Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 You know something this is funny. I was thinking this last night. I don't even know how you two met Yeah

0:29 We've told the strike in a million times, so you just apparently don't consume our content. I try not to No, I'm hit so when I moved to Houston in 2014 and I just discovered LinkedIn and Only world.

0:43 Yeah, I was like Thing I can actually just find anyone I want to find at any company and send him a message And I mean I had like a 95 hit rate since I'm on a message day to answer. I was like this

0:54 is a cheat code and somehow I found Jake Jake at the time was working on his startup GDS where and I don't know if I'd seen you post something or just you know came up in suggestions, and I just sent

1:11 him my messages like hey Looks like what you're working on is interesting. We should meet for lunch then from lunch and then we met at Niko Niko's and yeah like Galleria Colin showed up in like these

1:27 these these Wranglers with boots with like a polo like tucked in I was like damn I used to wear a cowboy boots have a single day I didn't see him wear tennis shoes for like two years probably yeah no

1:39 it was a thing I used to wear a cowboy boots every you also never wore shorts either yeah that's a complete opposite I'm so glad that there were no cowboy boots shorts

1:50 that's a Kermit thing Kermit Kermit wears shorts and cowboy boots but yeah so we met and then we're just kind of hit it off talking about different podcasts that we listened to at the time there was

2:03 also this website called Bigger Pockets which is like a real estate investing website and we were both talking about that so anyways just started coming friends over some mutual interest.

2:19 2016 early 16. Yeah. Yeah, and then we recorded our first podcast later that year The one we work No, we're different one is different one. Oh, oh, yeah Recorded this at Jake's house. This is

2:33 called the podcast is called fit and wealthy

2:39 So this is episode one so we're still figuring out exactly the direction that we want to go with this

2:47 We

2:50 can chop on a clip of it, we never published it because it's so cringe to listen to it It only it only lives on my phone. That's the only place But I'll be I'll have myself on show I have it and

3:00 it'll come up And I'm like I've never been able to listen to more than two minutes of the same because I'm like god Just I want to shoot myself when I listen to it But yeah, the podcast is called fit

3:09 and wealthy and it was just about like business and health like fitness like the things that we're interested in. You know, we're like, what, 22 at the time? the time 26.

3:20 But no, but it's actually funny. When you listen to it, I'm like, yeah, that was on point. That's on point. Like it was actually the episode was on your, your network is your net worth, which

3:29 is kind of funny to see how everything's kind of played out with just like the community. Yeah, but everything we said was true. Collins voice was like seven octaves lower and really much thicker

3:37 accent. No, it's interesting. There's just been this, this phenomenon that's happened with my voice ever since I started podcasting. One, I used to have a like really thick accent, but also the,

3:49 like my levels of my voice were much deeper. And you go back and listen, like Julie, it's like this is so weird. Like, were you pretending to sound like that? I'm like, how would I pretend to

4:00 be sounding like that? But I listened to Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan said the same thing that when he started podcasting, he lost his Boston accent and his voice changed. And I think it's something that

4:10 happens subconsciously as you start recording content and podcasting, you want to become more clear and articulate. And so you started adjusting your voice to sound like that. My voice has changed

4:20 too, just not as noticeably. But I'll go back and listen to the first podcast I did like seven years ago, and it's a big deal. I'm like mortified. I'm gonna go back and listen to episode one.

4:29 You should. And see. I mean, it's been a couple of years since you've been podcasting now. So I might've probably had two a week for two years. Yeah. Yeah, go back, like, if you want

4:37 something to roast me on, go back and watch some of my old videos and podcasts, and it sounds nothing like I do today. The vlog we found yesterday. Yeah, so we were using DW. Insight yesterday,

4:48 and we found this vlog. And the vlog was from 2018. And we're laughing because the vlog starts, and the hook, there's no context to the hook to how the vlog starts. It's just like, yeah, you

5:02 want to work with us? You want to make money? Let's do it. Hey, we want to make money. How can we make money with you?

5:08 Let's do it. Like, you got an idea? Let's do it. And then it just cuts in, and I'm like, We're even talking about and so anyways, I'll show you that vlog and had nothing to do with the rest of

5:19 the video Yeah, it'll be endless content for you to roast me on Like I need any yeah, so was that like a digital wildcatters piece of content Had y'all started digital wildcatters or was that just

5:31 more cringe sitting around? Was no it wasn't even like a dimmer in our eye like we know it was It was I think that I was like at the point where we started thinking about digital all catters So when

5:41 we started the podcast in 2018 It was actually in this room. This is our first podcast. See a little weird to see it come back full circle, but

5:51 Started the oil and gas startups podcast in 2018, but digital all catters wasn't a thing yet Like we didn't think of digital all catters as a company. We just had a podcast and anyways We just knew

6:02 that content was the future and that it was the highest formal leverage So we're like hey, we need to start videoing and documenting and And so we hired a videographer, a full-time videographer,

6:13 and all of us around and Jake and I were actually just talking about this yesterday because we had nothing if we weren't doing anything there is nothing to like actually documented it wasn't like

6:21 today where we have like a million things going on and I think you could, you know, see is interesting, whereas then it was just like,

6:27 we're just trying to keep ourselves busy, but what that said like it's super, it's super fucking cool to go back and see that like, and one of those vlogs like I'm sitting right here and we saw

6:38 these whiteboards here in a desk. I'm like, man, if we could just make like 10 grand a month, you know, off this, off this podcast or doing this and we can start investing in this. And so you

6:46 go back and you hear you forget those things like you forget those things over time. And so we were two days ago talking about, man, if we just make time grand

6:58 a month I'm always saying about how we make 10 grand a month, so that never changes, but it's funny looking those vlogs. They're like speaking the whiteboards half the time you can go and just like

7:06 pause the video and just see the things that we had written on the whiteboards and see like the. goals and ambitions, but also like the problems and the challenges that we were dealing with, just

7:14 in like how we had like kind of mind mapped it out. It's, it is really interesting to see. After this, we're gonna plug this, we need to plug this clip into this podcast here because you start

7:22 the vlog and me and Jake are standing outside the building talking. And it's me talking and then it like frames over to Jake and Jake's sitting there, he's standing there wearing a blazer and dark

7:31 sunglasses and he's just standing there, me and Julian, Jake just started cracking up. Like why do you look like such a freak in this? So there's one blog, there's probably enough content to like

7:41 have a whole roast on. I thought I was trying with you. I don't know what was going on.

7:47 Yeah, so we, you know, at that time, when we started the podcast, you know, back then like podcasting was actually, you didn't have all this podcasting infrastructure where you could just go

7:59 get transistor or one of these softwares and just, you know, record, upload and it would publish, you actually had to build a website with an RSS feed And

8:09 so. way that we set it up, Julie back then had a full-time job and she would help us part-time and she built out all the podcasting infrastructure and then we had a podcast editor that we used

8:21 overseas and so we had a little bit of a process there and

8:28 back then we didn't really know what digital walk adders would become we just knew that hey if you create content and you create this value and put value out there that something would come from that

8:43 and what I'm gonna sound I'm gonna sound kind of like an ass asking this but it's a legitimate question was it truly that that you knew you'd build a community and build value and all that or is it or

8:55 is there a touch of vanity in it i just want everybody to hear no and i'd say that with love i don't think there was any vanity at all i mean you start a podcast called oiling gas startups we

9:03 literally said we don't know if anyone will listen to this or not what's the tam for a podcast like that you know five And we said our selfish reasoning was like hey even if nothing comes from this at

9:14 least we could get some cool People in the room and increase our personal network and so that's what we saw from it We didn't ever see it as like hey, we can make money from doing this or we can

9:25 become you know Influencer celebrities we just because I was the opposite. I was like

9:35 I want to I want to I want to host the the daily show I was telling jewels yesterday Julian the story of how we met Chuck it's like in 2020. I'm sitting there in our office I get this email and all

9:46 the email says calling Chuck Yates here call me and I had no No clue who Chuck was and I'm like who the fuck is this thing or you call me and you were like yes I'm getting Chuck Yates call me.

