Luxury Unplugged Podcast Transcript

Host: Neeti Keswani
Guest: Aaron Richards, Founder of ATN

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Neeti Keswani: Let's dive in and redefine luxury from the inside out. Today we are exploring an interesting topic that is at the intersection of technology and wealth building. Our guest, Mr. Aaron Richards, is someone who's truly ahead of the curve. He's the founder of ATN, a company that's making waves in the world of trading, business optimization, and strategic growth. Now with a passion for innovation and hands-on approach to leadership, he's building a career that's helping businesses not just grow but scale with precision.

So if you are a seasoned investor, a curious entrepreneur, or just fascinated by how trading works, then this is going to be the game-changer podcast for you. If you've been wondering how to build an income through your online business, how to have that created income and loads of questions around it, you're going to get answers to those questions in this podcast.

Welcome to Luxury Unplugged. I'm Neeti Keswani, your host, and this is where luxury meets spirituality. Now in this interview series, we are exploring what it truly means to live a life of purpose, elegance, and inner abundance. But why leave the external environment too? So through our inspiring stories and conscious entrepreneurship, in each episode we are helping you unplug from the noise and reconnect with the essence of who you really are.

Let's dive in and redefine luxury from the inside out. Welcome, Aaron Richards.

Aaron Richards: Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Great introduction. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Neeti Keswani: So nice to have you, Aaron Richards. And we are having so many questions around the interesting things that you are doing in your career. So, to start off, you talk about having a passive income, a steady stable passive income. How did you sort of start making that? First of all, how did you venture into investing per se?

Aaron Richards: Yeah, great question. I mean, you know, it started back in like 2019. So, that was something that I realized when I moved to Los Angeles and saw the big homes and saw, you know, kind of the lifestyle that people were living and I was like, well, I'm not going to be able to get there making $100,000 per year. Even with a combined household income of pretty much $200,000 per year, I was looking at the expenses versus the income. And I was like, it's going to be a long, long time for me to be able to afford a multi-million dollar home and, you know, be on the beach whenever I want and things of that nature.

So that led me to really diving into the world of entrepreneurship and then also into the world of investing, which is a completely, completely different world than, you know, a 9-to-5 employee or someone who is stuck in the rat race. The worlds are completely different. So I just wanted to figure it out for myself. It didn't come without my struggles, and still there are still challenges that I face today, but you know, fast forward six years later, I'm very happy with the trajectory that I've been on.

Neeti Keswani: Very nice, very interesting. In fact, because you also talk about a steady stable income that you've been able to build out. So before we dive into that, let's understand for our viewers' sake, what is it really and how do you go about it if you're really a newbie in this area?

Aaron Richards: Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, there's two great questions. So the first thing I'll start with the second one. How do you go about it? Well, the first thing that you have to do is actually have investable income, right? Or the ability to have capital to risk with an investment.

For people that are, you know, 18 and young individuals that are trying to start a career, figure out what they want to do in life, focus on getting a high income skill set. For me, I have this theory, it's called the three acquisitions of wealth. The first is, you know, acquire knowledge, then you want to acquire capital, and then you want to use that capital to acquire assets, and then you can kind of rinse, wash, and repeat.

The first thing is the knowledge piece. That goes into formal education, self-education, you know, developing skill sets, understanding how you can use those skill sets to earn you money. And so again, for the younger individuals that are looking to be able to invest, well, you need to start with having capital to invest. And I wouldn't double leverage and, you know, get a credit card or a business loan to get into algorithmic trading or investing. That's high risk.

So, starting with a high income skill set is first and foremost. Now, for the people if you fast forward to someone who's already done that and you know whether you're late 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and on, and you already have a career, you already have a high income skill set. You're just stuck in the time-for-dollars trap. You are someone like myself, you know, about seven plus years ago, and you're looking for a way out of the rat race. Well, you just want to at that point minimize your liabilities and have investable capital.

