What The Funk?

0:00 What the funk is back doing a mid to late January, Friday recording with Trent Marks, the CEO founder, president of resource energy solutions at a Calgary, they are a newer funk futures client, a

0:19 really exciting one too. We've seen some good opportunity and traction here in the states so far. So really honored to have Trent on he was connected to us through petro beacon, which is somewhat

0:32 of a well known entity with with Steve McCloud, who's a bit of a small time legend, I would say an oil and gas technology, I should have him on the podcast at some point too. But beautiful day,

0:46 we kind of made it through our insanity of negative weather. And now I can look outside, see the snow melting, the sun's peeking out so excited for a good weekend, watch some football, maybe make

0:57 some chillies spend some time with the family. Probably by the time this episode comes out, it'll be right around NAEP. NAEP is of course a big conference in the oil and gas industry. I'll be

1:09 there, Trent will be there, a bunch of people on my team will be there, thousands of other people will be there not connected to funk futures in any way, shape or form. So I'm looking forward to

1:17 that. So Trent, thank you so much for coming on today. How you doing? Really good, thanks Jeremy, pleasure to be here. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you're here. I think you've got a lot to talk

1:29 about a lot we can dive into. So, first things first, I asked this to all my guests and you're no different. Who are you, Trent Marks? Who is Trent Marks?

1:40 Well, Jeremy, I was born and raised here in Calgary, Alberta and spent my, up 'til 22 years old, I was here. Had a great upbringing childhood, loved the city My

1:59 My recent uh last 17 years ago was was now a new company that i'm running resource energy solutions and um

2:11 but going back to to my upbringing uh always had a love of of this city a little bit uh cold in the winters but uh nice beautiful summers all the time yeah and uh my my grandfather's actually born in

2:27 henry out of texas so i have some some how do i say it um some near and dear uh affiliation with texas and so i spend a lot of time there now too yeah you do spend a lot of time there which which

2:43 makes sense for business and you're kind of your continued expansion into the us so i'm going to reverse engineer the math a little bit you're in Calgary till about age 22 formative memory of mine

2:54 actually i would have been eight or nine years old when the olympics were Calgary, the Winter Olympics, which was, I'm sure, a big deal up there. And I just remember, you know, being in New

3:06 Hampshire, New Hampshire's cold. Winter sports are a big deal. I grew up skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, come in, have hot chocolate, all that good stuff. So Calgary to me seemed like this,

3:19 this really neat place because you had the Olympics there. It was in Canada, but it was on the other side of the country. Were you in Calgary during the Olympics? I was, that was 1988 and it was

3:32 a great year. I remember the, Eddie the Eagle, if you remember the

3:41 the ski jumper. Okay. And they actually did a movie on him later, but I did remember going out to one of the events at the Canada Olympic Park, which is near here, and the city was just a buzz.

3:51 It was just such a great time. I was, geez, that was, I think I was 21 years old at the time.

3:60 just a perfect age for people of all different countries and international descent to come to your city. What was it like? The energy must have been incredible. I mean, Calgary is not a huge city,

4:12 right? So then all of a sudden you have the whole world focused on your city as the epicenter. Like talk to me a little bit about that. What was 1988 like in Calgary with the Olympics, the build

4:22 up to it, and then of course the games? Well, if I think for me, I think it was one of the funnest times of my life Everything from age of 16, 17, and up to 21, and 22, and it was really

4:36 exciting. The city was a buzz, of course. There was, you know, this was always, this had been planned for many years. Yeah. So you can imagine, right? It's usually a 10 year plan ahead that

4:46 you've been approved. Your city's gonna host the Winter Olympics. And all the facilities that were made around the city,

4:54 just a transformation, Having access to. the mountains that are so close, where the many of the events were held at the likes of Lake Louise and other facilities nearby, was just incredible. The

5:13 time I remember where I was working at the time and schooling, and

5:19 you just had to make time wherever you could to get out to these events

5:25 and all of the numbers of visitors that came to Calgary was really, really an experience. Probably the most people ever in Calgary at one time, although Stampede gets kind of crazy up there too,

5:38 so I don't know if that claims accurate, but Calgary's grown, I would guess, a lot since then. To me, I always call it Canadian Denver, and Denver has grown by leaps and bounds, so much

5:49 different city than when I moved here 20 years ago. And certainly, if you go back to the '80s, this was a cow town, kind of then became little more of like that. like a pot town, and now it's

6:01 really sort of like, it feels to me like a big city here. Calgary to you, does it feel like a big city? Does it still sort of feel like a bit of a cow town? Like, what would you say the vibe is

6:13 there now?

