**How I turned $0 into $1,500,000 Trading Prop Firms (Full Roadmap) — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/turned-zero-into-one-million-trading-prop-firms/

JJ Simon shares his detailed roadmap on turning $0 into $1.5M trading prop firms, covering strategies, phases, and risk management.

## Key Takeaways

- Start small and focus on getting the first payout to build momentum.
- Use a consistent, repeatable trading strategy based on sound principles like fair pricing theory.
- Scale by stacking multiple funded accounts and managing risk at the portfolio level.
- Treat trading as a business: journal trades, emotions, and follow a withdraw-to-reinvest cycle.
- Continuous learning and adapting your strategy is essential for long-term success.

## What the video covers

- JJ Simon is a full-time futures trader with $1.5 million in prop firm payouts, mostly earned in the last 12 months.
- He outlines a step-by-step roadmap from starting with zero capital to scaling up to $1.5 million.
- JJ emphasizes the importance of creating a trading strategy based on his quantitative finance background and fair pricing theory.
- The journey is divided into phases: starting from $0 to $10K/month, then $10K to $30K/month, and beyond.
- He highlights the difficulty of achieving the first payout and recommends aiming for $1,000 to $2,000 initially.
- Scaling involves stacking multiple funded accounts and treating trading like a business with journaling and reinvestment cycles.
- Risk management is crucial, including managing portfolio-level risk and avoiding large losses from mistakes.
- JJ shares personal experiences, including losses and lessons learned, to illustrate the process.
- He stresses consistency, routine, and continuous strategy improvement as keys to success.
- The video provides actionable advice for traders to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and replicate his approach.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction and Proof of Earnings
2. 01:04 Overview of Roadmap and Phases
3. 02:15 Background and Education in Trading
4. 03:05 Developing the Trading Strategy
5. 04:07 Phase 0 to $10K Monthly Income
6. 05:19 Phase 1: $10K to $30K Monthly Income
7. 06:21 Treating Trading Like a Business
8. 07:19 Risk Management and Scaling Accounts
9. 09:11 Lessons Learned and Avoiding Big Losses
10. 10:08 Consistency, Routine, and Strategy Improvement

Answers

## Questions about this video

What is the first step JJ recommends for starting prop trading?

JJ recommends focusing on getting the first payout of about $1,000 to $2,000, as it is the hardest but crucial step to build a scalable bankroll.

How does JJ suggest scaling trading income after the initial payout?

He suggests stacking multiple funded accounts and replicating the same trading edge across them, while managing risk at the portfolio level.

What role does risk management play in JJ's trading approach?

Risk management is vital; JJ manages risk across accounts to avoid large losses, journals trades and emotions, and treats trading like a business with a withdraw-to-reinvest cycle.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

Hey, I'm JJ. I'm a full-time futures trader, and I've done $1.5 million in prop firm payouts, 1.3 of them coming in the last 12 months. And I'm here to give you the exact 0 to $1.5 million scaling roadmap.

00:11

Speaker A

road map. All right, so here's what the video is going to look like. I'll start with the proof as always and then I'm going to go through 012 three phases of monthly income and some results of mine.

00:19

Speaker A

All right, so here's what the video is going to look like. I'll start with the proof, as always, and then I'm going to go through 0, 1, 2, 3 phases of monthly income and some results of mine.

00:33

Speaker A

of others. And at the end, I'll get to what you should do. Now, the proof is out of the way. As always, I'm going to go through all the phases, talk about how I did it, and then I'm going to

00:42

Speaker A

So, as this plays here, I have about $320,000 worth of Topstep payouts. There's probably like 280K in the new dashboard. Topstep is 100% the best site in terms of payout stacking. I also have Tradeify, Funded Next, E8, and a bunch of others. And at the end, I'll get to what you should do.

00:51

Speaker A

quantitative finance. I graduated college when I was 19. With this degree, I then had an internship in risk management in the industry. Had a return offer, declined it, and started profit trading full-time in February of 2025.

