The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software and VETRO FiberMap.
Joe Coldebella:
This episode of the Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software and VETRO FiberMap.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. We are at Calix ConneXions in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. Joining me are the CEO Michael Wynschenk and Anne Tetamore, Vice President of Marketing at Hunter Communications. Welcome to the Broadband Bunch.
Anne Tetamore:
Thank you.
Michael Wynschenk:
Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having us.
Joe Coldebella:
Hey, it’s really a great pleasure to have you here as well. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of background noise, but these events themselves are awesome. Why do you guys come to an event like Calix ConneXions?
Michael Wynschenk:
It makes us smarter. It makes us smarter, because we hear from one of our key suppliers what their strategy is; how they can complement our growth plans; and perhaps even more importantly, our peers all around the country. We’re a regional internet service provider. There are a lot of regional internet service providers. We don’t know all of them. We don’t know most of them. This gives us a chance to rub elbows, share stories, and help us collectively figure out what the next steps are for each of our companies.
Joe Coldebella:
I love it. You get a chance to do R&D, rip off and duplicate, right? Because when some folks do some things you say, “Hey, that’s a really good idea.” And you can share your ideas as well.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
So for you, when coming to these conferences, what do you look for?
Anne Tetamore:
I liked what Michael said about making us smarter, but I think it also has the opportunity to allow us to not only network with our peers but also identify areas where we’re doing that and I’m doing the same thing. So it’s nice to get that third-party validation so that we can kind of see that we’re all in the same boat, and we’re doing this together. I’ve already been to a few different panel discussions this morning. I’ve learned a lot, but I’ve also heard a lot of the same things that we talk about on a daily basis.
Michael Wynschenk:
And the other part is I’m fortunate to be on the CEO Advisory Board for Calix. So Calix will present their ideas, and then the CEOs collectively get into a discussion with their executives to help them figure out what their steps are. Does it make sense for us to have the ability to absorb and adopt everything that our key supplier wants to execute? So it’s a dialogue with Calix, which is also very important.
Joe Coldebella:
And the great thing about this event is that they make success and innovation stories front and center, which is just fantastic. At the end of the day, it’s about moving the ball forward.
Michael Wynschenk:
I think our mission is about providing fast, reliable, affordable, and safe internet. And that’s not unique to Hunter. That’s what the industry is about. And I think you’re exactly right. All that idea sharing pushes us forward collectively, and keeping in mind who it really matters to, which is our business customers and those who are our customers in the home.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. And another great thing is that we get to have conversations. Before we dive really deep, I would love it if you could each share a little bit about yourself and sort of your journey to the world of broadband.
Anne Tetamore:
Sure. So I’ve been in marketing for about 20 years. The last 13 or 14 of them have been specific to the internet broadband market. So I remember when I got into this industry about 14 years ago. And they said, “Oh, you’re never going to get out. Once you get into telecom, you’re in it.” And I thought, “Oh yeah, sure, okay.” Oh no, I’m in it.
And it’s funny, because I live, breathe, and just do this all day every day. I always have to remind myself that not everybody wakes up thinking about their internet service, right? But we constantly do so because it’s our reality. The Internet isn’t just a commodity anymore; it’s a resource that people need. It’s the same thing as walking into the room and turning on your lights. And it’s definitely something that the public as well as the private sector needs so vitally today.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s really a great point, Anne. I think that people just expect the internet to work, and they really don’t think about it. But then there are so many companies that are literally built on the internet, and it’s becoming more so year by year.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
All right. Michael, what’s your story?
Michael Wynschenk:
Well, I’ve got a lot of gray hair. I got a graduate degree at a time in the early mid-eighties. I was looking for a job, and I just got married. My wife and I were on our first New Year’s Eve as a married couple, and we were watching the coverage of the ball dropping in New York. But it wasn’t the ball. It was the old bell system insignia, a bell. And as that ball was dropping during that one minute, my wife said, “What’s that all about? I think they’re breaking up the phone company. Telecommunications is going to be a big growth industry. Why don’t you interview for a job in that industry?” And I thought, “Well, there’s a good idea.” Clearly, proof I married above my station in life.
