Making Money

Robert Plank: Paul Potratz is the COO of Potratz, a firm in Schenectady, New York, I hope I said his name and the city right, that works with businesses in the US, Canada and Copenhagen on creating top funnel brand strategies, consumer engagement content on websites and social media, and sales training. Sounds like lots of good stuff. How are things today Paul?

Paul Potratz: Good. Good. How about you Robert?

Robert Plank: Super fantastic. I see you're in upstate New York. I was there about a year ago. I fell and broke my ankle in two places there, so I don't think I'll be going back.

Paul Potratz: That's not the norm here. I mean it's a bunch of Italian food and senior citizens.

Robert Plank: May I just had to go to your exact city, not just the general area maybe.

Paul Potratz: That's probably what it was, yeah.

Robert Plank: In your general area of Schenectady, New York and wherever else the world takes you, what would you say that it is that you do and what makes you different and special?

Paul Potratz: We work with business owners, but we work with business owners establishing a brand and getting new clients. That's kind of it in a nutshell. That's our ad agency portion. In the last few months I've started to expand out of that because the agency does well. What I mean by expanding is working with business owners or future business owners of how to get their business going.

Robert Plank: Okay. Do you have any cool stories ... Do you have any cool, interesting, almost like cutting edge things that you're doing to help these businesses recently?

Paul Potratz: Yeah. Matter of fact I do. I'm asked that question a lot, what's cool, what's new, what's cutting edge? We can definitely talk about dynamic retargeting and gmail ads. We have workshops here at our office a lot and what I've done is I'm like let's go back to the basics, because with all the new technology and everything we forget about the basics of how to answer to phone, how to actually proof our emails, how to send emails, how to build an email data base ... To kind of take all that back, because there's so many things swirling through my head, it's all about brand. I feel like that's what people are missing because of all the online ... The digital marketing pay-per-click, is they don't establish a brand, and if you don't establish a brand all you have is sell by price, die by price.

Robert Plank: What should be people be doing to establish that brand?

Paul Potratz: You've got to decide what is it that you ... What is your product, what is your service and how does it improve one's lives. You've got to decide how does it really help someone. The workshop I was in a few weeks ago ... I was in Virginia and I was trying to get the business owners to understand how does your product or service improve somebody's life. I gave them a little test or a task to do to come up, work together in groups, and they just couldn't get out of the sales pitch. That's what they wanted to do, is pitch their product and not talk about how their product or service was going to help somebody save time, save money, improve their life.

Robert Plank: They were lacking what's in it for me then?

Paul Potratz: Exactly. You've got to think selfish. You've got to turn yourself around and not only in that negative, but you've got think why does someone want to do business with you other than price. Most business owners, they want to automatically go to price, and if you sell by price you don't ... The only way you can go is go down.

Robert Plank: Right. Do you have a case study where that kind of thing happened just to kind of reinforce the point home? Do you have anyone that you came across where maybe they were trying to compete on price and you changed their ways and made them market better?

Paul Potratz: Yeah. Definitely. Even ourselves, we were growing and growing and growing as an agency and we do an interview process with a prospective client and then we said we want to compete against these other companies, so we kind of lost our way. This was about a year and a half ago. We started competing on price, but we're not scalable for that, for price, and I definitely seen the result after doing that for about eight months. Granted we added a lot of clients, but the clients we added didn't stay with us as long.

That's been something that we've been talking about for a number of years with all of our clients. For example, I've got a good friend of mine, he started out as a client and now he's a really good friend. His name is Ryan. Ryan is in the market, he's a car dealer, and I'll talk about that because automotive can be very relatable to everybody. When we first started working together he was completing on price. Now he doesn't compete on price and his cars are on the average of fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars more than competing dealers in the market, but he's outselling them.

Robert Plank: What are you having him do specifically to outsell his competitors there?

Paul Potratz: It's all about the experience. What I mean by the experience, I mean ... I really talk about like Macy's versus Nordstrom. I'm sure a lot of your listeners have been into those two stores. You go to Macy's and it's ... You just don't get that help. You don't get that experience and they drop everything in the bag ... For example, you go, you buy a tie ... I go, I buy a tie, I pay good money or a tie. They take the tie, they just drop it in the bag. They roll it in half and they drop it in the bag, that's Macy's. Nordstrom, they take that tie and they're like, let me help you find a shirt, let me help you find a suit, let me help you find a pocket square, let me help you find socks, and so on and so forth. Then when you purchase the tie they fold it, they put it a box, they put it in a bag, they take your credit card, they say thank you, they walk around the counter and they hand you the bag instead of just shoving it to you across the counter.

