What The Funk?

0:00 We're back, dropping over the barrel, tripping over the barrel with the man, a landman, an Alabama man, sort of, right? And somebody who's worked in all different sides of the house. So I've

0:16 really enjoyed my interactions with Jarrus. Tim, you made an astute observation if you look at Jarrus' LinkedIn profile picture. Oh, yeah. Just looks like he's really into whatever it is that

0:26 he's talking about. It looks intense on the picture. That's the vibe we like to have here on Tripping Over the Barrel. So welcome to. It's actually the mall food court. I'm just giving an order.

0:39 But I know, but I know, but I know that that's how you are at the mall food court. That's how you are. No, I want that orange Julius. And I want it this size with that straw.

0:50 Yeah, we still have orange Julius's around. I have a nice idea. I can't remember the lot when I was in a mall. I don't. I was just at the mall. That's why I was late to this podcast. recording

1:00 starting. I love them all. Tim, we've talked about this, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well,

1:07 because I grew up like way in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire, like the best, like indoor, like malls were, I don't know, nine 75, 90 minutes away. Like it. So it was a hike. It was

1:19 like the whole day was planned around going to the mall,

1:23 kind of like in the old West, we're going to town, we're going to the mall. So yeah, I still enjoy going to the mall. Just win.

1:33 But anyway, now for the mall. Here we are the day before my event. Well, this recording is coming out next week, but I've got the, uh, thunk futures golf scramble tomorrow. Super looking

1:42 forward to that. Gonna be nice weather. Got some friends coming to town, literally mid podcast. So excited to network hang out with energy tech people, oil and gas decision makers, you know, it

1:53 just sort of across the board. What, What I found interesting, Tim, about that is a lot of finance people showed up, Tim, that finance people have a lot of time on their hands and with that time,

2:03 they play golf with it. Well, I'm not sure they're going to sign up for that.

2:09 They're not going to claim they got a lot of time on their hands. But now I know, it's like, all right, yeah. I still think we're coming out of the golf tournament. Yes, sign me up. I haven't,

2:19 you know, there's still a lot of people who are missing, have missed out on them and be able to go do those things. So any excuse they can get to get out and have a, you know, do something on a

2:29 Friday, good weather, we're going to go take it right now. Yeah, although, I mean, anybody from Canada wasn't able to come. I mean, it's just too much of a hassle to travel back and forth

2:40 there right now. But that's sort of - You need to stop the roads. No, it's just like, I think you need a test going in, test going out. There may be a mandatory quarantine even upon return.

2:49 Things are more shut down up there than they are here for sure, well, especially Alabama. But

2:57 anyways, This is your show today. I want you to take us from your Okey roots all the way through Intergen, a very interesting upstream oil and gas company that wasn't always just that. And I was,

3:10 Tim, I love talking about the oil and gas companies that are in unusual places. Oh yeah. Like there's, are there any other oil and gas companies in Birmingham? Actually, there is. There's one

3:21 called Diversified Gas and Oil

3:25 They're actually traded on the London Exchange. They're a billion plus dollar company. Heavy, heavy and acquisitions of just boring conventional stuff, but they've done really well with it. So

3:36 yeah, I would say at this time they're probably the number one energy company in Birmingham. And then I'm at a close number two or number three, Solo at my home office.

3:49 They're at one wing of the energy corridor. I'm at the other, the anchor tenant, if you will

3:57 No, that's awesome. I mean, I know I've diversified, of course, tons and tons of low-producing natural gas wells on the eastern corridor, so you always have the ability to sell it and extract it.

4:08 Not sexy or anything like that, but seems to be working. I just didn't know they were headquartered there. That's cool, because they're probably all over the, really, the east coast. They have

4:18 more field offices around the country that I think all those field officers are probably bigger than what the headquarters is But from what I understand, the executive team and then some of the

4:29 critical skeleton functions are located here in Birmingham and then the rest of the operations people are scattered all over the place. But I think anybody, in oil and gas in general, you say

4:41 Birmingham, Alabama, there's always a what? And if you know the business, you generally sell, well, that must be energy and then, you know, that's, that's pretty much it. It is fascinating

4:53 and when you hear mississippi in it's it's Danbury years of the My Dad It's it is just kind of interesting to see where these guys might pop up Yeah it was it was a lot of fun like when energy was was

5:05 blowing and going and and periodically we would have visitors come to town with other companies that we were trying to do deals with are discussing deals and they would be shocked when we would go to

5:15 lunch and could spread out an acreage map over the table and talk as loud as we want because nobody around nobody care what you're talking about you know it was just you could say whatever you wanted

5:28 and there were no secrets out we're getting out or or thou are being told otherwise it is definitely a different atmosphere try that Luigi's in Midland You're going to exactly a lot of ears listening

5:40 for denver when I was a thinker Yeah so so How'd you get to Alabama tick tick Us through that whole process grown up college cause I think you went to college in Oklahoma where you're from I did.

5:52 Yeah. Yeah. This can be a really long story. Um, yeah. If you've got a landman on your podcast by now, um, at this point, you're like, it's no longer tripping over the barrel. You're like

6:04 bottom of the barrel is like, you may have to remain. I mean, if you've got, if you've got somebody like me on there, you're scraping. I think, I think we've had, there's a couple that

6:14 definitely work across the bottom. We won't name names, but I think you're, you're a step up You've got 70 some episodes. I'm, you know, I realize I'm at the bottom of the barrel, but none,

6:24 nonetheless super excited to be here. So I grew up in, uh, in Northern Oklahoma, uh, the town of Enid to be exact. Oh, no way. Yeah. Oh, we're going to hit that. Go ahead and shut down. Go

6:37 ahead. I'm in the resources. The plane's my own story. You're not going to distract me. So if you want to bring up Enid now, we can go in. So that's not how it works. It's our podcast. Well,

6:45 I'm just going to, I'm I'm just going to go ahead and drop it in, but, uh, That was one of the stations where my dad was stationed when when I was growing up was Enid Oklahoma. My brother

6:54 graduated from Enid High. So yeah, so Air Force then. Yep, Vance Air Force Base. My dad was there. I don't wanna, you know, he was the Vice Wing Commander for a couple of years there. So my

7:09 grandfather retired from Vance Air Force Base. That's what brought my dad to Enid. Yes. And then my mom grew up in out in the country Like, even in Enid, we can say out in the country and that

7:22 means a different place.

7:24 Yeah, so

7:27 I was born and raised in Enid and I grew up not really knowing what people do when they grow up and do other jobs. I mean, I didn't have anybody in my family that had ever gone to college. The only

7:42 types of jobs that I knew that even existed were whatever the kids are dressing up on career day. So like doctor, which I have a very low gore threshold. So that wasn't gonna work. Teacher sounded

7:54 really appealing, really something that I thought I'd be into. And then I found out how much they make. So I wasn't too as enthusiastic about teacher anymore. And then honestly, there were just a

8:05 lot of professions that I thought were out of my reach. Like I thought that's not something that I was born into that I'm gonna be able to do. And so to some extent, I would say I had my sights set

8:17 kind of low I mean, it was just, it's kind of, I mean, it's not because I was brought up being told that I was never gonna mount anything, nothing like that. I just didn't have a whole lot of

8:28 like influences around me that taught me or that showed me what the potential was. So all that said, I grew up just kind of waiting for somebody to tell me, hey, this is something that you might

8:39 be good at. And I came out of college I actually did a - I went to school for a year on a theater

8:50 Nice. Yeah, so that's my little piece of random, that's one of my little pieces of random trivia about me is I went to start out a school on a theater scholarship. And then I took a break for a

9:03 couple of years and I did a church mission down in Chile. And then I came back and then needed to try to figure out growing up and the first thing I did is I went and worked in the oil field So I did,

9:18 like, I mean, you've got rig hands, you've got roused about guys. And then whatever comes below that, that's where I fit in.

9:27 And I did that for about a year or so. And I was like, I wasn't afraid to go out and do the work that I will tell you, I was terrible at it. Like I am, I'm not afraid of manual labor, but I am a

9:38 walking disaster. And it's a miracle that nobody around me died or that I wasn't seriously injured I'm just, I'm a clutz, I mean, I'll just admit it.

9:50 So anyways about through all this time I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I had a friend whose dad was a geologist and we were talking one day and he asked me what I was going to do

10:01 and I told him I didn't know and he said well you might make a good land man oh you has a great program for that once you go check it out and so I did and I enrolled at O U and I was a year through my

10:14 first year of college and halfway through my first internship before I had any clue what it was a land man did or or what it was going to pertain to but ultimately it's the career that I followed has

10:26 been a tremendous blessing for me and my family so excited to to do that that career so I did it internship with actually I did one with continental resources are in enid and one summer and then I did

10:39 another one with Burlington Resources and I out of graduation I went back to Farmington New Mexico I spent some time there working for Burlington and we were wired by Conoco. And that set kind of a

10:51 stage of my entire career that is filled with transitions and interesting events that take place at every job that I've been in. So started off with Burlington, I was there and we were bought by

11:02 Conoco. So I went through that merger. I came back to Oklahoma City at that point and worked for Chesapeake. And actually, the couple of years there with Chesapeake were kind of normal in terms of

11:13 like, I've got a normal land man job and I was doing normal land man things and everything was rock and everybody was happy. And then I guess I was too boring for me 'cause I left and I went to a

11:24 little public company in Oklahoma City called Quest Resource Corporation.

11:29 And during that few years, I gained more experience that I, it's like more experience than most people get in their whole career and it's all experience I hope I never have to use again. So I got

11:41 there in March of. Ominous, sounds ominous.

11:47 Yeah, so I got there in March of 2008. We closed a major acquisition in July of 2008. And then right after that, it was discovered that the CEO and the CFO had stolen10 million from the company.

