Bandwidth Builders: The People & Stories Behind the Fiber Revolution with Dan Caruso

Dan Caruso (00:00)
Well, Carrie Charles, thank you for coming out here.

Carrie Charles (00:02)
Thank you, Dan. I'm so excited.

Dan Caruso (00:05)
When we have like a unique format here that we're going to play with because you too have a podcast. Yeah. So what we're going to do is do two podcasts in one. I'm going to start out for the first 15 minutes and then you're going to turn to the host and I'm going to turn to the guests for the next 15 and we'll go back and forth a few times and have kind of a two podcasts in one experience and to see where that leads.

Carrie Charles (00:10)
I do. I do.

Let's do it. I think it's awesome.

Dan Caruso (00:33)
So the first time I recall meeting you, in fact, maybe the only times we met in person is at Metro Connect. Is that right? that your memory as well?

Carrie Charles (00:42)
Yes, yes, I do remember that. And you know, it's interesting, Dan, because that was very intentional, meeting you. And I remember I was almost borderline stalking you because I want to meet him so bad. And so I believe you were sitting at the bar and then there were no seats beside you at Metro Connect. And so then I kept moving down and down and down until I was finally next to you. And I'm like, hi, I'm Carrie. So no, but I think, you know, a lot of people.

who connected maybe did connect at Metro Connect because it was a hub for us, right?

Dan Caruso (01:17)
Yep. And by the time you started coming to Metro Connect, was when about 2015 or 2014?

Carrie Charles (01:25)
Okay, I got in the industry in 2016. So it's right around 2016.

Dan Caruso (01:31)
Okay, so there's a prehistory in Metro Connect that I think you'll learn about a little bit, because it was very important in the development of Xeon, really the redevelopment of our industry. So we'll talk more about that. But what was really impressive when I've observed you both showing up there and what you've done since then is how you were able to use that collection of people to come up with a very targeted plan for your business and use that to build

relationships that not just spanned across the US, but spanned well beyond the US in a very important sector that you, I think, built your business around. So do you want to tell us a little bit more on how you started the business in 2016, built it, and I think built it around the theme of digital infrastructure and around kind of the connections that you were making at Metro Connect and perhaps some other industry conferences. think there's a lot people can learn on how to leverage something like that to build out a business.

Carrie Charles (02:28)
No, thank you. I would love to talk about it. So the business idea was actually brought to me. So I joined Broadstaff. Again, I'll just back up. My company is Broadstaff. And we specialize in staffing and workforce development in digital infrastructure. So everything wireless, wireline, data center, and IT. so the idea was brought to me by the investor in Broadstaff.

And we'd been in business together off and on for many years. And he said, I just invested in this company called Broadstaff. It's in telecom. I think that you would love it. Why don't you join us and help us grow it?

Dan Caruso (03:08)
And what was the state of the company at that point in time? Okay, so it was a new company that he invested in. Did it have much of a team in place at that point?

Carrie Charles (03:11)
That had only been in existence for a few months.

No, really, there was one owner who was a CEO at the time and then I think there was just two other employees, that was it. And so at the time I was 49 years old and I was getting ready to be an empty nester. My kids were gonna go to college and I thought about it and I thought, gosh, I don't really know anything about telecom. I mean, other than the Marine Corps, which I was in.

Dan Caruso (03:26)
Okay.

By

the way, thank you for your service, because I know you are military vet. So we'll come back to earlier in your career later on, because I want to learn kind of how you got from, you know, early on in your life to Broadstaff

Carrie Charles (04:00)
Yes, so then I thought, I don't know anything about telecom really. I don't know anything about staffing, but I'm excited for new opportunities. So I said, yeah, let's do it. I'll figure it out. I'll learn it. And so I came aboard and, you know, as an owner, I had the investor and another partner. And I remember that I was flying to my first conference and it was literally after just a couple of months after I joined the company and I was studying.

What is fiber? What is DAS? What is, I had no idea. I really didn't know. And I was on my way to this conference and I showed up and I remember I even got the name of my company wrong in the beginning because I was just so new to the whole thing. And so many people helped me. And I think Dan, what I tried to do is I tried to use my lack of knowledge about the industry as an advantage.

because I thought, that means staffing and digital infrastructure, because I look at our business because we specialize in digital infrastructure, but we also are a staffing company. So we really operate in two industries, but I didn't know anything about either one. And I thought, well, this is incredible because what I can do is take my experience from other industries and other businesses, and then I can transfer this here.

and do some different things than other people are doing. So just to give you a couple examples, one of my passions is marketing and PR and branding and every company that I'd ever, I'd been an entrepreneur since I was younger, but every other company, I've been really involved in that and unique marketing and branding ideas. And I didn't see that really in staffing and especially in staffing in telecom. So I thought, well, I'm going to focus on

really building a network, a strong network and strong relationships by being everywhere all the time in person.

Dan Caruso (06:02)
which is unique. Which is unique. It was you and seven other executives who were focusing on recruiting at Metriconnect. was probably you.

Carrie Charles (06:13)
I was everywhere. mean, Dan, I'm telling you, I was traveling easily every week. I mean, there'd be some times where I was gone for weeks at a time. Every single conference, every event, every Christmas function, every whatever it was, I was gonna be there. And I had so much FOMO because I said, no, I've got to be everywhere. And then not only that, but I really utilized the power of social media.

marketing and branding, not just branding, company branding, but also personal branding to build the company hand in hand with those relationships. And then I thought, okay, well, I want to maximize this further and look at other ways that I can build this brand. And that's when I got into podcasting and that was a huge success also. So I would say that that lack of knowledge about staffing and telecom really helped me.

to say, okay, well, I'm gonna take all of these ideas that worked over here in these other industries and try it here, and it did.

Dan Caruso (07:17)
and lean into social media at the same time. I think the reason you're here right now and the reason we've stayed connected is because of social media. Seeing you very present and innovative in how you're using, I'm mostly a LinkedIn person, so I think it's mostly LinkedIn, although some of the stuff I'm working on now, we're kind of more leveraging a broader set of platforms, but your ability to build up a personal brand that was and is applicable to what you're doing was part of what

I'm sure was bringing business to the table. The relationships you were building with the right people who had staffing requirements and digital infrastructure would turn to you is my guess. Is that kind of how the sequence would work?

Carrie Charles (08:01)
I definitely, I think that social media is obviously very powerful with business and no matter what business you are in, I think it's important to utilize social media. And I know obviously I love being with people, I'm very outgoing, I speak. So it's natural for me to be on social media, but there's other people where it's not really natural, they don't feel comfortable. But even still, it is important for leaders to be there.

because it's in today's world, and I always say this, you know when we were little, how we would think, if it's on TV, it's real, it's true, and everybody believed it. Well, it's the same now with social media, and especially with LinkedIn in the business world. So it's important that we have that brand, we have that presence on LinkedIn, and the messages that we craft, they're authentic, and they're real. And I think that above anything else from,

what I decided to do on LinkedIn, or for that social presence, I just wanted to be me and be real and not be so, I guess, professional, if you will. It's just more of like, look, this is how I feel, this is who I am, and I'm just gonna talk to you like I would just talk to you if you and I were together.

Dan Caruso (09:23)
But now you do a lot of speaking as well. So do want to tell us a little bit about what you do from a speaking engagement standpoint and how that interweaves with actually before we go there, tell us what Broadstaff is today. So when you when you first got involved with it, it was an owner, a couple of people you're brought in to do something with it based on a past relationship. Fast forward to 2025 almost. What is Broadstaff today?

Carrie Charles (09:50)
So it's an interesting story. When I came aboard, I was just really focused on growing revenue. And there was a CEO in place of the company who was actually the original founder and then our investor. Over time, was over, I guess, a couple of years or so, we bought out that original founder. And then I took over running the company as the CEO. And when we first started Broadstaff,

we started as just pure wireless infrastructure and mostly in distributed antenna systems. So we were focused in that really small sliver of a vertical. And then over time, seeing more opportunity, we ventured into fiber and data center and then more of that full digital infrastructure model. And that's where we are now. We also added IT as well.

