What The Funk?

0:00 We've got BB for free. That's what I'm calling this episode today. We're going to get a small dose of Brian Becker. I always enjoy Brian Becker got him to come to my house. He's sitting out in the

0:13 kitchen for this episode of, of what the funk you and I met. Uh, geez, it was like right before the pandemic. It was, you were, you were managing an RFP, um, for evaluating ERP systems And we

0:30 met, I think maybe in person once. And then all of our interactions for like almost a year were then over the internet, right? Finally got back together and started to realize like, I think, I

0:44 think we could be friends, love fantasy football, got young families. You actually live kind of on this side of town. Are you Gordon or Brookfield? Uh, Thornton or the North side Denver crew So

0:56 yeah, I think there was a, there was a deck escapade. Um, at least ones that we both needed to be like, we need to see people in person. You sent them the other side of my deck. Let's watch,

1:05 you know, hang out. So. Yeah, you, you live, I think, on a golf course. So, and it was a beautiful afternoon. That was fun. I gave you a funk future sat and you return the favor and you

1:15 gave me this, this crazy thing, but I want to give everybody the full dose of, of Brian Becker. You're, you're what I would consider sort of like the, the new wave of IT technology leader

1:29 that, that I've met and in your background, we met when you were in oil and gas, but your background actually came from, from outside of that. So I want the full story. I think that you are

1:40 basically from the middle of nowhere in Iowa, but I want to hear like, who are you, Brian Becker? That's the question I'd like to ask. Who is Brian Becker? Oh, yeah. So I'll tell you about

1:50 myself. I guess it's like a job interview question is a person for most I consider myself a husband and a daddy. I got two littles Um, And they mean a lot to me, both basically everything. And

2:02 most of my life is revolved around, scheduling around a six-year-old and a three-year-old terrorist. She's nuts, and she's a lot of fun. And just balancing, trying to kick my own business off and

2:13 then taking care of my babies. So a lot of fun and trying to raise them upright, but ultimately is like, in my professional career, my side is like, what I want to do is I want to drive value and

2:24 work with great humans on interesting products Interesting projects that satiate in my curiosity and my just my utter need to learn, right? And so I'm always reading, I'm always learning, I always

2:35 want to apply, I always want to think in how I can help people meet their maximum potential by applying technology or just communicating and networking with people. So gun to my head, say,

2:47 describe me in three words, it's family, curiosity, teamwork or integrity, something like that. And technology, I do owe you a thank you. I do owe you a thank you as well. I'm not even sure

2:59 I've done this in person, but I owe it to you publicly. We sat down at Loma to have lunch, and I was trying to get in your head about maybe buying some NFTs. And you shut that down so hard that it

3:12 prevented me from buying one, which is a good thing, 'cause I was gonna spend like 1200 bucks on something that's worth maybe 15 cents today. But you're like, dude, it's just a link to a server.

3:23 If that's what you're looking for, I can give you that for a lot less than 1200 bucks Thanks for being here. Yeah, it's just a link to a JPEG that I can copy and replicate without any

3:32 remediation. So yeah, it's

3:35 my history and I pride myself a lot. It's like, I like to think independently on how this crypto stuff or how this latest and greatest technology can be used. And I'm not afraid to shoot stuff down.

3:46 I think I've saved people hundreds of thousands of dollars in my network of saying, do not buy this or buy this You know, so.

3:56 Maybe I should have started that crypto hedge fund multiple years ago. I don't know. Oh, man. So let's just jump right into that. This is a digital wildcatters podcast. We talked about this

4:05 earlier. I was just down in Houston at Fuse, had a great time, aside from the absolutely bone-chilling Houston weather. All I heard about all summer was, Oh my God, it's so hot down here. And

4:18 then I show up and it was windy and cold, it led into Halloween It definitely felt like fall. But had a great time of views, got to see some people that I really liked to see, I talked about this

4:32 before. Matt Harriman and Pod2 ran into

4:36 the pre-pad guys who recently just got funded from Devin, saw Trey Love, CTO over at Devin. And then really Andrew Chan, a good buddy of mine who's in the VC community, don't get to see him a ton,

4:49 but when I do, it's always fun We went to Taste of Texas, first time getting a steak at Taste of Texas.

4:56 Did you and you and Bobby and you and do the Immaculate grid together?

5:00 No, no, that is a fun text read that we have the three of us though. So who can beat each other and get, get the lowest score or at least get all the Immaculate grids correct. But no, I, I saw

5:09 Bobby briefly in the VIP at Fuse on Tuesday. He's the same high energy, really bright, one of my faves over at Grace and Mill and other podcaster, but so to bring it back to sort of like the

5:22 cryptocurrency conversation, you know, I actually think from an attendance perspective, the surprise me, the empower conference that Digital Wildcat or Stid had more people than Fuse. So clearly

5:34 they've branched really strong into this whole like mining, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency community. And when I go to that show, I know like four or five people. When I go to Fuse, I feel like I know

5:45 about half the people. So it was fascinating to be like, whoa, I think there were more people at at Empower, which lends me to think like either there's less conferences, for that arena or

