Oil and Gas Startups Podcast

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0:56 is going to be digitalwalkcutterscomenergyx Alright cool man, well dude. We got you back down in Hewson from Mexico on the show. We have Tim Taylor, which whenever I say your name, yeah, it just

1:07 brings up home improvement. Yes, which I can know you get that a lot and I've heard you made that. But like, I never say your last name. And I want just like saying your last name right there. I

1:16 was like, yeah, that does like instantly take me back to home improvement. What's funny is so, you know, born and raised in Montreal. We have a coffee chain called Tim Hortons Yeah, and people

1:28 would hear my name and they would skip home improvement. Just go like, Oh, like, like Tim Hortons.

1:34 So depending on if you're in Canada, the default Tim Hortons in the US, it's home approved. Which you have now one in Katie. You got a Tim Hortons and Katie? Yeah, I don't know that. I've

1:44 always heard about Tim Hortons and heard it's great from the Canadians. So I trust that they have good coffee. So I'll have to check it out. But so midnight marketing Dude, yeah,

1:56 you've been in Mexico for the last year. Uh, your wife, Macy got transferred down there slumber J. Yeah. Um, you know, following else, chronicles of moving. Um, I have a lot of empathy, uh,

2:08 for, you know, it's like, I will never do that in my life and so appreciate the, uh, learning lesson. Yeah, you know, but when we mentioned that we've moved to Mexico for our visas, people

2:18 automatically assume that, am I close enough here? Yeah, they automatically assume that they think Cancun or they think resort and we move to a place called Vijay Hermosa Yeah, or Villa Hermosa,

2:30 but as you told me, it's the West Texas of Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. And so you talk about like energy poverty and like, just, it's rough, but it put things in perspective, for sure. Yeah. So I'm

2:41 more grateful for things. Yeah. There's so much convenience when it comes to living in North America and just like the coordinate privilege of being born in a place like this. It is crazy, right?

2:50 I mean, even just, I saw Mexico, so the story of HEB. and how much he missed HEB and I was a messenger and told her that. had this intern come down here from Boston. Okay. I mean, Ms. Boston.

3:02 I mean, this is in the United States, nice place. And he came down to Texas and could not believe HEB. in like the size of our grocery stores. And so even in the United States, like, you know,

3:13 here in Texas, we take that stuff for granted where you just walk into a grocery store and have everything imaginable. It expands too. Like my favorite chips are miss Vicky's. Yeah. And now they

3:21 have a new line of like air fried miss Vicky's, which is like a lower calorie and like every flavor that you can think of Yeah, it's so cool, but it's good to be back. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know,

3:32 for

3:34 anyone that doesn't know you. I'm sure a lot of listeners know you, but tell us a little bit about what you do, what midnight marketing is, and we'll kind of dive into it a bit. Yeah, so

3:46 midnight marketing is a marketing agency. We started about three and a half years ago now, so relatively young, and we focused on branding on websites and on marketing Mm-hmm. That third piece

3:58 there was digital marketing, but we actually dropped the digital and now we're gonna focus more so just on small marketing itself. So like in real life events as well. And yeah, I mean, our team,

4:09 we have a couple team members here. Most of our team is in Montreal. That's where our creative office is. And we focus on the only gas sector. Yeah, I got a couple of, we'll talk about the team

4:20 being in Montreal because it's not a very, when I at least, I've never been there. So I can't speak on Montreal, but I don't think of it as a very friendly oil and gas city. So we'll dive into

4:30 that dynamic here in a little bit. But first, let's roll it back a little bit because you're a serial entrepreneur. When I first met you, I think we met in like 2018. '18 or '19. Yeah, and

4:43 actually, I mean, you were here in the early days of digital wall caddars and we saw these opportunities around marketing and content and things of this nature book before that. you had a watch

4:56 company and which I wore those watches all over the place, I fucking love them. By the way, and y'all's content and your marketing around that brand was great. I think that you have a really

5:09 unique skill set around branding and design

5:16 and being married to Macy, you got exposure to oil and gas through our connections in slumber day and started to see this opportunity of like, hey, all these women gas companies suck at marketing

5:28 and branding and so taking your skill set and applying it to that, is there anything that I'm not articulating in like that opportunity set that you saw there? No, man, it's so dead on. So like

5:38 as you know, being an entrepreneur, like you have to wear a lot of hats, marketing becomes one of those hats that you wear, you got to, you know, wear your accounting hat as well. And then

5:46 that's the part of the business

5:49 that I fell most in love with, you know, starting businesses.

5:53 And so, yeah, seeing so much opportunity. Actually, in this room is where like you, myself, Jake. Yeah. Carl at the time. Yeah. Damn, there was a lot of time. You get here like five am.

6:04 Yeah. And we had so many good memories. We had a whiteboard up on this wall. It's so funny for anyone that doesn't know that's listening to this podcast studio that we're in was our original

6:13 podcast studio. This building used to be a big co-working space and we rented out this room. And this room was podcast studio had desk. Our podcast table was a kitchen table from Jake's garage and

6:24 you know, I had some lights and so like really wrinketing set up compared to what we have today. But yeah, that was, man, it seems like yesterday. It does. And so cool, it's like, I step back

6:35 in here now and it's like, now you have this, like you, it's almost this entire building with the digital walk headers. Yeah, it was kind of crazy to think about. But yeah, you know, I think

6:45 what was interesting about those early days back then was that, you know, the writing was on the wall I don't even know if you know this, but before Digital Wildcatters had started a marketing

6:58 agency called Amplify Media, and this was in 2016, I was like, there's all this opportunity, and I couldn't land a single client. Like, just no one was, maybe I wasn't articulating it well,

7:09 and I was like, okay, well, we just started creating content ourselves. We got lucky with COVID.

7:16 Like, there's a lot of mixed feelings about that time, that period, but for us, we got incredibly lucky because customers couldn't go see their customers anymore, our customers couldn't go see

7:26 their prospects. And so without that, I don't know if we'd be here. That's actually, yeah, I mean, that is an interesting point. I mean, you think about what COVID did, it definitely changed

7:36 dynamics. I mean, even, you know, if we take a lot of sales calls that are Zoom calls that might not have, like that can be weird before COVID, you know, and now it's just acceptable. That's

7:47 kind of the way that it is. And so, yeah, In 2020, I mean, the same thing that we saw at Digital Allcatters is like, everyone's locked down in their house. Like this is our opportunity to

7:57 create content and get in front of them. And so it makes sense that other companies needed a way to get in front of people. It was so interesting. I remember seeing the first, um, it was like mid

8:06 2020. And I saw a directional driller, uh, post a TikTok on LinkedIn. And I thought, okay, like from this point on things have changed. Yeah. That was like a signal of like, okay, something,

8:19 there's some fundamental change here. Yeah And for some businesses, it was like, it was horrible. It was just for ours with, with marketing, we see marketing, great marketing as like great

8:28 storytelling. And like it was a way for customers to communicate their story to, again, their, their audience or their audiences. Yeah. So, and so, and y'all mainly focus on oil and gas and

8:38 energy companies, uh, specifically. Yeah. So, you know, let's talk about, let's talk about your workforce, being a Montreal, you know, the dynamic. because some people may be like, oh,

8:50 are you not based in Houston? And like, I know the answer for that, because I mean, this industry, it's a technical industry. It's not a creative industry. And that's why it struggles with

8:59 these things. Lots of creative stuff in places like Montreal, for example. And so one, I'm going to give you a couple of questions here. It's going to be loaded. But first question is, you know,

9:10 a dynamic of a place like Montreal being kind of a liberal, leaning place, probably doesn't have a lot of oil and gas fans, building a company that helps oil and gas companies there. I want to

9:21 hear about that. And then two, kind of piggyback off of that, teaching creatives about the oil and gas industry. You know, they're working with some very technical, you know, directional

9:32 drilling company. For example, these are technical things. And so tell me about like what it's been building the team and kind of company culture. Well, yeah, so again, I was born and raised in

9:43 Montreal So obviously I have some ties to Montreal as a city. and as a place,

9:52 much of it was beautiful. There's so much culture, there's so much art, it's a. I've heard it's great. I need to come up there and visit you all sometime. It's one of my favorite cities in the

10:02 world, but that wasn't the intention initially. I was looking for Houston. It was just a weird time. Things were locked down. I was trying to find graphic designers here, and with the salary

10:14 price points that I was looking at, and the price points that I wanted to be for customers, there was just a mixed match of I couldn't make it work. And I needed to find other opportunities. And I

10:24 was also trying to find graphic designers in oil and gas. And so really, that Ben diagram, the price was just too high. It didn't make sense. A lot of the people that I was speaking to, they

10:35 just got to let go from an operator or a service company. And

10:41 they were used to salaries that we just, again, couldn't be competitive Yeah. So, I look to Montreal and. Yeah, I mean, it was difficult at first

10:53 to get people equated on gas to tobacco, right? Yeah. But something's changed. Like in the last year, like we get people on and like they see what we're doing and they see that we're, you know,

11:04 affiliated and connected to like digital wall catters and see what social lot Tain's doing. And it's like, this is, we're creating something that's very unique and very needed Yeah.,

