69 Timothy Sykes: Creating the Next Outrageous Millionaire Lifestyle

If you could source a millionaire to work day and night in to get you to your goal of a million dollars, would you follow them? Our next guest on the School of Greatness turned $12,415 in $3.93 million in less than 3 years. His story is amazing. To see videos, get show notes and connect with the School, please visit lewishowes.com/69 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 69 with Timothy Sykes.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is upgrades? Thanks so much for saying hi to me today and listening to this episode. I've got a special guest on today. His name is Mr. Timothy Sykes. And Tim is a buddy of mine that I've known for a number of years back from my New York City days, living there. We would connect every once in a while and he was doing, always doing some big things with his penny stock trading. He was making a lot of money trading penny stocks and teaching other people how to do this as well, how to take a few thousand dollars and turn it into hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And on this episode, we dive into his story about how he took just a few thousand dollars when he was a teenager and built it into a few million dollars a few years later.

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  And then the strategies along the ways of how he's been teaching people to do the same. We talk about marketing, we talk about building a business and dive into what it's like for him to be hated so much and to be criticized a lot. And he's criticized a lot for his marketing style and the way he promotes things. But he's done extremely well at the same time. So we dive into his internal battle with that. And also a lot of other fun things along the way. So make sure to get out your pen and paper, take some notes. Tim's an awesome guy. I think you're gonna really like this interview. I've got a big, big month ahead of me. I'm actually going to Uruguay and Brazil

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  to compete with the USA national team in the Pan American Championships in Uruguay at the end of June. So I'm very excited about this process. We just won the national championship. Championship with my New York City team, handball team. It was amazing tournament that we had and the whole team came together. Winning the championship game was a lot of fun. My first time being on a championship team. Actually, I've been to a lot of championship games, playoff games, things like that, but never actually won a national championship. So this was a first and it was humbling, it was fun, it was exciting, a lot of different things. Happening. So it was a blessing and I'm very grateful for that experience. Now I get to go represent my country.

• 2:43Lewis Howes?

  Wear USA across my chest, which for me gives me chills every time I get to think about wearing that and representing my country and the journey over the last three and a half, four years of taking on this new adventure of Team Handball. To represent my country. So I'm very excited about this to come back together with my teammates from all over the world. Train with them, go to Brazil and compete for a while, then in Uruguay for the tournament. So if anyone's down there in Uruguay, make sure to say hi at the Pan American Championships. I will keep you guys posted on what's happening with that process and the journey. Along the way in these episodes, so make sure to subscribe over on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  And continue to share this with your friends. I really appreciate you guys. Staying so connected with me with your posts on Instagram where you are listening to the show. Posting on Twitter and Facebook constantly. So thank you guys so much for subscribing, for listening, for sharing these episodes and I hope they continue to get more inspiring for you. Each and every week. So with that, let's dive in to today's episode with Mr. Timothy Sykes.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone? Thanks so much for checking out the School of Greatness again. I am sitting with a good buddy of mine, Mr. Timothy Sykes. What's up, brother?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Hey, how's it going, man?

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  It's going good. And for those that don't know who Tim is, he is really well-known for being an amazing penny stock trader. And he's outrageously good at marketing because he's outrageous at it. And he has a great story. So I want to have you share your story for those that don't know you, because some of my audience probably knows you, because I, you know, we interact online every now and then. So they'll see that. But then, there's a whole lot of people that have no clue what penny stocks are, what stock trading, the market, they don't know anything about it. And they don't know how you became so successful. So just kind of like your brief story about that.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, first, thanks for having me on. It's good to see you. It's been too long. Secondly, yeah, I've had a wild kind of journey. My parents gave me my bar mitzvah gift money, $12,415 when I was in high school. I was a tennis player and I was playing every day. And my weak Jewish genetics gave out and I got injured and I had two casts on my arms. So they gave me control of this money to basically invest. They thought I would lose it all. They thought that it would be a good lesson for me. And instead, by the end of senior year of high school, I turned the 12,000 into 120,000. Then after freshman year was 800,000. And before I graduated college, it was nearly 2 million.

• 5:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so like five years or something?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Four years trading penny stocks, which are stocks trading under $5 a share, very speculative stocks. Not like Google, not Apple, not GE, small companies.

• 5:50Lewis Howes?

  Stocks you don't know of.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, stocks you don't know of, a lot of very sketchy companies. If you've ever seen the movie Wolf of Wall Street.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Those are all penny stocks. So there are a lot of scams out there, so you have to be careful. But there's also some good companies that, you know, they have like these groundbreaking technologies. And big companies want to use these small companies. So I kind of have a talent of finding, you know, what is a good company and what is a bad company? And I separate the two. And now I actually teach people, because I made so much with my own money.

• 6:22Lewis Howes?

