Energy Crue
Welcome to 'Energy Crüe', the podcast that dives deep into the heart of industry innovation, entrepreneurship, and personal growth. I'm your host, JP Warren, and each episode, we embark on a journey to uncover the passions and motivations that fuel industry leaders. We're not just talking business here; we're exploring the personal drives, the triumphs, and the challenges that shape today's pioneers. Alongside these inspiring conversations, I'll be sharing my own story - the battles with imposter syndrome, the pivotal mindset shifts, and the lessons learned throughout my entrepreneurial voyage. As a certified coach, my goal is to empower you, our listeners, to break free from the barriers holding you back. Join me as we navigate both the professional and personal landscapes, learning and growing together with 'Energy Crüe'
Energy Crue
Strategy for Survival with Jeff Krimmel (Founder KSG - Krimmel Strategy Group)
Jeff Krimmel, founder of Krimmel Strategy Group (KSG), shares insights on making better strategic decisions in energy and building a business around data-driven strategy in uncertain times.
• Building external networks is crucial for career development, even when internal relationships seem sufficient
• Naming your business after yourself makes it easier for professional connections to find your company
• Strategic decisions in energy require balancing cost management with long-term asset value maximization
• Two company paths during downturns: battening down hatches versus strategic partnership formation
• Energy consolidation is pushing companies toward professionalizing operations rather than rapid expansion
• Creativity doesn't require revolutionary ideas – asking thoughtful questions others haven't considered creates value
• Introducing appropriate rigor to decision-making processes helps companies deploy capital more effectively
• Companies should be leaning into ambiguity and uncertainty to find opportunities
• Living in the oil field builds resilience that doesn't exist in many other industries
Have a good attitude. Listen, it sucks out there, it's a dumpster fire. You hear the worst news everywhere. Have a good attitude, that'll set you apart.
Thank you.
Speaker 2:And welcome to a new Energy Thru podcast. And, yes, this is kind of an unstripted we're doing this live. I think we're going live on, I think, linkedin right now. I just got to check that to see if we are yeah, we are. If, uh, we are, um, yeah, we are, I guess we are, I guess we are.
Speaker 2:So originally, this podcast, uh was something that, uh, a good friend of mine actually recently knew a good friend of mine and I, uh, we were having lunch and I love our lunch conversations very sharp uh, just a, just a brilliant dude and just a good person around the table and I said you know, we should be having a podcast about what we're talking about right now. You know the guests I'm about to have is, he's making LinkedIn waves. He's not only book clubs but also coaching, training, strategy sessions and really helping companies make better decision with data. I don't think I don't need a long introduction for this gentleman right here and I'm sure you'll recognize his smiling face up behind the mic as we bring him on stage. I want to welcome everyone to the table. Jeff Krimmel, the founder and president, ceo. It's so weird having your own company, isn't it? Like what do you name yourself? Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:Real quick, real quick, real quick. I'm sorry Of Krimmel criminal strategy. I had to finish what your company was. Real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no worries, and yeah, I feel like and I won't take your time and have a whole conversation about this, but I feel like I could have a whole conversation about this, because that was, you know, right, anyone that launches their own thing, that there's, you know, the name is sort of an obvious first decision or early decision to make. The name is sort of an obvious first decision or early decision to make, and so you can name it after yourself, like I did, right, and it's there's a sort of a natural ego play to that, which I won't deny, right, there's there's an ego element to it. And yet, the reason that I convinced myself that it was, in a sense, ok to indulge my ego there was. I figured, you know, if this doesn't work, you know what kind of list of regrets might I have and how can I preemptively avoid those regrets?
Speaker 1:And one of them was I'd imagined a scenario where it's like, okay, people know about me on LinkedIn, like they know Jeff Krimmel on LinkedIn, but they didn't know, you know, acme strategy or whatever that I could have launched, and so I'm asking them to hold one more thing in their head in addition to my name, which is like, okay, I know Jeff Grimmel, I know he does on LinkedIn and Jeff is tied to Acme strategy and so when I see Acme strategy stuff I should know I should form that connection and I figured, man, I'm just going to try to make it as easy on people as possible. If you know me, if my name sounds familiar, then the company would hopefully sound familiar. It's just one more small regret that I might be able to avoid when I launched, knowing that like I have to now live right with the idea that I named the company after myself.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm about to get into some stories about my company's names and have the backfire on that a little bit, but real quick, I mean. So I've noticed your stuff really. When you started KSG Criminal Strategy Group I want everyone to check that out if you're out there and all that stuff. So you said people know you and all that stuff I'm not being rude or anything like that because there's a lot of people out there, but I didn't know you prior, before you started putting out this content. So did you do a lot of like LinkedIn personal branding content before you decided to kind of step out and do your own thing? Or was it you just really kind of amp it up when you started?
Speaker 1:I was doing it before I started to get serious about LinkedIn in May of 2022, I believe and I launched KSG Criminal Strategy Group in January of 2024. Launched KSG criminal strategy group in January of 2024. So I had about a year and a half where, in that first you know, 12 to 18 months certainly for the first 12 months, I was posting almost literally every single day.
Speaker 1:And I think that I might've gone through calendar year 2023, and it's possible that I hit 365 days of posts. I do remember posting on Christmas day and New Year's day and all that, and so I'd gotten serious about it before then and I had received some inbound communication before I launched KSG, and the inbound communication was part of what convinced me that I could give this thing a go.
Speaker 2:You had to have some sort of validation before you actually took the first steps.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's exactly right. And there was also I just you know I didn't start getting serious about LinkedIn in May of 2022 with the idea of, like, okay, I'm going to launch my own deal. The kind of main motivation was to build up a network. So you know our networks. There are many similarities between yours and mine and there are some differences, and one difference I think I'm not certain about this is you end up collaborating with and having spent time around a lot of true sales professionals right, folks that have been in that field or practiced in that field are trying to improve their acumen there and, as a result, right of being in sales, naturally you're sort of compelled to lean outward, you know, into the market, make new connections and predominantly with customers, right, but even competitors and suppliers. The more people you know in principle, the better you can do your job.
Speaker 1:Well, my background and we can go through this later or not it's largely academic and research and strategy focused.
Speaker 1:I was doing it in-house, so my clients such that they existed were other employees inside the same companies that I worked in and while I went to a conference here or there, the work that I was doing and the value that I was generating required very little in terms of me connecting with other people.
Speaker 1:So when I got serious about LinkedIn in May of 2022, I figured, okay, I've lived my whole existence in-house in these companies and I've simply just not been exposed. And, to own some of this myself, I had not taken the initiative to connect with a bunch of people outside of my companies. I don't blame you, yeah, and I justified it right, because it's like, well, building these rich connections outside of my company it's not going to help my performance review, it's not going to get me a bonus or a raise or whatever, like I have to impress the people that I'm working for, um, and so that's where I spent the the dominant share well, I think that's what's interesting too, because I remember when I started my career, you know, at noble I was like, well, I really don't need to know anyone else in the industry because this is my chance of success, this is my.
Speaker 2:The connections here are going to elevate me throughout my career and it was one of those things where it's like, you know, like, even like towards. I started like going to more you know lunches, trying to club lunches. I realized that, like those five, six, seven years that I was building my internal networks at the company man, what a like. I really could have maximized that by. So, whether you believe that you need an external network or not, you always do, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:That's right. You know and I'm going to put a pin in that because I want to revisit it and this is I'm about to launch into one bit of like we're in a live podcast, so I'm going to ask you a question that we would absolutely edit out if this was not live. On my side here, I have a button that says stream this to your audience. Side here, I have a button that says stream this to your audience. If I click that, do you think?
Speaker 2:it'll take you to login.
Speaker 1:Do you think you can do that? I don't know. It's just kind of shame on me If you're sharing it with your audience, I feel.
Speaker 2:Try it out. Try it out.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be doing. It looks like I don't have a stream yard account, so, oh, you need an account to do that I guess. So yeah, you know what if?
