Molly Ruland:

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to Camp Content. In this episode, we are joined by Steve Smith. He is the chief revenue officer at Live Oak Fiber. Who brings over 2 decades of experience in telecom sales leadership. His professional journey has spanned several significant roles across sales, marketing, sales operations, product development, and corporate development at notable companies, including Ritter Communications, Swiftreach, gen General Telecom, Apex, and Quest. Steve has made notable contributions in the telecom industry, including the development launch of of a major FTTX project and the founding of RazorNet, a network consortium aimed at enhancing middle mile fiber network connectivity. Alongside Jody Craft, he co founded Ronan Technology Advisors, supporting FTTX service provider leaders in their strategic endeavors.

Molly Ruland:

Steve is now with Live Oak Fiber, and so we’re gonna get into it. We’re gonna talk about marketing, revenue, and all of that good stuff on today’s episode. So thanks for joining us today.

Steve Smith:

Thanks for having me, Molly. It’s exciting to be here.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Well

Steve Smith:

marketing and content and getting customers. It’s fun.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, it’s a question on everybody’s mind. You know? It’s a different market than it was last year and the year before. Right? Business has changed. The way people spend money has changed. Yeah. The whole world has changed, quite frankly. Right? So we’re changing with it. So, can you give me a little background on Live Oak Fiber, like a company snapshot? Like, where are you guys located? How many employees?

Steve Smith:

Sure. Absolutely. So Live Oak Fiber was formed. Jody and I had a Jody and I formed a consulting company called Ronan Technology Advisors back in 2015, And we felt like, the reason we did that Jody and I had come from large operators, and that’s why we had we felt like there was a need in the marketplace

Molly Ruland:

for some of these rural providers

Steve Smith:

That was, you know, that needed extra muscle to make products, to develop networks, to figure out how to plan or expand their network, where to make investments. And so that was our business. We worked with providers that had 15 people in rural Kentucky or Arkansas or Tennessee, all the way up to, you know, we did a lot of work with Sprint and the T Mobile merger. We worked with the Sprint Global Wireline business. So, a lot of provide that was our business for 7 years, and through that, we also did work with private equity. There’s been a lot of investment in this space, I think, over the last 10 years, but especially the last 5, where companies are referred to as digital infrastructure because that’s actually what it is. And we worked with a company called Infrared Capital Partners, and they were looking to invest in the United States and find a way to build broadband. So we built a business plan for private equity.

Steve Smith:

Jody and I were not shopping for a business plan. They were a client, and they said, hey. We wanna do this. Could you guys put a plan together? And so we did. On July 22, we started Live Oak Fiber. There were 4 of us at the time, and we started from scratch. So we just had a PowerPoint and Excel as I like to say, and we went from there. Within 6 months, though, we had connected, we had built a network in Florida, and we’d also built some in Georgia.

Steve Smith:

But before December, within 6 months, we’d hired about 30 or 40 people, and we had connected customers and had them up and running. Live Oak Fiber today operates in 2 areas of the country. We operate on the coastal, southern coast of Georgia, and that is, Glynn County, Camden County. That’s Brunswick, Georgia, Saint Simons Island. Camden County is where the US submarine base is, for the Atlantic fleet. We also do some work. We have connected customers to the eastern side of Savannah on the barrier islands there. And then in Florida, we’re dead in the middle of the Panhandle there.

Steve Smith:

We’re just west of Pensacola in an area called Okaloosa County or the Emerald Coast is what they call it because of the watercolor. So those that are listing might be familiar with Fort Walton Beach, or they might be familiar with Destin. So we’re building everything, along that coast and up to the interstate, I ten. So from, you know, Navarre, Fort Walton Beach down to Panama City Beach. And that’s where we are today. So today, we’re just over 2 years old. We have about 125 employees. We built thousands of miles of fiber.

Steve Smith:

We have, you know, over 10,000 customers, and, yeah, we’re excited. We’re off and running as they say.

Molly Ruland:

As you should be. I mean, that’s an impressive 2 year sprint for sure. You gotta love a business that starts based on the demand. Right? It’s always good when someone comes to you and says, hey. We got money for this thing. We need you to build it. But you’ve clearly taken it.