So currently, I mean really since 2018, I've been sitting in the CEO seat. It's, and you know, with an amazing team, we have now probably about 150 employees or so. Including the people that are in the field working for our clients as contractors, there are employees.

Dan Caruso (11:06)
much to graphic dispersion.

Carrie Charles (11:08)
Right now we are throughout the entire US. So I believe we're in, gosh, we're almost in all states. And you'd mentioned earlier about being global. I I've traveled a lot and I've spoken in other countries, but we're not quite yet moving to that global presence, but that's something that we want to achieve.

Dan Caruso (11:30)
Okay, great. now tell us about what you do on a speaking engagement side. Yeah, so that helps build the brand of the business, your brand and how it all kind of comes together.

Carrie Charles (11:41)
You know, Dan, that was probably, I'd say, of the most powerful pieces of building the brand was speaking. And what I did, I've been a speaker since I was younger. I've been a professional speaker. I just love it. I mean, I feel more comfortable.

Dan Caruso (11:59)
When

you say professional speaker, is... Paid. I don't think I've ever gotten paid to give a speech. we got one professional speaker here.

Carrie Charles (12:01)
So I would say getting paid.

Now, it's not that I got paid a lot, but I got paid. So it was a history. I loved it and I had a passion for it. so I thought, well, I'm going to bring that in.

Dan Caruso (12:21)
What

would go back to those days when you were getting paid to speak early on? What would you speak about? What would be your topic?

Carrie Charles (12:29)
So I was originally when I was younger, I was in the financial services industry and I started a company called Financial Solutions for Women. I was a CFP and so I was one of the pioneers in really focusing financial services on women because when and I'm a I'm a little bit older now, but back then I.

You know, the financial services industry said, no, the man has to be present to make the decisions for financial services or any financial decisions. Why isn't your husband here? I'm not gonna talk to you without your husband. And I thought that is ridiculous. I mean, and I'm 57, so that's dating me, but you know, and I thought that's so ridiculous. Here I am, I was probably 26, and I thought this needs to shift because I can't believe this is happening.

So then I started a company specifically for women and know, women and wealth. And then I started speaking on that subject. And I spoke all over the country and you know, different companies and really bringing that message to the financial services industry. And for a bit, I also was a life and executive coach. And so I did a lot of speaking around that as well. Basically every industry I've been in, I've brought like public speaking to that.

business or to my world. And it's always been a success. I will say, when I first started at Broadstaff, and I thought, well, I wanna start speaking. And I didn't know anything about the industry, nothing. And so I had Alyssa Miller, who I don't know if you're familiar with. iMiller PR. She gave me my first opportunity to speak. And she said, well, there was a...

event called NEDAS in the Northeast. And she said, okay, you have, I think she gave me like 12 minutes. And I was so nervous because I'm thinking, wait a minute, there's gonna be people in this audience, hundreds of people with 10, 20, 30, 40 years in telecom. And I've been doing this for months. And so I was very, very nervous. But that actually started, once I got that out of the way, it really started my speaking career.

not really career, but those opportunities in telecom. And so I just reached out to everyone who was running a conference and I said, you know, I'd like to speak. Here's what I can speak on. Here's what I can bring to your conference. I can moderate, I can speak. And then people were receptive and then I, boy, I was speaking quite a few times a year, I still am. And I do think that that strengthens the brand because what you do is whether you're speaking on panels, which you've done a lot,

or doing keynotes, you follow that up with the social media, you know, the posts and all of the blasts around that. the people that are not necessarily at those speaking events, but they see you doing it, immediately it provides credibility to the brand, right? And so that's super important when building a brand. And I do think that this, you know, the podcasts and speaking and panels and again, for

all leaders or startups, think it's very, very, very important. Even if you're uncomfortable with it, and if you're uncomfortable with it, you gotta get coaching. Like, you gotta do it. I don't think you can delegate it as a CEO or as a leader. I mean, later, maybe once you're established and you really wanna bring in your team to start. Yeah, but in the beginning especially, I do think it's something that the leader needs to do.

Dan Caruso (16:12)
Start building up their brands.

Okay. Well, we'll come back to some of the stuff that are you ready to take over the podcast?

Carrie Charles (16:23)
Yes,

I am. let's go. So let's switch. So Dan, I...

Dan Caruso (16:28)
I'm

not sure I like being on the other side of a podcast.

Carrie Charles (16:31)
We need to

move or switch seats. don't know. There you go. There you go. So Dan, I have always had immense respect for you and I know a bit about your journey, but I would love for.

Dan Caruso (16:34)
We'll just put, we'll just turn it upside down.

Well, you know more now than you do 10 minutes ago.

Carrie Charles (16:49)
You're right, you're right. I know way more now. But I really would like to hear about your journey, know, from maybe from where you started even to where you're sitting today, because there's people, you know, in our audience that are looking at you saying, wow, I would like to do that. You know, how do I get to where he is?

Dan Caruso (17:12)
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of scar tissue to get to by that. So be careful what you ask for. So I was in undergrad in the early 1980s. So graduated from high school in 81 and went to college after that. And while I was in college, AT&T was told to break up. And the official birthday of the internet was 1983, which was

my junior year of college, depending on how you count, because it took me five years to get done with the four-year degree. somewhere in the middle of my college experience. So, when I graduated from college, I joined Illinois Bell. So, my first paycheck said, Illinois Bell, believe it or not. the phone company is what it was known for. At that point, the phone company, Illinois Bell, was no longer part of AT&T. AT&T was told to break up.

that spin off what was called the Baby Bells. One of the Baby Bells was called Ameritech and Ameritech owned Illinois bell, Indiana bell, Wisconsin bell and a couple others. So I started in The Bell System, uh, as in the mansion training program. And my first job was in a, in actually a garage, a garage that had technicians and I supervised the team of seven kind of installers, maintenance people who would fix and install telephone lines.

Uh, but it was part of management rotation program. So I had a series of jobs that culminated being part of their corporate development group. And at the time I also went out and got my MBA from the University of Chicago. So as I was finishing the MBA, you know, what became really clear to me is I didn't want to be on the side that was defending. I want to be on the side that was attacking the monopoly. So, uh, I joined fortunately for me, a company in Chicago, uh, suburbs that was originally called Chicago fiber optics. So was one of the pioneering.

competitors to the Bell system, building fiber networks to allow their customers to avoid using Illinois Bell and the other Baby Bells. It was, when I got there, its name was MFS. So, Keiwit, the big construction company out of Omaha, backed Jim Crowe to buy out Chicago fiber optics. They called it Metropolitan Fiber Systems. And then later it was called MFS Communications.

And we bought the biggest internet backbone of the early internet era called UUNet. So now early in my career, you know, I'm scaling up as the company scaling up and ending up in as one of the more senior executives of MFS as we sold it to WorldCom. Now we sold to WorldCom, a lot of the MFS team left for various reasons. I wasn't one of those. So I had invested in stock options and didn't really know what, none of us knew what we were getting into, but

In my experience there, I was now very senior. My boss's boss was Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan, CFO, me to do some things that my spider sense said, this is not something you should be doing. And I didn't do it, which turned out to be really good and ended up leaving to rejoin that same team of MFS, came out here to Colorado and was one of the founding executives of Level 3.

Level 3 in the early years, I was responsible for the super majority of what we were doing because in early years, we didn't have revenue, we didn't have salespeople because we were building out network and other types of infrastructure and all the engineering, construction, operations fell under me in the early years. So that coincided with the big bandwidth boom. We then went through the big dot com, turned into dot pom, bandwidth boom turned into telecom meltdown.

the fall from grace that we all experienced, including Level 3 was harsh. was the biggest bust in the history of boom bust cycles, probably in the entire world that has ever experienced. So we have to survive through that. were ups and downs for me going through that. Sometimes, I was one of the most significant kind of executives at Level 3 and other times I was in the doghouse for not.

doing what I should be doing in a way they wanted me to do it or whatever. So I was there through the recovery period, but then I left and began my CEO journey. And I took a CEO job that I was uniquely qualified for because no one else wanted the job. And that's how I got it. Because it was buying out a public company called ICG that was about ready to slam into its second bankruptcy and no one else wanted to touch it. But with the backing of a couple of investors who are

you know, extremely close to this day, we bought it, brought some of my team together from Level 3 in MFS, and we turned a less than $9 million investment into an exit that was valued at about 250 million all within two years. So big windfall for the investors, big windfall for management, but it was doing so by breaking apart a company. So it wasn't very satisfying, need to be done, but you know.

that isn't what I wanted my legacy to be. So I wanted to build something. I wanted to build something from scratch. I wanted to build something that could show you can build a fiber-based bandwidth business in a way that has a very good outcome for all of the stakeholders, the employees, the customers, and importantly, the investors as well. So we built Zayo from here in Boulder from scratch and became Level 3's biggest rival. We went public in 2014. We sold in 2020.

And I feel really good about not just my legacy, but the whole journey, the ups and the downs and the people that were part of it. And uniquely that coincided with the bigger arc of the bandwidth, know, creation boom bust kind of rebirth, you know, saga.

Carrie Charles (23:21)
You know, let's talk about the downs because there's a lot of businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs who've had a rough time the past couple of years, and especially in our industry. when, you know, I know you've been through so many cycles and so many of those downs, but when you were there, what, you know, how did you get through it? Like, what were some of the strategies you used or maybe even a mindset that really got you

to just stay head down focused and build this thing again.

Dan Caruso (23:56)
Yeah. So there's two types of downs. one has to do your, personal journey, you know, where, where maybe you did things you shouldn't have been doing, or you didn't handle things as well as you handle them. You're going through your own growing pains. and I had multiple of those in my career journey. So it wasn't a steady arc like this. was like meteoric followed by my own boom and bust cycles. and I wasn't prepared for that. I didn't have,

role models, didn't have mentors, I didn't come from a family environment that had any idea what it meant to do the kind of stuff I was doing. It was more blue collar-ish type of upbringing. So the harder parts for me were the personal kind of adversities that sometimes self-inflicted that I had to overcome. But one of my, I think, capabilities

is when the going gets tough, the tough get going that's probably not a bad expression for me. I think I probably thrive in environments that are chaotic, environments of uncertainty, environments of high risk. I think that's when I could get most focused. I think that's when kind of my skill sets become most valuable and driving through kind of what a tough environment might be, but driving through it.

and taking advantage of fact that maybe others are less equipped to deal with kind of these crazy environments that we sometimes find ourselves in.

Carrie Charles (25:32)
You have the nickname "The Bear." So where, first of all, where did it come from? How'd you get it? And then I have one more question after that.

Dan Caruso (25:41)
Yeah, so it's not a term of endearment. Maybe it is now, but it wasn't when it was given it to me. I think it was in the 11th Level 3 days. And some of the people I'm closest to to this day, I think they're the ones who really got that going. I'll even, know, none of them will quite admit they were the source of it, but I'll throw a Sandi Mays and maybe a Glenn Russo and maybe one or two others, John Scarano under the bus. think it came from kind of people who part of my team, part of my.

know, loyalist group, colleagues across multiple ventures. But, you know, this was like, you know, like the name of the podcast, The Bear Roars, you know, I could be pretty ruthless and aggressive at times. So they had a whole lexicon, you know, you know, where people would try to, you know, they saw me starting to kind of get heated up over something, how to distract me, know, so squirt the honey at the bear or squirt the honey at someone else or I would always protect the bear cubs. So don't mess with one of.

dance loyalists because they'll come back and claw you to death. So I think people had fun with it, maybe at my expense early on, but then it's something I now view as a term of endearment.

Carrie Charles (26:55)
So I was reading that, one of the reasons why you got it. Now I love hearing this story, the back story, because of your tenacity and drive, I'm curious about your drive. Let's say, when you, in the early, in your career, mid, early, mid, right in the thick of your career, what drove you then? And now, what drives you today? Is it anything different than that?

Dan Caruso (27:21)
Yeah, very different. So I think a lot of people have achieved significant success. You know, it doesn't always come from, you know, what I'll say is a good place. You know, think often it comes from, you know, insecurities. It comes from feeling compelled to prove something. You know, sometimes you're even sure who you're trying to prove it to, but you feel compelled to like, you know, show that, you know, you can accomplish something. So my guess is if you

most of the people we think of as having very successful outcomes. And I'm not talking about corporate leaders who that could be a whole different path, know, wearing the right suits and saying the right things at the right time. But those people started, you know, from scratch and built things up. Founders who had significant exits, including people that are household names. Most of them, I suspect, you know, you could look back and say, you know, they were trying to prove something.

to a ghost maybe, but something because they had their own insecurities or something that was driving them that was coming from the inside out that was a source of it. And I certainly would put myself in that camp for some reason. As far back as I can remember, there's always this feeling of needing to accomplish something of significance and being willing to pursue that.

no matter what the cost. Fortunately, staying on the legal side of the line, and I say that because a lot of people that I encountered during the bandwidth boom and bust probably had the same drive, but didn't stay on the legal side of the line and end up in jail and otherwise, in more of a disgraced outcome than a positive outcome. So fortunately, at least had a compass that kept me not doing all that I could do, even if it meant crossing the ethical lines.

But today it's totally different. it's, and again, this isn't something I could explain either, because I think this comes from the inside out. It would be very easy for me and a lot of people I know who are in similar situations, that this phase of life, like, I did what I'm to do, now I'm going to go and become a golf and hike and hang out on a beach somewhere warm and live a more casual lifestyle.

which is certainly choice that's available. But for every reason, I still have a drive, but it's the drive that has more to do with kind of my responsibility to give back in a way that's unique and meaningful. And we talked earlier in this podcast about how you've developed the platform, but developing a platform that's really aimed at kind of primarily Colorado and the themes of innovation, entrepreneurship, help people who are maybe following in footsteps like mine, help.

them in their journeys, help give them the support, the exposure, and the ecosystem around that help it develop. it is, you know, in the we live in today, things don't sound authentic and they don't sound altruistic, but there is an element of altruism and why to do it, you know, because I feel an opportunity and a responsibility to give back.

Carrie Charles (30:43)
and wisdom because it sounds like you've learned a lot over these.

Dan Caruso (30:47)
I hope so. Certainly a lot of learning opportunities.

Carrie Charles (30:50)
Right, right. Would you like to switch again?

Dan Caruso (30:53)
Yeah, so let's switch back. So we're now on round two. So when you began to show up in Metro Connect in 2016, because we talked earlier about early in your career in financials, people didn't think that a woman should be able to speak to the finances, you where's your husband kind of thing. So when you showed up in 2016 Metro Connect, it was what, 50-50 women and men?

Carrie Charles (31:20)
No way. No way. Boy, when I was like 95, 5, when I entered the industry, I mean, I was comfortable in a man's world because I was in the Marine Corps, right? And this felt like the Marines. mean, it was the majority. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I walk into a room and

Dan Caruso (31:24)
5545?

like the Marines from 20 years ago.

Carrie Charles (31:42)
Typically, I'm either the only woman in that room at Metro Connect or some other industry event, or maybe there's one other somewhere that I can find. yeah, it was, and that's what, just back in 2016. So, I mean, it's changed some since then. It's not where we would like it to be yet, but it has changed.

Dan Caruso (32:05)
Yeah, but it was, mean, when that bar area would get crowded, I mean, it was such a great venue. They moved it out of Fort Lauderdale. I I might come by this year. But, uh, yeah, he'd go into the bar area, spilling out into the outdoor patio. So at the height, might be 400 people there. My guess is 380 were male.

Carrie Charles (32:15)
side.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think, you know, as a woman in a male dominated industry like that, I mean, we can look at it in two ways, right? We can say, you know, this is, why is this, why can't it be different? This is difficult, this is hard, this is a good old boys club, how am I gonna break in? I just always took a different approach and I said, this is an advantage. Why? Because I'm different. And I think it's good to be different. I think it's good to stand out.

And so I would always look at it in a positive way saying, I've got to walk into this room as someone who is different, right? Not that I'm at a disadvantage because I'm not like them. I'm at an advantage because I'm

Dan Caruso (33:11)
Yeah. And I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I've often asked myself why in 2016 was it still so male dominated? Because I don't think.

I don't think that was a result of good old boys wanting to do business with other good old boys. I think it's much more complicated than that because I think there were programs in place for long periods of time. And I know I was always trying to lean toward building balanced teams. I had as many women on my board as men, which in 2013 and 2014, that wasn't a thing like it is now. But it was hard to...

If you looked at my senior team, it was imbalanced and it always was, even though I would lean as hard as I could to create balance, but it was like there were these obstacles that were really hard to overcome. In part because the Bell system was so male dominated and then they had their programs early on to try to build diversity. So if you were a talented woman in that industry, it wasn't a bad idea to go work for Bell companies because they needed so many women and

They need them in senior positions. would go, you bend over backwards to attract them to join their companies and to retain them. So you almost have this sucking sound of like women going toward the traditional belt system as opposed to being part of the competitive environment. so I think it takes a lot longer to change those. Not necessarily because you're overcoming kind of deep male biases of wanting to work with other males or wanting just to promote males, but just.

there's circumstances that have to be dealt with.

Carrie Charles (34:56)
Yeah, I agree with that. I think too what happens, and I'm sure this happens in every industry, but especially in telecom, I've seen it, is, and you just mentioned it yourself, I mean, there's, you when someone takes on a new role or a founder creates a new company or a new venture, they look to their past and they say, I trust these people. So I'm gonna bring them along with me. So when you're looking backwards, there's even more.

male domination and less women in the industry. So you're backwards and you're capturing, you're bringing in these people who are typically going to be male. So your top leadership team again is now male. And so I think, like you said, it takes time for that ship to really move in order to say, okay, I'm gonna reach back because I trust her. And I'm gonna bring her forward. And I think that's all happening now and I'm seeing it. One of the things that we...

are committed to at Broadstaff is hiring, diversity in hiring for our clients. And they're demanding it now. And so we're constantly looking for a diverse talent pool, bringing in women. so, like you said, it's not that I don't see them in saying, no, let's keep it the way it is. This feels good. I see them saying, we want more women in leadership roles. They're amazing. it's just,

I hear nothing but positives. So I do think it's changed. I'm seeing a difference and I'm excited about it, but we're not really where we need to be still.

Dan Caruso (36:27)
Yeah, funny story. When I was selling Zayo we always, as I said, always had diversity on our board. know, And part of it is working hard to get diversity, but also diverse boards tend to be better boards. So as the new owners took over, you know, they then start to name the new board, you know, they bought the company, could do whatever they want. And, you know, so they're revealing them one by one. And so they get up to nine and

there wasn't a woman among the nine and there was only one person who wasn't a white male. And it was like, okay, whatever, you you're guys company now, but you know, worked really hard, you know, and then by the time they realized it was too late, cause they, you know, the two different investors, each got to name so many seeds. They kind of got them named, got them on the board. And then they also, they realized, oh my gosh, you know, we got all males. And then they started hearing from employees like,

Why is everyone that's on the board a male? What happened? But you can't easily unwind that.

Carrie Charles (37:32)
Exactly. It's not that hard. Or it's not that easy, rather.

Dan Caruso (37:36)
So I was

gonna go back to the, you do a lot of direct investing now and some of them are very early stage companies. And one of the things you do look for is that nucleus of the core team. So you go to the core team and you say, have you worked together before? What have you accomplished together? Have you built up a company before? Are you gonna draw on talent from your past network? So the dynamic you described about what do you do look backwards? Absolutely. And as an investor,

you want to see the strength of those relationships that they already learned how to work together. They're already a team. Now they're applying a team to the next venture. But if you're an industry that's been dominated by a certain category of people and you look back and say, I'm to bring my team with, well, guess what? Your starting point is way off balance. But as an investor, you you need that team to be kicking into all gears very early on. So it does take kind of

these cycles for that to change.

Carrie Charles (38:37)
Yes, and also being intentional about it because what you can do when you're building that team for your startup is bring in the people that you trust and you've been working with and that you know those investors are gonna be happy with, but then also bring in another person that is either, that is a diverse candidate, let's say, that's either at an executive level or possibly at maybe the next level down that's ready to move up to that executive level. That way you've got the

succession and the investors can also see that you are building that diversity through succession. So I think it's taking a chance too and hiring is never a perfect science but I think there's a lot of leaders that are really good at it that use your gut, your intuition, but it is. It's taking a risk and taking a chance that I'm gonna bring this person on.

Dan Caruso (39:18)
Yep.

Yeah, you have to work hard to, you don't just let it play out all by itself, because then it takes five times as long for it to self crack. So you have to work hard to build the diversity, be intentional. But the other risk too, that I've seen play out lots of times is where someone's bringing kind of their quote unquote team on, because they've worked with them before, because they're comfortable working with them.

But it's not because they're bringing them out and they're talented. You know, this isn't, you know, isn't necessarily the A team. It's the convenient team. So it's, there's a big difference between a nucleus of people who've, you know, are talented as a group and have done things before cops. And what then starts to look like maybe a good, know, good old boy network, which is, well, that's the best person for this. That's well, that's just the best person that you happen to work with who, you know, highly correlated to who you are and what you look like and what your background is, as opposed to.

Is that really the vet person or maybe the other person there who looks different and is different might be far more talented. You just haven't taken the time to look for them and figure them out. And I think, you know, a service like yours can help the people who do want to be intentional, find talent that maybe they haven't, you know, worked with before, but is every bit and more talented than, you know, the convenient hires.

Carrie Charles (40:57)
I agree with you. And there's also the concept of diversity of thought, because if you say, okay, who do I trust? Who am I comfortable with? Then you have worked with them before. You all may think the same. You're aligned, but that can actually inhibit innovation in today's world. So diversity of thought will actually spark innovation. So being able to say, okay, it might be just a little uncomfortable.

hiring this person or that person, but they're gonna bring something to this company that we don't have and that we've never seen before. Have one client who is very, very successful in what they do, and the leader specifically built his team with people that do not know each other. He would not allow any referrals at all because he wanted everyone to be fresh, new, and create that spark of innovation, and it's working.

Dan Caruso (41:55)
Yeah, I will say this, our Caruso ventures team, is small, it's about 10 or 11 people, is majority women. Is that right? Yeah. Doesn't look like it is you're looking out here because that's, you know, two men, one woman. But if you look at our team as a whole, it's, especially with the news person that's about to join, I think it's about 60, 40 women. So you got to start that way. Cause if start that way, it will continue. That's the thing I used to preach is, you know, the hard part is

creating the initial diversity. Once you create the initial diversity, will solve its, the bigger challenge of diversity just naturally solves itself because you're a strong woman leader, you're gonna be more likely to attract other kind of talented women.

Carrie Charles (42:41)
Exactly, and then women coming into the organization see other women in leadership roles and it makes them more inclined to join that company. What I find is that, you know, leaders get lazy. They just get lazy and they look at the candidate poll and, okay, well, there's the best person for the job right there. I've got three men. Well, if it's in a male-dominated industry, your candidate poll is gonna be male-dominated. But if you look hard enough, the best person for the job may be a woman or may be a diverse candidate.

but you've just got to go that extra step and look a little bit harder and then you might find that person who is diverse and say, wow, that person is the best. And it takes sometimes a little bit longer to do that and many leaders are just in a hurry. They want that right person and they want them now.

Dan Caruso (43:29)
When I was running Zayo, I put in place a management development program that was somewhat designed after what I did to launch my career. And we would target primarily MBA students for the program. And probably the majority of them came out of CU, Boulder, not all of them. Probably this is a guess, but maybe in the years we had that program, maybe there were 50 people, 45 to 50 people in there overall.

And at least half were women. Cause the other philosophy was if you can find, you know, that balance when people are fresh in their careers, that's going to lead to, you gotta be a patient. You gotta be thinking the longer game. Well, I got to tell you something I'm sure we'll hear in this podcast. So if it was about 50 people, all about 25 women, about half of those women are doing extremely interesting things. Many of them in executive positions right now. and it's just been.

And the men too, the men in that program, probably half of them are in very senior executive positions scattered across the industry which is.

Carrie Charles (44:36)
So another thing that's interesting about hiring women in our industry or other industries is that especially for leadership roles, placing an ad is not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to get out and proactively search for these people, for these women, find them, call them, court them, talk to them. Because when you place an ad, many times women will not answer that ad.

for two reasons. Number one, they don't have all the qualifications and they're very, many women are very clear that, I don't have that one qualification or I don't have that. So I'm not going to apply. The second thing is they don't care. like, I was gonna apply. I don't have any of that. I got this. And then the other thing is that women tend to be very loyal and many times they're not reading ads. They're not looking at Indeed. They're not out there.

Dan Caruso (45:17)
And most men don't read,

I'm here.

Carrie Charles (45:34)
So the high level women that you really want for executive roles and leadership roles, they need to be proactively recruited. And many times they could be with your competitors. So that's where it's good to call in a staffing company or a specialized staffing company in your industry that knows that network and knows those women that can bring them in.

Dan Caruso (45:56)
Yeah, no doubt. And how big of an impact do you think you've had on women in the field of digital infrastructure?

Carrie Charles (46:09)
Gosh, that's good question. I don't think I'll ever really know, but I will say that I'm a strong stand for women to advance and to know how to network and know how to promote themselves and get sponsors and mentors. And I speak on that. I teach on that a lot. So I have a really strong commitment around that. And there could be, especially with my podcast.

I tend to really focus on featuring women on the podcast and talking about that and supporting other women. And so I would hope that I have had an impact because it is something I'm passionate about. But at the same time, I'd say maybe all my mentors that I look at have been men. And so this isn't a man versus woman thing. It's really just...

looking at the company and the goals of the company and saying, get that diversity of not just thought, but talent and leadership. Women are different leaders than men many times. so it really brings a lot.

Dan Caruso (47:22)
Sometimes

it's diversity of talent where both are white males, but one is your network who doesn't really add much diversity of talent, diversity of thought versus someone who's coming at it from a whole different perspective. They're coming from a different journey, maybe even an adjacent industry, but is very good at what you need help on. If I look back at my Zayo career, I will fault myself for not...

Carrie Charles (47:29)
Right, one's totally different.

Dan Caruso (47:51)
working more with people like you on the recruiting side and relying maybe too much on people who were from my past network. And over a period of time, especially after we went public, my original teams all made tons of money. They worked their tails off for years. They were extremely talented, but they were ready to take a break and think about doing their next thing. So it came time to replacing them.

not having built the capability to draw on external talent, I started bringing people in from my past network who frankly in hindsight, they were often the B team or the C team. weren't, the team was helping me build the company and get it to the big goals, but the team replacing them wasn't the same caliber. So my view is one of my bigger mistakes. Do you me to hand it back over?

Carrie Charles (48:50)
Let's

do it. Let's do it. So I am excited to talk about your book. And I cannot wait to read it, Dan. So I ordered it. I pre-ordered it. And...

Dan Caruso (49:01)
Pre-orders

are available now, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and we need you to pre-order it because we want it to be something that rises up the charts and the best time to do that is leading up to the publication date or the delivery date. So the delivery date is February 4th, which is probably a few weeks from when this podcast can be dropped, so two or three weeks. So we as an industry, as the individuals industry,

worked so hard for so many years, lived such a crazy experience together, you not all good. know, our lows were very low and our highs were very high. And, you and I think you asked me earlier in the earlier segment, like what drives me at this point. I talked about the Colorado, but the other thing and what's driving this is...

The story of bandwidths never, as much as we've all put into this, it's never been captured. And it's been overshadowed by the dot com dot bomb. But the dot com dot bomb was small in comparison to what we went to. And it was, the dot com would have never happened if we didn't build the internet infrastructure to enable that to happen. So I want to tell our story, our broad story, kind of our story meeting the thousands and thousands of people who contributed to this revolution.

30 years ago, 20 years ago, and present day. And I want us to do that for ourselves so that we can capture kind of our collective memories. So I'm hoping to augment it with other people's memories, but I'm also very much wanting to celebrate kind of this collection of people who did this, even if in many cases not everything worked out as we were hoping for.

Carrie Charles (50:51)
You know, one thing that I'm really excited about with your book is that our industry needs more high quality talent. There's, you we have gaps, have shortages, especially in the technician, you know, that level. And we need more people to know, especially young people, that this is a phenomenal industry to get into. you know, it's, I think that this is gonna be a catalyst for

that communication to younger people, to all people to say, look, this is an amazing industry and we've been through so much, but we are resilient and come on in. We welcome you. So it's not, it doesn't happen that everyone falls into telecom. I didn't mean to go into telecom. Every time I interview someone on my podcast, they just fell into it. And so I believe that that's going to make a difference there. Let me ask you, Dan. So out of all the themes in your book,

What is one of your favorite themes or one of the most important themes to you that you really want people to know?

Dan Caruso (51:59)
that's a tough question. And so when I first drafted this, I mean, it was pretty ugly, first of all, but it was also twice as thick as what you hold over now. And that's not then. So I'm like, OK, I'm going to have to put two books out. So I'm going split into two books, volume one and volume two. But the right answer wasn't to put two books out. It was to answer the question that you just answered.

really is the story here that you want to tell or that you feel compelled to tell. Because you can't tell everything. If tell everything, it's going to be just a train wreck. So it took a lot of reflecting on what are you trying to do here and not trying to do too much, which I don't think I fully accomplished because

I did do more in here than kind of the experts would have told me to do. I got like half the size and just pick one little thing. And I'm like, no, this is a story that needs to be told and needs to be told broadly in its entirety. And if I was to say one theme is, the book really focuses on the characters, the individuals. It's not technology. It's not even strategy, although, you know, there's elements of strategy through it. It's the people, the people, the characters.

you know, many of which are really good, you know, and some of which were very bad. And some of the very good ones, then they failed, not because they weren't very good because, you know, of the circumstances around it. And some people who look like the most successful, you know, the ones who were at the top of the world, they're on the covers of the Wall Street Journal and Business Week. They were the CEO of the year, CFO of the years. Many of them are the ones who crashed on the hardest and went to jail. We all...

I think most people know of the Enron story. But when people didn't know of the Enron story, what they don't know, it was the bandwidth portion of Enron story that really was a big part of bringing them down. don't touch on that in the book, but it's, I think, important to realize that, but the stories of the Gary Winnick and the George Nashios and the Bernie Ebbers, you can learn as much from what they did that they shouldn't have been doing, but to also see that alongside of those who...

were their contemporaries and did what they should be doing. They didn't cross those lines and how they navigate through both the ups and the downs and eventually to where we are today. So I think it's an opportunity to learn from kind of, you know, maybe bigger than life. know, there's sections where Carl Icahn plays a prominent role, sections where John Malone plays prominent roles, Phil Anschutz, you know, the MFN and above that team.

that ranges all the way from Steve Garofalo to John Kluge to Bill LaPerch who did a fantastic job taking that from post bankruptcy to creating a whole bunch of value. So I think it's learning from the individuals and learning kind of through their experiences what maybe you can build upon for your own journey and what maybe you want to avoid. And if I was to say one other overarching theme,

And one of reasons it's thick is I couldn't help myself but put some appendixes in there. And I use Warren Buffett to kind of, you know, in a small way, but important way to kind of frame each chapter of the story, but the authentic building of really real value, real business value, like what, are you really building something valuable for the ages? Or are you just trying to take advantage of a hype cycle, go raise a bunch of money, say you're doing all these great things, and then try to sell before people figure out that.

you know, what you're really doing is a sham. commit yourself to building a company that has got long-term legitimate value no matter who owns it, when it owns it, you know, that every, no matter what business you're in, you know, focus on that or you're gonna get caught in a boom bus cycle yourself and maybe be on the wrong side of that.

