By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 20, 2026.

Staying the first call means being the name the company man already has when he needs drill pipe, jars, stabilizers, or pressure control by the day, or a fishing hand for stuck pipe and junk in the hole. You hold that spot by staying known between jobs, slow months included, so your number is the one he reaches for without thinking.

I get a small taste of your life when I work in Midland. I stay at the Hilton, and I know I've really gotten into the grime of the Permian Basin when the sheets already have sand and dirt in them, even though the staff supposedly cleaned the room. Dirt and dust from people's work boots end up in and around that whole room. That's just the reality of doing business out here, and rental and fishing hands live a lot more of it than I do. The company man only sees that grit when you're on his location. Put the jobs you ran, and how you ran them, under your own name, so he still sees the hand who shows up in the months he has nothing for you.

How Rentals Bill and Who Rents

Drilling Tools International's 10-K for 2025 shows how one large rental company makes its money. Tools rent mainly on daily fees, with charges for tools lost or damaged. About 48 percent of its 2025 revenue came from oilfield service companies such as Baker Hughes, Halliburton, and SLB, and about 48 percent from operators such as Chevron, EOG, and Occidental. Its fleet is concentrated in the Permian, and drilling contractors rarely rent tools on an operator's behalf.

At that company, each side of the location brought in about half the money, so the service company's people and the operator's people both need to know your name. On the operator side, start with what a drilling engineer does and selling to the oilfield company man.

When the Count Slides

Baker Hughes figures put the Permian at 304 rigs at the start of 2025 and 247 on December 30, 2025, as Permian Basin Oil and Gas Magazine reported. By the week ending October 16, 2026, Baker Hughes counted 272. The full picture, permits and all, lives on our Permian Basin page.

A slide like 2025's is when tools sit in the yard and crews get cut. The founder we work with once wrote a post about layoffs and what they do to safety, and it reached roughly 5,000 impressions in an industry that doesn't clap. A slow month is the time to say what you know about the work. Our guide on what to do when the rig count drops and rental tools sit in the yard picks up from there.

What You Want Said When a Fishing Job Comes Up

Across our clients, from individual owner-operators to large companies with manufacturing facilities around the world, a bigger LinkedIn presence brings back the same kind of feedback. Their customers say they're up to date on everything: they know when something new comes out, and they know when someone's going to be in their part of the world. Even when those customers aren't ready to buy, they say, "Oh, you need this. I know someone who does that. He talks about it all the time."

That's the sentence you want said about you when a company man asks around for a fishing hand. It only gets said about the rep who has been talking about the work.

Guides for Your Side of the Business

Two short answers: does your LinkedIn profile matter if you sell oilfield equipment, and what to do when the oil price falls and your pipeline dries up. For the companies close to the yard, see our map of oilfield companies in Odessa.

The Warm Walk-In™ in Four Moves

For a rental or fishing rep, the whole job is staying known between call-outs. The Warm Walk-In™ does that in four moves:

  1. Capture. One story dump a quarter, typed or spoken from the truck.
  2. Rig up. Positioning, voice, profile, one signature offer. Four to six weeks. Yours forever.
  3. Run the rotation. Posts in your voice on a fixed calendar, three to five a week, never more than one a day. Your name in the right conversations. A fresh lead magnet every quarter.
  4. Read the quarter. A plain-English video review every three months. Saves, messages, meetings. Not likes.

You approve every post before it goes out, and what we build is yours to keep.

Proof From the Field

A fourth-generation Permian service-company founder who hated marketing. His board nearly killed the project over ROI. We spent June to October 2025 building his name, then started posting for him, in his voice, with his yes on every post.

From Sep 15, 2025 to Oct 19, 2026: 270,955 impressions, 104,386 people reached, and followers up from 1,974 to 4,232, with 61% of them working in oil and gas. LinkedIn's Social Selling Index ranks him in the top 1% of sales professionals in oil and gas.

No name, by policy. It's his name, not ours. Read the full story.

When the First-Call List Decides

When pipe is stuck in the middle of the night, the company man calls whoever is on the first-call list and answered last time. A first-call agreement and a fishing hand who shows up win that job. A post does not.

Drilling Tools International's 10-K shows how long it takes to get on that list. The company reports more than 340 master service agreements, which it calls hard and slow to obtain, and a first-call supply agreement with one of its largest customers, in place since 2013 and extended through 2026. A known name can help earlier, in the long work of winning the MSA and getting on the list.

Get Your Bison Walk-Around

Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first.

Get your Bison Walk-Around

Sources and As-Of Dates

The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.