Is Your Back Office Ready for Growth? | Walt Lotspeich | Talk To Th3 Doc Ep. 144

Speaker A: Is there a doctor in the house?

Speaker B: Doctor, you have a visitor in the main lobby. Hello and welcome to the, uh, Talk to the Doc podcast. For today, we're going to throw, or we're going to talk a little bit about how a little stewardship today can help keep tomorrow's heirs from needing a treasure map, an attorney, and maybe a therapist. I don't know. I'm your host, Steve the Doctor Meek. And the. The doctor is in. Our guest today is, uh, Walt Lotspiech, uh, president of OG Trust Services. So let's get into it. Welcome, Walt. Tell us a little bit more about you.

Speaker A: Thanks, Steve. Glad to be here. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah. As you mentioned, I'm currently the president of a company called OG Trust Services. Uh, we are headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas and we have offices in Oklahoma City and Ruston, Louisiana also. And basically, uh, our mission or our purpose is we manage mineral interests for primarily financial institutions like banks, trust companies, family offices, uh, people like that. Um, and we have a couple of applications, software applications that we've developed over the years. We're in our 10th year, started in 2016. Um, so we've grown pretty rapidly the last couple of years. Uh, I guess we'll probably be talking about some of that here in a few minutes. How we've tried to manage through that and deal with the challenges that come along with that. Um, but yeah, so being in Texas, minerals, uh, is a big deal. A lot of families own, um, oil and gas rights and so our company helps them do everything from just keep track of their transactions. There's a lot of data flying around. Um, so our primary application is called Vision og and that's designed as an accounting system specifically designed for, for the types of assets. So we're very niche and our team is very, you know, specialized in how to handle those. Those, um, can be very complex. And uh, there's those types of assets that is very unique and, um, it takes a lot of training to fully understand what we're doing. So hopefully we're adding value to our clients by being subject matter experts and having a pretty good technology, uh, aspect to help them manage them efficiently.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker A: Personally, from. I, uh, live in Virginia, pretty far away from Texas, and we don't have any oil. Um, so I've had to kind of learn all that. My background is trust operations, which kind of dovetails to what we're doing because you have to be able to connect the dots between the subject matter, the data, the mineral data, and also be able to speak the Language of the sewer, trust organizations. So that's how I got involved in this. Um, I started here in 2018. So.

Speaker B: Well, I, uh, actually grew up in oil country here in Texas. I grew up in a little town outside of San Angelo. So, uh, my very first high school job was related to the oil industry. Not oil, but, uh, I actually helped weld metal plates onto trucks that they use in the oil fields. So 15 year olds, I'm out in the heat, first job, four bucks an hour. I was living the dream.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's been pretty eye opening to me personally, uh, to see just how many aspects and jobs and careers and things there are related to oil. People like to think about, you know, the show Landman is kind of the all the rage these days. And certainly there are a lot of Landmen out there. They're very important people, um, like Billy Bob's character. Uh, but when you see the show or read about anything to do with the industry, there's a lot of different, uh, tentacles. And even what we do, I mean, we're encounters, we're sitting in an office in front of a computer, uh, tracking royalty payments. So it's a very large industry. So. Yeah, that's pretty cool that you in the field. I've never worked in the field.

Speaker B: I never actually worked in the field either. I was, uh, putting together trucks, you know, the automotive side of things. But, you know, I used to go visit and one time I went back to visit about 10 years ago, I couldn't even get a hotel room because it was all. All hotels are booked up by people staying in for, you know, one of the oil runs that was going on at the time. But anyways, I could get off track all day long talking about home. So, uh, let's go ahead and get into it a little bit. This doctor's appointment, I always like to go through a little bit of the vitals. When I think of the vitals, I always think of, uh, uh, first the pulse, you know, kind of what is the current state of the market or industry trends. And you surprised me a little bit. You kind, uh, of came out and said, uh, cybersecurity remains like a key concern and focus. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker A: Well, part of it I think is because of the nature of who our. When you work with financial institutions, they're very, with good reason, concerned about, uh, privacy of their clients, data, uh, um, you know, and just security in general. And so we spend a lot of time and effort, uh, making sure we have the right procedures, uh, in place, making sure our people are trained, uh, to understand, uh, you know, what certain scenarios can happen, like a phishing attack or things like that. So we have some pretty good tools in place. We actually, I think the reason why we, we got connected as we used Fulcrum Group and I know you're involved with them. They've been a really big help to us, um, both in terms of our growth, as I mentioned earlier, and also this part of the equation. Um, you know, as a small company, when we were a startup, um, it literally was. We'd go down to Best Buy and buy a computer and maybe sign up for Geek Squad and buy Norton Antivirus. And that was probably the extent of our cybersecurity. You know, we weren't very proactive. We couldn't be. We didn't know what to do. And we also didn't have any money, so.

Speaker B: So now entrepreneurs can sympathize.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there were three of us, so the risk was. And we didn't have any clients, so the risk was relatively low. Nobody really cared about us. Today, I think it's a lot different when you have multiple offices, you have 24 people spread out, different locations, um, everything from just having it, starting with just a good inventory of what devices you even have that could be exposed, um, and then the tools that go along with that. So, uh, when I say it's an important thing for us, it's important because our clients are always asking us, what are you guys doing about this? You know, we have a SOC report. Soc. I'm assuming you may know what that is. Statement of controls. And getting, um, through the audit for that every year is a. Always, um, quite a task. And they want to know, you know, what's going on. Thankfully, so far, we've never had any real problems. I give credit, a lot of that credit to Fulcrum Group for helping us, um, try to mitigate the risk. You can't really ever eliminate it. Um, but you can take steps, the best steps you can, and stay on, um, current with things like patches and, and as leader of a small. We're still a small company and that's really not in our wheelhouse. We don't have anybody here that's well versed in all that. Um, so it's so kind of our attitude has always been, if it's something that we're not experts in and let's outsource it to somebody that, that does what to do and is staying current. And that's, that's, that's what we've done. But yeah, it's very front of mind for me all the time. You know it's not something I worry about because we, we write things in place but it's, it's, we have to take seriously.

Speaker B: Well uh, you know I appreciate all the positive things stuff but uh, um, you know, as uh, who's not technical as a full time job and you recognize that risk can never be uh, 100% mitigated. How do you deal with that? How does that factor into your decision making about things you do, uh, you know, change management, uh, your processes, uh, how does that impact you in that way?

Speaker A: Well, as I mentioned we outsource what we can. So from a um, just day to day user uh perspective we, we use as much as we can. Um, and because of all of our data we have very little. We don't have any file cabinets, um, don't want file, you know, we don't have paper lying around. I think that's probably as big of a risk today as anything else is that you know, somebody walks by somebody's desk and picks up a piece of paper, it has some important information on it, Social Security number, account number, whatever. Um, so that's one thing is we try to be as paperless as possible and have everything that's internal live within the systems that we have in place that are monitored and updated and so on. As far as our proprietary application goes, uh, we have, we also outsource the bat to a firm that's been with us since day one and we have, our, our data is all hosted Amazon Web Services so we kind of rely on their security, um, and all the things that they have in place to you know, downstream protect our data and our clients data. It's not, it's not inexpensive some money to do this the correct way. But that's, that's how we do it. Paperless as possible, outsource what we can and keep everything in the cloud.

Speaker B: Now uh, you know, as a, as an entrepreneur, you know, starting off with uh, three people, no clients and a dream, uh, what uh, what made you decide build your own application as opposed to you know, trying to utilize something off the shelf or that was already out there for the, for the industry.

Speaker A: That's a good question. So our, our origin story is pretty interesting. I think that you know as I mentioned my background is trust operations. Personally didn't know anything about oil and gas before I started here. Uh, my colleague Dana Church is a uh, proud fort worthy and proud Texan and uh, he's an oil and Gas guy. That's what he's done his career. And so the other investors that helped us start the company, one of them was, is a very large rental firm that had hired programmers to build Vision. And um, they pretty. After a couple of years of trying to develop it, they came to the realization one, that they're not business, right. And so they were looking for some people to help them kind of take what they had started and make it marketable. And I think they also realized that what they had something a modern uh, application. A lot of the other things that were out in the market at the time were kind of legacy systems. So they thought, well, if we, if we can just write people focused on this, we can take it to the market, broader market and make it monetize their original investment and that so it account. Uh, the trust industry is a very small industry, very fraternal. Um, so we all knew each other and uh, here we are. So it kind of worked out for everybody. And uh, that client that originally started Vision is still there, an investor. Their CEO sits on our board and their mineral management division is a huge client of ours even today. So it's kind of a win, I guess. Uh, we were able to step in and do some things and everybody benefited from uh.

Speaker B: So you've uh, got your application in place. It's been working. Uh, you know, obviously it's uh, you've monetized it very well. Uh, what, what is you, do you like for it or a life cycle or do you have regular rhythms where you try to figure out how you're going to improve upon it or take it to the next level or do that next thing.

Speaker A: You'd make a great sock auditor, Steve. Yes, we get, we get asked that a bit. So we, we. Our attitude is that application like Vision, it's. You're never really done with it could because things change, things evolve. I'm sure point in this conversation it'll turn around. You're going to ask people something about AI. Um, you know, that's a new thing that nobody was talking about, you know, two years ago. Um, but the point is, yes, we have an ongoing budget for programming, for enhancements. We have a, you know, a ticketing system. And as far as. Yes, we have some ideas that kind of sit in the hopper until we can find the time and resources to implement them. Um, but we're doing a Sprint release much every six to eight weeks. So Vision, um, is always evolving. And some of that is things that are broken or, you know, hey, this is a good Idea, you know, this would be, this is good. Be better if we did it this way. Um, and some of sometimes it's like right now we've got a, uh, beta version sitting out there that we're testing that's got some really interesting, um, efficiency tools coming out where we have a REST API, um, so we can partner with outside vendors and bring data in, send data out, that sort of thing. So that's a lot of what we're doing now is just kind of spreading our wings a little bit and trying to use the core vision does well and then partner with other industry, uh, partners to leverage our data and data together. So I don't know if that answers your question. As you work with the ongoing thing. We're never really with it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that fits, uh, perfectly with the ITIL concept that it's not a product, it's a service that's never really done, uh, uh, always looking for those ways to reduce friction and make it operate better for your people. Uh, you know, it's always, always a good thing. Now the cyber security angle you talked about, you, uh, know your rest API and third parties. How do you, how do you in those areas and working with your, uh, application?

Speaker A: Uh, we, uh, you know, we have a process, vendor management process where we, you know, we have questionnaire. We send them basically and ask them a lot of the same questions that get asked of us, uh, about our software. Um, I think what's powerful about that kind of thing is it can allow, you know, through us, um, without having to do all the research and individual programming and so on, we do all that heavy lifting and then they get to use, use the benefits of it. Yeah, we vet them. Yeah. We can't just deal vendor. We have to make sure that they're sure that we're comfortable taking the risk of working with them.

Speaker B: Now, what's your, um, what's the most exciting thing that you've got on your roadmap that you're looking forward to in the next, you know, six to 12 months?

Speaker A: Wow, that's a good question for me. Uh, that probably would depend on who you ask. If you ask my colleague, you might have other ideas because we kind of come from different backgrounds. I'm an efficiency guy. If we can make things more efficient, that's what gets me excited. So what's coming? I mentioned in Beta we've got a, I don't want to say too much, but because we've got to get it into production before it's real. But, uh, a large part of uh, the bottlenecks for what we do every day has to do with consuming large amounts of data. Um, and it can be pretty complex. And so right now what we have to do is go to certain resources and download these data sets and then turn around and vision and import them in. And we can do that and we can do it at a large scale. The problem is, or the challenge is that it requires pretty significant technical knowledge to do it and to do it accurately without getting bad data in division. So the worst thing you can do is you get a lot of data. But if it's bad data then it's, then it's worse than. So what we're trying to do is automate that process using the REST API so that even a rank and file user that doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily. They can just push a few buttons and go get the data. It's already formatted, it's vetted, uh, and then they can have confidence when they're putting it into. So that's probably the, that's a big thing. I mean there's a couple of other kind of big ideas that are floating around. But that in the vein of just saying, continuing to think about ways that we can create efficiencies.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Uh, that's what, that's what we're excited about.

Speaker B: Now you brought up AI. I didn't bring it up. You brought it up. But uh, in the world of uh, in the world of AI, uh, uh, what are you looking at there? What's your, do you have a direction you're heading?

