Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 All right. We're going to the chapel and we're going to get married already. What did y'all do? Yeah. Well, we combined companies or technically our company was acquired by Aegis and merged

0:36 together and it's been good. We had a bunch of unique capabilities where we were doing one side of the physical marketing space. Aegis is an expert in the leader in the financial side and we never

0:47 had that. They didn't ever have the physical and culturally, it just made a lot of sense and Brian and team, they want something, they go after it pretty aggressively and reached out to us and

0:59 took a little bit of convincing because we really weren't for sale and didn't, you know, had, had heard of Aegis but wasn't in the mindset of this is somebody that we could do a combination with.

1:07 And I think after a couple months of just going back and forth, getting the teams together, that was a big thing. Like Brian brought all the executive Team Dokom City sat down and. After that

1:18 meeting, my business partner had been 10 years and kind of looked at each other and we were like, Man, this seems like it could be a really good thing. So, ended up doing the deal close January 1.

1:28 And I'm fascinated about this 'cause as a private equity guy, ultimately always put money into real assets. So, not that I wanna minimize the human portion of it, but I owned an oil and gas well,

1:42 I owned reserves in there. It may have been a water well 'cause the oil sucked, but whatever Right. Walk me through this, how you merge a people business. 'Cause that's kind of fascinating to me

1:56 'cause, I mean, you acquired 'em, the assets walk out the door every day, don't they? Yeah, I have to go back when Max said, technically they were acquired, we've got a big laugh out of that.

2:09 Because he, I always say it's pretty easy to tell who got acquired 'cause who got a check And as I recall, I wrote one and don't remember receiving one, but we've gotten back more than what we

2:23 could ever have invested to, because there are some real assets. At least that's how we viewed it, and we've acquired Ancova. Certainly there are the people who are a huge component of it. We

2:32 really looked at it, and we had been looking at the physical space for quite some time, because we knew it was a place where all of our customers are obviously participating in the markets every day,

2:45 and we thought we might be able to do something a little different. The challenge for us was we knew the kinds of companies that were involved in the physical management of oil and gas molecules.

2:57 Ryan, you might want to slightly. Why don't you hop up and just look at real quick. I think it's turn towards us just not as far torn, torn edgy because that's your camera. And there's the

3:13 weirdest dynamic that happens. I don't know if you know this, but I'm always like, why isn't that camera up here facing this? And what happens is if you, if you don't have cameras centralized in

3:26 one spot, when the viewer watches it and it shifts angles, people get dizzy. It's actually really a thing. So you have to have cameras grounded on, on one side. So, okay. All right Do I start

3:38 that question over again? So we can, uh, the, uh, so, okay. So, okay. This is fascinating to me because in effect you acquired. People and, you know, I'm used to buying assets. So I

3:55 invest in oil and gas company. And if you have to run management off, you run management off, but it sounds like you acquired a bunch of people and they walk out the door So how are you thinking

4:07 through that? And then tell me that, and then we're gonna circle back to figure out what y'all actually do. Yeah. Sure. I actually feel like we did acquire a tremendous amount of assets. I think

4:18 it's easy to view it as a people business, but as we looked at the physical space, and we'd been looking at it for quite some time, the large majority of our customers are involved in the physical

4:29 movement of molecules. And so, we had a thesis that we wanted to be in the market in a way where we could do it at scale with an experienced team. And COVA had that, and the average person there

4:45 had almost 30 years of experience at in COVA. Max may have been the least experienced as it

4:52 turned out. We were looking for someone who had an edge from a technology perspective. We can probably talk a lot about that. And COVA had what we would view as a version, one of technology that

5:04 was really fascinating We had not seen it. I applied that way anywhere else, and then we wanted to do it in an unconflicted manner. We do not want to

5:17 purchase molecules and trade on the backs of our customers. That was something that was really important to us, and so we found all of that with ANCOVA, and so the assets that we got, which you're

5:30 right, they can walk out the door, but that was an important part from a people perspective to make sure that they were aligned with the vision. Max mentioned we took the team to Oklahoma City.

5:40 That's one of the most unique things I think I've seen done in a transaction before. We tied most of them through some form of equity to the long-term success of the company, and I think just

5:53 generally our cultures matched really well. So that part has been great, and Max should comment more on it, but our cultures and Max and Mark were very focused on that as are we at Aegis to make

6:07 and the technology was a huge asset. I think we've done a lot of development on top of that to really modernize it and scale it, but that was a tremendous asset. So yeah, I think we were, you

6:17 know, we were fascinated by the people and the technology assets, and I think we're taking very good care of both. Well, congratulations, 'cause at this point, you have made it longer than CS

6:27 and DLJ did, or first of all, and DLJ did. It was really funny, I had a buddy who liked to joke that he was the last DLJ guy at Credit Suisse, and he said, Well, they can't fire me, 'cause

6:39 then they made the whole acquisition for nothing, and one of our buddies like, Oh yeah, they can get rid of youand just forget it ever happened, forget it ever happened. So now, tell me what are

6:50 we calling the combined company now, and what does it actually do today, and then tell me who was doing what? Yeah, well, still Aegis Hedging, but there's Aegis Physical is the new group it is

7:02 our old company, basically still based at Oklahoma City, and really it's everything. that has to do with selling the product or monetizing the product, so everything from negotiating, doing due

7:14 diligence on the front end for producers to help them look at an asset and understand the midstream side, understand the takeaway, understand the gathering agreements, processing agreements, and

7:24 then the marketing arrangements and what price they're getting and things like that we do that on the front end. Then once someone has an asset, we help them manage that. So it's the day-to-day

7:32 selling the volumes, whether that's nominations, scheduling, calling the oil purchasers, getting them to come pick up the barrels, renegotiating those deals, all the back office side of it,

7:43 contract administration, helping with just the day-to-day stuff, well-connects, if there's a well-connect coming up, who's bird-dog in that, who's making sure that the pipeline's going to be

7:52 there on time. So it's really kind of A to Z physical marketing and some clients, and then we've got the technology on top of all that. Some people, it's kind of like full service. We do

8:03 everything. It's like they don't have somebody that does what we do. So they'll bring us in and it's basically, we want you to be our marketing or physical department. Other folks, they have that

8:12 already and so they just really like the tech and they're like, we have a team of people, but this can help supplement what we do and make it better. And so I think that there's something we can do

8:20 for everybody and the nice thing about physical is that it's 247, 365, you always got a sell product versus on the financial hedging side, sometimes it's really needed, other times it might not be

8:30 needed as much. And I feel like with the combined company, now E just can help you sort of full revenue all the way from A to Z, sell the product, do the risk management, and then put it all on

8:40 an incredible technology platform where you can really give you insights that nobody else has. Yeah, that's right. So before the transaction, E just as a standalone entity prior to ANCOVA, we

8:50 have people who are deep in the markets. Primarily oil and gas, that has been our primary focus, but it goes beyond that into the metals and eggs and other markets. So we had deep expertise in the

9:01 markets. We were able to advise on hedging transactions. establish strategies, policies, et cetera, we take those to market through a marketplace known as Aegis Market. So Max mentioned Aegis

9:14 Physical as a new division. Aegis Markets was a division Aegis CTA, commodity trading advisors who provides the advice. These are all mostly regulated entities under the CFTC. So we could provide

9:26 the research, we could advise on head strategy, we could execute the transactions through a marketplace, we could manage those hedges through to settlement. It's kind of simple way to think about

9:37 it. And all that was enabled through technology. By combining the physical component, now we had good insights into what's happening into the physical markets and actually get that product sold for

9:46 folks. And that connection between physical and financial is, as you know, being in the industry is really important. What indexes you're paid for in the field need to be hedged properly as a,

9:55 for instance, and how you think about your ethane elections are really important versus how you're hedged, for instance, And there's some unique things you can do there. and we could provide 15

10:06 other things. But this really did round out and create a full service offering from, from actually we're seeing diligence in a number of new deals, from looking at the actual physical asset, to

10:20 setting up transportation, to putting hedges in place, pre-close, to managing those hedges to settlement and constantly readjusting the portfolio. So that ability to see the complete life cycle of

10:32 a molecule through, that puts us in a really unique position today. Plus, I'll add just the research side, such a luxury, like the Aegis team has six or seven full-time people that are just macro

10:43 research. And just to be able to call those guys up and be like, hey, what do you think about this basin? What are your thoughts on this takeaway here? This base is differential. We sit and have

10:52 two meetings a week, one on Monday morning and then one on Friday afternoon. We just sit around and talk about the market, why it's doing what it's doing. And that's the kind of stuff I love to

10:59 nerd out on So that's just been really fun. To just have a team of guys, that's what they're focused on all the time. It's just like what's going on on the research side. And I think it's a huge

11:07 luxury for our clients as well. Just have access to that. So looking at the businesses separately and then coming together, how much overlap was there in geographic focus and then how much customer

11:24 overlap was it? I don't know how much customer overlap total. There was some, I mean, maybe - Handful Of our clients were Aegis clients, but the nice thing is is that the target clients were both

11:35 of the same. So Aegis has hundreds of EMP companies and we had, you know, 50 something, right? And so that's a great, it's been a great way for us to go and get a bunch of warm leads and talk to

11:47 the existing Aegis client base and say we've got these new capabilities. Do you guys need help? And that's proven out. I mean, I think we've, I don't know how many of the new things we've signed

11:57 on that have been existing Aegis clients, It's just so nice because they've got great relationships. They can introduce our team, go in and find if there's a way to work together, whether that's

12:06 the technology or whether it's advisory or the physical marketing, the molecules. So just that part of the thesis has been really nice. I mean, our BD guys are like, man, this is great. Like

12:18 they're just getting it teed up, you know? And then they just go right in and can knock them down and help people out and add value. And it's just, it's easy when you have such the infrastructure

12:27 and the relationships that the Aegis team had before the combination. Yeah, I mean, just to put some numbers, a little over 500 customers at Aegis, 50 customers there. I think we had, I think

12:37 it was only five that were overlapped. We're both covering every major basin in the US. And four months in, it's so nice to see that we've taken financial only customers and upsold every part of

12:51 physical, right? To create the complete offering. And even though a much smaller number of customers in Vancouver, in the United States. including I think one that's going to sign today, we've

13:01 seen multiple, multiple upsells that were physical only adding financial hedging. So we really have seen success coming from across both the organizations. It's been, it's early days still, but

13:14 it's hard to imagine being in a better spot post an acquisition. So one last kind of business question then, let's geek out like it's Monday morning or Friday afternoon, 'cause I have thoughts

13:25 there that I want to pick y'all's brain, but y'all thought y'all were doing a podcast. I'm like, I get two of the smartest students in here to ask my questions of who do you want a phone call from

13:37 an EP company? Is there like a minimum size, maximum size? It just depends. I mean, I think that with the physical stuff we can help anybody, I think with financial, there's a lot of folks you

13:49 can help. It depends on what their hedging, or you can probably talk better this than I can, but what their hedging requirements are. Some folks just don't hedge, right? If you're somebody that

13:57 doesn't have it, then you probably don't need it. hedging or financial advice, but everybody sells product. And so we've had it in the past clients that were small, like little non operator

14:06 clients that they wanted to take in kind on their volumes and have us market them because they weren't happy with the operator and we'll go work for those folks. We've got big, large public E and

14:15 P's that are now using our software and rolling it out across all their assets. So I think it's kind of any, anybody anywhere in between, you know, historically it was a lot of private equity back

14:25 guys, smaller, mid size I think through the technology that's really opened up the total addressable market to the bigger groups with more complicated operations because they just have so much to

14:34 wrap their hands around. Um, I don't know, Brian, if you want to tack on to that question, but. Oh, I think you said a well, there's really no client that's too small to have a conversation,

14:44 practically speaking, when you're hedging, it may be hard to get credit if you're, you know, 50 barrels a day. Um, but you know, really, when we map the market, we, we see 1400, you know,

14:55 total customers we could work with. In a willing gas, we're working with 400 of those now, another 100 outside of willing gas. So there's a long list of folks that we can help and we certainly

15:09 have been engaged by a number of customers of late that don't have an asset yet, but are looking for help on how should I think about the transportation issues in a given area, what should I think

15:21 about from a hedging perspective, what is, we've got PDP, et cetera So we literally have customers who have no production right this second. And your pitch job on the financial side is being more

15:35 thoughtful about future prices as well as better execution on trades. What else else would you, if you're pitching me, what am I hearing? Well, on the hedging side in particular, we don't wanna,

15:49 we have a hard time calling the market, just anybody can tell you they know what the price is going to be. I think we have some unique insights into why we think you may be bullish or bearish the

16:01 curve going forward. So I do think we're well informed to have those discussions. But from a hedging perspective, it's really about what does it take to make your plan work? I think a couple of

16:11 years ago when we were here, and by the way, crude is at 120, and I think gas was 850, it's a little different time, and we were saying to hedge everything, you possibly could, but we have a

16:21 way to model your exposures So we start to think about someone's plan, what have you underwritten an asset to, what have you committed to shareholders, what do you wanna pay out on dividends? I

16:30 mean, you name it, let's work to a plan, and now the hedges should enable that plan. Of course, we'll have a point of view on the market, and whether or not today is a good day to do it or not,

16:40 or this month is a good time, but hedging should not be about calling the market, it's about making sure that you are executing against your plan. Now, when we take those hedges to the market,

16:53 the dealers primarily. large banks and other swap dealers. That's a very important time because pennies matter on execution, especially at the volumes that we're doing. We have about 7 million

17:07 barrels a day, BOE. a day, under management. Taking those deals to a dealer and making sure we're creating the right competitive tension and getting a fair price is something we think we're

17:18 uniquely positioned to do both because of our technology and because of our insight across so many customers that we're executing hedges on.

17:27 Then taking that all the way to settlement. How is that valued each month? Are you being paid properly by your banks? Are they requesting the right amount of money to you? Are you set up for your

17:36 audits, etc? We really want to take that hedge from front to back. That's the value hedging. Physical has a lot of the same characteristics and equally opaque market from our perspective. I would

17:48 say with physical, the model that we had at the beginning of the company was started out as advising. And it was pretty simple, just consulting, advising. You don't have our expertise on staff.

17:59 And so we would come in and be that for you, sort of an outsourced model. In 2016, two years after we were founded, we got into the actual physical purchase function and acting as agent, bidding

18:09 out products. And what we saw there was a lot of, what I would just say kind of misalignment, it's like I make the joke all the time, like you would never use like a mineral buyer as your like

18:18 title attorney, because you'd be giving them like the, you'd be giving them all the secret sauce, but yet you're using what I would call market maker to do your marketing and your advisory. And

18:28 it's like, well, you're giving them your drill schedule, when you're gonna drill it, they're telling you which pipelines you should go to. And by the way, on the back end, their traders are

18:35 taking out transport, arbitrage in your volumes. Now, they're risk takers and we need that because like you want people to take risks, they're market makers, they're completely necessary and

18:45 fundamental, but we just always felt like it was a little bit misaligned. It's like, if I'm trading my own book, basically a gold mine by telling me all your plans. I can go out and make, not

18:55 risk-free art, but like I can arb that. And so that was always a traditional model. A lot of these marketing shops came from kind of that in-run era. If you look back, a lot of them were started

19:03 up around early 2000s, mid 2000s. A lot of them come from the trading and financial side. And we came from the EP side, like working for Chesapeake, my partner and I. So from the second largest

19:13 gas producer, most active driller. And I think that we always just took the side of the EPs. And it's like, everything we've ever done is just like a fixed fee, like a passenger. Like we'll go

19:22 out and bid it out, find the best market makers, lay it out like a menu, and then we can sell it to them and just charge like a per unit car or per unit fee, and then do all the back office

19:32 scheduling, accounting, and voicing all those things for you. So it was really more of just like this, extreme transparency, exactly what we get paid. We don't trade our own book. We're not

19:41 taking a bunch of credit risk. We're not trying to buy low sell high basically. And I think that resonated with a lot 'cause they were just like, I feel like you're on our team. It's aligned

19:52 versus this black box that you're just selling into. And I think Aegis has been historically on the hedging side in a very similar mindset of this transparency. Like we provide a service. We're not

20:01 out, you know, playing the arbitrage game. Yeah, no, it sometimes felt like

20:07 sitting there with our EP companies, we're getting screwed somewhere. I can't tell though, right? Right, yeah, we felt that. Well, and from the mid-stream companies too, I mean, it's like

20:18 Mark and I, my partner, would always joke that we're kind of the BS meter. It's like if you're a land guy or something or pick somebody that's smart at their discipline, that they go sit down with

20:26 a mid-stream company, those guys are gonna like, that conversation is gonna be different than if we were sitting in the room with you. 'Cause they know that like number one, we know all those guys

20:34 and we've worked with them for years. And number two, they just know we know what we're doing and it's like, I think it's a totally different conversation. We believe you'll get a better deal just

20:42 'cause we're like involved with it. It's like they're not gonna try to pull the same crap that they would normally pull They're just doing their job. I mean, mid-stream companies are trying to -

20:49 extract as much value as they can. And our goal is just to get a fair deal. We want both sides to win and we play referee a lot in the middle there, but that's another piece of it. And I'd be

20:58 happy to pay you not to have to deal with the mid-star. Yeah, some guys, some guys fight over pennies and fight all day and it's just painful. Well, it was fascinating getting close to this space

21:10 to see that there's a very acute need where people are receiving hundreds, if not thousands in some cases of statements every month from the midstream companies, all in different formats with

21:24 different levels of detail and trying to extract the key data elements to make better decisions about whether how they market it or how they get information to the reservoir engineers to update their

21:35 models. I mean, there's a hundred different business decisions that can be made and no way to get at the data that sits inside of there. And that's what really got us attracted to end COVID to

21:47 begin with was that they were starting to solve that problem. And so, you know, you see that people really struggle to understand how they are actually paid. And that is a fascinating thing to me.

22:02 I mean, your sales are the lifeblood of an oil and gas company, but very, you know, too little attention. I'm not gonna say not too little attention is paid to, are you being paid accurately?

22:13 Are you being paid fairly? Are you being paid in line with your contract? Are there different decisions you could be making? And so allowing people to get at that data and drive better decision

22:22 making, that is a fascinating problem for us to get after, for, you know, customers who just don't, they do still have the time, you know, to dive into that. Yeah, and that's what the tech

22:33 that we were, he's alluding to the tech that we were building. A lot of it was revolving around that, like capturing all this data, figuring out how to make better decisions, figuring out if

22:42 we're getting paid right. I mean, we would find payment mistakes all over the place. this malicious thing where they're trying to pay you wrong. It's just, they've got a bunch of junior

22:50 accountants entering stuff in. You've got two commercial guys that negotiate some complicated deal. And then you pass it off to some accountant who's then trying to get it into some rigid accounting

22:59 system that has a hard time even getting all the data in. And so something like, we just caught a deal this morning, I got an email. Fuels were supposed to be capped and they were getting paid as

23:08 actual and the actuals were above the cap. Well, it's a huge delivery point. I mean, it's a hundred million a day plus delivery point And the fuels are two, three percent off, like do the math.

23:19 You only get two years to go back and ask for an audit. So it's real dollars. And so figuring out a way to like capture all that data, display it in a way to where these metrics that people want to

23:30 get access to, like what are my NGL cuts? What are the yields look like? What's going on? FA and price is dumped. Should I switch to rejection? Like back in the day, just you have to go through

23:38 spreadsheets and there'd be a bunch of analysts that would spend two, three weeks digging through a bunch of state PDFs, hand key and stuff in.

23:46 We're using some machine learning and AI to just be able to pull all this data into a database and slice and dice it in a million ways and really show you like how you're making money. And just to

23:54 put a really fine point in that, we were on a call with one of our customers. We were demoing this technology for them. We uploaded all their pop statements or settlement statements. This is a

24:05 pretty large public company,

24:11 EMP, and we had never seen the data before We loaded it, took two minutes to load down a 3, 200 statements, read them, organize the data, pop it up on screen. And he said, wait a second, is

24:19 that an NGO trending report? Said, yeah, I mean, it's kind of right out of the box. And he said, I just spent the last four days pulling that together for our management team. I mean, we

24:30 literally took something out of the box in less than two minutes, had something up that had taken four days for several individuals to pull together. So that's the kind of power I mean, people talk

24:40 about AI, and this happens to be machine learning inside of an AI. Toolkit, but those are the kinds of efficiencies that can be done or achieved if you're willing to

24:53 invest and do things at scale. I

24:57 would have bet my entire life, and I'm trying to think when this was, but it might have been 15 or 20 years ago, we met with a company that was basically going to be the trusted third-party meter,

25:09 because now everybody's got 12 meters at every station and that They were just going to be, No, we're third-party, we're trusted, you run it through one meter. That's the number everybody uses,

25:20 and all that, nowhere near that. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, the metering size is another piece of it. We're not doing physical audits on meters. We certainly have the engineering connections and

25:29 the connections in that space where we could help provide that service, but ours is really more like, there's a lot of software around what the wells are flowing, like production software, and

25:38 that's a pretty common thing. You've got the SCADA, and there's been a bunch of tech there, but we're more focused on what

25:44 And so what actually got sold, yeah, just 'cause the barrels are in the tank, that's one thing. Or just because you've flowed this much gas, that's, you know, you have an internal gas analysis,

25:52 you think your NGOs are gonna be this, but what were your actual NGOs? And so we're very focused on cash coming in. Like what was the actual cash you got paid? Let's look at those statements,

26:02 let's dive in. How does that compare to your contract? Does it look right? And it's complicated. Those contracts are 50, 60 pages long, you know? And they're just, there's a lot of terms,

26:13 different recoveries, different fuels, different fees, treating, you know, treating costs, processing, downstream transportation, NGL, fractionation, transportation fees. I mean, there's

26:24 just, each statement has what? Like 40 different data elements on it, and they come in PDF most of the time. And so you're getting hundreds of these. And it's just like, that's a big piece of it.

26:34 And that's where I think the tech, anybody could use it, whereas like the advisory, you know, if you already have a whole team of marketing people, you probably don't need us for advisory Maybe

26:42 we could help in some instances.

