What The Funk?

0:00 What's up, Funkers? We're back. I got Max G max Gagliardi a fellow podcaster in the oil and gas space a true influencer as a matter of fact, somebody who I've wanted to have on this podcast for

0:13 quite a while. So I think this is going to be a fun one Bon, thanks for having me

0:39 on I'm going to be a part of the world inspired you to kind of go down

0:47 this path of entrepreneurship and

0:51 your hands and, you know, eight or 10 different.

1:00 buckets.

1:02 Sure. Well, Max Gagliardi grew up in Oklahoma my whole life. I was born in the Tulsa area and moved to Oklahoma City area about ninth grade. My dad's an oil and gas is a geologist. And so he got

1:15 a new job, you know, how it goes in the industry. And we moved the family over here, and then graduated here in Edmond and then went to Oklahoma State and was there. And that was kind of my first,

1:27 actually got a hospitality degree. Luckily, I don't know that in my undergrad and then didn't know what I wanted to do. And ended up getting an internship and they went and got a space and went and

1:36 got an MBA. It was like right when the great financial crisis was hitting. And the job prospects were dim. And I was just like, I'm just going to reenroll and try to intern somewhere again. And

1:47 then that was actually a good move. I mean, I don't recommend getting an MBA right out of school. I think the MBAs are kind of, they're okay. I think you can learn a lot more doing just like real

1:56 world stuff, but it worked out for me because I got the job at Chesapeake. And that was just this massive launching point for my career and it's really fortunate because I had kind of a business

2:05 background with what I'd studied. And so I got into what they call the commercial group, which is basically the liaison between the people drilling the wells or operating group at Chesapeake and

2:15 then all the midstream and downstream counter parties and negotiating those contracts, coordinating the well connects. And I just got to do a lot of different things in that role 'cause it's like,

2:25 you kind of have to know a little bit about everything because you're dealing with all the different groups, you're dealing with drilling and production, you're dealing with the land people, you're

2:32 dealing with finance, you're dealing with the accounting groups, you're even dealing with the geologists, like they're out prospecting some new area and it's like, do we have takeaway, do we have

2:41 infrastructure? So you're kind of get to have your finger in the pie in a bunch of different areas and that was super interesting to me, but very fortunate to get put into that position because

2:50 there's a lot of things in the business world and oil and gas that I just wasn't very interested in. And so I just felt like I was kind of lucky And then I was also lucky because. Chesapeake at the

3:01 time was just going crazy. We had, I think at the peak, maybe 160, 570 rigs - Oh my God - And so there was just so much activity going on. Most primarily working in the mid-continent at the time.

3:13 So kind of Oklahoma, Texas. And we had like 60 something rigs going in our group. And I think that like if you had taken just our drill schedule, that would have been like the second largest

3:24 drilling company or active company in the US, just the subset of what we had going on just in the group I was in So got to drink from a fire hose and learn a bunch of stuff. And then a bunch of

3:35 things happened like the company started having some rough waters. Aubrey left or got ousted kind of and then he went and started American Energy Partners. I hung out there for a while with the new

3:45 management team. Got to kind of see one of these giant corporate change things is like and got to be part of the bobs coming in and doing all this stuff. And when the new management came in, it was

3:56 fine. But it was not really what I'd signed up for when I got there. And so I went and joined Aubrey over at AEP, actually she emailed him. He was one of those guys that was like, I don't care

4:06 how big or small you were on the totem pole. He really prided himself on answering people's emails. Like he would respond to you. And he was just a really short response. And so I remember sending

4:15 him my resume and being like, Hey, I wanna come over and join you guys are doing. And he was like, Sid and he's a Thunder game, portside and I can see him typing on his phone. And I just gave

4:22 email back right away. And he's like, Sid and sorry, Charlie. And we'll get you in. And so yeah, it's pretty crazy. And a lot of people have stories like that with him He's just one of these

4:30 guys that was kind of, he just really prided himself on connecting with people. And went over there and it was like, I was only there for about six or seven months. And it was just kind of a not

4:41 really a great situation. They bought a bunch of assets when oil was really high. And then things got rough. And our group kind of got shuffled around. And I basically got let go. Like me and my

4:51 boss and a bunch of people in our group, like they split everything out into business units. And I effectively got given like a package after I'd been there for like seven months. This was

5:00 something that I never experienced. Like my whole career, I'd been kind of on this upward trajectory. Even when I was younger, I had a lot of jobs and just had never been let go from anything. I

5:10 just was somebody that was very dedicated to what I was doing. So at the time, I was like, this is like a really bad thing. It was a really bad moment in my career. And it ended up being like the

5:20 best thing that's ever happened to me. I kind of took about a week or two off, just sort of playing golf and hanging out. I applied for a few jobs online. And I've told this sort of before But my

5:29 dad was like, what are you doing? And I was like, I played golf my buddies and did this. And he's like, that's not doing enough. He's like, you need to do more. He's like, go make business

5:38 cards. He's like, make an LLC. He's like, learn how to do that. He's like, learn how to start that up. He's like, you need to quit position yourself as a consultant today. And I was kind of

5:47 like, aren't consultants just people that are unemployed. But then they act like they're - he's like, no, he's like, don't care about what other people think about you. He's like, just position

5:53 yourself as a consultant. He's like, it'll open up more doors instead of just looking for. full-time things you can now also start pitching a bunch of people and being like, Hey, if you don't

6:02 have a full-time role, I can help you. And then within a week or two, after doing that, I landed my first consulting gig and realized the power behind consulting that you can make quite a bit more

6:15 on an hourly basis than you would make working at a full-time job. I was like, Well, this is cool. So started working there pretty quickly after the AAP thing I was working with a mid-sized

