[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Preferred Way, a retirement podcast brought to you by Preferred Trust Company, the preferred custodian for all alternative investments.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Hello everybody and welcome to the Preferred Way. I have Troy Aker with me today.
Hey. Hey, how's it going?
[00:00:19] Speaker C: I'm always good. I'm glad to be on the show, glad to talk to you and find out how life is going across the financial world.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, we're not going to talk so much about self directed IRAs today because quite frankly, I think everybody knows a self directed IRA is. I'm more interested to find out what's going on in your industry, to be quite frank with you. So why don't you give us just a brief introduction? I know it's been about a year since you've been on our show.
Who are you, where you're from, what are you all about? Give us, give us a little background.
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Well, it's a very simple story.
I've spent 41 years in the oil and gas space. I'm 61 years old. I started off on the investment side where I was a licensed broker putting private accredited investors into drilling opportunities to get big tax write offs. And then being the kind of overachiever that I am, I quickly decided that I could do it better. I ended up starting my own investment company in 1991, had that for 20 something years. But then I focused on the asset side, created Eckerd Enterprise. Now we're about 1.15 billion under management, about 2,500 accredited investors. We're cash flowing about 75 to 100 million a year and distributions. And what we've done is created a real symbiotic relationship between private investors who want to own energy either in their self directed IRA or regularly. And we're now competing head to head with larger oil companies. So it's just, it's a perfect scenario. 41 years in the making and now we're benefiting from all that expertise and experience.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Why have you decided to stay private and not go public?
[00:01:46] Speaker C: You talk about me? Yeah, well, you've known me only on podcasts, but I'm not really good at.
I have Tourette's syndrome and things come out of my mouth that shouldn't. I'd probably be fired within about a week and a half.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: You're saying the regulators would love you is what you're saying, right?
[00:02:03] Speaker C: No, I'm saying the shareholders would fire me.
I tell you what, what kept me away from private equity kept me away from public. I've watched a lot of my wealthy clients. Over 41 years, I've dealt with thousands upon thousands of successful people, public, private equity backed, et cetera. And I just watched them get skinned alive.
So to me, it's like running through a gauntlet. And the chance of me making it through the gauntlet and having enough value at the end that it's worth the headache has never been there. And I just learned by watching all my other clients get decimated in bad deals with public trades and private equity. I'm like, yeah, thanks, but no thanks.
And I really like to be hands on. I have a board of advisors, I have my C team, but really at the end of the day, I've been able to navigate based on just. I'm really super hands on and I really get a pulse the market. And I've seen a lot of people who could not make the right decision because they were backed by a board or backed by a stock directive that said you can't go left when everything says go left.
[00:03:00] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Or they over leverage you and they try to do some crazy stuff and it just, it completely ruins the business and everything that's been built. So I actually have a lot of respect for the fact that you have stayed private and continue to offer these types of investments.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: It helps my.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: Really cool.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Yeah, it does, helps me.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Wonderful. Let's talk about the evolution of the industry. I mean, you have done it all.
Where do you find is your sweet spot for investors at this point? Because you know, there's a lot to the business where. Where would you say to an investor is probably the best spot to be in today?
[00:03:39] Speaker C: If I were just a simple passive investor that wanted not to learn about oil. I didn't want to know how the car was built. I just want to invest and make money. It's mineral, just buy minerals. I just want to put money in cash flow every month. Don't call me, I won't call you. I'll invest what I have. I call it pocket change. People invest gas with pocket change. They don't, you know, they buy their stocks, bonds, real estate, that little residual 3 to 5% of your portfolio. You do it when you have extra cash.
[00:04:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Moral rights are the right investment, I would say. Work and interest is a very strong financial tool. It gives you the advantage of owning interest in wells, but it has a massive tax aspect. So outside of a directed IRA, self directed IRA, it's really a big tool for reducing your W2 income. And then of course pipelines and other types of assets that kind of are indirectly related to that are just different ways of approaching the same concept. I want to own producing oil and gas wells in the United States, and I want all the tax benefits, and I want those checks every month. You know, we're one of the big countries in the world that the oil and gas industry is held by private investors. The rest is owned by governments. So that's one of the most unique things, is that this is probably one of the only places you can actually invest directly like this.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Okay, so first was mineral rights. Talk to me about mineral rights. Does that really. Are you really investing in oil and gas? Are you investing in real estate?
