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  At the end of his spiel, he offered his ‘learn how to live a life like mine’ course (usually selling at £5000) for a mere £2000 introductory offer. I still believed him. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter – the only thing that I learned on that two-day course was that I could have learned everything they taught me by searching for it on the internet. The more I learned, the more I felt cheated, and in the days and weeks that followed, I became more and more angry about the 2000-plus (lent to me by my parents) that I had wasted. By then, however, I had become quite adept at channelling anger, and that man's lies drove me to want to become all the things he had claimed to be.

  I did meet a couple of good guys during those two days, and we decided that there was more we could do by pooling our resources; then learning, and subsequently trading, together. There were about a dozen of us in the focus group that we set up, and we worked well as a team. I was between leaving college and starting university at this point, and I had a bit more time on my hands than some of the employed members of the group, so my role became research. I would spend hours (often 18 per day) just watching the markets, reading up on the companies we were interested in, and feeding back the information to the others. Eventually, a few of the guys started paying me a monthly fee to take my stock trades – and my reputation began to grow.

  For the first few months I was pretty poor, and then I began to deliver a few decent returns. You might be thinking that I was just lucky, got in at the right time, had a gift for spotting a great deal, or really did learn something from the blagger who had taken my parents' savings. But you would be wrong on all counts. I just worked hard, committed long, lonely hours to learning, and was determined to make something good come out of my poor judgement. I was angry, and it helped.

  Let me be clear here: my best month came in at 16%, which is pretty impressive if I say so myself, but with such a small starting pot that barely made me £300 before costs. I wasn't amassing enormous wealth in those days, but I was certainly building up knowledge and experience. And the huge amount of time I was spending was a long-term investment which is still paying me dividends to this day.

  Back to the seminar and its aftermath. Although I recognised that I had been duped, I was still naive enough to get more involved in this organisation and soon fell further into its manipulative grasp. Looking back, I can see now that as a young guy who was getting to grips with the way things worked, they saw me as something of a trophy to put on display. I guess I was a justification story: if this kid can do it, anyone can. The other thing that is obvious to me now is that the money that organisation was making was through training people, not by trading themselves. The old adage that ‘Those who can, do; those who can't, teach’ was certainly true in their case. There was a clear pattern of seminar – two-day course – mentoring – then upsell to more training. It was a con; and the sad thing is that the business is still running today (albeit under a different name). Get in touch with anyone in my team, and we'll happily share the name of this company (and any others we are aware of), so you can avoid, avoid, avoid.

  I have to stress, however, that other people's bad practice should never get in the way of you working hard, doing the right thing, and enjoying the success that will inevitably follow. If you are reading this today, and you are at the acorn stage of something that you truly love and believe in – please, whatever else you do, keep going. Apply honest graft and proactive learning to what you love doing, and the result will always be genuine wealth (whether that is financial, emotional, or practical).

  Who is Samuel Leach?

  The other result from me getting involved in the focus group and beginning to hang around with other traders, was that I began to get recognised. I was young, people saw that my trades were successful, and I was happy to volunteer at trader training events as an advisor and helper.

  The more people spoke to me, and word got around that my advice had value, the more people were willing to pay for my knowledge. This gave birth to my first entrepreneurial venture within the stock market where I set up a subscription list (eventually comprising around 40 people) who would pay me £30 per month to get the lowdown on my stock watchlist. Alongside the returns on my own meagre trading account, I was soon earning between £1500 and £2000 per month – while I was studying. Mum and Dad got their investment back, and things were looking up.

  I soon realised that trading could become a life-changing opportunity. My trading account eventually grew to £2000 and was earning an average of 10%, giving me £200 per month. But I knew, from that day on, that I would one day have a trading account of £200 000 and, at 10%, that £20 000 per month would be a goal worth fighting to win.

  Alongside this personal realisation that I could control my destiny, financially and practically, I also saw that I could help others to make their dreams come true and understand their potential. This started with my family and the ways that I could support them but, as time has moved on, it has extended to anyone else who has honest ambition and is prepared to work hard towards their goals.

  In my business today, a large part of what we do is teach others how to trade successfully. Yes, I write about my success, post videos about the fruits of my labour (supercars and the like), and I don't hold back from telling people that they can achieve anything they put their heart to – but I am so careful not to sell fake news. You will never see me, or anyone associated with Samuel & Co, promoting lifestyle-selling seminars or pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams. We teach people properly; and we are even prepared to let the right people trade on our trade floor and be around like-minded people.

  As my own understanding of the markets developed, and I observed the way that the trading community operated (the good and the bad), I decided that I would do things the right way – I decided I wanted to help.