Joe Coldebella:
Absolutely.
Michael Wynschenk:
And the next thing you know, by the time that ball dropped, we started discussing, “Okay, now what companies are you going to interview for?” And six months later I started working for AT&T. I will tell you, at that time, AT&T was just starting to sell telephone systems. Shortly thereafter, we were selling fax machines.
Now this is really dating the genesis of the industry, going away from just voice to sending information. And well, I sold fax machines for $3,000 each.
Joe Coldebella:
Wow.
Michael Wynschenk:
So the industry has moved forward a long way since then. And this is the only industry I’ve been in. And to Anne’s point, we change the world. We connect people; we connect companies. And those who have been in it are very passionate about it. And we look at our journey in the past, and we look at where we’re going. It only looks like it’s going to get better. Think about this. Twenty years ago, what did we have? We had a little noise that said, “You have mail,” and it was AOL services. And that feels like literally lifetimes ago.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. If you share that with a child today, they’ll be like, “Where are you at?”
Anne Tetamore:
“What do you mean you couldn’t use the phone when you wanted to use the internet? What phone? The cell phone?”
No, the house phone.
Joe Coldebella:
But it really is incredible how technology has grown through the years, right? You’ve got the telegraph to the telephone, from the telephone to the fax, from the fax to the internet. It’s all sort of the same thing, but it gets more incredible as the years go by.
Michael Wynschenk:
My children’s great-grandmother celebrated a few years ago her 100th birthday. And the question was, “Gram, what did you experience in your life that you just never thought was going to happen?” And she indicated that one is that you could get on an airplane and fly pretty much anywhere in the world. Number two, that she has great-grandchildren all over the world. Using the computer, she can talk to everyone and see them anytime she wants.
And the third thing is she is a big sports fan. She says, “I never thought the San Francisco Giants would ever win the World Series. And watching that.” She didn’t go to any of the games. She was in front of her TV or on her computer. That’s a 100-year-old great-grandmother. That’s the journey. Oh, and I’m sorry. I forgot one more. And landing on the moon was the fourth. Well, all those are things she experienced with technology, networking, and connectivity.
Joe Coldebella:
And all in the last 70 years, which is just amazing and incredible stuff. So the journey has led you to Hunter. Could you give us a little background on Hunter itself?
Michael Wynschenk:
Sure. So Hunter started as a construction company 30 years ago. And the interesting part of this is that there were eight employees. Hunter was building networks for entities that are now competitors, cable companies, and telecom companies. Then Hunter decided to pivot, and I’ll let Anne talk about that relative to the journey the company went on. The company has been on multiple pivots and journeys. That is how companies survive in this industry.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely. Thanks, Michael. So as Michael said, we started as a construction company. Our founder was a man with a truck and a ladder, right? And through that, he ended up developing this company that started to provide internet service to commercial businesses. And then after commercial businesses, about 10 years later, we were able to start offering residential internet service right after the pandemic towards the end of 2020. So when people really needed the internet the most, to have a reliable, affordable connection in the Southern Oregon markets that we serve, it was a pivotal moment for us to be able to do that at that point in time.
Michael Wynschenk:
And the timing couldn’t have been better because Hunter, the founder of the company, had just sold the company. The deal closed in April of 2020. And at that point, Hunter had no residential customers. So imagine this: during the pandemic, all the customers were working in their offices. The offices closed down; they moved home. And Hunter decides at that point that maybe it’s a good idea to take our network and go into the neighborhoods. And that’s what we started probably around the December 2020 timeframe.
Joe Coldebella:
Okay. So, Michael, you became CEO at the absolute perfect time for a person to become part of the Internet. Did you start the month of the pandemic starting?
Michael Wynschenk:
Well, yeah. Interestingly enough, I was working for a cable company. We were doing fiber to the home at a great level of intensity in Connecticut and New York. We’re doing about 100,000 homes per year. And the pandemic started in New Rochelle. I mean, that was ground zero as I look back at it. And I was wondering why my technicians were not allowed to enter the town. Well, it turned out to be that they set up protection barriers because they couldn’t figure out what this was.
So around the April timeframe, I accepted the position. So the pandemic was a couple of months old. I’m living in Connecticut. The company is located in Oregon. My wife and I said, “This isn’t going to work. Let’s move to Oregon.” And I’ll never forget, Joe, that flight from Connecticut to Oregon wearing a mask and then a mask over the mask and then gloves. It was the scariest thing. And we had to explain to our families why we felt that was safe.
So that was our journey to Medford. And as I said, we looked at where the opportunities were. We were doing this while we were dealing with the stress of the first 90 days of the pandemic. And I think it was an example of a management team and a company that found ways to get things done. We protected our employees while we grew our business. That was the genesis. That was the steppingstone where as CEO, I thought, we have the culture that lets us pretty much do anything we put our mind to.
Anne Tetamore:
We are very resilient in that regard.
Joe Coldebella:
So you start bringing on residential customers. And from the little research that I’ve done, it seems that as soon as these folks heard that you were there, they switched to you. What was the overriding factor?
Anne Tetamore:
Relief. Relief that they have other options from an internet provider to choose from.
Joe Coldebella:
Well, could you sort of give a 30,000-foot overview of the Southern Oregon landscape?
Michael Wynschenk:
Well, let’s back up just for a step. Remember, we had no residential customers. So we first had to build the infrastructure and a customer service department. We had to bring in a marketing department, door-to-door sales, and installers. Our installers were doing business. Now we are doing residential. That’s a whole different experience for somebody who’s now opening their door and a stranger comes in during the pandemic to install services. So it took us about six months to build that platform. After that, we started bringing all the fiber.
Anne Tetamore:
I remember I got there in February 2021. It was a whole new world for me from where I had come from. I had come from another larger national telco. But it was also so exciting because we were kind of creating it as we went. We had the opportunity to look at what didn’t work for us in the past and what customers didn’t like and remove all of those barriers to be able to provide our customers with services that they wanted and that they really deserved.
Michael Wynschenk:
And it was a really interesting journey. Well, it’s interesting from our view, Anne, because again, no one knew we were in there. So we had to rebrand our trucks. People said, “My goodness. Look, they’re everywhere.” If you see our trucks, they look a little different.
Anne Tetamore:
He loves our trucks.
Michael Wynschenk:
I love our trucks, but our employees didn’t. They said, “Oh, those colors are not…” I said, “That’s the whole point.”
Anne Tetamore:
We get so many compliments on those trucks now. They used to be white. And he said, “When I got hired, no more white trucks. They’re nice. They’re red, orange, branded, and look great.”
Michael Wynschenk:
And we decided to be the disruptor in the industry. So we introduced Price for Life. Once you have our services, that’s the price you will pay for that service that you have. If you move across the street, that’s your price for life.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s awesome.
Michael Wynschenk:
There’s no charge for installation. No charge for data caps. At that time, Joe, we offered one gig service. And I would say our take rate was about 20% at that time. Then Anne joined us, and we started telling our story. We had to figure out where we were going to build, and Anne worked on our website to enable that.
Anne Tetamore:
Yeah. So we partnered with a company that was able to help us with some mapping tools, put those up on the website, and then really started to collect interest from customers to determine where we were going to go build next. Building a fiber network isn’t an easy task, so we definitely want to make sure that we’re going where the interest is.
That’s a big factor in determining where we’ll expand to. So we had that tool available to us. We had our new brand available, and we really started to see changes and growth. And it was a really exciting time for our company. It still is. We’re a 30-year-old — I don’t want to say start-up, but we kind of are because there’s just been so many different phases in the growth of our company.
Michael Wynschenk:
And the other thing that we did while we were going at the beginning of this journey, Joe. We established with employee input, what our mission, values, and how we were going to determine what our “why” was.
And I think the lesson learned here as companies grow, whatever the industry is, you need to bring your employees along with you. The second is not just to bring them along but to listen to what they have to say. And if you are doing the right things at the right time with the right strategy, it’s amazing what can happen. And I said that we were acquired. The company that acquired us is Grain Management, which has a unique perspective. As a private equity firm, they only invest in this industry.
