Next Level Pros - #24: Bridger Pennington: Founder of Fund Launch, Over 225 Deals Made, Family Man

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

In this episode of "The Founder Podcast" hosted by Chris Lee, we dive into the inspiring journey of Bridger Pennington, the mastermind behind Fund Launch. In a candid and insightful conversation, Chris sits down with Bridger to uncover his remarkable rise as a young entrepreneur in the world of fund management. At just 28 years old, Bridger is already running a hedge fund and steering the ship at Fund Launch, an innovative platform where entrepreneurs are schooled in the art of launching funds. With an impressive track record, including overseeing multiple funds over $100 million and even a billion-dollar fund, Bridger has emerged as a leading figure in the space of fund creation. The podcast takes listeners on a ride through Bridger's life story, beginning with his upbringing in a modest household, completely unaware of his father's successful real estate fund management endeavors. Chris and Bridger delve into the pivotal moment when Bridger discovered his father's financial legacy, which eventually led him on a quest to unlock the secrets of the ultra-wealthy. This episode is a testament to Bridger Pennington's journey, his dedication to self-improvement, and his mission to democratize financial knowledge. Join us as we uncover the blueprint from scratch and gain insights into the mind of a young entrepreneur who is reshaping the world of fund management and education. HIGHLIGHTS “My dad finally grabs me though and he goes, Bridger you're kind like a chicken with your head cut off. I want you to go with my business partner. This guy can really help you out.” “We have students all over the world, people launching crazy funds."  “The ultra wealthy families of the world, they send their children to the best universities possible. They sometimes cheat to get them in or pay to get the news, right. But they go and they want their kids to work in the fund space, private equity, hedge funds venture capital or come back home and run the family office." TIMESTAMPS 00:00: Introduction 02:45: No One Teaches This! 04:51: Following Fathers Footsteps 08:38: Funds Masterclass 12:32: Current Funds 15:50: Wealth Of Knowledge 18:05: Parenting 22:25: Course Competition 26:07: Focus On The Clients 31:14: Family Perceptive 35:02: Would You Change Anything? 37:55: Asymmetrical Risk  41:44: Lost & Founder

We're going through a massive transition in the economy right now, where you can make millions of dollars in very ways that the older generations, even me and you, would look at and say, that's not a legitimate way to make money, but yet it's dollars are dollars. Welcome to another episode of the Founder Podcast. Today, I am joined by Mr. Bridger Pennington, right? I'm pronouncing it right. Oh, man. But Bridger is an absolute stud. He has been running his business, Fund Launch, in which they teach entrepreneurs how to launch funds, which is super exciting. It's actually something that I'm actually really excited to learn more about. He sold an additional business, got his start in the business years ago when he found out that his dad was actually wealthy,

grew up in a way that didn't realize that. His dad runs a real estate fund, number five in the world, $48 billion. And your dad never gave you any money, never gave you anything, but he gave you the knowledge in order to do so, which I think is the best thing that you can pass on to future generations. Bridger's a family man, a believer in Christ, and just an awesome dude. Welcome to the show. Chris, good to be on. What a pleasure. Yeah, dude. Excited. You know know it's interesting bridger i uh so i'm always looking for awesome guests for for my podcast and i got the recommendation to interview you by like three or four different people they're like you got to interview bridger you got to interview bridger

and so like after the third fourth i'm like all right this guy must be legit let's reach out figure it out so i'm excited to have you on man So give us more depth in that story. So first of all, how old are you? You're, you're a young man. Yeah. So 28 years old right now. Awesome. Yeah. We're running that hedge fund and we got fund launch, which is cool. And we're just growing. So we've helped, I think we have about 60,000 students around the world that do funds. So we can dive into funds. We've got 12 funds over a hundred million dollars, one fund over a billion. We're partners now on eight minority funds as well. So these, I mean, these funds, we can go dive into it. Craziest funds you've ever seen. I mean, basic hedge funds, real estate funds, private equity, but also we have

guys doing almond farm funds. We have guys doing cow manure funds. We have one group they buy, they find broke writers on Hollywood. They buy scripts from them. They turn around and sell them to HBO, Netflix for 200 200 300 grand so they make a spread gosh i need to do that anyways we help a lot of people launch funds which is pretty cool i love the i love the hustle sorry if i didn't uh if i if i downplayed your uh your profile because you're freaking awesome well no it's fun i like to just i like to just seed kind of this stuff because it's such an interesting space that not a lot of people talk about yeah like the reason we actually started making content online was because no one teaches this. Yes. And I was thankful enough to

learn from a dad who taught me this, but like literally if you go on Google or YouTube, no, this is like locked up on wall street or on Ivy league tower or whatever, somewhere regular people like me and you don't hear about this every single day. And so we were like, we need to like D we call it democratize wall street. So bring this to the general public and people. It's a pretty cool space. Yeah. I love your hashtag. It's like a wall street rebels or something. What is it? Yeah. That's so cool. Um, man. So tell us the story, like how you got involved, like growing up, your dad was, was running these funds. You really didn't know, like, give me that, that whole background. Yeah. So, and cut me off whenever you want. I grew up in a pretty normal house. My dad drove a car with a dent in the door. I mean, what are we talking? Normal house?

Like nothing. It wasn't, I wasn't poor by any means. How many square feet? Probably 3000 square feet. Okay. Normal house. My dad drove a 1999 Ford expedition with literally a dent in the door. Yes. Just an entrepreneur. He was up and down. He started a bunch of different companies. Really awesome dude. But he learned, he grew up in ghetto North Las Vegas, very poor. So he had risen from his income to, uh, to where he was at the time, but nothing fancy. We didn't go on trips. We didn't do, I mean, we were just, we're there and it was fun. I had a great childhood. No Ferraris, no Lambos. So I, and I had, he really baked into us kids though, this entrepreneur spirit. Like if you want to do well, and we, it was interesting. My dad made sure one of his stories is like, I made sure my kids lived nearby rich kids. So he bought the cheapest house that

went to the same schools as all the rich kids. Cause he goes, I think most kids believe they can do what their dad does. He goes, I grew up in a high school in North Las Vegas where the kids, parents were just blue collar workers. And they, you'd ask the kid, I'm not going to college. I'm going to go work at the tire store. I'm going to go work at the tire store. I'm going to go work at the fire department, which is nothing wrong with that. Because I want my kids to hang out with kids whose parents are anesthesiologists or run, which my friends, all my friends, you know, ears, nose and throat went to school for 15 years.

Doctor, right? They live in this huge mansion. Another guy was a major big time lawyer. The other guy that ran a, he's the CEO of a fortune 500 company. Wow. I was friends with these guys. And so their kids, you'd ask them, what are you guys going to do? I'm going to do what my dad did i'm gonna go to college go to wharton go to harvard and what it does is you everyone believes they can do what their dad does typically right and so he did that on purpose actually to

make sure i grew up those kids so i had anyways a very strong entrepreneur spirit very cool went on a two-year lds mission went to taiwan spoke mandarin chinese wow loved it we can talk about that more if you want but it's amazing mission amazing mission. Came home and I was like, came home on fire. Yes. I am here. I'm ready to work. So the first week I got home, I started a business. I started a Chinese tutoring business. Yes. I started tutoring kids in my neighborhood and stuff. I was making 30 to $40 an hour tutoring. I then hired seven or eight tutors. We started to build this little group. And I realized the thing though, when I was doing this business, that the margins are terrible on tutoring because I had to pay my, I've like

hired a kid to help me tutor. Right. If we've made 30 bucks, I'd pay him 25. I was making a $5 margin, which just isn't much. Right. So anyways, long story, but I, my first two years of college, I started six businesses. Yes. And these weren't just like business ideas. Like these were actual businesses. I had, I wholesale two houses. we started building websites for people. I was doing this Chinese tutoring business. I mean, I went, I did like every business on YouTube. I figured out and like did. Yes. And finally my dad grabs me and he's like, just the hustles. What you were just a hustle. And I was like, I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to, and actually that taught me a ton. We can talk about in a minute, but just the process of doing that teaches you a ton.

My dad finally grabs me though. And he goes, Bridger, you're kind of like a chicken with your head cut off. I want you to go be with my business partner. This guy can really help you out. So I said, okay, dad, I'll do whatever. So I go meet with this guy. I pull up to his house, beautiful house, gated community, beautiful, gorgeous home. I park my car and I'm like, who's my dad's business partner? This guy's legit. So I walked over the door. I knock on the door. I'm a little nervous. Like a butler is going to come and like be gone peasant, get out of here. But anyways, my dad's business partner answers the door, goes, Bridger, come on. And I walk in this guy's house. It's gorgeous. He's got the cars, the pool, just everything, right? I'm

totally impressed. I sit down. We have this long conversation. I finally ask him though, I go, how did you get all of this? How did you do this? And he goes, Bridger, it's a funny question. Not a lot of people ask me this. And he goes, in my twenties, I was a lot like you. He goes, I was a hustler. I just did every business. And actually I made good money in my twenties, but then he goes, Bridger, it's a funny question. Not a lot of people ask me this. And he goes, in my 20s, I was a lot like you. He goes, I was a hustler. I just did every business. And actually, I made good money in my 20s. But then he goes, then I figured out the secrets of the ultra wealthy. He goes, the ultra wealthy families of the world, they send their children to the best universities possible. And they sometimes cheat to get them in or pay to get them. We've seen that in the news, right? But they go and they want their kids to work in the fund space, private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, or come back home and run the family office. And he goes, I've met a guy that ran a private

equity fund that was one of the wealthiest wealthy people I'd ever met as a young dude. And he said, I don't, I met that guy and I made a goal. He says, I don't care how long it takes me one year, five years, or 20 years. He goes, I was going to figure out what a fund was. He's, I don't even know what a fund was, how to build one, how to scale one. And he goes, that's what we did. And he goes, and at the time he goes, we're, we're managing about $8 billion of real estate multifamily, which to put that into perspective, I know, you know, Grant Cardone, people will follow him. Cardone capital is about 4 billion, right? This is double. So that's two times. This is years ago. This is twice. This is twice and they're buying multifamily apartments, pretty similar assets, twice as big as Cardone Capital. Today, they're over 10 times bigger than Cardone Capital. Wow. So 10X Uncle G. Nothing wrong with

Uncle G. I love his content, but just to give you a magnitude of scale. Yeah. That's a lot of growth. That's big perspective. Yeah. And I was totally impressed. And I saw, and I was just a young kid. I'm 21 at the time. And I was like, can you be my mentor? You know, I'll come, I'll get you coffee, whatever he goes, Bridger, go talk to your dad. Your dad knows way more about that. I do. And I said, no, my dad's kind of broke. We live in a normal house, dude. I want to learn from you. Like you're rich. You're all this stuff. And he goes, Bridger, sorry to break it to you, but your dad, me and your dad make about the same amount of money. We're 50, 50 on this. And my chin drops the floor. I like, huh? Like, come again? He's like, yeah, we're pretty much equal business partners. And I left the dude's house. I drove straight to my dad's house. You're like, what on earth?