26:44 But that's why I think it's so cool with like the Aegis platform, what they've done, 'cause now we're integrating it all into one spot. So you can see like your financial hedges, you can see all

26:52 the market research, you can see your actual sales, all in one cloud-based, just log in, have all your stuff there. It's pretty cool. All right, let's geek out like it's Monday morning or

27:02 Friday afternoon, I'll go, I'll go first. The follow up question is gonna be, okay, well, tell me what y'all talked about this Monday or last Friday or whatever But my thing is, I think that

27:15 every natural gas producer in America needs to stop thinking about selling natural gas and start thinking about in electrons selling

27:26 some way, shape. And the reason I'm thinking that is because one, EMP guys are the most entrepreneurial people on the planet. The men and women of the oil and gas business are very entrepreneurial

27:39 and it feels like we've stopped innovating So that's kind of number one.

27:44 People need electrons. They don't need natural gaps these days. I mean, the price tells us that. We're gonna triple the amount of electricity. I mean, when your brother runs off with your

27:56 girlfriend, you want AI kicking on Hank Williams Jr. on your phone, right? You know, you don't wanna have to go Google search it. And the amount of electricity that AI takes versus just a simple

28:09 Google search, it's like five and 10 X Yeah, so we're gonna need tons more like electrons. Silicon Valley knows that and they're gonna go steal our business if we don't provide them electrons.

28:22 Yeah. So I have this soapbox, am I right, wrong and different? Are y'all thinking about that or am I an idiot? What do you think? Well, Max will have a much more informed opinion on that, but

28:35 to illustrate your point, this was told to me by it, one of our dealers in New York, their head of crude trading. I haven't verified this statistic, but it fascinating. He said, one new Nvidia

28:48 AI chip, and I don't, I've forgotten what they're called, will consume as much power as a Tesla driven 13, 000 miles a year. Yeah. That is a, that is a fascinating, you know, way to think

29:03 about what the electricity needs are over time. And yeah, we've, we've banned the word energy transition at our, at our company. We just, it's silly. It's energy addition and by gosh, we

29:16 should change the, should change that frame, um, to be, we're in conservation mode and crude oil is going nowhere. Right. I, I figured out how to make metals, medical supplies out of wind or

29:29 water or solar as best I can tell means one thing on fuels and cars and there'll be, there'll be some transition on that. But we ought to be thinking about conservation of that like anyway. There's

29:41 not an unlimited supply, and so I think we need to change this whole framework of all of these commodities to be thinking about, Hey, we're going to need these for a lot longer than we think, and

29:50 so we need the additional energy capacity through

29:55 renewables and other means so that we have that for longer because we're going to be so reliant on it would be my take. You're right. You know what I say on BDE all the time is, we're adding two

30:08 billion people to the planet and I don't know if that's in the next five years, ten years, you know, whenever and they're all coming from Africa and Southeast Asia and if our answer to them is here

30:19 use the solar panel and by the way, you don't get cheap coal to build an economy, build a standard of living like I've got, I let them eat cake, that's going to have real global repercussions.

30:31 There's no doubt about that. That's like war type shit, you know, I think and so that really worries me that we're not thinking that one through. And look, I'm a very strong supporter of all the

30:42 renewable complex. And we have a number of customers that are involved in production of biodiesel and renewable diesel and solar panel production. I mean, that is a big part of our business also.

30:51 And so we're incredibly supportive of that, but it's not going to be a replacement, right? There will be portions that are replaced, but we've got to be thinking about this as, we've got where

31:04 you started the question, we have massive power demand How are we going to think about that supply and aggregate? Because everything I see and read and watch my kids do, there's going to be more

31:18 need for electricity than less. Yeah, when we talked about the other day, and it was, someone brought up that the consensus view among a bunch of research shops was that that gas power generation

31:27 had peaked, and that it was going to fall off, right? And the chart was hilarious from SP, and it was like, it looked like a Mount Everest, it was straight up, natural gas power demand, And it

31:37 was like straight down, starting in 2024. And no doubt renewables will soak up some of the power knees that are coming with AI specifically. And we've seen some people throw out Raymond James, I

31:50 think had a thing that said 10 BCF. Another group said five BCF a day. This is by 2030. They're saying, I think Matt and the internal guys maybe think it's closer to four after talking to a couple

32:00 of these shops for BCF. That's huge. Those are huge numbers. And the real question is like, okay, well, how much of that will renewables take versus natural gas? And so what was the recent

32:14 power plant that just kind of defied orders recently? And they're gonna start up a new neck gas generation and they got, they're getting slammed by it politically. Have you seen that story? Yeah.

32:23 Or for like, forever. For like, forever. It was at the others. They basically said, look, we have to build this. We gotta build this natural gas generation power plant. A bunch of people were

32:31 upset about it and they just kind of said, we're gonna do it anyways So I think that gas will be the key fuel for AI. AI is not as, easy of a swing demand is like a Bitcoin mining, we can just

32:44 turn it off and turn it right back on, at least as far as I know, like they want it running. So, and then I've also heard a lot of these Bitcoin guys are converting to AI. Like I think maybe

32:54 those core scientific said they're going to convert up to 50 of their computation power over to AI. So it's shifting that way. I think that gas is going to play a big role just because it's so

33:04 reliable. We have so much of it. It's damn near a waste product in a lot of areas My only soapbox on that, and this is totally anecdotal from an unemployed dude in Houston, Texas, but if we leave

33:18 Silicon Valley to their own devices to do that, they're going to choose nuclear, and we all know nuclear's a ways off and it's hard, but technology's always happy to throw money at things, make it

33:32 better, and they've got way more pull with the government to be able to do things like regulatory and all. And I just worry that we're not being proactive enough as natural gas producers in terms of

33:48 handing the electron solution. They would be, Silicon Valley should be talking to Aegis because with what we have on the environmental side, we could do a gas supply deal. We can figure out where

33:58 they can get good gas supply. The physical team could work with them if they've got a data center location, help them do the supply side or do the supply for the electricity And then he just has all

34:09 the environmental group that could get them credits and do things to make them net zero if they wanna be net zero with the natural gas. There's even folks out now that have this certified natural gas

34:19 or whatever, where they're making sure there's not as many leaks. So get it as clean as you possibly can and then do offsets and things like that if they want to go that route and pay for that. But

34:28 I feel like we'd be uniquely positioned to help. 'Cause I'm actually, and this is said as someone who's not an engineer and incredibly arrogant. ignorant on that front. But I'm actually this

34:41 weekend going to record a podcast with the head of data centers for Intel. Okay. Because he actually called up and said, I listen to your podcast. We're trying to figure out energy. We want to

34:51 have our ducks in a row. So, I'm ready to redo the podcast with y'all too, when y'all buy electricity, electric generation. Well, I'm curious, when you say that that that gas producer should

35:05 deliver electrons, how would, what do you have in mind? See, I'm a big picture guy.

35:11 No, I've been actually trying to think it through. Is

35:17 it literally,

35:21 creating the, figuring out what a data center needs in terms of power usage, sizing up the gas generation and in effect selling that to technology companies? Is it, you know, Bitcoin mining is

35:40 actually an electron, right? If you think about it, should every net gas person, 'cause this was gonna kind of be my second question is, is, I produce natural gas. I run it through the

35:53 processing plant. I make the decision to strip out ethane or not or whatever. Are we gonna see a point where midstream companies are gonna say, do you wanna mine

36:04 Bitcoin instead of selling the natural gas down the line? I'm just converted to electricity in general Yeah, we'll throw it into the grid or something. I think there's a lot of big electricity

36:13 needs in the Permian. I mean, I've talked to a number of large Permian producers that are like, we could, if you, me and a couple of our peers around us could backstop a power plant. If they're

36:23 having so many issues dealing with utility companies, how slow they are, not commercial. So maybe that's where it starts is in the field. The head of data centers, I'm gonna get them to Monahan's.

