4: Jide Ayangade – One Day at a Time

Matt Harriman: My name is Matt Harriman. Welcome to the Achieve and Enjoy podcast, where we explore the relationship between work and happiness, achievement and joy, and success and contentment. We share our own stories and interview interesting people who have something to teach us about achieving our definition of success while enjoying the journey that leads us there. Today, my guest is Jide Ayangade. He's a really interesting person who I think has a great mindset and perspective on life — I'm excited to draw out.

Jide Ayangade: Thanks, Matt. 

Matt Harriman: Yeah, we're both getting our money's worth out there, that's for sure. So, thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Jide Ayangade: Of course, man. I'm glad to be here. 

Matt Harriman: I'd like to start by talking about your career. This podcast is centered around work, but we'll also talk about how that relates to happiness, highs and lows, and everything in between. When I looked at your work history, it started with more traditional companies like Baker Hughes and Conoco, and now you're possibly at the leading edge of innovation with augmented reality and virtual reality within oil and gas. I'd like to hear the story of your career. It doesn't need to be your resume, but where did you come from? How did you get here?

Jide Ayangade: Sure, it's always interesting to look back. I know you mentioned Baker Hughes, but there's a lot before that. I grew up in Nigeria and moved to the States in 2006. I have a background in chemical engineering, and to some extent, being an engineer was expected of me since many of my family members were engineers.

But for some weird reason, I wanted to be in the oil and gas business. My mom had a mentor who had two kids — one was a lawyer, and the other was a chemical engineer. The chemical engineer was working in the oil and gas industry. After talking to them, what really piqued my interest was how much they traveled — a lot of it overseas. To my adventurous spirit, that was very appealing. I went to New Mexico Tech for my graduate studies in Petroleum Engineering. 

I had planned to attend grad school in the UK, but my father became ill and passed away after about eight months. I deferred my plans and applied to schools in the US.

New Mexico Tech is located in the small town of Socorro, New Mexico. The school has a population of 7,500 when in session, and 2,500 when out of session. It's an engineering and tech college town, something I deliberately picked because it was the opposite of where I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos had 20 million people and was overcrowded. I also was in search of solitude after my father's passing — New Mexico Tech was a quiet place. I have no regrets. Additionally while enrolled in grad school, I started working with a startup that was acquired by Baker Hughes — leading to me joining the company.

Matt Harriman: Was this the same startup where you met Jim?

Jide Ayangade: Yes, I met him when he hired me to help him start the Houston office and develop the go-to-market strategy for the company. At the time, the company was developing software similar to Petrel called JewelSuite, which was used for reservoir characterization and simulation workloads.

My career at Baker Hughes was amazing. I worked with phenomenal people, and I got to travel around the world to many exotic places I had never imagined visiting as a 19 or 20-year-old. After several years, I left to gain experience from an E&P perspective — plus, the pay was much better.

At the time, I believed that I needed that experience as part of my career and exposure to the oil and gas industry. I then had the opportunity to work for Cono Phillips, but my time there was short-lived because I was laid off in 2014 due to the downturn. I think primarily because the asset I worked on was being divested. We were essentially hired to put the finishing touches on it and sell it off. The interesting thing is, you go from place to place, and the cultures might be very different, but you still meet a lot of phenomenal people there. That's something I keep running into; there are really a lot of smart, good, and interesting people. After Cono, I also had the opportunity to work for Blackstone Minerals, which I think was one of the most rewarding aspects of my career. I'd like to think I'm one of the few oil and gas professionals who has worked in every single basin in the lower 48.

Blackstone Minerals is one of the biggest mineral holders in the US — meaning I got to touch every aspect of that in some form or fashion. Obviously, some basins were more active than others, but it was a very rich exposure and a small team.

Which I missed from my startup days. I don't know if it's because of how I was raised. I was the firstborn, so I had a lot of responsibilities and did a lot of things. I got that exposure again when I was working for Blackstone Minerals. Do you know Jessica Bird from Blackstone?

Matt Harriman: I totally agree. I've found the same thing no matter where I'm at or what company it is. There are really, really good people even within those companies that are fundamentally broken and dysfunctional — there are still really good people fighting the good fight, trying to make good things happen. 

You used the word rewarding a few times when you were talking through all that. What are the types of things that would make a role or a time at a company rewarding for you? 

Jide Ayangade: Like you, I'm a people person. I like interacting and understanding what exactly people do and what makes them tick. Being able to have those conversations with people, understand how they work; being exposed to what they do; getting a little bit of that experience in what they do and how it fits into what I'm doing. I think we should always ask, "Hey, what's the overall objective that we're all walking towards?" Being able to interact with all the other components of that gearbox and understanding what they do is also rewarding for me. It makes me feel like there's some kind of grand purpose to what I'm doing. 

Matt Harriman: It makes sense that you would tend toward smaller companies, teams, and things like that. After Blackstone, you were at Enverus, which was also a contract gig because you were laid off from Blackstone during the 2020 Covid oil and gas downturn. Now you’re at?

Jide Ayangade: There was a pivot at Blackstone — it was no longer acquisition-focused but instead focused on increasing revenue from royalty properties. This shift affected interactions and subsequently affected me. So I started a consulting company that was used to get into Enverus with James Ruiz when he started Q. At the time when they were acquired by Enverus and were trying to integrate their solutions into the bigger platform, I was contracted to help with the QA/QC process. Subsequently, I got the opportunity to invest and help grow a new tech venture that I'm currently involved with, which is also a Dutch startup. It's almost like I've gone full circle. 

Matt Harriman:  You can't get away from the Dutch. I do want to talk about what you're doing now a little bit, but before we do that looking back over your career and the journey from Nigeria to the States, what were some of the highs? What were some of the lows? 

Jide Ayangade: The low for me during the journey was losing my dad. It wasn't so much the academic work or the process of living in a new place as it was the low of adjusting to life without him. The solace of the smaller town helped me process things and grieve and cope. The landscape was also very foreign to me — making it an adventure. I lived at the base of a huge mountain, right across from hole 13 on the golf course. After classes, I would start from hole 13, walk my way up, talk shop when we got to the clubhouse, buy drinks, and then continue all the way back. The slow-paced environment was healing in a way. I still miss it. A lot of people didn't really like it, but I loved every single moment.

Matt Harriman: How do you think your dad's passing impacted your outlook on life, work, and everything else as you worked through it?

Jide Ayangade: One day at a time — that's always been my mantra. There's this Bible verse that says, "Give us our daily bread." It doesn't say monthly or yearly, it says daily. So I just take it one day at a time. Even if I'm going through highs and lows, it all passes. I think that mindset parallels what you mentioned about playing golf, where you have to look for ways to chop up a huge task and take it one muscle at a time. There's an element of that in living. I try to live my life one day at a time. Or with kids, one minute at a time.

Matt Harriman: For sure with kids — one minute is very different from the next. Death fascinates me because our family has had many near misses and scares. My daughter's medical condition has allowed me to walk away from those experiences with a better perspective on everything. It pulls me back to living in the present moment. The Buddhists meditate on death a lot to remind them that this moment is all we've got. No matter what happens in the future, the best thing you can do is to be fully present.

Jide Ayangade: It's about maximizing the time you have because yesterday's past, and you can't go back. Tomorrow's not a given, so just maximize what you got today. That doesn't mean we don't plan, but today has its troubles that you have to deal with. Living according to that also helps to deal with the mortality question. Enjoy every single moment because tomorrow's not a given. I learned this when my mother-in-law passed away in 2020. We had to move her from Santa Fe to Houston, and seeing the whole dying process crystallizes the notion of really taking it one day at a time. Deal with today's problems as they come. Tell the people you love that you love them, every day. 

Matt Harriman: I'm sorry for your losses, but I can tell that you have processed them and tried to grow and learn from them. What else can you do?

Jide Ayangade: I am still processing them. They were tough losses, but I tell my wife, "Hey, I'm not guaranteed. I could poof right then and there."

