He Started a $10M+ SaaS With No Experience

0:00And then after realizing the features and the flows they're missing, I'm like, "Well, this is built by a developer, not a trader." So, I reached out to these companies in like 2017 and I said, "Hey, can you guys add this? Can you guys do this?" And they never would listen. And then I think in 2018, 2019, I was like, "Why don't I build my own?" So, I have no idea how to run a software company. I have no idea about anything. And then I think in at the end of 2019, one day I was like, "You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to do it. What's the worst

0:25that's going to happen?" Mhm. So, because I don't have a technical background, it makes things a little bit more difficult. I was like, "Okay, well, this is my weakness. What is my superpower?" Mhm. Marketing and trading. Right. All right, brother. How much money do you make? Uh well over seven figures a month. What do you do? Uh I own a trading platform called TradeZella, a journaling platform for traders. I trade and I have a trading floor in Dubai. Okay, you've done the whole race, is how I like to think about it. But you're on your the SAS SAS step of this race and you're absolutely crushing it. You've gone from trader

0:56to creator to building a full-blown software company. And so, I want to go through the entire journey today with you, but I have the opinion that trading is like gambling. Is trading actually a skill? You know, this argument happens with a lot of people where they do go into thinking trading is gambling, but I I I I reposition it, right? So, trading is a probability game just like everything else. Even if you start a business, it's a probability game of you picking the best markets, build building the best product, serving the customers the best way. If you're able to do all of those things at the highest possible

1:32way, your probability of succeeding in that business is higher. Mhm. Same thing with trading. If you're able to identify an edge, manage that edge, take high-quality trades, uh manage your risk, and manage everything around that, you have a higher probability of succeeding, right? So, it's like how do you get the edge on your side? And if you're able to get edge on your side over a long consistent period of time, the idea of gambling exits. And I think people think it's gambling because so

1:59many people lose money in trading. Mhm. And the reason people lose money in trading is because the barrier of entry is so low. So, that concept of gambling enters in. It's like low-hanging fruit. You feel like you don't have to do a lot of work, but really it's a there's like deep skills that you have to learn to

2:13actually be successful. Yeah, and I've seen that with so many people that they'll come in, fund an account $5,000, $10,000, put on two, three trades, lose, and say, "Oh, it's gambling." Got you. So, what are the skills? Like how would if you actually want to approach trading from a serious competent perspective and actually take it seriously? How do you go about it? So, the number one thing is identifying a way of trading, right? Identifying a way of trading in terms of what's your viewpoint on the market, how do you think the market operates? And then from

2:42there, establishing a set of strategies. Okay. Right? So, for example, for me, the way I look at the market or the way I think the market operates, it's essentially an auction, right? It's a it's transactions between buyers and sellers into the marketplace, and the market is kind of transacting those transactions, right? The idea there becomes to identify where the

3:02opportunities lie in supply and demand. Are buyers more aggressive here? Are buyers interested in paying this current price? Are sellers offloading at this current price? And if I'm able to identify that, my job then just becomes to make money off it off the difference, right? So, that's like a simple approach that market looks off. The second thing is you'll see on social media a lot of people, you know, support, resistance, pattern, this, that. It's all BS. Uh really? It's because think about it, how is a trillion-dollar plus industry working off

3:34basic random lines? That's true. Right? Like it it it off a pattern, hey, we're seeing this pattern, it means it's going to go up. It's it's it's not it's not that simple. And even at that point, you'd think most of the competent traders would all know the patterns. And so, is that like a self-fulfilling thing then at that point? Is that Is that why people can get away with like teaching it? Because I can go in the past and I can show you 10 examples of a trade where the patterns worked, and then I can say, "Look at the times it worked." But if I show you over

4:02a component of 10,000 trades, you'll see it's not as consistent as you think it is. Is this different than like market psychology? Uh it's not different. It's There is a there is a relevancy of how it's how it's similar to market psychology. I think what happens in in that is when people do get into it and they do see something working over and over again, they'll try to replicate the same thing cuz they see it's working. So, the psychological aspect there is like, "Oh

4:30man, I see it working. I'm going to do the same thing. It doesn't work. It's because of me." Got you. That cycle just keeps working over and over again. Got you. Interesting. So, I really like your approach because one, when you wherever making content on it, you were actually like logging into your broker brokerage account and like showing people firsthand how much you're playing with and very public about your wins and your massive losses. So, I'm curious, are you specifically have you literally found like one strategy that you follow and like one approach to trading and like you're like very selective or how is like what's your

5:02general approach to picking trades? Yeah, so in terms of strategy, I have a few different strategies, but those strategies are from like one way of looking at the market, right? So, it's like with anything else with business, you have one business with different playbooks of understanding how you should market that business, grow that business, and so on, right? So, with trading, I have that one way of understanding the market dynamics, and then within those market dynamics, I have strategies that work on

5:26trending days in the market's moving up. I have strategies for when market is selling off. I have strategies when the market is moving between 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. So, I have different strategies with different approaches, but those strategies align with one way of looking at the market. That's one That's a key thing because if you speak to some traders, you'll you'll realize they have different ways of looking at the market. And it's like you can have different ways, but your understanding of how the market moves and what the the the the psychology of it is, what the movements are, have to be within one umbrella. Interesting. So,

5:59what is the way that you look at it? Like how would you describe that? Yeah, same way as in terms of as as an auction, right? The whole market is an auction place, buyers and sellers. And then when you look at it from that perspective, you start looking at behaviors, right? Well, you know, it's 10:00 a.m., which is a

6:13critical time in the market. 10:30 a.m. is a critical time in the market. So, when I look at times, then it's like, "Well, are buyers transacting around this time? Did the new buyers step in? Did the new sellers step in? Who's active? Who's present?" Uh this is a key transactional zone that we've seen in the past week where a lot of transactions are happening. Who is

6:30stepping up? Who is stepping in here? Interesting. So, is this like RSI? No, so those are all indicators. Those are all indicators, right? Okay. I'm not really a fan of indicators. I think they're very easily like you can sell on them. Like you I can show you an indicator and be like, "Look, this

6:45indicator's above 70. RSI is above 70. You should sell." These indicators are just a reflection of price action. So, what's happening in the chart is a reflection on the indicators, right? So, indicators are essentially lagging. So, the move will happen, then the indicators will follow. And indicators in my opinion just create a lot more noise for the market. So, my way of looking at the market is not creating or adding these filters that create a lot more

7:09noise for me. And so, this isn't And you're not looking at like So, are you looking at buy pressure, sell pressure? Is that like Essentially buy pressure, sell pressure. If there is buy pressure, is there like a passive seller sitting there who's eating up all the buy pressure, right? Sometimes you might see a buy pressure step in and someone's aggressively buying, but as someone's aggressively buying, someone may be passively selling over and over again

7:31and they might have a lot of inventory. And as they have a lot of inventory, that inventory overrules the buying pressure. So, that selling slowly starts fading down. Interesting. And then are you paying attention to like daily news? Like is that like a key part of it? Like the subjective aspect of it? Yeah, so news, looking at market events, looking at the overall picture of market sentiment, uh what is happening in terms of the trend of the market, the sentiment as mentioned. These things are very important to understand where the market wants to head to. What would be an example of a news event and then the

7:59decision you would make because of that? Uh so, some big events that happen on a month-to-month is like CPI data. Okay. FOMC, you know, if Fed's going to cut rates or not, earning season. Like right now, we're currently in earning season. So, around earning season, how are companies reporting? Like yesterday, Meta reported. Meta's stock is up massively. If you look at the market today, you're seeing that little move up

8:20in the market as well. So, looking at the overall sentiment of the market, big news like that, and how the market is reacting to those events. So, you're waiting for those events to transpire and then you're kind of just paying attention to pick your trade, basically. So, you're not gambling on the report. No, because unless I I have the report before it comes out, there's just no way for you to go and take a trade on that. I like I like to let the news come out, see how price reacts to the news, and depending on how price reacts to the news, then I'll say, "Okay, well,

8:52this, based on price, buyers or the market thinks this is good." And I can see that in the transactional element of it. Okay, well, now I'm looking for a long play or vice versa. Interesting. And so, you're really just you've developed this like very specific things to be looking for. I feel like that's like the skill you're really learning as a trader is the discipline to only like

9:12play your game. Yeah, and you know what? And and it's hard sometimes because in 2021 when the big move with AMC and GME happened, I missed it. And even though I saw it go up in front of my eyes, it just it didn't fit the narrative or the way I trade. Mhm. Uh so, I was like, "Oh, it's not something I would touch. It's not something I would touch." And I'm like, "Oh man, if I was to buy X amount of shares, I could

9:34have made this much." Mhm. Right? So, having that level of discipline to just follow the things that you're supposed to trade, I think is extremely important and that's where some traders fall off the realms and just kind of go on tilt. How do you think you landed in the strategy that you use now? Okay, so when I first started till how I trade now, my trading has completely evolved, right? So, the way I even traded 6 years ago or 5 years ago is very different than now. And it's just over time as you kind of educate yourself more and more on a on a particular topic, you start looking at

10:06things from a different perspective. Uh you start gaining more knowledge, more experience, and that as that whole happens, you start seeing what works and what doesn't. So, a lot of it was just kind of learning from an intentional point of view, and then applying what I'm learning, and then also observing what the market is giving me after years and years and years. So, it'll just kind of

