What The Funk?

0:00 And we're live from funk futures, world headquarters here in Colorado, Jason Webster's upstairs. I've been relegated to the basements that we don't hear each other while we're doing this podcast.

0:12 And Tim is in his kitchen, I think, right now. Yeah. I'm in the kitchen. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. This is the third or fourth one we've done where you've had someone at your house with you,

0:24 right? Susan Klatt, for sure, was the first one, and I was sort of like pushing back on her like, she's like, I've never done one of these. I'm going to come to your house. I'm like, You know,

0:34 it might be easier if you don't, of this, but anyways, that was fun. Then Zach Warren, we actually filmed right here at this table. There you go. Yeah. I like it, but I mean, maybe I need

0:47 like a more formal studio, so I don't have to sit on a different level of the house when, you know, adjacent Webster's here doing the pot Well, before I see that the funk futures is blowing up,

0:57 you've got to be able to. build a little garage studio for yourself by now, right? I mean, there's four other people that live here that have a say in those kinds of things, but yeah, yeah, you

1:10 know, it's been fun. You know, Tim, we'll get into this 'cause Jason's actually with an 18-year-old startup right now, but in sort of a growth mode with his organization as is Funk Futures, and

1:23 I think OVS Group as well right now And I think the thing that's fascinating for me is, I think I looked on LinkedIn, I've been at Funk Futures like outwardly for like 16 months, and very rarely

1:35 actually take time to like appreciate the wins, you know. It's, you're constantly focused on what could go wrong. When is the other shoe gonna drop? When is this guy gonna fire me? Why am I not

1:46 selling enough? I mean, all the things that you worry about even in sort of like a full-time job and just more condensed, but every once in a while when you get a chance to slow down, It's like,

1:55 man, this has been kind of fun. We built something over the last year and a half. Hopefully he keeps going. Anyway, it's enough about me. This is Jason Webster time. Jason Webster, Mr. Texas

2:04 triangle himself. Grew up in Dallas, went to college and say, Netonia lives in Houston. Jason, why don't you give us a little bit of your background? Yeah, no, absolutely. First off, Jeremy,

2:15 I appreciate you guys having me on. The proverbial long time listener, first time caller, listening to some of them. Had one of my good buddies on about a couple of weeks ago, so I'm excited So,

2:16 you know, appreciate you guys having me on. Yeah,

2:31 so who am I? So you kind of mentioned it, Jeremy. I've, other than Austin, I've lived in all the big cities, you know, in Texas. You know, grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, played soccer, a

2:42 lot of sports, had fun.

2:45 When I was graduating high school, trying to decide where I went to go, you know, Chairman and I, we were talking about this a bit. I, you know, looked at AM and UT, and ended up deciding on

2:53 Trinity. You know, kind of small liberal arts school San Antonio is a really cool city. small city field, even though it's a pretty big city. Went there. It was comp sign major. Really enjoyed

3:07 programming, did it in high school, kind of had a knack for it. You always liked the math and science part of the world in the academia side. And really fell in love with the campus. Fell in love

3:18 with the school and really had a good time. Ended up getting a computer science degree, graduated in four years. Parents were happy about that It was only four years.

3:30 And then you have to be there. Trinity's no small change kind of place. I mean,

3:37 it's private. So if you spend extra time there, that's a big deal. Yeah, it was a four years, like no more than four years. It was a game plan and it actually came to fruition. That was good.

3:49 The cool thing about Trinity, I've been down to the campus a few times,

3:56 Is it's right in the center of a really nice part of San Antonio, just it's completely incorporated into the community around it. It's just a really great area, just to be going to school. It was,

4:12 it was fun. And I'm sure a lot of schools are like this. I mean, it is in a really cool area. I mean, like in 10 minute drive, you pretty much are really where you want to be in San Antonio a

4:23 time in the center of it But it's a bubble, right? I mean, at school, if you don't leave campus much, I mean, you're in San Antonio, but you're in the Trinity bubble, right? And so it's

4:32 interesting when you venture out, you're in the city, but like if you stay on campus, like you just feel like you're in the middle of just Trinity city, not necessarily San Antonio. So it's a

4:43 cool campus. Like we were talking about it a bit earlier this morning, but it's changed a lot. Like, you know, they've put a lot of money into it, a lot of new buildings, it's a gorgeous campus.

4:52 But yeah, like I wouldn't trade for the world at it a great time.

4:56 didn't date my wife in college but she actually was attorney as well. So we met and then when I actually ended up coming to Houston, you know, ended up dating and married and kids. So, you know,

5:07 ended up, ended up working out pretty well. So, you know, my exposure being a New England kid and seeing all this stuff in, in Texas, you know, you've got your Aggies, you got UT, you got

5:19 Texas Tech, a lot of oil and gas. Did you, were you exposed to oil and gas at all when you were in college? Not at all.

5:29 You know, again, like, I guess I'll get to it a bit when I ended up going to work for Quorum, how I ultimately got exposed to oil and gas. But in San Antonio, you know, it's not your typical

5:38 oil and gas, Tom, you have a Lero that was there, but other than that, you know, like I said, I was, I was focused on being a comp sci person, right, program. I didn't care about programming

5:49 for the oil and gas industry, for vacuum cleaners, whatever. It didn't really matter. I was just, you know, enjoy the programming aspect of it. But yeah, through school, like oil and gas

5:58 wasn't even a snippet of like what I was expecting or looking for, as you get into your senior year and you start doing some interviews, et cetera, I did interview with Exxon and thought about

6:08 going to work at Exxon. So I might have ended up in industry. But

6:14 that's a big, huge machine. And I wanted kind of a different feel type company and ended up staying in San Antonio and working for a non-profit research firm just on North side of town, which is

6:28 okay. I actually, it was a good first job, kind of get exposed to kind of corporate culture and doing those kind of things. But I was on a massive government project. So you could probably know

6:41 what they were asking us to do. It was probably a 75, 80 person team. And I'm a college grad. I had like this little bitty niche, but it just didn't move fast It. was government jobs, right?

