Transforming Tech From Startup to Industry Powerhouse

Welcome to another episode of the Multifamily Innovation Podcast. We've got a great guest for you today. He's one of our Multifamily Innovation Council partners and the Multifamily Innovation Council is an executive-level membership organization dedicated to the pursuit of the profitable multifamily company. Listen, we are uniquely positioned to focus on this intersection between leadership, technology, ai and innovation. And if you'd like more information, if you're not a member today, go to multifamilyinnovationcom, click on Council and get all the information you need to become a member.

And if you're not yet registered for our annual event this is the Multifamily Innovation and AI Summit do that today. Do that right now. That's at multifamilyinnovationcom. When you come back after registering today, I'm going to be sharing time with Sean Gorman. Now. Sean is the owner and also the president and CEO of Safety Net Access. Sean has built his company from a two-person startup into one of the most respected companies in the high speed internet field. Today, safety Net Access is considered an industry leader for its relentless commitment to customer service and its ability to stay on the very forefront of technological innovation in our industry. All right, sean, welcome in, thanks for having me.

Yeah, so tell me how Amicus came about. Tell me about that.

Amicus is a division of our mother Shorter's company, safetynet Access. So SafetyNet Access has been around. I started SafetyNet Access back in I think we were incorporated in 2001. We actually probably started a little bit prior to that, maybe in 1999. And basically what SafetyNet Access does is we build, we design networks for the hospitality industry. So we're one of the major players in the hospitality industry. So we are approved by more brands than anybody else in the world. So we're the top provider for Hilton Hotels. I think we're number two for Marriott Hotels. So how Amicus sort of came from, that was we had decided to take the knowledge that we have in hospitality and put it outside. So that touches on everything you can imagine. Anything outside of hospitality. That's what we do. So we could include airports. It includes MDUs, so multi-dwelling units, apartment complexes, things like that, storage facilities, factories, whatever it is. Anything outside of hospitality we do it. We bring our expertise from here over there.

That's interesting and hospitality and multifamily are coming closer and closer.

It's very much so. Actually, you'll find now that the brands are sort of turning to that direction. So we have brands that are converting hotels to MDUs and we have hotels that are now deciding that that whole space is the Amicus side and you take safety net access. And it's a very easy transition for us Because if you think to yourself, if you walk into a hotel, you might have, let's say, a hundred room hotel. You've got 80% occupancy, so 80 of those rooms are filled every night. You might have one room, just one room, that has a family of five, and each of those family of five might have five devices, excuse me, two devices each. So they're going to have 10 total devices. We've got to support that one room that night. The next night it's a new group in 80 rooms and we've got to answer those phone calls in a very, very quick time because the hotels hold us to a very high standard.

So now all of a sudden you say, all right, let's transition over to an apartment building. Well, you've got, even if it's a 100-room apartment building, you've got people in there. You set them up once. They're pretty good to go. For the remainder of the time they may call now and then Think to yourself when you're at home and you have your cable company, you're going to call once in a while, but it's not often Sure. But when you do call, oftentimes you're on hold for a long period of time. See, we're used to answering that phone in 45 seconds to a minute. So now for somebody, yeah, so now for somebody in MDU. It's almost a relief to have a company you can call. You can get directly to somebody that knows what they're doing and take care of it immediately.

Yeah, they've never had that. It was execute the contract, it goes in the drawer and then you never hear from them.

Exactly so that transition for us is very easy. So when we come into this space, people are like where have you been? Because we have all that knowledge base and we're bringing it over here. So I mean I hate to use the word easy, because that's probably not the right term to use, but to tell you the truth, it's very easy for us to transition into this space.

Yeah, and it's about people. So you have a way that you lead your company.

Tell me about that, and how has even your professional sports background played a part in how you built the business. Well, there's probably two different dimensions to that. So the professional sports guy was completely different than the guy now. So there's two different sides of that guy. But what you got out of the professional sports guy was you've got competition, you hate to lose, you always want to be number one. That transitions perfectly over to any kind of a business. So that helped a lot.

I think the other part of my business which I sort of set my hat on more than anything else is the integrity piece of it. So and I learned that from my parents my dad was a stickler for integrity first in everything we do and that's where our tagline comes from. So if you look at any of our marketing material, our cards, our website, you'll see Integrity First. So for years people were like you got to have a tagline, you got to do this, you got to do that. Are you a technology company? Come up with some tagline. But you know what I figured if we went with Integrity First and we led that way, no matter what we do, we're going to do the right way. So if you take, for instance, since when people come into my company and they want to apply for a job.

One of the key things I ask them is how do you handle it when customers call and they're complaining and what they're doing? And they always get a little nervous and edgy when I'm asking them that. How do I answer it? Right, but my point always to them is you've got to pretend like every customer you have is your mother. So your mother's calling and she's asking you listen, you've got equipment in your mother's house or your mother's building and she's asking you what do I do with this equipment?

We're going to look at it and say, all right, mom, you know what, you probably don't have to replace that. Well, that blows everything out. You go to any MBA school or whatever they're going to talk about. Or you talk to these PE firms. They're going to talk about what kind of money you're making. What are you doing? Well, that's not how I do it. I do it to try to build the best possible product I can for somebody do it the right way so that when I go home at night I can sleep and all to do right by the customer every single time, no matter what.

So you can't go wrong. Yeah, and so this differentiation that you're providing, bring it to multifamily, coming from this, the pressure of hospitality, the business model of it and the opportunity that, as you mentioned. What did you say? Where have you guys been? Is this what you're hearing from the market? And what I'd love to know from that is like is it people that is making the difference here? Because you also build technology teams as well.

Yeah, I think you know we talk about this a lot when we're even in the hotel business, when people are saying you know what differentiates you, everybody's looking for what's the big differentiator. And you know what differentiates you, everybody's looking for what's the big differentiator. And you know a lot of people can build a network. I mean, you know, in the old days we'd go into a hotel and they'd have their little nephew, so-and-so. That was building the network for them and that's great.

I think what differentiates us is the people. But we also go into our relationships less of thinking that it's a client and more of thinking that it's a partner. So if you go in with a partnership idea, it's a lot different that way. So I think we go in saying what can we do for you? How can we help you? But on the same note, I think we're not intimidated to go out and tell people when we think they're probably doing it wrong. Because if you're going with that integrity first attitude, if we know the client's doing it wrong, we're going to steer them back, even if it might cost them more money sometimes and that's not necessarily the case Usually it's probably less money.

So I think the people for me, certainly have made a difference. I've been very, very lucky. You look at some of the people that have worked with me. Our CTO that's here today. He's been working with me for 20 plus years. A lot of the people that come to work for us stay with us. We do a really good job of trying to take care of our employees and I think when you do that, you end up taking care of your clients.

Yeah, and speaking of building teams and building relationships, how do you go about building a network, building relationships, how do you go about building a network? And what would you say an executive should be thinking about when they're evaluating this process?

I think you probably have to go for me. I would say you have to look at the company and what their experience is. Obviously, we've got 20 years of building networks, all types of networks. I think you've got to really look at-.

Do they have choice? A lot of times they don't know what their choices are, though, too right.

Yeah, I mean, obviously you've got to do your homework, you've got to go out there and look. I think there are certain companies in this space that they're going to know, maybe more than somebody like us because we've been in the hospitality space for so long. So I think for me, if I was doing it on their end, I'd want to know who I am, I'd want to get to this guy and I think I try to make myself very accessible. I still make cold calls. I still answer the phone. People are amazed. Sometimes phone calls come into the business. I answer them.

And they say, well, can you get me the right person? I said, well, you kind of do have the right person. I think that makes a difference. I think today, especially around technology, we're getting away from, you know, with AI and everything else we're getting away from the whole people stuff. Sure, and that bothers me.

Even though we're a tech company, I still believe in my people going out and visiting customers. I want them to get on a plane, go out and shake a hand. I don't think anything beats that. You can tell me you can do a Zoom call all day. It's not the same. So we're big believers in answering our phones.

A lot of my customers actually, believe it or not, have my cell phone. They can call me directly. I don't know of any other companies my size that the CEOs are giving out their cell phones, but I'll do it and I'll happily do it because I think they deserve that, because that's what I'd want on my end. I'd want on my end, I'd want to be able to call that CEO if I was working with somebody and say, hey, look, I got a problem here and you know what. You can pretend all day long, there aren't going to be any problems. There's always problems with technology, there's always something that's going to go wrong. You know, a switch goes down, something happens, the connection ends, something's going to go wrong. It's how you respond to it and I think we realized that. We realized that very early on and we do a really good job of staying on top of things and calling back customers and getting back to them and taking care of the problems when it hits the fan.

You know having such great coverage around hospitality. At what point did you notice or pay attention to bringing this to multifamily? What was that signal?

I think it was when we saw our brand starting to go into that space so we realized we probably wanted to get into that space.

Was it customers that were in hospitality bringing you along? Yes, it's sort of like, hey, we've got this great solution here. Hey, can we try this on this asset?

Yes, 100% and I don't want to reference all the clients on here, but we have some really big clients. So if you look at the management companies throughout hospitality, there's probably 50 main ones in the United States. I think we handle 48, 49 of them and what happens is we've built up a really good reputation, started to sort of expand outside of that. It could include restaurants, we've done military bases, all these kind of customers that have sort of made the jump first and then said, well, who are we going to use for this? Who are the people in this space? They're like well, could we go back to safety net access? Could we talk to them, because we trust them? We already know who they are, we know what we're getting. Can we bring them with us? So yeah, absolutely. That was the transition.

Yeah, and in terms of holding that reputation, that's a lot to manage. You mentioned, you know, picking up the phone, even you answering, making cold calls, really having that integrity first mindset and culture I guess I can, and even how you operate the business. How do you do that in such a product that is somewhat, can be technical and things change?

I think you've got to educate, educate, educate. So even when the sales guy starts the process, he has to say listen, this is what's going to happen, this is how things happen. And then you almost want to be prepared for the worst. So you want to explain that to customers so they're not blown away when something happens. Because oftentimes if you don't educate them, they're going to call especially if they don't have any technology background and say you know, this happened or that happened. Well, that happens, but you've got to tell them that ahead of time. And I think that's where you sort of we differentiate ourselves. We try to educate the client beforehand so that they know what's coming. So when you do have the pitfalls which you're going to have, if you explain that to them in the beginning, oftentimes it's not much of a problem after that. But if you don't tell it to them, they're going to be upset.

Right, you start to think about after the sale, right after the relationship expectations, these types of things.

It's very, very important to build the expectations. If we don't do that up front, we're in trouble on the back end.

Yeah. So what does the ideal client look like? Is it a developer, current operator, somebody in contract status, Like what does for multifamily?

Yeah, I think it's probably the developers, so that we're sort of getting in early, because I'd rather be on the side of coming in when they're just designing the plans. I'd like my guys to sit down with the blueprints and go through everything and say have you thought of this, have you thought of that? And oftentimes we've had great success doing that, because we get in in the beginning, we build the relationship and as they're building the product per se, we're building it with them and alongside them, so that they feel a lot more comfortable with us. I think that's probably sort of the ideal person for us. I mean, we can go into existing buildings, we can certainly do any of that, but it's nice to get brought in in the beginning with these developers as they do it.

And I think what I'm finding now, or what we're finding now in this industry, is that the old school sort of construction guys have changed a little bit. So now maybe the sons, the grandsons are coming in who have a lot more technology background and they're saying, hey, wait a minute, why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we looking at this? I feel like maybe we're leaving money on the table by not sort of doing this ourselves instead of farming it out all the time. I think in the past a lot of times they said the cable company will come in and just let them do it.

I don't want to have anything to do with it.

And I think when we come in and we say, well, we'll do that piece for you as you, they get a little nervous because they're like, well, I don't want to have anything to do with it. But what's nice about it is we sort of give them the credit as bringing it in but we take care of it all. So they have it's still hands off for them, but they're just getting to participate in it, whereas before they probably didn't?

Yeah, take me through some of those value engineering moments in the development meetings, like what are we looking at differently that maybe is status quo or routine in the process of bringing this type of service in?

Well, again, I think the big thing that I run into is some of the old school guys that don't want to touch technology at all. So our biggest challenge is to sort of get through that and let them understand what this is about. I think sometimes, when you don't understand technology or you haven't been around it, it's a little scary. Sometimes it's just turn the computer off and turn it back on. You just rebooted it, you're good to go. But they're thinking, oh, my gosh, my computer's not working. I got the blue screen of death. I can't do this. So I think there's a lot challenge we run into. And the other challenge, which I mentioned before, is that they think, well, I don't want to be in the business of doing this, I'm a construction person. I don't want to get into the business technology. When you're telling me, yeah, I can have it, I really don't want it.

So we have to sort of overcome that too. That's our biggest challenge too, because as we do these things, we've got to tell them listen, this isn't going to be on you, it's going to be on us. Here's our help desk. We've got hundreds of people that sit in a help desk, that are intelligent people that know what they're doing. They're all technology people. So we're answering that a lot of times on the first call, whereas if you know, when sometimes you're calling some of these help desks, you have trouble understanding them. They're really going through a list. They're just kind of poo-pooing you until they can get you to somebody else and then you have to be transferred two or three times before you get an answer.

How would you and this will be fun, I enjoy this explain it to a fifth grader what the product is?