Matt Harriman: The pandemic in 2020 forced everyone to realize the prominence of death in one’s life — causing many people to quit their jobs and focus on finding happiness. Many people defer their happiness, thinking they'll work a hundred hours a week until they exit and then retire and be happy. However, this approach may not work out in the end.

Jide Ayangade: I like that you brought that up because the title of the podcast is Achieve and Enjoy. If you enjoy what you're doing, it changes the way you perceive success or whatever it is. It also depends on the type of job. In startups, there’s a lot of work — especially if you’re invested. You have to make quite a few sacrifices that might make you cry every now and then. One of my favorite quotes (summarized) is from Elon Musk. He says, “It’s like eating glass. You still have to smile about it.” But if you enjoy it, then it changes the lens from which you perceive success or whatever it is you’re chasing. 

Matt Harriman: It depends so much on the individual too and the time that they're at in their life. There are times when you're really passionate and you want to put your whole being into one thing — nothing wrong with that. However, it's important to be intentional about the sacrifices you're making. Some people build a company, exit, make millions of dollars, but have regrets about how they were as a father or husband. Those in that situation, I’ve talked to them and I can see the regret they have — it’s tough to stomach. I’m still trying to figure it out. I don’t think anyone has it all figured out, but it’s worth being intentional. 

Jide Ayangade: The journey is going to be different for everyone. I don’t like giving advice, but regret is always there. We make choices. And then you look back and think you should have done something else, but you don’t know what the outcome of that choice would be. How do you quantify what’s going to be successful before you make a decision? It's better to call them mistakes and learn from them going forward. Regret is a strong work. Mistakes can be cross-corrected.

Matt Harriman: I find the feeling of regret whenever I realize that I made a decision that I knew wasn't right at the time. But I might have suppressed it or had a bad feeling.

Jide Ayangade: I feel the same way. For me, I process it by thinking that I still had an experience I wouldn't have had if I didn't make that decision.

Matt Harriman: For sure. We could talk about this forever, but we should probably let people more qualified in psychology talk about it. I like thinking about these things. We all consider whether we're making the right decisions for ourselves and our families. Doing what's right is subjective to each individual, and you have to figure it out for yourself. Let's talk about what you're doing now.

Jide Ayangade: I love what I'm doing now. It's still a startup, so it has challenges, but the name of the app we sell is Baselines, and the company is Craytive Technologies. The founder of the company and I worked together in a previous Dutch startup. He always had an aspiration to solve the communication divide between disciplines, specifically with geoscientists and engineers.

When AR and VR technologies came out, he saw them as a way to help solve that divide. Baselinez was developed to help storytelling — specifically for the subsurface. VR, AR, and immersive technologies have been used in other industries, but how they're perceived and used varies. The value of these technologies can be overlooked, but the application of this technology to what we're doing is critical to lowering the risk of lost translation. We're talking about geology, drilling, etc. It's complex, but it's one of the critical ways of reducing that risk. The business boils down to three questions: How big is it? How quickly can you take it out or put it in? What's the economic benefit of it?

Matt Harriman: You’re still talking about oil and gas, right? Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Jide Ayangade: We are all storytellers, and we strive to tell our stories in the best way possible for their intended use. Our goal is to empower geologists, engineers, and executives with immersive technology to tell the stories of the subsurface. This technology has already improved drilling operations and driven the kind of performance we want people to register and discuss.

Big tech companies invest heavily in this technology because it provides value. For example, 3D imaging of the brain is used for cancer diagnoses. Subsurface data is just another 3D problem that is difficult to explain or resolve in 2D. Immersive technology can help in planning operations and even reduces the risk of things going wrong — making a significant difference over time.

Matt Harriman: Using immersive technology drives people's understanding of the reservoir or the part of the subsurface they're examining, right? You generate a 3D model based on the data and then you can see it?

Jide Ayangade: Yes, that's the core idea. We generate a 3D model based on data and then allow people to view it — the same way 2D screens replaced paper technology, immersive technology is replacing 2D screens. We see things in 3D, and now we're able to capture and communicate that in 3D. Geologists can visualize things in 3D, but it's not a closed loop until they can show it to someone who will take action based on it.

