How To Launch A Fund In A Recession | Live

Hello, hello! What's up, everybody? Okay, we should be looking good now. So say what's up, say hi to everybody, say where you're calling in from, hit the little polls thing that we've we've dropped in. We'll start here in a couple minutes. So get ready, get some water, get stretched out. We're gonna have a fun time today. It's gonna be a fun call. We're gonna go live for this whole thing. We're gonna map it all out. The whole nine yards should be a freaking hoot. So get ready, everybody. Let me know if things aren't looking good or the chat's not working like. Like help us out. Like if something's not right or something's not feeling good, let me know. So we'll keep watching the videos and we'll get started in just a few minutes. Sound good? See you guys in a minute.

Ah, ah, ah. I'm in it just to rewrite history 'cause I'm in the mood to label us the leaders. Leaders of the leaders of the new school. This ain't for the radio. Can't find this on YouTube. This the type of killing that these critics ain't used to. Victorious. Victorious. Victorious. Victorious. Victorious. Victorious. In this day and age, I got time for innovation. Time to be creative. Time too big to waste all my time on critics hating. Flattered by your opinions. Destroy you while just embracing. Now watch our worldy sunrise up. No daylight savers. Go nuts when I have it. Glazed belt, my sound in this beat. On the outside we dreamin'. Watch me wake back up in the castle. My thoughts are distorted 'cause I recall guys were hatin' uncommonly. Y'all love them but can't common denominators. Hold up. Tried to overlook a rival. All eyes on me 'cause I got no competition. Now lookin' at an idol. Your dough ain't long enough to pay for my attention. Man, it's the gospel for the black sheep. I guess it got a bangin' ring to it. Quiet, we're triumphin' the rap league. So all of you motherfuckers could sing to it. I was born to be victorious, most definitely victorious. I'm destined to be victorious. Through all the hate and this place will remain glorious. I was born to be victorious, most definitely victorious. I'm destined to be victorious. Avoided by the statistics, occasionally will quit it. Pay reality visits, but it was too hard to live it. Build the mock-up with this Yeah, why I be burning these critics? 'Cause they ain't know they was walking their course while burning they bridges. Hold up, hold up. Man, whoever thought I'd be rapping? Rapping? The family ain't never think that can happen. Matter of fact, only person that ever pushed me to get out was my mother, and the only reason was 'cause I can track. Heard that Carmen's that chick that you put a ring on, and by the looks at your life, guess she's a cling-on. It's on me. Dudes had they lead on the board, but game change over time, so I even the score. Youngest, fed it up, learn how to step it up. Recipe chef, they Yo, what's up? What's up?

All right, we're going live in a few minutes here. Say hello to everybody, hit the poll, say where you're calling in from. You can even start networking with people. You know, talk about what industry you're doing, or I'm doing real estate in a certain area, and you can even— yeah, this is like, this is, this is fun. We're live on here. Start talking to people. Say hi. Say what's up. We'll get going in a few minutes. I gotta run to the bathroom, get ready, and once we get started, we are gonna fly through this. So give us— we're gonna start. We're at the top of the hour. So give us a, give us a few minutes. We'll be going. I'll keep running videos though for you guys and say what's up. What's up, you guys? Good to see you, Joe, Chris. Good to see you, Khalil. Good to see you. Welcome in, you guys. Welcome in. Welcome in. Okay, we'll go live in a few minutes here.

This day is gonna be the greatest memory, making history. Let's go! You don't need no luck with that golden touch. Time to light it up. Let's go! Get ready for it. Get ready for it. Get ready for it.

Yeah, this is it.

Go! Go! Go! Yeah, this is it. Go! Go! Let's go! Yeah, this is it. Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh yeah, it's about to break. Got what it's gonna take. Go ahead and on that stage, let's go. When you're made for this, yeah, it's RBS. Top another list, let's go. Get ready for it. Get ready for it. Get ready for it. Yeah, this is it. Go! Go! Go! Yeah, this is it. Go! Let's go!

Let's go!

Yeah, this is it.

We are the crazy 1% who believes they can change the world. The crazy 1% who stop at nothing. And what's crazy enough about the crazy 1% They're actually the ones who change the world. I wanted to have regular people, or people like you guys, have access to the same thing that I had access to. I mean, it's just like what Tony Robbins says, proximity is power. This event is insane. The quality of person that you'll meet at Funnel Launch Live is second to none. Yo, what's up, people? Hello, hello. Good to see everybody in here calling in from— look, we got a bunch of people in here from New York, Maine, Indiana. We're starting in just a few minutes, top of the hour, getting going. So say hello. By the way, make sure you chat to everyone in the chat. Don't do hosts and panelists if you're chatting. Just say hi to people coming in here. Um, say hello. And yeah, somebody's asking, he's— I'm saying hi to people that didn't say they were in the course. They're in the— they're messaging me on hosts and panelists. So make sure you message me to everyone. Say hello to everyone on there. Um, and, uh, Santa, because I get private messages from you guys, but make sure to say it to everyone so that everyone will see your chat on there. Hit the, um, hit the links on it. What's up? Hey guys, let's go after it. LOL. Yeah, gotcha. There you go. Um, Hello. Hello.

Yeah.

Make sure to say to everyone. People keep messaging me to host and panelists. Make sure that your little chat button says to everyone. We're going to start and let me just run real quick. I got to run to the bathroom, get stretched out real quick. We're going to start at the top of the hour in just a couple of minutes, so we'll get rolling.

I'll play one more video and we'll get rolling.

Okay. All right, all right, people, we are to the top of the hour here. Let's get rolling. Um, hello, good to see everybody. Welcome in, welcome in. Um, uh, happy webinar day. You guys are amazing. Happy to be on. We're gonna fumble this thing. This thing is live, we are running with it, so it's gonna be a good time. So say hello to everybody. Um, I'm gonna drop a few polls, other questions in the chat. Um, if you guys can real quick, I'm just by way of survey Good to see everybody. Fort Lauderdale, warmth and sunshine, that's awesome. New York. So yeah, I'm actually in Salt Lake City, Utah right now, and we're going to talk about investment funds today. We're going to talk about 2023. We're going to talk about how to prep and launch a fund in 2023. I launched a fund last year, actually in the middle of a crypto crash. We launched a crypto fund, if you can believe that. We raised $10 million for that fund. We're still raising money for that fund. It's actually done very well. I'm now a partner on 6 different funds, and we've helped now, I think, over— what were we at, Mason? 35,000, 40,000 people in our groups. 40,000 people in our groups and communities, which is absolutely insane, which is so cool. So just so everyone's aware, behind the scenes, I got Mason Brands, my co-founder, business partner. We've also got Matt. And who else is on here?

Matt.

Matt's the other main one, and a few other moderators are coming in to help. So if you guys have questions, and sometimes I'm talking so fast, So if you guys don't have questions, they're live, they can chat with you, send them a private message, or if you put a message in, they might message you privately just to help you out if there's something going on. Because I just— we're going to roll, baby. We're going to fly through this thing. So welcome in, everybody. Good to see you guys. If you can in the chat, I'm actually curious how many people this is your very first time hopping on a Zoom call with me. So if this is your first time, type in like a 1. If this is the second time, type in 2, 3, 4. And if it's 5, just do like 5 plus. Type it in the chat there. A little poll for everybody. And actually, maybe we might be able to even launch a poll here. But yeah, type in the chat. I want to see, uh, I want to see what everyone's in. Okay, a lot of people, this is your first time. Really cool. Um, welcome in. You guys are— you guys are in for a treat today. We're gonna have a lot of fun. Uh, as you know, finance can be very boring and slow and, uh, methodical, and I like to make it pretty fun. I like to have a lot of fun. We'll do giveaways today. We're going to go fast. I want to answer questions. We're going to pull out— I got the whiteboard here. We're going to whiteboard stuff out, things that don't make sense to you. Well, I'm going to stay on, dude. You guys better buckle in because we're going to dive. I want you to— I want you to, after— at the end of this thing, to feel like you've got a full, like, slew of everything you need to know. And again, most people look at this, how crazy this is. Most people, this is your first time ever hopping on a call. So you know what? And just, just to— just because I'm such a hater on the traditional boring finance, we're going to do a giveaway right now at the beginning of this call. Okay, so how these giveaways work, if this is your first time, What we do is I'm going to give you a keyword or phrase to say in the chat. Make sure you're typing to everyone. Okay? It's got to be to everyone. I'm going to scroll through and I'm just going to pick somebody. You have like 4 or 5 seconds to type it in. Pretty easy. We might do some other— we do competitions sometimes. Anyways, for this first one, we'll just keep it easy. So, for $100 to Amazon, $100 to Amazon, type yes in the chat if you guys are ready to get going. So, type yes in the chat. For $100 to Amazon. I'm gonna pick somebody in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello? Hello? Wow, there's a lot of people on here. Okay, what's up? Make sure you're typing to everyone as well. Uh, Rodney Gibson. Okay, Rodney, dude, Rodney, you got $100 going your way to Amazon. So what you're gonna do right now, um, either Mason or Matt's gonna message you or message them privately. Send them, uh, your email address privately. Don't send it to everybody, send it privately, and we'll send you over email, um, a $100 gift card.

Boom!

We're like 2 minutes into this thing, we've already given away $100, which is kind of fun. So, all right, welcome in, you guys. Good to see y'all. Um, and then finally, if you guys can, in the chat, um, I want to hear what industries y'all work in. So if you're in real estate, type in real estate. If you're in— and maybe put a little clarification— I'm in single-family real estate or multi-family real estate. If you're industrial, if you do forex trading, if you trade securities or options or crypto, if you do private equity, if you buy businesses, If you do a debt fund, you issue loans, if you do venture capital, type that in the chat. I'm just curious, kind of a poll of where everyone's at. Now, if you're like, I don't even know anything, just be like, dude, I'm brand new. I'm here to learn. Just say that, and we'll roll with that. Then there's no hard feelings against that. I'm just curious what industries people are at least interested in. Maybe if you're brand new, type in what one you're interested in. Maybe, I'm brand new, but I'm interested in multifamily real estate, or I'm brand new, I'm interested in trading options. That would help too. Give us kind of a poll of where everyone's at. And again, make sure it's typed into everyone in here as well. A lot of you guys are still sending me private messages. Quant fund, real estate, betting and gambling. Really cool. Real estate hedge funds. Here to learn.

Awesome.

Buy businesses. Okay, we're going to talk about all of that today as we dive in. So you know what? I think if people are late, they're late. What do you think, Mace? We get going? Go for it. Let's just get rolling. You guys good? Type a yes in the chat if you guys are ready to get rolling. Once we get started, we're going to get rolling fast. And I think let's just get going. So today we're going to talk about how to launch a fund without working been on Wall Street for 20-plus years, specifically to 2023, with a recession looming, or maybe a recession's already here, or it's coming, right? What does that mean for us, and how do we do this? So, that's what we're going to talk about today. So, real quick results disclaimer. What I'm sharing is my personal opinion. This is not financial or legal advice. If you guys can, in the chat, again, I'm going to— And by the way, before I go any further, I do a lot of callbacks, and I do that because it's fun, number one. But psychologists actually tell us, if you come to a webinar or something like this, and you sit there and listen, you will remember about 0% of the content that you heard. Think back to 3 months ago, whatever. A lot of us, we remember close to zero. If you take notes while you're listening, that goes from zero, it jumps to about 4% to 5% of the content you'll remember long-term. If you use your voice, your body, if you engage, if you type in a chat, If you somehow are engaged in the conversation, that number jumps from 5% to 13% to 20% at the top end, which is pretty cool. Okay, so who's down to get to 20%? If you guys are going to spend— time is our most valuable asset. If you're going to spend time with me today live, I want you guys to get the most out of it. So again, I'm going to ask— I'm not just doing callbacks just for fun or just for me. I do it for us so that we can both remember and you guys can help remember all the stuff we're talking about today. Sound good? Okay, so, um, if, if that's cool, type in like, I, I want to get to 20%. Okay, type in I want to get to 20%. Again, this is for us to be— if you're engaged, if you're typing, if you're taking notes, it just helps you remember more stuff. Now, um, again, I'm not, not sharing financial legal advice. I'm not selling securities. I just want to share personal opinions. Some of our results are unusually high. Don't expect those for yourself. Sound good? Everyone feel like I— you're disclaimed? Okay. Um, in the chat, I love it. Thank you guys for typing in the chat. That helps so much. I think it makes it just Just a better experience for everybody. All right. Let's dive into it. So, real quick, I'm not here to talk about myself like crazy, but I think it's important for you to know who I am, my background. So, my name is Bridger Pennington. I started 2 funds in my 20s. I'll share some of those stories in a minute. We raised and deployed millions of dollars out of those funds. My second fund actually sold. We had a competitor come in and buy us out, which was really cool. It was about a year and a half ago, Mace, something like that. A year and a half ago, a competitor came, bought my entire fund, had a nice exit on that. And then since then, middle of last year, I launched a new fund in crypto. So, we launched a crypto hedge fund. And again, I'm not going to— people are asking me questions about crypto on here. I am not a crypto expert. I'm good at funds. We'll talk about that in a minute. I'm very good at funds. My partners are incredible at crypto. So, I partner with a couple of incredible partners that just are bonkers at crypto, and we've actually performed very well as a fund. It's been awesome to run that fund. It's been really cool. We raised $10 million on our initial launch. We're still raising money for that, which is really cool. And we're running that right now. So, I do that. We've been featured on Bloomberg and a bunch of other stuff. This is me and Mason. So, Mason behind the scenes. We actually launched another company called Fund Launch, which you guys can kind of see here today, where we actually teach people about investments. I felt— I'll tell the story in a minute, but I felt so blessed by my background and story and was able to learn funds that I think other people should learn about funds as well. And we've done pretty well in this business, and it's been awesome. And we've actually done, I think, $16 or $17 million in sales in about 2 years, helping people launch funds, which is so cool. Now, as I say that, another disclaimer, today, I have nothing to sell you today. You can't buy anything on this webinar. Sometimes you guys hop on calls, people pitch you all day on something. That's not today. Today, I really want to come and I want to share value. I want to just teach. I want to educate. I want to help more people learn how this game of funds works. Does that sound good? If you're with me, type yes in the chat. Does that work, you guys? Okay, let's get into it. So, this is me real quick. If you guys don't— look out for the scammer bot accounts online, but @bridger_pennington on TikTok, YouTube, wherever we're at. is my account. So here we are. This is our event we threw last year. I'm actually curious in the chat, who came to this event? This is Fund Launch Live 2022. We were in Las Vegas. We had 1,200 people. We sold out the entire event about a month before, which was insane. People coming to learn about funds of all things, which is really cool. It was a 3-day event, crazy event. We are high energy, if you can't tell. We do a lot of cool stuff. Again, I want people engaged, up and running. It's pretty cool. So, with that, a couple of you guys are there. Okay, really cool. Let me pull up the chat. I want to see the chat here right in front of me. Really cool, you guys. That's awesome. Today, we want to talk about this, though. I want to talk about a fund is the best way for you to scale your business or investments. So, current business owners in here, I'm going to talk about how you can build a fund to go and potentially buy out your competitors. You can launch a fund to go— we had one guy in our group, he had a huge— I won't give all the details, but one of the largest hydrogen plants in the United States, guys, in our group. And he's like, I want to launch another facility. So, he launched an outside fund. That fund raised the capital. He kept his original business. He didn't give up any equity in his original business, launched an outside fund to build all of his new facilities for him. It was pretty cool. So, you can scale your business and then also your investments. We have guys, we'll share in a minute, but guys that are house flippers, people that are home gamers, traders, you bolt a fund on it. Now, instead of trading $50 grand, they're trading $5 million or $10 million or $30 million, which is pretty cool. Okay? So, we're talking about this game of funds, what funds are, All that kind of stuff. Does that sound good? You guys with me? Say yes. Okay, let's do it. Let's dive in. So we're talking about this. My goal for our short time together is how to talk about how I was able to start 2 funds in my 20s, deploy millions of dollars without a track record, without working on Wall Street, without some fancy Ivy League degree, and how you should be thinking about using this. We're going to talk about the Fund Launch Formula. It's a 4-step formula to launch funds. Okay. Additionally, this is kind of what we're going to talk about today as a structure. So number 1, we're going to talk about the secret structure of a $10+ billion fund. I actually have a couple incredible mentors that run deca-billion-dollar funds, and we actually have people in our group that are right near actually a $10 billion fund. I'm going to show you the structure of how they're structured together and the behind the scenes of how these work, which is pretty cool. Number 2, we're going to talk about how you can ethically steal your competitors' investors and launch a fund in an efficient way. This is through the Fund Launch Formula. It's going to be pretty fun. We're going to dive into that. And then number 3, we're going to talk about the strategic and economic advantage of launching a fund in 2023. I have a bunch of charts and data I want to share exactly for right now, what we're seeing in 2023, what is going on and how you guys, at least I think a lot of the guys I talk to, are very excited for 2023, how to make a ton of money right now, especially with the fund, which is kind of cool. Does that sound good? Does that sound fair? Is that cool if we talk about it? Yeah, today. All right, let's dive into it. So now, again, I said this before, you can't buy anything on this webinar today. I am not— this is not like some pitch, like secret thing. I really want to come and share a ton of value. So I just want to clarify that again. I'm here for you guys. Okay. Does that sound fair? All right, let's dive into it. So I want to talk about this first. Starting a fund is the most lucrative vehicle in the world. Now we're going to talk about— we're going to start basic. We're going to start what even is a fund. So some of you guys are like brand new, like, I don't even know what you're talking about, Bridger. That's okay. Rest assured, I'm going to help you out. We're going to start about what a fund is. We're going to go very simple to very advanced. We're going to talk about international feeder structures, the whole nine yards. And by the way, I'm going to stay on at the end for a Q&A. I've got my iPad here. We're going to do a Q&A. I can sit here for, I don't know, however long you guys want. Hours if you guys— maybe not too long. I got like in 3 hours I got a thing, but we can stay on for a while and answer questions for you guys. Sound good?