Speaker 1:anyone's out there that you know it doesn't be released, it'll be shared, so I'm sure people will be consuming some uh ksg after this there you go um, but to get to your point, yes, I I think that the reason I share what I shared I think part of the power of you sharing what you just shared about being internally focused is, if you're doing that, it's not because you're lazy, it's not because you're unaware.
Speaker 1:It makes a lot of sense and a lot of us have made those same decisions. Now, in hindsight, I wish that I had played that differently. I wish I had cultivated more of a kind of outward-facing network much earlier than I did. So the best time to start would have been 5, 10 years ago. The second best time to start is now kind of thing. And so that's one of the beauties of LinkedIn is that even when I was in-house and didn't have clients that I was calling on and didn't have sort of a natural set of opportunities to go build these new relationships, linkedin has been magical for me in that way. And then, once you build up just even a little bit of momentum there, then I found, yeah, I got even more opportunities to do things in person and it kind of snowballs in a good way.
Speaker 2:So how did you so? Okay, so let's, I want to get to begin kind of the origin story of kind of KSG. So obviously it's an inbound stuff coming in. The origin story of kind of KSG, so obviously it's an inbound stuff coming in. You're doing the in-house research and you're saying, okay, well, there's obviously something here that that that people need, that people might want to uh to make better decisions. When it came down to it, I guess, what was the uh, the push off the cliff for you, you know, and how'd you feel kind of going about that? Were you comfortable, confident, nervous? Uh, still waking up, you know, four in the morning, like three in the morning, four in the morning, like I am wondering, you know it's. You know, I've heard entrepreneurship is like uh, jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. Um, what was your experience? I guess, um, taking that step, uh, I guess what? Year and a half ago.
Speaker 1:That's right. Um, not even one question. Yeah, not quite, but, but not quite. But getting toward a year and a half and I feel like my answer is all over the place because so, yes, it's one of those deals where, when I launched right, you know, like I talked about when I talked about naming the thing I kind of in my head, went through some.
Speaker 1:You know, I think Jeff Bezos is the one that came up with the notion of the regret minimization framework. So I'm trying to minimize regrets out of the gate, knowing I'm probably not going to get many opportunities. There's a possibility. I don't get two opportunities to do this, so I know I get one opportunity and so I'm going to minimize the regret around this. And so one way that I did that is naming it the way I named it. Another way that I did that, I talked with a lot of folks that had launched their own deals and asked them what went well, what didn't go well if you had to do it over again, sort of deal. And that's a challenge, right, because this is a soapbox that I've gotten on previously in my career, before I launched KSG is every human being and then every company really believes they are a special snowflake and in a sense that's literally true. Right, there's not two JP Warrens, there's not two of the businesses that you've built.
Speaker 2:We're all special.
Speaker 1:We're all special and we're all unique, right, it is highly plausible that someone can offer you any piece of advice under the sun, and you could come up with a compelling reason why. Eh, that doesn't really apply to me. I have always argued. The real challenge is when you see advice, when you're gathering data and information, there's almost always a reason why you could argue it doesn't apply to your situation. Likewise, though, there's almost always a reason why it might apply.
Speaker 1:And so I try hard to dance with both of those possibilities. So I was talking with people that started all kinds of businesses. No, no one had launched identically exactly the thing that I was thinking of launching. And yet, right, you hear a lot of commonality. And so I was prepared for the roller coaster. I was told about the roller coaster, the idea of building the plane as we're flying this advice comes up all the time. So I did receive that advice.
Speaker 1:I like to believe that I'm a reasonably, if not very even, keeled person. Right, historically, I do not get too high when things are going well. I don't get too low when things are going low. So I figured, okay, I've heard this advice, I'm sort of mentally prepared for the roller coaster. I am wired in a way where I feel like I'll be able to navigate this mildly, gracefully and great, let's do this.
Speaker 1:And, man, with all of that being said, I underappreciated um yeah, what the highs we're going to look like and what the lows are going to look like. And even within the same day and I want to exaggerate, probably even within a handful of hours, I can go from I'm going to knock this thing out of the park. There's no chance, like there's nowhere to go, but straight up from here to a handful of hours later being like i'm'm not sure this is going to work, right, like I don't, I don't know how this is going to come together in a way that I had imagined, and and so it's one of those deals where, like, rationally, right, intellectually, I can kind of work through that, but what you can't do at least I've not met a human being to do it is just like use your mind and use your willpower to simply like avoid an emotional reaction. Right, like those emotions are going to come. Uh, I can't, you know. I I wish I could you know.
Speaker 1:Like I'm just not going to be afraid today, or I'm not going to be irrationally exuberant today, right, I'm gonna. It's like no, those emotions hit, and then challenges. I have to kind of manage it, and so it's a long-winded way to say like I ride the roller coaster and at the same time I feel like for as high as it's a long-winded way to say like I ride the roller coaster and at the same time, I feel like for as high as it's gotten, as low as it gets, I do see like it's sustainable, I think I'll be able to kind of carry it through. But man, it's a roller coaster.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing I think it's. You know, I think that's a, that's how it's a mindset you know. So whether and I believe, trust me, you know I'll get an email where it's like yes, like oh, I got breathing room, runway feels so good, it's blowing and going. You're right, Like I'm unstoppable. Then you're right, Then probably within like an hour or two, the wind in the sail kind of drops, and then you're left in this kind of this, this stale water. You know you don't have that hit. You're like okay, this thing's going to fail, smoke a mirror.
Speaker 2:So I really think, whenever you are dealing with that, whether it's you know, whether it's sales, or whether it's ownership of a business or whatever it is, it really is. So for me, you're right, I focus, I mean you always magnify, even if it's not negative. You know it might be like, you might interpret as being negative, but you always focus on that. So I'm trying, you know, every day to be intentional about like, okay, you're going to focus on the wins, focus on successes, the minor obstacles that are in your way or the things that are saying no, it's not negative, it's just part of the story, part of your process as you build, whatever it is so us being live right, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that we're alive uh, you know, introduce some chaos.
Speaker 1:I'll flip the script here, and because this is something I definitely want to ask you about, is that you know, for you, having done it, I guess a you know how long exactly have you been doing? It is one part of my question. So I've never have you been an entrepreneur?
Speaker 2:have you always been an entrepreneur? No, I never have. Never I've I do. I'd even take a commission, uh, paying sales rules. You know, I love stability. I love the aspect of like, listen, I'll go out, I'll crush, I'll do a great job, and all that stuff, but I know what I'm taking home. So the idea of not knowing where your next meal is going to come from was very foreign. Very, uh, I was very anti that. However, I don't know, maybe it was one of those things where I just got. It was just like maybe it was the times, cause it was like, right after COVID, it was June or July of 2021.
Speaker 2:So the world kind of started opening up and it was kind of like, well, there's new. You know, it's a new opportunity, new. I don't know what it was, but I started it in. Uh, I started connection crew right here, whatever. In July 2021, crew club started in, literally probably about a year and a half later, I never really found a place for connection crew. So crew club started, which is the operator round tables, then exec crew, so this thing. So, all in all, I've probably been going on about four years, um, trying to figure it out. How about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay, call it four years, and so you've been riding this roller coaster right between two and three times as long as I have.
Speaker 1:And one thing that I admire about what you do, and so I'd be curious to know how much of this is deliberate, versus you just saying, no, this is just how I am, so there's not a whole lot to say about it, which is for as long as you've been doing it and for the highs that you've had and the lows that you've had. Uh, one, one of the many things I admire about you is you have not lost your um interest in an energy for experimenting, right For launching and exploring and changing and evolving, and I'm curious kind of where that strength is, because I think there's a lot of folks right that anyone that's done any entrepreneurism, you're going to get kicked in the teeth, no matter how great you're doing it. It's just, it's inevitable that there are times, there are real hard times that hit, and how have those times, as they strike everyone, when they've struck you, how has that not robbed you of your willingness or desire to explore and experiment and recreate?
Speaker 2:because I think, at the end of the day, I mean, it's just like it's you know. You know, when you're growing up you view your parents like having it figured out, or every adult has their you know, their stuff together. It's that's not the reality of it. So. So every business owner, uh, in my opinion, is always it's frantic. It's frantic behind the scenes. So for me, when I first started, I was like, oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I want to start doing this, I'm gonna start doing this. So, from order for me to actually try new stuff, number one you got to believe it. All right, you really do have to. You know whether it's been done before or not done before, the style, whatever you got to believe in at first. You know what I mean. You have to believe in a way to actually communicate that message or communicate that vision with enthusiasm, you know, with what you believe. So, number one, it's belief, um. Number two, it's uh I actually put this you have to reframe what you're doing, especially if it's something new, right? So you know, reframing it to be contrary, to be more valuable, to kind of what's currently out there in the market.
Speaker 2:I find I like reframing stuff, you know. Like you know, for example, people talk about low cost. Well, you wouldn't go out and buy the cheapest minivan for your family or the cheapest car seat for your kid, you know. So why are you doing low cost when you go to the office, and that's kind of how you provide for your family when you go to the office, and that's kind of how you provide for your family. So I like reframing.
Speaker 2:The last thing that I think I've learned I'm still trying to learn this is staying focused. You know, as a business owner, as a solopreneur, you have all these different ideas you could do. I could do this, oh, you know. My network I could do. You know, headhunting, I could do. Recruiting, oh, but also my network, I can do this, this. So it really is also for me and I've, I'm challenged with this is staying focused. So it's constantly believing yourself burn the ship. You know, burn the ships, but really kind of staying focused. So, for example, like, if I'm doing stuff, I'll try to add that on to the lanes I'm already in. I'll try to widen the lane versus carve a new path so yeah, it, yeah, yeah, what you say makes sense.
Speaker 1:It's um, and I, I say that for a couple reasons. One just selfishly, something I'm curious about right now, that. But but another is, you know, I think about, uh, the oil and gas industry writ large, which you and I, you know both spend a lot of time in and around and, right, this is a season of reinvention.
Speaker 1:Right, because there's and I won't sugarcoat it right, there's all the layoffs and there's, you know, real hard times that are happening. And yet, right out of some of those most challenging times typically come a lot of opportunity. But it's really hard, you know, when you're, you know, right in the middle of something this challenging, to muster the energy and the enthusiasm to explore and experiment. And knowing that you know there's, there's some swings that will take that, that that won't land at all, right, but but others, there's always a chance for that home run. And so, um, you know now's the time, right, that I'm trying to kind of motivate myself into. You know this is the self-talk I'm going through. You know now's the time to explore and experiment and, um, like you said, widen these lanes, really get creative around.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of value to create out there, and the oil field specifically, but I've written about it's happening in chemicals, it's happening in a lot of energy and industrial sectors more broadly. These emerging trade frictions happening the way they are right now, there's a lot of weight against near-term, possibly even medium-term, economic activity in a lot of these sectors and so, yes, that's sort of scary to acknowledge and unfortunate. It's a lot easier and more fun when things are going super smoothly, and yet it means that a lot of these entities and individuals are more sensitive to unique ways of creating value. So there's really a ton of opportunity out there right now, but it's tough to muster the energy, enthusiasm to pursue.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about this. Let's shift from kind of the personal side of you know, communicating value or, you know, starting our own thing or offering some sort of you know value that you and I both do Similar but very different. Let's talk about this when it kind of comes. You know we are talking about. You know we're both in the energy space, we're both in the oil and gas space, and let's talk about that. Let's talk about this time of reinvention right now. You mentioned a lot of stuff geopolitically. You mentioned a lot of stuff, whether it's administration, workforce reductions. Now you have AI coming.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of different fronts right now that I feel that's different in the downturn than previously.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to kind of set this up and I want you to kind of your brain and work with me here.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of it's very similar when it comes to, you know, commodity prices, you know, laying rigs down, whatever that is, but I feel it's also very different, because I think and this is my opinion, I personally believe that previously a lot of companies would, you know, tighten the hatches, wait for the storm to pass and then hopefully they can come out and get some market share. Hopefully they can come up and kind of succeed right. I feel that's different this time, just because of all the different, you know, the fronts that people are battling or affecting the business. So I feel that there's going to be two paths. It's going to be very interesting to see the companies that survive from this, I think the companies that button down the hatches that we've done previously, the past couple decades, right, and hopefully this thing will pass and I think you're also going to see the emergence of like a lot of newer not newer companies, but the emergence of, like strategic, more focused companies that actually kind of capitalize on these no-transcript, you know, an hour it's.
Speaker 1:This is interesting, like, because there are um macro shifts that are happening that I'm completely with you, will lead to, um, you know, structural changes that that will change the way that we think about the oil field, specifically the energy space more broadly. So I am, I am with you about the fact, right. So I and I'm I want to call back to my earlier um snowflake, uh, comment. Right, you could, every downturn is its own special snowflake, and that's true. Right, you can go through every downturn and pick out reasons why that one was unique relative to others that came before it, and then, with hindsight, what those came after. And yet, almost all these downturns have things in common, patterns that are worth acknowledging and understanding, and then deciding whether, okay, does that pattern serve us in this downturn or should we leave it behind?
Speaker 1:So, what you said about there's kind of two paths, which I think is a good way to say okay, on this continuum of you know, kind of paths that you, you know, options that you could pursue, the one extreme is, hey, we're just going to batten down the hat, cut everything that we can cut, cut every person that isn't generating revenue. Right, get down to. You know every employee right Is there a plus or minus cash surplus or deficit for that employee, and eliminate all the employees for whom there's a cash deficit and try to just get as small and as lean as you can. And that's.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's been a strategy historically and it's not wrong. But that was historically Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1:And it's. It is an obvious strategy. It's. It's not unreasonable, like if you're concerned about cash generation and you're trying to protect yourself. I understand why the instinct is to move in that direction. If you're an executive management team, it's really hard to get punished by your shareholder base for getting super, super like that, particularly in this environment where capital discipline is such a big topic and shareholders are pretty vocal about wanting to get these dividends and share repurchases and stuff. So I understand that instinct and how those mechanics unfold. It is also equally obvious, right, that there's a sizable cost that comes with pursuing that. One of the immediate costs that you bear is when the market does turn. You are then not positioned to pounce and to take advantage, right?
Speaker 2:You have to build up everything that you cut in order to kind of step back on the dance yeah, yeah, it happens.
Speaker 1:You know the just to be kind of high level about. It happens both with people and with equipment. Right, with people, you're bringing people back on, uh, many of whom either don't know your business or, if they did, if they had been involved in your business previously, um, you know there's been enough that's changed that they still have to take some time ramping up with equipment. If you're cannibalizing equipment to keep the other equipment in the field, that equipment that has been cannibalized needs to get stood back up, and so there's investment that's required to get all this equipment to perform and operate. And it's expensive, right, it's expensive to go from a cold start up to trying to keep pace with the market, and that's always been the case, right, there's no part of that dynamic that really changes from cycle to cycle. So that is one path. This other path that you talked about is a path that I have talked about. I've given a couple of talks about capital discipline in the oil field and what I see as the future of the oil field.
Speaker 1:And my vision is it kind of coming together. There's more that I'm reading and hearing that that kind of increases my confidence and and what I had been claiming previously. There's a book right now that I'm reading called can't deny it, by doug terrison. He's um, a former equity analyst, big time equity analyst at morgan stanley and then evercore isi, and then now he sits on the board philip 66 okay, real high power wall street guy and very well known and well regarded in the energy space, and he was the one, and him and his team, made the big call. Back in the late 90s they wrote an equity research piece called the era of the super majors, and so they are the ones who argued, before any of the super major combinations occurred, that now was the time for the exons and mobiles of the world to combine the bps and the amicos of the world which we're seeing the past 18 months, 19 months, yeah yeah right.
Speaker 1:So we've had this most recent round of consolidation and so I'm reading this book and he's talking about how he you know he made that call.