  They want to know from you.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  They want to know, um, and I was on this TV show called Wolf, or

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Wolf of Wall Street.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I was on this TV show called, uh, Wall Street Warriors and, uh, it's now in like 20 countries. It was like, kind of like a reality show. Um, and so I started teaching and now I have 5,000 plus students in over 60 countries. And two students just recently passed a million dollars in trading profits. Um, one of them, he started with $1,500 of his own money. He's now up to 1.73 million in three years since becoming my student, Tim Grittani. Big shout out to him.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  And he was just, uh, like, he just passed one million like four months ago, right?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  He passed, yeah, he passed one million. Um, and we were featured on CNN and that was kind of crazy because he got like 5,000 social shares. So everyone's like, oh, I want to make a million dollars. So I teach my strategy and, you know, not everyone's going to become a millionaire, but what I do is teach rules that I've learned over 15 years of trading. And if you learn these rules, you're better off. It's, you know, people say, oh, I'm scared of the stock market. I'm scared of penny stocks. What, what can you do to help me? Well, I teach you rules. Like I'm like a driving instructor, you know, driving is scary if you don't pay attention to red lights, stop signs, lanes, like basic, basic rules, you know, if you just get in a car, if you're like a baby and you're driving like, you're gonna, you know, go crazy.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's what's very similar in the stock market. So I teach rules and I share them and I kind of, uh, antagonize people with how proud I am of the money that I've made and, and what it can buy and, and the lifestyle.

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's your, your Instagram handle? It's just Tim Sykes?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Uh, Timothy Sykes is, is, uh, my Instagram handle and I post pictures and, you know, YouTube, we have, uh, nearly 300 videos and I just, you know, when you make this kind of money, I mean, I've been making six figures, sometimes seven figures a year. Um, every year for, for over a decade and that adds up and you can basically do it from anywhere. All you need is an internet connection. So I trade from the Maldives. I do like a video. I, I made a stock trade from my Lamborghini. So like you see me like doing this trade and, and people come up to my window and they're like, hey dude, nice car. I'm like, not now, I'm making a stock trade. And I make like a thousand dollars from the Lambo.

• 8:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  So I, I rub it in because it's, it's kind of cool to be able to, be able to work from anywhere. Um, Man, woman, child, it doesn't matter if you're American, international. So it's kind of a cool thing.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  The thing I like about Tim is a lot of people, you know, I have friends who are like, just Tim's the biggest douchebag marketer. Like, he's so, you know, over the top. It's ridiculous. And when they actually meet him, when I get to hang out with him, he's like the most loving, humble, nice guy. It's really weird because like meeting you and being friends for a while, you've let me stay at your place for like three months over the last three years in New York City. You're always very welcoming and, you know, before we even really knew each other that well. And so that's what I really like about you. It's like, sure, you're this like type of marketer that's over the top, but you're like, really care about people's success and you care about your friends.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  100% and you have to, you know, you have to be aggressive on the internet or else you don't stand out. Okay. I've made a few million dollars, big whoop. But, you know, by giving visuals, by showing off my Lamborghini and my mansions and my crazy trips and showing people, this is why you should work so hard. It offends some, but most people are like, oh my God, I want this. I want to do what it takes to get there. So that's what I am online and people make all these judgments about who I am and as a person. It's totally different, you know? If I was just totally humble and nice and, you know, myself online, I was that for the first year or two and no one cared. Because everyone's like, oh, it's just like a guy. That's cool. That's nice.

• 9:51Lewis Howes?

  A nerdy dude who's just making money.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  You didn't show, I didn't show the carrot, you know, I, no one wants to really learn finance. No one wants to learn about the stock market. It's not exciting. But if you see the rewards of what you can possibly get and you're, you know, inspired to study, look through all my DVDs and video lessons and webinars and, you know, try and see the intricacies. You know, then you're, then you're encouraged. So my job is like inspiration, just to give people this hope that they can actually get there. And they can, if they actually follow the rules as evidenced by my two millionaire students so far.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  You've got a lot of students who've had, you know, probably multiple six-figure years and they make thousands of dollars every month. Lots of students, right?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, that's not inspirational. So I could say, oh, I probably have, I don't know, maybe two or 300 students who have made 10 grand. In the past few months.

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  That's cool, but that's not life changing.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  The, you know, Tim Gertani, fifteen hundred into one point seven million in three years. And he's doing it all off my patterns.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  And he's from Columbus, Ohio.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  He's from my hometown.

• 10:52Lewis Howes?

  We saw each other at the airport.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I saw you in Ohio. I was in Ohio trying to be there to witness him crossing a million dollars in trading profits. I had to go back freaking twice because, you know, I've kind of put pressure on him. It's kind of tough, like with a camera in your face, but we got it. And he crossed a million and now he's at one point seven. So he's just an average kid. But the cool thing is that he does it all on himself. Like he's not just blindly following my picks. One day he made two hundred thousand dollars in one day. Uh, when I was in Japan, I was filming, uh, in Japan, I was sleeping because of the time zone difference. And I woke up and I got like an I am from one of my other students. They're like, Tim made two hundred fifteen today. I'm like, I don't care if you made two hundred fifteen dollars. And he's like, no, two hundred fifteen thousand.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  And it was off, straight off a pattern in my DVDs and he did it all while I was asleep. So

• 11:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Self-sufficient students is, I think, even better.

• 11:40Lewis Howes?

  So a lot of your students, do they follow you? You're like online for a certain amount of hours and you're like, here's the trades I'm about to do. Or here's like what you need to look out for today, or do you teach them the stuff and then they're on their own?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Uh, so every day, I mean, since the last time you seen me, I've gained forty pounds. Because I have a lot more students and I, I work my butt off for them. Uh, every day I give a watch list of like stocks to watch before the market opens. And I give commentary usually thirty to forty times over the course of the day. I'm making trades too. You know, I'm, I'm trading and teaching.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Um, and showing, okay, this pattern, you know, fits this DVD. I hope you've watched this DVD and you know, and, and we try and see, and I don't win a hundred percent of the time. I win about seventy-three percent of the time. But I just show this, yeah, it's a good percentage and there's rules. Like even if I have a loss, I cut the losses quickly. I let the winners run or I try to, I have patience problems. So I'm not exactly a perfect trader, but I show what I did right and what I did wrong. Like Friday, yesterday, um, you know, I lost like fourteen thousand, but for the week I still finished up twenty-two thousand. So you see what I do right and what I do wrong. And I think a lot of people want to make twenty thousand in a week.