12:02 Hey now. Yeah, which it was a public company. So that's a bad thing when you steal money. SEC doesn't like that. So we went from a stock price of about15 or so in that summer, by December, we

12:17 were down to 19 cents. And then if you remember the year 2008, obviously there were all kinds of other energy perils that happened. So during the next two or two, two and a half, three years, it

12:30 was survival mode of this entity. And so we had a name change, all kinds of different things that I did during that period that I didn't realize they were land jobs, but they didn't have anyone

12:41 else to do that. And they didn't know what other function to put that under. and a became the Landman job I do but you know there's that may be a book one day that whole experience and everything

12:54 that happens in the organization it was a it was pretty crazy and some interesting stories that came out of that protocol we we got into that a little bit and mac and I found it to be to be

13:06 fascinating right that was that was a a time where things were were really going crazy and you just look at sort of the the rise and fall it's emblematic of of a lot of companies I would think what's

13:18 unfortunate and different though is the fraud piece right Yeah living living through that I can only imagine then you have auditors looking at everything you do even with you as a land man who may or

13:28 may not be in charge of certain numbers now every number matters now every move you make is monitored right the scrutiny is placed in it you know at a different level that where did you eventually

13:38 move onto from there to go to a big companies was that enter gen or what happened after that So, after doing that for a while, I went back to Chesapeake, actually. And then shortly after I got to

13:51 Chesapeake is when it began its massive overhaul of change of leadership, I was working the Permian assets, which we sold. So I went through that whole divestiture process of selling those assets

14:04 and then being a liaison between Chesapeake and the purchasers of those assets. And then after a few years of that, that's when I was approached to go down to Birmingham for energy. And, you know,

14:17 it's one of those situations where not very many people grow up dreaming and hoping that one day they'll live in Birmingham, Alabama. So I can't say it was really something that was on my radar.

14:27 Yeah, nobody. And

14:31 for a long, I mean, it was about six months of them talking to me and saying, Hey, come check this out. Yeah, all you got to do is look up Birmingham, Alabama on Wikipedia. And that'll give

14:41 you a lot of reasons right off the bat as to why you're pretty sure you're not going to want to live in Birmingham. I mean, it's, it's not a destination for many people. I mean, it's, it's not.

14:53 So finally, I agree to come and visit, I, I agree to come and visit. And just is like, okay, I told my wife, I said, let's go down there. We'll spend a weekend And we'll tell them we hated it

15:05 and then they'll leave us alone and we can get on with life. And so we came down and we spent a weekend at the end of September and found out it's, it's truly a beautiful area. You know, when you,

15:16 when you do a comparison of Birmingham to Oklahoma City, which is where we were living population wise, each are about a million in the metro area, kind of a cool, smaller city vibe with, with

15:29 some neat things happening within it, but three huge differences between Birmingham and Oklahoma City. is that here we've got tall tree, small mountains and no wind. And it was a pretty, it was a

15:41 pretty sweet combination. And we found out that, I mean, Birmingham proper certainly has its problems. But when you move into some of the other towns that go south of the city, then you get into

15:50 some pretty, pretty pleasant, amazing neighborhoods and stuff. So when you came to your wife the first time and said, Hey, Birmingham, what was, what's her reaction? No. Yeah, just flat out

16:01 straight up, right? You don't know how not doing it. Yeah, it's like, no, that's not something we were doing But, you know, I'll tell you, I mean, the change that's been is that when we

16:09 lived in Oklahoma, and we both grew up in Oklahoma, and we knew the area very well, when we used to go on vacation or go travel anywhere but Oklahoma, on the last day of that vacation, she was

16:21 typically crying because she was gonna have to go back to Oklahoma the next day, and she doesn't cry anymore when we come back home. So that's a, that's a, that's something of a testament I mean

16:34 just looking at your your Path I mean you're no longer at least I can tell required to be in Birmingham Alabama for your for your work I enjoy slowly she hasn't said hey let's go to Tulsa sounds like

16:47 a choice yeah no we are Yeah since the end of two thousand and eighteen I've had really I have had no professional commitments have kept me here whatsoever I had a daughter that was finishing up high

16:58 school and we got her out of high school and now it's wicked really wicked we are truly untethered we could be anywhere we want to be and we just happily found a place that that mixes or fits well for

17:10 Us I'll although we'll say that this past summer we spend the middle of July we spent a week in San Francisco which was sixty degrees and amazing and and then we for another week we were in southwest

17:23 Colorado we're up in the mountains drier and amazing and then we got back to Birmingham the beginning of August and I right away right Yeah this place is like, why are we living here? This is awful.

17:35 We got to get out of here. So no, I guess we're not getting sponsors from the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce on this podcast. I mean, at least they get to mention, though. Yeah, if you love if

17:48 you love heat and humidity, I'm in Houston. So, okay, Tim's it's definitely not as bad as Houston. I can say that

17:60 Wow. So we've got Houston humidity, but nice scenery.

