RG 352 – Investing in Oil & Gas: What You Need to Know with Dave Wolcott

What goes into investing in a commodity like oil & gas? Should you consider investing in this asset class to diversify your portfolio?

Dave Wolcott is an established entrepreneur, a former captain in the Marine Corps, author of “The Holistic Wealth Strategy, a Framework for Building Legacy Wealth and Unlimited Freedom to Live an Extraordinary Life,” the host of the Wealth Strategy Secrets of The Ultra-Wealthy podcast, and the CEO of Pantheon Investments.

In this episode, Dave gives a unique point of view on real estate as a long-term investor, walks us through the asset class of oil & gas, explains how mining from the investment standpoint works, and so much more.

Interested in becoming an Investor with Reed? Click here to join his Investor email list.

We also go into hedging against the devaluation of the dollar, investing in alternative energies, and building a wealth strategy that will resist economic fluctuations. We don’t have a lot of guests going into the nitty gritty of stock market assets, so we’re pumped to have Dave share his valuable insights with us today.

Click on that Play button to learn more about Dave, oil & gas, and how Dave and his team operate their business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Once you get past the simple concept of “money”, you can access the different types of freedom it can provide.
• Real estate can provide the trifecta of investing: cash flow, tax efficiency, and forced appreciation.
• A lot of geopolitical factors affect the demand in the oil and gas niche, but demand remains strong, nonetheless.
• Positioning your capital in assets with inherent value can help you hedge against significant economic changes.
• Diversifying your investments can help reduce your uncertainties.

Links
www.linkedin.com/in/dave-wolcott-863306
https://pantheoninvest.com/wealth-strategy/

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Reed Goossens (00:00):

Good day. Good day, guys. Now, before we dive into today’s show, I want you to let you know that some of you may be aware that over the past eight years, I have built a substantial multi-family real estate portfolio here in the US worth over half a billion dollars. And in that time, my passive investors have received fantastic double-digit returns. And now you too can invest directly into my deals for as little as $50,000. So if you’re an interested investor, head over to reedgoossen.com to find out more. That’s reedgoossen.com. Now, back into the show,

Dave Wolcott (00:38):

If you think through the psychology of money and what money really means once you get past money, right? Um, we’re, we’re accessing money to be able to, I think, you know, achieve four different freedoms. One being freedom of time, right? To have the time that you wanna have in life. You want to have freedom of purpose to wake up every day and be fascinated and motivated about what it is that you’re actually doing. Um, you want to have freedom of relationship to choose the people that you wanna work with, right? And of course, you wanna have freedom of money to create experiences and impact in your life, and do all those things that you really wanna do, right? So when you really kind of understand that right, at a, at a deeper level of what you’re trying to achieve, you know, then you can start to build a strategy about how to achieve that.

Speaker 3 (01:38):

Welcome to investing in the us, a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market. Join Reed as he interviews, go-getters, risk takers, and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing.

Reed Goossens (01:58):

Good day, good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US Podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host, Reed Goossens. Good as always, to be with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned in into learn from my incredible guests, and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States when it comes to real estate investing, business investing, and entrepreneurship. Each show I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created their businesses here in the us, how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately created extraordinary lives for themselves and their families. Life by design, as I like to say. Hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys, to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (02:45):

If these guys can do it, so can you. Now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes, and you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Gossen. You can find the show wherever you podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. But you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to reedgoossens.com, Click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts where you can see my ugly mug, but the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough outta me. Let’s get cracking and into today’s show.

Reed Goossens (03:31):

Today, the show I have the pleasure of speaking with Dave Wolcott. Now Dave has started his career by serving the country as a captain of a Marine Corps, and in 2000, he and his wife brought triplets into the world, which really inspired him to challenge the traditional ways of thinking around financial planning. Today Dave is an author podcast, toast and Founder and CEO of Pantheon Investments. And he, he’s really passionate about helping other entrepreneurs build wealth passively by investing in superior real estate and alternative assets by providing predictable cash flow, tax efficiencies, and upside potential as a reliable alternative to the volatility of the stock market. I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the show today to share he’s incredible knowledge and insight with us, but enough me Gidi, let’s get him out here. Good. Hey, Dave, welcome to the show. How you do today, mate?

Dave Wolcott (04:16):

Hey, Reed. Good to be here. Grateful to connect with you and the listeners.

Reed Goossens (04:20):

Yeah, well, uh, it’s been a minute. I was just talking a little bit in the green room. Uh, it sounds like you’ve got some awesome stuff going on, which I really, really wanna dive deep into in and around your platform that you’re building. But before we get into that, can you rewind the clock and tell me how you made your first of a dollar as a kid?

