What The Funk?

0:00 I'll tell you what Tim, today, and Eric can attest to this too being in the greater Denver area. It's fall. It feels like fall today. It is for commerce day. Is it one of those get outside and

0:13 do something kind of days? I mean, it's the first time you step out at, whatever, 730 in the morning and it's like 54 degrees and you're like, oh, that's, that's chilly. It hasn't warmed up

0:24 that much. It kind of feels like fall. Wow. Well, that's, that's kind of fun. We've, I mean, as far as Houston goes, we've had pretty mild, very mild days here this last week or so post

0:35 Nicholas has been quite pleasant. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is

0:40 getting to, I guess, the more comfortable time of year. So I'm ready for that. It's been too hot for me.

0:47 Anyways, wanted to, well, I wanted to rub it in your face that see you won that football game, but the Aggies were able to pull it out, Tim. So I guess congratulations on that. Well, yeah, I

0:57 did a lot to affect that game for sure.

1:01 I, yeah, it's funny. It was, it was so dicey. I was pulling all of my, uh, super fan tricks. You know, I went and changed shirts at halftime, moved to a different seat in the living room,

1:12 all just to kind of change the luck up a little bit. So, you know, I, I did all I could from where I was. And I was just trying to drag you down with me as a bandwagon buffs fan. I believe I

1:22 said, man, this is a big game. We are in great shape. I think we can get this upset down You go, yeah, what number are you? And I said, well, I used to be number five. I guess you're still

1:32 never five. So I can't say, no, no, well, I mean, depends on the poll. But anyway, you got a shot. You got a shot. So Eric Marshall, my guy, I met Eric earlier this year. He's got a lot

1:44 of things going on, which is very common, I think, with our guests. But specifically, as it relates to technology, he's seen a lot of the early kind of adoption of tech companies in the energy

1:54 tech

1:56 space that I would consider. a little bit more technical, a lot of subsurface, some downhole, and then iron IQ as well, which we're going to jump into. But Eric, if you don't mind, give us

2:06 sort of your background, obviously, growing up Western Colorado, making your way to mines and into the professional will kind of take us through your life. Yeah, what's up guys, appreciate you

2:19 having me on.

2:21 Yeah, so Western Colorado, I grew up in a small town called Delta, a very few people know about Delta. I mean, you guys are kind of shaking your head. I think, Tim, you're actually googling it.

2:32 I'm looking out right now. Yeah, so

2:37 most people know Grand Junction. Some people know Montrose, everybody knows, tell you're right in Aspen, right? So I'm, Delta is right in between Grand Junction and Montrose, and it is a

2:50 farm town, whole mining

2:54 town, My parents moved there when I was two years old. Personally, I just claim to be a call out of native. They're still out there, but great spot. I mean, we move there as like 3, 500 people.

3:05 High school is pretty relaxed. There's, you know, one in the town. Had a good time. It's growing up in a small town is fun. You've got access to everything, right? So,

3:19 anything for sports, music, I was, I had my hand in just about anything you could think of See, are you like, are you just as close to like Salt Lake as you are to Denver there? I mean, it was

3:31 sort of out in No Man's Land, right? Like right in the middle, yep. In fact, my parents made a day trip to Salt Lake to get a brush off the other day. So. To get a what? A brush off. You got

3:43 to keep the weeds down with the tractors, you know? So. Hey, I just showed, put my, put my city right on there, huh? Yeah, you kind of did.

3:55 So I mean, you know, from Western Colorado, I mean, what gets you to school of minds? So not getting in to see you, those bastards. What? What? Yeah. What the hell? I know. So here's the

4:12 thing. Growing up, I wanted to do, I wanted to be an architect, right? So I was like, okay, I could do that. I go Penn State, my parents, and you should probably stay in state, it'd be

4:19 cheaper. Like well, engineering could be cool. Maybe do some aerospace I like aeroplanes, and so I'm going to go to engineering school and see you. It's just what I'm going to do. So I fill out

4:31 my application,

4:34 I mean, let's just be honest, Jeremy, it's CSU is a safety school. So I applied there, and

4:41 I got into CSU, and great, I'm waiting for my letter back from CSU, and

4:50 didn't get it.

4:52 I didn't see that coming, not to sound arrogant, but I didn't expect that. Yeah. So my dad, thankfully, my mom, both, like, why don't you apply to school of minds, sit in engineering school.