6:17 In population, I think we're

6:20 at 12 million or three.

6:24 The country is 40 million right now, Canada, I'm surprised I just remember 34 million and I'm like, what happened? Where do those extra 7 million people come from? It feels like, to me, it

6:37 doesn't feel like it's grown that much bigger and spread out so much that you don't really see the growth a lot of times. I have lived in a

6:47 number of different areas in Calgary and now I'm downtown close to where my office is.

6:56 But what's interesting to see is transformation that we're doing downtown. When COVID hit, it's just, it was just a ghost town. The, you know, you had people, everyone was working from home.

7:10 We had this massive, one of the worst in, I think, in the cities in Canada vacancy rates on commercial real estate downtown. And so we put a lot of money into now converting this into these

7:23 residential units So there's a lot of, it's going to bring, I think, more vibrancy into the downtown core. It has always been sort of a very, and that maybe other cities can relate to this as

7:36 well. Sometimes your downtown is quite desolate at night. No, there's not much going on. I kind of relate that to Houston. I don't really, Houston's sort of similar, I think, in a way. Yeah,

7:49 like, it's just bigger

7:53 But there's so many

7:55 people in the core in that. in the downtown area. And when they go home at night, there's nothing there. Right, except for nap week, then downtown's actually a little bit vibrant. But I agree,

8:06 Houston's a place where you descend upon downtown to go into your office to go to work and then everybody flees to the suburbs, whatever, Sugar Land, Katie, Woodlands, other

8:16 places in Houston. So interesting parallel there. If you grow up in Calgary, oil and gas is around you. There's a couple hundred oil and gas companies up there A lot of them pretty long lasting at

8:27 this point. What kind of brought you into the oil and gas industry? Was it something that interested you because it was always around you? Did you just sort of end up in it? Tell me about your

8:37 path to oil and gas. Well, I think as a

8:42 younger

8:45 child growing up, I was always a bit of an entrepreneur and trying to do anything I could to make money. Started with a paper route and many other jobs Finally, after graduating from high school,

8:57 we started, took a mechanical engineering, business administration, and then I wanted to, we're in the energy hub here. So I took a job as a jugghound. So on the seismic cruise, the guys that

9:16 are laying all the wires that connect the instrumentation sound that pick up the sound when they do the seismic back in the day. We are out there laying out all of this cable behind the trucks. So

9:34 that was my first experience in all the gas and working in the energy. Now that was up in Northern Alberta. So it was really cold. So I got

9:44 one of the things that I realized quickly was, if I want to climb the chain, I better work hard. So I always have that hard work ethic Ever, ever, ever since I have that. And that comes from my

9:57 parents and my grandparents, the farming backgrounds.

10:02 So I started at that level and it wasn't very long before I was finally driving the truck and so I could stay a little bit warmer. Nice. So you did actually work for the oil and gas company, oil

10:14 and gas field services company. And then eventually you decided to get into the technology space. Talk to me about that transition because I think it's something we've seen a lot of, you work in

10:24 oil and gas, you work in the field, you say, Hey, wait a second. We're doing a lot of things on paper. This doesn't make sense. The internet boom starts to happen And. you decide to go out and

10:34 launch this RES company. Talk to me about the path or the transition from working in the field to actually building field software and then the invention of RES Sure. There was a bit of a time in

10:48 between where I was 22 and

10:52 my, you know, the I guess the blessings of God and things happen. I had a child. So nice, I decided I had to work. And we, so I went to work for a company in British Columbia working in

11:07 lumber-handling and optimization equipment manufacturing. God. We built sawmills and I took another, it was about a three year equivalent of education in procurement and supply chain management and

11:21 slowly moved up to purchasing, buying, logistics, and I was always buying all the high tech, the software, the hardware for anything related to automation and instrumentation. And that's where I

11:34 kind of, I remember one of my early mentors said, just get really good at computers. And, you know, he, and you have to, and even today, and today we're seeing it even at younger ages, we've

11:46 got children at four or five years old that are starting to do coding. But so I've always been around technology After there was a software lumber agreement, had come into play with Canada and the

11:59 USA, and so there was some job sharing, and I realized that the oil sands was gonna take off here in Alberta. And the whole energy sector. So I came back home to Alberta, and then was working for

12:12 five years in purchasing supply chain management. I decided I wanted to move from procurement into sales So I worked with a great business coach and ended up getting a job at selling drilling service

12:29 rigs for enzyme rock weld decision. Still around? Yeah, and did great there working for six months. And then one of her other clients, my business coach had these two gentlemen that they were

12:41 looking

12:49 for some to run the company and.

12:53 and sell the product. So I thought, you know, this will be a good opportunity to get my reality MBA put on a different, put on mini hats. It did require a pay cut, about 30, but that was, I

13:07 felt that was gonna be well worth it. And so it wasn't two years after, I liked, you know, and I really had, was getting good reviews from the customers about the product and the software

13:21 technology So it was about two years after that I bought the company. And I remember early days going back, when I first, I was 22, back then it was MS DOS. And then Windows 31 was coming into

13:36 play and that was in 1989, 1990. And that was such a game changer. And then all of the office suites and I was buying all of this and I remember, I said, I really like that. I'd love to be able

13:49 to build software, shrink wrap it and then you can just, you know. and sell lots of it at higher margins. So that's what really intrigued me and interest me in RES. And so we've now been building

14:02 lots of great software over the last 17 years and really proud to say that I think we've got some of the best drilling and well information management software in

14:13 the world. And it's being, you know, compared to the others and we're seeing good results on all friends I mean, we're both biased when it comes to this. It's your company and I'm consulting for

14:26 you, but I also like to take somewhat of a, you know, and kind of a middleman view of all these things and have knowledge of all of the various systems in the space. I like what you've built

14:43 particularly with the Wellman product for kind of drilling completions, all the field data and you've built it in the cloud. I'm sure that was a relatively big transition for you to make, but you

14:57 have other solutions as well. Talk to me about the evolution of the systems that you built and then other systems that you've added on to it in Wellman. And did you build this yourself or did you

15:10 hire developers to build it? Like what was that process like? Well, that is an interesting, it's a good question. Because it's a real interesting process When you look at the evolution of

15:22 software development and where we started from, you know, 17, 18 years ago with Wellman was the first, it's our flagship product. Pennzoil asked us to build some reports in the field. They could

15:39 automate some of the data to bring it back to the office. Instead, back then that day, they were using bag phones

15:46 to call in their morning reports. You can imagine it back in that day That's how you got the reported by a phone call.

15:54 what's happening out in the field,

15:57 so

15:59 we built up Wellman for drilling and completions and then later all the well intervention and abandonment modules. Following that we built all of the construction components around it and it's always

16:17 an evolution of the software development cycle because you've got to stay on top of technologies as they change and they're ever changing so quickly. Five years ago we made a large investment to make

16:29 our software web-based and there's a difference between web and cloud-based software. Cloud can be in an old traditional desktop app and you host it in the cloud so people can access it. Typically

16:42 it's multi-tenant Web-based is more where now it's accessibility on every any browser and

16:54 And that's really, I think that's being one of our bigger transitions in staying on top. And who knows what's going to be next to the next five, 10 years, but there may be another. You have to

17:07 keep on top. So that's what we're doing. And so about 10, 11 years ago, we added on to a couple of other products, AFE Manager. That's authorization for expenditure, because it starts at

17:18 creating a budget. And then that's routed for review and approval internally in some kind of smaller companies can just run that around the office with paper and get people's signatures, or you can.

17:29 We like to call that the sneaker net. The sneaker net, exactly.

17:35 And then so we built that up and we had an opportunity to build a regulator edition of the AFE Management for Indonesia regulator. And so I remember doing lots of travel to Carda back in those days.

17:49 And then we have an AFE oil and gas edition version Yeah. And then we built about six years, seven years ago, we started building a regulatory compliance solution called Torque, total operations

18:01 risk and control. And that's around well asset integrity, liability, environmental risk and compliance management, built on the Alberta energy regulator, industry standards and directives and

18:14 best practices of what to do and when and what to report around all of our operations So that's our free core products. And then we also, 10 years ago, started to build out drill AI to see ahead of

18:30 the drill bit. So we've got a patented technology in Canada, US and Mexico to see ahead, to do bit wire predictions, stuck by conditions and well-blown characteristics. And what's next? Well,

18:42 more mobile and making sure the data is accessible to others is some things in a roadmap But as we look back in time at our company, We were in the cloud 15 years ago, way before Amazon or Azure,

18:59 any of these cloud providers came about. So we've always been on the leading edge. And even the drill AI, although we still have some more work to get that to commercialization of that product, it

19:13 seems like we've always kind of, we're always staying now really ahead of the time. And it was sometimes, I felt that maybe it was too early for adoption Yeah, that right there is, thank you for

19:26 walking me through kind of the evolution of the products. Fairly robust suite, I would say definitely built for the enterprise. Interesting point on having a product that's almost too early.

19:41 I see that today with some of the ESG sustainability related applications, but I've also seen the the markets start to come in the direction of those systems. If I think back to maybe 10, 11 years

19:57 ago, one of the concepts that I was selling at the time with Seven Lakes was iPad based mobile field data capture for pumpers, and that was relatively early and took company's time to adopt it. And

20:11 now something like that is more of the standard. So it's always a fine line, right? The way that somebody like you thinks, the way that a lot of founders and technology innovators think is push

20:21 the envelope But will the industry adopt the envelope that you are pushing and when, right? Because there is a such thing as being too early. And in conversations that I've had with lots of

20:35 different operators today, as it relates to artificial intelligence, machine learning. The opinions are pretty split. I think everybody wants to embrace it, but there's also sort of the opinion

20:49 that This is the worst that it's gonna be. right, the hallucinations and all these other things that relates to AI and ML is only gonna get better, right? In the same way that the internet was,

21:02 had some questions in the 90s, now you see the internet sort of hit its sort of peak as things are now, everything's streaming, right? We're always on and connected, whether it's on our iPhones

21:13 or Samsungs or whatever people use or computer Here we are streaming over a cloud, you know, podcasting version, the concept of podcasting wasn't even really a thing a long time ago. But I'm

21:27 curious to see where things do go in the artificial intelligence space and also how it starts to impact what you're doing in terms of the intelligence as it relates to the field tech. How do you view

21:42 the sort of whole AI movement and everything that's really started to change in that regard over the past. even just year or so. Are you incorporating artificial intelligence? Is that on the

21:54 roadmap? And if you have any use cases, I'm curious to kind of let the audience here what those might be. Yeah, absolutely. The AI movement and what we've seen in just the last three, four years

22:06 has been phenomenal at the speed of which it's coming around it. And people are starting to embrace it more. We use it wherever we can We use it within

22:19 our products, how to enhance it, do more predictive analytics. AI, drill AI is all about algorithms and looking at 65 data points every second and predicting processing that data to be able to see

22:37 ahead of the bit. And so that's just one application of it. But as we're seeing today, chat, GPT, other ways and uses of

22:47 AI, we're always looking I have the fortune of being able to have traveled around the world so much.

22:55 I just, the amount of cities and countries and states and provinces that I've been to have just

23:04 seen the map of all the pins, if you wanted to see, you know, locations where I've been. But the travel gives you that

23:13 opportunity to also see what else is going on

23:18 We're always keeping one of the things that we value as innovation, improvement, right? Always staying ahead of the curve

23:27 at, you know, I think we spend more in RD dollars than many service companies. And we invest in the products and staying on top of innovation because that's what we need to do to stay ahead. And

23:40 our customers are going to want to see that

23:44 like when we had to do a rewrite of the software six years ago, right? We realized, if we're going to want to be able to use more technologies like AI, we have to change the underlying

23:55 architecture, right, the database structures to make sure that we've got that structured database and then you can pull the information easier and then you can put all of these new technologies to

24:07 work. So what we're seeing with these

24:13 GPUs and the processors and everything that's happening around us,

24:18 it's incredible. Like where does it start? It starts at cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, that's what's driving all of these GPU processors as well as now AI. So there's a couple different areas that

24:33 really are lending themselves to this growth, which will benefit us if used properly. We have to be careful about when you take AI to extremes that are negative impacts. That's not the way it's

24:50 designed to be used, unfortunately, that will be something that we may not ever be able to be avoid, but we need to be aware of it, for sure. Interesting. So you talked about a few things there

25:02 that I want to touch on. I think first and foremost, you've traveled a lot internationally, domestically, North America, South America, overseas, for business. Talk to me a little bit about

25:16 some of the differences, or maybe it's similarities between doing business in Canada versus the US versus Mexico versus South America versus, whatever, the Middle East or Australia or Asia or

25:28 Europe. Talk to me a little bit about some of what you've learned in terms of what's different, and ultimately, what's the same?

25:37 The - a lot of differences are

25:42 about our cultures That's really the main one that. You've got to know the cultures of the countries or provinces or even states

25:54 that you're going to be selling into or providing services to

25:59 Indonesia, for example, very different culture.

26:04 Some of the tough, I thought I'd met some tough negotiators in my life, but there are some pretty tough negotiators. Interesting So, you

26:16 have to be armed and ready and prepared to deal with that, and most of the similarities are really around the same thing applies. You've got to build a relationship, you've got to build that trust.

26:30 Now if you've got a smaller tool like an Apple phone, for example, it becomes a little easier You don't have to have a big trust relationship to people just, they need it, they want it, right?

26:46 But when you're selling. software solutions that impact a company's bottom line operations and they want to know that they can trust the buyer and you have to still build that relationship just like

27:02 with any partner that you have in life. And if you don't have trust with your partnership and it doesn't really work out too well most of the time, that's what I've learned. To say the least, to

27:13 say the least. Well, yeah, I appreciate that. And I think the cultural differences, you even mentioned state to state, that's a thing too. The way people do business in Oklahoma is different

27:23 than Colorado or California or Texas even. And certainly when you go to Alberta or South America overseas, it is different. Of course, there are similarities, right? There has to be value

27:35 provided and there has to be some level of monetary exchange. But the differences are real and I think that's an important nuance, at least for me, throughout my sales career and understanding.

27:46 some of those differences in treating each situation as its own individual entity. I wanna go back in time a little bit with you, right? So we talked a little bit about Calgary guy, spent some

28:00 time in the field, spent some time in British Columbia. You've got some experience now. You've run multiple companies. What advice would you have for your younger self?

28:16 Well,

28:17 I would be advising to

28:22 keep working hard, working smart,

28:26 surround yourself with

28:29 good people, mentors, always important.

28:40 When you see, maybe don't hesitate when you see really good opportunities and jump on them. People sometimes take too long to make a decision, so you want to make decisions quickly, and

28:52 you don't keep educating. It's reading is important.

28:59 I read a lot on a daily basis. I haven't been much like a storybook reader, but I'd love to read anything about business and growth and from the areas of your expertise. Because if you're

29:16 constantly educating yourself, all the better, and keeping up with the times on technology is really important all around you. Sometimes people just don't spend enough time on these areas,

29:32 and of course building your relationship, your balance, your personal life is just as important to feed that Some of the best work you will do in your life will be from your home.

29:46 Especially now, especially now,

29:51 but you're right. Now it's given, but back in the day, the amount of work I remember I did at home when I was buying resource energy solutions It was about three months of work, all from home in

29:54 the evenings to structure the deal.

30:15 a good effort and nothing comes easy in life.

30:21 Thank you for that answer and I'm kind of curious too, since I'm a little bit earlier into my entrepreneurial journey, about three years into funk futures and have some investments in some earlier

30:32 stage technology companies that hopefully turn into something at some point. But a question I have for you and something I like to ask, long running entrepreneurs like yourself, how have you

30:44 avoided burnout? I know this isn't something that I've sort of prepped you to ask, but you've run RES now for 18, 19 years. And it still feels in some ways the energy that your team has like a

30:58 startup. You still have a desire to expand into, you know, additional markets, create new solutions. How have you done this for almost two decades and avoided burnout? Or have you had some,

31:12 patches of that time where you did feel sort of burned out. And how did you get out of it?

31:18 I've been fortunate not to have any of these burnout patches. Once in a while, you'll get tired. And so you'll take a vacation. Take a week off. I haven't taken a week off in a while.

31:33 But the key is really always be growing. And if you're not growing, you're stagnant or you're dying. And you have to be excited about the growth. And if you're creating that buzz and that

31:49 excitement, other people around you see it and feel it and follow it. So some of the things I do is I've got to make sure I'm getting my eight hours of sleep. That's really important. I find that

31:58 for myself. And a good rest is so good and healthy I'm keeping up with my

32:08 all sorts of health things

32:13 input into my body supplements and I think are very important. A

32:20 number of other powders that they put in a smoothie in the morning. It's just been a tradition for five, six, seven years now and then getting out and for exercise and doing cardio and weights or

32:33 whatever you can do to take

32:36 the edge off or the stress off sometimes. And then on the weekends I've been fortunate that I have a tree farm in Sundry. So in the summer months, you know, I get out there on the weekends to look

32:50 after

32:52 this hobby farm, which is.

32:54 I've been so busy and it's been hard to try and sell the trees. But the trees I planted, about 30, 000 of them over six years, 15, 16 years ago. And when you get out into the country and breathe

33:05 the fresh air, you know, it's so beautiful. And right now, in this time of the year, you know, this is why it's so great. I didn't realize how. much fun sledding was. And so three years ago,

33:15 I bought a sled. And the snow, you know, where we are, everything west of us is crown land. And you could pretty much just know we'll be able to Lake Louise if you had a guide and could take that

33:26 trail. So it's just great to get out from right from the cabin, munch on the snowmobile and the sled and off you go. So those are the those, that's more exercise on the weekend. And that kind of

33:38 takes away from the office stress. Because if you're doing if you're doing seven days a week on the computer, you will you can burn out pretty quickly without that other those rests that you need,

33:50 right? Yeah, I like how you tied sort of the the physical component into avoiding mental burnout. I do believe that that's important. And there's nothing quite like getting out in the country

34:01 seeing seeing the stars, you know, getting getting some of the that fresh air is is super nice. I'm fortunate to live kind of right on my creek right behind me and even in little like. pockets of

34:12 time during the day, when I can just get a chance just to sit down and meditate by a creek, right? With the water flowing, changes your whole mindset for the day or just going for a quick walk

34:23 around the block. I don't do it enough, but I noticed that when I do, I feel really good about it. And something else, yeah, go ahead. Well, it's gonna say, you know what, but that is all

34:35 from too, and somebody reminded me, it's you're out there, you're breathing more, right? People are, you know, someone said, hey, yeah, there's oxygen is free, just keep breathing. That's

34:44 all this, that's a meditation and yoga, right? Breathing into the nose.

34:53 You're gonna say? Out through the mouth. To go back also to one of the things that in sort of the burnout part of the conversation that we were talking about, and advice to your younger self, you

35:06 said something that really stood out to me So I actually wanted to and created a website. had the idea for starting a fractional contract sales company as far back as 2017. You were hinting at,

35:20 when you see something and you have passion for it, you really just need to go for it. And what held me back, I just talked about this yesterday with my friends, Keith and EMIers of mainline

35:29 ventures, they're now launching their own thing. And we talked very candidly around, part of why I didn't start my company then was health insurance, right? It's something that down here for

35:40 employees in the US, I was sort of afraid to not have some of the benefits in particular health insurance with a young family. Oh no, now I have to pay for that myself out of pocket. How do I do

35:51 it? And I'm not the only one. I think a lot of people have avoided starting their own thing due to the safety of some of the benefits, especially health insurance, that a full time job can provide,

36:04 right? So if I were to go back, even just less than a decade to my younger self and say, you've got the go for it, you'll figure out some of those ancillary things. I probably shouldn't have

36:17 started my own company earlier, but I let not having health insurance or having to figure out a different route, pay for it all out of pocket, which is not cheap down here from starting my own

36:29 company. And that to me is an important, like I look back and laugh at that now, like why would I do that? But on the flip side, I think I learned more about myself in those sort of last few jobs

36:40 I had as a full-time resource that my heart and my passion was really starting to be helping earlier stage companies and bringing different types of value to various different operators and oil and

36:52 gas companies. So that sort of struck a core of me, Tran, I appreciate that. And it's so true. It's difficult because unless I'm throwing a bunch of money at you, you've got, you know, I got

37:04 to deal with the security issue, I'm in fear, right?

37:09 of taking the risk. So you have to just kind of take the plunge and know that, hey, what's the worst that can happen, right? Yeah, you just go back and get a job. I mean, to me, that's sort

37:23 of like, it took me enough time to rationalize like, what is failure? Like, even still, say my company goes belly up, right? The worst case scenario. Like, I don't care about how people view

37:35 me in terms of being a success or a failure To me, that's all intrinsically motivated. The worst thing that would happen is that I would get a job. That's okay. For 17 years of my career, I

37:44 worked a job. I was totally happy about that. So, you know, it's like the downside. It's really not that bad. If somebody wants to go out and go for it, just make sure you have kind of a laser

37:55 target in terms of what you want to achieve in running your own business. Also kind of curious to bring it back to RES. You've been running this thing for a while, right? You're expanding, you're

38:05 growing, technology is rocking you're getting a lot of good feedback from oil and gas companies from drillers, domestically, internationally, so on and so forth. Do you have time to think about

38:15 what this company looks like in four or five years? And if so, what do you think it looks like?

38:22 I'm always planning ahead to grow the company. For sure, I see that we're gonna be in more countries in four or five years. More states, the more

38:38 products of ours that will have more traction in different areas. And continuing to grow, staying on top of new innovative ideas. Some of our core products are now expanding into different areas

38:53 like renewables, for example. As people don't maybe recognize that our software can be applied to anything, any type of a project, wind, farm, soil, or geothermal thermal. Any construction

39:10 projects, right? Any time you want to manage daily costs and activities, we have a new suite of products. And so we're going to be continuing to evolve that and grow that to have just more smiles

39:25 on our customer's faces.

39:30 And having to make and wanting the thing, we must always be mindful of is providing great service. Because if you can provide a good level of service, you'll always be there at the end of the day.

39:42 People can forgive a

39:45 small, you know, there's maybe there's a bug in the software, right? There's always software always has some issues from time to time as things as things come up. But that's one of the most

39:56 important things that we're going to be always continuing to focus on. And we're really proud to have been doing so ever since day one, always providing a high level of service. We're always there

40:04 for our customers 247. 365 days a year.

40:10 even on Christmas or Easter, or New Years, or what you name it, that's cool.

40:17 Yeah, I mean, another question that I have, again, about sort of some of your entrepreneurial ventures and management in particular is how do you delegate? I find that to be extremely challenging

40:31 for me. I'm really fortunate to have Max. You've gotten to know Max and some of my other guys, and it takes time, right? This is your baby, you know, RES. is your baby. Funk Futures is my

40:42 baby. I want to see this thing through. I want to see it be a success. I'll delegate, but I still want to keep close eyes on everything. Like, how have you been able to successfully delegate?

40:54 'Cause I know some of the guys on your team have been there for 15 years. So obviously you can't be micromanaging them too much. Like, what advice would you have for other entrepreneurs? Maybe I'm

41:03 just selfishly asking this for myself But how would you recommend delegation? And what does that look like to you and how have you been able to do more of it to have a long lasting company?

41:17 If you don't delegate, you won't grow because you're going to be doing that all yourself. So you have to understand that, yes, we have to do that. Now, how do we do it to make sure that we are

41:30 still

41:32 getting the information we want as we have to design and make sure that we have in place the metrics of the reporting that we want to have? Yeah And so you

41:41 make sure you've got that

41:43 process and that reporting documented on what needs to be done. This is the role, I want you to do it, like we've got all sorts of procedures in running our company, different manuals for

41:55 operations for you name it. There's a process behind it, even lead conversion process, right? How to do that? So that as you grow, add a new salesperson,

42:09 operations manager or any role you've got everything documented so then you can easily be on top of that reporting and then you just are you have them and you have that maybe it's a weekly or a

42:23 bi-weekly or every two weeks a meeting or whatever you're you know to get that reporting back and and that you're measuring that against the metrics that are required for those for any role that

42:36 you're going to delegate to because if you're not measuring those metrics then you can't keep an eye on on you know that that's fundamental if you want to be able to keep an eye on the the

42:48 advancements in progress forward on any any particular task or or work that's required yeah I think taking a quantitative approach is good and especially for you guys it's a bit of you know the

43:00 proverbial eating your own dog food you're inputting companies are importing lots of data into your system. It would be foolish not. be data driven internally in terms of how you manage processes

43:11 and people. Now, this is fun. I enjoy kind of hearing your perspective, and especially somebody who's been at the entrepreneur game in technology for 20 plus years, you've seen things change a

43:25 lot. Certainly, a lot of companies come, a lot of companies go, some companies get acquired, some companies go under, and kudos to you for being able to have a long last year It's a successful

43:39 company that has some real innovation to it that I think will start to continue to spread in various different places, well outside of Alberta. Tell me Trent, where can people find you? Where can

43:52 they find your company, social media, websites, all those sorts of things? Yeah, we're on most of the social media platforms, LinkedIn, Resource Energy Solutions.

44:06 com is the company address that, of course, our website, and any other, or else, we just started to

44:18 look at Twitter to see if we want to, if there's any value there, or X, if there's any value there.

44:26 And so that's where you can find us And we're, you know, I'm spending now half my time in Houston and half the time, or maybe it's four months in Houston and six months in Calgary and two months in

44:41 the air. And so that's

44:45 where I am most of the time. Yeah, that's that's relatable and I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to mention back to what you talked about delegation is what's really important to it,

44:56 you have to be mindful of is, is that you're not like demanding things from people that you're leading and not being a boss, right, dear, you know, it's about It's about us growing because

45:07 there's a difference between being a leader and being a boss. And those are important factors to always be mindful of that you're treating people well. Like you want to be treated. Yeah, I mean,

45:19 the golden rule applies in business as much as anywhere else. I was actually talking to a friend about this recently. This has been was super startling for me. And in some ways still is Like I was

45:32 really fortunate, especially in high school and then college, to have in playing sports or being in various different positions of leadership to have mentors, to have captains of sports teams, to

45:44 have coaches, to have fraternity brothers who were just unbelievable leaders and taught me a lot and were mentors. And frankly, when I got out into the working world, I was shocked by how a lot of

45:57 managers managed Like you said, much more boss, far less leader.

46:05 In some ways, it's unbelievable. Like if you have a good boss, good manager, whatever you wanna call it, that can oftentimes be more important than making another 20, 30 in terms of the dollars

46:18 that come in each year to you, right? People really care about how they're treated. And I think each generation values the way that they are treated even more, which I think is a positive thing.

46:29 But it really stood out to me where it's like, man, how did you get into this position, especially in sales, because what can happen in sales is the best sales person then gets promoted to be the

46:40 person that runs the sales team. But they might not have any management or leadership skills. They might not be able to impart what they do well. They're just good at selling a product. So then

46:50 I'd start to see like, oh, that's interesting. It's like making your quarterback the head coach, but the quarterback doesn't communicate well with the rest of the team. So some parallels with

47:01 sports, but something that really stood out to me when I got out in the business world. Where are all these amazing leaders that I spend time with in my youth and to my 20s? They're not where I'm

47:13 working.

47:16 Yeah, there's a lot of good leaders in sports. It's phenomenal, but we

47:20 learn from them, too, as we

47:24 grow up. That's why I'm getting involved in team sports, as always, I think it's a great experience. You totally agree And I think with sales, especially, there's a lot of parallels with just in

47:36 terms of being a team player, being competitive, and sharing credit, right? The best leaders always do that. You see Tom Brady behind me, you never hear him speak in terms ofI, he always spoke

47:48 in terms ofwe. And I think there's a lot of important lessons there. Final note, I wanted to make Trent, and this has just always sort of been fascinating to me. Because I started my company in

47:57 the pandemic, there's people like you who I've done business with now. We've been doing business for a couple three months and. We've never met in person. You know, and there are some people that

48:08 I've done business with for a couple of years that I've never actually met in person. So I just wanna say I'm looking forward to actually meeting you in the flash, in person in Houston. When we go

48:17 down there for Nate, it should be a good show, but the tie it all together, that should be a good time. And I do look forward to actually getting face-to-face with you since, you know, we're

48:27 actually business partners, so. Likewise, likewise, it's overdue. I appreciate it Trent Marks, ladies and gentlemen, X marks the spot, M-A-R-X. Thanks for coming on today, Trent.

48:40 ResourceEnergySolutionscom, doing some really big things in the drilling completion space.