Everstream Walks The Talk With CEO Brett Lindsey – RCR Wireless News

The kind of culture a company has is reflective of the kind of leaders it has. When leaders walk their talk and get involved in the overall business processes, the company walks alongside it too. In this episode, Carrie Charles brings over someone who has shown tremendous passion, realness, and involvement to his company. She sits down with the President and CEO of Everstream, Brett Lindsey. Brett shares with us how he has built a culture around authenticity, inclusivity, and diversity. He talks about how he empowers his employees and leaders to lead effectively and powerfully. Moreover, Brett then tells us about the things they are looking forward to this 2021 and how they are planning to move with the market as fiber-based network service providers.

I amthrilled to have with me,Brett Lindsey. He isthePresidentand CEO ofEverstream.Brett,welcome to the show.

Thank you. I appreciate being here.

I want to say that weve been working with Everstream for quite some time, and I was excited when you accepted my invitation to come on the show.Onething Im excited about is speaking to you from a leadership perspective, because Ive heard many great things about not just Everstream, but also about you as a leader.Canyou discuss a little bit about your journey, how you got to where you are, maybe some challenges that you faced along the way, some of your greatest professional achievements?

I joke around that I grew up wanting to be in telecom,and its not quite true, but I had a mentor when I was in college thathappened to be the president of a company in telecom. I thought,Thisguy has got a great life. I wonder what I can do to replicate what hes done.I asked him and he said,Hereswhat you do. You start off selling telephone equipment because youll understand what the customer wants.Once youve done that for a little while, and if youve been successful, then you move to an operating companysoyou can understand the nuts and bolts of how you deliver the underlying services to those companies.Thisis starting in sales.Onceyouve done that,then you need to take a pay cut and move into operations and figure out how to manage that side of the business,and understand how it all comes together.Ifyoure fortunate enough, then youll get an opportunity to leave a big company and go work for a smaller venture back or PEbackedcompany where you can then get into leadership roles.Hopefully,that will allow for you to move into a presidency overall like I had.I thought, That sounds good to me.

I did not finish college. I got hired in Aprilinmy senior year of college. I ended up flagging two classes that last semester and didnt graduate.Igot the job in April. I was excited. It was a juniorAG for thecompany at the time calledWilTel selling key systems, which most people dont know what that is anymore. I was excited to get this job.Twoweeks later, they called and told me that there was going to be a hiring freezeandI wasnt going to get to startuntilDecember. I wasscrewed at that point. I hadnt graduated from college. I had accepted the job and I needed to figure out how to live until December. I started doing landscaping for rich people in OklahomaCityat theNichols Hillsneighborhoods to make ends meet.Myjob started in December. I started working in sales. I loved itandI had been there about six months when the company decided to do away with my position,and itwas going to force me to have to double my quota.

I went to my manager and said,I can do this. Youvegot to give me a chance. She gave me that opportunitytosomeone that Im still in contact with now.Itwasthe beginning of my trajectory through telecom and it was atWilTel. Istayed thereuntiltheTelecomAct happened in 1996, which was my leverage into the operating business side of things. I was at BrooksFiber.Mymentor who told me what to do became a regional president in Ohio.Thatshow I moved from OklahomaCityto Columbus, Ohio to work with him back in the day for our nextlane, which later became XO, which is now part of Verizon.

Icontinued to have these steps with big companies. I wasona quest for awhile and the JoeNachosdays, and everybody remembers what happened there. Ourdivision was calledCross-link,and we were a pet project of his.Whenhe got let go, our division got shut down, and itwas two days before my son was born. I was sitting there thinking,Im going to have some challenges here.I immediately landed a position with MCPartners,which was a private equity firm that had invested in a couple of companies. Icontinued to work with them multiple times and they were my first big equity partner at Everstream.Wehad successful exits together.Forme, it was trying to get that big company experience moving into a more entrepreneurial environment where I felt like I could have a bigger impact on the business.Ihave been able to take that opportunity with both hands and continue to grow the business that way.Its atestamenttounderstanding that if you are well-rounded in the business, it helps you be successfullater in life.Iwas fortunate to have some great mentors and coaches along the way.

Thatsthe power of mentorship. Youvegot some great advice when you were younger.Thatsone thing Id love to speak on is mentorship being a mentor, as well as a mentee.Youvetouched every piece of telecom. I could see why youre successful and youre such a great leader.Thatsawesome.Tellme about Everstream,your services, who are your customers,and a little bit about your offices locations,andthe markets that you serve?

