EXPERIENCE 48 | Emily Kincaid, Co-Founder & Managing Member at Elevate Energy Services

On this episode of the local experience my guest was Emily Kincaid. Emily is the co-founder and managing member of Elevate Energy Services. Elevate is a completion business which is the PC way of saying frack water. So they source and move frack water around for drilling rigs mostly in Weld County, Colorado area as well as in North Dakota, Texas and New Mexico. Emily is only 33 years old and she's got 200 employees give or take and she is amazing. She's also very passionate about sustainability and recycling and energy conservation. So what you think you know about oil field businesses isn't necessarily the case with her. So you'll learn a lot of things about the backdrop, the underpinnings of the energy industry, especially moving water around and water rights and things like that, but also what it takes to build a team, to build cohesion and a culture of people that want to be there on the job and have great performance every week. And so listen in and listen up because Emily is a great guest and you'll love her like I do. All right, thanks. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the local experience podcast. I'm your host, Kirk Bear. This show is produced by me and my team and sponsored by my small business, local Think Tank and sometimes others episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. Our guests are interesting and successful people with unique business journeys and the more business education and unvarnished truth we can uncover the better. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode. And if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips from their journey and a greater appreciation for each of our guests woven into these long format experience episodes are occasional thoughtful episodes. Topically focused snippets of five to fifteen minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths. And also I'll read the local perspective blog posts because I'm lazy to infer to listen and read and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in and if you'd like to show a please subscribe, review and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. My guest today is Emily Kincaid and Emily is the co-founder and managing member of Elevate Energy Services and I'm just going to let her tell you about what she does because I still struggle to understand it sometimes I'm not from the oil space and so Emily let's learn some things today about you and what Elevate does and let's just start with kind of describing the company as it is today. Yeah okay so Elevate is an awful services company we're focused on completion which is technically fracking is where it's where you the fracking occurs so you drill a new well you do the completion which is the fracking and then you bring it into production so the line share ninety percent of our businesses focus on the completion side. Completion sounds so much nicer than fracking. It's the PC term. Oh yes yeah I know I'm afraid people are going to hear the word fracking next. Yeah well I don't think anybody knows about it though so I'm hoping that that through this kind of conversation people can listen and learn and so so what's that mean? You're finding water and moving it around for oil-filled companies that are drilling the wells and fracking them. Man there is a lot that goes on in fracking a well and I would love the opportunity to educate whoever wants to get educated on it because it's there's so much misinformation out there and I've been immersed in it for over a decade I mean immersed in it right for sure but so yeah it takes a lot of water and we manage that water we started managing that water in Colorado and now we do that we have a branch a very solid branch in New Mexico the southern part of New Mexico. Okay maybe 60 employees down there. Oh wow. Maybe 60 employees up here in Colorado and then we have kind of satellite branches in North Dakota. Little baby branches that want to be a full-size branch. Exactly yep. Yeah like the customer base isn't quite big enough to dedicate guys to live there quite yet but there's enough that we rent yard space and ship guys around so. So I know how you got into this but people listening wouldn't necessarily so let's just go back to the earliest days of elevate and how do you start a business like this? Right the earliest days so I definitely didn't see myself in oil and gas when I went into college I had been my dad was in oil and gas while farming and then oiling. Okay yeah peaches we my family does peaches I'm from Palisade. We'll bounce back there here in a whole story but yeah I'm just most curious like it seems like it's so capital intensive and and require so much assets and you're still just young and how do you get that first job? Well I was working for a company I was there for several years seven I think about seven years just developing my knowledge of my network and I was selling the service of moving water around for oil and gas we pump it around with pumps and pipes and I was basically in sales I had moved around the company I was managing the sales team I was looking at a bigger management role and teaching yourself how to run a business so I I knew I wanted to have my own business I knew this is what I wanted to do I had been packaging so I fell in this unique situation and this how it always happens right you're just open for the right opportunity and you take it you capitalize on it and the space was really competitive and so I started basically selling the water to producers so there was a gap in Colorado at the time between farmers knowing what water they can sell what they can't sell how to report it with the state and then what to charge and then producers there was this gap with so I'll use the word producer it's an oil company sure so there's this gap with producers they just need the water they don't know they just need this much right here at this time and and they don't understand what the state needs or what the farmers need or what the ditch system needs or what shrink is in the you know what evaporation is or you know either I didn't either but there was I recognize this gap and there was other people in my space beginning to recognize that gap too and just fill that gap so I really just became a bridge between local farmers the state and producers just to get water where everybody wanted it to go the farmers want to make money on their water the states fine as long as it's coded properly and you're reporting it daily and the oil company needs it so I really just started to to I started I made that like an add-on to my service and it was it was just something I started doing on my own it's not something my company was offering I just I was I was a water broker of sorts I want a water broker exactly yep and I was doing that through my company because it was helping me sell so my job was to sell but I mean a hard time because it was competitive so just doing this add-on to get more sales and I was like I want to start my own business I always have this is a perfect opportunity because it doesn't take any capital I had these relationships finally with these farmers that they'd cashflow me they would sell me the water for you know and then I would sell it to the producer I the producer would pay me in 30 days and then I had net 120 the farmer yeah so you have to pay anything up front and there was no no it was just intellectual property at the time I didn't need any assets to do that you know I just needed connections and I just needed connections in right place right time well and you're not the typical like knows a bunch of old farmers kind of person necessarily I mean you're you're young you were college graduate obviously you'd been in that industry but how did you meet all these and they're not old I imagine but a lot of them probably are well I was in sales I can cold call I can look somebody up in the phone book and see you have a lot of land and see that you have some industrial use rights and see that this producer's coming really close to your land and would you like to sell your water to that producer can I help you with that process okay okay interesting that's a yeah again it's a industry that I just didn't understand but it's it's neat that you were able to build those bridges and really supply resources that otherwise these projects you know they just really can't even happen I imagine huh and they fumbled their way through it before I got there right I mean it was happening it's just I streamlined it easy button for that for both sides for everybody yeah and I just made a little markup you know just marked it up a little and package did manage it so I did I I was like you know I'm gonna quit and I told my employer I'm not competing with you I'll continue to give you the work that you want because I don't do the pumping okay so you're not offering this additional brokering part like just let me do that on my own and I'll continue to funnel you business you don't have to pay me as a salesperson and so it was a also good opportunity to not be stepping on toes or whatever and so at the time I told my husband this is what I wanted to do and we had some money and savings I don't know maybe 12 grand and savings and I was like you know I think I'm gonna take a at least three months before like I really get the first job get paid whatever you know so I remember I mean we didn't I don't want to paint this picture like we're so poor and we're doing horrible but you know I mean it's get scary we put groceries on the credit card a couple