6:27 producer that just needed the services that I had but didn't have it internally and didn't really want to hire somebody. So started doing that and then my old VP, Mark Edge, left Chesapeake and we

6:38 went and grabbed a beer. He's 30 years my senior and he's like, Hey, I've got some leads on some consulting stuff. And I was like, Well, I'm doing some consulting stuff. And it's like, Well,

6:45 maybe we can work on some of these things together. And so for about the first month, maybe three or four weeks, we kind of just were now approaching people more as a team, like, Hey, we're both

6:54 available. We were kind of billing separately at first. like one, turn into two, turn into three, turn into four clients, like within a very fast time period, we're like, okay, like we need

7:04 to, we got to like, you know, create an LLC and create a partnership and start pitching this more as a company. And then it just kind of moved forward from there and like we went to half a dozen

7:15 clients and a dozen clients, we started having to hire people like within that first year. And then we in 2016, we started in COVID energy marketing. So when COVID energy was the first company and

7:24 then that was a consulting business and then in COVID energy marketing was the physical marketing business. So we actually, we had clients being like, why don't you just market our product like

7:32 you're doing everything else for us. And at the time we had a chance to bring in the old, one of our old employees at Chesapeake, who's a rock star to head up the marketing group. And she had

7:43 marketed like three and a half these a day at Chesapeake. And so we brought her in and started up the marketing group. And that was in 2016. So that was about two years later, a little less than

7:53 two years, about a year and a half later and then uh That kind of grew and we started staffing up and we got to, I think at that point we had like eight or nine employees. And then in 2018 we ran

8:06 out and got some private equity funding and we're chasing like some midstream deals and spent a few years, we got like a 200 million commitment from a private equity group and I joke around, I'm

8:15 like, I don't know if that was good or bad timing. It was like good timing in the sense that we got the, it was like bad timing in the sense that midstream got really challenging then. It was like

8:25 the term started getting so bad like no one can make any money because it got so competitive. And guys are doing crazy things like paying way too much for assets or just doing something like we

8:33 didn't think made sense. There's kind of good timing because we only did one deal that was kind of small, we exited it and then COVID hit and it was like, man, we're really glad we didn't spend

8:44 all this money because we would be in a really bad spot. Like a lot of guys were in a really bad spot kind of after COVID and even to now like midstreams really not recovered back to where it was.

8:55 And then our sponsor was like, well, we thought, well, they're going to pull the plug. And we saw the other businesses going, but we had like fooled up a management team just for the pipeline

9:02 stuff and the mid-stream stuff. And they were like, we want you guys to look at the energy transition. And we were like, OK, so done really what we'll do there. So we kicked around a bunch of

9:11 things, looked at carbon capture, looked at the services side. It actually got pretty close on what I thought was a really interesting company that had kind of a green angle to it. But ultimately,

9:21 I ended up winding that down with those guys And then that was like 2021. And then just kind of refocus on our core business. And one thing that we made a commitment to back in 2020 was to focus

9:30 more on tech. And that's kind of when the genesis of this product we have now called Incove View started. And we realized we had all this data. And we had - we're doing all these processes. It's

9:41 all manual. We also saw the problems that big companies had that do what we do. And we knew the pain points of working for a big company and not having any of these tools like in a tech-based format.

9:54 So we started building it internally. We have some very fortunate employees that are very tech savvy. And they started putting together some things on the back end about a couple years ago. And it

10:01 started out on the contract side, then it moved to the production side. And we just slowly building up that tech stack and then really rolling it out and testing it on the existing clients that we

10:10 had. And that was great for us because a lot of tech companies, they don't have a, you're trying to go to market and you're basically guinea pigging on brand new customers, whereas we could guinea

10:20 pig and test it out on existing clients and give it to them for free. And we found out that they really liked it. And so that's kind of, I don't want to get into the view product later, but I

10:30 started that. And then that was also when the podcast started. And again, I was just kind of like, I need to lean into tech. I'm not using media. I'm not using technology at all to like get the

10:39 word out. similar story to a lot of people. It was COVID and you couldn't go to conferences, you couldn't go to dinners, you couldn't do all these things. And so how do I connect with people?

10:48 And so kind of mid 2020, it took me like a while to hit posts on the first one, but I started kind of planning it. And then started recording them in like November, December 2020, banked up a few,

10:58 and then launched it in January of 2021. And so it's been a little over two years on the podcast. The other things that we've done, we've got some other stuff, like the Bitcoin stuff, we've got a

11:07 little Bitcoin mine that we put together. And that's a whole story of people coming to us and asking for our expertise on the gas marketing and midstream side and saying, can you find us natural gas

11:17 to mine Bitcoin with, which we didn't know anything about at the time, but we quickly learned it. And then decided, hey, let's do some of this ourselves. And so we've got that company. It's

11:26 fairly small. It's big for us, but fairly small in the grand scheme of the Bitcoin world. And then we've also got a bunch of cool like real estate stuff that we're doing on the side and my partners

11:36 invested in a lot of that. I've also got some other partners coupled

11:40 and one here at Oklahoma City. They're kind of the main partners, and then we've got a bunch of investors that are kind of friends, colleagues, things like that, people that saw what we were

11:50 doing. And we raised a little fund for the real estate stuff, and we've got some really cool cabins that we're building. And then we've got a really awesome waterfront development that we're

11:60 working on today. And there's some other things we do, like just angel investing type stuff on the side, like the distillery, we've got these bottles, you can't see 'em back here 'cause it's

12:08 blurred out, but woodworks distilleries are new Distillery in Oklahoma City, they just opened up, and I'm more passive in that, but it's fun to, the management team is great, and it's fun to

