Episode 1396: Interview with Sean Tepper from Tykr

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1396 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Sean Tepper: I'm Sean Tepper. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to invest with confidence on your own is key.

[00:00:21] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired

[00:00:25] Scott Maderer: Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:36] Sean Tepper: Really get you started with baby steps.

[00:00:39] And, and really that key word is confidence. It's not making money. That's great. We'll get you there. Confidence. And I always use the metaphor. It's like, you're a little

[00:00:48] kid jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool. Like the first time it's terrifying. Like, am I going to drown?

[00:00:53] Is this, is this the last of my days? You know, but after you do it once you realize, Hey, that's, that's not too bad. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent.

[00:01:12] And your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:31] In today's podcast, I interview Sean Tepper. I asked Sean about his journey to creating Ticker. Sean also shares with you why biblical principles are baked into everything he does. And Sean also shares why confidence is the key, not knowledge. I've got a new book coming out called Inspired Living.

[00:01:51] Assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about it and sign up [00:02:00] for getting more information over at inspiredstewardship. com Inspired Living. That's InspiredStewardship. com Inspired Living. Sean Tepper is the founder and CEO of Ticker, a software that helps people manage their own investments with confidence.

[00:02:18] He originally created Ticker as an Excel sheet in 2016 to save time with his own investing. After four years, he made consistent returns and in 2019, he started sharing this Excel sheet with other investors and everyone asked, when are you going to turn this into a software and share it with others?

[00:02:37] Ticker took about a year to build and officially went live in 2020. Today, Ticker has over 8, 000 customers in 50 countries. Welcome to the show, Sean.

[00:02:48] Sean Tepper: Hey, good to be here. How are you doing, Scott?

[00:02:51] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. I'm doing okay. I'm doing great. This'll hopefully be kicking off the new year for everybody and they'll [00:03:00] be having a moment, or if you're catching up on this later.

[00:03:03] This will be a chance to hear a little bit about something a little different than what we talk about on the show and to set that up, I shared a kind of the highlight reel of some of the work you do, but go into a little bit more about your journey and what brought you to the point of founding Ticker and putting that out for the world.

[00:03:25] Sure. Yeah, if I could just take a few minutes here, it's an entertaining story. So my background

[00:03:30] Sean Tepper: is about 20 years

[00:03:31] Scott Maderer: in business, mostly tech. I started my first company in the 2000s. It was an agency service business, and we did a lot of websites and software and video for small and Mid sized

[00:03:42] Sean Tepper: businesses.

[00:03:42] This was around 2006 and grew it over four years but made no money through the recession. I, in order to add more the customers, we had to add more employees. So liabilities kept increasing with the revenue, which does not make a scalable business model and [00:04:00] learned a lot, but. It wasn't a profitable enterprise, but anyway, 2010 came along and we did start growing a little bit more, caught the attention of a larger agency and

[00:04:11] Scott Maderer: they did offer to not buy us out, but we went through a merger and it wasn't like a large check was written at that moment is

[00:04:18] Sean Tepper: essentially all debts and liabilities wiped

[00:04:20] Scott Maderer: out in the business

[00:04:21] Sean Tepper: and it was, it gave me an opportunity to go my own way.

[00:04:25] And at that point I knew what kind of business I wanted to start,

[00:04:27] Scott Maderer: which is a SaaS business. Software as a service. I looked at companies like MailChimp,

[00:04:32] Sean Tepper: Salesforce, Netflix, and said,

[00:04:35] Scott Maderer: I'm going to create that. However, I didn't have any

[00:04:37] Sean Tepper: good SaaS ideas at the time.

[00:04:40] Scott Maderer: I decided let's

[00:04:41] Sean Tepper: go work for large corporations.

[00:04:42] So I wanted to get some big business experience for about two years that turned into 12 years. Sometimes things take a little longer than expected,

[00:04:52] Scott Maderer: but I did corporate contracting project

[00:04:56] Sean Tepper: management. Some of the companies I work for include GE and Kohler [00:05:00] and they're

[00:05:00] Scott Maderer: great companies. But at the same time I got into investing and I started with angel investing, which is like investing in private businesses.

[00:05:08] I'm like, Hey, I'm a tech guy.

[00:05:10] Sean Tepper: I can invest in that new tech business and watch it go to 1000%. Needless to say, that never happened. But also learned a lot along the way. And that brought me to about

[00:05:21] Scott Maderer: 2015. I said, let's stop with the angel investing. Let's start

[00:05:25] Sean Tepper: investing like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger value investing.

