From Broke to Six Figures and Back: Jason Brown on Options Trading, Risk and Rebuilding Wealth
Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Jason Brown shares his journey from growing up in poverty and sleeping in sleeping bags to turning a $500 investment into a six-figure tradi
Key takeaways
- Emotional trading can lead to catastrophic losses; disciplined execution is critical for long-term success.
- Financial literacy and consistent practice through paper trading are essential before risking real capital.
Main topics
- Options trading strategies
- Risk management in investing
Notable quotes
"You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it."
Conclusion
Jason Brown's story illustrates that true wealth building isn't about quick wins but
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Look at the MAG7 stocks and just follow the money. Money's going into AI, infrastructure, cloud, storage, data centers. I would tell people to look there, at least at the time of this recording. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. Speaker 1 (0:33) What's up and welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what's right and what's now. We can talk about last year, we can talk about next year. No, we're not about the windshield looking too far ahead. We're not about the rearview mirror looking too far behind. We're actually about taking notice of what's here, what's now, and how to get ahead in business and in life. And that's why we bring all the experts. We got my friend, my buddy, downtown Jason Brown. I gave him a name he didn't even ask for. That's what I do, Jason, but welcome to the show. Ryan, good to be here, man. I love it. Speaker 1 (1:03) I love it. I receive it. Good. I appreciate that. Some people like, I don't think they knew how to tape me. I give everybody pit names. It's love. I don't know. It's just what I do. I love what you're doing, Jason. Little options trading. Power Trades University, author of Five Year Millionaire. Damn, I'm going to be a five year. Everybody likes to get in a hurry, but five years sounds pretty good, Jason. It's a good, reasonable time frame. That's why I like it. It's doable and it's not 40 years out. You're not looking at retirement. It's within your lifetime where you can still enjoy it. Speaker 1 (1:32) I know. Hey, man, I had student loans and I wouldn't say I used every dollar wisely. Some might argue using them for college isn't even wise, but we'll save that topic for another day at another guest. But I got the intention of taking out the student loan, throwing it in the stock. It actually seems smart. It's like at least you're going to get a higher return. You would have hoped. I'd love to start there a little bit, Jason, and then building towards what you're doing with Five Year Millionaire. Yeah, absolutely. So what happened when I was growing up, we were poor, sleeping in sleeping bags, and I was trying to figure out how to change our family's financial tree. And I actually took $2,000 to a bank at 18. That was my graduation money. And I said, like, I want to invest. Speaker 1 (2:11) The girl asked me, like, why? I said, I want to be rich. Like, why else do people do this? And so basically, she said, you want aggressive funds. I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right. I need aggressive growth. And I'm thinking, OK, I'm going to come back two or three years later. I'm going to have $6,000. You hear people say, just put some money in, leave it, come back. It'll grow. Came back about two or three years later, and it was down to $700. And so they lost majority of my money. They lost $1,300. So I'm like, I could have lost my own money. What happened? And pretty much, she's just like, I don't know what to tell you. Market goes up, goes. I was like, I know what to tell you. Give me my 700. I can do this myself. And so I spent $200 on some Jordans. I was like, if I lose this other 500, at least I got some gym shoes out of the whole deal. Speaker 1 (2:51) You know, I got something to show, but I had 500 bucks. I'm working for Sprint PCS making $8 an hour. I made 64 bucks on a Saturday, $50 after you take out taxes. And I was like, I could just make 50 bucks with this $500. I wouldn't have to work a weekend. What I did was I bought Sprint at $5. It fell down to $4. I was like, oh man, I'm not that good at this. Maybe I'm not as smart as I thought. Sprint went back up to five. I thought, okay, I just need to go to 550. Speaker 1 (3:21) It fell back down to four again. I thought the stock market's rigged. That's why they asked for your social security number. They won't let it go to 550. I just had all these thoughts. It went back up to five and I said, I've seen this before. I got out at five. It fell to four. I got back in. It went up to five. I got out, made my first hundred dollars. I tell you that story because that was the first time I started to learn about patterns. If you drew that out on the paper, it'd be called a channel and stock pattern. So I got really good at these patterns and start studying what other patterns there were. And I said, how do I get more money? into the machine. And so I had a scholarship to school, to Mike Illich School of Business, Wayne State University here in Detroit, Michigan. And I knew that I went and saw financial aid. I saw my buddies getting student loan refunds. Speaker 1 (4:01) And I found out that because I didn't live on campus, she was like, oh, you can use the money to live on campus. I said, well, what if I live at home? She's like, well, you could move on campus, use it for living expenses. So like basically use it for whatever I want. And for me, I saw that as an opportunity to get more money into the stock market machine. So I took that $10,000 student loan and I grew it to like $113,000 as a 21 year old college student. Amazing. What a great story that would be if that was the end. But I think there's a part two coming. There's definitely a but to that, right? Because what happened was I dropped out of school after that. I made more money not being an engineer. And then I grew the account to about $300,000. And about three years later, at about 26, 27, I actually risked a quarter million trying to make half a million and I lose it all. Speaker 1 (4:49) So by the time I'm 27-ish, I'm flat broke, had to move back home to the neighborhood with drugs, gangs, bars on the window, and really reset. But that's where this whole new Jason Brown was born. That's when I started documenting my life and saying, like, I know the stock market works. I've made money from it before. I just got to figure out what I did wrong. And that's kind of how I got into YouTube and teaching. And I was rebuilding my account and kind of recording and documenting the whole process along the way. Speaker 1 (5:18) This episode of Vibe Science is brought to you by Shopify. We talk a lot on this show about being intentional with the life you want to create. One thing I've learned is that waiting until everything feels perfect can keep you from ever taking the first step. That was something I had to get past when I started building my storefront. I had an idea for the business and knew what I wanted to create, but I definitely didn't know how to do every part of it on my own. Shopify gave me a clear place to begin with everything I needed already there from day one. Speaker 1 (5:45) I was able to launch my store and start selling in a few simple steps. Shopify's design templates and AI site builder made setting up my storefront easy, and Sidekick AI helped me along the way. ShopPay also gives customers the easiest checkout on the market, which helped make the storefront feel complete and ready for people to use. What I appreciate now is that Shopify helps me stay up to date with my business, even when life gets busy. My storefront remains an active part of how I run the business without feeling like something I have to completely figure out on my own. Speaker 1 (6:13) If you've been thinking about starting a business but feel like you need to know everything before you begin, you don't. 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