Tradeify founders Brett and Vinny on traders, gamers and live capital

0:0090% of people who are talking about live haven't ever been live yet. Running a prop firm is is fast and furious. I mean, we have right now 100,000 traders trading daily. There's a lot of people on social, they always look at it like it's you versus the firm. We can see how a lot of people may get that opinion. Does make sense, but everyone has an opinion on prop firms, but very few people actually understand how they really work.

0:20So, instead of talking to another trader, I sat down with the founders behind Traderify, Brett and Vinnie. when you go to live, let's say you make $5,000, $10,000 in a day, you can take that right away. I don't know almost a single prop that you can do in just one day that you get the funded a payout just like that. Traders in general, they'll look at it sometimes as, oh, I can just go long or short at the open or news and build a huge buffer.

0:44And you wouldn't actually do that with real money. I think one thing that a lot of traders need to know is we had an honest conversation about what really happens behind the scenes when you're running a prop firm. They broke down how Traderify actually came to life. I had a look at where we were this time last year. We had 20,000 active traders. Wow. We 5xed our number of traders. Anyone with a little bit of marketing reach can open up a prop in like 3 weeks.

1:07I think I saw someone advertising open up a prop in 2 weeks. That can't happen. They shared their view on what the future holds for the industry. They spilled the beans on whether prop firm owners actually talk to each other. If you've ever wanted an unfiltered view of what it's like to really run a prop firm, this is the episode for you. Trader trades the market. A gamer trades the profit.

1:27The gamers will spend a lot. You may see thousands of dollars of payout, but behind the scenes, maybe they made a profit, but there's thousands of dollars of expenses as well. If I had to pick which type of trader, I would be looking at the data. I I would pick. Let's get into it. What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Prop Firm Trader Podcast. The number one podcast in the world for funded traders.

1:44On this show, we like to do things differently. We like to look past just the money and just the payouts and we want to understand what it takes to actually succeed in the prop firm space. Now, on today's episode, we're going to do things a little differently. Normally, we will showcase a trader. We'll talk about their strategy and their mindset, but today we've got two individuals that are going to give you more information than you could probably take in a lifetime about the prop firm space.

2:09I truly believe if you want to succeed in the prop firm game, you have to understand how to play it and understand what goes on behind the scenes. Now, there's no better person to tell you what goes on behind the scenes than our guests today. Their firm has paid out over $250 million to their traders. They are constantly innovating and they are building a trusted platform that traders can actually succeed in. It is my pleasure without any further ado to introduce the wizards behind Traderify, Brett and Vinnie.

2:38Welcome aboard, guys. Appreciate it. Happy to be here. We got the actual wizard over here. His nickname is Gandalf for for those for those who know. So, we got an actual wizard in the in the chair here. Yeah, I thought that was planned. I actually wasn't. I think the uh the vibe today is just on point. I'm still the wizard's apprentice, so I'm in the Ministry of Magic over here, but he's learning. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm getting there. Um guys, I want to jump straight in.

3:08I am super keen to understand what goes on behind the scenes cuz I think the majority of what I do is I'm talking to the trader. I'm talking to the end user and we see things from one perspective, but you guys are in a unique position where you essentially have all the data. You have all the visibility of everything that goes on behind the scenes.

3:23And I think for the people at home to understand what it's like to run the prop, what the future of that journey might be like, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. So I think the first thing I want to throw your way is you guys obviously see the data of thousands and thousands of traders that come through your door. What pattern do you guys see play out most that has actually really surprised you?

3:47I mean firstly behind the scenes the running a prop firm is is fast and furious. It's it's insane. It's crazy. I mean we have right now 100,000 traders right trading daily, right? And that's that's a lot to manage. Um, and I think in terms of patterns that we see, I would bucket prop firm traders into into really two categories. We have the traditional traders, those that, you know, they've found an edge in the market. Uh, maybe they're trading real capital and they want to scale up their trading by using prop firms and they take that edge into the market.

4:19Uh, and they do very well. And then there's well the the second type of propform traders which are the I'd call them more in the kind of gamers right and I think the difference between a trader and a gamer is that you know a trader trades the market a gamer trades the prop right and that's the that's the big difference interesting and the way the gamers kind of work is they they look at the rules that the prop firm has and they try to find an edge based on that rule set so what what draw down they have available able uh what's their profit targets or what what's their targets to to get a payout and they'll kind of adjust their trading style or the amount of risk that they put into the market and their trades based on the the proper rules.

5:06Right? So you get those kind of two buckets. You get traders that do very well in each of them and you get traders that don't do very well in each of them as well. Right. And in each kind of category you have to the trader has to find their their edge and and try to to to to get payouts. Yeah. Yeah, they're each trying to

5:26win in their own way, right? Uh a serious trader or the first category, they're basically looking at things from the lens of I want to get better at trading, but I want to scale up my capital. I want to be able to take bigger payouts without putting up, you know, so much risk that they may be doing in their live account. Um they're more serious, right? Whereas the gamers, they're looking at it from the sense of I want to beat the firm.

5:46And there's a lot of people on social, they always look at it like it's you versus the firm. And you know, we we can see how a lot of people may get that opinion. It does make sense, but there's a difference between a firm who's actually against you and one who's constantly providing tools in order to improve your trading. And that's what we started here at Tradeify. That's what we constantly try to do. Uh come up with new tools that traders can actually use to improve their habits each and every month.

6:10So, sure, they might fail a few times or take a while before they get their first payout, but at least they're learning along the journey. M from from your guys perspective, do you care which type of trader you get through the door? Like do you only want the serious traders? Do you not mind if you have a few of the gamers through the door? How does that work? Yeah, I think I think different props have different opinions on this, right?

6:34You'll see some prop firms that are very aggressively against the gamer, right? You see some props bring in rules that you know if if if you take too much risk foram example and on the CFD side of things a lot of the the prop firms have these type of rules right max risk you could take on a trade um or you need to have a certain RR in trades you have to keep a stop loss things like that um I think on our side we we we don't have those kind of rules we don't have I mean there's nothing hidden in our rule set right so um if you have taken that payout you you will unless there was some kind of you know chargeback fraud or something that we see you will get the payout right um so we tend to be quite friendly to to to whichever type of trader you want to be right we set the rules up so that it's sustainable for for the firm right and what we can actually deliver and that just means that for from a trader perspective whatever strategy you have whether it's a a profit focus strategy or an actual trading strategy they can feel

7:38comfortable coming to tradeify and if they get pay out, they know they're going to get paid, right? Yeah. I mean, a prop a prop firm's job is to really make trading more accessible to the general public and we embody that here at Tradeify. So, we're not looking for a specific type of customer or trader. Um, we welcome them all, but they all have different paths, right? The goal is again to give them the tools and you know for them to be able to figure out how to trade these markets and improve you know day by day, month by month in their own way because everybody always trades different.

8:11It's going to take some people months to click years. Some people won't click at all. The trading's not built for everyone. There's a lot of people who say trading is for everyone. Everyone's brain is wired differently. We're all made up of different chemicals. I don't think that trading is for everyone. Some people most likely aren't going to ever make it if they're uh going in every day like a casino, right? They're fullporting their account, losing it, whether it's live or on the sim side.