10:28experience would be it. Do you think it's like a person's brain type, like the way they think? Cuz you're saying they have perspectives on the market, but you think there's actually like people have an engineer mind and more like a creator mind. Like Yeah. Do you think that trading in general attracts people that are successful attracts a specific way of thinking, like engineer minds, or is it literally like a reflection of the way you think is going to be developed in

10:48your trading strategy? So, I do think there are different uh mindsets and different uh different traders with different mindsets. Like I've I've seen people that are purely engineers in how they trade and how they think and how they look at the market. And then I do see people that are a little bit more erratic and all over the place how they think and look at the market. I think it's just finding what your cushion is

11:08in terms of the way you operate, right? I know some traders that can swing trade really really well, meaning they can hold positions overnight and kind of look at things from a calmer slower way. But if you kind of put them in a predicament or a if you put them in a situation where they have to really make choices on their feet on the spot, they can't do it. They're not They're not quick on their feet. So, it's also knowing what you're good at and how you

11:31can operate. Uh if you have the level of patience to wait out on some trades, great. Some people don't have the patience, they're quick. So, they want to be in and out of moves, so then they're they'll start scalping. So, identifying that brain type and how you think how you operate also very important. So, how would you cuz I'm assuming when you're starting out you're like trying all these different strategies and different approaches to trading. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of people aren't really paying attention. They just like might

11:54get a win here or might get a loss here. So, how would you go about like dialing in your strategy? So, the way I did it early on was wrong. I spent a lot of wrong time and a lot of time that I think I could have saved just cuz it's throwing a lot of stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks and what

12:08doesn't and just kind of experimenting. I think if I was to start over again, I would pick the way I'm trading now, obviously. Looking at the market from that element, and then just start journaling and tracking every Yeah, journaling every single day. The The concept of journaling people have a very weird concept of it. They think it's like you're writing down your thoughts and like you're going in your diary and so on. But the idea of like actual journ- journaling is like logging in a day. Like for example, with trading, it would be before I start a session, I would write out the different scenarios that may play out based on today's

12:42pre-market action. So, you're like literally listing what you think is going to happen before you or like before while you make the trade. are the scenarios that may possibly happen with today's, you know, potential move. Like for example, yesterday Meta had earnings, Meta is gapping up, Meta is moving up really strong, market is moving along with it. What are the few setups or few ways that you think Meta or the market will move? And then if you do take a trade, identify how that trade that you took played alongside with your pre-market game plan. Then at the end of the day, look at those two things. Now,

13:13if you do that over over the course of the next 45 to 60 days, what starts happening happening is you start developing a very good understanding of the market and yourself. You start seeing that okay, well, hey, the first Friday of every month you know, job reports comes comes out. So, around the first Friday of every month, I realize that Wednesday or Tuesday till Friday, market is very flat because the market is waiting for this big job reports to come out. So, a lot of traders are

13:40cashing out, they're on the sidelines. And you start learning that when you're intentionally focused on paying attention to every detail and you know, when you start writing things down, typing stuff out, you start noticing these things a lot more. So, then you have like the hindsight of like, wow. So, then you like you'll basically write down an event that's happening, you write down like your thesis of what you think is an opportunity. You'll do it, and then you'll reflect on what actually happened to then kind of have the hindsight to see what you were thinking correctly or

14:07incorrectly. Absolutely. And then over time, you can see in those situations every time you tend to think this way, but it always goes the other way. And that's like kind of recognize like an internal bias is the word? Is that the word? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And and the thing cool thing about that is when you do it for like for the very first time, you're going to be wrong. Like completely wrong so many times. And the idea is to be wrong. The idea is to experience that, wow, how did I miss this? Wow, how did I how did I miss

14:32that? Wow, I noticed around 10:00 a.m. every day the market has a big shift. Oh, wow, why is that happening at 10:00 a.m.? Oh, it makes sense, institutions stepping at 10:00 a.m. What happens at 10:30 a.m.? That's initial balance. Okay, so you start developing these things when you're intentionally focusing on learning and absorbing information. And so, you think this is literally like that is the approach to

14:52trading that people should be following? But when I'm on when I'm on social media, all I see is people saying charts, psychology, trends, or whatever it is. Like they're selling like these like tactics. And you really think it's more just about like figuring out some sort of spiritual journey. No, no, not not not a spiritual journey element. Of course, you need to have a framework and a

15:10foundation of knowing what you're doing. You can't just go in and write stuff out and learn from that. You need to have a foundation, but I think outside of the foundation, most of the stuff that we do see on social media is BS, right? Even psychology, like trading psychology in a way is a marketing gimmick because trading psychology is not a real thing

15:31until you know how to trade. Uh okay. You You see what I'm saying? You can't You can't go into the markets and say I suck because of my psychology. No, you suck because you don't know what you're doing. know you You don't even know what an order book is, right? So, until you know what you're doing and you have proven it, you forward tested, you back tested, you have applied the strategy, you have seen it work over time over time, and then when you start throwing more and more money in, now you

15:56can use the word psychology. Mhm. Okay. Right? So, that that's what happens, and it's easy to kind of sell that concept. That's why on social media you see everyone group chats and this and that, psychology psychology, and they just kind of push that down everyone's throat. Interesting. So, how did you figure out about this journaling thing? Is this something you like always had when you were like something you developed personally or Uh yeah, I mean I I've started journaling early on in my trading career just to kind of like I'm very big on like tracking things. Like even if I go to the gym, okay, I weight

16:23this much, this is my max bench, this is my max distance. I want to see like improvement. For me, subconsciously, when I also see improvement in something and I see how things are going, it makes me kind of more driven towards it. Like same thing with the business. If you have a business, how do you start tracking your business expenses, your

16:38revenue, your cost of customers, etc. etc. etc. And once you go down that rabbit hole, you get more obsessed with the numbers. So, for me, that element of journaling is the same exact thing, and that's where like the idea of TradeZella kicked in. Got you. Cuz that's what it all is. That's what all TradeZella is, which we'll dive into. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk into that. So, could you guys give me one example of how journaling like like what is like the main way that it changed the way you traded? Or what is a good example of how like Sure. you've made corrections based on that? Uh so,

17:05there's two types of things that I've learned uh from journaling trading, right? And one is from a psychological point and one is from a technical point. So, from a technical point, seeing how the time frames my strategies work best under, right? So, over a course of let's say 100 plus trades I've taken, once I start tagging them into what strategy they are, I'll start seeing, wow, this strategy works really well only the first hour. I've I've noticed the first hour I have a 70% win rate. I noticed after the first hour, 2 hours, it has a 20% win rate. I noticed the first hour I have a three to one R multiple on on

17:37this strategy. I noticed afterwards I don't. So, when you start seeing it over a larger number of trades, you can see your percentages of winning trades, losing trades, when it's working, when it's not working. From a psychological point of view, when you just look at it from like a let's say a very basic level, I realized like very early on

17:53like Mondays, why am I red on Mondays? Like I I've noticed for like year or two, most Mondays I would start Mondays off red. And I'm like, well, what is it about Mondays? Like is it just the market sucks on Mondays? And then when I dove down into it a little bit deeper, I realized that what happens on Mondays is because we have a long weekend, Monday starts, I'm so excited, I go in with more size. As I go in with more size and a and a bigger risk element, I'm more

18:18blinded by the by the risks in a trade. I'll lose more money than I should, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I'm trading to make that money back. So, it becomes this like whole psychological thing I'm doing without like where where I have no need to do it, right? So, I learned that from like a psychological point of view by looking at data and just seeing Monday's red red

18:38red red red. What is it about Mondays? Oh, I see what it is. How about now when I go in Mondays, I reduce my size by 50%, and I limit myself only to one trade. Take one trade, win or lose, I'm done. I did that. That one tweak improved my trading. So, like retrospective like introspection. Yeah. Uh-huh. So, that really guides you based on your own past experiences, but if you don't write it down, you don't ever

19:01really log it. Yeah, it's just tracking you, right? It doesn't have to be just on a physical piece of paper, just tracking you, looking at from a visual point of view of what's working, what's not working, uh what days I'm performing well, what time periods I'm performing well, uh right? What strategies are working, when are these strategies working well, and just you just kind of see the before and after. Is this like a common thing

19:20in trading that people do? No. No. The The common thing in trading is opening an account, fund it, put a couple of grand in or whatever the case may be, put on a trade, and say trading is gambling. Mhm. That's what the the the the route is, right? Guilty. Yeah. That's funny. Why do you make content? Uh so, at first it was just like a YouTube thing. I want to, you know, get on YouTube and start making content. Uh that was like my first thing. I think I

19:48made my first piece of content in 2018. Mhm. Uh I wasn't consistent with it early on. I'll tell you that much. I really took content serious in 2023 of May. I was at 180,000 subs. And then from then till December, we added 4 to 500k subs. That's when I was like focused on just putting putting out content. Yeah. And the reason I reas- I took it serious was

20:11because to grow TradeZella. Okay. Yeah. So, it was literally intentional for your software. so when I when I doubled down on it last year in May, it was like, "Okay, well, if I can give people free value online and I can show them a tool that I think is valuable and I don't shove it down their throat of selling it, which I don't ever sell anywhere. I won't be

20:31like, "Go buy this." Mhm. People will eventually want to use it, right? Because it's something that solves a problem and I'm getting in front of millions and millions of people. So, why not do that and also at the same time give people real raw value of what real trading is. So, how did you come up with the idea for TradeZella? Uh so, the idea essentially started formulating from years ago where when I started journaling. So, obviously when I started journaling, I'm like, "Let me put this in Excel." When I put it in Excel, then I'm like, "Oh, it'd be great if this was automated." And then of