Welike to keep it simple.We are a fiberbased network service provider. We like to own,operate everything that we connect customers to. In 2020,93% of every circuit that we sold to a customer was directly connected to our network. We believe that is how you win those customers, keep those customers and continue to grow.Forus, its allfiber all the time.The idea is how can we build more fiber than anyone else in the markets that were inbecausewe believe that delivering ethernet,internet, some dark fiber isthe key for us.Our business has shifted a little bit.Westarted outheavy on wholesale, then moved into enterprise.Thatwas when we were in Ohio.When we brought in our initial funding in 2015 with MC,we acquired GLCCommLink up in Michigan, and we also are at LynxNetwork Group.

Thattook us from Ohio to Michigan.Wepicked up some other services along the way, but weve always kept our core and focusing on enterprise customers and the wholesale space, andnot try to get away from marketing. We didnt decide to become a data center company orget into voice or unified messaging or anything else.Wewant to buildourown and operate as much fiberas possible.Thathas helped us well. Wedid a transaction in 2018 where we sold Everstream toAMP.Thebasic premise there was weve been successfullydoing it in a couple ofstates. I like the Midwest,I likethework ethic of the people,the business community thats here.Forme, it was,How can I find a partner that will allow us to continue to grow our business?

Werenow in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, well be closing ontheUnity transaction, and thatwill take us into Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.Withsomewinannouncements, well also be opening up Kentucky.Thebusiness has continued to evolve.Wewant to make certain that we are connecting as many people as possible to our fiber networks,and that we have robust networks that are there for our customers.Theconversations of talking about100MBor1 GB adays past, customersarenow askingfor 10GBlike it wasnt1GBor100MB.Afew years ago, 40GB or100 GB. Itsabout having the capacity and the assets to be able to keep your customers happy.

Youkeep your employees happy too.Mycompany,Broadstaff, weplace people with Everstream and we always hear that they are happy. I want to talk about that a bit. What is it like to work for Everstream?Whatsthe culture like there?

Thereare very few things in our organization that are top-down, but culture is one of them.Tome, the culture has to start at the top and it has to be embodied by me and everyone on our executive team,and flow through everybody in the organization so that its clear,concise and consistent.Whenwe started down this path, the idea was,Whatare the key valuesandmantras? What can we have peopleinternalize so that it can help them understand what we need to do every day?Thefirst one is,Dowhat you sayyou willdo.Thepalindrome,Dowhat you say you will do,is everywhere in our office. Its on the walls, on t-shirts, its everywhere.Forus, thats our golden rule. That the idea is whether its a co-worker,customer, partner, vendor, whomever, that we will do what we say we will do.Itstattooed on my arm in Latin.Itsmy own thing as well.Fromthe standpoint of understanding that every day, whether thats for work or my family, my kids, whatever that is, that Im doing that as well.Thatsthe first one.

The second one is happypeople, happy customers. There is not a chance in hell that your customers are going to have a positive experienceifyour employees do not enjoy their jobs.Itsnot going to happen.Wedo a ton on developing ourpeople.Forthemany years in a row, weve grown exponentially in sizeandpromoted 20% of our staff every year.Weare very focused and conscientious about giving people development plans that allow them to stay with us.Wewant to review those on a regular basis.Ive been here formanyyears. Weve got a lot ofpeoplethat have been with me during that duration.

Whatsgreat to me is having examples in the organization that other new people can come in and see, and understand thatmanyyears ago,they were the person thats now the vice president of our customer engagement team.Thatperson startedincustomer service, became a manager, then became a director and is now running a very large team with that organization. We have a gentleman that started in the NOC and then went into engineering and became a manager.Hesnow VP of ourNetworkEngineering team.Wehave multiple stories ofpeoplethat have come in and stayed with us.Theystayedwith us because our feeling is different than what theyre used to.Itsdifferent because we spend a lot of time talking about it, caring for our people.

Thelast one on that space is once people hit that magic five-yearmark,I view those people at the highest risk.Ifyouve been here for five years, and if you havent been promoted a coupleoftimes, your compensation hasnt changed dramatically over that period of time, youre riding to get picked off.Howdo we do that?Wedo that one because every single employee in our company is an owner. Everyone in our organization has shares.Those peoplethat have been with us before when we sold back in 2018, participated in,and theyllpay it again whenever our next event is.Theidea is that everyone needs to feel like they have ownership in whats going on.Alsothat thosepeoplethat have been here for five years, some people are comfortable doing what theyre doing.I may be a splicer and I love splicing them. Thats what I want to do every day. As long as that person is happy doing that, thats great, but we want to make sure that people are there.

