
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
In this episode of the podcast, Chris sits down once again with Chad Crager, Executive Director of Fort Collins Connexion, to discuss the city's progress in developing a sustainable municipal broadband network. Chad shares exciting updates, including reaching 21,000 subscribers and serving 80,000 premises, while highlighting the city's innovative approach to broadband, such as leveraging underground power infrastructure and implementing dig-once policies.
Chad also emphasizes Fort Collins' commitment to digital equity, explaining efforts to serve mobile home parks, the challenges of wiring such communities, and the introduction of Spanish-speaking staff to reach underserved populations. The discussion touches on the city's long-term sustainability plans, business model, and collaboration with local government, ensuring that Fort Collins Connexion remains financially resilient while fostering digital inclusion for all residents.
Tune in for an insightful look at how Fort Collins is balancing competition with incumbents, expanding broadband access, and setting an example for other cities looking to invest in community broadband.
This show is 30 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license
Chad Crager (00:07):
2027, we should be completely in the block, which is huge for a brand new business.
Christopher Mitchell (00:13):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Cell of Reliance, and I'm talking to Chad Crager, who is the Executive Director of Fort Collins Connexion. Welcome.
Chad Crager (00:27):
Thanks Chris. Appreciate being here with you.
Christopher Mitchell (00:30):
[00:00:30] You're one of the rare cases of a municipal network coming on the show twice in one year, and there's a few things that have happened though, and I wanted to talk with you a little bit more about it. We talked, I guess it would be eight months ago and we talked a bit about how things were going and competition and stuff like that, but for people who missed that, people who just started tuning in and haven't gone back to the fullback catalog, where's Fort [00:01:00] Collins and what's Connexion?
Chad Crager (01:02):
Yeah, so Fort Collins, Colorado is north of Denver, kind of northwest close to the border of Wyoming. We're actually closer to Cheyenne than we are to Denver. The city of Fort Collins has generally been a very innovative city. For example, back in the eighties, they made a decision to underground their entire power grid. The city wanted better Internet. The city asked the incumbents, Hey, when are you going to spend money on our Internet? And the answer was, [00:01:30] we don't have any business plan to, that wasn't the right answer. Like a long story short, the voters voted in to have a municipal broadband utility, which became Fort Collins Connexion. That has been done about a year and our power, we are a hundred percent underground and we are serving 80,000 premises. That one s they can get it
Christopher Mitchell (01:54):
And Fort Collins is, I don't know exactly where it is in Colorado, but if you were not in Colorado, you'd [00:02:00] probably be one of the more rapidly growing cities of the nation.
Chad Crager (02:03):
Yeah, I think so. And we have other communities around us that are growing as well. I feel like every list I see, everybody's growing.
Christopher Mitchell (02:10):
Right. Colorado is just bursting it feels like.
Chad Crager (02:12):
That's right. Exactly.
Christopher Mitchell (02:14):
So you have a lot of expansion, which is really good from a point of view because a lot of times hopefully you're able to get in the ground into places and have a low install cost then and new customers to get right away.
Chad Crager (02:27):
Yeah, exactly. Any new developments, we actually put [00:02:30] conduit in the empty conduit because when they sign up for us, we don't want to mess up their landscaping, and so it means that we have homes that have empty conduit that may not have our service, but it makes it a lot easier and cheaper whenever they decide to sign up for us.
Christopher Mitchell (02:45):
Let me ask you that. Is this something where, this is a little bit nuts and bolts, but we worked previously, we had been working with folks up in Bozeman before they had moved forward with Yellowstone Fiber, [00:03:00] that ambitious plan that the community is working on there. And they had said that when a developer comes in, we have a notebook that we give them and it tells 'em all the dimensions of water pipe and this and that and everything else. And for broadband we're like, I don't know, some conduit. Maybe
Chad Crager (03:16):
The big difference in Fort Collins than I think Bozeman is that Fort Collins has our own power, and what that means is we're not relying, for example on Excel. What that also means is that our power as part of the city, we call it light and power. [00:03:30] They're going in the new developments and they're putting in city infrastructure and we are working with them on putting in conduit and what's needed from a design standpoint. So it's hard if you don't have your own utility going into those areas and you're using Excel or some other provider, but having light and power is a huge piece of Connexion success.
Christopher Mitchell (03:52):
Yeah. That's where I was curious if that's actually the utilities people that are going and doing that, or if you just have a spec that you give the [00:04:00] developer and they do it, but you do it and the city does it,
Chad Crager (04:02):
We do it and we have something called we basically dig once. And so when lightened power goes in, they give our competitors basically a chance to go in as well because the idea is, look, we've got a trench open, let's put in everything we can. We have to pay to be in there just like our competitors do, but it functions a lot better for new development as far as the impacts and to the actual developers and the construction schedule.
Christopher Mitchell (04:28):
Now, this is something that we [00:04:30] talked about before, which is the business plan. Well, several weeks ago, two weeks ago, I guess the press release went out that you had hit 20,000 subs. You're telling me that's old news now?
Chad Crager (04:40):
Yeah, we're excited about it. By the end of this month, we expect to hit 21,000. And so it is also, I'll say a peak month for us because of student move-in. For those that don't know it, Fort Collins is home to Colorado State University, which is about 35,000 kids that come in, [00:05:00] and so in May it's the opposite. People are moving out and August is when we get a ton of signups, and so that's one reason why it's sort of our peak time of the year
Christopher Mitchell (05:09):
Now that's out of 80,000 PRM. And so 25%. That's right. This is something that I feel like every time I've talked to you or predecessors, I've always made this point, you are sitting prettier at 25% than almost anyone else's. And I'm always think it's useful to just reiterate that because you are able to [00:05:30] pay all your debt and your operating costs with a lower penetration than many others.
Chad Crager (05:37):
Well, and keep in mind that if you don't look at all 80,000 premises, but you look at the actual people that can sign up, what I mean by that is we might have an MDU or an apartment complex that we don't have permission, and so we don't include them in the denominator, and that's important because Fort Collins is 40% MDU, and so of people that can sign up, our take rate's [00:06:00] actually 41% now, which is super exciting, but you're right, Chris, we've got to pay off our bonds and right now basically almost every month of the year, 10 of 12 months, we are completely in the black as far as an operating cost goes. When I say that I include debt and that statement twice a year, we have a bigger payment that includes our principal, and at that point we don't have quite enough to pay for that as well. And so by 2027, [00:06:30] we should be completely in the black, which is huge for a brand new business.
Christopher Mitchell (06:35):
Yes. And one in particular that's coming in. I mean, if you go back, what'd you start? 2018, something like that
Chad Crager (06:41):
Started. Yeah, first customer is 2019.
Christopher Mitchell (06:44):
At that point, I felt like Chattanooga still seemed a bit new even though they were almost eight, nine years old at that point. And there was this question, like you said, the incumbents did not want to upgrade, right? You had mostly DSL from the telephone company, and I think you would've had Dxi [00:07:00] three from the cable company, which was about as good as cable got. And so from our perspective, you were going into a fairly competitive market and we were curious because it's one thing to be in a city where they have the last to get the cable upgrades and there's never going to be, but at that point, CenturyLink had put some fiber into some places they're not going to do everyone. But I would just say that it's been fascinating to me that you and other networks that have been built around that time [00:07:30] have done as well or better than predecessor networks that had less competition. And it's an interesting dynamic.
Chad Crager (07:37):
It really is. And I think it also shows unfortunately for our competitors, the dislike of those competitors. I mean, one reason for ours and other success is because of experiences that people have had. Even now though, we have our competitors because of Connexion or investing back in the city. So for those libertarians in the city that think the government shouldn't be in this, I'm like, well, you should [00:08:00] thank us because your bill from our competitors is actually lower than they've invested more into our city. The other difference, and I would tell anyone getting into this space is that you think differently as a city. And what I mean by that is Connexion has commission-based pay employees that as far as I know, are the only commission-based pay public employees in the state of Colorado. And so that's super important, and you're in a competitive market, you've got to do things that typically you don't have to do. No one calls to cancel their power [00:08:30] or their water because you can't. Right? And so in order to be a competitive business, you've got to think like that and have a city that supports you in order to do that.
Christopher Mitchell (08:40):
Well, and speaking of people, I saw a different, actually it was probably the same story that I saw was that you're going to be adding a Spanish speaking employee, and I knew that Longmont had a fair amount of people who speak Spanish primarily. So you must as well.
Chad Crager (08:52):
We do. And so we recently were fortunate enough to light up one of our biggest mobile home parks. [00:09:00] When we went into the mobile home park with our sales folks, what we very quickly realized is there was a communication barrier there through that experience we needed to, and now it's posted, hire a Spanish speaking sales associate because our job is not to make money and go to those places. It is truly to get to every single resident that we can regardless of demographics or what language they speak. And so that's something that we're super excited about, but Chris, again, it's an [00:09:30] example of having to be flexible and being in a place that allows you to quickly post an higher position for such things. Otherwise, that's a pretty substantial aspect of Fort Collins that we would not be able to reach or even communicate with.
Christopher Mitchell (09:43):
I mean, I'm fascinated also at mobile home parks separately, which is the challenge often of how do you wire it up when a lot of times the owners are a bit hostile. You're going to put an ONT on a post maybe depending.
Chad Crager (10:00):
[00:10:00] Yeah, and we're working on that. I'm not sure in the last podcast if we talked about a Colorado state bill that passed that. Basically we worked with our local state representative, Andy Base Necker, who put forward a bill that went all the way through the state and signed by the governor that allows us to go into properties without a right of entry. And the reason this is huge and the catalyst for it was we have some mobile home parks where the owners don't want anything to do with us.
(10:30):
[00:10:30] My own thought is that they're afraid we are the city and we're going to recognize all other kind of deficiencies in there. That's not what we do, but they wouldn't let us go in there. And so now as long as we follow the rules, which is certified mail and other things, we can go into mobile home parks or other MDUs and build without a right of entry, which is really meant for the folks that live there. The idea is, look, this is municipal broadband. This was voted in. You should be able to get to those [00:11:00] residents that live there because it's a state bill. Now, this is not just for Fort Collins, this is for the entire state, and what's important is part of the bill. We did put some aesthetic requirements in there. I woke up one night, Chris, while this bill was being formed, and within days our competitors hopped on to support the bill, and I thought, what kind of monster did we create in some of these other areas of Fort Collins or other areas of of Colorado? And so that's where we started to put things in. You can't even have pedestals above [00:11:30] ground. And so some really strict aesthetic requirements because the idea is, look, if we can get on the property, we need to do it in the most responsible way so that we're not impacting the property owners.
Christopher Mitchell (11:41):
And then if you want to work with the property owner, they want to work with you to do in a way that's more cost effective for you, then hey, you have that option
Chad Crager (11:49):
And I don't want to use the bill. My hope, Chris, is I never have to use this bill because goal is to really collaborate with those that own the property.
Christopher Mitchell (11:56):
Well, and it's funny because whenever we talk on the shows that I do [00:12:00] with people that run ISPs, they scoff at this and they're like, yeah, I can't imagine going into a building and saying, I have a right to be here with a letter signed by the Attorney general or something like that. They're like, that would kill a relationship. But at the same time, I appreciate your attitude is one of we need to balance this out in terms of what is best for residents who need to have this as an option.
Chad Crager (12:23):
My hope is this bill is a little bit of a stick to get people to come to the table to have the conversation. If that's [00:12:30] all that happened, then that is a win for everybody in the end.
Christopher Mitchell (12:34):
Now with mobile homes, one of the things I found interesting is that to me it seems like a great application for wireless. You have almost no RF degradation, and so did you look at that and how did you consider it?
Chad Crager (12:48):
Yeah, we've looked at it. One of the really difficult things, at least in a lot of our mobile home parks are trees and a lot of that wireless does not play well with trees that a lot of these mobile homes have. As a matter of [00:13:00] fact, trees are one of our priorities as they are for our community, as they are for most
Christopher Mitchell (13:03):
For heat and other reasons
Chad Crager (13:05):
For heat and other reasons. So we're not going to eliminate trees in order to have a better wireless signal. The other thing that's interesting, and I am sort of fascinated by this is I talked to more mobile home park residents. There's more and more retired people in these mobile home parks, and I'm seeing more and more retired folks that like to game together. I didn't know this was a demographic. And so these are older folks that have decided to get into the gaming, [00:13:30] and we are being asked with our digital equity now, do we offer it in a two gig speed? And so if we go wireless, I think it could provide a short-term solution and it might be half the cost, but if we put in fiber, it will provide a much longer timeframe as a solution. And the other thing that's important in the city of Fort Collins is most of our mobile home parks are protected from a zoning perspective. And what I mean by that is if we were going to throw in $500,000 to build out a mobile home park [00:14:00] and then a year from now someone came in and basically bought it and tore 'em all out, we would be throwing away $500,000 in construction because they're protected. Someone could buy it, but they have to keep it as a mobile home park, which really gives us confidence in putting in fiber to those areas, if that makes sense.
Christopher Mitchell (14:17):
Yeah, no, that does make a lot of sense. And these considerations are, it's amazing to me how when you dig down you find out how complicated it all is and 500,000 is a lot of money. You've got to be aware of that.
Chad Crager (14:30):
[00:14:30] Yeah, exactly. And so there's an opportunity cost, and just so you know, in general what we find is if we go into a single family house, it's about a year ROI, by the time we build it until we start to get revenue above what we spent to build it out. If we go into an apartment complex, it's about three years. A mobile park is virtually five years, and so there's a reason why these mobile home parks are not served by our incumbents is because the expense is so high, and the reason is that you think about an apartment complex, [00:15:00] you might have six big buildings, so once you get to six buildings, you can serve maybe hundreds of people. Mobile home park is like a mini neighborhood, and each lot or each home I should say, is a separate piece of construction like a neighborhood than what it is for an apartment. And so that's one reason why they're so expensive, especially when you make the entire thing underground.
Christopher Mitchell (15:22):
When you mentioned digital equity with that plan that you have, just remember Sean in a staff meeting earlier today. [00:15:30] I might be hamming it up a little bit, but we are talking about some of the implications around the BEAD requirements that states set a low cost plan, and we're talking through different aspects of that and what our feelings were about it and how to respond to some of the different trends that we're seeing. And Sean is talking about, I remember a promised land in Colorado where they set money aside from day one to connect low income families, so how is that going in [00:16:00] the promised land there?
Chad Crager (16:01):
It's going really well. We have almost 900 customers that are qualified for digital equity, and so to remind folks listening, we set aside 6% of our revenue and that money has been collecting since day one, and so that money is now paying for not only our customers. Instead of paying $70 for one gig symmetrical, it becomes $20. We do not believe in throttling. Everybody should get the same. That is also paying for a position [00:16:30] in our local school district that's a digital liaison to go into different mobile home parks and other areas. It's paying for hardware, it's paying for job aspects at the county for those seeking jobs, and so it's done amazing for our community, but it was definitely an intentional thing. I mean, I've told you before Chris, when we were starting out that 6% looked mighty nice to look getting for revenue to pay our debt, but we've been very intentional on what to use it for as a city because I mean we shouldn't matter [00:17:00] who is in office at a federal level in order to provide our residents that need Internet at a low price if they qualify.
Christopher Mitchell (17:08):
You mentioned the two months a year where you're in the red. Have you felt any political questions raised about that? I mean years ago, I do feel it does feel very different now than it did 10 years ago. In that 10 years ago, I feel like you would've been under assault with different organizations saying what a disaster this was and trying to put pressure on elected leaders and things like that.
Chad Crager (17:30):
[00:17:30] Yeah. When I say in the red, what that means is we still have money set aside to make up for that red, if that makes sense, but our ongoing capital, or I'm sorry, our ongoing operations, which means paying for our cost of goods to get Internet in our video, to pay for our staff to pay for our monthly principal payment, that is where we're in the black. When I say we're going in the red, it doesn't mean we're having to borrow more money. It just means we have to set money aside for when those two months hit of the year
(17:59):
We [00:18:00] can pay for those months. And so we are not needing to go back to the voters or anything like that, but at the same time, we're running a business and so we've got to know what expenses are coming up and any startup you look at, they can in five or six years get to where they're in the black completely is pretty amazing because there's always ongoing expenses for capital, and our capital costs are there because while we're done with the build out, every time we build to someone's house, [00:18:30] when we put it underground, what we call it, the drop, that's a cost that we don't see for a while. Now we're starting to see more and more people that move into a house that already have our service that makes sense. The fibers going into the house and we call that wired and inactive, but we're still a ways away from getting where most of the city has that. We will likely have capital costs for a long time as we build on MDUs, but that's just part of running a business is knowing what expenses you have coming up, what months you have [00:19:00] to be in the red and building up cash throughout the previous five months in order to make that payment on that six months. Right.
Christopher Mitchell (19:08):
Yeah. Now that you've made that clear, is there any campaign, do you see letters to the editor about how you are ruining the market economy or anything
Chad Crager (19:16):
Like that? No. We had quite a few people that were very much against us at the beginning and we're sure that we would fail. The government shouldn't get into this space. We have not had any of those come back and say that they were wrong, [00:19:30] but we also haven't heard from 'em, so I call that a success
Christopher Mitchell (19:33):
For honest people. Sometimes it's hard to remember how easy it's for people to just say things. I was just listening to a discussion and it was some of the press quotes from Nixon in, I think it was like 72 or 73, talking about how they were the cleanest administration in history, and I was like, wow, they really said that and people believed it, and
Chad Crager (19:55):
I mean public opinion, Christopher, anything is a really hard [00:20:00] thing to sway, whether it's for you or against you once it's out there. People have a tendency, especially now probably worse than any time in history with social media, but all we could do is put our head down and take the high road, and that's exactly what we've done by getting our name out there, whether it's events or whether it's having salespeople, but we're trying to make our names synonymous with why would you not get us?
Christopher Mitchell (20:24):
Now you are surrounded as well by some areas that are eligible for funds, and [00:20:30] I'm curious what's next sort of as you're both within the city and outside of the city?
Chad Crager (20:36):
Yeah, we're definitely in Colorado. The Colorado broadband office, it's anticipated that it could be within less than a month that they open up beat funding for 45 days. There's definitely some areas in the city, although not very many because Connexion exists and so the speeds are high enough. We are partnering with Larimer County. They've been a great partner. We received four [00:21:00] different projects, about $12 million in capital projects fund through them, and so we're working with them to where they will pay the match and then we will share our revenue. We get to repay them over a number of years, and we are going to be going after quite a bit of BEAD in order to reach Larimer County residents between us, city of Loveland with Pulse and Estes Park, Larimer County, those that live outside those areas have quite a few people that are not connected to the Internet, [00:21:30] and so Larimer County is really working with us and collaborating to find some cash match to go after B funds.
Christopher Mitchell (21:37):
That's excellent and fascinating. Also, as we've been concerned about, some of the requirements are on BEAD and the difficulty, but Larimer County's not new to this. They've been given this a lot of thought for many years. I know, and pretty sophisticated in terms of how they're going to pick a good partner
Chad Crager (21:58):
And I'll say anything [00:22:00] in life, that good relationship, there's been a lot of drink share between us in order to get to a point to where BEAD would come open. So what I'd say to others is that there's any opportunity to partner with those in your area, whether it's the county or nonprofits or school district, start the conversations now, start taking people to have coffee or a beer and just there will be funding that becomes available. I personally don't think that BEAD is the end of this, and so if BEADs not the time, there will be other times in the future.
Christopher Mitchell (22:28):
Yeah, I'm glad to hear you say that. I felt [00:22:30] very alone when people are like, this is the last big funding, and I'm like, I'm not saying there's going to be a larger one, but it's not the end of it. We know that there are millions of locations that are not going to be connected with this, and we also know that in many urban areas where they don't have a program like yours, there is no solution currently in the states, and the federal government have to figure that out at some point.
Chad Crager (22:52):
I mean, my personal feeling is that this will highlight how much funding we need. I think you'll see a lot of people [00:23:00] connected and that will only make those that are not connected feel even more isolated,
(23:05):
And there will have to be some kind of funding available. And you're right, Chris, whether it's the urban areas or something like that. The other thing is if you look traditionally in our transportation dollars that have come through the pike, there's never been from presidential down the local campaign that says, these are the last of our transportation dollars. That's never happened. The reality is our roads and our bridges start to fall apart and there has to be new money. Eventually there will be a need for higher speeds, [00:23:30] and whether we do it now or whether we do it 10 years in the future, what seems like ridiculous at speeds that we may need 10 years from now are going to be a necessity and there will have to be some kind of funding available for those that need it.
Christopher Mitchell (23:44):
Yeah. Although I hope that in many cases we've funded business models that have an incentive to do a good job rather than just figuring out how to send as much to New York as possible.
Chad Crager (23:55):
I agree, and I hope that those businesses are putting aside money for asset management [00:24:00] and growth to take care of that. The worst thing we could do is build all this, and you've got this great fiber, but you've got this, sorry, head end stuff that is not the right technology, and so I'm not the one looking at this. Luckily, I just get to build it and operate it. I don't have to be the one that's being held accountable for all these dollars.
Christopher Mitchell (24:18):
So how did you get here? This is as we're getting ready to wrap up, this is something that I've been, I don't know, just been more and more paying attention to is how few people intended to spend their careers [00:24:30] significantly in telecom and found themselves here.
Chad Crager (24:33):
My background is transportation, never really did anything in telecom. Even coming to the city of Fort Collins, I moved here from the city of Austin to be the city engineer for the city of Fort Collins, which basically means you're over all the right of way, whether it's new development or new projects, including building out fiber, you work to protect the streets. I got here and I thought to myself, [00:25:00] why is this city wanting to build your own Internet? This is crazy to me. I came from Austin where there's six competitors or whatever it is. I never knew that I would be working with and leading Connexion, and so as I got here, one thing that at my history of is building a lot of projects and what Connexion was, was it just a giant capital project because we're underground, we hit every single person's sprinkler system in the city of Fort Collins.
(25:27):
It seemed like there were some challenges [00:25:30] happening. I was asked to move over to help write the ship as far as the build goes and the construction contract at the time it was being led by someone else, their contract expired, and I ended up taking the helm as the executive director of Connexion, and so I certainly learned when I came to Connexion kind of this industry, but I am by no means and experts. That's where my amazing staff is the expert in this, and so [00:26:00] I don't believe that subject matter experts are always the best to lead an organization that they're subject matter experts in because generally what happens is they may, I've had experiences where they may micromanage, they may want to do their things their way instead of really asking all the questions of why and being curious and relying and empowering staff to do their jobs.
Christopher Mitchell (26:24):
Yeah, I have to say that that's very persuasive to me in my style [00:26:30] of management, which is I always feel like if someone is flattering me, I start to just distrust them at a certain point, just like I've learned enough about how my brain works. Most people's brains works. You're your own worst enemy a lot of the time, and if you know that, then you can get a lot of interesting stuff done. I agree.
(26:52):
So with your engineering background, then I'll just say for this is a real, real time. I was just catching up with Billy Ray. [00:27:00] Billy Ray ran Glasgow in Kentucky. He was writing and actually beginning to implement smart electrical systems in the eighties, and he's an engineer and he really came about, he did a lot of really great things, retired now, but he was just talking about how he's amazed at how few people run the numbers on the poles, even the companies putting up poles for pole loading, and he was talking about all these different windstorms that are knocking over poles. I just sort of assumed if the winds strong enough, it's [00:27:30] going to blow, and he's like, no, we have calculations. We should be, if they bothered to do them, this wouldn't be happening. And how many things are like that with an engineering background where you look at it and you're just like, wow, these people are just cutting corners. I feel like my eyes were open to, we don't have to have as many things fail as we do.
Chad Crager (27:48):
Yeah, I mean you definitely have to have data, and one of the things, I don't care what kind of engineer it is, and I tell my youngest daughter this, who's figured out college engineering just teaches you to solve problems right now. You can go [00:28:00] into separate fields to do certain things, but it teaches you to solve problems and it teaches you to have redundancy and data to support whatever decisions are made and whether that includes your existing assets, so whether that includes solving what you need to do to make sure for more capacity in the future, and so I think it's good to, I think anyone can go into any background if they remain curious, but I think the beauty in engineering, not that I've never sat here and touted this field like I am right now, but it does teach folks to [00:28:30] solve problems because that's kind of the foundation of engineering, and so I think having data is important. I think it's also good. I'll go the other way, Chris, and say to listen to those in your team that do the marketing, because that can be just as important as those polls falling down. You could have the strongest polls in the world, but without any customers, it really doesn't matter as much. So I've certainly learned the value of both sides
(28:57):
My personality is such that most things are done with my [00:29:00] gut anyways, and so I tend to balance myself out with data and with gut, but I would say just surround people with whether you can solve things and through data and through your marketing, but know enough to call BS because sometimes staff may try to get things from you if you're just passive, if you're just learning.
Christopher Mitchell (29:20):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not even like a nefarious thing sometimes They just have other priorities they're working on too.
Chad Crager (29:25):
Exactly. I mean, sometimes it's all they know, and so they've been in that [00:29:30] world and I think staff has amazing intent. It's just you got to know sometimes what questions to ask.
Christopher Mitchell (29:36):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate having another conversation and looking forward to what's next, but keep up the great work and good luck.
Chad Crager (29:46):
Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it, buddy.
Ry Marcattilio (29:48):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas for the show. [00:30:00] Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at Community nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please [00:30:30] take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative comments.