Success leaves clues Finance Strategists sat down with Rod Phim, founder of AltSignals. He discussed his thoughts on the past, present, and future of the company, as well as the insight he gained along the way. Q: Who are you and what’s your background? My name is Rod and I live in Scotland, UK. I am 24 years old. I have been active online making money for at least a decade now. I started AltSignals back in 2017 during the crazy Bull run. I'm sure some of you reading this will remember. My background before that was predominantly affiliate marketing, promoting and running dating websites, digital marketing, and other types of internet monetization. Academically, after leaving school slightly earlier than most, I ventured off to college and followed by attending University to study various subjects and degrees ranging from Computer Networking and Ethical Hacking (Ethical Hacking is a degree in Scotland believe it or not). I found myself uninterested in the University lifestyle. For me, it was becoming a waste of time, so I decided to leave and continue doing what I know best; making money online and growing my online business. Q: Who has been your biggest influence, and why did they have such a significant effect on you? Honestly, there have been too many to mention, being on the internet making money for such a long time, I have met thousands of people and gotten to know and learn from some incredibly smart and wealthy people. The thing about the internet and making money in general is that it brings people together. The older guys pass down their knowledge and experience to the younger guys. In this industry having the right connections and relationships is important, and taking time to talk and invest in those relationships is essential when you are young. If you meet the right people and become friends with them, life becomes easier and you become more knowledgeable. Something I have learnt over the years is that rich people hang out with rich people, or at the very least people who will give them value. Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself when you were in your twenties? I would have told myself to do more research about this industry and the people involved. Trading is almost like gambling; it's very outdated, full of lower quality people, and degenerate gamblers. Forex scams are rampant which overflow into the crypto world. Brokers are shady, manipulative and only care about their profits/shareholders. Something else about this business: 90% of traders lose regardless of what happens. The problem is the gambling mentality and emotions. Which makes it like a business even more difficult to help traders to become profitable. We see about 25% of our traders drop off after their first month with us which is fairly high but also reasonable considering the super high turnover rate in trading. Q: What is AltSignals? AltSignals is mostly a Crypto Trading Signals Provider. We initially set up just sending free Signals back in the Bull run when you could make 1000% in one trade like it was nothing. We started to see organic growth without any forms of marketing and quickly noticed there was a huge demand for Signals in this new and exciting space. Along with that, the current signal providers were of very low quality; poor formatting, no websites, hiding their losses, and blatantly scamming people. So as an affiliate marketing it was a no-brainer to jump into this space and take over. The majority of our customers are trading with leverage on places like Bitmex and Binance Futures. We have now branched out more towards automated trading, trading algorithms, custom Indicators, and Forex Signals. But primarily the majority of our customers still want Crypto Signals. Q: What makes your company different from its competitors? The main USP AltSignals has is brand trust in a business that is full of scammers and crooked people. Another is transparency. We have extensive verified track records of all our results. Not many signal groups have such a clean and consistent track record of their results. Along with that, good support and offering refunds to customers is another key thing AltSignals does differently compared to other competitors in the market. We never hide our loss either, in fact, I make sure to post our stop losses in our public channel so people can really see what's going on. Lastly, we stand out because of our honesty with customers. We don't try to scam them, unlike many competitors. Q: What led you to start AltSignals? In the beginning, I was just doing it to see if there was any interest. We were sending free Signals out to anyone that wanted them and started to grow quickly. The name we chose helped a lot too because of the strong keywords. This meant when people searched on Telegram for Alt or Signals our channel would appear organically which was very powerful and gave us a huge source of new users joining for free. Organic traffic is simply unbeatable, it's free, highly targeted, and runs 24/7. Another reason for starting was to help the industry, getting into something like crypto trading was new and exciting since Forex was primarily the trading people did and that seemed to have dominated the market for the last two decades. We had the opportunity to make a real difference and become market leaders for doing Signals. Q: What has the experience of building the business taught you? Building a highly profitable business while giving the customer good value and customer service is by no means easy, it took a lot of time, effort, and hard work. Being young I don't mind taking huge risks. In fact, it is something I enjoy. I have been building businesses before AltSignals so it wasn't too complicated. I and my partners are fairly tech-savvy and know my way around the internet. The best experience of building a business like AltSignals or any trading business is the types of people I meet. I can say I'm friends with people from all around the world and all walks of life, learning from people far richer and superior to me is something money cannot buy. Q: Where do you see things headed for you in the next 5 years? Without giving too much away, AltSignals will most likely run for many more years. But personally, I am slowly stepping away from the front end of this business and moving towards more quantitative and also based trading styles. Robots are truly the way to go when it comes to trading, especially with high volume. The stress of trading 100m with humans, for example, is just not worth it. Humans make mistakes and with a capital of that size, it can become a huge risk. Robots on the other hand can handle trading this sort of volume much easier. Selling Signals is fun, watching people grow and have success is very enjoyable to be a part of, but you won’t make serious money. The people you meet selling Signals though will help you get there. For more information, see https://altsignals.io/
Introduction
Who is Rod Phim?
True Tamplin is a published author, public speaker, CEO of UpDigital, and founder of Finance Strategists.
True is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance (CEPF®), author of The Handy Financial Ratios Guide, a member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, contributes to his financial education site, Finance Strategists, and has spoken to various financial communities such as the CFA Institute, as well as university students like his Alma mater, Biola University, where he received a bachelor of science in business and data analytics.
To learn more about True, visit his personal website or view his author profiles on Amazon, Nasdaq and Forbes.
