How to Start a $50M Investment Fund (From Scratch!) | DSH #1198

Summary

Digital Social Hour – Episode: How to Start a $50M Investment Fund (From Scratch!) | DSH #1198

Release Date: February 22, 2025

Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Bridger Pennington
Managed Assets: Approximately $50 Million
Type of Funds: Blockchain Investment Fund & GP Stakes Fund

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Digital Social Hour, host Sean Kelly engages in an insightful conversation with Bridger Pennington, a seasoned fund manager known for launching multiple investment funds from the ground up. The discussion delves into the intricacies of starting a substantial investment fund, navigating capital raising challenges, and understanding the broader financial and geopolitical landscapes that influence investment strategies.

---

2. Bridger Pennington’s Journey to Fund Management

Bridger shares his unconventional entry into the world of investment funds, highlighting a pivotal moment when he decided to pitch his fund to his wealthy father.

Bridger (00:00): "I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no. He said if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own."

Despite the initial rejection, Bridger's perseverance led him to successfully launch three funds and initiate a fourth, with his father eventually investing for the first time in Bridger’s funds seven years later.

Bridger (02:00): "To this day he's invested in a single fund I've done."

Currently managing a $50 million portfolio, Bridger operates both a blockchain investment fund and a GP stakes fund, showcasing his versatility in the investment domain.

---

3. Overcoming Capital Raising Challenges

At just 22 years old, Bridger faced significant hurdles in raising capital due to his age and lack of a formal education in finance.

Bridger (02:38): "I'm 22 years old, I have no tracker, no college degree. Like, why would you invest with a 22-year-old?"

His father’s advice became instrumental in his approach:

Bridger (03:07): "Focus on the deal. If the deal is so good and you can outline every risk and every opportunity... people may look past your youth."

Using a compelling example, Bridger illustrates the importance of presenting lucrative deals to attract investors, emphasizing thorough due diligence.

---

4. The Imperative of Due Diligence and Fraud Prevention

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around safeguarding investments through third-party audits and administration to prevent fraud.

Bridger (06:16): "Fraud. We've seen a bunch… people steal money, especially on small funds."

He underscores his strict investment criteria:

Bridger (07:13): "Do they have third-party audits? Do they do third-party administration?"

This stringent approach has earned him the trust of major investors, setting his funds apart in a crowded marketplace.

---

5. Private Funds vs. Mutual Funds: Performance Insights

The conversation shifts to the performance metrics of various fund types, comparing private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds to traditional mutual funds.

Bridger (05:10): "Tony Robbins… private equity versus the S&P 500 over the last 30 years has 4 or 5 X'ed the returns."

Highlighting the superior returns of private funds, Bridger notes that only 40% of all funds outperformed the S&P 500 last year, whereas top-tier private funds consistently deliver exceptional returns.

---

6. The Dominance of Major Investment Firms

Bridger discusses the overwhelming influence of giants like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street in the global financial ecosystem.

Bridger (10:45): "BlackRock and Vanguard are the two largest owners…"

These firms manage approximately $22 trillion in assets, wielding significant power over Fortune 500 companies by influencing corporate governance through their substantial shareholdings.

---

7. Market Manipulation in Traditional and Crypto Markets

Addressing concerns about market integrity, Bridger cites historical instances of manipulation and draws parallels with the burgeoning cryptocurrency sector.

Bridger (09:26): "Bernie Madoff… never did an audit."

He warns about the ease of manipulating smaller markets like crypto, given their relatively nascent state compared to traditional markets like gold.

Bridger (16:51): "If JP Morgan can manipulate the $14 trillion gold market, imagine the $3 trillion crypto market."

---

8. Geopolitical Influence through Financial Power and Military Might

A deep dive into the interplay between financial dominance and military strategy reveals how the U.S. leverages its economic power alongside its formidable naval presence.

Bridger (11:58): "The dollar is doing just fine now… it's backed by 14 aircraft carriers… backed by a trade embargo."

He elaborates on the strategic use of aircraft carriers to assert U.S. dominance in critical regions, influencing global trade and political alignments.

---

9. Cryptocurrency and AI Investment Strategies

Bridger shares his cautious optimism about investing in AI and cryptocurrency, acknowledging both their potential and the inherent risks.

Bridger (19:01): "If AI is really smart, it would play dumb… and then wake up one day."

He opts for a diversified approach, spreading investments across various AI and crypto companies to mitigate risks.

---

10. The Importance of Family and Personal Fulfillment

Shifting gears, Bridger emphasizes the paramount importance of family over material wealth, sharing personal anecdotes about his own family life.

Bridger (38:09): "Your biggest flex you can have in life is an amazing family…"

He believes that building and nurturing strong familial relationships offers the most enduring form of success and fulfillment.

---

11. Networking and Mastermind Groups for Success

Highlighting the value of continuous learning and networking, Bridger discusses his investments in high-tier mastermind groups led by influential figures like Russell Brunson.

Bridger (41:59): "Getting in the right room with the right people… winners always find an ROI and losers always find a negative."

These groups provide access to exclusive knowledge, connections, and strategies that propel his investment ventures forward.

---

12. Conclusion and Resources

Towards the end of the episode, Bridger directs listeners to valuable resources for aspiring fund managers and investors.

Bridger (43:35): "Fundlaunch.com… we have a full free course on funds."

He encourages the audience to utilize these platforms to educate themselves on launching and managing successful investment funds, emphasizing transparency and integrity in the investment process.

---

Key Takeaways

• Persistence Pays Off: Despite initial setbacks, continuous effort and strategic decision-making can lead to substantial success in fund management.

• Due Diligence is Crucial: Ensuring third-party audits and administration safeguards investments against fraud and builds investor trust.

• Understanding Market Dynamics: Recognizing the performance differences between various fund types and the influence of major financial firms is essential for informed investing.

• Geopolitical Awareness: Financial strategies are deeply intertwined with global politics and military strategies, impacting investment landscapes.

• Personal Fulfillment Over Material Wealth: Building a strong family foundation provides lasting satisfaction beyond financial achievements.

• Continuous Learning and Networking: Engaging with mastermind groups and educational resources is vital for sustained growth and success in the investment field.

