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My journey into leadership began in an unexpected way—selling premium outdoor gear. I…
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Ty Sorensen posted thisThis morning I learned what a phonological pattern disorder is. By the end of breakfast, I had built an app to help my 4-year-old fix hers. Let that sink in for a second. My daughter got a speech screening this week. The pathologist flagged some atypical sound substitutions — her brain has built shortcuts, essentially treating consonant blends like inefficiencies to eliminate. "Pwimb" for climb. "Spweeping" for sleeping. Honestly? My first thought was: that's very on-brand. She's my kid. Already thinking in systems. Already optimizing. But the shortcuts need rewriting. So I did what any slightly obsessive parent does at 6am. I pulled the peer-reviewed research. Cross-referenced ASHA guidelines, the Cycles Approach, minimal pairs therapy, gamification studies from JMIR Pediatrics. Then I built her a fully interactive, science-backed home program — complete with daily game rotations, word lists by target sound, a star chart reward system, and parent cue cards. On my phone. While eating eggs. I don't say this to flex. I say this because it genuinely blows my mind. We are living in a moment where a dad with zero background in speech pathology can access the same research a clinician would use, synthesize it in minutes, and turn it into something a 4-year-old will actually want to play. The democratization of expertise is not a future thing. It's a breakfast thing. That's extraordinary. And I think we forget that sometimes. Hug your kids. Use your tools. And if your little one says "pwee" for tree — don't correct them. Model it back with joy. The science says that's actually the right move. Pretty freaking cool if you ask me! #parenting #AI #EdTech #Leadership #GrowthMindset
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Ty Sorensen posted thisI heard something on a podcast today at the gym that stopped me mid-squat. 😉 "Love can't be earned." So many of us are wired to provide. Work harder. Make more. Buy better things. We tie our worth, and quietly, our lovability, to what we produce. So we grind. We sacrifice weekends. We miss dinners. We miss music class. We tell ourselves it's temporary, that we're doing it for them. But here's the uncomfortable truth: the people who love us most would probably trade the bigger house, the nicer car, and the annual vacation for more of us. More presence. More attention. More ordinary Tuesday evenings. And think about it, most of us didn't have any of those things when they fell in love with us in the first place. Love isn't a transaction. It doesn't accumulate in a bank account. You can't negotiate your way into it or out-earn your absence from it. I'm not saying ambition is the enemy. It’s not. But it's worth asking: Who are you actually building this for, and are they getting you in the process? Something I'm sitting with this week.
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Ty Sorensen posted thisOne of the most challenging leadership ideas I’ve been wrestling with lately comes from Vipassana meditation: “Not self.” At first, it sounds abstract. But the more you sit with it, the more practical it becomes. Most of our reactions—at work and in life—are driven by a subtle but powerful force: Ego. The need to be right. The need to defend our ideas. The need to protect our identity. And when that goes unchecked, it shows up everywhere: In meetings. In strategy debates. In politics. In conflict. Zoomed out, it’s the same pattern that fuels division, resentment, and even war. Vipassana offers a different path—one centered on true insight. Not just thinking. Not just opinion. Insight. From what I’ve learned, real insight is built on three things: 1. Direct observation Seeing what is actually happening—not what we assume or feel. 2. Non-reaction Creating space between stimulus and response so we’re not controlled by emotion. (this is the single hardest component for me to get right) 3. Impermanence Recognizing that thoughts, feelings, and even our strongest opinions are temporary—not fixed truths. When you put those three together, something shifts. You stop identifying with every thought. You stop defending every position. You start seeing situations more clearly. And that’s where better decisions come from. Because the goal isn’t to eliminate thinking. It’s to move beyond intellectualizing into understanding. There’s a big difference. Intellectualizing says: “I’ve formed an opinion.” Insight says: “I see what’s actually happening.” The more I practice this, the more I realize: The best leaders aren’t the ones who always have the strongest opinions. They’re the ones who are least attached to them. So here’s something I’ve been asking myself: Is this my perspective… Or is this my ego?
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Ty Sorensen posted thisI’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between being busy… and being useful. They are not the same thing. You can have a calendar full of meetings, a long to-do list, and still not move anything meaningful forward. And on the flip side, a single focused conversation or decision can change the trajectory of a project, a team, or even a company. Early in my career, I equated activity with progress. More emails. More meetings. More urgency. It felt productive. But over time, I started noticing something: The highest-impact people I’ve worked with don’t look busy. They look… intentional. They ask better questions. They simplify complex problems. They focus on the few things that actually matter. And they create clarity where others create noise. They understand something most people miss: Value isn’t created by motion. It’s created by direction. In modern work environments, it’s easy to confuse responsiveness with effectiveness. But leadership isn’t about reacting quickly. It’s about making sure the team is working on the right things in the first place. That requires a different kind of discipline: Saying no more often. Protecting time to think. Prioritizing outcomes over activity. Because at the end of the day, no one rewards you for being the busiest person in the room. They remember you for being the one who made things better. So here’s a question I’ve been asking myself: Am I filling my time… Or am I actually creating value?