So while we are being creative and driving our business, they are providing assistance on capitalization and assistance with our banking relationships. So sometimes, the stars line up. But you have to work hard to make that happen and then leverage that. So for us, I think, good people in the right place at the right time doing a lot of the right things.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
So as you’re telling me this, I’m doing inside my brain fist pumps. It sounds like what you’re doing is making your company local. And that’s probably one of the things that is really important, especially in the rural or smaller towns. When they see the branded truck or the guy or the gal in the store with the Hunter Communications logo, they can go up to them and say, “I’ve got great service.” That must be super gratifying for you guys.
Anne Tetamore:
It’s super, super gratifying because our employees are our customers and vice versa. They understand how well our service works. Like you said, you see them in the grocery store. I think for me, one of the best parts about it is if you’re a customer and you have an issue, let’s be honest, things happen. We’re all not perfect.
But if you call up and talk to Sarah, one of our customer service agents today, you can call up tomorrow and talk to Sarah. You’re not going to get in a queue and talk to one of 2,500 different call center reps across the United States and beyond. You’re going to talk to a person who lives in our community and understands our community. It is the same thing with our technicians. We have a 4.8 Google rating.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. That’s great.
Anne Tetamore:
4.8 for an internet service provider, right?
Michael Wynschenk:
That’s out of five.
Anne Tetamore:
Thank you. Thank you. Yes. That is out of five, not 10. When our technicians go into the home, they take certain care, right? They make sure that they wear their booties and that all of the devices are connected before they leave and that our customers are satisfied before they leave. And that shows in that Google rating. So for me, like I said before, when we started providing service, what was the reaction from customers? It was a relief. We’re not going to raise your rates in month 13. We’re not going to do all of those things that have become so commonplace in our industry that customers have just kind of accepted. And they don’t have to.
Michael Wynschenk:
What is that application, neighborhood?
Anne Tetamore:
Nextdoor.
Michael Wynschenk:
Nextdoor neighbor. So I’ve been in the industry a long time, and my wife has been married to me for a long time. She would look at these apps. This is not a Hunter story. First, I’ll tell you other company stories. She would look at the app, and she goes, “Oh, you guys are mentioned.” And my first reaction, right, I’m in defensive mode. My body language changes.
Anne Tetamore:
Tightens up.
Michael Wynschenk:
Yeah, everything tightens up. And then she would read, and I’d say, “Oh boy.” Then I’d get on the phone and start to do the recovery process. She still does that. She reads and goes, “Oh, you want to hear this one?” And I’m relaxed now because they are very positive because they left a company that they were not happy with. And we are an alternative local, providing better quality solutions and better service. So now when she reads those, I say, “Bring it on. Sounds terrific.” And the biggest criticism we have is why are you not in our neighborhood yet?
Anne Tetamore:
Expand faster.
Joe Coldebella:
Right.
Anne Tetamore:
Build faster, please.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s a good problem to have.
Anne Tetamore:
It is.
Joe Coldebella:
So now that you’re expanding into residential areas people are super excited. The internet itself can be a wonderful thing, but there are also some things that we need to look out for. And that’s one of the reasons why you’re also here at Calix ConneXions. This podcast is being recorded in October. And this month is National Bully Awareness Month.
Anne Tetamore:
National Bullying Prevention Month.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. When we were growing up as kids, the bully was somebody who was down the street or in the schoolyard. But now, it’s taken on another thing, which can be super scary. And you’re a mother.
Anne Tetamore:
I am. I have a 10-year-old and a six-year-old. So we’re just starting on this journey in our household, right? The 10-year-old has a tablet. She got it last year for Christmas. Anybody who has more than one child knows that once one child gets something, now the six-year-old wants it. So his seventh birthday is coming up. I never thought I’d be getting him one this early. But with Bark, which is a new product that we’re offering now with Calix at Hunter, I feel a lot more comfortable letting them both be on the internet.
Michael Wynschenk:
Your seven-year-old is getting a tablet?
Anne Tetamore:
My husband’s not pleased about it. But for my sanity, I’m going to let him get it.
Michael Wynschenk:
But I think that’s common now, right?
Anne Tetamore:
It is.
Michael Wynschenk:
I mean, you’re right, the oldest gets it.
