Podcasts about windstream

Holly B. Hunt, the Vice President of Channel Sales for Cipher, shares her compelling journey in building an indirect sales channel for a leading cybersecurity firm. Her story weaves through the essential themes of resilience, persistence, and the critical role of networking in advancing one's career. Holly discusses the burgeoning demand for managed security services amidst rising cybersecurity threats and how Cipher's roots in Brazil and expansion to the U.S. are influencing their strategic growth. Her insights resonate deeply with sales professionals navigating the rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape.  Listeners are treated to an inspiring narrative that follows the evolution of sales careers and leadership roles. We explore the transformation of an individual who progressed from managing a clothing store sales team during college to leading a podcast business. This segment spotlights the power of embracing new opportunities and special projects, which capture leadership attention and facilitate career advancement. The episode further highlights the shift from a numbers-focused mindset to a leadership approach that thrives on empathy and effective communication, encouraging team growth and productivity.  The conversation continues by addressing work-life balance and the importance of mentorship, particularly for women in male-dominated fields like cybersecurity. Holly emphasizes the necessity of taking time off for mental health and how leaders can foster a supportive environment for their teams. She shares personal experiences of overcoming gender biases with the help of a dedicated mentor, underscoring the transformative impact of guidance and honest feedback. The discussion wraps up with insights on the effective utilization of CRM systems in sales organizations, highlighting their potential pitfalls and benefits when used correctly. Holly B. Hunt is a seasoned sales leader with nearly two decades of experience in telecommunications sales, sales leadership, enablement, and channel development. She is currently the VP of Channel Sales at Cipher, a global Managed Security Services Provider, and has previously held leadership roles at Comcast Business, AT&T, Windstream, and others. Holly has been widely recognized in the IT channel, earning multiple accolades, including the Women of the Channel list (2022-2024), Sandler Partners' National Channel Manager of the Year (2022, 2023), and the LEAD award for exceptional female leaders (2023). She actively contributes to industry organizations, serving on the board of the Alliance of Channel Women and OAPB Fishing Foundation, and as Communications Chair for the Alliance of Channel Women. Holly was recently inducted into Cloud Girls and is a sustaining member of the Junior League of Fort Lauderdale. A double-degree graduate from the University of Georgia, she is also an entrepreneur and has moderated the John Maxwell Live 2 Lead Leadership Conference.    Quotes: "Resilience isn't just about bouncing back; it's about growing through the challenges and emerging stronger in your career journey." "In the rapidly evolving world of cybersecurity, the power of networking cannot be underestimated. Your network truly is your net worth." "Effective leadership isn't just about numbers; it's about fostering a team environment where empathy and communication drive success." "Embracing vulnerability as a leader can transform not only your team dynamics but also your personal relationships.”   Links: Holly's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollybhunt/ Cipher - https://www.cipher.com Get this episode and all other episodes of Sales Lead Dog at https://empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog 

Drex covers the urgent need for Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 before support ends on October 25, 2025. Then new developments on Salt Typhoon, a Chinese hacking group, targeting major U.S. telecom carriers like Charter Communications and Windstream. He finishes by covering breaking updates on the Treasury Department breach linked to the Chinese government, impacting the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid Subscribe: This Week HealthTwitter: This Week Health LinkedIn: Week HealthDonate: Alex's Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Tune in to the latest episode of Connect the Dots as Joe Scattareggia, President of Windstream Wholesale, sits down with Colt Technology Services COO Buddy Bayer. These telecommunications veterans unpack their groundbreaking 800G network trial between Chicago and London - a global first in connectivity innovation. Discover how this advancement tackles critical industry challenges, from power consumption to AI infrastructure demands, while setting new standards for network efficiency. Buddy also shares insights from managing Europe's largest fiber network and explains why this milestone matters for service providers and enterprises alike. 

In this episode of Fail Faster, we welcome Josh Angotti, VP of Network Automation and AI at Windstream. Josh shares his journey from growing up in central Pennsylvania to becoming a leader in AI and network operations. He discusses his team's work on predictive and prescriptive analytics, the integration of generative AI for operational efficiencies, and the future impact of AI in the tech industry. Tune in for insights into clear communication, strategic planning, and the transformative power of AI in network operations.

Richard Murtha, of Kinetic by Windstream, discusses how broadband networks can be fortified to endure natural disasters.

In this episode of The D2D Podcast, Whitney Jurgens from Kinetic by Windstream discusses with Clint Root how the company is transforming high-speed internet access through the rollout of its 8GIG fiber service. Kinetic is now one of the leading fiber providers in the U.S., expanding services across 18 states. Whitney shares insights into the "Fiber Fast Start" initiative, which helps streamline fiber deployment, allowing door-to-door sales teams to meet customer needs as soon as new fiber services are launched in an area.Whitney emphasizes the critical role of door-to-door sales in connecting with communities, helping them understand the benefits of 8GIG fiber, and offering personalized solutions for every household. She also explains Kinetic's commitment to quality—from the product itself to the customer service experience. Whether you're in the fiber sales industry or just curious about the future of broadband, this episode provides practical sales strategies and highlights Kinetic's leadership in fiber technology.You'll find answer to questions such as:What is Kinetic by Windstream's 8GIG fiber service?How does the “Fiber Fast Start” program accelerate fiber deployment?What are the best practices for selling 8GIG fiber door-to-door?Why is door-to-door sales essential for Kinetic's growth?How is Kinetic enhancing its customer service experience?Learn more about 8 Gig Fiber Internet Provider: https://www.windstream.com/residential/8gigThank you for listening! Don't miss out on future episodes! Subscribe to The D2D Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. You may also watch this podcast on YouTube!You may also follow Sam Taggart on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for more nuggets on D2D and Sales Tips.

Set Your Dial to TechVibe this Sunday at 6 AM to learn how Windstream Enterprises helps top technology companies seamlessly manage growth while staying ahead in security and innovation. As a Strategic Sales Engineer at Windstream Enterprise, Amie Sutton brings her extensive knowledge in network design and security to ensure clients achieve optimal performance and security standards with innovative Windstream solutions. In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, businesses face constant pressure to do more with less. Amie dives deep into how Windstream can deploy custom solutions that can transform your business by addressing specific needs, from network management to comprehensive security strategie; help clients stay resilient amidst evolving technology demands. Don't miss out on this opportunity to elevate your business—tune in and unlock strategies to accelerate your growth and security in the tech space.

//The Wire//2100Z July 10, 2024////ROUTINE////BLUF:  US COMPLETES WITHDRAWAL OF ONE BASE IN NIGER, ADDITIONAL DRAWDOWNS CONTINUE. 911 CALL CENTER OUTAGE ISSUES CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE MIDWEST.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Niger: American forces have departed from Base 101 in the capitol of Niamey, following the mandate that forces the withdrawal of American forces within Niger. American forces are still in the process of withdrawing from Base 201 in Agadez, which is scheduled to be completed by the September 15th deadline imposed by Nigerien forces.-HomeFront-Nebraska: Several counties reported 911 call center outages overnight. No cause was given for the outage, and most services have since been restored.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: The situation with regards to 911 call center outages in Nebraska (and parts of other Midwestern states) has been contentious for some time. This latest outage comes one day after Nebraska files a formal complaint against Windstream, the telecom company responsible for 911 call center operations. This more recent complaint is in reference to the 911 call center outages of last year.Analyst: S2A1//END REPORT//

FP&A professionals are the original business intelligence (BI) experts, says Len Mcfall, senior consultant, finance at Windstream Holdings, a $1billion US telecoms company. “FP&A itself is synonymous with business intelligence,” he says. “And honestly, weren't, weren't we the first business intelligence? We've always been working with data. We've always been trying to simplify and present data in a  meaningful way to people who might not,otherwise be literate.” In this frank and honest interview McFall, whose background is heavily influenced by BI, gives insights from a 20 year career including HCT Investments, Sitel, Crossroads Treatment Center and a minefield of data at Windstream.   “I'm not a bullet point guy. I'm a paragraph guy” says Len– warning he's not one for short, snappy answers, but a storyteller who loves to dive deep,  as he reveals: Why 40% of my job is touching base with people to curate all the data we use across the organization Putting sales on blast:  how often do you catch a forecast from a sales organization that's even 50%, right? Coming into a company to save them after they were delivering finance reporting 30 days after close (from 30 days to day 8) the role of data analysis and bi  in finance and in the decision making process. How business runs on “hunches” and why it is FP&A to prove that hunch  Why if you cannot communicate to the business you are useless  The vast amount of data we have access to in telecoms and how we separate the signal from the noise  How finance rubs against IT and why it's not pretty  Why AI in finance is like a “very smart but green intern” and prompt engineers are ridiculous Killing for food in winters during his childhood Connect with Len on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/len-mcfall-6274857b/