12:17 promote it 'cause it's like, I can promote oil and gas stuff, and that's great, but everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people like good spirits, and so that's a fun one to push on social

12:27 media. So I think, conclude all that, I know I rambled there, but I didn't want to give the full background, but basically I just got kind of forced to be in the entrepreneurship path. I always

12:37 sort of knew that I wanted to do it, I kind of fantasized about it. And I was very fortunate to have my wife, he was very supportive and was like, if you're gonna do it, go do it. And just kind

12:46 of built it sort of, mostly self-funded. We did have that equity commitment, but outside of that, it's been a lot of it's self-funded. I mean, we own the companies that, the Ancova companies

12:57 outright, and even in the real estate stuff, a lot of it were like the river development, it's mostly owned by us and then the fund, we own a big chunk of that as well So just to kind of be

13:09 fortunate to be in these positions where I can sort of steer the ship for better for worse. I mean, I think on the outside looking in, it looks really fun, but entrepreneurship can be pretty

13:18 gritty. And so anyways, that's, and we can talk about it later, but that's kind of the story and what we've got going on now - I love it, I love it. And it is a lot, like no doubt. And I see

13:29 how this happens myself, being entrepreneur, it started for me with, you know, there's a lot of actually things that you said that make us kindred spirits, I'll jump into that in just a second.

13:40 But when I first went to market with my first entrepreneurial venture funk futures, it was just to do contract sales and help companies, mostly up and coming, oil and gas technology companies with

13:53 gaining a foothold in the market. Well, then people started asking for help with their marketing content, video creation. What about recruiting? Right. And then now I'm involved in two different

14:05 tech companies. So I see how this spirals and people start coming to you Because they view you as, okay, you're not afraid to put yourself out there. You can add benefit to what it is that we're

14:15 doing. And before you know it, you're like, okay, what is my business, right? Or what are my businesses in your case? And in my case, I think there were two things that I want to touch on that

14:26 I find really fascinating that I would actually consider breaks that you had, whether you realized it or not early in your career. One, I think is the role at Chesapeake and to make a comparison to

14:39 football coaches. If you look at some of the best football coaches, like even active today, you've got Bill Belichick, right? You've got Harbaugh for the Ravens. What they had in common is that

14:49 they both gained their bearings as coaches, as special teams coaches. And what a special teams coaches do, they work with all sides of the ball, right? You're working with offensive players,

15:01 you're working with defensive players, and you're talking to all of them the same way, right? Football is very, very split in terms of how these conversations go. You've got your meetings for

15:10 your receivers, your meetings for the offense, your meetings for the quarterbacks. They don't do a lot with the defense. But special teams is everyone, right? So you were really fortunate, I

15:19 think, early on in your career to touch the midstream side, have a view into upstream, talk to executives, talk to people that were working in the back office, as well as the field. So whether

15:28 you realize that or not, that, I think, set you up for some success in your entrepreneurial ventures down the road, because you had to get comfortable talking to everybody. and understanding how

15:37 your messaging would get across to all those people. That's one. Two is - Yeah, 100 - Yeah. Two is that you got laid off. And this happened to me too. I don't never forget it. It was

15:49 Valentine's Day of 2007. And I was in sales and the company wasn't great. I sort of knew that the finances weren't all that solid. And I remember my boss coming up to me at the end of the day he's

16:02 like, Hey man, listen. You can sell, this isn't really my choice, but we're gonna have to lay you off. And I was just thinking like, Oh my God, what a failure I am. How is this gonna happen?

16:16 And I was, I think 26 years old, maybe 27. And it was the best thing that happened 'cause it sort of desensitized me to that happening again in the future. The first time you're like, Oh my God,

16:25 what am I gonna do? I'm un-hirable. Who's gonna wanna pay me money? Just I'm a loser. You get these thoughts that start to build A couple of weeks later, somebody offers you 20 more to do a job

16:37 that you like more. And you're like, okay. So it's actually happened a few times. I've been laid off whether it was market conditions, whether it was the right company, whether it was my

16:45 performance, it happens. And I think it sort of just desensitized me to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be a little less emotional and more pragmatic about my approach. And I think you

16:56 were fortunate to have had that experience like with what you probably thought was gonna be a company you could really grow with, right? You've got Aubrey McClendon, you've got American Energy

17:05 Partners, you've got big funding, Oklahoma City was really kind of growing 2014, 2015 in that period of time. And then you're like, oh shit, right? So I think those two things happening now

17:15 that I'm getting to know you more and following you from a business perspective and a personal side of things. Like I think those things helped you and I'm curious to think to see what you feel about

17:26 those as you look back on your time, A, a Chesapeake and then B, getting laid off from AEP. How do you think those experiences have benefited you and hardened you effectively for what you've done

17:32 subsequently - They're huge. And I think the Chesapeake thing, it was the getting all

17:44 the experience doing different things. I think it was right place, right time around being at the most active drillers, second largest producer, natural gas. Just, there was also the cultural

17:54 aspect of it. Like they were very good at propping young people up, letting them, you know, basically if you were good, then you could like take on as much as you, you know, you could do. And

18:03 so you got to, you know, you got to get in front of management, you got to, you know, take on projects and do things that most people, you know I, had worked at another bigger midstream company

18:12 and they were very old school. It was kind of like, oh, you wanna be in commercial? They're like, well, you know, put in 20 years and then, you know, you can apply, right? And it was like,

18:20 you start off at this grunt role and you work your way up. And it was almost like a hazing thing 'cause all the people that were in that group had been there for a long period of time and you just

18:28 weren't gonna get in. And so the fact that I could just go in and get into this role and start out as an analyst but got promoted within like six or seven months, something like that. We got

18:36 promoted up to like a rep and then like at a lot of companies, that was something you had to have 10 years experience. And actually in a weird way, the experience that I got at Chesapeake basically

18:46 made me un-hirable because whenever I lost the job at AP, I couldn't even apply for jobs because I would look at the role and say, okay, this is my exact role that I'd been in of my whole career.