Speaker 1:He made a call about, um, the golden era of uh, you know, the age of the golden age of refining, um, you know, circa 2004, 5 and and 2006. It's an interesting book and it's interesting to see inside the mind of someone who analyzes these equities and studies the market and is challenged with generating narratives that people can use to make decisions about how to run these businesses, how to invest in these businesses. The argument for the super major move was that there's a lot of uncertainty. There's cost of capital is going up. There's the opportunities. The real attractive opportunities for growth are more available. The bigger you are, the more plausibly you can generate enough capital to go pursue these growth opportunities in the way that is most cost attractive and the way that the market would demand. And so it's one of these. One plus one equals three deals where bringing together two large operators to create an even larger one does more than just give you a little bit more opportunity it can unlock opportunity.
Speaker 2:However, that is not reflected in red counter frack spreads. It's actually the one plus one equals one. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So, but then it gets to today, right where it was an argument I was making before I read this book. Having read the book, I think there's echoes of it, which is I'm arguing that you know the way that super majors historically have interacted with oil field services companies, right that those have been. At least you can point to scenarios where those were deeper partnerships, that they were exploring new fields, developing new fields, trying to radically change the cost profiles in mature fields, and so you would get this deal where you'd have expertise and capital that comes from the E&P, you have this technology and operational acumen day-to-day that comes from the services companies and you'd bring those together and it'd be a pretty intimate, long ranging partnership. It wasn't mutually beneficial.
Speaker 2:You got the technology coming out, you have the yeah yeah, Right, it wasn't unduly transactional.
Speaker 1:There were transactional elements involved, but it's not like you were bidding AFE to AFE well to well to try to figure out you know who's going to bid the least to take this on. It's like no, we're going to roll in this partner. We're going to develop a whole field. We're going to deploy this technology. We know that the early phases of deploying this technology are going to be rockier, but as we get this under our belt and proceed down the learning curve, then operationally we'll get a lot more efficient and costs will fall and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:And then, on the flip side of that, of that right, you've had these, you know, say, US land independents that are trying to prove out an unconventional you know sector, you know circa 10, 15 years ago, and at that case it's like, yeah, we're just trying to drive costs down as much as possible.
Speaker 1:The service companies are largely commoditized, like you know. We'll just have them compete against each other and see how low, can you know, can we get this AFE down to, so that we can have a chance to get cash positive, because they were cash negative for a fair bit of time. And so it's highly transactional and it's just well to well, it's very cutthroat and you have the oilfield service companies competing against each other. Well, going forward, these independents have gotten larger, They've merged exactly what you're saying They've consolidated, and the reason they're doing that is they're starting to enter the same phase that the super majors were in, which is, in order to succeed from here, it's not so much about proving out these crazy new developments, it's not so much about just bolting on additional acreage to what you have. But you need to professionalize operations. You need to get much more sophisticated about how we deploy capital, how we engage, how we enroll technology, how we cultivate continuing technology developments and deployments, so that we have a long runway out into the future.
Speaker 2:That stuff's not transactional. Let me pause you. I love this, so let me ask you a question. So, when companies that are looking at this more and again I'm using strategic because I'm obviously tying what you do with this when it does come to capital deployment, stuff like that, obviously that obviously the short side is the low. You know the thing that you know you can think of well, let's just, you know, get the AFEs down, let's get the lowest cost, let's do this. But there's a huge portion right now it's not low cost anymore because you get what you pay for. But I've heard a lot around the table the crew club tables and a lot of cost management.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it makes sense that cost management gets interesting. I keep thinking back to the press release that SLB had when they announced the combination with Champion X, and in that press release I won't be able to quote it verbatim, but there was a comment about how, and I'm going to share this comment. This comment's been shared way before in the past and it will be shared again in the future, but it was the way that SLB constructed their press release that made me think like, okay, this does sound a little bit different this time, which is customers, the EMPs, are trying to maximize the lifetime value of their assets, and EMPs will always say that and they always have historically said that. And yet, right, you can look back and point to very specific windows of time where, no, you're not trying to maximize the lifetime value of this asset, you're trying to find the most sexy initial production record.
Speaker 1:That you can find, or you're trying to see kind of how widely can you bring wells online geographically? What kind of footprint can we maximize over a period of time so we can plausibly claim that, hey, look, there's all these well locations that we're pursuing and you get into acreage, tiering and all that kind of stuff. Well, if you really zoom out, it should all be in service of. We have a resource and a set of reserves available to us, and we really are trying to unlock absolutely as much value as we can from this set of resources as we can. And so if we go back to the resource land, some of that means, okay, how can we identify more reserves within this resource base?
Speaker 1:But then, once you have your reserves identified, then it's like, okay, we need to pull those up to surface in a way that again maximizes the long-term value, because investors today really do care about how long will you be able to generate cash flows into the future? Right, if you get to a point where oil demand starts to plateau and eventually roll over, assets will become stranded, and so investors today are already thinking about the possibility of stranded assets in the future. And so, as a management team, the best thing you can say is we have managed our costs and managed our portfolio in a way where we have a super long runway of super low cost inventory that we'll be able to produce until the world needs its very last drop of oil. Right, that's the best way to invite investors into your investment thesis, and so is that.
Speaker 2:Is that I'm sorry go on, go for it. No, I was going to say I feel like you're seeing a lot more you know inventory in the shelf holding shed all that stuff long term. You're seeing a lot of these bigger whales, the super majors and all that stuff start getting acres just to get acres. You're not getting a lot of private operators coming to the table. They're not really doing farm outs or JVs and stuff like that. I feel again from what I've heard, I think what you're saying is that they're holding on to these assets you know to showcase, you know the shelf life of the companies. Yes, that's exactly right. Is that very different than previous acquisitions?
Speaker 1:Certainly than early days of shale right. Early days of shale were more about again, sexy IPs and demonstrating that you could unlock the potential of these wells, that you could profitably produce a range of wells, that you could generate the cash that you needed to to meet your ongoing obligations, that you could manage your debt load and protect your balance sheet. It was more about just the financial and economic plausibility of operating these things where they can be a long-lasting resource, and the point is, we've proven that it's a sustaining asset that should have a long and durable future. And so now the question becomes okay, are you going to be a part of the present, the medium-term future and the longer-term future? Because, as we all know, oil is going to be used for a long time, and so the challenge is what we don't know is what happens to oil demand at the margin. You have OPEC saying, hey, oil demand is going to grow at less than 1% per year out to 2050. You have ExxonMobil saying, oil demand is going to grow until mid-2030s and it's going to stay flat out to 2050. There's other folks that say, okay, oil demand will grow out to say the late 2030s, but then it'll actually start rolling over and declining by the time you get to 2050s, but even still, like even those rollover type scenarios, you get to a case where, you know, oil demand is still nominally what it is today right, it's not like 20, 30, 40, 50% lower than it is today, and so there's a lot of oil that's going to be needed and there's a lot of the resource base that exists today that we're going to need to sustain for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:And really, the competition now gets into. Can you plausibly claim we're the kind of operator that's going to last until the end of time? Right, like, we have the high enough quality asset base, we have approved out enough operational platform to execute this. And then the big one is we have the partnerships that we need to help us collaborate in a way to unlock this value going forward. And that's where I think these services companies right.
Speaker 1:So, to get back to your initial question, there's one which is batten down the hatches, cut everything that we're able to cut and live to fight another day. There will be service companies that have enough capital to do this where it's like okay, right now is the time you should always be investing in your relationships, but right now is the time where you can have pretty intimate, deep-seated conversations with prospective customers, because everyone is trying to rethink okay, what's the future going to look like? How bad does this get right now? What does the future look like? So people do have the time and the bandwidth to think pretty deeply about how to position themselves for the future, and I think there is to your point.
