110: Take Your Money Back By Removing the Fear and Greed with Joshua Belanger

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Joshua Belanger. He was a once struggling professional wrestler delivering pizzas and is now recognized as one of the leading experts with trading options and alternative investment opportunities to generate passive income. That's a mouthful but I'm super glad to have you on the show Joshua.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. You need to shorten that, but thanks. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to rock the mic for the next 20 minutes.

Robert Plank: Awesome. What is it that you do?

Joshua Belanger: Listening to that, and listening to it a few different times I think the way that I've shortened it down is that I help investors get over the 2 biggest obstacles I've seen over the last 12 years. What are those obstacles or hurdles? Fear and greed, so that's what I look to help them with.

Robert Plank: Isn't that the stereotypes, like the Gordon Gekko you're supposed to be? You're supposed to play to your strengths and stuff like that?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Right. No one's successful at being fearful or also greedy, so it's about keeping yourself in check. When it comes to the marketplace you can get both of those sides of it pretty good. That's not a real good way to explain it but, fear and greed is really what controls the marketplaces, but you can't provide proper expectations on being fearful and greedy. That's what I look to sum up for people to be able to help them become successful.

Robert Plank: You're saying that can take over if you don't manage it well?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah, that happens for most people. Why do most people lose money? It's because they are either too fearful and also are too greedy, meaning that they don't, if all the greedy side they're not getting out of positions because they think, "Man, if I would've just had Amazon and I bought that IPO in 1995 I would've been up 2000%." No. It doesn't work that way, and the same thing on the fearful side of it when the financial crisis is going on, and the S&P 500 is at 666 and you're like, "Oh well, the world's going to hell in a handbasket." You could think that way but at that point you've got to say, "Maybe I should buy some stuff here."

Robert Plank: That's like the weirdest thing because I haven't done stock trading in a couple years but when I did do it I was surprised at just how a number would take over, and then even I went through a stage where I would do some paper trading and be like, on certain days, say the price is this, and I played around with that, and the same psychological stuff like you're mentioning, like the fear and agreed, it still messed me up even though it wasn't real money, it was just numbers on even a piece of paper, but it's crazy how much, you have no idea how much all that dark stuff comes in until you're playing with your stock trading stuff.

Joshua Belanger: All that dark stuff is all the stuff in your head. You're looking at stuff and you're making your own interpretation but there's millions of dollars traded every day, back and forth, and not back-and-forth meaning one side to another, but there's a buy and sell. The wonderful thing about the marketplace is that there's no other opportunity out there like the financial markets, meaning that you don't like Apple, so you could take the other side of the trade by selling it. You could sell short, say "Hey, Apple's overvalued here." You can't do that in anything. You can't go to a piece of real estate and, "Hey dude. You just sold your house for how much money," and like a new buyer, "I'm going to short that house."

You can't go to Vegas with an edge and say, "Hey I want to take the other side of the trade." They'll take the other side of the trade, but with their edge, but you can't be Vegas. The only opportunity is in the financial markets with that, and that's the most, it's transparent, and it's at your fingertips, and it's a wonderful thing.

Robert Plank: But also kind of scary. I want to know about your story and this whole, because you can't just say, well, you used to be a wrestler and delivering pizzas, and now you're doing this. That's too good to pass up, right? I'm curious, how did you get from there to here?

Joshua Belanger: Oh man, that was a while ago. I started wrestling when I was 14, 15 years old and I stopped when I was just about 19 years old. In that time I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I was working at a pizza place, and I went to school. I went to a junior college for a week and at that time I worked at this pizza place for a while. I had an opportunity to become a manager and the guy that I looked up to, and I worked for, Rod, he taught me a lot about business, and sitting in business 101 class I'm like, I already know this stuff and this is not my route.

Before then he had told me, and just in conversation he's like, "Man, if I wasn't doing this it'd be cool to be a stockbroker." That was my a-ha moment. My a-ha moment is because wow, man, stockbrokers. They probably make a ton of money.

Robert Plank: That sounds like a cool profession.

