Bet Chat Diaries: The Business Plan

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – (Abraham Lincoln)

Now my dream is about to become a reality, I have to convince my nearest and dearest that I haven’t gone insane and I actually have a plan. Up till now, I’ve spent lots of time on my betting and trading but without any added pressure. It’s been an enjoyable hobby and something I’ve learned and improved on but now it will have to be a big part of my income.

Just like the Dragon’s Den panel wouldn’t give a penny to a poorly thought out business idea, my wife wouldn’t give me her blessing without knowing the ins and outs and making sure I could answer all her questions.

So I showed her my PowerPoint presentation I’d prepared earlier. She had her notepad and pen ready. I tried to wow her with an incredible colour scheme and funky animations but she saw right through it. This was going to be harder than I thought.

I told her the strategies I was going to use. She tried her best to stay awake while I prattled on about variance, edges and expected value. She looked desperately at the clock on the wall wondering how much longer this was going to take. All the while, her notepad was full to the brim with notes, question marks and some serious underlining.

She asked me some tough questions but all of them were excellent and necessary. If I couldn’t answer these, I had no business trying to make this my business. Here were a select few that might be worth thinking about…

How much can you make a month?

The easiest question to ask but the hardest to answer. As all of you know, it’s tough to predict how much you’ll make in a given month and personally, I’m not a fan of targets in my trading (for reasons I’ll explain later down the line).

My modest answer was that I would be making AT LEAST half of my betting/trading bankroll each month and that would be a worst case scenario. If you are thinking of going pro, this figure should be enough to cover a salary for yourselves. This is where it is tough for a lot of people. You need a decent sized bankroll to make it work but without having the time to bet, it can take a long time to get to that figure.

What about your fixed income?

I’m lucky I have a trade that is generally in demand, so I can always fall back on teaching work and tutoring if needed. Hopefully this is the case for readers too. If you can switch your job to part time just to cover your bills each month, this is one less headache so you can concentrate on your trading.

Why isn’t everyone doing this then?

This is a trickier one to answer. Maybe some people don’t have the time or patience to find the edges that I have? Maybe they just haven’t spotted these angles? Maybe they are doing something similar or better but just in different markets? There might be lots of other reasons but I have no doubt that there are lots of people doing what I’m doing but I expect they are probably keeping this to themselves and reaping the rewards.

Why didn’t you take the bins out last night?

This was the toughest question of them all and I had no idea. I tried to deny all knowledge of it but there was clear WhatsApp evidence. 1-0 to the missus.

*****

Next time, I will talk about my strategies I’ll be using this coming year. Some of them might already be familiar to you and some might be brand new. I won’t be giving away all my secrets just yet but hopefully there’ll be some things you can explore further to find some profitable angles for yourself.

In the meantime, if you want to go pro one day, you can relive the grilling I got from my wife by asking yourself these questions:

• What is your strategy and approach?
• Why is it profitable?
• Why isn’t everyone doing it?
• What will you do if that strategy stops working? Do you have others?
• How much have you made from this?
• Can you scale up what you’re doing to make a full-time income?
• What’s your backup plan?
• Have you got other revenue streams to cover your bills?
• How many hours a week do you think you’ll be working going pro?
• Have you thought about the negatives as well as the positives? What are they?
• Did you take the bins out?