8:37Until you get that switch of I need to change, you're not going to be successful. So, some people aren't able to do that. But again, providing the tools to give the path to being successful is a props job. having the rule set and the guidelines behind how much risk you can take, what is your draw down, profit targets, etc. They're all healthy things. I call them um kind of like the bumpers in uh in bowling when you're first starting out as a kid, right?

9:07You have these uh you can put them on and you know, if you hit a hit something on the side, you mess up, at least you can still knock a couple pins down. So, I look at trading with a prop just like that. Even if you mess up, at least you're hopefully learning something. You can go at it again, strike a couple pins down, hopefully get that strike and hit a payout.

9:21Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not to ask you a question for you, but if I if if it was me, if I had to pick which type of trader I would be looking at the data, I I would pick the the trader that actually has a trading strategy, right? Because with prop, you know, if you're trading real money, it's easy. You could you can look at your P&L, right, ac um I had a successful year or had a bad year, a neutral year. in a prop, just looking at payouts is quite deceptive, right?

9:48You've gota you got to look at the expense side of things and how much did you actually profit, you know, what was the was it worth it, right? And you'll see that with actual traders, they will spend less to get their payouts that the gamers will spend a lot, right? And you you you may see thousands of dollars of payouts, but behind the scenes, there's probably maybe they made a profit, but there's thousands of dollars of expenses as well, right?

10:07So, I mean, if I was to if I was to listen to this and think which, you know, how do I want to trade props? I would encourage people to look for an actual trading strategy, right? Because eventually, once you've got payouts with the prop with Traderify, we will move you into live capital. Once we've seen that you found a strategy that's successful, if you're going to go into live capital, right, you don't there's no resets anymore. So, you you're relying on your strategy.

10:35So, I would, you know, encourage people to to not game the props, but find a real strategy that works, right? Yeah, fair. Do you want to skip the long evaluation process and get straight to funded? Because Tradeify actually gives you that option. Tradeify Futures is one of the most trusted prop firms in the industry. They paid out over $125 million to their traders whilst operating consistently for years with stable conditions.

10:58And here's the big thing that most traders care about. They have no hidden rules and no denied payouts. If you hit the objectives, you get paid. It's really that simple. Tradeify also have really flexible plan choices. You can pass an evaluation in as little as one day. They have daily payout options. And if you want to skip the evaluation process entirely, you can go for instant funding. With instant funding, you can start trading funded accounts immediately without having to go through the evaluation.

11:24Account sizes go up to $150,000, and you can control five of these, meaning your total capital could be $750,000. With this, you can also request your payout every 5 days. But this is where things have taken a step forward. Tradify have just launched Tradeify Elite Live. This is a brand new live trading program with a performance reward pool. This means you can earn extra rewards on top of your profits with up to $90,000 available across multiple accounts. And here's the key to this.

11:58You unlock those rewards by trading profitably for 5 days and keeping your profit above your draw down. But now you're being rewarded for consistency and not just big wins. They've also introduced new plans with a much lower barrier to entry. You've now got options like the select 25K and the growth 25K. Whilst the price has been reduced, they've kept features like their flexible and daily payouts and even 1-day pass evaluations. On top of that, there are no more subscriptions.

12:24Everything is a one-time purchase only. You now get instant dashboard automations, which means if you pass your evaluation on one big move, you don't have to wait around. You can activate your funded account immediately. And in terms of platforms, you're not restricted to any one choice. You can now trade across Trade of Wealth Charts, Rhythmic, and even Tradec. So, if you're looking to get an account, make sure you use code PFT at the checkout.

12:50The link is in the description below. Let's get back to the episode. There's no reset button in live. Yes. Well, of course, technically you can go back to live, but it's a much longer

13:00reset than just clicking a button. 100% 100%. Um, there's one thing that you said that kind of stuck out to me, right, which is early on you mentioned that as you guys have grown, you now got 100,000 traders that are trading with you guys. How are you managing that behind the scenes? Like I can imagine, well actually I can't imagine, but the business perspective of having to manage that volume of trades, right? Even if each individual just placed one trade a day, which we probably know is not going to be the case, what are you guys doing behind the scenes to kind of keep the lights on every single day to ensure people are not abusing the system?

13:26I mean, so look, behind behind the scenes, I'd say to manage 100,000 traders, there's there's I'd say kind of three big teams that we have. We have trader support, we have risk and fraud, and then we have trade desk. Uh and the trade desk really manages our live traders because we have 100,000 uh traders on our platform trading sim but we also have about 500 live traders right training the real markets and we need to do trade surveillance we need to look at their parameters we need to adjust the people are doing well maybe look at the ones that aren't doing well right so that that's a team in itself as well I'd say the hardest part of managing 100,000 traders is support right I mean this right on the front lines yeah I mean I looked at the data this week and we had uh 5,000 tickets a day coming in that's crazy that's insane But but that's that's it's it's crazy because that's where a lot of the volume will come in, right?

14:23You have you have support channels like Discord, you have um tickets that come through via intercom um or or different chat bots that firms have. Uh one way that we've been able to excel is actually improving that chatbot. I think it's solving what 60 70% 70% now. First time I'm hearing it now above I think it was 65 last week or a month ago. So 70% of tickets and that that's amazing because like typically when people talk to a bot especially when you get like the bot itself and not an a you know you just type an agent agent agent agent in there right you're trying to get to a person and you're not actually getting your question answered so to see that that's um being effective in working for people and they're not just getting I think there's a difference between getting an answer and getting it answered right or having a good experience you know at the end of those things when you do the thumbs up or thumbs down we're seeing more of the thumbs up even in that 70%.

15:16So, it's proving that while support is uh obviously on the front line there, when we're having these 5,000 plus tickets a day, having the good tech behind even the support and a chatbot goes a long way because you're able to reach out to these people, get their issues uh addressed and solved in a timely manner so they're not, you know, struggling to figure out what's going on with their account when the market's already tough, right?

15:39You don't want to make things harder. Trading is uh a [ __ ] show a lot of the days, right? It's very tough. It's one of the hardest jobs, but it's one of the most rewarding. So something like support is what uh a lot of people need. And you know, it starts with that. Yeah. And then and then on the the risk and fraud side, right, we've had to rely a lot on automation.

16:03I think if you looking at prop firms a couple years ago on the risk and fraud side, you'd have real people checking checking manually a lot of like trade histories and like and we did we were we did originally we did a lot of manual kind of looking for fraud, right? I think we've say especially over the last six months and especially with the emergence of AI, right?

16:19Um managing risk and fraud for 100,000 traders has got a lot a lot easier than it was even even a year ago, right? Um, but we we invested in building out the automations. Um, I mean I mean that's part of the reason why people like Tradeify, right? It because things are automated, right? When they get their payout request, the checks that happen behind the scenes happen in an automated way. It's pretty quick. Traders tend to get paid, you know, within, you know, 30 minutes, 1 hour, right?

16:48So, we can we've got the point that we can do those checks very very quickly. Um, but I mean, you think about 100,000 traders. I mean, that's a lot of computational power. There's a lot of data behind the scenes that and AI algos now that are firing trying to trying to make sure that we we're running a um a consistent ship and we're you know finding those that are trying to you know trying to defraud us for different different things, right?

