In episode 21 of Wake Up to Wealth, Brandon Brittingham interviews Wallstreet Trapper - featured on Breakfast Club, Ellen DeGeneres, Black Enterprise, Yahoo Finance and more - to discuss his remarkable journey from adversity to success in the stock market. Trap shares his personal story of overcoming challenges, including being homeless, going to prison, and finding his way to financial freedom through the stock market.
Tune in to gain valuable insights on resilience and the true path to success.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Brandon Brittingham
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mailboxmoneyb/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.brittingham.1/
Wallstreet Trapper
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wall_street_trapper/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WallstreetTrapper/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wallstreet-trapper/
Youtube: @WallstreetTrapper
WEBSITE
Brandon Brittingham: https://www.brandonsbrain.org/home
Wallstreet Trapper: https://wallstreettrapper.com/
This is Wake Up to Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brinningham.
What's up, everybody? I am here today, and I'm super excited because I happen to be in your studio today. Come on, man. I'm here with Trap, Wall Street Trapper. And, man, I'm excited. I'm excited because, you know, all the stuff you've been doing, but I'm super excited to have you on the show today, and I thank you for taking your time with us.
Brandon Brittingham
Yeah, man. Yeah, man. I just, uh, you know, when I first met you, man, you was opening, just sharing information with me, seeing what you could do to help. So, you know, anytime I can bring any value to whatever you got going on, man, I'm here, man. So I appreciate you for having me, for sure. Thank you, man.
WallStreet Trapper
Yeah. So, uh, I don't want to talk about success right away. Just because what I always go to is people will see you on social media, they'll see me on social media, and they think it happened, we woke up and we were successful. I've just seen over the years some of the most successful people I've ever met. It was because of the adversity that he had gone through, right? So if you wouldn't mind, because what you've done is remarkable, but I really want people to hear what happened to get you to this point.
Brandon Brittingham
So I always say that you can't negotiate the necessary. The adversity is needed at seasoning. to your life, you know what I'm saying? So just born and raised in New Orleans. I saw my mama get shot when I was about nine. She survived. At 13, my mama went to prison. My grandmother passed away. So I was homeless for a couple of years. At 16, I went to prison for attempt murder. And that's when I learned about the stock market, while I was in prison. And this guy I met in there, he told me, he was just like, man, y'all, y'all playing the wrong game, bro. You know what I'm saying? And then from there, It wasn't that he told me about the stock market. He just said wealthy people do three things. They know how to stop working for money, learn how to let their money work for them so they can buy back their time and give value to people. And then he said the number three ways to build wealth was invest in stocks, create a business, buy real estate. And I was about maybe 18 when he told me that. And then sort of the rest of my time in prison, I really spent a lot of time just learning about the stock market because I felt like, you know, just being a dude from the hood, man, black, like, I ain't see success. Right. You know, the only successful people I saw was really like the hustlers. You know what I'm saying? So that's kind of what I looked up to. I was too short to play football or basketball. Right. So I was like, all right, this is my way out. And I think during that time, man, you really don't put too much value on your life. you just won't survive. And we get equipped with the tools to survive, but not the tools to be successful. And so in prison, I just had time to study the game and it made sense to me. The market literally was a reflection of the streets. Same thing, product, service, marketing, branding, supply and demand. And I was like, oh, I get that. It's the same thing. And so my idea was, initially, I could use my street money, clean it in a stock market, and I'll be all right. You know, you always try to think about how you can outsmart