21:00course, there's competitors that existed. And I would use them. So, when I would use them, I would realize that they're missing a lot of different features. And then after realizing the features and the flaws they're missing, I'm like, "Well, this is built by a developer, not a trader. I know it's not a trader cuz if it was a trader, this is how they would track this. This is what they would do here." So, I reached out to these companies in like 2017 and I said, "Hey, can you guys add this? Can you guys do this?" And they never would listen. Mhm. And every day I would be

21:28like, "Wow, if they had this feature or that feature or they tracked this this certain way, this would be so beneficial to me." And then I think in 2018, 2019, I was like, "Why don't I build my own?" And then I'm like, "Wait, I have no idea how to build software. I have no idea how to run a software company. I have no idea about anything." Like you ask me about, you know, what MRR is even. I didn't even know what MRR is, what AR is. I've never heard those terms before, right? Cuz I mean, they're completely different space, right? So, I'm like, "Okay, well, I think I should

21:55do it." So, I'd go back and forth for a whole year of like, "I should do it and then I'm scared. Mhm. I should do it. I'm scared." Like like countless times, right? that. Yeah. And it was like, "I'm scared. It's unknown territory." And then I think in at the end of 2019, one day I was like, "You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to do it. What's the

22:11worst that's going to happen? I'm going to lose money. Oh, well. I'd rather be 80 and say I've tried this and I failed than to be like, "What if?" Right? So, at that time, I had a friend who had an agency. So, I went the agency route, right? And it was uh it was not the best experience I've had, but he came. He's

22:29like, "We'll build this out for you. We'll do this for you. We'll make it do X, Y, and Z." So, we had like a kickoff session uh and we were aiming to build an MVP. This was in the beginning of 2020. So, we start that and they were supposed to deliver everything by 20 September of

22:442020. And when they kicked that off, it just they gave me a really shitty product. Was it a set scope of work? Yeah. So, you set the scope of work for like a six-figure amount of money. Yes. Yeah. And this is the time frame. Yeah. That is the worst thing about development agencies cuz you're locked in. That's exactly what we did. And my my thing is when they built it, I started using it. I'm

23:04like, "This is broken. This is slow. This isn't working well. This is wrong." And we kept going back and forth a lot. And then what I did at the time is I got a few different opinions on it. Like I hired people. I made them go through the code base and I said, "Hey, can you

23:16check this out? Can you check this out?" And about six people had the same thing. You know, there's a lot of technical debt. Very hard to scale. This code is written very poorly, very hard to understand. Uh if you add more layers on top of this, you're going to run into a lot of issues down the road. So, I started seeing this problem consistently. I parted ways with them. And then from there, for six, seven months, I worked with so many different people. Like just interviews, processes, understanding about code, understanding about development, understanding processes, and just learning. To a point where honestly, early 2021, I thought about just closing

23:51the project. Cuz now it's because I haven't made a dollar from it. I'm burning money. Time. know. Yeah, my time is getting wasted. I don't have an end in sight, right? Because it's like when you're in the middle of chaos, everything is burning and you're like, "Well, where do I see the end of the tunnel?" And I couldn't

24:09see it. Which is scary cuz now if you tell me, "Hey, well, in another 2 years, you'll see it." Or at another dollar value, you'll see it. Cool. I didn't have that. So, for me it was like, "Does it make sense for me to take time away from everything I'm doing and allocate time here, spend money here, and just lose out on the

24:26opportunity cost, too?" So, should I turn it off? Should I cut it down? Cut it down? Cut it down? And then, you know, I said, "Let me give this 2 years. Let me just double down on it. Let me learn. Let me give it a fair shot. Let me equip myself with skill sets. Let me go to conferences." Like I've been to a few SaaS conferences and every time I went there, just side note,

24:42I felt like the dumbest person alive. Yeah. Cuz people would use some terminologies and I wouldn't have no idea what it means. They make it sound way more complicated than they Yeah, exactly. And then you're like, "Wait, what? I don't know what that is." They would ask me questions. Like I have no idea. Mhm. But uh then in 2021, I was able to work uh with this there's this guy, Yaroslav, really good friend of mine. He also has an agency, right? Uh they're the same company that built Calendly. Calendly

25:08was built by an agency? Yes. Woah. Really good agency. Extremely good. They worked with them from day one when they were like from inception to $3 billion. They still work with them today. Did they get equity or is it He got offered equity and the the founder turned it down at the time cuz he's like, "I wasn't in the best spot and I was investing in too many places." But if he invested at that time, just side note, his $180,000 investment would have been $450 million. And he's like, And he's like, "Till today, he's like, till today, I think about it." How could

25:39you not? Of like, "How'd I miss out on this big opportunity?" I mean, I could see it cuz it's like such a simple concept. Like it's a Calendly. Like all you do is book time on someone's calendar and set up a call. How could you ever predict that? the even the founder of that, he has no

25:51technical background, anything at all. Yeah. And there's probably a dozen other people that had that idea and this is just the one that hit. So, it makes sense, but that's hard. Yeah. Insane. Yeah, he tells me till this day. But I was able to, you know, form a partnership with him. I was able to get some engineers from his team over

26:05to us and kind of work out an agreement. So, we started with one person from from his team. He helped us refactor the whole code. His name is Alex. Great guy. Like he stepped in at the right time, helped us refactor everything, stabilized the platform, and then we started adding more people to the team. Now we started having a road map. So, the main difference was first you have this guy who's the head who really could understand the problem and have like creative input. I think a lot of developers are just going to look at a feature list and say, "Okay, that's what

26:32you asked for. That's what I do." Without the big picture in mind, future features, is this scalable? They just do the job to get the money. So, this guy had like the creative insight, actual creative problem-solving, and then you got dedicated developers instead of just like workshop devs, basically. Yeah. Yeah, it was dedicated developers

26:48that work on the project full-time. They're familiar with the scope, understand the code, understand everything that they need to about this about this project. You also have to have some element of understanding trading just for the logic and so on. So, they're dedicated on this project. Right. So, they're thinking through problems. They're looking out for you with foresight. what the problems are,

27:05what we're trying to solve, etc., etc. So, that was a big game-changer in terms of having confidence cuz my biggest weak point in this whole element of TradeZella was the dev side. I don't have a technical background. So, because I don't have a technical background, it makes things a little bit more difficult. I was like, "Okay, well, this

27:22is my weakness. What is my superpower? Marketing and trading." So, I have to have a weakness which I can live with. It's just so hard to communicate to them, I can imagine, when you're not technical at all and then they're trying to tell you like limitations or why this can't be a feature. It can get really frustrating, but Yeah, it it was frustrating early on. I think over time I've kind of learned a little bit more, right? When you're kind of involved in it, you start seeing the limitations that exist within your platform and you can start looking at things from more of a technical point

27:49of view. Like, "Hey, if we're going to launch to X amount of users, these are problems we need to solve on the infrastructure. That's going to take 2 months. Okay, I understand why it's going to take 2 months." Right? So, you you you have to have something over time that must be developed. Early on was very hard, though. Right. Yeah. Having a that project manager or the leader is probably the it's like the translator between the two and then can just look out for you both. So, I think that's definitely the difference between a

28:10great agency and a bad agency, for sure. Okay, so you went with the agency route. You got the the MVP built with the correct agency now. Yeah. Didn't you Did you say that I think I heard you say this one that I really liked is that you got the idea for this because all the Wall Street traders would do journaling and it was like a really like core thing that it was like required at their like Yeah, so a lot of real firms on any

28:31floor, Mhm. they have journaling, right? They have reporting. They have analytics. Like you need to. As an employee of the firm, it's like a requirement. have to have your pre-market game plan. You need to have your daily review game plan. You need to have your weekly stats, your monthly stats. Uh all these companies have all-hands meetings at the end of the month and they recap everyone's stats, the firm's stats. So, it's like, "Okay, well, if all these big firms and big institutions are doing it, why wouldn't a retail

28:59trader do it?" Yeah. But since you were making content and seeing all of the people in retail, they're all just selling the lifestyle Lambos and just selling the dream and totally overlooking like the fundamentals that the real players are doing. Cuz you just saw that and like, "Wow, there's a huge opportunity." And you know the product's valuable cuz the best people in the world are doing this. And then you saw there was a gap with the other products out there. And so, you had distribution plus that concept to supply it over here. That's genius, dude. So, so for me it was it was really interesting cuz I'm like,

29:25"Okay, well, what separates me in this space is, as you mentioned before, I've logged into my broker accounts and I've showcased like, "Hey, I'm logging in and I'm making X amount. I made this much this year this year, this month." And so on. And I've done that for the past 6, 7 years consistently, every single year. So, it's built this massive trust with

29:44an audience. Mhm. It's also built this authority figure of like, hey, if he says journaling is important and he's been saying this before he's had a software, it must be important. Then when I add that with the element of I'm involved in the product and I'm building it the way I think a person should journal, it gets

30:01people on it more. Right? So it's a concept of building a good product. We're very focused on building an extremely well product. It's not like just build a shitty prod project and you know, get people to come to the front door. It is build a good product, serve customers, and then distribution all alongside work extremely well. Yeah, you you have to have that product first approach so it grows on its own. So I'm curious what just if you could just explain the product cuz I know there's journaling, but I know there's a little bit more to it cuz you're getting like different analytics and whatnot. So kind of give

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31:29all lowercase. shopify.com/wgmi. Thank you Shopify for sponsoring today's podcast. It off as just a basic journaling tool. Now we've evolved into like the all-in-one trading tool that has journaling, backtesting where you can go back in time, test a strategy. So I can go to Tesla in 2021 and see how Tesla traded for that particular day and then I can start testing out different strategies from 5 years ago, 10 years ago. So I can basically trade the markets in a few hours that would take someone few years. Gotcha. So I'm able to get that, backtest, forward test, journaling meaning my we have a notebook section in there. We're trying to up

32:08that too to make it similar to notion, but we have a notebook section where you can write out your pre-market game plan, after market game plan. You can see all your reporting, how do you do Mondays, how do you do between this time period, how do you do when you hold the trade for 5 minutes, how do you do what your average risk is, like real

32:24analytics that go deeper, right? We have like a replay feature where if let's say you took a trade 2 weeks ago on Amazon and you just open up TradeZella, you can click that trade and it's going to replay the action that happened 2 weeks ago second by second, where you got in, where you got out. So it's like, hey, I took this trade that was a 5-minute trade, play, and it's like 9:32 a.m. you

32:46got in. Interesting. 9:37 you got out. So you can see that action and when you observe that, you'll go, okay, wow, I see like what I did. I see what I did good. I see what I did wrong. You can tag your trades. You can add strategies to your uh trades. You can add playbooks to your trades. Like, hey, this was my opening drive setup. What was the what was the criteria that happened? This was my morning top setup. What was the criteria that happened? So when you start doing these elements of work, you can start seeing in like a reporting dashboard of

33:17what is working, what is not working. Now what we're trying to do is we're trying to evolve that into the next level. Like we already have education. Building a new education portal. So every trader will get extreme levels of education of like, you know, what is options, what is futures, different strategies, different content creators are going to come on and kind of share that. We're building an AI feature into it at this current moment where you can input your data and you press a button and it will give you feedback for your Like what mistake did I make here? What what do you think I saw and then what do you think I could

33:46have done differently? giving you like this deep level of the best use cases. That's going to be massive for you guys. That's going to be huge and then that's what we're calling Zella insights. So TradeZella when you look at the name, Zella is a character. So it's just like Alexa and Siri, Zella is that character yeah that's going to give you feedback. That was the vision from day one. So the idea is for these new traders that come on that have no idea what they're doing right wrong, you click it, it helps you with that. And if it if it's raw data that's like not consistent, it'll say,

34:14hey Brett, your your data is not consistent. You don't have a well-defined risk management strategy. You don't have a well-defined this strategy. Here are some tools to build that. That's really cool. That's going to be so helpful for traders just to see what they're doing wrong. It's like having a mentor next to you really. Fascinating. So basically it's just like you plug in like your brokerage account, your trading account, and then it's just going to give you all the analytics. But simultaneously you're able to journal while you're making the trades before, during, and after. And simultaneously it's actually recording the trades and backlogging that so you can watch the

34:45replay and just reflect with your notes. Absolutely. Damn. Everything, yeah. This has been built since that version So that version stopped in 2020. We scraped that. We picked it a back up in summer of 2021. We spent 3 4 months refactoring and then from 2022, realistically from then till now is when we started building. And we started adding more developers. We currently have seven developers on the

35:08team. So not a big big team, but a few months ago we had three to four. So we just got to seven. Gotcha. Yeah. Do you think you're going to ever sell? I don't I don't really think about selling to be honest. It's one of those things where I enjoy building it so much where I just keep building, keep building, keep

35:26building. If in the future something comes along, I'll maybe look at it, but it's like even if you wrote me a check for like a hundred million right now, I wouldn't take it. Interesting. wouldn't take it. I good for you for that. I mean, what would you do at the end of the day? It's all it's all the element of what I would do and I also see the value in something and all the different parallels of growing it in different parallels of being able to get it to where I want to get it to. Trading is one of the biggest niches on YouTube and on the internet in the world. And then

35:55Wall Street finance is probably one of the biggest markets in the world. So I think you're like pennies compared to what it's going to be. Yeah, absolutely. Like there's so much surface area you could do too. Like what would be the main growth engine do you see yourself a pursue? So the thing is we haven't really

36:08leveraged any growth engines fully yet. Like up until now we there's because we don't support crypto. We don't support Indian markets. We don't support a lot of different brokers, right? So there's so many different avenues. We don't support different languages, right? So if you go to the Latin community, right? You go to different parts of the world, there's so many different language barriers that people if we had that would probably just double in ARR just by adding that. Um So there's a lot of avenues we haven't even touched. Right now it has been solely through a few partners we have and word of mouth and my socials. That's all we've done to get

36:42to the level we're at. Can we break those distribution channels down? So I know you have your channel and which is literally why you made it which I think every SaaS founder should take seriously because it's the most high trust, high leverage way to get eyeballs for free essentially. So your YouTube channel was strategically you went you put much more time into it knowing that this product was getting to a point where it's like ready. The product was great. You're ready to push it. But you didn't Did you I'm I'm assuming you didn't really put call to actions in your videos or did you make like one dedicated video like

37:09announcing it? Yeah, so what I would do on YouTube, so last year on YouTube as mentioned in May we were at 180,000 subs. From May of last year till December and December we're at 700. So in that time period we added 400 and I haven't posted a video by the way on YouTube since like January. Why? I just got busy with so

37:27many different stuff. It's it's hard. Content is really hard, right? So in a span of a couple of months we were able to add four to 500k subs and that was like intentional focused growing YouTube. I did not spend more than 4 to 10 hours a week on YouTube. In that week I made one video. We would take that one video and we would redistribute it on multiple channels, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts and a lot of other channels and that would all drive growth to our YouTube. Mhm. That was like the

37:57simple formula that we used. Just make one piece of content, cut it up, mass distribute podcast like this, mass distribute, push to one place. Absolutely. And even on TikTok like I've We have like a TikTok page. We have multiple Instagram pages with a few hundred thousand followers. I've never made a video sitting in front of a

38:12camera solely for a reels or TikTok. Everything online has been cut out from YouTube or a podcast. I can't believe you only spend 4 to 10 hours. I spend like 30 hours on a video if it's a talking head video. Like I'm writing the script and everything. So I don't script. Scripting has not worked for me. I wonder trading could be a little more like Yeah. So there's there's there's there's videos that people Yeah, so there's like videos like I'll like I'll have I'll have a I'll have a trade. Like, hey, I made 80

38:36grand. I'll walk through that trade. I'll go into my First I'll go into my trading platform to showcase like, hey, I'm not just bluffing and I'm not, you know, BSing here. Here look, I made the money. And then I'll go to TradeZella. Mhm. Walking through that trade. So those videos if it's a 20-minute video, the recording time is 22 minutes, 23 minutes, and then edit, chop it up, and that's it. The videos that are difficult are talking heads. But even those it's like, hey, seven things I've learned from making X amount of seven things I've learned. I'll write down my

39:03notes up what the bullet points are. I'll turn the camera on and just talk. makes sense. Yeah. It's much more natural way to speak. What percentage of customers came from your YouTube channel, do you know? Yeah, so up until now, I think now we're kind of separating away from my brand which is great, but until Q1 of this year about 40 to 50% of customers were coming from one of my socials. And that was like your first probably your first also your first customers. Absolutely. My first the first year I think 80 85% were coming just from me. Then we hit a stride of network effect of now if you

39:37go on Twitter like I went on Twitter yesterday and because the month of July just ended, I kid you not I was going through my feed and I probably saw like over 100, 200 people Mhm. just sharing their monthly recap on TradeZella. Exactly. I feel like personal brand content like has a glass ceiling in a way. And once you hit that, it's like then it's just about how much you post. But there's like the time it takes to post that much. There's now that you have this like group of customers, you can go affiliates, you can go like viral loops. You actually

40:02have like the product led growth. Yeah. And so I think a lot of people need to understand that. Like it's like the best way to start a software, but if you're trying to scale like the big boys, billion dollars, that's just like the initial fuel. Yeah, so the product led aspect has helped a lot. So it's like I go on Twitter now, all I see is TradeZella recap, recap, recap. Our calendar What is that? What is the recap? Did you like the monthly recap. They'll post their calendar, they'll post their notes, they'll post their stats. Hey, what my win percentage was, what my average win to loss ratio was, how my

40:28monthly calendar looked in profit and loss element, what some of my notes were. So go on Twitter and I see that. How's that encouraged? Like why are people posting on Twitter? Did you like tell them that or is it like a button they can hit like share? So right now we those are the things that we're incorporating now to simplify that. Like we're making a link where you can share your TradeZella profile Mhm. and people can like kind of see your stats. But I think it's just from the trading community transparency. Everyone wants to showcase transparency and talk about and flex if they want to. Yeah, in a

40:55way, right? Uh so it's cool seeing like people share that. And then we have like a feature where you can turn off your P&L. So instead of showcasing, hey, I made 30 grand this month, it'll say you made 40R. Yeah. Meaning you made 40 times what you risked. So you don't know if someone made 3,000 or 300 grand. Right. So it's kind of shows the skill,

41:13not the vanity. Exactly. So we're like pushing this as well. Like, hey, this is what you guys should focus on. That's what I talk about a lot too, right? So even in my YouTube videos, I'll say, hey guys, don't worry about what I made. What I made is irrelevant. Look at what I risked and look at what my R is,