9:59 We're just like let's talk and I'm like I talked to him. He's like hey, you know He's like I've been doing this podcast and he's like you know the guys I'm doing it with I love him He's like but you

10:05 know I can't say the F word and And he's like, you know, I want to be able to do that. He's like, you know, I kind of record a podcast with you guys. I was like, yeah, sure, like, nothing

10:13 about him. Uh, 24 hours later you had on LinkedIn, some video of rocket taking off. Well, what's funny is, uh, because what I was telling Julie Ann yesterday, I was like, I don't look at

10:25 Chuck through the same lens as other people in the industry. Look at you as like, I've never known you from that. I was always just like, yeah, there's just some random guy that hit me up through,

10:33 through the email, but to the point is like, that's what we always saw, the leverage of content was, you know, you get this exposure, you put content out there and then, you know, good things

10:46 come from that. So I think back to going back to a lot of the podcast now is is predominantly in done. There's occasionally I'll reach out to people that, you know, I want to talk with you and

10:55 have you on the show. But in the early days, it was like, I don't think people realize for one, podcasting the space was not common and two people speaking on podcasts was not common. So it was

11:05 constantly just getting rejected reaching out to people. people being like, hey, we love to look at the podcast and telling the story of trying to get the EMPs on. Oh, yeah. So I go to the, I

11:12 go to the, um, uh, how to get private equity to back here. It was an SPE event, tons of people there. Uh, and I remember some of these people. I remember it was, um, Don Burdick was up there

11:24 who we've had on the podcast. Uh, it was DRW. It was, uh, love both of those guys,

11:31 um, the guy from Riverbend. Oh, uh, newcomer Randy. He was there Got rice, um, and, oh God, who's the other guy? The other guy slipped my mind. I can see him in my head. I know exactly who

11:42 he is. And I went up to, um, I didn't talk to Don that day, but it's not the DRW. He talked to Randy. He talked to the other guy. And out of the three DRW was the only one who gave me the time

11:51 of day. It was just like, yeah, I come on your podcast. Like, and this is before he was putting out hot taking the day. This is before a pocket. Like he had no content at this point. He just

11:58 seemed like a guy that I would get along with based on his responses on the panel. And so he came on the podcast later and then, which is kind of crazy because value exchange there between us and

12:07 DRW, because he's probably like, I don't know, episode 10 or so. And like Jake said, he wasn't putting out content yet. He wasn't putting out stuff on LinkedIn, but he had written a book. And

12:19 so he was like, I want to put out content. And he came on our podcast. And I mean, that episode blew up. Everyone, I mean, he was so vulnerable, talked about, you know, just personal family

12:33 challenges. He's a real business company and did really well. And that was kind of the catalyst for him taking off and building a personal brand and creating all this content. And then was also

12:44 just huge for us as well too, because I don't think a piece of content existed like that in oil and gas where you have someone that came in, you know, moved from engineering to building a

12:55 successful successful oil company and then being so transparent and genuine and authentic in their story like that. Where would you find that content before it just That was actually a pretty pivotal

13:08 moment from content creation from us. And I'll even say in the industry, 'cause you're right. I mean, we all had mother ships. I had LA mad at me 'cause I'm at a joke on stage or whatever. DRW

13:21 had backers, you know, and all that. And so being kind of free to

13:28 that was cool. So like, okay, so we're podcasting along. When is it like we have a company, we're gonna do this. Yeah, well, let me tell, let me tell, give some more context. Because

13:42 there's a lot of stuff that just happened in between that doesn't get talked about a lot. And I'm also gonna tell a story that ties into content and one of our investors. But Jake and I, you know,

13:56 we didn't really know what would come from the podcast. And back then, there was two things We wanted to own some oil wells. Yeah, we did. So we got a few buddies together, bought some strip of

14:12 wells up in Oklahoma. And what we did was with our videographers, we documented this. We said, Hey, we're going up to Oklahoma to look at these wells. And so showed the process of buying them.

14:25 And then we had to go up there and work them over. So we document that. And what's funny is I didn't know this story until last year So one of our biggest investors now in digital wallcatters, one

14:36 of our biggest supporters started out as one of our biggest haters. And so Bison ventures up in Oklahoma, they started off. They had an upstream company moved into midstream, OFS, and now they

14:51 have tech. And they were going to buy these wells. And all of a sudden, someone swoops in and buys them, and we didn't even negotiate the Bottom and bottom and bottom and

15:03 bottom. If you don't know, you're the bottom of it. So the seller tells them, and you know, Oklahoma is just a very tight knit community, and they're like, Yeah, some guys from Houston came

15:12 and bought these wells. And so Bison's like, Who the fuck are these guys? And then a month later - These guys paid list price for 'em. And then a month later, they see us post this YouTube video

15:20 of us doing it, and so they're like, these fucking clowns are like, you know, buying these wells and then like making YouTube videos. And anyways, they told me last year, they're like, they

15:29 told me the story And I had no idea, even when they invested, like I had no idea about this. And they tell us, they're like, hey, when y'all did that? Like, man, we thought y'all were the

15:37 biggest clowns, and now we get it. You guys were just so far ahead in the future of content creation and creating videos. And so anyways, you know, we were doing that and also doing some

15:49 consulting work with some tech companies and funny stories there. Like, you know, we helped this positive displacement technology. they were building the pump and Switzerland. And so me and Jake

16:03 fly over to Switzerland and we hang out for two days with this Russian oligarch that was funding it. Who's son is like the biggest rapper in all of Russia? He's like the Drake of Russia. Yeah, his

16:13 son's name is Timothy. And he's like, I didn't have that on the bingo card this

16:22 morning. We were gonna talk about it. There's a Russian Drake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he has like the largest house, like this guy, has like largest house in San Tropez. He's got a hundred

16:26 million dollar art collection Like the big, like super young. The last thing that he told me if I ever need anything, a Moscow to let him know. And so I've never called on that figure. But

16:37 anyways, so we were just doing a bunch of things and trying to see what would stick. And so, you know, with the podcast, what we started seeing was that it became a tangible platform where

16:51 startup founders would come tell their stories and really, you know, be able to make the story more personal. not just, hey, you know, we've developed this solution and for XYZ, but like,

17:05 actually come tell your story of how you got here and how you solve this problem. And on the flip side, you'd have end users who were engineers or investors that would come to our show to discover

17:17 these new technological solutions. And so you started seeing transactions. And so

17:23 we said, okay, how can we take this a step further and actually bring people together? And so we launched.

17:32 We did. It wasn't even energy tech night. It was called, what do we call that first event that we did? It was like energy. We did a few happy hours before that. There was like an investor panel

17:42 or something that we did. Startup funding panel or something. So we had a couple like investors, VCs or whatever from the space. Once again, I'm wearing like a freakin' tie. I don't know what

17:54 I'm going to do.

17:56 We have video of it. She's wearing a tie. But we did it at. We did it, we were at Galleria just opened up. And this was 2018.

18:07 And we got two kegs of beer and 40 pizzas. And it was so well put together that we forgot to get plates. So everyone's walking around with a red cup of beer in one hand and a slice of pizza in the

18:20 other. But everyone fucking loved it. They're like, what is this? Like we've never seen anything like this in oil and gas. And you know, we work in the Galleria, which is like well designed and

18:31 had a beautiful view. And so it was just like a really good ambiance and setting. And then we really parlayed that into the energy tech nights. And so started doing our energy tech nights that we

18:41 work. And the idea there was, hey, can we get a few startups to come present and just get the right people in the room? And I mean, same thing happened there. You'd have startups come present.

18:53 I mean, Corva, before Corva was who they were. They were one of the first ones to present I think they were on under. 100 rigs back then, I mean, super small. Yeah. Yeah. Football, well,

19:04 database, tacky is, tracks.

19:07 Yeah, you had other companies come present that got 5 million checks from investors under their series A, so really just did that stuff like kind of a hobby for a couple years from

19:22 2017, 18 to 2020. We literally did everything ourselves by then and we made absolutely zero money. And this was like, I remember specifically, I don't know if it was the first one or the second

19:30 one, but you and I, you parked your truck like four blocks down the road from we were at Galleria. Well, no, we took the kegs and pizza and all that. It was downtown. We were doing it, we

19:40 moved it to we were at downtown and there's no parking downtown. And so me and Jake would go pick up the kegs of beer from specs and then he had a part four blocks away in the parking garage and me

19:49 and Jake had to lug these kegs of beer four blocks downtown. Kegs aren't like, no, I'm talking real like dripping sweat We had to bring extra change of clothes. And so, yeah, we literally did

20:00 everything. And back then, we'd also partnered up with Sean Gare over in Sean. Sean had built a successful media company and sold it to, who is it, Penwall? I think Penwall is Penwall. Yeah,

20:12 Penwall. And so he's kind of giving us some tips. And anyways, you know, I think we made on those first ones, like we had 10, 000 and

20:23 ticket sales and sponsorships and we're like, oh shit, this is awesome. That was all the money in the world. Yeah, it was It really was. And I mean, I like, I cannot, like, I cannot

20:32 overstate how broke we were so turning that time and so, yeah. You don't realize. Yeah, so, yeah. And then 2020 is when we actually started thinking about digital walk headers as a business.

20:49 And so a couple of things happened on a macro level. You had media podcast companies, not media companies, podcast companies starting to get acquired.