11:13 you know, over the last few months I've seen this as well I've been doing some tests to see, can I attract people to digital wall catters from outside of oil and gas, from other cities? And like

11:26 an example is on this fucking rock star up

11:32 in New York City. And she does event sales and sponsorships and she's done8 million in sales last year by herself. And, you know, I'm in several meetings with her and not only is she so hyped

11:44 about digital wall catters oil and gas. The job is remote. And she's like, I want to move down to Houston and be in the office with y'all. Right. And so I think that there's this dynamic of a

11:58 shift in the culture and perception of the industry because it's like, oh, this isn't boring and stale. Like it was five years ago, 10 years ago. And it actually is very interesting work in an

12:12 industry. And so you start kind of teaching the world about it. And then all of a sudden it's easier to recruit into it And so it's so humbling to be a part of it too. Because what you're saying,

12:21 digital walk headers has played such a huge part in that. FTB, massive part in that social. I think that we're the adjacent to all of us. We're leveling this up. And I think it's pretty cool to

12:34 now see the ramifications of what that's doing. Yeah, the second, third order effects, the ripple effects of what that actually means for the industry. Yeah, you know, I think that when - I

12:47 looked at oil and gas like in 2016, I compared it to Silicon Valley in tech. And why did I want to go work in Silicon Valley? It's 'cause of like, it just looked cool, right? And so, it's just

12:58 about looking cool. And you always - It's a part of it. It really is branding, right? And storytelling. And so, yeah, I think that all of these things are super important. I was talking to,

13:11 there's this lady over on TikTok and she works for, I think she works for MI. Swaco. Anyways, she's blowing up, you know, on her TikToks, she shows people like what life is, like on an

13:26 offshore rig. Like, I messaged her, I was like, Hey, I just want you to knowhow important the work is that you're doing. And you probably don't even know that. Like, you're probably just like,

13:34 Oh, hey, I'm getting views on TikTok. And like, showing people, you know what offshore life is. I was like, but this stuff is extremely important And so I just think that the rise of like

13:45 content creators

13:47 storytelling, you know, things like what we're doing, women at marketing is doing FTB, all of these things compound and kind of build up this, this image. And so that can't be, you know,

13:58 stated enough. And I think what's cool now is like, you're starting to see like traditional oil companies, OFS companies start to drag along with that too, right? And I think that that's what,

14:10 so going back to the team, what's so exciting about, I think if you're in marketing and you see this industry, you're starting with typically a company that has a blank canvas, or somewhat a blank

14:21 canvas, and so you can really paint. Like our job is to get the soul out of our cut, like bring the soul of who they are into some sort of marketing plan, branding plan. Yeah, yeah. But

14:33 the canvas is pretty bare in terms of like what to compare it to. And so it's like we aren't being compared to anything else. And so I think that gives the freedom of creativity. Yeah, it gives

14:47 you some pretty wide parameters to operate. Yeah, you can get inspired by like a Nike campaign and say, oh, you know what, I like what they did there. I can bring this into, you know, a drill

14:58 bit and see how we can match these campaigns. There's so many different things you can do. Yeah, that's a big thing for me. It's always been like, I look at like for inspiration in other

15:08 industries, other companies. And actually, it's pretty funny. We just shot some commercials with these actors for Clyde Pro, and I told boss, so I said, hey, do you remember those Apple

15:19 commercials back in the day where he had an old guy and he had a young guy, and the old guy was the PC, the guy who

15:24 had just blank face. He's too young. Yeah, no idea what I was talking about it. That's us. I was like, all right, dude. I was like, let's go watch it on YouTube. And anyways, so we

15:33 recreated our own, so it's like you can take elements of other things that you see, and it's like, yeah, how can you apply that to a drill bit, which on the surface, like a drill bit seems

15:42 boring. But it's like, no, you can actually create brand Yeah, you can. Around these things and that's a really good point to what you just brought up is like, you know You can take you can be

15:52 very innovative with your marketing and take what you've seen in the past And what's been successful and just find a way to blend it in into what you're doing. Yeah Yeah, that's one of my favorite

15:59 Apple campaigns. Yeah, no, it's great like it's burned in my burned in my mind for all of my life And so yeah, so for y'all's services, you know and actually I mean midnight's been a great

16:11 partner for us helping us with our marketing on our events, so You know nothing but great things to say about the team over there Tell me a little bit about Earlier you alluded to you you have

16:24 several different offerings or services that you guys really focus on It's kind of take it through, you know If a Fs company is listening and they want to engage with y'all, you know What that what

16:36 that process actually looks like and what y'all can help out with yeah, so again, it's three divisions It's branding its websites and it's marketing and I stayed in that order because

16:46 Midnight didn't come out of this thesis or this business plan. It was just very organic. And so we're in those three divisions because that's where we saw the most need. And it started with

16:57 branding. And then they would naturally say, hey, okay, now we need a website. Okay, now we need marketing. And so typically for a branding project, that's a bigger project. That might be

17:08 three to six months of work working alongside a customer. And again, we're trying to pull out the soul of who is this, like who are you guys? Who do you want to be?

