What The Funk?

0:00 All right, we are back on what the funk after a mini hiatus that included for me a family vacation over spring break to Paris, France. That was awesome. Really awesome. Then canceling and

0:14 postponing Curtis successfully, maybe two or three different times. Thank you, Curtis, for being patient with that. And now we're back. Now we're back. The snows melted. We're past the winter

0:29 doldrums here in Colorado. It looks like a beautiful Friday, so super excited to be back on the podcast. And Curtis, you're somebody that I only met, I think, maybe once, maybe twice before

0:40 this. But as you were telling me your story, headed out to a meeting, I'm like, man, this guy's got a lot to talk about. He's got a big personality. You've worked your way up the ranks at EAG,

0:55 which is one of the top, if not the top, oil and gas consulting firms.

1:01 And you've got a really interesting background, you know, I think I'm not going to steal all your thunder, but Houston kid, you did some time in the military, you picked up technology, you've

1:10 done a lot of different things. And I was like, yeah, I think, you know, A, I think you're a natural storyteller, B, I think you've got some fun things to talk about. So, you know, just

1:20 based on the time we spent together, I'm like, man, we could talk all day. So I wanted to feature you, have you come on the podcast and just tell everybody the Curtis Forsyth, right? Forsyth,

1:33 yep, yep. Yeah, that's not as easy as for Sith. A lot of people might go with Forsyth. I mean, a lot of that. I'm like, look, I know who you're talking to so we can keep going. Let's just

1:43 roll. We want to rewind as long as I know that you're talking to me. Exactly, we'll just go with Curtis. But I'll ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, is who are you? Who is Curtis

1:54 Forsyth?

1:56 I ask myself a question all the time. and I always come up with a different answer, but I don't know, I'm generally speaking, I don't know, I'm probably, I

2:06 like to think I'm a normal guy, I'm a doofus just as much as anybody else, a hypocrite just as much as anybody else, I really enjoy my job, I like helping people out, I've got a great family,

2:21 wife and kids, it's funny everybody's like, you know, you're like, who are you? And they're always, the first answer is like, first of all, a husband and a father I'm like, yeah man, you

2:30 know, that's great, you know, but like, that's a, what, who really are you? Like, what do you do? Like, that's not, that's kind of an easy way to get out of that question. I don't know, I

2:39 just, I, I don't know, I like working with people and I like solving problems and I like puzzles and I, I fidget, I can't sit still for too long. I tend to talk too much in meetings. So I have

2:53 to like, consciously reel back. I, you know, just a normal person, I guess.

2:59 Yeah, a normal person, but there's some layers to that. So let's go all the way back, right? I think you said you grew up in Houston and then you went to the military. So walk me a little bit

3:08 through your upbringing and then how you ended up in the military. What you did in the military, it's always fascinating to me. And then you came out and got into technology, I think, but yeah,

3:18 kind of walked me through the younger days and then kind of through your early adulthood. Yeah, sure. Sure, let's see, from Houston, I'm from Pearland, actually a little bit south of Pearland,

3:31 Manville. We're getting real out into the wilderness here, but I mean, I say that, but it's all built up out there now. But anyways, I'm from Pearland, graduated from Pearland. The person, my

3:45 wife, we graduated from this, we went to high school together, been married for 18 years now, 19 years. And then, yeah, I was interested in computers and IT for as long as I can remember. You

3:59 know, I mean, I was probably like eight or something. I remember I got an old IBM desktop computer with a leather carrying handle. And it didn't really even have a hard drive in it. Like you had

4:12 to, the operating system booted on one floppy drive and then you could load other things onto another floppy drive, loaded it in a ram, did your thing, saved it on a floppy drive. Like it was,

4:22 and ever since then I've always enjoyed computers I did, got out of high school, I tried college and that really wasn't my deal. I was in ROTC when I was in high school, so I knew I was gonna join

4:37 the military. My family, grandfather was in the army, then he retired from the police department, my uncle, everybody, military family. All the friends that my parents had, a lot of them were

4:51 in the army or police department and stuff like that, so I just kind of knew I was gonna do that I was gonna go to college and try the ROTC thing And it was just two, I don't know, I didn't have a

5:01 good time. It just didn't seem, I don't know, authentic I guess maybe is the word. I just was like, this is kind of like, it doesn't feel real, like I wanted a real job and to make real money.

5:15 And then also I was really immature and didn't go to school and didn't know what I was doing and just kind of sort of just, for lack of a better drug park around for a little while. And then I got

5:25 done with that, I was waiting tables at a Mexican food restaurant. And I was like, Yeah, it's time to join the army. I was like, I knew I was gonna do it. And I'm actually glad I did it that

5:35 way. Now, years and years and years later, after being in the army, becoming an NCO and stuff like that. And you see, as an NCO we have this, we have a probably not great, but it's always a

5:47 bit of a, we sort of like give people a hard time if you come straight in from ROTC as an officer. They're like, Oh yeah, you're an officer, that's cool, man. you know, the phrase always was

5:57 like, I've got boots that have been in the army longer than you have. So like, I understand that you're, I report to you and you're here to do things, mostly paperwork.

6:10 But yeah, I'm glad I did that, man. I honestly was just kind of done. It didn't know what I was gonna do. So I sold everything I owned.

