107: Stop Dreaming and Take Action with Anmol Singh

Robert Plank: Anmol Singh is a professional stock market trader and founder and CEO of multiple companies involved with education, finance, investing, social apps, real estate, all kinds of stuff. He's going to talk to us today about how he started those businesses and how he manages his time and runs those businesses. How are things today, Anmol?

Anmol Singh: I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Robert Plank: Cool. It sounds like you have a lot of stuff in progress, a lot of stuff you set up. How the heck did you get started with all this?

Anmol Singh: It basically all started through trading. I was in my dorm room sitting back in university and we were figuring out different ways where we can perhaps get ahead rather than just looking for a job. That's how I was introduced to trading but just talking to my friends in the dorm room. Nobody really took any action, whereas I just went out there, researched about how the markets work, took a lot of courses, took a lot of education and then got started trading. After about 12 months or so of, I guess, dabbling in the markets and losing a little bit, I finally figured out my strategy and what I really wanted to do and how I really wanted to trade. From there it was a basically a snowball effect. When you're getting money in from trading, you have two things. Either you can withdraw it and you can spend that money, or you can take that money and invest it into other different businesses. I chose the different route. I chose to invest that money into other businesses.

Robert Plank: Cool. I love that. It's a really nice comparison between you and your friends in college. I think that that's kind of the typical person, right? The typical person kind of knows about all of these things, does a little bit of reading, dreams a little bit, but doesn't actually take action. It sounds like you went ahead and made all the mistakes that there were to make and read all of the stuff there was to read. Then once you got past that initial little hump then all of these other things took off.

Anmol Singh: Exactly. Taking action is what really differentiates people who achieve things from people who don't, because I could have sat in the dorm room and just talked about it. It was a fun discussion and then I could have gone out and done the usual thing or I could sacrifice maybe a couple of Saturday nights. Just sit in my dorm room and figure out what I should do next. It's those little things you give up, they're the ones that are going to get you to where you want to be.

Robert Plank: Then, it's like you give it you at first, but then it pays off way, way later in the end. I think that I see a lot of people kind of fall into is that they'll talk a big game, or they'll talk about all the future plans and it's almost like talking too much about what you're going to do, almost makes you feel as if you've done it. Then once you've done it, you're not motivated to go ahead and do it. It sounds like you just went ahead instead of talking about it to every single person who'd listen, you just kind of quietly went and did your thing and then, well guess what? The thing that you're talking about can be your past actions, not your future dreams.

Anmol Singh: Exactly. The way to think about this one is, you could either talk about what you're going to do, which is good too, you should always talk about your future goals, but you can either say, "Hey, I'm going to launch a multimillion dollar business in five years." You could either say that, or you could say, "Hey, I want to launch a multimillion dollar business in five years, but here's what I've done so far leading up to those five years." That's what we're really differentiate. For me, I made a commitment. I said, "I'm going to make money as a successful stock market trader. This is where I want to get in five years. So far to get there what I've done is I've spent X amount of money on my education, taken these courses. I opened up a trading account. I've started putting trades with really small money."

What I'm giving you right now is I'm breaking my goal down into actionable items and those are the stuff that I took action on. That's what people need to do rather than just dreaming about having successful business. You have to ask yourself the question, what have you done until now? Have you even launched your own website? First things first, go and buy your own name's domain name. First buy the domain name. Second thing you need to do is you need to create a business plan. Third thing you need to do is register your company. All this doesn't even require you to have a business idea. You're taking action into that goal and that's what will differentiate you from, a person who takes action from a person who doesn't.

Robert Plank: I love that. It's such a simple message, but I think everyone needs to hear that. Even if you just take one little step, like you said, registering their domain name, even though it seems like, "Oh, I can do that later. I can do that when I have my other tasks." Sometimes we just have to just get going just the tiniest bit. I like that a lot. You said that you started off with this trading stuff. You started with a little bit of money, grew to some more money and then instead of just taking the money out and living off that, you decided to invest this into some other businesses. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Anmol Singh: Sure. When I started trading, I was initially trading for another firm, but mainly as independent trader where they used to give me a percentage of the profits and they used to back me the money in regards to that. That was the first way I started, but then eventually I started making good money on my own that I didn't really require another firm's capital. I had my own capital to trade. That was one thing where I left that firm and started trading on my own, which will naturally save me a percentage that I had to give to them, so now I'm making more money. Then what I did from that money is I said, "You know what? I could either keep on trading the way I'm trading or I could put more money in my trading account and perhaps start trading a little bit more money." That was the second step.

