What The Funk?

0:00 Got my gal, the tenacious G coming on the puck today, big fan of Sarah Compton. We finally got to meet on a call that really could have just been this podcast. We talked like all about your

0:14 background, sort of how you got to where you are, crossfit, cultivating your LinkedIn profile. I like your authenticity. I like your energy. And I thought you're exactly the type of person I

0:25 want to bring on and sort of let you expound on some of your expertise, both as a geologist and sort of just as a unique personality in the space. You got your hands in a bunch of different things.

0:37 Spent time at Great Western, went to school at Alabama, Indiana. I don't need to steal all your stories. So Sarah, what we do here on the podcast, What The Funk? I just ask you, who is Sarah

0:48 Compton?

0:50 So

0:52 I did think and had to come up with some descriptive words that would summarize it up And it wasn't much of a summary at all. But you, you know, we kind of chatted a little bit and I'm pretty

1:04 authentic. So my LinkedIn profile is pretty spot on. Like I think some of the reason I can have so much energy is 'cause I don't waste a whole bunch of it. I'm bullshitting too much, but

1:15 professional, you know, I consider myself a professional even though I don't really take myself super seriously. I just think that kind of means like, I also work hard and put in time and effort

1:25 even if I don't want to, or maybe don't necessarily have an interest in it Like, that's my job, I'm gonna do my job. Yeah. Bit of an academic, which I don't like that word very much, but more

1:35 just, I'm really curious. I really like learning a bit of an athlete, you know, and then wife, mom, daughter, sister, yeah, like all of that. But really just, I have a pretty big curiosity

1:46 and it's combined a little bit with some resilience that's bred from a smidge of stubbornness and maybe a slide Just.

1:57 a little though, stood up.

1:60 Like me, never really thought that you'd end up in oil and gas, right? Like that was not on your radar at all. So are you from Indiana originally, like, where did you grow up? And then I think

2:12 you went to Alabama, which is also somewhat unusual for an oil and gas person. Take me through your path. Like how did this all happen where we got here today? Yeah. So it's a winding path for

2:24 sure. Um, I grew up in, I was born in Ohio, but moved to Indiana when I was like, four, so one flyover state to the next. But even at that time, my neighbor still tells me how I went and

2:36 knocked on their door and said, I'm, my main name is needy. And we can get into that later, but, you know, I'm Sarah needy and I'm 40 years old. And I'm going to chase storms when I grow up,

2:45 like a four year old. And that was actually started from a little bit of fear. Um, I would remember being afraid of lightning and it, like in my brain thinking people are afraid of what they don't

2:58 know and don't understand. So I'm going to learn about storms and lightning because here's where we live. They happen all the time and I don't want to be afraid for my whole life. And so that

3:07 started a ridiculously long induction, I guess, like look at storms and everything all the way up through like junior year of high school. I mean, science math was what I wanted to do to study

3:19 meteorology and storms. And got to be about 16 and realized that will put me squarely in Oklahoma.

3:30 And no travel beyond, right? I mean, maybe go to Kansas, like an exciting foray into Kansas. And so I kind of switched to geology because I wanted to travel a lot more. And that started this big

3:42 winding path. I was looking at volcanoes, volcanic rocks. I picked a school called Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, which is IUPY.

3:52 We used to joke that like it has to be Indiana University and then Purdue because it can't be poo U-E-I, so S-V-I-T-Y.

4:00 And you can't say Indiana, or you can't say Purdue, 'cause those are their own things, so it's IUPUI. It's IUPUI, man, go jags. And even the geology department is in the Purdue School of

4:15 Science, but it's an IU degree. So that school just kind of picked the Moronown program, and that's where your degree comes from. But what helped drive that was it was where I could get a softball

4:25 scholarship, and the school had geology Geology as a major, even way back then when I was looking, was not hugely prevalent at universities. And it is shrinking, unfortunately more so, that a

4:37 lot of schools are dropping it, but that got me at IUPUI. I wanted to be a professor, mostly because I wanted to teach. I like teaching, I like coaching, and I didn't want to do it at high

4:48 school or middle school and get paid nothing, and I wanted to have little or no control. So I wanted to do that at a college level. man, I followed that that was undergrad masters. And I was

5:00 probably two years into my dissertation before I realized like, professors aren't paid to teach, they're paid to do research and generate money for the university. And I thought, man, if we're

5:11 gonna be, if I'm gonna be making somebody money, like, if I'm pulling in millions of dollars of grants or making millions of dollars for somebody else, like, I want to cut can I get some more?

5:22 Yeah, like, where do I do that? How do I do that? And I was already two years in. And so I didn't want to quit my PhD and just be like, he's not home slice. I've put it all this time. So

5:33 didn't internship with swift energy. And he's now silver bow resources. And thought, you know, I actually kind of like this, like, this is still interesting. And it's not the the corporate,

5:45 you know, hellhole that a lot of corporate is kind of made out to be. And I think I could do this. And so got a job with noble energy. And here we are. So volcanoes and volcanic rocks right to

5:57 oil and gas. That's a clear path. That's really cool. So you've always liked the rock, clearly, right? You like storms, you like the rock, you embrace learning. Want to talk about softball a

6:09 little bit, because you said, you're an athlete, I know you still take pride in that. Some of the videos you post, are you doing like split jerks and for people that don't know what that is,

6:17 that doesn't mean she's a bad person, just, or that type of Olympic lift. Yeah.

6:25 And your former is pretty good. Mine is, mine is not. But it's impressive to watch when somebody who's not that big can put a bunch of weight over their head. What position did you play in

6:35 softball? So I was sent a field. This is where I ended up. I bounced around a little bit. I said, believe it or not, I started off as catcher. Wow. And they were like, you're a little little

6:46 for that. And about 12 or 13 is when a lot of girls kind of start eating girl spirits, a late sprout or might be 14 or 15. But it was pretty obvious at that time that I was not going to be that big.

