Interview Date: December 5, 2025
Moderator: Judi Allen
Panelists: Patricia Jo Boyers, Ann Carlsen, Cathy Rasenberger, Gemma Toner
Series: Women in Cable Archive
Abstract
In the December 5, 2025 Women in Cable Archive “Entrepreneurs” panel (moderated by Judi Allen at Charter’s Stamford studios), four founders map how cable’s “scrappy,” fast-iteration culture became an ideal entrepreneurship training ground: Patricia Jo Boyers (BOYCOM Cablevision) from the operator/contractor side, Ann Carlsen (Carlsen Resources) from executive search, Cathy Rasenberger (Rasenberger Media; FreeLiveSports/Sports Studio) from network distribution and FAST sports, and Gemma Toner (TONE Networks) from programming/operator roles into a leadership-development SaaS platform. They describe cable as an industry that normalized doing “the impossible,” learning by building, and using relationships as career (and company) capital—whether through Chuck Dolan-era Cablevision’s entrepreneurial environment, early ESPN/Food Network–style startup realities, trade/industry networks, or the hands-on problem-solving required of small independent operators.
The conversation then turns into a practical playbook for staying alive as a founder. The traits they keep returning to are optimism, resilience, humor, and tenacity—paired with vulnerability and “911 people” to call when the stress spikes. They emphasize disciplined operating basics, including managing cash flow, hiring slow, being quick to fire, and not scaling teams or agencies too early. Additional lessons mentioned are: delegation is a learned skill; “fill in the skill sets you’re not excellent at;” and that choosing the wrong partner can sink a business. On strategy, they argue that plans are useful as direction but reality demands constant pivots. Founders should sleep on big decisions, protect their reputations and integrity, and be willing to say no to money or deals when the partner fit is wrong. Their closing advice is blunt: entrepreneurship is harder and messier than it looks, most “rocket ship” stories are outliers, and you’ll never have enough time or money or resources. So avoid analysis paralysis, “just start,” and be ready to learn fast when things change and develop.
Interview Transcript
JUDI ALLEN: Hello, it’s December 5, 2025, and we’re here at the beautiful studios of Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. I’m Judi Allen, a 30-plus-year veteran of the cable industry and currently a consultant with Quantum Media, and our topic today is entrepreneurs. I am joined by four amazing examples of the entrepreneurs in our industry, and I’m going to toss it to each of them to do a very brief introduction of themselves, and then we’ve got some questions and have a great discussion. Patty?
PATRICIA JO BOYERS: Hi, Patty Boyers. Greetings from the foothills of the great Ozark Mountains. Patty Boyers, president, CEO, cofounder of BOYCOM Cablevision, and the longest-running woman chairman of the ACA.
ALLEN: Ann.
ANN CARLSEN: Hi, I’m Ann Carlsen, a 37-year veteran of my own company, Carlsen Resources, which is an executive search firm.
ALLEN: Cathy.
CATHY RASENBERGER: Cathy Rasenberger, I am the president and founder of Rasenberger Media, which is a 28-year-old consulting business that’s known for launching independent cable television networks. I’m also cofounder and president of FreeLiveSports and Sports Studio, which is the largest free sports streaming platform in the world.
ALLEN: And Gemma?
GEMMA TONER: Hi, Gemma Toner, I am the founder and CEO of TONE Networks. We are a video-based leadership development, SaaS platform that focuses on early to mid-level employees. And I started in the industry in 1987.
ALLEN: Okay, speaking of the industry, let’s start there. Ladies, how did the cable industry prepare you for your entrepreneurial journey? Anybody can start.
TONER: Sure –
ALLEN: Go ahead, Gemma.
TONER: — I’ll start. I had the great luck to work at AMC Networks and also Cablevision, which were highly entrepreneurial companies. And we just did the impossible pretty much every day and did things that hadn’t been done. And so I think it was the culture of Cablevision, and the leadership of Charles Dolan, and all the people he had around him that has really helped me be prepared for entrepreneurship. Because it really was about doing things that hadn’t been done before and figuring it out.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, I think the DNA of our industry is entrepreneurship. So I started at ESPN in the early ’80s when ESPN did not have the NFL. It had Australian rules football, no one would buy advertising on it, it was a startup, hard to believe today. And I think that the network we developed in the early days, also all entrepreneurs, helped to support me when I started my business 28 years ago. So I think it’s — it prepared us that way.
CARLSEN: I came into the industry in 1981 and started right out of college in door-to-door sales for United Cable. And from that, I was going to be a journalist, but that didn’t work out so well, and went to a magazine, Cable Television Business, which was one of the early cable trades. And from that, I had the opportunity to meet and commiserate with the biggest entrepreneurs in the industry, Bill Daniels, just — I mean, it was an amazing opportunity. I got to interview them as a journalist at this publication, I got to sell ads to them, whatever — not to the same time, of course, but… [laughter]
BOYERS: That would’ve worked.
CARLSEN: And — yeah, not a bad thing.
BOYERS: Yeah.
CARLSEN: But it was the mindset. The cable industry to me was a mindset that entrepreneurial, scrappy, hardworking, we can save the world kind of thing, and everybody really thought they were saving the world. It really was an incredible time and –
RASENBERGER: Huge time of opportunity in our industry.
CARLSEN: Yeah, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, and everybody was starting in the industry, it’s –
CARLSEN: Yeah, right, we were all the same age too.
RASENBERGER: Ann and I have worked at competitive magazines.
CARLSEN: Right.
RASENBERGER: I was the publisher of Cablevision at the time. We were really young and going places, and you look at the industry today with everybody that started in that industry.
CARLSEN: Yeah, right, all of our network –
RASENBERGER: Yeah, yeah. Really amazing time.
