Starting a Fund is NOT for Everyone

Hey, welcome back to Investment Fund Secrets. I'm Bridger Pennington, and today we're going to talk about why starting a fund is not for everybody. Recently, I had somebody and a couple people ask me this, Preston, Bridger, do you really expect average people to come off the street and really start a fund? No, I don't at all. Starting a fund is not for everybody. Starting a fund is like a big deal, and that's why we've created— there's so much content to create for this because it is a huge deal to go out and launch a fund. I believe launching a fund should be maybe your second or third business that you've launched. You should learn business principles in entrepreneurship before— in other places before you come and launch a fund. So this episode's a little bit of a rant, but no, I don't expect the average person to come off the street and start a fund. Not at all. Managing money is a big deal. But I think a lot of people have misconceptions on what they need to start a fund and what they don't need to start a fund. And so I want to walk you through a few of my just short list of things that you need and don't need. So things that you don't need, let's start there. You do not need a Harvard degree to start a fund. You don't need to work on Wall Street for 20 years to start a fund. You don't need some magical pedigree with, you know, whatever network to start a fund. You don't need amazing, you know, pedigree of your father and grandfather were the Vanderbilts. You don't need any of that, okay? That's a misconception a lot of people have. Regular people that are smart and savvy and go through this next list can start funds. So the things that you do need though to start funds are this. This is my short list. So you need to be first off good at managing money. If you're gonna be a professional money manager, you should be good at managing your own personal finances, right? You need to be hardworking. It's amazing. I was talking to my brother-in-law yesterday. We were talking. He runs an amazing multi-million dollar business, has done really well, never went to college, or he went to college for a little bit, dropped out. And we both were talking about the value, the overvalue that people put on a college degree. Now, college is great, you can learn a lot there, a lot of networking, it's fantastic things that come from universities but I think a lot of you— we were both agreeing this— a lot of university students go and turn their mind off. Like Bridger, what are you talking about turn your mind off? You're at school, you're learning, you're taking quizzes and stuff. Yeah, you're doing a lot of busy work, right? Your mind is turned off on your career life decisions And it's turned on of, oh, I gotta get all this busy work done, I got this assignment done, I gotta get this test done, and it's just busy work to fill your days with sometimes mindless things. If you've been to university, like college, university, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes mindless stuff of just memorizing facts and statistics and things that you're never going to use in life to spit out on a test, and you're filling your mind. You're not thinking about, hey, what am I going to do when I graduate? What am I going to do in the next 10 years, 20 years of my life and career? How am I going to manage my personal investments and finances, right? A lot of those questions leave your mind when you're at college, and it's a sad thing that happens at our college universities is, you know, people are busy. They think being busy is being productive, and it's not that way. And for a lot of people, like I was talking to my brother-in-law, for him it was just too much mindlessness. He had so much focus and could work hard, said, this just isn't for me. And he stepped out of school and launched a multimillion-dollar business, has done super well. Anyways, working hard is crucial and he talks about this all the time. He's like, it's very rare. He said, I thought it was just common because I was this way. It's very rare to find someone that's actually willing to wake up and grind for a year without a paycheck. That's hard, that's hard work. When people talk about hard work, like okay, digging ditches is hard work but waking up every day at 6 AM and working 12 hours a day for a year without a paycheck, that is hard work. And a lot of people are not willing to do that to start their own business. They're not willing to invest, you know, $2,000 or $5,000 or even $10,000 on themselves, but they'll invest $80,000 on a mindless degree for a piece of paper that just kept them busy during the most— probably could be the most productive years of your life, right? You don't have kids, you don't have a spouse, right? Usually in college, you have time to go launch businesses and take risks, right? That's what we were talking about last night, and it's very few people actually we've found that are willing to put in the work. So if you, first off, good at managing money, hard worker, I put on there negotiation skills, you're able to build systems and manage teams, if you're able to find amazing partners and work with those partners well, and if you have an amazing investment strategy, those are the things you need to start a fund. You don't need to work on Wall Street, you don't need to go to Harvard, but you do need to be able to build systems, manage teams, bring people together, be an organizer. Be the system builder, have a great investment strategy coupled with that, and maybe you partner with somebody that has that. Those are things that you need to start a fund. We had a lady on our support, she asked us, Bridger, how— what