We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lindsay Duff a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lindsay , thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
I work in the industry of Emini Futures Day Trading Education. In general, the standard for any kind of program that teaches people how to trade is not very defined and widely varied. Most programs have some sort of strategy that they teach in the form of an online course, and sometimes they have group classes or a trading room available as a resource.
Through the years of working for a lot of these other companies, I’ve discovered that the one thing they are truly missing is genuine support and dedication to their students. Most of these companies were viewing their students, not as students, but just another number or only seeing dollar signs instead of actual people that are trying to achieve something and change their lives and be successful at trading.
When you are trying to build a school or a program, you have to view it through the student’s perspective in order to really serve them. And I feel like that’s what we’ve done at Responsible Day Trading. We do offer things like personal one on one coaching, that involves live video chats and a dedicated mentor for our students entire journey, but the truly intangible part of R. D. T. that makes us special is the unrelenting commitment that we have for our students, the connections we make with them and the relationship that develop over time.
Most of our students continue staying in touch with us after they’ve completed our program, because their coaches are personally invested in their success and their story – and those types of connections are incredibly hard to come by.
Quite a few students actually return to RDT as team members because it offers them dual income as they are growing in their trading careers, but more importantly, to give back to their community and support others who are trying to achieve the same goals and dreams by learning to trade.
We also offer incredibly flexible payment plans that are almost customized for every student because we know everyone’s situation is unique, and we want to provide solutions to any obstacles that might prevent students from investing in themselves and their future,
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Lindsay Duff and I am the founder and one of the creators here at Responsible Day Trading. I have been fortunate enough to cross paths with many inspired and like-minded traders since my adventure in Day Trading began in 2003. It has been such a pleasure to grow together with many of them and even see a few join me in the RDT quest to help others become more than they could have ever imagined by lighting the way on the Day Trading journey.
When I began this journey, I was a single mom of 2 very young children, and while I had a Criminal Justice degree, I was sort of stuck in the world of the service industry as a bartender. There was a time when I wanted to move up to management and they told me that they didn’t believe I was right for it and that’s when I realized that where I was, had a ceiling, and I had reached it. In a very fortunate turn of events, I was hired on to a day trading company that taught me everything from the ground up. I stayed with them for 3 years and eventually moved on to 3 other companies, helping them to start-up their companies and develop their curriculum.
But there was on thing that was missing in all of these places. I wanted to see our customers grow and blossom into the traders they aspired to be. Because if we’re being very honest, while I love trading, my passion is to see people do and be their best. While working with these other companies, I came to realize that they did not share the same passion as me. Their only goal was to get people through the door and wish them luck in their ability to sift through all of the information to make sense of it all.
So, I decided to step out on my own and do things my way. And this is where Responsible Day Trading was born.
At RDT, we find such joy in working with traders who are looking to create a clear, confident and consistent path in order to engage in well-informed and growth-inducing activity when it comes to their trading performance. We understand that not every single trade will be a winner but we also know that every single trade, win or lose, will be an opportunity to learn and grow.
We offer several programs, each with a variety of different resources, to teach people to trade and flow with the futures market. Our programs and products teach people how to proficiently use a trading platform, develop their trading strategy, manage risk, as well as overcome emotional and psychological obstacles that can affect their trading. We are able to offer these programs through online videos, pdf notes, one-on-one coaching via live video chats and a personal video review system and library.
There is no magic formula and there is no get rich overnight secret when it comes to trading. Learning to trade is like learning to drive (or learning a new language or an instrument) There will be highs and there will be lows. It takes time to be proficient, but learning the skill is incredibly gratifying and can cause immense change in your life, just like learning how to drive or learning another language changes your opportunities. But we all know that learning on our own, is not always the best path. Having someone there, that you can trust and rely on, to guide you through the journey is worth its weight in gold.
Our job is to teach you to trade like YOU and the help you develop a consistent and clear through processes as you navigate through your daily time with the market. We don’t hand you an manual and tell you, “Good luck!”.. We walk you through every process and make sure you clearly understand each concept before you move to the next one. Our programs are designed to take you from the very basics of trading with homework reviews that allow you to know that you are seeing things properly and that you are on the right path. We work through these together so you have each piece of the puzzle before you move on to the next step.
When I really reflect on it all, being able to create this school, with programs that really put the people who join us here front and center has been one of the greatest decisions of my life. It brings me so much joy to see that light turn on for those who have been sitting in the dark for so long. It reminds me that, even though the journey is extraordinary, it does not have to be solitary. It has given me the opportunity to be me to be surrounded by happy, goal-driven individuals who know they are supported and part of a community that is there for them– and it makes me extremely proud to be able to be a part of the growth and connection for those who choose enter the RDT doors.
Any advice for managing a team?
My team is spread all over the world – Lithuania, Spain, the U. K, Mexico, and the U.S. A key to keeping team morale high and making sure that we complete our projects efficiently is the relationships that we develop with each other and being flexible with roles and assignments so that every team member is happy and motivated with what they are working on.
I like to foster an environment where we’re supporting each other, not just in work, but in our own personal journeys. Before every meeting we always chat about what’s going on in our personal lives, catch up, joke and laugh with each other to feed those connections and to set a positive tone and group mindset before discussing what we want to accomplish.
If someone is struggling to complete their work or is missing deadlines, I never react with disappointment or anger, but I approach the situation by asking “What do you want to be working on? Is the type of work you are doing satisfying and are you motivated to complete it?” Everyone is unique with their own set of talents and I find its better to communicate with my team, adjust their type of assignments or even have them pivot to different roles to keep morale high, maintain forward motion and progress, and keep people stimulated.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Something I had to unlearn was the idea that I can force or control the market – or the world, But the amazing thing was that, through this process, I learned that can only control my actions and reactions to situations presented in front of me. Letting go of the fact that you don’t have control over a lot of aspects in your life is terrifying and a hard lesson to swallow, but once you release you can go with the flow, I found that there are gifts and positives in life that are available to you that I didn’t see before because my vision was too narrow under the false idea that I could control everything.
In trading this applies to the thinking that I could tell the market what to do and that it would listen – something that was drilled into me at the first trading company I worked for. Not only did they teach the idea that you are able to control the market, but they doubled down on this lesson by saying that you HAD to in order to be profitable. I was convinced the way I learned was the only way to do it. There were so many indicators and ideas that, I later learned, were unnecessary. It was the thought process that you must take a trade if it touched a certain indicator, paying no attention to the strength the market had when approaching the area. I had to learn the hard way that this leads to loss, and then I had to realize that my thinking was incorrect and THEN I had to unlearn this way of thinking and teach myself something new. it was a long and arduous journey but it eventually paved the way to my own unique trading strategy that embraces change and allows for everyone’s uniqueness to thrive in the trading world
How you behave in life is intertwined with how you trade; in learning that I could not control the market, I was able to let go of the negativity in my life that stemmed from things outside of my control. Life will throw curveballs at you and even though you can’t control the pitcher, you decide when to swing, While it was a very tough lesson to learn, it was definitely the most valuable, it has changed me for the better and will be with me all the rest of my years. And I make it my mission in life to help others see it as well. Learning to trade in this way has shaped who I am today and I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to not only learn it, but live it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.responsibledaytrading.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/responsible_day_trading/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ResponsibleDayTrading
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/responsible-day-trading/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DayResponsible
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ResponsibleDayTrading1