Hi Piotr, what’s your background? What were you doing prior to opening a trading floor with Real Trading?
I am and always was an entrepreneur. This is one of not many wide enough categories to fit everything I did in my life prior trading floor adventure and during it. I was constantly opening new businesses and closing them while doing various markets trading in the meantime. I finished Silesian Technical University with Economics and Organization masters diploma but never worked on salary – I simply haven’t got enough time to sit in some job for 8 hours per day. This happens when you try to hold few different companies in your hand simultaneously.
When did you decide you wanted to own your own business? Describe the process you went through to determine which business opportunity to invest in.
I decided that I want my own business when I was 16 years old. This was the first time I’ve opened a company and started to earn money legally with taxes and such. Before that I did all kinds of crazy stuff like betting for cash or for toy cars in kindergarten. I’ve also run sales of bottle caps which had quite a value between kids back then. Since I remember I always were looking at the world from perspective of potential. If there was a slightest earning potential I was in and such behavior was defining my life up till 2005 and trading floor opening. By that time I managed to earn a masters diploma and publish 3 books which became a bestsellers of my publisher.
How did you first learn about the general concept? What did you find appealing about this type of business?
Trading markets were appealing since I first learn about forex market in late 90s. In normal business there is a number of things you need to take care of in order to earn profit. You have costs, workers, raw materials, production, sales, marketing, customer relations, guarantees, reclamations, suppliers and clients etc. A lot of things to tune up in a way for you to get some percentage of revenue as your profit. When you trade markets you have money as your worker, money is your production: its being supplied, turned around and made bigger – it seems like very simplified conventional business model yet beneath these simple truths it brings you endless diversity of opportunities.
How did you first hear about our opportunity? What attracted you to Real Trading?
I chatted once with a guy in Australia. He happened to have a friend in Netherlands who happen to look for contacts in Poland in order to open a trading floor. It took him a while to make me understand the concept of BP trading model but when I did I immediately saw practically unlimited potential of students/traders driven trading floor. I always liked teaching and I always liked trading so this became a perfect idea for me. Back in 2005 Real Trading, although under different brand, was the only option in my country, plus the business partner was a former trader from this company so the choice was obvious.
Describe the company’s sales process and your interaction prior to opening a trading floor.
First I went away to negotiate with the best internet provider which happened to be a supplier for universities in Poland also. In the process I gained a list of fiber nodes under my city and learned where office space rental would be reasonable. I learned also quite a lot about my city history, especially from its communistic times – it turned out that there were multiple institutes, mostly chemistry related, located in different parts of the city but connected with cables which… were belonging now to the ISP I mentioned above. After democracy and free market entered Poland most of these institutes were closed and the office space rented away so my job was only to pick one closest to the city center. It turned out that not only the place was one of cheapest it also had unused fiber node which was a reason of me getting it 90% cheaper than standard price of the operator. With secured location and line I found two investors (my friend and my father), brought Dutch guy in Poland and we started signing papers that finally led to me making the first trade few months later and then to my own graduation as a Real Trading trader.
How was the company’s training and pre-opening support. Was it a positive experience?
From what I know currently pre-opening support is much better experience than it was in 2005. Most importantly it is much faster and makes it possible to open a floor in matter of weeks not months. Technology also progressed and now currier carries just papers back and forth – in the past he was handling network hardware too. In matter of office opening support I can bet things progressed quite significantly in last few years.
What training guidance, programs & support were provided? Were they effective?
Basically our office was starting two times. First in 2005, then due to highly risky trading of the official owner it bankrupted in early 2006 when change in ownership happened also. I took over the office with students trained by me as well as with debts and liabilities towards investors , suppliers and such. I turned it into my idea of how it should look like. When this was happening I was invited to Toronto in order to get manager training. It was a fantastic experience although it didn’t bring much of a practical solutions. Most of things shared there I already figured out by myself while trying to put up our office to work in first couple of months. In 2011 I trained myself in professional teaching and business coaching, obtained relevant certificates and completely redone our operations. After managing my office in times of its troubles when we were digging ourselves up from debts hole with just a group of students, after bringing it to its peak performance (20+ traders and a large students group), fighting out wild competition and then witnessing its downfall back to cameral operations we are once again crawling up slowly with a group of loyal traders conducting our activities in a very different world than the one we started this business in. I think I was managing most of situations that can happen in conducting a trading floor business operation. We were graduating a lot of people, we also witnessed a long period without any graduation, but so far we always managed to get ourselves back in a saddle. Right now with new approach to trading, with new software and new approach to teaching students (and from few weeks also to teaching managers and office owners), we do start another exciting adventure that will lead us into the uncharted territories of stock trading endeavor.
