The Art of Online Business

Successful Membership Growth & Retention Strategies with Jason Brown

• Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie • Episode 807

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I welcome back Jason Brown, creator of Power Trade University and the Five-Year Millionaire Movement. He opens up about the strategies behind running his successful membership, his definition of true success, and how to effectively manage churn by genuinely serving your community.


We also discuss what options trading involves and how Jason's approach can help online business owners grow their wealth.


Watch the ‘Before We Hit Record’ episode and get to know Jason Brown.



Please click here to give an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes! Thanks for your support!



Links mentioned in this episode:



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Timestamps:

0:00 Membership Success and Trading Options

15:13 Building and Maintaining Membership Retention



Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode, the second one with Jason Brown. And if you didn't hear the first episode, well, hi, jason, how's it going? Glad to be back. Part two, part two. So what are we talking about?

Speaker 1:

Well, in part one, it was a segment before we hit record where you get to hear all of that good conversation with another online course creator, entrepreneur, to really learn about them, because I felt like we all just come across as so one-dimensional and I don't get to know all the cool people that are doing great things online. Jason is one of those who he started this course, this membership called Power Trade University, and more recently, he started another thing. If you will, it's. It can't even call it a thing. It's a movement. I did not mean to discredit the movement. It's a movement called the Five-Year Millionaire Program and he's the host of a podcast with the same name, like giving people a vision to create 1 million in five years in a very controlled way, using stock options trading to build wealth.

Speaker 1:

And I needed to have Jason on the podcast why? Because he was very instrumental in my initial decision to quit my day job way back in 2018 and start my first online business, and you know, like you. We were talking about it at the beginning of the previous episode, but you're doing the thing that you're passionate about and only later do you realize the impact that you have on other people's life. Whatever you want to call it the ripple effect, it's just the impact. Where you're pursuing your passion, you're going after this opportunity to serve people with your gift and passion and it really is changing your life. And so, jason, I had you on this podcast because you did impact my life, and I'm not sure where I would be now if I hadn't have taken that first like jump leap of faith. Albeit, it was a measured leap of faith. I had a whole bunch of savings saved up to start my first business, teaching Chinese.

Speaker 2:

So with that, welcome back to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me and, like I said earlier, just so cool to know that me jumping on a podcast and sharing my story has inspired somebody else, and that's why I love doing this. You just never know who's listening, what they're going to take from it, how you're going to change their life, cause somebody changed my life when I listened to their podcast.

Speaker 2:

and yeah, this information isn't to be kept to yourself. It's about getting your story out there and sharing it so you can help other people. So I appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, and I agree the story is not to be kept to yourself. So we're here to talk about your membership. Memberships can be super complex and I came here with a mission on this episode, jason If you could break down what you define as success in, and what should be the difference between, monthly and annual, and and you know the the tactical parts too. But let's start with this success. What does success look for you like, for you now, and how does that differ from what you define success as as you were building your, your membership, back in the first year?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, success is a. Success is always an interesting word to me, because success could fall in the form of money, could fall in the form of just doing something you always wanted to do, whether you make no money. And so when I think about success for me and I hope more people look at success like this, but when I when I think about success for me and I hope more people look at success like this, but when I think about success for me, it's just really doing something that I thought would help a lot of people but selfishly, would help me as well. And when I say that, I mean when I look back at the stock market for me, just growing up kid from Detroit, poor, like nobody was into the stock market, I mean, like you know, a lot of people are now, but nobody was back then. So I was like man, I wish I had a place where I could talk to other traders. I wish I had a place to ask what are you seeing? Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Why are you buying, why are you selling? And so success initially was just like finding a place where I could talk about stocks to people and I didn't wake up and say I wanted to create a membership.

Speaker 2:

I started doing like live seminars out of Starbucks coffee houses, out of the library. I was doing live seminars around Metro Detroit and one day what happened was we kind of had like a little bit of a winter storm or rain or something like that, and like I had still went to do the seminar and I'm bringing my projector and bringing we would bring like little food or snacks for people. I mean, we were actually spending money to host these. And then I think we started eventually charging like five bucks, but it was just about being around people. But in that same vein, what happened was I think we got there when I say we, it might be me and my wife, we were dating at the time we got there, we set up and like not that many people showed up and I remember for the first time I started asking myself like well, why am I fighting rush hour traffic, bringing food, lugging my projector, doing all this for like five bucks?