Explain it to a fifth grader. That's probably pretty easy for me, um, cause I'm actually I'm not a technology guy, so I'm probably more of a sales guy than anything else. What we do is very similar to what we do in a hotel. We go in and we build sort of inside the hotel. We build the backbone, so we build the network. So it's kind of like plumbing, except it's bringing the internet and everything else to the rooms. So think of the cable company bringing the network sort of into the building. We take it from the building inward and that's what we manage.

So if you were in a—some of the problems you'll have oftentimes is when people can sort of willy nilly, decide oh, I've got a cable company in my place, I'm going to put a, a wifi router in, and then the next guy puts a wifi router in and you've got all these apartments with wifi routers.

Now you got a lot of stuff going back and forth there. Um, they're all competing for the same stuff. There's a lot of confusion, there's overlap. What we'll do is we'll go in and we'll build those Wi-Fi networks for a particular customer and it's his own, basically secure network. So now when he leaves that room and maybe goes to the gym or goes to the pool, he's still connected to his network, nobody else's network, and you don't have all that sort of traffic going on and confusion and a lot of loud noise going on, because we've sort of sectioned it off for each individual unit, which is nice. I mean it really does make a big difference. And also the onboarding process is very simple. It's basically you call us up, we switch you on, you're good to go, and it's much more simplified than what we're sort of used to in the past.

Yes, it's almost like the utility system versus a private hospital. I mean, being in a hospitality business, you were forced to I don't want to say forced, but it makes sense to meet the expectations of those brands that are selling service and amenity. And all that. What insights on the customer do you bring back from that marketplace?

I think sort of for us. I don't know how many insights, but you're dealing with. You're drinking from a fire hose, I guess is the way to look at it when you're in the hospitality business Because, like I said, you might have a family of five with 10 devices in one of those rooms and you got to handle everything. I mean, one of the big things that we have to handle that they call us on in a in hotels is is gaming. So these kids come in, they set up their gaming. They can't can't get on, they have to figure it out and our help desk has to handle that. So when we, when we transition into residential, it becomes a lot less complex and it's very easy. So they call us up, we onboard them, we get them on. If they have an emergency, they call us, we take care of it. So I think it's because of that We've been drinking from a fire hose for 20-something years Now we go there. It's less of a fire hose, so I think it's a lot easier for us to handle.

Yeah, it's interesting. What are you seeing next when you're building technology and deploying technology? How do you think through that to scale and plan for the future?

no-transcript run your thermostats. You're going to run everything on that wireless network. So that has to be really rock solid for you. But that's sort of the next phase. You're going to be walking into these things. You're going to walk in with your cell phone, which they're doing now in hotels. You walk in with your cell phone, it becomes the key for your door. It's going to control everything in the building. They're going to know when you walk through the front door. So they're going to say to me Mr Gorman, on my phone, welcome to the. Whatever hotel it is, your phone now becomes your key. You walk to your door, you open your door.

It's a little almost it's almost weird when you think about it. It's kind of futuristic. But that's where it's going. I mean, everything's going to be tied into one place. And where we want to be is you know, we have our own software company. That's a portal that's going to sort of see into the health of all our networks. So at some point we want to have that portal be the one place people go. I hate to use one-stop shopping Everybody uses that but it's one place where they can go and see the health of even if they own, let's say, 15 properties. They can go there and take a look at their network. They can see what they're doing. We can look at even energy management, like I said, thermostats Everything's going to run on these things. So that's where the future's going. I mean everything's going to be smart technology.

Yeah, you mentioned the software piece, obviously hiring great people. You mentioned building a healthy organization around not only great values but the tech. How has that sort of being software in-house, I guess played a part in what you're doing?

It's enormous for us. So for years what we did was we have a software company called Select Networks. It's sort of a sister company and it's based in Belfast, ireland, and for years I was outsourcing to different places whether it be India, venezuela, all sorts of places to try to do this. And I got to the point where not only were there some language barriers there, but you know it's on the other side of the world. You know there were constantly little things.

So I'm always trying to figure out how we fine tune the business to make it better, and I think the biggest thing for me was I wanted my own people. I wanted them working for me, I wanted their paychecks to be signed by me, and so that's how we sort of ended up with Belfast Ireland. I mean, we've got enormous talent over there. We've got maybe 16 people, I think, over there now in that software company. But it definitely adds a benefit to what we do, because all of our companies tie into each other so they're not completely separate, so that we're all over the board. They all tie into each other. So it's been nice for us. Now we have our own software people. If we need to develop things, if we need to look at the latest and greatest in software. We have our own team.

