It was 1989, and I was starting to realize I wanted to be a coach.

I had suffered through the first of my surgeries a few years before, and I found myself still unable to walk up a flight of stairs (little did I know that I wouldn’t be healthy for about 17 more years). Although tennis had been the only thing I ever wanted, it was becoming clear that ship had sailed.

I was facing the fact that the only way I would realize my tennis dreams would be through my future students, and I was oddly excited by that.

So I naturally read every coaching book I could find, and, in 1989, I came across the greatest book I had ever seen. It was called The Fighting Spirit: A Championship Season at Notre Dame by Lou Holtz. It was great for two reasons: 1) I had been recruited by Notre Dame to play on their tennis team before I had become irreparably injured, and had been their guest at a home football game during the recruiting process; and 2) This book was a “live” account of the 1988 Irish team that won the national championship.

When I say “live” I mean that it contained a first person account of each game during that season. The recaps were written as if the writer didn’t know the outcome.

How cool is that?

The book allowed me to get a look into the mindset (as it was happening!) of one of the best coaches in college sports.

Needless to say, my 1989 self devoured it. I might have read it three times. And some of the coaching tips became a part of my personal coaching repertoire.  Many of those ideas still float around in my head today.

But what thrilled me most about Holtz’s book was its real-time nature. I loved living each game of that season with the team. To first read about the special pre-game preparations, and then live out the actual games was intoxicating. Even though it may have been written after that fact and I knew the end result, I found myself constantly thinking, “I hope we win this one!” It was awesome.

Which led me to today.

For a long time, I’ve been wanting to chronicle a real-time trading adventure. I’ve done a ton of research and have my beliefs on what traders can accomplish.

But I’ve found it’s tough to do something first and talk about it later.  It doesn’t have the impact, and it’s always easy to mistrust something when it’s in the past. How do I know those results aren’t fake??

That’s the main reason behind launching my latest Course called The Heron.

It’s a daytrading system I created using principles I’ve been researching since 2012. (The Course gives great detail on how to trade it discretionarily, and you can additionally buy the robot if you like to trade that way).

I’ve had good results trading robots similar to the Heron, and I’ve been trading this style of robot for almost three years. And the research looks excellent, as I mentioned in the Thursday webinar last week.

But the fun part for me is that I’m trading it live so anyone can see how it does. If you want to follow along, the link to watch the Heron is here. I also put that link in the Course. Feel free to follow along whether you buy the course or are just curious.

Of course, there’s a possibility the Heron could fail. Sure, the research looks good and my personal trading experience has been good — but that doesn’t mean it will work. It might be mediocre or something worse. And that reality is nothing to sneeze at.

To me, though, that’s the exciting part. If it goes great, we’ll have a chance to watch a “national championship” as it happens. If it sputters, I’ll be ready to make adjustments on the fly.

To me, that’s what coaching/competing is all about.

Feel free to watch last week’s webinar to get more information and feel free to watch the daily progress. I’ll be doing blog posts and webinars along the way describing the good or the bad or anything else.

As a great philosopher once said (and I’ve often repeated): The only joy in the world is to begin.

The Heron journey begins today.