What The Funk?

0:00 We are on what the funk today with one of my favorite people, maybe in general, that I've met in the past five or six years, but certainly in the oil and gas industry, drew Hopkins, drew Diddy

0:16 Hopkins. It's always been Diddy. That's always been I had long before he did. I feel like it's really sullying my name at this point. So yeah, I've, I've been really battling that, Jeremy, but

0:27 thanks for bringing it up. For sure. Good to see you. Great to see you. Currently in OKC, Repin Novus consulting these days. We'll talk all about that. But as we know on what the funk, this is

0:41 not an advertisement for Novus. And I've had Kate, Robert, you have the Kevin on like a combined five times at this point over the past four years They're good content. They're good content. They

0:55 are experts on their field, for sure. I mean, And they're just good people, which is like sort of a theme, I think for Oakies, I've always been comfortable. I've always said this. Oklahoma

1:05 City is my favorite business town. I just always feel comfortable there. I think people are just nice. They're welcoming, even if they don't want to buy something from me, because people know if

1:14 I'm coming in there, I'm probably trying to sell you something. Not probably I am trying to sell you something. But it's just, you know, even still just willing to sit down and have a coffee and

1:23 be open book and talk about life. Some of my favorite people in oil and gas I've met in OKC, Tulsa's different. I'm not, I actually would say, I like Tulsa a little bit more just like maybe

1:35 cynically, agriculturally, I think it's a little bit prettier. It is. But OKC is, it's a much different business town. Tulsa's like more closed off. OKC is more open arms. I agree with you.

1:46 And my plan was like, I went to school down here from 2000 until 2004. And I've lived in Oklahoma my whole life. And I thought in 2004, I was like, I'm getting out of this two bit town like I've

1:57 got to go explore the world. and started with Chesapeake right after that. And I thought, I'll stay here for like six to eight months and we'll see how it plays out. And that turned into like 13

2:06 years. Love the people, love the community, love how just absolutely just dynamic the oil and gas industry has been on every up and every down. And it really has been home. It's been a wonderful

2:20 home base and it's been just a great place to grow up in the energy industry Yeah, I mean, I do like the, I've had a bunch of people on, whether it's a Max Gagliardi or, you know, Kevin Decker,

2:35 as I mentioned. I think even Kate, there's so many people that came through Chesapeake at some point and almost everybody looks back on it super fondly, especially when you guys have like 100 rigs

2:49 and you're basically just like, let's just go for everything we can possibly go for it and have fun. but I have to hit you with the first question, even though I didn't send you any prep questions

3:03 because I know you don't need it. You're a podcast person. We work better off the fly, right? Let's do it, baby. Oh, let's do it. Who are you, man? Who is Drew Hopkins? Who is, oh, man.

3:12 So for the next two and a half hours, I want to take you through. I started off going Miss Gibson's first grade class, walked in there. Now,

3:23 who I am is I'm the son of two Oklahoma school teachers I am a absolute oil and gas nut that didn't realize he was an oil and gas nut until the first day he walked into Chesapeake.

3:40 I am a promoter at heart promoter being different. I feel than marketing than business development. I've got a land background. I've got communications background in the different roles that I've

3:55 played.

3:57 CRO background, but my love and my real passion is promoting and that doesn't matter if it's oil and gas, if it's an event, if it's anything that can make something more than what it was originally

4:15 intended to be. And so I love the idea of being able to work in business development and be able to work with companies. I love the David and Goliath story of small companies because I can't

4:30 remember who said it. And it's one of my favorite quotes of why I bet on anybody but yourself. That

4:39 was you. I need to really credit you for some of these. You've got my favorite quotes out there. But I learned early on at Chesapeake. I was like, when you surround yourself with a good team,

4:50 that's fantastic. But you have to have a certain level of, I don't know if it's confidence or cockiness. of where you're like, I know that I can not, not only might have touched something, but I

5:03 can, if I touch it and if I put enough work into it, I can make, I can help make something incredibly successful. And I've loved to be able to do that with, from the vendor side, I've loved to

5:15 be able to do that at Chesapeake of the roles at Chesapeake that they were so kind and so just pushing me into things to see if we could make them successful And that was the biggest challenge and so

5:29 fun to be able to take that on and to be able to roll with it, to be able to do that with Wade Brawley, to be able to do that with Kate here. Like every single one of these has been the opportunity

5:39 where I know by the calendar that I'm getting older, but I feel by my level of excitement, I feel just like what I was walking in the door of Chesapeake. I feel so excited and I cannot stop

5:55 thinking about the different ideas of how to make something and it's fun, it's just fun. Yeah, I mean, I view you as a culture guy. I think it's a little bit challenging to put you in a box.

6:09 Like I met you, you might not even remember this, years ago, it was at NAIP, and you've got this kind of presence, you've got this positive vibe. And then you and I got to know each other a

6:19 little bit more during COVID. You had me on your podcast back when Land Vantage had that office and Oklahoma City. Right, we sent a car for you, I believe And that car never showed up. And you

6:29 walked in, ended up walking the long way to get to where we were doing the podcast. That was early days, Jeremy. That was pretty, pretty sad. But I was so glad that you came here. I thought it

6:40 was a joke. Like, it was like 92 degrees and 100 humidity. And you're like, Yeah, yeah, here's the address. And they drop me off, I've got like all my bags. I got my laptop. And I'm like,

6:51 this is a joke, right? Like now you're gonna make me sweat my ass off just to get to your studio. And then it's in like some warehouse in the back. Back, yeah. And thankfully, so many people

7:02 were just so quick to be like, let us take you over there. And that actually turned out to be no one. And you ended up walking and pulling your bags all the way over to the warehouse. And I'm

7:11 setting things up and I just look at the door and here you come in sweaty and everything. And then I'm like, and we're rolling in three too. You're like, yeah, okay, you're here So are you, I'm

7:19 like, can I just like catch my breath dude? It was like straight up like rush out of the house to the airport through security, flight, land, Uber to the wrong location, sweating in the back.

7:30 And you're like, okay, we're here. We got the IT guy ready to, I'm like, dude, like - We're on the clock, we're on the clock. We gotta get this going. You were so kind. You were so kind to

7:40 come on it. And that was the early days of just trying something new to see if it worked. And I knew that you would be always game for things like that, and you were so kind to be able to. on.