[00:05:00] Speaker D: Give.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Give me the differences between the two. What's your perspective?
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Well, if I were just investing in real estate, you and I could buy any piece of land, any building we want, anywhere we want, and it's. It is what it is, right?
[00:05:11] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: Oil and gas, I better have the supporting technical skills, intellectual skills that tells me not only where the oil and gas is, so I buy the right mineral. Right. But I got to know quantity, time, and economic value. That's incredibly subjective because it's all the ground one to two to three miles. Right.
So what really makes it unique is that it does qualify as real estate. But I need, like, neurosurgeons and I need specialists who can help me guide where I buy it and who's going to drill it, who's going to harvest it, because I don't want to pay for it. So it is, it looks super, super easy, but it is very complex. But I think with 40 years of experience, we've made it look easy because we delivered it consistently with consistent results.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I've heard that, well, mineral rights is just real estate. I'm like, really?
Do you know what's two miles down? Do you have any idea what you're, you know, what you're getting yourself into? You know, and, and we've talked about this a little bit. You know, there's so many shysters out there. Tell me what.
And trust me, we see a lot of it at Preferred.
Tell me what we should watch out for with these groups. And I'm sure you have seen the gamut, and it cannot be more frustrating to you when you stumble across this crap. But tell me what we should watch out for.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Well, the first thing, I'm going to make a comment to your listeners, and this applies to all listeners. I've got clients that are barely worth a million. I got guys that are worth 2 billion.
Here's the one thing that the biggest mistake people make in oil and gas.
You don't think you need to know how it works. You think you're gambling. So I'll put 50 grand or 100 grand or 200 grand, I'll give it a try.
You took that same person to Vegas. They wouldn't even go to the $5 blackjack table, but yet they're going to take 100, 200, 500,000 of risk.
So it goes back to the very basics like so let's say you and I were going to go to an investment advisor and we said, hey, we want to use you. Can you show me how you've done for your clients the last five years? Oh, I don't have that. Can you tell me how long you've been doing it? Well, I was selling homes last month, now I'm an advisor.
So what happens is investors almost help create this, this toxic poisonous disease called sponsors and promoters in oil and gas.
I've been trailing it for about the last 14 months because I knew that most likely if President Trump got in, he was going to promote fossil fuel. There's 45 different sponsors out there of which I've gone online public data and out of 45, I'm going to say maybe three are legitimate but they have terrible results. The rest are either backed by felons, cons, cease and desist orders, lawsuits, massive. But they all have dressed it up with AI websites and marketing. So what I would say the fundamentals dwelling gas is this is me.
Show me your track record that you have done anything close to what you're promoting today. So if you say this well is going to pay me back in two years, it's going to make this kind of return. Show me your track record that you've ever done that before. You're not going to get, you will not get a track record. They will not give it to you.
What these oil and gas guys like to do is they like to put them all in special purpose vehicles, general partnerships converted to a limited partnership or it's a llc. And the reason they do that is that as a member of an SPV or a special purpose vehicle, you don't own the assets, you own part of the company or the entity. Right.
I'm asking for accounting. Well, I don't have to give it to you. You're getting your share of the partnership. I want, those are the cost. I don't have to share that with you, I just got to give you the cost to the partnership. And they do that because they have so over promoted the asset. You basically have a Dry hole before you ever wrote your check. So the thing is, I don't buy into partnerships, and that will sometimes do a partnership, like if we're buying a company or something. But for me, Eka does is direct ownership. Direct ownership in drilling, direct ownership in minerals. You own that piece of real estate?
[00:09:03] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: 9.9% of all other oil and gas ventures are done in LLCs or tax ID entities. That's a problem.
[00:09:11] Speaker D: Yeah, so.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: And the reason why it's a problem is the terms of the deal are so bad, you have had economic failure. Even if you had a great well, you will lose money.
[00:09:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Not crazy. I mean, it's. It's just that simple. Just ask some questions. If you can't get an answer, just turn around and go the other direction. Like why. Why do people fall for this? Is it just. It just looks too good to be true? I mean, what are you.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: What's happening? I gotta tell you, probably in the last three years, more than any time in my career, I am dumbfounded.
[00:09:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: By the passivity and not ignorance. I'm just saying.
Naive. Right.
