A Story Of Greed – The Fastest Way To Go Broke

While cleaning out my files this week, I found a testimonial from well over a decade ago. It was a testimonial regarding my previous career. A career that led me to and overlapped with my Profiling and Communications work.

In the early 2000s I taught the tools of FOREX Currency trading with an in depth focus on the psychology of trading. Being one of the few trainers globally who focused on understanding the mind of the traders, I had clients travelling from as far as Europe to work with me here in Australia. What follows is a story of a group who did just that, somewhere around 2008.

The group had travelled from the other side of the world to train with me. There were 6 people in total and 3 who went on to spend more time with me after the courses. The whole group was brought together by (let’s call him Joe) who bankrolled the Courses. By the way, I should point out here that Joe never sat in on any of the training. Joe was just the bank

After they finished their training, the 3 were employed by Joe to trade his money for him. Recognising that Joe, not having attended the courses and being the source of their trading capital, was going to be a problem, I continued to work with the 3 traders. ?We continued to discuss their planned trades each day as well as doing post-mortems on the trades they had completed – won or lost. And after I took myself out of the equation, they continued to trade well for quite some time.

Sometime later, I received this testimonial from one of the three. (Let’s call him Charles).

“I Highly recommend anyone who is interested in forex trading to try Alan’s courses, he presents a very complex subject in an easy-to-understand format that is fun to learn. He also provides amazing assistance after the class is complete and always seems to have time for any query that you may have. I have also found out a lot more about myself after working with Alan and can’t recommend his services enough!!!”

As you can imagine I felt good hearing that and that they were doing well. Another successful outcome – or so I thought. ?

This is where the greed came in, the discipline went out the window, and everything went belly up. A year or two later, Charles and I caught up online and he shared the following with me.

“I am living in Canada at the moment with my lovely girlfriend. We met about 4 months after I did the course with you. I'm still trading at the moment. I gave up on it for a while after events with Joe and co.?

Basically after we finished trading with you we were given large accounts to trade with. Mine was $500,000 and Barry’s was $800,000. I traded for a couple of months and when I looked back through my results I found out that I was doing quite well so it was all positive.

Joe had promised us 20% commission on everything that we made and Barry started to trade quite well so Joe gave him a trading account with nearly $4 million to trade with. To say that he was feeling the pressure was a bit of an understatement. He made $130,000 in his first week but then greed got the better of him and he lost $900,000 the next week. He lost a trade and doubled up to try and get it back and lost loads of money.

Joe was also trying to influence the trading and was trading our accounts and losing money all over the place. In the end we closed the office down and ceased trading and I left Australia soon afterwards.”

“I’m back trading 2 small accounts and following everything you taught me, ?just taking it easy and making money. Thanks to you, I am more aware of myself and have the ability to see where things do and don't work and it's all very exciting so who knows what the future holds.

I think we will be in Canada for a year or two and then we will be coming back to Australia, possibly to New South Wales so if that assistant teaching role is still possible with you who knows what will happen in the future ;)

Please let me know how you've been and thank you again for all your great teaching, patience and for helping me to see and understand more about myself.”

Joe proved how greed and a lack of disciple will bring you down so fast your head will spin. While Barry let his discipline slide and fear take over.

Charles, on the other hand, got back to his foundation lessons, focussed on understanding his personality and character, reapplied discipline to his practises. Recent contact with Charles, more than a decade later, and he is still doing well.

The lesson I learnt from this highlighted a number of points for me:

• My knowledge is highly valuable, not just to me but everyone I share it with.
• My time shouldn’t be wasted on those who disrespect or don’t value it – as Joe did.
• There are those you can help and those who you can’t.

Putting that together, I learnt to appreciate the saying “Go where you are celebrated and not just where you are tolerated.”

In whatever I am teaching, I can only work with a finite number of people in this lifetime – the same as you. So, I put the question to you too, “do you want to spend time with the Charles’s of the world or waste your time on the Joes and Barry's.

It is why anyone who wants to train with me personally, in whatever field I work in, they have to prove they are of the right stuff. This is why anyone who wants to do one of my Master Profiling and Communications Programs must first pass an interview.

I’ll leave you with one more question. If you are good at what you do. If you bring great value to your clients. How well do you respect yourself, your offering, and the people you work with??

So, set your standards and apply discipline to everything you do. Respect yourself, because no one else will - until you do. Keep your focus and leave the Joes and Barry's of the world for someone else to waste their time with.

#Greed #discipline #respect #Communications