EP 56: Introducing Terry Corder

Transcript for this Episode:

Announcer: Dive into the world of innovation with us as we unravel the challenges, breakthroughs, and latest trends that are shaping our digital landscape. This is Tech UNMUTED, your guide to the tech revolution.

SANTI: Welcome to another episode of Tech UNMUTED. Today, I want to do something different.

TERRY: Okay. What are we going to do?

SANTI: All right. Terry, look, you've been on the podcast several times, you're going to be co-hosting the podcast moving forward. I'm like, why don't we just take time to get to know Terry? I figured, let's just change things up a little bit and put you on the spot. I think that's always fun. What I want to do is just turn this into a little bit of an interview, and let's get the audience to get to know Terry Corder a little bit better. I'm just going to start off by asking, where did Terry grow up? There we go.

TERRY: All right. Oh, I am Kentucky born and raised. I actually was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Yes, people, it's pronounced Louisville, like you've got a mouthful of marbles.

SANTI: It's not Louisville?

TERRY: No, it's not Louisville or Louisville. No, it's Louisville. I grew up there. I live in Shelbyville, which is outside of Louisville. It's on the way to Lexington, so between Louisville and Lexington. I've lived out in Shelby County or Shelbyville for 18, 19 years now. I love it out here. Would not move back to a big city if you paid me. I love being out in the country, small area, beautiful land all around us. I just love that, but I am a Kentucky born and bred person.

SANTI: Nice. I know Kentucky is known for two things, bourbon and of course the Kentucky Derby.

TERRY: There you go.

SANTI: I'm assuming that you are a connoisseur of both.

TERRY: I do enjoy both bourbon and a horse race. I try to make it to Churchill Downs a few times a year, which is where the Derby's held. Keeneland, it's also a very old racetrack here in Kentucky, a little smaller than Churchill, but it's where a lot of the big race horses are bought and sold.

SANTI: Interesting.

TERRY: The big horse sales are at Keeneland. They fly in from all around the world to buy champion horses that they'll eventually run in the Derby or in some other races.

SANTI: That's actually very cool.

TERRY: It's neat being here. It's a very eclectic area when it comes to horses and bourbon.

SANTI: Yes, it's funny because when I tell people I'm from Florida, people just think about beaches and fishing, and I go, "No, you don't understand, there is a huge agricultural sector to Florida, there's a lot of cowboys, and they're like, "What?" "Yes, we got cowboys in Florida." We have fields and fields full of cattle. One thing I've learned in South Florida, in South Florida, it is very hard to find a horse that is Western-saddle-trained. They do a lot of this polo stuff down here. It's all English-saddled, reining with both hands instead of one hand at reining, that kind of thing.

I get to enjoy, when I'm not in South Florida, horseback riding what I would consider a real horse, which is a horse that's trained on a Western saddle with one hand at reining or reining a horse. I wanted to go to your neck of the woods for quite some time. I always think about it and talk about it. Just I haven't pulled the trigger. One of the reasons being is I want to be able to ride either like Tennessee walkers, which are all throughout Tennessee and Kentucky. It's very common. It's a very comfortable horse to ride. It's hard to find down here, or a true quarter horse that is 100% Western-saddle-trained, because, again, hard to find them down here.

TERRY: Yes. Shelby County, where I live, we are the saddle bred capital of the world. Where Louisville is known for the Derby and Lexington is known for thoroughbreds, these horses are the four different types of-- the trot, the gait-

SANTI: Yes, the gait horses.

TERRY: -[crosstalk] walking horses. Yes. We do the major horse shows here every year. This is a big area, not just for racing horses, but for showing horses and things like that.

SANTI: Very nice. Yes. I got to get up there and-

TERRY: You should come up and we'll have a-

SANTI: -check off-

TERRY: -glass of bourbon. Just a glass.

SANTI: Yes. Just a glass. Terry, question. When did you enter this industry? By me, industry, because some people call it telecom, some people call IT, some see it as two separates, I see it together because at one point it converged-

TERRY: It did.

SANTI: -so however you want to identify it, how long have you been in this industry?

TERRY: I started professionally working with computer in technology, with an internet company. A lot of people did during the dot com. It was early to mid-'90s when I helped a group of friends start a dot com. It was Ntr DOT Net. Actually, it was a dot net. Ntr DOT Net, we were a service provider. From there I did some other engineering aspects for private companies, for large health insurance companies, things like that, and always found myself in communication, working with the communication side, the networks, which led to telephony, eventually, as you know it, and then from there it all blended together.