5:56 there's more curiosity around it than sort of what we already know within oil and gas or oil and gas tech. So give me your opinion then, your straight truth, Brian Becker, on crypto currency, how

6:08 do you feel about it? Well, let me circle back first and comment on why I think Empower gets so much, so much push is that you look at a number of the cryptocurrency conferences out there, it's

6:23 all about making money, some speculation and things like that is they've got a great development team, it's like they're gonna make my two cent token worth 15 cents and get out, right? Empower is

6:32 more of a practical application of energy and potentially waste that's stranded natural gas or a stranded product in which that you can convert to something of value. And so I think that's really,

6:42 really a powerful use case for producers that have this waste product in the middle of the Permian or the Bakken that they're flaring natural gas. But as far as crypto, I think it went through the

6:58 hype and speculation where people made fortunes. I certainly participated in that, I didn't even make a fortune, but enough to do some home renovations. But there's some serious critical thinking

7:10 on the use case of blockchain in general, tokenization economics, and just basically the value that it adds to society, right? Right now is like your bet on Bitcoin, if you're going to hold that,

7:23 it's a bet against almost the US. dollar, it's an intermediate independent currency, right? That's not governed by anything, it's uncentrable, et cetera. But you're really seeing the United

7:34 States government just really crack down on it. You can see with the FTX

7:40 and Sam Brickman Freed, and then you have the meltdown of a very big exchange you'll receive right now that there's hype with fraud. So you really have to be cognizant on the use case and really be

7:50 a believer and to weed the political ramifications, the risks there to be able to make an investment or just really buy into that ecosystem and develop product unetherium or really believe that, you

8:04 know, Ripple's going to be the really cross-governmental method for settlements, et cetera. So a lot of critical thinking that you need to do and pay attention to what the big players are doing

8:14 because they're not going to let this go lightly. But digitization of the dollar is a very big deal

8:20 You're using a blockchain technology, implementation of blockchain, and using for supply chain challenges in cross-country or, I mean, cross-third party agreements, et cetera, with smart

8:29 contracts. Very big deal. I can definitely see that coming down the pipe. Nice. So would you say you're bullish on it or you want to see regulation come through first? What do you think is the

8:41 outlook, if you were to say on someone that holds cryptocurrency? Because I do. I have a coin-based account. Yeah. Yeah You know, I've been checking it more lately when things are looking good.

8:50 It's sort of like, you know, having a season-long fantasy team. You spend a lot of time on the CBS Sports page or Yahoo Fantasy page when your team's winning, then when you're losing, same thing

9:02 with stocks or crypto. So what is your take? Would you say you're overall bullish? I would say I'm bullish, but don't bet your house on it. I would say if you were me and I'm me, the best way of

9:17 profiting on cryptocurrency is buying a little bit every single month And just don't even look at it, wake up in 10 years. It's a sexy word. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, don't be surprised if it

9:29 disappears, right? This is not financial advice. But what I would do is what I'm doing, I'll just tell you what I'm doing is every month I buy a little bit, not a ton, but yeah, enough to

9:39 hopefully win the lottery. It's like, if you bought GameStop, if you buy GameStop stock right now, it says, you know what? In case this Moass or whatever these apes are talking about blows up,

9:50 I want to have Little pieces of pie, you know but I don't know if you believe in that. But it's like something. What a wild time that was with GameStop. I, one of my best friends from college,

10:02 Dan Marcus, shout out Dan Marcus, he got a 1600 on his SATs. I don't know what, I think he goes to like 1800 now. Okay. He basically got like a perfect score, but they don't tell you, you know,

10:17 you took the SATs probably. I didn't know, I was in Iowa, where the ACT shot ACTs,

10:23 okay, so in the Northeast, I took the ACTs too, 'cause you either needed the SATs and SATs for most colleges, or SAT and ACTs. So, very different types of tests. But on the SATs, that was sort

10:37 of like the standard standardized test in the Northeast. And I got to Brandeis is a freshman, and Dan Marcus was on my haul, and people started, you know, the whispers started going around like,

10:50 Hey man, this guy got a 16.

10:55 I got to go talk to this guy. So I, I chatted it up with him and he said, yeah, indeed he got a, he got

11:04 a 1600. A fairly funny story. So, so he went to high school in New Jersey and there's a lot of funny stories about this kid, not just related to SATs. But he, he did really well. I think when

11:16 he was in sixth grade, he got a 1340 on his SATs. So like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. Yeah. And then his sophomore year, he took the PSATs as sophomores they have, you take the pre SATs

11:29 just to sort of give you a sense of what it looks like, give you some reps. And I think he got like a 1580 or 1590. Oh, wow. So his guidance counselor's like, dude, you should just take the

11:41 SATs like this year, because then you have it, right? You have your score. It doesn't need to hang over your head for next year. Take it as a senior. You've got your score, right? He's like,

11:50 fine. And. he got a 1590 and they're like, Great job, you got a 1590. You should really go for a 1600. He's like, No, I'm good. I'm good with the 1590. You said, If I just took it now,

12:03 it's good. So they made a rule at that point that it was a requirement for all juniors then to take the SATs. So he's like, Okay, great. They're like, You basically, we're not gonna let you