18:04 Yeah, you've got hills. Yeah, we do. You've got rolling hills. You probably have some foliage. We do. The only hills we have are freeway overpasses. It's very flat. Houston's very, very flat.

18:17 But you're there for business, transactional city, you know. So I want to I want to jump into Energen a little bit because so Tim and I have a fairly similar lens typically when we come into an

18:32 We're coming in to present our wares, to try to sell them some sort of technology or some engagement to do business with us. Most of those companies exist. I mean, a very large percentage of those

18:46 companies exist in a few cities, none of which are Birmingham. But we've been into hundreds and hundreds of different rooms, even in some of these sort of ancillary places. And you see the

18:55 differences in the companies. I thought Energen was very different to do business with and to engage with in part because of their location, but also in part because their background wasn't in being

19:07 like a true upstream oil and gas company. They were diversified and then sort of all of a sudden, hey, we've got this oil and gas asset in West Texas that's going nuts, what exactly do we do,

19:19 right? Versus if you're in the Permian and you live there every day, that's your life, right? So I always found it fascinating. They had a very successful exit. The company did extremely well

19:29 but I'm curious from your perspective, working out more of a pure play like. Chesapeake or even quest and then going to enter gen that talk about some of the differences I guess in the in the

19:39 companies and things that you learned Yeah so it's it's worth understanding why energy is was located in Birmingham and what it's story was so the roots of the company went back to the mid eighteen

19:53 hundreds and they were basically the the the first started the company was lighting the street lamps in Birmingham and then it was supplying the gas or the fuel for the street lamps and then it was

20:07 the infrastructure for the fuel to the lamps and then eventually it became the the public utility for natural gas within the metropolitan area and a large a large swath of Alabama and and so then

20:21 several decades ago and energy had a side company and he and pie company that was purchasing natural gas assets to supplement the volumes that were going into the utility in Alaska this way for a few

20:35 decades and and they made a number of strategic purpose purchases and so there's assets all over the place and as you noted already some of those assets were in the Permian basin and and they they

20:47 built our A and E N P team to be able to operate those those assets and and naturally after two thousand and ten you know going through that last decade and the Permian really heated up and had

20:59 tremendous value to it and energy and found itself sitting on some incredible assets within a very lucrative basin and so shortly before I came to enter gin in twenty fourteen the company had sold off

21:15 the utility portion so the utility company at the time was called Alec Gasco and so they sold off Ala Gasco and became at that point appear E N P publicly traded company that was head In Birmingham

21:28 Alabama they had no assets in Alabama I mean we had some minerals but no operations all of our operations at the time were in the San Juan Basin and in the Permian Basin and then just some smaller

21:42 ancillary properties in other places and and we began selling that staff we eventually sold the San Juan Basin as well and then we just we were a pure Permian operator know he did have a pretty large

21:54 office in Midland about half of our people were in Midland the other half are in Birmingham so so it was a it was a pretty good mixture between the two but no I mean it was it was a very interesting

22:04 culture and a very interesting dynamic in terms of the way that things were done and energy versus the way that they had been done in other companies and you know one one of the things that I observed

22:17 and it was that when the downturn happened twenty fifteen twenty sixteen area and for energy for a lot of energy. That was really the first time they'd ever faced a downturn, which is interesting

22:30 because the company was so old, right? It had so many assets and so much operations and there had been all these price fluctuations, but they had always had that gas utility as that was the main

22:42 revenue drive. It's almost like a hedge against the downturn. It was. It was. And I mean, all of the analysts' attention up until that divestiture of allogasco was focused on the utility. That's

22:54 why they sold off the utility, is so that they could realize the greater value that these oil and gas CP assets were going to have. And so there wasn't ever really scrutiny in other downturns

23:05 because everybody was so focused on on the utility. And so with the utility gone, in this downturn in 15, 16 happening, it made a lot of people have to wake up and figure out what was going on

23:18 pretty quick Yeah, so - No, they're a bunch of decisions. I'll keep your play oil and gas. Yeah exactly and I mean there were a couple of I mean there were a number decisions that had to be made

23:27 and mean it was the first time that the company did a lay off and I dunno how many decades and I you know we began selling assets and begin issuing stock on stuff and it was a a lot of this was new

23:41 territory for a lotta people even though they had worked for an oil and gas company for decades a never never really truly experienced what was happening during that timeframe Yeah jetted marketers to

23:54 that was going to make a comment

23:57 when you say when you said the downturn when we went through the downturn I was going to make a comment wait a minute they only went through one though Yeah I mean it was I you know for war it and

24:11 like I Dunno how else to describe it other it was just it was really surprising and shocking to me who had been at other places that had experienced other turmoil you know and I'm not a super I'm not

24:23 a super experienced guy. I'm not like the youngest puppy in the room, but it was interesting to have people who had decades of experience who were coming to me saying, okay, what's going to happen

