00:00:00:00 - 00:00:18:09
Unknown
Welcome to a 2026 edition of Energy Bytes. Woo hoo! Land man. I'm Bobby Neil, and here I got the rad dad, John Callahan, here with us. How are we doing, man? Good. And, excited. Been kind of a long time coming, trying to get these guys down from Oklahoma City, but we've got, Darren and Megan Boyd, maybe even first brothers we've had.
00:00:18:10 - 00:00:26:05
Unknown
I don't know, I've had brothers. Yeah, we had brother and sister. Yes. Country. But yeah, it seems brother and sister, but it's brother and.
00:00:26:07 - 00:00:43:12
Unknown
Like any good brother would, would say. And then, their adopted brother Josh. That's right. Who is right? You know, the the tech brains behind everything at at firm app. So now I'm super excited to have you guys here. I mean, I, I think we when I was at gristmill, we were some of the, you know, trying to be early adopters.
00:00:43:12 - 00:01:07:01
Unknown
And we got bought, of the other platform. But, there's a lot of people probably listening that have used some of the stuff you guys have, developed in the past, too, that they don't even know it yet, but, now, super excited to have you here. But again, like I said, they come in from Oklahoma City and we talked about it on the previous episode, but we'd love to get your perspective on the, recent news with, expand and Devon kind of relocating headquarters at least.
00:01:07:10 - 00:01:42:15
Unknown
And just kind of what you're hearing on the ground floor about that and, yeah. Well, initially, you know, we hope that all things don't come in threes. I think is the initial response, to the to the Oklahoma City market. I mean, it's, I think initially people that like it makes sense that it's an address change for lots of reasons or the the big question a lot of people have is like, well, what happens to these are two huge companies that have been really active as companies and corporate sponsors.
00:01:42:15 - 00:02:04:06
Unknown
I mean, they're names all over the Thunder Arena, every McLendon owned. That's right. So there's a family. So on it or not, I don't know, like he was one of one of these. Yeah, yeah. So part of it is a, you know, people thing. I've seen lots of, memes with the Devon Tower rebranded, like, you know, Dollar General on top of it.
00:02:04:06 - 00:02:27:06
Unknown
So there's been that's been going around and which kind of kind of, you know, confirms to me that people really don't understand that that's not really what's going to happen. But, that I think is the initial thought. And then when you when you hear that it's not really moving people, that there's still, there's still a sense of loss of kind of these, these companies are moving out.
00:02:27:06 - 00:02:43:23
Unknown
I mean, there's still enough people here and we're going to still go to church with them and go pick up our kids from school with all these people, but they're they're gone. Yeah. At the same time, this can be hard. I mean, hell, it was hard with GMI having the one little office off of them, and then it's made more sense to move people eventually.
00:02:43:23 - 00:03:01:17
Unknown
You know, it's like it sounds good. And, to maintain that presence, I think there's a ton of talent that obviously Devon especially still has there. And I'm sure Chesapeake or expand, you know, does two. But it's just, you know, if you have half your team that's working on the Eagle for in Oklahoma City now from here, how does it make sense, you know, or how can you do it?
00:03:01:17 - 00:03:19:01
Unknown
I mean, Conoco has a presence in Oklahoma called Bartlesville, but it's super small, right? Darren and I actually been up in Bartlesville. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we're we're familiar where it's like it's they're there, but it's not the same as it was when we were growing up. And that's just it. You know, it's almost basically, you know, so they had a lab there too, right.
00:03:19:01 - 00:03:41:06
Unknown
Like, they had the R&D facility outside of town. I think for a while they had some auditing groups. But, you know, it's just not the same. It's not it's not all the sea level people. And, you know, you're not seeing the CEO at a basketball game kind of a thing. So it's it's different. Yeah. And I mean, I went to the Thunder game when I was there with Devin and and it's like I mean literally just walk in and say Devin's name is everywhere.
00:03:41:06 - 00:03:59:18
Unknown
Like it's at the stadium. It's on the ice rink during the winter. You know, it's, you know, it's and that tower, you can't miss it, you know? So. And I would be hopeful that all that still exists. I mean, when they say significant presence still in Oklahoma City, you know, I don't know to what who is moving to Houston, you know, what leadership is going to basically kind of recreate that address.
00:03:59:18 - 00:04:20:10
Unknown
But, Oklahoma City's been on such a uptick for the last decade. This feels like one of the first knocks we've had in a while of just like something else to kind of overcome. But, I think once it's settled in a little bit and people have talked about like exactly what this means, it hasn't been as like earth shattering news as it was today.
00:04:20:10 - 00:04:42:08
Unknown
I guess. You know, it's more of a Conoco Contra thing where they've got a significant presence in Midland. And, I mean, they still have all their mid-card assets, don't they? Right? Yeah. So it's like you got operating fields an hour away for sure. Oh, cool. Well, let's jump into, the firm app, and then we can probably go back through the, the history of how you guys even got here.
00:04:42:08 - 00:05:01:12
Unknown
And, and, you know, I scout and all that, but, I mean, before we even get to that, I mean, I as a firm app, as an owner relations platform, can you guys just let the users know what is under relations in general, and why is it important? Because it's definitely kind of shoved to the side until you have to until you have until you have to build a, Microsoft.
00:05:01:14 - 00:05:24:05
Unknown
Yeah. 365, you know, Frankenstein thing to manage, on our relations like I did. And then I was like, please bring these guys in and you take it away from me. Yeah, well, I'll say, when we first looked at kind of the space and it was the efficiency of went of which like the operators were working and it a lot of times they'll outsource owner relations.
00:05:24:05 - 00:05:53:03
Unknown
So just the, the dealings of the owners that we have surface mineral all of that. And there's a lot there's a lot of activity. There's a lot of volume of inbound. Everything from my father passed away to I moved I need to change my address or just general questions about whatever it might be. So we had learned that, like, there might be a team of two, three, 4 or 5 people that are dealing with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of owners.
00:05:53:03 - 00:06:16:05
Unknown
And like the volume starts to stack where we may think we're doing great if we can get a response back in three weeks, you know, and so from a relation standpoint, like that's not really like creating this really strong bond between the operating company and the owner base. And so that was just kind of like a pinch point that I think was pretty consistent across everybody that we had talked to.
00:06:16:06 - 00:06:36:15
Unknown
And the other side of it was the owner experience was like incredibly limited at best. They may have an email address or a phone number for me to reach out and ask my questions. Nothing was really facing them. Nothing was app based where I can just, you know, like when I deal with my bank or I deal with my AT&T account, I'm not I'm not going by the store anymore.
00:06:36:15 - 00:06:59:08
Unknown
I'm just getting on my app, log in and I'm answering my own questions. Or if I do have a question, I can ask it there and get an immediate response. So kind of a mixture of those two things. And with like the flood of AI opportunity, we really saw like this, there could be something here that's going to be helpful and a win win in a way that like, hasn't been presented itself in kind of this owner relations land world.
00:06:59:10 - 00:07:18:01
Unknown
Yeah. Well, and from a timing perspective, you know, we ran into the same thing on the safety software, which we may talk about, but, you know, in the 80s, like you didn't need safety software if it even existed in the 80s. Right? It was like, you know, no one would have bought it. But that changed, right?
00:07:18:05 - 00:07:40:10
Unknown
You know, 2010 or, you know, mid 2000 hit and operator expectations go up. Insurance costs are through the roof. So it's like you really have to to adjust to the the industry as it, as it evolves. Well the same thing has happened like with owner relations I'm sure there is a day 80s, 90s, early 2000 where that you'd call and be like, who are you?
00:07:40:10 - 00:08:01:23
Unknown
Like, do we pay you or why don't you just go to your mailbox, get your check, and don't ever call me again, right? Like, like, like, just be happy that we're sending you those checks. And that is not the environment that we live in now, and especially in the last several years with all of the consolidation, it just increases the the calls of like, why am I getting this check?
00:08:01:23 - 00:08:22:07
Unknown
Who is this from? What does that mean for me? And and so I think it's just a matter of the timing is right for it to. That's an interesting perspective too. Right. Like they have more rights. So do like quote unquote rights, but they're also potentially less informed about what they're getting and what they're doing and stuff in general.