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Ty Sorensen posted thisThis morning’s reading from The Daily Stoic stopped me for a minute. Marcus Aurelius wrote nearly 2,000 years ago: “Hold sacred your capacity for understanding… It’s what demands due diligence, care for others, and obedience to what is right.” The reflection that follows hits even harder: “What you take for granted, others wouldn’t even think to dream of.” That line stuck with me. Many of us wake up every day with extraordinary advantages we rarely pause to consider: The ability to read. The ability to reason. Access to information. The freedom to question ideas. The opportunity to influence outcomes. For much of human history—and for many people even today—those things are not guaranteed. Marcus Aurelius believed the human ability to reason was sacred because it allows us to navigate complexity, improve our circumstances, and help others do the same. But there’s an important second half to that idea. With that ability comes responsibility. Responsibility to think before reacting. Responsibility to seek truth rather than simply confirming our assumptions. Responsibility to use our voice and our judgment in ways that make the systems around us better, not worse. In other words, the capacity to reason isn’t just a gift. It’s a duty. A duty to pursue what is right. A duty to treat others with dignity. A duty to leave things better than we found them. It’s easy to forget that in the noise of modern life. But Stoic philosophy reminds us that leadership, citizenship, and character all start in the same place: Protecting and honoring that sacred part of us that can pause, think clearly, and choose to do the right thing.
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Ty Sorensen posted thisOne leadership muscle I’m intentionally building right now is this: Do the research before forming the opinion. It sounds obvious. But in practice, it’s surprisingly rare. In business meetings, strategy reviews, and even public conversations, people often jump straight to: “Here’s why that won’t work.” Sometimes those instincts are right. Experience and pattern recognition matter. But just as often, the reaction is based on assumptions, incomplete information, or second-hand narratives rather than actual research. I try to follow a simple rule: If I don’t have direct experience with the subject, I pause the instinct to form a strong opinion until I’ve done some homework. That means: • Reading primary sources • Looking at actual data • Seeking out credible experts on both sides • Understanding the system the decision lives inside Whether it’s business strategy, economic policy, technology, or organizational change, most topics are more complex than our first reaction. Strong leaders develop the discipline to say: “I don’t know enough about this yet.” That’s not weakness. That’s intellectual integrity. Over time, building this habit creates something powerful inside teams and organizations: Better decisions. Because opinions are valuable. But informed opinions are what actually move things forward.
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Ty Sorensen posted thisThe older I get, the more I realize something uncomfortable about leadership: Most problems in organizations—and honestly in society—aren’t caused by bad people. They’re caused by unclear expectations, poor communication, and people being afraid to ask direct questions. Years ago I created, and started using a simple framework with teams: The ECDA Formula ™ Expectations Communication Direct Questions = Accountability If expectations are unclear, people guess. If communication is inconsistent, people assume. If direct questions aren’t asked, resentment builds. And when those three things break down, accountability disappears. What I’ve learned leading teams across revenue, analytics, and operations is that accountability isn’t something you demand. It’s something you design into the system. The best leaders I’ve worked with do three things extremely well: • They make expectations obvious. • They communicate far more than they think they need to. • They create environments where direct questions are welcomed, not punished. When those things exist, something powerful happens: People stop protecting themselves and start owning outcomes. In a world that feels increasingly chaotic and divided, I find myself coming back to simple frameworks like this. Not because they’re trendy. But because clarity and accountability still solve most problems.
