What The Funk?

0:01 We got the

0:27 SORWSHCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR though we're here to talk about Roosh.

0:35 If you plan a user conference in Las Vegas, you've got to have a plan in place like, okay, all these guys are going to show up and only half of them are ever going to make it to any of the meetings.

0:49 What's the plan there? Yeah, content. Content's got to be purposeful, meaningful content where you can do both. There's plenty of time to play and plenty of time I think to participate in in

1:01 meaningful sessions and that means quorum is not doing all the presenting because quorum presenting is boring, right? It's it's industry speakers and customers that you know have have important

1:10 things to say to their their peers. I remember SPE had their conference there one year years and years ago and I talked to someone from SPE and I don't know if this is their official statement but

1:20 they basically said yeah we're not ever doing that again. You know they're 12, 000 people show up and you got 2, 000 people on the floor show floor you know. Yeah yeah no you look we've had a lot

1:30 of luck I think you know don't mean to jump right into that but but we've you know I think had a good a good you know make sure of both content you know whether it's whether it's actual end users

1:43 talking about products and what they'd like to see them and how they'd like to see them evolve or executives talking about industry trends that are important to them and hearing from their peers on

1:52 how they're thinking about certain things like we've had a great great mix of both content and fun. You're in Vegas you know people Wanna do fun things, go to shows. I mean, there's so many

1:60 different options in Vegas now from, from airplanes to golf, to race cars to, you know, you, you name it. There's, there's a lot of fun to do. You got to make time for both. The raiders. The

2:10 raiders. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. Pat's a plan out there this year. Josh McDaniel's is the coach. We're talking about maybe a group trip, a bunch of old New England guys go out to Vegas for the

2:20 weekend and go to that dark star or whatever they call it, that spaceship that they got out of a stadium. Um, have you guys done the quorum conference in Vegas? Uh, traditionally, is this, is

2:30 this what you do? Yeah, look, historically we've been, uh, really all over, honestly, it's just that at some point the conference became so big, um, that, that the easiest place from, uh,

2:42 you know, kind of hosting the, the number of people that were hosting from a logistics standpoint, et cetera, it's just the easiest place to do it was Vegas. And so we have, uh, you know, we

2:50 used to go like Vegas one year, then it'd be like Nashville, then San Diego, then Antonio, and, and then back to Vegas. And every time we go to Vegas, the customers kept saying, Go back to

2:59 Vegas next year. Go back to Vegas next year. So,

3:04 yeah. That makes sense. Okay, we skipped some of our normal formalities with the, hey, tell us about RUSCH, you know, background. How did you get into the business and so on? So let's go

3:14 through a little bio on you if you can kind of put in your own words. And then I'm sure Jeremy will jump in with some tidbits. Oh yeah. Yeah, look, I love that we jumped right into it. First of

3:26 all, I should say thanks for having me And I appreciate the time this morning. I gotta admit, you know, you guys scheduled this for April Fool's Day, so I figured maybe we'd go up and I'd be the

3:36 only one here and you guys were like, Yeah, right, I'm not interested. I thought we sent you the link a little late, so it might've felt like that. I was like, yeah, I knew this wasn't gonna

3:46 happen. No, yeah, so thanks for having me, glad to be here and excited to get to know you guys as well. Look, my, I guess, background quick story You know, I'm the son of Iranian immigrants.

3:58 led religious persecution to come to the US around the time of the revolution. I was born abroad, but came to the US by the time I was two. Made it to Texas before I was five. Spent my elementary,

4:12 middle, and high school, really in the same sort of school path and the same group of kids in Round Rock Texas,, right outside of Austin. Living in Austin today, still close friends with a lot

4:23 of those guys and girls that I grew up with And yeah, I mean, that's sort of, that's sort of how I think I ended up in Texas. I love this place. I lived in Houston for a while, have lived in

4:36 other cities in New York, Chicago, and could not wait to get back to Austin. I've been back in Austin for about 10 years and my extended family, my mom, my brother, sister, and so on and so

4:49 forth, cousins all live here. And so yeah, this is home

4:54 So I wanna get into, so you grew up in Texas. and went to high school there, tight-knit community, round rock, just outside of Austin. And then you went to Columbia, right? New York City.

5:06 What? Great school, obviously, Ivy League. What prompted you to go there? Best school you went to? You wanted to go to the Northeast. It was a priority in your family to go to the best school

5:16 you got into. Like, what was it? Yeah. You know, no, I had no idea I was gonna go to Columbia. I played soccer growing up. Soccer was really the only thing I cared about And to my parents,

5:26 you know, they didn't really care about the soccer. They cared about, you know, good grades and academics. And coming from a Persian family, it was like, you know, you're either gonna be a

5:34 doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. And I wasn't really sort of interested in any of those, although I thought, okay, maybe I'd be a doctor, but for all the wrong reasons. And so I played soccer.

5:45 And ultimately it wasn't until late in high school where, you know, started getting recruited by Columbia. i was looking at a handful of other schools across the country that the problem with

5:55 soccer in Texas there's only one D one school in Texas it's SM You and So if I wanted to play Diwan and in SM You Unfortunately wasn't interested and so I was looking looking across the country and in

6:08 in Columbia came calling you and I was like how you know my parents are like where you you need to take that seriously and and I was like Okay I went on a visit to to the campus that an official visit

6:21 fell in love immediately with with the city the school the players the teammates there you know that we're going to be there the following year I had a I had a you know just an incredible recruiting

6:33 visit and I came back Oman and that was it to my parents that that that's where I was going to go and there they were happy because you know I was looking at at other schools really for the for the

6:42 soccer first and and this was really more of a a joint decision saw Ivy League Athletics I Mean i Was I Don't Brag when I was being recruited by one of the Ivy League schools for football back in the

6:55 day Look I didn't I didn't deserve to be but it was

7:01 but you know they they didn't have athletic scholarships and so I was going to have you know they they have other ways of find him you know help for you and everything but as that's where I where I

7:10 turned off the okay whenever mind if you're not paying the packet up over me to play I'm I'm A I'm going to go somewhere else but what was it like Ivy League athletics may be compared to I dunno with

