On the Edge

Stephen Brown (00:01)
Welcome to On The Edge brought to you by Elite Sales Edge with your host, Stephen Brown. In the series, Getting to Know Your CXOs, we'll be diving deep into conversations with various C -level executives. We'll explore the formidable challenges they encounter, the critical decisions they make, and the lessons that have left a lasting impact on them. Sit back and prepare to gain some insightful knowledge from the leaders who shape the business world.

Welcome to On the Edge. This is your host, Stephen Brown, and I'm here with my guest, Chuck Reagan today. Chuck is CEO of VoIP Networks. With more than 25 years of telecommunications experience, Chuck Reagan stands at the forefront of the fastest moving industry trend, cloud services. Much of his time has spent coaching and mentoring his team of highly skilled and highly certified cloud professionals, ensuring that customers enjoy a smooth migration to cloud -based services.

with Cloud9 by Voigt Networks. Under Chuck's visionary leadership, Voigt Networks was an early adopter in cloud -based disaster recovery and cloud telephony services for the mid -level to enterprise markets. He guided the firm through its successful transition from traditional telecommunications reseller to state -of -the -art subscription -based cloud provider with long -term customer contracts. Chuck is a recognized industry speaker,

providing state of the industry updates and thought leaders for big entities like the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, the VoiceCon trade shows and various Wall Street analysts. He's also appeared on the cover of Channel Pro Magazine and he's featured in the article Cashing In on Smartphones. Chuck holds a BS in business from Rutgers University. Chuck, we're glad to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks for having me.

Hey Chuck, why don't you I gave him the formals on you. Why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? Yeah, great. Thanks for having me on on Steven. Well, let's see. I'm a husband father of three plus a dog and lifer in the telecommunications industry. You and I as you know go way back and I've been doing this now. I'm going on 34 years in the telecommunications industry and started out.

just simply as a regional interconnect company. And now we've grown it to a global cloud computing company. Wow, that is awesome. Yeah, Chuck, we do go way back. It's been quite the journey. You've built how many companies down? And I think you've mentioned you've actually acquired some companies. Yeah, we've done a recent acquisition of Wesley Clover Solutions to expand our finance division and bring on some talent from Wesley Clover. But we're serial.

company starters at VoIP networks for serial serial company starters. We really have been chasing that elusive hockey stick revenue, you know, up and to the right. And when it was you and I started out, we were selling telephone systems and voicemail and slinging dial tone. And, you know, it was as good as your last sale. You hope they buy a maintenance contract, you hope they

have you out with your technician and your real expensive truck to overcharge them in hours, look at the labor to do a move out or a change. All of that's changed these days. We started one company that way, World Wide Telecom. Then that grew into a company called VoiceGuard, which when the company you were with, Mitel, came out with that Mitel Teleworker product. That got us into data centers and basically selling insurance for disaster recovery for telecommunications.

a company with some venture capital we named VoiceGuard. And through VoiceGuard, we found that people wanted to rent phone systems as opposed to owning them all the time. So that eventually led to VoIP networks and our Cloud9 by VoIP networks offering, which now comes in a retail and a hotel capacity. Very nice. So let's dive right into it, Chuck. I mean, you've built companies, you've acquired companies, you're president and CEO.

networks, what advice would you give to a brand new CEO? He's going into his or her first month. What do you think is the most important stuff to get off?

Well, if you're going into a company that's matured or is growing, the first thing you want to do is go in and meet with everyone. You know, from the ground up, you want to talk to the entry level person who maybe is back in the warehouse, or you want to talk to the sales team, you want to talk to the operations team. You want to learn. You know, if you come in spouting knowledge, whereas you don't even know the people that you're working with, it's generally viewed as a false start. Sometimes people will tune you out just because of the message.

Whereas if you go in and you're inclusive and you just listen, you know, a successful meeting, I was told a long time ago is when you talk 15 % of the time and the other person talks 85 % of the time. So you go in and you listen and you learned, you know, being a CEO, you're not on a pitch count. You don't have to swing at every other, every other ball that's thrown your way. You sit back and you listen. Then when it comes time, you have to decide, you give direction. And generally, if you've listened enough, the direction is usually,

what most of the people in the room wanted to do. You just get labeled as the C type person who, you know, said engage. So Chuck building companies, the most important asset you can have obviously is the people. So can you share with the audience your philosophy on building a team, what you look for in leadership and really what are the core attributes for you as a great leader? Well, it's generally the person that doesn't want to manage anyone.

someone standing up saying, yes, I want to manage, ask them to sit down. Because it's usually the person who is just a person who wants to get the job done. They want to get the job done right. They want to get the job done the first time right. Generally, that person works well unsupervised. And you can count on when times are tougher, when things really you're up against it. That's the kind of person you want in a managerial capacity. You're someone who does it reluctantly.

