Every entrepreneurship story has a unique trajectory, but every entrepreneur has one thing in common: the drive. Some find it in their need to improve on things they see in the world. Others are motivated by a desire for financial success. Some see entrepreneurship as the art of dealing with obstacles. Whatever their motivation, something had to be there to light that initial spark and keep it alive through the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.
For Theo Miller, it was a desire for a life where he, his mother, and his brother could flourish. At 25 years old, Miller is behind Eminence Pro, a high-frequency algorithm currencies trading platform whose extensive backtesting and 15% average historical monthly returns speak volumes about its efficacy and potential. And while his success gave him and his family the life he desired, the road to getting them wasn’t always easy, and it didn’t come without its lessons.
“My mom was cautious with her finances and taught me to be frugal. But I knew I didn’t want that life for myself; I wanted more,” Miller recalls. “She always pushed me to go to college, but I believed I could make it without it. I wanted to give my family a better life. My trading journey was like my college tuition—I lost a lot of money learning, but it was a valuable experience.”
Miller’s first steps in trading came while he was still in high school when he took a class with a trading competition with demo accounts as part of the curriculum. He already had friends interested in trading, but his first hands-on experience was invaluable.
Highly motivated to win—it would net him a Wall Street internship—he wasn’t able to finish the 30-day competition with a return. He did learn something important. “You don’t need a lot to start, but there’s a lot of risk if you don’t know what you’re doing,“ he says.
There are two ways to learn things—through personal experience and someone else’s—and Miller decided to try both. He started trading using money he saved from his early jobs and taking on side hustles when he needed more to put himself in a better position as a day trader. Having no access to mentors, he turned to the source of wisdom many people of his generation turn to—YouTube.
“YouTube was a huge resource for me. I learned about different trading strategies and indicators. I dedicated myself to studying and practicing every day,” he says. “Eventually, I felt confident enough to explore automated trading systems, like forex expert advisors. These are essentially bots that trade automatically based on predefined criteria.”
Throughout his early trading career, Miller encountered several obstacles. The first was the pattern day trader rule, which required him to have $25,000 in his trading account to make as many trades as he wanted. The next one came when he found legal obstacles to trading securities with other people’s money. Between the two, Miller learned that sometimes, when encountered with an obstacle, the best movement isn’t always forward. It can sometimes be lateral. That’s why he switched from trading securities to trading currency pairs.
“The transition was influenced by the need for scalability and legality in managing funds. Forex offered the ability to leverage up to 1:500, making it a suitable choice for managing larger sums of money,” Miller says. “We set up a PAMM system, allowing us to manage multiple accounts simultaneously. The same principles and strategies I used in stock and options trading applied to forex but with different instruments. The move to forex also aligned with our goal of potentially running a hedge fund in the future.”
Arguably, the most valuable lesson of his entrepreneurship career was that he didn’t have to go at it alone. At one point, his wife held things together with her jobs while he was working out his trading strategies. Friends and family who came in with money to invest might have done it for the profits, but they also helped him grow as an entrepreneur and scale his business. Miller didn’t know how to code, so he worked with a developer to create the algorithm for his ventures.
Friends also become business partners, and business partners become friends. Today, Miller has a small community of people who share and work on the same goals together. In entrepreneurship, much like in life, it’s all about finding one’s place.
“We all shared the drive to succeed and dominate in our field. We even took a trip to Bali, my dream destination,” he recalls. “We loved it so much that we decided to move there. We sold our cars, left our apartments, and relocated. It was cheaper than Miami, and we lived in a large villa, splitting costs among five people. Living in Bali with my business partners, I finally found the right people to be around. The environment in Bali, with its emphasis on karma and positivity, is perfect for our lifestyle and business.”
