We Are Growing Fast. Whats Next?

Boom, people! Welcome back to the show. Today we are celebrating the 100th episode of Investment Fund Secrets. Woo! Let's go, baby! I love it. All right, so today we're— I know, I don't think this is exactly the 100th episode, by the way. We wouldn't count it. I think we're at 104, 105 episodes, but I was like, we already missed the 100th episode. We got to go back and celebrate. So today we are celebrating the 100th episode. I don't know if it actually is the 100th episode. I think it's about 106 right now. Yeah, this podcast, Investment Fund Secrets, we've been able to— I started out about last Last July, so almost 9 months ago, started this out and we— I didn't know what we were doing when we started out. I just said, I want to start a podcast. My dad runs a co-founder of a $20 billion family of funds. My brother, chief compliance officer of a $300 million fund, and I've ran my fund for the last 2 and a half years. You guys know my story, and so we started this podcast just for fun to see what would happen, and to date right now, we get about 11,000 downloads a month. I think we're at 65,000, 66,000 downloads so far on this podcast. It's been pretty fun and it's been A good journey, so thank you for coming along. It's been a fun journey with you guys to connect and meet people from this show. I've actually been able to meet a lot of people because of this show. You guys have come and reached out to me on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever we talk. You've joined our mini vault groups and our mastermind group, and it's been pretty fun to be a part of it. So today I wanna do kind of a fun episode. I'm gonna tell you the story, some highlights from the first 100 episodes, and tell you the stuff that we're doing in the future, And kind of just use this as a fun celebration episode. Does that sound good? Okay, so we started— I'll tell you the kind of the origin story of how we started this. So we, like I said before, we had this idea to do it and I met a few podcasters out there that did shows or did YouTube channels and a lot of them said the same thing and they were usually— I was watching a video, they're telling everybody but they felt like they were talking directly to me. They said, Bridger, you've got to do about 30 to 40 episodes before you really find your voice, and I didn't really know what that meant But they said there's a lot of people out there that start a show and they do 3 episodes, they do 5 episodes, they do 8 episodes and they go, ah, that's crap, I'm gonna quit, nobody's following. They go, that's not the point. The point of your first 30 episodes is to find your voice, to find what resonates with you and your audience. And so I started out our podcast, I said I'm at least gonna do 30 episodes before I decide if I'm gonna keep doing this. So we started out, we just tested different stories, different hooks, I was trying all different things. If you go back to our original episodes, I was trying We were talking about all different stuff and I finally realized what resonated with myself and our audience was how to launch a fund without working on Wall Street or having an Ivy League degree, that was our message that resonated with people and there are people like myself, like my dad, like my brother that have launched funds out there that did it the unconventional route and there's actually this amazing corner of the internet that we've now— you know, we've spaced out and we have this community of people that have come together like hey, me too. Like, that's also something I do, right? I don't— I'm not one of the Wall Street finance bros that are just jerks to everybody. Like, there are good people out there like me and you that are launching funds. And that was our message we went after, and we started to deep dive into fund structure, how to raise money, compliance, different questions people had, and it's been a fun ride. On the podcast, we've interviewed a handful of people. We've had Sid Kromenhoek, founder of Album VC, $130 million fund. We've had my dad on, my brother. We've had Aaron Wagner, Adam Campbell, a handful of other fund managers. It's been an incredible ride. I've been able to, because of this podcast, Actually, I've spoken at two events so far. We actually have another event coming out in July. This is a big event. A couple guys from Shark Tank are speaking. Mike Dillard speaking at it. Les Brown is speaking at it. I am, guys, I'm one of the speakers. I can't believe they invited me. It is a virtual event. I'll tell you more details if you're on our email list or whatever. You'll see it. I think it's July 20th. They're launching and publishing everything. It's going to be a virtual event. They would have done it live, but they said because of COVID they're doing a virtual event, which is pretty cool. I thought it was pretty interesting. They said, Bridger, the reason we invited you—I was one of