the game. You never think about getting out the game. It's just, how can I outsmart the game? And so I came home, and I was telling my homies about it. Like, bro, like, We were in Polo and we were in Timberlands, like that's owned by a company called VFC Corp. We were in Fendi, that's owned by Louis Vuitton, we were at Hennessy. We were in Nike, like we drank, you know, Hennessy. So all that's owned by certain companies. And I was like, bro, like, yo, we can really own this. And then the idea of ownership started like clicking in my head. Like, the only way to be wealthy is you gotta own some shit. And so that was it. It just clicked for me. But then around 2014, I had caught another charge in 2012. And they kicked my door, and they got 10 pounds of weed, $10,000, a 223, a 40, extended clip, and 100 X-pills. And so I was just like, all right, it's over with for me now. I got blessed. They kicked in the door with no search warrant. And I got found out guilty because of the fruit of a poisonous tree. And that means anything you come in my house and you don't have a legal right to be there, everything is null and void. So that was the life. But shit, I still ain't gonna give up the street. So I was like, all right, I'm broke. So I went to just robbing dope dealers. That was the new lick. That was the new, cause you, again, it may sound weird, but you never think of getting out the street. Cause it's all you really know. It's what you feel comfortable with. And it's hard to tell somebody who from the street from that magnitude where I was to go get a job. Because I felt like that was the next thing to prison to me. You know what I'm saying? Of course. And so me and my homie got in a situation, and I almost got killed. And then I told my homie, like, bro, that's a wrap. I ain't doing this no more. I done already did time. I done got shot. I done almost got killed. I done got found out guilty. Ain't nothing else for me to do in the streets but go back to prison or get killed. And you know, I was like, nah, bro, I don't want to do that. So I gave him whatever we made from that and I just started working. And I just said, at least I could just go in on the stock market. Right. So that was about 2014. So from 2014 to maybe 2018, I just took it really, really serious. started talking about it on Instagram from a friend of mine, was like, nah, you need to teach people on Instagram. I'm like, I didn't think nobody wanted to hear about it. Right. Nobody want to hear about no damn stocks. You know, that ain't what we do on Instagram, man. We show off, and we, yeah. So got on the Gram, started talking about it, and people started gravitating to it. Pandemic hit, everybody was inside. Everybody wanted to learn how to make money. And people had been rocking with me, and then it just got, it just started growing from there, man. Wound up doing the Ellen show, wound up doing a breakfast club, wound up doing a swing in the morning. All of that came from me just consistently putting in work. And then this year I had my first million dollar trade. And so, you know, it kind of just consistently just taking over the market, but also just being transparent. like really showing people the wins and the losses and not a lifestyle. But that was a byproduct of where I was from. Like where I was from, you hesitant about showing lifestyle in New Orleans because you become dinner. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You become the thing that everybody won't eat, because so many people starving. Yeah. And so the lifestyle thing never was for me. It was just showing people that. And so, bruh, here we are now, bruh. You know, some years in the game. And man, it's just, I find so much joy in not seeing people make money, because that's the goal. Like, this could be the ticket to your freedom for me. So that's why I'm just all in on it, bruh.
So, um. You prompted two questions. I'm going to ask you the first one. So a lot of people, when it comes to social media, and I tell people all the time how powerful it is, but a lot of people, we're so manipulated by instant gratification from social media, right? So you started... And, you know, how were you posting once a day? What were you doing? And, like, when did you see traction? Because it wasn't the first fucking day you went on social media, right? Hell no. And now, I mean, now your shit is crazy, right? So, but there was a gap in between. And how long was that gap?
So one of the things I did was, and the streets taught me this, was always, before you go into anybody hood and hustle, you got to pay attention to, like, who the hustlers are, who the robbers are, who the jackers are. Excuse me, who hustling what? And so what I saw on Instagram was there was a bunch of pages that had information, but nobody would show their face. No face, yeah. Nobody was talking. Nobody was going live. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to go live every day. Yeah. I had a friend of mine that knew how to work Canva. And so I would tell her what I wanted to put on it, right? So she would go make the Canva little things for me. I'll give her like five or six ideas and she'll make them for me. And it wasn't the best, but I would use them. And then I would write down what I wanted them to be in them. And then I would go live and talk about it. And so probably that first year, again, you start the page with no followers. So that first year, I think I gained about maybe 15,000 followers. Which that's still. Yeah, that was rapid. Yeah, a lot. That was a lot. I think that first year I gained about 15,000 followers, but I was going live like. In the morning, so I would do stuff like when a bell, when the opening bell come on for the market, I would go live. So you were consistent. You were super consistent. That was it. Every day I would post and then I would go live when the market opened. It would be called opening bell with trap. And then I would, I would use like what they use on CNBC. It would be at lunchtime. I'll go lunch money with trap. It was more than once a day. Yeah. It was lunch money with trap. Yeah. And then at the end of the day, it'd be closing bell with trap. And then sometimes, two o'clock in the morning, I show people me researching a company. So I just was doing what none of the other pages was doing, right? They had information, and their graphics looked amazing. But it was a faceless page. But it was a faceless page. So now people are asking questions, and another thing I would do is I would go to people's pages that had all the followers, and I would go answer every question in the comments. That's smart. All day, that's all I did. I had unquit the job. So I was like, this is what I'm doing. So I would just answer all the questions in the comments. I had a list of like 15 pages from CNBC on down, Bloomberg, you know, the faceless pages. I'm in everybody comments all day. And then the name was Wall Street Trapper. So it kind of was like a good name. Yeah, it stuck out. Yeah, it stuck out. So that was, at least that first year was just grind work. Yeah. All grind work. And still to this day, I follow the same method because people still don't go live.
So you just one thing you just said that a lot of people in the journey of being an entrepreneur where I think people fuck up is they get away. Like what you just said is such a. valuable piece of advice. You didn't stop what worked. No. You found out it worked and you kept doing it. For some fucking reason, most entrepreneurs, including myself, I've done it. You do something that works really well, and then we feel that we got to change it, and you didn't. And that's worked really well. But one of the things that you said, for everybody listening to this, is like, you put in the grind, you put in the work, you were consistent. The hardest thing for any human being to be is consistent. Yeah.
And I wonder why that is, because If you really want something, you know, the goal is to always just outwork everybody. Right. Right. But... in your consistencies, you got to be paying attention. Because you can consistently be doing the wrong shit. Facts. You know what I'm saying? That's why you ain't getting no movement. If I'm consistently working out the wrong way, not eating, I ain't going to see no results. So for me, and I think my greatest advantage is because I'm from the streets. I'm not going to lie. Because the streets always make you pay attention. Like, you always on alert. You always on guard. And you know somebody is always going to take you out. Somebody coming on the block trying to outgrind you or outwork you. So for me, it was like, I'm not going to let nobody go live more than me. Like, I would do stuff like a company would have an earnings call. I would go live listening to the earnings call and break down what's being said in the call because I knew that the average person, they don't understand that. You know what I'm saying? So I would do it with CNBC. I'm watching CNBC. I know the average person don't understand what's going on, but guess what? If I get on there and I start breaking down what's going on, it's like, oh, that makes sense to me.
Yeah. I mean, another key, you know, serious gem you gave is, you know, you, so when did you start, like, offering something to your audience to buy? Was that right away? Nah, I waited a year. So, for everybody listening to this, that's why I asked that question. Yeah. So you gave value away for a year. For a year. A year straight, just gave value. Yep. So you just, I'm just going to deposit a fuck ton of education into the market. Then I'm going to come back and ask for the sale. It's like the streets.
Yeah. Sample packs.
Yeah. But most people would not be willing to do that for that long.
Yeah, a year. And then when I did drop something, it was an e-book. The shit went crazy. It went crazy. And I still didn't understand. Again, I didn't even understand how the internet thing worked. Right. You know what I'm saying? So I had an e-book with a PayPal link attached to it. I had an e-book with the PayPal link attached to it. But I did that for a year straight. But you sold a rack of them. I sold a lot of them. And then before I even dropped the course, I dropped four e-books. Right. And then here's the crazy part. There's evolution. I had dropped four e-books. Walshie Trap 101, Walshie Trap 102, Walshie Trap 103, and then Pay Me In Equity. And then I was like, all right. Now, let me take it to another level. I still didn't have the course idea in my mind. Right. It was get all four e-books and a phone call with me for $297. Damn.
Back in the day, did people get that?
