Jace Graham on Oil and Gas Industry Leaders Podcast | Ep 192

[Music] Double your rate of failure, okay? I wish I would have failed faster earlier. What you tend to find is that, you know what? You figure out a way to persevere and get through. The other thing is, I would say, is have a mindset of a creator and not a victim. [Music] The oil and gas industry, the driving engine of the world economy, delivering prosperity, innovation and abundance across the globe. Here are the stories of its key players, directly from the leaders themselves. This is oil and gas industry leaders podcast, where real experiences are passed on from the leaders of today to the leaders of tomorrow. Here is your host, Paige Wilson. Welcome back to another episode of Oil and Gas Industry Leaders podcast, sponsored by IFS. Every era of oil and gas has its turning point, and right now that shift is industrial AI. IFS focuses on applying AI to complex, asset-heavy operations and helping operators reduce downtime, improve productivity, and make more informed decisions across their portfolios. Discover what's next at IFS.com. Okay, I'm sitting here today with J. Scram, Chief Executive Officer of Rising Phoenix Resources. Welcome to the show, J. Scram. Let's talk about how you got started in the oil and gas industry. Oh, Paige, I appreciate you having me on the show. Really excited to visit with you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, let's jump right in. I'm a fourth generation oil and gas professional. Paige sounds like we've got something in common there. Yeah. My father was an independent operator, so I grew up, I grew up on a rig out in big lake, Texas. Ooh, I was a young boy while my dad was doing some prospecting, but be honest, we really didn't gravitate to the business until after I graduated from college and started my work as a landman. In fact, I could not get a job back then in the Barnett shale. This was kind of the first shale play that was getting developed, and they were only hiring experienced landmen back then, and this would have been 2003. So I got a job up in Northeast flat part of Colorado as a kind of an intern landman, and was getting paid a hundred bucks a day plus per DM. I thought I was the best thing ever out of college, but I had a great mentor, Jerry Ryan, that had been in the business for about 45 years. He taught me how to run title and negotiate leases, and so I did that for a couple of years before moving down to Texas and cutting my teeth on some harder title in East Texas, and then did a little stand-up in Oklahoma before ultimately joining up with my father at Palo Petroleum, where we did a lot of leasing activity in the Barnett shale, started putting mineral deals together. Also did quite a few drilling deals with the Mountain West Texas, did a heavy oil drilling project. I guess that was the closest thing to wildcating, as I can imagine. My old man was a true wildcater, we did a heavy oil project up in Fort Scott, Missouri, in 2010, where we were drilling about 200 feet deep and going about two miles horizontally, injecting steam horizontally to recover heavy oil. Paige, I've seen a lot of the business from operations to non-op, to leasehold, to minerals, to you name it. In fact, when we were doing our minerals, mineral buying in 2005 to about 2010 in the Barnett, we ended up buying 12,000 quarter acreed lots. Yeah, I was a young man then. That's a young man's game for sure, a young woman's game. Quarter acre by quarter acre, we had a team of about 20 landmen that I oversaw that were going out and basically picking up minerals under rooftops. And but aggregated about a 4,000 net mineral acre position that me and my brothers still own today. Fast forward into 2016, I started rising Phoenix. I really wanted to focus in on the mineral and the multi-sided of the business initially. I did my first fund with just some friends of mine. Back in 2018, took that fund full cycle, delivered about a 1.4 net to our investors in about 18 months on a PDP heavy fund. And that was what got us started at rising Phoenix on kind of our mineral fund strategy. But today we've got multiple verticals. I've got a real estate investment firm. We do hard money lending, private mortgages, fixed inflips on homes. We have a mineral company that buys and sells minerals. We've got a capital company that we raise capital from high net worth. Based on three different strategies at debt, bond strategy, at income and a gross strategy. So we're fully integrated. We got a lot going on over at rising Phoenix. But it all kind of stems back to oil and gas. It goes early days. I remember with my father out there on a rig and on the shoulder of a giant. What a great experience you had to have had to get spend that time with your failing. Yeah, no. It was phenomenal. My dad was, they don't make them like this anymore. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2019. But he was in the office with the Mahogany Wood, smuck and cigarettes. You can come in at your own risk. He had a sign on the front door that would even say that. But he would put good mineral and drilling deals together. So I just learned like how to be transparent with your investors. How to put a good deal together. How to do a quarterback in after payout sign. We get paid after our investors do. And we carry that same approach with our investments today. I just got to learn the right way of doing it. Obviously, there's dry holes involved, but more hits and lends and failures and losses. But definitely have my scars. But definitely got to learn on the shoulder of a giant. That'd be my farm. Yeah, yeah. I think we all have those scars. It's a risky industry. And we just got to live and learn and make it through. Speaking of that, what made you actually want to start your own company? Because that's a lot. I wish I had a pretty story. Me and my father were a lot alike. And so family business is going to be complicated. And I made a call in 2016 that I wanted to go out on my own and start my own company and really focus on minerals. But I also was interested in real estate. I'd done some smaller real estate deals in my early 20s. And really, like that side of the business, I wanted to explore that as well. And so by leaving a real money thing, I found that no one really told me what to do. But I had to wake up every morning and figure out how to make money and how to put food on the table per se and make it all works. But no, it was something that I just naturally have always been entrepreneurial from a kid. It was raised in an entrepreneurial family, if you will. And that would unfold far from the tree. It was my time. I got to work with my own man for about 12 years, learned a time. And then when it was time, I felt that I needed to go, which was my own wings. And that's what I did. That's awesome. That's great. Let's get into the leadership portion. Chase, what is leadership to you? That's a great question. It's decisiveness under uncertainty. It's conviction, adaptability, clarity of division. There are so many things that I see as leadership, radical transparency, leading by example, relentless execution. There's this leadership. It's not easy. It's not for everybody. People think they want to start a company and all that. But really, you really have to understand that when you bring people on underneath you and under your team, you're a shepherd. And you got to do the right thing. And you're also got other people involved in their families and all that stuff. I think you have to have resilience and grit. To be a good leader, you have to be able to identify and recognize phenomenal talent and be able to delegate that responsibilities and not try to be the key person involved all the time to find the right people to smarter people in the room. And it's also not having all the answers and being vulnerable. And being able to say, hey, you guys, I screwed up. And I'm not always right. But at the end of the day, I've got to make a call. And I'm going to make the best call that I can based on what I know. That's great. Yeah. So what is an example of a difficult situation that you've been in as a leader? I'm going to speak that we're going to get vulnerable here on page. I'm going to be honest with you. One of my right-hand gals has been when me since inception just left about two weeks ago. Oh, wow. This is someone that's been in the trench of me since day one helped me build the operational side of the businesses. And so what I realized, what's tough is that the journey that you put together, the mission that you put in play, unfortunately not everybody's going to be there at the end when you're on top of the mountain, at the top of the mountain. Being able to understand that when people are on your bus at that particular time, you have to pour into them as much as possible, but they're not always going to be on the bus. And understanding that. And while it hurts, and I truly, genuinely love this person as an individual and for their family, all that kind of stuff, nothing, but not one person can slow down the mission of what we're trying to do at rising Phoenix. So that's always a tough one. It's just the people that tend to come and go and the leader is always going to be there pressing forward and doing what has to get done. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of a culture shock, right? Because she loves them. She's been there since forever. Yeah, it is. There were some things that had you in play, and she's having her second child. And so there's some things, just different things in life came up, and we had to adjust, and we have to pivot and work around things. There's people that could come in and fill roles and all that. But at the same time, it's never easy to have someone that you truly enjoy being around, that you trust, you know, laterally, that it was no longer with you. It's definitely something that's never easy for a leader to comprehend. Yeah, speaking on the ladder, what is the most rewarding thing about leadership? It's back to the people. For me, I like to see the transformation in the person. Seeing someone that joins our sales team, day one, they're kind of timid. They're not as sure as about what we're doing, how we do it, to fast forward six months, nine months, 12 months later, the confidence, the just understanding the wherewithal of kind of what's going on, and ultimately what that drives is ultimately on take home. So seeing them make good money, and go on these really cool trips, and all that kind of stuff. Once you've done hundreds, if not thousands of deals, I think we've done over a thousand real-estate transactions over the last five years. Obviously, I told you we did 12,000 quarter acre acquisitions. It's no longer about the deals page deals come and go. It's really the transformation of the team and the people. And