00:08:22:08 - 00:08:42:12
Unknown
Right. Like I've never even thought about that. But like generational knowledge transfer on that side. Yeah. Yeah that too. But then there's all this stuff that flows downstream to say the accounting and land system, like the suspense and all these things. And now a sudden, if you're behind or a head on something, then I mean, the last thing accountant, I say, here's a PPA, right.
00:08:42:12 - 00:09:07:08
Unknown
You know how big or small this is. But like, there's, you know, not a yeah, there's material impacts, you know, downstream of this too, that, you know, not getting to these things sooner or better or even just legal honestly. Right. I mean like, well, and then the educated landowners, of course, you know, that's a whole other ball of wax where they're like Darren said, you know, with it, you know, I might be comparing banks by who has the best app like this app.
00:09:07:08 - 00:09:28:13
Unknown
It's trash. Will banks do what banks do? I want an easy interface to interact and handle my stuff well. Owners are the savvy ones. They understand like which which operators they like to work with and which they don't. And so you. So public perception means more today than it did ten years ago for the operator.
00:09:28:15 - 00:09:45:16
Unknown
So I mean, again, I like I said, a lot of companies, it was you know, I think we even had a contract lady Mandy, you know, like that was answering some calls and stuff like that. But but I mean, I know from our perspective, I think we talked to one other person that built out something on like dynamics, you know, and does it internally.
00:09:45:16 - 00:10:10:23
Unknown
And then, I mean, I built mine on top of Microsoft Planner and it connected through Power Automate and like it, I mean, it was just it was a better system than what they had in the spreadsheet, but it was not good at all in like, so, I mean, what are you seeing in the wild, you know, that people have been doing to try to manage this and now and now, like, maybe we can dive more into, like how how you guys are tackling it and, you know, some key features, dynamics has come up recently.
00:10:11:10 - 00:10:33:00
Unknown
And it I think it has some it's like a CRM. Yeah. I mean, and and there are, you know, outsourcing call centers, you know, and that's just kind of throwing people at it. We've, we know of some groups that have tried to kind of build things in SharePoint. I haven't seen that, but I can't imagine that that structure is scalable.
00:10:33:20 - 00:10:53:19
Unknown
And, and so I to like anything and everything, we've even had some groups, you know, that's like, hey, well, we use Salesforce and it doesn't matter what you think you want, you have to build whatever. You're whatever you need in Salesforce, however that looks, because that's just what we're going to use. So those platforms are not cheap.
00:10:53:19 - 00:11:26:16
Unknown
Even like quick basic is expensive really quickly. Like, yeah. And so, we, we, we I'm going to reference the safety side. So I hope at some point we give context to why I keep bringing this up. But on a previous platform too, it's like when when we went to develop that we we Darren and I went and looked for an existing platform first, and then with the fact that it wasn't there in how we thought it should be, you know, offline capabilities, you know, 35% of the oil field has connectivity issues, right?
00:11:26:16 - 00:11:47:18
Unknown
So you need to be able to use it offline. So that there were certain like specific needs that kind of drove that direction. There are a lot of platforms out that I think are working for operators to keep them organized internally, but the owner is on the outside of that wall, right? And the owner still has to call in.
00:11:47:18 - 00:12:05:20
Unknown
And then someone's digging through the matrix on the internal side to give their information. And so a big aspect of ours is an opportunity which some people Pooh poohed early. They're like, our owners aren't going to download an app. And it's like, well, maybe the 85 year old who won't go to ACH isn't going to download an app, and I get that.
00:12:05:22 - 00:12:24:15
Unknown
But I've also witnessed 70 year olds who refuse to go to ACH load their check, their paper check, using their banking app. So, I mean, they're right there, like we're on the cusp. Yeah, yeah. We're not talking crazy. And then everybody younger than that is going to say also those old folks are going to die soon and do hell.
00:12:24:15 - 00:12:56:10
Unknown
And I don't want to bring that into you. I mean, that is it is is inevitably, you know, I mean, I think a lot of the oilfield technology adoption has almost been forced by the whole crew change thing, in all honesty. Right. It's like it wasn't until you started having, what is what's between Boomer and Millennial X yet it wasn't until you start started seeing Gen X and millennials in the management, and then C-suite where they were like, hey, I expect this to be digital now.
00:12:56:10 - 00:13:19:05
Unknown
Now we have the ability to go do that. But I mean, that's another piece of that for sure. Like it's they're less educated but they know apps. Yeah. Like well and they're there are they're going to they're going to be people that call. They're going to be people that email. We're not assuming an 80% adoption rate of an app, but there will be some adopters of the app.
00:13:19:19 - 00:13:41:20
Unknown
But then having the system be able to use, you know, take advantage of all of those channels of communication and put it all in one system is is what we saw the opportunity for that? That's what I was going to say, the multichannel like, because behavior change is going to take a minute and you sure don't want to disrupt 100,000 landowners like what they're used to.
00:13:41:22 - 00:14:01:04
Unknown
But where do you want to be in three years? What are you going to be in five years? Well, if the adoption of an app and I can deal everything, I mean, the cost of postage alone on a monthly basis for some of these operators is fairly staggering. And it might be we're sending out a postcard or whatever it is like it's and you're you're dropping some serious money on that just to communicate.
00:14:01:04 - 00:14:23:13
Unknown
Whereas the more of 10% in year one, 20% in year two, like, let's grow that, you're going to start to see a rate of return come in so many other areas when you can get in a paperless environment like that. So I was just going to say the multichannel, where if you're going to call, awesome call. But we want that that mobile, that desktop, you know, kind of user just to grow over time.
00:14:23:13 - 00:14:38:05
Unknown
And if you're going to if you want to be somewhere in five years, you need to start. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, let's jump in on that over the multichannel you're talking about, let's say the loggers that are calling and sending emails, I mean, I think this is where the AI and some of the transcription is kind of become like a big piece of this.
00:14:38:05 - 00:15:00:08
Unknown
And like, how do you know, how does that work? Or what's an example of that kind of workflow? It is. So, you know, I, I, I always kind of preface like we're kind of in this transitionary period of comfort with AI, right? And I think we're, we're, you know, old habits die hard in the oil field. So I think there's, we're we're a little behind in our adoption and our trust of it for really what it's capable of doing.
00:15:01:01 - 00:15:24:18
Unknown
And a lot of people that say, well, I looked at AI last year and, you know, it wasn't very good. It's like, well, bro, that's ancient history. Yeah. It's like that's that is, not even the case anymore. So allowing customers like offering AI, but allowing the customers to be able to control, like, release AI at their comfort level for these different channels.
00:15:24:18 - 00:15:47:18
Unknown
But ultimately, like, I could auto respond to an email if and our system if it has a high confidence rate, that it can answer the question, it will do that. If it if it doesn't, it won't hallucinate some ridiculous answer. It'll create a ticket and move it to a person so it can auto respond to emails. It can, you know, chat widgets on the website.
00:15:47:18 - 00:16:12:19
Unknown
We've got all these owner relations pages with FAQs and it's like, I don't websites used to be the answer, right? Like for hey, it's on the website. But now you know, our our average click rate patients on a, on a website's 2.3 clicks. So you're not getting to a third click. So if the answer to their question is three clicks away, they're probably placing a phone call, right?
00:16:12:21 - 00:16:53:18
Unknown
So you get all these FAQ pages where if I go to an FAQ page and there's five FAQs, it's easy to navigate. It's not very informative. If I put 500 FAQs on there, it's really informative, but it's impossible to navigate and I is unbelievably, skillful at taking all of that information and throwing a chatbot on a website, auto respond to emails, chat interactions on a website, and then we even have the ability for you to give your AI agent, you know, multiple agents and internal external, as many as you'd want.
00:16:53:18 - 00:17:15:08
Unknown
You could have them divided up by basin if you wanted to. But like, give it a persona, give it context, tell it what kind of voice? What type like does it have an accent? We've got an example called Kenny. When we're on the safety side again, referencing something we haven't talked about, but the safety software, we were always asked, like, hey, on your voice stuff like, do you have redneck?
00:17:15:08 - 00:17:34:20
Unknown
And it's like, man, we don't have redneck. But now with AI, we have the ability to have like all the redneck you want and man, like AI is going to revolutionize customer service. Like, I really believe there's going to be a day where you call Southwest Airlines to change your flight. He may be so disappointed when a person answers the phone, right?