times and sure well how much were you making as a commission salesperson a lot right a lot I mean six figures anyway with my commission my base was not great but with my commission yeah yeah I and so I had built up a bit of a savings but yeah so he was really supportive he's like you I know you can do whatever you put your mind to so supportive so I did that and it went well I had a couple deals and made some money meanwhile I I wanted to eventually start doing the pumping right of the stuff but you need money I can't do I don't know how to prime a pump you know I so there's an operation all aspect yeah we'll have the ops guys go take care yeah which sounds easy but it is not and getting the right person to partner with to do that is clutch yeah and that's where your business partner now came in yeah I had been planting seeds with him over the years I just recognized him I'm not the smartest person but I am good at recognizing talents and putting people in the right places I think is the strength of mine I think so I'm you know I'm not this but yeah so I recognized him immediately as someone that could provide a lot of value so I do want to name this person yes his name is Craig Horn I'm so proud of him he's he's one of the making him a business partner was one of the best decisions of my life yeah and you were you were talking before we got started here about how you know you share that co-founder status even though you were slinging some water and doing some things he's really what allowed you to really be the integrated company that you are today yes oh absolutely yeah and what's his special sauce obviously the operations he knows all about all the pumps and all of that I guess or like tell me about the customer journey a little bit like what's it look like somebody a producer yeah needs some some what was it completion water yes great and it's only out reach out to you and and like is it just a math problem like a construction problem of sorts where it's like okay here's what you need here's the estimate of how much work and many how many men and stuff and then here's the estimate do you want it or not yeah so at this point okay my pad is here and I need this much water I need this much delivered daily so we'll figure out where we want to get the water from and then from that point you know make sure that there's enough and then from that point it's it's just engineering it's that it's a he's just it's just a calculation yeah what pumps to put where with what pipe I can see now where the network really is so essential because based on where this pad is well drawing a circle around that which are the farmers that have potentially excess rights and a willingness to play ball with us or that you know I've expressed interest in the past or whatever exactly yeah so because draw the shortest line between the water source and the pad and that's makes everybody happier exactly interesting okay I want to learn I want to can we jump in the way back machine so where did you go to elementary school and like let's let's learn about Emily on the way toward taking this leap and then we'll talk about the evolution of elevate and partnering up and and joining forces can we do that yes yeah what's a it's out west western slope somewhere is I remember is it grand junction proper or it was Palisade Palisade mm-hmm yep we I was pretty poor growing up my grandparents live there my grandma's from Germany she runs a peach orchard my family was slinging peaches when I was a kid she runs a fruit sand she was the original the original boss lady she right on yeah big inspiration oh huge she was the first woman on the grand junction chamber of commerce oh wow yeah that's so cool she's fantastic what's her name do you want to sell my haze awesome yeah my my my dad's grandmother the mate was really the matriarch of the bear family as well and she actually was a great farmer a great money manager and things and built up some land that most of her kids just kind of slowly shriveled away with after that so anyway I digress but it's it's a really powerful thing I imagine it was for me as a as her you know oldest grandson great grandson but for you as a as a granddaughter to have that kind of figure in your past has to be empowering well I recognize it now and adult at the time I don't know I think at the time I my mom also super strong woman she would do things around the house that most men wouldn't do she there was nothing keeping her from doing what she wanted to do so yeah between my mom and my grandma I never had these like you know some women feel that they need to be take up less space and not speak so loud and like you know there's this whole thing I've learned a lot about but I don't remember feeling any of that yeah so that's beautiful yeah yeah yeah so you were you know I hate these are word tomboy but you're a bit of a tomboy probably in your elementary school years and this is in palisade school which is what like classes of 20 or 30 or 50 kids maybe bigger than that my graduating high school class was 160 oh wow okay I didn't really so it wasn't huge but it was 4 a sports I got to play at college in high school yeah so tell me about that what kind of a student were you as you grew up and started noticing boys and all that kind of stuff of life were you an athlete as well I was a yeah straight A students I like to follow the rules and get my homework and show every day a high achiever I was a three sport athlete and I you love volleyball but I love volleyball yes I played volleyball I played basketball okay and the everybody that did that played ran track but I just wanted a break from that group of girls and I played golf because my dad was like golf would be good for you when you're older and I'm so thankful I chose golf yes yeah you track you just don't use that much the rest of your life no so I still use golf I still play volleyball a little bit of basketball okay fun that's nice so then high school like you got your pick of places to go for school and stuff I imagine right I actually wanted to stay in state because we're still relatively poor so I was gonna have to pay for college out of my pocket and I didn't want to pay too much but I didn't want to stay in town so I went to UNC in Greeley for two years and then my junior year I transferred to CSU I was turning 21 I was like I know it's gonna be way more fun to be living in for Collins and when I moved to this side the mountains I just didn't know I didn't know I we I didn't even have time or the money to visit the schools right so I didn't know the difference between Greeley or for Collins or I just knew it was in state and it wasn't grand junction yeah and what's your family dynamic do you have brothers sisters as well I have one little sister yep and if she local she's still at West kind of she just moved to Denver I'm so happy she's she loves grand junction she loves being out there but she met a boy in Denver that she fell in love with and I'm so thankful because to have her closer that's awesome that's awesome and so like your dad was in the midst of a business journey like right at that time right like he had started something when you were pretty young and as you said you were poor and stuff but that started like really becoming something while you're at school then is that accurate um he he always wanted to be an entrepreneur he started a business that failed when I was young and he started a second business and just could not get off the ground and when I was in high school he was still making enough money in his business to survive but nothing more yes yep and that's how it was through my whole through what I can remember even through high school and into college and when I was in college it started to do better started to do better um and then I I remember I think it was senior year I think it was senior year he was like I've made enough money I'm gonna pay off your college loans and I was like what okay I've been working and like paying them off where I could and I'm like so this whole time I could have been right I could have been partying yes yeah so that was super cool that was really cool paid off my loans right before I graduated college and so yeah I went I actually went to work for him when I first graduated oh yeah remember you tell a story he was tough with you oh he was so tough well I worked for him through in high school through the summers and you know whenever I had extra time I go work for him he was really tough on me I one summer I wrecked my truck not horribly bad the bumper was dented I'd rear-ended somebody and he he made me work the summer for free I was just a receptionist I had to work for free I got paid for any hour over 40 hours so I would try and work 50 hours to get paid for 10 to pay off my bumper but otherwise it just went toward the bumper yeah and he had to even get a new bumper at the end of the summer you had the guys in the shop bend my bumper back into place and here you go I should have got a job somewhere else to buy a bumper probably I didn't know it was an option you know he was pretty hard on me but it probably only strengthened you for the journey ahead right so you went to work like were you marketing was that your background is that what I remember yeah I double majored in economics and then business okay the emphasis in marketing okay and so it started as a marketing intern or whatever like that's kind of the path I imagine right yeah the I got a job offer from a robotics company in Boulder for 30,000 a year to do their startup marketing and dad was like Paul pay you 40 if you want to come here