6:54 The people are gray, a lot of really intelligent people, but it just, it wasn't for me. I, you know, it took me a couple of years to kind of figure it out, but

7:02 they actually, it's a pretty cool company. Like they do a number of things, you know, Tim was just kind of joking. When you drive down the highway, you see monkeys. And every time you hear

7:09 about this company, they have a bunch of different departments, right? So they do a lot of research. And everyone knows about the monkeys. When I was a kid in San Antonio, we were, we would,

7:19 if you drive down 410, I think it is And you just see this dome close to the freeway, surprisingly close to the freeway. The bunch of monkeys just sitting up inside it, you know, and it's not the

7:31 zoo, and it says Southwest Research Institute or whatever it is. And we, you know, we always, you know, we're going to play football in various places and we drive by it and always wonder what

7:42 the hell's going on. I hope those monkeys aren't getting, you know, injected with radiation or something.

7:48 So that's how, that's how the city, I can't identify this.

7:53 Yeah, it is. In fact, it was funny because, you know, in preparation for this podcast, you ask, you're like, oh, that's where the monkeys are, right? So if people know swearing your

8:01 Southwest research, the very first question is like, oh, did you work with the monkeys? Like, no, I was actually in a different department.

8:08 I didn't know about this at all. That's wild. So you started off working not with monkeys, but, you know, not too far removed from them. And then, quorum, right? Was it right to quorum? Yeah,

8:21 it was So I worked there for a few years. And then, a guy who actually worked at Quorum at the time, Scott Bateman, he's a great guy. He actually is at, I think he's at Amazon now. But anyways,

8:33 we were having a beer one Friday night. And I was like, yeah, I'm kind of doing this stuff. It's kind of boring. I'm not really, it's not fulfilling. Except he was like, well, hey, you know,

8:42 we're actually looking to bring some people on a quorum. You know, we're growing at that point And 04 is about a 45-50 person company, so we had, you know. I talked that Friday, I flew out on

8:55 Tuesday, interviewed a couple of guys, got a job offer, and two weeks later started at Quorum. So yeah, that's

9:03 how I ended up in Houston, right? Like, you know, they basically said, you know, you can live in Houston or Dallas, 'cause they had two offices at the time. And, you know, I hadn't really

9:11 ever been in Houston, had a lot of friends from Trinity who ended up in Houston. So, decided to go to Houston and started at Quorum, so

9:20 So, your native Quorum, I guess, your original Quorum then. So, you didn't come in through one of the acquisitions or baltons or anything? Correct, yeah, when I started, so there's about,

9:32 like I said, 45, 50 people in '04, 'cause, you know, they started in '98, right? And so, was early on, right? The acquisitions really didn't start taking off until, you know, really like

9:43 the last five to seven years or so. But, yeah, when I started, there was, I think, seven or eight of us and the entire upstream organization. So it was early on, like at that point, all we

9:54 had was a land, you know, they had a land and GIS solution. There was no accounting or revenue or production, like no other things existed when I started. So it was definitely early, it was

10:05 established, kind of like where I'm at in Al Fira, you know, an established solid product, but very entrepreneurial sort of startup kind of feel, you know, we all have multiple jobs. It wasn't

10:15 kind of the big machine it is today, for sure, when I started So take me through your evolution of jobs, because you've mentioned this a lot. And I think there are still some people there, like,

10:27 you know, we had Sarushan a few weeks ago. I was out at Connections and seeing the people like Lindsey, who's been there forever too. So like, what was your evolution in jobs? Was it like you

10:37 were a sales guy and then you were a land subject matter expert, implementer? Like, and I know you eventually ended up as an executive there, but what were the hats that you, that you wore? And

10:47 then I guess as we move forward onto Spiro, what are you doing over there?

10:51 Yeah, perfect. So it's interesting, like many of us, early in the day, Lindsey included. Sarush came on, I guess, a couple of years after me, convinced him to come work with us. But yeah,

11:04 my very first assignment, so I started at Quorum, my very first assignment was doing a data conversion out of an AS 400 system into the land system for Noble. So, again, being a comp sci-fi guy,

11:17 I wanted to be in the code programming, but really it was doing PLSQL type stuff, data manipulation, pulling into the system, which was pretty cool 'cause a lot of what I had done before was

11:28 really more kind of UI integration type coding in my previous job, not really kind of data, like data manipulation. So, it was kind of a cool new thing to learn. Learn the system and the business

11:40 pretty quickly, 'cause when you're starting to look at data, you're like, first thing is like, what's the legal description? Like, why does everyone care about this acreage? You're like, what

11:48 are spacing units? As you're putting all this data in, you have to figure out where to put it. You're learning what it is and why it actually matters to these companies. So for a first year or two,

11:59 we did a lot of kind of implementations, configurations, reporting, data manipulation, integration. So you kind of like the whole, the technology side of putting it a product for a customer.

12:11 But what I quickly realized is, I really enjoyed interacting with the customers and actually being not behind the computer, right? The proverbial, put headphones on, turn lights off, shut the

12:20 door and code for eight hours a day. Like I quickly realized that I enjoyed having my technology fix, but really enjoyed interacting with the customers, solving business problems. It was just more

12:33 rewarding than, looking at a bunch of lines of code for me. So as we did that, of course, we're starting to grow. The land product is starting to gain traction. At that point, now we're

12:44 starting to build an accounting and a revenue system, et cetera And so, you know, I - We all did multiple things, so early on, and Sarush kind of alluded to this too. I went and listened to you

12:55 guys' podcast with him, but we all coded and supported and did sales presentations and demonstrations and made coffee at times, right? I mean, like we all kind of did everything. But as we

13:07 started, sorry. Move the furniture. Yeah, exactly. So like as we started getting bigger and getting more people, we had to get more of a, you know, a true organization management kind of

13:17 structure in place And at that time, so my original mentor was Gary O'Dwyer. He actors at Chevron for 20 plus years. That's where the land system, corn's land system came from, right? It was at

13:30 Chevron, built at Chevron. And so he came over to Quorum, when Quorum acquired it in the early 2000s. And he really showed me the ropes. Like he taught me is like how to engage with customers,

