What The Funk?

0:01 I got to feel it. And the only cure is Bobby Neillen.

0:08 Is it what is that from

0:10 the cowbell thing? Any more cowbell that will ferrule skit?

0:17 Yeah. All right. He's like, I got a fever. The only prescription is more cowbell. Thank you. Okay. I got to feel it. The only prescription is more Bobby Neillen. And we got that rhyme a

0:28 little bit better, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I guess this is what two podcasts in a row where we got multiple Boston Red Sox hats on. And it's legitimate, too. It's not like he just has a hat in

0:40 his house. Like, you know, he and Mark and Bobby, especially you're a diehard, right? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, been on them since, you know, well, I mean, I don't have a bucky dent, you

0:50 know, but, you know, I've got Aaron Boone, so. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Dye in the wool. So we'll get into all that good stuff. Bobby Neillen, And I met on Twitter in the EFT land. He started

1:03 making some intelligent commentary on I think analytic solutions and just data related stuff. And I was like, wow, this guy really knows this stuff. Jose Rodriguez is like, oh no, Bobby really

1:15 knows this stuff. So we got on the phone with the intention to chat. I wanted to introduce him to Funk Futures, talk about all the amazing fun, innovative, cool clients we have. But we just sort

1:24 of got into everything. And he's got roots in the Northeast in New Hampshire He's a Sox fan. He married a girl from Pennsylvania just like I did. And then, of course, tying it into the whole

1:34 analytics thing. Sounds like you might even know some people who played baseball with him, Tim. So this Bobby Neillan's got a web around him. I guess so. Yeah, we kind of had to have him on the

1:45 show after all of that, didn't we? Yeah. So, you know, we're casual here, Bobby. I just want to get a sense like, who are you, right? Where'd you come from? Where'd you go to school? and

1:56 then how did that take you eventually into oil and gas? Yeah, sure.

2:02 So, yeah, so Bobby Neal and I grew up mainly in the Houston area, grew up down in the small town called Needville, south of South of Sugarland. My mom's from my mom grew up in Needville, but I

2:15 was born down here actually originally in Wharton and then lived up in New Hampshire until I was about six or seven or so and then moved back down and then we went all the way through, yep, before

2:28 you die. And remind me, I do have a, actually do have a Plymouth, New Hampshire story. What? Yeah. And now we're the mall is Jeremy.

2:40 I mean, since you brought it up, Tim, the nearest mall until I was 11 was in Manchester, which was about an hour and 10 minutes from my house. It was a big deal and they got one in Concord. And

2:51 then it was like 45 minutes, but no, Plymouth did not have them all

2:57 But yeah, so remind me, you know, I think we're gonna get into some of that stuff later, but you know, live up there until six or seven, then we move back down and then kind of grew up in

3:06 Houston in this area. And I went through Needville High School and got into the United States Merchant Marine Academy, which is up on Long Island in New York. And was there everybody year and a

3:19 half and then realized that A, I didn't want to be on a ship for the rest of my life or for the next eight years And B, I was starting to kind of fill out and throw the baseball a little harder and

3:29 stuff like that. So I kind of wanted to pursue that passion. So came back down to a year, junior college baseball, Wharton County Junior College. And then actually made my way back up to New York

3:39 had some connections up there and got in at Hofstra University. We played in the CIA and

3:47 did two more years there. And you graduated and that's where I met my wife. I played baseball and she played softball And then, yeah, it was pretty. I guess kind of step back. Both my parents

3:59 were teachers. My mom taught elementary school just retired last year. And my dad's gonna retire this year. So, you know, kind of teaching life was kind of what I knew. And it's a great, it's a

4:10 great life. You know, especially in time with kids and everything in the summer, but,

4:14 so, you know, I was like, you know, when I got my math degree, figured, yeah, I'm gonna teach, I'm gonna coach. And, you know, I came out and did that. I did one year at a small school

4:24 near Galveston called Hitchcock High School And coached some basketball and taught them out there, and then got in at Foster High School in Richmond, kind of out near Tim. And I coached basketball,

4:35 baseball, did a little bit of football, and tied everything from algebra up to pre-cal. And, yeah, that kind of got me up to the oil and gas point, so I got to about 2014 or so. And, well, I

4:48 guess, you know, a couple years before that, I was coaching some summer baseball as well. And one of the dads on the team, He seems John Hentius, just retired from Conoco. Um, you, we got to

4:57 talk in, had a couple of beers and he's like, Oh man, you got a math background and you did a little engineering coursework. I mean, you'd be great at, at Conoco as a reservoir tech. And I was

5:05 like, man, I don't know anything but oil and gas. Um, he said, Oh, don't worry. But you don't need to. Isn't that illegal? If you grew up in Houston, you have to know something. But like

5:13 they let you graduate high school without knowing what a, what an oil rig is. Yeah. I knew it. I knew what a cotton field was. Uh, yeah, he's going to be a blue jay. All right. All right.

5:23 All right. There's two, hold on But before we get into your oil and gas stuff, there's, there's a lot here already, right? And, and I think this is, I even forgot about that commonality too,

5:32 both of my parents or teachers, uh, who have retired as well. So I had a similar upbringing in terms of that lifestyle, right? What they had, sort of all the trips planned around the school

5:42 schedule. Education was a big time priority. Um, and it just sort of instilled a different mindset. And like you, like I didn't really know anything about business growing up And then I went to a

5:53 liberal arts college. and weighted tables. So by the time I actually got my first like real corporate job, I was almost 24. I didn't know anything about business other than what I'd seen on like

6:02 office space. So it was like a real like, whoa, hits you, hits you right in the face. But I think that's a, that's an interesting parallel. And then the baseball passion. So even when you were

6:16 done playing, you still wanted to be kind of a part of it, right? Like you've got this real passion for sports. Do you still do any of that coaching now that you're working full time and on gas?