Steve Smith:

Places to do it. Right. And we’ve done it in places. You know, I think the thing about broadband that people don’t realize is that it really kinda transcends demographics. The demand is there. Whether they’re, you know, a lower income or a higher income, there’s that’s that’s the need and that’s what the pandemic has 100% taught us, that connectivity, you know, is everything. And maybe you’re a lower income family. We built fiber in some of maybe the poorest counties in the United States, and we had to take rates that, you know, we have today because people need it.

Steve Smith:

Maybe they don’t go on a vacation. Maybe they turn on streaming services for the summer. Maybe they turn on gaming services. Just depends. But yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

So are you primarily consumer selling to consumers, or are you also selling to other businesses?

Steve Smith:

We sell to every location along the network. So it’s primarily homes and businesses, but we also sell to larger businesses. You might call it enterprise, hospital systems, school systems, municipalities. We also do work with larger carriers. There’s companies that there’s large companies in the United States that have national accounts, and those national accounts have locations in our areas, we sell to them as well.

Molly Ruland:

That’s amazing. Especially school systems, I would imagine with the pandemic, that was the first thing I thought of is the school systems really struggle with the lack of connectivity, so I’m sure they were happy to have you there. It’s a pretty competitive industry. So how are you guys staying on top of things? How are you separating yourself from the pack? And, you know, a lot of people don’t really like their telecom provider, AKA Comcast, for good reasons because they’re horrible. I said that. You didn’t. So how are you guys staying ahead of that curve and staying on top of that market?

Steve Smith:

Well, I think that that is one thing that makes us different. We all know how consumers have been treated in the space and myself included. You know, I purchased all the services from these folks. But there’s also other companies. You know, think about, like, in Amazon and how Amazon makes a buying experience for a consumer. Telecom companies were not there yet, but Jody and I wanted, we wanted to basically start a company that highlighted, the true value of You don’t get to the checkout counter and they start you know, there’s taxes, but, you know, You don’t get to the checkout counter and they start you know there’s taxes, but you don’t get to the checkout counter and there’s a lot of extra fees on there that you don’t know what it is. Right? And, it’s turned consumers into people that have to wrangle their providers around every 2 years to get in and out of contracts. There’s whole websites dedicated to how you, you know, negotiate with your cable provider.

Steve Smith:

That’s crazy. That’s not how people like to buy things or experience things. And so we started that’s one of the things we do. For instance, we do not outsource our technicians. We employ full time technicians, and we have a white glove service. Our technicians are our employees. These are long term career jobs that they get that they haven’t had in some of these regions, and we train them. And they get to a customer’s house, and they don’t leave until everything’s working.

Steve Smith:

And, but they’re not outsourced from another city or, you know, that are just there to try to knock out a job. That’s what the experience is, and that’s what Jody and I, at the core, wanted to do.

Molly Ruland:

That’s amazing. I really appreciate that. You know, I think it’s really important to pay people a living wage and give people job security, and I can tell that that’s important to you as well. And I definitely respect that. I think that it might be more expensive on your line item and all that, and it might be hard to justify with investors. But at the end of the day, we all wanna be valued for the money we’re spending and for being a customer, and we wanna be treated a certain way. And I think a lot of people a lot of the problems we’re seeing in society is because people are angry that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, and they don’t get what they were told they were gonna get. Right? So I think one company at a time delivering what you’ve promised, you know, really does make a difference.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, it’s such a simple basic thing, but this is where we are.

Steve Smith:

It’s a simple thing, and people say, oh, everybody wants to do that, and they do. I think every company wants to differentiate themselves in that kind of service aspect, but we absolutely do, and we’re absolutely intentional about trying to make that happen. We have, inside of 2 years, been certified as a great place to work, which is a bit of a thing. And we also were selected last year. We haven’t been selected this year as well. They haven’t given us the rankings because we moved up. We have more employees, but we were one of the, you know, the fortune, you know, best small businesses to work within the 1st year. And Amazing.

Steve Smith:

If you build that culture, that is reflected in our customer experiences with our folks. Like, our technicians, our everybody that works with customers, they like coming to work. They like making customers happy. They’re invested in our why statement, which is, you know, we’re there to improve the quality of life of these communities through technology, and our technology is broadband. So if they’re brought in on that, I mean, we have really great committed people, and that’s one of the differentiators for us. And It

Molly Ruland:

makes a lot of sense. You know? If you like the people you’re giving money to, you’re gonna keep giving them the money. I mean, it’s pretty simple. Right? And sometimes a small little gesture can really go a long way. You know? It really is the little things at this point. Can you give me an example of, like, a successful program you have run to expand your reach and what kind of marketing? Are you doing content marketing? Are you doing paid ads? What are you doing to get in front of people?

