Making Trading Simple with Rosetta Bryson

Rosetta Bryson, the founder and CEO of Simple Trader Pro, the largest Black-owned financial technology company in America, delights in decoding what is often experienced by many people as an inaccessible system. Rosetta is leading the charge in expanding and diversifying the FinTech space, a field where few Black founders exist, and her simple tools show investors how to navigate landmines with confidence and ease.

“If you level the trading field, you level every field.” – Rosetta Bryson

Episode Highlights:

• Rosetta’s catalyst to her trade journey (How she founded Simple Trader Pro)
• How Simple Trader Pro helps people of color build wealth
• Simple Trader Pro’s Z School (A philanthropic enterprise on the mission to educate generation Z s on how to trade)
• How opportunities Simple Trader Pro is opening up to more people in the trading world are rippling out beyond Wall Street

Website:

Simple Trader Pro

Connect with Rosetta:

Twitter
Facebook
Youtube

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I’m Jaime Masters. And today on the show, we have Rosetta Bryson. She is the founder of Simple Trader Pro. You can check them out at SimpleTraderPro.com. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Jaime Masters:	I love your story and how you started because you’re, actually, a bishop it looked like. I was reading your story. You have such a diverse background I know. Can you tell me a little bit more?

Rosetta Bryson:	How far back do you want to go?

Jaime Masters:	Give me bits and pieces all the way through.

Rosetta Bryson:	I grew up in the Midwest, Kansas City, Missouri and ended up going to Washington, DC for school and ended up going to HBCU, Historical Black College and University in Washington, DC. Then, I got accepted to Emery in Atlanta. And I was going to Emery because Emery had the only program, which was dual law, which is as dual doctorate and a minister, MDIV. So, you could do both in three to five years. I was like let’s go. And when I got there, I had always been interested in business because I’m one of those students, unlike some of you, I had to put myself through school. So, we didn’t come from a rich family.

	There was no money.

Jaime Masters:	I know what that’s like exactly.

Rosetta Bryson:	I don’t know what they call it. There was no chest. There was none of that. I was a middle child of five. And I think they got through a couple of semesters with the oldest child and was like everybody else, you’re on your own. So, on my own. I ended up going to undergrad. I paid for it because I worked 40 hours and went to school 40 hours. I was just a typing temp. I did temp work. I temped 40 hours a week if you can believe. You can find a temp. But I had a good thing. I could type really quick and I was good at answering the phones. So,  [inaudible] [00:01:54] and whatever it was. 

	James and Morgenstern. I just had to memorize it. And I was very good but then, it gave me the business. I was like what are these businesses. So, every day, these people would come in in the morning and they would pick up their Wall Street Journals and blah, blah, blah. So, I just became acquainted with it. And then, I went to – I grew up in a house that was always a Christian household. And so, I’m not afraid to tell anybody, even as a CEO, I’m a believer. And I just thought that’s where my life was carrying me. I wasn’t sure. That’s why I did the juris doctorate and the Master in Divinity and see where it’s – anyway, I took the Master in Divinity. 

	I got the Master in Divinity and immediately went down that field. But there was something pulling me over here towards business. And the doors just opened up that way. So, I always call myself the accidental CEO.

Jaime Masters:	You are a seeker of knowledge. Law and ministry are very different. 

Rosetta Bryson:	What can I say? I didn’t know which way I wanted to go so let me just try – you never heard that? Something in your back pocket. As a woman, I never felt like I was going to be given the same access as men in ministry. They were just going to try to pigeon hole me. They were going to try to do such and such. And so, I felt like I needed something in my back pocket, which was law. And I ended up not going in that direction but ended up really focusing on the Master in Divinity, went back to DC, became over religious affairs for the city, which means working through the Mayor’s Office and the White House. 

	And after that, I ended up going back to Florida ordained a bishop. So, a real live bishop. But people call me bishop because it’s a move on the chess board in training. So, there we go.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, that’s a good point, too. I didn’t even know that. So, how did you get to Simple Trader Pro then?

Rosetta Bryson:	So, I tell this as my one de facto story. So, I went to an HBCU, which was just the University of District of Columbia, a small school back then. You had to go to a gym and register just in and out, blah, blah, blah. Plus, I was a student that put myself through school. So, I wasn’t around everybody all of the time. But then, I got accepted to Emery. My last year though, my last year of school, I was elected student government president, the talker I was. And so, I got to get through that, applied to Emery, got into Emery. But Emery is known of the Harvard of the south. So, I went on this campus and my mind was just blown.

