Blockbuster’s story is a cautionary tale filled with lessons-learned that was written by one of the oil industry’s very own. Like so many companies in the ensuing decades, this is yet another story of the digital land grab gone wrong. The company used to have 60,000 employees and 9,000 stores worldwide with a market value of $5 billion and revenues of $5.9 billion. Today, Blockbuster is a bankrupt relic of the past. A business school case study on how to do everything wrong when it's time to keep pace with the increasing rate of change around you. So it should come as no surprise Blockbuster was founded by an oilman. The Digital Land Grab Only An Oilman Could Miss When things were blowing and going in the early '80s, David Cook lived in Dallas, Texas. He wrote computer programs to manage inventory for large oil and gas companies. When the market collapsed in 1985, his wife Sandy suggested they jump in on the surging VHS rental market. They went from unpaid invoices to ...
Tribe Rocket Inc. Blog
Tribe Rocket Inc. is an oil and gas media company. When we are not building and monetizing our audience, we are helping brands build their audience to sell them things.
Marketing in the Oilfield: How to Close Your NAPE Summit ’17 Leads
If you attended NAPE Summit 2017 in Houston, Texas last week you saw a plethora of tactics for marketing in the oilfield. Jesse Hejny from Purple Land Management had a fishbowl overflowing with business cards thanks to the irresistible allure of in-booth back massages. Drillinginfo hosted talks throughout the day on subjects ranging from oil prices to operator benchmarking and oilfield investing. They collected contact information from attendees and have already sent out the decks from every presentation. Not to be outdone, outsourced accounting consultant Lisa Hanz had a straight-up hula hoop performer in her booth. Hey, whatever gets your attention, right? But whether you got business cards with back massages, technical presentations, or hula hoops what do you do now? The obvious answer is to follow-up, but how? What can you do to turn your NAPE Summit 2017 leads into deals? We're going to answer all of these questions, but before we get into the follow-up we have to lay ...
Oil Addiction Fiction: Epstein on Glenn Beck (Video & Transcript)
Oil addiction fiction isn't a new phenomena in the US. The number of people who believe the miracle product that doubles life expectancy and improves human life is. Our friend Alex Epstein was recently on Glenn Beck. He took this myth to the woodshed. Since oil addiction fiction has spread so rampantly through the American psyche we decided to have our friends at CabbageTree Solutions transcribe the interview. If you know anyone who believes the false narrative about oil and gas, send them this link! You can click here to automatically share it on Twitter. Enjoy! Oil Addiction Fiction: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Alex Epstein talks to Glenn Beck https://www.youtube.com/embed/YqHB0X_r_Kw Oil Addiction Fiction Transcript Glenn: Welcome to the program. This is the second day in a row we have had a person from California in our midst that makes a lot of sense. Now, I can’t vouch for him yet. And I’m sitting between The Tale of Two Cities right here. I got Stu in ...
Tesla’s Solar Roof is a Ticking Economic Time Bomb
The mortgage boom of the early 2000's is always told as a story of greedy banks pushing derivative investments. But, it takes two to tango and that's not the whole story. The rest of the story belongs to the borrowers. It's not fashionable to hold people responsible for their actions today, but if we don't learn the lessons of 2008 I'm afraid we're doomed to repeat them thanks to "Tony Stark" himself. No, not Ghostface Killah. While he is the only person worthy of the moniker besides the actual character (why I used quote marks above), in this case, we're talking about Elon Musk. But, what does Elon Musk have to do with the borrowers that contributed to the world financial collapse of 2008? Running the Numbers The moment Musk unveiled the Tesla solar roof, the world rejoiced. It was heralded as another brilliant move by the world's most brilliant man. Okay, I'll bite. Let's do the math. According to Roofing Calculator, the average home roof costs $9,000- $14,000 to ...
Oil Industry Recruitment: The One Thing Airswift is Missing
Oil industry recruitment is a multi-billion dollar industry. January 20th, 2016 Air Energi and Swift Worldwide Resources formally merged together to become Airswift, one of the largest business staffing companies in the US. By all accounts, the merger was a success. At the beginning of 2016, the company was expected to generate over $1.2 billion a year in revenue. From a branding perspective, they did a great job combining the companies. Before After Likewise, the new website has an exceptionally clean look and feel. A quick Inspect shows us they're using Hero Font, which offers a smooth and modern aesthetic that's nice and easy on the eyes. Anyone who has hired us to build out their sales-driven marketing process knows we are big fans of tools like Font Awesome and Dashicons. Airswift did a great job using icons like this to illustrate the company's story. If that's not good enough, you're also looking at five different conversion paths here. ...
