June 2026 marks ten years since OG Trust Services became a company. We have been thinking about how to acknowledge that because on one hand, it’s an arbitrary milestone. On the other hand, it’s a journey worth reflecting on, because the story of these ten years is something that we are proud of.
We would like to share our story with you.
Where It Started
In 2016, a group of trust industry professionals, people with deep experience in trust operations, software development and mineral management, came together around a piece of software that a large independent trust company had begun to develop. They saw what it could become, formed O/G Trust Services, and took it from there.
What we built first was VISION-OG: a cloud-based oil and gas mineral management software application purpose-built for trust companies, family offices, and foundations. What we built around it over the next decade was a services firm, one that doesn’t just hand clients software and wish them luck, but who partners with them through implementation and support after the sale. We also developed back-office processing and ongoing management solutions to assist our clients when called upon.
That evolution from software company to end-to-end services firm wasn’t fully developed on day one. It has been driven by what our clients keep telling us they need.
Getting Through the Hard Part
We would be leaving something important out if we didn’t mention COVID. Every company and individual has their “COVID story” we are no different.
We were in the middle of ramping up when the pandemic hit. New business dried up almost overnight. Nobody was making decisions. One of our main revenue variables – the price of oil – dropped sharply and stayed depressed for several months. The management question shifted from “how do we grow” to “how do we survive”, and that period forced us to take a hard look at how we operated and to figure out how to do everything faster, smarter, and more efficiently with less margin for error.
That discipline stuck. When things opened back up, we were leaner, more deliberate, and more focused than we’d ever been before. It made us a better company. It made us more resilient.
What We’ve Built
Today, OG Trust Services has 24 team members located in three offices: Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, and Ruston, Louisiana. We manage mineral and real estate assets for trust companies, family offices, foundations, and institutional mineral owners across the country. We currently process approximately 7000 transactions and over 1.2 million lines of detail data in VISION-OG every month. We integrate data daily into most of the major Trust Accounting Systems on the market today. We’ve launched VISION-ATLAS, our real estate asset management platform, expanding what we can do for clients who manage both mineral and surface assets. And we’ve built a SOC 1 Type II-compliant infrastructure that institutional clients can rely on.
I’m coming up on 30 years in the trust industry myself. Dana Church, our Chief Land Officer and one of our Founding Members, has been doing this for close to 20. We came into this with reasonable expectations and hard-won perspective, and that experience is embedded in everything we’ve built.
What’s Actually Changed in Ten Years
Someone asked us recently what’s different about how we operate now versus when we started. The honest answer is: almost everything operational, and nothing fundamental.
What’s fundamental hasn’t changed. Clients need their assets managed accurately, consistently, and in a way that holds up to regulatory scrutiny. That was true in 2016 and it’s true today.
What’s changed is how we deliver on that. We’ve built partnerships with best-in-class vendors for document management, data exchange, and IT because my philosophy has always been to outsource the things we’re not experts in so we can focus on the things we are. We’ve built a REST API infrastructure that allows us to exchange data cleanly with other industry platforms. We’ve developed scanning, indexing, and document organization workflows that turn what used to be a bottleneck — physical mail, paper run statements, stacks of checks — into a streamlined, searchable, scalable process.
None of that is glamorous. Document management is not the kind of thing that gets a standing ovation at conferences. But it’s the foundation that makes everything else work at scale, and getting it right took years.
Who Deserves the Credit
We would be telling an incomplete story if we didn’t acknowledge the people who got us here.
Our clients. Not just for their business, though obviously that matters, but for the ideas, the feedback, the patience when we were still figuring things out, and the partnership that pushed us to keep building. VISION-ATLAS exists because clients kept asking us for it. Our back office service model evolved because clients kept telling us what they needed. They’ve shaped this company as much as we have.
Our team. Twenty-four people who are genuinely good at what they do and genuinely committed to doing right by our clients. They are where the rubber meets the road.
And our industry partners, who’ve helped us do more than we could have done alone.
Why We Are Writing This
The ten year anniversary is a good moment to make a clear bottom line statement: O/G Trust Services is an established firm, with a proven platform, a seasoned team, and a decade of client relationships that have held up to everything thrown at us: a pandemic, shifting markets, established and entrenched competition, and the kind of operational complexity that separates companies that last from companies that don’t.
We’ve earned the trust of the institutions we serve. The software performs. The services perform. The team performs. That doesn’t happen by accident and it doesn’t happen overnight.
The future is the most exciting it’s ever been. We’re more confident about what’s coming than we’ve ever been.
And we’re just getting started.
Walt Lotspeich, CMM, is President of OG Trust Services.
OG Trust Services Perspective
OG Trust Services shares insights like these because we see, every day, how avoidable missteps can erode mineral value over time. Our clients rely on OG Trust’s experience, processes, and purpose built tools to bring clarity, discipline, and transparency to mineral ownership and oversight. Whether supporting families, trustees, or institutions, our role is to help guide informed decision making and reduce the risk of costly mistakes before they occur. If the issues outlined here resonate with your situation, engaging early can make a meaningful difference.
Walt Lotspeich, CMM, is President of OG Trust Services and a Certified Mineral Manager with more than two decades of experience in trust operations, wealth management, and financial technology. He helps trust companies, family offices, and foundations navigate the operational and compliance demands of managing mineral interests and real estate assets — and is a frequent speaker and podcast guest on mineral asset management, OCC Reg 9 compliance, and fiduciary technology.
View Walts’s full profile and credentials and LinkedIn Profile