week I’ll have someone going like is this a good time to buy Peloton? I’m like it’s never going to be a good time to buy Peloton, right? You know, if you play on the junk pile, you know you’re just going to, you’re going to get your, you’re going to get tetanitis or whatever. So it’s really just kind of.
John Carter:
So the idea of you know, helping people pinpoint like this is a good opportunity, but also telling them you know what not to do it’s almost like you know whether a trader is successful today or not is what they learn not to do. And also being able to tell them that like hey, yeah, don’t you know, um, but that’s probably the biggest thing is we’ll get is just fending off questions of people like well, you know, do you think I should load up on? Should I buy a bunch of calls on Meta right before earnings? No, you know, cause you know it might work, but it very highly probability won’t, because of this, this and this, and so I think it’s. You know, it’s almost like a mission to save people from themselves in a way and, uh, you know, trying to just find, you know, the ways to do that.
John Newtson:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I think that. Um, so do you think that the? Um, we obviously had a huge amount of people who came in and so like, for you guys, what do you think? Like the, the rough, rough percentage of people who kind of like are still here from that 21 kind of boom?
John Carter:
it’s a good. You know, we definitely had this. All the same, it was kind of similar to 2008. I mean, we kind of, you know, went and came down about 30 and then, you know, kind of started to bottom out and turn back higher again. Um, I I think what from just from what I’ve seen, is that you know, even the people that say lost money and they’re kind of out of the game for a while, they got their feet wet, though you know there’s still, it is still kind of a um, and you’re and you’re seeing that.
John Carter:
Now, what I’m seeing right now is you can kind of tell a lot by just when you see um like record volume and options. So that’s one thing. You know SPX and all that kind of stuff, and when you see stuff like that, it just shows you how much interest there is out there and how much activity is out there. And now the question is okay, how many of these people are doing it on their own? How many of these people are on someone’s Discord that they saw on TikTok? And then, how many people have found a real community?
John Carter:
Um, and there’s rooms. You know there’s a one room, a guy that I follow and he will. You know it’s crap room but it’s great information Like there’s. It’s old technology, um, you know there’s no screen share, there’s no audio, but it’s great because it’s a group of real traders doing real things. And you know, if you’re a new person and you go in there, you’re totally lost, right, but that’s. That’s the kind of thing is. Just, you know, you want to kind of find these. You can’t be all things to all people you know in this market.
You got to really say okay, you’re an experienced trader, here’s your home. You’re a noob, you know, here’s your home. And just kind of making sure that that’s clear from the outset.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah, I think that one of the things that I had this in my state of finpub presentation, that that was that really struck me was that the when things kind of started to go soft for this industry, um for that period, um, that pullback happens, but retail investor participation in the market continued to hit record highs, and so you can see, like investor participation in the market continued to hit record highs and so you can see, like the participation in the market explodes in 20 during covid and then it stayed high and then a lot of thin pub kind of you know has all kinds of things, all kinds of problems. People pull back and I wonder if it’s because so many people dove in to all of the kind of aggressive stuff yeah, so and were disillusioned.
John Carter:
Maybe uh so I think there’s a couple things. There is what at least I saw, because it’s you know, there’s always that. You know everybody’s a genius in a bull market right, and in 2020. You know 2020 is a great year for trading and at some point, you know, the music kind of stops, and 2021 was a pretty good year as well.
John Carter:
But when it really kind of things change and really I think the one thing here that I don’t hear people talk about, but there’s a fundamental change when interest rates go from a quarter of 1% to 5%, like in six months or however long, that happened so many things that that impacted and it could be a distraction to you know oh, my God, I got to get a mortgage to. You know, that’s going to. Things are, you know, at somebody’s company and stuff like that. But low interest rates facilitated a lot of excess and including attitudes, ideas, because it was always, you know, you’re always like one, you know, one week away from a new home run because some other asset was going up, so you might have lost it in Google calls, but you made it in Ethereum, and so when that party ended and all assets came down and everything got tighter and everything got harder and the government wasn’t handing out money. The difference there with that is before, when people lost money, they could refund their account Like whatever, I’ll just refinance my house, blah, blah, blah. That just all shut down. That’s a big thing and I think a lot of people just didn’t realize that. So that was a big thing. And then from there, if everybody, if there was no guidance, if whoever you were following just didn’t know, like there was a lot of people out there that had services that had been trading for two years Great, they’re doing awesome if they’re buying the dip on Tesla, like they’re killing it. But if they’re buying the, you know, if they’re buying the dip on Tesla from 400 all the way down to, you know, 100 or 150, and everybody’s blindly following along.