---

Notable Quotes

• Bridger on Overcoming Youth Barriers:

  "Focus on the deal. If the deal is so good and you can outline every risk and every opportunity... people may look past your youth."
  [02:38]

• Bridger on Fraud Prevention:

  "Do they have third-party audits? Do they do third-party administration?"
  [07:13]

• Bridger on Investment Returns:

  "Tony Robbins… private equity versus the S&P 500 over the last 30 years has 4 or 5 X'ed the returns."
  [05:10]

• Bridger on the U.S. Dollar's Power:

  "The dollar is backed by 14 aircraft carriers. It's backed by a trade embargo."
  [11:58]

• Bridger on Family Values:

  "Your biggest flex you can have in life is an amazing family…"
  [38:09]

---

Resources Mentioned

• Fundlaunch.com:
  A comprehensive free course for learning about launching and managing investment funds.

  "If you guys want to learn about investment funds, we have a free course on Fundlaunch.com."
  [43:35]

• Altstreet.com:
  Platform featuring interviews with fund managers globally.

  "You can go to Altstreet.com as well."
  [43:35]

---

Tune in next time to Digital Social Hour for more unfiltered conversations with influential figures shaping the world today.

Transcript

[A]

And I went to raise capital. Like, I'm going to go pitch my dad. Who better? Apparently my dad's rich. He doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing. You know, like, he'll probably have tons of money. So I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. He said if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own. To this day, he's. I've now launched three funds. I'm doing a fourth right now. Last week was the first time he's ever invested in a single fund.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Currently run two funds right now. I run a blockchain investment fund. We run a GP stakes fund. We manage roughly $50 million of AUM right now.

[B]

Damn. That's crazy. All right, guys, we got the fund master here today, Bridger Pennington. Thanks for coming on, man.

[A]

What's up? Good to see you. Yeah, long time waited.

[B]

Yeah. I've been seeing you at events for years, man.

[A]

Yes, we have.

[B]

I think we were trying to plan this out. Limitless. Like two years ago, right?

[A]

Yep, yep.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Good to be here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And congrats to you, man. You're blowing up. Just crushing. I see all your clips. You guys are crushing it.

[B]

Thanks, dude. You too. You're. You're the fund expert, man. How'd you get into this stuff?

[A]

Yeah, the. The quick story is I grew up in a normal household. Didn't know till college. My dad was running a $28 billion family of funds.

[B]

He didn't tell you?

[A]

Had no clue. He drove a. He drove a car with a dent in the door. Full old Ford Expedition. And I mean, to put that in perspective, that is five times bigger than Cardone Capital today.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

He's now retired. Their funds are $48 billion, something like that crap. And now we weren't poor by any means, but we weren't rich by any means either. And I was in college, I was like, dad, like, what the. Like, what have we been doing? Anyways, long story short, my desk are teaching me out funds. So he started to teach me. We got a whiteboard. He teach me how funds are built, how to raise capital, how to put them together, how to work the sec. My brother then went into law, became an investment funds attorney as well. And so I started in college, I started looking around for fund ideas. I launched a fund in College at 22 years old, had this interesting idea. I pitched it. I was at a company, pitch it to the owners of the company. Liked the idea, went and launched this fund, I helped my dad kind of help me put it together and I went to raise capital and I'm like, I'm gonna go pitch my dad. Like, you know, who better? Apparently my dad's rich. He doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing. You know, like, he'll probably have tons of money. So I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so, yeah, he said if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own. This is a lesson that you have to learn. He said no. And to this day he's. I've now launched three funds. We're going to do in a fourth right now. And actually, sorry, last week, this is seven years ago, this last week was the first time he's ever invested in a single fund I've ever done.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So he just always said no. But it was taught me a valuable lesson. Went out, launched a fund and then I launched a second fund. Ran that fund for about three and a half years. We sold that fund. I currently run two funds right now. I run a blockchain investment fund. We run a GP stakes fund. We manage roughly $50 million of AUM right now.

[B]

Damn, that's crazy. How tough was it raising money for that first one?

[A]

Yeah, it was tough. Well, I'm 22 years old, I have no tracker, no college degree. Like, why would you Invest with a 22 year old? You wouldn't. And so I'm sitting there like, why would someone do this? And what my dad taught me was focus on the deal. If the deal is so good and you can outline every risk and every opportunity and really show the due diligence you have done, people may look past your youth. And so that's what we did. And so I dug into this thing. He gave me an example. He said, when raising capital, everyone gets so introvert, like, no one will invest in me. He goes, imagine if I found, you know, a brand new Ferrari in Montana that was for sale and it's in bankruptcy and the car is for sale for $50,000. He's like Bridger, but you have till Saturday at noon to come up with 50 grand. You can't use any of your own money. And this car we could sell for a quarter million dollars on Monday morning. Could you find 50 grand? And I was like, yeah, actually, I think so. Like, we're going to make 200 grand this weekend. Like, I'm going to knock on doors, I'll be up all night, like, but I You know what? I was like, yeah, I bet I could find 50 grand. And he said, why? I'm like, well, because it's a. That's an easy deal. Like, it's. We're gonna pay 50 grand. We're getting a $250,000 car. We can flip it. Like, it's obviously the returns, right? And that's. I'm making a lot of assumptions there, but everything checks out. And he was like, there it is. Like, if you find a good enough deal, a car that's worth 50 grand, that you could sell it for 250, and it's in probate or it's in some special situation, they need cash by Saturday. A lot of times, people will look past your youth and experience because the deal is so good, and you just tell an investor, hey, don't trust me. You look at it yourself. You do your own due diligence. And so that's what we do with that first fund. And we went out and raised, you know, talked. I talked to everybody I knew, and we raised. It was a small amount. We raised $49,500.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So it wasn't even fund. It was like a syndication. But I was 22 years old, and it was enough to get started. And we were like, okay, let's get going. And that first group investors, we got them a 64% return on their money.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

So small amount of money, but good return. The second fund we launched, I said, okay, let's scale this. And then we. We raised and deployed millions of dollars in that fund over the next few years. Did extremely well. Our returns were 62% net rate of return, 40. I think it was 47. And then 36% cash on cash return, if I remember correctly.

[B]

That's insane.

[A]

And then we had a competitor come in and buy us out.

[B]

Wow, that's impressive, man. You got to know which funds to invest in. So I looked up last night, what percentage of funds beat the S&P 500, which is something, you know, everyone can invest to, and it's easy. Do you know what percentage.

[A]

Well, what type of search was a mutual funds. All funds.

[B]

All funds.

[A]

All funds. That'll be. Get a big basket.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I work more with private funds, but what did it pull for all?

[B]

So last year. It changes a lot every year because of the economy. But last year, only 40% of funds beat the S&P 500.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I've seen it as low as, like, 15 on some of the years.