20:60 Gimlet and the Ringer both got acquired by Spotify for two hundred million dollars plus for each of them And I was like oh damn I was like there's actually a business here in podcasting and then one

21:12 thing that was Really eye-opening to me was when pin national acquired barstool sports and it's not a great analogy now that pin national Just divested barstool sports But still it gave us this idea

21:25 and you know pin national had this gambling app that they wanted to take to the market And but they need a distribution because you had to go up against fan dual and draft Kings And so they acquire

21:36 barstool sports now they have this huge marketing arm this community that can create content and Be their distribution channels for the app and so tore apart their investor relations deck and said oh,

21:48 that's the future You can build a community which we've built this community through content and events Now you can start to listen to the community and build products to serve them and so Um, that

21:60 was really, that was really the catalyst for us going full time on it. We decided to go full time on it, uh, March of 2020, just a few weeks before oil went negative. And so, you know, I

22:11 talked to a painfully aware, talked to a couple of investors, um, talked to some advertisers and sort of like, okay, cool. We actually have something commercial here that we can go pursue. And

22:21 then we'll win negative and there were no investors and there were no, um, advertisers And so, um, we put every dime that we had into the business in 2020 and just knuckle down and figured out,

22:34 hey, it was actually kind of a unique opportunity because everyone was locked up in their house for COVID. So we said, we need to go heavy on content. Like, how can we just deliver content? We

22:45 have a one piece of content out there. It's a live call. It's me, Jake, David Ramsey would and Alan Gilmer and like, we're sitting like in our bedrooms on live cams and I mean, that thing did so

22:56 well. I have a picture. Instagram from back then of two people in their garage, watching this live video with us. I'm like, hey, thank you so much for creating this content, allowing us to like

23:10 have community and feel connected during COVID. And so like the work that we were actually doing seemed really important there because we're allowing people to connect with each other. 'Cause you

23:21 know what happened to me and then is, or me during that time is, I mean, I wanted to go be Howard Stern, right? I wanted to tell them Dick jokes and laugh and, you know, do all my silly kind of

23:32 stuff. Be David Letterman, you know, all that. And oil hits minus 37, everybody's in lockdown. I mean, I was trying to be really good 'cause my kids were going back and forth and my ex-wife has

23:47 asthma and we didn't know if that was a co-morbidity factor. So I was being really good. Man, I was alone in my house in Richmond. Yeah. You know, I got out and walked some, But other than that,

23:57 I'm not talking to my. people not seeing anyone. And so when I started recording these podcasts, I think the first one I did with Kitty and BRV, the anons and stuff, that was funny. And, you

24:10 know, I was sitting there getting drunk. They were getting drunk while we did it. Yeah. But after that, it got really serious really quick, you know, talking to best friend fish about both of

24:19 us losing our job, Patrick on. And it went a totally different direction than I thought I didn't think I was going to be sitting there having to play the therapist to the oil and gas business. But

24:30 that's kind of where it went. No, for sure. I mean, you know, if you remember like that D-Dave video I made, which probably the most successful meme I've ever made. But even if you go look at

24:41 the comments on YouTube, I went and read them the other day. And it like hit me like people were commenting like, just lost my job. But this made me laugh. Thank you or like my husband's going

24:54 through a really tough time. I showed this to him and it made him smile. all in this together. And so, you know, it's interesting to see how content and telling stories and letting people know

25:09 that they're not alone in that because, I mean, that was a scary time. Like, we forget about it, but it was like, I was, I was, I wasn't worried about me, but I was worried about all my

25:18 family, all my friends. And, you know, it's easy to forget, like, how, how uneasy of a time that was for a lot of people. Well, the, because the, the, you know, another big moment, kind

25:29 of when I was starting to podcast, when energy credit one came on, when a Jeff Davies came on. Yeah. You know, he talked about blowing up a hedge fund, you know, when he was at TPH and he was

25:41 just real about it. I mean, he just owned it, you know, it wasn't like, Oh, somebody else's fault. He's like, no, I made the call, you know, unfortunately I was right. I was just way too

25:50 early. But, you know, yeah, and all that. Just the engagement I got and the imbalance on that. Yeah. And all this really, really wild. Yeah, you know, I'm a big believer in community and

26:04 you look at digital walk-atters who are a very community centric company and you know, human nature that we want to be connected with other people and surrounded by other people. And I think what

26:16 these content mediums have allowed us to do is to tell stories of people. You know, you go back to oil and gas startups like I said, it's like, how can you actually humanize people and tell their

26:27 stories. And I think that I listen to podcasts with entrepreneurs that I respect. And when you hear them, you hear Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast. And he goes through all the same

26:41 challenges that other founders have gone through. And the way that he thinks about things, I'm like, oh, that resonates with me as well. And so I think that these mediums have allowed people to

26:54 connect on a on a deeper level. Well, and you figure out too that, you know, an overnight success took 15 years of nights. Oh, yeah. No, it's over, it's over that. Yeah. The, so

27:07 podcasting away all that industries in the tank. I mean, how are you making money, Jake? We weren't. Yeah. We had enough cash to last us in 2020 to the end of the year. Not even to the end of

27:21 the year. And then we did our first kind of brand deal, like essentially our first customer client, that I really want to call it at the end of 2020. Like literally in the nick of time. And then

27:32 that got us another three, four months down the road. And we're like, cool, we bought ourselves some time to like figure out, we weren't media people. We're rolling gas guys. Like we didn't

27:41 understand like how all this stuff works. And so it was just kind of like figuring as we were going along. Yeah, we

27:48 came up with this idea, which is called the bullpen. And, you know, going back to, okay, How can we create products? serve our community. You know, Jake and I had worked on this project and

28:00 we've taken a little bit of cash away from it. And so we had enough cash to last until the end of the year. And you know, I want to give a shout out to Maynard Holt because I spent a lot of time

28:12 with Maynard back in 2020. And I don't know if you've ever been to Maynard's warehouse, but he's got this I haven't. He's got a man I used to live. I mean, I went to college with him. I used to

28:21 live. The former Mrs. Yates has Yeah, the house three doors down. Yeah. But I never, I never got the invite to tell me he tells me to meet him. I had his had his place and you walk in there.

28:32 And you know, it's just big metal building and walk in there. And there's a big projector up on the wall. And it's like playing rap videos and there's like football players like practicing in this

28:42 turf area. And I'm like, I'm not in the running place. And Maynard comes walking down. I was like, Oh, hey, call it. What's up? And then you go up to the second story. And he's got his

28:49 conference rooms. And I mean, just, it's a dream set up. I love it. But we spend so much time around whiteboards. talking, and I think Maynard and TPH as an organization was by far the first

29:02 believers in seeing what we were building, and so we built this product called the bullpen, and the bullpen was a directory, it was a database on our website where you'd have every oil and gas tech

29:15 startup and you'd go on there and they'd have their own profile page. So like back then, combo curve, they weren't even combo curve, they were inside petroleum back then, you'd go to their

29:24 profile page, you'd have co-founder, CEO Armand on there with his demo, walking through the platform, you'd have an overview of who the company was and you know, I remember getting messages like,

29:36 this is one of the most innovative things that we've seen in oil and gas, I might chill, it's a page on our website, but you know, to Jake's point, like we didn't make any money in 2020 and I

29:48 think it was like Q4 and I mean we're running, like we're running dry and we ended up doing a hundred thousand. and revenue that year, and the majority of that revenue, probably 75 of it came from

30:01 TPH. I'm doing an advertising and brand deal with us. So advertising on the podcast, sponsoring the bullpen. And so I've told Bobby on the podcast that we do a Bobby Tudor, as I do, you probably

30:13 don't know. This is like, TPH saved us. Like I don't know if we'd be here without TPH. And anyway, so the bullpen, Jake and I were like, okay, how can we commercialize this and actually go

30:27 charge EMPs for it? You know, there's a lot of value here. And so we started talking to a lot of our friends at EMPs and the common thread that they came back with on feedback is like, yeah, this

30:38 is great, but we also want a way to talk to our industry peers about these technologies. And so I was like, oh, that's interesting. And you started seeing what was happening with like EFT over on

30:49 Twitter. You know, you start having this community building up over on Twitter where people are talking and you have engineers and finance. people and just started realizing that, hey, there's

30:58 not a central networking platform that's built specifically for the energy industry. And so we got this idea and really started putting thought into it and ended up shelving the bullpen because we

31:12 wanted to figure out what we were really doing there. And then as COVID started ending, you know, we kind of, I don't want to say we understood the events business, but we had success there with

31:26 our energy tech nights and we knew that there was something there. And everyone was doing digital events, virtual events, and people wanted us to do virtual events and we're like, no, it's lame,

31:37 we're not going to do a webinar. And we got the idea for Evolve and that was about the time that I think that you'd met us probably a few months before Evolve, because you went up there with us and

31:50 we said, okay, COVID's happening, but can we kind of. this this piece of content and we went and crush it with evolve and then it was when was involved that was early 21 I think it was yeah March

32:02 21 spring spring of yeah cuz I was vaccinated at the time and I got vaccinated January of 2021 yep yep I think it was and y'all started my podcast on October of 2020 but we really didn't know each

32:17 other I was like handing y'all a podcast yeah I mean we were exactly yeah that's what yeah no I mean you still had your office done and Richmond so you're hanging down there global world headquarters

32:27 I love that office it's such a good office it was cool it's a Pilates studio now but

32:35 shame so that's spring of 21 evolve yep and then as we started coming out of covid I think that we were probably the first company and didn't want to do live event coming out of covid I don't the

32:50 energy tight night that we did immediately after that was the first thing we did back. was the best attended energy tech that we've ever gotten. The energy was so high. It was like, I think it was

32:58 like 450, almost 500 people. Yeah, almost had 500 people there, packed. It even got memed on some of the big finance meme accounts because you had people, you know, we did at Heights Theater.

