Helping Entrepreneurs Replace a 6 Figure Income with Less Than 4 Hours Per Week with Niko Mercuris

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how to help entrepreneurs replace a six-figure income with less than four hours per week. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Nico Mercurius and EO Fire Studios. Nico is the founder of Crypto Renegades, a high-ticket crypto trading mastermind with over 1 ,600 paying members, generating$200 ,000 monthly. After surviving the 2008 financial crash that cost him$4 million, Nico rebuilt his fortune through strategic crypto trading and now teaches Entrepreneurs' proven crypto wormhole method for creating six to seven figure income streams.

0:41And today we'll talk about passive income, learning the game, risk and leverage, finding your fits, understanding leverage, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Nico and our sponsors. And Fire Nation, I want to be very clear, nothing in this video is financial advice. I am in no way endorsing what Nico is promoting or talking about. He is just sharing his area of expertise. So sit back, enjoy, and let's kick it on in. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:19Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic all in just 90 days. Ready for freedom? Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Nico, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Most people, especially if they're already motivated and already inspired and already looking to do something and they think that they're going to be successful at, disagree that they need to work on their mindset.

2:10They all think that they just need the formula, they just need the plan. But most people get hung up on mindset issues that prevent them or block them from somehow, some way reaching their goal. And what I find after working with a lot of people who ultimately become successful as the major blocks had nothing to do with the technicals, it was all in their head that we have to get past certain limiting beliefs. Well, Fire Nation, that's why today we're talking about how we're going to help entrepreneurs replace a six-figure income with less than four hours per week. And nothing you're going to hear in this episode is direct financial advice.

2:46Always do your own research, Fire Nation. You know that. This is just Nico sharing his genius, his zone of fire. And I want to start with a passive income reality check. I mean, Nico, how realistic is it really to make passive income from trading? And what do most people get wrong about that dream? I think what most people get wrong about passive income is that there is such a thing. There is really nothing passive. So even real estate, you can buy a nice 20 unit, 50 in a department building, you got rent, you got tenants paying rent. You got, even if you got a property manager managing it and collecting the rent for you and just sending you the money, you still have to manage the managers.

3:26You got to be, you got to be an asset manager in that case and manage the property manager to make sure they're doing everything right. So there's always going to be some work involved, some level of effort on your part. Now, maybe when you get 10, 15 million in the bank and you got some, some hedge fund or something that you can get a, get a monthly pinch it from, then you can get to that passive mark. But in the beginning, there is a little bit of effort, but I will tell you this, what we do and what we teach people to do is the only thing I know of that you can do concurrently simultaneously with anything else you're doing, a business or multiple businesses or a job that you can do in your spare time that doesn't really require you to sell anything or talk to anybody or have a product or service or be anywhere at any certain time or punch a clock.

4:13And it is something that you can literally do in your spare time to add an extra six-figure income, but it still takes a little bit of skillset that you do have to learn in order to get it down. Now, I want to talk about learning the game because at the end of the day, life is a game. And for people that actually realize it, maybe you can start playing it. So for those that are ready to dive in, what is the smartest way to learn how to trade crypto futures in 2025 and beyond that actually builds skill, not just hype? Yeah, great question. You know, we got a lot of people that join the Crypto Renegades Mastermind and they're logical, they understand that it takes a little time.

4:53We got some people who make, you know, 250 grand in their first four months and some people that don't even get past, you know, taking their first step or entering a trade in that amount of time because of fear or some mindset block. But so not everybody's different, but I mean, not everybody's the same, I should say. But but what I think is what I think that the most important thing to do is get educated first, because a lot of people say, well, I think I'm going to I'm going to take the money that I would normally pay for education and I'll throw it into a trading account. And let me just practice.

5:23Let me just get the hang of this first. And then when I make a little money, I'll then pay for education or some type of assistance. And that is usually a very costly mistake. And I don't say that just because I want people to join my group, go get help from anybody. I went to OTA, Online Trading Academy, 25 years ago to learn how to trade the stock market. Cost me about$30 ,000 at the time. And that was for a 12-week in-person education. And this is where hedge funds get their traders from. They get them from OTA and places like that. And it costs a lot of money. Today, OTA, I believe, is about$60 ,000 to$80 ,000 for that same education.

5:59But if I would have gone, I see what people do is they go and try to do it on their own first. They try to learn by the old school of hard knocks. And you can make successful trades. You will make money just out of sheer luck. And that's the problem. Most people get lucky on their very first trade and think this is easy and then give it all back on their second or third trade. So what I recommend people do is instead of worrying about making a lot of money, hopefully you have a stable income from a job or a business where you can dedicate a couple months to getting this skill down, understanding where support resistance is, understanding how to see where the liquidity zones are and knowing when to enter and exit.