17:18 No one's going to know more about their customers than them. So we don't pretend to know more about their business than they do. Our job is to understand and then prescribe a branding solution,

17:28 which is going to be a long-term play. And then marketing solutions, which is going to be a little bit shorter term. So

17:35 we try to get them to try out marketing pretty quick because, again, there's short-term objectives that we could hit. Branding is a longer play. Yeah I mean, on the marketing front, probably

17:45 lo-hing for you. where you can get some quick ones together, start building up a relationship. I mean, branding and brand overhauls, I mean, that's a big task. It takes time. Like you think

17:55 about like digital walk hatters, like that's many, many years into the making, right? And like for us, branding is perception. So like when you think digital walk hatters, like, you know, if

18:05 we had a hundred people in this room, we were to say just a walk hatters, like what do they all think about that brand? That's what brand is. Not what we tell you it is, right? Yeah, exactly.

18:12 So that takes time. Yeah. It's a reputation So, you know, what's the, what's the, I see, you know, share your Instagram stories and, you know, they'll do, actually I'll do some really great

18:25 fucking work on, like animations. Thank you. And things of that nature. I love that stuff. I appreciate that 'cause I know that stuff's super hard to make. Yeah. You know, it's not easy. I

18:35 mean, we have some really great content creators on our team on DW and

18:41 like they wouldn't, you know, they don't have that skill set to make that stuff So this is like very cool. graphics and actually I was talking to you the other day 'cause it's like, man, if we

18:49 could create graphics like that and do like voiceovers for like TikToks, like they would crush. I was just like, it's so uneconomic to create 'em and to do 'em, but it seems like y'all crush it

19:03 and customers really enjoy those. So that's been something that y'all spend a lot of time on. We're always trying to make the best customer experience possible, and we're always trying to make sure

19:13 that our product is the best, right? So I get asked a lot, especially recently, about AI tools. I'm like, well, if it fits into making the customer experience better, then great. We're not

19:21 gonna look at the technology and find a way to market it. Like, we're gonna reverse engineer it. Like, what do the customers need? And how can we create the best customer experience with the best

19:33 services possible? Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Like, how do you think about utilizing AI within midnight not you're 'cause, Yeah? internally marketing looking at the business.

19:45 You and I have talked and service business, people business. And so it's like, how can you do more in like scale people's efforts? Have y'all found anything through AI that helps y'all in y'all's

19:57 workflows or the creative process? Because like GPT, for example, I find it be like a great catalyst for ideas of like that cold start problem of like just get started. So have y'all been

20:07 utilizing that at all, help your business? Yeah, we use probably eight, ten tools. But we don't just jump on the latest tool So like I myself, I'll check out one to three tools a week. Yeah.

20:19 And most of them honestly are junk or they're not doing what they're advertised. There's so much trash out there because a lot of them are just, I mean, GPT wrappers with a, you know, it's very

20:29 thin and like they're, they're junk. But yeah, and one I've been playing around with is Jasper. And I think Jasper has some good potential and we've been using it. But that's the, the, the

20:42 copywriting AI tool, right? Um, before GPT came out with builder GPT, it's like, you could upload, like you could train the model with your collateral. So all of our events, we could upload

20:53 all of our, um, decks and everything on that. So had factual information on what is in power, what is energy. And then, you know, I'd have it analyze all my tweets so that it could create a

21:05 frack slap voice. And I found like the frack slap voice doesn't really sound like me, but it all, it's actually a really good tone for the company And so now you can go and say, Hey, we need to

21:15 generate an email campaign for empower with frack slaps voice and it'll take all the factual data from the empower material and then write it in a tone of frack slap. And so I think stuff like that's

21:28 like really promising and really cool. But to your point, I mean, there's just so much noise out there and not a ton of signal. Yeah, for us, it needs to fit into that, that mission of like

21:38 creating the best customer experience And if it doesn't, then yeah, we're not going to fumble with tech and then build it out. to match the customer's needs. We're gonna start with the customer's

