My Journey From Being A Food Technologist To Starting My Own Forex Trading Business

Published: July 15th, 2022
Lin Simon
Founder, LS Trading and Marketing
$1.2K
revenue/mo
1
Founders
5
Employees
LS Trading and Ma...
instagram.com/tradingwithlins
from Walvis Bay, Namibia
started October 2019
$1,200
revenue/mo
1
Founders
5
Employees
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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

I am Lin (Linekela) Simon, owner, and founder of LS Trading and Marketing. My Company provides free foreign exchange lessons and guidance to potential Forex traders while providing free market analysis to ensure consistent profitability for our network.

I also host a free affiliate marketing course for forex traders & marketers who want to grow an affiliate marketing business in the foreign exchange market.

I have directly and indirectly worked with around 950 forex traders, which brings us, on average, a monthly income of $1,200.

This figure doesn’t include income from the company trading accounts.

ls-trading-firm

ls-trading-firm

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I am a qualified Food Technologist, and I have been working in the food manufacturing industry for the past 16 years as a Quality Assurance Manager. A friend told me about Forex trading in 2012/2013 there, and I told her straight that it is not my thing.

I would never get it because I hate numbers and math. In 2017, my cousin Tuna called me to tell me about this Namibian guy who is making a lot of money from Forex and that he was hosting a seminar for 500N$.

She attended the seminar and told me about a broker offering free 30USD to trade. It was on a Saturday. I signed up for my trading account, downloaded MetaTrader 4 then I started placing a trade but it kept saying (the market is close), I couldn’t understand, and only later did I find out the market doesn’t work during the weekend. I realize that this forex trading thing is not as straightforward as I thought, so I spent months reading and using Google and Youtube.

I subscribed to a Telegram channel which is like a library of trading books. I had no social life, it was all work, home, and trading after hours. In 2017, I made the mistake of investing money too early and not spending enough time trading paper money and I blew my accounts a lot.

In 2018, I met a guy on Telegram who was selling trading software and he introduced me to a broker that was looking to establish its footprint in Africa and that is how I got into the affiliate side of the business. I worked with that Company, and their manager came to Namibia to open an office, and I recruited my best friend Helen to run the office as I still have a full-time job.

I later got out of that business and my friend took over because I wanted to focus on teaching and growing my Whatsapp group for free market analysis.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and developing your first product.

In 2019, I was introduced to a broker that had everything I have been looking for and that is when I started teaching more and guiding a lot of people in their trading.

Being a full-time employee, I needed a broker that offers instruments, so I can trade during the weekend and grow my income. When I started teaching and introducing people to forex trading, I was just doing it because I saw the potential of others to make extra income from it.

In 2020, the Affiliate Manager from their office called me and told me I am one of their top affiliate recruiters in Namibia and Africa, which was a shocker because I was just doing it to introduce others to a great opportunity. I decided to get a lot more serious with my affiliate marketing.

I started a free forex mentorship program for women. I took on 15 women for 3 months and spent 1 hour every week on each one of them. It took me another 2 years to realize that I have a profitable business that I am not managing properly.

In March 2022, I decided to calculate my 2021 profit from the affiliate part of my trading and it came to an average of 1,200USD monthly which is around 19,000 N$ monthly. This was a very huge shock and eye-opener because I was withdrawing my profits almost every 3rd day and I never really got to see the benefits of it.

I decided to brand my business and run a proper business and that is how LS Trading and Marketing was born. I opened an Instagram account for my business. I moved my business from Whatsapp to Telegram. I recruited 4 Senior Trading Analysts and a personal assistant.

All the services I give for free, when a trader uses my business link to open an account with our broker, I get a commission when they trade and I use that to run the business and pay my employees.

The reason, I chose the specific broker to build my business with is for soo many good reasons:

  1. Great Support
  2. They offer most trading instruments, Forex, Indices, Stock, Options, Cryptocurrencies, Binary options
  3. 24/7 trading on some of their unique indices

Trading is a higher risk market with higher returns that is why you must take care and guide your customers for them to be profitable when they are profitable they continue to trade and generate monthly income for themselves and your business continues to generate commission for sustainability.

Here’s a breakdown of the services I offer:

  1. Forex trading lessons, I host this once a week on Zoom. This is a very interactive session and I sometimes give homework and recommend what to read and make it a learning classroom as much as possible. Traders can ask questions, and get guidance on their strategies. I also teach about how one can become a consistently profitable trader.

  2. Affiliate Manager training: I host this once a week on Zoom: I teach traders how they can become affiliates in the market and guide them on how they can grow their business.

  3. Market Analysis (trading signals): I have 3 groups being run by 3 traders whereby anyone is free to join and benefits from the free analysis and trading signals being shared. This also caters to busy traders who don’t have time to spend on the charts so they are still able to partake in the market on a daily.

  4. Individual sessions: I host this on a need basis especially for beginners as they need more guidance. I host when a trader requests it.

  5. Mentorship and coaching: I am planning to be doing this on a 3-months basis. This will be for advanced traders who want to become profitable and it requires a real trading account. I will be starting the 2022 1st session on 1 June 2022.

Describe the process of launching the business.