5:03 If you want to engineer, you might as well apply there. And I, to this day, I still don't know. But they,

5:09 I don't know if they saw the forest or the trees or if they just made a big mistake, but I got into minds. We might like, okay, so minds growing up to me in New England, right? There's so many

5:23 good schools in the Northeast, right? It's very saturated with the private universities. But then if you looked at the rankings and the tiers, little Colorado school of minds was always way up

5:33 there in like the top couple tiers of school. And I was like, that's so, that doesn't make sense. Like mining, it just all seems so foreign. So to me, it's like,

5:43 where did CU mess this up, man? Like, I feel like people that go to minds generally do big things

5:51 I didn't realize there was a, is there a big discrepancy between CU and School of Mines as far as to get in? I think School of Mines is one of the harder schools to get into. That's kind of my

6:00 expectation would be. Yeah, and the whole country. I thought so. And if anybody from the Mines admission team has ever listened to this podcast, maybe they can explain where they went wrong. Or

6:09 maybe, you know what? How about this? Maybe CU can explain - CU's true. This doesn't add up, man. We have our quote on Western Colorado kids. I guess we'll just let this kid go to Mines And you

6:21 know what, hey, it could have been that too. You know what, we needed some more people from outside the Denver metro area. We'll just let this poor country boy in and see if he can hang. So I

6:30 went from a first semester

6:34 076 GPA. Well. Yeah, yeah. They were really second-guessing that decision. Yeah. I guarantee it.

6:43 I finished on the Dean's List. I mean, you know, it's an upward battle, but I finished on top. Yeah, I'm still going for that. I started so low and now I'm still trying to get on the Dean's

6:53 list.

6:56 We'll have to give it some more time. So you get to minds, right? And this is actually, I can relate to this. And this is part of the reason that I really enjoyed when we met a couple of months

7:04 back is I'm a small town kid as well, a country. And even if you take the hardest classes and all that, it's just a different level of education when you go to a private university like that. So I

7:15 showed up in college and it was very humbling for me because it was just extremely difficult and I felt like, man, it's hard enough for me to adapt to the whole social, like everybody altogether

7:24 thing. And then it's also really hard academically. So what were you able to do to kind of turn it around? I mean, when you're forced with the option of either getting it together or getting out,

7:39 you kind of have to turn it around, right? But what it came down to is I just needed to learn how to study you know, high school, middle school. That was just easy for me. I kind of cruised

7:51 through and really focused on friends and relationship and activities and whatever you wanted to do, but I had to actually put schools a priority. And so doing that helped, right? That

8:03 wasn't an easy turnaround. It definitely wasn't a switch to be flipped, but something I learned to do over time and I made it out. I'll tell you, school of minds, I've been to the campus a couple

8:15 times, oddly enough to meet with some professors You know, in my professional career, I put it up there with Pepperdine, School of Minds, even see you for that matter of places where I think I

8:28 would be driven to distraction just because of where it is. Nothing more than just the scenery. I mean, Pepperdine, of course, is legendary for, you know, sitting up there and watching Wales go

8:39 by and all that, but, you know, School of Minds, I don't know that I'd just be

8:44 up above the brewery the whole time, just, you know, looking at things. I don't know, how do you, how does that work? Yeah, it gets you from the mountains. Maybe you get used to it. I don't

8:52 know.

8:54 Yeah, I can see Jeremy's kind of, I think he's on the same page as Zion. And I grew up in it, right? So it's not entirely different. Had I gone to Pepperdine? Yeah, huge distraction being on

9:05 the beach every day.

9:08 Growing up in the mountains and staying in the mountains, kind of all the same. But to your point, it is an absolutely beautiful setting and golden is seriously one of the coolest towns Love it.

9:18 Colorado has to offer. You've got everything from hiking, mountain biking, running, fishing, a couple of good breweries out of golden. And rocks, 10 minutes away. Everything's 20 minutes away.

9:30 Even see you, thankfully on the weekends. I spent a lot of time at CU on the weekends. Yeah, much more of a social scene up there for sure. I mean, Tim, you're a member where I used to live.

