What The Funk?

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0:56 That sounds like a great hockey name, Ula. Did you play hockey growing up? I did. Well,

1:02 that was a rule. Well, I mean,

1:06 hockey is a rich man sport and we did not grow up very wealthy. So no hockey in our household. He was a fisherman, spear fisherman, as a matter of no spear fisherman. Yeah, well, we started the

1:16 show. We already learned that he came over on a fishing boat or his family came over on a fishing boat to Canada. So it's true. Yeah, I've been excited about this one for a while Josh is

1:28 unapologetically authentic. I think is one way to put it. He's a consultant kind of like I am and even empowered me to speak up more as the consultant. Just say where shit is sticking and to point

1:41 it out versus just saying, I can just wipe that off the wall. But really, really an awesome guy, I think a geophysicist by training, but I want your full story, how the hell did you go from Nova

1:54 Scotia guy to geophysicist. Denver, Houston, Tulsa, what do you got going on? Who are you? Okay, well, I mean, there's a lot there and I'm not gonna give you the 10 minute monologue because

2:06 that's the worst. Born and raised in Nova Scotia

2:11 until I wasn't anymore and I went to Ontario to school and honestly, I went to Ontario to school because I missed the acceptance deadline for their 15 universities. So I got a degree in math. I

2:20 spent a year in Australia during that and it was just really trying to find my direction. And math is great, but I was like, I don't know, at the end of the program, I remember speaking with

2:28 Professor Poland and being like, what do I do now? And he's like, mmm, good luck. And I was like, I hope you go on today. This is a long time. And so I was very hungover in bed one morning and

2:37 I got a call from a professor saying, do you want to do a master's in geophysics? And I've been kind of faking being a geologist for most of my undergrad, but it was like a really good fit. So I

2:45 jumped in and did that. And from there, I went down to Houston to the SCG conference and I met up on mobile. We hit it off like peas and carrots. They hired me and I went to work for ex-unovals

2:55 and geophysicists for happy day. But this is where the twist comes. I met my wife down there, and she got into residency in Denver, so we had to move. And I kind of, it was, it was the 2014,

3:07 2015, you know, nothing particularly was going wrong. Everything was going wrong, you know. It was terrible. And so I hired a guy named Bill Frank to be my sheriff of my career advisor for six

3:19 months. And we met all the time, and he talked me through, and we really did a lot of soul searching on what made for a happy Josh And it was just an amazing adventure. If anybody ever is offered

3:30 the opportunity of a career advisor, definitely just scoop it up, because it is unbelievable. Worth a terrible dump to it, because I - I was going to say, I think that depends on the advisor. I

3:38 wouldn't hire Jeremy to get my career advisor. I wouldn't try to get you to pay me to be your career advisor. I have a good one. This is interesting. I like this. I mean, yeah, so it was

3:49 everything. And so what we figured out is I really didn't like doing science. It wasn't particularly good at it. It was very good at teaching it and really talking about it So what is that

3:56 technical sales? right? So I pivot over to Fracture ID and started going to business development. And now fast forward where I am now, I help companies grow from being small to medium. Not just

4:05 on the sales and marketing side, but looking at like the whole spectrum of like what problems you're facing, what business strategies to implement, just trying to be useful. And it's super fun.

4:13 So that's what I didn't know. Is that mostly tech tech companies that you're advising or? No, it turns out that, and you guys already know this, I'm going to say you're going to act like you're

4:23 like, I'm so impressed, but we all know it. Every business is facing the same problems. Whether you're opening an odd dog stand or you're opening a big tech company. When you sit down with the

4:32 executives and you talk through, are you worried about when you're driving into work? It's almost always like one of six things. And they feel like it's a snowflake situation where like, I'm going

4:33 through this alone. I'm very worried. And if you listen and you reflect, you're like,

4:47 no, in fact. So I've helped a doctor's practice, a branding agency, a plug-and-a-band company, a 3D print shop.

4:56 ESG solutions is a big part of what I'm doing right now, helping them merge because deep imaging and ESG solutions went together. And then my primary one is XM instruments, where we build mass

5:05 spectrometers. The XM thing is really interesting to me. I've heard some people call it Exume. I call it XM. It's nice that you just clarified what it's actually called. But can you explain what

5:16 XM is? 'Cause to me, it sounds like pretty complex science, big box, expensive, awesome tech. But tell me what's going on there All right, so I mean, for anyone who's listening, there's never

5:28 heard of XM right now, there are just like Ozz Theranos. I'm not gonna have any. I'll check you later. Big box, it does a magical thing. Perfect. One drop of blood, guys. And I can make you

5:38 win the lottery, and you're gonna love it.

5:42 No, well, we built a mass spectrometer. Well, I can't say we once again, not good at science, just could have talked me about it. But Jeff Williams came up with this idea, and mass

5:50 spectrometry for one, I'm just gonna own it at the gate. Isn't something that people are like, about it. So most of your listeners have not stopped listening, I'm sorry.

5:60 One sentence, what is mass spectrometry real quick? The study of what's in things. Okay. So you're assessing the energy to mass ratio of the elements or compounds that exist in material.

6:10 Essentially, for QAQC

6:14 RD production, if you want to know your elemental composition of something, use a mass spectrometer. And if you had a liquid or a gas, it's already solved Like, there's already a system out there

6:21 that will do it. But if you have a solid, literally, you're kind of up a creep without a paddle. You're in a real pickle. So, gas from a ton of people gas and mass spectrometry for solid. Okay.

6:35 All right. I got something. Yeah. So, they're all out there already. So, for us, what we do is we've done this two foot by two foot mass box that does all the mass spectrometer inside of it,

6:46 and it can really be run by like a tack. And so, once again. I thought the selling benefit here was going to be a lot cheaper because it's smaller and simpler than the other ones out there, but

6:55 literally it just didn't exist. And so we're creating a19 billion market right now in the U S. And it's, it's relatively straightforward. And we have some amazing use cases that we're already

7:03 deploying it into, but it's super fun.

7:07 That particular company, Tim, when I first launched, um, thunk futures came up from a number of investors, Jim Thorson and people like, Hey, you should talk to those guys. And I hit up Josh.

7:16 And his response was, no, our issue right now is not marketing and sales It's like delivery. Like there's, there's people knocking down the door to do business with us. I'm like, well, you're,

7:26 you're one of the few, you're one of the few, but it sounds, it sounds cool. And it doesn't surprise me. I think Ellen Scott, who's Ellen Williams now is over there. So like, you guys picked a

7:34 lot of young forward thinking really bright geos and engineers to push this out there. But that's not your, that's not your only thing. Tell me a little bit more about your, your business. Like

7:43 what do you got going on right now? When you say mine, you mean like that song? No, Josh Ula. JoshUlaLLCcom.

7:52 So, I mean, as most of my time has spent on X and instruments and then it's so fun and it's so different. We just finished a safe round, so we raised around2 million, we're just surging. We got

8:04 two SBIR grants last year, thank goodness for SBIR grants. And so then the second of that one is ESG solutions. So they were acquired by Deep Imaging last year. They do micro-sizemic and frack

8:16 monitoring using Telton fiber, Deep Imaging use electromagnetics And so we're trying to package all this together, I'm not trying, but we've packaged all together into a toolbox. We're doing a

8:24 rebranding deployment in early March, and now we're trying to, and this is where I can get pretty, I don't know, ferocious, that's not the right word, who knows. There is a word that describes

8:34 what it's going to be, where it's like, folks need to know what the heck their frack looks like, so that they can optimize it. Like if it goes back to Theranos, the black box that does the blood

8:43 human lottery, that's kind of how fracking is going right now in that like no one's excavating down 10, 000 feet, conical Phillips did that really good one where they did a tilt core near a frack

8:53 But even that we're dealing with sample size one or two So our x-grade regression is one like we're just killing it you do nothing wrong But we don't have a sample size that statistically valid and

9:01 see we keep working in the dark And so this is my excitement for you as few solutions is that we give you the opportunity to have a look at what the heck is going on So you can figure out well spacing

9:09 one rack configuration, you know sequencing all these things that obviously matter And they've been trying to solve for decades, but now we can finally do it. And so pretty excited for that You get

9:21 all that time Wow, that's a there's a lot there. I you know, I always play Jeremy did in the last pod, but I always try to play dumb guy Hey, can you define this but there was there's too much to

9:34 go back and hit on there, but I Would I I do want to I want to reverse and go back to I love all this but that moment of and I've seen it to a few people You got your degree in math, now what? So,

9:52 is that a natural math to geophysics? Is that one of the, is that the way people go from math to geophysics? Is that very common or is it,

10:03 I don't know, like just curious about that path, you know, and why geophysics? No, it's so, like I was saying, I was kind of faking being a geologist. I got a minor in geology. Is me looking

10:14 for the field courses, 'cause they were so fun. And I just really enjoyed the culture around geology. A lot of being outdoors, a lot of just happy people. And I was like, Yeah, this is amazing.

10:24 So I think that's a great thing. That's a lot of sandals. Oh, I had socks and sandals all day, feeling great. There you go. Yeah, so cozy, big, broad brim pads, sun protection, like really

10:34 out in my alley. I'm married to a dermatologist, so she's like very supportive of that kind of stuff. Cover the skin. But no, I would say most people from math didn't go into geophysics. I think

10:44 a lot of geologists do, or folks that are aiming towards geophysics from the very beginning. Geophysics ends up being kind of the oddball that folks don't normally just start out thinking they're

10:52 gonna do. You don't really learn about geophysics in high school. So, it's something you kind of migrate to if it's your interest, so. Yeah, my boss is well known for choosing his major who went

11:01 to University of Kansas. He chose his major for geology because it sounded like something he can get a lot of hiking in. Yep. No doubt You know, honestly, we even back up a little bit from there.

11:12 I joked about, you know, it was the only one I hadn't accepted and it was the only one left out there. So, Carl in the university was where I ended up going. I applied to something like 16

11:20 universities 'cause I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think at Ryerson, I was gonna be like in directing and filmography and McGill. It was gonna be biology. Like, I was just like, roll the

11:29 dice. And so, I was in this committee on violence in the public school system. It was all these adults when I was in grade 12. And they're like, Oh, what school are you gonna go to? And I was

11:37 like, Oh, I haven't decided yet Like, do you know they have deadlines? No, I got the committee and I went home and I went through my stack of papers that I've been ignoring and I'd missed 14 of

11:47 the 16 deadlines. I was like, oh no, this is a real pickle. But then luckily, the two that were left thought I was playing hardball and gave me bigger scholarships. I was like, there we go. Oh,

11:56 that's neat. So talk about the moving within the states. Has that been driven by your wife being the doctor? Like the you guys end up in Tulsa or Houston? You said Denver, she had I think a

12:07 residency or something like that Is that what's dictated it? You sort of go where the wife's business opportunities are or why the moods. Well, I mean, in the beginning for residency and then for

12:17 fellowship, we went to Denver and then back to Houston. Yeah, I mean, you take the role of a trailing spouse, like you over has to have them so I did. And then we decided together to move to

12:26 Idaho. And then we decided together during the pandemic, having a newborn that was a NICU and being alone, who would, what are we doing here? So then we moved to Oklahoma to live in Tulsa and

12:37 have that support.

12:41 That was the kid, that was the kid. Oh, great, it was just a week in the NICU, but then I feel like it was just like, you just need to family support. Especially, I mean, the pandemic has

12:48 affected everybody in different ways, right? No doubt. And really, for me, it was the biggest learning, is that, you know, when you're younger, you feel like you're just an island, and you

12:56 can kind of do whatever, you're a free spirit. And then as you get older and you have more responsibilities, you're like, dang, in that community support, it would be really nice. The family

13:03 support would be really, really nice, and I miss it. And I think it was just a maturity that came up with a pandemic that helped us have declared it And why Tulsa, yeah, you have family? Yeah,

13:13 my wife's from here. So we live half, we live awfully close to her parents, like half a mile down the road, we wave and say hi to Brad from here, perfect. That's nice for the babysitting

13:24 capabilities and things like that, for sure. Yeah, no doubt, I don't doubt. Do you feel like it's home, Tulsa? Oh my goodness, yeah, okay, so yeah, let's spend the next 31 minutes just

13:36 talking about how great Tulsa is, 'cause I could do this all day So it's also kind of like. One of those cities and some kind of a ventures film that from the outside looks like a bit of woods and

13:44 you go through the forest field and you're like, Oh my goodness, there's water slides. And everyone's having a good time writing triceratops in here. Similar for Tulsa in that like,

13:53 I don't think they advertise well externally. I think they're working on that, no doubt. But once you're inside it, the internal advertising and communication and community and business here,

14:04 then you can build anything here. There is so much money, there is so much support There's just so many facilities here to help people grow a business from small to medium. It's unbelievable, and

14:15 I've met. I've got to hang out with the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Energy, just because they make themselves available in Oklahoma to meet with folks. It's not here.

14:26 It's like really curious. There's two cities, Tulsa's one of them, that I find that it's woefully under marketed. Pittsburgh being the other. It's a great place to be and not to sell Pittsburgh.

14:40 you know, smoke stacks and factories and steel mills that you think about when you remember Pittsburgh of the 70s, Tulsa's like that as well. I lived there briefly in the early 90s. And it was so

14:55 easy to get around. And at the time I was there, Tulsa was the exact demographics of the United States as a whole. So, you know, how many African American, Hispanic, it matched the rest of the

15:09 country I don't know if it still does. And what was interesting at the time was, that's where McDonald's would choose to test their new uniforms or their new food stuff. Or a lot of these companies

15:19 would test market things in Tulsa because it would could reflect what the demographics of the rest of the country. So, McPizza was in Tulsa and never made it out. Oh, I, in Canada, McPizza,

15:32 became a whole nationwide thing. And as a kid, it was just family sized pepper and a pizza's for Josh and me. It's so bizarre So, you know, I'm from New Hampshire. And as you get north, you're

15:41 pretty much in Southern Canada. At that point, like you're in the woods, there's dears and all, you know, yaks and all this crap. So there was always pizzas at those two. So for some reason,

15:51 like Canadian into like just below the border. Love the McPizza. I would kill for a McPizza right now. I feel like I'm sorry. I feel like it was it was likely deep pride and who cares? It was so

16:03 so good. I didn't even think about that. I haven't had one since I was like 12. Um, no, so on Tulsa, Tim, you talked about that a long time ago With Don Burdick down there and he's echoed some

16:12 similar sentiments, right? That it's just an easy place to kind of launch a company to get, uh, support from people locally as well as government and be able to have success, whatever. And I

16:23 think Don is a great example. He actively tries to help other people in Tulsa and get them together and make them network. I mean, um, I think that that community of it's, uh, a little social

16:38 network of, Hey, you need some help? Yeah, let's get you guys introduced to everybody. And the thing is, it's really surprising, because it's genuine. I've met a lot of people in my travels

16:48 that will always say, Yeah, I'll help you no doubt. And then when you call them, that help, because they've offered it, it doesn't come to fruition. You're like, Well, then why did you say it?

16:56 Like, Was it to look good in front of your friends as a stupid? Like, Don't do that. And here, it's quite the opposite. Like, genuine, like, like I said, I've had audiences with everyone I

17:05 could want to, just to understand, like, what should I do in the situation? Where should I go here? Everyone wants to mentor, everyone wants to help. Like, if I were going to be building a

17:13 company, I would bring it to Tulsa, too, sweet. And the amount of incentives they have here as well, it's nuts. Like, they will do it. Yeah, people move there. Yeah, Tulsa Remote is10, 000

17:22 to work remotely here. And they're pretty generous with that with, like, applying those good odds of getting it. It's incredible. Well, perhaps you should, when you're, you know, done with

17:31 these companies getting them to medium, and you're not interested in taking them to large. Maybe you should get on the Tulsa marketing team. Oh, goodness. I mean, I meet with the Chamber a bunch,

17:45 but like, there's so many different facets here too. There's such an alignment between like the philanthropy, like the George Pfizer Foundation, like they have loads of money and they're just

17:54 injecting it. Like, have you guys seen the gathering place? I haven't. Get on Google, search it now right now because obviously we're doing a podcast. But, if yours is at home, you can go do

18:05 it because who cares? But, the gathering place is this park that's like an amusement park. Like, words cannot describe. It's paid for 100 not by government, but by all the companies in town

18:15 being like, I wanna make this a place you wanna bring your kids. And it will blow your mind what you're gonna see on this website. And it's growing every day. They're even aiming the river up to

18:22 make a water park to go with it. Like, it's crazy. And so, all these folks are all aligned towards the same common goal. So, I think, like, to your point, if you wanna help grow tall, so you

18:31 don't have to just go for the government role, it'll be like, I'm gonna help market it.

18:35 So many other different facets there are reaching out into the ether of America to tell people what's going on here like it's unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, Tim, we've talked about Oklahoma a little

18:45 bit on this podcast, but the two big cities in Oklahoma, Tulsa and

18:53 OKC. I've had some pretty good success doing business there, but only if I go there, right? It's not the type of place where you're going to win remotely like this over the web, whereas you can

19:03 do that a little bit more in Denver and Houston I think there's that expectation while you can't always travel. Oklahoma is like, well, yeah, just just when you come down here, let's let's talk

19:11 about it, but it always results in something great, right? Well, you did come down, you check that box, you care, you like it here, good. Now we can open up some gates for you, but that took

19:20 time. Like that took repeated visits to those cities to be able to say, OK, it's not just an outsider. He values us. Now we can start talking.

19:31 I agree a little bit a little bit different.

19:34 It's an in-person town. It's a face-to-face town. And, you know, I used to go up there for what the Adam meetings, that was fun. Those were great. That was one of Don Burdick's things. And

19:45 again, really out of that, hey, just want to get all the people who are doing acquisition and divestitures into the same place and who's got what deals and we'll have a little speaker and a good

19:55 meal and it was great to see that. Right, it's so small as well Like there's a place in, now I'm just gonna be super local trying to really show off how cool I am. In Utica Square over here,

20:07 called Wild Fork and they have just super good breakfast. They're really small, they have to receding. Literally, whenever I have a business meeting that could be a breakfast, I'll just go there

20:16 and invariably I'll run into two or three other people that like are doing the same. And so it's like, it's really fun to bring folks from out of town because you'd be like, oh, see at that table

20:23 and you'd be like, oh, that person, that person. Yeah,

20:27 I mean, I could name drop some people that are running into there, but it's just like, it almost feels like you're just in your own kitchen kind of bumping into like other folks in the morning.

20:34 It's just, it's an interesting old-time place. And people say, you know, it's gonna blow up like Austin. And I really hope it doesn't, 'cause Austin is very crowded. I like Austin a great deal,

20:43 but it takes a long time to get around Austin. And I think that we can keep this kind of like medium size, which is obviously my favorite. I think we're gonna be really happier. Yeah, we keep

20:52 hitting that word medium. So,

20:56 so what, I mean, I guess, Josh, you're helping companies now, this is your stick moving from small to medium How many can you work with at a time? And you're obviously focused on at least the

21:08 couple that take up the bulk of your time now, but how are you spreading yourself out? That's super interesting. So, it's true, very clear, open, honest communication. So, early on when I

21:19 tried this, I wasn't, because you learned about how to communicate. And I was like, I know, this will work. I'll just, you know, I'll do something here somewhere. And then invariably I got

21:28 too busy and my family took the hit and I wasn't, I was just working way too much, right? not sustainable or burnout and I'm grumpy. No one wants this, right? I don't mean this. And so what I

21:38 did was a lot of on a monthly basis is auditing my timeline, seeing what's absorbing my time, seeing what's not, and prioritizing. And actually, I took a leadership course here in Tulsa called

21:47 the same leadership. And we spent a lot of time just focusing on the idea that if you have a list of these many things you do, just cut the bottom half off and just go like, the guy that was

21:57 running at Shawn Copeland, one of the folks, just one day when he had this epiphany, 'cause he phoned half the people that he was on board for and said, I'm off your board today. And they were

22:04 like, Oh, please, we need you. And he's like, I mean, I'm not doing that kind of job. Like, I'm good, but like I'm too busy and I'm distracted. And like, you need to find someone that's a

22:11 better fit. This is a better opportunity for someone that has more.

