You know, the internet started off just running through telephone lines and became a dial up. and it was, you know, everybody remembers the, the old squeal, of getting connected and waiting for that to stop running. And you go, okay, I'm now I'm ready to go, and I can send an email or, I can play Oregon Trail or whatever that ends up being. This is the way. For Business Growth podcast. Where we wave in an expert to share how they're changing. The game. And how you can use their insider secrets right away to help your business thrive with your host, Steve Beacham and Jay. Hills. Writer. Right. Today we are waving in an expert in the business connectivity space, and by that we mean all things internet. Every business needs to connect. And today our guest, our expert is Jay Hills. Jay, glad to have you on. Thanks, Steve. Excited to be here. So Jay is a business consultant who over the last 20 years, Jay, you've helped thousands of businesses find the right internet, find the right connectivity. And my understanding is that can often be maybe a little more complex than people understand. Can be at times. a lot of times it's fairly simple, but people just don't altogether know what they're looking at because it's not. They just assume it works. Give me internet and I'm rolling. And sometimes that's the case and sometimes it's not. That makes sense. We're going to get into that in a little bit talking about the person that you are, Jay, because I think this is interesting. You are not only running a very successful consultancy, passionate guy, strong leader and also a two time national volleyball champ. You've been playing and coaching since college. I have it's that's where I spend the majority of my time when I'm outside of the office or outside of the house without the boys. I love coaching kids love coaching kids. Developing them as as young men and, competing at whatever the highest level is that that they want to compete at. So sometimes it's recreational, sometimes it's regional, and sometimes it's national. And, I've been pretty fortunate to be a part of a couple of really, really talented teams. Nice. Well, for the business leaders listening as a leader, as a coach, do you have any general advice there? From what I have seen in the last 20 years, whether it is coaching or it is just in business, is if you can be an efficient problem solver, you can create a business or you can create a team. And in doing that, everybody has some sort of an issue that they would like help fixing. And if you can be that fix, if you can be a great listener and be a creative problem solver, you can do a lot of great things. Love that. Love that. So as we get into it, let's ride the wave. One of the things that we love to do here is kind of bust some myths, right? And in every industry there's things that we as leaders, things that we have all heard, that maybe they're partially true, maybe they're just completely bonkers off. Right? So in the internet world, no difference. Right? One of the ones that we talked a little bit about is oftentimes people will say, hey, internet is internet. Yeah. that's the the misconception is one, internet is magic. it just doesn't exist in the air. but there are a lot of people that just they take it for granted at this point in time because it is so commonplace. It's like it's like turning on a faucet and water coming out. they just assume, hey, if I have internet, I'm. I'm good. And and it's a commodity at this point in time. And they determine I have internet, so my business will work on the internet. And depending on what your business is and what those needs are, it's not always the case. and so if you're a small mom and pop shop and you're 2 or 3 people and you got maybe a point of sale system and, and maybe you're going to have some Wi-Fi for yourself to be able to search, you know, the local news or whatever. Sure. No problem. Internet is internet. If you're, a company in any size, 2 or 3 employees, up to 10,000, and you need to be connected. You need to be on the internet for your business to function at peak efficiency. internet is not always internet. Can you give me an example of a time where somebody says, hey, I'm paying for pretty good internet, but come to find out, they weren't getting what they needed. So I had, Tom, who owned a architecture firm, small shop, did a lot of really good work. only had four architects in a in a receptionist, basically. And that's five employees. Five employees shouldn't need any sort of very special internet. The exception is they worked everything they did in the cloud and all of their big CAD files and all of these giant, giant, giant pieces of data that had to come in and out, and they were just hammering in time because they were waiting for so long for their transfers of data to come from their local PCs up to the cloud. And the upload their. It just was not working for what they needed to do. And when he and I got together and we ended up basically deciding that going to a dedicated fiber pipe was the move for him. it changed his world. Yes. He ended up spending four x what he was spending on his internet before, but his efficiency of his people and the amount of labor that he was getting was just drastically different. And the overall cost savings and profit for him by just making that simple switch, was huge for his company. That makes sense to me. I think if you can explain for people who maybe don't know the depth, what's the difference between, hey, I've got a T1, have got a Cox regular internet in my house. Sure, I've got a fiber pipe. So, you know, the internet started off just running through telephone lines and became a dial up. and it was, you know, everybody remembers the, the old squeal, of getting connected and waiting for that to stop running. And you go, okay, I'm now I'm ready to go and I can send an email or, I can play Oregon Trail or whatever. That ended up being AOL online. So they ended up taking that. And, they turned that into what were the big deal at the time for businesses that needed that became t ones that were basically in essence, telephone lines kind of bonded together and they were able to create a really, really fast one and a half Meg by one and a half Meg internet connection for these businesses that needed it. And they were really doing something. So. So if I've got a T1, I'm if you've to the late 90s. no, if you've got a T1, you're up to 95, 96, maybe, maybe 98 if you're really doing something. And, at that point in time, you were probably paying somewhere around 8 or $900 a month for, one and a half by one and a half connection. then they then they did some more technology of the phone lines and came up with the DSL for the more home user and the small business user, because people just couldn't afford what that was. then they started doing bonded T1 that gave you a, oh, a big three by three connection that was really pushing some data. and then they went to copper, which was they figured out to run internet over coax lines, just that people were using for their cable TV. what's that? What's the benefit and drawback of those? So the, the, the benefit of basically your coax internet connection is it's inexpensive, really fast download speeds. Okay. Upload speeds. but your cost is right. it's a great small business application. If you don't have to be, you don't have to worry about packet loss or any sort of really detailed detail stuff of what you're transferring in your file data. but the the drawback to, though, is copper is very susceptible to weather. It's very susceptible to heat and cold, and it's very susceptible to getting cut because it's not buried very deep in the ground. Or it hangs on your telephone poles and, tends to get beat up a little bit. So it's it's a great product if you don't have to be connected all of the time. Okay. and then you're your best of your best right now is basically having your, your dedicated fiber and your dedicated fiber line that runs on glass. It's not affected by weather. It's not affected by temperature. It is symmetrical data. It is, in essence, guaranteed data back and forth to wherever you need it to go. unless something drastic happens there, you know, somebody takes down a telephone pole, somebody digs in the ground 20, 30in where they're not supposed to. those things are unusual, but that's that's just part of having to be on the internet. And the internet isn't just magic. it actually runs on lines running underground, running on telephone lines all over the world. And if somebody wants to know more about the difference between shared fiber, fiber, dedicated fiber, or dark fiber call, we're not going to get that super deep into that today. Yep. So yeah. Myth number one internet is internet. Thank you. The other thing, another thing I hear fairly often is people say, yeah, I called around a little bit. I just can't get good internet where I am. That happens a lot in in rural areas and in some super dense, you know, we'll call them where you would have a, like a scrapyard or somewhere that's surrounded by railroad tracks, pin between a river and a rail line, which happens a lot because it used to be all the distribution was done through the river. And then once the river, once the barges and the boats took it there, they got on a rail line and they went somewhere else. So that's they're close to one another. what I can tell you is 95% of the time somebody tells me that, I can get them reliable internet. It's it's really just a matter of creativity. Some time and some money. And sometimes you need one of those. Sometimes you need all three of those. Sometimes you need a lot of all three of those. But I can get you internet. Got it, got it. And I appreciate this. One of the things we like to do is kind of dive down and find those pearls of truth among what you hear. Right? The other one that I hear occasionally is business owners saying, it doesn't matter who my provider is. I'm opening a new location. I'm just going to call the local phone company or whoever or whoever the local cable co is. I'm just going to give them a call and whatever they have, I'm gonna run with it. I've heard you say you recommend against that. Sure. there's there's not anything in particularly wrong on the surface of that. you can absolutely do that. If you're somebody that is looking to be more knowledgeable about the the actual connectivity you're putting in your building, you want to make sure that you're getting the best bang for your buck, if you will, getting the best product for what you need. I would strongly recommend talking to some sort of a consultant or broker that can actually look at whatever is available in your area. Certain times there is only one availability and you're just kind of hamstrung on that situation. Other times there might be three, four, five different providers. You can use