• 12:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for sure. So how did you learn all these strategies in the first place when you were sixteen or whatever?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, just trial and error over fifteen years. You know, for the first like five or six years I was developing these rules. I didn't even understand that I needed rules.

• 12:55Lewis Howes?

  Did someone teach you like, hey, you should check out penny stocks? Or did you hear about penny stocks somewhere? Or was it like, oh, let me just, the stock market seems cool?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  So totally self-taught. There, there were no books. There still are no books other than my books and DVDs on penny stocks because they're pretty much hated by everybody in finance. Um, but I was, I, I went to penny stocks. I didn't have a lot of money and, you know, I wasn't going to trade like hundred dollar stocks. I couldn't afford it. The stocks don't move that much. So, you know, most people on Wall Street, they're trying to make twenty percent per year. Like, that's their end goal. Like, if you have a billion dollar fund, you make twenty percent per year, you have a fantastic year.

• 13:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Average person, if you have five, ten, fifty thousand dollars to your aim and you make twenty percent a year, it's nothing. You know, even if you have fifty thousand dollars in savings, which very few people do, and you make twenty percent, that's ten grand over the course of the year.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  It's not, not much.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  What are you, a Starbucks? What are you, Starbucks barista? Like, you know, you don't make that much. It's not life-changing. You put in a lot of work and that's best case scenario. So I had to, you know, be a little different and try and refine a strategy where there's more upside to make it worth it for people with small accounts.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And I didn't know that that would be my specialty. I didn't plan on being like a penny stock trader, but that's what I've.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  You're like, these are small amounts. I could buy a lot in and if they doubled, then I could make a lot more money.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Correct. Some, that's the beauty of penny stocks. They can double in like a day or two versus Google, like, you know, might double over like two years or three years. Or Facebook, it might double over two or three years, but you're not going to grow your account that fast. So the vast majority of finance, CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, is irrelevant to people with small accounts. But they don't know that because they just get this fed to them every single day. And they're like, oh, let me invest in good quality companies. That's safe. And then the stocks sometimes also drop. Like, Google and Facebook is not guaranteed to go up double. You know, you have these big companies and sometimes they get cut in half in a year. Sometimes safe mutual funds get cut in half, lose fifty percent of your money, and you've wasted a year. So I need to do a lot of teaching, to change people's perceptions.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest attribute or skill?

• 14:53Lewis Howes?

  Someone needs to have in order to be a successful trading, like over the long term.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Um, discipline, you know, i- if you get your ego involved, if you don't cut your losses quickly, um, if you bet positions that are too big, you're like, oh my God, I know this stock is just gonna do amazing things. I'm gonna bet everything and, and you can't do that because you risk disaster. You know, i- if you're wrong, even just a little bit, you risk disaster and then you're out of the game. The key is staying in the game. The key is, you know, being successful over the long haul. Yes, I do have a lot of students who have been successful within a year, two, three years. But, you know, Tim Grittani, fifteen hundred to one point seven million so far. Five or 10 years from now, if he's still following my rules, he'll have twenty, thirty, fifty million. That's life changing.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty good.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  One point seven million after taxes, it's nice for a kid from Ohio. He's only twenty five, but it's not, you know, i- it's not everything. And I want people to see how to get to, to true wealth and true freedom.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest fear that people have when they get into stocks? Because I would be probably like, you know, if I wasn't experienced at this and I lost ten grand in like a week, I'd probably be like, okay, I'm done with this game. Or it's like, it's not for me or whatever. Is that the biggest fear is just people losing everything?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Losing everything and not understanding what's going on. Cause you see all these blinking green and red lights and you're like, I don't understand numbers. I'm not good at math. Um, so you, you don't know the, the, the indicators. You don't know what's actually happening. And if you're just throwing money into something that you don't know what's going on, I mean, that's, it doesn't even matter if you make money. It's scary because you're like, oh my God, I just made five thousand. I don't know what I did, but so I, I really emphasize learning these rules and cutting losses quickly. Those are my two most important things. Number one, cut losses. Like if you're, let's say you have five thousand in the stock market and you're down, you know, five hundred dollars. That's a lot of money to some people.

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, with only five thousand in.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you need to cut it off, but too many.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  Don't try to ride it to be like, it's gonna come back.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Too many people think that, too many people use hope as a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. You cannot be down and then say, oh, maybe it'll come back. Maybe it will, but maybe it won't and you don't want. Get into those situations where the odds are less than 50% because then you're you're going gambling and you might as well go to Vegas and get some free drinks.