21:47 needs. Yeah, for sure. So, you

21:51 know, being down in Mexico, I mean, it seems like sometimes you don't even have power or Wi-Fi, so tell me about like the last year of running the business. And I mean, all the stress that you

22:04 had, you know, in the personal life of moving, I mean, where were the challenges operating internationally? Internet, like number one. But is that decent internet? I mean, honestly, I could

22:15 live anywhere in the world. I just need like internet and like some sort of gym, you know, that's pretty much it. And so I found a gym, but internet was definitely an issue. Yeah. It was tough,

22:25 but some of the good things that came out of it was extreme delegation, like a year and a half ago, 'cause we were in Visa Hermosa for a year and a half. A year and a half ago, like I was the main

22:37 point of contact for almost the entire team. And like now we have a hierarchy and we have a chain of command Yeah, and kind of forced you. To figure out your systems and processes and delegation

22:48 right which is really good because we're entrepreneurs as you know It's like that's it's so hard to delegate cuz you're you're always in this battle like why can't just do it? I can do it faster and

22:55 better. Yeah It's actually funny like Julie Frances really struggles with that and actually you and Julie have like very similar. Yeah, person like skill sets personalities and so Like for me, I'm

23:07 like do the best part of being an entrepreneur is hiring other people to do the work I'm like take it take it all and so I have like kind of the weighted towards the opposite end of that but I mean

23:18 when you know people like you and Julie are so like you're a great executor and just get shit done and you do really high quality work and so yeah like I could see struggling with that where it's like

23:30 not only can I do it better but I can also do it faster and so kind of pigeonholes you into getting stuck into that. It's something that I'm working on for sure because I mean I still like one of our

23:41 team leads had mentioned this the other day and the elevator at the office in Montreal, she's like, you know. Sometimes you have like some serious like like it's almost like reality distortion with

23:49 like timelines. They're very unrealistic but you know my Let me defend you real quick. Yes, because I do it for myself. I was gonna yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let me do it for you

24:01 That's how you make shit happen like is by having I mean a lot of people like to bash Elon for Having these unrealistic timelines But look at what Elon has been able to achieve and it's because they

24:12 you know they push themselves and Even you know a few weeks ago. We said okay. We have eight weeks until the end of the year What's the important work for the next eight weeks and? one of the one

24:23 of the Goals was to get a thousand hours of content into our content library and I said that's not good enough said 3, 000 hours And you're like dude, they just passed it like there we go push

24:35 people. Yeah Yeah, I said like you raise the bar and even if you come up short You're probably better off than what that original conservative goal was so I think that there's some tension there,

24:46 like you got to, you got to balance that and not make things just, you know, extremely unrealistic, but it's that window, you know, and I think, um, as, as CEOs as leaders, leaders of a

24:57 company, like we do, maybe, you know, we aim for the stars, but I think that that is a good thing, yeah, to your point, yeah, um, because if we don't push our teams who will, right, like

25:07 if you just take someone on their word and like, well, that can't be done, I'm going to do what I can, if you just take them on that, then it'll always be just whatever that is, that's probably

25:15 going to be mediocre, right? Yeah. So finding that balance of like how much to push, but not so much that it's demotivating if you can continuously hit, you know, miss your mark. Yeah, you

25:24 don't want to keep failing. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, that's what you need some wins and be like, oh shit, we crushed that. And so that's what I was getting at is like, you don't want to, you

25:32 don't want to set such high targets to where you're constantly, um, but it's wild because now, you know, you got me thinking like when we, when we first started, we turned out a website in like

25:43 three to four weeks. Like maybe even like, and that was like to the moon for me. I was like, why is this taking so long? It should take like a week, you know? And now, like now we have a

25:53 process in place and like the product is so much better, but it's like three months. And so I would still say that we're much quicker than most of our competitors. Yeah. Are the levels good? Yeah,

26:05 you're good. Okay. I'm checking my timer over here. I usually sit on that side so I can't see. I'm upside down over here looking at the board We're 30 minutes in. So yeah, I mean, so, you know,

26:17 when we first started, like the designer was

26:21 the engineer that would develop a site. Okay. And for a while that was me. Yeah. Right. And so you become the copywriter, you become the graphic designer. But the thing is like the product then

26:33 versus now, it's not even close. I was chatting with our VP of operations two days ago. I'm like, you know, Kat, like the stuff that is coming of midnight today is just like. I would hold it

26:45 against anyone, you know? And

26:47 this is not like me drinking our Kool-Aid. Like now, like we went from like good to like this stuff is great. Yeah. And

26:56 the bar for the team is so high now and it's so obvious when something falls short, you know? Sticks out, yeah. Yeah, and we're the same with the team too. It's like very obvious when we bring

27:08 someone on if they're gonna connect within the first couple of weeks, we just know if it's gonna, you know, vibe. Yeah, he always, you know, going back to talking about that lady from New York

27:19 that wants to move down here, I was like, man, I'm really nervous about that. It's like, let's work a little bit. 'Cause like, you know within the first two weeks if someone's gonna fit or not.