Joshua Belanger: It sounds like a cool profession so I watched movies like Boiler Room at that time, and I'm like, "Whoa. This is pretty awesome. Let me jump on this horse," and a couple doors down from where I worked at the pizza place there was an Edward Jones office and a guy named Russ. He ordered pizza pretty often. I went in there one day and I said, "Hey. 19 years old. I'd like to become a stockbroker," and he said, "Okay. Do you have a book of business?" "No." "Do you have a series 7?" "No." He knew I didn't have the stuff but he was like, hey, you know, and then he explained to me-

Robert Plank: Then he asked did you watch Boiler Room and that was like you're hired, right?

Joshua Belanger: He told me, he said to me, "These are the things you have to get to." I live in Chicago now but I grew up outside Chicago. I grew up on the Wisconsin Illinois state line so that's about a 45 minute car drive, and an hour and 20 minute train ride, so he said to me, "I used to work on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile exchange." There's a couple different exchanges in Chicago. That's one of them. That's a futures exchange, and that would be your best opportunity. You would be able to get your foot in the door and see where you want to go, and he was right, but he said to me, "I haven't worked there in a while. I don't know anybody, but that's my advice."

I'm like, "Okay, cool." That's all I needed so I went, like I said this was 13, 14 years ago, so I went online, we had the interwebs then. They were still starting out but I went on. I went to CME's website and I even, I didn't know much about it because I didn't realize until I was down there that there's a Chicago Board of Options Exchange, and the Chicago Board of Trade, so I'm only looking at the CME because that's what he told me, but I called every firm in there. I went through the directory 2 times, got an opportunity to interview, didn't get the job the first time. They called me back a few months later and they gave me a job as a runner, which only means I had my foot in the door, but I was making little money.

I joke that the janitor was actually more valuable than me because you're kind of like a grunt. As a runner you're a grunt, and a runner, only my job, in those days that is what's known as the open outcry system. You see all movies, like the Eddie Murphy movie where they're in the pit and their yelling, it looks like they're yelling but they're actually really trading. There's a art to it.

Robert Plank: With the yellow coats and stuff?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I forget the movie. I think it's trading money or something.

Robert Plank: Trading Places.

Joshua Belanger: Trading Places. Yeah. That movie, that's when things were really buzzing. When I got there it was buzzing but not as much is that, and also that's a movie, but that's a different story. A runner actually would go and have to fight through those crowds to get the tickets from the traders who are in the pit there, and usually some of them, if they're bigger, they had a clerk which was essentially an assistant. I would have to to fight through there, get in, get all these tickets from who I need to get tickets from, and the tickets are these trading cards because that's how they traded, and I recorded it, take those and within 15 minutes, because it all had happened, get them time stamped at the clearing firm. That's why I had to fight it.

They don't just let you in. They don't say, "Hey, Josh. Oh my God. You're the runner? You got to get the Bill over there? Come on through." No. They push you out of the way. They elbow you and they know that your new. They don't make it easy. You get in their way. They yell at you. It was a pretty fun experience. It was pretty fun.

Robert Plank: You had to earn your stuff, sounds like.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. You have to break in. I loved the opportunity. I miss it. It was a unique experience. I would never trade it for anything.

Robert Plank: Cool. That's how you got your foot in the door. Obviously you don't do that now, so what is it that you do now?

Joshua Belanger: That's how I got my foot in the door and then from there I can summarize my whole background. It could take a while but I took different opportunities. I leveraged that and eventually I became a stockbroker, realized that's not what I wanted to do, and I was fortunate enough to have that experience of being on the floor to realize, "Man. I got my series 7 now. I thought I knew everything and here I've become a stockbroker. I'm making 600 calls a day. Man, and all I'm doing is just pitching product. Man, this is like a sales job."

When I would ask about, "Hey, this client asked me, or this person asked me about the market, what I thought about it." My senior broker would say to me, "Your opinion doesn't matter. Just go open accounts," and I'm like, "Wow." I would ask questions like, "Hey. What do you think of Martin?" He was like, "Kid. Just go open accounts. It doesn't matter." I'm like, "Wow. This is not as fun as I thought it was going to be."

I had different opportunities. I have a lot of experience in different aspects of the financial industry, but in 2008 I was working at a trade desk, and I really wanted to do something on my own. I was starting to manage money on the side and I also wanted to start the website because how I got gravitated towards, specifically options is what I teach, or what I primary focus in on, but to be honest with everyone and to help them understand, options are only a product. Stocks are a product. Options are a product. Features are a product. It's just understanding how to use them all at once, or how to use them to be successful.

