To learn more about Gallery Furniture click here and  Corporate Memory Solutions click here.

Mark: Before we jump in the interview, let me tell you the back story where we actually filmed this. If you’re in the Houston, Texas area you’ve heard of Jim Mattress Mack. If you’re outside of Houston, Texas, you probably still heard of him. This guy is a great guy, fantastic businessman, classic American, you know, rag to riches story.

He started Gallery Furniture over thirty years ago on the side of the freeway in a tent. And today, he’s turned it into a multi-million dollar business. The big that the does that we love so much is he supports and buys from American manufacturers. And then he has capitalism with a cause. So, Mack donates extensively to communities, education, and then our favorite to the military.

So, we run across their new location in Richmond, Texas and the architecture of this place is unbelievable. You would never think it’s a furniture store. When you walk in, they have the usual selection of furniture, but then it goes on for what looks like miles, stuff is everywhere, anything you could possibly want. Now, of course, Mattress Mack is famous for his one day service, right? Buy it today, deliver it today, if you have a problem we’ll fix it in a day. And as you walk through the store though you start to notice that things are different like this waterfall wall. And also, Mack supports for other local businesses.

And as you continue to walk through, there are stuff like, oh, look, kids can jump on the bed. You know how cool is that? And of course, there’s oversized table and chairs which you can actually buy if you want to. Now, Mack also allows Brookwood which is a charitable organization to have some space in the store. And then, there’s this wonderful kitchen which I actually have lunched in called Brick and Mortar and the food there was to die for and there’s even a cupcake shop with coffee.

So, as you continue to walk through you’ll notice this huge aquarium. Remember, you are in furniture store, folks. But, the big thing is the atrium, it is enormous and it’s climate-controlled. There’s tropical birds, monkeys, and there’s a big indoor pond with full of goldfish and lots of flowering plants in the water. It’s just absolutely beautiful. So what do we do? We reach out to Gallery Furniture in social media and say, “Hey, can we shoot some video at your spot?” And they said yes.

Hey, folks let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

Today, we’re in beautiful Houston, Texas. It’s February. If you notice I’m sweating it’s because it’s like 89 degrees in February. And we’re sitting here with Michael Rager with Corporate Memory Solutions.

How are you doing, Michael?

Michael: I’m doing great, Mark. How are you doing today?

Mark: I’m doing really well. Thank you.

So, Michael’s company does something really fascinating that actually overlays across the entire oil and gas industry, but also touches two big things going on; the low crude prices and the great crew change. Tell me a little bit about what your company does?

Michael: Well, what we do is right now there’s a lot of corporate knowledge is going to be leaving the workplace. You just talked about the great crew change, what’s happening right now in this low prices go down, what happens we got to start cutting cost and sometimes the cost cut our people.

And, what’s happening what we found out in going out and talking with consultants is they’re really not cutting the top people yet, they’re cutting the middle people, so those top people have been training middle people, they may start to transfer that knowledge. Well, those people are now gone and now, they’re bringing in this, you know, lower level workers new level workers coming up and they’re now raw, they don’t know what’s going on.

And so, what we do is we work with companies to take that intellectual knowledge out of the senior level people, put it into a software. We use software system to train – to train people through process management, process documentation to take that information on how successful people have done it and get it down to the new people that are coming in. So, we can kind of get rid of some mistakes, we can, you know, not worry about some compliance issues and stuff like that.

Mark: So, you tell me that if I’m a major operator and  I have a senior deepwater engineers that’s been in my company thirty five years, you can take the information that’s in his head, put it into a system, so my new engineers that come on board can actually benefit from it?

Michael: Yeah. What we want to do is want to understand how that guy works. You know what happens is when we start working, we go to work and we just work instinctually, you know, is we just do what we do. What we want to do is figure out how those people are working instinctually and then put together a training program to train our new people how to do it. And what we have and we know with the newer people, you know, millennials, you know, they  want things now and quick and they want to be able to, you know, share and do stuff.

So, now what we can do is we can take that information, figure out how the most successful people have done it, train new people, and then they can actually collaborate and say, oh, this is how you’ve done it in the past. Well, you know what? There’s some new technology, we can move that and we can change the process, maybe we’ll able to automate here and not automate here. But we can do a lot of new things, you know, this way and, you know, it’s just taking some time to sit down with those people before they’re gone.

Mark: Man, that is awesome, Michael. So, if people want to learn more about what you do, where should they go?

Michael: They should go to www.corporatememoriessolutions.com. Go in there, phone number is there, info is there, e-mail, you know, you will see a little bit of our software see how it works and give us a call and let’s sit down and talk.

Mark: Yeah. So, folks we’ll put a link in the show notes so you don’t have to be writing notes.

Michael, what the audience doesn’t know is this is the third time we’ve done this.

Michael: I know. This is – we started the first one I think there were Christmas ornaments the first time we’ve done it. So, I told Mark he was supposed to give me thirty minutes today not three.

Mark:  Yeah. So, sincerely, I really appreciate your time.

Michael: No, we want to do it. It’s all about sharing knowledge, you know, I love what Mark does and he’s helped me a lot and so, anything I can do to give back and want to and you know hopefully we can do it again. And just not tape the same thing over and over again.

Mark: Yeah. I agree. So, folks I hope this helped. We will see you next time.