0:02 He turned a $2,500 investment into
0:05 America's largest independent oil
0:07 company. He forced the biggest corporate
0:11 merger in history, a 13.2 billion deal,
0:13 and he didn't even buy the company. He
0:16 made 800 million for his investors in 3
0:18 years by terrifying the most powerful
0:21 executives in the world. Time magazine
0:23 put him on the cover. Fortune called him
0:26 the company hunter. Congress hauled him
0:29 in to testify. An entire town held
0:32 24-hour prayer virils asking God to stop
0:35 him. Then he lost everything. His stock
0:39 went from $171 to under $5. His company
0:43 drowned in 1.3 billion of debt. He was
0:45 pushed out of the empire. He spent 40
0:48 years building. By the time it was over,
0:51 Tboon Pickins was nearly 70 years old,
0:54 divorced, depressed, and down to roughly
0:57 $1.2 million in liquid assets. most
1:00 people would have disappeared. He didn't
1:02 disappear. He came back, built a hedge
1:05 fund from a desk and a telephone, and
1:08 earned $1.1 billion in a single year.
1:10 Then he gave away over a billion
1:12 dollars. Here's what most people miss
1:14 about Tboon Pickins. His product was
1:18 never oil. His product was narrative.
1:20 And he was the greatest salesman in the
1:22 history of American business. And the
1:25 person who tells the best story wins.
1:26 I'm Nico Lewig, the founder of
1:29 Collateral.com, the financial
1:31 storytelling firm. I spent months inside
1:33 this story, including three of Pickin's
1:37 own books, Forbes investigation spanning
1:39 four decades, a Time magazine cover
1:42 story, PBS interviews, a Wall Street
1:45 Week appearance, and an oral history
1:48 interview where Pickkins at 82 years old
1:50 reflects on everything he built in
1:52 Nearly Lost. Here's the thing most
1:54 people don't realize about Tboon
1:57 Pickins. Every chapter of his life was a
1:59 sales pitch. When he was 28 with no
2:02 money and no reputation, he knocked on
2:05 doors across the Texas panhandle selling
2:08 investors on Wildcat wells. When he took
2:10 Mesa public, he flew to Wall Street and
2:13 knocked on doors of institutional firms,
2:14 learning to speak the language of
2:17 portfolio managers. When he realized it
2:19 was cheaper to buy oil on the stock
2:21 exchange than drill for it in the
2:23 ground, he went on a national media
2:26 tour, convincing shareholders they were
2:28 being robbed by their own executives.
2:30 And when he lost everything in his
2:32 late60s, he went back to knocking on
2:35 doors, asking people to trust him with
2:37 their money one more time. Walk into a
2:40 room, tell a compelling story, and get
2:42 people to believe in you. If you watched
2:44 our documentary on Traml Crow, you'll
2:47 recognize a pattern here. Crow built the
2:50 largest real estate empire in America by
2:52 selling people on partnership. Pickkins
2:54 built the largest independent oil
2:57 company in America by selling people on
2:59 vision. Both of them understood that in
3:01 the business, the person who controls
3:04 the narrative controls the outcome. And
3:05 here's the one principle I want you to
3:08 take away from this entire story. The
3:11 person who tells the best story wins.
3:13 You're going to see this play out in
3:15 every chapter of his life. And here's
3:17 the journey that we're about to take.
3:21 Chapter one is The Wound covering 1928
3:23 to 1956.
3:28 Chapter 2 is Mesa covering 1956 to 1981.
3:32 Chapter 3 is The Insight covering 1981
3:33 to 1982.
3:36 Chapter four is the battle for golf
3:40 covering 1982 to 1984. Chapter five is
3:44 Boonbusters covering 1984 to 1985.
3:48 Chapter 6 is the fall covering 1986 to 1996.
3:49 1996.
3:51 Chapter 7 [music] is the comeback
3:56 covering 1996 to 2007. Chapter 8 is the
3:59 Pickins Plan covering 2008 to 2012.
4:03 Chapter 9 is the giveaway covering 2003
4:07 to 2018. Chapter 10 is the fourth
4:11 quarter covering 2017 to 2019. So let's
4:14 begin. Chapter 1, the wound. The
4:18 timeline here is from 1928 to 1956. And
4:19 to understand why Tboon Pickins bet
4:22 everything on storytelling, you have to
4:24 understand where he came from. Thomas
4:28 Boon Pickkins Jr. was born on May 22nd,
4:32 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma, a cow
4:35 town of 6,300 people surrounded by
4:38 pastures where cattle grazed alongside
4:41 active oil pumps. He was an only child.