41:26right? Which is what traders should do. So that also kind of started this new movement with traders of like, oh, this is what we should be focusing on. Ah, so you create like this like score that like kind of shows your skill as a trader regardless of size. Yeah. Huh. So so I mean the R multiple not that I created it, it existed

41:42before. Or showcased it. Yeah, so now we're just emphasizing it on on it more and it's like the retail trading space is so disconnected from like the proper trading space, right? Like when you go to institutions and so on cuz of a lot of influencers. So what we're trying to do is bridge the gap of like this is the right way to trade, this is what the tools you need, these are the things you need to do to get to the point of profitability. Have So this is kind of like beehive how they kind of everyone screenshots their like newsletter growth. So it's like it's like it makes sense for your tool. It's

42:09like a kind of a cultural thing where it makes sense to want to show people what you've been doing and you're kind of categorizing the skill instead of the vanity. That's really smart. Software's in a really unique place too where you have the product led growth and that's not really like you can't do that in courses, you can't do that anywhere else. There's pros and cons here. So has have there been other uh like organic growth engines like that that are product led? Have you done like

42:30affiliates to creators or anything? done affiliates with some partners. It's been really good because we've we've hand selected who we want. Mhm. Uh like we didn't just open up our affiliate program to everyone. It's like, hey, who do we think will be a good representation of our brand? So we'll call call them partners, give them like, you know, a piece of the revenue,

42:48recurring revenue consistently. And uh that's been a big push as well. Mhm. That is a also a department where going into Q4, we're going to double down on really heavy. Right? With key partners, key potential, you know, partnerships and so on and just double down on more creators we can get, more on YouTube, more on Reddit, more on different avenues and just kind of get this thing flowing to everyone. Yeah, I think uh affiliate communities are about to be a really big thing and that's what I'm going to lead the charge here with here. And so I'm really excited for that cuz they've kind of unlocked a new

43:19aspect to where you can get like the affiliate link and a community hub and then have your content that does so well on short form and then let people arm those people. I think it's going to be Yeah, I think it's super cool what you're doing. Yeah. So affiliates, then you have people naturally showing off their trades. Is do So do you have something that's like the Spotify wrapped? That's the kind of like your planned So this year at the

43:39end of this year we'll have that. Or is it branded? Like if you like saw a screenshot, you'd know it's TradeZella. I I I think at this point everyone knows cuz we have a unique UI. So everyone sees the UI, they see the calendar, they see some of the stats, they see all these things. Uh so people know. Like we also have our own thing called Zella scale or Zella score. Mhm. Uh where it'll give you a score on your trading based on a few metrics. It's still in beta, but in the next month or two, it it'll have like four, five more data points where it's

44:05like you can see based on your max drawdown, R multiple, win percentage, average win to loss ratio, uh your consistency element, it'll give you a score of where you stand as a trader. Interesting. It's got to feel like that there's always like 20 things that need to be done. Oh man, I I I I I I always say I tell my sisters all the time, if I knew how to code Yeah. Oh man, it would be game over. It would be game cuz I would just sit down like legit 24 hours a day and just push

44:31everything out. Push, push, push, push. I like there's so many things in my head that we have that we have to do. And every time we do like our monthly or quarterly plan, I'm like I add so much things and I'm like, okay, well, how do we hit all of this? They're like, it's impossible for us to do all of these things. Mhm. And I'm like, I wish we could get it out like tomorrow. Yeah, all the brokerage integrations, then you have to add crypto, then all the user like actual growth metrics you want to add. I can imagine the list goes on and

44:55on. Yeah, and even feature wise like we have a very extensive feature list that is never ending. Mhm. And you know, as I as we do interviews with users and as we see different pain points, we're like, oh wow, this is a big pain point. And it's things that I was never a pain point for me. We start learning so much and it's like, okay, well, this is the problem that these beginner traders have, this is the problem these advanced traders have, this is where the ICP for these customers fit in. How do we build that? How do we solve this problem? And we look at everything from like a first

45:23point of view where if this is the problem what way can we solve it? Then we test it and we push it out really quick. So our our whole thing is build it to 70%, 80% and just push out, push out, push out, get feedback, improve, push out, push out, push out, get feedback, improve and just keep doing that reiteration process. That's like the tried and true SaaS SaaS method, the billion dollars right there. So what are you most excited about out of all the features, out of all the next I think the AI element. Yeah, that sounds

45:49awesome. I'm I'm the most excited about. Uh we haven't even announced it yet, to be honest. I didn't mention it right now to you. Uh uh That's the main thing. We've been working on it for some time now. It it's just the language models and everything that we're building out and kind of testing and checking cuz also we want to

46:06give people really in-depth information. Uh I think we're going to aim to launch end of September, maybe early October sometime. But I think that's one big feature. There's another feature. I don't know if I want to say it out loud. It's okay. Yeah, there's another feature. I just don't want competitors to pick the

46:25cuz that's like 2025. need to be smart here. You're you're playing at the level where people are paying attention. So I get it. And also talking about people paying attention, talking about competitors in the past two years or past years where all of our competitors have woken up and they're started updating their UI, adding new features. Where prior to a year, year and a half ago, they never touched it. And they've been around like one of our competitors have been around since 2012. Many businesses struggle with high costs for materials, employees, distribution, and repaying borrowing costs. This affects cash flow, which is the number one reason why

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47:43more weeks. Head to netsuite.com/wgmi. That's netsuite.com/wgmi. Thank you, NetSuite, for sponsoring the podcast. And they just updated their UI. Are they following you? Like are they copying you? Yeah, that's Like That's the SaaS game. Like hard. Like if I show you our competitor that just updated their UI recently and some of the features they added, you'll be like, holy crap. It's a it's a compliment and also like you have to like every time you update something, you have to be

48:09ready to push. Yeah. Do you have you found that outside of YouTube just having that presence and like are you making like obviously you guys have that like course internally or like information educational resources? But do you find yourself that like are you making videos like explain product updates or are you like are you like is your face on Not not so much. We haven't we haven't made uh on like the YouTube element on on TradeZella and the product stuff, we haven't made much. And even if there's stuff we made, it's like I'll do some of them. Like if you're launching a new feature, I'll maybe do that. But if

48:38it's like updates and product breakdowns, we have someone else doing that. Is it just like a newsletter? How are you communicating new features? is one. We have a change log and a update on our website and then a lot on social media. Like we aim to push out a certain amount of features every month, new features, and push them on social media. So you like you have like brand

48:57you have like a TradeZella account. Yeah, which is like I think 90K on Instagram. Twitter's like I think 30 or 40K. YouTube, we have like five videos. It's at 10K. Okay. Right? So it's like those are pretty Have you found content strategies for those or is it literally just like communicating feature updates, announcements? You might do like a little community engage like people Yeah, there's a mixture. There's a mixture of we we mix it between updates on the product. Hey, these are the product updates. And then also with a mixture of educational elements, funny memes. So it's like a combination of fun stuff. Oh, memes, okay. Right? With a

49:28combination of education. Who's making those educational Uh we have someone that's making them. have an internal guy who's making all the educational like communicate to users of what Cool. So we're doing that on on a week on Twitter, Instagram, and uh yeah, those two make Is that guy full-time? A full-time, yeah. Does Does he have Does he have other roles? Uh no, just the main role is just, you know, content editing on content. Every Twitter, reply to Twitter, uh mentions, retweets, engagement on Twitter, engagement on

49:56social media, and content. Interesting. Okay, so from there you have the educational resources. Is that just included in the monthly subscription or is it like sold separately as a course? All all in the monthly. So, you're basically doing what these like trading gurus on online are charging 50 bucks a month for just for the info you have that included with your tool. So, now we're making a whole infrastructure that's similar to Masterclass on TradeZella. So, you're going to bring in other people who teach trading and get

50:25the best educational traders. educational, best strategies, best everything. It's all baked in. All in all in one one platform. One in the one subscription. One subscription. So, you interesting. So, you have a you wouldn't like I know Beehive has like a thousand dollar like I think this is an interesting marketing angle for a lot of SaaS companies is to like make a paid course, use that as like your paid ads engine, run ads like a hundred dollar course, whatever, just to break even, and then get the continuity of uh your subscription. So, Yeah, I I I don't think that's a bad idea. I I think our superpower once

50:55again is marketing. Like I think genuinely when I want to turn that engine on of adding 50,000 customers in a month. I know it sounds crazy. There's a way to do that. No, for sure. Right? Uh And then we have one mission, and I want to stick to that mission. It's how do we

51:09help retail traders become profitable? Period. And you're just pounding value. So, even from day one, everything we've launched, all the new features, etc., we've never increased pricing. We've never made a higher tier product. We kept the same pricing. In the future, maybe we'll create a higher tier product that has more features and more things, but for the next year to year and a half, one pricing on the higher tier, which is $49 a month, which is not expensive at all. Uh community, webinars, education, tools, resources, everything. It's like the creator approach to SaaS. I think this is like the brand new most cutting edge

51:44way to operate. and and and that way we keep it focused. It's your moat. Yeah, all customer focused. And like I said, we're we're product led growth company first, where it's like we want to build a great product, a great service, and we want it to be so good that every trader that gets into trading, this is the first

52:00tool that pops in their head. Mhm. Yeah. That is genius cuz people are saying SaaS like all the tools are kind of commoditized. You might have a UI advantage now, but the community is like the new moat for people. Yeah. Interesting. And you've been able to do it so much you use your personal brand as the Yeah. spark, but then now

