169: Investment Opportunities Most Dentists Don't Consider But Should

So my biggest question for financial planners or high net worth investors or their CPAs, et cetera is like, what am I missing? Here I go. What you're missing is it's a brand new sector.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organ organizations. Now let's get started.

Hello and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. I'm Ken Kaufman, your host today and I have got an awesome guest that I think is going to bring some interesting insights and a little bit different perspective than we often have on this podcast. Really quickly, just to set the stage so that when our guest introduces himself, you guys have a good flavor for understanding his background and things he's done. Troy Eckerd has been working with dentists, several hundred dentists, in the area of investing and specifically in mineral rights and the opportunity to build passive income in those areas. These are things to be thinking about as a clinician as you start to, as you start to build up income in your practice as well as when you eventually exit your dental practice. And so, Troy, why don't you go ahead and take a second or a minute here, give the listeners a little bit of your background and where you're coming from and then we'll jump right into it.

Yeah, it's very simple. I started in 1985 as an investment broker with a licensed firm representing wealthy investors who wanted direct ownership in the U.S. oil and gas industry. They wanted to either own minerals or pipelines or drill wells. And over the last 37 years, I ultimately ended up starting my own company called Eckerd Enterprises. And I've continued that one on one relationship with high net worth investors. They're doctors, lawyers, engineers, your typical successful entrepreneurs, professionals. And as a result of almost four decades, we have identified that owning US Mineral rights is probably the least risky, highest cash flowing and easiest investment for somebody like a dentist or a doctor or professional to own because it requires virtually zero effort on their part other than making the investment decision. So I've been able to do 40 years of really working and understanding everything from, like I said, doctors, dentist, engineers, and that's helped them during their active practice, during their active career, as well as preparing for Retirement and estate planning outstanding.

And so your business is basically looking for those who'd like to invest. And as they research, they understand the asset class and they understand the risks and those things and. And then ultimately you're using that money to make these investments in their behalf. Is that right?

You're pretty close. The way my company has been working is that because I own my own investment firm for 22 years I was very well educated and very familiar with and kind of very stringent on due diligence. So the way I've approached it, my business is that I want to give potential investing partners the cleanest, clearest, transparent due diligence on any asset class. In my case, it's US Oil and gas energy. Right. So the way my company works is we go out and we acquire mineral rights that we believe are the best that money can buy. We aggregate those into an inventory and then we extract out various mineral tracks and put them into small portfolios of which we keep 10 to 25%. And then we offer the balance to our investing partners and they can buy in based on dollar amount, based on frequency. But essentially the difference from what you said and what I, what we do is we take the lead, we invest our own money. So we're a high net worth family office energy office, which I own 100% of the company. So we start off by putting our money first, then invite our partners to participate with. It's a little different.

Okay, I'm following that makes perfect sense. So really quick, some of our listeners may not know what constitutes a high net worth investor. So could you maybe define that term?

Well, it's moving quite quickly these days. What used to be rich is not so rich. And what was rich last month is deteriorating. So in today's world right now, high net worth to me means somebody who probably has a net worth in excess of $5 million. And high net worth to me means somebody who has income probably in excess of 4 to $500,000 a year. That's a high net worth investor. And that changes every day because the markets change. But realistically, it's somebody who can make decisions on their own and they have the financial wherewithal. They may be able to seek professional advice from lawyers and CPAs, but they have enough money where they have discretionary investment capital where they can look at alternative energy space like oil and gas and know that's something they can add to their overall portfolio.

So walk us through why you choose to partner with high net worth individuals versus, you know, private equity or you know traditional institutional funds and things like that.

Well, and this is no disrespect to any of your listeners, but I have very little respect for private equity. I have very little respect for those coming out of Wall street because they're the best at putting on suits and ties and buffing their fingernails. And then they package deals using pension money. They go out and find management teams, they treat them like whip dogs, they give them a bunch of money, very tight constraints, and then the guys that give them the money decide now they want to drive the car. And the way I've looked at it since 1985 is that the smartest people out there are entrepreneurs, they built their own business, doctors, lawyers, engineers, et cetera. And what I find is that when the markets are down, private equity banks, they all roll up their carpet. They go away, there's no capital. Well, that's the worst time to roll up your carpet. That's the best time to buy because assets are distressed. So by happenstance or me being a contrarian thinker, I've always liked and enjoyed working with individual investors because to me, every million dollar plus net worth client is like access to a million dollar line of credit. It's like a bank. So my firm currently manages well over a thousand individual high net worth clients. So you do that math times a million dollars. I've got quite a bit of access to capital and that capital is monitoring whether or not they extend that capital based on a continual review of the success or failures that my company has. So all the money you want is there, but every month you're getting a report card saying, how well are you doing? Do you want more money? Well, let's see how you've done. Whether I extend you more capital. I like that close personal relationship. I like access to capital that can move very quick and that gives us a great advantage in the marketplace.