9:39 You came to my house. Oh, man. El Dorado Springs. And sometimes you just forget. You're like, oh, right I could just go for a walk in the mountains. right now, and instead you forget, I'm

9:50 all stressed out, man. People pay good money to live in places like that. Dude, all you had to do was sit on your balcony and listen to the babbling brook down below. That was. I miss it. You

9:59 ever been to Eldo? Eric? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause it's like, as the crow flies, it's very close to golden and school of mines, actually. So you finished mines and then what? You got

10:11 into oil and gas or did you do something else first? No, I got into oil and gas Funny enough, my degree is mechanical engineering. I wanted to go into automotive, maybe even kind of stay around

10:25 the medical field, design prostheses, something like that. And my best offer was oil and gas. So I went to work for Halliburton right out of the gates, thinking I'll do this for a few months,

10:40 maybe a couple of years until I find out what I really want to do and walking onto my first frack job and seeing all that horsepower

10:49 So, like, this is one of the coolest things ever, and I stayed with Hallibur for about five years. When you know, did some time up in Rock Springs, I lived down in Houston, Tim, and I

11:03 got out in just under three years of good behavior and got back up to Denver and haven't left since. So. Were you in the field as a field engineer the whole time or? Yeah When I was down in Houston,

11:16 I was running a technology called their Pinpoint Stimulation, basically coil-frack, and that was sort of a combination of a field and office activities. I was putting together all their workflows

11:28 and safety procedures and things like that, but then I'd be going overseas for four, six, eight weeks at a time introducing the technology to new areas and new operators. It was a really, really

11:39 fun job. I enjoyed that a lot. Where old you get to go overseas? what's your kind of most exotic port of call?

11:47 I spent a few, a few tours in northern Siberia and the northern part of Russia, I did a hitch down in Saudi Arabia, which was probably culturally one of the coolest things I've ever done. And

12:01 quite a bit of time in China and in our Mongolia areas too. So it's pretty neat to see those places. Yeah, I had a good time to see a lot of cool stuff. That's a pretty wide spread. I'm just

12:11 thinking northern Siberia and the desert of Saudi Arabia That's a that's a big contrast. I mean, I similar in a way being isolated, not many people around, but yeah, but what? Oh man. I mean,

12:25 you talk about Midland. It's kind of like, you know, Midland. Yeah, spreading temperature range there. It's pretty big. That's that. That's pretty cool stuff. So so you were on the technology

12:37 side, right, focused on the actual, like best of breed cutting edge drilling techniques.

12:45 Was your focus more sort of on oil? Was it on natural gas extraction? Was it a variety of different things? And then I guess beyond that, are there different rules in each country that you're in

12:56 as far as how risky or risk averse you can be in trying some of the new technology? No, man. Yes to everything you do say.

13:09 So as far as oil natural gas goes, in the state of the time it was all natural gas, right? Natural gas was still kind of the hot topic. We were just coming down off that14 MCF range and that was

13:21 still what everybody was chasing. But you go overseas and they were still, they're starting to chase oil, going after some liquids. I think the time in Russia was very natural gas focused. Saudi

13:33 Arabia was definitely very oil focused in China was,

13:38 I think they had primarily oil, but they were willing to deal with the gas. You know, as far as adapting new technologies and different rules and things like that, there's a story that comes out

13:48 of China that, when we went over to do these technologies, they'd call me and say, okay, we're doing this new operational process for the first time. What do we need to do? So I was like, all

13:59 right, here's what you gotta do. You know, call, you know, company A, B, and C, tell 'em you want, you know, this for a wellhead. I need a minimum of two barriers. You need some pipe rams.

14:11 You need something you can actually set everything in You need to be able to circulate while you're moving pipe, and you know, all this stuff. Great. So these guys, they say that that's perfect.

14:20 We'll get you everything you need. We show up, and the wellhead is a high drill that hasn't been tested. That's it. Wow. Well, this isn't gonna do much good. So, is this all we have? Yeah,

14:38 well, these things won't even flow. So you're fine. One barrier is good for China. or something different, but we'll roll with it. So finish the first frack. And we're tripping pipe with a live

14:51 well. So

14:55 thankfully he says that this well is not gonna flow, right? So we start tripping pipe. What's tripping pipe? Striping pipe. Tripping. Tripping. Tripping, tripping out of the hole. Pull the

15:02 pipe

15:05 out. Pull the pipe out.

15:08 Yep, yep, we're moving up to the next stage This technology is basically a straddle system, right? So you, you, you prefer it, you frack. I'm just thinking Jeremy's going, oh man, more

15:20 definitions I need. I mean, I kind of, so Eric, so just to take it a step back, right? Yes, Tim is an engineer. Yes, I generally understand what you're talking about. We do have some

15:31 listeners, believe it or not, that, you know, family, friends of mine, people that are just interested in general, that don't fully understand the terminology, right? So no, I mean, Tim's

15:39 just getting a kick out of like, okay, it's doing this and that. But a brief descriptor

15:47 for the - Yeah, for sure. So what this technology was is usually, if you're completing a vertical well at the time, you would go in and you pump a hydraulic frack job. You run it with a wire line.

