How to Launch a Fund Without Working on Wall Street (The BEST Formula)

Hey guys, welcome to today's free training. Today we're going to talk about how to start a fund without working on Wall Street for 20+ years or having an Ivy League degree. Now my goal for our short time together is to show you how I was able to start 2 funds in my 20s, deploy millions of dollars without number one, a track record, 2, working on Wall Street, 3, a fancy degree, and I'm going to show you how you can do the same thing through the Fund Launch Formula. Now that's a lot to cover today. I feel a little bit like a mosquito at a nudist colony. So much to do, but not a lot of time to do it. Now before we dive into things, you probably want to know who am I and why am I qualified to speak to you today? My name is Bridger Pennington. I'm the founder of Blackbridge Holdings. We're an investment fund that does short-term loans to entrepreneurs. We've done over 225 deals in the last 2 and a half years. I've deployed millions of dollars out of my funds. I have a handful of people that work for me. We've launched 2 funds and we're working on a 3rd fund right now. I've also been invited to be on Fox and Friends, so pretty soon here I'm gonna fly out to New York and be on the studio with them on Fox and Friends, so stay tuned. Now I'm guessing today isn't your first webinar. If you thought about launching a business or a fund in the past and failed, I just want to let you know it's not your fault. There's lots of information out there on YouTube and other places, and it's easy to get confused and overwhelmed. Additionally, if the sound of starting a fund scares you, you are not alone. I was scared to death to launch my first fund, but thankfully I had a good mentor and a good process to follow to help me get my first fund off the ground. And finally, if you're worried that big firms or managing directors don't want you to launch your own fund, you're right. They want you working for them. They want you in the golden handcuffs, slaving away for— to build their dream instead of you going out and building your own dream. So since launching my own funds, I've had a lot of people reach out to me asking me, Bridger, how did you launch your funds? How do you get off the ground? How do I get started? So that's why we started this movement, Investment Fund Secrets. We have over 11,000 downloads a month on our podcast, over 1,100 members in our community and groups and our mastermind programs, and we're the Wall Street rebels. The life you want, the marriage you want, and the family that you want are going to be fueled by the businesses you build. And we're pulling back the curtain on this entire fund world that's so mythical and nobody knows about. We're pulling back the curtain and helping regular people like you and me launch funds every day. Now, before I show you the Fund Launch Formula, I've got to explain what a fund is and how you can make a lot of money running your own fund. And I'm going to show you that starting a fund is the most lucrative vehicle on the planet to make money. So on this board, you'll see some big names: Ray Dalio, James Simons, Kenneth Griffin, some big numbers next to their names. These guys are all fund managers and all run their own funds. Now, I want to put this into perspective for you. So if you chose the vehicle of playing basketball to make money for a living, how much money could you make? So arguably right now, LeBron James is the number one basketball player in the world. He's a freak athlete, incredible, just has God-given talent. 17 years in the league and his net worth is around, I would say today, probably about $650 million, probably today. Now, who would you say is the best onstage speaker in the world? Arguably, I would say it's Tony Robbins, right? Tony Robbins, incredible guy, done this for 40 years, has been motivating and coaching and helped people all over the world. Net worth after 40 years, is $500 million. Now, let's go back to this board of fund managers. Okay, you see some big numbers here. These aren't their net worth. On the top, that's not Ray Dalio's net worth at $2 billion. This is their 2019 earnings alone, and this is 2019 earnings just from their fund, not individual investments, not private things, just from their fund, what it paid them in 2019. To put that into perspective, see that Bugatti in the bottom right corner? If you got a good deal on a Bugatti, you would spend probably about $1 million, which is wild, right, to spend that much money on a car. John Overdeck, the lowest person on this list, had enough money in 2019 to buy a Bugatti January 1st at noon. He had personally already made $1 million. So when I say starting a fund is the most lucrative vehicle in the world, I mean it. If you feel like, Bridger, there's no way I could ever do that, I can never be on that list, I can never start my own fund. When I launched my first fund, I was in the process of raising money and I went on a Saturday morning to play basketball with some friends. A rebound went up and a friend swung an elbow and my 2 front teeth got knocked out. Don't look too close but these 2 front teeth are actually fake and they got clean knocked out. This is not a fake picture. On the right, I