Steve Smith:

Everything, Molly. So, no, we do everything. No. We actually do. We have a very digital forward plan, but we also do a lot out of home and, like, some of the traditional items. It really comes down to understanding the customers. We create buyer personas for every area that we’re in, so different depending on where you live, we have different messaging, and we reach you a different way. Some people like to read the newspaper.

Steve Smith:

Some people, especially in some of these communities, love talk radio, especially when it’s about sports, local sports. That’s a thing. But then you have people that have, for instance, maybe outside of Savannah or, you know, some of the areas over Florida where they wanna work from home, and if they have a difference you know, they’re getting a different message. So, yeah, digital advertising, and it’s all about AB testing. It’s all about, you know, evaluating, measuring, and trying to track all that. But I view it as an orchestra. So each of these different components of marketing is an instrument in the orchestra, and it’s how you kind of conduct it and make sure that, you know, that the drum section doesn’t get too loud. You know? We do direct mail.

Steve Smith:

Direct mail works, if it’s done correctly, and it could be a, you know, definitely different way. Digital ads work. You know, we’re not doing it. We did produce some television quality commercials last year that were very successful. Our competitors blocked us from being able to run those on linear TV. So when you’re watching cable TV, that’s called linear television. Mhmm. They won’t allow us to run ads there. That’s fine.

Steve Smith:

So we run it on connected channels. So we’ll run it on, you know, YouTube. We’ll run it on

Molly Ruland:

eBay and

Steve Smith:

Discord. And, you know, Netflix did make some changes with how they offer their service packages. There’s paid ad versions of Netflix now, after they cleaned up all the passwords. We’re on Netflix. We’re on platforms that didn’t exist a few years ago. Nextdoor is a great one. So we’re on as many platforms as we can to reach them, and we’re not really concerned about linear TV, but just wanted to put that out there. But, yeah, any way we can reach customers, live events work really well, if done correctly.

Steve Smith:

And, yeah, if it’s marketing, it’s in the orchestra. Now we may not have as many of that as we do, you know, another piece, but, yeah, it’s we’re always we’re always iterating on that. And that’s what, you know, that’s what’s made us successful, I think. We haven’t found the magic. It always changes. It always changes.

Molly Ruland:

Well, I think that’s exactly it. I love that you’re still doing direct mail. I I, interviewed a guy named Chris from the Modern Postcard. They’ve been doing direct mail for 40 years. I’ll make that introduction. And I was fascinated. I was like, people are still doing direct mail. Like, who knew? And it does work.

Molly Ruland:

It’s targeted, and you can retarget people that were on your website. But I think the biggest message here is, like, you’ve, you know, you’ve grown quite a bit in 2 years. You’ve reached a lot of people, and it sounds like you’re doing everything. You’ve got all those wheels turning, and I think, I think that’s probably a lot of work, but it’s probably really smart because instead of going for the new, fancy newfangled thing, it’s like, well, keep doing the tried and true things. Just make sure you’re diversifying your efforts, it kinda sounds like to me.

Steve Smith:

That’s right. And if you I’m using the music analogy a lot, I guess, this morning. And, you know, if you’ve ever had kids in a band, you know, you go to that first junior high band concert and you just grit your teeth and it’s like, oh, gotta get through this. Some kids pounding away on the cymbals of the back and some kid blowing its heart out of the 10orsax and

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Steve Smith:

You know, but as those instruments develop and those people learn to play with each other, as you get to high school, you know, you get to that high school band, that symphonic band, and even like the jazz band, those kids start to take cues from each other. They’re like, oh, I know when we’re gonna start. I know when that rift’s gonna kick in, and it’s the same, it’s the exact same with marketing. It’s making sure that everything is sequenced and highly orchestrated. And that’s you know, on the back end, that’s what people probably don’t see is maybe it looks simple on the front, but you’ve in order for all those instruments to play well together, you have to constantly make sure, you know, are they on the same sheet and and get these different things to take cues from each other. People can get a direct mail piece, and they can respond to that on, you know, maybe a cold call from the sales team. Oh, I saw your direct mail. Oh, great.