the only people that they actually asked to. Be on, that they reached out to and said we want you to be on. He goes I've got 2 dozen speakers that want to be a part of this event, we're only taking a handful of people. He said Bridger, I reached out to you because of it's incredible what you guys are doing. Your movement, your students, what you've created online is so unconventional, so different than all the guys teaching real estate or people talking about forex trading. He goes your movement, your results from your students is just incredible and we've got to hear your story. And I was honored to be a part of it. And anyways, it should be a good event. I'm excited to see when it drops. I think July 20th, somewhere around there, 24th. They're picking a date right now and you'll see more stuff from us when it gets closer. But it's been an incredible ride on this journey of doing this and I want to thank you guys for coming along and coming on and meeting. I don't think— I hate when people like, thank you for following me. I hate that crap. I am grateful that we can connect and this is the platform that we connect on and I really appreciate a lot of people that reach out on Instagram or LinkedIn so that I can connect with and reach out to you. I think it's been a, it's been a really fun ride, and we're gonna keep going. We got— this is the first 100 episodes. We've had a good ride so far. You guys have seen my progression. My fund in that time period has tripled in size, by the way. From the moment— from the time I started my podcast until today, my fund has tripled AUM. And there's been a lot of reasons for that, but it's been a fun ride, and we're going up and up and up and continually launching funds and growing this process. And thank you for growing with me, and it's been a really fun ride. So I want to say thank you to you guys, and this has been an amazing journey. And we're gonna keep doing it, keep going on. If you guys want to meet, you know, message me, whatever, LinkedIn. I think Instagram's usually the easiest way to get a hold of me, Bridger_Pennington. If you guys want to send me videos, send me questions, I want to bring actually people onto the Instagram and do like— you ever seen those side-by-side videos where they have like one person asking a question, then I answer it and we go back and forth? If you have questions, just send me a video and we might even post on Instagram. We'll tag you, whatever you want to do. But it— I think it's cool to connect to you guys. So we got the podcast— sorry, back to the stories. We got the podcast going, it was up and running, and we said, I wonder if people would want to learn more about this. So we launched what's called the Mini Vault, and some of you are members of that. It's a small course, it's got about 7 or 8 videos in it going deeper. I have a whiteboard, we draw out fund structure, you get an example pitch deck of mine, you get a checklist that I have to launch a fund. We have a Facebook group, I'm actually going live in there later today, and it's pretty fun what we've done inside there. So if you want to learn more about the Mini Vault or whatever, I mean, it's a great product. We got a lot of people in there, and then people wanted more. They said, "How can I learn more about this? I want to get access to you and your dad." And so all along, we had this goal of launching a mastermind. And last this last February, we actually launched our mastermind, and it was it was an incredible launch. So because I realized I don't know everything about launching a fund, I'm I'm humble. I I don't know humble enough to say that, but I recognize my weakness. Like essentially is what I'm trying to say is I don't know everything about launching a fund. And so we went out and found other mentors. We call them mastermind mentors. Six other mentors that all run funds did it unconventionally. You met some. them on the podcast. Paul Hutchinson, Sid Cromenhoek, my dad, my brother John Pennington, Terry Rogers, other people that have been on the podcast actually in our mastermind course come on and teach and go deeper and have video trainings. And we have about 80— I think I'd say about 80 videos in our backend course, about 10 hours of content. We give you legal documents, the whole 9 yards, all that stuff. We've given our mastermind mentors and the coaching we do once a week, live coaching calls inside of our group where we hop on a Zoom call, you ask questions live, we bring our mastermind mentors on, you can network with them, meet them, meet the other students in our group. We have about 200 students in that group right now, which is pretty— it's been a pretty fun ride to launch that and to grow that and to build out our workbooks and other things and tools. And it's helped me more than anything. It's helped me better understand and put the pieces together on how funds really work in different industries, different sectors. Because a