7:51 And I really appreciated that conversation. And I've appreciated every time that we've been able to catch up at any event. Likewise. So,

7:60 I mean, interesting. I think that you and I had talked about this before. We both have a love for baseball. We'll talk about that a little bit. But the parents being teachers, so my mom is

8:09 retired. She was an elementary school art teacher, K through eight. My dad is a retired professor of psychology. So I'm also the son of two teachers. And I think that there's an element of that

8:20 that's carried through professionally. But yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say what did having having both parents as teachers, what do you think some of the main things that you that

8:31 benefited you at this point in your life by having parents as teachers? Well, there's a lot. And you know, I didn't, I don't have this answer scripted, but it's pretty easy for me to answer that

8:42 question because it's like fundamental to my life and who I am and who I became. I think one is teachers don't make a lot of money. Maybe professors make a little bit more, but like we grew up

8:53 having everything that we needed, but not everything that I wanted. So I think it put this value on education and a value on just being kind to people. But also it, you know, we didn't go on

9:09 fancy vacations. We would basically drive everywhere. We had the nicest car we ever had was like a 1994 tourist, which was kind of a dope car. I'm not gonna lie You know, Ford tourists, we had

9:21 Ford escorts, we had Chevy Cavaliers. And, you know, I would see people driving Volvos and Sobs and BMWs. And I said, you know, when I get older, like, I'm gonna do that. So it did create

9:26 the sense, at least for me of, I understand the baseline of what I need. And it's not, not a

9:33 lot, but

9:37 I also understand what I want. And it's, I knew I wasn't gonna be a teacher because I wouldn't be able to earn the same way. The importance of education was certainly manifested very early on. I

9:50 mean, I remember distinctly even when I was in eighth grade, we had a book that was like the top, it was, you know, US News and World Report. Now it's all digital, but in 1993 or whatever, it

10:01 wasn't. So there was this book, and I remember even being in eighth grade and in looking through this book and like kind of marking schools that I might potentially want to go to for college, you

10:12 know, and it was like, I don't know, I was like, Villanova sounds kind of cool. Boston College was interesting. Brandeis where I ended up going. Look kind of new UCLA, because they were like

10:23 in the NCAA tournament and stuff. But even just like, okay, so you have this idea of a school, but then you look into it, like, what do my SAT scores need to be? Like, what does my GPA need to

10:31 be? What are these schools look for? So the importance of education was instilled at a young age. And then I would also say, just

10:40 discipline and consistency, like, you know, it's cold in New Hampshire. You know, and I know Oklahoma can be hot sometimes. It can be cold sometimes too. But the kind of Puritan style work

10:52 ethic that I saw from my parents too, to just get up every day and school starts at 730 or whatever. And we're gonna be in the car at seven o'clock and get you to school on time. And it doesn't

11:04 matter if it's 15 below, we're going, right? There really wasn't calling in sick There wasn't, you can just not show up today and you just go. So a lot of things, right? And I value all of them.

11:21 My sister's, my older sister is a librarian in Vermont, which is kind of cool. So she sort of stayed in that like educational, you know, a child-focused realm. And my younger sister is an

11:33 executive director at a nonprofit. So like they stayed a little bit closer to what I would consider the giving side, the educational side, and I went in the the other direction of being a business

11:46 guy. I love it. How about you? Let me turn that back on you. What did you take from your parents being teachers and how has that kind of helped in your life? A lot of similarities, if what you

11:55 just said. I mean, a lot of similarities. And so my mom was first grade, just first grade education. My dad was eighth and ninth grade American and Oklahoma history. Oh nice. And he's 86 years

12:11 old now and he is sharp as a tack He can still every bit of the constitution, every legal document, every amendment, he can rattle off immediately. And it means so much to him. I was an only

12:25 child too. And so I would have the elementary education and like the high school education, both just pinging me all the time. They taught me to question everything. They taught me to be able to

12:40 argue both sides of an argument I thought that was really important. My dad was a huge stickler on our name means something. Reputation, reputation, reputation. And I remember that from one of

12:56 the things of, and I hear people quote it all the time about Aubrey McLendon saying it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and it takes 10 minutes to ruin it. Well, for sure. And I remember my

13:06 dad talking about like his father, Jet Oklahoma, which I don't know if you're familiar with where Jet is, but it's the great salt plains of Oklahoma where they dig salt crystals and we're back in

13:17 the early days before the war, they would bomb it, do bombing testing runs and everything else. Probably a ton of radiation in that town. Let me tell you. And that probably explains a lot about

13:26 my family. But

13:30 they even ran a huge farm that was like a pig farm and everything. And so it was low on the totem pole and low on the respect. And my dad said you had to earn every bit, every ounce of respect that

13:41 you could throughout your career and he said that same. and he said, Just take time with your studies. Be the best person that you can. Show people that you are caring, are compassion, and be

13:57 able to know that a kind heart can win out. And I really have tried to put that into play, and I am so absolutely thankful for both of them and everything that they were able to pass on to me. And

14:11 I think that really translates well, kind of to what we talked about even here today of reputation is what helps you be successful in business. And people remember, people have long memories of who

14:23 they've worked with in the past, who they trust in business. And the final thing that I'll say is, during the summers at Oklahoma City University, I teach the energy management course there. And

14:38 so that was kind of

14:41 an ode to my dad of. He was such a great teacher. And I was like, I never, just for your, the exact same thing you said. I said, for the life that I want to live, I want to make sure that I'm

14:51 in the energy business. I want to do really well. But I also want to give something back to him. And that is a show that his teaching was a little bit passed on to me. And so I get to, I get to

15:01 do that during the summers

15:05 and it makes me super happy. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I think that, and you're also a podcaster, as we mentioned before, which I am. And I think this in some ways is like my pulpit, right?

15:12 My parents would stand up and teach and be in front of the class. And I always liked that, right? I admired that. And a good teacher can have a tremendous impact on your life, your career, your

15:23 passion, your studies, what you major in, what you end up going into for a career, what you value in your time off. You know, and so, you know, a couple of things I do, I have a friend who is

15:34 a professor of sales. Pretty cool. He created a curriculum at Bentley University in Massachusetts And what he does is. He has people like me or his friends who are successful salespeople in some

15:47 way, shape, or form, and come in and basically be there to answer questions for these students. And what I like about it is he's, yeah, they're doing a lot of like reading from books and I'll

15:59 sit in like some of the curriculum beforehand to get a sense of like where they're at in their sales training and understanding of sales and all that But he does a good job of getting them prepared,

16:14 which is so important actually when you go into business and especially when you're in sales, where he's like what I, when I'm asking people to do and I'm gonna grade you on this is do research on

16:24 the people that are coming in to talk to us and understand their background and ask questions. Don't just ask what makes you a good salesperson, ask them a pointed question. So people would come

16:33 with amazing stuff to me like,

16:37 It looks like in 2007, you decided to make a career pivot into oil and gas. What was the reason for that and were there any regrets on moving away from the traditional SaaS space and into oil and

16:49 gas? These kids are 21 asking this question. I'm like, That's good. That is really good. That's really good. You did your homework. Then there's a follow-up question with like, Are there any

17:00 industries that you might recommend somebody of my age start to look into right now? I'm kind of interested in AI or crypto. I'm like, You probably know more about that stuff than I do at this

17:10 point, right?

17:14 I really do value and appreciate kind of like you do with the energy management, summer studies at Oklahoma City University, just having some opportunities to give back. Then of course, podcasting

17:25 is not too dissimilar. I think I got a lot of this from my parents And I mean, that's a reason to be thankful, isn't it? I mean, that's absolutely fantastic. And it's, I think it's a good like

17:39 owed to them. And I told my dad about this podcast and he watched, or the podcast that Jarrison I do. And he watched like the first episode. And he's like, cool. And I was like, just, you know,

17:50 are we watching it again? And he's like, ah, one's enough. So, I mean, he got enough out of one as many, as many of our listeners, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. That's sort of how it is with you,

18:00 right? One time with Drew is kind of enough. That's all right Tell me about the podcast a little bit, 'cause you had this, it wasn't like a land vantage, a land, like what, you had something,

18:12 right? Like you had the subtle resonance of a podcast that I was on a few years ago, almost four years ago at this point. And then obviously things have changed and your life, land vantage had the

18:25 sale, it went to pack energy, you know, we'll talk about some of the shift and transition of building a company, selling a company, starting almost from scratch, and then finding your new niche

18:36 at Novus, and I could see you being there for a long time. But what led to the podcast with Jarrus and good timing, by the way, to put out a land podcast when landman at this TV show is like all

18:46 the rage? Absolutely. So, and briefly hitting on the original podcast that we had at LIS of a small company, small company trying to find any way to be relevant and to continue to get the name out

19:01 there, right? And so, that was just one of the things that I thought you have, like normal sales cycles, you have your marketing budget, you have your sales budget you, have your business

19:11 development budget, and you look at all these things and you see all of the different events that you could push money to and where are you gonna get the best return? And I started looking and I was

19:20 like, aside from time and effort of being able to,

19:26 like record and then go back through and edit and try to make it look good,

19:32 And I said, we have all of the tools to make commercials on our own for very low cost. And we can talk to some really interesting people along the way. And that continues to grow your base. And it

19:47 makes more people interested. And at the end of the day, even if it's one or two more people that know your name, that's great. That's one or two more people. And so I mean, that's what we

19:58 followed with that. And I said, just give me a shot And they were always so nice to allow me to kind of test new waters. And so that became pretty cool, because that got our name out there. After

20:10 land vantage, being able to come to Novos, kind of a similar situation of we have a much, I would say, a larger scope, a bigger, bigger budget with these things. But if you don't look at all

20:25 the different mediums that can continue to get your name out there, I think it's a very foolish. It's a foolish errand not to take advantage of those things. Yeah. And I think a lot of companies,

20:35 and I think a lot of people say I don't have time for that. And I

20:41 wholeheartedly disagree on if you're really trying to do things to build yourself, build your company, build your own personal brand, you have to make time. And so, Jerris and I have been friends

20:53 for a long time. And we speak on the same kind of different speaking circuits We knew each other back from the Chesapeake days. We both kind of have that similar dry sense of humor. I think he is

21:05 so just well versed in land and AI and so many different things.

21:11 We always have tried to support each other. And I knew he was speaking in an afternoon and I just wrapped up a speech that I had done. And so, I ran all the way across where this venue was. And I

21:23 got in right before he was going on the stage and he was getting ready to go up on the stage he pivoted and he came right over to me and he leaned to me. He leaned over and the lights were down and

21:32 the spotlights on the stage. And he said, How do you feel about doing a podcast? And we started in like two weeks. And I was like, Yeah. I was like, We're in, let's do it. And just pushed him

21:40 up on the stage. I think we both had been thinking about it and we both knew that we wanted to do something like that. And all it took was just kind of that, the minds connecting at that conference

21:53 just at the right time. And it was so natural. It was so incredibly natural And so it was good timing with the land man show coming up because we knew that was going to draw some real serious. It

22:03 was going to draw some feelings in both ways. Like people were going to like it. People were going to hate it, but the main thing was people were going to be talking about it. And so we said,

22:13 we've got the good background. We've got the good connections, especially in that land space, to be able to do a weekly show that is going to have a guest on it that is going to be familiar to the

22:25 industry I mean, there are people that we've had on that we are so excited and meet. people coming up on it that, I mean, everybody knows. And we are so fortunate in this career that, you know,

22:37 as we cycle out to where people go from the new people in the company to kind of like the middle of their career and they're very well versed to kind of moving into that role of being able to pass

22:49 their knowledge on to the younger generations, there are so many people that are in those upper management stages who are just so excited to be able to pass on the stories, the things that they

23:02 found work, the things that they would have done differently and to be able to give them that opportunity to sit down and just talk through, you know, for like an hour or two is so rewarding and it

23:14 does go back to where you're saying it's kind of like the the owed to your family too and the teaching of you get to talk to these people, you get to find out what makes them tick, you get to find

23:22 out the hilarious stories that they can pass along but more than anything I like you, me, I would say 90 of the listening audience of what the funk, we really care about the industry and we want it

23:36 to continue and we want it to continue to build. And if we can pass along any knowledge, we wanna be able to have the chance to do that. And I think a podcast is a perfect way to do that. Yeah,

23:49 it is. I think if you stick with it, I don't know if you saw my LinkedIn post or what the funk page posted this yesterday, but I, of course, reviewed that. I have six different pages on LinkedIn

24:02 and a million different companies I have my hands in. But I kind of put my fingerprints on that one. And the number one thing, people ask me no joke, probably once a week, various different.

24:14 Just last weekend at a friend's son's bar mitzvah in Indiana, my buddy's like, yeah, funk does, he's an oil and gas, like a sales guy, and he does a podcast. And you see somebody's expression

24:25 change like, Oh, I've been thinking about doing a podcast. And do you have any, anything I should know, any advice? 'Cause it sounds like you've been doing it. I'm like, I have, I've put out

24:37 like 180 episodes and my advice is like pretty simple. You just have to keep doing it. I was getting ready to say let me guess consistency would be right up to number one or two. And you can't have

24:51 a good idea, film it, put some whites up behind you, have some laughs and then two weeks later be like, I don't have time to edit. I'll put that first episode out there. We'll do the next one,

25:04 maybe next month. You know, you can't do that. You've gotta get on a schedule. And I think also accepting like, you're just not gonna be good early on. Like I've listened to my early episodes

25:15 with Tim and you know, we were pretty good 'cause like you and Jarris, we had a good ham and egg thing. We, you know, culturally aligned well, we've had so many conversations before we ever went

25:25 on a podcast So it wasn't awkward. but it was a little bit more robotic. Right. 'Cause it was scripted. And now, you know, I just, if there's a part of the conversation, like I didn't plan to

25:37 talk to you about our parents being teachers for 10 minutes, but that's sort of the way it should go, right? If you're connecting authentically, if you're listening. But it really is, man, I

25:47 hate to see podcasts, you know, eight, 10, 12 episodes stop because I think that the audience, the listening audience, and some people just love listening to podcasts, they don't really take

26:00 you seriously until you probably put out maybe 15 or 20 episodes because so many podcasts they've started listening to and then they stop and they're like, well, that sucks, I actually liked, I

26:10 feel like I invested like 20 hours in my time and now they just stop doing it. And the reason's always the same, well, I wasn't making any money off of it, I don't have any time. Maybe it wasn't

26:19 driving business for me. But like you said, you've got to take the big picture with it and consistency is so key. I completely agree with you on early episodes being a little bit rough because

26:34 you've never done it before. And you've spoken in front of like my speaking has always been with a podium in front of me and a, you know, least entitled analyst crowd, you know, in front. And

26:46 you get a little bit unnerved of where you're like, okay, I'm on camera now. I'm supposed to carry a conversation for the next hour. And like you've got your notes written down and you're trying

26:56 to figure out how you're gonna transition And it just seems clunky. And I completely agree of the things that I wanna do more than anything on any podcast is if I can have a conversation that people

27:09 like that they can listen to on their way to work while they're working out at the gym.

27:16 If I can tell stories that they can relate to, which I feel like I'm at the point in life where I can professionally, personally, there's always something going on There's always something just

27:27 absolutely just. ridiculous going on in life that might give somebody a chuckle and then to be able to put a bow on it and be able to talk to a great guest and Hear those same stories that they have

27:38 but yeah, the scripted thing early on and we are we're still pretty pretty fresh into it like we're only about 15 to maybe 18 episodes in we're going to continue it on and as long as we're as long as

27:51 we're able to and we really are passionate about doing this just because the I'll tell you going to nape this year They were so kind on they gave us a booth and I saw that I was kind of jealous for

28:06 the record

28:08 Well, I mean when you've got an awesome logo and whenever you talk to the right people and slip a couple hundred bucks You know to the right to the right pocket. It's you know what you're saying

28:17 guys It's cheating, but no, I did that was kind of cool that you had that it was it was it was it was so nice And I am so absolutely just overboard thankful of They were so positive with the cast.

28:29 And so that was like in the final week before NAIP was. And so what do you have to have? Like you have to have, you get that booth, but what do you put in it? And so we were Amazonning everything

28:40 as quickly as possible tables and chairs and a cow skin rug and like trying to figure out how to get all this stuff down. And I was just really flying down just for the networking stuff, right? But

28:49 now I was like, oh, no, I'm responsible for filling up this booth and making people want to come buy it. In the back of my mind, I was like, nobody's going to come buy this. Like, also our

28:59 position, like way out of the way. No, it wasn't. Well, if they give you something for free. Yeah, it's going to be out of the way. And so I thought my thought was, okay, I will be in there

29:11 and I will sit at the table. And I know enough people, you know what nape, you're going to know hundreds of people that I'll be able to get up, be able to walk around the room, leave some stuff

29:20 on the on the table if anybody wants anything. We weren't able to get out of the booth because so many people came around and it it was so like humbling to hear people actually, number one, saying

29:33 that they were listening. That's the advantage, right? Yeah, it felt really good. Like, I mean, I am so sincere whenever I say, it felt so good to hear people saying, This is what I liked.

29:43 And then talking about parts of the show that I remember doing and I didn't know if it was gonna land or not and it landed and they loved it. And then to have more people come up and be like, Hey,

29:55 I just wanna show you on my phoneand show us that they were following it on Spotifyor on YouTube. And I was like, I didn't anticipate this, but I'm so incredibly thankfulfor people even going out

30:09 of their wayand going to the far side by the bathroom where we wereto even give a nice kind note. And so that was really cool. And it really inspired me to be like, You know what? We were taking

30:20 this kind of fun seriously before, but I definitely want to. do the right thing for the people that are listening and make sure that they're, they're entertained and learning something. Yeah. I

30:32 mean, I think that the, that's what keeps you going to is even just one or two people being like, Hey man, yeah, I know who you are. I listened to your podcast. It doesn't take much. Like

30:42 we're not going to be Joe Rogan or Bill Simmons, a super niche podcast audience, but you can have fun and still get a ton of both business value. And I think like personal satisfaction out of it,

30:55 because like I've said this so many times before and I'll say it again, this is like the only hour of the week where I'm not just tethered. I know. You know, like I'm actually in a real

31:05 conversation.

