Transcript

I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About

From School of Hard Knocks · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 20 min · 5,106 words · 71 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About", an episode of School of Hard Knocks published September 7, 2025 (20 min, about 5,106 words). It mentions 15 people, works and ideas, including oil and gas, Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), natural gas, Texas, upstream oil and gas.

What this episode is about

The oil and gas industry has generated more billionaires than any other sector, including tech and real estate, driving immense wealth creation. This exploration takes us to Texas, where we'll meet Brent Franklin, a prominent oil mogul, to learn about his success in the field and discover how to invest in this lucrative market.

Key takeaways

  • Oil and gas has minted more billionaires than tech, proving black gold is still the gold standard.
  • Brent Franklin turned grass mowing into a billion-dollar empire, proving that opportunity often dresses like work.
  • If you want to make a small fortune in oil, start with a large one; the barrier to entry is steep.
  • Today's oil landscape is risky yet ripe, as old-school drilling experiences a capital shortage—time to dig deeper!
  • Investing in oil isn’t just about cash; it’s a masterclass in risk tolerance and problem-solving on a global scale.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 3:00: oil and gas, Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), billionaire, Texas
  2. – 6:00: oil and gas, natural gas, oil wells
  3. – 9:00: oil and gas, billionaire, oil wells, Midland Odessa
  4. – 12:00: oil and gas, Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Rise Capital
  5. – 15:00: oil and gas, midstream, downstream, natural gas
  6. – 18:00: oil and gas, natural gas, social media marketing
  7. – 19:33: billionaire

Notable quotes from "I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About"

  • All right, you guys. So, we just got to the oil rig out here in ElCampo, Texas.
    about Texas · at
  • So our company did about $40 million last year across all of our platforms.
    about Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin) · at
  • Natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. And people don't realize how to get in. They like the concept of oil and gas, but they don't know entry points. And people can't invest in.
    about natural gas · at
  • So, a lot of people say, Hey, I got an oil rig. I got an oil well. A lot of people don't know the difference between a rig and a well. This is a drilling rig. Okay. Back behind…
    about oil wells · at
  • Whenever I first got into oil and gas, I was actually out on a drilling rig like this. I had applied for a job out in Midland Odessa. Didn't really know anything about oil and…
    about Midland Odessa · at
  • Play the game. And if you don't, you got to partner with somebody that does. And that's exactly why we created Rise Capital.
    about Rise Capital · at
  • Sectors of oil and gas. There's upstream, there's downstream, and there's midstream. This is what's called upstream oil and gas. This is actually where we explore and produce…
    about upstream oil and gas · at
  • Oil and gas is a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's always going to be needed. Everything that you touch today, the paint that's in these shirts, the gas that's in your car, everything.
    about oil and gas · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin) — Person · Main guest · 4 mentions · first at
    He is presented as an oil-and-gas mogul explaining how he built a drilling and investment business, how rigs/wells work, and how investors can participate via fund structures.

Companies & orgs

  • Rise Capital — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at
    Brent Franklin cites Rise Capital as the vehicle created to help people participate and 'play the game' with knowledgeable partners, implying an investment platform/fund manager.

