What The Funk?

0:00 Hey, oh, we are back on what the funk with my man Darnell Franco. It was really fun for me last week. Darnell, I have to say, I recorded a couple episodes in person in Houston at the digital

0:12 accounters office. Maybe you saw that. I posted the one with Harry from Sigma Stream yesterday. It's, it's a different experience doing it in person. I mean, I've done a bunch in person now.

0:22 I've done way more online. It's like less exhausting when you do it in person It feels more like a conversation. There's just cameras around you. You forget that you're on camera sometimes where

0:34 this is like, I'm, I really want to make sure I look at the camera. I listen to you,

0:39 but nonetheless, I love, I love podcasting. It just like really just, just kind of resonated again with how much I enjoy it, both doing it virtually as well as, as in person. And you're

0:50 somebody who I've wanted to have on the podcast for a while because you're a smooth talker. You should

0:57 have your own podcast. top-notch sales engineer. You're well-connected in Calgary. You are certainly an important resource at detection, which is a compressor fleet optimization company. That's

1:11 probably underselling it, but you'll talk a lot more about detection at some point. Yeah, absolutely. But I've been with you in meetings. Detection is a funk futures client. Shout out Corey

1:23 Scott, one of my best friends who heads up sales for detection. And it's been really fun. I know my team enjoys working with you as well because you, I think you're a good listener. Obviously you

1:33 have subject matter expertise from being at this company since you were 11 years old. But besides that, we want to get to know you, man. So I'll hit you with the first question. You know, it's

1:43 coming. Who are you and who is Darnell Franco? Yeah. Oh, I love this question. First off, thanks for having me. I know we're trying to a couple of messages and listen to the podcast and

1:54 definitely have that imposter syndrome. Like, Unreal dudes and gals on the - I'm like, who am I to be on here? So

2:04 they tie their shoes the same way you do. That's right, that's right. So yeah, super humbling man, who is Darnell Franco? I'm a working progress and I love that 'cause it's an umbrella term. I

2:18 know there's things that I'm good at about some skill around and there's man so much left to work on. But underneath that umbrella of working progress, it's like, first and foremost, I'm a husband,

2:30 I'm a father, our son just turned one, which is super cool and I get to learn as much as I can from all the dads all around me, which is sweet. As you mentioned, I'm a sales engineer at Detection

2:42 Technologies. Been with the company since 2012. I've got like a nice little break in the middle there that when you ask, hey, what led to detection, it might be answering, hey, what led to me

2:54 coming back to Detection Sure, which is cool. I also have a lot of passion around mental health. You know, there's been a couple things within, you know, my family history, but also, you know,

3:08 external, you know, chosen family, friends, all that sort of stuff that has guided my path to, you know, make that important part of, you know, my day to day and my identity And, you know, I

3:20 also love to, you know, slip this vulnerable part of my story in, is I'm a divorcee, went through. Yeah, I guess like some people call it just like a failed marriage, you know, a handful of

3:35 years ago. And, you know, we'll kind of loop that in maybe even towards the end. But, yeah, those are probably like, in general, things that make me up I'm a smiley dude. Most people are

3:49 always weirded out when I show up to a call and I'm not smiling or kind of my jovial self.

3:57 at a very, very high level nutshell. That's, that's, I mean, there's a lot there, just if you know, I feel like that is, and I want to tie the mental health comment back into you being a

4:09 smiley eye. I think that that almost puts like added pressure on you because now it's Darnell, Darnell's always happy. He's always a smiley guy that when you're just not having a great day, which

4:22 let's be honest, you're human, you're going to have all the days, maybe it's cold outside, maybe somebody cuts you off and maybe your kid's sick at school and you don't have the time to pick them

4:32 up. Like, there's a million things that can happen and then you're not the smiley guy. And then people are saying, what's wrong with Darnell? And then you start asking yourself, what's wrong

4:41 with me? And you start to spiral like, I'm keenly aware of that because I've talked with many of my friends about this. And then in college, we even had like, A lot of conversations internally,

4:53 whether they're psychologists behind this or not, but we sort of like would observe the people who everybody liked, who was popular, who people like to be around. And a common theme was that they

5:04 smiled a lot. If you smile a lot and you're just generally in a good mood, people just wanna be around you. Like in the same way that Misery loves company, I think that like people looking for

5:16 happiness also like being around people who are happy So I've always tried to make that part of my kind of ethos and a core value too is try to like bring things up, right? Especially from a

5:27 happiness perspective. But then what tends to happen is there's not like a middle ground. It's like you're either really happy or you're really not. And then people are like, what's wrong with you?