[00:05:29] Scott Maderer: And I knew that these guys were able

[00:05:31] Sean Tepper: to beat the market. In fact, Warren Buffett has said that if he was managing a million dollars, even 10 million, he could make 50 percent per year. And I knew this is not a gambling man. This man does not use emotions or feelings, which tells me there's some sort of a logic he's starting with.

[00:05:47] The question is, what is the logic? So I started going down the YouTube rabbit hole read as many books

[00:05:53] Scott Maderer: as I could on investing in the stock market.

[00:05:55] Sean Tepper: Needless to say, there's a lot of noise and fluff and bad advice out there.

[00:05:59] Scott Maderer: [00:06:00] However, with a little help from him, Charlie Munger, and even a guy by the name of Phil Towne I was able to put together

[00:06:06] Sean Tepper: some calculations into an Excel sheet.

[00:06:09] A project manager's best friend is pretty

[00:06:10] Scott Maderer: much Excel. So I've been using Excel for long enough. And I said let's do this. Let's try to get some bigger returns. Phil Town teaches you should be making 15 percent or more in the markets. And if you do invest in the S& P

[00:06:23] Sean Tepper: 500, you can get about 6

[00:06:25] Scott Maderer: to 8 percent per year after inflation.

[00:06:28] So you should definitely

[00:06:29] Sean Tepper: be beating the market. If you're managing your own investments. I'm like challenge accepted. Let's do this.

[00:06:36] Scott Maderer: So my first year, 2016, I made 15%. Next year was 16%. Then I realized investing in individual stocks is the way to go. If you really want to accelerate your wealth building process.

[00:06:49] So I sold my ETFs, which are essentially just a bundle of stocks. And that third year, I made 80%.

[00:06:54] Sean Tepper: And I was like, Here we go.

[00:06:57] Scott Maderer: So I use this Excel sheet for about four years, brought me to [00:07:00] 2019. And at that moment,

[00:07:01] Sean Tepper: I started sharing it with some

[00:07:03] Scott Maderer: people, some retail investors, regular guys like you and I, as well as

[00:07:07] Sean Tepper: some institutions.

[00:07:08] And everybody was like, Hey, you should consider turning this into a software to share with others. So it's 10 years later, I've got my SAS idea, overnight idea come to

[00:07:20] Scott Maderer: life. So It took about a year to build the first version of Ticker. We went live in

[00:07:25] Sean Tepper: 2020. It took about six months to get the first paying customer.

[00:07:29] Very humbling experience, but

[00:07:30] Scott Maderer: I, I set those expectations. I've been building software long enough. What you want to do when you launch a software, you want to get a bunch of people on for free. So my goal was bring out a hundred people. And the idea is to get feedback. but really

[00:07:43] Sean Tepper: fast feedback. What is wrong with the tool?

[00:07:45] I don't know what's, I don't care what you say what is right. I want to know what's wrong so

[00:07:50] Scott Maderer: we can make it better and just iterate from there. Fast forward to today. We're live a little over three years. We have a little over 8, 000 [00:08:00] customers in about 50 countries, and we're really proud of this.

[00:08:03] Our Trustpilot score is a 4. 9 out of 5. I always say that. So if I ever talk about Ticker

[00:08:08] Sean Tepper: or say anything, don't take my word for it. I always say don't listen to me. Go see what our customers have to say. You can go from there. And real quick here

[00:08:17] Scott Maderer: Ticker is a screener and educational platform.

[00:08:21] Sean Tepper: It's not a broker.

[00:08:22] Scott Maderer: And what that means is

[00:08:23] Sean Tepper: if you want to know Hey, is Tesla a good stock or is Apple a good stock? Or how do I find some good stocks?

[00:08:29] Scott Maderer: And at the same time, learn how to

[00:08:31] Sean Tepper: invest such as when do I buy? When do I sell? How do I reduce risk? Or

[00:08:35] Scott Maderer: how do I even invest my first hundred dollars?

[00:08:38] Sean Tepper: We help you with all of the

[00:08:40] Scott Maderer: That's our platform. A broker for context is

[00:08:43] Sean Tepper: like Think of TD Ameritrade, which isn't what I use, or E Trade Robinhood. That's where you connect your bank account and you can actually make trades. So our tool is like the complementary system you want along the way. It's more

[00:08:55] Scott Maderer: the education system for what you would [00:09:00] go.

[00:09:00] and buy or sell. Yeah, you, actual buyer or

[00:09:04] Sean Tepper: seller piece. Yeah.

[00:09:05] Scott Maderer: I phrased it as like your broker is your car and ticker is the gasoline. You

[00:09:10] Sean Tepper: need, you need gas to move the car forward. So you do need ticker. Yeah.