7:22 with if you're if you're into soccer like a C C type of Athletics Yeah well okay so so I Guess you Know i guess to to answer your first sort of question for me mate Ivy Leagues expensive and my my

7:36 family didn't grow up with know when my parents fled Iran they had they had everything they were retired and aid literally moved here with nothing and started their lives over with a two year old and

7:46 so like you know money wasn't really a thing that we we had growing up And so paying for school is not gonna be an option. I was gonna figure out how to do it myself or get some money. And so look,

7:56 in the Ivy League there's grants that are provided that covered the majority of my four years there. That would not have been something I would have chosen to do unless that was an option. And

8:08 so that's sort of how not an athletic scholarship, but certainly the grants enabled me to be able to go and play that for four years Man, Columbia's athletic fields are a good 25-minute bus ride

8:20 away from campus. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, 'cause Columbia's in the upper West side, right on the sort of - It's Harlem. It's a whole highway. It can be considered Harlem,

8:31 I think technically starts at 125th Street, but it's a blurred area. I haven't actually been back in a good five, six, seven years, and I'm sure it's changed quite a bit, but - True Um, you

8:42 know, it's, it's, uh, it's - Yeah, so like the schedule of a student athlete

8:49 I mean, talk about a slap in the face. Like high school was a piece of cake for me. You know, getting good grades was not a hard thing. I did, you know, well enough in school. I had a good GPA,

8:58 the SATs were, you know, I think the math side of it was a piece of cake. I damn near ace the math side of the SAT and then the verbal side, maybe not so great. But enough combined to get into,

9:10 you know, to get into Columbia. But again, like slap in the face academics freshman year. It's like, wait, what do you mean? Like you get to campus and soccer is the same season And it's

9:19 football. So you're there before school starts, you're in preseason. You hit the full practice every day, games kicking in, sometimes midweek games for soccer, right? And before I knew it, I

9:30 was struggling academically, right? And so it was like, OK, I don't think I actually know how to study. I don't think I actually know how to learn properly, you know? And so I had to sort of,

9:41 one, get some help from teammates who came from - actually, I had teammates who came from backgrounds where their schools, They're high school. was harder for them than Columbia. Like, they were

9:53 like, oh man, this is like, yeah, I have all the tools, I have all the skills I need to ace sort of what I'm doing here. And that was a, not no offense to the

10:03 upbringing I had, but in the schooling that I had, is just a different ballgame. So I say that to say, man, the schedule of a student athlete coming in at 18 years old, trying to balance school

10:17 And you're a competitor, it's the only reason you got into playing and playing college. So you're gonna put blood, sweat, and tears into your sport craft. It was pretty intense. We were

10:31 competitive. I thought, I was fortunate enough to play all four years. I started all four years, I think. I think it was the second game of the season where I got some playing time by the third

10:42 game. I was starting and was fortunate to get kind of playing time, but.

10:49 I think back to that schedule that I had to carry and I think I think learning how to do that like figuring out how to manage my time had to be committed to both academics and and the thing that I

11:01 loved the most which was was soccer you know that that kind of thing set the path for me for the rest of my life to be able to like if you can handle that sort of schedule and do well on both sides

11:11 and you know that that's a that's a skill you can carry forward and in anything you do man this is there's a lot of relatable stuff here for for me having gone to Brandeis which was very similar in

11:22 terms of there were kids who went to high schools in in New York and New Jersey and Chicago that prep them for that and they were like they came in and they were in Spanish too and they're immediately

11:35 like oh this is too easy I need to go to Spanish three grade I'm like Oh Man I just took Spanish for four years and I need to be in Spanish one like I'm not ready to say just a different caliber of

11:45 one of student in Education and I talked about this on this pod before Tim Two you realize, and I'm sure Suresh did too, like these guys have a great work ethic, they're smart, that all these

11:54 things, like you gotta step up your game just to stay with them. But you know, like Yerush, I didn't have, I wasn't challenged in high school academically. Maybe one course here and there, I'd

12:07 have to put a little bit of effort into, but for the most part, I was able to, you know, put in minimal effort and get through. You know, and I, you know, did well on tests and everything,

12:17 but the, when I got to school, the AM, suddenly it was like, yeah, I gotta go teach myself how to study 'cause I just had no study skills. I did not know how to go do it. You know, I just

12:30 figured to sit in there, listen to a lecture and remember the stuff and take the test, but you know, everything changed. It wasn't 'til my junior year that I was like, wait a minute, I now know

12:39 what to do. And it's not that my grades were bad freshman year, sophomore year, it's just they kept improving once I got everything figured out had I gone to one of those prep schools, Jeremy, I

12:49 think it would have been an easier transition Yeah my grades are terrible terrible out of the gate like I was immediately trying to figure out how to catch up cause I wasn't i wasn't used to that I

12:59 was used to being in the top of the class and in a top athlete like I I wanted to do both but like I said you know you then I chased my GP for the next three years making it get back up above a a

13:11 three o by the time i graduated but it wasn't it wasn't easy and and some of those guys were talking about jeremy were the ones that that helped me write some of my teammates who who knew how to do it

13:23 the right way were the ones that sort said looking out the sour going to do it certainly there were still plenty of like you know cramming the night before staying up all night trying to trying to you

13:32 know sit in a library with with dozens of other people who are chewing on sunflower seeds and drinking coke trying to stay awake to get every last bit staying in before that next exam was a little bit

13:44 different when you're doing that on the road too I go on coming back from a from a game or something Yeah Yup Yeah Yeah We we carrying Your Your work and look back down like there weren't laptops

13:57 sounds were late nineties into reality writes like he carried your books and notebooks and by taking notes and writing papers on of by hand like it was crazy Yeah laptops were two thousand dollars

14:10 late nineties prices so it sort of weeded out who had had laptops everybody else had desktops or worked at the library I remember the day when professors when I started A and M in nineteen eighty

14:20 eight we they were talking about you know five ten years from now you're all going to be sitting here with computers you're not going to be you know laptops and I was like Wow and you know that it's

14:30 not even even now you know there's only he is not everybody sitting there in front of a laptop and in class now most of them probably do now or have tablets and things but Yeah it's funny how those

14:42 predictions We still don't have hoverboards for God's sakes. Yeah, we're supposed to have flying cars by 2000. So

14:52 what was your major? Yeah, so I started in pre-med and that lasted a semester.