18:58 And they were like minimum 15 years Like you can't even apply for it. So I'm going through trying to apply for jobs. And it was like all these, you know, online forums where you have to, I mean,

19:07 they won't even let you get to that. You can't even fill out the form. You can't apply. It's like you have to select it. You have 15 years experience. You can't even apply. So it was almost like,

19:14 I can't even get a job doing what I do because I had so much experience at a young age, which seems crazy, but it actually kind of put me in a position to where like the only way that I could get

19:24 that value and do the role I was doing. was to maybe find an niche or a company where they would let me in or just do it for myself. And then I think that getting the, getting let go is a really

19:35 valuable experience. I mean, I don't wish that on anyone because it's hard to deal with, but at the same time, that's when you really figure out who you are and what you're made of. And you also

19:46 get, it's a very humbling experience. And I think that that's important. I think in business, I've said it before. It's like get humbled into it quickly 'cause you're going to at some point. So

19:54 the faster you can do that, then the better off you're going to be. And then I also just the luck around, the luck around the timing of it. Like when we were doing in 2014, everyone's like, you

20:05 know, oil prices crashed. Like we started the company, what was it, 80 bucks? And then like six months from then it was 30 bucks. And you know, but at the same time, there was all this like

20:15 private equity money and private investment coming into the space. And so those were a lot of our bread and butter clients early on. So we got fortunate of things bunch a was there,

20:24 We've been very fortunate with the success of our clients. It's been a huge thing because it's like you can have, you know, you can do the best job ever, but if your clients failing, then they're

20:33 going to fire you because they're failing, right? So it's like you get lucky to get with successful groups and then you kind of ride the coattails of that. We've had some clients that have just had

20:41 phenomenal success and we've got to be a part of it and that's really exciting. And still to this day have clients that are doing amazing things and that's great for us. And so I think you're right.

20:51 I mean, I think I always try to credit luck wherever I can because you can put yourself in the right position, but ultimately, you know, luck plays a huge role - Yeah, no, no question about it.

21:02 So when I first started following you, I think it was on Twitter where I found you first. You were putting out some really cool drone-centric content of like homes in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, Broken

21:17 Arrow, Oklahoma, something like that. Yeah. And it actually looked to me a lot like where I grew up I didn't even realize that Oklahoma had areas that look like this, but you really put like a

21:29 unique spin on how you've created and cultivated interest around these homes, these rentals, these real estate properties. Talk about that a little bit in some of the passion you've had for I guess

21:42 video, but also creating demand through being a little bit different in terms of how you push some of these rentals and properties to market -

21:54 Well, definitely. I mean, I think one thing I learned when I started doing the media stuff was that it was a great creative outlet for me and I grew up as kind of a creative, played music growing

22:03 up. I don't play as much anymore every once in a while, I'll get the instruments out, but always have had a creative itch and lost it a little bit, you know, whenever I was working in the

22:13 corporate world. And even with Ancovit was like, you know, I mean, midstream marketing, EMP stuff, it's a little dry. There's creativity involved, don't be wrong. You can be creative in the

22:23 business world, no matter what you're doing. But it's not the same type of creativeness that I love. And I felt like with the media stuff, it really gave me a chance to scratch that itch and to do

22:34 it in a way that's for business. And then the video editing, I have people now that helped me with the podcast, but I had to learn it first because I was like, I'm not gonna pay someone else,

22:43 like I need to figure this out. And so, I had some experience doing audio editing is when I was younger And so it translated really well to the video side. And so, I've done, I wish I could do

22:53 more vlogs. It just takes so much time to do the vlogs, but I enjoy them. And so with the drone stuff, it just started, you know, when you're doing these real estate projects buying these cabins

23:03 and renting them out. And it was like, this is a really cool thing to video. And that's the thing with media, like whether it's like video or pictures, is that you kind of have to go see cool

23:12 things. It's like, I can sit around at my house and get the drone up or drive, you know, in my neighborhood or at my office and like anywhere in between, there's not that much to like video or

23:24 take pictures of, right? So it's like a lot of these really popular, for example, travel vlogs. It's like, cause they're always going amazing places. And so a broken Boca Humma is like this

23:33 little corner, a Southeast corner of Oklahoma. I had actually didn't even know, I mean, I knew I'd heard of it, but like didn't even visit there until later in life, like 2019. Um, so I was,

23:43 you know, this is only four years ago. And when I went down there, I was like, this is incredible I was like, this place doesn't even look like Oklahoma. It looks like Colorado. Tom, it really

23:52 like, it looks a lot like Arkansas. You pin to Arkansas. Yeah. I also would say it looked like her mind. Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me like almost like this, like little mini Colorado in Oklahoma.

24:03 And, um, or as close as you could get here. What's crazy about that area is that, um, it's almost all Dallas, Fort Worth, North Texas people that visit there. It's like the percentage of

24:13 visitors is like 85. Um, and at least about what the metrics that we see. from our management companies. It's like 85 Dallas, kind of North Texas area. So if you think about it, that part of

24:25 the world, there's not really many places close. I mean, it's like a two and a half hour drive from North Texas. If you're like the heart of Dallas, maybe it's like three hours, but it's like a

24:34 two and a half to three hour drive for them. And it's like, where else can they go? It's that close that looks that gorgeous. And so, you know, use the media stuff. And honestly, the other

24:44 thing I'll say about this before we move off the topic is that it's been the highest ROI

24:51 on the media stuff. People are always like, oh, what's like, do you make money on the podcast? And like I've had sponsors on it. I don't have any right now. I've been talking to a few companies.