36:33 I'm gonna take them to the Ben again and sell them on, this is where you want your data center. Well, I've got natural gas everywhere. It's not a coincidence that Meta, that Zuckerberg put John

36:43 Arnold on the board. I mean, like, why would he put an energy guy on the board? Because he knows it's coming. I mean, he knows that this is what they need to be focused on. And he was making a

36:51 comment that they're gonna need just for one facility like a gigawatt. And he's like, it's not gonna be the chips that are at the bottleneck, it's gonna be the energy. So it's, the two worlds are

36:60 coming together. Similar to how the Bitcoin stuff did a few years ago, I think AI is coming just as fast as that wave And so I don't have a good answer for your question other than I'm just asking

37:11 it because it seems to me we could be at a buck50 or2 gas as long as we want it to be.

37:21 I mean, you know, we'll see. I mean, like the future curve shows it going higher, but so many people are curtailed right now. I mean, we're hearing stories that something gets pressed to

37:27 release, like the big companies like Chesapeake and others that are drilling, completing and shutting in, waiting for 2025 to bring it online. But we hear stories of even smaller producers drilled

37:38 a big 20 million a day dry gas well and they're like, we're shutting it in and we're going to hedge out in the future and then produce it when it comes online later. So will the curve materialize

37:46 the way that it's showing that it will? Probably not. I mean, I think prices, we'll see. I mean, I don't want to get off the company line what we've discussed, but I think there are scenarios

37:56 where prices stay depressed just because so there's just so much gas. Well, and if, you know, it's interesting, I was talking to, do you know Roy Johnston? Yeah. And so I had Rory on the

38:06 podcast when we were talking. And Rory said, this is an interesting point. Don't know what to make of it, but everyone talks, you know, returning to October of 2019, pre-COVID, we're slightly

38:19 higher on flights or whatever. Rory's like, I'm not sure we should be talking and thinking like that because did the pandemic fundamentally change something? Meaning, is it reverting back to

38:32 pre-pandemics or right way to think about it or are we all going to travel more? live through a pandemic now. Are we gonna, have we changed workflows enough that? And so his whole thing is

38:43 figuring out what normal is may take us kind of a few years. And so it's gonna take time. I mean, even just like the driving patterns for me personally, I work from home at least one day a week,

38:56 two days, sometimes a week. And so prior to COVID, I never worked from the house. I was in five days a week. So think about that ripple effect across a lot of people That's, you know, I've

39:06 noticed the difference in my mileage on my truck. And so think about how many other people are in that boat. So there is a change there. I think what's shocking is the AI. Did you guys watch the

39:15 open AI demo from yesterday at all? Nah. It's pretty incredible. Like they're showing some stuff where it's like, you know, AI doing tutoring. Like the kid was sitting down with a geometry

39:24 problem. And it's just talking to him like a real person, not robotic sounding, like sound like a real voice, helping him do the product. There was another one where they sat two AIs next to each

39:32 other And it was like a customer service call. Like, Hey, where's my package? I can't find it, the other one's like, I'll look that out for you real quick and they're just like talking back and

39:39 forth. I saw the translation one. Yeah, the translation one. Yeah, the translation one. The translation one. The translation one. It talks in Italian or whatever, yeah. But like those types

39:46 of things will probably change. The workforce will change, maybe energy from the demand side could change energy from the travel side, but even what we're doing with AI, I mean, I think it could

39:58 potentially replace, maybe not replaces the right word, but change the roles of a lot of accounting in back office folks, just with what we're doing. I mean, maybe it frees them up to do

40:07 something else, but like with the stuff that we can do now in seconds to Brian's point, they used to take us weeks of time, that's a big deal for companies, right? It's like, if I can take all

40:17 this data for you and within seconds have it in a usable format and then API it directly to your accounting software, it's like, that's a whole department of people that used to have to do that. So

40:26 that doesn't mean those people go away, but like they maybe just change to a higher value use case, like they go work on something else. And it's definitely something they need to be playing with

40:34 today, because if you're not - If you're not playing with it today, you're going to be left behind, for sure. I do want to go back though, Chuck. I heard it here first at Silicon Valley in

40:45 California is going to get nuclear. They've, no, that's a fascinating call. Totally what I have heard and we'll see what this fellow from Intel says on the podcast is they think they're doing

40:59 micro-nuclear, that that's going to power all the data centers, they're not, yeah, SMR

41:07 And I don't know as much about nuclear as I should, but at the end of the day, they're gonna do it that way, they're gonna avoid grids 'cause I think everybody, oil and gas, even the big

41:20 utilities have to admit they're incapable of building a grid that sustains all this. We're gonna have to go off the grid. But I think like when you hear Mark Andreessen talk and stuff there they're

41:35 all leaning towards the next So

41:39 it could happen it's it's it makes a lot of sense. It's just Can we get out of our own way? Yeah, you know, I mean even like the energy transition stuff It's like we can't mine things here in the

41:47 US, right? And now they just announced that they're putting on more tariffs on China for EV batteries and solar panels and all these things and it's like It's like well, we can't make them here

41:56 guys because you won't let us mine and so I mean The whole like nimby not my backyard Not letting us do things here. We have a lot of resources here. We could do a bunch. We could do nuclear We

42:08 could do almost unlimited amounts of natural gas. We're so resource rich It's just gonna be the regulatory world. Like how do we has that get navigated? Yeah, no totally does is This was pretty

42:19 interesting. So on the BDE podcast My girlfriend's British and so any time I would say the you know, Europe or the European's she'd let me have it We are 27 different countries, blah, blah. We're

42:33 not in uniform. through last year and every episode we were breaking down the different countries and just what their nuclear sources were, energy sources, uses, and

42:48 what their issues were. And one of the things I found fascinating, Europe was able to push ahead of us with renewables because in effect France is a big huge battery with all its nuclear stuff, its

43:02 base load At times they're exporting 35 of the electricity they're generating, and the French did that basically in the 70s, right, in terms of just, we're going to choose one design, boom, boom,

43:16 we're going to lay this out. And their electric costs are at least average of what Europe is and sometimes even lower. It really is if you choose one design replicated over, and I'm not for that,

43:30 I'm a free market guy, but. if, let's say Google or whoever has their way, one design, regulatory approval, we're just going to build it over and over again, you can see that happening much

43:43 quicker than we would think when we think nuclear. Well, nuclear is the miracle fuel. I mean, if it was if it were discovered today, everybody that's been arguing for all the

43:55 great. That's what's so fascinating. That's where I think we're going to have a hard time getting out of our own way. And I think the call in California is that's particularly interesting if Google

44:04 wanted to set up a bunch of independent, you know, nuclear facilities. I could see that happen in Texas where we're a bit more free market. But that's an interesting call. I like that. I think

44:15 nuclear is a

44:18 great option.

44:21 We got to get people wisened up on the things that failed and that were built in the 70s Got it with there have been some are they have you ever driven a car from the 70s? We have made improvements

44:35 in our manufacturing and we could build any day in the 70s. We sucked all over. Seems a lot like the space race. It's like we had advanced technology back then that we don't even have now. And

44:44 we're sending guys to the moon. And then what Elon's doing with SpaceX, he's now, I saw some budget numbers. He's doing things for a fraction of the cost of NASA. He's made it into a profitable

44:56 business, I think. I don't know if it's quite profitable, but it's getting there. And so it's like, is it the private sector that steps in to do this stuff as a free market sky? Like, I would

45:04 hope that you would see that. But it's going to have a hard time beating natural gas because we have so much of it. It's so cheap. Methane leaks are fixable. That's the big thing everybody says.