24:32 next? Like what should we expect? What's going to happen? Yeah, no one. 'Cause when they knew, you know, what bad mojo I brought to every company I worked at, but

24:43 then they also knew that they experienced a variety of different things. Cheers, the mush, Johnson. Where we chose the mush follows. Yeah, probably the best thing that I could do for a company

24:53 is to go and be hired by their competitor. And I just, I just show up, you know. There's nothing I intentionally do to bring it down. I just show up. And then, you know, my magic happens. Yes,

25:05 it's funny as a, 'cause Jeremiah are both in sales and this happens to us every once in a while, you're working with a company that is having some sort of an issue. And you've got a champion who's

25:14 moving you through and we're trying to make some progress. And of course, then they get like you're at Chesapeake. Well, my guy, Chesapeake just got laid off so you get another champion. I know

25:22 now he's gone and then pretty soon I start my conversation with the next guy with now Listen I think I'm a poison pill I think that you know you're you've been assigned to help move this along but

25:35 everyone else has not made it through this process so be careful be careful in your dealings with Me I might be the cause well when when I was being courted by Energy and I had that conversation I

25:48 mean there were a couple people who were saying we really want you to be here now this is going to be great and I told them hey this is my record of everywhere that I have been something terrible has

25:59 happened everywhere I've been and the answer I got back was you think way too highly of yourself to think that anything is going to happen if you come to energy I mean we've been around for one

26:09 hundred and fifty years there's no way you can make anything happen and four years to the day that I started enter general was now Diamond back energy

26:22 well you know it wasn't your fault that the Saudis decided to produce a bunch of oil and and drive the price down was it was it was one of my first questions I mean when it came to talk compensation

26:34 energy one of my first questions to the HR Guy was do you Guys have a change of control provision for your employees cause I've I I've been there that do you have something

26:47 and you get the blank stare when I did they said the answer was why would we ever need one of those it's like so no I took the job anyways but lobbied for the necessity of that and I mean fortunately

27:01 we were able to get something in place before everything went upside down so so twenty eighteen fish this ends now what so you're in Birmingham right you moved there for a company for a job that's now

27:16 theoretically not there anymore what what happened next Well, not theoretically, it was not. We were back, no serious folks. It was good. Yeah,

27:32 no, that's a great question. You know, in terms of what was next. So yeah, I mean, being in Birmingham, I didn't really have a whole bunch of other companies that I could go interview with in

27:42 Birmingham and go take another land man job. So I had to decide what is it that I want to do with this time and with this newfound freedom if you want to call it that. And so, yeah, this was

27:57 December 1 of 2018. A birthday?

28:03 I'm sure it was purely coincidental. I don't think they do that. You ruined my birthday. I did. Without even knowing it, without it all. So

28:13 I thought, well, I've got an entrepreneurial itch that I want to scratch And so I'm going to see what I can do and, and, uh, I know with the with the Landman community and having worked Permian

28:24 Basil a man community I had lots of peers and lots of people I'd done interactions with who had just absolutely killed it you know buying leases flipping leases buy minerals flipping minerals and I

28:36 thought well that's easy I can do that like I've been funding you guys for years and have been buying deals from you guys for years I possess that same attitude that same talent and so I thought

28:46 that's you know twenty you know we're in December twenty Eighteen I'll take Christmas and then twenty Nineteen I'm going to jump into this well I know a lot of people think that that the demise of oil

28:58 and gas happened at the at the beginning of the pandemic it didn't happened about a year before that and I don't know why it why the catalyst was but roughly January one twenty nineteen is when the

29:10 investment community in all analysts and everybody said you Guys have had enjoyed this ride long enough and now you need to start making money All this stuff that you've been buying, everything that

29:20 you've drilled as much as you could drill, produce as much as you could produce, buy as much as you could buy, which we were rewarding you for doing all of that, mind you. We've now changed our

29:29 minds and now we're gonna reward you on making money. And companies went, Whoa, we're not built for that. Like, what do you mean, make money? You've never asked us to do that before. Why do we

29:40 have to do that now? So, trying to decide that this is the time you're gonna go out and flip some deals when you don't really have a plan or funding behind you is not the best time to go out and do

29:51 that. So, but there were some different ideas and things that I wanted to be able to jump into. There were ideas and philosophies that I had about the land profession in general. Some things that

30:02 I had noticed from the in-house experience that were needed from the service side. There were some resources that I wanted people to be able to take advantage of. And so, I began exploring those

30:12 ideas and was fortunate to have some people come to me and say, Hey, would you do some? would you do some light consulting work for a son and it wasn't a time to keep me Super swamped and busy but

30:24 it was enough to get a flavor for that service side and I found that I really really enjoyed it and so I decided kind of mid twenty nineteen as I okay This is what I'm Gonna do is I'm going to be a

30:35 service company and I'm going to build a service company that no one has ever seen before in terms of land services and so I started a company called launcher energy consulting and launch era is the