[00:09:16] Scott Maderer: So let's talk a little bit to on the show, I talk a lot about faith and how our faith journey affects our business journey or our life journey.

[00:09:27] How has your faith journey intersected with. This journey of Inventing and finding and going into the investing world as an educator however, those overlapped. Yeah. So

[00:09:41] Sean Tepper: I'm really sensitive to

[00:09:42] Scott Maderer: there's, and you probably see the space too, especially on YouTube. I've got a

[00:09:46] Sean Tepper: YouTube channel

[00:09:46] Scott Maderer: And a podcast, and there's a lot of

[00:09:49] Sean Tepper: people looking for the quick buck.

[00:09:50] And then this, a lot of this

[00:09:52] Scott Maderer: Especially the

[00:09:54] Sean Tepper: younger generations, I'm over 40 now guys in their twenties, even girls standing in front of [00:10:00] that new. fancy car, a rented private jet and look at me and there's this name society. And I'm like, no I don't want to do any of that.

[00:10:09] And I, I don't want people thinking this is a get rich quick scheme. This is very much. It's a compound interest game, which can take a few years to get the ball moving. But after about five, 10 years, you see some big results. So I, when I created ticker,

[00:10:24] Scott Maderer: I said, I want to.

[00:10:25] Sean Tepper: Use biblical principles and I don't want to deviate from that.

[00:10:29] So investing money wisely, saving money, wisely, not taking risks, not gambling. People come to us, we have crypto in our platform, but it's a marketing play to bring the crypto traders into ticker and then open their eyes to value investing to try it and true it wealth, not a bait and switch completely, but an ethical way to say, Hey, we noticed you like this, but you probably want to do this.

[00:10:53] So using. biblical principles. of managing money is the foundation of ticker. And there's [00:11:00] some people that see that, which is cool within ticker. And some people are like, Hey, what you're teaching doesn't make sense. And I'm like it's in the Bible. So that's the

[00:11:08] Scott Maderer: source. So why did you approach it with that idea of biblical principles?

[00:11:14] What made you decide to put that into the product? I'm

[00:11:20] Sean Tepper: a

[00:11:20] Scott Maderer: little bit about me is I've been a Christian for probably since I was 16 is when I really

[00:11:26] Sean Tepper: committed but I will have to say most of my life is more lukewarm and it was like one foot in one foot out and the reason really comes down to one word which is impatience and I would not wait on God's timing I'm like and I'm a highly motivated driven person when I want something done I move with the purpose.

[00:11:44] Let's get this done. We're not wasting time. And in that, unfortunately, has not worked out very well for me. I haven't made big mistakes, but I haven't made big progress because I want to do things on my time. So when I started ticker it was [00:12:00] a shift because I've had business failures in the past.

[00:12:03] Aside that first service business wasn't a big success. It was a success in learning, but I've had other tech businesses I was involved with and they were complete

[00:12:11] Scott Maderer: failures. I didn't lose a house or

[00:12:14] Sean Tepper: anything like that, but I mitigated my risk, but I'm like, I'm not making progress here, but I'm, I was consistently moving forward on my

[00:12:20] Scott Maderer: time and not God's timing.

[00:12:21] So I

[00:12:22] Sean Tepper: said ticker. I bootstrapped the business. I actually remained a full time employee for over 3 years at another company and kind of built ticker on the

[00:12:31] Scott Maderer: side.

[00:12:33] Sean Tepper: And I'm like. Yeah. I'm building this, but I'm going to do it on your time in God, like this. I'm in it to serve you. And I want to make this a big thing, but I got to trust you and stop relying on just me.

[00:12:47] Scott Maderer: So your view changed when you came to it late and some of that often is maturity to just growing up and learning. Oh, wow. I could beat my head against this [00:13:00] wall a lot. And all I do is get a sore head.

[00:13:04] Sean Tepper: Yeah, that, that's the story. That's my story. You talked a little bit earlier, you mentioned that people talk about gambling or invest use that term.

[00:13:15] Scott Maderer: And then also The idea of trading and you hear a lot about day trading is a get rich quick that's how you can really make the big money and all of that. What's in your mind, what's the difference between trading and value investing, investing in general gambling that whole ball of wax that I think a lot of times we.

[00:13:38] Tie it together and say it's all the same thing when it's not.

[00:13:42] Sean Tepper: No, it's not. So when people join you get a new email every day with tips and you can skip all the emails, you can read them and all one go on our free site. Ticker. com is it's got a blog.

[00:13:53] Scott Maderer: It's there's the platform ticker.

[00:13:55] And then there's a site you

[00:13:56] Sean Tepper: read through. But one of the tips is the difference between investing and trading. [00:14:00] There's six major differences is

[00:14:01] Scott Maderer: number one is. Get this, 99 percent of traders lose money.