Okay, I'm following. This is great. So what would you say is the number one reason that you feel like these professionals, you know, like you said, you work with attorneys and obviously dentists and doctors and professionals and entrepreneurs. Why is it that you think that they should consider engaging in this, you know, mineral rights investment business in a short summary?

Because I could talk for hours on it, but in a short summary, every investment you have is going to be and is currently affected by energy cost. So as a dentist, when you start talking about buying those gloves and those syringes and your employees want to pay raise because the cost of gasoline is higher, you're looking at utility bills for your practice Going up. Everything in your portfolio, every single stock on the stock exchange, is affected by energy, transportation, et cetera. If you don't have a part of your portfolio in energy, what you've done is you decided to drive a car with one flat tire. And energy, when it goes up, you better have a counterbalance because stocks go down, inflation goes up, interest rates go up, real estate goes down because you have a higher operating cost. But if you don't have something to counterbalance that by having energy in your portfolio, you get a double negative, you get a deterioration of asset value because what I just described, and you don't have any way of lifting it because you don't have any energy in your portfolio. And owning energy stocks is not, is not an answer because that's tied to the public equities. So what my individual partners have learned over the last three and a half decades is if I can directly own energy, drilling wells, participating in mineral rights pipelines. When the market turns against favorable performance in stocks and bonds and other assets, energy is usually going up in value. Higher oil prices, higher gas price, weight counterbalances. And so when it goes down, when stocks go up, I still have energy. It's still making me money, but it allows me to have that nice sequential balance in my portfolio. Most investors, 98% will never invest in oil and gas because it's such an obscure asset class and quite candidly can, it is one that has its ride full of crooks, liars, cheats and thieves. So the number one thing in oil and gas is you got to find the right company because 9.8 out of 10 are going to rob you blind. And so that's the biggest issue then. That's why we stand hard on the fact we've been around since 1985, etc. Right. It's like anything, there's about 5% who really know what they're doing and 95% are trying to figure it out. And I don't want to be in that 95%.

Yeah, fair enough. So what are the primary risks or, you know, concerns? Somebody should be, you know, and if somebody were to look at this, how would you coach them to evaluate this type of an opportunity and the risks associated with it?

First and foremost, number one, is that you got to find the right company. These guys get on with Texas swag and they act like they're rednecks and in the field and they're partnering with Exxon. It's all a bunch of bs. So number one, you better find the right company to Invest with that's paramount to everything else. Number two, the risk is, is that they're not competent. So maybe they're nice people, maybe they're doing it legally. They couldn't find oil on a jiffy lid, and it's a very difficult business and it takes decades of expertise to figure this out. So number one is the company, number two is competency. And number three is being in the right space. Oil and gas industry is like real estate. It has three different divisions in oil and gas. You have upstream, which is all oil and gas exploration, the production and discovery and extraction of oil. Midstream is between the wellheads and delivering, transporting and processing that oil. So that's midstream. And then downstream is the refining process that takes it to our house and our cars, etc. Right. Well, the downstream is too big. That's ExxonMobil, that's Chevron, that's refineries. We can't participate in that. Midstream is so massive and regulatory, extensive. You can get into it, but it's very difficult and little small investors like us can't aggregate enough synergy to make a real dental. So the only space left for investors is really the upstream well, in that upstream, it's. You want to go shoot seismic. Do you want to go out and lease minerals? Do you want to go out and drill wells? Or do you want to be the landlord and own the mineral rights? Because in this country, you cannot drill a well on private land without having a mineral owner that you've leased the minerals from. Who's getting free income every month. I don't care if it's Warren Buffett who's buying oxy. Warren Buffett is a tenant of Eckerd's Minerals right now. So you get to be at the top or the headwater of income when you buy minerals. And so for me, when I look at those three spaces, Ken, I'm looking at how do I get to the very top of the food chain? How do I get paid first and have zero liability and zero exposure to environmental or drilling or cost overruns? That's mineral rights, which has only really evolved truly as a market asset in the last eight or nine years.