Dave Wolcott (04:35):

Yeah, the first one was really, uh, doing landscaping gigs, uh, around my neighborhood. Uh, I remember just taking my lawnmower down the street and, you know, you get 20 bucks, uh, a lawn and before you know it, you start getting some recurring revenue, uh, with repeat customers. And that was really, uh, my first entree, uh, into entrepreneurship.

Reed Goossens (04:58):

Walk us through the life that you led up up until, um, you know, 2000 and that sort of challenging around your financial planning. You, you, you, I mentioned that you were in the Marine Corps, so did you grow up in and around money and, and what was your relationship like, uh, with money growing up?

Dave Wolcott (05:16):

Yeah, so Reed, um, probably like a lot of listeners out there, right? I was raised in a middle class family, grew up in Connecticut, and I was told that the recipe for success was to go to school, get good grades, you’re gonna get a job, and everything’s gonna kind of work out, right? So, so I followed down that path and, um, got into the Marine Corps, got a chance to serve with some amazing people, travel the world, uh, phenomenal experience, and then really, you know, learn some things. Um, in the Marine Corps, they don’t really teach you anywhere else. Things such as leadership, teamwork, and integrity, right? So, um, after I completed, uh, you know, the Marine Corps, uh, in college, uh, through that I transitioned in the corporate worlds, got into the tech industry, um, and we started to raise a family at the same time.

Dave Wolcott (06:05):

So we had an 18 month old, and I know you have a newborn as well too, so you can appreciate. So we had, we had an 18 month old, and then on October 24th, 2000, uh, my wife and I hit the baby lottery and literally had triplets. So our life came, became quite chaotic. Uh, we quadrupled the size of our family and the first thing I did read was I was really concerned about, you know, financial security for my family. I mean, you know, even back then they were talking about, you know, it’s a million dollars per kid to raise your kid. I mean, how am I gonna really build wealth? And, you know, sat down with my financial planner and all he could tell me was, you know, just max out your 401ks, put your money in 5 29 plans for the kids and, you know, build up this, you know, big nest egg.

Dave Wolcott (06:54):

And I think the entrepreneur in me at that point just got so frustrated with that average advice, and I knew I could do better. So I really wanted to solve the problem of how are the top 1% really building their wealth? Cuz I knew it wasn’t as a retail investor in the stock market. So from that point on, I started investing in alternative assets, um, everything from oil and gas, uh, raw land, retail, multifamily office, all kinds of different asset classes. And then I also transitioned to the B side of the Cashflow Quadrant, became a business owner, uh, started my own tech, uh, consulting business, uh, ran that for 13 years, exited that, and learned a lot about taxes there and running businesses. And so, fast forward to today, uh, 20 years later, and my book is really kind of an instantiation of all of my learning lessons, right? On how to, you know, really create a system and a strategy around building wealth, right? It’s not just one thing. It’s about this overall process of really how you build wealth.

Reed Goossens (08:02):

Yeah, no, I, I love that. And thank you for sharing that background with us. And, and I want to get into the book, uh, in a minute, but what, what was the, did you just stumble across alternative assets? Because it’s not just like every day people talk about it, right? Particularly 20 years ago when, when you sort of had that, uh, the epiphany, you know, you were, no one was talking about commercial real estate, no one was talking about oil and gas. No one was talking about these things outside the stock market. So where did you go to get educated on that back in the day?

Dave Wolcott (08:29):

No, a hundred percent Rita. I mean, there weren’t great podcasts like this or YouTube videos or resources or groups of people, but I, you know, I, it was through the course of reading, right? I, I was reading, and I, I, I happened to read Kiyosaki’s books actually just after they came out. I mean, this was like 99. And so, you know, we’re looking at single family rentals. We were living in Denver at the time. I mean, I can literally remember to this day, you know, bribing the kids, four kids in the back of a car with lollipops while we’re trying to go investigate properties, , right? And then at nighttime try to do, you know, you know, run the numbers and pencil something, but, you know, I could not make that work. So it was a process of, you know, really networking, meeting other people, continuing to learn on that process.

Dave Wolcott (09:18):

And I think, you know, the, uh, you know, the purple pill kiyosaki’s books, right? Were really, uh, a massive paradigm shift for a lot of people. Uh, but to, but it was very conceptual, right? And it was like, okay, this is a great idea that you can get into some of these alternatives, but, but what do I do? Right? How do I create a business? What kind of business should I be in? I, you know, what about taxes, right? How, how do I get access to these different investment properties? But eventually, um, I ended up through networking, uh, meeting a private equity guy, uh, who is actually in, uh, the Texas region. And, um, you know, that was my first real foray into, uh, private. So I started working with him and then continually, you know, building out my network from there.

