Latest / Exit Algorithms / How to Run Your Business Like a Fortune 500 From Day One | Jason Brown (#92)
Transcript
- Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high-value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, today I'm joined by Jason Brown. He's the founder of the Brown Report and Power Trades University. He's the host of the Five Year Millionaire Podcast, a YouTuber with over 80,000 subscribers. and the author of the Amazon best seller, Five Year Millionaire. an overall badass. Jason, welcome to the show. Good to have you here. Jason Brown: Pete, thanks for having me. I like that. An overall badass. I'll take it. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yes, sir. Yeah. How about we start out? Do you mind sharing your your business journey, Jason? And you know, what what led you to to where you are today? Jason Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my business journey, when I think about it, it really goes back to, know, my youth. I was always into making money or trying to figure out how to make money. I remember I would buy like pagers back when people would carry pagers. And if case got really broken or tattered, they kind of throw them away or give them away. But I found that For like 15 bucks, you can buy the case, like the neon green cases, and change them. Then you could turn around and sell that same page for 40, 50 bucks just by putting a new case on it. So I was always interested in business. And I did some network marketing. I was in ⁓ couple of different network marketing companies, which is where I really learned the principles of Time leverage, business ownership, residual or passive income, you know, having some type of team, either people working for you, intellectual property working for you. real estate, something else working for you so that you could have some leverage. So that's that was like my early exposure, if you will, to entrepreneurship. But I kind of fell into it by mistake as far as this business. I was 18 and I wanted was investing or I wanted to invest because we grew up poor. So I took like two thousand dollars to a bank, had them invest it. Girl asked me what's your goal? It's like I wanna be rich. It's like why else would anybody do this, right? And so ⁓ she said you want aggressive funds. I said, Yeah, I want aggressive funds. So she took my two thousand dollars. I come back about three years later, I'm twenty-one. They pretty much lost all my money. They lost thirteen hundred dollars of it. And so I'm like, What happened? Like I could have lost my own thirteen hundred dollars. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Jason Brown: And so I was, yeah, was kind of irritated because it's like I'm, you know, that was my graduation money. So I'm like, I'm not about to graduate again. So where am I going to get $2,000 from? So I took the $700 and I was like, I could do this myself. I'll invest myself. And I spent $200 on some gym shoes. I have $500 left. Yeah, I said if I lose this $500, at least I got some Jordans out of this thing. And so I took the $200, bought some Jordans. I have $500 left. I'm working for Sprint PCS at the time, Pete. I'm making $8 an hour. So about $64 on the weekend. when you take taxes out, I made about $50 take home. So I was like, man, if I can make $50 from my ⁓ I can finally take a weekend off. That's all I wanted to do was earn 10%, make $50, finally take a Saturday off because I had been working since I was 16. McDonald's, Mervyn's, Best Buy. I'd always worked on the weekends all through high school. I just never had a weekend off. I couldn't do what all the other kids did. I couldn't hang out. I always worked. And so bought Sprint stock. Our stock was $5 a share. Sprint. I'm like, break, I'm gonna buy 100, 100 shares. Bought 100 shares at five. Stock started to fall down to four. I was like, man, this doesn't work. I'm not as smart as I think I am. Stock went back up to five. I'm like, great, I just need to go to 550. I'm gonna break even. I mean not breaking off, making my first fifty bucks, it fell back down to four again. I was like, the mar it this doesn't work, the market's rigged. And then it went back up to five. And I said, I've seen this before. So Pete, I got out at five, stock fell down to four, I got back in. Stock went back up to five. I got out. I made my first one hundred dollars. I didn't know if you drew that out on a chart. It would be called a channel and stock of channels between five and four, four and five, five and four. Had I known how to read stock charts, I would have known not to buy a five and to wait and to buy it four. So then I started thinking what other patterns exist. And I get really good at researching these patterns. And so I took a $10,000 student loan and I invested it in a stock market. I was like, well, I was well, how do I I got really good at it? So I like, how do I get more money in the machine? I had a scholarship to the Mike Ealer School of Business here in Detroit. I applied for financial aid because I knew they would cut me a refund check. I took the refund check and I invested it and I grew it to like six figures as a twenty-one year old college student. Fast forward, did I get into business? I ended up dropping out of school, full time trading for about three years. I ran the account up to about 300,000. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jason Brown: I year three going into year four, I risk a quarter million trying to make half a million. I actually lose it all, blow up my entire account. I had to move back home, sell my car. I'm flat broke. I had to get a job. But I knew the stock market worked. I just had to figure out, you know, what I did wrong. So I was very into personal development, like I told you. And so Jim Roam was like, take a picture, you know, journal about your journey. And I was like, I'm gonna do one better. I'm gonna record it. So I started recording my journey and I started teaching online about what I did wrong in the stock market. And also started doing these local seminars around Metro Detroit about like, here's how you don't blow up your account, here's what you don't wanna do, here's why you wanna pay attention to this or that. And so slowly I started building this following of doing these seminars ⁓ locally. And also sharing my journey online. And then one day we had like a big snowstorm and we couldn't do the seminar locally. And I was like, what if I just did it online? Like, why are we driving all around? And that was kind of like the birth or the genesis of building like an online platform. And people started asking me, you know, how'd you know what to buy? How'd you know what to sell? Can you teach us? And I was like, Well, people pay me for this. And that's literally how I kind of transitioned into ⁓ building an online stock market education platform. It was like I said, totally by mistake, just all out of passion and sharing how I blew my account up and what went wrong and trying to help other people not do the same or or be better at this. And little did I know, there was a business waiting for me. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Man, that's awesome. I I'm a big ⁓ Jim Roan fan as well. yeah, h how did so what were some of the rules or or lessons you learned from you know from losing almost all of your savings? Jason Brown: So a lot of it I talk about in my book, but as you can see from the t-shirt here, I don't know if people, I don't know if you'll put this out as video or not, but ⁓ the shirt says you never go broke taking a profit. That was one of my main principles that came out of that situation I risked a quarter mil trying to make half a million. I was actually up a hundred thousand, but I said that's not enough because it's not five hundred thousand. I wasn't thinking, what if you just made a hundred thousand four more times? I wasn't thinking that. I was like, what am I gonna do with a hundred thousand? That's not enough money. I'll never say that again, by the way. I know exactly what I'll do with a hundred thousand. That's lot of money, right? but at the time I was just a little cocky, a little egotistical. And it's like, what I'm gonna do with a hundred thousand. I need five hundred. So one of the things I learned was that you never go broke taking a profit, right? So if you take a profit, it adds up with whether you're trying to make a hundred thousand, if you make ten thousand ten times. You make 5,020 times, it all adds up to get you there. So that was one of the things I learned. I learned to have some protection on my account, right? You want to live the trade another day. You never want to just go all in to where if the thing goes wrong, you're out of the game. That was I was just over-leveraged. you know, some things I talk about in my book is having a I'm wrong level. So you believe a stock or a chart is gonna go this way. Maybe the same thing in life and in business, but if you're wrong, at what point are you gonna abort? the mission and save yourself. Like I went down with the ship. know what I'm saying? I I went flat broke, had to move back home. It was a certain point where I should have just pulled the lever and said, you what, this trade isn't going in my favor. I think I doubled down on it. I added more. I'm like, I gotta be right. I started hoping, praying it goes back up and I realized hope and prayer just has you I get Christians will say pray about it. But you know, in business and in the stock market, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jason Brown: You know, God is on both sides, right? Two people are God fearing. There's no leverage there for the deal to go your way. that has nothing to do with it. You gotta be able to read charts, analyze risks, do your research, and also live the trade or invest another day. And those are just some of the principles I didn't go in with. I just went in with, I'm about to make a half a million dollars. Never what would happen if I lose a quarter million dollars, which is most of my account. Never crossed my mind, Pete. ⁓ Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah. Man. Yeah, that I bet that was a terrible time. Jason Brown: You know, it's funny, I it was a terrible time, but I wouldn't change it because as I rebuilt coming out of that, I wouldn't have the business today, I wouldn't have the book today, I wouldn't have rebuilt my account like it was today with the right principles and structures. But at the time, I was not sitting there thinking, you know, I'm gonna build a company and teach people someday. Right at the time, I was like, You're idiot, why'd you do that? You're not smart, you knew you couldn't do, you know. All the negative talk came in at that time, but thank God I was listening to also some of those personal development motivational speakers and going to seminars and you know that helped me get through and start thinking about it differently. I even said, you know, it's either gonna be a hell of a comeback story or it's gonna make a great book someday, or it's gonna be a hell of a time trying. Like I I got that from that positive thinking. And and so it helped me get through, and sure enough. Sometimes that's what you need when you're down in the dumps, man. Like that's all you got left is your health and your mindset and and hopefully somebody that loves you. But those are the things that are super valuable when you're down and out. But they're also the things that are super valuable when you're not down and out because you don't realize sometimes how valuable that is till you don't have money, you don't have status, and you're like you're left with what's really important, your health, your mindset, and those people around you that love you. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, definitely. let let's talk a little bit more about that that journey, you know, building ⁓ eight figure education brand on top of being a trader. How how long did it take to to start getting traction and and you know, your community really taking off? Jason Brown: You know, I look back on it, the two years, I was just documenting my I I was really just a blogger, if you will. I I did like I said, I didn't wake up and say, like, I'm gonna build a business. I bought a domain name, the Brown Report, and I was like, It's my report on my life and what I'm finding in the stock market and how I'm rebuilding account. Never was I like, how do I monetize this? and I just I just was like, ⁓ people have a blog. I'm gonna I'm gonna start a blog. That was the thing. So I just started a blog and then I thought, I'll do video with it and I'll put videos on the blog. So it's vlogging. I'll have a video blog. That was like the first two years, just blogging, just sharing, doing a little local seminars. I was doing them out of Starbucks. I was doing them out of the back of Panair, not Panair Bra. I'm sorry, the Microsoft Store Somerset Mall. I did Some of the seminars out of the public library, anybody anywhere that will give me free space. It's how the first two years started. It wasn't until about year three that you know I had this following and people were asking like for more of a structured course. And I'm like, you know, I gotta buy a camera, a like a better camera than the webcam. I ordered like this green screen. I'm like, okay, this is starting to cost me money. I you know, I I've started to charge like ten dollars for the little seminars just to offset some of the costs. We were bringing food to But again, never was I thinking I was trying to build a business. One what happened was I took one of the local seminars I did and you people couldn't make it because of a storm, and then one I had to cancel. So I said I'll upload it online. I uploaded it to a platform called Udemy, which I think they just got bought out by Somebody, but it used to Udemy, maybe they're still around. And I remember like 500 people enrolled in the course. And I was like, whoa. Because I made it for free. I didn't even charge. I was just, it was just free. Like 500 people enrolled. Then people were like, This The audio is bad. We can't hear. We can't see what he's talking about. And I'm like, that's because it was a live seminar. And I just set a microphone in the middle of the room. I had like a Yeti that I just set in the middle of the room. I was walking around, but I had the thing recording my screen the whole time. So they couldn't see me. They couldn't see people. I mean, it was just I just was recording it just for the hell of it, not just thinking I'm a upload it. But what happened was a light butt moment went off from I was like, if 500 people registered, they're interested in a topic. They just want a quality version of it. I was like, okay, I'm gonna record it, do a quality version, and I'm gonna I'm gonna see if people will buy it. I think I re-recorded it. Uploaded the quality version and it was like $50. bought it. It a hundred bucks. I like 50% off. bought it. I thought this is interesting. 500 people registered said they want quality. I record the quality one, upload it for 100, 50% off discount. Nobody buys it. And then insert the third skill. I realized I was like, I gotta learn how to sell online. Cause I was like, I learned how to record a good product. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hmm, yeah. Mm. Jason Brown: I know people are interested in the stock market, but they're not buying. Now I have to learn how to sell online. And that was really like the last piece of the puzzle. It's like, how do I sell this to strangers online? That's when I really started learning about funnels and landing pages and explaining stuff and you know, people being able to trust you to put their credit card in online. I mean, I think now everybody's willing to put their credit card in online, but back then Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Jason Brown: It's like you gotta have a secure server license. You wanna make sure that lock is at the top of the page so people trust you. And like, what's your refund? Like I really started going down this rabbit hole of learning internet marketing, which I had no plan on learning, but I had this course and I knew people won. I'm like, I bought all this equipment and recorded it. Somebody better buy it. and that really just took me down a path of learning about Facebook ads, YouTube ads, funnels, ⁓ retargeting people, all kind of stuff. So it's like Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: No. Jason Brown: I learned a whole new skill set that I didn't even set out to learn ⁓ from doing this. And then we went from