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Ty Sorensen posted thisMost of modern sales outreach isn’t selling. It’s automation pretending to be selling. And we did this to ourselves. About a decade ago, the industry embraced sequences and cadences. Prescriptive outreach frameworks with defined frequency, channels, and templates. On the surface, it seemed brilliant. Structured. Scalable. Repeatable. But what it actually did was normalize lazy selling. Instead of understanding a prospect’s world, we built systems designed to spray messages at scale and hope something sticks. The result? We trained an entire generation of buyers to delete our emails without reading them. Not because buyers hate vendors. Because most outreach adds zero value. Now we’ve added AI to the mix. Companies are proudly announcing “personalization at scale.” But let’s be honest about what that really means. “Hey Ty — I saw your LinkedIn post about leadership and it really resonated with me…” Followed by a pitch that has nothing to do with my business. That’s not personalization. That’s tokenization. AI is scraping digital breadcrumbs and inserting them into templates. The problem? Most real buying signals don’t exist on the internet. Executives aren’t posting about: • Internal operational failures • Vendor frustrations • Budget constraints • Strategic initiatives that haven’t been announced • Problems they’re quietly trying to solve Those insights only come from conversations. And that’s where modern sales has drifted furthest from its roots. Selling was never about activity volume. It was about problem discovery. Neil Rackham’s research in SPIN Selling studied 35,000 sales calls and found that top performers didn’t win by pitching better. They won by asking better questions. The Challenger research reinforced the same idea: the best sellers teach, tailor, and take control of insight, not just send messages. And MEDDIC, still one of the best enterprise frameworks, is built entirely around deep understanding of a customer’s business problem. None of these frameworks say: “Send 14 automated emails and hope.” Yet that’s where much of the industry landed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge believer in AI and automation. I spent years in RevOps building systems to make sales teams more efficient. And today I use AI every single day. But if we’re not careful, these tools will make us worse at selling. Because we’ll confuse automation with effectiveness. Selling is simple. Not easy. But simple. 1. Get to know someone. 2. Understand the problems they’re trying to solve. 3. Determine if you can actually help. 4. If you can, show them how. That’s it. No prompt engineering required. The future of sales isn’t AI replacing sellers. It’s sellers who use AI to create more time for real conversations. Because problems aren’t discovered in sequences. They’re discovered in dialogue. And until we get back to that… buyers will keep deleting our emails.
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Ty Sorensen posted thisWhat if SaaS actually had to deliver results to get paid? For years, software companies sold access. Seats. Licenses. Tiers. Feature bundles. But access doesn’t guarantee outcomes. And many buyers learned that the hard way. A $50K CRM doesn’t magically produce pipeline. A support platform doesn’t automatically improve customer experience. A marketing tool doesn’t create demand. Without strong process, RevOps, and internal ownership, a lot of software simply becomes… expensive shelfware. That’s why I’m fascinated by the emerging shift toward outcome-based pricing models. Instead of paying for access, you pay for results. • Leads generated • Issues resolved • Revenue influenced • Time saved • Customers retained In other words: put your money where your mouth is. This model aligns incentives in a way traditional SaaS rarely did. If the software doesn’t deliver value, the vendor doesn’t get paid. That’s a healthier relationship. And it’s already starting to happen. More SaaS companies are experimenting with pricing tied to usage or measurable outcomes rather than seats or licenses. Of course, it introduces new challenges: Forecasting becomes harder. Revenue becomes less predictable. Metrics must be crystal clear. But honestly? That feels like progress to me. For a long time, software companies optimized for ARR. Maybe the next era optimizes for customer results. And if forecasting becomes harder… Well, maybe someone will build an outcome-based SaaS tool for that. 😉
Ty Sorensen replied to a comment
1d
Paul Davis, CRPC™ Hey, that’s why we share. Level up each other! 👍🏼
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Very cool Ryan! Love the vulnerability and share. I gave up alcohol 855 days ago for very different reasons and I did need support, but the results are the exact same. Way to go! Proud of you. 🤘
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David M. Boyle Thanks David! It’s only become worse since I posted this. 😂
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisSuccession Planning Is About More Than Replacing a CEO…and week one into externally supporting NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association as their external search partner, I am really struck by the need for more succession planning efforts for these community-based broadband providers. In many rural broadband organizations—cooperatives, family-founded companies, small independents—the leadership bench often reflects decades of institutional knowledge. Leaders have grown up with their communities, built relationships with policymakers, navigated funding cycles, and, frankly, willed networks into existence when others wouldn’t. The heart of these organizations are their committed staff. When one of those key and long-time leaders steps away without a plan, the risk isn’t just operational disruption—it’s loss of continuity in vision, trust, and momentum. Succession planning ensures that: • The mission survives leadership change • Institutional knowledge is transferred—not lost • Stakeholders (boards, employees, members, regulators) maintain confidence Without it, even strong organizations can stumble at exactly the wrong moment—when capital is deployed, networks are expanding, competition is growing and expectations are high Succession planning matters everywhere—but in rural broadband, the stakes are uniquely high. These providers are often: • Capital intensive: Managing large-scale investments from programs like BEAD, ReConnect, and USF • Community accountable: Serving neighbors, not just customers • Policy exposed: Dependent on regulatory frameworks and advocacy outcomes • Operationally lean: With limited redundancy in leadership roles That means a leadership gap isn’t just inconvenient—it can delay builds, jeopardize funding compliance, strain partnerships, and erode community trust. In short: succession is not just about leadership continuity—it’s about network continuity Even small organizations can—and should—develop internal talent. That means identifying those future high-potential leaders, giving them cross-functional exposure and letting them own real decisions and outcomes. Not always easy to do but important to do sooner rather than later! Succession isn’t just about the CEO. It’s about strengthening the entire leadership pipeline, particularly when access to talent can be tougher in a remote community.
