Jeff Bishop is a Professional Trader and Co-Founder of the popular trading educational program, RagingBull.com. He brings 20 years of professional experience working as a trading expert, and has become known as a leader in the field. Bishop is also a member of MENSA, one of the oldest high IQ clubs in the world. His professional background and natural ability has allowed Bishop to thrive in his roles over the years.
Bishop attended the University of Texas, where he received two Bachelor’s Degrees in Economics and Finance. Following graduation, he pursued work within entrepreneurship, and would end up opening several successful businesses that made over $1 million.
In 2010, Jeff Bishop teamed up with professional trader Jason Bond to create RagingBull.com. The trading educational program focuses on teaching both new and experienced traders the ins and outs of trading. Working alongside Bond, the duo helped RagingBull.com become one of the most popular educational programs available.
Throughout his time with RagingBull.com, Jeff Bishop has focused on creating comprehensive programs on mastering the art of options trading. Most recently, he launched the new High Octane Options program, which teaches traders about how to achieve success with options. Not only can students learn from Bishop on how to trade options, but they can learn directly from his live portfolio. Other exciting programs that Bishop offers through RagingBull.com include Bullseye Trades, Total Alpha, and Portfolio Accelerator.
One of Jeff Bishop’s biggest passions in his career includes providing professional mentorship to up-and-coming professionals in the field. He has helped countless professionals find long-term success as traders, including biotech stocks guru, Kyle Dennis. After becoming the first student to make $1 million in trading profits, Dennis would end up joining RagingBull.com as a trading educator. He continues to help other traders achieve the same level of success as him.
In 2018, Jeff Bishop and Jason Bond teamed up to create RagingBull Giving. RagingBull Giving is a program that brings together traders who are looking to support reputable organizations within their communities. To date, the traders at RagingBull.com have donated over $725,000 to reputable organizations.
Our Interview with Jeff Bishop
Question: What’s the most important thing we should know about you?
Jeff Bishop: The Jeff that gets portrayed to the outside world through ads and the website and stuff; that’s not really me. I think that most people would say that that’s not who Jeff is at all, really. I really am a pretty down-to-earth guy, and cares a lot about his family.
I’m passionate about trading, but it’s a very small portion of his life, really. It’s all about his family and growing his business. Those are his two main passions, really. My two babies.
Question: Name the most impactful lesson you learned from failure.
Jeff Bishop: Failure is just a temporary setback. America’s a place that’s designed to reward multiple failures. You’re rewarded for taking more shots. So I think failure is just a part of life, and everybody has to get back on the saddle and try again. I think too many people give up too easily. They’re too emotionally involved, and their failure, they take it personally. They have a hard time overcoming it.
But I think the bar was so low in my life, that failure was almost expected. So anything that actually worked out well was a bonus. I was never too rattled by our failures. I was honestly more surprised by successes. So that’s why I strive to do more. Failure never really bothered me.
Question: What accomplishment are you most proud of?
Jeff Bishop: I’m really proud of the business we built. I mean, it’s such a great community with people that are part of it, and the people on our team. I’m really proud of what we’ve put together here. I think it’s pretty awesome. It’s something I never would have imagined we would get to.
It had good roots, which started with just people really close to me, family, friends. Not the most qualified people necessarily, but very trustworthy, very loyal people to have. That was always more important to me than talent. Nowadays, we kind of need both, but in the early days it was really just about loyalty and trustworthiness.
And so it had good roots. We had just great people. Everybody was truly a family from the very start, and I think that branched out after we had 30, 40 employees. I think even new people kind of sense that early on. If we’ve got an issue with the company, there’s a fire that has to happen, everybody’s all-hands-on-deck. No, one’s like, “Ah, someone else will get to it.” Everybody tries to contribute however they can to make things better.
It doesn’t happen in a lot of companies. That says something about the loyalty, and the involvement by people, how they take it personally, too.
Question: What did you waste the most time on when you were first starting your career?
Jeff Bishop: I guess the biggest mistake I had with business early on was looking for ways that I could maximize my own output, like hourly rate. I was trying to find things that I could become higher paid per-hour, essentially, instead of growing a business that had scalability where it was bigger than me.
That was kind of something I learned over the years. Trying to do things with a one-man show, instead of seeing the value of a network you could build instead.