BOYERS: Well, I started in 1979, so I can tell how long I’ve been in it. [laughter]
ALLEN: You win, Patty, you win. [laughter]
BOYERS: And I didn’t have a choice. Honestly, I’m the only one here from the operator’s side of the house. But I started out as a contractor, an underground contractor, did one of the very first fiber-optic jobs in Michigan for Cablevision way back in the day. And my husband was the one with his head in the clouds, and my feet were on the ground with putting hands and feet to his ideas. And so we were underground contractors for 17 years, and we just decided, you know, we’re going to build our own cable TV system. So we get a cable at our own house, honest to God, that’s the truth, [laughter] and — as I sit here today, it really is the truth, and got involved. I’ve always had this burning desire. I love politics, I love policy, I love regulatory work, and more than anything, I love the government staying the hell out of my business. And so the only person to do that is yourself. So you have to get in there, and you figure out ways to do things because nobody else is doing them for you as a rural, small independent operator.
ALLEN: Patty, great segue. I want to ask each of you, what personal traits do you think you have that make it possible for you to be a successful entrepreneur?
RASENBERGER: Yeah, I — I’ve mentioned this earlier today. I think I wake up every day with an incredibly positive attitude that I can conquer the world. Now, by 5:00, I don’t feel so excited. [laughter] But I think that really helps because, as an entrepreneur, you are going to face hurdles constantly, and you have to be able to pivot and keep moving on in a very optimistic way. So I think that’s a big ingredient for me.
BOYERS: I think the too much month at the end of the money. When we were talking with Gemma this morning, she was giving us some nuggets from Chuck Dolan. And the fact that you’re never going to have enough money, you’re never going to have enough resources, and you’ve got way too much month at the end of the money, but there’s always the next month. And so we did so much for so long with so little, we were qualified to do everything with nothing at all. And we really felt like we were eight-foot tall and bulletproof because we were. And so the thing is, if it can be done, you can do it. I’ve never had anyone tell me, “Oh, I’m sorry, Patty, you can’t do that,” and then it was, “I’ll show you.” So what trait that is? I don’t know, Judi, [laughter] cut a pencil to that one, I don’t know what the trait is, but it really is tenacity.
ALLEN: I think that’s a good description.
TONER: I think resilience, you have to be ready to bounce back. Because just like, to your point, Patty, every day, there’s something that –
BOYERS: Oh yeah.
TONER: — there’s no such thing as smooth sailing when you have your own business. There’s always a challenge, and so it really is that bounce back of how you can overcome whatever giant setback.
BOYERS: Yeah, don’t let the hard days win, that’s just the most important thing, tomorrow, I’m going to win.
TONER: Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
BOYERS: Tomorrow I win.
CARLSEN: Yeah, boy, you guys have a lot of confidence. [laughter]
ALLEN: Well, what do you think, Ann? You’ve been successful at running a search firm for many years?
CARLSEN: Yeah, humor, I would say humor because I just laugh at everything, at myself more than anything. But I just find — whenever I get nervous or scared or whatever, I just find the humor in it. And there’s always humor, yeah, so that’s it for me.
TONER: You know, I think we all probably have confidence, but make no mistake, I’ll be honest, this is not easy, and I’ve cried a lot. I would call Ann when I was ready to give up, then she would talk me off the ledge, if you will. So I think there’s also this level of self-awareness and vulnerability that you have to get comfortable with, and having what I call those 9-1-1 people that when you are in a bad way… Because every day I wake up the same way as you do, but by the end, I’m like, holy moly, how am I going to face the next day? And sometimes, it is having that network and having the wherewithal to reach out and say, “Hey, can we just talk?” and help see you through things.
CARLSEN: That’s a great one.
ALLEN: So would you say running your own business is an emotional roller coaster? Is that — or is that an exaggeration?
BOYERS: It’s a financial roller coaster, I can tell you this, but this industry has been changing, and morphing, and growing ever since we’ve been in it, which is 47 years we’ve been in it. And to say that when you have a banker say, “I need a five-year plan,” all you can do is laugh, there’s the humor. [laughter]
CARLSEN: I just love that, right, right.
BOYERS: It’s like, are you kidding me?
CARLSEN: Yeah, right.
BOYERS: You want a –? I don’t have a five-minute plan; I’m just flying by the seat of my pants. No, really, — this industry, in and of itself, is young, and we were not necessarily maybe at the infancy of it, but we were toddlers.
CARLSEN: We’re close, yeah –
BOYERS: We were right there with those toddlers.
CARLSEN: Yeah, yeah, we were.
BOYERS: And to say that we’ve grown with it, yes, and expanded with it, yes. And do we have things to give back to it? Hell, yes, we have things to give back to it.
CARLSEN: Yeah, good point.
ALLEN: Each of you started your companies at different–, we’ve thrown out some years, but that you started your companies at different phases in your career. Do you think where you were and those circumstances had anything to do with either your decision, or your trajectory, or anything? So talk a little bit about where you were in your career — you don’t have to tell me your age — and how that impacts your starting of your company because I know, knowing you, they were different times.
RASENBERGER: In my case, I often say I was an accidental entrepreneur. I was head of distribution and marketing for the Food Network, it was acquired, I was given a very nice severance and out figuring out what I was going to do next. And it was just when analog cable was exploding into digital, and there was a huge opportunity for niche cable networks to try — to get launched now. And I remember coming home to my husband and saying, “I think people need my help. I think I need to start a business.” And he decided to stay home with our three-month-old child, and I started a business going out and helping independent, startup cable networks get launched. Launched 25 of them, but it was very much the timing. The opportunity was available. I saw it, I seized it, and I had a very supportive husband who got behind me and helped me through it. Same thing is true with my current business. As streaming and FAST took off, sports was missing from the FAST. It was the most under-represented segment in the FAST category. An opportunity to buy a sports streaming company in Europe became available to me. I understood what sports was going to do to drive advertising into FAST, I seized the opportunity, I bought it, and turned it into a much bigger company. But I think a lot of it is opportunity, recognizing the opportunity, which only experience and wisdom helps you do.
BOYERS: And having the balls to do it too –
RASENBERGER: And seizing it –
BOYERS: — I’m telling you.
RASENBERGER: — yeah.
BOYERS: That’s a whole lot to do with it, brains, balls, and borrowed money.
RASENBERGER: Exactly — [laughter]
TONER: It does.
RASENBERGER: — exactly.
