If Prices Could Talk

A handful of genuine operational insights surface - risk-framing via 'how many can you afford to crash,' the COUPA system payment-term trap, and the importance of front-loaded contract language to survive client internal churn - but they are buried in lengthy biographical anecdotes, military reminiscing, and fairly generic B2B advice about building relationships before an RFP.

“how many of these can you afford to crash?”

“the Koopa system wouldn't see that. It would say look I, I need to pay them 30 days later. So it was effectively pushing our, our system into you know, a 60 day payment”

The aerospace/FAA certification context is genuinely unusual and the risk-quantification framing is fresh, but most of the underlying advice - build pre-RFP relationships, walk away from bad terms, big companies pay late on purpose - is standard B2B consulting wisdom recycled into a novel domain without meaningfully advancing it.

“I think you can build a success loop on that too. An upward spiral where if you're winning contracts that make sense for both parties”

“The regulator, culturally is not programmed to say yes to new and novel stuff. They're actually motivated to say no or I want more data”

Charlton Evans is a genuine domain practitioner - Marine Harrier pilot turned FAA certification specialist with real client names (Chevron, ConocoPhillips) and first-hand regulatory experience - but he leads a small boutique and the conversation never tests or extends his expertise into scalable lessons for a broader B2B operator audience.

“I got grabbed by the scruff of the neck and we started the commercial division, which was two guys, um, who got, and I got plucked in front of the, uh, FAA and said, hey, we're going to certify this drone and to do work for ConocoPhillips in Alaska”

“one of our former clients, Chevron for example, there's a director of a division”

The episode offers a few concrete anchors - $40k pursuit cost on a lost deal, named clients Chevron and ConocoPhillips, COUPA as a named system, 90- vs 45-day payment terms, Part 25 FAA regulations - but the majority of claims stay at the level of 'bigger companies are harder to get paid by' without numbers, timelines, or win/loss data to substantiate them.

“internally we spent um, in man hours and, and just financially around 40k chasing that opportunity”

“they were signing up for 90 uh, day payment terms instead of 45”

Brian Doyle provides the episode's sharpest moments - the loaded risk-value question about human-life pricing and the GE payment-timing anecdote - but both hosts largely accept every claim unchallenged, rely on 'absolutely' and 'wonderful' as filler, and the final stretch devolves into a mutual appreciation segment with no probing follow-up.

“how do you think about that risk? It's not like you can say, oh well, a, uh, human life is worth a million dollars. And so if this aircraft with four people on it crashes, you'd save $4 million. That's probably not the right way to think about it”

“Wonderful. Excellent.”