Yeah, what challenges do you run into? Perhaps are in conversations with customers. What are they pushing back on any aspect of this process?

Well, it's funny you should ask me that because I've recently had a couple of those things in the last month or so, and it's going to go back to what you said before Our biggest strengths are our employees. The biggest thing that also hurt us are our employees. So I think you've got to make sure you hire the right people. One bad apple can cause a lot of friction, sure, and I think that what I've seen is I have to almost do a better job even of hiring the right people. So what you do in my position is you get to a point and everybody's done it right you read all these books on entrepreneurs. You get to a point where you say the biggest problem entrepreneurs have is they try to do everything on their own, and I never thought I was really like that. So what I did was I went out and I hired a-.

You just told me you were answering the calls, right Like you're picking up the phone. Oh yeah, yeah, that's natural, it's your business.

You care Absolutely 100%. But you need to be able to hire people that you can sort of put that on their shoulders and say, all right, you take care of this.

Yeah.

So I think it's sort of the plus and the downside, because you can't control everybody. I mean, we have over 140 people that are full-time and another 100 plus that are 1099s or they're outsourced somehow, but they've been working for us for years. I have to be very careful, especially the way I run things, because everything to me is about my reputation, so it's my company, there's no one else. I don't have a private equity firm in here. Everything's out of my back pocket. So if I have one complaint, it bothers me. So I have to be very careful to make sure I hire the right people, because that can backfire on you very quickly, yeah, and it's interesting the type of solutions that you bring forward.

I would suspect and maybe you can tell me yes or no on this is people aren't asking the who's part of the team question in this negotiation. Is this something you're bringing forward as the differentiator, because I can't imagine that that's an expectation based off of the history of these types of relationships multifamily owners and operators have had with this type of A hundred percent. I bring it to the forefront and I tell them who my people are Are people asking that, or do they not even think that that should be something that's of value?

I don't, you know. I think they think it's of value, but I think that's a good question. I don't think they. I don't really think they ask like who's your team? Tell me about them. No, they don't do that. So I put it in front of them, but I try to get out as much as possible to have them meet me. I do think it matters and I think it all falls downhill. So I think sort of the guy running the show has to be the guy that's promoting the integrity first above everybody else, and he needs to be promoting that all the time. I think it's important for them to meet me and sometimes I think that happens. That's why I come to, I fly around and I meet with people. My guys will bring me in. But you know, strangely enough, that question, no, I don't think a lot of them do say, hey, what kind of people do you have? What are they like? I think it's just technology.

They don't even want to touch it. He's there that can handle this for me, right, and I think before you could probably put something in and set it the pace of innovation, the pace of change. You mentioned this different technologies from door locks and different things that innovate so fast. Now it's key as it's ever been.

Well, we look at a lot of times when we tell people they need to upgrade their network, they'll come back and say how I just did that. And we'll say to them well, let me ask you something In the last few years, how many iPhones have you owned? That's the problem, that everything else continues to change.

And that's the hardware piece you have to stay up, not the software piece that comes through it.

So you have to stay up with the times, and if not, the times and if not, you sort of get a little lost there.

And whether good, bad or indifferent, it's changing all the time, so it's difficult. I'm curious of the due diligence questions they're asking you in these meetings. Obviously you're sharing time with people In terms of the Wi-Fi managed network, how are they looking through creating that experience for customers?

Certainly in the hotels. They want to make the experience like it is at home. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to basically make it exactly like at home.

Walk in, it's on your-. Everything works just like I got it at home, so it's pretty easy at home. We set it up. It's good to go. Even when they come into something new, they want to be able to do the same thing. They want that same experience. So we're trying to make it the best possible experience we can, and we got to make it easy, so we got to take something that's seemingly complicated and making it I hate to say it, but idiot proof. Like you said earlier, fifth grade education and then you should be able to explain it that way. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be selling the product.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And how do you see the common areas and the private areas? I guess it's similar to hospitality.

I mean you have the same you just have more pressure on the turn because it's the same thing If by common areas you mean like a lobby or, yeah, your clubhouses and pool areas. So for the residential it's going to follow you. In the hotels it's more or less, they usually put you on like a lobby network, a guest, and then when you go to the guest network that's usually in your room.

So it's usually two separate. Yeah, and so you're part of the adjacent income opportunities with that, because some charge for that right in the hospitality. What are you seeing play out in multifamily adjacent income opportunities with that, because some charge for that?

right In the hospitality. Are you seeing what are you seeing play out in multifamily? Too early to tell or no? I mean, I think in the residential space multifamily it's just going to be like it would be for any of us at home. I don't think that's changing any. You're going to pay X amount for your internet. Most people now aren't buying the TV anymore. They're doing everything streaming. So you have to have the best possible network and the best possible internet, which is why that's great for us, because that's what everybody's doing.