4:43 His father, Thomas Boon Pickkins,
4:46 Senior, was a landman, someone who
4:47 secures mineral rights for leases
4:49 [music] for oil and gas drilling. His
4:52 mother, Grace Pickkins, ran the local
4:54 office of price administration during
4:57 the war. rationing gasoline for three
4:59 counties. But the real power in the
5:01 family sat on the porch across the
5:04 driveway. His grandmother, Nelly
5:07 Mullinsson, she taught him the two
5:09 lessons that would define his entire
5:12 life. The value of a dollar and the cost
5:14 of your character. She'd ask if I had
5:17 the money, and I'd reply yes, that I had
5:20 50 cents. That my haircut was 25 cents,
5:22 the movie 10 cents, and [music] I'd have
5:26 a nickel for popcorn. and she'd say, "A
5:29 fool and his money are soon parted.
5:31 Don't you ever forget that." One day,
5:33 while delivering papers, Young Boon
5:35 found an empty wallet. He returned it to
5:37 the owner, who gave him a dollar as a
5:41 reward. He ran home excited and told his
5:43 grandmother. Pickins recalled what she
5:46 said, saying, "My grandmother said,
5:48 "Sunny, take that dollar back. We're not
5:51 going to get a reward for being honest."
5:53 He had to return the dollar in a pouring
5:56 rainstorm. and the lesson stuck. He was
5:57 12 when he got his first paper route
6:00 with 28 customers. Within months, he had
6:03 bought the routes on either side of him,
6:06 expanding his territory to 154 homes. He
6:09 later called it his first introduction
6:11 to expanding [music] quickly by
6:13 acquisition. This is the same instinct
6:16 Traml Crow had at the exact same age.
6:19 Crow was mowing lawns, selling
6:21 magazines, and catting. Pickins was
6:23 buying paper routes. Both of them were
6:26 learning the same lesson. Nobody is
6:28 going to hand you anything. You have to
6:30 go get it yourself. Now, here's the
6:32 wound. His father was a gambler. Time
6:34 magazine reported that he was an
6:37 ineterate gambler who made and lost a
6:39 fortune buying and selling oil leases.
6:41 In the late 1930s, the search for oil in
6:44 the Seol area ran its course. Instead of
6:46 playing it safe with land deals, his
6:48 father started investing in wildcat
6:50 [music] wells, which had much greater
6:53 risk. Pickkins wrote about it saying,
6:55 "As it turned out, my father was better
6:57 at assessing risk in a game of a
7:00 fivecard draw than in looking for oil.
7:02 The family went from a yellow Pierce
7:06 Arrow to a used Chevy." His father took
7:08 a corporate job as a landman at Philips
7:11 Petroleum, not because he wanted to, but
7:14 because he had to. Pickkins wrote saying
7:16 this was the first time in his life that
7:19 he had not been self-employed and that
7:21 transition to the corporate world was
7:23 difficult for him. I don't think he ever
7:25 really made the adjustment. He had lived
7:28 in the wild too long. This is the wound.
7:30 His father was a brilliant storyteller,
7:33 a man everybody liked, but he lost his
7:35 independent and could never get it back.
7:38 Does this sound familiar to you? It
7:40 should because Traml Crow's father was a
7:43 bookkeeper who gave decades to someone
7:45 else's company and then when the company
7:47 disappeared, he had nothing to show for
7:50 it. Both men were shaped by the same
7:52 lessons. You must have ownership and
7:54 skin in the game in order to thrive.
7:57 After a basketball scholarship to Texas
7:59 A&M that ended in a broken elbow,
8:02 Pickkins transferred to Oklahoma State
8:04 and he graduated with a geology degree
8:06 in 1951. He then went to work for
8:09 Philips Petroleum, the same firm that
8:11 his father worked for. He hated it from
8:13 day one. Pickkins later described what
8:16 it was like, saying, quote, "Every
8:19 morning, a bell rang at 5 minutes before
8:23 8, signaling you to your desk, just like
8:25 at school. At noon, everyone would be
8:28 standing by the door waiting for the
8:31 lunch bell. The final bell rang at 5,
8:33 and they didn't want anyone staying past
8:36 quitting time. And after 3 years, Boon
8:39 quit. He cashed in his $1,300 pension,
8:41 bought a Ford station wagon that he
8:43 slept in while scouting well sites, and
8:46 struck out on his own with $2,500 in
8:49 borrowed money. Pickin said, quote,
8:52 "Except for a few members of my family,
8:55 no one gave me a prayer of succeeding.