John Carter:
So one thing you know, you realize after a while, is people don’t really think for themselves. If you’re buying calls, you might think like, well, I’ve literally had situations where I’ll place a target of like seven bucks and it’ll get to like 690 and start to drop. It’s like all right, guys, let’s take it. But there will be people there that it’s like well, you said seven and it’s at a dollar now, and and I was like and so you got to just really people how literal literal people are on that.
John Carter:
And so it’s, it’s just, you know, it’s just really, it’s almost over-explaining. You know like, hey, you know the market has changed, we’re below this. You know, buying calls on the you know this is not going to work anymore. And so anyone that I think walked them through that process was like okay, yeah, this is not going to be as easy as it was, it’s changing. That’s a whole different experience than someone who’s never experienced that before. And they’re just like yeah, it’ll come back, guys, don’t worry, it’ll come back, it’ll come back. Oh my God, six months later. Yeah, that just wipes people out and you lose trust.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and that’s where it’s interesting, like when I talk to a lot of marketers and copywriters on the um publishing side of stuff that, like um, patrick Bouvier had brought it up too when I talked to him he was, you know, copy chief over at, I guess at the time and now he’s over back at Stansbury um, that interest rates a big cause for for for everything going down, because all the ways that it affects everything.
John Newtson:
And then when Matt Ward and I posted a video about with you know, after the fed was like, hey, we’re not, we’re not going to keep raising rates when we cut rates is here and you’re like, oh, it’s going to be a, you know, rates go down, we’re going to have a boom in months since 21. And my point when I talked to some of my friends in the industry is like, if interest rates affect FinPub this much, then all the things that you’re writing about, how much is it affecting those things? And if you don’t understand, like just the basics of interest rates, like how can you talk about the markets effectively? It’s great when everything’s exploding, like when the world, you know everything’s going up, but like we’re not in that environment again. And how do you, how do you even think about this from an idea perspective if you don’t even have that in your calculus, right?
John Carter:
Yeah, and I, and I think the other thing is, you know we were talking earlier about how you know interest rates impact. But you know, yeah, and I think the other thing is, we were talking earlier about how interest rates impact, but a lot of clients that are wealthy and have, say, investments in apartment buildings or commercial real estate some can always get cash again. Oh, I blew up my $50,000 account. Great, I’m going to come over here, I’m going to get it again. But that situation can change a lot of things. Now I think at some point and this is how I think this is going to go down is that we are going to see kind of a 2008 style real estate correction in. I mean, I would say these cycles, 68% of the time they work 100% of the time, right, so let’s say, it plays out as it has over the last 300 years every 18 and a half years. So that would mean that this next real estate 2008 cycle is going to be 2027. And then we’re going to see interest rates cut, cut, cut, cut, probably back to, you know, less than 1% again, and that’s good, because what happens then is, you know, you will go through a process where all assets rise. Well, we don’t know, that may or may not happen. Right, that’s how what I think is going to happen. But I also like to just tell people like you know, the the environment’s always changing and if you’re in a you know an environment with high interest rates, you know.
John Carter:
Just wanting to understand, you know, in terms of trading, I think it becomes even more. I think one of the things, I guess, if there’s a selling point when there’s high interest rates, is how important it is just to have a steady income to offset debt payments and things like that too. And it just becomes more and more important to look at trading as it’s like how can you do this in a way where it’s not this emotional? I always joke look, every trade doesn’t have to be this journey of self-discovery. You’re like, oh my God, you know the ups and downs and stuff like that, but it’s helping guide people through that. Like it’s just, you know, it’s just a way that, if you think of it in its most simple form, it’s just you know, we’re just showing people how to be Walmart. You know, memorial Day is coming up and there’s going to be a demand for hot dogs. You can sell them for three bucks Great.