that to, you know, we had a Facebook group and then people was like, we don't use Facebook, we're boycotting them. So I'm like, okay, I need my own platform because I can't rely on Facebook. So then I started researching how do you build a custom platform and how do you the membership if they pay and don't pay? And then I went down this whole rabbit hole. And then there was certain softwares, but none of them were perfect. So then I'm like, how do you get a developer? How do you know you can trust the developer? And they won't screw you. So I didn't, you know, just went down this whole world of out outsourcing, hiring developers out of the country, how to protect yourself, how to make sure it's your intellectual property, non-disclosures, all kind of stuff. It just each moment just kept forcing me down a new path to learn a new skill that inevitably turned out to be The Brown report, but then I was like, what if I get hit by a bus? The Brown report is Jason Brown. And then if I wanted to sell, nobody wants to buy the Brown report because their last name isn't Brown. So then I was like, Well, we're somebody was like, Well, what kind of trader are you? A day trader, you a swing trader? I was like, I'm an option trader, I'm a power trader. We put a lot of power behind our trades with options. So then I thought, Power Trades University. So then I create a whole new website, a whole new brand. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Jason Brown: Because I wanted to separate me from the actual business if I ever wanted to sell it or bring in other teachers, coaches. So then Power Trades University was born. So that's why there's two brands. The Brown Report is more like my personal brand. And then Power Trades University is our online stock market education platform. So it's just a constant evolution of trial and error, and then listening to what the market wanted, and then also paying attention to. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Jason Brown: You know, the structure and setup at every turn of the journey. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. ⁓ that's awesome. I I love that. Figure figure it out as you go, basically. Jason Brown: Yeah. Yeah. And you let passion guide you. You let your drive for excellence drive you, right? 'Cause I just at every piece I just want it to be good. You know, when someone was like, This sucks, the audio's bad. I'm like, I'm gonna buy one of those three hundred dollar microphones. And then it's like the camera quality's bad. I'm like, I'm gonna get one of those really nice cameras, right? And so I've always been like that. I was like, All right, let's let's step it up. You know, even now, I mean I'm I'm talking to you on a thirteen hundred dollar camera. ⁓ three, four hundred dollar mic. Like I'm always like, how do I improve this? How do I make it a little bit better? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. awesome. Yeah, I'd love to talk kind of tactics. you know, when you invest, what are some of the the things that you that you look for, you prioritize? Jason Brown: Primarily the chart. First thing I look at is the chart. I'm a technical, a technician. do technical analysis. So I like to look at the chart. The chart tells me about ⁓ to 90% of what I need to know about a stock, a trade, an investment. The other 10 to 20% is story of why. I don't want the story first. I want to see the chart. If the stock is down, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jason Brown: Now I want to go understand why it is down. Did they miss earnings? Is there a new competitor on the block? But the chart will tell me that things aren't going well. And if the stock's booming, the chart will tell me, then I'll go look at the story and say, well, why is it booming? Is it because of AI? Is it because of chips? Is it because of interest rates? Is it because of this? But the chart will tell you almost everything you need to know about a stock. I've had conversations with people and I was like, They're either about to do layoffs or your company's about to go out of business. And they're like, No, we're not. We're doing good. I'm like, the stock is at this price and it's going this. I'm like, the closer it gets to zero, y'all about to go out of business. No, the stock's cheap. See, and sure enough, almost two months later, I remember Circuit City. I remember a couple of different companies where comp you they they started announcing layoffs and then they were going out of business. And I'm like, the stock did the chart tell you everything you need to know? ⁓ so that's the first place I start with just looking at the chart and then I back up what I'm seeing with fundamental analysis and what's the story behind it. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. ⁓ gotcha. Yeah, what are your thoughts on the SpaceX IPO? Did did you personally have you invested yet? remarket or where d yeah, where do you see it going? Jason Brown: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You know, so when we invest my investment thesis, of all, I'm a trader. so investors are looking at fundamental, long term, where's it gonna be? As a trader, I'm looking at where's the momentum at in the next 30, 60, 90 days, 12 months. And so typically what that involves is having some type of history. And IPOs have history yet. So we look for what we call PRPs in our program. Predictable, repeatable patterns. Well, if it hasn't been trading for, know, it hasn't even been three months. They haven't even had their first quarterly earnings. There is no predictable, repeatable pattern. And so I don't trade stocks that don't have a predictable, repeatable pattern. They don't have an established investor base yet. it's just that's not in my wheelhouse. And it typically doesn't work out. If you look at all the major IPOs, you can even go back to Facebook, you could look at, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Jason Brown: I think Google, look at all the major IPOs. They have a history of shooting up for the first two, three days and then crashing almost immediately. Now, long term, did Facebook go from 20 bucks to being a multi-billion dollar company and go all the way up to 600 bucks? Sure. Same with Google. Did it go up and split eventually? Yes. But on IPO week, if you will, they all have a history of being up the first two, three days, maybe the first month, and then just turn around and crashing and burning before they kinda establish a committed customer base and trading base and investment base. So I typically like to wait for that predictable, repeatable pattern, couple earnings to come out and then I'll say, you know, now's the time to take a look at this company. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Gotcha. Yeah, it makes sense. ⁓ awesome. And we touched a bit about it earlier about your book, the the five year millionaire roadmap. do you mind sharing some of the main through lines from that book? Maybe some takeaways, you know, not just for investors, but also just business owners in general. Jason Brown: Yeah. A couple takeaways is like I said, there's a chapter called You Never Go Broke Taking a Profit. So whether you're investing, whether you're running a business, like you help people exit their businesses, you gotta know when it's time to hang it up, when it's time to take a profit. When your business is doing well and it's time to exit, pass it to somebody else. A lot of people hold on to stuff too long. That includes stocks. They watch a stock go all the way up and then they watch it come. All the way back down. And then they say stuff like, I should have sold. I wish I would have. It's just like, Why didn't you? Right? But there's a part of you that has what we talk about in the book, fear and greed. There's this fear that I'm missing out. I'm missing out. I'm scared. Then there's this greed, like, ⁓ how much higher can it go? And you're always battling fear and greed, whether you're investing, whether you're in real estate, whether you have a business. And so there The book is about emotion, how to control your emotion when you're handling business, when you're handling investments. ⁓ it's about my personal story of making that quarter million, being broke, and building my way back. So it's about mindset and resilience. It's not, yes, it's about how to make a million dollars, but I talk a lot about you have to become a millionaire. It's who you have to become mentally and psychologically, how you think before you can unlock a million dollars. And I share my path to building it back and becoming a millionaire and how anybody can do that using options trading. And if you can earn 10% a month, starting with about five thousand dollars, you could have one point two million dollars in five years. But it takes a ton of discipline, it takes knowledge, and it takes emotional and mental maturity to to unlock those riches. So that's a little bit About what five year millionaire is about. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. I love it. What's the you know single mindset shift you'd say separates from the ones who make it and, you know, the ones who who quit? Jason Brown: In the stock market or just in life? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Well let's go with well let's go with life. Jason Brown: Think belief, you gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe in what you're doing. You know, if if you don't, it's very hard to make it through the ups, the downs, the tough times, right? But if you if you believe in what you're doing, you you'll you'll run through a brick wall, right? If you're passionate about the cause, if you believe that you are the person that's meant to do this, called to do this, God drop that gift in your lap, not somebody else's to see it through. You you you're gonna s you're you're gonna do whatever you can when your belief is strong. I there's a song by John Mayer that says it's called Belief, but I remember the verse goes something like I think it said, What can put a thousand men in the sand? Belief can. He was basically talking about people going to war, fighting for their c people are people will die. if they believe they're doing the right thing for whether it's for their country, for their family, and and that same belief. It's like when you got belief, it's almost nothing you you can't overcome or nothing you won't learn. No, no person you won't talk to resource you on approach to to to hit your goal. So I think that's one of the key differentiators in life. The person who believes will will definitely outperform the one who doesn't. In the stock market, It's about taking calculated risks and controlling your emotions. People come in here and they treat it like a Las Vegas casino table, a crap table, they're not looking at probability and statistics of trades or investments. They're just like, Apple sounds good. I heard Nvidia's doing well. They're not looking at probability and statistics. And then, like said, they're not controlling their emotions. When they're down, they're, you know, they want to gamble. They want to double down or go back up. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jason Brown: They lose their five hundred bucks, they're sick about it. That's why I don't trade. They don't understand, like losing is a part of it. It's just you can't lose more than you make. But losing is a part of it. It would be like driving a car and the first time you get a flat tire or an accident, you're like, I'll never drive again. That's it. I'm catching the bus from here on out. It's like that doesn't make sense. Catching a flat tire is part of it. Getting the oil change is part of it. Getting into your first fender bender. It's it's all part of it. It doesn't mean life isn't better for having a car. it's the same with the stock market. Yes, some people blow up their account. Yes, you can lose some money. But for the most part, life is better when you have some type of investments because all roads lead to it, whether it's your 401k, whether you have a business and you exit it, you're typically putting that money in a stock market so you can live off of it. So all roads lead to it. It's yeah, I heard this saying once that think ninety percent of the world is water, so you might want to learn how to swim. Well, ⁓ roads lead to the stock market as far as retirement, your four ⁓ one K, your Roth IRA, you put money away from your your kids' tuition, pension. So you might wanna learn how this industry works at some point. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. ⁓ well said. awesome. Yeah, well we'll we'll switch tracks here, go a little bit deeper on on AI. I know on the on the pre show you talked about your building some tools. I'd love to hear, you know, how are you leveraging AI today and where do you see it affecting your industry the most? Jason Brown: Yeah, so AI for me, I'm a I I like to think I'm a pretty smart guy. And I'm a very I'm I'm always interested in pushing the envelope and I'm very curious. What AI has done for me has allowed me to unlock some of that curiosity and that genius and those dreams and make them real. So I would say stuff like, Man, wouldn't it be cool? Like we built like a financial modeling options calculator, but it was in a spreadsheet and cause people would take a trade and they were like, I don't know what my break it is. So we built this big spreadsheet so you could put the stock in, the price you're buying, all this stuff. But I was like, Man, what if we could like build an app for that? What if we could build it and embed it on our site and our members can take it with ⁓ everywhere they go, then it spit out a digital version and they could print it if they want. Before I was like, well, how much would that cost? We gotta outsource it to India. Then when we need updates, it breaks. Like, but AI now is like, I'm like, here's the spreadsheet. Here's how we do it. I want it to look like like now I'm like, ⁓ this is interesting. I can actually bring to life some of these cool tools and things that I think would help our traders at a reasonable price without saying if we build it, we gotta charge $10,000 for it. You know, so then now it's out of the reach of the masses, but it's really allowing me to dream and build things that I think will help investors, help traders. ⁓ some of the you know, most people start off doing this stuff part-time, so they're at work. So I'm like, gosh, one of the issues I had when I was at work was speed of research, speed of information. And so we built like a stock market research agent. And here's the thing: anybody can build these tools. The difference is If you're not a trader or an investor, you don't know how to build it for investors. You don't know what you're looking for. You don't know how to parse through the data. And so that's what makes it different for me. It's not that my chat GBT is better, my claw is better, but thinking and dreaming of all the stuff I wish I had as an investor, as a trader over the last 20 years. And that's what makes ⁓ what I build in the app different from somebody else coming and say, I'm just gonna build a options calculator or a financial research tool. It's like, sure. Do you know what to research? Do you know what's important? Do you know what's not important? Do you know how to structure that data so regular people can understand it? ⁓ I'm just having a ton of fun with AI and building and rolling out tools for for our members. ⁓ so we built like a stock market research agent, an options financial calculator. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Nice. Jason Brown: We have a five-year millionaire calculator, which is like I got this much money. How much would I need? And what type of trades do I need to take to try to grow it to a million in five years? There's just so much cool stuff that we're working on. We actually got a couple other things that we're building. We want to build an option So you give us the stock, and if you can I wanna build it to where if you upload a picture of the chart, it'll apply our analysis to the chart and give you. six different option strategies to trade or play on it. So there's just there's so much that's available with the power of AI that before would have cost us too much to even think about exploring. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. ⁓ that's awesome. Yeah, have you found the you know, the recent updates this year, I think it was February with Claude, cowork and coding. Have that has that enabled you as you know, as a business owner to be able to offer all these ex all these different tools? Jason Brown: Everybody talks about Claude. I I like I still like Chat GPT the best. I I'm not really sure why everybody loves Claude so much, with all the ⁓ restrictions and all that, but Chat GPT is killing it for me. And then I use Codex, which is a a version of Chat GPT's Claude code, if you will. codex is just beast mode for me. I really love it, but I'm sure some people like Claude, it does some stuff. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Got it. Jason Brown: ⁓ I use Google's Notebook LM, which is cool for doing some interesting stuff with studying. I was studying for a test and uploading my stuff to Notebook L ⁓ creating quizzes and flashcards for myself. I mean, gosh, there is no one tool. I I recommend people test them all, but my my go to is Chat and Codec, so Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: ⁓ yeah. Gotcha. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's ta it's all all clawed these days, but yeah, you know it Jason Brown: I don't know why. I tried Claw and I was like, this is not better, or it's not that much different. In fact, in some cases it was worse. I just didn't know what the hype was about. But I've also learned from being in the stock market. I I ignore most of the news because news is hype. A lot of news is negative. A lot of news is just, okay, this is what people want to hear. Let's hype it up. It's the same thing with the internet. This new release of Clog Code is gonna kill Chat GPT or like this new update is over for, you know, it's like it's not. And the update wasn't even that great. Like, but people are sensationalizing ⁓ And so you gotta just take some of the stuff with a grain of salt because everybody's looking for clicks, you and and clickbaity titles and so. This is the chat GPT killer, right? okay. ⁓ right. Okay. you everything works and nothing works. You gotta test them off, see what works best for you, and then ignore the noise. ⁓ Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yep, yeah, I agree. That's awesome, Jason. That's been a a great conversation. I got I got one final question for you. If you could pick one tip for business owners wanting to succeed in the long term, what would it be? Jason Brown: Let's do it. I would say run your business like a Fortune 500 company from day one. don't that with you have to spend Fortune 500 money. What I mean is pay $20 a month and get QuickBooks and just make sure your books are kept, right? D just something that simple. You might not have a full accounting department and CPAs, but you can act. As if you're a Fortune 500 company, just by adding QuickBooks to keep your books. pay your taxes. You know, so many people get in trouble with making a ton of money. They go buy a car, they go shopping, they don't really set any side any aside for taxes. think like a Fortune 500 company. Guess what they have? A marketing budget. I can't tell you how many people like I might spend some days, I some months I spend three grand a month just to test stuff, meaning I don't expect. Any return back. I don't expect any sales. I just expect data information. know other people who are like, if I spend a thousand on Facebook ads or this, like I have to make a thousand dollars if I don't. And I'm like, that is not how companies work. They have a research and development budget. They have a marketing budget. I'm not saying your marketing budget has to be half a million dollars or three million dollars for a Super Bowl commercial, but if you're telling me you don't have $300 ⁓ spend five dollars a day. on Facebook and five dollars a day on Google. That's $150 per platform, $300 just to test some ads. You're you're you're not you're not thinking about running this like a business. You're running it like a self-employed or you're running it like a hobbyist. And so businesses who want to say long term, just start thinking about how you can run it like a real business from from day one. You know, get an LLC. Like start like don't don't just don't You gotta get out of side hustle mentality and like I'm gonna keep everything under the table so I don't have to pay taxes. It's like then how are you ever gonna build business credit you don't wanna pay taxes, you wanna get paid in cash, you wanna hide everything under the table. So like just come out the gate, be a real b treat it like a real business from day one. That would be my advice. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah, you got some good advice, Jason. I I appreciate your time. Where can listeners find you in the your book and your your business, ⁓ Power Trades University? Where's the best place? Jason Brown: Yeah, the best place to find me is the BrownReport.com. From there, you can check out Powertrades University. From there, you get access to our YouTube channel. From there, my LinkedIn is there the Book Five, You're a Millionaire. It's sold everywhere. Books are sold, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Amazon, you name it, all the major bookstores. I think Target, it's sold everywhere, books or so. But if you go to the Brownreport.com, you'll also can click out to the various links for the book as well. So I appreciate you having me. The BrownReport.com, the Brown Report on all platforms, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. That's me. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Jason, I'll leave that in the show notes. Thanks for your time today. It's great talking to you. Jason Brown: Pete, I appreciate you, man. Thanks.