6:28 So not nothing with baseball, you know, currently I'm actually been coaching my daughter's six youth softball this past fall and now this spring. And that's been a lot of fun. And it's been really

6:36 cool to kind of get back into it. Totally different than coaching high schoolers. Like, you know, we show up first day for softball and it's like, this is first base. This is second race. You

6:45 know, your glove goes on your left hand if you're right handed, you know, all those kind of basic things, but it's been a lot of fun and kind of kind of re-energize me in that space. When I got

6:55 into the oil and gas, I didn't totally leave baseball behind for a while. I did some private coaching and stuff like that. You kept it in there, but then with the kids and run around, you know,

7:04 it's just, you know, focusing a lot more on, you know, on being a dad to my kids and being a coach to my kids, so. Yeah, fantastic. Go ahead, Tim. The, what, I mean, well, first of all,

7:15 what position did you play? Were you a pitcher? You said you filled out and you weren't, we were throwing harder, so maybe. Yeah, yeah, I was a pitcher in college. I broke my wrist playing

7:23 football at the Merchant Marine Academy, and that kind of ended my hitting career. You know, I just kind of got too far out of it by the time I came back and hadn't seen live pitching for two or

7:30 three years, and it was like, that's just tough to come back to, especially when you start moving up levels. Yeah, for me, it was a curve ball. Stop me from hitting. Yeah. Any picture of a

7:39 curve ball, I was jelly-legged and fall all over the place, so. Yeah, I remember even just like making contact with a curve ball once when I'd been struggling so much, and I was just really proud

7:48 of myself, that I timed it off to hit a foul ball or something I have a weird one for you, but. In coaching, so obviously you coached, you know, young teenage boys in high school, and then

8:02 you're going to coach your daughter in SIXU, which is clearly a very different age group, but did you notice a discernible difference between coaching girls versus coaching boys? I know that big

8:15 age group to tell apart, but. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely different with girls, but at the same time, I think at this point, I don't know if I can necessarily tell if it's just girls, or if

8:26 it's six-year-olds, it's kind of tough to discern right now, but I mean, I think they're definitely, I just try to keep it a lot more light. Right now,

8:36 being six-year, I just tell them, I just want this to be a good experience. Your first experience with softball, I want it to be good. I don't want you to want to play again next year, because

8:44 you're on my team. We'll learn some softball along the way, but

8:50 let's not make it too overly competitive right now.

8:54 Yeah, I coached a bunch of coed soccer teams, you know, why stuff? But at that age, I found it kind of interesting that at six years old, there was an interesting break where some of the kids

9:06 just got it immediately and we're super competitive and just, and then there was a lot of other people that just weren't ready to grasp sports. I was kind of where I was headed with it. Do you

9:17 notice much difference with, did you see that on that, on that side? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you get some girls. I mean, my daughter, it's almost like she didn't really have a choice. I mean,

9:27 my wife took her up to Mizzou last summer to go to the super regional because my wife's former coach is the head coach at Mizzou Softball. So, you know, we've kind of got her indoctrinated and all

9:36 that. But then you get other girls that show up and, like I said, I mean, they don't know anything about the game. The parents, I mean, I had one of the parents last night asked me if you do

9:43 the scorebook. And he's like, I said something about a single. And he's like, what's a single? And I was like, you know, I mean, I mean, and they're awesome. I mean, the great parents, but

9:51 it's just like, you know, as soon as he's

9:54 just having to expose to it. And you probably had her doing soft toss in the house at two years old, right? Yeah, exactly. And my son's a maniac now too, 'cause now he's got his sister. He just

10:02 turned two this week. And last night, we did a little practice with my daughter. And he's like, I want a bat. I want a ball. And he's like grabbing it and holding it right already. And it's,

10:10 so yeah, I mean, I think it's just, they come from it, but I mean, it's pretty cool. We're about halfway through the season. And actually a girl last night got the game winning hit. And I mean,

10:17 she's been struggling all year. She's probably one of the youngest on the team, but I mean, she made contact because they took the TOA yesterday, so they can't use a T anymore. Like, I have to

10:25 get five pitches and they're out. And she made contact. And she ran to first, and we scored. And that was the winning run. So it's pretty cool to see them. Yeah, the maturation process. I mean,

10:34 they grow a lot over two months or so. Yeah. A lot of parallels there to life in general, and especially in sales, right? Like, I just need to get this done. I've been struggling. And then you

10:44 get the game winning hit, the biggest deal, the quarter, and you're the - Oh, for sure. of the conquering hero.

10:50 random also with series coming on the episode before this back -to -back guys who went to college in New York

10:58 when I was reading reading your bio I didn't know where hofstra was I Knew I knew it was northeast side to go look it up and I think SE is in New York and isn't like in the center of Long Island i

11:08 Guess Yeah and I You Know I was sitting there thinking about one of the questions I was going to Ask Cause I have no appreciation of the New York City you know it's New York Long Island I know that

11:21 the concert was very different but what is the is there what is the difference between living in Long Island versus kind of up in New York City is that of Manhattan then Yeah Yeah I mean i mean lions

11:33 definitely the burbs but it's not like you think of the Burbs I hear that Yeah a little a lot more established community has been around a good bit longer but Yeah I mean it's lie auditioning to just

11:43 cause you've got a little bit of that there's a north shore vs Southshore Thing You've Got You know Suffolk Versus Nassau County is kind of Ease I mean cause If you go way out east, I mean, you got

11:51 like Montauk and the Hamptons and like that's like pretty swanky and it's beautiful out there. And then, you know, Hofstra was kind of more on that west side where you're getting closer to Queens.

12:00 So, you know, it starts to blend together a little bit. But I mean, culturally, I mean, I think they retain a lot of the New York kind of swagger and stuff like that. But it's just not the

12:10 hustle and bustle as much, you know, it's a little bourbon. There's like, there's real beaches on Long Island too, people go down there and spend summers and, you know, on the beach and all

12:20 that versus water in Manhattan, but I don't think you're like hanging out on the

12:28 beach. I mean, I went to Jones Beach quite a bit. I mean, the north shore is a little more craggy on the Long Island sound and everything. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot worse places you could

12:35 be than Long Island in the summer. So yeah, yeah, no, no question. Well, you know, apart in all the baseball talk, it is opening day. I'm going to be heading to course field after this

12:46 podcast extremely excited about that with your friend Dan Schickiar. Tim, there you go, tradition, opening day, capital grill, then over to the ball game. But Bobby, you, you, you just met

12:57 Tim, right? Like you hadn't had any interactions with him. Yeah, I didn't tell her anything. So one of the things we like to hit people with is, is Tim, talk a little bit about your background

13:06 at spa fire and let's, let's transition to sort of the data and analytics conversation to go from your math background, Bobby, into your oil and gas career and how you've applied it. And Tim,