33:09 And next to Heights Theater, there's like a fidelity or, you know, one of those brokerage, large commercial brokerage firms. And there's all these guys and blue blazers lined up down the street

33:21 underneath the sign as all the finance accounts are like memeing that. But yeah, that energy just was unmatched because people have been pent up for almost two years. And so gravitated towards the

33:38 events, a couple of reasons. You know, one, this industry is just really conditioned for events. They understand it, but two, it's such a good medium for building community. And if you look at

33:48 the events in this industry, I mean, just to be blunt, they suck. in their trade shows and they're very rigid and hard to make connections and we - Well, I mean, when you think about NAEP, it's

34:01 not NAEP, it's the Four Seasons Bar, it's being at Keneelies. The Hill of America is the opportune party. Exactly, and so we were like, how can we create a party and then inject content and

34:13 valuable information into that to make it valuable for people and really develop this thesis of collisions And what we saw was that we just enabled this environment where you removed all the friction

34:24 and took down barriers to where people could actually meet each other and be comfortable and really solve those collisions or the catalysts for ideas and collaboration and opportunity. And I mean,

34:38 like one of the things like I'm most proud about personally is after every energy technite, after every fuse, after every empower, we get all of these testimonials case studies of

34:51 people. in companies getting value out of it. From this recent one that we just did up in Oklahoma City with Marty.

34:59 Is there an artifact to help us? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Marty was working on a seed financing for his company and one and a half million dollar seed financing had an investor. The

35:10 investor was hard-balling him on some terms. Marty's like, I'm not doing that. And he comes and does energy tech night on Thursday, wins energy tech night, closes the deal that next Monday and

35:21 says that winning energy tech night directly affected him, closing that deal and getting the terms that he wanted. And that's fucking awesome. And then on top of that, he sent me screenshots of 10

35:33 messages from other investors reaching out, wanna talk, new customers, totally game-changing for him. So the events for us have been really great for him. I think there's another inside baseball

35:43 thing that I think about sometimes that I don't think people realize. In the early days, I remember a comment made Ryan Gurney over at Mantra seems just like you guys are doing some like really You

35:54 know meaningful work here. I don't think you guys like realize it. This is like the early early days But whenever you're creating I'm curious to your perspective on this whenever you're creating

36:03 Podcasts or any other sort of content like it can be a little bit of a lonely existence because you're just putting things out of the ether And your only feedback loop is like likes comments

36:11 impressions things like that and most people don't really like engaging that way They just kind of come across it. Maybe they appreciate it. Maybe they don't But then when you add in the events and

36:20 you have those in-person connections we would come into the office you get that feedback loop of like Yeah, like we raised we raised funding. Oh, you know, I closed two clients like oh like this

36:28 has led to me getting a new job Or this is like changed my life in some way and so that I think it helps continue to be a catalyst for like continuing to do What we do because you see the results of

36:39 it whereas if it's like purely just content I think sometimes it's hard to do that's funny like one of the only podcasts I've ever listened to like consistently is no Kagan's podcast. And so. I love

36:48 Noah Kagan 'cause he was employee number 13 at Facebook

36:54 and essentially he got fired by Zuckerberg because Zuckerberg's like he gotta quit doing your blog and Noah told him to get fucked and then he goes over to Mint. Same thing, he's like first 10

37:03 employment, same thing happens and he relinquishes all of his equity and so like these billion dollar companies and just does not give a damn. And anyways, it goes on to create his own nearly

37:14 billion dollar company app, Sumo And anyways, he had this blog post and wants about

37:21 Tony Robbins events. And I mean, it was like from like six years ago. And anyways, I went to one of my friends' birthday parties in Austin a year or two ago and I didn't know this, but him and

37:32 Noah Kagan are best friends. And so Noah was there, Noah's talking to someone and I walk up to him and I was like, Hey guys, mind if I join? And Noah was like, Yeah, you know, we're just

37:40 talking about Tony Robbins here. I was like, Yeah, that blog post that you wrote six years ago was perfect. And his eyes got all big. You actually read that and it's like, that's so cool to hear

37:49 like someone actually reads my stuff. So you create podcasts and then Jake said, you don't get that feedback loop. Like, you know, you just sit here and record content. And it's really cool when

37:59 someone references something that you talked about. When I was talking to the petroleum alliance of Oklahoma about a month ago, I was speaking at their wildcatters launch. I said two stories like

38:10 that. One, the girlfriend wanted to go to Sardinia I didn't even know where Sardinia was. Like I was like, you know, what are we talking about? Yeah, when you tell me how we're going there, I

38:20 was like, I have no clue that. I couldn't put that in the mouth. That's too rich for me. Island in the Mediterranean, an Italian island in the Mediterranean. So think Sicily, next big island up.

38:30 I'm like, oh, okay, so anyway, we went there. We're laying out by the pool and somebody walks over to me. Hey man, I just want you to know I'm big fan of your podcast. In Sardinia? In

38:40 Sardinia, like in a small town in Sardinia And that's good, girlfriend's just like, oh. Jeez, good God, really? Jilly rules her eyes so hard anytime that, anytime that happens. But the

38:53 greatest, 'cause you know it chucks, just eat it up. Ego doesn't play it in lights.

39:00 Although in Fom Chucky everyone knows me. What was your favorite podcast that I did?

39:07 In all fairness though, I've gotten to the point in my life, I like the likes, I don't need the likes. I am, I am there. Let's go. That's gross. I am there But the greatest example of this is

39:19 my daughter, Sarah, is going with a bunch of people to Catillion, you know, a dance. And, you know, she doesn't know everybody in the group and all her friends date that she was sitting next to.

39:33 You know, Sarah goes, Hey, I'm Sarah Yates. And he goes, Oh my God, is your dad Chuck Yates? And Sarah just went. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

39:43 Oh my God, I listened to your dad's podcast is so great. I want to get into energy one day.

39:49 And I'm willing to cut that kid a million dollar check.

39:54 Come to me when you need funding. But it's like, it is so amazing the power. I mean, I've got, there's a garbage crew in a Seattle that emails me about twice a

40:06 year. Hey, we listen to your podcast. We want to know about this, this, and this. I don't know anything about energy there I mean, literally listening to it, they all, they love it. They're

40:14 shirt off, you know what I mean? Not love that, yeah. And then there's a guy in Japan who sends me an email and about once a year, twice a year in broken English. You know, here are the 12

40:27 podcasts I listen to, what happened, it's broken English. Yeah. You know, it's supposedly one of the nuclear subs in the Navy is listening to my podcast Friday morning. That's amazing, that's

40:37 crazy. The reach you can have. That guy hit me up on Twitter the other day And he's like, hey, he's like, um. He's a officer in the US Army, and he's like, I was wearing one of y'all's digital

40:48 wallcatters and power shirts in Iraq. He's like, my dad, is that one of the Houston Bitcoin meetups and got one of y'all shirts and sent it to me? And that's how he discovered us. And I was like,

40:58 that's cool. I was like, you got to be the first person to support our merch in Iraq, I know of. But yeah,

41:05 content allows you to,

41:09 I mean, just get reached I mean, really, if you think about it, you know, it's like, if you can get a thousand listeners on a podcast, which that's not a, it's not a huge podcast, you know,

41:20 compared to Joe Rogan's of the world. But think about a thousand people being in a room listening. And then that's distributed across the world. Most conferences in our space are like 500, 800,

41:31 800 people. Yeah. You get 500, 800 downloads, you're like, oh, it's not a lot. That's a lot of people listening to something. Yeah. You know, it's also like crazy about audio Do you all

41:40 remember a kid-cratic job? Yeah. In the oil field, I don't know, I don't know why we had this deep of a relationship with kid-cratic his oil field hands, but I think it was because he was just,

41:53 you're going out at 430 in the morning, like that's what was on radio, like talk radio. And so we all listened to kid-cratic and he passed away. I think he had a heart attack. It was something

42:04 sudden and all the oil field hands, like we felt sad, like we lost a friend. I don't even see kid, I don't even know what he looks like. But that connection that you had with audio and just

42:16 listening to someone every single day and then all of a sudden, you know, they pass away. It's like, you know, you like lost a piece of you. And so I think audio content especially is super

42:27 interesting in that. Well, you know, it's interesting today because we sit there and we talk about news and media and all three most trusted news sources in America. If you look at any poll or

42:38 some version of these three number one Oprah and you kind of get that I mean she's had her talk show and all that. But Oprah's been real. I mean, she talked about losing her virginity because a guy

42:48 gave her a popsicle, you know, and all that. It's Howard Stern. I mean, for all of Howard Stern's jokes and being canceled and stuff might be the best interviewer in America. I mean, he gets

43:01 celebrities to talk about real things. He's authentic, he's genuine. And then it's Joe Rogan. I mean, those are your three most trusted news sources Yeah, it's not ABC, CBS, CNN, any of that.

43:12 I think that major media continues to diminish over time because like, I can't tell you last the only time I've ever watched news channels is, you know, I grew up with my grandparents and my

43:27 grandfather to have Fox News on 247, and then offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The only thing that they play on TV is Fox News. And so that's like the only exposure. But do you know why the

43:40 Fox News logo in the bottom left corner?

43:44 No, because only you would know this useless information. My mom reached out to David Rhodes, who David Rhodes is a college friend of the Yates brothers because we were all at Rice, he went to

43:57 Rice, turns out my dad and his dad went to Rice, turns out a weirder story. My grandfather delivered his father because he grew up in Baytown, his mom's driving through Rosenberg, Texas, goes

44:10 into labor, my grandfather is the only doctor, so Rhodes family never paid the Yates family for that delivery, but that's another story. Anyway, David Rhodes was Roger Ailes' right-hand man,

44:21 kind of Fox News, and my mom called David one day, and of course David took the phone call, and she's like, You're starting to burn something into my TV. I just

44:33 watched Fox News all day, and so anyway, 48 hours later, it started spinning That's pretty interesting actually.

44:41 I'm Riddle TV's like a good burn in there. If you had an image on there too long,

44:47 so. So, 'cause this is kind of interesting. I actually don't think a lot of people know this. I know this 'cause at some point I started showing up here every day just 'cause I figured that's

44:57 better than day drinking at my house, which wouldn't end well. But what stuff is happening now at digital wildcatters? 'Cause when I tell people this stuff, they have no idea Yeah, no, I mean,

45:12 same here. We're starting to talk about some of the things that we've been building and I think people's reactions are like, well, I haven't shown up in talking about this. And it's one 'cause

45:22 we've been building slowly and being deliberate about how we do it. We're not a heavily funded startup like out of Silicon Valley where you just have infinite resources to build. When you're

45:36 building a company,

45:39 cheap and slow, or expensive and fast, and you know, we've we've kind of landed in the in the middle there, but what our thesis is as a company is, you know, again, very community-centric how

45:53 can we build things that enable our community to solve the world's energy crisis and what we've landed on is building this vertically integrated professional network. And so, if you look at the

46:06 evolution of the internet, sorry, I'm gonna get really nerdy here. Talk about this, but I think that it's important to understand where the internet's going. You look at Web1, Web1 was

46:17 static forums, messaging boards, you know, think AOL wants to messenger Craigslist, things of this nature. Web2, who Web2 is actually coined by LinkedIn and their series B-Deck, was all of

46:29 these huge horizontal social media platforms. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, you know, go down the list and It's really interesting if you listen to how Mark Zuckerberg talked

46:42 about Facebook back around 2009, 2010, because they started off just for college students and it's a directory essentially. Yeah. But getting college students together in person and he said,

46:55 we're not a social media network or a community platform and we're reflecting the things that we do in person in a digital environment. And anyways, that's not where they ended up going What these

47:07 large social media platforms did was connected everyone around the world and then enabled people to be creators, which is great. But the problem is, and I think Instagram is kind of the best

47:19 example of this is remember Instagram before they got bought by Facebook was a place where you could like, I'd follow Jake and like, see these pictures and like, it was like very personal and you

47:30 were actually following and connected with people that you know, you go to Instagram now and it's very algorithmic driven content by creators with, you know, reels and of this nature. And so what

47:41 people are missing is that community aspect online. And so what you're seeing now is we move into the next evolution of the internet is these vertical platforms that are built specifically for A,

47:53 industries or B, groups of people. So this isn't just specific to digital wall caters. I mean, we've seen this happen in other industries, like Doximity did it for doctors and nurses. I've seen

48:04 community platforms for pickleball players

48:09 Yeah, you know, one of my friends, like you mentioned, Gino and Jason are two of the best wrestlers in the world. Their platform Ocean is a community platform for wrestlers. And so that's what

48:21 you're really starting to see is these verticalized platforms for specific groups of people that can serve them better. And so that's really what we're building. Because if you think about it, I

48:33 mean, my in my business career, read the Wall Street Journal. Watch CNBC, and then when LinkedIn finally showed up, that's kind of what you did. Yeah. And yeah, that gave you a good, broad

48:47 overview, but anytime they wrote an article about energy like, Oh man, those idiots don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. You know? No, so you realize how little mainstream media knows

48:57 about topics when they write something about a topic that you understand very deeply. And so for us, if you look at what our mission is at Digital Wildcatters, we want to enable our community of

49:11 energy professionals to solve the world's energy crisis. And we want to provide the platform and resources for them to be able to do that. And so I think, you know, like us, there'll be other

49:21 platforms out there. You know, you can see this with,

49:27 I want to get like crypto, but talk like like board apes, but board apes started off as like digital assets. And they said, okay, hey, let's get everyone together in person for parties. And now

49:36 they're creating tech products for that community of people on some of these platforms. They're not just digital social media platforms. They're actual in real life elements too. And getting people

49:47 together in person and then just reinforcing that with a central platform. And so, you know, the way that we see our app collide and it's funny, someone, I didn't realize how similar the name

49:59 collide is to Collin until last week 'cause I wrote out Collide on paper and then I was like, that's a lot like my name. Someone on Twitter called it out last week. They're like, oh, does Collin

50:09 just name this app after

50:12 him? But, you know, the reason that we named it Collide was off of that thesis of collisions from our events, the same types of collisions that we've been really successful with at our events. We

50:21 want those to happen in a digital environment as well. And so, you know, when you look at Collide, I like telling people it's kind of like the stack overflow of energy, stack overflow built this

50:31 community platform. Or if you're a software developer, you could come ask a question about your code and the community would answer it and then boom, that question would be index. That way the

50:41 next time someone came along, they could search for it, find the information that they needed, and if they couldn't find it, they could ask the community and get an answer who want that same type

50:50 of platform to assist in energy And. I want to say something to the old CEOs that have stumbled across this podcast and actually figured out how to listen to it. So your peers? Exactly. You know

51:03 I'm 55 next week, yeah, 55 next week. But no, two things that I think are really important and I think I'm going to try to write a really cool speech about this and run around and start giving it

51:17 is number one, kids today are digitally native. I mean, you guys all grew up with phones and social media and all that sort of stuff So energy, if you're not leading it. edge digital stuff. Of

51:35 course, we're not gonna attract any new talent. We sit there and we talk like the old guys, we talk, oh, it's volatile and people talk bad about us. I'm like, no, when's the last time you gave

51:44 someone a digital app that could interact with their peers and stuff? You know what I mean? That's how the rest of the world does it. You know the, when we were getting that feedback back in 2020,

51:55 you know, hey, we wanna discuss these topics with our industry peers and there was a second part to that without being reprimanded by our employers And this industry has always really struggled with

52:06 how people do business online. But to your point is, yeah, you know, hey, these kids have grown up digitally native. Well, I mean, me and Jake are probably like halfway through the millennial

52:18 generation. I mean, millennials are 40 years old now. You know, me and Jake are 33. But even for us, the iPhone came out in 2007. That's what they were doing. It was right before Obama. Yeah,

52:29 we're a junior election. You know, we're juniors in high school. I mean, people that are mine and Jake's age, if you're young 30s, like we are the last people that remember life before the

52:39 internet. And I mean, there was only about - My first cell phone was in Nokia. So like, I didn't come into the iPhone. There was like four phones away from me. But I mean, you know, I remember

52:48 getting my first house home computer when I was like eight. And so there was only about, you know. We had like an Apple II. Yeah. Like literally one of the first computers. In about six or seven

52:56 years. I had a Commodore Pet Commodore 64 or whatever But now like you look at my kids. I mean, dude, most of my parenting fights that I have to break up happen on the metaverse. You know,

53:10 they're over in Roblox and you know, they're wearing VR headsets like, Yog, quit knocking my house down. I'm like, Y'all aren't even fighting in the real world. But

53:21 that's the thing is if you look at, I think these are the two biggest problems in energy. And actually I saw someone quote a EMPC CEO on Twitter about this other day that said. This isn't verbatim,

53:32 but it'll capture the sentiment said you the biggest challenge to growing oil and gas production is attracting talent to this industry and the problem is is You have two problems in the industry one

53:45 is Recruiting doesn't matter if you talk to HR departments at EMPs or Fs renewables climate tech everyone has the same problem We cannot find qualified talent can't find qualified talent within the

53:57 industry They'll tell you, you know, we get applicants from LinkedIn and indeed, but they're not qualified talent reason is those are horizontal Platforms you have people from all different

54:05 industries and backgrounds and then there's a top-of-funnel problem attracting talent to the industry You go over on my tiktok you go on digital walk headers YouTube. You'll find comments of like,