Reed Goossens (10:04):

Uh, I love what you said there about Robert Kiyosaki’s book, because it, I picked that up book up back in 2009, so many years after you, but conceptually, it’s great, right? And it was such a, you know, invokes so much thought to go out and challenge the traditional norms of, of how we go out and make money. But to your point, doesn’t really give you the sort of the blueprint, right? You know, taxes, how the, how to which I found that myself was, was, was, was kind of challenging. It was sort of teasing you a little bit to say, yeah, well, this is what you can do. Be like, well, go on, tell us what do we do next? You know, and then get, that’s the business of writing books and getting him into the, the coaching of what Robert Kiosaki does. But I had this same experience where it’s like, okay, there’s this great idea about, you know, the quad, the cashflow quadrant, moving into the investor status through business owner or self-employed or employee, and understanding the different relationships between how that all affects you and your income and the way you earn your income.

Reed Goossens (11:00):

Um, but going out and doing it, you know, it, it takes 10,000 hours right? In whatever direction you choose. So it’s interesting you hear 20 years later after you’ve gone down this path, how much diversification you’ve, you’ve, you’ve come across. Um, my my question to you is, does, has, have you had more clarity in that around being diversified and, and, you know, being like a surfer and pivoting and, and not just like sticking with one asset class. Has, has that, has that been good for you? Or has that been, I assume it has been, but in the beginning I, I know a lot of people start out and say, I’m just gonna do real estate. I’m just gonna do X, y, z and you seem to be able to have, you know, navigated a, a wide range of different alternative asset classes. How has that gone down in the evolution or, or, or the decision making process around that, uh, in over the last 20 years?

Dave Wolcott (11:52):

Yeah, good question, Reed. Um, so I really consider myself a wealth strategist and a professional investor before I am, you know, just a real estate investor, right? And it’s really interesting because, you know, if you think through the psychology of money and what money really means once you get past money, right? Um, we’re, we’re accessing money to be able to, I think, you know, achieve four different freedoms. One being freedom of time, right? To have the time that you wanna have in life. You want to have freedom of purpose to wake up every day and be fascinated and motivated about what it is that you’re actually doing. Um, you want to have freedom of relationship to choose the people that you wanna work with, right? And of course, you wanna have freedom of money to create experiences and impact in your life and do all those things that you really wanna do, right?

Dave Wolcott (12:44):

So when you really kind of understand that, right, at a, at a deeper level of what you’re trying to achieve, you know, then you can start to build a strategy about how to achieve that, right? Why I like, you know, real estate and why, you know, this is a huge asset class. If you actually look at the ultra high net worth, you look at, uh, tiger 21, their portfolio allocations, right? It’s real estate and private, you know, alternatives are over 50% of their portfolios. And the reason is because of, really because of three things. I call it the trifecta investing. It’s, they’ve got tax efficiency, they’ve got consistent passive income, and they’ve also got forced depreciation where you can drive value into an asset, right? So we’re all familiar that with that on the, you know, real estate side and value add and how that works.

Dave Wolcott (13:35):

Uh, but there’s some other asset classes out there that are really quite compelling, uh, that can do the same thing. And also around, you know, I also look at investments from basically the macro economic standpoint, you know, so for instance, we have an oil and gas fund, uh, we were talking about earlier. And you know, if you think back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? At the base level, you’ve got food, shelter, energy, water, right? We need energy for everything in this world, whether you’re in Australia, uh, you’re in New Zealand or wherever you live or whatever industry you’re in, right? The demand for that is just only growing, right? So, so we’d like to, um, invest in assets where there’s a growing demand, right? And the fundamentals, you know, really makes sense. And then from an investor, again, you know, looking at different things, you know, such as in that case, you know, a hundred percent of your investment is actually tax deductible against active income, right? So that’s huge. I mean, we’ve got a lot of high income earners, uh, and our investment groups. So being able to provide a solution for them, um, is really huge.

Reed Goossens (14:45):

Let’s, let’s go down the path of oil and gas. I’ve actually never had anyone on the show talking about it, so I’m, I’m very interested to draw the parallels, uh, between those three, you know, pillars. You sort of talk about tax efficiency, uh, consistent cashflow and forced depreciation. Cuz we obviously talk about real estate here. We talk a a lot about real estate, a lot about, you know, forced depreciation and the reason you get into, involved in hard assets. But let’s just from the, from the, the high level, start with maybe some of the similarities and then we’ll, we can get into maybe some of the perceived risks of oil and gas, you know, given the boom. And you always hear about the boom and bust, and I don’t want to get into the negative just yet, but let’s go on the positive. So do you wanna just walk us through how y what are the similarities between real estate and then some of those tax efficiencies you, you just mentioned?

Dave Wolcott (15:31):

Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s a very interesting asset class. So one thing is, Reed, that, uh, you know, we’ve aligned with an operator partner that has a very similar approach to multifamily value add. That’s kind of their unique differentiator in the marketplace, uh, because the CEO, he’s a fourth generation oil guy, and one of his good friends was a multifamily guy, right? So seven years ago, he kept talking to him about all the benefits of multifamily, and then he said, you know, his light bulb moment was, Hey, I’m going to create that in the oil and gas industry. So typically in oil and gas, you know, there’s different levels that you can play at, uh, at the front end of it is much more speculative, uh, where, you know, there might be wildcatting or a lot of, you know, just, just kind of drilling right?

Dave Wolcott (16:19):

Um, you know, on that front end, which is more of like a, you know, r and d kind of, you know, perspective, right? And that’s higher risk, but higher, uh, return as well. Um, in this case, what we’re doing is we go after what’s called PDP, which is a proven, uh, production, right? Proven developed production. So you can, it, we actually know, uh, through 3D seismology that there is oil underground in a particular area. It’s just a matter of, okay, how can we extract it and then optimize it, right? Because once you get to, um, you know, peak flow, right? That’s when you know this thing starts really cash flowing. Uh, super well, uh, one thing that’s also, you know, unique about this asset class is it is a depleting asset, right? So as you’re pulling oil outta the ground, right, your reserves are actually, you know, getting lower and lower.

Dave Wolcott (17:10):

So that’s kind of the business model in this case is that, you know, we’re drilling for oil and we actually have a split between 50 50 gas and oil, which provides a nice natural hedge there because the two prices aren’t always necessarily correlated. Um, and then from there, the idea, I mean, you know, typically an oil and gas, um, like pension funds are usually going after these because it’s steady income, right? They’re just driving the income play from it. Uh, they’re getting the tax deduction from it. Um, but then eventually, you know, the wells kind of dry out. In our case, what we’re doing is proving up these wells, you know, create, you know, just really optimizing the assets and then we can sell that to buyers, either an upstream buyer, like a larger production, uh, player like Conoco Phillips or something, uh, or one of these pension funds who’s more of an income type buyer. And there’s transactions that are happening, you know, there’s probably 20, 30 of them every day or every month, sorry, um, you know, across the industry. So it’s, you know, that that’s kind of the process of, of really, you know, what’s happening. Uh, but again, it’s a unique model in this case, uh, with the operator, we work with

Reed Goossens (18:23):

A and you mentioned risk earlier, it seems like it’s towards the more exploratory risk. If you’ve got a scale of one to 10, 10 being a stabilized sellable asset to a pension fund, where would you, you fit, say a four, four to four to six on that range? Because you’re coming in having to, are you drilling and then getting to that peak flow that you sort of said and then then sort of stabilizing it, then selling? Is that where you sort of fit in?

Dave Wolcott (18:46):

I, i, I think it’s much more around the seven in terms of seven. Okay. You know, better on risk, because like I said, we’re going after this Pdp mm-hmm. , so we know there’s oil underground mm-hmm. , it’s not just wild CADing, right. Which is, which is much more exploratory in nature. We know that there’s oil underground, so we’re trying to, you know, go after that. And like I said, the technology has come along so far these days. I mean, there’s 3D seismology reports and we’ve seen, you know, lots of production reports where, you know, you know, things are there and you just have to, you know, you have to be able to, to access it. And the other thing I find really unique as well, Reed, so similar to, um, you know, uh, multifamily property, right? Where you, you’ll have a third party appraiser come and value the asset, right?

Dave Wolcott (19:33):

Well, we do the same thing in oil and gas where there’s a third party appraiser that based upon that PDP value. And then there’s also something called PUD, which is proven undeveloped production. So that land actually has value on its own too, because, you know, it’s the potential to be able to access oil under there. So the PDP and p u D values are actually valued by a third party appraiser, um, and really substantiate, you know, the asset of what we’re going after and the overall potential value. And even banks, like in Texas and everything banks ever actually lend based upon that value. And you can’t get more conservative than a bank, right?

Reed Goossens (20:19):

? Well,

Dave Wolcott (20:20):

Well, I guess

Reed Goossens (20:22):

Depending on what bank you you’re banking with. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, with SVB going under. Yeah. Um, so coincidentally, I’m, my background’s in civil engineering and I spent, uh, few years working for a mining company, similar sort of stuff. Uh, we call ’em rock doctors, geo geologists up in the plane, uh, flying over vast land, you know, barren land that you wouldn’t even consider usable. But it’s great for mining. And they do these very, very complex modeling to determine what is beneath the earth, um, from, uh, a geological point of view. Everything from oil and gas, although through to minerals and, and hard assets. And, and typically just for the listeners out there, you know, oil and gas come together because oil puts off a gas, and you can use both. If you find copper, typically you find gold. There’s like, so as you mine for certain minerals, you have other, you find other minerals, you know, deposits alongside of it.