kind of return can I expect from coming in your course? And we sell a, you know, simple— right now it's a simple $47 course, and she said, what kind of return on my investment can I expect? And we just said, sorry, I just don't think this is for you. Right, we just said no, you're not allowed to come in because we are actively— and people might say wow, why don't you let her in, what are you doing? I am actively keeping people out of our programs and content just as much as I'm actively bringing them in. Now, that might make you pause for a second like why would he do that because there are people, certain people I do not want in our courses and programs with our coaching because they are so just such a hassle and burden on support, on me. To help them, right? I would rather not take your money. Just keep your own money. Do, you know, go somewhere else. We don't want you in our programs if you have that mindset of what, you know, exactly, Bridger, what's the return on my investment that I can expect from you, right? I'm just like, sorry, this isn't for you. And that might be harsh, but it saves us a ton of time, and it brings— we want to bring in the right type of people. A lot of the content I create, I try to be polarizing with it because I want to kick out a lot of people that I don't want to work with. And I wanna bring in and attract people that think like me, that are good at the things I just talked about, hardworking, negotiating, building systems, bringing people together, and that's what I try to teach and share, 'cause that's what's been successful in my fund, when launching my fund. So with this, I, you know, no hard feelings, I love ya, but a lot of people we're trying to actually kick out, just to take burdens off our support and off of our content. We don't wanna work with some people. So starting a fund is not for everybody, But if you're hardworking, if you have good negotiation skills, if you can build systems and teams and bring people together and have that drive, starting a fund is a very, very lucrative way to make money. And I— we kind of went through our mission statement. My mission is to help you design and build very lucrative funds for yourself and your family and your team. That's what all I'm trying to do. I'm helping you design a fund. I'm not going to give you an investment strategy. That's for you to figure out but I'll give you a few ideas but I'm going to teach you how to raise money and build a fund. Those are the 2 things I'm focusing on in all my content to do that, to help you create a super lucrative fund and that's what we're trying to do here on this podcast and our show and all of our products we sell and everything like that, that's our whole purpose and goal is to do that. So, starting a fund is not for everybody but it's for a lot of people that, you know, they didn't work on Wall Street, they've had this misconception, this false belief that man, I didn't come from the Vanderbilt family, I'm not a Trump. So I can't start a fund. That's ridiculous. There are thousands of funds in America right now launched and created by just regular, seemingly regular Joes that were just good at managing money, good at negotiation, good at finding deals, good investment strategy, and good at building teams, right, that's it. And it's funny, I actually have a cool opportunity every week. I go and we have an entrepreneurship lecture series class we hold at a university and I get to work with them and we have these amazing entrepreneurs come and I mean, they've either sold businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars or they're currently running businesses that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And these guys come on, I get to spend 5 hours with them every week. We talk, we have like a little pre-thing at the end, we talk, we have like some food and stuff. And I get to meet these people and talk to them and it's incredible just how much of just regular people they are, right? I think that's something that we often forget when we're pitching like limited partners that are going to be super big investors. They're just regular people. These are all regular people just trying to do, you know, to support their family. They're trying to make some money. They're maybe trying to get— they have a few things they want to leave a legacy. Maybe they want to get maybe some fame. Maybe they just want to make more money, whatever it is, but they're just regular people like all of us, right? They put their pants on one leg at a time just like me and you, right? And I get to spend, you know, a lot of hours with people that are very wealthy and rich and we joke and laugh just like I'm talking with, you know, my cousin from Canada or, you know, my buddy from down the street. I mean, we It's about the same conversations. We're talking about sports and politics and religion, whatever it is, right? It's not as crazy as you think to start a fund. So I hope this episode is a little bit of a rant, a little bit of a one-off on some support tickets we've had, but I want you to know that's where we're coming from with this episode, and I hope that you know that you can do this. I was able to start a fund. My dad, if you've heard his story, I mean, not that great of a resume, now runs a $20 billion fund, and a lot of the fund managers that I'm trying to bring on this show are the same way. Regular people that decided to work hard could set up— say, I can build a system. I'm not the smartest guy, but I can bring the pieces together and launch a fund. I hope that gives you confidence in launching your fund. So anyways, love you all, and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace.