What Gets Passed Down

Claude Thorp was out on his first rig before he was ten years old.

Not because somebody signed him up for a career day. Because his father and his grandfather were both in the oil and gas industry, and that’s where the family went. The rig wasn’t a field trip. It was the family business. By fourteen, Claude knew he was going to work in it. There was never really a question.

When he told me that on Wisdom at the Wellhead, I thought about my own dad. Different industry, same principle. My father was a farmer and a carpenter on an 80-acre farm near Billings, Montana. He raised crops, built houses, and read scripture to ten kids every night at the dinner table. And everything I know about work, about trust, about taking care of the people who depend on you — I learned it sitting at that table before I ever set foot on a rig.

That’s what this episode made me think about. Not strategy. Not partnerships. Not business models. The stuff that gets passed down. The lessons that don’t come from a textbook or a training program. The things your father told you that you didn’t understand until twenty years later, when you were standing in the exact situation he was trying to prepare you for.

Oil and gas is one of the last industries where that kind of generational transfer still happens naturally. And I think we’re in danger of losing it if we’re not careful.

Get a Degree in Something Else

Claude’s grandfather gave him a piece of advice that sounds pessimistic on the surface but is actually one of the smartest things I’ve heard a mentor say. He told Claude, “You need to get a degree in something so when this business goes to hell, you can go do something else.”

That’s not a man who doesn’t believe in the industry. That’s a man who’s survived enough downturns to know what’s coming. He loved the business. He spent his career in it. And he still told his grandson to have a backup plan, because he’d watched the cycles break people who didn’t.

So Claude went to UT Austin and got a finance degree. Not because he wanted to be a banker. Because his grandfather told him to be ready for the day the music stopped. And you know what? Claude told us he’s used that finance degree every single day for over fifty years.

I think about that when I talk to young engineers who are laser-focused on one discipline. There’s nothing wrong with going deep. But the people who last in this business — the ones who are still standing after the third or fourth downturn — are the ones who built a wider foundation. Not because they planned to leave the industry. Because somebody who’d been through it told them to be ready for anything.

That’s generational wisdom. It doesn’t come from a career coach. It comes from a grandfather who watched the world go sideways and wanted to make sure his grandson had options.

We Don’t Need That

Here’s my favorite detail from Claude’s story. His father was a geologist. Claude, being good at math, told his dad he should probably become a petroleum engineer. His father’s response: “I’m a better drilling engineer than any petroleum engineer as a geologist. We don’t need that.”

I’m a petroleum engineer. I’ve been hearing geologists say things like that my entire career. And I’ll admit, sometimes they’re not entirely wrong.

But what I love about that exchange is what it really teaches. Claude’s father wasn’t just being stubborn. He was telling his son: I know this business from the inside. I’ve done the work. And I’m telling you, the piece of paper matters less than the understanding. The title matters less than the capability.

Claude listened. He didn’t get a petroleum engineering degree. He got a business and finance degree with geology and petroleum engineering courses mixed in. And that blend — the financial mind with enough technical grounding to understand the rocks and the wells — turned out to be exactly what he needed for a fifty-year career connecting operators with the right teams and resources.

His father’s stubbornness wasn’t an obstacle. It was a redirect. And it pointed Claude toward the thing he was actually built for, even though nobody knew it at the time.

Cucumbers and Customers

My dad taught business the same way Claude’s grandfather taught survival — through the thing that was right in front of us.

I started selling cucumbers from my garden in sixth grade. My dad watched me do it and told me something I’ve carried my whole life: “If you don’t take care of your customers, you’re not gonna have the results of it.”

That’s a farming lesson. It’s also a business lesson. It’s also the foundation of everything I’ve tried to build at Total Stream. Take care of the people who trust you with their business, or don’t expect them to come back.

My dad didn’t frame it as a business principle. He didn’t sit me down with a whiteboard. He just said it while I was standing in the garden with dirt on my hands, and it went in so deep that I’m still running on it forty years later.

That’s how the best lessons work. They don’t feel like lessons when you receive them. They feel like a conversation. And then you spend the rest of your career realizing your dad was right about everything.

What Happens When the Chain Breaks

Claude was third generation. Grandfather, father, son — all in oil and gas. Each one shaped the next. The grandfather taught financial caution. The father taught technical confidence. And Claude took both of those and built a career connecting people, which is something neither his father nor his grandfather did, but something their lessons made possible.

That chain doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because somebody takes the time to talk. To bring the kid to the rig. To say the thing at the dinner table that doesn’t make sense until twenty years later.

I worry about what happens when that chain breaks. When experienced operators retire and their knowledge walks out the door with them. When the next generation learns from YouTube instead of from a mentor who’s been through three cycles. When the wisdom that used to get passed down over coffee and field visits gets replaced by onboarding modules and compliance training.

Don’t get me wrong — training matters. Systems matter. But they’re not the same thing as a grandfather telling you to get a backup degree because he knows what’s coming. They’re not the same thing as a father telling you the title doesn’t matter as much as the understanding. Those lessons have weight because they come from someone who earned them the hard way and cared enough to pass them on.

My dad told his kids, “My voice won’t be there anymore, but the word of God will always be with you.” He knew he wasn’t going to be around forever. So he built the lessons into us while he could.

Claude’s grandfather did the same thing. His father did the same thing. And Claude, whether he thinks about it this way or not, has been doing the same thing for fifty years — passing down what he learned to every operator, every team, and every partner he works with.

That’s what this podcast is for. That’s what Wisdom at the Wellhead means. It’s not a clever name. It’s the whole mission. Capture the wisdom before it walks away. Pass it down while there’s still someone there to hear it.

Because the lessons that last the longest were never in a textbook. They were at the dinner table, in the garden, and out on the rig before you were ten years old.

Claude Thorp is third-generation oil and gas, with over fifty years of experience building teams and partnerships at New Tech Global. His conversation with Jeff Dyk and Kevin Fischer on Wisdom at the Wellhead is a reminder of where the best lessons actually come from.

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