15:60 You set a bridge plug over the job that you just completed. You perforate new holes, new access to the rock, pump another frack job, and rinse, lather, repeat. What's the time-consuming process?

16:11 Because in between stages, you've got two or three hours. So what this did was allow you to do all of that with one trip in the hole, same string of pipe in the hole, no wire line, you could

16:23 pre-perforate everything. But you've got these packers or cups or whatever you want to call them that are isolating these perforations.

16:31 I'm doing a really good job talking with my hands for anybody that's actually not watching this.

16:37 It works. OK.

16:40 So you're isolating these perforations, you're able to pump down pipe and actually stimulate these things. And so when you're done, you just pull the pipe up the hole, restrattle the next set of

16:49 perforations and pump another job. And you don't have to spend two or three hours in between frack jobs. No waiting to do this. So it's a time saver in a vertical well, and it was a pretty cool

16:58 cutting edge technology. So after this first frack in China, we're in the middle of nowhere and kind of just enjoying the scenery and all these arms that are on the side of the clips that people cut

17:09 out and

17:11 waiting around enjoying the scenery. I looked down and the well that's not supposed to be flowing is flowing.

17:18 And to top it all off, there's a guy over there in his little red jumpsuit and little red hat with a broomstick and an H2S monitor holding it over the returns to the pad So,

17:37 what's going on here? So walk over the country. the company, man, and so what's going on? I think, oh, yeah, this well is flowing a little bit. You guys did a really good job.

17:48 Okay, not my concern right now, my concern is flowing a little bit, and you got the new guy over there with an H2S monitor. Oh, yeah, these wells are sour. Uh-oh, house sour. Like, well, we

18:01 had an incident a few years ago, killed everybody within a mile radius. Oh, my God. And I didn't know what to say at the time, and I, I'm just kind of down it. Welcome to China. Yeah. Okay,

18:15 thanks Tim, you said it, I didn't have to.

18:19 So I'm just, I really am just dumped on it. Well, I would prefer that we shut the well in and figure something out, and you maybe get the well control that I requested from the get-go.

18:32 And we can, you know, regardless, we can't be flowing this well up itself.

18:40 I will never to this day forget what this guy says. He looks at me, dead in the eyes, is are you a Christian?

18:47 Yeah.

18:50 And he says, well, your God will take care of you. Oh my God. And I said, well, if you've got that much confidence in him, he'll teach you how to do the rest of this too. I got my guys and we

19:03 went off location and left And all the country manager blew out of China, done. We're out of here with him. Yup. Wow. That's tripping over the barrel story, Tim. We didn't expect him to just

19:16 slip into that one. Oh, here's the best part. He actually caught me at the hotel before I left with his minions. And I actually had to formally apologize for disrespecting an elder because I

19:28 walked off location and didn't respect his authority. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, but I'm still leaving

19:37 Sorry, sorry. Anyways, don't kill people with sour gas.

19:43 Wow, that's good stuff. All right, so, you know, my crack research, again, for those who listen to the show frequently, it's all linked in stuff, but like a lot of our guests that we have on

19:54 lately, it seems like, everybody's got their fingers in a number of different places, some of my movie side hustles or, you know, part-time gigs and things like that. And you're no, you're no

20:06 different, Eric. I'm looking at least three things that you're listed and I've probably got a couple things going on, but what takes up the bulk of your time?

20:16 So bulk of my time is working for a company called Geodynamics. I'm an engineering advisor for them. You know, essentially, I'm an extension to a completion team that an operator has, trying to

20:30 help them optimize their wells through perforation design, taking it a step further and doing the analysis to say, what we did actually works. or it doesn't, sometimes that's a good way to do it.

20:42 Sometimes it's not. I mean, let's be honest, if you're fine-tuning perforations and hoping to see that result in production, if you've got a really good setup, you're not gonna be outside the

20:53 margin of a type curve anyway. So is it still kind of your company is consulting with the operator or turnkey delivering the completion or? We are a company that provides consumable products for

21:08 completion technologies. So we provide perforating charges, guns, frack plugs, tow valves, any one

21:18 off type use for the completion of a well. And my job specifically is to support those products, support the sales team, and really kind of find cool new technologies that we can chase after, have

21:32 those what if conversations with operators that can turn into some cool technologies So you're an expert on shape charges then? I am nowhere close to an expert on shaped charges. I am the guy. You

21:45 tell me what size that hole is and I will help you optimize your frack job. But I can barely spell wire line to be honest with you. Jeremy, that's someday we're going to have to get someone who is

21:57 an expert on shaped charges to compare an RPG from the military with a perforation gun in oil and gas. You'd be amazed at how similar they are No, I buy that. I mean, I actually can kind of

22:10 picture exactly what you mean, just kind of. Right.

