In this episode, I'm going to take you on the Journey of how a deadhead searching for Independence and self-reliance became a day trader. You know, a lot of people have a preconceived notion of what it means to be a day trader. Some people think we just sit here and gamble all day long. Other people have a very distinctive image of what a day trader looks like, what type of person a day trader is, and not always a flattering image.

So it's kind of funny when I think back about the times my wife would introduce me to people and they already knew that she was married to a day trader and they would be surprised when they saw me because I didn't look like what they expected a day trader to look like I Always kind of found that interesting because they had a real image in their head of oh, This Woman's married to a day trader They had an image of what I looked like what type of person I was and then when they met me, they were surprised. I've got the long hair I've got the beard I don't look like what a lot of people think a day Trader's supposed to look like but I wear both of these with pride because when I started growing my hair out and growing the beard when I was in my teens and my 20s, these men it was harder for me to get a regular job. so this was a little bit of a Fu to the man I never wanted to work for the man, right? but I needed to find a way to make money getting a regular job, especially an entry-level job. It's sort of the bottom of the food chain and to me it's what I would do if I had no skills and I had no money.

If I have skills and have money, I can leverage that to create my own source of income, become self-employed in one way or another Day trading is certainly one of those ways. but if I didn't have any money I didn't have any skills, then a regular job makes sense to kind of get started. So one of the things that I struggled with in my teens and certainly in my 20s was that I didn't have a lot of money I never about skills. That's why I had jobs like working at a gas station, working as an intern, working at the design studio and working at the Ceramic Studio now the Ceramic Studio in the Design Studio.

Both of those started to teach me some skills which I thought could give me the potential to leverage to create my own source of employment I could have run my own ceramic Studio I could have done craft fairs and things like that and sold my goods with the design work I had the potential of leveraging what I was learning there to create my own design studio. so those both were really good. entry level sort of apprenticeships that had the potential to get me up off of that bottom run. But the fact is, when I was younger I didn't have the startup Capital so I had a lot of ideas of businesses that I wanted to do.

but I didn't have the money to make those dreams happen and with some of those business ideas and dreams I had, it was more than just money it was I didn't have the confidence to take the leap so when I got into trading, this was something that I was able to do from the comfort of my own home I didn't have to go out on the road I didn't have to go networking I didn't have to try to sell my good my Ceramics or something like that at different stores I was able to set up in my own space with very minimal equipment I had two borrowed computers one was a Mac one was a PC and that was enough for me to get started. Now obviously the trading account that was the largest investment that I had, but the fact is today you could start trading in a simulator and you can start trading with really small accounts. So the barrier entry for day trading is really really low from a cost perspective. but it's high from a knowledge perspective and high from a skill perspective.

The fact is the motivator for me was the reality, knowing every day that other people were doing this profitably and that if I could get this this, could open up so many more opportunities for me. But I Have to say What attracted me to trading was not the money. and I think that that right there is where there's those preconceived notions about what a day trader looks like. What type of person's a day trader? It's the belief that day Traders are people that are just money hungry.

They're people that are just trying to make as much money as possible. That's the only purpose for me. Yeah, I wanted to make money, but this was not about becoming a millionaire I didn't really think that that was a viable path. I Thought maybe I could get to the point where I could consistently make 100 200, 300 a day.

You know, fifty seventy, five thousand dollars a year. Okay, maybe over the course of 10 or 15 years I'd cumulatively make over a million dollars. but this wasn't like a path of getting rich. It was never about that for me.

but I dealt with a lot of judgment when I got into trading and I was telling people about it because a lot of people sort of thought you know this isn't the type of thing that you should be doing. This is the type of thing that people with a lot of money do. This is the type of thing that people who you know are want to drive. BMWs and I don't know have all these fancy things, do you know Russ let's be real.

This isn't who you are. why are you trying to day trade? And so if you remember in 2018 when I got my concussion of course lost all my memory as my memory was coming back. uh the doctor I don't know someone was like do you know what you do for a living and I was like uh I I think um something in the stock market and he was like I remember he was like uh oh we better get this guy into the MRI something's really wrong with his brain. it's like there's not no, not a chance and then I even second guessing myself because I was like that, that's not who I am I'm not us.