Okay, all right, I'm following. So it seems like then whoever can go out and find the best deals on mineral rights is, you know, that that now becomes the, the name of the game. And so if somebody's coming to you and you're going out and finding those, how. How are you getting access to and. And how are, how are you Making sure that you're finding the absolute best deals that are out there and available. Because as we all know, right, there are always lots of things to go by. It's a matter of finding the ones that are going to create the best outcome.

And the United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows private ownership of mineral rights. That's one unique thing. We're one of the only countries in the entire world. Number two is because of the success of technology. Now we're drilling horizontal wells and we're frac stimulating with sand and water these big shale reservoirs, which are like Barrie Grand Canyon. So you probably have 100 million to 200 million mineral acres in the United States now that we know has massive amounts of oil and gas. So it's no longer about where the oil and gas is. Now it's all driven by who's the most efficient jockey, who's the best oil company, who has the money, the technology, the personnel, and who can deliver the greatest extraction. So if you and I both own minerals and you have Johnny Jack Wagon Oil and I have Exxon, Exxon may be more expensive, which I don't care because I don't pay the bills, but they're going to have the money, the technology, the skills, the engineers to get the most oil and gas out of my minerals, which means I make more money, right? So this whole industry has changed and evolved. Where now they use satellites to track the direction of a drill bit, they're using computer panels to figure out what's down four miles in the ground, like sending spacecraft to Mars. So because of that technology, we're not talking dry holes anymore. We're talking about what's the rate of return per well. So this industry has evolved. What's really evolved is that now private investors are not trying to fight it out with Exxon to go buy 300 acres of minerals. Now you have this ocean of minerals. And what gives Eckerd the biggest advantage over all of our competitors is I've spent 37 years drilling. So I've been on the tenant side. Not the landlord, the tenant. So we study and evaluate every oil company. We learn their patterns and where they're going to lease and drill and how they're going to extract and who's better. So because of that almost four decades of expertise, it makes it easier for me to decide which building I'm going to buy because that's the best tenant that pays their bills and has the highest rents. Right. Most of the people that buy minerals do not understand, nor have they participated in the drilling side? So they're just taking a stab and hoping they buy the right mineral. We took the reverse role and said, let's take four decades of expertise, figure out who's the very best in class, who's going to have the money, who's going to drill the both the most, the best wells, the most wells. And how does that generate revenue to us in the most effective manner. That's why we have such an advantage in the market. Right.

And again, there's always a risk. Right. There are still risks, as we talked about before, associated with this. But it sounds like your approach is trying to mitigate as much of that as possible by finding the right assets.

Well, the nice thing about the way the industry's evolved the last 10 years, like I said, five, six, seven years ago, we couldn't buy minerals like we can today. So this is a brand, this market we've been in for about four and a half, five years. Heavy, heavy in the minerals because it finally opened, the window, opened up for private investors like you and I. And really the risk is the following. Everybody's concerned about regulatory risk, they're worried about the climate control, everybody pushing alternative energy. The reality is, it's not a reality. Because what you've learned in the last year and a half is you've learned that with Europe, that all that alternative energy can't even put a dent in the necessary day to day needs for energy and the byproducts that come from fossil fuels. So oil and gas will be here 100, 200 years from now. Way past the time I pass. Dead right. But what's happening is, is that the oil and gas industry has become such a perfectionist type of an industry. It's more like a manufacturing process. So back to the risk. The risk is if you've got this, we mainly focus on oklahoma. You got 40 million acres. You know, that'd be like saying, I want to go buy land in Chicago. You can buy anything you want. Well, where do I start? So what we've done is we've narrowed it down based on three elements. Number one, where's the best oil and gas reserves in that particular area? Number two, who's the best jockeys or oil companies? And the third thing, the most critical thing to minerals is extraction. Who's going to activate a well to be drilled to pull our oil and gas out of the ground so I can own the most saturated oil and gas minerals in the world. But if nobody drills it, it's worthless. So our key for this company is really understanding the activation component and we have knocked it out of the park because inside the company we have geologists, we have engineers, we've got landmass. So we've created a phenomenal team that really focuses on who's going to drill and when they're going to drill. And that's what puts us at the top of the ladder. Right.

So there's obviously a lot of complexity here.

Right.

I'm certain, you know, regulatory issues and tax filings and, and there's a lot of things to keep track of and run with this. So if I was to think about investing in something like this or, you know, if anybody else was, what, what falls on me, like what do I need to be prepared to handle and do and file or, you know, is that something that you guys just handle and take?