Speaker 1:There is a cohort of oilfield services company that is also thinking very deeply about how do we partner in ways where we can. First we sell to the E&P that we are the partner that will help you unlock the value that you need to maximize the value of these assets over some long period of time and then, once you convince them that they can turn around and convince their shareholder base that. And so I think that's going to be a real segmentation in the OFS community. There's some that I absolutely understand the instinct batten down the hatch to sell everything that you can liquidate. Live to fight another day. There's others that I think are going to see major like partnerships between OFS and these new independents that we have not seen in the past, and the seeds for that are literally being planted right now. All right.
Speaker 2:So I have a question before because I want to talk to you about, obviously you know KSG and kind of, let me get there. Let me finish this question real quick. So how does how do companies in this day and age whether you're an operator, whether you're a service company or I'm not sure if you dive into tech and all that stuff but how do you actually, how would you stay competitive in this market right now, in the near term, next six, 12 months? How do you stay competitive? You might've spoken that already or touched on it, but let's just kind of be clear about that. As an operator, how do you stay competitive? As a service company, how do you stay competitive?
Speaker 1:The phrase that you used before will absolutely be top of mind of everyone, which is cost management, right, so it's easy to say okay, the way to stay competitive is make sure that you are as sort of lean and efficient and flexible. You have as much optionality as you can have. Those are all easy words to say and they're not wrong. Those are in general, directionally. That's the right answer. The devil's in the details, right. It gets down to what kind of capital allocation decisions are you making right now? That will position yourself in a way where you do have that optionality. You do have that flexibility.
Speaker 1:And so, when it gets down to say you're trying to make personnel decisions or you're trying to make equipment decisions, the harder ones are the personnel side. If you are forced to make cuts, where are those cuts coming from? And are you cutting the most expensive part of your labor force? Because it's the most expensive part of your labor force and that's the easiest way to save a bunch of dollars, even though that might be the portion of the labor force that has the deepest connections into your customer base or your vendor base or whatever. And so that's where the devil kind of gets in the tails. Likewise, on the equipment side, if you are shutting down or potentially cannibalizing some of your highest cost equipment which again would make sense that might also be the equipment that is most differentiating for you, that you're able to unlock the most value for your customers. And so it takes some real courage to go through and understand like, okay, there's kind of the easiest, because if we're trying to save the most dollars, literally you cut here, there and whatever, but those cuts may most impair your ability to form the kind of partnerships that you want, to maintain the kind of flexibility that you want, um, and so there's more nuance and perspective required and understanding how are we going to position, uh, you know, our company to succeed? So that's sort of the the mechanical, the pnl mechanics. The other bit that I think you and I are both sensitive to and a lot of our lunches, um are kind of built in part around it is and it was a conversation I was just having um with with a high-profile investment management firm yesterday that one of my beliefs say specifically and to kind of wrap in KSG, since you were going to go in that direction anyway, one of my biggest beliefs is I've run KSG and I've interacted.
Speaker 1:My clients tend to be senior executives inside of energy companies is these executives, and I think the reason I'm sharing this is I think it generalizes to basically all people that live in the energy space. But my experience talking with these energy executives they crave being able to find someone or a team of people that can or already does think as deeply about their business as they do. Right, they live in that business day to day. That is their world and the idea that me as a partner, as a research partner, as a market intelligence partner, as a strategist, as a learning development facilitator, that I can very, very quickly immerse myself in their business and be as fluent in it nearly as they are and think nearly as deeply about it as they do. That's what they crave, because a lot of these folks feel isolated, they feel alone. They really want an outside perspective. They want someone to help test their ideas. They want someone to help propose new ideas, and in order to do that in a compelling way, you really have to know their business, their reality, their customer base, their challenges. And so it's what I do.
Speaker 1:It's one of the reasons I can compete with McKinsey and Bain and Accenture and name a big wig energy consultancy or a consultancy that at least could compete in energy. And there's a reason that I can win work that they don't. And it's because I have this argument. I'm not winning all the work that they're winning. And it's because I have this argument I'm not winning all the work that they're winning, of course, but I have this argument and so I can position myself accordingly.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that translates very broadly to all of us that, whether you're thinking internally so it's like, okay, I need to, you know what is my boss crave, what is my boss's boss crave? They crave someone who's thinking as deeply about their challenges, their opportunities, as they are. Well, likewise, if you're in sales, this is what your customer craves and you don't have to spend years of your life to build the fluency you need to engage these folks constructively. Right A little bit of thought, listening to the right podcasts, reading the right books, reading the right journal articles, talking with the right people, doing the right kinds of networking you can get yourself up to speed where it's both building up the acumen but then, frankly, building up the confidence. So almost everyone knows more than they give themselves credit for.
Speaker 1:I think one of the superpowers that I have for KSG is every day I'm able to lean into that confidence a little bit more, which allows me to have the right kinds of conversations with the right kinds of people. I'm not shy about sharing what I know. I'm not shy about claiming what I know but also acknowledging what I don't know, so that I can understand when I'm on firm ground and when I'm not and when I need to do more work. But a lot of folks already know more than they give themselves credit for. So kind of cultivating the confidence to lean in to that competence, to that expertise. But then really, where you don't have enough competence or acumen or expertise or awareness, build it. And that's one of the things I'm most excited about AI.
Speaker 1:Ai can help you build it. Go to any of those tools, start asking some questions. You'll get some answers. Not that that's the gospel, not that that's. You get that and that's your one singular truth and just race forward with that. But it gives you enough information that then, if you sit down with JP or you sit down with Jeff or you sit down with anyone else in your network and you have a cup of coffee or you have a lunch, you're able to talk constructively about what's happening in the market. What are you paying attention to? And then you know, really get out of your own head what are other people thinking about, what do they care about, what are their challenges, what are their opportunities. And as soon as you can flip that switch and engage with them on their ground, everything changes for all of us.
Speaker 2:I also think it's. I also think, though, the concept of obviously stepping in a company, speaking to everyone kind of their language and all that stuff, yeah, it does take a certain level of confidence, but I also think that with that confidence it allows you to offer more creative solutions that maybe historically haven't even brought up to the table. You know, maybe different creative approaches and maybe different creative messages, or maybe a different creative direction or strategy or focus. But I think again, through confidence or through just thinking outside the box or putting yourself, I'm always trying to put myself in the buyer's shoes. You know what I mean. Like whenever I do the sales training, whenever I do the communications, the leadership, you know, when I'm working executives to teach about communication, it's always like all right, what does your subordinates think? What is driving the bus, what is important to them? So I think it's important to confidence aspect too, Also to be a little creative with things, with maybe suggestions, or try things outside the box, Because Lord knows the oil and gas needs new innovative ideas.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. And to add some color onto the creativity, because I know how I responded to that in the past and I think there's others that hear that and think I'm not Thomas Edison over here. I'm not coming up with all these new ingenious inventions and fine, right, none of us are Thomas Edison that dude's wild. So none of us are that. But the point is that creativity comes in dramatically different forms, and one thing I've learned about creativity is moments where I don't think I'm even being creative, but where I share something that I've been thinking about and I've reflected on and that I have learned or I've changed my mind about or I have now questioned that in the past I hadn't questioned. I've changed my mind about, or I have now questioned that in the past I hadn't questioned Just sharing those things. Other people hear that and they think about how creative you are. So it's important not to set the bar so high that it's like, okay, you have to invent the next great commercial model that's going to exist in oil and gas, right, that if you don't do that, you're a creative failure. No, no, no. If you live in the world, in that commercial world of oil and gas, even you thinking deeply about. Okay, we have these transactional models, we have these turnkey models, we have all these different partnerships. There's equity sharing and profit sharing, all these different ways that we can bring teams together to execute a project.
Speaker 1:And even as you just reflect on all the things that you know exist and you learn more about them, and you learn more about them, you will inevitably ask yourself a question or a couple of questions. And when you pose those questions to another person, you'll have lunch with someone or coffee, and you'll bring this up and be like hey, I was just thinking about this the other day. I know this kind of partnership. I was reading about these two companies and it makes me wonder why do companies never do X? Or why do we never hear about Y? And that might be all?