13:43 like how to go about business, like how to think about PL,

13:47 You know, not just like, here's how you put a system in, but how to think about the bigger picture. And then really give me a lot of opportunity to start running projects, running multiple

13:56 projects, that ultimately, you know, kind of started running the land and revenue practice. And then eventually, I was probably 2010, 2012, this timeframe, you know, we, I ended up taking

14:10 you over and running the entire upstream vertical for about six or so years. So that's where, I mean, I really enjoyed that, 'cause it was, you had responsibility for the development and product

14:20 direction, the sales and marketing aspect of it, the implementation support. So it really was like kind of running a business unit or a business within a business. And I learned a ton, a lot of

14:29 it, the hard way. Unfortunately, you know, make some mistakes and learn, but, you know, it was in the heyday. We were growing rapidly and it was a lot of fun. And you have lifelong friends

14:40 and learned a whole lot of stuff. But the exposure I got to the oil and gas world at Quorum, was immense. I know a lot about upstream, mid-room pipeline isn't necessarily my pedigree. I didn't

14:53 really focus on that much, but just how the business runs, all of our customers are having access to a way hundreds of different companies run their business. They all think they're different.

15:04 They're very similar with some nuances but, it was really cool to actually learn about the ruling gas world, business problems, how people address it. There's not necessarily a right way to do

15:15 certain things, but there are definitely wrong ways. I learned a lot of different ways of just if you think it can be done and should be done this way. There's other ways it can be done just as

15:23 well. I learned a whole lot at Quorum and enjoyed my time there.

15:30 When I think about Quorum, at least in the first half of your 10-year over there, I viewed it at that point like tips dominated the market. Midstream was completely owned, transportation,

15:43 gathering pipelines. that was Quorum's thing, and then started to see some land, particularly at companies who were bigger, right? So like the companies like Devan or Continental, who had SAP,

15:54 would naturally sort of just default and go to Quorum land. So carved out that niche of like Quorum land is the elite land solution in the market, right? With Spira, who is a, you know, funk

16:07 futures client and a really interesting promising organization, you're focused less on, I would say, sort of the back office ERP type of stuff and much more in the field. Did you have

16:18 opportunities when you were at Quorum to work with the field or were you mostly focused on the back office and what are some of the differences you see in selling to field, remote services folks,

16:28 contractors versus CFOs and controllers up in the ivory tower? Yeah, no, great question. So at Quorum, you know, as are the acquisitions that Tim you were kind of alluding to, you know,

16:41 started right, you know, kind of with fielding and the field data capture and skated solutions, you know, those are more production, you'll kind of focus solutions. I wasn't really, I mean, I

16:50 knew about them, you know, I knew how they fit in our portfolio, but wasn't necessarily involved. So when I came to spirit, it was sort of a, I call it career 20, but it was different, right?

17:01 I mean, working with the back office, you know, it's always kind of the executive, typically the C-suite It's the ones who are doing a lot of the bean counting and decision making, not

17:09 necessarily doing the day-to-day operations, whereas spirit, that's what you've got to what it is. So it's been fun, because it's very similar, right? I mean, software software, you got to

17:20 build it, you got to sell it, you got to implement it, you got to support it, right? So it's very similar, and so what I learned at Quorum has been very valuable for me in my role here at Spira.

17:30 But it is different, like you're working with the field guys. And a lot of them, they roll up their sleeves and they're getting their hands dirty. And like the ones doing the actual work, not to

17:39 say the operators or kind of the back office people aren't, it's just a different world servicing the same market, right? So it's been interesting. And then

17:51 the kind of sales process or how it works, it's a much faster cycle, which is actually really refreshing, right? I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've filled out thousand plus requirement

18:04 RFPs that you kind of wonder if they're actually ever reading them, right? I mean, because they all look exactly the same. I think there's kind of a joke, right? People take those requirements

18:13 and then read jumble them. So you can't copy and paste and make you fill them out every single time. But this is a lot more kind of relationship-based, have a quick conversation. What's your

18:25 problem? OK, here, let me show it. And then sounds great. Let's sign in off you go, right? The difference, too, is kind of the world's change. You don't have these multi-million dollar

18:35 projects implementing software. Everyone likes off the shelf, turnkey software these days. They don't like big upfront capital projects. And so ours, at Spirit, I mean, it is. Here's a

18:47 software, we do a lot of some configuration in to make it match your business, train you and off you go. So I mean, it can be up and running within a couple of weeks, sometimes with a few months,

18:59 depending on the complexity, integration, et cetera. So it's been refreshing to kind of have sort of a quicker, true, fast, cloud-offered software offering, being kind of a software company,

19:10 not a consulting company that consults and implements software. So it's been different, but I've enjoyed it.

19:19 The people I work with are amazing at Spira. And in fact, how I ended up at Spira, So Kevin Lovebrook, our

19:28 CEO, he actually was at Quorum as well. And I think it was like 707 to 14 maybe in the Canadian office at Quorum. And so I spent quite a bit of time in Calgary at Quorum, you know, trying to help

19:42 build the upstream business in the Canadian market. So I did a lot of work with Kevin and then, you know, when it was time to part ways with Quorum, you know, took some, took some time and ended

19:50 up reconnecting with Kevin. And, you know, he said, Hey, I need someone to come be an executive and build and run the US brand for us And, you know, after, you know, some back and forth, it

20:03 was too good to be true. And, you know, I ended up here at Spiro, so it's been awesome. Looking at the dates on LinkedIn, it looks like that was kind of writing the throws of the whole

20:14 COVID. You know, everybody trying to figure out what's going on with COVID. So what was it like making, taking time off and doing a career change right in the middle of COVID? You know, it was

20:25 tough You know, cuz obviously COVID hit everyone right March 2020. I ended up leaving Quorum in October 2020. So in Texas, it was a lot less locked down at that point come October, right? I mean,

20:39 people weren't necessarily going back to the office, but it wasn't complete lockdown. Like it was the first three months of COVID. So it was a little bit easier at that point, right? I mean,