8:58 My single-minded focus gave me an edge.
9:01 I was now going to succeed or fall on my
9:05 ass." Chapter 2. Mesa. The timeline here
9:08 is from 1956 to 1981. And here's where
9:12 the storytelling begins. In 1956, at the
9:15 age of 28, Pickkins founded Petroleum
9:18 Exploration, Inc. with two investors,
9:21 John O'Brien and Jean McCart, who gave
9:24 him a $100,000 line of credit. They got
9:26 half of the company, he got the other
9:29 half. He had no money, no letter head,
9:31 and he did his own typing. He was a sole
9:34 proprietor who looked younger than he
9:36 was and people called him the boy
9:38 geologist. But he was a good hustler. He
9:40 put together drilling funds, raised
9:42 money from his investors, and drilled
9:44 wells. His first programs were turned
9:49 4:1 and then 6:1. By 1964, he had enough
9:51 investors and enough track record to
9:53 take the company public. He named it
9:56 Mesa Petroleum after the flattop but of
9:58 the Texas panhandle. His salary that
10:02 year was $24,960.
10:03 Now, here's what made Pickings different
10:06 from every other independent oilman in
10:08 America. He didn't just drill wells, he
10:10 sold a vision. Just like Traml Crow was
10:13 building speculative warehouses before
10:15 he had tenants committed, Pickkins was
10:17 selling investors on reserves that
10:19 hadn't been discovered yet. Both men
10:21 were selling the future. Build it and
10:24 they will come. Drill it and the oil
10:26 will be there. Pickkins took that vision
10:29 global. In 1959, he scraped together $35,000
10:31 $35,000
10:33 to invest in drilling sites in Canada.
10:35 Mesa sank the income from those sites
10:38 into new wells and in 1979 sold its
10:40 Canadian operations to Dome Petroleum
10:44 for $600 million. He discovered a major
10:47 North Sea strike in 1975 and named it
10:49 after his then wife Beatatrice. Mesa put
10:52 54 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
10:56 Forbes wrote in 1979 saying, "Mesa got
10:58 wealthy up there when everyone was
11:00 looking in a different direction. He
11:02 called Pickkins the best financial man
11:04 I've met in 25 years in the oil
11:08 business. By 1981, Mesa stock hit $171 a
11:10 share." There's two reasons why I made
11:13 this film. The first is I love telling
11:15 financial stories and the second is I
11:17 want to tell yours. I'm the founder of
11:19 Collateral Partners. We help investment
11:21 firms and operating businesses close the
11:24 gap between who they actually are and
11:25 how they're perceived. We have finance
11:27 people who understand your business and
11:28 designers who make you look
11:30 institutional. And that combination
11:32 doesn't exist anywhere else. So, if
11:34 you're raising capital, closing clients,
11:36 or recruiting talent, and you're tired
11:38 of competitors who just present
11:40 themselves better, click the link below.
11:42 Let's get on a call and audit your
11:44 materials versus your leading
11:46 competitors, and let's close the gap.
11:49 Chapter 3, the insight. The timeline
11:53 here is from 1981 to 1982. By the early
11:55 1980s, Pickkins would have been working
11:56 on an idea that would have changed
11:59 everything for Mesa. He figured it was
12:01 vastly cheaper to look for oil and gas
12:03 reserve on the floor of the New York
12:06 Stock Exchange than to explore for them
12:08 in the Gulf of Mexico. Think about what
12:10 he was saying. If you take the 10
12:12 largest oil companies listed on the New
12:15 York Stock Exchange, 90% were not
12:18 replacing their reserves annually. Their
12:20 stocks were selling at an average price
12:23 of 45% of the appraised value of their
12:25 underlying assets. That means you could
12:29 buy $1 of oil in the ground for 45 on
12:31 the stock market. So why would you spend
12:33 $500 million drilling wells when you
12:36 could spend 500 million buying a company
12:38 that already had the oil? Pickin said it
12:41 plainly. It has become cheaper to look
12:44 for oil on the floor of the New York
12:46 Stock Exchange than in the ground. But
12:49 here's the problem. Nobody had ever done
12:52 this before. Not at this scale. To pull
12:54 it off, Pickins didn't just need money.