I can tell my team is like, when you're on our bus, when you're on this bus at Rising Phoenix, we're gonna pour 110% into you. And we'd like to see people change. Not only in the business world, but also in life. We really work with people about what's your will of life look like? Do you look at that? Do you have goals in other aspects of just career? Career is one piece of it. And so we talk about that. It's not always about career. Where else can we get better as humans and show up better as a husband, as a spouse, as a friend, you name it? So we work on that. We meet about that. We have one-on-ones and talk about that kind of stuff. So to me, to see, and like I say, if someone ends up evolving and moving on, seeing the best for them, that's where really where the targets are out for me is just seeing that evolution. 'Cause at the end of the day, and it's about the experiences you've had. - Yeah, that's amazing. You got pretty deep on me right there. (laughs) That's fantastic. I don't know who wouldn't want that in a career. So that's fantastic. Do you have a piece of advice that you could give our audience? - Yeah, I fell forward faster. (laughs) Double your rate of failure, okay? - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - A creator is always thinking of ways to improve, get better. It's never somebody else's fault. That was a phenomenal lesson that I'm gonna take to the next problem. Victims tend to blame, tend to point fingers. It's not fair. I didn't get the learning lesson. I didn't understand. I didn't get the education. That's a victim mindset. And so I just think that you need to have that creator mindset to really just take on what's coming at you and find the best out of it. 'Cause we're always learning and practicing. - Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one that all those excuses and stuff can really put you behind. - It's just negative energy. - Yeah, that too. - At the end of the day, none of us are getting out of this place alive. - Right, yeah. - So I'm just gonna go full speed, no helmet. That's what my dad used to say. And we're gonna figure out, we're gonna make some mistakes, but we're gonna break some eggs. But you know what, we're gonna have a fun doing it. And we're gonna probably learn more along the way and have more fun and be around people like that. That's the other thing. It's circling the iceberg surrounding yourself with people like that. Imagine being in a room full of creators. When I go to masterminds, real estate masterminds, I'm in a couple of them that are very high in masterminds. And I'm in a room where everybody is getting everybody better. And everyone's sharpening the blade. It's just awesome. - That is great. That is so great. Do you have a book that is influencing you? - A couple. Let's go one more tactical if you will from a business standpoint. We want our business around a model called EOS, entrepreneurial operating system. The book is called Traction by Geno Weckman. Game changer for me. It really shows you how to run any business very systematically and very organized. Talking about scorecards and metrics to the cadence of the meeting, the level 10, to the quarterly conversations, to the annual planning, to the VTO, to you name it. So anybody out there that's looking to start a business, you need to have a framework that you're operating around. Just showing off, having meetings, and thinking that running a business is not the right way. What Traction did is it really gave me a framework. And it's applicable for anything, whether you want to run a restaurant or do a nonprofit, but it provides a framework for you and your team to operate under and around that we've been doing since we started this company back in 2016. So that's one from a very technical, just tactical, I say standpoint, from business. But what I really like is, "Entrary Leadership" by Dave Ramsey, phenomenal book. Dave Ramsey does a great job of just combining the entrepreneurship with leadership and how to be a good leader while being an entrepreneur. And I just think that's a great one. If you take those two books and you have like layer in with Traction being the kind of fundamentals, the technical, the way to do it. And then layer in this entrepreneurship feel good approach with how to run the business. It's a recipe for success. - That's great, yeah. I have never heard a complaint about David Ramsey's anything. - Yeah, I'm not making about cut up your credit cards and all that kind of stuff. That's not really my jam, but he does a phenomenal job on the entrepreneurship side. It's a whole different business line that he has that I really gravitate towards. - Yeah. What would you say is your most used business tool? - Most use business rule. Don't do deals with business. - Our tool. - Oh, tool. Business rules, don't do deals with bad people. I'd say that this is a tool that I really like right now is a couple of them. Obviously with AI and what's going on, everybody's using chat GPT. We've really kind of played with some stuff within chat. There's ways that you can build your own GPT. Okay, think about like it's your own knowledge base. So let me give you a couple of examples. For my sales teams, teams plural, whether it's my minimal team, my real estate team, or my capital raising team, they've got individual sales coaches, okay? Where the knowledge base, we load up all the knowledge base. Here's what we're