27:26 I mean, it's pretty obvious, but if

27:30 you raise the bar for the talent that you're bringing on, it makes sense to me that you can also see the bar raise for the quality of work, each all are putting out as well I mean, you'll put out

27:41 amazing work now and You know, for, and it's actually funny, I wrote this post today about bootstrapping versus funding and like the challenges of bootstrapping because it's fucking hard, but

27:51 you've bootstrapped this company and have grown up within cash flow. So congrats because that's fucking, it's an incredible feat to do that and fucking hard. And I appreciate people that do it.

28:04 And you've built this amazing team. You all got sick office. Love y'all's, the design of y'all's office. I think that it looks amazing And so, you know, talk a little bit kind of about that.

28:17 Just anyone else that's out there that's bootstrapping, you know, some of the challenges that you've had to work through and how you've overcome those to build a great team and culture and

28:28 ultimately a product. Well, yeah. I mean, to timestamp this episode, congrats to the walk-outers. 25 million raised. Thank you, man. Appreciate it, dude. That's awesome And so, yeah, you

28:40 wrote this post, um, and. It was interesting because it's true. When you're bootstrapping, you might not be able to hire the best talent 'cause there's gonna be a higher salary cap for that. And

28:56 you actually kind of alluded to that earlier when you're talking about the talent here in Houston, coming from oil and gas companies, the unit economics didn't work out for you. So you had to get

29:07 creative and say, Okay, I have to go somewhere elseto where I can make the unit economics work out Yeah, and

29:15 everyone's path is different. We got, again, we got lucky. I attribute

29:26 a lot of this to luck. So we got lucky in the sense that we, our customers, pay for our business, right? And they vote every month. We don't sign contracts. So every single customer at midnight

29:35 is on a month to month contract. That's impressive. Yeah, and, you know, times like I like living on hard mode. Yeah, well, sometimes it can be challenging 'cause the year end is usually when

29:47 businesses make decisions whether to try out another year or go different back up budgets, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But again, just focusing on like the customer experience, like I think creating a

29:59 cancellation policy that's very easy to get up. If you're in a position where you wanna cancel with a company, making it more difficult for them is probably not optimal, right? Well, I think one

30:09 thing that it forces y'all to do is to be customer obsessed. And I was reading this memo from Jeff Bezos the other day and he was talking about this day one philosophy that Amazon has. And someone

30:22 asked what happens on day two and he said day two is the day that your company dies. And he's like, the reason that we're always able to be in day one is because we're so customer obsessed that

30:30 we're constantly innovating because we can always do better to server our customer and so staying in this day one mindset. the way that you have your contract structure kind of forces you to stay in

30:42 this day one mindset because you have to constantly deliver value or else they're not gonna renew with me, right? And so it's kind of this forced customer success plan. It holds us accountable and

30:54 it makes us earn our customer's business every single month to innovate on our services. Going back to not having to raise, we're lucky enough that we haven't

31:06 There's enough orifices to go through as an entrepreneur that having to find investors is just one that we haven't needed to do. But it's not off the table for the future. We just haven't been able

31:19 to do it and I like the freedom of not having to answer it. We can change our model operationally and not have to answer to anyone. Yeah, you say fluid, you can pivot, make decisions. And we

31:32 just did, like we just made a huge operational change like a month ago And there's just no one to talk to about that. other than us trying things out and being very transparent with the panel,

31:41 we're trying. Yeah, no, I think that's actually one of the biggest benefits. The same bootstrap is the ability to stay agile and ultimately do what you want and do the, make the decisions that

31:52 are right for the business that no one knows better than yourself, right? And so, but

32:13 yeah, you know, I just think that there's this huge debate over on Twitter, like what's better bootstrap versus funded. And there's always, like it's not black, it's not black and white It's

32:13 like depends on like so many different variables. And I was like, you know, I've lived through both. It's like there's pros and cons to both. And really actually kind of yet to sometimes work

32:19 backwards and determine what is the outcome. And, you know, it's also like, I'm, I think someday, I'll start a company that's at the intersection of robotics and AI, because some of the

32:31 companies I'm watching a day, like I'm so inspired by them. I'm like, man, this would be fucking cool to be building this stuff. Like this is this is I mean deep tech that you need capital to go

32:41 do and so you know It's just very much depends on on the business and a million different other variables But I would I always do laugh about is the people are always like oh you should just bootstrap

32:54 or people have never bootstrapped a company before and so they don't understand like the pain that you've gone through to Yeah, thanks. So I mean look it of course it could be very stressful, right?

