Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast

OGYP #15: tl;dr Oil and Gas Startups, Failure is an Option! Marty Dytrych stops by to talk about his personal journey of being a live music entrepreneur to now co founding the second of his Oil and Gas Startups, Supply 20, that is bringing innovation to Industrial Supply Chain. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later Learn More about Marty Dytrych Connect with Marty on LinkedIn or via Email Learn More about Oil and Gas Startups like Supply 20 Follow Supply 20 on LinkedIn Learn More About the API Young Professionals OGYP Tech Segment: RealWear, head mounted tablet solutions for the connected industrial worker   RealWear.com Join the OGYP Slack Community Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #015 Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP# 15 | Why Oil and Gas Startups Should Fail Fast appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #14: tl;dr Digital Oilfield Friend of the show Mark LaCour stops by to recap the IoT in Oil and Gas conference and discuss technologies on the cutting edge of the Digital Oilfield. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later Learn More about The Digital Oilfield   Energy Conference Network Podcast: Building The Digital Oilfield with Mark LaCour OGYP Tech Segment: RealWear, head mounted tablet solutions for the connected industrial worker   RealWear.com Join the OGYP Slack Community Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #014 and learn about The Digital Oilfield Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #14 | The Digital Oilfield is Here to Stay appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #13: tl;dr Lean Start Up RigBasket Ali Raza of RigBasket walks us through the origins of RigBasket, SaaS starting an Oil and Gas company and the Houston Startup Scene. In the OGYP tech segment Ali explains the Lean Canvas, a lean start up tool. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later Learn More about RigBasket RigBasket.com RigBasket’s Blog Station Houston OGYP Tech Segment: The Lean Canvas; a Lean Start Up Business Plan The Lean Start Up Lean Start Up Application Running Lean Join the OGYP Slack Community Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #013 and learn about RigBasket Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #13|Energy Lean Start Up RigBasket appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #12: tl;dr Oil and Gas Industry: There’s an app for that! Thiago Leite of Leych Company speaks about coding software, oil and gas app development, and why the digital oilfield is here now. Bonus advice on how to learn to code and job opportunities available after you learn. In the OGYP tech segment Thiago explains User Experience versus User Interface. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later Leych company builds apps for Oil and Gas Industry OGYP Tech Segment: User Interface (UI) versus User Experience (UX) Join the OGYP Slack Community Connect with Thiago Leite   The best way to connect with Thiago is via LinkedIn Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #012 and learn about App Development Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #12|Coding Apps in The Oil and Gas Industry appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #11: tl;dr Tech not Petroleum Engineering is the Major Key OGYP Listener Sander Ohnstad interviews James about how to enter Oil and Gas without a Petroleum Engineering Degree, why technology is the key to unlocking the future and some words on solving the world’s energy needs. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later Entering Oil & Gas without a Petroleum Engineering Degree What interested you in the oil industry besides money? What drives you to be so involved in the industry? How can students network from a distance? Should I pursue a Petroleum Engineering Degree What’s the best way to connect with older professionals? One of my mentors has told me that sometimes “the way to the top first requires a move to the side.” His opinion is that sometimes to get to where you want to go you have to sometimes take a position or do something that you don’t want to do in order to get to where you eventually want to go. Would you say this is true? What is the best way to split time as an undergrad? Should grades be the only focus? Or should you divide your time between grades and building your network? How much does GPA actually matter in the hiring process? What is your opinion on working for supermajors? Most of them require you start in a engineering training program where you switch positions every 18-24 months. Is this worth it? Or would it be better to focus on one particular part of the industry and learn as much as you can about it? Anything you wish you had known upon graduation that you would like to pass on? What’s your prediction for the future of the oil and gas industry considering the EPA and mainstream environmental backlash? What is the process of adding value to a company? Students are mostly taught what to do and what to memorize. What are some exercises to start this process of adding value while still in college? What is your view of the IoT and its role in the future of O&G? OGYP Tech Segment: Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) + Pokemon GO Augmented Reality Sample Video Charity Water: A tech enabled charity Augmented Reality via Techcrunch Industrial Augmented Reality Software Wearable Industrial Hardware: Coming Soon Join the OGYP Slack Community Connect with Sander Ohnstad   The best way to connect with Sander is via LinkedIn Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #011 Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #11 | Technology is The New Petroleum Engineering appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #10: tl;dr Cognitive Computing with IBM Watson Scott Kimbleton breaks down the cutting edge technology of IBM’s Watson project and its cloud enabled Cognitive Computing capabilities. Scott walks us through the steps to implement Watson, including machine learning. Then Scott goes over some use case examples and we let our mind run about the capabilities. Finally Scott tells us how we can grasp and use the technology.  Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later About the Digital Oilfield Learn About IBM Watson as recommended by Scott: Main Watson Site Video on how Watson Works Geaux to the Watson News Explorer Watson+Ted|Watson+Twitter Jill (Watson Teaching Assistant) OGYP Tech Segment: API’s (Application Programming Interface) An Application Programming Interface (API) is defined as is a set of routine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software and applications. Bluemix (All of Watson’s API’s) Concepts Insights API on Bluemix Computer World on API’s Join the OGYP Slack Community Connect with Scott Kimbleton and IBM The best way to connect with Scott is via LinkedIn Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #010 to learn about IBM Cognitive Computing Project Watson Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #10 | IBM Watson and Cognitive Computing in Oil and Gas appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #09: tl;dr The Digital Oilfield Mark and I explain the internet of things as we lay out the Digital Oilfield market map including Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, wearables, cyber security and more. Then we discuss how we can unlock the potential of current and aspiring Oil and Gas Entrepreneurs. Finally Mark gives away free consulting and tells us how to crack enterprise sales in Big Oil and resistance to change. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be uploaded later About the Digital Oilfield The Digital Oilfield is part of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which is a segment of The Internet of Things (Iot). Above is a terrific Market Map of the IIoT. It is very helpful to use this chart while listening to begin to understand the bigger picture. Another important thing to note is that the Digital Oilfield doesn’t simply mean Oil & Gas Vertical Technology but refers to the IoT in the Energy business. The subsegments here span both hardware and software and include: Wearables, optimizing Manufacturing and Supply chain, Network & sensors development, Big Data Analytics, cyber security and more. Powerful companies are being, and will be built within the Digital Oilfield and this is a massive area of growth. I highly recommend that OGYP’s educate themselves about IoT/IIoT/Digital Oilfield and begin to think how you can fit into the picture. I try to share articles related to IoT as much as possible on Linkedin, twitter etc. As Peter Thiel says in his book, Zero to One, ask yourself, what valuable Digital Oilfield companies is no one building? Can you and your company or startup build it? OGYP Tech Segment: Hardware Vs. Software Hardware, in tech terms, is the physical aspect of computers, cell phones, tablets and other devices. Software is defined as the programs and other operating information used by a computer. To use an iPhone as an example: The actual phone you wait in line at the apple store for hours on release day to buy is a piece of hardware The software is what installed is on it, iOS, or the apps you download. Great examples of Oil and Gas Hardware would include: Wired Drill Pipe Rugged Industrial Cell Phones Examples of Oil and Gas Software you may be familiar with: GDS Ware Biota Join the OGYP Slack Community Connect with Mark LaCour and Modalpoint: modalpoint.com Mark’s Contact Info: Email LinkedIn Mark’s Podcasts: Oil and Gas This Week The Oil and Gas Careers Show Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #09 to learn about The Digital Oilfield Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #09|Building the Digital Oilfield with Mark LaCour appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #08: tl;dr Australia Oil and Gas In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, we talk to  OGYP listener Joshua Minniecon about growing up in Australia, how he got into Oil and Gas, and how he used technology to connect directly to the community in America. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Video to be Added Later About Our Guest: Josh Minniecon To be added later The easiest way to connect with Josh is on Linkedin. Join the OGYP Slack Channel: Just Input your Email Address on the right Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #08 with Josh Minniecon Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #08|Australia Oil and Gas is in the Building! appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #07: tl;dr Starting Your Career/Job In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, I drop a solo episode. First I talk share my personal productivity secrets. Then I give some tips on how to start your new job, internship or career the right way. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube Podcast Video to be Uploaded Later Career Tips Show up early the first few weeks Sit down with your supervisor Mastering Work Communication: Get to inbox Zero Ask Questions & Continuous Learning. Be hungry Be curious about other people’s jobs & lives Care about and ask if you can help solve your coworker’s problems OGYP Tech Segment: Get to Inbox Zero with GTD+Evernote Getting Things Done by David Allen The Secret Weapon (Tons of Awesome Video Walkthroughs) Get Evernote Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #07 and Start Your Career Off Right Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #07| Starting Your New Job or Career in Oil & Gas appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #06: tl;dr Cyber Security In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, Jessica Patterson discuss growing up around the Oil & Gas industry, oil and gas cyber security, and how you can be more secure in your everyday life. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Jessica Patterson Jessica Patterson is a rising young professional in Cybersecurity as the Territory Development Manager for Check Point Software Technologies. She is responsible for new client acquisitions, educating the market on the latest emerging technologies, and increasing brand awareness for her firm. She is passionate about being a catalyst for change and empowering people to believe in their greatness. Whenever she is not at work, she can be found teaching heated powerful flow yoga classes at BIG Power Yoga in Houston. Jessica is an avid runner and recently completed the New York City where Check Point Software sponsored her and donated $1,200 to the American Cancer Society. She cares about people, technology, and continuing to grow as a professional through the evolving business world. Jessica is a highly motivated, go-getter and has her sights on receiving a MBA. Jessica likes to make Beyonce references and is passionate about Women in IT initiatives as she is going to found the TedXWomeninTechHouston event this October. The easiest way to connect with Jessica is on Linkedin, Twitter or Instagram. OGYP Tech Segment: Be less busy with Slack Learn more about Cyber Security, as recommended by Jessica: http://krebsonsecurity.com  http://blog.checkpoint.com https://infragard.org Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #06 with Jessica Patterson Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Subscribe to the Future of Oil, Gas & Energy Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat The post OGYP #006| Oil and Gas Cyber Security with Jessica Patterson appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #05: tl;dr Oil and Gas Software In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, Jake Corley of GDS Ware gives us his story, how he Co-founded an Oil and Gas software startup, the Oil and Gas Data Problem, Funding and Venture Capital & finally, how to know if you’re ready to be an Entrepreneur. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Jake Corley Born and raised in Houston, Jake Corley is a Co-Founder of GDS Ware and is responsible for overseeing and guiding the day-to-day operations of GDS Ware. He also presides over Administrative, Sales, Client Relations, Marketing and Support Departments while ensuring departments meet individual monthly, quarterly and annual goals. Before Co-Founding GDS, Jake served in the United States Marine Corps. The easiest way to connect with Jake is on Linkedin. To learn more about GDS Ware, visit their website. OGYP Tech Segment: What is the Cloud and where is it? What is the Cloud and where is it? via Gizmodo Where to start learning how to code, as recommended by Jake Code Academy Code.org Khan Academy Learn More About The Houston Tech, & Oil and Gas technology scene Station Houston Start Houston Society of Oil and Gas Entrepreneurs Kirk Coburn’s Blog: The Anarchist Cookbook for Entrepreneurs solving the World’s Energy Problems The Mercury Fund (Venture Capital) Houston Technology Center Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #05 with Jacob Corley Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Follow The OGYP Pod & Related Projects Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook OGYP #05: Oil and Gas Software with Jake Corley [0:00:00] James: Welcome to the corner of oil, gas and technology. This is episode five of the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast and I’m your host, James Gordey. Today, Jake Corley of GDS Ware gives us his story, how he co-founded an oil and gas startup, the Oil and Gas Data problem, Funding and Venture Capital and, finally, how to know if you’re ready to be an entrepreneur. All right. On this week’s show, we have Jake Corley, co-founder of GDS Ware. Jake, welcome and thanks for giving me your time. Jake: Hey, thanks for having me, James. James: Okay. So, one question we always start off with, Jake, how did you get in oil and gas and how did you find yourself now at GDS Ware? Jake: Oh, man. You want the short answer or the long answer? James: The somewhat long answer. Jake: The somewhat long answer. Okay. Never did I ever think that I would end up in oil and gas. And I really come to love the industry. I guess, it all started — let us kind of go back a little bit on my background, I guess. I have a pretty heavy tech background, started off in hardware side. In high school, I was working at a tech company, doing one of like car dealership systems called Universal Computer Systems or UCS for short. And then they actually merged with Reynolds and Reynolds. So, that’s kind of what the company is known as how. There’s a lot of people who know that company. And so I started working there in high school. I built computer systems for them, computers/robotic systems. So, I had a tech background. I joined the Marine Corps back in 2009. So, they saw that background as kind of an asset. So actually, I went into communications maintenance from there. So, still doing more tech stuff. So, that really involved things like any kind of communication [0:01:50] [Indiscernible] field or out in deployment so they can be radio gear or data communication systems gear, fixing that down to the component or card level. After that, after– James: Where were you located when you did this? Were you kind of traveling all around in the field? Jake: It was all over the place, mostly California. Whenever you go into the military, they send you to your school to kind of learn your trade there and I was Twentynine Palms which is about 45 minutes from Palm Springs. It’s in the desert. So, I was there for a year kind of learning the communications maintenance gig. And then from there I was stationed in Camp Pendleton California which is right smacked out in between San Diego and Los Angeles. So, it was a beautiful area. I loved it. I miss it. But after doing that for so long, I was kind of burned out on the hardware side. And I kind of wanted to dive into being a developer, writing code, building things. I’ve always been a builder. So, that’s what I wanted to do. So, when I got out, I moved back to Houston, started going to school for computer science. I was working. I felt like I needed a job that was really, really flexible with going to school. And so I become a personal trainer. I got certified while I was in the Marine Corps. And that allowed me to make good money but also kind of make my own hours, kind of did that around school. So it was like the perfect gig there. And I loved what I did. It was fun. And that is actually how I got into oil and gas. So, I met my now business partner through the gym. We kind of just met by chance. I heard that he was a developer. We started a conversation. He had been developing ever since he was in his teens and he’s about 40 now. And he offered to kind of be my mentor. I kind of blocked off Tuesdays and Thursdays of my schedule and he did the same thing. We would get together and he would teach kind of like the worldwide way to actually write code other than learning in classroom. James: How much coding knowledge did you have before that? Were you watching videos online and try and learn? Did you learn that at school? Was he really helping you learn more quickly than you would be able to on your own? Jake: I learned more in my little mentorship with him than I ever did in school or on my own. I did watch a lot of videos. There’s a lot of interactive tools and stuff online like Code Academy, Code.org. Khan Academy has some good stuff. That’s K-H-A-N Academy. They teach, of course, a whole bunch of different things but coding is one of those. But the Alchemy Interactive platform better, like something like Code Academy because you actually are required to write code kind of before you can go to the next lesson. So, it kind of lets you be able to be more hands on rather than just watching videos. And that’s kind of our mentorship, was to– [0:05:00] It was kind of like a mix between interactive side and kind of like school in a way. You cover some basic concepts of kind of like the next project that he wanted me to do. And he would say, “Okay, well, here’s what I want you to build. And if you have questions, ask me.” He was like, “You can ask me as many questions as you want.” James: It was just you and him just sitting down learning? Jake: Yeah, just me and him. He was like, “Here’s your deadline and here’s what I want you to build.” He was like, “This is the real world. This is how developers work. So, you should learn the way that you work.” James: And I’ve heard, and I’m trying to figure this out on my own in my own off time and at night, but did you learn a specific language? Did he recommend one specifically or were you kind of learning HTML? How does that work? Because for a lot of people, coding is [0:05:49] [Crosstalk]. Jake: Yeah, that’s a great question. James: Myself included. It’s black box, what is coding and all that? Jake: That’s a good question. And the bigger question that nobody really ever covers and you don’t really learn this until you actually writing code is what do you want to write code for? Do you want to go on certain devices? Do you want to go web based? Do you want to be a very database driven? Do you want to go enterprise level software? You better figure out what you want and do some research on what are some of the best languages for that. I started off with — within school, you don’t have a choice. They throw a language at you. And even within the same school, from class to class, if I didn’t pay attention, I’d come into like say Computer Science I, that was the generic name, and you start off learning Java. And then I accidentally signed for Com Sci II, which I thought was a follow on, but it was Com Sci II to not Java but to C Sharp. So, I was happy to learn– James: Absolutely different. Jake: Yeah. And they’re completely different from syntax. That’s the only difference between the languages. It’s the syntax and the order of things and kind of the nomenclature used to call methods and where you actually go to code. But once you kind of learn one language, a lot of the methodology really translates from language to language. James: Okay, got it. But you really have to figure out what you really want to build. And so when I started with him, I kind of dive into the Java and to C Sharp or, no, C++. And then with him, it was C Sharp, ASP.NET, very Windows driven, really good for like enterprise level software. That’s what he pretty much — I mean, he had experienced a lot of things but that was the stuff that he has done most of his career. And so that was completely new to me once again. So, we started there. And then, let’s see. Where do we go from there? Okay, yes. So, he’s my mentor for a while. James: What year was that? Jake: This was 2013. James: Okay. Jake: 2013. I was fresh out of the Marine Corps, just started this mentorship. And then he showed me what is now our product. He had been building it over the course of — I think at that point it was going on about four years. He was building the product that is now GDS. I asked him. I was like, “What are you doing with this?” And he was like, “Well, that’s been a project.” James: What does GDS stand for? Jake: There’s really no meaning behind it. He picks some letters and it is what it is. James: Okay, keep going. Jake: A lot of people ask that. And I’m like, I wish there was a really good meaning behind it but really not. So, we were sitting around having coffee, doing whatever our mentorship things. We’re planning on taking it to the next level. I was going to start diving deep into the databases. And we both kind of just stopped and thought, “Hey, well, why don’t we turn this into a company?” And we kind of got the wheels turning. We were like, okay, if we wanted to start a company, what would that look like? James: What was the initial product? What did he imagine it being? Or was he just doing it as a hobby? Jake: He grew up in oil and gas. His family works very closely in oil and gas and so he kind of knew the problems that existed. And so, he built this in a way kind of from what his experiences were to really solve all the problems that these companies were experiencing, which we can get into in a second, kind of dive deep into that. And so — so, where was I going with that? James: What does the company look like? Jake: Oh, yes. So, what does the company look like? And so we kind of thought about it. I was in the middle of the semester that time at school. I had a secure job. He was the CIO of a company at that time. But luckily for him, he had a lot of free time because kind of being at the top he just made his own schedule. James: Was that an oil company or tech company or both? Jake: No, that was a tech company. James: Okay. [0:10:00] Jake: In a completely different sector. But he’s had a lot of oil experience. So, we kind of thought about it for a while. A couple of months went by. And this was like early 2014. And we pulled the trigger on it. So, I left my job. I finished out my semester. We got an office, set it all up. We had no plans at this point. We got funding pretty early on, some private investors. James: Can you go back a little bit there? Jake: Yeah. James: I’m going to ask two questions here. What does that first office look like? Because that’s a startup from the ground up. Was it just you and him with your computers on the boxes they came in? What sort of office set up we got going here? Jake: So, we were kind of fortunate at first. Whatever we first started doing, we were kind of just doing it at our house but we felt like that was going to be our full time gig and we needed a place to call our office. Luckily we had connections on getting some office space for practically free. And so we capitalized on that, which was kind of funny