Helping Healthcare Scale
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Helping Healthcare Scale
Bridger Pennington: Mastering Fund Management and Real Estate Investments to Scale Healthcare Organizations
What if you could harness the power of fundraising to scale your healthcare organization? In this episode, we welcome Bridger Pennington, a renowned fund manager and founder of The Ugly Unicorn and Sunlarge Partners, to share his incredible journey from college entrepreneurship to the helm of multiple successful investment funds. Pennington, who also co-founded Fund Launch, illuminates the path to mastering fund creation and management, shedding light on strategies that have helped thousands in the industry.
We dissect the critical elements of risk-return analysis, discussing how to evaluate investments through scenario testing and identifying both controllable and uncontrollable risks. Bridger explains how securing high-profile partners, like Elon Musk, can transform investment opportunities from ordinary to exceptional. We delve into the nuances of building a strong team and the essential skills needed in fund management, emphasizing the importance of continuous self-improvement and effective public speaking.
Finally, Bridger offers a compelling perspective on integrating spirituality into business, illustrating how faith and future-oriented thinking can profoundly impact decision-making and personal growth. Through his own experiences, Bridger demonstrates the interconnectedness of various aspects of life and shares invaluable insights on spiritual guidance in business decisions. Tune in for actionable strategies and inspiring stories that can help scale your healthcare organization and beyond.
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But I went into college. I started six businesses, my first years of college and all sorts of things I come to find out. My dad ran a decabillion dollar family of real estate funds. He's now since retired but had done extremely well and I didn't really realize my dad had much money. My dad taught me about funds in college. I met with his mentor and other couple of people and ended up launching my first fund in college, pitched my dad for money.
Speaker 2:My dad said no and still, to this day, has never invested in a single fund. I've done. The goal of this show is to help healthcare organizations scale by leveraging real estate strategies and interviewing high-level healthcare executives in order to pull out lessons learned along the way. If you'd like a free site selection analysis from our team, or you'd like to learn more about how we're acquiring real estate through our fund on the blockchain, visit us at wwwreuniversityorg and drop us a line. That's re as in realestateuniversityorg. Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Helping Healthcare Scale, where I'm your host, eric, and I'm excited to welcome our guest today, bridger Pennington. He runs Two Investment Fund, the Ugly Unicorn and Sunlarge Partners, which he has 30 million in assets under management, and I met Bridger back when I joined his group called the Black Car Group, which is essentially an incubator for startup fund, and there's a lot of really exceptional people doing really exceptional things and it's been a pleasure to be a part of, and so, bridger, I'm really excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 1:Austin, so fun to be here. Congrats on your success, man, what you've done, and just it's fun to be with you and spend some time. But anyways, congrats to you. I love the show, I love what you've done, so let's dive in. Thanks, man. Yeah, so I think I want to get into the weeds, for sure, but I always think it's a little bit helpful just to provide a little bit, so maybe could you just briefly explain, like, how you got into the world of funds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll give you the 30 seconds so we can go deeper if you want. But I went into college, I started six businesses in my first years of college and all sorts of things I come to find out. My dad ran a deca-billion dollar family of real estate funds. He's now since retired but had done extremely well and I didn't really realize my dad had much money. My dad taught me about funds in college and I met with his mentor and other couple of people and ended up launching my first fund in college, pitched my dad for money. My dad said no and still to this day has never invested in a single fund. I've done, but has been a great mentor and coach for me and it was.
Speaker 1:I lost my first fund at 22 years old and actually scaled that pretty well. They actually did extremely well. We I ran that first fund. I got a 64% return to investors ran a second fund. I ran that for three and a half years and we managed. We were rolling a few million dollars a year into loans and these short-term loans. We got very good returns for our investment. We actually sold that fund. So we exited that fund.
Speaker 1:It was Blackbridge Holdings, so I had a good little exit on that fund and then during that process, a lot of people started asking me about how you build funds, how do you do funds? My brother also is an investment funds attorney, so I have my dad who runs brand big funds, my brother's, who's an investment funds attorney than me, who had ran a fund out of college, and so we started this company called Fund Launch where we helped help educate and teach people about funds. We now have which is actually it's been crazy the growth of Fund Launch, like it's. We started to put out little videos or a podcast and you hope, like you make a little course. I don't know if anybody's done this before. You hope like 50 people watch it, or maybe if 100 people took your course, like that would be so cool. Or if a thousand people took it wow, that would be crazy. And today we've had over 77,000 people go through one of our courses. Our academy course is at over 4,000 people just through our fund academy. Black card has had over a thousand people go through black card, which is our kind of our top incubating group. We incubate launch funds and just the last two years we've launched 210 funds just out of Black Card alone. It's about two funds a week we launch out of a group, which is just crazy.
Speaker 1:We've been to some of our events. We just threw an event in Orlando Roughly 2,000 people came to that event. Last year in Miami with roughly 2,000 people. Two years ago we were in Vegas with 1,200 people. It's cool to just see our fund launch feed come out. And then I now currently run two funds, a GP Stakes Fund and a Blockchain Investment Fund, and so, anyways, it's fun, dude. We're growing, we're having lots of fun, we're going at it and we help people all over the world do funds and launch funds, scale funds, and it's just been great to be a part of yeah, that's cool, A lot of times in the multi-site healthcare space like maybe it's dentistry, dental support organizations or medical support organizations or med spas there's a popular path, which is you start a practice, you see how it goes.
