The programme
An edge is only the beginning. The Operating Standard brings together the process, performance and environment required to execute it consistently.
The strategy gives you the rules.
Heads-Up Trading develops the performer behind them.
01
The Five Phase Plan
The process that turns a strategy into something you can repeat.
02
Heads-Up Trading
Mental performance training, so you can follow your rules when it matters.
03
Live Trading & Coaching
Live sessions and coaching that sharpen how you execute.
04
Private Community
A focused group of traders working to the same standard.
01
Opening
Tom Spinks
Founder, The Operating Standard
A letter from the founder
Six months from now, you’ll be somewhere.
The question is… Where?
Because six months is going to pass whether you take action or not.
You can arrive there having done exactly what you’re doing today.
Same strategy.
Same mistakes.
Same frustrations.
Same excuses.
Or you can arrive there having deliberately changed the direction of your trading, and potentially your life.
And that’s really where the idea behind The Operating Standard came from.
Most traders are looking for the next strategy.
The next indicator.
The next course.
The next person who’s going to tell them exactly where to buy and where to sell.
But I don’t believe that’s what creates a consistently successful trader.
I think it’s what you do with the strategy that matters.
How well you understand it.
Whether you’ve actually tested it.
Whether you’ve built your life around being able to execute it.
Whether you can follow your rules when you’re losing.
And whether you’re prepared to honestly look at your own data and continually improve.
That’s what The Operating Standard is designed to help you do.
Not simply give you another strategy.
But give you the strategy, structure, process, coaching, environment and accountability to spend the next six months becoming better at this.
02
Six months
Six months is a really interesting period of time.
It’s long enough to create meaningful change, but short enough that you can look at it as a very specific challenge.
So rather than asking yourself:
“How am I going to become a great trader one day?”
I want you to ask a much simpler question:
“What could I change about my trading over the next six months?”
Because six months gives you enough time to learn.
Enough time to test.
Enough time to make mistakes.
Enough time to develop new habits.
Enough time to build evidence.
Enough time to improve your execution.
And enough time to look back and realise that you’ve become a very different trader.
And that’s why The Operating Standard isn’t designed as something you rush through in a few weeks.
It’s a six-month process.
Because meaningful change takes time.
03
Clarity
But it starts with clarity.
You need to know where you’re going.
What do you actually want from your trading?
What do you want your life to look like six months from now?
How much time do you want to spend trading?
What do you want your finances to look like?
What kind of trader do you want to become?
Because fuzzy goals produce fuzzy results.
That’s why when you join The Operating Standard, one of the first things you’ll do is complete your Day 1 Trader Audit.
DAY 1 TRADER AUDIT
We’ll look at where you are today.
Your trading.
Your habits.
Your experience.
Your strengths.
Your weaknesses.
What’s working.
What’s holding you back.
But more importantly, we’ll get really clear on where you want to be six months from now.
What are your specific goals?
What needs to change?
What would make these next six months genuinely successful for you?
And we’re going to write those things down.
Not keep them in our heads.
Not vaguely hope they happen.
Write them down.
Give yourself something specific to work towards.
Because once we know where you’re starting and where you want to go, we can start putting the pieces in place to help you get there.
That’s what the next six months are about.
04
Change your direction
And here’s something important.
You don’t have to have everything figured out today.
You don’t need to know exactly where you’ll be six months from now.
You just need to start moving in the right direction.
One decision.
One habit.
One trade.
One review.
One day at a time.
And then we give that direction a process.
05
The five phase plan to profitability
From philosophy
to the system.
And that’s why I’ve built The Operating Standard around five phases.
Because we’re not going to try and change everything at once.
We’re going to focus on the things that actually matter…
and do them consistently.
Learn. Test. Adjust. Apply. Track.
Each phase has a purpose.
And together, they give you a process to follow over the next six months.
Learn
Understand the Edge
The first step is to Learn.
And this is where we start with the foundation of The Operating Standard: a rule-based, mechanical trading strategy.
Because the markets are complex.
There are millions of participants, countless variables and an almost endless amount of information that you could analyse.
But just because the market is complex, doesn’t mean the way you trade it needs to be.
In fact, I believe the opposite.
The more complexity you bring into your decision-making, the easier it becomes to second-guess yourself, change your mind and trade emotionally.
So we simplify.
We have a defined set of rules that tells you what we’re looking for, when we’re interested, where we enter, where we’re wrong and how we manage the trade.
There’s no sitting in front of a chart trying to predict every possible thing the market might do.
The market can do whatever it wants.
Our job is simply to wait for our conditions to appear and then execute the plan.
That’s what makes it mechanical.
We don’t need to predict the market. We need to recognise our setup and execute our edge.
And you won’t be left trying to piece those rules together yourself.