12:56 He needed a story. He needed to convince
12:58 shareholders that their own executives
13:01 were destroying value. He needed to
13:03 convince lenders that a tiny company
13:05 from Amarillo could take on a
13:08 billiondoll corporation. He needed to
13:10 convince the media that he wasn't a
13:12 pirate, but rather a champion of the
13:15 little guy. And that's exactly what he
13:18 did. In 1982, Mesa took aim at City's
13:21 Service, an Oklahoma firm with sales
13:23 nearly 20 times larger than Mesa's.
13:25 City's Service didn't just defend
13:28 itself. It launched a counterattack, a
13:30 Pac-Man defense, where the prey turns
13:33 around and tries to swallow the hunter.
13:35 For a brief terrifying moment, the tiny
13:37 company that started the fight was about
13:40 to be swallowed by its own target, but
13:42 Pickins survived. City's service ended
13:44 up selling itself to accidental
13:47 Petroleum, and Mesa walked away with a
13:50 $31.5 million profit. Mesa's vice
13:52 president explained the story, saying,
13:55 "Mesa had insufficient financial muscle
13:57 throughout that fight. We had a good
14:00 idea, but not enough money to back it
14:02 up. City's service was the proof of
14:05 concept. It proved that a tiny company
14:08 could force a giant to restructure just
14:09 by telling a better story to its
14:11 stakeholders. Then Pickkins went after
14:14 General American Oil and drove them into
14:16 the arms of Philips Petroleum. Mesa's
14:19 profit was 45 million. He went after
14:21 Suprron Energy. The profit there was 30
14:23 million. Each time the pattern was the
14:26 same. Pickins would announce a stake,
14:28 the stock price would soar, and then the
14:30 company would scramble to find a way
14:32 out, and the shareholders, the people
14:34 who actually own the company, would make
14:37 a fortune. Fortune magazine called Boon
14:40 the company hunter. And in late 1983, he
14:42 set his sights on the biggest target of
14:45 his career. Chapter 4, the battle for
14:48 golf. The timeline here is from 1983
14:51 until 1984. G Oil was not just another
14:54 company. It was an institution and Boone
14:56 had his sight set on something larger.
14:59 One of the legendary seven sisters that
15:02 dominated the global oil industry for
15:04 most of the 20th century. Based in
15:06 Pittsburgh, they had revenues of $29
15:09 billion a year. Mesa just had revenues
15:12 of $413 million. Pickkins waged the
15:14 battle with 1.3 billion in credit that
15:16 he raised from bankers and partners [music]
15:17 [music]
15:19 like independent Texas Oilman Sirill
15:22 Wagner and Jack Brown. Time magazine
15:25 reported what happened, saying his bid
15:28 was extremely bold. It was an incredibly
15:31 intuitive reading by Boon. G's top
15:33 executives would underestimate him. He
15:36 said it simply, saying they were not
15:38 street fighters. G's chairman, James
15:40 Lee, had made his contempt [music] for
15:42 Pickkins clear. He accused Pickkins of
15:46 hitand-run tactics. G went so far as to
15:48 say they didn't even consider Mesa a
15:50 real stockholder because they had
15:52 borrowed the money to buy the stock. But
15:54 that arrogance was the opening that
15:57 Pickkins needed. He waged the entire
15:59 campaign through storytelling, taking
16:01 out newspaper ads, giving interviews,
16:03 and pointing [music] out to every
16:05 shareholder exactly how much money they
16:07 had to gain. Chief executives who
16:10 themselves own few shares of their
16:12 companies have no more feeling for the
16:14 average [music] stockholder than they do
16:17 for baboons in Africa. GF refused to
16:20 deal with Mesa, so G sold itself to
16:23 Chevron for 13.2 billion, the biggest
16:25 merger in business history at the time.
16:28 G Oil, a pillar of American industry for
16:32 83 years, was gone. In Tibboon Pickins,
16:34 his investor [music] group had purchased
16:37 21.7 million shares at an average about
16:41 $44 each. Chevron paid $80 a share. The
16:45 profit was approximately $760 million.