The third step was, "Hey, maybe I could diversify because right now I'm a short term trader but maybe I could do some long term trading." With that money, I opened up another account where I started doing long term investing and long term trading. Then sooner or later, my family and friends wanted to give me their money to trade. I said, "You know what? Sure thing. Let's do it." After first few years, I hesitated. I didn't want to take anybody's money, but then finally I said, "You know what? Okay. I'll do it for the friends and family." That turned into a pretty big long term fund that I traded with.

From there it was like, "All right. I think I'm in a pretty good place with my trading, maybe I should diversify." By that time, what happened was you started getting a lot of emails, a lot of social media messages of people wanting to learn how to trade because I used to write a blog, post videos. Without having livetraders.com and just posting my market commentary. That got a lot of attention from people wanting to learn. That resulted in natural progression to me starting LiveTraders where now we're teaching other people to trade. We're backing them with our own money. Same way the firm backed me when I started, now we back other traders with our money in exchange for a percentage of their profits. Then that led to one of the business.

The next progression was into real estate. My father has always been into real estate. I said, "This is definitely something that has good potential." What I started doing was I started taking some of the capital and buying rental properties and buying commercial real estate. That was one of the other progressions that led into that.

One thing to another, I started looking for something that has I guess synergy with my current businesses. One of them was trading out those systems which is just a website where we build an program software for traders. Traders need different kinds of tools. They need different kinds of automation tools. What we do now is I have an in house designer, and a programmer that works with the clients to build trading software that they need. That was just synergy inside the current model. That's how it led from one thing to another.

Robert Plank: There's a bunch of really cool things about that story and about all of that. The best thing that I like about it is usually when people talk about diversifying in their business, it kind of almost sounds like one thing that they do that makes money, makes up for something else that's not making money or diversifying to some people sounds like where they do half of one project and half of another project. What I really like about what you just explained here is that you didn't do all these things at once. One thing kind of led to something and then led to the next logical thing. The other things I like about it is that you kind of started off with almost like a proof of concept. You master trading on your own and then you went out and had software made to do that. Master trading with your own money and then that kind of grew into trading with other people's money and then all that led to teaching people how to go and do those things. It's kind of like you tried these different experiments, it seems like one pays off and then you went in and took that all to the next logical step.

The final thing I like about all of that is that you said that about verticals and synergy, just because I know that with me, whenever I try to have one project in one niche or some project in some other niche. The software program over here or some software as a service over there. It's like my time's always kind of split and I have to almost switch gears and things like that. What I really like about what you've explained there, especially with how it all led to the training program about trading and the trading software is that it's not like you mastered stock trading and then decided to go off in some whole other direction like weight loss or something. You taught what you're good at.

Anmol Singh: Right. Exactly. I think it's important, especially for your first few businesses is to do something that you're already good at, do something that you're passionate about and do something that you love because I could have said, "I'm going to go launch my weight loss program," but then maybe I'm not passionate about it. Maybe I'm not even good at it, which I'm not. It's like when you do things which are totally outside of your realm and you're just chasing, I guess, what's hot and what's making money these days on the internet. That's a gig. That's not a business. That's one thing people have to realize.

There are several things you can do to maybe make a $5,000, $10,000 here and there, but is that long term business. Nothing is ever going to be long term sustainable if you're not passionate about it. Number two, you're not good at it. For me, the trading thing again was, as you said, as a proof of concept, here's how I'm trading, here's it making money. The natural progression was let's teach others how to do the same. Then now the students are making money. That's proof of concept. Then I needed to get a trading software basically designed just for myself. That's how I contacted a programmer. I contacted him, said, "Hey, this is the software that I need, this is what I'm looking to get built.

I basically got it built for myself, but then when I was trading and the students were able to see it, they said, "You know what? We want this software too." Then I got people coming up and saying, "Hey, this is the software that I'm looking to get built, here's the criteria for that, can you ask your guy how much it costs." That's what led to forming that business where now we get too many queries for people about software. This is what they need built. I just contacted my programmers and said, "Hey, why don't you just work for me and I'm going to get you these softwares that people want to get built and why don't we work together and give them a really good product. That's how it led from one business to another.