30:47 genus name for otter which is my my son's favorite animal and then my daughter actually designed the logo for me so if you ever see remnants of that launcher energy logo still laying around that she

30:60 designed that I was I was proud to have the her her part in that and so I began talking to different people about all these different ideas that I had and the way things that ought to be done and and

31:11 tried to become pretty active on Linkedin at that time I had this the stupid stupid Cheesy Gimmick That for whatever reason caught on an otter Adorno Yeah news you ought are now that's where the name

31:23 came from I mean it's like it's on My List of things to ask about so at this level you can do it

31:29 but

31:32 jeremy you you went quiet

31:36 so anyway just keep going he'll come it's really it's really interesting if you hit the Mute Button I Dunno if You Guys have ever done that on like a call like a zoom call it's this crazy thing have

31:46 you hit the mute button people can hear you but that I in Zoom at people thought it was too cheeky but I had a background when those virtual backgrounds and zoom in all it said was you're on Mute and

31:57 as you just point to it Yeah Yeah Yeah so that that's where news you outer know came from stupid stupid Cheesy Gimmick but like I said it was fun going to nape and things and people are like oh you're

32:09 the otter guy it's like Yeah and so you know that it was fun to see that that was working and I get a kick out of it and I enjoy doing it and so Towards the end of 2019, I came across the guys with

32:20 Paramount and Tulsa, and got to sit down with the founder, president, Blake Sussman, and he had started Paramount in

32:30 2008, which we've already talked about, probably not a great time to start a business, but if you can start wondering that time and you're successful, then you must be doing some right things,

32:39 and he had definitely done some great stuff with Paramount throughout time, but to his credit a few years ago, he recognized the need to begin to pivot what his traditional land brokerage company

32:51 needed to be and what it needed to provide. And so we hit it off from the first time we talked and realized that we had some mutual ideas and things that we wanted to accomplish. I had some

33:01 experience and some skill sets and some ideas that he wanted to be able to utilize. They definitely had the infrastructure in place and the clientele that was already there that I wanted to be able

33:11 to take advantage of And so I just - world launcher up and kind of hung up that name and went all in on Paramount and have been doing that pretty successfully with them now for about a year and a half.

33:25 I wanted to get into it. So

33:28 it started out as a kind of typical land brokerage and now technology provider? Yeah, so I would say Paramount does, you know, so

33:41 this is gonna be one of those things where you're gonna have to edit some hemming and hauling all over the place, right? But no, so to tell the story of it, so Paramount was a broker that, like I

33:50 said, started off in 2008. A few years ago, they recognized the need that they needed to change. One of the examples that they did is at that time, Thought Trace had just done their rebranding.

34:02 They had changed from Agile upstream. They'd become Thought Trace. They had put in a bunch of money into their marketing and to rolling out their product to people. And a lot of the land service

34:12 people or landmen and we're looking at it going. No, this is, you can never use technology for stuff. We don't want that, you know, it's terrible and they tried to run away from it or fight it

34:22 off. And the guys at Paramount said, no, we want to be top partners working with Thought Trace on this. We know that there's a human element that's always going to be needed to these aspects and

34:32 that's what we want to do. And so they had already added the Thought Trace piece, but I mean, today, as of today, we've got close to 80 people who are working on various projects. A fraction of

34:45 them are doing the traditional land title type work. And everybody else is doing outside the box projects. It's the types of projects that I wish that I had had available or the type of people that

34:59 I wish I had available when I was in-house, when I was a layman or a laymanger.

35:05 Layman has a crazy amount of responsibility that falls upon them in a traditional sense they may have a geographical area of responsibility. and to be able to perform that job to perfection means

35:16 that you know the story of every single acre whether you own it or somebody else owns it you're on top of all of the operations not only for your company but as an operator but your company is a non

35:27 opera years well as competitive activity that's happening within that area and when you're trying to balance this massive load of all these things you're just basically doing things here and there to

35:37 survive and not necessarily not necessarily to thrive and I had always wanted a clone of myself when I was sitting in that Chair I hear that I hear that when when art express to my boss the woes that

35:50 I was having of workload and things like that he would say we'll just get some brokers the problem was is that most of the brokers hadn't done that type of work before they were so they're

36:01 exceptionally skilled at title and leasing and a couple of other tasks but they had never actually sat in a chair that I was in and knew that Given me the confidence to where I could hand stuff off to

36:13 them and say this is what I need you to do and know that I wasn't Gonna have to explain every step of the way for them to do it and so when I started off as Londra that's what I wanted to do is be

36:23 able to provide that plug and play resource of the human element that nobody was really offering and or at least they weren't aware of that those services were available and then when I became part of

36:35 paramount it's still that human element but we also have a technological element that we roll into that as well so we we do a lot of work with thought trace we've got a proprietary platform to where

36:46 we try to do as much of our work and product in there as possible and so to the extent that we can not work in spreadsheets we try not to work in spreadsheets so we'll we'll use a you know a low code