In today's episode, we explore the FlyingYeti campaign exploited by using a WinRAR vulnerability (CVE-2023-38831) to deliver COOKBOX malware in Ukraine, detailed by Cloudflare's Cloudforce One: https://thehackernews.com/2024/05/flyingyeti-exploits-winrar.html. Next, we discuss the unprecedented mystery malware attack that destroyed 600,000 routers from ISP Windstream, reported by Black Lotus Labs: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/mystery-malware-destroys-600000-routers-from-a-single-isp-during-72-hour-span/. Finally, we dive into the Trend Micro study on CISOs facing pressure from corporate boards to downplay cyber risk: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cisos-pressure-boards-downplay-cyber-risk/717497/. Tags: WinRAR, COOKBOX, FlyingYeti, Cloudflare, cyber warfare, Ukraine, phishing attacks, malware, routers, ISP, threat actor, Trend Micro, CISOs, cyber risks, organizational security Search Phrases: WinRAR vulnerability explained COOKBOX malware detection and removal FlyingYeti cyber attack details Cloudflare security advisories Protecting against phishing attacks Malware impact on routers ISP security breach cases Trend Micro cybersecurity reports CISO corporate board pressure Organizational cybersecurity best practices May31 An unknown threat actor recently unleashed a devastating malware attack that obliterated over 600,000 routers from a single internet service provider in just 72 hours. Forcing the company to replace all of the affected devices, leaving their patrons in digital darkness. What the heck happened here and how will we recover from this? Under mounting pressure from corporate boards, nearly four and five chief information security officers or CSOs are being pushed to downplay the severity of cyber risks. As revealed by a recent trend micro study.. How can CSOs navigate the pressure from corporate boards while also maintaining robust security posture? And finally, sometimes I pick stories simply because the name is too good. So flying Yeti is exploiting a WinRAR vulnerability to deliver cookbook malware in Ukraine marking another alarming chapter in Russia, aligned cyber warfare. You're listening to the daily decrypt.. And just over 72 hour time period malware called Chalubo Rendered more than 600,000 routers permanently unusable. All of these routers belonged to a single internet service provider named Windstream. And this ISP is now forced to replace every single one of these routers. Now that is not a small task. And a lot of these routers live in rural areas, which would be a long drive for. ISP technicians to make. And there were only so many ISP technicians. Out there. Sure they can ship you these routers, but that's going to take a long time because no supply chain is equipped to handle a random 600,000. Product order. Overnight. So who knows how long these people will be without internet? The specific routers that were affected are action tech T 3,200 and Sage com. And users are reporting a static red light on their routers, which indicates failure. Wow. Black Lotus labs utilize the census search engine. To track these affected router models and noted that. Throughout that 72 hour time period. There was a 49% drop in connections for these routers. So almost half of these routers on the public internet. Went offline. And I had mentioned that a lot of these routers lived in rural areas. But the spread of this disaster is, is pretty wide and vast because. This internet service provider provided service specifically to. Rural areas. And what is out in rural areas, a lot of farming and agriculture. So who knows what sort of impact this will have? Over. Our food source in the coming months. ' cause even tractors nowadays rely on wifi. Which is a whole nother wormhole. That I won't get to on this episode, but if you're interested, go ahead and look up John Deere wifi. And cloud connectivity because I believe they actually locked down these devices. And you have to be connected to the cloud to use them or something crazy like that. And this will also affect emergency services, which are few and far between. Out in rural areas already. Which is just unfair. But I hope this ISP is doing okay. And has a solid disaster recovery plan for how to get. Their patrons back online. It's. As far as I can tell, pretty much not feasible to get 600,000 devices out to patrons in any sort of reasonable amount of time. So. Hopefully. They can provide their patrons with maybe Amazon gift cards and instructions on how to connect. Routers purchased on Amazon or best buy to the ISP network or, or some, some sort of creative solution to get internet back online. As of right now, researchers have not identified how the routers were initially infected. Some possible methods could include exploiting, unknown vulnerabilities or abusing weak credentials. Or even maybe accessing exposed administrative panels. And I'm sure we'll hear some more from security researchers in the coming weeks on how this happened. But it's pretty hard to pin down because routers are widely. Insecure. And unpatched and it could be a myriad of ways. That they were compromised. And on that note, how do you prevent this? Make sure your routers are regularly updated. It is probably not updating itself. So you're going to have to go in and you're going to have to find. That update button. I'm sorry. That totally sucks, but just do it. This is about the worst case that can happen other than being spied on. And in fact, I was actually traveling out of town and staying with a friend recently. And I asked his permission to go into his router just to see what was going on. I like to poke around and make sure my friends are secure. And I, while I was in there. Updated his router had never been updated. Wasn't automatically updating. And I went ahead and showed him how to do it himself. According to a study recently done by trend micro. Almost four and five CSOs report feeling pressured by corporate boards to downplay their company's cyber risk. Which is a conflict between executives and security professionals that we've seen a lot in the past, but we're really hoping. Is being remediated due to all the visibility on cybersecurity risk. But this study is showing that we still have a lot of work to do. According to this study, 43% of security leaders feel they are perceived as nagging. Or repetitive while 42% feel seen as overly negative about their cyber risk. In the United States, the sec mandates that publicly traded companies disclose significant cybersecurity incidents within four business days, which is only going to add pressure to these CSOs. To manage their board's expectations while also complying with regulations. That is not a job that I envy. In fact, the sec charged solar winds and its top cyber risk executives for misleading investors about their cyber resilience. Now any study done relies on the opinions and questions asked to the specific participants, right? So this. Is kind of contradicted by a similar study done by proof point earlier this year that shows that 84% of CSOs now feel aligned with their boards on cyber risk. Which would indicate the opposite of this study. Ear, regardless. If you're a CSO or if you're an aspiring CSO. It's hard. To confront the people that pay you and write your checks. But you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your company. And you owe it to cybersecurity as a whole to take a stand. And. Make sure that the cyber risk you're dealing with is identified and. Addressed to the best of your ability. Uh, my favorite leadership tactic or strategy or principle is. To not be afraid or to recognize that it would be your proudest moment to be fired for standing up for something you believe in. Which is almost the way you have to approach leadership. Nowadays, you're going to get a lot of pressure from above and you're going to get a lot of pressure from below. So unless you know what you stand for. You're probably going to pick the wrong side. So pick something, stand for it. Hopefully it follows moral grounds and make it your life's honor to get fired for standing up for what you believe in. So we all know what phishing is. And with the invent of generative AI and machine learning, et cetera, phishing is only on the rise. People are being. Provided with more and more tools that will help them fish more efficiently. So of course fishing is going to be on the rise. It's a very effective hacking technique. Well, further proof of that. Comes when. CloudFlare disrupted a phishing campaign by a Russia aligned group called flying Yeti. That has been targeting Ukraine with quote cook box malware. Lots of good visuals there. The attackers use debt themed, lures exploiting concerns over housing and utilities to trick victims. Once the fishing victim clicks the link. They're directed to a get hub page that mimics cube Coleman, Alta, which is a leading malicious RAR archive. Download. The cook box malware then uses PowerShell to control the infected system. Connecting to a DDNS domain for command and control. Flashpoint also noted that Russian apt groups are refining their tactics and expanding their targets. Using malware, like agent Tesla and snake key logger. To accomplish their cyber crime goals. And as I mentioned in the intro, I mostly picked this story because of the fun visuals of a flying Yeti. But. Keep yourself up to date on fishing tactics, know what to look for and how to avoid getting fished yourself. I was talking to a friend yesterday who was showing me an example of a phishing email that his company came across. And it looked really good. I couldn't actually identify it as a phishing email. So, what do you do in that case? You should be skeptical of any link you click in any email. Never click a link without first thinking about what you're clicking. It's a really hard habit, but it will save you a lot of time and money. By not getting fished. Right. So first thing, check the email address it was sent from. I think it was my dad recently who sent me an email that he thought might be fishing, but couldn't tell. And so he just forwarded it to me. And yeah, the first thing I did was open up and see the email address sent. Sometimes it'll show like an alias, like Facebook marketing, but then the actual email address is something different and yeah, in. In this case. It was something like cutie pie, thirty6@gmail.com. Sending an email. Requesting to reset your password on Facebook or something like that. Like that's never going to happen. It'll come from, I mean, Facebook does use some pretty sneaky domains. That look like fishing. So Hey, knock that off Facebook. But it'll never be from a Gmail. It'll always be from a Facebook or fb.me or something like that. And if the email looks legit, You can always. Google. Malware sandbox or something like that and find a service they're free and you can copy the link, paste it in there and see what it does. I did this for my dad's email as well. It was a PDF and I got to actually watch the PDF. On a screen like this, this virtual machine opened up the PDF. And I got to watch it, try to ex execute other programs. In the background. It was super cool. But yeah. Try to use a safe environment to open up that link, or if it's not necessary. To click the link. Like if you have to reset your Facebook password, you can just go log into Facebook and go to your settings and reset your own password. You don't have to click the link for convenience. If it's like pay your bill. Now you can just go to your account by typing in the URL yourself. And pay the bill. Don't click the link. Just try to avoid clicking links as much as you possibly can.

Robert "Bo" Bennett started "Adgrafix", a graphic design firm, right after graduating Bryant University in 1994, with a bachelor's degree in marketing. In 1995, he sold the graphic design business but kept the name "Adgrafix" that he used for his new web hosting company. As a self-taught programmer, Bo created one of the first (perhaps the first) web-based affiliate systems and web-based web hosting interfaces. He built Adgrafix to a 5 million dollar a year business, then sold it to Allegiance Telecom in 2001.A day after he sold Adgrafix, Bo started Archieboy Holdings, LLC as a holding company for many different web properties, some of which have become their own entities, and sold to new owners, and others which he is still running today. One of the past sales includes Boston Datacenters -- the distressed datacenter in Charlestown, MA purchased by Bo from former HarvardNet founder. He took the company from losing tens of thousands of dollars per month to profitability in less than a year. In two years time, he sold the property to Hosted Solutions. Today, the property is owned by Windstream, and it remains one of the premier datacenters in New England.Bo is currently the founder and CEO of eBookIt.com, a company that formats and distributes eBooks, print on demand, and digital audio books, as well as president of Archieboy Holdings.Success / Motivation.By age 10, Robert "Bo" Bennett started listening to and reading personal development tapes and books. Over the years, he has developed a science-based approach to success that differs quite a bit from the over-hyped success guru's approaches commonly seen today. Before beginning his lifelong quest to shape the lives of others, he had to prove to himself that his theories, beliefs, and convictions worked.At age 10, Bo started in business by creating and selling wooden key racks in his father's workshop. Since then, he has started several companies and sold them anywhere from $1 to $20,000,000.00.After selling his first company of significant value, Bo began writing Year To Success, the most comprehensive book ever written on success, based on his experiences, thoughts, and timeless success principles.Psychology.Bo's interest in psychology began as an undergraduate studying marketing, specifically, consumer behavior. After many years immersed in the business world, Bo returned to school and received his master's degree in general psychology. As part of this effort, Bo creates videos that can be found on his YouTube channel.Bo's personal motto is "Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime." Much of his charitable work is in the area of education—not teaching people what to think, but how to think. His projects include his book, The Concept: A Critical and Honest Look at God and Religion, and Logically Fallacious, the most comprehensive collection of logical fallacies. His secular (humanistic) philosophy is detailed at PositiveHumanism.com.Academia / Education.Bo's pro bono work focuses on education. He developed and taught a public speaking and debate course for Student Athletes Rising, a non-profit youth development organization offering guidance and training for America's youth, ages 7-19, preparing them for enriching college experiences and productive lives as future leaders of their communities. As a PhD student, Bo spent time as a graduate assistant for Walden University, tutoring masters and other PhD students in research methodology. His dissertation was on social intelligence development in both traditional and distance learning programs.Toastmasters.Bo joined Toastmasters in 2003, after a painfully embarrassing speech given to a room full of his contractors.

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The free concert will be in the Quince Lot (adjacent to the Justice Center/behind Windstream building). Parking will be in the Justice Center parking lot.

Jack talks to Kevin Stinnett from The Lane Report about Windstream's broadband department Kinetic moving its home office to Kentucky and a new teaching program at Midway College.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most do not think of managed Wifi and security cameras when you mention Windstream.  Windstream has put forth great efforts in evolving and offering more of the tech stack.  In this episode, we discuss emerging tech and how they are meeting the need by focusing on " as a service" provider.  We touch on the importance of cyber security whenever you talk tech.  Windstream is one of the few suppliers that has all five of our advanced solutions focus- Cx, Cybersecurity, Cloud and Wireless. Learn more about John-https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonschlee/Learn more about Brett- https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-pontiff-ba713011/More on Windstream's managed WIFI and IP cameras for retail- https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/blog/business-challenge/why-retailers-should-use-wifi-and-ip-camera-heat-mapping/?backto=homeSupport the show

Art Nichols, Windstream CTO, returns for an exclusive discussion with Windstream Wholesale CRO, Joe Scattareggia, sharing his perspective on the industry's constant continuum of technology and leading the way in the market. Art shares his insight into Windstream's first-to-market Next Gen 400G achievement in 2020, including advancements and refinements since, and now pioneering beyond Next Gen with Regional Rapid Fiber 400G – enhancing the coast-to-coast network footprint with game-changing ZR+ pluggables.

Windstream provides services for over 45,000 enterprises at over 180,000 of their critical locations. They provide them with Cloud Connectivity, Unified Communications and a portfolio packed with additional services and technology. Austin Herrington Launching Talkdesk as a CCaaS is a big plus for Windstream Enterprise. Austin Herrington speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, about their current priorities in today's market. Austin also talks about the new customer support solution – Talkdesk. Austin gets into the decision process and what the relationship will mean to their customers. He even gets into AI and how it is relevant to Call Centers and how it will improve their customer relations. Listen in to this podcast and find out more of the details about Talkdesk, what it brings to Call Centers and why it is ultimately better for your customers. CCaaS = Fast deployment + fast onboarding + fast time to value Transform interactions with a contact center service that enables customers to connect with your agents on their terms—all while empowering agents to work from anywhere. Improve agent productivity and contact center effectiveness with advanced self-service and AI-infused solutions Reduce operational expenses through automation Drive continuous improvement of the customer journey with actionable insights Ensure conversation clarity through crystal clear calls Protect customer data to the highest security standards Third-party integrations + leading apps Supercharge your workflows and customer experience with an innovative ecosystem of open APIs and 70+ pre-built and industry-specific integrations, such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zendesk and ServiceNow. Deliver a consistent customer experience worldwide CCaaS, powered by Talkdesk, supports 31+ local languages and accents via AI and automation. Plus, over 7 languages are supported natively in the Agent Workspace with the ability to quickly add a new language. For more information, go to: https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/ or 877-606-9551

Sākas orķestra "Rīga" tradicionālais festivāls "Windstream". Saruna ar orķestra māksliniecisko vadītāju Valdi Butānu.

Our weekly recap features FTX Group, Alameda Research, Windstream, Hertz and analysis from Credit Cloud by Reorg. For this week's deep dive, Reorg reporter Ellen Schneider and Americas' legal analyst Mike Legge cover a busy week in the world of crypto, including FTX Group's chapter 11 filing, what led to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's empire and whether “Crypto Winter” is shaping up to be more of an ice age instead.

Scout Security Ltd (ASX:SCT, OTC:SSECF) CEO Ryan McCall tells Proactive's Stephen Gunnion the launch of its home security platform in Australia is just the latest catalyst for growth. McCall explains that Scout Security, doing business as Scout Alarm, targets the consumer market with its DIY security systems as well as telcos with its white-label Security-as-a-Service platform. A recent partnership with Fortune 500 company Lumen Technologies, with five million subscribers, will boost annual recurring revenue (ARR), he says. It joins Windstream as Scout's second major partner in the strategic telecommunications channel. #ProactiveInvestors #ScoutSecurity #ScoutAlarm #homesecurity #alarm #Lumen #Windstream #ASX #OTC

In Re: Windstream Holdings, In

This episode features a conversation between colleagues, John Nishimoto, Vice President, Wholesale Products, Marketing, Business Development, and Joe Scattareggia, CRO, at Windstream Wholesale. John returns to the program to provide an overview of ICON (Intelligent Converged Optical Network) – Windstream Wholesale's new generation network architecture that's enabling smarter, high-capacity optical services for Wholesale customers. John also reveals details about current builds and future strategic network expansions. 

Dave Baker, Darren Headrick and Cameron Mills were live from outside of Memorial Coliseum for 'Tent City Live' presented by Kinetic by Windstream. Head Coach Kyra Elzy and Kentucky Women's Basketball players; Jada Walker, Maddie Scherr and Nyah Leveretter joined the show to discuss starting practice and their upcoming season. From the Kentucky Men's Basketball we talk with Coach Orlando Antigua and players Oscar Tshiebwe and CJ Fredrick the share how the Bahamas helped them bond as a team.

This episode features a conversation with Joe Scattareggia, CRO of Windstream Wholesale, and Nigel Bayliff, CEO of Aqua Comms, as they discuss their business partnership and synergy. Nigel reveals details about Aqua Comm's AEC-1 network - a subsea fiber-optic network interconnecting New York, Dublin, and London - and elaborates on what his organization seeks within a partner, detailing why Windstream Wholesale's philosophy, values, and network capabilities match their partnership criteria perfectly.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST - https://anchor.fm/dailystockpick/support Yesterday was the lightest volume day in the nasdaq all year $Nvda reports - Cathy woods bought 300k shares last week and sold them for a loss this week … she's trading like all of us who have lost big on short term bounces we didn't take profits on $Baba pivot is $90 at this point Friend that works at $AVYA - they have some issues financially - business is good - financials not so much - friend who works there worked for Worldcom, Enron, EarthLink and Windstream along with other businesses that have the same trajectory - interesting conversation $PTON - strkes $AMZN deal - WOW - huge pop in the stock - it will change the game since Amazon is the biggest retailer - margins will shrink - but with clothes, shoes, bikes, parts, etc. - it should be crazy good. Half a million searches per month on Amazon for Peloton - this will allow more deals with other retailers too. Also will Peloton membership be included with Prime? HUGE! $JKS is a falling knife - look at $CSIQ - Canadian Solar - it seems stronger SCANS Yesterday was $OXY - today $CVX - big energy seems strong $BABA $APPH $BIDU $PBR - remember the huge dividend? This has continued to just soar back to cover the gap caused by the dividend $UPRO - bull $SPXU - bear $SPXL - bull $TQQQ - bull $SQQQ - bear $SARK - bear --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dailystockpick/support

On this episode of THE CLASSIC METAL SHOW, Neeley and Chris start off talking about how people are having anxiety issues which is causing them to not go out and do anything. Following, they have some tech talk about buying new TVs and Chris' new internet. Finally, Neeley admits that he's going to his high school reunion, and Chris convinces him to turn it into a show bit!Please SUBSCRIBE, click the notification bell, leave a comment or a like, and share this episode!**NOTE: Everything said here, and on every episode of all of our shows are 100% the opinions of the hosts. Nothing is stated as fact. Do your own research to see if their opinions are true or not.**

This episode features a conversation with Phil Cusumano, Head of Global Accounts at Windstream Wholesale. Phil reveals why he made the decision to join Windstream and how the three pillars of partnership, network expansion and technology leadership fit into his customer base. Discover the unique elements that allow Windstream to be a fast and flexible provider.  

Edge computing is the next long-term growth opportunity for rural telecom operators as data storage and processing that supports low latency applications moves into smaller communities. In this episode, two experts at the forefront of the edge computing join CoBank's Jeff Johnston with insights on how rural operators can reap the benefits of an expanding market. Listen to Jeff's conversation with Marc Dyman of Kinetic by Windstream and Brian Porter with the Tensor Group.

Point Remove Brewery plans comedy and craft night; Windstream to invest in rural broadband; Entergy offering rebates on certain electric purchases; enrollment continues for Project SEARCH; small craft advisory now in place on river; we talk with Courtney Martin from Main Street Morrilton about Munchin' on Main.

Episode 99: Chris Wiedmar is a technology leader and entrepreneur with a focus on operations, partnerships, and business development. He has experience building applications, IOT solutions, and is currently building in the web3 and NFT space with Party Horses. He is born and raised in Louisville and lives in the Highlands with his wife, Erin, and 3 children. 5 Across is a year long series of pitch competitions and highlights some of the most exciting tech companies to be growing in Kentucky. 5 Across is Kentucky's premiere pitch competition. If you've ever seen NBC's Shark Tank then you'd enjoy 5 Across. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Party Horses website Chris Wiedmar on Linkedin Kinetic by Windstream - 5 Across 2022 Title Sponsor Chase - 5 Across February 2022 Presenting Sponsor Leave Some Feedback: • What should we talk about next? Please email podcast@awesomeinc.org • Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: • Subscribe to our podcast • awesomeinc.org • Instagram @awesomeinclex • Twitter @awesomeinclex • YouTube --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/awesomeinc/message

This episode features an interview with Buddy Bayer, Chief Network Officer for Windstream. Buddy reveals a personal story about the events in his childhood that helped shape who he is today, as well as details about his career journey and what he appreciates most about working at Windstream. Discover why the investment community is drawn to Windstream and some of the areas that Windstream plans to invest in for 2022. Buddy also shares his thoughts about how the “fast and flexible” model is helping Windstream in the marketplace. Finally, you'll hear the first part of a story about host Joe Scattareggia's run-in with a former President!  

Mike Frane, VP of product management for Windstream Enterprise, is back on the podcast to provide his forecast for enterprise trends in 2022 such as cybersecurity, SASE, zero trust access, SD-WAN and more. Frane also discusses how enterprise culture must adjust to the needs of the distributed workforce, and is hopeful that the industry will better understand the "acronym soup" around managed services for enterprises so operators' customers can better customize the networking and security services they need.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 91: Joshua Reid is the Founder and CEO of Inphlu, and winner of the 2021 5 Across FINALS pitch competition. Inphlu offers employers a simple way to amplify their brand and drive recruitment by sharing corporate approved content through the social media channels of their employees. Joshua and his team launched January 2020 and have since oversubscribed their $500,000 pre-seed round and have expanded into both the enterprise and collegiate markets. Joshua is passionate about helping companies solve two of their biggest problems, talent acquisition and customer acquisition. The 5 Across Finals is the culmination of a year long series of pitch competitions and highlights some of the most exciting tech companies to be growing in Kentucky. 5 Across is Kentucky's premiere pitch competition. If you've ever seen NBC's Shark Tank then you'd enjoy 5 Across. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Inphlu Josh Reid on Linkedin Kinetic by Windstream - 5 Across' 2021 Title Sponsor Airwing Ventures - 5 Across FINALS' Presenting Sponsor Leave Some Feedback: • What should we talk about next? Please email podcast@awesomeinc.org • Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: • Subscribe to our podcast • awesomeinc.org • Instagram @awesomeinclex • Twitter @awesomeinclex • YouTube --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/awesomeinc/message

Chris Kern is Managing Director of Windstream Partners where he advises startup and early-stage tech business owners in selling their companies for under $50M. Chris got his start on Wall Street working on large finance and acquisition deals, but he quickly shifted gears 25 years ago, moved to Phoenix, and worked only with small software companies in the fast-growing technology business. Chris is an expert independent advisor who has helped over 150 growing tech companies get financing, obtain investment, or sell their companies. I have known Chris for over 15 years.  There are 10X more software acquisitions for under $50M than the few billion-dollar deals we hear about in the news, but we just don't hear about the smaller ones that create so many successful life-changing outcomes for founders.  In this special "Ask the Expert" episode of the Dallas Sofware Podcast, I ask Chris the top questions that Dallas startup founders ask me about selling their company when they are still small: What's happening right now in mergers & acquisitions of software, SaaS, and fintech companies that sell for $10M to $50M? What are common valuations ranges for software startups and small companies with revenues between $500K and $5M? What are the factors that affect valuation one way or the other? Can you really sell a startup for 5X revenues when it's still small? Who is buying these smaller software companies? How does the process work to sell your company? What are the pitfalls that founders make? What should they be thinking about before they try to sell? Is it better to have outside funding or to have bootstrapped when selling your company?