Anne Tetamore:
Yeah, there are friends of his in first grade that have them.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s an interesting conversation. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, right, two sort of like icons, if you will. I don’t know if I’d want to use that word. But when they were asked, “How do your kids use the internet?” And both of them said, “We don’t let our kids on the internet.”
Anne Tetamore:
It’s hard. It’s such a personal decision for each family too, right? But I think as long as we’re safeguarding our children online, then it’s okay. As you said, there’s good and there’s bad. There’s cyberbullying. Like you said, it used to be in the classrooms and on the playgrounds, now it’s on their devices.
Cyberbullying has tripled over the years. 55% of children report being cyberbullied. 90% of children report witnessing it. And to me, the 90% is the more disturbing statistic because they’re watching it happen to their friends, and they’re not doing anything about it because they’re scared. Nobody wants to stand up and be the one that stands up to the bully, and then it just compounds itself.
Joe Coldebella:
And when it’s online, how do you stand up to the bully? Michael, I know that your daughter is a teacher. Sometimes the bullying online goes to the schools or after school, and it’s really tough. I do not envy anyone who has to deal with it.
Michael Wynschenk:
So my daughter is a middle school teacher at the same school where she went to school in the sixth grade. So imagine that.
Joe Coldebella:
Wow.
Michael Wynschenk:
She’s the theater teacher, and she’s also in charge of the electives. And when the sixth graders come in from elementary school, there’s that first or second day of orientation. And she participates in walking the kids through the school. She stops at an area where she recalls her locker was when she was a sixth grader. And she says, “This is the spot where I got bullied. My job as a teacher, the counselor’s job, the administration’s job is to create as safe an environment as possible.”
So good for her; good for her school. Now, I guess it was maybe six or nine months ago now, as a theater teacher, she’s doing a rehearsal. I went into the area where the rehearsal was occurring, and there was a 12 or 13-year-old girl who was just knocking it out of the park, Joe. She was doing a terrific job in this performance.
When the rehearsal was over, she walked over to her phone. And I’ll never forget this, she walked over to her phone and fell to her knees. My daughter walked over. I don’t know the full story because she wasn’t going to share that with me. But that night, she shared “Cyberbullying is a very real thing.” And candidly, nine months ago, I wasn’t familiar with cyberbullying. She described what was going on in the schools, and I watched her help the student call the parent and do all those things that you’d want a teacher to do. But there’s a tremendous cost to those teachers psychologically of having to do that.
Anne Tetamore:
That puts a lot on a teacher to have to be responsible for one more thing, right?
Joe Coldebella:
For our parents, what exactly does Bark let you do?
Anne Tetamore:
Yep. So Bark Parental Control app, thank you for asking. It has numerous different capacities. I think for me, the biggest part of it though is that it allows me as a mom to build trust with my daughter while also letting her maintain her privacy.
So I download it on my device, and I download it on her device. It’s only going to alert me when there’s something that is a cause for concern. If she’s being bullied, visiting a website that’s inappropriate, or there’s anything on the phone, it’ll let me know that I may want to talk to my child about this.
It’s also going to allow me to say which websites she can and cannot go to. So now I’m not the bad guy anymore, Michael. It’s the device, right? It’s doing that for me, and it’s also going to set screen time limits. “So two hours, you’re up. That’s it for the day. No more for you.” This is something that my husband and I have had a hard time with because the kids get on these tablets, they start scrolling, get these dopamine hits, and get addicted to it. And it’s like, “All right, let’s read a book. Let’s play a game as a family. You need to take a break from the tablet right now.”
Joe Coldebella:
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the social influencer, Gary Vaynerchuk. He said the amazing thing about the phone and an extension of that, the internet, is that everything that’s on there is curated by you. So everything that’s cool, great, and you care about is there. And the rest of the world is secondary. So it’s really important, especially with these generations coming up to figure out ways to dose it. Listen, I’m guilty of it as well.
Anne Tetamore:
Same. Same.
Joe Coldebella:
And I would hope, other people would probably disagree, that I have the maturity to sometimes put it down. But then there’s the problem when get that bad comment or you don’t get enough likes, and then that could send someone spiraling.
