The ONLY 1-Man Business That Anyone Can Start Without Needing Customers

Did you know that there is one particular industry that anyone with a mobile device can get into?

An industry that exchanges over $5 trillion every single day?

I still remember the first time I was introduced to this business model.

I had recently closed down the first business I ever started - the dropshipping store that sold back stretchers which I go in-depth about in the previous blog.

I was devastated by this unexpected loss. I felt like everything I've worked hard for the previous months just came tumbling down like Jenga.

This was around May 2020. My birthday just passed and my goal was to have a successful business before I turned 18.

As my birthday edged closer, I still remember my passion and hope diminishing slowly.

I started to slip back into bad habits; gaming all day, sleeping all day and worst of all, I had no more basketball due to the lockdown.

That's when my school friend told me about this thing called 'Forex.'

Back in high school, I do remember hearing of people making wild amounts of money through trading and stocks. I had not the slightest clue how it all worked.

Frankly, I didn't want to know, one look at those charts, and my brain felt like it wanted to crash. Now I've always been good at maths (to some extent) but this felt out of this world.

"How do you even learn this? Maybe once I'm 40 years old or so, I can finally do stuff like this!"

This time, however, it was different. From the small pool of knowledge I had attributed over the past few months, I was ready to take on the next challenge.

Once my friend introduced me to this idea, he mentioned how he and a small group of others were part of a program regarding forex. The host of the program was "someone our age making £80,000 per year from trading the forex markets," he told me.

This immediately made my spidey senses tingle with suspicion. I've just come out of an industry full of 'gurus.'

He told me that all I had to do was to pay £100 a month to join the program and learn to trade. Better yet, if I find others who are willing to learn for this small fee, I would receive a kickback from it.

He told me to think about it, sent me some of the program content and so I took this information and sat on it for a while.  

A few days later, the same friend messaged me and told me that he is no longer trading forex. He had gotten scammed by the program and that he has given up on forex.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when I discovered pyramid schemes.

I told him... "You haven't even tried forex yet, how do you know forex doesn't work?"

He was adamant about proving me wrong and that's when I realised what Simon Sinek said about how people view the world, was true.

He said that there's really two ways to see the world. There's one type of person who sees what they want in life, whilst the other person only sees the roadblock stopping them from getting what they want in life.

I could only see the life that forex can provide me. My friend on the other hand... he only saw the scams that stopped him from getting into forex.

Regardless of my friend's decision, I decided to take the program content he sent me and learn it from A-Z. It was a very simple, yet detailed guide called the 'Candlestick Trading Bible.'

The more I read through this PDF, the more videos I watched, the easier forex got. In reality, it was very easy to learn. The charts only go up, down or sideways and you got to learn the different outcomes possible in each of those scenarios.

I even made a YouTube video to teach some of the content I learned about forex in only 10 minutes.

And I finally got to the point where I thought I was ready to finally put the things I learned into action. 

I had completed the PDF and had almost an entire notepad of notes detailing the step-by-step processes and trends you would find in a real market. 

To tell you the truth, I was scared to open the charts previously, I was scared of failure once again.

I signed up for MT4 (Metatrader 4) and realised I can play around with a fake account before putting my own money on the line. So every few days, I would place a trade or two and leave it. 

The one big thing I picked up about forex is that you should not constantly check your trades.

Once I did check, however, I found that there were actually some winners, but there were also some losers too.

I had a goal to turn a £1000 account into a £10,000 account. Once I did this, that is when I would be ready to finally put my own money on the line.

From all the time and energy spent learning the skills needed to trade forex, I neglected the biggest thing... my mindset.

In forex, it takes a particular type of person to put their money on the line and watch it fluctuate. I was still the same person who turned off an ad campaign for not bringing back results after £11 spent.

I was not ready to 'gamble' away my money, even though I learned that trading, done correctly, is not gambling.

The issue was that I hadn't yet realised that to turn £1000 into £10,000, quickly, I would need to leverage a large amount of money - meaning I am at risk of losing a large amount too.

So instead of carrying on, I decided to pull the procrastination card and buy a book called 'Naked Forex.'

I had heard that it's one of the best trading books, especially if you already know a bit about forex.

Again, I spent the next month reading the book, watching success stories, and acting like I was being productive. 

Every new thing learned, or success discovered, gave me a glimmer of hope that forex was going to be the bridge between reality and my dreams.

After a period of time, I finished the book and had a strategy mapped out that I wanted to test on the fake accounts first.

Every day, I waited and waited, and I still wasn't ready to take the leap of faith and get to work, putting my learnings into action.

Luckily, I was still in the middle of reading ''Rich Dad Poor Dad' at this time and Robert Kiyosaki (the author) had taught me that the rich only get richer because they put their money to work.

Every dollar (or pound) that you invest, is like a worker going out and making you more money - meaning more workers.

This is when I realised the game I was playing was the wrong game. I was trying to skip a vital step. 

Trading and investing are only effective when you have money to play with.

Trading and investing is where real wealth is created, first, you have to have a vehicle that generates the money needed to invest. 

Forex was not the right vehicle to create the income I needed.

I had to pivot.

The key lessons learned here were:

1. There's a vast amount of opportunity waiting at every corner. All you have to do is be accepting and open to opportunities, shift your paradigm and you'll spot opportunity everywhere.
2. Nothing you learn in the real world is valid unless it is backed by action. action breeds results, inaction, and staying in neutral gear is just a mirage of progress. 
3. Failure is inevitable, your priority should be to fail fast and iterate. Failing is only worthwhile when you actually learn from it. From my previous failure, I learned that the most important thing is to start as soon as possible. In forex again, I managed to consume all the content without any real-world application.
4. Manage your expectations. Go into business with optimism, but prepare for failure. Nothing will come overnight.
5. The most crucial lesson I've learnt until today is that the mind is your biggest barrier to success. You're only capable of doing what you perceive to be your limit. I was scared to lose money hence, I didn't take the necessary actions to see this through. Once you conquer your own mind, you're 80% closer to your dreams.
6. In business, you need money to make money. Learning to give before you take is a big lesson that anyone who wishes to walk this journey must learn to prevail in.
7. Notice when you're procrastinating and snap out of it as soon as possible. The only way to improve is by first knowing where you're going wrong.

What other lessons do you think you've picked up from this abstract story?

Have you tried forex? What did you think?


Till next time,
Mohamad