Welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host, Phil Better, as your special guest today on invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the, Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. I am, of course, your host with the most feel better. And today, I am happy to have Travell Simpson from the drive group on. Gonna tell us about his journey in entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism. If I ever can say that word properly, I can't. As well as what the drive group is all about. Travell, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me, but most importantly, thank you for having maybe the best, podcast host name of all time.

I do my best.

I I have your best. We all feel better.

There you go.

There we go.

The drive in life is always to feel better, so why not with feel better himself?

Absolutely.

Treval, I wanna thank you for being here. How about you give us a quick introduction? Let us know a bit about who you are and what you do and what is the Drive Group.

Sure. Yeah. The Drive Group is a started out as a trading think tank. We did derivatives trading, which essentially is a percentage of a commodity or a stock, and you kinda leverage it for a return stock market. Kinda did that with a small team of people, developed enough capital where we got brave enough to do some real estate investment, some venture investment. And now I think we more exist in that space, the venture and real estate side of things, to try and generate a return. Always focus on team building and new opportunities, with respect to our commodities background. That that is how I would describe the Jeff Group.

So what got you into deciding to trade derivatives? Because that's that's a specialized like, most people when they hear talk about the stock market, it's like, you know, Apple, Google, or the penny stocks from, like, the wall of the wall speed. What was it about, like, derivatives? What made you wanna go down that route?

I'll probably link it to 3 different things. The first was, Wall Street Money Never Sleeps starring Shia Labeouf and Michael Douglas. I was addicted to that movie. Guys wearing nice suits. I had no idea what they were talking about, but the idea of this sort of Wall Street life, this fast money life, I think appealed to me. And this was around the time I was in school. I originally went to school to be a lawyer, then I fell in love with politics, which was my initial major. Wanted to be a campaign manager, but, I mean, that film and just this concept of industry really, really gripped me.

Then I was at a a New Year's Eve party with a with a guy who's popping champagne. I knew this guy from church, and I I can tell you this, when he was at church, he couldn't afford the champagne, and it have only been a couple of years. So then we're we're now at this New Year's Eve party and I I I mean, it looked like a rap video. The guy had a shirt open, you know, 6 pack of abs. It was crazy. So I come up to him and say, hey. What are you doing? He was like, trade money. I manage, you know, I manage my own financial portfolio.

I said, hey, man. Take my number. Give me a call. I think it was a combination of that that sense of this Wall Street life seeing it in its in its sort of in its in its reality. But it was also this idea that I was coming to the end of my, I've come to the end of my schooling. So for so long, you know, I was a very obedient child. My entire identity was do what your do what your parents say. My dad was a military man.

So I always say that I only became an individual at 21 when I graduated. It's the last promise I made to my parents. Right? I give them back my diploma and they say, okay. Now what do you wanna do? So I'm I'm I'm sitting there. It's 2014. I'm I'm 24, 3 years into attempts at my own individuality, and, I tried my head at being an artist. I was working at the banks. I was doing many things, but, you know, you come up against the reality that whatever you do gotta pay you at some point, and, I think it was just this beautiful intersection.

So got addicted to it, fell into this course online called baby pips, And what I loved about derivatives trading is you didn't need big financial muscle to do it. You just needed knowledge. And I remember thinking if the gap between where I am and where I could be tomorrow is what I can teach myself, then, I like my chances.