36:59 platform that will dump everything into it will structural of workflow or process will give out assignments to different people they can work their assignments within that that module they can upload

37:08 attachments to it make elements whatever get complete and he goes onto the next person than at any given moment we can export what needs to be exported to the client and it from a management

37:19 perspective there's full transparency and accountability on everything because we can see what everybody is doing and what their progresses and we can make adjustments as needed or give coaching and

37:28 things like that so I mean that's that's one example from the technological aspect of what we're trying to give people and dinner impairments just say it's a very different company in general it's a

37:40 remote company so we were remote long before covert ever happened and you know I mentioned we've got eighty some people that are working there all over the country I've personally been running a

37:52 project that's got close to forty people on it we're across three time zones in all kinds of states and in different areas and so this is there were some different things that I had to learn when I

38:03 went from that said that Common corporate side that I was used to and then whenever to the paramount side so with paramount internally email is banned really well or we don't use email internally at

38:17 all so just some sort of a chatter slacker we do yet we so we use so we've we've selected slack and we use it exclusively for all internal communications in school so we'll use teams as well for

38:32 external communications for our clients cause a lot of them are in the Microsoft Environment and I mean we are too for that matter but we just we like slack and we will use email for external

38:43 communication purposes but internally we use slack for everything and where that really comes in handy is that when we've got we've got a multitude of projects that are happening all at once and we

38:55 always want the best people best person for the best job at the right time and so periodically that means moving people around to different tasks it's just a matter of taking that person and putting

39:06 them in a different slack channel that they spend a little bit of time they read everything that's happened since they were last on the project they review any attachments that might be there any

39:15 video instructions that we've passed posted and they're up to speed you know within an hour and they're working and it's it's a really easy way people integrated well so it's interesting timing I'm

39:28 looking at your profile so you started at Paramount February two thousand and twenty which anyone who's doing the math now as one month before all hell broke loose Saga and I'm get based on what

39:39 you're describing here paramount as a company really didn't have to make any adjustments for covert at all though right now but what was it like now that you guys were fully prep for full remote your

39:50 slacks you've got everything else god what was alike now your business had to change because the guys you are working with were suddenly having to change what was that like for you guys to to Watch

40:02 everyone else panic and try and figure it out so I think the best Way I can answer that as is we've talked about my personal location being in Birmingham Alabama right so at the end of two thousand

40:15 and eighteen beginning of two thousand and nineteen colleagues and peers that I had who were in the oil and gas business said well what are you going to do you know where you Gonna move to you are you

40:23 going to go back to Oklahoma City you Gonna go to Houston you going to do and I told people I was going to I was going to stay in Birmingham and pretty much one hundred percent of the time they would

40:32 say oh well that's that's nice to save up enough money you don't need to work Yeah Yeah right that was it was like well what kind of job are you going to do well I'm going to work in oil and gas and

40:44 most people said that's impossible right you cannot work in oil and gas and live in Birmingham it's just not going to work you're not going to be able to do that and so you know and I said well I'm

40:56 out to show that it can be done like I I want to show everybody that you can live where you want to live and do the work What you want to do and and I was you know for the most part of twenty nineteen

41:08 talking to a wall on on this message but twenty twenty opinion shortchanged on that project was like a traffic warden Yeah Yeah and so Yeah I mean now I mean it's and that's a huge recruiting perk now

41:22 for a lot of companies aren't necessarily oil and gas but just just in the industry or in all industries in general is like you can live wherever you want to live and do this job because the

41:31 technology is such where it can happen so for for us at Paramount I mean not to sound too arrogant but it was it was a relief to have the rest of the world catch up to us you know to where it wasn't

41:45 you know there wasn't that expectation of will if he can't be in her office and he can't do the job or if he if you're not able to meet with Us in person then how do we know that you're capable of

41:54 doing anything when we were already very well versed on slackened zoom and could do screen shares and we already had platforms that were set to where people could work from wherever and so I liked the

42:06 idea that the rest of the world just caught up to the remote place Yeah Nah I do too and certainly I think those younger than US are are enjoying the fact that things were coming in their direction

42:18 tech wise but Yeah gas Guess I mean it's also the nature of of the industry I mean like any sort of construction or manufacturing you are going to have a bunch of people at a single location so that

42:30 sort of then Bradwell than everybody else should be at one location to in the in the office right it's like well maybe those people don't need to be in the office just a thought but as things come

42:42 back I think oil and gas companies are some of the first to bring to bring people back like one hundred per cent what I mean yet Italy like I Hope I hope that the optionality for having remote working

42:55 environments is not a fad like I hope it continues I it's just it's It's still hard to break some of these kind of, I'm going to go, I hate to go old school new school, but some of the old school

43:07 operators still have this idea. If I can't see the guy, I don't know that he's doing what he's supposed to be doing. So I'm not going to mention the name of the company, but a good friend of mine