Inside The Operating Standard, you’ll have the complete strategy training, the framework, examples and support to understand exactly what we’re looking for.
You can ask questions.
You can see it applied.
You can watch it being traded.
And you can work through it at your own pace until you understand it.
That’s where your six-month journey begins.
First, you learn the rules.
Test
Build Confidence
Then you Test.
And this is something I think is massively overlooked in trading.
You don’t need me to tell you that your strategy works.
You need to prove it to yourself.
You backtest it.
You collect the data.
You understand the win rate, the drawdowns, the winners, the losers and what you should realistically expect.
And inside The Operating Standard, we’ll show you how to do that properly.
What to test.
What to record.
What numbers matter.
And how to interpret what your data is actually telling you.
Because once you’ve tested the strategy, you’re no longer simply believing in an idea.
You’ve got data behind it.
You’ve seen the winners.
You’ve seen the losses.
You’ve seen the losing streaks.
You’ve seen the edge play out over a meaningful sample.
So instead of borrowing confidence from me…
you start building your own.
Adjust
Build the Environment
Then you Adjust.
And this isn’t about immediately changing the strategy.
It’s about changing the environment around you.
When can you actually trade?
Where are you going to trade?
What does your routine look like?
How are you going to manage your work, your family, your sleep and everything else that competes for your attention?
So we build an environment that allows you to execute your edge.
We build the routines.
We raise our standards.
We make the process sustainable.
Because you can’t consistently execute a strategy if your life isn’t set up to allow you to do it.
And that’s something we’ll help you build.
Not somebody else’s perfect trading routine.
Yours.
A trading plan and environment built around your life, your responsibilities and the evidence you’ve collected.
Because the goal isn’t simply to know what to do.
It’s to create an environment in which you’re actually able to do it consistently.
Apply
Execute the Edge
Then you Apply.
This is where theory meets the market.
You take what you’ve learned and tested and you execute it.
You learn to wait.
You learn to follow your rules.
You learn to take losses without abandoning your process.
You learn to deal with the emotions that come with putting real money at risk.
And you learn that a good trade can lose money…
and a bad trade can make money.
This is also where Heads-Up Trading becomes so important.
Because knowing your edge and being able to execute that edge under pressure are two different skills.
Inside the programme, we’ll work on both.
How you prepare.
How you train.
How you perform.
How you respond when things don’t go your way.
How you reset.
And how you review.
THE HEADS-UP TRADING FRAMEWORK
01
PREPARE
02
TRAIN
03
PERFORM
04
RESET
05
REVIEW
Track
Measure & Improve
And finally, you Track.
Because if you’re not documenting what you’re doing, you’re relying on memory.
You journal your trades.
You review them.
You look at your performance.
You look at your psychology.
You identify patterns.
And then you use that information to improve.
You become a student of your own trading.
And you won’t be doing that review completely in isolation.
Through Game Film, trade reviews, journal reviews and coaching, we’ll help you look beyond whether a trade simply won or lost.
Was it valid?
Did you execute it correctly?
What did you do well?
What needs work?
What’s the lesson?
And what are you going to do differently next time?
GAME FILM
01
REVIEW
02
LESSON
03
ACTION
04
IMPROVEMENT
Because review without action is only observation.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
And then the process starts again.
Learn. Test. Adjust. Apply. Track.
And then you go around again.
06
This is bigger than trading
But here’s where The Operating Standard becomes different.
This isn’t just about trading.
Because if you want to change your trading, you may need to change the person who’s doing the trading.
Your standards.
Your habits.
Your environment.
The people you surround yourself with.
The way you use your time.
The way you respond to setbacks.
The things you’re willing to sacrifice.
The things you’re willing to learn.
Because success isn’t about finding some magical answer.
It’s about consistently applying the fundamentals that actually matter.
And that’s why this programme isn’t simply a library of trading videos.
The strategy matters.
But the person executing it matters too.
The Operating Standard is designed to develop both.
07
Don’t try to do everything
And one thing I really want you to understand is that we’re not going to try and do 4,000 different things.
We’re going to identify the things that actually matter…
and do them again and again.
Because it’s not about doing 4,000 things once.
It’s about doing six or seven important things 4,000 times.
That’s how skill is developed.
That’s how habits are formed.
That’s how consistency is built.
And that’s what these six months are about.
Less content. More action.
You don’t need another hundred things to think about.
You need to get very good at the few things that matter.
08
Association
And think about the people around you.
Who are you spending your time with?
Who are you learning from?
Who inspires you?
Who challenges you to raise your standards?
And who simply keeps you where you are?
Trading can be incredibly isolating.
Most people in your life probably don’t trade.
They don’t necessarily understand what it’s like to sit through a losing streak.
They don’t understand why you can follow your plan perfectly and still lose money.