and I'm like yeah yeah first time like yeah yeah so but after I went to work for him then he sold he sold his business not even six months later oh really was he already kind of played that is that something you did not tell me about it no idea yeah was upsetting yes oh yeah I was in the boardroom with everybody else oh man there's probably like 15 of us in the boardroom when he announced it and I didn't get a warning and I just started crying I couldn't make it stop his business had been such a part of our lives yeah I mean he yeah yeah it was a part of our lives for ever yeah so it was like losing a small sibling I don't have the sibling or something it just felt it wasn't great yeah yeah and the bio it wasn't good either they rebranded they took everybody out of they just integrated it and they just ate it up so it was a painful the the culture and the people difference and stuff that had been there just kind of got absorbed into the corporate malaise yep yep yep so but you stayed I stayed yeah it's what I know yeah no no I'm sure he signed some sort of contract to show up every day and I I don't think he showed up any day he just yeah he just wrote off into the sunset yeah yeah well raise peaches or whatever yep exactly hey it's a you know there's a lot of different journeys to have right like how many employees did you have when it when it's old he had 450 and that's about three times as many as you know today okay does that don't you at all or do you see 450 is just being basically the same as 150 I don't know it's it's different the what what I'm doing and what he's doing is so different really it's been 15 years and the market has changed dramatically so it's the same general industry but just the techniques and equipment and things like that are all different so different interesting nine day different we use we don't we use different pipe we use different pumps we had different technology I mean it's nine day so talk to about that transition from you know marketing intern to to salesperson because you were that you're still a young person with not too much grass into your feet as far as the business world right I had fun doing the marketing for that corporation it was big it was a multi-billion dollar corporation or marketing department of three and I got to be over a whole segment that the water transfer segment so I spent time in Canada and Pennsylvania and Oklahoma and California and everywhere but when they got done buying companies the position got really boring for me and so I just I I was unhappy with my job and I I just went to my boss and I was like I want to move into sales or I'm gonna quit because I'm can't I can't I'm so bored I'm just so bored and they I was really young I was a female they didn't want to move me into sales had a lot of pushback and there was one local manager who had a lot of faith in me and he took me under his wing he was like well she can sell my one product have her come work for me and they're like okay Emily you can go sell these tanks but you can't sell anything else you know and I was like when else grew you know and I sold I sold whatever I wanted in by year two I was top five sales wow out of how many out of I mean a lot probably I don't know 40 sales people most of which had more you know life almost interesting so I fought I clawed I fought my way through that and what was your secret sauce in that like how just working hard a cold calling and and that or do you have like special techniques as far as relationship building because it's a game of trust I reckon in that industry as well yeah I think it's twofold so I will grind and I will work hard that's one of the things that I will do I like I'll put in the time and I'll put in the work and I'll put in time I'll put in valuable I'll work smart too and so I think that contributed a lot to it and then I understood what I was selling because my dad had been in it and I had been doing the marketing for it and I think yeah I think you'd be surprised I was surprised at how much more I knew than the other salespeople about exactly what we were doing yeah yeah so that was helpful and then being a young female I was so much easier for me to get in the first time for a meeting everybody wants to know what I look like and if I know what I'm talking about and there's this curiosity right about it so and then when you crush it oh yeah oh yes fair enough yeah so it just was this perfect little yeah up at the time I was yeah it was perfect for me yeah nowadays it's almost like you know anti me too or whatever right to to be like okay with yeah I got an appointment because I was a young capitalized on it in the best world or whatever but yeah fair enough I like it so so pretty soon your your big baller sales pardon the expression but killing it and like a couple years and that kind of a role before then we jump back to the story and you teasing Craig away yeah well I only probably like two years I did that and then they moved me into a sales management role so I could train some other salespeople under me and I did that and how did you like that in comparison um it was fine I my pay you know it's always hard when you take someone who's just killing it sales making good commission and you're like actually could you just train these other people and like kind of scale back and you're like put my commission checks right so but I I don't know it wasn't bad I liked that I was learning more I'm I have a thirst for knowledge so something I probably made you sharper something else that I really value in life is knowledge like I just I just any opportunity to try something new or do something new business wise I'll latch on to even if it's you know compensation wise less I I would still go do it because I wanted to start my own business I need to know these things it's just to be to manage people yeah yeah learn how to manage meet these and those relationships I built with those salespeople a lot of them I still have they're on your team no no no no just those relationships are still there yeah yeah which are important as well and so do you compete like directly with that former company that you work for I don't so it was again like divine intervention so I started doing this the water recurring I wanted to get into water pumping but I wasn't in a huge rush but that's on my horizon I know that that's a target and I'm talking with Craig my partner trying to come over so about six months after I left my company announces that they're selling to their biggest competitor oh so they formed what is like the Walmart of what we do just this big one-stop shop the service isn't great but it's super cheap and they they pick up a lot of market share that way and but it just doesn't align with my values as a business as as I want to be running a business or selling to my customers and Craig felt the same way and so he was getting ready to he was working he was getting ready to go through this merger and if it hadn't been for that merger he wouldn't come with me he appreciate he's risk adverse he has five kids his you know he needs health insurance and he needs a steady check and he you know if it hadn't been for that buyout happening at the same time I'm begging him to come over it wouldn't have come together well sometimes that's a opportunity knocks and he's like hmm I like the sound of that knock yep yep yep so that came and I'm like okay now's the time he's like you're right now it is the time and his wife finally signed off at that point I had been buttering up his wife for a long time too she was nervous and so it was only like six months after you'd started though right it was mm-hmm so are where you buttering her up like oh I mean years in advance maybe not years in advance but at least for the last six months right fair enough and that and then yeah when they announced that buyout was just perfect timing I don't know how I got so lucky well and then he did Craig bring like more resources because like at this point you you might have be able to get contracts pumping water but you don't have any pumps or hoses or whatever like what's that capital start looks like for you guys because banks aren't super eager to lend to start up oilfield services yeah we got no money no one would give us any money we I asked dad and he said no he said I I don't have any liquid capital you're gonna have to figure it out you know and so so then I asked some of his friends and they all were kind of like that seems really risky and one of them said yes but he wanted like I can't remember 20% AB or something and we were like that's so I had I had actually stashed up quite a bit of cash from my water sales the markups were really lucrative at the time for some of the deals and I just I had just packed him away yeah I had packed it away in the bank because I knew I just knew that I was gonna start needing to buy pumps and some of it so I had that money kind of hold away and he had a decent I mean you know little nest hold that he was willing to throw in because we both what happened is we had a customer who wanted us really bad we had to really that were like if you started pumping you could have my work right we were with while we miss you and we don't want to be with Walmart yes exactly at least two that were like that and one of them we had a really good relationship with and so we just kind of laid out our our situation with him and they said well we'll just cash flow we'll pay you up front we'll give you half up they paid for the whole job of oh my gosh because we didn't have that we just didn't have the money to pay the salaries of the guys and