What's going on, dad? This is after you came home off your mission. Yes, this is after. Oh my goodness. It's like, dad, what's going on? Like, what, like, why haven't I been able to order like dessert at the restaurant for the past 20 years? Cause it's too expensive. We've got to save money on drinks, you know? And yet you're managing billions of dollars. So long story short, my dad started to teach me about funds. So every Sunday night I'd go to his house, he pulled the whiteboard and we would, he would map out what funds were, how waterfall structure work, how international feeder strungs work, how the SEC compliance works, how to find capital partners, all this stuff. And it was phenomenal. And I had this just masterclass from

my dad, a mentor on funds. And it's a funny thing about life. When you start to learn something, you start to recognize that thing in your life. Principal from Tony Robbins, all these other teachers, like if you buy a car, you start to see that car everywhere, right? Same thing was true with me about funds. I started to learn about funds and I thought, huh, I started to see opportunities for funds. So I was, now I've turned 22 years old, I was in college working. So I was in school full-time working a job and an internship. Again, my dad was, I was working too. I was working college and doing my thing at the internship. I saw an opportunity where we could start a fund for this company. They needed financing for these clients. So I said, I'm going to do this fund. I put it

all together. I mean, my dad helped put this kind of map out what the fund would look like. And I finally hit this wall. So I built this whole thing. I was super excited. Then I hit this wall like crap. How am I going to raise money? Like who's going to, the first thing you need for a fund is investors. Like that's the basis of a fund. Like I don't, I haven't graduated college. I have no tracker, no Ivy league degree. Like who's going to invest in me? And then I had a great idea. I was like, huh? My dad, he's got money. He doesn't spend it on Ferraris or funds. They're like, my dad will invest. And he's love. He's already helped me build this little thing. So I remember it was a late Sunday night. I went and I went in my dad's

little home office and I walked into your pitch ready. Oh yeah. Ready to go, baby. And I, I sit across my dad just like this. I said, dad, how would you like to be our first investor into our fund? And he smiled and he said, Bridger, 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. This will be a crutch that you'll never be able to recover from. And your first investor is your hardest investor to find. So no. And he kicked me out. Yeah. Tough love moment between me and my dad. But then he, uh, but it's probably the greatest blessing my dad ever gave me. And I went out and I raised a whopping $49,500 from six investors, which is people listening. That might sound cool. That's teeny. That's like nothing in the fund space.

So were you doing it all legal? Were these all accredited investors? So we did it through a syndication structure. Um, and I, I believe some were credit somewhere, but we were all partners on a syndication essentially. And so we had all the lawyers check it off and it looked good. And so we launched this little micro syndication and it was a teeny amount of money, but we did really well. We got a 64% return on their money back to those first group of partners and investors, which was phenomenal.

150 grand. Let's go. We then dovetailed that to our second fund. Our second fund, we raised and employed millions of dollars out of that fund. I ran that fund for about three and a half years. Did incredible. We had, I think, 62, 49 62 49 and 36 cash on cash return so real quick you go and you return 64 your next guys you're going to raise money from are you telling them

hey our previous fund was only 50 grand or you're saying our previous fund returned 64 64 better yeah and we just said hey we're doing the same strategy we're just gonna do the last scale and we're doing micro loans they. We're just going to do the last scale. And we were doing micro loans. They were 2000, $8,000 a loan. They turned very fast. We just got this great return. And that fund did phenomenal. It was, it was great. I actually finally had a competitor come and buy us out on that fund. So they, uh, they gave us an offer. We sold that fund, um, and exited that. And then during that process, my dad and myself, my brother's also an investment funds attorney, worked on the largest law firm in the world for funds. And so between three of us we had a pretty good fund knowledge so we started

to make content online and then we made a kind of a course and a group your dad was involved with the the content well i would just interview him i was pretty much me but i'd interview him and bring him as a guest sometimes my brother i'd bring him as a guest yeah but it was pretty much me yeah and uh all this we just we just blew up online as far as the space and so and it's pretty niche space for funds but we now you know have grown and we throw big events and we do all this cool stuff and we have students all over the world and people launching crazy funds. And so amazing. And then, then since then I've launched now at a different hedge fund. We raised eight figures on our first launch and we're running that now it's a crypto hedge fund that we

currently run. And then now we're, we partner with some of our students. We partner with eight of them on some of their funds. So yeah, it's kind of, that's the quick and dirty story. Yeah. You said, so like kind of your portfolio of students, you said how many have done 100 million and you have one that's done a billion, right? Raised a fund. 12 funds over 100 million, at least reported. This is just reported.

Right, right, right. One fund over a billion. We have 54 funds over $10 million in our group. Dude, that's so exciting. And so, I mean, here you are, 28 years old, seven years since you've come home from your mission. Yeah. Is that right?

Yeah, just about. Okay. Married, have a kid, right? Living life. Man, you know where I was when I was 28 years old? I think I was just meddling through bankruptcy. I can't remember. Oh, shoot.

But it was about the same. So that's pretty awesome that you've been able to take this. I love your dad's perspective on like not giving your kids a crutch. Yeah. I have the same. And still to this day, my dad has not invested in any fund or deal I've pitched him. That's so awesome. I pitch him all the time too. I love that. I'm like, dad, there's this great deal. He's like, cool. Find somebody else. I need to meet your dad. Yeah. Because I actually tried a father very similarly with my kids. So I have five kids. My oldest boy is 14.

My daughter's 16. And the thing I let them know, I'm like, look, you don't get a dime, right? When you're under my home, yeah, I'm going to provide some basic essentials and everything for you. But I'm not investing in your business. You're not, when I die, you're not inheriting anything, but the best thing I can do is give you my knowledge. So it sounds like me and your dad are so great. No, that, and my dad has done that for me and it's been phenomenal. Yeah. It's interesting. I interview a lot of people that run funds, big funds that are wealthy, and

it's funny to interview them and see the difference between, and I, it's, I, I, in my opinion, about 50, 50 of the kids of that can the second generation of these really high powered fund managers of people that have tons of wealth about 50 50 half of them the kids totally go astray yeah and are on drugs and just suck right out of it and then the other half these parents do a really good job and most parents that i've seen do that exact thing oh so they make their kids those are the ones that are successful yes let's go. I'll echo what you're saying. I think it's, I want to parent my kids that way. Kind of like Shaq said.