Reed Goossens (21:19):

Just to give a little bit of, bit of, bit of background, but of context, I spent a lot of time in the jungles in Fiji, uh, and in Thailand, um, uh, with, with, uh, you know, you’re trying to find and, and taking core samples, um, for, for different mining companies, it’s a, it’s a completely different business. With that being said, are you doing that? Is, is the company that you’re partnering up, are they going out and doing the explo uh, exploration, or are they already knowing it’s identified oil field? We are just gonna come in and buy a right to, to mine on or,

Dave Wolcott (21:49):

Yeah, it’s the ladder extract. It’s the ladder, yeah. Got it. Okay. So we’re, we’re leasing the land and part of it is a real estate play, right? Mm-hmm. , because you’ve got, you’ve gotta go after the land that you think has the potential, and with, that’s typically done through land leases, through the owners, uh, uh, the property owners. Yeah.

Reed Goossens (22:06):

Yep. So now let’s talk about the benefits of, and the similarity between, um, the value add there, right? So you go find this lease, you go find this land, you’ll then coming and putting the wells on it, is that correct? Correct. And then, and then refin and then refin, and then refining it, correct. And then selling it off? Correct. Okay. So you’re doing a soup to nuts, um, everything from putting a drill on the ground, getting it out, refining it, putting it on a truck, selling it to a, a human distributor who gets it into the pump, um, down the street from where we live, correct? Yes. Yeah. Great. Awesome. That’s,

Dave Wolcott (22:36):

That’s interesting. That’s exactly, yeah. But again, from like the investment standpoint, I mean, a lot of people just don’t realize, cuz e especially if you’re a real estate investor, you know, we’re all understand bonus depreciation, how that works against our passive income. Um, but look, I mean, since the Reagan era, there’s been really strong energy, uh, incentives as well, tax incentives, right? So, so a hundred percent of this investment is actually tax deductible, um mm-hmm. , you know, which is really huge against, you know, W2 active income. Um, so, you know, for a lot of high paid professionals, uh, it’s a really good, you know, alternative.

Reed Goossens (23:16):

For those of you who are interested in staying up to date with all the latest happenings in my business, or to learn more about passively investing directly into my multi-family value add deals, then head over to reedgoossens.com And sign up for my monthly newsletter. By signing up, you’ll automatically be notified about my new up and coming investment opportunities. You’ll be able to stay up to date with all the latest real estate news here in the United States and much, much more. So head over to reedgoossens.com and sign up today, now back into the show.

Reed Goossens (23:50):

Yep. And this, just, so for those listeners out there, depreciation has shown up on a K one or a loss, and we just issued K one s, and sometimes investors can’t access some of the depreciation because they’re not full-time real estate investors or, or, or, or certain categor categorized by the irs. And again, I’m not a cpa, but you know, I, I’m, I’m a little bit dangerous with when it comes to, to, to understanding a K one. But Dave, you saying that even if you do have an active income, you can still get all the losses from that Well, uh, just based on what the IRS has has written in the code.

Dave Wolcott (24:23):

Yeah. Correct. And the way, uh, we do that, the way it’s structured is actually when you get your K one, you, you actually sign subscription documents as a gp, right? Mm-hmm. , because you have a working interest in the, well, so you are actually a gp, so you share in, you know, the active income as well as the active losses, uh, that go against that, you know, and then once, uh, the fund, you know, all the capital is deployed in the fund, uh, then you get converted to an LP position, uh, later on.

Reed Goossens (24:54):

Gotcha, gotcha. Because that would be my next guess. Like everyone’s gotta then a voting right to decide what to do, uh, with the investment, which could, uh, could be, uh, a can of worms opening that thing up if, uh, you had a hundred investors or wanting an opinion on, on what to do, uh, with a certain oil, oil rig or not .

Dave Wolcott (25:10):

Yeah.

Reed Goossens (25:10):

Let’s get onto the sort of the, the, the, the ebbs and flows of the energy industry, right? You know, we, we saw barrel, uh, oil, a cost a barrel plummet, uh, I can’t remember, it was just at the beginning of the pandemic, there was ships out in the sea that they couldn’t even give away the oil at, you know, at that stage, how much volatility isn’t around that to protecting someone’s investment? And, and what are you doing, uh, when you’re actively, you know, looking to, to buy into certain times of the market when, when oil is valued or gas is valued at certain different prices?