then the fuel so we rented some things which were not 30 and we could cash all that but you can't cash flow the guys in the fuel that all that's due like they ought to get paid yeah so they paid us over a half a million up front that is my my friend and I were just talking about how to really succeed in life you have to find some advocates you know and if you don't really have any advocates people that'll stand up and say you know that Emily she's pretty swell which is kind of what saying hey you know what we want you bad enough will front you we trust you we know you guys do a great job you've been doing a great job for us yeah what I think God for that faith yeah I could I can almost you're close to emotional thinking back to that because it's neat to have people trust you like that it is yeah so so that's really the jumpstart your own capital Craig had scrolled up a little bit on his own yeah yeah come in with some some things some needed stuff and then is this like a virtual business virtually you have to have a warehouse I imagine the store some of the pumps and more and you know hoses and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah I signed a lease I signed so we're poor we're gonna get much so there was this business in John's town that had extra space extra space like in their yard yeah so we leased an acre from them and on this space they had a quainted hut that we had a dirt floor yeah yeah and so that was our first space for at least a year I think I think maybe just over a year you know two porta-potties office trailer coins that had I was pregnant I got pregnant okay I remember being very pregnant freezing cold vomiting in the porta-potties like what am I doing this is just that I've made in life but where things could like the the was opportunity that I was so happy yeah yeah even though you probably weren't making quite the kind of money you had been in peak sales man the problem was we were making good money but we had every penny we made we had to buy assets with right because we were renting like we were renting and so if you bought the asset then the margin would go up but then as soon as we made more money we had we had customers that we should have good relationship and we did a good job and we were in just a really great place so from 2017 to 2019 it almost felt like we had a wait list like maybe not quite like I definitely was out selling I mean that's not exactly a wait list but I mean we were in a really great yeah yeah when we're like ready to get a new customer we could hit it hard and and find one it felt right what's a customer worth are our customers like a quarter million dollars for a cycle or something like that or a million dollars or something like sure I'm just trying to get an understanding of the scale there's a bunch of small producers but when I say go get a new customer I mean a steady customer that keeps at least a crew busy and I would say one crew like a customer that keeps one crew busy is worth two to three million oh wow okay and so there's there's some real opportunity for margin there as well right like you've got to move the water around but if you can keep a crew busy and then what happens I guess I hate to bring up bad times but like when the oil market just went to heck-and-a-hem basket what not zero calls then and that kind of thing oh my gosh well we just kept buying more assets buy more assets expanding expanding I just have this vision I went actually this week I went back and I pulled my goals that I'd written down in late 17 2017 for the okay for the for 2018 and then my five year in my tenure okay I reviewed those goals awesome they were lofty goals we were lofty goals man we had eight guys we're working out that coins and hut in the trailer and I was like in five years we're gonna be making 50 million we're gonna be in four bases here we are knocking on knocking on four years and we've achieved a few of the we have more assets we have almost double the amount of assets that I that was in the goals were at half the revenue nice yeah well next year is coming I don't think we'll have 50 million I would love to it that's not happening but I mean we have come a long way yeah so we were just full speed ahead there was just every month so we no matter whatever we made we threw back into it although we never went into that this episode is sponsored by Loco think tank Loco think tank provides clear collaboration for business owners we build smart safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with our model features give back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators and we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the Loco experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at locothinktank.com that's l-o-o-c-o thinktank.com so yeah to sort of say it's like thank God for bankers not loading a bunch of money on stuff right because you can have 500 people by now and a big debt pile in front of you when the price went to heck yep yeah so we my dad calls it getting over the tips of your skis so we didn't get too far over the tips of our skis we waited till we had the cash and then we would buy the asset and then we would take the customer yeah and thank God we did that because in two weeks we went from 83 guys to 32 every single customer called and told us they were canceling their plans we're shutting down well you know who knows what's gonna happen and we just batten down the hatches and anything that was that we could cut we cut yeah we didn't have the felony assets to pay any bills but we you already have a plan about how you would shrink from 80 to 30 if you had to to some extent just like who's field workers and who's payroll or whatever I mean 32 seems like too many if everybody's not doing much it was too many it was too many it wasn't for the ppp loan we got the ppp loan which was a lifesaver so I would say that we got down to 32 because we got the ppp loan so we paid the max amount we would pay people to work in the yard just to give him a paycheck and you know if you just this is horrible but you know just you just cut from the outside into the center and you just keep cutting until you don't have to cut anymore so there's like key people in your circle they're inner circle like the key you know and you just cut as deep as you got to cut and you stop cutting we don't have to cut anymore yeah and that was a really a few months before gosh probably six months before really markets rebounded and more than that serious way more than a year and a half yeah so I want to do a thought bubble can we do that I want to hear like you you kind of commented on how you're a talent spotter and a putter of people in their right places and things like that can we do just like a little segment on that how do you do that what what what is it about the things that you've learned what helps you in that regard so just for people that might want to like get better at that themselves because they don't know where to start yeah oh I hmm wow it comes so naturally to me I will have a hard time articulating this I think I it mostly comes from my gut I think it's a gut feeling about people and then I just maybe my interest gets spiked and then I just pay attention I think just watching and paying attention and seeing how people solve problems and listening to your gut to yeah yeah start with listening to them as well like how do you get to know people on that path just watching yeah I think just watching yeah for me yeah yeah fair enough yeah mostly watching I wouldn't say not nothing as far as like interviews or hearing what they have to say to me so how do you watch from a far or like like you talked about Craig but like I'm guessing some of your other key people either came from networks and connections or were people that you'd built relationships with already that's right mm-hmm it's just about working with them and seeing how they respond to certain circumstances all that yeah yeah our safety guy man he was such a good hire he does our fleet and our safety okay he we were third-party in our safety he was one of the account managers and he just held himself so well he spoke so well he was so passionate I never sat down and asked him about himself I just recognize that he worked hard and then he was passionate and then he and I just really thought a lot of him and then he decided to part ways with that company and he did something else outside of oil and gas and then we got to a place where we're ready to hire someone and I called him and I'm like man you're so impressive I just would love to have you on the team and he's like I thought Elevate was great yeah I'd love to be on the team and so yeah that was a great fit yeah that's a you kind of tucked him away in your pocket for a win because you're always I imagine thinking that five years out always always always yes you struggle sometimes to bring it to the day-to-day or it seems like to me that you might have a pretty strong balance between that future-sightedness and good shit done to day-to-day I appreciate that compliment that was very nice yeah I can sit down I guess I'd all sit down and grind if I have to yeah how do you know when it's time for which um I don't consciously it's not a conscious effort to look into the future it's like something like when your show like in the shower I do so much thinking and it's I'm just thinking and I just find myself thinking about the future and where I want to be and how we're gonna get there and that the things that I need to be doing today to I don't know it's just an unconscious like yeah star in the sky the north star I'm just gravitating towards yeah that's fair I think that's uh yeah that word visionary is very much like the biblical word profit you know the people can see some people myself included just see ahead differently than other people and that might be the case yeah we can't help it yeah we can brand you the one yeah okay cool so let's get back to the business journey just a little bit bring us back up today so it was way more than six months you said what before demand really picked up at all in the and I imagine because there's like that's a leading indicator right because if oil prices are still kind of depressed and stuff people aren't necessarily fracking new wells they're not completing the new wells even if they're ready to otherwise be gone because that's another big layer of of expense before you create revenue right for them for the perspective yeah yeah it was yeah it was rough we had one customer in New Mexico that kept going guys hour shared down there and we expanded into sewage pumping for municipalities yeah I went out and got the woman-owned certification from the city of Denver which helped us get some some contracts and keep guys busy and that's like like literally like just pumping shit yep same pumps do the same things whether it's frack water or sewage yeah and so like I'm imagining like a big six-foot sewer line or something in Denver and so you're talking like a dozen 12-inch tubes or something like that to bypass this section or how's that fly oh man so a six-foot like concrete sewer has no pressure rating so it's like maybe half full our pipe has a hundred and fifty two hundred psi pressure rating so we'll shove that amount of we'll shove that amount of sewage through a much smaller diameter pipe at a higher rate yeah I hadn't really thought it feels like a once-a-tube is full the tube is just full but if it's going a hundred miles an hour that's a different situation yeah so how how much pressure did you say a hundred pounds of pressure 150 it's 150 oh my goodness we move so much water current we we've been buying a bigger diameter hose we do some things but yeah we move so much water so fast like like like the putter river is what like down to like 2000 CFM or something like that CFS CFS yeah in like low tide or whatever it up to 10 or 20 thousand like what like how much water are you doing math now and you're yeah I'm doing math so that I can put it in for a second so we'll let's on it's very common for us to pump a hundred barrels a minute and that is the equivalent to 4,200 so 4,000 gallons a minute oh yeah so that's a little easier to kind of grasp yeah yeah it's a lot yeah for sure and we don't just one system you've got one system you've got 30 of those systems whatever scattered about I don't know about 30 yeah maybe like 10 okay whatever I thought several yeah interesting well and I guess that's because you need that that daily delivery and you got a do you store water on site then a little bit yeah just enough to kind of cover that days or two days needs or that kind of thing an hour of need okay yeah we yeah there's no stopping you rigging backup pumps you never shut down so if there's a problem you've got maybe an hour or two to get a fix before they run out of water so I thought and maybe this is a good time to educate me and our listeners about the actual process I kind of imagine that like you pump all the water down there everybody gets ready and you'd like the fuse and then fracking and then you like suck it all out is that basically I mean so fracking is technically fracturing fracturing the rock yep that's why it's spelled with a C and not a K right but it's it's fracturing the rock and they fracture the rock with water under pressure so they they send a gun down fire the gun it puts little cracks in the shell and then they use high pressure pumps to pump water down and the pressure of the water is what really fractures the rock open okay so it's actually just an inherent pressure which is probably even more than that 150 more I can't even speak to that I have no idea a lot I'm sure it's a lot the amount of horsepower on location takes up I mean it's like trucks the size of this you know three ping pong tables and there's 20 of them out there and this is just horsepower oh is it hydraulic horsepower I think so yeah it's yeah so they they pump it down fractures the rock and they do that a bunch of times and then when they're done they flow it back all the water comes back yeah they can separate if there's oil in it grass whatever separate that out and then use it again right yeah in a lot of cases yeah so is it get dirty mm-hmm it definitely gets dirty the it mixes with the water that's already in the formation which is bad water gotcha gotcha interesting so how do you clean it up right so we not your department I imagine it's it's not we do a little bit in New Mexico we use a hundred percent reused water recycled water so they'll flow it back some it depends on a lot of things but that a lot of treatment is required the way that they're fracking now is really just you don't have to have the cleanest water it's like water fracking right well I'm imagining like in a place especially that's very arid and you don't have these water sources like wild county it's great because it's water all over the place relatively mm-hmm but like New Mexico in some places like it's almost like we have this reservoir it's got a bunch of our water in it that we've got the rights for and when this person needs completion we send it down there smash smash frack frack suck it back up to our reservoir and then move it somewhere else again yeah I mean you've got to start in a pit that's lined so that it's not you know contaminating any dirt or anything and there's lots of precautions that are taken so you don't spill any of the water and but yeah I mean yeah you move it to a to a lined pond you treat it send it to the next frack use it again huh interesting well I guess that's probably better than like fracking it once and sending it on down the street definitely yeah a lot more cost effective for the customer as well yeah okay so what else do you want people to know about like the business journey to this point and and maybe you want to share where that three-year five-year vision is now did you recast those visions after you pulled those I haven't I mean it's on the agenda it's on the agenda yeah um at first I mean I wanted to take over the world I want to I want to be the the best and the biggest supplier of what we do in the US and I still kind of feel that in my heart so I've got a real line with Craig and make sure he's in the same place yeah and the direction to get there but I mean there's definitely a piece of me that just wants to take over the world so how I'm kind of always inspired by the David versus glass stories of sorts like small companies that are winning in a big company game and that seems like definitely your your circumstance here why are you winning so much and what does that difference in customer service look like or whatever from from a from your clients perspective sure so one thing that we hold dear is so I personally like to I want to leave the world better than I I got to it I want to leave it a better place I want to do good I want to be good I want to change lives and just you know help and I think one of the best ways to do that is pay a living wage to people who are willing to work I would rather pay somebody who's willing to work better than give a hand out to somebody who doesn't want to work so we pay our guys well and we have low turnover because of it we do profit share I don't know that anybody else does yeah in our space and so we retain guys and just employees in ways that no one else does and it's allowed it's amazing how just good service in the same faces will just retain we've retained all of the work we've ever brought on and the word spreads and people want to work with us yeah well I think probably you know you we were talking about your talent and and finding people and things but I think a lot of people have a talent like that they're like you know what that elevate looks like it might be a better place to work than the place I am now or whatever which is our goal yeah I want to look what our trucks are all new we everything's tooled out the guys have nice uniforms they have good pay yeah I want everybody in the all felt to think that they would have a better time working yeah yeah no no until where you can grow to if you can get all the people that you want yeah especially in today's world yeah the talent is what's holding us back right I'd like to think if we had taken out loans and gotten a bunch of capital we would have taken over the world but we wouldn't have because we can't get the you can't cultivate a team that does a good job in that amount of time yeah is that one of the asked that you would have even for people that listen to this is you know send good people to elevate or you're growing right always yeah always hiring yeah definitely hiring now especially hiring for good people hard workers are you guys having struggled keeping people we don't struggle keeping people we I think we fire more people than quit just I mean we're a good place to work yeah cool anything else on the on the business journey side we're gonna jump into the face family politics segments here soon you got any encouragement yeah yeah yeah I would say something my dad told me is it's better to make a bad decision than no decision and I would just I have lived by that and it's helped me so much because even if you make a bad decision at