Unlocking Investment Opportunities You Didn't Know Existed - Episode 93
In today's episode, I sit down with Kelly Ann Winget, an incredible expert in the world of private equity, to talk about how she broke into a male-dominated field and built her own path to wealth. Kelly shares the lessons she learned from her parents about money, how to build generational wealth, and why it’s so important to include women in investment conversations. We also discuss practical tips for making smart financial decisions, teaching your kids about money, and the importance of finding the right people to help manage your wealth.
About our guest:
Kelly Ann Winget is an accomplished alternative investments expert and founder of Alternative Wealth Partners (AWP), the first private equity firm founded by a millennial, openly LGBTQ+ woman. She has raised nearly $1 billion in capital across startups, energy, manufacturing, real estate, and emerging markets, including Opportunity Zone Funds. A recognized trailblazer, Kelly Ann has been featured in major media outlets like The New York Times and Forbes. She is the author of Pitch the Bitch: Grab Your Financial Future by the Bags and a sought-after speaker at events like the Women’s Venture Summit. Kelly Ann also partners with the WOMO Foundation and Diversity Crew to build a more inclusive tomorrow. Passionate about philanthropy, she supports causes like Wipe Out Kids’ Cancer. In her downtime, Kelly Ann enjoys traveling with her wife, spending time with family, and cuddling her three big dogs.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema: [00:00:00] Kelly Ann Winget is an accomplished alternative investment expert and founder of Alternative Wealth Partners, the first private equity firm founded by a millennial openly LGBTQ plus woman. She raised nearly a billion in capital across startups, energy, manufacturing, real estate, and emerging markets, including Opportunity Zone Funds.
As a recognized trailblazer, Kellyanne has been featured in major media outlets, like the New York Times and Forbes. She is the author of Pitch the Bitch, Grab Your Financial Future by the Bags, and a sought after speaker at events like the Women's Venture Summit. Kellyanne also partners with the WOMO Foundation and Diversity Crew to build a more inclusive tomorrow.
Passionate about philanthropy, she supports causes like Wipeout Kids Cancer. In her [00:01:00] downtime, Kellyanne enjoys traveling with her wife, spending time with family, and cuddling her three big dogs.
Welcome my financially intentional people. I'm super bagged to be here with a brand new episode with Kelly Ann Winget and she has an amazing story in the investment space and I'm going to have her share that. But I'm just super excited to talk about different kinds of investments, making investments inclusive, and just trying to get you guys to normalize investing in your life.
So Kelly, welcome so much. Super excited to dive into your story. And I appreciate you being on the podcast. Um,
Kelly Ann Winget: Having me today.
Naseema: know your story is so interesting, so I'm gonna just have you go into it. So how did you get into the finance space? Like, Period. This isn't a space that's super friendly to women and not one of those things.
I hear a lot of women just dive in head first on, so I'm interested to hear how you got in it.
Kelly Ann Winget: It's definitely not one of those things that you stumble [00:02:00] upon. I had two financially, like financial professional parents. They were entrepreneurs, investors, out of high school into college. My parents were, CPAs, accountants, my father worked for Price Waterhouse, my mom worked for private companies doing accounting and, forensic accounting at that.
And so money was not a taboo topic in our home. I, grew up in an affluent neighborhood. I was taught early on that that was not normal for people like our lifestyle. They made a big effort to educate us outside of Money will just always be there, but we had to earn it.
When I was a teenager, as most teenage girls do want a lot of really obnoxious, expensive things. And my parents are like, go figure it out yourself because we're not doing that. Like your job is school. And if you want to do anything beyond that Figure it out. So I got into sales at 15. I was selling car washes part time in high school and making almost six figures.
Wow. how to, I learned how to make money early on. And so I learned [00:03:00] that I liked money and I liked making money and and I liked working. So when I graduated high school I had a bunch of different jobs in high school, but that was the one thing that stuck. And when I was going to college, I tried out a lot of different classes.
I knew that I wanted to do business. So I was like in these business courses, listening to somebody that's, reading me a book they didn't write about a business they didn't own. And I was like, why I'm literally losing money being in this space. And I went and worked underneath operators and I worked in health care.
I worked for radiology firm for a long time. I went into construction work for a demolition company and ultimately ended up in oil and gas, which I'm five generations in oil and gas. So it was a space that I understood and eventually would end up there anyways. And that was my first toe dip into the private equity alternative investment space.