each of them having some goods or some bads, and each of them having different price points. So it would be in your best interest to have someone that is looking out for you and not just someone that is looking out for one singular product that they can sell. Got it. Okay. Well, here on the show, we like to say the high tide raises all boats, right? And I find that if somebody can take an action right away, or if we can give somebody an actionable task that they can go, do you know, we're trying to add value here? So when you think about that idea that, hey, 95% of the time I'm told no, what's an what's an action people can take or what have you seen businesses do. People that are told, no, we can't get it. Give me an example. So I have a I have a client, in southern Missouri, and Mike called me. This is going back 4 or 5 years now. And Mike said, hey, I run the port down here and we are doing a lot more file transfer. We're getting a lot larger files. We're doing a lot more on the internet. And it's a river port. Right. And it's a river port. Yes. Yeah. And the and and basically because I cannot get reliable internet, it is costing me thousands and thousands of dollars and I am pissing off all of the customers are coming through here. I have to figure something out. And so I went and met with Mike that day, looked around, saw what he was dealing with, and he was in. Absolutely the Bermuda Triangle of internet. I mean, this guy had a rock quarry on one side of him. He had, a river on one side of him and four railroad tracks on one side of them. And I mean, that is that is the trifecta of terribleness, trying to get a an internet line to that location. Now, most of the people he talked to just looked at and said, there's no way I'm not going to spend my time on it. I have a little bit of creativity to me. I've done a lot of these complex builds over the last 20 years. And so I said, Mike, we can do this. It might take me six months and it might cost you, 330 or 40 grand, but I can get you internet here. And so we, we did some problem solving for him. We did some creative thinking and partnered with some of the other businesses that were right around him there. And five months later, he had a dedicated fiber pipe in that shop. And it changed his life, changed his business. He is cruisin and, you know, he'll he'll call me for literally anything if he needs a plumber the next time he's going to call me, because that's a problem. So, Work solving problems. So. So if I'm a business owner and I've been told no, what's my takeaway there? Do I go knock on the neighbor's door and say, hey, do you also have this problem? What's the what's the action I can take today or tomorrow? You're going to either call someone like me or me. would be the first thing that I would do. If you're not, or you don't know someone, or you can't find someone like me, what you're going to have to do is basically put in some effort into finding the person inside of the local cable company, or the local internet provider that has done builds like this in the past. it's, it's it's a little bit different of an animal. And if people haven't done it before, they get intimidated because of the time and energy and the detail that goes into it. So you're going to just have to press and ask number of questions and get a hold of, that sales team and say, who has done this before and interview them and ask them how they've done it and where they've done it, and it can be done. So you say, hey, who's your Winston Wolf? And when they say, I don't know what you're talking about, read in Pulp Fiction, right? Yeah. I'll do reference. So who's your problem solver. Love that. Okay. And then another, another thing that we occasionally hear I've got multiple locations. I have enough problems. It's sure you've dealt with some clients that talk to you about how that's gotten them turn their hair out. could you can give us an example there of an action people could take in the story? Sure. I have, Multiple, the one that comes to mind for me is I talk to Joey, who is, an IT consultant. in, in the Missouri market as well. And he has a client that has 86 locations, and they just absolutely despise dealing with the five different internet providers that they have with five different bills and five different billing numbers and tech support numbers and, and and and and every. Time something goes down. Every every time something happens, they have to figure out, okay, which network am I on? Who do I got a call? Is that what what account number is that? It's it's a it's a problem. It's a problem. And it's very, very frustrating and nightmare spreadsheet. So in doing that he just said hey what can we do. What what's, what's the move here. And again there's, there's a, there's a solve for everything. And in his world his solve was basically going to an aggregator of service that was able to consolidate all of their bills into one, be able to provide them with multiple internet service providers throughout the Missouri market while putting them into one particular account. And we, I mean, we changed that IT departments life where the, the daily problems that they were running into turned into, you know, still daily issues, but instead of being all day, we're talking five minutes and so the amount of money that we save them by making that change just in a billing aspect, but then also the amount of money we save them and labor hours