16:48 He had not taken control of G, but he
16:50 had forced it into the largest corporate
16:52 merger in history, and he had made
16:53 nearly $800 [music]
16:56 million doing it. When 50 of the
16:58 arbitrageers who had profited from the
17:00 deal attended a dinner for [music]
17:02 Pickins at the Regency Hotel in
17:06 Manhattan, New York Mayor Edward Cook
17:09 gave him a crystal apple in honor of the
17:11 $50 million the fight had brought to the
17:13 city. Midway through the evening, a
17:15 chimpanzeee on roller skates appeared
17:17 wearing a golf filling station uniform.
17:20 It wheeled in, sat next to Pickkins, and
17:21 started licking his face. >> [music]
17:21 >> [music]
17:23 >> Pickkins quipped in reference to G's
17:25 chairman. James Lee was never this
17:28 friendly. Pickkins was 55 years old. He
17:31 was on the cover of Time magazine and he
17:34 was just getting started. Chapter 5.
17:36 Boonbusters. The timeline here is from
17:40 1984 to 1985. After Gulf, the corporate
17:43 world declared war on Tboon Pickins. He
17:44 was denounced on Capitol Hill, in
17:47 boardrooms, and in the press. Retired
17:50 City Service executive GC Richardson
17:53 spoke for many saying he's only after
17:55 the almighty buck. He's nothing but a
17:58 pirate. G's Harold Hammer was blunt
18:01 about picking shareholder crusade saying
18:03 my only objection to Pickins is the aura
18:06 he tries to create when he says he's for
18:08 the small shareholder. That's just a
18:10 load of crap. But Pickkins didn't slow
18:13 down. His next target was his former
18:15 employer, the company where he sat at
18:18 the desk listening to bells ring waiting
18:20 for permission to go to lunch. The
18:22 company his father used to work for,
18:25 Philillips Petroleum. Bartletville,
18:28 Oklahoma was a company town with a
18:30 population of 36,000 people. Phillips
18:33 was its lifeblood, the largest employer,
18:36 the largest taxpayer, and the center of
18:39 civic life. When Pickkins announced his
18:42 bid in December 1984, the town didn't
18:45 resist. It rose up in a revolution. They
18:48 held 24-hour prayer virils at the local
18:50 church, asking God to protect their
18:52 company from Tboon Pickins. They
18:55 organized a boon busters campaign. The
18:57 battle turned into a bruising and
18:59 emotional struggle. Eventually, Pickkins
19:01 agreed to back off. Phillips guaranteed
19:05 him an $89 million profit on his shares.
19:07 Then he was after Unical, the 14th
19:09 largest oil company in the country.
19:12 Unical's chairman, Fred Hartley, was a
19:14 different kind of opponent. Hartley
19:16 fought back with a controversial defense
19:19 tactic, a massive self-tender offer that
19:22 excluded pick and shares. The Delaware
19:24 Supreme Court upheld it in a landmark
19:27 ruling, Unical Court versus Mesa
19:30 Petroleum. That case is still taught in
19:32 every corporate law class in America.
19:34 Pickkins estimated that as a result of
19:37 his takeover battles about 750,000
19:40 small investors saw the value of their
19:42 holdings grow by approximately $12
19:45 billion. But the business roundt the
19:48 powerful lobbying group of Fortune 500
19:52 CEOs raised $10 million specifically to
19:54 destroy T. Boon Pickikin's reputation
19:57 and it was working. The era of the
19:59 hostile takeover was coming to an end,
20:02 and the greatest salesman in the history
20:04 of American business [music] was about
20:06 to discover that even the best story in
20:08 the world can't change the price of
20:11 natural gas. Chapter 6, the fall. The
20:15 timeline here is from 1986 to 1996. The
20:17 game had changed. Companies armed
20:19 themselves with poison [music] pills,
20:21 staggered boards, and golden parachutes.
20:24 The stock market crash of 1987 dried up
20:26 the market for hostile takeovers [music]
20:29 and Pickkins had made a fateful bet. He
20:31 believed natural gas prices were about
20:34 to soar. He loaded up Mesa with debt to
20:36 invest heavily in natural gas property
20:38 and he was wrong. Natural gas prices
20:40 collapsed and stayed low for years.
20:43 Forbes wrote in 1992 saying time and
20:45 cash finally seemed to be running out
20:47 for Tboon Pickins. The numbers were
20:51 devastating. Mesa had $1.3 billion in
20:55 debt. Revenue was about $173 million,
20:58 barely more than the 144 million annual
21:00 interest bill. The stock shriveled from
21:05 $171 in 1981 to $70, then to under $5.