This technology helps people understand the scale and complexity of what we're dealing with in the subsurface. Old school paper was as big as a whole table, and we had to distill that into a 2D screen that doesn't fully capture the essence of what we’re dealing with. Immersive technology makes it possible to tell subsurface stories in a more compelling way and enables us to appreciate what we're dealing with. As you can tell, I'm very animated about how we're able to tell subsurface stories with immersive technology.

Matt Harriman: That reminds me of when I started at Chesapeake. I knew nothing about oil and gas. I didn’t grow up in an oil and gas family. Six months after I started, we began using Intersite for field development planning. In Intersite, you drag facilities and takeaway points around on a screen, then consolidate the wells so they're not even visible. It's like playing a video game. During my second year there, we went on a field trip to see the actual facilities, wells, drilling operations, and completion crews. It blew my mind. The complexity and immensity of these operations cemented in my head that when I dragged that little thing across the screen, I was actually moving an entire factory, attached to hundreds of people.

Jide Ayangade: Exactly. 

Matt Harriman: That's really cool. How do you value that perspective? And, especially, in a fairly traditional industry, how do you get people's minds wrapped around the fact that we're doing unbelievably complex things underground, but still approving 2 billion capital programs on paper, and some companies have their frack scheduled in Microsoft Outlook?

Jide Ayangade: Today, the technology is so accessible and cheap. What we do is very specific to the geology, which can be abstract — it's like trying to describe an interpretive dance without seeing it. We know there are risks involved in the current 2D screen technology, with many near misses equating to millions of dollars. If immersive technology can help mitigate that risk, and companies see a pathway to doing so, then the value is realized.

The critical things that have enabled us to get to this stage are: companies investing billions of dollars over a decade; immersive technology is becoming cheaper and more accessible; and integration of 3D models that have been built for subsurface or office facilities for a long time, but never viewed in 3D until now. Because you typically require powerful workstations for 3D modeling, sharing those models can be challenging. There's a story about a geoscientist who was tasked with building a 3D salt model. If she succeeded, the company could bid on fields that overlapped with the model — potentially resulting in a billion-dollar investment. When she finished building the model on her PC after six months of work, she had to take snapshots to share it. Resulting in a loss of information and data across the translation process.

From gathering expensive data to interpreting it and building the model, it all gets dumbed down to a PDF that's then screen-shared. Despite the complexity of the data, the company makes decisions based on these simplified representations. Communicating this information is challenging, which is why even a 10% reduction in communication would be impactful. However, we've been able to reduce communication times by over 50%, which can lead to significant productivity gains. By successfully sharing the actual 3D model instead of a simplified representation, we can help improve shared understanding within the organization. There's a lot of knowledge that's sitting in PCs and databases that's underutilized. By integrating existing geoscience applications, we can utilize that information and improve decision-making processes.

Matt Harriman: You mentioned communication, but even that word’s been overused to the point where people gloss over it. It sounds to me like this is a really strong tool for improving the shared understanding within an organization. One of the things that pisses me off (Saga Wisdom Conference I went to a few weeks back) is that so much of the work reservoir engineers do gets wasted because the outcome isn’t shared. The point of having an organization is so that there’s more people working on a problem — building together. 

Jide Ayangade: I’m going to add on to that because I don’t think I’m going enough justice to what I’m trying to say. We build models. We take data that’s sitting in PCs somewhere or in people’s brains and make it accessible. This is key because the oil and gas industry doesn’t have as much talent coming in, especially geoscientists (reduced by 30% in the last decade) and it's still forecasted in the next 10 years to lose another 30%. And so there's a lot of knowledge that is going out, but there's a lot of what's called interpretive knowledge that they've also done that's just sitting and not being utilized. 

We integrate with those systems in a similar way to how you do with your software applications Pod2 builds. Then we take that information and data and allow you to distribute your work to your colleagues, or whoever you want to have access to it. By "visual way,” I mean that we are using Teams calls on a 2D screen. Imagine if we were meeting in 3D. You could give me a high five and I could give you one, even though we're miles apart. I can share this cup with you, and you can hold it and move it around. I can see it from my perspective, and you can see it from yours. This makes for a more engaging conversation than just yelling at a screen while you sit miles away. These are the building blocks that we've built into the baseline, which touch on not just geology, but also drilling.