00:17:34:22 - 00:17:50:03
Unknown
And this is for the person that doesn't have the app, right. You're just going to be like, hey, do you have an AI agent I could talk to because it'll get done so much faster. And so it really AI has the ability to interact with all of those channels except snail mail. I don't we're not going to get into that.
00:17:50:03 - 00:18:15:05
Unknown
No. Are you at Scott Castle? The scan in there. Snail mail. But, So. So Josh can. I'm on that side. I mean, what we're probably four years into the. Since tugboat got released, like you and you guys have been building this about that long. You're on that. I mean, how have you had to architect this to be able to pivot to the better models?
00:18:15:07 - 00:18:51:11
Unknown
Like, what's it been like? Yeah, it feels like you have to redesign it every six months because the capabilities are different. And you can now take advantage of things that you couldn't do previously. I mean, when we started, we were really, focused on being able to accept all the normal channels, like people are used to using phone calls and emails and, web chat, and we have a group SMS, but, and I think that benefited us because you still want to support those, but now we have the ability on each of those to just throw AI in front of it if they want to.
00:18:52:04 - 00:19:22:01
Unknown
And it's it's definitely opt in. But, you know, if I can have I answer half the phone calls, you know, if I can have I answer half the emails, you know, like that kind of thing, then we can only turn the ones that really need to talk to somebody into, but it's I mean, you know, we started out with, I mean, not to get too into it, but like Twilio voice and the voice SDK and like, we were just one run, one little model and voice, it's speech or text to speech and respond.
00:19:22:01 - 00:19:36:15
Unknown
And we felt like we were awesome. You know, we were like, oh my gosh, like someone can talk to it and ask a question and we can give an answer. And then someone asks a follow up question. We're like, well, crap, we can't do that like that. Like they're like, just have a respond. You're like, you don't understand.
00:19:36:15 - 00:19:59:18
Unknown
Like this is really hard. And then interruptions and waiting for them to finish talking and all that. So it's I mean, we've had to redesign it. You know, we've, we've used, VPI and, you know, there's probably a half a dozen different voice agents. ChatGPT has a voice agent. 11 labs has one now, and we've we've kind of tried everything.
00:19:59:18 - 00:20:15:12
Unknown
We've kind of ended up rolling our own a little bit, but it's, like, just trying to keep up with it. It's. You start to try to think, well, I'm going to design in a way that this is going to be flexible so that whatever happens a year from now that's available, we can sort of swap it out.
00:20:15:17 - 00:20:30:04
Unknown
But still it's and if you use a vendor, you know, like if you're using 11 labs, not I mean, I'm sure they're great, but like, you're sort of tied in to whatever they're going to support. So I mean, there's a there's a lot of decisions to make and a lot. But you can also develop the next thing really fast.
00:20:30:04 - 00:20:50:13
Unknown
Now if you use cloud code and all that, that's true. Yeah. That's the like dichotomy right. Yeah. It's like I mean we we just flipped our front end from Ruby to React and two and a half weeks, which is like it's still mind blowing to me. But it's like with the cost of code effectively going to zero.
00:20:50:15 - 00:21:09:13
Unknown
What does that mean? Like, are we does the code even matter? Like, does the language matter anymore? Feels it's like disposable now. Yeah. No, it's I don't really understand what that means. But like, it really is like it can change so fast. And so you've got to be willing to just abandon it. Like, that's the thing. It's like I can rebuild this or I can.
00:21:09:18 - 00:21:29:11
Unknown
You used to be like your cherished, like, should I print this out and, like, copyright it, like it was like, really like that. Yeah. People did that, you know? And now it's I want to I want to unpack some of the, the voice stuff because I think people don't realize how, you know, everybody has the voice now, but people don't realize what goes on under the hood with a lot of these things.
00:21:29:11 - 00:21:46:04
Unknown
I've talked about it before, but there's this magic layer where between the prompt and the response, all this shit is happening. The user has no idea what's going on, but it feels like magic on the back end of it. You hope it does? Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. So, yeah, walk us through some of that.
00:21:46:04 - 00:22:09:17
Unknown
Like when y'all are evaluate because there's a million models out there now too, right? Walk us through kind of how you went through evaluating, you know, did you do just the stock voices? Did you try and custom train it on a specific voice or anything like that? Talk about like, because there's just like with the rag, there's a lot of parameters under the hood of that as to like how long it listens for and the time delay.
00:22:09:17 - 00:22:30:18
Unknown
Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, my, my first I mean, we used Twilio and that was obviously not going to do it for a conversation. So then we my thing is, I mean, I love building it in-house because then you have control and all that, but this felt like it was an impossible mountain to climb, like, because it's there's so much and it'd be so easy to get it wrong.
00:22:30:18 - 00:22:49:00
Unknown
So we tried a few different things from open source, like I said, but VIP, I don't know if you've heard of that, but that's really solid, ability to build an agent. It's a little bit more of like a gooey where people can set up context and CP sources and voices and all that kind of stuff is really good.
00:22:49:02 - 00:23:10:06
Unknown
But then it wouldn't have something like, well, what if the person like, we do some stuff in school systems, like what if the person speaks Spanish or French? It couldn't switch. It had to hang up and start a new conversation. And so you're like, oh my gosh, I'm like 90% of the way. I just need this one thing and it's not on the table and I can't do it well at all.
00:23:10:06 - 00:23:34:09
Unknown
Yeah. So it's so you're just stuck with whatever. So we ended up I mean we still through Twilio and they have like WebSockets where you can live stream like eight bit whatever. You know, audio. And so we just receive it and we use deep gram for, speech to text. And then, you know, 11 labs is our, text to speech.
00:23:34:09 - 00:23:53:10
Unknown
And the only I think 11 labs is awesome. And they've got some new stuff that's coming out. It's even better. I don't know if you've heard of Sesame and Sesame Dotcom. You got to pull that up. It is the most impressive, interesting chat I voice I have ever seen. It's it blows everything else out of the water.
00:23:53:10 - 00:24:14:11
Unknown
Did I did our podcast intro. My voice on that is 11 labs. Oh is it really okay? Because I wanted to go all in on the AI stuff. Yeah. Like, let's screw it. Let's let's see. But that was like over a year ago. So I'd be curious to see what it's like now. You know, it's really funny. I, we did a little bit of that, but now we let people just you can type in text and design it that way.
00:24:14:11 - 00:24:28:17
Unknown
And that's real convenient. And so we we do that a lot for demos. But I did clone a voice one time. It was for something a pastor was wanting to do. And so he's got all these sermons. I'm like, great. I'll just like load it in there and I load it and he'd be like, hey, how's it going?
00:24:28:17 - 00:24:55:02
Unknown
They'd be like, hi, how are you? Like, cause that's like, you're a different way of speaking when you're presenting. Yeah. When you're presenting, it's like, and I never realized that was a different voice. So in the nuance, you know, in this whole world is just, there's just in the the amount of time it takes to reply, you know, is really difficult because you'll have, you know, we've had owners that are 80 years old or whatever, and it's gonna they need a moment to formulate their thought.
00:24:55:02 - 00:25:18:06
Unknown
And and so it really has to be based on what they're saying, and not just how long the pauses and everything is, how long the pause is. Right now, it feels like, almost adding context to the. Yeah. To that variable. Yeah. So that's what. So now that's what we do is like we, we wait a minimum amount of time for the first, you know, response because they're thinking about their question.
00:25:18:06 - 00:25:38:12
Unknown
Everybody is, you know, and then once they once the conversation starts, we we use a quick language model to just like, hey, is did this person finish their sentence or did they say my address is and like, if that's the case, you need to wait 30s for the response because they're about to say something. So yeah, a lot of nuance.
00:25:38:12 - 00:26:04:12
Unknown
That's faster. That's cool. You know, I could geek out on that stuff with you all day. Just like to your point, I think that the big jump from like, you know, running something locally on your laptop and having something cool for you to like, enterprise is just it's so big in the language model space, because most of the time the out of the box tools will get you to that cool like prototype stage.
00:26:04:17 - 00:26:19:09
Unknown
But getting it across that finish line, you have to have the ability to turn the knobs under the hood or you're not going to. It's not going to work. And it demos so well. That first version, like you can sit in front of it because we know how to talk to it. And it's like, hey, say this part fast.