So, for those that are, you know, maybe 18 to 30 and they're still trying to figure out their career and figure out how they can earn a high amount of income so they do have investable capital, then the first thing you want to focus on is the actual knowledge piece. For those who are already there, you may be 30, 50, 70 years old, you're still in your working age, and you actually earn a pretty high income. Well, what you want to do at that point is look at the makeup of your portfolio. Do you just have your investments in things that are going to make 5 to 10% annually, or do you have a sliver of your portfolio that is what's called alternative investments? Those can be precious metals, collectibles, commodities, other businesses, and also trading.

With trading and how we leverage AI and technology is, you know, just several years ago, that started to become more prevalent for retail investors to have access to these high-frequency trading models, these algorithms. But you don't want to just go at it alone. You don't necessarily just want to buy an algorithm and then just put a bunch of money on it and watch it go to zero. That's not really advisable. You want to have professionals that you're working with to help you, and that's where you know our company comes in. We have trading teams that we use to leverage their expertise and give our clients the best chance of success.

Neeti Keswani: Right. So, Aaron Richards, in terms of when you talked about the people that are getting into it, you talked about the age group and age span of 18 to 30. While researching for the podcast even I came across, there's a lot of information and a lot of inquisitiveness in the teenagers to get into it. Is that something like a trend these days?

Aaron Richards: Well, it's a trend for them to do it themselves. They're the ones who are more so the type that will either use prop firms, which is basically using other people's money. The problem with prop firms that we've seen is that they don't actually pay out. Like 99% of them don't actually pay out. They make their money off of people paying for challenges, and most of them fail. But when someone actually passes and they've been a successful trader, that's when they don't actually pay out.

So it is a trend for the younger generation to do prop firm trading or to try to trade themselves with what they have, which is maybe a couple thousand dollars. But as far as those the 18 to 30 year olds, that's not necessarily our crowd at ATN. The ATN community that we have, most of our clients, our average age is like 45 years old. So the trend for those individuals that we serve is they want to take advantage of AI. They want to take advantage of advanced technology. And they want to take advantage of something that's passive for themselves because they don't want a second job. The last thing that our clients want is to spend more hours sitting in front of a screen and not with their family.

Neeti Keswani: So, in terms of the audience and the kind of people that you are working along with, these are high-income individuals, right?

Aaron Richards: High income, not necessarily high net worth. We're taking what's usually reserved for the top 1% and we're allowing for access to the top five and 10%, which is really helpful.

Neeti Keswani: So in terms of high-income group of people, there is still the risk that is there with AI and with kind of automated trading. So what kind of risk are we looking at if we go on an independent basis versus somebody like you? What kind of risk mitigation happens with you?

Aaron Richards: It's easier to use an analogy. If you want to get from New York to Miami, you could walk. That's like trying to save your way to wealth. You could take a car, that's a little faster, like investing for 5-10% returns. Or you could fly there. It's going to be a good amount faster. But you need a license, it's more expensive, there's more restrictions. That's AI, that's algorithmic trading.

With what we do is, instead of you flying the plane by yourself, we give you access to something like Delta Airlines. You are sitting in first class and you're getting from New York to Miami very comfortably. You're not the pilot. You don't have to go through years of training. So, for what we do, we are not the trading team. ATN is not the trading team. We're the go-between. We're the consultants. We provide a level of access. So you can consider us the airline. We have pilots that we contract with to get you to your destination. It's allowing for the professionals to do most of the work while you are able to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Neeti Keswani: So is it coming with, let's say, you invest this particular amount of money with us and we are going to be guaranteeing a certain kind of return? Or are we talking about a long-term basis where you suggest and the client makes the final decision? How do you really work?

Aaron Richards: Yeah, great question. So whenever anyone throws out the word guarantee, I kind of cringe. Nothing in life is guaranteed except for death and taxes. In finance and investing, there's nothing that's guaranteed. For us, no, we don't offer guarantees because that's unethical. But what we do offer is actual results. We offer the ability to look at what has been the track record and what's been the performance over time. And of course, past results don't dictate future results, but you can look at our testimonials, case studies, and the results we've been able to help our clients see to make an informed decision. We've had a pretty successful go at it in the last few years.

Neeti Keswani: So Aaron Richards, let's get to some basics. When we talk about your online income, which is widely written about on your websites, you talk about a $25,000 per month kind of online income through automated trading. So what are some of the key habits or routines that might help other people to scale their online income in this fashion?

Aaron Richards: The first thing that has to happen is the ability to have income or capital to invest, what you call risk capital. Money that you could afford to lose. For me making more than $25,000 per month passively, it just is a matter of how much capital I have allocated into my funds. What we've seen historically has been around three to five plus percent on a monthly basis, or more importantly, between 30 and 50 or so percent on a yearly basis. The more capital you have to put in, the more you're earning. So I would advise someone to have capital available that they will not need in the very near future. It's similar to how you would think of putting capital away for retirement.

Neeti Keswani: In terms of that, my question would be about the kind of mistakes people generally make when they're trying to automate their income. What sort of mistakes do they get into and how can they avoid them?

Aaron Richards: Yeah, great question. Trusting the wrong people is big. There's a lot of people out there that do not have the best interest of their clients. For me, growing up in a Christian household, we had values like the golden rule. So for me, it's about transparency, honesty, track record, and availability.

I've personally experienced this. I lost 60 plus thousand dollars in Amazon automation, tens of thousands in Airbnb automation, tens of thousands in Shopify automation. I went into trucking and that did not work out. I remember a client of ATN invested $150,000 into a trucking program that was supposed to make him $5 to $10,000 per month, and after four or five months, he was making an average of $0 per month.

So, you need to look at track record and see historical success of it actually working for other people that are similar to you. And then also, not going in with multiple six figures if that's all the investable capital you have. You want to slow-play it and protect yourself.

Neeti Keswani: Okay, so coming back to trading now. Automated trading versus manual trading—why or why not? Which one should you opt for? Is automated trading really good? Should somebody trust it?

Aaron Richards: They say anywhere from 90 to 95% of traders are not profitable. For those that may be listening that have thought about trying it yourself, it's a pretty daunting profession. When you have someone who's a part of that top five and 10% of traders who are actually profitable, that's where we have a business.

People don't want to learn the years it takes, or lose the hundreds of thousands of dollars you could lose trading yourself. They just don't have the time to stare at a computer screen all day. My clients are looking for a better work-life balance. 77% of employees have been burnt out. They don't want to replace their current job with another job. They want to be in a position to spend more time with the people that they care about.

Neeti Keswani: That's a beautiful answer. Having said that, in terms of the situation that we are in right now, probably hitting a recession sooner than later, what is your thought regarding that and what are the trading strategies that people should have right now?

Aaron Richards: Yeah, great question. The definition of a recession has changed, but we've really kind of been in a recession since 2022. A recession is two negative quarters of GDP growth. We've had several of those in a row. So, I would say about being in a recession, it's definitely a good time to become wealthy if you allocate things accordingly and trust the right people.

For me personally, back in 2022 is when I started ATN officially. Fast forward several years later, my net worth has grown by more than 30x. I recognize it as an opportunity to take advantage of things that are not as oversaturated. Real estate is a little overexposed, we're at the top of the market, and interest rates are not inviting. With the tariffs and executive orders, we've seen stocks go in and out, people's retirement affected.

It's just a matter of diversification. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. ATN allows you to have a portfolio and have a sliver of that portfolio using our connections to boost your overall growth. Diversification is key. The modern portfolio theory is about diversification. The only time it doesn't help is with a market-wide systemic risk, which is what the tariffs are. But if you are hedged and have uncorrelated assets, that can be helpful. Commodities typically do well with inflation. Different businesses can be profitable if you buy them on a discount.

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