The Value Of Geriatric Landmen: Evolution By Passing Down Experience

The Impetus

The other week I got an email from a young landman. We briefly met at a happy hour hosted by our company MYR Land Services and Alford O’Brien PLLC here in San Antonio. I won’t dox the kid, but he works with another landman broker here in town. He was nice enough to reach out and say that he had visited LandmanLife for the first time a few days prior and that he appreciated the content and the glimpse into the real life of a landman. I was flattered to say the least, and as soon as I get over this fucking pinkeye I intend to have the guy over to LL HQ for a couple of beers.

That interaction, although it was brief and seemingly meaningless to most people, got me thinking about what we are leaving behind for the next generation of landmen. Take a look at the content being promoted by our “industry association” the AAPL and…you A) won’t have any clue what a landman actually does, and B) would think that we are supposed to act like Realtors and maintain a professional image, work 10 hours every day, never do anything wrong and never make any mistakes. That’s just not realistic.

How My Journey Has Evolved

Back in 2020 when I started to be more open about my identity, I had spent over 10 years running LandmanLife in secret. I was afraid of how it would be perceived by the older generation. The brokers that I was working for. People I was working with. Potential clients who might be offended by some of the things I’ve said about them…or the parody swag that I made about their companies. Landowners that would get pissed I was telling a story about their insane behavior. You get the point. I had let those fears dictate my behavior, so I stayed “hidden.”

Since coming out with everything, it has been amazing to get genuine feedback from fellow landmen, a few landowners, and quite a few potential (some now current) clients. Yes, my content back when I was pseudo-anonymous was more edgy, raw, and unfiltered. That same spirit of calling a spade a spade still runs through me, but I’ve gotten older, possibly (maybe not) wiser, and a hell of a lot more refined with how I present myself to the world. Unfortunately that has resulted in less posting. I’ve shared more about my personal struggles than my professional ones. The drunken rants have toned down because…I don’t really have the time or energy for that kind of shit anymore.

My Formative Years and the Benefit of Mentors

When I got that email last week it really got me thinking about how my journey as a landman started. Looking back with 14 years of experience I can see more clearly the opportunities that I may have missed, the bullets I mostly unknowingly dodged, and I have a much greater appreciation for the older landmen that took the time to impart some of their wisdom on my young, dumb, drunk self. I still try to stay in touch with some of those people that were part of my formative years. Their contributions to my career range from small to profound, but I still appreciate all of it. J. Martin…if you ever read this, you are at the top of that list. Shawn, if you ever read this…I appreciate you too, but fucking call me back sometime bro.

Learning to be a good landman is an exercise in patience, it’s truly a journey. Soak up whatever knowledge your older peers can give you because they won’t be around forever. Lots of the “old timers” I used to work with have retired, left the industry, or sadly passed away. Pour one out for those homies. Trying to measure the impact of knowledge shared with me is something that I frankly don’t have the time to even contemplate, but I can 100% say that J. Martin was the most influential influence on my way of looking at the landman world.

He trusted his landmen to learn new skills and encouraged us to work on projects we had no experience with. Figure things out on your own, and then call for help when you hit a dead end. He didn’t hold our hands, he pushed us out into the world and let us grow on our own. There are a lot of landmen I know that are my age who would not have been able to handle that kind of freedom. “You need to know how this works, so go figure it out.” Was his attitude. He made me into the landman that I am today.

The Knowledge Passed Down

Learning how to work on old road and railroad easements was something I learned a lot about from one of the wold timers. I still occasionally run into a situation with an old railroad and can pull some shit out of the cobwebs about how the Texas Santa Fe Railroad merged with Union Pacific back in the day. Mastering the Texas RRC GIS map was something that took a long time, but I had some patient teachers. There is always an answer to your question or problem…a lot of the experience is learning how to go about finding the answer or solution. Thank you to all of the landmen that took the time to teach me.

That does not mean that I am done learning, not by a long shot. Almost every day I am learning something new, or refining some skill that I acquired years ago. The breadth of knowledge I have now is unquantifiable. Not trying to brag by any means, and I think all of you seasoned landmen will understand what I mean. My constant curiosity about this business and industry has served me well, and I know a little bit about a lot of different things. That varied, well rounded, experience ended up becoming more of an obstacle for me when I was looking for work.

Dealing With Brokers Block

Brokers wanted someone with 10 years of run sheet experience…to do run sheets. Or 5 years of leasing experience, to do leasing. 3 years of due diligence, to do due diligence. They didn’t see my overall knowledge and experience as a benefit because they looked at me as a number on a spreadsheet, a tool to get a job done. When I think about the course of my career, aside from J. Martin, no broker ever seemed to care to take the time to teach me anything about managing a project or a business. It was easier to say “stay in your lane, stop asking questions.”