Imagine looking at wells with anti-collision planes, or a drilling supervisor who says, "Every time in this field, we always get stuck at this particular point. We can't integrate the geology because all we have is just a PDF and it tells us this is the depth way I think you should be worried about." When you move away from that, maybe you move two miles away, we're expecting to hit something at this depth, but we don't. Then we hit something at a depth we don't know, and it's costing us about $25,000 an hour. But even if we discount that, I would have to take pictures of the drill bits and send it off. Our phones are so powerful nowadays that they're all embedded with light sensors, and you can do a 3D scan of the drill bit showing before and after, and upload it. We then (Baselinez) provide a very visual way for you to see the 3D model, along with the actual geology. This way you can be in the field while I can be in the office, and we can still talk about it.

Matt Harriman: It's crazy to me. Our phones are so accessible now. When I first got introduced to it several years ago, I met Jim Dubois at a restaurant and he pulled out his Oculus from his backpack and handed it to me. I put it on and played with a 3D model of a piece of rock. It's just wild. You might look like a goon when you're sitting in a restaurant doing that, but the ease of use and just being able to get to that is really impressive. I'm sure you have some interesting stories about people putting on a headset for the first time, especially some old-school patch guys. Do you have any?

Jide Ayangade: I don't want to discount what you just described. You have an image model of a rock that you're playing with in the middle of Pluckers, and you also look like a goon doing it.

Those are two critical things you touched on. 10 years ago, that was impossible. You wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of Pluckers with a $300 headset that you picked up from Best Buy and be able to look at that model, and spin it around. People would fly in from all over the world to a particular visualization center to view what you just held in your hand in the middle of Pluckers. The cultural change surrounding the use of the technology works on a case-by-case basis. But, once people put on the headset, every preconception of what they had goes away. They quickly realize the value, accessibility, and novelty of it. They realize they're doing what they couldn't do 10 years ago in the middle of Pluckers — it's like an iPhone moment. When the iPhone came out, no one dreamt that they would be staring at oil wells on an iPhone in the middle of Pluckers. Yet, here we are. 

The accessibility allows us to tell that story to non-technical experts who we need to convince. We're talking about energy transition, but in a way, it’s really energy expansion. We're going to be doing more stuff with the subsurface than we wanted to, whether it's taking stuff out of it or sticking stuff in it. This tool is valuable for highlighting the risks and benefits of these huge multi-billion dollar subsurface projects.

Matt Harriman: You made a connection for me that I hadn't fully made before. The rocks aren't getting any less important no matter what the future of energy looks like. We're going to need to be doing things underground that are highly technical and require understanding. I’m not going to let you get away without sharing a funny story or two.

Jide Ayangade: There are several funny stories, but one interesting observation is that the pace of adoption for subsurface technology seems to be higher in Asia than in North America right now. I say "loosely" because these are just interactions and anecdotes. There are still old-school people who, when you tell them about this and give a presentation, say, "Oh, I don't want to put that on." Then they get curious and want to try it for themselves. 

The way we look at it on the iPhone is like buying furniture from IKEA. You can place an object and say, "Oh, that's my data." Okay. And then they look at it on the iPad, and they can move it around. If a colleague moves stuff around, they can see it too. Over time, they get a little more adventurous and put on the HoloLens. For those who don't know, the HoloLens is a headset where you can still see what’s going on around you. And they put that on and say, "Oh, wow. Okay. So you can touch, you can move, and I don't need to be in front of a PC to do that!” 

And then they put on the actual virtual reality headset, which locks you in, but has richer immersion. Then they say, "Oh, wow, I didn't think this is what you were talking about. I had no clue." It doesn't do justice to what we're trying to do because almost 90% of the time when people put on the headset, they realize the value of what this does.

Matt Harriman: They're seeing the interpretive dance after you sketched it for them?

Jide Ayangade: Exactly. Hit me baby one more time. 