Thelast one is our no asshole policy.Peoplejokeandthink thats funny when I say it.Itsthe one that I take the most pride in because its the one thing that if you say and you dont live up to that rule, somebody is going to call you on it.Theidea iswe cannot have someone in our organization that isscreaming at people, yelling at people, badgering them, that doesnt work. We know that and it doesnt keep people happy.Iftheyre not happy, then the customers arent happy.

Wevehad some instances where weve had some fairly highuppeoplein the organization who were assholes,and thosepeopledidnt make it.Wehad a holiday party one time and the guy decided to show up,have too much to drink,break some people and pass out at the bar.OnMonday,he was gone.Iwrote a note to the team on Monday after we let the person go and told that team,I want to make sure you understand that theno asshole policyapplies to all.Wewant to make certain that people understand that they need to have a safe environment where they feel comfortableexpressingtheir opinions and can challenge things.Wedo not serve ourselves or our customerswellby having a bunchof people that all think the same.Wehave a very diverse work culture here,and45% of our team are female. Weve got every ethnic variety you can imagine within our organization.Forus, webelieve that having that difference of opinion allows for our business to be better and makes people want to stay here.

Did you say 45% of your team?

Thatsthe lateststatandits an all areas,permitting,construction, finance, HR,sales, all throughout the organization.

Youwrote an article on LinkedIn about diversity. First of all,I love your realness.Whenyou speak, I get what youre saying. Lets talk about that article briefly about diversity,about your passion around it, and also the new initiative you created because of that.

In2020, it was hard for everybody. Itwas an odd feeling that our business grew exponentially during 2020 while other people were suffering.Businesseswere suffering, but even more than that, you have the social injustice undertone that went out the entire year. I was struggling at trying to figure out how could I specifically make a difference as it relates to racism and diversity, and being able to have those conversations within our team. Iwasinvited on a flyfishing trip to Montana right around the same time that the racial unrest was at its peak. I went there with the idea of unplugging,and instead tried to focus on how can I help on this specific issue and ended up connecting with two African-American gentlemen that were on the trip with me.

Ithought,Theseguys are here. Oneis from Atlanta andone isfrom California. I can figure out how to ask them questions and learn something.Themost key thing that was shared with me was,Youneed tolisten more. You need to talk to people, ask questions, but also educate yourself about some of the issues.Whatthey recommended most was that I readtheLetter from Birmingham Jailthat waswritten by Martin Luther King, Jr.in 1963.Whenyou read them, youre taken with the fact that this guy is such an amazing line.Takeapart all of the challenges that he was facing at thattime.Thefact that you could sit inside of a jail and write one of the most eloquent things Ive ever read, and be able to describe succinctly the challenges that were facing.

Whenyou read it, you could replace Birminghamnowwith Detroit, Chicago, LA, any city in the US.Youcould read thatand think,Thiscould have been written now, but how sad is it that it was written in 1968andhow little have we come in that period of time? Itstrying to address these issues and make it better.Thelast thingthat spoke to me,and Im trying to get some of my peers to think about it more,is this idea that Martin Luther saysitsnot the raging racist or the KKK that hes concerned about. Its the moderate white male, and that person wants the issue to go away.Theywant to like,Im sorry that you feel that way, but lets move past it,becausethey feel uncomfortable.They dont want to raise their hand and talk about something.Thatmakes other people feel uncomfortable because they somehow feel thats not their role.

Whathes saying is that is wrong. Those are the people that we need to be helped with the most that your silence effectively is hurting us more than anything else.Mychallengeinthe piece on LinkedIn was to create awareness and make sure that my team knew that I was thinking about it.Secondlyisto try to getpeoplein our space, which are predominantly white 50-year-old malesto take a step forward and trying to do something beyond whats good for our business or ourselves.

Theressomething about you as a leader, and Ive learned a lot from you from our brief conversations,and also what I hear about you as a leader from the people that weve placed there at Everstream, youre involved, committed and passionate, but then you also empower people at the same time.Youreinvolved in the interview process and some followup post-interview with the growth and development of your team. Tell me a little bit about your involvement and also how you empower others and empower your leaders to lead effectively and powerfully?

Thefirst thing I talked about for the business why people want to be here is because of our culture. I view myself as the final gatekeeper when somebody joins the business.Peoplethink its more altruisticlikeIcant wait to talk to every single person that were interviewing, but its to make certain that we dont bring the wrong person in our doors.Wehave an interview processdepending on everyperson, no matter what level, between3to5people. Im the final interview for every employee that we have.Itsa different type of conversation. I dont spend time going through peoples resumes. They have barfed that up to five people before they get to me. I dont need to ask them again how they got into telecom and their last job.