that they were spending on frivolous research and banging their head against the wall by who we're calling and what terminology are we using and what's happening with this site here? just made the entire department happier and more efficient itself. Yeah. If I can buy my team time or save them headache, that's a win. You mentioned saving money in the billing part. What do you mean there. So it depending on the aggregator, depending on the situation, depending on the number of sites, you can. I don't want to call it easily, but there is a scale of service. And as you grow to a certain size, there is some some savings to be had by just having scale, having 50 sites, 60 sites, 80, 100, a thousand sites. When you're doing that, there's discounts available and packaging that up together. So you may say, okay, well I'm going direct to each of these providers and that's going to be the best cost that I can get. These aggregators have wholesale cost with all of these providers as well. And the more sites that they do, the more of a discount, the more of a wholesale rate they get. So there is many times where you can save your team a lot of time and a lot of stress, while also saving your bottom line, some dollars as well. So we're saving the IT team, potentially even saving costs or somewhat neutral or a slight premium on the service. And then I heard a quote somewhere, every time your billing department has to open an envelope and enter a bill into the system, you're looking at 10 or $15 or something. So, okay, that's so so if that if I'm in that scenario, I've got eight sites, ten sites, 20 sites, 86 sites. What's my what's my action? What's my takeaway? Your action item there is to, again find find a consultant. Find somebody like me. Find me. because that's something that we can walk you through and help introduce you to the right aggregator. That is the right fit for your company. Because that's they're not all. They're all not created the same. Got it. Okay, we will put that and all these other sort of busted myths and these, these sort of truth, high tide actions somebody can take right away on the show notes. One more story. We talked about this a little bit before you came in. You've got some clients who need really, really reliable internet. It's absolutely required. It's absolutely essential for them. And you were telling me that sometimes they think they've got reliable internet. They think they've got backups, or they think they can't get what they need. And you've been able to kind of cut through some bias there too. Yeah. There is a particular large organization here in Saint Louis that, decided that they needed a large, large five gig backup internet pipe and, bought it from a totally separate provider than what their main pipe comes in on, but didn't ask any follow up questions. And what ended up happening with that is the provider they bought the backup from, ended up buying the actual internet pipe from their current provider, and white labeled it or basically last mailed it as it's called in the industry to them. So yes, they were paying a separate company for a separate internet pipe that ran through their data center. But the actual physical line coming into the building was exactly the same. So if that line gets hit by a Billy backhoe, or that line gets taken down on a telephone pole, somehow further down the road, they're both down. And I think I've got a backup, but that. So that's whenever you are going in and you're going down that route. That's the question you need to ask is who are you using for your last mile? Is it your pipe or is it someone else's? If it's someone else's, where's that coming into your building? If it is yours? If it was, it's their own property. Also ask where that's coming into the building, because if they're coming through the same path, you're opening yourself for liability that they could both be down. What's the kind of answer that makes you say, okay, they're taking care of. The the answer that makes me comfortable is if you can't get an actual map of where it comes into the building itself, and there is actual physical diversity to where one pipe is coming in down into the front of the building, and the other pipe is coming in to the left side of the building, the right side of the building, the back of the building that allows you to go, okay, I've got diversity and I know that I have a totally separate carrier, totally separate provider. So their network is down or my main network is down. They're not crossed over. And if somebody does dig where they're not supposed to or, takes down a telephone pole in a car accident. Billy backhoe. We're still going to be up and running. Got it. Okay. And then last question on on this. so the action there I like it is kind of take a look and see where they're actually coming in. Who's that last mile? I think you said the other question is if I'm in a super regulated industry or I've got to have things up or, you know, if every minute my internet is down, I'm losing money, sure. What's what's your recommendation? What's the action I can take there? So that's that. That answer is dedicated fiber and back up dedicated fiber. that's the that's the answer to what you're trying to do. in that world, that is probably the closest example to that is a couple of my cannabis companies that I, that I deal in. cannabis is highly, highly regulated now that it's legalized and the state wants to control the theft and, one offs and they accidentally lost stuff. And so in the cannabis industry, you have to be up all of the time for the state to be able to view your security cameras at any point in time that they want to. and so if your internet is down and the state decides at that point in time that they're going to check in on you and they can't, there's a fine for that, and that fine can be small. That fine can be business ending depending on how many times this has happened and what's going on. So, I had Alex get in touch with me. They were building a, 180,000 square foot grow house that has roughly 300 ish cameras in the building that need to stream and need to go out to the cloud. And in doing that, we had to put, a very significant fiber internet pipe into that building. But then they needed a fiber and a pipe that was almost the same size to go in in the complete opposite direction, so that they could make sure that at any given time, if there was a problem with one, the other one would be able to pick up. So we, we went through mapping of plant maps. We we spent a lot of time detailing that out to figure out where this one is going to go, where that one is going to go, where it terminates, where it actually goes back to a data center at. And so we actually were able to follow that trail all the way back to the data center, knowing that they didn't cross ever. So whether it was Billy Backhoe or, drunk driver that takes down a telephone pole or, storm that takes down, some, some lines with a big tree branch that it wouldn't take down both at the same time. And if it did, it was a significant, significant disaster that could be explained to the state. So the state's not going to say, hey, it was raining, I get it. I couldn't I couldn't look at your cameras. Correct. That was that's that's not going to happen. But if there is a tornado, that's, that's outside of their realm and that's how that's going to, they'll go, okay, we we can understand that. Got it. Got it. Well, I like hearing the stories. It helps me kind of see the bigger picture. And J we wave to you in as an expert because the internet is not necessarily just internet. Any business that wants to any organization really that especially I'm hearing you say if they need to be on the internet to make transactions, if they want to make sure they're getting the best bang for the buck, if they want to reduce headache and hassle for their team, they want to reduce some of that spend for billing. There are options. There are immediate actions they can take, such as if you're being told no, find somebody. Find that Winston Wolf. Find that problem solver. If you've got multiple locations, there are companies who can come in and be a wholesaler and tie some of that together and make it one bill, one piece of paper. Jay, I'm hearing you say if you need reliable internet, number one was kind of you said, check where they're coming in. Yeah. If you're going to reliable or you need to make sure that you're up and you in, you're going to put a secondary pipe in you. The the first thing you're going to do is check to make sure they're not running on the exact same network. And second thing you're going to do is you're going to check the diversity of where they're coming in physically. those are the two main things that you're going to want to ask the question on. You don't have to be an expert on internet or connectivity in any way to be able to look at a map and go, this red line goes here, and that green line goes there. You're, that's just anybody can do that. But asking the right question and asking one extra question can save you a ton of issues. Yeah, ton of headache that makes sense. Okay, well, Jay, I appreciate your time as the expert in connectivity. If you're talking to business owners, business leaders, any final thoughts? Any anything additional that you want to make sure they're aware of that can help them and help their businesses grow? just ask a couple of extra questions will get you a long way. I don't I tell people all the time, getting the cheapest thing out there is not always what is the best thing for your business. I'm not saying that it has to be super expensive and you have to buy the most expensive thing, but ask a couple of questions and finding the right fit for how your business needs to operate and it may cost you an extra 10%, may cost you an extra 50% over what it was going to be. But the value in your business being up and running and running at peak efficiency all the time, because the internet is so vital to businesses these days, is worth it. So don't get so hung up on the price point of everything. I'm not telling you have to spend extra money, but ask a couple extra questions to make sure that the least expensive option is still the best option for you. Got it? Got it. That makes sense. And we're going to if you're listening to this in your car, if you don't have your notes handy, we're going to take all of the wisdom here from Jay. We're going to put it into one downloadable page on wave for business.com at our podcast page. Kind of make that easy. At the end of the day, we want everybody to be able to take an action immediately. That's going to make it easy, hopefully knock out a hassle or help their business grow and thrive. Can't thank you enough for the time. Jay. Hillsong. Here we are wading into business growth. thank you so much. Thanks to you. Really appreciate it.