#58 Kelly Ann Winget | Bought an $11M Ammo Company for $0

About the episode

The company had less than $3 million in debt and does $6 million to $8 million a year. After a fire, its bank pulled the capital out and forced it into bankruptcy. The owner could have sold the equipment and walked away with about $8 million. Winget structured a deal that keeps him running the shop, protects what the equipment would have paid him, and gives him equity if the turnaround works.

She was making close to six figures part-time selling car washes in high school, skipped college to work for operators, and raised about $1 billion for other people’s deals over almost 15 years, $100,000 at a time. In 2020, when a family office asked her to soften what negative oil meant for its investors, she formed Alternative Wealth Partners the next day.

AWP runs like a mutual fund of alternatives for accredited investors: drilling projects, operating companies, real estate and venture in one limited partnership. Her first fund closed at a little under $20 million and made about 30 acquisitions. She explains why she only invests where she can take control, how oil and gas and qualified opportunity zones shelter cash flow, why private equity loses family businesses, and why her next fund targets defense and national security supply chains.

Kelly Ann Winget is founder and CEO of Alternative Wealth Partners, a private investment firm she founded in 2020 that manages diversified funds of alternative assets, including energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, real estate and private businesses, for accredited investors and family offices. She grew up in a fifth-generation Texas oil and gas family, guest lectures on alternative investments at SMU, and hosts The Wealth Alpha podcast. She was named to the Inc. Female Founders 500 in 2026.