45:13 Oh, methane leaks, like it's fixable, you know. Where was methane leaks in the IRA bill? Like where, you know, they targeted getting more solar, more batteries, you know, a lot of money to

45:22 China and that thing, but I think I backed into it. And I don't know, my numbers are exactly right, but had they taken the amount they did in the IRA and put it towards nuclear, turn 10 to 15 of

45:33 the total US. nuclear, if they just spent that money on nuclear, or if they gave incentives to stop methane leaks, like, Hey, for every methane leak you stop, we give you an incentive credit.

45:42 You get paid more for your gas, or whatever. So there's solutions that can be done, but the regulatory side is going to be a challenge, and I think because natural gas, there's so many state

45:51 incentives, because a lot of states that produce a lot of it and mean something to them. Some of these projects, I would guess, would gravitate towards those areas that are more business-friendly,

45:60 I feel like knack-ass is going to rise up, at least in the near term, to meet some of this demand. And I hope so. Yeah. I'm just worried that we're not. So, all right, Brian, last question,

46:12 because y'all have better things to do than educate me on things and y'all have been kind with your time. Give me something that y'all talked about at a Monday morning meeting or a Friday afternoon

46:22 meeting

46:24 when y'all are sitting around spitball and talking about. something big, macro. Give me something cool you all talked about. Well, I think the easy ones, and Max should go into more detail on

46:35 any of them. I think does LNG come on as fast as we hope? I mean, I think that is a very important factor for the future price of net gas. I worry about that. I worry about where we are from a

46:51 pricing perspective. We've seen some recovery here, but we have to incent the continued production of natural gas. And LNG coming on is going to be an important piece. And will that go slower or

47:04 faster,

47:08 or at some reduced pace or faster pace? The good news is, and this is where we've been debating a lot, many of the projects have been delivered early. And we talk a lot about the delays. So

47:18 that's an important factor, I think, in what happens with gas here in the alkyl medium term.

47:27 I think crude oil, how much war premium is there? We said it was10, and that's proven to be about right since things have calmed down a little bit in the Gaza Strip. But this geopolitical risk to

47:41 us moves things, China demand is obviously a big part of it as well. But the thing I think is a little easier to understand is just this geopolitical risk is obviously real right now and how much is

47:55 that going to move markets. We talk a lot about OPEC and what decisions may be made and those sorts of things. But I find the war premium and what does that mean? And if we see a series of

48:07 ceasefires, what could that do to crude oil price? And we've been talking to customers about that for months now and we're starting to see some of the effects there. Those are two that we talk

48:19 about all the time I mean, I'm always fascinated with natural gas, like is there ever a pathway to a more sustained3, 4 price?

48:27 longer period of time. It's just hard with how much we have.

48:31 But to Brian's point on the LNG, when that comes on, all the new AI, does that materialize into demand? But can we get to a healthier gas market where it's not, I don't think five, six bucks is,

48:42 that's, we'll just drill it to oblivion. But if we could get to three bucks sustained, 350 sustained, and have a tighter band with less volatility, probably needs to be potentially some more

48:52 storage done, a storage has been slow the last decade or so. So not a lot of it's been built, and that can kind of help smooth some of that out. But that's a big one. The other thing is, look at

49:02 the economy. And what's going on there? How does that roll through to some of the other stuff like steel and some of these other products that we look at? And if you look at the, how long the

49:11 curve's been inverted, the yield curve, typically when it goes this long, there's a pretty dramatic event at some point, whether that be a large stock market drop, a large job loss recession.

49:24 And so those are really hard to predict, I think. Everybody was probably too bearish the last two years. I mean, like last year seems like the bearish year. I can add maybe on Twitter too much.

49:33 I've said this before, but it's like everything I read is like the collapse of the economy, but we kind of keep chugging along. I mean, jobs have softened a little bit. Inflation's still kind of

49:43 going, but all those things matter to energy prices, steel prices, you know, all these different markets that we follow. And so that's one that I'm always fascinated to talk about because no one

49:53 really knows the answer And it just always feels like, with how good things have been going, it feels like there could be something on the horizon, which is probably a good reason to be hedged on

50:02 crude oil because when something does happen, you know, there can always be that dip. Because, I mean, when you think about fiat currencies when they collapse, they talk about the magic number

50:13 being 120 of GDP. Right. That no economy has sustained greater than that. And when the collapse happens, happens quick I mean, the Weimer Republic was having a pretty good time. Boom, all of a

50:27 sudden they're wheelbarrows and then boom, it's Hitler, you know? So it happens fast and that's what kind of scares me as an unemployed dude on a limited budget. Well, and I think it happens

50:38 quick, but it's also, we're kind of like the best of the worst in terms of currencies. I mean, look around the world, you know? I'll do this member a little bit of what we're calling. Right,

50:46 yeah. And so does the, is it like the dollar milkshake theory where everything, the dollars, everybody comes into the dollar because all the other currencies are, you know, if it, if things get

50:55 really bad, does the dollar shine and stand out on top, do the gold bugs in the Bitcoin guys, do they have their day of celebration and a bunch of these alt assets, money goes to there, but we

51:06 know energy's not going away. We know it's going to be a vital part of the economy, whether it's in a recession or a recovery. And I think that playing in this space, I've never been more bullish

51:17 long term that we're going to need it and it's going to be around. And I like working in a space with real assets that people use every single day. So we pay attention to that stuff, but it's not

51:26 like the end all be all because ultimately, even if there's a big recession, people still got to get to work. They're still going to go. They're still going to probably going to be on. Just

51:36 things feel unstable to me. And I had to fill out my quarterly director survey being a member of a public company board. And I found myself being the most bearish I've ever been in filling out that

51:52 survey for the most recent quarter Just with interest rates higher for longer. I mean, that that's talked about, you know, forever, you know, just geopolitical instability. An election where

52:02 who knows what's going to happen coming up. You know, you just everything just feels feels like quicksand right now. And I think that's tough. And we saw that, you know, Q4, especially last

52:14 year on just people having a hard time getting to decisions and being confused Now, as it relates to, you know, our our particular business. we've actually haven't seen this much activity in a

52:26 long time. People making decisions, new management teams, getting backed. The consolidation phase seems to have happened and non-core assets are being, are being spun off and new teams are being

52:36 funded. So from our business perspective, things that feels like it's never been stronger before. So I find myself going back and forth and I feel like that's everyone right now. Where are the

52:51 solid pieces of ground that we can stand on? And I just think that that that has a big risk to us where things just stall out here, a bigger term. No, you can really, because I used to hate when

53:06 a management team would come in and say, Chuck, this time it's different. It's never. It's never different. It's cycled, blah, blah, blah. But this time just feels different with this

53:16 election. I don't think we've ever had these two to bad choices. as well as, as well as I don't think we've ever been this divided,

53:31 I mean, I remember, I remember kind of Carter and Reagan, and I remember, you know, Bush and Clinton and stuff, but I don't feel like we were this divided. And, you know, one of the things I

53:45 did, because I moderated a panel with James Carville and Mary Madeline last week, that was so cool I started off our prep call with, Hey, Mary, leave James, run off with me. I've had a crush on

53:58 you my whole life. And she said, See, James, I'm still hot. It's great. But, you know, one of the things that we were talking about in there that I said is, I went back and actually looked at

54:13 all the major legislative achievements of the presidents all the way back to Reagan. And if you look at him, every one of the presidents. And I just looked at the Senate, but I'm sure the House is

54:25 the same way. About 23 of the votes for the legislative achievement would come from the President's party, but 13 would come from the opposition party. So you'd have stuff 70, 30, 65, 35, and

54:41 that was all of them. It was really under Obama that literally you had less than 10 Republicans voting on all of his major achievements Obamacare, zero Republican votes. And it just felt like that

54:56 changed. And we've been fighting since, so. Yeah, and I think that's the frustration, at least I know a lot of business leaders who watch this, who are listening to this podcast. This idea

55:10 that you just need to have one more yes than no is fascinating to me. As someone that has the privilege to lead people and build a vision and hopefully take them, you know, take them to new places

55:22 or, you know, and be a part of that. Like that's just not how it should be. Like we need to be having, you know, to your point, massive majorities to move in or any organization forward. And

55:35 the fact that we've devolved to that place from a political standpoint is just, it's fascinating to me that people sort of lost a, lost of you what leadership really looks like. The only bipartisan

55:46 thing is spending more money. I mean, I mean, that's kind of it I don't, I think that's probably bullish hard assets like oil and gas. I mean, you're gonna need it, is that inflation, you know,

55:57 ultimately it's gonna roll through. We see it in service costs. We see it in cost of drill a well. And so, you know, to the extent that break evens are higher, we need higher prices. I mean, I

56:07 just think that in a bout of inflation, like we've been in historically oil and gas has done well.