	They had this gym that was bigger than our whole university and just a huge amount of Woodruff money just dripping in money. Pools, yachting, lacrosse. And there was no lacrosse where I was from and all of that. Get to this huge gym and I handed in my papers and I realized there were two lines. There was the lines where everybody was over there and their parents were taking them to school and they were in that line and they were buying the books and bam, Mastercard, Visa, American Express and just paid off and the kids were – we were always latch key kids. I was in the other line.

	And the other line I call the sign your life away line because you had to pay tuition, housing, books, everything before you ever took one class I was in debt. And I thought to myself I’m in the wrong line. How did I get in that line? How do I get out of that line? And how do I make sure everybody that I know never has to sit in this line? So, from there, I knew that I wanted to do business. And one of my friends, his father – “Oh, my father has his own hedge fund. Consider just dropping in or working for the summer. Consider it.” So, I worked for the summer. I was an intern. And it changed my life. So, sometimes you just invest in yourself enough to say I think they expected me to be gone after the first week.

	I was there every day. I met the CEO on his way in. Hey. So, he was always, “Let her in the room. Let her in the room. Let her hear. She wants to hear, too.” Because there just was no one like me. The change came when they let me learn the first year. The second year, I thought I knew. I went back and learned more. They liked me. You’ve got to be likable. And then, they would pull all of these young men in from, and I say men, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Brown, Yale, Wharton. Come in. Series 7 license and they couldn’t trade. And they would say, “Send them to Rosetta. Let her teach them how to trade.” And I was like what. 

	So, from there, it’s something nobody else wanted to do. But in the end, everybody wanted to know how I did it because I would say put everything out of your mind and learn it my way. And so, they asked me to come with them. And I said no because I was on a different trajectory. But then, they asked me, “Teach us what you teach them.” And I said no. I’m going to do it myself. That’s Simple Trader Pro. 

Jaime Masters:	So, were you always good at teaching people things like simplifying stuff or did you find that out then?

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, I think that I’m one of five kids. That’s the beauty of being one of five kids. You’ve got to fit in where you get in. And because I think there is something about having a little gritty background, little dirt under – you can work it whatever you can work it. I’m up here trying as a student to go to school, put myself through school. I didn’t ask anybody for money, no books. So, I had to be savvy. And I knew when to speak up and I knew when to be quiet. And so, having said that, my savvy is what I think and the grittiness, I think people can respect that. Just like we don’t have it all but I’m up here trying.

Jaime Masters:	Well, especially starting a business. When you technically have no business background, it is a whole new venture in itself. So, give me the short story of how it started to now.

Rosetta Bryson:	So, this is the background. I went back to Florida after I worked at the White House. I went to Florida and right after 9/11, went to Florida, was pastoring a church there. So, that’s a business there. That’s the business of the church. I sat on several boards. I was on this board, that board in the community. I sit on all boards. So, I was bored on the board. And we would start our own nonprofit. The church would. So, we ran those and they were great for the church. But in 2016, I was at a point where I was like there’s got to be more than this. What is that more for me? And I’ve always traded and I loved it. 

	And I’ve always used it as a method to here is extra cash, blah, blah, blah. But the people were getting good. I created my own method, back tested, and I knew it was good because we took people who had never traded before and let’s see if you can make money and they did. And so, first of all, you have to love what you do. If you don’t love it, don’t do it. I get excited about going to work every day. Most people can’t say that. I do. I love trading.

Jaime Masters:	In the forefront, it’s a competitive market. Even in 2016, it was a really competitive market. So, how did you start learning especially online marketing and that kind of thing for where you are now?

Rosetta Bryson:	I don’t think it’s as competitive as – I think it’s as competitive now more so. But back then, when I was saying, “Come on. Let me teach you how to trade,” they were like no, who cares. Nobody does that. And they would listen to all of the stuff. Nobody makes money. That’s gambling. All sorts of stuff that people have been told because they’re not educated. I’m like listen, people make so much money. The group that I was with because I started in commodities, they were like listen, there’s only so much money a man can make in a day. So, let’s be at tennis or golf at 12:00. They would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars and they were at tennis and golf by 12 noon. 

	And I was like there is only so much money? What? So, just to see it whiz by, I know that it’s true. I had to convince people. But then, when 2020 came, we had started the open January 2017. We were profitable Day 1. And so, that garnered people’s attention. I knew people in the business in terms of institutional traders. If they wanted somebody to know something, they would send them to me. They ran my course. I have a live trade room with hundreds of people that come every day to listen to me and what I have to say in terms of trading. And so, I think our valuations and our knowledge of the game, we have the best company.