least you jumped in the water yeah and you can start swimming in a different direction but if you never jump in the water you can't choose a direction you you won't even have a sense for what direction you need to go or what the water feels like and you're gonna make mistakes and a mistake is better than than just paralyzed and no movement my dad gives the exact same advice I've shared that more than a bunch of times I bet they would like each other yeah I bet thank you thank you for that so what's your which one would you like to grab first on the face family politics conversation element politics politics first yeah let's talk about it yeah how's let's go Brandon no well you know this about me I am I am a libertarian I voted libertarian in the last two presidential elections but mostly what I want to touch on is energy energy policy and climate change which I climate changes real we know it's real I I want to leave a better world for my kids too I you know I I want to save the planet I want to keep animals safe I I don't want yeah you know I want all the things that everybody wants yeah just because I mean I guess and so what I really wish is that Democrats and Republicans hadn't created this polar problem and just this hatred because we'll do better working together I wish that there was just more of a realization that we're in energy a lot of us in energy have the mindset that I have and we're all working towards a common goal but all of us are turning on our heater all of us are driving our cars and to just live in the clouds and think you're not doing that it it's just there's not gonna be anything helpful that comes out of ignoring oil and gas expertise on the way to fixing climate change you will have to work together yeah unless we want to starve a bunch of people and you know keep developing nations from what's happening is okay they're shutting down oil and gas operations in Colorado pretty much we're like not even focusing on our Colorado branch because the politics are pushing us out and what happens when the United States isn't producing its own oil and gas anymore is oil and gas is gonna we're gonna continue to consume it so if we're so unless we're gonna figure out how to not consume it it's gonna come from third world countries where there's no regulation in how they produce it they're the the pollution that they're causing for every well compared to our pollution is ten times as bad and people are dying there's no workplace safety there's there's just no regulation and so it's like just because it's not in your backyard doesn't mean it's not happening right it's happening worse it's like us shipping our plastic it's like us recycling but our plastics are actually going to the season China in the ocean yeah so yeah out is out of sight out of mine is not the way that we need to approach this problem we need to approach it together and be in energy independent and identify really the energy that's gonna solve the that's gonna get as close as close as dissolving our problems yeah and we can I love when energy I love solar farms I'm all about that I think we should continue to to work on that but the amount of energy that that produces is never going to meet our needs it just won't it's a pie in the sky dream and I'm not saying that because my company relies on on producing the world it's the truth and I wish that people would hear that like actually hear it I become kind of interested in the adverse effects of windmills lately like actually diverting changing up the the atmospheric rivers and kind of creating like a challenge where where he is being diverted like almost as if it's another mountain range like the equivalent of all our windmills right now have like a mountain range impact and it's like pushing our hot air up to that Arctic vortex it at least some of the theory yeah and I've always thought that like you know hydroelectric dams they make the river colder solar seems like the lowest impact but it's also reflecting heat not dense right but the wind thing I'm really pretty concerned about that like it'll actually like in England and Europe right now they've got no wind well is that because they've got no wind or did they kill it I have no idea actually I'm not yeah that's wild anyway I'm not versed in that I'm stooped that out a little bit I will I would really love to see our country get more into nuclear like yeah I don't see how that shouldn't be part of our conversation it should be because all the all the ways to get energy have some drawback they do so yeah you can't yeah you're not gonna get energy for free so how do we encourage like these sustainable paths whilst not starving I think like like me I think that I suspect I've always said that you know the work the thing that's way worse than than climate change would be giving somebody the levers of controlling the energy of all the world right that person that was people whatever that oligarchy would be so corrupted and people so subject to their will because energy is life kind of in our world yeah oh my gosh yeah could you imagine yeah oh yeah it'd be like North Korea you know they just shut off the lights at nine and yeah no heat or we get our we get our passport that makes for your vaccines rep to date and stuff and then also it shows how many energy credits you have left right for the month you know you're like oh they're turned like thermostat down to 55 because yeah yeah yeah your carbon footprints too bad right exactly are you want to take a trip you got to sit at home literally for like so you could have enough travel credits yep yep yep and it's something like even I make a conscious effort to use less one-use plastics and I you know we try and keep our thermostat down and we you know and I'm in oil and gas I'm I'm not trying to so I wish that that stigma I hate that there's that stigma that I'm that I'm just consuming more energy than everybody else and I would just I just want that stigma to go away and then for us as a community to just approach a solution together yeah because it's not wind and solar it's just not it there's not enough you would have to have statistically you would have to cover all of California and all of New York City to provide provide enough energy for one day in the United States and you're right and that's if the sun shining in the winds blowing and then like it's just not the amount of energy that you get per acre is not enough yeah so there so we need to be using more compressed natural gas totally yes and looking into nuclear and then having a serious conversation like a with energy professionals you see the some company like they took an order to brand a bunch of REI jackets with the oil companies name and they didn't take the order north face did that north face and now Liberty has these billboards around Denver about how Liberty's products are made from yeah it's so it's so they're made from oil and gas products it's so hypocritical right yes there's oil right it's all yes and like you wouldn't be able to summit a mountain without oil and gas all of the products that you take up with you that keep you alive and protect you from the elements and hold your food and hold your water and and heat your those are oil and gas products we wouldn't be exploring the depths of the world I mean I go on and on so I feel pretty passionately about that yeah yeah well I think that's probably pretty resonant with me like I don't want to wreck the world either I drive less than most people I you know agree you know but but I also don't want to be forced into energy poverty mm-hmm yeah I mean what there's some statistic more than 60% of the world still is living on wood fire and dung right for and they're having 10 children and eight of them are dying or I mean so when you have abundant energy resources your population slow population growth slows there's less illness I mean there's so many benefits yeah the medicine that we have today so much of the medicine we have today is a byproduct of oil yeah any particular like thought leaders or people that that should be followed in this conversation that you really resonate I do yeah in Colorado there's a guy named Dan Haley he's the president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and he puts out a lot of really great stuff that is will help us combat climate change but from an energy persons perspective okay so I like Dan Haley a lot I think he brings a lot of good to the community the Colorado community sure me anything else in that general sphere of politics that you'd like to talk about I think term limits for Congress I think the government is bloated and in trouble and I'll always push for term limits for Congress and I'll continue voting libertarian even if it seems like a wasted vote because you've got to start somewhere yeah and if I inspire only one other person to vote with me because that's where we all feel that's how we all feel yeah that is how we all feel last government and just let us be free and I've been voting libertaria but I thank you I didn't vote for Joe last time I actually voted for Kanye instead no you didn't thought it was a little bit more anti-establishment it was pretty anti-establishment yeah I voted for Joe Jordanson not Joe Biden fair enough yeah so faith or our faith or family I don't have much faith I'm probably agnostic okay so we're in same atheist but I'm not I wouldn't class for myself as a Christian my mom is a Hindu interesting practicing Hindu like not born that way I grew up Christian okay and she was pretty Christian my dad doesn't do a whole lot of faith stuff right and my mom researched