Having just one product and saying all I want is just to, okay, for instance. All I want to do is eat chicken. Well, okay. What about steak, and what about this? You can enjoy all those things but why do you just have to have chicken?

Robert Plank: It gets old fast.

Joshua Belanger: It gets old fast. It's not the best example. If the first thing I could come up with. Anyways, they're all products and they all work together. In all actuality stocks are easier and that's why most people gravitate towards it. I work in different aspects of the financial industry and there's a lot of restrictions, and there's a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't like a lot of the regulations, the restrictions, and all I was supposed to do was to sell products and gather assets. I thought I could do more for people. I thought I could do more and provide more because that's all I asked. Every time I asked to do something more I was always shut down. No. You can't do that. No. You shouldn't do that. No.

Robert Plank: Right. Don't be creative. You're a machine. Keep making phone calls.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Don't be a machine. There is a stock called Rick's Cabaret. The ticker symbol, stock symbol's R-I-C-K. It's a strip club. I thought it'd be cool if I could pitch those in open clients. I'm like, "Hey man. This stock is relatively new. It's a strip club. You could own a strip club." That was just a unique story. Compliance department shut that down pretty quickly.

Robert Plank: Oh man, but now that you're on your own, now you're free to do all that, right?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I don't focus on stocks. Stocks are just a byproduct of the everyday, the typical investor like you and I, which are known as retail, I'm not a professional. I'm not on the professional side anymore. Retail investors, the most opportunity for them is using leveraged instruments like options, like futures, and to really use a lot less of their capital to make a lot more. The traditional approach to investing is to have 80 to 90% in stocks, and the rest of it in cash. Well, that doesn't work. Maybe 30 years ago whatever person said that and that was the outcome, yeah. People still rehash that information because the financial industry is all about taking your money and collecting fees. That's it.

There's zero edge with the access to technology, with the access to information, all those things that may have made others so-called market wizards successful is out the door. They're past. They're gone. The market's so much more efficient, so much more effective. The edge is gone for anybody. The playing field, what I mean by that, is as level as possible, and somebody like Robert, and me, and anybody can actually do better than professionals because we don't have those restrictions. It's just about learning your craft, or actually wanting to do it as well.

Robert Plank: It reminds me of, we keep mentioning all these 80s and 90s movies and stuff, and it reminds me of how when people used to go on an airplane and they would call a travel agent. Now you just use the computer. It sounds like that's a similar thing now, right? You used to call your stockbroker but now it makes more sense to learn a little bit, and then go online and do it yourself instead.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. In those days you didn't have direct access to the marketplace so you had to go through a broker. There was a part of it too, you're like, "Oh, I've got a broker." You call him on your phone on the golf club, and yes, you feel important, and at that time there was different opportunities. Maybe a hedge fund manager did have access to certain information that the street didn't have, but that doesn't exist anymore.

The only way that these hedge fund managers, because they underperform, they underperform. Mutual funds underperform. 90% of them underperform every year. There collecting fees to give alpha but they underperform. The reason why is because the markets so efficient and there's no edge for them. You're in the hole right when they take their fees, and there are so many other types of hidden fees and everything else. It's a money machine.

There's a book called, it's an old book, it's from like the 1930s, but something about the yachts. I can't think of it, but anyways, brokers. Why do these hedge fund managers have the most money? They're not the smartest people. They don't even produce that much alpha, alpha meaning return, but they collect their fees. Fees paid out is a third of our GDP, the financial industry. It's just such a money generating system that's protected by these firms because that's their interest, is keeping your money in a 401(k) plan, keeping your money and an IRA, keeping your money away from you as far as you can so they can collect their little fees.

It might not sound like a lot but over a time frame for you, and also for them with millions of people, it becomes trillions of trillions of dollars every year that they look to do that, and they don't have to do anything.

Robert Plank: Sounds like a little corrupt system in a way. Along those-

Joshua Belanger: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Oh, go ahead.

Joshua Belanger: I don't want to say it's corrupt. It's naiveness. It's people who don't want to take control of their money. There's a little bit, it's tough. It's tough because they're not doing anything. They're doing what they're saying, and then there's some people that actually want to do good. It's just you have restrictions when it comes to the financial markets. You have restrictions with firms who don't want you to do this because the risk department. It's just easier to put people into products. It becomes accountability of you and your money, and you knowing what to do with it. That's a long discussion on its own, but it's not as plain cut of pointing the finger at them. The easiest way to stop it is to take your money back.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. If people want to invest in a strip club or whatever, the equivalent is that in the research they want to buy some options and whatever, they can make their own decision. They can have their own control.

