Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:08 Bitcoin and energy go together like two peas in a pot. Everybody knows that, Dan.

0:15 Yeah, well did you know that our 12 gauge shoots very violently?

0:50 Hey guys, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job the podcast. Rice Business School had me on their podcast the other day and so I figured I'd share it with you here. It was really cool. Scott Gale of

1:01 Hal Burton Labs was the interviewer. So anyway, it may get a little rice geeky for some of y'all, but anyway, hope you enjoy. All right. Welcome to the I'll Have You Know podcast. I'm your host,

1:12 Scott Gale. I'm here with Chuck Yates Rice undergrad, 91, Rice Business School, 94. Now did I get selected because I didn't pay my parking tickets? This is like my pittance to the university.

1:27 Cats out of the bag, Chuck. All right. I've come here with a collection. There we go. There we go. It's the privilege to be here kind of on your home turf. You're at your home turf as well.

1:38 Yeah, we're at home. This is the field for those of you who don't know, Scott and I both have podcasts published by Digital Wildcatters and this is the Digital Wildcatters podcasting studio. This

1:49 is it. I encourage you guys to check it out. We'll talk a bit about Chuck Yates needs a job podcast. I wanna hear a bit more about the origin story around that, but I wanted to kind of just start

2:00 a little bit chronologically and go back 'cause the Yates family has a lot of connectivity with Rice University. Can you share a little bit about kind of some of that family history - Yeah, so I'm

2:12 Charles Wilbur Yates III. Charles Wilbur Yates Sr So my grandfather was class of 30, 31, 32, somewhere in there, I should probably know the date. So he went to Rice, great aunt went to Rice in

2:29 the late 30s. I don't think she got a degree early 40s somewhere that she attended classes. Then you had mom and dad both graduate from Rice in the early to mid 60s You had Uncle Terry graduate from

2:45 Rice in the late 60s. Then you had me. Brother J, Brother Kenny, I'll graduate from Rice in the 90s. You ex-wife Kim, I met at Rice. And then I think in the divorce, I won the right to say it

3:03 is still a Yates family degree, but I'm not sure I'll have to check the divorce degree on that one. And then the two sister-in-laws, Crystal and Becca both went to Rice

3:23 And just while we're piling on Rice stats, multiple of us have multiple Rice degrees. So dad, undergrad PhD.

3:27 And then he went to med school. I don't get that, that's kind of a masochist for schooling. I have the undergrad and the MBA, like you said. And Brother J actually has a BA and a BS. So he did

3:37 one of the

3:40 engineering's and I think his BA was in history. So we actually have a rice, multiple rice degrees. I don't know how many that is, but I'll kind of put that up against anyone else's - Yeah,

3:51 that's fantastic - Any other family, yeah - So when you were kind of graduating high school and deciding to go to college, was it even a conversation or was it a - I didn't have a choice. Didn't

3:59 have a choice. So this was kind of funny. So I decided sophomore year in high school that I was gonna get a Harvard and went and announced that to my parents. Scared the hell out of my mom She's

4:13 like, Oh my God, my poor little baby from Richmond, Texas is gonna go off to the East Coast. It's gonna become a rabble rouser, liberal Mary Amy Carter and start protesting and all this. And

4:25 unbeknownst to me, Dad says, No where I got this. And I said, Dad said, You know, Harvard's a really good school chuck. If you go there, I'll even pay for you to go there, but you gotta go

4:37 visit. You can't just show up on campus. I go, Okay, Dad, I'll go next summer.

4:44 Mom says to this day, the hardest thing she ever did when parenting me, they let me get on a plane to go to Boston, Massachusetts in the dead of winter. And it was 73 degrees in Houston, Texas.

4:58 I didn't take a coat. I didn't know any better. I mean, I was just like, it's 73 degrees in Houston. Why do I need a coat? I got up there and I had like one pair of jeans. Everything else I

5:09 packed was shorts and my mom knew this And so anyway, I got there and kind of walked around campus in my T-shirt. And I think I went and bought a jacket or something. So I'm freezing to death. And

5:23 Harvard is going, here is our latest building. It was built in 1796. And I was just going, ah, I don't think this is a place for me. Needless to say, I didn't get into Harvard. But I've

5:35 changed the story so that at the end of the tour, I walked into the admissions office and asked Harvard

5:42 That's a much better story, right? I like it. That's a great parenting approach. Oh, I know. Parents as well. That's fantastic. Typical dad.

5:52 So, I mean, you arrive on Rice Campus. Obviously, you've got some familiarity kind of with, can you share a little bit about kind of your initial kind of impressions having been on Rice Campus

6:05 and a bit of your journey kind of through the business school? Yeah, the thing that was really cool about Rice, that I think I gained some appreciation for particularly later in life is, I mean,

6:20 the collection of intelligence that I was surrounded with at Rice, far and away the greatest amount of intelligence I've ever been surrounded by. I mean, I worked in investment banking I did

6:33 private equity, which are supposedly the pentacles of careers out there. And my freshman class at Rice had.

6:46 gazillion times the horsepower that I saw out in the professional world. I mean, just really, really smart people. And I think the other cool thing about Rice, and it would be interesting to see

6:55 my answer on this versus today's folks' answer on this, is '80s late of kind, know you, Rice, early '90s, you to went I when

7:05 were smart enough to get into Harvard, Yale, but generally, you couldn't afford it. So Rice was the economic alternative to the Ivy Leagues. And so what you wound up having is a bunch of

7:18 middle-class kids that maybe got into Stanford or wherever, but just couldn't afford it. Or you had someone from a small town in Texas, etc. Because I think the tuition, I mean, it was a big

7:32 deal my freshman year went tuition, I think got raised to 4, 000 a semester And so that was kind of the care.

7:42 of rice at the time. And what was great about it is it really wasn't a class system. Money didn't matter. And who knows what an Ivy League campus would look like, but I'm sure at Yale, it matters

7:54 what your last name is, how much money you had. And it just didn't seem to matter at rice. It was more about how smart you were and what stupid pranks you could figure out to pull and stuff like

8:07 that. So huge amount of appreciation for that, particularly later in life. 'Cause it kind of gave me a grounding of where I'm maybe not rightfully, who's Hey. my it about worry father not and

8:18 meeting any into walk could I like felt I but, so

8:25 or how much money do I have or whatever, it was a rice you could walk into any meeting. So I thought that was really cool about rice. Did you have that vibe? Yeah, I mean, I - 'Cause what year

8:34 were you - Class of 2019, so did the executive MBA program at Rice And. Certainly found it to be an approachable kind of, but like you're saying, just like the level of brilliance in the room,

8:46 you're kind of looking around like, how did I get in here? But

8:50 just the,

8:53 I don't know, just found that there was just, the class sizes were really small. There was just sort of like a humanity to it in a way that was unique. And I think certainly through COVID and as

9:05 they've added like the online program and have kind of expanded classes, I think that one of those challenges is to kind of maintain that same feel, that

9:16 kind of familial kind of vibe. So I got a story along those lines. During the 70s, Rice had about as bad a run in football as any universities ever had. I mean, I think at one point we'd lost 25

9:33 straight games or whatever, God bless Ray Alburn. who went to Rice with dad, but he was kind of the coach during all that rice alone does good takes over the program that never wins another game.

9:45 So anyway, they've they fired Ray Alburn and they were looking for a new coach. So I was this was early 80s. So I think I was still in eighth grade. I wrote a letter to Norman Hackerman, who was

9:59 the president of Rice applying for the job as head football coach. And I detailed stuff out like I knew all the Dallas Cowboys statistics and that one time, you know, when I was really young, I

10:12 went to a Rice game and I was talking all about football and the lady sitting behind me tapped my mom on the shoulder and said, your daughter sure does know a lot about football. You know, so I had

10:23 it was it was I mean, it was fairly tongue in cheek, the letter. And a anyway, so I mail it into Dr. Hackerman. I get a very nice written note. Dear Mr. Yates, thank you for your interest in

10:36 the job. I forwarded your letter to the committee, making the determination. I wish you the best luck if there's anything I can do, Norman Hackerman, right? So about two years later, I'm on

10:48 campus at a reception for a family friend and Dr. Hackerman's there and I'll walk up and I get Dr. Hackerman.

10:54 I don't know if you remember me. I applied for the football coaching job and I'm like a sophomore in high school at this point And he said, come here. And he kind of pulls me aside and he said,

11:06 Hell son, I voted for you -

11:09 That's quite the endorsement - It was really cool - That's a cool confidence builder going into the experience - Probably totally untrue, but anyway, probably didn't, but it was nice enough. I was

11:21 like, all right - That's awesome. Give me a share a bit about kind of coming out of the program and kind of launching your career.

11:29 you know, eventually, like you said, getting into investment banking and private equity, can you tell a little bit about kind of that early journey and what motivated you to kind of get into that

11:37 kind of world? Yeah, so now I'll be a little critical of rice, or at least my time there. I mean, very, very smart and all the people I was surrounded with, professors really made you think.

11:52 So I thought that was great. No way, shape or form was I prepared for any sort of career graduating with my BA in political science. Sure. You know, just had no idea how the world worked. There

12:06 wasn't an undergrad business program of any sort. Right. They just launched it recently. Yeah, they had managerial studies, which I mean, was really just this

12:16 compiling a bunch of statistics class, economics class and all that. So I really didn't know what I wanted to do. So I kind of did what every political science major is. I defaulted into law

12:27 school, So I went to the University of Texas Law School and figured out big thick book, tiny print, no pictures. That's really bad. So I dropped out after the first semester and technically I

12:41 actually dropped out before the end of the first semester, but I feel bad saying that I didn't even make it a semester. So it's like, so I dropped that. And I just defaulted back into Rice

12:52 Business School 'cause I didn't know what to do And what was cool about that is, for the first time I had a real finance class. And to me, that was just my jam. I mean, I've always been a numbers

13:06 type guy, really good at math. I actually kind of think in math, as you talk, I break down things into numbers in my mind. It's sort of weird. I haven't heard about anybody else that does that.

13:16 But that's kind of how it was. And, you know, finance is really just translating accounting into value, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that it's a signing risk. cost capital, that sort

13:29 of stuff, but as simple as form. So figured out that was my jam. And what was neat about it is I had this non-traditional looking career path because undergrad, start and stop in law school, get

13:44 an MBA without any real true working experience - Sure - But it was

13:49 amazing the amount of rice folks for such a small school that were in the finance world And when I was interviewing for investment banks coming out of business school, Goldman Sachs was still private,

14:05 it was a private partnership. And there were 133 partners, five of them were rice people - Oh, well - I mean, arguably the most prestigious job on the planet. So you just had a lot of rice folks

14:18 you were able to go talk to in that world. And so, and one thing I'll say good about the rice community

14:29 Everybody takes your call, hey, I'm another rice person. And there seems to be some commonality there that would be interesting if other schools to hear if they have it or not, 'cause we certainly

14:39 have it in our land - Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's one of the features that kind of comes up again and again in describing kind of one of the big advantages of being a part of the alumni

14:48 base is that anybody will take a call. Like it doesn't matter if there's a direct connection or, you know, to some other alumni or whatever It's like a cold call if you're connected to rice, that

15:01 there's a willingness to kind of take the call. And I feel like people pay that forward - Yeah, no, it was interesting. So arguably the greatest venture capitalist in history is Burton McMurtry.

15:12 I mean, Burton went to Rice undergrad, went to work for Sylvania and Silicon Valley, got a PhD at Stanford while he did it, became a venture capitalist, I think as early as the mid '60s. I mean,

15:25 so really at the cutting edge of it.

15:29 Microsoft only took venture capital from one firm and they took it from, I believe the entity was called TVI because they wanted Burton McMurtry on their board. And, you know, so all the great

15:43 rice Silicon Valley stories, Burton was here recruitment Jimmy Trevig, Kenny Ashman, you know, tick on down the list And so anyway, my dad went high school and college with Kenny Ashman, who big

15:59 rock big Silicon Valley store success story founded Rome. He's the Owen Rome and they sold IBM for gazillion dollars and had another startup with Ashlawn that did really well. My brother Kenny is

16:11 named after Kenny Ashman Dad calls one day and they're supposed to be going out for one of the Ashman boys, Bart Mitzvahs. And Dad says, Yeah, we can't go. Your brother Bobby's sick. I'm the

16:24 oldest of four boys and brother Bobby's. eight years younger than me. So Bobby at that time, maybe call it 12 or 13. Yeah, we just can't go, but

16:36 Bobby's sick. And I was like, Well, I'll come take care of him, Dad, and y'all can go to the bar mitzvah. I'll come home for the weekend and do it. And that goes really, and I go, Big guy,

16:44 do me a favor. You gotta bring me Burton McMurtry's business card. And

16:50 he goes, All right So at this bar mitzvah, San Francisco, everybody on the planet said, Dad walks up to Burton McMurtry and says, Hey, I wanna thank you. You're the only reason I'm here. And

17:03 my son is watching, my son is watching his younger brother who's sick and we didn't wanna leave, but he said he'd come, if I could get your business card. Burton McMurtry said, You know what? I

17:14 don't bring business cards to these type things. Takes out a cocktail napkin rights his number on it So give that to your son. And anyway, every time Burton McMurtry would come to Houston on

17:26 something, he'd take me to breakfast. I mean, here I am just a rice undergrad and then a lowly investment banker, you know, working and he always took my phone calls and stuff. And so, I mean,

17:37 he was on the board of rice at McMurtry College, right? Yeah. I mean, what were some of the things in those kind of quiet one-on-one sessions with Burton over the years? Any kind of advice or