13:14 talk about sort of where you came from and this whole genesis Well, yeah, so, I mean, there's no reason you know this, but I started out in, you know, at slumber's day. Well, it was a

13:25 predecessor to that and moved over to spa fire and I was actually their first oil and gas person. Okay. Now, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know if they want to pursue oil and gas,

13:34 all kinds of, they were basically in pharmaceuticals for the most part. Yeah Anyway,

13:41 so we struggled forever to get the industry to kind of recognize analytics at come up with a budget to kind of put it in place. So I'm kind of proud of what we wound up doing. By the time I left,

13:55 we had moved across the chasm and we're starting to kind of move up the, I'm sorry, we're using a sales term, but I don't know if you know, crossing the chasm. Yeah, I mean, I haven't read the

14:05 book, but I'm really, I'm aware like, I read the Cliffs notes, essentially. Yeah, by the way. So I like

14:13 to tell people when I go in and they're using Spotify or complaining about something I always tell them, Well, that's partly my fault Yeah. No, I mean, if that was you, you did a whole job with

14:23 the marketing integration. No, I'm not gonna take that much credit, but there were a lot of people involved. It was a great product, great, great group, and we had some great salespeople. I

14:34 was on the technical side, but I left right as it was kind of making the turn and where it became, it was a couple years later and it became kind of, you just walked into anyone at gas companies.

14:46 Exactly. Yeah,

14:48 it's almost, Baja War I of the competitors was there. In 2014, I feel like it had really kind of reached fairly mass adoption. So I'm guessing when you walked into your first, was it a data and

15:02 analytics kind of job at Conoco? Were you starting? Okay, so I came in and I was a reservoir engineering technician, but

15:11 to your point, the first day I went to lunch and it was me, my boss Phil, and the reservoir engineer, Greg Lemons, it was really talented dude. And they were like, You're gonna be the spot fire

15:22 guy. You're welcome. Yeah, I was like, I don't know what that means. But no, I mean, they kind of just, they had me pegged that, you know, and they knew I didn't know it. I mean, one of

15:33 the stories I tell, like I literally walked in the door and I didn't know what a V local wasn't excelled. Like the first week they kind of gave me a little pet project and I was trying to hack away

15:40 at it. And someone was like, Oh, you just do V look up? And I was like, Wait, what's that?

15:45 but they basically have me pegged to be a. you know, the spot fire reservoir tech, you know, for the Eagleford development team or for the end up being for the Eagleford base reservoir team. But

15:56 really, I mean, I've had to cut my teeth like Greg, basically would, so Greg had built up some really cool stuff with a couple of the contractors they had and then they kind of handed off to me,

16:06 but then it was like, all right, how can we add more functionality? So he's like, hey, this group did this. Can you reverse engineer it and bake it in? So I mean, I did a lot of learning just

16:12 by working backwards from what other people had done at that point And then, but yeah, I mean, I love Spotfire. To the

16:21 point where I actually, I ruffled some feathers with Tibco a few months ago. I put a LinkedIn and Twitter post with LinkedIn. It was more powerful with them. And

16:28 I ended up getting like their VP of analytics reached out to me. But it was more because I think marketing-wise, they could do better. I mean, I see Power BI and I see Tableau. And it's like,

16:41 you know, people just know those brands. And I haven't messed with Tableau too much And I've heard really good things, but I mean, I've missed a Power BI and I'm coming around on it, I mean, I

16:49 haven't seen good use cases, but I mean, spot fire can do anything that power be I can do in more, and it's just, but I don't, again, you get outside of oil and gas to pharmaceuticals for the

16:58 most part, and I don't know many people who know about spot fire other than just in passing knowledge. Interesting. And to me, it's a problem. I mean, it's a problem with the marketing or just

17:08 how it was pitched or, you know, or there's comfortable, I don't know, I mean, but to that end, the reason it upset me is because it's a great product and there's a ton you can do with it. So,

17:19 yeah, I mean, I branched into other tools, I mean, when I came in, it was like spot fire and I really honestly, I resisted coding for a long time, but, you know, I speak of spot fire as kind

17:31 of my gateway drug, if you will, you know, and then through that, I was like, oh, you know, I guess if I can learn R, then I can extend it with the tear engine and, you know, oh, well, if

17:39 I want to pull data in, then maybe I need to learn a little bit of sequel and then, you know, just keeps building on itself. But, uh, I mean, still use it to this day, you know, with that

17:47 Grayson know, and I mean, it's a great product. So let me ask, so not many people make the run from coach, teacher, into oil and gas tech. Sure. That is a not a traditional path in. There's a

18:06 lot of usually. We've seen a lot of non-traditional paths but that may be, you know, one of the different, we had a coach at George Ranch High School also in the same district as Foster. And

18:18 swimming coach, and he went from swim coach teacher to sales in oil and gas, but he was selling hardware. Yeah, like, that's a lot of stuff. And it was a little bit different. He was training

18:29 you up on whatever this valve is and go out and sell it. But to move from oil and gas to from teaching to reservoir tech, I mean, that's not a, that's a big, that's a big transition I'm just kind

18:43 of curious what. What

18:47 contains in P90s and all these different things, like what am I, what's good, what's bad? Is this good, is not lying good, is that like that? Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, obviously a huge jump,

18:56 like I said, didn't even know what a VLOOKUP was in Excel.

18:60 So at the time, you know, part of the reason that the guy John had recommended I joined Conica was they were starting to see a lot of people with math degrees do very well as technicians, like

19:14 reservoir techs, production techs, and they figured, you know, we can teach them the rest. And I think it was a perfect storm. And I think other companies did at Conica, definitely, I mean,

19:21 there was a group of us that came in with math backgrounds. And it didn't help hurt that, like the manager of Eagle for Development, Steve Bonet at the time, he started off as a reservoir tech and

19:33 he had, you know, knew the kind of the skillset you needed to get into it. So when I got in, luckily they invested a good bit in me. I think one thing that definitely helped, you know, I have

19:41 the math background So, you know, the logic and kind of all that stuff, but it. I think having a year or so of the engineering coursework at the Merchant Marine Academy is really kind of like

19:51 taking a lot of engineering basics so when I got in I had taken thermodynamics I'd taken strength materials and just somebody that thing so when they start talking about some of the stuff it wasn't