because it was way bigger than we ever needed. And there’s just like the two of us. And so we both had offices right next to each other within this big office. James: It was like you were in office spaces. It wasn’t like co-working space or anything? Jake: No, no. This was actually like our office space. James: So, it’s not like Station or Start Houston, nothing like that? It’s like an actual office space. Jake: No, that was 100% ours. We came in there and there was this hideous like forest green, the whole office. I don’t know what it was before. We were like in a lawyer’s office or something. James: Did you paint? Jake: Yeah, we painted. That was like our first day. It was like, man, we cannot look at this every day. James: Throw it on the white board, we got to paint. Jake: Yeah. The first thing we did. So, before we even moved in. So, we got our wives out there and we bought some nice gray or white paint or something and painted the whole office and made it look nice. That was kind of our first step in taking ownership of the place and then I think it kind of helped us feel like the place was ours. James: Okay. So, you got the office. And then the second question I wanted to ask. You sort of just said we got some funding. But a lot of people don’t know what that’s like. I know the startup podcast, they talked a little bit about it. But that’s on a different scale. This is in oil and gas. How does a startup get funding? How did you get funding? You had some connections maybe? Jake: This one was through — yeah, this was through people that we knew. And this kind of goes into knowing people and networking really, really helps. Because of the network now and through everybody that I know with oil and gas entrepreneurs and API and everybody that I’ve met outside of that and just kind of my own networking, if I needed to start a new venture and I needed funding, there’s many people who would give me funding based on just knowing me. And that’s not to sound like cocky or anything but it’s just that your network is your net worth. And a lot of people don’t understand what that means. That means literally if you need funding, that’s like the first people that you should go to for funding. James: Were these venture capitalists or these people in your network, did they get a percentage of GDS Ware as it was at that time? Jake: Yes, yes, in exchange for equity. It’s just like shark tank. James: Can you tell us about that? I mean, I don’t know. I’m just curious because this is something you don’t really get a peek into very often. Jake: So, with this, it was — we pretty much negotiated an amount and an equity stake. It was very favorable for us. James: And then put evaluation on it so now like we’re worth this much? Jake: Yes and no. We really never even — Honestly, evaluation, whenever we got funding, never came into my mind. Because the way that I see it — and this is something you see on shark tank all the time. You see these guys come on there and they say, “I want $200,000 for X%.” And they’re like, “Hey, we’re valued at, we believe we’re valued at $3 million.” And it’s like, “Well, how many sales do you have?” It’s like, [0:14:09] [Indiscernible]? You don’t have any sales, you’re not valued at anything. And that’s what stage we were at. We didn’t have any sales. We didn’t have any clients. James: So, you just need some money to kind of build the company and get it up off the ground. Jake: Yeah. We needed some money to get off the ground and kind of just help us grow and scale, hold us over until we can actually start making money because we were still pre-revenue. So, I never really thought about evaluation because I thought we were valued at nothing until we actually made money. James: Yeah. Jake: And so, I think a lot of people need to actually look at their businesses that way. They get caught up in just raising — So many entrepreneurs, especially in Silicon Valley, they’re just always constantly striving towards the next round of funding, which in a sense, like taking funding should be like a terrible day for you because you’re giving away parts of your company. James: Exactly. Jake: And a lot of people were like, “Oh, yeah, I’m just going to give this way.” [0:15:01] And then they work eight or nine years and they have an exit and they own like 0.6% of their company and it takes a lot smaller more chunk than they could have. And a lot of people, if you can, not necessarily pull on boot strap, but if you can at least try to save as much, not necessarily save money, but not waste as much money– James: Maintain a hold on to the company? Jake: Yeah. Maybe have a little bit more patience in certain growth periods instead of thinking that throwing money at all of your problems is going to make your company grow a lot faster because that’s not always the case. Because if you’re doing all the wrong things and you throw more money at it you’re just wasting more money. Now perhaps it’s maybe the way that you position the market or the way that you’re targeting clients, it could be a sales or marketing problem, it could be a product problem, it could be a management problem. But a lot of people are under the impression that, okay, we’ll raise $20 million. We’ll just going to hire a whole bunch of people and the problems are going to go away. And that’s not necessarily the case. And I think we’ve seen that with a lot of startups right now. Not in oil and gas base but just in general. That’s kind of why we’re in a huge startup bubble. But that’s a whole another topic. James: Okay. So, yeah, I got distracted because I just wanted to let people hear more about that. So, you get your funding and you get your office and now you’re building the company and the product, right? Jake: Yeah, we are building — So, the products, I mean, like I said, it’d had already been built for the past four years. And so, initially, it was like we’re coming to the office and like, okay, what do we do? How do you run a startup? Let’s figure this out. What do we need to do with our days? So, at first, it was a lot of me really learning oil and gas. It was learning our product. It was learning exactly where we fit in the market. James: Is this the part– Jake: I needed to. Which– James: Is this the part where we talk about what you all do and the problems are fixed or is that later still? Jake: We can jump into that. James: Okay. Jake: So, I mean, of course, before I started the company, I should probably talk a little bit about I did my due diligence. I did research other companies in the space. My partner had shown me a bunch of different pieces of software that were out there. And so it made sense. I just didn’t dive into something blind and kind of hope that we had product fit because it definitely made sense. I saw the problems out there. And then as I’ve gone along this journey, it’s even more prevalent these days. So, really the problem, I guess we can talk about this, the problem in oil and gas is it’s really a data problem. It’s an upstream, midstream, downstream. We are specifically in upstream. Our software is specifically for E&P companies, which is exploration and production companies. So, anybody who actually pulls oil and natural gas out of the ground and sell it. So, those are the people that we target. How do I frame this problem? The problem is, I mean, in kind of the most basic sense, oil and gas service upstream lags behind by about 20 years in terms of technology. James: Lags behind who or what? Jake: Behind other industries. If you look at financial or you look at medical, these guys usually have some of the latest technologies. They embrace change. They embrace the latest technologies. They take risks on startups. And upstream oil and gas is complete opposite. The guys are completely set in their ways and not embrace new technologies. They think that they’ve been doing things the same way for 50 to 100 years, why should they ever change? And so because of that, it’s kind of just like this mindset that you’ll see with an upstream and this has resulted in these companies still operating on actual paper, spreadsheets, hundreds if not thousands of spreadsheets and then probably some various antiquated pieces of software that was built probably in early ’90s and the mid ’90s.  And so there’s a lot of ways that they can actually improve the way that they run their businesses. Problem is that a lot of these companies, they’re using paper, they’re using spreadsheets, they’re using software. So, what do use information data for? You use your information data to make decisions. So, the way these guys are making decisions is they’re looking through paper, they’re looking through the spreadsheets, looking through the software and trying to make decisions based off of that. So, in 2016, whenever we have everything in absolute real time, we’re able to find out anything you want to know via Google and the internet and your smart phone. But these guys don’t know how many wells they have online in any given time. [0:20:00] They don’t know how much oil and gas they’re producing at any given time. They don’t know how much money they’re making or how much money they’re losing. James: Yes, specifically losing right now. Jake: Yeah. There’s a lot of issues with that. So, what we do is we provide them with a central cloud-based software that allows them to collect information, manage the information, analyze the information and then report on it either internally or to the regulatory agencies. And that we call this kind of more like an end to end solution, so it covers production operations, accounting, regulatory, engineering and so on and so forth. Because the problem is that the information is disparate. You get it all over the place. It’s dispersed in many different locations. So providing them with a single location and actually base the decisions on the information and store it, therefore, you can increase the efficiency of your operations. That’s kind of the basic overview. And then, of course, with that, you can automate certain things. You can set reminders. You can set thresholds. James: Is there an app? Jake: What’s that? James: Is there an app used on your computer? Is that just anywhere? Jake: It’s completely web based. We actually give them a URL and then they log in from there. We do have data applications as well for the field data collection side, wherever they’re actually capturing gauge entries or run tickets or well status reports, anything like that. They can enter that on their iPhone or Android phone, Windows phone, doesn’t matter. James: Okay. And it all feeds into this one central system? Jake: Yeah, exactly. Because it has a lot of other systems that are not — If it’s not cloud based then you’re maintaining — A lot of times what I see in individual database on each individual computer, that has to be probably updated from a main database, which kind of results in a lot of problems. We really don’t suffer that way anymore because of that. You can just have different information, which is really, in the most basic sense, no different than having a bunch of different spreadsheets with the same information. It kind of creates a data integrity problem because you’re never sure whether you can trust the data or not. You’re never sure if that was the last accurate measurement or last accurate value that should have been in there whenever you have maybe ten spreadsheets for the same thing. James: So, are all of these things that you just talked about, is that the data problem we’re we hear about? Jake: Yes. So, this is the data problem. And this is the problem from the smallest oil and gas companies, mom-and-pop shops, okay, this is the problem for them. Not as a big of a problem because logistically speaking the operations are a lot more simple. And running an upstream oil and gas company is– we’re joining a logistics company. James: Okay. Jake: So, as you grow more people, as you grow more wells in more states in different places, it just becomes logistically more challenging because your operations are spread out across the entire US most of the time. James: Can you run the bulk of your company on the GDS software? Jake: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, exactly. But that’s really the vision, is they shouldn’t need– James: All these other antiquated or not connected things. Jake: Yeah, exactly. With the exception of a few things. Like we don’t get into the seismic side, the geospatial, kind of like the geosciences. We don’t really get into any of that. It’s highly technical. It’s highly specialized. But we built the system in a way to work if they wanted to somehow view that information. Within GDS, they can do so. James: Okay. Jake: So, we’re not trying to get too much into the geology side. We have a lot of engineering tools. But, yeah, but not so much on the geology side. James: Okay, got it. That makes sense. And then what’s the — So, people, they have, like the way they collect and report on this data is all connected. But I was at OTC a  couple of weeks ago and they were also speaking about the companies and the operators, these E&P people that don’t want to give up their data for their drill because that’s their secret sauce and that’s what they view as their competitive differentiator. Is that related to this at all? Jake: That’s only a problem — I’ve only seen that be a problem with supermajors. James: Okay. Jake: So, Chevon, Shell, ConocoPhilips, those kind of guys, I’d been in meetings with all of them and whenever you start talking specifics they kind of get hush-hush and they just give you the look like, “Hey, we can’t talk about that.” It’s not so taboo in a way with most operators especially if they’re one of my clients like I’m going to see all of your data. [0:25:01] Like I have to put this in here for you. We have to go through a nice long implementation. So there’s really no way necessarily around that. But nobody has really, yeah, nobody is as secretive about that as the supermajors. James: The big guys Jake: Because they really do feel that is their secret sauce. James: Okay. And so, all of these, these are all the problems you solved. But doesn’t this present some problems for startups in general trying to attack this base because these people, they don’t view change as something that they can make improvement to the better. They view that as we have works and let’s just keep doing it like that. Jake: Yeah. I mean, that’s a huge problem that you have to overcome. And that’s something every time we go into a company to talk to them it’s more of a — I mean, it’s a long process to start off with. Sales cycles in this industry especially for what we do is 12 to 18 months. So, you have to build relationship and you have to let them know that you care about the way that they do business. You have to take on the trusted adviser. Yeah, I mean, they really have to trust you. Of course, you have to have a good product or service. It’s a big part of that. But I think one of the problems that you see with a lot of startups is that they don’t have a good sales team or marketing team. And I think with the oil and gas, I mean, especially with most people that I’ve seen coming in, they’re kind of [0:26:32] [Indiscernible] within oil and gas and so there might be really technical but they don’t have any sales experience or marketing experience and they really don’t know how to relay that message into layman’s terms of here’s kind of our valued proposition, here’s how we can help your business. They would talk about the features of the product and features and features and features, not like what are some of the benefits? Why would this company want to use your service or product? James: Yeah. Like what things am I dealing with that we fix right here with this software, or that our company could fix for you? Jake: So startups getting in, want to break down my barrier, for one, they need to understand the problem that they’re trying to solve and then they need to understand the people that they’re selling to very, very, very well. So, the only way to really do that is to spend time. So, if you got a client on board spend time. Go to their office. Spend time with their engineers like I’ve done. Learn exactly how they do their jobs. So that way you can understand the problems first hand. And, therefore, you can build you, either your product or build your services even better. James: Would you say that things that you described, that’s how you all dealt with the problems, just getting to know the people and the business and spending time with the potential customers? Jake: Yeah, exactly. We spent a whole bunch of time talking to a whole lot of different companies asking millions and millions of questions, really trying to get inside their head as to what their day looks like. And for the most part, say you talk to an engineer, their days is generally for the most part, the same. But different engineers, different environments, different companies experience different problems. That kind of helps us drive where we want to build the product next and more ways that we can actually provide value to these guys. James: Okay. That all sounds good. You mentioned your network that you’ve sort of accrued over time and that your, what did you say, your network is your net worth? Jake: Mm-hmm. James: Okay. There’s a lot of people you’re talking about too like the oil and gas technology and startups scene. Is that mostly centralized in Houston or are there other companies trying to take technology and make improvements for the better? Who are these people that you’re talking about? What are they doing? How can people learn about them? Or I don’t know if there’s any sort of central hub for all of this but let’s get these people talking to each other, how can people listening now learn about this stuff and more about software and technology in oil and gas? Jake: I think a good place to start is to come, if people want to like learn more about startups and stuff, within the oil and gas space, they can come join us. I’m one of the, I guess, kind of co-founders, organizers, for the Society of Oil and Gas Entrepreneurs. That’s a good place to start. I would say at this point, where we’re at — It’s a good measure to actually run startups and it’s, I think, more so now with our members. It’s more people who are just, they’re really intrigued and they’re interested. They have may have some ideas. They want to make their leap from the nine to five to kind of the entrepreneur life. And so that’s where we get a lot of. James: How do you make that leap? Do you have to just start doing it after five, after the nine to five? Or do you just kind of take a leap and figure it out and start working on it? Jake: That’s a really tough question to answer. James: Play both sides of the fence until you have some sales and some business? [0:30:00] Jake: I mean, it depends. And that’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Because I’ve had people ask me that question more than not. It seems like everybody I run into that hasn’t made the leap, like how do you make the leap? Or they come up with a million excuses as to why they cannot make the leap. They’ll be like, “Oh, I’m married. I have kids.” I was like, “Hey, I was married. I don’t have kids but I was married when I started this company.” I took a very large pay cut. We weren’t paying ourselves very generously. It was definitely a struggle. But I think to kind of go from ground zero, if you want to be an entrepreneur, for the love of God, please solve the real problem. Because, I say that because they talked to some people who are like, yeah, I’m getting into the space and I’m starting a messaging app or I’m making a social network. Or I run a team of offshore developers India. It’s like, come on, guys. There’s a million of these out there. Go out there. Look at the world around you and think what could be better? And that can be within oil and gas. That can be within the daily life, it can be anything. I would never, if I was working at the good nine to five job, I would never just quit my job to go start something that I thought was like, “Yeah, this is kind of cool. Maybe this is the way for me to like go the business route.” You’d be passionate. You’d be really, really passionate about the problems that you’re solving because the entrepreneurial journey is a hard one. Last two years had been extremely difficult. There’s been many times where it was pretty hard to bear, lots and lots of rejections, lots and lots of failures, lots of things to learn from. And nobody ever talks about that. Everybody always sees the Mark Zuckerbergs or the WhatsApp guys, the Instagram guys that are making trillions of dollars and they seem to kind of do that overnight even though they really didn’t do it overnight. And so I think a lot of people who are kind of getting into the space think that — they have unrealistic expectations. Let’s not think of the golden app or a company. I think even we were that way. We thought that we were going to be billionaires overnight. And that’s not the reality. Most overnight successes take about eight to ten years. So, if you’re going to dedicate eight to ten years of your life for something, make sure it’s a good idea so you’re not going to look back and be like, “Man, I really wish I didn’t waste my, waste eight to ten years of my life try to sell a pet rock.” Make sure you’re like really into what you’re doing. And that’s like the best advice that I give anybody who is like looking of getting into the space. But if you have an awesome idea, if you have the passion, you’re a little bit resourceful, I think it’s all it really takes. And you just got to be really, really, really driven. And I think some of that can be learned, but I think some of that you should just be born with. And I think some people have that inside them and they all know it and other people think they have it but they really don’t. And what I mean by that is these last two years, anybody who knows me knows that I work extremely long hours. I work weekends. I don’t really take days off. When I’m on vacation I’m working. I’m on the laptop. I’m on the phone. You have to be completely obsessive about what you do in your startup. And then maybe you’ll be successful. I’m not saying that I’m like the bench mark for success or anything but that’s what I’ve learned so far. If you’re not willing to work extremely, extremely hard, the competition will knock you off or you will never even penetrate the market to begin with. James: Are there a lot of oil and gas startups? Have you gone to know a lot of people like this? Because like you said, the sales cycle is so long and all these projects, they’re so complex. You have to know a lot about them and it takes a lot. You can’t just build an app and, like you said, be a billionaire overnight. Jake: Surprisingly enough, for being networked in the oil and gas, there’s actually not many people that I’ve ran into that actually run startups within oil and gas. I think you’ve got like some of the old SURGE guys which I’ve run into some of them at OTC and it’s something like sort of [0:34:15] [Indiscernible]. James: The surge guys? Jake: I know a lot of them kind of — yeah, like the SURGE guys. James: I mean, I know who they are but the people that are listening. Jake: Yeah. SURGE was a startup accelerator in oil and gas space. Kirk Coburn, he’s a founder. He shut that down last month. He kind of posted a long — I think he posted about why it wasn’t going to work. And so now, that’s shut down. He still has his obligations to the startups there, which that’s a whole another topic. There’s a whole lot of issues with that. There’s some new guys in town, Station Houston. I’m not really sure what their business model is. I don’t know if that’s just co-working space with mentorship or if it’s also an accelerator. I don’t really know. [0:35:02] But, yeah, I think the state of the startup community, I think there’s a good startup community here but I think it’s very dispersed. I don’t think it’s a very unified scene. A lot of people got the Start Houston. Now you got Station Houston. James: And outside of Houston or, like you said, maybe they’re not just that many people attacking the oil and gas industry in general with fixing problems. Like if I’m anywhere around the world, because a lot of people are in Texas or in Houston that are listening to this show but there are people around this country or in the world that are listening. Jake: Yeah. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of companies coming into technical problems with oil and gas. James: Would you say there’s problems to be solved then? Jake: Yeah, there’s definitely problems to be solved but I feel like because oil and gas is like this big scary industry where there’s a lot of barriers to entry and some of that is just the habits of the people within, kind of their mindset but it’s also it can be very capital expensive to enter, I think because of that most people shy away. They think I could never solve this problem. I could never get the funding to do this. And that’s not necessarily the case. James: What are the funding sources? Because through my own research, I have found that there’s the Houston Angel Network and then I know that all of the big oil and gas companies have corporate venture arms. If someone was, if they think they have a good idea, where would they go and look for funding? Who are these people? What are the funding sources? Jake: So, first and foremost, if you have a good product or service and you want funding, my best suggestion is try to at least sell something at first. Because going to an investor empty handed looks terrible. If you do that and if you can blow up enough notoriety kind of like the grassroots way, funding will find you. You don’t have to look for funding. I know a lot of people that there are always saying, “Hey, I need to find funding. Do you know anybody? I need to find funding.” And most of the time it’s just because their products or services are not good enough or maybe they haven’t sold it yet. I’ve had many, many people approached us since we got funding to give us another round of funding. And it just becomes kind of easy. It actually kind of becomes annoying sometimes with people constantly calling to fund you. James: Are you allowed to say who those people are? Probably not. Yeah, okay. Jake: I don’t know. There’s a few offhand. Chevon Technology Ventures. We were in touch with them at one point. We didn’t need the funding so we didn’t take it. That’s a good place to start if you’re in oil and gas looking to solve a problems but the — With Chevon Technology Ventures or — Those supermajors have really their own kind of like type of funds, it seems these days. Chevon does, Conoco does, BP does. James: Are they oil and gas, I guess, venture capitalist firms or like — I know here in town there’s Mercury and a couple other funds maybe. Where can people go? Jake: I don’t know any guys over at Mercury. I know they’re kind of oil and gas-centric. So, I mean, that could be a good place to start. James: So, just any funding sources in general? They don’t have to be oil and gas specific, just if you have a good product or service and you’re selling things people will fund you like you said? Jake: It really depends on what you’re looking for in investments. So, it depends on the structure of investment that you want. But I think one of the big things when taking in investment especially if you’re — Say, you really want to get into oil and gas and you have some experience but you’re not like a complete expert in the field that you’re going into but you know there’s a problem and you want to solve it, it’s probably better to get with an investor who has connections within oil and gas or has a deep understanding of oil and gas rather than going to investor outside of oil and gas and you’re just taking his money. If you find an investor within oil and gas, you can at least take some of that experience, take some of that network and I think that will really help you along to the next stage. That’s a huge thing to consider whenever taking funding is, do you want them to be a mentor. I think that should be a conversation. That should be almost like a two-way interview whenever taking funding. It shouldn’t be just like, hey, you pitch to an investor. It’s like what can you offer me? What can you offer my company? Why should I invest? Why should I take your money? As opposed to taking somebody else’s money or some other firm’s money. Because you need that to be a good fit. That needs to be a good mutual understanding. And if you’ve never taken funding before, obviously, investors have an endgame. They have their own end goal. So, they’re looking for an exit. They’re looking for merger acquisition of some sort or IPO. [0:40:04] And if you don’t plan on doing those and you’re probably not going to get funding. That’s just how it works. Because, I mean, they’re looking to make money on their money. And if you just want to grow your company forever and not go IPO or if you’re private then you’re not going to get funding. So, that’s just kind of the low down on that. James: Okay. So, if people want to learn more about you or reach out to you, how should they do so? Jake: If you want to learn more about me, I guess, I’m most active probably on LinkedIn. You can go to LinkedIn and search Jacob Corley. Or if you want to learn more about GDS Ware, kind of find out what we do, you can go to www.gdsware.com. Yeah, that’s it. I don’t really do the whole — I mean, I have Twitter but I don’t really do the whole Twitter thing. James: Okay. All right, Jake. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on today. Jakes: Thanks, James. [Background music] James: When you hear this music, that means you’re listening to the OGYP tech segment. Today, we’ll answer the questions: What is the cloud and where is it? So, in simple terms, I did a bunch of research, and basically what the cloud is, is a network of computers connected to the Internet that collect and carry information. The cloud got started in the mid ’90s when engineers started drawing a cloud picture to refer to all the connected computers that talk to each other. In 1996, engineers at Compaq first coined the term cloud computing. And less than a year later, in 1997, at the same sort of conferences that today’s iPhones get announced at called WWDC, Apple’s then CEO Steve Jobs described what would later become the iCloud. Instead of only storing files on your computer, on your personal hard drive, today, you pay Apple and Google or insert big tech company, their storing gives you the ability to access it on their servers. The cloud, allowing companies like GDS Ware to build software to help solve the oil and gas data problem or let you access yourself your selfie or Excel spreadsheet anywhere that’s connected to the Internet. You’re free to reach out to me if you’d like to learn more about the specific technology segment be covered here or topic that you don’t understand. To watch Steve Jobs’ old school WWDC speech or if you’d like to learn more about the cloud, you can visit the show notes at jamesgordey.com/ogyp5. All right. We go from learning about the cloud to the cloudy identity of the one person who left a review since the last episode. We have one 5-star review from Anonymous. I appreciate the review. And also that means that basically everyone who’s listening to the show has not left a review. And the reason I’m asking for that is it’s the number one thing you can do to help the show. As DJ Khaled would say, it’s the major key. And the reason it’s that is because it helps put the show to the top of the iTunes search rankings, which helps more people find the show. If you want to help out the show and do me a personal favor, you can go to jamesgordey.com/review and you can find this on my website as we discuss. You can find the show notes, OGYP-5. And then also we’re on iTunes and Stitcher. If you want to find the contact input to hit me up, I really would appreciate. I like hearing from everyone. I know we have people listening in the UK and Australia and about 20 other countries in addition to the US around the world right now. And I’d love to hear from each and every person that’s listening, your feedback, your questions, your concerns. You hate me, you like, I’d like to start a conversation about it. So, you can find on my contact info, that’s LinkedIn, Twitter, email, plans for all of them. You can find that on the show notes. One last time, that’s where you can go to find out any of the things on the show that you want to learn more about, then maybe you can write down when you’re listening. It’s going to be jamesgordey.com/ogyp5. I’ll talk to you next week. Jake: So, I’m going to try to hopefully see if they don’t call me again. James: Yeah. The good thing about this whole system is we can edit it. Jake: Okay. Let’s try this again. I’m probably going to — It’s my dad so he’s going to keep calling until I answer. But I’m going to keep it where I am. [0:45:04] End of Audio The post OGYP #005| Oil and Gas Software with Jake Corley appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #04: tl;dr Upstream Sales & IoT In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, Jennifer Perez speaks about her contrarian story of forcing her way into into Oil & Gas at a time when Schlumberger was laying off thousands. Jennifer also talks about starting her career in Oil & Gas, “Survivors Guilt” and what Upstream Sales in 2016 are like. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Jennifer Perez Jennifer Perez is a Sales Representative at M-I Swaco, a Schlumberger Company.  offers drilling fluid systems to improve drilling performance, technology to maximize production, and environmental solutions to safely manage waste volumes. Jennifer is a motivated professional who has proven success in organization and streamlining business processes at a Fortune 500 company. Jennifer is extremely passionate about her work and eager to expand her network. The easiest way to connect with Jennifer is  on Linkedin or via Email. Technology Segment: The Internet of Things (IoT) Google result for “Internet of Things” Cisco CEO Talks about $19 Trillion industry The Internet of Things Ted Talks IoT Ted Talks IoT: Youtube The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #04 with Jennifer Perez Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Follow The OGYP Pod & Related Projects Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook OGYP #004|Upstream Sales& IoT with Jennifer Perez   [0:00:00] James:All right. Welcome in episode four of the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast. Okay. So, this show is directed to the Oil and Gas Young Professionals, that’s the show, and the future of oil and gas is technology. So, what I’m going to try and do is add some direction of the show and you can find me and OGYP posted up on the corner of oil and gas, the energy industry and technology, the intersection, posted up on the corner. Okay. For this show, our guest is going to be Jennifer Perez. Jennifer is a sales representative at M-I Swaco, a subsidiary company of Schlumberger. Jennifer is going to give us her story, tell us what it’s like to sell in the upstream services sector in 2016 and at the end I quizzed her in the lightning round about M-I Swaco’s new products and services. All right, Jennifer Perez, welcome in to the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast. Thanks for coming by today. Jennifer:Thank you for having me, James. I really appreciate it. James:Okay. So, this is kind of becoming the go to question to start up the show here. But Jennifer, how did you get in oil and gas? Jennifer:I got into oil and gas, long story short, I had an internship and then got hired full time. Long story is that I interviewed with Schlumberger the semester before I graduated and– James:When was that? What semester? So people can kind of get a reference for when you graduated. Jennifer:Fall, 2014. James:Fall 2014. What else happened in fall 2014? That would be the OPEC meeting where they decided not to cut production and thus begun the downward spiral of the WTI and the world crude oil prices. What was it like graduating school when that was happening? Because that was also my — I was in the same boat as well. Jennifer:It was really nerve wracking. Actually, I reached out to the recruiters and the partners with the sales program that I graduated from. And how I found Schlumberger, I reached out to them and I was like, “Hey, do I still have an internship?” With prices going low, I was worried about it if they were going to rescind the offer or anything. But they didn’t and I was really happy about that for sure. That internship started in June of 2015 and ended in August and it was the hardest few months of my entire life. James:What was the internship? What were you doing? Jennifer:I was calculating market share for NAL and– James:NAL? Jennifer:North America Land. James:Okay. Jennifer:Yeah. There are tons of acronyms, sorry. I remember starting and hearing all of these and being, why do people say those? Like they should just say the entire word because it’s easier. But now, I’ve caught on. I’ve drank the Kool Aid. I say acronyms all the time. James:Yeah, exactly. We love the oil and gas acronym. We love those. Jennifer:There should be a book. That’s what I’m going to do on the weekends now, is write a book of acronyms. James:Okay. And you mentioned this internship was hard. And, obviously, it was sort of rough to get thrown in at that point when you sort of just felt lucky to have a job but there’s a lot of people and people were trying to figure out what was going on with the oil prices and maybe they were — I don’t know. There’s a lot of uncertainties around that time. And what was it like? You said that was a difficult internship. So we can, obviously, sympathize there. Jennifer:It was not only because of the industry, the environment. It was difficult just because of the tasks given because it was one of those sink or swim situations where they literally were like, “Okay, like figure out how to do this. We’re not really going to give you much direction. We just want to see what you produce at the end of the summer.” And, yeah, there were tons of uncertainties because as the months progress, like from June even to August, rig count fell dramatically and having to work that into market share, my presentation was really difficult. I remember towards the end getting asked like, “Oh, why are we losing this market share?” Some of it is rig count and some of it is some other opportunities that I pointed out that are being worked on. So, it was grueling just because it was really hard. I didn’t know where to turn for all this information and everything was in Excel spreadsheet. Everything was like people just had information like their own little market share for their area. And so it was a lot of meeting and hounding people for information. So, yeah, that was the hard part. [0:05:01] And, of course, like analyzing all of that data and trying to make sense of it and finding like missed opportunities on M-I Swaco’s part. James:Was there a guaranteed job offer at the end of the internship? Jennifer:No. James:So, was there any sort of things that you did to go on above and beyond to try and keep your name in their mind and let them know that you’re someone that they should hire? Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. I made sure to have Facetime with as many people as possible in the office. I made sure everyone knew my name and asked everyone for help. There was no one I know, like door I didn’t knock on for information. And so I think that really helped. And then, of course, like staying late, going in on the weekends just to finish the work because it was so much. So, I think what really helped was just my work ethic and just meeting people and going from there. James:Yeah. It’s all about attitude. So, you kind of got thrown in to a difficult situation and you made the best of it and then you went above and beyond. And like you said, reached out to everyone, make sure they know your name, bring them some coffee, go and ask them for answers, ask them how they made their personal spreadsheets so good and how you could learn them yourself. Jennifer:Exactly. James:Okay. And then at the end, you said there was no guaranteed job offer but you did land a job offer while Schlumberger was unfortunately reducing their head count by thousands of people worldwide. How did that happen? Jennifer:It happened because I expressed interest in pursuing sales and they knew they needed sales people. And so I think because I made my desire known with the company from the start, I think that also really helped because — and it was just timing honestly because they had open positions in sales and I wanted to pursue that. I think that also really helped me get a full time job. James:So, you did it. You landed the job. It’s what every college graduate dreams of, getting a job in the oil and gas, or at least the ones that are listening to the show. They want to get a job, maybe not in oil and gas, but just a job in general. Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. James:Achieving that, what was — you landed as a sales position in Houston? Jennifer:Correct. James:So, you show up and you sort of got an introduction to the company and what it was like and a little bit of the culture but that was from the internship standpoint. Now, you’re signed on full time. Jennifer:Correct. James:What was it like getting started at such a big organization and trying to find your bearings and sort of, again, you had to start over and get all of your — you get your feet under you. Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. It kind of was daunting just because everything that I had been doing already for the company was very in house and then getting tasked with client facing rules is actually — yeah, it’s pretty intimidating. James:Client facing? Is that like code of conduct or best practices for the sales team? What is that? Jennifer:So, client facing is just — it basically just means that you’re in front of clients. Like you yourself like see clients and you’re in front of them. James:Getting those reps in from them. Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. And I think what really helped was the training that they provided. They made sure to give me a lot of technical information and things to study, classes I took, which definitely helped because I had no idea. I don’t have a technical background. And so to kind of come into that is definitely intimidating but I think it’s something that you can definitely get a handle of if you’re really dedicated and you have a desire to learn. And– James:Go ahead. Jennifer:Oh, I was going to say and then I also pushed for field experience because I feel like that’s what you need. James:Does that mean going out to the rig and actually seeing the job first hand? Jennifer:Yeah, and doing the job. I mean, I didn’t like take over the mud engineers. I wasn’t their relief or anything. I was a shadow. But what ended up happening was they were like, “Okay, you went to mud school,” which is one of the classes I attended and they’re like, “Okay, since you went to mud school, you can go grab a sample and you can run the test and then let me know how it goes.” And so I was like, “Okay.” So, yeah, it was a lot of hands on and really interesting to see. James:What was going through your mind the first time you went out there on the rig? What the coolest, some of the cool things you saw? What shocked you? What maybe wasn’t quite as you expected? Jennifer:I expected it to be very dirty and grimy and to be surrounded by people who were like mean or– James:And dirty and grimy? Jennifer:Yeah, exactly. And then I found the exact opposite of that. Everyone was so kind. No one was every like, “Oh, you’re a female or you’re a young’un. You don’t deserve to be here or anything.” [0:10:04] They’re so welcoming. No one ever like didn’t want to answer my questions or anything. I never expected it to be so loud though. You just never think about that. Or at least I never did. And, yeah, you had to wear sound proof equipment to be around certain areas of the rig which is crazy to think about. And just the scale of everything. You see pictures, you read about it, but then you see it in person and you’re like, “Wow, this is real. This is huge.” And it’s part of this huge — like it just really kind of makes you, like puts you in perspective. James:Yeah, that you’re on the job site of one rig and there’s fewer rigs all the time but you’re working on one at a time and just the shear amount of work that it takes and all the moving parts for one rig is amazing. Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, it’s so cool to see how everything works and– James:And you got to bounce around a couple of them and check them out? Jennifer:Yeah. The one thing I didn’t, that I wasn’t too happy about was the food because still something I’m learning to do for myself is cook. So, the first time I went out to a rig I didn’t know what to buy for myself and I ended up just buying Pop Tarts and cereal and that’s what I ate. And so next time I went out I prepared. James:The sugar rush eventually wore off and then– Jennifer:I needed to sleep eventually, so. James:Yeah, there you go. Okay. And then around the office, was there above and beyond your specific job, could you kind of feel the uneasiness and the tension in the workplace that some people may resent you because you had come in and just gotten this job and their coworker or their friend just gotten laid off? Was there anything like that, kind of workplace difficulties? Jennifer:Not that I’ve seen firsthand. I mean, if they’re saying something behind my back, that’s something different. But not to my face and not anything that I feel everyone is super kind and supportive. And if I ever had any questions, there’s not a shortage of people that I can go to. And, of course, it’s difficult to see your friends getting laid off. And for some people, like family members too. So, there’s a little bit of survivor’s guilt. James:Survivor’s guilt? Is that a common term or did you just coin that? Jennifer:No, it’s a real term. James:Can you talk about that, survivor’s guilt? Jennifer:Yeah. It basically is an HR term for the people who get to stay, get to keep their job after layoffs or anything like that. And so it’s rough and I’m not like trying to say like, “Oh, I have so much survivor’s guilt. Woe is me,” or anything like — nothing like that. But it’s rough to see friends and family but I’ve seen really talented people and I know they’re going to find something that’s right for them going forward. James:Okay. So, working at Schlumberger, is really big company, are there any sort of cool — You’re kind of working in your own little mini subculture of Houston. Are there any cool internal Schlumberger things, maybe some sort of workplace practices that go on or is there something that if I don’t work at Schlumberger I don’t know about but which is kind of something you just as part of your daily, week or your month or part of your daily whatever inside the company? Jennifer:I would have to say all the different team building events. So, tomorrow actually, sorry, a couple days from now, we’re going out to a lodge that M-I Swaco has in Port O’Connor and it’s just like the team is going to hang out there and just kind of see each other outside of work which doesn’t always get to happen with everyone’s schedule. And so, I think it’s so nice and I think it will be fun. M-I Swaco, it turns out has like tons of, not tons, but like different little apartments or lodges that I hope to stay in one day. James:To clarify, the people who own and the company that owns these lodges that you hope to one day stay in, you mentioned M-I Swaco, can you clarify for all of all our listeners what that is and what that means? Jennifer:Sure. M-I Swaco is a segment of Schlumberger. They bought M-I Swaco in 2011 and they’re working towards integration and it’s coming along pretty well. One challenge of buying companies and being such a big entity is like systems. So, every company has their own way of doing things. And so, I think Schlumberger is moving towards– [0:15:02] We already have one system that kind of is worldwide that everyone uses, which I think is a really good idea. And what’s going to happen in the next few months, few years is that they’re going to integrate different functions into it. So, right now, it’s mainly sales. What I get to see is sales. We’re going to have finance in there and we’re going to be able to run all these crazy cool reports and things like that. So, that’s kind of exciting that they have that CRM and they’re going to expand it. And, yeah, because Schlumberger has bought several companies, we’re all just called segments. James:Okay. So, this is something that I have experienced by just speaking with people and a lot of people our age or both under 25 even, when you go to work, all these people that you talk to, what does the age breakdown of those people look like? Are they all millennials and post grads or are they all pushing retirement? Jennifer:It depends on what function you look at. For MI’s sales team, I’m the only sales rep in my 20s. So, everyone else is like in their 60s. It’s definitely an older demographic like my coworkers and everything. In different areas, like some of the labs or out in the field, you have younger people but in the office it’s generally like more senior people. James:That’s something I can relate to and a lot of people I think our age across the industry can relate to. You might be young but it’s sort of strange because you’re doing the same jobs and working with these people. But they’re all much older than you so you have to kind of make water cooler chat and what are you going to talk about over coffee or lunch. Jennifer:Grandchildren. James:Yeah, grandchildren. Like, “Oh, little Tommy is playing soccer this weekend and I’ve got to go.” Really, you don’t know much about Tommy unless maybe your brother or sister has some sort of children because we’re just out of school. So, we’re trying to relate and figure these people out. So, you’re in sales. Jennifer:Correct. James:At M-I Swaco which is a segment of Schlumberger. Jennifer:Correct. James:Schlumberger is the largest upstream oil and gas service company, right? Jennifer:Correct. James:So, what’s it like selling an upstream oil and gas services in 2016? Is that hard? Is that easy as easy street? Jennifer:I wish it was easy. I think I’d be able to sleep better at night. No, just kidding. It’s definitely difficult. It’s not anything that I would say like you just show up to work and it just happens, like things aren’t given to you or falling to your lap. At least for me. So, I think it’s like a daily grind. But it’s also really fun because you interact with a whole bunch of different people and that’s what I personally like to do is I’m pretty social because I like to be around people and so I think sales at M-I Swaco really helps me with that. James:What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to get someone at a meeting or a phone call or email? How do you find — do you guess email addresses and try to get people to hit you up? Are there any sort of crazy things? Because I’m