	We’ve bought our own AI company, which allows us then to do everything that they do on Wall Street but for the retail trader. And I think that that’s a step above what anybody else is doing. And I just think that when people are honest about what they do, they’re honest brokers, people will flock to you and people have been flocking. So, that’s what’s happening.

Jaime Masters:	How did you buy an AI company? That sounds killer.

Rosetta Bryson:	I was doing AI because we wanted to expand our internal reach on how we do our own analytics. And the company was going under. And I was like let me just buy you. So, that was me going from two people to thirteen. So, it’s a lot. 

Jaime Masters:	Yeah. Definitely. When was that?

Rosetta Bryson:	That was December 2020. 

Jaime Masters:	Okay. So, having a whole new team. And tell me a little bit more about the AI. I’m obsessed with AI and anything having to do with the future of technology. So, tell me a little bit more about what sort of things that you guys have been diving into.

Rosetta Bryson:	There’s only so much I can say because some stuff is proprietary. But I will tell you this. We can – and we’re not the only ones but we can tell a trader what’s going to happen based on history and where we predict it out in the future in terms of where to get in and out of the trade. And most people won’t even put their mouth there. We have people – I’ll just say it like this. We have people who have never made more than $50,000.00 who have gone three or four straight years of masking 6 figures. We have people who have made six figures who have made money in trading, lost money in trading, now are seven figure people. So, we’re doing something.

	Our technology is doing something. Plus, I feel like once a week, somebody tries to hack us. So, we must be doing something if all of my firewalls that I have to pay for to stay up need to stay up. 

Jaime Masters:	Tell me a little bit more about marketing and how you find your customers because you’re mostly all online now. I know before, you were networking and stuff. Is it more networking or is it online marketing? Tell me a little more.

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, this is very interesting because I originally started with the group that I started with. And people hear me talk about it. I’ve always said, “Why did you start it?” “Because I’m the only one in the room that looked like me.” There were not women and there were especially not black women. And they just were not there. And so, I thought I’ve got to have a way. 

	But the guys are the ones, the young guys that are sent so they don’t have – so, I figured that I needed to – I was like I need to have more people like me in the room. And that’s been a – diversity has been – before the marches, before the Black Lives Matter, I was always about women and brown and black people of color having access to this $4 trillion a year business that never closes down. So, the access is not given and I just need the access to be given to people like me  so that they can change their destiny. I believe that trading gives people the opportunity to dream. A lot of people, they go to work 9:00 to 5:00.

	They drive the same way there. They drive the same way home. They know they’re on a fixed income, even though they’re not saying it’s a fixed income. They know that they have two kids, a dog, a house payment, a mortgage payment. They’re paying off student loans. They quit dreaming. And they see people take a vacation every quarter. They see people doing what they want to do in life. And so, I said learn to trade because it’s that valuable. Then, you can use that money to go invest and do what you want to do. Some people flip houses. Some people love to travel. Whatever it is you want to do, trading is that vehicle that does it.

	It gives you the ability to dream. And so, when people ask me what I do, I say I give people the ability to dream.

Jaime Masters:	How did you get in front of the diverse audience, especially online?

Rosetta Bryson:	I think that people heard about us and then, we started getting interviews in different places. I think that in the big scheme of things, we got on Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, CNBC. We’ve been a lot of places. People just hear about us. And because there is no one in this space that occupies it like we do then, they tell and some other people tell. So, we’ve been in the newspapers. We’ve been everywhere.

Jaime Masters:	So, press really worked. For some companies, press is just I’ve been on Yahoo’s home page six times and I did not get a ton of stuff from it but that was for me. So, for you, you, actually, get leads and stuff like that through it?

Rosetta Bryson:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, yes. What doesn’t give us – I know that people are going to be stunned. What doesn’t give us the gravitas that people think it does is all of this internet stuff, internet media. What did we get from that? Absolutely nothing. Not one person came, joined. But being within the walls, there’s a different move for real traders and how brokers and they interact that’s not a media – you know.

Jaime Masters:	Well, that’s why I was surprised. I was checking out your website and stuff. And I’m a geek so I’m like looking at the sales page. And I was like you don’t have a whole funnel built. You don’t have a whole bunch of the internet things that most people have. 