Joshua Belanger: You can have your own control with your money and how you invested into the marketplace. The first step is like, okay Josh. I don't want to stop, the fees that you pay over 10, 20, or 10, 15, 20, 25 years, that 2% fee, that compounds. I could show you a graph to what we have. We're talking about thousands of dollars. On a $50,000 account we're talking about thousands of dollars, many of thousands of dollars, that you lose that could go into your pocket over that time frame. The first step is just taking your money back.

Now you don't have to go into options. You're wanting to get your blue belt in investing. This is like a little dojo. Investing's like a dojo. If you want your white belt and to do it yourself, and what I would refer that as is, if you want to learn just a little bit to be able to defend yourself and protect yourself, you go and you start taking classes. The first thing you could do taking your money back is, you take your money back, and you could put it into, it makes me cringe to say this Robert, it makes me cringe. You could put your money into a vanguard fund like the ET, are not ETF, but that's another way to do it, but of Vanguard, low-cost index fund with the S&P 500, and that would save you many of thousands of dollars a year just doing that, and you're just going to get the market return.

Because again, 90% of investors, or 90% of professionals, do not beat that index. If that's the case, why are you trying to bat, you have the 10% and you are able to get that 10% that are doing it, because you're not going to in and out of different mutual funds. Just let the market give you what it gives you and just ride that out.

Now if you want to take it to the next step and you want to start managing money more actively, then yeah, then you can start learning how to do that with options and things of that sort, and being more engaged, but the first step is just to do that.

Robert Plank: Cool. It sounds like there's, I don't want to keep you too long, but there's a lot of really cool steps people can take to basically get the power back, get the control back, don't let the fear and the greed take you over. Even if they don't know much at all just yet they can put it into a vanguard or an ETF, like an index fund or something, and then eventually work their way up to options. I want to talk a little bit about you have this program called OptionSIZZLE. Can you tell us what that's about?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah, optionSIZZLE's my website. That's what I started in the financials crisis, great time to do that, but that's when I started, and that was a whole medium of being able to teach people how to use options successfully. When I was in the financial industry and I was making my cold calls, I would talk about options, and I would try to use options, and compliance department would say nope, and also clients would say, man, options are to0, fill in the blank. I don't know much about options.

It started to become a recurring thing that, and even my own lack of success with the options in the beginning, because I lost $2000, which was my whole account at the time, on one trade, making mistakes people do normally starting out with options. Even though I had this series 7 license, which is a industry license which said I'm a professional, and I knew, and I could operate in the financial industry, it didn't teach me how to become successful at managing my own money or even using these instruments, so that's where I started to take it to the next level and really focus in on it, and get to where I'm at now of being in a place to use them and also help those that are looking to do the same.

Robert Plank: This optionSIZZLE, is it a blog? Is it a membership site? What is this exactly?

Joshua Belanger: That's the real estate. That's my domain. That's the area and when you go there you'll be enticed with a bunch of little articles, which are little daily emails that I send out. The whole point of that is to captivate you, to get in and start being engaged in. We have different products that I offer. I wrote this book called Fearless Investing With Options, and it really is the book that I wish I had when I first started, when I first started using options, or even studying for my series 7, because so many options books are just very vanilla. They don't even teach you a foundation to be successful. They give you insight but not anything that is actionable to be able to implement.

That's kind of the first process and I have other products in there as well that we offer to help that. It's almost I have a choose your own adventure approach, where somebody comes in and we provide something to them, and if they want to continue up with working with us, and we start on a low investment opportunity where they buy a book or report. If they want to continue on with the process then yeah, you get more information, which is more value, as you continue to go through the journey with us.

Robert Plank: They can try out and the more they get hooked, the more they can get.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I approach this as if you went to a karate class or a martial art class. You just don't get your black belt in one day. Everyone's ahead of you. You come in on day one, you're going to lose. There's nothing you can do. You may get lucky but you don't know anything, and you have to start at that, and you have to start working your way up. Now if you want to get that black belt, everyone's different. Maybe someone wants to get a green belt. Maybe someone wants to learn this one thing, which I would say that's not how you're going to become successful, but that's not my opportunity to tell them all you need is to learn that.

