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Beyond The Reservoir
Welcome to the podcast where we connect you to the people and technology at SLB and go Beyond the Reservoir My name is Hunter Holtshopple, host of Beyond the Reservoir. I am excited to share with you the exciting people and technology that make up the team at Reservoir Performance team at SLB. My hope is that you leave having learned more about the guest and what we do in the energy industry
Beyond The Reservoir
Simon Ross - Balancing Life and Leadership at SLB
Today, I sit down with Simon Ross, VP of Technology Delivery at Reservoir Performance, to uncover his journey from rural Scotland to a pivotal leadership role at SLB. Simon shares how his early life and upbringing in the countryside and the strong work ethic of his mother shaped his career. Discover how he chose engineering over art and how his unique blend of creativity and technical prowess laid a strong foundation for his future in the energy sector.
Join us as we explore Simon's career-defining moments, particularly his decision to move to Schlumberger Business Consulting (SBC) instead of pursuing an MBA or returning to operations. Influential mentors and rigorous training at INSEAD were instrumental in this transition, expanding his understanding of the oil field value chain and refining his leadership skills. This episode underscores the importance of mentorship and the value of exploring internal opportunities before making significant career leaps.
What does it take to balance a demanding role with personal well-being? Simon sheds light on his current responsibilities, from integrating supply chain to maintaining smooth operations, while also emphasizing the importance of a work-life balance. Hear personal anecdotes about his family life, hobbies, and the activities that keep him grounded—like rock climbing, skiing, and even Muay Thai. Wrapping up with insights from a guest on the reservoir performance team, this episode offers a holistic view of both the professional and personal aspects of leading in the energy industry. From career advice to personal wellness, this episode is packed with valuable insights for aspiring leaders and industry veterans alike.
My name is Hunter Holzapfel, host of Beyond the Reservoir, and I'm excited to share with you the people and technology that make up the SLB team's improving reservoir performance. My hope is that you leave this episode having learned more about the guests and what they do in the energy industry and their career along the way. Today it is my pleasure to introduce Simon Ross, vp of Technology Delivery at Reservoir Performance. Simon, great to have you on. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Hunter. It's very nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Certainly. I was thinking about this early this morning a way to start and I was thinking about your post on Yammer, and you seem to be known as the selfie king around RP. I want to know if you have always dreamed of that position or something that just came to you.
Speaker 2:I absolutely have not always dreamed of having that position. I think the Selfie King is definitely our commander-in-chief, olivier. Right, he's the selfie king. He's the one that kind of started this with this picture of Egypt in front of the pyramids. And I'd actually say, in my team, absolutely the best selfie taker is Malik, oh yeah, our Western Hemisphere OECC manager. He's a perfectionist. He's got the best photos. He's always got the, you know, perfect image well taken, yeah, um, but, but you know, it's always nice when you're with everyone to to take a photo, uh, of, of the moment and um, uh, I like to show five fingers on each hand. So ten fingers, um, because that's how we start work and that's how we want to leave work yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:No, I like it. I think we'll get to it a little bit later in the episode, but I thought it'd be a fun way to start the, the show off, um, because, yeah, I think you and your position getting to travel and meet the teams and you know it's an awesome thing to show the community off. So, yeah, so getting started. I guess, before we get into your career, I just wanted to talk about you know where you're from and what life was like before you joined SLB. If there's any memorable moments that you can think of that maybe pushed you into engineering and SLB in general that you can think of that maybe pushed you into engineering and SLB in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so well. I grew up in Scotland, in Aberdeenshire, which is a beautiful part of the world, very much in the country. So I didn't live in big cities and didn't really know what a city was. To be honest with you, we didn't really know what a city was. To be honest with you, we had dogs. We spent a lot of time outside walking on bikes and so on. So that's how I grew up.
Speaker 2:I was educated in small schools with small communities, but I did spend a year in Spain when I was quite young, around eight my sister is a year and a half younger than me we went to Spain while my mum and dad were divorcing, so that was a tricky time for the family. We were just there for a year, but it was really where probably, I saw for the first time how hard my mum worked and she'd always been like that and she still is. But that that ethic was really quite, uh, important to me. I would say going, you know, through all of my life, yeah, um, oh and yeah. So we, we were scotland, then we're in Spain, then we moved back to Scotland, same area that we'd come from, but I wanted to get out of the countryside much as I loved it and move somewhere that had a bit more of a, let's say, cosmopolitan feel.
Speaker 2:That was a very big motivator for me, and so that's why university was important. There weren't a lot of people in my school that went where university was important. There weren't a lot of people in my school that went to university. Yeah, so that was a big deal, and I ended up in Glasgow, and why I chose engineering was because it was either engineering or art. Those were the things that I was good at, really good at, and I thought about that a lot. I got into the glasgow school of art as well, but, uh, I just thought that with engineering, that's probably a bit more of a career prospect than trying to be a struggling artist yeah, yeah, with engineering looks like it paid off.
Speaker 1:Uh, for sure, but you know it's funny. You know art and engineering are, I think you know, pretty similar, more similar than people probably imagine. I mean, I think, a lot of engineering. I've been recently into getting you know old 35 millimeter cameras and the mechanics of them are very artistic, you know beautiful. So I think they go hand in hand.
Speaker 2:It's a great point actually, you know you don't think about it intuitively, but it's interesting to hear you say that I had also done a photography course in Florence between school and university. It was a really privileged reality, something like that. And indeed there's this very precise aspect of how you use a camera, yeah, how it works, how you choose your film, choose your aperture settings, choose your shutter speed settings, all of those kinds of things, and that's very scientific, right. But then there's the artistic aspect of how you compose a picture, how you see a good picture, and bringing these two things together is a lot of fun. Yeah, I have a lot in common, or at least they complement each other well, yeah yeah, certainly so, from university.
Speaker 1:you decided then at some point to join SLB or Schlumberger at the time. What kind of pushed you on that path and maybe you can describe your first years know, years in the company? Um, uh, you know in the field and and and the lessons you picked up there in the field, uh, translated later into your life, a career yeah, yeah, so this is really going back a bit as well.
Speaker 2:Um, so I I left university without a very, very, very clear idea of what I wanted to do. I was working in restaurants at the time, actually, and having a really good time, but I knew that I wanted to use my degree in the field of engineering, and so I was applying to several blue chip companies, the ones that were, let's say, heavily involved with at least my university. There were quite a few of them, but SLB obviously Schlumberger at the time was the one, without a doubt, that had the best cultural fit for me. The interviews were I was relaxed, but they were tough. The assessment center I felt as if I was with people I really wanted to be with. It was a crazy assessment center that exists. You know where you're launching an egg, to the other side of the room, and so on, working as a team to try and not break the egg.
Speaker 2:I just had a really good time in the interview with the assessment centres. And then there was even little things such well, actually not that small, but my assessment centre was in Cambridge, which was amazing to go to Cambridge Assessment Center. So all of these things I really that was the most important aspect to me. It wasn't the industry itself. I wasn't particularly hung up on joining any particular industry, to be honest with you, but the cultural aspect of of slp was was why I was why I went with uh was why I went with slp yeah, yeah, that's uh reminds me of my kind of onboarding or interview process.
Speaker 1:I also had to do the egg egg drop for us. Um, do you remember if your egg broke or not?
Speaker 2:Ours did not break Maybe that's probably why you're here Maybe, I'm not sure, but it was pretty rewarding for that egg to stay together. You know what the sad thing is. I don't remember how we did it. I remember that that egg did not break yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know if they do that anymore. I don't know they do that anymore. I know Actually. Yeah, yeah, I think I know they still do the two day thing that I was able to. I don't know if it's still the same, but but I know they do still do some onsite interview process, which is great to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that whole onboarding into SLB, the assessment centers were also kind of tough at times. They would wake you up early and say, right, come on, we're getting back into it. And obviously the training schools were the same. Training I was in BTC, the training I was in BTC 74, which was in Livingston, and in 2000, and to this day and all the time I've had with SLB, that training school is still one of the one of the highlights I have of the whole thing, because that's when you know you're, I met all these people from all these different places, people that I, uh, from nationalities that I've never been exposed to before.