33:05 You've been through it too. It could be very stressful. Yeah I have to like you're you're counting on what people on what your customers are paying for. Yeah Yeah, but I will say that I think you

33:14 and I have both seen you know startups in the industry when they do get a raise Someone with the first thing they do is like the founders spend too much money and like they Sometimes over paper talent

33:26 and like kudos to people who have gotten great jobs and startups and be able to be a part of that wave Yeah But like you know, you know if like you might be being overpaid and like yeah You and I

33:36 have probably heard some salaries. You know, like, oh, that's not what like, yeah. If you're making like 180 as like a junior graphic designer, like that's probably out of scope. Yeah, that's

33:45 awesome. I mean, there's good markets for knowing, you know what, what talent should be compensated at, right? And it does make it tough when you're bootstrapping. And, you know, there's just

33:58 startups that may have a lot of funding or bigger companies, like oil and gas companies that like, oh, we would, you know, we need a good graphic designer. This midnight marketing company over

34:08 here has some, and I pick them off. I was laughing the other day 'cause Shell put out an events manager position, and I actually told Sydney about it. And like, they're paying like a quarter

34:16 million dollars, like 250, 000 cash and all the benefits. For a single salary. Yeah, and it's probably to fucking do like some golf events, like probably way less work than what she does here.

34:27 I told her about that. She's like, Why are you telling me about this right now? I was like, Yeah, don't leave me, please. Was it 250 OTE or was it

34:37 250? I don't remember.

34:40 Yeah, I don't remember. But I mean, it was, what is nice about bootstrapping and like you guys have done it up until now, right? It's like, it does force you to be very resourceful with minimal

34:50 resources and like, that's a skill set. Yeah, you know, on my, over on my Twitter, I put, what are the, some of the pros of bootstrapping? And one was,

34:60 I'm gonna pull out my Twitter real quick. I'm gonna read it for you.

35:04 One was along those lines. Give me just a second here. It's like, you can hear the crickets as I'm looking. So some of the benefits of bootstrapping, limited resources, forces, creativity.

35:17 Yeah. You actually think about the unit economics, what you've done. You organically discover path of least resistant and product commercialization, what you talked about, having these three

35:29 products. or services that you guys found that through feedback loops. And then an obvious one is maintaining ownership and control. So it's like we talked about all of those in this episode. No,

35:42 it's so, and it's, oftentimes when I reflect on this, it's like, there was, again, there was no master plan on this. It just, it really is that feedback loop. Listening to the clients,

35:51 making adjustments. We've got it wrong plenty of times, man. Yeah. We've had some major screw ups Yeah. List reputable brand names, you know? It's just part of it. Yeah, we're in it for the

36:04 long game, you know? And it's, it makes us better. Yeah, I mean, you know, for us, like this year, like little disappointed on certain things, really excited on other things. And always, I

36:18 take a lot of inspiration from Jeff Bezos' memos. So this is the second time I'm on my rant. So this is all I do in my spare time I just have to say those memos, but remember, uh. Actually, no,

36:28 it's just, I've heard Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs both say this, like, we don't care if we have a back quarter. Like, we're not building a business based on quarters. We're here for the long term.

36:38 Yeah. And it's all right. If you have a back quarter, if you have a bad year, you have, you know, mistakes, bad interactions, like that's part of it. And you have to zoom out and think about

36:48 the long term. And a lot of times in the long term, these little micro things, they don't matter. So yeah, we're here for the long game. It can be challenging. Like, look, the, you know,

36:59 we've been in business for three and a half years. The first two and a half, we're just like rocket ship, like crazy, right? Like growing so quick. And this last year has been like a reflection

37:09 year, like really dialing in our workflows. Because you could have the best skilled people, but without really good workflows and communication, like you can't amplify those efforts. And so now

37:19 we've been able to do that. Yeah. Our leadership team, Katrina, Allison, rage star, like they've been so. instrumental in making this happen. And now it's the system is just so agile and quick.

