What The Funk?

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, let's get smart with C smart analytics CEO Ernie how's Ernie how you doing today man? Oh Great, how about you Jeremy? I'm doing awesome. It's a Friday middle of the summer

0:15 My kids just got back from summer camp last weekend after being gone for three weeks. So really really nice to have the full family in effect I got a business trip to Oklahoma City next week, which

0:27 I'm very excited about various different things I'll be hanging out and all of the usual places that people go to when they're in Oklahoma City So I'm I'm doing well. How's your how's your summer

0:38 going? It's good. Good so far. It's been busy as all get out been back and forth out to Colorado Springs and for that CZ conference out there and We're just getting into the spring of things. I'm

0:51 gonna get to go down at babysit three my grandsons tomorrow and And we're just going to have a. on grandpa day because I'll be just me and the three of them. And then my wife is going to be doing

1:06 duty waiting for grandchild number nine to arrive here. Oh my God. Nine? Nine, yes. Well, we're doing not hard to repopulate

1:20 the world. A full housing per se. Yes. Indeed. You know, all I can say is I'm just getting to know you, but I hope at the point when I have three, four, five, nine grandchildren, I have as

1:33 much energy and positivity as you do. So let's get into it a little bit with you, Ernie. So who are you, man? Let's get into your background. Where'd you grow up? I think you went to Penn State

1:44 based on the picture I see behind you, but wanna hear your story and how you got to where you're at today. Well, you know, of course, I have a lot of different rules like all of us do, right?

1:55 And so, you know, I am a. Christian, I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, I'm a husband of 40 years coming up near next month. Congrats. So we get to celebrate that with all of the crew, which

2:10 should be a lot of fun. We're looking forward to that. And but I'm also, you know, a CEO, a leader, a technologist by education, a mechanical engineer, a sales, you know, really through and

2:25 through. So, like all of us, a lot of us I've had different hats, a weird kind of eclectic mix of different traits and so forth that most people find very grating, but my wife puts up.

2:39 Well, for 40 years or 39 years and 11 months she has, let's let's hope we can make it another month, right? So, are you from Pennsylvania? Well, I was born in Baltimore and via a south Florida,

2:54 I came to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. when I was in the fourth grade. And so I was raised, for the most part, all of my impressionable years were in Pittsburgh. And

3:08 of course, I got there just in time for the Steelers to start having their decade, right? So I got there in time to be a Steelers fan. Pilots actually won a couple of World Series during that time,

3:21 so that was fun. And so in '79, we considered ourselves the City of Champions for a short while. And so that was great growing up. And then as you noted, I went off to Penn State for four years

3:35 there. Out in Happy Valley. So this is random to actually back-to-back guests on this podcast who both grew up or were born in Baltimore. So

3:51 small world, and we had guests this past week I'm at my home from. Baltimore as well. So the universe is telling me something. Maybe I need to get like a crab cake for lunch or something like that.

4:02 I think it's a must some old base seasoning on some French fries or something. I don't know. But well, now I'm craving that. All I had to do was say it. But so that's that's awesome. And you

4:13 know, I've never been to to state college PA. I have a

4:18 bunch of friends who went to school there. And it really sounds like something that should be on my bucket list is going to a football game at Beaver Stadium when there's a full whiteout. Yeah, for

4:29 sure. I mean, you know, it's it's it's a big place. So it's right up there next to Michigan in terms of the biggest stadiums that you can be at. And so it's quite the experience, whiteout or not.

4:42 And it's a lot of fun. I actually prefer the college football experience and just the vibe over the professional because everybody's kind of laid back and you're getting them or resorts a money to do

4:53 what they do and everything else. but it's a whole different feeling when you're going to stadium with a bunch of kids playing. And you get different results, right? So that's a lot of fun. No,

5:04 that's neat. And not to mention like, you know, the fall in Appalachia is awesome, right? It is absolutely gorgeous. So you get the colors. Although, you know, for the first month, it's

5:16 September is beautiful in Appie Valley. It's sun shiny and typically 80 degrees And you get some nice warm days in there too. So it gives you all seasons and you get to experience the full course of

5:30 it during a football season, for sure. Yeah, not too dissimilar to New England, really. You know, probably just a tad warmer, but nonetheless, you get those full four seasons and you can't

5:43 beat the fall. I mean, I've talked to my dad about this too. Yeah, me too if you could just mimic that six weeks a year.

5:53 right where you get that perfect idyllic fall from call it mid september to first week in november and just bottle that up and sell it you'd be a very very wealthy man yeah absolutely absolutely now

6:06 we have to we have to give some credit where it's due living on the front range in colorado not all that terribly different and some fantastic weather in the fall there too so it doesn't suck it does

6:19 not suck here i'll tell you it's nice right now too it's about 70 degrees so you know with that dry heat perfectly comfortable it you know it's it's pretty dang nice and when i get done with this

6:32 podcast maybe i'll get outside and try to get away from my computer for five minutes which is very rare these days because i'm a busy guy just like you which is a good thing i'd rather be be very busy

6:42 and swamped with work than the opposite so i got a distributor many years ago where i was uh just a young buck salesman and he was an old crusty you know distributor guy and I complained about being

6:55 busy and he looked at me funnily and he said, How's her? The alternatives are grim.

7:03 True words have never been stated Ernie. I mean, I'm with you. I've seen both sides of that. I'd much rather be busy in my phone blowing up while I'm trying to do a podcast, so I'll take it. So

7:13 tell me, so you graduated from Penn State and then what? Well, I went to work for a big company and went to work for Westinghouse Electric, went out to Chicago, Illinois. I

7:26 was already married because I got married the summer before my senior year at college and we were already pregnant when we went out to Chicago. So we shot up in Chicago in our little car, our little

7:39 beat up car with body work all over it, still all spotted and everything. And didn't have a place to stay. We ended up having to stay with my sister in honor of college

7:50 apartment with her great roommate for two weeks to live, moved in there, spent a year in Chicago as an inside sales guy working for Westinghouse, and then we went on to Grand Rapids, Michigan,

8:03 and that's where I got the entrepreneurial bucket. I was selling construction products and products for Switchgear and that kind

8:20 of thing, but I got into some weird stuff. And they, at the time, Westinghouse had entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial little division that they tried to start off. And it was for energy control

8:26 and lighting management. It was a tiny little, they were trying to nurture it, and foster it. And I became the sales manager and moved back to Pittsburgh. And little did I know that the whole

8:39 entrepreneurial idea was great on paper, but it really didn't thrive and work in big companies. They had a way of killing it at the time when it was just about ready to break. And so that led me to

8:52 the opportunity to switch. And I went to work for this little startup company and I was the fourth employee. And we were in an office that was no bigger than the office I'm sitting in now four

9:03 people craved in and in AM chairs. Four months after I started there, we ended up buying a product line from the West House Defense Division that changed my life. We bought an ultrasonic flow meter

9:18 product line And dominated everything we did. So I spent the next 25 years of my career making, selling, inventing, all sorts of different versions of ultrasonic meters applying it into new areas

9:32 and new markets and creating new markets and having a great time doing it until we eventually sold out to a bigger company in 2006. And I was there, we sold off to Cameron at the time. And I was

9:46 there through 2017 through the acquisition of Cameron by. by Schlauberge, and I lasted about one year before I said I got to get out of here and get back to my roots. Yeah. So

9:59 Schlauberge would quite literally be the antithesis of a four person company or a start up. Yes. And to be, you know, they have an idea of what they're doing. They have their business model, but

10:12 they're tough on people, for sure. And so the day I realized that the next thing I was going to do was tell them wearing the world I didn't want to go. And they would tell me where to go to pick up

10:25 my next video check. I said, I'm not sure I want to play that game at this point. I'd like to have some more flexibility to go visit my grandchildren and stop. And so I decided to go. And then

10:36 went looking for work in a smaller company. And I found it came to work out in Colorado, in Lovelin, just north of you, and went to work for a holding company. that had a bunch of discrete

10:50 businesses, half of which were metrology. So I switched over from the OEM side, the meters that we have calibrated to the calibration lab side of things. And then we had a couple of other entities.

11:04 And so on the day before, on the month before COVID hit, the pandemic and our private equity investor let us know that they were outgrowing us. And eventually decided to go by their hobby business

11:18 They bought Williams Racing, of all things. Nice. I went for a racing team. And so they decided to sell us off. We spent two years during the pandemic selling off the company in parts and pieces.

11:31 But the good news is that's what created the opportunity for me and my management team to buy C-Smart. Oh, that's cool. Well, it's fascinating. So

11:44 why don't you tell our audience a little bit about now that I have the genesis? What is C-Smart and the way we can talk about measurement and all that stuff, but what do you guys do? So in a

11:55 nutshell, we monitor and analyze diagnostic data from custody transfer ultrasonic measurement stations, and we can do it from anywhere. But we get that data ported in by a couple of different ways

12:09 and run through those analytics in real time So alla by hour, we're looking at all the analytics from those stations and ejecting, quantifying, and telling people how to

12:20 fix when errors occur. That's what we did.

12:26 So you sell directly to pipeline companies, to oil and gas companies, like who do you sell to? Yeah, so the heart of our business, the set of the bowjias I like to call it is transmission and

12:40 storage In the midstream sector, but we stand out on that bow tie all the way to. The tail end of the gathering processing stations. So residue gas all the way to end users And but but the core

12:57 core business and the majority were the central End of where these ultrasonic meters are is in the transport transmission and storage

13:07 So you've mentioned that you're basically doing this monitoring in in real time

13:14 And what are you what are you monitoring is it is it like oh there's a big spike? downward we need to alert the customer about this or they'll be alerted themselves is it leaks like what what are

13:26 these Spikes and data that people are looking for and do they literally have somebody who's monitoring the monitor in real time? So so yeah, they realize the rub so we have to go back a little bit

13:38 in time And in about two in about two thousand or so was when ultrasonic meters really got moment and were becoming widely adopted in the gas transmission segment. And the

13:53 attraction to ultrasonic meters is no moving parts of wide turn down range, bigger meters that can handle fall throughput down to small. So it gave a lot of advantages. And of course it was

14:07 advertised in those days as the perfect meter as every new technology is. And during the next 10 years or so that all the AGA committees get together and the API committees get together and figure

14:20 out where the weaknesses really are in these perfect flow meters and how do we end up allowing, you know, making up for that, right? How do we apply them? What rules do we have to follow? How

14:31 should we maintain them? What should be the different regimes for recalibration or calibration in the first place and what are the installation effects and all of those kinds of things they spent 10

14:43 years trying to get to those standards that are If you're me and describing that, I love the guys who build those standards. But for me, it's like gnawing my arm off because it's always a common

14:55 denominator, right? You've got all the OEMs, you've got all the users, they all have different objectives. And so you end up trying to get a negotiation to get to at least the pace level of what

15:06 we should be doing and how we should be doing it. But the problem is all these smart stations have an ultrasonic meter has 70 to 80 data points that are not flow. They're patents and and velocities

15:19 and delta T's

15:22 and all sorts of other things. And so 70 to 80 points, we spent a lot of money putting in these smart measurement stations and then we ignore all that diagnostic information. We leave that all

15:33 stranded at the station and we look at the flow output and we look at the actual and standard flow volumes and just like we always did for all stations preceding them. And so we've ignored that and

15:49 add to our detriment. We got a benefit from ultrasonic meters. We went from about 1 LAUF. If I treat lost and unaccounted for as our gross measurement or KPI of how well we're doing measuring

16:03 things, we have 1 in the industry, according to EIA data, all the way through to about 2000. Then it dropped steadily over the next decade to about 04 And then it's 04. So we got the benefit of

16:19 good meters, generally good meters, right? USMs are doing a good job, but they're not perfect.

16:28 If we look at the diagnostic data, we can get down to what those numbers should look like when we're dealing with a large population of uncertainty, the station of about 035. We should be able to

16:40 drive that right down to 002. That's the optic. Got it And that's what we're going through. we're trying to make use of all of that secondary and tertiary data points and how they all fit together

16:52 and then we get to play Sesame Street which one of these things is not like the other which one of these things just doesn't belong and turn that into a this year making an error of 01 percent or 02

17:03 percent. That gives the information to the customer that says this is where it fits on my priority list and now I can schedule that and go fix it based on priority and what I need to do. Let's go

17:15 back in time a little bit before these smart measurement machines devices existed. How was this data measured?

17:26 Well, if you go back in time, we've got and we still exist, right? A lot of oil-fist measurements, a lot of turbine meters, a lot of rotary emitters Those are the fundamental technologies for

17:38 gas. Got it. Now, this is fascinating stuff. Do people typically. monitor with video, what's happening as well, so that they can tie into, okay, you see an outlier on

17:55 the data, can you actually see that on the video as well?

17:60 Well, we can't see inside the pipe. So that's one of the X, right? And even if we could, we're talking about a gas that's invisible and except for the other stuff associated with it, depending

18:12 on where you are, it could smell bad. So there you go But no, you really can't get a visual. You've got to use those diagnostic pieces of data to paint yourself a picture of what's going on inside.

18:25 It turns out that they paint a pretty good picture, though, of exactly what's happening. And they are sensitive and they can be correlated to, if you have a database full of solid calibration

18:41 traceable data, they can be traced to that. are turning the magnitude of those errors when they occur. So we essentially use AI and analytical, you know, our customary old age old analytical

18:53 techniques to quantify those errors and say it's a is this a point one or is this a point five or is this a one percent?

19:04 In terms of C smart, what is what does the team look like today? You know, obviously you spend a bunch of time out here in Colorado, but you still live in Pennsylvania. What is what does the team

19:15 look like? What is the company structure like today? Well, we took advantage of of COVID

19:22 and ended up becoming a model of what our company does. So we became virtual in 2021. We gave up the lease of our original office in Louisiana and and land virtual, which fits our company anyway,

19:38 because We're spread out from Pennsylvania when I'm out of here. Colorado, to Texas, to Houston,

19:48 to Iowa, and to Louisiana. So we're spread out everywhere. There are 10 of us today. And, uh, and, uh, we just monitor a pile of, uh, ultrasonic meters for. And when there is, where's the

20:01 majority of your, of your business? Well, you ask, okay, we started the ER and it's still kind

20:13 of ground zero and central. We are monitoring stations worldwide. We've got a few tick marks around the world in crazy places. We're actually doing some monitoring for in Pakistan of all places.

20:21 Right. Really? Because where would you

20:26 pick to monitor? You pick Pakistan for obviously, obviously, uh, and, uh, and Mexico. And we've got some, uh, opportunities and forays in Latin America and beyond Yeah, that's that's really

20:40 cool and when you think about the future for C-Smart. Is it a shift in technology or is it, we've got a technology that people need, we're just gonna continue to expand our footprint in various

20:54 different markets? Well, that's a great question. So, we're gonna stay centrally focused in the gas technology market. There are certain reasons for that and that makes sense. We've got a lot of

21:06 growing room to do. In the US, by my estimation in my town, which is as good as anybody else's that I could ever find. If we could talk market studies, it's a separate topic. But I figured there

21:20 are about 20, 000 ultrasonic meters installed in the US today. And that makes about 80, 000 worldwide. And of those 20, 000, if I have my way, we'll be monitoring 6, 000 of them in the short

21:35 term in the next few years. So, we've got a lot of growing room and a lot of growth to do. but we are doing something unusual. We've done, I've had the, I've been blessed with the opportunity to

21:47 do it beforehand. This is that the, probably the swan's on for me. We are experiencing a paid off shift. We are really leading the market to shift from the old ways of periodic maintenance and

22:03 manual edicts and nearly going out collecting data, bringing it back, spending hours and hours analyzing it, to shifting to real-time automated analysis. And that shift is always interesting to

22:19 accomplish and to do. I can say you get a real feeling of accomplishment once you're done, and I'm sure we're gonna feel that. But it's beginning already. You've seen some really important shifts

22:34 in the industry from gas companies and transmission companies saying, We will never ever entertain cloud-based services up until about 2017 to we can't get enough cloud-based services. You why?

22:48 Because they're cheaper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, compute power drives down the cost of data and systems and it increases competition and frankly levels the playing field for smaller companies

23:03 competing against bigger companies, which is great Great. I mean, that's capitalism, right? So, you know, that's what you're talking about is core to sort of what I've seen in oil and gas in

23:17 the past call it 10 years, but really ramped up in the last five years or so. If you think about production optimization or you think about monitoring of methane emissions, typically in the past,

23:34 I like to think of that as companies were basically driving. a fire truck around looking for a fire, okay? Yep. And now there's alarms and alerts that say, Hey, fire truck, we need you here now,

23:49 right? And the benefits that that creates are significant from a safety perspective, from a cost perspective, from an environmental perspective. There's so many things, and it's cool. It sounds

24:02 like this groundswell is not only happening in the production space, in the emission space, but also in the measurement space. Do you see the type of readings that you have and the measurement

24:15 space as a whole becoming a little bit more predictive? Are you guys at that point, or do you feel like that's coming a little bit later? Oh no, definitely predictive. So if you analyze our data

24:28 over the past nine years and look at your average year, 30 of the issues that we find at a station are pre and they're going to become or if you don't deal with them now or soon. The advantage of

24:42 those is I can actually put that in my work schedule and do them when I want to because it's not the emergency it is today. And I can focus my triage or my emergency room attention over on the ones

24:57 that are creating that million dollar a year error. Yeah. And I can knock that guy down very fast because he needs attention right away Go ahead and schedule my predictive errors. And what you see

25:10 is the actual overall number of errors go down. That's not intuitive because we're actually doing nothing to stop those errors from occurring. We're not, we're just reacting, right? But the

25:22 faster you react, there's this underlying secondary effect that says you're actually taking better care of your assets and those predictive maintenance opportunities are occurring. You're taking

25:34 care of them and the total number of events actually go down. Yeah, that's I mean, that's great. And of course, not surprising, right? Once you have the data, there's a lot you can do with

25:44 that data. And predictive analytics is where you get to once you have and trust that level of data and visibility. I'm