20:47 still wearing masks and all that kind of good stuff, but it wasn't like, you know, you're locked in your house. But that being said, you know, when I left Quorum, took some time because, you

20:56 know, when you're implementing software, you know, there were software companies, but you're also doing a lot of consulting. And so I did a lot of soul searching and played a lot of golf while

21:05 searching. I heard it go. Go ahead, too. I couldn't, I was trying to decide, do I want to do another software gig? Do I want to do like, you know, traditional consulting, right, like coming

21:17 in business process stuff or whatever? Or, you know, do I want to go work in industry? And I had all those opportunities. But what I kind of quickly realized is like, you know, Billacomp's iGuy,

21:27 I haven't written a lot of code in years. like I'm a tech junkie and so like I want to be involved with the software company because you still get to do you know the client interaction, you still

21:37 get to be focused on the industry, you get to do a lot of consulting and helping solve hard business problems and make people's lives and businesses better and you still get your tech fix. So after

21:48 a few months I knew it's technologies where I needed to be in a software company made sense. I actually looked possibly at exiting the oil and gas world. I mean

21:58 like during COVID the negative oil price for a period of time it was just it wasn't necessarily a lucrative market and so I was like maybe I should look at software outside of oil and gas but I love

22:08 the oil and gas world right. I mean contrary to popular belief also fuels are needed and aren't going anywhere and I love the ability to leverage technology to make our industry better and so

22:19 ultimately when Kevin and I reconnected and it was oil and gas focused still and this technology kind of checked all the boxes and It feels like it felt like home, and it's definitely home now for

22:31 sure. So I've got, I mean, I know Jeremy, you're very familiar with Spirit Data, I'm not. Yeah. But can we back up, what does Spirit Data do? Yeah, absolutely. So Jeremy kind of alluded to

22:45 it a bit. So we have what we call ORP, right? It's an operations resource platform. So kind of simplistically, you know, the way we kind of describe it is, a lot of customers will have a CRM

22:57 tool, right? The sales guys are using the sales force or a dynamic or whatever they're using. And then you have accounting, which might be QuickBooks or SAP or Oracle or whoever. You know,

23:07 everything in between is kind of where we fit, right? So we like to say ORP is effectively the ERP for operations. So it is a field management solution. So we've got a number of customers that we

23:19 service. You know, predominantly in the willing gas world, have a lot of field services companies, You know, some operators, you know, And then a number of Roddy of other kind of customers kind

23:28 of cost a spectrum. But the guys who run it, so customer calls and says, hey, I need you to do a workover on this well. Or I need you, we've got Hyderabad companies that do precision drilling or

23:41 digging with water and vacuums, right? And so they all run this in customer calls. They basically say, okay, what do you need? They put it in, they're able to give them a quote or a bid. They

23:52 can create work orders for disorders. And then once that's accepted, they've got their price books for that customer, all the contracts, MSAs, et cetera. Once a customer says, great, when can

24:02 you be here? There's a scheduling piece. You go and you look at all of your assets, your people, your equipment, your inventory, and you schedule it, right? You've got to directly in the

24:11 system, you're scheduling, you're looking at where everyone's at. And then ultimately you dispatch it. So it could be Jeremy's a supervisor with a crew of 10. I dispatch it to Jeremy or dispatch

24:21 it to the people. I dispatch the equipment And now you know where all of your people equipment is. his bags scheduled out and then so now they're out and they're doing whatever function it is a work

24:32 over drilling digging laying concrete a wireline equal to whatever whatever they're doing right and and they're out in the field and there's a technology a mobile component right here your phone

24:44 tablet or laptop in a disconnected state they're keeping track of all the labor equipment and material that's going on two hours which is being used etc M and then once that's all done you can get

24:55 signatures out in the field from you to accompany man or an operators run it you know they kind of conglomerate it back and are getting the surgery or virus or to it but then you can route it around

25:05 for approval and and ultimately invoice and so then if your service provider you have all the information you know how much labor was spent you know how many know the runtime of the rigs or whatever

25:15 the equipment being used as an indie author the invoice to the customer um Yeah that's kind of the heart of it and there's payroll capabilities to ride so you know a lot of these companies Have hourly

25:27 employees and so those guys are putting in, you know, they log on their phone today, I work eight hours and so we have all that information because it's revenue that you're gonna build back to the

25:35 customer even though it's a cost to you and so you can have payroll within the system. A lot of safety certifications making sure if I'm getting ready to deploy 10 out to do, you know, a master

25:46 welding job, does he have the master welding certificate or qualification? So marrying the people to the jobs. So it really is a lot of back office management of your assets and people, and then

25:56 capturing everything that's happening in the field in a centralized system. You know, to run your business, you're getting real-time optics and be able to make decisions based off of, you know,

26:06 really what's going on.

26:08 What about some of the areas that are just really remote and don't have service? Like obviously you have a GPS component and you're, you know, kind of tapped into where people are at any given time.

26:19 What What happens when you're in a no-service area? Yeah, great question. you're right, we do have like a workload feature, right? Like if you're in the middle of nowhere, or especially, you

26:29 know, in the Canadian market, you might be in the middle of nowhere and it's freezing. And so it pings you every hour and you got to make sure you check in so people know, you know, you're safe.

26:38 But we purposely built the application. So, you know, it is a SaaS cloud-based offering. But, you know, whether it's a tablet, phone, or laptop version, it works in a disconnected state. So,

26:48 you know, if you have an Apple phone, you go to the iOS store, you download SpearFI If

26:54 you're on Android, you go to the Google Play Store, you download it. And so, it works in a disconnected state. So, if you are in the middle of nowhere, Bill, you still have the ability to run

27:04 the software. And then, the second it has connectivity, it automatically synchronizes your information, gets your new dispatch information. So, it is purposely built because, you know, you

27:14 don't typically drill a well in the middle of Denver, right? It's kind of an outskirts, whether it's typically you know it's getting better and you know a lot of these companies will have you know

27:23 WIfi capabilities but there's no satellite around and still can't use it and so we purposely when it was built you know eighteen years ago that was before we had the coverage we have today and though

