Jessica Ghaney founded Funding Talent in late 2019. Funding Talent is a trading community that provides education to traders, also known as a proprietary trading firm. In a proprietary firm like Funding Talent, trades are placed using the firm’s capital rather than the trader funding their account with their own capital. This allows the Funding Talent community to trade and learn while having the support and capital of the firm.
It is a subscription-based business where the trader can actually earn payouts based on a simulated trading environment. The main focus of Funding Talent is creating an environment where members of the community can learn how to improve their skills as traders while showcasing their abilities and receiving payouts based on their demo account progress.
Separate from her Funding Talent business, Jessica also has a significant social media presence on Instagram,“ForexTips101” with over 210,000 followers. She started the account early 2019, as a way to connect with other traders and it eventually led to the creation of Funding Talent.
Jessica had started out her career at the age of 22 as a registered nurse, but trading and being able to work for herself has become her true passion.
What surprised you the most when you started your career, what lessons did you learn?
What surprised me the most by how many obstacles there are in running a business. There are always going to be things that pop up and obstacles that happen. The journey is rewarding but at the same time, there are a lot of hills to climb. Entrepreneurship and owning a successful business sounds like such a great thing, but there are a lot of challenges.
What is one piece of advice you would give someone starting in your industry?
I would advise learning about the importance of emotional intelligence. When it comes to trading, it takes losing money or risking money to make money. It can be very hard people to wrap their heads around that concept. It can have a big emotional impact because people do things like over leveraging and over risking, and that kind of thing. If you don’t have a good grasp on your emotions, it is really tough. I think it is the most important thing to grasp before you get into this industry.
I encourage people to understand that it is a long game that you are playing when you are trading or investing. It is not quick and easy money. The faster you understand that it is a long journey. You have to learn to control risk because if you over leverage yourself in trying to achieve unrealistic returns, then really what you are doing is gambling. Learning how to properly manage your risk early on will really help with the emotional side of things.
If you could change anything about your industry what would it be and why?
There are quite a few things I would change. Social media has become very toxic in our industry because you do get people who have painted a picture that trading and investing is very easy and that you can make all of this money overnight by trading Forex or trading or investing in stocks. That is just not the reality at all. What happens is, you get a lot of people who are new to finance and new to the world of trading, and they jump into things feeling very lied to or taken advantage of when they do not achieve huge returns overnight. It is a very common theme in this space in particular. This is why I have started my Forex Tips 101 page because I have always tried to be very authentic and show people what reality is like. It is very difficult, and it is not easy money. It requires a lot of discipline and risk management. You are going to make $1,000 by throwing $10 into a Forex account. That is just not possible. So authentic communication has been a big goal of mine with my followers on my page. There are more and more people on social media that are also bringing some ethics to the space, but it has been a long time where some people have taken advantage of the low barrier to entry to get involved into trading, and it has tainted our industry. That is definitely the biggest thing I would change. I don’t necessarily want to increase the barriers to entry. To me, it is encouraging transparency and honesty about the industry. It’s not that easy, and I am trying to fill in that gap of knowledge that is clearly missing for a lot of people.
How would your colleagues describe you?
I think they describe me as very positive. Not always, of course, but I usually have a very positive outlook on things. That is how I have created my own leadership style. I keep a very open mind and a very positive outlook on things. I think that is how they would describe me.
How do you maintain a solid work life balance?
The whole idea of like a work life balance, I’m not big on that. Work/life balance has become its own thing. To me, if you are happy working a lot of the time and it brings you joy and you’re not sacrificing relationships or family time, then you know, it’s perfectly fine to work a lot.
I am someone who does not turn off too often. I don’t have children or anything like that. My partner and I, we work all throughout the day and that is what brings us joy and makes us happy. So, I don’t really believe in work/life balance too much. I think you just do what feels best to you. If it works for you, it comes back to just not caring what other people think and making choices for yourself.
Who has been a role model to you and why?
In terms of business, I really, really like Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s someone who has been very influential on me. I very much resonate with him and his ideas. He’s a very successful entrepreneur and a really big social media influencer as well. He speaks a lot on authenticity and not caring too much what other people think, just putting yourself out there and taking action, all those things that are in line with how I conduct business and how I lead people.
What is one piece of advice that you have never forgotten?
One of my good friends, her Mom one time was speaking to us and said, if there’s something you want to do and it’s going to take five or 10 years – and that can feel very off putting if you think something is going to take so long to get there – but she said, just do it anyway because the time passes either way. So whether you do that thing or not, the five years is going to pass so you might as well start now and do whatever it is you want to do.
What does success look like to you?
Success to me is being able to do the things you want to do. When I was a nurse and I worked for someone else, I just really felt like I couldn’t do any of the things I wanted to be free to do. I couldn’t put my ideas into action. There were so many limits I had because my time was so eaten up by doing something that I didn’t really love doing. So really success to me is that time freedom, the freedom to be able to do things you want on your own time.