How to be a millionaire: Detroit investor & author's 5-year story

FOX 2 - Who wants to be a millionaire? It is a financial goal that many think could be out of reach, but one man from Detroit just wrote a book claiming he has the secret to make a million dollars in just five years.

His name is Jason Brown and he recently sat down to explain the lessons we can all take away from his success.

His book is called "Five Year Millionaire" and it chronicles how he went from broke to making $5 million in the stock market. The market can be an intimidating place for someone who might not know how to start or what to look for, that's where he says he can help.

"This is a low risk time to buy because we think it can go up," Brown says.

From his home studio, Jason Brown is known to take a risk or two, documenting his every move for subscribers on his web page and YouTube.

"This is Microsoft, a big company, look what it's doing - boom, boom, boom," he said, pointing out performance graph spikes.

The backstory:

He says his current situation is a far cry from his humble beginnings.

"We slept in sleeping bags because we didn't have beds. I thought beds were for grownups because they needed a good night's sleep to go to work the next day," he said. "I went to a friend's house and saw his bed and said, 'Wow.'

At a young age, Brown dodged the trappings of gangs and crime, recognizing that education as a way to achieve the same goal - to get rich.

"I ended up getting a scholarship to Wayne State's Mike Illitch School of Business," he said.

But he quickly found out how hard that was - he took $2,000 to the bank and asked them to invest it for him.

"I come back two years, three years later and I'm thinking I'm going to have at least $6,000," he said. "So I check my account - it's down to $700. My heart kind of dropped (like) 'You lost $1,300 of my money."

He took out the $700 and tried to play the stock market on his own.

"I got obsessed by studying stock patterns," Brown said. "Once I got good at flipping $500, I was like how do I get more money into the machine."

At first Brown looked the part. He turned $10,000 into $100,000 in six months - and then he lost it all.

"I moved back home with my mom in Detroit to that house with bars on the windows, drugs and gangs in the neighborhood," he said.

Rather than pack it up and find another career, he started recording his comeback on YouTube.

"You couldn't tell me it didn't work," he said. "I had already ran the account up to $300,000. I knew it worked, I just had to figure out what I did wrong.

"As I started to figure out what I did wrong, that became my founding principles for my online stock trading university."

He realized just how many people wanted to get involved in the stock market but just didn't know where to start.

"When I made all that money, when I lost all that money, I didn't have anybody to talk to, I thought I was alone," he said. "I was a little depressed - I was a lot depressed, and I was like, 'I wish I had other people to talk to about this." And that's why I created a community so other traders could talk to each other.

It's all outlined in his book, "Five-Year Millionaire," his website The Brown Report and his subscription-based membership. He can't guarantee he will make you a millionaire, but he knows he'll help.

'What I can guarantee, is that this book will help you get there faster than waiting 40 years and sticking it in a random 401K and hoping you have enough at retirement," he said.

One of the first tips he gives away for free is to practice. You can download a trading app like Webull or Robin Hood and do what is called paper trading. Invest in real stocks with fake money and see if you can get good before risking your own hard-earned cash.