6:18 My car, I didn't have a cell phone. I gave all my clothes and all that other kind of stuff away and joined the army and went to Fort Benning. For basic training, infantry school, or infantry

6:29 basic training there. And

6:32 then I went to AIT, learned IT. That's what I did the whole time. Airborne School got stationed on Fort Bragg. I was really lucky, just kind of like, I had opportunities to do things in my

6:45 career. So I got being, you know, in communications, but also being airborne qualified, being stationed on Fort Bragg that gives you a lot of opportunity to do things that. are outside of like,

6:57 you know, typical sort of army things. So I got to work with other units. And there's a lot of, obviously it's Prag. So there's a lot of special operations and stuff like that. And we did joint

7:07 communication school and things like that. And then the unit that I was in, we got to test some new equipment. We tested these things called data packages that had just, you know, where we were

7:18 testing them out in the field to see if these things would work. So I had a good time in Then I, you know, my wife and I got together. We got married and had kids and it just got too much. I

7:30 couldn't do that. It wasn't fair

7:34 to really. I mean, something, you know, it'd be like, hey, we're going to go on a training mission. It's two o'clock in the morning. So get your chip together and let's go. And then I'll be

7:42 back in two weeks, you know what I mean? Or something like that. It was kind of hard. But yeah, I mean, I had a good time. I deployed a couple of times. Got to go to Korea and stuff like that

7:51 So it was good. Then I got out and -

8:02 Started doing IT consulting pretty much ever since then. Just working my way up. That's cool, that's cool. So you were in the Army, but you focused on the technology stuff. So it was kind of a

8:07 nice fit, right? You tried the college thing, realized fairly quickly it wasn't for you, waited some tables, realized you had to grow up maybe a little bit, and the Army provided the right

8:17 outlet for that, not only from a discipline perspective, but also from the ability to jump into technology And what's funny is when you and I were in the car together, I started giving you my story

8:29 about my career and the first job that I had was selling storage area networks that ran over IP in Boulder, Colorado. You go, was it left-hand networks? I'm like, what? How'd you know that?

8:38 He's like, oh, God, I hated those systems.

8:43 Which is funny, because I think the large majority of people that I start with that story, too, it's to provide the punchline of, well, it was20, 000 for a terabyte of data storage.

8:55 Now on your phone, it's like249, that has changed. And it was obvious that that was going to change, but you actually interacted with these data storage boxes. So you sort of learn that hands on.

9:05 And you know, sorry for whoever sold you that teal that it

9:10 wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't. You could've been you man, who knows, who knows? I was a little peon, they wouldn't let me talk to anybody of actual like decision-making capability at that point.

9:19 But maybe I called called you, I don't know Maybe, I remember when HP bought left-hand, and we were like, come on guys, what are y'all doing? And I mean they worked, I didn't like 'em. I hated

9:33 working on 'em, they were hard. It was like the first foray into like this sort of,

9:39 like a VMware has a thing called a V-SAN, like a virtual SAN. And it was supposed to have redundancy and it's over IP and you could do different storage types, block and file and all kinds of stuff

9:49 like that. they were, it was just like the first iteration or really the first sort of like a part of the first generation. And some NetApp did great at it. They were successful. Left hand, not

10:01 so much. They got bought. But I don't know. I mean, maybe that is a success story is everybody there and all the folks that ran the show, they walked away with what they wanted to get, I guess.

10:11 Yeah. I mean, maybe it's one of those things where you know you have a good idea, but you're constrained by the amount of money you can put into something to develop it. So you do some things on

10:20 the cheap. You prove out the fact that it works and then you actually flip it to a bigger company that might be able to take it somewhere further. So I have no idea where all of that went. But yeah,

10:32 really fascinating that our early days somehow intertwined whether we realized it or not. Talk to me about oil and gas. Like when did you, you're obviously, you know, a Houston area person. It

10:43 feels like you're, it was inevitable you were going to touch oil and gas, but we didn't talk about it to this You got how you did IT consulting. When did you start getting exposed to the oil and

10:54 gas industry? Well, it's funny, I did a whole, what's ancestrycom sort of deal, and I didn't even find this out until later on that my great-grandfather, half my family and my dad's up was in

11:10 oil and gas I

11:13 love it in Odessa and all the whole area, right in there for generations. And then I got out of the army and started just doing regular IT consulting. And it was right around the time that managed

11:29 services started to become a thing. Before, it was just hourly IT consulting, right? And there wasn't a lot of proactive monitoring, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that kind of stuff came out

11:41 And then I started doing that for oil and gas companies 'cause we were in Houston. and then I just got really interested in it and then I started to realize that the military experience of jumping

11:53 radios and doing radio systems and satellite systems and these things, node centers, networking,

12:01 switching and voice communications, like we had to do all of that. We had to know the full piece to do our job was really similar to like field skater comms and I just thought it was really I like

12:13 that sort of thing. Radio systems and you know microwave point-to-point radio shots like that's what we did in the Army. We had to know all the stuff and it easily translated over into field comms

12:25 and then and it's not just the technology it's also kind of sort of like the way to work. You know like there's IT in the field and there's comms in the field and even back then you know today a lot

12:37 of the IE techs like know a little bit about networking a little bit about radios and also the like how how to use a total flow and all kinds of stuff like that. And it just really translates very

12:49 easily, because the way it worked was just get it done. Get out there, get the work done like it's important to move forward. I enjoyed putting my hands on equipment and going up to the field and

13:00 stuff like that. And so I just sort of naturally gravitated to that. And then that led into things like more actual consulting and moving up, building VMware cloud environments for people and then

13:12 understanding how the actual oil and gas industry works. You know what I mean? It's interesting. Oil and gas accounting is a total pain in the ass.