54:15 hey, this is really cool How can I work in oil and gas? How can I get in the industry? So we think with collide part of the collide platform will be a recruiting solution and helping people in our

54:27 community connect with their next gig and accelerate their career and then help the companies in our ecosystem find the qualified talent that they need. We've already been doing manually, literally

54:38 since day one, if somebody reaches out of like, Hey, I'm looking for a job, or come and reach out and say, Hey, I'm looking to hire a head of sales or something. We've done this matchmaking for

54:47 five or six years. Yeah. Like through text messages and through email, we've never made a single dollar doff doing it, but it's just being kind of an accessory to the community. You can do that

54:55 at scale. And it's not even just within oil and gas. I mean, I can't tell you how many messages I get from, hey, I'm a climate tech company working on CCUS based in San Francisco. We just raised

55:05 a series A. We're looking for a 15 year engineer from oil and gas, probably worked at an EPC, got experience in permitting, or hey, we need an oil and gas engineer that's familiar with this

55:18 chemical process. And so I think that, you know, that is a huge challenge, not only for oil and gas, but the energy industry as a whole and the second main problem. Well, hold on, while we're

55:30 on that problem, 'cause there's something that I've seen that, there's so much of a tenure system in oil and gas. I'm there 15 years and I finally get promoted to VP. Technology, I show up at

55:48 Facebook, I kick butt, I'm marketing director for the West Coast and I'm 24. Yeah.

55:55 And I think one of the things we've talked about with this app is, you know, if we have anonymous folks on the app that are interacting and you can tell, wow, that person really gets it and all.

56:09 You know, hopefully we're gonna have the wherewithal to say, hey, you should talk to this person. Yeah. Their resume may not reflect it, but go read their threads. Well, we call it internally,

56:19 we call it creating the dynamic resume. And so, if you look at the tech industry and you're a software developer. Hey, here's my GitHub, you can check out my contributions. Hey, give me a

56:33 coding test. I'll take your coding test. You can show proof of work in true skill and ability. And that doesn't exist for most technical workforce in the world, which is the energy workforce. And

56:46 so all you have right now is static resuming. And LinkedIn does a good job of this, but you can say, hey, where you've worked. Yeah, it's where I've worked. Yeah, I worked at Pioneer Natural

56:56 Resources for five years I worked at Exxon for six, but that doesn't tell someone's true ability and skill. And a good story I like to tell people is over on Twitter, most of the community runs

57:11 under anonymity. And this anon profile, we did a meet up here one night at our office, and everyone started drinking beer and started getting loose lips. And there's this account that was always

57:24 contributing the conversations and really smart. person. And I was like, all right, you know, this is probably a 10 year investment banker, you know, probably 31 years old. They're, they're,

57:37 they're experienced enough to know what they're talking about, but they're young enough to be hip with meme culture. And so that's what I pegged them for. And anyways, we do this meetup. This,

57:46 this account shows up and tells me that there's that account. It's a 23 year old kid, first year banker And that opened my eyes because I didn't have any preconceived bias about his ability or skill

57:59 because I just, I didn't know who he was on the internet. And I was just like this guy's smart. He knows what he's talking about. And then comes in and was able to kind of blew my mind with that.

58:09 And so being able to create this dynamic resume is something that I'm super passionate about solving this problem because I think that you can take different elements of gamification and credentials

58:24 and combine them. What I mean by that is like over you know, we're in Clyde, we're still in the early stages of this and we'll continue to build it out and make it more robust over time. But, you

58:34 know, instead of getting likes, you know, instead of just having like a heart, there's a lightning bolt and, um, the gamification system is going to be based around like Watts, like every time

58:43 you get a like, it's a what and, um, you're a, um, you know, say that you're a production engineer and you're always talking about artificial lift and answering questions and contributing. And

58:54 you're getting a lot of Watts from your peers Now you go to apply for a job at Pioneer natural resources and they see this and they're like, Oh, Sarah over here is super experienced. Um, here's

59:08 her background on a resume, but now you have this qualitative element to where they're actually really involved in the community and have all of this social proof and validation from their peers that,

59:18 um, they're, they're contributing and, um, getting this recognition for. And so, and it's going to be their conversation is going to be indexed. Huh? What do they know about production? Boom,

59:28 pull it up and read it, okay, that makes sense. No, exactly. And I also think that, on the flip side, Pioneer comes like, hey, we need a production engineer that's good with this. We'll be

59:38 able to help them connect with - Hey, here's our leaderboard of these people in these categories you have tons of watts. Yeah, we'll be able to link them up and help them. And so, if you look at

59:49 the recruiting process now, it is a very inhuman process. Check, you probably don't know this, I don't know the last time you applied for a job list, but you go apply

1:00:03 for a job, and you know, John on our team is just a great example of this. You go apply for a job, and all of these companies have online, compliant applicant tracker systems, ATSs, and they're

1:00:18 all driven by algorithms. And you go apply, and one thing happens, or a couple things happens one thing is you never hear anything. back, it just gets lost into this black hole. You might just

1:00:32 get a rejection letter immediately because you didn't match the keywords. It's a very broken process for both sides of the market. I mean, look, I hire here at Digital Altcatters and it's a very

1:00:44 qualitative process. I could never just hire someone by looking at their resume and saying, yep, that's the person. And on the flip side, it's very discouraging and demoralizing for people in the

1:00:57 workforce to go sit there and apply for 30 jobs and you just never even, it feels like you're not getting any traction. Well, in two, it's my dad didn't go to school with his dad and that really

1:01:10 sucks. And so I think that we're really going to be able to solve that problem and then the second main problem that this industry has that we're solving is knowledge, retention, and transfer. And

1:01:22 this can be broken down in a couple of different facets But, one.

1:01:29 If you look at people my age, came into the industry, 2010, you know, I saw a little bit of conventional, drilled some conventional wells, but then boom, it was all shale. It's manufacturing

1:01:42 process.

1:01:44 In oil and gas, you have a very bimodal distribution of age. You have boomers, no one in between, and you have millennials. And now what we're seeing is that there's going to be no Gen Z coming

1:01:54 into this industry as well. What's happened though is the boomers are leaving the industry, and this is happening now, and they're taking this tribal knowledge with them of how to find oil and

1:02:03 drill conventional assets. A lot of the younger generation doesn't have that skill set, and that's just like one example. Now, if you look at knowledge transfer across the industry, or even going

1:02:15 within companies, you know, companies have a bunch of divisions and don't have the ability to transfer knowledge, we think that we're going to solve that problem. But if you really scale out to a

1:02:25 broader view of energy, you look at this knowledge graph, center of the oil and gas power is 80 of the world, but you have these adjacent energy verticals that are starting to grow, whether it's

1:02:34 renewables, CCUS, geothermal, my boys and nukes are coming back, but I'll be fighting that fight, yeah, yeah, nuclear battery storage, whatever. All of these things are interconnected and

1:02:48 intertwined. And all of these adjacent energy verticals are dependent on expertise and resources from the oil and gas industry And so really being able to build this knowledge graph and the social

1:03:00 graph that connects everyone. And so now, hey, instead of calling me up, you know, do you know a engineer that's familiar with this chemical process for our battery technology?

1:03:12 You can come on the platform and find those people yourselves. Like really, what I want Clyde to be is if you're looking for any piece of information, you need a subject matter expert or you're

1:03:20 looking for your next gig and energy, it happens on the slide Well, and if we're going to have a transition, it's got to leverage the existing infrastructure.

1:03:29 And so we're not silos anymore. One of the coolest things I had happen is last year at Fuse, kind of our South by Southwest of energy technology, the conference we do, is a renewables guy came up

1:03:44 to me and said, Chuck, I need to meet an oil and gas guy. And I'm like, all right, sure. And found an oil and gas guy, we all went and had a beer. I would have given anything if I could have

1:03:55 recorded that hour and a half conversation Because a renewables guy was just like, hey, I need to pick your brain. Because we're going to have to scale. And nobody has scaled like the oil and gas

1:04:07 business. And just all the issues associated with it, I got no clue. And the oil and gas guy starts talking. And I mean, it's got feverishly taken notes. It was a great interaction. And so - I

1:04:19 came over if it was Orsted or which wind operator it was. But this happened a year and a half or two years ago they have this offshore wind. I think it was in the North Sea and ended up taking a

1:04:31 billion dollar loss on it because their transfer cables on the subsea floor Got torn up by rocks, and I'm like what industry has been running subsea infrastructure in cables for decades oil and gas

1:04:46 and so

1:04:49 It's just like a good example of hey oil and gases and Elon Musk actually doing a great job. Elon must have been picking off oil and gas engineers For SpaceX to go work on their offshore

1:05:01 installations You know, they bought this net gas field for fuel down in Eagleford And I know people personally that are petroleum engineers that have been picked off by SpaceX and so Elon gets it

1:05:12 It's like hey, we're gonna go to the industry that understands how to scale infrastructure and build things and so You know, that's for us. I mean one We're very pro-energy energy maximalist and