Well, I'm going to say the obvious because your listeners are going to say, okay, this sounds too good to be true. And that's the problem, is it is too good to be true. But it's only been here like five or six, seven years, right? Here's how it works. A investor decides, we like Eckerd, we like what they do. We want to own minerals. We're going to buy into one of Troy's portfolios. It's a $5 million mix of minerals covering several different oil companies and properties. You write a check for $100,000. We process it, we send you an exhibit. You're deeded and titled. We built our own app. You can look at it 24,7 online. Only oil company in the country that has this app. Six months from now, you're going to start getting your first check for all the oil and gas that's sold in, let's say, the month of April, like we are today, right? You'll get a check. You're going to get 12 checks a year or ACH deposits and you're going to get a 1099. The problem with this investment is it's boring. So I have a lot of very active clients. They're into residential and multifamily and they're, you know, they're busy buying stocks and bonds. A lot of my partners tell me once I write you a check, there's nothing for me to do. I don't get to check on any. I can't make any decision. You get no bills, no capital costs. You have no exposure to liability. You have zero cash requirements. There's zero management fees, there's zero equity back ends by Eckerd. So it's like me, I'm the CEO and I'm literally bored going, well, we're placing minerals, but there's not a lot I can decide. Why is that? All of our minerals are managed day to day by Exxon, Chevron and Ox. We got billion dollar oil companies managing every single part of our minerals. And the very first thing that happens when Exxon sells that oil and sells that gas, that gas buyer and that oil buyer like Valero will send a check to Exxon. Exxon says, well, good. But the first 18 to 20% of that income, it's not ours. Put that in the royalty mineral owner's account because it's not our money. We'll pay the bills with what's left. So we get paid first. We're above bankruptcy. We get paid every single month. Otherwise their lease expires and we get all their wells for free. So we always get paid no matter what the price oil and gas is, right? So what happens is we get a gross check in and we say, well, we've got 10 partners in this portfolio, gross check divided by 10, everybody's pro rata share. Here's your check. It's been deposited in your bank. Or you get a green envelope from Eckert and you go, what else do I need to do? Go run your practice, go to the beach, go play golf. It is the most passive asset class that exists the most. So my biggest question for financial planners or high net worth investors or their CPAs, et cetera, is like, well, what am I missing? Here I go, what you're missing is it's a brand new sector. What you're missing is it really is that easy. And because it's that easy, it's hard for most people who are complex thinkers like we are, to get our head around it. But it's that easy. I literally have been divesting out of all my other stuff, saying this is the easiest investment. I would not put money anywhere else because how can I do this? How can I replicate cash flow every month from major oil companies without any cost or exposure? I don't know how to do that. And that's what's been fun. So I think the other thing, part of your question is, is that when you think about, from you as an investor, once you get the basic understanding of minerals, then it's really a capital deployment. And then you're going to always have that question like, how do I know this isn't a Ponzi scheme? How do I know Troy's for real? How can Troy enter a billion dollar trillion dollar business. And why would these people sell Troy minerals? Because most of these farmers and ranchers and people that own the land didn't realize the minerals under the ground were so valuable. And they didn't realize they could sever it and sell the minerals but keep the ranch. And all of a sudden this horizontal drilling comes along and the guy who's got 500 acres and trying to survive on 50 cows realized, my land, the surface is worth 2,000 an acre, but the minerals underneath me is worth 12 to $30,000 an acre. I can sell 10 acres of minerals, pay off my farm and my John Deere tractor, and I still got the family place. It became a marketable asset they did not know they had 10 years ago. So you've made multiple, multiple millionaires, big time millionaires out of these surface owners. And they still own the ranch, but they're encouraged to sell because that creates asset transition from mineral rights to raw land, paying off banks, putting their kids in college and that kind of stuff. This market's all. We just happen to be very smart, positioned very well. Back in 2018, I saw the window open after four decades of being in the business that we have two things that are happening today that have never happened in my career. A complete exit of capital. Biden administration, everybody before them said, banks, we're all going green around the world. Stop lending to oil companies. You're going to be punished if you put money behind fossil fuels. So I like that varied entry, went way high. No money for the oil company. Number two happened is you had this complete disruption by global supply based on Russia and Saudi Arabia. So we had two things happening. Destruction on the supply side because of no capital, and complete flooding of the market by two behemoths. It meant that the price of minerals were completely suppressed, 40, 60% below value. So we went out and we grabbed as much as we could put in the bank and. And we're still the number one cash buyer today in the state of Oklahoma. Because why the power of dentists, the power of professionals is you have complete, repeatable income. So when I go, look, we just made an offer yesterday in $150 million package. And what I look at is I look at my thousand partners and I go down my list and I go, these are my bankers. This asset class is tremendous. If we want to buy that, how do I think my bankers are going to respond? So I go down the list, look at my doctors, dentists, engineers, and I say, what do I think they're going to do? And what Kind of capital. We're easily going to fund that $150 million package in under 60 days. So you said earlier, why don't I go to private equity? Why don't I go to Wall Street? Because Wall street and private equity will look at the $150 million asset and they'll figure out how they can screw the deal up by telling you what to offer and how to sell, when to sell. And they don't know what they're doing because you know why? We're now buying private equities, assets they bought four years ago and they paid three times the price we did. They don't know what they're doing. So our expertise is I get that wrench, I get grease on my hands, I go to the field and we look at those assets and what that creates for you, our partner, the clients that are buying the minerals. What it creates is an absolute connectivity between money and the asset. And it means the greatest chance of success without having middlemen in the middle, poor decision makers in the middle. And Eckerd puts his money out first. So that means that what I'm totally at risk with you guys before you ever write your check. All these elements of what have been derived over three and a half decades of doing this business. It wasn't like I came up with it yesterday. So right place, right time, great market, wide open Runway. I just know that I have very, very tough parts. I got petroleum engineers and jobs that are my clients, guys in the business. And they'll tell me today, I've never had an asset perform like this. I don't have to think about it. I just get checks and a 1099. Should I be doing something else? Yeah, make more money because we need to invest more money. So it's a lot of fun, but it sounds too good to be true, right? Yeah.