[00:14:06] Sean Tepper: And the reason is they're entering and exiting the market. And timing the market is nearly impossible.

[00:14:12] It's time in the market, not timing the market.

[00:14:16] Scott Maderer: That's the critical difference

[00:14:17] Sean Tepper: there. So we're all about investing, buying, and then buying more. Whereas traders are trying to time, enter, and 99 percent lose money. Trading another thing here. I won't give you all six. I'll just give you three. Number two would be trading is a job because you are trading your time for a paycheck.

[00:14:36] Whereas investing you flip that equation and you make money work for you. And that's biblical. You want money working for you. So traders and I've

[00:14:46] Scott Maderer: had plenty on my podcast. The ones that are successful because there's multiple ways that you do

[00:14:51] Sean Tepper: crypto

[00:14:51] Scott Maderer: trading, stock trading,

[00:14:52] Sean Tepper: options trading. 4x, which is foreign exchange.

[00:14:55] The only traders that can make money, very little money, but the ones that [00:15:00] can, and this is very rare, they're trading currencies across the globe, but they're usually working, get this, it can be 12 to 16 hours a day because you have to be up over multiple time zones from Asia to Europe to the United States.

[00:15:15] And I know guys, they'll go full week with hours, and they'll make zero dollars. I'm like, Why are you doing this? It's it's a rush when you make some money. Mike, that feels like gambling. The third reason this blows people away. There are about 3000 billionaires on the planet, give or take.

[00:15:33] And of those 3000 billionaires, I have a question here for you. How many of those do you think are traders? And how many of those do you think are investors? Take a guess.

[00:15:41] Scott Maderer: I would argue that probably All of them are investors at some level. Whether that's buying businesses or whether that's investing in businesses or whether that's stock investing again, there's different kinds of investing real estate whatever, there are probably all investors at some level.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Sean Tepper: You are correct. There are zero. Billionaire traders and of the 3000 billionaires out there, it's a mix between, and you pretty much nailed it. It's a mix between in entrepreneurs and investors. And with the investors it's

[00:16:13] Scott Maderer: either stock investors in the stock market

[00:16:15] Sean Tepper: or real estate investors. Bingo, you nailed it,

[00:16:19] And

[00:16:19] Scott Maderer: a lot of times too, I've, I like what I've shown people or noticed with people is the people that are attracted to investing in the stock market. From a personality perspective, aren't necessarily the same people that are going to be successful in like real estate investing. And in other words they both want to invest.

[00:16:39] It takes a different kind of person to do it one way versus the other in terms of how you think about the world and what you want to, what you want to spend your energy on and think about, and that kind of thing. Yeah, totally. Like real estate is, and I have talked about this in videos,

[00:16:54] Sean Tepper: and I've had real estate investors in the podcast.

[00:16:57] If you compare

[00:16:58] Scott Maderer: the two, you can actually build your [00:17:00] wealth faster

[00:17:01] Sean Tepper: with stock investing because the appreciation of a business is faster than appreciation of a property. For example you're not going to buy a home for 250, 000 and it will be valued at 500, 000 the next year, 750, 000 the next year. a million.

[00:17:17] Then it doesn't work like that with real

[00:17:18] Scott Maderer: estate, but

[00:17:19] Sean Tepper: with stocks that can very much happen because of the profitability of a company can grow so fast. However, real estate investing is the better play if you want passive

[00:17:28] Scott Maderer: income, but talking to a lot of. Real estate investors and I had on my podcast, the average

[00:17:35] Sean Tepper: timeline to quit your day job, if you will, is about 10 years.

[00:17:40] You got, you get your first property, then you use that to get a second property, then use that to get 4, then 8. And that takes a long time, but you can build a sizable portfolio where the passive income from renters is outpacing your previous salary and you can quit your day job. But cause people want to get into real estate investing and quit their day [00:18:00] job in two years.

[00:18:00] It's no, it doesn't work that way.

[00:18:04] Scott Maderer: And again, I think to point out the gambling idea. A lot of what it sounds like is coming up is, whatever form of, whether it's day trading, whether it's going to Las Vegas and putting 50 on, on, on black on roulette or whatever that gambling mindset is that get rich quick mindset where investing, whether it's real estate, whether it's stock, whether it's whatever is more of the no.

[00:18:34] Come up with the pattern that you're going to use. Do it consistently. Do it over time. Sometimes it's gonna sometimes it's gonna go up. Sometimes it's gonna go down. It's okay. I'm not worried about that because I'm in for the long game. I'm not slow and steady wins the race kind of mindset.