19:60 like this totally foreign thing to me like now when I came in I I realize how Little I knew about the sub surface seemingly I think and that's why I think I still try to have a lot of empathy with

20:10 people outside the industry that speak about it cause like when I came in I Got and I had never even connect the Dots that net oil and gas was natural gasoline rather than gasoline that you're just

20:19 little things I add or or it's or the OH wait it's not this huge just like pool of oil under the ground like

20:27 that you just find permeability and porosity all the all these things so I mean but I mean at that I I was very lucky to get him when I did because he had twenty fourteen oil still ninety hundred

20:38 dollars and Conoco invested a lot in me early on like they had an internal like Reservoir engineering for non - or patrol engineering for non-engineers course. And they sent me to, I think it was

20:49 like subsurface consultants, had like a two-day thing. So I kind of got the crash course in oil and gas. And then they had these things called IPMs internally where we could learn more about oil

20:58 and gas. But then a lot of it was just sitting in meetings and trying to learn all the acronyms and just kind of like just being a sponge and not being afraid to ask questions. I mean, I think

21:10 growth mindset gets kind of a little hokey sometimes But I mean, I just have to kind of realize if it's difficult to learn, it's worth learning. And you may not understand it now, but I think to

21:20 your point, what you said earlier, Jeremy, like about sales, but it's true everywhere. It's like success is not this linear path, right? You know, there's those memes where everybody's like

21:27 here and it's all bunch of scribble scrabbles. And then all of a sudden it kind of, you figure it out or something works and then you take that next step. But just being willing to struggle through

21:37 things and just being willing to learn. Yup, yup I was chatting with somebody. just the other day, who's 45 years old. And he said to this point in his career, it's all kind of been steady up.

21:51 And this is the first time in his 20-something year career where he's like, I'm gonna make less money this year. I feel uncertain about things. And I'm like, yeah, it's just not a straight line

22:03 to success for most people, right? And it's a hard reality whenever it hits you, but I could see it hitting him. I'm like, you'll be all right There's no rule book that says you have to increase

22:14 your compensation by 6 and gain a better job title every two years, right? No, for sure. And I think the timing you had is interesting because I mean, I know thinking about myself with at that

22:26 time, 2014,

22:29 you know, it was a lot of crazy, stupid things are going on, people are drilling everything and anything. And

22:37 then 2015 got a little weird looking And then 2016, it just went awash. what the hell? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that had to be itchy. You're just what? A year and a half into your career and or. I

22:49 mean, I would say not even really 'cause it was November of 2014 when Saudi, it was our right around Thanksgiving and then announced they were gonna ramp up production and prices like, 'cause,

22:58 yeah, I mean, I remember specifically being in a meeting and we were talking about, you know, break evens and stuff like that. And someone was like, oh yeah, I think our break evens like 42

23:05 bucks or whatever. And we were like90, I was like, oh, I don't have to worry about that.

23:09 And then it didn't take long, get into 2015. You're like, oh boy, this is a cut in the close But

23:15 I mean, obviously you're going to have to cyclical. I think especially for Conoco, I

23:22 mean, a lot of people probably wouldn't think so if they lost their jobs. But I think it was necessary. I think especially Conoco, when I came

23:29 in, they had split in 2012 or 2013 or so with Phillips CC6. And I think they were still operating like they were integrated at this huge center and just throwing money around. And I was kind of

23:38 like, how are we making money? And it turns out maybe we weren't.

23:43 You know, I think that they've done a great job since and of like, they, they were kind of the first ones on that whole cost of supply. Um, it's extra edgy and they really seem to have executed

23:53 on acquisitions and the vestraiture so far. So, um, yeah, it was definitely a very interesting time to come in. Um, and I was very fortunate to have people in my corner, um, you know, to kind

24:03 of make it through those cause that was definitely unnerving to me, your first year out of teaching, you know, comfortable teaching and coaching. And, you know, you're making a little more money,

24:10 but you're like, how long is this going to last? I just bought a house, got to get on the way. Um, but, uh, you know, I was very fortunate to kind of get through those and, uh, no, it's,

24:15 it's been great.

24:21 So how long were you at Conoco and then you're at Grace and Mill now, right? Yeah. So yeah, there was a few stops in between there, but, um, yeah, I was at Conoco until 2017, um, so about

24:34 three years. And then I joined a company reservoir data systems, um, was out in Katie, um, and they, put pressure gauges and sensors on wells. They have like high quality, high resolution

24:48 pressure sensors and they use them for like offset frack interference, measurement, like, you know, measuring pressure for offset frack, defects, you know,

24:58 when I was there, I helped, you know, there's a lot of companies doing it out, but you know, with a frack streaming solution, helped develop that, you know, where you plug it into like serial

25:06 port and the frack band and stream the data out so that people can see their fracks in real time, you know Yup. So, and that was a really cool experience. You know, Rebecca, NRS and Cecil, they

25:17 run a really, really cool company out there. You know, small, but small, but mighty kind of thing. But it was a, I made, there was a growth that I made there that I don't think I would have

25:26 been able to make that Conoco. You know, going from big company, which, you know, I think everything has it's, plus it's mine is like Conoco. I had this awesome data infrastructure that was

25:36 already set up for us in the Eagle Ferd. You know, we had a data warehouse. I could just plug in and got good data back. You know, didn't have to really worry about it. And I could play around

25:44 with it. It was a great way to learn and spot fire and do all that. But RDS I think is where I took one of those, you know, kind of next steps. You went from where there's somebody that's got a

25:54 job to do something and then you go to the small company where everybody does, there is no job description. Everybody has to do everything. Yeah, I mean, I did everything data. I was managing a

26:05 web development project. I was handling data QC and quality coming from the field You know, yeah, I was customer support rather.

26:15 You went and operators were calling and hey, where's this data? How do I find it? What's wrong with it? I'd go on sales calls with the sales engineer, helping the guys when they needed more

26:25 technical background. And then I was also lucky enough the last year or two there to be on their executive leadership team and kind of actually get more in the business side and focus on strategy,

26:36 help them implement, you know, a goal setting system I think they use a ditch walk hairs.

26:42 But just kind of really helping the company to kind of focus because, you know, learn a lot about business there. Because I mean, it's when you're small, you have to make decisions, you know,

26:51 about what you can and can't do or what you're willing to do. Because there's only so much time, excuse me, time and money. And you know, you want to help everyone with everything, but you've

27:01 got to really kind of narrow your focus. And to really execute, you've got to focus on that, you know, one of those one or two things, you know, if you're trying to boil the ocean, you're not

27:09 going to get anywhere So, but it was, now that was a really fun company and, you know, so I have a lot of really good friends from there. It was a really good group of people.