I started with, I guess it's been right at, it'll be 20 years this year. I started with a company called Lightyear Network Solutions, that was an evolution of a company called Unidial, which was affiliated with our dot com back in the '90s, so about 20 years ago. 2004 I started with that company. I was there six, seven years and left and went to a company called Cbeyond. After I left, a company called Birch acquired Lightyear within six months of me leaving. Within a year of me going to Cbeyond, Birch acquired Cbeyond. I merged back with all the people I knew and had worked with, and I'd built that network. I helped build that network. I'd worked on the voice side of it.

Then, because I was always in operations and network engineering, when I went to Cbeyond, I got pulled into solution engineering, so the pre-sale side of it and looking at the big picture of business for the customer, and found that I really enjoyed that and enjoyed leading a team of people that all enjoy that. Worked with a great team of engineers. I've been officially here 13 and a half years, but like I say, six and a half prior to that was with a company that got swallowed up in this conglomerate that we call Fusion Connect today.

Yes, I've been doing it well over 30 years now, and it's been a ride. In 30 years, I've seen technologies change, I've seen the biggest circuit in a dot com. Our biggest circuits we had at our dot net were DS3, so 45 megabits.

SANTI: That's right.

TERRY: We had a pair of them, but we could only use one at a time. They were there for failover. We served thousands of customers on 45 megabits.

SANTI: It's crazy.

TERRY: I have a gigabit at home here.

SANTI: That's right.

TERRY: It's amazing that the advancements in technology and what I've seen over 30 years of being here, change in technology, and how today all of the things that we at Fusion Connect can provide to customers, from those circuits to security and SD-WAN to calling and voice, the communication stuff that I always played with and was in and was involved in, we're able to do all of that now. That's what keeps me happy. That's what keeps me here.

SANTI: Yes, of course. Yes. You know what? That journey that you just described, what's that one thing that you really enjoyed about it? What's that one thing that when you look back at everything, you're like, "Man, this is awesome"? What's that one thing that stands out for you?

TERRY: I enjoy constantly learning, but at the same time, I enjoy talking to people, speaking to peers, speaking to a group of people. As you know, I go and do a lot of our public speaking opportunities that we have. It's because I've become comfortable. I've always been an extrovert. I'm a loudmouth, so I've always been out there in front of people.

SANTI: The radio voice. That's what I call it, the radio voice. [chuckles]

TERRY: I appreciate it. No, that's what I enjoy. I enjoy getting out, in learning, staying up to date on technology, and then relaying that to people around me to help spread the knowledge. That's the thing that keeps me happy and keeps me going, is spreading that knowledge amongst my peers.

SANTI: Yes. I know that you feel the same way, but while our industry is always changing, it is what makes it exciting, right? It makes it fun.

TERRY: That's it.

SANTI: You ask yourself, what's next? Once you get your head wrapped around the one thing that's, let's say, new, you're going, "Man, what is the next thing of this?" Sure enough, there it comes.

TERRY: Or, "What can I do with this new thing to make it the next thing?"

SANTI: Right, yes, and part of before. Yes, it's pretty cool. I know, Terry, that you gave us a pretty good background to where you grew up and some of the things, but what does Terry do when Terry is not like solutioning for partners and customers? Typical, hey, it's five o'clock or it's the weekend, what does Terry, when he's not wearing a Fusion shirt do?

TERRY: Okay. The thing that when I'm done working for the day, I work in-depth on technical issues. I think about the big picture and businesses and how I can help customers do that. When I'm done, I don't want to do that in the evening. I love to cook. [crosstalk]

SANTI: Oh, nice. I didn't know that.

TERRY: Yes, she and I'll get together, we'll go upstairs, we'll sit down, talk about the day, prep dinner together and make dinner. Doing that in the evenings is a release for me. On the weekends, we do a little bit of antiquing, things like that. Nothing major. I don't have big high-end $10,000, $100,000 antiques in my house, but I enjoy antiquing, and I will occasionally pick up a microphone and maybe sing a song.

SANTI: Very nice. What's your go-to song?

TERRY: Oh, the one I'm saying in most countries is Folsom Prison Blues. I've sang it in London, Scotland, sang it in the Bahamas and Jamaica, all over the United States, probably in a dozen or more states. It's an easy one. I know it. It just what I fall back to.

SANTI: Very nice.

TERRY: I always do it for fun. Have a good time-- [crosstalk]

SANTI: Yes, of course. I don't know about you, but I don't need drinks to grab a mic and just sing something. No, I just do it. Nice. All right. This is actually pretty good. By the way, now I can understand the one time I posted. This was a few years ago. I posted a video of me making a pumpkin pie. I remember you told me, "Did you buy the puree, or did you go ahead and carve out them pumpkins?" Now I understand where that came from. Yes.