56:15 during those times, so we'll see if that continues. But man, it just seems like the only thing they can agree on is just spending more money and making things more expensive. Well, and Chuck,

56:23 it's a, you're always good for a hot take. I'm curious on your point of view of what's happening on college campuses today, 'cause it's something that I'm getting increasingly passionate about. So

56:32 this is interesting. I did some research for this for talking with James and Mary. If you go poll 18 to 24-year-olds, so in effect, a proxy for college students, Palestinian-Israeli issues are

56:49 like number 16 or 17. You've had 8 of college students say that they've participated in one of the demonstrations. So it's getting a lot of attention and people are talking about it, but actually,

57:09 if you ask college kids what they care about, I can't buy a house when I graduate. I can't find a job. My car payment's gonna be higher than I thought. So what's gonna be an interesting dynamic is

57:22 young people may vote more Republican than they ever have 'cause they feel disenfranchised, they're losing the American dream, they don't have time to be idealistic because of bread and butter type

57:35 issues. And what's gonna be weird is the other side of that, 65 years and older, if you're old and you've paid off your house, you actually got a pretty good life. You know, think about it. If

57:47 your strengths are up. You're getting five to six percent on your cash sitting in your checking account time bad a not to be alive. So Generally. value in much so appreciated is house Your. you

57:52 might see more

57:60 Democrats or more 65 year olds voting Democrat this time. So the, I think the campus protests are sort of a whole lot on nothing What's the easy? makes a lot of division. I mean, you see, like

58:15 you said, they put so much focus on it. Half the time, I think it's like, that's the goal is to put the focus on the division stuff to just distract people from all the actual issues. You know,

58:24 it's like, let's put this like thing in the news is going to make everybody upset. And that way, they're just like scrolling on their phone, commenting on Facebook or whatever, instead of like

58:32 focusing on the real issues. But I mean, we could do we could do this for a whole day. But if you really think about it, back when you had three, maybe four news outlets, the three major

58:44 networks and maybe PBS. By the way, one of the funniest energy jokes, you all remember McNeil layer, the PBS show, you too, you don't remember it. But they were boring drab newsmen on PBS and

58:58 David Letterman, you say we can solve the energy crisis, we can just harness the sexual tension between McNeil and one layer. But when you had four media outlets, ad dollars were based on

59:12 popularity. And so popularity pushed you more towards the center 'cause you needed more viewers. And now that we have literally thousands of outlets, ad dollars chase intensity. So if my podcast

59:27 gets 500 downloads, who cares on the numbers, but if those 500 people love me and will sign drilling contracts based on what I say, then I'm gonna have a lot of ad dollars. And unfortunately,

59:41 when you need intensity, you stir the pot to your point of, let's go get the protest on there and - Brings eyeballs. Yeah. Brings intense eyeballs. Yeah. Engagement. Engagement, right,

59:54 exactly. That's the thing that I've struggled with with media. I don't know how you felt with it. You've been doing it for a while now, but like what I would notice is that if I put out some

1:00:01 thoughtful thing about gas prices or storage or whatever or something that I did a lot of research for, it's like three likes. If I just make a joke about birds getting killed by windmill, it's

1:00:10 like a thousand likes, you know? So you're like, Okay, I see how this works. It's like, you know, and then you like, make the kind of shitpost thing, and then you get a bunch of people that

1:00:18 are just there for that, they're there for the memes or whatever. You're like, is that even a valuable audience? It's just a weird, like the incentives are so not good for, I don't know. So

1:00:26 I've kind of, basically I've moved away from really caring as much about engagement, and we're just talking about things that I'm interested in, talking to the people I'm interested in, making

1:00:34 relationships because the legacy media game is just so, it's just that you want to get that enraged engagement, and I'm just not, can't live like that And this has kind of gone weird because now

1:00:45 we've got Clyde GPT out there, and we're training a language model on all the content we're creating. So you've moved from a world where I want to have Ken Hirsch on, 'cause I'll get a lot of

1:00:57 people listening to this to, we've got a lot of people on Clyde asking this question, and we have a big white space there. So I need a subject matter expert to come on here and talk about it so we

1:01:09 can start training the model on things So actually talking about real stuff like we've been doing today, I think you're gonna see more out of the podcast than Chuck Yates telling 13 year old poopy

1:01:21 jokes or something. Yeah, I'll tune in for those too, but I think you've done a great job with this man. I mean, I think you bringing people together, you've got a wide variety of guests. I

1:01:31 appreciate that. I like to tune in for the energy stuff, but then also you have somebody else. I love your stuff too. Have someone ran them on that's good. Yeah, it's been great in this. And

1:01:39 you know, Brian, I hate to warn you, but sequels always suck We're making a seat,

1:01:44 but there's a second time. Max is probably, that's true. You know, just going back to wrap up that college campus thing, I agree with that. I think the issue is, I mean, it's an important

1:01:54 issue, but I think it's being taken to different levels for lots of different, for many reasons. The thing that's been shocking, that I've been most disappointed in is the students who are not

1:02:06 involved in it And you know, just in thinking as a leader. not that we hire that many people, but the kinds of people that we would want to hire that match our culture's statement and just the way

1:02:19 we do things, it's very important to me. And the fact that they're not standing up at certain universities and getting frustrated with being blocked from access to their classes or having their

1:02:30 graduations canceled or moved or the bad publicity that's coming along with it, or you name the things, I just, those are the folks that I'm most concerned about. I know where the administrations

1:02:42 are. They're in a tough spot. They don't want to make the tough calls. The professors are going to lean left. I mean, that's no surprise to anybody. They're going to try to support the students.