What? Did you give that away? I was doing 10 calls a day. Bro. I promise you. You gave away a lot of value. I promise you. I was doing 10 calls a day.
So if you're listening and you got one of those calls, you got a fucking deal.
What? And here's the thing. I still have people with me. They'll tell me, I've been with you since the phone calls. Right. Yeah, because you gave them so much value. Yeah, they're like, bro, I've been with you. I'm talking about a real phone number. Yeah. That's real phone number. And then Zoom jumped off. So it was, okay, phone number and a Zoom call. So you had, you had all. So that was my, that was it. Like that was, and I was doing eight, mind you, I had stopped working. Because in my heart, I'm a hustler. Oh, because you still had another job.
Yeah, I was doing ironwork and welding.
Got it, got it. So I stopped doing that. I said, I ain't doing this no more. I'm going to do this right here. And to me, in my mind, man, just talking on the phone with people is, that ain't hard as going to work 12 hours a day, 10, 12 hours a day.
No doubt about it. Seven days a week. And you're doing something you love.
You understand. I was excited. So now I was going live saying, DM me the word phone call, and I'll send you a PayPal link. Mind you, I didn't know how this was working. I'm sending you a PayPal link. You pay the $2.97. And you get on the phone with me. I send you the full e-books. It's me manually. And then I don't know nothing about how this thing go, but all I know is I'm doing $1,000 a day.
The thing that's remarkable about that is most people would eat, would so overthink that whole process that they would never get started. And I think that what's crazy about that is you just said, fuck it, I'm gonna do it. I'm in. And then so that just built this, just, you know, you built this groundswell of an audience and you gave away so much value that then it's like, don't buy anything you put out because you've already overdelivered on so much value.
On everything. And that was the whole, for me, and here's the crazy part, it's supposed to be a one hour phone call. You was going over an hour for sure. Probably was going two hours. Yeah. I got another call. Let me don't talk about you catch me. Well, I got two hours between the call You might get a three hour phone call out of me for 297. You got four ebooks and you like, bruh Yeah, when you dropping this and so I met a friend of mine that said, um he was like You need to stop doing the phone calls He said, the next, like, 20 phone calls you do, write down the questions that they have of you. He's on a Zoom, and then you create a course behind that. Behind it, yeah. And then that becomes what you do. And if you still want to do the phone call, now you charge $1,000. You know, the number's different. You know, the number's different. So I was like, all right, cool. And so I did that for a while, and I didn't do the phone call. I wanted to over-deliver. Right. So I started charging $2,500 for one day with me. Jesus. So I would fly out to you. That's cheap. All I know was I ain't working and I ain't hustling no more. Right. So it was $2,500. It was called meet the plug. Right. It was called Meet the Plug, and I was doing like three of those a month. Right. Man, I felt like I was winning. Right, of course, yeah. I'm winning. So I was, I was, it would cost, it would be $2,500 plus the hotel fee. Right. I would book my own flight. And so... So you wasn't even netting $2,500. Nope. Right. Nope. So it probably was netting, depending on the flight, depending... Like, the first I went was California. Yeah, that shit wasn't cheap. That was not cheap. And I was staying in... I wasn't staying in no big dog hotel. Right. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it was like, all right, but you was getting a whole eight-hour day out of me, which started at like... We would start at 9.30 when the market came on, and we would leave when the market go off. That was my day. That was the day predicated. 9.30 to 4.30, 4 o'clock when the market go off. That was the day. That was the session. Yeah. We would do a little lunch, but we would go eat lunch together. Yeah. And I would treat the lunch. Jesus. But in my mind, man, I'm winning. Yeah.
Well, the... The following you built by doing that, money can't buy it.
Marketing can't buy it. Do you know what I mean? And I would go live, I would ask the person, could I go live for a little bit? And I would go live while I'm doing a one-on-one for like maybe 30 minutes. That's context gold. Yeah. It's like, man, look, y'all want to get one of these? DM me the word. Right. And get signed up. The plug. Yep. And at the end of the day, I'll send them a PayPal link. Yeah. With a calendar invite. And PayPal loved you. It was loving me. That's all I knew. Right. But I tell people all the time, What you don't know is not a reason for you not to do something. Facts. You know what I'm saying? Like, I didn't know how to maneuver around, but I knew if I kept it simple, eventually I'll grow into it. I'll bring somebody in that can show me, OK, no, let's do this. Let's do that. I mean, you went out and did it.