Instead, I use it as an opportunity to try to get to know them.Myquestions are,Describeyour life from birth until the end of high school.Areyou1of3? Didyou play soccer? Did your parents go to divorce?Whatever it is that makes that person into who they are. Thesecond one is,Whatdo you do for fun?Whenyoure not working,howdo you spend your time?I learned more about peoples families,hobbies and things that I otherwise would not know for quite some time after somebody joined us.Thelast oneis,Whyare you leaving where you are?Itssad and awesome for us at the same time.Sadthat most people are leaving where they are because they dont feel appreciated,because they dont feel like the direction is truly shared with them,andthat they dont feel like theyre having an impact at the place where they are.

Thoseare things that we can solve for people. Those are the things that were doing it correctly. Those people will feel differently when they come to Everstream.Thesecond that I do is once somebody is on board, we have an onboarding call3to4weeks after the person joins with us.Myquestion is,Didwe do what we said we would do? Was your laptop sitting at your desk? Did you have access to all this stuff?Isthere training that you need? What can I do to make certain that you are successful in this role with us?Thefeedback that I constantly get from people is one,I never thought I would talk toyouduring the interview process. Second,I never thought Id probably talk to you again.

Beingable to talk to them again after theyve been on board for that is key.The other thing is we believe that we have to be out in the market.Theway that we operate our businessis by having whoever touches the customer needs to be local in that specific area, which is different from a lot of telecom companies where everything keeps getting more and more centralized into the headquarter grand goofball location, which doesnt work for us.Theother thing that weve done, especially during COVIDin 2020,whichwas a little dicey, but we were trying to travel to every market once a month through social distancing and everything else. They saw our faces because2020was a challenge for people,lets be clear.Itwas difficult to try to keep peoples morale up.

Wehad a tremendous year and our own people felt guilty about it. We built over 10 million feet of fiberin 2020,weinstalled customers in every state that we now operate in. We opened new offices in every state.Alot took place in the midst of very difficult times for others.Ourability to try the best we could to communicate with people,have them see us,and make certain that they felt like they were connected to what we were trying to do with the business has helped us continue that culture.

Everstream is growing exponentially.Its exciting toknow. Lets talk about hiring.Whatson your radar for 2021?Are you hiring?Whattypes of roles?Whatare you looking at there?

Weare hiring. Ourexpectation is well add somewhere between 75 to 80 people. Some of those are also going to come through the acquisitions that were either scheduled to close or those that were in the process,but we will be staffing across the markets.Wealso have a team of what we call a national team.What theyre doing is tasked with going into some of the expansion markets where we haveacontract.Wehave a customer in that area.Wehave the team now focused on doing the initial design engineering and permitting to get that market on its way.Onceit started to starttoconstruct fiber and were moving towards the solid customers, then we would bring in that director of field services and OSB manager,high-speedmanager, and all the bodies that are required.

Inany given market, youretypically going to see 25 to 35 people managing everything from a local level.Wewant to be able to see those markets with more of a higherup view,and then be able to hand them off to someoneonce its a little bit more mature. Thatsa process that weve been evolving.Wehired a gentleman,Drew Mullin from Crown Castle. Itsover our corporate development group and hes leading that team.Wevecontinued to add local talent at every as well as in the organization,andCleveland istheretoo.

Forus,outside plan,inside plan,sales, anything and everything that you can imagine that we need for our business, we are not planning on slowing down from the standpoint of what we construct or install.Forus, its making certain that weve got Xinthebacklog and were going to install Y each quarter, how many bodies need to be in our shop to be able to make that happen. I feel like we figured out our machine,and we know exactly each quarter what needs to come in to make sure that we deliver on our promises to customers.

Whats your vision for the next five years?Wheres Everstream going to be?

Im not sure that I can answer that. If youd asked memanyyears ago, I would have not given the answer of where we are now for sure. I wouldnt want to be limitinginwhere I think well be.Ifwe keep doing what we havebeen doing, our workwill continue to come.Wehave been opportunistic at looking at acquisitions that made sense where we could find fiberrich assets with products that aligned with ours, with smart people that we could bring into the business.Wewill keep doing that. We will continue to grow organicallyinevery one of these markets. Werenot interested in being competitors to a lot of our peers.Itdoesnt make sense for me to move towards greatplainsbecause,withthe way that we view it,and it sounds like an odd thing to say,we want to be inthethird place.