52:16it just grows by itself. it's literally we're growing. I Like I said, I haven't posted a YouTube video in six six seven months now. Last video was like probably in January. And we're still growing month over month more and more. I keep saying it, but the surface area that you guys have to grow

52:30into is massive. insane. for you right now, dude. That's awesome. So, what are you basically You have marketing down. Don't sell the courses. That's just a concept, but you don't need it. You guys can grow in so many different ways. Is there like something that you think I don't know how to describe it. Like you're only focused on retail. So, you don't want to go with like an enterprise We're We're actually We're actually speaking to a few big firms in in New York and a few other places,

52:56and possibly going to get them on. Right? So, there's a few big firms, and our next step is how do we make TradeZella good enough for you guys to be a part of it. What are What are the things that we need? So, we're in conversation with a few of them, and the play there isn't really uh from an enterprise point of view, it for me it's not how do we make money on them. For me, it's like how do we get them on? Cuz if we have the biggest firms on using TradeZella, and even if let's say we make no money, that's such a big selling factor. Social

53:27proof, you're ingraining their behavior. They're going to tell their other trader friends at the biggest firms. So, so for me, it's like getting these big firms on is is more important than any amount of money. Interesting. So, then going back into your Masterclass vision here, is it like you're going to like curate the best traders personally, then like shoot like

53:46basic strategies? Everything Everything We're going to shoot it, record it, everything. It's already kind of in the works, so it's just now we have done a little bit of it already. Now, it's just kind of planning a launch, and then getting a backlog of other big traders, big creators that we think are able to offer value. And only value they're going to offer is their strategies and their approach to the market. So, if you're a new trader, you can hop on and see all of these different approaches and strategies out there. Interesting. Can I ask what the

54:15incentive Are you paying them to do it? Are they going to get an affiliate link? Are they Do they see the value in being associated, and like maybe they have a course like an upsell or something, or Yeah, so I think the the value that comes into people is one, the association of having access to a hundreds and hundreds of thousands of traders, cuz most people are selling something. Yeah, they get exposure. So, getting the exposure, the network effect of having hundreds and hundreds of thousands of eyes on you, especially next year when we're going to hit two of our biggest growth metrics. I think I think by end

54:43of 2025 we'll have a million users, not all paid, but a million users on the platform. Oh my uh I know it sounds crazy, but it's I'm actually confident that we're going to be able to get there. Uh so, you know, you're getting that network effect of all these users seeing you and contributing to the mission. Uh we are going to make the education free at a point. Mhm. We're not going to make money off it. So, it'll be a part of the subscription, but eventually it'll be a lead magnet, basically. Yeah, it's like you want You want to learn trading, sign up to TradeZella. We're going to have a free

55:10account. Here's the free education. Here's free this. Here's free that. So, it is following that mission of like how do we help retail traders become profitable? And my first thing is give them free education. Mhm. Right? So, right now, it's like for the first six months, it's hard because we don't have a free plan, but eventually the plan is to have one free plan, no credit card, no anything, just journal, basic journal,

55:31community, and education, all in one. Yeah, you're hitting like the entire life cycle. So, if they're just interested in trading, from trading interested to professional traders, there's going to be a stage where this will help you get from one starting point to one outcome. Yeah. And and and the interesting spot we're in it with competitors is we're outside of profitability. I can still fund this project a lot of money if I need to from my own pocket. Yeah. We're not You probably Sorry, you had like five million dollars before you even probably made this, right? Like Yeah, I mean, my my trading floor, my trading business, and you know,

56:05everything else like I'm pretty comfortable in like funding this multi-millions if I need to to back it up. Is there a thought process here where you're literally like taking people from their very beginning levels of trading to actually becoming like very successful traders, then having them on your trading floor? Yeah. So, that would be that's so smart. So, we have a trading floor in Dubai where we are funding some traders, giving them real capital to trade futures markets, stock market, and so on. And what we want to do there is we want to get the best talent, someone that we think is coachable, learnable, and kind of split the profits with them,

56:40right? And we want to hit that scalability in thousands of users, right? So, Damn. That is smart. So, right now, the problem that we were facing is a scalability issue of like being able to onboard these customers. We've kind of solved that by building our own in-house tech recently. And now, we're able to take on more customers, manage them, and kind of see who we want to fund, who we don't want to want to fund. Now, for people that maybe are watching, we're not a We're not the funding company. There's a lot of prop

57:10firms out there like FTMO and so on. That's not what we are. We're not take a challenge. If you pass the challenge, we'll give you money. No, we're evaluating you without a challenge, without you taking a challenge, and based on the evaluation, we're putting you on a process to see if we want to

57:25keep you a part of our firm. And if you are, we will give you capital, obviously slowly and surely, and scale that up. So, that's how it works. You guys have like a big bank account, one bank account, and then you have these traders, and you give them like a hundred grand each or something. Yeah. And then what they'll start trading with it, and if they make ten thousand dollars, you split it some certain split. Basically, it's all these accounts are monitored and and managed, right? You can't lose more than Let's say you have a hundred grand account, you can't lose more than a thousand a day. Mhm. So, it's not like

57:50you're going to go into a hundred grand account and blow forty thousand dollars a day. It's all like, you know, with a lot of different metrics and things placed in and baked into the into the product where you have a max loss, max gain, max trade amount, timing, etc., etc. Is this communicated through the TradeZella platform, or this is more like hand-to-hand you see This is all black line. So, that's is the black line company. And for that, we have a wait list of like 72,000 people, which is insane. Like we have We put out a wait list about a couple of months ago, and from then

58:16till now it's just 72 What are you looking for for in the people that are success or that you choose? Uh we're looking for your approach to the market. We're looking for How do you How do you see the approach? How do you engage? a whole documentation of you writing that down. You're giving us your trades. So, if if you give us a certain approach, and you give us your data for the past year, we're able to see your approach matching with your trades, right? Are your playbooks matching with what you've outlined? Uh right? What are your metrics? What is your risk-to-reward ratio? What is your

58:47consistency element, right? Are you trading in a consistent pool of trades? Like are all your trades between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m.? Are you randomly shooting the You know what I mean? Do you Do you want them to know this stuff, or is this like Oh, no, they they Yeah, yeah, they can know this stuff. This is this is fine.

59:01Yeah, yeah. It's not just saying, it's also your data. You're Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a tool, so they can say what whatever they want, but there's a data element. We're not just taking someone without any data. You need to have raw data and historical data of trades that you've taken that we can actually look at

59:15before we even go on to stage one. Mhm. How old are you? I'm 29. You're at a great pace, brother. Cuz I can see this being like literally like your free courses once it's free is just getting millions of people through the door. Then they're actually learning how to trade. The people that stick with it, let's just say it's like a hundred thousand people who stick with it. Start

59:32using TradeZella really successfully. They start up in that R score, post in publicly, you know? They start getting like social proof into the public world that they know what they're talking about. Then they can apply to your trading floor, and then now they're taking you have like trained them up to real professional level traders. Now they're taking your money and making this huge balloon of just works as a very healthy cycle. And the cool thing is, like I was saying before, we can fund this a lot very, very strongly if we need to more. We don't We're not backed by VCs, so we don't have any pressure of like growing and

1:00:04taking certain routes. Uh we're not focused on making money, which is a really big superpower we have. We're not here sitting like What do you mean? Uh what I mean by that is we're not sitting here and saying my goal is to make a billion dollars. a billion dollars. My goal is to hit this revenue number. My goal is We have one simple goal, and it's to make a product that will help traders

1:00:25become successful, period. Retail traders, yeah. Whatever we need to do, whatever we need to pour into that, keep doing that. Be hyper focused on that. Forget all the metrics, forget everything else. Not saying they're not important, but keep building a good product. And we can keep funding it. Mhm. It's like interesting. Go ahead, Tariq. Yeah, I I was saying we're at a point what what, you know, as a business we're

1:00:44doing well. Uh you know, me myself and I I'm doing well where I can keep funding this high six figures a month if I need to over and over again for the next couple of years. So it's like we can keep playing the burning game with competitors, which I'm not worried about, unless a competitor raises 20 million dollars, 30

1:01:00million dollars. And there's only urgency just cuz they could beat you to one. One. Yeah. do crypto first or something, right? Yeah, so it's not I'm not really worried unless one of them raises a lot of money. Right. Uh and so so that's where our superpower isn't we're trying to hit these metrics of like growth or metrics of making X amount of money. Our metric is just

1:01:21build a good product, let it flywheel. That's it. It's like basketball. You're just trying to make make a basket, so you're just taking it possession by possession by possession. Exactly. Interesting. That's really cool. So this is a It's so fascinating cuz this is like a very new Alex Hormozi is kind of doing something very similar,

1:01:35how so vertically integrated. Right? Like make content, teach people how to go from 300,000 to 3 million. Once you're at 3 million, we'll invest in you taking you to 300 million or whatever. So there's no monetization really on the bottom sections, but you're really just taking people from zero to one. And then once they're at one, you take them from one to 100, basically. That's so smart,

1:01:54dude. Thank you. Hell yeah. Okay, so I really just The last thing I guess I want to really ask you cuz I I know we're hitting the time here. Uh why'd you buy your sister SVJ? Uh okay. So a lot of a lot of different reasons. So I have two sisters. One I got her a