00:26:19:09 - 00:26:37:19
Unknown
You're not even thinking that. You're not even saying that to each other, but you just know, like, I've got a I've got to say it in this certain way, and then you get a real person on the phone talking to it, and you're like, this doesn't work at all. Yeah. You know, so yeah. So I think one thing you hit on anything, we can talk about the technical side of it also.
00:26:37:19 - 00:26:54:02
Unknown
But as you know, I think you're targeting oil and gas. But I mean, you've got school districts and I think to see whether like a horse racing horse track or something, we're doing stuff with or without the safety, I feel like that was safety. Oh yeah, that was I school. Yeah, that was a Kentucky Derby though. Okay. That's Churchill Downs.
00:26:54:02 - 00:27:10:15
Unknown
I bet that's what I thought I could remember. But I guess we'll focus on that. And I do want to get on the ice cat thing so we can actually talk about it, and then people can. Well, they've got the conduit in tune in for the. This is the big reveal where they got the hooker I yeah, it's not really it's a seven minute long.
00:27:10:15 - 00:27:38:21
Unknown
No, let's break it. We're 20 minutes in. We are supposed to remember first 30s. According to Mr. Beast, I'm. I'm less of a professional amateur basketball player. At this, I don't get paid at all. But, But I guess. The how much like, say, for oil and gas clients. Are you feeling like oil and gas context and then, like, do you have to, like, provide different contexts, like for your school clients or how and how does that work?
00:27:38:21 - 00:27:58:02
Unknown
Or is that part of the onboarding process with any customer? Yeah. So each each account will completely control its own knowledge base and how we got into the school school districts was kind of interesting. So we Josh and I are in Norman, Oklahoma Dragons up in Edmond, and Norman public schools was going through an RFP for their website.
00:27:58:07 - 00:28:18:20
Unknown
And our superintendent is very forward thinking like he's he loves he'd love nothing more than to join this conversation. And he had an I request on the RFP for whoever the web designer is. We want something that he couldn't even dream of, but it needs to ie needs to be incorporated into it somehow. And nobody offered that.
00:28:19:00 - 00:28:41:06
Unknown
And so it kind of created a little bit of a hole in what he envisioned his wanted his website to do. And just through mutual contacts in town, got Ahold of us to come in and just kind of share what we're doing on the site. And they're really just using like just the agent piece. But as we learned about a school district's website, it's going to get redone.
00:28:41:06 - 00:29:09:03
Unknown
Revamped bid bid is awarded. They get started on it is can mentioned like everything in the past is just throw it on your website. Well literally I think we counted close to a thousand web pages, like a thousand URLs on a new cleaned up on a brand new site. And if you include board docs and policies, procedures and handbooks, it was approaching 10,000 pages of documentation on the website.
00:29:09:05 - 00:29:38:01
Unknown
So if your 2.3 clicks, if that's like the link, you're never going to find anything. And so here's what we ended up doing was we can scrape and keep up to date all of those web links into their knowledge base, all the docs, same thing. And so we throw a chat agent on their website, whether it's a little bubble that you pop open or it's a, it's a widget that's ready to go and you just start to type in and engage, because it's easier to consume and just go straight.
00:29:38:01 - 00:30:01:18
Unknown
What's for lunch tomorrow at Monroe Elementary? And I get an answer back, as opposed to having to go and find all that's nice. I check my daughter's on their school website. What's crazy? This is a PDF. Yeah, we we gained a whole new appreciation for like, we we deal in, in corporate America, right? Like we're dealing with, Grayson Mill and Devin and all these groups, and, like, they've got a lot of information out there.
00:30:01:19 - 00:30:31:18
Unknown
They don't. They may not hold a candle to school districts. I mean, everything from extracurricular activities to what's for lunch tomorrow to it's like a city academically. It's dynamic transportation. That's the big thing. It's constantly changing. Yeah, it's it's like the weather changes, right? Right. Everything change. It is such a massive thing. And now all your stakeholders being faculty and staff, but students and parents and just general community members, they're all asking your website questions.
00:30:31:18 - 00:30:56:18
Unknown
And so, with our doctor Nick being kind of the forward thinking superintendent is this, he's like, we're launching this and we're going for it. And then I think just others looked over his shoulder and saw like, that's great, we need that too. And so just organically, we've added school districts, some associations kind of tied in with education, but their members have a lot of questions.
00:30:56:18 - 00:31:18:08
Unknown
And let's just engage that way. We we did build one for a group that, it's title 70 in the state of Oklahoma, which is all like education legislation. And that is a I want to say it's a level of membership within their association that you get an access to an expert. Well, that's John sitting back by his phone in the office.
00:31:18:10 - 00:31:42:16
Unknown
And so we've basically taken all of title 70 language and doctor pages. It's 1500 pages. All the ag opinions, all of that is loaded into their knowledge base. And John posted on LinkedIn recently that he is available to hire. I mean, the beauty of it is because you can check conversations and look at threads and see confidence ratings on responses, and it's important that you're you, you trust but verify, right.
00:31:42:16 - 00:32:01:21
Unknown
Like you're going to go back in, I'm going to read through and make sure the narrative and the messaging and everything is spot on. And if it's not, why not? And let's make a fix to that. But he's able to manage way more, as opposed to I'll call you back. You can just engage with that agent online. So that's how we kind of got into it was just through happenstance.
00:32:01:21 - 00:32:28:09
Unknown
But it's it's just like the next person's asking, tell me about what Norman's doing. I think that's, a big thing that, I don't know. It was about a year ago I realized this. It's like machine learning came about because humans, we have so much numerical, structured data that a human can't physically process all of it. Limbs are the exact same thing, but for text and like, once you make that connection, I'm like, oh, I've got a shit ton of text data, right?
00:32:28:09 - 00:32:51:06
Unknown
How am I supposed to? Yeah. And now you can tie in structured data as well. But I've got all this data. How am I supposed to make sense of it? And it's like, it doesn't matter if it's oil and gas or school districts or whatever. Like, we all have so much. I mean, just your Google Drive, right? Like I remember when Google rolled out whatever OCR they're running under the hood on Google Drive, and I could search for things in my files instead of just the file name.
00:32:51:06 - 00:33:12:03
Unknown
It was like, oh my God, like, this is incredible. Well, I, I looked once upon a time and putting a pool in our house. No, I don't have a pool is the end of that story. But it was like I live in Edmond, Oklahoma. And so I called the city because I, I heard we had an easement. I get I get, you know, oh, that's Bobby.
00:33:12:03 - 00:33:38:13
Unknown
And then I talked about it and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about that like. And instead they pass the buck that it was not easily searched on the website. And this was before I knew the cost of indexing a website because, you know, but before Josh was like, hey, that cost money. I went on and created a demo account for and I indexed all of the City of Edmond's websites, and it was like 1600 pages because it goes out to state and all types of stuff.
00:33:38:15 - 00:33:59:06
Unknown
And and I asked it, I live at this address and what do I need to do to build a website. And it it the easement. I needed to contact the gas company and it gave me it mapped it out. And it's like, well, how many phone calls that that would have saved a day? Six phone calls for me to make to the city.
00:33:59:14 - 00:34:20:15
Unknown
And that's just one guy. So, it's that data is just it's grown so big. Everything's just grown so fat that I will be the answer to getting access to it. So too bad you didn't get the the pool. And I'd been. Because, lux pools. My boy, Jeff Hughes, his company could have come out and clean it for you.
00:34:20:20 - 00:34:38:12
Unknown
He could be here. It's not too late. Out of love that unless you're easement, you have to get a team in Edmond. He's making trips. Jeff personally loves to do it himself. Is what? What he's told me. He loves coverage. I think the only time I've seen him do it himself, he sent me a picture. It was like 20.
00:34:38:13 - 00:34:58:08
Unknown
It was the holidays. Yeah, like in December. And like, his guy didn't show up, so he had to get the worst possible condition. Me? Yeah. I think now's a good time to transition to the. Yeah. The teaser. So. Yeah. So, I mean, this is not your first software endeavor. Foray. I was especially probably not yours that you've been kind of been doing stuff.
00:34:58:08 - 00:35:17:12
Unknown
Right. But it's the three of you, had previously had its eye scout workout, and it's still living and breathing. I think you guys were acquired by KPA. That's right. All right. Yeah. Who just rebranded to Novara, which is kind of their new name, but, Yeah. So I worked for a service company in Oklahoma City. Did that for five, 4 or 5 years.