• 17:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  And at least understand that, you know, the odds are so low. What I want people to do is be more meticulous. Ninety to 95% of traders lose money. So it's a sucker's game if you have no rules, if you go with your gut. You know, people get tips from their friends. Oh, this is a really good penny.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  They stick it out or whatever. Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  They stick it out and they lose and they they keep adding. They're like, oh, it's only 5,000. You know, I might as well. I've already held. I might as well hold some more. And I'm just like, oh, yeah, yeah. If you're meticulous about it, if you treat it like a business, if you care about every single dollar, like. I have several millions of dollars in the bank right now, and I still care about every single dollar. I get pissed like if I lose $10. Because that's the mindset that I have. That's my training. And that's what I want others to think about it. When they're trading penny stocks, when they're trading in the stock market, when they're in the stock market in general, they treat it like a game. Where, you know, it just doesn't matter. Like, it's like, oh, it's fun money. This is I'm learning.

• 17:58Lewis Howes?

  So don't care.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  You don't learn by not practicing good, you know, trading rules, unfortunately. So.

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  So give me the the three to five things, if you could find the perfect person, individual. That is going to be the all star penny stock trader. What are the three to five characteristics? Or mindset, uh, skills that they have that you would be like, that's the person I want on my team to like, do all my trades for me. Who would that be?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody who is, uh, you know, reasonable and not like aggressive, like someone who's like, oh, my K. I'm going to start with $5,000 and I'm going to turn it into a million within a year guaranteed. That's too aggressive. You can't have any expectations. You have to be reasonable. Understand that, you know, you're gonna maybe lose a little if you control your losses, like my top student, Tim Gertani, lost for the first six months, but he only had losses like 50 bucks, 20 bucks. And he got better.

• 18:48Lewis Howes?

  So you cut it real quick and then.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And he learned. So have reasonable expectations. Secondly, again, you you have to be patient. Like, this is not something where. It's gonna happen overnight, even though, yes, I did have overnight success and many of my students have had overnight success. You can't look for that. You have to, you have to think of this as a marathon. Like, if you turn, you know, 1500 into like 15,000 in year one, that's awesome. 10 times your money.

• 19:13Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  You know, because then those same kinds of rules that you learn from doing that, turning 15,000 into 150,000 10 times next year. And then you do maybe 150,000 into 1.5 million. So you need to learn like kind of. Just the the patterns that they can grow your account, but not all at once. The third thing that you have to understand is that it's not based on one hot stock. Like, don't ever fall in love with a stock. Too many people, they're like, oh, my God, this technology is going to change the world. It's amazing. And maybe there's some setbacks and they're like, no, I still believe it. I still believe it. And you can't do that. You you have to understand that the way to grow your account very quickly in penny stocks, the way that I have and my students have, is trading a lot of different stocks.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  You try and make, you know, a little gain here, a little gain there, 10, 20, 30%. You're like a sniper. You know, this is what I say. I say, aim small, miss small. So you try and take some profits there and then you move on to the next and then the next and then the next. There's always a new technology, a new company with, you know, a new oil technology, a new gold, a new, uh, you know, some medical innovation. Everyone is trying to pitch these amazing stories and you have to understand that the vast majority of them are going to fail. But they might be hot for a few days or a few weeks, like marijuana stocks have been very hot for the past few months with the legalization in some states. So a lot of investors rode that wave.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, too many people rode the wave and they made a lot of money, but they didn't lock in profits. They're like, no, marijuana is going to change the world. So they're still holding and the stocks have now crashed like 80, 90%.

• 20:41Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  They didn't get off, they didn't take profits. So you have to take profits. You can't just hold forever. A lot of people, I mean, I know people who had turned like a thousand into like 100,000 on a marijuana stock and they kept holding and now it's like down to 5,000. So just imagine that, making like 99,000 and then losing and you're and you're still trying to console yourself, but you're like, well, I'm still up overall. I'm like, oh, my God, such wasted money.

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Because they didn't have the rules. They didn't understand to take profits along the way.

• 21:08Lewis Howes?

  So what I heard were the three points was first is don't set huge expectations. Second one is be patient. The third one is don't be attached to a specific result.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Though the key is growing your account, nothing else. Like, don't fall in love with these stocks. Don't fall in love with the story. Don't trust anybody. You don't trust these press releases of these companies because they're all going to try and hype themselves up.

• 21:30Lewis Howes?

  Try to push the stock up, right?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you've seen like Wolf of Wall Street, you know, the brokers try and pitch a story. And sometimes that works for a few days or a few weeks, but you it rarely ever lasts with penny stocks. So most small companies fail and most penny stocks fail. So you can ride the waves up, but just understand that you have to get off the train at some time.

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like the the same examples you gave are being successful and penny stocks is being successful in anything.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I I it took me several years to be successful as a teacher and I wanted success all at once. I'm like, I have this strategy that's can change people's lives. And everyone's like, OK, so and so I was like, all right, I need to like, create some testimonials. I need to show some examples now that I have, but I also needed to give visuals. Like, I didn't understand if I'm giving a video lesson on like this amazing stock and it's like a forty five minute video lesson on why I think this stock is going to be good. And I show a picture of like the stock chart as the thumbnail on the video. Or I show a picture of like my Lamborghini, my two hundred thirty five thousand dollar orange, two thousand thirteen Lamborghini as the thumbnail. Guess which video gets more views?

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  The labo.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Like four to one, even though it's the exact same video lesson, because people want to see, you know, what they can get. Why should I spend forty five minutes watching this video lesson? So you have to adapt, you know, I I'm still teaching the exact same thing that I taught when I initially began. But now I'm having much more success because I've adapted. And that's what I would think everybody should do, no matter what industry you're in. You need to adapt and see what actually works and have no expectations.