Carrie Charles (56:09)
So boom bust cycle, boom bust and rebirth, right? Rebirth. So there's been cycles like this throughout history. let me ask you, I'm just curious about this. Are we approaching the same cycle with AI?

Dan Caruso (56:26)
Yeah, so one thing for certain is boom, bust cycles repeat themselves. Usually there's a long interval between one and the next because you almost need to get to a generation that wasn't there during the last one. Because if you're there in the middle one, you will never forget it and you will always be on the lookout for the next one. But if you weren't there, that was my parents' problem or my grandparents' problem. I don't even know what they're talking about.

Carrie Charles (56:31)
Right.

Dan Caruso (56:55)
This is different this time, this is legitimate. So what caused the bandwidth and .com boom and bust? And I think this is really important to learn. What caused it is the collective we were right. We were right when we said this thing called the internet is gonna change everything. And these new brick-sized mobile phones are gonna get small and fit in everyone's pockets. And this fiber optic technology is gonna make bandwidth plentiful.

So we thought that in the early 1990s and we were right. Okay, so big powerful trends that are almost so obvious that everyone buys into it. So I think that's an important part of what causes you to go toward a boom cycle. It's so obvious and people wanna rush into it. They wanna rush for gold to the West Coast, cause there's gold there and if I don't get there.

You know, soon and dig for gold, there's gonna be no more gold to dig. So there's, and there was gold in the West. one knew how much, but it caused a gold rush. There was a lot of money being made in bandwidth for all the obvious reasons. And there was, the internet was gonna change the world and it did. Well, what's happening right now? Is AI a fad? Is AI a trend? Is AI, you know, gonna change the world? Yes, it's gonna change the world. Quantum technology.

which I spent a lot of time on, is gonna change the fabric of humankind in ways that are less manageable than us thinking about how the internet was gonna change the world 30 years ago. It's gonna fundamentally change everything. So you have the same ingredients. have multiple big trends that are gonna feed off of each other. And in doing so, the enthusiasm to invest is gonna be there.

and it's happening already with AI. So that mean it's, you you shouldn't invest in AI right now? No, because boom cycles go on for a period of time. We don't know if the cliff is, you know, now or eight years from now, but I could pretty much tell you with a pretty high degree of confidence that there will be a cliff that we fall off of and it's going to have something to do with AI and quantum and a couple other things too, maybe space tech kind of intersect themselves. Money gets poured in, which is already happening in AI.

and investors get ahead of themselves and then a bad behavior as people are trying to chase money and this and that and you're gonna have another crash. It's just no one knows when.

Carrie Charles (59:30)
Right. One more thing with the book. And you touched on this a little earlier, but I want to go a little bit deeper. So you have a passion for entrepreneurs. You have a passion for founders. And you want to give back. So I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a founder. reading this book, what lessons do you want me to get from this book when I read it?

Dan Caruso (59:56)
Well, it depends on who the person is. Okay, so there's, me tell some things that may be less relevant to you and some things that might be more relevant to you. So people want to build up businesses of significance, know, and you think of like, you know, working with bankers, working with consultants, acquiring companies, battling to acquire companies. You know, there's a lot of stories in here.

You know, heavily researched, very factually accurate of takeover battles, know, where multiple companies are going after the same company, some in a friendly way and others who come in over the top in a hostile way and how the whole dynamic played out. There's, know, early in the stories about building businesses from scratch, pioneering ideas by pioneering leaders. Back then, many of them were tycoons. There wasn't the venture capital sources available back then. So.

how did they see something and have the guts to start it and navigate to something of significance? So I think depending on one's perspective, you could get most value out of seeing people build something from scratch. You could see how they dealt with the hype of the boom and who did, who handled that better, who handled it worse, what happened during the meltdown. Stocks that actually

got created because of the talcum meltdown, stocks that, biggest regulatory securities change ever was a direct outcome of what happened in this. So you kind of see the misbehavior that was happening. And then those who want to take advantage of a distress cycle, like what do you do when all hell breaks loose and things are in the rubble? And you say, you know what, I want to be prepared for that because that's, I want to take advantage of that situation.

There's a lot of lessons we learned there. So it depends on one's perspective, but the one common theme throughout is I think the ingenuity of entrepreneurs, of business leaders. I suspect when people read the book, they're gonna glean out to two or three that speak to them the most and really be like, wow, I wanna learn more about that person and what they did and.

because I could see myself in that person. I think learning from other people's journeys and experiences and build upon that for your own journey.

Carrie Charles (1:02:24)
Yes. I want to talk about the industry, digital infrastructure. Where do you see it today? And then where do you see it over the next decade? So in other words, what do leaders need to know or be prepared for? Possibly opportunities and also threats.

Dan Caruso (1:02:46)
Yeah, and I'm going to focus more on fiber than data centers and wireless infrastructure because that's what I know best. think a lot of what I say also implies today's centers. So first and foremost, digital infrastructure has been around for a while, but the future digital infrastructure is as interesting as the past. So we're already seeing that today with the early stage of AI.

and how that's affecting kind of remote data centers located in environments where there's more access to power and the need to get fiber out to those remote data centers. We're not seeing any of that right now from quantum and won't for a few years, but we will. So with AI, right now more of AI has to do with these massive data centers off the beaten path, but AI is going to move into the edge. Like an example would be

to use the full power AI on your device, you're gonna have to have the workload being done around you, but in a proximity where you're at. Well, none of us, very few of us are in the proximity of the middle of Wyoming, where there might be cheap power, or in a proximity of New York or Dallas or some other bigger markets. So when AI moves more toward the edge, which is probably already happening, but certainly will happen in a big way.

You know, owning fiber networks is going to be a big deal because now the edge fiber networks, know, the kind of, you know, I think Zayo was particularly well positioned for, in part because of MFN and above net and companies like that where we have significant fiber and conduits in the Metro environments and regional environments. So you're going to see the AI trend create a boost in the Metro regional, just like it already has in kind of the inner city side. And then quantum.

Here's what I like to think about quantum. So, and this is actually a unique thought, so I'm little bit proud of this one. When the internet came to be, what did we do with it? Well, we used the phone network. We used dial-up modems, which we used for phone calls. We used Sonnet, which is old technology for how you carry data around. We used DS1s that was to combine multiple phone calls on one copper pair.

So we used the phone network, you know, and we jammed the internet into it. But as internet matured, we now built a different network that was designed for the internet, out of ethernet, out of wavelengths, out of fiber itself. Well, the same thing is going to happen with quantum. Quantum is going to start out by using the internet to move quantum around. But as quantum picks up momentum, quantum is not going to want to use the old technology, which will be the internet. It's want to use native quantum technology as its communication kind of infrastructure.

fiber almost certainly will still be extraordinarily important, but what happens on that fiber, what happens with the equipment that feeds that fiber will almost certainly be fundamentally different. In fact, even the fiber itself might be optimized for kind of quantum networking or quantum communications. So I think first and foremost, what I'd like to say is there's a lot of opportunity in digital infrastructure and the same can be said about data centers, et cetera. But the other thing I would say too is,

One problem that has occurred in fiber, the business of fiber networks, the business of bandwidth, is I think the people running those businesses never learned how to run those businesses. And I see the same mistakes being made now that were made 10 years ago and 20 years ago.

Carrie Charles (1:06:33)
Which, tell me a couple of mistakes. What are you saying?

