00:01
Speaker 1
Thanks for joining me on let's Get Digital. I'm glad you're here. I have today one of my dear friends, Mike Underdown. He is the founder and CEO of Crosstown Fiber. I am absolutely thrilled to have him on the show today. You're going to learn a lot. We've got some cool stories to tell along with learning a little bit more about the industry and also about Crosstown Fiber. So, Mike, thank you for being here finally.
00:30
Speaker 2
Thank you for having me. Glad our schedule's finally connected.
00:34
Speaker 1
I know, I know you're so busy, but it's a good thing. So what is? You know, how did you get into this industry, this amazing industry that we're all part of? What? And then tell the story also behind Crosstown Fiber.
00:49
Speaker 3
Sure.
00:51
Speaker 2
Well, it was several decades ago I started, unfortunately, I had several what I'll call entry level jobs when I got out of college. The market wasn't very good in the late 80s, early 90s, and I eventually ended up at a company called Teleport Communications Group tcg. It was arguably the first CLEC in the industry I worked for. Baba Nunziata was the founder. And it was just an amazing experience for me to start in that space. Learning from Howard Brunke, who really was the godfather of fiber as far as telecommunications go. There's probably many others, but he was a New York tel engineer that kind of co founded TCG with Bob Nunziata. You know, as I look back now, I wish I could appreciate then how much I appreciate everything I learned when I was there.
01:51
Speaker 2
I imagine everybody says that, but, you know, were dropped into the deep end of the pool in an industry that was just starting out. And I started in a sales role, although I had a bit of a technical spin to myself. So I started to kind of move more into a technical capacity and then eventually moved all the way over into the data center side where I was not really data center, but the data services side where back when there was a technology called ATM asynchronous transfer mode, which nobody knows what it is anymore. It's not your cash machine. But that inevitably died. I was at TCG right up until AT&T acquired us in late 98. And that's when I realized that I didn't really fit well in the large corporate world.
02:49
Speaker 2
I need, I need a little more space and grace to do what I like to do. And somewhere after, I don't know, six or nine months, I resigned from AT T and went to work for Adelphia. Business Solutions, which was a company owned by Adelphia which you know, didn't have the greatest end to it but again learned a lot about network development, network deployment. I was a area executive for Adelphia in the Midwest and Chicago, based out of Chicago and where I really got to understand network construction. IRUs in particular weren't really doing IRUSED in the, you know, in the 90s. IRU's irrevocable right of use agreements for network really kind of kicked off, you know, late 90s, but really into the early 2000s. And that contractual tool really is what's going on today in some way, shape or form.
03:50
Speaker 2
But that's really why I soaked my teeth. Anecdotally I'll tell you that when Adelphia filed for bankruptcy and everything crashed, I was personally crushed.
04:02
Speaker 3
I thought I had arrived at a.
04:03
Speaker 2
Company I wanted to work for. I worked for Jim Rigas for a period of time directly and really enjoyed him as a human being and as an executive. He was a great manager. And so when they filed for bankruptcy and everything kind of fell apart, I was crushed and I left the industry altogether and said I've had it with telecom, it's horrible. You know, I wanted to do the next thing I love, which was pizza.
04:33
Speaker 1
Pizza?
04:34
Speaker 2
Yeah. I met, I met a gentleman by the name of Joe Semic who is the founder, co founder of Tombstone Pizza up in Green Bay, Wisconsin oddly enough. And I started a pizza business and I was distributing frozen pizza for a period of time. And as much as I was angry at the telecom industry and how I, I was done with it in so many ways, shapes and forms.
05:01
Speaker 3
I did not belong in food distribution.
05:05
Speaker 2
I spent a lot of time losing a lot of money.
05:09
Speaker 3
It didn't go well. I didn't belong there.
05:12
Speaker 2
I sold some pizzas to a hotel in Las Vegas and this is, was the end of it where I sold a 150,000 pizzas to this hotel and I think I made 1800 bucks.
05:29
Speaker 1
Telecom needed you back.