22:16 I've actually had some conversations with some military guys that wanted to use some of the shape charges for breaches, right, because you can get really, it's a safety mechanism for them, because

22:26 if they can do that on a Bluetooth controlled device from 300 feet away, man, that's a game changer for them. Yeah, with some real, real horsepower, right? Real estate, we can talk about real

22:38 estate in a minute. I want to talk about IronIQ. I actually spoke to Josh Braker earlier today. He heads up sales for them. Tim, how familiar are you with the Skate-a-World?

22:48 Fundamental understanding. And you're in production op, so it's not too far. I get it. I'm not sure how far deep you're going with the questions. I don't know, I don't want to go too far. Yeah,

22:57 I mean, just general familiarity, right? I mean, it's a lot like a lot of other oil and gas technology where they're sort of the legacy vendors and maybe the technology is not cloud-based. Maybe

23:09 it's expensive, right? You kind of put on that technical debt with the solution. And I like you sort of doing your traditional cloud-based skado will make you leaner, will give you alerts, that

23:19 sort of stuff. So I believe that it's mine's guys, right? So I'm not sure what the connection is with you, Eric, but they seem to be gaining some traction. Kind of that traditional, you know,

23:31 will rip and replace and put you on subscription and lower costs So I'm curious, you know, at work. Were you an early user of those guys or are these minds guys? Like how did that relationship

23:40 happen?

23:43 Oh, randomly about like the way I got into minds. I still haven't really figured all that out. Yeah, I mean, that's how all of these work. Every, every one of these winds up being random,

23:53 right? Yeah. Oh, the energy tech night met this guy drinking a beer and then we're off. It kind of started that way. I met Matt Schulwalter, who's the chair of, of iron IQ, that is symposium

24:06 down in Oklahoma City. And he was, at the time, pitching another product that eventually merged into what is now known as iron IQ. And at the time, I was going through and asking these questions,

24:19 have you thought about X? Have you thought about Y? Have you thought about Z? What could you do? You've got a really cool platform. You know, we went to dinner, had a couple beers. The next

24:28 day, would you be a board advisor for us? I'd be happy to do that. That sounds fun So that kind of morphed into

24:37 what is now known as IronIQ. And,

24:40 you know, they're an absolutely phenomenal skated company. And so I'm a board advisor for them. But at the end of the day, I love this team that they have and I want to see them succeed. So yes,

24:54 I am a little bit biased, but I really truly believe they've got a game changer. You've got your legacy skated systems out there which collect data, send alarms, send alerts You know, some of

25:06 these things trigger alarms to the point that all the alarms and alerts go into junk mail because there's thousands of them a day. You can't customize anything. So what IRN-IQ has done is made

25:20 everything customizable. They've integrated Node-RED, you can bring any kind of platform in and talk to any kind of different software with it. You can set your own alarms, you can set your own

25:29 triggers and they've really modernized the way skated is being used And It's the perfect time for something like this to come out to the industry, because let's just face it. We're kind of archaic

25:43 in the way we do things. And there's a lot of people that sit there with their arms crossed, say, and I'm not going to change because it's why change something that's not broken. Well, that's a

25:52 terrible answer. Or put my job at risk. And I do get that, right? Like I come across people like, you know, at like John Joshua saying, he's like, yeah, I met with this company and I realized

26:03 there was like four SCADA engineers in the room and it's like over my dead body, you're getting this product in here 'cause my value is associated with Signet or one of the, you know, Wonderwear or

26:13 something like that. Regardless of whether or not it's a good company decision, people will look to preserve themselves, right? But just in general, right? The move toward cloud will increase

26:25 adoption of cloud technologies because if the mandate comes from on high and there's cost savings, it will happen. We're archaic in that we're just sort of behind other industries, I mean, there's

26:36 a lot of other industries that are, that are not too far off with. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to push back on it a little. I mean, I think there's a lot of innovation, certainly in

26:45 headquarters in every oil and gas company. It's as we move out into the field, because let's face it, we don't have a factory floor. We can't go put, you know, a sensor everywhere or one sensor

26:58 to monitor everything else because it, and they're so far apart. I mean, we've got wells a couple miles apart and we've got to, you know, drive out there we've got all these different sensors and

27:07 one sensor for one well and it's, it's, it's becomes a logistics problem and an expense problem. And that's why, I mean, you just take a value decision from a, an oil and gas from an engineer.

