What The Funk?

0:00 And we're back with tripping over the barrel. We've got representatives from Reagan Smith referred to us by a friend of the podcast long time listener. Trent Stoker, Trent Stoker, Trent Stoker.

0:14 Thank you, Trent. It was great to see Trent at NAIP last week.

0:20 Scott, you were there, right? But we didn't see each other. Yeah. What were you doing? I had I got sucked into a different party than you were at That can happen. That can happen at NAIP. You

0:31 know, Tim, my whole NAIP experience this year, it was awesome. I'll get into that in a second. But I didn't cool down the whole time. Like I'm not used to coming out of the shower and like

0:44 sweating a little bit and then having to put on clothes. I'm like, it doesn't make sense. It's like 68 degrees in here. Why am I still sweating? And I was, I don't know. Welcome to Houston.

0:55 That's just the way I go. Yeah You just, you just kind of have to get used to that. It's like a never ending thing. Whew, wasn't hot until I left. Finally got back here. I'm like, Oh, that's

1:05 nice, that's nice. Whereas when I show up in Denver, I get off the plane and my lips are instantly chapped. It's like, how did that happen? Yeah, now somebody else was saying that today that on

1:15 the walk in the concourse, if you fly into A, you can go out and walk at DIA, right? As opposed to taking the train all the way in. Yep. That immediately, like as you start making your way to

1:29 the main terminal, your lips just immediately start to crack, right? Basically. So anyways, we've got Monica and Scott. Feels like that's like a couple's name from the 80s, right? Like you can

1:41 picture the big hair and the stonewashed jeans, maybe an Oklahoma room for the boss, but I wanna get to know you guys a little bit because Trent has been pushing, bring these guys on, they're

1:53 unique, they're personable, they've got a number of different businesses. I'm most privy to Land Scout, about you guys from sort of the beginning. Where are you from? How did you get to where

2:04 you're at today? Your quick story and then we'll dive in more. Go ahead, Monica. Oh, okay. Well, thanks for having us on. This is our first time to do a podcast. So we're newbies. Yeah, so

2:16 I'm an Oklahoma native, grew up in Tennessee, Oklahoma. Lived through the original oil bust, I guess. My dad was in the oil field. Ended up going to OU and have a background in archeology and

2:28 history, got a law degree where I met Jennifer, our other law partner, and Scott, through law school. And then also have a natural resource management master's through TechSANM, Gigum, for any

2:41 Aggies, let's see. And Reagan Smith, we started in 2005. It was right around all the regs we're changing with the Energy Act. And I had previously worked at Reagan Resources and we'll see

2:57 you in the next one. He had the idea to do a spin-off company, so that's where we kind of came in, and Regan Smith still to this day specializes in projects on federal and Indian lands. Really any

3:10 project you want to do, pipelines, wind, oil and gas, oil and gas has been our bread and butter for 15 years, but we do really anything that needs to be done on federal and Indian lands. And

3:23 then we've got some spin-off companies, Land Scout, we've got a law firm So, and I'll just talk, tell about him now. No, hold on, hold on. Sorry.

3:32 Yeah. I have a couple of things. I was digging through your educational past, there's a couple of things that just jumped right off the page at me. I am not a good student, contrary to what my

3:41 resume looks like. Well, I'll tell you what, you've got a lot of logos there, but so it's rare that we get an archaeologist on the show. And I just,

3:52 University of Haifa, Ancient Mediterranean Near Eastern Studies, I mean, Is that? You know where that is. I think the only way to explain that is I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

4:02 So I just kept going to school. And now it all kind of time, it all makes sense now looking back, but at the time it, my parents were just very concerned. So that I was actually gonna make

4:15 something of it. So you went to archeological field school, I guess, at University of Haifa? Yes. Are you, I mean, are you actually out with a little brush? You know? Yes, I worked on - What

4:26 was the project? It was one of Herod's, so King Herod from the Bible. His, but let's see, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, I'm probably botching this 'cause it's been about 25 years. But

4:37 it was his summer palace. It was also had been turned into a Byzantine church at the time. So it's in ancient Caesarea where St. Paul was held captive, if you remember from the Bible, that he was

4:48 basically on house arrest in this town. So it had a lot of really cool history. And yeah, we were with the trowels and buckets of dirt Yeah. So not a bowl whip going through caves? No, no. No,

5:03 no India Jones stuff huh? Exciting stuff, but I mean, it was exciting to me. So I mean, it's very compared to like what we find in Oklahoma, it's pretty cool stuff over there, so. We've got

5:15 the Indian mountains in Oklahoma. Yeah, and not the spirits of Oklahoma. I mean, we're usually finding like old farm equipment and homestead, you know, something your grandmother would have had

5:27 in her house that everyone's like, that's archaeology, and you're like, yep. Dinosaur bones, you know, here and there. Yeah. So love that. So a story that I like to tell or just basically

5:38 part of my life and background. From New Hampshire, but I'm Jewish. I was the only Jewish kid at my high school of 800 people, but my family was somewhat religious. My dad was the first son of

5:49 like pretty conservative rabbi. Right, so I feel like I had a good background with it. Went to Jewish sleep way summer camp, which was like the best time of my life. basically for two months.

5:59 Like tips still like, what? Like no. Oh, and the softball team was fantastic at that camp. Yeah, yeah, all right. You must. Your parents really wanted you to stay away for a while. That's a

6:10 long summer. It's been shortened. It's like ebbs and float. I think now those traditional camps are more like six, six and a half weeks. But nonetheless, so I went for years. And then the

6:20 summer after your junior year of high school, you have the option to go to Israel for six weeks, right? And basically it's almost like a team tour, right? You're with all the other kids from the

6:31 other camps and super fun. But one of the traditions that they always have you do is like a day of archeological digging where you go like a different day cave. And it was so cool down there because

6:42 it's hot. It's the summer, it's Israel. You go down there, you're like, oh, this is nice. That's awesome. What area did you go on the archeological survey?

6:54 I wish I could remember. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to dig that out. Like the two bases there were one was like way in the north and one was in Jerusalem. So I think it was, it's within a

7:04 bus drive of any of those places. I think there's a circle of these surveys going on all over the country. So we were actually out on the coast and it was beautiful. I mean. It's so nice there.

7:13 Yeah. For a college summer abroad, it was pretty awesome. No, Mediterranean, super nice. But anyways, no, that was always a big thing. So like being at camp, there was just tradition of kids

7:23 who would come back wearing like, I dig Israel with like archeological - Oh, cool. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a good incentive to keep going to the camp. So I didn't think we would have all

7:33 these connections on archeology. Yeah, I know nothing about it. They just put me in a cave once and said, Take some stuff off. No, but you know, the reason archeology stood out to me, and I'm

7:42 gonna just tell my story, but I'm at Texas AM University, landlocked, land-grant college, great. Yes. Happens to have, at least when I was there, one of the top nautical archeology schools in

7:55 the world. You still do, yes. I buy that, yeah. I

7:60 know it does, yeah. I happen to find that professor and took one of his classes. It was fascinating. He actually studied a shipwreck off the coast of Israel, apparently important, but someday

8:11 Jeremy, I'll go through with you the evolution of the keel and its importance to understanding shipping in the Mediterranean. Right But I'd also talk about the Mediterranean shipping. We did a lot

8:23 of that when we were in Israel. So there's, I mean, hey, knowledge that you may never use, but we got it. Oh, it's bringing me back now. I'm getting nostalgic. No, Tim, but I believe that,

8:34 right? I mean, when I think AM, anything subsurface, right? I buy it. Sure, they've got people that have started to figure that stuff out for years. So I dig it. I still buy this thing. I

8:46 feel bad. I just think there was one guy that love to go scuba diving and just start it. I'm gonna get some funding and go study shipwrecks in your various places.

8:57 I think that's exactly how it happened. Hey, man. So, Mr. Saint Jean. Saint Jean, Scott Saint Jean. Yeah, Saint Jean, you know, one of my law professors called me Saint Jean all the time.

9:08 So, yeah, so I went to Oklahoma State University with an engineering degree back in the day and then

9:17 practiced engineering for about six years, traveled a little bit, lived in Chicago for a little bit, and then came back to Oklahoma City and started law school at OCU. So,

9:29 then met Monica and was looking for a career change and she had started Reagan Smith and it was just a tiny, tiny two or three person company at the time, so

9:40 16 years later, I'm sitting here. He's stuck, he got stuck. I always say, I'm the only dude in oil and gas industry that have two women partners,

9:51 Oh, yeah, that sounds like a challenge. I think we can find those. Yeah, we'll dig that up.