6:37Because once you do that, there is no limit to how much you can make. This is the one cool thing about what we do is that there's some guys that make millions of dollars a month and, you know, literally trading an hour or two a month, like Ferrari money every day. And that's because, but they didn't start out that way. That's because they built the skill set up, took a little time to get over that learning curve. But once they get it, guys and gals, it's it's quite amazing because, you know, you can I always tell people that this is the only thing that I know of that you can do not only, you know, in your spare time, but you don't even have to wear clothes.

7:09You don't have to leave your house. You can be in bed by the pool, you know, with a hat and with a cat or a bat, as the old, you know, as the old book says. But, you know, it's it's it's really phenomenal because we've got guys we had a guy in our group. I know you didn't ask yet about this, but we got a guy named TJ who came in. And if he would have told me his financial situation before he joined, I would have talked him out of it. He was on food stamps. He basically on government assistance. He had a credit card. He said he took a leap of faith. And all he had was two hundred and fifty dollars that he couldn't even send into his trading account because he didn't know how he had to get on with one of our team members to help him transfer.

7:48and he made 26 grand his first month and turned that into 250 in four months and over a million dollars in seven months. And right now, still within a year, within a year of trading for the first time, over 6 million in a hedge fund he created with his friend and family members. So, you know, I've seen it all. I've seen people go from nothing to a lot. And I've seen some people struggle just to make a little bit because they're, you know, stubborn and they don't want to take direction or they think they, they think they understand one thing and that's it. They run with it. But you know, anybody can do it.

8:20You just have to follow simple instructions. Yeah. To back to one of your earlier points. I mean, that's kind of one of the major problems is that a lot of people get into markets during a bull run. Cause you know, the hype, the euphoria, and guess what? Everything's winning in a, in a bull run. So you make a trade and it wins. You think you're a winner, but no, it's the bull run. It's not you. It's not your trade. It's not your skills because you have none. And then you get absolutely crushed. You know, even as I said in the intro, you know, Nico, he survived the 2008 financial crash, but it cost him$4 million.

8:49I mean, this is a person that had been in the game for a while at that point. So it can happen literally to anybody. That's why I want to talk about risk and I want to talk about leverage. I mean, trading with leverage sounds powerful, but dangerous. I mean, we just heard about the biggest liquidation ever. I mean, it was like$19.1 billion was liquidated in crypto, like in the course of 30 minutes or something. And I mean, it's very obvious that there's like these market manipulators that are out there that are literally hunting the shorts. They're hunting the longs. They're to liquidate these leveraged plays.

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11:49So how do you think about risk when leverage can multiply both wins and losses? Yeah, great question and great point you just made as well. The people I know who make the most money trading stock market or crypto, they blew up accounts many times before they learned the lesson. And the only difference between them, the people that make million dollars a year plus and everyone else is they just kept going until they figured it out. The difference between them and the majority of the people is the people that give up after they have a loss or they, you know, they, they get frustrated because doesn't work.

12:20So, but I will tell you this with back to your other point, leverage, a lot of people are scared. And if you go on YouTube, you're going to see YouTubers, crypto, supposed crypto experts who have big followings on YouTube. They don't trade. All they do is talk about crypto. They talk about their, you know, bull markets and bear markets and things like that. They point to charts or like it's going up, it's going down. Look at this, look at that. And they don't trade and they don't really understand it, but they tell everybody, stay away from leverage. That's for sure. Way to get your account blown up.

12:49And, you know, listen, there are people out there that bought, you know, Bitcoin at pennies and are billionaires now. And they didn't do anything. They just bought it and sat there for 10 years. Of course, that happens to some. But if you have any grand illusion in your mind about getting super rich or even relatively rich at all, it's all relative to what you think rich is. But let's just say five million or more in the bank or liquid. if you have any desire to reach that level. You need to understand leverage and you need to use leverage. It doesn't matter if it's crypto trading or real estate or anything else.

13:23Every successful person, every billionaire you've ever heard of, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, all of them, they use leverage to get there. They borrowed millions or hundreds of millions from banks to buy more property. And then they refinanced that, pulled the equity out tax-free, used that money to buy more properties. It's all OPM, other people's money. Elon Musk borrowed 40 billion or so to buy Twitter. He had the money, but he borrowed against his stock portfolio because why not? You know, use OPM. Jeff Bezos, he bought a$200 million yacht. He could have sold his stock to do that, but he would have got a capital gains tax.