24:59 I haven't really pushed it that much. Yeah, same for a lot of different reasons we can get into it later. I just kind of do it because it's my, it's a habit of passion for it. And I love having

25:07 good conversations with interesting people. And I think it leads to good things. But the skills that I've learned around media, the most money I've made for media is hands down then the. real

25:18 estate stuff because it's like this river development, you know, the properties are expensive. And so we're targeting kind of high net worth individuals. It's like a luxury resort style community.

25:29 And so we go down there and we take drone shots and take videos and we put together like a height video vlog and I hired like a voice actor to come in and like do the video. And that was just a

25:40 little project. And then we posted it, like we put it on the website and we also posted it like on Facebook and like these investor groups because they have these groups that like, you know, they

25:49 invest in that area and then I also posted it on Twitter. And from that, you know, we're at like 15 lot sales and we just are at least under contract. They all haven't closed yet. And they, and

25:59 we started it in like end of October, you know, we don't have the roads finished yet. So some people were buying them like side unseen. And so, and that's in like a, that's in like a really

26:07 harsh real estate environment. Like, because like rates have gone up and real estate's like, it's in a down market right now And so I think that - What I found with the media stuff is that if you

26:17 have something valuable to sell, whether that's the stuff we do in ANCOVA, whether that's the real estate stuff, whether whatever it is, if you have something valuable, then the enhancement in

26:27 the multiple that you can get on media is just incredible. Because you can reach so many people. It's evergreen. It's always out there. The power of technology is just so amazing if you can

26:37 harness that and use it and put it out there. So it's been a journey, but I would say that that stuff is stuff that I enjoy doing it. And it's also been a great ROI for my time and investment. You

26:49 know, what it does for me when I look at it, when I like, I love when you put out, you've got a lot of different content. And I like that about you and sort of your whole persona. But when you

27:02 put out the real estate centric content, it evokes an emotion, at least in me, because it reminds me of home. It reminds me of where I grew up So it makes sense to me that people, especially who

27:13 live in a city. They see this and it just looks, it evokes a feeling. It feels idyllic. It feels relaxing, right? It feels like you're out there, but enjoying something that's also luxurious.

27:27 And that's just me and my perception from watching like three of your freaking videos. So kudos to you on that. Nicole Nixon, who does some contract marketing with us and I used to work with her at

27:37 W Energy Software, her big thing and she does a lot of like early stage branding for companies is nobody thinks about the emotional component of what they create, right? Your brand needs to evoke a

27:51 feeling in people. And eventually businesses get too big and they really start to shy away from that. But especially early stage, you want people to look at it and feel a certain way. And I think

28:02 you've done a good job of capturing the essence of whatever broken bow Oklahoma is, whether I go there or not, I have an idea because of content that you've put out around what it is.

28:13 Let's shift a little bit to something that pissed a lot of people off that you did. So you put out a post on, I think it was Twitter where you said, Doesn't matter how much money you have. If

28:26 you're working after 5 pm. around the weekends, you pour. And there's no way you can feel some type of way about reading that and some people are like, Fuck this guy, I don't like you

28:38 anymore. And I kind of took a step back and thought about it and I agree, I agree and disagree. I agree that it's something I aspire to. I disagree because I don't think it would have been

28:51 possible for me to create the business or businesses that I've created not working past 5 pm. or on weekends. But I do think that you're going after something that the true worth and wealth that you

29:04 create is around your happiness and the time that you spend with the people that you actually care about. but I'm curious what kind of prompted you to put that out. And was that just a shitpost? Or

29:13 do you truly cut things off at 5 pm. and shut down your laptop over the weekend so you can spend time with your young family -

29:21 No, I'm a raging workaholic and the post was for me because I sometimes sit there and I think about how, I think about how, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, you can have success or make

29:31 money. And then sometimes I find myself in situations where I'm working and it's like nighttime or I'm like missing my kid's stuff or it's on the weekend on a vacation and I'm, you know, out of my

29:42 laptop, where everybody's at the pool having fun and I feel poor. I feel like what's the point of having money? Like what's the point of all this work that I've done if I'm sitting here? And I

29:51 didn't mean it. Like I think the part that pissed people off was that the nine to five things, a bunch of like blue collar people got on there and they were like, I have to work on weekends and

29:58 blah, blah. And I was like, That's not what I'm saying. And I made a tweet underneath it that was like, just to be clear, like I don't mean, you know. If you have to work, clearly people have

30:07 to work weird hours. Like that's not what I'm saying. Like you're a poor. If you have to work on nights or weekends, but the sentiment of the post was, it was actually funny because when I made

30:18 it, I was thinking about myself because my wife, we were on a vacation and she was like, I don't want you working. You need to be not working over here. And I was like, all right, so I was

30:27 trying really hard not to work, but there was a guy that was with us on the vacation and he had some big work thing, deadline. He spent the entire trip, he saw on his laptop, like away from his

30:36 kids, away from his wife. And I just remember thinking like, and he makes really good money. He's a great job and he does really well. He has a lot of successful investments. I just remember

30:45 thinking like, what's it all worth? Like if that's what you're doing, if you can't even take a vacation with your kids. And he's telling me, oh, we haven't been on any vacations in a long time,

30:53 really excited to go on this. And the whole time he doesn't even, he's checked out. So I think that that was the genesis of the post. It was obviously like, you know, kind of being like your

31:02 poor. I mean, that's the thing about Twitter. caricature of yourself, you say things to engagement farm. I found myself engagement farming less now that I have more followers because I feel like

31:12 I don't really have anything to prove. And it's like, I mean, I haven't even really been posting as much on Twitter because it's like, I've kind of gotten to a point where like, I feel okay with

31:19 the growth that it's had. And I'm trying to focus more on like higher ROI.

