 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Buddy, welcome to our new podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Cutaya, CEO and founder of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Christel. Hey Jamie, welcome everyone to Data Movers where we sit down with the leading voices in today's telecom and data center world, supporting the requirements of this new normal. So Jamie, did you see the Mars perseverance landing by any chance? I saw a brief clipping on the news and it was cool as heck, I will say. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Amazing to think that the world we're in, communications technology is behind now getting that video in 4K from Mars to our TV sets. I mean, beyond the technical accomplishment of landing, if the communication side is really fascinating. It's so fascinating, the newscaster said, okay, here's your first sound from Mars. Everyone listen in. And then you could hear this like, I don't know, it sounded windy? I'm not sure if that's a thing in Mars, but this crazy noise. I'm like, we're listening in on Mars. Like that, I mean, from a telecom perspective, that's pretty intense, right? It's pretty intense. And the technology behind it is fascinating. One of the pioneers of the internet, Vidsurf, who's actually been working for over a decade on an interplanetary internet. So the idea is you'll have lots of devices and rovers and you need a brand new network, a brand new set of protocols to support all of these missions that are traveling around the solar system. So I don't know, does our next guest have an interplanetary network support by any chance? You know, that's the one thing I can't help you with. No, I mean, this company just give them a couple of years or months. Couple of decades, years, months, okay. Well, let me formally introduce here. Our guest, super excited to have today Mike Olson, Senior Vice President at Consolidated Communications. Mike, welcome to JSA TV, Data Movers. Glad to be here. Yeah, and Mike, before we dive into the interview, I noticed from your bio, you're from Minnesota. You went to school in Minneapolis. You worked professionally, you know, your career in the Minnesota, Minneapolis area. My question is really, why are you guys so nice? What is it about Minneapolis in particular? Everyone is nice. It is in the water or the air, or what's going on up there? And just to preface this, for those of you listening in on a podcast and you can't see our fabulous Evan, he has a shirt that say, it's way too people-y outside on right now. So this is where the question's coming from. Mike. Absolutely. Well, I actually grew up in Iowa and actually moved to Minnesota to go to college. So that's probably where- So from nice to nicer. It's- Exactly, sure. You know, I think the big thing is people just embrace the outdoors and embrace being busy, being embraced, being out in public and just doing everything with the all four seasons up here. And I think it just makes a happier person overall. And because it is true and I travel the country quite frequently which I haven't the last year, but this Midwest or Minnesota nice is a real thing. It really is. And you know, I think there's such a community spirit which we'll get to in a heartbeat actually part of your consolidated DNA. But you know, you also mentioned you know, last year it's been crazy. We're actually nearing the one year anniversary mark. I don't know anyone's gonna celebrate, but for when COVID-19 first hit the US and you know, it's been very tumultuous needless to say. How has consolidated been helping with the intense demand for broadband and business communications? And how have you seen changes in your customer behavior during this crazy pandemic? Yeah, good question. And you know, when I think about it it's almost hard to believe it's been a year because at times it's went slow and times when you reflect back, it's been almost a year. And I'll never forget that week I was actually in Houston and when I flew out, things seemed normal. When I flew back, there was 30 people on my flight that Friday. But yeah, I think at that point that following week not that it was chaos, but everybody needed to move fast including consolidated, deploying people home and we did it very well as along with a lot of businesses. But really what we needed to showcase was being very flexible. People needed bandwidth upgrades like that. And I remember those first six, eight weeks we did hundreds and hundreds of expedites. We call them in our industry where we had to turn up bandwidth and connectivity within 48 hours just to support all those businesses that were deploying people at home. And I think the other thing that really spawned this is we've been talking about cloud for five, six plus years. And at times cloud has been hard to adopt for a business because right now they kind of control everything and it's hard to let control go. And when you're talking about cloud you're entrusting some of your services that you control today with a provider like us. But this really forced that adoption of cloud. For example, taking your phone from your desk and running home and plugging it in and continuing doing business just like you were sitting in the office. So it really, really accelerated the adoption of cloud, the importance of cloud, the importance of being diverse. And because the hybrid model that we're in I think we'll continue to be in. It'll be somewhere in the middle. A lot of companies are talking about some permanent work from home employees. Is that gonna be 20%, 30%? I don't know. I think it'll be something in the middle. And I think this hybrid of, and me personally, I was not a work from home person. And I like going to the brick and mortar. I'm all about seeing people culture that type of thing. But I've learned that when things go back to whatever the new norm is it'll be more productive for me to sometimes work from home especially a long travel week. And if I get back on a Thursday night it may be wise to work at home. So I think it's really opened up businesses minds on we need to do it differently. We need to be very, very flexible because if we are, we can be much more productive. And I think the other thing too which you probably saw some press is the episodes and residential where now our homes have become a workplace. And I know for me sitting out my window face the street I saw our vans go by for months. I saw our competitors vans go by for months. That was something we hadn't seen in our industry for a long, long time because it was more of a entertainment value from being at home versus a true work from home environment. So that's really the biggest changes. And I think what we're seeing now as we're moving closer to the old norm slowly but surely is a lot of companies that were maybe holding back projects wanna do them and they wanna do them now. So we as service providers in our industry we need to become faster than we were before because that's what businesses are demanding. They're demanding services much quicker, much more flexible. So that's really initiative, not only a consolidated but by guess my peers in the industry. That's phenomenal. And speaking of faster, I see you've upgraded over 1.6 million additional fiber gig services to customers over the past five years. What's behind that phenomenon? Because that's quite an accomplishment. Yeah, the timing is really perfect. This is an initiative that's been talked about for a couple of years with the company. And as the residential service moves more to over the top type services, not the traditional cable TV per se. It's more the Hulu and Yahoo and all those different types of services that you can get today, but really accelerated with this new work from home environment and kids learning from home. Whether they're in K-12 or even college which I have a daughter that came home to learn from home too. So the increase in bandwidth requirements is really, really critical. So yeah, to your statement over the next five years we plan to build to 1.6 million homes in various regions of our company. And this year alone we're gonna do 300,000 homes. So that's a pretty aggressive, most aggressive in our company's history in not only serving residents but really being able to provide higher bandwidth to businesses along the way as we build those fiber routes and into those residential neighborhoods is everybody is actually gonna win whether you're a residential or a commercial customer because the demand for bandwidth was always going up. It's just really, really accelerated with the pandemic the last 12 months. And that really serves up that, the reality that we're facing of the digital divide you guys are really chopping away at it in local communities and talking community like we touched on earlier over the past few months I know consolidated announced a series of community giving programs like your new educational grant programs, $60,000 campaign pledge for United Way one of my favorite charities. Employee funded foundation support, interesting. Would you say this type of community support is just part of the consolidated culture? It really is. And probably what I'm most proud of and even when I was part of a regional you talked about Minnesota earlier I was part of a regional company that was acquired by consolidated communications back in 2014. And corporate citizenship was really, really important to us and it's very similar to consolidated critical needs education really are too. And I actually sat on that board that gave away all that money every year. And I know when we were acquired that's the first thing I looked at consolidated communications was kind of their vision mission and they had the same corporate citizenship. So that's exciting. And I think the other thing is it's really attracted great employees. We just do not have the turnover like most companies or industry do because of that corporate citizenship. And that's why we still have offices and people scattered throughout the country. We don't necessarily bring everybody in one location because we want people involved in their communities. And to be honest, that's one of the benefits of me not traveling I've been able to be involved in my primary service group this last year which I had not been as involved as I used to be because of all my travel and that speech and hearing. But yeah, I mean, if you think about education and for those of you listening today that have had kids at home, spouse, partner at home it was a challenge, right? Not only from a noise perspective but everybody's trying to share that bandwidth. So if you were living in a home that did not have significant bandwidth you felt the impact. And is my work or my kids education more important? Well, it all is, but yeah, it's really this expansion really, really correlates with our core corporate culture which is K through 12 education and critical needs. So, and we have volunteer programs just very, very proud that our company has that as an initiative. Phenomenal. So looking at your career a little bit as we do here on Data Movers I see you've been with consolidated for 18 years you've been in telecom for 23 years. I think I might have you edged out by a few years even more than that. So we're really getting into like 56 K modem territory here but so looking back on trends you've seen throughout your career what surprised you and treat you the most about our industry and how it's evolved. Yeah, really good question. I was not to date, but I was at the tail end of the 56 K modem, you're right. And internet and how it's become such a normal part of our life. But I think for me that is because that was the digital transformation where traditional telephone companies were all analog at that point and they just gotten through the digital and then they went through the becoming an internet provider with the 56 style up modems and just the dependency on bandwidth that was a really a slow development in our industry. Whether it's traditional telephone companies or traditional cable companies it was very slow and evolving because the networks were built for voice not necessarily for data. And as data became more and more prevalent and more and more required by whether it's a consumer or a business that was big challenges because you had to upgrade the really the core of your networks to provide that bandwidth. So it's kind of that transition from voice to data. And I think the other thing that is probably I wasn't necessarily a believer and I remember this day probably maybe 13 years ago at a Cisco conference when Cisco said video will be the new voice in one year. And I said, what? Video will be the new voice in one year. And man, did that happen and it really took off with the millennials. And it all started with this device but now look at the world we live in. So if you weren't an adopter of video or the pandemic taught you to be an adopter of video and how critical it is if I ever get a voice conference bridge I'm going, what? I really don't know what to do anymore because I'm so used to video I'm so used to seeing somebody across the screen here where back to your question that has probably been the biggest surprise is a lot of people had a hard time adopting the video. And if you remember, they had their cameras off even though they were on a video call but it's just that adoption of video and how prevalent it is not only in our personal life but in our business life today. And then I think the other thing which we talked about at the beginning is IP how important the internet how everything is going over the internet today with cloud services and being able to bring your phone from your office and plug it into your home and be just like at your office. So to me to answer your question is really the video and the IP technology and how fast that became a critical part of people's lives. Absolutely. And had we known to invest in Zoom, you know. Exactly. February. Yes. But that's a good lead into my next question knowing what you know now if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice especially at the beginning of your prayer. You know the thing I've learned how important listening is listening is a skill and how important it is to listen and not speak. And I really learned that you know I was very even though I've been here a long time as my second job out of college I've been very blessed to be in this industry this long but when I first moved into management that's when I learned how critical is listening is and one of my mantras is practice the 95 five rule listen 95% of the time speak 5% of the time because you learn so much by listening and taking that time to just listen not speak, not interrupt gather your thoughts, take notes but the power of listening no matter what role you are and no matter what industry you're in listening is the first skill I would recommend anybody mastering. And I think the second one is you know thinking about this is leadership really matters. You know I've seen throughout my career when you have strong leaders in place nobody leaves. People wanna work for people more so than money. And that doesn't matter if it's a Gen X or millennial whatever it is strong leaders and if you don't have turnover your company is gonna be much more successful because turnover is very costly it's dangerous, it's unpredictable so for me it's probably those top two but I think we all can practice better listening skills. Solid advice. So I'm a big fan of companies like yourself and consolidated companies that are competing against the telco giants out there that just seem to get bigger and bigger every day but how do you see the industry looking over the next one, two, three years in terms of the telecom landscape competitive landscape? Yeah, that's really good insight. I like we're large but we're not one of the big guys you know and when you're that way we still