Tried to open up the show by calling Windstream customer support on the show to yell at them about the internet but they hung up on us THREE TIMES ON THREE DIFFERENT SUPPORT LINES so we are officially declaring war on Windstream for life. We talk about crappy monopoly internet services, get involved with a fetish community online, and pine for a Balldo sponsorship. This week's closing song is The First Rule by Flaming Tsunamis JOIN THE SHOW'S DISCORD SERVER where your penis will be measured against your will by our fed-o-meter so that you may be thusly judged Call our voicemail box at ‪(312) 574-0765 and we'll play your message on the next show SUPPORT THE SHOW Follow us: Derek | Davie | Flint | The Show Find us on Patreon and get access to bonus episodes

Bill Cook, CEO of Cook Consulting Group and venture partner for Columbia Capital,  joins the program to discuss his career journey and shares his thoughts on recent long-haul investment systems that are happening in the marketplace. Discover the types of customers that are driving the need for increased bandwidth and the importance of leveraging partnerships. Bill also shares his perspective on what he likes about Windstream's long-haul routes.  

Windstream CMO Mike Flannery joins the podcast to discuss why enterprises didn't deploy SD-WAN as widely as the industry anticipated they would at the start of the pandemic. Flannery explains how concerns around cost and ease of use stalled SD-WAN deployments for remote workers, but the tide is changing as remote access tools improve and enterprises budget for a long-term distributed workforce. "Organizations still had quite a bit of their overhead tied up in physical locations and networking services," explains Flannery. "Investment in a home-based SD-WAN would have been a materially additive cost at a time when business revenues were under pressure as a result of the pandemic."In addition, Flannery shares insights on whether customers are on board with and fully comprehend SASE, the networking and security convergence trend recently coined by Gartner. He also explains which industries have been more bullish about readily adopting SASE and SD-WAN. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Windstream CMO Mike Flannery joins the podcast to discuss why enterprises didn't deploy SD-WAN as widely as the industry anticipated they would at the start of the pandemic. Flannery explains how concerns around cost and ease of use stalled SD-WAN deployments for remote workers, but the tide is changing as remote access tools improve and enterprises budget for a long-term distributed workforce. "Organizations still had quite a bit of their overhead tied up in physical locations and networking services," explains Flannery. "Investment in a home-based SD-WAN would have been a materially additive cost at a time when business revenues were under pressure as a result of the pandemic." In addition, Flannery shares insights on whether customers are on board with and fully comprehend SASE, the networking and security convergence trend recently coined by Gartner. He also explains which industries have been more bullish about readily adopting SASE and SD-WAN.

Steve Schecter, Director of Network Architecture at Akamai Technologies, joins the program to discuss why Akamai has been referred to as the "WD-40 of the Internet", why Akamai decided to partner with Windstream, and how that partnership fits into Akamai's internet ecosystem. Discover where Akamai has been focusing its expansion efforts, the next technologies that they are looking to embrace, and how Akamai is working with its partners to expand deeper into their networks.       

In our local news today: Bentley's comments on the vaccine draw ire of governor; the fair is underway; Windstream bringing fiber broadband to nearby counties; ASP to target aggressive driving violators; Arvest holding annual "We Love Teachers" campaign; we'll check sports, and have a visit with Charles Spivey on behalf of the Conway County Care Center.

“In a typical year, black business owners are rejected for loans from traditional sources two and half times more often than Caucasian business owners. We want to do our part to stabilize this important economic sector in the communities we serve,” said  Lorenzo Clark, Vice President of Inside Sales for Kinetic and president of the Windstream Black Professional Network Committee.  Follow Kinetic Business by Windstream on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to see what they're talking about next or tune in to their recently launched podcast, Connecting Business on Apple Podcast or YouTube. Subscribe to Black Entrepreneur Experience Podcast mailing list to receive weekly updates and enter to win in our Monthly Drawinghttps://bit.ly/34LALts.You will receive exclusive content delivered right to your inbox. Also Connect on Facebookhttp://bit.ly/2jn5TaO