John Carter:
Buy them for a dollar now and then, in three weeks you can sell them for $3 versus I think. I see a lot of people come to the market and they’re like what’s the hot stock of the day? I got a SMCI is going up, I’m going to buy calls. Well, it’s great when that works, but when it doesn’t, people lose everything. They just don’t understand that when the game changes. And so part of it is, I think, is our job, is learning, just educating people about that too, and that doesn’t even have to be a class, that’s just hey, here’s free information. That it’s just part of the benefits of hanging out with us is that, yeah, we’re going to give you some trades but also kind of educate you on the lay of the land and kind of you know how things work and stuff like that too.
John Newtson:
Yeah, so are you then fundamentally bullish on trader education as an industry?
John Carter:
Yeah, I am. I just, you know, I think that the the big if there’s a reckoning on stuff like this is that the you know it’s the you know we were talking earlier about. You know it’s just it’s. It’s this kind of like what’s the first? You know it’s all hat, no cattle, right.
John Carter:
If you got to and you’ve got to really be doing something that you know that is working and sharing that with people versus, um, you know some great, uh, there’s a lot of things that look great.
John Carter:
You know if you can really hype them up, they’re going to sound pretty amazing and and maybe that’s something that works in a specific environment. But you know, if it stops working and you keep pushing it, um, you just lose credibility. And so I think it’s, if anything, if anything, what 2023 taught a lot of people is to learn how to be more discerning, and so I think that that’s um, you know it’s, you got to pass the sniff test. You know you got it’s and it’s so tough because you got to look, we all with marketing, you got to get people in the door and it’s. And I always say like, look, if we can just get people in our door, you know we’re doing them a favor. So we got to have something that you know it’s you know, in terms of marketing, that’s something that’s real and true. But you know, you gotta you know, what’s that?
John Carter:
yeah, what’s that fine line? To kind of the. The psychological thing is to kind of at least get them to cross and give it a try, right and um, but at the end of the day, you gotta have stuff that’s and it doesn’t have to be um, you don’t have to have stuff that. I think, contrary, it’s like, you know, you don’t necessarily have to like, oh, my God, this is a. We have this great trader and he or she is doing all these great things. It doesn’t have to be that so much.
John Carter:
It’s just more here’s, you know, actionable information of you know going back to like what not to do. I mean almost just, you know, just kind of being able to, you know, tell people like, you know things like that too. So I just think it comes down to it’s just, you know, for people that are genuine and wanting to share um, and they’ve got some, you know market experience to back it up and they’re not this, you know blown smoke, I mean, I think that’s, you know that’s, if anything, that’s going to be the kind of the, those are the ones that will keep on going, and you know everyone else will kind of have their booms and stuff like that. But you know they can, they’ll bust. You know once that, once everybody kind of gets an idea that you know this stuff doesn’t work. You know doesn’t doesn’t work that great all the time.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah. And so to you know, switch tracks for a second here. Um, you mentioned that you sold you know two thirds of the business to a PE firm. Um, I remember talking to Brittany Burns when she was CEO and she she mentioned, like I think you guys talked to something like 70, 73 or something different PE firms before you found. Walk me through why you decided to exit that way and then what that process looked like for you and then how it impacted the business with a PE firm as a partner after the fact.
John Carter:
Yeah. So it was interesting and I think we thought about this maybe in the early 2020. And we just kind of thought, all right, we’ve been having some nice growth and we’ve been joking about let’s build a real business, let’s build out a team, and so then what’s the end game with that? Is it something where? And so I always thought that within our skill set internally, we could build a business, a $30 to $50 million business. Beyond that, I didn’t know how to do it. I think there’s just at some point, you know, you kind of know your skillset, you know your niche and you kind of build something up that would make sense for someone more experienced to kind of come in and help out. So that was kind of the idea, and so we went through. And so what we did was we went through. We found a kind of a small boutique investment banker that kind of knew the space, and we spent about a year, you know, from the time that we first talked to them to the time that, you know, we ended up closing on something. It was about a little over a year, 14, 15 months, and so and the idea with that if nobody’s ever gone through it before but it’s um, what’s nice about this is that the, the IB investment banker, you know they’ll put together materials and like a teaser and then just kind of like, hey, here’s our story, and then boom, they just shoot it out. And we had yeah, I think it was 78 NDAs to sign that, people that were firms that were interested in Um, and then that got down to about a dozen you know that you’re talking to. And then you kind of narrow it down to about three or four where you know everything kind of clicks and everything kind of aligns. And we didn’t know during the whole process. I mean, one of the things was like, okay, we have no idea. You know, would someone even be interested in this? And at the end of the day we were completely fine continuing to run it. And so I think and that’s important, like you want to. You know, if you’re just looking to get out, I think that’s a different kind of a thing. But you know I wanted to stay a part of it. You know I was wanting to roll equity into it and stuff like that too.