Dan Caruso (1:06:36)
So the biggest one has to do with, and I really think this is an outgrowth of the Bell system. So in the Bell system, if you were the head of sales or you're the head of marketing, you had a really tiny role. You were like, look at them. They're so cute. They think they're a sales leader. And why was that? Because they were a monopoly. The sales and marketing side controlled almost no money. They almost had almost no influence. All the influence was on the network side.

network had an entire capital program. 80% of people were on the network side. They were in operations, they were in engineering, they were in the control centers. They were the business. And if you're the head of the network, you head up 80% of the company. It's just the way it was. They were a monopoly, who cared? You didn't really need marketing people because of where else can you get your phone service from? that trend tends to continue. And at one level,

it intellectually makes sense, it sounds efficient. Oh yeah, we got one network organization, we're the most efficient, we're the most optimal, we have one this and one that. And then you take a step back and say, I do realize that all of the capital decisions are pretty much being made by the network organization. If they're not making them, they have veto rights over them. All the resources company, the expenses, the line share. So the people who are in the business side, they don't really understand what's going on.

you know, from a financial sense. And even if they do, they have to try to influence and control and, you know, to people who view themselves as, you know, we know what's going on in our network. Well, you kind of do, but the business of the company, how to make, you know, revenue turn into cashflow, you know, when most of your costs are over there and the business decisions are somewhere else. I don't think that code's been cracked. I mean, we took a very different approach.

at Zayo to do that, but as soon I left, they went back to the traditional approach. And if you look now, I guess you count up the people, you'd probably see 70% of them work in the network organization and they run big network organizations and Verizon and others in the past. And you need to find kind of more of a business orientation. And so I think that's one. then secondly,

So bandwidth is extraordinarily important, right? I bandwidth is extraordinarily important. Yet if you look at the combined value of the companies who have the most fiber networks and do bandwidth for a living, know, Lumen and Zayo would be by far, you know, probably 70%. You've got the fiber assets on the crown, and then you have, you know, others here and there. The combined value of all those companies is a rounding error on Google or Amazon.

Microsoft, yet Google, Microsoft, Amazon, their entire business depends on those fiber networks. So how in the value chain equation do people own and operate the fiber networks, only be worth together tens of billions while the companies that rely on them the most are worth trillions of dollars? Why is that imbalance still exists? Before it existed because there were just too many suppliers, but now it's gotten consolidated. So I think the reflection

If I was in the shoes of like leading a Lumen or leading a Zayo, the question that would keep me up at night and did when I was running Zayos, how do we get more of our fair share of the value chain? Why are we pricing, feel compelled to price our services in a way where we're really not worth that much as an industry, yet the people we're serving are worth trillions of dollars. So why shouldn't they be paying twice as much for what we do? I think as an industry, they have to figure out without...

They have to figure out what are we doing to ourselves that is pricing our valuable services in a way, because it's not like we will rebuild their fiber networks. They've got a moat that is really thick and really wide, yet it isn't turning into the value equation that you'd expect. And I couldn't fully crack it. As well as we did at Zayo, I was unable to fully crack that nut. And part of it is we've given a lot of fiber away to those web scale companies, but now they need a bunch more fiber.

You know, are the current versions of the Lumens and the Zayos in a much more consolidated industry, are they going to continue to give that away at prices that maybe don't reflect the true value? Or are they going to find a way to extract more price, which they kind of have to as an industry sort of figure out together without colluding or else they're just going to undercut each other and stay where they are. So I think, you know, business acumen, you know, more focus on how do we really create value that is

should be ours for the taking given the importance of bandwidth and the fundamental need for fiber to produce that bandwidth for companies who are doing crazy stuff and are worth trillions of dollars. I would get a little more of our fair share.

Carrie Charles (1:11:38)
That is brilliant because I think that can be translated and useful to all companies, right? And I mean, I know in the staffing world, it's similar where the margins have just been cut and cut and cut and cut and cut. And we're working with...

you know, just these enormous companies and Fortune 50 companies and 500 companies and it's like, wait a minute, we provide a really valuable service here and that they need so desperately. So I do think that that can be, you know, what you just said can be utilized by really any company in any industry that's saying, how do we create more value? Right? Because it's that stopping and saying, yes, we need a bigger piece of that pie, but

We need to deserve it and we need to create that value for that customer.

Dan Caruso (1:12:30)
Yeah. And I think this comes back to some of earlier conversation that we had and, you know, and one I want to explore more of is creating a unique brand, and creating value added services and relationships around that brand, which is what you've done. Do you want to switch? Yeah, we'll switch more casually. And so if you can talk to the people watching this who

you know, I'll say talk to my team, which I think applies to a broad team too. If you were starting with what you know right now and starting more from scratch and you wanted to really, from a business perspective, leverage, I'll say social media, but when I say social media, I want you to broadly what that means, both the different types of social media, the X versus.

LinkedIn, but also different ways of using it, like podcasts and et cetera. You know, and your goal was I want to create a unique brand both for myself, but linked to the business I'm building and maybe the business I'm going to build after that. Cause my brand stays with me, the brand of the business, if I sell it, sort of stays with the business. So you want both. So what would you advise kind of those people are trying to figure that out? You you want to use.

social media platforms to build up whatever business you're working for and build up your own personal brand, what would you do? Why would you do it?

Carrie Charles (1:14:07)
So number one, I see companies who start out by building the brand and they don't build the brand of the people behind the brand. And I just think that they do need to be built simultaneously and simply because people relate and buy from people. And so I think when you're looking at just a brand and saying, this is X, Y, Z widget, there's no emotional connection to that.

And so having a person or people in the beginning to drive that brand and represent that brand and speak emotionally about that brand I think is important. Now, over time, you can start to separate yourself from the brand, which we've had to do at Broadstaff. And I know many companies have this issue, like, wow, the founder is the brand and now we have to separate the company and have the brand stand alone. But that is...

I believe that's a little bit further down the road because in the beginning, the leaders, whether it's the CEO or another leader, getting out there and representing the brand and speaking and podcasting and being on social media and going to these events and networking and socializing and relationship building, I think that's very important in the beginning. Like I said, because people are emotionally connected to people usually first over a thing.

And so I would suggest at the beginning, let's say I had to do this over, right? Which who knows, I may do this over at some point in my life, I'd love to. So I would, know, originally I would go in with the brand by my side and it would be me creating the connection, creating the emotion. And then the brand would be also creating itself at the same time. And so we would be working hand in hand together. And then over time as a company, you know,

got more revenue and we became stronger, then we would be building that brand up to stand alone and then I would be supporting it, but the brand wouldn't be me. So I think that's one thing that's very, very important. I think, you know...

Dan Caruso (1:16:18)
What

would you use to create the brain?

Carrie Charles (1:16:22)
Well, think that people do underestimate the power of podcasting. before I had a podcast, I did not know how powerful that they were necessarily. So I think that no matter what brand you are, no matter what company that you have, think that having a podcast is only going to strengthen not only your brand, but also bring you customers and grow your revenue. So in other words, when...

You know, with the podcast that, you know, my, in fact, I'm rebranding my podcast. it has been 5G Talent Talk for years. And, know, with, we talk about so much more than 5g and, we're talking about all of digital infrastructure. So we are, you know, we're rebranding and it's going to be. Should I say it? It's this. Well, we're going to, we're going to be rolling all of it. When is this going to be released? early January.

Dan Caruso (1:17:08)
Do you have the brand yet? It's up to you. I would love for you to.

Carrie Charles (1:17:17)
early January. So we're not going to actually release it until January. But I will say the name of it, which I think is so cool. And it's really good. So the name of it's going to be, Let's Get Digital. Let's Get Digital. So we're not going to bring in like the Olivia Newton John with the leg warmers and all of that. We're not going to that place. But I wanted something that, you know, a little bit more fun.

Dan Caruso (1:17:28)
That's cool, I like that.

Carrie Charles (1:17:41)
that really represented all of digital infrastructure, but something that was a little bit lighter and also something that represented me a little bit more because again, with the podcast, the...

Dan Caruso (1:17:52)
You know, well, podcast.

be owned by Broadstaff or will it be owned outside of Broadstaff?

Carrie Charles (1:18:02)
It's my podcast. yeah, it's. Yes.

And here's, you it's interesting because we're in partnership with RCR Wireless News. And that was years ago where the founder of RCR Wireless News and Arden Media came to me and said, hey, let's do a podcast together. And I thought, okay, why not? Right. That's who I am. I'm like, I'm always a guest no matter what. I'll figure it out. And so it's, that's been very powerful because we're leveraging, you know, we're able to, you know, to

be seen by all of their subscribers as well globally. But I you I produce it and you know, I find the guests and do the interviews and it, you know, it really is something that is a brand that I'm passionate about. But at the same time, some of those, some of our guests are current clients or potential clients. Not all of them because this is really for the industry. But I think, you know, that's one back to your original question of how do you do that?

what do you use, what avenues, what strategies, what mediums, then I think one of those should be podcasting. And you can not only interview potential customers or current customers, but you interview people that are going to be interesting and relevant to your customers. And what that does is it positions you in a place of credibility as a leader. So I think podcasting is huge. I think the other thing is video.