So I was trying to make 20 bucks an hour cutting grass. And how could I make $30 doing something else? But there was something along the way that it just clicked that, okay, well I have a few employees and I was now making more money. Well, that was the scalability part of things. I was never involved in jobs that were very scalable until I found the online world.
Question: Name a tool you use for work that you can’t live without.
Jeff Bishop: Slack. If there’s one thing that we use so much every day that I’m connected to all the time, it’s got to be that. My phone’s with me almost all day long. So even when I’m watching TV with the kids at night, Slack pops up, and I’m still answering stuff at 9:00, 10:00 at night and chatting with people. But it’s one of those weird things where it bridges a social media component and made it work.
For such a simple little idea, it crosses a lot. It really captures the things you have to do with work with everybody remotely. And then everybody I work with I’m friends with, too. So we have nice little social groups.
Question: What is your favorite hobby and why?
Jeff Bishop: Probably, I think bike riding. Bicycle, not motorcycle. New Hampshire is such a beautiful place, there’s tons of quiet, windy roads, and trees and mountains and water. It’s a beautiful place to be. And I find that’s one of the few times that I really can just kind of disconnect to be by myself in my own thoughts. So I really enjoy the bike rides.
I enjoy hiking a lot too. That’s more of a community thing I enjoy. That’s something I didn’t know I liked until I moved to New Hampshire.
Question: What excited you the most about your industry right now?
Jeff Bishop: I see a lot of people that are truly interested in trying to make a career out of it, or trying to better themselves for their lifetime. That’s really kind of why we started the business, was to help people learn to become better traders. So to see more and more people really want that now is great.
Question: What concerns you most about your industry right now?
Jeff Bishop: Probably a very similar line. I think that there’s just too many people rushing in, and they don’t want to get any education. Just want to make reckless decisions. You know, brokerages, and trading in general, almost encourages reckless decisions. They make it so easy to trade. It’s like a casino.
So my fear is that so many brand-new people rushing in are going to get burned, and then be turned off to the stock market for years and years and miss a huge opportunity in their life. It happened in the dotcom crash. I saw that firsthand. That’s when I first got started trading, back around 2001. And then we saw it again around 2008 with the financial collapse.
People just got turned off by the market. And that could last decades for them. So they may just miss out on the market from that. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Question: What’s the greatest risk you’ve ever taken?
Jeff Bishop: I bought a large RV and moved from Texas to New Hampshire over a year ago. It was definitely a big risk. We had no reason to be in New Hampshire other than we just wanted to start something over in life. And it was a good time to try it. So we could point that to a good risk.
That one, I think paid off. I think it’s been a good move for our family, and to live up here. But we left our friends and family, and a great place in Texas, for no other reason than we just felt it was time to start something new.
I mean that one was risky. We had such a great spot in Texas. Everything was fine. There was really no real reason to move. And it did take a lot to make the move.
Question: Name one small habit that positively impacts your productivity.
Jeff Bishop: I’m very diligent about taking care of what’s right in front of me right now. So I’m able to handle hundreds of things during the day without getting flustered about thinking about the hundreds of things. But I’m very good about just handling the one thing on my plate at the moment right here.
I’ve got a very short attention span. That’s good and bad in a lot of ways, but it helps with having to make lots of choices and decisions every day. And Slack just feeds that.
I’m very focused on things right in front of me for the moment, but it can’t be very long. But I’m also really good at a big-picture type of thing. I’m pretty good about seeing the overall landscape and the picture of a broad thing.
But I don’t dwell. I think too many people dwell on the grandiose big-dreamer type things. I think it’s hard to have big dreamers who actually get things done. But I’m very focused on getting things done every day. I’m very self-motivated.
I’ve always been pretty self-motivated, at least with business and taking care of myself. My family was never there to take care of anything, so it was always on myself to make things happen. So I think I’ve always been that way.
I always knew nothing was ever given to me. I always had to figure out a way to get it. So I make things happen. I think that was something from early on in life. My parents probably taught me indirectly that it was good.
Question: Do you value intelligence or common sense more? Why?
Jeff Bishop: I value common sense more. Well, let’s say intelligence is always relative, first of all. And I think it can always be learned. But I’ve known a lot of very brilliant, smart people who lack a lot of common sense.
And I think that’s really what it takes to be successful in the world, more than intelligence. Common sense and understanding how the world actually works versus just head knowledge, is much more important. So the people I want in my company, for example, or how I want my kids to be. I’m more concerned my kids have practical knowledge rather than book knowledge.