These young kids now are moving into these apartments and they're just downloading stuff. It's all streaming.

How do you think through speeds of access in terms of I know when I travel, I can get the free, I can do the upgrade, I can pay for faster or even timelines to that, and in multifamily, how do you? Are there things that you can throttle or offer additional speed services, or how do you think through all that?

Yes, there's a lot of different ways we can do it.

Now you're getting into a little more technology then, but you want to bring in I mean years ago you could bring all this.

Yes, there's a lot of different ways we can do it Now. You're getting into a little more technology then, but you want to bring in. I mean, years ago you could bring in a T1, and you couldn't do that anymore. People are expecting a lot more and people are downloading a lot more now, right, so with all the streaming television and everything that requires a huge bandwidth, and a lot of times people will tell you well, we've got these speeds inside our building. Well, that's great, but if the bandwidth going out of the building isn't that big, that doesn't help you any. So you've got to make sure you're bringing in enough bandwidth outside to handle the capacity of that building.

This is at the curb. That's what I use my guys for.

This is at the curb, yes.

Yes, bringing it into the building.

And then that's where your value engineering. When You're talking about plans, you're talking about the inside stuff, correct?

So we'll go in and talk to the people about those speeds and what they're going to need based on the size of their building, what kind of clientele they're going to have. If we go into an assistant living place, we're probably not going to have the downloading that we're going to see at some group of apartments with young kids yeah, PlayStations and all that stuff.

Right.

Yeah.

It's interesting, and so what are the questions I should be asking that I haven't asked?

What are they? Yeah, what would that be got?

me on the spot there yeah, um, I mean, I I think you've asked a lot of great questions. I I think that, um, our, our biggest thing, which you've talked about, is the people part. I I find it very interesting that you said how many people are asking about the people, because I don't think anybody is. I think that's probably what other people should be asking, never mind you, but other people should be asking am I really doing business with? And I don't think there's enough of that going on. Yeah, it's very true. That was a real political answer to that, wasn't it? No, no, I think it's good.

I think what I'm thinking through with that is based on the expectation of this type of service. It wouldn't be a question. You think you would have even control over asking, like you know, because it's in and out and, uh, you know you're left to.

You know, the hotel business is unique in that it's a white glove industry and we we talk about that a lot with what we do. Um, we're sort of at the service of these guys and because we've got, we've got, we've got which interesting. We have two customers really. We have the hotel, the brand itself, and then we have the end customer, which is the guest that's in the room. They're both our customers at the end of the day and we have to be able to do that. It's the same thing in multifamily. We've got whoever that developer is, whoever that owner is of that building, he or she is our customer customer, but so is the client at the end. So we see them both as customers.

I don't think everybody does that. I think some people see as the guy sort of paying the real thing and calling the shots as the customer. But we look beyond that. We say we got to go right down to the person in the room. That's our customer too and that matters. And that person matters because usually a lot of times when they're calling in, they're very frustrated, Something's not working, they don't understand, and they need somebody on the other end to say hey, listen, we'll take care of you Don't worry about it. We want to look like. You know, we're on the side of this guy. We're on the side of that guy too, because that's the person staying in there that has to deal with the day-to-day stuff.

Yeah, so let's go into a little bit more on the hospitality side because I think it plays out because a lot of multifamily owners and operators want to create that type of an experience. Oftentimes the promise is there, maybe the resources aren't, or maybe even the people or the training. It could be a lot of factors. What do you see in those conversations with the executives in the hospitality? You mentioned the white glove experience and this collision with technology. How do you see either parallels or differences in how they think through business decisions?

Well, I think that with some of these people people that we're dealing with, with the brands and whatnot a lot of times they forget that there's other people that are handling it. So they look at the sort of the, the macro, I guess picture of everything and they see it as one big thing where this brand, we've got to do this, and they forget that not only like I mentioned earlier, you got to worry about the customer, you got to worry about the customer, you got to worry about the GM, you got to worry about the person at the front desk and sometimes, I think from a business standpoint they're not understanding that those people need to be educated too. So you can't just throw a network in and then the GM doesn't know what's going on. The person at the front desk who's dealing with the customer every single day doesn't know what's going on. So what we try to do is we try to even go beyond that and not just sell it to them, but sell it to the GM, sell it to the people behind the front desk and explain to them. The process becomes so much easier if you guys understand exactly what's going on here, because that can be a problem sometimes, and even if it's as simple as some business owners.

Some brands don't want the number in the room, so you have to call the front desk to get the number to call us. Others present it right there in the room. That creates other issues. You might have a problem with the lights, anything else, they just call the number. And who's the number? We're the number. So that's part of the reason we're as well prepared as we are, because over the years, because I've always told my guys just answer the questions. I don't like to get into this pointing fingers. So if they would call on the TVs, we'd answer it. If they'd call on the circuit coming into the building, we'd answer it. We'd take care of it. They called the door locks, we'd find the door lock company, we'd answer it. So now, when you look at that, we've had such good training that we were right in the firefight the whole time. So now, when we get out of this, we've got a knowledge base beyond what anybody else has, because they've all been calling us, even though they're not supposed to be calling us.

They've called us. Yeah, it goes back to your point on education, and I like how you mentioned the general manager, the front desk. I mean it's the same situation on apartments, yep Right, you have the portfolio managers, you have the executives. There's you have the portfolio managers, you have the executives, there's the people doing the math how does this play out? And then those that are looking for what's happening next. Speaking of what's happening next, what do you think is next for what you're working on?

Well, we're expanding all the time. I mean, our company is very interesting. We have our software company, select Networks. We have our S&A EP, which is our event productions company, and we have Amicus, and Amicus, by the way, in Latin it's trusted friend. That's why we ended up going with that name. So what's next for us is to take these divisions and these different companies and make them as successful as they can be in their space, and sort of that's what we're trying to do right now.

I think with Amicus we're developing and learning every day with how we want to do this, because now that we're sort of outside of hospitality, we're getting calls from all sorts of different people. I told you earlier we did military bases. It's very interesting because everybody needs a network, everybody needs it. Somebody's got to monitor it, maintain it. A lot of times they'll go to companies and they do deals where they get, you know, great hardware. The hardware is brought in. They might have one it guy, but the it guy's like I really can't manage this. Um, that's where, sort of, we come into play and I think, again, one of the things that makes this a little bit different is we go into a lot of it guys and say, because I think there's a fear there sometimes that we're going to try to take their job and that's the last thing I want to do.

So I'll try to go in there and say to them listen, my job is to make you look good. I can be in the background, the people don't have to know about me, you can take all the credit, but we'll help you. That's really helped us in our business to grow our business, because we work with consultants, we work with IT guys and we're on their side, whereas I think sometimes there's that tendency to think these guys are going to take my job. I'm going to be out of a job if I bring these guys in, and that's not the case. We still like somebody there that can take all the credit. We'll sit in the background, we're just happy doing that.

Yeah, we're coming up on our bonus round now. We're coming up on the end of our time together, but I'd love to explore some additional stuff if you're open to it. Sure, I'd love to know, like you mentioned, the software company, the events, obviously, the platform bringing all it sounds like you're, the more control, even in multifamily, I mean you can own and operate, you have a little bit more control. They don't necessarily go after it because there's money to be made in management. It's that you can create the experience or control the experience and fix things when they break those types of things. Is that played out in these different business units that sort of come together in an ecosystem? Is that your business?

model In the different ones. Yeah, a hundred percent that each one sort of plays into the other one. I mean, when you look at it, which?

gives you advantage and leverage over the experience of the other right.

Absolutely. So you know, when we get into the event production space, the only reason I get into that was because I was servicing them. All the time I'd get calls from other companies that were doing events planning. They need the networking company. So I said, well, we can get into that. And I mean we have. We've got networks in all 50 states. We've got over, I think, 4,000 plus hotels that we manage. A lot of these have spaces where they do events. So that was an easy tie-in for us. You know, when you look at Amicus and you say, well, we're going to go out and you know, even if we're just starting in this business, we've got 20 plus years of experience with networking guys, fantastic smart guys behind us that can go into this. So that's just tying right in. It's very easy for us. And with the software company, both companies utilize the software company. Although the software company stands in its loan and does business with other people, it's supporting all the different companies that I have. So there's definitely all of them are intertwined.

Yeah, we had NVIDIA on our podcast and we were talking about cities and spaces. And when you think about this, it's space, right, you have the hotel different type of space, you have the multifamily, and then you're mentioning these event spaces and stuff like that. It's pretty interesting how the consumer is blending these things. You also mentioned partnership and where you're walking into situations thinking, okay, let's get alignment here, let's create some victories for you, disarming any defensive behavior on like, hey, I know this may have appeared to be a conflict before, but we're here to help you win. How do you think through that? As a leader? Is this? Are you? I mean, you're obviously intentional about this, but with technology, this is more and more important than ever before. Yes, take me through that for those that may be building a business today, and how that partnership should be.

I think the way I look at all these things, when I do it, when I talk to you about our partnership, I look at it as if I'm sitting in his seat. So every business deal I make whether it's a customer complaining or whether it's a deal I got to make with a huge developer I'm going to put myself in his seat and I'm going to say what does he really want to know? And if I were sitting in his seat, what do I want out of this guy? I wouldn't want to get ripped off. I wouldn't want him to price too high. I wouldn't want him going into this thinking I'm just in it to make a buck for me.

So if I sort of take that stance and sort of everything I do in my business, it becomes quite easy. Because I'm sitting down with a guy saying I'm just partnering with you and honestly and I have this in every deal I go into I don't know why they wouldn't want to go with me I honestly go into every deal. I have thinking that because I'm like I'm only going to do this to help you out. I'm not trying to make myself, I'm not driving a Lamborghini, I'm going to do this and I figured the minute I do that with you, I've created much more of a partnership, because now I've created a friendship, which is what I do with a lot of my clients, and they're going to use me for the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and that I've seen that play out over and over and over again. So I think the key for me is I put myself in his shoes and that's the way I try to view the sale.

Do you think that has to do with the ability that I mean you've bootstrapped, I should say maybe a company where you have control over the outcome and these types of decisions? That gives you an advantage.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I will tell you nothing was ever given to me. I'm a scrappy guy and I think by nature I'm like that, so that definitely plays into everything.

I do. Is that like the hockey stuff?

There's probably a little hockey stuff in that. Yeah, a little Sure.

Getting better every day type of yeah no, absolutely.

But I think too, you know, and not kidding here, I think with the hockey piece I don't think I went as far as I could have, or I really wanted to, and that always bothered me.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think I put enough time in or effort in, sometimes when I think back on it. And so in my business I said to myself I'm not going to do that, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go for it in everything I do, but I won't do it at the expense of my employees, I won't do it at the expense of my customers. So I'll do it the right way. I don't believe in nice guy. You know, finishes last.

Sure Sure, I figure you can finish first all the time. Well, winning feels good, absolutely, and I think people want to be on winning teams as well, and they want to be serviced by a winner.

And going back to hockey and coaching, you know leading and following, being coached and being coachable is important too, right? Because you're dealing with people with complex knowledge, deep knowledge around technology, these types of things. As you're talking about your software company, you have to work through a lot of different dynamics, I would imagine.

Yeah, but I think every day as I lead, I think part of being a good leader is I have to understand that to your point. I can coach, but I need to be coached as well. Sometimes because I won't have the same knowledge as my CTO, for example, and I need to be open to listening to him. I can't say it's my way or the highway. I need him to be able to come in and feel comfortable telling me that's not the way you do it, this is the way you do it and I think we do that really, really well. I mean, I'm very much. I have no problem with constructive criticism and I will oftentimes ask people in my company their opinions on things and the least like person you'd think I should be asking. I'll ask them to just get their opinion, cause I think sometimes the best ideas come from the least likely places.

So how do you, how do you deal with a setback?

How do I deal with a setback? How would you deal with a setback when COVID hit? I'll just give you an example. So when COVID hit, I rallied my guys together. We had to lay off a bunch of people because obviously it hit the hospitality industry really badly and we lost. We didn't really lose the clients, but we lost the. They weren't able to pay. And so I can remember sitting down and I thought to myself how do I handle this?

And I oftentimes go back to my my playing hockey or my coaching, and I said, listen, I'm going to go over a couple of things that I've taught my kids which I think are very important. So obviously it's when you get hit. That's when you got to really decide who you are. And we got hit really badly and I said I tell my kids, when there's a fire, you don't run away from it, you run at it.

And everybody's kind of like well, what do you mean? Well, you got something scary. It's right in front of you. You don't run away from it because somebody might need to be saved. So you better run towards the fire. And the last thing I taught him, which is a little more from hockey, is, if you hit them, hit them first, fast and last, and I said that's what we're going to do. And that's what we did. We spent money, we built our S&AEP business, we built our amicus business, all during COVID, when we were losing everything. Everything was going down. So that's how I handle setbacks I go at it, I don't run away from it, right.

That's good stuff. Yeah Well, we are up on time, but this has been refreshing. I hope to continue to follow what you're working on. I know we'll have an opportunity to share some time later today, but excited.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah, excited for what you guys are building here.

Thank you All right, we'll see you next time.