27:20 So we're going to spend X amount of dollars to put a

27:25 rod pump monitor, sucker rod pump monitor on every well, but there we got 20, 000 wells, we can't go put it on every well. especially when the wells making seven or eight barrels a day, we're

27:37 just simply not gonna do it. So it's a lot harder to just sit there and adopt technologies. Now, that's the problem. I think the solutions are there and they're coming down to a price point where

27:48 I think it's gonna make a lot of sense. And now that ESG's gonna be a big deal, I think those things are becoming a lot easier to make those decisions. And, you know, we wanna reduce windshield

27:50 time for everybody as well. So if we can use this technology to

28:01 do that The point is, the reason we're behind is because we're such a distributed,

28:08 you know, a playing field as opposed to, you know, a mine where there's the mine. You know, it's one location, it's a big location, but it's one location. Anyway, all right, off-site box,

28:21 Eric comments. You wanna build as repeatable of a process as you can for like assets. I don't think there's any challenge with that. But the point you just made that it ultimately comes down to is

28:32 not all. oil wells and need for optimization are the same, right? Depends on what investment needs to be made in a solution and what the lifetime value of that asset may be, right? So yeah, we

28:44 can't make blanket statements, but I think as a whole, and Eric, you can comment on this part, the move to cloud is just accelerating, cloud-centric companies that, you know, growth. Yeah, it

28:55 is, and there's always going to be companies that are just going to fly out and say, no I'm not going to put any technology into anything. Sure. I'm going to run things the way that I've always

29:05 run them. But there are a ton of companies out there that already use legacy-scated systems. And those providers, and I'm not going to throw anybody under the bus, that's not what I'm here to do,

29:19 but those companies have just dug their heels in the sand and said, this is what you get. And if you don't like it, go somewhere else. And - eventually they will and eventually they will exactly

29:32 it but the The thing that sucks, oh, well, but you're tied into a five-year contract. So it's going to cost you if you do want to go somewhere else. Private equity dilemma right here, yeah.

29:40 Right, exactly. So what the iron IQ guys have done is they've identified a need in the industry to be able to customize everything, to get what you need, not what somebody else is going to give

29:54 you, if that makes sense. I think we're at a turning point right now where the legacy systems are like, this is what we're providing you and you're going to take it or you're not. And IronIQ is a

30:05 company, I think it's going to say, this is what we will do for you. If you want to do more, we can do that too, but you can scale it up, you can scale it down, you can do what you want, and I

30:16 think one of the things that's very unique to them is they can actually, you can have a dashboard for the pumpers to know exactly which wells they need to go see that day, two minimize their

30:24 windshield time, right, and then you can have a dashboard for the CFO that tells them exactly what's been produced. in the last 24 hours so he can update his model. So you can cater everything to

30:36 whatever you need to see. So it's completely customizable. This is what I love too about these conversations and oil and gas is like you could argue that Tim's company does the same thing. You can

30:47 say I represent companies that build Power BI and do the same thing. It's a natural extension once you have SCADA and the data to then start integrating other data with it and making it happen. The

30:57 key is do you trust the data and is it actually usable? And that's when you can start to say, yeah, we're getting operational efficiency from these types of solutions. But it's a very nice company.

31:08 I think surely what happens is they'll have competition that pops up. Eventually, the legacy companies will disappear somewhat because they just can't get away with the model and they sort of die

31:20 out. And then copycats start to emerge and undercut the new kind of like head honcho and price, right And?

31:29 when I, the other thing, the barrier to entry. I mean, if you go, I don't want to start naming companies. So we already mentioned saying that, but look, these guys do it. But you've got

31:40 legacy companies that in order to change out what they're doing, they know what they need to do. They know they need to go down this path. They simply can't in order to go make that investment to

31:51 make the changes just too great. So they're going to ride the annuity as long as they can, make improvements or existing infrastructure and ride it as long as they can But the barrier to entry now

32:01 is so much lower to go ahead and create a new skate company, if you will, to bring up. I think that you were going to see those guys just fade away eventually. And the iron IQs or the, the next,

32:16 the next flavor will, they'll be competing to take that business. Yeah. And I think what, where they've actually taken advantage of what you just said is the fact that they started on the field

32:27 side, the hardware side, and they know all hardware very very well. and then they built the software around that, right? So you know, every piece of hardware has a different language that it

32:37 speaks. And did they start with cloud in mind when they started that software part? Yep. See, that's the key. If you start, that's what you're starting with and you've already made that decision.