13:24 So I just, I found all the others there. So it was an easy transition to me. And then so probably right around, I don't know, 2010, 2012 is when things started to pick up for oil and gas. And

13:37 then I'd say probably the last 10 years or so it's been really specific. But we still, even today, where I work, IT for other companies. You're right. You know, IT's IT, it's funny, like,

13:49 always joke about, like, how come is IT is the one, that I say this in an idealistic sort of view, but IT seems to be the only sort of like discipline that is required to know how everybody else's

14:02 job and systems work. Kind of. Nobody has to know how our stuff works. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, man, I don't know computers, you know, and I don't know how to, you know, an

14:12 email and the set and the other And I'm like, well, you probably should start to learn 'cause the world's changing all around you. And we all need to know a little bit more about technology. But

14:20 we have to know all of that, right? We have to know how production works. We have to know how ops works and all the way from, you know, all the way up, you know, through that whole system

14:30 'cause we can do good consulting and we can do a good job. If we don't know how those things work, we can't build infrastructure and can tell you what kind of software is better business and how you

14:42 run, all that other kind of stuff. So I just always thought it was super interesting. But I just like it, no matter what, I like manufacturing too, it's great. I like those sorts of like, I

14:51 guess you could say like dirty industries is what people say is, I like that kind of stuff. Transportation is great. Like my dad and my grandparents were all truck drivers. Even on my wife's side,

15:04 there's truck drivers and stuff like that in the family. So that's kind of sort of where I live And the people that I'm around, so I enjoy that. I don't really like doing consulting and IT work for

15:16 the medical field, but yeah, that's it. That's kind of sort of how I got into oil and gas. Like it just happened to just, it's always been a part of my life, especially growing up in Houston,

15:29 so. Yeah, I like the way that you talked about, and I would consider that sort of, IT in the field, operational technology, right? And you immediately realized like, Hey, wait a second

15:38 There's some like real. Similarities to what happens in military from a communications device standpoint, which is kind of neat, you know? That's,

15:48 I didn't really think about that, but it makes sense. So you just sort of picked up on it quickly. You're like, oh, I see what you're going for here. Like, this isn't too different. Yeah,

15:55 you're looking for different data points, but I got you. Yeah, I mean, we were deployed in Iraq and we were shooting, you know, like we had a team that was part of this system and they're, they

16:06 do our LOS radios and, you know, it's 10, 15, 20 kilometer point-to-point shots to send comms data over. And I mean, that is tower-to-tower comms out in the field. You know what I mean? It's

16:21 just so easily translatable. And then, you know, I got into the private sector and started working on stuff like that. And I'm just, you know, some of it too, I was like, man, you guys got

16:30 good stuff. Like this is nice.

16:35 You guys invested in this stuff, huh? Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, we tested, you know, back then, even today still, like the military has always been about like, you know, there's

16:47 equipment specifically made for it. It's got to be ruggedized, right? Like plugs are, you know, have dust covers and you have to screw things in and it's, you know, you could drop it and not

16:57 worry about it. Like, we would literally drop gear out of airplanes and then set them up and use them, right? Like, that was what we did. And it was all, you know, fine. And then we started

17:07 testing out some of the commercial stuff. Cisco gear and promenas and stuff like that and started, you know, we were kind of sort of like the folks that were trying this out in the field and go out

17:20 into Camp McCall outside of Fort Bragg and set it up in the dirt and see what happens with it and it gets dusty and and stuff worked okay. So we started adopting a lot of that stuff like a regular

17:29 like the Cisco IP phone that you see on your desk is the same phone that we had out in the field you know what I mean

17:38 It's funny nowadays, you know, some of your the IT folks and stuff like that, oh, you can only run cat five three hundred feet or three hundred meters or whatever or it's like, oh, it's too hot

17:46 in there and it won't run and it's like, man, I put bags of ice on top of shit for to keep it from, you know, you just fine. Now, obviously, that's not, that's like an extreme case like in the

17:57 event of an emergency, you know what I mean, but it's, it's interesting how like the difference between, you know, what is like the standard and what's required as to what the gear can actually

18:07 do Comes out and then once getting, you know, like out in the field, like you stretch the gear out a lot, you know, I mean, we've got just people go by, links is switch and throw it in a box in

18:19 the 100 degree West Texas heat. It'll last about a year and then it'll break and die. And then I'm like, yeah, you probably should get a real, you know, like, like an IE 3000 or something from

18:30 Cisco, like a proper outside switch that can handle the gear the game so I'm serious. That's fine. That's funny. Yeah, I like how you told that story and how everything sort of comes back to

18:43 how do things work in certain weather conditions. And there are extreme conditions, of course, no one can ask whether it's like extremely cold or extremely hot, but you still need communications.

18:51 And that keeps the business running, keeps it going. Talk to me a little bit about EAG. When did you join EAG? How did you meet EAG and like talk to me about your career progression there? That's

19:02 a fun story So I worked for a company, I worked at the Aldridge Company as an IT consultant for years and years and years. And even how I got there is an interesting story. But EAG basically

19:15 was a client of ours. Why I was at this company. So we did their IT and they outsourced IT to us.