Dave Wolcott (25:42):

Yeah, great question, Reed. I, you know, really that’s the biggest risk is we can’t control what the prices are, you know, and they, they move around all the time. Um, you know, the pandemic prices obviously cratered like you talked about, but it’s come back really strong. Um, the, but the really interesting thing is, is that, you know, since the pandemic and even before that, um, this industry has not had much investment at all because there’s been such a push towards all these green initiatives, right? So that’s where the money is going. That’s where, you know, politically, uh, people are trying to drive capital to these ESG initiatives, um, and the industry just has not had much investment, right? Um, and then you add on top of that geopolitical events, like, you know, the war in Ukraine, right? I mean, um, natural gas right now in Europe, I mean in Germany, um, you know, completely, uh, short, right?

Dave Wolcott (26:39):

In terms of that. So, you know, we think that, um, the timing just couldn’t be better in terms of demand, um, you know, because of some of those reasons. Another reason is, I mean, you know, look at China, right? They’ve had one of the most stringent lockdowns that’s been almost for a year. And so once they kind of come back online, um, you know, we’re expecting prices to really start to, uh, you know, start to increase. Um, so I think there’s a lot of, you know, geopolitical economic factors going into, you know, demand, uh, for the oil. And then when you just kind of think about the fundamentals of it, again, I mean, it’s just petroleum based products. I mean, the, the green initiatives have barely made a dent, like one to 2% with the trillions that have been put into it over the past decade.

Dave Wolcott (27:29):

Uh, you know, in our demand, and, and it’s used, I mean, petroleum based products are used in everything from the microphone. You’re using the headphones, you’re using the computer, uh, your wife’s makeup products, right? It’s literally in everything. Um, and again, no matter where you live in the world, uh, or what industry you’re in or what you’re doing, right, um, I, I think there’s just very strong demand. So I’d like to be positioned there. And the other point that I’ll make Reed, which is really fascinating, you know, now it’s really coming to light in the marketplace, right? The current valuation devaluation of the dollar, uh, right? That’s, you know, that’s been happening really, you know, for, for quite some time, you know, so the question is really how do you hedge against that? And we’ve talked about hedging and commercial real estate, right? Because, you know, it can be good in inflationary environment, but you know, one way to think about it is if you’re positioning your capital in assets that have inherent value, right? So there has been a push towards commodities right now because, you know, they have more, they, they hold more value in something, again, like oil and gas, um, is definitely, whether, whether we go to war, whatever happens in the economy, you know, there’s, there’s some strong value,

Reed Goossens (28:45):

There’s sophy physical asset, um, uh, that you can, you know, it’s not paper, which is what Correct is what you’re trying, what you’re trying to, you know, um, allude to, um, you know, back to your point on, on the, the investment into alternative energies, um, you know, I know there’s been a huge push for that. And you mentioned earlier in the show that’s, it’s a depleting asset. So, you know, casting forward a hundred years, 200 years, I, no one has a crystal ball, but are there, do you see, do you see it changing and with, with the depletion and, and, um, of, of a, of a commodity that, you know, people still need and want?

Dave Wolcott (29:21):

I think so, right? Yeah. I think it’s gonna be much more gradual than people think. I mean, I know, you know, some states and car manufacturers, they’re talking about, you know, all green by 2030. I mean, there, there’s just no way. I mean, there is no way, and y you know, look, I’m, I, you know, I’m all for the planet as well, but you’ve gotta have some reality into here, right? And, and I mean, think about the, the other thing is like natural gas, for instance, I mean, Europe actually declared it as a, you know, renewable energy, uh, source, right? So, uh, so there, so there are some ways to, you know, use the energy, I would say, more effectively, right? Mm-hmm. for, you know, for the environment.

Reed Goossens (30:02):

And I, I have seen carbon capture from oil fields yes. Start to be, you know, like layering on top of green initiatives in the way in which you’re extracting or catching. And I, I don’t, IM not an expert in this, but, you know, just there, there, there are ways sort of tick the two boxes, if that makes sense, , yes. Yeah. You can sort of, you’d be more effective in the way you’re capturing it and then repurposing it and then putting, you know, you sort of nearly double prong in terms of producing energy. Cause you produce it from the physical oil or gas, and then through the, um, the manu not necessarily the manufacturing, but the refining of it, you can then create another source of energy, which is obviously renewable at that stage. So very, it is a very, very interesting space and I’d love to know more about it. Um, we only have limited time with you today, but I do, uh, will encourage people at the end of the show to, to, to, to reach out to you. So, um, with that being said, what’s the plan for 2023 and beyond, uh, you know, recession wise? Uh, are you thinking that there’s a recession coming? Um, how does that affect your oil and gas or any of your commercial real estate or alternative asset investing, uh, perspective, uh, between now and the end of the year?