[00:18:52] It is. I got a fun. I'll keep this short,

[00:18:55] Sean Tepper: but this is a really fun story. I think you'll appreciate. So in our education, we talk about a [00:19:00] case study a guy by the name of Ronald Reed. You can Google this guy. He's got a great article on CNBC. But this is a guy who's a janitor who was able to build up a portfolio of 8 million.

[00:19:10] The question is, how does somebody who's making minimum wage become a multi millionaire? The answer you buy individual stocks, focused

[00:19:19] Scott Maderer: portfolio, about 10 stocks, and

[00:19:21] Sean Tepper: you keep buying every month. Do not skip a month. It's the discipline, the man, like you have to pay your energy bill every month, your cell phone bill.

[00:19:29] If you have a mortgage, you can't skip a month. You get a treat investing. the same way. And he did that over two or three decades, minimum wage, 8 million. And that's what I tell all of our customers. This shows that you, if you keep buying every month, doesn't matter what your income is. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room.

[00:19:48] You don't have to be a math genius. You just need the discipline to keep investing every month. And you can be in a really fantastic position. And you've got to be even there. [00:20:00] Like you mentioned, he, it's not like he put all of his money in one company either.

[00:20:05] Yes.

[00:20:08] Scott Maderer: He, you kn the Enron stories, right?

[00:20:11] that had all their money

[00:20:16] You lost everything because he had the discipline to spread it around and do some other things. So when you think about people that are attracted to this idea of investing or value investing some people there's some people want to go out there and learn it and begin to do it themselves and all of that.

[00:20:44] Other people may hear all of this and go, okay, this just sounds another job or too much work or I'm not, I just don't want to put the time and energy into that. When you see the folks that are attracted to this versus folks that [00:21:00] maybe for whatever reason, this isn't the right thing for you.

[00:21:03] There, there might be a reason why you know, that, that isn't the right approach for them. What are some of the commonalities that you see in the folks that are successful that. This is a good idea for him versus maybe somebody that it's like, Hey, wait a minute. You're looking for the wrong thing here.

[00:21:21] Sure. Yeah. So to take a step back, I just want to talk about, there's really four different types of assets, main assets you can invest in. You can go into stocks, you can go into ETFs. index funds or mutual funds. And I would put ETFs, index funds, and

[00:21:36] Sean Tepper: mutual funds in their own category, which would be wealth protection.

[00:21:40] Now you can do that on your own or you can go through financial planner,

[00:21:44] Scott Maderer: but financial protection is for somebody who is their,

[00:21:48] Sean Tepper: they're nearing retirement or financial independence. Maybe they sold a business, maybe they sold real estate, or maybe they inherited capital from a loved one that recently passed away.

[00:21:58] Then definitely put it into those [00:22:00] bundled products. Now, we do have a lot of

[00:22:03] Scott Maderer: people in our audience, and there are statistics I could share here,

[00:22:06] Sean Tepper: on people who are still working and they have a timeline to achieve retirement, but get

[00:22:10] Scott Maderer: this, most people are behind the eight ball in fact, Gen X is, I was looking at statistics yesterday, actually, 57 percent of Gen X

[00:22:21] Sean Tepper: probably won't be able to retire.

[00:22:22] They don't have enough money and it's 50 percent of millennials and it's 35 percent they're already projecting of Gen Z and Gen Z being like we're talking 11 to 24 years old or something.

[00:22:35] Scott Maderer: People are behind the eight ball and what are their

[00:22:38] Sean Tepper: options? So what are they? You can get a second job.

[00:22:41] You can get a third job. You can work yourself to death, which the Bible says you should not be doing, right? So you can't do that. You can, but you're going to hurt yourself. So how do you figure out how to make money work for you? The easiest way, and this is what a lot of our people in our community, because 80 percent of our customers are complete beginners.[00:23:00]

[00:23:00] They've never invested before. They want to figure out how do they make money

[00:23:03] Scott Maderer: work for them. And fortunately, the stock market

[00:23:05] Sean Tepper: these days, Signing up for broker is free, TD Ameritrade is what I use is free. Robinhood is free. E Trade. And when you make trades, that's even low cost or free. So it's really low barrier to entry.

[00:23:18] You need an internet connection. So either your phone or your computer or Wi Fi. And then you should, you don't need, but you should probably use a tool like Ticker to help make sure you're on the right path. And I tell you what, barrier to entry has never been an option. lower to get in, start making money work for you.

[00:23:35] So to create the commonalities, people want to, they want, and this is I'll use this. This is a phrase that a lot of people resonate with. They want confidence, sure, making money and building wealth and retiring. That's all cute, right? But the number 1 word our audience gravitates for. Or two is confidence.

