Brandt Brereton is the husband of Jody Brereton and the father of three sons, Connor, Kyle, and Jack. He lives in the country next to horses, chickens, and bears with Jody in Reno, Nevada, in the foothills of Mt. Rose, thirty minutes from Lake Tahoe, having finally escaped Silicon Valley, where he and Jody grew up. They are patiently awaiting grandchildren.

Brandt reads 25-35 books a year, loves fly fishing, is a semi-trained chef de cuisine, and learned how to sail his sloop on the San Francisco Bay with his sons. He loves good food and wine and needs to lose weight. Every personality test he’s ever taken pegs him as the overly driven, results-oriented person with strong persuasion and perseverance attributes. He was a three-sport athlete who didn’t get serious about academics until his first semester of college; he was the first person in his family to graduate.

Despite his love of teaching and public speaking, he’s an introvert. He has tried to follow the teachings of Jesus since marrying Jody, but regularly blows it. He tries to measure “success” in his life by how many people he’ll see in Heaven because he played some small role in pointing people to Jesus and by what people will say about him at his funeral. His favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption.

Brereton began his investment banking career on Black Friday, October 19, 1987, the day the stock market crashed. He was at the firms of Bateman-Eichler and then Kidder, Peabody & Co., respectively. He stepped away from investment banking for a few years to run a small family business while his mother was dying of cancer so she and his father could travel the world before her passing. He also was “grounded for repairs” from investment banking for two years after the 2008 financial crisis, taking a two-year, nonvoluntary sabbatical serving as an executive of a Silicon Valley-based, national homeless ministry, CityTeam Ministries. This period of his life was pivotal and informs his corporate finance work and investing today, as does his Stage 3B melanoma cancer diagnosis; nothing quite focuses you on what’s important like statistical survival rates ;) He is currently cancer-free and wants to leave his experience and knowledge to others as part of his legacy. He hopes to one day meet and invest in his professional “Timothy”.

He graduated from San Jose State University with a BS in accounting and finance after ten years of night school while he was employed at the aforementioned investment banks during the day. He attended executive education at Harvard Business School and then launched Perpetuate Capital where he serves as General Partner. He is the author of The ESOP Playbook, available on Amazon.com, and he holds all of the securities and investment advisor licenses one holds in that industry.