This falls into the “wish I did it sooner” category.
When you want to succeed at anything, having a mastermind or accountability group can be huge in helping you reach your goals.
Left to our own devices, it can be easy to put important tasks off for days, weeks or even months.
But when you have to be accountable to people you respect, you are much more likely to move forward with your commitments. So if you are finding it hard to do your backtesting, journal your trades or any other task that will improve your trading, then you probably need an accountability partner or group.
This Will Take Work
Before I jump into the different ways that you can find an accountability buddy, let's get something straight…
You will need to put in the work to get the reward.
Don't expect to contact one or two people and find a good match. It's just like dating, you will probably have to go on a lot of bad “dates” before you find someone who is compatible.
Remember to stay positive and keep searching…
The rewards are worth it!
My Top 5 Tips for Finding the Best Accountability Partner
Here are my top tips for speeding up the process of finding a compatible partner:
- They should be in a similar timezone. This makes it much easier to hold meetings.
- You should complement each other and be able to be straightforward with each other. Look for someone who has strengths where you are weak and vice versa. It also helps if your partner is at a similar stage in their trading journey.
- Agree to a 30-day trial period upfront. This way, if someone isn't working out, you can cut them politely and look for another partner.
- Your partner should be committed. If they skip meetings frequently or don't respond to emails in a timely manner, then they probably aren't as committed as you. Move on quickly.
- Commit to regular meetings. I would suggest doing weekly meetings, but do what works best for both of you.
Alright, now let's get into how to find an accountability partner or group.
1. Join Trading Facebook Groups
The right Facebook groups can be a great place to learn a skill and get some support from experienced veterans. But unfortunately they can also be breeding grounds for spammers and scammers.
So join a handful of Facebook groups and try them out for a week or two. It will usually become obvious which groups have legit traders and which ones were set up by spammers.
But if you join too many groups at the same time, you will be overwhelmed. Track about 5 at a time, that's a great way to get started.
Leave the bad groups and stay with the good ones.
2. Join the Trading Accountability Tribe
I created the Trading Accountability Tribe because I didn't see any easy ways to find an accountability buddy or group. Post your profile and browse profiles of other traders.
3. Start Working Twitter
You can still find an accountability partner even if you live in a remote area. Twitter is probably the best way to do this.
Take a look at what people are tweeting and that will give you a good idea of what level they are at and if you might be a good personality match. Then contact them and start a conversation…make a friend.
One Twitter trick you can use is to look through the list of people who follow famous traders or trading related personalities. This is a lot easier than searching for “trader” or related keywords.
4. Attend Trading Conferences
As I wrote about here, attending trading conferences can be a great way to meet successful traders and make lifelong friends. Even if I don't end up contacting people I meet at a conference afterwards, it's always fun to be in a room where people actually understand trading.
5. Contact Trading Educators
Trading educators probably won't have time to be your personal accountability partner. However, they may be able to match you up with one of their students.
This is a fantastic way to find traders who are already vetted and are at a similar level to you.
Now let's take a look at some of the tools that can make your accountability group run smoothly.
My Favorite Tools for Trading Accountability Groups
These are my must-have tools for trading accountability groups. Experiment to see what works best for your group.
Appear.in
Appear.in is my favorite video conferencing software. It's free and it works like it's supposed to.
You don't need to mess with crappy bloated software made by Microsoft and people don't need to sign up for an account.
They just click on the meeting link that you setup and they are in!
Evernote
Keeping your trading journal in Evernote makes it easy to share it with your trading accountability partner. Then they can check in on your progress whenever it's convenient with them and you can do the same.
You won't have to wait for your meetings to get an update on how your buddy is trading.
To learn how to use Evernote as an excellent Forex trading journal, read this post. Trello can also be used as a sharable trading journal. Get the Trello tutorial here.
A messaging app like WhatsApp can be a great way to stay in touch between meetings. I would highly recommend using one.
Most of the traders I know use WhatsApp, but you might like another app better. Use what works best for you.
MyFxBook
The look of MyFxBook is very dated, but it's still the best way to share your trading results. Have everyone in your group setup an account and track their trading account. It can be scary for some people to share their track record, but if you can face this fear, you will be more likely to succeed.
Final Thoughts on Finding a Trading Accountability Partner or Group
If you do some searching, you can find some amazing success stories on how a trading accountability partner can dramatically improve your results in any area of life. So the sooner get started, the sooner you can start benefiting from this type of trading relationship.
Get started with finding your accountability buddy right now.
It all starts with a simple “hello.” 🙂
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