Uh, but because they're going to do what they make sure it gets done. Right. Uh, someone who just wants to seize power to seize power, uh, usually has some sort of agenda that it's not going to be productive overall for the success of the organization. So choose wisely. Uh, usually you made the right choice. Most people are going to look around and nod their head and say, yeah, I would have chosen them to, or her too. Can you talk through Chuck, your, your thought press, sorry, your thought process.

and how you approach making difficult decisions.

Well, let's start with COVID. That's the most recent, as you had mentioned, tsunami that no one saw coming, a time where you couldn't report to the office, you were discouraged from reporting to the office. And that's for what I refer to as knowledge -based workers, someone who can telework, someone who can remotely get their job done as well or almost as well, maybe if not better, than actually driving and reporting to an office. A transactional worker, they didn't have that luxury.

You know, that burger's not going to flip itself. That car is not going to drive itself off the lot or make it through that car lot on its own. So there was a lot of transactional people then. And that's really who I empathize the most with. Those people, those heroes, right, who showed up at the hospitals, the nurses, the doctors and whatnot, the front line grocery store workers. So if you try and empathize with them, you'll understand what the organization is going through. So if you have to manage in that environment,

You have to be able to put yourself in that person's shoes. You have to say, what's their challenge? Do they have childcare issues? Do they have two people in that relationship that are both working and there's children, young children involved? My heart really goes out to the people who had young children do this. Boy, they really got taught on an iPad quickly. But how do you make the decision in there? You have to understand your role, right? Am I transactional business or am I?

handling knowledge -based workers, like for example, an insurance company might do quite well. We have a lot of insurance companies that were customers that easily pivoted to an at -home environment. Their challenge was how do you make sure that people are working? There's no clock in, clock out. So a lot of tools were developed for home -based workers during that time as a result of the need to track people. As you know, you and I worked for years in contact centers.

to where agents are logging in and logging out or clocking in and clocking out. And that's the easy one. But what about the people who maybe were, as I call them, cube dwellers? That you could look over the cube and see that that person's doing their job, not doing their job. So for us during COVID, we pivoted quite nicely because we were already largely a home -based organization. Most of our folks work throughout the country. So it's impossible to...

maybe get to a local office. So we've used it as an asset, you know, our ability to work from home, the managing from home, as you mentioned, that's a different skill set altogether. And that, you know, that takes a steady hand and understanding, you know, what your workers are going through and listening to them. That's great. So here's a topic that I think is just top of mind for everybody. AI, it's exciting on one hand and you know, it's kind of

but it's gonna impact business big time one way or another. As a CEO, I can imagine you've got a pretty healthy opinion on this. I'd love to hear what you think about AI and what is how it's gonna impact business and people's lives frankly. Well, it's funny. It's just the next thing in my opinion. It's going to be, first of all, it's gonna need to be regulated. Even the people who are creating AI are raising their hands and say, this needs to be regulated, which typically,

People early on in a developmental stage don't say, come regulate me, right? This stuff is so scary sometimes that you don't know who you're talking to. You don't know what you're talking to. It's really the beginning of what's real and what's not real. We've seen different glimpses of it in the past in different forms, but some of the things I've seen as recently as last week, Tyler Perry, the director said, he was going to invest 800 million, I think, down in the Atlanta area, I think we're at on a studio.

And when he saw the latest AI, just by talking to an AI interface and saying, build me this sort of background with cheetahs running through the, and he was blown away. He says, why would I invest this much money in a soundstage when I know that over there I can do it for no cost. Now he's an advocate of saying, look, let's regulate it and save the jobs associated with his industry. But that's the real fear, right? Is the Skynet.

You know, from term, this kind of Terminator thing, you know, is this just the beginning? And then the machines learned and then they got smart. Well, you know, today's applications are quite practical for us in our industry. You know, we're now dealing with people's websites, that chat bot that comes up when you're saying, Hi, may I help you? We have our AI interfaces, you know, basically, you know, screen scraping their website and garnering the knowledge like, you know, we have a lot of universities and the universities, for example.

you know, we'll have the AI chat bot study their website and it happens in seconds, you know, and it's answering general questions. What kind of GPA do I need? And you can have an AI interface tell you, you know, what you need to do on your SATs, if anything, or, you know, what kind of grade point average do you have? What kind of support can I expect by way of scholarship or grant money? Those are things that used to go into the university contact center. They're investing money to say, hey, if I can get, you know, a majority of our

most frequently asked questions. Today's generation, those students who are looking to go to college in their late teens or early 20s, they're going to use a mobile phone. And they're not going to want to pick up and call somebody. I don't think they know how to hold the phone up to their ear, quite frankly. I think it only stays out here in front of them. So let's turn on a speakerphone. You're probably going to do a chat pod with them. And think about it, that's going to save that university a lot of money.

