Jesse Acosta: His Top Tip for Finding Students For Your Online Course

Welcome to Course Creator Series, where you can learn directly from experienced course creators on how you can monetize and grow your online business.

I’m your host, Dr. Destini Copp and I help entrepreneurs reduce their reliance on 1:1 services or agency type work and scale their digital product revenue. Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Acosta.

With over fifteen years of experience as an entrepreneur, Jesse Acosta is now the head mentor and trader teaching about risk management in the market.

Please tell us about your business.

I run a sales management consulting business, and my newest baby is The Day Trader Chatroom. Our mission is to share all we know about the stock market and trading with our members to help them get over the initial startup hurdles that the new traders struggle with and ones we struggled with when we started trading.

Our main goal is to serve our community of traders with outstanding personal service and a platform with resources, courses, and live trading/lessons every day. We are an all-in-one place where they can also chat with each other and the chatroom leaders and mods in real-time.

I have been self-employed for the last 15 years of my life. I have always had a drive not to be a part of the regular "rat race" of life.

When I was an elementary school child, my parents gave me a gift for Christmas. It was a toy called Creepy Crawlies. This toy had molds where one would pour a liquid into it and then cook it in the oven it came with. The toy was not an edible product; you would bake a rubber bug that was a little toy. After I made a few of these rubber bugs or Creepy Crawlies, I would stick them in a little box and sell them on the school bus on the way to and from school for an average of fifty cents each.

Today, I run multiple businesses, trade stocks for myself, and run a stock trading community called The Day Trader Chatroom, allowing my team and me to share our knowledge with other traders. My dad instilled a drive in me to always try my best.

Start at the beginning of your journey. What were things like for you? How did you feel? What was keeping you up at night?

At the start of this new journey, what kept me up at night was making sure that our courses would be the best they could be to over-deliver value to our members.

Unfortunately, the industry has a black eye due to many scammers, just like most industries nowadays have, so our goal was to over-deliver quality content and personal customer service. I believe we currently have achieved this, and we have plans to strive for more excellent content and service moving forward.

At what point did things change for you? What was the pivotal moment?

I do not believe I had a pivotal moment that made things change for me and make me chase entrepreneurship. It's like I said at the beginning, it was something that was inside of me since a very young age.

Even in high school, during my part-time jobs, I would calculate my expenses like gas, car insurance, lunch and then try and figure out how I could make that money selling things on eBay so that I could quit my job. I never liked working for someone else and building their visions and dreams. I always had the drive to do that for myself and bring my friends and family who wanted to work with me along for the ride.

Thanks to this, today in my sales management business, I get to work with my wife, sister, and close friend I consider a brother and other people I have met along the way. Moreover, The Day Trader Chatroom was founded by myself and Jonal who I consider a brother in my life.

They say not to partner with friends and family, but if you have the right people in your corner, you can partner with them, and they can make the best partners you will ever have in your life. Two people or more working towards one vision is an unstoppable force, and I thank God for them every day.

What are the top three mistakes you made in your entrepreneurial journey, and what would you do differently?

The top three mistakes I have made throughout my years as an entrepreneur are as follows.

First, in one of my past businesses, I had a significant amount of initial success. Instead of putting the profits back into marketing and website, I chose to put it back into manufacturing, which made me fail in getting traffic to the site.

The second mistake that has stuck with me was not learning about SEO which caused me to outsource my SEO to a company that completely ripped me off. Both of these mistakes happened very early, probably in my first three years of the business; because of this, today we know how to spread our profits, we know about SEO, and do our SEO in-house.

The third mistake that has stuck with me is one that I have not come across yet. The reason I say yet is that no one is so great they will not make a mistake. Mistakes will happen. It's how we react to the mistake and the lessons we take from it that matter. Those mistakes make us better entrepreneurs, and I look forward to the day the third mistake hits so that I may grow stronger as an entrepreneur.

What are some of the best ways you've found students for your online course(s)?

The best ways to get new students are by providing high-quality, free content and answering their questions online. People see the value in the content. They see my desire and authenticity in that I want to help, I want to share everything I know with them, and they get to know me the "real" me and not some made-up persona.

What is your entrepreneurial life like today?

I believe the diehard entrepreneur has cycles just like the stock market has cycles. Some days we wake up feeling like superstars, and some days we wake up wondering why we even try and how much easier a "9-5" would be.

However, the real ones, we stick to the course because we know we cannot do anything else. Currently, I am at a point where I am looking to invest in stocks and real estate for passive income.

I am also preparing my daughter's future so that she can have a good starting point when she is older and ready to start her life. Even as a one-year-old, she already has an investment account which my wife and I started for her last year during the market crash.

So, you could say I am at a point in my life where I am using everything I have built over the past fifteen years to catapult my family and team with me to the next level.

Have you pivoted in your business?

Yes, I have pivoted my business. You see, I had plans to have established a health and life insurance company that we were supposed to start in 2020.

Instead, we decided to pause that project and start The Day Trader Chatroom because we saw a void in quality content and quality customer service with people who genuinely care about their members in the industry.

What's your favorite launch strategy? Webinars, Challenges, Video Series, etc. Why do you like this approach?

My favorite launch strategy is by far social media launch after a series of videos leading up to the launch. You provide little hints of what you are about to do; it keeps your audience captivated with quality content.

How do you stay focused and productive in your business? What advice do you have for new entrepreneurs?

I stay focused and productive in my business because I am a very organized person. I dedicate time slots for each task that I have to do during the day, including extra time to spend with my daughter and wife and even time to go outside for a quick walk, even if it's just 10 minutes.

We have a chicken coup on our property, and I usually take a few minutes of my day to go out there and take my daughter because she loves to see the "titis" (Spanish for little chickens, as she calls them).

This helps me stay focused and not burn out too fast on hectic weeks because I know what I have to accomplish, and I know I have some breaks which the mind and body always need.

What do you see as the next steps for your online course business?

In 2021, we have launched a swing trading course. Later this summer, we are launching a short trading course. Both of these accompany all our day trading courses and option courses we currently had launched in 2020.

We are constantly working hard behind the scenes on more content, including our video lesson library, which is nearing 200 videos, all having to do with trading and our special projects for 2022. The best part of this is that our yearly members get consistent access to all these courses, content, and more with no price increase.

What is your favorite quote or business book?

My favorite quote is actually from The Bible, verse Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

This verse, along with my wife and family's encouragement, has gotten me through every hurdle, failure, and rough patch in my entrepreneur and personal life, and I thank God and my family for their support.

What advice do you have for other online course creators/entrepreneurs out there?

There is only one tip that matters when creating online courses, and that is over-deliver! Give your customer everything they need and upgrade your content as time passes so that your customer sees that you are giving them more than they are providing you.

How can people find you to learn more?

The best way to reach me is via my website TheDayTraderChatroom.com. People can also follow me on Twitter at @Jesse_W33.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us!