• 23:00Lewis Howes?

  So do you feel like, um, you know, you're basically like throwing a charging horse at someone. You're like, come for this, but I'm really teaching you this. Do you feel like that goes against some morals or anything like that? Or do you feel like it's really actually serving people to the best of the the ability?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  So I get this question a lot. I make the analogy where like, if you see a bum on the street and, you know, he's like, give me a drink, right? And let's say you have, for some reason, two drinks in your hand. And in one hand, you have a bottle of Jack Daniels. In the other hand, you have like a kale, spinach and celery like green drink. Which one do you think the bum is going to choose?

• 23:33Lewis Howes?

  Not the kale one.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  He's gonna choose a Jack Daniels. So I give the bum the Jack Daniels, but I've tricked the bum and I put the kale and spinach juice in the Jack Daniels bottle. And he probably spits it out, but I'm still trying to help him. So that's what I do. You know, I, I dress up a lot of my stuff with the Lamborghinis in the mansions, but I literally have gotten it from penny stocks. So I don't think it's that too far of a stretch and then especially since I do have students now. So I'm promoting education and yes, I'm ridiculously aggressive promoting my education and to some people I'm too aggressive. But as long as I promote something that's, that's useful, if I'm like, if I'm selling crack to kids and I'm like dressing it up, then that's a bad thing. But I'm giving rules that, you know, can change your life. And even if you don't make a million dollars, they're gonna save you from making a ton of dumb mistakes in the stock market

• 24:18Speaker 01

  world. And they're applicable to the real world and business world. Like a lot of startups have told me like, oh my God, some of this stuff that you say adapting, you know, cutting losses, like this applies to the business world too. So I promote education and I'm proud of it.

• 24:30Lewis Howes?

  And I think uh, it's different because you're an individual brand as opposed to like a, a company brand. And so some people may get turned off because it's your personality as opposed to the company's personality. Whereas there's other companies that can get away with it because no one's attached to it. And they can be ridiculously outrageous and it's not as I guess, uh, looked down upon for some people. But for you, they might look down upon it or think, judge you or whatever, because uh, it's, you know, your personal brand.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, they, they think that it's personal. It's not personal. Okay. Like whether it's me or a company, you know, I'm teaching a, a specific set of rules. And people think, oh, based on your pictures, like you're a douchebag. But that's not me. That's just my, I use social media to market. I don't use it to like, share my actual life. So there's a difference. Most people like share their lives and I think that's very superficial because you wanna like, you want likes for your little, you know, dog, your ham sandwich that you're eating for lunch. I don't care what you think about my lunch. I wanna inspire you. So yes, I'm, I'm aggressive, but I think uh, being aggressive with a purpose is, is just a fact.

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  Now, do you ever feel, do you ever feel bad if someone's like judging you or anything like that? Or do they, or when they leave you nasty comments, do you ever feel like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this? Or how do you deal with that internally?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Um, in the beginning, I was like offended, then I kind of got used to it. Um, you know, I mean, if I wasn't me, I'd probably hate me too. If I'm just looking at all these pictures and me like, look at this guy like, and I'm sitting here like in my cubicle in my crappy life. I would, I would hate me so much. I would be my biggest hater. Um, so I, I understand their, their plight, but it doesn't bother me because, you know, if they did research, if they saw what I actually do, I have so many free videos and, and so many like free stuff.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Great resources.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  That, that just is useful. Like there, there's no way to become a worse trader or a worse investor watching my stuff. Because I teach rules that I've refined, that my students have learned from. Um, and that work that have, that have been time tested. Like I'm not, you know, just making these rules up out of the blue. These are rules that I've personally used to make a lot of money. And I made a lot of boneheaded mistakes for five or six or seven years. So I tell people like, look, you can learn all this stuff on your own.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  Or invest in me.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  But it would take you like 10 years and who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars you'll lose until you realize it. So I have some haters at first and they're like, ah, screw your rules. I don't, I don't want to listen, you know? I don't need a Lamborghini. I have a good life. And then they come back six, nine months and they're like, you know, hat in hand and they're like, I, yeah, I should, I should have studied. I'm sorry. And I get that and, and I don't care, you know? As long as people, you know, find out about me, they're going to give in either now or five years or 10 years. I've created two millionaire students so far, but in five years, there might be a hundred.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  And so it's a question of when will people finally realize what I teach is real? Because there's a lot of just sketchy stuff with penny stocks and especially with the trading education world. And I just have to show that I'm real and that's, that's for me is a marathon.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  And I think, uh, I think it was Seth Godin who said something like, um, if no one's talking about you, good or bad, then that's bad.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:30Lewis Howes?

  So it's, you know, the haters are actually a good thing. It means you're doing something right. If someone are talking about what they're upset about you, it means you're like striking a conversation, you're, you're, you're. Creating some type of conflict inside of them to talk.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Well, if even if you don't believe me like right away and you're like, you know, you hate me like Howard Stern, you know, economics where you listen to me and you still hate me at first, but eventually you see that I'm going to be right 73% of the time. So three out of four times, eventually you're going to see it. My first millionaire student, Michael Good, actually wrote a blog post about me. This is how I found him. He wrote a blog post called Timothy Sykes is full of BS. You can Google this, it's still up. He's updated it, but he made all these remarks on why I was full of BS. And we went back and forth in the comments section and he's like, okay, I'll give you a try. And now he's up to 1.3 million in profits in five years. He's also one of my head trading coaches. So my millionaire students aren't just like millionaires on their own. They actually want to give back. So they each give webinars. Michael Good and Tim Gertani give weekly webinars.