Okay.

So, starting a fund is the most lucrative vehicle on the planet. These are all fund managers right here. Okay? You got Izzy Englander, Jim Simons, Ken Griffin, Daniel Loeb. Now, what's interesting about this, these are not their net worths. So, that's not Jim Simons' net worth at $3.6 billion, which is an amazing amount of money. Because net worth, right? So, Elon Musk, his net worth is a lot reflected by Tesla stock. So, his net worth goes up if Tesla stock goes up. His net worth goes down if Tesla stock drops. I think his net worth dropped $80 billion last year because Tesla stock fell a lot. I'm not talking net worth, because net worth's on paper. The numbers you see on the screen aren't these guys' net worth. Those are their 2021 earnings alone, just from one income source, their fund. So when I say running a fund is the most lucrative vehicle on planet Earth, I mean it. Okay? Like Ken Griffin right here, he's making over $150 million a month from one income source. That's not his personal portfolio. That's not his properties. That's just his fund that's paying him. I don't even know what I would do with $150 million a month coming to me every month. You'd have to have a team of people, how to deploy that, how to put it in charities. What are you going to do with that? It's That's freaking insane. To put it in perspective, Daniel Loeb at the bottom, $920 million, the lowest guy on this list. So, January 2021, well, let's just say this house on the bottom is a $9 million home. He had a— or an $8 million home. He had enough money January 1st at 6:00 PM. He had already made $8 million, his first workday of the year running his hedge fund. Who wants that problem in their life? Anybody want that? It's a problem to have money. Anybody want that problem? I'll take that problem. Yeah. Let's do it, right? So, let's talk about what is a fund, how funds work, how they're put together. Sound good? Now, let me take you back a little bit. This is a couple of years ago with me. So, I was probably like a lot of you guys. I got into college. So, I got out of high school, went on a 2-year LDS mission to Taiwan, which was amazing. I learned Mandarin Chinese. It was awesome. I come home and I am like a kid with my hair on fire. I was very ambitious and I'm like, I'm going to make money. And the best way to make money is to start businesses, right? I started 6 different businesses my first 2 years of college. And actually, me and Mason started a couple of those businesses together. It was really fun. But we were doing everything. I was actually— we had a Chinese tutoring business. I had 6 different tutors that were working for me. I wholesaled 2 houses. Anybody a wholesaler in here? Wholesaled 2 houses. We built websites for people. We did a forex trading thing. I did every business under the sun that you could find on YouTube. I tried all of them. And finally, my dad grabbed me. And he's like, Bridger, you're kind of like a chicken with your head cut off. I want to help you out a little bit. And so, he goes, I want you to go meet with my business partner. I think this guy can really help you. I said, okay, cool. I'll go meet with whoever. And so, I set this appointment up. I drive to this guy's house, and I head up there, and I pull up through this gated community. And granted, I grew up in a pretty normal house, nothing bad, nothing great. My dad drove a car with 200,000 miles on it, dent in the door. We had an okay, good life, nothing crazy. That's kind of the life we lived. And so, I drove to this guy's house. I pull up, it's a gated community. I'm like, wow, it's a nice area. I drive to this guy's house, I pull up to this cul-de-sac, and it's this beautiful, gorgeous home on this cul-de-sac. I was like, holy crap, who is this guy? Park my car, I get out, I go knock on the door, and I'm worried a butler is going to come and like, begone, peasant, get out of here. And I was all worried. And thankfully, my dad's business partner answers the door. He goes, Bridger, come on. And he brings me in this house, and it's It's gorgeous. He's got the grand piano, he's got the cars in the garage, the pool in the backyard, the basketball court in the basement. I think it's just gorgeous. And I walk in, I sit down on these big couches, and to make a long story short, we start to chat. We start talking about business and life, and finally, I ask him this. I go, how did you get all of this? How did you do this? And he goes, funny enough, Bridger, not a lot of people ask me that question. And I was like, oh shoot, that's the first question I had. I'm sorry if I offended you, but that's the only question I had. He's like, no, no, it's fine. But he goes, Bridger, in my 20s, I was a lot like you. He goes, I started a bunch of little businesses. I actually made a good amount of money. He goes, then I figured out the secrets of the rich, because I figured out the secrets of the ultra-wealthy of the world. And I was like, okay. And he goes, I met a guy that ran a private equity fund. And he was one of the wealthiest guys I had ever met in my entire life. And he goes, I don't care. I didn't care how long it took me. I don't care if it took me 1 year, 5 years, or 20 years. He goes, I was going to learn what a fund was, how to start one, and how to scale one. He goes, that's exactly what we did. And he goes, at the time, he goes, we manage about $8 billion of real estate. $8 billion. Okay? To put that into perspective, You guys, anybody know Grant Cardone in the chat? You guys know Grant Cardone? Type like a yes or something if you guys know Grant Cardone. Uncle G, right? Nothing against Uncle Grant Cardone, but Cardone Capital, I think today manages about $4 billion. And this is years ago. So, at the time, they were twice as big as Cardone Capital, which is crazy. And then, and actually, as I fast forward to today, they're over $40 billion, these guys manage, which is unreal. They're 10 times bigger than Cardone Capital. Like 10x Grant Cardone, right? Yo, what's up, Uncle G? But it was pretty crazy, right? So, they're 10 times bigger than Grant Cardone. So, I'm like, dude, okay. And I've heard from groups like this and webinars and stuff, find a mentor, right? You got to go find a mentor. Your mentor's going to help you out. So, I said, dude, can you be my mentor? I'll get your coffee in the morning. I'll come work for free, whatever you need. But let me just learn from you. And he says, Bridger, go talk to your dad. He's like, your dad knows way more about this than I do. And I said, no, no, my dad's kind of broke. We're poor. You're rich. Like, I want to learn from you. And he goes, Bridger, sorry to break it to you, but me and your dad make about the same amount of money. And my chin dropped to the floor. I was like, huh? Come again? What? He's like, yeah, me and your dad are pretty much equal business partners in this. And I, dude, I left the dude's house. I drove straight to my dad's house and I was like, Dad, what the heck? Like, what's going on? Like, why haven't I been able to order a soda at Chipotle because it's too expensive? And yet you're managing billion-dollar funds bigger than Grant Cardone. Like, what's going on? What's the disconnect? And anyways, long story short, my dad, he kind of laughed. He said, yeah, I like to save and invest my money. My partner likes to spend his money. But yeah, we run these big funds. And actually, kudos to my dad, man. He just lived the Millionaire Next Door lifestyle. If you read that book, he just lived that to a tee. And so, long story short, I started to go meet with my dad every Sunday night. I'd go to his house, he'd whiteboard this out for me, and taught me about funds. And this is what I'm going to share with you right now is what he taught me about funds. We're going to share a different piece of this, but is that cool if we get into it right now? Sound good? Type a yes in the chat if you guys are ready to get into it. Sound good?

All right.

So, in the most basic sense, what is a fund? All a fund is, is a pool of money, investors, put money into that pool. People like me and you, fund managers, we draw from that pool. We go and make investments. We buy assets. We invest in something. Whenever those assets make money, they flow back to the pool, and then they get split between ourselves and our investors. That's it. Okay? It's not that crazy. This is one of the oldest business models on planet Earth. You look back, Christopher Columbus, he was like, hey, Give me some money. We're going to go to the new world. We're going to get a bunch of gold. We're going to bring it back, and we'll split the spoils. It's not that complex. So then, and by the way, we've helped in the last year. So right here. So what's the difference then between private equity, hedge funds, real estate funds, debt funds? By the way, we helped 120 funds launch last year. I've helped every one of these, private equity, hedge funds, real estate funds, debt funds. I'm actually a partner now in 6 different funds. So, what I get to see is the backend of all these funds, how they're put together. And the craziest thing is they all run almost exactly the same way. They're actually not that different. The only difference— oh, let me go back. The only difference here is what they invest into. So, what is a private equity fund? A private equity fund, all it is, is a pool of money. Investors put money in that pool, same thing. And the only difference is the assets they buy, the bottom piece. So, a private equity firm, They buy private equity. They buy privately held businesses. So, for example, Sycamore Partners on Wall Street, major private equity firm. Anybody heard of Sycamore Partners? I mean, in the chat? Probably not. I was actually speaking at 2 events last week. Raise of hands. It was like 2 people in the whole room. We had like 200 people there. 2 people knew who Sycamore Partners was. And I said, do you guys know Staples, like the department store Staples? Do you know Nine West Shoes, Aeropostale? Have you heard of Kohl's department store? And I think, I'm not sure if the acquisition went through for Kohl's. They're all owned by Sycamore Partners. Last year, they were trying to buy Victoria's Secret. That's a private equity firm. They gobble up all these brands. A lot of the brands and TV shows and stuff you watch are all owned by the same company, which is kind of crazy. It's private equity. We help people do micro private equity. We have people in our group that have a restaurant, and then they go out and buy up all their competitors. and pool them into one pool. And now they have this kind of micro private equity strategy. Isn't that kind of interesting? But in just a minute, I'm going to share an example of a gun store. This guy did it with a gun store, bought all of his competitors out. It's pretty cool. I'll share that in a minute. That's private equity. Is that making sense? Okay. You guys following along so far? Okay. So again, what's a hedge fund then? The only difference, again, same thing, investors pool money, the assets are different. So instead of buying privately held business, a hedge fund buys public securities or public Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, forex. They're a fund that buys— let's say we're in a crypto hedge fund. We're a hedge fund, a pool of money that buys crypto, which is a publicly traded asset. It's not that crazy, you guys. The one thing I hate about finance is how confusing they make it, like everything sound. This isn't that crazy, right? You guys following along? Type yes in the chat. That's kind of making some sense. Real estate funds. Okay. It's in the name. It's a pool of money. Instead of buying private companies, or instead of buying crypto, They buy real estate.

Okay.

Pool of money that buys real estate. It flows back to the investors, goes from there. Debt funds, they issue debt. Okay. So debt funds issue loans, mortgages. My first 2 funds were debt funds. I actually issued small loans to businesses. We got paid back. I'll actually share that example in a few minutes. Sound good? Is this making sense?

Okay.

It's not that crazy. This world of funds, it sounds so crazy and so hard. It's really not that crazy. We're going to share some more examples in a minute, but is that kind of helping? So now, who this works for, this works for people in trading, crypto, forex, futures, real estate, Buying and selling small business, investing in startups, scaling existing business, issuing loans, debt. This is the world of funds, which is pretty cool. Okay. Now, to kind of finish that story back with my dad, right? So, I'm with my dad. My dad's teaching me this kind of stuff, and we'll get more examples. But there's a funny thing in your brain that when you start to learn something, you start to recognize that thing in your life. Like, anybody ever bought a new car? Like, you go buy a new Mercedes, and all of a sudden, you start seeing that same Mercedes driving around everywhere, right? Same thing happened for me with funds. So, at the time, I was 22 years old, I was in college, and I started to learn about funds. So, I was in college, I was working a job and working at an internship at a startup. And I had this crazy idea at the startup. I'm like, dude, I could start a fund in this business. The clients that were coming through this fund needed financing. So, I went and talked to the owners of the company, and I was like, hey, we could finance some of the clients coming and give them a loan, a short-term loan. They could pay us back in 30 to 60 days. They loved the idea. I then went and talked to my dad. We sat down, we mapped this whole entire fund out, which is pretty fun. So, we mapped this whole thing out, got it all together, and I was pretty stoked. So, I'm 22 years old at the time, got this little fund ready to go, and then I hit this wall. I was like, shoot, I've got to go raise money. And for whatever reason, I overlooked finding investors, and I was like, crap, who's going to invest in me? I'm in college, I have no track record, who's going to invest in me? And then I thought, aha, A little light bulb went off. My dad. My dad's rich, apparently, doesn't spend his money on fancy cars or houses. He would probably love to invest in my fund. So, I'll go pitch my dad to invest in our fund. So, I remember it was a late Sunday night. I walked in my dad's little home office, sat down with him, and I said, Dad, I want to thank you so much for helping me put this together. And he really was. He was an incredible mentor, helped me put together this fund. And I said, Dad, in my best pitch voice possible, I said, Dad, how would you like to be our first investor into our fund? I said, just like that handout and everything, right? Looked him right in the eyes. And he kind of laughed and he said, Bridger, he goes, I have the money to invest, but if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own. He goes, that'll be a crutch that you'll never be able to recover from. And he said no. And it was a big tough love moment between me and my dad. And he kicked me out and he said, you got to go learn how to do this on your own. And I walked out with my tail between my legs a little bit. And anyways, I went out, I hit the streets, I talked to everybody I knew. I talked to former bosses, college professors, I talked to like neighbor, whoever it was. And after about 4 weeks of pitching, I raised a whopping $49,500 from like 6 different investors. And some of you guys might be like, wow, that's great. That's like teeny. That's probably one of the smallest funds ever to launch, right? $49,500. But it was enough to get started. We were doing these small microloans. The loans were like $3,000 to $5,000 per client. They were short-term, like 36 days, so we could start this fund. We launched this first little syndicate fund, and I got my first group of investors a 64% return on their money, which was awesome. So again, small dollar amount, but good return. So we closed that down. We restructured it, launched the same strategy. We raised and deployed millions of dollars out of that next fund. I ran that for about 3.5, 4 years. And then, like I said earlier, we had a competitor come and buy us out. I actually exited a fund, sold my entire fund, which was really cool. I had a good exit on that. And then since then, we launched Fund Launch. We started to teach people about funds and all that kind of stuff. And still to this day, my dad has still never invested in any deal, project, fund, anything I've ever launched. But my dad has been an incredible mentor and coach for me. He's not a partner in any of my business or anything, but he's been an incredible coach and mentor. Additionally, my brother is also a securities attorney for funds. So, my brother actually does all the legal work for funds, which is so cool. He works at the largest law firm in the world for funds. So, between the 3 of us, We have some pretty cool background on that. So, a lot of people started to come to me and my dad and my brother and started to ask us, hey, how do I do a fund? How do I build one? None of us went to Harvard. None of us did Ivy League schools. All of us just had this kind of roundabout way of getting into the fund world. So, we started Fund Launch. We started to teach people how to do funds, how to launch them. And we've actually helped a number of people launch their funds. This is actually an award we give out to anybody in our group that gets over $10 million in their fund. Last year on stage, I think we had 14 or 15 funds come up on stage and accept their reward. Right now, we just did a survey. We have 1 student fund over $1 billion, 4 student funds over $100 million, and 54 student funds between $1 and $50 million, which is so freaking crazy. Okay. Which is so cool. These are some of the groups here. These guys raised $500 million to trade index funds. They raised $3.4 million here. Stock commitments for under $1 million in 10 days for a hotel-to-condo conversion in Rio de Janeiro. This is John R. He raised $10 million for his hedge fund. Dana raised $65 million for his real estate fund. This is David D., $9 million in commitments for his crypto fund. Amika right here, he wants to buy 15 sustainable food companies. Like, really cool. You've got Blake Vaughn, raised $3.45 million, which is so cool. This guy, we're going to share this story in a minute. He went from flipping 4 homes a year to 72 homes in 1 year. Any house flippers in the group? He did that by doing a fund, which is so cool. We're going to share his example in just a minute. Brent Campbell raised $3,400,000 last month right here. It's just crazy to see all the people that are raising money, which is so cool. And by the way, we are throwing our next event here in a couple of months. And you guys heard of Fund Life Live. You guys were here in the beginning. You saw the videos. You guys want to see kind of the behind-the-scenes renders of how— what it's going to look like? You saw a little peek a second ago. You guys want to see it? Type a yes in the chat. That works. By the way, let's do a little giveaway right now. What do you think, Mace?

$100?

Let's do it. All right. Let's do a $100 giveaway, kind of loosen things up, stretch out, and then we're going to dive into a bunch of content right now. So, you guys ready? In the chat, type in, I want to start a fund. Type in, I want to start a fund. I'm going to pick somebody for $100 to, let's say, Nike. $100 to Nike. I want to start a fund in the chat. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Wow.