  The key to teaching people to trade is support and mentorship. And, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, to make your word and your promise the bond by which you stand or you fall. You can still be ruthless and take make-or-break decisions, but you must operate within the bounds of what is legally and morally right. If there is one big lesson that I want you to take from this chapter, whoever you are and at whatever stage of your career or life you are, it is that standing up for what is right is as powerful as fighting for what you believe in.

  Trust me, there are laws of attraction at work here – and you would be wise to start operating within those laws. My good friend and colleague, Raj, is an excellent example of beliefs and principles being the ideal foundations for a life of wealth and prosperity.

  Meet Raj Singh

  My future seemed to be mapped out for me from an early age. I grew up working in the family business, a hardware store that they'd owned for 25 years, and from 18 years old I worked in the store for seven days a week. I heard about this seminar on trading and wondered if there might be another, non-DIY, pathway for me to wander along. Later, I learned that Samuel had been in the room that night as well and, like me, blindly handed over my £2000 to be taught a whole load of useless information about trading. Wounded and feeling scammed, I walked away from the course with enough knowledge to start in a small way, but not enough to actually become any good.

  Shortly after that, we sold the family business and I started to search out local jobs. There was an advert from this new trading company, Samuel & Co, so I applied and went to the interview. From the first time I met Sam I was massively impressed, and a little bit humbled, that such a young guy could be so capable and full of conviction about where he wanted his business to go. The fact that we'd both been ripped off by the same scammer also helped to make that connection. I enrolled on his course, stayed back late to pick his brain, consistently interrupted him during coffee breaks to ask more questions, and in April 2015 became his first full-time member of staff outside of his family.

  I say full-time, we were working out of bedrooms and living rooms back then and communicated online and by phone to make sure we were working to the
same goals. Time moves so quickly and so much has happened since that it was only in January 2019, on a company working holiday in Thailand, that we actually got to sit down for 20 minutes to reminisce about the ‘old days’.

  Since then I've been involved in recruitment for the business, worked on some exciting projects in Birmingham and Madrid, and helped manage the company's social media. Today, I still work on the trading floor and enjoy fighting on the frontline of the markets, while also being part of the algorithm team.

  Having seen the company and the people who joined us over the years grow and evolve, from day one, I have realised that everyone is individual and has their own story. People choose to become traders for different reasons, their motivations stretch from family to fun or to fortune, and their personal definitions of prosperity are as diverse as their own backgrounds and stories.

  My prosperity algorithm

  For me, prosperity means becoming the best version of me (confident, fearless, and capable), but also being financially secure enough to fight the cause of preventing animal cruelty. It is a passion of mine to stop poaching in all its sickening forms and to support innocent animals whose only crime is to be valuable in the eyes of wicked people.

  Since joining Samuel & Co and working with Samuel much of that ambition has already been achieved. I have overcome some of my biggest fears, including talking on stage in front of several hundreds of people, learning to scuba dive (even though I'm scared of water), and starting some charity work. I even turned my dog's Instagram account into a business selling dog food. It was originally Samuel's idea after he noticed that Nico had gained over 20 000 followers.

  I've realised that nothing is stopping you doing whatever you want to do in your life. You are your only competition and, if you can find other people who believe in you and associate yourself with like-minded individuals, you really can achieve anything. You just need to be bold, follow great examples, and believe that you will get to your dreams if you keep on going.

  As Samuel always says, ‘don't worry about the journey, think about how great the story will be'.

  ‘What you do doesn’t have to make you rich, it just has to make you happy.’

  Chapter 8

  FINDING THE YOU-NIQUE IN YOU

  In the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, there is a pivotal scene where his character, John Keating, has all his students gathered in the school's trophy room. He asks them to go and look closely at the faded, black-and-white year photographs of all the graduates who had studied there decades earlier, suggesting that they'd never looked at them properly before. As they close in, the teacher reminds the boys that they are no different from the young men looking back at them through the shadows of history. He says that they have the same haircuts, are full of the same hormones, feel invincible just like them, and believe that they are destined for great things. He then hits them with a hard truth – that those boys are now fertilising the daffodils.

  And then in a moment of true movie magic he says, ‘but if you listen really close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you – seize the day boys – seize the day’.

  As I write this chapter, I am 27 years old. To some of you that will seem a distant, almost inconceivable, future. Others, I know, will be thinking, ‘Oh, to be 27 again.’ If you are the latter, I feel your frustration because at the best-case estimation I am already over a quarter of the way through my life, and there is so much more I still want to achieve. Whatever age you are, I urge you to seize the day, because all of our days are numbered and, like the students in those photographs, everyone has the potential to achieve more with the days they have left (as long as they don't waste their time).