So a couple questions just as follow up to that. So first of all, you said you get a 1099. So is this ordinary income or is there any capital gains element of this investment?

Capital gains would only occur upon disposition of the mineral. So minerals rights by the IRS are treated as real estate. It's actual real estate. So you'll never be able to go to zero by writing off a mineral acre because it's raw land. Kind of like if your house burns down, the lot's still there. So the IRS treats it as real estate. So you could do 1031 tax exchange from traditional real estate into minerals or minerals back into traditional real estate because you can invest in your self directed IRA or your retirement plan, or you can invest in your traditional account. It's the same classification as real estate.

Okay.

And title, you have a contract says you own it. It's recorded in the courthouse. So it's just like any other piece of real estate you have. The only difference is there's no holding costs, there's no property tax, there's no insurance, there's no landscapers. So what a lot of our partners have done is they moved out of residential and apartments. They bought into oil and gas, mineral rights, because they're like, I have zero holding costs. I don't care if oil goes to 40 or if it goes to 140. I just get a net check every month with no bills. And we do provide complete back office. I think you asked that while ago. We provide everything. We do the accounting every month. We do all the updates on production. The app has every one of your minerals, every well that's produced in the state. We spent a couple of million dollars having scraping. So we get the production data, the taxing data out of the Oklahoma Commission. You get access to that? Because I don't trust anybody. I don't even trust the newspaper guy. I want to know where my paper is when I pay you 25 bucks. So I built the app so that way when you're at the airport or you're in France or you're running your practice, you can take a look how your minerals are doing, the percentage of return, how the wells are producing. Because why Troy's a nice guy, but Troy might hit his head on the car and decide to become a crook tomorrow. I want to make sure my partners know where their assets are, where it's performing, full transparency. Because like I told you at the beginning of this, I don't have a great short term memory. So it's better for me just to tell you like it is. And, and if it's, if it's bad, it's bad. If it's good, it's good. And unfortunately for us, it's been incredibly good.

Yeah. And so just understanding that, that it's treated very similarly from a tax perspective and other perspectives as, as it is real estate. It's just important to understand the ordinary income nature of that.

Yep. Think about like rental property. You rent a house, you're getting depreciation on the house. Right. But you're getting income in. So the income minus the expenses is your net income. Well, in this case, we don't have any expenses. So all the income you get from the royalty is taxable income. 1099, right?

Yep.

But what you get equivalent to depreciation, real estate is the IRS allows you to take 15% of your income off your minerals you don't pay taxes on. It's a depletion allowance. So every year, if I make 100,000 in income on my minerals, I only pay taxes on 85,000. Got it. So it doesn't have that tax deduction, but it has that tax abatement by 15% not being taxed. And so we do have a lot of high income investors. So what they'll say is, okay, I'm buying minerals. Do I like that? Simple passivity to it. But man, I'm making a lot of money out of my practice. What do I do? Well, we also buy into wells with the same companies that are drilling our minerals. We'll buy into those wells because somebody can't afford it. So we're getting the advantage of being the mineral owner and we participate in drilling. When you participate in drilling under the current tax law, it's like a 70 to 90% tax deduction first year. So a lot of our dentists, doctors and stuff are saying, I'm buying minerals, I'm buying drilling, I'm getting tax deductions, I'm getting depletion allowance. And the checks just keep coming in because effectively we're drilling with the biggest, smartest oil companies on the planet and we haven't had a dry hole in four and a half, five years.