21:08 Forbes called it a bet the ranch gamble
21:11 on natural gas that had been a blowout
21:13 for shareholders. This is the cautionary
21:15 tale of what happens when a great
21:18 salesman starts believing his own story
21:20 too much. Pickkins had spent the entire
21:22 decade of the 1980s telling the world
21:25 that oil and gas were undervalued. He
21:28 told the story so convincingly that it
21:30 had convinced himself and he bet the
21:32 company on it. But no amount of
21:33 storytelling could change commodity
21:36 prices. Richard Rainwater came in to
21:38 rescue the company, but ultimately
21:42 Pickins was pushed out. By 1996, Tboon
21:44 Pickins, the most famous businessman in
21:46 America, the man on the cover of Time
21:49 magazine, the scourge of big oil, was
21:52 nearly 70 years old. He was divorced. He
21:54 was depressed. His net worth had
21:57 evaporated. He later admitted he was
22:00 down to roughly $1.2 million in liquid
22:02 [music] assets. He wrote about the
22:04 lowest point, saying, "I was in that
22:08 hard, tough spot in the fall of 1996."
22:10 For most people, this would be the end
22:12 of the story. This is where the Traml
22:14 Crow parallel is impossible to ignore.
22:16 And if you haven't watched our Traml
22:18 Crow video, go back and watch it after
22:21 this. Crow nearly lost everything twice.
22:24 First in the 1973 oil crisis and then
22:27 again in the 1986 SNL meltdown. Both
22:29 times, his partner stepped up and
22:32 sacrificed their own wealth to save him.
22:34 Crow survived because the relationships
22:37 he had built over many decades. Pickkins
22:39 was about to prove the exact same thing.
22:42 The relationships, the reputation, the
22:44 trust he had built from over 40 years of
22:47 doing deals, those were about to become
22:49 the only assets to him that mattered.
22:52 Chapter 7, the comeback. The timeline
22:56 here is from 1996 to 2007. Boon Pickins
22:59 BP Capital leased a modest office and
23:01 outfitted it with used furniture and
23:03 off-the-shelf computers. Pickkins had
23:06 his desk, a cherry taken from Mesa, a
23:09 computer, and a telephone. He had five
23:11 employees and a dog named Murdoch. He
23:13 wrote about it saying, "I like that
23:16 feeling. No baggage. I traded the
23:18 corporate jet for the company plane." As
23:21 the ads of Southwest Airlines would say,
23:23 he imagined a headline that captivated
23:26 him for years. Quotes, "The old man
23:29 makes a comeback." His longtime adviser,
23:31 Bobby Stillwell, liked to say, quotes,
23:34 "Boon had been in the prime of his life
23:36 three times." Now, think about what
23:39 happened next. A man in his late60s,
23:42 having lost his company, a marriage, and
23:44 virtually all of his wealth, went back
23:47 to doing exactly what he did as a
23:50 28-year-old in Amarillo, knocking on
23:52 doors, and asking people to trust him
23:54 with their money. He formed BP Capital
23:58 Energy Fund in 1997, a commodity trading
24:00 fund focused on energy markets. The
24:03 pitch was essentially this. I've spent
24:05 my entire life in energy. I know these
24:08 markets better than anyone alive. I got
24:10 knocked down, but the fundamentals, I
24:12 understand, have not changed. It took
24:14 extraordinary salesmanship to get
24:17 investors to back a 70some year old who
24:19 had just lost his company. Think about
24:21 this. He went from a few billion dollars
24:24 to 1.2 $.2 million. Then in the winter
24:26 of 2002,
24:29 natural gas prices spiked. A $10 million
24:31 investment Pickkins made in natural gas
24:35 commodities turned into $125 million. By
24:38 the end of February 2003, the fund was
24:42 up another 300 million, a 330% return in
24:44 2 months. Pickkins reflected on the
24:47 irony saying, "It's interesting that the
24:49 thing that sank us [music] at Mesa,
24:51 natural gas, was the thing that made us
24:55 a BP capital. Timing is everything. The
24:57 media noticed the resurrection of Tboon
24:59 Pickins." Read one headline. Two years
25:02 ago, the legendary oil man was divorced,
25:05 depressed, and discredited. "Age will be
25:08 served," read another. Tboon Pickins is
25:11 76 years old. By almost any reckoning,
25:13 he is the hottest money manager in the
25:16 [music] world. By 2006, the BP Capital
25:20 Commodity Fund returned 54% after fees.