There's a lot of people. Okay. Let me grab somebody. Man, I gotta say this name right. Jack— Jackies Detong, is that right? Do they say it? I'm butchering your name, I'm so sorry. But is it just Jackie or Jack— Jackies Detong? You got $100 to Nike, so send Mason or Matthew or somebody behind the scenes your email. We'll send it to you right now. So congrats, there you go. Um, all right, let's show you guys behind the scenes. This is the render for Funnel Launch Live 2023, which is so sick. We got 2,500 people coming. It's gonna be pretty awesome. Boom! Isn't that cool? That is an LED curved LED screen, which is pretty sick. Okay, it's a huge— I don't know, it's like 90 feet or something across the stage. It's gonna be pretty fun, um, this event. And we got Ed Mylett coming, Jim Rogers. Um, so there's again one more time, sorry if you guys didn't see it. Um, we got Ed Mylett, Jim Rogers coming May 10th through the 12th in the Miami Convention Center. Um, tickets are on sale. We sold out, by the way, about a month before, um, last time. So it's pretty cool. So, um, which is pretty awesome. Now, Bridger, and by the way, I want to just preface again, you guys, we're not selling anything today. You can't buy anything on this webinar, but I just want to throw this out here just so you guys see it. Now, Bridger, it's too hard to start a fund, right? I can't do this. No one will invest in me. I don't have the partners. There's one person out there that has just broken through all glass ceilings for me. It's just changed my life completely. This person is, I think, helping at least men all around the world do incredible things. The fact that Pete Davidson dated Kim Kardashian means that me and you can do anything in this world. So, stop saying, oh, funds are too hard. I can't figure it out. If this can happen, me and you can do freaking anything on planet Earth. Type a yes in the chat. All right? And I think, didn't he date all these other— who else did he date? He dated all these other crazy models and Ariana Grande. Ariana Grande. That's right. He's dated like this guy, Pete Davidson, this guy. Like, I mean, like, I guess he's got a nice bod or something, but I just like— I— the fact that this happens means me and you can do anything in this world. All right. Anything's possible. All right. So with that, let's buckle up. Let's dive in. I'm gonna jump into some content here. All right. We're gonna go fast today. Um, is it cool if we go quick? You guys good? All right. Let's talk about house flipping. All right. Any houseovers in the chat? I'm gonna share a bunch of examples of how funds work in real time. This is how one of our guys went from flipping 4 houses a year to 72 houses the next year using a fund. Okay, so right now I'm gonna summarize, uh, houseovers— I'm sorry, I'm gonna summarize your entire job in about 30 seconds, okay? And correct me if I'm wrong or off, okay? Uh, you got a house here. You go and you're like, I'm gonna flip this house, it looks awesome. You go find hard money, investor money, or bank money, or your own money. You put that money together, you put it into an LLC, start a brand new little entity. The money flows in that LLC. You then go and you flip the house. You get contractors together, everything. You go flip the house. You then turn around and sell it. You make some cash money. Yeah, feeling good. And then you do it again. You start over. You go find another house. You got to call up your investors again. Hey, we got a new house. You guys want to send money in? You get another hard money loan, whatever it is. Set up an LLC. You do this again. You flip houses. How did I do? House flippers out pretty good? Yeah. This is actually called a syndication loop, which actually is great. By the way, you can do this for buying businesses. You can do this for a lot of stuff. And it's actually, it works really well. It's really good at building a track record. My first fund was kind of like this, kind of like a syndication. Now, what we helped our guy do was, because he's like, dude, I have such a problem. Every time I find a house, I got to recall my investors. I got to reset up a new entity. It just takes so much time. There's so much friction to flip another house. And so, what we did for him We went and set up a fund, and instead of raising capital every time you find a house, you raise capital once. You set up all the entities, the legal structure once, and out of all that, you can go flip as many houses as you want. So, in the next year, literally, he raised $5 million, flipped 72 homes. Oh, and by the way, because he was running a fund, he got better banking relationships. So, his cost of capital, his interest rate would go down. So, he could outbid and outcompete his competitors. Oh, also, when he went to the courthouse, instead of— some of these house flippers are like, hey, I can close in 30 days. Give me 30 days. I got to call capital, get it together. He's like, hey, I'll close tomorrow. I got cash in the bank, proof of funds. In the chat, do you guys think you'd win more or less deals having a fund, having cash ready to go, all set up, ready to— more or less deals? Probably more, right? Do you think you'd get better interest rates or worse interest rates if you had a lot of deals, a good relationship with a bank through a fund? Probably better, right? This is how funds come and outcompete regular little guys like me and you that are just trying to flip a little house here and there. Additionally, he had economies of scale. Because he had a fund, he could pay for full-time crews to go from house to house. He had a full-time tile and flooring team that would go from house to house. And then he had a roofing team or a painting team or whatever team that would go, carpet team that would just go from house to house. He had economies of scale, which brought his overall overhead down. He got better returns to his investors. Kind of interesting, right? There's a reason why last year 1 in 7 homes were purchased by funds. 1 in 7. Funds are becoming the only game in town. You got to learn this. This is why most people that are successful in business finance end up in a fund one day. Is that kind of making sense? You guys following along so far? Okay, let's do the next one. E-commerce. Anybody e-commerce in the chat? Does Amazon stores other stuff? So, I want to share— this is a true example. I'm going to share round numbers, but a true example from some guys in our group. Okay? So, these guys want to do Amazon. They're actually very good at Amazon, but they didn't want to start brand new stores. There's a lot of headache with starting up a brand new store. You got to build it up, get credibility. So, what they did, they went and raised $250,000 in a fund. There's my pool of money again, right? They raised $250,000, and this, again, round numbers, let's say they buy 5 Amazon stores for $50,000 apiece. So, they just buy existing stores. And by the way, there's a lot of kids that are 22 years old, they're like, $50 grand? Done. I'll sell you my store tomorrow. Because that's a lot of money to somebody when they're brand new starting out. And they bought 5 stores, and they're actually good at Amazon. They scaled these stores up, put them under, and they did all the cool stuff. I'm not an expert on Amazon, but they did all these cool things to help them grow. Within 1 year, those Amazon stores were performing very well. They net free cash flowed $350,000.

Wow.

Net free cash flow. So, what they did is they took the money, net free cash flow, and went and paid back all their investors, plus a 20% return. So, in their documents, they told investors, hey, if you guys in one year, if we get you a 20% return and pay you back all your capital, would you guys be happy? And they're like, yes, we'd love that. So, they took just the cash flow, they didn't sell the businesses, just the cash flow, paid back all their investors, plus a 20% return. And investors were so happy, like, man, I made 20% in one year with these guys. Sounds awesome. Let's do it again next year. And guess what they had? They kept the original— these business owners, they now have 5 businesses they own free and clear, about $3 million enterprise value, that's net free cash flowing $350 grand a year. They went from zero to a $3 million enterprise value business doing that without any debt or any overhead. Who loves that? Isn't that kind of interesting? Isn't that kind of a cool idea? Type a yes in the chat. That's kind of making sense. You guys following along? Okay, let's do a different one here. Um, I'm gonna— again, I'm going— I'm gonna go quick through these, you guys, and we'll just do questions at the end. Okay, so save your questions for the end. I'll just go quick. This will help you understand. This is a guy that did this with funeral homes. Okay, true example. Now again, I'm gonna use round numbers, but true story what he's doing. He found that he could, uh, uh, buy and sell mom-and-pop funeral homes. He could buy them and sell them for about double to a larger private equity firm. So, for example, he raised $8 million here. Again, example round numbers. Let's say he went out and bought 8 funeral homes for $1 million apiece. So, here's our funeral homes, 8, $1 million apiece. He groups them together. He then takes away overhead. He has a consistent management team, so it makes them more profitable. He groups them together in a portfolio. In 1 year, he can turn around and sell that portfolio for $16 million to a larger private equity firm. Kind of cool, right? Makes an $8 million spread, not using any of his own money. Now he's got to pay back his investors, so he does an 80/20 split on them. So round numbers again, $8 million profit, he pays his investors $6.2 million, he takes home $1.8 million on this one deal every year. And if you do the math, I think somebody did the math for me, investors make on this deal something like 60% to 70% return in one year. So, investors love it. Like, dude, that was amazing. That was the best deal we ever did. Let's do it again next year. He made $1.8 million. People work for years. People grind. Me and you grind our faces off to make $1.8 million in a year. And all he does is group these funeral homes together and sells them, and he makes $1.8 million. Working smarter, not harder, right? This is how High finance, where this is how you get to the next level of business. Kind of making sense? Yes, type yes in the chat. That's kind of making sense. Okay, kind of cool. I'm gonna share another— we're just gonna go examples, baby. This is gonna make sense how this works in business. Any current business owners in the chat? Okay, so current business owners, this is an example of a guy calls me up. He goes, Bridger, I have a gun store. We do about $5 to $10 million revenue a year. Okay, right here, this, this square represents his store and his entity in business. He's like, Bridger, I want to go buy my competitor stores out. So he goes, what do I do? Should I get some debt? Should I do the Shark Tank route, go find an investor, give up 20% of my business? He's like, I don't want to give up 20% of my business. This is my baby. I don't want to give this thing up. And so, I'm like, dude, do a third option. So, what we put together for him, and he's still working on this right now, but this is the idea of what we're putting together for him. And we've helped other groups do this as well. Instead of giving— you leave your business exactly how it is today. You don't touch This square up here, it's the same. You start an outside fund. So, here's our fund. We raise whatever amount of money we need. We raise it in a brand new fund. That fund goes and buys the competitor stores, an acquisition, private equity. They go buy up all the competitor stores. The fund then contracts your company over here to run the stores for you, because you're good at running gun stores. You know how to do it, you know how to get inventory, all that kind of stuff. So, we're going to pay you, kind of like a franchise, we're going to pay you a corporate fee of 5% a year to just run the stores for us. So, you get paid, he gets paid over here, running the stores for 5% a year, and he helps get overhead. He can put his branding, his logos on everything. And all of a sudden, now he has a monopoly of an entire area. He controls an entire market. And then as these competitor stores make money, just like any other fund, the money flows back. You pay your corporate fee, but the money flows back to the fund, And gets split between the investors and the fund manager, which also happens to be him, because he's also running the fund. So, he makes money, an 80/20 split. So, 80% goes to the investors, 20% goes to him, because he put the fund together and does this on there. So, he makes money running the fund, splitting with investors. He also makes money running the corporate fee, and he makes money just running his current business operations. And all of a sudden, now he has a monopoly of an entire area where he controls a lot of the stores in one area. Are your wheels starting to turn a little bit? This is what's happening right now. If you guys look at like Wiggy Wash or Quick Quack Car, you know, those car washes that are getting built, they are grabbing competitor stores or building new stores and taking over market share. In business, that's one of the biggest things is like, how do I dominate market share? This is a quick, easy way to dominate market share. Isn't that kind of cool? Any like, type aha in the chat. That's kind of like a little light bulb went off. Isn't that kind of cool? Okay, this is how you can use funds for a business, which is so freaking cool. So now I want to go to the crazy zone with you. Okay, how this works in private equity or debt markets. So let me tell you a quick story. My dad, as I mentioned my dad earlier, um, awesome dude, incredible mentor. Um, he's, you know, running this big fund and, and he gets sent to New York to go to an SEC conference. So this is for major funds. They're running a deca-billion-dollar fund at the time. And my dad's now since retired and he's all that kind of stuff, but at the time he's running there, he goes to New York for a compliance conference. They're going all the new rules, regulations are coming out. So he goes there and he's sitting at a table with a couple other fund managers. So he's talking to this one guy, he goes, hey, what do you guys do? And this guy explains to him what I'm about to explain to you, what they do with a fund and how they produce hundreds of millions of dollars a year on these simple little deals. It's pretty crazy. So they're sitting at the table, that's what he describes to him. He goes, we run a fund with big and small biotech companies. So he goes, for example, there's these big biotech companies out there, and they want to purchase small biotech companies, like small in air quotes, they're pretty big, but for about, let's just say for $5 billion over 5 years. So a big biotech company's going to buy a small biotech company for $5 billion over 5 years. A lot of times, these small biotech companies, they don't want to wait 5 years to get paid out. So, what we'll do, we'll approach them and say, hey, instead of waiting 5 years, what if we pay you $4.5 billion right now? So, we'll pay you $4.5 billion today, and then we will collect the $5 billion over 5 years. Does that work for you guys? And he goes, they love it. And they sign up. They go, I would— because they want to move on to the next product. They don't want to wait 5 years. They want to get paid today, and they can move on to other stuff. And so, he goes, we come in and we facilitate this transaction. Do the math here. That's $500 million spread over 5 years. That's $100 million a year they make doing this one transaction. People work their entire lives, they grind their face, and if you're lucky enough, you will have a business that makes $100 million in one year, let alone 5 years. The odds of that's like 0.00001% of businesses. They do this one transaction, they make $100 million a year for 5 years. That's it. That's all they do. And my dad asked him, he's like, well, so how big are you guys? How many deals like this do you do a year? He goes, right now we manage about a $35 billion fund. And he goes, we're actually trying to raise another $40 billion because we have so much demand Just for this little arbitrage play right here. And it's a company you've never heard of. They're not on the Wall Street Journal getting talked about every day, because all we do is, and we only do biotech, we don't do other types of business, we only do biotech. They needed $80 billion, how much demand they had for just that arrangement. Isn't that kind of crazy? Okay, that is high finance. That's like, that's like the crazy zone. Is that kind of— is this helpful, you guys? You guys liking this so far? Give me— I need some feedback in chat. Is this like, is this like good? So kind of cool. Again, Bridger, there's no way I can do this. If Pete Davidson can date Kim Kardashian, we can do freaking anything in this world. Okay? So be like, don't— Bridger, I can't. It's too hard. I can't figure this out. Okay? If this is happening, we can do it. All right? Okay? You guys all right? So with that, let's do another giveaway real quick. What do you think, Mace? $100 to Amazon. $100 to Amazon. Amazon. You can buy anything on Amazon. Amazon. $100 to Amazon. Type in the chat, we got this, because I want you guys to feel like you can do a fun— like, type in we got this in the chat. I'm gonna pick somebody. Okay, type in we got this in the chat. Make sure you type it to everyone, not just hosts and panelists as well. Okay, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Oh man, they're coming in so fast. I gotta grab somebody.

Dan Nelson.