17:09Yeah. We have those days though of the Spongebob meme which we got to pop up here with the uh running around with the fires going on though. So, um, that hap I think that happens at every prop. Like there's always, uh, I I don't want to say weekly, but definitely every other week there's something that happens and, uh, you got to be on your toes. So, those are the things that I think a lot of people don't realize, whether it's, you know, an outage, um, something going on with data, uh, just something not working on the dashboard.

17:34It happens at all props. And that's kind of what has a backlog and a big buildup. And that's what gets customers usually customers and traders upset because again it's just a wrench that you're throwing into their trading day which is tough. So being able to firefight while building is uh is uh something that takes a lot of um a lot of people to get done. So you know we're just happy that we're building a great team that's able to handle all these uh messes that come up left and right.

18:01Yeah. But I think like what you said is is inevitable for for a business in general. you're going to have a bad day. And for me, you can relate this back to trading, which is I think the truest sign of success is not necessarily what happens on the good days, but how you deal with the bad days. And I think from a a consumer perspective, that is what you would want to see. You You're not expecting it to be 100% perfect all of the time.

18:25But as long as they can manage those bad days in the right way, then I think you're on a a good path going forward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've had to work with our partners a lot, right? cuz this is I mean the the growth that's happened in the prop firm market is explosive. We went I think you I had a look at where we were this time last year. We had 20,000 active traders, right? So we've 5xed our number of active traders. So that puts a stress on us, but it also puts a stress on our partners like Ninja Trader that having to deal with that increased volume, not just for us, but but all props.

18:53So they've had to I mean people forget this is a lot of the trading that's happening is is sim, right? It's not it's not like the traders are being sent to the the real markets. These are simulated markets. This is all taking computational power and uh you know the platforms need to be able to handle that load, right?

19:18Every new trader is an extra bit of load. So I mean it's taking a I think we're in a good point. There was a couple of patches where we had some scaling issues, but um I'd say we we're we're on the other end of that. Yeah. about during uh the market open in sim there's about 10x or maybe it was 12x the amount of orders that go through on live right which is I mean on one hand it's almost obvious right because there's so many people and it's sim so they'll put more contracts on but on the other hand you just look at the pure volume and you see why there can be these issues especially around those highly volatile periods like CPI data market open etc so those are a lot of things that us as the uh prop firm have to you know look out for and deal with.

19:56But of course, the vendors like Vinnie was saying, you know, Ninja Trader, other brokers, etc. that have um the SIM platforms to um be wary of, especially during those exponential growth phases. Of course. Of course. Quick question for you. Are you actually tracking your trades properly or are you just taking them and then moving on? Because if you're not reviewing your data, you're not actually improving.

20:20This is exactly what Tradezilla fixes. It's an automated trading journal that connects directly to your broker, pulling all the information about the trades that you are taking. This is the absolute best way to get a full breakdown in terms of how you're actually performing. You can connect an unlimited amount of accounts, including all your prop firm accounts, with their prop firm sync feature.

20:38You can even use the back testing function and the trade replay feature to figure out what's actually working in your edge. Tradzella now has AI integrated into it. This is the one tool that's going to drastically improve your performance as a trader. Head to tradzella.com and use code PFT for 20% off. That's tradzella.com and code PFT. Um, talk to me about your thoughts on the future of props because I've been trading for a while and I saw

21:07kind of the the takeoff on props many many years ago and it kind of goes through this like boom and bust cycle where you have good periods, there are highs, um, things transition, things change, new things get adopted. You mentioned obviously AI is becoming a big part of what's going on behind the the scenes in terms of infrastructure. [snorts] Where do you see the industry going because there's a lot of people that are very pessimistic.

21:28There's some people that are quite optimistic. So from your guys perspective, how do you see it moving? I think we're still in the early stages of prop. Um I think there's what did we a million traders? We we estimate there's about a million prop firm traders. Wow. and and it's a big number but relatively small compared to the amount of actual traders out there right in the world especially considering that you know this is international an international business of course there's some countries you know who are um blacklisted and not able to trade but for the most part a majority of countries are able to trade so I think there's going to be a big push towards like international um soon as well but I think that a big part of what we've learned the past six to nine months is that there's going to be a bigger push towards live and we're doing that here as And that's because there should be a path to live.

22:14There is no just staying in the simulated environment, looking at things from the fake market perspective and taking these payouts without any real goal of being an actual trader. And prop firms as a whole, actual prop firms, they're looking to give their capital to traders, right, who've proved themselves or have, you know, degrees or have worked in investment banking, etc. So when you look at prop firms like us, retail prop firms, we're looking for traders who are everyday people, right?

22:42Like you and I or your neighbor, anyone, but they have the goal or aspiration to get to that live trader level. And that's what we want to see traders get to because it completes that full flywheel of you have those bumpers on that we were going over before and you eventually are able to take them off, bowl some spares, get some strikes on your own, right? Sure. if you fall off the track or you miss a couple there, you'll have us in your corner as well to help you out.

23:10Because when you go live, especially with us um at a at well, when you go live at a prop firm, for the most part, you'll have a risk team. With us, you have a risk team. We give you performance goals. You get performance bonuses for hitting certain parameters. So, I think live is a big push just simply because nobody should really stay in SIM trade in the fake markets forever. There has to be actual liquidity behind it. You have to have some way to be able to get into the actual pits of trading or the uh the trenches.

23:35Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just to add to that what I said before, right, about what do you do with the traders and gamers? Do you allow gamers? Do you And and we chose not to go to war with the gamers, right? And the the way we're able to do that and it's kind of go to war with the gamers. That's so good. Um I mean the the but the way we structured the program is that you go into a simfunded account and then once we find that you are you have something that's successful we'll move you into a live account.

24:05Okay. And that in our mind should be a deterrent to try and game it. Right? If you know that I'm only going to get three six or you know three four five six payouts whatever it is and then I'm going to be moved into a live account. you know, if if you can make um if you can actually make money in that live account that we give you because we give you substantial amount of capability there.

24:26And we've tried to work quite hard on making sure the live account is still as attractive as the SIM account. So, we've added things to spice it up a little bit, right? So, you get your live accounts. If you hit X target, we'll give you a bonus. If you hit this, we'll give you another bonus.

24:45if you hit this level, we'll let you do swing trading or we'll give you like an X amount more leverage, right? So, we've tried to make the live program as attractive as we as we can, right? While still still being sustainable. And the hope is there that, you know, once the gamers have done a couple cycles getting to live, blowing it up to be like, wait a minute, maybe we should try try [clears throat] actually trading this live account or something that works, right?

25:10Yeah. The pay the rules just to get the payouts like they come off, right? as long as you make more than your starting balance. You can take a payout every day with us. Yeah. Um and that that that's just like your own personal account too, right? When you fund it. So, we wanted to make it as similar as we could while still giving those advantages, right? Like leverage, performance bonuses, etc.

25:26And um just creating that path again from sim to live because a lot of people they'll the gamers or just traders in general they'll they'll look at it sometimes as oh I can just go long or short at the open or news and build a huge buffer and that you wouldn't actually do that with real money. I think uh one thing that a lot of traders need to know is would you trade the same way you're trading sim on a live account with your own money?

25:49Probably not. Yeah. So yeah, I think I think live is a big thing that uh a lot of props will continue to invest in, try and improve. Um I think we we also did something recently uh we moved into the the broker space, right? So I think you're going to start to see more prop firms follow a similar pattern. I mean I think in the CFD market a lot of props have been doing that as well. I mean FG Mobile for example. Um, so I think the I think in the future you start to see the brokers or IBS and and props start to to become one.