Dave Wolcott (31:05):

Yeah, great question Reed. Um, and again, this kind of goes back to our overall holistic wealth strategy, right? Because I think the majority of people don’t actually have a wealth strategy in place, but when you have a strategy in place, you can manage the peaks, you can manage the values, you know, based on, you know, geopolitical events, you know, economics, things that are happening. So for instance, you know, one thing we do, I know your, your listeners are probably familiar with is the infinite banking, uh, you know, policy. So we help our clients with that, right? And that takes a lot of, you know, uncertainty and creates some certainty in your operating capital, right? You’re able to create this baseline of capital reserves. Uh, plus it’s a great place to, you know, have your dry powder, your money’s growing, you know, compounding tax free. Uh, and there’s, you know, a multiplier of benefits right on top of that.

Dave Wolcott (31:59):

So that’s one way that you can just remove some of that uncertainty, right? And then obviously investing in some of these asset classes that are non-correlated to the markets. And then, like I said, have, you know, um, at the base layer of Maslow’s hierarchy where you have strong fundamentals that support them, you know, you’re in a better position for things to be recession resistant. And also as you look to allocate capital across your portfolio, um, you know, we’re always thinking about it, you know, it’s almost like a, you know, solving problems for investors, Reed, right? And when you really think about, you know, what are investors trying to do? I mean, forget about the asset class for a second. You know, people are typically looking to, you know, offset their taxes. They’re looking to create income streams, right? That, that are, are predictable. Uh, they’re looking to have growth opportunities, right?

Dave Wolcott (32:52):

Where, where you can, you know, you can grow your capital. Uh, so there’s different things that are people, you know, are really trying to do. So then trying to, you know, fit some of these asset classes that can support that need. We actually have a merchant cash advance, uh, fund, uh, that’s just rolling out that some, you know, top hedge funds are on and everything right now. And we’re bringing this to our, our clients. Um, uh, it’s got very compelling double digit cash flow returns. Um, and we’ve structured it in a way that helps, you know, both short term investors looking for income as well as, you know, growth investors looking for that, you know, income and growth. Um, and there’s just some amazing, uh, velocity to that fund. So.

Reed Goossens (33:36):

Interesting. That’s a, I’m sure we could talk for a whole episode about that exact Yeah. Investment strategy cuz it’s something that I haven’t heard a lot about, but, um, clearly it’s out there and clearly people need it. So with that being said, uh, at the end of every show, we love to dive into, into the top five investing tips. You ready to get into it? Sure, mate. Question number one is what’s the daily habit you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

Dave Wolcott (33:57):

Meditation. Meditation.

Reed Goossens (33:59):

Yep. Every day.

Dave Wolcott (34:01):

Every day. Every

Reed Goossens (34:02):

Day. Yep. I know I, with the baby, it’s been hard for me to, to get it back into every day, but it’s, uh, something that I find if my da, if I don’t do it in a day, I’m, my day’s slightly off. You know, it’s not having that, that quiet time in the morning. I don’t know when you do yours, but I do mine in the morning, uh, to, to center myself before diving into the, uh, the chaos, uh, of running, uh, running a business.

Dave Wolcott (34:22):

So , a hundred percent.

Reed Goossens (34:24):

Question number two is, who’s been the most influential person in your career to date? Uh,

Dave Wolcott (34:29):

I think that would be Dan Sullivan. So he’s the, he’s the leader of, um, the top entrepreneurial, uh, coaching company called Strategic Coach. Uh, so I’ve been a me, I’m a member of their 10x group and been involved in that for six years. Uh, phenomenal insights. If you’re, if you’re an entrepreneur, I highly recommend, uh, checking out.

Reed Goossens (34:50):

Awesome. Question number three is what is, what is the most influential tool in your business? And when I say tool, it could be a physical tool, like a journal or, or a phone, or it could be a piece of software that you just can’t run the business without. What is it?

Dave Wolcott (35:03):

Wow, that’s such a good question. So as part of my strategy around this holistic wealth strategy, right? I’ve essentially been trying to build a system out of building wealth like we’ve talked about mm-hmm. . Uh, so as part of our mastermind and virtual family office, um, I have my CFO who’s taken a couple, um, software companies, uh, public before, a very experienced guy. We’ve been working on a skunkworks project around actually creating an entire, uh, an entire software based tool, uh, that can, you know, manage all of your alternative investments, whether you have businesses, you’re running oil and gas, you’ve got commercial real estate, you’ve got ATM syndication, all these different syndications. Let’s like, okay, how do I manage, you know, the, you know, proforma versus, you know, what was come in? How am I managing my tax rates, right? Am I, do I have a strategy to reduce my taxes? And, and where is a dashboard to do that with KPIs that aligns to my goals and values? So, um, so that’s, uh, that’s our tool that we’re, uh, we’re creating

Reed Goossens (36:13):

When’s it launching?

