I'm gonna let a little bit of the genie out of the bottle (the one year anniversary post)

What’s up Chronicle Crew. It’s crazy to think it’s been a year of publishing on Substack.

Shout out to all my “Day 1s” who have been with me from the beginning.

And those of you that recently found this publication thank you so much for paying attention.

In the world of content marketing they say;

• a “like” is ok

• a “follow” is better

• but when someone is willing to lend you their email address it is a sign of trust. Thank you for trusting me with your attention.

It is my dream to do this full time.

I really do enjoy it.

They say “find something you love doing and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

They also say, “a sure fire way to start hating something is to get paid to do it.”

Life’s contradictions.

Yes I would have to charge when that day comes. Gotta pay the bills yo!

But that time is not in the near future.

A special thanks to all of you that I have met and talked to that have encouraged me to continue to pursue this project.

I am listening.

In sales and marketing they teach you to never talk about yourself - talk about your ideal clients’ pain points and problems.

Well we are going to violate that rule this week and give you a little background to the story behind Crude Chronicles.

(p.s. referring to myself in the 3rd person sounds a little douchy but just go with it.)

The beginnings

It was the early 2000s, China was booming, a war in the Middle East was starting and commodities were all the rage.

I was fortunate at the time to meet some very influential people that took me under their wing and were great mentors.

I was never a great student, not recruited to a bulge bracket or large money manager or hedge fund.

I had to do it the old fashion way of working up from the proverbial “mail room.” starting at $24k a year. - Still got my first pay check framed.

Along the way I took those exams to get the alphabet soup after my name.

I hated accounting and said I never wanted to become one.

And now I make charts from balance sheets and income statements that are 100 years old.

Another one of life’s ironies.

During those early days I took a liking to commodities and petroleum cycles.

Like most of us, I read Yergin’s, “The Prize” and Sampson’s “The Seven Sisters,” and fell in love with the histories, the geopolitics and the players.

As consumers of content we all like to be told a story.

The purpose of this blog is to tell the stories of these companies in this industry that produce these commodities and hopefully do it in an entertaining way.

In my travails of studying the history of this industry I started to notice the patterns and the rhythms of history.