What separates billionaires from everyday investors when it comes to building and preserving wealth? It’s not just about how much money they have, but how strategically they invest it. In this episode of the Build It to Billions Podcast, host Brett Swarts sits down with Bob Fraser, co-founder of Aspen Funds and co-host of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, to explore the investment strategies wealthy individuals use to grow their portfolios, manage risk, and avoid costly financial mistakes. From alternative investments and real estate to diversification and passive income, Bob shares valuable insights into building lasting wealth beyond traditional stocks and bonds.
Discover how adopting a billionaire’s investment mindset can help entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and high-net-worth individuals make smarter financial decisions. Brett and Bob explore the importance of understanding market cycles, identifying investment opportunities, protecting capital, and creating long-term financial freedom. Whether you’re preparing for a major business exit, looking to diversify your portfolio, or seeking ways to preserve generational wealth, this conversation offers practical perspectives to help you invest with greater confidence and purpose.
Episode Highlights Here:
Intro
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward, scale to billions, and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
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Brett
Welcome to the Build It to Billions podcast, where we guide successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth in life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goals help to be scale and compound your wealth in life, so you can give more all the way to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swarts. Each and every episode, we’re joined by the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires, or billionaires, and they share their secrets, wisdom, and insights with us, so we can all level up and make a bigger impact. I’m excited about our next guest. He is a USA Today best-selling author of Invest Like a Billionaire and serves as CFO and chief macro strategist for Aspen Funds, a fund sponsor investing across multiple asset classes, including private credit, commercial real estate, distressed debt, energy, and more. Aspen Funds is known for its data-driven approach to investing, identifying major macroeconomic trends, and building investment strategies designed to capitalize on them. At one point, Bob was recognized. Our guest, Bob Fraser, recognized for his data-driven out of out of out of the consensus forecast and the co-host of Aston’s Invest Like a Billionaire podcast and so much more. Please welcome to the show with me, Bob Fraser. Bob, how we doing?
Bob
Yeah, great to be here. Looking forward to this. It’s been a long time coming.
Brett
Absolutely, we’ve had a chance to meet a few years ago, and it’s always great to glean your wisdom and to get a chance to get you on the show. Here is really, really, really grateful for this. By the way, we’re also streaming on Capital Gains Tax Solutions podcast and YouTube channel. So, for those listening out there, make sure to stay for the episode. Bob’s going to be talking about you know major liquidity events and ways to really think through these, as he’s had these for himself and his clients in the past. So, let’s dive right in, Bob, to a little bit more about your story and your focus. It’d be great just to kind of hear your entrepreneurial journey and or your kind of your story to building wealth and helping others build wealth, and then also your current focus.
Bob
Yeah, absolutely. Well, like probably a lot of your listeners, you know, I started just as a job. You know, I was a computer programmer for many years and loved it. I’ve been very talented at it. Had a lot of fun jobs doing that, but I always had this entrepreneurial itch, and so in 1995 I started a.com. You know I saw the internet coming right and realized it was going to be a very big deal and thought well let me let me hang my shingle out and do my thing and I wrote the world’s worst business plan and I’m really not exaggerating I mean, it was so pitiful. I knew nothing about business. I was a I was a computer coder, grew up in a family of you know of you know conehead engineers, and I knew nothing about business. And so it was a it was a bit of a rough start, but we ended up raising 40 over $40 million in venture capital, becoming one of the largest venture capitalized companies in the Midwest, hit an exponential growth curve, one of the fastest, in fact, the fastest growing company in the Midwest during the late’90s, and you know won all these awards, the Entrepreneur of the Year award, Ernst and Young, and then lost everything in the great financial crisis, and so that was my first introduction to the public markets. Right, is like, you know, getting creamed, and but the good thing about that is I really got a financial education and a business education, and you know I got what I call a street MBA, right? And they’re really, really good, but way more expensive. And so, so got that, and then became a public markets trader. So, using my quant skills and analytical skills and computer skills, built a built a public markets trading engine lost everything in the great financial crisis again. So, second encounter with the public, the volatility of the public markets, and at that time said, you know what, I want to pivot into something that is controllable. You know the markets just dump for no freaking reason, and I’m thinking about an apartment complex next door, right? It didn’t evaporate, right? Nothing, nothing evaporated. People still paid rent, and I thought, gosh, I want something like as an entrepreneur, right? You, you, you want to control things. You want to build things that you can, you can improve, you can scale, you can, you know, that’s not just based on some. Opinions and someone else’s idea of your value, and so that’s what that’s what led me to alternatives. And at that time, at the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, met my partner Jim Afucio, who had.
Outro
So, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody
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About Bob Fraser
Bob Fraser is the co-founder and managing partner of Aspen Funds, an alternative investment firm focused on helping investors build and preserve wealth through private credit, real estate, energy, and other alternative investments. With over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, finance, and investing, Bob brings a unique perspective on macroeconomic trends, wealth creation, risk management, and portfolio diversification. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in computer science and is a former Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner.
Bob is also the co-host of the popular Invest Like a Billionaire podcast and co-author of Invest Like a Billionaire: Unlocking Wealth Secrets of the Ultra-Rich. Through his podcast, speaking engagements, and investment expertise, he helps entrepreneurs, accredited investors, and high-net-worth individuals understand alternative investment opportunities, generate passive income, and build long-term financial freedom. His mission is to empower investors with the knowledge and strategies to make informed decisions, protect their capital, and create lasting generational wealth.
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