Yeah. I'm rich. I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I'm part of a Harvard group. So I attend this program called OPM and have you heard of it? No. Yeah. So essentially what it is, is it's every, every year we go out to Harvard three weeks a year stay on campus it's for owners presidents of different businesses they have certain qualifications there's 168 of us and it's got a diverse people I mean we've got that the second richest guy in the world his oldest son is part of our group got will I am we got like like there's there's all kinds of like super successful this and the other but but it's interesting you take that sample size of 168 people and you got about half of them that are living on daddy's money right and and you just

see what they're doing with their lives and some of them are just like not not that impressive and then there's these other people that have like bootstrapped it up or their parents taught them the right way or whatnot. And so, yeah, it's not, it's never even a distinguish of whether or not your parent was rich is, is how they, how they parented, how they transitioned that, that wealth of knowledge, right? But did they transition just assets or, or wealth or knowledge assets, right? Well, it Right. What's funny, we go and meet with a lot of big family offices. Yeah. And that exact same thing, you see a big level of confidence shift between those two categories as well.

Yes. People that bootstrap like you or me or whatever, like they feel this big amount of pride and confidence in what they've built. Right. The other half feel this sense of, you know, I was kind of gifted this stuff. And we go meet with these. And my business partner kept telling me, he goes, Bridget, when you're going to meet with this family, you're going to notice, because we're meeting with the son, there's a deep sense of sadness behind their eyes. Yes. There's a deep sense of, you know, dad did it, but I haven't quite done it yet. Right.

Behind their eyes. And they're still trying to prove to their dad that they're worth it, but they never can because they don't, they're not actually doing it. Right. And they're 40, 50 year old men. Yes, it's crazy. Still feeling like they haven't proved anything. And then all of a sudden they'll come up, we're gonna do this charity thing and do $12 million to this random thing. And it just doesn't quite fill that void

because they were given it. And it's funny if you think about, you know, if you were God or the creator of the universe and you were trying to build a amazing human, you wouldn't give them everything up front. If you wanted to build patience, you wouldn't give them everything up front. If you wanted to build patience, you wouldn't give them everything day one. If you wanted to build perseverance or diligence,

you would give them the opposite of what you think to build that trait. And it's one of the most beautiful gifts parents can give to children, I think, is not giving them money, not giving them a hand up, but giving them maybe knowledge, maybe delaying, whatever the thing is for your child. But it's very interesting way to think

about life. Yeah. And it's interesting. So my business partner, uh, Daryl, he's got four daughters and, and we, we kind of have this debate back and forth because, you know, daughters and sons are even a little different, right? Because the expectation for a man, like at least where my, my expectation is a man needs to go and provide, right. A woman needs to support. Yeah. She may be a part of the providing, right. But it, but it's a different, different level. And so like, how do you, how do you, uh, allocate that, right? Like, do I, do I take care of my daughters, but not my sons or, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting healthy debate to like figure out how that, that what have you done with your daughters then,

you know um right now i try to parent them the same but it doesn't work very good i'm not to be to be frank i'm not a great dad of girls right like i'm i am very like rigid like rub some rub some dirt in it you know stand up you got this type deal doesn't work with women you know and so so i've tried to try to morph my parenting style or whatnot but uh but yeah it'll it'll be interesting i think i think i'll probably have a different take on on a financial aspect with the way i take care of my daughters but it'll be it'll be interesting but at the same time i don't want to debilitate my future son-in-laws right like and so because that's such an interesting category too the son-in-laws coming in and oh man it's very interesting good night yeah i'm gonna good night oh man i'm gonna

be approaching that here in a few years my daughter's um she's 16 and a half you know she's gonna be gone in two years i mean she could be married in three or four i'm like oh how do you approach that wow it's funny too i love the quote everyone's a perfect parent until they have kids right right right and so it's just interesting as you go that? Wow. It's funny too, I love the quote, everyone's a perfect parent until they have kids. Right. Right. Right. And so it's just interesting as you go.

I'm just, yeah, it's a couple of years I have to follow up and see how you navigate all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have some really cool things that I like to do with my kids that have seemed to work thus far, but we'll see. So, man, I love what your story, like that is fascinating to me, like the way that your dad is passing on his knowledge and just your hustle, your grit, all these different businesses that you've started. I think that's so key to being successful is like just finding the different ins and outs of like creating value. Right. And and even if it's only five dollars an hour of value that you're creating versus like flipping a big business or

whatever it is like um i think that's so much of the younger generation today is just trying to get the quick and easy buck right they're they're thinking like uh i think the the statistic right they they interviewed a bunch of teenagers and like all of them expect to be a millionaire by the age of 25 right and but they want it quick and easy they're not willing to go and do those things building build a language building you know business where you're only making five bucks an hour you know figure out how the economy works or what whatever it is right like it's just like i want it now start a youtube channel get a following shake my butt you know we do something i don't know

and so i it's interesting to just see like like that you're doing it the right way well it's channel, get a following, shake my butt, you know, we do something, I don't know. And so I, it's interesting to just see like, like that you're doing it the right way. Well, it's interesting too. I, I actually love that goal though. I love that that's built in. If a lot of kids want to be, I think I love the Jim Rohn quote, set a goal to be a millionaire because of who you have to become to get there. Right. And we're, we're going through a massive transition in the economy right now, right. Where you can make millions of dollars in very ways that the older generations, even me and you would look at and say, that's a, that's a, not a legitimate way to make money, but yet it's dollars or dollars. Right. And so whether it's a YouTube channel or being a content creator,

or I don't know, building an AI, just leveraging AI to build websites or whatever you're going to use. At least the journey, I think, is massive. Now, I have friends that are giving everything up to be a gaming streamer. And they're not putting correct business principles into what they're going to do, especially for online creation. This is something actually I did a terrible job at the beginning. I had a while, we actually built a course to flip houses. Okay. This is like way back when one of those six businesses was a course called live flip. Yeah. And so I was like, yo, I love the concept of courses. They have great margins. Great. You can do a lot with a course. Let's build a house flipping course. So I found these two mentors.