Hey, Terry, let's switch gears here. The podcast, as you know, a lot of times is about what's happening in the industry, what are the trends? People want to hear about that stuff. You have a different perspective because you're always on the phone with so many people and customers and partners and out in the field and at events. What's the trend that you're hearing? Tell us what you're hearing out there that's happening in this industry.

TERRY: Absolutely. I've recently gone and spent a week at Microsoft's campus, working with them on their converged communication summit. Say that four times-- [crosstalk]

SANTI: Fast.

TERRY: Exactly. No, we were out at Microsoft, had a great session there. The term you hear across the entirety of their platform is the term copilot. You hear AI in every aspect of business. People are starting to get sick of it, they say, but it is what you're hearing about in the field. How can you utilize AI to better do business, to better perform in the day-to-day business tasks that everybody has to do?

Truly, that's one of the big trends. How does AI integrate with communication, network, security? Because there are different AI platforms for all of that. There's AI for sales. There are aspects of AI that help sellers with email responses. They help automate updates to customers. There's AI aspects that help automate service delivery or service support to customers. They can give customers updates on outage issues, on different things like that. Really integrating all of the AI into the way that people work and communicate on a day-to-day basis is the biggest trend. We've heard about it for a year, almost nine months.

SANTI: Where it's been the main conversation.

TERRY: Yes, AI's been around forever. People are surprised. I always reference back, and I want to say it was an Isaac Asimov book in the '60s, maybe, that talked about the automated house. The house that ends up not letting them out. It may have turned into a Twilight Zone episode or something, but it was-- I remember that from when I was younger. You always think, "Wow, that'd be really neat. I could see where that would work."

Now all of us have these devices in our homes that give us answers, that play our music, that tell us when the doors are opening or closing, that really let us know where our deliveries are. All of that is AI and has been for many years, but now it's coming into the day-to-day of everybody's business. It's really our job here at Fusion Connect and in the industry in general to help customers know how to utilize AI for their business without being scared of it.

You have to be understanding of it and you take the right precautions. At the same time, it's a great tool when used as a tool. It's really going to help businesses. That's what we're doing here at Fusion Connect. We're helping businesses perform AI functions within their calling, within their M365 environment. If I'm writing a document, if I'm sending an email, I can have AI read what I wrote and work on the grammar of it so that maybe I'm not sending out something that doesn't sound quite right. Being from Kentucky, people say I have an accent, which it's a dialect, actually. People, depending on where you live in the world-

SANTI: In the state. I'm sure that in the state of Kentucky, you can tell when people are from different parts of the state based on their dialect.

TERRY: You can tell when people are from Florida or from California. We deal with people all over the world. Writing something grammatically correct that doesn't sound like it's from Kentucky or Florida or California, it sounds like it's a more truly univer-- Think about Star Trek. It's the universal translator. It is what is going to be able to give the right language to people to be able to converse globally. That's really some of the first parts of utilizing AI in business and how we're helping customers do it.

SANTI: Yes. I'm looking forward to more autonomous behaviors from AIs. I can't wait for that stuff. That's the stuff that excites me. All right, Terry, how can our listeners connect with you? What would be the best way to connect with you?

TERRY: LinkedIn is the best place. You can look up Terry Corder on LinkedIn. You'll see my picture and connect with me. I'd love to talk to people, like I said, I'd love to connect with all of our viewers, listeners, and love to talk to you about anything. It doesn't have to be business, let's talk about cooking or let's talk about bourbon. Let's talk about business, because all of that goes together now.

SANTI: Yes, it does. It really goes hand in hand. Terry, I thought this was a fun episode because it's different.

TERRY: I had fun.

SANTI: Right. It changed things up. A lot of times people hear the voice or they see the person, but we don't get a chance to tell people about us. Maybe one day we'll just flip the tables and maybe we'll have you interview me-

TERRY: I'd love to.

SANTI: -and I can share my background. I think it's a nice thing to do. Folks, this brings our episode to an end. Remember to visit fusionconnect.com if you want to learn more about what we can do for you. Just as Terry invited you to look him up on LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. We're always looking forward to making connections. It's in the name, Fusion Connect, we want to make connections.

TERRY: That's right. Make sure you subscribe to Tech UNMUTED. Follow the podcast. Look for new episodes. We're always here bringing you information about business, technology, and about each other.

SANTI: Yes. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected. See you.

TERRY: See you.

Announcer: Thanks for diving into the tech world with us today. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon to never miss an episode of Tech UNMUTED. Stay curious, stay connected.

Episode Credits:

Produced by: Fusion Connect