Speaker 2:

And that was the first time I started thinking like why don't we just do the seminar online and everybody could just go home, jump on the zoom? Nobody got to drive. When it's over, we don't have to drive. It actually wasn't even zoom back. Then it's like go to webinar I think we were using but wow, okay, so, okay, so so. So me just success for me was just like how can I be around people talking about the stock market and how can I remove barriers? So I'm like, if I do a seminar in metro detroit, people on the west side, grand rapids, ann arbor, they can't drive over and be, here, so it just started making sense of going online.

Speaker 2:

So that was success in the early days. Success now in the membership, for me is just making sure that my members are not just having financial success. But, like I, if you interviewed or met one of my members in person, I want you to be like where where do where are you learning that? Like, who are you hanging around? I don't want you to meet my members and be like who is they teacher? Because they ain't teaching them nothing and what community are they part of? Because I definitely don't want to join that Like. So that's success to me. Now it's like, if you connect with one of my students, I want you to be like oh, this must be a power trade student, and so that success, not necessarily monetarily, but just that my students are successful and that we're represented out in the marketplace as, like a people you want to be around and that know what they talking about.

Speaker 1:

That is a great definition of success. I wish more people had that. Your students can be clearly identified as they learn from Power Trades University.

Speaker 2:

That's success to me. If you'd be like, oh, they must they learn from Power Trades University, that's success to me. If you'd be like, oh, they must be learning from Power Trades, then that's success. If you walk away from one of them, then you're like I want to go where they went. That's not a good sign. No, it's not.

Speaker 1:

So in the last episode which, by the way the listener you might not know, it's linked in the show notes below where you can click through there and watch or listen to the last episode where we got to know Jason. But you were talking about how you did this. You teach people how to make money trading options, and you did it with your own money first. And then you went and got a loan very in a calculated way, like not in a blind, I just need more money way. But you looked and you assessed the risk and when I heard you talk about in, like the very logical way that you looked at the loan and you're like, well, this is a loan. What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario? What's the interest rate on this loan? You're like, let's go. And you took that $10,000 and grew it as a I don't think you said you were a freshman in university and you grew that to over $100,000?.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was 21. I think it was my second year in college, but yeah, I was 21.

Speaker 1:

So a question on my mind is somebody joins your membership. They know that they're there to use money, to trade options and build wealth, but they're there, are they? So are your members new to trading options, or have they?

Speaker 2:

already had a good amount of experience and they just want to know how to refine the craft and the skills. Yeah, great question. So we say we take you from a beginner to confident trader and so if you are a complete beginner, we're the home for you. If you've been doing this for a while and not quite having the success, we're also the place for you. If you're doing this and you're having success, but you want a community and you want to network, we're the community for you. But if you've been doing this for a while and you think you know it all, you think you got nothing else to learn, everybody should just listen to you then we're not the community for you. So, beginner to doing it, losing money, to doing it, making money but want to be a part of a community where you can give back or also network with other high level, high thinkers of the stock market that's who we typically attract. Awesome.

Speaker 2:

But if you want to like day trade, if you want to gamble, if you just kind of want to put it all on black, we're really not the place for you. I'm trying to get away from that and you want to be strategic, have a game plan, take calculated risks. You know that's that's who we, we, we attract, that's what we want to attract, and we also kind of spit out organically everything else you know okay, okay, tactical question what does?

Speaker 1:

before you answer, we got to break down what is trading options, but my tactical question is what does building the membership as far as sales and marketing, finding new members how has that changed now, because what year are you in having your membership so far? I started this business like 12 years ago, right, so I'm a good 12 years in so how does how, how has it changed acquiring new members now versus when you first started the membership? But first, what is options trading?