BOYERS: Not necessarily in that order.
CARLSEN: Yeah.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, but I don’t know if I would have seen the opportunities clearly earlier in my career for either one of my businesses and having the confidence, the wisdom, and the balls to just do it.
ALLEN: Now, Ann –
CARLSEN: Yeah, it’s amazing –
ALLEN: — you talked about you were going to be a journalist, then you were all your different things. But now, you’ve been running an executive search firm very successfully for a lot of years. Like when, how, did you say that’s it and this is where I’m staying?
CARLSEN: This is where I really hoped I have a good story, but I really don’t, so… [laughter] So –
ALLEN: We can help you –
CARLSEN: — really happened was –
ALLEN: — we can help you.
BOYERS: Yeah, you start, we’ll add.
CARLSEN: I was 28 years old, and I was just getting married, and I knew that I wanted to have kids. And I needed a job that let me work from home because I wanted to stay at home with my kids. So Pete and I got married, and I started the business in my bedroom, and the rest is history. I never intended it to be a long-term opportunity for me, but it just snowballed from there, so… And the supportive partner thing, I mean, without Pete, I wouldn’t –
RASENBERGER: Yeah, he –
CARLSEN: — all the nights, all-nighters, all of it, you’ve got to have somebody that’s willing to pick up the slack.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, and it’s so — and it’s something people don’t talk about a lot, but you know women want it all. You can have it all, but you better have someone back home supporting you through it because it’s very hard to do it alone. Have kids, run your own business, travel all the time.
CARLSEN: Yeah, yeah, impossible really.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, impossible.
ALLEN: Yeah, and, Gemma, you made a decision at a very different place in your career?
TONER: Yeah, so I had the benefit of being in this fabulous industry with all the fun that we had and doing all these new things. And then I came to a point in my career where I walked in one day into this company that I loved, Cablevision, and I had a close friend pass away. And I walked in and I was like, you know, I’m getting to do all this cool stuff, but there has to be something more, and so I decided to retire. It was not strategic, and to your point, this isn’t a sexy story, it was very emotional. And what I wanted to do was take a break and really reconnect with my family and my kids particularly, and so I retired. And at my retirement party, Chuck Dolan was there, and he thanked me for my service. And he leaned in and said this to me, and so I’m forever grateful. He said, “When you want to start a company, you call me.” Now, I can tell you, you say accidental, I had no intention of getting back in the game, I was retiring, I wanted to give back, a little philanthropy —
[unknown]: travel
TONER: I wanted to do something totally different, right? And then I have to thank this cable industry, Maria Brennan, CEO of WICT, gave me a call and said, “You know, Gemma, we need you to talk on a panel for our leadership conference about career pivots.” Now, believe it or not, I started out in accounting, then ended up in content with AMC Networks, then ended up in Cablevision, launching the broadband products, and then ended my career at Cablevision with data analytics, right? So all over the place. And what I found was in speaking at that engagement, there were all these fantastic women, and I was like, why in the world are you here? I know you, you don’t need to hear what I have to say. But what dawned on me was that I had had the benefit of mentors and sponsors, and I had an executive coach, and I got to go to Stanford, and all of those things are scarce resources. And so that was really where the idea of TONE came about. And how often does someone like a Charles Dolan, say, “Give me a call”? And so I wrote a business plan, came up with an idea, and went to him, and years later, we got funded, and we started. It was wild.
CARLSEN: That’s a great story.
ALLEN: Interesting –
TONER: But I would say what was most important about that was launching TONE Networks, it was purpose driven. This was really about helping people get the lives they want. And so I think that is what keeps me going, is that we’re making this type of knowledge accessible to people that typically don’t have access to it.
BOYERS: And the success stories.
TONER: Yeah, yeah.
BOYERS: The ability to — I think that’s what women, especially when you get to a certain age, you really need to be able to turn around and help somebody else up that ladder coming up behind you.
TONER: Yes.
BOYERS: Because we have — we — I don’t think of myself as a trailblazer, but — I’m a bridge burner — [laughter] but as a trailblazer. But I have people come up to me and say, “Oh, my God, Patty, I don’t think I could do what you’ve done.” I said, “I don’t think I can go back and do it again,” but it wasn’t because it was purposeful, it wasn’t because I had a plan. It was because I had to feed my family, I had a mortgage to pay. I had bills, I had family to take care of. And so you think about all those things, you get your priorities straight and now what you do is just get up and you work.
RASENBERGER: Yup, I agree totally.
BOYERS: You work as hard as you can, and you surround yourself with people who are the same way. And that’s — Amy Maclean, editor in chief at CableFAX said to me one time, she said, “Patty, I know you’ve been in the business a long time, you say so, but you really just — nobody really knew who you were until about 17 years ago, 18 years ago.” And I said, “That’s because I was at home in the tree business.” I didn’t get into the timber business until my son was grown because I was home with that priority. I was going to raise my kid and — because I only got one shot at motherhood, and I was going to make dadgum sure that I did the best job that I could do. The jury’s still out on that, he’s 37 but — [laughter]
RASENBERGER: No, it isn’t.
BOYERS: The deal is, is that I think women have a resiliency about them that is multifaceted, and that we have the ability to hone in on the stuff that’s important and let the rest of it blow away. And that’s really important for — especially the ability to pay back, the ability to mentor. The mentorship thing, I think that’s very important for us because the same women that we were back then are still coming up today. The circumstances are different, the industry is different, still same problems.
CARLSEN: Yep, exactly, the same problems.
ALLEN: So when you were starting and then all of you in different — did you stop and say, “What do I need to make myself professionally ready, financially ready?” Or you just said, “I got a great idea,” or “I need to start earning some money?” Tell me about the process.
RASENBERGER: I don’t think — when you start a business, you have to go all in, whole hog. You can’t be half in and half out. So you have to establish yourself as a business. You have to create a corporation or an LLC. You’ve got to get the accountants. You’ve got to hire the team. You’ve got to balance costs with revenue. So I remember starting my company and going out and hiring a whole team on my payroll. And suddenly I thought, well gosh, now, I’m just trying to feed the overhead –
CARLSEN: Right, right.