If you want to learn how to become a black belt I can certainly help you do that. If you want to learn that, then yeah, you have this, but that's where I let the things fall into place of where they, what they want, and how they want to approach it.

Robert Plank: I like that. I like that. From what it sounds like, your thought process behind, first of all your journey from point A to point B, and the way that you've explained the way that you trade and the way that you teach others, it sounds like, usually the 2 extremes of people who go through are either just try to flood you with all of the facts and figures, and then that's not helpful at all, right? It sounds like some of the textbooks that you read, and then the other extreme is someone saying, what you have to do it exactly this way.

I think what's cool about the way you've explained all this is maybe there's 4 or 5 different paths. Maybe there's a couple different places someone wants to end up and you give them the strategy to put different things together, and get to that specific place they want to get to.

Joshua Belanger: Yes. Some people just want trade ideas and it drives me up the wall because it's not just about the trade ideas, it's about the logic, but for so long, I know that you focus in on membership stuff, and I actually deviated from that. I had a membership. I had a recurring, and I deviated from it because I'm like, well, I want to teach people how to become masters, but not everyone wants to become a master.

Robert Plank: Some people just dabble, right?

Joshua Belanger: Some people just dabble, and it really took me to this experience where I was at this store, the grocery store, and they actually have a very nice wine collection, and they have really solid wine people there that really know, will supposedly they know, they could tell a hell of a story.

Robert Plank: They sound convincing.

Joshua Belanger: It's just not like any kind of wine place where you like, "Oh, is this good?" They'll tell you, like I bought this $100 bottle of wine. It was the most expensive bottle I've ever bought. I bought it because he told me about Giuseppe and his last harvest, and he told me the story, and I'm like "Okay. Giuseppe passed away on his last harvest and this is his bottle. Oh my God. I'm done."

Robert Plank: It was like he died as he was putting the cork in the last one.

Joshua Belanger: Almost. I'm like, man, I can just visualize Giuseppe on his rocking chair overlooking the harvest. This is his last harvest. I have the bottle and he's passed away. I'm like, how else would you want to go? I'm doing this for Giuseppe. Done. Let's do this, and then I get home and I had buyers remorse. I'm like, but it was one of the best bottles of wine I've ever had.

Anyways, but the guys there, they can tell you a good story. They can tell you about the regions and everything else. It really took me to this one time I went in, and my girlfriend Nicole, she's not crazy about the stories, but she was like, "Listen. We just got to go in because I have want to get wine. I don't want to hear stories. I just want to get a bottle of wine and let's go."

I went in on my own one-time and I was feeling the same way, so the guy that we knew, he was like, "Hey. How's it going?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm doing good," and I asked him, "Hey. I just need a bottle of wine under 15 bucks." He starts talking about all this, and it really took me to that point because I'm like, man. I just want the bottle of wine. I don't need to know everything about the bottle of wine, and it was my a-ha moment of maybe that's how other people feel. Maybe they just don't want to know everything that I know about options, the in-depth analysis, and the time involved. Maybe they just want to see, hey. Does this guy, if he has a couple good picks maybe I'll just follow him.

Now I look at it as giving them broccoli that's wrapped in bacon almost. I can still teach them how to trade options successfully with giving them picks. This was a little bit of a longer rant, but yeah. That's how people are. I'm still learning. I still, every day I'm learning. I might be further ahead. It doesn't make me better than anybody else. I know I have experience, which is what it is, but every day I'm still trying to get better. Every day I'm still getting after it, learning, all those things.

Just because you get to a black belt in a martial art doesn't mean your learning stops either. You continue to try to keep learning, and that's the same way with investing, and really just business and anything, life. It's just getting better every day.

Robert Plank: Yeah, you take too long of a break, get too comfortable, you backslide.

Joshua Belanger: That's where you start to cut corners.

Robert Plank: Yeah.

Joshua Belanger: That's where you lose your discipline.

Robert Plank: Scarier place to be. As we're winding down this call could you tell us, what's the big number one mistake you see people anywhere making their mistakes with their money, or with trading, or with anything in that category?

