Chat with Traders

Aaron Feifield left school at 15 and spent his late teens and early twenties experimenting with different business ventures. His first $1,000 came from a graphic and web design company, but by his mid-20s he was drawn to trading. He invested $5,000 into a trading account and began actively trading, but quickly hit a wall. "Most people will struggle for at least three, four, five years before they really see any type of consistency or success," he realized. The breakthrough came when he had an epiphany: he was trying to become a trader without knowing a single trader. "If you wanted to be a mechanic, you would hang around with people who talk about cars, who love cars, who work on cars. Here I was trying to be a trader, yet I didn't know a single trader."

Instead of continuing to struggle alone, Aaron launched Chat with Traders on January 15, 2015. His strategy was straightforward but demanding: interview successful traders weekly and build an audience. He committed to publishing one episode every week without fail. He focused on two key growth levers: getting "big names on the podcast" because they attract listeners, and concentrating his promotional efforts on Twitter, where traders were already active. He also built in calls-to-action—asking listeners to download a free ebook with "17 Proven Lessons" from traders, which helped build his email list.

Within a year, by January 2016, the podcast had reached over 620,000 cumulative downloads and nearly 5,800 email subscribers. His last month alone (January 2016) generated just over 90,000 downloads. The consistency and focus on high-profile guests resonated with the trading community. Twitter became his primary growth channel, where he actively promoted episodes and engaged with traders.

Aaron deliberately resisted monetizing early. While he earned a couple hundred dollars per month from a premium ebook and had explored other revenue streams—including about $2,000 per month from occasional design work for Founder Magazine and roughly $500 per month from an investment property—he kept the podcast free and ad-free. Nathan Latka praised this approach: "You've resisted the urge to sell and you've built an incredibly valuable audience. I can only imagine when you decide to turn on the revenue spicket, it's going to do really well."

Operationally, Aaron used Trello and Slack to scale beyond himself, bringing on a few team members to handle research, episode uploads to YouTube and SoundCloud, and other operational tasks. This allowed him to focus on guest outreach and content strategy.

At 25 years old, Aaron was still actively trading his $5,000 account (using a swing trading approach rather than day trading) while building Chat with Traders into the top-ranked trading podcast. His stated focus for 2016 was to significantly ramp up email list growth. He remained active on Twitter at @ChatwithTraders and continued publishing weekly episodes. His advice to others was clear: start early, avoid purely service-based businesses, and focus on delegation and audience building rather than being involved in every detail.