25:24 Pickins earned $1.1 billion that year
25:26 alone, making him the fourth highest
25:28 earner on Wall Street ahead of George
25:32 Soros. At the close of 2007, the BP
25:38 Capital Energy Equity Fund was up 1,140%
25:40 since inception. Meanwhile, the company
25:42 that had pushed him out, which
25:44 eventually became Pioneer Natural
25:48 Resources, had lost $1.7 billion in its
25:51 [music] first 3 years. From 1997 to
25:55 2007, Pioneer earned a total profit of
25:58 about $900 million. In that same time
26:02 period, BP Capital made $8 billion.
26:05 Pickins later said, quotes, "When I
26:08 started BP Capital, I had a desk, a
26:11 telephone. Best of all, unlike Pioneer,
26:14 we carried no debt. The greatest
26:16 salesman in the history of American
26:18 business had done it again. His product
26:20 was never oil. His product was
26:23 narrative. And narrative, unlike oil,
26:26 never runs dry." Chapter 8. The Pickins
26:29 Plan. The timeline here is from 2008 to
26:32 2012. In July 2008, on his mother's
26:35 birthday, Pickkins launched the Pickins
26:38 Plan. He spent $62 million of his own
26:41 money on a national advertising campaign
26:44 to promote American energy independence
26:46 through wind and natural gas. He
26:48 testified before Congress. He met with
26:50 senators, governors, presidential
26:53 candidates from both parties. Pickkins
26:55 told his wife Meline about the plan and
26:57 she responded saying, "I know that
27:00 you'll do it and you'll do a good job.
27:02 Now, let's go back to sleep and do it
27:05 tomorrow." For a brief, remarkable
27:08 moment, an 80-year-old Texas oilman had
27:10 unified the country around energy
27:13 policy. Liberals loved the wind power.
27:16 Conservatives loved the natural gas, but
27:19 everyone loved the idea of energy
27:21 independence. Then the financial crisis
27:24 of 2008 hit. Natural gas prices
27:26 collapsed again. The credit markets
27:28 froze. And Pickickets couldn't get the
27:30 transmission lines built to carry the
27:32 wind power from the panhandle to the
27:35 cities. He had ordered about $1.5
27:38 billion of turbines, but later abandoned
27:41 the project. Chapter nine, the giveaway.
27:45 The timeline year from 2003 to 2018. As
27:47 he entered the final chapters of his
27:49 life, Pickkins turned his attention to
27:50 giving his [music] fortune away. I've
27:53 long stated that I enjoy making money
27:55 and I enjoy giving it away. I like
27:58 making money more, but giving it away is
28:00 a very close second. His greatest
28:03 beneficiary was his alma mater, Oklahoma
28:05 State University. Over his lifetime, he
28:08 gave the school more than $652 million.
28:12 In 2006 alone, he gave $165 million to
28:14 the athletic department. This was the
28:16 largest gift to athletics and the
28:18 history of American higher education at
28:20 the time. He gave $100 million to the
28:22 University of Texas system, split
28:25 between MD Anderson Cancer Center in UT
28:27 Southwestern Medical Center. He
28:29 explained why saying, "I firmly believe
28:30 one of the reasons I was put on this
28:33 earth was to make money and be generous
28:35 with it." He signed the giving pledge,
28:37 promising to donate the majority of his
28:39 wealth to charity. When Bill Gates
28:41 called to ask him to commit to giving
28:44 away 50%, Pickkins responded, quote, I'm
28:47 already on record saying I do 90%. He
28:50 said bluntly, I'm not a big fan of
28:53 inherited wealth. It generally does more
28:55 harm than good. Oklahoma State President
28:57 Hargus captured [music] what Pickkins
28:59 meant to the university, saying he was
29:02 the ultimate cowboy. It is impossible to
29:04 calculate his full impact on Oklahoma
29:07 State. By the time Pickkins was done, he
29:09 had given over a billion dollars.