01:04

Speaker A

Now, the proof is out of the way. As always, I'm going to go through all the phases, talk about how I did it, and then I'm going to suggest how you should do it. This is a video about how I did it, but you can definitely learn a lot from how I did it, and then implement that for yourself.

01:19

Speaker A

trading, which was obviously very good. And college was pretty much just about learning the basics of trading. Uh and then growing the bankroll from 0 to 250 25K and then profiter specifically 25K up to 1.5 million. Definitely helped

01:34

Speaker A

So, starting with phase zero, my background. I have a degree in quantitative finance. I graduated college when I was 19. With this degree, I then had an internship in risk management in the industry. Had a return offer, declined it, and started prop trading full-time in February of 2023.

01:44

Speaker A

should do is you should analyze your own background. You need to find your strengths and weaknesses. I already knew what my strengths were, but I didn't know what my weaknesses were. And that is what came to haunt me later. But just

01:54

Speaker A

So, we're at exactly 16 months now. I did start with $0. Kind of, I had a lot of poker experience in college. If you know me already, I basically turned $250 into $25,000 playing poker. And pretty much most of that stuff carried over to trading, which was obviously very good.

02:04

Speaker A

first thing I had to do obviously was create my strategy then get the first payout and then max out one to two firms. Creating the strategy I just use stuff I learned in college. I trade fair pricing theory which is basically like

02:15

Speaker A

And college was pretty much just about learning the basics of trading. Uh, and then growing the bankroll from 0 to 250, 25K, and then prop trading specifically 25K up to 1.5 million. Definitely helped with the trading psychology. Quant finance degree helped with the trading strategy, and the internship in risk management helped with my risk management.

02:22

Speaker A

Getting the first payout was 100% the hardest. As soon as you get the first payout, you are literally good to go. I would aim for a first payout of about$1 to $2,000 just so you can scale. And that's a very good bankroll to do so.

02:33

Speaker A

So, I felt like I had everything covered, and I was ready to go prop trading full-time. But what you should do is you should analyze your own background. You need to find your strengths and weaknesses. I already knew what my strengths were, but I didn't know what my weaknesses were. And that is what came to haunt me later. But just analyze your own background. Find out your strengths and weaknesses based on your trading and what you know just in general. Like if you're good at math, statistics, psychology, anything.

02:36

Speaker A

If you can get one payout for $1,000, now you just need five payouts for $1,000 on one firm. Add another firm, that's 10 payouts for $1,000, and that is 10K. As soon as you're able to do that in a month, you are good to go onto

02:47

Speaker A

Now on to phase one. 0 to 10K per month. So, first thing I had to do obviously was create my strategy, then get the first payout, and then max out one to two firms.

02:57

Speaker A

exactly what you did for your first 2K five more times. Here's a picture from February 3rd, 2025, just my tops of account. I had a $1,000 win on this.

03:05

Speaker A

Creating the strategy, I just used stuff I learned in college. I trade fair pricing theory, which is basically like when the market opens, it goes up. Then I'll trade a reversion back to the market open price. Same thing for the downside. So, that was the strategy.

03:15

Speaker A

accounts, probably 10 to 20. If you were doing 10 back at 10K per month, then you probably need to do 20 or just larger payout sizes on your 10 accounts. So basically, you're just going to replicate the same edge across all of

03:25

Speaker A

Getting the first payout was 100% the hardest. As soon as you get the first payout, you are literally good to go. I would aim for a first payout of about $1,000 to $2,000 just so you can scale. And that's a very good bankroll to do so.

03:34

Speaker A

literally scale the same exact thing. Importantly though, you have to treat it like a business. So journal every single trade, your emotions, run the withdraw to reinvest cycle. I'll get to that in just a second. and manage run at the

03:43

Speaker A

Also, once you get the first payout, then you want to start maxing out firms.

03:54

Speaker A

trade where you're going for like 15k profit or even more maybe, then what you can do is you can do two accounts worth of risk. You can essentially do a a stop loss here of minus 2K and then do

04:07

Speaker A

If you can get one payout for $1,000, now you just need five payouts for $1,000 on one firm. Add another firm, that's 10 payouts for $1,000, and that is 10K. As soon as you're able to do that in a month, you are good to go onto phase two.

