Joshua Broder, CEO of Tilson

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My next guest is Joshua Broder, who serves as the CEO of Tilson, an information technology professional and network construction company based in Portland. Under his leadership, Tilson has grown from less than 10 employees to 280, earning a top spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America's Fastest growing companies for the past consecutive seven years. Thanks for coming in today.

Joshua Broder:

Nice to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Seems like you've been doing a lot of hard work over the last seven years or so.

Joshua Broder:

It's been busy. It's been busy since coming home to Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about your background. I think the thing that most intrigues me is the fact that you have a BA From Middlebury, but you also served as an army signal officer on missions in Europe, the Middle east and Central Asia. And you were awarded the Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan. So it seems like you've kind of had a varied background.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, it's an unusual path into technology through the liberal arts. When I went to Middlebury, I went on an Army ROTC scholarship up at the University of Vermont. And the army in the way that they choose your assignment Decided that a history major should be in charge of a bunch of computer science folks. And it's actually all tied up in September 11th when the plane hit the Pentagon, it destroyed the HR department of the army at the time and created a bunch of chaos. And so I was supposed to be a military intelligence officer in Japan and wound up as a signal officer in Germany at a time when the military was deploying to a lot of places. So I got this accidental education in technology, intentional education in people and an accidental education in technology as part of that adventure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So where Were you on September 11?

Joshua Broder:

I was still in college. It was my last semester. I was a start. February and end, four years, February guy. And I remember standing and watching that all happened and the guy next to me asked, hey, you're going to be in the army? Are we going to invade Afghanistan? And I remember saying, oh God no, we would never fight a land war in Asia again. I think we've learned that lesson. And a few years later I was in Afghanistan eating some crow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I had three brothers, I think, and a sister who all served in the Middle east. And. And actually I guess it was two and one that was stateside. And I remember how nerve wracking it was because it was young people. We were sending our young people over there. We still are sending our young people over there. How did that feel as a college student to be thinking, oh my gosh, my life is going to change really dramatically.

Joshua Broder:

So there was definitely a sense of that the future was a bit more ominous than I had anticipated. But I know for sure now as a young parent that it was way worse for my parents than it was for me as an indestructible 20something.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, I have an indestructible 20something. A couple of them. And I think that's probably true. I wonder how my mom made it through during that time.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, yeah, I think it was quite challenging for them. And at the time when you're in it and that age, I think it's not nearly as hard. It's definitely a young person sport.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've spoken to a number of people who have suggested that really the future of technology lies in our ability to interface with humans. And I think what you're describing in your background really speaks to that, that it's not just about the technology. It's how do we interact as social organisms and how do we make the technology or create a technology that enables us to further that.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean we live in an increasingly more connected world. And in my business, our focus has been really in two aspects of that connectivity. The first is in the actual connection, as in making sure that whether we're outside in a beach or sitting in our office or relaxing at home, that we're connected to each other, that actual network that connects us, and also the software that humans interact with and making sure that we can interact with it in the least obtrusive way possible. And so our whole business has been around breaking down the barriers between people by connecting them. And we connect them with a network that reaches out to them wherever they are, and then with software that they can interact with, hopefully with a low level of awareness that they're interacting with it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what was the moment that you knew that you wanted to create a company that would make this possible?

Joshua Broder:

So it's hard to pinpoint a specific moment. You know, as is the case with most careers, it's riddled with serendipitous accidents and being presented with opportunities and saying yes to things. And so in my own career, that was certainly true. I was an accidental entrant into technology, intentionally an entrant into leadership. And so what I would say is maybe even in high school, I knew that my life's work would be in leading people and accomplishing things bigger than what I could accomplish by myself. The technology that came later was a bit accidental. And then even coming to work at Tilson, I was looking for a way to be in Maine and be successful here. And so I threw in with a guy that had founded a really small company. I was the third guy and didn't really know what I was getting into and said yes to an opportunity. As it became clear, though, that the world was changing, that this sense of virtual connectedness was going to drive our whole economy, it became clear pretty quickly that that's where I wanted to be and that's where I wanted the business to be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a history major, how did that work into your eventual, I guess, career path?

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, I get that question a lot. So, for me, college was a very traditional liberal arts education. And what I took away from that was the ability to write and to focus my critical thinking skills. And those are things that I'm faced with using every day. And so the domain that we work in, in some ways is incidental, but the idea that I have to effectively communicate with other people and challenge the assumptions that are put in front of me are the everyday challenges that I face and really that our team faces. So what you'll find in our team is a lot of accidental technologists who, if they don't come from a technically liberal arts background, then their career path looks kind of liberal artsy. They've come into technology from another way. And so we're typically looking for people who have discipline and structure in the way that they think. And the technology and technical skill set is really secondary to the discipline that they bring to thinking about problems.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me what it is that Tilson Technology is doing.

Joshua Broder:

So we do really two distinct things for customers, and we're working for primarily large utilities, government agencies, and big businesses, and we're helping build them networks. And when we say networks, we mean big networks. The cellular networks that make our cellular phones and smartphones work, the networks that make power grids and water distribution systems communicate and automate, and the businesses that bring broadband to communities. So large networks, and we design, build, and maintain those networks. And we also have a separate and distinct but related business that helps large infrastructure companies build the core software that runs their businesses. So these would be large construction companies, government agencies, the folks responsible for the infrastructure in our lives, we help build and maintain the software that drives those organizations.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the similarities that you see between the companies that you're working with and some of the differences?

Joshua Broder:

So one of the things that we see that's different between our customers is their mission. They each have, you know, a specific aspiration for the world, but the similarities that we see between them is that they all need infrastructure to accomplish those missions. So in many technology businesses, the focus is really the consumer. They're carving out a space where they're going to bring something very specific to people like Facebook or Twitter. In our case, we're building the underlying infrastructure that enables organizations to deliver whatever their unique and specific mission is. One of the commonalities that we see in all of those organizations is they need to deliver what they do to people wherever they are. So that ubiquitous connectivity, in almost every case, it's driven by software. So those are the two places where we are connecting and automating those functions.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It seems as though this field is one where one has to be able to be flexible because there's continual change. I know in medicine, when we start, when I started, we were all still doing paper charts. Seems like a long time ago. It really wasn't that long ago. We've evolved into electronic medical records and connectivity. And with every change, there have been some kind of itchy spots, some difficulties, some challenges. Talk to me about the importance of flexibility.

Joshua Broder:

So for us, the need to be flexible in the technology that we deploy has been increasing over time. So when I started in this business in 2007, when I came back to Maine, things changed in a revolutionary way every two years, which was the fastest things ever changed in the economy. I mean, the world got turned on its head every two years, and that was terrifying and disorienting. Well, flash forward just a few years and now it's every six months. And so the level of flexibility needed to surf those technology changes is pretty extreme. And what we're finding is that a lot of our competitors are going out of business, and they're going out of business on the back of having grown their businesses in a rigid way. And so they've gotten very good at doing something specific. And that something specific is gone in the blink of an eye. And so we've become professional changelings. And our DNA of our company and the kind of people we hire really is all about that mental flexibility to challenge what's in front of them and be ready to reinvent in six months. And we know that in a year it'll be in three months, and then it'll just be constant. So that pace of change has accelerated. And the fact that there's been periodic revolutions in technology is disorienting. But to have that be a near constant feature is something I'm not sure we've even really come to grips with as a society, that we're going to be in this constant phase of. Of reinvention. But I think it punctuates the need to ensure that critical thinking skills and flexibility are part of our educational DNA, that we get away from training skills and start training thinking.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I ponder this a lot because the way that our society has been structured is very. We're very competitive nation. And so in order to be competitive, we like to have a set of rules. We go by the rules. And then if you are the one who's the best at going by the rules, then you can be the winner. But what you're describing is the rules keep changing, the competition keeps fluxing and morphing. And sometimes it can feel hard to be the winner. Maybe it's not even as important to be. Let's put winner in quotes.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, I think in this case it's important to be the leader. And if you want to lead in a high change environment, you just have to be prepared with getting comfortable that you're going to be writing the book. And I think those that are willing to grab the pen, inevitably the crowd sort of parts around them. People are happy to have someone Take the pen and write the rule book. And that's a place that we've really enjoyed. So in the way that birds of a feather flock together, the team that we've assembled have been people that really get excited by that, by doing something for the first time. We are not the company that can do something the sixth time most inexpensively, where the folks that people are calling to do it for the first time. And so that's super exciting for us because it's really that sort of level of intellectual challenge that gets us excited.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have, as you said, leadership has been important to you, and you've spent some time working on essentially your leadership and your entrepreneurial skills. Really, you've. You've allied yourself with different organizations that have enabled you to learn more about that particular skill set as time has gone on. How did you know that this was something that you were interested in?