Oil Company Slogans: How to Grow Market Share with Great Taglines
If you're an oilman, I'm willing to bet you spend roughly zero time thinking about oil company slogans. If you're like a lot of oilmen, you don't even have a company tagline. Which is a YUGE mistake. Think about it. Most of the time, your good business acquaintances don't fully understand how you can help them until you sit down and talk it out. With no tagline, you make it even harder for prospects to figure out what you do, and if you can help. In short, you leave money on the table when you don't understand oil company slogans. Let's look at why that's the case, and how you can create or improve the tagline you're working with today. Oil Company Slogans: Making History It's true not everyone in the industry has great oil company slogans, but when they're good they're historic. ExxonMobil gives us one of the greatest examples in the oilfield. Ever heard the tagline, "Put a tiger in your tank"? That's obviously a silly question. It ranks right up there with Nike's "Just ...
Selling Oilfield Services: 5 Ways Pros Build Trust and Close Deals
Selling oilfield services in 2017 is nothing like it was in 2007, and it's certainly nothing like it was in 1987. Unfortunately, amateurs across the industry still sell like we're in the Commodore 64 era. These amateurs stumble around aimlessly hoping the next big deal will save their jobs. I know, I used to be one of them. No one thing happened that made me suddenly become a professional seller. Sandler Sales Training helped (a lot). Linking up with the oil and gas sales expert himself, Mr. Mark LaCour, was another stepping stone. Content marketing certainly played a pivotal role as well. But, while I can't point to one event or tactic made it all click, a handful of things have made all the difference. Here are five of them. Selling Oilfield Services: Turning Pro #1 Stop Caring If you are in sales, your job is not to close every sale. Your job is to close every sale that makes sense. You have to go into every meeting prepared – even happy – to walk away ...
Oilfield Music: The Definitive Directory of the Best Songs in Oil & Gas
If you work in the oilfield, you love you some oilfield. Naturally, every now and again you think, "I need me some oilfield music!" But when you Google any variation on "oilfield music" you come up with a handful of short articles filled with broken links and only a few songs. What gives?! We saw this gaping hole in the market and decided it was time to fill it once and for all. Thus, we are thrilled to bring you the Definitive Oilfield Music Directory! Bookmark this page. We'll be adding to the directory each week. If you don't have a Spotify account yet, you're going to want to fix that problem. Click here to fix that problem now. Just get the premium account. It's $9.99 after a 30-day free trial. That's 10 bucks a month to basically own all the music ever created, especially those CDs someone stole in college and the record collection your kids destroyed. I'm not even getting paid to say that. I'm just an audiophile who's addicted to music. I have taken the liberty to ...
Oilfield Theft: 3 Ways to Steal Great Ideas & Grow Your Bottom Line
Oilfield theft is a serious problem. Inside Energy penned an article back in 2015 where the FBI-led Oilfield Theft Task Force in Midland said they were, "...averaging between $400,000 and $800,000 a month in theft." Companies like PetroCloud and Pedigree Technologies offer strong solutions to help battle the onslaught of oilfield theft ne'er do wells looking to get their dirty paws on your goods. Unfortunately for them, they can't stop me. And neither can you, copper! Yeah, see! You’ll never catch me, see! The greatest thing about marketing is you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. It’s all been done before and much better than you could ever do. All you have to do is find companies that are killing it, and copy what they do. This post is going to show you exactly how to steal ideas from the top companies in the industry. Oceans 12 ain’t gonna have nothing on you! But, before we go too far down this road, let’s make one thing abundantly clear; it is NEVER OKAY to steal ...
Future Price of Oil: How to Succeed When Prices Stay Low
The future price of oil is back in the news, this time with a new twist. Seeking Alpha posted an article yesterday quoting Continental’s Harold Hamm: "(U.S. oil production) is going to have to be done in a measured way, or else we kill the market." I've had a sneaking suspicion we were headed this way for quite some time. I feared the moment prices started to rebound, we would ramp up production so fast we would essentially kill the recovery. It looks I might be right, which (surprisingly) isn't the first time - more on this in a minute. In short, here's my hot take on the future price of oil: $45 - $55/bbl is the new normal, but don’t be surprised if it’s far lower for far longer. Between America's ability to turn ramp-up shale production at the drop of a dime, our inability to take a "measured" approach to drilling, and the proliferation of shale technology around the world, we are looking at a global oversupply as far as the eye can see. The good news is oil ...