29:11 Chapter 10, the fourth quarter. The
29:15 timeline here is from 2017 to 2019. In
29:18 2017, at the age of 89, Pickkins
29:20 suffered a series of strokes and a
29:23 serious fall. He put his beloved 65,000
29:26 acre Mesa Vista Ranch on the market. He
29:29 closed his hedge fund in 2018. He knew
29:31 the end was near and he wrote a final
29:33 message. I clearly am in the fourth
29:35 quarter. Let me give you the full
29:38 timeline of what this man built. 1928
29:40 was the year that he was born in
29:43 Holdenville, Oklahoma. 1951 was his
29:46 geology degree from Oklahoma State. 1954
29:50 he quit Philips Petroleum with $2,500.
29:53 1956 he founded Petroleum Exploration,
29:57 Inc. 1964 was when Mesa Petroleum went
30:01 public. 1969 was the Hugoton takeover, a
30:05 company 20 times Mesa's size. 1979 he
30:07 sold Canadian operations for $600
30:11 million. 1982 was the city service
30:15 battle. 1984 he forced the Gulf Chevron
30:19 merger for $13.2 billion. 1985 he was on
30:23 the cover of Time magazine. 1992 Mesa
30:26 was drowning in 1.3 billion of debt.
30:29 1996 he was pushed out of Mesa with
30:33 roughly $1.2 million in liquidity. 1997
30:36 he founded BP Capital with a desk and a
30:40 telephone. 2003 he made $300 million in
30:44 two months on natural gas. 2006 he
30:47 earned $1.1 billion in a single year.
30:50 2008 he launched the Pickkins plan and
30:54 spent $62 million of his own money. 2019
30:56 he gave over a billion dollars. Tboon
31:00 Pickkins died on September 11th, 2019 at
31:02 the age of 91 years old. He'd been
31:04 married five times. He had four children
31:06 and numerous grandchildren. He left
31:09 behind a legacy that reshaped American
31:10 capitalism. He had forced the
31:13 restructuring of an entire industry. He
31:15 had made the term shareholder rights
31:17 part of the national vocabulary. He had
31:19 proven that a man from Holdenville,
31:21 Oklahoma could go toe-to-toe with the
31:23 most powerful corporations in the world
31:25 [music] and win. And he had proved
31:27 something else. Twice in his life,
31:29 Pickkins lost nearly everything. [music]
31:32 And twice he came back not because he
31:34 found more oil, not because the market
31:36 turned in his favor, but because people
31:38 believed in him. Just like Treml Crow,
31:40 who was saved by partners who
31:42 voluntarily liquidated their wealth to
31:44 rescue him. Pickkins was saved by
31:46 investors who backed him when he had
31:49 nothing left but his name and his story.
31:51 If you haven't watched our documentary
31:53 on Treml Crow, go watch it. The
31:55 parallels between these two men will
31:57 blow your mind. Crow built an empire in
31:59 partnership. Pickkins built an empire on
32:02 narrative. Both lost everything and both
32:04 came back. Both survived because of the
32:06 relationships they had built over
32:08 decades of treating people right. And if
32:10 you were to take away one thing from
32:12 this, it is that Tboon's Pickins product
32:14 was never oil. His product was always
32:17 the same thing. It was a compelling
32:20 story told with absolute conviction by a
32:22 man who would never stop selling. He
32:25 sold investors on Wildcat Wells and the
32:28 Texas panhandle when he was just 28. He
32:30 sold Wall Street on a tiny oil company
32:33 from Amarillo when he was 36. He sold
32:35 the entire American public on
32:37 shareholder rights when he was 56. He
32:40 sold hedge fund investors on one more
32:42 bet when he was 70. He sold the nation
32:45 on energy independence when he was 80.
32:48 The skill was always the same. Walk into
32:51 a room, tell a story, make people
32:54 believe. That skill was portable, it was
32:56 durable, and it was apparently
32:58 indestructible. Pickins wrote in his
33:01 final message saying, "I've been a lucky
33:04 guy, a very lucky guy, and I hope that
33:06 you find yourself as lucky as I consider
33:08 myself. Don't think about what you're
33:10 going to get. Think about what you can
33:12 give." And the person who tells the best
33:16 story wins. This is about Ton Pickkins
33:20 1928 to 2019 and this is the greatest
33:23 story ever sold. One more thing, this
33:25 film took seven people weeks to create.
33:27 Our goal is to produce content like this
33:30 every single week. Netflix production on
33:32 the greatest stories in finance and
33:33 business. And if you want to see more of
33:36 this, like the video, subscribe to the
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33:39 with someone who needs to hear this
