The Career Lessons That OUTLAST Any Job Title | Jobbers Ep. 7

The Career Lessons That OUTLAST Any Job Title

 In this episode of Jobbers: American Energy, host Jason Case sits down with Charles Strait, Technical Services Manager at ROC, whose decades of experience stretch from global oilfields to small-town steel mills. Raised in a fourth-generation ranching family and shaped by military service, he reflects on how early lessons about grit, responsibility, and using your mind instead of your back still guide his work today. This is a story of leadership without ego, technology built in top-secret silos, and legacy built one job at a time. 

• Your back or your brain, what his dad told him at 16
• Why the steel mill shaped his work ethic for life
• How failure at Star Wars tech led to GPS as we know it
• Lessons from mentors who lived through Vietnam
• The difference between big oil and family-run operations
• Why culture beats compensation in career decisions
• What lamb’s liver in Morocco taught him about teamwork
• His personal mission to mentor others the way he was mentored
• The real cost of time, and why it’s the rarest commodity
• Why restaurant work should be required training for future professionals

BEST MOMENTS

00:03:23. “The TV series that impacted me the most was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.”
00:06:01. “My dad took a supplemental job swinging a 35-pound sledgehammer for 50 hours a week.”
00:11:30. “Find something that you can get paid to do using your brains that you really enjoy.”
00:16:01. “My dad said, you weighed all the pluses and minuses and chose a path different from our family.”
00:26:02. “They said if this ever gets out, you’ll be in Leavenworth breaking big rocks into little rocks until you die.”
00:33:16. “Why make a product just like the one they made 30 years ago? There’s gotta be a better way.”
00:47:13. “Do no harm is the most important thing, because they want to pass this down to their children.”
01:17:18. “Whether we catch fish or not, it’s going to be a good time for us.”

Thank you for listening to Jobbers: American Energy, the podcast that captures the real, unscripted stories of the people powering America’s fuel and energy industries. Every month, we go beyond the headlines to share the grit, leadership, and legacy of the workers who keep this country running.

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🛢️ Jobbers: American Energy is hosted by Jason Case, the CEO of ROC, a third-generation family-run wholesale energy distribution company. Learn more about Jason and the work behind the show at www.jobberspodcast.com/about.

Real people. Real stories. Real American energy.

Transcript

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You can take a job that you use your brains. And if you use your brains, you can do that the rest of your life. The only caveat to that is find something that you can get paid to do using your brains that you really enjoy. Don't take a job that you just go to and just mindlessly do it because you'll never be happy. And then that happiness goes to your family and everything else. You can always come back to your back if you're doing a job using your brains and it falls through or something unplanned happens. You can always take a job swinging a sledgehammer. Yeah, it pays. Welcome to Jobs, American Energy, the podcast that tells the untold stories of the people powering America. I'm your host, Jason Case. And each month we go beyond headlines to meet the folks keeping our country running one job at a time. Let's get into it. Check straight. Thank you for doing this. Join the pod. Thanks for doing that. Well, just to give a quick overview, we'll start off with some fun questions just for the audience to get to know. You get the brain warmed up, and then I'll give a brief overview of your background and then we'll just get in and kind of carry on, discuss your story and why you worked in the industry so long. All right, let's get started. So are you a morning person or a night owl? Morning person. Okay. What's one of your favorite restaurants in your hometown? Probably. Cactus Flower. Cactus Flower. Mexican restaurant. Okay, so shout out to cactus Flower. Favorite TV show or movie? Currently going back that the movies that would probably impact me the most. Probably. Jeremiah Johnson comes up in my family conversation quite. Okay. Well, tell me about it. I'm a big movie buff. I haven't seen that one. Then it's a it's an old Robert Redford mountain man. He he was in the wars between the states and he came out to the mountains or maybe even been the war before the war, the war between the states. But he comes out to the Mountaineers to be a mountain man from an old guy. Will Grier. Okay. I recognize the actor. And there's just a lot of sayings in it where, like a good example would be he put calls under his mat and under his blanket and started to spend the night. When he woke up, he was on fire. And the old man looks and said, Yep, I, I knew you didn't put enough dirt on that, but he didn't tell him that. He just knew it. You know, he's like yeah they'll, they'll whiskers guys like, oh yeah. Like you should have put more dirt on that. Been there and done that in there. So there's a lot of those kind of things in the movie. One of my dad's favorite sayings that they have in that movie is he says, a can you skin Chris Pilgrim is a goal. I can shed any crazy weight and in the scene he's running for his life with a grizzly chasing him and he runs and he goes right to the cabin. This guy's in a daze. Up the back window. He looks at it, says, okay, skin that when I bring another way, it's another guy. He's in a log cabin with a grizzly bear, you know? So it's like a movie with a bunch of old Western wisdom. Yes. Okay. So, man and my family was about them just verbatim a lot. You know? You really think you could do that? Yeah, I think I do that. And then you're like, Okay, prove it. Yeah, prove it. Any TV shows that you like right now, modern TV shows haven't really impacted me. To me, I just I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm I'm focused on doing other things. But when I saw this is that one of the possible questions I said what series actually impacted my life? Probably the most will be different than most people. It was a Carl Sagan series called The Cosmos. When I grew up in the seventies and eighties, Carl Sagan put out this series called Cosmos. The every show was just fascinating to me. It really got my mind started in pretty much the direction I took because he talked about how there's more galaxies in in the universe than are grains of sand on every ocean in the world and every galaxies got, you know, millions of stars and stuff. So to me, it's like, which is the wonder, you know, it's just a small little thing in this great, vast place. And to me that there was just so much fascination for that. And and the time period in Star Trek and all those was the popular TV shows. So everybody talked about, Oh, I'm going to travel from here to some other place. What really got me on my my start thinking, okay, from a science standpoint, can we get there? Yeah. Was I was really interested in that. So I would say that that TV series by far backed me and I've turned it on now and like, well, it was pretty, it was pretty hokey. We were seventies technology. Yeah. 7 to 10 analogy but still good information. Yeah. So, so it's good to go back and look at it. I'm like, oh, it really impacted me. And then we look at again like, why? It's a little rough now. All right. I know you spent a lot of time on the road, so you're probably not reading while you're driving because you're very safe on the road. But what are some of the good audiobooks, a recent recently listen to Most of the audiobooks that I listened to are like his name is Eric Johnson. Motivational people. I think it's Eric Johnson. Yeah, this is one of them that I catch a lot because he came from almost nothing multimillionaire now. And what does he do? He tells people how to how to improve yourself. And it's not some magic stuff. It's like it's it's all about work. I'm going to work. The other guy, so I'll listen to a lot of his stuff because in our job, a lot of times it's it's how well can I outperform the other guy and, and you personalize it that way. It's not some big bad company. You're going to gain something against their salesperson or their their manager. I get to be ill, so I listen to a lot of that kind of motivation and stuff. And a lot of it, of course, military because I'm I was in the military, so a lot of military stuff saying this is this is how you do a job know. So I listen to most of those kind of audiobooks. You grew up in a fourth generation ranching family, and then you decided to listen in the Air Force and landed at Lowry Air Force Base. That was from 85 to 89. And then from there you received a computer science degree while working at the Air Force, and then you went on to study engineering. Then you get into the work field, you end up working for big oil at Texaco. From there, you transitioned over to Bellwether Del Rey, where you're managing the North American mining division, also working in South America. And then you go over to Petron Corporation, which is international in your work in engineering, technical services, upper management, and you're all over the world for those guys. And then after Petron, you ended up working in management technical services at RC and a couple of the certifications you got along the way were coveted. CEO's also certified reliability engineer and a really long list of other certifications that I won't get into now. But what was it like growing up in that multi-generational ranching family, and how did your dad take it when you said that you wanted to go join the military? Well, a little background. My mom was raised in a ranching community and in southeastern Colorado, the town was called Model, which had a town as a generous term. It's a post office and like three buildings. And until recently, I had never been there. And I lived 110 miles away and really dirt poor farming, ranching community. My dad was born in Fowler, Colorado, and and we have a ranch north of Alice Springs. Again, farming, ranching, heavy, heavy farming agriculture region. So everybody meets at the one cafe in town. It's only springs as a town. I don't know, it's probably 200, 300 people. And they're all old ranchers and farmers that can no longer work on the ranch. So they buy a place in town? Yeah. So they all meet at the one cafe and talk. So you spend a lot of time there and you learn. You learn a lot about ranching and farming and stuff and so it's it was a very good upbringing that the part that came to my mind when we were talking about this video is all of those people listen to a guy named Paul Harvey at that time he was a radio announcer and stuff. And if you ever want to learn about Small town USA, he's got one small video out there. It is called That. So God made a farmer. And it really gets into the detail of what these people's life is like. It's it's an amazing detail, like what it's like to just be a farmer, a rancher in the U.S., and that's Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey, God made a farmer. So God may on the eighth day, God made a farm. That's awesome. And it's it's a great thing. And so I grew up in that environment where you got up early. We listened to Paul Harvey first thing in the morning, and then we didn't listen to stocks like a baker. We listened to the Farm report. What is the price of soybeans? What is the price of beef in Chicago? Yeah, every day. That's that's what you base your life around because that was your livelihood. And the thing about ranching and farming is that you can't get out of it. My dad, we took one family vacation, my entire youth. We went to El Paso, Texas for the weekend. That was it. That was the one family vacation that