Speaker 2:You start acquiring more practices, you bootstrap it as much as you can, get as much bank financing as you can, and then at some point a lot of people will just take on private equity and the idea is to hold off on the private equity as long as possible.
Speaker 1:So that way, you know you're, the value like of your company when they actually buy you is maximized as far as you can get, and so I think it's interesting what you're doing, which is teaching people how to do their own fund, because a lot of people, especially in healthcare space, they don't think about.
Speaker 2:it's not common knowledge to start your own fund?
Speaker 1:It's's. Hey, these are my groups, these are my projects, this is what I'm doing and these are the fund guys over here, the private equity guys, and at some point we're going to reach out to them and find a good partner and bring them on. But can you explain maybe, the different approach which would be if you wanted to start your own fund? How do you think that would work? Maybe just provide some education around that? Yeah, yeah, great question. First off, I'm going to say a lot about funds. That route is not a bad route, though. Scaling up selling to private equity, it's a good route. There's plenty of fortunes that have been built doing that model. So I'm not going to. I don't want to say negative things about the model it's good but I want to just give an alternative view to that model. Because in that model, guess who makes all the money? Private equity people. You make some money too, but the private equity. That's why they're in this game. They make the enormous amounts of money playing the game of private equity. So what I invite people to do is number one first educate yourself about if maybe you are going to go the traditional round, just partner. Educate yourself on what private equity is how they make money, how they're incentivized. It will help you negotiate better when you are working with private equity. The second thing I'll say, though, is you could also do it yourself. A lot of groups that traditional model is I'm going to scale up, partner or sell to private equity.
Speaker 1:I invite people to say what if we started our own private equity fund and you're building your? Let's say you've got let's just simple examples. You got one med spa Okay, you got your single med spa. Got one med spa Okay, you got your single med spa. You could get bank money, or you could so debt. You could get a debt loan to scale. If you want to scale and get more locations, you could go get an investor like Shark Tank, sell 20% or 40% of the business. You get equity investors, or you could do a third option. The third option is you set up a fund.
Speaker 1:We raised money external of your business, so you leave your business your med spot as is. You don't touch it. Your med spot is your med spot. We raise an external fund. That fund, we raise X number of dollars, and the goal of that new fund is to go fuel the growth around your business. So let's say you wanted to buy out your competitors. So that new fund is going to go buy the seven or eight competitors in your area. Okay, we're going to now own seven or eight businesses and the private equity fund that you started is going to own that. But guess what? We need someone to run the new med spas, and so what we're going to do is contract your old existing business We'll call it old med spa. That's yours. We're going to contract and pay a 5% royalty per year for you to put your branding on it and train employees to help with hiring, hr and ta-da. Now you, because you're the owner of the old med spa and you're also the owner of the private equity firm, you now control eight different med spas in a local area and you have somewhat of a mini monopoly in that area. Now, at the end of the year, those new med spas you bought, the money still flows to the private equity firm. But guess what? You own the private equity firm. You split that with your investors. You make money there, but you also you leave your old business, old med spa, as is. You make money from that and you get a 5% royalty for helping running the things and essentially you do.
Speaker 1:What John D Rockefeller talks about is own nothing and control everything. You still own a lot, but you now control a way bigger market share. That would be one example of going and buying competitors. You can do the same thing. You set up an external fund. You go, buy up your supply chain. So I've seen people do this as well.
Speaker 1:I don't know all the intricacies of running your own med spa, but there's a lot of stuff. You buy All the stuff you use for your clients or services or people. You start buying up competitive or supply chain services. You roll them together. You start controlling an entire supply chain. Additionally, if you scale enough, you buy enough med spas or enough training. You centralize marketing. You centralize, finance your total. Your average cost to run a location goes down because you centralize. You have one finance team instead of seven finance teams. That's how private equity thinks about in place, and so what happens is you can justify a much higher multiple when you aggregate fractured industries like med spas. You pull them together. Bigger investors will pay a higher multiple for that product.
Speaker 1:So, for example, let's say I don't know multiples, I'm just going to throw something out. But actually, what is a multiple? What does a med spa trade for Austin, Do you know, like a one-off med spa Individual? Yeah, one-off would be five to seven. Four to seven there's a lot of depending on the EBITDA, like how well it runs somewhere around there. Four to seven there's a lot of depending on the EBITDA, like how well it runs somewhere around there. Four to seven EBITDA. Yeah, okay, so let's say your med spa is going to trade for four to seven EBITDA on a one-off basis and let's call it. It's probably going to be closer to a four.
Speaker 1:If I'm being honest, on a one location, because there's so much risk on the owner what if you take out the one? Or like what happens to this business? It's a lot more risk. What happens in most industries is, once you buy a certain level of scale let's call it 15 locations you centralize marketing, finance, hr into one average cost to run goes down your multiple increases. So instead of trading at a 4X multiple, maybe you're gonna trade at a and you said four to seven. A lot of times I see it jump to an 11 or 12 or 13 X multiple because you've now aggregated industry and a bigger players want to deploy capital and they're rolling those together as well and you've shown you can grow beyond one location. You've actually shown a true system of a company. You're actually buying now a system, a company, not just a location or an owner, and there's much more risk in buying one than buying 15 together.
Speaker 1:And anyways, lots of ideas. But you could buy up your supply chain. Some people do that. They buy their supply chain, some people buy competitors or some people just fuel expansion. We're going to fuel, we're going to open up 20 more locations and we're going to these new investors from this fund you can call it a syndication or a fund fuel each new location and expands our growth like crazy. So I'll stop talking there. Hopefully that gives a sense of the ideas of what you could do when you launch your own investment fund instead of partnering with private equity. Now, again, partnering with private equity is fine, but they just take the lion and share. It's something you could do by yourself and you get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's go a little bit. Then let's talk about the process of starting your own, because I think maybe people are listening to that and thinking like, oh yeah, like I just assumed I'd settle private equity, I never thought about starting my own fund. What do you think are the first steps if you actually want to start going down this route?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're like I'm curious about this, what I would tell somebody to do is we teach this thing called the fund launch formula, and we developed this. We didn't really develop it, it was more. We discovered this is the better terms. I interviewed hundreds of fund managers and found they all followed the same process to launch their funds. It's a four-step formula. I'll tell you very quickly. We have tons of videos on YouTube and other content that teaches this, but I'm trying to condense it.
Speaker 1:Step one is vet out the deal, and I'll put deal in air quotes. Vet out the deal. The offer does this, and I think of funds like a product. You are building a product, an investment product. Is this product viable? So what do you do with products? Usually, you do market testing. You usually think about any widget. You're going to market test it. You're going to run it through scenarios to make sure it is durable in certain environments. We do the same thing with your fund.
Speaker 1:So, let's say for, let's use the MedSpa example. So what we're going to do is run. We have a bunch of frameworks like risk control. Return is one of our frameworks. So we run through this framework to vet out what are the risks associated. What are things we can and can't control? And how does that drive a return? And so we're really going to okay, let's look at all the risks things that we can and can't control for med spas Okay, things we can control.
Speaker 1:We can control how much we charge. We can control how much we pay employees. We can control our location Okay, these are things we can control. Things we can't control. We can't control tariffs on China, but it's still a risk. Just because we can't control it doesn't mean it's not a risk. We can't control interest rates. We can't control a war kicking off in Ukraine and Russia, but it's still. Maybe it's important to your industry. And so what we're gonna do is put that on an Excel model and run scenario testing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what happens if we raise our prices 10%? How does that affect a best case, a base case, and a worst case scenario? Or what happens if interest rates? Currently they're five and a quarter? What if they drop to three and a quarter? Or what if they go up to seven and a quarter? How does that affect our rental prices or leasing prices or all those supply chain issues we have with debt or variable costs that we have? What we're going to do is run scenarios and what we're trying to drive down is we're trying to figure out if this plan, the idea you have has asymmetrical risk versus return, which is a fancy finance term. All that means is relatively low risk for high return.
Speaker 1:All of us have probably heard this concept of high risk, high reward, low risk, low reward right, everyone's heard that before. Yes, that's true in some markets, but we try to play in things where we can find asymmetrical risk reward ratio, meaning we can find things that have relatively low risk for high reward. That's what we're trying to find, and you might say, bridget, that's impossible. Let me tell you, give an example. Let's say me and Austin are starting a business together. Okay, and you're an investor, and so you're gonna invest in me and Austin's business and let's just call it medium risk and medium reward.
Speaker 1:Okay, me and Austin are medium risk, so it's medium risk, medium reward ratio. And then we're starting this new business, okay, and you're an investor. You're like well, should I invest? Should I not invest? Should I invest? Should I not invest? And then me and Austin announced hey, you know what we just landed? A huge deal. Elon Musk is going to be our third business partner Okay, as an investor, you're an investor with your money, would you? Are you more likely to invest or less likely to invest if elon musk is our?
Speaker 2:third business partner? Yeah, way more likely probably more?
Speaker 1:yeah, probably way. Oh, yeah, I'm in. If elon's in, I'm in. Okay, now let's look at what's the risk level. Does the let's talk reward?
Speaker 1:Elon musk is our third business partner. What's the chances of reward? Does it go up or down on this investment? Probably up, way up. If elon's in, the reward is going to go way up. Elon is a very seasoned entrepreneur, the guy. Everything he touches turned into gold. What are the chances of it failing? Now? Is the chance of failure or risk go up or down? You could argue it stays the same or goes down. Right, so so now, all of a sudden, our reward went up with Elon coming in and our risk maybe either stayed the same or went down because he's got so much capital he can overfund.
Speaker 1:Think about all the risks that go away because Elon's involved. Ta-da, we just created asymmetrical risk Just by bringing in one new partner. We lowered our risk and increased our return just because of expertise. This happens a lot in fragments and markets like house flippers have asymmetrical risk. That's the way they make money in these investments. They bring their own expertise. They know how to flip a house, they know how to do carpet and paint and find mold and all this stuff and it saves a bunch of time and money and they can flip house and they make a Delta asymmetrical risk. So, anyways, I'm going too long, so you're thinking about doing this.
Speaker 1:Let's run scenarios. This should take you let's call it seven days. Let's run scenarios on Excel to figure out if you actually have a good idea or not, and run all the scenarios. Number two let's frame out the fund. And number three so framing out, that's the details of what the fund will look like. I have a bunch of YouTube videos and content how you'll pay back investors. Go actually pitch investors. Let's start floating this around to see if people are interested, if our ideas from step one actually translate to the real.
Speaker 1:The market is the best teacher. Love it or hate it, the market is the best teacher. A lot of business owners forget this and myself included, I forgot this, but the market is the best teacher. The market will tell you what is good or bad. Screw the victim mindset of oh, I'm in the I'm whatever colored skin or background or gender or ethnicity or whatever Like. The market is the best teacher. The market will tell you and so what we do, and I think you could do this in three weeks, two weeks, vet out your idea, frame out the fun, go to the market, let the market teach you and what you're going to do is probably come back and tweak some of your stuff.
Speaker 1:On that first original Excel I did you know what they brought up a good idea and you're going to tweak your fund. You're going to build a fund with your potential investors and then, once you've gotten to the point where you get I try to get verbal commitments like hey, austin, I got this brand new fund XYZ. It's not all put together yet, but once it's done, could I put you down for a verbal commitment of $100,000 in this thing, once we've had it all out and everything but what you're hearing so far temperature check. If everything checks out, would you be interested in 100,000 for this? And if Austin goes, you know what? Yeah, this is awesome, like man, great. Okay, I know I'm onto something, but if Austin goes, probably I love you, but probably not right now, and I'm gonna say why not? Nah, just and really, austin, tell me what's going on. I just don't love your team. I just don't think this is gonna work. I just don't like your market. They're gonna tell you some of reasons. Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Let me go back to the drawing board. Let me see if I can beef up my team a little bit, but let me see if I can approach this market in a different way. Or maybe we move markets. You might bring up a good point I don't like this market, let's move to a different market. You guys did that, and so that's how you vet up a deal. Yeah, so, anyways, is the easiest part? Setting up the legal docs. It is complex, but it's the easiest part. Once you know what you want, once you have investors that want your product and lawyers just take orders, you pay them some shekels and they do this stuff, but now you have a fund that people want. So that's what I would say yeah, so let's talk.
Speaker 2:Then let's say you've gone through you're already in like a med spa, a dental, and you've got a couple of locations and you're getting ready to take on private equity and okay, you know what I actually do want to do this. I want to create my own fund. What kind of team members do you start to assemble?
Speaker 1:Because it's obviously different, like when you're going to be raising money versus partnering with somebody who has the money like that becomes very different. So what was that? I guess two questions is what was it like for you and what do you recommend for people to?
Speaker 2:start assembling their team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question on tea. So three pieces of a tea for a fund. You have what I call your expert investor. This person is very good at the med spas, like the actual product. Okay, I call them the expert investor. They eat, sleep and drink med spas and how they're built and how they're putting together and how to scale them and like the not just like doing the injections but running the business of med spas. Right, that's your expert investor and they're good at the growth and expansion.
Speaker 1:The next person or team of people would be what I call your fund management team. This is the people that run the mechanics of your fund. They do investor relations, they do legal, they work with compliance groups, audit groups, to make sure your fund is running the right way. That's your second tier. And then your third person is what I call a cap raiser or your I guess cap raiser is the best vernacular. They're your, your money market person that goes out, born salesperson, can go and raise money for you. Now, one person can do all three of those hats. Two people can do them, 20 people can do them, but all three hats need to be worn. So again, I'll say you have a cap, money raiser, capital raiser person, a fund management someone actually put the fund together and then an expert investor.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this, maybe you're already good at med spas. You might be the expert investor. I know how to grow this thing. I just need someone to figure out how to run a fund and raise money for me. Great, let's go find those two people and bring them together. And or it's five people or 20 people right, You're, but they're all just hats that you wear. So those would be the people I would start thinking about. And I it's not the how, it's the who. Stop asking the question how do I run a fund? Ask, who can I find that can run a fund with me? Who can I find that can help me raise capital? Who can I find that can help me with acquisitions? Who can I find that has a Harvard degree that can sit on my board and look really cool when I pitch investors? Right, who, it's not how, it's who. Who can get me into these big family offices to pitch? And that's what I'd say. Yeah, so where do you like?
Speaker 2:because I think this is great advice and I think people are probably gonna be thinking, okay, like where do I go? Like where would you recommend them to go? To start trying to find these people to add to their team couple.
Speaker 1:I have a bunch of comments on this number one. I, there's already these people assembled. I I always just rewrite my brain on this all the time, like the people that you're looking for already hang out together. Oh, man, I'm looking to hire some developers for my team. I got to go search the earth for no, you don't. Developers hang out. Guess who. They hang out with Other guys that write code, other developers man, I got to find all these investors and family offices man, I just got to, I guess I got to go find them. Offices man, I just got to. I guess I got to go find them. Guess who? Family offices like wealthy worth a hundred million, $200 million families hang out with Other families that also have $200 million. Like, guess who? Billionaires hang out with Other billionaires. Okay, they're already assembled together, it's.
Speaker 1:Can I insert myself into that river or that? The river is already flowing. How do I insert myself in there? We've done a lot. We've assembled a lot of people in fund launch. So we've assembled people that love funds. We've built this huge pool of 70,000 people that build funds, like running funds, they're interested in funds. We build this huge pool and you just insert yourself in that pool. Okay, the one thing I'd say on this, though this note and I've had to teach myself this over and over again it's one of those. I share this, but it's something that I've had to learn and the stuff I like to share, by the way, I don't like to share stuff that I haven't done myself. So everything I'm sharing today I've done myself. I have actually real world experience Like I've done it. It's not just theory. The easiest way to date a 10. If you're in the dating world like you have zero to 10. What's?
Speaker 2:the easiest way to date a nine or a 10?.
Speaker 3:Now I now I know people that are there's people that are, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:There's people that are fives, that date tens, and their people sometimes can date out of their leagues for sure, but the easiest way to date a nine or a ten is to also be a nine or a ten. That's the easiest way to date a nine or a ten to be on like. Yes, people can date out of their leagues a little bit, but usually it comes back to who you are. If you want a level 7, 8, 9, 10 business partner, you need to develop yourself into a level 7, 8, 9, 10 business partner, because level 9 business partners want to partner with guess who Other level 9 business partners. There's probably a reason. Elon Musk has not partnered with Austin and Bridger yet. Not yet Because I would. I don't know you, austin, but me at least I would put Elon on like level 100 and maybe I'm at like a level seven.
Speaker 3:And so I got to keep, I got to work on the skills of running businesses.
Speaker 1:I got to sharpen my ax so that I attract business partners like an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos or someone like that to partner with me. Birds of a feather flock together. I think it's one of the most true principles on earth. If you are looking for good partners, sharpen your own ax. Sharpen who you are. People gravitate towards smart, competent, successful people that are like them, and so the easiest way to stand out is to be like those people, and whether that means self-education, hiring courses, youtube, university is massive. That's why we have an education platform Like I think it's. There is so much you can learn for free on YouTube and then put into practice in real life. Start running business, whatever that means for you, but start putting it into practice in real life. Start running business whatever that means for you, but start putting it into practice in real life and get real world experience. It's massive.
Speaker 1:My current business partner, dan Young he would have never partnered with me, but I think I sharpened my skills enough. He's been on the board of Intel for 16 years. Multiple Inc 500 women done 600 million in revenue. He's on the board of AMD. This is my business partner, dan Young and I worked enough years.
Speaker 1:Finally, two years ago, I think I had developed myself into somebody that Dan said, ok, I see value in Bridger, I want to partner with that guy. And he came to me and said what if we did a fund together and I knew things about funds that he didn't know and had. We've done 30 million in sales with FundLodge. I've had some success in my previous funds. I think he looked at me and said okay, this is a guy I want to partner with now and I think I had sharpened my skills enough where he said that's the kind of partner that I want to be with. Evidently I don't know what he thought, every little detail but we partnered together and we're fantastic business partners. We're 50-50 partners in our fund. It's gone extremely well and it's been awesome. That's my business partner. So I think there's a lot of value in developing yourself and sharpening your own axe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's a constant thing. I remember when I first started the business and I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, the email and the four-hour work week and I was like, oh, I'm good, I bought a franchise. You know, starting to franchise, I'm a pro, I'm good, I got everything. Yeah, this thing's going to loan itself because I read all these books and I'm just going to sit back with my toes in the sand like Tim Ferriss says, and it's, it is not. You're constantly sharpening the act.
Speaker 1:Can I add on that? Yeah, I think there's skills in business. Just like basketball has skills or football, you learn how to dribble or how to shoot a free throw. Whatever the skill is, there are skills in business. Building sales teams is a skill. Doing marketing outreach is a skill. Connecting over to cross-pollinate businesses and merging businesses together is a skill. Connecting over to cross-pollinate businesses and merging businesses together is a skill. Doing deals together, negotiating deals is a skill. Managing employees is a skill. Hiring A-plus talent is a skill and it needs practice.
Speaker 1:You don't just read a book and learn how to dribble a basketball. It takes practice and this is something I've had to learn over and over again. Okay, what are the skills I have to identify? First off, identify the skill of meeting someone and making them like me in 30 seconds or less. That is a skill.
Speaker 1:Anything that you can learn is a skill by definition. If you can learn that, it means it's a skill. So how do I develop the skill of meeting someone in 30 seconds or less? I get them to laugh, smile and like me and wanna maybe do business with me or get to know me more, or whatever. And if I can develop, if it's something that can be learned. It means it's a skill. And am I good at that skill or bad at that skill? And so I think a lot of people, myself included, have read books and think I aren't. Oh, I just have skills because I read these books and then I got into the real world and the skills. It's like learning how to do a karate chop and then going to the real world and you hit the brick and nothing breaks right.
Speaker 2:There's a big gap and currently, like right now, I'm developing massive skills, like myself.
Speaker 1:Right now, I'm actively developing skills for me, Bridger right now and I'm learning a ton of crap and I think about it like that listen to.
Speaker 2:You talked about the skill of public speaking, doing things differently that grab people's attention, going into the audience, et cetera. That has really nothing to do with running a fund.
Speaker 1:Like they can absolutely come together and help each other. But you could spend so much time on public speaking and so much time on learning how to run a fund that it can be almost overwhelming. There's never a shortage of things to learn.
Speaker 2:It's almost like which ones are we going to say no to is the most important thing, because I've noticed myself. I just go down on these little, oh this is really important.
Speaker 1:Like I go down this pathway, I work on my social media. I got to get my social media presence going and then you get, like other people, doing more and more and more.
Speaker 2:And so you can get relentless about a certain area and then, meanwhile, the rest of these things that you really should be focusing on too, start to fall away. So you have to balance the act.
Speaker 1:And I guess the question in there is, like, how do you balance all the different skills that have true value? Yeah, that's a good question. I do prioritize things at different times in my life of what is a skill priority that I'm gonna focus on for that time period. For a long time it's been speaking and that's still a top priority. Like I just, for whatever reason, I've always wanted to be a good speaker on stage and if you invite me, like I'm gonna be top 1% speaker, I'm gonna stand out, I'm gonna be different. So that was always top of mind priority.
Speaker 1:So anytime I went a lot of us listen to stuff or sit in audiences I would just take notes. If it was a bad speaker, I would take notes. I'd get so bored. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take notes on why the speaker is bad. And like I go to church, I'm like my mom made me go to church and I'm sitting in church and I'm like this speaker is terrible. Okay, why my brain for something? I can only be here right now. Okay, it had a terrible opening. They didn't engage me with anything. They're super monotone, just their body language is somewhat boring and the content, like I would go through and then I'd say, if I was giving the same talk, what would I do differently? And anyways, that's one example of that.
Speaker 1:Like currently I'm trying to develop the skill of building massive sales teams. So we have a sales team at Fun Launch and we have other portfolio companies. I'm like I wanna learn the skill of how to scale a sales team and it's been hard. I've had to learn a lot of stuff and read books and podcasts and learn that skill and I think, different. Like currently, right now I'm going through the skill process of how do you outbound to institutions and family offices large family offices, I'm talking multi-billion dollar family offices how do I get my foot in the door, get my fund in front of them and in the right mode and process to make sure that they love it? That's a skill and maybe I'll develop that skill the rest of my life probably, but it's a high value skill.
Speaker 1:So I look at what are the opportunities I have and what are the gaps. That and I am the difference, bridger. I am the reason we are not a hundred million dollar a year company. I'm the reason I don't manage a billion dollar fund portfolio. It is because of me. I am the reason. So if I'm the reason, there's a gap between me and someone else and I need to become that future self. And if skills can shorten that gap, what skills can shorten it the fastest? So that's how I approach thinking about this, because I am the biggest problem in my business. I am the biggest and I think that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of business owners. I keep reminding myself of that Anytime there's a problem in business.
Speaker 1:I have 50 employees now and we're growing and employees do stupid crap, like stupid stuff, and you guys all know this. It's the most stupid thing you're thinking. And stupid crap, like stupid stuff. And you guys all know this is what you're thinking. And I go it's my fault then we didn't train them the right way, we didn't, I didn't hire the right person. It's my fault that I hired you. I don't say that to him, but it's really I go.
Speaker 1:I shouldn't have hired you. What was I thinking six months ago? And I took a chance on you and then we didn't train you and then we didn't put right controls, cause you just took the company credit card and went to and bought a bunch of crap on it that you thought was good, but it's also for your personal. You actually stole money from the company. So what do we do about that? First off, I probably just shouldn't have hired you. Number two I should have trained you a lot better. Number three I should have put better controls in. You actually shouldn't even have the chance to take a company credit card and go to the store and buy a bunch of personal stuff for yourself.
Speaker 1:That is a full disc breakdown across the board of management of HR and of finance team. And guess who runs all those teams, bridger, and guess who. Everyone ultimately reports to Bridger. So it isn't my fault. So how do we fix the system? And let's go through and let's system advocate our HR hiring practices. We need to learn how to screen and hire better people. Number two we need to put in.
Speaker 1:Well, you can go down the list of how to fix those problems, but it's the big. It's a big thing to keep reminding yourself. You are the biggest difference in your business is the business owner. You affect everything. Everything's your fault. It's extreme ownership. And you and, by the way, the opposite is true as well Everything in your life, maybe a vast majority you have it because of you. That's a good thing to look at. Hey, I have all this cool stuff. A lot of it's come and I'd say, some of it's from grace and from the grace of God or just where you were born. It's a ton of that too. But notice, recognizing extreme ownership on everything, especially the things that go wrong, is massive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one is massive. Yeah, One thing that's helped me is we get into these ruts like your brain develops neurological pathways by thinking the same thoughts over and over again. And so we think that because we've been doing these things for so long, or I've been in this business for so long. Things have been happening this way, at this pace for so long, but that's just the way things are.
Speaker 1:But it's refreshing to think that we can change the future. We can change the narrative at any point in time, like there's no reason why if we've made multiple bad hiring choices or we've taken a six years to get this point, that it's going to take another six years to get the next point, like you can learn a new strategy or get a new body of motivation or any number of reasons why you can change your behavior Like it was.
Speaker 1:I was listening to one of Alex or Mosey's podcast was what inspired that, but it's like the past does not have to dictate the future.
Speaker 2:And so to your point like it all starts with me, it all ends with me, is we don't have to keep doing the same things that we've been doing.
Speaker 1:If we're like we're moving slow, we keep making the same mistakes, like you can like totally start over and rebrand yourself or rethink your processes or your organization, and that can take you to the next level so much faster than what it took you to get here, here, and so that's just been something that I've been thinking about lately.
Speaker 1:I love it, something I you remind me of Ben Hardy spoke at FunLoss Live and I wish I would have thought of this. But this is amazing. He goes. Most people think in think about your past self, your present self and your future self. Most people think your past determines your present and your present determines your future. That's how time works right. What I've done in the past now determines the present and your present determines your future. That's how time works right. What I've done in the past now determines the present and the present determines the future.
Speaker 1:And he's a behavioral psychologist, phd. He's written a number of great books and he talks about wealthy or growth people that have had a huge success. They think about time way differently. He goes think of those same three buckets past, present, future. He goes the way they think about time this they project into the future. They use their past to learn. They then project into the future and their future self pulls their present self into the future.
Speaker 1:So let me say that again in a different way. So, for example, you heard of, like Tony Robbins or other people talk about an identity. So you have an identity that you build of a future, your best self. Think of you like at my best self, I'm funny, I'm charismatic, I'm good to be around, I'm smart, I'm a good listener, like my best self and they paint a picture or a vision board or a goal of their future self, of who they are, and they pull their present self to the future self and he goes.
Speaker 1:This little shift in thinking is mass and I wish I would have thought of it myself. I was like that's so genius, because that's when we talk about wealth, people and you hear what they do and how they think is that's how they think they have a future vision of their self or their company, and they are pulling the present to that, from their future. It feels almost like the future is pulling the present to it. And now, whether you like that or not, that line of thinking and he goes from a statistical standpoint has produced some of the most high performing people on earth.
Speaker 1:And so, whether you like it or not, they use the past to think through and build a future outcome and they pull their present self to that future outcome. It's not just the past in terms of the present which in terms of the future, and it takes away victim mindset. It puts ownership on you to determine that future self, which I love. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that was a great talk. By the way, I remember being there for that in the audience and that's a good reminder that you brought that up. And so, as we're coming close to our time together, I know you mentioned going to church and God, and I also identify as a.
Speaker 1:Christian. So I just want to talk about faith in the workplace and what that means to you and how maybe it's affected what you've done. Yeah, yeah, I'm Christian as well. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints and I try to do my best. I try to be a better Christian man and I'm not perfect by any means, but I do believe a couple of things. I'll just say on this. I do believe the world, my life is way more happier being with God than not God and trying to follow Jesus Christ and follow God, my life is way better than not. Number one my family's life is, I believe, exponentially better from being with God than not God. I, my family's life is, I believe, exponentially better from being with God than not God. I have had a number of experiences. Now let's talk about business.
Speaker 1:I believe everything mixes. Some people think, oh, I just have my spiritual life and then I have my business life and I have my fitness life and I have my relationship life or whatever. That you split up your lives into certain categories. I believe they all mesh. The way you work out and your physical body directly affects how you show up at work and business, the energy you bring to the workplace, the way your relationships at home with your spouse or kids, directly affect the way you show up to the gym and, for better or for worse, sometimes you're pissed off, you go to the gym, you eat out more, but it directly affects your business and your spiritual life. Anyways, I say I think they all mix. I think your spiritual life mixes with business life. A ton I think about and I pray over business a lot and I pray over choices and decisions and things, and I'm just. I believe God cares about the details of our lives. I'll give you two examples. And you might say this Bridget, this is strange. Why would you mix that? I believe who you hire and fire has a drastic spiritual and relationship and emotional implication on at least that individual, if not their families and even their extended families. So it's a big deal. When you hire somebody, you're affecting 20 to 30 people's lives. And when you hire somebody, you're affecting 20 to 30 people's lives. And or if you fire somebody, you're affecting 20 to 30 people's lives in a big degree or small degree. And so it's a big deal and there's a lot of unknowns. I don't know about those, that group of people, and I also don't know about this person, their future self, and so I. A lot of times I'll pray over hiring and firing and all sorts of stuff like that. But I'll give you two examples.
Speaker 1:This is back when I was 24 years old. I was invited by a certain gentleman. This guy is very wealthy, he's twice my age, he has private jet, rolls Royce, huge mansion, awesome businesses. Crushes it like a hundred million dollars, like huge, like crazy. Brings me to his office, sits me down, we talk for about an hour, he goes, he goes bridger. I want to open up a new division of my company. I want you to run it. I want to be partners with you. Like you're gonna make x number like huge amounts of money, tens of millions of dollars, running this thing over the course of the next decade.