31:07 That's exactly right. You have so many meetings going on throughout the day. Your phone is always blowing up and like it really is. You're spot on with that. Whenever we can set up our little our

31:18 little thing and hit record on that, we kind of just both take a sigh of relief. And just like. sitting here just talking to you today. I mean, it's the same thing. It's being able to talk to

31:28 somebody that you relate really well to, that you know has had many of the same experiences that you've had and it's just fun to talk about. Yeah, man. So I wanna talk a little bit about land

31:40 vantage, right? So, or even just going back in your career. So you had the Chesapeake experience, which I'm sure was foundational and fundamentally just awesome. And you got to see a company

31:51 grow and constrict and, you know, being various different basins and hire sort of like the best of the best in the city that you're in And. then all of a sudden the thunder come in and now you guys

32:02 have this Chesapeake energy arena. Did you go right from Chesapeake to land vantage? I did, I did, and I told you

32:13 about that. So Chesapeake was in, in those years, unlike 2015, '16 and '17 was whenever I left And it was definitely in a, in a. spirit of change for sure. And so much had changed on the campus.

32:29 We were continually in kind of reorgs, just restructuring, making sure that we were in a good place to be able to continue to move forward. And I hats off to all the management there for working

32:40 just tirelessly to make sure that that happened for the people.

32:44 After so many different rounds of, you know, like layoffs and everything like that, I had done so many years there and been on the ups and the downs. And I thought, I'm at a point in my life

32:58 where number one, I want to focus more on my family is being that only child of being able to help my dad transition from being able to do school teaching to kind of running a lot of different land

33:10 that our family owned to be a lease out to to renters and be able to help farm and everything like that and I was like he's not getting any older he's not getting any younger and turns still has

33:23 exactly the same amount of energy at 86, then he did the day that I left Chesapeake in 2017. So I miss the boat on that of where I thought, I'm really gonna have to leverage helping him.

33:35 Wade and Jim and a few others from the management team, Amy Hotman, they had exited from Chesapeake early on because they had been building slowly up LIS. I looked at the business model that they

33:50 had I knew the type of people that they were. I knew that whenever they had a vision of something, I knew it was not just, Hey, this on paper looks good, but if we do this right and if we am

34:04 asked the right team, we're gonna be able to do something incredibly special. And so in talking to them and in seeing how I could help, not just from the land background that I had of being able to

34:16 help with the software, but also in that, in that kind of promotional, that, of revenue style space, we came to a pretty good agreement of that that would be a great opportunity for me to utilize

34:30 network and utilize the ability to see if I was, I want to say it right of see if I was

34:40 the person that I said I was of can I do what I said of can I grow something and

34:47 so I took that as a huge challenge and it was a fast and furious few years of just working like crazy with them to see how we could make a software that was unlike anything that the the business had

35:00 seen so far being able to build on that experience that we had and really put something out there that was that was fresh that companies of all sizes could use and then being able to market it in a

35:13 way that it didn't just look like a mom and pop shop doing it it looked like something that was beyond professional and that was that could be utilized by a super major the very next day. And I'm

35:28 really proud of it. I'm really proud of what we were able to accomplish. I'm very, very, very proud of not just our leadership and C-suite team there, but we brought on so many wonderful people

35:43 from the top level all the way down. I think at one point, whenever I left there, I mean, we were almost at 100 and something people. Wow. And to be able to see that growth over those years, I

35:57 think I joined and we had 11. And to be able to

36:03 also be seen as a place of tremendous growth that took care of employees and that people put their faith in a management team that could be good for your family, in a city in a very rocky environment

36:19 of oil and gas industry, it was. It was a combination of a lot of things that came together. It was a lot of hard work, but it was so incredibly rewarding. And just one of the things that I'm

36:31 proudest of in my entire career.

36:35 There's a lot that I can sift through there. But what I really want to focus on is

36:41 the blessing and the curse. The blessing is that you loved LIS, you loved land vantage. You were, at least from my perspective, maybe weighed a little bit And Amy, you could say, Jim, to a

36:54 lesser extent, but you were like the face of the company, always at the trade shows, the person traveling around doing the business deals, but you didn't actually have the sales experience, like

37:05 true sales experience, true. Before that, well, I want to get to that in a second, we'll talk about that. But the blessing is that you loved it and you had great colleagues. The curse is then,

37:15 how do you replicate that, right? So you get acquired. And it's hard, right? So you go to PAC, which at the time was buying a lot of stuff. And they were growing and they have private equity

37:28 money, family office money behind them. And it's all about growth. And you probably lose a little bit of the culture that you had built, which then creates a situation where it's like, oh my god,

37:40 this is different. And I loved LIS. I mean, I love PAC for buying us and it certainly helped you financially and evolve in your career. But you didn't build it. You're just another number

37:55 employee getting a paycheck. And I'm not trying to be diminutive in saying that. Oh, no, no. You didn't last there very long. And that didn't surprise me at all because of the blessing and curse

38:07 complex that I think you got from both Chesapeake and then LIS. So naturally, and you kind of tease me, you said, well, I'm going somewhere, I've decided that this is where I'm going to go. And

38:19 then no surprise you go to Novice Consulting, which is another place where culture is paramount, where you'd worked with some of these people before, where it's got some of that okey, friendliness,

38:30 welcome in culture. And they put you in one of the only roles that's a non-billable position, right? Which is a big step for a consulting company to do that. It is. It really is. Do you feel

38:45 some of that same passion that you had for Novus, that you had for LIS? Is it different? Is it the same? And was it really, really important for you more so than the money to find the culture?

38:59 For sure. So you said something earlier, you said the Okey culture and the friendliness that goes into it. And while I didn't have the sales experience,

39:15 what I found at an early age even in Chesapeake. And some of the roles that they pushed me towards were front facing of being in front of like royalty owners or being in front of companies that we

39:28 were working with, that there may have been some friction. And I was told by somebody at Chesapeake a long time ago of they were like, Hopkins, you're a hard guy to hate, and you're an easy guy

39:40 to work with. And I agree with that. I absolutely see that as a huge compliment because, and that stems back from my family, mostly from my grandfather on my mom's side. And he was a cowboy,

39:57 cowboys cowboy. He could talk to anybody, he could talk to a brick wall. He could go out, be running like a fence, and somebody would say that the property line was a little bit different, and

40:09 they would just be absolutely mad, and by the time that they got done talking, he was their best friend They were saying

40:19 Milford Robertson is a pillar of this community. I would trust him with anything. And if I got

40:27 anything from DNA or anything passed down or just being able to glean anything from that guy, being probably one of the absolute greatest people I've ever met in my life, I would want it to be that

40:40 when people meet me, they genuinely know I'm not pushing them off as a number or they're not just another person that I'm meeting today that I'll set the phone down, I will focus 100 on them and I

40:54 genuinely do care. I hope I can say that for my entire life, like I hope

41:00 I can continue that up and I know that I can because it's something that I love.