04:16

Speaker A

Basically like replicating a 150k account but with two 50k accounts. You could also just do half contract size on both of them and then both 2ks would look like the same thing. So it' be minus 2k minus 2k at the same time.

04:28

Speaker A

But pretty much what I had to do was obviously find the strategy, take my first small trades, hit 2,000, which was my first payout I believe, and then from there just scale that up to 10K. Do exactly what you did for your first 2K five more times.

04:38

Speaker A

one till day where I blew literally 50k of funded account balances. Um, basically what I did was I lost 6K by trading on 15NQ instead of MNQ. And that caused me to lose $6,000 in literally like 20 seconds. After that, I decided

04:56

Speaker A

Here's a picture from February 3rd, 2023, just my Topstep account. I had a $1,000 win on this.

05:08

Speaker A

reinvest cycle is really important. We need to understand we're not shooting for lottery tickets. You're not going to turn one $1,000 into $25,000. Just not going to happen. It might happen for one person watching this video, but 100

05:19

Speaker A

After you reach your first $10,000, you are going to advance to phase two. Phase two is 10 to 30K per month. And here's a few things that you are going to need to do. You will be stacking multiple funded accounts, probably 10 to 20.

05:28

Speaker A

to become 9K which is going to become 27K. This is how you can do it. You can try tripling your account size. That's usually the return on investment that I'm searching for in my trading. I'm not doing this 1 to 25K or like 5 to 100K.

05:41

Speaker A

If you were doing 10 back at 10K per month, then you probably need to do 20 or just larger payout sizes on your 10 accounts. So basically, you're just going to replicate the same edge across all of them.

05:50

Speaker A

You need actual capital to trade. So, I was able to finally hit my first $100,000 of net worth slashtrading bankroll. As you can see here, March 7th, I did get onto the 150k accounts like within a month. It was probably too

06:02

Speaker A

The most important thing throughout this entire video and your entire prop journey is consistency. If you can do it once, you just need to do it five more times, then 10 more times, and 100 more times. And you can literally scale the same exact thing.

06:12

Speaker A

I guess, just the low of the the news wig. But, yeah, I've been trading the same strategy for now 16 months. So, it definitely worked. You can try it if you want. Now, let me go over one example of

06:21

Speaker A

Importantly though, you have to treat it like a business. So journal every single trade, your emotions, run the withdraw to reinvest cycle. I'll get to that in just a second. And manage run at the portfolio level, not per account.

06:33

Speaker A

So, very large increase on my investment. Don't shoot for that. Shoot for a 3x and if you do great, then you'll get more. That's sort of how I base my risk management. Now, here's a little bit of proof that I actually did

06:43

Speaker A

Let me just give you a quick example of something that I've been doing a little bit more. And just possibly think about it. Basically, on a 50K account, you have $2,000 of drawdown. If you want to do a trade where you're going for like 15K profit or even more maybe, then what you can do is you can do two accounts worth of risk.

06:53

Speaker A

for 3K, five for 3500, and then the live account payout for 46K. This much in payouts. 90% split gave me this much in profit. It is all right here. I post about it a few times before. Now, for

07:03

Speaker A

You can essentially do a stop loss here of minus 2K and then do another stop loss here of minus 2K and then add on your profit targets of whatever you're going for, 15K, if you have a really, really large trade in mind on a very good high time frame bias.

07:08

Speaker A

So, I was buying the direct accounts because I love the instant funded option. Just saved me a ton of time. And I needed 9K to get the payout. It's just the requirement they have. and they have a 20% consistency rule. Now, basically,

07:19

Speaker A

Basically like replicating a 150K account but with two 50K accounts. You could also just do half contract size on both of them and then both 2Ks would look like the same thing. So it'd be minus 2K, minus 2K at the same time.

07:32

Speaker A

well, I'm really great at that. Why don't I just do that same thing here?

07:35

Speaker A

Pretty much the same thing. And here's what I had to do for this. Obviously, consistency, building momentum though, for sure because I'm reinvesting my payouts. Navigate losses. This is the first time that I hit big losses. I had one day where I blew literally 50K of funded account balances.

07:44

Speaker A

It is proven. I've done it for a year and a half now. Also, it is important to not copy trade. I know it's such a weird thing to hear. I do not copy trade that much. I do sometimes, but you should

07:53

Speaker A

Um, basically what I did was I lost 6K by trading on 15NQ instead of MNQ. And that caused me to lose $6,000 in literally like 20 seconds. After that, I decided to Martingale risk 12K, risk 24K, that sort of thing.

08:02

Speaker A

absolutely cooked. Even if you don't tilt and you have a bad streak of variance, then you're cooked still because look, with 4,500 draw down, if I lose four in a row, which is totally possible with a 1 to 1.5, if I lose four

08:11

Speaker A

And then just don't do that because that's how I lost 50K in one day. Now, what I meant here by replicate the same edge and treat it like a business. The withdraw to reinvest cycle is really important.

08:22

Speaker A

and then only my third account got the payout. Once I got the payout, boom, I bought four more. So this would be number four, 5, 6, 7, which also all lost. I might have been copy trading those. Um, and all of them lost. And I

08:33

Speaker A

We need to understand we're not shooting for lottery tickets. You're not going to turn one $1,000 into $25,000. Just not going to happen. It might happen for one person watching this video, but 100 other people are going to lose $1,000. Someone's going to make 25K and the profit is going to be up 75K.

08:45

Speaker A

but 10 and 11 did not which is totally fine because I was not copy trading. So, and then I did eventually get two more just to add on number 12, 13. Sorry, number 12, 13 and 14, I believe. Or

08:58

Speaker A

So, don't think like a lottery. You need to think 1K is going to become 3K, which is going to become 9K, which is going to become 27K. This is how you can do it. You can try tripling your account size. That's usually the return on investment that I'm searching for in my trading.

09:08

Speaker A

And that was the risk management approach that I used for Lucid. It was how I was able to turn this into this.

09:13

Speaker A

I'm not doing this 1 to 25K or like 5 to 100K. It's very doable goals of 3x the investment and also, yeah, just treat it like investment. Treat it like a business. You have to spend money to make money in literally every business, prop included, because we're trading.

09:21

Speaker A

trade. If you're open to it, I would suggest using a strategy that allows you to take multiple trades per day just for that reason. Also, if I'm able to take 20 trades a day and someone else is only

09:29

Speaker A

You need actual capital to trade. So, I was able to finally hit my first $100,000 of net worth slash trading bankroll. As you can see here, March 7th, I did get onto the 150K accounts like within a month. It was probably too quick, but you always learn from your mistakes.

09:39

Speaker A

improves your psychology because you're only losing 1,200 and then the next trade you make 1,800. And then the law of large numbers that is going to even out over the course of a day. So I barely have losing days because I take

09:48

Speaker A

I was trading the same thing here. Remember my strategy. 8:30 a.m. we have news, which is priced in, trade a reversion back to the pre-news price. I did end up going for a little bit more, I guess, just the low of the news wig.

09:57

Speaker A

trades. I don't have losing days too often because I take 20 to 30 trades per day. So that is how you're going to get to 30K per month on prop firms. After 30K a month, the next goal is 100K,

10:08

Speaker A

But, yeah, I've been trading the same strategy for now 16 months. So, it definitely worked. You can try it if you want. Now, let me go over one example of risk management because I know you guys are probably pretty interested in how I manage my risk across all of my accounts.

10:17

Speaker A

can buy, all that sort of stuff. So, here we go. For phase three, you are going to need to diversify. You're going to need to use 5 to 10 different firms most likely and then obviously max allocate. That's going to be the 150k

10:28

Speaker A

Let me talk about Lucid trading. So, on Lucid, I was able to turn $6,436 into $100,700.

10:39

Speaker A

is in terms of risk, if you have a new funded account and you're going to risk $4,500 on it and you lose it, whatever, instead of losing $4500, you lost whatever the eval cost to get you there.

10:49

Speaker A

So, very large increase on my investment. Don't shoot for that. Shoot for a 3x and if you do great, then you'll get mo

11:03

Speaker A

once been 10K in payouts in the long run expected value of an account, you just lost $4,500 of that. So you just lost four 4,500 real dollars instead of doing the exact same funded account risk but only losing 500. So uh why would you

11:16

Speaker A

even do the this one in the first place, right? Like you you shouldn't. You need to lock in a daily routine. Like I keep saying, be extremely consistent. Same thing every single day. No, no changes in your plan or else small differences

11:29

Speaker A

in this. Even 10% can cost you a lot. I do a weekly review at the end of every week on the weekend. So much free time because the market's closed. So I do my review, see how I performed the last

11:36

Speaker A

week and then plan for the next week. You can also start moving profits into personal and investments. In terms of personal, just upgrade your lifestyle.

11:43

Speaker A

Like you're making 30 to 100K a month. You can afford to get a nice place, improve your setup, eat well, all that sort of stuff. Little things to improve your trading. I feel like as soon as I moved to my new apartment, it was

11:52

Speaker A

literally a month ago. Uh, I moved way too late cuz I had a lease on a college dorm, but it increased my productivity so much as well as my trading.

12:00

Speaker A

Investments as well definitely contribute to long-term investments. Uh, I wouldn't worry too much about specific investments. Just do ETFs. Protect the downside. So, one week does not wreck you. Like I just mentioned previously here. If you're going to tilt, don't do

12:12

Speaker A

it first of all, but at least tilt on a new account so you're only risking 500 for the same exact draw down. Now, the final point for 3200K month is to create a new strategy. I know it's going to

12:20

Speaker A

sound painful to hear that, but there are a few reasons. Let me just talk about them really quick. First one is you're going to need to take way more trades per day. You're going to need to take probably like 20 30 trades a day as

12:31

Speaker A

opposed to previously like two, three, maybe five trades a day. Um, at least for me, you could be copy trading 20 accounts at once and only take one or two trades a day. But that is going to be extremely high variance. If you want

12:44

Speaker A

to make 100k a month, you're going to literally have to be risking like $20,000 a trade, which I probably could not handle. I feel like the most I've ever risked in a trade is probably $2,000 ever and I make $100,000 a month

12:56

Speaker A

trading on proper. So, um that should that should hopefully give you a little bit of insight into how you can approach them in a more profitable way. But yeah, creating new strategy means more trades.

13:04

Speaker A

So, just more more trades per per day and a different strategy as well because the draw down is so different. You have 2.25x the amount of draw down and the payout caps are now 2.5x large like if it's going from 2k to 5k. So we get

13:18

Speaker A

larger payout caps, we got more draw down. So the same sort of trades that you had been taking where you're like you're going to risk 1K and go for 2K.

13:25

Speaker A

Imagine this is like the risk to reward box minus 1K plus 2K. It's not going to work on 150K. Now you have way more draw down. So you might have to even do like minus 2K plus 4K, 6K, whatever. So

13:38

Speaker A

there's just such different types of trades. You're only allowed one more contract, but it's just such a different trade. It's so long. Like for market reversions, I trade reversions. On my 50k accounts, if I see a move up, then I

13:48

Speaker A

can trade a reversion to it for like 50, 75, 100 points. On a 150k, I probably wouldn't even take this sort of trade.

13:54

Speaker A

It's literally my main strategy, though. And I probably wouldn't even be able to get that many points in my favor enough to take it on a 150k. So maybe your strategy worked for it, and you would be very lucky if it does. But I assume it

14:05

Speaker A

might not. So you might need a much more high time frame sort of approach to trading 150ks. And if you keep doing the same strategy for 50 to 100 and it's not working, well, that is probably why.