5:38 Yeah. But interesting to hear you say that 'cause I have noticed that about you. I'm like, wow, he's like a happy guy. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think you want aspect of it and this is

5:48 Cheryl to you and your team I love working with you guys. So we get on a call and it's usually like a weekly update. It's like, oh man, like I haven't seen Jeremy. I mean, I sometimes miss a

5:58 bunch then 'cause I'm double booked. You're working right now. Right? Like I'm so busy. But no, it's when you're surrounded by great people, they also bring the happiness out. So you kind of

6:09 get into this echo chamber of like, oh, like we're all happy, clappy. But I love it when, you know, off to the side, you know, maybe there's someone who's just getting to know me and it's like,

6:19 man, you're happy all the time. And the thing I like quickly get to, just to bring it down to reality is like, I'm grateful because it is not always a happy moment. And there are these

6:33 challenging times and challenging situations and yeah, that give me a reason to be happy 'cause you experienced the full spectrum of happiness, sadness, and fear and therapy, All of the different

6:47 emotions, all the emotions, so yeah. No doubt, no doubt. And, you know, something that I've always, and we can talk about sales engineering a little bit, and I know you're gonna hit me with a

6:59 question, so I'm intentionally stalling on this one, but one of the things that I think is, and I've seen this at a lot of companies of the size of detection are just in tech. In general is, you

7:11 sort of have your ACE, and I think you've sort of carved your niche out, whether it's just, you know, a personality, skill set, experience at the company You've kind of become the go-to for,

7:23 all right, if we're gonna bring our A team, we're gonna need Darnell to be here, but then you can't really clone yourself. So then you get in the situation where everybody needs a piece of you,

7:34 and your calendar becomes one of the most valuable commodities at the company. How do you balance that with, you wanna be there, you wanna support your team, but it's really hard to do demo after

7:47 demo after demo I can't beat the guy. So how have you've managed that at detection and throughout your career when you're the demo guy? Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, it's, oh, so this is, you

8:01 know, pulling from Corey's podcast 'cause I listened to that fresh this morning. But he talks to go, you know, Michael Jordan, he's on a team, it's a team sport. And I grew up playing

8:09 basketball. I was also like four foot nine until a great development. I think that didn't take me far. Luckily I had, you know, some brains and gone into university But really, really resonate

8:22 with that. And so behind the scenes, you know, in between the actual demos and all the meetings, there's always this, hey, you know, if for some reason, this is my mentality. I maybe don't

8:33 say this out loud to the reps and my team members, but hey, like if something happened to me and I couldn't get on that call, what can I do coming out of that call to empower them to be able to

8:44 handle that at least at a high level and then give them the confidence to say, By the way, if you need to dig in deeper, we can bring in a conversation with Darnall after the fact. And so there's

8:56 a lot of training behind the scenes. There's a lot of sales enablement. And it's not perfect by any means. I'm still learning that. This is my first true sales engineering role. But I think it's

9:09 really trying to

9:13 create systems that allow me to somewhat be replaceable, right? Like ideally, if you have the wisdom and the wherewithal and can pass it along and you find someone who has like a desire for the

9:26 sales aspect, the commercial big picture value thinking versus just, okay, I'm gonna check these boxes and you know, do the tasks that my clients reach out to me for. If I could find someone like

9:37 that, like kind of trying to prep right now with systems that allow me to just like pour into that, you know, young, professional, whenever they come around. So it's kind of like operating with

9:51 duplication and scalability in the back of my mind. Which you really have to think like that, especially at a tech company, because the way things are with detection today, and you guys are

10:01 whatever, private equity or venture capital pack, there's money behind you. They're putting money behind you to have you just stay afloat, right? They expect growth.

10:10 You'd need duplication of resources. So it can ever just continue to be the Darnell Joe. And then that kind of puts it on you to find the person and also allow them to find their own personality.

10:25 I'm surprised this is your first true SE job, and maybe it's because you do have so much background with the product that there's no question that's really going to stump you. I think it's important

10:37 too, and I've seen companies struggle with this, is there's a risk of burning you out. Absolutely. If the company is going to scale and make the the investors happy and make. i See your money and

10:48 all this stuff is you've got to figure out how to effectively clone yourself and I know it's it's silly and the personality can be completely different

11:00 but I do think that that's something that will be important because like I even see with my Guys too when they're like Hey we just set up this meeting for detection like my mind goes to his darnell

11:10 going to be on the call honestly that no offense to the sales team who's like fully capable and and very experienced and smart and hardworking but they're not you bright so you know it's the first

11:23 question I go to and I would almost guarantee it's the same question that the head of sales and that development has to his hey we just had this big call with a major where's Darnell Yeah that's right

11:33 which which is it's wild so I'm glad that you keep that in the back of your mind because it's it's probably more important than you realize I've been accompanies where it's like they just didn't care

11:45 if like you know what this is our guy and we're just going to ride this horse until he breaks down but inevitably like you'll breakdown if you're doing one hundred demos that's right that's right no I

11:57 also to that point I also think it requires a company culture that acknowledges Bernal and treats it with the respect it deserves and because inadvertently whether it's intentional or not you're going

12:12 to get into seasons where you're riding the red line right between burnout and cave this is still sustainable but it's in those seasons if there's great communication around there's good trust between

12:25 Yeah I'll see myself in Corey and you know the management team that I know plug into here and there for them for me to be able to open up and share that cause one aspect and maybe this gets into hey

12:37 like what would you tell a young professional it sounds you do have to have some level of vulnerability to say by the way Guys I'm getting close to burning out and that shouldn't be A fearful thing to

12:48 communicate because it doesn't reflect that you suck at your job it reflects that there's something within the system at your company that's stretching you to your limits and those stretch moments can

13:05 point out may be a flop but it's also an opportunity to growth and maybe there's something in there that creates new opportunity for you to hire and then you bring in more talent right right and so

13:18 anyways you know it it's it I I think that so the Bernard topic is is an interesting one and it we kind of chatted briefly about this before I started recording I'm four years into running my company

13:30 yet on and there is a level of challenge and stress and pressure and being an entrepreneur and running your own company but I don't think at any point in this business have I experienced burnout they

13:43 and maybe it's different than being an employee I Guess it's It's Board dependent on Me but I think part of it is just learning some little tricks where it doesn't have to be black and white where you

13:53 push push push and then outbreak you breakdown and burnout I think there are even simple things like taking deep breaths for like ten minutes yeah if you can meditate or something might like it

14:04 inevitably delay some level of burnout that you feel to feel like you need a week long retreat to feel normal right and and I I think that it's important in the business world that we just do step

14:17 away a little bit more a big shift I've seen of course you've seen this too during covered everything moved to these virtual video meetings and we haven't really gotten away from that so I have a day

14:32 where I get up in the morning it's my third or fourth day in a row where I'm on eight or nine calls like I'm not going to be at my Best and I think It's OK for me to recognize and even say that when

14:42 people ask how are you doing I'm Good but I also just wanted to share. I've been on like 20 of these calls this week. So I'm starting to feel a little bit like a lot of staring at a computer screen,

14:55 which I don't think humans are totally meant to do. But anyways, it's like admitting that vulnerability, admitting some level of I'm hitting my wall, I'm feeling stretched is important for longer

15:07 term sustainability. And I think for younger professionals, like you said, it's very, very common for a young employee to toe the line and almost avoid authenticity to the point of like, I'll

15:18 just go above and beyond and do it and you sort of dehumanize yourself, right? So I think that's an important coaching point for younger professionals. And you know, that was one of the questions

15:29 and I usually wait until the end to ask this, but I thought your answer was kind of fascinating and what you told me yesterday is, I wanna ask you Darnell, like what advice would you give to your

15:37 younger self? Yeah, I love this Okay.

15:46 it's it's one of those things where like I'm so fearful of that question like if someone invents time travel and we got the Lorry like the New DeLorean that's been developed on social media if that

15:60 can travel back in the past I am staying as far away from that thing is part and Yeah girl watching back to the future butterfly effect and messing with the past no Bueno and the reason why see that

16:14 is man like it's Valentine's Day today five years ago and my nose yet five years ago

16:26 we said Allawi for the first time four years ago to this day we're engaged and and bass after a season of see You know Heartbreak Challenge Messiness in My Personal life and if throwing Hey, Darnell

16:45 from 2011, like don't go here or chin up dude, you'll get through it 'cause somehow derail every mistake and choice and opportunity that led me right to here where outside of this wall is my son

17:03 napping a change thing wanna don't I, risk at be could that of any if Like. out hanging downstairs wife my, room other the in As I

17:12 said, I'm self-reflective enough to know that, hey, if I could chat with a guy who's in a similar situation as I was 10 years ago or five years ago, it's career-oriented, personal life, love

17:26 life-related, you know, maybe interpersonal stuff, you know, another aspect of my story had a good buddy of mine landing some major, major trouble. And not just, hey, I robbed a bank 'cause I

17:37 was broke, but like serious, moral, like, Told me was black and white like that person's cut off and now grappling with heat how I be a good friend and on this core belief system of forgiveness

17:51 and second chance and redemption yet more that's really really bad and I was actually one of the reasons why I started therapy and thank goodness big shout out to Davis Allen Rockstar engineer at

18:06 detection turned software developer now touring analytics he recognized that something was off with me that morning when I stepped out on the patio we had a fifteen minute chat he was like by the way

18:16 if You're looking for it here's a great therapist out I worked with worth a call and that kickstarted my mental health journey if you will and in a more formal sense but Yeah it's an important

18:32 investment in yourself so shut out Dave Davis Allen good for him he knew that who knew the Technical Developer Engineer Guys were so introspective man Ray I would say detection as a culture from an

18:47 engineering sphere standpoint where a bunch of weird dudes in essence why we can get into social situations we can talk through a networking event we can make friends and yeah like when people over

19:02 that hate your guts cause you know some veal operations are like oh look at this another hotshot engineer come to do a training session what BS are we going to have to do to make them money right like

19:16 there's a lot of winning over but I'd say he has the leadership at detection over the years have done a great job finding folks who can like sit in that role and flourish and they they hire based on

19:31 like soft skills cause we know like compression compression where the experts at it we could train it is something you can't teach his people skills is how to be resilient when someone thinks you're

19:45 out to lunch how do you like stand in that and they are still have conviction while also acknowledging that they've got bounced car's engine comes out you know knocking them on the head like how do

19:58 you acknowledge that and still find a way to work together but that's a hard combination of things to tab at a person man I'm enjoying this I have two that I have to shifted to what what is detection

20:17 Yeah but what well first of all what's compression Yeah Russian what is what is detection do around this where you guys have built a nice business around the compressor absolutely so compression

20:31 specific to oil and gas as Pacific to the niche of natural gas production and gas gathering systems I if compressor is you know called a major organ if you will and to use an analogy and your heart in

20:46 your body can be analogous to a compressor and a gathering system in your heart the reason why it's pumping is for a couple of different reasons the case in point number one you know you need to get

20:59 nutrients and energy and warmth at the very base level to your extremities to look out my window it's snowing like crazy in Calgary Alberta Canada right now it's cold and so hopefully your heart is

