What The Funk?

0:00 Okay, we are back on a overcast Friday here in the Denver area. Got my friend Steve Cooper of energy IQ fame, the data management guru, one of them in the oil and gas world. Steve's a good dude

0:18 for anybody who's met him. And Steve, particularly, I think relevant this week, having you on. Because as I mentioned, I was out at the Quorum Connections conference In Las Vegas, earlier this

0:33 week at the MGM, they do a really nice job with that show. Probably a thousand people there, lots of partners, vendors, executives, entrepreneurs. They put together a really good show and it's

0:49 fun. This is my third one of these, I think, that I've been to all post-COVID. They've actually outgrown the MGM.

0:57 which is crazy to think because it's an absolutely enormous hotel. And they're moving to the ARIA next year. So I'm looking forward to see how that changes things, do our hotel, probably a bigger

1:08 conference space. But I had a blast. I was there with one of my clients, one of Fung Futures clients, EAG. And your name came up a little bit because as you know, certainly, energy IQ was

1:19 acquired just a little over five years ago by Quorum. So there were some of your former colleagues there But anyways, just for profitless with that. Thanks for having me on Jeremy, good to catch

1:31 up. Yeah, it's a funny thing, but I never got to go to one of those events. You know, we'll probably get into it, but energy IQ was acquired just before COVID hit. So plans were in place for,

1:46 you know, the event and, you know, I had a big role and then, you know, I still had to do it, but it was all virtual. So I never got to enjoy, you know, very good aspect of it.

1:58 It was very disappointing, and I would have loved this song. You know, you probably could still go, and you'd see a bunch of your old clients there and people that worked for you and worked with

2:07 you.

2:09 But I don't know what your schedule dictates if a trip to Las Vegas is in the cards. Maybe next year we go out together, who knows? Yeah, you never know. You never know, I'd always be up for a

2:19 trip there. Yeah, it is fun. I'm like the worst guest for the casino. They see me coming in and they're like, oh God, it's you. I don't gamble and I don't drink. So I basically just have one

2:31 of those people who takes up the penny slots and. No, I didn't really have a lot of time while I was there, but you know, these casinos, they're brilliant, right? To get to the elevator, to

2:42 get to the conference floor, you have to walk through the casino to get there. Oh yeah. Right, they've got the physics of how this works mapped out, I spent less, I think, than I typically do

2:54 on a business trip because, you know, all the meals were paid for, you know, I didn't, I didn't drink, I didn't gamble. So my expense report was not that big coming out of, out of Vegas this

3:05 week, but it was still a good time. Good for you. Thank you. Steve, I've got to hit you with the question that I hit all of my guests right out of the gate is who are you, man? Who is Steve

3:17 Cooper? Well, there's a question I wasn't ready for.

3:23 You know, it's probably better to ask other people on that one, but yeah, I could give you a little bit about my background, where I, you know, so I grew up in England, northwest Diamenchester,

3:36 Pam Corporalton.

3:39 You know, and I went, I actually, coming out to school, I was intending to, you know, walk for the National Coal Board in Britain Okay. So I took a year off between school and university and

3:53 went to walk down a coal mine. And that pretty much convinced me I did not want to walk down a coal mine as a career. Wow. I still went on and did a mining engineering degree. And then at the end

4:08 of that, there was pretty much nothing left of the British coal mining industry 'cause it was right around the time the Thatcher took on the unions and there's only one winner in that one. And so

4:21 there was really no jobs left, but it didn't really matter. I didn't want to do it anyway.

4:27 But I did consider briefly going to work in the South African gold mines, but I had even worse timing 'cause that was around the whole apartheid and there was a mess. And so you could own a lot of

4:42 money down there, but you couldn't actually do anything with it. I stayed on a Nottingham University where I'd done my undergraduate and did a postgraduate degree and it was sponsored by a company

4:54 in the US. in Colorado. And the deal was if I did the postgraduate work, I could spend six weeks out of the year in Colorado and I was like, that's good enough for me, I'm doing that. Sounds

5:06 good, yeah. So I came out and worked for this company and what it really did was it was taught me, you know, kind of a crash course in computer science, because it was kind of early days in

5:20 computer science, we were still dealing with, you know, old languages and that. And so I, yeah, I worked for them for a little bit and then I got picked up by another company in Colorado, but

5:31 it was out of Australia. And they were really in the forerunners of the GIS world, so Genesis. And I worked for them for a couple of years, but they, they were struggling And at the time they

5:46 were kind of. competing with Edsory, but Edsory just crushed them. Absolutely. Yeah, as they have with everybody in the natural world. In my portal, yeah. And so I ended up, I decided I