That student's going to get, or the parent's going to get the information they need right away. But on the flip side, I'm also seeing a lot of rushing into AI for what I call AI FOMO, you know, fear of missing out. You know, a lot of people say, we have to implement AI. And I'm like, slow down. Why? What is it you're going to do with it? Because one example I saw, I think it was Air Canada. Just last week, I read that a person off of the AI chat bot,

asked about a grievance, a bereavement fair. And the chat bot went in and said, if you apply within nine days, we'll refund your fair with proper, you know, acknowledgement that it was for indeed this reason. And the airline said, well, that's not our policy. We didn't agree to that. And they actually went to court. Now Air Canada was dumb enough to only offer them $100 to go away, you know, towards a free ticket. And that even made that person more mad. Guess what? He took them to small claims court and won. They said, that's an extension of your organization.

Sure. So that's an AI is now making financial decisions, you know, in this example, you know, for air Canada and however many other people might've caught that loophole. And well, behold, I went and looked on it the next, you know, the next day it's shut down right now. I'm sure it's under maintenance. Cause it costs them money. So, you know, healthy fear of missing out isn't the worst thing. Yeah, that just, um, I can see where companies would want to get out on their front foot, you know, cause they're.

You know, I think it's that old adage of walk before you run type of thing. Right. And then let's figure out if this technology, we know it's going to be relevant, but let's just figure out how first. I know personally, you know, I read a lot and I like to write a lot, but I found I literally get into conversations with chat GPT when I'm writing an article. Now it's taken that process from normally it would take you about, you know, maybe.

to really get the thing where you really want it, because you come back to it, you start, you stop and all this. Nowadays, you just say, look, I want to put together a detailed article about these four topics, and then it'll spit out an outline or something. Broad strokes become very detailed. Yeah, and then you just keep going back and forth with it, almost like a person, but what do you think about this? And then you get a really good piece of content. It takes an hour. It's fantastic.

One of the things that's always fascinated me, and I mean, I'm a brand new entrepreneur, so I'm kind of in that scared, excited phase, you know, and, you know, you've been... That never leaves. You don't cure that. You just manage it. Awesome. Awesome. Good to know. But it's, I've always admired folks that have done this, you know, they step out, they take the risk and they do that. So you've built several companies, you know, over the years. We've talked to...

You've acquired some, but I mean, let's get into that emotional side of it a little bit. Let's talk about where the inspiration come from. What did that feel like, and how did you get to that decision?

Well, for example, like in our current world, we're in a cloud services environment, which required a significant investment about 14 years ago. Very significant, like life altering investment. And that really, that's because the cloud services at the time that were just emerging were with the large carriers, the Verizon's, the AT &T's, and they were.

of the mindset, you know, we're going to own the customer, we're going to pay you a commission, which in essence, you become an agent, they now are the holder of your client. And if the client has a bad experience, they're not coming back to you. They're never coming back to you, they're going to let you know it. If they have a great experience, best case, you still, you know, you still collect that revenue from that partnership. But, you know, what I saw at the time was, I'm not willing to trade my customer base for, you know, somebody else's experience and then a small

portion of the pie. So we said, if we're going to do this cloud business, we're going to invest in data centers, in equipment, services that we, that scared the life out of us. You know, quite frankly, because when you consider the importance with some of the customers we have, you know, we have suicide hotlines, we have hospitals, we have municipalities, we have a lot of, you know, very, very mission critical applications. So, you know, the fear that you mentioned.

The fear of losing money, the fear of not being successful, the fear of having somebody else take your customer is what motivated me every day to get up and try again and to do better. And then, you know, it's like Warren Buffett's book, The Snowball. You know, you start out with a snowball at the top of the hill and it rolls down and it collects more snow and pretty soon the snowball starts to grow. And, you know, for us, luckily, it was and is a success to, you know, and we just hope to keep growing it.

Yeah, it's, I appreciate you sharing that with us, Chuck. That's, you know, I'm sure looking back, you know, it's, I'm sure there's a lot of fond memories, but I can only imagine being in that seat. Cause it's one thing to, you know, for somebody on the outside to look at it, but man, if you can really put yourself into that, like I'm about to make a decision that is life altering, not only for me, but for those people that are around me. That's a big, that's a big risk.