[A]

Yeah, that primarily. I've seen that site before. Looks a lot at mutual funds because they're a very public. Right. And mutual funds over the last few years have really died out. Mutual funds used to be very common. They're actively managed funds kind of like and. But ETFs have come and really taken those out. The problem with mutual funds is you're paying for market returns plus a premium for someone to manage it. So you're paying management fees and performance fees if you look specifically at private funds. So Tony Robbins just wrote a book called the Holy Grail of Investing specific on private equity and I'm going to get the stats wrong but I'll rough estimates he votes private equity versus the S&P 500 over the last 30 years has 4 or 5 XED the returns.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

On a full decile across the board. When you're looking at the full quartile funds has done extremely well. So different categories. You get private equity, venture capital, hedge funds. You'll see different returns there.

[B]

That's good to know. So private funds are near the top of those investment returns out of all of them.

[A]

Well and it depends but. But to your point there is a full gambit of funds.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When I look at funds, number one, returns is important. Number two though is like fraud. We've seen a bunch. There's fraudsters or people that steal money especially on small funds. People listen to this podcast. I've seen a number of people recently that you know, get pitched by their buddy. We're gonna go buy a couple of crumble stores. We're gonna buy this restaurant, we're gonna go buy this thing put let's pool some money together and go buy and they don't do third party audits. They don't do third party administration. They don't button it up. And sadly enough you'll. We've seen a lot recently of groups that someone was stealing money or money wasn't going to the right thing that was allocated or for whatever reason. I have a simple rule for investing in any fund board. None. Number one, do they have third party audits? Number two, do they do third party administration? If they ask the question what's a. What's third party administration? I'm not investing like I'm out. I'm done. I'm already done. Well Bridger, I'm your buddy. I'm like I'm out, dude. If you don't know what third party administration is or third party audits, like I'm done. Don't even care what the investment is.

[B]

All right guys. Ketone IQ high performance Energy shot. Natural supplement. First time ever trying this. Let's see what happens. No artificial flavors or colors. 100 milligrams of natural caffeine from green tea and 5 grams of ketones and zero sugar. All right, see what we got here. Let me shake it first, actually, just in case. Wow. It actually tastes pretty good.

[A]

Not gonna lie.

[B]

Shout out to ketone iq Good stuff.

[A]

Now then, furthermore, you can talk about returns and what the investment is and how you're going to do it and all, but that's like first point, stop.

[B]

I got wrecked on Aaron Wagner's.

[A]

Did you?

[B]

Yeah. So I'm over one on funds. I'll try it again probably, but left a bad taste in my mouth, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

When Aaron's. I. Yeah, we know him decently well and didn't do audits, didn't do third party administration.

[B]

Yeah, right. And he got caught spending in on private jets.

[A]

Yeah. So we'll see how that court case comes out.

[B]

We'll see. Yeah. But yeah, there's been a lot in our space recently. Jeremiah Evans. Did you see that one in Utah? And yeah, you got to do your due diligence. I didn't know about the audits thing. I just trusted a friend that told me about it. Yeah, so it's partially my fault too.

[A]

Well, it's funny, I talked a lot of investors I didn't know. I know a lot of guys just like you. And we. I saw all those deals, this is four or five years ago. They were pitching me hard to join those deals. And I said. I just said, hey, man, are you guys doing audits? Nah, we don't do that. We're just a small group. We're just buying this little thing like we don't need those. I just said, hey, it's just too early for me then, you know, I'm out. And we. We. I think we. And there's other guys. I won't say their names, but there's probably a handful more. And it's. I mean, maybe it's fate or luck or whatever, but we have missed every single one of them, me and my partners. Wow. We actually had one of our biggest investors call us up. So he, he's invested. I'm gonna rough math, but let's call it 20 million. Amongst all of those. Some of those deals and other ones as well. And he said our investment. He invested with us too. He said, you guys are the only ones first off that do third party audits, third party administration. The only ones that have actually given me A positive good. And actually not just good, a great return. And he goes, you're the only guys I trust anymore.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And they said, furthermore, how did you guys avoid all those other scams? Because we're in the same group. We've been pitched these for years. And I said, it's simple. They didn't do third party audits. They didn't do third party administration. I'll tell you a story. Bernie Madoff, remember him?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

30 years, he never did an audit.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Bernie Madoff was running 28 billion, roughly. He was the president of the NASDAQ. Bernie Madoff was giving millions of dollars away to charities. He was a great guy. Back in man, early 2000s, he was the guy. The SEC investigated Bernie twice and found nothing. Bernie's great. We love him. He's given money to our charities and stuff. It took a competitors firm. They, they then did a research on Bernie and built a case and gave it to the sec. That's how the SEC found Bernie Madoff.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It's a wild story. That is, before Bernie Madoff, only about 10% of firms did annual audits. After Bernie Madoff, over 90% of firms did. Did third party audits. I mean, it was a huge divide on Wall street when that happened.

[B]

Yeah, I remember watching that documentary when I was younger. 28 billion. I did not know he got up that high. That must be a record, right?

[A]

I think it's one of the largest. Yeah. Largest in history. Wild.

[B]

What's, what's blackrock at these days? They got to be hundreds of billions, right?

[A]

Well, black. BlackRock's, I think roughly 10 trillion.

[B]

10 trillion. Holy crap.

[A]

But BlackRock's a little different. So you have private funds, then you have ETFs. We talk about these three funds that are taking over the world. You have Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. Now these three, primarily through ETFs, and so they own. Get this, we pulled the Fortune 500 list.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think it's 9, 494 of the Fortune 500. BlackRock and Vanguard are the two largest owners.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Shareholders. Now, if you're a CEO, what's your job? The job of a CEO is to return shareholder value. And so if your largest shareholder is BlackRock and BlackRock a couple years ago says, well, we really want to push an ESG agenda, which. Environmental, social, governance agenda. And if you're not compliant with this, well, we're just going to delist you from our platform. Your largest shareholder is going to sell your stock. Because remember a couple of years ago, like Every company all of a sudden just was doing this green initiative and had this like. And I was, I was like, how did they, they get all these random companies around the country to all agree to go in this direction? Like all at the same time. Like it seems weird, right? You go, oh, well, their largest shareholder, BlackRock, just said, we're going to, we need an ESG agenda on all your companies and you're a CEO. And you go, oh, I, I need to comply with that or my stock price is going to be devalued. I'm going to get fired as CEO. And you really start to look at who runs the world. And it's feeling. These three companies combined managed roughly $22 trillion of assets. BlackRock, State street and Vanguard.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