Steve Smith:

What’d you like about it? Like, you can have those kinds of handoffs, so to speak. So, yeah, that’s the key thing. I would not say we are a jazz band yet. We’re not quite there. But, yeah, we definitely that’s where we wanna get to. I was in New York last week, and Jody and I went to see a band at Birdland. And the guy that was supposed to play, didn’t make it, so they had the house band fill in, and they were called the Yardbirds. They did not have a conductor, so they had a full 11 piece band.

Steve Smith:

The guy at the front would go 1, 2, 3, 4, and kick it off. And I was like, that’s how you wanna get to in marketing where you don’t necessarily know where the queues are, they know when to start, and then they just go full force. And that’s where, you know, in music and I think in marketing, that tentative part where you’re like, I don’t know if I really wanna do this. No. You know, once you get the cues right, you gotta really lean into it and become confident doing that. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

Well, you know, that makes me think a lot about, like, vendor relationships because not everybody has in-house people. And I see I’ve seen it a lot over the last couple years where I’m working with a client, and they’re working with a different vendor for this service and this a different vendor for this service, and it’s almost like a built in competition. It’s like each vendor is trying to, like, roll the other one under the bus. It’s way too much, like, we can’t do that. We need another invoice or that’s not my job going around. And I’m always kinda bewildered by how, like, unwilling it you know, it’s like you land the big contractor, then you stop working. And, like, in order to get that symphony and then every once in a while, I get paired with vendors where, like, we’re all on the same team. We’re connected on LinkedIn.

Molly Ruland:

We’re With the music. Helping each other out, and it’s magic. And then other times, you’re like, Jesus Christ. Whose team are you on here? Do you want your client to win or not? Like, I don’t do your job, dude. I’m not coming for it. Can we just, like, want the client to win together? You know?

Steve Smith:

That’s right. You’re using terms I’m assuming you’ve been a consultant before, and that’s the thing is a consultant, and, you know, you’re only as good as the value that you bring that day. You’re not Mhmm. You don’t need to bring any drama. You’re there. You’ve got one sole purpose and that’s to make your client successful. If that means you gotta play well with somebody else, you’ve gotta play well with them and that’s that’s harmony. Right? And if there’s vendors that you can harmonize with, then they don’t they don’t.

Steve Smith:

But that’s with any, like, professional organization. You know? Right. Right. And, I don’t really love the patriots, but I do think Bill Belichick had a system that he could take anybody from any team and drop them in, and they would be rock stars because he had a system. You know, like, you gotta play in our system. And I think if companies do that look. You can take feedback from different people. That’s what I like about working with the different agencies is we work with agencies that aren’t specific to telecom.

Steve Smith:

So you might have someone that’s working with software. You might have someone that’s working with the consumer, and that’s good to get that breadth and depth because they’re gonna say, hey, Steve, have you thought about this? Like, you could get a better ecommerce vision from someone that’s not doing telecom. Maybe someone’s, like, helping someone stand up a website where they’re ordering things. So, yeah, you gotta be able to take the feedback, but they gotta play on the same team. They can’t be clubbing each other with the instruments and stuff for trying to you know, this doesn’t last long. And it’s amazing to me. I agree with you. I think some people let them stick around too long, and that just doesn’t work.

Molly Ruland:

I don’t get that. Too long. With real high price tags too. I’m like, how much are you paying them a month? Right. I’ll give you 3 more people. Like, let’s go. Come on, man. I

Steve Smith:

will place all of them. Come here. I’m like, what? Now I got 4 people hitting each other instead of 1, so no thanks. Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

Sometimes I just do the work just to prove a point, but that’s the irony. I’m like, I know they said they couldn’t do it, but I just did it in 20 minutes. And I’m not charging you for it. Because I just

Steve Smith:

i don’t wanna Molly, absolutely. Yes. The Irish, absolutely.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a principle over circumstance. You know? I get very, like, protective of my clients when I know they’re getting ripped off. You know? I can’t I can’t help it. Right? But, anyway, enough about that. So let’s let’s go into our lightning round,

Steve Smith:

portion

Molly Ruland:

of the podcast. What is one technology trend you think will revolutionize the broadband industry in the next 5 years?

Steve Smith:

I think that phone numbers will go away. Oh,

Molly Ruland:

What do you think will replace them?

Steve Smith:

I think it’ll just be contacts. Just your it’s already started. You probably don’t know the phone numbers of everybody in your phone, but you just see their name. So you’re gonna be dialing, you’re gonna be connecting with an icon. It’s a person. And you’re gonna connect with them, I think, on email or chat or whatever. You know? But Right. The phone number, you know, we all have parents.

Steve Smith:

Like, my mom still has the same phone number that she’s had for, I don’t know, 40 years. Right. Right. So maybe my mom’s not the test case for this. But I think if you look in your phone, you know, it’s icons and, you know, names, and you’re just gonna connect to people. And maybe you’re, like, gonna be connecting to them and you’re gonna be chatting with them or maybe you’re gonna talk live. I don’t know. But I think that phone number thing goes away.

Molly Ruland:

Now I love them too much. Yeah. I always joke that if I get arrested and I get one phone call, my best friend from high school’s mom is not gonna be happy about that phone call because it’s the

Steve Smith:

only the only number you remember. It’s the only number you remember. Right? My best friend

Molly Ruland:

Commons? Yeah.

Steve Smith:

Yeah. I’ve got a friend here in Denver, and he knows my mom’s phone number. And then, yeah, that’s about it.

Molly Ruland:

That’s about it. Exactly. And I’m pretty sure they still live there and still have that number. So it’s a good one to remember.

Steve Smith:

I’d love to know. And I remember his and I had to use his dad’s number one time, so I’m very familiar with the number.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Exactly. That’s too funny. Yeah. Okay. Can you name a book or a resource that has profoundly influenced your professional mindset or career path or Yeah. Whatever?

Steve Smith:

Yeah. I got introduced well, there’s 2, actually. One was a book I got when I first got into telecom. It was called Citizen Soldier. It’s written by Stephen Ambrose. He is an amazing American historian, and it’s the story of the American soldier in World War 2. And, he’s like, this is telecom or really this is business. And the reason America was so successful is that they allowed decision making and ideas to flow freely from the frontline to people that could make decisions.

Steve Smith:

And the Germans to this day, you know, had a very hierarchical way of making decisions. So an idea could come, but if you know, it had to go up the chain to get permission and then had to go back down. And one example of that that I use a lot is in Normandy, they took aerial photos of the beaches, and it looked like there were shrubs, you know, around these fields, but they were actually hedgerows. They were death traps. They were trees that would, you know, it was impossible to get through. And the guys in the motor pool, the mechanics were like, if we take some of the scrap metal and put them into sawtooth form, we can actually add these to the vehicles. They can penetrate the hedgerows, knock it down, and we can advance through there without, you know, getting creamed. That idea came from the motor pool.

Steve Smith:

It didn’t come from headquarters, and they enacted it quickly. And, also, a lot of the American equipment, it didn’t last as long as some of the German vehicles and things like that, but they had the parts and the people were able to fix it. They were able to get things together, make it work. So Citizen Soldiers is a great book. And then the other one that really impacted me was the story of Ernest Shackleton, and I don’t know if you know the story, but Ernest was a British explorer, tried to cross the South Pole on foot, several times. But on his last journey, he commissioned a boat called the Endurance, and they were lost at sea for, you know, just over 2 years. And, yeah, and the great thing about that, and I’m not gonna ruin it, I want people to look it up. Get the coffee table book because it’s pictures.

Steve Smith:

And the reason that’s important is as the boat gets crushed by the ice, they get trapped in ice floats, And they had dogs and dog sleds and all this stuff. And back then, they had a cameraman, and he’s like, we gotta take just the essential stuff. That’s all we’re taking. And the camera guy’s like, I guess we gotta get rid of all the camera gear. He’s like, oh, no. No. No. Taking the camera gear.

Steve Smith:

Because when we get out of here, I want all the pictures, so it’ll fund, I want to tell this story and I want to get out of here and I want to raise money next time. So get the coffee table book, we have it in our offices, it’s one of the books that’s fundamental to our culture, all of the pictures are real and yeah, it’s a great story of leadership and, how do you keep a team together in maybe some of the worst conditions ever. My friend told me you’ll never be hungry. You’ll never be cold if you read that book, and it’s a great book. You don’t even have to read it. It’s got pictures. I went to school in Arkansas. We like books with pictures, but, yeah, it was great.