05:31
Speaker 2
Yes. Inevitably after all that I did again it kind of gave me the entrepreneurial bug if you will, because I realized that I could stand on my own. So I was doing some consulting for Mylan Pushkar who through his group sitting.
05:52
Speaker 3
At out of West Virginia had acquired.
05:54
Speaker 2
Quite a bit of the Adelphia assets. So I went in there as a consultant and started to, I don't know.
06:03
Speaker 3
I guess strategically dispose of different assets.
06:06
Speaker 2
That they didn't need. Inevitably coming down to the last four markets which were Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago and Cincinnati. And I put together a few dollars and bought it from them and started the company Chicago Fiber Systems, which was.
06:26
Speaker 3
Kind of an homage to Metropolitan Fiber Systems mfs because the original name of.
06:32
Speaker 2
MFS was Chicago Fiber Optics Systems. And I wanted that name, but unfortunately it was still an actual legal entity at the time. I couldn't. So I named my company Chicago Fiber Systems and started building a fiber infrastructure company in Chicago. In 2006 and 7. I was a part owner in a data center, 601 Polk street in this time, so 2006 till I sold it in 2008, I had owned part of a data center and the fiber company. My idea was to be the annex for 350 Cermak as well as 710 Lakeshore Drive, which is the Starlight, the education gateway in Chicago. And at that time in 2006, ish Joe Manbretti over there wasn't taking anything but optical level connections. I think it had to be at.
07:29
Speaker 3
Least an OC12 if I remember right.
07:32
Speaker 2
And not everybody, you know, a lot of companies didn't have that.
07:34
Speaker 3
So my idea was to build a.
07:36
Speaker 2
Company to house all the people who.
07:39
Speaker 3
Needed to connect to 710 or 350.
07:42
Speaker 2
And I would create the OC whatever.
07:45
Speaker 3
Over there and they would sub.
07:47
Speaker 2
Be sub tenants of mine that never went. But I ended up having some success in a company called Senesis. Made myself and my investors an offer that we couldn't pass up and they only bought the fiber asset. Eventually we sold 601 Polk street to what is now Tearpoint, who owns 61 Polk street today. All that jumping around, I, you know.
08:14
Speaker 3
Continued to do consulting.
08:15
Speaker 2
I formed a engineering and construction management firm because I, I really found that I, I needed to see what I was doing. You know, it's one of those things where I wasn't getting the satisfaction out of spreadsheets and proposals. I was getting more satisfaction out of.
08:38
Speaker 3
Moving dirt and seeing manholes get put.
08:40
Speaker 2
Into place and that kind of stuff, and I still am that way.
08:43
Speaker 3
I get most of my thrill about.
08:45
Speaker 2
How much we can get done in Chicagoland. And frankly, this time in my life where I was a partner in Comdesco Communication design company, were a engineering, civil engineering and construction management firm. Did that for about 10 years. That, that was where I kind of really got the bulk of my experience in construction specifically. It was also the time that probably the most important thing in my life happened. In 2013 I was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And I had this company and I had all these employees and you know, here I am battling this disease and you know, I didn't know what I was going to do, but the one thing I knew I wasn't going to do was like, I had too many people depending on me. So I was just like, well, just.
09:47
Speaker 3
Got to push through.
09:48
Speaker 2
Just deal with what's in front of you and move on. In hindsight, I formed a lot of my principles and philosophies as a result of my time laying in a hospital bed and how you learn not to.
10:04
Speaker 3
Deal with certain things.
10:05
Speaker 2
Anger doesn't get you anywhere. In fact, I found that some of my friends who I also were going.
10:12
Speaker 3
Through similar things at the same time.
10:15
Speaker 2
Those who were angry about it and would, you know, basically give. Give the disease a personality and swear at it. There's ones that passed and I just never acknowledged it as a disease. And I just kept moving forward as deal with what's in front of me.
10:34
Speaker 3
We'll see what happens after that. Don't get caught up in the end.
10:38
Speaker 2
And inevitably that I formed that into my company philosophy, which I'll call into later. So, you know, I really had a positive attitude about it. And I think that is in large part how I survived it and moved on that and the Blackhawks won the Stanley cup, so.
10:58
Speaker 1
So that always helps.
10:59
Speaker 2
Yeah, that helped me a lot then. And so after all that, I exited Com Desco and started doing a lot of consulting just around the country in different way, shapes and form from data center design, communication design experience, where what I was seeing at the time, a.
11:23
Speaker 3
Company called QTS in Chicago had built.
11:25
Speaker 2
A data center and they were about.
11:28
Speaker 3
To lose their anchor tenant because they didn't have a communication design.
11:32
Speaker 2
I got brought in to lay it out and we started to show them how if they moved some of the.
11:38
Speaker 3
Infrastructure out away from the building, they.
11:40
Speaker 2
Could draw the carriers there instead of.
11:44
Speaker 3
Begging the carriers to come there.
11:46
Speaker 2
And by doing that, they immediately recovered that anchor tenant and now the building's full, you know, I don't know. Eight years later and they're onto their expansion.
12:00
Speaker 3
I did the same for several other.
12:01
Speaker 2
Data center companies where effectively they kept missing out.
12:05
Speaker 3
They would think that the carriers were.
12:07
Speaker 2
Close, and the reality was there was.
12:10
Speaker 3
Nowhere for the carrier to intercept them.
12:12
Speaker 2
So you had to show them how the infrastructure needs to be laid out so that you can draw these companies in. If you don't have a tenant, you know, the carriers aren't going to come.
12:23
Speaker 3
If you don't have the carriers.
12:24
Speaker 2
No tenant's going to go there because there's no connectivity. I mean, a data center that doesn't.
12:29
Speaker 3
Have fiber infrastructure is known as a warehouse.
12:33
Speaker 2
There's nothing. So you've got to have that interconnection to the ecosystem. So anyway, so I did that for a while and then in 2019 I was asked to consult on a project in Chicago where a company out of Texas had one an eate award for the Chicago public Schools. And I was asked to be part of the team. And so I started and we inevitably formed a clec to build instead of partnering. And through that course the, the company out of Texas is still, they're still part of Crosstown, the minority equity participants. Now I had to, we brought money in to buy them out because it's clearly a very substantial capital burden to build in Chicago or any major metro, to be honest, particularly companies.
13:35
Speaker 3
Cities in the east are very expensive to build.
13:38
Speaker 2
Between union labor and just the general age of the infrastructure can get expensive and challenging. So that's when we formed Crosstown Fiber. Again, I always have a little bit of a play on words that was, I was watching TV and a commercial came on for the Cubs versus the White Sox, the Crosstown Classic, and I thought, oh my gosh, it's so obvious. So Crosstown Fiber was born out of a commercial.
14:08
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. Mike, I want to thank you for sharing your story, your personal story. And you know, ever since I met you have just been such an inspiration on so many levels, but especially when it comes to, you know, how you beat cancer and I know you're inspiration to so many people that know you. So thank you for sharing that. And you know, I can't wait to get in a little bit to, you know, how you incorporate that into your company culture. What just give an outline of, you know, who is Crosstown fiber and what you do and who you serve.
14:48
Speaker 2
So Crosstown Fiber is a fiber infrastructure company in Chicagoland. We provide high capacity fiber infrastructure. We're a subsurface utility. We only build underground. My Entire network is 100% underground. Again, having built for a lot of people. Aerial construction has its place, but it's not in data center interconnection. And in today's world, data center interconnection is arguably one of the most important things relative to the digital economy. You know, obviously power is becoming the focal point, but frankly, right behind it is the fiber connection because as I said, a data center that doesn't have connectivity to other data centers is a warehouse. It doesn't do anything. So that's where we expanded the Chicago public school network and went into the digital, into the data center space. Because I was building routes for these schools that no one had built before.
15:55
Speaker 3
No one was in these neighborhoods.
15:56
Speaker 2
That's why the project was born.
15:59
Speaker 3
So I had unique paths that no one else had.
16:03
Speaker 2
And again, going back to my previous experience when I was running Comdesco was.
16:08
Speaker 3
Diversity is everything, and having unique routes.
16:11
Speaker 2
That no one else has is the secret sauce, if you will. So, and at the time I thought I was building enough duct, I had overbuilt the system significantly to the point where we have a choke point in our network that's about 12,096 fibers.
16:31
Speaker 3
I'm not sure, based on some of.
16:32
Speaker 2
The numbers and things that I'm seeing in the market, the direction that's enough. As much as I'm significantly dwarfing everybody else's infrastructure in a metro space, I'm not sure that even I have enough. So as we moved out into the suburbs, into Elk Grove and North Lake, we. We overbuilt that even more. So now we're, you know, north of 20,000 fibers in that. In that space. But again, we're just, we just want to make sure that no one ever says that. We never get to say, hey, we got to overbuild that because we don't have enough glass.
17:07
Speaker 3
So we've kind of standardized on 864 cables.
17:10
Speaker 2
We don't pull anything less. I won't pull anything more either, due to the splice case issues that could be done the bigger cables. I did some consulting work for a company out of Ashburn that was placing 6,912 cables. And that's just too much fiber to deal with, in my opinion. It opens up a lot of opportunity for human error, which is generally, most of the outages are caused by somebody, a person messing up.
17:40
Speaker 1
Yeah.
17:41
Speaker 2
So anyway, that's why went with that architecture.
17:47
Speaker 1
Well, good. So we talked a little bit about some challenges that you've seen with your data center clients and that there's, you know, something that's missing in the planning and design phase that really causes problems down the line. Can you touch on that a bit?
18:07
Speaker 3
Sure.
18:08
Speaker 2
Again, not every data center is created equal. So some of them don't have this issue, but many of them do, particularly the. The, the issue for a lot of the data center operators. Not, not the actual hyperscaler itself, but the data center Operators that are out there and, or developers, you know, when.
18:30
Speaker 3
They'Re building a $200 or $300 million site.
18:35
Speaker 2
Is spending an extra $20 million on communication.
18:39
Speaker 3
Infrastructure is kind of in the noise.
18:40
Speaker 2
It doesn't really affect that much.
18:42
Speaker 3
And that's their opportunity to push that.
18:44
Speaker 2
Infrastructure out in a way that, taking.
18:46
Speaker 3
Care of some of the jurisdictional issues.
18:48
Speaker 2
And right of way issues that can come up, whether it's a waterway, a gas main. You know, there's so many data centers by airports now they forget about the.
19:00
Speaker 3
Fuel lines for the airport.
19:02
Speaker 2
Sometimes they'll build a data center right adjacent to a, you know, a fuel line. I know of a data center where they built this thing.
19:10
Speaker 3
And the east side of the street.
19:12
Speaker 2
Is a high pressure gas main that the utility owns the whole street and then the southern barrier is the jet fuel for the airport. And you know, when you do anything.
19:27
Speaker 3
They'Re all over you. If they feel the vibration, those, the.
19:31
Speaker 2
Pipes have vibration sensors on them. And then you know, these black vans show up spooky. So not thinking about that.
19:42
Speaker 3
But while they were in construction of.
19:43
Speaker 2
The building, they could have put communication.
19:45
Speaker 3
Infrastructure on other sides of the highway. They could have coordinated with the utility.
19:50
Speaker 2
At that time to get their infrastructure on the other sides so that companies, fiber providers in particular could tie in at that point. And then they leased the conduit back into the building.
20:03
Speaker 3
That was what were doing back.
20:05
Speaker 2
In the 90s with ePort, now 350 Cermac and know we pushed that infrastructure out as far away from the building.
20:13
Speaker 3
As we could because there was so.
20:14
Speaker 2
Much.
20:17
Speaker 3
Challenges around the McCormick Place area. So you pushed it to the other side of the tollway because tollway rights.
20:22
Speaker 2
Were challenging and things of that nature railroad stuff, it's always a pain.
20:27
Speaker 3
So whenever I see these people, these companies try to do it after they.
20:30
Speaker 2
Built it, you know, my experience is asking for a million dollars after you've spent a hundred million dollars is way harder than adding a million dollars while you're spending a hundred. And so it's that pre planning and understanding where you sit in the ecosystem, not just in your plot, but actually how it interconnects to the rest of the system that you're going to participate in. And I know there's a lot of competition between the operators and things of that nature, but it's a.
21:03
Speaker 3
Frenemy situation where you know you're competing.
21:05
Speaker 2
But you have to interconnect with three with digital realty you have to interconnect with Equinix.
21:11
Speaker 3
You can't just sit there and.
21:13
Speaker 2
Now you're seeing, you know, companies like Oracle and Microsoft collaborating on stuff. So everybody, even though they compete, they.
21:20
Speaker 3
They still have to come together as well.
21:22
Speaker 2
And you know, the more we understand that from an infrastructure standpoint and can pre plan, I think we'll find that.
21:31
Speaker 3
One, the communities that we build in.
21:33
Speaker 2
Will treat us a little bit better because nobody likes having their streets cut two, three times, do it once, do it right and coordinate. Which really comes from engineering and planning.
21:45
Speaker 1
What is the impact of the data centers on the communities?
21:51
Speaker 2
It's kind of complicated. I had a lot of friends at Microsoft and tried to help with some of the Microsoft community engagements where I learned some of the downside of it. You know, the upside is around economic growth and job creation there, the jobs that are created, although in the negative there isn't a ton of them.
22:11
Speaker 3
But on the positive they are high paying, good jobs.
22:15
Speaker 2
On the economic growth, you know, in Chicagoland, you know, in the last, I don't know, 15 years there's been about $4 billion worth of data center construction in the Chicagoland area. You know, there's probably another 4 or 5 billion coming that's planned at least. I heard, I heard a number where digital realty has contributed, you know, over the years that they've been there, 20 years that they've been there in excess of $3 billion to the economy, you know, so it's good money. So you know, from the taxable and all that kind of stuff as you look at like infrastructure by building these data centers, particularly in communities that may be further out or may not have the same digital equity, if you will, these data centers could enhance connectivity and infrastructure out there.
23:11
Speaker 2
They're certainly going to upgrade the power grid in those communities as well.
23:15
Speaker 3
So the benefit of that power grid is there.
23:18
Speaker 2
All very positive on the negative. You know, depending upon architecture and design.
23:24
Speaker 3
I mean historically water usage was a.
23:26
Speaker 2
Big thing, you know, energy consumption still a big thing. And you know, let's face it, not.
23:33
Speaker 3
Every data center looks great either.
23:35
Speaker 2
You know, so zoning and aesthetics are kind of a challenge or can be for a lot of communities if they, you know, have a little better look. So I, you know, there's different, there's a lot of different things that are there. And I know in Chicago there's a new thing called a data register, data residency, which is a mandate that a certain portion of the data that's there has to stay within the city limits. So you know, when they make these.
24:10
Speaker 3
Decisions to do stuff, it isn't immediately.
24:11
Speaker 2
Going to some other community for revenue. There's some of that is staying within the community itself. So it's just starting. We'll see how that goes. But I'm very excited. That was alderman Villegas Drive. And I think it's. I actually really do believe it's a great policy to be created and maybe see more and more of it across the country.
24:34
Speaker 1
Lets switch gears to your company culture. And I really would love to hear about how your experience with cancer helped you to create some of your values in your company.
24:49
Speaker 2
Yeah, so.
24:52
Speaker 3
I got a little philosophical.
24:54
Speaker 2
When I was doing that stuff. And it was kind of fun for me as I started to think about things and what I was going to do. And it kind of was. Stemmed from being a scientist. I should actually go back.
25:12
Speaker 3
One of the things is when you're.
25:13
Speaker 2
Laying there and you're trying to figure things out and you're trying to take calls and you're typing on your computer and there's nothing else to do because a hospital is nothing but a series of naps. So at any given time, at any time, you're awake. So I kind of came up with this idea of. Was not my idea. I read about it. I was reading a lot of philosophy and there's. I got. I got really heavy into stoicism and Taoism.
25:39
Speaker 3
But one of the things that struck.
25:40
Speaker 2
Me is doing right because it's right has become the cornerstone of what I try to do. And what that means is no matter what benefit to you, do the right thing causes the right thing.
25:54
Speaker 3
And when you sit back and you.
25:55
Speaker 2
Take a moment, you analyze.
25:57
Speaker 3
Sometimes even when you do something good.
25:59
Speaker 2
For someone, you did it because you.
26:03
Speaker 3
Yourself benefited from it. And it wasn't because it was the right thing to do.
26:07
Speaker 2
You did it just because you felt.
26:09
Speaker 3
Good at the end.
26:10
Speaker 2
You knew that by helping this person out effectively, you were helping yourself and.
26:14
Speaker 3
Made yourself feel great. So don't necessarily be all proud and.
26:18
Speaker 2
Great about yourself because you think you did the right thing.
26:21
Speaker 3
You only did the right thing if the only reason you did it was.
26:24
Speaker 2
For the principle of right or righteousness. So I get a little weird on that one every once in a while.
26:32
Speaker 1
I love it. I love that, Mike. I do.
26:35
Speaker 2
And then so from that I. I started to go into it a little more like what does right mean? And all that. And so you really. It's more about an objectivity of it all. So being a scientist was kind of where I went. And being a scientist is really about being curious. You know, you think about your 2.
26:56
Speaker 3
Year old is really a scientist.
26:57
Speaker 2
They're really.
26:58
Speaker 3
What's that? What's that?
26:59
Speaker 2
So being curious and not having a.
27:01
Speaker 3
Judgment about what it is you're asking.
27:03
Speaker 2
About, you're just asking and you're just.
27:04
Speaker 3
Trying to figure, you see what it is.
27:06
Speaker 2
Which kind of drove me to really focusing on the process of things. So I know we all tend to, you know, want to jump to the outcome. And, and I used to say this a lot. I have this, my cover from my iPhone. You know, when you hold it up to someone, they said, well, what color is this? And they'll say it's black. Well, actually I bought it. It's charcoal gray.
27:33
Speaker 1
You know, Right.
27:34
Speaker 2
If you'd gone through correct, gathering all the data, gathering all the different things, take the time to go through it all, you might find that it's not.
27:42
Speaker 3
Exactly what you thought it was.
27:45
Speaker 2
And in today's world in particular, with all the different things in data and stuff, it's really difficult to necessarily know what it is.
27:55
Speaker 3
So when you jump to an outcome, in my opinion, you're almost always going to be wrong. Not because the outcome itself was different.
28:01
Speaker 2
But you missed out on some learning component along the way that had you.
28:07
Speaker 3
No matter what, forced yourself to go through the data. Because outcome bias is a very real thing.
28:12
Speaker 2
And that's the part that I think people don't give enough respect to, is.
28:19
Speaker 3
When they start to try to do.
28:20
Speaker 2
Things or make decisions about stuff. And, and that kind of outcome bias.
28:25
Speaker 3
Is what creates these silos.
28:27
Speaker 2
And people then form them the silos and they work in this thing. Because I know what I'm doing or, you know, doing right, because it's right.
28:34
Speaker 3
I'm a hero.
28:34
Speaker 2
I want to be a hero. Well, had you collaborated on it, Hiro, you wouldn't have taken you three weeks to do it. You would have got it done in two days. Because you could have had a bunch of people help you who knew, you know, this. So all these things kind of come together in the workforce as to, you know, doing these things and taking the time to just flow through it makes everything much better and frankly easier.
29:00
Speaker 3
And almost a better product and higher quality.
29:03
Speaker 2
And in my opinion, that's the kind of, the dedication to excellence is really where that all comes from. Collaboration is just a challenging thing for a lot of people, not because they don't want to collaborate but they're not.
29:19
Speaker 3
Rewarding themselves when they do.
29:22
Speaker 2
And so you try to work that through. And as a coach of teams or.
29:28
Speaker 3
Whatever, you kind of see that at times.
29:30
Speaker 2
And that's again, some of that experience came from that. I coached sports for a little while as well.
