Growing a Business, AI and Hiring, and Challenges Facing Western Alaska with Shannon Oelkers

Laura and Nic interview Shannon Oelkers, owner and principal consultant at Integrity Environmental, about growing a business, using AI thoughtfully in environmental work, and how hiring is changing in an AI-driven world. They also dive into the complex energy and infrastructure challenges facing western Alaska, along with the memorable field experiences that come with working in some of the country’s most remote landscapes.

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Connect with Shannon Oelkers at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-oelkers/

Guest Bio:
Shannon Oelkers is the owner and principal consultant for Integrity Environmental. Shannon previously worked at the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in the Contaminated Sites and Terminal / Tank Farms division, focusing on industrial environmental compliance. Shannon holds a bachelor's degree in Biological Science and a master's degree in Community Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has more than a decade of experience inspecting and auditing bulk fuel tank farm operations. Shannon is also an MBA Instructor at Alaska Pacific University. Shannon is well-versed in the unique challenges of completing oil and gas related projects in Alaska.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura.

On today's episode, we talk about how environmental professionals should be using AI. We interview Shannon Oelkers bout growing a business, AI and hiring, and challenges facing Western Alaska.

And finally. Here are some fun facts on the stellar sea lion. Stellar sea lions are the largest of the eared seals, with adult males reaching up to 11 ft in length and weighing as much as 2500 pounds, roughly 3 times the weight of females.

That's, that's too big. That's, that's huge.

The western population has declined approximately 77 to 81% from the 1970s to the early 2000s and remains listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Though it has slowly increased overall since 2003, the eastern population, by contrast, recovered sufficiently to be delisted in 2013.

Stellar sea lions are predatory and feed primarily at night on over 100 species of fish and cephalopods, with diet varying by location and season depending on prey availability.

How about that? That music. Join NAEP with a special discount code EPR for $25 off your membership. Register now at www.NAP.org. Environmental Professionals Radio comes to the ESRI user conference. Join this lively live podcast featuring voices. from the Nature Conservancy, ESRI and the Society for Conservation GIS. We'll dive into digital twins, explore how mapping helps translate science into spatial insight, and discuss how conservation professionals can keep pace with an ever evolving technological landscape. Expect sharp insights, practical takeaways, and plenty of laughs from EPR hosts Laura and Nic along the way.

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Let's get to our segment. What did you talk about with Shannon today?

Oh my God, we talked about so many awesome things. We talked about you not being there. Oh, come on, come on. She missed you. Um, I missed her. Yeah, you guys are ships passing in the night because you both had travels today.

Yeah, yeah, but we had a really great conversation around AI. Like I asked her, you know, how she's using it in her business, and I loved her responses. I don't wanna get too in depth and Give out to any spoilers, but it was a really interesting conversation. But I guess I could kind of ask you the same thing.

Um, I think it's a different conversation than it was a year ago. Last year it was, are you asking it questions? Now, now it's, is it doing stuff for you and actually helping you, right? And yeah, I mean, so it's funny, like, so there's, there's lots of initiatives. People, every company, large company is working on it, even companies that aren't software companies are working on it. They all have tools and capabilities they didn't have before. I think there's a few things and I don't know. Like, I love that, I don't know what you guys have talked about yet because I get to listen to it later, but like, to me it's like there's, there's two things happening, right? There's like the promise of AI and then the reality of AI. There's a, there's our, um, and like one of the problems, one of the challenges is like AI is still being designed by people and the prompts that it gets are human. So, that means that, you know, it's basically can only work on what it has available to it, right? That is everything, right, on the internet, but that doesn't make it right or it doesn't make it infallible and in fact can do the opposite, can make it quite wrong about certain things.

So you're understanding that, understanding that you can actually Create it to do something for you, right? Like I think especially people, uh, my generation and older, like we're just like, how many times would, you know, whatever fit into or like, or how many hours is in a typical project. You could ask for something like that, right? Just to give you an idea when you're trying to price something out. I just, you have no idea how accurate it is and but like as a practitioner you're like, I know the answer to this question. Does, does AI, and that's a cute thing you can do with it, but that's not really like it's not overtly practical. It's just that it kind of can be like a check like, oh yeah, I do have my numbers right. I am good with this. That's great, move forward. But it is also working on. Writing and tightening up writing and and doing better in certain ways, it does like there's there's things that that you've seen like tricks and triggers for AI writing is hyphens. There's a lot of dashes in AI right. There isn't in most human speech, so like it's those are like funny little tells, but it can also cite things wrong. It can also be used improperly that way and so we're, we're careful about how we use it, but it is. Like where I think it's really practical is taking a bunch of different data sets, right, and putting them all together and then being like, hey, here's everything that's in your project area. That's a fantastic thing. That's super interesting, and it saves a lot of time, energy, and effort that isn't really helpful. You're not learning anything doing that. You're just going, OK, well, are the wetlands there? Yes. Or is it flood plains? No. OK, now what else is there? And, and so like it's just when you can click one button instead of 17, that's not a bad thing, and it's like, yeah, it's really, it's an automation tool or it can be, you know, we've had Zapier and other automation tools for. A long time. This is just an advanced automation tool in a lot of cases. It's also an advanced analytical tool, but it's a tool, you know, even this, you know, we're gonna have all these agents that this doesn't mean like an agent, I don't know how many people understand an agent could just be like. An agent that copies files. Yeah, that's an agent, like tiny little itty bitty tasks, and then a whole bunch of agents can, you know, work together to do a bigger task, but it's not like, you know, you didn't hire somebody before whose job was just to like, move a file from here to there.