Speaker 1:I'm 24 years old. Dream come true, couldn't be. I was like whoa, this is, this is what I've been working for. Holy crap, I go back home. I'm brand new, newly married, or no? Sorry, I was dating my wife. Sorry, I wasn't even married. I was dating my wife, I believe.
Speaker 1:And anyways, I decided to pray over it and I got a distinct answer no, don't do this. And I like double checked. I was like are you sure, god? It was like very clear, like in my heart do not do this. And I was like I don't, I have no rationale for this. This guy is he's given me an opportunity of a lifetime. I went and I said you know what, if God speaks to me, I follow. That was like a core belief in my mind. God speaks to me, I follow. He doesn't speak to me that often, but if he does, like I will fall. So I went. I told this guy I'm sorry I can't do business with you. I just got other stuff. I'm sorry, I just don't feel right about it. He said he like just went cold shoulders, like whatever, see you later. Like good luck, kid. And I was like all right, whatever.
Speaker 1:Three weeks later I get called into another guy's office. This guy has another huge business, drives an awesome I don't want to give too many details because people might know who the person is Drives this amazing car and all this kind of stuff. Anyways, he gives me a similar offer Three weeks later, another offer they're going to launch this new business, this new phone, they're crushing it, all this cool stuff. I was like, wow, this is crazy and I go home, I pray about it, guess what the answer is. And I go home, I pray about it, guess what the answer is, don't do it. And my faith is now a test. I'm like is this just me, or is this God who's speaking to me? Am I just off? What is going on? But I really felt, and I had developed a pattern of what I believed, how God speaks to me and the language of the spirit, as I call it. And anyways, and over time, you set kind of data points and things that work and don't work, and I feel like I've tried to learn how the spirit, or God, communicates with me. And it was a true no, it was a no, and I said, all right, I'm gonna follow. And so I told this guy no. So in three weeks, I told two guys no, and I'm sitting in my freaking basement apartment with no money, like this. Anyways, I go on.
Speaker 1:We've done some fun stuff over the last five years. We started Fun Launch. Fun Launch took off. I started my other funds, so I've made plenty of money, so that turned out great. What was crazy, though, last year, or the last 18 months, I guess, the first guy his whole business completely blew up Bunch of fraudulent allegations his life like all this crazy stuff. The second guy within months is running a I don't know a few hundred million dollar Ponzi scheme SEC investigations like big, heavy stuff. I would have never known ever that those two opportunities back to back would have resulted three or four years later into massive fraudulent problems and I would have been tied up. I would maybe be going to jail right now if I was involved with them.
Speaker 1:And I look back and go, wow, that is insane. God really does care about a puny little bridger that's. I'm just a normal dude that lives in Utah, like I'm not really that cool, and he cares enough about me to help me figure out and not hit two landmines that would have it would have probably ruined my career, to be honest, like you have a big sec Ponzi scheme allegation against you that ruins your career forever and I was like, wow, what a gift from God. And I just I have a testimony that God cares about the details of all of our lives and that's why I talk about God on my show and podcast and social media and I've had that. Those are two experiences. I've had countless experiences just like that.
Speaker 1:I could sit here for three or four hours. I take notes on my phone of things and I have a full spiritual journal. I keep track of it. I just can't deny, I just can't deny the hand of God in my life and and that's why it's I think this whole game everything mixes together and I take a very spiritual approach to all things in life and I'm getting. I'm not perfect, I'm working hard, I'm trying to be better. It's a bunch of stuff I got to improve on and do better, but I like the path I'm on. You can say that we're all broken, but I like the path that I'm walking towards and maybe one day I'll get to the mountaintop or whatever, but I'm walking the path and I'm following. I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, I'm following Jesus Christ and that's the path I'm walking. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've made mistakes worse than anybody, and that's why I need God more than anybody.
Speaker 2:And like that's why I need God more than anybody. You know what I mean. Like it's not oh, I made a mistake so I don't believe in him. No, that's why I need him, because I am inclined to make mistakes, especially on my own without him. And so, anyway, thanks for sharing that. It's a really powerful story. Just in closing, it's been awesome. I really appreciate you sharing your insight.
Speaker 2:What is a good way for anybody to find out more about what you're doing, or reach out and get in touch with you guys, anything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my name is Bridger Pennington. I'm on pretty much most social media platforms. We put out a lot of content on funds, specifically in finance stuff. We have a full free course on funds as well. So if you want to learn about funds, if that sparks your interest, go to fundlaunchcom Entirely free. I think it's 25 videos and segments and like totally free. I just want to help more people launch funds, build funds themselves. You go to fundlaunchcom and follow us and then we have other stuff. We help people launch funds. We have Black Card. We have other paid stuff for sure and paid events. But just come in, I tell people, just educate yourself. So find Bridger Pennington or Fun Launch and you can come in there.
Speaker 3:Awesome Been, a pleasure being on today. Thank you so much. If you need help finding the perfect location for your practice or you're ready to invest in commercial real estate, email us podcast at leadersreecom R-E as in realestatecom, or go to leadersreecom and fill out our form. See you next time.