Matt Harriman: I'm gonna need you to write out a verbal description of "Hit me baby one more time."

Jide Ayangade: There's another person who said, "Hey, this is a very impactful solution, but I look like a knucklehead in the middle of this open floor plan office waving my hands around. So because of that, I think I'm gonna pass, but it's still very cool technology and I see the true value of it now.” The technology is still so new. We’re working with companies who have looked at this technology, but haven’t used it or thought of specific use cases to apply it to. They're using it to look at surface facilities and design surface facilities, but also to see subsurface data. In a way, it makes me a little anxious that maybe we're crazy because I haven't seen anyone else doing this in the field.

But when there's a lot of validation that we've gotten and a lot of encouragement that we also get, we know we're on the right track. The problem we're solving is truly impactful. There's this chief geologist from a Scandinavian country who said, "The things that I can't explain to our drilling engineers, it's just, by definition of the subsurface, difficult for me to explain. I can't show them on seismic because the resolution of seismic doesn't quite capture it. I have to use my geological interpretation and experience to create this target that they have to hit. There have been so many close calls with directional drilling. If I can just say, "Stay away from here. One or two degrees of deviation can cause you to miss this, and if you do, that's a hundred million down the drain." 

Matt Harriman:  It's exciting. We only have about ten minutes left — we could talk for eight hours. Looking like a goon comes back to ego and fear of looking silly, and I think that's something people need to address in therapy if it's an issue. I've noticed it's a self-confidence issue. I do think it’s cultural, but it's getting better. Pokemon Go changed the world with augmented reality and had more people walking around and doing stuff like that. As for what you’re doing and being on the leading edge of the technology in this industry, how you find balance? How does the anxiety of thinking about if people think you’re crazy impact your mindset day to day? 

Jide Ayangade: As for being on the leading edge of technology in this industry, it can be nerve-wracking. It's a sensitive topic, but we're about five years ahead of what we should be doing. Oil and gas companies are actually interested in this and believe it's the future of work — plus, hey're well-funded. We're pushing the envelope of technology innovation, but we're also perceived as anti-diluvian. We need to connect with the right people who see the value and ride the wave in a sensible, cost-effective way. That's what we're trying to do right now and manage all the anxiety that comes with it. We are finding other crazies inside the oil and gas industry that believe in this and are pushing it. The pace at which it happens is what causes the anxiety, but we know it can happen.

Matt Harriman: You seem to be very confident that it's going to happen, it's just a matter of when…and if you can make enough to keep the lights on until then.

Jide Ayangade: Exactly. 

Matt Harriman: I mean, if oil and gas companies are putting money toward this sort of thing, that means that it's very real. They wouldn't do it out of the goodness of their heart.

Jide Ayangade: It seems like more of them are doing it in Europe and in Asia though, than in the US but, we'll also get there because I think the use cases are very different too. The US tends to be more operational in real-time. 

Matt Harriman: Let's start to round things out. We went to some places that I didn't know that we would go to in our conversation! That was a lot of fun though. You're obviously energized by the place that you're in right now, and simultaneously dealing with that anxiety about whether you're too far out in front or not. I feel like people deal with that kind of stuff a lot. As somebody who's very engaged in what they're doing, how do you deal with that kind of anxiety? What advice would you give to somebody that is dealing with some of those sorts of anxieties?

Jide Ayangade: I don't like giving advice because it's just gonna be different for everyone, but I’ll go back to, “One day at a time.” I also remember one thing, my dad said, “Don't live your life according to someone else's time.” I'm going through my own anxiety the best way I think I can — vastly different from someone else who's going through some other kind of anxiety. It might be similar anxieties, but circumstances will always be different. The choices we make will always be different too. But I would love to connect with you who have this kind of anxiety and share stories.

Matt Harriman: If people want to reach out to you or learn more about you and what you're doing, what's the best way?

Jide Ayangade: I guess LinkedIn or at Baselinez. Fun fact, the reason we call it Baselinez is that we wanted everyone to be on the same baseline — the z was added for depth.

Matt Harriman: I didn't know that that — that ties all the way back to that shared understanding.