looking for, a good discovery call. Here are the things that we're looking for. Here's the kind of the methodology that we're trying to drive, all that kind of stuff. And then our team then uses those GPTs, almost like sales coaches, where they can pop in transcripts, they can pop in emails, and they're graded and given kind of good immediate feedback in real time on how they can get better based on the processes that we've uploaded. So that's a unique way to be using chat GPT versus just dropping in and creating threads. I really like that. I also have that on my investor relations side, where my investor relations team can ask questions into the GPT and get legit answers back from the PPMs and stuff. A tool that I like that's like a widget, if you will. I've got this little thing called, "plod.plaud.ud." Plod is like a meeting recorder. It attaches to your phone and I can go into any meeting and I can just record the meeting. Think about if I'm at a conference, I can record what's being said at a conference or at a mastermind. Even a phone call can be recorded. So it just allows you to pull transcripts and then it summarizes it in a manner that you can have action steps behind it. So whenever we go into team meetings, we always have them recorded. So that any sort of action step or next step item is already identified without having to do all the note-taking. But it's a note-taking tool. - Very convenient. - Yeah. - I don't know if this isn't applicable, but who would you say is your most respected competitor? - We operate with abundance, mentality versus scarcity. What I love is like, when you think of competitors, like we share best practices. Imagine that. So I've got groups, I'm just gonna name a few, Paragon, Wolf and the Boys over there at Paragon. Another group that I highly respect that also is a competitor is Tower Rock with Australas and guys like that. But instead of having the scarcity mindset and saying, "Hey, I'm gonna do all this over here and I'm not gonna tell you any of the tools and the systems and the processes and all the things that are working for me, I'm just gonna keep all that. We share all that. We share best practices. We all try to get better. There's enough for all of us. Again, I think coming in with that different mindset, I think in our industry, specifically on the mental and royalty acquisition side, everyone has always been so close to the chest. And it wasn't until I started going into these real estate masterminds that I realized that these guys could be in the same market in Dallas, Texas and they're sharing best practices. Like why are they doing that? And what was happening was both groups were getting better and they were converting more and doing more deals. So it's like they had the tide rises all ships. So I bring on the competition, and if they're welcome to having a conversation, then we're welcome to sharing what we do and how we do it. Because I know there's gonna be a nugget that they benefit from and vice versa. And so we've just started doing these mineral man lunches where we come in and we sit down and have lunch and we literally were excited to share like what Plods doing in our business or what AI is doing or how we can apply this or what does this scorecard look like? So I don't really look at it that way, Paige, but I think there's definitely competition out there but we like to share resources and stuff. - That's lovely. That really is lovely to see everyone working together. - We still go out and it's funny. We'll still get deals where all of a sudden Wolf over a pair of them will give me a call and be like, hey, are you talking that Sally may over in Borden County? Am I, yep, we're not gonna do that. We'll figure out, I'll either stand down or it'll happen from time to time but there's just plenty of sandbox versus all the plans, still get deals done. - Yeah, of course, but what makes you better than the competition? - Ooh. My good looks. Now I think our big differentiator, and this is what we've been known for since inception is our ground game. We're just heavy ground game players. I did a talk at NAEP this past year called Ground Game 2.0, but in just what it looks like but our ground game is we run a center closure model. We're very organized, our scripts are dialed, we're constantly meeting as a team and going over things and huddles, accountability, transparency, trainings, all that stuff is going on, running them through a process, a CRM, and ground game is definitely not easy but if you do it right, you stay on top of it. It's not just showing up and being a land man and being able to be able to have a good conversation on the phone, but just that relentless follow us over and over again. Neal, Bound, Cold Calling and Prospecting and Direct Mail and all that stuff organized and coordinated in a manner that actually gets deals done. It's definitely not easy, but it's definitely something that we proud ourselves on. - Yeah, fantastic. What is your most important lesson learned? I look forward to getting my-- I ask him every day, I don't know, you can connect the dots looking backwards page. I always know that it's just part of the journey. Nothing's ever gonna be easy, it doesn't feel like, even where we are where people can look and say, "God, rising Phoenix looks like Dave, a tame so much success and all that." But every day we're getting level set, we're learning, adjusting, pivoting, and trying