Steve Smith:

It’s a good book. Those are the 2 l l. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

I love it. I’m a big book person, so I’m gonna check both of those out for sure. I love new books that I haven’t heard of before, so I appreciate that. You bet. I have a wild card question for you.

Steve Smith:

Okay.

Molly Ruland:

If you were given unlimited resources and complete freedom to start a new project or initiative with Live Oak Fiber that could potentially redefine the future of telecom, what would it be?

Steve Smith:

Oh, wow. That’s a good one. No pressure. Jeez. I actually haven’t ever thought about that, Molly. It would be a combination. You know, I’d like to integrate mobile at some point. If it was unlimited, I’d like to have, you know, one platform, you know, across all of our customers, and I actually don’t think we’re too far away from that with how we’re kinda deploying the network.

Steve Smith:

But, yeah, I would like to have ubiquitous coverage across ubiquitous devices across all of our areas that we serve, and not have these different kinds of hybrid or frank and stitch together networks that kind of exist today. So, yeah, I would do that.

Molly Ruland:

I love it. Amazing. Alright. And then we’re coming into our last segment. This is where it gets really fun. So this segment is called real or fake, and I’m gonna list off some podcast names, and then you have to guess whether they’re real or fake.

Steve Smith:

Okay. Alright.

Molly Ruland:

We like to keep it, you know, on the cutting edge here at Heart Gasmia. So alright. So the first one is, the morning brews.

Steve Smith:

That’s real.

Molly Ruland:

It’s actually fake. There’s a newsletter called the morning brew, but not a podcast. I set you up with that one.

Steve Smith:

Bruise, plural? So it’s like drinking beer? Yes. I would think that would be real, but that’s not real? That’s

Molly Ruland:

not true. Mean, it’s in Costa Rica, it is. Let me tell you. They love a

Steve Smith:

good news for you. Okay.

Molly Ruland:

Actually, I just reposted it on Facebook, but I live in Costa Rica, and so our local news is always like, a tree has fallen. Thank god no one was hurt. Like, it’s the best local news ever. And they posted a woman who just turned a 100, and she lives in the blue zone. And you know, everybody’s going nuts over the blue zone, and you live forever. And the pictures of her in front of a birthday cake drinking a beer, and I’m like, yes. That is how you live to be a 100. You live in a blue zone, and you drink beer.

Steve Smith:

Blue zone, and you brew in the morning. Okay. But that’s not real. I can’t go to that podcast. It doesn’t seem

Molly Ruland:

But maybe we should start it. Maybe it’s

Steve Smith:

a I

Molly Ruland:

I hope you will. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I had a former guest on the show start a podcast based on one of the fake podcast names because it was that good.

Steve Smith:

I mean, I guess it could be like bruises, like, b r u I s e, which, you know, if anybody’s had Monday morning sales calls, it could be the Monday brews, and I would put that brews. Yeah. Exactly.

Molly Ruland:

That would be good. That’s a little more relevant too. Yep. The morning brews. I love it. Okay. Alright. Number 2, the sporkful.

Steve Smith:

Sporkful? Like, spork as in the utensil?

Molly Ruland:

Yes. That everybody’s favorite.

Steve Smith:

I mean, I am a fan of spork. I do like Taco Bell. I’m gonna say it’s real.

Molly Ruland:

It is. Sounds good, but it is real. Number 3, call your girlfriend.

Steve Smith:

I mean, I wanna absurdly say that that’s real, but I’m gonna say it’s fake.

Molly Ruland:

It’s real. Uh-huh. Gotcha.

Steve Smith:

People need her for that. Okay.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I know. Like, she’s not texting you all day. Let’s be honest here. Come on.

Steve Smith:

Right. It’s true.

Molly Ruland:

Well, that is it. That is it for our real or fake round. It’s always I got

Steve Smith:

1 out of 3. I guess that’s, you know, in Major League Baseball, I’d make the all star team. I bat 3 on it. That’s good.

Molly Ruland:

I’ll take it. You scored higher than most. I gotta tell you. That gets everybody. Except for my last guess, he got all of them right. It made me rethink, maybe I need a new segment. You know?

Steve Smith:

Those are good. And what was the one about the spork?

Molly Ruland:

The sporkful.

Steve Smith:

Alright. I’m gonna

Molly Ruland:

do it with the spork. It’s a real podcast.