Anne Tetamore:
And imagine that happening to a 12-year-old who doesn’t have that mental maturity yet. So they get that validation from it. And then if somebody doesn’t like it or gives it a thumbs down or angry face, that’s just so crushing for these kids.
Michael Wynschenk:
Or imagine the picture that gets taken that your daughter does not want to have taken, and suddenly that picture gets distributed to how big is the group going to be?
Anne Tetamore:
Everybody in the school, right? It’s awful. And then the other part of Bark is the location monitoring. The Director of Sales for our company has a middle school-aged son. I think he said he needs to take the city bus one or two nights a week now after school. That allows him to keep tabs on his son and know where his son’s going, when he’s on the bus, and when he gets home. So it gives him that additional peace of mind.
Michael Wynschenk:
Regarding the trust factor, it’s not the parents using the Bark software to monitor their children. That destroys the trust. It’s an alerting system. So when the child is experiencing something or doing something that the parent has determined they don’t want the child to do, the software alerts the parent. So it’s an exception basis rather than a constant monitoring. I can’t imagine, Anne, you having a discussion with your 10-year-old, if she knew that you knew where she was all the time on the internet.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely not.
Michael Wynschenk:
It’s only an exception.
Anne Tetamore:
Well, and I don’t want to know.
Joe Coldebella:
Right.
Anne Tetamore:
Right? There are only so many hours in the day.
Joe Coldebella:
No, no. But it’s also not spying, right? It’s observing.
Anne Tetamore:
Exactly.
Joe Coldebella:
And that way as a parent, you know when to sort of insert yourself. Then you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to let them explore.” But then if it gets a little scary, these tools allow you to be on top of it. It also gives the chance for you to sort of like nudge the child to say, “Hey, listen, is there something bothering you a little bit?” And then they might not know how you know, but then they’ll open up, which is so, so important.
Anne Tetamore:
Yep. And what’s great too is that we get a lot of tools from Calix and Bark to help us educate our customers. And they’ve been educating me. I’ve been reading through these blogs and learning a lot about how I can help my child and things that I need to be looking out for online.
Above and beyond just cyberbullying, Roblox is a big app amongst kids these days. They love to play the social media game, but you can give them Robux so that they can buy things. They can buy things with your credit card. Well, if I give my daughter my credit card to go buy Robux, now what happens if somebody tries to scam her because she doesn’t know?
Joe Coldebella:
Sure.
Anne Tetamore:
You know what I mean?
Joe Coldebella:
Right.
Anne Tetamore:
So it just compounds it. It’s my responsibility to put a car seat in my car. It’s my responsibility to teach my daughter, and my son eventually, how to stay safe online and that it’s not me spying on you. But unfortunately, there are people out there who aren’t very kind when it comes to this type of stuff.
Michael Wynschenk:
You’ve used this analogy, Anne, before. When your child was young, you would hold your child’s hand to cross the street. And now the child is out of the car seat but needs to fasten the seatbelt. This is the hand; this is the seatbelt. A parent has a responsibility.
Hunter is in Oregon and Northern, Northern California. We encourage people who are, and businesses who are our customers to get this for their employees. It’s bigger than just Hunter. I think this country will be in much better shape for parents and children as this world continues to get more complicated and more difficult for a child to understand if those parents are helping their children use this kind of software.
Joe Coldebella:
So what are some of the other tools that are in the suite?
Anne Tetamore:
Sure, sure. So Bark is just one part of our Hunter Shield suite of internet security products. So in addition to Bark, we’ve got the HunterIQ App, which is our new app. It’s basically network management for your home Wi-Fi network. So it’s an app you can download onto your cell phone or your tablet. You can say which devices you want connected to the internet. You can give your guests their own Wi-Fi network. The holidays are coming up. How many times do you hear, “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” Now you can just give them their own network. You can text it to them. Away they go.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great.
Anne Tetamore:
Yeah. So that actually comes included with our Wi-Fi. We launched that a few months ago. Then in addition to the HunterIQ App, we also offer Hunter Protect. It’s antivirus software, malware, and viruses in real-time. And it will let you know when you are being attacked and when and how many viruses that it’s blocked for you. And then the third piece of that is Hunter Control which is parental controls at the device level in your home. Bark is a little bit different because that’s more at the software level while your kids are out of the home. But then Hunter Control also offers network trafficking.
So let’s say I work from home. Not let’s say, I do. I work from home. So I want all of the bandwidth coming to my work computer and my camera during the day. Then after 5:00, maybe 6 or 7, we’ll move that, right? We’ll program it. So now it goes to the living room TV. Well, the kids don’t have tablets on the weekdays anymore. That’s another one I put. Yeah, I’m not very popular at home lately. But then it’ll go to the family TV, so we can stream. And we can all watch Family Jeopardy at the end of the night so that I’m getting optimized bandwidth where we need it during the day.
Joe Coldebella:
So what you’re telling me is that it is putting the subscriber first.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
This is ultimately the most important thing because at the end of the day, it’s getting that high Google rating. And it’s getting that word-of-mouth advertising, which we know is the most powerful form of marketing there is.
Anne Tetamore:
It is very focused on the customer experience, right?
Michael Wynschenk:
That’s our “why”. That’s the only reason we exist. And if we can’t help our customers use technology well so they can connect when and where they want to, we don’t have a right to keep our doors open.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. I love the mission. I love the “why”. As we wind down here, I was just going to ask you a couple more questions. The first one is about workforce issues. Obviously, we’ve been talking about the apps and the customer. How has that been for you guys? As I talked to other people from around the country, some people way that it is a problem. For other people, it’s not a problem. I would love to get your perspective.
Michael Wynschenk:
Do you mean our staffing levels to support this journey?
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah.
Michael Wynschenk:
So, again, as we’ve said earlier, our heritage is construction. So we do our own builds from stringing the fiber on the poles or under the ground, splicing it all up, doing the installation, and doing the engineering. Joe, you have a very good question because in the last, well, probably nine months or so, we’ve seen a higher degree of difficulty in recruiting for some of those positions, in particular the construction position.
And so we’ve actually partnered with some firms that work with the military. So if there is someone in the service and has six months left on their rotation, they can choose to start and leave the military, get paid by the Department of Defense, and begin their journey of what their career is post-service. And we’ve just started this, and we’re hoping that’s going to be an avenue for us to improve the recruitment and the retention of folks, in particular in the construction department.
Joe Coldebella:
I love it because I think that this industry does a very poor job of communicating that these are careers, not quick jobs. Amazon does a great job of promoting jobs, but this is an opportunity to share a career.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely. We offer a lot of on-the-job training. Our tagline is “Better connections start here”, but we’ve been working with our HR team. And we are saying better careers start here too, right? It’s not just a come here, work for six months or a year and leave. It’s come here, work the trade, and work your way up into a career at a company that’s growing at a really fast rate.
Michael Wynschenk:
We’ve actually started a Ready Now Program where each department identified their top employees who they thought had a long runway with us. So we put them through a one-year development program of skill sets and knowledge. I speak to the class, I think, twice. You speak to the class; a lot of leaders do. So they understand what the business is, not just the department they work in. And in 2022, we promoted nine of the 12 that participated in that program.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. You’re also showing a commitment to your employees. You often hear, “Oh, well, they always bring somebody in.” But if you let your people grow, then they stick around and then you build. Unfortunately, a lot of folks are aging out of this industry. So there’s going to be a huge vacuum. And I hear that AI is going to take some of the burden up. There are going to be different ways for us to solve the problem, but it’s going to be a tough road to hoe.
Michael Wynschenk:
Yeah, it is. Our four strategic pillars are people, process, technology, and financial health. It starts with the people. For us, there are two kinds of people: customers and employees. We want to bring in the best employees to take care of our customers. We want to retain our customers, but we can’t do that effectively if we can’t retain our employees. And a lot of that is, I think, our benefit package is one of the best in Oregon.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Michael Wynschenk:
It costs us some money, but that’s part of the investment. Our training programs are our programs to bring people up through the business. If the business can run that way, I think that makes it the kind of business that customers want to do business with. What we didn’t talk about is our engagement in the community and what we did when there were some terrible fires in the area of Talent in Phoenix, destroying large parts of the community, what we did to assist and our donations to the schools. We are part of a community. And that’s the nice thing about being a local and regional provider.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely. And when you were talking about our employees earlier just now too, I was thinking about how I think we do a really good job of explaining the “why” to our employees, right? Okay, as an employee, that’s what you want me to do. But why? Why? Why is that the decision that we’re making?
To Michael’s point about the leadership program that we have, we just got done doing a presentation with them about business acumen and the different trends that we see in the industry, and why we make some of the strategic business decisions that we make. Employees are really hungry for that today. They want to learn. So I think that doing that with our employees gives them a real sense of “I too can affect change at this company” and makes them much more productive.
Michael Wynschenk:
At the end of the day, I have a lot of assets, a lot of cable on poles, a lot of cable, and a lot of customers. The most important asset we have is our people.
Anne Tetamore:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. It’s truly amazing how important the “why” is. I was actually just reading an article, and they said that the reason why the overwhelming majority of folks get burnout is that they don’t know the “why”. They can do the work. But then there’s a point where they ask, “Why am I doing this?” And then if you communicate that effectively, you really do move mountains.
Michael Wynschenk:
And it’s easy to say. We have to remind ourselves as leaders of our business and our departments to do that. It’s almost like when was the last time you hugged your child and said, “I love you”? My wife and I have been married for a long time. And it’s like, “Oh yeah, we do this at least once a week, don’t we? It’s hug time.” Well, we don’t want to hug employees. HR will not exactly view that kindly, but it’s the words we use. It’s the amount of feedback we give to help them on their journey.
And there are times we’ve had employees leave, and we endorse it. We said, “You’re right. This isn’t the right industry, but you have the right behaviors. So it’s time to leave the nest, so to speak.” And we realize that, and we’re proud of how they do when they move on.
Anne Tetamore:
Yep. We just started an employee newsletter too, and they love it.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome.
Anne Tetamore:
Because some of them said, “We don’t really know what’s going on.” In the Grants Pass area where we serve in Southern Oregon, we just lit up 1500 homes. And I thought to myself, “I don’t know how many employees know that we did this. So sending out those newsletters, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people. “Thank you so much for doing this. This is so helpful.” People are asking questions and proposing topics for future newsletters. And it’s just another way for us to touch our employees and let them know what we have going on.
Michael Wynschenk:
So Joe, you said we’re wrapping up, but we’re not ready to wrap up.
Anne Tetamore:
Sorry, sorry.
Joe Coldebella:
No. This is great. No, I love it.
Michael Wynschenk:
So here’s an example of how somehow the Executive Director of Grants Pass, Boys and Girls Club said, “I know you’re doing a lot of work. What can I do to help, in particular the Bark, the Bark software? Because that’s a big concern.” And I think at the end of the year, beginning of next year, we have a whole program we’re going to start to help those who are part of the Boys and Girls Club from how best to utilize the internet to how to use a software like we’re talking about.
That wasn’t our phone call. That was the community doing a reach-out. By the way, the employees who work in Grants Pass are very excited about that. So it’s a circular scenario. And better connections are not just about the technology. It’s about how we’re helping people. The community is reaching out to us, and we’re reaching out to them.
Joe Coldebella:
And what I love about that is how flexible you can be compared to maybe larger carriers. It’s like, “Hey, listen, let’s get boots on the ground right away” because there’s actually a need and an excitement for it. So that’s really awesome.
Anne Tetamore:
We are very nimble. We have the ability to pivot very quickly when we see a need in the community, and that’s one of the reasons why I joined this company two and a half years ago.
Michael Wynschenk:
This is what we spend our staff meetings on.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. This has been an absolutely phenomenal visit. Hopefully, next year or two years down the line, we’ll have you guys back on the podcast again.
Anne Tetamore:
Please.
Joe Coldebella:
You guys have a fantastic story, and I’m so happy that we were able to share it.
Anne Tetamore:
Thanks so much, Joe.
Michael Wynschenk:
Thank you, Joe.
Joe Coldebella:
Thank you. That’s going to wrap up this episode of the Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