[00:23:56] They want the confidence to know they're making the right

[00:23:58] Scott Maderer: choices. They're in the [00:24:00] right businesses and they're not

[00:24:01] Sean Tepper: in the wrong businesses and they can truly, I say this, they can rest their head on their pillow at night knowing they're making the right decisions and our audience because they know they can speed up their timeline.

[00:24:15] Scott Maderer: And I would say that a lot of that, you, what you just pointed out is what I was digging for a little bit is whether it's using a tool like ticker or whether it's going out and becoming self educated and reading all the books and doing all of that. And there's a little bit of a no matter how you're going to do it you're making tradeoffs between different decisions, right? In terms of if you want to put all the time and energy into educating yourself. That's one decision, and that's one cost. And then you can do that if you want to use a tool like ticker, it's a different cost.

[00:24:54] Not, yeah. Not a tremendous one, but there's a cost there. Yeah. And you still have to put some time and energy into [00:25:00] making in other words, it's all well and good to buy a tool like ticker if you then just read it and don't do anything. Yeah, okay. It hasn't done you any good then that you've actually got to be the kind of person that's going to execute on it and follow through and do that.

[00:25:15] Do that work. The quote, index funds and that kind of thing. The advantage to them is if you did it, it's kind of fire and forget it's there. The disadvantage to it is, it's not going to be as high of a yield over those length of time as you can do with more active kinds of processes.

[00:25:39] If, but again, the risk, like you mentioned, the day trader risk is the other end, which is you're not willing to put in the time and energy and work to do it right. Then you're all the way at the other end. And so there's, I think and my reason for pointing that out is. Not saying Ticker's not the right product, but saying that even there you, [00:26:00] as an individual, you've got to own something here and put in some time and energy and effort and work.

[00:26:07] Now there's tools like Ticker that could lower that barrier, but you've still got to actually execute. Because I think one of the biggest risks that a lot of people face is they think to themselves, Oh yeah, I need to invest. That's it. That's as far as they get, they talk about it. Yeah. They mentioned in their head that they need to do it, but they never actually execute.

[00:26:27] And I don't care what tool you have. That's that's not going to, that's not going to help you either. If that makes sense in the long run. And have you seen that with folks that it sounds like for a lot of folks, what they're getting out of ticker is that, that education, that confidence, that ability to say, okay.

[00:26:48] Now I'm going to go execute and pull the trigger as opposed to that doubtful feeling of I, since I don't really know what to do, I'm going to, I'm going to end up doing nothing. [00:27:00] Yeah. With Ticker we try to

[00:27:03] Sean Tepper: really get you started with baby steps and really that key word is confidence.

[00:27:08] Scott Maderer: It's not making money. That's great. We'll get you there. Confidence. And I always use the metaphor.

[00:27:14] Sean Tepper: It's like you're a little kid jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool. Like the first time, it's terrifying. Am I going to drown? Is this the last of my days? But after you do it once you realize, Hey that's not too bad.

[00:27:26] Scott Maderer: The same thing as buying your first stock on your own. Like that first

[00:27:30] Sean Tepper: stock is Oh my gosh, am I going to make money? Am I going to lose money? No, we try to put you in the right frame of work with our education, which is really streamlined, getting you up to speed. You can get up to speed and. a matter of hours, if you really wanted, if not less, the tool really guides you, but

[00:27:44] Scott Maderer: it's get that first stock, start small, start with between a hundred and a thousand dollars,

[00:27:49] Sean Tepper: and then go another month and then start adding a little more.

[00:27:52] And we tell our customers, try to invest between 15 and 30 percent of your income. If you can't do

[00:27:58] Scott Maderer: that much, that's okay. [00:28:00] Start

[00:28:00] Sean Tepper: small, but work your way up to that. So it's all about baby steps, but it goes back to Ronald Reed. Don't skip a month.

[00:28:08] Scott Maderer: And that's a problem we're solving on a big enterprise level

[00:28:12] Sean Tepper: is a lot of these brokers get people who join and they sit, they'll buy a stock and they'll sit three months, they'll sit six months, they'll sit, and the broker doesn't make money because they need transactions and the person investing doesn't build their wealth because they're not investing.

[00:28:26] While we are getting people, as we phrase, we get people off the bench and in the game. We want you investing every month. And so we do have a few brokers that are talking to us right now that if you can show us proof that your customers are making X amount of trades, then we want to partner up. So that's the big business play I'm looking at is how do we help two people at once, the investors and the brokers.