Joshua Belanger: Well, I think it's just proper expectations. When it comes to business, and just thinking about business and different things as well, it's just the expectations are not there. What I mean specifically is if you bought, I made the little joke about buying Amazon when it was, well, I don't know if I made the joke earlier. Some people think like, "Oh man. If I just would've bought Amazon's IPO when it came out in May," I think it was 1995, "and would've held it to this day, $5000 would be worth over $1 million."

That's one stock out of how many that's out there? It doesn't work that way, and there's no way that you would be able to hold that investment for that long. That doesn't work. Your fear and greed-

Robert Plank: The money would've burned a hole in your pocket. The 2008 crash would've done whatever, all that stuff, right?

Joshua Belanger: It's not smart as is. It's not smart. You've got to take your wins when you can. People talk about managing risk but they don't talk about the other side of managing risk, which is taking your wins, and taking that risk off the table. What I mean specifically, I had this business that I just sold. I started it 3 years ago, made some passive income. It was Amazon based. It was just a different type of investment. I'm threw some money at it, made some money, and for me I made money on it, I wanted to lock it up.

Could it keep going? Sure, but I rather take my money and find something else to put it in, and keep going. I don't care if I had the opportunity to buy Amazon stock. I would've never held it, and that's not how you can approach things and life, because that's an outlier. That's a rare event. That doesn't happen, and you can't approach it, so it's really about expectations and managing risk, and taking, when you manage risk it's not about the loss side. It's about the win side. It's about taking that win, and yeah, you hear about people who turned down Google's offer and look at them now.

Yeah, look at them, but there's not anyone else behind them. There's only one. You only hear about them because what about the other hundred or thousand people? They were lucky. They took the risk. That's big risk. Good for them, but when you're starting out your cushion for risk is very limited. Now when you get bigger, yeah. You can take on bigger risk and so forth, but it's just being able to quantify that risk and understanding it. With people in the marketplace, they put too much money at risk.

It's what we were talking about earlier with the traditional approach of 80% invested. When the market goes down, which it does, and will, those positions, they sell them at the worst case because they get margin called. With what we can do now, with being able to teach somebody like you or anybody, is that you can use 30% of your capital and still make those same returns, and have 70% in cash.

Why do you have cash? Well, because that's your lifeline. That's the only thing that you have. So what, you're not essentially making money on it, and you could make money, but you can't do that. You have to keep that in a safe place. You have to keep it because even if you're using 30%, when things happen, positions go against you, you have to be able to have that money to be able to buy yourself duration, buy yourself some time.

When things are great, things are great. When things are bad you have to be able to have something in the reserve tank to be able to buffer that, just to be able to buy yourself some duration. The same thing in business. I think it's the same thing in investing as well. A lot of people say trading, I say active. I don't do day trading. There's people who do day trading. That's fine for them. I've never been successful at it. I know very few people who have been successful. My approach isn't about day trading. My approach is about just being more active with your money and more engaged.

You don't have to change your computer every day and Johnny Mr. Market. You can be successful, make above average returns than the market provides, and you don't have to be chained to your computer.

Robert Plank: That's the dream because I know that that was a real problem with me, and I think that it comes full circle. Like at the beginning you said it comes back to fear and greed, and I think that I couldn't help but check that portfolio, check the numbers every couple of minutes, and it just emotionally messed me up. Especially if it dropped a tiny bit, I be like, "Oh my gosh. I got to panic sell," and if it jumped a bunch, I'm like "I got to buy some more," and then if I sold it and it kept going up I just, it was such a roller coaster. It sounds like you have-

Joshua Belanger: It's too many variables. That's why.

Robert Plank: Yeah, and it was just all on checks to.

Joshua Belanger: The way that I try to do that now, and we can do that with options, I read some of the information about yourself and how you like to create systems, that's the way that I now approach teaching people, to take those variables out of it, to manage risk before entry so you're stopping out. You didn't have an idea area of where things could go, proper expectations, so you're panicking, and you're selling at really the wrong time, and then also when it goes against you you're like, "Oh, man. Where do I sell it? Do I sell here or do I sell there?" Well, to create consistency you have to have consistency and a consistent plan, and to be able to execute that.