25:56 sorry, if you put the if you put the way back button on back in the 80s, when the focus was on quality control and quality assurance and everything else, the the motive or the

26:10 the saying was you can't approve a process unless you measure it's true. We keep it work. It's like groundhog day all over again. We're doing the same things. We're living the same lessons 30

26:21 years later, 40 years later. Yeah, no, 100. So, you

26:26 know, I think you know a little bit about me. We've we've chatted a few times before I started my career as an inside sales guy. So, I've always placed a great emphasis in value on. lead

26:37 generation and even at run a company today and fund futures, that helps companies get their feet in the doors that they may not necessarily get in themselves or at least get them in a little bit

26:47 warmer and a little bit faster. Which leads me to the question for you, how do you get business?

26:54 That's a really good question. So, that ties in. I look at us some days I wake up and I say, Man, we're a 10 year old startup. And that's largely what we are, right? And there are all kinds of

27:08 sayings that I use. You know, if you're eventually your ship will come in and the trick is to hang around long enough until it does, right? No. On that, right? We've survived and we've managed

27:19 to flourish and keep doing our thing until that moment when all of those paradigm shifts and our pushing and the market development all comes together. But still in all that lead generation, that

27:32 element of it, we want doing a really good job of, And I think we're doing a much better job now. Um, believe it or not,

27:40 I was really blessed because I got introduced by a friend of one of our investors and introduced to a guy who absolutely loves to cold call.

27:53 Now I need to, I need to meet this guy. I'm stealing it from you. I'm telling you, he's, he's an odd duck. I'm, I'm going to tell you, right? Cause how many guys do we know that love to cold

28:04 call? You've got a, you've got to be able to handle rejection You've got to be able to handle, you know, all sorts of things, but he does it. And he does it very well. So in contrast, we will

28:16 have locked in and talking to the same people over and over, talking to our measurement community, um, which is fine because those are the people that we're working with and they're very important,

28:27 but the decision making isn't always necessarily the measurement community. The ironic is they're actually viewed internally in their own company for the most part like overhead.

28:39 and all the things to date about overhead, right? So they never get the resources they want. They never get the innovation that they want. They never get the people power that they need. And so

28:49 they're always behind and always running. But that wasn't necessarily the only people that we needed to talk to. So what my sales manager has done for me with his cold calling is arranged it. So

29:03 these days I am spending probably 15 hours a week on conversations with people that we have never talked to before. Cool. And beginning the attraction on that. So it's a fantastic thing. I think

29:17 we're really making progress. I mean, you better hold on to him because that is a resource that's worth his weight in gold. I'm blessed to have to watch this podcast, by the way, just because I

29:31 said. I'll find him. I'll find him I have two guys who are incredible. And I think they both actually enjoy the cold calling because it's a challenge, right? It is. It'd be so easy if all the

29:45 calls came to me. Of course I'd close them, they'd say, right? But they like turning somebody. They like getting somebody who's pessimistic and turn them into an optimist and eventually a

29:55 champion. And I did a lot of that kind of earlier on in my career. And it's very popular and trite to say, I hate cold calling. But if I'm to look back at my career, a lot of the people that I've

30:09 become friends with in business that I've sold to, developed an appreciation for me because I actually cold called on them and convinced them of something and then sold them something and then

30:20 maintained that account and became an actual human being to them. So I can't understate just how important it is. And for me, in the evolution of my career, it doesn't matter where I get to. I

30:32 could be the CEO someday of a, multi-million dollar company and probably will be candidly, or at least hope to be. But I waited tables, right? And my first job, I made 85 cold calls a day, and

30:47 I did that for a year and a half. And then I had the smallest territory and the fewest, warmest leads at my next company. And still always had this element of you got a hustle, right? You got a

30:59 cold call and you still need to differentiate yourself in some way to just make things a little bit warmer for you. And now that business does tend to come to us more because I've built a little bit

31:11 more of a brand and have more of an established company and have some subject matter expertise in a very niche area, I don't undervalue and probably frankly overpay for that particular skill set

31:25 because I lived it. And it was always hard for me in sales situations when I worked for a manager who'd never been

31:35 so you're exactly right. I look back, you know, in my history, my very first job and the reason, you know, one of the reasons that brought me down this path that led me to where I am today,

31:46 through all these different events and times and opportunities, my very first job was at 14 years old, selling junk jewelry door to door. Really? Now, it doesn't get much more cold called than

31:58 that.

32:00 So I've lived that dream too. And you know, ironically enough, it was not what I would have signed up for when I said after the ad in the paper and showed up and I was surprised when I said, Oh,

32:13 you're talking about doing that. But I tried it. And it turned out I was reasonably good at it. And so I did that for a while. But I did that while I was at college, I was on the fundraiser squad

32:26 for these guys at the back of me here and did cold calling for alumni, right? So yeah, I had that in my experience and and There is nothing that prepares you for changing paradigms, for pushing

32:41 things forward, then a background in doing exactly that, experience in doing exactly that. It's a must, and it's something that I do place a lot of emphasis and value in for salespeople that I

32:54 deal with, 'cause it just shows like, if you can deal with that level of rejection, that's gonna help you in life. Forget about just work. Life is hard, and you're gonna deal with setbacks all

33:04 the time, and yeah, I mean, it's not always easy, and look, when I would get back on a Friday afternoon from lunch, I didn't wanna deal with another four hours of rejection, right? But you

33:15 just get through it, that's your job, and that's what you get paid to do. I remember some people telling me when I explained what my entry-level job was at left-hand networks, making 85 cold calls

33:26 a day. People said to me, I couldn't do that. And I was thinking, Well, you could if you had to pay bills, you wanted to get your career started, you know, I couldn't be a lawyer and read

33:38 briefs all day. I like that I couldn't be a doctor because I get squeamish around blood, right? So there's things that you could do, cold calling, you don't want to. Well, I think that's

33:51 partially true, but I'll give a different take on that too, Jeremy. And we had in our previous startup, we were still small. We hired an engineer and he came from a big company and he came into a

34:07 little company. And it was an odd case. He had a young family and he was switching jobs and maybe at home. After one week, he came in and quit. And in an exit interview, he said, you people are

34:23 crazy.

34:25 You expect results. I just can't handle the pressure. So I think there is an element when some people say I couldn't do that, I think there is actually a block that says, hey, maybe that isn't

34:38 right for you. Maybe that isn't your niche. And I think maybe this particular case, right, this coal-calling thing, it's more of a niche and more of a not everybody can do it kind of a thing. It

34:50 really is that that Tom Sawyer wanted a million unicorn type people that just are not part of the general population that drive in that atmosphere, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I think

35:04 athletes tend to do well in that situation. I think people who did work in the food service industry, people who worked in some dirtier jobs,

35:13 just sort of deal with it and accept it. But we can move on off of that. That's that's fun to dive in. I'm glad we both have some history doing that and that you have such a good resource and I'm

35:23 very, very fortunate to have the guys that I have on my team too Good guy. Talk about. future. So C smart, right? You got 10 people today. Like you said, you're a 10 year old startup. Do you

35:38 see your company acquiring companies in the same space? Do you see yourself and your company growing organically? Do you see yourself maybe someday getting rolled up with other measurement gas

35:51 measurement type players? Like where does this all go if we're looking five or so gears down the road for C smart analytics? Well, of course, yeah, we don't know for sure, but generally speaking,

36:04 our plan is that we would either be rolled up into we that thing unique the doing and organization broader a

36:11 do. We're very, very focused, very single threaded. There are folks that do all sorts of other stuff in the accounting space, in the flow measurement space that are much, much broader than what

36:23 we do, but we'd uniquely do our piece very well. So we could with the weather one of those companies. As a as another asset for things that they do that would really enhance their portfolio or we

36:38 could You know go to a different next private equity group because we're growing strong and there's value in that All those all those things are possibilities yet to be determined But the trick for us

36:51 is to hit that growth and and that's what we're working hard every day to try to get to You know, I mentioned I want to be measuring in monitoring 6, 000 meters in the next five years That's that's

37:02 the goal. That's what the goal has been and that's what we keep working every day for Well, I think that would be 30 of the US market, right? So We put you in a in a pretty powerful position if

37:15 you were able to do that

37:18 So something that we like to do on what the funk and I'm sure we'll have some fun with this is I Didn't prep you for this, but I'm gonna put you on the spots. We're gonna do some rapid fire I'm

37:28 gonna say a word or a sentence and you have to tell me the first thing that comes to mind. No, all right. All right. So here we go. Roberto Clemente. The greatest of all time. Yeah. Yeah. And

37:46 with a career that was cut short, pretty unfortunate, but what a what an awesome guy and what an awesome player. Yeah. And to go as a philanthropist as he did, right? Just amazing. Fermenti

38:01 brothers.

38:04 Hard to eat with one hand. Napkins. Napkins would have been accepted as well. Let me throw another one out there. The year 2030.

38:29 Wow.

38:32 The wake up call.

38:35 Talk to me more about that. That's interesting. Well, you know, we got a lot going on in our world right now. We got a lot of things that are changing. We've got all sorts of political and

38:47 cultural upheaval that's going on. Add to that then in our industry, right? The energy transformation and all the talk that's going about that objectives have been set for

39:04 2030, 2035, 2050. 2030 is about the time we wake up and say this is not going to work. What are we going to do now? I tend to agree with that. I think we do need it's probably coming. I mean,

39:18 we're talking about six and a half years from now, which really isn't that long and. And as I get older, six and a half years feels shorter and shorter, right? 'Cause it's a small percentage of

39:27 my time on Earth. But you're probably right that we have ambitious goals with no clear runway on how to get there. Then I think we're all on the same page with, yes, we want sustainability. Heck,

39:42 if we had carbon airplane, carbon free airplanes, that would be great, but we're not anywhere close to that, right? So our dependence on the products that I deal with, that we deal with on a

39:53 daily basis, is not gonna change, in fact, it may just grow. So as we get closer and closer to one extreme, we're actually going to the other extreme

40:05 in reality. So you're probably right about the reckoning that may happen in the wake-up call in 2030, but what generally tends to happen is it just gets punted down the road. So 2030 becomes 2035,

40:15 and we just say, Yeah, no wake-up call, yeah, we'll just sorta keep going, the way that we're going I think that's true. That's true. The reckoning part of it and the wake-up call part of it is

40:24 that we are doing damage right now With these with these goals and these unattainable goals, right and these lofty goals the frankly I mean, let's face they're being made by politicians that really

40:37 don't know

40:39 That they're they're wanting to on the plus side. They're wanting to set objectives They're wanting to be JFK right saying we're gonna go to the moon before the end of the decade We're gonna get

40:49 there and we're committed to it. That's the righteous part of of the argument But the damage part of the argument is we were in the process of telling You know our younger generations our kids and

41:03 and my grandkids that gas and oil Have no future. Don't go anywhere near that. That's dirty. It's no good It's downright evil and don't have anything to do with it And we're cutting ourselves off

41:18 at the pass. Who's gonna be there? who's going to be there to actually sustain the quality of life that we have in this country number one in Europe, across the globe, and who gets to pay for that?

41:35 It's very aggressive. The poor are going to pay much, much worse than the present-day rich, and that's where the reckoning comes into play I could see that, and you're a little bit older than me,

41:51 but didn't this sort of happen in the late '70s and the early '80s, where the same vilification was happening of the oil and gas industry, and we just sort of that sort of went away. Well, it's

42:03 true, but not without damage, right? So what happened was actually the oil and gas industry is a little bit more resilient because they go through this seven-year cycle anyway Next up, boom and

42:16 bust business should always ask it. But I'll give you another example in another area of experience that I had. I've lived through the nuclear, you know, got to get nuclear, got to go to the

42:28 nuclear renaissance, back to the nuclear, got to go and live through those cycles. And with each recurring cycle, we get further and further away from being able to actually make progress and move

42:39 forward. And

42:42 it's because of people. It's because of lack of people going in, lack of investment, eventually you pay the price for that. And so it's going to hurt in some way. I don't know exactly what it

42:53 looks like, but it's good to hurt in some way.

42:57 We will, and I just think the, I don't know understand why everything has to be so extreme. I just want to sit down and be logical about all these sorts of things. But so there is one final topic,

43:11 Ernie, that I wanted to bring up with you And that is, you're wearing a tie. Yes. So talk to me a little bit about this. Is this just, are you a guy who always wears a tie? Is this something

43:25 you've done throughout your career? I know most people are listening and not watching, but I find it pretty fascinating because I don't think anyone else has ever come on this podcast wearing a tie

43:34 besides a state senator that we had on like two years ago. All right, well, it's good to be unique, I'm going to say. But yeah, I'm kind of old school, right? I grew up still in the time and

43:48 came into business in the time when, you know, before, remember casual Fridays, before it became casual every day? Of course. Yeah, I mean, you know, so I came in and this was particularly in

44:00 sales. This I viewed as the customer uniform, right? The uniform that I wore to show respect to our customers and to say, hey, I went to the trouble, right? I've tried to address myself this

44:14 morning. because I'm gonna make a presentation where I'm gonna have a discussion with you. And even though all of my customers did not wear ties for the most part, it still was a certain sign of

44:26 respect and presence to say, well, you know, it's important for me to do my part and to wear that customer uniform. When I had people eventually working for me in about 2006, 2007, I finally

44:42 gave up making them wear ties. I finally got to a point where I said, I can't really make you do that. But I can tell you how I feel, right? And I feel there is, there is importance to the