6:57 And then I was quick and fast. And so they tried me out at some different places. They liked my arm and so started in right field and then ended up landing in center field for college. It's got to

7:09 be, I mean, I've always been impressed by fast pitch softball players because it's the ball rises. So you're swinging to like where the ball should go, right? So it's almost like you're

7:22 constantly hitting a frisbee or something like that. How hard do people throw in college? Is it like 60 plus 70 miles an hour? Yeah, so it depends on obviously the pitch. So if you have a good

7:36 pitcher, their fastball should be low 70s, high 60s, but then they'll have a change up. And that you'll want at least, I'd say a 10 to 15 mile an hour drop on that. So you could go from somebody

7:48 who's throwing 70 to 55 So one pitch you might get a 70 mile an hour, right? inside real tight. And then the next one, ideally, like 55 low and outside, and that will make you look real stupid.

8:00 If you're not, if you're not prepped for it. No, I mean, it's, it's hard. And I remember, you know, Jenny Finch, right, the legend, she pitched at one point to a bunch of major league

8:12 baseball players, and they were just completely befuddled, right? Because they're used to the ball kind of coming down from the end and from the arm over the top. And they were like, okay, I'm

8:21 gonna need to like practice this for a while. Like, I think that they'd figure it out eventually, but it's like, pan, this is different. This is hard. Yeah, it's a like, we have a bit of an

8:31 advantage over baseball, because you have one release point, right? You're not gonna get any sidearm craziness, but you can do the rise ball, you can do a drop ball. And so it where it kind of

8:40 almost goes up and then comes down like what softball pitchers do is insane. That helps set the ball is giant and bright yellow, like the baseball is small and and just white, but

8:52 I would not envy somebody to try to go from baseball to softball or the reverse, right? I mean, baseball, the ball is coming a lot faster, but it's coming from farther away. So your ability to

9:02 judge trajectories a little bit better, but their ball breaks at a different spot. So it's just, I do think baseball, hitting a baseball or hitting a softball, I think they're almost equally

9:13 difficult, but I do think it's one of the hardest things in sports. Like you're taking a round ball and a round bat, and they're both moving on independent trajectories and your job is to connect

9:22 them squarely, like that. Yeah, you got a round bat, you got a round ball and you got to square it up. Like, you know, I'm not a mathematician or anything, but something about that just seems

9:34 off. It's like, some of the time, like, you're doing good. You're doing a whole thing. You're doing a whole thing if you fail 70 of the time. Yeah, this is fun. Like I, so I played,

9:49 baseball up until I was about 15 or 16. I love baseball. If you look behind me, right? You see, oh my gosh, especially to the Red Sox, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz and Fenway Park. Like I grew

10:00 up going to Fenway Park, which is like a kind of a magical place and gives you a real love for the game. And I remember playing in Little League where the mound was, I think, 44 or 46 feet from

10:12 home plate. And you get dudes who are like 12, almost 13, throwing 65 miles an hour It's like hitting a 90 mile an hour fastball in baseball. So I remember taking the jump to Babe Ruth the next

10:24 year that even though the kids were older and bigger, just having a little more time to hit the ball, none of them were throwing 90, right?

10:46 So I'm like, actually, Little League as a 12 year old, 11 year old was harder for me than being a 13, 14, 15 year old in Babe Ruth. But then people start throwing curve balls and things get

10:46 really, really difficult when that happens Basically, you're hitting the equivalent. of a, if there's a softball pitcher throwing 70 miles an hour from 45 feet, that's almost like a hundred miles

10:54 an hour, right? It's pretty fast. It's really fast. And like you said, the key is the breaking ball. Cause it's rare, like 70 miles an hour is the fast ball. Very few pitchers are going to

11:06 rely on that. It's the same as what you experienced in baseball where about 12 or 13, they start really relying on speed, but then the batters really start catching up. And if you're throwing

11:16 fatties right down the middle, I don't care How fast they're going, they're getting parked, like they're gone. But man, that you get some of those breaking balls and really the strategy, which

11:25 it sort of helped me as a batter. I would not forget the previous pitch, but like I judged each pitch on its own merit because I didn't, and this is not a dig to pitchers at all, but they're human

11:38 beings. And so they might mean to throw a pitch. Like a batter can guess the sequence appropriately. But if the pitcher screws up and doesn't throw the pitch properly, It doesn't matter if the

11:48 batter's judged it. So I tried to take each pitch individually on its own merit, whatever it was, and just forget what the previous one was. It got me in trouble one time because I also forgot the

11:59 count, and it was a 3-0 pitch, and our college coach was extremely, I posted about this on LinkedIn, I think. Our college coach was like very hardcore on, you do not swing. No green-lighted for

12:12 you. You're not swinging, and I was a freshman, and because I just wiped out, I took the count, everything in its own time. And man, I swung it. Fortunately, it was a home run, like - Wow.