17:47 perspective that kind of stood out as you got to kind of have that unique interaction, that coaching? Yeah, it was kind of cool, because, you know, I mean, the kind of when I got into business

18:01 school figured out finance, you know, okay, private equity, venture capital, investment banking, the big allure of that. And I remember one time talking about it, I mean, he goes, yeah,

18:12 it's kind of cool. But, other hand, you're never going to sleep. He's like, he can be up worried all the time. And all that. I was like, okay The other cool thing. that I didn't have an

18:23 appreciation for, he did venture capital, he did early stage stuff. And one of the

18:29 things he said is that made his life a lot easier is he said, You know what, I've gotten to the point in my careers. I assume they can build what they say they're gonna build - True - 'Cause

18:39 engineers are really smart. Software developers can really write software. So I go, Okay, great. And then I sit there and I go, Okay, this product, who cares? And it's really about figuring

18:54 out the market. Is there a market for it? Can you penetrate the market? What are the trade-offs with your product versus others? And he said, That's what I spend my time worrying on. And you

19:05 know, at that point in my life, I was like, No, can they build this machine? And yeah, he's like, Yeah, they can. They always do. They always have cost overruns, but they do - So don't get

19:15 there - Yeah - Oh, that's wild. The, so. Can you share a little bit about your investment-making experience? You spend some, I don't know, all of the different organizations that you kind of

19:25 spent your time. So actually, not a lot, only two. Coming out of business school, I went to work for Stevens, the Little Rock Arkansas Investment Bank. I was in their Houston office for six

19:38 years and Dallas office for one year. So my running joke was I wanted to do well, but not well enough to get promoted to Little Rock That said, that could not be more grateful to the Stevens family,

19:51 in particular Warren Stevens, because what was cool about that job is you had an investment bank, and investment banking, you're basically playing agent for someone, you're advising them on a

20:02 merger, an acquisition, you're raising capital for them. But during the period when I was there, really kind of the mid-90s to early 2000s,

20:12 They invested enough money just because the family's worth.

20:20 that literally, literally they would have been something like the fifth largest VC firm in America if you counted the dollars there or like the 10th or 12th largest LBO shop if you counted them as

20:33 that. So they did a lot of investing and you always had to have your investing hat on 'cause at any given moment during a deal the family's able to say, well, we'll just do it - Oh, well - And

20:47 just override all the other - Yeah, and then they'd ask you, and how big's your check? And you're always kind of like, oops, okay. So yeah, it

20:57 was a great place to work and they're just a gazillion great Stevens stories. Jack Stevens was chairman of Augusta for like 18 years. So he was the one that put the green jacket on the winner and he

21:12 is the most publicity shy person on the planet.

21:17 graduated from the Naval Academy where he was Jimmy Carter's roommate, just quiet career down in Little Rock, but just phenomenal success. And so because of being chairman of Augusta, he always

21:31 had a really close relationship with CBS. Sure. Because they always showed it. So CBS, you may not know this, CBS in the late '60s bought the New York Yankees. Right. No, I didn't know that

21:43 And they figured out about 1972, they had no idea what they were doing in baseball because they had bought it for content. It wasn't working out. It was a mess and all this. So in 1972, CEO of

21:57 CBS picks up the phone calls Jack Stevens, says, Hey, Jack, we're in over our head on this baseball thing. We don't get it. We paid 12 million for the Yankees. If you'll just give us 12 million,

22:09 we'll sell you the Yankees and we'll just be done with it and all that and Jack goes, hmm, it's kind of interesting. Can I move them down here to Little Rock?

22:21 CEO's like, well, I'm not really sure you'd want to do that. You got the big media market here. And he goes, okay, well, then I'm probably not interested, but I appreciate the phone call. And

22:29 so they sold the Steinbrenner and the rest is history. But Stevens was this amazing place. And then I kind of posted to you then, so I went to Kane Anderson and did for about 27 seconds, I was an

22:46 energy technology banker because the early 2000s, oil and gas was in the tank and everything was dot com related. And to raise your next fund, you had to have some sort of technology angle. So I

23:01 joined Kane and that was potentially gonna be a focus and six months later, the dot com bubble burst, went away and lo and behold, oil and gas was back. So it spent the next 20 years as an oil and

23:14 gas private equity. guy. So for a decent number of in the audience are looking to have that kind of opportunity in their career of being in oil and gas, private equity, energy, investing. What

23:32 are some of the key features in your view as you looked around and participated in that landscape of what made people particularly successful?

