The Journey (pt. 1)
2013 Competing for $3,000,000 prize pool @ Dota 2 “The International” Championships
See that guy in the middle there, raising his fist in the air? That’s me. In this picture we had just upset the Chinese powerhouse, and tournament favorite, LGD gaming. This was one of the happiest moments in my entire life.
For a sum of 3 years (2010–2013), I had captained the best North American DotA 2 team to place top 8 in the world at, what can only be described as, the SuperBowl of esports.
Dota 2 The International at Key Arena
The reason I bring this up is to give some context as to the parallels between then and now, and what I believe to be the journey to success.
When I was in High School, professional gaming was as good as myth. But I always wanted to be one… no one could possibly understand. In fact, I wanted to be a pro-gamer so bad that I used to lie to my peers and tell them that I was a “sponsored” gamer that was paid to play!
I competed in dozens of amateur tournaments where the winner won a Dominos Pizza or 100 bucks to split 5 ways. I spent almost all of my free time thinking and dreaming up new ways to become more efficient, to better my skills, to analyze my mistakes and, more importantly, how to ditch school. I was obsessed, I lived and breathed this game for at least 4 years before hitting my big break.
Things changed when Valve, a Washington-based video game publisher/distributor, announced a $1,000,000 prize pool tournament for the game I loved. This began a long line of tradition where every year we would raise capital to grow the prize to, what is now, $28,000,000+tournaments (Look up: The International 2018).
For once in my life, I was able to set a goal; the first step of the journey, attend The International. I had nothing, however. Yeah, you know those Domino's Pizza prizes? Let’s just say I never got to eat much pizza. As for a team? I had none. Contacts? None. My parents also used to steal the router at night and disable the internet, only for me to sneak out at 1/2 a.m. to reinstall it every time. They dreaded it, called me a loser, said I would never amount to anything if I continued to waste my life playing video games and had scolded me relentlessly.
Regardless… I DECIDED I was going to do this. This is the second step of the journey. I wrote out my goal and thought deeply about how to achieve it. I drafted plan after plan after plan and finally decided to put my full effective effort into this goal and nothing else. I committed whole-heartedly and accepted that it was only going to get more difficult from here. I decided, that I would give myself one year to give everything I’ve got.
The third step was to act. This is probably the easiest step. You’ve laid down what you need to do, now it’s time to execute. I had decided that in order to make it, I’d need a mentor. Mentors come in all forms and they show us what we need to do to achieve what we want the most. We need to find people who know how to get where we want to go and then we need to prove ourselves. I spent a lot of time building my skills and I made sure that the right people saw what I was doing. I wanted to show that I wasn’t just some nobody with a dream. I wanted to show them that I was a serious, committed, hard-working and skilled person. This is one of the keys, nobody wants to help someone who can’t even help themselves. Following closely and analyzing everything he did or said, I was able to quickly achieve huge skill jumps.
Through action after action after action, eventually I built my reputation and my squad from the ground up. I spent every single waking hour thinking, analyzing, strategizing, and practicing. I cut out all the unnecessary distractions, I spent less time with friends, with family, going out and wasting my time in general. I figured that massive discipline was going to shape me into the person I needed to be. I treated every moment as an opportunity for growth. Even as I slept I was listening to leadership material, listening to audio books about success and discipline… no wasted moments.
Compounding on your actions and decisions gives you a distinct advantage over the rest, and this is a competition after all.
The fourth step is perseverance.
Once in motion you will notice that these small optimizations can have larger effects in the long-run. And don’t mistake it, your path is going to absolutely require that mindset. You need to think long-term, without that light at the end of the tunnel, many unprepared dreamers fail to achieve their goals because it gets too tough.
To attend The International back then, you had to be invited directly and recognized as a top 16 team in the entire world. Keep in mind, that North America was the laughing stock of the entire scene, with no representation at major tournaments and serial last place contenders at all international events. I decided to change that. Since North Americans frankly sucked at the game, I inspired my team to wake up at 7am every morning to practice 8 hours a day against Europeans on 230+ ping, which is a HUGE deal in a game of precision. Fortunately, another aspect of the game was strategy. What I could do was outwork my opponent, out-think and out strategize them. I employed many innovative tactics that allowed our team to strike a 96% win rate over 40 competitive official matches. Doing this every single day seldom taking breaks, we were able to be sponsored and actually be compensated for doing this out of pure passion… a dream come true.
Following this success, we were invited as the 2nd team to be officially invited due to our results and our commitment (we were one of 3 teams that kept the same roster for almost an entire year). Another dream come true… So it seemed.
