**0 to $780,000 in 12 months on prop firms - full roadmap โ€” Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/0-to-780000-12-months-prop-firms-roadmap/ JJ Simon shares a full roadmap of how his student grew from $0 to $780K in 12 months trading prop firms with risk management and strategy. ## Key Takeaways - Success in prop firm trading requires mastering the firm's rules and risk management, not just market prediction. - Scaling profits involves managing multiple accounts with disciplined bankroll and risk diversification. - Building a consistent, rules-based trading strategy is critical before increasing trading capital. - Avoid risking all capital on the same day to reduce risk of ruin and maintain steady growth. - Mentorship and studying market mechanics are key to developing an edge and sustainable trading career. ## What the video covers - JJ Simon, a full-time futures trader, made $1.5M from prop firms in 12 months and shares his student's journey from $0 to $780K. - The student started trading options with losses, took a year off to study markets and prop firm strategies before returning disciplined. - Phase one covers the first $10K month using a rules-based, risk-managed approach focused on beating prop firms, not markets. - The student quickly achieved his first payout within weeks and scaled to $10K, then $30K months by trading multiple prop firms. - Phase two focuses on scaling from $10K to $50K+ months by solidifying strategy, managing bankroll, and spreading risk across accounts. - Key lessons include not risking all accounts on the same day, treating prop firms as games to be beaten, and consistent bankroll management. - The student scaled to 30+ accounts, achieving $50K to $120K monthly profits while maintaining discipline and risk controls. - JJ emphasizes the importance of understanding prop firm rules, trading with guardrails, and avoiding overconfidence. - The roadmap includes phases zero through scaling, with real verified results and practical advice for traders stuck at various income levels. - The video also highlights the value of mentorship and adapting strategies to funded accounts versus evaluation stages. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction and Overview of Student's Journey 2. 00:44 Phase Zero: Early Trading Mistakes and Learning 3. 01:24 Phase One: First $10K Month and Initial Payout 4. 02:26 Scaling to $30K and Multiple Prop Firms 5. 03:26 Risk and Bankroll Management for Scaling 6. 03:58 Importance of Gaming the Prop Firm, Not the Market 7. 04:38 Balancing Trading with Life and Schedule 8. 05:21 Advice for Moving from $10K to $100K Months 9. 06:01 Spreading Risk Across Accounts and Strategies 10. 06:42 Summary and Final Recommendations Answers ## Questions about this video How did the student achieve his first payout so quickly? By focusing on learning the prop firms' rules and adopting a rules-based, risk-managed trading approach, the student secured his first payout within weeks of mentorship. What is the key to scaling profits from $10K to $50K+ per month? The key is solidifying a consistent trading strategy, managing bankroll carefully, spreading risk across multiple accounts, and not risking all capital on the same day. Why is it important to 'beat the prop firm, not the market'? Because prop firms have specific rules and risk limits, success depends on gaming these rules with discipline and strategy rather than trying to predict market moves perfectly. ## Full Transcript โ€” Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A Hey, I'm JJ. I'm a full-time futures trader, and I've made $1.5 million from prop firms in the past 12 months. This video is on how one of my students turned $0 into $780,000 trading on prop firms in just under a year. Today, he's 00:11 Speaker A going to walk you through the entire journey. Every time he drops a number or a story, I'm going to show you on a roadmap board exactly what he means and how he did it. Zero to 10K, 10K to 100K, 00:20 Speaker A 100K to 800K. Let's get into it. Here's what the board looks like. I'll go through phase zero, his background, zero to 10K, 10K to 50K, 50K to 100K, and then of course his results. We cannot fake those. They're all real. Here's 00:33 Speaker A Topstep, more Topstep, E8, there's him, MyFunded Futures, TradiFi, more Topstep, and then at the end we'll go over what you should do. Now, let's start with phase zero. Obviously, he just started in his college dorm. He turned 18. He 00:44 Speaker A was trading options around the hype, had a big first win that led to overconfidence, and he kept blowing every single paycheck he had into options. He just blew so many of the options accounts, lost so many plays that he eventually quit. He was mentally 00:54 Speaker A checked out trading live options, which means you can lose everything in one day. He didn't have a system, he didn't have guardrails, no goals, no one ahead. Then, he took a year off the charts, studied the [music] markets, how money 01:03 Speaker A moves, how to beat prop firms, which is the most important. So, he built his discipline, then came back. The lesson from this is that the problem was never work ethic. He put a lot of effort into options, just wasn't able to find an 01:13 Speaker A edge. It was the vehicle, basically the strategy and the approach. Now, that leads us to phase one, his first $10,000 month. He joined the mentorship in June 2025, and the first two weeks he learned the firms, not the market. That means 01:24 Speaker A taking a rules-based approach to prop firm trading. One, mostly focused on risk management. He wants to just spend a little bit and withdraw a lot, [music] and he was able to get his first payout on July 11th, just a few weeks after 01:35 Speaker A starting working with me. Then, instantly turned that into a $10,000 week and month in July. So, talk to us a little bit about your first payout, how that felt, how you were able to achieve it. Yeah, for sure. So, as you 01:47 Speaker A mentioned, yeah, we started off I think like the end of June of 2025. So, those I think the last few days was just being spent on the prop firms and knowing how to actually like on the new system, 01:57 Speaker A changes, being able to actually understand the market, just like looking at data. And then July was when I actually started trading. So, I like started actually knowing how to trade. 02:06 Speaker A And I took my first payout. It was on the 11th of July. And that was on MyFundedFutures. I took a max payout of 4,000. And that felt really motivating to me because I knew that I could make it out. And like [music] just told 02:17 Speaker A myself that I could do it. Yeah. Throughout the month of June, I got my first 10K withdrawal a week. And it was 10K profit. I only spent around I think I would do 12,000 and I spent around 2,000. So, that was a good ROI. Mhm. 02:28 Speaker A Yeah. And then on the month of August, I kept just going into more firms. So, for July, I was just on Topstep. And then in August, I kept moving on to different firms. I think I added two more firms to 02:37 Speaker A my arsenal. And then I withdrew my first 30K month. And that was only spending like 5K, I think. Yeah. It's more for told me I could really control how much I trade and be able to as just as long 02:46 Speaker A as I discipline myself and don't lose all my accounts in one day, I can really do it. And then just going forward for the next few months, I kept having 50K, 70K, 100K months. Just being able to scale at such a scale. And I think 02:59 Speaker A my best month ever was in December where I had 120,000 being only spending 15,000. That was a really big month. And you wouldn't know that I made 100,000 in the month was really something that I was actually like called with me. And 03:11 Speaker A then yeah, going forward, I've been consistently making 50K months in the past four or five months. And I've been really proud of myself on that. Yeah. 03:17 Speaker A That leads us to phase two when you turn $10,000 per month up to $50,000 per month. First, he focused on solidifying the strategy, which is what the lesson down here is talking about. You need to scale across firms with consistency. 03:28 Speaker A With your bankroll management, you can't deploy your whole stack at once. You have an increased variance chance of losing everything. And you want your risk of ruin to be as low as possible. 03:34 Speaker A All right. So, you started working with me. And then two weeks after you started working, you were able to get your first payout. What do you think specifically about working with me and my approach was able to get you there so quickly? 03:43 Speaker A Yeah, for sure. I think working with your approach about handling like every prop firm as more about like gaming the prop firm [music] than gaming the market. Specifically about how to treat each prop firm, is definitely one of the 03:54 Speaker A biggest things I learned and definitely one of the biggest steps that helped me achieve my first payout. 