Brisket, Safety Meetings, and Paid Half-Days: Building a Crew That Stays | Allan and Jolene Stocki Ep 76

Rural communities have waited years for broadband that actually works, and the operators closest to those customers are the ones finally closing the gap. Discover how a husband-and-wife ownership team built a fixed wireless network from scratch, moved it to fiber, and is now taking on a 1,500-mile BEAD expansion.

In this episode of Power the Network, host Tim Locker sits down with Allan and Jolene Stocki, owners of Current High Speed, to discuss how an electrical and HVAC company in Southeast Missouri became a broadband provider serving five counties. Allan explains how frustration with his own home internet led to climbing towers, pouring concrete, and self-building roughly 150 of the 252 tower sites the company once operated — and why he pushed the team to rip and replace that network with fiber before the bandwidth ceiling arrived. Jolene shares how she taught herself splicing from YouTube videos, brought documentation discipline to a network that had none, and helped shape custom-outfitted splice trailers for each technician. The conversation also covers the realities of their BEAD build: 1,500 miles of underground cable, months of federal permitting through historic preservation, tribal council, and endangered species reviews, and crews trained and waiting for a green light. Whether you're an independent ISP owner or a network operations leader, this episode offers practical lessons on growth, patience, and people. Their closing vision — using growth to reinvest in the community — is worth hearing.

• How a frustration with home internet turned an electrical and HVAC business into a five-county fixed wireless and fiber provider.
• Why Current High Speed chose to rip and replace a profitable wireless network with fiber before bandwidth demand caught up.
• Inside the federal permitting maze of a BEAD build, from historic preservation reviews to endangered species clearances.
• The importance of splice documentation and mapping when a damaged enclosure has to be rebuilt from scratch.
• Why treating employees like people, not numbers, fills the hiring pipeline without spending a dollar on advertising.

Hi, welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. We've got a little change of pace for you this week. We've got two guests in studio. We have the husband and wife duo, Alan and Jolene Stockie, go owners of current high-speed internet down in Southeast Missouri. Current high speed is currently bringing broadband down to that part of the state serving. It's kind of an underserved area for broadband, expanding fiber into that area through the bead program. We're going to get a good understanding today of their background, how they kind of got into what they're doing, their future, their culture. We're going to learn a lot about current high speed today. So let's get into it with Alan and Jolene. Alan and Jolene, thank you so much for joining us today. How's your trip to Kansas City been? Yeah, pretty good, Tim. Pretty good. Definitely been different. Yeah. First time up here? First time for pleasure slash business. Yeah. I guess staying in the city, first time stayed up in Kansas. Been through a few times, but nice. Well, let's break the ice here. So it was your first trip to the match show this year. Yeah. What'd you think of it? So we've been to the Westpapaluzzo's and stuff down in Las Vegas in Southeast Missouri. Some were shows set up, you know, kind of a thing. Yeah. It was a good show. A lot of the vendors was kind of nice. We knew a lot more vendors than we did down in the West Bay Area and stuff like that. So have some more strategic conversations that way when you kind of have some familiar faces. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Well, we're glad you joined us and thanks for coming up. Many people know current high speed as a broadband provider. But you kind of had your roots in electrical and HVAC. I guess what caused you to see a need for broadband in your area and like, I mean, tell us a little background. Yeah, I get to tell the story a little bit. So it's kind of fun. The company itself is older than the internet. So it started 1991, I believe, doing mostly electrical and then got into heating and air, bought out of heating and air company and got into that. And then I jumped on about 10 years ago with the company. OK. And I was in a, I was in my tuition. It's what I was by trade and HVAC doubled in swing check. And so I jumped on as a service tech for them basically. And I sit around talking to Danny one day, he's the owner. And I said, hey, there's just like real problem in the area that we have with internet. And I think I've got a way we can help the community. And so we were transitioning buildings at the time. And it was kind of like rolled off his shoulder and I approached him again with it later. And I was like, look, man, I like, I'm going to do this. I really want you to do it with me. I want to do this together. I think you can do it. But I'm going to do it if you don't. So this is like, here's the last chance. He's like, OK, let's do it. And so he jumped on board. And we started pulling equipment up on towers. And I'm just making a go of it. Yeah. And then, you know, for three or four years after we started, we were on 252 towers across five counties. OK. We started all the wireless space. Yeah, we started all the wireless space. We built all about 150 of the towers that we were on. We built ourselves out there, poor concrete. OK. About to crane out all the other whole nine yards. We've always been a do-it-yourself shop, because we've had the nature of being able to do our electric. You know, when you're in those sort of service industries, you gain the capacity to do all the tradesmen sort of aspects of the business. That's awesome. So what was it that you saw in the community? What triggered it? Oh, it was me on them, the kids. And it absolutely was screaming down the hallway. Shut the YouTube off so I can load the news article on my thing. OK. Oh, yeah. And I was like, so just, I don't struggle with that. Absolutely personal struggle started it. I was like, I don't want to be yelling at them. There's truly there exists a world where we can YouTube and read news at the same time. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I mean, not everybody will take everything to that extreme. Yeah. Or have you, I mean, what other things like that have you taken to the extreme? I don't sit there and think, well, gosh, my internet's bad. I'm going to build a network. Like, that takes a special person, I think. You nailed it. No, we, I guess we kind of do that about a lot of different things. Can't find produce in the grocery store that we want. We'll build a garden. It's just kind of who we are. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. What kind of role from one business to the other? What kind of lessons did you learn from the electrical side and the H backside into, you know, the swap right over into the broadband side? Sure. We're accustomed to like, so from an electrical standpoint, you're going to go fix the ceiling fan in somebody's house. So you know the service industry, you know, how to show up in a van that's washed and, you know, have booty covers if it's a real nice house. And all of the sort of crusty's got your eyes of being a service-related company. So when you're installing internet, that transition was easy. We could, you know, we knew how to do that. We knew how to run cables, you know, how to, you know, drill into the sides of the houses. How to, you know, a lot of it is just changing the size of the wire that you're running in the house. So for us from the electrical to installing the internet itself, anyway, was a super easy, you know, sort of no brain or transition. Some of the bigger stuff, like how do you, how do you stop cyber attacks on a network? You know, that's new. Yeah. So what's the learning curve like? Oh, massive. I mean, so we put a bunch of equipment up. We start off five towers, right? We hung all this equipment. And I'm out there the next day after we hung the equipment. I'm trying to get a signal. I've got the receiver on the roof of my car about the Parkerlegg, I can see the tower. I can see our equipment on the tower. Nothing, I get nothing. I mean, I just hours, hours, now. Trying to figure out. Trying to figure out one of the being one stupid checkbox, you know, of course there's always. It's what it pulls down to all the time. One stupid checkbox, but the learning curve was just, you know, was exponential. Because when you're just trying to do it yourself and figured out yourself, if you're going to school at the school of Art Knox, and it's difficult and arduous, but you will learn and you'll learn it thoroughly. At what point did fiber come into play for you? So we just crossed into the threshold of being profitable and it kind of set everybody down and I was like, look guys, I know we're finally making money, but I can see the writing on the wall. The future cast is the 20 megabit per second package or so I are not going to be enough. 4K TVs are going to come out in the next couple of years and they're going to take 25 megs. You know, what are we going to do? So we're going to have to gut the network, rip and replace everything, try to find equipment and at that exact moment of time, there wasn't really equipment. They do much better than that. And so we were like, okay, we're going to have to go to fiber because fiber you can deliver. You know, you know, I'm going to tell Pete you what. Yeah, I did. It's insane. So, you know, I tell him it's really hard to tell an average person walking in the street that's a, you know, a car mechanic or whatever, you know, it's sort of an average show like how fast fiber really is. Yeah. It's almost impossible to explain to them. So we've got our network rack set up in the office so people can come in and I'll show them what a fiber line looks like and I'll show them its size of a human error. And I'll say, yeah, by the way, you can stream 50,000 TV shows through this legal line. You know, and their eyes are just blown away. And in reality, Japan has done 232 trillion thousand shows through one strand of fiber, you know, and so it's, you can't explain that as well as, you know, you want to do some folks. But that's really what the whole shift to fiber was was there is no end in sight. Yeah. Whereas the wireless world seemed like it had a cap on it at the time. Let's kind of move directions a little bit. You know, I had the opportunity to come down a visit with you guys here month or two back. And we did a little bit of work with you. And the one thing that I noticed was the culture within your company. Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, we, you know, brought everybody back and had lunch for everybody in the shop, you know, those kinds of things. And I know you guys take that very seriously. How did you, how did you develop, you know, what you've got in terms of culture and you know, how do you keep that moving? What's the, what's your vision for the future? You know, as you grow, how long can you continue to do you all the things that you do for your folks? Yeah. Well, it's got a lot of questions there. Yeah. So break it down. I think part of it is, is because we've both worked for people that didn't treat you like a person. You are a number. Yeah. And that's one big thing at our company is that we want you to be a person not a number. Right. Because everybody's different. Everybody learns different. Everybody works different. But we can all work together. Yeah. And we just, we take care of each other the best that we can all the way throughout. And we're going to continue to do it as long as we can. That's great. Somewhere, and she's right, I've worked for some major, not fund people to work for it. I don't know what demographic is on the podcast here. So that's all good. Like you used the old word, that'd be it. That's 100% it. And so we're just like, how do we not be those guys? You know, how do we not do that? And that's a premise that applies to both sides of the thing. So our ISP and the way we treat our people is the same thing. So