Speaker 1:Someone needs to be like my goodness, like that's excellent question, like that is something that we should get to the bottom of. Why don't you help me get to the bottom of it? And so I say all that because I don't want people to feel like, hey, in order to be creative, I have to come with this fully polished, fleshed out design. No, no, no, but just participate in the conversation, like lean into your creativity, lean into your curiosity, be inquisitive. And if you indulge all of that and you do it in front of and around the right people, your creativity will naturally emerge and you'll have way more success than you otherwise would have.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting because you know there's a lot of people that don't feel like they're creative. You know what I mean. You know I think I'm creative in certain aspects and not creative in certain aspects. And I remember I was having a conversation with a, a software company. I was like, oh, what about, have you thought about this, this and this? And I thought that was it wasn't creative at all. And it was.
Speaker 2:And you saw, I saw the faces, though it was like a like a dawn, like, oh, my gosh, week or last week, and she just brought up you know two or three you know comments to me and I was like, holy crap, I didn't even think about that. And she's like, well, you know, it's just I and so like the fact is, you hear these people that you're right, that are inquisitive, that are curious, that actually are that kind of like not I'm not going to say challenging, but just kind of like have you thought about this? And you know it's for me, you're right, people have to be connected to you, they have to be in tune and care about what you care about. But also, you're right, you don't have to be Elon or Thomas Edison or something creating Starlink or anything like that. You literally just have to sit there with an outside perspective, maybe chime in kind of your thoughts about the scenario or the situation or a different approach, and that's creative enough that might jog some thoughts into other people's lives.
Speaker 1:That's right. So what you said about Kate I think that's worth emphasizing which is, in order for this to work right, it needs to come. You need to have some generally, you need to have some affinity with the person that you're sharing, right, coming in just totally cold as a stranger is going to be tough for them to appreciate. Whatever it is that you might offer in terms of ideas. You need to come with humility, right. It's not one of these deals like hey, I've been thinking about oil and gas commercial structures for the last 30 minutes and you guys are all a bunch of idiots because you haven't thought of A, b or C. No, there may be very good reasons why those things aren't being used, so it requires some humility. At the same time, it is easy to lean into that humility side and be like well, I don't really know oil and gas commercial structures, so I'm just going to shut up, I'm not going to lean into that because I don't really know that and so I don't want to come across as a know-it-all or arrogant or whatever. And I think people use that as a kind of get out of jail free card to not participate and without realizing choosing that path comes with an enormous amount of cost.
Speaker 1:It's a specific example of a broader theme that I've learned in my career, which is and now I try hard to just steer always in this direction Anything that makes me uncomfortable I try to steer toward. And great, I mean easy words to say. Where's the challenge? Well, the challenge is there are different emotions. Not everything is discomfort, but there's some stuff that really is just a bad idea. There's some stuff that is half-baked, it's not a complete thought. You need to be aware of that. But when you do have a complete thought and you have done a bit of homework and you have talked with people and the conclusion that you've settled on makes you uncomfortable, that's all for me. It's almost always a sign lean hard into that. So this idea hey, I'm not creative, I'm not Thomas Edison, I'm not Elon Musk Fine, none of us are.
Speaker 1:And yet the idea that you should have enough confidence to realize if I study, if I explore, if I read, if I listen, if I engage with other folks in my network, I can learn enough about something to participate. And then it's on me to ask that question or to offer that kind of proposal. And that's uncomfortable because there's a chance someone looks at it or hears it and decides nope, that's ridiculous, we're not going to do that. There's always a small chance. It almost never happens. But the magic of when you ask that question or, like I said, offer that kind of challenge to someone, that it really helps them unlock a thought that they otherwise might not have had or they might have already had that thought, but it helps cement that thought, it gives that thought some salience that it wouldn't have otherwise had. Then what you just offered to them was magic, and to you it seemed like a struggle or something you debated about. Should I even speak up?
Speaker 1:And so I guess my broader advice here is just lean into your curiosity lean into your um, you know, your, your uh desire to, to learn and to explore and then, when you can, when you combine that and you connect with other human beings. Uh, it really is. I keep using the word, but it's magical I think it's something too.
Speaker 2:I think it's you know I, I, you know, you know these dinners that I host all this stuff. I'm not an engineer, but you know it's surrounded by high profile engineers that worked up. I don't mind and again, I had a problem with this in my early career I don't mind not knowing anything, I don't mind asking the stupid questions because you know, as we go out through our careers, you know we might be talking about, you know MWDs for you know my, you know past 15 years, doesn't really necessarily mean I understand the mechanics of an MWD when it's used, what it's used to do, all that stuff. So asking the stupid questions, even if you've been around the industry for, in my case, 20 years, it's okay. It's okay because you're asking kind of in a novice way, but also if you've been encompassing this for 20 years, that novice question might just ding you and say, oh my gosh, we're not even thinking about that.
Speaker 1:That's right, and you know the asking stupid questions bit. There's when you have those questions right, the filter you can use to decide whether to ask it or not. To ask it is if you have a stupid question because you've been lazy, don't ask that one right. Do the work Like if you can answer your own question, but it's just going to require some effort. Go answer your own question, but it's just going to require some effort. Go answer your own question. There's almost nothing more frustrating than someone asking a ridiculous question because they're obviously two weeks ago to do the work.
Speaker 1:Now, that said, there are plenty of other quote unquote stupid questions that you may have that the reason you don't have the answer has nothing to do with your work ethic or your desire to learn. It just might be hey, I've been in the industry for two decades. I have never been close enough to the actual tool to learn firsthand why this functions the way it has. Or, like in my case, I had never been close enough to a customer, to an EMP customer, to ask this kind of question or to know, hey, if you offered this kind of perspective, how might they respond? Because I worked on pricing, profitability and I had, again commercials, why I keep going back to?
Speaker 1:It's like hey, there's countless different ways we can sell this drill bit or this service drilling service and there's all these commercial structures. Why don't we just ask customers about it? It's like, well, we have like believe, we have like believe me, we've asked, we've asked this and that, but. But me being able to learn from them by asking them those straightforward, silly, ridiculous questions was helpful to me because there was no really other way for me to find the answer. So I encourage folks if it's because you're lazy, just do it, just learn. Otherwise, definitely bring those questions, because there's people that would love to field those kinds of questions and people like talking too, let and people like talking too.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about KSG real quick. I know we've been talking about 52 minutes. I know we have. You have stuff to do, your schedule's both of our schedules are busy, but let's talk about KSG real quick. So what kind of you know here? You know KSG Criminal Strategy Group, you know. You know I'm doing strategy with Connection Crew and all that stuff. But however, your strategy, when people utilize KSG, let me ask you like you come in with data research and all that stuff. So let me ask you, I guess, help me with this question. I guess, when you walk into a why KSG? What decisions can they make with the data you provide?
Speaker 1:At the high level. There's two ways that clients use me. One is, say, through a traditional market research-based strategy exercise. So this might be hey, we have a CapEx program that we're working through right now and we're trying to decide how many dollars do we deploy and where do we deploy those dollars, and it would really help us out to understand. So one of the recent projects I did was you know, we'd love to have some view on oil prices and rig counts out to 2030. Because we're going to make some Apex investments today that have a five-year return horizon and we just can't not have a view on oil markets out in the future. Great, I can help with that.
Speaker 1:There was another project that I did where it's like okay, hey, we distribute industrial products today and we are thinking about possibly distributing electrical products tomorrow, and so we want to know, given the product base that we distribute into today, how much of any of that overlaps with the product set that we might need if we were to distribute electrical products. And how big of a market is electrical product distribution? And then, geographically, how does it align with what our existing geographical footprint is? So I can do a bunch of market research to help them better understand the size of that market, the attractiveness of the market, the overlap. I did some voice of the customer stuff where I was able to talk with executives in that space and better learn about the structure of that segment of the industry and how they might need to map their structure over to succeed.