12:27 I didn't hit many. I'm not a big kid, I didn't hit many. I don't remember if it was an inside the park or not, but I remember when the seniors came up and they were like, You are lucky that that

12:35 was a home run. I'm like, What are you talking about? 'Cause even a single, you're like pinch runner, you're out. Yeah, this get out and the track is just on the other side of the field, go

12:44 run There you go. That, no, that, I mean, that's, that's cool. And it brings me back a little bit to it's baseball softball. It's an instinctual sport hitting especially, right? And even on

12:57 defense, right? You just let your instincts take over and your practice and preparation get the job done. I remember, I think I was probably 14 and looking really foolish on a curveball and saying

13:08 to myself, okay, the sequence says that he's not gonna throw another curveball. He's gonna throw a fastball. So I'm gonna swing at this pitch because I know it's gonna be a fastball. And

13:17 unfortunately, the pitch was way inside. So I got it like off the handle and grounded a shortstop. And I'm like, okay, so now the next level of thinking is location. Not just pitch sequence,

13:28 right? It's location, spin. Where's it gonna be? Because if you threw it down the middle, I would have crushed it, but he didn't. 'Cause he's a smart pitcher. He's thinking this guy's thinking

13:37 fastball. He's getting a fastball. He's not getting a strike. Yeah, he's getting crowded a little bit Which was cool, I'm like, okay. Now I'm incorporating the mental into it,

14:06 and this is a lot more than I thought, right? This is no longer just being a 12 year old and playing with your, you know, your kind of natural instincts. So yeah, it's always fun to talk about

14:07 that, 'cause I think there are parallels to with sports and being a professional, right? Like there's no question that you're going to get things thrown at you, maybe it's a layoff, right? Maybe

14:13 it's oil prices going negative, maybe it's you waking up one day and realizing like, man, I don't really want to work for somebody else. I feel like I should be an entrepreneur and you're dealing

14:25 with these different pitches and it's how you react, right? How you handle that. When a dog barks and you're podcasting, you have to make sure you stay focused, right? Yeah, somebody's got a

14:35 chainsaw running and he's normally protective of air space. Usually he doesn't care about chainsaws. But it's okay, dogs are allowed to bark, babies are allowed to cry. normal for us. And by the

14:48 way, it's beautiful where you're at right now. You're up in the mountains, right? Yeah. Beautiful. Technically, our address is Morrison, but this is Conifer. We're behind Myers Ranch. Do you

14:58 get animals going on back there? They're like bears, mountain lions, deer. Like, what do you got? The answer is yes. We have, it's not been recent. And I didn't post, I think I meant to post

15:09 it on LinkedIn. We had a bear in my car. No,

15:14 just hanging out. I, you know,

15:18 we live up here. I'm not the best at like locking doors. And our driveway is such that if somebody's coming down the driveway, like with nefarious intent, I mean, they've, they've got to kind of

15:28 come a little ways. And so it's not, it's not usually locked. There has been a time when a child has left a car door open and I didn't catch it and it snowed inside my car. And we're building a

15:39 deck. So we have a bunch of wood out in the driveway. And as we were talk about like it's been a little abnormally wet. So he's going out to cover big piles of wood and I'm inside with the kids

15:49 clean up dinner or whatever. And he comes back in and he's just kind of a little shaken up. He's like, I think I made a mistake. And I was like, you're going to have to be more specific. And

15:58 don't know what you're talking about. And he's, well, your car door was open. And I'm thinking, well, that's really weird. I'm like, sure, it was all shut. He's like, your car door was open.

16:07 So I went to go shut it. And as I'm going to shut it, I see a critter inside. And of course, you know, my brain goes a mill mass out. So I got stuttered or startled, shut the door real quick,

16:18 ran inside. I'm like, you should, you should the critter in my car?

16:24 And so immediately, I'm like, there's a bear in my car, like a, like a grown up bear or like a cup. We suspect as small as it was that he's probably a year or two, all these probably 300 pounds,

16:36 you know, two or 300 pounds, like he's a little guy. So he gets, he gets his pistol in this little like metal, whatever the heck you got. and he's gonna go get the bear out of the car, but he's,

16:46 you know, he's nervous. Like he doesn't want to get mauled. And our driveway is set up such that the car was probably 15, 20 feet from the front door. It wasn't very far. And so the way we

16:57 usually scare them off, we get bears fairly frequently. The way we scare them off is the car alarm. 'Cause the trash cans, we have bear proof trash cans. They're in front of the car. There's

17:06 like this much space between the trash can and my car and my car's got a decent car alarm. So you hit it and it's lights and it's noise that scares the life out of only a gun for at least another two

17:15 weeks, whatever. So that was the plan. It was like, he opens the car door, runs into the house, and I'll hit the car alarm and out the bear will go. And that was basically how it went down.

17:25 And all he had done was tear up the upholstery of the back passenger door and rip the loose, like the A-bar plastic covering or whatever. But it was a little dirty. a wet bear, it didn't smell

17:42 remarkably. I mean, he was probably in there for a minute and a half, two minutes. And so we got super lucky that there was not more damage, but yeah, we get wildlife. So now I like my corridor

17:52 and we make sure to lock the front door, 'cause our front door is really, it's just a click button. Like if you can open a car door and get in the car, they can open the front door.

18:03 Yeah, yeah, and they're comfortable up there too, right? They're like, oh cool, I smell something good in the house Maybe I'll just go take a quick look around. Yeah, this guy is a lot more

18:13 brazen than some of the other bears that we've usually had. He, I a be could it, he say she, she don't have. Just more comfy than other bears that I've seen up here, which is saying something.

18:25 I mean, we've only been up here five years, but you get used to bears rifling through the trash can and all that. Oh, yes. This guy. I mean, or this gal, right? Or gal. One of those.

18:36 Critter, this critter. He used to live in El Dorado Springs, which is just outside of Boulder. It's kind of in a canyon. And we would get bears all the time. So I remember before, I guess there

18:50 was an acknowledged bear problem, I'm sure it's not like bears just started existing in 2010, but for whatever reason, we just had like regular trash cans. And we're like, oh, a bear got through

19:03 the trash and kind of ripped everything up last night. Like, let's put some rocks on top of the trash That'll do it. And the bears just come in, they knock that shit off. It's nothing. And we're

19:12 like, okay, maybe like bungee cords, no, no. So they just rip the thing open. And even though they don't get the bungee cords off, you see like scratch marks everywhere and they still get in.