we ever took. And because ranching and farming is so tough to make money, a lot of them had to take supplemental jobs. So my dad took a supplemental job that paid the most. And you use your back. It was at a steel mill that's near my hometown, and he worked there. You end up working there 43 years. But that was his supplemental job to help pay for the other stuff he did. And when he first started working there, they would work him like six months of the year and then it'd be like six months. He as hard as he could work and is like, Oh, now you're laid off for six months. Said it worked really good to have this other job to fall back on. But when I was young, he's one of the £35 sledgehammer for five years for 50 hours a week. And it was hard work. Yeah, ranching and working at the steel mill. So it was tough. It was really tough on him. And he never, ever complained. A He just in is his way of doing things. Was always you either do or you don't. He never wanted to hear you try. Trade was not really in his vocabulary. You did or you didn't. And that's how he brings you up. You know it. And I have one sister, so we both grew up in that same kind of environment that you you're only doing as good as your last accomplishment is like, you know that you complete the task. You did. And if you didn't, you know, try again. It wasn't okay, good enough, you know, So that was a different environment to wake up in every day and work hard. And of course, I went to school and the school doesn't have a name. It's just a county high school. It's called County High School. I don't even get most schools. You get really nice names like FDR High School is named after somebody. Now I with the county high school. So it but all of those kids at that school were all sons of ranchers and farmers and stuff. So it was good. And what she was asking about. So probably the toughest conversation that I had, it was my dad sat me down maybe 16 because I graduated at 17. So he sat me down and said, You got two choices really. In life. You can take a job or you're going to use your back and that job is going to pay well, and someday your backs can be wore out and you're going to be old and decrepit looking to have the people around you farmers, ranchers, steel mill or you can take a job that you use your brains. And if you use your brains, you can do that the rest of your life. The only caveat to that is find something that you can get paid to do using your brains that you really enjoy. Don't take a job that you just go to and just mindlessly do it because you'll never be happy. And then that happiness goes to your family and everything else. And it was probably some of the best advice ever gaming, because he said, you can always come back to your back if you're doing a job using your brains and it falls through or something unplanned happens, you can always take a job swinging at sledge hammer. Yeah, it pays. Yeah. So that was very good advice that he gave me. But then that led into the next conversation that we had, which was stuff for him. He's like, okay, what do you think you want to do with your life? And I was like, You know, I've never been anywhere. I've lived within so many miles of this house my whole life. I'd like to see other things. And he was very open with me, which is very rare for my dad. He said, You know, I was the same way I wanted to. I wanted to be a biologist. I wanted to be in the mountains and and work for like the Division of Wildlife. But it wasn't in the cards for me. I had to take a job with my back because I had a family to support. And we had to we had to do this. So he didn't take that path. Yeah. So I was like, okay, what do you say? And he says, Well, you've got a couple of choices. You can keep going down the same path and you'll you'll be a mirror image of me, which she'll be perfectly happy with. Or he said, What do you want to do? And I said, Well I think I'd like to. He'll go do something else. At that particular time in my life, I always thought I wanted to design aircraft, so I had set up myself that I wanted to go to Florida State and be an aeronautical engineer. Talk about it Since sixth grade and my entire time in high school, I took every math class and science class. I could take. I even took classes at the local community college while still in high school because I took all the classes that high school offered and I wanted more. I took classes and stuff and it hurt me a little bit in the sense that back then they didn't have honors classes. So if you got a B and in differential equations at the community college, it would on your transcripts as a B. So in my high school class, I was barely in the top 100 for a GPA. And they're like, Well, that's amazing. Then it was like, Well, I'm taking these tough classes and they're tough. Yeah, no. And now a days they, they give away, they weigh them differently. They weigh too much differently because my, my son just got to high school. Yeah. You take that class now, they give you all these. Plus you can have a better than four o GPA. It's like, oh, you can have an eight. Yeah, we sort of had that, but we waited and the steel mill was down. At this particular time, ranching was terrible. In the mid eighties they were spending every dime there just to keep things afloat. And we just had a really good talk and, and I talked to my dad and said, it doesn't look like college is in my future is like, well, at that time they didn't have the loans and stuff they have now. And if you grow up in ranch country, you don't borrow money that you just don't borrow money from the bank. That wasn't the government that was given the money back then. Borrow money unless it's absolutely necessary. You do without or you make things work. So we just decided, no, I don't have college in my future. There's no money there. So I signed up for the Air Force and then in 1985 was the first year they forced you to take these college entrance exams. I was like, I'm ready to go, but hey, I'll take the exam. What the heck? You know, it was something they'd made the junior and senior start in 1985 that we would take. It was the A.C.T., I guess we have AZT, and I got a 35 in math and a 35 in science and a 20 in English, which my my wife loved to talk about that. So I get this course back and now I'm getting all these colleges sending me this information, come to our school. 30 fives are really good because I'm like, Wow, I didn't get a 3636 with the top scores. I want to I want to get the best score. Like 35 is really good. And that's what they're trying to deal with. Like, Well, what is your college offering? They said, Oh, well, you would have to come up with like $10,000. You'd have to commit. Well, we'll give you a little scholarship and we had a conversation with my folks and they're like, we just yeah, we don't have that. So I said, Oh, well, at least I know where I stand, you know? So I went in the military and it was a good conversation. I think my dad was the proudest parent because he said, you you weighed all the pluses and minuses and said you have to leave what you know and and go out into the world and try to do something different than everybody than our families ever really done. Yeah. So it it was a good conversation is probably the toughest conversation, though, because I think my dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps and stuff and later on and I'm running on a little bit later on, it helped because when I finished my Air Force and I got that first job, I didn't like it. I had enough thoughts from my upbringing that this is a job we don't like, do something else. And an opportunity came up at the steel mill and I said, You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to work with my dad. So I changed and I went to the steel mill to be what at that time they called it Reliability Ninja, which nobody knew what that was at that time. And I said, Now I'm working with my dad and you can ask my dad today. It actually bothered him a lot more when I started working with him because he was in this environment for 30 years where he saw people lose hands, fingers maimed, till at one time at that steel mill there was having it was a number like 17 to 20 people a year die at the steel mill from safety and safety got better and better. But still a dangerous job. A dangerous job. And he was scared for me now because now I was in that environment and he's like, Oh man, now. It bothered him a lot more that I was working with him because they saw where he saw where they were putting me. I'd crawl under equipment that was running, you know, had molten bars going over, but the bearings down there and he'd go, See, these are good. I don't know if I'd go in there and stuff like that. Working around equipment where people, people didn't know the dangers and would just blow up. They had steadily lines that blow up and just people died. So I think that bothered him a lot more. When I started working with him, you know, it was like, Oh, I was okay When you were somewhere else in that way, you were me and and probably the one other take I'd get from working with him at the steel mill was everybody that worked with my dad. And that's a good thing to say. He's a garment. He's the hardest worker we ever had. He he had this image that he would put out. And because then I felt like I had to live up to that. And languages is I don't want to eat lunch here, you know, I don't want to be caught sleeping over here somewhere. So because of that, I was like, Oh, I got to work extra hard here, turned it on. So so that was that was a good part in my life where it came full circle and stuff. So if I understand correctly, I think it's almost divine intervention. You get this opportunity to work with your dad, and even though your dad loves his son, I'm sure he's still proud that you are using your mind and your body to a degree probably didn't like the fact that you're in a dangerous environment doing it. How do you transition from steel mill to getting involved in the oil industry? You know, people say it's lucky sometimes it's stuff. I've had very good luck in my life. So when I went in, I regressed a little bit. I went into the Air Force computers was a new thing long before your time. I'm sure I went in in 85 when you had a lot of senior people that went through Vietnam and they they saw the bad and war was bad. No two ways about it. It's a bad business. It's a business where we take our youngest, brightest people and put them in harm's way. And by 85, all those people from Vietnam or toward the end of their careers. So I ended up with some great mentors, people that had lived some really bad things, but then came out of it. And so when I started in Air Force, they're like, Well, we have this new technology that we we don't really know what it's about. It's all these computers. You got to remember this. And they didn't have personal computers. So the first job I had was at the finance center where they literally had four levels of this building that were sub levels that you couldn't access. It was all top secret. And they were a sizable super Wal-Mart. They were just the computer systems, four levels. And they're like, Oh, we're coming up with these new stocks called PCs, and it's going to be on your desk. I'm like, Wow, what a great jump in technology. But the people I was working with and I go, This is way past me. They didn't have digital anything. So for them, computers was far beyond them. But I had these mentors that said, Okay, master this. As a guy that's been in the military 30 years, he doesn't need to. It's past his prime and said, You as this young person learn this technology, master it, get good at it. And at that particular time we just spent and I told you in the past we spent billions of dollars because if you grew up in the seventies, it was it when we were going to get blown up by nuclear weapons, it was going to happen. It's just it you expected