Hi, and welcome to Power the Network.
I'm your host, Tim Locker, vice President of Broadband here at CBM.
You know, I say this a lot, but I truly do enjoy the opportunity to meet all these new folks through this podcast, and today is no exception.
We've got another Iowa boy, uh turned Cans and uh, he's going to be on with us and we're going to talk about how to set yourself apart in the broadband network if if you're a broadband provider.
So, uh, let's get into our conversation today with Seth Thompson from KLYX.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm glad to have you here.
I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better.
Uh.
You know, we've kind of passed each other in trade shows and et cetera.
I've seen a bunch of your content on LinkedIn, but other than that, I don't really know much about you.
So I'm excited to have you here today.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
And yeah, like a lot of people, you probably know me as the headband guy for for a while until a good one to get started?
What the oh there we go?
What got you doing your seth talks on LinkedIn.
You know, it's interesting this is over five years ago, now, I suppose, and I was just a sales guy, knew doing normal sales guy things and you know, making the call, send them the emails, trying to build relationships.
I felt like I had a good message, but there had to be a way to take it wider.
You know, you can only make so many calls, through so many voicemails and touch so many people that way.
And right about the time I was having those thoughts, I got the chance to hear a gentleman named Marcus Sheridan speak in person, and his whole thing is is content marketing.
He wrote a book called They Ask You Answer.
If you're interested in content marketing, definitely pick it up, very very good.
But then got a chance to have lunch of them sit right beside him at lunch as we had a group lunch.
After that, I started thinking, you know, I can probably do this.
He's very focused on like company brand and marketing, like I'd probably do this for myself.
So went out on a limb, posted a video on LinkedIn and saw the response that gout and the rest is history.
It was just kind of like it wasn't even a valuable video at all, but I saw how many people engaged with that, how many people saw it, and uh, I was like, okay, this, this might be a path.
And so yeah, you know, it's five years later and the video of the content stuff has definitely become a core part of who I am and what I'm doing.
Well, I mean, it definitely you know, got my attention, and I'm sure you know, probably feels a little silly at first, and yeah, but I mean it's definitely catchy.
Yeah, you know, and it's gotten it's gotten your name and face out there.
It is.
It's opened more doors than I care to admit.
Yeah, not literally, not literally.
No, that's awesome.
You know, you know, the podcast is starting, you know, we're fairly new into this, but it's starting to kind of do a little bit of the same.
So it's definitely definitely important to you know, set yourself apart somehow from yeah, from the competition.
So I love your messaging though you're always talking about you know, how do how do your customers and you know, for those of you that don't know, most of our customers are in this space or you know, independent Taelcos for example, And you know, it used to be that if you just had fiber to the home, you're you're special.
Yep, And that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
What are you telling your folks, your customers, you know, how to set themselves apart?
Yeah, it's it's really interesting because you look at even the independent broadband providers, the co ops, even the municipalities.
A lot of those folks that you and I are both working with, you know, they were some of the first ones to bring fiber internet to their subscribers, way before many of the big folks today.
Yeah.
Yeah, And so for a long time that was a differentiator, right if they're competing with whatever large cable company or overbuilder might also be in the town or towns they serve.
Hey, we're fiber, this is great.
Well, now fiber is really not that much of a differential Number one, because you may have other fiber players and they're overbuilding you.
And number two because speed is abundant regardless of technology at this point, and when speed, which is one of the primary advantages of fiber, when it's abundant, it's no longer a differentiator.
So you have to find other ways to stand out.
It's the same way.
I take this parallel back to buying a car.
If you were to buy the first car right the model t out there, Well, if you found another car that could go ten miles per hour faster, that was a big advantage.
And it kept going like that for a while until all I need to do is go eighty miles per hour.
Yeah, and there's some people that would really like a Ferrari because they're really into that, but that's a small percentage of the population.
Yeah, And so now you're not making a decision off of how fast is a cargo?
Can it give me faster point A to point B?
Every car can do that.
You're making a decision off of well am I commuter?
Do I have a family?
Do I need the suv with a third road?
Do I want the leather seats, the entertainment system?
How am I using this vehicle?
And so you're pulling that back to the broadband space.
That's really what we're coaching our broadband provider customers to do.
You know, look at their packages and their solutions, how they differentiate as how are your subscribers using your service, and then build value around that.
And that's really I think Calyx's positioned themselves well to do that.
So what little things specific in that bundle are there that when I'm looking at if I'm looking at a customer's usage, and what specifically am I trying to target them with?
Yeah, so you know, you have to standardize it to an extent.
So you're breaking it down to, hey do we have you know, look at personas right, you might have this is just your average web surfer.
They're not doing much, they're checking Facebook, checking their email.
And then you might have a family that has both parents' devices, kids' devices, they're gaming, they're streaming, they've got work from home, their education from home.
Okay, that's going to be a very robust package.
A lot of stuff you can build into that.
You might have MDU that has a certain type of user, right, depending your MDU tenant in Ames, Iowa might look very different than your MDU tenants in co Loo, Iowa.
Sure, so building packages around those type of things, you know, family package.
If you're looking, hey, full blown everything, we got all these devices, Maybe we need a little more bandwidth.
Maybe that's where we get a gig or a multi gig package.
That's where we need things like network security.
If you have a family, maybe you have a larger house, so you need mesh extenders, Wi Fi extenders in there, things like social media monitoring, parental controls, but essentially baking all of that into a package and offering it as a bundle to take the thought out of it.
Because reality is that family or that customer could go piece mail all that stuff out, they could buy their internet from you, they could go directly to some parental control app.
They could get some end dependent network security.
That's so much to manage, and it's more than those people want to do.
So the fact that you, as the broadband provider can become the aggregator, really that's pulling that all together.
That in itself has value.
Yeah, and that service kind of goes hand in hand with that.
I think our customers really out service the competitors developed you know, the big companies and so on.
The way I look at that because if you talk to a lot of our customers, our mutual customers, and you say, hey, what makes you stand out from the competition, A lot of them will lean on you know, our service, our customer service, like we're reliable.
These are just tangible ways to demonstrate that where yes, if someone has an issue and they call in and you pick up the phone, that's awesome, but they've had an issue before they get to experience that, right, So how can you give them tangible things upfront that are saying listen, you can see the value day one and working with us.
I think some of that even just goes into the install process and the training.
I laugh.
My dad actually just signed up for a fiver of the home.
They're in Polk City, yep.
And so he just signed up in Monday.
You know, they come out to hook him up and yeah, about four hours later, you know, they finally got him trained on how the remote works, you know.
And so I mean you have to have the patients work with folks like that, and I think our customers do a great job with that.
I heard that put a very good way from one of our customers in Iowa.
The best tech and installer that a broadband provider can have is the compassionate nerd, right, the compassionate nerd that gets it.
They understand how things work, they can explain it, but they also understand that everybody else probably doesn't, and so they have that patience to walk them through I mean, and that is the prime experience right there, right, that's what you're looking for.
Yeah, that's going to keep those customers coming back forever.
So you mentioned Iowa.
You're born and raised in Iowa.
Born and raised in Iowa.
Yep.
I lived there really my whole life until about nine ten months ago.
So what part of the day.
So born on the east side of the state Cedar Rapids, Iowa City area, lived there my younger years through elementary school, and then what I would call home in Iowa was adel right outside one about twenty naues outside there, and my parents lived there until about three years ago.
They moved down here to Kansas City for a job opportunity for my dad.
And you know, for us, I have two small, small boys, and we had always had a goal to be close to family in some way.
So before my parents had moved, it was let's get back to Des Moines.
Glad we didn't at this point, right, you know.
And then when my parents moved down here to KC.
We still have some family around there in Des Moines, and we have some family in Saint Louis.
But was a little bit constrained by my job in territory at Calix, which was Iowa at that point and strictly focused on the cloud side.
And so when my now leader reached out to me and said, hey, how do you feel about Kansas, you know, I guess a little over a year ago this one was like, well, I think I can make that happen, right, And it's it's been a whirlwind since.
But it's been a fun transition down here.
And you know, it was really hard to leave those customers in Iowa because you build those relationships and there are there are great folks across the industry, but I'm obviously partial of the folks in Iowa and that was a tough decision.
But coming down here, it's actually been really great for me professionally too, just to get exposure to some you know, some different broadband providers, different people, a new team here at Calyx as well, and it's been really fun getting to know the territory and the people down here.
You know, sometimes you don't plan it, but things just work out when you're on the right track.
Yeah, yeah, I I you know, I've had this conversation with multiple people, like you don't get to pick when opportunities come you just got to take them when they do come.
Ye, No, that's right.
Now, I saw that you started in finance, and were you working with telcos or how did you get into the telco?
So I'll say this, and I'll tell anybody up front, not a finance guy, not a tech guy, worked in both the industries.
So I actually I got into commercial equipment finance right out of college.
I would have been back in twenty fourteen.
And it's essentially the company I worked for was a leasing company.
So you think about you know, even in this building right here and office a lot of our people work at.
You don't typically go and just buy a copier machine, right Typically you'll sign that and you'll pay a monthly lease and usage agreement.
That's just how it's always been done.
So the company I worked for at that time, Great America Financial.
They really made their business doing that.
I got a great reputation in the industry, moved in and they they you know, kind of spread into different spaces like the managed service provider i T space, as well as the telecommunications space.