13:57So what did he do? He borrowed against his stock portfolio. This is leverage. And he's going to pay that loan back with the increased value of the asset being held as an escrow or as collateral. And so we do that with crypto too. So all leverage is, is that if I have$10 ,000, let's just say, and I deposited in my trading account, I'm not going to use all$10 ,000 to risk on a trade. Let's just say I'm going to risk 2%, 3%, 5%. But just to make this example easier to understand, let's just say 10%. So I'm going to put$1 ,000 out of my$10 ,000 on a trade. That's what I'm risking,$1 ,000. And then I'm going to put it at 10x leverage.

14:37So now I'm really playing with$10 ,000. my$1 ,000 times 10, that's the 10X leverage, but I'm really only risking 1 ,000 of my own money. Then I'm going to put a 10 % stop loss on that, which means I'm really only risking 10 % of my $1 ,000, which is only$100. So I'm playing with$10 ,000. I'm risking 1 ,000 of my own money, but I have a 10 % stop loss, which will prevent me from losing 1 ,000 if it goes against me, and I'll really only lose 100. Now, if it goes in the favor that I want it, if it goes in the direction I want it to go this trade. And let's just say I make a 10 % gain on the trade, but wait a minute, is it really going to move 10 %?

15:15No, it's only going to move 1%. So let's say the market only moves 1 % in the right direction, but because I'm at 10 X leverage, I'm going to make 10%. 10 % of what? 10 % of my$1 ,000. So that's, that's only a hundred bucks. So am I really going to risk a hundred bucks to make a hundred bucks? In this example, I would, I gave that example, just so you understand leverage, but I wouldn't even take that trade because when we take trades, we want a four to one or higher risk to reward ratio. So I would want to make, I would want to make$400 if I'm going to risk$100. And this is really easy to demonstrate if I share my screen and show a chart, which I do every week for people, but it's, it's, you're really not risking as much as you think.

15:56You can actually go 100X leverage. So let's just use that same example. I got 10 grand in my account. I'm going to risk a thousand on the trade, but I'm going to use 100 X leverage. So now I'm trading$100 ,000, but I'm really only risking 1000 of my own money. If the trade moves 1 % in the direction that I wanted to do, I'm going to make 100 % times 100, which is a 100 % gain on a 1 % move. That's what leverage does for you. And people say, well, what happens if it goes against you? Can't you lose everything? No, the most you can lose is the amount you're risking or your margin. And in this case, my margin is$1 ,000.

16:30But if I put a 10 % or a 5 % stop loss on that, I'm really only risking 10 % or 5 % of my$1 ,000. It's pretty amazing when you really understand it. And it's, you know, you can compare it to real estate or anything else. If I buy a house,$500 ,000 house here in Florida, typical price of a standard house. If I put 20 % down, I'm leveraging. The bank is loaning me 400 grand. I'm putting 100 grand down. If you had to come up with all the money yourself to buy a house or to do anything in this day and age, you would never do it. I mean, you don't live long enough to save up a million dollars or 500 grand, or you just, it's just very difficult.

17:07So you need leverage, you need to borrow. And the richest people do it. They borrow the most they can. But in the house scenario, if I bought the house for 500 grand, put a hundred grand down in 10 years from now, the house goes up 10 % per year. Then the house is now worth a million dollars in eight to 10 years. I only put, you know, a hundred thousand down. So now I have 900 ,000 in equity. Who gets that money, the bank or me? Well, I do. So if I sold the house, I'd be able to pull all that out. As long as I pay the bank back their 400 grand that they loan me, I walk with 600 grand cash or 700 because I get my a hundred grand back.

17:41Right. So that's leverage. But what if I refinanced it instead of sold it? And instead of selling it and getting a capital gains tax, I just refinanced it, pull six or 700 grand out and then use that money to buy another house. So now I'm buying houses with borrowed money, refied money. And this is how real estate investors get rich over time. They just keep using refi money to buy more properties. And so when you understand the math and you understand how it works, you can do this in the crypto market, the stock market, and you can be very successful. It's all about risk to reward ratio. Well, let's talk about finding our fits because at the end of the day, who is this right for?

18:19I mean, how can someone figure out if trading crypto futures is truly right for them? We're talking skill-wise. We're talking mindset-wise. We're talking lifestyle-wise. Nico, how do we find out? I hear a lot of people on social media telling people, you know, follow your dream, follow your passion. You should do what you love to do. And I'm going to beg to differ with that a little bit because when it comes to making money, as long as you have an interest in something, it doesn't have to be what you love to do. You could love to play golf all day, but are you going to be a pro golfer? No, but maybe you're a real estate agent, but you love to play golf all day.