19:25 And then, you know, I left, went to do other things and kind of years went by. And then a friend of mine that I worked at Aldridge with was like, Hey, I'm at this company called EAG starting

19:38 doing IT outsourcing, like, come work for us. And I actually took him a couple of times. I was like, Yeah, I'm good. Because I got a little bit burned out on IT outsourcing and consulting and

19:49 stuff like that. I went to, like, I guess, corporate IT is the word, but it was nice and relaxing. It was just boring, too But so he called and I was like, Okay. Even some folks from EAG

20:07 reached out and were like, Hey, we're starting this thing. And I came and I was like, This is great. It's a good company. And Elizabeth, our CEO, her idea of how to do it was different. And

20:20 knowing that we were kind of focused in a vertical. What she wanted to deliver to the customers was, you know, I thought, I agreed with the thought process. One of the reasons I got so burnt out

20:36 on IT was just 'cause I was just like, it's all about throwing your lowest level cheapest person. And it's almost like you maybe not maliciously or purposefully, but you

20:44 have to, you make users go through this gamut

20:55 of bullshit to just get help with their computer. Yeah. You know, and the thought process was like, we're not gonna do that We're gonna hire experienced people and we're gonna pay them an

21:07 appropriate price. We're gonna treat them like adults and they're gonna sit on the desk, like all of our people on our service desk are all tier three's. And the thought process and my expectation

21:16 with the team is that you solve any problem that you want or that comes across your desk. We focus on small to medium business, which means it's not overly complex, it's not a lot going on. We

21:27 then learn the apps and focus on oil and gas

21:31 If you're a tier three and you reset passwords all day, like, man, great, easy day. And if not, if we've got a real problem server outage or something that's not easy, it's not like you're like,

21:41 Oh, I have to escalate your ticket to some other person. And then just go through and like, that was the thing that really sold me. I just felt like we weren't the thought process in managed

21:53 services, and even it is today for a lot of companies is consistently good service And I'm like, And that's not really, some people are okay with that. I just want to deliver just great service

22:04 for appropriate price and just be done with it. So I started just as a consultant at EAG, moved up, started running the projects team, things changed and kind of sort of ended up where I'm at

22:17 today as vice president of IT. And sometimes still, I'm like, Yeah, that's real. We're doing this and

22:26 there's a lot of stuff I can do better I'm learning ever, just like everybody else is going. It's not easy, it's not, you know, it's one of those deals where like you're, as a, you know, in,

22:36 in, you know, how this goes, you sit back and you're like, Man, what are these, what are these people doing? If I were in charge, I would do this, you know what I mean? And then now I'm

22:44 looking back now and it's kind of like you're becoming your parent. You're like, Oh, man, that's why, like, man, I'm seeing some shit that, that guy that I didn't agree with said in, you know,

22:54 a couple of months. It's kind of funny, right? It's like, you're like, Who said, that was, that was my mom's voice. That was me So, so what does a vice president of IT at a, at a growing

23:05 consulting firm do? Like what does your day to day look like? Is it just completely different every single day? Is it really, really similar on a daily basis? Like, what do you do, man? It's,

23:16 it's similar in that I just do a lot of different things, you know, I mean, because we have, we have a fairly large-sized corporate IT team as well, because, you know, we do consulting BPO up.

23:30 business process outsourcing

23:33 and IT consulting. App support, a little bit of development with Power BI and data analytics, right? There's a lot of, all that is there. And so,

23:45 working with the corporate IT team to keep the outsourced accounting going 'cause we host and manage. If we don't host, then we manage all of the apps and systems that we use to do that, including

23:56 the reports and the data warehousing and all that, so that's a team And then trying to do sales and working with marketing to account management, to all the way to helping out. Sometimes when the

24:08 team gets overloaded, like I'll build a server, like, you know what I mean? Like I can still work and do the same consulting and I'm a big proponent of sort of like not asking people necessarily

24:15 to do something that you couldn't, you're not capable of doing it yourself. I really like

24:24 that. I learned that when I was in the army And so I just do - a lot of different things. It's all within the IT space. It's all similar, you know, is from, honestly, sometimes from invoicing

24:38 problems. Like if our people aren't keeping time right, then we send an invoice to a client. I'm like, whoa, yeah, you're right, we shouldn't be building a passion. And then sometimes it's

24:46 just like helping with cybersecurity insurance or doing consulting work to help people get on the right path or deciding whether or not a risk is acceptable, you know, like in not just always

24:57 pushing stuff onto people to personnel problems and working with that and onboarding and interviewing and, you know, all of the things that go within that realm is really what my day-to-day life

25:09 looks like. But thankfully I've got a really good team, like a really good team that gets stuff squared away and I'm not like in everybody's business all the time. I don't really, you know, feel

25:21 like I'm being pulled in a bunch of different directions. I've got a list of stuff to do. always always have a list of stuff to do. Like there's always something going on, but it's not, you know,

25:30 we don't have too many emergencies or anything like that. So it's not too bad. That's pretty normal, I think, for a lot of people. Hopefully it is normal. I really like my job. I work a lot,

25:43 and that's usually because it's stuff that I'm interested in. Like it's really nice to have a job to where, you know, it's like, oh, let's look into some AI stuff or, you know, like, you know,

25:52 or just play with data sometimes and just kind of fluff around and until we can do it. And then I had to go back and do my real job, but that's about what it's like most of the time. Yeah, that's

26:02 cool. So do you feel like you still have time to fulfill your curiosity around the emerging technology stuff? Like, yeah, you mentioned AI. You know, you probably touch automation a little bit

26:14 in terms of what you guys support in the managed services side. But do you feel like you get to tinker as much as you'd want in your life now? Yeah Man, if I had. all the money in the world,

26:26 that's all I would do all day is just, and honestly, personally, it's not that.