27:18 But from there, a couple of former Conoco colleagues reached out, they were at University Lands, which is part of the University of Texas system. Sure. And I'm sorry. No, no, no, I was just

27:29 going to say that the University Lands thing is interesting. And I don't know, Tim, maybe you have some familiarity with University Lands a little bit.

27:39 I don't know, can what do you guys give like sort of a high level on what they do? Cause it's, it's fast. Yeah. Um, so university lands is part of the university of Texas system. And, uh, I

27:50 mean, they've owned the land since I think sometime in the 1800s. But, um, basically there's about 21 million acres of land out in the Permian that they own and about 1 million acres of that is

28:02 oil and gas producing. Wow And, uh, and they have the surface and the, uh, you know, the mineral rights to that. So, you know, the, the, and their mission basically is to provide, there's

28:15 two funds. There's the permanent university fund and the, uh, auxiliary university fund, um, P puff in the AUF. And so the puff is one, I mean, that's the big one. And that's managed by you,

28:25 Tim Co, um, which I can't remember what that acronym is. Uh, exactly the other one, but the other ones who actually managed like the fund managed the money, but we were, the university lands is

28:36 kind of managing, you oil gas coming out of the ground and basically we're collecting, you know, royalty on every barrel of oil and gas, you know, produced on the land. And so all the revenue

28:46 from that goes into the puff. And then that gets managed. So last year, I mean, I think they just released their, like, they had like a little PDF book of it. But I think it's all they made

28:55 about1213 billion for the University of Texas system. And I think the puff now is worth anywhere between 20 and25 billion. And so that gets, you didn't go determines like that gets dispersed

29:08 throughout University of Texas system. I mean, whether it's UT Austin, you know, UT Dallas, MD Anderson, and actually a third of it goes to the AM system as well. So two thirds goes to UT

29:19 system and a third goes AM. That, by the way, that is probably the beginning of the hatred between AM. And really went right before all that. There was, you know, I don't, you know, I'm sure

29:33 some historian can tell you where that started. there was a big fight about the university lands that AM should get half and Texas should get half. And then the one third, two-thirds split was,

29:46 that's an interesting one. Back in my day, back in my day. Well, about 20 years ago. They used to talk about, one of the big jokes at Texas was AM, you get one third of the education.

30:01 And that was a reference back to the, I think the 20s when that division happened Okay. Yeah, it sounds right because that was, yeah, the 20s when they added the Santa Rita well. And I think

30:10 this last year they just restored that well as well, kind of like a historical landmark, whatever. But, I mean, a super cool mission where like again, the work you're doing kind of contributes

30:19 to the education, you know, which was kind of big for me coming out of education was kind of a cool deal to kind of parlay that. Right. And like my former CEO kind of said, you know, money,

30:28 some of that money goes to MD Anderson. So in a way, oil and gas, cures cancer. So That's a nice message we should hit on. Yeah, right. That seems like something you'd see in the

30:40 Midland airport or something like that. Yeah, probably. But as you get the puff, which is that big one, then you actually still have the auxiliary university fund. So one cool thing about that

30:50 is it wasn't just oil and gas. We had grazing rights, but also solar farms, wind, right away, all that kind of stuff. So managing the surface side of it, too. And there's definitely an ESG

31:02 component where,

31:04 as least we had a lot more power than probably your typical landowner. A, if we asked for data, they had to give it to us. Like, if we needed stage-by-stage completion data, or down to the perf

31:19 level, they had to give it to us. And a lot of them were not too comfortable to us, especially if they had acquired a company that was on it. And then they were like, wait, we have to give you

31:27 that? You're like, yeah, sorry, go read the legal documents but at the same time on the, Uh,

31:35 the environmental side, you know, say, and it wasn't a huge lover, especially when gas got down where take away was like zero dollars or negative. But, you know, they had to pay us for gas

31:45 whether they flared it or not. You know, so if, you know, if they flared it or not, like they were paying, you know, market rate for

31:53 that gas. And I think there was things that you guys going around, you know, making sure things were restored back to their original, you know, you know, so you come in and you build a pad and

32:02 do all this stuff. Then once they leave, they've got to restore it back to the way it was, you know, outside the wellhead and everything. So, you know, it was definitely a pretty cool deal in

32:10 that regard. But I ended up being part of a group that has been around, I guess it's about six or seven years now. But so for a while, it was just, they were just collecting checks for the most

32:19 part. And they had someone like people that would go around, you know, check on things. But I think the board at UT was like, wait, we've got this amazing resource. We're a lot of money. And

32:28 we're not doing anything to manage the oil and gas people want to make sure that they're developing it, you know, prudently. They're not just

32:36 you know, just again, destroying value, destroying capital. 'Cause I mean, UT lands has a lot, University lands has a lot longer viewpoint. Like they're looking at a 50-hundred year kind of

32:44 view of this, not like in the bit that you get some of these operators, you get a PE backed firm that comes in that just wants to grip it and rip it, you know. You got six months. Yeah, and

32:52 they're trying to flip it. But you know, so our group is kind of there to make sure, you know, see what companies we're doing the best in certain areas. But then we can basically act as a, like

33:03 almost like a consulting group to the other operators, like, 'cause we had data that they didn't have. I mean, everyone's got public data, which especially in Texas is, you know, okay, at best,

33:12 especially when you get into production where it's allocated. But,

33:17 yeah, unless they have a joint venture, but we had all the production data and all the, so we could do analysis that they could and we had industry experts, you know, from Conoco, Oxy, you know,

33:26 some of these other companies, you know, geologists. So we go in and make a compelling argument of like, this is why you should be spacing this way You should change your frack design, you know,

33:36 companies adjacent. You are realizing this much more. And, you know, there were even lovers we could potentially pull where, you know, do we, you know, give you a couple of points on royalty

33:45 to employ this strategy because we think it's that worth it. You know, but it's about, you know, creating value for the long term for the University of Texas system. So

33:55 it was pretty cool. So, you know, from the data side, you know, getting all that data from all these different places and mashing together, you know, it was a lot of fun