it. Everybody, if you look at the movies and stuff from them, it was just a foregone conclusion. We were going to go to nuclear war, nuclear war. And our response was if they sent 100 wasn't a thousand. It's the old you like movies, it's the old Sean Connery movie. And the mobsters, if they put one two years in the they break your arm, you know, you put them in the hospital. We put them in the morgue. Yes. That was that that was that mentality. Wilson 2000. We're going to totally annihilate them. And we spent millions of dollars to develop this technology to shoot down ICBMs that was going to be our savior. We were going to shoot them down even though they shot them and were sent some back. They didn't have the technology to shoot ours down, but we're going to shoot all theirs down. And they should billions on it. And when they it was called Star Wars, if you remember history and when it didn't come to fruition, because somebody at the very end finally said, well, we tried to develop this laser and it would take seven nuclear power plants running it simultaneously to generate an energy to shoot one of these lasers like this isn't going to work viable at the time that they at the time. And that's where in all of my life it's always about timing and and position. And in this particular time, the timing wasn't there, the technology wasn't there to create this. So they came to our area and said, okay, what what can we do is what we did spent all these billions on. And I said, I just spent a year and a half pretty much mapping out the world using longitude, latitude, the whole world. And we didn't have enough computers to to do it efficiently, even with the fences computer system the Air Force had, because world's a big place and we start talking about mapping it just the world. It's it's big numbers in hundred and 68 digits by 168 digits and you're moving them. So we didn't have the technology to do it. So there was a company called Parade about what's called a Cray supercomputer, and they found it that they used gold and put all these processors which had been developed all stacked in this thing. It was fast enough to do it. So the technology was there suddenly like, oh, hey, we could we could do this in real time. So if we can map the world in real time, what could we use it for? And the first general that we had in office said, Oh, well, we need to do save our pilots. Pilots have no way to communicate except in all fashion. Radio, when they get shot down to can be picked up. So they said, well, why don't we use something so pilots can communicate? And that's where we developed a pen, which in essence is a what's now considered a glorified cell phone. And that signal gets broadcast up into the noise band. And then someone another place has these crystals and says, Oh, I could pull out a noise band and actually communicate with it. Yeah, this case, it was just a beacon. So it's pretty much the tracking system that we use in our maps, on our phones all the time. But it would save pilots. Oh my God, this is great. But who gets this? And I go, Oh, well, only people worth it. So one of the ironies of this whole thing was that they said all pilots, it was a general store. Was it? But it got down to my level like, ooh, I don't think so. We'll just replace you. We cannot bring another kid into your job, does it? Well, that's kind of irony. You know, I'm building technology that isn't going to save you. Be able to say leave it in advance. But by developing that technology, that's literally where global positioning came from. They said we got to build find pilots anywhere in the world. So if they go down and where the Navy came up as a Navy still using sextant star like, hey, we're out here in the Pacific is in sections, can we use this technology? Wouldn't it be nice to know where we're at exactly In our ship, anywhere in the world. Like, Well, now, that'd be great. Until there was where old Russians might get ahold of this. So I can't tell you how many meetings I had with top generals and stuff, because at that time they'd moved me from the finance entering to people. Noyce Nor Ed It was. It was the place for this kind of information to be gathered and stuff. So I was in or out and these was like was long as they can as some Russians shoot a rocket based on your coordinates, that was all they was worried about. How did they keep it from getting in the noise? Because again, cellular didn't exist at that point. So they was like, our how are we can communicate without wires and lines and it just goes up there. These other people can't hear it, you know, That is so it was it was an interesting dichotomy, I guess. But so that's what global positioning came from. It started with the Navy. We put up 23 satellites now called Nasdaq satellites, which for the Navy satellite system. So we could track the Navy and it really turned into a great job for me because it had never been done before. And for me, it was interesting because a lot of this stuff that we were working on and stuff and stuff that a guy named Nick, like Tesla, it said, could happen 100 years before. And Nick, like Tesla doesn't get the credit for it because he worked for a guy named Edison. And that's similar, I say similar to my job, very similar in my job. I did a lot of the code that really set this stuff off because I, I could envision what they was trying to do. And then the lieutenant colonel that I worked for, he's the one who took credit for all the reports. He's like, Yeah, mighty, mighty. They're the greatest team we ever had. They took care of this. And he went on to form a company called Garmin, which you've probably heard. Yeah. So he was one of the people that started Garmin. But when I was in the Air Force, they pretty much said, if this ever gets out, what you're working on, you're going to be in Leavenworth, Kansas, breaking big rocks in the little rocks until you die. Yeah, You know, so it was it was top secret. Of course, the group I worked in is still in area 51, so I can't have the people I work for because we never allowed to talk to anybody else inside your little silo. But that's the same division that people were made for. People that are trying to push the envelope in technologies and stuff that don't exist now. So it was it was a great, great job. The only problem was, was the mental brain drain, I guess, is what you would call. One of my flaws is when I tried to do something like that, I can't shut it off. And I had a great mentor in the Air Force. He was a chief. He had been in Vietnam and he took the time to take me outside. A lot of times he's like, Chuck, let's just go outside and not the only was a smoke, so we'd go sit on a park ridge outside and just look at the sun and the wind and the flowers is like, When was the last time we slept? I said, Oh, what day of the week is it? Could be Wednesday. I had to sleep in three days. I've been writing code 24 hours a day for three days straight. He's like, Do you feel like you're bulletproof because you're 1890? You can't do that. You have to be able to let this stuff go. And it was very hard on me and I did see it because I was in it. But I'd go three days and you forget to eat. Like, when was the last time you ate As I, I don't know. But it was it at least a day or two ago. Yeah I know. And he said you can do that. And because he was a good strong mentor and that's I guess the strength in my, my career is that I've had good mentors. I've had people that said, okay, you know, this is this is how you do it. This is the way to do it properly. And and it's really helped me to my life. And that's what now I'm really trying to pay it back. Yeah, no big movie, but pay it forward. Yeah. My job now, I feel, is I've reached this part of my life is, is to mentor in all ways. It may not be a young person, but just mentor people and say, okay, this is value one way that you can do it. But there's another way you might look at doing it. Here's a different way. Try this and see if it works better for you because every, every personalized effort and you might find that the message that you're telling them, it's a good message, but it might not be a message that they can hear understand at this particular time in their life. So you find that other way to say a different message is, okay, does this make more sense? And a lot of times you get that aha moment. We're like, Oh yeah, that I can do. So I try to use that and it's again because every every company I've worked for as ed good mentors, every one of them. And because of that, it almost feels like to me that when I share their knowledge, I'm sharing a piece of them which keeps them going because most of by the time you get age, most of them are gone. There's a few of them that are still around, but they're, you know, they're getting older sibling reason why we're doing this. You know, I tell everybody that comes on, first of all, your family should know your story because all of us are going to take that long walk west one day. And, you know, I'd give anything to be able to call my dad, talk to him, hear his voice, and like it's not the same, but you still get an opportunity to see your dad's voice or your grandpa's face and here, hey, why did he spend 30 plus years working in this industry? What do you love about it? Because if you didn't love it, you wouldn't have done it for so long. To your dad's point. Right? Find something that you enjoy. It's it's a job. It's a career, but you find enjoyment in it every day. And I it's and that's why I love what we do, because what we do touches everything. So you're you're you grown up a rancher going into the military get this opportunity at the steel mill. You get to work with your dad, which is awesome. Even though he was probably a little afraid that you're in that type of environment. The reliability, reliability, engineering, how does that end up applying to the oil industry? How do you go from reliability engineering at the steel mill to end up working with big oil at Texaco? So at that time, reliability injury wasn't actually a degree you could get. You were a mechanical engineer and reliability was considered a part of that, like a subpar fit. Yeah. And how how the person brought it to me was your job is to find things that break and go to the root cause. What caused it to break so that way doesn't break on the next one or what can you implement so that we don't have these things break as much in the future? So for me it was just like going back to puzzles and that challenge. Like, okay, how did this break on? Let's let's make sure you know what caused the break in? Was it of a part or was it a person? Is it practices or is it is it physical parts that this part isn't good enough? And so forth? And I found that such a great stimulation for me, because then it was like, okay, now I need to learn more. So now it's like, okay, I need to learn about these parts. I need to learn about manufacturing, I need to take classes. And I did. I went and took a calculus based statistics class. Why? Because that tells me of all the parts that are made, how many are going to break without you doing anything? The part by itself, 3% of these parts when you make them are bad parts. And I was like, Well, that adds a lot to the equation because I'm thinking every part me must be good. And I go, No, when we manufacture these parts, we then the numbers 3% we make are terrible. They don't work. And I'm like, Oh, well, 3% said, well, how many are not as good as 100%, you know. So I really always push myself to learn more and more and more. So the lubricant side of it came in primarily from the money. The people willing to pay the money was the ones that are like, okay, our equipment's not working. What's the first cause? A lot of people you've been in the business long enough. What's the number more customers say, Oh, it must have been the oil or oil. It must have been. Must have been the lubricants. Yeah, I know it