21:11 pumping well enough in getting you know all that heat tear fingers and toes you don't get frostbite so as gas gathering as energy transmission and but then you also have other functions of your heart

21:24 where it's like okay now we're going to pump your blood through your kidneys and liver to clean it up re no different than moving using a gas compressor to move gas through processing plant to drop

21:40 all your NGL and Condi which is big bucks compared to an M S yas of gas that's another application of it and then the third one gas lift we all know that gas compression can unlock massive barrels of

21:56 oil compared to not having that you know artificial lift method and that's analogous to your heart pumping blood through your lungs why because your lungs add oxygen to the blood and then ASI that

22:12 gets transmitted so it's like your heart pumping blood through your lungs is like your gas compressor reenacting that gas into your casing and helping you unload that well and therefore unlock oil

22:28 production which again is very very lucrative compared to an M S Yeah for gas Yup

22:36 jazz compression. I don't know if you resonate with that analogy. It makes sense to me. And for whatever reason, like, despite a 17 plus year career in oil and gas and oil and gas tech,

22:48 compression was just not something production, of course, and the production optimization component and things like artificial lift. Yeah, that resonates. But, you know, when we started working

22:59 with detection, I was like, all right, so like, what is this? Right? Do we talk to production people? You know, is this natural gas centric? Is this for companies who want to get more oil out

23:09 of the ground? And the answer is a little bit of yes to all. But detection has now been around for a while. So shift it to what detection does. Yeah. Around the compression fleet. Yeah,

23:23 absolutely. So yeah, like you mentioned, detection has been a while around for a while. I think we have a news clipping in the Canadian office of like compression 99 because he's officially came

23:35 out with a product in 1999, which is wild. But detection as a whole, we leverage technology and expertise to unlock value out of your gas compression fleet. We're a fleet management tech stack.

23:52 We pull in really great hardware capabilities for remote monitoring and data visibility. And still to this day, just this morning, we're talking with massive knit streamer in the States And you're

24:04 still, for that team, their rotating equipment specialist team is still flying blind to a major piece of equipment in the field. They don't even see running, not running. And for some of them,

24:18 all they do see is running, not running. When, I mean, heck, like you could outfit your home with door sensors, cameras, all that stuff. And with your cell phone, you could be - I could be in

24:30 Houston traveling for work and see everything about my home. You can't do that for a massive piece of equipment that cost multiple millions dollars that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars of

24:42 revenue every day as there's that aspect of it but with him there I we've been leveraging digital twin and cloud based technology for a long time and I would like to bet that detection is probably one

24:55 of the first cloud based technologies out of calgary on the industrial side and ever and someone could probably refute that it's probably very reputable but is very early the ninety ninety nine to

25:09 have data going to the Internet and spit out results like that's pretty isn't it wasn't born out of necessity though right because if you're in the field right then you have to get the data back

25:23 somewhere to leverage whatever exists from an Internet perspective I don't even really remember when wifi started to become a thing for sure when I was in college which is around the same time that I

25:33 guess detection was doing compression ninety not yeah that that I was definitely I had to plug my the cable into the wall to get internet in the dorm and then in the house that I was in there was no

25:46 wifi yeah the idea of edge compute is probably it may be a hotter term now or started to become a harder term seven or eight years ago but you guys have really been embracing the idea of operating on

26:01 the Edge Yeah for over twenty years so you might be right because it was born out of necessity yeah absolutely when people talk about the edge when people talk about AI when they talk about cloud

26:12 compute like what does that mean to you from the seat that you sit and because I'm sure as the sales engineer and that the expert in the room the guy with a dozen years of experience the company yeah

26:24 people ask like so what do you Guys do with Ai I would almost guarantee this comes up in like half your meetings and you do this on the Edge how do you explain the edge to them and then how do you

26:34 answer the AI Question Cause I think detection has taken a little bit of a of a harder line with like we actually do true edge you can say I we make your A I work better I've heard that phrase come

26:45 out but like so how do you ask questions like sake what what does this mean that you guys are on the edge and then what what do you do with Ai Yeah absolutely the preacher says that that answer is we

26:57 have a digital twin and back in the day before there was cloud he would actually get faxed in Data I don't think we even turn off our fax line until all it would have been like twenty fifteen or

27:09 twenty sixteen cause some people like I'll be going and doing all my expenses and photocopying all my receipts and I'm like yo there's a stack of field data sheets right here like who was the

27:24 who needs their field datasheet faxes Yeah exactly exactly Whose compressor is capital of five to 33? Like, what is this? Can I move this? I have to scan my dinner from Caesars the other night.