41:06 It made me successful with LIS because I already had good contacts at different companies. But if I could get in and talk to these different companies and let them know who I was as a person,

41:17 passionate I was. Um, maybe a little bit of that Oklahoma attitude of being, being friendly and being able to be good to talk to, but if I can, people want to do business with people they like,

41:29 people want to do business with people that they trust. And, um, I will bend over backwards to make sure that I build that trust and that I'm able to be available to that person, not just as a, I

41:44 dealt with it, Chesapeake, I dealt with too many salespeople who were just trying to sign a contract and I said the difference that I'll be is if people need me morning, noon or night, 365 days a

41:55 year, seven days a week, um, I, the Dwight Schrute persona, maybe some people might take that reference, but like I, I have had, I've had royalty owners call me at 11 o'clock at night on a

42:06 Saturday, Saturday night to absolutely give me an earful about, you know, a pad site that was half mile away from them. I've had sales negotiations that go in through the weekend. And I've had

42:18 people at the end of those say, I didn't expect anybody to answer today. And I was like, you're my priority. When I started looking around,

42:32 you wanna look for people that share that same passion in their business. And that was one of the biggest things of, I knew Wade, I knew Jim, I knew Amy and Joel. And I knew how passionate they

42:43 were with building something that was really gonna change and revolutionize the game Again, not a commercial tease or anything. I'm talking about people finding that very, very, I think rare set

42:55 of leadership. I knew about Novos, I knew about, I had worked with many of the people here on the leadership team. At Chesapeake. At Chesapeake. Or even partnering with, okay, okay. No, at

43:09 Chesapeake. And I knew, not only of them, I had worked closely with a lot of them early in their careers

43:18 ever so impressed with who they were. And I always kind of, in the background, followed. I was like, oh, they're doing the consulting. Oh, wait, they're starting their own business. And I

43:29 had sat down and I was talking with my wife and I was like, they're going to be big. Like they're going to be big. And they're going to be big because of what, like the vision that they have, the

43:40 people that they put together and the real ability to execute. And if you have that combination, if you've got the right people in place, and you are very, very, very picky on the people that

43:54 you're bringing into it,

43:57 that vision transforms not going from vision to that execution and absolutely amazing things happen. And so when the opportunity was

44:09 put in front of me, it was pretty easy to know where I wanted to go. And I've never done the consulting space before.

44:18 It's something that is number one, it's been a new challenge. Number two, it's been very easy to come into because I think kind of the little set of skills that I bring on are a little bit unique

44:31 and I think they're very unique to the consulting space. And I think that translates incredibly well of I don't think they've seen a lot of things that we're able to kind of do and put out. And I

44:42 think that it only spells for the things that we have planned in the future, continuing that building. I mean, you know, you know exactly from the conversation that we've said before of I love

44:52 being able to take something that is kind of that small ball of clay and build it into that full statue and really surprise people. And this is just another one of those cases. It's just so fun to

45:06 be able to solve some. I mean, I love to hear it and you said something that was interesting to me, which is you were

45:16 First of all, it's amazing. You found somebody to marry you. Let's say you're not wrong, you're not wrong. And she's cool, I met her. She's cool. So, and you said, these guys are gonna be

45:27 big. I actually don't know if I believed that they were gonna be big, but I'll say this. I knew that they would be what they wanted to be. Right. So if it was being a big, large, successful,

45:44 corporate, a consulting firm, they could be that. I didn't know what they wanted to be, 'cause maybe at first it was, we just don't wanna work for other people. We wanna control our own destiny.

45:56 But now it's actually going in the path of like, there's a lot of marketing, the logos everywhere. You're putting out great content. You're diversified in the types of companies that you're

46:06 working with, both in oil and gas, and outside of it, that I do see, maybe it is the desire of the team to be a big consulting firm. But again, that wasn't, my take on them was more like,

46:17 they'll just be what they want to be. And whether that's an awesome 30 person boutique firm or the next EAG with 190 people or something like that. And I think all of those options are on the table.

46:31 And I'm happy that you're there. It's the right fit. I absolutely appreciate that. I think the main word that it comes down to is responsible growth, right? It's growing responsibly and also with

46:44 that leadership team being able to sit down and being able to say, to your point of what you said, what do we want to be? And are we content? Are you content? Are you happy? Are

46:57 you making sure that the people that have taken, anytime you go to work for a company, you're taking a risk, right? And so whenever you hire people on, they're taking a risk to be able to be a

47:08 part of that organization that you're building The main thing before finance is before finance. or anything else is in my leadership book, I wanna make sure that I take care of people. And I want

47:20 people to know that if they are taking a chance or if they're taking any bit of what they feel like a risk, that I'm gonna do absolutely everything I can to make sure that that is eliminated from

47:33 their mind and they are so incredibly happy that they have become part of this. You hear about culture, you hear about people like, like

47:43 I don't live on that mindset of where people are like, oh, we're a big family here. I think that's the weirdest thing to say about a company. I think we're a big team. I mean, you're all

47:52 probably related anyway 'cause we're from Oklahoma. We are, I told you about the bombing over the Great Salt Plains. I told you, I did tell you about that, so we probably are. But if you are,

48:02 like you're a big sports fan, I'm a big sports fan. I love the idea of that general manager position of being able to look and being able to find it. all the right, you get the right pitches, you

48:16 get the right second baseman, you put together the team that's gonna make you the most successful going forward, and you look in long-term, right?

48:25 Like you said, we look not just in the oil and gas business, we're looking at upstream, midstream and downstream, we're seeing who are all of these impactful people that we can make a real

48:34 difference with. Who are the people that are going to, just like our leadership team here, that are gonna resonate with other leadership teams, in all of those different groups?