Rosetta Bryson:	Yeah. And when most people come to us or we – because one of the things that I believe is you’ve got to see it to believe it. So, I give people one day. You get one opportunity to come see us trade live. And when they see all of the people, if I put them in the big room or I have a smaller room and they see what they do there, just mesmerized. So, I’m not a waster. But that has never been that way that Google, You Tube, IG. If that works for you and maybe it will work for us at a different phase but it’s never stopped us because we have an average of 670 people on with us every day from all over the world.

Jaime Masters:	That’s awesome. See, we can still do it without just internet stuff people. It’s so funny because they’re usually like paid traffic. And it’s really hard in the Fin Tech space with paid traffic. So, that’s why I had to ask. Okay. Great. Well, tell me a little bit more about School Z. Because I know especially you really try to give back. So, tell me a little bit more about that. 

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, we’re working with several colleges in Florida. And what we do is we try to use places on their campus. And we try to grab kids that are underprivileged in middle school. I can’t wait until high school. If I can teach you to trade just like people code, trade. If I can teach you how to trade, I always tell people they will never be on drugs. They will never sell a drug. They will never be on drugs. They will never have an issue with going to school. If they can learn to trade, they will never be broke. They will never be poverty. They will be homeowners. I believe that if I could just catch them early.

	I don’t have to worry about them going to college and them coming out in debt. So, we do three years where we work with people and we’re working with some bigger banks to go beyond that. So, we’re trying to go beyond the three years as you get into high school, sixth, seventh, and eight grade. We’re trying to get you now so that when you go to high school, you have somebody under your wings to do some internships at some big banks, whether it be Citi, JP Morgan Chase, some of the bigger banks, Wells Fargo. If we can get you in there and then, we can help you get through college with the caveat that these kids have been with us for six years.

	Now, can we make sure that they get through college and you employ them when they come out? They already know your culture. They already know the culture of the company. So, we’re trying to see what we do. 

Jaime Masters:	That’s awesome. Do the kids have to have any specific skill set or everything is sort of learnable and tradable? They don’t have to love math versus not loving math.

Rosetta Bryson:	No. As a matter of fact, that is the most misconstrued thing and I hear it all of the time. I hear people say I’m not that good in math. You don’t have to be. And there are so many myths about trading that are lies. First of all, you don’t have to have a lot of money to trade. I’ve got to have $50,000.00. I’m not rich enough to trade. You do not have to have a lot of money to trade. And I just put it like this. I can teach you three things. And you’ve probably heard me say it. I can teach you how to trade anywhere in the world. I can teach you how to trade and never lose your principles. And I can teach you how to trade your way out of an ordinary life into an extraordinary life. 

	So, those are the three things I promise. And I think if you can get past all of the myths about it being gambling, about it being hard to do, about – just come and learn and your life will be changed.

Jaime Masters:	Especially when I have clients and stuff ask me that they want to give back, they’re very into philanthropy and it’s always like but when we’re like this then, I’ll give back. So, how do you split your focus? Because this is sort of like a piece of who you are. You have to give back it seems like. So, can you give some advice for people who are like I know I really want to do something within the company structure to give back but I’m afraid it will take up too much time or anything like that so that way they know? 

Rosetta Bryson:	I’m misunderstanding your question.

Jaime Masters:	So, business owners that have six, seven figure businesses, they know what they’re doing but they’re also potentially burned out or working really hard and they’re like I want to start this whole separate thing but I don’t want to have the team be focused on that and then, disregard the other stuff that we have to work on. But I really want to give back sooner rather than later. They usually kick that can down the road for a while like eventually I will. When I’m more successful I will.

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, I can’t wait for that to be more successful. So, what we do is in the summer, we take our whole staff and we just decamp on the campus. We’re asking for the dorm rooms, the open room, the conference room so that we can have these kids. And then, we take them to the zoo and all of that in there, too, movies and all of that. It's a two-week intensive where they can learn the skills of trading and be excited about being a trader and know what that looks like and how to aim for the future. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. So, one of the things that – it has to be part of your DNA as far as company. 

	This is what we do. This is – and for those who don’t have time, find people like me so into it. We do – I’m not trying to sell anything. We do a once-a-year silent auction. I ask all of the banks buy at two tables, $20,000.00 – so these kids can come, so that they can have the uniform, so they can have the shirt, so they can have the experience, so they can be excited just like being a doctor, lawyer, [inaudible] [00:21:25]. They can come into this industry because it’s never been given. I don’t know if you know how many black people are not in the industry and the access that is not given to people of color.