And what happens is, how they accumulate so much power is we buy ETFs. So they have iShares or iShares, pros, whatever. So me, if me and you went and bought a SP 500 ETF, a lot of times it's going through Blackhawk or Vanguard and they go in on our behalf and buy a little piece of all these 500 companies, which is a good thing. It's been one of the most successful products ever on Wall Street. However, the voting rights of those shares isn't held by me, it's held by BlackRock. And they can do kind of what they want. I mean, it's made them one of the most powerful institutions on earth. Wow. It's kind of scary if you start to look at consolidation of industries. Right now there are roughly five, six food companies that control every single brand on earth.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

There are, you know, have you ever heard of the big four accounting firms? Deloitte, kpmg, those ones? Yeah. There's a reason there's big four. They've bought everybody else. They've consolidated their whole industry. Right. We're seeing, we're seeing mass consolidation across pretty much every industry right now. There's 14 car companies that control prints the entire planet. You know, Maserati is the same company that's owned by Dodge Ram and. Right. It's the same company. You have a lot of these brands that are mixed together under one conglomerate. Volkswagen owns Bentley, Audi, you know, well, Lamborghini, it's all owned by Volkswagen.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

It's the same car.

[B]

Do you think that's a good thing, the mass consolidation? How do you feel about it?

[A]

It's good to a degree sometimes it can centralize things and make costs go down for consumers, but once it becomes monopoly and anti competitive Then it's a terrible thing.

[B]

They stopped that in Vegas with the hotels because MGM was taken over.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they had to.

[A]

Half of Vegas was owned by one group.

[B]

Yeah. I wonder if they're going to do that with other industries.

[A]

Yeah, we'll see. They've already, I mean they have some antitrust lawsuits out and it's hard, you know, in our day and age. They've like, they're trying to break up Google right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Three different groups. We'll see if they do that. But overall, even if It's. You take BlackRock though, is BlackRock anti competitive? They're just a shareholder. They don't, you know, they just own 7% of XYZ company, Walmart or Facebook or whatever. Is that anti competitive, is it not? So they're kind of behind the scenes pulling the strings on all these CEOs and they all just go compete. It's very interesting to watch what BlackRock and, and Vanguard and Safe Streets are doing.

[B]

Once I found out how much percentage of the stock market they own, it was close to 80, right?

[A]

Yeah. Well, I've seen different reports.

[B]

I've seen different ones. Yeah. But the one I saw was it said close to 80. I don't know if that's accurate or not. I pulled all my stocks. I was like, I mean they could just manipulate the price.

[A]

Yeah, Yep. It's, it's kind of freaky. And that's what we know. I wonder what we don't know.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So I look at like Jamie Dimon, head of, and I'm like, wonder what he knows and what actually is going on. So my dad and me and my brother wrote a book called Dollars Gold and Bitcoin. And my dad points out in this book a few examples of mass market manipulation. So back in, I believe it was 2012, Barclays was fined $300 million for manipulating the Libor price which is the London international banking rate. So huge. JPMorgan Chase was given the largest fine ever by the SEC, I think it was in 2021 for manipulating the precious metals markets for over a decade. So get this, the gold market is over 10, I think it's 13, $14 trillion right now. You have the silver markets, also huge precious metals. JP Morgan, a, you know, a company, not the government, not whatever, a company with a small group of team was manipulating the price of gold, silver, precious metals for a decade. They were moving this market and only it was what, 10 years later they found out they find them roughly a billion dollars.

[B]

That's just what they caught Wild, like.

[A]

That'S what they caught. So my dad then points out, like, what other market manipulation is going on that we don't know about, that we will know about in 10 or 15 years. Right now there's some prices that don't make sense. In his book, he talks a lot about bitcoin. He believes that they are boxing in bitcoin. You would box it in. You don't kill bitcoin, but you put it in a box. Right? There's certain trade limits and you suppress the price to bring in other buyers or to make it not competitive against the US Dollar. Now we've had the Trump administration and we'll see if that changes that whole shift. But if you look at the price changes after 2021, they find JP Morgan Chase, Bitcoin's price started to trade differently. And his theory is the SEC or the Fed started to come in and maybe started to box in bitcoin. Different price levels. We had the crash, you know, the last cycle of end of 2022. And now we're coming up on this crypto cycle as well. And I run a crypto fund. I'm in crypto. I love crypto. But it's interesting to potential huge market manipulators in that, in that space.

[B]

I could see it, man, because it's still a new industry. It's only like what, 10, 15 years old. So you can easily get in there with a few billion dollars and manipulate stuff.

[A]

Well, the whole crypto market is 3 trillion. Gold is 14 trillion. If, if JP Morgan, one company can manipulate the gold market at 14 trillion, how much easier would it be to manipulate the $3 trillion crypto market?

[B]

Way easier.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Plus you could trade it all day, every day. It's not closed on the weekends. Like gold and silver. Yeah, I'm mixed, I'm mixed on gold. I got some. But I hear these wild things about gold. So we'll see.

[A]

Well, last week there's a lot of people calling their gold due in the United Kingdom. So this, this whole report that I was reading, people are calling because they have gold reserves. It's supposed to be physical gold, but they, they own like a ETF or a GLD or whatever and they're actually calling their gold back because of Trump's tariffs. Trump's looking to tariff. They don't want to get tariffs on that gold. So they're going to try to get it and put it in a safer vault. They have delayed. So usually it's a three to four day delay to get your gold out they've now jumped it to six to eight weeks.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Which everyone's theorizing they don't have the gold. They've been pontificate, pontificating the price of gold. They've been selling, you know, GLD shares of gold or whatever and they don't actually own the gold. So right now there's a run on the bank right now on gold which could do some very interesting things to the price of gold going forward.

[B]

Yeah. Because now other countries will see that and call theirs and then it could be a worldwide thing to run on.

[A]

The bank on gold. And we actually are going to. We're going to see how much gold is out there. It's going to be interesting.

[B]

That is very interesting. Do you have any?

[A]

I have some gold. Yeah.

[B]

I have physical. I don't have the etf.

[A]

Yeah, some physical. Some etf. I. It's funny. The whole entire gold I saw a stat it could fit in the entire gold in the whole world could fit into an Olympic size.

[B]

I saw that.

[A]

I was like that's crazy.

[B]

Really crazy.

[A]

That's wild.

[B]

But there's, there's theories that there's more in space.

[A]

Oh yeah. Asteroid or something.

[B]

Yeah. Elon's going to try to mine it like 10, 20 years.