AT&T,because of market shareandthe fact that theyve been here for hundredplus years,is going to be first in market share in the market.The second is going to be the MSO, whether thats Comcast orCharteror whoever that is.Thenwe want to be the one that is deploying the most fiber thats adding the most customers and is taking market share on this market.Ifyou consider that weve gone from twostatesto where we are now and the availability of business in those areas, we have plenty to do for the next several years.Whenwe marry our carrier wholesale wireless business and everything thats happening in 5G, which is pushing us hard, and then our enterprise demand, which is continuing to hammer us for more bandwidth organically, more services, everything that they need.Ifwe stick to our knitting, well be finefiveyears from now.

Manytimes when companiesgrowandthey grow fast through acquisitions, as well as organically, the culture changes,things change.Wehear this quite a bit from candidates. They say,Thingshave changed since X happened.Thecompanyis different since X happened.It sounds to me like that is not going to be the story of Everstream. How do you maintain a cohesive culture through all the growth and acquisitions?

Itsa shit ton of work.Thechallenge is trying to get the people that you bring on board. You ask the question about how do you empower your people?Thisis how we keep our culture growing.Weview the directors in the market.Inevery large market, we have a director of field services and a director of sales, and they manage 90% of the bodies that are in that market.Ifthat market is not succeeding, it isnt because somebody in Cleveland didnt do what they needed to do. Its because we failed at the local level to make those people feel supported,involved and had the tools that they needed to be successful.Forus, we have spent a ton of time and we did thisthoughtfully.

Backin 2019, we engaged withAMP.We looked at a number of acquisitions and these things are priced so high,wedont feel like were getting what we want.We kicked off a $300 million capital campaign to build all these marketsout.Theidea waswhilewere doing that, what has to happen is that you have to feel like youre working for Everstream no matter what city youre in, and how that manifestsitself.Whenyou walk in,the offices look exactly the same, same paint on the walls, same furniture, same sayings on the walls, everything, same snacks.Thinkingof the things that make people feel like Cleveland is not the epicenter of the world. Cleveland happens to be one office where a number of us sit,and it should feel the same in St. Louis or Indianapolis or Milwaukee.

Theoffice is important. Itsgoing to sound like a small thing, but its something in years past people started to get rid of.Wehave an office manager in every single office.That person is there to make certain that we have visibility to whats going on, not in aBig Brotherwatch you mode, but understanding what is the culture feeling? How are people feeling? Are they overwhelmed? Whatsthemoralelike?Thatway,we can also use those office managers as advocates for the business.Theyrun all of that. If we have a chili cook-off in Cleveland, we have a chili cookoff in every market at the same time.Thoseoffice managers are helping make that happen.Thatsthe difference.

Theother piece is people want to build. So much of our team are on the construction site.Ifyouve been at some of the big companies out there, especiallyWindstream or CenturyLink or Lumen,the amount of building fiber at the local level has gone down dramaticallyoverthe last several years.Theyvegotten bigger, theyve got different products, theyve got different mindsets.Whenthey know that were coming in to impact the local market, to build as much fiber as possible,theyget to do that. People get geeked up about the fact that theyre building something from scratch in that city.Capitalizingon that, making certain that it feels consistent across all the markets, and then giving people a culture that feels different from where they areisthe best compliment that one of our team members can make to me is it feels different here. If it feels the same, then weve lost. It has to feel different here than anywhere else that theyve been in the past, or we will not be able to replicate the success that weve had up to this point.

Therearesome rich golden nuggets here in this conversation. I thank you so much for being on the show. I know Ive learned a lot and Im honored to support Everstream withBroadstaff. Imhonored to have this conversation with you.Wherecan our audience learn about Everstream,the careersandeverything that you have to offer?

Thankyou for having me on.Everstream.netis our website. We have a builtout section for people that are seeking employment. It has all kinds of information,videos about the business,allof the postings are there as well. Aboutanything that you need to know to find a positionat Everstreamis available online.

Brett, thank you so much for being on the show.Itsbeen a pleasure.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

In 2016-2017, Brett more than tripled the size of the organization within less than 12 months with two Michigan-based acquisitions. Previously as Chief Operations Officer of OneCommunity, Brett oversaw the $100 million expansion of the network that became Everstream. Brett brings more than 25 years of experience in successful operations management and business development efforts for venture-backed organizations to the Fortune 500. He has extensive experience in the telecom industry, having served as President of Elantic Telecom and Chief Operations Officer of Vox Mobile. Brett also held management positions with City Signal Communications, Qwest Communications, XO Communications and Williams Communication Systems.

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Everstream Walks The Talk With CEO Brett Lindsey - RCR Wireless News