19:22 Like, no, I think we're at the point where we need like bear-approved trash cans. And that finally did it and they stopped coming by. But I remember being upstairs in the bathroom one night and

19:32 looking down at that, I heard the bear kind of trying to get into the trash. And then, and I kind of like yelled at them, And seeing a bear sprint up the road at like 30 miles an hour, I'm like,

19:45 oh my God. Like - They're frighteningly fast. Really fast, and especially at that size, you're like, oh my God, what is going on here? We would die, I would be dead. Scary, 'cause usually

19:57 you don't see them, right? Like they do a good job of like, they're scared. Black bears try to avoid humans. But when you do see them and then you see them run, you're like, okay, I'm gonna

20:06 avoid that thing Or climb, you're like, yep, you can't run from them, you can't climb, like. Cool, where do you go? But now that's part of the beauty, of course, of Colorado. And it does

20:20 look awesome behind you. But back to your story, right? So how did you end up, no, this is good. How did you end up in Denver?

20:29 So Denver was sort of my husband's doing. I had an internship with Silver Bow, now Silver Bow used to be Swift. Yeah. And they had made a really good job offer I was pretty stoked about. But

20:42 Kevin had kind of wanted to live in Denver. And so I went to, I think it was AAPG. And they had, they have an annual like student expo in Houston, but they also had one up in Laramie. And just

20:57 made kind of the cutoff to get there. And interviewed, was lucky enough to interview with a bunch of companies. 'Cause this is 2012, right? Oil was huge and it was the, you have a degree in a

21:07 pulse, era, like, come on, so. That was prep time. Yeah, like, and so got to interview with a bunch of companies and Noble made an offer and it was for Denver and that was where we went. So

21:21 you office downtown working for Noble? Yep, got, was there for about a year and a half? It's probably there for about a year when things started dropping, right? Price started dropping. And

21:32 then their first round of layoffs was about six months after that. You know, it's a bit of a bummer. It's your first oil and gas downturn as an employee. And I had never paid attention before.

21:42 Like I just made the decision a year to prior to even going to oil and gas. So wasn't sure what to expect or anything, but yeah, I mean, you get handed that pink slip and you're like, all right,

21:54 now what? Yeah, so I'm here in Denver. I mean, in really 2008 to 2014, I guess there was a little bit of a dip in late 2008, going into

22:07 2009 was really a good time, right? 'Cause you had the combination of hydraulic fracturing. You had the discovery of shale plays. You had a lot of private equity money coming into the space and

22:18 newer smaller companies emerging. In addition to a lot of the majors really, really doing well. And then that Thanksgiving weekend hit on in 2014 and it's like, there's blood in the patch today.

22:31 This is bad. And it was kind of a struggle, I mean, really since then, I think it's fundamentally shifted. It went from just initial production and overall how fast can we drill and how much can

22:47 we produce to a focus on profitability and cash flow and returning money to investors. And it's shifted things and that also coincides with kind of the technology influx coming into the space as well

23:02 So it's been an interesting market where you have people from the tech side being like, Ooh, I want to get into oil and gas. There's so much money. There's so much opportunity. And then things

23:12 start slowing down as more and more technology comes into the space. I was just talking to one of my clients about this earlier today that I first started working in oil and gas software sales in

23:22 2008. And the problem was not sales. It was not getting meetings. It was not doing demos. It was not getting sales was finding people who could deliver. right, 'cause you couldn't hire fast

23:34 enough. So like when I was at BOLO, a typical day would be like, I'd make like 10 phone calls, I'd get like two or three meetings and by around lunch, I'm like, I think if I get more meetings,

23:49 I don't have anybody who can actually show the product. And then if I don't have somebody who can show the product, who's gonna implement it and who's gonna train, who's gonna integrate, who's

23:58 gonna support these guys? I'm like, I guess I'll just go home So like, I wonder if these guys are even gonna need me. But there as time, and there wasn't a ton of competition. But as time went

24:11 on, more and more companies saw, oh, there's an opportunity here. And then you get less companies to sell to. And more competition on the tech side, it's really sort of been more survival of the

24:22 fittest. We didn't have to be great in the early to mid 2000s to sell software to oil and gas. And now you see it. right? You really have to come in and you've got to be, you have a process, you

24:35 have to be have a technique, you have to differentiate because so many products sound the same. So talk to me a little bit about then after noble, did you go right from noble to great western? No,

24:46 it was a winding path. So I think the first job might have been a small, a really small operator that's now bankrupt called Bridge Creek. I think they're bankrupt. They're gone. That was as a

25:01 contract worker for pathetically low hourly rate. Just, you know, coming out of it, like, whatever. And then IHS market, which when I first joined was just IHS. And I had, I knew they were

25:15 data from noble, but I had no idea that they also did Jane's battleships, which my dad reads Jane's books, cover to cover. Like, every time he would come and visit in Alabama, they would go,

25:26 we'd go down to the golf and we'd visit the big battle show that he would. Practically give a tour like by the end we would have people just following us But so that was funny then they merged they

25:36 were market when I was there now their SP global plats So I mean even date of vendors are just yeah, they're getting gobbled up then spend some time at Liberty oil field services Which is now Liberty

25:45 energy? a little stint with terra guidance, which is still kicking along they are I Had a good time working for them and then great Western and so So you you've seen a lot. Okay, so I didn't I

25:60 guess I wasn't aware of the IHS stint. What did you do as a geologist over there? So it was more data. It was a data well in data transformation something like that but helping to pull the public

26:13 data and so really Helping to babysit the teams that were pulling public data So I had a couple of states that I would oversee and we had two offshore teams one onshore team And they were connected to