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast, I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Dan Reinbold join us. Dan, I would love for you to introduce yourself and your background to our audience. Dan Reinbold: Sure. Thanks, Shawnna. I have been in sales my entire career ever since graduating from college, so if you met me on an airplane and asked me what I did for a living, I’d say sales and sales management. However, I had the opportunity years ago to go into sales training it was called at the time, which I did. I then through a series of promotions with the company called PAETEC at the time was able to go back into sales leadership. I ended up managing about 350 million in revenue and about 350 people. After we were purchased by a company called Windstream, I went back into sales enablement it’s now called and have been doing that for about the past 10 years. It’s been a career of sales, selling, sales management, and sales training. SS: I love that. You’ve actually been referred to as a pioneer in sales training and I’d love your opinion. What are the core components of a successful training program? DR: To be called a pioneer is quite generous, but I think the things that make a successful sales training program, and probably where some of the individuals that have mentioned that or gave me good recommendations really caught onto the fact that, to me, when you teach selling, and everybody knows there’s tons of sales training out there, hundreds and hundreds of books on selling lots of methodologies, but I really like to teach as a systematic, almost scientific approach. This is layered in with what I’ll call some psychology of why people might do what they do or say what they say. That's all designed to be reactive to what the salesperson does. I think what resonates with a lot of the people that I’ve taught over the years is the fact that we break down the sales training into steps. I call them the three pillars. Every step has a goal that would be the second pillar and then you layer in different tactics. This is all designed, so your three pillars would be the step of the sale, the goal of that particular step, and then any type of tactics that you might deploy, I’ll call it. This is all designed to increase your probability of making a sale. Let me emphasize that when I teach selling, this is not about tricks and let’s not confuse tactics with gimmicks. This is really about sound selling practices that are all designed to really try to operate in the best interest of the prospect. If you don’t have that at heart, they’re going to smell that insincerity on you and this is why so many salespeople and sales training programs either aren’t successful or get labeled the old fashioned, not to denigrate them, but the used car sales approach. This is not about high pressure. This is all about trying to increase your probability of making a sale, but not doing it at the expense of your prospect. Actually, Shawnna, done correctly, it should generate happy customers who then give you referrals and then the machine starts to pick up on that. SS: I love that. I heard a panel that you were on recently, and while you may be a pioneer, I also think that you are very forward-leaning in a lot of that sales training space and its components because on the panel you actually discussed nurturing consistent continuous learning environments. I feel like that’s very cutting edge for the sales training space. I’d love for you to explain to our audience, what’s your perception on that and how can sales enablement help reinforce key skills and knowledge for reps through continuous learning? DR: Well, that’s a great question. Boy, if I used the phrase nurturing consistent and continuous learning environments, then that sounds pretty highbrow for me, but I like it. To drive a consistent learning environment, and your question was really centered around the reinforcement of key skills. The way you reinforce key skills is, let’s go back to that procedural method of teaching where the most important thing, the biggest test of any type of learning program, whether it’s selling skills, product knowledge, system, and process is the application and the ability of the student to apply the knowledge. This isn't theoretical. If it doesn’t work in the field, if it doesn’t give you the result, then it might as well as just be left on a whiteboard in a classroom. Anything that you teach, and let’s go back to the comment I think about being a pioneer or even let’s say forward-leaning. it’s really about figuring out what your student is doing in the field and then coaching to that. Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t use some sports analogy here. It’s like if you practice a certain thing on the practice field, but you can’t deploy it in a game-time situation or if it fails in a game-time situation, which sometimes that’s going to happen because your opponent is reacting, of course, at the same time. Then it probably wasn’t effective education. To me, the true test of the ability of any learning program is, what kind of field results are you getting? Then that speaks to the whole topic of metrics and tracking and that, but when it comes down to sales program effectiveness, to me that comes down to, can you dissect or coach actual field sales calls? Whether you’re there in person as a coach, AKA a sales leader with your rep and the prospect, or if now with all the virtual meetings occurring, if you can break down a recorded call. To me, all of the programs that are out there now that allow for recording and practicing and role-playing within an LMS or a learning environment are great, but where the rubber meets the road and the true test of effectiveness is in the field. If you can get real field data to break down real game film as I call it, that’s where you’re really going to see the effectiveness of your program. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice and love that we get to drill into the reinforcement component of that. Now I’d love to go into the environment component though, from your perspective, what role does the learning environment play in the success of sales training programs and how can enablement practitioners help to nurture a really positive learning environment for their reps? DR: The company that I was just most recently with is a great microcosm of your question. When I came in, they did the traditional, okay, we fly people in for the traditional week-long “new hire training” where lots of seasoned reps and even new people, cue the eye-roll, got to fly to corporate. We have to be there Monday morning, flying in on Sunday, be there Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. We do Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. or whatever until evening time, come back on Friday, maybe have half or three-quarters of the day, and then people fly back home. Well, that becomes as companies grow, and you’re sitting in a three-hour different time zone than I am and we’re still in the United States, but if you’re international, that becomes even more challenging. To me, this is where if you were looking for a silver lining of COVID for training, let’s say, this is where it occurred. It forced companies like mine at the time to examine that program, which when you really get down to it is terribly inefficient. What I mean by that, forget COVID, the pure nature of going into a classroom, sitting there all day after having flown in, and then maybe you go to dinner in the evening, you have homework, you get back in the classroom. It’s just overload. People reach their cognitive overload very quickly. Depending on the person, they can be overloaded by Monday at noon, some people will maybe last through Tuesday. COVID forced us to really look at that and immediately transition everything to virtual, and we actually embraced it as a training department and found it to be more effective and more enjoyable for the audience. Now, don’t get me wrong. To me, I love the face-to-face in-person interaction that can occur, but when you look at the entire spectrum, meaning the full gamut of benefit and detriment when you look at that week to two-week long corporate new hire training, I come back to the word efficiency and say, look, it’s just not that efficient. If you now go virtual and you get set up with really good applications that allow good visual clarity of a virtual classroom, and you have anywhere from 15 to I’ll say 50 attendees and you can all be on camera, you can break them into groups, you can use a variety of different things. Let’s say you use slack, you can create different slack channels for your groups to communicate and do question and answer in, and then you can do role-plays, but you also still have to have that engagement, so you create games. We broke our trainings into teams and we tried to make it fun. Since it’s virtual, we try to do some stuff that may be considered silly but engaging. One day wear your craziest hat or you introduce us to your pet that day or whatever it is, but you try to create a comradery on the virtual training. Since you’re going into their environment, they have more of the ability to do show and tell on stuff that is important to them. You’ve got this real trade-off between the two environments where, yeah physical interaction in the classroom is nice, but when you look at the prototypical corporate training program, virtual can actually bring you so many more benefits. You can spread it out over time. You don’t have as lengthy of class time so you get better cognitive participation because people could focus for a couple of hours, then you take a break. Let’s say they’re salespeople, they can go off and they can do prospecting or study on some of the other things that they have to do to do their job. They’re not tied up wall-to-wall for one to two weeks. You can spread it out, you get a lot more efficiency in a lot of ways, it’s a much better training program. We were finding that the students like it better, you don’t have to worry about flights and planes and hotels and where you’re sleeping and all that kind of stuff. There’s a lot of benefit to the new virtual learning environment when it’s set up properly. SS: Absolutely. I think that’s a fantastic answer and it makes a ton of sense; I appreciate that. I want to shift gears a little bit in this podcast because in addition to your sales enablement experience, as you mentioned in your introduction, you also have extensive experience as a sales leader. I know a lot of sales enablement practitioners often need to partner very closely with their sales leaders to design and deliver a lot of these training programs. I’d love to understand from you, what are some best practices around helping sales leaders achieve their core goals through training programs? DR: There are a couple of things. The wonderful thing about learning how to sell and sell well is that you’ll never be without the ability to generate income for yourself. I think there’s a lot of benefit. At least to me personally, having been a salesperson, lived under a quota, at times in my career even being on straight commission, and then advancing up through sales leadership and getting larger and larger staffs, and like I said to the point where it culminated in hundreds of salespeople working for me. The benefit there is that then when you transition that to the classroom, it gives you credibility. A lot of corporate sales trainers unfortunately don’t have that field experience. Now, this is not a knock on them, it’s just the way of the world. I think many companies are missing out on a particular element of taking successful salespeople and finding the ones that really enjoy coaching and training others and affording them an opportunity to be in sales enablement or sales training. What usually happens, Shawnna, just to be real here, is that trainers don’t make as much money as sales leaders and salespeople. You have to be willing to pay a little bit more to get those people that love to do that. I think the value is they have that field experience, they’ve done it before, they walk the walk. When they step in front of the classroom, it gives them that all important credibility. I think that’s one component. The second component that you asked about is then how does this allow you to partner with the sales leaders? Well, look, when sales leaders found out that I manage teams, that credibility was built in. Look, you have to manage teams successfully, you could be really bad at something so therefore it doesn’t translate, but if you had a good track record that gives you the credibility. They start to listen and open their minds more. When you show them a program that’s duplicatable and it’s combined with coaching and they’re seeing a mediocre salesperson increase their metrics, move up from 70% of quota to 100% or 110%, it just builds momentum, and it allows the programs in and of itself to be more received. Therefore, they’re more used and when they’re used, there are better results in the field and that’s what it’s all about. Let’s be real, most sales leaders are looking at one thing and so are their managers. Did you make your number? Month in and month out, year in and year out, quarter in and quarter out, are you consistently making them? I think that’s the ultimate metric is, how are you doing with respect to your quota? SS: Yep. I couldn’t agree more. That definitely is the ultimate end goal. Now, what are some of best practices that you might have then when it comes to gaining buy-in for enablement programs though from executive stakeholders because obviously they’re critical to have as business partners in the organization as well? DR: Great question. I’m going to give you an unusual answer. One of the things I’ve always tried to do is try to continue to learn, to continue to evolve my ideas, to continue to listen to other ideas. Within the past year, if you’d asked me that question a year ago, I’d have said, oh, you have to have absolute buy-in from the executive level right down to your entire program and every detail of it. Then, I was exposed to a philosophy from a senior vice president of sales. He said, you know what I want, buy-in from the bottom up. He goes, yeah, I want to support your program, but for me I’m going to support your program if the reps are loving the program, if they’re getting results. Then their managers are going to buy-in and they’re going to start to be looking at going, hey what’s Susie doing that the others aren’t doing? Susie is like, oh, I followed this procedure and I do this, I use these tactics and these steps, and I learned this from the sales trainer and then I have him on calls and we do coaching afterwards and they break down my calls with me. Suddenly their managers are going, okay, I want Joey and Tom and Claire doing all that too. It starts to create this groundswell from the bottom up that other people are starting to catch on. They want to duplicate that success. When that filters up, the executives again, they’re going to be fine as long as you’re making your number, doing it ethically, doing it professionally, that your customers are happy. It was an interesting philosophy to me that this Senior Vice President was saying, look, for me it’s fine, but he goes, I’m really not on sales calls, so I want the buy-in from the bottom up. I listened to that, and it really started to realign my thinking. I’ve seen a lot of programs fail where the executives went out and bought a program and hired a high price consulting firm to come in. They did this at the company I worked at prior to me coming in and it actually did fail. They went out and spent a ton of money on a program and it just did not catch on, the salespeople didn’t buy it. They flew trainers all around the world and trained on this and it just didn’t get the buy-in. Even though the executives said, oh, this looks like a great program and purchased it and invested in it, they couldn’t force it downstream. I think that’s a very interesting concept is you can’t force stuff downstream. If you really want to build a program, make sure that your reps that are you going to use the program buy-in before the executives go spend all the money on it. If you can get the field working and using the program, which is the most important thing in purchasing or buying any type of program or any type of internal sales enablement program or sales training program, then you’re going to have success. You’re not always going to have success just because you have executive buy-in from the top if your people aren’t finding it usable, duplicatable, coachable in the field. And that’s a very, very important distinction. SS: I love that piece of advice, Dan, it is very solid. I loved the notion of thinking about bottom-up buy-in, that’s fantastic. Now, I know we’re almost at time. I’ve learned a ton of things from you throughout this podcast. I want to close on something that you had also mentioned just a moment ago, the importance of helping to drive revenue growth. Now, you specifically call this out, even on your profile on LinkedIn that you help do so through education and development of salespeople. I’d love in closing for our audience some advice on how sales enablement practitioners can tie their efforts into revenue impact. DR: You take your sales force, you look at, everybody’s doing forecasting and everybody’s trying to create more and more metrics to be able to evaluate their salespeople, but the one thing that continues to I think be missing is the grassroots game film, I’ll call it again, it’s worth repeating, approach to seeing how individual sales reps sell. You get people on their appointments, listening in. You listen to actual, not role play, I’m talking actual prospect calls. I think one of the things that I never let go of that made me successful as a sales leader is what I went into my markets, I wanted to do one thing. I wanted to run real sales appointments with my regional director and one of their reps with prospects. Not with happy satisfied current customers. Those are important when the retention is involved, especially in the fields I’ve been in, which is, you know, SaaS and telecom. That recurring revenue is what makes all the efforts worthwhile, but I want it to be on the new prospect calls because that’s where salesperson performance can make a difference. I went on to customer retention calls with the account manager, but I wanted to be on a call belly to belly with the rep and their manager. When we were done, we would go get a cup of coffee and we would sit down and we would start with the rep and say, how’d you do? What could you do better? Then we’d go to the manager. How do you think they did? What could they do better? Then they would go to me as the I'll say head coach, and we would go through it, and we would break it down. That grassroots ability to look into the performance of an individual will bring up the whole performance of the team if that manager takes those tidbits and starts to use that with all their people, whether they have a staff of 3, 5, 10, whatever. Now with technology, you can accelerate that because you can record your calls, you can get transcriptions of calls. That grassroots coaching is what will ultimately drive revenue growth because sometimes the difference between making your number that month or that quarter is the difference between one or two big deals. That difference is often totally reliant on what that salesperson said and did throughout that sale. I think that the biggest thing to go back and tie sales enablement practices to revenue impact is to drive a systematic approach to selling that's duplicatable, replicable with every rep, resonating with them, and coachable in the field. That in and of itself is going to be able to drive up that primary metric of revenue increase. It starts with all the steps, whether it’s prospecting and you’re increasing your appointment rate, whether it’s increasing your second ability to get that next appointment. All the appointments I’ve been on are never a one-call close. Some of the very technical applications we’ve sold sometimes take anywhere from 6 to 18 months to persuade a customer to come over and give your company a try, so I think those are significant. SS: Again, Dan, thank you so much for the fantastic advice on this podcast. I appreciate your time. DR: My pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Enrique Valdes, Vice President Sales, North Region for Telxius, joins the program to discuss Telxius' partnership with Windstream and how that collaboration is providing customers with ultra-high connectivity and diversity options throughout the U.S, Latin America, and beyond. Enrique reveals the verticals that are drivers of growth, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for organizations to support their IT infrastructure development. He also shares his thoughts about why Windstream's commitment to being fast and flexible makes them an ideal strategic partner for Telxius.

Le dernier tome de la trilogie des frères Lemay se termine cette semaine à Windstream avec nul autre que le cerveau de tous les opérations et l'athlète indétrôné du trio , le discret mais au combien hilarant à ses heures, Vincent Lemay ! Bonne écoute!

Monique Davis is a Career & Business Strategist, Speaker, Author, Minister and when she is not running her businesses she is a wife, and mother. Monique Davis broke records in the telecommunication staffing industry through her placements with TE Connectivity prior to it being acquired. She has worked with the best of them and has an outstanding track record to prove it. Her leadership team has a track record of hiring hundreds of stellar talent for companies like Windstream, AT&T, CHR Solutions, & Delta Air Lines just to name a few. Monique Davis Links Https://TheMoniqueDavis.com Https://Bit.ly/BARRegistration

Tout le monde aime Monika! Venez apprendre à l'aimer encore un peu plus en écoutant ce tout premier épisode du WindStream. 

Bienvenue sur le WindStream! WindStream est votre lien avec votre communauté de Bodyflight. Des discussions en profondeur sur des sujets variés, ce podcast vous permettra d'en apprendre davantage sur les gens qui pratiquent le sport que vous aimez!

Jonaed Iqbal: [00:00:00] Welcome to the 18th episode of the notary podcast is your host,  Jonaed Iqbal. Today's guest is Monique Davis, the founder of Fresh Talent Sources, a training and sourcing company. Monique started her career recruiting models for a talent agency. Despite not having a degree, she was able to leverage her experience and break into the recruiting world.The rest is history. Listen to how Monique outwork and outshine others around her with creativity and hard work. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/nodegree. Every contribution is appreciated. This show is impossible without you. Let's get this show started.Welcome to another episode of the NoDegree Podcast. Today we have an amazing guest, Monique Davis. Monique, can you introduce yourself? Monique Davis: [00:00:54] Hey guys, how are you? Yep. I am Monique Davis, career strategist and founder of Fresh Talent Sources. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:01:01] So what is Fresh Talent Sources? What do you do? Monique Davis: [00:01:04] Good question. Uh, Fresh Talent Sources, we are a sourcing and training firm. So what does that mean? When companies are startups, small businesses to medium sized businesses that need almost like an HR team. Or talent acquisition team to help them get the candidates that are necessary to help their business thrive. They bring us in. We typically do orders from telecom, cybersecurity, and HR.Those are like our top three. Areas. And, um, the training piece is actually where we come in and we train those junior level recruiters or junior level sourcers on how to identify candidates and some really innovative ways. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:01:51] Let's take it back to the beginning. What were you doing in high school and what'd you want to be and how'd you sort of get to this path?Monique Davis: [00:01:58] Okay. So that's a good question as well. So for me, you know, when I was in high school, I-- I consider myself out of the box, right? I didn't think like the people that were around me. My initial thought was I was going to be a news anchor. I was going to tell the news to individuals, and then when I kind of, you know, got a chance to understand that.I went to the WSB TV here in Atlanta, the studio here, and I said, you know what? This may not be for me. This is still me being in high school, and I decided that I wanted to deal in. In pre-law and that wasn't for me there. So I did go to college for a couple of years and it was just a lot of the same types of things I was learning in high school, but just like on a higher level. In terms of like the algebra stuff and just, I just felt like I was never getting into the real deal of what I want it to be, the core. Ultimately, I decided to get a job. I worked for a company that, um, dealt with identifying models instead of candidates. It was models. I'm identifying them to be a part of their agency and subsequently their training program.And so. That's kind of, that's the start of my journey of eventually getting into recruiting. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:03:21] Okay, so you were identifying models. These are models who are, what, videos, photo shoots, magazines, what type?Monique Davis: [00:03:26] Everything, everything. Everything he Elite-- The Elite Bounder is like one of the top modeling agencies ever. They had a company called John Casablancas, who is the owner of Elite.That's how I got my start with working with their corporation. And. Figuring out, you know, strategies, ways, scripts on how to speak to individuals, how to get their attention, all of that stuff. So all the hustle kind of came from that when I worked for their company. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:03:58] What did you learn from that job? What skills were really -- And you know, you can take as long as you want to answer that question.Monique Davis: [00:04:05] Man, yeah. I don't think we have enough time, but I'll stick to some core pieces. So first and foremost, organization, I learned how to organize my time, manage my time wisely, put schedules together-- Together, coordinate. Well, I wanted to speak to who was a priority, who was a warm prospect, who was a cold prospect.Um, I learned the art of business development. I learned the art of networking. I learned the art of follow up. You know, a lot of salespeople are good to sell you stuff, but they never follow up on anything. So I learned how, following up with essential to closing the deal, I learned that a lot of business deals are not even closed at a business office. Typically they're closed at dinner or they're closed at a lunch or breakfast, you know? But those are the just kind of transferable skills that I ended up learning in that environment. I learned the competitive nature of sales and, and how people can be really crazy. When it came down to get in the sale right? And so I learned how to maneuver with certain personality types. And that's what kinda got me into personalities and, and studying personalities and, and how your behavior plays a really big part on the types of positions and roles you should be in, man. But those are just like the core areas I can think of.And then identifying candidates. So now, of course, since then I've worked with a lot of the big boys from Delta airlines to Tyco electronics to, you know, a lot of big boys. But prior to even getting into actual recruiting for corporations, dealing with this agency, I was able to figure out ways to identify candidates that were not just the normal ways.So meaning at that time, what was being like my space. Was big and, and, um, going out and going to the mall was a big thing too, to find that talent. But I would go one step above. I would research the schools, the Ge- geography, the area that I was in. I would research the schools and identify places that people that have, that was my target audience.Where they would actually be. So I learned customer segmentation there as well. It was literally, it was literally the foundation of me. It was the foundation of me and who I am in, in every other job that I had. After that, I was able to speak so clearly and concise to those types of skillsets because I had dealt with it.Firsthand and I learned how to manage money because I used to make a lot of it at an early age.Jonaed Iqbal: [00:06:51] Yeah. And I see a lot of people, they'll make the money and then they essentially make nothing because they squander it for years. And then it's tough, especially as you're, you grow older, you have more expenses, things come up and you want to grow. How long were you at that agency? Monique Davis: [00:07:07] Oh gosh. I was there for almost four years. Yeah. Basically my college, the time that I was supposed to be in college. Yeah. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:07:20] You felt that it was definitely a great foundation?Monique Davis: [00:07:23] Absolutely. Without, I have no doubt whatsoever that this was like a perfect foundation for me to get into all the wonderful things that I ended up kind of delving into as I, uh, when I left that place. Yeah. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:07:38] I know you've had several jobs after that. Was there any time where. You know, the lack of college degree sort of said, "Hey, you have to like prove yourself" or you had to jump through hoops. Did that ever happen to you? Monique Davis: [00:07:51] You know what, I'll say this, I've always had a really strong work ethic, like really, really strong. Initially coming on board, I can remember one company in particular, it was a telecom company that I worked with, Tyco Electronics. So when I first came the head of talent acquisition, he was like, okay, you got a little experience here with this, but you know, we're really looking for a rock star and blah, blah, blah, and this and that.I started to get more assertive in the interview. I said, well, tell me some of the KPOs like what are the, what are the key performance objectives for this role? What is it that, let's move the whole job description out of the way. Okay, tell me what it is that you need this person to achieve in this position.Who will they interact with? Who will they connect with? And he was just like, okay, well let me tell you. And so he began to tell me, and you know, kind of just really give me some realistic job previews. And every situation, everything that, every objective. I gave him an example, a strong example of what I had already done.That was the exact thing that he was looking for. Needless to say, we were only slated to meet for 30 minutes. I ended up taking up two hours of his time and right when I was leaving the building, he made me be offered now because of the lack of degree, he made me an hourly rate offer that was not really what I wanted, but I took it anyway because I just felt like--Like I can prove myself. You know, I was eager. I was hungry. Six months in, I became talent acquisition manager. Got like over-- Honestly, I went from making $50,000 a year to make almost a hundred thousand dollars a year. He made everybody just come to me. He's like, look, she knows what she's doing. Just go to Monique, and he stayed the global talent acquisition, head of Tyco electronics connectivity and Marietta.That's kind of how it happened. I know that. The hiring-- The HR people, and you know, he had a team of people telling me, telling him, no, she's not ready for a management role. She's not ready for this. She only has this on her, you know, this is her, this is her information here. Like this is her resume. Like, what is this?Like a modeling agency as she did, you know, and then I did some freelance recruiting for a smaller recruiting firm. I actually did it for free commission-based. I say free cause I didn't get an hourly, but it was commission based. And so that was all my experience and they were like, uh, yeah, I don't think so. But I came in and I kicked butt. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:10:27] You kicked everyone's butt right?Monique Davis: [00:10:28] I kick everyone's butt and that's how it, that's how it happened. Literally like step by step. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:10:36] Now, how long did it, once you started being in the role of, right, initially they had this perception of you. Okay, where she came from, this model, she dealt with these people. That's not a real job or whatever. How long did it take you to sort of win people over when they were like, you know what, he made the right decision.Monique Davis: [00:10:55] Yeah. I think it was month three. My 90 day, I guess probationary period. By that time I had already made, probably, I don't, I can't even remember the number.  Let's just say 20 you know, I had already made like 20 hires and they were, and they, these were hard. Telecom is not the easiest type of position to fill, you know. I had already made like almost 20 hires and I was very, very assertive and very professional. One of the things in that environment, it was like one of those business casual environments.So one day you'll see somebody with like some jeans on and you know, no one really kind of stepped it up and I stepped it up every day. I dress for the job that I desire, not the job that I had. Right. I came. With the, uh, management feel to me. Does that make sense? Like, I didn't come in like, "Oh, I'm just a regular old specialist here."You know, I came like, "no, I'm about to run this place. Okay." And I never got into. Like those gossipy, you know, HR can be a little gossipy. So I never got into those gossipy circles. I never got into, you know, just getting too familiar with my colleagues. I like, I had a professional fund exchange, but it was just like I wouldn't let myself, because I always felt like one day I'm going to be managing you guys. And so my mindset was always: management, leadership, servant leadership. That was my thing. And so I think that that third month when I was making these hires, their numbers were going up. They introduced me to a BPO team, was a-- is a business process outsourcing team and headed by this, this great guy, this director guy, he's so awesome.And uh, and I remember him bringing me in. I was the only minority. I was the youngest person there. Okay. And he would bring me into these meetings and they would say what they, what they wanted to say about what their, what their need of and how this is going to be so hard to do that. And I would say, "If you don't mind, if I interject..." and I would speak my opinion, I would say, "well, I honestly, with these numbers, here's how we can do it. Here's the strategy, here's what you can expect in the first quarter. Here's what...", and I already had my, I had my numbers. I had, I was a, I was just a stickler for having strong work ethic. And I think that that impressed them so much that leadership began to come to me. Instead of going directly to my boss first, they would come directly to me and ask me for things.And because they saw my knowledge, I stepped up in areas where I knew I was supposed to step up. And I think that's so vital to being able to, um, take off of the, the whole, I don't want to say stigma, but just like the look of no degree. You're not smart or you don't, you don't have the business savvy you, you absolutely can have it.Because I know plenty of people now that have master's degrees are stuck working at Dillard's and Nordstrom's because they can't find something. Right. If there's nothing wrong with Dillard's or Nordstrom, but if that's not where you want to be, it could be. It could be. It could be something wrong with that.So yeah, I definitely, definitely say within the- the first three months they began to recognize that I wasn't one to play with. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:14:12] And then once the how to change. So now before they were like, all right, that's Monique. She thinks she's going to run the place. But how did it change? Like how they treat you? What was it before? What was it after? Like once they start respecting you now, did they ask you more questions? Did they sort of look at you different or what. Monique Davis: [00:14:27] Yeah, absolutely. Um, they definitely started to include me. I mean, I was going to lunches in North Dakota. I mean, I was flying out places now. I was presenting my ideas, you know, I was actually being heard.I was collaborating with the HR team. A lot of people get confused with talent acquisition and HR were like, we're sisters. Or maybe like step sisters, I don't know. But we're, we're, we're connected, but we're not like, we're very different, you know? So the HR team started to respect me. As a matter of fact, the HR manager would start to come directly to me and say, "Hey, I'd like your input on, you know, this, this situation or that.." or whatever.And we just started to collaborate more. I started to make myself more available. It just kind of happened organically. I honestly, it just was one of those things where they saw how many people respected me. As a matter of fact, one of the directors of that team, I was mentioning the BPO team, they wrote a letter. Because at one point they were, they did not know if, if my job was a job that needed to-- Since they had a global person, they were like, "well, what do we need a talent acquisition manager for?"And he wrote a letter. He gave them the numbers, my numbers, and he was like, she has. She has brought us from zero to 8 million by the people that she's bringing in to work for our outsourcing projects, for our clients, like sprint and Windstream, et cetera. And they were like, "What?!". And so that is, it was like the proof was in the pudding, you know what I mean?And that is how I was able to, I guess, kind of get their validation because the other directors were validating me. They didn't do it on their own. HR didn't do it on their own, and they still, they were stuck in that mentality of, "Oh, no degree." You know, they were stuck in that, but my proof was here and the numbers, and when you make money for a company, they never forget you. They never, they never forget you. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:16:28] So let's go back to the modeling agency. So you did very well at that job. Who are people who don't do well at that job? Because I could imagine there's some people who sort of get stuck in that industry or they make some key mistakes. Monique Davis: [00:16:41] At the beginning, when I first started, I think the people that, because it was high turnover and you know it's sales, right?So it was really high turnover. Ultimately they want you to feel like, make it feel like it's a talent agency, but really it's sales. One of the individuals that kind of make-- that was let go was because she got comfortable. And every day, and I, and maybe that's the workaholic in me, but, but every day I live like this is, "I got to eat." Like I don't have any money in my bank account. And that's how I live my life. And so if you don't have at hunger in any business development role, in any type of recruiting or marketing role, you can never get complacent. You can never just feel like, "Oh, I can just. Post somewhere and wait for people to come to me", in terms of job opportunities, et cetera.You got to be very proactive and strategic in your approach, and so if you're, if you are not about the strategy, if you're not about the hustle and really the grit. If that's not your personality, that you shouldn't be in a business development position, period. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:17:50] When you were the talent manager, what came next? How long did you stay at that job and then what came next and when did you realize it was sort of time for a change? Monique Davis: [00:17:57] Oh man. So as talent acquisition manager, let me just say, I loved that job. I have yet to find, I'm an entrepreneur now, but from that timeframe all the way up to now, I've never found a position that was that much--that was that fulfilling. Right? So what happened was they had another company that came in and acquired my teamJonaed Iqbal: [00:18:19] Oh man... I hear this already-Monique Davis: [00:18:21] And I was sick. I was so sick. And the company that came in, Oh my gosh, they were, they were very conservative, very conservative. They were impressed by my numbers, but they didn't understand my value. And so when they, when, when it came down down, they were like firing people left and right. I'm talking about like chopping block city.That's where we lived. And I was just like, well, I need to get started looking for another position. And so. I remember that team that did that. The team that was left, I remember the director and he's like, "Hey, listen, I'm putting in my notice". And he told me, and I was like, "Oh God, if he leaves, he's my biggest supporter. Like, what am I going to do? I'm out." And he goes, "I just want you to know that wherever I go, I really, really, really want to talk to you. Like. Just know that." And he was very kind of vague and how he said it, he didn't really give me a lot of information. I was like, "Oh, okay. Whatever that means." It came down to Chapman city time for me and I met with the VP and the HR manager and they go, "well, we don't want to let you go cause we see what you can do, but we want to cut your. You know, because of your education and because of this, we want to cut you down to about 65,000 a year." And I was like, [laughing] I just bust out laughing. And I was like, "are you serious?" And I was like "okay, all right." I said, "let me take some time and think about it." What I did, I took some time. I thought about it. I knew I wasn't going to stay, but I wanted to make sure I secured the bag before I left that one.So I was already plotting my exit strategy. And then, you know, as I'm doing that, I had a girlfriend who worked at a staffing agency. And she's like, "Oh, come over here. I can train you to be my manager. Like one of my managers, you know, one of my leads or whatever," and I'm like, "okay, cool. Let's"- Oh assistant manager, I'm sorry.And I was like, "okay, cool. Ah staffing is not really my thing, but all right." I gave them my notice, told them I was going over to the staffing company. And they were like, "Oh my gosh, we're just so upset that you're leaving." And I'm like, uh, you, "tried to cut my pay like 35,000 bucks. And so there was--"Jonaed Iqbal: [00:20:43] You should be upset! You're the one-Monique Davis: [00:20:45] I'm the one who's been hurt. And so they were like, "well, can you, well, okay, well, okay." And so, so what I said was, "well, how about this? How about I find my replacement. How about I find my replacement through a staffing agency, let's, let's through the company that I'm actually going to be going to." So not only did I leave on good terms, but I actually got the business, like I ended up that my first hire was me transitioning out of those.Jonaed Iqbal: [00:21:12] Wow! You're a hustlerMonique Davis: [00:21:15] I'm a hustler. I'm a hustler. So, so that was my first thing. And the staffing agency was something very temporary. I stayed there for a couple of months. And then their HR team reached out to me and they were like, the company that he was at now it's another telecom company, and they reached out to me like, "we've heard great things about you. We basically, we want to hire you. You don't even have to go through the whole process. We want you, because Chuck saying he can't do it without you." Right. And I was like, "Oh wow. Yeah."It didn't take long. We negotiated a really great deal, really great benefits package. 