RASENBERGER: — pay off the overhead. I cut the team, I hired people as contractors from my different clients, and that’s the way I’ve worked ever since. I spend the least amount of money necessary to build the company and only add team when I’ve got the significant revenue coming in.
ALLEN: So I think this is worth — let’s explore this, this is a really big question. You’ve got to be all in, you’re working really hard, but you can’t, despite — maybe Patty can, but you can’t do it all yourself all the time, I’m just teasing.
BOYERS: Yeah.
ALLEN: It’s how do you think about when to add people, delegating. How do you juggle that? It’s not easy, right?
RASENBERGER: Fill in the skill sets you’re not excellent at.
CARLSEN: There you go.
RASENBERGER: So understand what you’re best at, what your superpower is, and then hire the people to do the skills that you’re not excellent at and –
BOYERS: Be Henry Ford –
RASENBERGER: Yeah.
BOYERS: — surround yourself people more intelligent than you, that’s what he did.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, absolutely.
ALLEN: So famous entrepreneurs are famously in control. They’re all in and committed the way you’ve described it, Cathy. So how do you think about managing control but still having people help you, how does that work? Anybody got any stories?
RASENBERGER: It’s hard because I think if you are a natural entrepreneur, you believe you can do it all yourself. And it’s very important that you don’t try to do it all yourself. So I’ve had to learn several times that I just couldn’t, I’d burn out if I tried to do it all, and I wasn’t actually good at some of the things I was trying to do myself. So I think it’s experience and wisdom as you get older. You realize delegating –
BOYERS: Maturity.
RASENBERGER: — is actually a skill set, and you’ve got to learn it.
BOYERS: Yeah, that’s hard because you think that, say, you wear a bunch of different hats and — but I can tell you, traditionally, entrepreneurial people are horrible business owners. Horrible business owners, horrible budget planners, horrible at a whole host of things. And in 2011 I was — after our son graduated from high school, and I moved my office home and hired our first CEO to run BOYCOM. And that was my pivot from the tree business to the timber business. That’s when I got really active at ACA because public relations and government relations is where I really — I am interested in politics, I always have been. And the most important time to build a relationship is before you need them. And they, politicians, are just like racehorses, they don’t remember the last race you bet on them in. And so I found that I really had a unique voice for independent, rural operators. I had a loud voice, a decibel level unheard of in the halls of Congress, and I could get people’s attention. And that was something that I learned that I did pretty damn good, so… And I had a consistent message, a real message, real people. I can tell my story. Nobody else can tell my story because it’s not their story, and so they can’t refute my story because it’s my story. And so whenever I walk into a congressman’s office, they’re going to listen to me because I’m their constituent, number one, and, number two, I’ve got a valid story. That they have the ability to either help me or hurt me, and they’re going to know when I walk out of there, which side of the fence they’re on. So it’s — yeah, I love that. That’s what ACA has been able to give me, my voice to be able to — And in the meantime, I’m helping everybody else out. And I have a wonderful team at home operating the business, and we’ve managed to continue to grow in some very hard economic and geographic problems where I’m from. So kudos to my team out there –
ALLEN: Yeah, right.
BOYERS: — don’t quit.
CARLSEN: Yeah, don’t quit now, don’t quit now.
ALLEN: So management is always hard, right?
BOYERS: Mm-hmm.
ALLEN: How much control you give up or not. It’s got to be harder when your name is either on the door, the name of your company, or you’re the CEO and it’s your dollars in the company. Anybody got stories of things that didn’t go well? We’re just — we’re all telling these wonderful — you’re doing a great job, but I want us to be useful to people who are watching this.
TONER: I think coming from corporate and having had really large budgets to manage, I came to the startup world thinking, well, we need a lot, right? And what I just quickly realized, I over hired, hired agencies way too early, and all of those things. So we had some colossal fails pretty early, and we had to pull back and then figure out how much do we really need, to the point of the — again, the wisdom, and just getting there with a lot less, and much scrappier. And I pride myself in having had a scrappy career, but this was scrappy like I’d never seen before.
BOYERS: Queen of scrappy.
TONER: Yeah, like super scrappy, and that was hard but also fun. And I also certainly experienced, and I’m sure you-all have too, where you hire with the best intentions, and sometimes, it’s just not the right fit, right? And dealing with that, especially when you’re small, you’re even more sensitive to people that aren’t quite the right fit, you can’t let them be. And so here you are trying to run the business, grow the business, get people in, and then you have to keep switching people out until you find the right one. So I would say those were the challenges. One, really pulling down, how much did I really need to make this company go so that cash flow was positive as early as possible so that I could sleep at night. Because I think the other big thing that, for me coming from corporate, was cash flow, and having employees, and making sure you can pay your bills, and you can pay your employees every month is paramount, right? You don’t get to go without them. And so I think that was a big adjustment like, wow, all right, I’m managing to the cash balance.
BOYERS: So that’s what they were doing up there on that C-suite.
TONER: Yeah, I’m managing to that cash balance. We always knew — you always knew that to a certain degree. But I think we all, who have been in corporate, you have that safety net of there’s some — you still have a job the next day, right? Whereas when you’re in an early stage startup, that’s not always the case.
BOYERS: Well, the deal is those folks working with you when she goes belly up, they just go home, they hit the street, and in maybe a week or so, they’ve got another job somewhere else. You lose your home. Because our home and farm up until eight years ago was mortgaged on my cable company. I don’t know a damn person in this industry that can say that today. That their home –
TONER: Good point.
BOYERS: — and their farm were mortgaged on their cable company. So when you say it’s personal –
__: It is personal.
__: It’s personal.
BOYERS: — it’s personal. If this goes belly up, I lose everything I have worked all of these years for, and it’s going to — that’s a different level of scrappy.
RASENBERGER: Agreed, yes.
TONER: Yeah, yeah.
ALLEN: It’s a different level of risk. [overlapping dialogue]
TONER: Oh, yeah, absolutely –
BOYERS: Oh, are you kidding me?