26:25So we we just launched a broker called Slay. Um, and that also I think helps you know complete the model but also uh helps from a regulatory point of view as well right. So um I think what the you know the key players in the market especially in the futures market if you think about the CME and uh NFA what they want to see is eventually that these traders are moving into to real live markets right so we do provide that path but I just told you there was 100,000 traders and we only have 500 active and live right what about those that are kind of maybe not quite ready for a live prop account how how can we help encourage them to continue trading live as well so that's that's kind of where where slay comes into play if you do achieve receive a payout from Traderify, you'll be able to take that payout and put it into your Slay Markets um brokerage account, right?

27:14And then you can continue trading prop, but you've got a you can start to build up your brokerage account at the same time and and start testing yourself in the real markets earlier than than trying to wait for the prop to move you there, right? So, I think that'll continue. Yeah, because when you go live with a prop, you get a certain uh amount of parameters. you have to hit a certain goal or hit a certain amount of um payouts on an account, etc.

27:31Whereas when you just get a certain when you just whereas when you get an actual payout from a prop, you could take let's just say you took a I don't know $3,000 payout. You could say to yourself, all right, I'm going to put 2500 in my bank and I'm going to put 500 in my own live account, right? Not not a sub account of the prop, but in my own because I, you know, I felt that I was able to achieve this $3,000 payout.

27:57I'm going to take those same um parameters that I had on myself getting to that payout, put them on my own live account, see if it works, and try to scale my capital there. So, Slay's in your corner for that as well. So, users will be able to basically choose, you know, do I want to just split a little bit of my payout into my own live account and then they're building an account with us on the SIM side, hopefully towards a sub account with us live.

28:20on the third hand or on the third leg being able to increase their own live account and trade it as well. Yeah. I I think as much as it's easy for for us to talk about the evolution of the prop space specifically, I think there's something that also has to be said for the traders because at least from my perspective, feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong. The sentiment of the idea of being moved to live, people hate the idea of it.

28:50And I I'm looking at that and I'm like this should be the end goal. Like this should be what you want. You should want to be a consistently profitable trader where you can trade real capital. But a lot of people are like oh been moved to live and they see as a like a negative thing. But it's it's nice to see obviously from your guys side that you're trying to encourage that life cycle.

29:09want people to go through that journey of, you know, starting off in the simulated environment, but being able to work with or to a place where you can use the tools and things that are provided to allow you to eventually to get to that stage. I think too many people think it's a predatory environment. You know, props want to keep you limited to the sim space, but evidently it's not always that way. Um, just just on that, like when you go to live, you can make, let's say you make $5,000, $10,000 in a day, you can take that right away.

29:35If you're on a simfunded account at pretty much any prop, I don't know almost a single prop that you can do in just one day that you get the funded a payout just like that. You know, no rules that you had to meet, no targets that you had to hit. You're just able to take a payout. So, I think a lot of people and I I do agree. I see it on social all the time. I'd say 90% of people who are talking [ __ ] about live haven't ever been live.

30:02Yeah. Right. They've never experienced it. They just want to A lot of people like to talk [ __ ] just because they want to talk [ __ ] And uh but but equally probably because they would struggle on life. Exactly. Exactly. They want to they would like to take out their frustrations. Uh again they're looking at it like it's us verse the prop. Yeah. Rather than the props in my corner. Correct. Correct. Talk to me about um the idea of

30:26regulation because this has been something which has been spoken about quite a lot and people are suspecting that especially in the simulated environment regulation is coming. What's your guys' thoughts on this? Do you think that it's are you guys planning for this? Like how how do you structure things behind the scenes? Yeah, I mean I in terms of planning for it, I think what I talked about with um the IB, I think is a step towards us um making a proactive step uh to start, you know, obviously to get to become an IB, we had to get registered with the NFA, for example.

30:53So we're talking to the NFA, we're talking to them about our business model, what how we hope to um you know, solicit customers and and things like that, right? So, we're kind of openly uh talking to to to regulators that are out there. I mean, we in terms of is regulation coming? We we have no idea, right? I mean, there's we we we obviously have uh people we take ad solicit advice from um that, you know, I don't there's nothing on the horizon, right, coming.

31:20But you you never know, right? And um you know, we we I think are are ready for it if it comes and we probably welcome it to be honest, right? I think one of the things I think will happen in the in the near future is I think you'll see some consolidation. I think the barrier to entry to get into prop is is very difficult now, right?

31:43You have quite a few fairly large firms to try and get market share now. It would be extremely it' be almost suicide, I would say, right? Um so I think you're going to see less players that are that are bigger, right? And I think it's up to the players that are in there that are left, right? and working with partners like Ninja Trader Rhythmic to almost somewhat start self-regulating a little bit, right?

32:05Make sure the props that are there are operating in an ethical manner, right? They've been properly vetted. Um, and I think Ninja Trader, for example, do a good job of vetting some of the firms that they bring in. Um, but yeah, just just holding each other accountable, right? Just just make sure you're running the firm properly, right? Not doing anything that's unsustainable. uh no retroactive changes, you know, things like that, right? And I think once you see that be eliminated from the market, you'll start to see a lot less complaints about different firms and and you'll start to see the I think sentiment shift that hey, actually, you know, this is this is something valuable uh for the for the market.

32:36Yeah. All in all, just being more proactive than reactive, right? Welcoming regulation, being ready for it. you know, we speak with legal, we speak with Ninja Trader, see if anything's ever coming down the pipeline. And we we don't do that in a manner like, oh [ __ ] if something happens, like we're screwed.

33:02We're more like, okay, if something happens, like, how can we set ourselves up where this is still a viable business? You know, I think a lot of people and and something that still shocks me. We're up to 150 plus employees now. So, you know, obviously we have 100,000 traders, and that's that's insane to say, but we also have, you know, 150 employees. There's a lot of families and people that are putting food on the table working with us, and we love everyone who works with us.

33:27The culture we've built here is is awesome. But if there's something that comes down the pipeline, you want to be ready to be able to see what you can do with this business still, right? Have a still heartbeating business that can thrive. So, you know, we got to look out for things down the pipeline and not only look at it for the traders, but of course the people who work with us here at Tradeify. Yeah, I I love that. Even from a consumer perspective, though, that's kind of what you would want to hit because you want to be able to trust the people that you are ultimately doing business with.

33:51There there was a a big thing where, you know, I think when you talked about consolidation, I think at one point, and maybe you can argue that even exists today, there are too many firms. And actually when you have too much, it's like who do I trust? How, you know, how do I know I'm picking the right people to actually trade and do business with? And some of the people's biggest anxiety was, am I actually going to get paid out? That that shouldn't be a question that you need to ask.

34:19You know, if you're picking the right people and I think with that consolidation, it's going to be a good thing. Yeah. I mean if you if you talk to prop firm traders especially ones that have traded with some of the legitimate firms right out there like trader fight and a few others and even on the the big firms in the CFD side if you ask them do you want prop to go away or do you think it's a bad thing they'll tell you no we love it you know the traders love prop right they love it but if you the problem is and I think the futures market has learned lessons from what's happened on the CFD market right on the CFD market there are hundreds of you know white labeled firms, right?

