Teri Ijeoma is the founder of Trade & Travel, a program that helps students learn how to trade stocks so they can travel the world, pursue their passions, and retire early. After working as a minister and assistant principal for ten years, Teri was overwhelmed and needed a change. She had always loved stock trading and decided to try and make it her full-time career.
Over $50 million in revenue | Has generated over 98,000 leads
Today, Teri isn’t just a full-time stock trader—she’s also a successful trading instructor, keynote speaker, and contributor for Yahoo! Finance.
Before she became a stock trader, Teri was an assistant principal at an elementary school. Unfortunately, what she thought was going to be a rewarding career turned out to be a stressful job that left her drained every day. She wanted to make a change, but she didn’t know what that would be.
“I felt like I was working all the time and never got a break. I really wanted to do something different but I felt like I didn’t have any other options.”
In 2010, Teri took up stock trading as a hobby. During her undergrad, she spent time as an intern on Wallstreet, which sparked her interest in the stock market. She eventually opened up her own brokerage account and traded stocks for fun.
Some days she’d be up, other days she’d be down, but over the course of six years, she developed an effective system. Eventually, she got to a point where she was making money on a fairly consistent basis.
Becoming a full-time trader
Teri knew she couldn’t stay in the education system forever. She also knew that her true passion was stock trading. So, she started wondering if she could replace her teaching income with trading. To do so, she would need to make roughly $300 a day through her trades.
Heading into 2017, Teri made this number her goal and she started working towards hitting that mark on a daily basis. She devoted even more time to trading and refining her craft, and it paid off.
By the end of the year, she achieved her goal of $300 a day and promptly quit her job. With her newfound freedom, she started traveling the world and living the life she always dreamed of.
Returning to teaching
After leaving her job as an assistant principal, Teri couldn’t imagine herself teaching again. However, that all changed as she began meeting fellow travelers.
Everyone would always ask her what she did for a living, and when she told them she traded stocks they always asked her to show them how she did it. Although she was reluctant at first, Teri eventually taught a class in Thailand and a second in Vietnam.
She posted about these classes on Instagram, so when she returned home her friends started asking her if she could teach them as well. This led to a third class in her hometown of Dallas.
Launching her business
Teri began to realize these classes were a business opportunity, so she started telling her students she had an online course to see if there would be any interest.
“I told them I had an online course because I had heard someone say you should just tell people you have it and if they buy it you’ll make it. It’s like proof of concept.”
Of the 70 students that signed up for her in-person classes, two registered for her online course. So, she built out the online course not knowing if her first two students would be the only ones to ever use it.
Teri created a landing page for her course with Leadpages and began sharing it with the world. Through her marketing efforts, and word of mouth, she attracted more and more students. Two students turned into ten, which turned into 100, and then 1,000.
As of the time of this writing, Teri’s Travel & Trade program has helped over 30,000 people learn how to trade stocks.
Challenges
In order to market her online course effectively, Teri needed attractive high-converting landing pages. She was spending a lot of time and effort to drive traffic to these pages, so she wanted to make sure they did a good job of selling her course and generating conversions.
She also needed a platform that was user-friendly. As someone who isn’t familiar with coding or web design, Teri required a solution that allowed anyone to build a professional-looking website.
Finally, she wanted an easy way to track her progress and figure out how many of her visitors were actually converting and buying her course.
How Leadpages helped
Conversion-optimized templates
Leadpages offers over 200 professionally-design landing page and website templates. Each template is created with conversions in mind using the latest best practices. This makes it easy for Teri to find a template that suits her brand and attracts new customers.
“If you’re doing a webinar page or a pop-up or a coupon they already have templates for those things and they look really nice. That was really helpful, especially since I was a one-person team in the beginning.”
Drag & Drop Builder
Leadpages’ Drag & Drop Builder simplifies the web design process. Once Teri has her template she can use the builder to add and remove sections, edit text, upload photos and images, and install conversion tools like countdown timers and submission forms. All without typing a single line of code.
Analytics
The Leadpages Dashboard keeps track of views, unique visitors, and conversions so Teri always knows how her pages are performing. Based on this information, she can make changes and optimize her results.
Results
$50,000,000 in revenue
Since creating her Travel & Trade program, Teri has generated over $50 million in revenue, largely due to positive word of mouth and her high-converting landing pages.
Over 98,000 leads
Over the four years that Teri has been a Leadpages user she’s collected 98,000+ leads through her landing pages, website, and popups.
How Teri uses Leadpages
Landing pages
Teri uses Leadpages to create landing pages for her lead magnets, webinars, and courses. The Drag & Drop Builder means she can launch new pages quickly and easily whenever she develops a new product.
Websites
Teri created her “Invest With Teri” website using Leadpages Sites. After selecting her template, Teri just had to edit the text, upload her images, and add any additional pages she needed. Because she was able to do it all herself, she avoided having to hire an expensive developer.
Pop-ups
To boost her conversions, Teri also utilizes exit-intent popups on her website and landing pages. This means whenever someone is about to click away they get a special offer from Teri, ensuring no one leaves empty-handed.
What’s next for Teri?
In addition to continuing to grow her online course, Teri wants to work towards dispelling some of the myths around stock trading. There’s a stigma that you can’t time the market and traders always lose money, but Teri has shown that with the right strategy and approach it’s possible to earn money consistently. Through her course and speaking engagements, she hopes to make people realize the amazing possibilities that trading offers.
Try Leadpages free for 14 days
Easily create your website and landing pages with the only platform engineered by marketing nerds.