31:25 It's like, it's one thing to just get like 20, 000 people to follow you is another thing. But all you need is like one person, the right person to like see your stuff and somebody that you're

31:34 trying to connect with. And so I've been doing more on LinkedIn lately. I feel like I've underutilized the

31:40 platform. I got kind of jaded by it for a while. So I've been trying to get back on there. And then the other thing the last thing I'll say on that post is it was like a wildly popular post because

31:49 it had like a thousand likes, I think, or more. And I got like all these like heartfelt messages from people telling me these stories about how they resonated with them. And so in some ways, I

31:59 think maybe those are the best posts. Like if people are taking a hardcore stands on both sides. then maybe you really struck a chord. Does that make sense - It makes a lot of sense. And it's

32:09 almost why it's unfortunate that our mutual buddy, DRW, right, is an out, or at least doesn't have the platform on LinkedIn that he used to have because he was almost intentionally divisive and

32:21 he's so, he has so much conviction in terms of how he puts things out there and he's also really, really intelligent. So it makes it tough, right? You're going to feel a certain type of way about

32:32 his post and now that he's not posting, it's like,

32:38 okay, like it's, we're missing an edge, I think that the industry needed, because there needs to be accountability -

32:46 He should have been on Twitter more, like I'm trying to talk to him a bunch on the side and I was like, man, you need to, I think if he would have gone as hard as he did on LinkedIn, on Twitter,

32:54 like the same amount of passion. And instead of doing the long form posts, he did the, he made him Twitter threads. I think he would have a couple hundred thousand dollars on Twitter right now. I

33:05 told him that. He was like, you know, anyways, but - Interesting. I wish you would start doing more on there. Yeah, I mean, he's a genius, like for all intents and purposes. And he can

33:14 communicate really well. And he, like, most people, like, they create an online caricature or persona of who they are. And I told him, I'm like, you can annoy me sometimes with your online

33:27 stuff. But then I see him in person. I'm like, oh, I love this dude. I've known this guy for 12 years He's got a good heart. He's a good golfer. He's a father. He's a family man. But you see,

33:37 like, people start to get their own sort of persona and start to believe, OK, I'm going to lean more and more into this on how they communicate from a social media perspective. And I think for me,

33:49 it's what's worked well, at least on LinkedIn, is being empathetic, like understanding that there's other people who are in some level of pain. And if you're just constantly putting out posts

34:02 hustle porn or positive, it's not real. 'Cause that's not who we are as people. We've got our own issues, we got our own pains also - Yeah, exactly - Yeah, from a partnership perspective. So

34:16 you said that you kind of brought on one guy, I think you said Mark, I know you've done some stuff with I think Dave Heikonin. And I'm curious how you've been able to do that 'Cause for me, it's

34:29 been really hard to bring on equals. I think I've been able to bring on resources that I can provide work to or consult with, but from the true partner perspective, I'm curious like how you've gone

34:41 about determining who the right people are and making those work. Because my biggest worry is, okay, we're gonna split this pie, but it's never gonna be fully even. Somebody's always gonna do

34:51 more work, somebody's gonna be driving more of the revenue. There's gonna be these challenges that pop up How have you successfully vetted out finding the right partners and then dividing up the

35:02 division of labor effectively across those partners -

35:07 Well, it's a great question, and I am very passionate about good partnerships, and I've put some content on this. I'd say the easiest thing is that early on, I realized that I can have all the

35:17 pie, and it's gonna be a lot smaller pie, or I can have a piece of the pie, and it's gonna be a huge pie. And so, and it's gonna be a lot more for me to eat. So, I think that that's one view

35:28 that I had to have. The other view was that when I started, I was 27, and the first time I got like, oh, that happened to me, I was 27. And so, there was a sense of, it made sense for me to

35:40 partner, because it was like, people asking a lot of questions, like, can you really do what you say you're gonna do? Like, there wasn't like the baked in credibility of being 20 years, 30

35:48 years in the business that you just get, because you have that reputation, and people know that you're the real deal. And so, I think that having, you know, the mark thing was very fortunate,

35:57 'cause we had worked together, And it was a big dispute. with us at the beginning. And it's probably the reason why I took this, you know, a month or two to incorporate was like, hey, like,

36:05 you know, what's the splits gonna be? And I just kind of told him, I was like, look, I'm not doing anything unless I'm like, I'm equal footing with someone. And he's like, well, I've got all

36:13 this experience. And, you know, you're gonna blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, but I'm gonna be doing a lot of work because I'm the younger guy and I'm gonna be in the weeds, you know,

36:21 chopping a lot of this wood. And it even beyond like the work splitting thing, 'cause Mark, like more than holds his own and has, since we've been a partner and we do good, we're good at

36:29 different things, which I think is very complimentary. I think that it was like, I just never wanna be in a position where I can get the rug pulled again. Like when I got let go, I was like, I'm

36:38 not gonna devote my life to something and put myself in a position where I can get, you know, get that taken away from me. And so, so we went in and we were like equal partners at the beginning.

36:47 And so it's been a really good structure. We have to manage by consensus, which can be painful sometimes. And when we first got, you know, early in the partnership, we would get in like fights

36:56 and stuff and we haven't in a long time. But it's like a work spouse. And that's one thing. And so even with our other ventures, the real estate stuff, the Bitcoin stuff, most of the things I do,

37:10 we try to be equal as we can with the people that I work for. And there's actually a reason there, too. I think a partnership is an incredible form of leverage. Like it's a multiplier on the work.