Dan Nelson, congrats. You got $100 to Amazon coming your way, brother. Send Mason or Matthew, whoever's behind the scenes right here, in the chat, send them your email. Dan will send you a gift card. Congrats, brother. All right. Now, let's dive in. A bunch of people were asking questions here. Now, so just so you know, we started a company called Fund Launch, and I mentioned this earlier, we wanted to help more people launch funds. We want to help more people get in this world. And essentially, I felt like I wanted to give people access to what I had access to. I had an incredible dad, an incredible brother that taught me about funds, and that's very unusual. And I understand the uniqueness of my position. If you go on YouTube or if you try to learn this online, it's super complex. There's nothing really written about it. And I mean, the real reason we started Fund Launch Live and Fund Launch and everything was to help regular people like me and you go out and launch funds. So, what I've done for you guys is this. Again, you can't buy anything, any, any on this call today, but we actually help people a lot with funds. We help them figure out where their fund is, how to position it. And if you want help from my team directly, we can help you with that. If you want to just learn, we got free courses, we got just like free videos, free content. We just want to educate the world on funds. Now, how this works is I've actually got a team of people over here. They're actually sitting right outside my office. We got 5 guys that are trained by me on funds. So if you're curious about like, could this work for my fund? Could I like launch a fund like this? These guys are trained by me. They will help you figure out if this could work for you and if we could help you. And if we can't help you, I'll refer you to somebody else. But we have lawyers that can come in. We have pitch deck designers. We have all the— like, we have everything. We've launched, like I said before, 120 funds in the last year through our group. So what I'm going to do, my guys have blocked out some time on their call for today. I think they've got 14 or 15 time slots open. Okay. If you guys want to talk to somebody on my team, I'm going to put the offer open for literally 1 minute. You have 1 minute to book a call and then we're going to keep going. I'm going to talk about the Fund Launch Formula, how we're going to launch funds, all that kind of stuff. We're going to go the crazy zone about how funds are built. Sound good? But my guys, it's for today or tomorrow. They've opened up time slots. So again, it's first come, first serve. Here you guys go. Okay? You can go book a call right there. Mason's going to drop a link in the chat as well. You guys can go book a call here if you want. And then we're going to talk about in just a second, we have literally 1 minute. I'm going to answer a few questions here, and then we're going to talk about how this is structured on a $10+ billion fund. We're actually going to walk through the Fund Launch Formula, how that kind of works. But again, if you guys are curious about how funds work, How they're put together. You've got 1 minute. I won't move without you. So go on there, funlaunch.com/call. It's first come, first served. We only have 15 time slots open, so go grab one right now. Um, and once they're gone, they're gone. Okay? Um, these guys are busy. They're trained by me. They have busy schedules, but I asked them to book off some time just for people that were live today on this call that you guys could book something. Does that sound fair? My little gift to you guys if you want to learn about funds. Um, And we have Funnel Launch Live, we have the Funnel Launch Academy, we have Black Card Coaching Group. And again, if we can't help you, we will refer you to somebody else that can help you. Again, my goal is to help more people understand this game of funds, how funds are working, all that kind of stuff. Sound good? Questions? Yeah. Do we help people international? 100%. We have people in— we actually have people in Canada, in the UK, in Australia, in the Middle East. We have funds all over the world we help people with. So yes, we help people all over the world. Um, some of you guys that are in different locations, um, we do live events. We actually have an event coming up soon with— you guys can come out and hang out with me, all the Black Card members, everything else. We can come and hang out, be in person. I like doing stuff in person, so I just— because I get more done. I just feel like I'm— I love being immersed. I feel like proximity is power. If I can get to something close, like, I think I can taste it, I think I can touch it, I can feel it, like, I accomplish that thing quicker. And so that's why we like throwing live events. We do stuff in person. You can come shake someone's hand, look somebody in the eyeballs, and like, so it's fun. So you guys come to our next event, all that kind of stuff. So just ask them on the phone. You can bring that up on the call, all that kind of stuff. Okay. Sound good? All right. Timer's down. Let's go on to the next thing. So, um, I'll tell a quick story. Okay. And this will kind of highlight the next piece we're gonna talk about. So I, uh, take, take you back a couple years. I launched my second fund. So we're running this fund, and again, I'm 24 years old at the time. I got invited, um, to go to this kind of secret business meeting in this really nice boardroom office area. So I go in, um, There's 3 gentlemen meeting, and I was invited as the 4th. So, I get invited in. I got invited by one of the guys, and I won't say their names because you might know who they are. They are pretty prominent figures on social media, online, across the board. So, I won't say their names, but I got invited. The 2 guys that were already there did not want me to show up. And by the way, they were discussing a brand new fund that they were going to launch. So, 2 guys there, it was pretty obvious they didn't want me to be there. The one guy that invited me was a friend of mine, and he wanted me to show up. They're talking this new fund that they are going to build. So, I show up to this boardroom, I walk in, we sit down, and it's pretty blatant that they are leaving me out of the conversation. And I'm 24 years old, these guys are mid-40s, early 50s. I mean, they're twice my age. And these are successful, I mean, very successful business people. They got all the cars and the jets and everything. So, I'm sitting there, I'm sheepish, I'm just sitting in my little seat, just sitting there. They're talking about their fund that they're going to build without me. And so I just have this moment of courage, and you know what I'm talking about, just this moment of like, you know what, screw it, I'm going to just send it. And so I raised my hand in this meeting, I'm like, hey, real quick, as you guys are talking about your fund, what are you guys going to do for pref, your catch-up carried interest? Are you guys going to run an American or European waterfall? Are you guys going to do management fees? Are you going to have an investment advisor, a registered investment advisor? What are you guys going to do? And they all go quiet. And like, what do you mean? I'm like, oh yeah, well, how are you going to structure it? What are you going to do for all your carried interest or your American waterfall? What are you going to do? And they're like, go to the whiteboard, go explain it to us. What do you mean? So I went up to the whiteboard and over the next 7 minutes, I described— I'm actually going to describe to you what I taught them, piece of it, and I described it to them on the whiteboard. Within 7 to 8 minutes, they were very impressed. They wanted me to be a full business partner with them in their new business, in their new fund, 25/25/25/25. I went from zero, nothing, worthless dirt to a full equal partner with them in this fund because of the stuff I'm about to describe to you right now. Does that sound good? Okay, so if you guys want to pull out a pen and paper, take some notes, we're going to dive into it. Sound good? Type a yes in the chat if you guys ready to get going. Sound good? Okay, let's dive into it. So we're going to talk about, um, kind of simple. We're going to go pretty advanced, and if it goes over your head, no worries about it. You guys can come— I think that we might send out a recording or something else. I don't know. You guys can go watch it again or just take notes or whatever. Okay, on the screen we've got a timeline of return. So on the left we've got 0% IRR. IRR stands for internal rate of return. Or you can just say returns. For this example, just use returns. So you got 0%, we got a 10% return, a 20% return on the screen. Okay. So we're going to talk through how returns work in a fund. Sound good? So right here, a lot of funds will charge a 2% management fee. So 2% management fee off the top. This is before the other returns are calculated. Okay. So 2% management fee is off the top. And by the way, these are terms that you can use when you go to a dinner party, you're at an interview, when you're at a business meeting, you're going to want to recall these things because you're going to sound super smart and sophisticated and maybe get on a business deal that you didn't know before. Sound good? Okay. The next thing that a lot of funds do is do what's called a pref or a preferential rate of return. So for example, in a lot of funds that I see, my first original fund was an 8% pref, meaning the first 8% of all returns go to my investors or limited partners. Okay. So first 8% of any return I get goes right to my investors. If this year we got a 7% return, all 7% would go to you, after fees. Above there, we do what's called a catch-up. Now, again, while I'm going, by the way, the top is what we get, me and you, the fund manager. The bottom is what the investors get. So the top, the catch-up, 2%. So again, if we got a 10% return this year, and don't think about it, this is after management fees, but the first 8% would go to the investors. Next 2% would come to the general partner, the 9th and 10th percentile. Does that sound good? Above 10% IRR, we split. Let's just say for this example, we got a 22% return, we do an 80/20 split. So 80% goes to the investor, 20% to us, the fund manager, the general partner. Okay? And this is after fees again. So let's say, for example, we got a 22% return this year after fees. First 8% goes to the investors. Next 2% comes to me and you, the general partner, the fund managers. The next, this then is split 80/20. So this is 12 percentiles. 9.8% or 80% would go to the investors, and 2.2% would come to us at the top as the fund manager. Is that kind of making sense? Is this following along so far? So if you total those together, if you total 2% plus 2% plus 2.2%, That's 6.2%. If you total the bottom, that's 17.8% return to investors. And again, you might add these up, it's 2% more because this is after fees. So we really would've got a 24% return for the year, but management fee is 2%. Is that kind of making sense so far? You following along? Now, by the way, this is good to know, even if you don't ever run a fund, you're probably going to get pitched on funds in the future. This is a great question to ask somebody. Hey, okay, you're pitching, you're going to average a 22% IRR, correct? Oh yeah, we're getting 22% this year. That's the plan. What's my take-home to me as the investor? Because the fund got a 22%, but I only took home 17.8% as the investor. Interesting, right? It's a different number. So whenever I'm getting pitched a fund, I always ask, okay, give me the cash-on-cash. What's the net return to me? Not IRR. And by the way, IRRs can be manipulated by the risk-free rate. What is the risk-free rate? Is it 1? Is it 5? What's the risk-free rate? Anyways, it's just a little tip. If you're getting pitched a fund, ask them what's the cash net return to me as the fund manager or as the investor. Is that good? Is that helpful? Okay. So let me give you a few examples. This will make a little more sense. Okay. Just stay with me. So this is actually my fund, BlackBridge Holdings. This is how we did this. I did not do a management fee. I said, hey, investors, I'm not taking any management fee. I don't make money unless you make at least 8% first. So again, this is an old fund of mine, but if you invest in that fund, if we made 7% this year, all 7% would go to you. I wouldn't make a dollar. I don't make anything unless we get 8% first. Okay? And then above 8%, again, we go 2% here. We then go 80/20 split. Now, what I did is I tweaked some things. And what's cool about funds is you get to write the Bible. We're going to talk about this in a minute, but you can pick all these. You can decide these. Some funds do a 7% pref, some funds do 70/30 splits, some funds charge a 3% management fee. You decide, which is so cool. Okay? So in my fund, I said, we're going to do— see that little shift there? We're going to do an 80/20 split until a 20% IRR. Okay? And then if we get a 20% IRR, if we get above that, we'll start splitting 50/50. Okay? So again, first 8% to the investors, next 2% to me. 80/20 until 20% IRR, and then we'll split 50/50. So if you remember, what was my first return on my fund? You remember? 64% return. Kind of crazy, right? So I got— we did 8%, 2%, 8%, and then from 20% IRR to 64%, we split 50/50 with my investors. Kind of interesting, right? Okay. You can kind of do the math. Now, you might be sitting there, back to this number, We can go here. Okay, Bridger, I'm not— let's just say on this example, I made 6.2% goes to fund managers. That's nothing. I don't want to make 6.2%. No. Yes, you do.

Okay?

Because that's not 6.2% on your own money. That's 6.2% on the entire fund. So if you manage, and funds are just scalable, it's a linear thing. So if you have a $10 million fund, 6.2% is $620,000. If you run a $100 million fund, that's $6.2 million in one year. If you run a billion-dollar fund, which you see online, a billion-dollar fund here, a billion-dollar fund there, billion-dollar fund, that's $62 million in one year. That's $1 million a week that you're making. If you run a $10 Billion-dollar fund. That's $620 million in one year. That's $10 million a week that you're making from your fund. It's pretty crazy. Remember that slide at the beginning, those fund managers, they run $80 to $200 billion funds, and that's how they make $1 to $3 billion a year net just to them. And typically a lot of funds, you don't need a lot of employees. to run a fund. A lot of it comes back to you, which is so cool. You guys starting to get this? It's like why funds, again, are the most lucrative vehicle on planet Earth. Is that kind of making sense? Okay. So now, is this helpful? Is this helping along? So I want to share with you guys the structure of funds so you know the right terminology. So remember when I talked about this earlier, right? We had investors, we had us, and assets. Same exact structure, just different names. So I'm going to give you the actual terminology of names. This is how 99% of all private funds in the world are structured. Okay. Instead of a pool of money, it's called— you see my little pool here? It's called a limited partnership or your fund. Okay. So instead of writing pool, you just call it a limited partnership. Instead of saying like us and fund managers, that's called the general partner. Okay. So the general partner is the fund manager of the limited partnership or the fund. Yes. Fun, long story. Take some notes on this. This helps. You have your Avenger team, or this is like your dream team over here. This is your people. And then you have investors, just like before, right? Same thing. Investors put money in the pool, us, we buy assets. Just as before, we have investors that are called, different name, limited partners of the fund. So they invest money into the fund, and the general partner manages the fund. So if you think about a limit, you have a limited partnership, limited partners invest into the limited partnership. that is governed by the general partner. The general partner governs the limited partnership that has investors that are called limited partners. Is this kind of making sense? Just same thing, but just different terminology. So you'll hear in like, you'll start hearing it. If you haven't heard it before, you'll start hearing it. Hey, they run a GPLP structure. That stands for general partner limited partnership structure. Or you'll hear this like, my LPs, my limited partners, these are my LPs. Okay, is that kind of making sense? That's what they mean is investors. Okay, and they go buy assets. Whenever those assets make money, it flows back to the limited partnership and gets split between the investors and the general partner, like we talked about before, the 8% pref, 20% carry. That's what they're talking about here. Not that crazy, right? It's pretty simple. Now, uh, funds are governed by 2 main documents, and this is the— they— we call them— I like to call them the Bible. Okay, these main documents, they are These are long legal documents. They are 100 pages each, and they're very expensive, and these are the Bible. The coolest thing about a fund is you get to write the Bible. You get to decide the laws, the bylaws, everything that goes on in the Bible. So you can write in, like we said before, hey, we want to do a 3% management fee. Okay, you write that in your Bible. Minimum commitment for our fund is $100,000. You write that in your Bible. The cool thing about funds is you get to write the Bible. Now, once the Bible is written, the LP and PPM, you've got to stick to it though. You can't go back and change it. You got to stick to the Bible. So if your fund, like my fund is a crypto fund, we buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Even if we get the best real estate deal on planet Earth, my fund can't buy it because in my LP and PPM, it says I cannot buy real estate. Even if I get the best NFT project on planet Earth, my fund says we're only going to buy cryptocurrency coins, I can't buy NFTs. Now, I can launch a new fund and raise new capital and go buy NFTs with a new LP and PPM, but I can't break my covenants and laws. Is that kind of making sense? Is this helpful so far? And then additionally, some funds have an investment advisor over here as well that collects the management fees, but we can talk about it more in the Q&A section. Sound good? Now, you guys want to go crazy zone? You want to see how this works for a $10 billion fund? We've actually helped a number of these funds structure and are put together. Does that sound good? Okay. You guys with me so far? Stand up for a second, stretch out. Should we do another giveaway? One more giveaway before we go to the crazy zone here.

Why not?

Let's give $100 away. Ooh. All right. In the chat, let's type in the chat. Just type in yes. Type yes in the chat. Or yeah, type just yes. Go yes. Okay. 5, 4, 3, and stand up, stretch out for a second, you know, get some, get a little loosey-goosey. 3, 2, 1. Uh, Chris Lopez. Okay, Chris Lopez, you got $100 coming your way. I'm taking off my jacket here. We're going to the crazy zone, people. You guys ready? And by the way, I'm gonna share this and we'll pull up Q&A. We'll pull up the whiteboard here in a minute. Sound good? All right, let's talk about how crazy big funds are structured. This is what's— if you ever heard parallel funds, feeder funds, Luxembourg funds, Cayman Island funds, we're gonna talk about right now. Okay, let's dive into it. So again, you have the same, and if this goes over your head, don't worry about it. You're good. We'll hit the next section. Okay, this is how we go to the crazy zones. We got our investment advisor, general partner. Remember, we just talked about same things, right? These 2 boxes are at the top here. Instead of 1 limited partnership, a lot of these big funds will set up 3 limited partnerships. They're called parallel funds. Okay, again, we're going to the crazy zone. If this goes over your head, don't worry about it. These are for different types of investors. So you have accredited investors, qualified clients, qualified purchasers, and then these are for international investors. over here, this master LP. So, a lot of you guys have heard of accredited investors, right? There's also 2 tiers higher than accredited investor. You have a qualified client and you have a qualified purchaser. Accredited investor has a million-dollar net worth, excluding their home. They make $200,000 a year or $300,000 a year with a spouse. If you do one of those things, and there's a bunch of other things, you can take a test and stuff now, but you become an accredited investor and you're allowed to And the SEC actually, it's an SEC rule. It's an SEC rule that sometimes you can't invest in certain things unless you're an accredited investor. Above that, you have a qualified client. Qualified clients have a $2.2 million net worth, excluding their home. Qualified purchasers have a $5 million net worth, excluding their home. And again, there's a few other nuances. I'm going quick here, but that's kind of the categories of investors. So, they raise capital for different investors. And let's say, just for example, let's say this first circle raises $100 million. This middle circle raises $200 million, and this circle raises $300 million. So, for a total of a $600 million fund, they have an LPM, PPM, a Bible. All that money, they flow that money down to a holding company pro rata how much money they have. That holding company then goes and buys, let's say, for example, real estate. They will set up special purpose entities and go buy real estate. So, this box would represent a skyscraper in Dallas. This box would represent an apartment complex in Chicago. This would be an apartment complex in Indiana. Okay? These are all different properties. When those properties make money, it flows back to the holding company and then flows back to each fund here. And that fund splits the money between the general partner and their individual investors. Is that kind of making sense? Following along so far? Again, we're in the crazy zone. We're going crazy. All right. Let's now talk about feeder funds or international investors. So, let's say you go out and you found a ton of investors out of South Korea. And these investors, you could have them invest directly into the qualified purchaser fund. However, if they do that, every year those Korean investors have to file US tax returns. They've got to hire a translator, they've got to hire somebody out of the US, and it's a big hassle to file US tax returns. You don't want to do that. So what they do, is they do this. And this is, again, this is an example, not tax advice. I'm giving you an example of how it may work. Those Korean investors, let's say there's 15 of them up here, they all invest into a Cayman Islands feeder fund. The Cayman Islands feeder fund takes 15 investors, consolidates it down to one, and then that Cayman Islands fund invests once into the master LP.

Okay.

At the end of the year, taxes come out. The master LP sends one tax return to the Cayman Islands fund. The Cayman Islands fund pays the tax. So there's no tax avoidance. The same amount of tax is being paid, but the Cayman Islands is a pass-through tax-free holding entity. And then it passes through all the money and returns just back to the investors. They don't have to file US tax returns. They still get— the money gets collected, But they don't have to spend the time or effort filing US tax returns. So, for example, if you made $100 here and they paid 20%, so $20 is paid, they end up with $80 here. And out of these other funds, the investors would make $100, but then pay $20 in tax, they end up with $80 total. Does that make sense? Same dollar amount of taxes paid, but it makes it very easy. So, for example, in Europe, Europe outlawed Cayman Island funds. But what did they set up? They set up Luxembourg funds. It's the same process. You just invest them through the Luxembourg, and then you invest in the United States. There's Alberta, Canada funds. There's Ireland funds. There are Dubai funds that are all the same purpose of doing a pass-through entity to taxes. Now, there are also illegal ways to run Cayman Island funds. Every movie you ever see, it's like an illegal Cayman Islands fund. This is the legal way to run Cayman Island funds. There are also illegal ways to money launder and stuff. This is the legal way to do it. Additionally, you might get one large investor, and sometimes you set up a full special managed account just for that investor. They're going to give you $200 million from some Dubai prince. You set up a special fund just for them that they're separated, and they invest into the holding company here. Okay? If that went over your head, no worries. We can talk about it in the Q&A, but kind of cool, right? Isn't that kind of sick? To kind of see, this is how like multi-billion-dollar funds are structured on the back end, kind of an example of how they do it. Isn't that kind of cool?

Okay.