[A]

Oh dang. They found one.

[B]

They said there's a lot of people that say it's on asteroids and stuff.

[A]

Well, you see there's an asteroid coming to Earth right now. I saw a 2% chance is going to hit us in what, 2033.

[B]

Yeah. Keeps going up I think to the odds. So we'll see what happens.

[A]

What do you do about that? Yeah, I mean I saw last year there was another asteroid at NASA put out a hydrogen bomb into space to as a potential. You know I could deterrent for these asteroids if they're coming close.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Hydrogen bombs, what 100 times bigger than an atomic bomb? Something like that. Like wild stuff.

[B]

Maybe there are ways to blow them up in space.

[A]

Yeah, go. I don't know. I bet they'll figure something out.

[B]

Did you start an AI fund too? No, nothing in AI Think that's a bubble.

[A]

No, I think AI is. I just don't know how to strategically invest in AI because it's interesting. It's. If they claim it's this it's the last invention mankind will make. Really A lot of books will say or whatever. If you make AI it's the last thing we ever need to make. It'll make everything else true. Amazing. Super generative AI Right. And these tech Companies have spent roughly a trillion dollars in the last 18 months. A trillion if you aggregate altogether Silicon Valley has spent that to figure out this last invention, humanity. So I'm like, I'm sitting there as an investor. Who's going to win? I don't know. So I'm going to make a spread bet, right? I'm going to, I'll play, yeah, I'll buy a Boss and Palantir and I'm gonna buy some Meta and I'll buy some Google and you know what I mean, which I've already, I already own. But who's going to win? And if they won, would they tell anybody? Probably not. They then could they have already won? Would you tell anybody? I probably wouldn't. If I. If X AI Elon, like they had true generative, like amazing, super intelligent AI, I wouldn't tell a soul. Yeah, you would go launch sub companies, you go trade the stock market. You'd accumulate a mass amount of wealth. You would get that integrated into every system on earth. If AI is really smart, it would play dumb. It would act like ChatGPT, right? Play dumb and give you little answers and stuff as it integrates into all of your systems, becomes a copilot on all of your, all of your computers and then wakes up one day and hopefully it's not evil. Hopefully it's, you know, that's, that's where my brain goes. So I don't know. What do you think? I don't, I don't know how to quite invest in that space besides just playing a spread on the whole.

[B]

No, I agree. There's so many different AI companies, it's almost like a needle in a haystack. Right? Because obviously some of them are going to pop off like Nvidia. Nvidia is always going to win because they're providing the chips. So I feel like that's a safer play than these individual companies. But if you hit one of these companies, it's like investing in Amazon in 2000, right?

[A]

Oh, it's. Yeah, it's insane. And what are the odds of who's going to win, who's not going to win? And if one wins, it might wipe out the other ones.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That don't win. Nvidia's Blackwell series. My partner is on the board of intel for the last 16 years, just retired from the board and he's on the board of AMD as well. So he's been telling us about the Blackwell chips coming out for like 18 months. Blackwell's coming out, Blackwell's coming out. And we, we passed the Chips act back in 2022, which was interesting. They, President Biden said It was a 24 hour notice. You had to decide between your citizenship and your job if you worked in China.

[B]

What.

[A]

So in the Chinese man, the Chinese chip manufacturing, they gave them a 24 hour notice. Anyone working in chips needs to leave China and come home or you're no longer a US citizen. Like it was that stark. And we were pulling out all chip anything chip manufacturing to China. This is when China was going to take over Taiwan as well. And this is right during COVID so a lot of people missed this. We parked an aircraft carrier right around Taiwan, then another one. Biden said, we're going to protect Taiwan at all costs. China back down from Taiwan. And they estimate that put China back seven, eight years.

[B]

Holy shit.

[A]

Manufacturing.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I mean it was a huge blow to China, which gave us an advantage, however. So that's what, you know, most people have thought. We've had a huge advantage in AI until just a few weeks ago, Deep Seat came out, right? So Deep Seq was this allegedly 5 million dollar startup out of China that had a model that was an order of magnitude better than ChatGPT and Gemini and others. And it blew up. I mean, the Stock, Nvidia dropped 17% a day.

[B]

I saw that.

[A]

I bought some. Did you buy some that day? I was like, I gotta buy. I'm gonna buy Nvidia. I made a good trade on that one. But now we've seen it looks like Nvidia has sold roughly $1 billion of chips to them. They're selling through Singapore or Hong Kong and it's moving up, you know, to China to build these data centers in the back of Deep Sea. But what it is showing, regardless of how they're getting the technology, China is right there with AI and it's, it's quite an arms race right now. And I'm grateful. President Trump just announced Stargate, which is the $500 billion investment they want to put into AI and win that race. Oh, that's if. And I would, I mean you would say as a country, if you lose the AI race, I mean, you lose everything, right? It's the last invention mankind needs. That's pretty wild. So we'll see. I. We'll see what they win.

[B]

I did not know Biden did that. I've never heard of him doing something that impactful. Man, I'm not going to lie. That's impressive.

[A]

Well, yeah, it was pretty. I'm a geek on this stuff, so I Try to watch geopolitical stuff quite a bit. So aircraft carriers are pretty interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We have. The United States has, I believe, 14 aircraft carriers. The combined world has a roughly one. Now they have other ships and stuff, but if you use the mass like the firepower of one. The combined world has one. We have 14.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

They have two nuclear power plants in each one. They can travel for roughly 100 years without porting if they don't want to.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

These things are incredible. The one aircraft carrier. Get this. So if they rank militaries and military might and stuff. So air forces. If one aircraft carrier parked off your coast, it would be the third most powerful air force on planet Earth.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I believe number one's China. Number or, sorry, number one's United States Air Force. Number two is China. And number three would be one aircraft carrier.

[B]

That's so nice.

[A]

So, like, it's wild. So like, when, when China was gonna take Taiwan, we went. We had an aircraft here in the South. South China Sea. We parked one there and things kept going on. They were flying jets over Taiwan. I lived in Taiwan for two years, by the way. I was a church missionary there. So I was really watching Taiwan because I know a lot of people there. I love Taiwan. It's amazing people. And then we parked a second aircraft carrier in the region. Now I read a report that they parked a third aircraft carrier there. Now somebody. They've kind of retracted that now. So I don't really know how many. But when we have two or maybe three aircraft carriers in a region, I mean, we are moments away from war. Like, right. That's a huge, huge deal. And China decided to back down. We passed the CHIPS act and we. And they kind of said, hey, we'll have a path to you guys maybe in 2027 or something like that.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I mean, we came close. The whole Israel conflict that was going on right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We parked our brand new Ford class carrier right off the coast of Israel.