religions and decided to be a Hindu which I love interesting I love that about her you don't you see some team changes but you don't see Hindu chosen very often right yeah so I just believe that there's a higher power and that's I don't know I don't know which religion is right and I haven't felt the calling to to to spend time researching every religion and figuring out what resonates with me yeah I prefer business diving into business yeah so do you think like is there a creator force right I have no idea no I think that at the core of it if you're a good person and you do good then you'll end up where you need to be and whether that's reincarnation in a great place right right it's going to have in or it's for every piece making up positive impact or or even just maybe this is the only time I haven't I have in my being is this time on earth and I'm walking meatbag I mean you make your own heaven and hell while you're here maybe sometimes I wonder that so just make it you know yeah fair enough I listen to a podcast with Rogan the other day and this guy was a I forget what the word was it was like a trans consciousness kind of thing so his theory basically was that you know consciousness isn't like we get enough neurons and stuff gathered and all of a sudden we have consciousness but that it's actually basic to foundational to like all of matter so like a rock or a tree might have consciousness just in various fragmented quantities compared to us and so like a human isn't necessarily like the consciousness that we imagine that we have isn't necessarily something special it's just kind of what happens when enough of the right kinds of neurons and pipes and pieces and stuff happen yeah I would yeah I would believe that probably not Pearl I and I I do go to church and I call myself a Christian but that notion of God isn't everything was kind of like oh yeah this guy's kind of barking up the right tree it seems like to me I don't know I mean there's been some things that happened in my life that felt like divine intervention or just I mean things just came together in the exact right way I don't know I experienced this stuff I'll think about somebody and they call me and then it happens a lot more more often than I can just write it off and be like it's not a thing it's totally a thing so I don't know what it is I haven't dove into it but I've decided that there's probably another level of something at least something young yeah not just a walking meat bag sure but probably not yeah I don't know that my sister thinks we're just walking meat bag life is meaningless we die into dust oh it seems kind of hard I know that's what I said live your best life yeah he's Sarah so let's talk about family then your sister is Sarah and she's younger by a few years yeah yeah three okay and not quite as enthusiastic about life it sounds like but tell me give me your family low down I don't think what was your dad's name Jack Jack and your mom Phoebe Phoebe and and they split sometimes during your use as well yeah I was young yep it was a rough divorce I don't know how they were ever married my dad is a cowboy from a palisade in the oil and gas but also cowboy my mom like I said it's now a practicing Hindu right she spent time in the 70s testing out a lot of drugs live in her life interesting but she's brilliant yeah she's really hard working she's beautiful she's still beautiful um but she's just this hippie soul who she's just this hippie soul right and my dad is not yeah I don't know how they got together in the first place yeah yeah I imagine your dad is kind of like the I don't know Sam Elliott character oh my god he's growing out his hair to match Sam Elliott as we speak he's growing this like white he turned white and he's like I'm growing it out so he's yes totally this kind of stoic wise guy I don't know I don't know how they got together and then yeah so we have and I have my sister Sarah she's my best friend but she's a sister you know she's I hate her and I love her you know fair enough yeah and she doesn't own a business what she do with her she doesn't she got her she went got her masters in social work and she was working at the at the middle hospital in Grand Junction which I love that such a social service that's undervalued I love that she was doing that and now she's working in a doctor's office as as like the on-call therapist kind of or just a resident therapist I guess yeah yeah and with a vision of eventually starting her own practice and seeing her own patients and so very different path yeah for sure yeah but she's smart she's smarter than me man I mean she wanted to do she's I think that she's smarter than me but she just you know everything's different and it brings her a lot of happiness yeah well and there's like you said there's necessary people in that space oh my gosh thank God for people like her yeah that would be such a hard job and it's compensated so poorly and it's so needed she had she had a master's and I don't know it's amazing what our communities will spend money on and not spend money on yeah in my opinion and yet you know to be the decider and like you know it sounds great to have a benevolent dictator but nobody with that much power could ever be benevolent right sure so anyway um so talk about your family now you've got a little I have a son he's three oh yeah you did meet him he's adorable he's he's a little blonde kid he was super premature he was nine weeks premature but he's totally healthy I mean what's his name Walker Walker you're allowed to say that on the podcast right I hope so we won't bring pictures up for nothing yeah Walker no he's adorable I love him so much I got divorced in 2020 which was super rough yeah but it needed to happen and I'm in a way better place now I'm so thankful I went through it it was like pain before the gain like I knew there would be a brighter outcome yeah did you guys know almost right away or did we were married for a long time seven years oh wow so waited a few years had a kid and then whatever yeah I think I knew in my gut all long but I really my parents got divorced and I really valued staying together and like I just had this belief that doesn't matter our differences we'll find a way through it and you just it's a mindset you just work through it marriages forever you never give up right if only I'd given up when I should have six months into it you know but I didn't and neither did he and I learned a lot and I can really yeah I can appreciate what I learned for sure and I do yeah I mean I love I'm thankful for Walker yeah so we're together for seven years that was the hardest thing I've ever done that was the hardest thing I've ever done yeah I had a I don't talk about it a lot but when I was 16 I was living mostly with my mom and she she was going through her own rough patch and I can recognize that now as an adult right but she kicked me out and that was a really really really hard time in my life and so I'm like well was my divorce the hardest because that was a really hard time in my life yeah and well and you were this a student and stuff right like I partied I partied hard I so I had a 4.0 but I partied on top of that but my mom came from this hippie background and she didn't care I can be gone all weekend right I mean she she trusted me she knew I was yeah I was an A student I made smart decisions so if I wanted to go drink till 4 a.m. then just don't drink and drive you know it's so it's so the same as my own parents really my mom actually called one of my friends I took the ACT just to go to college and I got a 30 but I heard if you got a 31 you can get like way more scholarships so I had to take it again right but I wasn't home at like 215 the night before I was supposed to take this ACT test to get my mom's like following my friends it was the only time that she ever like checked it I was like hey she was like hey this is pretty irresponsible your test is tomorrow at 8 and your responsible kid right yeah don't don't put me wrong yeah I was a really responsible kid yeah so but I partied and but in hindsight I think she just was in a place in her life with my parents divorce and then like financially and I I just now believe she was just in a place in her life that she wasn't ready to parent me yeah and so I've come a long way good yeah yeah we didn't talk for several years oh really wow we have a relationship now a good relationship I love her so much yeah and either your parents have remarried um mom remarried but it didn't work out and my dad has just been this um bachelor I mean he's loving his best life he's got this friend group of bachelor's they go to dinner like three times a night together and then he's just he's uh he's doing great he doesn't need to remarries I after my parents split up my wife and I were actually married and my dad became a 55 year old bachelor or whatever and this is in a burl egg country and the ladies just came out of the woodwork so I'm sure your dad probably doesn't do too hard for too bad for days he doesn't he doesn't neither does my mom they're both yeah well and they're unfortunately like one of the things I'm learning is there aren't that many great guys out there right um especially for my friends that have gotten into their forties or whatever and and they're just like well but the good ones are all still married or whatever and so was that scary for you so scary it was so I had to I had probably three years of therapy before I finally pulled the trigger on leaving him because I was so scared of just everything that comes with it you seem like you're so not scared of so