48:49 If we find the right people, if I do my job of being able to introduce us, not just Oklahoma City and all of our normal, exciting oil and gas spaces, those middle in Texas, those Denver's, I

49:04 love those places, but I wanna go beyond that. And I am a firm believer and I'm like, we get one shot at this whole thing. Yeah, you get one career to go through. And I want to look back

49:16 whenever I'm retired and I want to be like, I wasn't ever complacent. I shot for the, I shot my shot. I shot for the fences. And because we did it responsibly, that's how we were able to make

49:30 the biggest difference for the biggest amount of people. And I'm, I, I, I, I, not only hope, I don't want to say hope because I know what's going to happen. I think it's, it's happening And

49:42 it's hard for you to see that because you're in it. Right. Yeah. I think that there's, there's a thread that is a part of every successful company that I've either consulted with, worked for, or

49:55 even observed. And that thread is, the focus is on delivery and customer satisfaction and success versus the focus on competition. And it's a huge red flag for me when I do see a company that is

50:10 just uber focused on their competition. This is a big Jeff Bezos thing, but if you're focused on competition, you're only focused on being slightly better than the competition. If you're focused

50:19 on your customers, you're focused on being the best possible delivery mechanism for your customer. That's right. And I think I see this time and time again, and that to me is an element of Novos

50:33 where they've never talked about who they compete with. And I don't think it really matters because if you deliver for the friendlies and the unfriendlies and continue to build and grow, then that's

50:46 everything in consulting because you're always relying on that repeat business. I don't care about, there's zero care in my mind about the people that we would consider competition because we're

50:57 putting ourselves in a league above that. We will always know that we are going to be going up against competitive people. That's always the case, right? But it's that experience and that's being

51:10 able to be confident and being able to. you know, show your work, right? And so we've got to continue to lead by example, we've got to be able to, the projects that we're so fortunate to be a

51:22 part of, be able to show that we're not just hitting the status quo, we're going completely above and beyond it. And that's the name of the game, right? So we're not looking back, we're only

51:33 looking forward. Love it. We only got a couple of minutes left. You and I could probably talk for two, two and a half, three hours, nobody wants to listen to that But I want to pivot to some

51:43 kind of fun stuff. Tell me your favorite restaurants in Oklahoma City.

51:49 Good night, there's some good ones. So stock and bond is down at the first national. Ooh, I like that place. I love that place. It is pound for pound, one of the best steak houses that Oklahoma

51:60 City has to offer. Very, very, very good food. There's the second, if I'm sticking to steak houses, I would say there's one called the signature grill. in Edmund, and it's a very small, like

52:16 more intimate experience, but the food there is just absolutely great. And then if I was going to say a third, there's a place called the Crown, and it's over here, very close to the Novos office,

52:27 very close to Chesapeake campus. It's on Western in Oklahoma City, and the chef there is, I mean, genius level, just absolutely genius. I

52:39 really have loved that the food scene in Oklahoma City has just continued to do so well. It's amazing. It's changed a lot from when I first went there 13, 14 years ago, too, but yeah, I do eat

52:52 pretty well in okay. And of course, you got the ranch, which has been around forever. The ranch is a staple for sure. It's definitely a staple. Now, I was going to ask you, now you do the

53:02 podcast. You've been running around like, how have you found your schedule over the last, let's say two years of really developing funk futures, is every week packed, like, I feel like at this

53:17 point in my career, every single week is completely packed up with something. And we've looked at when we could get away for a vacation or anything like that. And I mean, it gets pushed so far out

53:28 and we don't even have any kids. And I can't imagine with kids, that just adds a whole new layer to the thing. Yeah, and my wife has a big job as well Yeah, my weeks are pretty packed. It's

53:41 probably less in person than I would like. I think it's more on the computer, calls with clients, calls with potential prospects, operators. I'm probably on about 25 web meetings a week,

53:58 realistically. I believe that might sound insane to some people, but it's true. And then you also consider like, I have a team to run and a lot of them are younger So I have to dedicate some time

54:09 to that. And it's hard because when I get through all the things I have to do, right, with the responsibilities to clients and to the business, do I always want to then have a coaching session on

54:21 a Friday with somebody on my team? No, but you know what they need that. You gotta do it. And it means a lot to them and I always feel good after it's done. It's hard to take a vacation. I don't

54:31 think my vacations are true vacations and there's a difference too between a vacation and a trip, so if you go with the kids' trip, if you just go with your partner, your wife, it's a vacation,

54:45 we're actually going a week from yesterday. So right now, next week, we'll be in London. Oh my gosh, nice. Yeah, we decided, yeah, thanks. We decided last, you know, we typically go to

54:57 Mexico and do like the all-inclusive resort type of thing in Cancun, Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, you know, somewhere like that, which is awesome. Those are amazing.

55:07 Yeah, I mean, it's great and I don't want my kids to take it for granted, 'cause I didn't go on one of those trips until like my honeymoon when I was like 31 or whatever. So I don't want them to

55:16 take it for granted. And I also want them to see other parts of the world. So we decided like, we looked at flights for spring break, which is, I guess it starts at the end of next week for us.

55:28 Yeah. And it was like 800 bucks or something like that to fly per person, to fly to Cancun And it's like basically the same price to fly to Heathrow in London. So we said, okay. Okay, do it. Oh,

55:41 I love it, that's really cool. That is really cool. Yeah, I have a client, I have a client in London too. So there is like a small business element to it, which like makes me feel a little bit

55:51 better about expensing some of the trip. But, so we're flying to London, we're spending the weekend there doing like the hop on, hop off buses, and then we jump on the channel, first thing

56:01 Monday morning, go to Paris And yeah, that's nice four days in Paris and shuttle back to London and fly home two weeks from now. So very excited about that. I will take some real time off. I've

56:14 kind of like prepped my team. The amount of like heads up, you have to give your team when you're really taking the vacation is so much different than when you're an employee. It's like as

56:22 employees, oh, yeah. By the way, I'm out. I'm throwing my out of office. I'm out next week. For me, it's like, okay guys, five weeks from now, I'm going to be going to London. And then

56:32 it's a reminder, okay, three weeks from now. All right, let me know It's coming. I'm not going to be here. My hours are going to be completely off. And I really don't want to have to start

56:40 logging on at eight o'clock at night. Like after we get out of the Louvre and eat a bunch of croissants or, There you go. You know, coca-van and have to get on some calls. So like this is on you