Speaker 1:There was another one that was a big EPCM company. That was they wanted to, so they themselves weren't deploying a lot of CapEx right, it was their customer base that was going to be pursuing a lot of projects. But this EPCM company needed to know you know which customer bases are going to ask. You ask, are going to pursue most aggressively building out these big projects and where in the world are they going to do it? And, by extension, there is a CapEx exercise that this EPCM company has to do, which is okay. Do we have the right footprint in-house to be able to respond when our customers lean hard on us to make sure that we're able to pursue the kind of projects that they're interested in pursuing, the kind of projects that they're interested in pursuing?
Speaker 1:So there's that wing of my business which is senior executive deploying capital planning. Maybe they're planning revenue and they want help in understanding what kind of range exists for our revenue going forward. They're doing some forecasting, they're doing some planning where market data can be of service to them. They'll pull me in to help on that. That's one path. The other path is this learning and development path.
Speaker 1:So it's like, hey, we have a leadership development program and we've pulled together these aspiring leaders and we want criminal strategy group to come in and teach them how can they develop their own market acumen, how can they develop their own corporate strategy acumen? Right To this point in their career they've been closer to the front lines, serving customers directly or operating tools directly or living in the supply chain organization, the HR organization. But now we need them to think more strategically and we need them to be aware that the market has all these fluctuations and the better attuned they are to that, the better decisions they can make as leaders internally. So I've set up unfacilitated workshops for that kind of group, but then it can go up to senior executives and go up to board members. There are plenty of board members right. They get selected to sit on a board because they have IT expertise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they experience in the industry.
Speaker 1:That's right and so, but they themselves, because they're now on the board, they want to participate more meaningfully in the financial discussions Like there's going to be real financial performance debates going on. I want to have a voice in those conversations, and so I've built programs where I can teach them the financial vocabulary, some of the strategy 101. There's a bunch of different corporate strategy frameworks that we can quickly go through to give you a sense of. Okay, this is how the management team thinks about strategy. This is what some of the words mean when we talk about strategy, and so one path is this market research, you know, intelligence based strategy work. The other is this learning and development workshop of this. The second path is where my sub stack newsletter, foundations of energy, sits, where I help people build energy professionals build their strategy and finance acumen. Get that newsletter. So those are the two big pathways I use.
Speaker 2:Man. So I got a question. So you have the data, you have the research. If I was doing this, my imposter syndrome at this point would be okay. I got the data, I got the research. How do you actually, I guess, how do you actually make the recommendations? Obviously, you're not making the decisions, You're suggesting the decisions. But from that data, from that research, I mean for me it's uncomfortable because it's like, hey, it's not my money, you know what I mean. Or it's not my, this it's not my, you know I'm not going to be here in 10 years, you know what I mean. Or five years, whatever. We're looking at how decisions or recommendations, yes.
Speaker 1:That goes back to something that I get on my soapbox about. I'll avoid all that here about the importance of forecasting. So the thing that I keep coming back to is these capital allocation decisions must be made. There's just no way to abstain from making a capital allocation decision. The business will erode, so we have to deploy this capital and we have to do it in a certain window of time. And so if you don't bring in me to support, if you don't do any kind of forecasting, strategy review or whatever, you still must make these capital allocation decisions. Instead of using the tool set that I will offer and the data and the insights and all that, you will rely on heuristics. You'll rely on your own experience. You'll rely on what's the most recent podcast that I've listened to or what was the most recent podcast, or what's everyone else doing, what's my competitors doing?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly what are my competitors doing? What's the last thing that I've heard? Or what sidebar conversation at a conference did I just most recently have? And you'll over-anchor around a lot of that, and so I feel very confident that when I bring in all this data and offer these insights that you know you're right, I mean I have to take a position. There's nothing more frustrating than bringing in someone like me and for them being like I don't know. You can do all kinds of things. Best of luck out there.
Speaker 1:No, I need to have a view, but there's no alternative to not having a view, and there's plenty of people that end up having views that, over time, you end up recalibrating, and so it's not that my crystal ball is somehow perfect, but I'm very clear about these are the data sets I'm using, these are the assumptions that I'm embedding in the analysis and, as a result, here's the conviction that I have, here's the belief that I have, and so when I share, then, what my ultimate recommendation is, they have enough visibility into my process, both the data sets I'm using, the analysis, the assumptions that they can, and then they've worked with me enough where they have some confidence what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:They can then decide for themselves how much weight they want to put on my recommendation, because my recommendation is almost always just one in a portfolio of information that they're using to make this decision, and so that visibility helps me out a lot, because I'm not just it's not a black box where I'm just spitting out some blind recommendation. They get to see the whole process, and that's helpful to them.
Speaker 2:All right, so I guess. So obviously talk to me about this newsletter. That's, I guess, growing your field has been very consistent. It's weekly, was it Sunday nights it goes out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I have two newsletters and there's one that goes out every Sunday night. That's my free weekly newsletter, and I call it the Business of Energy. That's the one where I include links to, and summaries of, all the energy research that I post on LinkedIn over the course of a week, so that way you don't have to go on LinkedIn and dig around for something. It's all in one spot with all the links. I offer a little bit of commentary around each. I also, in that newsletter, include an energy-related anecdote related anecdote, insight or observation is how I label it that I don't publish anywhere else. So even if you've seen everything that I've published on linkedin, you'll still have something new to read in that newsletter. So that's the free one goes out every single week. Um, it's a great way for me to stay in touch with people that actively follow what I do online. Then there's the substack newsletter called foundations of energy, and that is a much deeper dive.
Speaker 1:Uh, okay, yes'm taking a topic of interest, the energy topic of interest at this moment in time, and I'm taking it all the way down to first principles, and we're going to introduce vocabulary, we'll introduce context, I'll introduce some data and it's a much more complete covering of one topic. The idea is we're trying to build our mental models around why does the energy space look the way it does? Why is it evolving the way it is? And so I'm taking the topics that investors are talking about, that senior executive management teams are talking about, and offering some explanations so that the rest of us, all of us in energy more broadly, can develop the tool set that we need to be a part of that conversation or at least to understand the implications as these calls are being made. And so I have that newsletter that goes out. That's nominally.
Speaker 1:Each week I'll put together a new topic and in fact, as I'm saying all that out loud, just today, before we went live this morning, I recorded my first ever sample podcast episode, and what I did was last week I took the energy research that I posted I think there were five different posts that I had on LinkedIn and what I did in the sample podcast episode was I spent on the order, say, of five minutes on each post, talking through.
Speaker 1:Why did I post it? I love it. What data sets am I using? What does it mean? How is it connected in the rest of the stuff that I post? What's the right way to understand this little bit that I happened to throw up on LinkedIn and so I put that together and I just put it as an audio only video on YouTube and I just put it on LinkedIn and asked for people to listen to it and offer some commentary about whether that's something that they would get a kick out of listening to in the future, because that's one of my this learning development is education path that I'm on. I really want to share as much of what I know and give people as much context and perspective so that they can incorporate it into their own mental models, and maybe that podcast will be the next thing I do. Maybe it won't, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's first off, you got to vote here. All right, you have a vote here to do it, cause I love the fact that you, what you're doing, you're right, you, you are sharing information, you're sharing knowledge, but you're also breaking it down where you know, if you're, if you're not on the C-suite or the, you know the 76th floor, you know downtown Houston, you know if you're, whether it's in the field, whether it's your, you know corporate sales or whether it's your, you know a drilling engineer somewhere you can understand what the, what the decision, the C-suite is talking about. I like that.
Speaker 1:It's. It's good for you know people because they feel more connected into their industry. It puts them in a position where they can argue about okay, what value do I bring to this company? And the better able you are to understand and articulate the value you bring in your role today, the better you are at positioning yourself for raises and promotions and all that, but also the better. So it works for the management team too, because they want want an engaged, plugged in value, aware employee base. That works great there and then also just for the energy space, on the whole it works better.