I started seeing commission already the moment I signed up my first trader, as the commission is given daily and monthly, depending on if your customers are trading or not. I only realized that I have quite a several customers in 2020 when the broker got in touch with me to tell me about it.

Don’t focus on the number but focus on the value of your service.

I first started everything on WhatsApp and word of mouth. I owe a lot to my first followers who appreciated the free lessons I have been giving them and they kept sharing my affiliate link with their friends and families.

I financed everything from my salary. I remembered I used to host trading competitions with strict trading rules, to keep my traders engaged and also to instill the spirit of responsible trading.

At one stage I tried a paid signal group but I couldn’t keep it up because ‘FREE” just kept calling me and when you have a paid group you now have to make sure you don’t share too much on the free group to not upset your subscribers.

I have learned a lot of lessons:

  1. Spend time trading paper money. Challenge yourself to trade minimum lot sizes as much as possible, it helps to combat greed.
  2. I also learned to never start a business no matter how small without accounting for my profits.
  3. Respect your customers.
  4. Protect your customers. Don’t introduce your network to other traders at all, no matter how you know them. Some traders promise account management, they take administration fees from people and they end up blowing their trading account flat. People end -up losing a lot of money.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

What has worked for me is being authentic, humble, honest, and respecting people. Forex trading is being used by thousands of scammers and a lot of people are losing money daily. You need to position yourself in a way that people can see that you are a real person.

Don’t focus on the number but focus on the value of your service. I have hosted 1-hour zoom training with only 1 or 2 people and I give it the same energy I give to a session with 10 or more people.

It is true what they say, find what you love and make it work for you.

I tried Instagram Ads this year and I saw growth in my link clicks and conversion. I will keep doing it. I don’t have a hang of it yet but I see it can grow a business.

Offering market analysis also works in this industry, people want to trade but they don’t have the time to do analysis daily.

In the foreign exchange market, customers need to make a profit for them to keep trading, so you must keep that in mind.

ls-trading-firm

ls-trading-firm

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

In terms of support to my customers and network, I am doing better than before. Traders have an option of 3 groups being managed by traders with 3 different trading styles.

I focus more on giving signals for the instruments which are available for trading 24/7 so that people can focus on their work during the week and focus on their trading during the weekend.

My social media following is very low currently and I am hoping it will pick up as I get to manage the ads well I am also planning to hire an account manager to manage my Instagram account.

Currently, the Telegram groups have a combined following of around 220 traders.

I am planning to offer another free group in June/July 2022 which will offer market analysis specifically for currencies trading.

1st of June 2022, I will start with free coaching and mentorship on how to become a profitable trader.

The goal is to grow my affiliate earnings from 1,200 USD monthly to 5,000USD monthly.

I also want to start hosting a room in Club-house weekly before the end of October this year.

I want to engage more traders in Europe and Asia markets and encourage other women to get into foreign exchange businesses.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

It is true what they say, find what you love and make it work for you. I have worked with women as old as 50 years and they are currently trading on their own. It is never too late to start something.

Be humble and trust God. From the beginning of my trading, I ignored to nurture my habits as a good trader, which cost me money as a trader. I started trading in 2017 and only came to realize good profits from 2019, after going back to trade on demo for 3 months straight.

When an opportunity comes your way and it provides a risk-free trial, try it before you discard it. I could have started my trading already in 2013 if I could have given enough thought to and learned more.

I also neglected my affiliate business from the beginning and didn’t manage my profit from day 1, but now I know better and all my hard work keeps paying off day by day. Trading is a skill, keep learning to harness your skills.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

I couldn’t have grown my affiliate business without Whatsapp and Zoom.

Whatapp helped me to support my network and zoom with their screen-sharing tool just made it easier to teach traders from all over the world. I can share my charts live during sessions.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

  1. Traders (Sara, MeeDiina, Sylvia, Laina, Daniel, and many others) who have been with me since 2018, when I started teaching, always encourage me to believe in what I do and continue doing it. I love and respect them so much.

  2. The Candlestick Bible, may God bless the person who wrote that book. For every beginner trader that comes my way, this book is the first homework I give. It covers most if not all the candlestick patterns they will need in their trading.

  3. Babypips.com website. The best learning site for trading.

  4. I used to follow a trader named Andy on telegram. He is from Singapore. I learned a lot from him.

  5. My friend Fessy, taught me one of the most simple but effective strategies for technical analysis in 2020, which I still use to this day.

  6. Apart from the traders in my network, there is only one trader I follow currently, Mdu Maphanga from South Africa, the owner of MFT-Institution. He shares the same values I share when it comes to this business. He is in it to help people. He is a very very good trader.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

When an opportunity comes your way and it provides a risk-free trial, try it before you discard it. I could have started my trading already in 2013 if I could have given enough thought to and learned more because I thought I was required to put in money from the word go.

Find your unique way of standing out, especially when you are in a competitive market or a market that is an easier target for scammers.

I have a strange belief that there is always a simple and easier way of doing things. Every time I try something, I keep looking for that simple easier way and I won’t stop until I find it.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

I am working on growing my business and I might need to expand my team in the near future. Please get in touch if you are a trader.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!

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