32:48 I think that that's, you know, having to migrate from one technology to another to another to another is very costly for these legacy companies. Starting straight to cloud, that's very impressive

32:60 Yeah, but it hurt companies though. It hurt some companies when they did that 2014-15, even though there was a decent amount of energy tech business happening, because it was too early, right?

33:10 It made the CTO feel nervous about it. So yes, you're right from a development standpoint, from a business standpoint though, people are saying, Well, I need this on premise. Like, you might

33:19 bite that bullet and do it, and no, that's tech debt you're not gonna care about later on.

33:24 Yeah. I mean, I think that the company that did it perfectly back in 2014-2015 that started as a cloud company, but nobody really knew it was a cloud company until they started using it, until

33:38 they got familiar with it was well data labs, right? Yeah. They came out and said, Look, we're gonna just take all your data. It's gonna be secure, I promise. We're gonna normalize everything.

33:47 You can analyze whatever you wantagainst whatever else you want. But had they gone up in 2014, 2015, and said, We're a cloud company, use us? Mm-mm. It was also just one subset of data. I

33:58 think people are always more concerned about production data, even than frack data But, you know, I guess that's a conversation for a different time. Yeah, it's also the type of data. I mean,

34:09 enter sites certainly faced that problem when they went all cloud for planning and reserves. They're not really reserves, but they're planning and systems. That was a difficult argument, 'cause

34:19 this is the data that these companies had. This is the golden goose. So they don't wanna let that out of the control. It took a long time to get those guys to get the clients comfortable with,

34:31 Yeah, your data is secure.

34:34 So, yeah, and I'll just call it out. I think a lot of that, the comfortable aspect of things is kind of a generational gap that we have in the industry too, right? It's, you know, I am proudly

34:48 not a millennial, but I am definitely the middleman between the older generation and the younger generation, right? It's how do you get those two to talk and how do you take advantage of everything

34:59 that the leadership generation in our industry has right now? How do you take advantage of that? How do you capture that before the new generation is just stuck running this whole thing and running

35:10 blind? Yeah, that's why you're seeing more learning management, knowledge management, right, saga, wisdom of the world, doing really well because you need to capture that knowledge, right?

35:21 It's desperately ignored and those training sessions are expensive

35:26 All right, let's talk real estate here. This is this has gotten out. So you've gone out and gotten what? I don't even know what the term is, a license to practice real estate or how does that

35:35 work? Yeah, I'm a licensed real estate broker in Colorado now. So if I'm moving to Denver, I just give you a call, so hey, I need a house. Give me a call, I'll help you find one. Under 100K

35:48 and you've got it all. You might want to try it on the road.

35:56 So what prompt did you go down that path? Well, I've always kind of had a liking for real estate I think I told you earlier, I wanted to be an architect when I was growing up. I love houses, I

36:06 love structures and how you can work with spaces. And I've always told my wife at some point, I want to get my license. I want to be able to buy and sell. I want us to be able to have rental

36:16 properties and our own properties up in the hills and no reason to pay somebody else to do all that. Yeah. And when COVID hit last year and everything slowed down,

36:28 what a better opportunity to take advantage of the downtime. started scrolling around and I saw a company that was going through the Colorado real estate thing. It was like 350 bucks or something

36:40 like that. Like, man, for that price, worst cases, I learned something. So

36:47 got my license and a great friend of mine has his own brokerage here in Denver and hung it with him. And the goal isn't

36:56 to just try to do two full time jobs. That never was the purpose of it It's just to kind of follow a passion and to help people out. So I've relocated a number of times. I understand the pain in

37:08 the butt and the cumbersome process that is. And if I can help somebody out, move into Denver, absolutely. I would love to help them out, friends, family, whatever. It's the

37:21 right time here, right? I mean, there's just - there's such a demand to be here. How is this in my neighborhood right now? I'm in Lafayette. Just go so fast I mean, it's like they're not like.