Yeah, yeah, and it is very funny because it's like, it is cool, and I don't wanna, and I'm not trying to discount it at all, and I think it's only going to get more interesting. And it's like the joke of like, we don't have to mail 300 boxes, you know, the night before Christmas anymore. Now we can just send an email to the people who are interested in the project. That's a great innovative change, you know, nobody wants to do that. That's cool. I think where it can get kind of tricky is like, well, all we need now is a is a subject matter expert. So if you only need a subject matter expert to make sure that this is correct. Why would you ever hire anyone new or young and how would they even learn to be an expert when that person retires and that's, that's kind of the tricky part that we're trying to be afraid, you know, while also saying I think like this is a low point for, um, like college recent grads, you know, I think they're like 8% unemployed, but like for frame of reference, you know, the Great Recession, it was like 21% unemployed, a different scenario. So we're talking about it like it's apocalyptic. It's not great. But it's not as bad as it seems. And so I don't know, I think every company is grappling with this in some way, shape or form. And yeah, well, that hiring piece is also one of the things that we talked about is it's getting increasingly difficult. It was already difficult to screen people. I remember hiring for people and they all in Tampa and they would all come from USF with the exact same resumes, same courses, say, oh, I did this project for my class. Well, so did the three other people we interviewed. Um, so standing out has always been hard, but I think it's even harder now because everyone's using Chachi BT to write their resume. But, but honestly, I don't think that, and you can tell me your experience, I think it actually makes it easier for people to stand out because If you actually put real effort into it, yeah, you will just automatically stand out because of, and it, it just gives you the opportunity to show who you are. Are you the person who puts in the effort or are you not? Are you not, yeah, yeah, and there's a reason like people do interviews anyway, right? You could just look at resumes and pick them out and be like, well, our resume looks amazing, I guess we're good. But no one does that because it's not, it's not really what a piece of paper gets you the interview. The interview gets you the job, right? That's we've, we've talked about that many times. That has not changed and it is not going to change anytime soon in terms of AI or anything else, really. That human connection is still pretty important, yeah. But have you seen a difference in the applications or the interview process for yourself? Some of the stuff is, it screens better, right? You can screen a lot more resumes. You can actually have AI be like, these are the keywords I'm looking for. Give me the ones that have that, great. You can vet those, you know, 10% of them we're gonna look through to make sure this is doing it right. OK, cool. Of those, you know, how many are in X location or whatever it is, you can give it parameters and it can narrow all those things down to help you. Sometimes you don't need to do that because you're looking for a unicorn. When you're looking for unicorns, AI is not gonna help you at all. Um, in that way it might help you like mine LinkedIn for someone who has the resume that wouldn't necessarily apply. That's helpful because there's, you know. I don't know if you noticed, millions of people on that app, so. Um, and you don't know them all, you know, but if you can find a way to be connected, or how you're connected to somebody that you want to hire, that's the way that companies can kind of, I guess it's kind of headhunting and, but it's not, it's using AI in an efficient way, and that's pretty new. Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of people having the same conversation in a year, and it will be a different level at that point also. Oh, just just think like when we do actually get to a point where AI is writing its own scripts. That's gonna be pretty wild and that'll be pretty strange to see and that's still quite a ways away, but it's closer than you think it. I'm not sure if it's as far off as we think though, because the model, the language model that the government just shut down was doing that. Yeah, it is close, but it takes a lot of. That's the big problem. It takes a lot of energy to do that. It's not just like you flip a switch and it's like, oh, now I know how to talk to myself. No, that's not it. Right, um, so yeah, I don't know. All it is is, I don't know, it just depends how fast it's gonna. Learn once it learns. I don't know, it's crazy. It's kind of like, it's already here faster than I think any of us thought it would be, and it's just gonna keep enhancing because it's got, not only does it have engineers working to fix the bugs that it has, it's helping build its own self better, so it's like exponential, you know. Yeah, and like I said, there's gonna be a government expo in the DC area. At the end of July, talking through solutions to project problems. So, and that is something that's quite interesting and we'll have some notes on that when it does come. So, yeah, be on the lookout for things like that cause it's it's not just any one group, everybody's paying attention to it. Yeah, well, I think if there's a takeaway, especially if you're starting your career, or even if you're in it, you know, regardless of your personal thoughts on AI, it's here. Yes. Here, like, really here, and even if you're not a user of it, you should at least be aware of what it can do and does and what the industry is using it for. Yeah, yeah, I think that's all very fair. It's definitely not going backwards. It's here. Cool. All right, well that's, that sounds like a great place to stop and let's get to our interview with Shannon.

Welcome back to ER. Today we're joined by Shannon Oelkers, owner and principal consultant at Integrity Environmental, and our favorite Alaska correspondent, whether she knows that or not. Shannon, it is awesome to have you back. I know Nic will be jealous that I got to talk to you all by myself. So I don't know if you realize this is the 4th time you've been on here. It's actually been a while since the last time, October 2023. 0 man, and I was gonna over two years. Wow, I, I, it feels like I was just on here. I know, right? And I was going to start off by asking you, you know, what has happened in, in that time, but you just mentioned before we started that yesterday was one of your top 10 out of 10 days. So I need to hear more about this.

Well, thank you for having me back. I love coming on EPR. I love the mission. Of this podcast, and I love the National Association of Environmental Professionals for all the work that they do. So I'm always happy to come on here. And yeah, yesterday was the kind of day that I dreamed about as a little girl when I wanted to be a scientist, and I got paid for it, paid well. So it was a 10 out of 10 day. We were working with somebody who was putting in something called a forward operating base. So when people are establishing new industrial areas or they're exploring areas for resource development, they'll put in something called a forward operating base or a FOB. And I was flown by a small aircraft and helicopter to a remote location, and I was assessing some fuel tanks that had been set up there and making sure they were compliant for their spill prevention, control, and countermeasure plan, and it was just one of the most beautiful places on earth. The sun was shining, the bugs listened to my bug spray and didn't bite me too bad. All of the tanks had little bare feet prints on them. If you, uh, I'll probably post it to LinkedIn today, but it's pretty cute. There's just little muddy black bear feet all over the tanks. It was the cutest thing ever. So yeah, it was a wonderful day. I was in a beautiful location with volcanoes and glaciers and small aircraft and adventure, and yeah, I really enjoyed it.

That is amazing. And it's Alaska summer, right? Spring, are you still in spring, summer? Where are you at?

Well, in Alaska, we just have almost summer and then summer's gone. It goes so fast, right? We are in summer now. I mean, it was true story. It was 88 degrees where I was yesterday. I, I was sweating, just to be blunt. I was very hot. I was not prepared for it to be that warm. But there was a nice cool breeze off a glacier, so that helped keep us cool, and there was a glacier stream nearby, so it was super easy to just go dip your hands in and get your neckcloth wet or whatever. But yeah, 88 degrees, that's a, it's a hot day outside for us Alaskans. I'm more comfortable in 60 with a sideways rain, but whatever.

Yeah, totally tracks. And then today you're off to Kotzebu. Did I say that right? No, you didn't, but that's OK. Almost nobody does. It's Cotambuau. Well, and it's cute in Anchorage. You'll hear people say, I'm going on a trip to Kotzebu, and they have all these weird ways of saying it. You just got it a shot. Katsubu. Yes, today I'm going to Kotzebu for a client. We're doing some stormwater work up there. And again, probably, probably won't be as good as yesterday, but what I do like about this one is that I'm solving real problems with somebody that's really worried about it, and I feel like I'm gonna bring a lot of clarity to them and the management of the company about how to solve the problem. And I don't know, there's a lot of, I really enjoy that feeling of being invited into somebody else's area of expertise and being allowed to help. I really honor that privilege because that is a very trustworthy spot to be. But boy do I love digging into a problem and figuring out root cause and helping people solve it. Oh man, that just checks every box I got. I love that part.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love the passion that you have for the work. And yeah, so jumping back to my original question, so, 2 years since we've seen you, what are some highlights? In your career or life that have happened.

Oh my gosh. Well, you know, we don't have any accolades per se, and I think it's because we've been busy working. We've just been incredibly blessed with growth. We've tripled our staff since 2 years ago, which if you want to talk about hiring, I would love to talk about that later, because I have some thoughts. So, yeah, we, we've really increased our footprint. We're now serving the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii, and uh, we're finding that it's a really good fit for our culture and especially Hawaii. Hawaii's just a very natural fit. It's different than Alaska, but the cultural values are the same that underpin it. So, as a business owner, that's involved in A lot of change on my part, because, of course, the business I was running 23 years ago was a lot smaller than the one that it is now. So, for me, a lot of my changes have been about my mindset. And I don't know how many of your listeners own businesses versus are working in businesses, but I think I own businesses, so I want to hear what you have to say. But I do think we do have more than just a few. So I, I think, feel free to share. And plus, you know, there may Somebody listening who doesn't now but may want to.

Well, and I would like to encourage people to think about owning a business, because I do listen to people a lot that say, I would never do what you do. The stress must be so incredible. And I would counter that never know, you know, when you have a job, there's stress too. Like, you could get fired at any minute, you know, I say choose your heart. I think you can be successful either way. I really do. And there's a lot more resources than when I, so I started my business 17 years ago. And what you could find was books. And magazine articles, maybe. I mean, I, I am still a loyal subscriber to Inc. magazine because I, when I told my parents I was gonna start a business, they bought me a subscription to that magazine and I did, it helped. I read, but now there's all these podcasts and all these amazing different things that are out there to help you. I still think there's a big gap in the environmental services world. I do think the trend is there's less small businesses in the environmental space. There's a lot more really large players. There's still room for us at the table. So yeah, I had to really change my mindset and develop leadership skills, and I've always been a very good strategic thinker, but I had to really expand that to things like how to take out loans to acquire a business. You know, I really had to figure out all of those things. I went through an acquisition. I now know what to do and what not to do. It's hard to do. Um, but you know, the only way to really, really learned it is just do it. My entire career, Laura, I have just sort of been like, see how far I can go until it stops. And so I, I haven't, I guess I just don't let fear stop me. I just sort of take it one bite at a time. I'm like, OK, we need to grow, and I would like to add clients in this area. Oh, look, here's a business where someone's retiring and I might be able to acquire. Do I know anything about acquisition? No. Time to download 1000 podcasts, read a couple of books. Books, ask all my friends, and I just sort of collate resources until I've got enough to hopefully do it right. And then I always get something a little wrong, but everybody does, right? Nobody, nobody hops on a piano and starts playing Mozart the first day they do it. So then you have the 80/20 rule. 80% goes right, 20% goes wrong, that's OK. You succeeded. Yeah. Yeah. And the 20% that goes wrong will take 80% of your effort. Yeah. Yeah. So the last couple of years has just been us really learning how to grow and preserve the culture that is integrity, and I am very proud of that. I feel like I've done a very good job of it. I'm very proud of what we do as a team. I mean, this sounds hokey, but I have given 14 other people full-time professional technical jobs, and I'm just me. I'm not a special person by any means. So I, that part I feel really good about. So I don't have an award for it, but if I had to pick what I'm most proud of in the last 3 years, it would be that I've been able to provide that many professional technical positions for people. These are not entry-level burger flipping jobs. These are expensive, hard, carefully thought out positions, so. And then what I can do with that workforce, Laura, I am also proud of. That's so cool what we can do and the projects we've been invited to, and I don't know if our clients still really enjoy working with us, and I don't think we've lost any of the thing that makes us integrity as we've grown, so that makes me really happy.

Yeah, just the name of your company is a Large lift. Well, you know what's funny is when I, I don't know if I said on the last podcast why I picked it, but when we were smaller, as I'm sure everyone listening to this knows, there are clients that want to do the right thing. They want to do it right, they want to do it well. And then there's this whole other category of clients that I'll kind of put into the cowboy pirate loose cannon category. And I wanted to tell those people, because I still work with pirates and cowboys and loose cannons all the time. But I wanted to clearly communicate to them that I was not going to break the law for anybody. And so I was like, I'm starting with my name. We are integrity. I can't step away from that. If you want me to sweep something under the rug, you need to find a different contractor. And that was the first part of why I chose it. And then the second part was we had added tank inspections, and tank inspections is the study of the integrity of the steel. So they had a double meaning. Yeah, that's the best. That's the best brand choice. It has something to do with your actual work and it ties to your values. That's perfect. Yeah, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it, but it was a good choice in the end. Maybe you can, uh, attribute that to Inc magazine. Well, congratulations. That's really, truly amazing, and I hope people listening hear that as a little hopeful hint that there are jobs, and there are, and there are good people hiring. So let's, let's turn to Alaska updates for a minute. Uh, you had shared that the Strait of, I don't even know how to say this, Hormuz, Herm closure. I've, I've read it a million times. I don't think I've ever said it out loud. Closure has been a big impact on energy costs in western Alaska this year, so yeah, it's not going terribly, um, so maybe just a little geographic orientation.

Western Alaska is in some places only a very few short thousands of feet from Russia, so most of the Fuel that comes to Western Alaska is typically produced in the Middle East, refined in Korea, and then it's brought to Alaska on double-hulled tankers from Korea because that is the cheapest, shortest option to Western Alaska. There's also somewhat of a capacity issue as well. Almost all the fuel that's produced on the West Coast, which is of the United States of America, is the next closes. A source of refined fuel for like diesel and jetty and gasoline, but all that fuel gets sold, like it's consumed by California, mostly. There's a lot of people in California, uh, and other people on the West Coast, and so there's not, there is fuel that is available to purchase to come to Alaska, but there's less of it. And when things get tight worldwide, it typically goes to the lower 48 because it doesn't have to be transported as far. So when the Strait of Hormuz closed, of course, prices started to rise, because vessels not only were trapped on the inside, but vessels that would normally be making transits, because you, you get profit on throughput, right? How many gallons of fuel you put through your vessel. Well, all these vessels are clogged up and there's no throughput and there's no fuel to buy. The other thing we need to know about Alaska to understand this problem is that most of the villages and towns, I guess by lower 48 cents, we call them cities, but 3500 people. It's towns, cities, villages in, in Western Alaska, they only have ice-free ports a certain number of months of the year. So they can't just wait till prices come down. They have to get their first load of fuel in May or June to support all of the summer construction and flights and all the things that happen in the summer that can't in the winter. And then they typically get one last delivery in the end of summer, like August and September to fill up before winter, and it's usually a. month supply. So, right now, even if, which I'm not entirely sure if it is, the MOU at the time of recording has been signed, but we have like 5 months of an expense tail. I mean, these companies have been incurring expenses for months and months and months and months. They're not going to drop their prices anytime soon because they have to overcome those losses. And so for rural Alaska, they're stuck in this position where a lot of their fuel is probably going to be double. So, last year, some of the electrical utilities we were working with were buying diesel for $3.50 a gallon, and they've been quoted anywhere from $7 to $9 a gallon for the June delivery. We're hoping it will come down at the end of the summer, but until this week, there wasn't even hope that that was going to stop. Anyway, so that creates a big hardship for these communities because how do you provide electricity to your residents at double the cost? I mean, imagine if your electric bill doubled for a year because it just had to. So there's been a lot of internal talk in the state of Alaska about how to mitigate this economic disaster. And then there's quite a few communities that are worried they may not be able to get a loan, cause a lot of communities, they have to take out loans to buy this amount of fuel. Cause I mean, if you're buying 2 million gallons at $7 million or $7 a gallon, it's $7 million that's a lot of money you gotta lay out. So there's just a lot of pieces to it that I think probably are gonna surprise many of our listeners. It's like this unintended consequence of this intensely global scale problem. Right, yeah, I can't even imagine if you were already scraping by to pay that bill and then you're like, OK, it's double, and then in someplace where you can't, it's not like you can just forego it there, Florida, maybe you can go not pay my electric bill. I might sweat quite a bit, but I'm not going to. We're talking places where when the electricity goes out for two days, like they're very, people die, so you can't, it's 60 below or whatever.

And just for like, maybe a reference, their energy expenses are already the highest in the nation, so most people's electric bill is somewhere between $500 and $800 a month before this kick. And that's with the state of Alaska subsidy, because these are very remote locations, it's very expensive to get fuel there. It's why the renewable energy focus in western and rural Alaska has been so strong. They're looking for more resilient grids, they're looking for ways to spread out costs and to mitigate this kind of pull, like if you only use diesel to generate electric, if the price of diesel goes up, you are at its mercy, but if you have other options like wind and solar, you can, Cut your burn time, and some of our smaller communities are, they've implemented things like biomass energy production, which is just good old fashioned wood burning. But if you're a community of 300 people, I mean, yeah, I feel like that's a good option. So, yeah, anyway, I could talk forever about energy in Alaska, but that's specifically how the Strait of Hormuz is impacting us.

Yeah, well, I think it demonstrate. Straight sort of the inequity of maybe people in the lower 48 are not so extreme need of the renewable energies. They don't feel it like that. But in the rural areas, they're feeling it and they want the solutions now, and they need the solutions now. If when the rest of us felt that, you know, I think they're feeling it a little bit with prices now. Can you imagine if Houston doubled their electric bill for 9 months and it's like, sorry, renewables in 5 minutes. There's no way, right? And then also, what has the response been like to Typhoon Halong? These words, I know Alaska is the alphabet soup.

It's Typhoon Halong, I believe. So, I, again, that was just the, it was just a tragic weather event, and I don't know, I can give you a little history of Alaska to explain it, but essentially, Alaska gets hit by really hard storms, and of course, we're very remote and lack resources, and Typhoon Heilong was not supposed to be that bad, and then it was. It was terrible, the storm. shifted and it flooded, I think, 12 or 16 communities altogether, but they got flooded badly to the point where houses were swept off their foundations and moved up to 12 miles away from their foundation. People were evacuated on a C-130, like they landed what part of Alaska is this? Western Alaska, if you want my Alaska map on my hand, it's this outer edge here, the most remote finger parts. Yeah, uh, for those of you listening, I held my hand up like the state of Alaska. That's how every Alaskan has their map on them. Yeah, they had to land a military craft and evacuate almost 600 people from two different communities just to save their lives because the floodwaters were rising so fast. And I believe there was one life lost, and then we still have people in Anchorage that have not returned to their homes because there was nothing for them to return to and surprising. Surprisingly, the federal government, Trump and FEMA signed executive orders right away and got us help right away, which was really appreciated, but it's essentially rebuilding these communities, which is an incredible amount of money, and there's a lot of planning and thoughts about do they go back to where they were or do we put them in a different location. But you got to remember these are traditional native villages as well, with long generational ties to these locations, and so it takes a long time to move a village. There's a lot of different things that go into that. You can't just go set up some Conex trailers a couple of miles away and be like, There you go, no roads, no, no electric, no nothing. Yeah, so I don't know. I still know people right now that are living in a hotel in Anchorage. that were displaced, what, last fall. And I, again, I just, I have a hard time. I mean, I just have a hard time imagining that flying anywhere else in the lower 48. But Alaskans are really resilient, and one of the most beautiful things, Laura, was how many people came out to help and come together. A whole group of contractors, us included, got together and we're providing free advice on how to like restart your heating system, because the two communities that were evacuated were tragic. Remember I said 12 communities got flooded. There was all these other communities that were heavily impacted, and when you have heating oil for your house and your house gets flooded, a lot of times you're, they're called a Toyo stove, but your heating unit, it stops working and the, the tank that you use to store your fuel oil gets water in it, and you have to filter it out, and those filters can become overwhelmed, and there's just all these. Things that you have to do to kind of recover and there wasn't anybody to do it that you couldn't call a technician to come to your house, right? You just have to do it. So, it was really nice to see everybody coming together along with the National Guard and NOAA, and I think Texas sent an entire division of their National Guard to help, which was really fun. I got a call from a guy who's like, I am. I was like, Can I help you? And he's like, I'm in, you know, insert community name here. And I was like, Yeah. He's like, and Oscar said you can tell me. I was like, Oh, yeah, Oscar from Coastal Villages. Yes, tell me what you need. And he didn't have diesel heating oil experience, and I walked him through how to, uh, crimp off return and supply lines so that they didn't leak, and that was super fun. And then NOAA actually did a cool initiative. They're creating like a, from that effort, they got everybody together this spring and they're making a guidance for next time from all those like lessons learned, which was really nice. I appreciated that. And NOAA did that all in the middle of government shutdowns, and there was a lot of volunteer time from the amazing staff at NOAA to make sure. The stuff didn't get lost and forgotten until next time. So there was a lot of good that came out of it, but Alaska just, we have some big, significantly complex problems, and yeah, we're just, we're a little delicate, you know, when things, we're resilient people, but man, our systems just, they can't take storm after storm after storm. It's just, it's a lot.

Yeah. Well, there's a trade-off, right? It's remote and it's far from the lower 48. It is, and my one of my best friends has lived there for like 20 years, and I've visited a few times. I stayed in McCarthy once for 10 days or so, yeah, and, um, it was before we, we talked last time, and it's a different life, and it is, it's on one hand, much more simple. And there's a, I, for me, I feel like it feels like very liberating to spend some time in that, but then it's hard too, you know, I've watched my friend build a cabin from scratch and Some of the, the issues that she ran into over the years, and, you know, it's still kind of like the wild west feeling to me a little bit too, where it's like, it hasn't progressed as far, but that's maybe also what's alluring about it.

Yeah, and I grew up like that, and you, you'll notice that I'm in a pretty standard house in a in a city and One of the things about that lifestyle, and I did, I lived it for 25 years, and it consumes a lot of your time. So you, it's like, when you're on vacation for 10 days, it feels wonderful, but when you wake up every single morning and you have to stoke the fire because your house is about to freeze, it's a lot of little tasks, and I, I do enjoy it. Like, we absolutely go out and do longer runs at our cabin where we're just living the simple life. But for a whole chunk of Alaska, that is their life, and it's not just a choice for them, it's where their ancestors have been for millennia. And I do see that on the online troll comments, like, why don't they just move into the big city, you know, but, you know, Western society descended upon them. It was not like they were like, Oh, I need to go live the simple life somewhere. So I, I do feel like staying in the place that you are from is really important for cultural and native language preservation, and I don't want to talk too much about it because that's definitely not something I'm an expert in by any means, but I have lived and worked in rural Alaska for multiple decades now and I do think that people need to hold empathy in their heart for the fact that it's a way of life we should preserve. We need those outlooks. We need people with those experiences at our tables, and I know for integrity, we work really, really hard, and we work with these people every day, living a lifestyle like that, and their expertise is So helpful because they are kind of like jack of all trades. They have to be able to fix everything. They can clearly see how each systems, interacts with and affects all the others. And when you're an intense specialist, like many of us scientists are, having somebody like that look at your project or your ideas or your thoughts can really help you connect. And put things together in a way that's gonna be better for everybody. So, I do think that one thing America could work a lot harder on is bringing all these different expertise levels to the table instead of having one expert on one thing. We need to have all these different worldviews to get the best ideas out and pick from that.

Yeah, agreed. So, business to business owner, let's talk tech a little bit. How are you incorporating AI into the work that you do? Or are you?

Yeah, we are. I think you have to at this point to get ahead or stay ahead. I don't even know. I feel like I was a late adopter of the iPhone. I'm a little ashamed to answer or to say that, but I was, I was skeptical. I was like, I don't need this. I had my flip phone, I was cool. But when I did, it fundamentally changed my business. I mean, that was when we I mean, I still remember how profitable we were the first year I had my iPhone because I was able to answer and do sales in a way I had not been able to do. So I learned from that lesson, because you know me, Laura, I love me some learning. So this time when AI showed up, I was like, Oh, this feels hard and scary, and I am not getting any younger. So I was like, Man, my, I don't know if my brain can handle this. But I went to my team and I, everyone's like, What do we do? What do we? And I was like, we have to just do it. Just jump in, take the first bite. So, we have good rules around AI and how we use it. The first thing that we did that was the easiest was we did meeting summaries and notes, and that saved us so much time. Nobody had to be Moneypenny's secretary anymore. And I honestly wonder how this is gonna, yeah, well, and I, I think it's going to free up a lot of women, honestly, because I I'll, I'll be honest, my entire career I've been asked to take notes in every meeting. So I was like, this is going to be really freeing. So yeah, we'd use it for meeting summaries and notes. We also use it for our work in task management. It's so wonderful to be able to be like, co-pilot, could you go through my emails for the last 5 days and tell me if there's any that I need to respond to? And then, of course, we have automated task reminders and all those good things built in.

One of the most interesting uses that I think your readers, readers, your listeners might want to hear about. is we've been using it for training, and we do external training for our clients. We also do internal training because nobody's an expert in bulk fuels when I hire them, so we have to train them. And one of the things I did about a year ago, we were really struggling with me bottlenecking the training because I had to like develop the content and then I had to record it, and I just, I also have to do my full-time sales job, my full-time owner job, and then billable, because I still have some billable. Anyway, one of the employees that I hired, she had some experience with AI in different ways, and she suggested that I clone my voice for narration voiceovers. And so I did. I went, I, I went to a professional podcast studio and I read The Great Gatsby for like 2 hours straight for this, this voice cloning technology. And then I read our website for another hour. And what's cool is I can develop a script for my training. And then it narrates it in my voice, but I don't have to do retakes when I mess up or choke on things or whatever. So I was a little hesitant at first because it felt pretty space agey to be like, I'm going to clone my voice. So yeah, it's a little trippy sometimes. I will hear the training in the background and I was like, I never said that. It's just my cloned voice. Um, but we did, we did step out a little, and I'm really glad we did. It's been really useful for reducing the amount of time I have to spend on the trainings. And then some of the other things we're using AI for is data checking, you know, we will never put client data into AI, but we, if we've got spreadsheets and we're like, I don't know, like UT thicknesses on steel. I'm like, are any of these out of tolerance, and then sucking it from one table to another in a report, there's no more number transversals, it's just always accurate all the time. It's wonderful. So, on the flip side of that, we have a whole lot of things we cannot use AI for, and I have a whole guidance, we do a whole training, we're very strict because we have a lot of confidential and proprietary information with our clients, and we have to, so. There's a whole bunch of stuff to the point where our business chat GPT, because we have a business account, I have it in the, in the background that if somebody tries to upload client data, it's gonna say, this looks a lot like proprietary client data. Are you sure you want to upload it, which is kind of cool, yeah, yeah, I, it's, I don't know. So we've been incorporating it slowly and surely. It was one of our, our key goals for 2025 was to kind of increase our efficiency and productivity by Some number, I won't lie, I don't know how to measure it. We tried and failed miserably, but we are more efficient. We definitely have better processes. Things that we used to hate doing are now a non-issue. So it is getting better. If anyone has tips for me on how to measure that, I am all ears, but it In general, the overall sense of well-being is much higher.

Yeah, well, I think that's great. And my favorite two things you just said were basically, you know, identifying where your bottlenecks are and using it as a tool to remove those because, again, as a business owner, I feel the same pains. And secondly, that one of your staff persons suggested something to you and you took it and you did it. You didn't say, no, we've always done it this other way. I'm not gonna change what I am. Putting my voice into AI is too scary, he said, no, let's try it, that's a good idea. So kudos to you on that.

Thank you. It was a little scary. My husband's like, what if she uses it to write checks? I was like, whatever. They can already do that right now from a phone call. Um, yeah, no, I think AI can be scary or it can be an exciting opportunity. You just gotta wrap your brain around it, and just, every time I feel a little, little shaky on AI, I just start learning more, and then I get to the point where, I don't know, everything can be scary if you let it.

Yeah, well, and then, so speaking of the scary part of it, how has it changed your hiring practices?

Goodness. So, and, and I'm, I'm saying that with all the love in my heart. It actually hasn't changed our hiring practices all that much other than when we do our hiring system, we do have a small task that we ask people to do, like we say, take numbers from this table and put it over here. And follow directions, and we're trying to see how well they follow directions. We did run that exact task through AI cause I figured 90% of the people that we were gonna interview would be like. We're almost through it, so we know what it looks like when it comes back from AI completely unedited. So we did modify that task a little to show us if it just went straight through AI unedited, and they just copied and pasted and did zero effort. Um, AI is a tool and it needs to be used smartly. And so what we're doing now is we're evaluating how our candidates are using AI and if they're doing it smartly to showcase what they do better or to make themselves more productive. I will tell you now, after reviewing several 100 resumes and going through quite a few interviews, there are ways to use AI that are not smart and it's real obvious to the rest of us. Uh, if you want my thoughts on AI and hiring, I'm happy to go through them.

Yeah, let's hear it. I think this is one of the topics for anyone looking for a job is interested to know.

So, I do think, and this is just independent Shannon as a small business owner, I'm not a large company, so the way we review resumes is different. We still read every resume because I don't want to use AI because I might miss something, right? I'm not looking to, large companies are, are largely doing a checklist check. Do you have these 8 things, check, check, check, and they're trying to Exclude everybody. I'm looking for the right cultural fit. I need to know that this person can work closely with people in rural Alaska and enjoy the work and be part of an entrepreneurial system. This is not pull lever A 27 times and go home. It's a very different kind of job. So, with that said, when you use AI to create your resume and your cover letter, it kind of beiges everybody out. Everybody looks like an AI resume and cover letter. So, if you want to work for a company that's bright and agile and exciting and interesting and doing cool things, You need to take the beige out, like use a I to make sure that you spelled everything correctly and the grammar's good and to give you some suggestions, but you still need to put your personality and your interests in there. And true story, I actually, we've of course got hundreds of resumes for a couple of positions that we had open. I would say 70 to 80% of them listed the same hobbies and interests, because that's what AI has decided is the average hobby in it. I'm like, well, I can tell you what it is, hiking, camping, reading, traveling. Uh, these are what environmental professionals are into. Yeah, and I, and like to the same wording, like it's all from this AI stock database. It's like using stock photos for your photo. It's like, I would like a stock photo of a brunette lady in her 50s, right? Like, and that's what you get. So I think if you want to work for a more dynamic company, you need to take your resume and cover letter and you need to have some personality bleed back through. And I would like cover letters to tell me why exactly you want this position. Instead of, I'm interested in integrity because integrity does these things and I would like to be one of, and I'm like, No, tell me why I want to hear. Well, I'm not going to say what I want to hear because AI will scrape it and then it'll show up in all my cover letters, but I want to hear why you specifically want this specific position, and I think this is the most important thing in a job search. It's where you should spend your time. Like, your resume's already written, you might want to tune it up for the job to put the specific skills and abilities in a better polish, but really, in that cover letter, I want to know what about this job interested you enough to apply for it. And if you can't spend the time to do that, then I don't want to spend the time interviewing. I mean, it is awful to get to the end of an interview and have somebody be like, Oh, no, I don't want to do this job at all. And we're very good about communicating clearly ahead of time, pay scale, what the job entails. You can go online and hear what it's like to work with integrity. Like, we're very open. A lot of firms don't take as much time because of reasons, right? They, they all got problems. So if you want End up in a good position as a job candidate, I think being a little more honest in your cover letter about why you specifically want the job and taking the time to do that is going to get you better interviews too. You're not just going to be interviewing with another head shop that you don't want to work for, you know. So, that's kind of my, my thinking about AI on that beige effect.

When I coach people, that's exactly what I tell them. I'm like, you need, why? That's mostly what I tell them. Why, why are you applying for this? Why does this make sense for you? Why, you know, most cover letters are just so whitewashed, beige, boring, whatever, and I'm like, imagine Shannon is looking at 100 cover letters, and they all finally, but finally one of them says, I've been waiting my whole life for this opportunity. I love tanks. Oh my God, you're hired, you know.

I had somebody really honest in their cover letter. It did get them an interview. They wrote, I've been applying for a bunch of jobs. I'll be honest, I just need any job. But I looked at your job and I thought, What if I could add adventure to it? I would love to have some adventure. And that stood out like a beacon of light, like the bat signal. They didn't even have all of the requirements that we were, but I said, I want to interview this person because they were honest. And it, she was indicating what we want. I want somebody that's ready for adventure. And it matched up with our values. So, one other caveat to that, if you go to AI and say, I would like you to match the culture and values of integrity, one thing that was really funny is a ton of our cover letters came back and they talked about the sustainability, development and sustainability plan experience of these candidates, and it was a significant, like over 50% of the cover letters had all this stuff about their, like, very specific about their sustainability plan preparation. We don't do sustainability planning. It's not anything in our, it's nothing we do. And I was like, where did this come from? It turns out one of our customers, our clients had asked us to do a sustainability evaluation for one of their internal, they wanted to hire a woman owned small business and sustainability, and so, so we made a sustainability plan and posted it to our website to meet this contract requirement with a client. And AI scraped that sustainability plan that we wrote and then incorrectly inferred that we write them. And so if you're relying on AI to determine whether you want to work for a company, it can make some pretty big dumb mistakes. So everyone that had anything to do with sustainability, I was like, it only takes that one, that one signature from AI to make it the whole thing trash, right? Like, I'll be honest, I had this happen the other day. I had to write me a reply to a friend, and it wasn't like it wasn't what I wanted to say. It just, I couldn't get the words right. It's basically asking for a friend that I ask for things all the time, and I was just like, how do I make this so less baggy. And so it was, it was an honest use of AI, but at the end it was like, OK, tell me when you want to go grab a drink, and I completely missed that part. I don't even live in the same city with this person. I was like, oh man, you know. I truly believe that AI wants to leave its mark, and it will find a way to whatever you're having it right for you to put it there. It's been directed to you because all of these different AI triggers for teachers and stuff, they're looking for that. But Laura, what I'm looking for is we all have to use AI. I'm not saying don't use it. We have to, but I'm looking for smart uses of AI. I'm looking for good executive, critical thinking, and related to that, we've had this happen a few times now, and I'm gonna just tell all of your listeners, please do not do this. We do virtual interviews because we're a distributed team. We have had multiple people come into an interview, and they must have chat GPT or something up on another screen. And they do the entire interview and they're like, we'll ask a question like, tell us about a time you did blah blah blah blah blah and then there's this god awful pause while they're waiting for chat GPT to crunch and then they start reading the chat GPT answer. They're like, thank you, Shannon, that's a great question. Let me tell you about a time that I mm mm mm and it's like they're robots. And I tell you what happens when that happens in an interview. One, it shows a huge lack of critical thinking. It shows a lack of emotional intelligence, and sadly, like a really low self-esteem. Like, all of those things show up when you use chat GBT that way, and I want nothing of that in my Workforce. And I just, I would encourage you back to the cover letter. Like, if you really want this job, let them see who you really are. I know it's scary. I know you've gone through 20 interviews and they all sucked. And some of those interviews felt like you were being herded like cattle through a chute, and I'm sorry. That's just how a lot of people do it because they don't know any better. But if you take the time to find interesting companies to apply for that you are really genuinely interested for, those interviews will start feeling more interesting. Yes, absolutely. If you're only applying because it checks your box, you're gonna get an interview that checks a box. Yeah, so, again, I love AI. It's doing amazing things, but you have to be a smart, critically thinking user. You can't just use it carte blanche for everything, or, uh, I, yeah, we call it lazy. Like it's just, it's right, like you're just like, oh, I can't. You're going to be a lazy worker. I can't hire somebody who can't even do an interview and expect you to go out and do a tank inspection without help. Yeah, and I, we do things that AI cannot. I cannot fly AI out to a remote location and have it look at a tank and tell me if it's good or not, right? So. You can't think for yourself and you're out in a remote location. You don't have cell signal. You can't pick up your phone and go, what do I do? That GBT will not have the schedule for your remote charter plane either. It ain't on because Nate's coming back when Nate's coming back, right?

So I need to be respectful of your time because you have to get out of here. But I could have this conversation with you all day. I also want to, because we have to hit field notes because in Alaska and I see some of the things that you get to do. So really quickly. We have a segment called #t Field Notes. This is a part of our show where we talk to our guests about their memorable moments doing the work, whether funny, scary, awkward, etc. If you're listening and would like us to share a story of yours, we would love to share it and send it to you info@vialprofessionalsradio.com or the form on the site. Hit me with some of your things, Shannon.

OK, I do have a couple of field notes for you. We work on Saint Paul Island quite a bit. They're one of our favorite places on Earth. And they have these unique fur seals, and they have, you can get permits to go view the seals, and there are seal viewing blinds all over the island, and I was taking a group of my employees and some city officials that are friends of ours, and I was like, come with us, let's go look at seals, it's, you know, calving time, I can't wait, or pupping time. And we get out of the cart, the seal blinds, and the seals are on the beach and everything's, and a seal blind, if you don't know, is like a, it's like a little wooden deck with kind of like pallets built up around it, so you can see through, but the seals can't see your outline. It can be really dangerous for pups. They can stampede if they get scared and they can squish the pups as they race towards the water. So it's kind of meant to break things up so you don't cause any stampedes. But anyways, we're approaching the seal blind and we're all chatting and we're having a great time, and it's super fun. And I went to step into the. and there was a full grown bull fur seal inside and they're like 1000 pounds and it was sleeping. I didn't know because I couldn't see it because it was laying down and it popped up and it stuck its head around the corner and went. I made that weird seal noise. It scared all of us so bad. We all screamed and then we ran around in circles because we were so scared. And then we ran back to the van and we hopped in and then we were like all panting and then we all started laughing because none of us looked good in that moment. It was like a Mr. Bean episode or something like. We were so scared and then he went right back to sleep. I was like, OK, so now when I go to the steal blinds, I'm always like, hey, anybody in there? So that was one. I don't know, it's not funny or all that interesting, but recently we were in Southeast Alaska, and Southeast Alaska has some of the best tide pooling in the world, and I had one of our employees with me and we got done with work, and I was like, What do you want to do? And she's like, I want to go tide pooling. I want to see what's out there. And so it was a nice low tide. We went out, we were seeing all sorts of cool anemones and sea stars and weird eels and cucumbers. And we were sitting there and it was a little misty and it was raining a little bit, we were in full rain gear, and you know, the big cedar trees, it smells like the cedar and salt candles are supposed to smell, but don't. It was so wonderful and fresh, and the breeze was just right, and then all this little herd of deer came out because they eat kelp in the Southeast and they lick the salt up, you know, they come out and they're eating and we're just out there with the deer, being one with nature and I was like, yeah, this is the benefit right here. Like this was such a good end to the workday, and we, we did that for a couple hours till the tide started to come back in, and then we went back and had a beer, some cheese curds at this local restaurant, and I was like, yeah, this is why I was a scientist. This is amazing sounds magical. It was, it really was, but we have to get you out of here. So thank you for sharing those. I mean, uh. Yeah, field stories in Alaska, endless. They are pretty nice, uh, yeah, I mean you do photography and art, but we're gonna skip past those and just I see some new ones it looks like behind you and um save them for next time. Is there anything else you would like to talk about before you head off?

No, not really. Thank you so much for having me aboard though. I really enjoyed being on here. Thank you for jumping on last minute. Appreciate it and I'm, I'm so glad to catch up with you and hear your updates and congrats on all the growth you've had and everything. Um, lastly, where can people get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is a good place or Instagram. We post a lot of really beautiful photos on there. Me personally, it'll be LinkedIn, but for the business Insta or LinkedIn. And then we have a podcast too about tanks. If you want to know more about tanks, we have 2000 listeners now, which just blows my mind for something about tanks. That's awesome. So yeah, you can, you can go to our website and get connected to that.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Shannon. I look forward to our next chat.

And that's our show. Thank you, Shannon, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody.