My first mentor outside of my family was an older attorney who was a friend of the family. Unpretentious fellow, I’ve written about him here before. I watched him increase his trading account 10 fold over about 10 years. He lived in a typical house in a small rural farming town. The carpet had worn through to the cement under it forming a path going from the front door to the kitchen. He’d take a scissors and trim the edges so people wouldn’t trip on it. He would rather have his money make money than buy a new carpet. Didn’t worry about what people thought about him. He had been a judge in the Nuremburg trials. He saw a lot that perhaps changed what he valued in life.
In a similar vein, one of the local farmers had the bumper on his car tied on with bailing wire. Everyone laughed at him. When he died they were shocked to find out he – starting out about the same as the rest of them -- was worth multiples of any of them.
I took classes from Robert Kiyosaki, Al Brooks, a couple others. In my experience, the more someone charges, they less value they have. In the final analysis, you do the internal work yourself or you don’t. This may not apply to everyone, as I am only interested in discretionary day trading.