[00:09:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: So you invested with this guy. You put $200,000. Did you ask him for his tracker? No, I didn't think about that. Did you ask him for the number of the ID on the well you're going to own? Because every well in the United States has to look it up. Abn, Right?
[00:10:07] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: I didn't know that. Did you know you could put in chat GBT or just Google and say, what's the 10 questions I should ask before I invest? I never thought of that either. I'm like.
I mean, I'm on.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: I know, I know.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: But it is doctors. It is. It is lawyers.
[00:10:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: People run big companies. And I'm going. You haven't even asked the fundamental. You might as well walk to the shopping mall with money hanging out of your pocket and your id, your atm, because you're just. You're just not even.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Just hand it out.
[00:10:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: And then when they find out they've been burned, they don't even have the courage to go after these crooks and liars and cheats and thieves. So they just do it again.
[00:10:42] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: They just walk away.
[00:10:44] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: I'm not going to blame the victim, but I'm going to say there's a lot of. There's a lot of responsibility that is at the feet of investors because they get enamored with fomo. They get enamored with.
[00:10:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: And they want to be richer than their dentist buddy. Or they want to have a better house. So you find out that you're building your house on quicksand and next thing you know you've lost a third to half your net worth and you're right back where you were in 2013.
Yeah, scratching your head. FOMO is a big problem. And I'll tell you the other thing I've noticed is that back in 082008, the big financial debacle was the largest closure of financial brokerage firms. They couldn't make it. It got too expensive. So you had more financial planners, more licensed brokers leave the business. Probably 25,000 left the business.
All these investments weren't shut down. So what all these brokers and all these financial guys, they said, oh, we got a new mousetrap, let's not be a broker, let's set up a mastermind, let's set up this, this group, let's have this dental group, this doctor group, this chiropractor group. We'll charge them fees. Then we'll go get all these sponsors and bring them in. And you guys just invested who you want. But we vetted them. But more what happened is they didn't vet them and more importantly they were taking kickbacks and commissions that absolutely. They've all been doing this illegal and unrestricted. Now there's lawsuits going against all these so called masterminds and they're all being pursued by the sec. But the problem is a mouse is going to get in your kitchen if he wants the cheese. Absolutely bad intending people. Whether it's oil and gas today or next month, it's going to be day. What's the next big thing is coming? Data centers, data racks and electrical grids. That's the next big carbon windmill. Solar scams over and investors are running to it like flies to a pile of dung saying this is the greatest investment. You're going to get it running through the self directed IRAs and investment accounts and that you're like, can you guys not even just slow down, take a breath, go. Let me think through this.
If they really put a meter on how much they had to work to make the money they're about to invest, they might rethink it, but they spend it like it's monopoly money. But that's just, it's almost impossible to figure it out.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it truly is. All right, let's switch gears.
We'll get off the ignorance meter because I'm okay calling it that because come on people, I just, it's, it's a struggle. Struggle.
Talk to me. About your industry, what is going on? What is exciting right now in oil and gas that just has your engine revving?
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Well, here's the number one thing that's kept me super excited for the last 10 years and probably what's going to keep me working for another 10 years because I love what I'm doing.
[00:13:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: The fact that we've been able to eliminate dry holes, I know that's staggering, but. But what has made it so enjoyable?
Fifteen years ago, when I sat in a room with geologist, other oil company, we were looking at drilling a well. It was not about how much the well was going to make. It was, you know, this Well's got a 37% chance of being a successful well. I go, so I got 63% chance of losing money.
[00:13:40] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: But the other ones are a 22% chance.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is a good one.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: So what's exciting about this industry, they, they finally have been able to use technology and all the processes around computers and technology and satellites and everything's going on now. You really can get some traction. You can really compete at a smaller level as Exxon or Chevron because you're doing the same things. It's computers, it's online, it's Internet, it's access, it's real time. You're watching your drill bit three miles on the ground with five guys on the computer, watching the drill bit actually penetrate the earth. You had no idea 15 years ago. So what's exciting to me is you've removed a lot of the subjectivity. A geologist would get into a room, wave his arms, he got his off oil. Saudi Arabia in this well. Nowadays they use computers and go, yeah, your Saudi Arabia looks like a thimble. Okay, it does.