many things but yet that was yes yes well because you're such an achiever you didn't want to be labeled as failing at the marriage no and I thought that yeah and we we explored that in therapy and that's not it it's when um it's just dates back to the abandonment issues that I had for my mom kicking me out I think um and then my dad worked really hard he was gone a lot and yeah and again they're both great parents and no parent is perfect and I've never met somebody that was you know really exceptional that didn't have some sort of oh yeah yeah yeah so and that's mine so mine was just having the strength to be on my own I just didn't innately have that strength I don't know I have a lot of strength in a lot of other ways but that was just one place that I struggled yeah um so unless there's anything else in this trifecta of faith family politics that you'd like to share we'll go on to the local experience yeah yeah yeah let's move to the local experience so the local experience you're craziest story event moment from your life that you'd care to share hmm oh that's right I remember you just told me to prepare for that yes well you don't have to prepare much the craziest moment in my life oh season even season yeah oh I had something that I was seeing about on the way over here and now I forgot no crazy let's talk about the craziest party story from when you're a teenager exactly here let's be like Emily can you I know yeah I was pretty wild I I would have in high school dad was gone a lot so when mom kicked me out I went to go live with dad yeah and he was gone working all the time I would have ping pong I would have beer pong tournaments in the garage and I had three beer pong tables that I could fit in the garage I would stack I would stack on the side of the house that dad never went and I would just host these beer pong tournaments I had I would I would keep keep keep a bracket it's like 30 40 kids oh yeah totally yep yeah if we'd haul the beer cans out the next day dad wasn't the wiser he totally knew he totally knew he just liked to be naive he again he knew I was a ping pong totally oh I didn't know that we're gonna play after we finish this yeah maybe next time if we don't run out of time yeah I'd had some party but thank god I did because I party relatively hard to college but then after college I was I was done I was really yeah I don't I just it's out of my system I didn't ever want to be but it is I don't have that desire yeah yeah well if you were working on something else yeah yeah now I'm too busy with the three-year-old and work and trying to keep my health up in my yeah so there's more to life um local experience did you think of something better than a beer pong my local experience I joined a chapter at local think tank was it a year ago not yeah not yet no probably last April or so yeah so it's an alternative board it's the first alternative board I've ever joined I had been wanting to join one for several years people message me on LinkedIn to join all the time um but none of them felt right they were they were in Denver or they were only oil and gas or they none of them ever felt right and Kurt reached out um and I loved that it was local I love that was different industries uh he was starting a new chapter so I wasn't invited I think it invited into an existing chapter I got to kind of start a new one which I liked um and I'm I love the the people in my group um it's incredible the changes I've been able to make in my business I have these like gut feelings about stuff that maybe I just am not identifying immediately what direction to take and I kind of ping it off the group and uh the path forward just becomes so clear it's like it looks a little dark the path forward and I kind of mentioned something and then everybody shines a flashlight in the right direction I'm like oh duh I can go that way and so my decisiveness has gotten better and then my so my decisiveness and then my ability to um execute quicker I think has improved I think it's I wasn't looking for a look I think uh commercial there necessarily but I do appreciate that okay and I was so flattered actually uh it's uh connecting with you is one of my favorites because that's what you said early on you were like I get you know do it so many peppered with people all the time of wanting me to get into a group with them and your approach and your website and the things that you said were just they fit better for me hmm oh totally I mean there's probably like I better get 10 a year well I mean a lot I don't know LinkedIn's gotten out of control right totally yeah it's a little bit what do you mean local experience oh just like crazy experience from your lifetime that you wanted to share oh crazy experience yeah yeah the loco crazy yeah crazy experience I know it's it's crazy those are crazy glasses huh yeah it's crazy um yeah just being here maybe like just that I've ended up in oil and gas it's so wild how old are you um you a lot to say I suppose like and if you promise not to judge me I do not I get judged on the opposite I judge you as awesome yeah I'm 33 33 hmm I'm 33 it's it's crazy to me that uh it's I get occasionally get imposter syndrome yeah yeah elevate we've got over a hundred employees yeah operating in four states well your boys so wild and your professionalism and your talent it's just dripping off of you that's so nice I don't yeah thank you that's that's incredible to hear yeah so that's been a wild ride and I'm just thankful to live in Colorado um that's I'm so I feel so blessed I feel just I'm so blessed in life you know I just need to share these things yeah you know love your face on the road probably oh absolutely yeah I'm involved with a couple nonprofits and I hope to expand on that do you want to give them a shout out at all sure yeah so I'm on the women's fund of world county it's my favorite nonprofit of no offense to the other one but it's my favorite the women are so hard working and a hundred percent of the money we raise goes straight into the community everybody's a volunteer we worked really hard to vet oh did we work really hard to vet who the money goes to I mean it is just the most transparent and wonderful organization cool the second thing is the um I help with the NCMC Gala usually every year that's the Northern Cardinal Medical Center it's out of Greeley and um we rate all the money that they raise goes right back into the hospital so new NICU beds is what it's going to just NICU equipment this year um maybe that's a local experience is uh you said nine weeks early was uh was your son yeah well do you have a stay in the hospital or are you 45 days because you were like fresh in the business I was oh my gosh I was I think like the four hours out the delivery I had to go prove payroll I mean I mean it was it it was I was still doing a lot of paperwork I was on I was on bed rest because my water broke early so I was like stuck in the hospital for a week I I never stopped working I wish that I had the ability to step back from I'm bummed that I didn't get that time with my infant yeah remember being so exhausted my kid was in the NICU for 45 days and then we went home and everybody who's had a kid understands that newborn phase in there you know and when you have a preemie they just they don't breastfeed so I pumped for seven months that was horrible there I mean is that why you're passionate about this NCMC Gala? maybe maybe it contributes a little bit yeah yeah so I do that and then I'm on the local chapter for the Cudder Owen Gas Association and it's amazing how much they give back to the community so we raise over a hundred thousand dollars every year it's all again it's all volunteers well all of the money that we raise just through oil and gas networking events goes straight back into the community so we meet once a month review donation requests and approve however much over a hundred thousand I mean and it's we do we have a scholarship fund all kinds of scholarships we fund pretty much anybody who asked for money we give them money I mean it's you just write in and as long as you are 501c3 certified and you're you know you got a reasonable request a reasonable request I mean probably not United Way because that's kind of right they do what we do I guess but like yeah if you're a legitimate organization yeah we're a member of women give here in Larra County which is a sub of the United Way is it a women given weld county as well or is that what the women's fund kind of is maybe it is similar I'm and I would like to get more involved in the forecarns community maybe find something but right now I'm maxed out right with those two boards and then my work and my kid I'm just maxed out yeah but I do hope with time over the next five years personally I want to start shifting more into the nonprofit space okay yeah excited you're more mm-hmm but we'll have to do that next time thank you so much Kurt I think so much of you I know I say that every time but you're such a friendly face and you're doing such wonderful things and I'm so flattered I don't know why anybody ever want to interview me well I'm honored that you're honored and though we'll just leave it there yeah and uh mutual fan club thanks for being here today thanks Kurt got speed thanks for listening to this episode of the Logo Experience podcast if you enjoyed this program share with your favorite people and please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform subscribe to never miss the latest interview and check out bloganexperience.com to learn more and find our library of episodes until next time stay local