1:02:51 But I'm just, I'm all for people, assembling, protesting, etc. But when they start

1:03:04 to trample on other people's rights, we've now moved beyond what we're trying to protect. And I want to know what the students are thinking about that are part of that. on campus because those are

1:03:10 the people that we're going to hire, they're going to be future leaders and folks not standing up against what is wrong. And that is

1:03:20 trampling on the rights of other individuals, sitting right next to them. That's the part that's really that's bugging me a bit. Sorry, we've taken a while to turn on this. No, I'm glad you

1:03:30 brought it up. I think it's interesting. It's actually been surprising to me that there has been a little bit of defense of what I will call America by some groups that have taken down the flag,

1:03:44 put back up the US flag and stuff. Right. Probably more engagement than I thought I would see on that, because I do understand, I heard this from a friend of one of my children, they kind of said,

1:03:59 Man, I just want to keep my head down. I don't want to get canceled by anyone. I want to get my degree And all it's kind of sad we've gotten to that. point to where you can't get out and say, Hey

1:04:11 guys, you really know what you're saying here. No. The cancel culture thing is real. People are afraid of that. I mean, people are afraid of being at some counter protest and then all of a

1:04:19 sudden they're on the news and someone's calling them names and their pictures everywhere. I mean, it's like on social media, when you have something go viral, it's kind of cool. It's kind of

1:04:28 scary too. You're like, Yeah, I'm glad this is like a good thing that I don't care about going viral, that I wanted to go viral because something goes viral the wrong way and you could be, have a

1:04:37 target on your back I think it's, you know, more people that have either have a platform or have the ability or confidence to have the platform should speak up, I think. And to Brian's point, I'm

1:04:46 not against one side having their protesters saying there are other things. But it is concerning when people are scared to even speak up for the second they believe. And I think that's the cancel

1:04:54 culture thing. People just don't want to get in a position where they could be targeted. And then the mob is pointing at them. Type of thing. Yeah. No, that's right. I mean, I don't know if

1:05:03 you've listened to Howard Stern recently. Howard Stern, I mean, literally the most fined person in FCC history now could be press secretary for the current administration. And you just kind of

1:05:18 wonder what, what happened to Howard Stern? I mean, is he worried about being canceled? Did he just have a change of heart? I mean, we can all grow old and have a change of heart. It's a cool

1:05:28 time that we live in in that anybody can have a voice or get themselves out there And anybody that has, especially if you're into something that's very niche, whether that be something that's a hot

1:05:38 topic, political thing, or whether it's just something like you like crocheting, whatever, pick the most niche random hobby. You can start a YouTube channel, you can start a podcast, and you

1:05:46 can reach all the people that are into that weird little niche thing that you're into. And I think the younger generation, I've been really impressed with some of the content creators and people

1:05:55 that I've seen. And even people that have reached out to me like these guys that help edit the podcast, they're just like an India entrepreneurial young guy. It's like, hey, I'll edit your stuff.

1:06:04 I'll do a better job. charge less than what this other person is doing. So like, I feel like we live in a time where there's never been more opportunity to, if you wanna have a voice, or if

1:06:11 you're passionate about a certain topic, get out there and just do it, make content. We can record something right here in hundreds or thousands of people could listen to it. And so the younger

1:06:19 generation seems to get it. I'm trying to, I'm like kind of, an internet wasn't even really around when I was in high school, barely, it was around. So I'm kind of like just on that first like

1:06:30 cusp of it and I feel left behind. But right now is an incredible time for folks that if you want to have a message, or if you want to create content, you should do it. You can literally change

1:06:39 your life from outbounds 'cause I don't know about you, but I made a lot of cold calls early in my career and way more effective today to be a thought leader, create your content and take inbounds.

1:06:51 For sure, I don't know. It's good to do. Well, you do, it's cool to come on. Yeah, I'm glad to do it. Congrats on the merger. Yeah, it's cool.

1:06:60 Hopefully y'all are still talking in a year and I'll have you back. Honestly, I would say it's been his best. I told Brian this and I'm not just saying it's gone as good as I could have possibly

1:07:08 hoped it could go. Yeah. It's been good. Yeah, it's worth saying. We mentioned it earlier, but one of the things we did and I look, you can't do this in every deal, but Max allowed us to do it

1:07:18 and it was the best thing I've ever done. We literally two months before the deal closed. We might have had a term sheet at least drafted at that point, but we got our executive teams together in

1:07:31 Oklahoma City and got on the whiteboard and started talking about what was possible. What could this company look like, post this? To get by it. Neither has wanted to close if we didn't think we

1:07:43 could do something unique, and that's not always possible. It's like two full days of eight hours sitting

1:07:49 in a room drawn on the whiteboard, and a lot of great energy came from that, and it's a great story about an off-market deal that really, we weren't like shopping the company. They wanted to do

1:08:02 something, but didn't have to. We kind of thought that can be cool, but we didn't have to. And then just to see something organic, MA, small business acquisition type of thing, it was a cool

1:08:10 process to live through. And something that I think is harder to pull off than a lot of people. I mean, my wife was just like, this isn't, you know, she's like, how many deals are you always

1:08:20 talking about some deal? Because like, I've done the private equity thing in the past. I've done a lot of, she's always like, whatever this deal is, you get what's so worked up and then things

1:08:27 like never closed, right? It's never been like selling the company. It's like other deals, you know, it's like you go deal hunting and, you know, there's a low probability, no matter what it

1:08:36 is, and especially when it's something like this, that it's kind of an organic thing that happens. So I used to always sell management teams that because they'd want to see a term sheet and I go,

1:08:46 look, I may be talking my own book here, take it with a grain of salt, but, and I don't want to go get margaritas with somebody, sit around all night. I'd want to show you the crappiest deal I

1:08:56 did. And one, would you have funded that too? If we did that together, are you gonna shoot me? Yeah. And go through all that 'cause I always said, at the end of the day, commercial terms,

1:09:08 there's a market out there. You knew what your company was worth. You knew what was too much to pay. You also knew what was too little to offer and we can always argue about it. But for the most

1:09:19 part, commercial terms. Yeah. Or commercial terms, right? Yeah, it's all the other stuff And then the life change for us, I mean, being entrepreneurial and then going to a bigger company,

1:09:30 which still feels very much entrepreneurial with what we're doing. So there's just a lot of things like the stars kind of aligned where it just had worked out. Yeah, and we made our board meeting

1:09:38 about a couple of weeks ago and yeah, you go through the board approvals and here's the thesis and here's all the reasons we want to do it. We actually shared all those materials with Max and the

1:09:48 team at ANCOVA and had them come in and give the report out, hey, here's what we wrote down. Here's what we told the board didn't know what we had said to them. You guys talk about what's actually

1:09:57 happened. And it turned into a really, really fun conversation where they facilitated that whole conversation at the board meeting. And, you know, you just, you don't see that all the time. I

1:10:07 mean, we typically would be talking, Hey, here's the four things that have gone well. Here's the six things we're not going so well. And here's three other things we're watching. And this was

1:10:14 literally everything we said was gonna happen. And that's a credit to Max and Mark because we focused so much on the cultural aspects, so much on what we wanted this to be, what we knew it could be

1:10:27 And spent a lot of time thanks to them focused on the people. And that's a, that was, you know, they, I don't know if they're assets to us, they're just people and they're a part of our team.

1:10:38 And it was very important to get that right. And, you know, that was big credit to Max and Mark for spending so much time there. What's been cool is like the perception of the tech and it's

1:10:49 getting better now with all the work that he just is doing to like incorporate it into their platform, but I kept being like, It's not going to be a problem necessarily selling it. It's going to be

1:10:57 like a problem that we're going to have a bunch of people that want it and we got to get it implemented. And that's going to be the hard part is that like taking on a lot more volume. And then to

1:11:05 come out of some of the meetings, like a few of the ones recently where the light bulb went on for them, it's, it feels pretty good. Cause I'm like, I wasn't just BSing you. Like I told you,

1:11:12 people are going to like this. Like it's, we, we'd seen it already a little bit, but we hadn't marketed as much. It was still really new. And so to see that play out and then to see the work

1:11:21 that we've been doing to make it better, it just feels like incredible runway and opportunity there. And it, it feels good like, Hey, this wasn't all just a sales pitch. Like, yes,

1:11:30 everything's a sales pitch, but some of the stuff that, you know, we were really touting is coming true, I think. So that's exciting to see versus, uh, the other way around when people like

1:11:39 this sucks and we told him it was the greatest thing or whatever. So I think it's panning out. Well, cool, dudes. Appreciate you guys coming on. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks for having

1:11:50 us, Chuck.