Nice.

It's way too much fun I'm having. Enjoying myself way too much.

Yeah, it seems.

Seemed like it.

Well, good. So I think this is definitely different than most podcast episodes that we have here, but I think getting our eyes opened to some of these other options and other things that could be out there is really helpful. And Troy, really appreciate the expertise that you have in this industry. Obviously, years and years of decades of experience and some really interesting cool things going on. We need to wrap up here. But as we start to do the wrap up, what would be sort of a parting tip, like the one piece of advice? Because you've got several hundred dentists that you work with and you've interacted with or, you know, doctors and those kind of things. What would be the. Just based on all of your experience and what, you know, what's the one piece of advice that you'd like to share with them as they're just thinking about how to, how do, you know, build, build wealth but, you know, take care of their patients, take care of their staff and all of those kind of Things.

Well, I would say this, that the way I view mineral rights, because I've got eight grandkids, it is the simplest asset I can own that I never have to think about. I'm never going to get a bill, I'm never going to get an invoice, I'm never going to get a cash call and have zero liability. But because of that, it also makes it the greatest asset to transfer in my estate. So I can run my practice, I can run my business. And as I accumulate those minerals, these Wells will last 25 to 75 years. Each mineral tract can hold eight as many as 84 wells. It's like owning an 84 unit apartment complex. So the simplest thing I would tell somebody is, do what you do, run your practice, run your business, do what you do, but take some of that capital and keep building mineral rights. Because what you're going to find is all of a sudden five years out, you own enough minerals, you're going, I'm making as much off my minerals as I am my practice. Maybe I should look at divesting my practice, taking that and continuing to build. Because when I do decide to make my estate, it's simply transferring the deed saying, hey, Troy, I want to transfer to my three kids. And here I want each one to have a third. Because we do have clients that pass away. We go, great, we just changed their name. What's it required? It's already done. So it's one of the simplest assets to transfer. It's one of the simplest assets to own. Like I said, I'm just like, there's nothing to do with. So it's a little boring. So if you're kind of like me, where you're always got your fingers in the toolbox looking for something to do, you got to go, I got to find a hobby. Because now my investment becomes so simple. But now it's almost like an addiction for me. Because now I'm thinking, my wife today is still saying, I can't find my wedding ring. I go, yeah, I hawked it so I could buy some more minerals. But you'll appreciate this later on. It is kind of one of those mindsets because I have really, really smart clients. I think like 18%, 20% of my clients are lawyers. Everybody goes, you sold a lawyer in your deal? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Why? Well, they have cash flow, they have a practice, they have no cost. They're trying to get out of their practice and have passive income like a dentist or other professional. But I like having lawyers in there because they're looking at all my contracts, look at all my SEC files, and I know I'm doing the right thing because I got lawyers as clients. I like analytical people, like dentists. They're detail. Dentists are detail. Engineers are detailed. So we get challenged every day about the quality of our work. So my parting comment is it's a very precarious business. You're going to get 10 phone calls, possibly from oil and gas guys. I'm telling you, 9.8 out of 10 are crooks or you have no chance of making money. So I'm not saying that I'm the best thing since sliced bread, but I'm saying this almost 60 year old guy has been doing this since 1985. And what I want to point out is you've got to pick the right company. Everything else will fall in place. You pick the wrong company, it's the fastest way to go. Burn a million dollars in the parking lot. It doesn't work.

All right, well, Corey, once again, thank you for being with us. I definitely appreciate it. I think there's been some good education here about alternative asset classes, about, you know, some tax elements and ultimately building out this passive income. I know every dentist I know does not want to be working in the chair the day before die. That's just not, not the case.

Right.

And so being able to build wealth over time and to be able to have that wealth generate income so that we can, you know, so that we can live that lifestyle that we want while hopefully we're chairside or, you know, working in the dental practice and then, you know, beyond that as well. All right, so many, many thanks to all of you for listening today. This is a wrap on all things alternative, investment classes and mineral rights and passive income. Happy day.

Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.