You know what? What stock market What am I thinking you know that's that's not right, that doesn't sound right. that's not who I am So even I still deal with this sort of. You know, a little bit of self-consciousness about being in the stock market because I don't feel like I fit in to the stock market so to speak. and yet it's what I do and it's what I've gotten really good at So that feeling of not fitting in.

that's something that's been a reoccurring theme in my life. I didn't really fit in when I was in elementary school. when I was in Middle School I was still a weird kid I was still a weird kid in high school I'm still a weird kid today and one of the groups that in my life felt the most comfortable with has been that deadhead group, right? That group of of hippies, if you want to call them that, whatever you want to call them when it came to high school, my first big concert was at the Orpheum in Boston and it was a Grateful Dead cover band and it was like everyone was there I looked around and I was like it felt like I was among family I felt like I fit in I felt like these were people that would have my back and now over the years I've kind of stayed in that scene and in high school and in college. I Used to drive and go on the tour, so I'd go from concert to concert to concert.

and so in those days you know, having the beard, having the long hair, you know where during the tie dye, all of that stuff. um, you know, having the bumper stickers on your car. That was a recipe for getting some attention from the heat, right? getting pulled over by the cops, getting hassled. So that certainly for me and probably a lot of others in the scene created some animosity with the man so to speak.

But that crowd. You know when you drive and you stop at a gas station halfway in between you know one concert and the next and you'd see someone else pull in and they've got that same bumper sticker. They've got that same shirt. It's like you know that that's a person that you can trust I have the same feeling now whenever we host these conventions where I'll have 100 or 150 Traders all sitting in a room I feel like I'm among family.

These are people that they're in this same Niche they totally get it I don't have to explain it to them. You know the day trading stuff and the thing with the Deadhead scene is it's so similar. It's this underlying connection and I think for a lot of us it's a support system and an affirmation that there's other people like us that are going down the non-traditional non-conventional path, the alternative path that we're not alone. So this summer I went out on the dead tour, caught some shows and one of the things that I really want to do is make a point of talking to the vendors.

So at all these Dead shows, there's a whole lot seen before you go into the actual concert where people are hanging out and there's a section that's kind of like a combination between like a craft fair and a farmer's market where deadheads who are also vendors will set up booths. and I love it because it's this kind of expression of capitalism, people that are harnessing their skill and leveraging some of the startup Capital to create their own livelihood. So they set up these booths where they sell all kinds of different things. I mean people sell art, they sell stickers and posters, and they sell tie-dye and they sell food.

They sell rocks and gems and I mean anything you could think of. and so I talked with a couple of these vendors and I was trying to get a real sense of what the life is like for them because they're on the road for the whole tour and they also do fall tour and spring tour and some of them probably do other things in the winter and I was thinking how much different is their life from mine now? certainly there's a limit to scalability when it comes to being a vendor. You're not going to be a vendor selling posters or stickers and things like that and have a 475 thousand dollar Green Day like I did on my best trading. Day Ever There's certainly a limit to scalability and it doesn't.

You know, it's a pretty tight limit. so I don't know the most anyone's ever made as a vendor in one day. Several thousand dollars? I'm sure five thousand maybe. but then of course they have the constraint of only being able to sell on the days where there's concerts.

So the questions I was asking how did you get into this? what is it that you love about this? How long do you see yourself doing this gave me some really interesting answers. I'll try to summarize some of the common takeaways that I got like my interest in day trading. It was never for any of these people about trying to get rich or make a ton of money. Yes, they need to be able to make money, they need to be able to pay bills.

But being a vendor on these tours allows them to stay on tour. It's a job that supports a lifestyle in this case, a nomadic lifestyle and day trading can be the exact same way because you could do it from anywhere in the world as long as you've got an internet connection. and I actually just had someone comment on one of the photos I posted of being at the tour that they're one of the vendors and they're also day trading which is awesome. So maybe in another world I would have become a vendor who knows people who know me well know that I work very hard I'm very driven I'm a very motivated person, but that motivation comes from within I Find traditional jobs to be stifling and oppressive and I don't thrive in that environment I Think anyone who's a day trader can relate to the search for a job that offers real Independence and autonomy.

and I think almost all of you. If you spend enough time talking to some of the vendors at these Dead shows and some of the people there would find, you might have a lot more in common with them than you might think.