9:59 Yeah, interesting. So how do you how do you split your time? Because I know that you've got a number of various interests, right? You've got technology, you've got legal right? You have

10:08 consulting that a tremendous amount of subject matter expertise in a I mean, I could call it niche, but I feel like the whole land land GIS mapping. And as it relates to anything federal is a huge

10:21 deal. And it's almost an area that people don't fully understand the breadth and depth of. So I'm curious, in Oklahoma, is it different than everywhere else in the country? Because you hear like,

10:33 you know, Oklahoma is actually, you know, an Indian reservation or something like that. So is it much different there than other states? And do you work in other states or is it Oklahoma centric?

10:43 We work the entire country because federal lands are everywhere. Sure. As As far as Oklahoma, yes. Anyone that's a land man here will know that, I mean, it's checkerboard. We have major

10:55 checkerboard title So you could have a unit that has state lands in it some Indian Lands and then also federal and then fees so all within a six hundred forty acre unit. Um, that's not uncommon so

11:10 most of our federal lands are subsurface unless you're on like a grasslands or core of engineer lake, but Now the Indian tribe stuff we have thirty four recognized tribes in Oklahoma So that runs the

11:25 gamut of different tribes that have different situations and different regs of their own

11:34 that we we have to navigate, but We work the entire country so we come up against all kinds of crazy situations that involve the feds state lands felands Yeah, you

11:44 think that you know all the all the deeper rules and federal regulations know, they're all written and but they're applied drastically differently all across the country. So a lot of states may be

11:60 rather loosey goozy with them. And just depending

12:06 on what agency you're working with and other sides of the country are very stringy. So it's it varies widely, even though they are the same rules. So that's interesting, not perspective

12:18 Yes, it strikes me I was going to ask this question, but the difference is between.

12:25 Well, I guess you've got the Indian reservation land and the federal land and, you know, private property and so on. And it just strikes me as being it's got so different to be able to to do these

12:40 other different pieces. Just what is that like having to navigate all those different rules? And I guess That's why you guys. have a niche. That's what we always say. If it was easy, we wouldn't

12:52 have jobs.

12:55 We kind of take every project from the very beginning, and that's one of our very first things we do is kind of figure out which agencies are involved, which tribes, and then we kind of, you know,

13:06 game it all out and figure out what the best course is. A lot of stuff we run concurrently. A lot of projects have dual permitting processes that we're running, you know, somebody's running the

13:17 tribal permits through while another person's running, you know, the state stuff or the BLM. I mean, we've got scenarios going right now that have multi-agency, multi-discipline within each

13:30 agency, sometimes even within the agencies, they can be at odds with each other. And then, you know, we have similar things with all projects. We've got landowner issues, you know, we've got

13:43 rig schedules always changing, you know, we've got all that, all the steps it's added on just because it's got federal regs or tribal regs or those types of things. And then the regular things

13:53 that everybody else is dealing with, big schedules and a lot of change in personnel right now, where we're trying to even internally of the company, they don't have as many people available for

14:05 certain projects. So their disciplines are limited on who's available to help and provide information. So we're tracking that stuff down. So I always feel like we're in a video game where we keep

14:17 getting up to the next level and it keeps getting harder. So - Yeah, along with that is with the administration changes that happen maybe every four years. Come ask about that, yeah. It's

14:29 different directives, right? So right now, the priority is not to approve APDs right now. They're really focusing on inspection and enforcement issues at this point. So that's a challenge in and

14:42 of itself as well. Which the APDs are the federal permits Applications permit to drill. So are we speaking a lot of jargon? There are so many acronyms. I mean, this industry is absolute acronym

14:53 hell, but then you go to other industries too, like just sit in for one 30 minute conversation and they start being like, nah, we need the STC on the ARO. So what do we got? It's so true. You

15:04 know, like I mean something somewhere else. I have no idea what you're talking about. Right. We still brand people back on everything they don't understand and we'll explain it, so. Even within

15:14 the industry it gets you You've got API and we, it means American Petroleum Institute but sometimes we're referring to the gravity of the oil and sometimes it's a reg. Yeah. Or sometimes it's the

15:27 well number. The API, they're like. Sometimes it's a piece of technology that connects systems as well. That's right. That's right. I was just about to say. See, if we were landscape.