John Carter:
And then the, you know the in the changes, the. So I always say it’s, it’s always nice to have kind of adults in the building, and so one of the first things that you know started changing was our tech stack. So when you bring on somebody like that, they just have experience in a lot of different industries. And so immediately it was like wow, here’s some things, let’s get you a much better tech stack. And that was great because that’s not something that we really knew how to do and that’s been fun.
John Carter:
And then the challenges are it’s just that you have, you know and I think this is with any you know venture or private equity firm is that they’ll have a financial model and they’ll look at the financial model and says, well, you know, and this, there’s a great. There’s a story of another industry I know, and this guy he had a widget, you know, he did like hardware, he they manufactured things for like Lowe’s and stuff like that and they sold it to a private equity firm. And there was this one product that was kind of they didn’t make much margin on and I’m just making up numbers here, but they were a big business. They probably did $100 million in revenue. And then here’s this one that did $15 million in revenue and it only had 10% margins. So they’re like, oh, let’s just get rid of that and the guy’s like we can’t get rid of that because if we do, that’s going to impact. That’s why Lowe’s continues to buy from us because we do that from them, and so we’d actually lose all this other business. We’re like, oh, no, no, but the financial model says if we cut this one out, the EBITDA is going to be, the margin is going to be that.
John Carter:
So the one thing I found is that that’s something just to be.
John Carter:
You know, I’ve had to like kind of look at and say no, no, we can’t.
John Carter:
No-transcript part of the business are the ones that built it, because they’ve seen, they understand the nuances, they understand all the levers, they understand that you know, if you do this today, that’s going to be a sale six months from today, and I think that’s something that sometimes can get lost, you know, in the model, and so that’s what I’ve just found is that it’s more and some of that though some of that modeling out has been interesting, but a lot of it is also kind of you know, it’s like okay, I know that looks great on the spreadsheet, but this is how you know when there’s a person out there and they’re trying to wonder what call to buy this model is not answering that question right, and so I think it’s.
John Carter:
So. It is kind of it is interesting to look at. So we’ve gone from, I’d say, you know, an organization where now our tech stack’s a lot better, our reporting is a lot better, you know our KPI dashboards, all that I mean wow, pristine. And then you know, really now just kind of making sure we’re backing that with what I would call more intuitive like hey, this is how the industry works, kind of thing Right, and that seems to be.
John Newtson:
Would that be one of the issues? I guess would be that there’s not a lot of comps. It’s a very niche industry. It’s a very kind of specific thing, so that you’re not going to find a lot of firms that have a lot of experience running companies in this space, I would imagine.
John Carter:
Yeah, I would say, you know, I would say that there’s something to be said for industry knowledge and experience, and it was great because the firm we worked with they do have experience in content, so they understood that part of it.
John Carter:
But I have seen situations, too, where it’s someone that doesn’t understand the industry at all and, yeah, they just don’t kind of understand it, and so that ends up being a business and we’ve bought kind of smaller businesses and stuff like that. But I always find it’s it’s nice to find one where you know you’ve got someone that understands their business but they’re just overwhelmed with all the work and so you know, and that’s kind of a perfect, kind of a niche there, and so I think you know, with us is we’re looking, you know looking at partners and stuff like that too, it’s always you know, with us is we’re looking, you know looking at partners and stuff like that too, it’s always all right. Is this, is this a group that you know they do this. They may not do it exactly like what we do, but they understand. You know the client is looking for very specific things and and things like that too, and that just always makes it so much easier.
John Newtson:
Right, so you are in like kind of an acquisition mode yourself then.
John Carter:
Yes, and so we’ve taught and we’ve, you know, we’ve mostly it’s been on the smaller side. We’ve talked to some, you know, um, that would be bigger ones too, and it is kind of, you know, it is kind of finding that it’s a combination of all right, are they doing things that we’re not, that we’d like to? So, um, as an example, we do. I like the idea of what I just call algo trading, um, and it’s not, that’s not our area of expertise, but it’s like, okay, we can go partner with these guys because that’s what they do and we can bring in some of our ideas. Awesome, you know, I think that’s kind of a, you know, perfect type of an opportunity there.
John Newtson:
Nice, and then with the PE firms, what was there anything that like that they brought to the table besides like saying, hey, let’s upgrade the tech stack, but like in terms of a view of the business or the industry that you thought was like surprising in a kind of a positive way, like a different perspective on like what it is or what you do that maybe you hadn’t thought of before.
John Carter:
Well, one of the things is that they were really able to kind of analyze, kind of the you know the data in a way that we hadn’t been able to, and just something like.
John Carter:
So one of the changes that we did was, you know, I was I always used to like, push for, like let’s just do monthly subscriptions, it’s just easier in terms of cash flow, it’s predictable and you know all that kind of stuff.
John Carter:
And then they really came in and started pushing like, you know, let’s do annuals because of this, this and this. I’m not really a fan of this idea, but it was a good idea and you know, it’s just and I think it’s just things like that where they could look at things in a way and just say like, yeah, you’re, you’re, you’re in the weeds. So you may not know that if we did this, this and this, you know this would make some things. This would make some things a lot better, and so that’s been helpful, kind of just having what I would call professionals being able to kind of look and analyze things in a way that, you know, I never, you know we’re. It was always kind of like we’re in the weeds and I think we’re doing pretty good, and oh yeah, here’s the monthly P&L. Great, when’s the next promo? You know, and that was kind of you know versus just kind of you know, doing things like just more of the I guess what I would say really deep dive, advanced analytics and things like that.
John Newtson:
Nice and then on the Hmm Nice and then on the like kind of with your place in the industry. I guess you have a lot of relationships. You do partnership kind of work, like affiliate work and other things with people in the space too, don’t you?
John Carter:
Yeah, and we always try to find it. It’s always we used to do a lot more affiliates gosh in. You know, I guess eight or 10 years ago we were really heavily into it and we still do it’s. You know that model’s changed a little bit, right, but it is kind of nice where, if you have someone, especially someone if they’re really good at marketing and they’ve built up a database, our products are really good and they convert.
John Carter:
And that’s something where, if you kind of find the right match, the tricky thing is if you find someone else out there has a product too, it’s just finding, you know, it’s just trying to find like ones that are complimentary to each other. So we found, you know, a couple of groups like that where it’s just like, yeah, we, we promote their stuff because it’s great, we use it, and um, and then you know, and vice versa, and that’s I always think it’s kind of perfect, because it’s just like, hey, we found this tool and we’re using it and great, we’ll set up, we’ll reach out to them and to say, hey, would you like to do some kind of a swap or cross-promotion, because your stuff’s awesome and our clients would really like it?
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah, and so tell us about your farm, their ranch, because I love seeing the pictures. You’ve got zebras, you’ve got kangaroos, you have everything. It’s a full-blown safari out there.
John Carter:
Yeah, so we have learned a lot during this process. So there was a time, about a year into COVID, when nobody was flying and we just I was talking to my wife, maria, and we had this. I call it. We call it the Tesla Ranch. I had some really good trades in Tesla over the years and pulled that money out of the market and got like 300 acres out in Wimberley, texas, and you think of Texas as like a desert, but the hill country, there’s hills, there’s lakes. It’s a really amazing place. It’s very similar to South Africa in terms of climate, the climate, and we’d visited there a couple of times.
John Carter:
And so I was sitting there and we thought, gosh, we may never go to. You know, are we going to Africa again? We haven’t been since, you know, since COVID, and we just thought, like you know, we’ve got this deck and it overlooks this field. There’s a pond like wouldn’t it be cool to just see some zebras and wildebeest out there? You know, ha ha, ha. And so one night, you know, I probably had a glass of wine and I’m just looking online and you know, and there’s all these Texas ranches that have all these things, and so we ended up with, um, I think 12 different species of you know. You got Kudu zebra, kudu zebra, wildebeest, uh, nyla sable, uh, oryx, um, you know, all on and on. And then, uh got some kangaroos the guy that I’d work with, he brought over a tiger cub. I’m like no, this is not going to be a tiger king situation. He brought over some monkeys, like no, I’ve already got three teenagers, I don’t need any more. But the idea that we could just go for a hike or sit on our porch and it’s great. I almost got a giraffe and I’m so glad Maria had this great idea.
