86. Trent Shores – GableGotwals

Trent Shores:

At any given moment on any given day, there are eight to 10 different types of threat actors with unique motivations targeting your entity. If it is a state actor, then it may be to seek in some way to disrupt, delay, or wreak havoc within your local citizenry to show that you as a country are weak.

Robert Wagner:

From HoganTaylor's CPAs and advisors, I'm Robert Wagner, and this is How That Happened, a business and innovation success podcast. Each episode of the show, we sit down with the business and community leaders behind thriving organizations to learn how business and innovation success actually happens.

Our guest today is Trent Shores. Trent is a shareholder at GableGotwals, a full service law firm with over 100 attorneys with offices in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. In addition to his work in private practice, Trent was recently named a Tribal Supreme Court Justice for the Kaw Nation and a member of the US Global Leadership Coalition's Oklahoma Advisory Committee.

Prior to joining GableGotwals, Trent spent 18 years working at the Department of Justice most recently as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Trent is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and has served in numerous capacities addressing Native American issues. As an assistant US attorney, Trent served as a national security cyber specialist working closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate and prosecute cyber crime linked to international organized crime, complex white collar conspiracies and domestic terrorism.

Trent holds a political science undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and a law degree from the University of Oklahoma. Trent, welcome to How that Happened podcast.

Trent Shores:

Hey, it's great to be here.

Robert Wagner:

We are so glad you're here. You got a fantastic background. Really you've done a lot of really cool things. We want to hear about some of those things as we go along here. But you started in studying political science. You've had a career in government and a little bit in politics as well. I saw you worked on the Keating campaign very early in your career. So what got you started in that direction, I guess?

Trent Shores:

There's really two things that I would point to, and first off was I had parents that were very involved and always talking to me about being involved in your community, whether that's locally in your town, in your city, or even on a larger scale in national engagements. And to that extent, my mother I remember was always very involved in politics locally. She would go work at a phone bank. She would volunteer to knock doors or put out signs, and I was the son that that always got brought along.

I saw that type of engagement, the opportunity to have outreach and impact your local citizenry. That really stuck with me through middle school and high school and then up through college and law school even. I ran for student government positions and held student leadership positions and really enjoyed it, found it personally fulfilling and an opportunity to engage those around me.

The second piece was I had a grandfather who served in the armed forces. He was a United States Marine. I grew up with a sense of service to country. And so for me, politics wasn't about the politics as sometimes we think of them today, divisive Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative. Politics, what was more about community engagement and a service to your country, something greater than the self.

So this great democratic republic that our founding fathers established and we continue on today. And so my grandfather was certainly an inspiration to engage in government or public service in some regard. He actually was a Marine on Wake Island, the Alamo of the Pacific, and was one of the last foxholes taken. He in fact spent almost four years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp before coming home.

So when I would go to his house as a child, we would get up every morning, sunrise and we would raise the flag. We would sing the national anthem. We would say the Pledge of Allegiance, and I've carried that with me. He died when I was just a child. But those are memories that I hope to honor today through my continued service.

Robert Wagner:

Wow. There's no way that wouldn't have an impact on someone as a young kid. Right? So that's awesome.

Trent Shores:

It really was very humbling. I'll tell you, I never saw my grandfather when he wasn't clean shaven because he appreciated the value of being able to wake up in the morning in our great country, use his razor as he always said, and look like a professional. He actually worked at the Stockyards in Oklahoma City. So it was always fun going to see pop because I could go see the stockyards and the fellas working the cattle down there and then make it back home and tell my parents all about the great day I had.

Robert Wagner:

That is fantastic. Well, speaking about your heritage as a great segue, I wanted to talk a little bit about your Indian heritage and you knew from a young age that you were part of the Indian nation, and yet you had this, I think is a great-grandmother who, in some bio materials that I read. For a long time, she would not portray herself as a Native American. I think she felt like that would maybe impinge on her rights as a citizen and stuff. But then fast forward, she's got this great grandson who has done a lot of work in Indian country and a lot of work for the tribal communities. So fill in the gaps of that story because this sounds like a fascinating lady and a great heritage for you.

Trent Shores:

Right. Who would've thunk it? A kid that grew up. I look very non-Indian, right? I look like your traditional Caucasian guy that that's walking down the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, but I am in fact a tribal citizen. I'm a citizen of the Choctaw nation, very proud to be a citizen of the Choctaw Nation and to embrace that aspect of my heritage.

In fact, it has informed so much of what I've done in law and policy and governance to help to advance the rights of indigenous peoples, but even just to make others aware of that history and that unique piece of our country's history. So as it relates to me personally though, you're spot on. Ruby Charlene Henderson was my great grandmother on my maternal side and she was born in the year 1900. In 1900, the great state of Oklahoma did not exist yet. We were still Indian territory.

Ruby Charlene realized, as did her parents at a very young age, that Native Americans did not enjoy the same rights as others around them. I can't say as other citizens because Native Americans weren't even recognized as citizens of our United States until 1924. So think about that. Our country has been founded. It has gone through a civil war. We have recognized the citizenship or the rights of African Americans. We have gone through women's suffrage, recognized the rights of women to vote. And then in 1924, we still did not yet have recognition that Native Americans, in some cases we call them the first Americans, now, right?

Robert Wagner:

Mm-hmm.

Trent Shores:

They did not have citizenship rights. And so in the Indian Citizenship Act, it wasn't even extended all the rights of a citizen, but some measure of citizenship. So it was viewed at my great-grandmother's family and certainly in her mind that if we could not be Native American that would be great. If people just thought that we were a Caucasian or a white family, then life would be better for us. We would have certain rights that our Indian family members would not.

This is also where I raise an era that comes out of the Indian boarding schools where Indian children were taken from their homes. There's that horrible line, "You want to save the man and kill the Indian." This idea of removing their sense of heritage and tradition and culture to "help", and I'm using air quotes here, to help Indian children assimilate into non-Indian society.

Not a proud moment in our country's history, but certainly one that was impactful in that era and one that our country, I think since has learned a lot from, and it certainly progressed beyond. So when my great-grandmother became ill in her later years, and my mother and I were helping to manage her house and we found a number of family bibles. We found family trees written in those bibles. We found birth certificates of marriage certificates and we're able to trace my heritage back, our family heritage back and prove our citizenship to be citizens of the Choctaw nation.

And so it was the first time in our family that we were more openly discussing our Native American heritage. I am so thankful that we did because it really has informed a large part of my professional career.

Robert Wagner:

So that is fascinating and sad as well. But what things have you worked on in your role working for the Department of Justice to help the Indian community?

Trent Shores:

There are a number of things that I'm really proud of. After 18 years at the US Department of Justice, I had some really unique opportunities Early in my career, I did a lot of policy related work. So when it came to helping to work in the George W. Bush administration as they worked with Congress on the drafting and passing of laws, one that I remember in particular is the Adam Walsh Act. This dealt with the national registration of sex offenders nationwide.

Indian country had not been incorporated into those laws historically, and we didn't want a safe zone to be created for sex offenders to go into Indian country and not have to register. So I remember working with members of the Hill Congressional members to figure out how do we incorporate in Indian country so that they are thought of and included in this national registry process, but to do so in a way that respected tribal sovereignty and did not make them or treat them as subsidiaries of a state government, which they're not.

I also had the chance to travel internationally. You would think it doesn't get much more domestic than Native American law, but I found that the United States State Department was involved in the United Nations discussions on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The DRIP as many people called it. They'd been engaging on that for years from an international law perspective without some foundational history in American Indian law where we recognized more rights for our Native Americans and our indigenous peoples than any other country in the world.

So I was really proud of the work I got to do on the declaration and helping to advance some sort of base recognition of human rights for all indigenous peoples. As my career progressed, I had the chance to come back to Oklahoma and work as a frontline prosecutor. I think some of my most meaningful work in Indian country came there in the sense of I was able to work one-on-one with victims of violent crimes. So oftentimes it was children. Oftentimes it was women who'd experienced some sort of domestic abuse, and I was able to work with them to pursue justice.

Sometimes you felt like you were giving a voice to someone who would not otherwise have a voice to pursue a just result and hold accountable and offender. That was personally fulfilling. But more so professionally, you recognize that you were giving of yourself to something greater that this universal pursuit of justice, and that was a really neat thing to be a part of.

Robert Wagner:

Very cool. Very cool. So one more question on the Indian country. You're I think a Supreme Court Justice-

Trent Shores:

I am.

Robert Wagner:

... in the Kaw Nation. What is that?

Trent Shores:

Well, the Kaw Nation is a tribe located here in Oklahoma. They actually came from Kansas when they were relocated to Oklahoma. It's a smaller tribe. It's when we think of our tribes in Oklahoma, we have 39 tribes and they all have different personalities and cultures and histories and languages and sizes. So the Kaw Nation would be one of the smaller tribes we have. But like any other government, they have a justice system. They have an attorney general who enforces the law and prosecutes crimes.

They have a police department. They have district court judges that can hear civil or criminal disputes. And just like any other justice system, certainly that we're familiar with here in the United States, the Kaw Nation has a place to appeal your district court decision if you're not satisfied with the result. I'm one of three justices on their Supreme Court that can hear those appeals.

Robert Wagner:

Got you, got you. All right. We'll be waiting for earth-shattering rulings from Trent Shores at the Kaw Nation.

Trent Shores:

Just wait. I'll make sure to use some Latin.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. That's great. All right. So your last role at the Department of Justice was a presidential nomination and requires senate confirmation. And as a news nerd myself, I mean I've watched a fair number of these usually Supreme Court nominees, which is I think most how the public sees it mostly. Right? But tell us about that process. It doesn't look fun from this position. How'd you prepare for that and what was that process like for you?

Trent Shores:

Well, certainly the best way to prepare for any senate confirmation process I think is a lot of prayer. Right?

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Trent Shores:

Because you know that you are getting ready to jump right into the middle of it, and it's a political process. I'm really proud of the way that senators, Inhofe and Lankford approached that process. They actually removed themselves at the beginning and hired a committee, a diverse committee of perspectives to interview perspective candidates. I want to say I walked into a room to interview with maybe 10 to 12 different people and they came from all different backgrounds and perspectives of industry here in Oklahoma.

Some had law enforcement backgrounds, some did not, though that committee made some recommendations to the senators for who would advance to the next round. And of course, it's the senators that helped to make that nomination by recommending people from their home state to the president.

I was fortunate to make it into that second round of interviews, and ultimately after interviewing with senators Lankford and Inhofe was able to have my name sent up to the White House. Then began a new process because now you're interviewing with the United States Department of Justice, their political appointees at the time. Jeff Sessions was our attorney general and Rod Rosenstein was our Deputy Attorney General.

I also met with folks from the White House. Again, it is this round-robin interview process, and you're not exactly sure what to expect. Fortunately for me, I'd spent my entire career at the United States Department of Justice. So I knew exactly what the US attorney did. I knew what I thought that position should be and really what it could be here in the Northern District of Oklahoma based out of Tulsa, and the opportunities to frankly reduce violent crime at the time.

So getting through that process was critical and having the opportunity to interact with senators who did have some specific questions for me about my background, my perspective, my view. It is always a great... If you did the US attorney job the right way, then you didn't do it a political way. It's about the rule of law, right? It's you're there enforcing the laws that Congress has written. So I think if you approach that the correct way, then you can make it through that process, which is long and it is arduous.

It can be painful, but fortunately for me, I was one of those that made it through rather quickly and was able to start pretty early in the administration. I think I was in the first or second tranche of US attorneys' confirmed. So I'm certainly thankful to President Trump for that opportunity and Senators Lankford and Inhofe supporting my nomination.

Robert Wagner:

So obviously it is a presidential nomination. Is there a term to it? It doesn't turn over when the president changes or does it?

Trent Shores:

You serve at the pleasure of the president.

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Trent Shores:

So there is no guaranteed term. Historically, it's not unusual that United States attorneys will resign or offer even their resignation if there is a change in administration such that president can pick his or her candidate or nominee for that particular position. When Bill Clinton came into office in the '90s, I believe he was the first president to replace all of the US attorneys at once. I've heard stories about a mass fax that went around telling everybody to clear out their desk. They had two weeks.

There was one US attorney that was retained out of that group. It was from the Eastern District of Oklahoma actually, and John Reilly, I believe. He was the one kept. Since then you've seen President Bush and Obama, they kept a few US attorneys, maybe eight to 10 from their predecessors. President Trump kept around a few. President Biden, I believe kept two. My colleague who was in Chicago was investigating some matters that I think politically could have been sensitive. Also kept a US attorney out of Delaware who was or perhaps is investigating President Biden's son and would've looked improper to have removed that individual.

Robert Wagner:

Right. And the role of the US attorney is the federal prosecution in the state district?

Trent Shores:

Yeah. You are the chief law enforcement officer for your particular federal district. There's 93 US attorneys nationwide. Here in Oklahoma, we have three federal districts. It's unique that a state our size has three, but the Northern District based out of Tulsa, the eastern district based out of Muskogee, the Western District based out of OKC. You are, for all intents and purposes, the lead attorney for the US Department of Justice in the United States. What gets all of the attention usually are our law enforcement initiatives or our criminal enforcement efforts, and that's everything from public corruption to anti-terrorism efforts, anti-human trafficking, drug trafficking. We're doing all of those things constantly.

We're also the attorneys for the government on the civil side, and so we do a lot on the civil side that sometimes doesn't receive the same level of attention, but can be just as important of work to the overall wellbeing and success of the United States.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, gotcha. Okay. So you've done a lot of litigating in your career. Are you having your best day when you're in the courtroom or is there something else that in the world of law that you enjoyed better?

Trent Shores:

There was no better moment than when I stood up in court for the first time in 2007 and said, "Trent Shores on behalf of the United States of America." Now, I don't get to say that anymore, but you're right. Being in a courtroom is what I love. I feel very comfortable and at home there. The opportunity to advocate for your client. The idea of being prepared, being held accountable because somebody is over there typing every word that you're saying and somebody else is going to come back later and review it.

It is a great game of chess. And then I don't say game to diminish the significance of it, but it is a challenge. At times it's an art. It is certainly something that I enjoy. But you're right, being in that courtroom, you feel alive and it is just great. That is the epitome, I believe, of the practice of law. I love it.

Robert Wagner:

All right. You've intrigued me now? So what's the highest pressure moment you've had in the courtroom?

Trent Shores:

It's really interesting. I've put on some child witnesses. You do not want to fail a child witness. You don't want to ask a question the wrong way. You don't want to present them in such a way that a jury may find them unbelievable. So those moments are really high pressure moments. I once had to cross-examine a 13-year-old girl who had been a victim of human trafficking. And when I say cross-examined, she was testifying for the defendant even though she was the victim of the crime.

I remember that being a very high pressure situation. You could have heard a pin drop in the courtroom because here was this victim who was testifying for the man who had been hurting and abusing and exploiting her. And we had to figure out, I had to figure out a way to elicit the information from her, the admissions, to hopefully hold this defendant accountable.

We were successful in doing that, but I can tell you that was certainly a challenging moment. It's also one of those moments that, you relish that opportunity to help this individual even in that moment where they didn't need or think that they wanted or needed your help. So that gets really intense. But there's nothing worse than waiting on a verdict. Right? You know that the system has worked, whether the verdict comes down in favor of your side or not, you have to resign yourself that this is the system. A just result is reached by virtue of the transparency and the implementation of the process. But those are the most intense moments waiting to hear those words.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Wow, that is an incredible example. I'd never even thought of an example you gave. [inaudible 00:23:04]

Trent Shores:

I'll tell you what. When I testified in front of the US Senate, I told a story of the most intense case I ever had. I'll tell you briefly. We had a young woman who had been so abused by her father that she had removed humanistic characteristics from her ability to communicate. And she communicated like a horse. By that, I mean she whinnied, she snorted. She would stamp her feet. It was a very sad state of affairs. We had to work with this young woman for months to prepare her to testify.

Her father was going to be sitting in the room. A jury of adults. Her whole life, she'd been taught to trust adults, and yet the adult who should have been the most important person in her life had violated that trust. And here she was going to sit in a courtroom, a foreign environment, and have to talk about all of these things, very personal and terrible things.

I will tell you that moment certainly in dealing with that type of case, not knowing what is this little girl, she was 12-years-old, I believe, going to do. And what I learned was children are so resilient, that we should not underestimate. The victims of crime often are resilient. They are survivors. And that little girl, like so many other victims that I worked with, showed that day why we should give them that opportunity and that voice and not underestimate them because she rose to the occasion.

She put aside her nervousness and her communication in an animal-like way and sounded like a normal little girl. It was a very moving moment, certainly for our team, the agents and the victim witness coordinators involved as we watched her have this moment. Ultimately, her father was held accountable and sentenced a life in prison. But certainly that moment, I'll tell you that makes it all worth it.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. Well, shifting gears, still talking about crime here, but shifting gears to cybercrime and so you've had some experience in that. I mean, that's a completely different subject than things you've been talking about from your experience previously. How did you learn that it's a very complex technical area. How did you learn that and prepare for it?

Trent Shores:

It is. A number of years ago, I believe the Deputy Attorney General at the time implemented a program known as the National Security Cyber Specialist Program at the Department of Justice and also created a computer hacking and intellectual property prosecutor role. Here in the northern district of Oklahoma, I was an assistant US attorney and had the chance to take on that mantle. It was new and challenging. DOJ provides all that training for you, so I always say I knew how to operate in a courtroom. I knew the fancy Latin words that they teach you in law school, but I didn't know any of the geek speak when it came to cybersecurity.

So they sit you down, not just with engineers, but with agents who know this stuff inside and out. They work with you and they teach you not just how to talk the talk, but they actually get into the substance of how it is that we protect our critical infrastructure here in the United States.

The types of attacks that we are seeing on a day-to-day basis, and not just that we're working to repel, but that we're working to prevent and then respond to. Now, that I'm in private practice, it's been very interesting to see just two months into private practice, we had had Colonial Pipeline and I thought that I had put to bed this chapter of my life that was a national security cyber specialist. And turns out Colonial Pipeline opened up a whole new window of opportunity for me in the private sector.

As we try to figure out what this emerging market is of cybersecurity, it is underserved, I think by those who are competent in the legal spectrum that have also done some of that front end work of responding to cyber incidents.

Robert Wagner:

Here at HoganTaylor, we're worried about cyber attacks., we're worried about protecting our data, our clients' data. Personally, we're all worried about our bank accounts and our personal information. But at the nation state kind of terrorist level, what's the goal? I mean, I fear a 9/11 level event from a cyber standpoint. We see things like colonial that you mentioned. You think a pipeline. We've always been worried about people blowing up a pipeline. Right? Well, turns out you can just do software for it.

We saw not long ago, we grounded every airplane in America for a few hours one morning because... Not because of a terrorist thing, but because of a software thing. So you're seeing how vulnerable and interconnected these things are. What's the goal of the bad guys at that level?

Trent Shores:

The motivations are diverse, and that's perhaps what makes the job of a CISO so challenging. At any given moment on any given day, there are eight to 10 different types of threat actors with unique motivations targeting your entity. If it is a state actor, then it may be to seek in some way to disrupt, delay or wreak havoc within your local citizenry to show that you as a country are weak or to cause some sort of mass casualty event you reference blowing up of the pipeline. It could be that if you are an environmental activist, for example, targeting our Oklahoma energy companies, that you want to disrupt product flow. It may be that you want to somehow disrupt or shake the confidence of the consumer in the energy industry.

If you are a criminal, then it may just be to get money. The good old fashioned motivation of, "I'm going to hold you hostage through ransomware or something else, and I want to get money." If you're a country like China sometimes that their focus is stealing of intellectual property. We actually had an incident where a Chinese national targeted a... We'll say a large energy company based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma to protect the identity of the victim there. And this Chinese national targeted nearly 2 billion worth of R&D, an intellectual property that came out of that company.

What we see is these threat actors use every means possible, and we just have to be prepared. And the CISOs who are protecting their networks have to be prepared to repel all of them at any one time. But in this interconnected world, it is so challenging to do so, especially when there isn't just one motive to take away. It is all of them. And when you look at that threat that is persistent and transcends industry. It underscores the importance of why we should be looking more and more at mitigating risk and increasing our cybersecurity is much more cost effective to do that on the front end than it is on the back end.

Robert Wagner:

So I'm fascinated by something the first, I don't know, three or four things at least that you said were really around shaking confidence and embarrassment. I guess those are very powerful things to do to a country.

Trent Shores:

Right. If you can undermine the public's confidence in the institutions of America because it cannot protect itself, right? Information is the coin of the realm today. And if I am able to access information, if I'm able to hack into the US government, if I'm able to expose some embarrassing emails, or if I'm able to steal technology from America, replicate it in my home country, and then shows superiority, there are all sorts of reasons psychologically or technically why our enemies are doing that to us.

They're doing it every day. Again, it really is sort of a scary world out there in the cyber sense, but it's also reassuring to know, because I've sat in the room with the law enforcement agents, the intelligence agents that are doing good work to protect us every day. We do not hear about that on the nightly news, but for every mention of the FBI, you hear on the nightly news, that may not be favorable. There are a hundred more men and women who are keeping us safe every night and every day and working to protect our freedoms. And we have to remember that.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Well, I don't know. The subject fascinates me and particularly just, again, the way you've couched it here and that we could have a major events, series of major events. No one dies, but it's having a profound impact on the psyche of America. Right?

Trent Shores:

Absolutely. And it makes you feel vulnerable. Nobody likes to feel vulnerable. But yeah, there's a reason now we all should have multifactor authentication on all of our accounts. Our information is protected in 15 different ways, and yet we still log on to apps sort of unknowingly, unwittingly. We all click through accepting the terms of service, really just shoveling over all of our personal information to apps and entities that we don't know who they are and who is controlling them.

It's a very interesting psychological situation to find ourselves in because we are worried about it, but we're also careless at times just to function in the world.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. Completely different topic. And last question before we get to our final five questions. We were talking before we started recording about you just got back from Israel on a mostly business trip related to commerce and private equity. Tell us about that trip and what you learned.

Trent Shores:

It was a really incredible trip. Had the opportunity to go to Tel Aviv at the invitation and part of the Israeli embassy to the United States to meet with venture capitalists who are in the cyber tech startup world. A lot of folks may not know, but Tulsa and Oklahoma writ large are hotbeds for cybersecurity and cyber tech startups. It's really neat to be in Tel Aviv, for example, and meeting with a teammate or other Israeli cyber startups that have ties to the University of Tulsa where they have scholarships or fellowships.

It's neat to be in those rooms and have Tulsa be discussed and very relevant. We saw everything under the sun. IT/OT, protection of critical infrastructure from water desalination treatment plants, energy critical infrastructure. Israel has a lot of enemies around it, and so they're particularly good at protecting their cyber infrastructure. And meeting with these cyber startups, many of the individuals who had founded them, of course, as all young men and women in Israel do, they've served in the military.

There's a particular group called Unit 8200 that is a cyber focused unit, sort of some of their best and brightest technical minds serve in that unit. And many of them, when they graduate from that, when their service is over, they go into cyber tech startups. It was a fascinating week of meetings and I am thankful I was able to do a bit of a pilgrimage at the end to Jerusalem.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Very good. Yeah, the program at TU is a hidden gem, I think, here in the state and here in the country, so it's very cool. All right.

Trent Shores:

We're the new Silicon Valley there. Come on. Silicon Valley of the Midwest.

Robert Wagner:

All right, Trent, I appreciate the discussion so much. We do have five questions that we ask every guest. So you ready?

Trent Shores:

I'm Ready.

Robert Wagner:

All right. So what was the first way you made money?

Trent Shores:

The first way that I can recall making money probably would've been those household chores that we're all so familiar with. That would be taking out the trash. That would be folding laundry and certainly doing those dirty dishes. But once I got out of the household, my actual first job was working on then Governor Frank Keating's reelection campaign. And that was the first time I got a paycheck, and that was really meaningful I will tell you. He talked me into taking off a semester of college to do that, and I'm thankful I did.

Robert Wagner:

That's very cool. Very cool. So if you were not a practicing attorney at GableGotwals, what do you think you wouldn't be doing?

Trent Shores:

As a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut, but I don't think that's what I would be doing.

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Trent Shores:

So if wasn't a practicing attorney, I think I would dedicate myself full-time to public service in some regard. As we discussed earlier in this podcast, I certainly have an itch to do that. The opportunity to be involved in influencing community in that way and bettering the place where you live and where my family lives, I think would be of great interest.

Robert Wagner:

All right. What would you tell your 20-year-old self?

Trent Shores:

Keep going. Right. Too often I think folks give up on whether it's dreams or goals because of challenges that they encounter along the way, but we just need to keep going. It's going to be okay. You are going to be okay. What you realize at 40 that you didn't know at 20 is that that day that was really tough is going to get you through to the next day, some later day down the road. Right? It is what you learn in those challenging moments to be persistent and just keep going.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Good. Very good. All right. What will be the title of your book?

Trent Shores:

What an interesting question. I've not thought about this before, so I'll tell you.

Robert Wagner:

Whatever came into your mind, that's the target.

Trent Shores:

Whatever came into to my mind, I guess it's going to be Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant.

Robert Wagner:

Oh, very good. Very good. All right. Last question is, what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Trent Shores:

Once again, you have me at a loss for words here. I think that one of the best pieces of advice came from my grandfather, and that was to always be proud of your country, and that's a good sort of cap to this. He had a big influence on my life, and certainly that's some great advice I think that I receive, and sometimes something I think is particularly prevalent for us to hear today.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, very good. Totally, agree with that. So Trent, thank you so much for this time. We really appreciate it. So if folks want to get in contact with you, how can they do that?

Trent Shores:

Hey, I'm always available at GableGotwal's law firm here in Tulsa. My email address is tshores@gablelaw.com. You can also find me on Twitter @TrentShores. It's easy enough. I've got a face made for radio today, I guess, but you'll find my photo and an American flag on there. You can find me.

Robert Wagner:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Trent.

Trent Shores:

Thank you.

Robert Wagner:

That's all for this episode of How That Happened. Thank you for listening. Be sure to visit howthathappened.com for show notes and additional episodes. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Stitcher. Thanks again for listening. This content is for information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Copyright 2023 HoganTaylor, LLP. All rights reserved. To view the HoganTaylor general terms and conditions, visit www.hogantaylor.com.