Speaker A: Well, I'm going to give a Fulcrum group again because uh, David Johnson, who I work with has been, every time we have a quarterly meeting for the last year and a half, he's been asking me about what are you going to do with AI, uh in your business. And for me anyway, been around long enough to remember really before there was an Internet even. It feels like the early days of the Internet when we were trying to figure out what the good use cases are. I'm sure you remember the dot com bubble where everybody and their brother was making a. Whatever dot com. And for every Amazon and Google that made it and made it big, there's a thousand other companies that didn't make it. So I guess my point is with AI right now, we're still trying to figure out um, how it can help us. We have, we have been trying. David, if you're listening. And we, and we've had some success. So we're, we're Primarily using Copilot. Another example of this whole thing that I find interesting is that, you know, now everybody's talking about Claude. You know, a year ago, nobody cared about Claude. Right. That's how fast this is moving.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And a year from now, who knows what we'll be talking about, uh, on this subject. So that's why I kind of like, you know, we're in on it. We know it's big. We know we need to be doing stuff with it. Um, we are. Um, I mean, just simple things. Like I was having a conversation earlier today, um, I don't remember the last time in probably the last six months that I've actually googled something. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Instead I'm going to go to Copilot, ask a question, and I'm going to get a better answer. You know, maybe, um, it's not. I haven't found where it's. There's a lot of people said it's not. Sometimes it's not accurate. I haven't really had any bad experiences with that personally, but I just think that people like the idea of, uh, googling something. Um, I don't know, Google has their little Gemini or whatever they call it built into the search engine now. But, um, so searching for things like asking questions, and we have technical questions. I have client today that asked us, you know, they've got a, they have a client to gift some mineral interest to a charity in Texas, and they're asking us, what do they need to do? Well, you can go to Copilot and ask that question. Probably get a pretty good starting point of where they need to. So I do think, though, that, you know, it's not going to go over the world like everybody's. That's another kind of thing that people are saying. But it's going to help. Like that scenario that I just described will help a guy like me, uh, not have to do as much research and digging around on websites, because Copilot is going to point me in the right direction. So it's. You still need the human knowledge and you still need the, um, you need to. Reading to do something with it. So things like that we're doing already, uh, we have trained it to. So we deal with a lot of public record documents like Deeds, for example. And some of our very intelligent, talented younger people have figured out how to take a PDF of a deed and upload it into Copilot and it'll read whatever they need and then put it to Excel, and then, then that translates over into vision, and that's you know, that's opposed to old way, which was you'd have two monitors, you have the deed on the left and the vision on the right, and you're keying in manual words and numbers. So I think that's, you know, being able to scrape data, find data on documents is, is a very valid current case for it. Um, one of the things that I've been asked about recently is when are you going to build the AI tool in division? Right. Because right now Envision it's, it's a relational database. It's good. We have really good reporting. You know, you can slice and dice the data. You can get it in all kinds of different formats and everything, but you're having to run a query or a report to do that.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: And sometimes you're limited by the parameters or the search criteria as to what, what you can do. Um, so if we had a tool kind of like I'm saying I'm doing, instead of Googling something where you could say, hey, vision, tell me how much Steve Meek paid in fees last year. And instead of having to run a report to see that, it's just going to spit it out to you. Right. Because it's just going to query the database and spit it out. So I think that's probably, uh, When I say we, I don't mean OG Trust vision necessarily. I think we as a, Anybody that's using applications, I think they're going to see more and more of that where they'll have the AI, uh, tool built into the application. You're already seeing it with like we use QuickBooks for our, um, our corporate accounting. And this has got, you know, you can do stuff like this already. Um, but I'm certainly not no Nostradamus about where this is headed, but I do know that it's, it's something we need to m out in front of because if you're not using it at all or if you're, you know, if you're the hills, because you think it's gonna, we're gonna be in some futuristic movie soon with the robots taking over the world, then you're gonna probably get left behind.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you hit on some really good concepts there. You know, the, you know, the quality of the output I think is uh, really shaped a lot by the quality of the request, your query. Um, you know, I hear people, I used to, I used to was, uh, I know the right questions to ask, uh, you know, as a consultant. But now in the AI world, I've kind of changed that too. I know the right questions to ask and the right way to ask it. So a lot of times when I hear people talking about the bad output, all I can think is you probably made a bad query or didn't quite know how to ask the right way. It just makes such a difference in your results.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And I think that's part of the learning process. Everybody's still learning. I like to tell the story. My colleagues are tired of hearing me tell this, but when I was in college, sophomore, we were the first class to get our very own email addresses, like individual email addresses. And we laughed about it. We said, we're never, what are we gonna do with this? We're never gonna use this. You know, we were emailing each other, I'd email my roommate and say, pick up a six pack of beer on your way home from class. And that was, that was the thing I think of to use it for. Right. And um, and it was pretty at that time. It was, you know, the point is, can you imagine the world today without email? You know, it's, it's ridiculous to think about. We didn't have email, we couldn't do business probably, or at least not the way we do it. So I think we're, that's where we are with stuff, you know, and it's um, fascinating, it's exciting. Um, and it's fascinating to me. I see. And I don't want to say, I don't want to stereotype younger, younger people but you know, that are more eager to adopt this type of thing and just what they can, what they already got to do with it. It's crazy. Um, in a good way.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I think, uh, you know, I've always been growing up humble, always, always enamored by information. You know, I love, I love libraries around stuff. And we're ah, at a unique time in human existence to where we have unlimited access to, you know, just about every bit of information there is. Uh, but that really, that really begs. You got to have a vision for things. I think I heard you say something earlier that you, you know, you still need that man to uh, quality check to understand, comprehend, to know that the information's correct or isn't. But you know, I do the ability to envision, the ability to think, to want, uh, are going to be huge drivers of what we see come out of AI.

Speaker A: Yep, I agree.

Speaker B: Now, um, um, I guess, um, moving on to what I call blood pressure, uh, performance metrics, you know, what tells the story for you right now, you know, I think you mentioned, when I asked you this question, you said kind of your KPIs based on datum and vision. Can, uh, you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker A: Sure. So we're not talking about my blood pressure?

Speaker B: No, no, you're not. We're not looking for high. We're trying to keep it close to ground level.

Speaker A: That's good. We'll save that for a different day.

Speaker B: Uh, no.

Speaker A: Seriously? Yeah. So as I mentioned kind of in the beginning, um, the challenge for us always, uh, has been and is, uh, the nature of what we're doing is data driven and it's uh, it's a lot of data. So to give you some perspective, right now, uh, we are processing around 7,000 transactions a month in vision. And that equates out to about 1.2 million line, what we call lines of data or like sub, sub transactions.