[B]

No way.

[A]

And we're running all of our, you know, so it's a big deal. When an aircraft carrier moves and it's parked somewhere, it's like the whole region goes, oh, crap.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

This is the third most powerful air force on Earth. And one aircraft here, when it leaves port, it leaves with like 15 ships. It's not just an aircraft carrier. It reaves with like a submarine. It comes with a battle destroyer. All these other. So it's. It's a full group that leaves together.

[B]

I want to see a photo one of these things.

[A]

Yeah, they're wild.

[B]

I can't even picture this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How many? Like, like, do you know the footage on it?

[A]

No. I don't know. I mean, if it's. I mean, I don't know if people on here can pull up pictures, whatever, but they're, they're wild.

[B]

Fifteen ships. You're talking about airplanes inside of there. That's so not.

[A]

They travel together in this whole fleet. So like it's a. Yeah, it's a big deal.

[B]

I did not know we were that far advanced of other militaries.

[A]

Yeah, it's. I mean, the, the. A navy is the most expensive thing a country can buy. If you talk about expensive things on earth, like a navy is it like you have, you have arrived and really after World War II, you had the Brentwoods Agreement. 1947, I believe, went to Brentwoods, Connecticut and the whole world came. And not the whole world, but the western world came together. It was the end of World War II. We were just about to end. I believe it was 1949. And they were discussing on the New World Order. The United States said, hey, we're the only group with a navy. And what we'll do is we will pay for a navy to protect the world. And a byproduct of that is, can you guys use our dollar? And over time, we became the world reserve currency and said, we will pay for a navy. It's very expensive to have a navy. We will. So if you're shipping from Brazil to Italy, we will protect you. You just have to use our dollar. And that's how the US dollar became the world reserve currency. And for 50, 60, 70 years we've had that agreement. That's why people wonder, why is the US the world police? It's because we agreed to it. We agreed we would be the world police as long as people used our dollar. That's why the US Gets in all these conflicts that people don't understand. It's like, well, no, we have to protect shipping lanes. Additionally, if you don't use our dollar, it's a big deal. So there's three people in history that me and my dad put in our book about people that didn't use the US dollar. First one is Umar Kadavi, Libya. He kind of got killed by the CIA.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah, he got assassinated. Next one was Saddam Hussein. He traded large amounts of oil not using US dollars. Kind of got killed by the US Government, right? Indirectly. The last one was Vladimir Putin. Putin has traded a large amounts of oil not using US dollars. And last year, year and A half ago, his pipeline blew up. Nord Stream 2 in two places.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Someone with a submarine and Navy Seals blew up his pipeline in two places and no one knows who did it, Right?

[B]

I think he might.

[A]

Yeah, he might know, right? It's a big deal when you trade large amounts of oil or trade goods without using US dollar. It's a big deal. People always come in. I'm a crypto guy. I hear all the arguments, like, the dollar's dead. The dollar. And I go, not yet. The DXY, which tracks the dollar versus other currency is up 12% in the last three years. I mean, we. The dollar is doing just fine now. Global standards people are moving to stable because I get the whole argument. I understand it. I think Trump understands it too. But people, when they say the dollar's backed by nothing, I think you got to hold your tone for a second. The dollar is backed by 14 aircraft carriers. It's backed by a trade embargo that's going to. Or a tariff if you don't trade with us. Cool. We'll just park an aircraft carrier in front of you. Good luck trading.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Do you want to use our dollar again? India in 2022 was going to get off the dollar. They announced they're going to stop using the dollar. Their currency did a flash crash overnight. It looked like a meme coin. It like went. And then it came back up. They called it a glitch in the system. Oh, it was a big glitch.

[B]

Yeah. That happened to Russia too, right?

[A]

Yes. Russia had a crash and Canada just based when they had the tariffs there. And currently their Canadian dollar is way down. But it's really. You don't want to use the dollar. Okay.

[B]

So we really have a lot of power over the rest of the world.

[A]

Oh, I mean, it's. It's massive. It's massive. So when people. I think it's a. You gotta be. Now, could the dollar decline? Yes. Can it be less used? Yes, I understand that argument, but currently it's not happening. The dollar is going up in value. I'll give you one more is. So China announced they wanted to get off the dollar, Right. So we have 30, what, $6 trillion of national debt. So which is a large amount of debt. Don't get me wrong, but if we had zero debt, I would be more concerned than having $36 trillion of debt.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Let me explain why is if we had zero debt, there's no reason for countries to continue to be stuck to the dollar. So take China, for example. China, I believe, wants to get off the dollar. They hate the dollar. But they own roughly a trillion dollars of our debt. And they announced a few years ago we're going to start selling this. You know, it was treasury debt, right. They're going to sell our Treasuries. Okay, what happens? We jack interest rates up at the fastest rate in history. So bond prices, they own a bunch of bonds. We put bond prices, we just jacked them up to like 4.5% from zero to four and a half the trillion dollars of value. What happens when you jack interest rates? The value of bonds goes down. It's an inverse correlation. So that trillion dollars is worth $500 billion like in a matter of a few months. And they go, crap, we can't sell this dollar. Additionally, we owe the rest of the world $36 trillion. Right. You want those dollars to be worth something. If you devalue the dollar, get rid of the dollar, the whole world would lose $36 trillion. We don't pay that debt. It's not being paid back in bitcoins, it's not being paid back in barrels of oil, it's not being paid back in bushels of wheat. It's paid back in dollars. And so you want other countries to have as much of your debt as possible because they rely on getting. We're going to pay interest payments in dollars and they want those dollars to be worth something. We're going to give them dollars, we're going to export dollars, and they're going to use those dollars to buy goods or buy our other stuff or exchange it with their currency. And it creates demand for our product. And this comes back to, we believe the greatest product ever produced by the United States greatest export is dollars. It's not oil, it's not tech, it's not whatever it is. We export dollars, we print a trillion of them. And people like me and you work 80 hours a week to get more of them. Right. And they print another trillion of them. And we're like, well, we got to work 80 hours a week to get more of these dollars. Right. It is the greatest product ever produced on earth.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And we export it across the board. Now that all being said, is 36 trillion a lot. Yes. Can we get that down? Yes. And I love the Doge stuff and what they're doing, but if it was zero, I'd also be concerned as well. Having debt in other countries hands I think is very important.