I brought them in. We filmed for like eight months, them flipping a house. And it was actually very high quality shot in 4k edited it. We made this big thing. I was decent at marketing, built the funnels. We did that webinars webinars we did the whole model we copied the whole thing we launched it and it totally flopped and i looked back and i was like why we have a great product and online and why don't people just sign up and then i realized that a certain thing that we don't think about when we go to online when we're starting a podcast or starting a youtube channel if you were going to open up a coffee shop, right? In your local area, you probably wouldn't put it next to the five. There's five other coffee shops on one corner. You probably wouldn't put a sixth

there, right? It's just a very competitive market, right? Maybe you put it in an area where there's not a lot of coffee shops, whatever you'd be strategic about your location of a business. Yet online, I realized with a house flipping course, there's about a thousand house flipping courses. There's Dean Graciosi. I mean, you can name them off. Why would they choose us over them? I was like, huh, this is a red ocean.

I have a friend right now. He's like, Bridger, I'm gonna be a fitness influencer. And I was like, okay, like what niche or whatever? No, I'm just gonna post videos of doing fitness. Just crush it. You and 20,000 other people are doing the exact same content online. It's just funny. We don't think about this red ocean, blue ocean concept. Right. And it was funny enough when we started fun launch, we take a totally different approach. I went, I used a tool called tube buddy. Fantastic tool.

Everyone should use it. It's a Chrome extension. It goes on YouTube tube buddy. How do you spell it? Like YouTube buddy, tube T U B E buddy. Yep. You go on there and you can actually type in keywords and phrases and it'll say how much search volume versus how much competition is for that key phrase. So we went on there and I said like how to flip a house. A lot of people search that, but very competitive. Yes. We went and searched like how to start a private equity fund, very high search volume, low competition. We're like, huh, that's interesting. How to start a real estate fund or how to start a private equity or how to, how do I like raise capital for a fund? We started getting these incredible ton of people searching for it, very low competition. We thought,

huh, this might be a blue ocean online. And so we actually, my first episodes, I started a podcast and show the first episodes, all 10 of them were pretty much targeted directly for those keywords. And all of a sudden we did a, I think we did a million dollars in our first six months. We had 2.5 million in our first 12 months. Wow. Because we picked a niche and found a blue ocean that was right there online. But a lot of people when they're looking online, don't realize these red oceans. I have friends that want to be a gaming streamer. Okay, cool. That's great. You and 10,000 other people. So maybe you should be a streamer that wears a certain outfit or does something funny or cracks jokes, or maybe a comedian and a streamer at the same time. Finding your niche on the online scape is a very different thing than just starting. Right. Right. Yeah. A lot of people

think if, if I just take action, if I just create a product or whatnot, it's going to automatically sell. Right. And so it's, it's understanding the total addressable market. It's understanding the competition. It's understanding, can Iable market it's understanding the competition it's understanding can i sell it right before you ever even get into the it right like what creating all the content because otherwise yeah i mean there's so many just market positioning yes like massive yes i have a friend that is online fitness but he's online fitness for successful ceos ages 45 to 55 money all of a sudden he's the category king of that space. Yes. And everyone comes to him for that thing. Right. It's really cool. I have another

friend that does online fitness for brides. She calls it bride fit. It's actually a family member of ours. Get your naked body on. No, it's like, yeah, you've got six months till you're getting married. Yes. Let's do a six month program to get you bride fit for your, to fit in that wedding dress and women, especially when they're getting married, there's just, and as a husband, you just spend a lot of money. He's like, yeah, flowers, whatever. Yeah. Bride fits like five, whatever, how many grand it is. Yeah. Put it in the budget, baby. It's all in the budget. Cause you're, and she's, she's actually built an incredible business off of that little niche. That's so cool. So dude, what, uh, what drives you today? So like you're, you're building this, like, where do you want to take it? Like, what

are your goals? What are your aspirations right now? So it's funny on a, I'll talk through a, on a couple of different senses here, obviously with fund launch and our funds, I, you know, I've got, at first I was like, I need to make money, meet up Bridger. And I was all focused on money, very coin focused. And so we made money. I made sure money was, we were cashflow generators putting in my pocket, which was awesome. And I did that for a while. It was really great. I'm hitting a point now where I'm transitioning from that to now more impact. And it was, it was really frustrating. Actually, I listened to podcasts like this and I listened to founders. I'm like, yeah, dude, we're all about the mission and the impact.

And I thought it was really cheesy. You're like bull crap. Everyone says that once they're a billionaire, what were you doing when you were like making your first 10 grand, you were focusing on making money. And so I focused on making money for the first, I don't know, let's call it a couple of years. I'm now hitting a point where I think I've, I feel like I've made enough money where it actually, now I understand why people talk about impact and what they're doing. And now I've, I've really focused on our customers and clients. I really do want to change this democratization of Wall Street. I want, I think there's consolidation at Vanguard, at BlackRock, these big citadel that run the world. You can talk at length, but how they manage all the boards and they do ESG initiatives and all

these initiatives to change Disney and Fox and all these companies, they pretty much have 100% say on what happens. They can do that because they run a fund. And 150 years ago, however many years ago, they figured out this game and just took it to the nth degree. Yep. I think more people like us need to figure out this game. We need to democratize the game of fun. So it's not just one in seven homes in 2021 were purchased by wall street in 2022 was one in five residential homes were purchased by more people need to understand this game of funds or we're going to be slaves to people that understand the game of funds. Yeah. So you talk about like finding your motivation, obviously, like initially it was money and then you're kind of going more to like a cause and taking it to like being able to push it, you know, through funds. Right. Um, have you ever read the book, how you measure your life?