couldn't possibly our operator, you know, it had to be the lubricants, you know, And in the steel industry too, it was funny. When I'd come up to stuff, I'd come up and I'd look at a bank and I said, Well, that may get pretty hot. It's blue. So blue and curry means it got to, you know, 600 degrees. Yeah, it's pretty hot. Then I look at the grease. Grease looks pretty fresh. I'm like, Man, we better bottle this grease. It must be the best grease Texaco ever made because it got 600 degrees and it even discolor. We have This is fantastic Grease. And I'd look at the guy. Did anybody at Grease to this? Oh, no, no, we would never do that, you know. Okay. But that was it. That was where you played that little cat and mouse game on, Mike. You know, you want blame the lubricate, but I'm pretty sure there was no grease in that when that pairing got hot, you know, So we'd play that month cat and mouse game, but it really inspired me that the lubricants company is the lifeblood of most equipment. If you're going to be in reliability, lubricants is the first part of it. There's not a machine out there that doesn't have lubricants in it. So then you're you spend all your time going, okay, well, what's new in lubricants? Why are we using the formula? It's 50 years old. Are you telling me that they have a came up with something since then? So that was always that challenging. And I always push people and all the companies that work like, okay, what's the better mousetrap? Why be a need to why make a product just like the one they made 30 years ago at another major oil dealer? Because just because they invented it 50 years ago don't mean it's the best. It will always be the best from now on. There's got to be a better way to make a better product. And that better product means that equipment lasts longer. And that's been my my drive, I guess for now 30 years because I've worked for a lot of and it's why I've left the Texaco's. The Texaco's are like big government They're tough to move. Yeah you could have the greatest ideas and say, hey, I want to make a product that might work in this application and then I can fill out these forms in three or four years, we'll do a test. Five or six years, we might market it. If we can sell a million gallons of it, we'll sell it. So I've been drawn a lot more to family owned smaller oil companies and nowadays they come specialty lubricants companies because that's how they make their money. It's like, what is it that the majors aren't making that we can make and make a lot of and make good money? And so I've been drawn to those kind of company. Silly little anecdote to that point. Last night we had the family over and I had shown my daughters just a little clip through Ford versus Ferrari, where the Ford beats the Italians and they're like, Yeah, America. So they at I really want to watch that movie. And I'm like, Yeah, we don't normally watch adult movies with our young daughters, but it's a pretty wholesome movie. And I like it because it's like a capture of time in America. And there's a scene right where Shelby comes in and he's about to get canned by Ford, and it's like he basically has to tell a story that's going to save his job. Right. And he tells that story and he talks about it and it focuses a lot of you just said, and like after it's done, you know, he kind of inspires, you know, Henry Ford the second. And he walks out and he shows them the assembly line and he's like three out of five bombers came off that assembly line during the war. He's like, this isn't the first time we went to war with the Europeans. He's like, Go to war. SHELBY And it was just awesome, like to see that what I like about that movie because I have watched the movie it's a good movie, is that he could have told the guy through a lot of reports and stuff about the car. He's like, Yeah, I could I could have gave you Stacks reports how great this car is, is that Let's go for a ride. Puts him in the car and that guy's screaming the entire time. He's like a weeping at the end of it. And he's like, That's where your money went. Right there. Yeah. He didn't need to show him all these books and all these. All these reports. He's like, This is what it takes to win at this. And he's he's pretty much like, Yeah, let's build this car. Yeah. And you need the right driver behind the wheel to handle that machine. It's how I've, I've done some of that kind of stuff in my career here where we take new technology. I don't need it too much, but when I started looking at ways to improve some like reliable and open use that came with this thermal technology which we were using an electrical and I am an electrical engineer by degree. So I'm like, Oh, this is kind of neat technology. I bet I could use it for opened years, you know, and some of these other checks that I do and the company I work for is like a I don't know, it's a lot. Yeah, that's great. And so I said, Well, buy me one. Karen will see if it pays out, you know. So they bought me an entry level camera. I showed them just like the Ferrari, I showed them all these things that they're, I couldn't see but they, they kind of thought they'd been raised in something. Yeah. I think this is something. A suspicion that they can't prove it. I could prove it. And pretty soon they're like, Okay, well, if you're going to prove it, you need to you need to put it in magazines so other people see that you're proving it. And then some of our competition had to start following what we did. They never talked about it until we did it. And then something that was in their literature like, Oh yeah, we me too. We do this thermal imaging also. So it took off. So I was like, okay, that's great. And, and it's really morphed into stuff now. You see it everywhere. Infrared imaging on bearings and gears and everything. It's gone everywhere. And we was the first ones really kind of publish a lot of that. So yeah, I was like, etc.. So then when like these 3D printers came out, plastic printers, I said, Hey, there's a use for this. There's a place that we can use this, and then like, we're not going to do it. So I had the wife buy me one as my Christmas gift because, you know, I'm sure just like you, anything that you really want in the world, either you save for or use, you buy it. Yeah. So Christmas is always a tough runner. Has like a what do you need? There's nothing I need. Yeah. I was like, hey, you know, my company probably could use this technology, but they just don't realize it yet. Yeah, yeah, they don't realize it. So she bought me a 3D printer and when I started printing some of these models and stuff of customers equipment, the sales just went through the roof because customers like you, you looked at my equipment and you drew this up on AutoCAD and printed out, and now it's sitting on my desk and I can take it apart. And we're not out there risking our lives in this noisy environment. Like, yeah, it's like, how many of these can you make? Like, I was in assembly lines. Like, I can make you one. Yeah. We released a new customer. Yeah, I rather Shop of Elves. This for me? Yeah, but it really morphed. And now I'm seeing that technology take off. I saw some just the other day where this guy had this beautiful, I think was a rotary crusher. All the parts look like the actual parts you because they got multiple filament printers used to write what a great way to teach the younger generation. And I did a magazine article again on that technology's being absorbed now by the Navy, not the way that we would typically think, but they're actually using it to make parts. If you think about you want to buy a part for a Navy ship, it has to be made somewhere and then has to sit on the ship because the ship doesn't come back in. And nowadays they're using this same technology so they can make brass gears and other metal gears on the ship. Yeah. So they just have to have the map. And I'm like, well, in the big scheme of things, it's what we would need if we ever want to go to space. So we want to populate on the moon and make a mining camp on the moon. You have to make those parts there. They can't ship them. You don't have time. That ship. Yeah, I think of it from like a Napa standpoint. You can imagine there's going to be a day, hopefully in my lifetime, you can go in an app and they say, Oh, what year is your car? It it's a 24 Ford. Okay, what do you need? Okay. And he just goes over his print and prints the part up so you're not stocking suspenders and parts. They just printed it for an entity. It's coming. The technology's already there, and that's where that timing comes in. Yeah, I'm hoping to be there for that because I think it's going to be it's going to be very interesting to go through that aspect in life. I know that we were like in that fundamental stage and they were just thinking, Now what can we do with this kind of technology? Sounds like a few pillars in your story. A Your dad's advice, Find something that you're going to enjoy doing. I think that you've been spot on was spotting technological development and also what sort of culture do you want to join? We talked about the Ford versus Ferrari and that part of my favorite or my favorite part from the scene where he basically keeps his job is where he's sitting in the lobby waiting to have this meeting and everybody's passing. His reporter and he's talking to Henry Ford. The second he's like, That red folder has passed through seven different hands before it got to the hand. And now they're going to provide it to you. And he basically says, like, you need to trust me. I know what I'm doing. And he says, Go to war, right? I give you what you need. So I thought that was good. And it sounds like that's some of what you were trying to avoid with big oil companies such as Texaco and maybe some of the other ones. So what did you like about that more family kind of petroleum job or culture versus this big macro corporate culture? In the family culture, you can make so much more of an impact every day when when I come to work or in any of the last companies I've worked at, you knew is if you have a good idea, it's it happens to the bottom line now not decades down the road the big oil companies they play the long game mobile has a 30 year plan. It says, okay, over 30 years we're going to grow this much of a percentage and we'll help our investors and stuff. And we're going to have this much market share in a family owned company. You're only going to be good as long as the leadership is good. And sometimes the leadership will get older or they get out and then the whole dynamic changes. So in this particular piece of time, you're like, okay, how can I impact this company? Now we're talking the one year plan, three year plan. How do I bring a lot of revenue or whatever, you know, how do I improve this company? Now they're here for the long term. How do we improve the sales to how to improve the operations team and sometimes a lot of my training, I like to use analogies that people already understand. You can't learn French per se if you don't know the English word dog. If I tell you dog and you don't know the word dog, I can't teach you French word for dog. So I use a lot of analogies. When I do training and stuff, it's obvious they use all the time sponges and sponges holding water as much like soap holds oil in a lubricant. But even at that, they I a lot of times like to use analogies like, well, you know, this has been this has been tried in the past and it's failed miserably. What did they do wrong? It wasn't that their idea was wrong. It was their timing. Was it right? And so a lot of times I tried to really help companies like, you know, our company and other companies that worked for is time. And the hardest thing I think, in in these family owned companies is you have elite people in certain jobs. And in a big company, there's no there's no people are owed a position. They just put the best people they can in the job. In