1:05:24 understand the oil and gas and the work place, an extremely important part in the future of powering the world, and we want to be able to enable those things to happen. So one soapbox I've got that

1:05:38 I want to add to this, and again I'm gonna have to figure out the funny way to give this speech and run around and start giving it, but everybody in the oil and gas business had a time in their

1:05:49 career where they had some information and they made a great deal because they had that information and they kept it private and all unfortunately you've given away whatever that game was you've given

1:06:01 away 15x that game in your career because you tight hole everything shit that doesn't have to be tight hole you just hold on to it and you know what's me and Chuck are saying I won't I won't call out

1:06:15 the private equity fund by name but large private equity fund and oil and gas and we're sitting there and you know I'm talking about collide and we're talking about this you know the idea because they

1:06:23 ask about like proprietary data. I'm like how much money did you guys lose in your and parent child

1:06:31 issues and I was like, if you would have just shared information and talked with other operators in that county, you guys could have actually all made more money in not completely fucked up your

1:06:42 assets, right? Yeah, you say that and it's like, oh yeah, you know, you're probably right, like all boats rise with the diet. That's one of the number one things that I've got, like even in

1:06:51 just recent conversations, I've got things like DW Insight, it's like, oh, what about price or information? And it's like, you don't realize that most of you, it's not as proprietary as you

1:07:00 really think of this. Yeah, and that's my point, 'cause I've got a buddy that's a software engineer, Silicon Valley, doesn't know anything about oil and gas, but really good friend listens to

1:07:10 podcasts and always kind of like wants to deep dive with me on stuff. He thinks it is crazy, like batshit crazy, that we don't share information. He's like, we're on Stack Overflow, and he works

1:07:25 for one of the large ones, so I'll just say company X, I go on there and I ask a question. Hey, I need some help with this, this, and this. Company, why? Answers me. Yeah. 'Cause we all

1:07:34 realize that if we share this sort of stuff, we're all better off. And I'm not talking oligopoly stuff, but he just spacing to him is the craziest thing on the planet. He's like, y'all don't all

1:07:47 get together. Y'all don't all share technical data. And all of this, and I go, well, there might be five acres out there that someone doesn't know. You know, let me get some credit to the

1:07:56 industry First, let me tell a story 'cause, you know, I remember running this expandable liner on a well out in West Texas and who's in the spray berry. And I remember the company man calling his

1:08:07 previous company. He's like, Hey, what did y'all see for losses when you were in this zone? And like, they're talking on the phone, right? 'Cause he knows someone personally and they're talking.

1:08:15 But let me get some credit to the industry over the last couple of years. I mean, I think that this is a generational thing that's being open that of more of kind have Millennials millennials by

1:08:23 source driven.

1:08:28 mindset of information sharing. But you know, I talked to an operator and

1:08:35 they're like, yeah, we have a data sharing agreement with 20 other operators in this county in West Texas. We can share information. We don't have a way to actually talk to them and do it. You

1:08:46 talk to, there's a large

1:08:51 GMP out in West Texas that's a friend of ours that has started organizing these closed door, Chatham House rules, conversations with other engineers from 20 or 30 other operators. Some of them come

1:09:03 in person, some of them hop on Zoom. And so this is happening. People fly in for these things too. Well, my whole point is it's always happened 'cause the service guy gets drunk on the weekend

1:09:12 and talks. The service guy goes to the competitor, hey, your competitor's doing this 'cause they wanna sell more. My whole thing is put some transparency to it and some openness to it and some

1:09:24 gamification to it

1:09:27 efficiently it's raising as opposed to this ad hoc type. It's raising the IQ of the workforce and

1:09:35 Cuz everybody knows everything there is literally no zone out there that is undetected There is no big hammer to hit. There's no technology hiding out there. Yeah, that is is gonna be a 10x exactly

1:09:47 Yeah, and you know one interesting thing that we've got from our feedback in our conversations is we've had several companies now from EMP's to large OFS that have asked us and I'm talking like

1:10:01 across the spectrum like one of these EMP's is a major one is one of the largest Independents and then the OFS is one of the largest OFS and they said this is awesome Like next step can you build us

1:10:12 an internal instance as well? So now if we do have anything that's super proprietary our employees can talk about it internally But then we can also layer, you know, the big part of our platform is

1:10:23 with this knowledge graph is machine learning components. And being able to take information, you know, what I

1:10:31 want this app to be is like having 1, 000 engineers right in your pocket where you go ask any question about energy and you can get an answer right away and all of these companies have these internal

1:10:42 data sets that they want to leverage as well. And so they're asking like, hey, how can we build an internal instance of collide to where our employees can share more liberally proprietary

1:10:52 information and then also draw down on our internal knowledge basis One of the companies, I'll be a little coy on names just 'cause I don't know if I can talk about this, but uses AI to run Lyft.

1:11:07 And when actually allowed to implement it, let the AI drive it about 80 of the time, you're running the Lyft too quickly, leads to burnout, leads to more replacement. Yeah, you sacrifice a

1:11:22 quarter of

1:11:26 a barrel at the end of the day in production, but at the end of the day, profitable. Yeah, by doing it. And so yeah, the other thing having digital stuff gets us away from The culture of well,

1:11:36 we've been doing this for 30 years. Yeah, you know, and I think that's important. I think there's been some You know the Senate. She's been talking about the great crew change for a long time But

1:11:45 I think it's actually finally happening and also with that. I think COVID was a catalyst for adoption of new technology

1:11:55 You know when you have negative forty dollar oil and You're looking at how can we extract more value out of our asset? How can we become more efficient and so that naturally leads to? You know

1:12:07 adopting these new types of technology So I think it's a pretty exciting time in the industry from that perspective So I was talking to Ryan Rice last night. I don't think he would mind if I shared

1:12:16 this We almost needed thirty five dollar oil for about another year longer Really because we've kind of like Yeah, you get away from it. You get away from it. Yeah. But yeah. So so yeah, no, so

1:12:29 okay, I've gotten off my soapbox. I'll quick grab about it. But the, the last thing I want to talk about, because I think this is really cool is DW. Insights. Yeah.

1:12:42 Are we allowed to talk about that? Did I talk about DW. What? Yeah I'm trying to think about how we, so, you know, we talked about the bullpen earlier and how we shelved it. And the thing was,

1:12:57 was that was so, that product was so valuable to the ecosystem. Actually, Jake just told me a story two weeks ago, we just found this out that one of the first companies that we had on the bullpen,

1:13:13 they came on there and they got acquired last year, apparently made good bit of money on it, and the company that acquired them found them from the bullpen. They said that if it wasn't for the

1:13:25 bullpen, that transaction wouldn't have ever happened. And so anyways, long story short, decided to bring it back. bullpen was a terrible name. We branded it to DW. Insight. And DW. Insight

1:13:40 is going to be a subscription product

1:13:44 for EMPs mainly. And then I think financial institutions, private equity funds, hedge funds, VCs, will also have an interest in it, maybe some OFS companies. But there's two parts to the

1:13:55 platform to the product. The first part is a startup database. And so you come on there, and we've already started onboarding a ton of energy tech startups. Each startup has their demo overview

1:14:09 through their clients or additional content. If they've presented it at an energy tech night or they've been on a podcast, we'll have that video up in there. And what this is great for is as simple

1:14:19 as it sounds, this just does not exist that there's not a platform out there. like this. And so now if you're a EMP and just pick a topic, you know, it could be artificial lift optimization or

1:14:32 methane mitigation, boom, you can come in here, low pressure environment. You're not getting sold and you can get an overview and see what companies are out there. And then boom, if I want to

1:14:43 talk to them, you can, you can reach out and talk to them. The alternative to that is if you're looking for something really, the only resources are the stuff that we're producing. So it like,

1:14:51 well, I guess I was podcast, but do you want to go through five years of podcast to like find what you're looking for around, say like a missions tech or artificial lift. Yeah. Same thing with

1:14:58 like energy tech night with the companies that are presenting. It's really a discoverability issue. Yeah. So it channels all of that. So this entire ecosystem of companies that we've ever talked

1:15:06 with or just kind of on our radar, I think it was centralized platform to be able to go and filter down and search for exactly what you're looking for. Yeah. And the second part of the product is

1:15:15 we have created this content search engine. And right now we've uploaded all of our content. So all of our videos from all of our podcasts. of our video recordings from panels and sessions at our

1:15:26 events. And we've even started bringing in third party content. Now we have

1:15:32 the distributed energy resources podcast on there. We have Yoshi's podcast on there, which she's a reservoir engineer, reservoir engineer, super intelligent, very smart engineer. And she has a

1:15:44 podcast that's around oil and gas engineering content. So we've brought that in there. And we've built it on a machine learning model to where you can come in there. And hey, now you're that

1:15:53 production engineer and you're trying to figure out what you're doing on methane emissions. I don't have six hours to listen to a podcast, boom, I type in methane emissions, instantly pops up

1:16:02 every single piece of content that we have on the platform, gives you a transcript, soon won't even have further capability to where you can get, Hey, I want to buy bullet points on this, tell me

1:16:10 the timestamp. That way you can really streamline information. And we think that this product is going to be

1:16:18 already using it internally. That's how we knew that it was going to be great, because we use an internal. for research it is so much easier to go search on DW insight like when I did energy tech

1:16:30 item in land we had Duke do the interview and I Went to DW insight typed in his name boom I mean half a second his video came up and I got what I needed go over to YouTube It was I mean it was very

1:16:44 difficult. It was a difficult process to actually find it over on YouTube And so what are I you know what we really want to be able to do in the future is? You know take information this

1:16:55 unstructured information, you know some engineers talking about artificial lift on collide Take that information take all the content that we create with subject matter experts at visual wall catters

1:17:05 through our podcast and events And then bring in third-party information From you know, I think that SPE APG SGE these technical organizations People like Yoshi that have their podcast and all of a

1:17:18 sudden we have this very robust knowledge graph that can be used to find whatever piece of information that you need. So DW Insight is, it's a content subscription product on the collide platform.