I just went and did it. You didn't overthink it. Nope. And that's probably a good part of your genius. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah. I think people always overthink stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Something you said, just listening to you, I'm going to go off script a little bit. Come on, man. I just want to ask this question because this is something that I'm a huge believer in. So at any time in your journey of what you went through, did you ever feel somebody, a higher power, whatever you believe in, was trying to tell you Bro, you're meant for something else. Yeah. That's why I'm putting this shit in front of you. Yeah. To stop, right? Oh, yeah. So I believe in God. Did you have a turning point where you found that?
Yeah. So I always believed in God because a lot of stuff that I've been through, I felt like if it was just me, I would have been messed it up. Sure. Right? And the ability, and I'll be honest, I don't, I didn't think that I was smart enough to connect the two. Sure. Like the stock market and like the streets, like who does that? And so I always- Which is genius, by the way. Yeah. Marketing. If I was to say I did it by myself, I'd be like, nah, bro, I ain't had that. But I know that when I think, when I look back and look at all the stuff I overcame, I was like, nah, I didn't. I had to go through all of that to get here. Facts. Like, this is what makes it relatable. And so when I look at the market, I always say there's nobody that makes it relatable to that class of people that still wants to be wealthy, that wants to retire right. And the market is just not designed to speak to those people. It's designed to sell them a 401k. It's designed to give them an annuity plan. It's designed to, hey, get on this social security. That's the way the market is designed. And so I was like, nah, I just got to keep learning, but I can also put it in a way that they can understand. And I just think that was the gift God gave me. The ability to navigate through the minutia of the jargon and be like, nope, here's just what you need.
So what's crazy about that is when you think about it like this, right? So this is what I believe. I say this on stage almost every time I speak. is that I believe there's certain people in this world that are chosen ones. You're one of them, I'm one of them, right? Thank you, brother. So we and you get put through more shit. Yeah. Because for us, it's the classroom to teach other people how to get through it. So if you think about it, because you came from the streets and you were exposed to stocks, that's how you were able to parallel it. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And think about it. If you hadn't gone through that, you wouldn't have been able to make the connection. Oh, for sure. And that's why
you've for sure been chosen. Yeah, I know for a fact that that is the relatability factor. Facts, for sure. And so I always tell my team, like, yo, this is who we are. Yeah. Like, authenticity is our superpower. Yep. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. It's our super power. We don't have to be, we don't have to do. And I think the thing about that too is now I go against everything that traditional finance teaches.
Yeah. Walsh for sure.
I go, which is great. Yeah. I go against everything that, and cause it just started making me understand like, all right, Wealth doesn't care what color you are. That's correct. Right?
But poverty don't care either.
What we just talked about before we got on here, money's the equalizer. And it's the equalizer. And I was like, you know what? Let me take away, let me show you for a second. Seeing my mama get shot, not finishing school, not knowing my father, going to prison, but yet here I am, you can still be successful, 100%, right? And I was like, all right. And so something came to my mind, and I looked at it, and it said, when I started looking at the most successful people in the world, they all broke the blueprint. They don't follow the blueprint that is set for people, right? You got to be an outlier. Right? You got to be willing to say, nope, I'm going to get out the line and I'm going to go over here. I'm going to go down this path that not many people go down, but it's going to be some adversity. But if I can get past that, it's some gangsta shit on the other side of the, you know what I'm saying? And so for me, I'm like, nah, I won't just, I won't go meet the adversity because if I play it safe, if I stay here, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep allowing them to feed me and giving them permission to starve me. 100%. Right? And I never wanted that. So it was, now how do I get people to adapt to that belief system?