a family owned company, a lot of times like, oh, we owe this guy the position. He's been there the longest, he's been here 20 years. So if we have a position open up in upper management, we got to give it to this guy. But they don't spend as much time looking at it going, Is he the right person for the job? He might be great at. The job is to a now and he might love the job and he's because he loves the job. He's there and he's working hard and then we promote him to a job above that level and he struggles. And it is it's not the job that was best for him. And I've experienced that twice in my life, like, say, when I was the number two person at Bell Rate working for a person. That was one of my mentors, loved the job, thought it was great. What I didn't see was how much as my boss he would take the heat for me for things I did. The decisions I made would risk money and he had never even bat an eye. I would put money away, Oh, we're going to spend money here and then would come to fruition. But he would take heat for that. Never pass it down. I never knew I was getting in trouble for that until I became his job. And then it was just never ending. I was like, Wow, this jumps terrible. This is it's all in the office and having to try to prove, Well, I'll try to make them money. I was like, That's not good. So twice I've been promoted to this upper upper levels and both I go to that man, I can do the job. Sure, it's a job. And like my dad would have said, Brains, your back is breed. That is not. It's not the job. That was really for me because literally I left the stuff I enjoyed to do the job that I was like, Oh, I'm destined to do this job. I climb that ladder and I go way up there and I was like, Wow, it's a different job. It's a different view. It's really not for me now, is there other people could do the job? And that's what I ended up doing. I was just like, Hey, I would rather you hire someone to do that job, a business person in that job, you have somebody wants them look at spreadsheets and and work with the stock market, gold futures, people out there and love that stuff. It just wasn't me. So I found myself. And that's why I keep going back to these more family owned companies, because there's typically always that niche in there that you're not quite leadership, that you're in meetings all day discovering the bottom line, but you're not the lowest guy either. You're you're high enough up that you can mentor people and bring them up to a level that they'd never even thought about before because their opinions matter. And I think that's an important part in a family owned company. Everybody's opinion matters. And if they're scared to give that opinion, then the culture is not quite right. I want people tell me their opinion now. Well, I come right to you and or upper management. Tell them their opinion. No, because sometimes they share stuff and me, they don't want to go up. Yeah, that's where my job is to say, okay, if a lot of people feel this way, maybe we need to change the culture. We need to change how we're doing things. And sometimes it's just it goes back to the training. It's maybe they they perceive something that upper management is doing when really they're not upper management a lot of times because they're in a different location. They're like, Oh, well, I think it's what we're doing and it's not anything that the upper manager thinks about. Yeah, because we all we're all trying to strive for that same thing, which is to make this company money or whatever company we're trying to make it last year it's a family owned company, so family companies, you want them to last. Will it be here for my kids? Yeah. And most family companies have kids. They have kids. They want to pass it down too much like a family ranch. Yeah. So you have that same do no harm kind of aspect. You know, whatever you do, ranching is a perfect example. And there's people all around us that's done it once they reach a certain age, like, okay, I don't have any kids anymore. I'll sell off my water rights. A ranch without water rights is no longer a ranch, and they've done it. They sell their water. It's a big city. And now the ranches just turn into this lead farm and nobody lives there anymore because they don't have water to to make it. You've killed the ranch and so that do no harm works the same in the oil industry. If you work for a family owned business, sometimes it's do no arm is the most important thing because they want to pass this down to their children and their children's children. They want, you know, their company to be an important part of society long after we're gone. And so our job is just to be that caretakers, you know, how much going to make it. And and, you know, you look at through history, you had the Rockefellers, you had all these people. And a lot of times the original guy was just as workhorse, just, you know, tough, tough, tough, that forward. You know, you bring up four tough people and they had to be and then their kids a lot of times weren't as strong because they didn't have to be. Daddy was the strong one, but then their grandkids sometimes I got other companies on the way down, the grandkids. They had to be the strong one. A lot of times they go, Yeah, we have to pick up the pieces because we're we're taking the dive. And and I've never owned a company, but because I come from like, say, our ranching background and stuff, you have to have that same mentality. You don't go spend and buy new trucks. I'm sure you know, new trucks are $120,000. My dad would flip if he ever thought we were going to buy a new truck, $420,000 to drive on rough back roads. Yeah, because he's like, Can you really justify that cost? You know, you buy a used truck that somebody else bought for that for $60,000 and just beat it to death? You can buy two trucks. Yeah. You know, so that's that's kind of that mentality. Yeah. So it, it affects me in almost everything I do. I always and I've talked to you several times, I, I like to know where the company's gone, so that way I can get direction and then it's okay. How do you do no harm? How do I help every person in the company be a little better than what they was doing before? And if I can't do it, who can do? Who can I talk to this? A You had to work with this person and help bring them up because just like a sports team, we're only good if everybody's going the same way. Yeah, and I use that analogy a lot. I brought it up to the people just last week as like, don't get mad at our operations people. Operations is like the defense of a football team that's ever played football. They're the disease. Their only job is to make sure that opposition doesn't gain any ground on us. They have to hold the ground that we've earned. That's their job. They can go get somebody. This is like a defense, could go get an interception and score for me, but that's not their job. Their job is to hold the ground, the sales department, marketing and most of the people in this ask our job is to go score points and win. Games were judged by how many games did you win? And I talked to those people just last week. I said, Look at that poor guy and Cincinnati. He had the most yards of anybody's head and long time, most touchdowns and anybody in long time. They didn't make the playoffs. Did they consider a successful season? No, because he didn't win the game team success. You know, he had all the personal stats. He had all the numbers. He didn't win the game and were judged on winning games. And to win games, we got to score points in our field. It's it's customers. You have to get more out of the existing customers, which is your easiest way to get games. And you do that by adding value to the customer. Anybody can sell fuel. Anybody can drop oil on a dog. But if you can get out there from a reliability engineering standpoint or, you know, having a focus on this environment and the application and this environment, you can add a lot of value to the customer, not by just giving them the product, but by saying like, Hey, here's how we operate with this product in this environment, or here are the safety concerns of this product or this environment, and you can start adding value. Then you get out of this kind of customer vendor type of relationship and you get into more of like a partnership with them because you're like, Hey, I'm adding value. You you're definitely adding value to us because without customers, none of us have a job. So you want to keep those guys happy. And it's not always about getting that next customer landing that well, those are exciting and those are wins. And like we celebrate those wins in this environment. We love winning. But start with winning what you have and going, Are we adding enough value to that customer or are they just going to go, This is a vendor relationship, you know, like somebody that sells me peanuts at a baseball stadium. Those guys aren't going to stick around because you're not finding a way to add value to it. And that's where as as I'm working on my metric, that's how managers brought it to me, was that you do business with people that you like and, and relationships. It's a lot easier to sell somebody or have somebody that's unhappy with you, not leave you because you have a relationship So as I'm working with the younger salespeople that we have now, they won't know the stuff that I've learned over 30 years and in three months it's just not going to happen. I can't transfer that much knowledge, but I can transfer knowledge like, how do you build a good relationship? One of them is don't text them, don't call them, go see them. Yeah. Face to face, eye to eye. It's how you build stuff. Because these people, you're making them make decisions that might be a risk for them. And the text doesn't doesn't satisfy that. Go talk to them. Because once they see you and say, Oh, this is the kind of person I could work with, or this person actually cares about what I do. And that's a that's a big thing I do a lot of times and I'm working with the salespeople even here is that learn your customers, don't just go in there blindly. As he said, Construction company, look them up. We got the internet, not look. Yeah. Who is Google Maps? Every link. Who is their dad? Who started a company? Who's the person running it? How are they doing? What equipment do they run? Learn about your customer. Because I can't tell you how many people in a five minute conversation I've brought to our side because I could relate to things that I know they're running through. I say, Oh, I see you run a CAD equipment or I see you in command. So we could have a discussion with them about their stuff, not just, Oh, I'm here to sell your product X, Y, Z, because I think it's the greatest product, because it's got magic fairy dust and it works good. It says Everybody tells them that. And that's how I try to coach the sales team One time. You got to remember they get ten salespeople, they come in there, sell them everything. You're just one of those people. So make an impact. Yep, make an impact on that person. So you're not just some commodity that they're buying like light bulbs and and pens. You're someone who's there to help them, and you will do much better now that the time is not right. Recognize that with them? Oh, you know, you've been using this chair on or whoever, you know another company for a long time. I understand that. But if anything ever changes, here I am. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times down the road something changes, their supplier changes. They're not happy and they call and say, Hey, would least like you come in and quote. Yeah. Or their strategy changes or or the people change. There's a lot of changes. And I try to remind myself and everybody around me is we really get paid to solve problems. There are some rules that we all have to operate in core values, the behaviors, associates those values. We have a strategic direction, right? You want to make sure the right people are on the bus before you point the bus in that direction. But once you're headed that way, you have to solve problems along the way. We have internal problems that we need to solve. I love new problems. I don't like revisiting old problems because it's like the proverbial we've climb the mountain and slid back down and we got to do it again. That's frustrating. But new problems are exciting because you're great. Now we have to solve this problem and we do the same thing for the customer base. Like you're really there. We can give you a price, we can give you a product, right? And over time you build a relationship. But as you're building that relationship and you're doing that research, try to identify the problems and challenges that they have. And if it's within our core competencies to help them solve it, that's how you're going to generate value. And you really can't get there unless you have a relationship. No one's going to open up to you about their business challenges if they don't trust you. So you have to go over that hurdle first and then you can get honestly checked and go, How do we fix these problems? And you're doing it together. And that's that's the type of customer that sticks around for a while because they go, I see the value there. And it's not just that number on the piece of paper. It's about what we do together. And I think that goes a long way and you hit it on the head. The military big thing. The military was always, you don't have to fight for the same ground twice. You make a game, take it, keep it, don't give it up because you paid a price for that real estate to give it back to retake. And that the same thought it came from some of my mentors and I have it, one of my screen savers is it and it's Robert Duvall with some code. But the code in essence says is is when I give you my time, it's the most precious commodity to me because you're taking piece of me with that. So if you don't, you don't use that wisely. You know, you really kind of had given me a negative, that it was the only thing that I had that you came by. All the money in the world can't buy time. There's not one person gets as we take no person gets out alive. I have a finite amount of time. So if I spend my time with you, it's it's the most precious commodity I have so accepted is that I take it as something is precious because it's all I got is it's the last thing I got to give. Yeah, So I use that and that's why I always try to be careful because when I, when I talk to customers, time is donating. They don't have all of them are typically under the gun. They have to get this equipment running and they don't have enough time because everybody's asked them to do stuff for them. So if you can come to them from that standpoint, see what I'm going to try to do for you and then try to give you some time back, I'm going to take my time and gift it to you. It's a strong message. A lot of times I can't tell you how many customers it came back to, but it said you did exactly what you said you was going to do. I don't have to spend time taking care of this. We used to call it alligators, the one I'll always tell me. The one thing is that you really hate. It's that alligator. Despite what machines break it down all the time and you don't think it should be breaking down. Give me that piece. I can take that off of the sheet. Then give me those. The biggest, scariest alligator out there. And then we'll work through the rest of the alligators. A lot of times that's the conversation I would ask, actually, this time is you you like to see your family. I'm sure you would like to not be at work 20 hours a day cold on weekends. So if I can give you some time, what's it worth to you? Yeah. And When you do it that way, a lot of times price never comes in. I very, very rarely talk about, Well, here's the price of my product X, Y, or Z, because I'm I'm going to time. And a lot of times price is the last thing that comes out. And that's how I think. And especially in the modern world, you have to be successful salesmen because they can shop price all day, they can click on their phone and say, Where's the price at five places of your product or competitive height. So you can't sell on price, you have to sell and something they can relate to. And for me, time was always one of those first things I go to. What is it worth to you to not add this down all the time? I couldn't agree more. Time is the most of valuable commodity that we have, and you appreciate it more now because you have family. When I didn't have a son time, it was just that now I find I do so much more to make sure I'm with my son for that specific parts of time. Yeah, you know, I'm willing to work however many hours it is, but I will, I will drive all night. If I asked you to make sure I'm there for that 15 minutes that he's got available. So we spend that 15 minutes together. And that's the part I think my dad brought to me, that it's that unsaid stuff. But he he called me this morning. Hey, how's your day going? Nobody else calls. Yeah, you know, he called this morning. Hey, how's your day going? Because he said it only with time. Yeah. Now he's retired, he's got time, and he's like, Okay, how's it. How's it going, old Chuck, today? How is he doing? Yeah, And and that's where I think to be successful in this business, you have to appreciate other people's time. Don't get upset when they cancel meetings. Things happen. If they don't answer right away, don't get upset. It's all about time. Time is dynamic. Your time is not as important to them until it is. And just like right now, I have customers columns and Joe, we need you here because I want your input on this application. And I'm like, okay, I'll be there. I'll be there when you need me. And that's that's how you get these long term customers. And without getting too far, like as a customers, that I picked up customers 20 years ago now, but I know companies that are trying to get them for the last 15 years and like, oh man, that then guy came in here and sold these guys on this product and we can't get them off it. Yeah, I'm like, Oh, I feel bad because now I work for the competition. They go, let his same taste so good. Yeah. Is like, was like they believed in me that long ago. And he told two friends Who told you, Joel do friends. And they haven't switched in 15, 18 years. And I'm the one who told him now I'm trying to get him to convert to something earlier, you know? So it's all let's see, time is a I think, a perfect segway as we kind of transition towards conclusion because we've talked a little bit about, you know, how your time was used and some of the your past companies and that there were times when you spent 42 weeks out of the year on the road in places as far as India and Morocco and South America. And there's there's big cultural differences between, let's say, like a major and a family owned business. But there's also significant cultural differences when you're on the road and you're spending your time in these international markets. What's one of the craziest things you've you've had to deal with from a cultural standpoint? When you're working at a market and you're not in America, probably the the hardest thing goes back to, if you like, family owned companies, you're used to everybody want to pull one direction. When you go to other countries, the value of the person is not what it is in the United States. I was in several countries where literally we're driving down the highway person on a bicycle on the side of the road, a a package truck drives by, hit someone, a mayor knocks them in their side of a road. Nobody stopped, knocked them off the bicycle, doing 60 miles an hour. Could have killed them, might've killed them. Nobody even stopped to check on you. And there was no value in the person. And that's hard if you come from the United States. You know, we we value everybody's opinion. You know, you look at any newscast, we we give everybody the right to speak their opinion. And the military's big about, hey, we fought for that, right? You could say anything you want, even if people don't want to hear it, your right, especially if people don't want to hear it, you can do it and you can be on the news and say it. It can be totally wrong. They'll let you say it's so right to say it. In other countries. That's not true. There was countries I was in, and China is a good example, scared to death. To say one thing bad about the government, you say something wrong with a government. They come and take you. It's is that simple. They'll come in, you'll be gone. No one heard from me. There's other countries that are developing countries. They haven't figured out the value of the people. They get. Very short story. I was at a mine in India. They had a guy out there that his only job was to put flags on trucks as they went into a pit. If you saw me with mining equipment, you have to have a a buggy whip flag to signify, he said out there on a metal chair with an umbrella. It was 130 degree heat and all day and this dust trucks had come by, but flag on it. Trucks to make took a flag up. I'm like, How did the guy get that job? He needed a job. I'm like, But nobody cares about that guy because they didn't even get in really a shelter or he's not in a clean air environment. He just sitting there dust and smog coming by and he puts a flag on in a metal chair. I was like, Wow, you know, that wouldn't happen where I met. Yeah, that had some nice ergonomic chair and a nice butt and stuff like that. So the value wasn't there, you know, like they they didn't treat this person like he had much value. But for him it was the job and it paid to his family to Easter. So he did it. He did it because that's his back and it's a different culture to yours. Limited with your options. They don't value, I would say, castes or different types of people the same way that you do in the United States. I'd imagine if your time is being spent in those areas of the world, in those environments, and that cultural divide that could probably wear on you, it was definitely a change for me because I would get scolded, because I would give a tip to somebody. But I didn't you know, I didn't know it was it was such a bad thing. But somebody bring me an ice cream, I'd give them a dollar and the guy would crack music. I'll get you a dollar. That's a week's wages here. An American dollar. That's a week's wages for him. But it had little value to me. It was a dollar. And he did a good job. And I wanted to say thank you. I'll be an ice cream in 130 degree heat. I was very thankful, like, Oh, we can do that because now he'll expect his dog as a okay. So I listen to what the person said. I said, Thank you very much. And every day I gave this guy down as I keep that dollars, if if a dollars a week wages you, I would gladly give you a dollar each and every day. And surprisingly, when I'd get to my hotel room, there was two scoops of ice cream and a nice ice cold coke sitting in my room. I was like, for a dollar bills that every time you like. But it's it's just that difference when you're not when you travel internationally stuff and you you have to accept how they live and where they live. I would eat food and India Morocco, places I would never eat in the States, but that's what they're eating. I can tell you a quick story. I was in Morocco and the line had one restaurant and it closed. It only closed. It was only open from 11 news. If you worked while there was at lunch, you didn't get lunch. So we ate what we call a roadside stand. I don't know if that would make it, but it's pretty much a person with a barbecue grill outside on the highway and truck drivers would stop and pick it up. And the first day we got there and the guy had lamb's liver, but he's in a hurry, so he's cooking six of these at a time. And he would put them on the grill. That sizzle for about 5 seconds. Turn it