That’s something that I think needs to be addressed in this industry. You see landmen that have made a successful (at least on first appearance) career being independent. They are probably not going to sit down and tell you how they did it. Maybe that’s because their journey was similar to mine, and too hard to explain or put into words. Or…maybe they just don’t want to share any of the ingredients to their secret sauce. That’s fine, and I understand. I don’t expect the guys from another brokerage to have any inclination to take the time to sit down with us and tell us how it is, how it was, and how it should be. But goddamn that’d be nice.

Trying to Evolve

When it comes to running a brokerage, me and Chris have made a good run so far. We founded MYR with the explicit mission statement of “being different.” I’ve talked about it in previous posts, we routinely have conversations about how different we can afford to be. Taking the lessons that we have learned over both of our different careers, we try to emulate the good experiences and traits while doing our best to avoid the ones that pissed us off. Most importantly, we pay our guys well and we pay them on time, whether we can afford to or not. Most of you are familiar with our ongoing battle with Avi Mirman to recoup the money he owes us for land work back in 2022. I know that’s probably never going to happen.

Managing projects, client relationships, finances, and the day to day operation is something that still challenges me. I don’t think that will ever change. We are trying to handle our business in a more transparent manner than the brokers we have worked for in the past. The “old ways” are not going to keep working. Our industry has changed. Staying nimble is more important than ever. Keeping costs down, moving your product in a fast and efficient manner, and this is the key component…having the right guys for the right jobs.

Calling on Others’ Experience

Looking at the roster of landmen we have working at MYR, I have the least experience of all of us. Most of our guys are over or close to 20 years in the business. We don’t have to tell them how to do their job, which makes things much easier for us. But what does that do to help the next generation of landmen? At various points over the past couple of years Chris and I have entertained the idea of finding a summer intern. Teaching younger people how to run title, or even broader, how to be a landman, is something that I feel compelled to do.

Finding the time to do that is a totally different problem. I am confident we will get that process started in the next couple of months, but it’s not something we have the bandwidth to do right now. We’ve had to hire more people to help as our business has grown, our bookkeeper handles all of our invoicing now, and we’re going to get her more involved in the day to day operations as she continues to demonstrate her skills for managing spreadsheets and staying on top of deadlines. That has been a huge help to us. Having a solid GIS guy working for us is another way we have drastically expanded our capabilities. Our landmen don’t have to spend hours fucking with NetDeedPlotter anymore, and that makes our work product more efficient.

A New Heading

The lessons we have learned over the course of this new phase in our careers is something that I have written a lot about, but have held off on posting. Why? Well…fuck me, maybe I’m reluctant to share some of the ingredients of our secret sauce. That thought has occurred to me on numerous occasions. Well, I’ll admit that in a lot of things in life I’m a hypocrite. Maybe LandmanLife can be a way of fixing that. Obviously our journey and experience is going to be unique to us…but I don’t see anyone else sharing this kind of information.

I’ve been reaching out to a lot of the brokers that we consider to be our prime competitors over the past year, trying to get together to have a few beers and shoot the shit. They all seem rather reserved, or straight up reluctant, because they think I’ve got an angle. Why can’t we know each other? All of our generation of landmen are out here trying to scratch out a place to earn a living with the big boys (the legacy shops that are synonymous with “land services” because they’ve been around for 40 years). Maybe we’re alone in that belief, and these other brokers naively think that they can operate on that same scale with the old way of doing things.

Breaking the Mold

The “good old boys” are getting old. They’re starting to retire, and the people taking over their businesses grew up working in back offices. They don’t have the hunger that we know from spending years in the field. Putting 20 guys on a 5 person project and hoping that “someone” knows how to do the work is not going to keep working. Spending months or years without finishing or updating a project, having 3 tiers of management between the client and the end landman, things like this are antiquated. Remember, the dinosaurs were fucking kings until they weren’t.

In a long and very convoluted way, I’m trying to say that I want to keep being different. I want to keep being honest about the highs and lows, and potential pitfalls, of this business. This is how I am going to hold myself accountable to that goal. I’m putting this out there in the world for everyone to see. I’m going to be more open about the professional side of running a brokerage. Maybe one person reading this and my subsequent posts will learn something valuable, and…that’s worth it to me. To the landman that emailed me last week, thank you. Your message has spurred me into action.