00:35:17:22 - 00:35:43:00
Unknown
Was lived in a it felt like a Forrest Gump like career path because I was in intercollegiate athletics up until that point, got hired on as an operational person at an oil field service company. And 90 days into that job was asked, hey, do you want to take over the safety department? I was like, checks out. So this oil spill thing.
00:35:43:02 - 00:36:00:21
Unknown
So I was spot on, you know, like, what am I failing at as an operational leader like so. But then too, you want to be valued and I'm like, I'm willing to do whatever to, you know, be part of the team. So I took that on and I probably would have said, no thanks if I kind of knew what I was getting myself.
00:36:01:01 - 00:36:25:12
Unknown
That's why they asked you. Yeah. I'm the dumb idiot that didn't know. But it was. It was. We had a great leadership group there. Very supportive. Wanted to be better. What, what kind of services were y'all doing? That was water. Water transfer services. So very labor intensive. I mean, a lot of pinch point and back. I mean, it was just like guys worked and and pretty active in the field until they there's a joke in the field.
00:36:25:12 - 00:36:48:20
Unknown
Service aside, your water transfer is at the bottom of the totem pole. You're always waiting on water transfer. I, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I think it's pretty dangerous, I think, because, like, the tanks, I mean, there's all kinds of shit. They're pulling pumps and hoes and ridiculous like that was over those hoses. That was us. And when we first got started for hose, I used to sell those.
00:36:48:20 - 00:37:11:20
Unknown
Well, before that, it was the 30ft sticks. Or you have to clamp every 30ft and they leaked everywhere. And they would truck those things out in a, you know. So we had a lot of opportunity for not being very good. And we succeeded in that often, such a great way to stay around. I mean, it's so much opportunity.
00:37:11:20 - 00:37:29:12
Unknown
It was a chance for me. Like, you talk about jumping in the deep end of a pool. I'm. I'm on Google, like, trying to figure out, like, acronyms. Like, what the heck is that? Like, I have no clue. Which I think ended up being it was like one of the it's probably beneficial and honestly, because you weren't you weren't, spoiled by the, the culture of another company.
00:37:29:13 - 00:37:48:20
Unknown
That's I believe that's true. It ended up being an advantage over disadvantage because I could ask the why would we do it that way question. Like we're never going to get better if we. So I was very interested in improvement. And we would ask questions of like, well, how do I, how do I do this? Or how do I do that?
00:37:48:20 - 00:38:23:15
Unknown
Even our insurance carrier, a big brand name, said, I got a spreadsheet or a form that you can use and the guys can fill that out in the field. That's not like that's not going to do it. And so we got started with just developing behavior based safety was really big at that time. Like all the operators were making a big push on observations and near misses stop cards, and they were doing it on trifold pieces of paper on these booklets, it's like, well, you fill this out, you give that to your foreman and you take this off and you give it to the company man or the whoever the location lead is.
00:38:23:17 - 00:38:40:23
Unknown
Well, that's just going to end up in the trash with your dog. It's painful as possible. Yeah. I mean, like, how are you trending off of paper? That's in somebody's floorboard. Yeah. Best case scenario, it's insert a spreadsheet a month later at best. And I would get a batch of these in the mail, like they would collect them at the field office and mail them to the corporate office.
00:38:41:00 - 00:38:59:00
Unknown
And I would thumb through them and you would stop at one. And being like, you've got to be kidding. Like this happened. What do we do? Like, is this guy still with us? Like one of those scythe type events where, like, if he's standing wasn't one foot to the left? He may not be here, you know, like that kind of an event.
00:38:59:00 - 00:39:20:13
Unknown
And it just kind of got, you know, onto the next, onto the next thing. And so, that's where the, the three of us got together. Well, you and I got together early. We we were, we asked Josh to jump on board because he was the brains behind everything. Like we were the. We know what we would like to do or what the end result would look like.
00:39:20:13 - 00:39:37:19
Unknown
And, the truth, the true story is we went to Josh first and he said, I'm good. Yeah. What were you doing? I was hoping that would come up because I was hoping it wouldn't come back. Yeah, actually. So he told us no. And then we spent a we spent 13 months paying a retainer to a software.
00:39:37:19 - 00:39:58:05
Unknown
I never saw one. I mean, it was at best we saw I've been there with, Oh, boy. But you don't know. You don't know that that's not normal. Yeah, we've never done that before. Your first, your first, your first consulting company thing is always a shit show. Yeah, well, don't feel bad. Well, you were working for MTM a a, what is MTM?
00:39:58:09 - 00:40:17:10
Unknown
Yeah, it's a manufacturing company in Oklahoma. But, they I had just taken, like, a few months off to work on something else, and I was back on and they had paid. They were really nice and paid my insurance and like, you know, like all that. And I was like, guys, I can't I would be the biggest jerk in the world if I left right after they did that for me.
00:40:17:10 - 00:40:34:14
Unknown
So I was just like, I can't do it. So then I go to one last meeting with this group that we were that kind of just given us a monthly retainer, whatever that was, and produce nothing. And I was like, we're done with this. Like, I'm done with that group. And it's like, well, let's go back to Josh, right one more time and see.
00:40:34:14 - 00:40:57:05
Unknown
So grab coffee with him. He's in, which was crazy because you just had the you just had my daughter. My first kid, Josie, was just born. We had enough money to pay him for 90 days, like, day. And I kind of like, hey, this is let's. And, Well, I remember we, you know, we're at this coffee shop, and we'd just spent 13 months paying for something that we never we never saw anything.
00:40:57:07 - 00:41:13:09
Unknown
And Josh is like, we kind of explain to him the basis thing is we wanted to be able to build a form and fill it up on a computer, have someone fill it out in the field, and then look at the data on a computer. And so we're explaining that, like very first level, this is what we're looking for.
00:41:13:09 - 00:41:37:16
Unknown
And I think I remember Josh, he was like I think I can do I think give me eight weeks. And then of course, Darren and I were like, yeah, right. This is we're just wheat. We're the worth of whatever we've got. And what year is this? By the way? This is 2014. And it, it was I want to say it was ten days later.
00:41:37:18 - 00:41:58:16
Unknown
It might have been 14 days later. Josh calls and is like, hey, I got some questions. Let's get together. I want to show you something. And he pulls up first time, right? It's the first time we've ever actually seen anything. And he's got this in his mind, really rudimentary kind of a thing. And and shows it to us and Darren and I are high fiving like, this is it?
00:41:58:16 - 00:42:17:06
Unknown
Yeah. We did it. We're done. You did it. And, he's like, no, no. Like, this is like, we got way more to do. And that was our first indication of, like, Josh is the right guy. And then it went on for. Yeah. And it's funny how God works because at the service company, we got put in the penalty box for a water transfer error.
00:42:17:06 - 00:42:45:08
Unknown
Like there was something that went down, and I, I was always the guy that they would shove out to go like, go PR yeah, go talk to the, you know, go findings. Apologize, fall on the sword. It's talk about your improvement plan all those kind of things and then get us work back as soon as possible. And so we were I want to say I forgot exactly who the operator was, but we got thrown in a penalty box for six months.
00:42:45:20 - 00:43:10:14
Unknown
Came back after that, and we had data like one of the field teams were starting to use just our behavior based safety forms because that was like, again, the kind of the hot button at the at the time. And, the question was asked, well, tell me what you're doing about behavior based safety. And I said this was a little risky because the guys out, I mean, they would be pretty blunt with what they were going to say, how they were going to say it, picture it.
00:43:10:14 - 00:43:35:00
Unknown
Not pictures, but maybe pictures that they're going to be taken. And I just said, well, let's, let's log in and see. This one just came in 2.5 minutes ago. It looks like a team down on such and such had a washout on such and such. And that sprung bored us into we got the work back and we got invited as like a best practice vendor to pitch what we were doing in front of all their folks.
00:43:35:00 - 00:43:52:05
Unknown
So and then that just kind of led to, you know, how do we monetize this in the next set of business questions? But. Well, and we ran into the same challenges that some owner teams are thinking our owners will never download the app. It was these guys out in the field they're never going to download. They're never going to do it.