• 28:27Lewis Howes?

  Teach to your students.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  To the trading challenge students. So we have, you know, this trading challenge, which are my VIP students and all of my top students give webinars. So this week was like a crazy week. They had like seven webinars from top students and just talking about like different strategies and the different rules that they've learned. So it's, it's a very cool culture where you don't just, you know, make a lot of money and laugh your way to the bank. You make a lot of money and then you try and help others because it's such a good feeling. It's so amazing. Like, you know, I, when I made, I don't know, I had $164,000 profit week a few weeks ago and that was cool. But I've had that before. It's not like a new thing for me, but I got like, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 emails from people like, oh my God, I made my first $1,000 today.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  And that's exciting.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  That is fascinating because they never thought this was possible. They're working like little crappy jobs.

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  Making a thousand bucks a week.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  A thousand dollars a month, some people. Like I have a lot of young people, a lot of part-time workers and they see that the stock market, if used properly, can be very good for you. If, if used improperly, if you just use it as a gambling resource, then you lose it. You don't learn anything and it is actually destroys lives. But if you use it properly with rules, it can change your life.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  Let's talk about marketing because in my opinion and probably lots of people's opinion, marketing is the biggest key to business success. It doesn't matter if you have a good product or a bad product, but if you can market the right way to get people to buy, that's what makes the difference. There's so many entrepreneurs out there right now that I see who are looking for advice to build their business to make, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in their company to kind of get it launched. Why are so many people failing at getting attention? And what are some things they can do either that based on your principles or, you know, even if they don't want to go over the top because that's not their personality, what are some things they can do?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people go into a business with predefined expectations like, you know, I'm going to do this, this is how the customers are going to react and then I'll have success. And that's not the way business works. Like you have to kind of try and judge based on your customers' reactions, how good of a product or how useful it is. So I did a very smart thing. Um, I did a lot of dumb things, but at first I wrote this book called The American Hedge Fund. I thought I was going to sell a million copies and I started my blog, timothysykes.com, just to promote the book.

• 30:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And the blog kind of morphed into this Q and A with my, my followers at the time. And, you know, out of like six months of blogging, forgetting about the book, the book didn't sell that many. It was sold a little bit. It was cool, but it didn't sell a million copies.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  The blog grew and I really focused on the blog because that's where all the interaction was.

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And I asked the people like, what do you want? And so they're like, we want real time alerts. And I had not thought of that. I thought, okay, I'm going to teach these patterns. I'm going to show you my success.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  You go do it.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And you're going to go do it. But they want to be led in real time. So I created Tim Alerts, Real Time Trades, and that is my, you know, biggest product with, you know, thousands of people. So.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  Is that a monthly subscription or what?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Monthly subscription, 50 bucks.

• 31:22Lewis Howes?

  Um, so basically people can watch your real time trades?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Real time trades. And then we, and then I, further interaction on the blog led to penny stocking silverware. It was Tim Alerts plus daily video lessons. So, you know, it's a little more in price. It's a hundred dollars a month, but this way you get the video lesson roundup too. So Tim Alerts, you just get the watch list and the alerts in the chat room. Then you can get the video lessons and then, you know, other stuff, but that all came from customers. I did not create that.

• 31:47Lewis Howes?

  So you originally had an idea that wasn't the idea that what people wanted. So you shifted into what they wanted.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Correct. I pivoted. I pivoted.

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  And it turned out being very profitable and helpful for everyone else.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Correct. So listen to your customers. Try and find what they really want. Like you can have an expectation of, okay, oh, here's the problem. Let me try and solve it. But then by listening and adapting and refining. You become much more successful. If you go in and you say, this is the product. This is amazing. It's not taking off right away, but eventually it's going to catch on. No, screw that. Always be changing. You know, I tried a podcast, as I mentioned, Tim Radio. It didn't take off, so I cut it after like six episodes. My people don't like it. They like videos. They're visual learners. That's fine. You know, I can do whatever, whatever it takes to be successful, whatever the customers are saying that they love and what they'll pay for. That's what really matters because I just want to educate. I don't care if I do a podcast, if I do a video lesson. I just want to show my rules somehow so that it gets ingrained into

• 32:41Speaker 01

  the customers' brains.

• 32:43Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. And what's been the most uh successful platform for you over the last three years in terms of attracting new and potential customers?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so I posted on Facebook. Uh, we have our YouTube channel. YouTube is really good because I can show like a thirty or forty minute like free video, like here's a trade, how I made like five grand in thirty minutes. Um, so that's very useful, but a lot of people don't want to watch thirty minutes. So lately Instagram has become huge for us, uh, where I just show a picture, a very short video, and I show like a stock chart, like here's how I made, you know, five grand. And I show the stock chart with the picture of like, you know, my, my presidential suite at whatever hotel I'm staying at. And it's like, this is how you get the presidential suite. You make trades like this.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Um, so Instagram is fast growing. I, I, I love social media. I love how it goes viral. I love how when you do something well, or you know, something that's very well received, it just blows up. Um, to be fair, a lot of people want to go viral. I've only had one thing go viral, and that is my, my second millionaire student, when he crossed a million dollars with the CNN article. Um, forget about going viral. I, I want to caution everybody, like ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the stuff you do will not go viral, even if you think it's the best thing ever. Um, but something doesn't have to go viral to be successful. Like you can have, you know, reach, let's say, two hundred people. And if the two hundred people are actually believing in, you know, whatever you're, you're teaching

• 34:06Speaker 01

  or, or selling, that's still a, a pretty good product. And if those two hundred people like the product, they'll tell their friends, and two hundred people can turn into like two thousand sales. So you don't need like two million sales like people think that you do.