34:53For anyone with a little bit of marketing reach can open up a prop in like 3 weeks. I think I saw someone advertising open up a prop in two weeks and that that can't happen, right? And it's not happening in futures because I think there is a there is a significant barrier to entry on the future side and you just have to, you know, because some of those firms, not all of them are going to last, right?

35:13And then they'll have to do things that are not ethical. And you're going to start to see traders, you know, get don't want to say scammed, but um you Yeah. bad things happen to traders, right? And and they're the ones that are going to make noise and it puts a bad it puts you know it makes the whole industry look bad, right? And that that once we can weed out those players and like the the smaller firms and I think you'll see that the the sentiment of the whole market shift, right?

35:40Yeah. Yeah, it's very easy to start a prop. Like Vinnie said, if you have if you want to start one up, you can get a white label. If you have a big following, you can market it. But at the end of the day, behind the scenes, everything going on is mostly behind everything going on is mostly up to the risk and data that you're reading and going through every day.

35:59You can market it and get a bunch of customers. We've seen it with a bunch of firms that have rise and fall risen and fallen within months, right? and only to even some of the biggest players in the space tried to get in, you know, the future space and and have fallen there. So, it's a it's a tough space to break into effectively to last. So, one thing I'm curious about, how much do prop firm owners actually talk and collaborate behind the scenes?

36:28Is it a happy space? What does that look like from your guys' perspective? There's a there's it's either one hand or the other. I think there's uh some of us who are like extremely competitive and uh don't like to get along and then there's those of us who talk a lot together. So I'd say most of the top firms we talk with each other now and it's mostly about like different ways that we can mitigate risk a lot of the those fraud rings that we talked about earlier.

36:53um what what's going on behind the scenes there? Like what are some um glitches in the system maybe at a brokerage and different things like that that might be slipping through the cracks where there's a new contract rolling over something didn't happen right. Um but mostly just a a a pulse check I'd say for the space just to make sure everyone's aligned.

37:09And a lot of people think like oh if the prop firm owners are talking to each other they're they're colluding against us like type [ __ ] But uh that's that's never the case here. We're basically just looking at everything holistically. How can we make the space better? What are what are people looking forward to? I think it's cool that the top firms, they all have their kind of unique little plans right now. I'd say in the top five.

37:32So, um, we've come to a point where before I don't think we'd have talked to each other, but myself, Vinnie, we're talking with a bunch of different players at different props. I'd say pretty much every other week or so now, just to kind of gauge the market and see where things are at. I think it's it's it's pro it's a good way to be proactive again rather than reactive, right? Especially things like legal compliance, etc. Um are are a big impact on the space and things that we want to be able to share with each other.

37:59Nobody wants to see another prop go down, especially one that's been in the game for so long. Sure, we're competitors, but it's not good for the market as a whole, right? We would never want to see that. Yeah, I think um there are less, you know, especially in the futures market, there aren't hundreds of players and there's there's a few that are becoming very large. So, I think it's in our benefit and I think people might be surprised how friendly some of the props are with each other actually.

38:24I mean, we're not sharing a lot, but we're, you know, we we are talking to each other and and uh you know, sharing things that we think the others should know about, right? And I think it goes back to like somewhat kind of self-regulating as well in terms of, you know, making sure everyone's aware of what's happening. And it's like what Brett said, the last the worst thing that could happen in the market is that uh a prop firm goes down or we have another incident like that.

38:42I think if something like that happen, especially one of the bigger firms, you might start to see, you know, uh people come step in and and start making, you know, make some changes. So that we need to make sure that doesn't happen, right? Yeah. I think of I mean I I see it as collaboration over competition. I think the better the infrastructure is on the back end, it only leads to a better experience for the trader in the long run.

39:05So it makes complete sense to me. Yeah. I mean like we'll run ads on each other. We throw jabs at each other right all the time. But like I'll still get on the phone and say, "Hey, how's it going? Like how's everything going?" as if there was, you know, that never happened. I mean that that's just again being friendly, keeping uh I don't want to say my enemies close uh closer, but you know my uh my frenemies. Yeah, fair. You you guys have

39:32obviously in a position now when we talk today, you're quite a titan in the industry as I would see it. But I imagine and you guys have touched on this idea already that it wasn't always smooth sailing. You've had challenges. Talk to me about the start of Tradeify like where did the vision come from? Was did you ever imagine at a point in time you'd be where you are today? Is the goal to go bigger?

39:54Where does it go? We were uh we were flying the plane while we were putting out fires uh upside down for a while. Uh when we when we first started it, it's funny because we were doing everything, literally everything. I mean, from the marketing to the payouts to we we didn't even have an automation for it at first when we when there were payouts that came through. We would literally go on Canva and type out the person's name, put in their payout amount, copy it, post it in the Discord, go on um Rise, pay them one by one.

40:25I think about if we had to do that now, uh people would be waiting days uh just to get their payout with how many we process each day. But it's it's funny because you look at that and and those first early days and it gets you uh to the point where you appreciate really how far you've come and then also looking at the team under you, what they're going through each day. and kind of getting in the weeds and have been um fighting in those trenches early on helps you think of the ideas and ways that you can innovate to make things faster um faster, better, and just all around a better experience for the traders uh and us as a business alike, right?

41:06If things are better for us, they're most likely going to be better for the trader as well because we're moving quicker, we're able to put things out faster. That's what the traders want to see. So those first early days, we were we were doing it all. um support tickets, all of that. I mean, I some of even now we, you know, we'll get in the trenches here and there just to see what it's like for the staff, see what we can improve on, and uh again, just be 1% better every day.

41:34Yeah, I think I think how we started has been a big factor in why we are so big right now, right? Because I think even before we started Traderify, we were traders, right? And it's a bit of a cliche now. Yeah. for by traders by traders for traders, right? The model. Yeah. But we were traders. We traded at prop before as well a little bit. And so we knew we knew what worked.

41:58We knew what we could do differently. And then I wouldn't change the way we started Traify at all. Right. I mean, you had we we offered 20 day one we offered 24/7 support and that was cuz the three founders I did the Europe shift, Brett did the American shift, and Dane did the Asian shift. Right. So we had Right. And it was it was crazy. But we we really learned the business very quickly.

42:20You know, we were doing the risk, you know, I was doing some social media posts and stuff and then, you know, obviously we once we started growing a little bit more, we had to bring in staff and had to bring them in quick, right? Uh but I think I think that really helped us and I think um you know, we can always see the mindset of uh of the trader and you know, even our road map going forward, you know, we we've got things that we that have coming, right?

42:40And that's because, you know, we we've been in their shoes and we know what they want. And it's great. I mean, those early days were great. Even now, it's great. I mean, it's definitely uh I'm surprised I haven't lost hair still. Um but you think I started a problem. Yeah. There you go. Exactly. But uh but no, I mean, you you look back now and it's just amazing to see like how far we've come.

43:04But we never let off the pedal, right? If anything, we made another pedal and put both feet on it. Uh forget about the brake. We just took that out and made another gas pedal. Yeah. But [clears throat] um you know you you look back you see those days you learned a lot and uh I wouldn't change a single thing either. Yeah. Yeah. I mean look I I think the other the other thing to add to that is uh when we came in we knew we wanted to be we wanted to run things differently to other firms that were out there right.