00:43:52:07 - 00:44:14:16
Unknown
And it's like, well, I get it. If the if you've given them trash, that's the thing. Like people get so jaded by, well, this we've tried this in the past and it hasn't worked. And it's like just because the process didn't work doesn't mean that the process is bad. Like, you probably had a shitty app that had a bunch of clicks and they couldn't use it in the field, and it didn't have offline capability.
00:44:14:16 - 00:44:32:21
Unknown
So how frustrating is that? When like one, you're going out of your way effectively as someone in the field to fill the thing out to begin with, you have 100 other things you should be doing. But then to make it painstaking, more pain step for then writing it in a form you can't like. You have to have a better solution.
00:44:32:21 - 00:44:51:02
Unknown
It can't just be a digital solution. I think is the like big thing there. Well, I think, I mean, just thinking now about it, like the technology in the owner relations world is strengthening, actually the relationship between the two, like I can shortcut this. I can get what I need. You're giving me information in my pocket like all of that.
00:44:51:04 - 00:45:18:19
Unknown
The safety was the same where the most damaging thing to a safety culture is to me to write down a an event that could have killed me. And I submit that and I hear zero. Yep. Whereas if I can do that in technology, that's going to ping somebody that I'm either getting a phone call, somebody driving something out to address or fix or provide me what I need that does nothing but build that relationship between that frontline worker and the leadership that's asking them to do those things in the first place.
00:45:18:19 - 00:45:37:19
Unknown
So we definitely saw saw that, you can start to like, be appreciative of people and then that just encourages them to I'm going to report again because I saw what happened the first go around. Yeah, yeah. I think the theme I'm seeing for a lot of yourself too is like that. It's not just a one sided, you know, thing.
00:45:37:19 - 00:45:55:06
Unknown
There's like, but there's there are two sides, especially even on the owner relations, you know, like there's the owners have been forgotten about forever. It's just like, here's a email, here's a fun go away. Don't don't reach out to me. Because even like, I think we see it on, like, some invoicing side, we've talked about that where it's like great for the operator.
00:45:55:08 - 00:46:13:02
Unknown
But me as a small vendor, I've got to go recreate all the invoices I just created in my accounting system and go recreate it. And, yeah, they get sold it. The stream of like, oh, we're going to give you the software for free, and it's going to solve all your accounting problems, and then we're going to make all your vendors have to use it, and we're going to charge them for it.
00:46:13:04 - 00:46:31:12
Unknown
And then by the way, they have 30 other vendors that they also have to submit payments through. And so it's actually not enjoyable for for the people who have to use it at all. That's no, I think I mean, it's a good business model if you can get away. Right. Well, if you're a big monopoly, that right monopolizes every that's cool that you get into that.
00:46:31:12 - 00:46:53:00
Unknown
It's not Savannah bananas where they focus on like, their clients or their biggest fans. Right. Customer experience. Yeah. It's about you're forcing your customers to use you and you're creating a negative. Yes. Big time. Yeah. No, I think customer experience is dramatically overlooked on the software side, especially in the oil field. Right. Like people want their stuff to be easier, like organically.
00:46:53:00 - 00:47:09:11
Unknown
You don't have to sell them on that. Right. But you have to do it right. And then on on a relationship, I remember we were talking about it. They also, do you ever go down that path on, like the revenue, statement side? Because remember, we were talking about it like, you know, similar to like my guess would be energy rank or something like that.
00:47:09:11 - 00:47:27:16
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So but I don't want to hog the mic here. We do that again. You were talking about I want you to tell them we, we do so we can ingest that file and then just represent that payment information to the owner. So it's just it's an opt in thing for if the operator wants to do that.
00:47:28:17 - 00:47:47:15
Unknown
There's a lot of advantage. One, just the notification element. That's a hot question that time of month where payments are going out the door is they're going to get a flood of calls. What's my payment this month? Well, if you sign up for The Age, you would look on your bank and see that, but it's going to hit your mailbox in four days.
00:47:48:10 - 00:48:06:06
Unknown
Whereas you can get a push notification the minute that posts, I can click on it, open my check stubs, see that total amount? So that is absolutely something that we're doing, including giving the owner the ability to download the data without them putting another credit card in. So they've got full access to all of that.
00:48:06:18 - 00:48:28:23
Unknown
Starting to look at, from a vendor from, from a vendor perspective, because vendors in some, some of these groups will have like a external relations. It's not just owners, but it's vendors as well. And vendors will call and say, when is check 507 getting paid? Yeah, they might have 1 or 2 people that have logins to open invoice.
00:48:28:23 - 00:48:52:15
Unknown
The masses don't. And so they're just placing calls to their contacts or and so now to be able to expose that same data to a vendor in a, an account where they could see have their history, payment status, all of that has been approved when they're going to get paid. Yeah. If it is it hung up somewhere. Whereas I mean, we're still we're not going to the data is going to come externally where for us to display.
00:48:52:17 - 00:49:10:15
Unknown
But it's going to give that, that. So that well information that's we had one group that just did a pilot out in the northeast, and they opened up the chat agent to their pilot owners, and it was interesting to see what they were asking, like, what's you learn what's important to them the first time? They can just start to engage.
00:49:10:17 - 00:49:28:09
Unknown
And they were asking a lot of, well, specific questions. Well, the data is available. We don't have any problem given in the answer to that. So it's just a matter of loading that into the knowledge base, which they're going to start putting more well related data for owners to get access to. But payments is there. Well information's there.
00:49:30:14 - 00:49:52:04
Unknown
Yeah. Jib vendor. Yeah. Oh that's awesome. And it's you're starting to learn as we go. Just like with any software. Like as you continue to evolve, you're going to just we want to knock out pinch points and headaches. So what are those things your team's doing that takes a week? How can we make that a couple hours through building a tool that's going to be able to do that now.
00:49:52:04 - 00:50:14:00
Unknown
That's awesome. There's so many of these things I know it's I mean, it's such an underserved side of business. I mean, I can literally just been shove in the corner like, oh yeah, we've got an owner relations team or process. Yeah. Well, and just think like there are literally millions of surface and mineral owners around like, and no one has paid attention to them to this extent.
00:50:14:00 - 00:50:32:18
Unknown
So yeah, I mean, people don't even think about I mean, we were in the back and we had 100 hundreds of owners and one well like, yeah, well, even just like it's crazy to think how archaic it is to expect just like, oh, it's I hope it shows up in the mail this week and I have no record of anything else.
00:50:32:18 - 00:50:53:23
Unknown
So like for in the year 2026. Yeah. Right. Right. Maybe 2000. Okay, fine. But 2010 and further what are we doing. Yeah. So with some of that I mean like also do you have any like direct integrations with any of like the lander ERP systems or is that kind of next level or. No, we really don't have it.
00:50:53:23 - 00:51:17:00
Unknown
Has anybody requested it I guess. Yeah. We don't really have any direct integrations. I mean, we have, lots of ways to import data and adapters that can convert column names and split data and stuff like that. But yeah, nothing like turnkey where it's like you just enter your credentials and it. So I mean, maybe this exists, but so far, I mean owner relations is new for me.
00:51:17:00 - 00:51:44:06
Unknown
Like, I'm this is I'm two years in and you know, I feel like I know nothing about it, but, the the data is, is pretty crazy. It feels like it's not, like, real organized always. You know, you have crazy things like duplicate owner numbers and stuff that I don't even really understand, but, and you'll have groups that have acquired several groups and each one is still kept separately.
00:51:44:06 - 00:52:06:13
Unknown
And, so just like it doesn't feel like there's something that we could do to just, like, hit a button and like, 50% of groups would be able to just move data straight over. Yeah, maybe if that does exist, I would love to hear about it. But, yeah. So far, yeah, a lot. Lots of adopters and, spreadsheet imports and FTP and API kind of stuff.
00:52:06:17 - 00:52:24:16
Unknown
And I haven't even, I haven't checked the Fivetran integration list in a while. I wonder what they're, they're up to. That's what he just described would be kind of that. But for the oil field, I wish someone would build that. I don't have any confidence. Anyone? Well, because all the software is are so locked down that in 10 to 5 intentionally to me.