TONER: — the risk –
BOYERS: So let’s talk about –
TONER: — or the fear.
BOYERS: — risk aversion. The deal about the employees, slow to hire and quick to fire.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, yeah, that sounds really true.
BOYERS: I have a tattoo right here.
ALLEN: Wait a second, is that good or bad for the executive search business?
CARLSEN: It was good for the business, sure, but I — oddly, since my job is to help people hire really great people, I’ve had three colossal failures when I tried to scale the business. Because we had way more business than we could handle at various times, and so I thought, oh, I need a COO to run the business. And so I would bring a really great person in, and then I would proceed to not listen, not give them any control of anything, and just –
BOYERS: Micromanage.
CARLSEN: — and just, yeah, of course, micromanage. Like you said, of course, we think we can do it all. And I’ve done it three times until I realized, you know what, I’m just going to keep this size, and that way, I can keep control of things because I’m not going to be able to let others
BOYERS: That’s right.
CARLSEN: — somebody else run my business for me.
RASENBERGER: The biggest thing –
CARLSEN: That’s a sad thing.
RASENBERGER: One of the biggest causes of failures of startup businesses is choosing the wrong partner.
CARLSEN: Oh, absolutely.
RASENBERGER: And I have many times thought I’ve got to find someone who could help expand my business, bring in a partner. I brought in two, failed miserably. It’s like a marriage and –
CARLSEN: Because they’re not us either –
RASENBERGER: — yeah, it takes a long time to figure out what you need in a marriage. Well, it’s no different in a corporation. You’ve got to find someone that complements your skills and also reinforces you. Very, very, very hard to find. In my current business, I have multiple partners, and it’s trying to figure out what every single one of my partners’ strengths are and how they drive the business forward that makes it work, but businesses fail all the time with the wrong –
BOYERS: Yes, so like a ship that won’t sail as a partnership.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, that’s right, that’s a good point. [laughter]
BOYERS: Done that, been there –
RASENBERGER: Yeah, yeah –
BOYERS: — I’ve got three T-shirts and will never do it again. [laughter]
RASENBERGER: Another Patty-ism. But the other thing you brought up, the responsibility you have to the people in your company, to, in my case, my clients that I would be launching networks for and all their employees. It’s enormous. It what — it’s what gets you up every morning at 5:30 answering emails and — [laughter]
ALLEN: And we know, and you send them early, Cathy. [laughter]
CARLSEN: Right, and the thing –
TONER: Yes, you do, Cathy.
CARLSEN: — that keeps you up at night –
RASENBERGER: It does –
CARLSEN: — I mean and –
RASENBERGER: — it does, and if you can payroll –
CARLSEN: — the paychecks, the paychecks, it’s –
BOYERS: You think about shoes and school supplies, buying shoes for their kids and –
CARLSEN: Yeah, right, right.
RASENBERGER: Because many people’s livelihoods, many people’s dreams– When I was launching cable networks for people, I was helping them manifest their dreams. And it wasn’t just that they were going to lose their money — and a lot of money went into startup cable networks — they were — their dream was also going to be ruined if I didn’t help carry it forward. So I think the — it’s not talked about enough, how big the burden of responsibility is on entrepreneurs.
CARLSEN: Yeah, absolutely.
TONER: Agreed, it’s not sexy, it’s messy –
CARLSEN: Yeah, it’s very messy.
TONER: — but it’s also fun.
BOYERS: You’ve got a good, firm faith too, and a good intuition and a gut.
ALLEN: So let’s talk about that, wisdom and intuition. I imagine we all assess that none of us are 25 and in our first jobs. So how has your thinking, approach, decision-making process, whatever, changed over time, and how does that develop? How have you developed it?
RASENBERGER: Oh, I think definitely my experience has made me wiser. It’s made my instincts sharper, so I know much more quickly what is going to work and what’s not going to work. And when I don’t know instantly, I sleep on everything.
BOYERS: Absolutely.
TONER: Mm-hmm, that’s good, yeah, me too.
RASENBERGER: And the next morning, the process of just sifting through experience, and the facts, and the opportunity, you seem to come to a clearer decision. But I think all the years in the business have totally sharpened my instincts and my inclinations.
BOYERS: Something I learned years ago was I have an internal voice. I call it my tummy alarm, conscience, the Holy Spirit, whatever you want to say, but it is right 99.8 percent of the time. And when I try to overanalyze it, that’s when I get myself in trouble. So if my instincts tell me, let’s do this, then let’s do this; my instincts tell me, let’s sleep on this, let’s sleep on this. And honestly, that’s a honing also though, it’s a fine-tuning, it’s a honing. It’s a frequency on a radio dial — nobody knows what a radio dial is — [laughter] but you could turn it –
CARLSEN: Right, you turn it –
BOYERS: — hear all that static, and then finally, oh, there you go, there’s Paul Harvey. And so it is something truly that you need to impart to someone else. I don’t think everyone has an internal voice that they — they all have an internal voice, they don’t listen to it, and I like to think that I have over the years– I’m a fly-off-the handle, hothead, and impulse decision-maker, but, like Cathy said, I will tell you, something, I’m going to go home and sleep on it. If I’m going to fly off, I’m going to wait till the next morning and fly off. And then it’s Katie bar the door most of the time.
ALLEN: You guys do the sleep on it, you do the sleep-on-it thing?
TONER: Oh yeah, I do, and I think compared to my younger self, right, earlier in my career, I wouldn’t take a beat — and it really does. It’s just — it’s amazing what a day does —
BOYERS: Yeah, perspective.
TONER: — to your perspective, really taking a beat, and I do that with almost everything now. I take a beat because I realize you don’t have to make that decision in that moment.
BOYERS: That’s right.
TONER: Take a beat.
BOYERS: Unless it’s turn right or left.
CARLSEN: But you can sleep and wake up the next day and not have –?
TONER: Some days I can, some days –
CARLSEN: Yeah, I mean because that’s –
TONER: — some nights, I have sleepless nights –
CARLSEN: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) sleep on something –
TONER: — and it’s rolling around in my head.
CARLSEN: Yeah, I like to –
RASENBERGER: Keep going.
CARLSEN: — ruminate, ruminate, ruminate, yeah, right?
TONER: I have those nights too –
ALLEN: I wonder, Cathy says that over time, she got smarter with just experience about knowing what was going to work.
RASENBERGER: Yes, yeah.
ALLEN: Not that you have to tell us any trade secrets, but did you get more like I know who they’re going to pick, I know how this, like you could anticipate given how many searches you’ve done over time?
CARLSEN: Yes, absolutely, and that’s a skill set that develops over time for sure.
RASENBERGER: Well, that 10,000 hours.
CARLSEN: And now I can do it, yeah, I mean –
RASENBERGER: You’ve done it for 10,000 hours, you’re an expert –
CARLSEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if — I guess, yeah, but it definitely — it’s definitely grown —
RASENBERGER: Yeah, one of the things we don’t talk about a lot in all of our businesses, our relationships are absolutely critical, foundational to our success. And I think the thing that really makes it work is always stay honest, stay transparent, stay… The respect and my reputation are what drive my business forward.
TONER: That’s right.
CARLSEN: Exactly.
RASENBERGER: And that you can lose that in a second by not –
BOYERS: You see it happen all the time.
RASENBERGER: — remaining true to your values. So our world in cable, and now in streaming, it’s fairly small, and it’s a very small network of people and relationships. It’s been what’s helped build all of our businesses. And if you don’t actually remain honest and true and keep performing, your business can –
CARLSEN: You don’t last, yeah.
BOYERS: That’s integrity right down to the wire, integrity.
RASENBERGER: — it’s integrity.
TONER: And I can also say because my company, we’re partially cable, right?
RASENBERGER: Yeah.
TONER: Some of our distribution is here, but we’re also in their industries. And so I think you have to carry that forward. It’s not just the relationship that you’ve built over 20-plus years, but it’s also building those new relationships.
RASENBERGER: Of course.
TONER: And what I find is so interesting is that people actually will call out and say, “Your integrity is what makes me want to work with you,” you know? And these are organizations and people that I don’t have 20 years of relationships, but it’s that ability to be so true to who you are that people immediately sense it. And it actually turns them to say, “I want to work with that company” because they’ll stand by it.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, true.
BOYERS: That’s their internal clock too, yeah.
TONER: Yes, it is, it is.
CARLSEN: Yeah, yeah, right, right.
ALLEN: Have you had to say no, and how do you say no to opportunities, or things, or jobs or…? How do you even do that process of –?
RASENBERGER: Oh, in my consulting business, I said no all the time because my consulting business was only going to continue to be successful based upon the success of my client.
CARLSEN: That’s right, yeah.
RASENBERGER: So I had what I always used to refer to as my criteria screen. One year, I had 80 –
CARLSEN: The stink test, we call it the stink test, yeah.
RASENBERGER: — 80 –
BOYERS: Stink test, okay, that’s good.
CARLSEN: Right.
BOYERS: It’s a scratch and sniff.
RASENBERGER: But 80 potential networks that wanted to get launched come to me, and I took five, and because they had to go through that criteria screen. And it was to the point where then the operators would call me because they knew that I had put my clients through this –
CARLSEN: Process, yeah.
RASENBERGER: — through this process, and therefore, I was a partner for them. I had evaluated things, and they could trust my criteria. But saying no is part — now, I say no a lot. I just say, “There are other people who might be better for your business than I am because of a variety of things.”
BOYERS: It’s not the deals you do, it’s a deal as you don’t do –
RASENBERGER: Well, that’s –
BOYERS: — and the discernment. Discernment is a big, old, hairy word, which I love.
CARLSEN: That’s a great word.
BOYERS: That’s something that you develop. It’s the maturity, it’s the wisdom, but the discernment to be able to look at something and say, “I can tell you where this guy’s going and where he’s going to be the best fit for, or not,” and then be able to just say no.
RASENBERGER: Yeah –
CARLSEN: Not easy to do —
TONER: It isn’t easy to do. –
CARLSEN: Oh, it’s really hard.
ALLEN: I would think –
TONER: Because sometimes you’re walking away from revenue or in my –
ALLEN: Right, that’s what –
TONER: — instance — I think it’s really hard actually.
RASENBERGER: And I think if you say no, you’re protecting the reputation of your company.
CARLSEN: Exactly.
TONER: I can give you an example because we’ve had a couple of different situations where we’ve been approached to be purchased or to have a new investor come in. And it’s hard to say no because you can imagine all you can do with that cash infusion and how that can accelerate your growth. And so really hard, sleepless nights. Ann, on that, I don’t just sleep on it. However, when you know it’s just not the right partner, you just have to say no. As much as you’re like, God, I want that money because we could grow so much faster, you just take it, again, take that beat and be like, this would really — it’s just not the right fit. And that’s a really hard decision.
RASENBERGER: It’s very hard. I’m going through that now with my streaming business. We are funding it ourselves rather than bringing in just plain money.
ALLEN: Which is a real decision.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, it’s a decision.
ALLEN: It is.
RASENBERGER: It’s coming out of my pocket because I don’t want to bring in just money. I want a strategic partner, and I want to make sure it’s the right strategic partner. Back to making the wrong decision. I mean, you’ve got to have a partner that can go the long distance with you, so these are the hard decisions, turning away –
CARLSEN: Yeah, turning away business.
ALLEN: So how do you guys think about short term and long term? I mean, you’re here taking on an investor, when you’re running your own business, you’ve got to be planning for the future, and the industry’s changing, and it doesn’t look the way it did 30 years ago or 10 years ago, or five years ago.
BOYERS: Three years ago.
ALLEN: But at the same time, you’ve got to be thinking about where am I positioning, where’s that, has it — and
RASENBERGER: You’ve got to have a plan.
ALLEN: — feeding the beast of like the day to day to day to day. Do you have a process –
RASENBERGER: You’ve got to have –
ALLEN: — a system? How do you guys do that?