lot of you guys know it's easy to do— not easy, but it's easier to do something. It's a little bit harder to do it and then teach it. The frameworks for teaching It's a whole nother step and usually the teacher is the one that learns the most and I've learned a lot from our mastermind group. If you've seen on the podcast some of these frameworks we put together, the Fun Launch Formula framework, the 3 Circles framework, these frameworks we have built out to help people comprehend and take big concepts and compress them down into 4 or 5 actionable steps is a big task and it's been very humbling and rewarding to go and do this for our mastermind since it's been a pretty fun ride. And we are— our mastermind is doing very well. We have students doing awesome in there. Actually, I want to bring a few students on our show and kind of show you the results that they've had and what they've done and grown their business amid a pandemic, amid the craziness of 2020. They've been able to still persevere and find niches and still do really well. It's been pretty— a pretty cool ride. So, and to the future, kind of what we're doing right now, we're growing that mastermind. I'm expanding the content, bringing on more mentors. That's our goal. That's our plan. I'm focusing my time and attention on that right now. In addition to launching, I have my own fund and we're launching a third fund here. So both those in tandem I'm doing. It's been a good ride, and that's for the near future. That's what we're doing. I think eventually we're gonna launch an inner circle group and other stuff, but for now, yeah, we want to do live events. By the way, I would love to throw a live fund event. How cool would that be, by the way? Like, think about like Grant Cardone's like 10X GrowthCon or Funnel Hacking Live, these big conventions for entrepreneurs, which are great. What if we did one for Funds. It'd be amazing. Anyways, we're thinking once this pandemic clears up, we want to do an in-person event, have fund managers come speak on stage for like a 2-day event or a 3-day event. Anyways, we're already mapping out stuff we want to do. By the way, I'm an event junkie, I love events so our events are gonna be bonkers. Like you've gone to maybe some events where they have like a little ballroom and it's, you know, nice, like no. Like we're getting the lights, the show, the fog, like we are doing— it's gonna be like a Concerts, it's gonna be like amazing, like huge. We're gonna go the extra mile 'cause there's no way I'm throwing a crappy event. Like, we are going all out on this event. Anyways, that's down the road. I think a year from now we're planning on doing a live event. It should be pretty fun. So anyways, that's the first 100 episodes. The next 100 episodes, we'll see. Hopefully I can triple my AUM again the next 100 episodes. That'd be pretty fun. We'll launch an event the next 100 episodes. Anyways, the next couple hundred episodes are gonna be fun and we're gonna keep this going. So let me know questions, comments. If you've liked this so far, go check out YouTube channel if you're there. If you're on YouTube, go check out our podcast. There's different content in different places sometimes. We're trying to make it more congruent right now, but drop us a subscription or a like or a review. That would really mean a lot, I guess, to my— my video team always tells me we need to get more reviews. We have so many listeners but just not very many reviews. So I'm told to say this. Subscribe, hit that link, whatever you want to do. Anyway, I'm out here just trying to give good value to people and help people start and launch and scale funds successfully because it's been a life changer for my life, my family, my wife, and our future kids. Launching a fund, this vehicle has changed our lives and I believe will for the next decades to come and I'm thankful that I was born into a great family and great place where I could launch a fund. I have the tools and I'm trying to give you guys all the same resources. If you ever felt like, oh, Bridger, you're so lucky because your dad runs a big fund, I am. Yeah, I recognize that but I'm trying to give you the same resources my dad gave me. My dad's never invested in any of my funds. He's just given me knowledge, education, and advice. That's all he's given me. That's been very successful to myself, and I want to give you those same things, especially through our mastermind group. That's the purpose of it, essentially. I want to give back, and all these fund managers feel the same way. They want to give back to not as much me, but the next generation. Those guys are a little bit older. They want to give back to the next generation of young fund managers like me and you, up and coming, to help us go and launch and scale funds. So 100 episodes has been a fun ride. To the next 100! It should be good. You guys are awesome. Love you guys, and I will see you on the next episode. Peace.