27:37 Exactly, exactly. So in any case, we would take that data, run it through essentially a simulation model, a digital twin, and it's a physics based model. So you don't need a six month training

27:51 timeframe or a massive amount of data to train this model It's literally, you know, if you were a compressor expert and you had to write out calculations by hand, this would be hand based

28:03 calculations, single point analysis. And that's how I differentiate us from AI and machine learning. Because it's around that learning piece, right? Like AI, ML, it's a hot topic these days,

28:22 everyone's jumping on board and I just cut right past it and say, hey. We are not that, at least in the detection analysis plus compressor fleet management world as of today, because our core

28:36 value prop is based on physics and thermal, stuff that I learned in second year university and grade 10 chemistry in physics. I must have not paid attention to any of those classes, 'cause I still

28:48 don't really know what that means, but anyways, I'm listening, I'm listening. All good, all good, all good. And that's the thing, you don't need to understand all that to extract the value out

28:56 of it, which is awesome. And so that marries up nicely with an edge computing side of things the on data of amount massive a need don't you because,

29:08 edge to extract the metrics and the value that we're surfacing to our clients. And so we have edge devices, fairly standard, these have been deployed to over tens of thousands, Thousands of

29:25 compressors. Across North America Awesome off Offshore which straight but basically we took that digital twin and have been taking that digital twin bringing it to that edge device and instead of yo

29:42 being able to look at pressures and temperatures you're looking at pressures and temperatures but also raw loads temperature I E no deviations all that sort of stuff that give someone operating in the

29:56 field insight into what's happening on a compressor package and before he or she drives out to fix something they're not going out without the tools materials that be my own that's beyond one layer of

30:11 it I literally just break calculations to the edge we give a A ha a highway for data to get into the cloud and and because we're physics based we don't have to deal with all that challenges with AI

30:28 and machine learning. And then you give them a dashboard so that they can see it both in real time or compare it with other data sets, whether that's production or production versus actual forecast.

30:37 I mean,

30:40 I was thinking a little bit as you were talking about digital twin because, you know, I went to a happy hour last summer, which, and people actually to do rail the conversation for one second.

30:50 Hey y'all, great, let's go. I go to so many happy hours My head recruiter, shout out Nate Dogg, out of Houston, said, you know, I called him the other day, I was headed to a happy hour. He

31:00 goes, dude, for someone who doesn't drink, you sure go to a lot of happy hours. I swear to God, I go to more happy hours than people who drink like fishes. And there I am, I actually just enjoy

31:11 spending time with people out of the office, out of the home. Like, you know, getting time together. The alcohol piece, for me, like I'm a pretty social person So it's not something I don't

31:24 need that like. Whatever you want to say that social lubricant or whatever to be comfortable so for me it's a happy hours just a chance to spend some time with people it's just Sorta become socially

31:34 acceptable for that to happen at a bar brewery or at a suite at the ball arena for an avalanche game or something like that but anyways I was at a happy hour last summer with Lockheed Martin which was

31:47 Super fun and and they started I got invited from a friend of mine who was an oil and gas has been at Lockheed for awhile they're not really focused on oil and gas I dunno if they do anything wrong

31:57 GaSp but they're intrigued by the fact that they have built digital twins designed for going to the Moon ray and figuring things out and how to do some sort of repair when it's like literally you

32:10 could lose somebody in outer space and they're like bootsy we're doing this like on the Moon we think that this is applicable to oil and gas right in the way that they we started talking through it

32:19 there like I mean to US like if we can do things millions of miles Applecare we do things thousands of miles down the road I mean I think fundamentally you probably can like your challenges Yeah you

32:29 get in the room cause you're lockheed Martin do you speak the language and I think that's why you have niche companies like a like a detection just wanted to share that because I thought it was kind

32:39 of cool to see how they were thinking about it very very bright people seasoned engineers creating digital twins for people in outer space and spacecraft on the moon and they're like you know there's

32:49 something in oil and gas here I'm like Yeah there probably is the way that the way they think about digital twin and it's a little bit different like it's probably a little bit more high fidelity than

32:60 the way you think about digital twin but nonetheless you're you're creating something around safety or data or efficiency or exactly in a remote location which I think is kind of neat raid an

33:15 infection I

33:17 did my Bachelor's degree in Aerospace engineering or did you Really I don't even know. I cued you up for that. That's not fair. Right? Like, no, I, uh, and they had a space, uh, stream. And

33:31 I think it was the first year that it came out and, uh, was always the entry by it. But, uh, I ended up choosing, you know, aerospace structures instead. But, uh, I mean, for those out

33:44 there, if you're from Lockheed and you got digital twins on some of your turbines that you deploy, man, like there's turbine driven equipment and one-line gas. You get to the midstream side of

33:55 things. They're these massive compressor stations and pumps driven by turbines or the electricity powering that is created by a turbine driven gen set. And so, yeah, like rocket science is

34:09 everywhere is what I'm trying to say

34:13 I love it. Yeah, I was in Houston last week for Nate, obviously. And as I'm in the airport flying home, there was a shirt. i didn't buy it but I thought it was kind of cute it's like you know

34:22 NASA it's not rocket science underneath it's like actually it is yeah like target cheek but it really is rocket science detection put out a press release or I guess a case study somewhat recently that

34:38 you guys should probably be louder about if I'm being totally honest I'm a branding marketing sales guy so I like to be loud I had detections you know a bunch of engineers so you Guys aren't that loud

34:48 but Nonetheless I I I found this case study to be pretty impactful because you were you referred to a a large oil and gas company that has attributed fifteen million dollars either in savings or

35:04 revenue increases to the work they're doing with detection Yep and how how long my Gosh I love this case city and you know this is hot off the press I wouldn't be surprised we're just in the early

35:18 days of really trying to get it out there by the church or Darnell it's meandering into our daily conversations and da Yeah it's a cool one we've been working with this company for a long long time