14:60 Literally lasted a semester. I was like, yeah, this is not gonna work for me. And then I was confused for another year, like not sure what I wanted to do. I mean, I knew that I liked business,

15:09 I was good at math and in Columbia, you know, the only real option there was economics and so I ended up going the economics path and getting an economics degree. And in New York City. So there's

15:20 a few things I wanna, I didn't realize we were gonna talk so much Columbia, but whatever, that's where we are. One, the first thing is, what is it like going to college in a big city like that?

15:30 You know, that was actually something I intentionally did not do because I was such a country bumpkin, growing up and I wanted, I need a little space, right? I still need to be able to park a car

15:39 and I saw what it was like for the kids that went to Boston University where it's like. literally right in the middle of a city. Were there lots of distractions for you? Did you feel like it was a

15:50 positive being in the city because you got everything at your fingertips? What was it like going to college in a huge city? Yeah, man. So like the beautiful thing about New York City, and I

16:00 didn't know this going into it, I was just, I just jumped in, right? I just jumped in like great opportunity, great school in New York City is amazing, let's go. And then like the things that I

16:09 realized that I loved about it is like everybody fits in Like I just got done with high school in Texas where it's like there's this click and that click and like are you and the popular kids are like,

16:18 nobody gives it, like no one cares. It won't be in New York City, nobody cares. Everybody fits in. You got students from all over the world coming there and it's like, you know, a microcosm of

16:27 New York City itself where it's a melting pot of all of that. Like that was one of the things immediately that I was like, man, I can just be myself. That's amazing, right? So like there was,

16:36 there was that aspect. I can't, I don't know that I stepped foot off of campus for like two and a half years. Being in New York City meant nothing to Me I was really on on the Columbia's campus and

16:48 you know which is as beautiful if you never been there it's a beautiful campus upon it again on the upper west side like some of the Ghostbuster films were filmed on campus where you see those of the

16:58 huge library with all the columns and even even inside some of those scenes are from inside the the the Butler Library on the campus but it's a beautiful campus and we had everything we needed right

17:08 there right so you don't need a car right you walk to everywhere you need to go if you happen to need to go you know handful of blocks you can jump in subway and and and again yet everything you

17:18 needed right there on campus or within three or four blocks of campus and so can't like I can't claim that I experienced New York City until later when I realized like me and only got like a year here

17:28 I only got like a year and a half left in the city I haven't you know Haven't been out to you know Wall street I haven't been down like you know times Square statue liberty like started doing some of

17:37 those things in against them all night some of my closest friends My closest friends were from Jersey, and there were a couple of brothers that one was a year older than me, one a year younger than

17:49 me, and their family lived 30 minutes away across the GW Bridge. Man, we spent a lot of time over at their house on Sunday, it's huge Italian family, big Sunday dinners. And so, as starving

18:02 college athletes that were hungry all the time, we would go there to their house and come pick us up, drive us back to Fairland, New Jersey, feed us, and then take us back with just trays and

18:13 trays of food that would last a whole week. Everybody eating it, people taking their hands in there too in the morning, right? Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. It is amazing how different everybody's

18:24 college experience is just because I was at a town that was dominated by the university. If you went to Chipotle, everybody in line with you is a student at the university, and everyone working

18:39 behind a counter is a student So it's like, you don't escape it, you're just immersed. But I'm thinking in New York, you know, you go to a pub and there's nobody from Columbia University in there

18:51 with you or whoever you came in with. It'd be a very different experience. It's interesting though, Tim. Like, we sort of had this community. You know, like all the, whether it was the bars or

19:01 the restaurants or whatever around campus, they were there for the college campus, right? I mean, Columbia is a three, 4, 000 person undergrad or student undergrad, right? So it's not that

19:12 many people. But all of the immediate restaurants that were in that area were there, you know, so like it was actually very similar. I spent time at AM, a lot of my closest friends went to AM.

19:22 You know, you go to whatever dance hall or bar and all of your friends are there. It was the same thing. It was the same thing. How do you venture 10 blocks away? Now it's New York City, you're

19:33 nobody, right? But yeah. Okay, so you graduate, it's 2, 000-ish and you decided to go to Israel. I don't know What You're talking about I had a little bit Yeah Man I know it's interesting I I

19:49 was probably one you know it wasn't sure what I wanted to do I just got done playing soccer for years I felt like I Wanna be done with Soccer I had this dream of being a professional soccer player as

20:02 a kid and and I was just done it at twenty two years old I was done with that and I wasn't ready to just start working and I had this opportunity to to go serve at the Bahai World Center in Haifa

20:13 Israel I had visited with my parents a couple of years prior Beautiful I mean Beautiful you know see a town on the Mediterranean and just just beautiful and and the I do there is like there's people

20:25 from all over the world doing various jobs or roles of of service within the behavioral centers or the administrative center of the Bahai Faith I Dunno if You Gossip know what My Faith is or not but

20:37 but in short it's an independent World religion with its administrative center and spiritual center there and and in Haifa or in Israel and and So I had a chance to go surfer a year and I figured you

20:51 know like I dunno what I want to do let me go let me go you know go there had this experience a lot I love traveling I love going to new places meeting people and so that's that's kind of how that

21:02 came to be really really neat do you have some time I'm still trying to figure out I've never heard of Bahai faith but is it really an offshoot of one of the other religions or what is what is real

21:17 short it's not it's an independent World religion about one hundred and fifty years old so it's like the latest of the of the of the world religions the the kind of fundamental beliefs in the Bahai

21:27 Faith is that all the religions are one they all come from the same God humankind is one all the eternal truths and all the religions like you know treat your neighbor the way you want to be treated

21:37 Integrity

21:40 all of those things are are the same the commonalities and religion are all the same no one none of them teach us to hate right there all to just love and so the Bahai faith believes in that this idea