43:23I think around the time when we launched this is 2024 there were there were issues a few issues at other firms right and there was one firm that even went down around uh that time as well and it was you know the sentiment was pretty low at that point right and that's people were also shifting from FX to futures there was the my forex funds thing happened just before as well so there was there was like a a whole blizzard or snowstorm of of if different issues and we kind of came in there with a snowblower Yeah, we were like, let's let's just run it properly.

43:55Yeah. Right. Clean it up. Make sure everything's fine, you know, no fine print that you have to read or look at. Nothing that you have to be worried about. You get your goal, hit your goals, request a payout, you're going to get paid. There should be no, you know, request a payout, have to go through a whole uh due diligence interview, all this stuff that you might have seen out there at the time and some firms even do now still.

44:21Yeah. Because again, we've said it so many times this podcast, trading's hard already. Why should it be more stressful to just wait for that is my op uh is my why should it be more stressful to wait for that pending payout to approved? Yeah, fair. Fair. Do you do you feel like the early days taught you things about either the business model or about yourselves? I I I think so. Yeah. I mean, we all came from different backgrounds, right?

44:49Um, I mean Brett came from, I think, insurance and then a lot in trading, right? Brett's been in the trading space for for a long time. Uh, I came from more of a a software and engineering uh, background and our other founder Dne came from more of a marketing background. So, we were a good mix actually, right, to start a prop firm. It was it was I think it's the perfect mix. Yeah. To start, it was a good mix. We had uh I going back to it, you know, I I was doing kind of like influencer work and a lot of marketing, but going back to what we said before, those are the people who usually fall in those first early months.

45:26So, you know, without Vinnie and Dne, who knows where we'd be or without each other, who knows where we'd be, right? So, I think having a a good mix of people rather than a lot of these firms you see sometimes pop up of just, you know, one person at the helm or two thinking, "Hey, I saw these guys at Tradeify do it. We can do that. I have a huge brand." Again, they're not looking at a lot of the stuff that went behind the scenes and what had to be done.

45:48And there were there were times if we weren't proactive, we could have been one of those firms. But again, we were being proactive rather than reactive, right? We'd constantly monitor the data even in those first early couple months. Sure. The first 60 days or so. Maybe we were figuring it out, but at least we were figuring it out.

46:06Yeah. And that's what it really came down to to uh get us this far. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, when we first started, we were we're all doing everything, but I think as the business grew, we kind of naturally fell into the right role, right? You know, I mean, Brett is he does a lot of stuff on the product side, you know, outward facing with affiliates and marketing. Um although it's my this is my first podcast. Yeah. But usually you're doing a good job.

46:31Yeah. Yeah. Usually chat. Put a W. Put a W in the comments for you. Tell which side of the business he's Yeah. Usually I'm not front facing, but I'm in the, you know, naturally in the behind the scenes. I'm working with the support teams, risk, you know, fraud, all that stuff, right? And the ops man himself. The ops wizard. The ops wizard. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we kind of naturally fell into into the right places, right?

46:52And uh I think just to add on to what Brett said, if I think not even just prop, but any business, right? I I wouldn't recommend going into any business by yourself. I think we are extremely lucky that we have the two of us and we have the the third founder, Dane that we we get along very well, right? I mean, we've had some ups and downs, right?

47:13But generally, we're like mom and dad a little bit. I I still don't know who's who, but we uh we'll we'll butt heads, but I I' just, you know, to that point, it's good to have someone like that because, you know, you're going to look at things a different perspective where you meet in the middle and like that's the perfect scenario that you could have had. But, uh, but all in all, we don't have any of these like tussles where like I mean, I talked to this guy.

47:33I talked to this guy more than my wife. Oh, yeah. Double maybe triple. Maybe triple. We're trying to get better. If you're watching this, we're trying to get better. But it's it's a good thing, I think, like you said, to have those different perspectives because you get to see each other's blind spots, right? That's the benefit of not having to do it by yourself. How how did you guys all meet like the three of you? This is uh 20 what is it 16? I always forget that.

48:0116 2016 I think whatever the first crypto boom was. Um we both bought a course. Uh actually a few a few of us at Tradeify bought a course. So, it was us three, the founders, as well as our head of support, um, our AI guy, uh, some of our support staff and risk team. Like, we there's probably six or seven of us that bought this course for one of these trading gurus, you know, for a year, not course, one of his like Discords or something like the Slack.

48:27It was back then. And, uh, he was basically trying to show us how to trade, how to do technical analysis. Now, this was where you could just throw a dart at any coin and make money. So, he was just drawing lines on a chart, and we thought that he was uh some type of god because everything was making money. But when that first bare market happened, we knew that uh yeah, this this guy didn't know what he was doing.

48:55But I'm thankful because not only did he introduce, of course, us to the charts, but to each other. And uh from there, we were basically uh realizing, hey, like this guy doesn't really know what he's doing. Um, but we should try to at least still learn what this trading thing is. So, we had our own little group chat. We decided to make our own Slack. I ran a I kind of took that to the next level and made our own type of Slack where we went into kind of stocks, options, a little bit of crypto from there.

49:17I did the influencer thing for a bit. Vinnie and uh a couple of the other um guys there were kind of still doing their own um full-time jobs, but on the side, always participating in trading. I know it was hard to uh stay away from the charts, especially during those times. Um but we basically decided to make Tradeify in 2021. Oh, really? And um it's it's funny because we didn't launch until August or end of July of uh 24 and uh we thought of the idea.

49:54We really over complicated the [ __ ] out of it. Um I remember we were going back and forth on how to build it. Like we went back and forth. There was a spell. We were going to do a CFD prop for a little while and um it was a good thing we didn't. Yeah. So, we we looked at it.

50:08We were first we were like, let's do futures. We're like, all right, you know, we we looked at some of the existing firms out there. We're like, I it would be cool to be able to run a firm, give retail traders access to capital. I always thought the idea of like a hedge fund is cool or uh or traditional prop where you're able to leverage your money and you know diversify with different people and basically build up a network of wealth with for others, right?

50:28So a retail prop is like that times 100 because you're giving everyday people the access to that capital. So it was always a great idea, but uh we put on the back burner for a few years and then we picked it back up beginning of uh or end of 2023. We were going to do FX like Vinnie was saying, but then the uh my Forex funds collapse happened. I'm kind of thankful. Yeah. Um that it happened when it did.

50:53Um who knows where we'd be if we did FX, especially after that collapse. Probably would have just quit. Um if we started right before that, we probably would would have just quit right there. But because we didn't launch yet, we decided to switch to futures. And again, here we are now. Top three firms in the space. Crazy. Crazy. Did I miss anything? husband or wife, whichever one you want to be.

51:14No, I think I think that was it. I mean, we had um yeah, we had the like start and stop kind of few years, right? You had a couple other projects. I had a couple of other things I was doing, but um I think it was just meant to be, right? We just got back together in 2024. The my Forex funds thing happened and then we just we actually committed and we built it, right? M it's it's funny because Vinnie's original projections that he put together for us and that we all really believed in were that we would have in a year the amount of traders we had I think in what four weeks one month or one month not even probably a couple weeks Jesus forget about the next month because that that must have been what like a 2,000% growth u month for us that was where we really exploded the second month but we were we were basically one of one of the reasons we were really able explode.