Uh huh. Yeah. So, uh, I believe it's from, from that book where, where he talks about like the hygiene factors. Have you, you remember this? Yeah. So it's interesting from that book where where he talks about like the hygiene factors have you remember this yeah so it's interesting because right money and oxygen are both hygiene factors right when you don't have enough of it right your first 10 grand your first 100 grand whatever is right just paying your bills it's the only thing that can motivate it's the only thing you think about i need oxygen now but after that and you don't even have to be that wealthy right like you don't have to have that. Money will lose its saver, right? Money will lose its drive, its power, everything like that. It is finding these bigger purpose things that actually are your true motivational factors that push you.

And the craziest thing that most people don't realize when they're poor is that if I could just focus on my motivational factors, I will be a value creator and money will automatically just attract itself to me. Right. Instead of me chasing money, money starts chasing me. And so I just love that, that, uh, just that concept of like shifting, right. Even though it sounds cheesy, like you said, right. Like, like, Oh yeah, sure. Purpose driven life, whatever else like add value to the world like and i was like yeah that's cool but like i need to make 10 grand right now you know like i need to survive the next six months yeah and that was actually good for a season i'm happy i did that right but it's it's transitioned a lot and the other thing i'll say is this i'll tell you a quick

story so we were at um pirates cove actually i think i texted you guys there yep um with my wife's family cool and my wife's grandparents he's got an incredible story he grew up his mom was a prostitute had all these different fathers through his life. He just, he grew up in a very interesting circumstance. So she's your wife's who? It's my wife's grandpa. Okay. He then grows up. He has, he beats his father up when he's 14. He got really good at boxing, beats the crap out of his father when he's drunk one night and like leaves the house and has this crazy story. He then becomes a blackjack dealer. He's pretty good at football. He gets a scholarship. This is down in Vegas or where? This is, uh, he was in through California, kind of Vegas area. He then plays for a team at Utah college team. He then

gets called to Vietnam, serves in Vietnam, finds God, finds Christ, becomes a member of the church of Jesus Christ, gets baptized, changes his life, gets married. He becomes a very successful lawyer. He now, he has five kids. Those kids all have incredible people. And my, my wife is one of his granddaughters. That's awesome. And they are, I'm not even kidding when I say incredible humans, this family. I mean, every, I mean, pretty much everyone is like incredible and like either dance or sport, they're college athletes, or they're ripped, like, or they have incredible businesses. Every single person you see is like, wow, these are sharp people. You, you married up. I married up big time. Yeah. So we're there. And it was funny. This, this guy comes and he visits the family. He walks, he's looking at this guy's a multimillionaire kind of been a playboy through

his life, but he, now he's a little bit older. He's like 50 ish. Yeah. And he's there and he's like, huh? He talks to the grandpa and we're kind of sitting there and he goes, what you have here is really special. Yeah. Money can't buy this. Yeah. You've built a family legacy. And me and my wife talk about this a lot. When I interview people and talk about success and family and whatever, I think the biggest success in life is exactly what my wife's grandpa has, where you have compounded wealth or how you ever define wealth, but success through generations. Cause I think, and you can't buy that. It takes, and you can't even do it yourself. Right. You have to do with another human, your spouse. Yep. And it takes 35, 40 years of being a really good dad and mother,

and then a really good grandfather to have. He's got about 60, 70 people in his posterity. So cool. And not a single one of them. I mean, are, I mean, they're all amazing people. That is almost all of them. And it's just cool. And like, you can't buy that. That is so cool. Like Ed, Ed Milet refers to it, uh, to your hair, her grandfather as the one, right. Generational breaker, right. My dad was the same thing for us, right? Like my, my dad grew up in a, in a home of a drunkard, you know, he was driving his his dad home from bars at age 12, you know, late late at night or whatnot. And it's just so cool to see the impact that that someone like just one decision. Right. I'm going to be different. I'm going to change it.

And to to have it spread across generations. That's so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. How how does your family help you offer perspective on your business? Well, it's massive. I think about that all the time, that family legacy. And, and I think on my business side of things, I have a unique spot for my business where I actually have thousands of students that look to me for help and my team and stuff. And I can hopefully drastically affect their lives in a positive way in a world of finance where it's the Wolf of Wall Street lifestyle, like cocaine stripper, just do whatever, live life fast. And who cares what happens tomorrow? Yes.

And when people, clients meet with me and my team, it's it's usually a very stark difference. I'm like, dude, we're playing the long game here. We're playing the 40 year game of reputation. You got to build a great family alongside a great business that has integrity that builds with investors and clients throughout, you know, the next few decades. And they're like, oh, oh, I thought you were just some 28 year old, whatever. And I'm like, no, this is what we're building here. And it takes you just compounded years of being a really good human, especially for funds. That's really what funds are. When you compound funds, you look at these big fund managers, Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett. Ray Dalio started his first fund at 26 years old. Warren Buffett started his first fund at, I believe, 28. A bunch of these fund

managers today that are multi-billion dollar fund managers started in their 20s at a pretty small fund. They raised 50 to 100 grand and they just started. And they, over a decade and a couple of decades, they get caught compounded returns. They were honest with investors, whether they made money or lost money, they had audits done. And all of a sudden we go, man, Warren Buffett's just incredible. Or Ray Daly's incredible. It's like, well, look, he spent 50 years, 50 years doing this. Have you ever seen his hockey stick growth of, of his, uh, of his net worth? It's actually phenomenal. You can Google it, right?