23:43 What's interesting about investment banking, because that's where you start. It's really hard to go to school to private equity. Private equity needs you trained. And so your path is going to be

23:54 commercial banking or it's going to be investment banking, right? Well, if you think about it,

24:03 an investment bank can look at your grades and figure out whether you're smart or not. They don't even have to meet you, right? So they can go, Okay, 39, great. Boom, Then the second thing is

24:14 they can interview you and figure out if you can sit in a meeting and not embarrassing them, right? And embarrass them. So that's pretty easy too. The thing that's hard is investment banking is a

24:27 grind. I mean, you do tons of hours and it's not just tons of hours, it's also you do tons of unproductive work. I mean, a client may call up and say, I wanna look at buying XYZ company and you

24:40 spend three days putting together this analysis. You're right about to ship it and they call back, Nah, we don't wanna look at it. So there are these two elements and so the biggest challenge for

24:50 an investment bank when hiring somebody is, do they quit after six months? Because your first year at an investment bank, they lose money on you. They're training you, your work's not

25:03 particularly very good. And then they make money on you year two and then they make a ton of money on. If third year analysts knew exactly how valuable they were, even though they're getting paid

25:16 gazillion dollars, they could probably even charge more. So what I would say is, if you're trying to get a job there, your goal is really to convince them, one, I know exactly what I'm getting

25:27 myself in for. I know about the hours, I know about the work requirements, et cetera. And I'm ready for it and I'm not gonna quit. And so I think kind of the one, you need to be very educated on

25:41 the different banks and what strengths they have. If you go interview with a bank that has a great MA practice, you're gonna wanna be able to convince them that you know that, et cetera, and all,

25:54 not because they really care, but it shows, okay, they really want this. They went and researched this and all. And then, so be able to convince them that. And then two, the best thing you can

26:06 do is, you can go get a drink with. a Chuck Yates who may be running the grave. I don't care, I don't know. I don't know who you are. If one of my second or third year analysts, that's really

26:19 good walks in and says, You need to hire Scott. I went to Rice with Scott and Scott's really smart and knows what we do and all that. That's what matters. So convince them that you're ready to

26:31 work, convince them that it's okay that half your work gets thrown in the garbage can, just nature of the beast and third. Go find yourself an advocate who can really pound the table for you in

26:41 there. And generally speaking, the lower an advocate is on the totem pole, actually the better they are. Interesting. 'Cause they've spent time in the trenches. They know. They spent time in

26:52 the trenches. Yeah, where it's really getting done. And quite frankly, if the second year analyst walks in and says, Scott's the guy, he or she is basically telling me, I'm gonna have to train

27:04 him, so I'm willing to do it. And that's the best endorsement you can really get.

27:09 So you just, you, you can't spend too much time researching. You can't spend too much time just talking to them. The one thing that does though to rice folks is anytime you go interview on Wall

27:25 Street and you're from Texas, they assume you want to be in the energy group - Oh, interesting - Yeah. No, I mean, I like went and interviewed and I didn't particularly want to be in the energy

27:35 group. I want to do technology or something - Ah, you're from Texas. That means you want to be in the energy group. But then what you do find out is, you know, if you start talking to the energy

27:44 group, a lot of them are in Houston, spend time in Houston, so you have commonality - Sure - So that gets you a follow-up discussion with them. You can go grab a drink or whatever the case may be,

27:54 but yeah, good luck - Yeah - Yeah - You're in Texas, nah, you think you want to do technology. You want to be in the energy group - Yeah, there's a lot of shift in the, at least in the Houston

28:04 area, that would bring a bit more kind of tack approach. maybe that'll shift over time. I wanted to ask just kind of, you know, removing on kind of chronologically, but I wanted to ask you've

28:15 got kind of some connections or passion around music kind of generally and the music industry perhaps. And so I wanted to just kind of ask, I know you've spent some time in Nashville and have

28:28 friends, I don't know if there's what kind of led you kind of down a bit of that path - Well, it's really funny because when you look at the history of the Yates family, there's not an ounce of

28:41 musical talent in our lineage, ever. So I can't sing, I can't play an instrument. Although the one thing I can play is I could play Jump by Van Halen on a synthesizer. If it's a great party trick

28:54 to have. Now, but I've always just been a music guy, always liked live music. And so just kind of through dumb luck falling in to this click of having musicians as friends Escape from reality is

29:09 I'll go be their roadie for a week. And so, you

29:13 know, I'll carry a guitar. I actually think my second career could be as a tour manager for a band, only I can't tune a guitar. That's the one thing I can't, but yeah, I've been out on tour with

29:28 Thomas Rad, Jule, the band Garbage, my friend Lindsay L. One of my kiddos, hero is Porter Robinson, the EDM star Turns out I know Porter's tour manager, so we got to go hang out on tour with

29:42 Porter. So for at least one weekend, I had a father of the year vote - Yeah - From the oldest kiddo,

29:52 but the thing I find interesting about that is at least my vintage, 'cause I'm older than you - True - You know, music was, you went and partied, you trashed the hotel room, you did all that -

30:05 Yeah - That's not it at all.

30:09 lobby call is at 8 am. and you hit their sound checks at three, the radio interview with the DJs at 334. It's very much a business. It's always joke with all those folks when I got on tour. It's

30:22 like, I'm having a cocktail 'cause I'm on vacation. I know it's your job, but, you know, it's like, this is my vacation. But

30:35 it's fun This was kind of crazy when I was at Rice, some of my classmates, Alex Tittle, whose dad, Dr. Tittle was head of the electrical engineering department for a long time. And then Jamie

30:48 Darwala actually started a band called Toy Subs and finished second one year on Star Search. That was at McMan's old show. It was kind of American Idol before American Idol. Yeah I

31:02 know it was just always been a music guy. I don't know why. Love it. That's awesome. I think that there's a. a lot of the kind of arts scene here in Houston, whether it's music or filmmaking or

31:15 others that doesn't get as much kind of love and appreciation as we're known for in NASA and energy and other guys. But - So, okay, real quick though.

31:31 So you're later in life, later in life, Rice, but we got to spend, even though historically we suck at this, we got to spend 30 seconds on Rice Athletics. Do you have a favorite Rice Athletics

31:43 story - I don't. My connectivity with Rice Athletics is - Nylon Void - Pretty visible - I got you. I got you. So, literally, I went to the football games every Saturday growing up. A lot of

31:59 times we would just go and see the band at halftime and see the mob show and leave. But anyway. The greatest moment was winning the College World Series in 2003. That was

32:13 pretty amazing. Yeah, I was up in Omaha for that. And watching Chris Cole course go and jump up on the wall and make that catch against Stanford. 'Cause that's the only reason we win the College

32:27 World Series. If that ball hits the wall, we lose the first game and we potentially lose that series. That was pretty amazing And what was really cool about that moment is I was recording the stuff

32:40 back on ESPN. Even though I was in Omaha, seeing it live, I was recording it when I came back, I was watching the games. And so anyway, Chris goes running and he catches that. And he does that

32:51 with a torn ACL. He'd torn it earlier in the game. Anyway, it catches it, bounces off the wall, there on the ground, gets up, and he's running back into the dugout and he tosses the ball to the

33:03 umpire and you can see the umpires lip scope. nice catch son - Yeah - So - That is cool. And I appreciate you wearing the rice jersey today - James Casey, James Casey, the greatest rice athlete in

33:16 history. So he came on the podcast. Chuck G8s needs a job probably about a couple of months ago and told his story. So yeah - Can we chat a little bit about kind of the podcast and you know,

33:31 you've - We should have better things to talk about - Sure - I mean, you've been very public about, you know, where you were and your kind of private equity job and moved on to what you're doing

33:43 now - You're so kind - So Chuck, tell us that story. You got fired from Kayne Anderson - Got cut fired from Kayne Anderson. Just in case anyone's curious why oil went to minus 37. It was all me -

33:55 Chuck left - I did it.

33:57 No, no, no, no - No deals with it - I did it and then I got booted. Right? 'Cause I got booted for performance - Okay - 37 didn't really help the performance, but right.

34:07 No. Like, how do you kind of, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, a specter and a challenge that everybody, wherever they're at in their career, can, you know, oil and gas particularly,

34:17 but other cyclical industries up and down, like, what did you learn from that experience? And I mean, by all rights, you've gone and done awesome, cool things sort of since then. So like, what

34:28 is it that sort of drove you kind of through that experience? You know, the, so, so, you know, if you step back, actually go, you know, wound up unfortunately getting divorced from Kim. We

34:43 separated in 2015 divorced in 2017. So a lot of kind of the mental health aspects of going through something that you normally would when you get fired, I went through with the divorce So just tons

35:00 of therapy. I've paid for more therapy than the Gross National Product. of a third world country. Spent a lot of time with my priest, did a lot of guiding, you know, all that sort of stuff. And,

35:14 you know, I think the key thing, I think, you know, I've read all of Brene Brown stuff, but I think the key thing she finds in her research is do we feel worthy? And when we don't feel worthy,

35:28 that's ultimately our bad behavior. We drink too much, we do this, we do that, we yell, scream, all that good stuff. And so figuring out why you should feel worthy is something I think

35:42 individuals just have to do. I mean, you kind of got to do, mine kind of came with a reconnection back with God. I mean, I always went to church, but I went to church 'cause I was scared, right?

35:52 I thought I'd get a hell if I didn't - Sure - And, you know, kind of going through all that, working with my priest Patrick, it was like, no, there's this cool guy, Jesus, that wants to have a

36:01 relationship with you. That's not - necessarily your path. I'm not suggesting that's the path from anyone else, but you do have to go figure out something on why you're worthy to fill that bucket.

36:15 And going through all that, being a managing partner at Kane Anderson was not in the bucket. So, I mean, so a lot of people have talked about, Oh, you kind of took it and tried. It's like,

36:26 Well, it wasn't in the bucket. I mean, it wasn't my sense of self-worth that I was the managing partner. It didn't matter It was a nice paycheck. You kind of recast your definition of awareness

36:37 of who you are and what you wanted to be. Yeah, and

36:41 it was fun being rich. Now that I'm poor, okay, look back at those days ago. Wow, that was really great. But yeah, so, you know, if there's kind of a lesson 'cause didn't you say, what did

36:55 you say this podcast had a divot to it? Oh, a pivot. Oh, pivot, okay, that's what you say you know if we're talking about pivots it's

37:04 Do it today. Don't worry about, don't wait until an event. You get fired at Orsh. Yeah, go figure out what makes you happy. I'll give props to Dr. Zeph, the accounting professor of at Rice. I

37:18 don't know if he was still around when you were there, but Zeph would do this thing where you'd sit and talk and it would be,

37:27 what do you want to do in your career? Oh, I want to be an investment banker, management consultant, whatever And Zeph would go, oh, that's great and kind of bait you into some conversation.

37:37 Then Zeph would go, hey, if you won the lottery tomorrow and you had 200 million dollars, what would you go do then? And just kind of bait you along in your story. And inevitably, your story was

37:48 not, I want to be a banker, you know, or I want to be a management consultant. It was, I'd go join the Peace Corps, I'd do all that. And Zeph would get you all jazzed up about whatever you're

37:58 saying when you have of all the money in the world and then stuff would go. Why do you need money to do that? I've never seen you that excited in your life. And I mean, I still went off and was an

38:09 investment banker. He did private equity, but it's a really good point. And it's an exercise people should do daily. It's like, why should I have my sense of self-worth? And you'll figure out if

38:22 you're really intellectually honest about it, it rarely comes down to money - True - Yeah. And it usually comes down to either something religious, the people in your life, service of some sort.

38:36 'Cause when you look at all the data on this stuff, they actually say,

38:45 you gain joy in if you earn the money versus inheriting it. And the other thing they say is if you spend money on life events. So if you love the Rolling Stones and you buy a first row ticket to see

38:60 Mick Jagger you're gonna enjoy that. You go buy an object, like a Porsche or whatever, you just don't get satisfaction out of it. And so do a lot of that work, 'cause then you're in a position

39:13 where something bad happens, you can actually handle it pretty well, you know - Yeah, you have a much deeper foundation to sort of operate from when you've got that in place - Yeah, exactly, plus

39:25 it's just healthy - Yeah - I mean, 'cause - Great perspective - Yeah, 'cause I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, I was talking to my kids, and my kids are 15, 16, and 20, and we'd seen

39:38 something about a kid, and I don't, who's gone through a really bad spot and contemplating all sorts of horrible things, and I said, Kids, please don't take this as dads, not taking your anxiety

39:52 seriously, 'cause I do, I understand it's real and all that. But I'm sitting here at age 54, I have no idea what I was worried about sophomore year in high school. I really don't. I mean, Sarah

40:04 Steffy stood me up on a date, and I don't really care.

40:10 And so, I don't mean that to be little what you're going through and all, but I'm just telling you perspective -

40:19 That doesn't take some time - Doesn't take some time - Does take some time and can be a hard one in many ways. No, that's awesome. I appreciate the candor and the perspective on it - No, we're not

40:30 editing this - I

40:34 just want to ask as we wrap up, Chuck, what's next? What's on the horizon? What's on your wish list of things that you want to go and do - No, that's a good question. It's been really fun

40:49 creating content. 'Cause in effect, that's really what the podcast has been is being able to create content And there's been just some fun stuff. I've done on the podcast.