26:27 the state databases and they get things when new wells and all of that would be uploaded so they'd pull those wells and so IHS was still they may be more automatic now they may be more automated right

26:39 with Python and beautiful soup and scraping and all that but at that time they were still manual and hands touching the data and in a way it really did help clean up a bunch of data still

26:52 because they had those couple of layers of data quality but I cannot imagine how expensive all of that was. Right? Well that's why it costs so much to subscribe to it you know but that is a good

27:04 point it was the same thing with drilling info I remember going to Austin visiting their office I think I was talking partnership on the sales side or something and they're like here's our development

27:13 group and this is just onshore and they're like yeah we've got 40 of these people just scraping data every day and I was thinking like that's going to be replaced by technology at some point. Nasty

27:24 management Tools big data. It's coming. Yeah, and you could scrape it now like I think the ones who are doing it right have the bots scraping it. And then somebody is curating it. Like they can

27:36 have the bots scraping. You can even have a bot kind of cleaning, right? You can have business rules. I mean, you have an idea of how long a well is supposed to be of how big a stage should be,

27:45 how many stages, but like you have some business rules that you can set in that grab the low hanging fruit, but you still need, at the end of the day, a human being taking a look, you know? Even

27:56 if it's just charts to spot outliers and stuff like that. So the ones who are doing it right, I think are combining those two. 'Cause you get the lower price point and you have one person now doing

28:06 the job that like 40 people were doing before. Right, right. It's a lot more QC than like the actual like data scraping and effort that it took that's now been replaced by technology, but still

28:19 like I play around in various different data sets. It's like part of the benefit of being a sales consultant and touching lots of different software products that consume and integrate that data.

28:29 into it. And what's interesting is some things still get missed. And I find a lot of it, it's just like naming convention where because of all the acquisitions in the space, like I have it here,

28:41 right? But that doesn't mean the person that's Q, seeing the data says, okay, well, Ultra is actually pure West. So then you've got a whole bunch of ultra petroleum stuff. I see a lot of

28:50 Burlington resources. I'm like, I'm gonna get acquired like 20 years ago. Like, you know who it is and fundamentally it makes sense. But you're still like, well, that's what the state says. So

28:59 this is what it is. But like me as the user, if I'm looking like, well, I want to do an acquisition or I want to analyze profitability of this or that, it still takes a little bit of human

29:08 ingenuity to get past even what they do on the data side. But that's sort of where I see things still falling a little bit short. But that'll be an interesting space to keep an eye on, because I

29:21 saw the other day in Varis just announced they crossed half a billion dollars in annual revenue. And that's like great. Like, good job.

29:30 But that generally means like, okay, someone's gonna come for that now, right? This is the nature of technology and competition and capitalism that, okay, well, what are they doing that we

29:40 can't do for less and maybe provide better service with? And it's the same thing that happened to IHS with drilling info, right? They seize that opportunity and now you got companies like well

29:50 database trying to do it, but you can't just be cheaper, you have to be better. And that's hard to do 'cause you don't have as many resources, right? Yeah. Fun stuff. Talk to me about Great

30:03 Western. So I always thought Great Western, especially on the G and G side in the engineering space was pretty strong. You were there for just over three years and at a small company, that's a

30:17 long time, whether it's tech company, oil and gas company, I don't care. So tell me a little bit about, Great Western and kind of the talented team that you were a part of there. And what all

30:26 happened with Great Western? I know you had a good run there. Yeah, and it's funny you say that because Great Western was like a little microcosm in oil and gas where so many of their employees had

30:40 been there a very long time. Like we, the GG group, for me at three years, that was the shortest run for any of them. You know, even during, there were two rounds of layoffs I think one of our

30:52 geo-stairs never ended up coming back, but he had kind of started his own thing down in Mississippi. But they let go of a senior geologist and a geophysicist and brought them back in contract. Like,

31:04 because we still had the work, the work still needed to be done. But that was a lot of fun. And just, we learned a lot. The rocks were really, really good, you know, very oil-rich rock. And

31:16 when you're at a small company like that, man, you get to do all kinds of stuff like you're it, you're the one running it. And I think at the end, we were at 50, 000 barrels production or 55,

31:27 like a small amount, you know, one or two rigs for a short insane while it was three rigs on our, our poor years years, but we got to do just about everything from permitting to development. We

31:39 had a really cool science section that we got a couple of papers out of, um, a couple of, uh, Ertech talks and man, that was, it was a good run. Like, but I did have a feeling, you know,

31:50 you're looking around, you're seeing Cibitas, I have stuff in Chevron that I bought Noble, which I didn't, I didn't anticipate Chevron wanting Great Western, um, for the acreage, but eventually,

32:02 of course, they ended up with Great Western acre. They will ultimately right now. Yeah. Um, but you know it when you're in a small company like that, and they had been trying my, from what I'd

32:14 heard, they'd been trying to sell almost since inception, like the plan for Pat Bro was to have the acreage develop have a little bit sell it and and off she goes. to make some money and you know

32:23 it rains money and that like the sales just kind of would always fall through for one reason or another and then equity switch happened where Pat Bro was no longer the main owner and it was EIG and

32:40 with my experience with noble and just having looked around the industry you know and kind of bouncing around you don't want to be kind of the jerk on the team but you're just kind of warning folks

32:50 who got used to not being sold right and they sort of had been sheltered from the oil and gas up and down and so you're just kind of warning them like this isn't Pat Bro anymore guys like this is EIG

33:01 where we have a year maybe tops and like that was almost exactly the time frame was almost a year but it was like these guys know how to make money and they're gonna flip it I don't know who's gonna