22:16 You know,

22:19 there we go. Sorry, my phone was crazy for a second now. I took a lot of that and I've been trying to implement myself. So everyone that I work for knows what I'm available for And it makes it

22:30 just work. If I reach a point that I am too busy, I'll be able to communicate in a very straightforward way 'cause I'll know where I was at, you know, in the month prior and the

22:41 month after. That's an interesting approach. I don't know if you've read the getting things done methodology. It's got an interesting way of prioritizing tasks. And, you know, it's kind of, I

22:55 think that fits into, hey, when you get down to this part of the list, yeah, that list just needs to disappear. You know, and I don't subscribe to the getting things done, but every once in a

23:07 while, I'll adopt a little piece of it to, you know, to accomplish my to-do list. Well, you can't see the next shelf up here is just like a bunch of management books, or like crossing the chasm,

23:17 or four disciplines of execution, all that, right? That's a good one. Crossing the chasm is one of my favorites. Yeah,

23:21 that's true. It's so tactile. It's some small to medium, right? I mean, that's really the - Yeah.

23:28 Before I was Joshua LLC, I was almost going to be page 226 LLC because on page 226, they define in the cross in the chasm, your sales pioneer, the person that can get it and communicate it and get

23:39 you come from zero to one and I was like, Oh, this is me. And so I almost opened a company on that and I was like, This is too much explaining. My name is easier. Yeah.

23:49 But I'm not going to make that. I'm not going to try to make that. Jeremy needs to take that. Page 226. You guys are going to have page 226 The only thing left is my phone still calls itself page

23:58 226, so I'll give it to you. But what I'm going to say is, with the getting things done, I think that all these management books and all these pieces, I'm surrounded by them, they all have

24:06 useful bits, right? And for those individuals that wrote them, that's how all their bits of accumulators into that story, that book, you know, it works for them. But if it works for everybody,

24:14 there will only be one book and be like, This is how you manage a business. But I think what you're describing, it's like, there is something useful there. There's something useful in the way

24:21 Dave Ramsey looks at money, this one useful in wealthy Barbara right like they're they all have bits that are quite beneficial and we just need to be able to Like one thing I try to do, and I

24:29 haven't done this year yet, is protect an hour in the morning to read some of these books, and then I highlight and start making my own book in my head of the parts that are useful. But I think,

24:38 for me, four disciplines of execution has been the largest impact in my life. Well, that's a good one to, I have to put that on the list, I'm not familiar with it. From a sales perspective, I

24:48 think the one that I aspire to follow, which I'm not very good at, is Sandler methodology for sales And

24:57 for some things it works great, but I adopt things out, but one of the parts that I see when I'm coaching young sales guys now is behavior. So they're bat triangle, behavior, attitude, and

25:10 technology or technique.

25:14 If you need to manage all three of those, and then it won't derail you in your sales process So it's an interesting, and I think it actually does go over into other tech and other places. If you

25:24 can manage,

25:28 all of those, you'll be good in whatever you do. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible. Okay, so it's something you're describing there that all three of us know is how much sales has changed in the

25:40 last 20 years, right? Absolutely. It's night and day and the folks that aren't evolving to catch up to it are struggling and I feel for them because what they did worked for so long and now they're

25:50 like, why is it not working? And you kind of just keep running into that same wall and I think now it is so relationship-based and if you're not providing useful value every time and being like a

26:01 human, it's not gonna work, right? But I think what you just described though, that triangle, it's everything is your behavior and attitude. Of course the technology has to be there. You have

26:10 to be selling something that's not stupid, but everything else is based on like, are you a good human or are you gonna be right by me? Yeah, what's interesting is I fight this, the computer

26:21 scientists of the world think, don't even think that sales guys are necessary in a lot of cases simply because, well, you know, you do the right thing and people will come to you. And essentially

26:32 I keep proving, it keeps proving wrong, that methodology. All right, we're finally to the point where you don't need sales guys 'cause we've got the internet or we're finally to the point that we

26:40 don't need sales guys because we've got the bots and all that. But you know, I think the relationship, especially ironically enough,

26:51 the more expensive something is, the more the relationship and the emotion matters You think that as when you start getting to a million dollars, you think, okay, it's all gonna be a spreadsheet

27:03 with checkboxes, you know, and we'll decide between the two products that are a million dollars each or something. But it's amazing how much more emotion is tied and the relationship matters more,

27:15 the bigger the numbers get. Hell yeah, you need a throat to choke. Now, I don't wanna get too far away from crossing the chasm because it's actually somewhat personal to me One, I think early on,

27:27 maybe in like the chapter two. And they show the percentage of companies that are actually like early adopters versus laggards. And it made sales feel so far less personal getting rejected so far

27:39 less personal it got me to all the knows got me to the innovators, the early adopters quickly. And frankly, there's only like 3 that are going to fit that profile, right? You have to find who are

27:52 those companies and even just to throw out some names like, you know, if you look at a pioneer natural resources or Chevron or conical Phillips, like they don't have to go first, right? Somebody

28:03 else can stub their toe and they can say, okay, well, you've proven it out in this asset. Now we can go in and jump to your product. But some companies are just addicted to we want to push the

28:13 envelope. So like a green lake energy, right? You see Rob Henry, Mac Gallagher, those guys, like they want to be different. They want to forge their path, take their learnings from the past,

28:22 but also be early adopters because there's benefits sometimes in doing. But what crossing the chasm does, and I recommend this highly to anybody who's selling for early stage companies, is it's

28:32 really not you, man. It's not personal, right? Most of these companies are going to say no, because they're laggards by default. And that's just how companies are generally speaking, especially

28:42 in oil and gas. If you take all those notes to heart, this isn't a long game for you, right? If you embrace the yeses that cross the chasm, the rest will come. I think Jeremy, just to build off

28:52 the point, one of the things that a lot of sales guys fall into trouble with is taking those personally, regardless of whether you're an early startup or anything else, and you come home and kick

29:05 the dog or whatever, and you've got to separate that

29:11 professional from your personal. There may be no's that

29:16 are about you, but those are never really, or shouldn't never be about you. You just take it in, Hey, I'm still the same guy. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing That comes back to that.

29:25 behavior. Hey, I'm going to take the no and learn from it and move on and not take it personally. If you take it personally, it will be, you know, you're going to kick the dog too often. Yeah,

29:37 the poor dog in that story. But just to like lean into it. And I think this is like a big takeaway is going back to like learning about communication. And like I'm always trying to get better at

29:48 learning and like being able to give feedback and receive feedback. And as a big part of that is that when you are receiving all those nodes. And it's very well like I just did a fundraising round

29:57 and we talked to a hundred V seeds. You know, most of them are nodes because you're not a piece of fit or whatever, right? Like it's just, it's appropriate. One thing that I always did was like,

30:06 I never was pushing. I was never like, you know, we need this deal to happen. Like I would approach the conversation as, is this a fit for your thesis? And are you guys a fit for us? And if

30:15 either of us were a no, then we would just move on. But if I ever received a no from them when I thought it was a fit the other way, I would always reach out and ask, like, can you give me 15

30:23 minutes and walk me through why we're now? I'm not trying to use this time. Like never, ever use that time to convince them to be a yes, 'cause that's freezing. Stu. But if you can learn from

30:32 them, and they can tell you why you are now, and then you understand, like, oh yeah, like definitely I should have seen that, they were a no to us as well, or you communicate something

30:40 incorrectly or you miss the mark somewhere. Suddenly, you're developing and growing as an individual, and then for your next conversation, you're wiser. And then the person that just helped you

30:49 and mentored you has become a friend, and you're treating genuine human connections, and not just like these transactional connections that you see also often. Yeah, I think one of the better

30:60 approaches that I get is where I ask them for the courtesy, please tell me no, don't string me out and say we'll meet next week or two weeks. If it's a no, please, I don't want to chase you and

31:14 you don't want to be chased, please tell me no. And come in. I mean, it's a really, really long no And it helps the friendship or the relationships. Whatever I'm talking about right now is a no

31:28 and I'm good with that. It might be better for you in six months and we'll talk then. Or I may have something else and they'll be more willing to talk to you if they know that, Hey, I can jettison

31:37 real quick with this guy if, if it's not a fit. And then if you go one step further and you find out you're not a fit, right? Like whatever you saw, champ, and the person was like, honestly,

31:47 my hair is fine. I'm trying to get something for my elbow to be in dry. You're like, I want to introduce you to Sarah. She says this appointment and then you introduce them to people that will fix

31:54 the problem because at the end of the day, if you're not selling a solution, you should not be in. If you can get them to someone that will solve the problem, they can move on past that. You're

32:02 like, and you're not a sales guy. I mean, you're a trusted advisor, but what flies in the face, but what flies in the face of that when you are a W two employee, and it's a big part of the

32:12 reason why I'm not right now is you go in and you get that no from somebody that really likes you. You're at somewhat of a dead end. Yes, you can do them a favor and point them somewhere else your

32:21 boss who's reporting up to the board says, well, you just got to you didn't sell that. I needed you to sell that account. Well, they didn't want it, that doesn't matter, right? You needed to

32:29 get revenue out of that account. And that whole fundamentally just broke me as a salesperson, 'cause like you said, Josh, you wanna provide value, right? You wanna be okay with taking the know

32:38 and finding some value for them so that you can do business down the road, which is the way a symbiotic business relationship should work. Yeah,

32:47 to say like you should have gotten that account, if you didn't have the solution for the problem they were trying to solve right now, no, you shouldn't have. And then while that salesperson has to

32:55 bring back into their company is that information. Like if they're not doing that second part where they're like, Hey, look, we didn't get this, but it's because they don't really carebut they're

33:03 well-spacing right now. They care about like getting more affordable sandor tracking their water. For whatever it is at the top of their list, you'd be rude to force them to be ableto problem this

33:12 third on their list. The same way we were talking about our list earlierthat like, no, that's way down there. I don't care about advertising in your journal. I can't have this meeting right now.