1:02:14few months ago an A12. Right? And then the second one I got her an SVJ. And the reason it was SVJ is because when I was 20, I took delivery of my SV. Mhm. Not Not when she Not when I was 21, when I was 24, when I was in Miami 5 years ago, 4 years ago. And she wasn't there, and I always told her next time I take delivery of one, you will be

1:02:33there. So that's why it was that car. And she's like always loved that car cuz I loved the SVJ. Uh but So she liked the Lamborghinis? It was a lot because of me. That and then also I just my two sisters have been like such a big support system in my life, both of them. And even when I was young and I would have like these crazy ideas and crazy things. Like for example, TradeZella. Me just saying I wanted to start start TradeZella and me feeling unsure about it, and then them blindly supporting me and saying, "No, you should do it. You can do it. You can do

1:03:04it." It kind of gives you this internal confidence of knowing there's people that believe in you. And I think having that consistently over and over again gives you this like crazy amounts of confidence. So they have been that from me for me since 17, both of them. So for me it's always been like a way of giving back to them, being like, "Hey, I appreciate you guys." And like, "Thank you so much for like always believing in me." When even like even

1:03:28trading-wise, "Hey, I'm going to trade." "Oh, yeah, you can do it. You can do it. Yeah, you can do it." And it was like a unblind level of like confidence, right? And that to me, since I was young, has played such a big role in me just doing stuff, just having these two people in my life that just always believed in anything I would do. And sometimes it would it wouldn't be things

1:03:46that I even believed in myself for. So that was That was it. And for me it was because that car was so important to me, it also became very important to Cyra, my sister. So she loved that car. And I was like, "If I'm going to get her any car, it is going to be the SVJ, the one that's better than what I got." That could be the most important aspect of entrepreneurship. Cuz like your rational mind tries to You're scared. Tries to talk you out of stuff. Tries to rationalize you out of it. And so just to have someone say, "No, you can actually do that." Like kind of mute

1:04:12that voice. So I can see why that's important. And then you You bought your parents a $4 million house, too. So you took care of your family way at the beginning. Yeah. Did you I'm curious that cuz you made a lot of money trading younger. I feel like a lot of people have the

1:04:26story of they make a lot of money young. They have like an ego, and then they're like spend it in different ways that they think would like and they kind of like blow it in a way. And then have like another ramp up and learn how to be like disciplined with it. Has that been something that you've seen? Uh I've seen it with people, not myself. I've I've always looked at people when I was very young of like, "How is someone able to stay at a high level year after year after year?" And I was always like, "I never want to be the person that's been

1:04:52at a high level and then fell down because of my own problems, my own uh you know, levels of not being disciplined and being stupid and immature and so on. So for me it was always like, "Okay, well, I need to make sure that my finances are taken care of. I don't blow money on stupid stuff. I'm not going to go to a club and spend 30 grand just cuz I can." Like that's stupidity to me, you know? Yeah, it's

1:05:11easy, but I it's just stupidity to me. Um so for me it's always been like looking at things from a point of view of like, "Hey, AB humble. Like be at a Like remain a student of the game. Don't ever think you're better than other people just because you have a little bit of money. There's always someone that has something more than you, and keep that. And if you ever feel like you're at a point where, 'Hey, I'm better than you,' you're competing with

1:05:32the wrong person." You know what I mean? So I go into rooms like we were just at a mastermind with Tyler, Tyler Denk from Beehiive. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. He had a mastermind in Costa Rica. Yeah, yeah, I went to that. Yeah, really cool. Great guy, a great group of great group of people. And even when I went there, my whole thing was like, "Hey, I'm the

1:05:46dumbest person here." Like genuinely. Like that's my mindset. I want to go in with like I'm Like I want to approach the room because I want to learn from you guys, right? And I don't want to go in a room with like, "Hey, I have this much money or I own X Like I don't doesn't matter. I'm here to learn, I'm here to grow. And I think when you remove that element of like, "I'm so good." and that ego element, you go into rooms and conversations with like learning. I actually want to learn from you. I want to learn how you're able to do X, Y, and

1:06:12Z, how this person is able to do X, Y, and Z. And that that level of progress and just improving excites me more than sitting in in a on a high horse chair and be like, "Oh, I'm so good at this." or "I'm so good at that." And the cuz they're like hardcore SaaS in the SaaS world, too. So I'm What did What is the number one thing you learned

1:06:27from them? Uh From One thing I learned from Yeah, uh tracking, man. They They track. Their Their speed and execution is really fast. That's really their brand. Yeah, they they update really fast. Uh Their Their Like I've I've taken a lot of key things from Tyler, right? And that was my main thing cuz we launched TradeZella and Beehiive around the same time, right? And uh he launched in 2021, I think a few months before us. And then we launched and like revenue-wise, MRR-wise, we're like They're They're They're more than us,

1:06:59but we're still like here. So I I I look at them as a I try to mimic what they're doing and learn from them. My biggest thing was tracking all the things they're tracking, how fast they're executing, how well he keeps his team together, right? And how he's able to keep everyone motivated, updated, and aligned on the vision was like huge for me cuz they're a remote-first team. So he's able to do that extremely, extremely well. And for me it's just taking that away from him, going back home, and saying, "Okay, well, how do I apply all these things within TradeZella and my other businesses?" And that whole

1:07:30weekend, you know, after I took away key things, I just went on a rampage of just applying, applying, applying. Yeah. Cuz it's like the little things. Like observing that pace and seeing like, "Okay, this is the expectation. This is what it looks like at the highest level, so we need to match this if match this

1:07:43if we want to be at the highest level." What were they tracking? You mean like just like like specifically like user analytics, like all that visits? had a spreadsheet where he tracked about everything. I don't want to say what everything is, all right? Like it was just everything. And it's like just seeing it and just seeing how someone is operating their business and little things they're doing just kind of gives you insight, and you're like, "Okay, wow wow, I see it. Okay, I see how you guys are pushing out product. I see what you're doing here. I see what you're doing there." It just kind of gives you a a new perspective on

1:08:10things. They raised money. Would you consider raising money? No, I wouldn't. I'm not I'm against raising. Yeah. What you're against it? I'm For For personally? So I'm against it because I know a lot of people that have raised money, and they have You know, if you need to, sure. If you don't need to, then obviously not. But they've complained about how the investor updates are annoying, board meetings are annoying, having to, you know, answer to these people, diluting your shares. Because at that point for

1:08:36to me, at least, it'll become a job. Yeah, it's not your business. You work for the investors, yeah. Like I love TradeZella. I love working on it. I love building the things I want to build on. I love taking a gamble on like my ideas. I love building in the direction I want to build in. That to me is fun. So I wouldn't give that up for any amounts of, you know, equity unless I still have

1:08:56control. Like a strategic maybe. be it. Besides that, I'm not I'm like I've gotten offers, by the way, from from Everyone wants to give people money. Yeah, from multiple people cuz when you look at our growth trajectory and everything, blah blah blah. Uh and some offers have been like really, really good. And I'm I'm just like

1:09:13I'm going to stay away. Interesting. Okay, so I guess the last topic, sorry, I did not mean the last question earlier. Last topic is uh This is We've all Like when you hear the story, obviously this is like 4 years. We're kind of getting like the things that have worked. I'm sure there's always been 10 things 10 things you tried didn't work. A lot of like doubt and like unknowing. So, is there anything like I know it's not a hugely popular topic on the internet, but like inner work or like guide like subconscious more of the subjective stuff you've done as a person that has helped you like cuz you said

1:09:42you were really scared to start your SAS. How were you like to kind of this give me this how you frame your inner self? So, I have two characters inside me. Interesting. Right? I I I I think we all there's I don't know what what people call this something the alter ego, I guess. So, I have an alter ego. I have multiple of them. And there's one that is like has this extreme high confidence and like I can

1:10:05do anything I want. And I've learned to create it. I've learned to kind of manage it and I've learned to know when to dive into it. Turn it on. Yeah. Right? So, like for example, I'm naturally not I don't like public speaking. I hate public speaking. Like to a point where in high school, I would miss days when I would have to present a project. That's how much I hate public speaking. I wouldn't go. I

1:10:31would skip I would skip the day, right? That's how much I hate public speaking. I over the years have developed that character in me where when I have to public speak and I've done it a few times, I would step into that frame and just be that character. Right? That's the same character I've developed in terms of when I have to take a big bold bet and I'm like okay, well, get into that character. Right? So, it's like I've

1:10:55I've I think we all need that. And it it it doesn't just develop. You need to have a vision. You need to have a level of confidence and confidence comes from accomplishments, right? I can't I didn't just wake up one day and have it. That came from hey, I started trading. I never went to college or for trading or anything and I was able to be good at it. Hey, I started a SAS platform and look how far we were able to get. So, things like that develop and create that character stronger and stronger and stronger where to now I can have that character and say, well, I think I can

1:11:24go for a billion. Mhm. Right? And then don't be so delusional. Be delusional to a Yeah, you know, be delusional to a point where it's like you can match efforts to it. Like 4 years ago, I couldn't say I think I can build something to a billion-dollar valuation. Now, I can say it with things backing it up and saying with this vision and game plan, I can see it. You need the incremental evidence to give your internal self the proof and belief that that character is real. Yeah. Since that alter ego you've had, you're consciously aware of that character and then you can point to like, no, this character made me a

1:12:01multi-eight-figure ARR company. So, if he can make me an eight-figure, why wouldn't he be able to make me a billion? And being conscious of that, huh? Yes, exactly. Is there any sort of like routine or practice or like affirmations? I know it's a really good for me really well is music. Really? Two two people I three people I listen to