So because of that, it gives me a greater level of confidence to talk to an investor like yourself and say, we're drilling these five wells, all five are going to hit, in my opinion, make your money back. It's whether it's 24 months, 30 months or 60 months. But I no longer have to tell you, you're going to lose your money. Now it's just a matter of economic rotation. It's a matter of how much quantity's in place and there's 200 million acres to go drill and play in so the big guys can't box us out. We can play in the playing.
My career, did I ever dream we'd have an industry that is this transparent, technology driven and finally accessible to the individual credit investor like it is today?
I thought I'd be long dead and gone before I ever saw a day like this. So thank goodness it's happened because every day I come to work with a smile on Facebook. Man, this is just, this is incredible, you know? Yeah, it's fun.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: It does. It has to feel amazing to be in that kind of position where the probability meter is, is so high at this point. Like it's. That's jealous. I'm jealous that you.
[00:15:31] Speaker C: This is the truth, Gary. In 2008, I was so tired of encompasses and dry holes. And yeah, I said, I am going to go start a landscaping company because I know how to mow grass. At least I know what the grass is going to do every day. I was so, I was so frustrated. I said, three PhD geologists and the wells dry. And you all would have bet your mother's life is a good well. I'm like, where's your mom? Oh, she died years ago. Well, of course you bet your mother's life because it's another dry hole. It was, it was unbelievable. That's why we're running out of oil. So today, now you can financially make plans. Our company's thinking about what we're buying. We can develop in 2028 or 2029. Not like hope that well hits because if it does, we can do one more well. That's. Yeah, it's no longer gambling. It's truly capital deployment in a very risk managed industry. That was not that way 10 years ago.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: So does it matter anymore where. If the probability is predictable, more predictable.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: I think it's all economics. So, so we know the where. We have these basins clearly defined. They're buried grand canes. We know the outer boundaries now it's all about economics. So the big companies today, we're at one of the lowest rig counts we've been in last like the last five years. So people say, well, where's the best place to drill? I go simple. Where the 549 rigs are today, right now, taking that aside, you say, but why are they economical? Well, gas prices are stronger than oil relative to commodities, so they're leaning more toward gas drilling than they are oil today. They're saying this basin has better transportation contracts, meaning they get charged less of a fee to move their gas and oil to market.
Looking at all the components and go, this basin, this county, this area, safer, cheaper drilling, better prices, better access to the market. That's where they're drilling now. Let's say Russia starts the war like they did in 2022, and all of a sudden oil goes to 129. Okay, let's quickly move the rigs from the gas over to the oil.
So there is a lot of what I call macro view of where we should drill and there's very micro decisions making place. And so what we do is we don't try to recreate the wheel. We look around and see Chevron, Oxy, Continental, Diamond. We go, okay, if we added up all the payroll of all these major companies, probably a billion dollars a year in some of the smartest minds in the world and they're moving those rigs, let's use the data, we know the advanced permitting go well, let's just buy where they're going, let's get in wells they're drilling and let's buy minerals everywhere they're drilling because it's the best acreage out of 200 million acres. A lot more complex than that. But I always say, you know, if you want to know where to drill, just follow the rigs. And it's not that far off.
Follow the rigs.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: It's not that difficult. So you got, you got probability, you've got, you know, follow the big guys a little bit. Right.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Smartest minds in the world.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: That's right. So why recreate the wheel? And then how is the political front from an advantage or disadvantage standpoint been?
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Well, in 2019 we started this iteration of Eckerd. All I heard from every audience for two years was oil is going to be gone in 30 years. How do you address the green energy initiative? And I said it's based on fraud, it doesn't work. Yes, oil's got to be $150 a barrel for it to work.
All that's happening is you're losing out on investing because you believe in a narrative that's based on false information. Right. Today we have totally 180 degree. The opposite. Instead of isn't that crazy anti fossil fuel we have drill baby drill. He's fast opening up the federal lands. The scary part for the industry though is what if President Trump, when he transfers out after three years, would it.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Go, what's going to happen?
[00:19:07] Speaker C: So these companies, the investors, companies like mine are like, are we dealing in 48 month decision making knowing it could be 180 degree difference or do we have any kind of Runway to believe we might be in a kind of a Reagan Bush 12 year scenario where this is the beginning of a 12 year run for fossil fuel. Now you really can build that plant, put that line in, you can invest. That capitalist capital is still void in oil and gas though. Believe it or not. I mean, really because of commodity prices. I would have thought with drill baby drill.
