Episode 44: The Wealth Pyramid: Build Before You Scale

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In this episode with Curtis May, Dave Wolcott breaks down one of the most misunderstood truths in wealth building: it’s not about chasing higher returns—it’s about fixing your structure. Too many high-income earners remain financially fragile because they skip the foundational steps and jump straight into “home run” investments. Dave unpacks why true wealth starts with building a strong financial base—focused on liquidity, protection, and tax efficiency—before layering on growth strategies.

Dave introduces the Wealth Pyramid framework, a contrarian alternative to traditional Wall Street portfolio models. Instead of relying on a 60/40 allocation, he explains how to build from the ground up: starting with a solid foundation (like cash value life insurance for liquidity and safety), then stacking tax-efficient, income-producing assets like real estate, energy, and private credit, and finally placing more speculative investments at the top. He also shares why volatility creates opportunity—not risk—for those with the right structure, and how shifting from the “default wealth track” can accelerate your path to financial freedom.

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I could talk for days about this, Curtis, and frankly, you know, I really want to help other people, right, dispel some of these myths and accelerate their trajectory to financial freedom and a life of abundance. Let me share this simplification that really everyone should have understood when we were in college, right? I’m sure your listeners have read the cashflow quadrant, but to simply explain that, if you are a business owner, you can be paying 20 % or less in taxes.

If you’re an investor, you can be paying 0 % in taxes, right? Just kind of uh level set that to what you’re paying today. If you are a W-2 employee, you’re probably paying the max amount of taxes. So actually one of the best potential strategies you can do is actually start to shift to that quadrant and become a business owner. And that could be, you know, creating a business, a side hustle.

It could be something like, you know, running a business that manages your investments, right? To start with. So you can actually, you know, make a shift even if you are working full time. You know what I see happening? I it’s brilliant. You know, because I think that a lot of people, they want to skip the, what I call the foundation. Cause it, know, we call it a foundation, you know, saving a percent, 15, 20 % or more of your gross income. And I mean the verb of saving.

Not, can’t save your way to financial freedom, but you do need to spend less than you make and capitalize your system. Right. You need to protect yourself. So we call it maximum protection. You got to play. I call it, got to build a moat around your castle, you know, you need liquidity and then you move the velocity.

I find I have to slow people down to speed them up because they want to jump right into velocity and they’re trying to hit home runs. Do you, you know, and what I love what you said there because there’s an order to this. There are phases of that and talk, tell them this slow down for a speed up in your language. You I build the foundation first.

Yeah, so we run a family office, Curtis, and we co-invest in different private opportunities with our investors. And we have a lot of high net worth investors that uh will come to us. They might have a liquidity event or they’re trying to reposition capital. And so our investment thesis uh aligns to the construct of just think about a pyramid for a moment, right? And rather than your typical pie chart that financial planners give of some asset allocation model of 60-40, right, that’s stocks, bonds, mutual funds type of thing, uh we’ve kind of turned this on our head, on its head, and have this pyramid where you want to build a strong foundation. So on a risk adjusted basis, you build the foundation really strong.

For us, this is where we see, you know, cash value, whole life insurance. right at the base, right? Because it’s even safer than banks, right? You’ve got the liquidity, you have the access, it’s got the multiplier and everything. So that’s the place where to your point, you can create defense. Now on top of this, now we like to structure some of these other asset classes that provide that trifecta of tax efficiency, passive income, and forced appreciation. And again, for us, We only focus on three asset classes, energy, real estate, and private credit. And then on top of the pyramid, that’s where you have more of your speculative type assets or your global equities in the stock market because they’re linear in nature.

They pay the most amount of taxes and there’s so much volatility to that. So what I would encourage people to do is, you know, when you have a moment and you’re not driving in the car, but literally just sit down on the back of a napkin. and draw out some percentages, you know, based on your risk tolerance. Cause you can see in that pyramid, the risk accelerates as you go up the pyramid. So really work through, you know, what is safe to you. Maybe someone wants 50 % of their portfolio allocation in something like infinite banking or very conservative, right? um And then other people, if you’re younger and you have more aggressive growth plans, right? It might be kind of a little bit flip-flopped. So.

just really think about that first. And then there’s tons of opportunities out there that you can start filling those buckets, but define your strategy and define your buckets first. like that. The, what are you in terms of, as we do this, these were going on, there’s tons of volatility, there’s a private credit crisis. Like as you, that’s why I talk about the foundation, but if you understand what you’re doing, Is either risk or there’s opportunity depending on what’s going on.

How do you see with all the volatility going on in the world as we record this, do you see opportunities and where do you see them? I only see opportunities, Curtis and it all starts internally because the external world is actually a reflection. It’s a complete mirror of what you’re thinking. So if you’re seeing risk, doubt, uncertainty, challenges out in the world, that’s what’s actually going to come back at you. Right. So we’re seeing opportunity because our oil and gas funds are performing extremely well right now.

And it was very intentionally positioned in this way, right. Where we had true diversification into a commodity that wasn’t, it’s completely uncorrelated to the stock market. Right. So we’ve always known that and had a certain allocation to that. Also on the private credit, it’s quite interesting because, again, you can just kind of take a headline, but what is Warren Buffett’s one of his philosophies, right? Never invest in something you don’t understand, right? If you look more into the industry, we actually have a private credit fund that has been performing at like almost over 2 % a month. And we’re invested in not, you funding AI companies at the front oh end of the spectrum as like an equity investment. We’re investing in things like HVAC companies that are cash flowing, know, transportation companies, they’re all cash flowing, it’s asset backed, it’s short term in nature.

uh we’ve been on this credit fund that has just absolutely been crushing in it. And again, it’s all non correlated to the stock market. So I would advise people to, you know, just uh heed warning to all of the sensationalism that’s out there. Now understand the facts from a quantitative standpoint, and then that way you can become a better investor and be your own best filter. Pantheon about the book and you know, what you got going on and how people can find out more about you and your company. Yeah, you bet, Curtis.

appreciate that. Really, the problem that we’re trying to solve for people is how to get out of this default wealth track by giving all of your hard earned capital to Wall Street and watching it go away and taxes, fees and inflation and really looking at a completely contrarian perspective like we really outlined today by reducing your taxes, by creating cash flow today, not Not when you’re 65, right? To managing your liquidity and really creating a system. Wealth building is actually, it’s a process. It’s a system. It’s not a one-time event, right? That’s how we create it.

The people who have one-time events, you see why they actually lose it very quickly, right? So at Pantheon, what our model is, is we actually have a software product called Pantheon Wealth OS that can actually take all your… uh alternative investments, including your life insurance policies actually, and then create portfolio allocation model based on how you would like to, you know, allocate capital. It also enables you to uh identify your goals and do scenario planning and things like that. So we start with, we have a software product. We also bring opportunities to our investors in the Pantheon Private Capital Network. where they can invest side by side with us, where I’m placing my individual capital into invisible opportunities that most people don’t see.

And then people who like to go deeper are actually, we have a mastermind community as well for people who really wanna learn these concepts further. And then also our family office, which is more of a, you know, kind of done for you model where we help uh people with wealth. A simple way, if you just go to contrarianwealthbuilder.com, uh We’ve put together a free masterclass if you’d like to learn about these concepts further. I could talk for days about this, Curtis, and frankly, the reason why I’m so passionate about this is it took me 25 years to really to become a professional investor and learn uh how things really work. And so I really want to help other people uh dispel some of these myths and accelerate their trajectory to financial freedom and a life of abundance.