12:13 graduate for this. Oh, it's like, all right, fine. So as a junior, you got a 1600. And for all the kids in the country that got a 1600, I think he said there was like 30 other kids. They

12:22 invite you to the White House, okay? And like you meet the president. Really? There's just not a lot of kids that get it, right? So he went to the White House, and they actually tell you,

12:32 'cause you can get up to five or six wrong, and still get a 1600, and they tell you which ones you get wrong, right? So he got - Oh, really? He got one wrong, and I think he stued on it for a

12:41 little while. Oh my gosh, it'd just be infuriating, right, for him. Yeah, he's just like, You got him He's like, Ah, really? I thought I got a different one wrong, maybe. but just like a

12:53 human calculator, right? Really, really sharp. Well, he was telling me in late 2020, he's like, there's this GameStop thing going on. He's an accountant and he's obviously good with numbers.

13:04 It's like, I don't know why, but like, I'm just getting a lot of like signs about this GameStop thing. And you should try to invest in it. So I ask my financial advisor, he's like, I don't see

13:16 any reason why this logically would go up. But like, if you're interested in it, maybe just buy some in like a Robinhood account or something like that. Sure, sure. I can give you financial

13:26 advice to move forward with it. Anyways, Dan Mark has figured out how to kind of work the system and he made about2 million off of GameStop. Oh my gosh. In that crazy short period of time. Unreal.

13:37 I was just a little bit late to it, but I remember him sending me his statements. He's like, man, just made100, 000 yesterday. I'm like, wow, that sounds pretty nice, yeah?

13:47 The movie is just pretty, I haven't seen the movie yet, but like that's my favorite part about like competition and rivalry and using data to, you know, to get an advantage is that even just in

14:02 that scenario is like people found out a way and they banded together. It's just, it's the truth is stranger than fiction. It's just like, it's an incredible story that will probably tell our kids

14:12 some time about, you know, there's like all these guys banded together, they found something and they outwitted Wall Street with all their quants that don't speak English or whatever, you know,

14:22 from Moneyball. They're not Moneyball from the movie about the housing shortage, the big short. So it's very easy. Yeah. But just a crazy time that was. I mean, and I do want to see that movie

14:36 that came out Pete Davidson and I guess Seth Rogen. It captures a period of time. And I do remember at the time talking to some people and like, they're going to make a movie about this like this

14:46 is a half two. It's a no brainer. And Robinhood got shut down in the afternoon. There's all these conspiracy theories, right? The hedge fund guys are in on it, but just completely insane. But

14:57 also it shows like the democratization of information, right? Right. Because that started on Reddit and people can do their own analysis and share their analysis, it created a bit of a transfer of

15:07 wealth in ways that really weren't available before because this was a little bit more of a black box, right? Right. How do you share that level of information? Which to me is super fascinating,

15:18 but what a time. I mean, coming up two years ago, plus I feel like everybody felt like they were a day trader at that point, right? Because we're at home, so much more, and stocks were just

15:29 going crazy in general. So everyone's like, yeah, I guess now I'm a professional day trader. Yeah, when everything's going up. Yeah, the bar still guys, Davey Daytrader was doing a live

15:40 YouTube stream, was like, we're betting on Amazon, and it needed just to be costing in the ring and bells, What else are you gonna do? You can only watch so much Netflix and people have money

15:49 from government, whatever, they're not having to go out to eat it, drive every day, right? So, yeah, it's just, it's, I don't know how we're going to recap, I've been thinking about this.

16:02 It's like, how am I gonna explain to my kids? It's like, yeah, you were born during COVID and all this stuff and we'll talk about. I mean, how did we work and how did it change and rapidly

16:09 accelerate the hybrid work from home and just the way that people want to work now? It's just, it's an insane part of our lives in the last couple of years. Completely, and yeah, I think that the

16:24 scars are still too fresh to give a full autopsy on it, but I think we'll probably get there in the next few years. I am curious for you, right? I think at the time you were running an IT group in

16:37 oil and gas and in oil and gas, as you know, everything's traditionally in person, right? All of a sudden you get hit with this COVID thing, you're managing an IT group. What happened? Are you

16:50 just like, okay, well, now we're all gonna work remote or did you feel like you came back to the office a little bit sooner? Like just generally speaking, being an IT leader at an oil and gas

16:58 company at that time, what was it like? Oh man, so not only was I leading an oil and gas company at the time, we were also in the middle of a transformational integration and acquisition Natural

17:13 gas prices and oil prices were super volatile. My wife was eight months pregnant and

17:21 I started getting a premonition as we were preparing for this integration and I started reading the news reports of something going on in Seattle. And I was like, okay, I called my brother-in-law

17:33 who was in New York at the time and he was running an orthopedic fellowship out there for Sports Medicine and he's like, Hey man, I'm keeping an eye on this converting our beds into a ward for COVID.