• 34:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  You just need to reach a few people and you have to be genuine. That's the biggest thing. Like, there's too many people on the internet who aren't genuine. They don't take pride in their work. Um, that might have worked a few years ago, but now I think there's more and more genuine people like you.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Um, who are passionate about what they do and they're kind of taking over it because you can sense, you know, who actually believes in what they do versus somebody who's just like, ah, I don't care. There's millions of people out there and they have that accent for some reason. Um, and they, and they just don't care and, and they know that there's so many suckers out there.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  They'll buy, get more people buyers.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  And I hate that. And I hate that. And that's not the future. So I want more people to be genuine. If you have a product or, or, you know, you want to educate people about something that you are an expert in. You know, I don't want people just teaching if they have no expertise. There's too many people in the stock market and journalists, like, you know, I ripped on this one guy on CNBC. He has no business background. He's writing about stocks. He's a theater major. So he delivers his speech eloquently, but he should be doing Shakespeare in the Park. He shouldn't be talking stocks. Um, so be sure that you're qualified, but if you're genuine, qualified and expert, and it's useful to your customers, then it's a home run.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Now, I want to shift into something else that I've been asking a lot of my guests lately because I like to bring on influential, successful, uh, experts on the school of greatness. And a lot of them range from being single to then eventually getting in relationships or being married. And I'm still a single guy and I like to know what has shifted for you now that you're in a relationship. You're not married, but you've been in a relationship for about, you know, almost a year, I think. And before you were kind of living the, you know, the playboy life a little bit. I wouldn't go that far, but you had girlfriends here and there and you know, you were having fun and you were making a lot of money and being successful. Has anything shifted for you now that you have, uh, you know, a committed relationship for over a year? And with a girl that you're, you know, really into that you're in love with?

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm very fortunate. I found the love of my life and I'm now domesticated. As I told you, I have like

• 36:17Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy to watch.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Martha Stewart furnishings. Um, you know, I, I still have my independent streak every now and then. Um, like where I have to just go like adventure to some crazy country. Um, but now I have a, a pet and you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a

• 36:34Lewis Howes?

  Another new world.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a lot to handle, um, but you know, I'm a one woman man and, and I'm very happy and it's, and it's changed my life because now it's, you know, everything's just truly fulfilled. Like my, my girlfriend is like, why are you always so happy? You know, like even like if I'm having a crappy day, I'm still happy because I have everything. Like I have business success. I, I'm very fortunate to, you know, have students who are very successful. So I'm fulfilled, not just, you know, monetarily, but philosophically. Now I have, uh, you know, an amazing girlfriend. I have an amazing family. I have amazing friends who I have no time for. It's, you have to set goals and I wasn't looking to find the love of my life. It was just kind of, it just happened. And I think that's like the best thing. When it just happens and you, and you weren't looking, but if you have all these pieces, you know, I think everybody wants to find true love.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Um, and once you have it, like you, you have to cherish it and you have to respect it. Cause you know, I, I'm just so fortunate. There's no other word. I'm, I'm blessed and you have to respect that blessing. Cause you could throw, I could throw it away.

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  If I didn't respect it and I, I don't want to do that. Cause it's, it's amazing.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Now, how has it impacted your business success?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  So.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  And do you feel like it takes away sometimes or does it enhance it?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. I mean, you, you definitely have to balance, um, having a, a little puppy and, um, a, a little four pound puppy, um, with a, a girlfriend and you know, a booming business. It takes a lot to, to balance everything. And sometimes, you know, the, the girlfriend gets left behind. Sometimes the business gets left behind. The puppy never gets left behind.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  But it's, it's not a, it's not a perfect science. Um, it definitely has like kind of hurt my business a little bit, but so what? Like I, I'm having, you know, if I'm firing on like 98% instead of a hundred percent business wise, and I sacrificed a two percent for like a somewhat of a balanced life. Yeah. For a life, that's worth it. That's a, that's a worthy sacrifice. You know, if you just have all business success and no friends and no family and no love. That's not a life, you know? Um, so I, I think you have to balance and you have to have priorities and, and obviously the, the more balanced, it's amazing. You know, if, if you're alone and you have like a hundred million dollar business and you're just sitting. At the top of the world, like drinking like a $10,000 bottle of wine. Are you happy?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  No. So it's made me happy, but you also have to manage time and I haven't done that great of a job. I'm still getting used to balancing everything as you know, I told you I gained a little weight. Or a lot of weight, like the human Jonah Hill.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  You know, I try still to be funny, but you know, now I'm looking for Academy Award winning films. So I don't know, I could probably do a better job, but you have to keep things in perspective.

• 39:18Lewis Howes?