37:21 And if everybody is aligned, then everybody's pulling on the rope at the same strength And everybody's success and failure is in an equal footing. There's a lot of people having different philosophy

37:32 with this. Like they don't agree with that. But what I've seen is that alignment in partnerships is huge. And I think that that is one of the biggest reasons why partnerships fail. The worst thing

37:43 in a deal is when somebody's making a lot more money than somebody else. But they put in - but they started it together and they worked the same amount. That's just - it's not going to last. You

37:52 see it in all across. Like you see it with bands, for example A lot of bands will have like the singer-songwriter or whoever. And because they're the songwriter. they get the majority of the

38:00 royalties, that's how royalties work. And what band managers will tell you, I watched an episode of Rogan, and he sat down with the lead singer of the Billy Corgan from the Smashing Punkins, and

38:08 he said that early on in his career, he was writing the songs, and his manager, they came to him, they said, All right, who are we gonna credit on these songs for the writer, because that's

38:18 who's gonna get the majority of the money? And the manager told him, he goes, The worst mistake you can make is putting just yourself as the writer for these songs. He goes, Your band will never

38:27 last. He's like, You will insure enough within if you get it. And he said, No, he said, Screw that, I'm gonna get all the money in. Within however many years the band broke up, and not only

38:36 did they break up, they became blood feuds, they hated each other. And for years, they were like, stewing each other, and just went from being best friends to being enemies effectively, because

38:46 of one decision to not split things equally. And that to me, and I already knew this when I heard that episode, but that was like, there you go, there's another example of it, and I think that

38:55 in business, you try to use leverage the best you can. Whether that's financial leverage like debt, if you're in a real estate deal or whether it's like technology is a form of leverage, right?

39:05 Like we talked about with the media stuff, but at a corporate level, I think partnerships are some of the best leverage that you can have because it can just amplify what you're doing so much. And

39:16 people always ask me like, how do you do all these things? And I'm like, I don't. I have really amazing partners and I have really great and we have great employees who we try to give them equity

39:24 or at least give them a feeling of ownership via their compensation that when the company's doing well, they get rewarded. We try to make alignment. We try to keep flat structures. And I think

39:33 that some people are like, how do you do it? And I'm like, I don't. I have all these other people. I might be the figurehead of it, but there's no way I could do all these things by myself.

39:40 I've just been fortunate enough to try to surround myself with really great people and put structures in place to where everybody can kind of thrive together. So that's what I would say. It's hard

39:50 though. Relationships with partners are really tough. I mean, you really need to be picky. You really need to know the person. one good thing with a lot of partnerships that I've done, are there

39:60 all people that I've worked with before? So like the real estate stuff, they've been on the other side of the table for me, like they were at a client, some of my partners there, then they left

40:09 that client and they came and did some consulting for us. So we've been like on both sides of the table, we're like, they're my boss, and then we were their boss, like a couple of these partners,

40:18 right? And then it was like, you know, after five or six years of working together, you recognize the person's strengths, their weaknesses, like how they work, like what they're about, right?

40:26 And the same thing with Mark, my other partner, it's like he was my VP, like I reported to him. It's like I knew like how he operated. And so I think people will always warn about, oh, don't do

40:35 business with friends. And it's like, well, it depends on what kind of friend they are. Like if they're a friend that you've made via working together and going through some shit together, then

40:44 actually think those can be really good partnerships because you know that person already, right? Like it's not just somebody that you're going in. If it's just a straight up friend, like from

40:52 high school or something, you've never worked together with them I would say be cautious with that. But if it's someone that's a colleague or a friend that you've met through forging through,

40:60 you've already forged through ups and downs, right? And so that's kind of how I've viewed it. I try to, and we've had bad partnerships too. We had a partnership in one of our companies that we

41:09 had another company that was, I won't go into the full story of it, but they came in and had a minority interest in one of our companies and it was terrible and they were just bad people and they

41:18 sucked. And I've seen both sides of how it can not work out. So anyways, I'll stop on that, but let you respond No, I mean, you actually, there's a lot of good Macs that you just brought in

41:30 there. And I want to talk about the piece at the end, which is I have a healthy amount of fear in bringing in investors for any of my businesses. And now, of course, for some of the capital

41:43 intensive stuff, you probably just simply don't have the liquid to do it. So you have to take on some form of investment or debt But when doing startups where I can scale and live through the

41:54 revenue growth. I just don't want those other voices coming in, right? Especially from a minority standpoint and effectively telling me what to do because there's so much PTSD around 19 years in

42:07 the working world of people telling me what to do and me disagreeing with it. So it's almost like I have this wall put up where somebody comes in and says, you should do this. It's like, you

42:16 should fuck off, right? I know what I'm doing. But I find it fascinating when I hear, okay, and I think it probably comes down to experience and then finding the right investment partners. But

42:28 like anything, you're gonna have to experience it and learn it and there's probably gonna be some negative partners like you mentioned with the minority owner here previously -

42:38 Sometimes it's good though, what I was gonna say is that it's good to hear whenever, it could be a positive to someone tell you that they don't agree with your idea. And I think that with my

42:48 partner Mark, it's like, I'm always kind of like, let's go, let's go, let's go. I'm the brakes a little bit, you know, like you got to get me there. Like I'm not there yet. And so sometimes

42:57 that's been frustrating. But other times in retrospect, I think it's helped me uncover a lot of blind spots that I had that maybe I knew that I had, like didn't want to, um, fess up to having and

43:08 it was like, you know, he's very candid about these are weaknesses. This is something that you're not good at or whatever. And like it's just point blank will tell it to you. And I think having

43:17 somebody around you or most people around you that can like keep you honest in that way, um, can be a positive But at the same time, it's like, it's a relationship. So it also caused things to

43:26 blow up. And I've seen people blow up because of bad partnerships too. So it's a balance. I just want raving fans and people that will kiss my ass. I'm just kidding. So here real quick, we got

43:36 about two minutes left. I want to do rapid fire with some questions and then have you share how people can find you at your various different, uh, online locales. So one, what is your favorite

43:49 place to eat dinner in Oklahoma city?