That's where a lot of people fail in investing because it's all variable, meaning that it's like calling audibles. Maybe I'll do it here. Maybe I'll do it there. Maybe I'll sell high. The market is random so to get consistent results you have to have a consistent approach and be able to execute on that. That's where I have started to really form into the fact of I'm going to help you become a machine, and I'm going to teach you exactly the things to be mechanical, to be systemized, and where you can use options to reduce your risk, create better returns, and have an approach that is going to help you take away that fear and greed.

Really the fear and greed is because you don't know what to do.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense, especially planning your eggs ahead of time just sounds awesome, and also that the marketplace is random, and if you're also random, it's just a big mess. At least if the marketplace itself is random and you are somewhat structured, and ordered, and systematized, at least you can make sense, and you can get what you want out of it sounds like.

Joshua Belanger: Absolutely, and it's also eliminating opinions because no one knows. There's no such thing as a good stock picker. There's no such thing. Your probability of being right is 50% when you pick stocks. With options we can skew that probability of success even greater. There's a trade-off, which everything in life has a trade-off. You don't make as much money, but there's no such thing as unlimited profit potential. It's like a drug. It's like the crack of Wall Street. Going back to the Amazon thing, like oh I would've, no. There's no such thing as that.

If you're so scared that the market's going to go to zero or that this stock is going to go to zero, go bankrupt, then you can't have the other spectrum and think the same thing. Well, it could do that but I'm only going to buy stocks or options because I think that Apple's going to go to 200. There's actually expectations, that we could look at option pricing right now, that gives us an expectation of what the markets priced in. We're talking about billions of dollars that say that's not going to happen, or what the probability of that's going to happen, and we can quantify that. That's how we eliminate that opinion, how we eliminate the fear and the greed because we can provide the expectations, the predetermined outcomes, of okay. I knew that this had a 75% chance of winning, however there was a 25% chance that it wasn't going to win, but because I knew that that 25% chance was there, I already accounted for that loss because I knew that could happen.

It happened here but I know that I got that out of the way, and I'm going to keep going. Continue to be consistent because the odds, the numbers are, it's the same way how Vegas works. It's the same exact way.

Robert Plank: Better than going in 50-50, right? At least you somewhat hedged your bets.

Joshua Belanger: 50-50 bets are fine but you have to be consistent on when you take profits and manage risk as well, because you start to get variable data, and that kind of skew will really hurt you on doing that. A lot of people, they take a big loss and they go, because they didn't size correctly their position and they have a big loss, and they go, "Ah, man. I'm going to take a break." No. You got to keep going. You can't just take a break. You got to keep going because now you dramatically skew the numbers against you.

For some reason when it comes to investing we approach it like, oh my God. We don't know what to do, but everything else in life we take so much data, and we go by it, but in the marketplace it's like no. So-and-so knows more than I do. No, they don't. They don't know more than you because it's random.

Robert Plank: That makes sense to me. I really like everything that you shared with us today. I really like your message. Could you state for us one more time your website and your books, and anything that you want people to check out?

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. I don't have a strong call to action to several websites. You can only go to OptionSizzle.com, and that's where you'll be able to find more information about me, and if you're interested in, if you just want to take your money back, and we have a report on how you can do that. Take your money back and you have control over it, or if you want to take the next step, and you want to learn more about how you can make more money after you have that control.

It's a big step. A lot of people are very reluctant because they don't have the confidence in being able to do it themselves. There's still this fact of like, man. What happens if I do worse? That's the problem. People are so scared that they're going to do worse that they go, "Josh, I hear you. I know that I'm going to lose money or I'm getting ripped off, but I'd rather get ripped off this much then lose more by doing it myself."

Well, we could show you how to do that in a very simple process. I know it's a shrug of a shoulder, but that's how people really feel. There's a lot on the line. There's a lot of pressure on them, but we can go from there and you can visit OptionSizzle.com and you could see the book that I wrote, which can be a great introduction to learning how to be successful with options, and even for those who " know options" this is a good reeducation of maybe some techniques in a process that you didn't really know.

Robert Plank: That maybe they skipped over or something.

Joshua Belanger: Yeah. Correct.

Robert Plank: Cool, so optionSIZZLE. Everything is there. That's where the magic begins, where dreams happen. Josh, thanks for being on the show. I appreciated all of the witty banter and all the cool tangents you went on. We covered a lot of cool stuff. I'm really glad you're here, so OptionSizzle.com is the place to go.