00:52:24:16 - 00:52:45:16
Unknown
I know Rudy's trying. Yeah. That's a big well but he's his stuff is mostly on the machine side where you actually have access to the data and you're not locked out of it by. Yeah, but I, you know, you're saying like, you mean you can access someone's land, SQL server data in the back. I mean, once you can get there if you have duplicate numbers and yeah, that's a data hygiene problem that's out of your control.
00:52:45:18 - 00:53:08:06
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, be prepared for that. Day already in an hour. This is crazy. I know, Lester it does. So, you guys are full infernape today. Today, right. Yeah. Any anything, you know, that you're trying to hit or have you all done previously or, this is my fourth year. I actually was the keynote speaker last year.
00:53:08:06 - 00:53:32:11
Unknown
Really? Yeah. For the luncheon. Nice. I'm sure your audience remembers that. Because you can't forget this face. I mean, if it's on camera. So this is our, This is my fourth year. Their third year. We've had a booth in the past. This year, we don't we kind of feel like, we've got a lot of momentum and and relationships and we've we've really seen, like, there's a lot of value in the cocktail hours in the meetings.
00:53:32:11 - 00:53:51:02
Unknown
But we want to be free this year to run the floor. And that's, you know, going to someone else's booth to engage with them is is really where I think the benefit is. So there's only three of us. If we had six, we would have half in the booth and a half walk in the floor. But we're really looking forward to that aspect of it.
00:53:51:13 - 00:54:09:16
Unknown
And just going from it's, Operator operators favorite part of this industry is just running into people that at shows that you haven't seen in a while. Yeah, it for sure. So small. Yeah. Well, in our experience on, you know, you could be on the safety side and maybe someone used eye scout at one and they went to the other.
00:54:09:16 - 00:54:31:18
Unknown
And there's a little bit of organic growth. But land is a small world. There's like two degrees, maybe three of separation relations between every land person I've ever met. Right. We have. Have. And so that's actually been a really big catalyst in, in, in our momentum. And and a reason why we have so many people to say hi to tomorrow.
00:54:31:19 - 00:54:48:14
Unknown
Yeah. Hundred percent before we kind of transition to the end. What how what is y'all's kind of business model? How does that work? If I'm an operator kind of walk walk us through that a little bit. You have to not pricing and stuff. Yeah. So just like a a SAS or typical SAS model.
00:54:48:16 - 00:55:09:01
Unknown
It is a SAS model. Yeah. So implement like we can spin up relatively quickly run at the pace of the operator. Sometimes they need to drag certain things out. Sometimes we can speed it up. So implementation I mean from start to stand up. Could be they can start taking inbound tickets within a handful of weeks.
00:55:09:03 - 00:55:25:09
Unknown
And then there's I always think of it like bullpen functionality. Like there's gonna, there's someone's coming to us because they want X, Y and Z, but there's a whole stash of opportunity for improvement. Off to the side. Let's get your initiatives launched first and then start to integrate some of that other stuff, as you're comfortable with it.
00:55:25:09 - 00:55:48:04
Unknown
So, yeah, it's we've been working directly with we'll do all like kind of the whole implementation phase and then, typical SAS where they'll work directly with a client success person to make sure that they're good. And we do a lot of updates. The updates are flying off the shelf right now. So just making sure by staying up to date with opportunities for what they can do within the within the product.
00:55:48:07 - 00:56:20:01
Unknown
Nice. That's awesome. Speed around. Yeah. Let's do it. I mean, all right, I had to write this one down so I didn't forget, you mentioned you were in college athletics before this. So I want to know your thoughts on the Nil and how to fix it. Oh. Me too. Yeah. I mean, I lived back in the day where they the university, you know, the big deal was starting to have compliance officers, like, on staff and then, just do an internal monitoring and all that.
00:56:20:03 - 00:56:43:01
Unknown
And it was a legitimate battle. So I oversaw one athletic depart, one athletic program that one of my task was travel. And so I had to be pretty strategic with what's a meal and what's a snack. And the minute you go from an app like two pieces of fruit, plus something else is no longer like it's like that kind of rule.
00:56:43:03 - 00:57:06:02
Unknown
And so you go from being so locked down where you just can't even, like, be a human being to care for somebody else. Well, you can't do that because of an NCAA rule to, like, all of a sudden. I mean, you can own the banana company, you know, like like they're going to give you $1 million if you'll just not even have to do anything so that the and I get the nil peace.
00:57:06:12 - 00:57:28:01
Unknown
It doesn't seem like, helping that dog. And on student athletes, it doesn't. You know, when it goes back to the UCLA thing about the March Madness guys on the deal and it's recognizable who that is. Well, they probably should get paid for that. But if you're just paying somebody because we want you to, we're recruiting you to come to our school and there's nothing in exchange that they're offering back.
00:57:28:01 - 00:57:46:09
Unknown
I'm not a big fan, but I mean, it's so it's so broken in so many ways. Pandora's out of the box. They're going to have to figure out I don't you know, they they kind of tease about Nick Saban being the it's going to take somebody and the conferences agreeing like everybody stack hands and agrees that this is out of control.
00:57:46:09 - 00:58:03:13
Unknown
And we need a voice to kind of help. It's going to it's going and I think that's not unreasonable to think we're going to get there. Now, I think about this guy. I think I had it on and I was like, they're talking about I think Alco brought up that they need that person at the top or something, but it is almost like they have they do have rules around some of this.
00:58:03:13 - 00:58:18:21
Unknown
Right? And so I mean, they've got kind of a legislative side and maybe a judiciary almost, but they don't have that executive branch to like enforce it. I mean, the NCAA is supposed to, but yeah, there's no one especially over that sports specifically that. Yeah, I mean I think there's a couple of like quick things that Saban and some of the others have talked about.
00:58:18:21 - 00:58:35:01
Unknown
First you got to move signing day like what what are we doing. The schedules. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Whether you like Lane Kiffin or not. But that wasn't his fault. No he you operated within the rules just like any good. And you had to make a decision that pretty much everyone would have made had it been at the right timing.
00:58:35:01 - 00:58:58:04
Unknown
But I mean, really bad. He did also pull some fund levers, like getting all the coaches the day before the, yeah. Well, yeah, the the way he did it, them like a lot of them but like but all but the choice to leave Ole Miss for LSU like. Yeah 95% of people are going to do that. I mean yeah I would have loved to cushy see that Ole Miss and living in Oxford for the rest of my life.
00:58:58:04 - 00:59:15:03
Unknown
But and not having the, you know, ten win or lose out target on the back of your, fair enough. You know, you win 8 to 10 a year in Oxford and they are going to put a statue up for sure. And you will have the speed limit named after, you know, I mean, he was two games away from the national team.
00:59:15:03 - 00:59:31:14
Unknown
You know, it's like you got your team that far. Like you're there. You can do it. I mean, yeah, I mean, hell, we'll see if he can turn it into the time, but yeah, it'll be interesting. He's there. So anyway, I want it that that was one I wanted to ask because it's, it's so fascinating to watch this dumpster fire play out right now.
00:59:31:16 - 00:59:57:16
Unknown
It's kind of sad. I mean, I love Saban's take. Always turns back to the what's the what betters the student athletes experience an opportunity for success after school. I think that's like so far off of anybody's mindset. Right. What's the thing it's like and I, I, I get the, the personal rights piece of this, but also like in what world is any 17, 18, 20 year old have any concept of how to manage any amount of money like that?
00:59:57:19 - 01:00:20:06
Unknown
Yeah. You know, and so it's like, why is why isn't it mandated that some percentage of that go into just an account that can't be touched until you graduate or something, right. Like or till you go pro or whatever, just so that they're not. I mean, because it is crazy, like I was in school, you know, Darren McFadden had his Cadillac on rims and no one, no one asked questions about that.
01:00:20:06 - 01:00:45:14
Unknown
But we all know where it came from. You know, and and all that shit was happening. Yeah, but, like, you had to be a little bit under low key with that, at least a little bit. Or, you know, you might raise some flags, but now it's like, well, no, but I mean, there's like huge implications. I mean, so I think before we came on, I mentioned I got a guy, you know, went for, like financial planning, but, and rich on this guy Jacob Turner, I see him all the time on, on LinkedIn.
01:00:45:14 - 01:01:04:01
Unknown
He was a former first round pick, but he actually mainly works a lot with like first round picks. But now also with the nil stuff and he's like lays it out on there. It's like they you know they're basically the sole proprietors or whatever are they to set up S Corp. And they're you maxing out for one K so they can, you know that all the shuffling or the money that you should be doing.