5:57 wanted to kind of get back to something close to what I was used to, but combine the computer science. I ended up going to work for what was petroleum information. So it was more on the, it was on

6:08 the oil and gas side, but still, you know, somewhat related to, you know, my background And so I went into petroleum information and they got, you know, acquired by IHS and so on. Burj with

6:24 Dwight's at the time. So probably names of people remember. So when PI and Dwight's Burj,

6:32 you know, I had been working, you know, kind of walking my way up a little bit at PI. And then, you know, I was made, I think, a vice president or a director And when I just kind of. you know,

6:45 we got going, I ended up becoming the CTO, or CIO, whichever way you looked at it, of IHS energy, so the energy vision. And so I stayed actually there for like 12 to 14 years, and, you know,

7:04 a chunk of that is the CIO, but then, you know,

7:11 IHS

7:14 went public, and things kind of changed a lot, and I didn't. And I'd always wanted to start my own company. So I decided, you know, I saw an opportunity, you know, PPDM was very big in

7:28 the oil and gas industry, obviously back then, you know, still relevant today. But IHS

7:36 had a version of PPDM called the PIDM that they delivered all the data in.

7:43 And I felt there was an opportunity to build a data management system on something that was pure PPDN. Okay. And so that's what I decided, when I decided to start energy IQ just, I mean, the

8:00 hardest part of that was really trying to walk at IHS to load that data. You know, they weren't very keen on that as you could imagine. And then I managed to talk my way into it. Got permission to

8:14 do that. And then we just started building products on top of the PBM database. It kind of took off from there. So

8:24 that's it. That's it. That's you from a business perspective. So I'm curious, obviously, you've got the accent. You're from Manchester. And, you know, I'm from New Hampshire where every town

8:37 and city in New Hampshire has a name like you do over in England. But of course, there's a Manchester and there's a Hanover and all of that. We call Manchester, Manchavagus, because that's where

8:51 everybody would, I guess, come up from Boston, all these gangsters and they do their underground poker games and all that because in New Hampshire, anything goes, man. There's no tax on anything.

9:02 The state motto slogan is live free or die. But yeah, like a lot of the same towns

9:11 have sister cities or just the same names over in the UK. So you came over here, do you have dual citizenship? Now, do you ever get back to the UK? I've always known you as a Colorado guy, but

9:26 obviously you still got the accent from back home. Yeah, if you talk to people back home, they don't think I got the accent, do you think that? Yeah, I think you lost it. I think I'm fully

9:34 Americanized now. But yeah, so I am a dual citizen So it was interesting, actually, because I hadn't really thought about it. But, you know, when I was at university, I got a summer job

9:48 working in New York State on a kid's camp. Oh, sure, yeah. And I had the greatest job in the world because, you know, my job was maintenance and I was the only person working there with a truck.

10:06 Yes, you're popular. With the weekends where it was time to go to the bars, yeah, I was really popular and we won't go into that. But, you know, I always had a soft spot for America and then,

10:18 you know, when this opportunity came up, you know, to work in Colorado, I came across one summer. I was like, oh my God, you know, I grew up in a place where, you know, like today, it's

10:29 like 300 days of gray and miserable. Yeah. Out of the year came to Colorado's 300 days of sunshine. Yeah. Let all, you know, and you got the mountains this is, you know, from day one, it was

10:45 like, this is where I wanted it. It was, you know, just awesome. So it was really, a lot of it was, you know, I've been in other places, plenty of other places, but I've always, you know,

10:56 never wanted to live anywhere else, except maybe Montana, but it's a bit cold. My wife wouldn't go there. So, um, so yeah, you know, I just kind of came over here, I loved it. And, you know,

11:08 then I met my wife. She's a Colorado native. Nice. We had a couple of kids and I was still, you know, when I first came across, you couldn't get US. citizenship without giving up your own. Oh,

11:22 wow. Okay. And so, so I didn't do it. So, I was on a green card, which is obviously relevant today. And then one of the elections, I think it was probably around 2008 or so.

11:37 You know, my kids, my girls were asking me, who are you going to vote for? I said, well, I can't vote. I'm not a citizen. And they're like, there was outrage. It's like, Oh, my God,

11:47 people died to get you the vote. You need to become a citizen. So, so I did. I took the English language test and passed. For generally, probably wasn't that hard for you. Not very hard. No

12:01 English English, you know, maybe your first language. Yeah. Yeah, that's a. That's cool. That's cool. So then you raise kids. I'm assuming your kids then don't have any Accents. Your wife

12:13 doesn't have an accent. No, no, no. Just just true Colorado natives. And yeah, you're here. I think you're over on the West side. I'm a little bit on the East side. You introduce me to

12:25 Woody's, the pizza place, which is a great spot over there in in Golden. You know, one of the things that, you know, when you first really hit my radar was when I was at seven lakes. This was

12:37 about a dozen years ago and energy IQ was like the de facto. player in the data management space. And Seven Lakes was an innovative company. They had

12:48 visions of grandeur in the data management space, we're building a lot of dashboards, and started to build out similar products to what energy IQ had. What we quickly realized is it's actually

12:59 pretty hard. You've got to do a lot on the back end to ensure that the data is consistent across all kinds of platforms with different databases And this is before cloud was really a thing, right?

13:12 So you're pulling all this into like a SQL database. Somehow you figured it out, though. And I think a lot of the challenges that you were solving for are still issues, still challenges, in the

13:23 oil and gas data space. So I'm curious, like,

13:28 how did you do that? How did you figure out that obviously you understood that there was a major pain point and that companies placed a value on integrated data sets and insights into that data?

13:41 from a technology perspective with the tools that were available to sort of just figure out how to normalize this across multiple systems? You know, it's a good question Jeremy. I think, you know,

13:51 obviously, you know, I'm looking back quite a few years here. So I probably, you know, forget a lot, a lot of stuff. Sure. But I think it was hard. I don't know it was that hard from a

14:03 technology perspective. It was really hard from a, you know, really from understanding how all the bits fit together. And I came in having 12 years working with the data and a reasonable

14:18 understanding of it. And I still uncovered a lot of really difficult stuff. From a technology perspective, you know, the hardest part back then was the volume of data and speed. You know,

14:31 because, you know, I mean, you talk about the days where, you know, to buy, you know, a couple of gigabytes fortune. Now you got it on your phone. So that, for the technology perspective,

14:45 we had to do some, you know, we had some small people who dealt with that. But honestly, you know, the hardest part I found was really making sense of the data you would get. And it didn't

14:57 really matter whether it came from IHS or, you know, drilling in for often the state. I mean, you know, just the whole concept of well identification was and probably still is brutal. You know,

15:11 the fact that every state identified wells differently. Sure. Well, it all be, you know, about the same up to 10 digits, but then the 12th and 14th meant something totally different. And it was

15:24 crucial because if you're taking logs and, you know, other other surveys, well bore surveys or production data, maybe tying it to the right well bore should have been simple. And it wasn't. And

15:38 it is. Oh my God, it gave me nightmares. And you know, it was funny 'cause I get teased about this, but I did a project for PPDN calledWhat is a Well? I remember that. And you go, What is a

15:50 well? What was a hole in the ground? But when you get down to the details of it, we couldn't, nobody could ever agree on what was actually a definition of a well, a well-bore and a completion.

16:02 And then the identification of it. So that was the hard part, but that was also the opportunity And so we spent huge amounts of time developing software to you go through and identify the hierarchy.

16:17 Okay, this well has this many well-bores, this well-bore has this many completions and self-completions and so on. And so I think that's, you know, that was really a lot of the intelligence in

16:30 our system because that made it a master data system because if we could identify that, then you could tie into all these other data stores. solutions. And I'm not sure that people really

16:42 understood how difficult that was and how much work we did in that space. And, you know, the guys that are in a dark or phenomenal, you know, guys like Rick Prueger, you know, working with him

16:53 to understand this. And a few of the other guys, they were phenomenal in helping us. But, you know, you brought up seven lakes, you know, seven lakes enraged me at the time. Sorry, sorry

17:07 about that, Steve. It was, but I also learned a tremendous amount from as you know, I was looking at seven lakes and going, I mean, the guy raised like 20 million or so. I was like, what? How

17:23 has he raised 20 million? They haven't done anything. They just got some flash. And that was probably unfair. There was a lot more to it than just flash. But it just taught me a lesson, you know,

17:36 the The presentation side is hugely important, so later on, we put a layer on top of our platform that was based on the elastic data technology. We had a guy working for us, Jimmy Coak, who was

17:55 just brilliant. And he looked at elastic,

17:59 pulled all the data into it. And from having a very slow and clunky interface, all of a sudden, we could present this data lightning fast and with some super cool tools out of the box, graphing

18:12 and chart and all of that. So even though seven lakes enraged me, I owe them a debt of gratitude for that because it was a good lesson. Yeah, it was, I mean, really part of the reason, the big

18:26 part of the reason why I took the job was because of the flash. Like, wait, I went out to California to interview and they started showing me all their stuff And it was just, it was beautiful,

18:35 right? whatever group they use to do their user interface, user experience front end,

18:43 it was just so clean. And I knew that it was gonna show well in meetings, but what it still comes down to is the data, the data quality of the aggregation, having a golden record of a well,

18:54 otherwise it's the whole garbage in, garbage out concept. Those were fun days. And I think that we were, focus was probably a bit too bifurcated to truly say, okay, our competitor is energy IQ.

19:10 You could say, this company competes with

19:14 the Merrick suite. So you're competing with even

19:23 in the production field data capture side, but we were selling the iPad version. They were going to market with the desktop version. And then there's analytics and dashboards. Well, you could

19:28 build this in house with Spotfire, but have you solved your data challenges? We can build this in HTML5

19:33 There was a lot of. entry points into a company, right? And that was one of the things that I took from that as, as a value is, you know, for, for energy IQ, I'm guessing, you know, you,

19:46 you had champions within the organization that were probably the data centric people. With Seven Lakes, like you can get him through the production side, right? You can get him through the

19:55 reserves and forecasting side. Maybe the land team needs a dashboard, then you've got IT with some sort of data project. So you become, we would become very immersed in the organization, which I

20:05 think is what led to a lot of the increase in business sales. And yeah, I think the big lesson, one of the big lessons is your company's worth what somebody's gonna pay for it, right? So if

20:16 somebody else sees the flash and buys into the story of, okay, your trajectory is high and rapid because people are buying into this flash, I wanna be a part of it And I think that, you know, the

20:33 unfortunate part of it. Seven Lakes truly was that downturn in 2015, 2016, especially, which you've got investors coming in from outside of the patch, and they're just looking at the numbers and

20:46 saying, My God, okay, you did5 million, you did12 million,

20:51 well, logically, you should do20 million next year, and then all of a sudden, oil crashes to26 a barrel of natural gases in the basement, and you don't, sales slow down, and you throw more

21:03 salespeople at it, and that's not the issue, companies just aren't buying stuff when they're in survival mode. So, yeah, I'm sorry for the lack of sleep, but we're all trying to feed our

21:14 families too, right? It's business. Oh, that's right. I mean, it is interesting. I mean,

21:21 we had a number of competitors out there, IHS being one, Petra Webb being another, you know, and, you know, NeuroDB was another one, if you remember those guys. Oh, yeah, I did, yes. And,

21:37 you know, it was always, you know, we would compete. I

21:42 was thinking of Petrosys as well with Volker. Remember Volker Hush in you? I don't know. And Adelaide, Australia. And, you know, I know I would see these guys, we would compete and we'd fight,

21:54 but then it was never, it was never personal. Well, there's always ones or twice with a bit more You know, I mean, for the most part I can see those guys. We would have a good chat and a laugh

22:06 on the beer, but it's interesting you bring up 2015-16, 'cause

22:13 that was about the closest we came to going under.

22:17 And again, it taught me the lesson, you know, but fortunately, I mean fortunately, we were on, you know, we were on a tear in 2015. Yeah,

22:29 you were We jumped a huge amount of revenue. And I always remember, it was something like December the 17th, Amir Mike Skeffington, who was running sales, had gone to Oklahoma City

22:44 to try and close a couple of deals. I think one of them was Devon, and the other one, it wasn't Chesapeake, it was another company that I can't, for the life of me, the memories, my memories

22:56 dawn on who it was. It wasn't, I think they went out of business again But

23:02 we closed them both on that day, because people got, people were really, the oil price had started to go down, and people thought, we're not gonna get our budget next year. Better spend it now,

23:15 right? Better spend it now. So we closed those two, we closed another one, I got to the airport, and the lady who at the time was CIO of BP called me on my phone, and said, hey, we got this

23:26 proposal for you, we wanna close it I'm like, Uh. Okay. And she said, Can you get us the paperwork tonight? Oh my God. And I was like, And I'm at the airport. And I'm like, Yeah, we can do

23:38 that. And she goes, And we want a

23:43 20 discount. And I don't know what made me feel. I said, No, no discounts. Yeah, no too much demand.

23:51 And she goes, Fine, just send it to me. Yeah. We close that one as well. It was like, Oh my God You know, so we're just, you know, we got absolutely wrecked in the bar, and as you would.

24:02 Yeah.

24:04 But then we knew what was coming. Yeah. And so, you know, unfortunately we had to lay about 30 of the people off. We had to cut, you know, 'cause even though, you know, we had this money

24:14 coming in, everything else was just going to hell. And, you know, we had the, you know, it's another lesson. And this is, you know, if I advise companies now, It's like you have to have your

24:28 Shackleton plan. Have you ever heard the story of Ernest Shackleton? No. He sailed, I think it was the ship, it was the endeavor to try to get to the South Pole. They got trapped in ice and it's

24:41 the most unbelievable survivor story you've ever heard of. You know, they had a cross, they walked across the ice, he sailed a little boat to some island that was uninhabited and ate seals. And

24:54 then, anyway, incredible survival story. So we had our Shackleton plan, you know Everything goes to hell, what are you gonna do? And we survived and came back and,

25:07 you know, and it was good and bad because it put a few of our competitors out of business, but it also enabled IHS to catch up. Right, because they can deal with downturns, right? I mean,

25:19 that's, they're built for that. You as a small company are not. And I see this as an entrepreneur myself, the most painful part of this business is when I had to lay, three people off in a period

25:31 of two months last summer. And it was awful. I mean, 'cause these are my friends, when you're a smaller company, you either know these people personally, which is why you brought them on in the

25:42 first place, or you get to know them, and it becomes like part of your family. God, that was painful. But they all understand it, it's awful. They understand it, right? It's sort of like, I

25:55 get it. I know you lost a couple clients, revenues down, there's some uncertainty in the market. Companies pay late, you know? And, you know, I'm over here trying to survive myself, my

26:07 Shackleton plan, right? Transfer and money from my home equity line of credit or take credit card advances and to make payroll. Like, that's a real thing, you know? And it's a scary time, but,

26:19 you know, I've said this many times before. My worst day as an entrepreneur is still better than my best day as an employee. But that's me That might not be the case for everyone else. No, it's

26:31 definitely, it's something you have to consider before you're particularly like you and I. We had businesses when we had families. Yeah. You know, I mean, I started energy IQ. I think I was

26:45 like maybe 40, 41. And my kids were five and three and it's a big step And there's definitely days when you go,

26:59 you know, I'm not sure we're going to make it. And you kind of wonder why you did it. And then, you know, when you look back and it turned out well, you go, oh, yeah, that was awesome. I do

27:08 that again. And then I think, no, I'm not doing that again. But you know, the other thing I'll tell you a funny story is, yeah, I had hired an accountant and he really wasn't very good.

27:21 Because every time I'd look at the monthly accounts, they were wrong You know, I would always find errors. It's like, okay, I'm finding these errors. What am I paying you for? I'm doing a job

27:30 for you. So anyway, he went and I asked my wife to step in and do it. And for anybody who's think of us out of business, don't get your wife involved.

27:42 I mean, she was awesome. I mean, she's very, very good with numbers. And so, but you know, the problem would be we'd be sitting there at night and she'd say, Oh, I'm not sure if we can make

27:53 payroll next month. And then I'd be like, I can't sleep You know, 'cause I'm up pasted around you don't stuff like that. It's hard to get away from it, but we stayed married, so it was good.

28:04 Yeah, and you'd say, We're gonna make payroll. You might not like how.

28:09 Well, we're gonna make it out of the way, you know. Yeah. You've been classified by people in the space as a survivor, and I would classify you with that too, right? You pushed into a space

28:23 that are big deals, not a ton of deals. So you kind of have to win your close rate has to be high and and I Maybe it's luck. Maybe it's good fortune. Maybe it's sort of a combination of

28:36 opportunity meeting good timing But your timing is spectacular, right? You close a couple of these deals three of these deals with big companies right before downturn But then the ultimate move is

28:46 selling your company right before covid oh I know it's um Yeah, it is it it's a funny It's just bizarre the whole thing. I mean it does go back to 2015 because That was the second big downturn. You

29:04 know, we've had another one around, you know, just after we got going

29:10 2008 2009 You know the whole you know, subprime mortgage thing just tanked everything. I was I So I

29:20 said, you know 2016 I was like right if we rebuild this you know, I'm going to get out, smart. And so around the summer of 2019, you know, I had two sort of minority business partners, Mike

29:41 Skeffington, Mike Hayden, Skeffington the Sales and Hayden Development. And

29:47 I said to them, you know, we were doing well in 2019. I said, I think the time is right to, you know, start preparing to get out. And it wasn't just the fact that we'd recovered. You know, I

30:04 felt that IHS was really coming up on us. And we hadn't really lost any deals to them prior. But in 2019, we lost a couple of big ones. We lost, I forget who it was, maybe Murphy Oil in Calgary

30:21 and another one. And we were still winning some a weird acquired petrol web. So we got all of their clients as well. So we'd actually grown a lot You know, we're up to like 50 to 60 employees And

30:36 so I felt that it needed a bigger company to take it to the next level Yeah, you know to to really invest because technology was changing big time You know, we were still even though we put elastic

30:49 on top of everything and that was phenomenal We were still under the hood sequel server database and You know

30:57 it you could see the writing on the wall that you know They needed to be an investment in the technology to take it You know to the next level and an investment in you know in the company the

31:07 employees, you know if you get to you know There's a few inflection points in a business, you know, you get to 10 employees. You can't Behave like a sole proprietor anymore, you know, you get to

31:19 you know 30 again, and then 50 is a big change You really got to put structure in place. I just didn't want to do it. And so I felt, okay, now is the tip at the right time. So that was middle of

31:30 2019. And I kind of knew the companies who would buy us. So, you know, I put the, you know, put the prospectus together and put it out there. And it's kind of funny, I think I can say this,

31:44 but the two who came through the strongest were quorum. And then the guys up in in Canada, and the names just come right out of my head,

31:58 they both wanted us badly. And I'm thinking, great, I can, you know, get a bidding war going on. And then I find out the both owned by Toma Bravo. No, sir, no, sir, no, was that the? Yes.

32:12 Yeah.

32:16 Yeah. And I actually She thought that Oscurna would acquire us.

32:21 But then I'm not quite sure what happened behind the scenes, but it was basically, you know, it's going to be quorum who. Yeah, because it was the same financial, it was ultimately all the same

32:31 private equity backer. And then those companies got merged together. They're like, wait, we have two companies with similar revenue. We're worth more if they're just together and there was no

32:40 product overlap. But your piece was one of the missing pieces. And I think they, they saw that, right? So you're like, Oh, great. This bidding war that I thought was between two companies is

32:49 actually the same company It's the same company, yeah, there's no bidding war. So much for bidding war. But anyway, we negotiated a deal and he was very, very fair. I was very happy with it.

33:01 And so, you know, but it takes a long time. So, you know, here we're, we're there at the end of, I think 2019 and we get into 2020. And there was some last minute hiccups and I was like, Oh,

33:18 I've got to fight this.

33:21 I have an advisor who I say thank you to him every time. He said, Steve, he said, Time kills deals. He said, Just suck it up and sign it. I was like, Fine, I'll do it. So I did, and we

33:37 closed on February the 13th,

33:41 2020. COVID was sort of a thing, but nobody had any idea what was coming And the following week, I went down to Houston to meet everybody in Shake Hands and all of that, and attend a client event

33:58 at the Houston baseball place, downtown, and it was the last time I flew for like two and a half years. Because right after that, just all hell broke loose. The oil price went negative. I don't

34:13 know if you remember that. How could I forget? You know, people are actually paying other people to take oil off the hands at like30. And then, you know, it's stabilized a little bit. But, you

34:24 know, I'm not sure we would have survived. So yes, we were unbelievably fortunate with the timing on that. Oh, that's awesome. I mean, you know, time definitely does kill deals, all kinds of

34:36 deals, it kills relationships too. But, you know, when you're talking about a larger transaction like that, I think your advisor came through in the clutch and you should be thanking him every

34:48 time you see him. I do, I do. He always reminds me of it as well. It's like, yeah, you're picking up this round of golf. Yeah, definitely. So, did you stick around? You know, what was that

34:60 like, right? So the deal happens, COVID happens, and I'm assuming there was some sort of like retention, right? Like you got to stick around for a period of time. Was that a thing? Yeah, they

35:09 asked me to stay home for 12 months. Got it And

35:15 yeah, it was totally fine. um, you know, no problems with it. I found, you know, in the early part, you know, I was still just kind of really doing the same thing. Yeah. Except I didn't

35:27 have to deal with finances. That was a huge wake off my shoulders. You know, at the end of every month, you know, you looked at all the, the bills and it's like, oh, that was gone. I was like,

35:38 oh my God, this is, this fabulous. So I loved it. And a little bit like you now. Um, you know, I loved it because I didn't have to do the stuff I didn't want to do. And I kept things running.

35:48 But then, you know, they brought somebody in to kind of take over because I had said, I'm not going to stay, you know, much, you know, beyond. And, um, so we transitioned things over and,

36:03 uh, and I started getting more into the clean energy space or quorum. But so I stayed on, then, After the year was up, I stayed on for another six months, like focused on the clean energy space.

36:18 But what I found, and I think this is common for a lot of people who've sold the companies, is people would come to me with problems related to the energy I use side. And I just felt it wasn't fair

36:32 to the guy in charge to. Yeah. And so in the end, I decided to step aside and I went and did some consulting work for a friend of mine in London. But then, you know, these things tend to suck

36:47 you in. And so last summer I decided, I'm done. Stuck away. I stepped away from that. So, but it was good because it's hard, I think for people to go, for me, it's hard to go from being full

37:01 on. Yeah, I couldn't have gone from being full on to doing nothing people

37:08 who do that and they struggle with it. And so it was a good way to wind down over a few years. Yeah, it makes sense. What are you doing now? So you kind of stepped away from, I guess, what was

37:22 full-time consulting work, whether you expected it to be that or not last summer. What have you been up to in the past eight and nine months? Well, doing lots of skiing,

37:32 lots of fly fishing. I didn't ever expect fly fishing to become a passion, but it has. I was out on the Taylor River yesterday, and I was just

37:42 happy as a clam standing in the river, catching fish, looking around at incredible scenery. And I've been able to go to a couple of places like Alaska, New Zealand, and we travel a lot. On the

37:56 business side, I didn't want to get totally, what I felt was back to that sort of advisor who helped me unbelievably. And there's been other people over years You might remember Mike McCrory, who

38:09 is - CEO of IHS Energy for many years. Unfortunately, he passed away last year from cancer, but he was an advisor for many years. Another guy, John Matei, who's been hugely helpful. I felt, I

38:26 can do that for companies. So I don't want to just invest in startups and step away. I only want to invest in startups where I can help. And I'm not talking about from the technology side or as

38:40 small from just the lessons you learn over the years. And so I created a small LLC, Blue River, investments, just to put some money into startups where I'm interested in the solution, what space

38:58 is it in. So I've invested in a

39:04 sort of a carbon capture tracking company.

39:11 And a couple of others, one of which is my nephew, you start in a podcast company. And, you know, I just look for small opportunities where I can help. But it's more about you're giving, you

39:23 know, hopefully useful advice, you know, from lessons long. And I'm not gonna step in and try the wrong company or anything like that. So that's what I'm gonna do. Well, that's good for you.

39:34 And I look forward to the point in my life and career where I'm doing those things. It's not right now, right? This is, you know, three young kids that still need to go through college and, you

39:44 know, I'm mid 40s, I'm in it, right? This is not the time to be doing that. But, you know, hopefully some of these bets that you place, you know, work out and give you an Uber-like return or

39:53 something. But if not, you know, you have a lot of value to add and impart. Like, what are some of those lessons that you do kind of offer to some of these entrepreneurs who are in it? Like,

40:06 what are some of those learnings and things that you pass along, that you only figured out. your experiences? Well, I think one of

40:16 the things I see when I look at business plans is the

40:22 you know, the outrageous optimism on revenue streams. And you know, it takes a long time. And so you've got to be able to survive. And you know, I don't want to be too

40:37 you know, down, but it's cash flow that kills people. And you might have a great product. You might have a great company and cash flow will bring you to your knees. And you know, I, like I said,

40:50 you know, I ran into that around that 2015 time. And it's the stuff you don't expect. You know, so right in the middle of that, you know, I didn't mention this. But at the end of 2015, you

41:01 know, I had a line of credit with Wells Fargo, and they just sent me a note and said, said, you know, we really don't like this industry.

41:10 we're calling you line of credit in. No. Oh my God. Yeah. And you have 30 days. You got to pay this thing off. Yeah. Well, fortunately, I found a local bank who was able to, you know,

41:21 willing to step in and they were awesome. And, you know, so I stayed with them, you know, even when Wells Fargo came back and said, well, we kind of like that industry now. I said, yeah. F

41:31 you. Yeah. You had your chance to get my money in interest. Now you don't Yeah, we were done. But, you know, so I think it's planning as far as you can for the unexpected. You know, you plan

41:46 for the happy path, but you got to be prepared for something coming from left field. I mean, we look at the chaos in the markets right now. Yeah. Who predicted that? Probably not many people,

41:59 you know, but you have to be in a position to be able to survive

42:04 So it's back to that sort of shackled and black. So I think that's a very big one, but also recognize and there. There are ups and

42:13 downs, so you get down times and you just kind of strap in and get on with it and you walk your way through it. I think the other thing for me is that I've noticed with companies of people I've

42:30 known is not facing up to the truth.

42:35 So you look and just ignore the fact that I'm going to run out of change in a couple of months or something magical is going to happen. Well, magic doesn't happen. So you have to really be on top

42:49 of the business, understand the financials, understand

42:55 what's going on and make you move slowly. You can't wait 'til the last minute. You remember Lehman Brothers who went out of business. Of course. I forget the name of the guy But, you know, I

43:07 read the book and. You know, the guys calling around at the last minute, like Warren Buffett, they owe me out. Yeah. So

43:16 it's too late, you're done. And, you know, obviously much larger scale, but, you know, it illustrates the point. From the technology side, I think, you know, the thing we did a pretty good

43:29 job of was staying up with technology, you know, I was with, you know, IHS for many years

43:41 and there's a solution in Canada that just dominated the business, but it was CD based and it was, you installed the software, so, you know, every week they sent out an upgrade and it was a

43:54 fantastic solution, you know, everybody loved it, but it was starting to get old and

44:03 we spent years trying to move it to a new platform Um.

44:10 And it was a lesson for me with energy IQs. Don't get behind, stay up with. And so we invested a lot of money in the development side. And I think a problem for a lot of companies is to get

44:23 focused on the money, the finances and increasing revenues and margins every month and don't want to spend money on stuff that doesn't give an immediate return. And it's a big mistake Yeah, the

44:39 working on the business versus in the business is, it's hard. And I deal with that. And basically what I've done is just work in same hours where I have points in the day where I'm working on the

44:54 business and during the day I'm working in the business that is only going to be scalable to a certain extent. And I think we're starting to come up on that point right now which is pretty exciting

45:07 but seeing it. a little bit in advance and planning for it has been important. I'm curious, like you've traveled all over the world, right? Why don't you give me some of your favorite cities that

45:19 you've been to, favorite places that you've been to in the world? Favorite places? Well, I mean, no spot. I love London. It's great to have family over there and I

45:32 go two or three times a year just to meet with people and also just go to the shows and stuff like that. But, you know, I am at heart an outdoors person. So, you know, I'm in the greatest place

45:45 for me, you know, with the skiing and the fishing. But, you know, over the last few years, we, you know, something was on my bucket list was to go to Alaska. Nice. That was fabulous. I mean,

45:57 my wife and I went and spent a week, you know, going to Denali and out to watch the bears and the glaciers. And then I spent a week at a fly fishing camp. out in the middle, and there was, it

46:11 was insane. I was fishing on a place called the Brooks River where you always have the pictures of the bears eating the salmon. Yeah. Oh, you're at one point, yeah. I'm standing in the middle of

46:21 the river with a guide. I've got, you know, big rainbow trout on my line. I look at this, like five bears around. Whoa. Oh, it's probably not good. You can have this trout, I'm just gonna

46:34 move over here I was just helping, just bring it in for you, you should have to move, but you know that, where anybody hasn't been up, that was fantastic. And then we just went to New Zealand.

46:47 New Zealand is awesome. If I'd have gone there in my 20s, I would probably still have been there. Yeah. Just go over there and down there. I mean, it just, it looks spectacular. Yeah, so all

46:59 right, I'm getting, you like a little bit of zen in your current state and certainly the balance between. the big city, London's a huge city and getting some time outdoors

47:13 is fun for you. Give me some of your favorite restaurants that you've been to over the years where you've whether it's

47:20 Houston or Denver or London or

47:24 places like that. It's a tough question for me because I'm not much of a foodie really, but I do like some of the restaurants in London. There's a great one that's called the Cinnamon Club and it's

47:39 in the in the old

47:43 Westminster Library. So they've left the library as it is and turned it into a high-ending Indian restaurant, so that's awesome. But I'm also a big history buff around World War II and stuff, and

47:57 so I love going to some of the old clubs in London. If I can wangle my way in, you know, There's the old army and navy club and they have fantastic Restaurants and things like that, but I used to

48:12 I used to really like you stuff. I mean there's so many restaurants creative fantastic You know, but it's been quite a few years as a business I kind of forget half the names of them, but yeah, I

48:25 thought I thought Houston is a tremendous place for restaurants Yeah, it is. It's always a highlight when I get there going to new places You know, you think you're eating something healthy and

48:37 Houston though like you order the fish and you realize it's just swimming and butter Well, maybe not as healthy as you thought, but you do eat well down there see if this is great, man you know, I

48:47 think you you told your story well and and Certainly a little bit of fortune, but you know, I think that you put your yourself in position to take advantage of that Where can people find you right

48:60 if you're an early-stage energy tech company? You're looking for an advisor you know, possibly an investor, you know, how do people get ahold of Steve Cooper? You know, but I think the easiest

49:10 way for people to find is just to go to LinkedIn and then look up Steve Cooper on Blue River Investments. And I'm sure I'll pop up that way or, well, people could just, you know, shoot me an

49:23 email as well. So it's just

49:28 SMCooper1963gmailcom. You are not hard to find, man. Steve, it's been great getting to know you on a personal level, and whether you realize it or not, you've provided some real insight and

49:39 advisory to me as an entrepreneur. So I can only imagine the value that you do provide to these companies when you're, you know, actively invested in them. So, you know, thanks for giving back

49:50 and offering everything you have. And thanks for coming on. What the funk today, my man? Yeah, you're welcome, Jeremy. It's been fun and likewise, pleasure to get to know you and good look

50:00 with the future and the changes Thank you so much.