[00:19:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: But what's happened is President Trump said drill baby drill. But I want oil at $55 a barrel. So private equity, Wall street looks at it and goes, guys are going to have a $20 drop in oil. So congratulations for drilling for almost free. But there's other places I can invest like data centers and all these AI and these electrical grid. So we truly are drilling out of cash flow only and that is causing supply to come down, rigs will be laid down and this almost tsunami price increase is building. And I think in 24 months you're going to see oil up 20, $30 a barrel because we're going to be dropping in supply. Yeah, it's always a tough game. It's a, it's a game.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: It is deciding for 20, 25 what's going to happen or my deciding what's going to happen over the next five years. I generally plan in five year increments. If you put a one online the first three or four years when it has the greatest production. So what does that look like in three years? And then I'm looking at what's going to happen in 10. If I look in the next six to 12 months, you might just go nuts because it changes every hour by the hour.
[00:20:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So that's probably where it's throw it up in the air and see what happens.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the, I mean, when the CEO of Exxon down, they all said the same thing. We're going to keep doing what we do.
[00:20:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Cash flow, we're going to assume you're going to keep well below 65. We're going to assume X, Y and Z. And so you can tell us drill baby drill. Until you give us any financial assurance or reassurance or any incentives, we're staying the course. And, and it is what it is.
[00:21:00] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: And I think, and that makes sense, you gotta, you gotta pick a path and you gotta go with it.
[00:21:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: And you just gotta follow what's going on out there.
All right. Any, any other advice you would give investors about oil and gas in general? How to get a hold of you?
What kind of investors are you looking for? Like, do you only specialize in accredited investors? Are there any other opportunities out there for anybody who's not just kind of give me an idea or do you stay in that realm of accredited investors?
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Well, we only deal with accredited investors because of our registration with the sec.
We now are setting up our own Investment advisory firm called Eckerd Financial Services, Family Offices, Financial Advisors cannot or will not do business. We have an advisory that'll be Thanksgiving. But here's the advice I would give all your investors. Ready? Whether you buy directly into oil and gas investments like Eckard has, or whether you buy energy stocks, I firmly believe the dollar is going to sink. It's going to cause oil and gas price to go up. And for whatever basis, if you don't have energy in your portfolio, you don't have a counterbalance to your seesaw. And so there's a lot of investments that are negatively correlated to rising commodity price. With the dollar headed down with oil prices where they're at with an upward tick. If you look back at 2002 to 2008, you look back at the previous up and downturn and it's a very clear pattern. I would just tell all your listeners, if you buy the stocks, buy an ETF or buy direct, do what's best for your personal net worth, but add a little bit, add 2, 3, 5% offset. I find that 95% of most investors have no energy in their portfolio whatsoever. And that to me just kind of takes away that counterbalance. When things get a little. I think we're headed to stagflation. I think we're going to see a kind of a raging market. I think we have inflation. I think we're going to be flatline. If you squeeze the top line in the profits, we're still busy. We're just not making as much money. I think a lot of industry is going to be very busy making very little profit. It's going to be pretty precarious. And I do not think inflation's gone away. So that means what I got to look at is how inflation is going to factor into oil. Oil should do much better. Gas should be doing much better. And those are things that I want in my portfolio.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: All right, I was going to ask you the last question.
What is the vision for your company in the next five to ten years? Sounds like you.
You've got some exciting stuff coming at the end of the year.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: Yeah, we had, we set our vision tour back in January. As the chairman, I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to accumulate and acquire $10 billion in assets over the next 10 years. We're going to end up with about three and a half billion dollars in minerals, about three billion in drilling, and about three billion in ancillary assets like producing wells. Right now there's an Absolute void of capital. And so what happened is with the big mergers with Exxon and Pioneer E, when they merged, what they did was they extended the Runway of their future drilling opportunity. Which means now you know, Exxon has wells they can drill up into 2070, right?
[00:24:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: The only difference is when they buy in large 60 billion dollar bundles, they got 2 or 3 billion of assets they really don't want. Well, those, those crumbs, those assets are incredibly valuable. Problem is there's no buyers. So we're finding ourselves looking at a hundred, two hundred, five hundred million dollars assets that we just bought one back in May that we think we paid almost 25% lower than what the market value was because there's no buyers. So there's a really big opportunity in the next 36 months to buy assets the majors have acquired by bundling that they don't want. You can muster the cash and the capital and the investors to do it. Tremendous upside value, Very, very low risk. Cash flowing from day one. And really no competition because no one can raise the money.
