Military brat, history buff, educator, musician, baseball hall of famer… Stephen Boudreaux brings a world of experiences into his job as an account manager at Cox Business — and it’s helped him be successful.
Stephen Boudreaux has always marched to the beat of his own drum — and his career journey is proof of just that. After undergrad, he got into law school but soon ruled out a career in the legal field and got a job teaching high school AP history.
“I have degrees in history and education, and people used to ask me, ‘What do you do with a history degree?’” he said. “Well, you either teach or go to law school. And I did both of those things.”
He loved teaching but decided that it wasn’t a sustainable career choice for him personally as a newlywed about to start a family.
But his passion for teaching led him to sales — and he never looked back.
“Salespeople are generally just teachers: educating about the products we offer,” said Stephen, who established himself in the telecom industry in various capacities over the last 30 years, from sales engineer to management and VP-level roles.
But in his home state of Arkansas, Stephen has made a name for himself outside of his 9-to-5. He’s an accomplished drummer who’s recorded dozens of albums and played with many bands over the years. He’s currently in three bands: Oreo Blue, The Uncrowned Kings and Honeyjack. Stephen has also played 52 consecutive seasons of amateur baseball (MSBL) and is an MSBL Hall of Fame inductee.
An overachiever? Definitely. Stephen’s different life experiences have shaped him, and here’s how he brings that into his sales career at Cox.
The new kid in town
Growing up in a military family, Stephen moved around a lot — a lifestyle he credits with teaching him resilience and adaptability.
“Having that kind of dramatic change in your life literally every year allows you to adapt to different places, different cultures and different people,” he said. “And I learned to make friends more quickly because I had a really a short amount of time — six months to a year — to do so.”
That sense of urgency to build relationships had served Stephen in his sales career: he’s able to walk into a customer’s office and meet with C-suite-level decision makers and “immediately start a conversation,” he said.
Stephen believes that learning to accept and embrace change so early in life has been a real asset to his career: “Change is the only constant, and how you get from one step to the next step is by managing the change and trying to stay even-keeled.”
This skill has allowed him to thrive working in an industry that’s constantly evolving like telecommunications.
“One of the things I say about sales is, ‘The nouns are always going to change. You just need to understand the verbs,’” he said. “I think you just have to relax a little bit and take care of your customers. If we just take care of them, it’s all going to be okay.”
The baseball player
Ever since he could hold a bat, Stephen’s been playing baseball.
“Baseball is the one thing that’s been consistent in my life,” he said. “I still play in a competitive collegiate league. I'm the oldest guy on my team by far, playing against 19-, 20-, 21-year-old collegiate baseball players.”
Stephen says that being part of a team environment through sports directly translates to knowing how to work as a team in the workplace: “Here in our sales world, we’re part of a team. We communicate as a team and help each other.”
Baseball, in particular, taught Stephen how to navigate both success and failure — a mindset that’s made all the difference in sales.
“Managing failures as much as you’re managing your success is an important component,” he said. “In baseball, if you hit .300 in your career, you’re considered a Hall of Famer. But that’s 30%, which anywhere else in the world is considered failing, right?”
The drummer and musician
Stephen’s passion for making music and playing in different bands has become an immediate ice breaker in his sales career. If people don’t know him for baseball, they’ve seen him play locally.
“In my world, here in Arkansas, so many people know who I am through baseball and music,” he said. “So, when I go into a meeting, the C-level people that I talk to used to watch my band when they were in college or they ask me, ‘Hey, when’s your band playing next?’”
Music also played a role in Stephen joining Cox Business in 2022. For years, a couple of his musician friends who work at Cox had been encouraging him to explore opportunities with the company. When the timing felt right to make a change, Stephen applied for an account manager role in the same territory where he’d built relationships for nearly 30 years. The move to Cox was more than worth it, he said.
“I finally ended up where I belong, where we have that culture of helping, and it just didn't feel that way anywhere else,” he said. “And I tell that story to a lot of these enterprise customers I’ve worked with before, but now I get to tell them, “‘The culture is different here. We’re here to help.’”