Speaker B: Um, wow.

Speaker A: And contrast that. You know, if we had asked this same question, you know, three years ago or five years ago, it would have been a fraction of what it is today. And if we have this conversation, uh, a year from now or two years from now, hopefully it will be, uh, exponentially higher than that. So, okay, so how do you do? Right. So one of the things challenges we ran into a couple of years ago, as I mentioned, we're on aws and it was a good problem to have, but we kept having slowness, latency in the application, the users again, and it would spin, you know, they get the blue wheels spinning and, and then I would start getting these annoying, uh, text messages of penguins, uh, skating around in circles on the ice. It's slow again. And, uh, it was very frustrating. Um, but we knew that it was a function of just the fact of what we were trying to push through the pipe. And we just didn't have, uh, the right setup at aws. And so we did a lot of research, had our programmers, um, research it and we had to upgrade to a larger server. We have, we have a dedicated server things. And, and um, the cost went way up, but the performance was back in line. And, and so far what I said then is, I said I don't want to have to have this conversation every two years. Like, we're growing fast, so let's build it out to where, you know, we can, we don't have to worry anytime soon. And so, uh, so far, so I've been able to manage it. So from a KPI perspective, from asking about data volume, it's always something that's front of mind because it's increasing it's not better to keep up with it from a server and so on. And so it also translates down to, uh, more users. So when you have more users, you have more questions. You know, people turn over rocks and figure something out that they put something in and it doesn't work right. And so you've got to fix that. So all of that, you know, kind of just flows naturally. Uh, but yeah, I'm looking at every month some of those numbers I just gave you. How many lines do we do? How many transactions, how many dollars?

Speaker B: Now is, is it, is it all users or is, uh, you know, does it signal other like, you know, growth or complexity or risk or, or something else?

Speaker A: You mean. I'm sorry, to understand these, these numbers.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're talking data numbers go up that it's going to go up exponentially. And you said it was users. I was just asking, is it only because of the user count or is that because of, you know, growth and growth, uh, in what you're handling, complexity in the data, uh, uh, you know, new risk from, from other things. You know, uh, I'm trying to make sure I understand what all the interests signal you.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, all the, it can be all the, I mean, so one of the cool things, it's. This is a, can be a, ah, blessing and curse. But working with financial institutions, there's mergers and acquisitions all the time, right? So we could have a client today that's doing X or Y and then there's a. They're acquired by some other institution or they merge and that can double overnight. You know, so, um, it could, when, I mean, when I say the part is go the other way too. They could get. One of our clients could get bought by somebody else and then they've already got some other solution. And then there's a, then there's an internal way they're going to go. And sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug in those situations. But the point is, uh, mergers and acquisitions can really change it. Uh, we're just, we're out there every day trying to get new business, new organizations to join us. That's our business development strategy. And then there's also organic growth. I mean, our clients, our job is to help them. The tools that they need to be able to attract new business within their own organization. And we really like when an existing client of ours goes out and gets a new piece of business because number one, it's good for them. Um, but it's also good for us. And so that's how we got. Those are the ways that we grow.

Speaker B: Um, so gotcha. Now of uh, uh, the different metrics you mentioned, I think you said like assets, transactions, lines of data, ah, you know, exceptions. Is there one of those that gives you kind of the um, I guess like the earliest warning that a client relationship or you know, workflow needs attention?

Speaker A: That's a great question. Yeah, I mean I think for uh, us the way we process these transactions, really a two step process. You know, most of our, what we're dealing with is royalty checks, right? So the check comes in and we create a transaction. Well that, that part's pretty easy and doesn't take a whole lot of time. Um, but, but these, as I mentioned, these have sub transactions. Um, for example, think of a situation, you have a royalty ownership and you get a check from a company, an oil company for $100. Well it's going to have a statement associated with it that might be 10 pages long because you might have 38 oil wells that are contributing to that $100. And so those micro transactions are telling us, you know, well number one, how many barrels of oil did it produce at what price? What's Steve's percentage in that? Well, what taxes were taken out, what other deductions were taken out. That's what I mean by the sub transactions. And so that part is where it gets really labor intensive or can. Um, and so when we start to get nervous is when we have a whole bunch of kind of what we call net transactions are the, the first part, a whole bunch of those lined up and we're back and we get backlogged on the details. That's bad. And that happens mainly, that's mainly, usually mainly a resource issue. And when I see that going on, you know, it's either, it's either a resource issue, training issue, right? It's either we need more help or somebody doesn't know what they're doing or worst case somebody's not doing their job. But luckily we don't have that problem. It's usually it's a resource problem. And that comes back to me, that's my job is to make sure these guys have enough help and they got the right tools.