When I say telecommunications, I mean actual physical phone systems, right.
So what we're doing and that's the part of the business that I came into, and that was my first exposure to, you know, really the technology industry.
So yeah, I got to know that really building hardwarees of service and devices of service or rental programs.
You know, in the simplest sense, we were trying to help different telephone providers, people that were selling what were typically these big legacy boxes hosted or PBX systems on site PBX systems that we're moving to the subscription type model, but they still had some hardware involved that they had to go pay for upfront.
It's like, okay, we'll finance that.
We'll wrap it all up in a one single monthly payment, make it easy for people.
You know.
I did that at Great America for about five years and then made a move to another finance company and eventually figured out, hey, you know, I want to pivot and where I'm at and so company that actually would have been a good prospect for me at that company, they were your typical it VAR doing some managed services now as well, but they're based out of Tampa.
Came on with them and they're like, hey, you're an I uh, we know there's a ton of broadband providers in Iowa.
Are the founder of the company had a lot of history in that space.
We want you to call on on these people, and that was kind of my introduction to broadband space.
Right.
So it's no one ever plans, you know, exactly how they're going to get where they are, but it's kind of one of those where again opportunity to take it as it comes, uh, you know, and you roll with it.
And from there, I was there for about a year and then Klex had reached out to me, and uh, yeah, the rest is history.
Right.
I was happy about I was happy with what I was doing and uh, really enjoying it.
But I had actually a couple few people from Klex reach out and it was kind of all right, maybe I should take this conversation.
Yeah, yeah, so but it's been a good thing, so that's awesome.
So basically that just kind of introduced you to the folks you ran from there.
And how long were you in Iowa with CALEX then before you went to Yeah, it would have been about two years, maybe a little over two years now, again just just how it worked out.
For about a year before that, I was calling on most of the same people with Imperium, and you know, I had quite a few people.
You know.
I was a big process guy, very persistent.
I got to know some people that way.
But people know the name Imperium.
Most folks know the name Calyx in the space that we're in, and so I switched over to Calex and all of a sudden, they start taking my calls and like, yeah, probably owe you a call for about the last year, fair enough, one of our one of our guys.
When you say persistent, uh, we tell him the thirteenth time is a charm.
It's It's true.
He will knock your door down until you finally talk to him.
Yeah, And sometimes that's what it takes, you know.
But I've also seen it the other way, when you've got the you've got the big name on your shirt, and maybe you leave and go somewhere else, and you I've seen where people think that you know, it's me, they me that they want to be with, and well I'm no longer with the big name, and yeah, all all of a sudden it goes the other way.
So yeah, sometimes you got to have that perspective as well.
But yeah, I think the interesting thing with that too, and that just goes back to what you and I do every day.
Like relationships really do matter, and that's really a tell, right, Like how strong was your relationship, how much value were you bringing versus exactly maybe the organization you were with, And ideally it's a good mix of both, you know.
I think that's I coached our people on this all the time, and I'll say this to anybody, especially in this industry.
Yeah, it's one thing for people to trust the CALYX name or the CBM name and you as an organization, and they should they should trust that because we're doing things right away.
But what's really going to get stuff done is if they trust Tim or if they trust Seth, because inevitably things will go wrong at some point.
Do I trust that Tim or Seth is going to go to bad internally?
Uh, you know, to the powers that be that may or may not know my organization, my story, what's going on here and why this is so important.
Yeah, I've seen that payoff over and over again, because reality is a lot of folks won't right, and that's what separates them.
Maybe not that they won't, but they simply can't exactly right, exactly right.
And that's whether it's whether it's you know, the individual or the company.
But exactly right, what do you think is our biggest challenge today in broadband?
Uh?
Well, I mean there's several.
Yeah, this is a lot of the conversations we have every day.
You know, I'll throw out the easy one, which has work for us, and that's you know, it's not just our customers, the broadband providers.
It's folks like you and I too, and our organizations finding good people that are invested and want to be in this industry.
That's that's definitely an issue.
Contractors trying to find exactly what to do it.
It's every every part.
It's it's contractors, it's it's vendors and suppliers that support the industry.
It's the broadband providers themselves.
You know, when we talk to a lot of people and say, hey, uh, what are your biggest roadblocks?
Like what's keeping you from going here?
And they're saying, we just don't have enough bodies to run fast enough at this point.
And we try to get on contractors, you know, up up in their queue, and like their queues are a mile long too, So it comes back to relationships there as well.
You know that that's a really big one.
And then obviously I think the funding is is just a really interesting part of it, because I'm sure you guys are tracking that closely.
Oh, yes, we are.
Yes, Just just like most of the industry, you know, you have the public funding and the private funding, and you really gotta you do have to look at them separately.
Both are are sources for our customers, but particularly with the public funding, you got to make the best that you can out of the situation.
But there's a lot of there's a lot of factors that you can't really control or impact as a broadband provider.
And so that's where we hear some frustration as hey, the way this thing is built is not made for a company like us, even though they're saying they want companies like us to participate, but I don't really have a good avenue to voice that and to really drive change there.
Now on the private side, it's a little bit different because typically you have direct relationships with those investors, but they're also driven by different things for sure, And so as a broadband provider, you know, you've got to be able to number one, move at the pace and meet the you know, the items that they want you to meet out there, and yeah, also have to be sure that the way that that company might want to drive you aligns with the culture that you want to have at your organization as well, because there may be differences there.
So the funding piece is just interesting.
There's just a huge push to get people connected.
But I don't think if you're outside the industry in particular, you realize how much has to go into that.
Number one, like, yes, how much money, but also the time, the manpower, the suppliers behind the scenes that have to make it happen as well.
So either there's focus on it, excited to see more development taking place and what that actually looks like and how it's executed.
There's a little bit of a concern.
You know, you go back a few years ago to you know, COVID hit and we had you know, the whole structure of the world changed, and you know, lead times were crazy.
You know, getting materials was was an issue.
Right now, it seems like we're in a little bit of a lull.
I know, we kind of oversold a little panic buying, you know, when when all the products weren't available, and so we're seeing a lot of inventory and they're kind of starting to go through and distributors are getting through some of their backload.
But uh, it also seems like customers are kind of waiting a little bit for some of these funds to develop.
Yes, you know, from a lot of our manufacturers are I guess we're a little concerned.
Uh, you know, do you think there's going to be another explosion like we had a few years ago or is it going to be different?
You know, they'll would be a pop.
I don't know if it's going to be what it was a few years ago now.
I think if you look at what it is right now, you're right.
And everybody in the industry, it's almost like everybody's kind of on edge waiting for things to happen.
And I will say the state broadband offices in particular and the NTIA have done a good job at least like laying out some timelines on when to expect and what to expect, But so much of it is just still that gray area where people aren't quite sure when thing's going to happen, because hey, just because you can bid on something doesn't mean it will be awarded.
And then once it's awarded, from our perspective, doesn't mean things will be ordered right away.
And then from that point, you still actually have to go construct the network and connect to the people.
Now, what I come back to and I think would Bead in particular, it's an awesome an awesome program and a great opportunity.
The execution of it is going to be critical on how many people actually get connected if it's a good, reliable service that can be there for a long time.
But that's also going to push down to folks like us that are are working with customers on that and what type of customers are going to get that funding right?
Is it going to be a lot of the big cable companies out there, Is it going to be the independence and the co ops?
Is it going to be the wireless players.
We just don't know.
And that's totally states of state on how it's going to be executed, and that will impact what it looks like for a lot of us too, because I even know it's a blessing that cares that they've pushed the execution of the states.
But you know, you have somebody that's on a border town in Kansas or a few minutes away, and they might want to bid on stuff in Kansas and stuff in Missouri.
But they've got two distinctly different sets of standards and processes that they have to follow, and that makes it more expensive, and it makes it more complex to do.
And talking about how it impacts a lot of our folks that are the independence and co ops, that's much more difficult for them to manage than it is say somebody that's a large national player with a million plus subscribers out there, right, you just don't have the administrative on the back end staff to do that.
So if you get anything out of this episode, you know, just remember that we work in several different markets.
We've got expertise in many areas, and if we don't, we've got the relationships to find the answers that are right for you.
We go really deep with our relationships and that's really what we value here at CBM.
If we can be of service to you, please reach out cbmrep dot com.
One of my concerns, and I think we've seen it just through some of the programs in the past, but one of my concerns is is really are we building networks to last?
You know, I surely hate to see our tax dollars go to rebuild stuff that we've done already.
And there's already some of that going on.
You know, most of what we do is outside plant stuff, so you know, cable and closures and boxes and all that kind of stuff.
So, but what types of things do you guys do from an electronics type of provider, What do you guys do to ensure then that scalability or you know, being able to support things in the future.
Yeah, yeah, and this is something we have a lot of pride init Calyx that you know, we do maybe a little differently than than some folks.
Kallex has gone through a conscious effort, you know, before I was there even to now to really scale down the number of SKUs that we have and the SKUs that we do have, making them much more scalable, so making it so it's very software driven, right.
We've disaggregated the software and the hardware layers so that you look at like our access technology or even our you know, our Wi Fi devices that are in there.
We push out quarterly software upgrades so that yes, we can fix bugs and stuff like that, but also new features that want to be rolled out or if there is a new system or new technology that needs to be put out there.
You know, take for example, our actually eight to one card.
It's both a gpon an XGS pond card depending on how you can figure it, optics you put in it and stuff like that.
And that's one example, right, But you look at it.
You know, eventually it'll come out, it'll be fifty gig and everything else, and yes, we'll have a new card for that, but it's still going to run on the common software operating platform.
Yeah, you know, you'll have the same chassis and everything else out there that that is running our nine platform, I'm guessing right now.
So that's a really big thing for us.
And it's interesting you talk about the life of technology.
Yes, technology standards change, but stuff still works.
I mean, we still have people that are pulling old OCAMB six cards out of commission right, which have been around for fifteen twenty years, and so that's really incredible to see.
You know, I don't know that every technology provider or platform provider like us behind the scenes, takes that stance, right If it's every product has its own chassis and operating platform and everything else like that, that's not super scalable because as technology advances, hey, it has to be a total ripping replace where Yeah, yeah, this can be number one, a little less intrusive, both for the problem provider and the customer.
And that's the goal, right to build networks that can last.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And that, like I said, that's one of my one of my bigger takeaways from what I've just seen in the last ten years, you know, is you know, we're building building stuff that we've already built in.
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
But you know, a lot of people I take for granted.
Uh, you know, I live in Slater, so yeah, and I've mentioned this before, but Huxley Telephone, you know, built one of the first fire of the home networks.
Yeah, right in my little town.
So yep.
To me, I'm a little jaded.
What's the big deal, right, right?
You know, we've always had great service, so but it's interesting to see how how that's changed, even in the last twenty years.
Yeah, you know, but to your point, it still works.
Yep, you know they haven't.
They do stuff differently now, but everything that they put in place, you know, and to thousand and two is still yeah, still running right, still rolling a roll along.
Good.
But let's just take another direction here.
I noticed you had mentioned you've been through some Dale Carnegie training.
Yeah, yeah, When did you do that?
And would you recommend that for?
Yeah?
So I did that and that was, you know, gosh, maybe two or three years out of school, and I was at Great America.
And I'll say too, Great America is a great place to start my career as a really a young, really green, not even a sales professional.
That when I wasn't anything right, they took me in at nothing and did a great job of putting me through some very structured sales training things like Dale Carnegie as well.
And I'm a big reader too, so read some read some of his books after the fact, actually, but yeah, I'd absolutely recommend Dale Dale Carnegie.
It's interesting and I'm a huge person on just personal development and growth.
Anyways, that was obviously a very structured way to do it.
But I think professionally, for all of us, we've got to be willing to invest into ourselves and see, Okay, who do I need to become to go where I want to go?
Because reality is, you probably cannot do that as the person you are right now, And if you are wise, you'd be there right exactly right, you would be there right now.
And Dale Carnegie was a great avenue to really start exposing me to that too.
Like number one, interacting with people, a conflict resolution, and being able to communicate with emotion.
These are all things that yeah, naturally come to some people, but for a lot of folks, it takes content.
Right, You have to intentionally say, hey, here's how I want to communicate this.
And as you do it more and more with that intention behind it, it becomes more natural.
But it's an acquired skill.
Take some of that emotion out of it and exactly right and eliminate some of the issues.
Yep, yep.
So find a friend of mine went through and actually went to the point where he's actually a trainer.
Okay as well, and you know, as long as I've known, you know, we've been buddy since high school.
But I could I could see a definite change in his direction.
Yep, you know, from the day he started that to where he's at now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know the thing with with Dale Carnegie or any any course like that in the book you read, Uh, it's great to take the course, it's great to read the book, but someone shit comes back to actually implementing it in your life.
Like you said, people will notice the difference only if you take what you have right, Like you can starve with a stake dinner right in front of you if you don't need it.
I mean, it's just just reality, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We recently just went through, as you know, a sales training class, and you know, even as long as I've been doing it, I mean, there's plenty of things I can do better yep.
And yeah, just taking the steps day to day, write the plan and do what you need to do.
Incorporate it yep, and it'll change.
So you've taken these different trainings, Dale, Carnegie sales trainings, et cetera, how do you implement that into your day to day sales to actually help your customer?
Yeah?
Well we talked about this a couple of minutes ago.
But so much, especially in this industry, is very relationship driven, and people are they're thirsty right to know more.
How can I approve my business?
How can I change things?
You know?
For me?
In particular, I get the opportunity, as do you, to go and have conversations with not just this broadband provider in front of me, but the other forty fifty or two hundred if you're in Iowa across the state, and so you get a lot of different perspectives and you start identifying themes at that point, right And something that I think anybody that works in the space can probably tell you.
We've got a lot of really solid networks built, especially among the independence and co ops.