34:05 That's, that's great. I mean, the whole university land story is a good one. It's you've played on the software tech side. You've played on the operator side. Then you played on the consulting

34:16 side. Yeah. And kind of had an opportunity, it looks like then to go back to the operator side. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I did some freelance, you know, over the last, you know, especially

34:26 when I was at university of lands, I had these little time for that and worked with a mainly with a feedback operator in Houston, not the one I'm at currently. Um, but you know, a couple of other,

34:36 you know, folks forever, but it was, I think that was a good way for me to keep my hands pushing the cloud stuff, because, you know, at least the university land, we were a little more, you

34:43 know, traditional, you know, if you want to look at that as a positive or negative, but you know, sequel server, you know, on-prem kind of stuff, which, which is fine, we had amazing

34:49 infrastructure. Um, but it was good way for me to kind of keep my, my skills sharp, you know, and marketable, but, um, yeah, I did a real quick stint at a consulting company and, um, but

34:59 I've been talking to the guys at Grayson Mill, um, you know, here and there, one of the guys, Patrick I worked with him at Conoco, played basketball with him and everything and we got to

35:06 chatting and just seemed like it was the right move for me. Like, they had, they had acquired the land from Equinor, uh, or the, you know, the acreage from Equinor and, uh, they had a, you

35:15 know, really good data engineering that came on, but then, uh, she, you know, leaving for, uh, company in aerospace and, you know, they needed to fill that, fill that hole. So, um, hey,

35:25 it was a great chance to come in and almost like really like, you don't get many opportunities, especially in all guests, for kind of a green field, like data analytics it's been really cool to

35:34 kind of have a lot of same in here my boss in the C suite and everyone has been really supportive of AASM ideas which it's been great and we've been able to kind of having him implement some more

35:46 modern technologies that other people may not get to or it's just harder you once you've already got established infrastructure yeah we really kind of come and start fresh and it's been it's been

35:56 really fun to kind of implement some pretty cool technologies an aside he had taken him to get us ramped up pretty quick and Grayson mill that's a one hundred percent Bahkan or one hundred percent

36:05 Wilson Basin Yeah for all intents purposes Yeah a little bit out in the PRB but Yeah I mean they the the main drugs that they bought you know we bought Ecuador's Balcony acreage in as Yeah We got that

36:18 and yeah the oil and gas but there's also midstream components here that we're really trying to get our hands around and we're figuring that out pretty quick but I think there's a lot of lot of

36:25 potential there too if I remember right they actually took operator ship or to a closed in June of twenty one and then Maybe so I mean, but when you were hired in November of 21, I mean, heck, it

36:39 was still, but you may not just, you're just getting the data, they're just getting the data organized from that point on, right? Yeah, I mean, there was a good bit over, but I mean, even

36:48 still we're still, you know, wrestling with, you know, some of our accounting, you know, software, I mean, there was still getting some of those processes, you know, ironed out, but yeah,

36:53 I mean, there was still a lot of like, you know, there was still data kind of influx coming over from there. It was drier on that, you know, with the TSA period and all that stuff. But yeah, I

37:02 think it really, even now it's like, you start looking at when do we really start off? I think, starting to see is actually, when they started operating around in June, July, I think they

37:10 started realizing some uplift just from like optimizing the wells in the production side. But yeah, I mean, data side. Yeah, I mean, it was so a lot of that coming over. So, yeah, again,

37:18 they were kind of working on a SQL Server based data warehouse. And then, yeah, I made the argument to get us moving over to more of a cloud data warehouse setup, but. So this is, I mean, and

37:30 Tim, you know, Rob,

37:32 He talks a lot about this too, how the ability to start from scratch and have minimal or zero tech debt is a major advantage for the new operator, right? The recently funded operator, the younger,

37:48 more forward thinking tech centric operator that then can be like, okay, we'll go cloud heavy. Can you talk a little bit about either some of the cultural challenges that you've had with that in

37:58 going that direction and once you're able to get beyond some of those hurdles, what are some of those systems that you use? Because I'm very familiar with sort of the traditional SQL on-prem and now

38:09 seeing companies move more to AWS or Azure or whatever sort of their preferences and finding more means of data aggregation and dissemination to people that's even cleaner and faster and more real

38:24 time Talk a little bit about your journey to the cloud and what are some of the systems that you utilize?

38:32 Sherzad Yeah it means I can get good MAc RTS where I thought I made a dismay game there that that's when I really started kind of he started using eight of Us and I kind of help get them from on -prem

38:42 into the cloud so you have started to kind of realize you don't need a server in a closet or like a glove I think there's a lot of the you know upfront capital investment you have to make I mean i

38:55 don't wanna get into why the clouds great

38:59 yard are getting the whole value prop of the cloud necessarily but I be I guess getting back over to Grayson Mill I mean it wasn't that they weren't using the cloud and you were in azure azure shop

39:11 which a lot of oil and gas because you got the whole Microsoft background and everything but just because you're using azure eight of US doesn't mean you're actually utilizing the cloud right like

39:20 just cause you've moved this server from on -prem and just input an easy to instance doesn't make it the cloud necessarily yes it is that ability to scale rapidly or to he knows that the big thing

39:31 with the data warehousing side that I'm in right now is like these big massively is like MPP massively parallel processing data warehouses is this concept of separating compute from storage. Whereas

39:47 like say SQL Server, it's all together. If you run a SQL Server node, you're you're having to buy some combination and they usually are kind of tied together in some way, shape or form. But we

39:56 start using cloud data warehouses as like Google BigQuery or Snowflake or and I think even Redshift's moving to it now. Like your stuff, you know, your storage and your computer totally kind of

40:07 separate things. But I think what they're doing under the hood is they're leveraging like your S3 buckets or Azure Blob storage under the hood for the storage. I mean, it's kind of opt off you

40:16 skated from you in that regard to get a compute layer on top of it. And you can have multiple kind of compute layers on top of it that are kind of separate. So, you know, I've got these people

40:25 using Power BI, they can use this warehouse and I've got these people using a spot fire and these people, you know, whatever else, like they're actually not stepping on each other's toes from a

40:33 compute standpoint, and you can scale this compute up fast, and you're paying only for what you use. Big queries based on how much data is scanned each time. You've got snowflake that it's kind of

40:45 a time-based thing, times whatever compute size you're using. But I

40:53 mean, one example, snowflake is23 per terabyte compressed per month So

41:01 23 bucks a terabyte for compressed for storage or even for compute. So that's for storage. And then you pay compute separate. So I mean, like that, yeah, again, those are separate there. But

41:11 sorry, excuse me.