Ryan being a car dealer, his team has been trained instead of when you come on the lot, "Hey, can I help you? What are you looking for? How much are you going to put down," those type of things. Even in their phone process and how they talk and how they have the discussion and the things that they deliver ... You fill in a lead form on his website, it's not all about price. It's to find exactly is that vehicle right for you. It's a discussion and it's helping. It's really more of a consultation than just how quick can I sell this to you and get you out of here.

Robert Plank: It sounds like lots of I guess little touches. Were those something that you thought of on your own or did you go and research the other car dealers? How did you settle on these specific things that Ryan, the car dealer, should have been doing?

Paul Potratz: It's definitely a partnership. Ryan is a big believer in making sure that he has the right team, the interview process. If you don't have the right team you will never be able to do it. My own experience ... How do we like to be treated when we go to spend money? It was a wake-up call to me. Some years back I was in Paris, France with my wife at the store named Charvet. Charvet is where the Kennedys used to get their shirts. It's custom made shirts and it's a very popular store. That was part of my whole ... When we go to Paris I'm going to go to Charvet.

I remember going in, and this place is really a dump. It's three stories of a dump, but their shirts are all custom made. I remember I went in and I met the woman and I said, "I want to get some shirts done." We're on the second floor and she's trying the different shirts on. They have the test shirts. I'm like, "Okay, this is the one I like." She's like, "No, no, no, it doesn't fit." I was like, "Yeah, it fits," because I wanted this shirt, because after you get a little older you realize that the shoulders have got to fit just right. I had a shirt, it was a sixteen in the collar, and she said, "No, that's too tight. You need a sixteen and a half," but when you go up to the next size the shoulders get bigger.

I'm like, "No, no, no, I want a sixteen. I'm losing weight." She's like, "No. I won't sell it to you." I said, "What? What do you mean you won't sell it to me?" I went into this discussion and everything. She said, "No, I'm not a sales person. I'm a consultant. I would not let my shirt go out of this store looking like that on you." She was actually not going to complete the sale. It was just the whole experience and the process that she took me through, and I was like wow, there's something to this, because I went in to get maybe one or two shirts and I ended up leaving with like ten, because I was told I couldn't do it and the experience was different and it was fascinating, which made me really start to study what is the psychology of when we're purchasing.

We talk about the Nordstrom effect, something like high end purses and how people will buy a high end purse even though the quality is not any different, it's just the whole mystique, the prestigious factor of it all. You can do that in any product, any service, regardless of the competition you have.

Robert Plank: Is this something that everyone should be doing, looking to I guess class up the process and make it less of a sales transaction and more of a consultation?

Paul Potratz: I think so. Definitely. Even today, I mean you kind of think about it. All of us are walking around with smart phones now, and when we go to purchase something generally we do research. We do research. Even if we're going to go buy a three dollar and fifty cent air freshener that you plug in the wall, we still want to do the research on it. If everybody is going online to do research, shouldn't you start being a consultative seller instead of just trying to sell by price? Granted there's going to be those salespeople and those business owners out there, that's what they think a call to action is, it's price, and that's what they're going to focus on. But if you want to be able to have loyal clients, and I use the word clients instead of customers, because customers go to Walmart. Clients, you're a trusted authority. If you want to have those repeat clients over and over and you want to build word-of-mouth and you want to build your brand, you need to become a consultant regardless of the product or service your selling.

Robert Plank: I like that. I like that idea. Kind of along those lines of you building this stuff up and having the right team and having the right process, I understand that you took a little bit of a road trip lately. Is that right?

Paul Potratz: I'm constantly taking road trips, so I'm not sure which one you're referring to since I've had a lot of them.

Robert Plank: Tell me about something. Tell me is this ... You take these road trips all the time. Is this possible because you've built up this good team and kind of a machine that runs without you, or what's the secret to having the successful business, but also being able to take time off whenever you want?

Paul Potratz: Yeah. I've definitely taken a lot of road trips, personal and business wise. When I started the agency, I started it ... I should have called it Dude and His Dog Agency, because I started in the bedroom with my dog laying at my feet and I was doing it all. I was doing copywriting, media buying, video production, account management, sales and everything. It's definitely been over the years, because when I started in 2003, the interview process and trying to find the right team members, and we've had some failures, but that's part of growing, and we've had some tremendous success. The agency pretty much ... I won't say it runs itself, but I've got a team of individuals that are dedicated and they run with it and they treat it like it's their own business.