You got to get on video somehow. can't just be, here's a video about my company and there's no human being. I'm all about humans and branding because I think it's important. think so getting on video and especially in today's world. And that could be actually one of your goals as an owner or as a founder for 2025. I've need to do more video or your team does or getting maybe your employees, getting them on video. You know, your brand has to have a heartbeat.

It has to have a soul and it has to connect emotionally with people. And so I think video is gonna be crucial. Now you can put video all over many different social media platforms, right? And you depend, you know, look at which one's best for you. Now, with that being said, many people think, I would never be on TikTok. My brand is not for TikTok. But your employees and your candidates may be on TikTok, right? So.

Dan Caruso (1:20:25)
I'm told I'm on TikTok now. My team put me on TikTok for the We can meet the password. So I don't know what I'm doing on TikTok.

Carrie Charles (1:20:32)
Okay, I'm telling you, there's some people that I know that are very, very, very successful and driven entrepreneurs and they're on TikTok all the time looking for information. So I would say that, you know, looking at all of these different platforms, whether it's Instagram, you're gonna find and you're gonna connect with, maybe you're not gonna connect with your ideal client on TikTok, but you may be connecting with, you know, someone who is going to work for you.

and be significant in the growth of your company. So I think that's another thing is really looking at video, looking at all the different platforms that you can lean on. We talked a little bit early about speaking. The thing I think that's most important with branding and making all these choices of what do I do, where do I go, and how do I do it is number one, taking risks and being a little different. Because if you look and sound and smell and taste like everybody else out there,

then it's not gonna be interesting to anyone. So you've gotta just do something that you think is almost crazy. There's something that I wanna do with my new podcast brand that my team thinks I'm crazy. They're like, we're not doing that. And I said, but I feel it in my gut. Like I feel like we need to do it. And it's a little edgy, it's a little out there, but those are the things. That's gonna be a surprise.

Dan Caruso (1:21:49)
Can us?

Is your half of this podcast, I mean the whole podcast is both of our halves, but are you going to post this on your new podcast?

Carrie Charles (1:22:01)
So you're going to be with, this will be the new brand. All right. So, and that's one thing that I think, I think that we all stop ourselves when we want to be creative. We think, no, how are people going to see me or see the brand or, you know, what are they going to think? And I want them to think this. And we're crafting these strategic, you know, messages and these strategic pathways and really

We just need to be like you said earlier, we just need to be authentic and real. And if we feel something intuitively, try it, do it. Because the more that we're becoming digital and disconnected from each other, the more that we want that connection. So I think that's the other thing. Be connected, be real, be authentic, take risks with your marketing and your social media. And sometimes if you, we're all entrepreneurs with good, you know.

intuition using our guts, right? Whatever we use. You have something in your gut, do it. Try it.

Dan Caruso (1:23:05)
But, and I agree, but you and probably me are in the super minority of people who are, for whatever reason, able to put yourself out there. Cause I gotta tell you, everything I've been through when we were launching the podcast and the revealing of the book, I got nervous. I'm both of them, like, okay, I'm putting myself out there in a way that I haven't put myself out there before and make it really easy for people to...

to shoot arrows at you. Now the good news for me is I've had arrows shot at me for the last 30 years and some of them were pretty sharp and they went in pretty deep and nothing's killed me so far. unless I do something really stupid here, I'm not gonna like, you know, get myself anywhere close to what I've experienced at past. But still, you're putting yourself out there. So you said take risks while the word risk means it's not always in the way that you want it to go and you're gonna have to be willing to, you know, to.

Carrie Charles (1:23:40)
Let's do it.

Dan Caruso (1:24:04)
you know, make some mistakes and do some things that maybe you think you wish you wouldn't have done, things that might cause you a little embarrassment, or just things that give ammunition to someone who, you know, is having a bad day or bad year or bad life and they want, you know, they want to like say bad things about someone you're giving them ammunition to pick on you if, you know, if you put yourself out there. So you've got to be the breed that you are, you know, and the willingness to take the risks, willingness to put yourself out there. And you have.

and you have very successfully and sounds like you will even more so in the next chapter.

Carrie Charles (1:24:38)
Yes, yes, and I think the older I get, the more I learn about that is, you know, just, not everybody's gonna like me and not everybody's gonna like or agree with what I'm doing. But I think it comes down to your mission. We talked earlier about your mission and your purpose and what drove us then and what drives us now. And, you know, the older I get, I'm looking at that greater mission and that greater purpose of.

you know, making a difference and showing people what's possible in the world. And I'm becoming less and less concerned with what people think about me, but more concerned about that mission.

Dan Caruso (1:25:15)
Maybe a good way to begin to wrap this up is, earlier you asked me where was that coming from? Where is that coming from you? I'd love the way you use greater purpose, greater mission. You're already very successful. You could turn your attention to your more personal life, get a good exit, and start thinking about hanging out here and hanging out there.

But instead you're talking about a greater purpose and a greater mission. Why? Where's that coming

Carrie Charles (1:25:50)
So my greater purpose is really focusing on God and my faith. And I always say this and that prayer is a business strategy. I have. I know, I know it's the three of it, but it's true. mean, I have grown my entire business based on faith, based on prayer, based on that North star of.

Dan Caruso (1:26:05)
Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Carrie Charles (1:26:19)
you know, letting God not just lead me, but lead the company. And we've had some incredible miracles at Broadstaff. I mean, five times Inc 5000, we went from 12 million to 30 million in one year in revenue. I mean, the team that we've built. So I would say that mission in that North Star of helping people to see what's possible is to help people see how God can guide them and direct them, that relationship with God toward that North Star, toward that success and really being able to lean on

as a business strategy as an entrepreneur.

Dan Caruso (1:26:52)
You know, it's interesting is this will just show people there's multiple paths. So I come from a family that, whose heritage was very religious. So Catholic, you know, Catholic dominated. Everyone was very religious. My entire family, you know, was very religious. You know, they went to church on Sundays and I was a, went to Sunday school and then I was an altar boy and that kind of stuff. I didn't get the religious gene.

When they handed it out to everyone else in my family, I must have been in a different line when they were handing the religious genes out. So I have no, nothing in me that relates me to a traditional religious idea of a God and a purpose coming from kind of somewhere else. Yet you and I are driven in similar ways. Even if the source is a bit different.

Carrie Charles (1:27:48)
Exactly, but just like we were talking about how when you're early in your career, know, you're bringing all these people with you, the comfort that you know and that you, you know, you've worked together with them. This is the way it's always been. And now you're at a point where you're examining, you know, this, you know, this mission and this purpose that you have inside that you've shared about really helping and giving back to entrepreneurs and to humanity with this book. I mean, what you're going to do with this book.

Dan Caruso (1:28:14)
I hope

it's viewed that way. Part of the intent is for it to have that effect. Thank you. Yet to be seen.

Carrie Charles (1:28:25)
What

I'm saying, Dan, is that it's never too late. It's never too late to have that connection.

Dan Caruso (1:28:32)
Well, I have a connection with the broader universe. that's my, my, my source of, you know, North star and power. Yes. Yes. Well, thank you so much. It's been so much fun. And it was somewhat spontaneous because, you know, reached, I reached out in the context of bandwidth and catching up with what you're doing. it just happened to be that you're going to be in Colorado and you explained reasons why, and we were turning this into a live versus a remote one. And I think, uh,

Live is always more energy, more fun, and hopefully people get more out of it. So thank you so much for doing it and making the drive here and being part of this.

Carrie Charles (1:29:10)
Thank

you, Dan. This has been fantastic. I'm so glad that this worked out.

Dan Caruso (1:29:13)
I it. Great, thanks.

I'll shake the hands after.

Carrie Charles (1:29:16)
Yes.