[B]

That is an interesting take. I never viewed the dollar as a product. You know, I always viewed it as currency. But you're saying how we're using it to leverage ourselves with other countries. It makes a lot of sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Are you worried at all with brics?

[A]

Well, the BRICS nations put up a plea to get off the dollar. First thing I'll say is it took the European Union, who are all naturally, you know, they share borders, trading parties, took them 20 years to come up with the Euro Brics nations. These guys are all kind of enemies with each other. They're not allies. They just have a common enemy, the United States. And they've said, we want to move off the dollar. Okay. I just think it's going to take a long time to get all those parties to agree on something, have a central bank like the European Union did. I think it's going to take a long time. Furthermore, Trump has just come out very hard on the BRICS nations and said, we're going to tariff any BRICS nation who's going to stop using our dollar. You're going to get tariffs, embargoes, aircraft carriers in front of you. Like, we're going to go. So if you're a BRICS nation, you're all of a sudden go, I don't, you know, yeah, let's be allies with the other BRICS nations. I don't know if we're gonna launch a currency.

[B]

Right. Makes sense. Are you, are you a fan of the tariff stuff?

[A]

Yes and no. I. It's funny, I listen to different economists. Some economists love it, must hate it. And it's a mixed bag. I don't know if I have a strong opinion yet because we don't really know the full effects. The, the overall concept of Trump saying we need to make fair trading agreements, I agree with using it as leverage. I mean, it's already been very successful. I mean, look at Canada. My mom's from Canada. And Mexico, he said, we're doing tariffs and what, 48 hours they tried to push back. Whatever. In 40 hours, both countries agreed to send 10,000 troops to the border to secure the borders.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It worked. Whether it's a threat, whether you can. People don't like Trump, that, whatever. Trump's a bad negotiator or it's because he has such good position, he's a good negotiator. Either way, Trump's a good negotiator, and I think he's been elected to be a good negotiator. China, there, I believe there are a lot of unfair trading practices with China. They manipulate their currency against ours, and they've done it for years. It is boosted Chinese economy. I do believe they need us more than we need them. And I think Trump sees that and says we're in a strong trading position. What's interesting too, Trump put the trade war back in his first term member. Yeah, Biden kept all those tariffs and then increased them. This is, I think it's a bipartisan thing as much as people don't like it. Both last two administrations, Trump term one and Biden term both kept pretty much the trade war going and increased it because they see this, you know, ever increasing conflict with China.

[B]

That's interesting. How is China manipulating against us?

[A]

Well, for a long time, and I don't, I don't know all the full details, but a long time they will move their currency price based on ours very directly. If we drop, if our currency drops a little bit, they drop a little bit more. If we go up, they go up a little bit. And it's to give them an advantage on their currency trade.

[B]

Oh, wow, that's interesting. Forex market. Wow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, I bet other countries do that too though.

[A]

And so then people go, well, this isn't a true price discovery of the Chinese yen. And they go look like there's no these, there's no way these currencies move just perfectly together because you're supposed to have price discovery on what a currency is worth. And just like think about cryptocurrency. Right. It's a similar concept. And China's perfectly matches ours. It's just like that can't happen. So someone's behind the scenes manipulating how this price action is working.

[B]

Have you seen the stats on what percentage of currencies fail over time? No, it's in the 90s, super high.

[A]

Almost like worldwide history.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of concerning, right?

[A]

Well, Ray Dalio's book puts out a strong case of there's 80 year cycles and you know, central banks or world reserve currencies change about every 80 years. We are 80 years. Well, you could argue we're 80 years. Coming up on 80 years soon. You could argue the dollar also became in 1972 when we went off the gold standard. That's when the dollar started. So we're about 50 years in, is a strong case. Is this time different? Maybe, maybe not. I, I personally think the United States and North America in general is strategically positioned better than anything on earth. Just geographically, we have no real threats. We have two oceans. I mean, it's just we have more natural resources. It's like, it's amazing. Yeah, North America is absolutely phenomenal. And as a currency goes, if, you know, if we can, and I think Trump's team is the team to do this. If we can come back to a surplus like they did in the Clinton years in 1990s, the idea of an external revenue service and bringing invest back to America and strengthen it, I think we could still be just fine. And I think our currency could continue on. I do believe, I don't know when, but they will eventually evolve the currency into a blockchain based currency.

[B]

I've been hearing rumors of that for years. I'm sure you have too.

[A]

I, I, I don't know when. It could be sooner, it could be later. This is an administration that's very pro crypto.

[B]

Yeah, I mean he lost his own coin.

[A]

Oh, they have a coin. They're looking at his stable coins right now. They're deregged SAB121 for the banks. I mean it's huge. All the crypto stuff right now is phenomenal. Could they move to a stablecoin backed currency? Perhaps. And if they don't do it, will they do it in 2028? Maybe or 2032? Maybe? Like, you know. But I think it's inevitable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You will inevitably move to a blockchain based currency and I think the dollar could reinvent itself for another 80 years or something like that.

[B]

So you're a fan of that? Cause a lot of people are scared of being able to track it and stuff.

[A]

Well, I don't know if I'm a fan. I think it's inevitable though. I just think there is too much power, too much control, too much efficiency that would happen for and I don't know if it's this administration, the next one or the next one, but eventually politicians go man, we gotta do this. It's that good or. And you know, I don't think it'll be a full central bank digital currency, like full control like China's done. It'll act just like it's doing today, but just the back end. It just starts tracking with a blockchain.

[B]

Right?

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Yeah, because they're still tracking dollars. There's codes on all them, right?

[A]

Yeah, they're essentially doing it already. But let's just digitize it and put it on a blockchain. It's a private blockchain. It's not gonna be a public ledger, it's private ledger, centralized. We're not going to call it a central bank digital currency because it's a bad word. But we're just Going to digitize our dollar a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, I would love it. Sending wires is so annoying man. Especially international. You got to wait a week. You don't know if it went through.

[A]

I had a guy in my show he. They have roughly 280 million of XRP.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

And with their family offices and stuff. They're huge XRP people. He told me that they he the SAB121 getting repealed with banks. All banks right now have. Are ready to move on building back end wallets for all bank accounts.

[B]

Damn. And.

[A]

And some of them already done it. So bank of America looks like they've already done it. And your wires will move and it'll act just like a normal wire. But it'll happen in a second for two pennies.

[B]

Really.