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisI just completed the Guardian Group's Virtual 5k for freedom! This is a really easy way to run or walk to help support Guardian Group and their fight against human trafficking! April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and now is an important time to take action. Your participation supports Guardian Group’s mission to: • Identify and disrupt trafficking operations • Protect vulnerable women and children in our communities https://lnkd.in/gYE_vNGG
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisWe’re proud to recognize Jeff, our Manhattan Market Manager, for receiving the Rising Star Volunteer Award from the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation. The Rising Star Volunteer Award honors individuals who dedicate their time to supporting nonprofit organizations and strengthening the communities they serve, even alongside the demands of their professional lives. Jeff’s commitment to community involvement reflects the values we strive to live out every day at WTC. His investment in local organizations and initiatives makes a meaningful impact, and we're proud to see his time & effort recognized. Congratulations, Jeff!
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisFor 90 seconds, listen to the trail and feel our latest technology, CloudTec Connect™, through the words of our founder Olivier Bernhard. Experience it all in the Cloudsoma and start your own dialogue with dirt. 🏔️ #DreamOn
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked this[Sound on] This time last year, I’d just been laid off, my marriage was on the brink of collapse (spoiler, it did collapse) and my health was at an all time low but the beauty of rock bottom is… nowhere to go but up:) after everything fell apart i decided to make some big, scary, bold changes went all in on my company & closed more business in Q1/26 than i made in all of FY2025 divorce, was ultimately a really good decision and i feel the more emotionally level and safe than i have in 8 years committed to a fitness plan, hired a private doctor to help with my autoimmune issues and health is improving everyday (ya girl is determined to be her hottest, richest, boldest self in 2026). a lot can change in a year so the next time you’re IN IT, just remember… it’s the hook to your comeback reel 🫡
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisFiber construction is officially underway in Burden, Viola, and K-42 Estates (rural Clearwater). 🎉 There’s a lot of hard work that goes into building a reliable network, and we’re proud to be investing in the communities we serve. We're not just bringing fiber, we're building the infrastructure rural Kansas needs for the future. Because small towns deserve big opportunities, too. Learn more about our expansion projects here: https://hubs.la/Q049zZLK0 #YourLocalInternetProvider #FiberInternet #RuralKansas #KansasBroadband #BroadbandBuiltToLast
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Ty Sorensen reacted on thisTy Sorensen reacted on thisThis week I attended the NTCA Telecom Executive Forum in San Diego — it is my favorite conference of the year. I had the opportunity to step away from the day-to-day and think bigger about leadership, strategy, and the future of our industry. I closed out an impactful conference watching the Padres play the Giants. Ive always loved baseball and it all really came together for me as I sat and enjoyed the game (thanks Nokia!) with some incredible leaders from our industry. Baseball, at its core, is a game of strategy. And so is the broadband business. It made me reflect: Do we have the right players in the right positions? Is our “pitcher” relying on more than just fastballs—are we mixing in innovation, adaptability, and a vision for the future? Do we have a center fielder who can cover ground when things don’t go as planned? Is our leadoff hitter getting on base—consistently creating opportunities for growth? And maybe most importantly… Do we have someone in the bullpen, warmed up and ready—prepared to step in when the next challenge comes our way? In a time where competition is stronger than ever, strategy matters. Execution matters. Team matters. The other team may score. They may even take the lead. But this is a nine-inning game. If we stay disciplined, minimize errors, trust our strategy, and empower our people—we put ourselves in the best position to win. That’s the mindset I’m bringing back with me. #Leadership #Broadband #Telecom #Strategy #Teamwork #NTCA #RuralBroadband
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Ty Sorensen liked thisTy Sorensen liked thisHappy Good Friday ✝️ A reminder to slow down, be grateful, and reflect on what matters most.
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ISPN
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2021 Gold Stevie Award - Sales Operations Professional of the Year
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Modern Sales Pros
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