Robert Plank: That's really cool, because like yous said, it started with the tool that you needed to use. You yourself as a stock trader, so then of course you'd build the perfect piece of software that would satisfy your needs but then your students and all these other people, they also had maybe a similar set of needs or slightly different set of features they would need. That way you actually create something that even if it didn't sell one copy, or even if it didn't sell 10 copies, it still would have been worth the money you put in because it delivered the things that you needed. Then because you are a good business owner and you market it, now you kind of can get it from both ends because now it's a solution that you use, but then you can also sell it to other people too. That's great.

Anmol Singh: Exactly.

Robert Plank: With all this stuff that you have going on, I want to ask you about your time management strategy and how the heck do you juggle all these things going in motion at once? How do you deal with emergencies, putting out fires and also have time for yourself and to relax and all that good stuff?

Anmol Singh: Right. For me, I would love to have a really nice system which I could could give people that this is systematically what I do, but my day is really simple. It's as simple as literally writing it down on a notepad. I'm probably the first one to go into newer technology, but as far as project management and time management concern, that's an area of my life that I really have not used technology for. I rarely use meetings. I rarely use calendar. I rarely use outlook, Gmail calendar. I don't use any form of calendar. What I do is, I have a pretty good understanding of what I want to get accomplished the next day, the day before.

Example, if I'm going to bed tonight, I would have already thought out the stuff that I need to get done tomorrow. What am I going to get done. Then how you systematize this day is to create a routine. For me, as a trader, it makes a lot of the job a really easy one because I wake up 8, 8:30 a.m. in the morning and from 8:30 to 9:00, I make my list on what stocks I'm looking to trade that day. From 9:00 to 9:30 I'm sharing it with my members and subscribers. From 9:30 to 11:30, it's strictly just trading. Just trading, trading, trading until 11:30. 11:30, I'm done trading, then I'll turn on my email. I'll check my email, respond to all my emails. Then once I'm done with that, I usually have phone calls scheduled like today you and me are talking and I have another scheduled after this one, then two more in the morning. The schedules are the only things I'm aware of because my goal is to be number one, punctual on all meetings, on all appointments, no matter how big or small.

The way I really manage it is on a piece of paper. Not even a piece of paper, one of those sticky note apps that are on your computer. I just write it down. Today's stuff to do list for today. This is what I need to get done. Then appointment, 2nd August 2 p.m. central. That's one call that I have. Just write down things that are priority and a to do list. I don't really have extreme softwares that I use for time management but one thing I can take, I guess I can give the listeners is to have an idea of what you're looking to do tomorrow.

When you go to bed today, you think about what things you need to get done tomorrow. If you're looking to launch a new business, what do I need to get done tomorrow? What are the small wins that I can get? A small win would be let's register the domain name. Let's register the company. Let's make a logo. That stuff that's really simple to do, which people can knock out of the way within less than ten hours. Then you've got to figure out your next steps. What else does it take? Do I need to create content? Do I need to launch my social media. Just have things to do and make sure you do them. Make sure you do at least 90% of the things that you write down.

Robert Plank: That's all really good stuff. I think that what I like the best about it is that it's not complicated. It frustrates me a lot when you see people, they do or they teach a super confusing kind of time management system or they claim to have good time management and their phone's always going off. There's all kinds of pop ups and there's a bunch of browser tabs open. I really like how you've just made it old school. Just made it a piece of paper and ... You know what too? I've noticed too that when I do the same thing, like I don't do it everyday like you do, but if I plan out tomorrow, today, then that next day ends up being super focused. The days that I just kind of start and I don't really have much of a plan, and maybe it takes me until half of the day to make that plan, it's no where close to as productive of a day as when it's all planned the night before. That's great.

Anmol Singh: Exactly. Nothing's more powerful than the human mind, because I've seen people who are running smaller companies than I am but they're using such complex time management software and they're putting stuff, typing stuff into the time management software. That just makes me think, that now you're managing the time management software. Now you're spending time on the time management software and that's taking away time from stuff you could of actually got done. For me, I've never been a big fan of time management softwares, and I've also seen some of the guys, as you said, they have notification after notification going through their phone, things they have to do, but still, when you ask that, what did you get done today, they don't have anything to show for it. Make sure you have stuff to show for it. It could be as simple as that when you're going to bed, just take down your diary and write down three things that I accomplished today. In the next column write down three things I could've done better today. That's it. Those three things you write down every day, sooner or later you'll figure it out. For me, one thing that's really been bothering me as it's been on my list is I got to go to the gym. That's been on my list and that's something that I have to get knocked out after this call.