Concepts & topics

  • oil and gas — Concept · Core topic · 23 mentions · first at
    The episode frames oil and gas as a wealth-creating industry and uses it to discuss operations, investing, risk, and the upstream/midstream/downstream value chain.
  • natural gas — Concept · Core topic · 4 mentions · first at
    Brent Franklin emphasizes natural gas as the best opportunity now, citing LNG exports, power demand (AI/data centers), and using gas to generate electricity for crypto mining.
  • upstream oil and gas — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
    Brent Franklin positions the rig operations as upstream (exploration/production), distinguishing it from midstream transport and downstream refining.
  • oil wells — Concept · Operational topic · 4 mentions · first at
    Brent Franklin clarifies the difference between drilling rigs and oil wells and explains how wells connect to tank batteries and pipelines after production.
  • midstream — Concept · Supporting topic · 2 mentions · first at
    Midstream is defined as transportation/logistics (pipelines, trucks) moving oil to tanks and gas to pipelines between upstream production and downstream refining.
    This, this oil once it hits or doesn't hit will go to a tank battery. The oil goes to a tank. The natural gas goes to a pipeline. That's called your midstream. Midstream is the…
  • social media marketing — Concept · Business strategy topic · 1 mention · first at
    Brent Franklin argues marketing (especially social media) is more powerful than sales and underutilized in oil and gas, positioning it as a competitive advantage.
    A lot of people downplay social media marketing, especially in the oil and gas industry, cuz they're like 100 years old. And they've done it the same way.
  • billionaire — Concept · Framing concept · 6 mentions · first at
    The episode uses billionaire-making as a hook to emphasize oil and gas wealth creation and to promote access to high-net-worth mentorship via the School of Mentors.
    There's one industry that has quietly created more billionaires than tech, crypto, or even real estate. An industry that built dynasties, powered entire nations, and still fuels untouchable wealth today. That industry is oil and.
  • downstream — Concept · Supporting topic · 2 mentions · first at
    Downstream is explained as the refining stage where produced hydrocarbons are turned into gasoline, diesel, and other products.
    Transporting oil and gas. It could be your trucks, your logistics, your pipeline. And then you've got what's called downstream. This is your refineries. This is companies that…
  • H2S gas — Concept · Safety topic · 1 mention · first at
    Hydrogen sulfide is discussed as a hazardous gas requiring monitoring; Brent Franklin notes the site has no H2S and explains best practices (H2S monitor).
    Typically, we'd wear a monitor called an H2S monitor, which is always best practice to have. But because this well is plugged off at the bottom, and we have all of the wellbor basically sealed.
  • fire retardant clothing — Concept · Safety topic · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as required PPE (FRCs) before going onto a live drilling rig, reinforcing the dangerous nature of oilfield work.
    Number one is typically you would wear F FRC's. These are fire retardant clothing. This is in case of any, type of burns or heat comes to you. In oil and gas, everything is heavy. So, there's a lot of sharp.
  • ENP — Concept · Technical concept · 1 mention
    Used to label the upstream segment as 'exploring and producing' (E&P), clarifying where value is created before midstream transport and downstream refining.
    Upstream...known as ENTP...exploring and producing...

Places & events

  • Texas — Place · Primary setting · 2 mentions · first at
    The interview takes place in a Texas oil field (El Campo, Texas), reinforcing the on-site operational focus and oilfield context.
  • Midland Odessa — Place · Referenced origin point · 2 mentions · first at
    It is cited as the place where Brent Franklin got a call that led to his first oil rig job, marking the start of his oilfield career.

Full transcript with timestamps

There's one industry that has quietly created more billionaires than tech, crypto, or even real estate. An industry that built dynasties, powered entire nations, and still fuels untouchable wealth today. That industry is oil and gas. And today, we're going straight to the source. I'm headed out to the literal Texas oil field to meet with one of the biggest oil moguls in the entire world, and his name, it's Brent Franklin, and he's been drilling oil wells all over the nation while making hundreds of millions of dollars doing so. We're going to be walking his rigs, hear how he built his empire, and how oil and gas continues to mint millionaires and billionaires even in today's world. So, this video is about to be insane from start to finish. So, stay tuned until the end. With that being said, let's get this video on the way.

All right, you guys. So, we just got to the oil rig out here in ElCampo, Texas. Yes, we are in the middle of nowhere. But yes, this business, these oil rigs have made more millionaires and billionaires in just about any industry in the world. So, I'm going to be interviewing one of the biggest oil moguls in not just Texas, but in the entire United States, you guys. So, let's go meet up with Brent right now and go figure out how the hell he even got into this business, why this business makes people so rich, and how you can start investing your money and making it work for you in oil. I never in my life thought that I would ever be at a damn oil rig right now. But I got to learn about this business myself because the returns in oil, man, I've heard it could be more than real estate, more than the stock market. So, this is going to be a master class on all things oil and gas. You guys, come on. There he

is. What's going on, brother? How's it going? James, we're in Franklin. How are you?