27:35 it was built with that in mind from the very inception that not make sense I mean I've been in the mobile apps game more a little more on lease operator side but it it fundamentally makes sense I mean

27:45 the the ability to operate by exception I think is inherently kind of E S G we've talked about this a little bit too right like E S G you know is a is a very wide swath brightly yet there's so much

27:59 that you could say is or isn't E S G to me things like this where you're you're right at the the tip of the spear right if you can prevent somebody from driving extra miles and putting more methane

28:12 into the atmosphere that's great right and your product gets people moving in that direction what what companies do that don't have an an RP type system is adjust like like literally things written

28:24 out by hand. Especially watching more people probably. Yeah, right? Yeah, it is. So like scheduling is definitely, you know, a big whiteboard in the conference room, right? You might have

28:35 like little magnets you're moving around and you know, it's kind of a kid game. But out in the field, you're right, like paper. Paper is still what it is, right? You know, you fill in a paper

28:43 ticket, you stick it in the mason jar on site and then the company man picks it up or - Wow. Yeah, I mean, like I would say my biggest competitor is paper or Excel.

28:54 So it's, and that's where, I mean, you kind of relude to it a bit, like, you know, so focusing on the field versus kind of the back office, you know, like I did in my prior life.

29:05 That's where I feel like technology, like the field, like there's a lot of really, really good technology, but it's more for like, how do I know exactly where that drill bit is going or how do I

29:14 actually, you know, how do I extract the gas, but not necessarily help run an operation And so I feel like the service companies. Technology is very under service for those guys right and some of

29:25 it's adoption right you know the guy's done it for 20 30 years Love running on his you know his tablet or while on a piece paper and you know isn't necessarily interest in technology But I you know

29:35 generally speaking right well and gas is kind of in behind the eight ball on technology Adoption compared to other industries and I'd say the field unfortunately hasn't been serviced as much Which is

29:46 actually really fun to kind of help Pulling technology and make their lives so much easier because doing these guys right like they finished their job And they have to drive an hour back to the office

29:56 then right or keel this stuff in and then drive home Well now it's on their phone They just as your drive at home push submit right and so it's making their work life balance better and not a whole

30:06 lot of just extra Driving And on the ESG front same thing right so if I'm if those guys are driving an hour less a day Because I'll go back to the office because it's technology-enabled that's helping

30:17 They have auditability in the system so you know what's going on. In fact, I had a conversation with a soon-to-be customer yesterday in the scheduling component. He said the same thing. He's like,

30:27 you know, we had two rigs and they basically crossed paths on the highway 'cause they were going to the next site. Instead of just, they were already on site, just move it over. And so things

30:37 like that helps you run a more efficient business, but then also it's good for the environment, et cetera. So there's a lot of benefits in being able to have technology and able to operations like

30:46 this.

30:47 Yeah, you know, it's, go ahead, Tim I was gonna say, one of the key enablers is, you know, they're at a time when nobody had a phone, they're moving around with it.

31:06 And now I don't care how much of a laggard you are in technology, resisting changes, I want to write everything down. People are just used to checking in and with their Chick-fil-A app, they're

31:11 just getting used to that. And it's got to enable reduce the barrier entry for services like you're providing. IT absolutely does you know and there there's still some pushback from some companies

31:23 still want to you know they have a master data management policy right you know here's a tablet but you can't go surf the web on a ride they'll have a lockdown but you're absolutely right I mean it

31:32 that's why it's such an easy adoption because I'm not asking you to go and learn some really complicated system right I mean if you know how to log in and check in an order on chick fillet you Gotta

31:42 go and put some cost and revenue items on a ticket that you're actually doing on the field I mean if we purposely made it it's a good looking piece of software but it's simple right we don't have a

31:52 lot of bells and whistles on it it's just brass tacks these are guys in the field they don't want to see a bunch of you know frivolous stuff for the for the sake of just having bells and whistles we

32:01 put it at their fingertips they put it in and off they go because ultimately I do no one wants these guys spending an hour doing Admin tasks you want them drilling or or working over or whatever their

32:11 job is like not monkeying with software right so that's really what the focus is done making sure we enable them to Do their jobs do it better and still have accurate operational activity and data for

32:23 the people who need it right to think broadly the electronic ticketing o R P space is ripe for consolidation there's just so many sort of small players out there that I wasn't even aware that spirit

32:36 has like seventy or seventy five customers right but there's a few of these companies like you look at engage engage probably has twentieth thirty customers we got clear justice stephen tubes was on

32:47 this about a year ago talking about how there's only twenty to twenty five percent of all of the field is actually digitized right just in terms of field tickets and I think we're trending more in

32:57 that direction but like this was not an area that was being covered and then all of a sudden it's like open ticket and you guys in and engage and clear just sticks and the iron sight it's like there's

33:07 all these different companies so like how do you differentiate aside from the fact that of course you guys are smart people you've done this before Like what's the, what's the differentiator? Why

33:17 does somebody go with you as opposed to some of these other guys? Yeah, great question. You know, I would say the breadth and depth of the offering. You know, it's probably a pretty standard

33:28 answer. But, you know, a lot of our customers, like when I talk about everything from scheduling, dispatching, ticketing, safety, et cetera, like, you know, there's a lot of different

33:38 features and functions of the system. And to be honest, only one or maybe a couple customers use the entire gambit of the solution Yeah. So a lot of customers say, you know what, I just, I need

33:48 to get off a paper, I need ticketing. And then they say, you know what, now that I have that, now I'd like to actually do invoices out of your system. And then, you know, maybe face-free is

33:56 like, well, great, it would be great if I could do payroll. And so I feel like with what we offer, it's not just the ticketing, right? I mean, like, the people you list, like, we compete in

34:06 certain areas, but I don't feel like any of them can do, you know, kind of the end to end

34:11 And a lot of times what our customers will do is, you know, we'll come in and maybe put it in for sort of, you know, kind of the must-have stuff they need. But then the rationalization of their

34:21 application footprint makes it easy. Because all of a sudden, like, we had a system for this, this, and this, and you just replace three systems with yours. And so I feel like a lot of what we

34:31 actually have a lot of success with is being able to rationalize an IT footprint because of the amount of scope that we can handle within the system And it's also a true term key SaaS software, right?