Joshua Broder:

It's hard to pinpoint it. I would say when I was. When I was in high school, it was pretty clear to me that leading teams were really going to be what I wanted to do. And that's why I sought out the Army ROTC scholarship, not because I had a deep and abiding interest in the army, but because I thought that it would be a place where I could figure out how to lead people and have an opportunity to do it in a meaningful way. One of the challenges about education, both in high school and in post secondary setting, is that it's an individual pursuit. It's about honing your own personal skills, and it's about getting an individual grade. And there are very few structured opportunities outside of sports and music to really work in an ensemble or a team and focus on really what happens in most of life, which is accomplishing things with other people. And so I was looking for an opportunity to really immerse myself in that. And I think that was a pretty early decision.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what types of things did you do in high school?

Joshua Broder:

So, like a lot of high school kids, you know, we get spread pretty thin. There was a youth organization that, you know, focused on leadership around aviation that I did in Portland, the Civil Air Patrol. And I would say, you know, most of my time was spent in music, playing in ensembles, or, you know, in sports, playing on teams. So, you know, like a lot of kids, we get pretty, pretty over, overly scheduled. And in the end, it was those things, those extracurricular things that, you know, provided the greatest interest for me because it was an opportunity to interact with other people and accomplish things together.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about growing up In Maine. Tell me what that was like for you. You came to Maine when you were 4.

Joshua Broder:

I came to Maine when I was 4. So I joked that it was the best decision I never made. I've heard Angus King say I wanted to be born in Maine, but I thought it'd be best to be with my parents at the time. So growing up in Maine was wonderful. I mean, I grew up in Cumberland and I got to go to Waynefleet in Portland, and my parents still live here, so they still in the house that I grew up in. And coming home was really the pleasure of a lifetime after living in a lot of places for 10 years. And so growing up in Maine was sheltered, idyllic, outside, sane. I didn't spend a lot of time in the car. I spent a lot of time with a welcoming community and people who looked out for me and gave me opportunities. And to be honest, coming back to Maine in 2007 after a 10 year hiatus was just like growing up here. It was coming back into a community of people that I knew and people that care about each other and have a fabric of connectedness with each other and getting to spend time outside and not in a car. You know, the difference is when I was a kid, there were three restaurants in Portland. And, you know, now it's the best place to eat in the world. And, you know, the cultural life has certainly gotten richer, but the basic sort of decency and lifestyle here is very familiar from when I was growing up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I know that your wife Eliza also grew up not in Portland, and yet the two of you have chosen to bring your two small children, 3 and 5, to live right here on Munjoy Hill. What caused that decision?

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, so we both grew up in the suburbs, Eliza and Pownall and me in Cumberland. And living in Portland has been great. It's the most convenient thing in the world. So, you know, we live, you know, right in the city, but it's in a neighborhood.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's.

Joshua Broder:

It's relatively quiet and safe. And when my daughter wakes up at 5:15, all sparkles and dressed and ready for the day and says, daddy, let's go to the coffee shop, it's nice to be able to walk next door and get a world class cup of coffee and spend time with my daughter. So the decision to live in the city was actually a really deliberate one that my wife and I made. And we decided that we could either live for the same money on a bunch of acres in the woods or right in town. And we decided to take the time that we would otherwise spend in the car commuting into town and put that back into our family and into my business. And so that's been a great sort of dividend. We've been able to pay ourselves by living and working in the same place. It's been a huge return of time for us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you really do work very close to where you actually live.