not in sales. I don’t know what’s that like. But I think it’s interesting. You’re trying to sell as much as you can and there’s less money to go around right now. What does that look like? Jennifer:For some companies, you can guess email addresses because it will just be first and last names. You will be like, okay. Like I know this person is in the drilling group so I need to talk to them. So, you just email them and hope they respond. For me, personally, just because I’m new to the industry, it’s about networking and establishing relationships. So, some of what I do, a lot of what I do is go out there and try to meet people organically and then it also involves like cold calling and cold emailing, which is never fun. It’s not anything that you wake up and like necessarily or super excited about. It’s not anything someone dreams about doing when they’re little, growing up and cold calling. James:Do you have a system down at this point? You got it down to a science? What’s your cold calling workflow? How does that happen? Jennifer:I don’t like to cold call in front of other people. I get too nervous about it. So, I’m definitely in my own little area and, yeah, I like know what questions to ask to kind of like get the conversation going and get some information that I need. And what I always try to do is set up in person meetings. I don’t really like dealing with just over the phone conversations. I believe the way to go is definitely meeting people in person. And so, some people are more receptive to that than others. [0:20:00] But I think, yeah, it’s just — I don’t have a script of anything. James:Yeah, no script. Jennifer:No script. At other companies, I have. I’ve had scripts. James:You mentioned going out and meeting and networking people, which is how we sort of met, right? Jennifer:Yeah, absolutely. James:How did we come to know each other? Jennifer:So, we met at an API Networking Happy Hour. James:And why were you at an API Networking Happy Hour? That kind of relate to you trying to find your feet in the industry, right? Jennifer:Yeah. Just because working around older people, you need to like find other young people in the oil and gas industry. They exist, they exist. James:Hopefully, they listen to the show. Jennifer:Yeah, exactly. We’re here. YPs are here. So, that’s why I wanted to get more involved with oil field organizations, just to meet people closer to my age. And I am part of the program for excellence in selling at the University of Houston and a lot of the graduates from there come to Schlumberger. And a former Schlumberger employee and PS alum is a co-founder. And so I was like, “That’s perfect. I definitely need to be where he is.” James:Shout out to Joel Powell right there. We love you, Joel. Jennifer:Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that’s how we met and we started, yeah. We started talking. James:All right. And then offline, we, you and I, discussed which you can and can’t talk about, and which you can’t talk about would be projects that are confidential. Jennifer:Correct. James:And the things that are internally going on at Schlumberger. But you also mentioned, and we briefly discussed, sort of some cool technologies you all are rolling out of the company. Can you talk about maybe a couple of those one at a time and I can ask you questions? Because this would be the first time I’m hearing about them. What’s up with those? Jennifer:So, our first is called a screen pulse and it is a vacuum that you put under the last screen on a shaker. And so what it does is it literally pulses and sucks more fluid off of the shaker’s screen. James:What’s a shaker? Jennifer:A shaker is a solids control equipment. It’s usually the first line directly from like coming, like mud coming out of the hole or any type of fluid. Yeah, it comes over the shaker first and it literally just is a giant machine that vibrates and flows liquid over like different screens. And the idea is that all the solids will stay on top of the screen and fall into a catching tank and the liquid will fall through the screens and you’ll be able to reuse that liquid as you keep drilling. James:Okay. So, real quick question. This just came to my mind as we’re talking here. How many of these technologies do you have in your mind that you want to talk about right now? Jennifer:Three. James:Three, okay. Let’s do a — let’s borrow some things from shark tank or the pitch world. Give me your elevator pitches for the next three things. Starting with the first one. Let’s go. I’m an investor. Pitch me on these products. Or I’m an operator trying to buy these. Jennifer:The pressure. So, screen pulse is going to — Well, okay, let’s back up. Because I don’t want to reduce these technologies to just elevator speeches because really they’re like customized. So, it really just depends on what you need. So, first, I would have to ask you some questions like if you’re drilling with water base or like a brine. James:We’re water based. Jennifer:Okay, so then you wouldn’t even — you would have no benefit from using our screen pulse. James:Okay. All right. On to the next one. What’s up with the next one? Jennifer:So, screen pulse — sorry. The next would one would be a reuse system and what it does is it mechanically and chemically reduces low gravity solids to whatever level you want actually. They can get it down to like .02 but, of course, like that, you can’t use that type of fluid to drill. You need some solids for filter cakes and things like that. James:And would there be some specific drilling applications or specific types of geology that you’re using this with or what’s the use here? What’s the application? [0:25:02] Jennifer:It’s just to make sure your mud stays clean and you keep any additives you want in it. And we can use it during active drilling and then also what we found is that it’s really good for when you’re done with your mud. So when you done drilling and you either have to store or the company buys it back, like we can clean it up for you. And so, that’s reuse. And then the next system is– James:Okay. So, what is the next technology that you want to talk about? Jennifer:It is our PFMS system, which is– James:More acronyms. Jennifer:Yeah, exactly. Pressure fluid management system. And it’s used for hole cleanouts and coil tubing operations. A lot of times people and companies use, don’t use close loop systems whenever they go back into the hole and they end up using tons and tons of water because they literally just — there’s no way to recapture any of it so all they have to do is use more water. And so what it does is it’s a closed loop system so you can reuse the fluid and like some benefits are reduced water cost and less rock tanks that you have to have on the site. James:Can you speak about which ones you have the most success of these three selling? Which one do you like the most? Which one is easiest to sell maybe? Jennifer:I think the technology that I like the most is probably the screen pulse just because I see so many benefits for it. It literally saves you so much money on fluid cost. And so, I mean, mud is super expensive and so why not try to find ways to cut cost in that way? And it doesn’t affect the shaker screens or anything like that. The vacuum isn’t that powerful. James:So, it’s called screen pulse? Jennifer:Screen pulse, correct. James:Screen pulse. It’s so good it sells itself. Jennifer:I hope so. James:Okay. And then for everyone listening here on the show, if they like you or if they’re interested in hearing more about screen pulse or M-I Swaco or they just want to connect with you on a personal level and get some drinks or coffee, how would you have them reach out to you? Jennifer:My phone number, which is the best way to reach me. James:A live phone number shout out. This is going to be Jennifer doing her best Mike Jones impersonation here. Jennifer was going to give out her number on the show, Mike Jones style, but she decided against it. So, this is me talking over right now. Don’t get too many ideas, guys. She’s already taken. Jennifer:And then another way to reach me would be through email, which is the second best way. James:Okay. And we’ll put that in the show notes, just in case. Jennifer:Okay. And it’s jperez183@slb.com. James:All right. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jennifer. Jennifer:Hey, I really appreciate it. I really appreciate talking about myself. James:All of Jennifer’s friends and family out there, thanks for tuning in. We appreciate your time. And everyone else, thank you so much for tuning in to the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast. And I look forward to speaking to you next time. Jennifer:Thank you so much, everybody. James:Bye guys. Okay. So, at the beginning of the show, we talked about how we’re going to post the show up on the corner of Oil and Gas and the greater energy industry and also technology. So what we’re going to do is add, for now, this is a working segment, a technology segment here. So, what I’m going to do right now is talk about our topic for this week, which is the internet of things. You may have heard of the digital oil field, which is actually the oil and gas specific segment of something that many think will be larger and more impactful than the internet as we’d know it. This is called the internet of things — IOT. Wiki defines the internet of things as a network of physical objects, devices, vehicles, building and other items in line with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Okay, so that’s the basic steps for making an object, make something connected to the IOT would be give it specific ID number, put a sensor on the object and connect it to the internet. All of these things we spoke, we heard about it loud and all of these things are connected on the cloud. And they all can work together and efficiency isn’t just really use technology to improve the world as we know it. [0:30:06] One basic example when I’m trying to explain what IOT is to people is smart trash cans. Everybody knows when they grew up they had chores, that they had to take out the trash every day because the trash is being collected certain times. But with the internet of things, they put sensors in trash cans and then that means that trash can can actually send little signals back to people that pick up the trash and know exactly when to pick it up so they don’t have to come out every week or every day. Another example of this, people know about smart lights and smart heating such as the Nest Thermostat. So, you can create intelligent efficient heating through your home so that you can save money in your electric bill and it only heats your house when you need to. Another really cool application of this is for medical use. And people that are at high risk for heart for attacks and heart disease in general, they can wear sensors. And these sensors can detect based on your heart rate. They’re key indicators, or at least signs of heart attacks and strokes. And then because these sensors are connected to the internet, that will alert your doctor and the doctor can then have his system approve it and that will send an ambulance automatically to whoever the sick person is and then you can get the care you need before you need it. So, that’s kind of preventative maintenance on your body. And that can really be powerful for helping people stay healthy. In oil and gas applications, so this would be digital oil field. This would be the new land shell drilling rigs. They can sense when they’re finished drilling one hole and they have legs on them and because everything is connected it will know that it needs to get up, use legs, walk where the next pole is and then start drilling again to the next hole. And just to give you an idea of the scale of how impactful this can be, the Cisco CEO John Chambers called the internet of things a $19 trillion industry. One last thing, because everyone talks about Google and how Google is a big part of our life, let’s just Google it. Right now I’m going to Google internet of things and see how many results pop up here. Okay, so that resulted in 245 million results in half a second. So, feel free to Google internet of things and you can tell me how many pop up. But that’s going to be it for the segment. I’m going to post a lot of cool notes in there if you’d like to learn more about this or you can reach out to me. Okay, so, I’m moving on with a more typical end of the show. We’re going to talk about reviews. We’ve got six, which means we now — Or we got two reviews, which means we now have six. So, the first one is going to be from Superman234. It says: Great conversation with valuable insights. Great new show focused for oil and gas young professionals. I enjoyed listening to different experts share their know and insight on specific areas of expertise. Listen to this episode with Mark LaCour. Great advice for young professionals. And the sixth one is going to be Matt O’Leary. Both of these are five-star reviews. The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast provides those burning questions that you’ve wanted to know in accessible format. The host James Gordey hits on the head, hits the nail on the head for millennials wondering how to break into the industry. As a current first year graduate student, this cast has helped me with the network and put my foot in doors that I would have otherwise close on others. Check in on Wednesdays for new releases. Okay. So, reviews like we’ve said are the most important thing that help the show. That does help push the show to the top of the iTunes rankings. And this helps more people find the show in turn. If you’d like to leave a review and I really appreciate if we could do so. It’s number one way to help me out. You can go to jamesgordey.com/review. Also, in addition to iTunes, you can find the show on Stitcher because we’re out in Stitcher Radio Store and on Soundcloud. And I want to say, yeah, just hit me up. I really like interacting with you people and getting your feedback. I’ve been getting it here and find out who’s listening to the show and I take people ideas and I submit them and I use them, like improvements. You can find all my contact information and all the rest of the show notes at jamesgordey.com/ogyp3. No zero this time, just ogyp3. And the show comes out every Wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. Central Time just like you’re listening to it now. We appreciate your time. Give me some feedback. I’d love hearing from you and I’ll speak to you next week. Bye now. [0:35:05]End of Audio 15     The post OGYP #004| Upstream Sales & IoT with Jennifer Perez appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #03: tl;dr Mark LaCour In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, Mark LaCour speaks candidly about how he got into Oil & Gas, started his own Oil & Gas company, and how he went from sales expert to podcast co host. Mark finishes things up by giving some advice on how to get your career started. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Mark LaCour Mark LaCour is the Director and founder of Modalpoint, The Oil & Gas Sales Experts. Modalpoint is a consulting company that helps you figure out where your product or service fits into the Oil & Gas industry. Modalpoint accepts clients from any industry, but the majority of their clients are large Tech companies. Mark is the cohost of Oil & Gas This Week, The Oil & Gas Careers Show, serves on the API Houston Board, and volunteers to educate teach students about STEM in Sugarland, TX. The easiest way is to connect with Mark everywhere, but feel free to follow the links to find him on Linkedin, Twitter or his website, Modalpoint. Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #03 with Mark LaCour Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Follow The OGYP Pod & Related Projects Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook OGYP #003|How to Start a Business in Oil & Gas with Mark LaCour [0:00:00] James Gordey: Welcome into this episode of the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast and I’m your host, James Gordey Gordey. Today, we’re going to speak to Mark LaCour of Modalpoint, the oil and gas sales expert. On the show today, Mark speaks candidly about his background, getting into the industry, what it’s like to start a business in the oil and gas industry and, finally, Mark offers some young professional specific career advice. Let’s get into the show this week. All right, today in the show, we’re going to welcome in my friend, the oil and gas sales expert and also the voice of the oil and gas community online, Mark LaCour. Mark: Hey, James, how are you doing, brother? James Gordey: Great to have you on the show. Mark: Yeah, it’s great to be here. James Gordey: Okay. So, a lot of people know you from your work and your show and everything like that and they know Modalpoint. They know that you’re the oil and gas sales expert. But we haven’t really gotten your full story and background. So, could you kind of just take us through your history in how you got into oil and gas? Mark: Yeah, it’s actually funny. It’s got to the point now that when we go places publicly people recognize me. My wife keeps telling me, “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re not a movie star.” But, yeah, my story is a little bit different than a lot of people in this industry. About 23 years ago, I had met the woman who is my wife now, at that point she was my girlfriend, and I wanted to quit traveling. I wanted to stay home more. And I happen to know some senior people at the phone company in the east, which is called BellSouth and which no longer exists. And so I went to them and said, “Look, I need a job where I don’t travel as much.” And they go, “Mark, we have the perfect position for you. But we just need to warn you it’s had declining revenue for over 30 years.” And I go, “I want it.” The truth is I had no idea what it really was. I just wanted the job. So, they gave it to me and it was their strategic sales manager for their oil and gas booking business. So, BellSouth, the phone company in the east, basically gave me all of their oil and gas accounts. Now, I knew absolutely nothing about oil and gas but I wanted to make money and I wanted to do a good job so what I did at first is try to set meetings with some clients they gave me just so I could to talk to them to understand what’s going on. And the first company that agreed to meet me was Chevron out in San Ramon, California. And the person that agreed to meet with me was a lowly procurement guy. He was the only one that will meet with me. So, I jumped to the plane, flew up to California, put my suit on, went out to their corporate headquarters in Pleasanton and went through security, get to the guy’s office and I walked in, knocked on the door, walked in. He’s at his desk and he looks at me. He doesn’t stand up. He doesn’t offer me his hand. He doesn’t even say hello. And he goes, “We have been paying tariff rates for over 50 years, why the hell should I be talking to you right now? And that was my introduction in oil and gas. James Gordey: Oh, it’s baptism by fire. Mark: Yeah. And so, if you fast forward to right now, that guy is now in charge of all supply chain for Africa for Chevron. I’m the godfather of his children and he’s one of my best friends. And needless to say, in my learning my accounts, I worked really hard to understand the businesses. Not how can Mark make money or how can BellSouth make money but what is the business of Chevron? What is the business of Haliburton or Baker or BJ Services or Shell or Exxon? How are they different? What I did is I made sure I did high quality work. And they eventually took notice. I’ll give you good examples. Schlumberger would not talk to me to save my life. I could not get a meeting with them for anything. So, by this point, I had grown the oil and gas book of business for Bell substantially and I had a pretty good support staff. So what I did internally within Bell is every year, as I did better, they want to jack my quota and what I would do is I would negotiate my quota but I also want head counts of dedicated customer service people, dedicated sales engineer, get dedicated service manager. By this point, I had dedicated customer service personnel. And so I put them on a project. And this was back in the ’90s. So, back then, companies were just transitioning to Ethernet networks for their employees from dial up. And so one of the problems a lot of companies had especially for executes is they have a separate dial up line, phone lines, for their modems for their computer. And when they would switch to Ethernet, because the people that were installing Ethernet were actually the IT guys inside of the company and the people that were responsible for the phone services was a separate group, they didn’t talk to each other. So often what would happen is a company would switch to an internal Ethernet network but nobody would tell the people at the telecommunications so they would never cut off these phone rhythms so they just kept billing month after month. So, I put my customer service reps on that for Schlumberger and I come to find out, yeah, Schlumberger was in that exact situation. So, I literally went to Schlumberger with a check for $49,000 for their refunds. And they talked to me. And they said, “We have never had a vendor that has brought us a check back.” See how I understood the business and made sure I did really good work for them as I grew, my reach within oil and gas business? [0:05:04] James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, that makes absolute sense. You understand the business and you’ve figured out what things that are kind of having, causing issues for them, that maybe they don’t even know about and you bring it to their attention to build up some equity there. Mark: Yeah. And so what happens is they start to see me not as a vendor but as an asset which then opened up a whole world to me. So, I’ve been offshore multiple times. I don’t want to mention the names of the company now because probably people could still get in trouble. But I would go, “Hey, I want to go offshore company XYZ.” And they go, “Oh, meet me at the heliport in Lafayette.” And they would just put me on a helicopter and I’d go offshore. I’d been in mud plants. I’d been in refineries. I’d been in pipeline companies. I’d been in network operation centers or the disaster recovery centers, through tubing, coil tubing. I’ve not only see it. I’ve touched it. I’ve done it. I know how it works. And this is over a span of 20 years. And so, we built that book of business and it was awesome. And speaking of learning the industry, I actually learned the industry so well that when somebody like, say — Baker Hughes corporate would issue an RFP for like this tired North America, I would go to the Baker Hughes offices who actually make money for the company as opposed to corporate procurement who caused money for company. I go, “Hey, corporate want to make us bid against MCI or Sprint or whatever. And the guy that I knew there thought of me so highly, he’d pick up the phone and chew procurement out.” And so I would be able to carve out my pieces of RFP at the price points I wanted. And this wasn’t me leveraging Baker Hughes. This was Baker Hughes seeing the advantage of working with me, having that one contact, knowing that you cannot run and oil service company without communications. And so, this is a great finding. It’s a great learning experience for me. I built a great team. We turned that book of business that had declining revenue around. We actually grew that book of business. And then we get to Katrina. So, for the two years before Katrina, Hurricane Katrina, I had been lobbying my management to let me move to Houston. And if people don’t remember the old BellSouth SPA, no, yeah, SBC, phone territories. So basically, BellSouth ended in Louisiana and SBC picked up in Texas. So, it was outside of BellSouth territory. James Gordey: And where were you living? Mark: At that time I was living in New Orleans, which is another long story. James Gordey: Got you. Mark: Yeah. I lobbied my management to move me from Atlanta to New Orleans so I’d be closer to my clients and it was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I was still jumping on the plane every week, fly to Houston, didn’t matter if the flight was shorter, but New Orleans is a wonderful city to explore, spend the weekend in. But the truth is, it’s small. It’s not a great place to live. Maybe you live and you learn. So, I lobbied my management for two years to move to Houston and they didn’t want to. In fact, my direct manager believed in [0:07:48] [Indiscernible], believed in telecommunications. He wants to see you every day. Luckily for me, he got a new manager. So, the VP of sales for that region. And she was much more open-minded. So eventually, with a bunch of pleading and promises, they allowed me to move to Houston as a trial. So, it wasn’t even perfect. In fact, they couldn’t even pay me. The BellSouth payroll system had never paid anybody in Texas before ever so they had to go get somebody to write some code so they can even pay me. And so I put my house on the market, sold it almost immediately. I moved to Houston. My wife and I, my three month old at that time, and two weeks later, Hurricane Katrina came through. James Gordey: Yeah, of course. I mean, I was living in New Orleans at the same as well. That changed not just life for everyone else living in New Orleans but also just for the entire region. Mark: Yeah. And so what a lot of people did not know you can’t run a refinery or a pipeline without telecommunication, without connectivity, and