Speaker B: So Gotcha now. Uh, you know, from uh, from your point of view there, is there a trend going? You know, you're uh, is the industry pretty static, just you know, continuing over and over and over the same things or do you feel like there's other things impacting the industry that are going to force you to modify your application or Modify your processes.

Speaker A: Well, if again, we kind of have our feet, uh, in a couple places, right? If we're talking about software, I think in development and programming and all that sort of thing, I think that goes back to your AI question. I think that AI will change and add efficiencies to all of that development and, you know, the way applications work together and so on. If we're talking about the trust industry, um, you know, trust industry is. It's pretty staid, um, by nature. A uh, lot of checks and balances, there's a lot of oversight and things require approvals and so on. So I think the trust industry is evolving more like what we were talking about earlier about AI too, like copilot being able to ask questions about laws in different states. And that's all, uh, pretty relevant, I think, to the trust industry. If we're talking about the oil industry, oil and gas, you know, that that's the fun part about this space that we're in is that you just never know. I mean, we were flying along, everything was fine. We were having $70 oil and all of a sudden the Strait of Hormuz is closed and. And uh, now it's 100 bucks, you know. And, you know, we had to make it through Covid when oil was $30 a barrel, you know. So, you know, I never grew up patch, but I did grow up in rural Virginia where, uh, I live around a bunch of farmers. And they always say, you know, you have a good year, you better put some away because you're going to have a, you're going to have a bad year. And I think it's very much that way. I think it's smoothed out a lot, you know, because of all the data that's available now, you know, you don't see as many oil companies going out and going bust because they drill dry hole because they thought there was a hole there in. The technology's there now. They pretty much know before they drill. They're usually pretty accurate as to what they're gonna get. I think the difference though now is the equation is these wells are drilling, are so deep and in their horizontal. And the cost drilling a well, you know, they can't really afford to have a lot of mistakes, you know. Um, sure. And so again, I'm not really an expert in the area. I've never worked for an oil company, um, but I do read a lot. But, uh, I just think the oil industry, you know, from a. There's different. Like we. Like earlier too, there's totally different sections of that industry. There's the producers who are worried about drilling the next well and where they're drilling it and so on. Um, there's the midstream people that are worried about pipelines and getting it from point A to point B. And that's always a political football, you know, uh, depending on where you are. And then there's the, you know, the people that do all the refining and kind of getting it out of the field, out of the pipeline and into usable, um, products. We don't have enough refineries. We think that's. I mean, the bottleneck. So, I don't know, the change is there. I mean, from my perspective, working on the accounting side of things and dealing with owner relations, people at different oil companies, there's a lot of improvements that could be made and efficiencies. It really kind of drives me crazy because, uh, that's how my brain works. Uh, some of the antiquated and arcane things we have to do to get things done with the oil companies. But I think that's kind of just the nature of the beast because, you know, they. If the oil company wants to spend money, they want to spend it on drilling a new well. They don't want to spend it on how to make things easier for mineral owners, you know, so.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, yeah, I guess. And it creates opportunities.

Speaker A: It creates opportunities for us too, because we know how to navigate all that stuff and get it done, uh, even though in many cases, very inefficient.

Speaker B: Gotcha. Now. Um, I guess the last area that we had to talk about, uh, the weight, not, uh, your weight, you know, kind of what I consider to be the, uh, strategy metric, uh, that leaders should know about. And, uh, the thing you threw out there was that, uh, just that you have vendors that you partner with to add value and efficiency. So talk a little bit more about that. Well, I mean, we.

Speaker A: Yeah, we've talked a bit about bottlenecks. We just. We were just talking operators and stuff. So I think one of the things we did a few years ago that that's really helped us is we kind of, you know, looked at every step of the process along the way from, from beginning to end and try to identify where the bottlenecks are. Um, and what I pretty quickly figured out was that a large bottleneck was at the very beginning of the process. I mean, a lot of what was actually, uh, you know, snail mail, you know, going to the PO Box, opening an envelope, looking at the document. And, you know, and like I said earlier, we don't want all that mail coming to our office, because that's a big liability. We don't need that with that. So we partner with, uh, a very good outfit that helps us with document management. And they're doing things like, you know, they're scanning and indexing it on the way in the door, keeping it organized by what type of document it is. Um, they are now actually using AI they have a lot of data scraping, which is great. Um, and so that is one example of something that, that we've done. Um, a large part of what a lot of people who are interested in these mineral interests, especially people that are actual landmen, they want a visual representation. They want a map. They want to see dots on the map of where their wells are located. And that does help for a lot of different things you're trying to do. We don't have a map and vision, um, m. But we've connected up with a couple of really good partners that have really cool maps. And if we can get them the right vision data so they know which dots to put on the map, uh, or which dots we care about, um, then we can partner together. We don't have to reinvent the wheel and go build a map. So that's another example of partnering for something like that really helped us help our clients.