43:54 Cool. The best steak place I think is probably the ranch. We like that. In Edmond, we go to, there's a couple different places. My wife loves Charleston's in Edmond. It's a pretty easy one,

44:06 staple. And that's probably her favorite. So we go there a lot. But the ranch is probably the best steakhouse. But yeah, it depends on the mood. It depends on the type of food. But I have to

44:14 almost categorize that by type of dish - I've been to the ranch twice and ended up closing business deals afterwards both times So obviously it's a good place to butter people up and have a good steak.

44:25 I love the ranch. Two, your favorite place to take a vacation -

44:32 Yeah, I love skiing. I think that I try to go every year if I can. I like Crested butte. It's where I grew up skiing at. We didn't have any really thing there. We would just drive there. My dad

44:43 would take us there. And I don't know why he picked there, but it's got a special place for me. My wife would probably say the beach, but I like the mountains. So I'll go with that Yeah.

44:53 Oklahomaans love those Western Colorado resorts. Crested butte is one, maybe purgatory. And ironically, it's like pretty far from me and also far from you, but not that much further than it is

45:08 for me to get to a place like Crested butte. Believe it or not. Okay, final question - Yeah - What do you think all of this looks like in five years? Is this gonna be like gagly-arty enterprises,

45:22 where you've got your hands still at a whole bunch of things? Or do you think that one or two of these things is really gonna take off and that's where your focus is gonna be -

45:33 It's really, really hard question to answer. I don't know. I think that hopefully I'm still surrounded by the people that are around in five years. And hopefully, and I wouldn't say this to

45:44 Mark's face. I think he needs to retire. Some of he's pushing, he'll be almost 70 then - Oh, wow - And so hopefully he's like made enough money where he's just. chilling on a beach somewhere. I

45:54 never, I actually have a fear of him not being my partner because it's been such a great partnership and I don't want it to stop, but for his sake, hopefully he can slow down a little bit. But in

46:05 terms of like, the business we have today and the Vancouver front, we've got a lot of really great people that aren't partnering level that they're going to be. They stick around and I've

46:13 surrounded myself with a great group of guys, the Enghans as well here at our company that are crushing it. And I want them to be here and I want them to be more of a vested equity interest in the

46:24 company. And so I hope we keep doing what we're doing. I hope that the tech platform can grow and I really think it's really cool what we built. And so I would love to see that platform grow. I

46:36 think on the real estate stuff, hopefully that development is a full blown neighborhood in five years and I can walk around with the kids and they'll remember back when it was raw land and now it's

46:45 this awesome community. That would be great I think for the podcast stuff, I just want to keep. keep it up, man. I wanna keep it up and I wanna be doing it in five years. I think that was the

46:56 big thing with the rebrand was really more than anything, just giving me something broad enough to where I can talk to whoever I want. And I hope I'm, you know, hope I'm 500 episodes or whatever

47:06 400 something episodes in by then, I mean, 171. So hopefully I'm at 500 plus episodes and that I'm continuing to get to talk to really cool people. And if those things happen, I'll be very happy

47:18 in five years and I hope everybody's healthy and all that stuff too So that's obviously the main things - Most importantly, yeah. You know, I think that the podcast thing, you know, as you know,

47:31 most podcasts die at like 10 episodes. That's the way that it goes, like 90 or something like that. And I was really fortunate to have Tim Loser, obviously who passed last year as an awesome

47:42 partner. And I think both of us, you know, it was sort of a struggle to get over the hump of maybe 30 or 40 episodes But once we did, this was gonna be a thing we were really gonna do forever.

47:54 And I knew when I took a break and was coming back that this wasn't gonna be an eight or nine or 10 episode thing. Like I'm gonna do this once a week. So I totally applaud you for that. And you

48:02 know, it's sort of like a dripping roast, right? 'Cause every time you have a new gas sign, you get a couple new listeners and a few of them come back, right? And it just sort of, you know,

48:12 steam rolls from there. Where can people find you? Your distillery, and COVA, energy, real estate Like where's the easiest place for people to find out all the crazy stuff you got going on next -

48:26 Yeah, I think on Twitter, I've got my, a lot of the links to those things in the bio. And so that's just a max underscore, Gagliardi. And then obviously on LinkedIn, just my name, the

48:37 website's ancovacom, ancoviacom. The

48:42 resort that we're working on is mountainforbresortcom.

48:46 And then the distillery is Woodworks Distilling, I think, but worksisstillingcom.

48:52 We've got a newsletter on sub stack, San Kobe Energy Markets newsletter. We put out once a week, just kind of highlights on the markets, what's going on with oil and gas. We, yeah, those are

49:01 the main places. And I'd encourage people to, like I always try to respond like that story about Aubrey. Like I really do my best, even if it's just a hey, no thanks, best of luck. Like I've

49:09 really tried to respond to people when they reach out. So if anybody wants to, I'll try my best and you want to connect on any of this stuff. I'd love to talk

49:17 to you - And yeah, this is good. Thank you for that This is going to come out after Empower, but I assume I'll see you at the Bitcoin mining conference in Houston, digital wildcat, which is

49:27 putting on - Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Max, for coming on, sharing a little bit of wisdom and being vulnerable enough to share some of your wins and failures from the past. Hopefully

49:37 other aspiring entrepreneurs can take something from it and hope to see your businesses grow. You're doing great stuff, man -

49:46 Thank you. Thanks for having me on.