John Carter:
We went and visited a giraffe preserve and stayed the night and it’s like, okay, this is not, that’s a lot of work. You know that’s, that’s a no-go, but you know these are zebras, kudu, you don’t need to. They just eat grass and drink water. You know they just they’re pretty low maintenance and yeah, and so that’s been awesome and the.
John Carter:
You know, the issue is things like you know, the first zebras we got. They were on our place for about exactly five minutes and then they just jumped the fence, like we didn’t have a high enough fence, and so I had to get a drone and every day for three weeks I would fly this drone like in a seven mile radius looking for them. And I finally found them three weeks later and they were in this field, about a mile away, and I called the owner up and you know, just this big ranch and I said, hey, hey, david, this is John man. Sorry, my zebra is on your place and I’m going to build out a high fence, but I don’t, you know, I don’t know what to do, can I just? He’s like you city slickers.
John Newtson:
You know, it’s pretty funny.
John Carter:
But yeah, so we learned a lot. You know we lost, uh, we lost, uh, uh, we lost one because you can’t have, like goat poop has some kind of a virus that’ll kill like bongos, or like we lost a bongo to that. Um, but it’s been great. I mean it’s been a really good. You know it’s been a fun experience with the kids. You know it’s amazing. You know, on the weekends going hiking and you come or go around a corner and there’s some zebra or you, or we’ve had some kangaroo babies and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s been fun.
John Newtson:
That’s very cool. So I guess, with where things are now, what are you guys thinking next? For you guys, you’re kind of at a great size. I guess you’re going to grow incrementally. What’s the kind of at a great size? I guess you’re going to grow incrementally. Like, what’s the kind of approach now, with the market coming back the way it is?
John Carter:
Yeah, a big part of it is. It’s really talking about what people you know there’s things that we’d like to do and then we’ll talk to our clients and it’s just like what do you guys want? You know, what are you guys looking for? And you know there’s certainly a lot of interest in, you know, zero DTE, spx and stuff like that and we do some of that, but it’s, you know, there are markets where, you know, we tend to focus more on kind of swing trading or you hope, you know, holding something for kind of a, you know, maybe a couple days to a couple of weeks, but there is an appetite for that, for more shorter term stuff. So we’re thinking of launching a product you know around that we’ve got. You know, I don’t know we’ve.
John Carter:
Live events are great, just because it’s really it is fun to kind of get out and kind of mingle with people versus just staring at screens all day. There’s a great place in Austin to do it, because you can do it at the college and you get like stadium seating and stuff like that. So we’ve done that. A couple. We may, you know, think of doing maybe a bigger event like that, but mostly it’s just more. You know what are ways to grow. What are ways to grow that’s, you know, partnership based. Like, okay, let’s partner up with this broker, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s really kind of dial into the needs of their folks and can we help each other out and to the needs of their folks and can we help each other out. And so sometimes that will, you know, a lot of our services are, I would call, a lot of handholding, and it may be something like, okay, well, here’s a service there’s no handholding. You know, here’s the alert, good luck. And so it’s just kind of looking at different things like that, like what’s, you know, not only is like what is it something that people want, but what is it a good, how is it? How is this going to be fulfilled? You know, is this going to be something where, um, you know and I personally, you know, I got three kids that were trained you don’t like to travel, we take time off, and so I personally can’t dedicate to like, okay, here’s a service I’m going to do every day for the next year with five other people that are part of that alert service, you know, yeah, so so it is. It is kind of looking at a what are. You know what are some things in this market. You know you kind of like follow the volume right, where’s the volume? Well, gosh, you got. You got a ton of volume options. It continues to grow.
John Carter:
I think automated trading systems are interesting. That’s a rabbit hole though it’s. You know that’s. That’s something where you know just got to, you know it’s. It’s an easy rabbit hole to go down as well. But I think the idea that you know I’m I’m a big fan of things like you know, like Tasty Trade and Tom Sosnoff and things like that and the way they do things, and it’s really just kind of finding ways like you know we’ve got to. It’s finding services that people would actually want, but at the same time, you know we’re all businesses and so it’s doing it in a way that’s economically feasible too. If you do, you know you do a service for free. That really it’s tough because it’s you know you’re having to. I personally, because people have asked like too, it’s like well, you know, if you’re just teaching, why don’t you do it for free?