After several months of nonstop grinding, it started to wear and tear on me. Not only that, but our competition grew more fierce as they adapted to our strategies and studied our tactics. I was losing my edge, my strategies were no longer working at a championship level. We started to experience tremendous failure. I’m talking going from 1st, 2nd, 3rd placements consistently to last place. It messed with my mind, I started to believe that I could not do a single correct thing. I grew furious with myself and it spawned inner turmoil and negativity. I started forcing myself to study harder and harder and harder, thinking it was the only way. I even considered quitting almost daily, to give up that spot to compete for my dream.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this? Maybe I got lucky? I asked a ton of rhetorical questions and found no answers but doubt. I abdicated myself from leadership and put it in the hands of my teammates and went into full meltdown mode…. so how did this story end?
I decided to change my beliefs. I began to reflect on my journey and that I was given an opportunity to do something great. By now I had a lot of things to be grateful for. I had thousands of fans, my family, my team, my mentors, my friends and all the sacrifices I took to get here, I could not let this go down in vain. I had changed my belief system to doing this for them. I wanted to push through it all so that I could give back. I imagined what I would do with my success, if I ever achieved it. How I would spend my time and money and how I would be kind to others. I imagined my life where I was able to mentor others just as I had been mentored and given a chance and that’s what changed it for me. I began to look at defeats as lessons and constantly reminded my team that we had a much bigger goal to fulfill, these were just stepping stones. I took every defeat in stride, and started to embrace the pressure, to learn and to realize that defeat was the greatest lesson I could ever utilize in service of my goals. All I had to do was survive.
The fifth step: Execution. When the time comes (and there should be a time) to meet that goal head on, you need to execute. To live without regrets, to me, is to try your absolute best. Everything should run like clockwork, you should be in the zone. Achieving flow state, all the skills you’ve been grinding at, your psychology, discipline, habits, study and mechanics should effortlessly shine through. You don’t need to think anymore, all you need to do is do what you’ve always been doing, what you practiced for.
The year had gone by and I was now at one of the greatest events in my entire life. I had set a goal and finally achieved it, I was competing at The International. Now the only thing left to do was see what I was made of. Throughout the tournament we performed extremely well, even taking a game off of the previous champions who took home $1,000,000 the year prior. Finally, after a grueling group-stage we were headed to the playoffs, on stage, which happened to be an elimination match, loser is going home.
For the first time in my life, I stepped onto a stage being watched by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of spectators world-wide, every action being closely admired or ridiculed. I was nervous as hell, but as soon as I touched the instrument that I had practiced on for so long, the computer, everything shifted out of focus and it was total zen.
One important rule of the tournament was there was a strategic advantage that was balanced by a coin flip. Essentially whichever team won the flip would be able to choose a powerful position that would give them a great advantage.
We took the first game in the series (bo3). They took the second game. The third game of the series was going to be the deciding factor. The referee came to do a coin flip to decide who would get the advantage… we had lost. This disadvantage was the ONE thing we needed in this head to head bout. Nonetheless, we had to move forward. We battled fiercely but eventually got eliminated by the veteran Southeast Asian powerhouse team.
As we walked outside and headed towards backstage, I could feel a rush of emotion come over me, not of sadness but of relief. I felt that we had tried our very best and sometimes your best isn’t what cuts it. I know that in this game, there is a certain edge you can play by and you don’t always win, it’s not possible. I finally let it sink in that I had achieved my goal and worked so tirelessly for it up until this very moment and felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders.
The final step: renewal. As I talked through this process, I hope that you saw some parallels with trading. It is not an exact 1:1 copy but the elements of success in achieving one’s goals are there. These lessons, and the achievement of my goals has lead to me pursue trading and the mastery of it. Having accomplished something I believe to be extremely difficult, I believe I have it in me to create a life out of trading. I believe it’s important to set new goals and when we complete our goals we build confidence in ourselves to achieve other things as well, and if we haven’t experienced it yet we should learn from those who have and seek to understand what it takes to really do something worthwhile.
So to sum it all up:
Set a goal
Create a plan, understand what needs to be done, and commit
Act, do what you need to do and invariably find mentors to cut down the learning curve
Persevere
Execute
Renewal
Trading is a lot like being a professional gamer, though it’s a lot more legitimized these days, in the sense that almost NO ONE can relate to your passion nor do they understand what it really actually is to begin with. This path can be extremely lonely, but with the right strategy we can connect with the people who understand us best.
To be fair, being passionate about something where maybe 1–3% of people actually succeed in globally warrants the overwhelming skepticism. WHY would anyone want to even make that attempt? It’s way too risky.
I just believe that trading is a worthy and ambitious goal that pushes us to our limits. It shows us who we truly are and what we are capable of. We aspire to master the game, but also ourselves. It demands so much from us to even begin to find our way but the rewards are innumerable. From which we can give back to the ones we love and to those who deserve our love.
Special shoutouts to my trading family: Garrett, Bear, Robbie, Fabs, Leandro, AMG, Hammer
Also to Ricky Analog and ADF for providing such a wealth of knowledge to us aspiring traders.