  I don't mean to bring a depressing tone to the book, but accepting the fact that you only have a limited time on this planet is one of the greatest motivators to go and use it to the best of your ability. What are you waiting for? Work out what you love and what you are good at – today if possible – and go and pursue it. There is no time to lose.

  What you do doesn't have to make you rich, it just has to make you happy. Trust me, material things will not make you happy – living a life that is full of the things that you love doing will. But if you are smart, and if you invest the time to master the rules of the thing you love doing, there is no reason why you can't also find a way to turn the thing you love into a living. (And why shouldn't that be an extremely successful one)?

  Who are you?

  Wealth is one of those interesting words which can be interpreted in many different ways and means different things to each person. While the most common understanding of the word is probably a financial or material one, its actual meaning is likely to be as individual as you and me. What is universal, especially in most Western societies, is how you achieve wealth – although it is still a barely known secret. The simple truth is that if you can discover the thing in life which gives you the most satisfaction and generates the most happiness for you and the people who you love, you will know what it means to be wealthy. Only you can decide what your something is – because you are unique. After identifying that magical goal, the level of your wealth is determined by how much you desire to gather more of it into your life. The problem most people face is that their effort does not match their desire – or they simply don't believe that the reward will be worth the effort.

  This book cannot tell you what form your wealth should take, in the same way that it cannot make you put in the effort to go and seek out that treasure. My intention is simply to help you see that you can; and, hopefully, inspire you to go and try.

  Here is a puzzle for you to ponder. I explained in the first chapter how my schooldays turned me into a version of myself that I didn't particularly like, but one that was necessary for me to be able to survive those days. Genetics and circumstance had shaped the unique individual who was born and named Samuel Leach some 16 years earlier. The fact is that everyone reaches this stage of their life, where they have become a product of nature, nurture, and environment. It is the infinite combinations and possibilities of our early lives which create the unique people we become. The puzzle that most people fail even to recognise, let alone solve, is that you can change! Your destiny (genetics and circumstance) is subject to two even more formidable forces – choice and determination.

  You were born unique, and you can become the person you wish to become.

  Of course, you cannot change your genetics or any physical features (good or bad) about your person. But you can change how and what you do; you can adapt to the environment that you exist within; you can choose your influences; you can become a person who sees opportunities over obstacles; you can decide that you are going to apply yourself to betterment; and you can take action today. It is entirely up to you.

  Even if your circumstances today are overwhelmingly restricted and hopeless, I cannot think of many scenarios where you couldn't force even a 1 or 2% improvement.

  So, go on, think about it – who are you? Get a piece of paper and start to write down a description of who you are today. Write about the things that you like, what you are good at, if you tend to see things negatively instead of positively, how your friends influence you, if you try harder at some things more than others, what makes you happy, sad, angry, or calm, and if you are satisfied with your life at the moment. Be honest with yourself – no one else need ever see this piece of paper.

  Then write down what your ideal life would look like and what sort of person you would like to be in the middle of it. Again, be honest and don't hold back. I love the saying that ‘if you reach for the stars, you might just land on the moon’, so I always aim high. At the same time, however, if you write on your piece of paper ‘living on my own personal luxury island and being waited upon day and night for the rest of my life …’, I think you might have missed the point. I want you to think about the sort of things that you enjoy ‘doing’ and what makes you the happiest.

  Trading up your talents

  Ev
ery single person who has ever been born is unique. Statistically, when you consider the size of the universe, the number of people who have ever lived, the chances of generations of your ancestors meeting one another, and the infinite chances of you being the result of your parents' relationship, you are a living miracle. You may share traits with family members, although you are just as likely to have completely different tastes, but there is only one of you and only ever will be. By default, your uniqueness means there must be things that you enjoy and are good at doing – even if you haven't worked out what they are yet.

  Whether you already know what your talents are, or an exercise like the one above has helped you to identify them, you need to understand that pursuing those things is your best chance of living a wealthy and successful life.

  For me, I realised that I was good at analysing situations, recognising patterns, seeing opportunities, and using these skills to predict future results and behaviours. I also made a deliberate decision to cultivate my thirst for knowledge, become the best that I could be, and push the boundaries of my willingness to take a calculated risk.

  Even as I write this, I can hear some readers thinking: ‘That is all very well for you Samuel Leach; YouTube trading expert – but I'm not like you.’ Well, I would like to agree with you, but that would make me wrong too. You see, I accept that not everyone has the same natural abilities, but I simply don't accept that people can't put in more effort to change their circumstances, learn a new skill, pursue an opportunity, or turn their own unique talents into wealth. I refuse to believe that some people are so unlucky that they have no skill whatsoever and that great opportunities have never been presented to them.

  (As a caveat, I am speaking here in general terms to people living in Westernised countries with the privileges of freedom, education, and stable government).