33:13 buy us you know I had kind of thought it would be Civitas so when they made they bought somebody a few months before PDC bought us

33:23 I don't remember who it was, but in PDC was always one kind of in the background. I was like, PDC, if they have a come to Jesus moment and decide they want to play with the big boys, they might

33:31 buy us. But in my mind, it was mostly Civitas. And then when PDC came, I was like, oh, look at that. It was PDC. So, and you know, if it's a Denver oil and gas company that buys you, your

33:44 GG team is done. Like they have a GG team. It might keep an ops geo, maybe. Maybe they'll keep somebody for ops, depending on how their geo team looks, rig to geo ratio. But most Denver based

33:57 oil and gas companies have the technical team they want in geology. And if they buy another Denver based company, they're not often interested in keeping the tech. Right, they're buying you for

34:10 the asset. The asset's been proven out. We don't need our GOs. We don't need our GIS person. We might not even need your IT people, right? might not need your accounts. So you've done a really

34:21 good job of reinventing or inventing yourself depending on how you want to look at it after that, because I've seen this happen a lot. And actually genuinely feel bad for a lot of people,

34:35 particularly in the Denver market, that have these awesome jobs. And then an acquisition happens and you're a little bit blindsided and you're like, Oh, no, I'm redundant. And I get paid really

34:45 well And there's no other companies I can really work for because they're all saturated. So then one job posting comes up at a Denver based company and you're fighting for it, right? And

34:57 everybody's going after it and really talented people are going after it. And you're like, Oh, okay. Well, I guess I'm waiting for the next Denver startup and there's been a lot less of those.

35:07 Yeah. So what do you do? Right? So, so how did you then take the bull by the horns? You'd seen it coming, right? You'd seen the acquisition coming You went from Pat Bro to finance bros and then

35:18 what happened is a sale, right? And there you are, what next? Like, what are you thinking? Are you like, am I in the wrong space? Do I have to, God forbid, move back to Houston? Like, what

35:29 was next for you? How did you kind of reinvent yourself and take this next step in your career? So the consulting firm was something I had anticipated. I don't remember when it first kind of came

35:42 into my mind of like, like you said, you know, sort of, well, I kind of might want to try going out on my own and see what that looks like and have a little bit more control 'cause at least if I

35:53 fall flat on my face, I mostly have me to blame, you know? And you're still at the mercy of the market. You're still at the mercy of a bunch of stuff. You don't control, but when you're at an

36:05 oil and gas company or any company, there's a middle person there also controlling your success or failure. And they're trying to navigate the same water as you are, and their success may or may

36:19 not be linked to yours. And so I was just a little bit tired of having that middle person in the way. And like, you know what? Let me like try and see how this goes on my own. And that was part

36:33 of what really started kind of a LinkedIn social media, like networking concept. And anybody who's talked networking with me for two seconds has heard my R-Mag education outreach story Which is

36:49 people, especially technical people, we really like to think, oh, my work will stand on its own. My work will be what gets me forward. And that's sort of true. Your work can speak for itself,

37:01 but it needs a platform to speak from. Like, if you're in a concert, you might sing better than the person on stage, but nobody gives a crap, like I can't hear you. They're not there to see you.

37:11 They're there to see that other singer. And so you could be great. You could have a great body work, but nobody cares. And that's where LinkedIn sort of came in this, the RMAG Teacher of the Year

37:21 Award hit at home for me because some people, well, if you have a great product, it'll speak for itself and it'll market itself and that's complete nut or bullshit. Sometimes it happens, it does

37:31 happen sometimes, but like we had

37:35 1, 000 to give to a teacher plus 1, 000 for their school, like literal free money, maybe a half hour to fill out an application, but free money was the product And you can't, in my mind, have a

37:49 better product than that, and we couldn't get people to apply for it. They couldn't sign up. We tried as low barrier of entry as possible. We tried to time it appropriately with the school year,

37:59 but it was free money for earth science teachers in Colorado, like free money for teachers. And we couldn't get enough people. And it was because - Well, and recognition. And recognition, you

38:13 get free marketing out of the deal, right? Right. And it's just like, man. And so that drove it home where like, it doesn't matter how good the product is if people don't know about it. They're

38:22 not going to buy it. And the same is true with us as professionals. And that drove the layoffs have driven home. And the thought of being a consultant kind of shifts the mindset from like, I'm

38:32 just an employee trying to find a job to I have a brand. And you know, I don't like they're on that turnaround. I know it's like, oh, a brand yourself blah, blah, blah. But you have to really,

38:41 like you said, take the bull by the horns and realize that like your career isn't necessarily tied to working for a company. Like you can try to do something on your own and see how that goes. And

38:55 even if it's all flat on your face, well, you're no worse off than you were before. Like you still got a pivot. There's so much good stuff here. And this is part of why if I could buy stock in

39:04 you, if I could buy a tenacious G TNG stock on the New York Stock Exchange, I would. And I think my listeners may not place as much emphasis on this as they should, because I have a lot of

39:17 salespeople on this. I have outgoing personalities on this. But a couple of episodes ago, I had Todd Brooker on, he is the president of Colleague Lesby, and he said that it is so, they have some

39:28 of the best engineers in the space. And it is so hard to get them to network, right? So he like has forced himself outside of his comfort zone, which is being on a computer and running decline

39:39 curves and looking at other people's data to actually be out and about. And I really commend him for doing that I think geologists are even more so in their own shell. And you're successfully broken

39:50 out of there. Yeah, you wanna drink beer and color and talk about rocks? Like, okay, maybe not necessarily the right thing for me as like an extrovert, but you know, that's cool. And I've been

40:01 to some of the RBAG events and I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I'm a little bit different than the people here, but like they're doing what makes them comfortable. And that's fun. the value

40:14 especially now with the presence you can cultivate on social media. And I do actually like the term of brand building. I was just talking to my mentor about this today that like I have successfully

40:28 built my brand as funk futures as I think the go-to contract sales guy in oil and gas. That doesn't happen overnight. That took 15 years of grinding in sales. It took three plus years of podcasting

40:42 It took going to hundreds of different oil and gas companies offices still getting up at 5 am. some days to fly to Oklahoma or Houston to be in meetings. And that's how you do it, right? This is

40:55 not just a flip that you switch. And where people tend to get discouraged is early on when they don't get that immediate feedback loop of positivity where you're like, well, I guess what, I broke

41:06 outside of my shell. I made a LinkedIn post and two people liked it. And I got one comment, nobody cares. So then I'll just keep doing things the same way, but you know, the definition

41:17 definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And this is really where like, I hope that you find a way to continue to coach people to break out

41:28 of their shell that are in the engineering and the geo space, because there are less jobs now consolidation has happened, and it's not coming back in Denver. So what do people do? They have skills,

41:40 they're educated, they're bright, they have to build their own brands. You need to get them out there, Sarah. It's your job. Well, and this is how I encourage many engineer friends, but one of

41:51 them in particular had the same kind of, just like you said, the job seemed to be shrinking. And so this whole concept and question of like, tell me your five or 10 career plan, like that's,

42:02 it's not a joke, but it sort of is. And the old way of thinking cannot apply, you can't have this plan of like, oh, I'm going to to come in and I'll be a geologist and then. In five years,

42:11 they'll be a senior geo and then in 10 years, maybe manager or whatever. Those are all titles and you don't control that and you could be really great and really smart and really awesome and you're

42:20 sitting your ass on the couch while other people who may not be as a great a geologist, but they're climbing that ladder and smart people are going to realize that technical folks realize that and

42:31 they get discouraged. And I think that's part of the loop to not network, they're like, well, it's not like I can control anything. And that is where they're wrong. The networking is where you

42:43 get the power. And so instead of thinking about titles, you know, and it's, it's a little bit of a bummer because you, you want the titles, you want the money, you want the work that comes with

42:52 all of that, find other ways and find like, why do you want those titles? You know, why do you want to be a senior? Oh, well, I want to do highly technical work Ideally, geology work, like

43:04 for some, you know, for me, learning stuff and doing technical work are just problem solving at a high level. That's what I want. Yeah. I've realized in this rope, it doesn't have to be geology.

43:15 And so you have to start getting into your wants and find ways to get those. And that's where the power comes from. Like if you wanna have a family, well, maybe you want a job or you don't have to

43:27 travel 80 of the time, that looks different. And so, oh, well, I would like to have a job. And you like start to frame it that way instead of these, that's an internal framing instead of these

43:38 external job titles 'Cause especially in Denver, even for engineers, but especially for geologists in Denver, like it's a pretty bleak market. You can do it, people are doing it. You just have

43:50 to know, like you might be laid off, you might have to find other ways to get those skills and keep them up, like make it more internal. And that's where the consulting kind of came from, like

44:00 make more control, recognize you do have it, but like it doesn't look like how you've been told it looks Well, and I think part of that is the education system. to, right? And this is all

44:12 fundamentally shifted with the expansion of the internet. Like you don't, you know, and this platform's on digital wildcatters. I don't think Colin or Jake who run that company graduated from

44:23 college, but they have some of the biggest brands in oil and gas because they built that for themselves took time. They cultivated it, but they're like, what, what value can we provide? What

44:33 problem can we solve? There's a lack of, of media. There's a lack of exposure for people doing really good things. There's a general sentiment toward oil and gas. We think we can shift that. And

44:43 that doesn't require a degree to do. Like, maybe it would help you if you had it, but it doesn't really matter, right? I mean, it's, for me, you know, going back to college days, like, you

44:55 know, as a history in American studies major, I couldn't tell you a lot about the Civil War, even though I sat in classrooms and learning all about it for years. What I can tell you though is it

45:06 taught me how to work hard and and how to socialize. and how to keep up with people who were inherently like more intelligent than I was. So what are my skills, right? How do I adapt? How do I

45:19 make it work? And that was the values, the socializing of kind of secondary education that was valuable for me. But I've learned a lot more in business and being in boardrooms and going through

45:33 sales calls and seeing companies get acquired and getting passed over for promotions that eventually that's what hardens you. And that's kind of what allows you to take control, like you said, as

45:43 you have in your own career. We've only got a couple minutes left here Sarah, but I wanted you to talk specifically a little bit more about is it intelligent well-head systems? Is that the company

45:52 that you work for? And you have a consulting room. So what do you do? What do you do these days? Yeah, so

45:59 definitely not pulled back kicking and screaming, but when I got into my own consultancy firm and unfortunate enough, my husband has a fairly steady job So we had planned that kind of together. And

46:10 'cause just like you said, it's gonna take a while. Do not expect to make a lot of money those first couple of years of your consultancy. Unless you get lucky and you might know that your end is

46:18 coming at your current job and you can sort of start to build that network and platform and all of that. But for the most part, those first couple of years might really suck. So I was ready to ride

46:29 that out and I was really liking my own kind of thing, like chasing down jobs, doing all that stuff. And I got reached out to buy intelligent all head systems for this spot, largely based on what

46:41 they had seen on LinkedIn. Look at that. Yep, I take a attitude a little bit, like I do some technical posts, they usually fall completely flat, but sometimes - I don't read those for the record.

46:52 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I like your human posts. Yeah, like the weightlifting videos are the like, yes, life sucks sometimes, keep going. Because your

47:00 resume is on LinkedIn, so your technical jobs are there. And so

47:06 IWS is first and foremost, like a safety company and they're on the fracturing side. And they do essentially valve management, right? And so anybody who's fracking right now, if you're swapping

47:15 over wells, you have pressures that you have to check and you have to make sure the pressures on either side of the valve are good. So you have some poor person out there at like three o'clock in

47:24 the morning with a clipboard. You know, if you're in the Bakken and it's December, like, oh, check these numbers and flip this valve. And so the system will do all those checks and can help run

47:34 the valves, all of that. And I was like, this is awesome, but I had no idea why you would reach out to me I'm a geologist, thank you. You should understand it. Yeah, so my title is product

47:46 manager of cloud services. And so product management is kind of more on the like ideation side. You're a little more cerebral. You do the business case, right? Once you've moved into execution,

47:57 it is more business, more project execution kind of work, project management. But at the beginning, it's like, come up with new stuff and help us run it through. Understand what the customer is

48:07 going through. are going through, find their pain points and it helps all of them. And I was like, Oh, that flipped the light switch for me. I was like, That's why you came back for me. Okay,

48:17 I get it now. As we're coming in, I got it. And so it's been really cool because they're willing to take somebody, a lot of folks who have the industry skillset and the industry knowledge and what

48:29 they really need for from their positions and then kind of train the rest. Like you hear that happening, the same thing with the job, like somebody reaching out for a job. I've heard these stories

48:39 and like, you're full of shit. That doesn't happen. And then I have to apologize to everybody who I thought was full of shit. It has happened to me. It can happen to

48:50 you. But and then they're willing to take you in for transferable skills to train you up. It's been amazing. Like you get so jaded and you're like, companies like that don't exist. They don't.

48:60 But it really helps. My manager is really solid Like I came in and I had these 90-day goals. I was here's your expectation. Here you go. I'm like, oh, oh, oh. Look at that, like that's sweet.

49:10 And they were more outlined, a little more tangible, which geology at an EMP firm by its nature is not like, come in, help us plan our wells, you know? Help us make sure we don't go out of zone.

49:21 Like there's not necessarily these set things, but product management, it was a little more tangible. And so that was really nice. But I am still, I do still have, and I'm gonna try to wrap up.

49:31 I know we're getting close. I have my little project off to the side too. I didn't totally let go of my consulting firm when I was building a software from some pain points I experienced at Great

49:41 Western. While I was working there stuff, I was like, well, I'm just gonna build this up so that I can solve it. Then they got sold and I thought, well, this problem still exists on a lot of

49:49 options. Yeah. And so it's at the point now where I like, I have to find, you know, I just have to find 75, 000 laying around andor become a full stack developer while working a full time job

50:01 and raising two children. So, you know, we said - Oh, so easy, so easy. That's a challenge that I have to, I have ideas, but without

50:13 full stack development chops, it's kind of hard to put those ideas into the technology. Oh, and then by the way, then that technology becomes a company. And then what about your other companies?

50:23 What about your job? What about your family? What about your husband? What about not just working? Yeah, we'll figure that out later, but. One step at a time. Yeah, you know, I guess final

50:33 thought to wrap up, like, you know, what if I fail, right? What if I actually do get outside my comfort zone and start putting myself out there and networking more and posting on social media,

50:45 maybe starting my company? What if I fail? What's the worst thing that could happen? And I say this to my clients all the time that want us to help them with marketing. It's like, well, what if

50:55 nobody likes it, right? What if nobody? I'm like, but what if one person does? And what if that one person wants to do business Do you revise your product?

51:06 right? How much did you spend? How much effort and time was that one action that got you that desired result? Because it's not, most likely it's not going to happen right away. But it might, you

51:18 know, minerals guy, Steven Hatcher, we've worked with him for a while. That was his big fear. What was holding him back was failure. Who's going to watch this? Why is anybody going to care?

51:26 Who's going to do it? I'm like, well, flip it around. What if somebody does? What if 15 people watch one of your videos, 15 more than you had before with this idea in your head. And now he's

51:37 got people coming to him, throwing him money, trying to do business. Now it's like, baby Goggins, man. What if right? Nice. Yeah. What if you do? I like that. But it's, it's, it's really

51:46 good stuff. This is going to be my challenge to you because we have more to talk about. I want you to find another geologist, somebody that wants exposure. And then we're going to come on and do

51:55 another podcast. You can co-host with me and we can, we can interview. So that's your challenge and we'll revisit that. But Sarah Compton, where do people find you? How can they find the

52:05 tenacious jiama? Linked in is the easiest way. My neighbor, after much cajoling and battering has convinced me to get an Instagram, but it's nowhere I don't really ever check it. Like I can

52:17 barely handle Linked in. I have a Facebook account for fitness stuff, but Linked is probably the quickest, easiest way. And yeah, you can usually find me there. And then I had the one closing

52:29 thought like going out on your own, and if you fail, for me, I couldn't not try it It was like, if I didn't try this, it would eat me up. Yeah. I would never know. So even if you fail, well,

52:40 at least you know. At least you found out. Yeah, I mean, I can't, I mean, I completely agree with that. And that's sort of where I got to, where people would be like, wow, that was bold.

52:50 Like that took balls to do. I'm like,

52:53 actually I had to do it. It would have been less authentic of me to take another job, 'cause I didn't wanna do that. Like this is what I had to do.

53:03 Well, it was the worst thing that could happen. I would just take a job. Like, that's okay. The fun job somewhere. Like, we have employable skills. Anyway, Sarah, this is great. Sarah

53:11 Compton on LinkedIn, great follow, great leader and emerging one in the oil and gas tech space. Thank you for coming on What The Funk, and we'll be bringing you back soon. Thanks for having me,

53:21 man.