03:58 Speaker A Yeah, 100%. I know I keep saying it for everyone on YouTube, you got to beat the prop firm, not the markets. You agree with that? 04:04 Speaker A Yeah, I definitely do. Okay, it's so much easier. So much easier, for sure. All right, and after your first payouts, I assume you reinvested it because you said it was a 4K payout and then your next month you were 04:14 Speaker A able to hit a $10,000 month from $2,000 worth of spend. So, obviously there's a bit of a difference when you go from just one account up to multiple accounts at a time. Uh, what specifically do you think enabled you to run all of those 04:26 Speaker A accounts at once? Let's see here. First of all, one of the biggest steps was also just jumping from 50Ks to 150Ks as bigger number equals more money. And also one of the biggest steps that enabled me to be able to do 04:38 Speaker A that was not having much else I was conflicting with my schedule, like me I just work I just like it was during summer, so I didn't really have much else to do besides just trade and work and you sometimes I didn't even work 04:48 Speaker A during I didn't trade during work if I had. Yeah. Yeah, I just being able to like trade whenever and being able to just know the market had a big impact. 04:58 Speaker A Yeah, 100%. And then as soon as you're able to get a consistent $10,000 month, obviously the goal after that is to get it to 30K and then 100K per month. So, you did mention going to the 150Ks, but 05:08 Speaker A just in terms of the volume of accounts that you have to trade, you're going from like five accounts up towards 30 accounts and then having insane consistency on all of those accounts together. So, if someone's here watching stuck at 10K per month, what would you 05:21 Speaker A tell them in order to get them up to 30 or 100K? Yeah, for sure. I personally first start tell them to just solidify their strategy. Make sure you actually know how to trade before you jump into 150Ks because that could definitely hurt your 05:33 Speaker A bankroll if you're just spending $200, $300 on a firm actually not knowing how to trade and not actually gaming the system. And after that would definitely be tell them to be man and be able to manage their bankroll. I'll explain it, 05:43 Speaker A but you have all your bankroll like just in your bank and then you spend it all on 150Ks and now you have nothing else, and it's really hard to be able to live with that nothing else. So, you have to 05:52 Speaker A be able to just manage your bankroll a little better. Yeah, so bankroll management and risk management he thinks like the most important thing. Okay. Most importantly though, like he said, don't put every account at risk on the same day. You 06:01 Speaker A need to spread your risk across your accounts like a portfolio, and of course trade a different strategy and risk to reward on funded accounts versus evaluations. Here's one of his posts in the Discord. He won for about $18,000 06:12 Speaker A with a nice trade to fill the gap off break of structure. It is not a practice acc. 06:22 Speaker A important. Basically, he did what I told him to for risk management. Okay, I'm not sure what this is. I'm not sure what this is. I'd have to ask him about that. 06:30 Speaker A But, regardless, right when he got the account, his first goal, or at least should have been to do -1200 +1800 on this specific account, this specific site, and this specific plan on the funded account. So, he did follow that 06:42 Speaker A here, here, here, and then mostly there. I assume qualifying for his first payout with this win right there. Then from there after the first payout, I guess it would be Wednesday. After the first payout, he switches to -1200 +1200 risk 06:55 Speaker A management [music] or +1000 risk management. And the reason for that is once you grow your balance so significantly large on this account with this specific [music] site, then they are going to review you to move to live. So, you have to change your 07:07 Speaker A performance a little bit, change your risk to reward just so that when you go live, you don't have too much profit removed from your account. So, a little bit of optimization for the risk management, but it was pretty [music] 07:16 Speaker A consistent for him across these two months except for these two days. Let's get into phase three. 50 to 100,000 per month. So, when [music] you have so many accounts, like you're trading 30 accounts, you need to have consistency 07:27 Speaker A on every single one of them, or else you're not going to be able to scale it. 07:29 Speaker A [music] Every time he added a new firm, he would work with me. We'd study the rules and build a plan to approach that firm specifically in a statistically optimal way. Then we diversified firms, and we repeat every single month. Now, 07:40 Speaker A the difference between the two paths that he took, path A, if he just kept trading options, he would still have no system, still be bleeding money, bad head space with no way out. Path B, join the mentorship, got the system, and he 07:50 Speaker A made $780,000 in 12 months with insane consistency. So, over the year that we've been working together, you had insane returns up now to almost $800,000 from prop firms. Where do you think you'd be if, instead of deciding to work with me on 08:03 Speaker A prop firms, you just kept trading options, kept trying to find your own way? Let's see