33:19 There's too many things on fire. Like, this is not me fixing your problem. If that salesperson doesn't have a safe enough environment to go back to their boss and say, look, we didn't get this

33:29 because this is the problem they're trying to solve. They're not worried about this. And then have a brainstorming session about like, how do we fix that problem so we can get to the next one on

33:36 the list or whatever it is? It's just kind of foolish. You're just kind of pushing rocks up there. Right, I'm gonna jump in, man. I feel like we're coaching each other here, but so one of the

33:46 things you got to do is coach your superiors in the knowing, this is what an opportunity looks like. You have to have a confirmed budget, a confirmed need, a confirmed itch that we can scratch.

34:02 And if we don't have all three of those, it's not actually an opportunity and nobody should be communicating that this is a million dollar deal. It's not a deal because it's not an opportunity yet.

34:11 It's still a prospect and you may want it, but we haven't even gotten it to an opportunity because we haven't confirmed that they can and are willing to spend the money.

34:22 always a trap, I think a lot of sales guys wind up falling into is, hey, I got this great opportunity in the Middle East for, you know, 10 million. No, no, it's not an opportunity yet. It's a

34:33 prospect that someone may spend money on. We don't, you know, and so I think sometimes that gets communicated up to the boards. I know we need that deal, you know, or maybe the board brings the

34:45 deal. I've seen this happen a lot where the, Hey, we've introduced you to the CEO of this company and they have this problem. Go sell it. Well, okay, we go in there, but they have the problem,

34:56 but they don't have the budget. Yeah. So it's not actually an opportunity. And then you wind up in the situation with at least one famous, famous story that Jeremy and I know of, well, in his

35:08 career with one of his, one of his bosses, the number, the client disappears and you're left holding the bag because they thought it was an opportunity and it really never was. You never were in

35:20 the game

35:22 brutal, brutal, you know, who's, who's your champion? What internal politics are happening, right? That may prevent you from winning that account. We're not sitting in those boardrooms. And

35:31 especially, you know, with COVID changing, I'm in way less boardrooms in general, right? People don't necessarily want the sales guy there. But, you know, it kind of is what, what it is.

35:42 That transparency thing you were talking about in the beginning between how many of these companies can I manage taking them from small to medium? I think that's same with your bosses. You got to

35:53 keep that transparency all the way up. So that brings us to like a really, really big topic that we have no time to get into. But I'll just like, I'll bridge it and then we'll just abandon it,

36:03 let it go. Yeah, you can come back on. But

36:07 when we look at the issues of oil and gas space, right? It almost comes back to everything we're talking about just in the microcosm of sales is non-proper communication of expectations And we look

36:18 at operators communicating with investors. You know, there's a big follow-up happening right now where folks aren't excited to put their money in oil and gas because they were promised they were

36:27 going to get boat kudikash and you just got loads of it, right? The returns were great. If they had promised a more realistic approach of what they were going to get for their investment, I think

36:36 people would keep their own money in, but they were promised like, oh, well, you know, space is well two feet apart. I mean, it's going to be fine. It's going to produce great. And there was

36:41 no real science. It was just like, yeah, it's construction work, manufacturing. And I think like if we could bring the level, and this is what I harp on all the time, if you bring a level of

36:51 transparency, honest communication, all the way from your client up to your investor through your organization, right? Like if I bring it back to Exum, every time we do a sales call or a pitch,

37:01 everybody that was on that call is expected to jump on a call directly afterwards internally, and give feedback to everyone who spoke or didn't speak on that call. So if you are the lowest run

37:10 person in Jeff, our CEO's on there, you're excited to give him some positives and some negatives. And he's expecting to give them back to you, and everyone's expected to receive them, and I

37:19 didn't make a contentious decision. sense of manner, but be like, Look, I need to learn from this telling more. It doesn't mean you'll always agree with it, but everyone knows where everyone

37:26 sits. We do that with our investors, where they know exactly what's going on. We do it with our clients, and it means that you only have to carry one truth. I learned that from a mentor of my

37:34 Martin Estal, where he's like, The joke he makes is I'm not clever to have more than one truth, so I just tell the truth all the time. But it's such a simple thing, but if you can get there by

37:45 changing the culture of where you are to allow the truth to just be the only thing you talk about, how easy is that? You know, this is so fun. Josh, I want to talk briefly about about tech energy,

37:59 right? This is one account that you brought me into, and these are, Tim, they're doing like PA work for basically Colorado-based wells right now. There's a whole big budget for them. We've got

38:09 to shut in a whole bunch of these wells. There's methane leaking. We know how to do this However, these guys haven't been on the services side, so they haven't done sales. They've been with

38:17 operators, right? going to make them successful is their willingness to say, we don't really know how to market or sell or pitch these things, right? So Josh and I have meetings with them

38:29 consistently where we talk about sales execution, even a simple thing like, hey, there was a guy named Jimmy on the call and at one point you called him Jim and another point you called him James.