1:12:17that have have kind of ignited it. Jay-Z. Nice. There there's certain music like if you listen to it, you really you know that guy. Yeah, right? Drake. I think even when you listen to some of things he says and then 50 Cent. Mhm. Right? You know, you put those certain songs and certain things they'll say. Like Jay-Z has a song um he says Hammer went broke, so you know

1:12:43more focused. Hammer I lost 30 million, so I spent another 30 cuz unlike Hammer, 30 million can't hurt me. So, it's like when you hear certain things that people say and like how how high they are in life and how they look at things, you're like, holy And that ignites that. I'm a huge believer that the music I listen to when I was like 18, 19, 20 is like how I became the way that I am. It's like building my self-image and I'm listening to music that's intentionally like re-encouraging what I want to be or what I aspire to be and those lyrics into your subconscious

1:13:14like actually creates it in you in a way. Yeah, and I think when you look at these people like Drake for example, one thing I admire about Drake, right? And I know Drake's not the person to talk about right now cuz everyone's like going against him is like how he's able to stay on top of the music industry for 15 years. Jay-Z, how he's able to become a multi-billionaire from being in the music industry and having other multiple ventures outside of that. Right? Same thing with 50 Cent, how he started in music and has went into other ventures and shifted and pivoted into a new career path. So, it's like really

1:13:43interesting when you look at these high net worth individuals and how they were able to pivot and what they were able to do cuz that's all a parallel correlation to everything we're doing in a different different world. Yeah, I mean, I think Drake's ability to stay on top of the game yeah, he's getting he was in a rap beef right now. He might have lost. This also could be the biggest set up for him to like solidify. So, he has like in this negative space, there's opportunity for him to come back even stronger. And there is something to say with that like

1:14:09sustainability cuz it's not about money. Like you had enough money when you were 24, 25 to like retire. And that's something that you kind of need to drop. I don't you think Eamon says the same thing about Drake? Like that's how what he really looks up to is like how do you stay on top of the game without getting complacent and studying into that. So, that's fascinating. Has there been any other like I guess not self-improvement, but just like general like practices that you follow just to like maintain that level of intensity in showing up every day or

1:14:34how did you not get complacent really? Uh I think one chip on my shoulder I've always had is realizing how blessed I am to be in America. I was born in Pakistan, right? So, because being born in a third-world country and where my parents grew up in and etc. So on like they lived in like a really poor part of the world. So, I was also born there. I came here when I was like 5, 6, so obviously not much time there, but I don't take it for granted the

1:14:58opportunities that exist for me. Uh that also kind of gives me this level of like pressure or a chip on my shoulder if you want to call it to keep performing at a high level. And I just think naturally I just want to compete at a high level and I think the person that's instilled that in me is Kobe Bryant. I was a huge Kobe fan, so you know, when I used to watch him, his the way he would approach the game, his talks, his interviews and how like ruthless he was and how he was so like

1:15:25keen on winning at such a high level. You as a kid, you know, when you're like in the fifth, fourth grade and you listen listen years after year, you start embodying that. That's probably where you got that same approach to your product cuz the same way he thinks about basketball. Absolutely. It's just another game, huh? Interesting. So, is there really anything else that you think that anyone cuz I do really like again, I'm going to this is what I think is the new way to do it. It's like personal brand to some sort of cash flow mechanism so trading, whatever it is to then using that as

1:15:54like a launchpad business to go SAS. Do you think that I'm just curious like a SAS like what is it like running a SAS compared to like your personal brand business, your trading business? So, it's it's it's way more difficult than you would imagine. Like I'm not saying you way more difficult. So, when I was the person I was at 25, I'm currently 29. The person at 25 or 26 could not operate at the level I'm operating now. There's a lot of things I had to learn. There's a lot of things I had to let go of. Like I had to learn how to be better at leading. I

1:16:24had to learn how to be better at seeing a vision and creating actionable steps to the vision. I had to learn how to be a better learner cuz now I'm spending a couple of hours a week on YouTube learning from different people. Like there's this guy I think the the founder of WordPress engine. Uh I watched A smart bear. That's Jason Cohen. I read his yeah, I read his stuff. Yeah, I read

1:16:46his stuff all the time. on the internet. Uh I read his stuff all the time. There's a lot of blog articles I spend time on. So, now it's like I'm managing being a trader, being on top of trading, running Blackline, trying to do my content when I was, now also being a SAS founder dealing with all of these daily problems that we run into. So, it it it's forced me to manage my time better. It's forced me to look at things from a better operational standpoint and being able to execute on the proper

1:17:14vision. Interesting. What was the most uncomfortable hurdle you had to like overcome that you saw the most growth from? Uh in in TradeZella? Or overall? Overall, if there's a more interesting Uh the most uncomfortable hurdle there's like a million different uncomfortable hurdles, honestly. Uh Like you said you didn't like public speaking, leadership was one. Also, you weren't technical and you went through all these different development agencies. It would have been easy to just say stuff. I think it was probably yeah, probably that. I think just throwing myself into I think on a span of 2, 3 weeks I did like a hundred plus interviews with agencies,

1:17:47independent contractors, engineers. 100 interviews? Over a hundred plus interviews in like a two-week period. No, no, no, to different other a lot of different. So, my thing was how do I learn about software development? How why don't I just interview people to hire them and through interviews let them talk. So, I would talk to different people, different agencies. I talked to this agency. They give me this approach. I just let them talk. Let them talk. I know absolutely nothing what they're saying, but if you speak to enough people over a period of time, you pick up certain keywords, you pick up certain approaches, then you understand why a certain approach makes

1:18:23sense, then you understand what approach most people were taking, why they're taking that approach, what has worked, what hasn't worked. So, this was like I think January and February of 2021 where on a two-week, three-week period, I just did so many interviews with so many companies, independent contractors, engineers learning just asking them like, hey, well, I want to hire you.

1:18:42What how would you tackle this project? What would you do? What how would you do this? How would you do that? And over time my questions got better. My approaches got better. Now I I've learned what I need to learn by just interviewing. Right? It's the same thing if you want to learn about real estate, speak to a bunch of different realtors in the space and you'll hear countless of different opinions, but you'll be able to formulate your own really good opinion after having conversations with

1:19:02them. So, did you pay any of these people? I know you did it. It's interesting that you're saying that you interviewed these people for like to work for you, which obviously most people when they're doing that, they're really thinking selfishly like I'm trying to get good talent, but you're thinking of it like I want to get not only am I going to try to find the best talent, but I'm also

1:19:20going to learn from every single person. So, you're taking from all of them instead of just the person you hired. Yeah, so I'm learning uh from cuz it's also when you start you don't know what to look for. You'll have a call and then they'll tell you stuff you're like, okay, I have no idea. Sounds good. You'll do another call, third call, and then you'll start seeing a difference between the great people and not the great people. How the great people can break down complex things into very simple ideas, right? So I've had calls with some people and they couldn't explain very basic concepts to me where someone else would take the

1:19:46most complex situation and dumb it down for me. And I'm like, okay, well, I like that he can dumb it down. Okay, how would you approach this? Okay, if we have trading and we're parsing data, how would you parse the data? This is how I would parse the data. Okay, he said this way. Now next time I ask a question, I have a framework to work on. Yes. It just

1:20:03builds on it. So that was a very uncomfortable time for me because doing 10, 12, 14 calls a day is like exhausting, exhausting, especially when you don't want to do it and you have no end in sight. done it before, you don't know what the questions ask. It's normal, you want to come off professional to the person. That's so interesting. I think the one thing I'll say here is on developers, as a non-technical person too. I never found a developer that said they

1:20:24couldn't do what I wanted to do. Exactly. I didn't say that either. And so it's like, I got to find a developer. Then you find the first guy and he's like, yeah, this will be easy, I can knock it out in 2 weeks. And you just think it's like Yeah, that was the one thing I liked about Yaroslav,

1:20:37you know, from Railsware. When I spoke to him and we formed our partnership and everything, he told me the things they weren't able to do in buying and how they would approach it differently. And he was like, well, you know, we have to refactor the code first. I was like, no, like I want to push these features out. And he's like, no, like, Omar, trust me, we need to refactor this to see where it's broken and he explained things to me. And I I kind of already had an idea of that was the approach, but I wanted to see how reluctant he was on doing the right

1:21:02thing or getting the client. conviction and the willing to push back. Yes. Even though you're in the control position. Yeah, and to me, if I'm working with anyone, I want to know that you can do that, that you're not going to just let me come in and say, no, no, no, we're going to do do that first. If you're an expert in your field, I want you to come in and say, listen, I understand what you're saying, that is a very dumb and stupid approach. If you want me to do it, sure, but it's a very

1:21:26dumb approach. I don't recommend this. This is what I recommend. Trust me and this is why. So he was very on that and that to me was a big thing. Him and another guy, Arthur on the team, they were very big on like proper approaches and I was like, okay, well, this is the way we're going to go about it. Dude, that is really good advice. And this conversation just really inspired me, dude. I think you have like one of the biggest visions and I don't see why it's not coming true in the next 5 or 10 years for you. You could go on forever with Black Line and

1:21:53everything you're doing. So I think you're the absolute who everybody should be learning from. So where can they find you? Uh Instagram, YouTube, Omar Ashraf, my first and last name. Okay. And then the software is TradeZella, if you guys want to go check that out. Dude, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you, man. Great questions, by the

1:22:08way. I was fired up.