Surplus Fund Academy creator Spencer J Vann had an interesting come up. When he was in high school, he was obsessed with basketball. That was his whole identity. He was headed to the NBA; he was sure of it. But then one day at practice he shattered his ankle. Bone sticking through the skin and everything. It would be six months before he could even walk normally again. As you can imagine, Spencer sank into a deep depression. Now what?
“At that time,” Spencer remembers, “my mom would actually keep me company. And one day she came into my room and she told me that her dream was to own a home. And I was like, ‘Well mom, why don’t we just save up and buy a house?’ And she was like, ‘Oh it’s never gonna happen.’ And something clicked in my head that day. I was like, ‘You know what? If I got into real estate I could not only make some money but maybe help her buy her own home one day.’”
That’s when Spencer made it his life’s mission to learn everything he could about real estate. He read all the books, watched all the YouTube videos, even started going to events. He’ll never forget his first seminar. Walks in, just 16 years old at the time, skinny as a tick on a flagpole, all sorts of acne, biting his nails—not a good look. He’s surrounded by a buncha forty-year-old white dudes in business suits. Anyways, the main speaker steps on stage, kills it, and Spencer goes up and talks to him at the end.
He’s super sweet to young Spence, probably feels bad for him, lets him join his paid mastermind for free, on one condition: Spencer had to write him an IOU and promise to pay him back. A year later, Spencer did just that. Now he’s all in. He’s gotten his real estate license, he’s wholesaling some deals, and he’s on top of the world. Still just 19 years old, thinks he knows it all, attends another little event, realizes he doesn’t. ‘Cause here’s this other guru talking about surplus funds. The heck is that?
“And the speaker’s like, ‘Basically you can make money by giving money away after a foreclosure.’ And I’m like, ‘No you can’t; you cannot do that. Like I know what’s real, and clearly this guy doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.’ So I’m over there raising my hand, asking all these intrusive questions. And he knows the answer to all of ’em, instantly. And it’s really kinda p*ssing me off. Because this guy’s like showing me up, ya know? Like who is this guy? He’s scamming people, ya know?”
Afterwards, Spencer goes up to one of his friends that was there, and was all, “Can you believe this fraud?” And his friend’s like, “Dude, what are you talking about? Everything the guy said was legit. I’ve done it before.” So finally Spencer concedes. “Can you teach me how to do it then?” he asks his buddy. His buddy agrees, and the rest is history. Matter fact, that buddy—David Church—I guess is the behind-the-scenes cofounder of Surplus Fund. Kind of crazy, right?
“Me and David eventually started doing surplus funds together,” Spencer says, “had some success with it obviously, and then realized: Hey, the reason I didn’t know about this was because I looked at everything online and nobody was talking about this at that time. So it seemed like a huge opportunity. And sure enough, it was. We’ve now helped 5,000+ people start their very own business from home, doing surplus funds. And we have students doing anywhere from $5k a month to millions a year.”