26:36 I like to work on cars.

26:39 We're doing stuff in the house. I like to build, I like woodworking, and Mona Yara actually enjoyed, Mona Yara, it's nice, and it's very centering, and I can listen to an audiobook. So if I

26:50 didn't have anything, if I didn't have a real job, I would just tinker, and just basically, as Mona Yara says, I would just put her around the household day, because I can't really sit still,

26:59 so I'm always doing something, and that would be great, man. I can't wait until I'm old and retired, and just kind of sort of shuffle around and just mess with stuff holding

27:09 it. You'll probably be in the metaverse at that point, so who knows?

27:14 It's funny, I don't do a lot of that, you know? I do like technology, and I like, I mean, hell, I like to write. SQL queries and pull data out of our system to see how things are working and

27:26 trying to use the information that we have. I like architecting, I like working in Azure and architecting environments and building servers and integrations and understanding reporting all that and

27:37 networking, I really like networking, I like all of that. But I wouldn't call myself like a techno file guy person or whatever, like, you know, I mean, hopefully nobody knows where I live, but

27:49 I mean, we don't even have an alarm system at the house 'Cause I think we're, I think technology's great. And it is a, it is a, an

27:60 augment or a force multiplier as they say to being a human being, but it shouldn't necessarily be like all ruling. You know what I mean? Like we have cameras that we put up 'cause we went on

28:10 vacation, we go on vacation. So I like that, but man, that's it. Like I don't fiddle around too much with stuff. I mean I, do play video games, don't get me wrong. I play a lot of video games

28:20 too,

28:21 But you got kids. You got kids. You can play video games with your kids. I'm sure they like that. Yeah, I wouldn't say that except that my wife and I are usually the ones that play video games

28:30 together by ourselves. Oh my God. Oh my God. Any time I played a video game with my wife and I were like dating early marriage, she's like, what a nerd. Like I just like playing Madden to me

28:41 alone.

28:43 No, it's we both play quite a bit. That's that's really fun. That's good So, so talk to me now about like the future. What do you see in terms of oil and gas? Because in some ways you're on the

28:57 cutting edge, in some ways you're just keeping things running. Like, what are some things that you've seen change, some trends, some evolution in terms of oil and gas? Because people say, you

29:07 know, they see you and they say, oh, cool. This is like an IT guy in oil and gas. I can ask questions, right? Are people coming to you with more questions around AI and in terms of automation,

29:17 in terms of like, uberization of the oil field? Like, where do you, from where you sit, now kind of see things evolving into?

29:28 It's a cycle, you know, especially on AI, like even Gartner's release, you know, they have the thing called the hype cycle. Sure. And we're on the upward trend of that right now. I, you know,

29:40 it comes and goes all the time, like predictive analytics and all this jazz was at all the range, 15 years ago. I went to a conference in Redmond but Microsoft Conference, it was talking about

29:50 using predictive analytics and like non-linear math to sort of figure out when elevator motors were going to go out. That's cool, yeah. Predictably, that's 15 years ago, right? The barrier to

30:02 entry and the actual pieces and all this other kind of jazz wasn't there. But I don't know, for me, it's true. People do come and ask questions. The most, the number one is cybersecurity, right?

30:15 That's top of mind for everybody right now. given the way that the world is moving, that's gonna be even more important as we go forward. But hey, people don't ask me about AI. I'm not a huge, I

30:29 would be honest, I'm not an AI fanboy. And most people that know me know that about me, I think it has a great place, but I don't think it's the answer to all of the world's problems, so that's

30:39 really not my style for that.

30:43 And I just think that we'll get back to normal sort of operations Yeah, it's just like any other thing, like there's, we're gonna throw all this. I mean, the number of ADI companies that say that

30:56 they're gonna revolutionize what you do in the last year or two is just blown up, right? For sure. And I think it's the same deal that we had like in the 90s, right? Everybody and their mom was

31:10 starting some web thing.

31:13 And I mean there in 1998 were, how many search engines like, you remember?

31:18 Oh, I used to, in 1998, exactly. I can picture sitting at my desk as a fresh guy. Right. Using something called Dogpile. Yeah.