I'd encourage the audience, one, not to do so. But it literally shows just like how unimpressive it was in his 20s, in his 30s, even in his 40s. It wasn't even that. It was like it was a lot of money, but it wasn't a lot of money, right? And then it just, this compound effect, and just, you know, into his 70s, all of a sudden it's just like, boom, double, double, double. Right. And it just it the consistency, the you know, like you said, like the honesty with your investors, like sticking to it. That's awesome. And back to what you talked about, you know, kids want to all be quick, get rich quick, which is fine.

I like that mentality, but there's something about living a life and leaving a long-term legacy and having compounded wins over time and understanding that some things just take time when you're being diligent and perseverance. So, uh, I think it's phenomenal, especially in the fun game. Yeah, dude. You know, and what you're really talking about is creating a culture, right? Like, uh, your team, not only is your employees but it's this this group of students right you're like you have such a powerful influence and and when you have that kind of influence it's all driven by culture and it's like what is our mission statement what are our core values what it like those things matter

right like as I built an organization of 1,300 employees like it was all based off of those things and it sounds like you're doing the same thing and and like that's the power to change the world that's the power to influence it and to go and compete against these big funds that are literally just dictating how we live life like we have the power to fight back i love it oh i love it six months ago we did a whole executive retreat my team we built out it took us about i think 12 to 15 hours to build our core values yeah and they put them on the wall and they look simple but it's like we debated these heavily. Love it.

About what we're going to live by and die by as a team. And it's been actually phenomenal for our company. That's so awesome. So if, I mean, dude, you're still young, right? Like a lot of times when I meet with somebody, it's like, okay, what advice would you give to a young entrepreneur? You're still young yourself, but like,

one, would you change anything that you've done up until this point? And then two, what advice would you give to somebody that's contemplating leaving everything they have and going out on their own? I mean, the first question, I don't know if I have a ton, it's always like, you always, you got to look back at your life and say, I'm happy with what the way things turned out, good, bad, or ugly, because it's made me who I am today. I mean, mean if i could go back i'd buy bitcoin in 2012 or something right you do something like that but i'll give uh advice to a younger self and it's actually fun i i actually like i i speak it i oftentimes actually get invited to speak at colleges and universities to high school kids

because i'm just closer to their age yes and i'm like hey it's at least for me it was hard to learn from somebody who was 60 years old telling me all the steps they took from age 21 to 65. Right. It's a lot easier. Like, I'm like, hey, I'll just tell you the next few steps. And I'm not going to tell you the whole route to the top of the mountain. I'm going to tell you the next few steps of how to do this. And I had a brother.

I'll tell you two stories that changed my life. And I would love advice. I give my younger self. I went I was in college and I met this. We were at the speaking event. This guy came from Harvard, spoke really impressive dude. And I'm sitting there like, man, it's a really great guy. And he gets off stage. He comes to the back of the room, right where I'm standing. And I'm like, oh man, he's sitting right here. I can just chat with him. And somebody else was speaking. So I lean over to him and I was so nervous at the time about

risk, which everyone's always nervous about risk. Should I take a chance? I had this idea for a business I was going to do. Should I take a chance? What if I ruined school? Because I had good grades. I was trying to do the internship thing and get a really good career. I actually got a six-figure job offer out of college that I turned down. And anyways, I kept asking him, like, what should I do? He said, Bridger, what do you mean risk? I'm like, well, yeah, it's risky. I could go start a business. What if I fail? And he goes, Bridger, if you fail, do you have a family member or a friend that you could move in with and sleep on their couch for a couple months and maybe eat food out of their fridge and be with them? Like, honestly. And I said, well, yeah, you know, I have parents or a brother-in-law

or somebody, they would take me in. If I really needed it, they would take me in. So he goes, you're telling me if you failed, fell flat on your face, you would move in with a family member, a friend who loves you and has food for you. And you could have air conditioning or whatever in a house. Right. And I was like, well, yeah, because Bridger, we're not talking about risk here. He's like, you got no risk. Your worst case scenario is better than 90% of the world lives today. Love that. We're not talking about risk here. Yeah. And he goes, and also, if you leave school or drop out, schools will always take your money. You can always come back and pay them for a degree.

They'll happily take your money for a degree. So if you have a good idea, go after it. So you dropped out. And I ended up dropping out of school because of that conversation. And another conversation I had with my brother-in-law, and he said a similar thing. He goes, Bridger, you're a time in your life when you're young. You don't have a mortgage. You don't have five kids like you do. You don't have a big, a car payment and all this

stuff to handle. It's just you. There's literally no risk. I'm like, I survive on like 500 bucks a month. Oh my gosh. You could get a job at McDonald's and in a week you're making your monthly payments. We're not talking about risk here. So you have a thing called asymmetrical risk and investing. We call this, it's, it's, we've heard the term. There's no downside. Yeah. There's, it's called high risk, high reward investing. You've heard that low risk, low reward. Asymmetrical risk is when you have relatively low risk, but yet very high reward. Right. That's what fund managers trying to find is find alpha or asymmetrical risk. So Bridger, you have that as a college student right now, you have relatively low downside, but if you, if it hits, if it does well, you have a massive

upside. Why would you not take that bet on yourself in the best years of your life? When you're healthy, you have tons of energy, you're young. Like, and I was like, huh, it's a great point. I love that advice. You know, I I've tried to live by that pretty much anytime I've looked at risk is like, I analyze what is the potential downside, right? And if the downside is moving in with my, moving in with my in-laws living in their basement or whatever it is, right? And if the downside is moving in with my in-laws, living in their basement or whatever it is, right? Like if that's really the worst case scenario, and I have never, ever taken action where it's ended up being my worst case scenario ever. Like I've even gone bankrupt and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, right? And so I think that's important

for anybody to hear that like the monster that you're creating in your mind of the downside of risk or whatever it is it's not real and and you won't even begin to approach that and even if you did so what right like well in america too we have bankruptcy right these these nets so much we have like food stamps we have like it is hard to be homeless, in my opinion, in America. Yes. If you're really trying.

Now, I know if you're on drugs or doing fentanyl and stuff, but let's just leave that out. If you don't avoid substance abuse, there's a lot of nets. If you live in the United States, there's a ton of nets that catch you. And it's, again, it's an asymmetrical risk. I love it.

I love it. So favorite book. What's something you're reading right now or something that you love to draw back on? A few books that have changed my entire career. Um, we talked about Russell Brunson. I love expert secrets. That book absolutely changed my life. Yep. Uh, launch by Jeff Walker. Okay. I'm not sure if you read that one. He's kind of an OG online marketer and he talks through this process of launching products. I, the reason I bring up those two books, they're very actionable books. I was young in my career in college and I would read these books from big wigs, right? I'd

read Jack Welsh's book on how to do management. And it just, it was so far away from me. Good to great. I'd read that one. But like, it's only applicable if you have 200 employees. I'm like, it's just me. Like this book is cool. And I've actually gone back and read those books. I'm like, wow, these are phenomenal books. And at the time I was like, that's a, I don't, I didn't get anything from this book. And so I like books when I talk on podcasts, books that are actionable.

Launch, very actionable book. Love it. Talks about the process of launching any product or business you're doing. He talks it through this. He calls it the PLF style launch. This is what Apple, so Apple, he goes, Apple's the best example of all time.

Every year they do this with their iPhone. So what happens in May or June of every year, there's leaked images of the new iPhone or the iPhone, whatever, 17 or 20 or whatever is coming out that we have leaked photos. And it's like, Apple's leaking these photos, right? This kind of, they get the most little hype and they build up a little bit more. This new feature maybe is coming out. They then set a date. They set a launch date, right? You then have a big announcement launch date. You launch this thing. You then open cart on the launch. And then he's like, the only reason to open a card is to close it. And you always set a close date. You close off the car. Apple sometimes doesn't do that, but you close like orders can only come in this time.

Anyways, very actual way to launch businesses and products. We do this still to this day. And we did that in college. I raised, I made $144,000 in a launch that we did just from doing that model. So cool. And I was like, you know, I was like, Holy crap. As a college kid, that could have been a billion dollars. The same way. Like it was the same feeling of like, Holy shoot. Like we're rigging rich, you know? But I love that book. I'll say those two expert secrets launch. The last one I'll say is lost and founder. Have you heard that book? I have, I haven, Expert Secrets, Launch. The last one I'll say is Lost and Founder. Have you heard that book? I have.

I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. Very phenomenal book. Talks about this, the real nuts and bolts of launching a business and being a founder. And this is the podcast, The Founder Podcast. He shares an example of service-based business versus tech-based businesses. He goes, a tech company will typically get a 10 to a 12x multiple. So let's say your company is doing 10 million revenue right you'd get a hundred million dollar evaluation a service-based company is going to get a two to three maybe so let's call a 10 million our same same revenue a service-based company will sell for 25 to 30 million dollars right he goes but the average founder ends up

with about 11 equity at the end a tech founder right of the end of their career. So if you had an $100 million exit, that means the average founder ends up with $11 million. The average service-based founder ends up with 50 to about 90% of their equity. So if you sold a service-based company for $30 million, you'd send up 15 to 20. And he calls it this myth of being a tech founder. Sounds really cool. And he himself, the writer, he's like, he runs a multi a hundred million dollar tech firm. The venture capitalists that have come in have locked his equity. He's worked on it for 11 years. He's like on paper, I'm worth, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars. I get paid a salary of about $230,000 a year. And I've never been paid more than that. And I cannot sell my equity. Oh my goodness. And he goes, if I could go back,

I would have structured things way differently. I would have. And anyways, it's a really, if you're a founder listening to this podcast, that's a fantastic, yeah, dude, appreciate the recommendation. So where, where's the best place to follow you? Instagram, YouTube, where we're at. Um, yeah, Instagram is awesome. Bridger underscore Pennington, YouTube. We have a channel that talks all about funds. So Bridger Pennington, we have a free course on funds too, for people. They want to like, yeah, give us a, give us a nice hook here. We're trying to democratize wall street. So I'm like, I just, we just give content because I really, I want people to launch more funds and learn at least not even launch, but just learn this game. Yes. So we have a totally

free course on funds. Just message me on Instagram or fun launch.com, but it's a hundred percent free to put in your email. And we have like, I don't know, 20 to 30 videos that walk you through how funds work, how they're built. I just, I, I just have this mission. We need more people to understand this game so that the black rocks of the world, the vanguards, the citadels do not just run over us over the next 10, 20 years. Dude, it's wild. Vanguard and black rock each have like a 15 per se stake in like every major business in the world it's it's unreal it is unreal and i'm with you it's very scary and how they can move and it's like huh who controls the world it's like and blackrock is essentially an extension of the fed

the fed does all their buying of their equities portfolio through blackrock and so you know it's an extension of the fed essentially the u.s government that whatever agenda they want to push right they can push it right through those groups. It's pretty interesting. They also run the Aladdin system. We can dive into deep finance if you want. The Aladdin system manages like 20 trillion a year. They do all, every transaction on earth

pretty much goes to the Aladdin system, which is ran by BlackRock. And so they can manipulate things like crazy. Oh my goodness. So man, I'm all about your mission. I think a lot of people that are listening to this podcast, they're either contemplating being founders, previous founders, had exits, whatnot, looking at launching funds and whatnot.

I think there's a lot of value that you can offer to our audience. So I appreciate your time today. No, thanks so much. Go and follow Bridger. He's absolutely awesome. Until next time.