41:05 But then there's also been some serious stuff. I mean, just given when the podcast started, it kind of, post everybody in the industry getting fired and me kind of being vocal about, Hey, I did

41:15 it. A lot of serious moments on the podcast. The Jeff Davies came on and just talked about, you know, a hedge fund that blew up, didn't have the results he wanted and was real about it. And we

41:27 talked through it. David Hayes came on, another rice guy from the late '90s who's at Natural Gas Partners came on and talked about going through testicular cancer and just the perspective. So

41:38 there's been, I had my priest on it and we went through all my therapy in an episode. So there's been a lot of serious stuff. So I'd like to figure out

41:50 mental health type things we can do in the energy business. 'Cause I think just being blonde about it, we're really shitty I mean, in our industry about it.

42:01 to do more stuff there. And then there's this whole thing that I haven't been able to figure out yet, but the energy business has clearly lost the narrative in the world. I mean, everybody hates

42:16 us. We're polluting the planet, all that. And we do a lot of good for stuff. And what's interesting is we, in the energy business, we take two approaches to it. One, we bear our head in the

42:28 sand Or two, we quote a bunch of facts, like a bratty, snotty little teenager at people and turn them all off. And then we wonder why nobody likes us. And if you look at the psychological

42:43 research, if you convince, if you wanna change somebody's mind, there are basically three things you can do. Number one, you can just ask questions. That's why the Socratic method of teaching

42:52 works so well. Two, you can scare people. I mean, you can make an argument the environmentalists have scared people, the world's gonna end in 10 years. effective. Three, you can make them

43:04 laugh. I have a view that younger people, and you're probably in this camp, you're probably more liberal than you should be. Not because young people aren't liberal, they are, but because of

43:14 John Stewart. I mean, you grew up watching John Stewart and John's cool, and he makes you laugh, and he makes you think, and maybe you can, you know, so there's something to do, energy

43:25 advocacy there that is not the inside the echo chamber stuff we do today. Sure. You know, oh, the environmental is so horrible. High five high five. Nobody listened to us say that, you know,

43:37 so I've spent a lot of time killing brain cells, trying to think through that, but I don't know that I have a good answer for that one yet, but I love that. I think there's a ton of opportunity

43:47 there. Yeah. And one last thing, I'll be slightly preachy on my soapbox. 75 of that, in terms just getting the narrative back is convincing people we're human. So don't print up the Freeza

44:02 Yankee bumper sticker when they have high energy prices. And it's okay to have an Instagram page where you go out to the oil film to say, Man, here's a drill bit. And this is kind of cool. It's

44:13 amazing how close we actually are to being able to change the narrative. Let me give one example. And again, I'll get off my soapbox. But I opened up Zoom calls and just had a bunch of, quote

44:28 unquote, kids come on and tell me why you're not in the energy business or all the like. And I did that about three or four times and some rice students were coming on. It was really cool we were

44:38 talking all. And a lot of it was the stuff you would think. There was one guy, a Canadian engineer, he's about 25 years old, so he's been out of school, called it three years. And he said,

44:49 Chuck, let me just tell you something. He goes, Suncor would come to my university and my freshman sophomore and junior year they sent an old white guy, probably 55 years old, who gave a speech,

45:04 discovering oil and gas, and like 20 people would show up. And two thirds of the people would leave during the speech and all that. My senior year, they sent a 27 year

45:18 old Indian engineer and he titled the presentation using AI to implement using AI to image the subsurface. So first off, 200 people showed up 'cause they're like, Holy cow, this sounds really cool.

45:35 AI and what are they doing? And the guy given the speech was just like, Holy cow, I've never talked to this many people before. This is great. And just started going on and on about how AI is

45:49 really cool and here's what we do. And let me pull this up, it's really cool Supposedly, the room went from 200 people to about 400 people. during the speech, 'cause people were texting their

45:60 friends, holy cow, you got it. Suncor, freshmen, sophomore, and junior year, recruited one or two engineers from that university, senior year, they got like 15. So we're really not that far

46:13 off, you know, as much as we think in the energy business, everybody hates us and we're so defensive in nature, all we kind of got to do is prove to people we're human and show some really cool

46:24 stuff, and we'll get a fair amount of, oh, you're polluting the planet, well, also get a fair amount of people going, hey, man, that's pretty cool. That's awesome, tell me more. So I don't

46:35 know what the answer is there, but I've killed a lot of brain cells and drunk a lot of glasses of wine thinking about that - Look forward to seeing it come together, 'cause it's needed. There's a

46:45 real opportunity to tell that narrative and an evolving audience as well that's ready to hear it The only problem is I figured out them. fundamentally the laziest person I know. And so unemployment

46:59 just kind of jams with me. So if I can overcome that - I love it. Well Chuck, this has been a privilege. It's been a ton of fun - It's been fun Scott - Thanks for coming in - No, thanks for

47:09 having me on and I will pay the parking tickets, I promise - Good deal.