15:36 Somebody. Yeah, yep. Somebody was gonna have to say it. So I heard a lot of different schools there. the rooting fandom because I know all those schools are big time football, basketball, all

15:49 that stuff. We are definitely, Reagan Smith is definitely a house divided. We're about 5050, I think, um, oh, you, LSU, um, I don't think we have anybody out. We have a, uh, we've got

16:01 Trent Stoker, who went to a school we won't name, but. What is it? Texas? You went to Texas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

16:09 I don't know. You got it. That's a 15 yard penalty right there, buddy Yeah.

16:16 Well, you know, they're all good schools. So as you, we would say that now that you have Trent there, you're fully integrated. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So. We're very

16:27 diversified here with our colleges. I'm on the outside looking in a little bit right now since OU in Texas left and. Oh my gosh. Don't the SEC talk around here has been.

16:39 I can imagine Do you guys go to all the games together like the mayhem?

16:45 game. Is that like a tradition? We just have a suite at OSU, which we were at all the games for the home games for OSU, where we would have clients that was all before, you know, 2020. Um,

16:55 well, I, I mean, I haven't been in any games in two years, I guess. I'm headed down to call a station in October. You usually do an AM a year. Yeah.

17:05 Yeah. Well, that's a good month. You go into the Alabama game then. I can't even remember. I, it's funny you said that I cannot remember it. My, my whole family goes and my mother's in charge

17:13 of that. So she just kind of tells me when to show up, which is nice. Wait, Tim, are you, are you coming up in a few weeks to the AM Buffs games? Still trying to work out those logistics.

17:23 Interesting. Interesting. That would be a good game. That's going to be a good one. Well, I, you guys, no reason if you guys to know this, but we just had a, my oldest daughter got married

17:32 this weekend and my entertainment budget may have been blown. So yeah, there was another thing too. You moved a kid to school. Oh, I've got, I've moved two kids into their various uh.

17:44 Apartments are dorms and their universities as well. Wow. That's an expensive week. Oh Yeah, you don't yeah, yeah

17:55 Tim's got three girls. I got a couple of wheat. We know how these sorts of things shake out, but No, that's that's

18:03 all fun. So so with with Trent like, you know, let's pass Trent. Come on I want

18:12 to talk about Trent for a second. So he has listened to every episode, maybe even in some cases a few times. So like introducing him to Chuck Yates was amazing because he's like, he was like fan

18:22 boy in it. He's like, Hey, oh, no way. It's like miss. He's like, mystery Yates. He's like, you can call me Chuck. And he's like, I'm a huge fan, man. I listened to all of your podcasts

18:31 and then gave like a couple examples of things that he liked to and immediately Chuck's in love, right. Oh, yeah, stroke Chuck's ego. But I was just like, that's just Trent, though, right? It

18:42 just made it, you know, smooth delivery, but also. the fact that he listens, right? So Tim, I think, did you guys,

18:50 did you hire him at Navigator? I did. Was he the right after me? He did come in. He came in to replace you. Autumn and Trent worked together for a little bit. Then she left, yeah. And then

19:03 Trent left to go to Oklahoma. He wanted to change a pace and went up there and worked there for, you know, and he's done a couple of his. He's stuck, he's up here Yeah, he's there for now, so.

19:16 The pace is, it's just so much different, right? And for me coming from the country a little bit, it's a nice balance 'cause you still get, you know, mahogany and some of the city things. You

19:25 got a basketball team. Yeah. But, you know, airports in and out, it's a small city feeling airport. It's very friendly. Oklahoma City has been a very good business city for me, also because

19:35 it's like, it's not far from here, right?

19:39 And you can do seven client meetings in one day. Yeah, you can't do that in Houston. No, you can't do it, you can't do it. We have tried to fly in and fly out in Houston. It is exhausting.

19:48 Always, always. Yeah, super friendly city, super easy to get around, absolutely. And it's got everything everybody else have on a smaller scale. I'm kind of partial to Tulsa myself, but I grew

20:00 up in Tulsa, so I can commiserate

20:06 with you, Tim. It's a beautiful country up there, for sure. It is. There's a certain spot where you leave the flatlands of Oklahoma City and enter the hills of Tulsa, and that's when things

20:15 start getting pretty. Yeah, I mean, the way I would probably look at it is, okay, see, it's a better business town. I'd probably rather live in Tulsa, if given the choice of either one, like

20:27 if I had to work from home, right? But for sure, I go to Oklahoma City, it's business. At Tulsa, there's even just less business opportunities, right? A lot of the biggest companies just

20:35 simply are there. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Tulsa's lost a lot of companies over the years.

20:41 WPX was a huge employer, right? So for that to go, okay, see, it's like, I mean, that, you know, very long commutes for some people or just finding different jobs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I

20:51 guess that's just the name of this industry, right, Tim? Yes, that's the way that acquisitions have happened forever. So obviously, we've talked a lot about Oklahoma, but I want to expand it

21:01 out. So you guys are doing work outside the state of Oklahoma. Oh, yeah. So I mean, obviously we've got

21:09 helium production in Arizona and on Navajo land and all kinds of things like that. So I'm kind of wondering, you mentioned something earlier, Monica, I think it was, you said wind, pipelines,

21:20 all kinds of stuff. So what's - ESG, carbon's question. ESG, ESG. So I'm curious - It's coming hot. It's coming hot to tell you. I'm with you. But I want to just first go over as a land and

21:32 consulting company, what's different about, say, permitting a well. in on it, let's just go with it. Some Indian reservation, you can name one if you want, versus a windmill on the same

21:45 location. What's it, what does that like pivoting? Is it different? Is it the same? I mean, there's no down hole, Scott does a lot of down hole engineering for on the BLM permitting side. So

21:59 actually the drilling programs and that type of thing. So obviously that goes away for those types of permits, but then you've got other engineering that comes into play with wind and above ground

22:11 facilities. So a lot of it on our end is very similar. I'll tell you what really affects those types of projects is the politics. It depends on where you're on the country and what they like. What

22:23 kind of energy do they like? So sometimes wind is harder to get people to get excited about. And sometimes oil and gas is harder to get, you

22:34 know, especially with the tribes It just kind of depends on what. their interest is. I mean, it's their land, so they're the land owner. And what they're interested in is what's going to happen.

22:45 So usually, like right now, we're doing a lot of tribal projects where we're working with the tribes on their behalf. We've historically been more on the operator developer side, so which is very

22:60 exciting to be on the tribal side where they're doing initiating their own projects. Those actually are more streamlined honestly because it's their project. They want it. There's a lot more buy-in

23:13 than representing someone and trying to sell the project to the tribes. It's a lot of exciting things going on. We're actually heavily in broadband right now.

23:27 Really, if you think about it, every project requires citing, every project requires permits. Everything has to go through environmental, archaeology reviews. So on our end, it changes a little

23:40 bit, but not drastically, honestly. Like I said, it's all the same rules. They're just applied differently. Yeah. And depending on your app. So you said something there I just wanna dig into.

23:51 So in some cases, obviously we're all familiar with a big company coming in and saying, Hey, we've got a location here. We'd like to drill, get the support of the Indian tribe or their BLM Bureau

24:04 of Land Management or whoever it is. But you're saying, so some of the tribes might be forming their own companies to create a solar array or just put in their own windmill. That's having a lot

24:17 across the country right now. They are in their oil and gas companies. They, yeah. Business development corporations where they're doing all kinds of different things. Partnering with oil and gas

24:26 companies is a big one. There's a lot of energy feasibility studies being done right now on using natural gas to power basically the. They're looking for energy sovereignty where they can get off

24:39 the grid. So powering tribal complexes. I mean, we're working on a lot of really cool and exciting, innovative things that tribes are doing. Municipalities are doing with different, basically

24:54 what we're seeing more is an assessment of all natural resources and how they can all kind of work together to create energy sovereignty or independence And then also economic development for the

25:08 tribes, so. Yeah, you remember Navajo Nation, Tim? We did some business with those guys. Oh, that's right, yeah, yeah. Navigator. Yeah. That was pretty much surrogate, right? We did that

25:18 through. I think we did, no, I think we did it directly, but there was a conversation around, all right, can we work with these guys because they're all white, right? Oh, yeah, there was a.

25:29 It was a real conversation, but I think we just built the relationship, right? There was enough comfort. That's part of it, right? I mean, building the racing ships, building the trust, you

25:39 know, and showing that you're there to help them and you have a vested interest in it as well. So, you know, it goes a long way. Well, and I think, I mean, we've been around for 15 years now,

25:51 we've worked with most of these tribes on oil and gas projects. So, you know, we already have a relationship basis there

26:00 that is easy for them to kind of accept and pivot into other things. When, I mean, Scott worked on a big beef processing facility for the last year, I mean, so. Talk about getting out of your

26:13 house.

26:15 That's funny. So, speaking of pivoting, I think we can pivot real quick. Tim, when was the last time I did an episode actually here? Like, I did a couple in somebody else's basement in the

26:29 Northeast. Two different basements up there.

26:35 Yeah, there may have been like a car down town, the Brown Palace member of the Brown Palace. And now finally, finally back in the comfort of my own home. Well, I saw you late when you just, you

26:44 laid back just a second for those who are not or listening, you know, Jeremy laid back and just reminded me of the last episode where he's, he did the episode from a bean bag in Chuck, in Chuck

26:54 Yates house and just laid back on the bean bag in the middle of the show. So yeah, I was thinking about that when you did that, of course, I'm used to seeing the homage to Boston sports behind you,

27:04 still, so. Yes, yes, we have it. We have it here, including one of my favorite Boston sports athletes, the pride of Oklahoma State. Marcus Smart. There you go. He's got paid. And club

27:17 intensity. Of course. And that's called pandering. I know he just signed a huge contract extension to him. I'm happy for him. I remember talking to Corey Scott when they drafted him and they

27:28 picked him like pretty high and he's like all I can say is like that kid will give you everything he has every And that's all you like, that's all you really care about, right? I mean, not

27:37 everyone's going to be Kevin Durant out of the drive a little bit too. I mean, yeah, to somebody, somebody score at him or some, but you like that. You like that fire. Yeah, absolutely. But

27:49 now he's a stud. Yeah, it's great. He's a he's a flower man product down in Texas. Flower Mount, Texas. Yeah. Does that Dallas area? Yep. Just a guess. It's a 50 50, right?

28:06 I think I do is from there.

28:09 So, so talk to me a little bit about nape. I want to I want to talk a little bit about nape. We're both of you there. Was it just you, Scott? And I guess just to preface it, like it was it was

28:18 good for me because I didn't feel rushed into different conversations on the flip side. I don't know, man, it was very light sparsely attended. I don't know if that's still a COVID thing. If it's

28:29 the market being where it's at or if we're now even shifting to more I don't know, you know, quick hitter digital or even like energy tech night type things that's just in and out. I don't know,

28:40 but I'm curious what you thought from a business interaction standpoint. No, exactly. I think

28:48 one of the key takeaways I came from was you're talking to the key players. A lot and historically it would be a land manager and five land tax and, you know, 17 geologists and, you know, just

29:05 the companies brought a lot of people. I think in this show, it was more of the decision makers and the people that really wanted to be there. So that's one takeaway. I did find myself engaging in

29:19 a lot more meaningful conversations. That sounds like you did as well.

29:25 And the parties were not, you know, typically you go to these parties and they're just crazy jam packed people and now it was actually. you know, kind of sparse at the parties, you could actually

29:38 move and kind of talk, but you know, I don't know, I'm with you. I don't know if it was a COVID thing or an industry. I was shocked to see that they had generally, when they serve lunch, it's

29:56 generally upstairs. Right. And this time it was on the floor. Oh, I didn't know that, I didn't even know that. Wow It was crazy, but yeah, I

30:07 think,

30:09 you know, I've seen it where it was 18, 000, 20, 000 people, and now I've seen it where it was 2, 500, I've heard 3, 500 registered, so yeah, so huge difference, but anyway, yeah,

30:24 nape

30:27 was good, I don't know if you go to the Hilton Bar at all, have you been there before? The Hilton Bar at night? Yeah, sure, I mean.

30:34 Did you go this time? I mean, it was, they didn't even have the next year. I didn't end up going at night. I went to the wildcatters thing. I went to the opportune thing, which is fun. EAG and

30:42 Thought Trace had an awesome event at the Grove. The Grove is always so nice. Yeah, the Grove is nice. And the grotto, I think, for the next night. And the wildcatters was very on brand with

30:51 their, like, kind of outdoor fun, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So everybody's sweating, you know. I mean, pizza. I took the tunnel or the overhead walkways, as much as I could Absolutely, I

31:04 was looking through there. It's so stifling, in a suit, and oh my gosh, yeah, it was - I didn't even bother with a suit this time. It was too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think anybody

31:15 will hold it against you either. No, all right, I agreed, agreed, agreed, yeah. So remember, way back in the day, summer nape was always the small one. Yeah. And winter was the big one.

31:25 And I know this one's really kind of the first one where it was being promoted, hey, we're all back in person, but you think it's still, could have been muted just because it was the summer nape

31:33 and not the. Well, and we, so I didn't go to NAEP. This, it fell right when my kids were starting school. So it didn't work out. So Trent and Scott and Blaine Housh went for us. But, you know,

31:45 they didn't announce February NAEP. It was nowhere on the website. We didn't even think they were having it. They kept calling this NAEP summit. So we were like, well, we gotta go because it's

31:54 not really summer NAEP. We thought it was NAEP. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then the NAEP Scott, you like walked in on Friday and you were like, it's up on the website February NAEP. And we were

32:05 like, oh, okay, so. There was a recap email that said, Sign up for, you know, winter NAEP. And I'm like, I thought that you were listening. You're like, I just did it, so. Yeah, we kind

32:18 of run the impression that NAEP's, this is the new NAEP now. Just one, and it's gonna be an office. I think it was confusing. So - It was confusing. And that may account for some of the

32:27 attendance where businesses didn't know, you know, what. this was really, if it was summer nape, if it was nape summit, if, you know, if they were going to have an opportunity in Friday,

32:37 February, so Too hot nape, maybe. Well, I was like, if this is nape and it's August and Euston.

32:46 August and Euston, that's just, that's a, that's a torture thing. I already live in August in Oklahoma City, and that's, that's hot enough for me. Yeah, good friend of mine, Dwayne Purvis,

32:57 he does, he's got his own consultancy, but he always writes, reports on various shows he went to. And he was commenting that while he felt it was under attended, he said, you know, a lot of

33:11 companies by policy were simply the run up, the run up of COVID in the two weeks prior just spooked enough of them that they just really cut everybody out. So I think that it probably would have

33:23 been double the attendance had, you know, the quick run up

33:29 I mean, even for a place that's militantly, you know, don't tell me what not to do as we are around here.

33:38 I think it's still spooked enough people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I would agree with that. In fact, I spoke to a gentleman at Devon and it was just he and someone else and, you know, they

33:51 were a week prior to they weren't going And then they got the call that they were going to set up the booth and everything. So, yeah, it's, it was hit and missed probably because of that. So,

34:06 Tim, we were talking before the show for when we do this, the wildcatters, they take like a screenshot and they kind of smoosh it together or they shrink each of us for the recording. That's what

34:15 it is. Right. Yeah. So you guys need to get real close together so that they can do a quick screenshot. Ready?

34:22 They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. Maybe they'll do four. I don't want to talk, what does this, I see the gusher behind you here. So what is that behind you guys? What's going on

34:31 there? So we have our own bar in the office. Wow. All the blowout preventer. This is the logo of the bar. Yeah, I can see it. The blowout preventer. Nice. So, you know, we work with a lot

34:45 of federal agencies, right? So they can be frustrating. That's amazing. That's well branded. Yes. So that's a lot of preventer Can we get, we should get that on a hat. Yeah. That would be

34:59 cool, right? That would be good, yes. Send that to your clients with like a bottle of whiskey or something like that for the holidays. There you go.

35:09 Yeah, so I guess before we jump, one of the questions we always like to ask people, and maybe you saw this and sort of the prep was, can you think of a time where you were part of a really

35:18 embarrassing or silly presentation, 'cause, you know, in a meeting, Tim and I sort of started this podcast based on him seeing somebody trip very slowly over a computer cord in a meeting and be

35:31 sitting down in a chair and like my feet flying up in the air when I'm at BHP building in an important setting, right? So I'm just curious if you guys have had anything that that you're like, we

35:40 were actually brainstorming this yesterday and I, I am a clutch. So I have a few and it's got to witness them all with, yeah. And I would say the whole story is embarrassing And not just the fall,

35:55 but so Scott and I got stuck. We were doing a saltwater disposal permit is how it started at the corporation commission. And this is back in 2009. So we had only been practicing attorneys for three

36:08 and a half years, four years. And we're not litigators by any search of imagination. If anyone wants to sue anybody that don't call us, that's not what we do.

36:18 But somehow the saltwater disposal permit became contentious. and went all the way through a full-blown trial at the Corporation Commission. So we were up against.

36:33 Very astute attorneys. Yes, one of the top, if you work in Oklahoma, you know, there's only about the 12 renowned Corporation Commission attorneys. We were up against one of them. It's

36:45 represented a very large company at the time. We represented a very small company at the time. We did not know what we were doing And so pretty much the whole trial was a lot of

36:59 crazy redirect questionings and we just had to go on the fly. But in the middle of after I had, I think cross-examined someone, I was coming back behind the counselor's tables and there was a

37:13 briefcase there that I did not see. And I completely wiped out and it was captured by the court reporter, like my whole - Nice In the transcript. It's in the transcript. falling and everyone would

37:26 be like, Oh my God. And the judge says something and it's all in the transcript that then had to be, this transcript was used multiple times in meetings and it kept coming up. And it was the story

37:39 that never ended, so yeah. When you think about like the artists that draws the scene of the courtroom, right? Yes, I could've been in one of those. They really should've just done that. That

37:48 would've been absolutely priceless. And it was not a graceful fall It was like papers and, you know. Look out of a movie. Yeah, they never are. So Scott, if you wanted to do a podcast, it

37:59 could be in the lawyer's side, tripping over the briefcase. Yeah, tripping over the briefcase, okay. Slipping on top of the briefcase or something like that. Yeah, the particular instant that I

38:09 was talking about, we had the guy, I wasn't even given the presentation. I was at the end of the table laughing, but he tripped over the laptop and the laptop moved like six feet on the table but

38:21 he fell in slow motion it was one of those deals where You knew he was gonna fall, but it was gonna take a while. Yeah, yeah. And he was maybe 10 feet past where he started the trip before he went

38:32 down. One of the - I had a bad fall at one of the very last BLM sales that was held in person. Where were you in? That would have been in Mexico, right? In New Mexico, right? In Santa Fe.

38:43 We're in Santa Fe at a hotel. It was in like a hotel bar room. And I got up to go get some papers they had up at the front. It was like the sale notice or something And I basically tripped over the

38:53 electoral court that was tied to the projector that had all the sale stuff running that everybody was watching. And it basically took out the whole thing. So I have a few and they're always really

39:07 public. There's always a lot of people around, you know. They're not. You never just tripped in her house when you're just walking around. I do remember like I started bleeding during the sale.

39:17 So yeah, I'm a klutz, but There's a place in New Mexico that I really. that I really liked too, a Santa Fe hotel. I wonder if it was that. What place was your conference at? I can't remember

39:31 why we got moved to that ballroom. It wasn't a fancy spot. No, it was like a high ed or a - Easily stayed at the end of the on the side. Now Jennifer and I attended the very last sale that was in

39:41 person sale that was held in Reno. And it was actually, we had to be evacuated because of demonstrators, protesters had broken into the hotel and they evacuated the ballroom for the sale. This was

39:55 in Reno for the Nevada sale. And we ended up being relocated to kind of a smaller conference room for the sale, but that was pretty crazy. So. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I'm gonna, Tim,

40:10 the next time we do a podcast, I'm gonna remember to bring up the name. But the one plug I wanted to give, if you go a little bit north of Santa Fe and kind of drive to this town that's called like

40:19 Ranch, Chimayo or Rancho Chimayo it's as if You're like driving through the Moon you know it's sort of like regular world and then you're on these back roads through the moon like archaeologists

40:30 geologists are probably in heaven right there you come out the other side there's like towns but it's like wow this is just a spot on Earth it's barren nothing here that yup super neat but two guys

40:41 you know you've got I mean am I hesitate to do this because this could take the whole podcast but you got your fingers in a lot of things if someone wanted to get in touch with you you know for I

40:52 dunno Regan Smith land Scout whatever what what how how they get reach you guys

41:00 the best you want to give your email to our our our email address is so mine would be s st John S S T J O H N at Reagan Smith Dot Com It's Best Way to get find US on Linkedin Linkedin Linkedin are low

41:16 numbers four zero five two eight six nine three two thick Yeah I Mean Well Whatever it is, we'll get you to the right place, so. No, it's fantastic. You guys have a valuable position here. It's

41:28 very niche and I think I have an appreciation for starting off with sort of the consulting and working in a certain route and realizing you could use technology to continue to die fast and die fast.

41:38 Yeah, we're all about being efficient, whatever we can do to be more efficient and serve our clients faster, so. No, that's fantastic. Well, thank you guys for coming on at TOTB and we'll see

41:49 you next time in OKC Okay, thanks for having us. Thank you guys.