here. If I didn't really know about futures, didn't know about the mentorship, I would definitely Plus, I don't think I would ever even have hear 08:13 Speaker A about futures as like I didn't know about futures before joining the mentorship. I barely knew I just knew a little bit. And so, I think I would definitely still be just losing money on options, just being able to try to find 08:24 Speaker A my own way out. And I don't think I'd be in a good space mentally as just losing that much money. When it When I was losing that much money on my Yeah, in my younger days, I was definitely not in a 08:33 Speaker A good space mentally. I was just sleeping in and just hiding in like my in my dorm bed. Yeah, I don't think that was that'd be very good for me. And I don't want to go back to those days, for sure. 08:41 Speaker A Yeah, for sure. And you keep saying gaming the prop firm. For those who don't know, the approach that we take is sort of one where we make statistically optimal decisions on prop firm trading based on the rules that they give us. 08:52 Speaker A So, you trade a different strategy on your evals and your fundeds, and you do a different risk to reward on both of them. I know it might seem counterintuitive at first, but you'd agree that's 100% the best way. 09:03 Speaker A Yeah, for sure. I definitely think it's the best way as And also just being able to sometimes other firms have other rules, and so being able to change your strategy for different firms is definitely one of the most optimal ways. 09:13 Speaker A And yeah, statistically, it's more optimal than to actually just try to I then try to do your own thing. 09:18 Speaker A Yeah, 100%. Well, when you started working with me, what specifically about my approach do you think enabled you in order to get some of these returns that you and other people have been able to achieve? 09:28 Speaker A As you mentioned a little before, being able to just begin the prop firm instead of gaming the market, it's just a lot easier to play a prop firm than to play a market. And so, being able being able 09:36 Speaker A to know like how each firm works and be able to actually know that it's a trusted firm before I actually go into it, definitely uh one of the biggest rules and one of the biggest things that that's helped me. And also, just being 09:46 Speaker A able to ask a lot of questions and just being able to know where I'm at and being able to know that like someone else has done it before me and being able and has someone else like scaled it 09:54 Speaker A to such scales before me is definitely something that makes it a lot easier to handle. But, what should you do? First, you need to identify what stage you are. So, whether that's phase zero, you haven't started yet, zero to 10k a month, 10 to 50k a 10:06 Speaker A month, 50 to 100k a month. You have to identify your phase first so you know what to fix. Then, identify your biggest weakness. Whatever your biggest weakness is is most likely restricting you about 80% and it's restricting you more than 10:18 Speaker A your biggest strength is lifting you up. So, identify your biggest weakness and try to cut that down as much as possible. Third, of course, take a more mathematical approach. Remember, there is statistically optimal risk, take profits, contract sizing to follow on 10:29 Speaker A prop firms just based on the rules that they give you, which leads me to number four, optimize for prop firms. We are obviously trading on prop firms and [music] so as he said, we need to optimize our approach for prop firms or 10:38 Speaker A else it's not going to work. Cuz remember, the prop firm makes money when you lose money. 10:41 Speaker A [music] So, you need to optimize your approach specifically for them instead of for a live account or something like that. If you're interested in working with me, I have worked with traders from pretty much all of these phases and I help them 10:50 Speaker A scale to the next one and the next one and the next one. So, if you're interested, the mentorship might be a good spot for you. There's an application link in the description. 10:56 Speaker A It's not going to stay open forever just because I don't want this approach going too public. So, it is limited enrollment, but if you're interested in having me help you, then definitely apply at the link below. I'll see you in 11:06 Speaker A the next one. Topics: prop firm trading futures trading JJ Simon risk management scaling trading accounts bankroll management trading mentorship funded accounts trading strategy trading roadmap --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/0-to-780000-12-months-prop-firms-roadmap/ โ€” the same content, without the markup. Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). 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