everybody connected back to Houston. And so all the refineries in Louisiana were down. All the pipelines were down. And we’re not talking about companies being to make money. You remember this, James Gordey. You couldn’t buy gasoline. James Gordey: Yeah, you couldn’t buy anything. Mark: You couldn’t buy anything. The infrastructure, critical infrastructure was destroyed. And this could bring a tear in my eye. I have a movie clip of New Orleans’ flood and the BellSouth CO on pointers [Phonetic] is lit. And we’re bringing in supplies on the third floor. Because 100 years ago, when BellSouth engineers designed that building, they knew that one day if New Orleans is flooded, they knew the water level, where it would be, whether you have to build a ramp so they could offload supplies. So, the BellSouth CO stayed up, which means our communication stayed up. Everybody else was dead. So, we’re the only telecommunication provider out there. Unfortunately, because the way things were basically configured, everybody else’s network failed to [0:09:39] [Indiscernible]. So, when the Sprint network went down, it dumped the Sprint traffic on BellSouth’s network. When the MCI network it went down, it dumped the MCI’s traffic on Bell’s network. When the AT&T network went down, it dumped — And so, the Bell network was so overloaded that nothing could get through because of time. If you remember, texts would get through because texts don’t have a latency component to it. [0:10:00] So, eventually, texts would work its way though and you would actually get them. So, when Katrina happened, I was the only BellSouth person that anybody could reach. Not that my guys were dead. There was just no way you could call them. There’s no way to communicate with them. So, I put together an emergency hit team. I put together some engineers in Atlanta and some project managers in Miami and we started hitting this thing head on. And so I did stuff that was crazy. I did stuff that broke company policy, broke laws. There’s the Exxon refinery right there at Chalmette. We had to get communications up. So, we had connectivity at the BellSouth CO but how do you get it right down the street to Chalmette. We can’t string any fiber or wire. So, there’s just this old technology called microwave shots. So, I looked up in our internal tools. I found some microwave engineers for Bell that were retired. I pulled them out of retirement. I had no authority to do that all. But they were good for the cause. They got out and they went and break the microwave shot from the Bell CO down into the Shell refinery and got Exxon talking. And guess what? That refinery got lit and it started producing some fuel which then helped the problem there everybody is dealing with. We did that one by one, piece by piece and it took about a year to get all that stuff fixed and done. And even, James Gordey, this is funny, even just a few months ago, I have somebody from the Exxon refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana call me about a circuit that my name was actually on the tag for. It’s still touching. But we did really earth changing work. We did the right stuff. One of the things I’m so proud of, and this is why I love this industry so much, is all of these deals are dead while the chips were down, while people were worried about their safety. My own tech crew had to be quartered by the national guard. All this work was done on handshakes. So, what was even a handshake was a phone call. And the thing I’m most proud of, when all this stuff was done, every one of those bills were paid. No questions asked. You don’t see that anywhere else. James Gordey: That’s really amazing story. I mean, there’s just you and your team and all these people just working together to take the roles and then throw them aside and just say, “Look, people actually need help. We’ve got to get this thing up and running again.” Mark: Yeah. When it’s all over, when everything was back to somewhat normal, I get called in to corporate office in Atlanta in the COO. So, my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss. We’re sitting there — Remember old dot matrix print sheets, the green and whites with the dots on the sides, there are holes on the side? James Gordey: Unfortunately, I don’t, Mark. Mark: Yeah. I hate myself. Some of the audience out probably never. Anyway, he had this dot matrix printer printout that went to the floor and he had a red pen. So, his admin walks me in there, sit down and he’s taking these and he’s going through it one by one with the red pen. He’s going, “Broke FCC law, broke FCC law, broke company policy, broke state policy, broke company policy, broke FCC law.” And so at first, I’m watching him do this like, “Oh, I’m going to get in trouble.” And then he kept doing it and he kept doing it. It’s like, “Damn. I’m going to lose my job.” And he kept doing it and he kept doing it. It’s like, “I’m going to go to jail.” I was like really scared. And when he got to the bottom of the list and he put it down, he took his rimmed glass off and he looked at me, he goes, “Mark, let me tell you something. I’m damn proud to have you on our team.” He goes, “In this situation, you did the right thing. Thank you.” He goes, “Any other situation, you’d be out of here so quick. But this was the right thing to do because this was a national disaster.” So, love the company, love the work. A lot of the relationships that I use now at Modalpoint started back then. And it was just — it was a horrible time. A lot of people lost everything they had. Unfortunately, some people lost their lives. But at the same time I saw some of the best things in people come out. I saw competitors work together because it needed to be done. It makes you believe in humanity again. But that’s how I got my start and it was a great way to get your start because I took the phone companies oil and gas book of business. I wasn’t siloed into one segment. So, I didn’t just know service. I didn’t just know upstream. I didn’t just know downstream. I didn’t just know midstream. I got to see it all, which now helps me mentally to have kind of universal look at this industry. James Gordey: That’s one thing you definitely preach to people especially in the down market. You just understand how the pie, it’s bigger than just your one segment and how it all fits together. I mean, if you know how it works, you can find the opportunities there. Mark: Yeah. It’s one of the things I’ve never noticed. This is my fourth downturn I’ve been through but I’ve never noticed how upstream-centric the Houston culture is. So, the funny thing is you go talk to anybody in the city and you read the newspapers and they talk about how it’s all doom and gloom. But if you pick your head up and look around the population in Houston is going up. That’s why traffic is so bad. There’s not enough class A office base. They’re tearing down perfectly fine class B office base to sustain class A office base. The reason, of course, all of that, you have two things going on. You have companies like in Anadarko closing remote offices because of local crisis, but they’re bringing their people back where, which means those jobs are back here now. The other thing that’s going on is the boom in downstream which is right here in our backyard. [0:15:01] So, you have all these downstream construction companies, the EPCs that are eventually the companies that are going to run these petrochemical plants [0:15:09] [Indiscernible]. They’re bringing their people here. So, Houston is actually doing really well in this environment but if you listen to news you would never think so. James Gordey: Yeah. One thing that was really striking, if you just drive around or you’re going back to Louisiana when I go visit home and you’re going just driving around the city, really when you take a line and you draw it through downtown, everything in the west is kind of upstream-centric and it’s very white color. But you and James Gordey Hahn, your show always said go downstream. And people — where is that maybe? That’s East Houston. That’s anywhere east of downtown, the ship channel and they just go over there and you literally see construction and CapEx and just everything is booming over there. Mark: Yeah, yeah. So, if your listeners work in this industry and they’re worried about stuff, my advice is back up, take deep breath. It’s okay. This happened. This can happen again unfortunately. But learn other parts of the industry so that you’re not chained to one of the segments if things go downhill, let’s say, but you can jump to the other segments when things are just fine. James Gordey: Okay. So, how did you, Modalpoint, eventually you started your own company. Why did you do that and how did you go from this Katrina story where you just did a tremendous amount of work to help people out to now you’re the oil and gas sales expert? Mark: Yes. So, BellSouth got bought by AT&T. At that point, it was no longer good fit for me. That was right along the time telecommunications were being commoditized. So, I went to work for a startup. I think everybody has at least one startup in their belt. That was great because I had to learn humility. When I had the BellSouth name behind me, I could talk to anybody I want. In fact, one of the things I used to do, and I can’t believe I’m about to admit this on your show, but if I wanted to know a company, and it was in BellSouth territory, let’s say it was in Halliburton, I would put my BellSouth hat in and I just walk in. I mean, I never got stopped. I just walk in and start talking to people. When I went to work for a startup you couldn’t do that. So, you had to learn how to develop business when people had never heard of your company. Let me tell you, that is way harder than when you have name recognition. That was a good learning experience for me. Unfortunately, that startup eventually didn’t work out. And then I worked for a big research company, Forrester Research, which is where a lot of my research methodology came from. Great company. I had the oil and gas key accounts. So, the most important accounts. I learned a lot. I mean, a lot from them. That was another position where our clients didn’t see me as a vendor but as a trusted advisor. So, somebody like Exxon is getting ready to renew their SAP contracts. Well, I had people that worked with SAP on my team that I would bring in and help them understand here’s what SAP will back now. Here’s the price points they’ll hit. They won’t go lower than this. Here’s stuff they will give you but they won’t tell you they’ll give you. So, you save ExxonMobil $10 million on SAP, on contract renegotiation. All of a sudden they like you. So, that was a great gig. And I still have friends at work over there. Unfortunately, they decided to cut my commission and it just quite honestly pissed me off. If you’re a sales person and somebody capped your commission, they’re basically saying, “We want you to work this hard but no harder.” And that just doesn’t fit my personality. So, Modalpoint actually was my wife’s idea. She came up with it. She goes, “You know, we’re at a point now where we could take a little bit of a chance. You have all these hundreds of companies coming to you, want you to help them sell oil and gas. Why don’t you start a consulting company to do that?” And, James Gordey, between you and I and our listeners here, I told my wife I didn’t think it was a good idea. But the truth was I was scared. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent, that I’d end up living on the street, blah, blah, blah. But eventually, I talked to enough people and I got some letter of intent and I made that jump. So we started Modalpoint I think December 26 and January 13th we had our first client and I haven’t stopped since then. James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, that’s really amazing, with some courage of your wife, you’re able to just go out and you have become an entrepreneur and start your own business and now you’re really just, have established yourself as just a key part of the oil and gas community both on and offline here. Mark: Yeah. Let me back you up. Between the starting and middle point and what we’re doing now, there’s been a lot of failure. I have done everything wrong at least once, sometimes two or three times. I tell people this all the time especially entrepreneurs. It’s not hard to work for yourself and make money. It’s really not. What’s hard is to make good money without working your butt off. That’s the difference. It took me a couple of years to figure out how to get there, how to do high quality impactful work that drives real value for my clients. So, in my case, it’s very measurable. I affect your top line quickly. So, if you’re a sales organization and you engage with me, you see your sales revenue growth rather quickly. If it doesn’t, that meant I failed. So far, knock on wood, I’ve never failed. So, that means that my clients see me as invaluable. I mean, it’s not that I’m a trusted adviser anymore. It’s like I’m part of the family. [0:20:01] And how you could think that feels from my end where at the end of the day some CEO claps you at the back, looks me straight in the eye and sincerely says, “Mark, we could have never done this without you. That you.” That feeling is worth what they’re paying me for. In fact, that feels rather worth than what they’re paying me. James Gordey: Yeah. Also, in the early stages, you’ve told me offline personally, maybe you started out doing one thing and then it was important that you failed but the failure is important because you learn from those failures and you ask your customers what they would pay you for and now you’re doing exactly that and you have more business than you can even deal with. Mark: Yeah, let’s break that down because listeners thinking about starting a business or has one needs to understand this. So, when I first started Modalpoint, I had a good idea and I went out and I sold it. I sold it not because it was good idea but because I was a good sales person. I didn’t know that.  Because I sold it, I thought I was on to something. So, I spent the next year trying to replicate that and I couldn’t and it was a grind. We had just enough revenue coming in to keep everybody employed but we couldn’t really grow and I kept trying to repeat the sell and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it. And eventually after about 18 months I had come to a realization that it wasn’t working. I didn’t know why it wasn’t working. I didn’t know what was going to work but I know it wasn’t working. So, I literally shut my company down. I laid everybody off. I gave them all a little package and then just stopped. And I went back to all the people that I engaged with that did not engage with me and I went with my researcher hat on, not my sales hat on. And I wanted to understand why they didn’t engage with me. And what I found out was that companies will outsource everything — HR, legal, IT — but they don’t want to outsource their sales teams because they want to own that customer relationship. Unfortunately, when I started Modalpoint, that was my idea, and I managed to find a company [0:21:52] [Indiscernible] outsource their sales team so I sold it. And so I went back once I get my researcher hat on and I asked people what would you be willing to pay me for? And after doing enough research, I come to find out what they would be willing to pay me for is to help them figure out where their product or service fits in oil and gas industry, who would buy it and what is the value that that it actually brings. So, we then started Modalpoint again for the second time on a different track of doing actually just market research for oil and gas. And that’s been a totally different journey for me. Instead of feeling like I’m pushing a boulder uphill, quite frankly, I’m running down the hill and boulders are chasing me. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you have a small business, if it’s not working, if it’s a struggle, stop. Take your ego out of it. Back up. Look at the bigger picture. Figure out what’s going on. In fact, a great way to do this is ping some of your peers, not friends, not people that are close to you because they won’t tell you the truth because they like you, but people that are similar to you in their career path, let them see what’s going on and you’ll be surprised the stuff that’s obvious that they’ll point out to you that they won’t see yourself because you’re too close to it. James Gordey: Exactly. I mean, what you really could have done, you could have, like you said, swallow your ego and you could have gone back and saw that this wasn’t working as well as you thought, got some feedback, made some tweaks of the product and kept going back and improving it incrementally. You could have, instead of taking 18 months, you could have done that after your first customer or after six months or just reduce the cycle time there to get feedback and improve your service for your consulting company. And, I mean, you did that eventually. Mark: Yeah, eventually. But because my ego was involved, because I knew I was right about this, I didn’t see that. I was too close to the problem. So now, it’s funny, after going through that experience, I have a bit of the opposite problem. Because now, every time there’s something not quite going right, I’m wondering is this a failure? Should I stop it? I’m a little bit too much of the other way now. There’s a balance in there somewhere and that was a good place to be. But I’m telling you, if you’re in that situation, if you’re an entrepreneur in that situation, gather as much of the facts as you can and get some of your peers look at it and they will quickly show where their constraints are, where the holes are. James Gordey: Yeah, Mark. That’s an awesome story. So, moving on from that, now we’ve kind of established your background and how you’ve established yourself as the oil and gas sales expert and you’re a successful entrepreneur in the oil and gas industry. So, most of the people know you, and I know you, directly from your work on the oil and gas career show, but first the Oil and Gas This Week Podcast. Can you take us back to the beginning, maybe just when James Gordey Hahn approached you and had this idea and how it grew into the wild success story that it is today. Mark: Yeah, he makes fun of me. So, this is the real back story. When I had my own company, I wasted a lot of money with digital marketing. I mean, a lot of money. A lot of them are really good at digital marketing but they just don’t get it. So, I’d have monthly meetings with these companies and they showed me how many new page views they got me, how many likes they got me and I would go, “My phone is not ringing.” And they would go, “But, yeah, look at all the traffic, look at this.” What they didn’t really get is that marketing has to drive sales results. Marketing for marketing data itself is not valuable to an organization. It needs to sell a product or service. [0:25:01] So, after wasting a bunch of money not getting any results, I was basically disgusted with the whole group of people. I didn’t really see them as being useful. James Gordey Hahn found me and I didn’t really even want to engage with him because of the way I was thinking about this and he eventually talked me into it. And I actually gave him access to be able to look behind the scenes in my WordPress site which is all I had at that point. And he came back to me and he goes, “Dude, I can’t believe it.” And I go, “I didn’t think I was doing too many things good.” He goes, “No, no, no, no, no.” He goes, “I’ve had a lot of clients. I’ve never seen anybody do everything wrong. Somehow, you’re doing everything wrong. I don’t know how you have any business.” So, that instantly said, “Maybe, I should talk to this guy more.” So, James Gordey Hahn initially becoming a vendor of mine and taught me, or actually I paid him to teach me, how to use social media properly to drive sales results. Because there’s a million ways of doing it wrong. There’s only a few ways of doing it right. And so once he taught me that, I now that have knowledge in my head, and so my people, my interns and my virtual assistants, they now do most of the work for that but I can check up on them. If they make a mistake, I can correct them. I have a bit of a thing about my business that I don’t like other people to know parts of my business that I don’t know. It doesn’t mean I do it but I like to at least know how it’s done. And so that’s where it worked really well for me. I mean, it’s ridiculous. You keep talking about oil and gas sales expert. Really Google that about me. If you Google oil and gas sales expert, you’ll see me come up one, two, three, four, five, six organically. And imagine what that’s done for my business. Imagine if anybody in the world types in oil and gas sales expert and they see me first, second and third? I mean, my phone just rings. So anyway, that’s how my relationship with James Gordey Hahn started. So, we went from him being a vendor to becoming — maybe not friends yet but really good acquaintance. We’re good business acquaintances. We had high trust relationship with him. And so then about, I don’t know, 13 months ago, 14 months ago, maybe a little longer than that, he came to me, “We need to do a podcast.” And I go, “I don’t have time to do a podcast. It’s a waste of time.” And I really thought it was a waste of time. And so he’s on me, on me, on me. And then eventually I just want him to shut up. And so I said, “Okay, I’ll do the podcast.” Still, not believing it was worth my time. Just to get him to shut up. And that was the beginning of the Oil and Gas This Week, me wanting him to shut up. So, once again, I’d be the first to admit I was wrong. The podcast has had great success, great growth rate. People love it. They find it very useful. And then surprisingly enough, we have companies who want to sponsor us. So now, revenue string for us which none of which I thought we’d never get to. But that’s the story of the beginning of Oil and Gas This Week. James Gordey: Yeah. And, I mean, what is it? 59, 60 episodes later, you all are number one in the search rankings and you have a huge community of people and friends that you’ve met through the show? Mark: Yeah. And if you’re a podcast person, especially if you’re a marketer in podcasting, our numbers don’t equate our revenue. We should not be making this much money as we do. The reason that we are is that our podcast audience are so loyal and so our sponsors — we don’t take sponsors who are trying to sell anything. We take sponsors who are trying to get exposure. Our sponsors know that when you listen to Oil and Gas This Week, the odds are those ear buzz in your head 45 minutes every week. It’s not like a radio show we could flip through the stations or banner ads we can just ignore them. You hear our sponsorship message because you listen to our show. And that’s very valuable for companies that are trying to just to take knowledge about what they’re doing differently or what they didn’t know. And so that’s why we have such great success. And then in the success of those podcasts has spawned other podcasts. So, I can go into it here but we have other podcasts in the works that we negotiate sponsorships with. I would not be surprised, James Gordey, if two years from now that there’s four or five podcasts all built around different subjects, all built around Oil and Gas This Week, which is the original one. James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, again, to go back on the revenue and the loyalty, you have a little nook in people’s lives every week and you build up that customer loyalty like you discussed and customer intimacy. And, I mean, there’s real value there. It’s almost like we get to hang out with you and James Gordey once a week. And we feel like we’re a part of your life and we interact with the first Q&A and everything like that. I mean, that’s really valuable. It’s like you said, you were receiving news about not just ads or banners but real companies that solved real problems and provide services to people who are directly your audience. So, I mean, there’s no better advertising than that, I would say. Mark: I mean, I really think of everybody as a family. You and I met through the podcast. I meet people probably on a monthly basis that I feel like I’ve met before but we’ve never met in real time. It’s all been virtual. But because of that level of communication is one step below just email, business — I mean, one step above — you develop intimacy with your audience and you get o know them. [0:30:01] I’m 50 years old. I actually think this is pretty cool. When I was younger, you would have to do all this in person which would take a lot of time. I now have pretty deep personal relationships with audience members of ours that are in Africa, that I’ve never met. And I just think it’s awesome. James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, you all are building the online community for the oil and gas industry. Maybe this is, I don’t know, sort of like a family tree. And, I mean, maybe I’m not directly owned by you all but this is a part, James Gordey Hahn and yourself have helped me make the show. And we hope that it just kind of further the oil and gas industry and maybe help people out and provide some value to them, every week at least here on the shows. Mark: Yes. So, you’re part of the tree, right? You came in, you have a desire, you want to help, it’s genuine, we help you because it’s genuine from our part and we help others because it’s genuine. And you eventually help others and you start thinking about that over the next ten years and it’s just a great thing. James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, like I said, when I found the show, I just, like most people do, I was just so eager for that content and I just consumed it and I’ve binge watched it and I reached out to you all. And I mean, it’s accelerated my personal network beyond what I could ever feel like. So again, speaking on network acceleration and things like that, could you kind of talk about how you suggested I get more involved when I asked you what I should do, when I first reached out and said that I like the show in the form of the API Young Professionals? Mark: Yes. So, I’ll make sure I understand what you’re asking me here. Are you asking me why I thought you should join the young professionals? James Gordey: No. Well, that’s part of the question. Let’s walk that back though. Let’s talk about the group itself, why you started it, what you hoped to accomplish and why you suggested people like myself join? Mark: Yeah. So, here’s the cool thing. I get to be totally honest about API because I know none of them listen to podcast. I know they don’t even how to listen to podcast. So, the American Petroleum Institute is one of the largest political groups in the US. We represent the rights of the oil and gas industry to congress. But we also set the standards. So we have a standardization group for almost everything offshore. If you go offshore and you wash your hands, that soap has to meet some API standard. Now, those efforts take money. So there’s all these local chapters all over the world. The largest local chapter is the API Houston chapter which I am on the board of. I’m the Director of Public Relations for the API Houston chapter. So, they call me the kid on the board. Remember, I’m 50 years old and they call me the kid. Does that kind of give you a visual of what it looks like? And so these are some very senior people in oil and gas industry. I mean, they’ve done, they’ve forgotten more than I know about it. But they’re from a different generation. And I’ve been a member of API Houston for probably 15 years and it was a couple of years ago, two to three years ago, it hit me. We had a luncheon and I’m looking around. It’s like everybody in here is the same people that I had been going to these lunches for the past 15 years. i see no new people. And then I started looking around and put people together in buckets in my head as far as age. It’s like I don’t think there’s anybody in here below 35. And so you think about that long term for an organization, the end result is not pretty. If you have no new blood coming in and everybody is getting older, at some point it will disappear. So, I bring it to the attention to my API board and say I think we need to start a young professionals group and they didn’t agree with me. And it took me 18 months to get approval because it was something new. And if you knew the oil and gas industry, nobody likes anything new in this industry. It took me 18 months of political rally and calling in my favor cards [0:33:44] [Indiscernible] to get enough votes on the board, because this had to be voted it, to try it. But it needed to have happen. It needed to happen, number one, just to save API Houston even though API Houston didn’t know they need to be saved. Number two, the world has changed. The way, James Gordey, that you and your peers think and do things is radically different than the way I and my peers do things. Is one better than the other? Quite frankly, I used to say no they were just different. Now, I will say, no, your way is better. In one of my conference rooms, I just installed a big plasma instead of LCD and one of my interns was with me and so I’m trying to figure out how to turn the darn thing on. So, I grabbed the instruction, she grabs her phone and Googles it. She figures out how to turn it on quicker than I did. And that was like a revelation. Whoa, it’s better. I don’t think that way. I know I can and when I need to I do. I don’t think first thing to grab something and Google it. It’s not just my generation. So, if you think about from that point, I have an obligation when I see that there’s a problem here, if I think the younger generation’s way of doing things is better. I have an obligation to try to bring it to oil and gas industry. I don’t want that way of thinking that, talent edge, to go somewhere else. That was another reason I started. Now, we could spend a whole show on all the hoops and failures and everything else that’s happened trying to stand up to this group. But I now have a very solid group of leaders there, which you are the leader, James Gordey. [0:35:11] The reason I thought you should join is I saw your energy, I saw your passion. I needed that in this group. But I also saw that you had a thirst for knowledge and you want to learn about this. So, I thought that was a fair trade. And so I invited you to join and you did and I’m so glad that you joined. James Gordey: Yeah. I mean, you just speak on that. Now, the API and professionals, what we’re trying to build, if you’re not familiar with it, in addition to what Mark says, is we kind of figured out that there’s a real hunger to accelerate and just grow your career and normally people, that effort takes the form of joining networking organizations. So, what we’re trying to do is build an organization where there’s different niches and everything like that but what we want to do is build one that’s catered to actually accelerate your career and build the professional, young professional organization. So, we want to hear from people that listen to this show and maybe our members out there or just anyone else that has some feedback, what do you want and are your curious about knowledge? How do you want to accelerate your career? How do you want to network? Do you need help knowing how to network? You need resume help? Do you want to know how to get in? Anything like that, we want to hear from people. Because like we were talking about earlier with Mark and his customers, his clients, the customers are the under 35 demographic in oil and gas for both this show and young professional groups. So, if you’re part of another group, reach out to us as well. We want to build a family here so we can further the oil and gas industry and get some creative innovative ideas to cause disruptive change for the better in the industry. Mark: Yeah, great stuff. And I’m telling people if you’re a young professional in oil and gas or you’re thinking about getting to oil and gas, reach out to James Gordey, reach out to the Houston API Young Professionals Group. They have been so helpful to so many people. They’ll be happy to share what they know. And if they don’t know they’ll tell you and point you in the right direction. James Gordey: Okay. So touching on that, Mark, could you give some advice to people on — you always, we hear you on the career show talking about just career advice as a general topic, but could you give some specific advice to people who are maybe graduating from college or are part of the under 35 demographic in oil and gas? Mark: That entered the industry or will enter the industry? James Gordey: I mean, just could be anyone outside or in, I mean, just you always give career advice to people in general but could you talk to the younger people out there? Mark: Yes. So, if we’re doing some broader base such as oil and gas focus, I can tell you a couple of things. So, first thing is experience is more — this can sound horrible. Experience counts for a lot, a lot more than education used to. Six, seven years ago, if I was looking at two recent grads and if that was for an entry level position and one had an MBA, I would pick the MBA. It’s not like that anymore. People are looking for the degree plus experience. So now, if you have a bachelor’s degree and you did an internship doing whatever this work is or you have an MBA who doesn’t have internship, the guy with the internship will get picked up. So, if you’re looking at your career path down the road, try to get some experience. Try to pick up an internship. I would suggest that you only do paid internships because in my experience companies that do interns where they don’t pay don’t really put energy back into developing that intern. Just remember, if you try to get internship and you start a year ahead of time, don’t wait until April to try to get a salary internship. Another thing is be proactive about that. Even companies who are not actively looking for interns — I know several big oil service companies that don’t actively look for interns but probably hire about 50 a year because interns reach out. They say, “Hey, do you have any intern opportunities?” They go, “No, but tell me what you’re looking for.” And they’ll find a place for them. This industry likes to help young people in the right way. So that’s important, trying to get some working experience. The other thing is show some patience. I know that you probably should be VP after two years but people in my generation think that that won’t happen. So somewhere in the middle ground is where the reality is. You need to have a little bit of patience and know that it’s going to take a little bit of time. Other thing is you need to have a plan for your own career path. So, if you’re going to work for a medium to large company, they’ll develop a career plan for you and you’ll have yearly performance reviews that are tied back to that career plan. But that’s the company that you’re working for, working with you to figure out how to best use your talent. That may not necessarily be the best career path for you. For instance, I mentor a lot of young people and in the last couple of years, their career path is: I go work for a larger oil and gas company. I learned XYZ. I then start on side my own little company at [0:39:48] [Indiscernible] at large company XYZ. I make the transition. I’m running my own company. That’s the right career path for them, which doesn’t match up. Trust me, if you’re working for a large oil company and their career path for you, they don’t have it at year five, which you could go work for your own company. [0:40:01] So, it’s just the state of the world that we’re in. The other thing is always be open to learning. The moment you stopped learning is the moment you stop progressing. We actually put time in our calendar to learn something new every month. At a high level, it’s kind of some advice I would give to people. The other thing is look in places — if you’re struggling with finding a job, look in places that need your skill sets but that wouldn’t normally look. So, if you have a degree in electrical engineering and you’re struggling to get a job in the oil and gas industry, if you’re looking upstream to service, you’re not getting one right now at 2016. So, look at downstream. They’re hiring like crazy. But they also need electrical engineers in medical. I mean, you may have never thought about that. Because you don’t think of electrical engineer in medical. Think outside, think where your skill sets both fit not necessarily what markets you traditionally been working. James Gordey: Well, can I ask you one question? If there’s people that have already secured jobs and, again, there’s a lot of more senior people that work at these companies, if I’m showing up on day one, what do you want to see for me? What do you want from your new hires? Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression, how can a young person that’s starting at a big company or just any company impress and give what the older generation wants to see from them? Mark: Yeah, that’s a great one. So, first thing, you need to show a little bit of respect whether it’s deserved or not. Just fake it. Second thing, be open to picking up additional work. So, if they want you to do XYZ, ask them, “Is there something else to do? Is there a special project?” my generation loves to see go-getters. We love to see people go the extra mile professionally. So, if you do a little bit of that, that will make you rise head and tails above your peers. I mean, I work with a lot of millennial and I hire them as interns and I have mentored a lot of them. And the ones that stand out to me are the ones that are hungry, that want more, they’re willing to put the work in. I see a lot of them that have the talent. And I see a lot of them that want to put just enough work in. And I’ve gotten to understand that the reason they’re like that is their world is not work. I respect that. I get that, right? They want to do a good job but no more than that so that they can spend time in their own personal interest. I totally get that. In fact, I take Thursdays off and teach high school because it’s my passion project. So, I’m kind of in the same boat. But when you’re first starting, especially with people, Gen Xers like me, don’t show that. Show them that you want to go the extra mile. It’s only a short term thing. But once you set that perception, a new place, once they start to think of you a certain way, unless you do something really stupid and screwed up, they won’t ever change the way they think about you. So, you do that for a little while and then you back off to doing just what you need to do, a good job, but they still think of you as a go-getter. James Gordey: Really great stuff, Mark. That makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, oil and gas is resistant to change and a bit old fashioned. So, if you need to — Just kind of think about what your parents want you to do when you’re going to work, that can go a long way, for sure. Mark: Yeah. I mean, the world’s changed because of technologies. And the world, it’s actually my opinion, is much better than what it used to be. I have virtual assistants from Malaysia do work for me. A few years ago, I couldn’t have done that. I would have jumped on the plane. I think that’s awesome at the same time my money is going to support a family in another country that can use that money. My generation is not as technology savvy as millennials and then you talk about the oil and gas industry, which has this big risk aversion. So, another thing you can bring in quite simply is your love for technology. I’m not saying go teach them how play on Facebook and Candy Crush. But if you’re a new hire some place and somebody is trying to set something up, instead of them calling IT, go help them with it. It’s probably second nature to you. But to the older guys, it’s a bit of a struggle. And when they see that you make a personal effort to help them, that’s huge. James Gordey: Yeah. Again, that’s an example of just going out of your way to just help people. I mean, the oil and gas industry, you always say, it’s about people first. I mean, at a human level, just level with people and just figure out anything that they’re dealing that maybe you can help with that’s not even so tough for you. Mark: Yeah. This is an industry of people doing business people. And one of the things, and a lot of millennials I think have a bit of a struggle with especially when they step into corporate America, not the small business, entrepreneurship, but when they step into corporate America, is they feel intimated and they lose their social skills. It’s not that they don’t have social skills. They have them. But when you walk into that floor at ExxonMobil and there’s 8,000 people there that you don’t know you get intimated and all of a sudden you start shutting down. So, here’s my advice to that. Fake it. Fake like you know what you’re doing, that you’re not scared, that you’ve been there forever, that you know everybody. If you fake it long enough — and I didn’t make this up. This is psychological principle. Your brain will start believing it and then you start being that. So, I’ve seen this unfortunately quite a few times where very bright promising young person comes into large company. They had a huge future in front of them. [0:45:04]   But because they get intimated because they’d never been in an environment, they shut down socially and then people’s perception of them is that they don’t work with others. And that’s not what it is at all but that’s the perception because they’ve been shut down socially because they’re scared. James Gordey: Yeah. Sort of like psychological muscle memory, fake it until you make it, and then eventually you will. All right, Mark. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We’re coming up at 45 minutes here. I just want to thank you for coming on and giving me your time and everyone else out there, also giving us your time because we know that your time is valuable. And I appreciate you giving me just some, a little bit of your day to just sit down here and learn some things and pick the brain of the oil and gas sales expert, Mark LaCour. Mark: Yeah. You’re very welcome, James Gordey. I’m glad I could be here. James Gordey: All right, until next time, guys. I appreciate it, Mark. Mark: For you, brother. James Gordey: All right. So, that was Mark LaCour, speaking directly to you, the oil and gas young professional or anyone who might be interested in the oil and gas young professional. So, that was the show. It’s coming to your iTunes feed, your podcast feed every Wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. Central Standard. That’s when the show comes out every week so you can know to expect it there. If you aren’t ready, if you’re just listening to this somewhere other than your iPhone or in the iTunes feed on your podcast or anywhere like that, subscribe to the show on iTunes. You can do that, just search or type in oil or oil and gas and the oil and gas young professional pod feed will be up there in the top five. Hopefully, if we get some more reviews that will be even closer to Mark’s show, as number one or up there neck to neck with that show. So again, reviews are the major, major key to helping the show out. It’s the number one thing you can do to help other people find it. So, we got one more review. That puts us at four. This one is from Brian Mahn. Brian is a friend of the show and he has reached out to me on Twitter. And he’s just all around great guy to know. So, this one’s called rising stars, interviewing rising stars. I can’t believe this was the inaugural #OGYP pod. Pretty much flawless. He’s a natural. James Gordey Gordey is a rising star and I’m excited to see his influence uniting the next generation of the young oil and gas professionals. Listen to this podcast. Listen for him around the industry… Oil and Gas This Week Podcast. Search gas, and follow him on Twitter. Keep up the great work, content and interviews, James Gordey. All right, Brian, thank you so much for that. All right, so that puts us at four interviews right there. And I’m going to ask, if you would, go to Jamesgordey.com/review and leave me one. That’s a personal favor I’m asking of you. And if you do that, if we just get one more, that will bump us up to five, which means when you search the show it will show the average iTunes rankings and it will make this pod a lot more legit. So, if you could, just leave us a review. And also, there are some people listening out there. I know, I see the numbers. Reach out to me. Hit me up. Some people have done so but I really like to hear from everyone to get your feedback just to know you. So, the easiest way to do that informally would be on Twitter. And that’s @James_gGrdey and all my other contact information, LinkedIn, Facebook, everything like that, email, you can find on the show notes for the show. And that’s going to be Jamesgordey.com/ogyp03. It’s ogyp03. I appreciate the time and I’ll speak to you all next week. [0:48:51] End of Audio The post OGYP #003|Mark LaCour & Starting an Oil & Gas Business appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

 OGYP #02: TL;DR LNG In this episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, we hear from Aaron Drucker. First Aaron tells us about his experiences working in Oil and Gas, including how he got into the industry, his time working at CB&I and his various expat assignments in Peru, Australia and Singapore. Then Aaron introduces us to LNG, guides us through a LNG deep dive and talks about what he sees for the future of the Liquefied Natural Gas market segment. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Aaron Drucker Aaron Drucker is a Business Development Manager current working at Chicago, Bridge & Iron, CB&I. According to their LinkedIn page, CB&I is the most complete energy infrastructure focused company in the world with 54,000 employees. At CB&I, Aaron has previously worked as an Estimator, Subcontracts Engineer and Contract Development Manager around the world including time in Peru, Australia, Singapore and the United States. The best way to connect with Aaron is by connecting with him on LinkedIn or via Email! Learn more about LNG as recommended by Aaron Drucker LNG in Nontechnical Language LNG World News Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Website Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #02: The American LNG Story with Aaron Drucker Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Follow The OGYP Pod & Related Projects RSVP for The API-YP Rig Tour Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook OGYP #002|The American LNG Story with Aaron Drucker [0:00:00] [Music] James Gordey: Welcome back to the Oil & Gas Young Professionals Podcast, OGYP for short. I’m your host lesser known as an OG more widely known as James Gordey Gordey. Today, Aaron Drucker Drucker of CB&I is going to help guide us on an LNG deep dive. You’ll hear the acronym LNG many times. All that means is liquefied natural gas. Let’s get into it. [Music] All right.  Aaron Drucker Drucker, welcome to the Oil & Gas Young Professionals Podcast. Aaron Drucker: Thanks, James Gordey. It’s great to be here. I’m glad we could get together and do this, so I’m pretty excited about the show. James Gordey: Yeah. So, just a little behind the scenes take here for everyone that’s listening, we actually recorded this already, but due to my, you know, my kind of recording incompetence it was, you know, it just didn’t come through and I don’t think that you all want to sit here and listen to half of our silence. So, here we are for take two. Aaron Drucker: [Laughs] It turns out that you do have to turn the microphones on and that makes all the difference in the world. James Gordey: Exactly. Okay. So, Aaron Drucker how exactly did you get in the oil and gas? I see that right now you’re working at CB&I, but can you kind of take us to how you arrive there? Aaron Drucker: Yeah. Sure. So, brief little background, I’m a Houston native. I went to Texas A&M and I majored in Construction Science. I kind of always knew I wanted to build something. I started off in engineering, but realized that they’re always way too much Math and way too much designing and I really just – I really like watching thing be built. I like seeing the physical creation of something, so I knew I wanted to be in construction. So, I graduated from A&M and I started off with a company that manage the construction of large diameter water lines. It was – I work in Houston, but they – they had offices all over the country, so I basically started off managing the construction of 36-inch, 42-inch, 48-inch, 54-inch, and larger water lines being built kind of all over Houston. So, that was a lot of fun. James Gordey: So, what size of these water lines would you need to have all of the tears coming from Johnny Manziel these days? Aaron Drucker: [Laughs] I think he needs like 96-inch. James Gordey: 96? Okay. Aaron Drucker: Something like that. Or at least, I mean maybe that – maybe that’s what he uses to [decope] now. I don’t know. James Gordey: Allegedly, [decope] does. Aaron Drucker: Allegedly. James Gordey: But we’re not here to make any allegations. Aaron Drucker: Allegedly. Allegedly in pictures. But, no, that’s – it’s actually, you know, just not to get too far off on to something not oil and gas, but the pipelines, it’s a little bit over complicated operation than what you might initially think just installing large diameter waterlines say 20 feet underground top of pipe in the middle of the city with traffic control and all the rest. And, you know, trying to figure out a place to lay down for miles and miles of large diameter waterline and trying to figure out the logistics around that. So, it’s actually a bit more complicated than what you might initially think, but the most fun thing about it was that when we inspected the waterlines we did so on a skate board, so that was awesome. James Gordey: And that – does the skateboard inspection that’s OSHA-approved, correct? Aaron Drucker: Absolutely, it’s OSHA-approved. James Gordey: Okay. So, you were, you know, you started kind of not in the oil and gas industry, but it seems like you have some transferrable skills that helped you jump over? Aaron Drucker: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean I had – I had experience in construction management and with estimating and basic construction methodologies. And I applied for a job at CB&I as an estimator and so, I started off as a discipline estimator doing a lot of material take offs for piping and some civil structural steel. Basically, whatever they threw my way with the exception of E&I because those guys are they hold on to their little black box way too much. But, yeah, — and actually, as a sidebar, I’ve been in the industry now for nearly ten years, I still don’t know how to do E&I. I just know that there are some cables involve, some transmitters, some input output, and that’s – and I’ve exhausted my knowledge. James Gordey: Can we know what E&I stands for because, you know, maybe for some people that are