over, Sizzle 5 seconds, and they'd bleed it to you. So you're having rare to medium rare lamb's liver and everybody else is in it. So you just you just ate it all. They come by. He's got lambs heart as a milk, medium rare lamb's heart as I have no idea how healthy a lamb is and what could possibly be in this food. But I mean it, you know. And he's bringing you out the bread and it's got it's got 100 flies on it and he's just a muffin and you, that sort of thing. And I'm like, yes. BLOCK it all out in here. So the third day, I'm like, we're not going to stop there because I'm worried. What? What's yeah, well, what are going to my today? To be honest to you, today, I'm going to fool. So but that was wisdom, culture, things, you know, I was like, wow, this is how these people live all the time. And I got home and they're like, Oh, you should just not eat, you know, my grow. It was the only food for hundred miles and everybody in the party is eating it. So I was like, okay, I'm not above him. They succeeded. But it was a bonding moment. Those guys went to the mat me from that point on and like, Oh, if he'll eat that, then we'll we're he's on the team, we'll work 10 hours. But this guy did stay out doing his work all night. So I was like, let's get I got in the club that way. But I could tell you the whole time I was like, okay, what possibly, you know, I almost trying to look stuff up on Google. What can you get from raw lamb's liver? Yeah, it is that ailments come. They're feeling like, Oh, oh, I have an itch. And it also sounds interesting, but the greatest thing about this job has been that I as I've been to the Arctic Circle, I've been with Eskimos up in the Arctic Circle at 70 below where they were giving me well's blubber that they and as I said, if you're Spanish first, you know what a cheat your own is. It would take wells blubber and put it in and some boiling fat and serve it to you. So it's like a crispy cheeks around, except it's like eating your shoe because it was sticky varnish stick and. But that's all she had. Yeah. You know, and I needed it and 70 below and I then all the remote places of the world they do mining in places that, you know, have cities. So I've met people and it goes back down to people. I've met Eskimos and any words and stuff that they've lived there for thousands of years as a country. The United States is, is kind of unique. When I travel the world like, okay, well, what was where you lived 200 years ago? I said nothing. I mean nothing. I'm in a restaurant in China that it's been this guy's family for 400 years. This restaurant, his whole family has to work in this restaurant. And it's their restaurant for 400 years as well. What was in your area that you grew up? That I was so well, it was just dirt. We had some Native Americans that came around as citizens and they would live there in like a teepee temporarily, but there wasn't a a permanent structure. Whereas if you go back 200 years ago, somebody had to live there. No, there was no money for them. It was such a foreign concept. Somebody had to live there. No, there wasn't anybody. And they just couldn't comprehend. If and when you go to these places, they say you got roamers. They don't even stop for stuff that's only 200 years old. They're like, Yeah, that's the stuff. It was built 400 years. So that's pretty much like new architecture. We don't even stop for that. So for me, it's it's interesting to come from United States. We have very, very little history and we tear it down all the time. In my hometown. But the house is 100 years old, like, Oh, it's 100 years old. That's terrible. Thing down and we'll put a new modern house up. And you go to these countries, which then they're thousands of years. And for me, that was probably the most interesting part of this job is like if I got to be there two weeks, what's there? Yeah, how would Google and research and I can't tell you how many places it'd be like, say I was in Constantinople two years ago. Now I'm like, So this is where the Crusaders start ranks. I was interested then, okay, so I'm going like to the Bible. Okay, What towns like acres and what's what towns are on the way to local. Yeah, that towns, right. It's over here like ten miles. One of the settlements. Yeah. You know, this is a town in the Bible. Yeah, in laws and. And thousands of years. So let's go by it or not. Does it look like a town? No. But you're there. Yeah, it is such a neat thing. They said your job allowed you to go. Were people are tourists were paying thousands of dollars. This is your job. I'm driving right past places that were in the Bible, in the Crusades and all those kind of things. And for me, it was it was fantastic. I really enjoyed that aspect of the job. It's just that eventually my father time is catching up to me a little bit and I couldn't be away. Islam, I have family commitments. I have a son. They need your home. So I can't just a world traveler. So I've came full circle, I guess is what I'm getting at with that is that I grew up where I was just in the same 23 miles. I didn't. And this 23 miles, this was this is the land. This is our spot. You don't move from here. And that's where my dad's lived. My dad has been with in that same little part of land. A quick story in that I, I had a competition a long time ago when I was in college down in San Antonio, Texas, and it was it was for Texas Instruments. I'd done this competition. I had to go down there and compete. So I called my grandfather up, who lived in a town called Galway, Texas, which is west of Austin. I said, Hey, I'm going to be in San Antonio. I have no idea because they didn't have Google back then or Manchester. How far is it? I'll drive up and see it because I hadn't seen him a long time and his name is now. He goes, Well, no, I guess you never been to San Antonio? No. According to my Brandon McNally map, it's like 130 miles goes. Nope. Never been there. You never in 130 miles south of your house? Nope. Okay. You know, it's just like it is like. Yeah, with Austin. Once you went to Austin, like, in the fifties as a So Austin's 80 miles away to the east. You've been there once and 90 years. Is that. Yeah. Said he's lived his entire life here and then he'd come see us up in Colorado every on summers. They would get in a big old Texas Cadillac. And this is when I was young, you know, this this guy was already now in his late seventies and eighties, and they would drive up and stay with us in the summers and just to be around the families. So he was pretty much like grandfather, do I really do that way? So I was like, and you'd never been the 80 miles out. You drive a thousand miles to earth, but you never said never had a reason together as a Fair enough. Okay. So that was that mentality I grew up in, and I was like, I got to be different. I want to see. I want to see You want 180 degrees, the opposite direction. You've been everywhere. I've been everywhere and I've really enjoyed it. And enjoyed just the history that I see when I'm there. It gives me something to focus on when I'm there besides just work. But now, now I've came full. I'm back to I think we look at traveling similarly. Most. A lot of my travel has been work related as well. And I I'm not as well-traveled as you, but I've worked in different environments in South America, UK, Europe. The two things I always come away with appreciation, but in two different ways. I like. I appreciate the history and aspects of the culture. There's always unique things that you like about the culture, the things that you don't like about the culture. And then when I get home, I really appreciate being in the United greatest country on earth. And it doesn't mean that I don't I don't love Ireland and the UK and Italy and all that Brazil and all these other places I've been to. I love going there. I love traveling there. I love learning about their their long history because America is a young country. But when I get back to America, I'm like, it's God's country. So speaking, keeping on the topic of time and getting away from work and the career in the industry, what are you looking forward to at the time you have left? Because none of us are guaranteed tomorrow? Yeah, particularly with family. You got any exciting things coming up? Well, for me, like I say, trying to trying to mentor my son, trying to give him the opportunity to make mistakes and and grow from them mistakes is probably the the easiest thing for me, hardest thing for my wife, family to do because they want to correct things right away. And like in their kid, they have to experience some pain. If your children don't experience any pain and they don't learn from those kind of things, so there's going to be some pain. So I'm trying to let him do those kind of things and he's changed so much. I recommended it. He worked in a restaurant. He hadn't ever work. We never had him work. You know, he's he's had it easy. You know, he did a lot of sports and stuff. He had an excuse not to. But when he got out of doing sports, I said, okay, you need to get a job and work. And I said, If I was you and got a job, I would go into the restaurant business. Because what he would like to be is a doctor of physical therapy. When I said much like what you're already going to do is what Dad does, no customer ever calls me and says, Hey, having a great day, I thought I'd share it with you. We're having the best day, best quarter we've ever had. Thought I'd. Just share with you. Normally I get everybody's bad day. Something broke down. They're in trouble. The company is losing money. They're having a really bad day. My job is not to bring them to happiness, but to get them back to mental game. So I spent 30 years working that technique. I said, You have to learn to deal with all kinds of people that are having really rough days. And if you're going to be a doctor, physical therapy, I'm going to tell you something. They're not going to be happy people. They're going to be people that their bones aren't working, and you're going to make them do things with their bones in their body and your joints that they're not going to be happy with. So you have to deal with people and you can't text them. You can't text them. And to do this and have them do it. So I said, you need to go into work, into the restaurant field or something like that where you have a lot of experience talking to people and trying to get them to be happy and and bring them food and at the food's not right and they're unhappy about it, you're going have to deal with it. You can't blame the cook. Yeah, you're the person that they see. You're the person that the eyes eyes. And he is probably changed 100% in the last year and a half. He has such a different personality because now he's working in that service industry where it's not his fault. It would love to blame the cook, but it's not his fault. But he takes the blame is like, I'll, I'll, I'll make it right. I will do what I can to make it right. We're sorry that that happened. And I think that's going to help set him up for the career that he chose. So for me, that's that's really, really good. And then on the backside of that, I know we talked about a little bit. I don't take many vacations, knock on wood. I haven't had a sick day. And she's I'm 25 years. That's a lamb's liver for you. Exactly. So very, very healthy. My dad is is 79 going to be 80 soon? His body is deteriorating. He used his body up to help supply me the opportunities. You can't swim in the sledgehammer for years and years and not just giant issues and stuff. And one of his things that he brought up, you know, way back in my youth, he always wanted to go fishing a certain lake in Montana. So this year my brother, now he's like, Hey, why should we buy your dad's for Father's Day? Said, You know what I would do? Let's get him out of the house, because he'll never go willingly. He's he's became a homebody we're just like, you know, if it is a Walmart, he doesn't need it. He checks over to Wal Mart, walks around the house, looks at stuff, and he don't mind as most I'm just walking around. So I said let's let's offer that. And when we brought it up to is like, oh no, that's just too far. It's like a thousand miles. And I'm like, Dad, I drive a thousand miles after after too much. I'm working on it that week. You know, that's as it's an afternoon drive for me. You know, these are just too far. This too far. But the more thought about this, like, you know, we could do that. And my brother was like, hey, I'll I'll take him up and assess Will so you can just ride. He don't drive. He can ride with me. It sounds great. And then my dad calls me when he goes, Hey, you know, how are we going to get a bone up there? So we're not going about that. We're going first class, we're going to rent. You know, we got a guide. He's got a boat. We're just going to sit on his boat and he's going to take us where the fish are. This is all he does. He's probably going to be pretty good at it is like, well, we've never done that. Well, let's do it. So, okay, we got a boat. And then he calls me up like a week later. Hey, you think there'll be a place we can fish from the shore? That when we're not on the boat, we're just sitting there and I. We face like. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Dad, they allow fishing at this lake on the shore. You know, you can bring your own stuff in it. And then he just took off his. I just laid up. He's like, oh, he spent two weeks trying to get fishing gear ready for this Lake now. So he's getting his personal gear. But it's like it never stopped in that way. We could probably fish at this late that you're taking me to for three days. And I get that I'm pretty sure you could just throw a line right in here. You know, they don't stop, and it really took off. And now he's just looking for it. He's just count down the minutes. He's just wait. My mom said he's already packed, ready to go. Got his gear in the living room already. You got to walk around it to go in and out house. You know, I was like, That's good. That makes me sad because whether we catch fish or not, it it's going to be a good time for us. And I, I, I feel bad a little bit. It may be the last time you don't. We never know. Never now. But I know his health isn't isn't as good as it used to be, and it could be. So I want to take this as an opportunity just to repay some of the debt back to my dad. I'm like, okay, let's go enjoy some time on a boat. And while we got it. While we got it, yeah, because you just you never know, you know? So it's it's a good time for me because I can pay it back. And that's, that's what jobs like this do for, you know. And I've tried to tell my son if you get paid to do a job you enjoy, put that money away. And then when you want to do stuff like that, that's what you're doing the job for. Take those little bits of time and say, Hey, let's go someplace, Do something that the average person that's just punching the clock you can't do. Yeah, there's a lot of people who can't take a vacation and go places because it just they don't have the funds or whatever the resources, the means or the time. Well, I can't think of a better way to spend your time than to do a bucket list opportunity like that with your dad. And before we finished, I couldn't agree more on the restaurant aspect and your and your suggestion to your son. My wife and I feel the same way. I bused tables when I was in college and she served at a restaurant. I worked at a nightclub. So I dealt with a worst of the worst people just out of their minds. They don't treat you well. And my wife was a server at a restaurant but we both agreed that when our kids are old enough and they want to go get a job, you should get a job, a hospitality related job, because if anything, it makes you appreciate people because you do have times and you get treated horribly and it doesn't feel good. And when you're on the other side of that table and you're the one ordering the food or ordering the drink, you treat them properly. I'm not saying it, but the you have a lot more empathy and it's a pet peeve of her and I because we do treat the service industry really well. I like to tip well if the service is horrible, maybe I won't give a tip, but I'm not barking orders at them or being rude to them or just overly demanding. They're not my personal assistant. They're there to help me with a meal. And when we go out to dinner with people, you can tell the people that have never worked in that type of environment because they don't treat people right. And I personally don't like going to dinner with people like that. I'm like, I don't want to go here and have an amazing meal and just watch you be rude to someone that's doing their job. So I would agree my daughters are old enough. Go out and work that job. Right? You'll appreciate people a whole lot more. It really humbles you that, hey, it's there's going to be things that happen to you in life is it's not your fault, but you're going to take the blame for it. And how do you deal with that? Yeah, it's another kind of strange face to face. How do you deal with that? You can't hide. You can't sneak in the back and send someone else that you got to face that person. And I think that's a good skill everybody should should go through because. It changes you as a person. You'll find that you're not as aggressive when it's on the other side. When you're at the table and your order is not right. You see me, I eat anything. I guess I'll just eat it. You know, even if they mess in an alley, it's okay, you know? And it's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world. Because again, it goes back to your time. Are you there typically, you know, just like as if you're there for your family environment, that's the time you want. Do you really care about the food? The food is nice. It's it's that interaction. It's the stories that your children are telling you. That's what's important. That's what you remember, not how well good or how well-done the steak was or how good the service was. They'll frescos. And that was the greatest steak you ever had. But you remember that you shared it. And that's the great thing that if I would have known when I had my son how much I had enjoyed, we would have had more. But we didn't take the time. Both my wife and I had very, very stressful jobs. That's why I took hobbies that would help me relieve stress. I had to have something. It took me out of that. So I took other hobbies and stuff. And now that we had a child, that's all we think about. We do everything for the child. It's, you know, everything in his life was all, you know, we based everything we did around that child. So I would love that had more, you know, I wish I would that would've been one of the things if I could take it back, I would have had more. Is there you're a fantastic addition to your life, 100% and whether you have one child or 15. So I'm at an age where a lot of her friends are, you know, married now having kids and some of them don't have kids. So they oftentimes reach out as a resource. You know, what's the biggest difference? And the one thing that I would say to people as they're having those kids, whether it's one or 15, it really is the reason why you do everything before kids. It's different after kids, you know, why did you get up early and work out? Well, yeah, I want to be in shape or really, I want be around for my kids. That's why you eat healthy. Well, yeah. I don't want to have ailments and diseases and all that. But why? What am I trying to stick around where I'm 85 years old for? Because I want to be there for my daughters when they're adults and when they have kids. And I want to be a papa one day. Like, that's really the reason I go to work. I don't need to make all the world in the money, but I do need to make enough money too, that we can live a life that's comfortable. And my my comfortable is not Rockefellers comfortable. It's whatever work for you. But it is really the reason why you do everything and that you hit it right on the head there. I don't need that second donut because I'm like, you know, I'd like to see my my child's middle age. I to see him go through when his body is not under risk because right now he's he's rock star. Yeah. You know, he's 60 to 25 bullet proof life, everything. He's going to live forever. I'd like to see him when when the body starts to deteriorate. Deteriorate a little bit, you know? Yeah. And for me to do that, I could live in my eighties, you know, So, like, okay, I can what can I do today to get that added today to make sure that it unless you know, something dramatic happens, I'm going to plan for that. I'm going like, okay, how do I live to in my eighties. Well that's that's setting up a good body, you know, what do I need? Make sure I stay healthy and things like that. And so it's it's good, but it's a it's a good motivator, you know, because and I've had that conversation once, then, you know, everything I own belongs to you someday, you know, don't come get it right away. But It's all going to be yours. So don't be scared. And that's one of the conversations I had with you. If you need something, sell something of mine. I don't care. It's going to be yours again anyway. So if you need it now, it's like pulling out of the family bank. Yeah. You know, she's like, well, you know, Daddy, you really need that money. So I guess because I was like, I don't need that many. If you need something, we'll sell one of them and we'll buy it now, because you're going to get that down the road anyway. The you have it now. Well, while you have a chance to change your past you know, we talk about that, if I can. In fact, you now and I simply like salespeople, I can affect you now and it changes your path. And I then I succeeded in what I was trying to do. If I let it go to your past can't change or you've gone down a bad path for a long time, then that's that's on me that I didn't didn't make an improvement in your life or help you in your life when I could have. So I want to I want to get you started, right, Because that's all I got. I won't be here to see the ends, typically. Yeah. You know, you're going to be around a lot longer than me, and you're going to get to see that. I don't get to see that part of the movie. I get to see the first half of the movie. Yeah. You know, so for me, that's it's a big part of that. So I, I live that I there's nothing that I wouldn't give to him and, and that's just people for example, this week we had a person retire and he was a huge USC Trojan fan and he was also a Las Vegas Raiders fan and a Las Vegas Raiders fan. I had a playing card that I'd had for 30 years that was just stuck in one of my bins, and it was a la signature card and I'm like, Hey, I'm going to give that to him. I forgot it last week. And he says, you know, they make the like it was my son, my son who works for this company, Huge, huge Raiders fan. So I made the point this week to go in and give it to and I played it off as I go, Yeah, I just got this card. It's it's some guy that played at USC, you know, he was he was a decent football player. His eyes lit up. I was Are you going to cry? You know, they're this is Arnie La. You know, he's like, how? You know? So it meant something and it changes his path. That memory will mean a lot more to him. And you then how many gallons we sold this year? It achieves this. That's what matters. Chuck, thank you for doing this. I hope fly fishing with your dad goes well. I hope You enjoy every minute you get with your son. I want to thank you for care. Thanks for listening to Javers American Energy. If today's episode gave you a new it reminded you why this work matters. Leave us a review on your preferred podcast platform. It really does help support the show. For more episodes and resources, visit Java's podcast dot com. Until next time.