Is that going to give you like a little heads up of how things work? So now we haven't talked a ton about Funnel— actually, we did a little bit about Funnel Launch Live, which is kind of cool. I want to show you guys a video real quick. And then actually, we're going to talk about the Funnel Launch Formula in a second. But you guys want to see this video of Funnel Launch Live? Take a little break, relax, grab a drink real quick, and we're going to dive into the Funnel Launch Formula, actually how people— we help people launch funds through a 4-step formula. This is how entrepreneurs launch funds. But real quick, I want to show you this video. I got to take a drink real quick. We are the crazy 1% who believe The crazy 1% who stop at nothing. And what's crazy enough about the crazy 1% is they're actually the ones who change the world. I wanted to have regular people, or people like you guys, have access to the same thing that I had access to. I mean, it's just like what Tony Robbins says, proximity is power. This event is insane. The quality of person that you'll meet at Funnel Launch Live is second to none.

Woo!

Okay, Funnel Hacks Live, people. Um, there it is. If you guys haven't got tickets yet, uh, I would highly recommend. We sold out early. We actually are ahead of schedule right now selling out, which is crazy. We've sold a lot of tickets. Um, May 10th through the 12th, Miami Convention Center. Now I want to do something cool for you guys, okay, on this call. Um, I already showed you the renders, right, for Funnel Hacks Live 2023. Um, this is the cool renders. We got the curved LED screen, everything here. So We got Funnel Launch Live tickets here. Now, I mentioned this before we started Funnel Launch. We hope you'll launch funds, right? And we opened up calls a minute ago. I just talked to Mason, actually, while I muted while we were watching that video. So we had a ton of people book calls. We actually filled up all the call spots. People want to launch funds. We just talked to our team. They're all here. They actually are willing to work on Saturday. They said, we'll open up some calls for Saturday and over the weekend and maybe early next week as well, because there was a lot of people on here that couldn't— but they were messaging us that couldn't book a call. So if you guys want to book a call, we're gonna do one more minute. You guys can book a call here. Additionally, we're gonna do a little bonus as well. If you guys join and book a call, you'll be able to come to our next event. We've got Funnel Launch Live coming up for discounted ticket prices. So bring that up on the call. We're gonna do a huge discount. I think it's like 50% off if you guys join Black Card or one of our other groups. If you join Black Card, you get 50% off tickets and all that kind of stuff. So bring that up on the call with them. I'm gonna— you guys do this. So we open up calls for the weekend. We got 1 minute. We are live here, and then we're gonna talk about the Fund Launch Formula. So again, if you guys, if you guys couldn't book a call or the times were weird, go book a call. They open up— these guys open up time for the— over the weekend and over next week as well. You guys can go book calls, um, and grab spots. They were very generous to do that, which is awesome. We had a lot of people on this call that wanted to just— wanted to hop on a call. So again, we will help you in any, any stage. If you're brand new beginner, if you already have an existing fund, we will figure out a spot to help you. And if— and again, if we can't help you We will refer you to somebody else. We're going to find a spot for you if you want to come to our events. We have awesome courses. We have actually a group. We have a— like, if you want to work with me and our team, we have 15 different coaches all around the world. We have 2 coaches in Canada, a coach in Europe. Um, we have coaches in the United States that come and specialize in different things that will help you think through your fund. We've actually partnered with some funds as well. Um, so just bring that up on the call and you guys can get 50% off tickets to Fund Launch Live as well when you join Black Card, which is so freaking cool. Okay, there's the— there's the link. I'll give you guys— got 10 more seconds, so go quick, and then we're gonna pull The whiteboard, actually. And we're going to dive into some more stuff. Sound good? There's a timer. 3, 2, 1. Any questions real quick just on this, on the book calls or things not working for you? By the way, we've had a few people— we've had a lot of people book calls at the same time. If you click on the link and sometimes the software is a little slow, if somebody else clicks the same time as you, it might kick you out of that time. So just if you're aware, if it kicks you out, go back in and just try another time slot. And sorry, we sometimes get overloaded. We have a lot of people on here. Last week we had a few people last week that were like, I can't book. And they're Their times are getting taken. We have so many people taking time. So again, it is first come, first serve. So you got to be quick on the keys. All right, so grab that link. Mason will drop it in one more time. But now I'm actually going to pull up the whiteboard here and let's talk Funnel Launch Formula. Sound good? So I'm going to stop sharing my screen here and I'm going to pull up the whiteboard here and share with you guys. And again, you guys, I'll give you like 30 more seconds if you guys are booking calls, whatever. Don't worry, you're not gonna miss anything. Um, but here we go. Let me know if you can see the screen. Type them in the chat if you guys can see my screen or not. Um, let's pull this open.

Boom.

Can you guys see it yet? Is it working? Not yet. What's going on?

Fun.

Can you like replug that in for me, Mason? That white cord? Yeah, just that one. Plug it out and plug it back in. Let's try it one more time. Hey, I'm I'm live with you guys. I'm here, baby. There we oh hey there we go. Can you see that now? That working? Mason, clap it up for Mason Brains, everybody. Got it worked. My heart dropped. I was like, oh no, the white. I love the whiteboard. Okay, so we're gonna talk about fund launch formula. This is the easiest, fastest, most efficient way to launch funds. So it's funny enough. So we launched fund launch, right? And I want I like I like talking to fund managers. I like hearing what they're doing. So we started a podcast and another show, and we started to interview fund managers. We have huge fund managers that come speak at our events. We have guys that run billion-dollar funds coming to speak, and they come in our podcast, all that kind of stuff. And it was funny enough, I started to see a pattern because I'd ask them, how'd you start your fund? And they would tell me the story. And I saw this pattern of how these funds were launched. And then I matched up and it's like, it's actually the same pattern that I launched my funds with. And so then we finally coined it. We're like, you know what? Let's just put this together in a step-by-step process. And we coined the phrase Fund Launch Formula. And so, this is, again, a 4-step formula for people like us. We aren't the Harvard grads. We aren't the people with the Vanderbilt family that has a gazillion dollars to spend and just throw away money. We are efficient with our capital. This is how effective funds run and are put together, all that kind of stuff. That's what I'm going to talk about. And it's a pretty efficient way to launch funds. Now, Now, if you go online, I actually did this on a video we had, we went online, we actually Googled how to launch a fund. And there's all these blogs that pop up, and you can tell the people writing these blogs have never launched a fund before. Most people will tell you, step number 1, go hire lawyers. Lawyers are like $30,000 to $50,000 to launch a fund. So you go pay, let's say, $40,000, $50,000 to launch a fund. You build the legal documents. You then take those legal documents, You then build a pitch deck, you then go pitch investors, and then you hope those investors put money in. And if they don't put money in, well, shoot, you're out $50,000. That is like the— that's actually the opposite way that we— these steps, like almost the opposite way that we teach how to do funds. Okay? So I want to teach you guys the lean, efficient, like effective way to launch funds. Sound good? If you're ready, type yes in the chat. If you guys are ready to get going, sound good? Okay, let's talk about it. So step number 1, we're going to go through here. It's funny enough. So, to kind of preface this, I was with my dad, and I was— so, back to my story, I was with my dad. I was like, Dad, how am I going to raise money? Because he wasn't going to invest in my deals. So, go raise money. I'm like, how am I going to do this? No one will believe me. I don't have a track record. I didn't graduate college. I didn't have any of this stuff. Who will invest in me? He goes, Bridger, I want to give you an example. And again, this is an example, but go with me.

Okay?

He goes, imagine me and you found, especially right now in 2023, we're going to talk about economic conditions and 5 or 10 minutes. But right now, there's a lot of people that are stressed or maybe overleveraged. Let's say we find this lady. She's in Billings, Montana. She has a Lamborghini Aventador, and she needs to sell it quickly. And she's like, hey, by this Saturday, I've got to sell this car, and I'll sell it for $50,000. I just need cash. They're going to foreclose on my house. I need money right now. I need to sell this car. Anybody have 50 grand? You can buy the car from me.

Okay.

And my dad, he's telling me, he's like, in 2007, 2008, this happened. You could do this for real. Okay? So he goes, Bridger, let's say we found a— we have this car and we have a mechanical— this car is legit. It's not like fake or, you know, it's not like whatever. It's legit. And we believe we can turn around and sell that car for $250,000 on Monday morning. Should still be a good deal for a Lamborghini Aventador. Okay? He goes, Bridger, and again, this example, go with me, and I'm going to ask you guys the same question. Could you find— you can't use any of your own money. Could you go find $50,000 by Saturday morning? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, no, could you find 50 grand? We're going to buy this car together, and we will turn around and sell it for $250,000. We'll make a $200,000 spread in 4 days. And yeah, you got to pay back your investor and stuff, but you'll make a good chunk of that. Could you find 50 grand? And I sat down, I was like, man, and I'm in college at the time. I was like, you know what? I might have to stay up all night. I'll fly around. I'm like, I'll go knock on doors. I'm going to make maybe $100 grand or $150 grand over the weekend. I was like, you know what? Yeah. I could talk to business owners. I could knock on doors, college professors, an aunt and uncle, a rich grandpa, somebody in my family, anybody. I was like, you know what? You know, if the deal was that good, it was guaranteed, it was checked out, like, you know what? Yeah, I could find $50 grand. Like, I'm going to make $100— let's say we split it 50/50 with our investor. I'm going to make $100 grand this weekend. Like, dang straight, dude. I'm doing this. Like, I'm a hustler. You know what I'm talking about? Like, that mentality. He's like, I'm doing this. He's like, cool. Anyone in the chat, you guys think you could find $50 grand by Saturday to do this deal? If it all checked out, you were going to flip this car for that much? So, he goes, okay, cool, Bridger. What if What if the car was $100,000? And I was like, oh man. So again, $100 grand, we're going to flip it. We'll make a $150,000 spread once we sell it, gain. We'll split that with them. Maybe we split it 50/50 with our investors. I'll take home $75 grand. And I was like, dude, I'm going to make $75 grand on the weekend. I bet you. It might be hard. I might struggle a little bit, but I bet I could find you $100 grand. And he goes, why? And I said, well, dude, the example you gave me, the deal was so good. It's such a juicy deal. It's a no-brainer. He goes, aha, there it is. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, 3 minutes ago, you were telling me you're inexperienced, you don't have a college degree, you don't have anything, but all of a sudden you believe that you could find $100,000 by Saturday morning.

Why?

Because the deal was so good. And he goes, the easiest way to launch a fund, step number 1 of a fund, is find an incredible deal. Now, by deal, I'm going to put this in quotes. It could literally be— we have actually guys in our group that do, they flip cars for their fund, which is pretty cool. This could be finding a real estate deal. It could be a strategy of how you trade options on the market or forex. But you find this incredible deal and you vet this deal out. You do all your due diligence. You go in, you find an incredible deal. It's the easiest way to cut through all the noise of the next steps. Is this kind of making sense so far? Type a yes in the chat. That's kind of making sense. Okay, find a credible deal. And by the way, in 2023, we're gonna talk about it in just a minute. Deals are here. Deals are happening right now. People are overleveraged. They need to dump properties and they're going through crazy stuff. And you can come in and scoop up things for pennies on the dollar, which is so cool. Okay, so now you found a great deal. What's the next step? Most people at this point, okay, Bridger, okay, let's hire the lawyers. Let's get stuff going. Let's get the lawyers going. And I go, hold on. Before you go hire lawyers, actually lawyers is step number 4. Before you go hire lawyers, go to step number 2. This is what I call the frame. Step number 2, you go frame out your entire fund. What we talked about earlier, are you going to charge a management fee, a pref, a catch-up, carried interest? How are you going to structure your fund? How are you going to put it together? How's it going to run? You can do that, the crazy international feeder structures. How are you going to put this together? And you boil it down all the way to a PowerPoint presentation. You then take that PowerPoint presentation, you go to step number 3, and you go and actually pitch investors. But wait, Bridger, hold on. I don't have legal documents done. How do I pitch investors without legal documents? This is how you do it. You go talk to an investor. Hey, Mrs. Johnson, hey, we've been friends for a while, whatever. I wanted to actually talk to you about something, or whatever it is. If they're a mentor, What I actually do is this. I can say, hey, I've got an idea for fun. I know, Ms. Johnson, you get pitched by everybody. Can you actually be like, if you give me 12 minutes, I want to practice pitching on you and just see if this is a good idea or not. Are you okay to give up 12 minutes? We'll hop on Zoom. I promise I'll be quick, but you look at so many deals. You're so good at looking at deals. Just let me know if I'm on the right track or not. A lot of times, you know what? This guy's a young hustler. You know what? I'll give him 12 minutes. So, I hop on, I pitch Mrs. Johnson on my entire fund, my pref, my catch-up, my deal. And Mrs. Johnson might give me some good feedback, and maybe I might have to go back and reframe some stuff. Maybe I change my management fee, or maybe I relook at the deal and I restart, and then I circle back. Now, if she loves it, she's like, actually, this is a really good deal. I say, you know what? We're actually going to do this. If we put this all together, get the lawyers done, could I put you down for a verbal commitment for $50,000 or $100,000? If everything checked out, she goes, yeah, if everything checks out, put me be down for a verbal commitment? So, what I do is I go get verbal commitments.

Aha.

Kind of cool, right? So, in our group, by the way, we help people do this. So, when you join Black Card, whatever, we help people go step 1, we help you find your deal. We vet it out. Our coaches come in and vet out your prep, your clatch-up. We actually practice pitching with you. And then our goal for everyone in our group, we try to get you $2 to $3 million of verbal commitments. And then and only then, You go to your lawyers, and then you keep iterating. You go back, you do this little loop, and then when you're ready, you go to step 4, you pay the money for the lawyers. And by the way, that's a reimbursable expense back to you. So, let's say lawyers are $30,000. We actually get it for a lot cheaper because, but most lawyers are $30,000. Whenever I walk into a lawyer's office, most people walk into a lawyer's office is what they do. They go, hey, I'm thinking about doing this deal. What's your thoughts on it? And lawyers will love to teach you. They'll love— they talk slow and they're methodical, and they will bill you $800 an hour to teach you about all the stuff I've taught you in the last hour, hour and a half. They'll bill you $800 an hour to teach you very slow and methodically. And then you go build your fund, and then an investor wants to change something, so you go back and then, oh yeah, I'll happily change that for you. Let's bill you by the hour. And that's why most funds are $30,000 to $50,000. Even I had a guy, he spent $120,000 on his fund, just documents. He kept changing it, going back and forth. When I walk into a lawyer's office, I walk in and I say, hey, I want XYZ with a drink and a side of fries. It's exactly what I want. And they're like, great. And I'm like, you bill by the hour? Cool. My last fund I set up for myself was like, I don't know, 10 grand maybe, because I save my lawyers a lot of time, which saves me a lot of money, because I know what I'm doing. I educate myself first on the fund. I practice it. I know the commitments. I know what I want. Because most funds do this. And actually, sometimes you get to step 3, I've done this on, I think, 3 fund ideas. I got to step 3, pitched investors, and they hated it. And they just didn't. And then the deal wasn't that. And I was like, oh yeah, that's kind of dumb. And I'll be frank with you, I've done this. I'm so happy I didn't pay lawyers $30 grand, because I got to step 3 and I found out it wasn't a good fund idea. So I said, okay, great. Let me go back to the drawing board. Let me find a new deal. All I wasted was a little bit of time. I didn't waste money back and forth with lawyers. Is that kind of making sense? This is the fund. The Fund Launch Formula is amazing for this. Okay? Any like ahas? Like, that's— guys, it's not that crazy. Again, I try to make things— that's a pretty complex thing, launching a fund— down to 4 pretty simple steps. So we help you with your frame. Like, this is actually a big piece, right? Your frame, your deal, you're getting commitments. And then finally, the lawyers. We actually— we have lawyers on our team that come in and can build the fund for you, all that kind of stuff, which is kind of cool. Okay, is that helpful? Is that helpful so far? Is this kind of making sense? Any questions? Actually, questions on this before I move on, before I get the whiteboard out. Uh, Mason, do you see any on here that I should— you can help me look through them. We got a lot of people on here live. Any questions here? Um, feeling good. So again, this can work for, um, you know, funds. And by the way, also, sorry, let me clarify what I do. Again, I go to my— I go to step 4, I get my lawyers, my legal, I get my PPM. and my LPA set up. And then I go back to— I got to go back and raise capital, and they got to sign the documents. So I then go back to step 3, and sometimes I make a little bit of iterations, but I hope to not do that. But then I go back to step 3 and get these guys to not be verbal, but then they become hard commitments, is what they're called. So they become hard commitments, they sign the fund, and then I can go launch the fund, do the deals, all that kind of stuff. Kind of cool, right? I interviewed so many fund managers that were startup entrepreneur fund managers. They follow this formula exactly. So we finally coined it in the Fund Launch Formula. People are worrying about just juggling stuff. Yep. So I will then, yeah, just like I said, I come back with my documents. I say, okay, Mrs. Johnson, remember like 3 weeks ago or a month ago when I talked about that deal? We're actually doing it. We got the documents. I'd love to walk through them with you. The deal's actually awesome. We got this other stuff we're putting together and it's really cool. You kind of have to re-pitch them a little bit because they might've forgotten earlier. Then you come back in. Hey, let's get you. Let's get you signed here. Cool. And then now they're officially signed into the fund.

Yeah.

Kind of cool, right?

Okay.