29:37
Speaker 1
I love those analogies, especially of the cell phone. It's great. What do you say drives you every day? You are a mission driven human being. And so what is it? What makes you just say, look, I have a job to do in this world.
30:00
Speaker 2
I really am just really hung up on connectivity, both as people, again, my collaboration, but also in the space. And there's been such poor architecture and infrastructure over the years that I really love the fact that I'm able to participate in new builds, brand new, everything. I'm, I'm not the incumbent. I don't look like one of my competitors. I, I really truly want to be what people measure excellence in our infrastructure space.
30:40
Speaker 3
I do think I have the greatest.
30:43
Speaker 2
Team of employees who are spectacular at their jobs. I have the greatest team members in my contractors. I don't even like to call them contractors.
30:54
Speaker 3
They're really, truly partners.
30:56
Speaker 2
We collaborate on everything. I've known most of these partners for decades, so I either worked with them or forum or alongside them, whatever. It's, it's amazing to see what happens when you get everybody in a room and we have a problem, and we have a lot of problems. So building in Chicagoland is not easy. Between the policies and different entities and railroads and counties and all the stuff that everybody deals with for whatever reason, this last few years has been the most challenging in all the years that I've done it. And I don't think we could have gotten, you know, the just under 400 route miles of network that we have. We couldn't have gotten that done without the team that I have. And I really, truly believe, and I'm thankful that I have these people in my life.
31:51
Speaker 1
They're great. I have met some of your team leaders as well as, you know, we staff for you as well. And everyone loves your culture. They stay for a very long time. And you know, everything you're saying today is true. I know you very well and you really walk your talk. Mike. There are some really exciting things on the horizon and I want to finish with talking about your growth, you know, new markets that you're expanding into. You know, what does your growth look like over the next five years?
32:27
Speaker 2
We're, we're definitely expanding around the collar states, you know, within you know, Indiana has got some interesting dynamics going on with the different hyperscalers we're kind of seeing from Chicagoland based point. Kind of a 90 mile ring around Chicago is kind of the area that we're looking at which gets you into Milwaukee or just south of Milwaukee, you know, into really Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids, Michigan, South Bend, all that stuff. So we're looking at a lot of those opportunities to expand. We, we will look at those from what I call the DBO model, which is design, build, operate. We'll partner with someone of the Fortune 5 hyperscale types and, and work with them on builds that are again, unique. I, I don't want to look like anybody else. I don't want to be along the rail. You know, frankly the rails are.
33:29
Speaker 3
Are very dangerous, particularly in the interstates.
33:31
Speaker 2
Because if a train derails and you get, your cable gets cut, heaven forbid.
33:37
Speaker 3
There'S a chemical spill on that run. You won't get to repair that cable for weeks.
33:43
Speaker 2
And you know, they, you just can't get back there. And you know, so it's an environmental thing. So those are the dangers that I just don't want to participate in. So I want to make sure that we're building away from all those things because it just seems like more and.
33:56
Speaker 3
More we're having issues around chemical spills.
33:59
Speaker 2
And different reasons why you can't get to whatever it is you need to get to. And if you plan for it or plan away from it, you mitigate that risk. And that's really how we think about things is I don't want anybody calling me. I want to make sure all the time. And you know, we do the right thing because it's the right thing.
34:20
Speaker 1
Yes you do. Yes you do. And Mike, I am just so excited to see you and your team's success. It's well deserved. How can we reach you? What is your website?
34:32
Speaker 2
Our website is crosstownfiber.com Again it's a fairly simple website at the moment, but has our maps relatively up to date. But you know, feel free to reach out anytime.
34:46
Speaker 1
That's fantastic. And I know that you attend pretty much every conference that there is in your industry, in our industry. I see you there. So I know I'm going to be seeing you in a couple weeks at ITW and I'm sure at many more. So I appreciate you coming on the show. This is awesome. It feels so good. Thank you for sharing and just being so authentic.
35:06
Speaker 2
Thanks for having me. Gary.
35:07
Speaker 1
We'll talk soon.
35:08
Speaker 2
Yep, Absolutely.
35:12
Speaker 1
Okay. That was awesome. Oh, my gosh, that was so good.