44:56 customer uniform and it is a sign of respect. So Jeremy, when I came on a podcast with you, I had to say I have to wear a tie as a sign of respect. Well, I'm honored, I will say that. And you

45:08 know, I actually, I've gone back and forth on this one, and I do dress very casual for the podcast 'cause I'm sitting in my house right now. So the likelihood is I'm not gonna wear a tie, but I

45:21 think, and I don't have the stats to back this up, but in my career, when I've gone into business meetings where I'm wearing a full suit and tie, I think I've done better. I think that I've felt

45:34 sharper, and I think that I've been able to ask for top dollar, and I think that I've been better received in the room So I do think that there is some value in that, and as we get further and

45:44 further away, it's something that I'll encourage younger salespeople to do, at least until you've kind of made it, right? Which obviously, in your case, you have made it and you're still wearing

45:53 a tie, so I do greatly appreciate that. But yeah, there were points where I kind of encouraged my team, like let's be the best dressed in the room, and oftentimes that means a suit and tie. Yeah,

46:06 yeah, and we're all victims of our experience. So, and I will tell if we got time, I'll tell one more story. Please do. We're looking at Sequoia nuclear power plant in Tennessee, and we're

46:20 actually installing a flow meter on the outside of a pipe that's 450 degrees Fahrenheit. And it is a 30-inch pipe radiating 450 degrees. There's a concrete block wall about this far away, and I'm

46:36 standing between a concrete block wall and that 450-degree pipe putting on this flow meter. We are needless to say drenched in sweat where we're coveralls, protective equipment so that we don't

46:48 bother ourselves and everything else. And my chief engineer at the time was traveling through, he stopped off to see how work was going at the plant. Before I know it, and he was a guy. He was

46:60 also old school. He was one of Rickover's henchmen back in the day before he left the

47:07 Rickover's working. and joined NPR Associates, but he came dressed as he always was in his sartorial spider. He had on a blue suit, pocket square, and tie. And you know, he showed up at the

47:21 plant, and those days you could walk into the turban building without any security, it was amazing. But he climbs up this scaffolding that's about 12 feet in the air, in his suit, and starts

47:33 looking and seeing what's going on in the pipe and asking questions and everything else So I'm looking at him and I'm going to say, Hello, at least take off your coat. And he looked at me and he

47:45 widened his finger and he said, Let me tell you something. Now let him see your sweat.

47:53 That's funny.

47:55 So, the least I could do is wear a tie, right?

47:60 I'll tell you, man, you'll see me sweat if I'm wearing a suit and tie walking around downtown Houston right about now. Well, that's true too. But that's true too. It does stress you from time to

48:10 time. No doubt. Well, you know, I actually think I value it more now because I have to wear it less. It used to be a little bit more common for me in my career to dress up in a more formal manner,

48:21 that now I really look forward to it because I almost never do it. So when I go to Oklahoma next week, I'll be wearing a suit and tie, or at least a suit on Monday and Tuesday, 'cause some of

48:33 those companies still dress up. They're still a little bit old school too But

48:38 Ernie, where can people find you? Where can they find C-Smart? And who should be looking for

48:46 you? Anybody with ultrasonic meters that they have to

48:49 take care of in their fleet? Frankly speaking, anybody with ultrasonic meters that are measuring either their residue gas that they're setting off to someplace else, or buying it because they're

49:03 running their power plant for a big industrial user. those kinds of meters, and even for real-less meters today, that have us set up diagnostics as well. They should be looking for us to make

49:18 efficient their oversight. We are a very cost-effective insurance policy against those errors that do occur, and we can correct them very quickly. There's the old joke about a guy with two watches,

49:33 has a dispute, and a guy with three watches has a lawsuit It just makes sense. We tend not to count the overhead of going back and trying to fix errors after the fact, after they've occurred and

49:46 been allowed for a while. So those, the transmission and storage, and all the way out to the ends of the bow tie, they should be looking for us, and to answer your question, they should be

49:56 looking at a c-smartanalyticscom, and they can find us all there, and we're good to go.

50:05 Ernie, this was a lot of fun, man. I appreciate your energy and your passion. And I'm eager to see where C-Smart goes. It hit my radar not too long ago. I love the website. I think you guys are

50:18 poised for some success. And frankly, at least from my perspective, there's not a ton of competition in your space. And I don't know if that's because there's just simply a lack of subject matter

50:29 expertise, if it's expensive to get the product line going. But I think that you guys are well positioned, and hopefully things continue to move forward in the measurement space for you. So,

50:41 Ernie, my man, thank you for coming on What The Funk? Well, thank you very much, Jerry. Yeah, it was great to be on the show.