So as long as we can do that, the vision for record is simple. Keep our head down, keep our mouth shut, stay cash, no debt, and just incrementally keep buying what we're buying. I think in 10 years we'll have $10 billion assets making 1 1/2 to 2 billion a year in distribution. And then the ultimate goal is someone's going to knock on the door in about 10 or 15 years and say we're looking for another big company to buy.
We offer you guys 15, 20, 30 billion for your company. We'll all decide does it make sense or not, and then we cash out. But honestly, with how much cash we're making, it's going to have to be a pretty substantial offer. So that's kind of the ten year vision. If I don't drop dead or my wife's boyfriend doesn't kick me out of the house.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: You know, whichever happens first.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Right, whichever happens first.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Hilarious.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: All right, really quick then. How do investors get a hold of you? What is the minimum investment and what kind of return should they expect?
[00:25:34] Speaker C: So let's start with the back end first. Our minerals are averaging 11.7% return per annum, cash on cash, over 101 portfolios.
Obviously some do much, much better work in interest drilling the wells. We're averaging about 92% return of capital invested within 24 months. We're averaging over 30% annualized return. We've had one bad hole that we drilled in the last six Years. So we're hitting everything. I mean, sometimes first distributions are 18 to 35% return in the first check. So that's real exciting.
The other thing I would tell you is minimum investment size. Normally it's 25,000 on minerals. It's like 50,000 on drilling. We have other ventures that may be higher, but here's the way we really view it, Kerry. We just want to know what's best for you. If you say, Look, I got 200,000 investors this year, we're going to tell you, look, be in 10 portfolios at 20,000 or spread across five portfolios because it's important that you're successful and it's important you're diversified. Getting hold of me is easy. It's eckard enterprises.com but what's real important is we built probably the only app of its kind called Eckerd Insights. You go to our website, eckerdenterprises.com it's called eckerd Insights. Eckerd Insights is the only alternative asset app of its kind. Now, you can go on there without putting any financial information. We're not going to sell your name.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:26:48] Speaker C: I'm just interested. Now you have all these hundreds and hundreds of hours of videos and how they only get us. The industry works. We give you everything we know from an informational standpoint. Okay, great. Now you say, I like what I see. Maybe now I want to look at some actual projects. You just go back and say, now I'm ready to look. I'm accredited. I want to look. We have our own partner. Partner online where clients can sell each other their own alternative assets. We don't charge any fee for that. So deaths, cancer, divorces, clients are able to sell each other minerals. We don't charge a fee for that. But I say this because there's not a single site you can go get oil and Gas101. So what we do is create that one on one through Eckerd Insights where if you sign up and go to it, you have everything you want. We want you to be the smartest, most educated oil and gas investor in the market. One, you'll appreciate oil and gas. Number two, by pure process of deduction, you're gonna say, here's Troy's amount of information. There's no one even close. That should tell you alone why the other potential sponsors may be somebody you may not want to get involved with.
[00:27:47] Speaker D: Yeah, they just can't compete.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: I mean, as an investor, be smart, ask questions, get answers. Can't get answers. Run.
Find another option.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: That's right. Like a bear is chasing you. Go, go, go.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: That's right.
Well, I don't have anything else. Do you have anything else for us?
[00:28:05] Speaker C: No. I will say this one thing as a positive comment to investors out there. This isn't the first correction, it won't be the last. Having gone through that in 2008, I want to offer some words of encouragement, which is you're already rich. You're already part of the 1% richest people on the planet. Don't cry, don't whine. Don't beat yourself over bad investments. It's water to the bridge. But today you got to know you're in the most optimistic, most opportunistic country in the world. Slow down. Don't feed three legged horses. Don't save crummy investments. Get real about what you're doing and start with a clean piece of paper and start building the next five years of your career and your life and your investments because we have all the resources. You just got to have the right attitude. That's what I think.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Love it. All right, you heard it here first. Check out Eckert Insights. That is where I'm headed.
Thank you so much. We appreciate it, Troy, for your time. And we'll talk to you soon. And for all the rest of you out there, we'll see you next time on the Preferred Way.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us for another episode where retirement savers meet alternative investment.
Can't wait for the next episode. To learn more, visit our
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