34:44 So it's not this kind of software that I have to come in and do a whole lot of customization or development to put it in. It really is configuration, training, and off you go. And so the ability

34:56 to get it and rapidly take advantage of it, I think, really distinguishes us from most of our competition, who typically has to have a massive upfront capital project to make it successful and work

35:05 for a business so it strikes me that

35:09 spirit data and even quorum for the most, most of their time, are primarily North American by that. I mean, US and Canadian type of

35:22 clientele. Is that, do I have that rider? Are you guys looking out internationally? There are other locations where you guys are going beyond North America? Yeah, no, great question. I would

35:31 say North America is our focus, right? I mean, we're about 50-50 right now between the states and US from a client standpoint We do have some non-North American customers. Those are kind of more

35:42 opportunistic, right? Someone has three rigs, sells it to a company, and they say, Hey, you should probably use this software. So, you know, if someone called and had the need, like I'd

35:51 absolutely entertain the opportunity, but I'm not necessarily focusing on developing the field market in Australia, as an example. So, I mean, North America is our focus. Well, you know, and

36:03 if you go that route, you never get any business trips to Dubai or anything like that So that's one goal I'm gonna have to buy. Isn't that a drawback? I don't know.

36:14 My trips you buy is one of my favorites favorite stops. I love it. That's fantastic

36:22 Well, I think Jason before we pivot into some of the kind of lighter stuff with this podcast my last question really about spirit is like from from your perspective like looking at Kevin, right?

36:34 This is a 18-year-old startup, right? It's it's effectively still run extremely lean You guys have good clients like what is it about all the sudden in year 17 Kevin decides? All right now we're

36:47 gonna step on the gas Yeah, good. So I Would say so it's 18 years old right so Kevin took the helm in 14 So it's been about eight years or so since he kind of came back and took it over and I'll

36:58 kind of skip the whole history of how you know How it came to be in the beginning?

37:04 But so it was originally kind of an enterprise on-prem type application and then like early, before most people started saying size, Kevin had the foresight with the board and everyone else who was

37:16 around this time to truly make it a fast cloud solution, right, before kind of it was a cool thing to do. So a big part of that was really a development focused organization, right, making sure

37:27 the product is there. We already had customers, but you're kind of changing into the next generation of what technology is. And so once that was established, you know, there's been kind of a

37:38 pivot into being more of, you know, kind of a marketing and sales driven organization, because you know, you're not building some vaporware that you're, you've just sold someone, you have a

37:46 sound product. And now it's just a matter of educating and executing, right, and selling. So, you know, when Kevin asked me to come to spirit, I mean, because, you know, if you look at just

37:57 the market, right, I mean, Canada is a great market, but just by size, right, the US is much larger. Yeah And there wasn't really an executive presence. And so that's where a lot of it was

38:07 like, hey, come on and out, you know, help kind of build. build it in the US, which it's been fun. It's, I do something different every day, right? Some days I'm doing a demonstration myself

38:19 or working on marketing collateral or talking to existing customers. And it's, you do a lot of different things, but it ended up kind of turning into more than the US, right? I mean, I'm working

38:31 a lot in Canada now to, or just kind of a chain of events that ended up just kind of doing that So, recently Kevin actually asked me to kind of take a step up and not just help the US, but kind of

38:44 be a lot involved with running the business. Instead of being VP of US operations, actually take the president title and actually really help run the business.

38:54 So, thank you. Congratulations, Sarah, that's cool. Yeah, no, thank you. Which, you know, title is a great, but like I'm still doing exactly what I was doing before But if you kind of get

39:06 back to ancient questions, like, you know, it's just a matter of like. and educating and actually executing a sales driven organization now because it's in the back of the truck and at work who's

39:18 Gotta you Gotta sell it now I'm in a lot of people you know call it spiral arise if someone says hey what do you do expire it's like well if you call us by you don't you definitely don't know if

39:27 you've ever heard of a similar didn't know we existed and so you know our number one goal is really just to make sure people know cause if if I get enough back you know a bake off I feel like we come

39:36 out on top more often than not and so it's just making sure people know that we have a a viable option but I think you've you've done a nice job of that right I mean it's it's really you know the

39:46 perspective that I have as a consultant is is so much different now being a part of the organization when you see something from the outside I just thought this was a Wednesday Tuesday company right

39:55 now having been exposed to it it's like man these guys are professionals this product is legit and these guys were serious re like it it takes a it takes that drive from the executive team to say hey

40:06 you know what we're on cruise control for awhile and it was great now we're past right now we're hitting the last line so I have a lot of respect for that and let's talk about sales presentations

40:17 things that have potentially gone wrong yet we call this podcast tripping over the barrel then you probably didn't listen to the first or second episode but you know it it's sort of the genesis is

40:26 like me and tim we have a million different things tim had a rip in his pants and had to hide as he as he left the room I was doing this like big passionate presentation to BHP Billiton I sit down my

40:39 butt hits the seat the seat flies back next thing you see all it is like my feet up in the air at a round table with a bunch of execs who people like are you Ok they're like I want to laugh but I Kit

40:50 anything crazy like that happen to you other as physical comedy or just a disaster of a demo that that you are a part of Italy I can't say it actually fallen out of a chair your gun no head over heels

41:03 and obviously everyone always has the technology challenges right or you push the button software bombs, and like those are all kind of things that happen. I would say one of the more memorable ones

41:17 we were doing, so this is probably like late 2000s, you know, probably 2007, 2008, you know, renewables kind of started becoming a hot topic, all of a sudden the government's given renewable

41:26 energy credits. So, you know, we started teetering into the energy or the renewable space with some of the existing products. And so we were starting to do tours and like, you know, typical oil

41:35 and gas towns, right? Houston, Midland, Denver, et cetera. That's not where your typical wind or, you know, renewable companies are, right? I mean, there's a ton of them in like the

41:43 northeastern area, like in Manhattan, right? So we had like six meetings lined up in Manhattan as me and another guy who's actually still a quorum. And we're just doing like demo after demo. And

41:54 then we got a call like, hey, we just got a flyer like, hey, you got to go show it to them. So, you know, we show up and sit down and go through the whole slide deck like, you know, here's

42:03 who we are and while we're great and here's kind of an overview of what we're about to show you in the software.

