Why the academy is called “From Trader to Entrepreneur”
Most of the IBs I work with came from trading. They traded, they had people around them asking questions, and at some point someone told them they could get paid for that. That's how almost everyone starts, and there's nothing wrong with it. The problem is what they bring with them: a trader's head is good for trading and gets in the way of building a business. That's why the academy is called From Trader to Entrepreneur.
Two ways of looking at the same month
A trader lives inside the trade. Open, close, win or lose, and every day starts from zero. It's a way of thinking that fits what they do perfectly: one decision, one result, next.
An IB who thinks that way lives the business the same way: one deposit, one commission, next. And when the month goes well they celebrate it like a winning trade, and when it goes badly they explain it as a streak. They go client by client, depend on their own hours and start each month from zero.
An entrepreneur looks at the same month and doesn't see a trade. They see a system that produced a result, and they ask which part of the system produced it. The trader's question is what happened. The entrepreneur's is what made it happen.
The two mindsets
In the academy, the last stage opens with exactly this, because the shift isn't one of technique but of identity. I sum it up in a sentence I repeat a lot: amateurs chase clients, professionals build their company.
Chasing clients is running after the next deposit. Building a company is looking after the portfolio that already exists, the systems that hold it up and the numbers that explain it. The first feels productive every day. The second is what's still standing a year from now.
I've already written two examples of how that difference looks in practice: what each one does with a good month, and what each one does when the broker says no.
Why “trader” is a verb and “entrepreneur” is an identity
Nobody is a trader while they sleep. It's something you do: when you're not trading, you aren't one. That's why a trader measures the day by what they did.
An entrepreneur is one even when they're not working, because what they built keeps running without them. They measure the business by what it produces, not by what they produced today. That's the leap that gives the academy its name: to stop being what you do and start being what you build.
It's not a leap in income. There are IBs who earn little and already think like entrepreneurs, and others who earn a lot and are still traders with clients. The difference is in where they look, not in how much comes in.
Why the name points to the end
I could have named the academy after what it teaches: acquisition, retention, systems. But those are tools, and a tool in the hands of someone who thinks like a trader gets used like one more trade: tried for a week and dropped if it didn't “pay”.
That's why the name points to the destination and not the path. The five stages are the path. The destination is to stop chasing clients and have something of your own that's still standing even when a month goes badly.
A test for this week
Take the list of what you did for your business yesterday: who you messaged, what you posted, what you spent time on. Mark each item with a T or an E: T if you did it thinking about today and this deposit, E if thinking about this year and this portfolio. Count. That ratio is your starting point; next week, turn just one T into an E.
You don't need to like the answer. You need to see it, because a mindset doesn't change all at once: it changes one decision at a time, and this is the first.
On why I built the academy and what I saw for years before doing it, I wrote here: Why I founded the first academy for IBs in Latin America.
Thinking like an entrepreneur: Stage 5 of the academy
In IB ACADEMY, Stage 5 is called The Professional Company and starts exactly here: the two mindsets —the one that burns the IB out and the one that builds—, the value of a client over time, the owner's week, and what you can do as a company that a lone IB can't. It's the last leap, and it's the one that gives its name to everything else.
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I work with the IBs in our network so their community grows with a system, not with improvisation: attract, support, retain and organise a portfolio. Here I write about that work, with no income promises.