[A]

And he believes they're going to use the XRP system or a thing called R is which protocol they use. But the banks have already built the infrastructure. It's already built. All they have to do is really flip a switch. They would transfer all of your bank accounts become. They'd have a backend wallet. You wouldn't even know it exists though. It just looked like your bank account. But on the back end there'd be a wallet and you would transfer direct from bank to bank using perhaps you know, XRP or you use R to do it.

[B]

I'd love that because Zelle is decent. But you can only send a certain amount. But something like that would be great.

[A]

Venmo. It's like Venmo or Zell. It's like instant. It happens like that. Yeah.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

But I think it's inevitable. Like don't you like it's. It's.

[B]

I think so. Yeah.

[A]

It's 25. It's got to happen. Yeah.

[B]

So you got two kids now right?

[A]

I do. Yeah.

[B]

Congrats. How's that? Raising a family while running four funds at the same time.

[A]

It's phenomenal. I run two funds right now but it's. That's phenomenal. We. I should. We had a baby two weeks ago.

[B]

Congrats.

[A]

So I'm here. I gotta. I gotta fly home pretty soon. My wife's amazing. We have a three year old son and it's been phenomenal. I. I am a big believer in family. I think it's. I. It's funny, you know. We talk a lot about money right now and assets and accumulating stuff. I think the biggest flex that someone can have, you know people have Lambos or jets or whatever. Your biggest flex you can have in life is an amazing family. And not just on the billboard. Amazing. They look good, like truly good people. If you, as you and a spouse can raise good kids and those kids can raise good kids and you have two or three generations of great people, that's the biggest flex you can have in life. And my wife's grandpa, he's 75 years old. I mean, their family is incredible. His kids, his grandkids now his great grandkids, I mean, like across the board. He's got, I think, 70 descendants.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Phenomenal humans. Not on drugs, they're smart, they're doing great things that, you know what I mean? I think like one or two have been divorced. Of the whole 70 plus people, I mean, just, they have good, good values. They were raised, I'm a member of the church, Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, like, raising good Christian values, just doing good in the world. I'm like, wow, that's winning that. And because you can't buy that, you can't even build it in a short period of time. It takes 40 years to build that. That's a 40 year commitment. And you can't even build it yourself. You have to build it with a partner. And I'm like, wow, that's winning. You know, that's the ultimate flex. And so me and my wife talk about this a lot. We're like, and my wife's phenomenal, human. Like, we grew up together on the same street. Can we do that? Can we build some great roots, some great foundation and build, you know, a posterity and money aside? Yeah, money's cool and all, but can we build and help raise really good people?

[B]

I think that's really quite beautiful. Yeah. Your family's a representation of you. Direct representation. I think that's why a lot of people like Trump too, because you look at his kids and they're all super successful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you didn't really see that with the other side this election.

[A]

Yeah, it was interesting. And Trump's had, you know, he's had a couple wives and mixed around and stuff, but you see his kids, you see the fruits of his labors, Right? And now not every kid's gonna turn out perfect. Some kids go wonky. And even if you're the best parent in the world, kids can go wonky. I totally agree with that. But in, in general, you know, as an aggregate, how have you done, you know, over 30, that's a long time. 30 years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, to raise a family or 20 years, like, can you keep your marriage together? Can you, you know, grow and Expand and, and anyways, I think it's, that's a lifelong pursuit that I think is the most, when I interview people on my show and stuff, the most happy, the most fulfilled people I find are people who did that and said it was, yeah, it took a lot of work, but man, like, one of my mentors, he, this guy's amazing. His, he has five kids. All five of them. I know his kids. Phenomenal humans. His, they all run businesses, do other cool stuff. His grandkids, like, you wouldn't like, they're just sharp, like smart, they're funny. You'd love to hang out and be with them. They're clean. They're not like doing crazy stuff on the weekends, like, you know what I mean? They're just good humans. And you're like, wow. And he goes, this is, I'm living the best, my dream right now. And I was like, that's so cool.

[B]

I love that. So speaking of mentors, I know you paid Russell Brunson 150 grand to meet him, right?

[A]

I joined, yeah. His category Kings group is a year membership in his mastermind. Yeah.

[B]

How was that? Was that a good ROI for you?

[A]

It's fun. I've joined a bunch of them. I've joined, I've joined one for 30 grand, one for 24 grand. One I'm considering right now is a quarter million dollars to join. And I've, you know, going back, my first one I ever joined was $15,000. I was in college, put on credit cards and it changed my life. And getting in the right room with the right people and stuff. And I, I, I think winners always find an ROI and losers always find a negative. And it's funny. So 150 grand sounds like a lot for a mastermind. I love Russell. I think he's done great things. And I was like, guess what? Worst case scenario, Worst case scenario, I pay Russell 150 grand and I have a really good story of how it sucked and Russell screwed me. You know what I mean? That'd be a good podcast show. Now that didn't happen. Russell was awesome. We love being in the group. We love Russell's thing. We spoke at his event last year at fhl. It was really fun. So I, I, one of I. And you also get to hang out with other people that also paid 150 grand to be in there. So rel, you know, always a good experience. There's different groups. We kind of bounce from one group to the next each year. We joined the Greenwich Economic Forum last year just Join different groups, trying to get a different, different.

[B]

Yeah, I do the same thing. I'm. I'm part of one, if not two every year. Masterminds, they're important.

[A]

Which ones you like?

[B]

Right now I'm in Jim D. Pretty good.

[A]

Jim dudes.

[B]

Jim dude. 72.72k a year. I've been part of Flashman's, which is 100k a year. Flight Club is another one. So there's all sorts, you know, and it. Yeah, it ranges from 10 to 250. Is that Tony Robbins? The 251?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, I saw that one. That one must be elite.

[A]

Pretty fun. The first event's in a couple weeks. I'm going to it, so.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

You should come.

[B]

Yeah. 250.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'll need a payment plan, man.

[A]

Wow. I did too. I did. Yeah. I'll talk to you after.

[B]

Well, dude, it's been cool. Where can people look. Look you up and find your funds and everything?

[A]

Yeah. Fund launch dot com. If people want. We have a full free course on funds. So we. Free gift for your audience. If you guys want to learn about investment funds, we. I want more people to understand what funds are, how to not get scammed, how to, like, underwrite funds, how to, like, make sure you're making good investments. And it's all free. So we have a free course, fundlaunch. Com. You can go to altstreet.com as well. We've interviewed all these fund managers around the world. It's all for free now. Beyond that, we help people launch their funds and stuff. You can learn about that more. But fundlaunch. Com, you can find all of our stuff.

[B]

Perfect. We'll link it below. Check them out, guys. See you next time.