to get better. But I surround myself with a phenomenal team. I trust them, you know, laterally, they do a great job. We have open communication. I just think they pull it all that together and tie it in kind of the leadership component that we talked about earlier, really focusing on getting better at life. It makes it just all kind of lines up in a manner that just works for us. - Fantastic. So how is your role now important to the future of the oil and gas industry? Besides the fact everybody knows what a land man is now. - Exactly, but now that that shows out there, we have to demystify some of the Hollywood. But I don't know, I think it's doing the right thing. I think it's showing up every day, putting in the time, trying to realize that it's not always gonna have the exact perfect game plan but being able to adjust and pivot, utilizing technology. What's interesting now, Paige, is that like what you've been doing in real estate, in minerals and development, that heavy oil deal I talked to you about, where we have a lot of onsite machinery. It's now setting us up to do take on this whole AI data center concepts that we're looking at here in a better part of, later part of 2026, we're gonna be pulling all the resources together across all the different verticals that we're in. And doing something pretty cool and amazing that I can't wait to talk to you about, maybe on the next podcast, and how we're stepping into the whole AI data center and it's a little bit different manner than what's being seen out there. But. - That is exciting. I'm excited to hear about it for sure. It sounds like it's different. I've had some issues with everybody just wanting to come on and talk about AI constantly. And it'd be refreshing to hear something different. Yeah, it's pulling what we know from natural gas and creating electricity and where you are within location on the grid and all that kind of stuff. But it's not some huge gigawatt facility type stuff. It's more of a smaller modular base but can definitely create some impact at scale. So we're really excited about that. So I think that's what I've learned is over the years from just different unique dynamic, fun facets of this industry that we're in page. There's just so many ways that you can do things and create business opportunities by just paying attention and learning from your past efforts. - Yeah. So what are your thoughts about telling someone about this industry that doesn't quite understand it? - Watch layman, you'll be ready to go. No, it's a phenomenal industry. I fell in love with it as a kid. I really got involved in it. Obviously as a land man, just every stage of it, running title back to Pat and in the quiet courthouse with the blind indexes and all the dust on those indexes in the base. Just learning the business from the ground up, whether that's you want to be on the engineering side or the joint development side to the land side, to the engineering side, geological side. There's just so many unique ways to get in this business. I think it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Oil and or natural gas create about 70% of the energy that's out there with AI data centers coming online, more and more, LNG coming online more and more. Us being the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, if you will. It's just, there's going to be a lot of jobs and opportunities in our space. Obviously, oil is over 100 bucks a barrel right now. There's just a lot of unique opportunities that you can come in and play in this arena. - Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a favorite podcast? - I really like Tim Powell's podcast. He's had me on a couple of times. I think he does a good job of just popping the hood on what goes on in our world as far as that's concerned. I also, I do like Dave Ramsey's Entrez Leadership Podcast. Is a good one. There's another one that I liked that's kind of fun with Russell Brunson that talks about he's a marketing genius that talks about building funnels. So if you're into marketing, I think Russell Brunson does a great job. But the one I originally listened to starting in the very beginning was Tim Ferris. He kind of changed my mindset on just how to operate, how to utilize virtual assistance, how to leverage just everything in life. And so that's always been one that I always go back to. - That's awesome. Yeah, he's been around for a long time. - Oh yeah. - All right, thanks for joining me again today, Jason. If you don't want to reach out to you and or get to know more about rising phoenix, how might they go about doing so? - We got a great website that really breaks down a lot of what we do every facet from investment opportunities if you want to invest directly with us to the different avenues that we plan at www.rising-fine xphoenix.com. And of course, you can reach out to us through that website as well. I'm also on LinkedIn at Jace_gram. - Perfect. Yeah, I sent you a request today. (laughing) - Great. - Yeah. - You're the best ones. (laughing) - That's great. Thanks again. That concludes this episode. So just remember it's up to you to open the next door. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to OGGM, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us a review and then go to OGGM.com to learn about all our other shows. And don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the oil and gas global network. (upbeat music)