less familiar? Aaron Drucker: Electrical Instrumentation. So, for all you electrical engineers out there, you’re awesome, but mainly I say that because I don’t know what you do. [0:05:00] James Gordey: All right. So, we have any electrical engineers out there, maybe we can put you in touch with Aaron Drucker and we can drill down further on what exactly E&I guys do. [0:05:07] Aaron Drucker: Yeah. No, and don’t get me wrong, I know that you guys definitely do something and clients definitely pay a lot of money for it. I just don’t understand it. So, that’s a me problem. I can own that. James Gordey: Okay. So, you started out doing some estimating at CB&I, how did you get, you know, progressing to the company, what was it like to start at such a big corporation and kind of tried find your footing? Aaron Drucker: Well, — well, first of I think you kind of do have to take a little bit into context. CB&I has grown just exponentially since – since I was – since I first started with the company. We did about $12 billion dollars worth of revenue last year and when I started with the company in 2007, we were – we were down around say $2 billion. So, we’re a much larger operation now than back then. So, that has now work – in hindsight, that’s worked out to be to my benefit just because I didn’t start off in a huge corporation, a huge corporation grew up around me. But, CB&I was great in that – in that they kind of let you do whatever it is that you wanted to do in terms of  — in terms of opportunities. If you were up for an opportunity and you wanted to put in the hard work, they’d let you do it. And so, I was – I was fortunately able to move around from – from discipline to discipline to a certain extent and then from location to location. James Gordey: Yeah. So, a lot of, you know, especially the young demographic that’s been listening to the show here they hear about expats assignments in oil and gas and, you know, based I’m just talking offline and just kind to get to know you, you have had the opportunity to travel and work abroad, you know, pretty good amount. Aaron Drucker: Yeah. Yeah, I have. So, I’ve spent three years living in Peru and two years living in Australia with CB&I. And then, kind of traveling everywhere in between and spend some time in London and spent some time in Singapore and Japan. So, I’ve had some pretty good fortune to do a fair bit of traveling. So, yeah, it’s definitely, you know, when I went to Peru for the first time and live for two years I was 24 years old, so – so it’s definitely an eye-opening experience to be able to live in a country like that. James Gordey: Let’s take a step back further here, a lot of people, you know, like I said are going to be interested in expat assignments. How did you make that jump? Did you ask your manager that you wanted to, hey, send me to Peru? Aaron Drucker: Oh, I was a pest. [Laughs] James Gordey: Yeah. Aaron Drucker: I was a pest. Not specifically for Peru, but I had a really excellent estimating manager then by the name of [John Crane] that I was just – it was just one of those things when you’re young and you’re stupid and you don’t realize how lucky you are. I just – I lucked into having a great boss and putting up with me pestering him to travel. And, he was – he was kind enough and good enough of a guy who believes in his people to help try to make – make your goals come true. And he sent me out on a couple of assignments kind of domestic assignments prior to going overseas and when I went overseas I got on to a project permanently and he was a good enough manager to let me do that. James Gordey: And then, you know, when you’re doing these assignments, what is your kind of work life balance like, do you get to enjoy the cities, did you see Machu Piccu or do you have a pretty good feel for the culture there or you’re kind of just working a lot? Aaron Drucker: Well, so, you know, every expats is going to have a different story and the stories vary from country to country from employer to employer. In my specific case in Peru, yeah, certainly I was able to get a pretty good hold of the culture and travel around the country.  The project site was 162 km south of Lima, so we were able to go into Lima not every weekend, but probably every other weekend, so I spent a lot of time there. And, of course, most we, you know, most of the job site itself was I believe 93% Peruvian labor, so you’re immerse in there, I mean you’re immerse in the culture just by working with the people around you. James Gordey: So, you may be weren’t in the 1% quite at this point in your life, but you made it to the 7%. [0:10:01] Aaron Drucker: Exactly. James Gordey: At CB&I at least. Aaron Drucker: Exactly. Well, not even in CB&I, I made it to the 7% on one project. [Laughs] James Gordey: You got to start somewhere. Aaron Drucker: Yeah. James Gordey: Okay. So, you mentioned that you worked in Australia as well as Peru. Can you kind of compare and contrast what it’s like to work in maybe a more developed country versus developing? Aaron Drucker: Yeah. I think that the contrast between a developing country and a developed country are, you know, it’s – Australia to me and I lived in Perth. Australia to me is a lot like Texas, like Perth is a lot like Texas to me. The differences in Western Australia and Eastern Australia is a lot like the differences between the north and the south of the US. And the cultures, you know, with the British background they’re all kind of, you know, seven degrees of separation, they’re not drastically different. Whereas, with Peru that being a developing nation, it was a lot different. You know you still have – things don’t quite work exactly as well as they work in the US. They’re still figuring things out like sometimes there’s blackouts no electricity. Sometimes the police don’t exactly know what to do in every situation. The government is still trying to figure out how to govern. You have… James Gordey: And that some people I would say were still trying to do that over here, correct? Aaron Drucker: Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. [Laughs] James Gordey: So, that’s kind of the string that ties, you know, the whole world together. Speaking of string tying all things together, you spoke about Australia and Peru and working all over the place with CB&I, the kind of the strand that tied you together with all these projects is liquefied natural gas. Aaron Drucker: Absolutely. James Gordey: So, okay, se we’ve got natural gas which is oil and gas and apart of that is going to be natural gas. What is natural gas and can you kind of talk about how people confuse methane and ethane wit interchangeably with natural gas. They’re not exactly clear what the difference is. Aaron Drucker: Yeah, sure. So, natural gas is kind of E – all of the above on that. So, it’s – it’s 93-96% methane depending on where you’re getting the gas from, but – so, basically majority methane and then you’ll have, you know, roughly – roughly 3-5% ethane, 1% butane and pentane – or sorry, 1% propane and butane. The rest pentane and then, you’ll have some non-hydrocarbons in that mix like carbon dioxide, H2S, and water. James Gordey: Okay. And then, so now that we are kind of, you know, educated, thanks for that knowledge you just dropped on us. Let’s go to liquefied natural gas. What is LNG? Aaron Drucker: So, LNG is basically natural gas that has been treated. So, by treated I mean they pulled out the H2S, they pulled out the carbon dioxide, they’ve removed any natural gas liquids. So, going back to the – to the propane and butane and ethane, they’ve removed those if there are any present. And, basically you’re just getting down to as much – basically it’s pure methane as you could get for the most part. And so, you’re taking that and you’re condensing and refrigerating it, so the guys in the LNG industry take a lot of flax sometimes for the process being simple and it isn’t, but essentially we are a larger refrigerator. So, we cool gas down to -161 degrees Celsius and that reduces the volume of the gas by six… James Gordey: Okay. And then, just kind of talking about the purpose of, you know, doing this whole process here sort of like how the Rockets fan basis kind of tailed off with some of the games I mean going to lately there’s a purpose and, you know, freezing it or liquefying it as you called it, right? Aaron Drucker: Right. Right. Right. Yeah and definitely not freezing it. You know we went through that warm a bit. If you’re freezing your – your LNG you’re going to run into some problems. James Gordey: So, when you liquefy it, it shrinks to 1/600th of the volume. Aaron Drucker: Exactly. James Gordey: And what are the benefits of that, why do we need to do that? Aaron Drucker: So, the benefits are around travel or not travel, but transportation of the gas itself. So, you know, the vast majority of gas around the world is transported by gas pipelines and much to the [sugaring] of everybody that opposes pipeline from Canada throughout the… James Gordey: Oh, they Keystone XL Pipeline. [0:15:00] Aaron Drucker: Yeah. To muster the [shingering] of everybody that opposes Keystone XL natural gas pipelines get built every day. There’s probably something like 10,000 miles of pipeline getting built this year. James Gordey: Yeah. That’s really a little known, you know, fact I guess however you want to talk about it. The Keystone XL just became political and very well publicized for all the wrong reasons. Aaron Drucker: Right. James Gordey: But we’re up here, you know, churning and burning standing up pipelines to move product to market all the time. Aaron Drucker: Right. Right. Exactly. And, just to be clear, I understand that the Keystone Pipeline is moving a different kind of product, it’s moving heavy crude versus natural gas and two completely different things. But, the point is is that people have pipelines all around them all day, I mean most people who have pipelines have gas pipelines going into their house. So… James Gordey: Yeah. And, pipeline is the safest way to move, you know, hydrocarbons from point A to point B. Aaron Drucker: Absolutely. Absolutely. James Gordey: It’s also, you know, very efficient. Aaron Drucker: Absolutely. James Gordey: Okay. So, we’re moving them in the pipelines and everything and, you know, we’ve got to shrink the volumes so that we can transport it. Why are we trying to transport it and put it on a vessel? Aaron Drucker: So, really the basic – the basic reason is economy. So, you know, at a certain point it becomes too expensive to transport gas by a pipeline. Now, most of the time that happens when you’re talking about transporting gas from one nation across an ocean to another nation. But, even – even in the context of say Peru LNG exports gas to Mexico, so technically you could build the gas pipeline from Peru to Mexico, they’re connected by land. You could build a pipeline through Ecuador through Colombia through Panama through all the rest of Central America and into Mexico. You can do it, it’s just not cost efficient. James Gordey: Okay. So, planes, trains, and automobiles in the oil and gas industry for natural gas were trying to take it, you know, originally Japan and what sort of the reason behind that? Aaron Drucker: So, the reason behind that is Japan unfortunately is a very resource poor nation. They just – they don’t have a lot of fossil fuels if any and actually unfortunately haven’t even been that blessed with geothermal capabilities despite all the volcanoes and tsunamis and earthquakes. So, they’ve – they’ve had to figure out a way to import their energy or produce it via nuclear which was part of the reason that Fukushima disaster three years ago was such a big deal for their country because that’s one of the largest sources of power. James Gordey: Okay. So, around what time did this Japanese LNG demand pop up? Aaron Drucker: So, really the first LNG, the first commercial LNG came about in 1961, so technically, you know, the sort of the LNGs now points to that, but really the industry didn’t start going looking anything like what it looks like today until the early 70’s. James Gordey: Okay. And then, just kind of focusing more on the US here, where do we come into this whole picture? Aaron Drucker: So, the US is a relatively new entrant or export. And, again, everybody will point to the Kenai Alaska facility the Conoco Phillips facility that was in 1961 and, yes, that is – that technically was the first American LNG export facility, but that’s a little bit of a different story than what America is experiencing now. James Gordey: Okay. So, sort of in  the recent history and people like myself before they were educated by individuals who are more well-informed such as yourself sort of associate the name Cheniere with LNG, that sort of synonymous together. Aaron Drucker: Sure. James Gordey: Can you kind of talk about what Cheniere was trying to do. Aaron Drucker: Yeah. James Gordey: And then, what happened and then what they winded up actually doing? Aaron Drucker: Yeah, sure. So, Cheniere and their founder and former CEO and director Charif Souki really an incredible story. So, in the early 2000’s the EIA the Energy Institute of America and kind of the market in general thought that the US was going to enter into a natural gas supply shortage. So, you had – you had what are called LNG regas facilities already existing in the US, places like Cove Point in Maryland and the trunk line facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana. [0:20:05] But, the market thought that we would need much more gas than what those facilities could handle. So, you had – you had sort of this rush to build LNG import facilities and it takes a long time to develop and build an LNG import facility. The regulatory process isn’t short we’re talking two to three years there. Construction isn’t short we’re talking, you know, twenty four maybe thirty six months probably closer to thirty six months because the – because of the length of time on the LNG storage tanks. So, it takes a long time to develop these facilities. James Gordey: And not only the facilities, you know, we got – we talked about the Houston XL and getting the product to these LNG specific process units and plants. You just kind of had to build the whole LNG infrastructure in the world to get all these products to the market, right? This all takes time. Aaron Drucker: Right. Right. Right. Exactly. So, that’s a little bit more that aspect plays a little bit more into when you’re trying to build a liquefaction facility than a regas. But, yeah, you still have all kinds of ancillary and peripheral infrastructure to build when you want to build an LNG import terminal. So, yeah, so it takes – it takes a long time to develop one of these projects, so in the case of Cheniere, about the time that Cheniere’s import facility came online is about the time that the shale revolution and fracking revolution in America took off and all of a sudden America found itself with way more natural gas and way more oil than we could ever use. James Gordey: Sure. And there’s a lot of people in the upstream portion of the oil and gas industry and maybe [0:22:01 Indiscernible] and other ENP companies. Now, we have natural gas everywhere and it didn’t change overnight, but in terms of, you know, large cycle projects in developing oil and gas infrastructure it might as well happen overnight, right? Aaron Drucker: Absolutely, I mean you – because in terms of typical project development horizons, it absolutely did happen overnight. James Gordey: Okay. So, now that everything, you know, kind of just took the whole gas market in the US and we flip it upside down as a result of shale and shale gas and the fracking revolution here at the shale boom. Now, Cheniere they have to go back to their investors that they’ve already gotten all these money from and not just them a bunch of other companies and say, hey, I know you basically done and we’ve got this import infrastructure here now, but now we’ve got to flip everything around. Aaron Drucker: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know and I guess that’s one aspect of my career that I haven’t had —  I haven’t had the experience of being in just yet, but on that – that LNG marketing side from an owner’s perspective, I can’t imagine how difficult of a conversation that is to have with all of your investors and all of your backers saying, yeah, so the thing that we thought was going to happen for the next twenty years turns out the exact opposite is going to happen for the next twenty years. James Gordey: Nobody’s perfect. I’m sure I’ve made several mistakes just as we’ve been recording here and as we discuss I made a mistake on the first time we tried to record this. So, eventually, you know, he has this conversation and he gets his backing and, you know, now, today we’re kind of seeing that they’ve – these projects they’re coming online the export terminals. Aaron Drucker: Right. Right. So, yeah, Cheniere it’s an incredible, incredible story if you, you know, for anybody out there who wants more details just Google Charif Souki and just Google the history of Cheniere. It’s absolutely an amazing story, but, yeah, they basically had to change their entire mode of operation their entire business model in a very short time frame. And they were – they’re the first in America in this modern era to export LNG. James Gordey: Yeah. And so, now they’re exporting LNG, but also around that time I guess all the roller coaster kind of took its – took it’s toll on the shareholders’ patience. And also, Mr. Souki and he has since been replaced, correct? Aaron Drucker: That’s correct. That’s correct. And, I mean I don’t know exactly what happened other than Mr. [Icon] apparently had a difference with Mr. Souki and I don’t know what that was, but, yeah, Charif Souki is now founder and managing partner of a company called Telllurian. [0:25:03] James Gordey: Okay. So, now that we’ve kind of told the Cheniere’s story up until today, can you kind of just talk about some trends that you see since you work in everyday, where do you see LNG going maybe in the future, short and long term? Aaron Drucker: So, you know, it’s kind of hard to say what exactly is going to happen in the too short term because everything happens in a long terminology. But, what I can see on the horizon is the increase in small scale LNGs, so – so facilities that, you know, a typical base load liquefaction facility is at the minimum say 4 megatons per annum or million tons per annum,  sorry. So, a small scale facility would be maybe .25 million tons per annum, .2 million tons per annum maybe even less. So, you see the increase of those facilities to service the needs of smaller countries in the Caribbean maybe elsewhere in South America, other island nations. James Gordey: You think maybe the Caribbean, maybe that’d be some sort of project you’re interested in visiting spending some time out there? Aaron Drucker: I would be all over it. Anytime they need any sort of LNG facilities built in the Caribbean, they could send me. James Gordey: Okay. Aaron Drucker: So, yeah, I see that and then, you know, sort of the backbone of the LNG industry has been long term sales agreements. So, meaning, you know, these facilities are incredibly expensive to build, billions and billions of dollars. So, in order for anybody to put up the money — money for that whether it’s, you know, big company like Exxon or – or private – private equity investors or banks or – or XM facilities whatever. In order for them to put up any kind of money, they need to make sure that they’re going to make some sort of return and that return is guaranteed through  twenty-year long contracts for guaranteed volumes of LNG delivery. James Gordey: Talking about the contracts, can you kind of just very high level walk people through how those contracts are structured and how these companies make their money? Aaron Drucker: Yeah, sure. So, I’ll just – there’s a lot of things happening right now and – in contracts particularly with US LNG that’s changing the commercial structure, but I’ll just go over sort of the traditional commercial structure of – of LNG kind of coming out of the South Pacific and going to  — to Japan. So, these contracts are structured anywhere from fifteen to twenty maybe even twenty five years long. And so, the contracts are based upon a guaranteed delivery per year of LNG. And sometimes – sometimes it’s the buyer’s responsibilities to ship the gas, sometimes it’s the seller’s responsibilities to ship the gas it just depends on the contract. But, at the heart of it, it’s guaranteed volume. And, that volume is then multiplied by unit price to get the total price of the contract. And so, that unit price to the contract floats on what’s called the Japanese – Japanese crude cocktail. So… James Gordey: What sort of cocktails are we talking about here? Are these midtown cocktail? Aaron Drucker: Nothing good, I tell you that right now. [Laughs] It involves way too much map. James Gordey: Okay. Maybe we’ll get one of those cocktails after the show. Aaron Drucker: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll be up for that. I’m not – be it for Singapore slang, maybe not Japanese crude. But, it’s basically just it’s a price based on the price of crude oil. So – so the price of LNG in these contracts essentially floats between a ceiling and a floor based – based on the price of oil. So –so everybody’s guaranteed their volumes and everybody’s kind of guaranteed a minimum price minimum return. And that, like I say is for a long time frame, right? Fifteen, twenty, maybe even twenty five years. So, the difference now is of course everybody sees the price of oil every day, everybody sees the price of oil move up and down every day it’s its own true commodity. It is a commodity, right? That fluctuates. And you can pay – you can pay $35 for a barrel of oil today, then you could pay $40 tomorrow and $20 the day after that depending on the price of the commodity. [0:30:07] So, right now LNG like I said doesn’t really function like that, it doesn’t have a daily price really. There is a spot price of LNG, but nobody builds projects based upon that – that price, they build it still based upon those long term contracts. And so, really what you see what I can see happening in the next, you know, maybe twenty years is LNG becoming its own commodity and it being traded globally, natural gas being traded globally in the same way that oil is traded globally. James Gordey: Okay. Let’s do a couple of quick fire things here to round it up. So, you’ll hear Mark LaCour the man who introduced us once said famously on his show, Oil and Gas This Week that he hosts with James Gordey Hahn. He talked about a fling and he talked about, you know, that something that you don’t want to do to your wife or your girlfriend. Can you explain to us what a fling is? Aaron Drucker: A fling? James Gordey: Yeah. Aaron Drucker: I have no idea. [Laughs] James Gordey: Isn’t that the large floating liquefied natural gas vessels? Aaron Drucker: Oh. [Laughs] You have me in some hot water there for a second. [Laughs] So, yeah, that’s an FLNG. James Gordey: Yeah. Aaron Drucker: So, that’s, yeah, Floating Liquid Natural Gas. Just in case anybody’s listesning, make that clear Floating Liquid Natural Gas. James Gordey: Yeah. Just in case your wife is listening to the show. This is all PG fun here. Aaron Drucker: Yeah. You have no idea how much – how much trouble you’re getting me in. James Gordey: [Laughs] Aaron Drucker: But, Floating Liquid Natural Gas. So – so, I’ll kind of break it down into an FSRU and no, I’m not saying FU to James Gordey. That’s a floating storage in regasification unit. So – so the FLNG is basically just the liquefaction portion of that. So, it’s an onshore – it’s an onshore liquefaction facility that is now floating. So, they just build a big ship huge ship the largest ship hauls in the world and they put a liquid natural gas terminal on the top of it. James Gordey: Okay. Got it.  So, sort of like a one-stop shop? Aaron Drucker: Well, it’s – well, sort of one-stop shop, it’s a one-stop liquefaction shop. James Gordey: Okay. Got it. Aaron Drucker: It’s a one-stop liquefaction shop and so – and so, really there is – there is – there is only two in fabrication in the world right now. The first one to come online will probably be [Prelude] which is project by Shell kind of North of Australia. So – so there’s no – there’s no partially functioning floating LNG yet. There’s a lot of FSRU floating storage and regasification units all over, several in India, several in Brazil, several elsewhere. So… James Gordey: Okay. So, there’s no, you know, actually realized in today’s world FLNGs and there’s also no commercially viable FLNG in your personal life [0:33:12 Indiscernible]? Aaron Drucker: Thank you for bringing that clarity to my wife, James Gordey. I appreciate that. James Gordey: Exactly. Okay. And then, so maybe and this might be a very broad question. If people are looking, you know, hey, maybe this is interesting, I want to work in this world, this is a sub segment I didn’t know much about before. What do you think maybe are some good, you know, resources to learn more and maybe some ways to get in or maybe some good companies that people should look to work for? Aaron Drucker: Okay. Well, I’ll take that one piece at a time. So, in terms of like just wanting to know more, there’s a couple of good resources out there. There’s a really great book called LNG in Non-technical Language. It’s probably – you probably get it on Amazon for maybe $40, you know expense it through your company. It’s a great book. It teaches you basically the ins and outs of everything with LNG. Aside from that, if you just want to get, you know, if you just want to kind of start, you know, to bring a toe in the water and getting a feel for the industry, LNG World News is great. It’s a daily sort of top ten stories in LNG, so that’s a great journal to subscribe to. Aside from that, if you wanted to really dive deep into American LNG since everything is – is through public regulation, you can go onto the FERC website. That’s Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission’s website. And you can read all of the project descriptions, they’re all publicly available. James Gordey: Got you. Okay. All right. So, and if people, you know, maybe they want to reach out to you and they think you’re a great guy and they want to talk t you more, you know, connect with you and maybe get some Japanese crude cocktails or maybe some espresso. [0:35:02] Aaron Drucker: Sure. James Gordey: How would you have them reach out to you? Aaron Drucker: You can reach me at my e-mail. That’s andrucker06@yahoo.com. James Gordey: Okay. And then we’ll be sure to put that in the accompanying show notes for the show. Aaron Drucker: Great. James Gordey: All right, Aaron Drucker. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it and I think we’ve learned a lot here today. Aaron Drucker: James Gordey, it’s been a blast. I very much appreciate you having me on and taking the time. James Gordey: All right. I appreciate it guys. Talk to you next time. [Music] All right. So, initial feedback on the show has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve had, yes, actual several hundred people listening, so I’ve really been overwhelmed by the response and everyone’s interest in the show.  I know we just had a lot of people hitting me up in the last episode. What we want to do is cover everything that you want covered, offer some education and kind of just unite the under 35 oil and gas, you know, the next generation and this the show for them by us. So, having said that please, you know, if you have any suggestions or there’s something you’d like covered, reach out to me and what we’re going to do is provide all of my contact information in the show notes and however you’d like to contact me, I will respond I’m readily available and I’ll try to stay on top of everything. All right. So, moving on to reviews. We got two reviews for the show and what we’re going to do is every time you leave a review, you’re going to get a shout out on the show. I’m going to read the entire thing. So, having said that we’re going to read the first one here, the title is Millenials Wanted by John [Flipca] and this is going to him talking from here on out just me reading it. James Gordey Gordey did an excellent job of hitting the highlights the millenials in the oil and gas industry are seeking opinions on the wide array of topical information resonate for anyone starting their career looking to make a transition in the industry. Keep checking for pertinent information that will help you build foundational knowledge on the oil and gas industry as well as networking inside of it. All right. I appreciate that one. John. And then, we have the friend of the show, The Oil and Gas Sales Expert, Mark LaCour with the second review here. And the title is Long Overdue. The oil and gas industry has long needed a voice from the younger generation and James Gordey Gordey, he’s talking about me is that voice. I love learning how the millenials see their careers lives and features differently than My Gen X or the boomers. Great work, easy to listen, and online must listen to list. Okay. And then – so that’s the two reviews we go, so if you’d like to leave a review and get the entire thing in a shoutout, if you want to put a shoutout in there I’ll read it on the show for the  — everyone’s that listening the whole audience. And then, to quote DJ Khaled, “Reviews are the major key to helping the show out.” So, if there’s anything you can do to help me, leave a review. The reviews help the shows move up the iTune rankings and it helps other people find the show. You can do that directly by going to James GordeyGordey.com/review. And this episode is going to come out on Wednesday which is going to be April 27th and this Saturday coming up the API Young Professional group that I’m a part of is hosting a real life opportunity to tour an offshore rig in Baytown, Texas. All you have to do is be an API member. So, we’re going to put the link to sign up in that as well, but it’s APIYP.org. And this is really a terrific opportunity, you’ll get to tour the rig and also get some really great networking opportunities. You can meet myself and the rest of the API team, Mark LaCour and a bunch of other really great people in the industry. Okay. And the last thing, we talked about connecting with the show. You can e-mail me, hit me up on Linkedin, Twitter. It’s James Gordey_Gordey and also we made a Facebook group for Facebook page for the podcast. And we’re also on YouTube now and I put that on – I put that on the notes and that’s also you can go to James GordeyGordey.com/ogyp02. All right.  I appreciate the time everyone and we’ll talk to you next week. [Music] Aaron Drucker: That’s the kind of change that it was. James Gordey: You’re at least going to need two phones in this situation. Aaron Drucker: At a minimum. [0:39:37] End of Audio The post OGYP #002|The American LNG Story with Aaron Drucker appeared first on JamesGordey.com.

OGYP #01: tl;dr Oil & Gas Entrepreneur Moji Karimi In this, the inaugural episode of The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, I talk to Moji Karimi. We discuss his journey from growing up in Iran, moving to Louisiana and picking up a Cajun accent, to moving to Houston. Moji walks us through his professional career, offers some insight into how to network in Oil and Gas and touches on how you can check out the Oil & Gas entrepreneurial scene. Click Here to Listen to the Show Watch the Podcast on Youtube About Our Guest: Moji Karimi Moji Karimi is a Petroleum Engineer and Oil and Gas Entrepreneur current working at Biota as a Business Development Manager. Biota applies DNA sequencing and data science to characterize the earth’s subsurface. Moji grew up in Iran and attended graduate school at UL Lafayette. Prior to joining Biota, Moji has worked in various roles at Tesco and Weatherford. The best way to connect with Moji is by connecting with him on LinkedIn or on Twitter! If you’d like to hear more from Moji or learn more about Biota, check out his appearance on Russ Capper’s “The Energy Makers Show“ Subscribe & Review The OGYP on iTunes, Google Play & Stitcher! Click Play to Hear #01 with Moji Karimi Click Play to Catch Up on the rest of the OGYP Episodes Follow The OGYP Pod & Related Projects Connect with Me Email | LinkedIn | Twitter #001 Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast: Oil & Gas Entrepreneur Moji Karimi James Gordey: Hello, I’m James Gordey, this is my podcast that you are listening to right now. I grew up in New Orleans, i went to lsu got a college degree for me that was civil engineering and i moved to houston 3 days after I graduated in may of 2015. Found a roommate on craigslist and was ready to get started with my career. After I got settled, I was looking to convert all of my energy into to something to try and build a network, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s the grown up thing to do, was to transition from college and start your network and be a grownup. So i found some organizations, I found some podcasts and I met some great people here and eventually I began producing that podcast and I joined and became a co-founder of of the api young professionals. After a while of being and producing that podcast I decided, hey I’ve got an idea. That idea is what you’re hearing here today, and this is, well you know there’s nothing special about me, I’m like you. I just went out on a limb and started doing it. SO this is just going to be the show, ya know it’s called The Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast, that’s the name for now, that might, we might decided that that’s lame, or that’s dumb and we’ll change it. I’m talking to you here  now from my apartment in Houston, my roommate’s taking a nap on the couch, because we’re rained in today, this is the big April storms in Houston. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you hear this. So instead of just sitting around, I decided to put up the final touches here and just talk to you. So this is going to be the show, we’ll start of just interviewing people, young professionals and more established industry guys, and gals. We don’t discriminate, we’ll take anyone on the show, we just want to have some good conversations. We’re going to get their story and talk to them as people. We’ll learn about some interesting topics together and this is just the show. I want to engage with y’all, get your feedback and anything like that to try and make the show that we want. Adding some features, taking away things, anything like that, but really I just wanted to talk to you and say, here I am, just any other standard post grad working in Oil and Gas talking to you here in my apartment in the middle of Houston. So this is going to be the show, the first person who was kind enough to talk to us, his name  is Moji Karimi. He is from Iran, but he went to ULL, where he got his graduate degree, University of Louisiana Lafayette, the ragin cajuns. Then he moved to Houston and started working where he eventually wound up at weatherford and now he is working at a startup, where’s he doing some really cool things involving Nanotechnology, profiling the organisms in the ground, you know, we’ll hear more about that as he talks, so here’s the show. Thanks. James Gordey: Welcome to the Oil and Gas Young Professionals Podcast. Moji Karimi:Thanks for having me James. James Gordey: So we’re here in Houston, and it’s April now and we’ve enjoyed this really mild, el nino winter, and it really didn’t get cold at all. Our friends that are probably listening in the north, wherever they might be as they eventually find this show, they’re probably very jealous of the weather we have here, but we’re about to pay the price, because here comes the heat, and we won’t be able to breath when we go outside until October? Moji Karimi: Yep, I tell you these past two or three days have been the best so far and I hope we get more of it, but it will probably start getting hotter here soon. James Gordey: Yeah we’re ready for it. Okay so, you’re from Iran but how did you get into Oil & Gas and how do you find yourself in Houston now? Moji Karimi: Laughs, That’s a long story but the short version is that I grew up in Iran, where oil and gas is one of the main resources, so you always see grown ups, as a kid on the news the oil minister making things happen and just about how the country and the economy is relying on Oil and Gas and after high school, which is where you have to choose what major to take in Iran and I knew that I wanted to be an engineer, but didn’t want to be an electrical engineer, or a mechanical engineer, or a chemical engineer, so then I came across Petroleum,. James Gordey: Were you between Petroleum and anything else or was it just straight Petroleum? Moji Karimi: No, once I made that choice, back in Iran, you actually have to choose what discipline of petroleum engineer you go to from a bachelors, so it’s exploration, production, drilling and reservoir and as you see you have to make that choice before going to college. I did my research, asked a lot of people who work in different sectors and it turns out they told me drilling engineering is actually more interesting, it’s more dynamic because things are happening in real time, and by the way you make more money, so that was it for me and I choose drilling engineering. And I went to school at the university for petroleum technology. James Gordey: Hey, I mean no pressure, you just have to make a decision and that’s where you go for the rest of your life. Moji Karimi: That is true and I guess I was one of the lucky ones, that what I choose to go to college for actually did turn out to be what I ended up enjoying. So I am grateful for that. James Gordey: Yeah that’s awesome! You’re out here making holes and figuring things out as we go. Okay so growing up in Iran, for your undergraduate, your bachelor’s degree you did petroleum drilling engineering. And then what came after that? Moji Karimi: Just getting close to graduating and thinking beyond what the education system had to offer there, I started doing my own research about what can I do for graduate studies. James Gordey: Were you getting on reddit to do this or where where did you figure out what you were trying to do? Moji Karimi:Just speaking with with people who have gone to different universities, I remember just going and looking at the rankings of universities and then it became clear that the United States had more to offer in terms of diversity of schools and richness of the petroleum engineer programs and at the time, to tell you the truth, I had no idea. If you told me Montana versus Louisiana and Texas, all I knew was from movies. But I would look for what states seemed to have more opportunities in terms of industry collaboration, better professors and they have research programs that are more in line with what I was doing at the time, which was drilling technology. While doing that I came across University of Louisiana at Lafayette and one of the professors there had some really interesting research so I reached out. They ended up offering me a scholarship and I stopped there, I didn’t apply to any other school. Once I got the ragin cajuns scholarship, that was it. That’s how I ended up at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. That was December of 2008 when I moved to the United States. James Gordey:Okay so I may be somewhat biased, but I’m also Louisiana born and raised from New Orleans and I have to say you made an excellent choice. So you’re the Iranian Ragin Cajun, what did you think of south Louisiana? Moji Karimi: I had a great, great time there, I really love Lafayette. I actually just 2 weeks ago was reading that Lafayette was chosen as the city with the happiest people and the picture that went with that was a bunch of people dancing with the cajun music, having crawfish. I got to experience that, very nice people, I really enjoyed my time and I think it is particularly a really good city to go to school because you want to have some focus for your school but you also want to have some fun while you’re there. On the same token, you don’t want to go to school in Las Vegas, but Lafayette was a great experience culturally and also a great place to come to the United States. James Gordey:Yeah, Louisiana really is the United States, but it’s almost like another country when you go there and we’re definitely all about the work life balance. You actually probably have to watch yourself on the scale since you might get a little heavy on the party side over there at times. People in Louisiana, especially in Lafayette, they like to have a great time. Moji Karimi: The only thing I have to blame Lafayette or Louisiana for is my accent, which I am still trying to work on. You can imagine, an Iranian mixed with Louisiana is not perfect english. James Gordey: Certainly, I was thinking that I heard some sort of cajun in there but I didn’t want to call you out on it, but you brought it up. So you have the Iranian, cajun accent and now some Texan. Moji Karimi: Cajun-Persian! James Gordey: Cajun-Persian, exactly. So what came after UL? Moji Karimi:So while I was at UL, which was actually just 3 semesters, when I wanted to look at my thesis, because we had to do a thesis program in graduate school, I wanted to do my thesis on a drilling technology that would have real applications in the industry. I didn’t want to do some theoretical research in the lab or just modeling with no applications. I had an eye on getting a job through my thesis, so what I did, is went to good old google and typed in, advanced drilling technology. I came across a bunch of things, managed pressure drilling being one, solid expandable systems, casing while drilling technology and casing while drilling was the one that peaked my interest. So I did more research on it and as I researched, I came across this name Tesco, the company again and again, every time I searched more. And so I looked into it. I asked why is Tesco so close to casing drilling? It turned out that they are actually the inventors of casing drilling and they have an office in Houston. At the time they also had an office in Lafayette so I reached out to them and basically said, “I’m a student at University of Louisiana Lafayette and I’m really interested in your technology. I would like to do my thesis on it. Why don’t you give me some problems, what are the things you are dealing with right now in the industry and I’ll pick one. If I can I’ll also solve it. It turned out that email ended up in the inbox of my good friend, who wasn’t my friend at the time but he was after, Moni Montgomery, who also happened to be a ragin cajun from ULL. He wrote me back with a very welcoming email and provided me with more information about technology. Long story short, I ended up in Houston, interviewed and we brainstormed about ideas and they gave me a problem and I solved that problem,but only a part of it and there was more left to do. When I graduated they offered me a full time position as a research engineer and that’s when I moved to Houston in 2010. James Gordey: Okay so you’re in Houston, you go from South Louisiana and now you have a second place in the US, Houston. As most people listening probably know, Houston is the epicenter or the center of the Oil & Gas universe, it’s like working on wall street for Oil and Gas. What do you think about Houston? Why Houston? Let’s talk about that a little bit. Moji Karimi: Houston is such a friendly city to me now, but when I moved here it was very intimidating starting with the highways. Moving from Lafayette to Houston, we had a little downtown where everything was there, but here downtown is really, it has a different meaning. It’s not a hanging out place after hours, where lafayette was. James Gordey: Were you looking for the Keg? All these bars, you could find them over here? Moji Karimi: Yeah, no Keg in Houston. So when I moved to Houston, I immediately realized that the way to establish yourself is to network and bond with the other colleagues and peers throughout the industry. I did that through different associations, SPE, IADC, AADE and Tesco, my company at the time, was very open to the idea of me exploring and to be the face of casing drilling in this community. That helped me in turn to get to know a lot of other people working in the industry, a lot of them who I am still in touch with and to get to know the dynamics of Houston. To your question of “Why Houston?” First and foremost, I am a believer that if you are in any business, you have to be where your market it, you have to be where your customers are, and if you are Oil and GAs, energy, that is going to be Houston. With that said, Houston is a very cultural city, cost of living is low, so even if you are an entrepreneur, it is an unique place to start your business. There are a lot of resources available if you are a business in Oil & Gas, or others too, such as medical or retail. But so far I have had a great experience in Houston and I think I will continue to live here.  James Gordey: I really can’t stress enough, I graduated from LSU back in May and I’ve been working here in Houston going on ten months now and just the opportunities and experiences you get to take up, and the people, you might interact with them on linkedin, or twitter or anything like that. I know that just because I live here in Houston I’ve met and become personal friends with people like Moji here, James Hahn, Mark LaCour of the Oil and Gas This week podcast. The doors that can open up for you are really incredible, just being and walking the halls with those people really opens your eyes and everything is at your fingertips. Houston really is terrific for your career and after 5 as well. So after that, I’m looking down here at your credentials on Linkedin, because I had to get prepared as we were going to talk here and I see that you’ve done a lot of work at Weatherford, could you tell me about your weatherford experience? Moji Karimi: Sure, when I was at Tesco, towards the end of my time there, I was doing research and one of the things I realized quickly was that I actually didn’t enjoy it as much, and I liked to learn more about why are we doing what we are doing and what is the business model for this. Who are the customers? What are we telling them? How are we representing them this data? So I like to be involved more in application engineering, operations, product line management type of roles, and Weatherford was the company that offered me that opportunity. Schlumberger came along and bought my division casing drilling from Tesco and that was when I moved to Weatherford. I started off as an application engineer for solid expandable systems and I did that for a while and then I moved back to drilling and casing, as Weatherford called it.   James Gordey:Can we talk a little bit about how you said your company was acquired by Schlumberger, which of course is the largest Oil and Gas upstream service company in the world. How did you make that switch? Did you you go your old ragin cajun working the connection route, did you cold call or email people, via Society of Petroleum Engineers, how did that happen? Moji Karimi:That’s a good question. I’m grateful for knowing the people at Weatherford just because of what I was doing prior with SPE, AADE with IADC. So what happens when you are working, no matter what company you are working at, at a very special topic, saying casing drilling, or it could be EOR, or advanced reservoir simulation using a certain method, you will get to know people who do the same thing at different companies. Through me presenting at SPE events and different functions, I got to know who is the person for drilling with casing at Weatherford, at baker hughes, at operating companies. When the news of tesco being acquired, the casing drilling division of tesco being acquired by Schlumberger, the Weatherford friends actually reached out to me and said, “we know this deal is happening, what is your plan?” I said no initially, and then other things happened and I changed my mind, I was uncertain because we didn’t know if this was going to be the best opportunity of a lifetime, to join schlumberger or not. So that’s how I ended up at weatherford. James Gordey:That’s really, and you hear about joining professional organizations, like API and SPE, or whatever is related to your segment of the industry or your industry specifically if you aren’t in oil and gas or energy, but you are hearing an example of a real life story about how if you get involved in these organizations, you meet people and then people view you as valuable. They want to hire you as well. As big as the oil and gas industry is, it’s also not as big as you think in your particular segment and you get to rub elbows a lot with the same people and you get to learn everyone who does similar things to you. Moji Karimi:Absolutely and if I was to emphasize on one thing when you do all of these associations, it’s all about paying it forward. You can’t expect to see results immediately, but it is to develop those connections. It does take a lot of energy, but you never know when it’s going to come back and help you out. James Gordey:Exactly, that’s just a good thing to have in your pocket, you join these organizations, you talk to people, network, meet them, help them with whatever they are trying to do and eventually they’ll really appreciate you and you’ll build up that equity with those people and they start to see you as a peer so that when you need something you can call upon them and they’ll actually help you. So everyone, here listening young professionals and the like, go out, find what organizations are relevant to your particular job or company, where you fit into the industry and join those organizations. Don’t just join them halfway, really do it intently and you can reap the benefits down the line when you need them especially in this low crude oil price environment. Moji Karimi:My experience with doing work at IADC and AADC, I was at the drilling fluids groups at ADE, the task work for updating the 12th edition of IADC drilling manual and when I was doing these things at the table, everyone had twenty plus, thirty years of experience and it’s intimidating, because oil and gas is very experience driven and it will take you a while to gain the confidence and sit at the table, to get to see people as peers, not just somebody that is joining and doesn’t know much about the topic. What I Realized is that once you prove yourself, once you pass that first barrier and add very good collaborative work with different generations within the industry, my suggestion is don’t be intimidated by how many years of experience you don’t have, focus on what you already know. James Gordey: If you don’t ask, and you don’t reach out, you’ll never know, so put yourself out there and just go for it. So we got a little sidetracked but you’re working at weatherford and I also know from just speaking with you and trying to set up this interview that you’ve gotten to do a lot of traveling with Weatherford as well, can you talk about that? (20:50) The post OGYP #001|Oil & Gas Entrepreneur Moji Karimi appeared first on JamesGordey.com.