38:38 Now we're going to call him what he said his name is, that's Jimmy, like really simple things to like get your alignment right and how we do business. And the way that these guys receive it is

38:48 awesome and they incorporate it quickly. Sometimes that naivete is a benefit. Like I think they're going to do well because they don't have all these years of being molded a certain way and they

38:59 don't push back and argue when we give positive criticism, right? So to see that evolution it's like I know those guys are going to do well because they're continuing to learn and get better after

39:09 each session versus saying this is proven, it's worked before it's how we do it now. But just sort of a two second you know, inside on them. I didn't expect it because they came. in the operator

39:20 side, I assumed they would feel like they do everything. They've been very open to say, there's a lot we need to work in with people who are coachable and having a culture of coaching where

39:32 everybody is getting and receiving is, is fabulous. And you don't see that very often. Um, and you, you have to start very early in the company to be able to establish that culture, I think Now,

39:45 I agree and just to bring it back to TAC really quick, like, I think earlier on, I said, you know, folks that were sales folks 20 years ago that aren't evolving to this level of like, just being

39:55 a partner and being a true friend to yourself. You know, give them some too. Uh, that's what they kind of represent is that they were operators. And so the, the beauty of what they do is when

40:04 they go and talk to someone, they're just as if they work on their team. And so the conversation is one of like, yeah, I know what you're dealing with. I, I dealt with that, but they also came

40:12 with a whole boatload of humility That I do think sometimes when you transition from being an operator to anything that is an operator. You're kind of coming off a pedestal. Like you were, I worked

40:22 at ExxonMobil. And it was such a pill for me to swallow to not work at ExxonMobil anymore. I flew business class, I hobnobbed, I was the bees' knees. And well, these guys just very quickly were

40:34 like, no, no, we're just gonna be a service company, we're gonna kill it. And it is very refreshing to work with them. They're a great, great shop. They're gonna

40:41 do very, very well. Just because they once again are just open on us and transparent. And I don't know, and I say this to them. I go, you know, assume your competition is doing this, but also

40:50 assume that what you want to do is exactly what they're not doing, right? Like you break down the walls and be a person versus just another service provider. And every time you reach out to someone

40:60 and send an email and make a phone call, you don't have to ask if they're signing the contract. You can drop in, hey, here's a presentation I just saw that's relevant to you guys. Here's a press

41:08 release. I think, you know, I like to talk about sales as like a bank, right? And as a sales person, we're always asking for a withdrawal But if you never make it deposit into that bank.

41:20 there's nothing to withdraw and the bank gets sick of you and they cut you off, right? You got no money here, man. There's nothing for you to do. So you got to feed that, right? And feeding

41:28 that isn't asking for something every single time. It's easy to forget that, right? Especially with the pressures inherent to sales, but you've got to be making deposits to be able to ask for a

41:37 withdrawal. I think I've heard this, a marriage counselor do make the same speech. I think mine has said the same thing too. I

41:47 agree with you, I mean, not much to add, you're 100, right? Yeah. And that's just the idea of partnership and communication. It's just, if you're not on your client's team, if you're not on

41:55 your company's team, it's just not gonna work.

41:59 Josh, where can people find you? You mentioned you have a website, LinkedIn, email, any of that stuff. Where can people try to align with you as a forward thinking kind of strategist? Wow, so

42:10 many nice words about me. So I made a cheeky website. It's just JOSHULAAcom.

42:16 studio forum that have Calgary made it. So if you need someone to put together a website or branding kit for you, definitely go studio forum. They are the coolest. Okay. Beyond that, I am on

42:25 LinkedIn, that's for sure. And then also my email is just super cheeky as well. So it's Joshjoshuvacom. And then I don't really do other social media. So good luck finding anywhere else. I

42:35 probably won't respond to them.

42:38 That's pretty much LinkedIn's it for me. I'm a voyeur on Facebook. LinkedIn's my social part, so.

42:49 That makes you sound spooky Man, we could keep this going all day, but we do have a hard stop here. Josh, thank you so much for coming in, for sharing your energy and your insights, and I don't

42:56 know Tim, any final thoughts? No, you know, before we did this, we were talking about his kind of where he came from, Nova Scotia and all that. And you're definitely Josh, the most Viking

43:05 looking we've had on the show, so I'm very pleased to have you on It's great having you on, I love this.

43:16 this coaching, I didn't expect it to go this route. So we'll have you went this way. Yeah, you're coming back. Yeah, well, I super enjoyed it guys. And yeah, just anytime I can be useful,

43:25 please just reach out, I love helping. All right, thanks Josh. See ya.