dressed up as a hillbilly because it was just so fitting to dress up that way. These teeth literally got knocked out. And at the time, I was going out, I was trying to raise money with 2 front teeth missing. So if you're like, Bridger, I don't know if I can do it. Guys, I raised money without 2 front teeth. They were— I had a flapper tooth and I would actually do most of my money raising over the phone. I was calling and picking up the phone and talking to investors. So I want to let you know you can do this. Additionally, these guys, this is Arrived Partners. These 3 gentlemen all in their 20s have 6 kids between them. Came and met with myself and my dad. We helped them launch their first fund. They have over $10 million under management in their first year. Guys, you can do this. There are regular people like you and me going out and launching funds every single day. Now, Bridger, what is a fund and how do I make money? Essentially, what a fund is, is a pool of money and me and you as fund managers get to draw from that pool of money and go make investments and when those investments make money back, we split the returns with our investors. And the beautiful thing about funds is the sky is the limit. That's why some of the wealthiest people on the planet run funds because there's really no cap on how big your fund, your pool of money can be. So, what kind of industries run funds? You have real estate funds, you have stock trader hedge funds, you have forex funds, venture capital funds, debt funds, Amazon sellers, tech companies, hot dog stands. Pretty much any company that wants to scale can use a fund to do it. Now, if you've been struggling to launch your own fund, this is probably why. You've been doing it what I call the hard way. This is what we've been forced to do for the past 50 years. Any Michael Scott fans in here? I'm dead inside, right? You hire a lawyer for $25,000, you get these legal docs. Legal docs are very expensive. You got to get them all organized and set up. Then you go pitch investors. Hopefully, you raise some money for your fund, and if no one likes it, you go back to the drawing board and you're stuck with a $25,000 legal bill. You got to get a job, you got to pay that bill off, and this is why a lot of good fund ideas eventually die or never get launched because a lot of people are following this old hard way to go out and launch a fund. So, if you haven't launched a fund yet, it's not your fault. You just haven't had the right strategy and method to go out and do it. So today, I want to show you a new way, a better way to go out and launch a fund, and this is called the fund launch formula. This is a 4-step process to launch a This is the way we beat out Harvard grads or people on Wall Street when we go out and set up our funds. You guys ready to get into it? Alright, let's do it. So when I was setting up my original funds, I was so worried about raising money or how was I gonna find investors. I had all these false beliefs in my mind. I was too young, I couldn't do this. And one of my mentors sat me down and said, Bridger, and I'm gonna give you the same talk he gave me. He said, Bridger, imagine me and you just found this Lamborghini Aventador in Billings, Montana, and we can buy it this Saturday for $50,000. Let's say the guy's going into bankruptcy, he needs to sell it, he needs cash by Saturday morning for $50 grand, and on Monday morning, we have a verified buyer in California that'll buy this car for $200,000. He said, just go with me, this is an example, everything's checked out, we have a mechanic look at it, this is a legit Lamborghini, just go with me, this is an example. I said, okay, here we go. He said, Bridger, and I want to ask you the same question, could you raise $50,000 by Saturday? You can't use any of your own money. And I thought about this question, I said, I don't know, maybe. So, could you go talk to former bosses or an aunt or maybe a college professor or brother or friend or somebody and get enough money pooled together for $50,000? You're going to make $150 grand this weekend if you can just come up with $50 grand by Saturday. It's guaranteed. And I thought about it for a second, I said, yeah, you know what, I think I could talk to enough people. I think I could. I could probably pull together 50 grand, and he goes, let's say we can't— he came back to the deal and he said, actually, I want to sell it for $100,000. You still have the verified buyer in California, 200 grand. Could you find $100,000 by Saturday morning? And I thought and I said, yeah, I think I could do it, and he goes, why? And I go, well, it's the deal, it's foolproof, right? Like, that's the example is we're gonna make 100 grand this weekend if we can find 100 grand, right? Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Yeah, I'll find the money. And he goes, aha, there it is. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, you just said it, the deal was so good. 3 minutes ago you were all stressed out, I can't raise money, I can't find investors, no one will believe in me, and all of a sudden you're telling me you could go out and confidently raise $100,000 by this Saturday. And I said, yeah, well it's foolproof. He goes, that's the point. The first step for setting up any fund or syndication deal is find an amazing deal. It's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness. Any Tony Robbins fans here? I love Tony and that's something he preaches to death. I'm gonna say the same thing to you guys. So step 1 of any fund or any syndication is find an amazing deal. Now when I say amazing deal, this could be an algorithm that trades forex stocks with 2 different currencies. This could be a cryptocurrency trader. This could be a real estate model. This could be, for me, doing short-term loans to entrepreneurs. This could be buying and selling Amazon businesses. I have one friend that goes out and buys small-time funeral homes, packages them together, and sells them on the public markets with his fund. When I say a good deal, that's what I mean, a good investing strategy. Now, side note, if you don't have one, partner with someone who already does. There are plenty of broke geniuses out there that have incredible strategies but have no clue how to start a fund, raise money, and structure the whole thing together, and they need someone like you to partner with them. Now, step number 1 is find an amazing deal. Now, most people at this point go, okay, great, I found the deal. Let's go hire lawyers for $25,000 and get this thing going. Let's get it off the ground. Hold on one second. Before you go spend all the money hiring lawyers, step number 2 is go and frame the deal. So, get the deal framed out, set up a pitch deck, go through your numbers on Excel, and map out how everyone is going to get paid. Then, step number 3 is go and pitch investors. But wait, Bridger, I can't pitch investors if I don't have legal docs done. Yes, you can. This is how one of my mentors raised his first $100 million fund. He said he would go to Mrs. Johnson's office, and Mrs. Johnson's a wealthy woman in the area, she likes to invest, And they would go to her office, and as they were getting there, some— this guy just left. This is Mr. Harvard. He's got his pinstripe suit, he's got his cool dog, he's looking dapper. And his pitch is this: is we hope to start buying properties the next 18 months. We theorize that we're so smart and we're so great that we're gonna buy properties the next 18 months, and you should invest with us. And Mrs. Johnson says, great, thank you so much, you know, we'll talk soon. My mentor would walk into the same office right after and say, hey, he'd go, hey, Mrs. Johnson, we're not from Harvard, we don't have this expert degree. However, we just found this property in Miami, Florida. It's appraised for $8.2 million. We can buy it for— at the end of the month for $4.5 million. So hey, we're no experts, but you've looked at real estate deals before. Look at the deal. This deal is so good. It's almost impossible that we can lose money on this. And they say, hey, you can hire your friend who's a real estate guy, come look at the deal and see if you want to get in. And that was their pitch and they said, hey, our legal docs are going to be done in a couple weeks but once they're done, can we put you down for a soft commitment of $500,000 for this deal? And Mrs. Johnson will look at it and say, yeah, you know what? I like this deal. I like what it looks like. If everything checks out the legal docs, yeah, I'll put down $500,000. My mentor told me 9 times out of 10, they chose the deal over the degree and that's how they beat out the Harvard grads that were pitching similar funds. So they would find a great deal, they would frame the deal out, they would pitch investors, they would get soft commitments from those investors, and then they would go and do their legal docs. Now, the beautiful thing about this formula is if you go to investors, you pitch them, and nobody likes your deal, well, guess what? You didn't waste money on legal docs. You can go back to the beginning and find a different deal. All you wasted was a little bit of time. You didn't waste $25,000 on legal docs and expensive lawyers. When no investor wanted to invest. And you can talk to your investors and say, hey, what type of deal would you like to see? You don't like this one, what one would you like to see? And you can start looking for those types of deals that they would want to invest in. So once you've got soft commitments from investors, then and only then go and do your legal docs. Now you might be asking a question, Bridger, how do I build a track record, right? No investor is going to believe in me if I don't have a track record. So I want to tell you a quick story of Brent. This is how Brent started out with syndication deals. So Brent followed the Fund Launch Formula. He found great deals, framed them out, pitched investors. But then there's a split between what I call the fund model and a syndication loop. The fund model is used to scale, and the syndication loop is used to build a track record. And Brent was flipping houses. I think house flippers are some of the best people on the planet to follow the syndication loop. So what house flippers do is they find a great deal, they frame it out, they pitch investors. The investors set up— they all They set up an LLC with the investors. The investors put money into the LLC. They all become partners. They do