17:47 And so I immediately called my firewall providers and my managed service provider. And been like, we have to prepare for everyone to be working from home remotely. So we were ahead of the game a

17:57 little bit because we were, we at the time were a very much an in-person shop for oil and gas. And then COVID happened and we were already prepped and ready to go. So we were already fully cloud or

18:09 close to fully cloud that we were able to do the remote access So it didn't really bother us too much. Just some rapid training on Microsoft Teams but it really affected the integration in all that

18:19 whole, the

18:23 whole transaction. It changed because we had to do a full transformation of the entire software stack remotely from COVID with all these people that may not have been working from home or it was a

18:34 very busy time. And as you know, it was like doing an in-person conversion from a very large independent for a transformational changes.

18:43 It was hard to find the right people. We couldn't get them in the room and look at them and have lunch and learn the secret, hey, have you thought about this? Hey, this is where it might trip you

18:51 up. And it was just a very unique time. Yeah, now that's fascinating for me. And I've asked a lot of different IT leaders how it was handled. Like, for example, Continental Resources, IT just

19:05 kept coming into the office. Like that was part of what, like, you know, the CEO is like, hey, this is something that we need to do. Oklahoma wasn't quite as firm on shutdown. So most of the

19:17 people at that company kept coming in. I think same thing with Hill Corp and a few others or some stories about that. And then you look at like Devin, and I think things fundamentally really

19:26 started to shift. I think they were sort of already doing like a day a week at home and not only has that stuck, now they're doing a little bit more remote than they were previously. So I so much

19:38 accelerated in a short period of time And I think where companies did have. opinions or preferences for remote or in-person work, everyone sort of started to dig in a little bit harder.

19:50 Prior to getting in the oil and gas industry, you were at, I think, Cronkey, you were in the sports. Are you sports? Right, so whoa, that feels like a dream, right? Like, I remember, this

20:00 is my podcast, so of course I gotta make it about me, but so I'm a junior in college, and I was just outside of Boston. So I started looking at all these internships and jobs, and I'm like, man,

20:12 none of these sound any good, except for one. And that was giving tours of Fenway Park, right? Huge Red Sox fan, you know, die hard. And I applied, and I didn't hear anything back, and I

20:23 reached back out again. They're like, we're really sorry. We've had thousands of applications for three spots, and this job pays1050 an hour.

20:34 Like, I'm like, I still want it. I do it for free, you know? To me, it's sort of like if you get that chance to work in the sports industry, you're a little more excited about at least guys

20:45 like you and I are, we're big sports fans. So what was that like? And does that level of excitement start to fade when it actually becomes your like day-to-day life? Talk about what it's like

20:53 working for a sports company. So yeah, to be a little bit more clear, yes, I worked for St. Crocky's basically his business arm, Crocky Sports and Entertainment. And they are a conglomerate of

21:06 not only just sports teams that nuggets the avalanche, the Colorado Rapids, the Mammoth La Crosse team. They also have radio stations, television stations, vineyards, they run those drones that

21:20 fly over college football games and NFL games called, oh man, I can't remember about the top of my head, Skycam. And among magazines, all sorts of things. So I wasn't doing just sports every day,

21:32 but I went to the arena to go to work, which was just surreal. Like I've seen, I could hear from my office, like pink do a sound check. and all these other bands do sound checks and things like

21:42 that, it's a crazy perk of the job. But I'll never forget my second or third year, I was running information security, and it was the first night of the nuggets game, and there's an enormous

21:55 power outage within the arena, within the first quarter, and they had to pause the game. And I immediately was like, okay, is someone inside our arena? And so I have to go there and help manage

22:05 that risk, so it makes you look at it from a different light, but it's also kind of fun. It's like, hey, we're going to go to the playoffs. There's going to be the risks that we have to help

22:15 take care of is we can't have a disruption in broadcast, and we have to partner with the NBA to make sure that our information security is there. So yes, it makes you think a little bit differently.

22:24 Does the light fade at all? Not really, because it's just a unique organization is that

22:30 your job is to enable teams to entertain people and eyeballs, eyeballs and your drums are your main. method of adding values that could sell ads and sell tickets and things like that. So ultimately

22:42 I wanted to transition out of that role, that role because like a big thing for me as like I grew up on a farm is like I want to add value in something that you know that I find super duper and

22:51 meaningful in the world. Not that I don't want to discount like sports and things like that it's always been a passion of mine of competition but I felt that it was like you know what I need to do

23:00 something in my life that I feel that I can add move the ball a little bit better for my people my friends around me that that has a little bit more value yeah and I think oil and gas like

23:10 fundamentally does does make you feel like that right it just uh oh sure you know more of a broad stroke it's it's more of a necessity than it is a piece of entertainment correct that's cool so uh you

23:25 recently launched your own company shout out class that's four i got an amazing yeti thank you for that i think this is a 46 ounce yeti i've been drinking much more water since you gave it to me thank

23:36 you for that Says class four looks like there's some sort of representation of the mountains, maybe some rapids, right? I know that you're like going out on the rivers and doing all that. And it

23:49 says IT, cyber, and data. So what does this measure? Congratulations on launching your own thing. I've been doing my own thing out for about three years. Lots of ups and downs. I appreciate you

24:01 coming and picking my brain. It reminds me a little bit of when I was starting out where you feel like you're sort of eating an elephant and how do you do that one bite at a time? But you definitely

24:13 crack the code on the logo. I love this, but class four, IT, cyber, data. What are you guys doing?

24:20 So what we try to do is to be your, basically, your guide. Nice water drink there, a little branding. I appreciate that. Yeah, you're welcome. We try to supply the market, oil and gas

24:32 companies, with unique expertise as being your guide through. getting through what I like to call your technology rapids. And the way that I came up with class four is that I was out rafting with a

24:43 good friend of mine, Ted Runkle. He's like the master of the upper cholera, or the Arkansas River down in Salida. And we came across this river, this rapid called Seidel Suckhole. And yeah,

24:55 he's like, all right, this is the class four rapid. We gotta get ready to go over this. I was like, well, how many classes are there? Well, depending on the international whitewater, it's

25:03 five or six. Five goes extreme You don't want to go down this without risking death. There's uncharted turns. Where class four is, you can navigate it with a, there's some some rapids, it's

25:14 gonna be difficult, but you can navigate that with an expert. And I'm like, huh, and this is about the time I'm trying to think about like, what's my name on my company? What do I want to do?

25:22 And I was like, class four, looked at the domain name, it's there, I was like, we're gonna call it this. So ultimately, I call this, it's like, I want to help you navigate technology rapids,

25:33 headwinds, challenges, business challenges, transformations, evolutions, big projects, or compliance issues, and get through those with certainty, with confidence, using best practices, and

25:45 having somebody that's actually done a lot of the work on the IT, cyber, and data side. I have a deep kind of a unique experience and skill set in which that I've built programs from IT and cyber.

25:57 I've dealt with a number of consulting problems or regulatory. I've been on the other side of my consultant and an assessor side. And so I want to be able to use that to help advise my clients on

26:09 getting through major challenges, enabling the business with IT and data, and just generally making their lives better by utilizing technology and implementing digital, a digital footprint or

26:21 digital thought process. So that's a lot, right? And I'd like to - It's a lot, it is. I'd like to simplify that a little bit sure is is. You're offering cater toward any specific industry, or

26:33 do you see this as like a generic IT technology challenge that really is across all verticals? So specifically, I'm initially going out and focusing with upstream oil and gas companies. I think

26:47 I've had some very good success with that in my previous role in just talking with current client that I have and then as well as the challenges and changes that they're doing now with industry 40 and

27:01 taking IT digital technologies converting that to actually adding value rather than just showing stuff on a dashboard or a screen. And how to use cloud, how to use, gosh, even AI to a certain

27:14 point, it's really buzzy right now. But where does this all fit into my

27:21 formula? And then on top of that is cybersecurity is changing so quickly right now. especially after Colonial Pipeline, as well as the SEC, SEC Charging Seasails with Fraud, like those changes on

27:34 the business political side, companies I don't think are prepared for it, and they need some guidance in going that way. And so I think this is a good time for me to go and help my advisory,

27:45 especially in the oil and gas industry. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, you have my mind racing a little bit with the Colonial Hack Like that, that is a big deal. And for whatever reason, just,

27:59 you know, I've been selling technology to various different,

28:03 you know, personas within oil and gas, but when it's technology that you're selling, eventually you will deal with, you know, converse with, strategize with, get shot down by the IT group,

28:16 right, in oil and gas studies. And to me, very few of these companies actually, until you get to like the really big ones, have a strong emphasis on cyber security. I think it's in part because

28:28 IT has been viewed as like a service to the business and what services cybersecurity provide necessarily directly for the business. Yeah, it helps keep the lights on, but it's only a problem and

28:39 once it becomes a problem. So I think what you're doing makes a ton of sense. I could actually see this working in a couple different ways, at least on the cyber side for one, bigger companies

28:50 that want somebody who has like advisory consulting level expertise to sort of help them with the playbook And then on the smaller oil and gas operator side to literally execute the playbook, right?

29:02 'Cause if they only have one or two IT people and they're primarily in a support or service capacity, how are they going to execute those strategies? So I think it logically makes a ton of sense for

29:13 me to go back a little bit, because I'm a consultant, right? Fundamentally with with funk churches and also really kind of have made my pitch to upstream oil and gas. I do think it'll be

29:26 interesting for you as you start getting demand from other industries, because we've started to see that a little bit now, too. You develop a network of people, and if you do good work, then

29:37 maybe it's a VC, or an investor, or an executive that moves industries and says, Well, this person might not have the subject matter expertise, but they're really good at this. They're really

29:48 good at implementing a CRM, or managing your pipeline, or doing lead generation, or helping sort of map out a strategic sales process. That stuff goes beyond any industry. So I think it'll be

29:59 interesting, at least for me, to watch with you, how your business may diversify in terms of industries, just based on the demand that you get. So something I definitely want to keep an eye on.

30:11 I'm personally surprised that Class 4 was available. It feels like with all, especially in place out here with nature, something like that would not be a bit funk futures, whatever. Why did I

30:22 pick that? Because I like the way that it sounds. And because of the recruiting on people like, oh, so you trade futures, I'm like, absolutely not, nothing of the sort, no finance background

30:31 at all. But I like the fact that it's FU, FU, right?

30:35 It kind of looks clean in

30:39 that regard. Maybe some subtle meaning there, right? There you go. But also,

30:44 it was available, like you said. And you know, like the future for candidates, right? Because we do recruiting, I wanna make the future brighter for the companies hiring than the people going

30:56 into those positions. So I like the name, I think it's cool. On the data side of things, is that more like analytics? Like reporting, data integration. What is that? 'Cause data is such a

31:09 broad subject, Brian. Like what does that mean to you? So first of all, I wanna let this out as part of data is like I hate the word digital transformation. That means you're basically having an

31:22 and it's a creative process that you're not thinking about technology, right? So, I like to use digital native or digital evolution in which that you are taking your data, which is, in essence,

31:33 a physical manifestation or physical representation of the work that your people are doing, and that way your assets are performing, and turn that into intelligence, right? A lot of people will

31:44 have that and be like, Yeah, here's our data, we're going to look at a report. But how do we level up our data and add layers and turn it into intelligence, actionable intelligence in a secure,

31:56 accurate way? This goes all the way from data governance. This goes to the data science side and just basically making data available through cloud infrastructure, on-premise infrastructure.

32:08 What's our strategy around how we're going to utilize our data to enhance

32:14 our business? I help bring order to that chaos because even in a lot of organizations, especially oil and gas, is still very siloed.

32:22 is your geological data is very different from your operational data. But is there a way, and that's very different from your financial data? Is there a way that we can put that together and

32:32 enhance that data and add layers of complexity of potentially some ALMI, what is appropriate? Or even of, hey guys, you're not even close to getting the top of

32:45 that pyramid. Here's the basic bare bones we need to do to continue to level up your business. And so looking at your maturity, designing a quick wind system, enhancing that quick wind system,

32:53 and then branching out and expanding as the appetite for the business gets hungrier for data. Yeah, I think that the incremental winds is a big thing. I've seen many data and data management

33:05 projects fail just heard about this other day with a Hyperion Data Warehouse that millions of dollars were spent on and then the project is abandoned. You have to show some of those quick winds. And

33:15 I think, shout out Mark Hebert and the Dakota analytics team. They do a good job with that. Like one thing that I've seen with them, I saw this a little bit with Seven Lakes. I saw this with

33:26 Stonebridge when I worked there. Zeno to an extent. I think it's like, okay, how can I take your data and show you value from it real quickly? Like does that mean an oil and gas and LOS dashboard

33:39 that drills down to an invoice, right? Or an AFE variants dashboard very quickly, something that I care about, right? What is my forecast, what is my actual, and can I get the image of the AFE?

33:52 That process right there could be laborious for a company, especially that has a ton of AFEs. For a lot of oil and gas companies, even if they have tons of AFEs, if they have the right access to

34:04 that data, that report, they can easily get into it, right? Not much of a challenge. So I think that that's important for the industry as a whole, for you to map out And, you know, generally

34:16 speaking, like. I think you know where to start with those things. So you'll deal with different levels of complexity and maturity in each of these organizations you go into. Another question I

34:26 have for you, Brian, about running your own business. So for me, my background is in sales. Almost 20 years at this point of doing sales, whether it be consultative or technology-centric sales.

34:40 So for me, in starting my own company, one thing I was not concerned about was being able to sell the offering Bigger concern for me is now retention of customers and actually servicing, because

34:53 it's cool. I sold it in the past. I could just hand that to someone else. Now I have to hand it to myself, right? Hand it to my team, manage my team, manage the client, manage expectations.

35:03 For you, how has that been so far? It's a shift, right? Because now, maybe you were selling the business on certain concepts before as it relates to technology, but now you're running your own

35:13 company, now you have to sell, right? Probably a little bit more out of your comfort zone. I know for like an IT, a technology person, maybe a nerd, not really a nerd, but I'm gonna call you

35:24 that anyway. You can do it. You're social, right? You're gregarious. How have you found that so far? Like, do you feel like that's a challenging part of this business? Does it take you out of

35:35 your comfort zone? Like, what have you learned in terms of like, okay, cool, I got this really good idea.

35:49 I know I can execute. How do I sell? It's the biggest. That's the, my thing It doesn't keep me up at night, but it's my biggest challenge. And I always am, am hungry to like, get myself out of

35:54 my comfort zone and doing my own business did get me out of that. And this is one of those key things that is, the technology side and delivery, I think is I can do that. I can execute on that all

36:03 day. It's bringing that, getting that pipeline, that flywheel in, which is my biggest challenge. And so I chose to go the route of, now I gotta get a LinkedIn. I gotta start writing content I

36:14 need to start showing myself off as hopefully. hopefully, a thought leader, or at least coming across as like I know what I'm talking about, right? And so, putting together that strategy is

36:23 using a different part of my mind and a different muscle. It's like, Okay, can I write content on this? What's my blog ideas? Okay? How big should the blog be? And I had to get into a whole

36:31 world of SEO and appropriate how to manipulate the algorithm because the algorithm basically runs our lives on LinkedIn if you were a marketer. You have to adjust to that. So, and then, how do I

36:44 put together an offering? How do I put together a scope of work and how do I present that to potential clients, right? And so, in my previous role before KSCI was a consultant, so I could go in

36:57 and I could say, Here's the scope of work and deliver it, but now I was like, Okay, what price point do I have to hit? What's my unit economics? How do I make this break even? I need to reverse

37:05 engineer my monthly budget, right? A lot of those types of thoughts and conversations run through my head as I go for a walker in et cetera. So, and it's good to have a guy like a Jeremy Funk to

37:17 bounce ideas off of in lean on of lean on a little bit is like, Hey, man, am I out of line here? What would you be doing here? So I appreciate all the help that you've been doing there too. As I

37:27 get this thing off the ground. So, well, it's, it's truly my pleasure. And I will say I hate one of the things that I really try to work on about myself is is making assumptions. And I probably

37:38 made an assumption about you that you're not as creative that you're not as creative as you actually are. I've seen some incredible ingenuity from you on the content marketing side, particularly

37:49 with your LinkedIn posts, as

37:52 well as sort of your, some of your presentation capabilities that, you know, maybe those, those items were there for you, but you just didn't need to tap into them in previous roles where I was

38:01 exposed to you. But seeing your level of creativity as, as one of my former friends said to me, it said, man, Brian's content is, is really hitting the spot, right? He's adding And now you're

38:13 consistent with it. You've got your fun Friday stuff, right? You're consistently adding value. And I always say this just so that you don't stop doing it. I just want to put this out there. So

38:24 say you get like five likes, right? And you felt like it was a great post and you should have gotten more likes. Well, you know what? All it takes is one person to view your content, view your

38:34 post and to feel like you got value out of that, right? That incrementally is an improvement over not doing anything at all So, you know, I would just say just keep going, right? Don't, there's

38:46 going to be setbacks. And there's like, it's, I don't know, man, like I'm like anybody else. If I throw a good post out there on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever, like I'm checking to see how

38:55 many likes it has. Like I think that that's even future. All right, what's my notification? How is this thing tracking? All right, in the first hour, I got 32 likes. This could be a banger,

39:03 sweet, right? But fundamentally, like you could get a post that has 6, 000 likes and get nothing out of it. It's three likes and one comment and that person reaches out to you and says, Hey, I

39:13 want to talk about your business. So, you know, you're continuing to build your brand and it just, you know, like what do you say, pound the stone, right? You just keep pounding the stone and

39:24 it'll continue to pay off. But I love what you're doing. I think that you're carving out a great niche as a technology person who has a creative component and also brings versatility in skill set to

39:34 the table. I'm going to put you on the spot now. You're well. Okay. You're earning it Yeah, so I send prep questions to everybody who comes on the podcast. And then, of course, I deviate from

39:44 the questions almost the entire time, maybe not, maybe not the whole time with you, but, but most of it. And then I really like to put people on the spot with the questions that I for sure didn't

39:56 ask. And now I'm going to do that with you. So, okay, here we go. I'm going to put you on the hot seat right now and throw some questions. All right

40:07 First things first, you're a big hockey fan. right? Yeah. Who wins? Who wins the Stanley Cup this year? That's the apps. I mean, I think they're the favorites, right? Uh, it depends on

40:20 hurricanes. The Bruins are good. There's some up and comers. Yeah, the Bruins are really good. Um, but the apps, like, I think what heard them last year is like, they didn't get any rate,

40:28 they didn't get any rest. Like they went from Stanley Cup and partying really hard to get their normal, their normal training in the offseason. This year, their legs are young, they're hungry,

40:39 they made some great acquisitions to Johansson, the second line's looking better, the PK is incredible. Powerplay and offense still needs a little bit of work, but it's still early. So really

40:47 excited for the abs. I love watching them. Love talking hockey, even though I'm not as good as Marga Verez and

40:54 our neighbors to the north. But it's like, to me, it's like art on ice. As much as I like baseball, it's an individualistic game that's played as a Like hockey, you have to do tape to tape. You

41:08 have to move the puck. You have to be in the right spots. And there's a lot of luck involved in which that you have to work, work, work. Those teams that continually consistently keep you there,

41:16 their legs moving and create chances. It's just the more chances you have, the better chance for you to score. And that's what I try to do in my business too, is like work, work, work, get on

41:25 the ground, pound the stone, stay consistent, love the abs, so. Yeah, and eventually get more shots on goal, right? That's right Hockey too, my daughter's 13 and 11 now, they love going to

41:38 hockey games, 'cause I think there's just no bad seat. We've sat in literally the last row in the 336 section, and we've sat pretty close to the glass, and no matter what, it's just awesome to

41:50 watch hockey live, and Denver's got a great atmosphere for it. They do. I want your prediction for WTI natural gas prices a year from today.

42:06 Because I know you track that closely, like we all do in oil and gas. So I loved, like one of the things that I love is geopolitics in like outside of reading about technology. I like reading like

42:18 the new oil or the end of the world is just the beginning and listen to some podcasts on people that are involved on how, how something over here and this part of the world trickles down and affects

42:29 economics and the other part of the world You can obviously see the macro trends in WTI, natural gases, consolidation, decarbonization, for your individual. How does that affect the price of oil?

42:41 Well, I think that there's still,

42:45 man, there's so many variables from China's demographics in the debt bomb that they have there to the Middle East that they have going on to the whole Russia, Ukraine thing is did Vladimir Putin

42:58 have a heart attack last week like there's There's so much variable going on, but the word that I think. especially the focus on consolidation and the reduced production and lack of inventory you're

43:11 seeing all these people change. By people up for inventory is I think it's up. Unfortunately, that's just me and my thought is like I think if I would be a betting man, I think you have to wager

43:23 on higher natural gas and oil prices over the next 12 to 24 months. I would tend to agree because demand isn't going down. We've seen that. I think that the emphasis on cleaner production could

43:40 create more costs associated with that. That cost has to get passed to somebody. That's probably going to be the consumer.

43:48 Another question. What about the sensitivity of shareholder returns for our shale producers, right, is that they don't want to drill too much. They think there's sensitivity from their investors

43:58 is like, hey, we want to get some money back out of this. I think that's got to play a price too. I mean, that was a lesson that the industry learned pretty hard, you know, going back almost

44:07 exactly nine years ago, that it was kind of like a, around Thanksgiving. There was, there was blood in the oil patch, you know, um, and I think that's when things really shifted from just drill

44:17 baby drill to drill while also being profitable, please free cash flow. Thank you very much. Right. Um, and that's sort of just been the way things, things have continued. Um, for the most

44:29 part, I'd say maybe the Permians an exception, but now we're seeing a ton of consolidation out there, um, as well. Um, also, you know, curious from your perspective on, on cloud, what, what

44:41 is your favorite cloud platform and why?

44:46 The favorite cloud platform and why? So just any product like SaaS product? No, I mean, you know, I think AWS or Azure cloud, like where do you tend to go and what is the reason for that? If

45:01 you were to make a recommendation. Sure. In my consulting practice, the answer is always it depends, but for me personally, I'm such a consultant now. That's right. It depends on what you're

45:11 trying to do. But for me, I consider myself a little bit of a builder. I want to

45:18 not be pigeonholed or stuck in a system, be a little bit more flexible. And to me, AWS seems like they have the most puzzle pieces that you can put together for cloud to create products, to have

45:31 rapid storage to do DR. And that's what we built a previous platform on that that we worked on for years. But like point, point products like Jasper has been really, really helpful. It's an AI

45:45 wrapper for chat GPT. I utilize like open tape or not open table, but air table and my day to day work That it's just like a low code database, right? So like like fast platforms, I think are

46:01 extremely part of it, every tool belt. But like, there's a big push also. And I've had a couple debates on this on LinkedIn on we should be going back on prem for economic reasons. And so it

46:13 really, really depends. I'm a big AWS guy. I know that there's other industry leaders in the oil and gas space, vital energy for one is big, big investors in the oil and gas. And then full

46:24 disclosure, like I've been on panels for AWS talking about the work that I've done a previous role. So, Azure is great for those lifting and shifting. There's a lot of brownfield, but AWS to me

46:35 is like if you're going to build and really take advantage of that digital transformation, sorry, digital evolution.

46:42 AWS is place to be. Nice. Yeah, you know, before I started funk futures, I was in an interview process with AWS and I found it really, really fascinating. It's just

46:55 such a different model than what I've dealt with on the software sales side, even just the way that people are compensated there. Um, but I could see, um, some of the energy associated with it,

47:07 even for a massive kind of market leader, um, the way that they had a level of excitement was pretty impressive. Like, I think Amazon is definitely a model company, um, in terms of how, you

47:20 know, not, not only how powerful they are, but how they sort of manage and distribute that power and wealth throughout the organization was, was really fascinating I just have my heart on doing

47:30 something entrepreneurial, which, which obviously you do too. And definitely wish you the best of luck with all of that. Brian, where can people find you, um, whether it be online or your

47:40 website, like, where can people learn more about you and, and class four? Yeah. So class four is class IVcom, uh, Becker at class, I

47:49 have, you can reach me there pretty easily. Um, all my contact information is there, uh, on Twitter, I'm underscore Becker B, which warning you may get comments on baseball and umpiring and

48:00 hockey and just just like filtered thoughts and things like that. And then I'm a pretty big LinkedIn presence

48:07 in which I'm posting two or three times a week. This week has been a little rough because I've been trying to move and pack for vacation and things like that. So that's where you can find me. And

48:16 then if you're in Denver, reach out to me. I'm super glad to meet up in person or a cigar bar and just talk tech, shoot the shit, whatever. So I'd love to make connections, especially in

48:28 supporting our oil and gas industry as well as the technology companies here in town. Yeah, I would definitely recommend to any of the oil and gas companies or oil and gas IT leaders that are

48:39 listening to this podcast. At a minimum, just sit down with Becker, you'll learn something, he has a fresh approach, works extremely hard and has a lot of knowledge behind his consulting

48:50 capability. So Mr. Becker, I appreciate you. Thank you for coming to the crib. We gotta go get some lunch, so we're gonna do that. Yeah. That's good. I appreciate you Jeremy. Thanks for

48:60 everything that you're doing for the industry and being a great friend, so I appreciate you.