RASENBERGER: Yeah, you have to have a — I always have a plan. I have a two-year plan, I have a five-year plan, and then I have a phased approach to get to each benchmark, so…
CARLSEN: Oh, my goodness –
RASENBERGER: So that –
CARLSEN: We need to talk.
BOYERS: Oh, there you go. [laughter]
ALLEN: Can I just say this is why this is a great panel. This is a great panel because you don’t all do things the exact same way.
CARLSEN: I need your services badly.
RASENBERGER: But I’d like to be doing things right now that just have to be pushed off to the next phase. Because I either don’t have the cash or it’s ahead — the cart ahead of the horse. You’ve got to build, you’ve got to create the foundation, or the whole thing will fall.
BOYERS: Right.
TONER: Let’s be honest, we had a five-year plan, well, we blew that within the –
RASENBERGER: It’s good to be directional.
TONER: — first year. It gives you a goal, but it’s like, wow.
BOYERS: Oh, it’s fiction and it’s for the banker.
CARLSEN: It is, it is fiction.
BOYERS: Yeah, it’s fiction.
TONER: We totally missed, and I think you have to be — when you’re in these startup companies, you have to be prepared that, yeah, you have these benchmarks that you want to hit, but sometimes you don’t. But it doesn’t mean that the business is not a good, solid, strong business. It just means you over or underestimated. Your thinking as to where you were going to be isn’t quite there, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea and it’s not the right business.
CARLSEN: That’s a really good point.
BOYERS: It does.
TONER: Because I think especially coming from corporate where it’s like, hey, you need to make your numbers, you don’t make your numbers, that’s it, right? And I think with early stage companies, particularly, we miss them. I mean let’s not kid ourselves. Most early stage companies miss some of their numbers, and then you regroup, pivot, whatever you want to call it, and get on the path to making it and reassess.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, but pivot is a key word.
BOYERS: I like pivot.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, I’m constantly pivoting be– also because I realize, hey, my business could be something else other than I anticipated with the right partner and pivot in a different direction. I used to give my son advice, I said — when he was little, he said he wanted to be president of the United States, and I said, “Well, okay, so you’re in first grade, then get good grades this year.”
CARLSEN: Right, let’s start here.
RASENBERGER: Make a plan that’s a year, max two years for it, because you make a plan that’s too far out, you’ll fail.
CARLSEN: Yeah.
BOYERS: Oh, yeah.
RASENBERGER: I mean –
CARLSEN: You’ll disappoint yourself.
ALLEN: So my question is, because I imagine people watching this are interested in being entrepreneurs, can anyone be an entrepreneur? And does the idea for the business matter more, or the person who wants to start it?
TONER: I think it has to be both, and I do think — I believe in just people that if you really want something, you can do it, right? I think when it comes to entrepreneurism, what I underestimated was the resilience, the hundreds of meetings, people telling you that “This is a dumb idea, why would you do this?” And really having that gumption to keep going when everybody’s saying your baby’s ugly. And I think — [laughter] really, they do. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
TONER: They’re like, “Why would you do that?” And especially if you’re doing something that hasn’t been done before like, “Who needs that, why would you do that?” So I think you have to have that resilience, gumption, stubbornness? I don’t know what it is but — and optimism, right, where you’re like, no, I know this is working, this will work, and you just keep going.
RASENBERGER: I agree with you, though. It has to be a combination. It has to be an idea that has the germ to grow. But if you don’t have the right skill set and the right attitude, it will never work. I remember hiring people when I first started my business to go out and do field sales for me, but they all had to work from their home. Now everyone works from their home but –
ALLEN: Then it was a big deal.
RASENBERGER: It was a big deal. And these are people that had worked for me at the Food Network, so they were tried and tested. One girl could not get out of her pajamas, she literally could not get –
CARLSEN: Yup, I know the feeling.
RASENBERGER: — she could not, she didn’t have the drive.
BOYERS: Now, she’s the manager at Walmart.
CARLSEN: Right, yeah, right. [laughter]
RASENBERGER: But the truth is not everyone is self-directed, not everyone –
BOYERS: That’s right.
CARLSEN: That’s true.
RASENBERGER: — gets up in the morning with a game plan, and the drive, and the persistence, and the perseverance to keep it going. Some people are natural entrepreneurs and — I started my business 28 years ago. When I started it, I thought, oh my God, I wished I’d started it earlier because it was so perfect for me.
ALLEN: Yeah, for you.
RASENBERGER: For me. But earlier, it wouldn’t have been the right opportunity or the right time, and I probably wouldn’t have been as successful. So it’s the combination of time and person.
BOYERS: And that’s all timing, I believe it’s timing, yeah, and a need. You have to find something that’s not a better mousetrap, you have to find. If you’re looking to become an entrepreneur, not going to happen. You have to have the skill set, and the mindset, and the balls to do it, but you also have to believe in yourself. Because to Gemma’s point, if you have something you believe in and everybody else is telling you no, you have to be able to get your back up and say yes, so we’re going to do this. Tenacity, it’s tenacity.
ALLEN: We talk about authors who submit novels over and over –
BOYERS: Over and over again.
ALLEN: — getting turned down and then somebody publishes it, and, boom, it becomes a bestseller, so you’re right.
RASENBERGER: And in raising money for my company now, I am kissing hundreds of frogs. I do so many meetings –
CARLSEN: Frog kissing.
RASENBERGER: — and it’s kissing frogs.
CARLSEN: Yes, that’s right.
RASENBERGER: You’ve got to just to put yourself out there.
ALLEN: There must be a prince out there somewhere.
RASENBERGER: Ah, there’s a prince –
ALLEN: There is one.
RASENBERGER: — I just haven’t found the right prince yet. I found out a lot of princes who wanted to give me money, but not the right prince.
ALLEN: The right one, right.
RASENBERGER: So it’s a lot of –
TONER: It’s such a numbers game.
RASENBERGER: — perseverance, yeah.
TONER: — of just keep swinging.
BOYERS: Oh, it is.