52:04We had one of the newer models which is called now our lightning funded that straight defunded model but we were able to do it in a way that was sustainable again being proactive rather than reactive looking at things and that was something new onto the scene and that's what we've continued to do with things like grand cup tournaments we love doing it gets a lot of people engaged a lot of new people into trading uh we're moving into prediction markets soon as well we're doing something with that now so you know any way we can open up the space to new eyes with something new and innovative uh has has really propelled us forward and that's what we love to do.

52:36Yeah. I mean when I when I put those projections together I think that was 21 the market was a lot smaller then it was a lot smaller and uh I think there was only one futures prop at the time right so you know the I was thinking we get to X right and then by the time we actually launched I think the market was 100 times bigger than it was. I just I can't I can't imagine all the time of like where we would be if we did launch 2021 because again like you said there's only one I think one or maybe two firms out there so it's pretty insane but the models have changed you know dramatically since uh those early days they used to be two and three like even three-step models and now it's pretty much just one day to pass a lot of them or two or three days and get into the funded account.

53:13I mean the prop from traders don't know how good they had it. They haven't like uh I mean when we were first started training props five six years ago I mean the the plans there were were so different right at least time limits daily loss limits weekly loss limits monthly loss every rule in the book you lost a two-step eval like I look at I look I look at the plans we offer now and uh I mean they are extremely attractive especially at the price point as well right you can get [clears throat] 50k like evaluations for less than $100.

53:50That's the thing. Even back then, they were the same price as now. Yeah. And they're much easier. So, it's uh must have been crazy to be a prop back then. I'll tell you that. I'd love to know the data back then. Yeah. You touched on one thing there which I actually wanted to bring up with you guys, which was the Grand Cup. I I I mean,

54:15I framed this in my intro for this reason when I called you guys like innovative. I have and I I didn't participate, but I observed from the sidelines. All right. Check it out. Yeah, I know. I'm done. Thank you. Come on. But I haven't seen so much like buzz and fun in the pro like cuz I I find a lot of the education and the path to actually trading. In a lot of cases, it's it's quite serious.

54:38I see what you guys are doing with the live streams. I see the Grand Cup and it brings a little bit of a buzz back to this game and this journey, which is a good thing. Whose idea was the Grand Cup to begin with? I know the second one that we switched up was definitely Vinnie's.

54:54Uh that was my baby. But I think the idea of doing tournaments, I can't remember who came up with it, but we were both aligned. We wanted to do it. One of us comes up with something and then we both ideate together. That's typically how it goes. Vinnie will do I'll I'll get a little carried away with the product. He'll be like, "Oh, well, we got to set some parameters." And you know, he's the ops guy.

55:10Like I'm you know, he goes into the cloud. I bring him back down to Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. He he reigns me back down, but I'm grounded then. Yeah. So, um but uh but yeah, that that was one of the most amazing and biggest things that we've put on. I mean, the second one did even bigger numbers than the last 65,000 traders. Yeah. 65,000 traders. I mean, the you couldn't go on social media and scroll without seeing someone talking about it.

55:31100%. And you know, we plan to double down on on doing those. We have a big uh event that we're going to be um launching at the end of the year as well um around tournaments. So, we're looking forward to announcing that. And uh again, any way that we can try to get new people into the space and excited is our goal here at Tradeify because trading again, this is probably the six, we need a counter by now.

55:58We're going to have to throw up the counter how many times I do it. Uh sixth time I'm saying it, but trading's hard enough. So having a community of people around you, like-minded people or differentminded people who are doing the same thing is really important. and the tournaments, community events, things like that, the streams, like you said, that brings the people together. It makes trading fun. Even if you're, you know, struggling, not having a a good time each day in the market, at least you're learning and having a good time being there.

56:21Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you kind of touched on it with the word fun, right? Because I see, you know, occasionally I see some comments that maybe, you know, because we did do offer resets on these on the Grand Cup, right? And maybe that, you know, maybe Traderify is making money on this, but but we're not.

56:40I can tell you that right now, right? The the money we bring in from resets doesn't cover the price pool that we give up, right? Obviously, we get some other benefit from it, right? Marketing. We're creating a buzz around the brand Traderify, right? But you know that that's a great benefit, but really what we're doing is giving back to the trading community, right? This is it's a fun tournament, right? Anybody can get involved. It's free, right? If you are on the sidelines of trading, you thought about it.

57:05Maybe you watching some educational videos, but you've not actually made a trade. Y, you know what what's a better way of getting into it or trying yourself out with a free tournament where, you know, maybe you've picked something up and you can go far and earn a prize, right? So, it really is a bit of a give back to the community. Um, as Brett said, we're going to double down on it.

57:25I think the next one's going to be even bigger, right? And I think we're trying to innovate on the format. So I think the first Grand Cup had more of a kind of leaderboard style. So it was like you had to get to the top X or you had to and to win you had to be at the top of the leaderboard. With the Grand Cup 2, we had more of a bracket style, you know, like World Cup style where you get, you know, you do headto heads.

57:44I think people thought that was fun as well. People love the headtoheads. We had that whole outlaw concept, right? And I think we're going to do something a bit different again for Gran Cup 3, but it it's going to be bigger. It's getting harder and harder to make it cooler, man. [ __ ] But you you know outside of the fun I think the fun was a huge aspect I have always found and again I think this is I've seen this with the evolution of trading in in the social media space.

58:10Trading is lonely. It's as a retail trader when you're just sitting there with your computer your laptop and you're clicking buttons all day and you've got nobody to speak to it's a [ __ ] lonely space. Yeah. So, you know, not even just to be able to participate in these sorts of tournaments, but like the live streams and stuff as well, the amount of people that must are tuning into that and just just have a platform to interact with somebody else that is understands what you're going through.

58:37Um, and to be able to have a conversation is huge. It's massive. I mean, on our stream, we have a talking potato. Yeah. Which, uh, shout out Bud Nick. Talking potato got the furthest in the tournament, which which he did. He made it to the what? semi-finals. Semi-finals. So, shout outs Budnick. That's crazy. I mean, look, it's a unique It's kind of a funny I I say this to people, the proper market, it's a funny market, right?

59:05It's and and like a lot of people don't realize it exists outside of it, right? And you try to explain it to people and it's kind of hard to explain, right? And I think we do have a very unique market. I think these type of events brings people together. It's like you said, if someone's trading prop on their own, all of a sudden they're part of something that, you know, 65,000 of the people are part of and everybody's commenting on it and it's it's fun and you I think we got to keep people engaged and and build this kind of sense of community, right?

59:36Yeah. How how often do you think there's going to be a grand cup style event or is it feasible to run more than one a year or I don't know? It's a lot of uh it's a lot of losing monies. I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, look, I think we're planning we did one I think November.

59:54I think it was November last year. November. That was the first one. That was the first one. Every six months pretty much. Probably around every six months. I think we can feasibly it it puts a lot of strain, right? Yeah. The tech tech team have to move off of what they were doing and focus on, right? Um especially when we make it grander and grander with each grand cup. So, yeah.

1:00:14And we we don't make it easy for them because it's not the same as the last one, right? And we say we have to launch in 30 days. Yeah. Yeah. So, shout out to the tech team again. Yeah. I love that. Um, right guys, I'm going to wind things down

1:00:28slowly. Um, I have a couple of segments that I like to do at the end of every episode. Normally, it's with the traders, but again, you guys are going to have that perspective. Five traders for traders. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I I want to start with some sort of like quickfire questions, um, hot takes and just to get your guys' raw thoughts on this.