31:25 I don't know if it still exists. There was Ask Jeebs. Ask Jeebs. Ask Jeebs. Altavista. Altavista, yeah. Right, all of that. Yahoo, AOL still had their thing. Google was just getting started,

31:35 right? So I think that's where things are gonna end up. And I think what we'll find is standard, sort of like field ops and stuff like that. There's not really a lot of shift there I know there's

31:47 a big deal about this digital twin, right? And edge computing and all that kind of stuff. And that's a way to get a little bit better at it. But those are basically big super major investment

32:03 opportunities and stuff like that. And there are people that are trying to get out to the small guys now to do that. But I think the technology's not fully fleshed out, right? Just like anything

32:12 else like how many years, I mean 10, five years ago. Now, today, we still have folks out in the field with like three 600 megahertz data dog radios, not IP, straight up just regular old school

32:28 comms, and it works, and it's simple, and when it breaks, you replace it, it's cheap, and you move on. You know what I mean? So I think we're gonna see a pullback on the complexity and sort of

32:39 like the add to all of this technology on top of things. I think sometimes we find that this is great, this is great, this is great, and it starts to obfuscate and put this layer between what's

32:49 real and what you see. And we're gonna get back to where, we'll find where digital twin, edge computing AI, we'll find what it's good at, and then that'll just get integrated into the world that

33:02 we've already seen it. I think we're gonna move up, right? Like we always do, but it's gonna go up and down as we sort of move forward with it. I think everybody in their mom has a large language

33:15 model. That's like the new arms race and we'll probably find that we'll end up with a few that are the big dogs that everybody uses and the people that are smart will figure out how to improve and

33:29 add to or and make those things on their own. I think what we'll find is not like this general, you know, this retrieval,

33:39 you know, augmented generation, the rag stuff like that and I think I said that wrong But anyways, we'll find out that it's not just good at doing general stuff. I think we'll see your expert

33:47 systems, right? Yeah. Like the company that builds a model specifically for this thing, such as, you know, analyzing well performance or something like that, that is trustworthy and that works

34:03 will be the ones that sort of like move up. And then what you'll find is that you just can't have a million of those. Right, right, right, right. You find the one that's the best and you ask

34:14 questions of that and start to really train that model and hone it in. Yeah, you know, like I mentioned very early on in this podcast, we went to Paris and really got to test out, I think that

34:27 the amazingness that is chat GPT. My wife, 'cause we're like, It's your best friend. 'Cause she just asked her a question. We're like, Oh my God, we know it's next. And she's like, Hold on

34:38 one second And she's like, reads the answer, basically. But there were points where we're standing at a street corner in a city that we've all never been to before and we're gonna eat lunch and she

34:50 goes in and says, No, within two-tenths of a mile of where I'm standing. Tell me three restaurants that are highly rated, good for family, have fast service, and are relatively affordable. Yeah.

35:05 And it comes back and gives answers and then she's like, Oh So those are great. but we're in Paris, so we'd like to focus on a French place if we possibly could, again, with the same criteria,

35:17 and then boom, boom, boom, these three places, and you end up going to one of them and have a great experience, and you're like, that was pretty cool, right? Like that, what would your

35:24 options be before? It's, you just go to Google, you type something in, restaurants near me, French restaurants near me, it starts to come up, you start going through and clicking and reading

35:32 the reviews, well, just have chat GBT for you, right? So I thought that was kinda cool, and you used that as a family like that, you know? I have a question then on that. Yes. Is that

35:44 artificial intelligence or just a really good search engine? That's a really good search engine, but it saved us time. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no,

35:54 I don't disagree. I just, to me, it is, you know, 'cause it pulls all of the data, which Google does and the set and the other. And I mean, the worst thing that could happen,

36:06 Sorry, I keep eating chips and then choking on them. The worst thing that could happen is that they figure out how to monetize this and then they're gonna start to steer you into where they want you

36:20 to be seared into. You gotta pay for that, yeah. Or, oh yeah, well, if you want, you know, if you pay us, just like Google ads, oh, you wanna be at the top of the page, oh, you wanna be

36:32 more heavily weighted with AI You wanna be seen, right, you wanna

36:39 get the best possible answer. And for what it's worth, my wife does the20 a month chat GPT thing, because again, it's her best for, okay. Well, it's her best for me. All the time, yeah, all

36:48 the time. I use it, and it does, it's great. In my role, you know, this is new to me, you know, this is the first time I've been a vice president of anything. I was, you know, like vice

36:58 president of my front yard for as long as I can live, and that was about it Still are, still are,

37:05 still are, still are, still are, still are, still are, still are, still are. So, I mean, it's very, very helpful and beneficial, but just like anything else, I tell all of our people this,

37:13 read what you're, you know what I mean? It's not the gospel truth. And it's getting people in trouble, you know what I mean? I had a conversation with a client yesterday about contract analysis

37:23 using AI in gray, but you still have to have a human being read it. It's not gonna replace that. And you have to be super careful about, you know, like there, you know, and this is, these are

37:34 edge cases This is an anecdote. It's not sort of like the world that we live in, but like there are law firms and people with law degrees that have gotten in trouble and presented fake, you know,

37:45 precedence cases to court because chat GPT was like generated some shit, right? So yeah. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, and it's even simple things sometimes too. Like we were checking into the hotel

37:56 and my wife's like, what time is it back in Denver? And I just kind of looked at her like, I know where your next question's going with that. What time is it in Denver to chat GPT? And it said

38:10 830. And I'm like, it was one o'clock on the nose or whatever. I'm like, there's a half hour time zone thing between here and Colorado and she's like, well, let me ask you. And she's like, are

38:22 you sure? 'Cause it's exactly one o'clock here. It's like, oh, whoops, sorry about that. It's actually 8 am. in Denver. And I was like, whoa. She's like, yeah, it's wrong sometimes It is.