01:01:04:01 - 01:01:25:23
Unknown
But right, that's probably the last thing 5% of what most of them now because they do. And then they get a tax bill at the end of the year. Like, wait, what? Yeah, like because I get the money tax free, right? Because they're their own company that they have to they're supposed to pay like quarterly taxes. And like if you could just go through that and spend it all and all of a sudden like, hey, you owe that as a, you know, 100 million, $100,000 a year, bad deal.
01:01:26:01 - 01:01:51:18
Unknown
Well, we there's a we're like office literally across the street from the University of Oklahoma. And there was there's a chapel across the street from where we were at. And I saw walking out to a, it was a Raptor. A Corvette and a Cybertruck were all parked right in front and they're like, really nice. I took notice of it as I'm walking across the street, well, decked out in OSU gear.
01:01:51:18 - 01:02:11:10
Unknown
Here comes three clear student athlete football players. I mean, just the size of these guys all getting into their individual car and head into practice. And it's like how times have changed. I've changed. You know, that's what was going on. SMU back in with you guys are yeah that's right. On Cadillacs I do think I do think SMU is going to come back with a vengeance and be like, you guys.
01:02:11:14 - 01:02:34:01
Unknown
So I was like, I mean I mean, I say that they were in the playoffs last year. Everybody owes them an apology. Yeah. Yeah. I guess one more thing. I mean, so some of you've got kids, you've all raised kids in OKC area or. Yeah, I've got I've got three teenagers. Okay. My oldest is a senior in high school, so we're in the throes of launching our first college.
01:02:34:01 - 01:02:55:01
Unknown
Nice. Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess we went last summer for the College World Series softball. Well, we're going back this year, our teams playing, but, like, I guess what would be a good spot to visit in the greater OKC area? Because we might be all over, but like whether it's brewery, restaurant, whatever, that's like, you know, kid friendly but kind of like a good spot, like you'll be up at like the, I will say centrally, but yeah, we'll be by the softball.
01:02:55:02 - 01:03:24:10
Unknown
We'll go to the softball complex. But there's other like tournaments for playing and it could be Edmond, could be Norman, like anywhere. So anywhere in the greater OKC area, anywhere you recommend? Well, I'll, I'll, I'll give this, a family pub is our oldest brother. Sudheer and I are two of five. Our oldest brother, has been a chef and he's lived all over the world and he works for there's a restaurant group in Oklahoma called Hal Smith Restaurant Group, and they're kind of like the Midas Touch.
01:03:24:10 - 01:03:44:22
Unknown
Anything they open is great. They could open up a corndog stand. It would be the best corndog you ate and the best experience you had eating a corndog. All of the restaurants are great. So they only like Charleston's and Burger Place's Mexican? Well, they own a breakfast concept that our brother is the corporate chef for, and it's called Neighborhood Jam.
01:03:45:00 - 01:04:02:23
Unknown
They're all over the metro. An absolute must for breakfast. Best breakfast, no matter which location you go to in the Oklahoma City area. Sweet. For sure. Nice. Good breakfast. And if you're Norman, come to our office and hang out. I mean, we're not quite the collide office. Oh, I can bring a whole softball team if you want to.
01:04:03:00 - 01:04:36:15
Unknown
Come on. Yeah, if you get much work done. But I got one more. What? What are some of your favorite, you know, dev tools that you're using these days, AI enabled or otherwise? Man. I mean, I live I live in cloud code right now. I, I've done, I've worked in Codex, and, anti-gravity and, but really just cloud code, like in the terminal is like my whole life.
01:04:36:15 - 01:04:57:19
Unknown
Like, I don't feel like I, I don't even use the tools. Like, people talk about those, and I don't even feel like I need those. I mean, it's it, like, I guess I'm just an old developer, but, even now, whenever I use it, I am blown away that it can do what it can do 100%. And I just like it.
01:04:57:19 - 01:05:28:04
Unknown
It's like it's I mean, it's like if somebody said, hey, we can totally just change the weather. Like, we would sit here and be like, no, like that will never happen in our lifetime. Maybe someday that's going to happen, but never it's like that. It's like that big of a thing in my head of, even if I does not change it anymore, if it if it stops improving the, the tidal wave of what already exists is has not at all has not fallen yet.
01:05:28:09 - 01:05:44:21
Unknown
Yeah. And it's just going to blow everything away when it, it just tees everything up to you. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading an article and they were like, you know, the average person doesn't realize what's going on in the AI space because the average person is just touching the front end of software. They're not. Yeah, building. And so it's like when you look at that.
01:05:44:21 - 01:06:04:16
Unknown
But the foundation of pretty much everything we do these days is software. And so it's like if we can do software really well, the possibilities are just incredible. And it's like, no, it's it's all just limited to your imagination. It's like like something will come in my head like something came I had like last week. I was like, we have all these developers or we have all this documentation, right?
01:06:04:16 - 01:06:23:04
Unknown
So that people know how to use the site. And we want our agent to be able to answer questions about how to build a form and all that kind of stuff. And it's like always out of date, right? Because you got a new thing and whatever. And I was like, well, why don't I just have Claude right, go through all of our code and write user facing documentation of how to use these things.
01:06:23:06 - 01:06:44:13
Unknown
And then every time I make a commit, I just have to say, oh, this change. In this change, I'm going to update the docs. So that's what we do now. And our knowledge base for docs is just like it's like very detailed, as detailed as you could want, you know. And it's it's never out of date. Yeah. Well that's like when we migrated to react.
01:06:44:15 - 01:07:09:13
Unknown
We have a cleaner better front end code base. Yeah. Yeah. Through the migration which is wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's crazy I guess with that I mean it's not necessarily speed round, but I think it's an interesting question for you guys. I mean you've built and sold one SaaS and you're working on one now. Like how do you feel about the future of SaaS with the fact that some people could go spin up things internally that they want or need?
01:07:09:15 - 01:07:34:17
Unknown
I mean, well, you know, I, I think it's called Amara's law, which is the concept of like we tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term, and we underestimate it in the long term. So I think we're in that overestimating phase. So I, I know that the behind the curtain people are going to know what's possible, but the general populace is going to be the anchor that drags.
01:07:34:17 - 01:08:01:06
Unknown
They're going to be the long. Yeah. And so, I still think there is so many of the people that we're going to talk to are just now trying to understand the value that I was going to have for them, and do they trust it. And so until that really pivots, I think like, like the SAS companies are going to be the ones that take advantage first or they have the opportunity to have the IP should.
01:08:01:07 - 01:08:20:13
Unknown
Right, right, right. Yeah. And it's going beyond just putting a chat bot on your website. Right. In most sense, like which is still blowing people's minds at some level. Right. It's like, how did you do that? We so a lot of SaaS companies that are not taking advantage of it. Right. That's. Yeah. That's right. That's what I meant by it's like, oh, you're a reservoir engineering simulation.
01:08:20:13 - 01:08:40:02
Unknown
And your AI initiative was to put a chat bot, right? Yeah, I was talking to that chat. Everybody was a reservoir simulation saying that AI means different things on every, you know, every deployment. Yeah. Now, y'all, I do want to clarify. I didn't mean chat bot in a derogatory way. Yeah, yeah. In the context of like a technical thing.
01:08:40:03 - 01:08:53:09
Unknown
Yeah. Like yeah. It's like that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Like in your case, it makes a ton of sense. But for a lot of the ones, it's like, oh, we've got this new I think it's like soft AI on there. And now we're like, I got that checkbox, my bonuses in the mail. That's what I was going to say.
01:08:53:09 - 01:09:12:00
Unknown
It's like on the roadmap. It's like, you know, I in the first half of the year and it's like we launched that check on to yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. Now this has been great guys. Yeah. Thanks for carving out some time for us. Yeah I appreciate this is a lot of this is awesome. Love your space. I got to give a shout out to the boys at, Cosmo, also in Oklahoma City.
01:09:12:00 - 01:09:18:22
Unknown
Thanks for dropping off the swag and stopping by yesterday. So go see them at Nape. I know they will be there.
01:09:19:00 - 01:09:22:13
Unknown
Appreciate it guys. Yeah. Thank you guys. See you next time again. Thanks. Thanks. So. Yeah.