	So, people are hearing me speak. But let me give you an example if I may. If you are a regular person and you have over $400,000.00 or $500,000.00 in your bank account then, you get a personal banker. You don’t have to go through the front door. You can go through the side doors. Here’s some tea. What do you want to do with your money? How do you want to invest it? Where do you want to sit it? When black people have that or people of color have that, they usually think they’ve either sold a house, come into some money, won the lotto and they don’t even ever offer it. 

Jaime Masters:	That blows.

Rosetta Bryson:	That is horrible. And so, then there are the group and I have to share this with you, I have more doctors and lawyers in my group that just blows your mind because they’ve been so busy working, they let other people handle their money. So, here is a chance to learn it and they are just blown away. Come on. And then, we teach you not only how to trade but how to do business because if you don’t know how to do business correctly, you’ll be paying capital gains tax. Do you know how to trade out of your IRA, your Roth IRA? Do you know how to set up the correct LLC? Do you write? 

	Let me just be very clear. A regular broker doing your tax work is not going to know anything about trading. They don’t know what a wash sale is. You should be having thousands of dollars back. You don’t even have any because they don’t know how traders work because this is what people don’t know. In trading, if you lose, you win. Just straight up. If you lost $400,000.00 on a trade and you didn’t trade it again for the next 30 days that is right off a bowl, you get it back.

Jaime Masters:	Great. Tell me more. Tell me more about that. 

Rosetta Bryson:	You didn’t know about that?

Jaime Masters:	No.

Rosetta Bryson:	Oh. Lots to tell. That’s just the business of trading. You have to know the business part as well as the physical part of entering and exiting trade. So, if you just wanted to know entering and exiting trade then, we’re not the people for you. I can teach you how to short. I can teach you how to be bullish. I can teach you those things. I can teach you how to set it up so that you will never lose your principle. But if you want to really – if you’re coming into this like this is what I want to do – and I love it because most people will tell you, I will tell you for the last couple of years, I’ve made my money in the first three minutes and I’m done. 

	The bell rings at 9:30. By 9:33, I’m done.

Jaime Masters:	So, you do golf and tennis. So, when you do that because you do your own trading anyway and then, you teach people how to be able to do that, do you do it based on what you’re doing? Do you tell people what you do or no?

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, my stuff is proprietary. So, I can tell you but I’d have to kill you. And you have to sign a confidentiality noncompete, non-solicitation, there are about four other ones in there.

Jaime Masters:	The lawyer comes out, yeah. So, in there, I know you said you have a daily live thing. So, what are you guys talking about on your daily live?

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, the bell rings at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time every day that the market is open. At about 8:45, my crew, my team comes on and we just tell you everything within every sector of what’s happening. We tell you what is moving, what’s not moving because we’ve been up and we’ve already done the overnight. We can tell you don’t listen to the procrastinators on TV. This is what’s going to make money today. And we’re very good at it.

Jaime Masters:	You look very excited over that. That’s awesome. I know we have to start wrapping up. So, I want to ask the last question. What is one –

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, that was quick.

Jaime Masters:	I know, right. Snappy. What is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Rosetta Bryson:	1.) Think of $2 million because $1 million after taxes is only half a million.

Jaime Masters:	Right. 
Rosetta Bryson:	Up the goal, ladder up because that goal is going to get you nowhere. You can’t buy a house or an apartment. The goal is too low. So, that’s No. 1, up the goal. 2.) I have this thing where I say life is an opportunity. Take it. You plan for it, you work for it. There’s an open door. Go through the door. If it doesn’t work out then, it doesn’t work out. But you went through the door. So, quit double guessing yourself. Life is an opportunity. Take it. Take the opportunity.

Jaime Masters:	I love it. And 11 years ago when I started this podcast, $1 million was worth so much more than it is today. So, maybe I should change that last question. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Where do we find out more about you online?

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, let me just say, again, I think everyone should have the opportunity to see what we do, to see in real time, live time how we make money. So, I invite you to go to SimpleTraderPro.com. It will ask you any questions or do you want to come to our free day of a live trade room. We give you one opportunity to come. So, sign up. We’d love to see you there. Come trade live with us for one day or watch us. And then, if you have any questions, just type it in there. We’ve got people in that room that will get back to you immediately. Just type in a question. I want to know how to do this. What does it cost? What does it mean? How does it work? 

	We want all of your questions answered. We don’t pressure anybody. I just think that you want to be very confident that when you come, this is what I want to do. And I’m doing it as a step forward, especially women. I think it’s just awesome.

Jaime Masters:	Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it.

Rosetta Bryson:	Well, thank you for having me.

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