[00:28:51] Scott Maderer: So what are some of the biggest mistakes people make when they're looking to make money by investing what goes wrong? [00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Sean Tepper: S listening to their next door neighbor or their

[00:29:02] Scott Maderer: brother at Christmas or, you

[00:29:05] Sean Tepper: know, you should buy this stock. It's great. There's this new pharma stock that just went public last week.

[00:29:12] And they're talking about this going to the moon. Stop it. And I always, this is education as well in our onboarding. If anybody tells you to buy a stock. The last thing you should do is buy that stock. The first thing you should do is ask why and then sit back and listen to the response. And in most cases, they're not going to have a logical reason.

[00:29:29] So I like if I'm listening to a podcast or I read something, I always go check it and ticker to see. What those numbers look like. Is this a strong business or is this something I should run from? So I see a lot of number one. I see a lot of people listening to people. They probably shouldn't listen to and there's even people analysts on wall street that have 1

[00:29:51] Scott Maderer: or 2 years business experience and they're giving

[00:29:54] Sean Tepper: stock recommendations.

[00:29:55] It's like they have take their recommendations and comments with a grain of salt and go right [00:30:00] to the source. In my case, I use ticker. A second mistake

[00:30:03] Scott Maderer: is and I mentioned this earlier people. As soon as they buy their first

[00:30:07] Sean Tepper: stock, their next question, I can't kid you on this. Their next question is, all right, when do I sell it?

[00:30:12] That's not how you make money. It's buying and then buying more. It's not the buying and selling Motley Fool. I like those guys on Motley Fool. They got a good podcast. They call it, you want to be a net? buyer. You're always buying more than you're selling. So I tell people strap around, get this whole selling thing out of your head.

[00:30:29] You pick a great company and then you keep buying more. So I'd say those two it's the listening to somebody and then trying to buy and sell.

[00:30:37] Scott Maderer: Yeah. And again, that buy and sell. When people hear trading, that's immediately what they think. Yeah. That means it's in the name, right?

[00:30:49] Trading. I'm trading. I'm buying and selling it. It sounds like that, but that's not what you're talking about. When you talk about value investing through trading, [00:31:00] it's effectively, it's almost setting up your own mini little mutual fund of the companies that you've invested. that You've done research on that that you've found are probably worthy investments to the to the best of your educated knowledge. Cause it's even quote unquote, the professionals don't get it perfect a hundred percent of the time. Nobody does it's even if you're going to a financial advisor, they do not get it right. A hundred percent of the time that is not. Yeah. And to speak to that. And we tell our audiences to a financial advisor, a wealth manager's job is not

[00:31:38] Sean Tepper: to build your wealth.

[00:31:40] It's to protect it. And I've had multiple advisors on my

[00:31:43] Scott Maderer: podcast and they 100 percent agree

[00:31:44] Sean Tepper: with that. The reason is, number one, they have to be a fiduciary. They have to protect your wealth in the first place. That's their

[00:31:50] Scott Maderer: job.

[00:31:50] Sean Tepper: That's what their certifications teach. Number two, one advisor,

[00:31:55] Scott Maderer: they need a lot of clients to make money

[00:31:58] Sean Tepper: because they are, they pay or [00:32:00] they charge an AUM, assets under management.

[00:32:02] And when you have 30, Maybe 100, 150. You can't be making individual trades for each customer. You would, I know people, I'll tell you this. I know people that have tried to do that and they're working 16, 17 hours a day. It is insane. However, when you and I manage our own businesses, we're not managing other people's portfolios.

[00:32:22] We don't have 5, 10, 15, whatever. It's just our, so we. can build their own wealth. We are responsible for that. Yeah. So when I frame it that way, people are like, Oh yeah, it makes sense. Like advisors will protect your wealth, which is good but if you want to build your wealth, it's kind

[00:32:38] Scott Maderer: of like you are responsible

[00:32:40] Sean Tepper: for writing your resume and going to the job interview.

[00:32:43] Somebody isn't going to do that. for you. If you want a different job, you want to get paid more. You have to do the work. Same thing with investing. You have to pick the stocks. You can't just hand it to somebody and be like, you make me rich.

[00:32:55] Scott Maderer: It doesn't work that way. And going back to the beginning of your story with the [00:33:00] wanted to start a SAS business, had an agency did all of those other things.

[00:33:05] There is a way to making wealth through building a successful business. People do it all the time, but again, that takes a certain kind of effort and energy and investment and time and knowledge and everything else that is a completely different again, it's a different person that wants to do that. There are a lot of folks listening to this podcast that want to have their own business and that's what they want to do. There are other people that. The thought of trying to run your own business is terrifying. And it's then don't go start a business. That's not just I tell people with real estate investing the same way.