how do we not do that? How do we not be that person? Or how do we not be that mega company, right? Yeah. And so what we found was that a long time we were heard a story from a company about bringing a barber in, right? And they bring the barber in. They give everybody the haircuts, right? And what they found was the guys would take like a half a day off or a whole day just to get a haircut. And so the company wanted to be more profitable by bringing the barber in and giving everybody free haircuts at the company, right? And then they boosted morale and they didn't have to take the day off to do it. And so it was a win-win kind of situation, right? So it took some of that and we sort of expounded on that. And so our guys can come in in the morning and grab a breakfast sandwich out of the freezer. They can throw in the microwave, you know, have the same thing that they're gonna get at the gas station. The coffee's made, you know, it's ready to go. So like they don't have to go seek it out so it's where they can come here. They don't get what they want. So it does a couple of things there. Not only is it good for the employee, but it's way more efficient. Exactly. So win-win-win, almost every time you take your employees and you treat them like human beings and you treat them like family and you treat them well, you can't always quantify what that looks like in reciprocation, but I can promise you from experience it reciprocates immensely. Yeah. And like I said, you came in and you had lunch with us, right? We have lunch every day. I'm pretty sure we're the only company in the world that has a hamburger button on the time clock. Yeah. And so Nick does our customer software and he's awesome. And so he built our time clock, he built our mapping software and built everything in-house. And so like we need to know, Pam can't just guess who's gonna be there. So I need some kind of button or sign up for lunch for me as a hamburger button. And so now morning when they're bunching in, if you're gonna be around, boom. Now we can make sure you're, you know, to get you fed. That's awesome, but still like if somebody's 30 miles out from the shop and they're out on a trouble or out doing something they can still stay in. Yeah, oh yeah. And you get their work done in. Yep, yeah. Yeah, and if you miss lunch, you come out and you just make your sandwich which is always lunch with the fridge. And then it's always leftovers too. So yeah. So that's what, I mean, that's what I noticed and was impressed with right away, but what other things other than lunch? Like what do we, what kind of things do we expect? Yeah, so we do these safety meetings. And I always hate it safety meetings. Like, or rather just safety is no accident. Well, yeah, but the environment of a safety meeting is always terrible. And so we do safety meetings differently. So once a month, I smoke a bunch of brisket's and we bring them in. And so we have this awesome smoked brisket for lunch. Everybody eats, we preach for about 15, 20 minutes about safety and then they go home paid. They take the rest of the day off. I'm like, you guys can do whatever you want but you can't stay here and don't punch out until you don't want a bunch out. And so 12 days a year, they get basically half a day off for it because I'm like, if we're gonna, she was safety crap, then go enjoy the rest of your day. Yeah, that's all. So I love safety. Yeah, safety meetings are great, right? So they're like looking forward to it. What a rally is a good afternoon. They're paying attention, you know, it's amazing. So it's a win, win, win there, you know. We take all the federal holidays, we don't have to, but we do. We had a policy where Missouri was gonna do the whole hourly sick time thing then they repealed it. We kept it. We kept it as a version. I think that somebody that's coming on to the company deserves to be sick, you know, should be allowed to be sick and not to hurt their family, right? You know, right. And so I like that whole earned sick time right off the get go. And then we keep it a little bit different from their PTO which they learn after years of service. Yeah. You know, things like that. So just lots of little places where we're like, hey, you're a human, you're gonna get sick. You know, you also have a family. I don't want that to screw that up. So we're gonna take care of you and make sure that that's one thing. Now, I mean, I think more in the last five or 10 years than, you know, even before, but you know, the flexibility to be able to do things at the house or do things for the family. That really drives kind of people where they want to work these days. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So have you ever, you ever been to a boss where you're like having to beg for time off or you're like, hey, I really need time to like, oh, we really need you to work on this. Yeah, no, I don't, I wouldn't mistake. Yeah, no, no, but people do all over the place they have to, you know, they're the worst. But yeah, we just, we just come in and you just tell your supervisor what day you're not gonna be there. We put it on the calendar, that's that. There's no discussion. Yeah, I don't care if you tell me it's to go home and play tennis. I don't care what it is you're doing. If it's important after you to take the day that it's important enough for me to give it to you. Yeah, no, that's your great philosophy. Yeah, and you know, what we've come to learn too is like everybody comes to work for a different reason. Oh, yeah, you know, it was between a not just the work side of things, but be, you know, what their personal goals are and what their family life looks like and all that stuff. So it's, it's, it's very different for each individual, you know, what's important to them. Yeah, it is. That's really originally in China's force is helping to navigate that. So, you know, she's gonna talk with the guys, you know, what's going on? What's going on in their world? You know, what can we do to support that? You know, even just from hey, like, you know, for whatever reason she's to like, you know, hey, they're moving this weekend or whatever. So, like, well, do you want to borrow one of the trucks, you know, do you have any help with that or whatever? So she's good at really kind of helping navigate the landscape of the more personal side of the employees a little bit so that we can be supportive as a company as we can be on that side too. So, how do you handle, you know, your personal relationship being married and owners and managing those roles at work versus at the office? Apparently, there's some work to do there. No, it's not there. It actually does really well. Surprisingly, like, I mean, he's my boss. Like, when it comes down to the end of the day at work, he is my boss, but we can talk about it and we know how to separate work from home. Yeah. And we've always been that way ever since we started together. And because we weren't married whenever I started working there. So, it was a whole different dynamic. We were just dating. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so she was helping me build out some RV parks that we were doing and we were struggling with splicing. Splicing was like this nightmare at the time. Yeah. Guys that were just doing what they were doing are wrong. We weren't getting at the distance that we needed. We were overusing ponds because we weren't getting the distance. There was no QC. It was a mess on every aspect of being a mess. Yeah. And so, I told you, when does I listen? I really need you to help me. I need you to come in and get a wrangle on this. I'm like, I can't. I can't struggle all these aspects and do this. So, I just need you to help me do this. So, down a watch, a few YouTube videos, and I figured it out and went to work in. What's interesting, there's not a ton of women out there that splice. But the ones I know are actually pretty darn good at it. And I don't know what it is, but if it's just certain personality traits or whatever. And we're able to focus on a lot of things at once. Yeah, but as far as the one grave, there's anybody that's listening to this that works with their spouse. The greatest thing we found out when you're at home and your spouse comes to you with a problem or a thing, right? Specify, do I need work, Alan, or do I need husband, Alan? Yeah. And if you can differentiate that ahead of the question, it goes so much better. Because all of the Alan's can be confused, I'm guessing. So, the clarity, clarity is very good for men. Yeah. Well, just know, like, are you coming to me, you know, same thing for all the guys out there who are listening. When your wife tells you something, say, do you need an answer or do you need sympathy, right? Yeah. Because what they need out of what they're telling you could be two completely different things. And so- Sometimes I just need him to be quiet and listen. Yeah. I need him to fix the problem. Right. I'm solution-oriented. So, I'm always going to lean towards fix the problem. And so, if I don't know it's just sympathy or support, then I'll try to fix it. Yeah. But that's usually helpful. If you're going to work with somebody that you love, being able to separate those things ahead of time is super good. Yeah. So, I've never, you know, I've seen a lot of, you know, generational family-type companies, but never like married. So, it's kind of a family dynamic, but a little bit different, you know, getting a little closer. Well, I'm fiercely protective of him. So, like, I'm not going to stand by unless somebody takes advantage of him. And I love my husband, but he's not very good at reading people. He's not- You trust everybody. He trusts everybody. He sees the best in everybody. Yeah. And I'm- Which is a great quality. It is. If you've got to hear a little more skeptical. Not a lot more skeptical. Oh, yeah. I don't trust people at all. And I'm not a people person, but I can- Don't array them. Yeah. Yeah. Don't tolerate. That's a good word. Oh, yeah. That's also another really good sort of ying and yang that we've got going for. Is that, yeah, she'll- after the meeting, I'm like, hey, how'd that go? Do you think they were receptive to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, they were happy. Or, no, no, they did not seem happy at all. Yeah. And it was OK with it. This one was not. Yeah. It just helps. Well, that's a great dynamic. I mean, it works. So- Yeah. Yeah, it works out really well for us so far. I mean, so far so good, right? How long have you been married? Little over a year. Little over a year. But we've been together, but- For almost four or more. Something like that. Yeah. That's cool. It seems like a lot longer. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. What do you like about the splicing side of it? I like being a bloom and just figuring out problems, just doing it. And just knowing that I can get the light for miles without any issues on it. Yeah. What do you guys do for documentation? We have spreadsheets for everything right now. Well, in the map. Yeah. And we started using the map because Nick added a spot on the where we could take pictures of what we do. Yeah. And we put that up there in whatever spot we're at on the map. And so that helps, too. Yeah. Being new, you know, so I had a splicing background. I've done a lot of it in the past. It's been a long time since I've done it, but I did a lot of it. And I worked for different companies in the data was very important. You know, I've seen on both sides of the house where it worked for companies that had very good documentation and I've worked for companies that had very, very poor documentation. Oh, yeah. So we actually have both. Yeah. Yeah. There's a reason. Prejolene and postjolene. And there's a, yeah, a marker point. I want to tell my guys is the more notes, the better. Yeah. If I know what I'm looking at before I ever get into that box, the better off we're going to be. Yeah. Instead of getting in there blind and blue is spliced to Aqua and red to white and not knowing. And then if it never gets updated, you know, if you make changes and so on. Yeah. No, no, it's no idea. Yeah. And we had a house fire and it burned a box down. And it's like, well, what was it? How do we put it back together? How does that go back together? No clue. And it was one of those prejolene boxes where we just had no idea. Yeah. They said it was a mess before we brought it on board. And so, you know, now if it's something like that happens, it's kind of a bit. We can just pull up the map and go up. There's all the, you know, there's your color chart, there's your this, there's your that. That's all set and done. Are you patient? Mm-hmm. Yeah. For the most part. Interesting. I'm really not. But for some reason, I mean, I could sit in a, in that environment and stay focused and do it. But I don't sit well, but I guess maybe it's just because I'm busy. But the, the details stuff didn't bother me, but I'm not patient. So I just kind of wonder why I have six kids. I don't know if it's always meant to be patient, so yeah, the patient's just always come natural. I don't know why. He's not patient at all. I do have to be okay, being alone with yourself for eight to ten hours a day. Yeah. And that's where I think it gets people. Most of my, for the bulk of my splicing, we actually worked in pairs. Okay. And so we, you know, it's just nice to have a hand prepping a cable and holding things and tie and stuff down and stuff. But then we, you know, we had, we were pretty fortunate. We had two splicers of peace, you know, and so you got one that, this is my baby, this one works, and then I'll use this one if I have to, but don't touch that one, you know, but then we would both sit down. And so when it got time to, it was a big cable and we got splicing, we'd both start hammering it out. But so it was kind of, it was kind of nice that way in a partner environment where you did have somebody, you know, to kind of jerk that all day. That was really, because we don't, I mean, we just always done as a solo event. Yeah. But then you would catch the guys, because they would be kind of in a row, doing a mile or whatever, three or four splicers on that mile, and you catch them when they're up and the other trailer hanging out with you. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Interesting. One of my, one of my big challenges was the company bought a new splice trailer for me. And so my first trailer for years and years, the entry point on the back was on the curb side. So it came in on the right. So my counter was on the side. And the new one was over here and it was, I mean, it took me a month to figure out how to prep cable. Oh, yeah. That's unfortunate. Left handed instead of right. It was something just an oversight. You wouldn't even think of. So we buy a, we buy box trailers and then we custom outfit them to each splicer. Yeah. After you, we measure where you sit, your counter height is exactly whatever where it needs to be. And then what we found for access doors, go down to the pet supply house and buy doggy doors. And you could put a couple of them, yeah, and they got the flaps and they closed so they keep the dust out, but they'll allow a dome in. Yeah. And so you got multiple access points on the trailer to bring them in that way. Yeah. But another one of those fun like we just do it ourselves kind of things. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Powering the network starts with strong partnerships. At CBM, we connect broadband, utility, and commercial industrial customers across the Midwest with best in class, manufacturers, and solutions. As 100% employee owned company, we're invested in every connection and every success. If you need help with the project or looking for a quality rep firm in the Midwest, reach out to us here at CBMREP.com. So, you guys are actually going to be part of, I guess it'd be America's biggest broadband expansion, the bead program, obviously some frustrations with, you know, here we are in 2026, but it looks like it's going to happen. So you guys are looking at a big expansion here. Yeah. So for us, it's a good size expansion, you know, probably quadruple the customer count we think as we go through and do it. But for us, it's 1,500 miles approximately of new underground cable that's going to go in. Over the next three years. Four years? Four years? Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Our shot clock started in June. Okay. And so like one of our projects is a two-year project and it started in June and we are still behind the permitting process. Yeah. We started the permitting process. I think that's one of the issues that we've talked about for years coming up to this point with the bead program and like, you know, how are we going to expedite permits and so on, but like you guys are in the thick of it. Yeah. So we started in February, applying for permits. Wow. And we're in October now. I don't think there's really any expediting on permits like they do it as best they can as quick as they can, but it doesn't make it any easier on our end. Because there's nothing, once we submit it, there's nothing we can do. Our hands are tied. Just sit and wait. Yeah. Right. Right. I think our understanding from the federal level sometimes there was like two and three years to get permits from them. So the fact that it's down to six months is an expedite. Good. Yeah. I think that's what they're feeding us anyway as far as that. But educate me a little bit because you know, in all my time in the industry, I've never had to submit permits. Okay. Right. Because it's federal. And so we didn't either. We built for ARPA, right? Okay. We did a 300 mile build under ARPA. It didn't have any. Other than the traditional permits of dealing with the county or government ordinance. So this is the first time it's a federally funded project. And so it goes through an enormous number of different things. State historic preservation office needed to take a look and make sure we weren't going to cross in any historic areas or that kind of thing and went to a tribal council and they had 30 days to decide if any of the Native Americans had any interest in where our lines were going. Might be crossing something sacred or something of that nature. And so all of these things were new to us as well. Because we're so close to Arkansas, some of our lines got rejected by fish and wildlife because they thought we went into Arkansas. And so thankfully they were really cool about it and knew that some of their GIS data was a little bit. So to get that permit through, they moved the border of Arkansas for us a little bit. No, no, it was great. I think it's all on the up and up again through email. And so there's just a lot of little caveats like that that are like that was a month process, you know, to hold that up and go through. So like in my brain, when I hear permits, I'm thinking, okay, like county placement permits, these are different. These are different. Okay. These are all the different big organizations that are like, hey, you're on a federally funded project. You now must check. Why? I think so. You're not in doing anything to burden danger species or anything like that. Sure. Yeah. So we got flagged. This is an interesting one. The Virginia sneeze weed is a particular endangered species. And now I'm like you and I watched the road crews go by and spray poison on everywhere. We're fixing a plow cable and I wonder myself out in the world. One matches the other there, but sometimes you don't get to apply logic. That's exactly it to a program. But again, thankfully, you know, cooler heads prevailed and I got an email here just a couple of days ago where they said, hey, as long as you're not disturbing the soil so much that it's going down into the wetlands, we think you're not going to disturb this needs weed. So you have our blessing to carry on. Do you know the value of this needs weed? Is it a food for a particular thing? It's a pollinator, I believe. Okay. It's like one of the endangered pollinators for butterflies and everything. Yeah, there's a three-page list of things that we might encounter that are in danger is that we need to keep our eyes out for. Do you have a shirt yet for this needs weed? No, I don't. I'll bring it up a little bit, but some of the signs around the office, they're all you, but you know, the sarcasm committee and all the different signs, I think they're wonderful, but they kind of just speak for you, don't they? Yeah, they do. They don't, my face does so. So do you have any idea yet like when you think you're going to get the green light? Oh, it's tomorrow. I pray it's tomorrow. Every day I feel like I'm praying it's tomorrow because we're under labor contracts right now. Yeah. So a guy is the can't do anything, but they're, everybody told me going into this, hey, labor shortage, labor shortage, labor shortage. So we got a bunch of guys built it up. We built it up. We've trained them. This well-trained machine that comes in every day and takes another 30 hour OSHA class because I don't know what to do with them right now. We were supposed to start three months ago. So that's probably hard, you know, and I don't want to lay them back off. That's a whole mess, you know, that's a whole process. So we're just like every day we pray it's going to be tomorrow and we can go. You know, we're ready on every aspect. The machines are greased, you know, there's three, four big quad track plows sitting in the yard. The materials are sitting in the yard, we're thinking, you know, because again, they said material shortage, we're going to be material problems. So we got ahead of the curve. Here we are, get punished for being ahead of the curve and everything, you know, I got ducks works in, baltzer in, fibers coming in, and so we're sitting on three or four months that have been coming in over the last three or four months because we thought we were going to get started. So that's been a, that's a big challenge for us right now. It's like, we really need this to go soon. So my understanding is they've submitted everything to SBAT, ESPAT, I believe. And so at this point, it's actually out of our hands. There's nothing further I can do. It's just a, we're at the mercy of the EPA ultimately saying, yes, go ahead. And as soon as we get that letter, it's going to be fun. Yeah. Then we're going to be putting in approximately two miles of fiber every day. We're going to, I'm sorry, two, two point one, two point two's, what we're now going to have to shoot for because of the delays. Yeah. Which is quite, oh, I think once you get rolling, you'll be cranking more than that. Yeah. We'll see. We hope so. Yeah. And then we're like, we install as we go. So everywhere that we are able to get laid in and spliced together, the installers are going to be right behind them. Who can people. And people tied in us. Yeah. Yeah. What's your, do you have an understanding of like what your take rate is in your local area? It's right about 50% a little higher. That's pretty good. That's what they tell me. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not, do you think it'll blow up with the fiber? That's hard to say. SpaceX has kind of come in and solve some problems for sure. I'm really curious. And then I'm thankful for that in a lot of ways, because that's what I set out to do. Yeah. You know, some, I'm torn emotionally against that. I'm like, well, I don't really want to have it on our fiber, but I'm really glad that people have access to good energy, right, that's the key. So I think it'll be a little bit less than that, maybe. But where we really shine is in what we're doing for the community. And so like our community outreach is a big thing for us. So we'll go out, we, you know, pet rescues, we'll donate towards the schools, the, you know what I mean, all the different ways that we could be more than internet. Yeah. That's where, you know, that's where we shine. And so I think when people realize that, when they start to understand that, that's what we're about as a company. Yeah. And then, you know, we try to foster this. This is not so YouTube and make a ton of money. Right. I'm not after a second. Y'all right now. Yeah. I am after solving this problem in the community. Yeah. Maybe after the first one first. Yeah. So we solve this problem, you know, and then we want to continue doing that for folks. And then we want to give them an outlet to where they can make a choice where they can keep their dollars in the community, or they can send them to Mars. And then we hope that you can literally, yeah. Yeah. So Taco. It's not only that though. It's our customer service though, too. Yeah. Well, that's true. Yeah. Everybody who works at the company lives in the county. Yeah. You call. You're calling us. You're calling somebody who lives around you. And that you call, you know, for the SpaceX that he's talking about, who are you talking to? Yeah. They're on the phone number. Yeah. Okay. Well, seeing. But I'm just saying, you know, any other company you call them, where are they from? Well, and it's so, you know, the, the Wisp market has kind of been, you know, kind of molded into like the independent delco market, really, kind of all in the same. Now it's a broadband provider, frankly, but you know, growing up, mostly selling to independent delco is kind of the same deal where it's a small independent, maybe family owned, maybe co-op, but their service level versus a bell company or one of the, you know, one of the big tier one type of companies, you're kind of in the same boat there in terms of service value, comparative, it's really, there's really no difference or no comparison, I mean, in the service that a small hometown company can deliver. So it's just an understanding, you know, I, we call it the hillbilly dialect sometimes it's, but down and down in Southern Missouri and those arcs, hard of the Ozarks, there is a, Ozarkian sort of dialect that comes out of English. And I, all the time I get people to walk through our front door, one we have a front door that you can walk through to pay your bill and people love that, because they want to communicate and be personable and, and that kind of thing, and they'll tell me when they're switching over, they're like, it was really such a pleasure to talk to somebody in West Plants that speaks hillbilly, you know, and they're like, yeah, it was really difficult to understand sometimes people from, you know, other countries and stuff that are, that are on there. Yeah. And they just, maybe you got an elderly couple and, you know, electronics for some, my dad's a great example, you know, but like, internet and trying to hook up a TV and all those different things for some of those folks are a challenge and, oh, the big guys aren't going to take the time to do that. No, they're not. I was reading a foot through the newspaper, whatever, but the front page of it had a lady that was like, please come help me set up my Roku, and my people are crying for help. On the front page of the newspaper, yeah. And so we took a policy once we read that and was, we just do a free service call here. I don't care if it's to help you set your TV up. I don't care what it's for. If you call us, we'll come to your house and we will help you with something related to the internet, whatever that is, getting connected to it, getting through a particular thing, navigating a, whatever, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. Yeah. Once you're here, we're going to come and help you do that. We're not going to charge you. It's just included in you being a customer. Yeah. Because I was like, people don't have an outlet for that or if they do, they're calling somebody because of how isolated we are, they're calling somebody from like Springfield that's two hours away. Yeah. Sure me. I'm going to help you set up your Roku. And it'll be $400. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like both of those things are unrealistic. And so we try to create an avenue where people can get the support that they need to and not have a cost. Oh, that's great. Yeah. What do you think this project is going to do for you in terms of growth? Sure. So yeah, we definitely have the growth aspect of it will be great. What I'm really looking forward to is, well, we're going to be able to do to affect the community once we've achieved that growth. So that growth gets us to almost a full completion of everybody having access to internet within an hour or less planes, which is the original company goal. Okay. Right. And that's what we set out to do. And I had a big meeting with all the supervisors. It's like, all right, guys, look, so our goal is now obtainable. And in the near enough future that we're going to need to start thinking beyond that goal a little bit. Yeah. So my idea is like, current high speed more than internet or current high speed investing in community. We actually have a pool right now where we're trying to decide what that next tagline is going to be. We're voting on it. But it's essentially one, how do we take what we've been given here, which is a fantastic opportunity, right? Yep. And use it to grow the community. And so we're reaching out to like some of the food shelters right now, some of the different things like that. Because you're monthly, you know, to sustain you, you know, can we feed everybody in three counties? I think we can, you know, at the end of this. And, and, and, you know, it just doesn't, it doesn't stop there. Yeah. And so that's what I'm really flavor to. The growth is going to facilitate an investment in the community that is going to make other companies mad at us because they don't want to, they way, you know, they want to keep more of that money. And I'm like, I want to, I want to rise everyone around me, you know, and so that's kind of what we're looking forward to with the growth is, you know, right now, I think it's 200 bucks a month each supervisor gets to go out and put our name on jerseys or, you know, I mean, whatever, whatever to help help donate. But if that turns into 2000 a month for all six supervisors, the change that we can make, the good that we can do for our community is going to be massive. And that's the growth I'm looking forward to, you know, we're always going to be there with the customer service. We're not going to sway from our roots as far as how we care for our customers, being in there for our customers, being, you know, we're always going to answer the phone of West Plains. So we're not going to grow beyond our local roots and our local feelings about how we were on the company. And we're just going to, you know, like, so we're just going to stop that and that stops it up as a physical border, you know, the North Fork River on this side and the Lempoint River on this side. And it's great. And so when we stop there and we can, then we can just reinvest and, you know, be that sort of solid company where, you know, if somebody moves that and from out of time, they're like, well, you wouldn't want to go with anybody else. Yeah. You know, that's what I was going to ask about your vision, but I think that kind of wraps it up. Oh, sorry. No, they got on it. That's great though. What a, you know, it's for everybody and not just for, it is, yeah, like, and my CFO is going to listen to this podcast and we will have another argument about this too bad, right? Sorry, Danny. But that's okay. Because he, you know, so like when we started doing free router placements early back in the day, it's like nobody does free router replacements. Yeah. Nobody drives it out to your house. That's it up for you. It does it for free. Huge argument with me and my CFO. And I was like, any opportunity you can take like that to just tie yourself to that customer is worth it. That's it. Exactly. Yeah. I just want to be like, so I was like, look, we're not spending any money on advertising. For the first seven years of the company, we spent $50 on Facebook ads at the very beginning. And that was that. And then at one point, we had a waiting list of, I don't know, 4,000 people to get out with us. Wow. Right. It was really good. So it's like, well, if we're not to advertise, let's take that money and reinvest, you know, put it in, you know, get these people free routers when the router gets out of their fault, you know, we should handle that. Yeah. And so that's just sort of the policy that we've taken since day one is, you know, like we take care of these customers and treat them how we would want to be treated, you know. That's awesome. So sort of that whole, you know, run the company in ways like, you know, you get the bad boss. And so you get the opportunity to be a good boss and you get the opportunity to be good to your place. And you've had bad providers. And so you get the opportunity to be the good providers and it's like, how can we be everything that nobody else is? I like how you say it's the opportunity to, your mind is in the right place. It's the right mindset to look at it as a leader. So I think that's, that's pretty impressive. Well, I appreciate that. Well, it comes from not wanting to lead. I didn't want to be the boss. Yeah. It's funny how many, like, yeah, a lot of people don't want to be interested in being the boss of people. Like it just doesn't something that I really do. But you know, they put me in those shoes and so I'm like, well, I know how I've been treated in the past and I didn't like it. Yeah. So it's just tried different routes. See what works. Awesome. Yeah. And it is. I had framing came to me two days ago and he said, hey, I need you to pull that indeed add down. He said, stop. And I said, as a dude, we're not running any ads. He's like, we're getting 10 apps a day. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, it's not. It's like, that's just, that's just where we are now. Like you know, go to the room and keep them on your bench. Right. Well, I'm going to have to let you show it. Show it. Now you understand. Now the word is hit. We are the company to go and work for. Yeah. I mean, now you're going to get to pick the green with the crop as far as it was working for us. That's awesome. Yeah. Last minute words to your folks, employees or customers? Oh, if the customers are listening, thank you. We wouldn't be here without you. And if the employees are listening, thank you, because we wouldn't be here without you. Yeah. That's pretty much it. That's awesome. It's been a pleasure for us to get to know you over. I know you work with David Edwards mostly, but I got to come down and visit with you and sitting here visiting with you today and getting to know you a little bit more has been great for me. That's my favorite part about this gig. I don't want to do this either, but three years into it, you know, but I get to meet so many people and learn more about you. So it's cool for me and it's important to us and your success is our success and we're happy to be a little part of it. No, we're happy to have you guys on. Yeah, and it's been a pair of a lot of David is, David operates a lot of the same ways we operate. You know, when he stopped by our office and was like, hey, okay, let me help you guys. Yeah. That was we, it was the first for us. We didn't have anybody that's ever stopped by and said, hey, let me introduce you to some manufacturers. Hey, let me introduce you. You know, that's never, never happened. So I was like, well, yeah, you know, we wanted it, you know, because it was just, it was, it was great. So, you know, we thank you guys too. That's awesome. So we just try to provide value the same way that you guys do and it's been a, it's been a good, been a good ride and we're happy to help you. So yeah. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. I just want to say thanks again to Alan and Jolene for coming into studio with us and being on the podcast. I've had the opportunity to go down and visit them at their, at their facility and to be able to sit here and get to know them a little bit better today on the show was, was a blessing for me. And we really appreciate our opportunity to help them move forward with their, with their future plan. So thanks again. Remember, if you need help on a project, or looking for great representation here in the Midwest, look no further than CBM. You can find us right here at CBMREP.com. Give us a like, share, subscribe, give us a comment, let us know what you'd like to see on future episodes. And as always, thank you for watching Power of the Network until next time, we'll see you next time.

Brisket, Safety Meetings, and Paid Half-Days: Building a Crew That Stays | Allan and Jolene Stocki Ep 76

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