Let's go back here. Other questions while we're on the topic? Yeah. And those fees are. I mean, thirty grand is like still a good deal on a fund. People are talking about fees. My brother's law firm that he worked at previous to this, their minimum fund. was $250,000 just for lawyers. Pretty crazy. Most funds average like $500,000 to $1 million just for the paper, just for the legal docs. Isn't that kind of crazy? Now, again, this can be a reimbursable expense though. Once the fund is launched, this actually, it's a startup cost of the fund, so this can get reimbursed back to you as the fund manager. It's kind of cool. Okay. All right. Let's go back here. Is this helpful? Now I want to talk about 2023 and actually want to share a bunch of the stuff going on right now, charts, all that kind of stuff. Um, now people are asking about— that's launching your fund, okay? There's other steps. You're gonna have to set up, you know, your bank account, set up third-party administrators, set up like all the processes. This is to launch. And then there's all the stuff like managing and running your fund. We help you with all that too. But the launching your fund, all like— if you can summarize it out of 3 steps or 4 steps, that's it right there. It's kind of cool. Um, all right, let me share my screen. Hey, can you guys see that? Is that working? Mace, looking good?

Good, baby.

Okay, um, so again, that's right. Oh yeah, we got some cool stuff, um, coming up. I'll go through this quick though. We got, uh, events coming up in the future here, um, with our Black Card group. Um, you guys can join. So we do live events all the time. I'll just skip through that so we get the next content, but Again, I think there's a few spots still open for phone calls. We have our black card events coming up here in the future. We throw 3 black card events a year. We have one in an exotic location, usually one in Utah, and then one at Funnel Launch Live as well. So, you guys get to come to all those, which is pretty cool. The next one coming up is the one in Utah here pretty soon, which is pretty cool. Again, go check that out and then go check it out. So, anyways, we have a few more calls. If you guys want to grab calls, we'll do one more. Just on Tuesday. Oh, just Tuesday. So, calls are booked out. This is for next week. We have calls available. So, they've already been booking out calls. If somebody drops, there may be one or two that open up, but you can go check the link. But I believe it's only calls for next week. We've got a lot of people on this call that have wanted to book a call and learn about funds and learn about our Black Card group. They can come. If you fly in, you get to meet with me and our team. We get to work with you on your fund, or you just want to do a course, or we have free stuff. We have live events. Whatever you need, dude, we're here to help you. We want to help you with your fund. Um, discounts that Black Card students get with like NAV and other— Oh yeah, so it's—

what's—

yeah, people are asking about that. So it's pretty cool. So in Black Card, actually, Black Card's our top coaching group. Um, we actually have a lot— like a legal team that comes in and it's all included in your cost of Black Card. We have the legal team that comes and does the, the legal setup for you. We actually get huge discounts. So what we do, just so you're aware, we go to these law firms and third-party administrators and tax firms and audit firms and we say, hey, Hey, we've got a big group. If we refer clients to you, can you give us a group discount? And they're like, well, sure. So we get 10%, 25%, 30% off on a lot of these, either whether it's a third-party admin, whether it's an audit. Legal actually is included. We actually just included it in the Black Card program, which is pretty cool. Okay, so you get all those. Um, we have discounts on to Kaplan if you guys want to get your like licenses and stuff. We have discounts there. We have partnerships with, I 4, maybe 5. We might have just added another one. I think it's 5 law firms now. So, if you need international fund structure, we have partnerships there. They give you— that one law firm gives a 50% discount if you want to do a crazy international structure. It's pretty wild. So, they have discounts there. We have our live events. We have coaching. We actually design your pitch deck for you in Black Card. So, if you have a pitch deck that wants to get— you want to get it beautified, make it look really pretty, we have a designer actually comes in and designs your pitch deck for you. You actually come on and you pitch me and you pitch our other coaches your fund, and we'll give you direct feedback on how you pitch, how your deck's put together so that you're polished. And once you go out to step 3 and raise capital, you've practiced 20 times pitching your fund and you're polished, you're ready to go. You don't get surprised by some random question. For example, an investor will ask you, hey, what happens if you die, Bridger, on your fund? If you haven't heard that before and you don't have an appendix slide, you're like, oh crap, I don't know what happens if I die. We train our people, questions like that, we'll train you with questions and you go, oh, it's in my appendix. We actually have a whole clause, a key man thing, a change of role, we actually dilute the whole fund and we actually give money back to everybody. We've already got it planned out. Oh, okay, cool. A lot of investors will have 10 questions like that or 15 or 20 questions that are hard, and we actually practice those questions with you to make sure you're polished, you're ready to go, You know exactly what not every investor will ask, but a majority of investors will ask you, that you're just sharp and on the point. So you don't miss the chance. If you get a chance to talk to a huge investor, you're polished, ready to go. Your deck looks amazing. You got legal docs done. You practice with us, and boom, you go out and launch a fund. That's how we've had a lot of fun. We have 1 student fund over $1 billion, 4 student funds in Black Card. These are funds in Black Card, 4 over $100 million, and 54 funds between $1 and $50 million. It's pretty cool. And then you get to hang out and hop on a Slack channel and talk and be in a mastermind group with those fund managers. So, I go in there, I'm like, yo, hey, what's all my Forex people seeing? We're seeing all these trades with the US dollar, rubles, euros. What are you guys seeing? They come on and share all their, oh yeah, we're seeing all these trade positions, all this cool stuff. You get to learn from a network of fund managers, which is so freaking cool. It's like my selfish reason I love Black Card is I get to hang out with fund managers that are actively running funds in different areas of the country that maybe I don't know about. Hey, how's real estate going on in Florida? Oh, we've got 5 fund managers that do real estate in Florida. They're going to tell me exactly the ins and outs of the Florida market. I mean, that's pretty valuable to hang out with a couple hundred fund managers in Black Card. It's pretty cool. So, all right, I digress. I think calls are getting booked. So, my guys have opened up more times. They're like, anyways, you guys are amazing. So, congrats on being amazing. They keep telling me, these guys are awesome. We want to talk to more of them. So, They keep opening up calls. So again, last call, funlaunch.com/call. All right, let's talk about what this means for 2023. Does that sound good? Ooh, I got some economic data, all that kind of stuff for you guys. All right, let's dive into it. So looking at 2023, I pulled a lot of these from Fred. You'll see the charts, and we're going to go kind of quick. Drop questions if you have them, but I'm going to go kind of quick through this.

Okay?

But I think it's going to paint an interesting picture of what we're seeing right now in 2023. Okay. These are credit cards and other revolving loans. Okay. So, this is all the way back to the year 2000, all the way up to right now. You see a big— this is, again, credit card and other revolving loans. So, yeah, 2008, you then had a major spike in the amount of credit people took on here. You then had COVID. You had actually a big decline. You'll see in a second, savings rates jump. So, this gray bar is going to be COVID. This gray bar will be the Great Financial Crash. And then right now though, we are at all-time highs for credit card and other revolving loans. Even with 2021, 2022, things slowing down, I mean, this thing has barely even blipped. Even rates going up, people don't care apparently. This is motor vehicle loans owned and securitized. This is, again, only for the last 10 years here. Pretty much just straight line. I mean, COVID, people love new cars. COVID did not slow down car loans. And we are at, again, all-time highs on billions of dollars of car loans, which is kind of crazy. With rates going up, a lot of them are on adjustable rates, so their payments are going up like crazy. Additionally, this is personal consumption expenditures. 10 years, pretty much a straight line. COVID dropped and went right back to that same line we were on before, and actually has gone up a little bit. All-time highs, personal consumption expenditures. So, the consumer spending has not dropped at all, even with Recession warnings and inflation, and all this stuff, personal consumption's all-time highs. This is a pretty interesting chart. And by the way, sorry if this is too much, we're going to paint this all together in a second, but this is consumer debt service payments as a percent of disposable income. So again, debt service, this is just the debt percentage people are paying as a percent of their disposable income. So right here, you have 5%, 5.5%, all the way up to 6% up here. That's the percent they're paying per year as a percent of their disposable income, okay, of debt service. So debt, you can kind of see a huge drop in COVID. This is a lot for moratoriums. You actually couldn't pay your debts off, or they didn't want you to. Now we're seeing those back again to all-time highs, especially with interest rates going up. You have that as well. This is so interesting. You ready for this? Personal saving rates. 2.4%, the lowest it's been in a decade. Actually, it's funny enough, in COVID, they went to 33%, I think 34%, highest it's been since World War II. That's how scared people were in COVID. They have dumped all that money back into the market. 2.4% lowest. This is actually the 20-year chart. I believe it's the lowest it's been in 20 years. Pretty wild. Okay? So, you have Record spending, record loans for cars, record debt service. And you can see the consumer getting willed. That's why a lot of people are talking about this consumer is going to get tapped out. There's only so much debt and so little savings you can have where there's a day of reckoning. So that's why a lot of people online are talking about this recession's coming, all that kind of stuff. That's what they're referencing, usually this. Okay. So, Now, can I start a business or fund? Like, what does this mean for me right now? We're going to talk about a few examples of how this works. Okay. And I'm going to go fast. We'll do a Q&A right after this. You guys ask whatever questions you want. Can I start a business or fund during a downturn? I've actually done a ton of research. I'm a geek. I geek out on funds. Like, the weekend comes around, I'm like, I'm going to go research fund managers, like what they did and how they did it.

Okay.

So I actually did research on some of the largest fund managers in the world. It's pretty interesting in relation to recessions. So, let me show you an example. So, for example, Warren Buffett, greatest investor of all time. Do you guys know he started when he was 26 years old, started his first fund, raised $105,000 in 1956, and then 1961, he said this was his big investment that changed his whole world. They made a million-dollar investment into a windmill company. Pretty crazy. Now, look at these dates in relation to a recession. So, you started in 1956, just 2 years later, he goes into recession. You would think that, man, it's a bad time to be in business. Just start a brand new business, you go right into recession. He then buys a company near the end of a recession. Pretty interesting, right? Now, what's interesting about recessions, by the way, the entire thing becomes a recession. A lot of times you don't know you're in a recession until you're halfway through it. So, for example, the technical definition of recession is 2 quarters of economic decline. Now, the White House has tried to change that definition, but for example, if you had 2 quarters of economic decline, you wouldn't know you were in a recession until you finished the second quarter, and then a month later they come out with the data. So, 7 months in, you wouldn't even know you're in a recession until 7 months have already happened. The whole thing becomes a recession. Same with a bear market. So, the definition of a bear market's down 20%. You don't know you're in a bear market until though you've hit, you're down 21%, and then the entire thing becomes a bear market. So, we've been in actually a bear market already over a year, because when the market started declining, it was about a year ago, a year and a half, somewhere in that range. So, we've declined that much. Does that make sense? The entire thing. So, sometimes you don't even know you're in a recession, and then you don't even know when you're coming out of a recession either. So, he makes this investment in the middle of a recession, essentially. Now we know it's the tail end of the recession, but still, he didn't know that. You don't know that when you're in it. Sometimes you don't know. Jim Rogers, he's actually speaking at our event, which is so cool. 30 years old, co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros. In 1973, raised $6 million when he's 30 years old. Some people think like, oh man, I got to be on Wall Street for 30 years. I got to be 45 years old, gray hair to launch a fund. You can do that, but you don't have to. This is the same Quantum Fund that broke the Bank of England. You know, this famous fund of Wall Street, Jim Rogers, one of the co-founders with George Soros. Crazy. He's coming to speak at our event. He started the fund 1973, the beginning of a recession. Ends up being one of the most successful funds of all time. Interesting, right? You would think that'd be the worst time to start a fund. It might be the best time to start a fund. Pretty interesting, right? Another example, Ray Dalio, 1975, 26 years old, started Bridgewater. Pretty young. And then quoted by an article on him, 1987 stock market crash was the major turning point for Dalio. So first off, he started his fund in a recession, 1975 is a recession. The oil crisis happened with OPEC. Kind of what's happening today. We have a little bit of an oil crisis. 1987 was the major— the crash is what Ray Dalio says. He's like, that's what made Bridgewater what it is today, was the crash. Smart money managers love what's going on. They love volatility. They love the dips. That's what produces some of the best funds of all time, is dips like this. So, a little example before I go to the next one. I talked to my dad about this. And my dad was like, he— so back in 2010, he had friends calling him up because he was in real estate, real estate fund. And they're like, hey, John, um, dude, I'm so sorry, man. I just want to call. I want to let you know I'm thinking about you. I love you, dude. Like, it must be tough for you. And my dad's like, what are you talking about? He goes, well, I've heard you're in real estate. I've heard real estate's really tough right now. And he's like, man, like, I just want to let you know I think about you. If you ever need anything, let me know. And my dad's like, dude, this is the best time in the history of the world. to be in real estate. He's like, you couldn't pick, in the last 100 years, I couldn't pick a better time to be in real estate than 2010. And his friends were like, oh, okay. He's like, dude, we're killing it, man. This is the— we're so excited. He goes, I'm working like crazy. It's the most exciting thing I've ever done. We're buying up deals on the cheap. It's so awesome. And they're like, oh, it's pretty interesting. Isn't that kind of an interesting perspective? Right now, people in the crypto space, like, Bridger, man, crypto's tough. Sorry, dude. I'm like, no, dude, we are so excited. We are buying crypto so cheap right now. It's amazing. That's what I'm talking about here. Last example, Jerome Kilberg, 51 years old, so kind of older, started KKR. KKR is one of the largest firms in the world for private equity. They own most of the brands that you guys will see around. A lot of them are owned by KKR.

Crazy.