37:34 I love it, love it. Yeah, so. Yeah, that's what we're actually tomorrow. We're going to first session of US. implementation 'cause like what I've

37:43 found in building businesses is 90 of the work is identifying the important work and getting everyone on the same page and aligned in executing on that and then the systems and processes to do it to

37:54 where you can have that efficiency because I've heard some good conversations around like people always talk about speed as important startups, but everyone can be going fast in different directions

38:08 and working against each other like what you really care about is velocity because it has a vector, it has a direction. So you want everyone moving fast but in the same direction. And so the only

38:18 way that you can do that is if you have good systems and processes, the only way that you can delegate and start enjoying your life a little bit if you have good systems and processes. So, you know,

38:27 I've I actually like been really fascinated by y'all's business watching from the outside in, talking to you about the processes that y'all have because I know like those things are hard. They're

38:38 hard to get right in the type of business that you'll have where you're serving different clients, you know, different campaigns, different ideation, like it's hard. Well, it's like that one

38:51 saying, like behind everything everywhere is chaos Yeah, right,

38:57 'cause I mean, even just to your point about velocity and direction, like there are some caveats to that too, right? Like

39:05 being a startup, being a young company, like you're gonna change, you're gonna pivot, and the thing is like how much to communicate to your team because you might say something one month, but

39:14 then your goals change in a quarter, like that's very normal. But some people are like, well, but you said this. Yeah, it's hard for some people to reconcile that And also, I don't know if you

39:23 saw this, building your business, but I learned early on that. My words carry weight and I may say something that I'm not really serious about in a conversation. And then team takes it and runs

39:37 with it because I said it, and so I had to start being a little bit more reserved and my thoughts and not just letting everything flow out of my mind. And then same thing, it's like, yeah, you

39:50 may set some goals for the quarter, but I mean, quarter's a long time and start a plan. And so things may change the next month There were so in tune right now, because a couple trips back when I

40:02 was in Montreal, I had said something to one of our team members and one of our leaders pulled me aside and said, hey, when you said this, you're not just

40:13 one of the team members now. Now it's like, you said something and it has some repercussions. And I didn't think about it. I'm like, I defended it a little bit. I'm like, wait, no, this

40:22 person's totally right. It's 100. I'm trying to get myself away from being in those types of positions or just being more thoughtful with like, you know, your words do have impact. Yeah, more

40:32 selective and thoughtful of what words you put out there. Because people are listening, you know, and yeah, I had another conversation with someone we first opened the office a year and a half ago

40:43 in Montreal. One of our marketing cords had reached out to me recently and just said, when you gave that, like that speech, like you gave like a little welcome speech to like our office and a new

40:55 era, we were only 10 in the office at the time. And he was like, that was so motivating. Like that changed my perspective on like the company. And you know, like I didn't think anything of it.

41:06 I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think anything of it. It's like, wow. Okay. So, so going back to your point, too, like, yeah, there's been times where, so I just recorded this video

41:15 that was released at a social octane event. And it's like a, what felt like several hours of footage boiled down to like an hour, like a minute or two. like hours being in that scene and I said so

41:27 many like if that footage is released as like I'm in trouble because there's so much in there that doesn't even make sense and it's you know it's the marriage of being all you know being recorded but

41:38 that's the footage I'm gonna get my hands on it oh one of our video editors all right yeah I'm a back channel I said some like silly things but it's like I'm also learning to keep things in check and

41:48 like our you know yeah yeah but what I will say is like that the team is just going back to like being in Mexico for a year and a half and delegation the team is just phenomenal now it's like like

41:59 truly if something happened to me like midnight wouldn't die whereas keep running yeah like a year and a half ago like probably not but now especially now that we have like business development in

42:09 place and like yeah things are working in that direction yeah I've been able to remove myself from this that's awesome and now really look at like the growth and now that I'm back in Houston I feel

42:19 the rumblings of what's coming yeah yeah I'm I'm sure you're energized being back here. You know, this is the energy capital of the world. So lots of opportunity here, ma'am. But dude, I'm super

42:31 pumped to have y'all back here. Not just you, you and Macy, back in, back in town. It was house looks beautiful. Can't wait to come visit it. Y'all built an office in the backyard? Is that

42:41 what you're doing? Yes. Dude, I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need a place to work. You're not at your office in your backyard. Oh, a little cave back there. Yeah. I only have my little

42:48 cot, like Jake, my little cot. Like, I'm never leaving. This is my new house. That'll be it. Well, dude, if anyone's listening and they want to reach out to midnight, where can they find you

43:00 guys? Midnightmarketingcom. Easy enough, midnightmarketingcom. We'll leave a link to it in the show notes. So, you guys can check it out in the show notes. You can also find Tim over on

43:10 LinkedIn, Instagram, all your favorite social media platforms. So, dude, appreciate you coming in, man. It's good to have you here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, y'all enjoyed this episode.

43:21 Please share it with a friend. If you need marketing help in the energy industry, highly recommend reaching out to Tim and Tim at Midnight Marketing.