1:17:31 And we just started rolling that out a few weeks ago and talking to ENPs and private equity funds and the reception has been extremely positive too. We think that that's gonna be a powerful tool.

1:17:43 Well, you know, I really, really great batting average. You know, I hate it. You know, I hate it. Y'all are gonna be able to like hold me to everything I say I'm BDE. Hey, Chuck, you said

1:17:54 this. That Chuck's like - Just for the audience. Chuck's like, I lead the audience and sing, or I lead the platform and sing fart. I might chuck this as a research product. Can you please use it

1:18:05 and - Now the worst thing about being around digital wildcatters here with these guys sitting in front of DW Insights is, I'll make some pronunciation about something. Oh, this is what's gonna

1:18:18 happen two seconds later it's like Do you remember when you said this? It's some stupid thing. I said two years ago, like oil's going to 150, you know? Yeah, but it's really the content search

1:18:29 engine that we have already is, it's

1:18:36 pretty amazing. And I think that it'll continue to get more robust over time. But

1:18:42 I think that like use cases will come from it, that I didn't even see like, you know, internally, one of our salespeople, Matt, was using it. And he had a sales call with someone and he knew

1:18:51 that they spoke at Fuse. So he went and searched him up on Fuse and used it for Biz Dev to just get some more context and understanding of the things that they like talking about. And so the way

1:19:02 that we're structuring that product is, it's an annual subscription, enterprise subscription for EMPs. So if you're an EMP, you can pay on an annual subscription and you can get access to the

1:19:14 startup database and the content search engine. But if you're just an individual and you want access to the content search engine, for that on an individual basis and have access to it. And so I

1:19:26 think that that is just the more content that we dump into that thing. It's just gonna continue to get more comfortable over time. Yeah, no, I mean, all the ability in the future to suggest other

1:19:39 stuff, hey, you looked up mud. By the way, here's what's going on with permitting on certain things. Yeah, no, exactly. That's gonna be really cool and - Yeah, exactly. Well, also see over

1:19:48 time, like as you were starting to query new things, it's like, what? How many results does that return, you know, for emissions, I know there's like 75 videos that have the word emissions in

1:19:56 it, at least. Yeah. But you know, if you look up something that's very, very particular, somebody gave me a word through the day and I was like, I haven't even heard this before. We had

1:20:03 nothing on it. It's like, okay, well, maybe we should create some content around this. No, that's exactly right. Yeah, at least still in the white spaces. 'Cause I'll go out on Twitter and

1:20:10 somebody will ask, how are management fees calculated by private equity funds? And I'm like, then everybody know that? Yeah. Nobody does. So I put out a tweet about it, you know, and all, you

1:20:21 know. people are liking it, people are messaging me. Holy cow, I didn't know how that worked. I put it out on Collide. And the thing is, is that the technology didn't exist to do this. Even a

1:20:31 couple of years ago. Yeah. A couple of years ago, even a year ago. You know, we've had the idea for Collide for three years now and have really been developing the thesis, but it wasn't until

1:20:41 the last year where, you know, like I said, dishwalk headers isn't a heavily funded Silicon Valley tech company. I can't go staff up a ton of data scientists and machine learning experts, you

1:20:53 know, these people make, you know, 500 grand a year over at Netflix. And so now being able to take these technologies off the shelf and it still requires a lot of development and tailoring, but

1:21:06 the core technology exists to where it's now economically feasible to be able to build these things. And so it's a, you know, I think it's an exciting time and energy and energy tech. And then

1:21:18 it's also an exciting time just to be building tech Some things exist that didn't exist a short time ago. It's cool, but we started off with the hardest thing first, which is video. And so if you

1:21:28 can index video doing text and blogs and technical papers and all that kind of stuff. It's actually funny because we

1:21:38 found this one problem. It's funny how you always discover these problems as you're building things, but we found one problem, which is on some of our old podcasts, when we'd have sponsors or

1:21:50 advertisers, like a combo curve used to be an advertiser. And so we'd have an overlay on the video that was like the said combo curve. And so now when you search combo curve, it'll bring up that

1:21:59 podcast because it says combo curve in the writing. And so it's funny, like the tools are so good that you have to figure out, you know, like in order. Yeah, it doesn't just detect speech, like

1:22:10 we can actually like any words that are on the screen, it can map that it's got computer vision. So individual people, like I think you're actually I don't think you're the only ones to this. when

1:22:19 it's mapped. So we type in call and anything. Yeah. That's, that's a pretty cool feature too. So I didn't get mapped first. All right, fine. We'll map you. We'll map you. Well, I'm glad

1:22:31 this didn't turn into a job review. I was going to ask for a raise, but maybe not. Do have a, I went out on

1:22:36 Twitter yesterday and I

1:22:41 said, Hey, man, I'm going to have the guys on the podcast and we're just going to kind of talk. I have no idea where it's going to go. Got any questions. Do you have a couple of questions? So

1:22:49 we'll end it. I'm curious

1:22:52 from somebody who shall remain nameless Kermit. Okay. Have they ever gotten to it into a physical altercation with each other outside of jiu-jitsu? No, no, we've grappled with each other at

1:23:04 jiu-jitsu, but not a physical location. Have you ever seen each other naked? I'm creeped out by this. All right, you wanna hear a funny story? What?

1:23:16 No, here's the closest that Jakes probably seen me naked is Rhett, Toby Rice's house. See, you know what I'm talking about. Toby's gonna miss you. Toby's gonna miss you. Suck it on the bank

1:23:29 right now.

1:23:31 Okay. Toby's stress level, just do the room. Just hitting that vape right now. Mine too, Toby. Oh, I have a photo in this one. Rhett, Toby's house And, you know, we're down on the basement,

1:23:40 bowling, drink a little bit of whiskey, and

1:23:48 I can't remember what happened. I said I was 180 pounds, he's like, You're not 180 pounds? He's like, Yeah, dude, I'm 180 pounds, no you're not. So, come here, down on the basement, you

1:23:55 know, they have a gym, and he's got this, like, really fancy scale that, like, does like a 3D management. It's like, Get your underwear now. Get your underwear now. I stripped down, and I'm

1:24:05 like, And my boxers. And Toby's just sitting there, like, analyzing this scale, and Jake's got a picture of it.

1:24:13 I'm going to show you. I'm not going to show the camera.

1:24:18 Wow.

1:24:20 I just got a text. You know, I'm hooked into D. W. Insights. EQT has just withdrawn from their contract.

1:24:30 Here's Toby in the picture. I'm

1:24:34 trying to get there. That's got some mean potential. That's got potential that needs to be destroyed. We've got that one in the vault. All right. Do either of you have a skin allergy to baby oil?

1:24:49 Not to baby oil. No, because the punch line to Kermit's tweet is, would they entertain a pay per view event that involves the first three questions? I was I wonder where he's going with the baby

1:25:03 oil. it all together as Kermit is like I said, I'll do anything for 10, 000 a month. It's really a little more. All right. That was the worst of the questions on Twitter. I think

1:25:17 Lee Sberg came in with Ryan Reynolds or what's the other Ryan? Gosling. Gosling. Oh, Ryan Reynolds, 100. Oh, look at that. Yeah. Nice. Not like Ryan Reynolds. He's funny, dude. Yeah. I

1:25:30 think trashy. Mick Wold trash had some questions, but I missed them. Sorry, trashy. I apologize to you, trashy. Dude, this was cool. It's kind of fun. Yeah. This was fun. So I'm going to

1:25:41 keep it doubting. But he's going to watch it.

1:25:45 Turned to a fun little steal. Check started when he before we got on the podcast, he's like, I've actually never asked y'all how y'all met. And, um, Jake Sander answer was grinder.

1:25:57 But now it's good to tell you how he met. So, there you go. Cool dudes. I met my mother. Her mother.

1:26:05 I botched the title. Yeah, she did. All right. Yeah, she did. Thanks for coming on.