Dave Wolcott (36:15):

Um, actually next month. Uh, but it’s, it’s only exclusive access for our, uh, our mastermind and, uh, VF O clients, so.

Reed Goossens (36:23):

Okay. Okay. We’ll, we’ll get that contact at the end of the show. Question number four is, in one sentence, what has been the biggest failure in your career and what’d you learn from that failure?

Dave Wolcott (36:34):

The biggest failure was in my first, my tech consulting company. We had six years of massive growth, double triple digit growth. Uh, we had literally won the Inc 5,000 award for fastest growing company, um, by like year five. And, you know, it was just all up and, um, we had a bunch of government clients and there was something happened called government sequestration where they basically put a freeze on spending. So, and this was a consulting business, so we have, you know, six figure consultants right on payroll. And we, we went from being completely at the top of our game to being underwater, like in a process of like 90 days. It was just, it, it was crazy. Something we couldn’t predict. Uh, so my biggest lesson learned there was really, you know, not having all of your eggs in one basket. And again, this is why, um, you know, I, I really like having a strategy, right? That also mitigates your downside and you’re using things like infinite banking. So you’ve got capital reserves to be able to manage through, through things that, you know, are unpredictable.

Reed Goossens (37:44):

Yeah, I love it. Well, yeah, it’s so poignant looking back on where you’ve pinpointing that time where you changed and pivoted to not having all your eggs in one basket. So I think that’s been definitely the underlying theme of today’s, today’s episode. Uh, mate, last question is, where can people reach you to continue the conversation? They wanna be in your sphere, they wanna find out what you do wanna be part of your coaching calls, all that sort of stuff. Where do they go?

Dave Wolcott (38:06):

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, our, just go to our website, if you wanna learn more about the book, uh, you can go to pantheon invest.com/wealth strategy and we have a book landing page there. Uh, we are, the book is actually trending number one on Amazon for financial engineering, uh, in small business taxes right now. So you can pick up a copy of the book and we’ve also got some bonus materials in there, um, that are really cool. We have a 401K exit calculator. So if you, if you exit your 401K and actually pay the penalty, which is really taboo, and you invest it in one of the Reeds deals and keep doing that for the next 20 years, you can kind of see where you would, you know, compound that growth too versus keeping it in the 401k. Uh, so that, so we got some kind of, uh, fun assets in there you can check out as well.

Reed Goossens (38:57):

Awesome stuff, mate. Well, look, I wanna thank you so much for jumping on the show today. Really appreciate your time. I just wanna reflect some of the things that I took away from today’s show. I think, you know, your purpose in and around identifying the freedom of time, the freedom of purpose, the free freedom of decision making and, and, and the relationships you have and the freedom of money help building what you’ve built today and, and just the, the myriad of different experiences by the sounds you’ve had, you’ve had over the years through starting a tech company through investing, uh, in oil and gas all the way through to investing in commercial real estate to really make you that whole holistic investor, uh, per your book. And I definitely encourage everyone getting their hands on, on, on, on a copy of that book today. But also wanna thank you again for sharing some insights in and around the oil and gas industry because it’s something very, very interesting to me. I see a lot more people investing in it, and I encourage people who are in interested, maybe in oil and gas, maybe reach out to Dave, uh, and his company to, to see what they can do because I know you’re on a part of a board, um, that, that helps people invest in oil and gas. Um, so did I leave anything out here, mate? And that’s little sign.

Dave Wolcott (39:56):

No, no, that’s awesome. Just, uh, really grateful for the opportunity, Reed. It’s always a pleasure to connect. Uh, we’ve known each other for many years and, uh, you know, really appreciate it. Appreciate you and uh, thanks for the time,

Reed Goossens (40:08):

Mate. My pleasure. Look, I wanna thank you everyone for taking some time outta your day to tune in, to continue to grow your financial iq. Cause that’s, we’re all about here on this show, investing in the us. If you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give it a fivestar review on iTunes. And remember, please hit up Dave at pathon investing. Uh, you can google his name, um, or, or the book, um, holistic Investor and make sure you reach out and, you know, just get involved with what he’s doing. Cause he’s got some incredible stuff happening over on his platform. Again, we’re gonna do this all again next week. So remember, be bold, be brave, and go give life a crack.