Brayden Sutton

Brayden Sutton built his entire investing career without a finance degree, an inheritance, or an industry connection — just hundreds of books and real money at stake. Four years after publishing with Scribe, his book is a Canadian bestseller that brought an ultra-high-net-worth investor into his private fund without a single prior conversation.

A Manuscript in the Drawer for Over 10 Years

Brayden Sutton started paying attention to capital markets at 18 years old, with no one in his family to guide him. Over the next 15-plus years, he taught himself through books — working through what he estimates are 200 to 300 essential finance titles — while putting real capital at risk, spending time on the ground with companies he invested in, and losing millions of dollars along the way before finding his footing.

The result was a manuscript he had been quietly building for over a decade. Not because he planned to publish it. It was more of a personal record, accumulated over years, with no clear destination.

The Moment It Clicked

That changed when a mentor — a New York Times bestselling author — asked a single question that shifted everything. Brayden described the moment:

"he made this comment to me that he goes, well, if you have that, why don't you try to create sort of a manual for your 18 year old grandson? And I didn't, you know, he hit me right away and I thought, man alive. I can't now take this, you know, at that time it was over 15 years of hands-on blood, sweat, and tears in the market, I go, I don't want to be able to not say to my two boys, here's a manual, read the manual. Don't blow your brains out. Like I did in my twenties, you know, figure this stuff out while you're young."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

The manuscript had an audience now. The book would be the manual he wished he'd had at 18 — for his sons, for the next generation of retail investors who were about to make the same expensive mistakes he had made.

Why Scribe

Brayden had heard of Scribe years earlier through a mutual connection of Tucker Max, and the idea had stayed with him. When his brother Dean brought it up again, he went back — and the person he first spoke with made the decision easy.

Left to his own devices, Brayden is clear about what would have happened:

"there's no way I would have been able to do it on my own. Like I just, it would have been one of those projects in the queue until 2040."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

What the Scribe process gave him was structure, accountability, and an editor who knew how to shape a decade's worth of material into something a reader could actually absorb:

"even just the editing of our manuscript initially, I felt like it was almost like this, like five hours Scorsese movie, they're like, you have put it into 90 minutes. It's like, how, how do you, and, you know, we worked with a tremendous, tremendous editor to get it down to a point where I felt really excited to be able to just give it to anyone, no matter where they were in their market journey or their money journey, even if they're still working for a paycheck."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

He also needed something that a busy person actually operating in the market every day could sustain:

"I needed the personal coach. I need the accountability and I needed the timeline. I needed the, I was, my hand was held the whole way and I'm a busy guy like everybody, and I wouldn't have been able to maintain that cadence and that rhythm to get a published book right down to the listing and artwork and all of the things you got to do, there's so much more than people anticipate, I think."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

The Results: Four Years of Compounding Returns

Money Mind: Beyond Speculation came out in 2022. Brayden is candid that he did not market it aggressively — the book was conceived as a tool, not a campaign. And yet, four years later, the outcomes keep compounding.

The book has sold more than 1,000 copies and reached official Canadian bestselling territory. Two Canadian billionaires received it through a third-party recommendation and called it "manual material." But the single most striking result came from someone Brayden had never spoken to:

"I have more than one, I actually have a small little fund to myself now that has shareholders. I have more than one very, what you call in the business, ultra high net worth investor only because he read it. He didn't know me. He read it. He sought me out. He figured out that I have a, this, this small partnership. He was able to participate, but he did so only through the book without me even knowing or meeting him."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

When Eric pressed him to ballpark the ROI, Brayden said it was nearly impossible to calculate:

"as far as the ROI, you can't even capture it. It's, it's immense because the capital, personal confidence level and ability again, to hand it to somebody, to go to an event and, and bring it with you, to go to a first time meeting with a prospective partner and be able to bring it and go, here's me and kind of lay your own cards on the table."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

The book also keeps finding new readers on its own. Four years in, Brayden still gets reader messages every week:

"I get messages every single week of people that are, that are genuinely, genuinely grateful over like three sentences, one little snippet that completely switched the entire way they look at their investing in it. It unlocked why they're losing more importantly, and showed them how winning is right there."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

And the book's reach extends into rooms Brayden occupies professionally. He described handing it to senior bankers:

"I've also been in the room with some pretty high level bankers, given it to them. And they all go, wow. Like where, where were you a banker? Where were your lawyers? Every time it's the same question I go, I'm a high school dropout."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

What the Book Became

Brayden describes the book not just as a business asset but as something that settled an identity he had spent decades building:

"it almost felt like a degree after 20 years of my trade. I finally got up. I finally got something to put on the wall for, for all of that."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

He also valued something that traditional publishing would have taken away:

"to be in control of that and to own the IP was pretty cool. And to not have to do the dog and pony show, I really loved to be honest."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author

And on what Scribe ultimately gave him, the summary is simple:

"kudos to scribe because the team was, was, it was unbelievable how good everybody was and how they work together. And there's no way I would have been able to do it on my own. Like I just, it would have been one of those projects in the queue until 2040."

— Brayden Sutton, Investor and Author