41:14 But then if I want to throw more horsepower - so at least snowflake talks about this, but they call it linearly scaling. So you can start off with this extra small, which is super cheap. But let's

41:24 say you've got a big job or something going to run, even within the SQL code, Sad to say I want to scale this up to a large cluster run this query at the end of it you say I want to scale it down

41:35 then you can have it baked into your code between like so you know in one thing that we're doing now too as you are using more of a E L T pattern he had originally was a Tl right where you extract and

41:47 transform and then you load it into your warehouse now the whole thing is you got this concept modern data stack is now extract load and then transform it in the data warehouse because you have so

41:58 much power behind it and then you know analysts are getting to use SQL which is kind of that Lingua Franca of you have no data you know transformations in data consumption so no re -sale have to

42:12 replicate our source systems into our data warehouse very affordably Yeah because it's stored like that storage is Super cheap and and then we can you know we can run our transformations on topic of

42:25 you know parrot long we want but then when we run these jobs they're done, then you're not paying for it 'cause that cluster shuts down. And so you've got, I mean, you might be paying2 per hour

42:37 for this cluster, but you only ran it for a minute. So you're paying appropriated

42:41 price. So I mean, like you can actually do this, you know, very affordably, but super powerfully. I mean, like just this past week, there was an instance where, 'cause I are accounting to

42:51 some, pretty much everything use this SQL server based on the application side, you know, that's just what a lot of vendors use And I ran this query that the company had given us to kind of get

43:01 this data out. And it, and this was like filtered, took like nine minutes on SQL server, and it took 20 seconds on the cloud data warehouse. Like, and like, and this is just things that are

43:12 gonna compound, whereas like, I mean, this was for one of our revenue accounting ladies and she was like, this is gonna be amazing, 'cause this process usually takes me like 10 hours, 'cause

43:21 like usually it times out through the interface or this, you know, they just do not get it out And now we can just feed that right into our BI or in Excel. 'Cause you can feed ODBC right into like

43:30 say an Excel sheet. And then, you know, she can use the interface that she's been comfortable with the whole time. So I think we're just gonna realize, you know, we're just scratching the

43:38 surface. But even still, I think this whole technology stack has allowed us, basically, 'cause we didn't really pick it until the end of January. And basically by the end of the first quarter,

43:47 we had all of our source systems, you know, synced over, built out all these analytical views. And like, now it's about rolling it out to the business and getting in their hands through Spotify

43:58 or Power BI, whatever, you know, so, you know, we can really start taking advantage of it. I love it. Was there a,

44:07 November to January, let's see, you got a lot accomplished, but obviously you have to sell your management team on, hey, let's, we need to go embrace this. Sure. One of the problems I see,

44:17 especially, and when you go out internationally, it kind of gets compounded, is this concept of, hey, it's not in our control.

44:28 I think that wall's been knocked down for the most part there. It's getting there. But there's still a little bit of that left. It was a hurdle you had to cross over with your management team? Not

44:38 too much really at Grayson Miller. I mean, one great thing about Grayson Miller is, you know, our management. I mean, everyone's, I think, you know, late 30s you, know, in their 40s. You

44:49 know, so we've got kind of that more, you know, these people who've been engineers and, you know, actually got to use spot fire. You know, it's not like you've got some executive who's heard of

44:57 spot fire But never really used it. So we've got people that are data driven and it's important to them that we are data driven and it's not just I wash.

45:05 But yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, my boss Corey's has been great and extremely supportive. But I mean, there were some selling on it, but I think, you know, when you, just because you're,

45:15 you know, servers in your building doesn't make it any more secure, if you don't have the right firewalls and stuff in place, and one thing that, you know, all these cloud vendors, I mean, they

45:23 give you all the tools you need and probably more than you might even you know, to protect your network if you implement it correctly, right? And there's that shared burden where it's like, you

45:32 know, AWS or Azure. There's certain things under their responsibility that, you know, they need to make sure that underlying infrastructure, but like you have to apply best practices on top of it.

45:42 So I think just pointing out that, you know, here are things we can do to keep our data safe, but here's, you know, the performance gains that we're going to get out of this and it's going to

45:49 allow us to do, you know, I mean, there's development speed and then there's processing speed. And I think this has helped us in both regards, you know, sometimes you have to make that trade off,

45:57 right? Like, you know, people talk about Python and is, you know, oh, it's a slow language. Well, does it happen in one second? That's fast enough for me. I mean, I don't care if it happens

46:06 in one second or, you know, half a second,

46:10 but it's a lot easier to work with than C, right? So like, but there are things like video games or certain processing things that need C or Rust or, you know, some of these more, you know,

46:21 stuff that runs on the hardware

46:23 But yeah, I mean, I can get back to the data warehouse inside it. Yeah, it didn't take much, you know, too much arm-twisting that then it was about finding the right solutions, you know, for

46:34 for the data extraction and load and for the data warehouse. And you know, just getting comfortable with the money we were going to spend, you know, also the money we were going to save, like the,

46:44 like the database side, I think was pretty easy because I, you know, it was at the very least a wash between the cloud data warehouse that we chose and the SQL server we were running on Azure, you

46:52 know, it was kind of a push and it's just way more performant for what we're trying to do There was one part this software we're using to extract and load the data and we end up going with the best

47:02 in class one and they know it and they make you pay for it. But

47:07 we haven't had no issues from their side. There was an issue with like the source system and they end up working really well. I mean, like, I mean, some of the stuff you can literally, you have

47:17 to set your source systems up, you know, to be able to kind of pull over the deltas. But basically at that point, like you just go to a list and say, I want tables X, Y, and hook a button and

47:26 it syncs it over and then it's just thinking over the deltas like we can crank it down to 15 minutes 30 minutes whatever like so we're getting data pumping into our data warehouse like constantly and

47:35 then able to run transformations on it constantly you know and very quickly I mean like right now I mean maybe it's not as big as going to be in a year but we can run our whole transformation over all

47:44 of our source systems into what we're going to use for analytics right now and it takes three to four minutes for those runs to run so. You know it's it's fascinating to listen to this whole thing

47:56 obviously you've got a strong time go background but also understand kind of what the executives want in oil and gas back in back in my day about 20 years ago. My first job in the corporate world was

48:08 at a company called left hand networks sold storage area networks that ran over IP versus fiber channel. And the storage boxes that we sold were20, 000 for one terabyte. It would you'd have to buy

48:24 a I'm a really expensive fan. to keep it cool and if you wanted something called disaster recovery he was extra RAM not getting the amount of people that like up there and got at any tech company I'm

48:38 trying to think of some of the ones that used it would spend if they had seven sites and they needed disaster recovery and backup I mean you're talking a twenty terabyte deal was enormous right and

48:48 what did you say twenty turbines cost you are twenty bucks a month or something like that Yeah one one terabyte is like twenty three bucks and compress like they have a compression which would

48:56 compress like a terabyte down to like six a sixth of it's size and Yeah and in it's in it is I swear that's where I mean to say especially on small folks like US like us we're not very big in the

49:06 whole data whereas things we think we have the data but we don't but like and some people do I mean he can geo the subsurface some of that data gets really big but but that's where they're making the

49:17 money cause I I am about ninety percent sure they're using blob storage under the hood and I say if we're using one hundred gigabytes We're paying twenty Bucks like they'll make making money on top of

49:25 that every month Yeah and they're doing that to everyone and until there's lot of people not even close to utilizing that first terabyte that's compressed and mean like Azure Blob storage S three

49:35 buckets I mean like Sushi you are getting these like glacier where it's like cold storage I mean you're talking like Lira like fractions of Pennies per gigabyte Yeah it's like is nuts or My Ula Jeremy

49:46 but I've written down a bunch of new terms here that I'm going to have to go Look

49:52 I get it somewhat I mean gee I was interviewing at a ws at some point and a couple of years ago so I remember doing like a crash crash course on their website so some of this is talking about the

50:03 redshift a W as three and it's it's actually like you'd pick it up really fast him it's just the acronym

50:11 world it's the same it's the same thing that you know you went through Bobby with joining Conoco Phillips Yeah what is that Greek letter Phi Mean oh Yeah That'S Prosody what the Hell's porosity and

50:25 then he goes through and once you get the acronyms figured out you know of course they get reused but every twenty years a change over we've got of course a P I is used way too many plays almost done

50:36 any research into that that's like the worst thing was that once I learned about rest of the eyes at RTS and then we start talking about Apia Numbers I'm like oh this is going to be miserable on Apia

50:44 Gravity Yeah Yeah so I was like Yeah it says it's fifty it's fifty a P I oil wait a minute what does that mean it's pretty hard to read on anyway well I think we're going to we're going to cut it here

50:58 unless we want to jump into a plymouth new hampshire story real quick what we should tell Plymouth New Hampshire let's do that let's see that so Yeah so My My Dad has been big into horses since he was

51:10 a kid but he grew up around a harness racing quarter horses and as we were living in New Hampshire at the time I think that when we were living in near Dover is the town Nottingham whatever but he had

51:22 a couple horses Um, that he'd been training and we went to the Plymouth fair and, uh, yeah, so spend the weekend there, you know, watching, you might as horses racing everything, but the one

51:34 thing, I mean, it still sticks with me and I had to be like four or five, but the guy on the intercom between every horse, between everything for three days straight, the only song he would play

51:43 was Mrs. Robinson.

51:47 So you got to get a warm. Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to, you know, it took me a long time before I got back and want to listen to Simon Garfunkel again. But, um, but artist racing, is that the

51:59 one where the guy's sitting in a wobbly area in a buggy behind? Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. I remember I think there was one time my dad took me on it with me. Didn't think about it. And then like

52:07 we got it all the way around. And you thought, oh, this is going to be great. And then you look sound like in my face, it just covered in dirt.

52:15 Oh, man. Yeah. I think that fair still still goes down over at the fairgrounds. Grateful dead played there in the seventies. different time. Yeah, but that's, uh, I can believe that, but you

52:25 know, you got to have some, some sympathy, like, you know, things travel there a little bit slower. Maybe they didn't have the full roster of music that you guys like. I can tell you what they

52:33 weren't ready for. They weren't ready for the fine young cannibals because my dad tried to ring my little, my album that I loved. I didn't even play that in between. They wouldn't do it. So no,

52:41 there's only one song here, kid. Yep. I think he played a little bit louder, just to spite me, but

52:48 put that microphone on it. Right on Bobby Nealon, we appreciate you. Where can people find you, man? I know you're on LinkedIn. You're on the Twits. Yeah. Yeah. I've linked in Twitter, you

52:58 know, being Nealon on Twitter. Um, and I've, you know, one thing I do need to get back to in a little bit is writing some more blogs, but a, you know, like a medium page. I did, you know, a

53:07 few of those are usually more technical, but, um, yeah, I'm on there. It's coach Nealon and, uh, you find me on medium, but yeah, otherwise just, uh, you know, best best probably link in

53:17 our Twitter. No, this is good. I you crush this and Acosta scored save to see

53:25 what the language rust is now though I'm Ok with that if you're going to start talking about you know Crypto and bitcoin and also like that's of like on the big length a big programming language for

53:37 that cause you know things memory safe but it's superfast like C plus plus a

53:42 while there we go that side in the tim this was two episodes now if we didn't talk about empower at all I think it was just such a blur we just seemed like John with our life but that was really cool

53:54 how I had a nice time I was it was a great the show was great you know everything everything about it was grady minute i guess UH if we could have avoided a thunderstorm for the first hour or hour but

54:05 Yeah it was gorgeous venue is Great I do have a complaint about the parking but that Oh Yeah See I didn't have to worry about that but it didn't it took a minute to get an Uber I love how they closed

54:16 that whole area down it's just very taxes that brewery massive.

54:22 I don't know how Colin and Jay did it, but how do you pull Ted Cruz to come speak? They're closing key. How do you ask him? You ask him? I guess you always have to ask. But anyway, that that

54:35 was, that was impressive to see the lineup, how many people were there, especially for our first show. I mean, yeah, absolutely. So it was a great show. And I'm, you know, I guess I'm

54:44 encouraging everyone to go back. But yeah, I'm definitely up to make it next year. We'll do it. Anyways, Bobby Neil, and thank you, my man. No, thank you. Go Sox and enjoy the rocks again.