Speaker 2:yeah, and it was so exciting we had, we had everyone there you know, yeah, and we had to work so hard, obviously learning all of this strange stuff that we had, uh, you know, seen for the first time.
Speaker 2:It's it's so fast, it's like jammed into the past radiation, explosives, wireline what the heck is wireline? And you know, and you're all learning this together and experiencing this together and helping each other work through it. Doesn't matter if matter if you're from Saudi Arabia or you're from California. Yeah, and you know a tremendous impact that that has on you as an individual. And that's the kind of company that we have, you know.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure. Yeah, the training center and training time definitely is a highlight and standout memory for me and I will say I think we've probably come a long way. I actually was in a set, you know, kellyville 73 or K T, klc 73. So interesting to hear the the numbering is is you know the change of the move to different centers?
Speaker 2:No, it's so different. I was in a MLC at the start of last year, earlier on last year, and it was wonderful. I got to meet everybody that was there, their large conference room that they have there, and we had the whole RP, all of the RP students that were there. There was performance live engineers, there were field engineers, there were maintenance engineers for testing for wireline, for call tubing, for stimulation. It was just, it was just awesome. Yeah, and the questions that they were, uh, that they were, um, they were coming to me and I was with mariana with, were very, very learned, very learned, very excited. They were excited about the future. There were some really good questions around the future of Performance Live, the future of stimulation. You know some of them were asking specific questions about their locations. It was really, really nice and I've met a few of these trainees in my travels as well. It's good to circle back with them and see how they're going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's awesome to hear. No, it's exciting times, for sure, and seeing the changes in the industry. Speaking of changes, you had a pretty big change. So I don't mean to gloss over your time in the field we can come back to that for sure but early on or pretty early on in your career, you made a pretty big jump, I think, from wireline field life to business consulting and I think the story that you told to me earlier before and that change is a good one. So I just wanted to hear from you how that change happened into that group and that business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was. It was a big change. Actually. I I was, I was, I was and I'd been in InTouch for about three years and I loved everything that I did in InTouch. I loved becoming an SME with MDT and MSCT and everything around it.
Speaker 2:But after that I was really interested in going to a different part of the company. That was the first thing. I just felt like a change, a significant change, and a traditional career. There were lots of options open obviously Could go into domain. Domain was a wonderful direction to go in and I had lots of friends in the reservoir. Domain still do Go back to operations also wonderful.
Speaker 2:But I just I don't know exactly why, but I didn't feel like doing that and wanted to do something different. So SBC was one area I was looking at. The other area was DNM and there were people in because I was in Sugarland at the time, and there were people in because I was in Sugar Land at the time. I was having some discussions around that too. And then there was the third option, which was leaving and I was thinking about that and doing an MBA. So I was even working through my GMAT and so on, just in case. That was a decision that I decided to make. So you know, I wasn't really completely sure, but what happened was that there was a couple of people that I knew in Schlumberger Business Consulting that I used to work with, and one of them in particular. That was my colleague in Norway when I was an FSM there, and he started talking to me a bit more about it and it sounded like something that would be really would be was what I was looking for. I wanted to do something that was less operational, less frontline, certainly more strategic and where I would learn more about the full oil field value chain, as opposed to being the narrower part that I was working on with Wireline, and so that really started to appeal to me, and that was why, now that I think about it, why I was interested in going to another segment at the time to just learn more broadly about the oil field value chain that I enjoyed being a part of. So with that, there were several To join a management consulting firm.
Speaker 2:Go through, uh, an assessment. You go through several interviews, um, you're interviewed by. Typically, most people that join these companies have worked for three or four years and then they've gone and done an mba somewhere and now they're going to be management consultants. So I had to go through the same process. So I had to go through all of that and then eventually they decided to hire me. It's strange, it was a transfer, but then I was being hired and part of that at the time was a management training. What was it? One month, six week school in INSEAD, which was a limited MBA experience. So that to me now is really ticking all of the boxes. I feel pretty fortunate to have been able to do that, because obviously now Schlumberger Business Consulting we don't have that in the company anymore for lots of reasons, but at the time I felt very fortunate to have been able to go over there and spend some time with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm sure that you can share more on that and the learnings there, since I think you spent a fair amount of time there. But a few things from your story I think think are worth hitting on is one I don't think it's.
Speaker 2:You mentioned there's three options, one of which was potentially leaving the company, and I would say that probably many people have explored that in terms of their career and know that that's normal, and the thing that you did I think that's awesome is reach out to and and talk to your managers or mentors or friends to see what other options exist before maybe hitting on that option yeah, um, and then actually one of the people that I spoke to at the time was, uh was richard brown, who used to be my n plus 2 when I was in the North Sea and there's a friend of mine now, obviously, but he's my counterpart for technology delivery in well construction and I remember having a discussion with him in the 110 building and he said don't leave, there's plenty of options here in Schlumberger. He was an important influencer to me at the time as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that's also important is just to have mentors or people that you can trust and people who will guide you, because we spend a lot of time with our career, especially at SLB Schlumberger, and I think it's important to make sure we're a lot of time with our career, especially at SLB Schlumberger, and I think it's important to make sure we're getting all out of it that we can, and I think that's a big thing. And I'm glad you did decide to stay, because now you are, as you mentioned, technology delivery VP, which is, I think, from my side, our point of view, a broad term. It seems like you do a lot, you're involved in a lot of parts of the operation and reservoir performance, so I thought maybe you could touch a little bit on that. What is VP of technology delivery? What do you, you know in broad strokes, what do you do and what does a normal week or month look like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very broad job, for sure, hunter. It's not really described very well by its name either.
Speaker 2:The business, the base and vice presidents are in charge of operations, but all of the functions that fall under technology delivery are ensuring that operations are planned and executed in the best possible way that they can be. And the really interesting thing about the role is that in SLB, when we talk about operations, we talk about execution. We talk about frontline field operations as operations. We talk about frontline field operations as operations. But if, for example, you're in a pharmaceutical company, operations is pretty much going to be around the aircraft maintenance or it's around the flights themselves. So operations means lots of different things to different people. But in essence, the themes are supply chain field services, which is our execution, supply chain and manufacturing and under technology delivery. They all exist in addition to PRP operation systems, which, in the broader world, is what people refer to when they're talking about technology. They're talking about business systems, digital technology, so it's all there. So my team and I have the responsibility of making sure that operations are done on time, that they're smooth and efficient, that they're safe and as cheap as possible.
Speaker 2:That's the core requirement of the technology delivery function. The key thing about it, which we talk about all the time, is we have very, very professional functions. You know the planning supply chain, the TLM, all of the functions very, very professional functions, all of them led by a vice president of that function that reports to either of that, or demos, and uh, you know, we so. So that's something that's been grown in the company over many years. They've come around at different times.
Speaker 2:It's fantastic, and I've obviously been in all of these functions but the risk behind it is that the value streams can become disconnected. So if I think, for example, about assets, you know an asset goes through manufacturing and and tlm, and and then it has to be delivered and executed and there's planning which threads all the way along. That. If you look at an asset through the asset's eyes, it's got a very complicated life with our functions. So, with technology delivery as a function conglomerate, we have to make sure that the value streams all come together and that's hard and we definitely haven't been successful with that yet. So that's the main reason we have a technology delivery conglomerate function.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You bring a lot of, as you're bringing a lot of, as you said, moving pieces together and and I think a lot of us tend to see, like you mentioned, the front line, that the service delivery portion of it, and and neglect to see the big parts behind it. Um, and and I'm gonna I'm gonna bridge this to another topic here, so bear with me, but behind that big group, there's a lot of people, a lot of people who are in the manufacturing centers, quite a few of them here in Sugar Land, a lot of people in supply chain and then a lot of people in service delivery, and I think one really cool thing about you and seeing you on Yammer and stuff like that is your interaction with those people and just seeing you in person interacting with the people. And and you know, you mentioned before that people are our biggest difference, our biggest differentiator, our biggest asset to the company. What, in your mind, sets our people apart at SLB or RP specifically?
Speaker 2:Well, I I would say number one is the diversity. This is part of our company culture and sometimes you can forget it, you know, but when you're in a country, in a center, when you're in a meeting, out for dinner, in a pin ceremony, whatever it might be, you're surrounded by diversity and it's quite, quite amazing. You don't see that anywhere else in the world, in any other company. Yeah, um, like, I don't say that because I've worked in lots of other companies. I know that because of friends from university. Friends have left slb. You know, we just we're so unique in that way and it's a privilege to be in a company that has that level of diversity.
Speaker 2:Outside of that, we are extremely performance driven. Second, best is never good enough. We always have to do better. This is something that comes with. You know, there's two sides to that right. It works in a pretty relentless work ethic. We have incredibly hardworking people, relentless people, and this is industry. This is known all over the industry, which is a good thing, you know. Just, we need to deliver, we have to deliver. But on the other hand, it comes with a lifestyle aspect as well, which, uh, I think has to be balanced, you know, and that's a public in itself. But, um, this is this. You know it's a big topic in itself, but this is a big conversation that we have in SLB is around life balance, and I really like the. Over the last few years in particular, a lot has happened to try to improve, improve our life balance, you know. Increased working from home, whether it's in the field, not just looking at utilization but looking at adherence to work schedule. You know all of these things we have to have talent, discussions about work with life. So that's another thing.
Speaker 2:And then I would say that the third thing is really just around. There's some really smart people in this company. I mean the creativity that exists. You see it everywhere, not just in technology, which is obviously backed up by the patents that we have and get every single month, but even in the field. The creative problem solving that we uh, we find uh. The solution development that we find uh, and we're seeing more and more of that in rp now, just by throwing segments together and creating, for example, rpi, you know, which are the combination of four previous sub segments. Um, you know, hold on to now the entire intervention space opens up all sorts of possibilities for how we can solve a problem. So those, to me, hunter, are the three biggest things the diversity, the relentless desire to deliver, which has two sides to it, and creativity yeah, yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:I like the last one, the creativity and just the brilliance of the, the teams I'm always amazed by, like thinking about the, the pecs or the. You know the cmr and, like you know, we really made some amazing you know this, my wireline side amazing, amazing tools there. Um, now part of that is you know again the people, the people side, and you get to visit a lot of them, which is great. Would you say that you find inspiration in them or do they inspire, or or do you inspire them or do? Let me, let me rephrase Do you find inspiration from them or do you work to inspire them, or a bit of both?
Speaker 2:work to inspire them, or a bit of both? Well, it's a very interesting question. I can definitely say that I get inspired by them my favorite times, and it doesn't necessarily need to be traveling far away or to another country. I find inspiration spending time with our teams in Kuala Lumpur, whether it's our delivery team in the center or whether it's our team in the delivery hub, but just spending time with a team around a project, around a problem, is hugely inspiring. You know, I just choose an example off the top of my head, like M&S.
Speaker 2:You know, m&s is one of our most complicated resources. No, it is the most complicated resource and it's half a dozen extremely clever, hardworking, brilliant people between the D2D team and the OCCs that have really strung together a bunch of ideas and turned it into this most incredible program. They've taken input from the field, they've taken some great enablement that's been offered by SAP but turned it into something which I don't even recognize it. And so every time I'm in one of these meetings with this team, I'm learning something new, something different. They're educating me, but at the same time, I hope that by wanting to help them, by being interested, in wanting to make this very complex resource simpler to manage that, hopefully, there's a little bit of inspiration on their side too. Um, I wouldn't want to assume that. Um, what I can absolutely tell you is that is that when I travel, uh, I'm inspired by all of the conversations that I that I have. You're always learning something new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure, and I think, yeah, for sure, and I think it's great from my perspective to be able to have someone like you. You're in the meetings the company or the division-wide meetings someone who's looking out for the team, and I think when we do good work, you're very positive about it, which is great, and then when there are any issues or things we need to work on, you're giving suggestions and advice and coming up with campaigns, like the safety campaigns, and I think it's important to have someone that's kind of guiding us in that and someone to look up to. So, from my side, I appreciate your role and so, uh, from my side, you know, I I appreciate uh, um, uh, your role and and you definitely inspire uh us from my side. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:You know it's a tough comments on that, on that comment on, uh, you know, being positive, but also always, you know, when there are problems, you have to face those problems. And, um, in general, I think, as a division, I would say that I don't know if we're positive enough. We do the most amazing things and we work in a very, very complicated part of the industry and we're hard on ourselves as a division. I think it's part of the makeup, but we do the most amazing things every single day and we need to celebrate. We need to find the time to celebrate more, yeah, but when it comes to let's just just say, the failures that we have, we also need to spend more time ensuring that those failures don't repeat.
Speaker 2:And that's about being very, very careful about really getting into the failures and I'm not just talking about service quality failure. It could be any kind of failure around somewhere else in our working processes and understanding why it's not working and what needs to happen to improve that particular process, you know. So reflection on these things is important. It's an important part of what I do, but it's a balance right, because we can't fix everything. You know, we'll never be perfect. So it's about really focusing on the things that will make the biggest difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that's very important and, yeah, celebrating the wins, you know, whether they're small or big, is definitely important. I got a couple of big, big topics that I'm hoping to get to and being mindful of the time, one of which is, you know, when we discussed, you talked about your family, your kids. You know how important to you because you know you mentioned you. You know we, we do have a lot of work. We, we are a division of hard workers and and work-life balance is so important. So how important is your family to you and how big of an influence on your work are they?
Speaker 2:It's unbelievably important, and I recognize that that's probably a predictable answer, so maybe I'll qualify that a little bit. So my wife is excellent budget, so she knows the kind of work life that I've had at least, and she's aware of how much I love my job. And especially in this job I can get called at any point of the day or night or the weekend, and she's very, very supportive of that. So I definitely don't take that for granted. So when my time is not at work my time has to be, and I want my time to be
Speaker 2:with her and with my children, because they're very patient with me, my kids. I have twins. They're called Harry and Penny, they're seven years old and they're an absolute bundle of joy. So I'm 47, so I had kids a little bit later in life and I often joke with my wife, with Kim, that the most important discussions that I have in a day will be with my kids when I get home.
Speaker 2:And you know, it could have been, over the course of the day, any number of topics from across any of the functions or whatever it might be, or strategic discussions and headquarters, but but when I, when I get home, when you know my, my daughter is, is, uh, telling me about a painting that she did in art, or on my son, who was telling me about, you know, his french homework, whatever it might be, it's, yeah, it's the most important discussion of the day. And, of course, sometimes you're not talking about it. No, that's all jibber-jabber that I don't understand. Yeah, um, so I, I, uh, you know they're, they're my rock, they're my sense of being and sense of what it's all about and what it's all for, and, um, yeah, I, I treasure every minute I have with them.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, tremendously important yeah, yeah, I think that's a a big thing. I'm a fairly new father three. I have a three year old and I'm almost one year old and it's, I mean, it's incredibly important. Like you said, I love that part where your most important conversation of the day is with them, even if it's you know about what Disney movie they watched or whatever. I mean it's the the topic is is irrelevant, as just having that conversation. I like that, and so, other than you know, maybe spending time with them and the family outside of work I assume any free time you have you try to spend with them. Is there anything else, though, that you do to keep your mind focused, because you do have such a big, important role and job at the company and RP? Is there anything you can share on how you stay fresh?
Speaker 2:yeah, like a lot of people, I suppose I've tried lots of different sports and things like that. Um, I tried, uh, um, I did rock climbing for a long time, uh, while I was living in houston. I don't do that really anymore. I love skiing, snowboarding actually, and ghost snowboarding a couple of times a year when I can. Well, I go every year and I'm doing that with my kids now, which is fun. Yeah, yeah, they're a little, you know, they just bum down that mountain, yeah, but I do run in nothing very long distance. But I go to the gym.
Speaker 2:I know, when we lived in Houston last time, I started doing Muay Thai Wow. I started doing Muay Thai Wow, and became very good friends with this fellow who's a neuropsychologist. He's got a professor in neuroscience. It's a very different kind of friend, right, and we did this Thai boxing for a couple of years and quit because we were getting hurt too much. But he was a gym fanatic.
Speaker 2:I was really, really and decided to turn his garage into a gym and I'd never been a gym fanatic Like many, many people.
Speaker 2:I would go and then not go and then have memberships that were usually wasted and things like that, but I started working out with him in his garage in Houston. It was a working man's gym, you know, it's got a bench, it's got a pull-up bar and it's got some other cool things that he likes to buy, but no fancy equipment. And so I started doing that very religiously with him. His routine is way, way more advanced than mine, but I fit into his routine, and so now, since I'm coming here, I give myself the time to do that three times a week. It's always the same it's Friday mornings, saturday mornings and Sunday mornings. I start work one hour later on Fridays so that I can do my gym workout, and I love it. I really, really do. I have a gym just around the corner from my house, and so I go over there and, um, you know, there's people there that I know now and it's fun to go, and so that's that's the main thing that I do, um, which is, let's say, just me.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, it's, uh, yeah, reading books, it's watching movies, it's it's, uh, all of the other kind of, uh, home level things that many other people do yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's uh very important, and I was going to say my one takeaway is don't mess with simon, because he knows muay thai, um, but uh, no for sure. I think that's, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:So that much danger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's important, I think, to stay fresh and you know I also have a home gym as well I try to use as much as possible. That's great. That's great. It's good to hear the you know the aspect of. You know there is life outside of work and and um, it's great to hear, uh, you know the, the time with kids, as well as the the effort to you know stay, you know reasonably, um, you know well exercised. So I appreciate make the time that's been put for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:How much do bench hunter?
Speaker 1:uh well, I don't know, I don't haven't been doing max, but I I powerlifting for a while. I benched 305, squat 500, and deadlift 600. Wow, but I haven't done that in a while.
Speaker 1:That's a lot Well done, yeah, but I was at the sacrifice of all cardiovascular. I stopped that. Um, but uh, simon, I I really appreciate you coming on. Before we go, though, I do have a few questions. Uh, rapid fire questions, if you're okay, go ahead all right. So what is your favorite food? Pasta, pasta. Uh, if you went to a coffee shop, what would your coffee or tea order be? Cappuccino, cappuccino, nice, easy. If you go on vacation tomorrow, would you go to the beach or mountain retreat? I'd go to the mountains. Mountains, nice, probably. Whistler, yeah, oh, cool. This is a little bit tougher one. If you could meet any famous person who would that be, oh, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a cool. That's the first time I heard that he actually has a really cool kind of documentary on, I think, Netflix. Yeah, I've seen it. Cool, yeah. And last one if there was any book recommendation you could give the audience, what would it be? Last one if there was any book recommendation you could give the audience, what would it be Well.
Speaker 2:You know, the best book I read in recent times was I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. It's a really, really fun novel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll have to check it out. I'm about to finish mine so I can rent that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was good, it was a really good book Very cool. Well, simon, yeah, it was good, really good, really good beat book Very cool.
Speaker 1:Well, Simon, again, I appreciate it. I might have to do a part two because I have so many more questions to ask you, but I want to be mindful of the time and just appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today.
Speaker 2:No, thank you so much for having me and thanks for all the tough questions thank you all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this episode of beyond the reservoir. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and be on the lookout for our next guest to learn more about the people and technology that make up the reservoir performance team. Thank you for listening.