And they probably aren’t going to ask whether you’ve done your backtesting, completed your journal or followed your rules.
That’s another reason I’ve built The Operating Standard around a community.
Because inside TOS, you’re surrounded by people who get it.
Traders working through the same process.
People learning.
Testing.
Sharing trades.
Reviewing mistakes.
Celebrating progress.
And trying to raise their own standard.
People who are doing things you aspire to do.
People who make you think bigger.
Because your environment matters.
And so does your association.
When you’re surrounded by people who are trying to improve, it becomes much easier to raise your own expectations of yourself.
09
Accountability
And you won’t do this alone.
Accountability matters.
When you’ve told someone what you’re going to do, you’re much more likely to do it.
That’s why you’ll have a community around you.
People who know what you’re working towards.
People who are going through the same process.
You’ll have live trading.
Coaching.
Trade reviews.
Journal reviews.
Live sessions.
A place to ask questions when you’re stuck.
A place to share your wins…
but also somewhere to be honest when things aren’t going well.
Because the aim isn’t simply to give you more trading information.
It’s to give you an environment that makes it easier to do the work.
Because setbacks are going to happen.
They always do.
The important thing is what you do next.
You learn.
You adjust.
And you get back to work.
10
The daily work
And ultimately, transformation isn’t going to come from one big breakthrough.
It’s going to come from the things you do when nobody is watching.
The early mornings.
The backtesting.
The journal entries.
The books.
The uncomfortable reviews.
The trades you don’t take.
The losses you accept.
The standards you refuse to lower.
The small things. Done consistently. Over six months.
That’s where the change happens.
And The Operating Standard gives you the structure around that work.
The process to follow.
The things to focus on.
The people around you.
The reviews that keep you moving.
But ultimately, you still have to do the work.
And that’s the point.
We’re not trying to make you dependent on somebody else.
We’re trying to help you become a better, more capable and more self-sufficient trader.
11
The journal & gratitude
And I don’t want these six months to be purely about making money.
Because there’s more to a good life than your trading account.
That’s why when you join The Operating Standard, you’ll receive your own six-month journal.
This is where I want you to document the journey.
Your goals.
Your thoughts.
Your lessons.
Your trading.
Your setbacks.
Your wins.
And every day, I want you to write down three things you’re grateful for.
Because it’s very easy, particularly in trading, to become obsessed with what you don’t have yet.
The account you want.
The results you want.
The life you want.
I want you to learn to appreciate where you are while you’re working towards where you want to be.
And six months from now, you’ll be able to open that journal and look back at the person who started this journey.
Go back to that Day 1 Trader Audit.
Look at the goals you wrote down.
Look at where you started.
Look at what you struggled with.
And then look at what’s changed.
Not just in your trading…
but in yourself.
12
The commitment
So if you’re going to join The Operating Standard, I don’t want you to think of this as another trading course.
I want you to think of it as a six-month commitment.
A commitment to yourself.
A commitment to your trading.
A commitment to your development.
And a commitment to raising your standards.
WHAT TOS PROVIDES
We’ll give you the strategy.
We’ll give you the Five Phase process.
We’ll teach you how to test it.
We’ll help you build your environment.
We’ll work on your performance through Heads-Up Trading.
We’ll review.
We’ll coach.
We’ll trade together.
We’ll give you the community and accountability around you.
We’ll give you the tools to document and measure the journey.
WHAT YOU BRING
But you have to bring the commitment.
You have to do the work.
You don’t have to change your entire life tomorrow.
You can’t change your destination overnight. But you can change your direction overnight.
And once you’ve changed direction, your job is simply to keep moving.
One day at a time.
One decision at a time.
One improvement at a time.
13
The bigger possibility
And who knows where that direction can take you?
Because trading, when approached properly, can become more than simply making money from the markets.
It can give you the opportunity to build a skill.
A skill that could pay you for life.
To create more flexibility.
To take greater control of your time.
To create opportunities that might not otherwise have been available to you.
But none of that happens overnight.
And none of it is guaranteed.
It starts with becoming better at what you do.
And becoming better at who you are.
That’s what I want these six months to be about.
Not chasing some imaginary finish line.
But deliberately moving towards the trader, and the person, you said you wanted to become on Day 1.
14
Final section
Six months from now, you’ll be somewhere.
The question is…
Where?
You can let the next six months happen to you…
or you can design them.
Learn. Test. Adjust. Apply. Track.
Raise your standards.
Build better habits.
Surround yourself with people who inspire you.
Become accountable.
Document the journey.
Keep improving.
And don’t worry about becoming a completely different trader tomorrow.
Just become a little better today.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And the day after that.
Because six months from now, you’ll look back…
and you’ll realise that all those small decisions weren’t so small after all.
The next step
Places are limited. Every enquiry is read personally.
TOS
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