Steve Smith:

I’m very excited about it. Okay.

Molly Ruland:

I’m curious. I wonder if it’s like a plastic utensil company. That would be kinda smart.

Steve Smith:

That would be smart. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

I wonder who it is. Now I’m curious. Well, listen, Steve. I appreciate oh, it’s a foodie podcast. That makes sense.

Steve Smith:

Oh, I’m in. I’m in for that.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I know. I’m about that life too. So well, listen, Steve. It’s been awesome hanging out with you today. I really appreciate your time. You know, when I was doing a little research about you, I was like, oh, this guy works hard, has a lot of experience, and has some real value to offer. So I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule and hanging out with me today.

Steve Smith:

Yeah. Thanks, Molly. I like I said, I’m blessed. I know there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there, and you just can never give up. You can never give up. So, yeah, I feel blessed to be working with the people I’m working with. I feel like the ball bounced the right way for us. I get up grateful every day, and, yeah, thank you for having me on.

Steve Smith:

And thank you for thank you for turning me on to the sportful. It’s great.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Hey. I think it’s, it’s Uh-oh. Did I lose? I think it’s fantastic that you were here, and you’re clearly aligned with the right people with your business partner and all the initiatives you’re doing and all the progress you’ve made and and even just the origin of the company. You know, there’s definitely people around you who see the value you’re bringing, and have created some platforms for that to happen. So so good on you for working hard and being an approachable person and responding to my outreach on LinkedIn.

Molly Ruland:

You know? It’s a

Steve Smith:

great outreach. And for those that don’t know, like, if you get a note from Molly, it’ll stand out, and you should respond to it. She knows how to write. You know how to write a LinkedIn message, Molly. Absolutely. And I get a lot of them.

Molly Ruland:

I do. I pull. You know, it’s funny because everybody who does respond has a sense of humor and is of a certain age. And so I haven’t had a bad podcast interview yet because everybody who’s come on has been genuinely interesting and intelligent and has a lot to offer, so I feel super lucky. So thank you, for sure.

Steve Smith:

It’s awesome. It was nice to meet you today. I appreciate you having us on.

Molly Ruland:

No problem. And, hey, before we go, tell everybody how they can get connected with Live Oak Fiber, where they can find you, all the good.

Steve Smith:

Well, for those that know what a Live Oak is, you know what it is. In Colorado, sometimes they’ll call it Live Oak, but Live Oak is a tree. It’s a tree that grows in the coastal region. It’s a heritage tree. So if you go to if you live in the areas that we serve, you know what that is. You go to Live Oak Fiber, live oak fiber dot com. You can follow us on all the Twitters and the TikToks and all the Instagram. All the channels are there, but you can follow our story.

Steve Smith:

We have a podcast as well. We’ve got an Instagram page. We’ve got all that. But even if you don’t live in the area, follow us. We have good content about streaming and, you know, what’s gonna be happening next in broadband, and we’d love to have you as part of that community.

Molly Ruland:

Amazing. And we’ll make sure all those links are in the show notes below so anybody listening to this can access that information. And, yeah, thanks for coming on the show, and, get connected with Steve if you haven’t already. It seems like a great company to be associated with or give money to in any kinda capacity. So on that note, thank you for tuning in to Camp Content. I hope you found the content valuable, and gave you some insight on how to get some new business this year. Until next time, be excellent to each other. Thank you.

Molly Ruland:

Alright. Alright. Alright. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Camp Content. This is Molly. And this is Matt. And we are Heartcast Media, AKA Camp Content, and we appreciate all of your support. If you found this content valuable, please comment on social media, LinkedIn, wherever you find us and we will make sure to comment back.

Molly Ruland:

And be sure to go on and subscribe and like on your favorite platforms, Spotify, Itunes, YouTube, you name it. Leave us that subscription. Give us that good review. We’ll love you forever. So until next time, be excellent to each other, and we’ll see you next week.

Steve Smith:

Produced by Heartcast

Molly Ruland:

Media. Thank you for tuning in to Camp Content hosted by Heart Cast Media. We are a digital content agency focused on content marketing for businesses and brands. If you’re looking to save time and be more consistent with your marketing and need a little guidance on what to say and how to say it and where to say it, we got your back. Book a discovery call today, and let’s talk.