Speaker 2:

so options trading basically, first of all, let's break down trading, because people hear the word trading, they only hear day trading. For some reason, and I think it's just the industry doesn't talk about any other type of trading. But there's other types of trading besides day trading. There's swing trading, there's options trade. There's all kinds of types of trading. Trading is just taking advantage of price movement whether that's price movement down, price movement up and you're taking advantage of what we like, whether that's price movement down, price movement up and you're taking advantage of what we like to call predictable, repeatable patterns. So that's trading. Those trades can happen over 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. They don't have to happen.

Speaker 2:

Day trading meaning you got to be in front of your computer all day when you're trading options options is the ability to control a stock without actually owning or buying the stock. So if you you know it's kind of you know you look at a stock that may be trading at $100 and you buy a $100 option, that means you have the right to buy that stock for $100 within 30 days. So if you pay $3 for that contract, if in 30 days that stock is trading at $110, well, that piece of paper is worth $10 now because you have the right to buy a stock at $100. If it's trading at $110, then that piece of paper is worth $10. If you paid $3 for that piece of paper, you could sell it for 10, you make $7 profit, but you never had to come up with the actual $100 to buy the stock. You just had the right to buy it at 100. So that's what opt is. It allows you to control higher price stocks for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 1:

All right, I think I got a good understanding too. I thought it was the same as day trading, so thank you for educating me there. Yeah, nope.

Speaker 2:

Nope Trading happens in different timeframes, and then there's stock trading and there's options trading.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right, well I'm. I'm linking up your website in the description below so that the listener can also educate themselves too. I want to know what does acquiring new members? How has that changed in 12 years? Give us a snapshot of how you were growing the membership when it was growing.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad we're talking about this because I just came from an event. It was a marketing event and I was a speaker at. We talked about memberships and stuff there. It was a marketing event and I was I was a speaker at and the whole. You know. We talked about memberships and stuff there. The funny part is it hasn't changed in 12 years and I recognize that more now than ever. Every time we try to do all the new hypey interesting stuff and we kind of realized like just go back to tried and true, which is just helping people, and so people want to build a membership. Sometimes, I think because it sounds sexy like I want a membership.

Speaker 1:

Recurring revenue.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but you have to find a recurring problem first, and so if you don't have a recurring problem, you don't have a membership. Sometimes people just want to create everything into a membership. But I'm like, well, what's the recurring problem that you saw For me? The stock market changes every day, so I have a recurring problem. You're like, what are we investing in the day? Stuff I used to like isn't working anymore. Apple's getting sued now. You know, like what worked yesterday, last month, last year, during the pandemic, doesn't work right now. And there's always a new stock, a new way to trade it. There's interest rates, there's wars, so there's always a new problem. You need a new perspective on the stock market and what stocks you should be considering and what option trades, and so that is the key to first building the membership is what reoccurring problem can you solve? Second thing you need to decide is, I like to say, a membership has to support the main thing, and so my main thing is I teach people how to trade in the stock market, and so my foundational stock trading course, my options, explained course. That's the main thing.

Speaker 2:

People want support. After they've gone through the course. They're like I've gone through it, I get it, but where can I ask questions? Where can I see what you're trading? So that creates the demand for wanting to have community. A lot of people just want community and there's no demand for it. There's no main thing. That even requires ongoing support, and so, for me, acquiring memberships today is the same way it was back then Teach people how to trade in the stock market and selling my courses, which creates the demand for needing ongoing support if you want to continue doing this, which then feeds the membership.

Speaker 2:

It's just that simple. Don't make business no harder than it has to be. The more people I teach, the more people need ongoing support. I'm the next logical answer and step, because they already learned the initial steps from me, so why would they go somewhere else? And then sometimes people do go somewhere else. And then sometimes people do go somewhere else because they want to trade Bitcoin or Forex or something that I don't teach. That's fine, but if they're sticking with stocks and options, it's the next logical step to be in membership and get support. Or they come out the gate with the courses and enrolling in a membership from day one. But it just makes sense because it's the next logical step, day one. But it just makes sense because it's the next logical step, and so I mean that's it. There's no like secret Facebook ad, there's no secret YouTube strategy. It's just like create demand for the main thing that needs ongoing support, which will funnel into your membership. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Well said, tell me about churn, like if somebody was to ask you starting out and then, 12 years later, until now, like, what are the things that you feel your business has done best to lower membership churn? And churn, as I define it, is the percentage of people that choose not to renew for the upcoming period. Like, how are you doing that?

Speaker 2:

upcoming period. Like how are you doing that? Well, I think the first thing you got to do is like wrap your head around, churn, and we all want people to pay us for the rest of their life.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's reality right, we'd love for people to pay us for the rest of our life. Truth is, how many times have you switched insurance companies, right? You need insurance on your car, you need insurance on your house. You probably switch every few years, right? And so you have to understand that every customer has a lifetime value. It might be three years, it might be four years, it might be two years, it might be six months. Your job is to try to increase it from six months to a year, from a year to two years, but at some point either they don't trade anymore, they got everything they needed, they graduated. Who knows like life happens, people leave.

Speaker 2:

The way I look at churn is like make sure we're controlling what we can control. Like I don't want people churning because they couldn't log into the website, like that's a bad problem to have. I don't want people churning because we told them we're going to do a video every Monday and then we canceled the last three Monday because I want to be out playing golf or something like. Control what you can control when it comes to churn. So I feel good about our churn, because we actually asked our members why they cancel A lot of times. It's like my mom got sick. I don't actually even trade anymore, like I just found out. It's not for me. I lost my job or you know. Usually stuff that's like not necessarily in our control, which I feel good about, because there's nothing we can do about life events where you don't trade anymore. You want to go a different route with how you manage money, and so those are the things that we focus on. It's like what can we control?

Speaker 2:

The other thing I look at is, you know, different retention. I wouldn't say strategies, because I don't like to look at my members as a strategy. I look at it as like, how can I help these folks even further? So, for example, like inside my membership, you get, depending on which level you get, you get two courses or four courses, depending on which level you come in at. So the courses are there for you to study on your own. And then the membership, the live session. We look at the stock market real time. We're applying what's taught in those courses. We're not teaching because the courses teach the live sessions we're actually applying. Well, I looked at that and said, okay, so some people go through the course, some people buy and don't go through the course. I don't know what the statistics are, but they say you know some high percent of people who buy courses never even go through.

Speaker 2:

So I'm like why don't we do this? Why don't we take the courses and break it up into a four week live session where we go through it with our members? So our members are like I don't want to cancel, I want to go through that four week session. Once that's over, we might look at the next course and say, okay, next month or in two months we're going through options explained together, and so those are little things that we do to. You know, it's like it's not a strategy, it's more just like how can I help people? And if you're helping people, they don't want to cancel. They're like I want to be part of that next four week session. I want to go through it live with the community.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes we'll do like prizes. We'll be like who can pick the best stock and at the end of the month, who has the best portfolio? They'll get $100 gift card. So how can you also make it fun? Trading doesn't always have to be serious, or any membership doesn't always have to be serious, but how can you try to make it fun? For a while we stopped it. We might start it back. We were doing the book club and so it was like we took Think and Grow Rich and we were reading through it as a community.

Speaker 2:

I also think where people feel like they're getting fed, their soul is getting fed, not just their pockets, like am I making money? But I think if they're becoming a better person. However, you can construct that, whether that's through reading books, whether that's just let's all get a coffee and jump online and just see how everybody's doing once a month, People look forward to that once a month, connecting with their traders or their membership friends, whatever your industry might be. So, at the end of the day, it's just really thinking about your members. It's not strategies and tactics. It's like really caring about people, okay, and and looking for ways to serve. You want to. You want retention low. Look for ways to serve. You want retention high. Try to do at least as much as possible while they pay you every single wow, okay, or retention, I think.

Speaker 1:

I think it's backward retention low, retention high. Serve Retention low, retention high serve Retention low.

Speaker 2:

Do those least Right. I mean, if you want churn high as well, if you want churn high.

Speaker 2:

Try to do as least as possible and get paid as much as possible. If you want churn low, try to serve as much. Try to look for opportunities to provide value to your members. You know people don't understand. The beauty in membership is I try to do what I couldn't do for you one-on-one. If I was going to go through a four-week session with just me and you, I'd be like you got to pay me like 10 grand, all right. But if it's like, all right, it's three, four, 500 of us, a thousand of us, it's like okay, it's $99 a month. 500 of us, a thousand of us, it's like okay, it's $99 a month. You know like now I can do something affordable because I can do it for the masses. So you want to serve because you can help more people, you can keep costs low and effective for most people. So I'm just always looking for unique ways to serve our community. That's the best retention strategy I can give you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing that. So, before we say goodbye the listener right now, because most of the people listening have pretty decent, likely successful, online businesses, and some of them might be thinking, hmm, this is an opportunity to take some of those profits and multiply them. Where would they find out more about that? And, like you, being able to teach them how to trade options and if it's the right fit for them.

Speaker 2:

I think all roads lead to the stock market, especially if you're an online business owner. I'm an online business owner and we're all responsible for our own retirement. We're responsible for setting up our own IRA or self-directed IRA or 401k if we work for our company. So all roads lead back to the stock market anyway. Even people who's like I hire it out to a guy, it's like well, if you understand how it works, you are better suited to ask that guy or girl questions and even know if they're doing right by you or not. So everybody, in my opinion, should be educated, even if you're going to outsource it. That being said, I think the best way is you know, there's two ways. I always like to tell people check me out for free, right. If you want to check me out, pay, great. But I would say, check me out for free. And the reason I say that is because make sure I'm your style or your flavor, right? That's another thing. When you talk about churn flavor, right? That's another thing.

Speaker 2:

When you talk about churn, I think we have low churn, low refunds, because I'm not pressuring you like well, you want to learn how to trade? Go buy my course. First, it's like actually no, if you go to thebrownreportcom, you can see my blog post, you can listen to my podcast, you can watch my YouTube videos. We also have something called the Stock Market Starter Pack. So if you're brand new, you're like I don't know how to open an account, what should I be looking for? It's probably a 12-page PDF download that we put together called the Stock Market Starter Pack.

Speaker 2:

If you're brand new to options you've been trading stocks but want to know options, we got the Option Starter Pack, which is also another free PDF download that walks you through how calls and put options works, gives you a worksheet to walk through the numbers. So I always tell people go to thebrownreportcom, check out my free content. If you decide there this is my guy, then obviously they can come over to PowerTrade University and pick up a package and then we can work together even further. But that's also a good way to lower your churn is to not keep everything behind a hidden wall. Let people experience it. And it's like well, I hope you like this, because I'm only going to do more of this in the membership. If you don't like this, don't join, because you're going to get more of this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, no, that makes really good sense. I'm not summarizing because the listener you could just scrub back on the timeline and hear that good advice about how to acquire members, like how to serve members well, how to lower churn. Jason, I know you got to go. Thank you for being on this podcast and sharing just a glimpse into the world of options trading and how to run a good membership 12 years. So I know the listener can take your advice, because I don't know as many businesses that have been around for 12 years. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Thanks for having me. It's funny to say 12 years because they'd be like most businesses fell in five years Then most who make it past five fell in five years after that and I'm like, well, we're on number 12. So I'm like that's right on.

Speaker 1:

I mean that's a huge metric of success.

Speaker 2:

So we're still so small. Compare in comparison right. So it's just. It just also goes to show you don't have to be the biggest, just just be. Just be the best at what you do. Just compete with yourself, serve people, help people. I think a lot of things will turn out just fine Cool.

Speaker 1:

Well said humbly. I doubt you're the smallest business. We'll stop here. The links that he mentioned the brown reportcom, and then the stock market starter pack or the option starter pack.

Speaker 2:

And they're both at the brown reportcom, so those are on our homepage. They can get those on their own Perfect.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well then, until the next time you see or hear from me, take care and be blessed, and we'll chat soon. Bye for now.

Speaker 2:

Awesome brother, I appreciate you. Clay, Thank you for being here.

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