Speaker B: Now, uh, you've talked a lot about being able to partner those kinds of things. How do you, you know, as an application builder, how do you decide when to build a capability inside your platform versus partnering with some of these specialized vendors?

Speaker A: I mean, that's a good question. That it just somewhat.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: Well, it's, you know, money is a factor, right? Resources. And we don't have unlimited resources. So what is the best use of our resources? And what I always come back to is, and I. Maybe I've said it here already, we. We should be doing what we well and what we do best. And if we can find someone that we trust and that does a good job to partner with, to do something else, then. Then let's do that. And also it gives us flexibility. One of the things that I've learned about oil and gas, uh, professionals is that they all have their own way of doing things. And, you know, it's like buying a truck. You can buy a Ford or a Chevy. You know, they're pretty much gonna get you down the road. But this guy likes a Ford, so he's gonna want a Ford. And so we don't want to only be able to offer Ford or Chevy. We want to be able to say, okay, use whichever one you want. So that's kind of our attitude. But if it's something that's part of our core competency, then we need to build it. So I guess, uh. I don't know if that's a good answer to your question.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it does. You know, standing in your own wheelhouse, knowing what you're good at, uh, you know, I think that's, uh, that's important for not just every organization, but every person. Uh, you know, you can't be great at everything. You know, knowing when you need to hire for a specific role or, you know, in an organization, knowing when, uh, it makes sense, that can build it with great expertise versus, uh, you know, seeking that expertise. Now, what about, uh, you mentioned that you had like a, uh, risk management, uh, form that you had all your potential vendors complete. But what else should, uh, what else do you evaluate before trusting an outside vendor with your obviously, uh, important operational data, asset data, you know, those kinds of things?

Speaker A: Well, again, we lean pretty heavily on group as our it, uh, vendor to, you know, we do our quarterly reviews. Um, we do making sure that the software that we are using is, is up to date. Um, because a lot of the patches and things that are updates are, Are centered around making sure that current on, um, whatever the latest and greatest cyber security things are. So, um, I mean, we. We would ask any, uh, critical that we have, if they don't have a SOC of their own, we're going to ask them for things like their, you know, we might ask them certain policies and procedures and so on. We want to understand how they're doing their business and how they're protecting, you know, our data and our work. So, yeah, we would, we would use the questionnaire, we would vet them before we would do anything with them.

Speaker B: Gotcha. Now, uh, you know, now with, uh, 25 or 24 people and multiple offices, is there anything you missed from old days when it was, uh, three guys in a dream?

Speaker A: You know, I think for me personally, uh, and I won't say I missed this, but it's probably made me better at my role now because when you're starting out like that, you kind of have to learn how to do everything. So you have to learn how to use the system. You have to learn, you know, and I'm still learning every day, which is what makes my job fun now. But, yeah, I mean, I think back then it was just we were figuring things out. You know, I'll never. We've got our first client, and then we're like, what do we do now? And, um, you know, just figuring out those procedures and who's going to do what and, um, that sort of thing. And then I think, you know. Yeah. You know, I'll never forget when we. The time we went cash positive in a month. That was pretty cool. And I think what I've learned from that is that, you know, if you do it, if you do it, do it right, but if you're trying to do it right, you know, once you kind of hit that. That threshold of, okay, now we're flow positive, it. It feels a little bit like the ball starts rolling downhill a little bit. You know, things aren't quite as hard every month. Um, so I kind of miss. I don't miss it, but I can appreciate those milestones, um, when you asked a question like this, um, there are many, many days where we didn't think it was fun back then.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: But looking back on it now, we did have a good time and, you know, no regrets at all. Um, and just very thankful for what we have now. Um, but I think for me anyway, just kind of being forced to learn how to do everything that I'm going to ask these other people to do later on is helpful because I can relate to them and, you know, empathize when they're. And like earlier about the. How do we know when we're starting to redline a little bit, you know. Well, I've got a pretty good barometer for that because of what we went through in the early days.

Speaker B: Well, uh, for what it's worth, when. When, uh, you're telling me about getting your first client stuff, I felt like I was watching the first Ghostbusters movie. You know, we got one, you know, kind of.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Everyone. Everyone going down the fire pole, uh,

Speaker A: to help them, uh, they signed the contract. Now what do we do?