35:32 and this is just a twenty twenty four locked back so you can imagine decades working with Us and they're using us in ways that a brand new client that Thong futures helps us onboard yo may not but the

35:46 core DNA is there and it's paid through our digital twin and our expertise that we bring to the table to use a medical analogy it's your doctor is your heart specialists your cardiothoracic surgeon

35:60 care with great technology that combination is helping drive insights that allow this Canadian producer to make really great decisions and it's great decisions to reduce downtime on their units

36:14 downtime is the killer of production when you're not running, even if you're unoptimized, when you're running, you're at least producing, but when you're down, you're down. But so that's kind of

36:26 key. Number one, it's really marrying up like how you physically set up your compressor with the control systems that naturally govern how they operate on a day-to-day basis. And that's kind of

36:40 entering the world of automation a little bit.

36:43 Give great guidance there Be it great guidance around, hey, here's what your compressor is actually capable of. So here's your line of ideal performance, but you're operating down here. With this

36:54 gap, you can either move more production if it's available, or you can pull harder on the field, which may actually help your gathering system and your well-deliverability. And then with that,

37:07 they call out very specifically some op-ex and capex, specifically around turnarounds that we save them a ton of money. and this company is also very blessed with a massive surplus fleet and so a

37:22 lot of conversations can be around a like yeah a new compressor station we need to build before we go and shop from here the multitude of great packagers and channel partners out there is there

37:33 anything in our backyard that is going to do a great job or is there a handful of units working in parallel or a series that we can just deploy and so again that digital twin without everything that

37:46 compressor but because we had that compress around the system for ten years grave data confirming capabilities and performance you can use that data to forecast hey would this be a good fit here yay

37:59 or nay ye cake go do a deep dive do we need to invest capital to overhaul the unit before it deploys gets changed piping is a great on paper but you go to site and it's just beat to shit right So we

38:15 help them with that first initial vetting, so they're not spinning their wheels, looking at units that they shouldn't even be looking at in the first place. Yeah, it's taking some of the guesswork

38:26 out of it. And I think that the, it's interesting to hear that, and especially when you started out saying it, it's like, well, this is a company that has clearly embraced, not only what

38:37 detection does, but just optimizing everything within the asset. I'm guessing it's not limited to compression, right? There's probably other things that they're doing, where they're trying to get

38:45 insights and really like predictive capabilities to be able to avoid that downtime, which like you said, it's the killer or profitability or production for an oil and gas company. That's right.

38:58 Does a company, does an oil and gas company like use detection for their entire compression fleet? Does that even make sense, or is there like a certain size of compressor or like asset. where it

39:13 starts to make sense to do this level of analysis or would you say it's blanket like to have a compressor you should use detect Yeah I would say you know

39:23 it's always case by case like any technology you deploy it in a way that makes sense I'm always respectful of a specific companies E O capabilities and budget and all that sort of stuff and so if

39:35 you're talking with me the very first time I'm asking yourself hey where's low hanging fruit and we typically deploy detection services in a land and expand motion champion maybe we take on your a

39:51 full gathering which might be a one percent of the fleet and or saw not even one percent it's usually like ten to fifteen percent that initial gathering system you approve it out there and then you

40:04 take the wins as your business case and value proposition that used to justify budget dollars in next years Budget and you grow from there to replace sequential to get to that fleetwide and deployment

40:19 and and we do recess and screw compressors now you've got your big boys out there married up with you know the big engines fifteen hundred two thousand plus horsepower then he got some really really

40:32 tiny stuff then when you get into the under sub fifty horsepower range and these typically are at the price point where clients will treat them as a run to failure and replace Ram vs hey like let's

40:49 let's manager spend here vicious below that threshold where it makes sense to do something you know around monitoring just like I like a car that you've had for twenty five years just just run it

41:02 until the wheels fall off and replace it exactly if you just change oil and make sure you got your summer tires winter tires swapped do great I changed Spark plugs every once in awhile when you need

41:15 it by otherwise just top of fluids but then you're going to have your stuff that is mission critical maybe as a family person I dunno if we'll ever have a minivan but if your minivan is the only way

41:28 to get your kids to school to hockey to basketball to the camps in the summer like he sure as heck better hope that it's running well and so you're probably there when I get a brand new van with the

41:41 five year plus an extra standard warranty re light now comes down to deploying resources by exception and will we find is out of compressor fleet and scale

41:58 our clients don't have the data to be able to deploy those resources by exceptions so we try to wear those insights to light as the whole you can improve what you don't measure and like I said maybe

42:11 ten fifteen mins go there some companies who don't have any visibility and their data their historic data is literally a binder this thick sitting inside of the compressor building or into a surpass

42:25 still yeah absolutely that's just crazy to me I dunno cause I actually think that that OK fine like you've decided that this is how things have worked we've been a successful company we're not going

42:39 to change anything like there's a part of me that can sort of understand that maybe because I'm older now but but truly like where that becomes detrimental is Yeah not only are you probably losing

42:50 dollars in doing that or you're tripping over you know dollars to find pennies type of thing exactly but I think what's actually worse and what's detrimental is you're turning off potential younger

43:05 resources from wanting to work at your company because they're not going to have a real say ninety eight percent of the time in a decision around technology. But they know that it's going to help.