can be swift and nimble which we really proved to many, many customers in 2020. You know for consolidated for companies that have weathered the storm over the last 10 years which solidated has they've done a good job of making very good strategic decisions not stretching too far but what you're gonna hear now is growth, growth, growth. It's really a focus on growth and it's really all three channels whether it's consumer, we call it the three C's here but consumer, commercial and carrier. I'm very thankful, I always have been but I think 2020 gave a lot of us to be very, very thankful to be in this industry because we're so needed and we're needed by all three of those C's that I talked about. So what you'll see about consolidated just like the residential expansion that we're gonna do is all about growth. So the companies that have really weathered the storm like us, you're gonna see them on a growth and accelerated growth plan going into the future because it's all about the bandwidth. You know, Evan if you remember the 56 K days you know the next was a T one that was a big deal, right? And then 10 Meg became the new T one and then 100 Meg became the new 10 Meg and then a gig became the new 100 well now it's 10 gig. Everything is everybody's asking for 10 gig and that's why we need to continue to grow as a company and whether it's organically or through the right acquisition. So that's what you're hearing a lot about. Talking about bandwidth and need for speed. Exactly. Brings us right into our rapid fire like that transition, our rapid fire section one of my favorite sections. I'd like to end our interview with a few rapid fire questions just to learn some fun facts about you. So tell us the first thing that comes to mind when I asked you first question. If you could have lunch with a famous person in history dead or alive, who would it be? That's a really good question. Well, I'm a big growing up in Iowa I'm a great big Iowa Hawkeye fan and I actually still have, I have season tickets and that's me and my boys thing in the weekends even though we didn't get to do it this last year but Iowa's head coach is Kirk France and he is a legend in college football. He's been there 22 years, has a top 20 program pretty much year after year and he does it with bringing in two and three stars and for those of you that follow sports you know what that means but the five stars are what Alabama gets and Ohio State gets and what he takes two and three star kids out of high school turns them into great college players and if you look at his record at the NFL has like the top three, top four number of kids that have went to the NFL from his program. So I'm just intrigued because obviously discipline and I run primarily the sales organization here which is all about discipline but I would be very intrigued about how he stays disciplined how he's changed over those 22 years to really keep that program in such great shape and winning year after year. Talk about the importance of leadership and coaching. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so what is the most used app on your phone? I would have to say Twitter and more from- Hallelujah, finally. Sing it in a song. So maybe the weather app next but probably Twitter and it's, I'm not a big Twitter but I love following some key news sources and it's immediate and I do like Twitter. So, awesome. And what is your favorite hobby or pastime and you're able to break away? Well, as I mentioned, I love attending sporting events. I played sports, I coached sports for many, many years as you can see from the pictures in the background. I didn't get to do that this last year. I have to watch on TV or on the internet but the other thing, you know, living in Minnesota we have over 10,000 lakes and I love lake life. I always have. So, and to be honest, when I am on the lake and on the water it's the only time I'm ever relaxed. So anytime I can spend time at the lake and on the water, that's my favorite. We all need our little den, you know? Yes. Especially 2020 beyond. Yes, I spent a lot of time there this last year. All right, so favorite movie, podcast, TV show, book. Good question. Probably movie, The Blind Sign. That really struck with me and it was very, very powerful and it still is today. I don't think I've seen a movie that's moved me as much and maybe more lines with me being such a volunteer and I always teach my people to be difference makers and while was that mother a difference maker. So I don't watch a lot of TV but I do like The Black List with James Spade. He came from Boston Legal and it's, I like the crime sci-fi type things and it's very, very intriguing but for TV would be The Black List. Great. Well, great. Well, thanks for joining us, Mike. Really nice connecting and meeting you and learning a bit about your mission at Consolidated and look forward to tweeting at you. So... There you go. You can touch that way. And in talking about tweeting and joining our data movers following, if you will. If you enjoyed today's podcast, come on in, check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming episodes. We release every other week on Wednesday mornings. Also our Twitter handles, Evan. Jay Scotto and Evan Kirstel and we will respond. So tweet at us and in the meantime. Happy networking.