What The Funk?

0:00 and we're live with the sales doctor himself. Matt Wilk, is your real doctor? Sales doctor, James Hahn. James Hahn, one of your former colleagues, dubbed you that nickname to me. We were

0:15 talking about you, and I've always been a huge Matt Wilcox and fan. I'm like giddy that he's on this podcast. Rarely do you have people that you look up to when they're younger than you, but that

0:24 happens to be one of these situations, for me, I always admired. Matt, but James is like - Let me - I want to reinforce that. Jeremy's admiration to you, Matt, because when I hired Jeremy at

0:35 Energy Navigator, the first person he wanted to introduce me to for a potential partnering call was you. He said, I want you to meet Matt. He's really good. He's up here in Denver with drilling

0:46 info and thought that was - wow. OK. Well, I would say it goes both ways. It's been fun to last, what, 12, 18 months to see fun futures get off the ground. That's -

0:59 That's been an exciting thing. So happy to be here. I'm looking forward to spending some time with you guys. Love it. Love it. So I want to go back to the genesis, right? I know you pretty well

1:09 from a career standpoint. I mean, you've been effectively at one company. And if you could pick one company to have started at in 2005 and still be there in 2022 in energy tech, it's probably in

1:20 various. I couldn't think of a company that's had a better rise in trajectory, but I want to get into you, the person like, who are you, where are you from? How did you get into this path of

1:30 getting right into an energy tech startup at a college? Sure. Yeah, I grew up in Houston. Dad was in the oil patch, largely doing stuff outside of the US. Big kind of FPSO projects. And so I've

1:46 been around the industry my entire life, which is exactly what I told myself. I'm not going to get into it. And for a year or so, I didn't I was doing real estate consulting in Houston. And a

1:60 good friend of mine, I still work with today, Colin Westmoreland, he'd been trying to recruit me over to drilling them for at the time. And finally, after about a year of persuasion, I moved

2:11 from Houston to Austin to get in the oil and gas industry, which I think I'm one of a small number of people that took that trajectory normally it's the other way around. Yeah.

2:20 So I've always loved the industry, really. I think it's an admirable industry to be in. Something that's exciting, it's a modern day treasure hunt.

2:30 You don't have to be big, you can be small, you can be all shapes and sizes to be successful. And it's really the epitome of entrepreneurship. And for me, starting back with drilling info back in

2:41 2005, it was early stage. We were low single digit millions in terms of revenue. And I asked down all the time, even recently did you ever think we'd get to where we were at? And he'd always say

2:54 with a smirk, never had a doubt

2:59 I question on that one, but no, it's been a great ride and what a great space to be in. Joining technology really at the right time, joining the energy space at the right time, really kind of

3:12 pre-shield development, really the Barnett was the only thing around when I started and it's been a crazy ride with a lot of really fun journeys along the way. Fantastic people, love the people in

3:25 this industry, love the people I get to work with You know, I've been here for 17 years, largely because people we get to serve and the people I get to work with, you know? I don't know what else

3:35 I'd rather do. Well, that's great, yeah. I was looking, researching your background just a little bit, you know, to get for the show here. And, you know, it's funny, in oil and gas space,

3:47 when you're just kind of going by someone's degree plan, so, you know, you went to Texas and I'm here to antagonize you a little bit with my shirt, but - Totally fair. So, and I just saw, Geo

3:58 and just kind of scroll past. And my head just immediately went, oh, geology. And then when I went back by and I saw, whoa, that's not geography.

4:07 What? What? Why is a geography degree? You know, I would just like to give a shout out to all the geography majors out there. There's a bright future for you, despite what I'm doing as you in

4:19 college.

4:21 You can go places. So use this as your opportunity to know that the future's bright So you don't have to be the other type of geo. No, I've always loved geography in all shapes and sizes. And I

4:35 think that's why I love working at Embarrass. It's taken me to 23 different countries over the last 17 years. And

4:44 parents had the old adage, go and do something you love. And lo and behold, I ended up in the geography department, the University of Texas And

4:54 there's some applicability I'd like to say, you know. We're looking at a lot of maps. Yeah, I mean - Just out. And Varus is a behemoth now, and we'll talk about that, but at the time, I mean,

5:06 drilling info was data and maps, right? Was that sort of the initial solution in 2005, 2006? Yeah, the genesis was,

5:18 let's see real-time permits online on a map. Like, that was the simple, minimal viable product at the time was, let's take railroad commission data, let's put it on a map and let's serve it

5:30 online. And it obviously grew into a lot more over the last 20 plus years. I remember my first trip to the drilling info office, I was visiting Ramona Hovey, who we mentioned in the pre-show,

5:43 we'll talk about that in a minute. She takes me down, she's kind of giving me a little tour of the Austin office, much smaller than, and opens a door and shows me a bunch of, She said this is

5:54 where all the UT students are digitizing maps for us. Yeah. So students from the university hire in part time and just sit down here just digitizing maps? Yeah, that's absolutely true. It was,

6:06 we had a great connection with the GIS department at the University of Texas and it was a great way to get really cheap labor to go out and do some pretty technical types of work. So yeah, that was

6:16 definitely part of our beginning. Have you, when did drilling info get founded? Was it? It was really 99. First product came out really, you know, kind of summer nape-ish of 2000. Okay, have

6:29 you gone, now you've been there 17 plus years and through attrition and all that, have you calculated what seniority you have over current employees? You got to be pretty close to the top now.

6:40 Yeah, I think I'm third now. Third,

6:44 that's got to be kind of - 'Cause Colin brought you in, right? And then there's - Colin brought me in. There's another gentleman Corey Roden who came with us through an acquisition of HPDI

6:54 So he's technically. you know, longer tenured, but yeah, I think it's debatable. You gotta, well, you gotta give him that. 'Cause I mean, HPDI is a really core piece. It's not like some of

7:05 the - That's right. Yeah, okay. Well, shout out to Corey, I know him as well, so. Oh, look at you, Tim. Yeah, there's a lot of memories flooding into my head right now from 2010, '11, '12,

7:16 '13. Kind of like right before Matt, we all had kids, right? And it was easier for people like you, myself, Marcia Ville, Hunter, and gang to get together, play golf, get some drinks. And

7:28 now we're like, it'd be cool if we could do that, you know, sometime. Let's find one day versus like every other Friday for a summer, you know? Exactly. Now I'll tell you what, from speaking

7:38 from my end, suddenly it gets easier 18 years later when you start getting rid of the kids and you can start to have reunions on Saturday evenings. We just started those now that I've gotten rid of

7:51 my kids

7:53 Let's take a pause right away from there. Tim, congratulations. You are a grandfather. That is right. As of January 2nd. I have a grandson Watson, my oldest got married in the summer, had the

8:08 kid a little bit early, but all's well. So it's been kind of an interesting ride for us. I'm still getting used to the new titles, but I appreciate it. Thank you.

8:18 Well, grandpa, we appreciate you still showing up. I know life is taking its tolls on you and I see the gray showing up in your beard Yeah, it's getting grayer. I'm looking to see if I can

8:27 actually fill out the gray enough to play sannets in December next year. It's getting close.

8:34 Anyway, back to Matt. So when did you move to Denver and why? I guess Texas kid, you were in Austin, you went to UT, you had a good job. What spurred the Denver move? Well, a company was

8:46 growing obviously incredibly fast back in 2006, 2007. I was going to move somewhere and having grown up in Houston didn't

8:56 you know, having grown up in Houston, you're not allowed to move to Dallas. Yeah. And, you know, having grown up in Houston, you're not gonna move to Oklahoma either. So, my wife and at the

9:06 time said, Hey, let's try out this Denver thing. We thought we'd do it for a couple years and some, what is it, 15 years later, still here? No real intention to go anywhere. How's it gonna say,

9:15 are you like the typical Denver relocator is like, now I'm here, I'm done. This is permanent? Pretty much, pretty much. I think we're, you know, we got three native kids now So I think our

9:27 status has kind of gone up the chain. We're no longer a relocated Texan. So we're staying foot. Nah, it's beautiful. So you know, Jeremy, I was just thinking about this before the show,

9:40 Envirus and the various guys that we've had on, I think they're definitely the most, we've had the most guests from Envirus on our show.

9:53 Well, we had Corey and Ian, that was an acquisition. I mean, yes, they're in there as now, but they're red dog guys, right? I mean, we've got Matt, Ramona, Alan, is there somebody else? I

10:03 mean, there's obviously, there's got to be other people that came through, like Trent Stoker's coming on in like two weeks. You got Patrick Ruddy, he was on Patrick Patrick. Yeah, well, we got

10:13 a pretty big alumni list. You know, when you're a company of 1, 500 people, you tend to have people all around But there's so many personalities that have come through there. I think that's the

10:27 thing is that Allen seemed to get some real big personalities that came in and came through the company and really kind of shaped it.

10:37 So at least that's my take. Oh, without a doubt, I think for the longest time, you know, we were a family through and through. And with being a family, you're dysfunctional. You get in a lot

10:48 of fights and at the end of the day, you go have a beer and. and hug it out. So that's how it was

10:56 for really the first five plus six, seven, eight years was a good group of people with a ton of personality that went like this a lot, but that's how we got things done. And it was a lean shot for

11:11 a really, really long time and really cared about the industry. And when you bring a landman, a geologist, a geophysicist, an engineer together, you're gonna have some of that. Yeah,

11:23 absolutely. Not to mention a few sales guys who need a product sale. That's right. And you know a salesperson, we're pretty needy folk.

11:33 No question. So Matt, one of the things that I wanted to talk about in this show is that really, I mean, I don't think I've ever asked you this directly, but how have you dealt with change? I

11:45 think for me in my career, change while I'm at a company has been the hardest thing Like when I get the urge to like, I need to go somewhere else. Well, it's 'cause Tim just changed my territory

11:53 or took this account or now somebody else has this responsibility and I wanted that job title. And all these things like bubble up, it's like I'm out, right? It's easier for me to go than to stay.

12:04 I can't think of anyone who's probably dealt with more change and stayed at a company from small to I think you just said 1500 plus people. How have you dealt with that? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't

12:15 easy and there's probably times now where it's still challenging. But how do you coach your team to deal with change and how have you yourself handled the immense amount of transition at your

12:26 organization? Yeah, it's obviously been a lot. We've gone through 20 plus acquisitions over the course of the last five or six years and with that three different private equity sponsors. And so

12:39 yeah, there is a ton of change. I think inherently people, they're changed at first in their professional careers They're excited about change in their personal lives. You see change all the time

12:53 in terms of getting to the new house, getting to the new car, having kids, changing the environment and the landscape you're in on traveling, things like that. And so, for me personally, it's

13:04 how do you take the personal side of your life and the things that you really desire about change that you want that's positive change? And how do you marry that internally with what you're going

13:15 through professionally? Because the reality is your professional lives and personal lives just overlap, probably more so now than they ever have with work from home and COVID.

13:28 And if you have the perspective that I desire change in the right places,

13:35 and one of those types of things that I can glean from the new opportunities I have at the organization that I'm at, it can change your perspective, and it certainly has for me changes one of the

13:47 things that without change there's there's limited upside to anything great that you can do. And for me personally, all the hardships and challenges that I went through, taught me just about the

14:02 opportunity that was now created. And as I look back, it was some of the moments where change really allowed for the most development that I've ever gone through. And I think if you can embrace

14:13 that, it's an opportunity to develop in a way that can make you an incredible leader, can make you an incredible partner And somebody that really is just driving the right type of culture. So it's

14:25 hard. I know it. But at the same time, if you take out of it, what you

14:40 really want, you can find some great opportunity. You know, people settle into routines, even just changing the form. Or once

14:44 you kind of get set in those routines in your professional life, you don't want them to change because you know what's going on, because your personal life is in. Well, it's a constant state of

14:52 change. You say to change. Yeah, I think, so Jeremy called it a sales doctor. I wanna get on one of my kind of pet things on sales. Sales people in general, deal with the, they have a constant

15:09 up and down, you know, and it's emotional. You lose a big deal, you get a big deal, you know, you get a new manager, your territory changed, and now you gotta go and work a whole new set of

15:22 clients. You know, these are big emotional swings, more so than I think people in actually in the development, software development, or somewhere else kind of have to go through. And I know

15:34 you've coached a lot of salespeople as well as being a top-notch sales guy yourself. How do you coach people through the, those emotional ups and downs, and maybe try to level off the peaks, the

15:47 good ones in the bad ones, how do you do that? Yeah, I am. I try to tell people the same thing. I've never been a good enough salesperson to get somebody to buy something they don't want and I've

15:58 never been a bad enough salesperson to get somebody to not buy something they need. And I say that all the time and the reason I say that is because the thing that I focus on is the inputs. What are

16:07 the wins that I can have day to day that allow me to feel good about the progress that I'm making? Because if I measure myself only against the output, the output being some sort of post deal or

16:17 revenue growth or whatever those things are, those are actually in many ways out of my control. Now I can do a great job to get it to the point where so many buys or says yes. But the reality is,

16:29 those things happen if I do a great job on the inputs. So am I an advocate of my customer? Do I care about the industry? Do I care about the people I work with? Or am visiting with them? Am I

16:42 helping them understand the value creation from the products we have? If I'm doing those things, I'm gonna win way more times than I don't. But if I'm focused on the output, which I see a lot of

16:52 people, salespeople are working on numerically measuring their success, that's one way, but that isn't the only way. And if you worked back in the last couple of years, holy cow, like, you know,

17:04 the landscape changed 100. And if I'm only focused on the in-state number, how do you go home feeling good about yourself? And so I try to work with people and say, Hey, let's focus on the things

17:15 that you control. Let's focus on the day-to-day. Let's focus how you represent the company, how you represent your teammates, and how you advocate for your customer base. And hopefully that

17:26 allows people a little more even nature, but we're all still salespeople that hard and we all still care about the end state. Yeah, and I think

17:37 you've got the chief revenue officer or whoever's in charge of looking at that, breathe the down your neck all the time, who is focused on that end state. So I guess it's natural for the sales guys

17:47 to always think, make the sales, then I'm on the chopping block. And, you know, and that may be where we'll be true. Yeah, I mean, Matt, that was really, really good stuff. The input versus

18:01 output. And I think it's, that's a fundamental cultural flaw within a lot of sales organizations. The focus is only on the output and not, well, what is somebody actually doing to get there? And

18:12 is this person maybe more skilled than another person whose output is better, but the input sticks? 'Cause that can happen sometimes, right? And you don't wanna get snowed over by it. What about

18:22 this? Let me push back on you like this. You tell people, hey, this is what you need to do. You need to do this and that. What if someone's like, well, I mean, that's easier for you, Matt.

18:31 Like you're such a good sales guy. You've been here forever. You've had this trajectory. It's harder for me, right? I mean, how do you reflect your personal experience back because your

18:40 trajectory at this company's different than somebody that comes on as a newer sales guy? Yeah, I say it this way.

18:48 I think the fundamental flaw that everybody gets into is they look at some of the best people they've been around and they try to do exactly that way. The reality is they're a different person.

18:58 You've got to figure out where the high level types of themes that I need to apply to me and how I want to work, me and how I want to work within the space that I play, and you adapt. And the worst

19:11 thing you can do is try to copy anybody else because you're not somebody else So, you know, take the things that make you great, take the things that you do well, and just do more of them. So

19:23 good, man. And to tie that to Chris Dinkler, your chief growth officer now, I think Chris would just move into chief revenue officer. Chris has been a mentor, friend of mine. And he was

19:34 somebody very early on, and I'm like, we're very different. That guy's style, my style, the way he talks to customers, the way he does business is different. But the things that I really picked

19:42 up from him was how to do creative business deals, How to ask for the business. differentiate yourself from the other salesperson that's competing on the other side of the table. So even though I

19:53 knew I would never try to emulate him, there were things that I picked up from him and where I'm like, I'm gonna use that my entire career. Right, so and for me, that was immensely valuable as a

20:03 younger sales guy, and I'm sure he's imparting that onto other folks. He loves to talk about cadence as well. So, what's your cadence? So, you know, he's funny I talked,

20:17 Sandler training is, I think, is one of the best sales training things out there, and I've been detached from it for a while, but one of the things they talk about is a triangle called bat,

20:29 behavior, attitude, and technique, or training. And that's really what you need to focus on. The behavior gets you out of bed. Your attitude is, you know, what you already talked about,

20:41 trying to level out those emotions, and then you can concentrate on technique, you develop your own technique, your own scripts. And so if you've got those in balance, I think you've got a pretty

20:52 good approach. Yeah, absolutely. And I think most importantly, for any kind of up-and-coming salesperson,

21:02 if I can make a recommendation to any of them, there's a book I read that's lasted with me, as I've developed sales folks, as I've worked with people even outside of sales, and as I've looked to

21:13 hire, there's a Patrick Lencioni book called Ideal Team Player, and it talks about looking for people that are humble, hungry, and smart, smart's not intelligent, smart's people smart. And if

21:23 you can find those three characteristics in anybody or develop yourself to those three characteristics,

21:30 especially in today's world, you become the type of team player that not only will elevate yourself, but it's gonna elevate the people around you.

21:39 The culture that you guys have bred is uniquely different, and let me sort of dive into what I mean by that.

21:47 probably should have worked with you for you at some point, but my ego wouldn't allow me to. And ironically, I thought that was because you guys had the ego, it wasn't. It's because I had the ego.

21:59 It's intimidating sometimes when you're the top individual contributor, like I've been at a few different places. And then you talk to a company and you go in and it's like these guys are very

22:07 humble, very measured, very respectful because I've been trained or taught as the lone wolf sales guy to go shoot and kill everything and eat everything. So when I come into interview, it's like,

22:17 Jeremy, we need you to do this. And I'm like, no, Matt, I wanna do this, this, this, and this 'cause I'm not good, I can do all that. Well, it's not like that here. This is a different

22:25 type of company. And it took me some time to realize that is a cultural mindset that you guys have, which is basically, you walk in the door, we all respect what you've done, but everyone here is

22:35 gonna have a seat at the table and an opportunity to contribute. It's not gonna be necessarily because of age or experience, it's gonna be because what you can offer and what you can do as a team

22:46 And frankly, I think that could be - intimidating to some. Talk a little bit about how you guys have fostered a team-centric culture at a growing organization. Yeah, I think as we look at the

23:01 types of objectives that we have for where we wanna go as an organization, I think one of the things that everybody talks about is being customer first. And while I think that in theory is the right

23:12 way to think about it, I would actually say it differently. The way that I would say it is, you need to create happy employees. Happy employees create happy customers. And to create happy

23:23 employees, you got to foster a culture and environment where people feel like they have a stake in the game that their voice has heard, that the organization is relatively flat and that there's an

23:33 opportunity for people to advance

23:37 with a lot of experience, not a lot of experience, different backgrounds,

23:44 different journeys and things like that And if you don't have that. you end up with a series of individuals and not a team. And so for us, the most important thing is that the energy landscape

23:55 changes almost every day. You know, what's a problem 12 months from today doesn't even exist today. And so, the only way that you're gonna be able to create really engaged, happy customers is to

24:07 have a culture of really happy people. And it is the first and foremost focus that we have as an organization. I'll go back to what I said before, the output being growth of the company, that's a

24:18 derivative of building a place that people want to be at and people are excited to be at. It's a foundational thing for our company. You think that goes all the way back to those early days with

24:30 Alan and. It does, I mean, it really does. I think Alan is one of the

24:40 most incredible people that I've ever been around in terms of how much he cares about the people that he works with. you know, if you've ever worked with them, you've got, you will have spent time

24:51 with them, you will have shared a meal with them, you will have gone on a journey with them. Yeah. And he cares about the people. And I think that was a foundational thing when drilling info got

25:03 started. And happy to say 20 plus years later, it's still going. It's funny that, well, we knew we were gonna get there, but I'm gonna go ahead and take it there. So we had Ramona Hovion as one,

25:14 probably one of our very early guests. And I remember reading my first set of blogs, when blogs were the big thing, from Allen. And he actually talked, he wrote a blog, The Waltz Across Texas,

25:24 and I asked Ramona about it. And she talked about this road trip. And I believe that road trip was her, Allen and Melinda driving to Corpus and all these different places over the course of a week

25:24 and what that was like So what, you

25:46 know,

25:48 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. No, no, we're just

25:51 going to go where they are. We're going to go straight to our customers and, and all that. And, um, it's just interesting that Alan would just jump in a car with whoever it is and we're just

26:01 going to go. So, and I know you've got a good story about that, but what's that like? Oh, the first time I ever did it, it was my seventh day on the job. So, you know, day seven, you know,

26:14 Alan comes up to me on day four and say, Hey, I need you to meet, you know, meet me here on Sunday morning at the office. So what are we doing? This will just pack a bag and, uh, you know,

26:25 we'll be gone about a week. And. So, okay, you have any more detail. If you know, Alan, you know, that's about as much detail as you're going to get. And so we hop in the car and we start

26:38 driving from Austin to, uh, to Tulsa. We plan to go that week from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to Dallas, Fort Worth, Graham, which star falls.

26:48 Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, Abilene, back home. Yikes. And as we're driving first day, you know, keep in mind, I'm sitting here with what I feel is like an iconic person in the

27:03 industry. First SaaS based company, you know, a lot of reverence for who this person is. We crossed the Red River and announced, Hey, hold the wheel. So what do you mean, hold the wheel?

27:13 It'll hold the wheel Alan grabs his camera and literally, as we're driving across the bridge, hangs outside of the window 'cause there's something he wants to take a picture of. And I'm just

27:23 thinking to myself as a, you know, 25 year old, What the hell did I get myself into?

27:30 It's okay. I wanna be home with my wife. I'm just thinking about that. What CEO of the company and your day four, day four, you're gonna know you're gonna be in a car with him. That's gotta be a

27:40 little scary. I'm like, what am I gonna say? I'm gonna get fired on, you know, whatever but now you're grabbing the wheel for

27:47 him. That's, all I remember at the end of that trip is I wanted a salad more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. No,

27:56 I'm just curious of late nights, fried food, great customer events, and time with some awesome people. You know, I look back, that was just an awesome experience for somebody that had never

28:07 spent time in the patch. You know, growing up in Houston, you're around it, but there's no substitute for actually getting in the field and seeing just the scale of the industry and really the

28:20 types of people that you get to meet. So it was an awesome experience. Sure, it took a couple of years off my life, but

28:27 we've been training it for the world. Yes, I remember my first job in East Texas with Dowell's Lumberjay sitting at the pit grill at 2 am. in the morning and seeing all the oil field folks in there

28:42 You know, it just hits you that this 247 a is

28:45 . the whole thing. So you got all these crews that are coming from different places in East Texas, frack jobs, cement jobs, rig crews, just were at the pit grill at 2 am. All of us fighting over

28:57 Ebola, Tabasco.

28:59 Sounds about right. Yeah, yeah. So Matt, I want to talk a little bit about, I mean, we could get into some of the sales fails because I know that those have surely stacked up over the years,

29:10 but I'm curious about,

29:13 you professionally, like, have you had the ability to dictate what you wanted to do or has it sort of been, well, there's one person in house that we know that can do basically every job within

29:24 the sales and revenue growth group. Matt, we need you to do this. Like, how much do you feel like you've dictated and you're doing what you want to do versus this is what we need you to do because

29:35 you're that important to the company? Yeah, I don't think those two things are disjointed. If you're on the path doing the things that you love to do, and you care about doing them really well.

29:46 the people you surround yourself with, the organization is going to see that, and when you have great leaders around you, great people leading the company, they're going to naturally know the

29:54 things that you have the opportunity to advance within the company. So, I've been really fortunate to take on some interesting roles. I've led our international team for three years, have some

30:11 really interesting stories from those three years,

30:15 and been able to participate in, you know, some of the transactions, you know, over the last few years from new private equity, and it's been a, it's been a heck of a ride. But I think if

30:23 you're doing the things that you really want to do, and you surround yourself with really great leadership, which I've been able to do, those things are noticed, and it's more collaborative than

30:33 it is, hey, I want to go do this, or Matt, go do this thing over here. It's, it's kind of a joint agreement that, hey, you're really good at this. We see there's an opportunity for this thing

30:41 over here, and working together to gotten

30:46 Sounds really good. I'm gonna try and coax a couple of the stories out international. So you said earlier, you've been to 22 or 23 countries. Now I assume most of that was when you were on the

30:56 international group. So what is the kind of the most remote, weirdest, strangest place you, or maybe the most interesting place that you've been? I don't know if that's the same place, but what

31:09 is, you know, the surprise somebody, you know, I've been to Myanmar or whatever. Uh,

31:17 man, I've been

31:20 a lot of interesting places. I think it's less about the interesting places and more about the interesting stories. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. My first trip to Japan, or actually I guess it was Seoul

31:30 at the time, on Korean air, probably a week or two before I was going on this trip, I watched the documentary about the 1983 Korean air flight get shot down by Russian military. That's reassuring.

31:47 No joke, when we are within, you know, 100 miles or so of Russian airspace, the pilot comes on and says, Hey, we're going to have to divert a little bit further south. And we thought, There's

31:59 Russian military presence in the air right now, so we're trying to avoid that. And I'm sitting there thinking,

32:08 What the hell did I sign up for here?

32:13 I've been in the Middle East where I thought I was getting kidnapped, I got lost in Mumbai, where cell coverage wasn't working. I've been in some random places at certainly random

32:26 times. So I could share that

32:29 one. That is one of those places, such an interesting dichotomy, to see poor people,

32:38 you think you've seen poverty. And when you drive the streets of Mumbai, you've got these beautiful uh buildings and uh temples and these great beautiful places and across the street is I don't even

32:53 know how to describe the the little tent city that's popped up but it's it's very it's an interesting place and I enjoyed the whole time while I was there but it is eye-opening as a westerner uh going

33:07 into a place like that for the first time Yeah absolutely I I actually have a a fondness for for India um I don't like to see the best merry-go hotel there's a there's a there's a saying in there it

33:20 says India's an assault on the census and if you've ever been to India that's exactly what it is we we actually have an office in Bangalore um and I love going there the quality of the people in India

33:32 is you know as good as anywhere I've been you know Tim it's speaking to kind of the destitution and challenges that a place like India has and really what we do and everybody that that participates in

33:45 energy landscape

33:47 That's why I love this space. Like if you think about, you know, food, water, shelter, all being necessities of life, so is reliable, affordable energy. And it's a passion for, you know,

34:00 myself and many other people and certainly our organization. And I would say the large percentage of the people that exist within the, the oil and gas space. And, you know, that's what gets us

34:10 jazz, that's what gets us excited. And, you know, certainly making trips to places like that, you know, they ground you in understanding why what we do is so incredibly important. That's so

34:21 good, man. So I want to go back to April 1st of 2013. It was my first day on the job at Seven Lakes. I just told Tim I was moving on, we'd dealt with all the emotion of that. Matt and I had a

34:33 lunch scheduled because Navigator and DI were partners. And I'm like, Hey, listen, I took a new job. Matt's like, No, that's cool, I'll still come up to Boulder. So we went to the Med, we

34:43 had a little bit of lunch And I was asking Matt, you know, Look, I'm kind of - venturing out on my own, you know, the kind of parachutes been pulled off, I'm about to jump from the airplane.

34:53 What advice would you have for me as I go into this? And something that resonated with me that I actually tell to other people is, you said when you got to Denver, one of the things that you did

35:05 immediately was become friends with the IHS salespeople, which to me was counterintuitive. It's like, but you're competing head to head, that you're walking out of meetings when they're walking in

35:15 and you know they're gonna pick one of you guys, most likely, but you said, no, I actually have built good relationships with them. I've talked to them, I've learned they're actually open books.

35:23 They root for me in some cases. We both know we're gonna get business. And I thought that was just fascinating 'cause I just wanted to kill all competition and realize very quickly, you know,

35:33 there could be times where you sit down with a competitor and they say, oh, I know we're both going for that deal, but that's a better fit for you. You're like, whoa, I never thought that that

35:40 guy would say that. That to me was cool. Why don't you talk about what you're, You moved to Denver, you got this new territory. Why the competition?

35:50 Well, I think if growing up in this industry taught me anything, it's a close knit group of people. And at some point in time, you know - You may be working for those guys soon. Yeah, that could

36:04 be too. And, you know, how you present yourself is incredibly important. And the reality is to be really good at your job in sales or any customer facing role, you have to put yourself in their

36:18 shoes and not the shoes of just what you're trying to accomplish. And if you put their goals and objectives first, sometimes that means they shouldn't do business with you and you gotta be okay with

36:28 that. And when I got here, the reality was, you know, drilling info, you know, we didn't have the product line that really competed with IHS and they were doing a fantastic job and there were

36:40 situations where it was better for the customer to continue their relationship with them.

36:46 and I had to be, and so it gained a lot of trust with the customer base, gained a lot of trust with the community here in Denver, and I think it was an important thing, and I would say that to any

36:59 kind of budding sales person or any organization is, competition is great. It's great for us, it's great for anybody that competes with us, and the best thing is, it's great for the customers.

37:10 Like at the end of the day, you need an environment where we're all challenged, and leapfrogging each other, over and over and over again, so you bring better technologies to solve really freaking

37:19 difficult problems. And put yourself in the eye of the customer, one of the, you know, some of the best contacts that I have developed over the years in my customers are guys that I talk to you

37:30 and I find out, well, it's not me they want, they want, you know, XYZ, they want Seven Lakes. Like, you know what, I know a guy over there, let me call them, plug you in, and you get -

37:40 You've done that, yeah. So much respect from the client, And of course, you know, the sales guy is happy to, you know, hey, I've got to lead. I didn't have to go, you know, farm myself,

37:52 but, you know, the client gives you that respect. So when you come back in the next time, they know that you're there to solve their problem, whether it's something you can solve or you'll find

38:01 someone else to solve it for them. Yeah, absolutely. And Matt, so two things. One, you're, you're one of the few sales leaders I've met that when you sit down and maybe this is just you. Maybe

38:13 it's something you've learned But, you know, when you sit down with, with me or with whoever, I don't think you have an expectation that, that a favor has to happen, that I need to give you a

38:23 lead or that it has to go both ways. But I think those things happen very organically. Advice I'd give to younger salespeople is just go in to, to meet people, be yourself and have authentic

38:33 conversations. And you'll probably see more business come from that than me saying, I'm going to sit down with Matt. I got these two customers it has. I need to talk to. They don't have that

38:40 product. Matt, can you be put off? like that's not how we interact. and it's not how people should do business, frankly. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think, again, it's

38:56 you've got a personal brand that you have as a salesperson, and really, you know, any role you play, and that's going to carry with you for a long period of time. And the opportunity to develop

39:07 authentic genuine relationships where you truly do care about the right outcomes, that's going to get you way farther than a flash in the pan. I got these two new leads, you know, that's fleeting,

39:17 long-term relationships, you know, that that creates trust, you know, creates opportunity, you know, it's it's just the right way to approach it. Okay, so 17 years, all in sales, all

39:31 enjoying info, the name tripping over the barrel, by the way, for this show came from the idea that we were going to talk about our sales failures, falling down in meetings, which is literally

39:43 why that where the name came from. Yeah. So 17 years, you've had to seen some pretty crazy situations in sales meetings and demos or whatever else. Do any come to mind as kind of funny episodes

39:55 that you're allowed to tell? Oh man, you know,

40:02 I'll tell them about me because I think it's only fair that way.

40:06 You know, when I

40:10 first started, you know, our first conferences, we brought our server with us. So you can imagine the difficulty in demoing a tool, you know, especially when multiple people were there. Like,

40:20 well, we don't have two servers here. So I'm not sure how we're going to treat this. Then we go to a situation where, you know, we were growing so fast that, you know, quite honestly, I'll

40:32 speak for myself. I wasn't that good at what I was doing. I was riding the wave of, of SaaS technology energy space and it was, you know, demo, demo, demo. Well, there were times where, you

40:42 know, Connections were bad or what have you. And I'm drawn on the whiteboard, what people can see with our applications. I

40:50 said, Imagine this. And we have all over time, but I think the absolute worst that I ever engaged with, we were in discussions with a IOC in Western Europe.

41:06 I didn't speak the local language and we were invited over to go and have a conversation And I pretty much failed in every aspect of the way of why are we going? What's the problem you're trying to

41:19 solve? What's the timing that you want to be able to solve it by? All the basics that any person that comes in the sales has been doing it for six months. I got so damn excited about this really

41:29 big opportunity in this really cool place. Myself and two others go over there, not an inexpensive trip.

41:38 I was wrong, dead completely wrong What they were trying to do is something that we fundamentally could not do. So you can imagine three fails people trying to,

41:46 you know, navigate the waters of, well, hey, we're trying to develop this, you know, you know, offshore, you know, structure from editorial Ghana and it's like, got it. And that's not

42:02 really, so we were there for 15 minutes, maybe Oh, wow.

42:09 It's occurred, it's happened to me where you're, you go to a meeting and you realize, okay, we're, we're not the solution you figured out in the first two minutes. But do you have the guts just

42:19 to say, hey, we're not the, we're not the right people and we're going to shut the meeting down because, especially if you flew and I'm going to guess it's France, but if you flew to France and

42:29 you find out Well, so now we got to justify why we flew all these people over here. Oh, man, that's got to be one of the toughest, toughest. Let's just say I didn't, I didn't advertise it that

42:40 way internally at the time.

42:44 I think it's definitely moving through the fight. You talk about taking servers. I mean, I cut my teeth in the industry. I started in the mid '90s. And you had to take your own projector. You

42:56 had to take your own overhead and your own laptops. There's no way you'd have any connectivity. And then if you fast forward a few years and everyone started having projectors in their meeting, I

43:06 had to come with my own cables, because I didn't know if it was going to be a VGA hookup, an HTN hookup, an RGB cable hookup. It was, I remember many meetings failing where everybody having a

43:18 crowd around my little laptop because we couldn't connect to anything. Yeah, no, been there, done that a thousand times over. And Jeremy, when we have Larry Denver on, we need to bring him on

43:30 because these stores are fascinating. But back in the day, they were selling Unix solutions So you had to ship Unix boxes, Silicon Graphics or Sun stations to the client. before you can show up

43:44 and do a demo. That absolutely crazy. Did the server show up? Yeah. Is the server there, do we have cross-link cables? Do we have, oh, unbelievable. Amazing. So Matt, I want to ask you a

43:58 couple of questions, and this is really for a lot of the younger salespeople to understand what it takes. What time do you typically start work in the morning?

44:09 Usually about, I get up about five every day Five, start getting on the computer. Five something, five 15, five 30. Yeah, I usually like to get up. You know, I've read some interesting

44:21 articles about the most productive time for executives, and it tends to be that kind of five to seven.

44:28 You know, it's, and even earlier in that, in some cases, and the reason why is there's no phone calls, there's no text messages, there's no emails, and there's also no new news. So there's no

44:39 real outlets. You're not, you're not finding anything new, And so it's really the only down period.

44:45 at any given point in time. And that's where I really thrive. You know, the opportunity to really think without distraction, to be able to really plan, you know, the course of the day. Because

44:59 once the day really gets started, you know, you're almost reactive by nature 'cause there's so many things coming at you. Yes. But I tend to get up early

45:10 and always add really No team wants on your calendar at 5 am. Nope. That I have proven. 17 years at one company, 23 countries, right? Still working there, still getting up at 5 am. I think

45:24 it's a really good reminder to anybody listening to this, whether it's your sales team, whether it's just general salespeople, like you don't get to where someone like Matt gets to buy a stake.

45:34 Like let's be very clear about that. You need a base level of will and skill, but it's that constant and consistent execution That is part of what you've done. That's, that's a really good example

45:45 for your team. So I give you immense credit for that. And for me, it's more like maybe six, six, 30, but I always think that Wilcox is already up and working. I better get up too. Well, you

45:55 know, it's really easy to do it when you got three kids. Yeah, right. Because if you don't take that time, you have no time. It's tough, right? We kind of have to pick like, do you get the

46:05 morning or the evening? And I think evening is a little bit more fun with the kids 'cause morning's hectic, getting them ready for school Oh, absolutely. Yes, the one thing I learned was get up

46:15 before the kids, get your stuff done, then get them up and get them ready. Otherwise, if you're all trying to get ready to get out the door at the same time, it's sheer hell. Yeah, absolutely.

46:28 Final question, and I have two notes if you give this any consideration, but have you ever given thought to the fact that you might just work at this one company for your whole career? Yeah, the

46:39 one thing I would say is, I don't necessarily view it as one company. The reason I say that is we need to evolve so much over time that it seems like a series of new companies, you know, kind of

46:51 along the way, but absolutely, you know, 42, you know, taking on a new role here at the organization, great, great equity partners, having a blast. I love this. I love this energy space.

47:06 I love the people we work with. I think it's what people seek out and I'd be a fool to go do something else So

47:15 yeah, it's an odd thing. I think it's more my grandfather's generation than it is mine, but you know, it may well come true. Amazing. Matt, any final words of wisdom for people listening? I

47:29 think you've dropped a lot of nuggets here. I'm going to have to re-listen to this before we drop it. Anything you want to share?

47:36 Yeah. Always ask for help You know, one of the things I see more than anything is.

47:43 a reluctance to be vulnerable. So you don't get anywhere that you wanna be without some challenges and have it overcome along the way. So take 'em on, you know? Go ahead first and enjoy the

47:55 process. And every change creates huge opportunity. Figure out what it is and map your goals to it. So. One of the hardest things to do is train yourself to ask for help It is, it is, and be

48:12 humble along the way. Yep. And you have, keep going, Matt. We appreciate you, brother. Hey, thanks for, thanks for having me. And Tim, once UT joins the SEC, we'll have a look at where

48:27 we're going from. We'll get some tailgates together. It sounds delightful