38:34 That's a simple question. I don't know. That was surprising to me. I use, you know, I'm not, I can do math things, but my sort of like memorized arithmetic isn't probably that good, but like

38:46 it's kind of like, okay, well, is it also, or is it, you know, maybe better, more beneficial to be able to say what time zone am I in and just do some math?

38:57 You know, I think that's hard. It is, you know, the same conversation yesterday with one of her clients about this buddy just kind of AI. In general, and I think it's my, the best analogy to me

39:09 is like, you know, 60 years ago, we had you build houses with hammers. Right. Right. And today we build them with nail guns. Right. You don't replace the human. You don't replace the design.

39:22 You don't replace what you have to know what you're doing. It's a tool to increase productivity, not necessarily a tool to replace. Now, that doesn't mean that AI will replace things and people

39:33 and it can do a lot of work. And I think eventually we will find that it will wholeheartedly replace individual roles and jobs. But I don't know, the world's not as cut and dry as people want it to

39:46 be. And the only way for a system like that to really fit is it's got to be pretty cut and dry. It's got to be trainable. You got to be able to measure the quality of the output and all this other

39:56 kind of jazz. And honestly, like the world's a freaking messy place and we're all like just a bunch of monkeys and there's There's no such thing as like a. you know, black and white sort of deal.

40:04 Yeah, I

40:08 do live in that world of life. But yeah, I understand that from a technology perspective, you do, but humans live in a gray area, right? And I think that a lot of these tech apps live in a black

40:19 and white area. So until it can come to our gray area without hallucinating, then there's probably always gonna be pushback. Anyway, it's enough about AI. That was fascinating stuff though. I'm

40:29 glad that we went down that path. 'Cause I, we don't have a ton of time and I want to dig into the fact that you are a Tesla fanboy. Would you consider yourself a fanboy? Would you consider

40:39 yourself a Tesla fanboy? Let me ask. No? No. Explain yourself. I like my Tesla. I wouldn't call myself a fanboy. 'Cause I would call, I mean, before this I

40:53 had BMWs, my son's got one. It's up on the lift in the garage right now that we're working on it And, um, I never thought I would own. an electric car,

41:07 and I didn't have a good reason for it other than I was like, man, I ain't buying that shit. There's no, there was no, yeah, I mean, I'm sort of like, well, I work in oil and gas, I

41:14 shouldn't have an electric car, which is like, it doesn't really make sense. What powers are great anyway, but. It doesn't, and actually, yeah, I've got, what I mean, you know me, and then

41:22 I've got a lot of opinions on a lot of shit. I've got opinions on that too, but honestly, I just started looking into it, and I told myself, I was like, not gonna do it unless it's the one that

41:33 kind of makes you want to vomit a little bit, because it accelerates so

41:37 fast. I mean, it's funny, I have this sort of personal, I guess, scale that I've sort of lived in. I've been to my stepdad, worked at a body shop, I grew up working on cars,

41:52 drove before I had a license, all this thing. I had three-wheeler to hold deal, like very South Texas, mainval, Pearland Redneck sort of thought process, trailer park stuff And so I've always

42:02 been into that.

43:02 cools the cabin down for me when I'm ready to come out into the car in the morning. You can set a timer and it's super, super bougie and some stuff like that. And I

43:13 like it. It's nice. I still miss having an actual motor. And I don't get to work on it as much. It's not like I get to do things to it, you know what I mean? But it's fun. It's good for what I

43:25 do. I live, you know, 40 minutes, 45 minutes outside of downtown and I work downtown. So it's nice I like it. I wouldn't call myself a fan, boy. I don't know if I'm going to put myself in that

43:36 bucket, but the last 30 seconds of me talking me actually to get that statement. Well, so I guess I did that to get your goat a little bit too. I think you're more of a car guy and I don't think -

43:52 I think a fanboy would say, I'm fully converted. I'm only going to drive Teslas for the rest of my life. I don't think that's where you're at. No, I mean, I like to think of myself as being

44:02 relatively practical and pragmatic. And we have a Chrysler Town and Country minivan. It's one of the best vehicles ever made. Oh, minivans? Every time we go on vacation with three kids, we're

44:14 like, How many bad time? And we all love it. I can put a four-way sheet of plywood back in that MFR and do whatever I need. I resotted, I got rid of some flower beds and restarted the yard a

44:25 couple of weeks ago. Just dumped a bunch of sod in the back of that thing and drove it, you know, it's wonderful, you know what I mean? I'm like, man, I don't know. Trucks are cool, but

44:34 really do you need a truck if you're just gonna get some stuff? Like, I don't need anything that's silly like that. Like my, you know, there's guys in my neighborhood that they've got like an

44:44 F-350. And I'm like, dude, I've never seen you tow anything with that F-350. It's cool, it's big, it's roomy, you know what I mean? I get it, but it's also stupid expensive, yeah.

44:57 It's American. It's true. I don't know. You know, and people ask me that like, But you're in oil and gas. You got an electric car. And I'm like, I don't believe that it's, that's a very sort

45:06 of like, I think,

45:09 I don't know about, I'll probably say things that are mean and people are going to have comments about this. It seems a little naive and almost immature thought process. Because it's not about oil

45:21 or coal or gas or whatever. It's about managing energy.

45:29 And what's a more effective way to do that is sometimes more fun way to do that. You know what I mean? So that's the same thing. I'm like, dude, the chances are that one of the clients that one

45:44 of EAG's clients has taken natural gas out of the ground and it was used to put electricity into my car. So it's all there. I'm more interested in how we do better at managing energy, moving it

46:01 around, storing it when it needs to be stored. I mean, if you look at it from like almost a, and I'm not a scientist or anything like that, I'm just a very, very uninformed amateur. But if you

46:11 look at it from just a view of like efficiency, we're really, really, really awful at managing energy. Like even the combustion is an incredibly inefficient, as what could be achieved, you know

46:25 what I mean? Like it gets hot as fuck Anything that gets hot as fuck is incredibly inefficient. It's not all your energy that you've got that's in the molecules all going off into heat and stuff

46:35 like that, right? So I just think it's more about that than it is anything. And that's a really, really good excuse to say that I do like my test it 'cause

46:49 it's really fast. But fine, well played. Final couple of questions for you. I'm always curious about this one. And I might've asked you this when we were hanging out, Looking back on your life,

46:56 what advice would you give to your younger self, the 18-year-old version, the 21-year-old version of your self? As you look back and think through your life, think through your career, like what

47:07 would you tell young Curtis Forsyth?

47:11 I don't know. Keep on trucking. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm just super lucky. I don't know if I would tell myself to do any, like, I like what I've got, you know what I mean? And as

47:24 far as like the, I've got it, and a lot of us probably do have this perspective. It's just not just me, obviously, but, you know, I mean, I didn't have a lot of money or anything, you know

47:35 what I mean? So I'm almost, and I don't wanna be greedy about it either. Like, I'm good, you know what I mean? I consider myself to be a successful person and I've got a great family, you know

47:49 what I mean? Like, I'm just, I would tell myself to like, Keep going, get the work done. Like you're gonna, you know, my big thing, honestly, is I would almost have, I know how I was back

48:00 then. And I've listened to your podcast. So I know that you understand this. I would give myself a pep talk. If I talk to myself 20 years ago, I'd be like, you'll be all right, man. You're

48:10 gonna, you can do this. Keep it going, right? That's the advice that I got. It's like, you're gonna get there. The future has a lot in store for you. Keep pushing Tell everybody to just go

48:23 pound sand and get the work done, right? And I actually would probably end up, you know, more successful or maybe just have a better outlook on life, but I don't know,

48:34 you know, I would probably think I'm good. I was a bit like, man, Curtis from 20 years ago is kind of a douche bag, but no.

48:41 You know, I think I could easily look back on myself in my early 20s, late teens and say the same thing, but that's just part of life's evolution as long as you weren't like an extreme douche bag

48:51 Okay. Yeah, I might even change that question moving forward too. go back in time and you get like a brief snippet with your yard. And you could say three words to them. Keep on trucking. Keep

49:05 on trucking for you, you know? Mine might be bed on Brady. There you go. I'd have a lot more money if I did that. I was gonna say, I was like, what,

49:16 by Apple? By Apple stock. Yeah, so maybe distilling it down like that is for all you're going for it. Anyways, Curtis was a blast having, where can people find you? Where can people find your

49:27 company? Give me like that quick elevator pitch for why somebody should do business with the

49:34 AG. You should do business with the AG 'cause we're really good at what we do. We're very pragmatic and very practical. And, you know, we all try to sort of like understand what reality looks

49:44 like and not just push a bunch of shit on people. All right, that's the key and the easiest thing. We wanna help people succeed and we wanna succeed alongside them, right? That's it, right? We

49:53 just wanna move forward with everybody.

49:57 eaginkcom is our website. Reach out, you know, the web team did a really good job. It looks great. There's lots of ways to get in contact. I have a calendly link that if you just wanna talk and

50:08 ask me a bunch of questions or put a meeting on my calendar to tell me how all the stuff I said today is stupid, happy to do that. And then I'm on the LinkedIn as well. But that's about it. I love

50:21 it, I love it. You know, when someone tells you to be succinct, you're very succinct when someone gives you an open-ended question, you can take 15 minutes to answer. It's one of the things that

50:29 I really like and admire and appreciate you about you, Curtis. And final point on EAG,

50:36 EAG is a special company to me. It was my first ever client with Funke Futures. We recently re-engaged end of 2024. And it's kind of like a homecoming of sorts. And the thing that has always stood

50:47 out to me that's interesting about your organization is, I'm not sure the exact numbers I'd say probably between 80 and 85 percent. of the business is repeat customers, right? Which is really like,

50:58 why would you do business with this company? It's like, well, I mean, 83 of the people that have ever done business with us come back and do it with us again. And I think that's about growing a

51:08 recommendation as you could possibly get. So it surprised me, because I think everybody's focused on new logos, right? How do we get that new? How do we grow? How do we do this? Well, what if

51:16 we just like deliver exceptional service to the people that do business with us? Yep Kind of guarantee 83 of our business next year, you know? Yeah, for real. And, you know, I think it's a big

51:27 testament to the team and, you know, Elizabeth and Chris and Eric and Amanda and all the VPs and everybody at the company, like we just - Good folks. We just wanna do work, man. So.

51:40 We do the work. All right, man. Curtis, thank you so much for coming on today. Curtis for us.