Joshua Broder:

That's true. I work downtown on Commercial street and soon I'll be moving to 16 Middle street and that'll be even closer to where I live, as it turns out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is it that you hope to see Tilson do as a company? I mean, you've obviously grown. I mean, we even had to change the numbers. So we had gotten you up to 260 people. And you said, well, actually we're at 280 people in our company.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, and we'll be at 300 by the end of the year. So, you know, we really have an ambition to boil the oceans in the place that we work. We want to be the national leader in the work that we do. Right now there's very few companies our size doing the work that we're doing. There's either some very small mom and pops that work in some of the smaller niches that we work in, or very large multi billion dollar corporations who dominate the market. Companies our size are actually a rarity and it's our ambition to dominate the market ourselves. We want to be the household name in the niches that we work and compete against the very largest companies in the world that do this work today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what about your workforce? How do you plan to attract the sort of workforce that you need?

Joshua Broder:

So workforce is a huge challenge for us. And when I think about the limitations on growing our business, workforce is really the only limitation that we face on a day to day basis. There's plenty of work and there's plenty of capital. Our challenge is not, though restricted to Maine. We're hiring all over the country. We have 12 national offices and two or three years we'll have 12 more and we'll go and find the talent where we need to. The nice thing about Maine is that it's a great place to bring people. When we bring people to Maine for an interview, they can see themselves living here. They can see this as a place that would be attractive to relocate to. And we run into the main diaspora all the time. Folks who have had to leave for whatever reason in their life and are looking for that opportunity to come home and we're happy to help them. So of our 280 employees, about 65 are in Maine today. And we think that will continue to grow, but we know it will also grow in other places. And so as a feature of our new space on Middle street, we have some guest rooms for our employees. And we know that one of the challenges that we face is bringing people to Main for all the meetings and things that happen in a company. And so we usually have a pretty steady drumbeat of folks coming here to visit. Obviously, we want to hire here when we can, but we're prepared to find the talent wherever it needs to be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Having spoken to other heads of companies, one of the concerns is often what's termed the trailing spouse.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I'm wondering if that is something that you also work with in your company, which is the need to find adequate and appropriate employment.

Joshua Broder:

Yeah, you know, in 2007, that was a problem, but in 2017, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. If we can entice someone to want to come to Maine, there are enough other great businesses that are also looking for talent. The debt trailing spouse can find something. And so I flew in last night from New York. I just had a day trip there for a business meeting. And the guy that I was sitting next to was on his way. He was a young guy from Virginia, and he was on his way to interview at Wex for an IT position. And I asked him, you know, hey, what's your life situation? He said, well, you know, I'm engaged, and we have a young daughter and we'd really hope they'll relocate to Maine. And I asked him the trailing spouse question. I said, you know, is your spouse work? And, you know, so is she feeling good about her job prospects here? And he said he really wasn't worried. He felt that, you know, there were enough people hiring here, it really wouldn't be a problem. So, you know, I think it's not an answer for everyone in every situation. But it seems like the economy here isn't a monoculture. It's not a single large business hiring in. I don't think that's true in other places in the state. I think there are incredible pockets of value in Maine where a single business dominates a community, and in that environment, can be very difficult for the trailing spouse. But Portland is maybe uniquely situated where there's a pretty broad and hungry job market. Here, there's more jobs than people, for sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that we have reversed what has been typically termed the brain drain, where our young people leave the state of Maine and then don't return.

Joshua Broder:

I think we've made progress. You know, the challenge for Maine is that not all of Maine has benefited equally by the economic miracle that has happened in southern Maine. And so, you know, that brain drain in some cases depends on your geographic perspective. For Aroostook county, some of the brain drain has been to Portland. We've got two dozen employees from the county in our business living and working in Portland. For families in Portland, the brain drain has largely been because there isn't a dearth of graduate school opportunities in the greater Portland area. There's phenomenal graduate schools, but in some very narrow bands of specialties. And so if someone needs a specialty that we don't happen to have a graduate school in, they go to Chicago and they never come back. And so I think it's a challenge for Portland, but it's a challenge for Portland in a different way than it's a challenge for other parts of Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we will be your new neighbors. Maine Magazine, Maine Media Collective is going to be moving into the same space. So I think it's going to be fun to see what happens with the cross pollinations of growing companies.

Joshua Broder:

We're super excited about it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, yes, we definitely are too. I appreciate your coming in today. I've been speaking with Joshua Broder, Josh, who serves as the CEO of Tilson and Information Technology Professional services and network construction company based in Portland. We'll see you soon as a neighbor and I really appreciate all the work that you're doing.

Joshua Broder:

Thanks. It was great to be here.