I think that probably predestined given my background, but the one thing that's different about, Me and then my white male counterpart who works [00:04:00] for his father's firm is that I found my own path there and that, I grew up with a sense of responsibility of holding doors open behind me, not just opening them.
So a lot of what I do is about educating other people about the space that they would otherwise never have access to.
Naseema: That is so cool. So did you finish college? You're just like, this is just a waste. I love that. So you've learned through your job, but I wanted to go back to the lessons that your parents were teaching you because you grew up pretty affluent. And, it's this thing, if you have come from a place of poverty and then you're the first one in your family to be affluent There's this fear that if you give your kids too much, they'll lose all of that wealth and all of that stuff that you worked really hard for.
But it seems like your parents did a really good job of instilling lessons in you to know that, okay, yeah, we have it, but that doesn't mean you just automatically have access to it. Can you speak a [00:05:00] little bit more about that? Because I just want to give people practical tools that they can use, Teaching their kids and things that I can use to teach my kids.
Kelly Ann Winget: I think that it's a realistic fear that if you give your children money, it will disappear. If you talk to anybody in the wealth management space or family office, which are typically people with half billion dollar plus net worth they have a staff of people who manage their money on their behalf of the family.
There's a realistic fear that in the third generation is in, doesn't have any money, they spend it all, like it's gone. And so that's why there's a lot of work that's done around how do you create true generational wealth where there is not that fear of it disappearing because of the structure that's put around the money.
And that's the biggest difference between, normal people and people that have half billion dollar net worth is the, all the resources around having that kind of wealth. You can have that same experience at any net worth. And that's what we believe. I think that the one thing that was really [00:06:00] important for us is that we never felt like there was a financial safety net because we were told there wasn't one.
And so even though we were allowed to fail, there was a lot of like emotional support. And like thought support. So if we were hitting rock bottom, how do we get out of it without Oh, mommy or daddy's writing a check, to make the problem go away. That'll never make a problem go away.
It just like delays the problem to be even later. So if you are, first generation of wealth you do have responsibility around that, but it isn't to, it isn't to make life like too easy, right? There are things that need to be taught around the money. And you can only really learn that from people who have done it before.
And unfortunately, the people that have done it before, like to gatekeep all of that information because how dare you also have wealth?
Naseema: Too. It's, it's [00:07:00] just like a fear. Like I got it out the mud. I don't I don't want you to struggle like this. And also I didn't necessarily have a roadmap.
Kelly Ann Winget: Yeah you don't want your children to struggle. my wife and I have two children and, they have everything they could possibly ever need or one under the moon. But, how do you navigate true problem solving and like independence away from the money that they can't just wake up one day and be like, I want this.
And it's you can't just have, you could just have that, but you're not going to just have that. If you have the means you create a comfortable, safe space, focusing on that safe, supportive space more than financial safety. It's okay to fail because we're here and my financial freedom allows me to be here in these different ways, not to write you a check so that you can go do whatever or have, a G wagon at 16.
Naseema: Yeah. And but you said that money conversations were normalized in your family. What did those look like? Like, how included were you guys in [00:08:00] the family finances?
Kelly Ann Winget: We knew how much stuff costs. We were present when groceries were being bought. We were present when things were being purchased for us. We knew how much our school activities were like, we got a bank account at 10
Naseema: Hmm.
Kelly Ann Winget: we got a credit card at 15. there were milestones in our life where, okay, at 10 years old, we're going into middle school.
There's going to be some independence there. We're going to be at school all day. We're going to be in clubs and programs. We're going to be required to pay club fees. We're going to be buying spirit, where going to dance. It's there's things where we're going to be in spaces and having to spend money without our parents present.
And so we had to make those purchases. So we were physically writing checks. To my parents from our bank accounts like we got our allowance. We got paid for good grades. If we had bad grades we had to pay interest. Like the, we had to pay them if we were failing school and not failing, but see, you're going to pay money because you've, [00:09:00] Wasted everybody's time.
And so we were physically writing checks to my parents for different things. To come so that we knew how to pay for stuff and how to manage our budget. So if our allowance allowed us to pay for our band club fees or whatever. And I only had 10 left and I'm going to the football game.
Like I don't get to buy a 20 shirt. I don't get to do whatever, it's not going to be like, Oh, let me give you extra money so that you can participate in something you chose to participate in band and that's what you paid for. And so it was like being very strict about. That kind of thing and not just coming in and saving the day with extra cash, just because we wanted to do something.
It's a big exercise. I think that, on social media and stuff, you see a lot of the envelope stuffing kind of strategy. and that's a very like rudimental exercise. And unfortunately is very difficult to get out of that in a digital currency world. You're not really understanding how [00:10:00] to budget and spend when all your stuff is in a physical space.
Cause the world doesn't operate that way. Do it with your children.
Naseema: Yeah, I love those lessons and those are I like that because you're gonna get to this milestone at 10 years old You're gonna start have to managing your money. Yes. I have to manage your money You have a bank account you pay for those things when you run out of money you run out of money how did your parents like?
Learn that to teach you like because I just think that that's genius My kids are like that But that's for me Like being in this space and kind of trying to pick up tidbits from other people. I definitely wasn't taught like that how did they learn that?
Kelly Ann Winget: I think that you have a couple of different things going on. My parents, my mother's almost 70. And she was adopted. So my grandparents were much older. They were teenagers during the depression. So you had a kind of a different experience. Although affluent where they came from and that getting passed through [00:11:00] to my mother and then her education background She just didn't want us to be, she didn't want us to be a certain type of person that came from money.
And so she was very actively teaching us away from that mentality to be more inclusive and understand how the power of the money, if you understand it and can work it correctly.
Naseema: I love that. I love that but it's so great that these lessons have passed generation to generation I'm sure you're sharing these lessons with your kids. How old are your kids? You
Kelly Ann Winget: 11 and 14.
Naseema: Oh, beautiful. So I have a 10 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old, a
Kelly Ann Winget: a 14 year old this summer was like, I have to get a job. I'm so expensive. And because at this point we're now like, we're not doing all this extra stuff. You have to start earning something, do something. And I think she's like starting to realize that If she wants her nails done or if she wants to go to target and buy her 30 step skincare routine thing, [00:12:00] it's you know how much your 30 step skincare routine is.
Naseema: 14 year old that has
Kelly Ann Winget: yeah, I don't know. They're on a whole different level now. And so we're trying to get
them to
really
understand.
Naseema: my daughter, we went into support. My daughter was like, I bet you all the kids are going to be in the drunken elephant section. I'm like, what the hell is that
Kelly Ann Winget: I don't know. I have no idea. it's bad. And the thing is that, you have to really get them to understand In Texas, the minimum wage is still 7 and 25 cents. So when you're 15 and can get a job, like you're making seven bucks an hour and after taxes, it's six. And so how much do you really want the $40 moisturizer?
When it's going to cost you three days of work to get it. And I think that's definitely that was something that I learned. As a teenager that I was like, I have to make as much money as humanly possible. as quickly as [00:13:00] possible if I want to do XYZ because I liked going out with my friends and, going to the mall and driving around and doing whatever and that cost money.
Naseema: So what is your 14 year old end up doing?
Kelly Ann Winget: I had her call around all over town to ask people about office rent rates
Naseema: Mm
Kelly Ann Winget: for a week and a half.
Naseema: Nice.
Kelly Ann Winget: So she learned some skills
because no one will hire at 14. So now they don't hire 14 year olds. Back in our day, that no one cared. 14 year olds could work, but. Now they can't do that, so they have to be 15 or 16.
Naseema: Ah, good to know. Good to know. And then You were making 6 figures, almost 6 figures, though, like in your sales job, which I always tell people get train your kids in sales because if they can learn sales, they can do anything. Because as an adult trying to learn sales is oh, no, I can't do this.
But as a kid, you are already like pitching every day to get stuff like learn use [00:14:00] those skills to actually learn how to make money from them. And Oh my God, the world is your oyster. So like, how are you doing that though?
Kelly Ann Winget: So this is like carwash detail packages and here in Dallas, there's this chain of car washes that do your oil changes and state inspections, but they also do carwash and detail and stuff. It wasn't like it is now where you have external carwash membership and you can pay to have unlimited car washes, but for whatever reason, your exterior carwash is $30.
Like none of that makes any sense. But when I was selling car washes, they had to change the commission program three times while I worked there because I kept figuring out like how
Naseema: how to,
get the highest commission.
Kelly Ann Winget: how to get the highest commission based on the type of carwash I sold. I was averaging over a hundred dollars a car.
And, and basically I'm making, I probably averaged about a 10 percent [00:15:00] commission, no matter what program they had. And I was doing three to 400 cars a day, Saturdays and Sundays. So I was, I was making a lot of money just by being able to, sell car washes.
Naseema: Were you physically there or were you like selling door to door? Okay.
Kelly Ann Winget: no, no. I was there.
They were coming to me. They were coming to me. Yeah. It was fun. I got to be outside, I'm like 16 and get a drive, really nice cars. I love cars. I got to handle all of the really fancy cars that would come through that couldn't, that had to be hand washed and stuff. I was never doing the actual detailing.
I would do my own cars, but I wouldn't actually do any of the detailing stuff. I learned how to do it when I first got the job so I could sell it. But after that I was just selling and I got moved around. They moved me to busier and busier locations because I got really good at selling car washes.
Naseema: That is so cool, but I think also the lesson that you [00:16:00] learned early on was that 1st of all, you like nice things and you knew that working at a McDonald's are at a fast food joint was not going to cut it for you. And because you understood how much things costing, you understood the value of money because you had to have.
Manage your money from an early age and you weren't afraid to do the jobs that needs to be done for you to make more money. But again, those lessons all tied together. So I think that's great. And I love that you're instilling that in your kids. And I'm going to borrow some of the lessons from you for sure.
But you have written an incredible book and I want you to dive into that book. What's it about? What can we learn from it? Like I'm enthralled.
Kelly Ann Winget: So , it's called pitch the bitch, grab your financial future by the bags. And, the title of the book comes from a movie called the boiler room, which was like, In early 2000s film, it was about like the stock market. And one of the first scenes is like the old brokers teaching the new broker, like the lay, the lay end.[00:17:00]
And he's the first rule is don't pitch the bitch. If you get a woman on the phone, you hang up because it's a waste of time. If she'll call you, if the stock's up, she'll call you. If the stock's down, you just don't pitch the bitch. that was like one of the first scenes in the film.
Naseema: Oh, I got to watch that.
Kelly Ann Winget: And it's something that like, Oh, this is just in the movies. But the reality is, is that I heard this like verbatim and in many other ways both racist, sexist, ageist, all sorts of things in these rooms when I was helping companies raise capital and investors tried to source companies and. I wrote this book because when I went out on my own, I was very intentional about making sure that, both the wife and the husband were included in the conversation, that I wasn't going to not take a phone call from a potential investor just because they had a foreign name or, all these terrible things that people said.
And I wrote the book because there's all of this gatekept information about wealth from what kind of bank account you [00:18:00] should have to what kind of retirement account and who, if you should be working with a financial planner or financial advisor, what's the difference, your insurance broker is not your financial advisor.
They're going to sell you an annuity. There's all these things that no one talks about. And it also, the The pop culture references, going back to the Bible basically, but every chapter like touches on a, a phrase or like a pop culture reference. That's built this little voice in the back of your head that says you can't women handle most of the financial decisions in their life, except for investing, which makes no sense.
So if you're doing the budgeting, the buying and all the everything else, like why wouldn't you also be making the investment decisions, not only just for your own money, but your family's wealth. And what are the resources you need to make those decisions? The book doesn't tell you what to invest in. I don't care what you invest in.
I just want you to be investing. I have a bias towards alternatives, which are everything outside of stocks, bonds, and cash. [00:19:00] So real estate, crypto, precious metals, art, collectibles, private equity, venture, like all of these things are private debt. These things are all inside of alternative investments, which everyone thinks is for the ultra high net worth, but a lot of people can get involved in alternatives.
Whether they're accredited or not accredited, which means you have a $200,000 income or a $1,000,000 net worth. And I think a lot of people qualify, they just don't know they qualify because they're not looking at their finances that way. And it opens up a whole new world of investment opportunity when you actually get a hold of what you're actually worth.
Naseema: So you said a whole lot of words in that and I love it. I was like, okay, first of all, I came into this space because I really felt like Not only wasn't I taught personal finance as a kid that we didn't have many conversations growing up, but also, I went to USC. [00:20:00] I went to 1 of the procedures schools in the world, but I felt like a lot of information was gate kept and to hear it coming from you on the privilege side that has been in that space to say that.
Yes. This information has been gate kept. Thank you for validating what I have been feeling and why I share. But
Kelly Ann Winget: on purpose. the types of things that are said in these spaces, they're a little quieter now, but they used to be said very out loud. And , when you're in a space and have somebody who's literally physically coming over and hanging up the phone because that person sounds too black, like they are actively excluding you from the conversation, the opportunity.
Naseema: what about people that say that everybody has the same opportunity as long as they work hard and, they show up and do the things like.
Kelly Ann Winget: you do to a sense, if you're given the same information, right? If you're given the same information, you absolutely [00:21:00] have the same ability to work hard and get there. But if you're not given all the tools and resources, then how are you supposed to succeed in the same way if you are working hard?
Naseema: And that's the thing that I hear all the time because I talk about just gender inequality and wage gaps and all of those kinds of things, investment gaps and I get a lot of pushback because people are like, it's because of your choices and careers. It's your choices in places that you get educated from.
Or, your degrees that you get is your fault. The wage gap is not real. The investment gap is not real. It's just something that's made up. So you guys can have something to talk about. I get that all the time. But from your experience, what have you seen?
Kelly Ann Winget: So it's funny because let's take. The difference between men and women and investing just in the public markets, you could have somebody like the reason why men have more in [00:22:00] retirement accounts than women is because they make more money. And are able to contribute more to retirement and savings and investments than women are, but women make more money on their investments than men.
So they're earning higher returns by almost a percent and a half a year, which is insane. The difference you get into compounding, but because men have more money at work, they have more money at the end of the, at the finish line. And I guess jokes on them because we outlive them by seven to 10 years.
So maybe that's where the difference comes up. We do actually have equal opportunity because we end up with all of their money. it's something to think about. We have 30 trillion going to women over the next, seven years. So you have to start getting smart about your money cause you're about to inherit it all.
Naseema: I love it. Yes. We need to figure out what to do with that, but, I just, I love that you talk about it because those are the conversations that. [00:23:00] Aren't really had our conversations that we're not really privy to things that we don't know that's happening in the back end of these rooms.
Like you said, like a lot of times the only access to investment advice We have come from these people who are selling us insurance products Anytime I share about investing for my kids. They're like what about getting your daughter an iul? I'm not really interested. Thank you very much. But that's what we're taught because we were taught, Oh, the wealthy get rich through these insurance products.
Kelly Ann Winget: No, no. They're not. They have insurance, but they have very, very complex insurance products that are built around their wealth because you're talking about funding premiums on a 50 to $100 million policy that you're leveraging to go buy an obscene amount of assets like there's a time and place.
But again, you're talking about somebody who's got it. A couple million dollars invested into [00:24:00] some sort of policy or structured policy when their entire net worth $500,000,000 dollars or more right is invested in alternatives like, that's where majority of wealth is sitting is in the private markets.
It's all about creating a foundation. If you've got $200 million sitting, making five, 6 percent in the market, they're golden for decades for generations, right? So they take more risk on the majority of their portfolio because they've already created the foundation. Everyone can create that same foundation with as little money as they have.
And then start to think about how do you diversify out of that? The biggest investment that somebody can make is in tax planning. If you can get really tax efficient with your money, then you're adding 30 to 50 percent to your returns every year, because that money is not going to taxes, which.
Who knows what it actually pays for [00:25:00] that's a return. You'll never see is paying your taxes.
Naseema: Exactly.
Kelly Ann Winget: if you're directly invested in things that help the community. Progress the future of the planet, all these different things, then your money is being directly invest in things you care about and you get the tax incentive for that.
It makes you feel better about your money instead of writing a blank check to the government.
Naseema: I love that. And a lot of people just don't even understand the value of that from where they are right now. If you're not a millionaire, you can definitely even more benefit for tax planning, because the more income you make, the more places that, you can kind of like, find places to put your money.
But right now, where you're at tax planning is super important. So I'm glad that you mentioned that.
Kelly Ann Winget: For like W2 earners, especially when you're building wealth, the whole point is to create as much income as possible. And then once you have gotten to the ceiling of your earning potential, like you physically exchanging your time for money, then you can start.
Focusing on how do you [00:26:00] structure a significant portion of that to start creating that passive money, not only. So if you some people like to, I'll never stop working. I don't think, but it's about, are you creating passive income? Are you stacking money right for a point of retirement to then pay for a lifestyle and.
The quickest way to do that is, is that if you're tax planning, even with W2, which is the worst kind of income if you can structure that the right way where your money is funneling in and you can save 20 percent of that just in tax planning, then that's the money that you can set aside for emergencies, big life changes and things like that.
Naseema: I love that. And then you talked about the way that those Uber wealthy set up their investment structure. They have a certain base that they know is that insecure and it's going to grow and continue to grow regardless. And then they have this big chunk that they're now investing in alternative assets and things [00:27:00] that kind of look super risky to us on the outside who don't really understand investing.
To bring that down to a level of a W 2 worker, like I said, most of my people, like nurses, like me, like we aren't W 2 income. What would that look like?
Kelly Ann Winget: So there's a couple different things that someone can do like to start investing outside of the public markets where you're contributing your money to your 401k, right? That's employee employee sponsored. They have some match program. Always max out your matching program because it's free money.
And that reduces your income, but it doesn't reduce it by a lot, right? If you're making 200, 000 a year, you're maxed out at 27 grand. It's at least 10 percent of your income is being pushed out, right? So what do you do with the other 90 percent of your income or you're spending some for life, right?
And then that other part is like, how can we invest in a tax efficient way? There are things that you can invest in that offsets your active income from [00:28:00] W2, things like oil and gas. The only reason why people still invest in oil and gas, I think is because of the tax deduction. It's 100 percent of your investment and it goes against your active income.
You can essentially write down 100, $200,000 of your income just by investing in oil and gas. If the drilling is successful, then you can have a monthly revenue. a check that gets sent to you every month for the life of the well. So like my family owns wells down in southern Louisiana and it's been paying royalty checks.
since the beginning of time. So these wells have been going for 80 years. and you have a lot of opportunity to do that. Now that's mineral rights. We didn't get a tax deduction for that, but that income that's earned off of that is also tax advantaged. And a CPA might not be the best person to talk to about this because most CPAs are very like one lane tax people.
But if you can find a tax strategist, a tax attorney, or somebody that specializes in like W 2 tax mitigation, Then that's the [00:29:00] type of person you want to partner with over finding an advisor or whatever, because they're just going to be able to sell you whatever product they're affiliated with. Whereas the tax strategist can really think about.
Okay, what is the best thing for your type of income? And then how can we move that income into a better tax situation? Can we hold all your assets in a trust? There's things that you can do structure wise, and the type of people that are around family office money remember, a family office has a team of people around their well, okay?
And that's an attorney. A tax person, a CPA, and a CEO that's like running everything around, right? You can fractionally create this service around you. Just by, you don't have to have an attorney on retainer. You don't have to have a CPA on retainer. You can just engage with them when you're in your tax or wealth.
like management mindset.
Naseema: Mhm.
Kelly Ann Winget: Good time for that. Like they're very busy at the end of the year. They're not [00:30:00] as busy at the beginning of the year, but around tax season. But if you're in like spring and fall, these are great times to get involved with one of these people.
Naseema: Wow, now that is golden advice create your own,
Kelly Ann Winget: family office. Yeah.
Naseema: thank you. Create your own family office piecemeal your family office. I think A lot of people don't understand that concept and just being able to have access to those people like that.
And understanding that they can, right? You don't, like you said, you don't have to pay a retainer. You might pay like a if you have your stuff together, like an hour, like consultation fee, which is, a couple hundred dollars, set aside that money because that is going to protect your money or Be invaluable for the wealth that you can build for your family.
So I love that advice. I love that advice. And I tell people that, you should always have a tax plan or always have an attorney. You always have these people like on speed now, but that is super that family office being able to put that together and structure that you're a billionaire.
I feel [00:31:00] like is super. Super solid advice, but for people like me, who is I'm like an index fund, like girly, like anything else for me is super, it's too much work. I don't want to have to think about it. How do you suggest that we get into alternative investments? Or even looking into becoming accredited?
Or do you even think that that's important right now?
Kelly Ann Winget: So there's nothing like you don't have to go and get certified somewhere or anything. If you make over $200,000 a year as an individual, or if you and your spouse make $300,000 a year together, and this is your gross income. A lot of people qualify for this, or if you have a million dollar net worth outside of your primary residence, so you can't have a million dollar home and be accredited, but you can have assets in your retirement assets in the market, a second house, a boat, whatever, all of those assets, jewelry, things like that, like all of your [00:32:00] assets together is a million dollars less your primary residence.
And that requirements from the sec that in FINRA. Just because they don't want you to lose your house. If something crazy were going to happen you do have to understand that when you're in the private space, there's not as much transparency or reporting as the public markets. Although most private are non correlated.
When the market's being crazy pants, your assets are not reacting the same way. And there's a difference between the Yale endowment, for example, that has 42 billion and their allocation to alternatives is in private equity is like almost 90%.
Naseema: Whaaat?
Kelly Ann Winget: I don't think an individual should have that kind of exposure unless you're like, I do this professionally.
So I have a significant amount of my net worth in alts, but for normal, like for regular people, because you have to talk about all the due diligence and stuff you have to do about picking an investment. In the private space, you have to do that all on your own. [00:33:00] So the reason why I created alternative well partners and the funds we manage was so that we're taking the heavy burden of due diligence off of the individual investor.
We create that family office experience of the investment arm for independent people so that you're not having to go out and find $50,000 at a time diversity in the alt space. And then doing all the due diligence on there because you have your own stuff going on, right? Like you don't have time to like full time think about, is this venture startup going to be the next Facebook or whatever?
There's a lot of due diligence that goes into that. I do that full time on behalf of my investors. And, that's the product that did not exist in the market four years ago that I built because it's kept to the family office that has a full time team moving money around that way. I've diversified and democratize that experience.
So for investors, I'm not the only one that has a fund. It might be [00:34:00] beneficial for. New investors to partner with active managers. Like I'm an active manager who's spending every day full time managing a portfolio of assets on behalf of investors. And you can do this in real estate. You can do this in venture.
You can do this in oil. You can do this in private equity. You can do this in debt. There's all different types of funds that do different things. It just depends on someone's personal preference or what they want to have exposure to. But they can start with as little as $50,000. Some of these funds, my fund minimum is $250,000.
So
Naseema: Ooh.
Kelly Ann Winget: it does have a big, it does have a big barrier of entry, but that was just because my average investor was coming in that I used to have a hundred thousand dollar minimum, but that's, people want more exposure. First fund, we were in 38 different portfolio companies. If you tried to build a portfolio of 38 different companies, Companies like you're spending a million plus as an individual to get into that many companies.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Kelly Ann Winget: [00:35:00] instead, they're writing a, a 6 figure chase, $100,000, and they're getting equal exposure to that space. there's ways to do it. Things like real estate, precious metals, arts collectibles, any barrier of entry, there's no accreditation requirement there. So there's a lot of ways you can get involved in alternatives without, having to go through some large investment barrier.
But most people who have three to 5 million net worths or more have this money sitting around an old 401k from a job. They left. They don't have it anymore. Or they're sitting in and stacked on cash, which, right now has been nice. You're earning 5 percent in the bank, but.
That's changing and going to change rapidly as rates continue to drop. Yes.
Naseema: To access these funds, you can't go to fidelity, right? You have to go to active managers and for again, per index by a girly active management is like a bad word, right? Because you think about we like index fund because of the low [00:36:00] fees, right? But active management comes with higher fees because you have a human, they're doing the due diligence.
So you're paying for that. And hopefully. That converts to higher returns. What does that look like for a person like me, W 2 and you just gave some examples I know to get into these funds these alternative funds or to work with an alternative wealth manager. I know you said there are funds that have lower minimums, but yours is really high.
It's out of the scope probably of my audience, but if we did want to access these funds, like, how would we get exposure to them? How would you suggest success? We'd start looking for alternative wealth managers.
Kelly Ann Winget: I'm happy to talk to anybody. I don't, even if they don't have a hundred, the $250,000 to invest today, it doesn't mean that they won't have it tomorrow, and so there's life events that happen that put people in unique financial situations. And that's why I want people to be empowered by having the information.
Even [00:37:00] if it's not investing with me, that when they go and find an opportunity that fits inside of what their liquidity is, that they have the tools and resources to make that educated decision. And index funds are fine. I think that that's great. And the fees in the active management space isn't ridiculous either.
I charge a 1 percent management fee. So it's not bad, I'm in it for the return, not the management fee. So I take a carry. So if, if we're successful, then I get paid. On that success, if we're not successful, then I don't get paid and I don't do this for free. My goal is to try to make this as high of a return as humanly possible, or, the investor, the good thing is that the investors walk away with all the returns.
And I don't But that's, that's not why I really do this. The public markets, you're exposed to a couple thousand companies. There's millions of companies in the United States that will never see the light of day on the public markets. And that's where all the return [00:38:00] is. By the time it gets to the public markets, those investors that have invested in the very beginning, take Snapchat, for example, Those Snapchat investors that were the first investors into that company paid 50 cents a share. And an IPO for over $16.
Naseema: Crazy.
Kelly Ann Winget: There's a lot of return that can be made in the private market. You just have to be willing to risk a little bit of money, especially when you're young again, how much money can you actively make and why you're actively making money, this is when you can take the most risk because you can just wake up the next day and be like, Oh, I lost $20,000.
How do I make another $20,000. You can't necessarily have that mindset when you're 65 years old. Maybe now 65 is young. People are living a lot longer, but, it's a different feeling than somebody who's, 30, 45 years old, who still has another 20 years of work potential, income potential, business potential to earn money that they can take a lot more risk.
Naseema: Yeah, I [00:39:00] just imagine that for the space that you're in, though with all that you do with all of your knowledge you're still like a diamond in the rough. I don't think what is the, what are the typical demographics of people that managed funds like this?
Kelly Ann Winget: Right now. There's been a lot of venture funds started by women, but in private equity, there's three of us.
Naseema: not 3% 3.
Kelly Ann Winget: there's, and I am the only one that I know that's doing what I'm doing. And I'm also under 40. So I'm 34 years old and I've been doing this for four years. There's not a lot of me around but that's okay because I get to lean on people that have done it before and get to challenge them on the ways that it was done before and how we can think about it now because I'm the demographic of the next generation.
Generation, right? So one thing that's interesting, I talk about it in my book is that when my parents got a divorce, like we were [00:40:00] teenagers, we were like almost out of the house and my mom, had to think about okay, attorney and financial advisor who am I going into the next phase of my life with?
And she was like very like intentional about selecting a, an advisor who was in her twenties. My mom was Like in her late fifties. So she went and found somebody half her age because for her and her mindset, she was like, I don't want someone my age or older picking my investments for me. I want to know what's up and coming.
I want to know what the future is. I want to be investing in things that. That will be around beyond me. I don't want to be put in the same products or conservative whatever, because for her, I don't need this. This is what's being left behind. And if I'm going to have the most growth, it's going to be in what's being innovated today.
And so that was something that she was very intentional about. And I agree the next Warren Buffett is my age.[00:41:00]
Naseema: I love that. I love that. So what advice would you give your daughters or my daughters that want to go into the space for them? What should they do?
Kelly Ann Winget: Take an accounting class. At least understand the basics. Like I'm not an accountant, but I can do circles around most accountants and see I think that it's really important to understand how money works just even at its most basic level. And then, yeah, find a way to get into sales because you'll learn how to manage money very quickly because you're, calculating all of this stuff, either for yourself or someone else, sometimes when you're in the sales position, you're working through somebody else's budget.
And it's an opportunity to understand people's motivations. Like I love the financial space. It's not very inclusive, but it's. getting there. And I think that women, we have to just be strong and push through it and not give up [00:42:00] and just force ourselves to be in those spaces.
They
Naseema: so if people want to stay in contact with you, get your book, all of the things, how can they do that?
Kelly Ann Winget: can go to alternativewealthpartners. com. I'm also very active on LinkedIn. If you want to follow me there, there's a calendar link there. If you want to schedule a session with me And to just think about, I'm not an advisor, so I can't give you any financial advice, but I can definitely help you wrap your head around what you need to be doing and who you need to be partnered with.
That's definitely the strategy session that we go through for an hour.
Naseema: Kelly, I learned a lot from this like I really loved having this conversation with you and you dropped so many gems that I've never heard on personal finance podcast and I'm a binger of personal finance podcast. So I really appreciate this conversation. I'm looking forward to [00:43:00] having more conversations like this, because like you said, like this information is.
Truly gate kept, we need to hear this and in order for us to normalize it, we need to hear it more. So I appreciate what you do because I know you're having these conversations a lot. And I know my audience can benefit from what they heard today. So I. Appreciate you. I'll be stalking you on LinkedIn.
I'll
be booking my session. I'll be reading the book. So I appreciate it. And all the links will be in the show notes for people to follow along and to get access to Kelly, but Kelly, thank you so much.
Kelly Ann Winget: Thank you for having me.
Naseema: Of course.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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