21:49 of progressive revelation which really just means that religion or spirituality is taught to us through God through messengers prophets and that that are that come from time to time just as like

22:01 students go to Kindergarten first grade dart second grade third grade fourth grade religion similar as humanity becomes more mature spiritually God gives US more revelation and so that's the that's

22:11 the idea but it's all from the same sort of you know the same the same source and I I was raised in the Bahai faith in it at Tommy a lot of really good principles again I got to spend sort of this

22:22 this moment between childhood and adulthood in Haifa Israel where I was really you know had a full year to sort of reflect on what that meant to me like who I wanted to be what what about the Bahai

22:33 faith was going to influence the rest of My Life and How I was going to live My Life You Know Today if I'm being totally honest like you know we don't we're so busy with that with with the three boys

22:45 and we have a fourth living with us as well like we're so busy with our schedules and all the things that we do that they like to my core animal by but but I don't like we don't actually participate

22:54 you know we can week out and a lot of the activities that happened so Yeah I Dunno if that fascinates you we generally don't get religious on the show I just wanted I hadn't really didn't know much

23:04 about it though that but anyway they should act kind of quick summary yeah so now that we're regaling your whole life tales since two thousand it's two thousand and one now right almost two thousand

23:15 and two you've had that somewhat of a spiritual awakening you do then you get the beautiful Mediterranean weather food all that stuff then why you you came back to the U S you go back to Texas and

23:26 Yeah no though the gas will give you the quickest version I I was I had not played soccer long enough where I absolutely missed it and thought I was missing an opportunity in my Youth to go put to put

23:37 you know put up all kind of effort into a soccer career that failed about six to eight months later I went and got back I got fit I was training in Haifa with with a local team there came back to the

23:49 states and my Buddy was already playing in Germany and real quick he is the first ever American head coach in the Bundesliga Pellegrino Matterazzo that's cool he stays there today is a coach of of

24:03 Stuttgart and he was playing in Germany and his brother graduated the year after Me and the two of US started training together and and again I went back to jersey and really kind of live with them

24:13 for a big asset played a bunch of games got sent over to Germany for a handful of trials nothing worked out for me nothing worked out for me and and so you know at that point I felt like I tried like

24:25 I put I put the falcon effort into it when meant to be let's see what's next and and and then nine eleven happened I went to I actually went back to New York City thinking that that I'd You Know

24:37 follow kind of the investment banking path that a lot of my friends had followed, and then not 11 happened, and there was no hiring whatsoever, and ended up finding a job through another one of my

24:48 friends in Houston, Texas. And that job was a cost accounting job at a manufacturing plant for US gypsum company, which She Rock is one of their trade names, right? So they're the largest

25:02 building products manufacturer in the US. They have since been acquired by Kannath. But I became an accountant for two years. When I get to how I got to quorum and I want to gas in two seconds,

25:13 but I became an accountant for two years, sort of was done with that. Like I had, you know, learned what I needed to learn about sort of accounting was getting bored and the opportunity showed up

25:24 in their corporate office in Chicago to be a part of a software implementation overhaul of everything back office to manufacturing the supply chain. It was like, you know, back in. two thousand Oh

25:39 Man I know two thousand and five ish and and ninety thousand like three four and in a move to their corporate Office I became a teammate or team member on this implementation like sixty million bucks

25:54 or ugly business we you know mackenzie bearing point at the time had a bunch of consultancies in there along with with thirty to forty people from from U S G and I that opened my eyes to one software

26:09 and software implementations to the biggest thing I took away I was I was just shocked like I had been out of school for two three years at the time and there was there was consultants coming in from

26:19 bearing point and and the other consultancies who'd also been out of school for two or three years but they were walking into U S gypsum company designing our future designing our processes telling

26:30 our directors best practices and I was like man What have I been doing for two years while you guys have been out there I went to Columbia Damn it Yeah I I just just blew my mind that that in the same

26:43 amount of time they had learned so much and so I you know I ended up at that point I knew that I needed to go fight I want to find asked us you have some company with this massive organization fifteen

26:55 thousand employs so much red tape I know some of my mentors there that gave me opportunities or are fantastic but that was not the place for Me I wanted to work for a small company wanted to make an

27:05 impact I wanted you know I wanted to be driven I wanted results in my career quickly so I was looking for a small company to go work for there was in consulting and you know through through friends

27:17 met met Jason Webster at the time who was a Warm Guy the man you Sound like you should come work for Quorum and only once you know What's warm and and you know a few conversations later in a couple of

27:29 interviews I ended up I ended up coming over decorum as a you know as basically a project manager and and and went through a crash course in some sort of technical skills learning how to build reports

27:42 and DOS and some PL SQL in order to do data conversions I was terrible at it terrible

27:49 luckily you know luckily did enough work for a couple of customers not to get fired and in that sort of set the path for for for near where I am now so then you you ramped up into the kind of the

28:02 sales side of the business but I may let me back up so you're obviously oil and gas was not what you are necessarily aiming at and you are in pretty early a Quorum but and I released after those

28:16 decorum that you join does not look like decorum now there's no doubt about that but that you kind of when you made the move from project management project implementation over to sales Well Yeah but

28:31 what what what makes that move cause that's a that's a a different jump Yeah a lot happened I mean a lot happen to meaning like has two thousand and six is when I started I did you know project

28:42 management sort of implementation services work for about two three years and then I switched into our support organization we're building our upstream practice and so I was asked to I was asked to to

28:54 create the support organization at that point we are everybody did everything like in all the team members we had like one day you go help a customer implement software next day you're taking a

29:03 support call the next day you're doing a demo for a potential new customer so as we were growing I had the moving furniture or moving furniture Yeah yeah totally setting up WIFI whatever it might be

29:15 for it for a customer and and and so I had the fortune of sort of you know having these opportunities to okay let's build a support organization how should it work what are the best practices okay

29:24 like learn how to do it set up a team and then it was like OK now we need a better kind of consulting services organization that just dedicated the upstream business. So then I went and did that for

29:36 a minute. And then we needed a pre-sales group, right? So like I had a handful of people where we all knew, we know the domain really, really well. But we don't have a team dedicated to

29:46 pre-sales or to call them solution engineers, right? Solution architects, the guys that come in, know the business, talk to existing customers, but also demo and talk to potential customers So I

29:57 had the ability to set up that part of the organization and sort of create the beginning of that. And then

30:05 one day, Perry and Lindsey were like, okay, you're gonna be an account executive. And I was like, what? What do you mean? Fancy word for - Fancy word for sales. You're doing sales. Yeah.