18:51So how can you merge these two passions of yours? Well, you can have your website done up in a golf theme and you can pull up in a golf cart and give people tours. I mean, there's all kinds of things to mesh your dreams with your actual income producing activity. but you don't have to be, you don't have to be in love with trading to get good at it and to make enough money to then, to then fund your dream. So what I tell people is this, you know, listen, you got to make money some way. You got to pay your bills some way. Do you want to pick the hardest thing out there? Or one of the easiest things?

19:25A lot of people think this seems hard because they see it on CNBC or the business networks and these charts and these graphs look very confusing. Uh, and they do this so intentionally, but I will tell you this, if you ever been to Wall Street and you see the hedge fund traders flying in on their$6 million helicopters landing on these giant buildings and trading for$6 million for the day and then flying back to the Hamptons, you would understand that they really want you to think this is difficult. But when you really understand how to do it, guys, what you're doing is buying and selling money.

19:56It's the purest form of making money, in my opinion. And you are contributing to the economy because you're providing liquidity to the market. Now, where's the money coming from when you make it. It's coming from someone who wasn't as skilled as you. Yes, it is a zero sum game in some respects that, you know, when you make a profit, you're pulling it out of the liquidity of the market. But I would say that anybody could do this if you can just focus for a minute to learn the skill. It's, you know, imagine when you first learned how to drive a car, 16, I remember it clearly, I was driving a BW Bug stick shift in the, you know, in the early eighties.

20:29And, you know, it was difficult. I didn't know what I was doing. I was nervous that the instructor was telling me to pull out on the road, slowly let the clutch out while I was pressing the gas down. I stalled a couple of times. People were honking at me. And I remember clearly because I tell the story a lot because, you know, 60 days later, I'm doing 60 around a corner, staring with my knee, eating a cheeseburger in one hand and sipping a soda pop in the other. Everything that's difficult gets easier as you just continue to do it a little bit. So, you know, I tell people, look, if you, if you don't know, try it under, try to understand it because you go as far as you can see, and you'll always be able to see further.

21:03And as soon as you get a little glimpse of how it works, it's like, oh, I didn't realize that. And then you see someone do it a few times. You're like, wow, I actually can do what he just did. And once you realize that, then there is no limit anymore. There's no limit to how much you can make. Okay. Take us home. For Fire Nation members who are serious about stepping into trading, what is the one mindset or move that gives them the best chance to win long-term? Yeah, I would say give yourself 90 days. And here's what most people do. They come in and they want to hit a home run right out of the gate.

21:36They want to, you know, hey, Nico, if I could just pay my mortgage, if I could just make enough to make three to five grand a month or, you know, whatever, I would be happy. This would be a dream come true. And then they come in and they learn something and they make three grand or five grand in their first week. And they're like, oh, okay, maybe I wasn't dreaming big enough or maybe I limited myself. But our goal in Crypto Renegades, we tell people we will get you to a consistent$100 a day within the first 30 days. We'll get you to a consistent$200 a day within the second 60 days, which is your first two months, and at least$300 a day by your 90-day period.

22:09That's the minimum. But we've got people making tens of thousands of dollars by that time. But if you can make just $300 a day by the end of 90 days, that is six figures a year. And we're talking about in less amount of time than you spend watching TV on a nightly basis. So I would say four hours a week, if you can peel that away from whatever it is you're doing, you can make an extra six figures a year pretty simply, pretty easily by just following our lead. We give signals. So you don't even have to really know what you're doing to take our signals. But here's what happens. Once you take the signals, once you start doing what we're showing you, you get better and better at it.

22:45And before you know it, you don't need us anymore. You can find the trade setups and you know exactly what to do. Fire Nation, you are listening to somebody who's been there, who's done that, who's running a group right now that's having a lot of successful individuals. So Nico, if Fire Nation is listening, they're like, well, what do I need to do to learn more? What is your call to action for our listeners today? We do have a live mastermind where we teach and train. I'm live probably seven hours a week in our group. My partner live another six, three or four hours, but total six because we have another member who, who trained.

23:16So we have 12 to 15 hours a week of live zoom trading that we're just teaching, training, answering questions. We have a discord group with 24 hour chat and a membership area where we have step-by-step tutorials to help people get set up. But I would say the first thing to do, if you reach out to me, you'll be provided my name, Nico McCurris on any social media. But if you go to like Instagram, for instance, just make sure whether it's Instagram or Facebook, I have the little blue check next to my name. I do have some imposters that are pretending to be me out there. Unfortunately, when you get into this position where you have thousands of people seeing your ads and stuff every day, people try to imitate you.