We've definitely set it up ... For example, we have unlimited paid time off. If somebody want's to take a month off, take a month off, as long as you're hitting your key performance and your key result areas, it doesn't make a difference. The company pretty much runs on peer pressure, which allows me one of the trips that I took where I went out west and I spent a few weeks out west on my dirt bike and didn't worry about it. That's part of it. Are you the type of business owner that's working in your business or working on your business? I try to work on the business, which has allowed me to start another company since then, and the agency is more or less my retirement egg I guess you can say.

Robert Plank: Cool. Was it just a matter of like ... How did you get from the 2003 era to now? Was it just a matter of the combination of this peer pressure thing and trying different people out? How did you get the whole team and all that figured out and how did you get it to become a thing where you didn't have to always watch over it and micromanage?

Paul Potratz: It's a culture. The different places I've worked over they years, I would work for the manager, not a leader, that would just do stupid things. He wouldn't let people make decisions. He wouldn't let people fail. He wouldn't let people succeed. You had to do it his way. I worked in corporate American for a number of years and everything about corporate America, I was like it just doesn't make any sense. I don't like it and I don't agree with it.

When I started the company and I started adding employees I said how do I let people make decisions, and it's the little things ... Granted, you can read all the stuff in books, but that's what happens so many times. A business owner will read something in a book or they'll listen to a podcast or they'll go hear a speaker talk, but they don't put those things in action and plan their day out and making sure that they're doing that. When one of my team members come into my door and they're like, "Paul, I got a question," I'm like, "Okay. Great. What's your question?"

I always make sure when they come with a question that they'll say, "This is what I think I should do and I think this is going to be the result," and I'm like, "Okay. Great. Go try it. See what happens." People aren't scared to fail, they're not scared to lose clients or whatever the recourse is going to be because they know I'm always going to be there to support them. It's just pushing, you make the decision, and it's definitely grown. Granted we've had some people that haven't made very wise decisions, but then there always has to ... I'm not going to say there has to be a consequence, but what did you learn from that?

That's really what our business is built on, coming to work and having fun, making somebody's day, doing what's right, and not worrying about the money, because the money will follow if you do a great job.

Robert Plank: That's an awesome attitude. I like that idea of letting your people fail so that they'll learn the decision on their own. Did I hear that right, that when they come to you with a question they have to already kind of have somewhat of an answer packaged with that question? Was that right?

Paul Potratz: Yes. Exactly. Otherwise the company ... It won't ever grow on its own. If you've got to be a dictator and you're literally saying you have to do this, you have to do that, and people are scared to make decisions, how's your company going to grow? How is it going to scale? You're always going to have to be involved in the company, one of two reasons, either you didn't train your people or your people are scared to make decisions. Then if they're scared to make decisions or if you're not letting them make decisions, they're going to end up going somewhere else anyway, because if they're that type of personality and mentality that they want to be the decision maker, they're going to go somewhere where they can be that person.

Robert Plank: Right. Has this whole method of yours, has it ever failed really badly? Has it ever not worked?

Paul Potratz: Yeah. I have a belief, and I've proved it over and over and over again, that when people go to work, when they get up in the morning and they come to work, they don't come to fail. They come to succeed, but as a leader you've got to understand what is success for each individual? A lot of times we think we'll pay them more money. Money's nice, yeah, and they definitely want to make money and our team makes good money ... I mean we pay them more here in upstate New York than they can make in Boston or New York City, but it's not always money. There's so much more to it.

With that same mindset that people want to succeed and you've got to understand what is success for them, there's been a time or two or maybe a dozen times that I've given an individual too much leeway or let them I guess spread their wings too quick before they were ready and then they just kept on failing and failing and failing. Then they're like this isn't for me. It does take the right personality, which is great. Interviewing ... I don't have anything to do with interviewing here, and termination ... I have nothing to do with termination. That's a committee of the team. The committee decides who's going to be interviewed, who's hired and who's fired.

Robert Plank: Are you saying that if someone is on the team and they're kind of unpopular with everyone else they can get booted out?

Paul Potratz: Yes.

Robert Plank: Wow, that's crazy, but kind of interesting and kind of novel there too.

Paul Potratz: Think about it. We've had different people that would come in, whether it was a graphic designer or a video editor or somebody that just does new business presentations, if they're not doing their job, then that's more work for everybody else. If they're failing, then that's a reputation for the entire company. They're not pulling their weight and people are saying, "why am I not getting my bonus? Why didn't I get my quarterly bonus? Why didn't I get my year end bonus?" It's like, "You tell me. Why do you think you didn't get it? What happened? Did we have any issues?"

We had a direct mail that was done incorrectly. We had to send it again. That cost us fifteen thousand dollars. We had a Facebook campaign that was run incorrectly. That cost us eighteen thousand dollars, so I have them tell me why it's not happening. How did that happen? So-and-so did this and so-and-so did that. Okay, there you go.

Robert Plank: How did you figure all this out? Was this all trial and error or ... This all seems kind of weird, but in a good way. How did all this come about?

Paul Potratz: To be completely honest is I'm lazy. I hate doing paperwork. It's not my strength. I love the creative process and creative thought. If I'm lazy doing paperwork, I've got to find other people to do it. If I'm lazy doing finances, I've got to find other people to do it. I said why not empower the people here that really want to do it? That's where it really came. I guess that's a good explanation of what it is. There's things that I really like to do and things I don't like to do, and the things I don't like to do I definitely want to have other people doing that that enjoy it.

Robert Plank: I like that. It reminds me of the Bill Gates quote where he says something like if you want something done find a lazy person to do it because they'll find an easy and fast way to get it done.

Paul Potratz: Exactly. There you go.

Robert Plank: Cool. Can you tell me about these two businesses and what's happening with them and what's ... Tell us about them and where people can find out about them and all that good stuff.

Paul Potratz: Yeah. The agency name is Potratz. We're known as a digital agency, but my newest venture is my ... It's my website that's launching pretty quick, which is my first name and last name, Paul Potratz. There's a page that spins off of that that called The Growth Mindset. What I've done with The Growth Mindset ... Because when I started my company I really struggled. What bookkeeping system do I use? What do I need to have on my business cards? Do I need a slogan? Do I need a logo? What website do I use? All these questions. How do I hire new people? What should be a pay plan?

When you're starting a company, or even in business, people struggle with that. What I've done is I've gone all around the country and I'm on the lookout for smart entrepreneurs. I've said, "Why don't you join The Growth Mindset?" The Growth Mindset is a group of entrepreneurs. It's where we share bundles every week, so we have a new thing that comes out, it can be anything from how to use YouTube to market yourself or how to make sure that your financial statement is balanced correctly, whatever it might be. That's our newest thing that we're launching. It's coming out November 22nd and it's called The Growth Mindset. It's off of my website.

We do, like I said, bundles. Video is a part of it. We do webinars, so we have questions and answers, but it's for entrepreneurs who are wanting to grow their business. It's a membership website, but it's cheap. We're still figuring out the pricing, but it's going to be thirty and fifty dollars a month.

Robert Plank: Is that one at PaulPotratz.com?

Paul Potratz: Yeah, PaulPotratz.com.

Robert Plank: The website of your agency, is that PPADV.com?

Paul Potratz: That's it. Yep.

Robert Plank: Do you have any plans to make any kind of website that teaches people how to become a snappy dresser?

Paul Potratz: I put that out there and no one seemed like they were really interested in it. I don't know. I'll tell you what, I love putting ginghams and plaids and stripes together in different colors. It's just hard to find guys that are willing to wear that other than myself.

Robert Plank: Maybe you can keep all of the secrets to yourself then?

Paul Potratz: I'm more than happy to share everything I know, but it's just ... Then people are always like "Yeah, that looks good. That looks sharp. I just wouldn't be able to pull it off." I was like, "Yeah, you'd be able to pull it off. It's easy. Just throw some stuff together with some colors and some patterns and you're good."

Robert Plank: They just need more confidence.

Paul Potratz: Exactly. That's what it is. I think that's part of the branding thing. That was I point I wanted to make because I felt like so many people were dressing like me and I said I'm going to take it to another level.

Robert Plank: You might as well, right, if you're doing it anyway?

Paul Potratz: Yeah. Exactly. What the heck, why not?

Robert Plank: Cool. Along those lines, thanks for stopping by the show Paul. The websites are ppadv.com and paulpotratz.com. Thanks again for stopping by.

Paul Potratz: Thanks Robert. Have a great day.

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.