56:53 guys, you got it. But I think it'll help them grow and evolve. You've prepared them well. I guarantee it. That is awesome. Thank you. That is really good. Time is for sure the most important

57:03 commodity No, time is a point. Um, I, I am a, my, my wife would mirror of, I, I feel like I kind of border on that workaholic. Uh, I don't, I don't like, I don't really like taking time

57:17 off that often. I, I really keep like the calls going throughout the, the day. And it's, it's not, it's not a great deal to have the, it's fun to build. So let me tell you real quick, uh,

57:28 the reason why I am in the absolute dog house at the Hopkins household. Okay And so I have a wonderful friend from college and he decided midway through, we were both in the business school and we

57:40 were just a few credits short of graduating and he looked over at me and he said, I don't want to do this. And I was like, well, take the class. And he was like, no, I want to be a movie

57:50 director. Well, I was like, well, that's a bit of a pivot. Okay. That's, that's a little bit different. And he stopped everything and he started, he was already like filming little things on

58:01 just the VHS cameras, you know, and everything on 90s, then he would put a little more money in to build or get a nicer camera. And he would ask us, all of these friends, hey, would you do this

58:11 with me on the weekend? And we'd film something. And he had a really good eye for it. Well, after I graduated and I was with Chesapeake, he was in Oklahoma City and he would do little ads for

58:21 different companies around here, Pecom, some of the other ones. And any money that he would get, he would put back into his production over and over. Just over and over. And so we always kept in

58:34 touch and he would always call and he'd say, Can you be the background in like a movie that I'm doing? And they'd be little low budget deals, you know, and everything. Then one of these movies

58:43 got bought by Amazon and it's probably not an Amazon Prime and so that was kind of a big deal. Yeah. Like a big deal. And if you ever watch it, it's called The Vast of Night and it's a very, very

58:53 good, like very good. So good in fact that you started getting some bigger offers. Okay. And so last year, he called me and he said, Can you drive a farm truck in Minko, Oklahoma at like 90

59:08 miles an hour? Wow. I said, I think I can. Yeah, for sure. You're like, Yeah, I did that when I was 13, so I can do it now. I go down there, drive absolutely not. This was not a good idea,

59:24 but I mean, fantastic. Driving, that may be my second call in stunt driving. He also says, Could you be a part in this thing? And he said, No speaking roles, but he said, I need you to be.

59:37 And I know what you're looking at me. You know exactly the part that he had offered me. And that was cult leader. And so he said, You're going to be a cult leader in this, like in a small

59:49 Oklahoma church where everybody's wearing denim. And like, it's just the real creepy vibe. And so filmed that, and it was really cool. It was a lot of fun. Well, he goes through editing and

1:00:00 everything. And like, I get a message from him and he says, Hey, this is the new Matthew McConaughey movie that's coming out. Wow. And he said, It's got a pretty strong lineup. It's gonna be

1:00:11 amazing. And he said, We're debuting as the top movie at South by Southwest. Oh, cool. And he said, Would you like to walk the red carpet? Whoa. And I said, Absolutely. And so I tell my wife

1:00:25 about this and - You didn't ask, you told Oh yeah, she rents a dress and we're very excited and we book all of our tickets and everything going down there. I didn't look at my schedule and I was a

1:00:40 speaker at an event that I could not change on the exact same night. Nice. And so

1:00:49 I missed that. I'm wearing the tuxedo right now if you notice This is the tuxedo that would have been worn. on Monday of this week at South by Southwest. My wife is barely talking to me at this

1:01:03 point. Oh, she's just in the rain. It turned out also that McConaughey, after the movie premiered, he did a street party with the entire cast and everyone with his tequila brand. And then my

1:01:15 wife's celebrity crush, not only Matthew McConaughey, is Pedro Pascal, and he turned up to the premiere. Oh, you really, really talk about it The text messages that I've got and have been, I

1:01:29 don't wanna say hateful, they've been borderline hateful. But yeah, it's a rough few weeks at the Hopkins house, but we are managing the therapies really gonna help, I think. And yeah,

1:01:44 the movie is called The Rivals of Amziah King, which depending on how it pulls, you'll get to see Drew Hopkins as a cult leader in it Oh, man. Oh, it's exciting. Hey, the role I was born to be

1:01:59 star here. The role I was born to play is what I've been told. So, you know, I love it. I love it. Drew, where can people, great story? Thank you for sharing. We could do this forever, but

1:02:09 I know you have a job. I have a job. Right. Um, where can people find you? Both, um, you know or page IMDB your, your, your LinkedIn. The IMDB page for your company

1:02:22 page, whatever. Where can people find you? Your podcast? Like, wait, where do people go to find more about you? How do you reach out to you? So if first and foremost, my, my, all my contact

1:02:30 information is on my LinkedIn. That's really the only social media that I've got. Um, I try to post things about our podcast, about our company, uh, on there, um, all of the novus stuff,

1:02:40 follow the novus page. We, we really appreciate that. We are, we are growing that like crazy right now and putting out some really fun content. So look for that. Um, but we, for the podcast,

1:02:51 Jerris and I have the real deal land man that is spotify on YouTube.

1:02:56 and on Apple podcast. And so you can find it in any one of those fun places, wherever you like to listen and consume. Leave us good comments, leave us bad content. We are comments, we don't care.

1:03:07 We just are happy that you're listening. And we just wanna continue to build this out for an industry that we're just absolutely just enamored with. And we're so thankful for people like you,

1:03:17 Jeremy, that keep this thing going. And it's just a wonderful group to be a part of, isn't it? It is, it is. And I think there's even like a little bit of a podcast or family, maybe not a cult

1:03:30 per se. That's more kind of your - That's my thing. Yeah, I don't tread on my grip.

1:03:37 I appreciate you drew the real deal. Hopkins didn't even talk about baseball. We'll have to do that another time. Congratulations on everything in life and for continuing to be a light in our

1:03:53 industry, both light-hearted as well as positive. And I just think you're in the right place, both professionally and, and I would assume personally as well, despite your wife being kind of

1:04:04 pissed off right now, but just keep doing you, man. Lean into that authenticity. You've got a lot to bring and people admire that about you. I appreciate that. Despite my obvious flaws, the

1:04:13 rest of it's gonna, it's a piece of cake. Now, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it being here