37:32 When did they sell? It's like, yeah, that sold last month. I'm like, I didn't even see it listed. Like, it's going crazy. It don't last a weekend, yeah. Yeah, and the thing, you know, and

37:43 since we were talking about going to cloud, I think the real estate business, as much as any place has changed so much over the last 30 years, just due to technology. I mean, the internet in

37:54 general, and you know,

37:58 you can find out about a house going up for sale and it's gone And an hour later, because somebody else knew about it before you, that's the whole advantage now, right? You know, it's crazy. I

38:09 mean, it comes down to, it really does sometimes come down to networks and who you know, knowing when stuff like that comes up, it's just, it's absolutely insane. Yeah, at a buddy that this was

38:23 before all this, when I was a spa fire, he had his own little weekend business with real estate. think he somewhere in Canada, but basically he would find someone who was going to sell their condo

38:36 or whatever else. And he would actually

38:39 have organized a party for that in that condo, it would be a blowout party or whatever else. And basically only invite people who are moving to the area or whatever it was and say, this is this

38:53 condo's for sale. And it would be sold that night. And that's that was kind of his beside business So far and now

39:02 you don't need to do that as much. But it was kind of interesting just to listen to how he was selling condos. Yeah, it's it, you know, open house kind of strategy interesting. So so Eric, I

39:14 know you got a lot going on. You got the geodynamics. You've got iron IQ on the board. You've got real estate. Where do people find you? Like if people want to reach out to you, contact you.

39:23 How do they they find what you got going on?

39:27 Man, I guess it depends on what they want, right?

39:32 We should have a scroll on list of all of us. It's not like me, man, it just sounds like me. A scroll on list of all those contacts. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn and I

39:40 check it regularly. So if you wanna, you know, go find me on LinkedIn and send me a message, you can do that.

39:48 For geodynamics, I'm on the website, go look there. geodynamicscom Geodynamicscom,

39:56 man, I don't know if it's still there. I did a presentation once and my face kept scrolling across the website uncomfortably, I mean.

40:05 But yeah, if you want real estate, it's ericcohomebasecom. If

40:12 you want oil and gas, it's ericmartialperfcom.

40:16 And if you just wanna get ahold of me, call me or send me a note on LinkedIn. That's good stuff too. All right, so if I'm traveling through Delta, Colorado. Yeah. You know, I'm maybe I'm on

40:30 the, you know, heading to tell your eye to where I'm going. What's the thing I need to do? I need to survive accident. Yeah, what do I need to go do in Delta? Get out. Delta's got a pretty

40:42 cool little vibe. And it's where the the Gunnison and the uncompogated rivers come together. Hence the term Delta. So

40:51 it's not too far from the mouth of the Black Canyon and things coming out of there. So you can go up and see the Black Canyon, go up on the Grand Mesa. There's a ton of lakes up there, some great

41:00 fishing. If

41:03 you want to just keep going through Delta, you can go to Grand Junction, Fruity, get some mountain biking in. It's a fun place. It really is. It was a great spot to grow up, right? I'm proud

41:14 to be from Delta. I'm one of my, you know, and anyone who's listened to our show a bunch, I probably said it a couple of times, but my family and I, we did a 50 states quest. and so on our trip

41:26 through Colorado, we actually, we turned left in Montrose instead of right to go to Delta and went up on the million dollar highway down to the fourth corner of the area, and so surprisingly close

41:36 to Delta as it turns out, but

41:40 yeah, it looks like a great area and I absolutely loved Uray. I guess that's how you say. Oh

41:46 yeah, people love you. Uray, yeah. Uray, yeah, yeah. Uray is beautiful. America's a little Switzerland. They've got all kinds of fun stuff up there and it's, if you've been there, you get

41:57 it. It's just such a cool place. If you ever get a chance to go up there for the 4th of July, a fireworks background, the canyon walls there. Oh, it's unreal. Sit in the hot springs and watch

42:07 the fireworks on 4th of July. That's an experience you'll remember. Oh, Latha, Latha Corn, isn't that somewhere out there? Latha Sweet Corn. Here's a fun story. So I grew up. Have you had

42:17 that? That stuff is. I grew up going to church with the owner and founder of a Latha this week, or wow. Uh, I know the kids, I know John Harold, uh, it is the best corn you'll ever have. No

42:30 doubt, uh, used to sell it. We could sit on the corner and Delta and sell it out of the back of a truck. You got to go pick it yourself. Yeah. Yep. They let you go pick it. You can sell it for

42:40 two bucks a dozen. Use that money to go buy school clothes with. School clothes. Mm hmm. Yeah. It might be some overalls.

42:49 I picture that accent there. You know, they really don't have one. I figured it was a euphemism for. Fear money. So. Hey, school.

42:59 Anyways, Mr. Marshall, appreciate you coming out. My brother. This is a good time. Good times. Appreciate you guys having me.