Good, man. It's good to meet you. Good to meet you as well. So, you own this right here?

I do. I do. How the hell did you even get into oil and gas? Man, it was crazy. I was mowing grass right after I got out of the Navy and uh you know I got a phone call from a buddy out Midland Odessa. So he's like hey man I got you a job on an oil rig. I packed my [ __ ] and I rolled out and uh got on a rig and a couple years later ended up buying a couple and you know now we own oil and gas business and investment companies.

Now for the people that don't understand how much money that they can actually make in oil and gas. How much money have you made in the last year through oil and gas?

So our company did about $40 million last year across all of our platforms. 40 million.

That's right. And you don't just own the rig, you own all aspects of it. Yeah. So what we do is simple. We buy distressed offmarket oil and gas investment properties and then we go out there and we fix them up. We drill wells. We fix wells. A lot of people in oil and gas overlever their properties or they don't know how to raise money properly. And so what we've done is we built a fund structure that allows people to not only understand but invest in it without having to become an oil company.

Now I want this video to serve as a master class for everybody watching that has no idea why people can get so rich off of oil and gas. Can you give us the blueprint today on how that's possible? Yeah. So, a lot of people talk about getting rich off oil and gas at oil field money. One of my favorite sayings is if you want to make a small fortune in oil and gas, start with a large fortune. It takes a lot of loss, a lot of headaches in oil and gas. And it's not just a get-richquick deal. You have to be consistent. You have to diversify.

And you got to have a risk tolerance. But we're going to dive in all that today.

And could we actually go up on the rig as well and check it out? You want to go up on the rig?

Is that cool? All right. Signal it up, man. Before that, is this the office right here?

Yeah. Yeah, let's take a look. Check it out. Let's go check it out. Yeah. So, right here is the camp house for our pusher. What's going on there?

Cameron is our tool pusher. What he does is he turns around and he makes sure that the rig is running. It's a 24/7 operation when we start drilling.

So, you got to have a team when you're in this business. Oh, man. You have to have an army. You have to have people that know what they're doing that are experienced. Safety is absolutely super important. You know, people see oil rigs and oil wells and they just think, you know, black gold and money, but in reality, this is the most dangerous job in the world.

Is it too late to get into oil and gas? Right now is the actual perfect time. you know, well, it's a different market today. There's a lot of people that have invested in oil and gas the same way, and it's not turned out good for them. Today's market, there's a lack of capital. There's not as many of these conventional rigs. People call this old school drilling that there used to be. And it's a dying breed. You know, we're going to use oil and gas forever. Natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. And people don't realize how to get in. They like the concept of oil and gas, but they don't know entry points. And people can't invest in things that they don't understand. And so me coming in as an investor, learning the hard way and taking a ton of losses, getting taken advantage of by scrupulous oil companies, being promised the dream by promoters, I said, you know what, money doesn't come from chasing money.

Money comes from chasing problems and monetizing the solution to those problems. So what I did is I took every problem that I had as an investor in the oil field. I put my pen to the pad and I really wrote out a good plan that works because why do people invest in oil and gas? You see it on the ads, right? Tax benefits. Oil and gas is one of the only industries where you can actually write off your investments against your active income when the deals are structured properly. In addition to that, I don't see any of these multif family deals or real estate deals that people are doing.

They can actually get you 100% return of your investment in less than a year when structured properly.