14:16

Speaker A

Just because you need more profit targets, you need more stop- loss, and you need to take longer trades in general to realize expected value on 150k accounts. Now, here's sort of what it looked like for me personally. July

14:25

Speaker A

was my first six-figure month, $125,000. Obviously, this 45K payout from E8 definitely helped with that. And then from there, six figure month. Once you get your six month, consistency, that is all you need. Look at this. July first

14:38

Speaker A

six figure month August, September, October, November, December, all the way through this year as well. Same six figures per month from trading. And that pretty much is just leading to consistency. Here's the payouts that I've received from Tradeify, Funded

14:50

Speaker A

Next, Topstep. We watched the video so you guys know it's not fake. And E8, you can also scan that code. Maybe um I did take a screenshot so it might not work.

14:57

Speaker A

But here is what you should do. Obviously, I've talked a lot about me in this video. Now, I want to give you guys some advice. Obviously, go back, rewatch it if you weren't thinking for yourself.

15:06

Speaker A

Try and take the examples I gave and implement it to your current situation as much as you can. Now, here's what you should do first. Obviously, identify what stage you're in. There's sort of the four. Your background, you haven't

15:15

Speaker A

really started trading, 0 to 10k a month. Um, I would consider you guys in my background. Like, you'd be in phase zero if you're losing money trading 0 to 10k, 10 to 30k, and then 30k to 100k per

15:26

Speaker A

month. So, here's what you should do first. Obviously, identify what stage you're in so you know exactly what problems you have and exactly what you need to do to advance to the next stage.

15:34

Speaker A

pretty much is just going to be consistency and scaling, taking more trades, higher payout caps, all that sort of stuff. Identify your biggest weakness. Weaknesses are much more like the absolute value of a weakness is much more than the absolute value of a

15:46

Speaker A

strength. Just like losing is to winning in general emotionally. Um I assume most people are going to have the same weaknesses like psychology, strategy, scaling, whatever. Just identify what your biggest weakness is personally and then do your best to fix it. Focus most

16:00

Speaker A

of your effort on that. 80% of your effort on fixing your biggest weakness, 20% to scaling your biggest strength because this is going to cut you down way more than a strength is going to increase your skill. Third, just in

16:11

Speaker A

general, take a more mathematical approach, right? Statistical as well. Um, in terms of your strategy, risk management scaling literally everything can be solved with math. That is just how I approach prop firms because obviously my degree and my

16:22

Speaker A

background. Finally, number four, optimize for prop firms. I see so many people optimizing trading strategies for live accounts, but we're trading on prop firms where they have specific rules. So why would you optimize for a live account where your whole goal is just

16:34

Speaker A

equity? On a live account, your goal is equity. On a prop firm, your goal is to not have draw down. Like if you have a insane equity curve like this, but you have a little bit of draw down, you're

16:42

Speaker A

going to lose your prop account. So maybe find a strategy that doesn't have a a high draw down. Maybe find a strategy that has a good win rate on 1 to 1.5 because prop firms in general minus 2K plus 3K that is a 1 to 1.5.

16:56

Speaker A

That sort of approach. Maximize your pack rate on Eval. You can even trade a different strategy on Eval versus funded. That's what I did sometimes just because the riskreward on EVA I do 1 to 1.5. Funded sometimes 1 to two, one to

17:06

Speaker A

three, one to four, one to five, whatever. That's why I don't have a win rate. I trade so many different risk to rewards because it's optimal to do so.

17:11

Speaker A

You're in a different math problem each time you have different constraints. First to pass the eval consistency rule, funded account, now you're optimizing for payout and expected value. So it I promise you it changes a lot more than

17:21

Speaker A

you think. So optimize your approach for proper specifically. Now I have worked with traders at all of these stages. So, if you are interested in learning from me, there is a link in the description to apply for my program. It is probably

17:32

Speaker A

going to be closing in a week or so. I'm not sure. But that is just how I turned $0 into $1.5 million with the proof as always trading prop firms and hopefully how you can do it as

Topics: prop trading futures trading JJ Simon trading roadmap funded accounts risk management trading strategy scaling trading quantitative finance trading psychology


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