42:10 That's that's kind of like managing assets. I wouldn't did an operation system to like manage like the cockpit for like the wind turbine generation. And so like we looked at a server like yeah sorry

42:22 we're in the wrong meeting like I had no idea how we ended up there it was just like a last second thing but like it was I felt pretty silly because like you're you're here like you got your game

42:32 based on your presenting and you're like what the hell are you talking about right it wasn't even the right winning the right wheelhouse of what they were looking for Tim that's like the light version

42:40 of Matt Wilcox and

42:43 his team in Europe 15 minutes in they're like what are you guys doing here nothing to sell to us that was a fun day and a few of those where you fly out someone set something up and they don't you

42:54 think you've been briefed and you show up and then either everything's changed between when you took off and landed or that you they were just hey I got a meeting come on in someone set it up we used

43:06 to have an appointment setting group.

43:10 and all they were trying to do is they were just calling. Oh, I got somebody. It's got the right title for you. You show up and the guy, you walk in, the guy goes, yeah, I said yes to this

43:20 meeting. I have no idea why. Yeah, oh boy. Then he goes to his phone, but even back then people didn't have phones. They would just blatantly like brazenly get up and leave the room. Yeah,

43:32 exactly. I have once, back in the day, back when there was PI data, and now part of my chest. Yeah. I went in and you guys said, do you guys have a reader for PI or PI data? And I was like,

43:49 that's about, we're about six months away from having that ready.

43:52 He's literally, and I remember the guys they didn't want to say it out loud, he just put his head on the back wall, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

44:02 The rent, everyone else in the meeting paid attention. And when the meeting broke, Guy in the front row said, that was unfortunate.

44:11 Yeah, of course, right. Well, this meeting didn't matter for shit. Tim, I have to say this 'cause you were involved in this too. Like one of the earlier career like awful losses that I had was

44:22 to quorum at ultra. Remember that for AFE work form? I was like, they should go with us. It doesn't make sense. They weren't a quorum shop and they went with it. And that was like, I didn't

44:33 understand why that happened, right? It was like one of those losses where it took me so long to rationalize, right? But I think that what the quorum team did well then was not focus on their

44:44 competition. I mean, this is very much like an Amazon-type approach, but as I've gotten to know the Sarucius, the Cameron's and the Jason's and so on and so forth, I don't think that you guys

44:55 actually focused on the competition. Like I think a lot of competition actually focused on you. Bolo was always focused on Excalibur. They get acquired. P2 was always focused on quorum, right?

45:06 inertia was probably focused on beating P2, beating you guys. You know I spend time with you I don't hear you talk about like it was about beating the competition it seems like the focus was more on

45:16 driving value for the customer then I think that there's a real lesson to be learned from that was that like a conscious way of doing business where you guys said this is a customer focused thing not

45:26 a competition and with the other vendors or like how did that sort of Manifest because I've I've noticed organizationally searched the same way you Guys are not focused on how to be better you're

45:37 focused on creating value and you know I mean I haven't been a Quorum for a bit but Yeah it was conscious and you know we like to be competent not cocky right now unlike the cocky Guy to come in but

45:53 no one like the lawyers you're second guessing either I do it originally it was it was corn business solutions not Quorum software because it really was focusing on driving value right and if you

46:03 actually make the customer job better enabling them with technology the rest of it will take care of itself right I don't need to come in and tell you like why you know my most of the bigger than the

46:13 other guy or how they're going to flounder like you know I don't today like if You're in the wrong Way I learned I've brought with me to Spira like I don't like the negative self right I mean like if

46:23 I come in and I'm talking about the competition when I'm actually giving them airtime and to like this let my money mel put my money where my mouth is and and you know let my technology speak for

46:32 itself and that it was conscious I'm there you know for me personally I did it is like I that that's just how it is right I mean if I let the best solution but it's not right for you like that Yeah it

46:45 makes sense like and you know there are times you'll lose like an ultra and maybe because of a relationship someone has with the CEO of a competition writes that kind of stuff happens and she can't

46:55 get too fussed about it and really just focus on what you can control and that's making their business better and just showing them eight years how you run your business my software and more often

47:04 than not it actually worked out well assuming you got a good piece of technology right I AM I am on let you know, lessons that I've learned through the years,

47:14 you start to come off pretty defensive when you do focus on how do I beat Aries? And you start to come off a little defensive and that just doesn't look good the whole way through. I agree.

47:28 And as far as something that you can't control and I asked you this last night at dinner, and hopefully you were able to give us some thought, but what advice would you give to your younger self,

47:36 whether that be five, 10, 15, 20 years ago when you graduated college, like, what would it be? You know, I have thought about it quite a bit since dinner and, you know, 'cause my gut reaction

47:48 and it's still really my answer is, you know, do what you said you were gonna do, right? And I said that 'cause like, I thought about it, it's like, well, it's not like I didn't do what I

47:57 thought I was gonna do younger, but like, do what you're gonna do and don't be scared to, 'cause a lot of times you get tossed into a job and like, you're over your head, but still are most

48:08 people when they first get. that kind of a job, right? And so, don't be scared, make decisions, learn from them. You know, we kind of pick on Kevin, because he's got a thing he calls asay do

48:18 ratio. And it's kind of to do what you say you're going to do, like what you say versus what you do. Like, if you do 100 of what you say, then you've got 100 say do ratio. If you're all talk and

48:31 never deliver, say, Oh, y'all get that, and you never do, then you never really low say do ratio. And so, I would say the younger self, do what you're say you're going to do, you know,

48:39 strive to have 100 say do ratio. And ultimately, you know, be honest, right? If you can't do it, don't say you can, or say, I don't think I can, but I'm going to try. And so, being open,

48:50 honest, transparent, 100 integrity, and do as much as you say you're going to do as a humanly possible is what I would tell my younger self. And I tell myself that today still. There's the mentor

49:00 lesson of the day right there, Jeremy. I mean, it's a good one. And, you know, you said a few things. The say do, I'm definitely to use that. I think there's. Yeah, absolutely. We pick on

49:11 Kevin, 'cause he brings, it comes out of the woodwork every now and then, but I told him I was gonna say it on this podcast, it'll spread. Yeah, you know, Tim, I think we talked about this,

49:21 this might have been Sarush or somebody else a few weeks back, but beyond just saying like, you know, yes, I committed to this and I'm gonna do it. Like, I do think that one of the lessons I

49:32 would have taught myself is like, it's okay to be like, I don't know, and go find somebody who does For some reason, I was like afraid to do that. Like, I thought it was weakness and maybe look

49:42 bad even in front of you, Tim. Like, I should know the answer, but really it's the better answer is to say, I don't know, let me get somebody who does, right? It builds more appreciation,

49:52 respect, trust with the customer than if you just answer every question haphazardly. Well, you know, I had a sales guy that was, I was kind of working, I was just caddy. I followed him around

50:02 the demos. Yeah. And he said, okay, then, here's the strategy here. We're going into Halberton They're gonna ask a bunch of questions. Leave at least two of them unanswered. Nice. Even if you

50:13 know the answer. Because that gives me a reason to follow up and we can answer another voice and answer those questions. And I like, well, I mean, I didn't know the answers, but I left it alone,

50:23 but it does

50:26 bring back the, you know, if you don't know, just relax. We'll get the answer for you.

50:33 Yeah, that's the, so I 100 agree. And especially the kind of the role I had at Quorum and absolutely, you know, kind of what I have now is if you answer it incorrectly, you know, a typical

50:44 sales guy would be like, Yeah, that's the project team you have to deal with that one. But like when you're an executive, guess who, and you say that, or your team says that you still have

50:52 accountability after the sale is complete to deliver. And so it does zero good to tell someone something if you don't know the answer, especially if it's been the wrong answer, because you have to

51:00 have accountability for that.

51:03 You know, your title was VP US operations, I think and now you're gonna be promoted to. if the President you know what's fascinating to me I know you now that you're not the kind of guy that cares

51:14 about titles but I do think perception sometimes can be reality I think ever since I changed my own title to CEO I get into some different conversations because some people just look and say well if

51:24 they have that title I can talk to them right so I I think that there's yes it's a little bit of signaling internally but you're also view different external people talk to you differently based on

51:34 title it's never something that I've done so it's a little bit bizarre to me but I've definitely noticed it even just in the last year and a half that it's like Oh well you you must be a special guy

51:44 it's like Nah just have a title so

51:48 Yeah I Agree I mean like to read in every financial advisor and banker in the world as a BB DOt arrives I'm Gonna be right even though they just graduated college Righto I agree there's something to

52:00 be said with like on talking to the President or the C E Whatever Regiment I Agree I feel your Riley Yeah it's good to be able to say Hey I'm president like you know I'm really excited and proud of

52:11 that but like I'm more about making sure spirit is a well run company and we actually get to feel like you can call me a janitor as long as we're actually making this company bigger better and more

52:21 valuable for our customer so Yeah it's nice but not not stuck on it Tim I Can't believe I didn't realize this earlier you should have some advice for Jason because you've done exactly this right

52:33 accompany that Sorta started to see while we've owned the Canadian market where's the upside US now we need to bring an I D P U S Operation Pseudo president and start to expand out down there and I'm

52:47 putting you on the spot with this but is there any advice from the eight years or whatever you had a navigator that you you'd pass onto Jason or somebody in Jason shoes wearing the while mean I think

52:55 for us having the product ready for the competition that we were going to be facing so we had two products one was gonna have a very stiff competition breaking into the market. The other was ready.

53:13 So I just vamped the whole thing and just said, Look, we're gonna go after this marketuntil the other one's ready.

53:21 So making sure that we had the right product and understood the nuance. Okay, we all speak the same language between Canada and the US, but we don't really There is a difference in the way people

53:39 interact with each other, talk to each other, title match, you know. Hey,

53:47 we have VP needs to talk to VP and all that. So some of those little nuances were difficult to communicate across the border with my bosses.

53:55 So understanding that, and that first year was a little difficult, but I think

54:03 I hear you depending on spotify to give me a half hour better answer than a lot of them do not but you know having the right product that can cross the War I think that's there's a whole lot of

54:16 companies that have hit that border try to come across and just never made it I always I always wondered like how much you actually shielded us from stuff to like how much negativity or questioning of

54:29 people or the strategy or why are we doing this in the U acid if we're not making money yet you know and how much of that we didn't actually see or hear because you served as a buffer like I I think

54:40 that was and I don't know but I'M just guessing that was probably something you're like well that shit has to stop rolling at some point I can't just let it dump on My Guys

54:50 I am not going to comment on that

54:55 Jason Webster band This was a good time where can people find you find Spirit Data Yeah, I mean, obviously the LinkedIn, you know, there, but you

55:06 know, the website spirodatacom email address is Jason dot Webster at spirodatacom

55:13 Yeah, it's going to blast, you know, both Jeremy, Tim, I appreciate you guys having having me on. Yeah, it's been, it's been, I didn't think it was not going to be fun, but it's actually

55:23 been way more entertaining and enjoyable than I actually thought it was going to be so I really appreciate Well, we're going to have you on typically when somebody does one of these, it's, it

55:33 starts to set off an avalanche. Like you'll be doing these podcasts every week.

55:42 Yeah, you know, wildcatters or startups or anything like that. Yeah, right. No, we haven't. We talked, we've talked to those guys. I like to, in fact, I'm kind of bending my CEOs here next

55:49 time he's in, in, in Houston. Maybe we can actually do that. But like I said, my number one goal for, for this year is making sure people know what spirit is and it exists And so doing things

55:59 like this is not like - fun, but also, you know, good for business. So again, I appreciate it. All right, you know, us first, that's what I want credit for. Always. That's right You're the

56:10 best.