Romney started Bain Capital. They make serious money because they have serious money. They're not interested in new clients unless they have serious money to bring in, and the same goes for pretty much all the other hedge funds and the like. (There was a guy on John Stewart a few nights ago who was talking about this. I only caught a minute before bed, but it's completely accurate.)
If you have $30k, you're not of interest to them or anyone like them. With $300k, still not. $3MM, nope. If you have $30MM to invest, meaning you have $100MM total, because you wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, then you might be talking to these type of guys. So you're several orders of magnitude away.
Most money managers, whether private or fund managers or whatever, are terrible. No offense to Cabrio, I know nothing about him personally. Here's an
article showing a study from Vanguard (large fund company) that most actively managed funds (meaning funds that have managers) did worse than the market average. Meaning you are generally better off not having a manager.
Once you start getting into serious money, you can access serious managers. These guys tend to do better because they are brighter, can afford more research (or as the SEC calls it, insider trading), have the ability to make markets rather than just be part of them, and can buy not just stock in companies but large shares with voting and management rights so they can actually influence them.
If you don't have this type of access, your best bet is either to find a decent manager or do it yourself. If you can do it well yourself, you can beat the market, and hence also most managers. If you can't do it well yourself, find a decent manager or just buy a market fund. I would recommend QQQ, which is traded like a stock and is the Nasdaq ETF, meaning it follows the Nasdaq and hence primarily tech stocks.
If you can do it yourself, buy low, sell high. Part of why managers do poorly is they always have to be investing and moving. You don't. When stuff is cheap, buy. When it is high, sell. Don't be afraid to sit on cash until it becomes cheap again, or go with gold, or whatever. This economy has been cycling with a general up trend for several years now, so you can buy and sell on volatility and ride each bump up.
Buy things you believe in. For me that means I buy very few companies. I buy Apple when the market appears to drag them down but they are clearly about to rebound with amazing results. Oil companies I generally think are a good buy, because it's not going anywhere but up. I generally think the market is going up, so I buy market trackers like SPY (S&P) and QQQ (Nasdaq). These are market funds, not active funds, so they go up when the market goes up and are not dependent on the skill of the manager. Right now, I think the market is inflated, so I'm not buying. If I am buying low and selling high, I buy QLD, which is the QQQ Long Double, meaning it is roughly tied to double the QQQ, so when QQQ goes up 1%, QLD goes up 2%. I make double the returns, but can also have double the losses if I buy high and the market drops. QID is the opposite, QQQ Inverse Double, and it goes up 2% when the QQQ goes down 1%. Use it if you want to bet against the market.
If all this seems complex, find a fund manager. Ask him how he is going to beat the market and ask him to show you proof he's done it before. If he can't, find another or start doing some more reading on your own.
You can turn $30k into $60k in a few years. You will generally not turn it into $100MM without some major risks, skill, and luck.