John Carter:
And it’s like because it’s you go back to yeah, I mean, I nothing I have to explain to you right, it’s just more about you know it’s. But it is more about, like, how do you want to spend your time? I would rather say, you know, do you want to spend time with? You know a hundred people that are in a room that are paying nine bucks a month, or 10 people that are paying, you know, $90 a month. You know absolutely the 10 people it’s. You know it’s going to be higher quality it’s. You know it’s less.
John Carter:
You know running around and stuff like that too, and so I think a lot of it is just, you know wanting to. You know, find the people out there that are, you know, serious about trading, that are looking for community, and it is kind of more of a. You know it’s not about scaling, like, how do we get, how do we find a hundred thousand people? It’s not. How do you, how do you find the next hundred great people that you really just want to work with and we go to these live events. These are great people. You know that’s like wow, this guy owns a printing business and this guy does this, and you know, and this and this lady over here has got this, you know amazing place that she you know out in Italy, and so it is a cool way to meet cool people and it’s just you know doing almost products that attract that as well.
John Newtson:
Yeah, I think that’s. I think that is going to come back in a way that maybe it hasn’t, in that businesses building community, having that kind of like texture of products that includes some kind of a live component. That kind of like texture of products that includes some kind of a live component um, at least on the smaller side. Like it may not be scalable, but it adds a level of stability, I think, to the business too. Um, because you build a culture of people who are like this is where this is part of their life.
John Carter:
Right, it’s more than just an online product yeah, and it’s so, and to me it’s, it’s. It’s more sustainable and way more fulfilling than a churn and burn model. You know, it’s just like all right, you know it’s just like you know you want it to be. I personally, if I’m doing this, I want it to be fun. I want it to be like I want to wake up excited. I want to wake up like, oh good Lord, you know what are we doing today, and that’s always an important part of it too.
John Newtson:
Yeah, so last big thing then, because you mentioned TastyTrade and you have a PE firm as a partner, I would imagine at some point there’s been conversations about the fact that you guys probably could drive quite a bit into a broker and you have broker partners, and so I would imagine that have you guys had conversations like that, like hey, we, we could be the, the, you know like an acquisition from a, from a broker, or acquiring a broker and becoming a broker and kind of merging those models? Have you had those kinds of conversations and thoughts?
John Carter:
Yeah, you know we have nothing, nothing that’s gone too serious, but I do think that’s a perfect model of you know somebody like you know. Here we are like showing people how to trade and they’re trading on 20 different platforms. You know what, if we were able to kind of like let’s just drive them all to this group over here and we’re just working more closely because, a we believe in their product and stuff like that, I think that’s just such a logical step. But it is hard to find. You know who’s the right, you know who’s the right partner for that.
John Carter:
There’s a lot of brokers out there and it’s something that you’d want. You want to make sure that, a their platform is awesome and robust. B that you want to be able to utilize your tools on it, and things like that. And then, c it’s not something that is it a small broker where they’ve got they’re more starting out but they’re still figuring out their systems, or it’s some huge broker and I don’t know. But I do think that that’s a very like logical kind of next step. And you know, I guess in terms of you know a place to find a home and everything like that too, yeah, yeah, cool, all right, well, john, hey, I appreciate you coming and doing this.
John Newtson:
Like I said, I’ve wanted to talk to you on this for quite a while now, so you’re awesome and I’m really glad you could do it.
John Carter:
Well, yeah, and thanks to you for putting together. I mean we’ve always, you know, throughout the years, have learned just in your kind of the quarterly meetings you do and the events that you put together. It’s just always great to be able to meet other people in the industry and kind of see what people are doing and stuff like that too.
John Newtson:
So industry- thanks, I appreciate that. Thanks, um and uh, yeah, so hopefully we’ll get you on here again for something else, or maybe one of our deep dives or one of the marketing mastermind calls that we’re going to be doing an fms pro um, so uh, again. Thanks, john. Yep, sounds good. Yeah, great, great to do it.