So, what's going on right here? What's going on? Okay, so this is one of our monitoring systems. This is called a peson system. And up on our rig floor, we've got our drilling rig equipped with electronics that let us know what's going into the ground. You can imagine going back into like the 1950s and 1960s. They didn't have anything like that. They're just throwing chains and I can show you some videos of it. It was really, really unsafe. But nowadays, technology, we're watching everything. So, right here up at the top left, you can see it tells us exactly our whole depth, which is 4599.5 ft. It tells us exactly where our bit is, and it tells us what we're doing right now. So, right now, what we're doing is called tripping pipe. This is the process of going in or out of the hole where they're taking pipe joints and connecting them together. And we're about to actually go up on the rig

floor. And I'll show you all about tripping in a second. It also has logs on here. It tells us, you know, if we're going to hit any type of gas, what type of formations we're drilling in, whether it's rock, sand, shell, and so this is a really, really crucial piece for Cameron to be able to sit here and understand what's going on on the rig floor at all times because if you just look out there right now, you can't really tell what's going on. So, this is kind of like our electronic eyes and ears on the floor.

I got a bunch of questions for you, but before we get back into the interview, could we actually go check out and see the full operations on what's going on out there? Oh yeah, let's rock and roll.

Let's go. Let's go check it out. Safety first, bro. I got to get this on first.

That's right. That's right. So, a few things before we go up on the rig. Number one is typically you would wear F FRC's. These are fire retardant clothing. This is in case of any, you know, type of burns or heat comes to you. In oil and gas, everything is heavy. So, there's a lot of sharp objects, there's a lot of heavy objects, and there's a lot of moving parts. Right now, we're going up on a live drilling rig, okay? And we just want to let people know that right now, we're on a well site that has no H2S gas. Typically, we'd wear a monitor called an H2S monitor, which is always best practice to have. But because this well is plugged off at the bottom, and we have all of the wellbor basically sealed off, we know that there's no H2S present. Typically, I'd have you wear this, but today I'm going to just let you go up here and take a look at it.

So, we are doing this safely and let's go take a look. Guys, this video has been insane so far. We're about to get right back to it, but I need to let you guys know something real quick. Look, 99% of people will never in their entire life get the chance to meet with and learn from an oil mogul, a billionaire or any ultra successful entrepreneur and ask them questions directly. But over the last year, guys, I built the number one most powerful entrepreneur network in private community for business owners and entrepreneurs in the entire world and it's called the school of mentors. And every single week, guys, I bring in the millionaires and billionaires I interview on this channel and they mentor our members live. When you join, you literally get one-on-one advice and direct mentorship from the most successful business owners in the entire world. You will collapse years of trial and error into just weeks cuz you're

learning from the most successful people on the planet. This is the closest thing that you will ever have to having a billionaire in your corner and multi-millionaires giving you advice every single week. So, if you want to join, listen, all you have to do is go down and click the link in the description of this video to join the number one community for business owners in the entire world. So, I can't wait to see you on the inside. That being said, let's get back to the video.

I'm a new person right now, but I think it's time to go out to the rig and see what's really going on right now.

All right, man. Be careful. Hey, by the way, everything's dirty. So, uh, don't touch nothing.

I got you. I got you. Before we head on out there, what exactly is this? So, you know, a lot of people say, "Hey, I got an oil rig. I got an oil well." A lot of people don't know the difference between a rig and a well. This is a drilling rig. Okay. Back behind me over here, these are oil wells. So, a lot of people, you've heard them say, "Oh, my auntie's got oil rigs." She probably has oil wells that are drilled by oil rigs. So, today we're out here. This is our 850 horsepower top drive drilling rig.

Let's go check it out. Let's go. How much does this thing make a day? So, we charge our customers $14,500 a day every single day that we operate this drilling rig. So, now we're inside of the doghouse. This is our main control area. Once again, this has computers where we can monitor. We've got the driller standing outside here. So, this is where, you know, this is where the magic happens whenever it comes to drilling.

Did you have a mentor to get into this business? Whenever I first got into oil and gas, I was actually out on a drilling rig like this. I had applied for a job out in Midland Odessa. Didn't really know anything about oil and gas. I just knew how to move your ass hand, you know, and so I didn't really know exactly what I was doing. I was just on the equipment. And I actually started getting into the investing period about 2016, 2017.

How much money does somebody need to start investing into oil and gas? So oil and gas investments are typically structured only where accredited investors can participate. There's a lot of oil and gas companies that structure their investments wrong and they try to sell you a piece of a lease as real estate. But US securities law states that whenever you fractionalize oil and gas lease, it becomes a security. So the first step is that somebody needs to be an accredited investor and have a substantial amount of capital and be able to bear total loss before ever getting in the industry, regardless of how it's structured. So $100,000 is a great spot to start. And my deal is is I never recommend putting your whole $100,000 in one well, in one new drill, or in any single company due to the fact is there is a lot of volatility in here.

And with that being said, there's not a way to mitigate risk. I believe that there's a way to mitigate loss whenever it comes to oil and gas. As an investor, what do investors ask for? They say, "Hey, how do I get return of investment?" Right? You go put 100 grand in a well and it doesn't work out for whatever reason. You hate the company. Oh, they were terrible. They lost my money. Tax deductions. Tax deductions. that doesn't typically get people to where they need to be in investments.

How are the returns on oil and gas compared to, let's say, the stock market compared to real estate? Which one, in your opinion, has the most favorable returns for investors?

Well, I'm not in the oil and gas business for my health, right? So, I've been doing real estate for over 10 years. I started out wholesaling, fixing up properties, and flipping them, and I created a lot of income for myself. The problem was is I had huge capital gains, huge tax liabilities, and the depreciation didn't offset what I had coming in. I love real estate. Real estate will always be one of my babies. I like it for long-term appreciation. Stock market that gets everybody's little gambling itch aside, right?

Doesn't really matter what stock you pick. The people in the stock market are trying to buy in low, capitalize on it, and exit at the right time. And I see people riding waves cuz they're not professional investors. I think that every market has a spot for good, smart, sophisticated investors. I think that you got to be diversified across everything. You just have to know how to play the game. And if you don't, you got to partner with somebody that does. And that's exactly why we created Rise Capital.

Let's go check out over here. Let's do it, man. All right. All right. So, first things first. You want some rough neck Starbucks, bro?

You want to take a shot? I'm all good. All right. Let's go check out the rig floor. Let's

go check it out. So, what is this right here? And break it down for everybody. Yeah. So, right now we're on the rig floor, and this is a top drive drilling rig. There's two types of drilling rigs that we work with. One is called a Kelly rig. The other one is called a top drive.

How expensive is this equipment? Well, it depends. If you buy it brand new, this rig right here cost you about $6.5 million.

Did you Did you drop that on that? Oh, no, bro. So, what we were able to do is we were able to find a seller who had a couple issues with their business and we actually bought this from a company that bought it from a bankruptcy. So, we paid about 15 cents on the dollar for the rig. We inherited all the contracts and uh we picked it up for dirt cheap.

So, you're always looking for opportunities. Absolutely. Money is saved by purchasing assets that are undervalued and usually from people that are in a bind

cuz they probably bought that for way more money than you ended up buying it on.

Yeah. I I believe they paid over $5 million for this piece of equipment. Now, you mentioned that you charge your I guess customers $14,000 a day for here. Who are you selling to? Is it gas stations? Like what what types of companies are you selling your oil to?

So a lot of people have the misconception on oil and gas that you just make gasoline right out of the ground. Right. So there's three main sectors of oil and gas. There's upstream, there's downstream, and there's midstream. This is what's called upstream oil and gas. This is actually where we explore and produce known as ENTP. This is where we're exploring and producing oil and gas. Once we produce this, this oil once it hits or doesn't hit will go to a tank battery. The oil goes to a tank. The natural gas goes to a pipeline. That's called your midstream. Midstream is the process of transporting oil and gas. It could be your trucks, your logistics, your pipeline. And then you've got what's called downstream. This is your refineries. This is companies that are actually purchasing the product for us using mid-stream companies to get it there and they're turning around.

They're refining it to gasoline, diesel, different types of products. There's three types of oil and gas. Upstream drilling, midstream shipping. That's right.

Downstream produce. Look at you. You're a land man already. Oh, come on. There's guys that make money in oil and gas. Some are the land man. Are these people going like doortodoor and they're finding people with a lot of acres, a lot of land and being like, "Hey, our technology seed that you've got oil here. Let's strike a deal." What is it? 7030 is like the standard or something like that. Can you kind of explain what that process is like?

Yeah. So, what happens is is most people that are in oil and gas upstream don't actually own the property. The people that own the surface are the surface owners and the people that own below the surface are the mineral owners. There might be one mineral owner. There might be a thousand mineral owners, literally. And so what happens is is when there's an area of interest, the land man that you see on TV is a person that goes out and is typically finding out who owns the title and finding that area of interest and they're going out and negotiating that oil and gas lease. Now, whenever it comes to trades, this is your oil and gas lease. You get to pick what you want to offer somebody just like you would in real estate. For instance, most mineral owners are looking for what's called a 25% royalty.

This means that when you extract oil and gas, they're getting 25% of the gross proceeds before the expenses. This is your royalty interest. It's also known as the NRI. So, somebody tells you, "Hey, we got an oil and gas lease and it's a 20% NRI." You know that the mineral owner is getting 20% of the gross revenue and then the oil company gets that other 80%. That other 80% is known as the working interest. And this is where people go in and they actually get to buy just like a tenant in common. They're buying a portion of the lease where they pay a portion of the drilling, but they get a portion of the proceeds if the well is commercially producable.

So, there's a lot of people in oil and gas. What separates you from 99% of other people?

What's big about my company that a lot of people wish they could do that they can't is we understand investment, but we also understand the industry. Most people that go out and raise money for oil and gas, known as promoters, they're just trying to sell somebody's opportunity and make a big markup on it. We're actually vertically integrated and invested in everything that we're doing. So, we know how to find the leases. We know how to extract the oil. We actually have the equipment to drill and we've created a fund structure unlike anything else that's ever existed. It operates a little bit like a trading platform. And when we get back to the office, I'm going to tell you all about it.

Before we do that, we got to I got to operate over here, don't I? Yeah, man. So, uh I think it's time that uh we break you out, Worm.

Let's go. Let's go. Hand those mics over and we're going to teach you about how to get this going. All right. So, first things first, we're going to make sure you get some safety gloves on. Make sure you don't hit anything sharp, anything heavy. Everything out here is super heavy and

it can kill you. Oh, man. It it'll crush you real quick. All right. So, what they're doing right now is they're coming down with the top drive. You're going to help this hand right here. You're going to pull these slips. Get up there. Grab that slip. It's going to pick up. Don't put your hand ready. Here we go. Now, you're going to get ready. Whenever this comes up, they're going to pick it up past the joint, past the collar. You're going to throw the slips in there. What these slips do is it's got teeth in there. They grab the pipe and hold it so it doesn't go down. So, we're going to pull out two joints at a time.

This is a devil rig. Get ready. There you go. Throw them. Nice and heavy, ain't it?

Ready to get on them tongs? Yes, sir. Watch it, boy. Everything heavy. Everything heavy. Watch out for that hole. YouTubers.

Are you a good salesman? I'm a closer, baby. Million dollar closer. Give me your best sales and negotiation advice right here.

You can make millions in sales, but you can make billions in marketing. I think the marketing is the most important part of any business. If you have the best product in the world and nobody knows what you have, you don't have anything. A lot of people downplay social media marketing, especially in the oil and gas industry, cuz they're like 100 years old. And they've done it the same way. But let me tell you something. Social media marketing knows everything about you. They know where you live, what you drive, your credit score, your race, everything. So, if you're not marketing on social media, you're going to get left behind. And sales, that's just part of it. If you got a good product that helps people, that is where it comes from. Money doesn't come from chasing money. Money comes from chasing problems and monetizing the solution to people's problems or providing a product or service that helps them.

You know, they don't teach this in school right? No. So, what school teaches you is to give your money away, right? They teach you go borrow money, go to college, get a job, raise money, put it in your 401k, give it to big business. What they don't teach you is how to go out there and solve somebody's problem and show them that you have the solution and how to monetize that.

So why is oil and gas such a billion dollar industry? Oil and gas is a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's always going to be needed. Everything that you touch today, the paint that's in these shirts, the gas that's in your car, everything.

The phone, the phone, man, it has lithium. Somebody's got to get out here and do this work. And you don't see the snowflakes today, especially in my generation, 35 years young, you don't see them out here trying to do this. People are lazy. They want to be YouTube influencers, but not everybody's got what it takes. You want to make money, you got to get out here and bust your ass.

What is the best part of oil to get into right now? What I'm focused on 100% right now is natural gas exploration and production.

Not so not oil. Not oil, man. Well, oil is a pain in the ass. You got to deal with pump jacks. You got to deal with a lot of mechanical failures. Some of the bigger companies, they they make these big bursts of oil.

Nobody talks about natural gas. Well, that's exactly why you should do it. You should always go for things the media is not talking about. Natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. We have more LG plants opening up and the export of natural gas and liqufied natural gas is massive right now. Anybody who is truly an oil and gas investor will tell you they're probably bullish on gas right now because that's where everything's coming from. You got electricity coming from it. You got heat coming from it. Hell, you got all kinds of these data centers. Let's talk about AI. And by the way, we're mining Bitcoin off of it. We take natural gas, run it into a generator, create electricity, and have lowcost power to mine cryptocurrency.

Did you have anybody that doubted you in business? Man, I've always had people that doubted me. I think that people always doubt things, right? You get around people that can't see your vision. They don't know what you're doing. They can't understand your mind. And only thing that matters is results. I've had to cut off so many friends. You can have good people around you that are the wrong people. And the faster you get rid of them, the better. Bad relationships, people getting, you know, the wrong girlfriend, hanging around the wrong people that are doing the wrong things.

if you want to be successful. You have got to pay to be in the rooms with people that are successful. I avoided going to so many masterminds and hanging out with other like-minded people because I thought, what are they going to teach me? And at the end of the day, it wasn't about them teaching me. It was just about paying to be in the room with the other people that paid to be in the room.

How old are you now? 35. Brent, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more message for the younger generation, what would that be?

Don't let anybody ever stop you from chasing your dreams. Figure out something you're good at. Solve a problem. Figure out what you stand for and market your ass off. Let everybody know who you are and what you stand for. Today's world is so full of hate. If you go look at any ad, even this one, on social media, you're going to see the keyboard warriors. They're sitting at home eating Cheetos in their panties, doing nothing, trying to stop entrepreneurs and successful people like ourselves from chasing our dream. Don't let anybody stop you from ever chasing your dreams.

All right, you guys. That's a wrap on today's video. Be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content, cuz I'm going all over the world to bring you guys the biggest, the most unique, the best business owners in the world to give you guys real advice to become millionaires in today's world. And be sure to like and subscribe. And if you have not already done so, go down, click the link in the description of this video to join the number one community for business owners in the world, cuz every week I host live calls with the millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs that I interview on this channel. Where can everybody find you at?

You can look me up on Instagram at realm milliondoll closer. You can see us on one of these uh links.

We appreciate you having us out. Absolutely. Hey, this is once in a lifetime right here. This is

All right. To the truck hand.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About"?

James (Guest), Brent Franklin (Guest).

What is "I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About" about?

The oil and gas industry has generated more billionaires than any other sector, including tech and real estate, driving immense wealth creation. This exploration takes us to Texas, where we'll meet Brent Franklin, a prominent oil mogul, to learn about his success in the field and discover how to invest in this lucrative market.

What is mentioned in this School of Hard Knocks episode?

15 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including oil and gas, Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), natural gas, Texas, upstream oil and gas, oil wells. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "I Investigated the $1 Trillion Industry Nobody Talks About"?

The episode runs 20 min; the transcript is about 5,106 words in 71 timestamped sections.

More from School of Hard Knocks

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.