the house flip. They're all making money. The house flip pays them all back and they restart. And the house flipper goes and finds another house. They pitch the investors again. They got to renegotiate, set up new terms. Investors come in as equity partners. They flip the deal and they restart. If you talk to a lot of house flippers, they'll call this the hamster wheel of syndication deals. Because it's a constant loop. It's a constant battle with hard money lenders, with different investors to get this set up and going. I have one friend right now who's flipped over 87 homes using the syndication loop. He just says it's incredibly tiring. Investors want to put money in, they want to renegotiate, they don't like the terms this time, they got to pull money out, and it's just a constant battle to do this. Now, a syndication loop is how I set up my— what I've called my first fund was actually a syndication. I had investors, they put money into an LLC, we're all equal partners, and we did a couple deals out of that syndicate. And that built me a track record, and I used that track record to eventually scale through the fund model. The fund model is designed to help you scale because the beautiful thing about the fund model at the top there, you find amazing deals, you frame it out, you pitch investors once, and from that investor pool, you can do as many deals as you want. So imagine a house flipper, they only have to raise money once and they can go flip 15 or 20 houses a year. That's why eventually most people use the fund model to scale because that That's where you make the big money, the big bucks. I love this meme up here, right? The big bucks are made up here. So to review, you use the syndication loop to build a track record to get your first couple deals done. It's much cheaper to set that up, and then eventually you can scale through the fund. And in our groups and community, we help people do both. We help Brent do his first syndication deal, and now he's scaling through a fund. So now that's the Fund Launch Formula. That's the 4-step formula. That's a big concept compressed down to 4 simple steps to get your fund or syndicate off the ground. And that is why the best way to launch a fund is through the Fund Launch Formula. And that's why we started this movement, had such great success with it, because people used it and were so successful launching their funds. I love this quote from Tony Robbins. He says, if you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do, and you'll achieve the same results. One of my friends, Clark Varon, he used a fund model to do microloans to Uganda. They were doing $100 to $500 loans per community. Another friend, AT, he buys and sells Amazon businesses with a fund. Another friend, Sid Kromenhoek, he sold his first business in college for a lot of money, started Album VC, and they just raised $75 million in 45 days. Essentially set up his own Shark Tank to go and invest in small-scale businesses. Nancy Zimmerman used this. She finished her undergrad at Brown. She learned about funds and trading. And doesn't she look like a nice lady could live down the street from you? She co-founded Bracebridge Capital and now is worth $740 million because she used the formula that wealthy people use. This guy, Grant Cardone, you guys all know him. Cardone Capital. Uses the same structure. If you want to be successful, copy what successful people do. Now, if you want some help to speed up the process, if you're stuck on YouTube or trying to do it yourself, you can click below and schedule a free strategy call with one of our coaches. They'll sit down and help you map out your first fund or syndicate deal and what it looks like for you and what options you have going forward. This works for people in real estate, forex trading, mom-and-pop bread shops— pretty much any company that believes they can scale. The only thing stopping you is money. A fund is the thing for you. So if you want to stop wasting time dabbling or scraping through the internet for content trying to do this yourself, then schedule a call for a strategy session below for free. Now you might be asking, Bridger, what's the catch? Why are you running these videos? What is the purpose of all of this? I have a high-level coaching program where 5 experienced fund managers train you on how to launch a fund. These fund managers currently run $100 million and even billion-dollar funds, and they do this to give back to the next generation of entrepreneurs. It's almost like the Y Combinator for funds. This is an incubator program to help funds get off the ground and scale. If you fit the right profile of some of that could fit into our program, we'll give you a low-pressure option to join. And if you aren't the right fit, we'll still help you out on this call. The purpose of this call is not to bring people into our program. We have plenty of people applying to get into our programs. We still want to help the next generation of entrepreneurs launch and scale funds and syndicates. So this call is a win-win for everybody. There are only limited spots available for these calls, but if you're watching this video, it means spots are still open. Fill out the calendar link below and we will talk soon. Bye. Bye.