So someone who's listening to this and the stock market scares them. Yeah. They're like, fuck, I don't know what to do. Yeah. Give them a piece of advice. They're starting out. Obviously, they need to come learn from you. That's one piece of advice. But how about the person that's like, shit, man, I'm scared to even buy the course from you or any of your education because I'm just scared of it in general.
What would you say to that? So one of the things is, So we do a show every Tuesday called Trappin' Tuesday. And I think that show is free for three hours. Three hours. Every two. We just hit our 100th episode. Congratulations. Man, that was big, right? But just to get in the game, I want you to have some type of education on it. And the reason why is because the game don't got no feelings. Sure. They don't care if it's your rent money. They don't care if it's your education money. It's not going to give it back to you. Right. Right. So I never want nobody to just jump in. I want you to go listen to something or somebody, preferably me, that can, I always say, anybody that listens to me, I let them borrow my confidence. Sure. Because confidence, like just how we say money is the great equalizer. Yeah. Confidence will be second to that. Yeah. Because when you're confident about something, you disregard the option of losing. Right? And there's so many, there's so much data inside of the loss. Your confidence makes you say, hmm, what did I learn from that? Right. Oh, I'm about to get, that's how I am. Like, I lost $120,000, that put me in position to go make a million dollars. Hold on, say that again. There's data in the losses. I had to lose $120,000 to go make a million. Facts. You cannot expect to gain without embracing the loss. Absolutely. You can't negotiate the necessary. Yep. Right? And what happens is the losses allow you to build that capacity up. to go to the next level. So for me, anybody, I'm not going to tell nobody, just jump straight in. I need you to get educated. Because once you get educated, there's not a move you cannot make. Right. Absolutely. There's not a move you cannot make. I can tell you, yeah, go buy Apple, go buy Microsoft, but you wouldn't know why you buying it. And I'm not a believer in buy what you use, because You can buy, I use AT&T. I wouldn't dare buy that stock. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. You know what I'm saying? I wear Nikes, but I wouldn't buy Nike stock. Stock just plummeted today, 18%. Why? Because the company said, we are losing our customer base, verbatim. Right? So I'm not a person that's going to tell you, yeah, just buy what you use. No, go get educated and you'll understand that what you use is where your understanding level is. And it doesn't have to be the company you use, but it can be that industry. So like, I don't like Nike. But I understand, like, Deckers. I understand Lululemon. I understand these new up-and-coming companies that's outperforming Nike. Right? I don't eat McDonald's, but I understand the fast food area. But guess what? I like Chipotle. I like Kava. They're outperforming. McDonald's and all these other fabs. So it's not so much of investing in what you use, invest in what you understand. That's the pivot. Got it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, that's the pivot.
So I end the show every time the same way. I ask everybody the same question. So I named the show Waking Up to Wealth. You've already learned it. You've been taught about money wrong. That's why I named it Waking Up to Wealth because I bring smart people on here like you to teach people about money better. So your answer can be whatever it is to you, but what does Waking Up to Wealth mean to you?
Waking up to freedom. Because there was a time in my life where every day I woke up in a cell and I wasn't always in prison.
Damn, that's powerful.
You feel me? Yes, I do. Yeah, you feel me? And so I was confined to whatever construct based on my ignorance. Right. You know what I'm saying? You can only go as far as you have the wisdom to move. And so waking up to wealth means now waking up to freedom. And that means I've acquired a certain type of wisdom that allows me to have full control of my life. Facts. So that, for me, waking up to wealth would be straight up waking up to freedom.
Well, man, I cannot thank you enough. I mean, the amount of wisdom and shit you dropped. Oh, man. Thank you, brother. This one might hit 100,000 downloads. Come on, man. I really appreciate you taking the time with me. Yeah, man. I know you're a busy man. Anytime. A lot of people can get a lot of value out of what you dropped today.
Thank you, brother. I appreciate y'all, man. Thank you, brother.
Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Wake Up to Wealth. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way we'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast and tell your friends about the show. It is how new people find us. Until next time.