Speaker B: Yeah, now what happens? Oh, my goodness. We got money. Well, um, you know, Walter, you know, I think, uh. Um, I'm hoping a lot of leaders, uh, you know, kind of hear your, uh, journey around technology, you know, think sometimes, uh, they think that technology is just that system in the background. But, you know, I'm hearing you talk about things like good systems, good data, good IT support. It's all part of your growth strategy. Uh, and so that, you know, if you're. That. If you're that leader, trying to connect, you know, operations, compliance and technology in a smarter way, then, uh, you know, that's. That's a goal. That helps.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And, um, you know, I mentioned the inventory of the devices. I mean, just something like that. Like if we hire a new person and we need to buy a laptop, I send one email and two days later the laptop is sitting on their desk, fully all ready to go. And I don't have to worry. And that's, that's, that's important. That's a good thing. So. Or if somebody leaves the company going the other way, you know, we ship it wherever it needs to go and it's done, and I don't have to worry about that either. And, um, it's, it's, it's a very valuable. As far as peace and you're not worried about it. But, um, it's also, you know, one less thing to, to be a distraction.

Speaker B: Well, uh, you know, as we, as we start to wrap this up, you know, I kind of feel like we've talked about, uh, we've talked about minerals, uh, uh, metrics, uh, making technology matters. Um, but what's your main message that you want the listeners to take away from our conversation today?

Speaker A: Well, if you're a, if you're an entrepreneur starting out, I think I would say, you know, just don't give up and don't be afraid to ask for help, uh, for people that have been there and done that. If you're somebody that's maybe like where we are right now, you know, if you're growing and you kind of hit. Hit a certain, you know, goals and so on, I think the key. And since you're the doc, you know, kind of joking around about blood pressure and stuff, I have to really make sure that I do take time for myself and take, you know, get away from it for a minute because it can, it can really affect you, uh, if you're, if you're too worried about or whatever. I'm fortunate that I have a lot of really, really good people around me that I don't worry about things when I'm in the office. But, um, I can feel that. I know that if you're someone who's lucky not having to worry about all that stuff, then I'd like to talk to you.

Speaker B: Can I borrow your blood pressure for a little bit? That's right.

Speaker A: But no, we, we just try to have fun with it and, and uh, be good to each other and take care of our clients. That's, that's, that's really. It's. There's no but. Just tackling and be nice to each other and do the best you can.

Speaker B: I think that's a pretty good recipe for Any type of organization. M. So, so beyond that, uh, you know, that's your main takeaway are the little things that you would put along with that, uh, uh, tips or uh, favorite things of yours that you uh, that you do that uh, you know, people can walk away with as uh, something to help them.

Speaker A: Well, I'll, I'll give you, give you the advice. Me when I first started out and, and he sold cars, so. And he was very well respected salesman, which, you know, that's probably a oxymoron. Um, but he, he said just whenever, if you're ever in a position of leadership, surround yourself with people that are smarter than you because they'll make you look good. In other words, what I took away from that is check your ego at the door and if somebody is better at something than you are, then you want them on your team, you know, so I've always tried to remember that. And uh, yeah, most of the people on our team are smarter than I am, so we uh, we've tried that, so.

Speaker B: Well, that's a good one. Yeah, I think uh, you know, if you're the smartest man in the room, you're probably working harder than everyone else. So uh.

Speaker A: Or you're not.

Speaker B: Or you're not. Or you're not. Yeah. Well, um, as, as we kind of wrap this up. M. How can people reach you if they want to get a hold of you?

Speaker A: Uh, oh sure. Uh, well, probably the simplest thing is just to go to our website which is just ogtrustservices.com and if you go there, uh, you can read about what we do and I think there's a contact page on there where my I, I should be listed there, there. I'm on LinkedIn. Um, so that's probably the best way to connect either website or LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Well, we'll make sure and uh, ah, have your website in the show notes and uh, when uh, when the producer gets the records the video, he adds your LinkedIn to the video so uh, people can see it there as they watch. If they, if they watch, it'll also be in the show notes and stuff. And uh, as for myself, you can reach me uh, as always, the doctor@fulcrumgroup.net uh, the doctor all spelled out uh, and uh, same for me, LinkedIn as well, you know. Hey, that brings us to the end of our doctor's appointment today. How do you feel, Walt?

Speaker A: Feel great, Steve. Thank you.

Speaker B: Well, hopefully, hopefully it lowers your blood pressure a little bit. Uh, uh, you know we got you from uh, Chattan mineral interests and royalty payments and trust operations. But, uh, I do think that all that you talked about today can apply to every organization. Every organization has important data. There's important work, uh, going on behind the scenes. Uh, sometimes you're not as mindful, uh, how well a back office just runs and people don't have to worry about the accounting or the data because you've got those clear processes and strong systems. But, um, if the conversation today helped you out, if you think a little bit differently about your business, your data, your systems, or your vendors, make sure you watch and listen to future episodes of Talk to the Doc. Subscribe on your favorite platform. Share it with a friend. Friends don't let friends not know my podcast. I think that's a saying. Uh, maybe I just made it up. Regardless, send me your ideas for future guests, future topics. I'm your host, Steve the Doctor Meek. And the Doctor is out. Thanks again, Walt. It.