So glad it was. It is and it was. But you know what? Fear is an incredible motivator. It says get up, get out of bed or you're not going to bed yet. You got to finish these two proposals and have them ready for the morning. So yeah, look, that's what an entrepreneur is going to do. That's someone who is in a C -suite. That person has to, you're going to make mistakes and really your success is just a combination of your mistakes plus one.

You know, so that's kind of look at it. You know, you stand on the shoulders of your mistakes and you know, they call that experience now. So you use your experience to, you know, to try and push forward. That's awesome. All right, Chuck, I only have one question for you here, a final question. You know, so today with the internet and this has been this way probably, you know, for quite some time now, it's really democratized information.

Um, what advice would you have for today's sales professionals wanting to engage with the C -level folks? I mean, I have my own opinions on this, but I would love to hear it from a C -level. Well, my first boss, when I started out in sales, put a phone book on my desk and said, start with the A's. Yeah. Just start cold calling. Cause you think about it at the time, we were selling business phone systems, for example, and how do you really know if somebody needs a business phone system? You don't. So, you know, that was the worst.

coaching experience of my sales career. So I was forced to go out and network. You know, the only way I'm going to find out the products and services that I was selling is somebody else is going to have to give me a lead. Someone else, we didn't have the money to market ourselves. We were too small. We, you know, we were up against AT &T, Lucent, all of the, you know, larger players, Siemens and whatnot. They had big budgets. People knew who they were. They got invited.

in for quotes. You know, I had to get myself invited in somehow. So, a number of different things. Networking is still far and away the most important aspect of a salesperson's career, in my humble opinion. If you're constantly trying to help someone else do their job, your job will take care of itself because that person's name usually won't forget it and B, is looking to probably, you know, find what's good for Chuck. You know, so if

If I'm constantly going to a lead networking group, I was always not the person looking for leads. I was giving what I call reverse leads. Hey, I have these five customers and here's the needs that they have. One needs an IT manager, one needs this, one needs that. Well, some guy in that group's a recruiter. Says, you have somebody that needs an IT manager, let's talk. You know, the other guy, you know, or other gal might be saying, hey, you know what, I'm a realtor. And you just mentioned you have, you know, two people relocating into the area. Can I talk to them about, you know, who,

I can show them around, maybe get a sale out of it. So reverse leads are for me is what is the asset that I have that I can put forth to the networking group and then be willing to share it to some extent by way of an introduction. Because when you do that, you're extending your reputation. So you have to check the people in your lead networking group and make sure that there's somebody that you would want doing business with your client base, right? The second thing is, is there was no internet when I started. I didn't know anything about a company unless I went to the library and looked at their annual report if they were public.

or stood outside their building and maybe try to understand what was going on on the other side of that door. So today's sales reps have a lot more tools to be able to A, link in with somebody. And if you do link in, please don't send them a sales pitch 10 seconds later because I have so many LinkedIn requests and then it's hi, nice to meet you. I'd like to network. And then it's, would you like a widget? And I'm like, that's a delete right there. I really don't have time for that. So.

If you're going to be in a lead networking group, if you're going to network with something, bring something to the table. Try and find out what they need and learn about that company. You know, a lot of times I had a very hard time understanding, you know, what ABC vacuum company did. Did they make vacuum? No, they made vacuum tubes that went into industrial. So, you know, you have those resources and websites, you know, understand and be able to, if you're in a meeting with a C level person, you're even an entry level, you know, gate holder. You just.

basically tell them what their website says. You know, hey, I saw that you, you know, did this for ABC company and that was the biggest project that you guys, people just love to hear, you know, about themselves. They love to hear that other people are understanding what they do. And lastly, I think we talked about this earlier was, you know, write them a note. I'll send them an email. They get a million emails. And if you, if I, we all get a million emails from people we don't know. That's why there's spam filters and junk emails. You ever try writing them a note? My second favorite thing is send them a fax.

Have you ever known, and in fact, these aren't as popular as they once were, but did you ever know somebody to not deliver a fax? If you walk up to a fax machine and there's a fax sitting in there, someone will spend an after morning trying to find Stephen Brown to say, Steve, I found your fax. Thank you so much for your time. It's been my great pleasure to know you. I've learned a ton from you and I really appreciate you giving me your time and sharing your time with the audience out there today. So for the audience out there,

regardless of where you are, if your business is in need of a contact center or you need a company to come in and help you take a look at your existing implementation, there's nobody better than VoIP Networks. So give Chuck Rigan and his team a call over there.

Thanks, Stephen. I really appreciate your time. And also to someone who's viewing this maybe for the first time and considering Stephen's services, no one I could recommend hire to motivate a sales team or to take your organization to the next level. Best wishes, Stephen. Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate it. Have a great day. You too.