He started at the end of a recession. So, again, we have people that started at the beginning of recession, middle recession, or end of recession. Right now, I don't know exactly where we're at in that cycle. People predict whatever, all that kind of stuff. I don't know. We're going to talk about it actually in a second. But the biggest thing is they had capital ready to deploy in these downturns. They had a fund. They had capital. They didn't wait. They deployed. They leaned into the challenge, and it produced some of the wealthiest individuals to ever walk the earth, is what produced out of a downturn. Right now, guys, this is the time. People, we've been waiting for this for years. When's the crash coming? It's like now. We are in it right now, which is so freaking awesome. Great example, Sir John Templeton. This guy's incredible. He, in 1939, borrowed a few thousand dollars to invest in US stocks under a dollar. This is in the middle of the war, or early in the war. And then during the war, he invested more. He bought any stock under a dollar, just because that's what he could afford. He wanted a diverse spread. This made him a billionaire, because he predicted the United States would win the war. And that's— he just bet on US stocks, and he was right. They won the war. He's known— this is the old— this is a guy that's known for saying, avoid the herd, buying when there's blood in the streets. He then gave over $1 billion to charities, died when he was 1,895 years old. Incredible human being. Tony Robbins talks about this guy in his books, all because he leaned into a recession or a downturn. Okay? Now, take everything they say with a grain of salt. So, real quick, I want to talk about— anybody remember this? Bill Ackman on CNBC. Take everything they think. So, right now, you go on the news, people love to talk about doom and gloom, recession, Like, craziness. Take everything they say with a grain of salt. They might be pushing their own agenda. They might be trying to change Jerome Powell to change rates with the Fed, or they might be trying to change what the White House does by going on a news station. So, for example, this happened in our life. One of the greatest trades of all time, in my opinion, happened during COVID Do you guys remember this? This was crazy. So, Bill Ackman gets on CNBC. This is March of 2020. So, he gets on CNBC, and this is right— remember when COVID was coming out, and you're like, well, I've heard about this virus. Is it bad? Is it not bad? What's going on? This is before the NBA shut down, before anything. This is right at the tipping point area. Bill Ackman, who's one of the largest well-known fund managers in the world, and you guys maybe don't know him, I know him, he's a crazy dude, runs this huge fund. He gets on CNBC and says, hell is coming. He goes, I've already been in lockdown for a month. He goes, this thing is going to tear apart markets. I mean, he just talks doom and gloom. He's scared. He's like, man, this is going to be crazy. Bill Ackman, a lot of people think, triggered the major sell-off of 2020. If you guys remember this chart, it dropped drastically. The NBA shut down, all these sports teams, they shut it down, March Madness, everything shut down. You guys remember this? Market went crazy down. All triggered, in my opinion, by Bill Ackman on this one interview. You're like, man, this is one of the largest hedge fund managers in the world, he's scared to death? I'm scared too. Little did everyone know, Bill Ackman had a $27 million short on the market. Right here, this is from Forbes. He made $2.6 billion from that one trade. Freaking crazy. Okay, one of the greatest trades of all time happened in about a 3-week time period. That was about 3 weeks. That's how far the market fell. He had a $27 million short on the market, made $2.6 billion in 3 weeks. Come on, people. Freaking insane. Number one, coolest trade ever, in my opinion. One of the best trades of all time. Number 2 though, take everything they say with a grain of salt. When you're watching the news, when you're watching other stuff, and these, like, the CEO of BlackRock or Blackstone, they come say something publicly, they might be trying to push an agenda that helps their fund. Okay? Take things, watch what they're doing, do what they do, not what they say. Okay? Is that kind of helpful? Kind of a cool trade though, right? Warren Buffett right now as well, he was sitting on tons of cash. He's now dumping. He's buying so much stuff during this crash anyways. Watch what they're doing, how they're doing. Find asymmetrical risk. Now, I'm going to talk about this, and we'll do Q&A right after this. Find asymmetrical risk. You might be sitting there like, well, Bridger, I know Pete Davidson could date Kim Kardashian, but what about me? How do I break through that glass ceiling? In all funds, what you're trying to do is find asymmetrical risk. There's this concept called the efficient market theory. The efficient market theory says that everything in markets is perfectly priced in. It's all perfect. And every data that's known, there's no way to find a strategic advantage in a market. And if you look at the statistics of fund managers, people like me and you that outperform markets over and over and over again, the odds are like a trillion to one that that's even capable with the efficient market theory, which I think is a false theory. What we do as fund managers, we find asymmetrical risk. You've probably heard before, like high risk, high reward, right? Low risk, low reward. In the fund world, that's That's not always the case. We try to find— asymmetrical risk means you have a high amount of return for a low amount of risk. That's asymmetrical risk versus reward ratio. Is that making sense? Now you're like, Bridger, well, how do you do that? So, for example, let's say me and you are going to go buy a business. We're going to go buy this cool business, and let's say there's a certain amount of risk associated with reward for that business. We're just right here. So, cool. We go buy it. We have a risk and reward level. However, let's just say we got Elon Musk to be our business partner. So, Elon Musk now joins. What do you think happens to the risk versus reward levels of that opportunity? If you were investing in that project, do you think the odds of success go up or down? Probably up, right? What do you think the amount of risk? Because Elon Musk, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, the risk probably goes down a little bit. All of a sudden, just because we added Elon Musk, we now have asymmetrical risk versus reward. He was the difference. Is that making sense? Is he following along so far? In our funds, typically, unless you have a crazy AI bot or algorithm, we, me and you, are the asymmetrical risk. We are the biggest difference of a fund. Maybe real estate, there's a certain risk versus reward, but maybe you know the market so well, you know how to do properties in this area so well that you have relatively low risk for a pretty high reward. I'm going to take a chance on that. I actually think entrepreneurship is an asymmetrical risk. You can have relatively low risk, you have bankruptcy, all these things that capture you, but you have huge upside, huge reward when you're an entrepreneur. It's asymmetrical risk. The biggest thing that me and you can do is invest in ourselves. We become asymmetrical risk. If you can become more like, in that scenario, like an Elon Musk type, that can come in and lower the amount of risk and up the side of reward, that's worth it. So, for example, I'll just tell you straight up, I actively— that's why congratulations to you guys for staying on this long. We're going to do Q&A in just a second, but you're investing in yourself. Me and you are the biggest asymmetrical risk that we can provide to a fund or an investment. Me and Mason have spent, we just totaled up, we've spent $200,000, get this, on courses, coaching, mentorship. Because if I find somebody that's done something I've done before, dude, I'll just copy you. Let me just— show me the path. I want the shortcut. We've spent $265,000 on coaches, mentoring, events, that kind of stuff. A quarter of a million dollars on coaching. You might say, that's crazy. That's so dumb. I would never spend that money. Well, okay. I spent it, and we just raised $10 million for a fund. Our business has done $17 million in sales. In 3 years. So, was it worth it or not worth it? What's the return on my investment? I thought it was pretty good. If I could go back in time, I'd spend it 2 times over. That's how good it was. We just joined a mastermind. It was $100,000— get this— $150,000 for 1 year mastermind. $150 grand. The reason me and Mason joined it, why? Because the dude that runs it, he runs a business exactly what we want to grow Funnel Launch into. We were like, dude, well, he's already done it. Do you think if he gives us some tips, tricks, some shortcuts, that we'll make more than $150,000 next year, and we will have asymmetrical risk on our business? And we were like, yes. Okay, it's easy. It's an investment. That's all it is. I'm a huge believer in educating yourself and investing in yourself. And I believe that's where I'm at today. And I will continue to invest in myself because I know it sharpens the axe. It gets me to bigger rooms. It gets me proximity is power, the whole freaking thing. So, on that note, we're going to open up Q&A right now. I want to answer some questions from you guys. You guys are amazing people. Last call we got, I think they opened up a couple— did they open up a couple more spots? I think for you guys, we keep filling up spots. So, if you guys want to learn about funds, how we worked, all that kind of stuff, you want to come to our events, you want to grab those discounts, if you guys want to have us work on your fund with you or walk you through how a fund is and just see if it works for you, you guys can hit the link below. I'm going to give you a 1-minute here. Grab that link. Okay, we got 7 spots left. That's it. Okay, 7 spots left. Okay, so it is getting shut out. So 7 spots left. Um, final call here, funlaunch.com/call, and we're gonna open up Q&A. Grab that link. Mason will drop in the chat as well, and you guys can see it there. But grab that link, funlaunch.com/call, and, um, go grab 7 spots left. If you guys want to talk to our team here, they're opening up now like late night calls and weekend calls just to help you guys out. Again, our mission is to help more regular people launch and scale investment funds that go and change humanity. It's our mission here at Fund Launch, and we want to help you guys do this. I want to help people launch funds. If you want my help or partner with me, again, I run an active fund. I'm now a partner on 6 different funds. We can help you across the board. I think more people need to understand about funds. More people like me and you need to understand how this game works. This is not reserved for the Ivy League elite. It's not reserved for the Wall Street people. Like, people can— regular people can do this. We're living proof that regular people can get in this game and win this game and actually do well. And it's so freaking awesome. Okay, so you guys are amazing. Final call, Mason, we'll drop that in there. I think 7 spots left. I'm sure they're gonna be gone here in just a second. So grab those calls and we'll go from there. Now I want to answer some questions for a minute and let's go into here. Now we have a lot of people on live. If you can, Send me questions on the Q&A, not the chat. So use the Q&A function. Send me questions on the Q&A. It's easier. And then also, we are— we actually are live on YouTube and other spots. Mason will grab questions from other places as well, but put them in the Q&A section. That'll just help me a little bit. Yeah, cool. Okay, let me go. Let me pull up my screen here. You guys ready? Drop some questions in. Let's pull them open. I'm going to pull up my whiteboard. Boom, bada bing, here we go. By the way, has this been useful? You guys like this call today? And my voice is like gone. It's been— I've been like yelling at the screen for an hour and a half or whatever, how long we've been on here. But, um, okay, hope you guys like it. Hopefully it's useful. Um, all right, share my screen here. Screen sharing is paused. What are the responsibilities of a fund manager? Ah, good question. So day-to-day responsibilities, um, great question. Um, do they say what type of fund? Day-to-day of like a fund? Yeah, okay. That's what's— it's kind of— this is kind of cool about running funds. Um, now I'll say launching a fund is, is hard. This is not for the faint of heart. This is not just like, oh, set up a little YouTube like channel and make some money. Setting up a fund is a serious endeavor, by the way.

Real estate.

You said real estate? Okay, cool. Well, I'll share a few examples, but it's hard to set up and launch a fund. Now, once a fund is running though, it's usually not that crazy. Now, it depends on your fund type. So some funds are— so actually, this will help answer a lot of questions too. So I'm going to give you a framework, then we're going to answer your question in a second, but let me give you a framework first. So inside of a fund, There are, in my opinion, 3 main roles inside of a fund. Over here on the left, this is what I call the expert investor. This is the person that's really good at crypto or real estate or trading or buying businesses. This is the guy that sits in his basement all day and trades options. In the middle circle, we have what we call the fund manager. This person's good at legal operations, SEC compliance. This is what I'm good at. I'm really good at this middle circle. And then finally, we have what I like to call the capital raiser or money raiser. This person is very well connected to money and can help raise capital. Typically, the person who's good at investing oftentimes doesn't know how to run a fund and/or how to raise capital and vice versa. I had a guy last year call me, he's like, Bridger, I've got 2 billionaire friends that love me. They want to invest in my deals, but I have no clue how to run a fund or even what to invest into. Can I partner with you or one of your teams? I was like, Dude, you got 2 billionaire friends that want to invest? Come on in, dude. Let's do it. And he was like, this guy's a natural-born capital raiser. So typically, you bring in partners that have different skill sets. Now, you could have 3 people that do this. You could have 2 people that cover these roles. You could have 1 person that covers all these roles, but all these 3 roles need to be filled, if that makes sense. And then eventually, you'll probably become a slice of one of these 3 things, if that makes sense. So, for example, in my crypto fund, My partner, Dan, he's really good at crypto. I'm really good at this part. And then we both help do this together. We both raise capital together, because I'm actually a decent capital raiser. Does that make sense? So back to the day-to-day of a fund manager, what does it look like? So when setting your— it depends on your fund. So the expert investor person, these guys are usually looking through new deals. New deals or servicing like existing deals, right? So if you're in real estate, you're helping run the current properties or and/or you're looking at new deals. Okay, fund manager section. This is helping if there's like new entities or legal contracts need to be set up. This is, uh, you know, filing like your quarterly reports. This is making sure that you're getting right like evaluations. And then in capital raises, these guys are going to parties and events and meeting high net worth individuals and setting up, trying to raise capital. So depending on your fund though, it doesn't take, once it's running, a lot. Now, some funds you're always trying to grow and you can spend a lot of time on them. Some funds that I know, they work on it probably 10 hours a week once it's running. Venture capital funds, they have a call they do every Friday, They allow new people to pitch them on new deals. And then anybody that wants to raise capital, every Tuesday, they do a call on Tuesdays. Anybody who wants to invest, they do a call. You can talk to them about their fund. And then the fund manager, on the quarter mark, they do some stuff on the quarter. It's not that crazy. Other funds that are day trading, every single day, they're on the charts, they're day trading. It's a lot more intensive over here. And then some funds, you're always raising new capital, and you're launching new funds, and you're scaling. So, So, it can come down to your level, but is that helpful a little bit? Kind of see the roles. And by the way, it's very rare that someone's good at all these things. So, find partners, be in a group, find a mastermind group. That's what actually we offer. When people join our group, we say, hey, are you a fund manager? Are you a capital raiser? Are you an expert investor? And if you're, what are you looking for as well? We've actually had a number of people in our Black Card group partner up. They're like, hey, oh, I'm really good at raising capital. You're good at real estate. Let's partner together. And let's do this. So anyways, I'm a partner guy. I like doing partnerships. This is the fastest way to launch a fund, and I think the best way to break up the responsibilities. People are wondering how these 3 are compensated. How are they compensated? Great question. Let me go green. Okay, it depends. Like all business, this is like, it's kind of a question of what should my business partner get? How much equity percentage? And again, that comes down to negotiations. That comes down to who's bringing the value to the table, all that kind of stuff. And every partnership will be different. Now, I want to give you though kind of a framework. I think all of these partners should be incentivized by equity. And so when I— a lot of funds that I've researched and looked at, it's not perfect, but about a third of the equity goes here, about a third goes here, and about a third goes here. Now, in some cases, this is 2, maybe 3 people here, This is 10 people, let's say, and this is 1 person, but still a third of the equity goes to all 10 of these people, a third goes to these 3 people, and a third goes to this 1 person, just for example. But it's about a third, a third. Now, sometimes that tweaks. And also, usually, if everyone helps raise capital and everybody helps look at investments, usually in a startup fund, everyone's wearing multiple hats. But if I was able to segment it, I would probably say about a third each. Is that helpful? A little bit. It's not always perfect, and as you grow, that'll change and fluctuate. But again, that's a rule of thumb. It's not perfect. Again, it's not perfect. Sometimes this is 50% and this is 25-25, you know what I mean? Um, just depends. But about a third is about an average. Good questions, you guys. Um, thanks for— yeah, any other, Mason, just call them out. That'll be helpful for me so I don't have to look at all of them. Yeah, but I was wondering how capital calls actually work. What's the process like when you're actually doing that? Yeah, let's talk about capital calls. So let's talk about the actual nuts and bolts of a fund. So a couple different— well, let's talk about this for a second. So there's— it's funny, I get a question, I have to explain 3 things first to answer the question. So here we go. Hopefully this is helpful to you guys. There's 2 different types of funds. It's called an open-ended fund, and there's a closed-ended fund. Open-ended funds start and they run indefinitely. A lot of hedge funds run this way. Our crypto fund is an open-ended fund. And what happens is investors can come in and out of this on closing. So let's imagine this is a timeline. It's like, let's say every 6 months. So this would be 6 months, 12, you have 18. So every 6 months, new investors can join and old investors can leave if they'd like. And you set up the rules. Maybe you— maybe they can only leave every quarter. Again, you write the Bible, which is cool. But just for example, that's how it could work in an open-end fund. And you just run indefinitely. At the end of every year, you do distributions, you pay out indefinitely. Okay. On open-end funds though, you need— you are providing— you need liquidity. Kind of differences. Let's see, my pencil's not working anymore.

Come on.

There we go. Because if investors want to leave, you got to be able to provide. So a lot of stock funds, like, I'll just sell some stock positions and I'll pay you out as an investor. Close-ended funds are typically like in real estate funds. So you have the same timeline here, but you'll say, hey, we're going to run a 7-year fund. We're going to raise capital for the first 18 months. We're going to raise capital right here. As we raise capital, we're going to start deploying. We're going to deploy, and you can't pull your money out because it's deployed. It's in real estate. We can't just sell the real estate for you to get a part of it. It's deployed. You can't. It's a closed-ended fund. We deploy, and then by year, let's say by year 5, we're going to start selling. And as we start selling, we'll then start sending capital back through distributions to you in the fund.

Okay?