Robert Plank: It's good that you're aware of that. That way a time management system doesn't manage you. It's the other way around.

Anmol Singh: Exactly.

Robert Plank: As we're kind of winding this call down and stuff like that, one thing that I was really curious about with your message and your niche and stuff like that is how do you stay in the boundaries? You have this list of when you talk to your subscribers and when you do your trading, you do your emails. How do you keep the time allotted to checking an email, how do you keep that from running over and the big reason why I want to know about this from you specifically is that I don't do a lot of stock trading anymore, but when I used to, I couldn't help but go ahead and check really quick, right? I'd check to see if the price went up, price went down, if it had hit my buy order or hit my sell order. How do you keep the checking from happening?

Anmol Singh: As far as my emails are concerned, I usually don't track or look at a time for me to respond to emails, because I'm really quick with that. It's on my phone and I'm really quick with responding to emails. Stuff, if you're getting junk emails or if you're getting newsletters from other places, pretty easily I can keep track of which ones are newsletters. If they're just newsletters, I usually just leave them as unread and then at the end of the night, if I have time before I'm going to bed, then I'll quickly go over them. I'm only responding to emails which are written by a person and not automated. If you write me an email, Robert Plank, and has a subject line which tells me that it's written by you not an automated program, then I'm going to open that email and I'm going to respond to that. If it's a newsletter email, let's say Amazon sending you something or some other newsletter you're subscribed to, then I usually leave them at the end of the day. If I'm looking at them at the end of the day, then by that very nature I've already went through my day and that's just the spare time that I am using.

Another thing as far as trading is concerned, most of the trading that I am doing, is divided into two ways of trading. One is the day trading style, which I'm trading 9:30 in the morning to 11:30. At that time, 9:30 to 11:30, I'm right there. After 11:30, I'm out of all the positions, so I don't have anything open positions to really look at the prices. Then I have a long term position portfolio, which I look at maybe once a day or maybe twice a week or something like that. I made strict rules in my long term account not to look at the stocks from day to day, otherwise they'll just drive you crazy.

Robert Plank: It sounds like the recurring theme I'm hearing about all of this time managements stuff is that you have not too many rules, but just enough rules in place where you follow them and then it ends up just being something that you can manage and keep going in that direction.

Anmol Singh: Exactly. People just need to ask themselves two questions. Did I get done what I intended to finish today? The answer is no then you've got to really look back and re-evaluate your schedule and your time management, but if you got everything you wanted to get done anyway, then you can ignore the experts because you got the work done and that's really all that matters.

Robert Plank: Amen to that. As we're winding down this call, can you tell us the biggest common mistake you're seeing as far as entrepreneurs or people trying to make their dream happen? What's the mistake you keep seeing over and over?

Anmol Singh: The mistake that I keep seeing over and over is people don't do what they say they were going to do. That's the number one thing. You got to do what you say you're going to do. If your goal is to, "Hey, I'm going to launch this new clothing company," again, take the first two steps first. Do what you say you're going to do is number one. A lot of people say a lot of things. For example, I'll just use myself as example, I say, "Hey. I'm going to start eating healthier from this morning," but then I woke up and I had a sugary drink. For me, that was bad. That's something. Just do what you say you're going to do is number one thing. Number two is to stop dreaming and taking action, because all of this with this lifestyle driven entry in marketing these days, there's so much motivation, there's so much lifestyle driven stuff that people want to achieve but they just say, "Yes. I want it. Yes. I want it." They get really motivated. They get really pumped up but then the action doesn't translate. The action doesn't show that you've taken steps that you really do want it. Wanting without execution is just dreaming.

Robert Plank: Both of those things combined ends up being a pretty powerful message. Do what you say you'll do and then stop dreaming and take action. Anmol, I really like everything you have to say and I want to tell everybody about where to find you, so where can they locate you and find out what you do?

Anmol Singh: Sure. Best way for people to keep in touch with me would be to go to the website LiveTraders.com and then anywhere else on social media if you search my handle DeltaNinety and it's all spelled out Deltaninety, it's all spelled out. Anywhere you go on social media, be it Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap chat, whatever there is, you search Deltaninety and you'll find me on there.

Robert Plank: LiveTraders.com and DeltaNinety. Anmol, thanks for being on the show, I really appreciate having you here.

Anmol Singh: Sure. Thanks for having me.