[00:33:48] Some people hear real estate investing and they're like, Oh, that's exciting. Other people are like, I don't want to be a landlord. then Don't be a landlord. There's other ways to grow wealth. You don't have to do it all the same way, just [00:34:00] because you heard just because your next door neighbor made their money that way doesn't mean that's what you need to do.

[00:34:06] Exactly. Yeah. I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there, is there anything else about Ticker or about your work that, that you think is important to share with the lister? I'd say, if anybody's thinking about maybe I should try this thing on my own ticker is, I know this is more of the sign off at the end, but it's like, Hey, it's we got a free trial with no credit card.

[00:34:29] Give it a test drive. It's like going to

[00:34:30] Sean Tepper: the, you go into the car dealer. You want to give a test drive of a car if it's for you. Great. If not go your own way. So it's our philosophy is the same. It's pretty low pressure. You want to give it a test drive and we totally welcome you to and start small.

[00:34:43] Okay. Cool. It's all about confidence. 100 bucks in, first stock or two, and then get warmed up from there.

[00:34:50] Scott Maderer: Awesome. My brand is Inspired Stewardship. I run things through that lens of stewardship. And yet, that's one of those words that I've [00:35:00] discovered means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

[00:35:02] When you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:35:07] Sean Tepper: Managing God's wealth because we have to

[00:35:10] Scott Maderer: run. And this is one thing I had to train myself. It's

[00:35:13] Sean Tepper: not my money. It's his money. So what am I doing with it to make a impact for his kingdom? As opposed to what am I going to do with it to benefit me?

[00:35:24] So those are my thoughts on stewardship.

[00:35:28] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. If I invented this magic machine and I plucked you from where you are today and transported you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind.

[00:35:51] What impact do you hope

[00:35:51] Sean Tepper: you've left on the world?

[00:35:54] Scott Maderer: Give people financial peace of

[00:35:57] Sean Tepper: mind. They're putting themselves

[00:35:58] Scott Maderer: back on track. There's [00:36:00] a lot of, I mentioned the statistics. I won't go into them here because I'll make this short and sweet, but there's a lot of people that are struggling

[00:36:07] Sean Tepper: financially and they're in pain.

[00:36:08] There's relationships that are

[00:36:11] Scott Maderer: really tarnished. Now you and I talked offline. I can't wait to

[00:36:14] Sean Tepper: have you on my podcast to hear your story, but there's a lot of people struggling financially. If I can solve that problem. Give people peace of mind. They can put their heads on their pillow at night with that peace of mind.

[00:36:26] They're doing the right thing. They're on the right track and money's working for them. That's a huge win.

[00:36:33] Scott Maderer: So what's coming next? What's on the roadmap in the new year?

[00:36:37] Sean Tepper: Oh, January mobile app tickers a web app right now, but the mobile app is the big one. And then thereafter, hopefully secure some partnerships with some brokers and help their

[00:36:47] Scott Maderer: customers get on track, increase their confidence.

[00:36:51] So that's the very near

[00:36:53] Sean Tepper: term 2024 game plan.

[00:36:57] Scott Maderer: Awesome. [00:37:00] So you can find out more about Sean Tipper over at his site at Ticker. com. That's T Y K R. com. And of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Sean, anything else you'd like to share with the listener? You want to check out

[00:37:14] Sean Tepper: ticker T Y K R dot

[00:37:15] Scott Maderer: com, or you can check out the podcast payback

[00:37:18] Sean Tepper: time, which is alluded to it, but it's about a little more than stocks.

[00:37:22] I do talk about real estate

[00:37:23] Scott Maderer: investing, or I bring guests on that. Talk about real estate investing or building businesses could be an e commerce business, a SAS business, a service business. For example, I brought on a guy

[00:37:34] Sean Tepper: talked about building wealth with, Laundromats. That was a fun episode. So big diversification there.

[00:37:40] So if you're looking for like business ideas you could get into, I do recommend people to check out Payback Time.

[00:37:46] Scott Maderer: Awesome. I'll put a link to that over in the show notes as well, so folks can find it and check it out. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you so much, Scott. It's great.[00:38:00]

[00:38:05] All right. Ready? All right. I'm Sean Tepper. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop

[00:38:14] Sean Tepper: your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talents and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to educate yourself on the real power of understanding the real power of stock.

[00:38:26] Did I read that right?

[00:38:27] Scott Maderer: No I wrote it wrong. That's what happened. Yeah, rephrase it. Basically we can re

[00:38:44] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. [00:39:00] If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor, go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:39:07] com slash iTunes rate. All one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures, develop your influence, and impact the world.

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