401, everything was like on point bonus.Everything's signed on. Everything was A1. I came on board and I worked with them for goodness. I feel like it was about a year. I was with CHR. It was good time. It was a little slower than I was used to. I did work remote. I did have to fly out a lot to some of their locations up North and like. You know, Fargo, and, uh, North Dakota area and stuff like that.But what ended up happening was they ended up outsourcing the recruiting side to, uh, to a place in India. And so not only did I get like chopped because they wanted to cut down on pricing, there on such stuff, but I had to train my replacement because the Indian outsourcing team didn't. They still, they got, they grasp the concept, but they still weren't like really understanding how to communicate effectively.And so I was giving him tips. I was creating guides for these people. Okay. And I, they were like kicking me out of the door. But I did that out of the, just the goodness of the, the integrity of my name. Right. Because there were other people that were like, I'm not training them. And that wasn't me. So, so that's, that's how I ended up leaving CHR, left CHR, and got introduced to Delta.Honestly, the rest is history because with after Delta. I stayed with them, made a name for myself, you know, he came senior IT recruiter over there. I noticed that there was not a lot of room for growth. The position that was above me. It was a very-- So I was with, I was with a subsidiary of Delta, which is called DGS.So this is a subsidiary and the environment was, it just, it just wasn't a, an environment where you, where relationships are fostered and people are trained and developed and grown. Right. It was more like a worker bee type of environment. Right. There was some people that got on the chopping block. Of course, I wasn't in that number, but I just realized that.It was my time to start to do my own thing because just my thought process, it just wasn't aligned with how they were going about how they want it to do to do business. And, um, I just thought, you know what? This is probably not going to be a good fit for me. I'm probably, I'm, I was there for like four years and I was like, okay, it's time for me to just do my own thing.And I, and I decided with my career strategy coaching that I was doing on the side anyway. Um, that I would go full force with that left there and began to really go hard with my Fresh Talent Sources initiative and went first from just career coaching. Well, first it went from just staffing and then just career coaching.And then I said, wait, "I'm going to just do, I'm going to do everything." And so it's, it's ever evolving my company, but now we're at a really comfortable place where we have a methodology called the Right Fit. Because I think it's so important that companies have the right fit in their organization, and there's certain behavior triggers and personality types that you can, that you're able to figure out or find the best person for your position.So that's what leads us here, leads us to this point. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:25:05] When you started it. Right? Cause usually what I've seen is it's never, it's always different when you start. Right? It's never how you expect, it's, it's there's a whole lot of things. Or when you started, what were some things that happened that were sort of you did not expect?Monique Davis: [00:25:19] I thought that I was going to just get business after business after business. I really did because that's me. And I'm hustling, I'm reaching out, I'm talking, I'm going to play some like what is going on? And I just didn't get the work like that. I did get a lot of career coaching clients and I'm thinking, okay, but I'm supposed to be doing staffing.Like that's where the bread and butter is. I wasn't getting this type of clients that I really, really wanted to get in that first year. I left in June, 2018 and that first year was horrific. But I ended up doing a lot of split partnerships. I learned a lot about that. Um, I learned about the barter and exchange system because at first I was like, "Oh yeah, I can pay for everything."And then my savings started to dwindle down and I'm like, "Oh God. Oh God, it's really dwindling down. I'm not replacing it with anything." And that was scary. And you know, I thank God for my husband because he was, the financial backbone or else I'd probably be be on the streets or something. But-- Because it was a lot, it was just, it's just the thing is you really feel like you feel invincible when you start your business.You just feel like people are just going to come because of who you are. You're like, I'm just going to get business, but it doesn't necessarily work like that. You really have to make the right connections and be a part of the right associations. Um, there are all types of membership groups that you need to be a part of, associations, alliances that you need to, to research and figure out for your specific industry.And learn the art of collaboration. I feel like when I learned the art of collaboration is when money and more clients started to come to me. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:27:04] What type of collaborations, if you don't mind sharing? Sure. So even what we're doing now, like this is a collaboration, right? So, so collaborations can consist of anything from this.Monique Davis: [00:27:15] Uh, to last-- uh, when was it this year? What does issue 20, 20? I'm trying to think. Uh, yeah. So earlier this year, or either late last year, I had an event and I partnered with another staffing company, was actually a, um, a full IT staffing company. Now I do IT as well. But I love Telekom and HR. Those are my babies.I love to recruit that. I love cybersecurity as well, but I love telecom and HR. And so I collaborated with her on this event. We had a very successful event. I had was just telling individuals about social media in employer branding and how to do like, you know, social media, how to break down, we'll be getting influencers, et cetera, et cetera.So, we had this really great collaboration happen. From that lead to my client that will be happening in March, you know, just sign the paperwork, you know, signing all that information and it's gonna. It's, it's about to happen. But that collaboration, we validated each other. We trusted each other, you know what I mean?Like, you know, I have, she felt like the owner of the founders, she felt like I had her best interest at heart because I wanted to bring her in on something that, you know, could be really great. If we continue to do it. And so, um, things like that, you know, that, that, that type of collaboration, you know, finding someone who's a competitor but not a competitor, like someone who's in your space but not really in your space, you know?And so they have their own group of people that they may not be able to satisfy. You know, there's certain, um. Job orders that she can't really satisfy because of her-- her team is not as big, you know, and she, she needs someone to help out. It's things like that, you know, um, reaching out to those small, like National Association of Professional Women.I've collaborated with them. You know, my, my thing was, let me do, I did a presentation on the art of networking. I did that for free. And then of course, at the end. Yeah. I was like, "okay, let's buy some of my books." Okay. And so they bought some of my books and some of them set, scheduled some, um, consultation sessions with me on how to grow their business, um, from a talent acquisition perspective.And so, yeah, it's just like, there's so many ways to collaborate. We could go on and on and on about collaboration, but you just have to do it, period. Be with someone that's not yourself, don't go by yourself. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:29:44] What are some collaborations that sort of didn't work out or they weren't what you expected and sort of what now going forward, how can you identify them more easily?Monique Davis: [00:29:54] Okay. One collaboration, and I don't want to say that it didn't work out. I'm going to, I'm trying to say this the right way. So, so for me, I'm all about, when I talk about career readiness right. I'm all about the whole person. I'm not just about the skillset that you have. I'm about your personality. I'm about your appearance, how you look, right?Everything. I had an idea to do this like social media, brandy, like talent, career branding type of event, and in collaboration with a beauty company, a very well known group, Beauty company, and they even let me use their, their corporate offices at Nordstrom. It was really beautiful, really beautiful, really nice.Got some people to come on board. The thing about it was. It just wasn't set up properly. Okay. So for instance, in the registration, we, I didn't go into strong enough detail about what monies would go to their beauty supplies that they were going to have for the guests and what was going to be kind of my re up for what I put in to the event.Right. Because when you make, when you have events, and conferences and things like that, you don't make any money like that. You don't really make any money. So it's really branding. Right. And so I was just like trying to figure, so we didn't really go into detail. And so some things kind of got muddy. When it was time to like cash those coins.Okay. My biggest regret is not having that part in the contract. Not like it was kind of like glazed over. We didn't go into detail. We had communicated verbally and I thought, "Hey, your word is bond. My word is bond. Let's just get the contract together to say that we're doing this great event and leave it at that."And then I just went, I didn't do my due diligence. And so that was the biggest problem and it made me say, "hmmm, I don't want to do anything like that again because it didn't necessarily work out to my favor. Okay. "Jonaed Iqbal: [00:32:04] Well, I guess it was a good learning experience going forward It was Monique Davis: [00:32:07] a great learning experience and it was so beautiful, by the way. It was like a really beautiful event. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:32:12] Those are the best when it's like, look, it didn't work out how you wanted, but it's still a good learning experiences. Nothing really negative. So I'm going to ask you this because this is going to be more personal to you, that you are a minority woman without a degree. So your experience is very different, right? From some other demographics and some other, you know, just like a male. So what are some things where. It was, you know, that was specific to you being a minority woman and how'd you overcome that? Monique Davis: [00:32:36] So that's an everyday thing. However, I don't make it an everyday thing. You can have the discernment, you can have the feeling that they're treating you a little different."Oh, that's good for you." You're like, "Good for me. What does that mean?" And so, and so you have to kind of ignore those comp, those backwards compliments. Right? And you have to show improve. For me, it was about not giving it any energy, you know what I mean? Like I would be in rooms filled with just baby boomer, white males, and be the only, I traveled with them and, and I had, and I thought nothing of it.I, you know, I, they were like, "Hey, we're going out for beers or whatever and you know, we'll see you tomorrow." I'm like, "Hey, you didn't invite me." And they're like, "Oh, okay." I'm like, "yeah, let me go get my purse." I made them accept me, and I think that's why even till this day, a lot of them still reach out to me and say, "Hey, just checking in. I have this client that may need your services, et cetera, et cetera," because I didn't. I didn't hold on to trying to be the black girl or the minority girl or person of color or the girl in general. Okay. I didn't try to hold onto that. I just was my fabulous self because when I went out, I want it to be fabulous and I was still my confident itself.I think a lot of times we can feel the feeling, but choose the behavior. And so I could feel like there was sometimes it was just uneasiness, like they didn't know how to react to me. It wasn't like they were racist or anything. It was just that they just didn't know how to move with me, and I would just make it very easy for them.Like, "Hey, let's go. Come on guys. Let's go. What are you, are you guys going hunting? Okay, take me with you. I don't believe in it, but I'll just see what you guys are doing. Maybe I can save some beers or something" like I would, I just had a different type of a mindset on that whole minority thing. I just didn't accept it.I knew who I was. I walked boldly in it. I was proud of it, but I still wouldn't accept that you're going to treat me differently. I'm going to make you respect me. I'm going to do above and beyond what I should be doing. And it's gonna. It's gonna make you eat your words. If you do have a negative thing to say about me, Jonaed Iqbal: [00:34:58] You feel that just being assertive and owning yourself and knowing like, this is who I am. You got to accept me. I work hard and I got the job done. Monique Davis: [00:35:08] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's layman's terms, like that's the easiest way to break it down. That's exactly how my thought process was. I just did it. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:35:18] If you were starting over, how would you go about it? Monique Davis: [00:35:21] That's such a good question. Because my husband now, he's all about education.Okay. So he's, we're polar opposites. He's big on education and, um, and me, um, I like being educated. You know what I mean? I like being trained on things and learning things and reading books, but you know, just that traditional education I'm just not for it. So he always asked if you could do it over, would you go back?Would you go to school, would you finish college? And I go, I don't think so because my life has been this really great crate. Like a lot of the ways that I've been able to see my strongest parts of myself is when I felt that weakness. That inferiority. Right. When I felt that feeling, man, I'm not, it made me step up so strongly. I didn't feel entitled doing it over. I would do it. I would do it over. The only thing that I would change would be, I don't think when I first came down to when I paint, when I left the agency that I got this little gig at the staffing agency. Initially I left the job. I left this job, and I left it because one of the girls got on my nerves.And so when I think back in retrospect. I really wish that I never left that staffing firm position. It was like, it was my, it was like, I was so young. I was a recruiting coordinator. I wasn't a recruiter, but she was, we had gotten into like this really good friendship and I don't know, she was just getting on my nerves and I just did like working with her and I'm like, I gotta get up outta here.Cause she's like, and you know, with staffing it's like normally like what, four or five people at the desk, you got a branch manager and then you have the recruiting coordinator. So it's a very intimate environment. And so you have to see them every day. You have to. Somewhat have lunch with him every day.It's just like, it was too much for me and I was so young and just like, I don't want to deal with her. I don't even want to see her face, and so I would change that. That's the only thing in my career that I feel like I would change is to. Never does leave a position based on a temporary feeling Jonaed Iqbal: [00:37:37] You would have just tried to work it out, had a conversation, something like that.Monique Davis: [00:37:41] I wish that the mature Monique now, Oh yeah. I would have killed that job. I would have gained more experience on a lot of different things in staffing. I still gained it, but it was just like I didn't have to leave. I could have left on different terms. As a matter of fact, I remember the branch manager saying to me, "I don't feel like it's your time to leave. I feel like you're going to do some great things. I feel like you could run this place." She was telling me that as a recruiting coordinator and I was just like, nah, I'm good. I was being so stubborn, so spoiled. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:38:14] It happens, so what's in the future for you? Monique Davis: [00:38:17] What's in the future? Telecom is on the rise. It's been quiet.Telecom has been really quiet, so I've been getting a lot of different jobs with like a different, like service technicians and, um, cybersecurity opportunities and stuff like that. But I see. My baby coming back. Telecom is coming back. It's in terms of like having that, that high volume, real need for them. And so I see more contracts coming my way. I've had a lot of great meetings with some really great to medium size companies that that need help. I see getting more into that, I see more speaking engagements for, for me, because I love to speak. If you can't tell, and, um.Jonaed Iqbal: [00:38:57] I can tell.Monique Davis: [00:38:59] And I love to train. And so I do a lot of trainings, and so I'm hoping to get involved more with more educational institutes. Like I just did this past with Georgia tech or two weeks ago with Georgia tech going out and speaking to their cybersecurity cohorts about reverse sourcing and how to source backwards. So I do want to get more involved with, with career strategies. With job search, take me dealing with sourcing, but from a reverse pers- perspective for the job seeker, not for, for the client, right.So I want to do more of those things. So that's my play. That's what I see in 2020 for me. What do you speak on? I have this really great series called "How to make Mondays great again." It's like. All my trials and errors of what I didn't do to make my Mondays great. I learned when I figured out how to combat the Monday blues, it helped me with so much clarity in my job.So teaching individuals that. I talk about, I love social media. I think it's one of the most slept on tools for businesses and for marketing and everything. I do a lot of talks about influencer marketing because I myself am an influencer as well. Um, got into that and I like it and you know, get free stuff.Hey, who doesn't like that? Uh, so, so doing that, I talk about that and the holistic part of me talks about career identity and the Right Fit Methodology that I was telling you about my company, Fresh Talent Sources, we live off of that. That's our mantra. We find the right fit for your business and culture. Talking about the personality traits from DISC and how to really, really hire based on behavior and performance versus skills and this raggedy job description. So I talk about all of those things. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:40:56] So how would someone get in touch with you? So I want to reach out. I am on Instagram as @theMoniqueDavis. I'm on Twitter as career coach, Mo Davis, I think or CareerCoachMo and I'm on LinkedIn, just Monique Davis. You can email me Monique@F as in Frank, T as in Tom sources. So ftsources.com Yeah, do everything. But call me. I, I don't do a lot of calls, but you can email me. Email. Okay, cool. So if you want to reach out to Monique, I'm going to put all those things in the show notes.Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing the stories. It was a wonderful story and like I said, we'll be doing some collaborating in the future. Monique Davis: [00:41:38] Sounds good. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and thank you so, so much for having this platform. I told you that the reason why I was even interested in it was because of your title. NoDegree, and I was like, "Hey, that's me." And embracing, having people embrace that no degree does not mean no education, you know? No training. It just means that you didn't follow the traditional route, and so I just really appreciate your podcast and what it represents. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:42:06] Thank you. I just want to say you are no degree, right? You are the type of stories I want to give out and so thank you. This ws a perfect episode. Monique Davis: [00:42:13] Awesome. Thank you. Have a good one. Jonaed Iqbal: [00:42:16] You too. Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information is valuable and you learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. NoDegree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about this topics without bias. If you think the show's worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com/nodegree any amount is appreciated and will go towards making teacher episodes even better.Follow us on Instagram or snapchat @nodegreepodcast on Facebook at facebook.com/nodegreeinc. If you want to personally reach out to me, connect or follow me on LinkedIn at , Jonaed Iqbal. Spelled J O N A E D last name I Q B A L, until next time. No degree. No problem. No degree.com. [OUTRO]