  Of course. So what's the long term goal for you? Like, how long can you be in the penny stock trading world? Is it ever to get tiring or boring? Or are you ever going to need some type of new creative outlet? Where do you see yourself?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, I have two millionaires created so far, a few other students who are getting close to a million. I want to create, you know, as many millionaires as possible. That's what seems to drive the most business success because everyone's like, oh my God, he's actually doing it.

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Um, before the question was like, can he actually create a millionaire? All I see is him being rich and nobody else. Now they see the students. So that's the overarching theme behind everything. How to create more millionaires, you know, is it more DVDs? Is it more books? Is it new, you know, interactive tools using 3D technology? I don't know. I want to keep teaching because penny stocks are so unloved and so misunderstood. The Wolf of Wall Street has brought in a lot of new people, but they just think, oh, everything in penny stocks are a scam. You're a scam. Everyone's a scam. And that's not true. Like if you look at the details, the Wolf of Wall Street actually took place in 1994 before the internet even was like really popular. So no one could do any internet research back then. That's, that's the difference between now and then.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  I think the internet is going to continue changing everything, especially education wise and finance wise. Transparency is becoming a big thing in the stock market and penny stocks. So, you know, people who are full of crap will eventually get exposed, I think, on the internet. So I look forward to helping expose that and, you know, just showing that this is all real. I don't think that you can ever. Have too much education, especially in a very misunderstood industry. I kind of look at myself. Maybe a little too egotistically like Kinsey, who you know, really revolutionized. Uh, the education of, of sex, you know, and I'm doing that for penny stocks. It's not nearly as important.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Or controversial, but still it exists like there's the education world in finance is, is literally in like the dark ages. Um, so I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and you know, living life and trying to keep balance.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. On your last day, what do you want people to say about you?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Um, I don't want there to be a last day. I really want to, uh, have human cloning become legalized. I know it's not legal. But if any of you guys out there are, are, uh, experts, I feel like there's gotta be some human cloning going on in South America or something. Um, I would love to clone myself and, and really just continue. Um, there's so much work to be done, so much. I'm, I'm really just scratching. Uh, the, the, the tip and it's, it's frustrating because there's a lot of stuff that I want to do. There's a lot more rules that I want to teach. There's a lot more. Um, you know, technologies and, and paths that I want to try to do that education. So I don't want there to be a last day.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I, I, I don't even know when my last day will come. If the human cloning thing or freezing my brain doesn't work out. Um, but if

• 42:16Lewis Howes?

  Hypothetically.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  If it does come, like I'll, I'll probably just be in the middle of like doing like a video lesson or, or working. Cause it, it never stops. Like, you know, I, I really want more experts out there to. Share their expertise and not be so selfish, especially in finance. You know, you have all these rich hedge fund managers. And rich traders and they don't share anything and they're just do it every year.

• 42:36Lewis Howes?

  To themselves.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I hate that. And I hate that. And, and nothing changes. And so the stock market is full of like people who just give stock tips. And then they go with their gut and it's like gambling and, and we should evolve past that. And I know it's not just for the stock market. It's every industry. If more experts came forward and shared what they've learned, uh, the world would be so much better.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  There wouldn't be poverty, probably. People would be able to learn how to do things to take care of themselves.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  I mean, there's still gonna be like lazy people and people who won't like do what they should to follow rules, but. At least the information should be out there more and the people who educate right now are more of those who can't do and they teach, you know, that's a saying. And, and that's sad. So I'll be fighting for education until the day I die.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. And what do you want people to say about you when you die then?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I don't care. You know, I really, you know, it's, I can't control what people do. All I can do is, what I can control is how hard I work and the type of products that I put out.

• 43:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And how it's received. And I'm going to, you know, keep obviously listening to my customers and seeing what they, you know, want and how to refine better. But, you know, after I'm, after I'm gone, I can't make any new products. So I could care less.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  I'm working till the day I die, baby.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  There you go. So final question I ask everyone, which is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  My definition of greatness is, you know, achieving your goals and living a fun and great life and helping others.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  Tim Sykes, I appreciate you for coming on, my man. Where can we find you online? Where can we connect with you and watch all of your extravagant travels on Instagram?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Where can't you find me online? No, if you go to TimothySykes.com or Instagram.com/TimothySykes or Twitter.com/TimothySykes or YouTube.com/TimothySykes.com, you know, just Google me. You'll see a bunch of stuff and you'll see my, my students and you'll see some of the, the bad stuff that people write about me because they're offended. But I'm just going to keep teaching because I know that it's good and I see the success that it creates.

• 44:37Lewis Howes?

  I love it. Thanks so much for coming on, man.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 44:55Lewis Howes?

  And I hope you guys enjoyed this interview. If you did, please do me a favor and share this with your friends. Go ahead and email a friend. If you think they might be inspired by Tim's message, go ahead and share it on Twitter or on Facebook. You get all the show notes over at LewisHowes.com/69. If you want to learn more about what Tim talked about in this episode, there'll be some videos on there, some images, some links, all that good stuff to his website as well. So go check out LewisHowes.com/69 for the show notes here. Make sure to subscribe over on iTunes. Leave a review on iTunes if you liked this interview. Subscribe on Stitcher and SoundCloud. And thank you guys so much for tuning in

• 45:40Lewis Howes?

  today on the School of Greatness. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I said there's more to life than rush Not gonna leave this place with us Top the game is not enough

• 46:25Speaker 02

  I said there's more to life than rush Not gonna leave this place with us Top the game is not enough