43:17 And I think eventually you start making suggestions and then you realize nothing's going to happen. Eventually you just sort of shut down, you get quiet, you look to work for somebody who's more

43:25 innovative. That's my biggest frustration with

43:30 combat. It's not just an oil and gas. I think this is sort of just across the board with like, well, we've done it this way and we've been successful. Like, why would we need to bring in

43:37 technology? It's less about the technology than it is almost about the culture and the attractiveness of the workplace. Because you want different skill sets and different opinions. And people who

43:49 will, it oftentimes, the people that grew up with tech and with phones in their hand are going to look at things differently versus somebody older who had to figure out how to use an iPad or an

43:59 iPhone when they were 40. That's right. So I think that - and I have

44:04 a lot of conversations with people who work at companies, Work it operators have highly. compensated jobs that are frustrated with the lack of innovation in their companies and they want to go out

44:19 and do something else they want to start a tech company they've started a tech company behind the scenes and it's like you know what you're signing up for is a lot harder than the job you currently

44:28 have right now it's a lot riskier but if you're if you're feeling like your soul is not in what you're doing or that you're not going to evolve yeah sometimes you can't put a price on that that's

44:39 right Yeah there's the

44:42 changed jobs a couple of times and Yeah maybe the first jumps I moved from a defense contractor in Canada this is like My Pie in the sky Dream to some day end up at GulfsTream aerospace like the G

44:59 sexes and all that sort of Stuff and but I probably moved into oil and gas and directly into detection from there because it just felt like It was more bureaucratic is very like lockstep with the

45:13 Canadian government and so the only way to move up or it seemed from the outside looking in with my year and a half experience there's like okay I just have to be

45:23 a personal chair for an extended period of time and then I'll go from and he went to an E to re like caillat that makes sense I think time should be honored but also like AM I going to feel fulfilled

45:37 AM I going to feel invigorated you know bringing this excitement and energy to organization and maybe not be rewarded for it in that sense so young I was kind of my reason for leaving that first time

45:53 but since then I've really tried to think of some cool tech companies on the HR space that really look at total compensation Bell pull together your Salary Variable Comp Your Benefits RSP in Canada or

46:09 401k matching in the States. And I like that thought 'cause some young professionals are like, oh, I see a higher salary, I should just take that. Don't realize that, oh, but there's all this

46:23 other stuff that you now have to pay for out of pocket. But I think a layer in that is what kind of soul compensation do you have? What's your moral compensation? Like, are you in a space that you

46:35 feel morally aligned with? Do you feel like your happiness and culture compensation is good? And this is my shout out to the amazing guys I've worked with at Detection for 12 years is when I go in,

46:51 I hang out with them for a week. I feel like I come out as a better person. So there's competition on a development level as well.

47:02 So all I have to say is, yeah, for folks to do how that pull of. Like, I don't know if this is like filling my bucket, not to suppress that is what I'm trying to say. And there's other aspects

47:17 to compensation

47:20 that are a bit more holistic, that are maybe worth considering as you shop around. Yeah, that's cool. I've never heard of sole compensation before. I've heard of sole provider. I've never heard

47:31 of sole compensation. I think that that's cool. And I really like how you mentioned that And it does, of course, tie back to mental health. But yeah, that's really kind of a, it's a fascinating

47:44 way to look at it, right? Because there are some things, certainly, that go well beyond the dollar. And sole compensation. I'm gonna start using that term a little bit too, especially when I'm

47:53 recruiting efforts. It's just being compensated the way that it needs to be. Is it being fed and yearned and loved and grown the way it has? We've only got a couple of minutes left here And I know

48:05 you want to ask me some questions. I am always the one that asks questions that actually kind of bother me when you're like I have questions for you I'M just kidding but if you want to ask me some

48:13 questions I'm happy to answer them Yes lily you know really selfishly and as you know as you heard I'm new to the world of sales engineering in the grand scheme of things but you touch a lot of

48:25 organizations you see into a lot of sales processes I'd be curious in your experience what makes a great sales engineer I'm going to be jotting notes in the background some oh sweet these are ways

48:37 that I can look at myself evaluate myself try and figure out how to really improve myself coming out of state Yeah I mean over twenty years in technology sales I've worked with all different kinds of

48:49 sales engineers most of them great to be honest I've been really blessed with awesome sales engineers maybe not great like sales managers and Bosses Butter but Great Great sales Engineers and I think

49:02 the thread and of what makes a great sales engineer is not too dissimilar from what makes a great salesperson man but in some ways it's even a little more challenging for a sales engineer in that your

49:14 job is to be the expert and pitch something and do the majority of the talking but the best sales engineers actually do the most asking of questions and lessening Yeah so how do you find that balance

49:27 how do you do that in a way that's organic versus you talk talk talk and then for anything you have so many questions like it's not like that right it's like truly making the interaction and engaging

49:39 one and one of the best sales engineers this goes back to like two thousand and seven or something like OK cool that I shot out Jason Old Aubusson who I worked with a bolo he's been at salesforce

49:51 running their global oil and gas division for awhile he probably doesn't do demos any more I I would not but he was Awesome and one of the things that he would always Do when we would get into a demo.