30:17 Yeah, and they're like, you're gonna carry a quota and here's some of your accounts. And I was like, hey, yeah, sure is a good idea. I'm not like, not too sure I really enjoyed doing demos.

30:27 Like, I actually really enjoyed - favorite things is walking to a room full of people who don't know who in the world you are and are super skeptical and, you know, an hour later walking out where

30:38 you've built a relationship. They appreciate that you come with some expertise and you've kind of opened their eyes to maybe a different way of doing business or managing their business and that's

30:49 one of my, that was one of my favorite things. So I became an account executive where, you know, now it's like, okay, you know, how do I take care of the customers that we have? How do I add a

30:57 couple of customers? I did that for a year, and about the end of that year, I did really, really well in that role, not because I'm good at sales, but because I think I'm, you know, I'm very

31:09 sort of

31:12 sincere in wanting to have strong relationships with people, and I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to do something that isn't right for them, and if I don't know that I'm going to tell

31:22 them that I don't know, and for those reasons, I think, you know, was able to build trusting relationships where we're, you know, good first year in that role, and then this is like 2017, and

31:36 then some of the acquisitions started with Fielding and Wellies, and simultaneously we were trying to take our market dominant land solution that everybody used, right? Chevron, Exxon, BP,

31:50 Conoco. We're like, Okay, that's great. We love this customer base. It is the best land solution in the world, but why can't we expand this to be for everybody? Why does it only have to be for

31:60 the Exxon's and BP's of the world? And so I kind of worked on taking that product, pre-configured down market, in conjunction with acquiring these companies and these cultures around fielding and

32:12 wellies where they had this startup culture. And they had this culture of what I call customer success where the support model is entirely different. It's SaaS software, right? You pay for a

32:22 subscription and we take care of you, right? And that means you're not getting a, you know, a. a bill for a 15-minute phone call that you had to ask a question on how to log in or whatever it

32:33 might be. And so I started building that team with a couple of other folks in building a culture and a structure around that team, again, not me personally, but me and a handful of other folks who

32:48 kind of spearheaded that over the last couple of years, and then that just kind of led into, well, hey, you guys are killing it with selling this on-demand stuff, here's the next challenge And

32:58 before I know it, you know, now I'm running all of US. sales for all of our products, right, both under the kind of, you know, Asserna now, you know, under the quorum footprint, along with

33:11 all of the quorum enterprise product, along with all of our on-demand SaaS solution. So I don't know. So you know, Jeremy, had we stuck with Energy Navigator, we'd be working for Rouge now. You

33:25 know that? or. or I wouldn't have a job and you guys would have taken over. Well, I've been working for us.

33:34 Let me ask you that. What is it like as corn business solution is going from,

33:41 I don't wanna say one product, but a small number of products is suddenly you're getting everything bolted on. You got all these startups joining up. Some not so startups, I mean, energy

33:49 navigator, which was part of a surname when you guys got together. That's not a startup I mean, what's it like suddenly going from one, two, three products to 50,

34:03 what's that like from a sales department? How do you do that? Yeah. Gosh, I mean, my knee-jerk reaction is it's amazing. It's amazing. Why? Because it's a chance for growth for all of us.

34:17 It's like, what if I had to sell land software for my entire career? Like, how meaningful would that be? But then it went from land to OK, back office accounting. to, okay, what happens in the

34:27 field? How does production get accounted for and captured, right? Then how do you plan to develop a field? Then how do you manage a process of staying on budget as you're out there drilling a well,

34:36 right? Like all of these things sort of expand your own domain expertise of what you know about the industry that we serve. And you know, for a sales professional, like one, it can be, oh my God,

34:45 I don't know which one to sell. Like what do I go focus on? Or it can be, let me really be thoughtful in thinking about, okay, who are my accounts? What are they doing? How do these products

34:55 sort of, you know, what are the key value props behind these products? And do those marry to this moment that a customer is doing whatever activity they're doing? It's challenging, you need

35:05 support, right? You need a strong solutions team, a pre-sales team, you need a strong marketing team, you need a strong products team. It's a team effort, sales never gonna do it by ourselves

35:16 because the domain is so large and the expertise. I mean, you guys, like, I don't know, You know, AFE Nav and ValNav and planning space and enter site, like I don't know those products in and

35:27 out. I have a very, very high level understanding of the business purpose they serve. But again, it's a team effort. Then you bring the right folks in to have the conversations. As you hear the

35:38 customer complaining about some pain that they have, you know, you have to be trained to sort of hear what those are and have those conversations and listen, listen, listen

35:49 And, you know, I think, yeah, from that standpoint, like we, like you're talking to me on the first day of the new quarter. And we, you know, usually I would probably have not gotten any

36:02 sleep last night and be erect this morning. And in all reality, man, we just had one of the best quarters that quorum as a company combined, right? Across all of these product sets that we have

36:14 had and what I mean by that is, man, like the momentum's there, the market understands the value bring the bear with both the breath. and the depth of solutions. I mean, you know, at this point,

36:25 at this point, you know, there's some new logos out there for us, but that's not the core of where we're at. We're taking care of our existing customers and then coming back and saying, look,

36:33 yeah, you guys have taken care of us in this area. You know, it's time to partner with you in this other area. That is what is boosting our business right now. And, you know, that vote of

36:44 confidence is the thing that makes me the most proud of delivering the kind of results we just did in Q1.

36:52 That's amazing. So, yeah, you guys have grown rapidly. And one of the things that I've been impressed with by Quorum, let's call it over, you know, the last five years. If you've been there

37:04 for close to 15, you could probably split it up into three different segments. But over the last five years, really the

37:11 exponential growth phase. Can you talk about some of the challenges you have, whether it be egos or personalities or skill sets and bringing in some of these new people into the organization?

37:22 'Cause I would think, you know, from the outside, oh, there's an acquisition. Let's think about how the products fit. Great. You've got technical people that can help with that. How do the

37:30 people fit? How do you navigate that when they had a culture? They thought they were great. Maybe they even felt like they competed against you in some ways and then all of a sudden they're working

37:39 for you. Why do you think that people comfortable with that?

37:43 Yeah, it's culture and it's not thinking the culture that you have already as quorum is the right culture, right? It's being very open-minded to collaborating with these new parts of the company to

37:57 become a new quorum together, right? It's not about, hey, you are now a part of quorum and now we're gonna lead you this way and we're gonna operate this way. I'm here to tell you some of these

38:04 acquisitions have been just momentous in changing the way we operated. Whether it's Wellies, for me, Wellies is one of the big, big ones that just changed the way we did, the way we sold and the

38:18 way we operated internally. It set the groundwork for who we are right now today, the way we serve the upstream business. It's adopting the parts of their culture that make you better, right? And

38:31 you can only do that if you come, you come to these conversations with the demeanor of listening, right? It's like, you gotta come together and say, Hey, we're gonna do this together It happens

38:41 to be, you know, that Asserna got merged or rolled up under quorum. Doesn't mean anything. Like, just because we acquired a company doesn't mean anything, we have to do this together. And if

38:51 we're not gonna do it together, we're gonna end up failing. But again, it takes the trust of, it takes time, right? Like, if I just think about my team and some of the new team members that

39:01 have all of a sudden are working for me instead of their former leaders, you know, like, I need to prove it to them I can't, I can't come into this, into this. relationship saying, hey, here's

39:12 how we're going to do things now. I need to prove it to my new team members that want to trust them. The two, we're in it together that three, I don't know all the answers. Like, you know,

39:21 you're going to know things a lot better than I do, especially in the domain that you've been working on. And so it's, it's that demeanor. Like you talked about ego, Jeremy. And, and for me,

39:30 man, like, you know, it's, it's a battle every day, but like I try not to, there's, there's no ego in what we do. Like it, again, I think maybe that's cause I grew up playing soccer and it's

39:37 a team sport and, you know, you're worthless if your teammates aren't going to, you know, participate with you and deliver it with you and fight with you. Um, and so yeah, I think, I think

39:47 it's, it's, it's a lot of those things that help create this, this new vision. It doesn't have to be the vision that it was, you know, before it has to be a new vision that you created together

39:58 as a result of, of this new company and the new people. Yeah, that's, that's the right attitude And I think it shares shed some light into why you guys have been able to integrate some of those

40:08 acquisitions has to start at the. at the top, so I know you have to run relatively soon. I look at other companies that are struggling, well, it's when you make the little acquisition, it's one

40:20 thing, the big company gobbles a small thing, but when I got to think when a Surna came in, there's a point there where there's a real risk of, this could fall apart. This could be where we're

40:34 now just chasing revenue as opposed to really building something And I admire the attitude to be able to pull that together. I haven't heard anybody complaining or mass ejections from the company.

40:46 People just take off. I think it's been a great marriage for something that looked, I mean, at least initially, to me it's like, whoa, that seems like an interesting merger. I understand why it

40:57 took place, but that was an interesting part where it could have really been a moment of this is where we grow from here or this is pretty much we're stagnating. I look at other companies, I'm not

41:10 gonna name them. I look at other companies that made these acquisitions. Jeremy and I talked about them on Wednesday. It's a struggle when they start to get too many bolted on to really capture

41:23 that culture and grow. Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that's different, and look, we learned a lot from watching other people fail at doing similar things, right? And we capitalized some of our

41:34 success in the last five, 10 years based on those companies failing And we're not gonna sit here and be, you know, stagnant or happy with where we've gotten. We have a lot to deliver still. We

41:45 have a lot of work to do to really deliver the full value of an integrated set of products. One thing that's different about us is we're not, we're not acquiring market share. Like, I'm not going

41:55 and buying a bunch of products I already have just to get more customers, right? Look, that's not entirely like not 100 accurate, right? But for the most part, we're looking for synergies.

42:05 We're looking to expand the overall breadth that delivers an integrated value to the customer and so I think that's where it's also a little bit different. Yeah, Landox. I mean, you guys have kind

42:19 of figured out with the model of OGSIS and Landox how to segment out the market more where I felt like you guys were playing more upmarket, especially on the land side, right? Now you really have

42:29 your hooks kind of across the industry and there's nobody too small or too big, which is fascinating. I mean, I've had companies that are clients of yours show me quorum on demand with a sense of

42:40 pride. I've never seen people show an ERP system with some pride. And I think in his case, it's got the right analytics. It's not that expensive and it works for him. So he's happy, right? And

42:50 I'm like, well, that's interesting. People usually just shit on their ERP systems. So this is a 60 well company, like I said, right? I mean, but I know you guys are going to have the condos

42:59 and exons and BP's out in Vegas too. Tim, I know you do have to run, but I got to get this. I'm going to stay on so I like this. You got it. Suresh, you must have thought about this. Can you

43:10 tell us a story about your fail, a team fail in a sales meeting, something like that?

43:17 Yeah, look. We'd love to hear you falling on your face at a client or something, or when you're doing pre-sales, any good story would be great. Yeah, I'm gonna disappoint you guys, not 'cause I

43:28 haven't failed a lot, but because it's kind of bland. Like what I realized now, again, I was not a sales professional I never had this aspiration to be good at sales. And so I've sort of learned

43:39 as I have gone along, including my first ever demo when I was a pre-solutions guy, right? Which no one taught me how to demo. No one taught me what I'd

43:48 like the fundamentals. No one taught me that you need to have a discovery call and hone in on areas, right? So I would just show up and throw up and hope something like this, something stuck

43:56 somewhere. And so when I look back to some of those, I'm just embarrassed by how we used to go about delivering presentations. But, I mean, the thing is,

44:10 it's reinforced because every once in a while, that works. Yeah, right. Yeah, so you get reinforced. Yeah, I get reinforced. I don't need to prep. We don't need to discover a call. I can do

44:20 it without that. Yeah. You know, the same as the other company on your base and you're good. Yeah. All right. Hey, sorry. I've never, I never left one of these before, but you and Jeremy

44:29 keep going. I got to run. You literally did this with Jose's episode last week. So anyways, Tim, have a good meeting and we'll talk to you soon. Hey, yeah, so Rish, we'll grab another couple,

44:39 couple minutes here if you don't mind. I'm curious from your seat where you see your organization going at this point. You're kind of mid career. You've settled into a leadership role there. The

44:52 company's gotten really big. Do you see this as quorum will continue to grow? Can you continue to acquire? And does there come a point where it's, it's something like going public as a step. We

45:04 don't see a lot of energy tech companies do that, but I think we could see in various take that route. You guys are sort of in the same ballpark from a revenue client based standpoint. I'm curious

45:12 from your seat, where you think this whole thing is heading. Yeah, I mean, again, I hope not to disappoint you with my answer here.

45:23 Jeremy, I have no earthly idea like where we could end up certainly going, you know, publics, a possibility, certainly getting acquired, certainly continuing to acquire. But like right now,

45:35 our

45:38 focus is heads down, we just merge a bunch of companies and we have a lot of value to deliver. And so, you know, I think, for me, especially in

45:47 my role in my seat, you know, I went from in

45:52 2020, gosh, was it 2020? Yeah. 2019, just doing the inside sales team. 2020, taking over the enterprise team and going And then 2021, really kind of getting comfortable with the enterprise

46:05 team. To then in 2022, adding the entire, a certain team to

46:12 the mix and the set of products as well and putting all of that, that bookings target, revenue target, right, on our shoulders for, it's like, I, if I'm worried about what our end game is, and

46:23 I'm not focused on what we're doing right now. And so, I think, again, I know that Jean and Lindsey and Tyson and Paul are, you know, along with Tomar, having these conversations and always

46:35 sort of thinking about what the options are. For me, it's like, I don't mean to say that it's a waste of time, but it's a distraction, right? Like, I have to focus on the job at hand. And I've

46:45 been blessed at Quorum in the sense of, you know, my career has grown. I've gotten new opportunities every couple of years to continue to be challenged and expand what I'm doing. And as long as

46:55 I'm growing, and as long as I'm being challenged in those ways, right, it's fun Like, yeah. I have been impressed with the with the people a Quorum the the long time folks Jason Webster's and

47:06 spirit are a client of mine right now and he's a really impressive guy I think I probably made some judgments about you guys just lump anyone with while they're just like another PI to write they're

47:16 going in the same direction but you guys have done some things that I think Picchu was was unable to do in terms of let's centralize on a single platform right let's that kind of segment of the market

47:27 in a few different ways and I think that's kind of been partier success when I was a W it was like we have Quorum Quorum as the the big competitor or we're going to go and kill those guys and

47:36 ultimately I was like you know there's a lot of similarities starting with the Midstream Tech company

47:43 excuse me branching into upstream figuring out sort of how you fit in the market now they're at that point where they're going to start acquiring things and see where they fit right but you guys

47:54 reacted nicely to hey Here's a new competitor what do we have to do what are the messages at speed Performance cloud Enterprise whatever it is and very quickly the narrative shifted from maybe W's got

48:07 the lead to you should check out Quorum on demand so Kudos to you guys for Sorta taking the bull by the horns and not being complacent resting on your laurels you know I think that speaks to the

48:18 leadership over there and I'm curious what advice you'd have for for yourself like like when you just started at a company like Quorum like what would you do differently what do you say you did while

48:29 like let me give you an example melt wilcoxon of red and various talked about this and he said the number one thing he would go back and tell himself that he tells people now is asked for more help

48:40 don't try to do it all yourself especially at a big company so I'm curious kind of what you would do if you were to look back and say alright twenty seven year old suresh this is what you should do to

48:50 make a mark at this company Yeah can I can I am going to answer that question how can I speak to some of the comments you made a second go around around are not resting and not being complacent in in

49:02 who we are today look I think I sorry I'll I'll just I'll be quick on this but I think it's it's important to me and I'm passionate about it is in I and I keep going back to this parallel of sports

49:12 where like you have to be driven to be the best version of your self you compete with yourself every single day and if you're not being reflective you have no chance of getting a re a thing or getting

49:26 better it's funny to me when we have competitors out there whose entire mission in life is to be a competitor of one particular company I can't stand it it's the wrong it's the wrong approach for your

49:36 customers in my Humble opinion I Like You know in and I think It's it's a little bit of a shame cause like we should we should all be driven to drive the most value for the oil and gas industry period

49:47 that is our mission all of Us and it's OK for all of us to have the same mission now you know and if and if we were to act that way then when when deals happen right or like in sports when games

49:58 happen when the game's over shake hands and say hey good job you had better luck next time or or congrats write whatever whatever that is and it's just so weird to me like I'm only realizing this

50:07 recently that that doesn't really exist in our space by now and I wish I really do kind of sounds weird it really kind of wish it did now the other thing I'll say is the last thing I want to say about

50:18 this topic before I answer your other question is it meant

50:24 from a technology perspective if anybody thought corn was going to kind of sit and watch like just acquire and sit and watch what's happening in a happy with that like these acquisitions have been so

50:35 strategic and no one's necessarily aware of the fact that when we acquired fielding in two thousand and fifteen it was the first and only at the time built natively multi -tenant sas what does multi

50:47 -tenant asner with US I won't spend all that time but what it means is everybody's in the same region at the same time you click a button as a vendor with a software developer you click a button

50:55 everybody gets a new feature at the same time it's just how linkedin works it's how facebook works and twitter works it's how your bank account webpage works like everybody's on the same version the

51:05 same time you don't upgrade your bank account when it cut when the bank tells you Hey I got a new feature on my website right right you just it's just there in so to pretend like everybody's got sass

51:14 is not a thing we've been quiet we've been

51:24 but hang on a second hang on I'll go back to Yeah Lemme Lemme let Me go back to one more thing before I answer your last question Sir and the that I Wanna I Wanna talk about one thing if if people

51:36 thought the corn was going to sit here and be happy with sort of where we're at today and we'll just keep sort of slowly boiling existing products we have in that was going to be good enough like

51:44 that's not what we'd been up to what we've been up to is building the first true suite of multi ass products what does that mean it's SASA just a word that everybody throws around now but multi

51:56 -tenant sas means that all of your customers are the same version software at the same time I spend one dollar investment I click a button you know as a software vendor and in that gets deployed all

52:07 my customers at the same time just like Facebook works just like your Linkedin as My Your Yeah just like your bank account when when a bank goes and updates a feature on their website and you log back

52:20 into chase the next day You don't have to go call them and ask for an upgrade, right? That's just deployed. They click a button and now you can, you know, apply for a new savings account or

52:27 whatever that feature is on their website. Our on-demand suite is built in that way. And so it's very strategic. We acquired Fielding for that reason. We acquired Wellies for that reason. We

52:37 acquired Ojisis for that reason. Again, we acquired Landox for that reason and our chaos dynamic docs. And when you build on a modern stack like that, while others are talking about the future and

52:48 sitting on their competing or sitting here secretly building the only true multi-tenant SaaS suite built on a modern stack that talks to each other through modern APIs where all of a sudden it's like,

52:59 oh damn, didn't realize Quorum was actually investing in those ways. So anyway, that's the last thing I wanted to say about that. Go back to your question.

53:09 Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, yeah, just what advice would I give myself when I started? Man, that's, that's, that's an interesting, like, I struck like I'M just so I feel like I'm so

53:24 blessed and pleased with how the opportunities that that my mentors and leaders have given me as I have have progressed my career and I think the thing is like the advice I give Myself i guess it's

53:37 like just show up every time you're supposed to show up show up like put the effort into it don't you know if you're not that comfortable with a perfect like the things that you do that you're not

53:47 comfortable with and you challenge yourself to do them or how you grow like those are the moments that you grow in so I think you know I think for the most part I was really lucky that that I was

53:56 trusted to be given opportunities that were challenging right but I I see in other people's careers where maybe they're not but they're also not they're kind of shying away from it when it's

54:05 challenging and again I think that take on the most difficult thing that might be out there and and then when you shine in that moment not only do grope it is but it's recognized Sarah I Dunno if

54:17 that's good advice or not I think that the world has changed too Wait like what the advice I give somebody today vs myself twenty years ago is is probably entirely different and for lots of reasons as

54:29 I sprung that on you but I was I was just sort of Curious now I think your answers is logical right to be there right make make yourself undeniable make yourself visible contribute where you can don't

54:39 make it about yourself and the final question I had before we let you go on this is back on the earpiece side of things so we're just getting to know each other but my background actually before I

54:49 started working at Bolo I Guess competing with you Guys on the upstream side two thousand and eight nine ten know those sorts of days I was in SAS I actually sold cloud software going as far back as

54:60 two thousand five no servers like la very much understood where the market was heading then I went to bolo and it was like not only do you get this horrible you ex looking software you also have to

55:14 pay a million dollars to do your data conversion so you mentioned like the pushing one to be able to do an upgrade awesome obviously I understand that it makes sense you do it on your iphone

55:25 everything is everything is great how do we get there for data conversions right that initial implementation because it still seems like for the most part these are mat massively time consuming a kind

55:37 of hard fought process to go through and do all of the data cleansing conversion to get it in how do you make the easy button for that Yeah a minute I think some of it's era jeremy honestly what I

55:50 what I mean by that is located garbage in garbage out or garbage out garbage and like that's always going to be the case wherever your data is coming from if it's terrible okay we got to spend some

55:58 time but you Gotta spend some time getting it to a state that you feel good about is always going to be the issue that has data Integrity Forevermore and then people will mess it up again and and

56:11 you'll have to go back and do data cleansing okay but the question you're asking is what will we're actually talking about is back then 2008, nine, 10, 11, 12. It was, you bought1 a software and

56:23 you paid5 a service. Absolutely. To go implement that software, do a data conversion, right? And that ratio is unacceptable. It's unacceptable for this in this market. And it's unacceptable in

56:35 general. And so I think, listen, tools like Landox and OGSIS on demand, right, or again, we are calling those products now on demand land, on demand accounting. They actually have like just

56:46 built in front-end spreadsheet importers, right? So customers can hit the button, export the spreadsheet, right? Here's how the format you've got to put your data in, hit a button, upload the

56:57 data back into the system, right? And where there's data errors, it'll tell you it's very clean, right? So customers can be self-serve. Not all customers want to be self-serve, but the days of

57:05 that one-to-five ratio are gone. You know, now we're talking about, you know, you talked about the 60-wall customer. It's like, they pay basically like a month of their a month of their

57:16 subscription cost equivalent to getting on board. A huge though it's like it's it's Pennies it's like a one twelve ratio and that's the way it it needs to be now look that has the scale rattled the

57:27 larger the company the larger the European data the more history the more complex the asset the more time it's going to take to get all the data ready but the beauty of of making these tools self

57:38 serve is that we're now we're now letting our partner network jump in and do that we need to be a software company we need a drive or software forward we need to enable partners to do those value

57:50 added services for our customers and not to say that we don't and that we don't want to but both is a really healthy you know if you can do both where you're enabling customer partners to go deliver

58:01 their services for customers right and you're you're you're in a much better stay Saddam desert those are my Quick US love It Sir Thank you for coming on Today My Man where can where can people find

58:12 you online how can they reach out to you if they want to get a hold of you Yeah Yeah look a Linkedin series so there's not many of US shirts spelling is is not that hard in the AMU the Quorum Email is

58:27 a surreal dot se hoon at Quorum software dot com so feel free to reach out love to connect with people Jeremy I really really appreciate you taking the time x -men before to get to know you as we'd

58:38 better Yeah it's going to be fun in a in Vegas man appreciate you Guys doing it out there selfishly but also just to to spend time see some of these new products at NAMm Dive in further but you take

58:48 care brother Thank you