So again, open-ended versus closed-ended fund. You can decide how you want to run your fund, again, in your LP and PPM. So back to capital calls. Typically in open-end funds, when someone comes in, you call 100% of the capital day one. So if an investor committed $1 million to you, you would put that like, okay, we're doing closing at the 6-month mark. It's called a closing. All $1 million is due that day, and we're going to start managing your account. In a real estate fund, Let me, uh, I'll put it down here kind of below. Okay, so let's just say it's a real estate fund here. Real estate. Well, we don't need all that capital day one because we got to find projects. It takes a little bit of time to find the right stuff. So what we'll do is we'll do smaller closings in here. So let's say you initially got pitched and you committed $1 million, and we've raised, um, by this closing— well, yeah, that's fine. Well, yeah, I'll just use it. We have $10 million raised and you have raised $1 million of that, or you're— as an investor, $1 million. So let's say we come right here, we're deploying, and we found a property that we like and it's a $2 million property. Okay? We're going to call down $2 million of capital. So we'll actually issue— what usually happens, we issue a notice and it's like, hey, you have 10 days To wire the money in. And here's the wire instructions. And we're calling down 20% of capital. So, if you invested— so $10 million, that's $2 million, right? If you invested $1 million, that would be $200,000. It's all pro rata based on your percentage of the fund. Does that make sense? So, this investor puts in $200,000, the rest of the investors put in the total of $2 million. We then go buy the property for $2 million. And then let's say 2 months later, we found another property. And it's $3 million. Okay. We're going to issue another capital call. We're calling down another 30% to total 50% of the fund will be called down. We're going to call the capital down. We send a notice, the wire comes in. That would now be $5 million total. And then this investor would put another $300,000 in, which would total $500,000. Does that make sense? So you can do— and then as you're— you can actually do this while you're raising money. So in these little check marks I put right here, right there, you can actually do closings and start buying properties here. You can buy properties here. You can buy— keep buying properties and do closings, and then you, um, keep raising money, rebalance the fund. I can dive into that if you want me to. Um, that's kind of how you do a capital call, to answer this question. Is that helpful? Okay, other questions? Pull this up here. Good questions, you guys. Can you raise funds from non-accredited investors? Yeah, so can I raise from non-accredited investors? Um, it depends. Okay, it depends on your fund type. So, um, we have other— I won't get too deep into this. We have other fun— other videos to talk about this, and actually in our course and stuff we talk all about this. But you've got, um, right here— so sorry, real quick before I draw this out. Let's talk about— we have non-accredited investors, we have accredited investors, we have qualified clients, and then qualified purchasers. This is from the SEC. Okay, non-accredited investors just don't fit in any category. Accredited investor has a million-dollar net worth, or they make $200,000 a year, or $300,000 a year with a spouse. 1, 2, 3 is an easy way to remember that. And then also, they can take a test now and other stuff. Qualified client, $2.2 million. Qualified purchaser, $5 million net worth, excluding their home, or a $25 million entity, an entity that has $25 million in assets. So you have these different tiers of funds or of investor types. So the question was, can— these guys are less than. They don't fit in any of these categories. Most people fit in any of these. So over here, we've got different— these are the most common fund types I'm going to explain to you. We have Regulation D-506, and then you've got B and C. I know it's confusing, but that's the name of the SEC filing with these. They're called Regulation D-506 or 506. Okay, in a 506, you can raise— well, we won't go through all the differences, but these are typically— you can raise from 35 non-accrediteds and up to where you're going to file a sub-filing, which is— anyways, I don't want to dive too deep, but there's sub-filings here called a 3 exemption, 3, and a 3. Hey, what the heck? We're on here. We might as well go through it. Let's just do it. 3. Okay, so you're going to pick if you're doing a fund like my fund, for example, is a Reg D 506. We'll talk about a C in a minute. I can raise and then it's 3 exemption. Okay, so let me just walk through this. Sorry, 35 non-accredited and then this says unlimited accredited. Okay. And then you cannot advertise this fund, a 506. That's why most funds, you don't see billboards, you don't see them running ads, because they literally by law cannot advertise their fund. A 506, you have to have only accredited investors, and then you can advertise, but you have to verify That they're accredited investors. Over here, they self-verify. So meaning in a 506 on the left here, a 506, I just sent a little paper and you just— I said, are you an accredited investor? And you check the box, yes, I'm an accredited investor. Okay, and I don't have to check on it. I just— we trust it. You have the liability. Okay. In a 506, I have to verify that you're an accredited investor. I actually need to— I have to get maybe your CPA or a lawyer that signs Joe Smith as an accredited investor, signed by the CPA. It's not that hard, but there's a few things that you can do that. So in my fund currently, I have to verify every investor that comes to me as an accredited investor. Now, the reason I do these is because— and then, sorry, and then I'll go to a 3 exemption. Underneath that, a 3 exemption limits me to 99 investors. A 3 is for real estate, and a 3 is 1,999 investors, but all of them need to be qualified purchasers. Interesting, right? So back down here, all of them have to be qualified purchasers. If I'm a 3 fund, I can raise from 1,999 investors. This real estate fund It's actually kind of a cool exemption. 999 investors for a real estate fund, and they just need to be, I believe, accredited or above. Okay. And then 3 is 99 investors, and they need to be accredited as well. So most funds raise— that's why most funds— and the reason you use these exemptions is because they give you a lot of leeway and a lot of flexibility. They're actually really awesome. This is a great exemption. You're exempt from filing like a public company. You're exempt from all these reporting. It's really great. That's why most— 99% of funds fall under Reg D 506, 506, and then they use a 3, 3, or 3 exemption. Kind of cool, right? Um, this is— hopefully this is helpful, you guys. Am I going too far? Is this good, you guys? We see you guys following along. Okay, so, um, I'm giving you guys kind of the, the secret sauce, I guess, a little bit here. So, um, on here, again, these are for accrediteds only. Okay, um, all of these different types. So let's go down to other— somebody asked, can I raise from non-accredited? That's why most funds use this. And now you'll kind of get a reason why. A different fund type is what's called a Reg A, and another one's called a Reg CF. So we have Reg Ds, we have a Reg A, and then Reg CF stands for crowdfunding. You guys seen crowdfunding? Grant Cardone does a crowdfunding platform. Fundrise does a crowdfunding platform. How these work, we won't go into all specifics, but kind of some general rules for both of these, actually. So I'm going to put a little— well, let me erase. I'll erase this line here. So how both these work— oh, where's my pencil? You can raise money from non-accredited investors, but you have to pre-identify assets. And you have to fully disclose. And it's similar to running a public company. If any of you have ever worked for a public company or ran a public company, these— I did finance for a public company in Silicon Valley for a while. These statements are scrutinized like crazy. You have to publish perfect. You have to have things audited. You need an army of accountants to do this. to fully disclose like a public company, and you have to pre-identify assets. Up here, if I run a real estate fund, a 506, I can just say, hey, we're raising $5 million. We plan to go buy properties over the next 18 months. It's called a blind pool. We haven't found— we found maybe 1 or 2 assets. We plan to go find another dozen of these, but we haven't identified them yet. In a Reg A or Reg CF, you have to identify the assets, get due diligence done, and then file. So, if you go to Cardone Capital, he has identified assets they've already done the due diligence on, they're raising capital for right now, which is fine. Sometimes you lose those deals too, because it takes too long to raise money. This is going to cost you a lot more of maintenance. Cost is way up. You need to hire— Grant Cardone has a lot of accounts. You need to go big if you're going to do this. Additionally, so, Reg A, or this is called— they call it a mini IPO. what they call this. And this is crowdfunding. Both can work. Additionally, we looked at the stats. It was like the average investment on a Reg CF is like $460, something like that. That's the average investment. So to raise $1 million, you need— somebody do the math for me. It's like 15,000 investors or something. Something like that, right? Somebody do the math for me. I'll just put $15,000 though. $15,000, let's just say, for example, whatever you're raising for, that's a lot of tax statements. That's a lot of phone calls. That's a lot of people bugging you about, oh man, can I get my money out? Or when does it close? That's a lot of customer service. Again, I mentioned this cost. Your monthly cost to run this is high. And so, for example, in my 506, we raised $1 million. We actually have 2 investors that have just given us $1 million each. It's like 2 people I got to deal with for $2 million, or I could deal with 15,000 people who are— and you guys know the old statement, it's funny, I ran a fund, my first fund, I took a— so sorry, side story. We had a non-accredited investor. I think we did this 506 one over here. He gave me $5,000 for one of our— we were raising some stuff. It was on a Thursday. He calls me next Monday. He's like, hey, how's the 5 grand doing? I'm like, it's good. We're just getting started. No worries. He calls me on Friday. Hey, I got my mortgage coming up. How long do you think I'll get the money back? What's going on? I'm like, dude, this is not right for you. You're out. And I sent him his money back. He was such a headache the first week. My other investor that gave me a quarter million dollars, dude, wire sent, awesome, good luck. You're going to kill it. Sent him a quarterly statement. He's happy as ever. It's so much easier dealing with high net worth. They understand the game of investing. And people that are investing $460 just don't get it. And so, it's a lot of work is what I'm trying to say. You can do it. We have people in our group that do it. Just understand the amount of workload that goes into it, and you need a lot of capital And so, the plan, if you're going to raise from non-accredited investors, I would have a game plan like Grant Cardone, like Fundrise. You're going to run a multimillion-dollar company. You're going to have operations. You're going to be spending $500,000 a month on ads. You're going to be running ads like crazy. I mean, to make it make sense to cover the cost of running this, you need to be running and have that big of a team and customer support. And you're going to have a whole floor of people. It's a big operation. to get the same result as you could get from raising from 5 investors in a blind pool. That's why most funds do a 506 or 506. Is that helpful? One other thing I'll share with you, kind of a cool story. This little number right here, so 3s are capped at 1,999 investors. This is why I shared Ray Dalio or Jim Rogers, Jim Simons, some of these big investors. Ray Dalio, I believe he closed his fund in 2005. This is in Tony Robbins' book, so that's where I'm quoting this from. Hasn't raised new money since 2005. To invest, when he was raising money in 2004, 2005, to talk to him, you had to have a $4 billion net worth. Minimum commitment was $100 million. Committed to the fund to invest in their fund. Crazy. And he hasn't raised new money since 2005 because you know why? He only has 1,999 spots. So he's like, well, I better get the most bang for my buck. So minimum commitment's $100 million, and you have to have a $4 billion net worth to even talk to us. Pretty crazy, right? And they manage, it's something like, they manage currently like $258 billion right now or something like that.

that.

It's wild. Okay? The reason for that is because he, by law, can't go over $999. Because what the SEC is saying is, once you hit— you don't have 2,000 friends. You're a public company once you have 2,000 investors. If you have more than 2,000, like a crowdfunding, you need to file and register like a public company. And so, because of that, and then it takes away a lot of the flexibility, because in a fund, you have control. In these top funds, I can decide a deal tomorrow and go buy it. In the Reg A or Reg CF, I've got to do due diligence, I've got to post it to my investors, they've got to invest one by one into the platform. And anyways, just slows down your speed. Again, pros and cons, both work. I've actually seen a ton of companies recently do Reg A for like, they're raising money for a startup, they do a Reg A offering, You'll see us on Instagram. I see, it's like these drone flying cars, invest into our Reg A, is what they're doing. And they can publicly advertise on a Reg A. It's kind of cool. All right. Long answer, big questions. Okay. Sorry. I like getting in the weeds though. You guys can tell, I freaking geek out on this stuff. So, there you go. Hopefully that's helpful. Again, not legal financial advice. Go do your own things. I'm just giving you the data, what's helpful. How are we doing, Mace?

Good.

Yeah, should we do some more, man? I need a drink of water. Let's see who's got some good— let's see, let's answer a couple more here. What do you think? Couple more, we'll wrap up. Um, great question. So what licenses do I need to run a fund? Um, it's kind of cool. Okay, you ready? Um, the answer is yes and no. So it depends on the fund you're running and depends on the size of fund you're running. So talk to a lawyer, whatever legal team you use, and ask them if you need one. But I'll just give you a general rule of thumb of how to think about it. For example though, I currently hold zero licenses and I've run 3 funds. Okay? So there's a cool thing about funds. So back to, I'm going to draw this out for you. Remember, you have your general partner, limited partnership, and you have your investors or LPs over here, right? investors. Okay, um, you then— I mentioned over here, you sometimes have a management company, and these are owned by the same people. So let's just say this is me and you, okay? We're partners, we're running these together, and we own the general partner and we own the management company. The, um, in a fund, it's actually pretty crazy. The only license you would need now, if There are some differences, but pretty much the only license you would need is if you're running a management company. This management company, you are going to file as an investment advisor or a registered investment advisor. This is like your brother-in-law that's like, hey, I'll manage your money for you. Those people, they work at Mutual, Merrill Lynch or whatever, and they're going to manage your money. That's an investment. They become a registered A registered investment advisor, a representative. Okay, so you would make this company an investment advisor. Now, this company, this management company advises the— we don't have clients like outside clients. We only have one client. The client is the fund. We give— the management company gives in— the investment advisor slash management company gives investment advice to the fund. And in return for that investment advice, they're paid a management fee for investment advice. And to give investment advice, you need to be licensed. So you need to have a Series 65 license. There's a couple other ones you can get, but the most common is a Series 65 license through FINRA. When you have a Series 65, you can set up your own shop, your own business that gives investment advice, which is called an investment advisor. Okay, and you're— you could charge a management fee. Now, the differences between these 2: registered investment advisor is any investment advisor under $150 million. Under a registered investment advisor is over $150 million. If you're over, you file with the SEC. If you're under, you file with the state. You do not file with both. Kind of crazy. You are either in the state level or the SEC level. All right, so what's cool is a lot of the funds in our group that we're launching are under $150 million. You fall into the state level. A lot of states don't require you to have a license depending on your state. Every state's a little different. Again, talk to your lawyer and ask like, hey, I'm in— like, and it's where your primary business is located. So I'm primarily located in Utah. We ran with our lawyer, we ran through for a crypto hedge fund in our state, we could charge management fees without a license. Kind of cool. And we actually filed as an exempt reporting advisor, which means we are exempt. We still file, but we're exempt from being an investment advisor or registered investment advisor, because we're an exempt reporting advisor because of the category and the state that we're in. Kind of cool, right? I admit, a little technical legal stuff. Ask your lawyer about this, see if you qualify. People might ask, well, Bridger, what if I'm trading? Do I need a Series 7? If I'm running a hedge fund that's trading options or whatever. Typically, most hedge funds do this. They work with a prime broker. This could be Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs. I'll just put Goldman Sachs here. Your fund is here. You're making trades. You will make the trade through your prime broker, and then you make the trade. The prime broker holds all the Series 7s and licenses and all that kind of stuff. All you would need to hold potentially is a Series 65. Depending on your state, you might not even need to hold a 65. Kind of crazy, right? Again, talk to your lawyer. Now, so just give you a rule of thumb though, venture capital funds, you almost never need a license. Just again, rule of thumb, they have the best lobbyists. Think about it like this, the government likes venture capital because it's investing to start up businesses. They want more people to invest in the startups and create more jobs. The next tier would be real estate funds. Real estate's not technically a security, and a lot of real estate funds, you don't need a license to run a real estate fund. Again, in general, talk to your lawyer, make sure it's— The next tier would be private equity. Some states require private equity, some don't. And again, it's only the 65. And then after that, you kind of have the most scrutinized is hedge funds. A lot of it depends on the state, but a lot of funds, a lot of states want you to have a 65 if you're running a hedge fund. So it depends on the fund type you're doing. Isn't that kind of crazy? Um, so kind of cool. Um, but again, this is why like it's cool to run the 506s, 506s, because you can get out of licenses and all this other stuff. These ones you have to make registered, there's a lot more scrutiny that happens in a Reg A or Reg CF if you're going to raise from non-accredited investors. The way the SEC looks at it, in my opinion, is, hey, if you're raising from somebody who's already a millionaire, they understand the risks of investing. And you know what? If they lose money, they're going to be okay. But if you take $1,000 from a non-accredited, from grandma, who's a non-accredited investor, and you lose that money, grandma may not be able to buy groceries next month, month, and we're going to come throw you in jail. They get mad. If you lose the rich people's money, they're like, ah, we don't care. As long as you didn't commit fraud, we don't care. But if you lose somebody that's broke, you lose their money, the SEC gets really mad and comes after you. Just kind of a rule of thumb. So, is that helpful? Licenses? Kind of a crash course. Again, just so you guys are aware, by the way, we have courses and stuff, The stuff I shared today and the stuff you see on YouTube is about 20% of all the videos and stuff we make. Isn't that crazy? We— I put out a lot of videos, I think, at least. Uh, it's only about 20%. If you guys go into our courses, our group stuff, we have like 80%. The other 80% is in there, and we teach all this kind of ins and outs. We answer questions. We do this forever and ever. It's like, it's really fun. So, um, okay, good question, you guys. Um, we'll do— uh, Mason's like telling me one more drop for calls. We have a couple people that wanted the link again. So one more call for calls. I think there's a few spots. Are there spots or no? Okay, 4. Okay, wow. So a couple Scott spots left. We're going to drop the link right now. So if you guys want to book a call, if you guys want to learn how this all works, if you want us to work with you and help you through this, if you want to work with our team, our coaches, whatever else, we have all sorts of cool stuff. Book a call with my team. They're all literally sitting right there. They're all trained by me. There's only 5 guys that take calls from us right now because we want really good people taking calls and you guys can hop on them. If you book a call, show up. If you book a call and don't show up, I'm coming after you. I'm going to come toilet paper your house and throw eggs on your porch and other stuff. Okay? Make sure to show up. These guys are putting their weekend on the line right now and late nights to take calls for you guys. If you book a call and don't show up, actually, we actually have a system. We actually can blacklist your email as well. It really bugs me when people don't show up for calls. that my guys are waiting to hop on a call with. And you're also taking a spot away from somebody else that could take a call. So if you book a call, put it in your calendar right now. Set a reminder. Come ready as well. Have notes ready to go. Be prepared. So there we go. All right. Okay, other questions here? See any other ones? Good one. Um, rule of thumb. Yeah, put in there. Yeah, I know I say rule of thumb. Guess what? Nobody knew what that meant. It's like ancient. It's just a phrase you use, like the general rule. And now people today that are like, oh, it means to beat your wife with a stick. It's only that width or whatever. Okay, I get it. I probably should say a general rule. But at the same time, no one knows that in today's culture unless you bring it up and tell, and you're trying to educate people. It's not like it's an offensive term to somebody until you bring it up and you make it offensive. So, I think there's a way to take offense and have offense. Anyways, I'll keep— I'm going to still— I worked at a company in Silicon Valley, and they're like, you guys can't say rule of thumb. You can't say guys, you guys, because it's a gen— and I was like, dude, I don't know. I think in a society, to me, when I say guys, I mean guys and I mean men and women. I mean they/them. I mean everybody. It just is a general term. That's how my culture is. So again, you can hear me rant on that, but I'll keep saying it. You guys are awesome though, because that's just how our— I don't know, unless you make something offensive, it can become offensive. So, okay, well, you guys are awesome. I think we've answered most of the questions here, and my voice is like dying. Can you hear it kind of dying out? It's like gonna be scratchy tomorrow. Thanks. Yeah, not— don't take offense. I'm not taking offense either. I don't take offense too much, but just so people are aware, that's why I say— I'll just say— I'll say whatever as long as it's not— I don't want to offend people, but it's Stuff like that. I'm like, dude, it's only offensive if other people make it offensive. Good. Yeah. Final question. That's a good question. Why can't Ray Dalio repeat funds and just do duplicate funds? It's because if you have the same strategy, especially for— it's only really for hedge funds because they're buying the same things. You can't have an integrated offering with multiple stacked funds. And so now in real estate, you can though. So real estate, because they're closed-ended funds, you can have Fund 1, and then 2 years later you launch Fund 2, And then you launch fund 3, and a couple years later, then launch fund 4. So, you'll see funds like, we're on office building fund 6. And the reason they can do that is because they're buying different office buildings. There's different risk associated with each one. If you're in a hedge fund though, it's the exact same trading strategy. You can't just copy and paste it because the markets are so— it's the exact same risk. But in venture capital, you see firms like, we're on venture capital fund 7. And because there's different portfolio companies in each fund, so that's why they can do it. All right, you all are amazing. Good to hang out today. Final call, fundlaunch.com/call. You guys can go grab a book a call. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. If you like this call, by the way, if you can take a picture of me real quick, or you, and tag me online, say what's up, I'll retag you, say what's up. I'll give you a thumbs up. Hey, there you go. But Say thanks to Mason as well. Mason did so good on the back of this call. You guys are amazing. Are we sending out a recording of this, Mason?

Yes.

Okay, so look out. We'll send out a recording of this tomorrow morning via email, I believe. So if you guys are on an email list, whatever, if you opted into this, you'll get an email. It should be coming out tomorrow morning. And if it doesn't come out, send me a DM or something. We can send you the replay or send us an email. By the way, you can always email us bridger@funlaunch.com. Send me an email if you guys have questions or other stuff or go book a call. Or if the thing doesn't come tomorrow, just send us a message at bridger@funlaunch.com. Um, hey, you guys are amazing. Fun hanging out today. I gotta get my voice all, uh, feeling good, but you guys are awesome. Um, good job today.