50:02 And this is accounting software, man. Like you're going feature and function with the revenue account, with the controller, with the gym account, like they want to get into it and they probably

50:11 don't want to share much generally. But he would always start off the meetings and say, and then I adopted this. He would say things like, hey, listen, like we do demos all the time, right? So

50:23 I'm gonna kind of have my canned workflow of things that I go to, but like this is for you guys, right? This session is for you So I wanna make sure that we're engaging and working through this

50:35 meeting together and that I'm answering and covering all of your questions. So just remember that, right? I might go off on a tangent. I may start showing things and get excited about stuff, but

50:44 this isn't for us, this is for you, right? So leaning into that, I think having empathy, right? Putting yourself in the seat of the person on the other side, whether you've worked in that

50:55 position or not is important. and oftentimes sales engineers do come from the role of sitting in the person on the other side of the table like leaning into that right not just being a product

51:06 pitcher and but but now making assumptions about what they do but referring back to when I was in this role of acts some of the challenges I had were this is that something that you see in your

51:18 current role may be making some assumptions around that right the empathy less assumptions ensuring that the prospect knows you're not just another product pitcher Yeah and then and then ultimately I

51:31 think being the trusted resource and that is a company advocate for their company as well as yours yeah right so I think your company would want you to be more of a salesman and the client or the

51:46 operator wants you to be more of an advocate less of a salesman so it's like understanding how to toe that line and doing so in an undefined way so hopefully that that helped you in any aspiring

51:57 younger Dardanelles that want to be demo Guys I love it I love it and yes there are some aspiring ses that you know tuning the other things all layering is a core talks about the best sales engineers

52:13 have a great skill at distilling things to Yeah yo distilling answers to a way that's digestible to the audience as in front of you and that's something I'm constantly checking myself on because it's

52:27 easy to Naruto but Yeah I'm talking to grasp table can't receive that then manly thousand missed opportunity to bring him on board there will be the time to nerd out it's probably not in a session

52:40 with twenty people best from right so so knowing when to nerd out and when not to I prefer that unless I think you do a good job with distilling things that the it's a skill to take something very

52:54 complex and make it simple and digestible rich it's so easy to get lost in and you know so much in that brain of yours Yeah but you don't need to share it all yeah that's rape and I feel like

53:07 sometimes there is that like scarce the mindset of I only got this one hour session to put it all on the table when it's fruit in reality like hey educated enough so that it garners enough interest to

53:22 book another session and it's like dating you know get enough of a connection that a war is both you know parties to book another date second date third date for that cetera so I throw a lot of

53:38 analogies in our maybe behind the scene calls around dating and stuff like that but I think it makes sense like it's just relationship building aM in some people maybe they're just not good

53:49 relationships though so why would we expect them to be good at communicating outside of a relationship is true that is true that is true What else you got for me got anything else any questions man

54:01 honestly I think I'm good like that was the one you know selfish thing that I want to get out today because we don't get a lot of one on one time to chat and say I do hope we get more obtuse like this

54:14 even if recording a podcast this is Awesome I was chapped that I missed out on that Denver event and we're tied up in our ills meetings but Yeah I know it's it's Awesome I think there will Yeah man

54:32 this was an honour for me and then there will be there will be more like you know whether it's a denver a van or houston and I need to get up to Calgary I'm not going up there when it's snowy and grey

54:42 and cold

54:45 we're finally hit hitting a little bit of a turn here it was really cold here yeah and now it's starting to get beautiful again but Yeah We'll we'll get more time and and you know maybe now that you

54:56 are curious may be all like when I'm sitting in a demo with you, I'll start taking more key observations of things that you can improve on. Not like I know, you have more experience with this than

55:04 I do, I've just, you know, I've seen a lot. Yeah, absolutely. The fact that you're open to feedback already shows that your path in this sales engineer and just with communication in general is

55:16 evolved. So where can people find you, Darnell? Where can they find you? Where can they find detection? You know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so I mean, you find detectioncom We're stuck a

55:26 little differently, so it's d-e-t-e-c-h-t-i-o-ncom. People like that, by the way. Okay, I'm glad. Some days - Like it's kind of, 'cause you got the tech thing. That's strange. But you're

55:38 detecting, it's actually kind of cool. The fact that you got that domain in like 1987. Seriously, probably a couple bucks at the time. Yeah. But I did find, when I left, and fun fact, I moved

55:52 to a company called Westgen Awesome, awesome, awesome. still yes still oil and gas in the emissions reduction but more so like reliable power and space in oil and gas I found myself spelling

56:06 detection like the company vs gateway without the age so I understand you're working at a company does that so that's where you can find detection and I most probably just found on linkedin not that I

56:21 could save time but either my Instagram and facebook are a bit more locked down but Yeah Linkedin Darnell Franco hard to miss my little thumbnail is being coveralls and hardhat and looking like I

56:37 belong on oil and gas

56:41 Wednesday I still have the site and my steel toes are beaten to shit because I actually use them not just for the one or two times that I had on site so I Yeah that's how you can find me Yeah, if not,

56:55 reach out to Jeremy and he can put us in touch. No doubt. Well, Darnell, I appreciate you. This was fun. Thank you for getting deep on a personal level and then teaching us about compression and

57:07 diving into some of your personal stuff. So it's been a pleasure and best of luck here in 2025 Thank you have a great long weekend