In this Episode: More drama as states file lawsuits to block T-Mobile / Sprint Deal (0:49) Dish Network emerges as possible 4th wireless carrier pending DOJ approval of T-Mobile Sprint Merger (1:41) 5G news around the world (7:07) Windstream's 5G Fixed Wireless Access play (11:26)   Q&A   Do VoIP phones work better (or worse) than landline phones?(17:50)   Why was AT&T broken up? (22:34)   Are you willing to buy cell phone service from your cable provider? (24:49)     Show Notes:   5G news around the world    AT&T launches its 20th 5G service site to parts of Las Vegas for business customers -  https://about.att.com/story/2019/las_vegas_5g.html   Verizon turns up it's 3rd 5G city in Denver, CO & Providence, RI -  https://www.verizon.com/about/news/customers-denver-providence-verizon-5g   T-Mobile activates it's first 5G service in portions of 6 cities -  https://www.t-mobile.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s10-5g   Vodafone launches 5G service covering 15 cities in Spain - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-06/16/c_138146413.htm   South Korea reaches 1 million 5G connections - http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2019/06/133_270495.html   Windstream 5G Strategy - https://investor.windstream.com/news/news-details/2019/Windstream-Wins-5G-Spectrum-in-FCC-Auctions-to-Boost-Rural-Broadband-Speeds/default.aspx   Resource for "Why was AT&T broken up?" -  https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-many-cell-service-providers-instead-of-just-one-universal-provider/answer/Jahmal-Abbott?ch=10&share=deb23c76&srid=RoqN

Earlier this year, Mark Creekmore transitioned from a frustrated DSL customer to a champion for better Internet access in Georgia. A concerned citizen and tech consultant, Mark joins us for the latest Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast. He discusses his history with Windstream and the steps he went through to improve his Internet access. Along with … Continue reading "Mark Creekmore Takes on Windstream – Community Broadband Bits Podcast #69" ★ Support this podcast ★