They do it the right way, but they're built and a lot of them are led by very network technology focused individuals, and things like marketing can be left as an afterthought because we talked about earlier.
Right before it was like we're fiber come to us, because a fiber that was your marketing stick.
Where now so much of it comes down to educating your customers on why the fiber is better than the other technology, why our solutions and our service is better than the other providers out there.
And to do that we really have to break it down.
You know, we need to speak our customers language.
Our broadbrand fires need to speak our customers language.
Comes back to how are they using your service?
What matters to them?
Well, maybe it matters to them that you know, if mom's upstairs on a zoom call and hey, son or daughter downstairs is a snow day and they're playing games on an Xbox.
Well, that zoom call is not going to buffer, right, speaking to that, speaking of Netflix not buffering, speaking to having a safe household, if it's that you have kids in the home, you know, speaking to network security, especially among older folks that might be that surfer streamer.
We know that.
You know when you talk about cyber threats in particular, who is extremely vulnerable, well, kids and older adults because they click on everything, right, It's like some pops up on the eyepen.
It's just click, click, click, click click.
You're like, oh, went away, it's good.
Like no, no, there might be a bad guy in your network.
But speaking of those things, because those are situations that people can identify with you when ideally, when you talk about marketing as a broadband provider, speaking their language comes down to putting together packages and putting together marketing content that makes people look at and say, oh, that's me.
They do identify with it or yes, I've been in that scenario before.
So I think that's really really important.
And again going back to what we mentioned about a lot of the leaders of some of the broadband providers might be more network focused.
The biggest difference because if everybody's built a solid network.
The biggest difference that I've seen in robbandroviders that really take off and grow and ones that don't.
If you have a really, really good invested marketer, it can make all the difference because you've got the solid network there, you've got the great products and solutions.
So having somebody, Yeah, having somebody that can tell your story that people in your community can identify with, that's huge.
It's no different than how people Why do people you know pay an exorbitant amount of money for iPhones?
And I'm guilty.
I got two of them sit in my pocket right now.
I actually one for work in my personal one.
Why because it works and it's easy.
I can identify with that brand and it doesn't make me work for the things that I know matter to me.
It's just there.
So creating that similar experience and your broadway in packages, I think is huge.
Oh that makes a lot of sense.
I'm glad you mentioned personal growth and you mentioned you read a lot about books.
What's the next book that I need to read?
Yeah?
My first recommendation to anybody, you know, whether it's like, hey, I haven't read this, or especially I read this when I was a relatively new grad and it was deeply impactful.
The book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen, And to me, it's just such a big one and I think the reason and it resonated for me because I'm a big process guy.
I mentioned that before he spends you know, a couple hundred pages essentially talking about how big changes don't come in some big sweeping event.
It's typically doing the little things right over and over and over again, right day in and day out, in these little daily disciplines, and that's actually reading that book was one of the things that plugged me into becoming more of a reader.
I didn't read it.
I mean I read some growing up, but you know, I got out of high school and like whatever, wasn't interested in it.
Maybe read a little bit in college, but really got into personal development in particular.
And I read every day now right at all times.
I have both a hard copy book and then I've got a audiobook going.
So I spent enough time in the car.
And I used to be an anti audio book guy too until I started doing it and I was like, ah, this is pretty good.
You get you know, you're still feeding your brain with the write info exactly right, exactly right, but with the slight edge in particular, he makes it down into daily disciplines, whether it's about personal development, if it's financially if it's growing yourself at work, growing your family, growing your faith, whatever it might be that's important to you, Hey, pull the one thing that you can do every day that will move you forward.
Commit to doing that.
Right.
It's not a big thing, incremental progress, exactly right.
And he boils it down, like make it something so small.
Like for me personal development in particular, I read ten pages every single day, you know, without fail now occasional fail, right, but you do your best to make that a non negotiable just in the same way that with the LinkedIn stuff.
I made it a non negotiable part of my day five years ago to post something on LinkedIn.
Right, And like I said, there's always times that hey, maybe I miss something or whatever else.
But when you start making that a priority, it's amazing how you start seeing that make a difference to you.
That's how many people you know twenty years later turn out to be an overnight success.
It's exactly right, Yeah, it's exactly right.
Little changes.
I I boil that down to looking at the people that I look up to that have been very successful, and I mentioned it a couple of times.
It's not by accident, right, people don't just I think there's especially among younger folks, go into maybe they graduate college or they get in with high school, and they go into the workforce, and they just expect like, well, I'm going to show up to work every day and do the things that I need to do and then naturally all progress and get where I want to be.
That's not how it happens.
Yeah, right, it's just not.
It might take a little bit to find that out.
Luckily, you know, reading and getting some experience under my belt.
I found that out pretty quick.
But I figured out how to in You have to be very intentional, right, because life happens and it's going to pull you fifty different directions, and the things that you prioritize will you know, they'll take priority, and that will dictate where you go.
In that book, in particular, they slight Edge talks a lot about these things are little.
Right.
It's very easy to read ten pages a day.
It's also very easy not to read ten pages a day.
It's very easy to go on a fifteen minute walk.
It's also very easy not to go on a fifteen minute walk, you know, So just saying I'm going to put in the little amount of effort to do that because that's what I told myself I was gonna do.
I mean, that's turned out to be a really good thing for me and my own growth and development as well.
So then a win is a win, regardless of how small.
Absolutely, it still puts you in the right direction.
Yeah, I can remember, and just to illustrate that, my freshman year baseball, actually freshman year of high school.
I think it hit like my first home run, and like it's one of those where you hit the ball and you take off running and like I wasn't a power hitter, but went over the fence.
You see them sitting there doing it, and you're like, oh, let's ask somebody, and the duck I'm like, ah, how far to go overbid as it doesn't matter it went over yeah, so which means it went over about like that much.
Yeah, obviously, but it's one more it doesn't matter.
My baseball career ended in seventh grade.
Remember distinctly, I'll never forget I'm at nighthawk Field and Slater I'm up on the mound middle of the second inning.
The coach from the other team hollers out to the battery says, hey, watch the change up.
Every pitch is a change up.
And I'm like, coach, that's all I So he's like, oh, sorry, kid, I'll never forget.
And that's what I do.
And baseball was my family's history.
Yeah, we're known for being ballplayers.
But yeah, I missed that one.
So every pitch changed up, right, Every pitch is a change up.
So uh, you mentioned, uh, you know, going on a walk every day.
How much is exercise part of your life?
Yeah, well walking needs to become more more a part of it.
But I've always been a bit of a gym rat, you know, since high school sports and everything like that.
Was was in the weight room and I played a year college baseball before I transferred back to University of Iowa.
Uh, you know, always had the competitive edge in me.
And I spent one semester just kind of like all right, how do I feed this what I do?
And you know, it was fortunate to find the powerlifting club had just started Iowa like the semester before, so it's like, okay, I'll get involved.
In that I think there was like five other people in the club at that point, and was really fortunate actually that the folks that started the club, one of them went on to be an all time world record holder, right, the strongest you know, one one sixty five pounder in the world ever at that point in time, which is insane, you know, and a lot of other really strong guys and gals that were nationally ranked.
And you know, I was a mediocre powerlifter, like I'll state that up front, but I became more of a powerlifter than I ever would have had I not spent that time around them.
You know, it was two three times a week we do group training sessions.
And actually we didn't do the same training either.
It wasn't that hey, you do a set and I do a or anything like that.
We all had our own training that we structured the way we thought was best.
But just being around those people, having the conversations that wouldn't have happened otherwise, having that support, and then we'd go compete together and do the meets together.
That was huge.
And you know, that was back in gosh, I guess twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and you know, I still compete occasionally.
At that point, it was a couple couple few times a year.
You know, you get older, like we talked about earlier, life happens.
I got some kids.
Now, I travel a fair amount for work, and I might I might compete every every couple of years now at this point, it's still fun to go push myself.
But yeah, yeah, it's been a really good thing for me.
And talking about process, I'm a process guy.
I've just that's another area I've seen it pay off over and over and over again.
So I'm still you know, i might not be training for a meter of competition particularly all the time, but I'm still in the gym four to five days a week typically wait training, I'm still a little more of the walking and riding the bike now because you got to keep your heart healthy too.
You can't just have big, strong muscles.
Well, how important is it just start that when you're young.
Well, for me, it was just such a habit thing because yes, I have it, but also it became part of my identity, right, and that just ingrains it.
Just like I'm the head bang guy on Linkedinah, I don't know if I could ever stop that because I'm the head bang and more people probably SAIDs I do.
It becomes part of your identity.
And the same way you know that physical fitness and exercise kind of became part of my identity and what I realized too, it wasn't necessarily that power leptoon became part of my identity.
That's certainly part of my life, but just the idea that I need to take care of my body and I can build it to do what I want it to do.
That's going to be different things at different points in my life.
Like right now, yeah, I don't need to be absolutely strongest I've ever been.
I still want to be strong, but I need to be able to get up and down off the ground with my kids and chase them around and coach teams and do everything that that entails as well.
Right as I'm aging, I've feel like flexibility is getting to be more important than strength or will at least allow you to use your strength absolutely right.
Yep.
Currently I'm in a little bit of a mix on where you know, where I fit in the fitness world.
Yep.
What I do love about it is it really puts your head in the right spot.
Yeah, you can have you can have the worst day, the worst week, whatever it is, but you go in, you get a good workout and like it all disappears.
That's the way amazing, how it clears your head, the way I look at that your life and everything happening, and it can be crazy, whether it's it's work, it's family, it's whatever obligations you have for me, you know, again being meadhead, I spent a lot of time on the way it's in particular.
Man, forty five pounds, it's always forty five pounds, right, It's just what it is.
That that's one thing that I know I can count on to be consistent even at forty five pounds.
Doesn't feel like I did yesterday or today.
It is forty five pounds, right, And that's my body given feedback on how my body is reacting, how it feels or doesn't feel.
So that's been a big thing.
Like no matter you know how great things are going or you know how crummy things are going.
Uh, it can pick you up, it can humble you, but it's always the same.
Right.
It's not because it changed, It's because something about you change.
Right.
It's a point of feedback, A great way to look at it.
You know.
Yeah, I started in a CrossFit gym.
Uh oh last May or so, and so uh that's why I say I'm in a little bit of a mix of where I'm at because that's that's all together different for me.
Yeah.
So when you say humbling, I know exactly what you mean.
There's always somebody that's going to lift more than you, There's always somebody that's going to do better than you.
But you just have to be able to put your ego aside, yep, and just give it your best and see what you can do.
So absolutely that's been I've enjoyed that.
Traveling is hard though, that's that mixed that into your your work schedule when you're on the road.
You know.
Well, I'll say a couple of ways.
Number One, I do my best when I travel to find an a gym, not just a hotel gen that I can go to, because again, you know, pierlifting you can't just do with dumbells and stuff you might find in a hotel GEN.
So if I can find a good gym close, I try to get over there, you know, pay the guests, fear or whatever.
It is.
Actually the gym that I'm a member of here in case has locations all across Kansas, which has been a good thing, you know, but it's also forced me to adjust some of my training and my goals as well, because sometimes it is I just need to get something in.
It doesn't have to be perfect or what it is for the exact reason you said, Number one, keep my body functioning, but to keep my mind right too, you know.
And and priorities.
I've just realized what I do and what you do, and a lot of folks in this industry demanding work, and it's a balancing act exactly I talked about, you know, all those different aspects of your life, whether it's your religion or your work, or your family or your money, all those areas of improvement, you know.
I mean it's a spinning plate, you exactly.
How to keep that thing balanced?
Yeah, yeah, And that's you know, coming back to what I mentioned before about the parallels thing competing there.
Hey, when that when I had training and work and my wife didn't have kids at that point, it's like, yeah, this can take up a lot of my time and be a big thing and can be a priority, you know, and those priorities just shift again.
You have priorities change.
You have other people, other things that come in your life too.
It's just by nature you make a decision that, like, this is important.
I really like it, but it's not as important as my family, right, Or maybe my job is more demanding now and that's more important.
If you asked me ten years ago, maybe I wouldn't have said that.
I don't know, but there's always another job.
That's right, that's right, that's right.
But we'll be able to deadlift six hundred pounds forever.
Yeah, you know, But that's that's been an interesting thing.
And this is just even the last price six months.
I've had to make adjustments to how I train, the goals that I have for myself, and also just come in a realization of like, hey, I'm thirty two now my body reacts a lot different than did at twenty two, so I can't treat it the same way, you know, going into the gym and you know, acting lacking maniac and expect and recover the same way.
So yeah, it's it's been interesting.
But it's been a really good thing too, because that seeing that extra band with freedom to focus on the things and I am trying to prioritize has been really really rewarding.
So and what you learn from it, you've you set your mind to it, you did X, Y or ZEA, and you see the results.
Yep, so then you know you can you know you can tackle whatever's next exactly right.
Yeah, we awesome.
H Well, I guess we're gonna wrap this up here this morning, but thank you so much for coming in.
It's been great getting to know you a little bit better.
Yeah, I love I love all your content.
I know you're going to keep doing it, so yep, putting it out there and and uh, you know, congratulations to your customer because I know you take great care of him and you do what you for him.
So I appreciate that.
And thanks for having me on here.
It's a lot of fun.
Awesome, Thank you thanks again for joining us today on Power the Network.
If you haven't followed Seth on LinkedIn, you can find him there.
Make sure and see his daily Seth talks.
I think they're great.
You know, he brought up the fact today that you know, fiber is not the only differentiator anymore.
You have to have uh, you've got to come up with new creative ways to set yourself apart because frankly, you know, almost everybody's got fiber now, so it's it's not the only thing.
You know, if you need a creative way, you know, to help set set yourselves apart from your competitors, you know, look out to seth and reach out to us here at CBM.
You can get ahold of us at cbmrep dot com.
And thanks for joining us on Power the Network.