CARLSEN: And I think it’s finding something — for me, it was finding something that I was good at, I knew I was good at, and using just myself to make it happen. I mean, it wasn’t really an idea or anything, just a process that I learned.
BOYERS: There was a need.
CARLSEN: Yeah, and there was a need, yeah, definitely.
BOYERS: With somebody intuitive, and you definitely have that God-given ability. The first time I met you was on the phone, and it was a three-and-a-half-hour call, and suddenly, we decided that our DNA was the same.
CARLSEN: Right, right, yeah. [laughter]
ALLEN: Ann is incredibly –
BOYERS: — and it’s like –
CARLSEN: [overlapping dialogue] How are we not related?
BOYERS: — why haven’t I met you before? I think we’re sisters. I just — [laughter] That’s the other thing, the camaraderie of whatever, you’re a battle-tested, and when you walk in a room and you smell a little singed, it’s like, I recognize that smell. [laughter]
RASENBERGER: I know that.
BOYERS: That’s a warrior, that’s a fellow warrior right there.
CARLSEN: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.
BOYERS: Because she smells like –
CARLSEN: And they might need some help.
ALLEN: Yeah, we need some help. [laughter]
BOYERS: She just came in out of the trench.
CARLSEN: [overlapping dialogue] and make sure it’s met. Yeah, that’s a really great way to put it. That’s true.
ALLEN: Final question, are there any pieces of advice that you would give if there’s someone out there watching this saying, I want to be a successful entrepreneur? Is there anything we haven’t even thought of to talk about, or I didn’t ask you about that you think is useful advice?
RASENBERGER: It’s harder than you think, so every — I meet so many young kids who are going to be entrepreneurs because we live in the “creator economy” now, and you don’t work for a company, you’re a creator. And it’s hard to make money year in, year out, and if people are depending upon you, that’s critical. You have to have a very good, well-researched idea, a market opportunity that’s going to support your idea. You’ve got to — what is your line?
BOYERS: Discipline? The brains, balls, and borrowed money?
RASENBERGER: Yeah, brains, balls, and borrowed money.
TONER: Borrowed money.
RASENBERGER: Yeah.
CARLSEN: A partner.
RASENBERGER: And partner –
CARLSEN: — a partner –
RASENBERGER: — that supports you at home, and maybe if you’re lucky enough to find one in your business too. And it’s every day getting up and facing another potential crisis, and then also lots of opportunities.
CARLSEN: A lot of great –
TONER: Oftentimes, you’re one deal away from changing the trajectory of your business.
BOYERS: Well, somebody says, I want to be an entrepreneur, and it’s like, yeah, you’re not going to make it. If you come and tell me, I’m going to be an entrepreneur, what are the steps, what’s my first step? We’ll get your education. What’s your idea, what’s your mousetrap? Ask a few questions, rely on your gut, and your gut’s going to tell you, you needed to go back to whatever it is you were doing because you’re not going to make. And I think honesty is incredibly important –
CARLSEN: Yeah, that’s huge.
BOYERS: — for those of us who have the privilege of being in the mentor stage and season of our life, where someone comes to us and says something, “Well, I want to do what you’ve done.” I’m thinking, well, you need to buckle up because it’s going to be a long ride, a long ride.
TONER: And I think that’s the other thing on the long ride, when it comes to starting these companies, what you see in the media and hear, all of these companies just skyrocketing to success. But those are really the one in a million, right? The majority of these companies fail, right? And the ones that are growing are growing at a much slower rate. So just be aware, you may not get to where you want to go as quickly as you think. And I think the other thing is, again, I just say this over and over to my team. We’re never going to have enough time, we’re never going to have enough money, and you’re never going to have enough resources but figure it out.
BOYERS: There’s always another month.
TONER: And the other thing that –
BOYERS: After the money.
TONER: — Chuck Dolan always said to us when we were — he would ask to — he was such a great visionary, and he would ask to do the impossible, right? And he would say, “Let’s just start.”
CARLSEN: Yeah, that’s right, that’s so good.
TONER: And we didn’t know how, we didn’t how to do it, but let’s just start. And I think when it comes to– when you do have the idea, and you vetted it, and you have all those other components, you can spend a lot of time thinking, but sometimes, you just got to go.
RASENBERGER: That’s good, totally agree with that.
TONER: Go –
ALLEN: And no analysis paralysis.
BOYERS: Yeah, right.
TONER: Just go and you’re going to learn and be ready, it’s going to break and you’re going to have to… We had so many things that we did wrong in the early days, but –
RASENBERGER: I totally agree with that.
TONER: — we had to get going because that was the only way we were going to work.
BOYERS: That’s right, 10 percent on the problem and 90 percent on the solution.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, just do it, nothing’s going to happen if you don’t move forward, unless you do it.
TONER: Just go.
RASENBERGER: And we were talking about it last night at dinner. There’s so many things that we are all afraid of, and you’ve just got to get out there and do it. You don’t like to public speak, get out there and do it because you’ll be better the next time. You don’t like to raise money, get out there and do it. And nothing’s going to happen if you just analyze, revising your deck over and over again, revising your business model. Who cares, really, in the end?
BOYERS: Right, your banker –
TONER: Revising your five-year plan.
RASENBERGER: Yeah, your banker, yeah — [laughter]
BOYERS: Your banker cares, and that’s it.
RASENBERGER: But really, you’re not going to have a perfect plan because it’s going to change tomorrow.
CARLSEN: That’s right.
RASENBERGER: Your deck really doesn’t matter. When I’d hear people say, “Gosh, you don’t have AI on your third page of your deck, it’s never going to sell.” No one reads the deck anyway. They listen to you, they invest in founders.
BOYERS: They’re not sure –
RASENBERGER: They don’t invest –
BOYERS: — if they get to the third page before they’re figuring it out.
ALLEN: Yeah, you’re right, [laughter] yeah, right.
BOYERS: That third page is buried.
RASENBERGER: Yeah.
ALLEN: All right, you guys, this was a great conversation. Patty, Ann, Cathy, Gemma, thank you very much.
RASENBERGER: Thank you, Judi.
BOYERS: Thank you, Judi.