Speaker 1:The more strategic and financial acumen our whole workforce has, the better we collectively are able to position ourselves each other, the companies, the equipment, all that in ways that generate the most value. And I have always been impressed by how sharp the folks that I've worked around in energy are. Some of them have many advanced degrees. Some of them have literally zero degrees, and the amount of acumen and intellect they build up just from working in the ways that they're working, working around the people they're working, working with the customers that they're working with over long enough periods of time, there's an abundance of a wealth of knowledge that exists there If you start layering some strategy and some finance stuff on top of all that, this workforce becomes even more productive, even more empowered, the whole sector performs better. So it's something I feel very passionate about.
Speaker 1:That's why this little podcast and the two news I try hard, that's why I asked you the question earlier about experimentation. I try hard to experiment with ways that I can share ideas and insights and information that are most digestible for folks. And so this was yeah, I just kind of keep exploring and experimenting that way. Keep the podcast going.
Speaker 2:That's my recommendation. I love that because we had a. We had a crew club round table with Justin Pritchard Jones, the production manager over at Trinity, and he led to a non-financial for financial, pretty much non-financial for you know, engineers and all that stuff. And and he was talking about if your field people don't know the contract, when you know whether or it's the natural gas price, something like that, they don't want to shut it off when it gets cold and all that stuff, you're really losing money. So you're right, the more you educate people about whether it's strategy, cost, whatever that is, the better decisions can be made, the more value can be brought to that company. So I love how you just said that. So wrap this up. I want pieces of advice for individuals. I want KSG advice for individuals. I want KSG advice for companies and how people can get connected to you and where they can find your newsletters. So advice for individuals, advice for companies and then tie it up with how people can connect.
Speaker 1:Excellent. My advice to individuals is to lean hard into those spaces that are lean hard into ambiguity, that there's very comfortable for all of us to live in well-defined, well-structured environments where we know exactly what success looks like. Tell me what I need to achieve to get my next raise or promotion. I miss those days. Yeah, promise, I promise you I will go deliver that. And when people don't give you that, it's not because they're trying to be malicious or they're unaware. They don't know the answer, they don't have the structure. And so if you're trying to make the biggest impact in your career, finding those places that are ambiguous, that are uncertainty, where people just don't know what the right answer looks like, if you have the time and the energy to go again, explore, experiment, know that you'll hit some brick walls, you'll have to turn around and recalibrate. But if you're able to find the answer and build structure and build certainty where none exists today, that's sort of the easiest path to a very lucrative, fulfilling career going forward. So find those areas of ambiguity, steer yourself toward them and offer yourself some patience and some time to make progress in that way. That's my advice to individuals.
Speaker 1:My advice to companies is to be aware of how much rigor you have introduced in your decision-making processes. And, like with anything, there's a sweet spot in terms of you can make decisions in much too sloppy a way where we just didn't bring the right data or information to bear. We didn't have a structured enough process in place. There's another extreme where we can absolutely over-engineer our decision-making process and be so slow and so clumsy and so expensive about it that we're not making the right decisions.
Speaker 1:The companies that I work with are the ones that find themselves near the sweet spot but have historically erred more toward the unstructured, the less rigorous approach, where they realize a little bit more data, a little bit more documented insight, a little more deliberation and adjudication will improve our decision-making processes. So I encourage all companies to be aware If you have an over-engineered process, find ways to strip out some of that cost and some of those mechanics because you don't need them. If you have an under-engineered process, particularly for some high-profile decisions, find a way, reach out to me, reach out to others. Find a way to introduce some rigor, because your decision making process will get a lot better and, as a result, you will have more confidence when you deploy capital, when you have to make arguments to your board or to shareholders about why you're doing what you're doing and what they should expect on the other side, you'll have even more confidence. You have the data.
Speaker 1:That's right, and you can enroll your employees in it. At that point, you don't have so many employees. Why are we doing this? What does this mean? Why would we not do this other thing? If you're clear about that through the decision-making process, then you get to enroll a lot of the stakeholders around your decision and life becomes better in a lot of ways. In terms of connecting with me, the easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn Jeff Krimmel, my last name is like Jimmy Kimmel, but with an R Kreml. There I put links to my free weekly newsletter. I share links to my Foundations of Energy sub stack. Just this morning I put a link up to the little YouTube sample.
Speaker 2:I'm going to check that out. I can't wait.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I put all that stuff on LinkedIn and then if you want to visit me at KSG proper, it's at KremlSGcom. You'll see a link there for free newsletter. If you sign up to my free newsletter you'll get everything. You'll get all the LinkedIn posts, You'll get everything. So that's kind of the easiest all-encompassing way to get to me and sign up for my free newsletter. You can either do that through LinkedIn or you can go to KremlSGcom.
Speaker 2:Jeff, I got to just say, man, first off, I love how, whenever being connected to you, I kind of see who you engage with. I'm like, wait, how do you know this person? Our circles are kind of combining, which I love. But, man, I just got to say on a personal note, you and I met online, on LinkedIn, which a lot of people do these days. But it's been such a blessing to know you because I really enjoy our lunches. It's been such a blessing to know you because I really enjoy our lunches.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously, you know, it's not really an echo chamber that you and I have when we have lunches about, you know, people approaching this market differently, communicating differently, making more strategic decisions, which I think you know you and I, you know, repeat each other about this. I think that's going to be the true definer of the victors of the down markets. But at the end of the day, like, I really just appreciate you kind of what you're doing for this industry, how you're helping companies, the insight you're providing not just the companies you help but the industry as a whole, man, so I just love what you're doing, obviously over here at Energy any of the crews we support you. But I've enjoyed this. So thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1:Man appreciate it and uh looking forward to uh you know, just you know, future collabs or whatever it looks like. Well, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1:That's very deeply flattering, and I know you're not fishing for a compliment, but I'm not and I do want to, I do want to say, um, you have, like I said before, there are many things that I admire about what you do and and the fact that you are so, um, empathetic and and again, outward looking like you.
Speaker 1:You definitely have your eyes and ears open to what people in our space are thinking about, what's keeping them up at night where their biggest opportunities lie, and the fact that you're so mission-driven about finding ways to help them develop the skill sets that they need to thrive, knowing that, again, I think this sector just the energy sector broadly, the oil field sector specifically we do have more than our fair share of highly talented, highly capable folks, and if you've lived in the oil field for any amount of time, you've lived through some ups and some downs, and so there's a resilience in our industry that doesn't exist in a lot of other places.
Speaker 1:And for you to find that resilience and help people build on top of what they already have, which is this resilient backbone, but the skill sets that they need to communicate in the right ways to be aware of how they deliver value and how other people can appreciate the ways that they deliver value. And, like I said before, and ask that question about your sort of unending willingness to explore and experiment and Bob and we even find those ways that offer people what they need at that moment in time to unlock this new future for themselves. I admire that deeply, so please continue pushing that. The fact that you have the patience to deal with this live back and forth. I love it. Turning tables and all that yeah, it's just it's. I'm very impressed, so keep up the great work.
Speaker 2:You know, I think we should do a new podcast where we just kind of compliment each other, I just compliment you guys and you just kind of go back and forth just to feel good, the feel good podcast. But, hey, man, jeff, jeff Krimmel, everyone out there with KSG, the Krimmel Strategy Group, check him out. Obviously you've seen him stuff on LinkedIn. He's continue to provide free knowledge, free value on kind of what the higher ups are looking at, how decisions are being made. So, jeff, obviously man can't wait for our next lunch, can't wait for our next roundtable BS sesh, but lunch Can't wait for our next roundtable BS sesh. But until then, appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thanks everyone for tuning in to EnergyCrew. And hey, I think one big differentiator right now to everyone out there is have a good attitude. Listen, it sucks out there, it's dumpster fire. You hear the worst news everywhere. Have a good attitude, that'll set you apart. That's an easy step to do. It's not easy, but at least fake it Alright. So everyone thanks out there for tuning in again, jeff, uh, criminal out there with criminal strategy group, ksg for short and uh, we'll talk to y'all soon. The awkward, the awkward, thank you.