1:00:45Uh, so maybe we'll round robin. I think we've been going Vinnie then Brett, so we'll keep it in an orderly fashion. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Um, should we have some hot one? Do we need some wings first or um, do you think you prefer to be a trader or a business owner? I mean, definitely a business owner, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, have don't I need to try to explain? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Go for it. Go for it. No, I I think part of I think you asked the question like um you know what did you like running trade did you know your strengths or whatever right and I think uh building trade I think this was what I was meant to do right is is run this the business right and I think uh uh you know I thought I was a pretty decent trader before that but he's damn good follow Gandalf trader on uh on a social yeah but I mean I don't get to trade as much anymore but I'm doing I think I'm doing what I love which is running this business right Nice.

1:01:38I agree. But I would say a businessman in trading. So like it's kind of the best of both worlds cuz I know we both love trading. Yeah. But we have a business around trading. So uh I think it's the best of both worlds. I I still trade on the side of dwindled back. It's uh it's obviously tough when you're building a business at this scale and what you have to do day in and day out, but both happy that it's in trading. What do you think more people should prioritize?

1:02:09A better win rate or higher risk-to-reward? Where's the reward? I'm stealing the spotlight. Yeah, I I mean, look, I think you got to find something that's profitable. I I think you can you I'm gonna give you this is a a bit of a copout, but yeah, I think I think you can still have bad riskreward, you can make up for it with win rate. Just so whatever the equation needs to balance, right? Fair. Do you guys think anybody can actually become profitable?

1:02:37No. said that. That was one of the I think first five t minutes. I had to I'm keep saying it right away. If I know the answer right away, I gotta say it. Yeah. Again, everyone's made up a different chemical. Some people their brains aren't wired to trade. Yeah, I I' I'd agree. I think it depends on the period that you're going through in your life, right? Because I think a lot of successful traders are able to manage emotion, right?

1:02:56And if you're not in a period of your life where you can't do that, you're not going to do well in trading. Yep. Fair. What's the biggest misconception about prop firms? Yeah. I I mean I think the biggest misconception is that firms are actively act trying to act against the trader which I think there might be a I don't think that's widely viewed but I think some do think that and and it's far from the truth right I mean we celebrate every payout well the the reality is the firm needs the trader and the trader needs the firm yeah exactly give and take give and take relationship 100% 100% Then um last one for you guys.

1:03:39Um do you think purely from data you can spot a profitable trader early?

1:03:47Yes. Yes. What do you look for? Metrics that we talked about, right? I mean even simple metrics, right? Um you know, we look for consistency, right? Uh the ability to handle emotion, right? How do they handle a loss day? You could tell number one thing. That was what I was going to say right there. Like trading is not how many times can you win or how much do you make when you win.

1:04:08It's how do you manage those days when you lose. You might see a trader do like 12 days where they're making 400 bucks, right? You think, "Wow, what a trader. I'm going to move I want I need to move him live." You got to wait for that loss day Friday the 13th day. When that day goes gone, everything's gone. And it happens. You know, people people get a couple dollars from within a payout or a goal they have in their own live account, different things, right?

1:04:33People like to see those uh especially in live accounts or like whatever, you know, Robin Hood, anything like that. They like to see these whole numbers, right? They take an account to a certain level. They're just about to hit that payout goal or that target goal that they have. I only need 50 bucks. They just throw away their whole strategy that they took to get there because of that one dopamine rush that they want. end up losing the whole thing. They refuse to cut the loss and they spiral.

1:04:57And it happens. It happens day in and day out. I mean, it's happened to me. It's happened to every I think it's happened to everyone. If you're if you're a trader and that hasn't happened to you, you're uh yeah, it's going to happen. I think I've equally seen it from the other perspective as well, which is the ones that have the big payouts. We we've had a lot of them, you know, on the pod where they've taken these ginormous payouts, life-changing money for them at that point in time, but that moment alone [ __ ] with their psychology.

1:05:21And the moment they go back to trading after that, everything is different. Once you've made a million dollars, how do you go back to making two 300 a day, right? It's and and the managing that the psychology of it is is really difficult. Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. Um, right, last one. We're going to adapt this ever so slightly. Uh, because again, this is usually from a trader to trader perspective, but I think you guys have a very unique opinion on this.

1:05:48We call this segment confessions of a trader. And all this is, it's a compilation of conversations, experiences that I've had with hundreds of traders over the years. And I compile it into a confession. And you guys can think of this as this is maybe an aspiring or a struggling trader confessing something to you guys, seeking your guidance, your advice, your wisdom, something to help them along their journey. Okay. Are you going to pull up our support tickets?

1:06:16Because that that's where a lot of these go. Yeah. if you could feed them through for ideas that maybe we'll pop pop a couple up right there to send you. Um, okay. So, today's confession of a trader. I am always seeing traders

1:06:32posting huge payouts online and it feels like everybody is making money except for me. From what you've seen across thousands of accounts, what does reality actually look like? First of all, welcome to therapy. You're you're not alone. I'd say 80% maybe even a little bit more of those people who have those large payouts, they've spent just as much to get there. Right? We talked about it earlier. You don't see the spend and the capital, the amount of times they swipe the card or swipe the card, put their card details in and charge it.

1:07:04They only show the wins, right? Not the losses. And that's typical on social media. So, I wouldn't look at it from that lens. Never. Unless someone's being 100% transparent, don't let that get to your head and, you know, keep slugging. Yeah. Everybody's been gone through the path of trading. They've gone through the cycle, right? And market tuition. Yeah. And and and you don't get a lot of traders on social media posting their losses, right?

1:07:33You'll get a you get a few, but most people are going to post their wins. Yeah. Right. So, you're no not everybody's showing that side of their trading, but you can believe us. it's there, right? Everybody's going through the same thing, right? So, you as long as you just got to focus on what you're doing and getting yourself to to to have an edge in the market that's profitable and that's just all you got to focus on. Love it. Brett, Vinnie, thank you guys so much for your time.

1:07:59Honestly, it's been a pleasure. It's been very eye opening for me. I can't even imagine what it's been like for the guys at home. So, I really appreciate you guys being here. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Right, [snorts] guys and girls, that is another episode in the books. What was your guys take? What was your biggest thing that you discovered about prop firms that you didn't know before this one?

1:08:22Let us know in the comments below. We'll be reading every single one. And if you're someone that wants your confession read out on a future episode, submit a support ticket. Did I take the words from you? Probably. [ __ ] Well, then we're going to have to cut it right there. If you would like your confession read out on a future episode, check the link in the description below.

1:08:42There'll be a form where you guys can submit it or a support ticket. There you go. Please don't don't don't give more tickets to our to our support staff. Use that link. Use that link. Um, if you enjoyed this, make sure you like this video, subscribe to the channel for more episodes just like this, and we will see you in the next one. Take care. Welcome to the Propirm Trader YouTube channel, the number one channel in the world for funded traders.

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1:09:26And of course, we have professional trader interviews on the Words of Wisdom channel. And last but not least, we have completely free trading education which is going to completely revolutionalize the space on Chart Academy. Without any further ado, let's get into this