43:18 works there. And he said, look, I got, he's, he's hacked off. He drives 40 minutes to work in downtown Houston, gets to the office, walks in, shuts his door, sits on Zoom calls with people

43:30 who are in the same building as him. No, this was, you know, during the height of COVID, they came back real quick, but that was there. So why can't I be doing that at my house? He, you know,

43:40 instead I'm driving somewhere else to go sit in an office with the door shut, doing the same thing I would have been doing in my house and saved every, saved everybody, you know, an hour and a

43:50 half of commuting and I think they, they've come around a little, but it's still interesting to see, Hey, we're going to pull everybody back in company mainly because we've we've been distributed

44:02 around the globe in different ways. We were kind of ready. And once we got forced out after two weeks, we were fully up and running and we're not, we're not going to go back.

44:17 We're all kind of fighting pretty hard to stay with what we're doing and so far it's worked. Yeah, so another one of the ways that Paramount was prepared for something like this is that they had

44:28 always obsessed over KPIs. Which was a term that I didn't know from my corporate environment. It wasn't until I worked with some people who were super smart and had studied this and had been coached

44:39 on it. But Paramount obsesses over the idea of key performance indicators and this idea that everything can be measured. And so as soon as we have any type of new project taking on, if we have not

44:51 previously measured something that in the past and we are measuring everything going forward. And so when you've got KPIs in place,

45:00 how long it should take a person to do every task and there might be some exceptions and as there are exceptions then you make adjustments along the way but when you've got a platform that is tracking

45:10 the progress as to what people are doing and you already have a benchmark in terms of this is where the person ought to be able to do in a day then it's really easy to figure out how do we have a

45:20 problem because somebody just doesn't understand is a bad communication or they loafing is it you know distractions at home or what is it and we can pinpoint what that issue or what that problem is

45:31 pretty quickly and get it resolved and and every now and then it's somebody who you know isn't designed for the remote working environment they need some type of additional scrutiny and thankfully

45:43 that that's very been very very few rare circumstances from the folks that that I've been able to work with so far most of the instances if we have KP eyes that are slacking a little bit it's ok this

45:55 is this is the measurement as to where you ought to be And it could be something really simple as, oh, I didn't understand that this was a set that I could take or that this was something I could do.

46:04 Or I don't have access to this certain program. We make the adjustment and, you know, we put people back on track right away.

46:12 No, that's good stuff. Well, I do have one final question, right? You're an Okey, you grew up in Oklahoma, you're in a big football, college football town, Birmingham, Alabama, but in

46:23 Oklahoma and Alabama play in a big game, who do you root for? No, that's a no-brainer, that's Oklahoma, of course. I was gonna say, you've looked at his LinkedIn profile, you know it's gonna

46:34 be the Sooners? Yeah, I mean, that's where I went to school, no. So

46:42 when you come to Alabama, the first question they ask you when you cross the state line is Auburn or Alabama. I mean, they don't wanna know your name, they don't care about what you're gonna do,

46:55 I don't care if You're going to be a liability on the system or a contributor to the tax pool all they want to know is are you Auburn or Alabama I mean that's it like growing up in Oklahoma I thought

47:07 we were college football fans we're not college football fans in Oklahoma it is like it is the complete way of life in Alabama I remember that the first within the first couple of weeks after I'd

47:21 moved here it was in December and and they were talking about you know Bowl games and stuff coming up and there was a lot of coverage you know with the regular season already over I thought okay well

47:32 we've still got you know a bowl game coming out but there's a lot of talk that's happening here and then like after January I notice that listening to the news radio like they're still talking about

47:45 football like a lot I mean my commute my commute was ten minutes from my house to the office downtown and and I'm A I'm a boring nerd and so I just listen to am talk radio And within that 10 minute

47:56 gap, every day I got an update on Auburn and Alabama football programs. It doesn't matter if it was March, April, May, whenever they were talking about it. I mean, I remember the day they gave

48:07 a five minute bio on the new outside linebackers coach that they just hired.

48:15 I can't even name the linebackers coach on the Oklahoma team, let alone give a bio as to who they are. Unbelievable Well, that's how I'm a theorist Johnson, my guy. How do people find you? How

48:28 do people get in touch with you if they want to explore doing some business or having you talk at an event? I know you do that. Where do people find you? So LinkedIn's a pretty easy place to find

48:38 me. If you're stalking me on there, I will try to find out, but you can connect with me or message me. And actually on my profile there, I'm not afraid to put my email address and my telephone

48:48 number on there so people can reach me that way if you check out Paramount's website. Animals Field Services Dot Com You'll See A bio and and find some ways especially within the land man Community I

49:02 tried to do some volunteer work in there as well and so I mean hopefully I'm not too incredibly hard to find but I welcome any any and all connections and getting to know people says Gerard J E R R I

49:14 asked Johnson the three Yep I found out the hard way that I think it's a woman's name Yeah That's for part two