Speaker 0 | 00:04.112

Welcome everyone to Telecom Radio 1. Today, we are very fortunate we have Mr. Ali Naroo from CNSG. Some people refer to him as the bad boy of telecom. Some people refer to me as the bad boy of telecom. So I really want everyone to listen up today. This is a special occasion. Ali, welcome to the show, man.

Speaker 1 | 00:26.799

Thank you, Phil. Thanks for having me, my friend.

Speaker 0 | 00:29.199

Yeah, so… You are, if there were pillars of CNST, which I’d say there’s probably like 12 pillars, but if there were pillars of CNST, you would certainly be one of them. You and I, you and I go back a long way. We’ve got a lot of stories together, which actually brings me to my first question, because a lot of people want to hear this. And I bet you we could have an episode of just crazy telecom stories. But I want… What’s the first craziest telecom story that comes to mind that you can think of? And let’s keep it cool.

Speaker 1 | 01:05.533

I hear you. That’s going to be tough to do. But I got to say, back when I got out of college and I was working for Exxon Communications, Exxon was very close to going bankrupt. It was a couple months prior to going bankrupt. And we were told to, we used to have morning meetings. We were told to spread. And we would get on the metros and everybody would get off at different stops in the metro, the CBD district in DC. This is right after 9-11, mind you, right? And my name being Ali and everyone having to check surveillance for that, you know, your license and stuff. It was tough to get into buildings in cold call, but our job was to go into these buildings and grab business cards, set appointments, and grab whatever decision-making we could, and abruptly interrupt their day and ask them, you know, as much discovery as you could, and go back to our desk and send them an email and set up a meeting. Well, during this time, there was a couple of buildings in D.C. that were being torn down. and these bills were being torn down and all the tenants actually, it was funny, it was rapid fire, they had to move out within 30 to 60 days notice. So not only did they have to find leases, move out, situate themselves just in general, deal with commercial real estate brokers, they had to also source their own telecommunication services, and they had to also move their services in or get out of their contracts and, you know, basically align their business. So we at Allegiance Telecom prior to XO merging with Allegiance. XO and Allegiance were very competitive in the marketplace. And I was legacy XO out of college. We would compete with Allegiance, quite frankly, every day. Allegiance had a model that was pretty aggressive. It starts pricing. They had a younger model. And we would run into the same buildings. Well, we’d be in the elevators. It really was just a mad race to hit your quota. And these orders were rather simple to get. People had to make decisions quickly. And it was really like two fish in a barrel. So at that point I was actually in an elevator and competitive, young, feisty, fiery, ambitious, compassionate. Me and my, I ran into my name David Wilson. David Wilson, as you know, is now our CEO, President, one of my best friends and one of the founders of CSC. David and I did not know each other from Adam. David and I got into a smaller altercation, words only, about who was going to win what and you know these opportunities in the building and etc. And this turned into year later allegiance and that allegiance and XO merging David becoming a colleague of mine a friend and in three years of post that CSP forming and me becoming the third employee or founder CSP we worked with Matt David obviously very gracious to them for the opportunity and then fast forward 18 years now best friends and business partners and we have a successful business that we’ve grown together so that was funny how the world kind of collided I think that’s funny So I think what’s even better is a lot of times when you and I would walk into meetings when you were supported to Broadview with you did a magnificent job and we’re obviously very blessed to have you in the CSP team I think you add a lot to our team was when you and I would walk into meetings We would ask customers. Who do you think of Phil? Who’s Ali? I think all the clients got a huge kick out of that and that was amazing So a lot of great times to see my friend, so I appreciate everything you’ve done and welcome to CSP team

Speaker 0 | 04:17.432

Yeah, man. I wish we had the I wish we had the elevator video from years ago It just reminds me of all the old Seabeyond guys cold calling doors and going up against the I-Corps guys. It was CNSG and I-Corps in D.C., and it was the same thing. Yeah. Just hilarious. I remember a guy telling another sales rep to go kick rocks. This is my building.

Speaker 1 | 04:39.670

So that,

Speaker 0 | 04:41.491

which is interesting, that’s how we started out. So we survived that world. We survived the hitting 55 doors a day. We survived the churn and burn. We survived the training classes that were filled with 30 people that they did every month. And I remember sitting in. my training class was filled with 13 people. And I looked around the training class and I said, I don’t have to worry about any of these people. And I looked at two other guys. I was like, okay, I need to worry about you. And I need to worry about you. And at the end of the year, every single one of those people had quit. And that was only one training class. And there was a training class every two weeks filled with 15 people. So that’s 30 people a month. And I was the only one standing in that one training class. So. It was a turn and burn. Some people refer to it as a boiler room in full effect type of model. And I think one of the main reasons why I survived and no one else did was because I really cared. I really had a lot of business integrity and really cared about the customer and doing a consultative type model, regardless of doing the Heisman. interrupting people’s days and I stopped by to introduce myself to the president owner who might that be could you go grab him thank you you know we we made it beyond that what is the difference that what’s the difference between you and I and what’s the difference that CNSG as a master telecom agency and the largest on the east coast brings to the table what’s our differentiating factor that you think

Speaker 1 | 06:22.021

There’s a lot of very, very, very successful master agencies. There’s master agencies that have been around well before CSP and all of them are great in their own unique way and their own niches. So kudos to Intellisys, Polaris, WTG. A lot of respect for all those guys. Really good on all fronts. Our model is a little bit different than them. I think we’ve been pretty elegant about how we’ve been able to build our businesses. We’ve been able to do it and not just be for the master. right we’ve been more of a niche approach where we have a hybrid model very experienced law firm model where we’re complicated we’re in front of customer we’re doing a lot of that we’re having those tough discussions we’re dealing with those issues and that’s why they know it Ali Nuru or Phil Howard deals because frankly we’re not four steps before people remove from the opportunity or deal so we’re in those conferences controversial conversations with cutovers with issues those averages those are rules the problems the sectors is being laid the new bad changes that just aren’t happening um being buttoned up and airtight deliveries and onboardings and discussions that’s what makes us different i mean i think at the end of the day when you look at you know from a personal standpoint if you look at your insurance broker that manages your wealth management your accountant and your wealth manager someone makes your money the end of the day what do you want from them high acting level responsiveness passion compassion hard work you know ethics and being authentic and i think that’s important our industry i gotta be honest with you a lot of family members and friends of mine who have purchased telecommunications services from people in our industry or from Austin me think that our industry has probably the most horrific customer service model or I think Lineaging in customer service into the next step for what’s right or what’s wrong or you know people being called out for not doing what’s right? Or you know working hard and the definition behind that I think a lot of the guys in the CSP team Again, we have guys that balance without our team that makes us so great. We have people that are great so many different things but we like to be very hands-on in front of the customer handling issues so good that a lot of us don’t mind getting our hands dirty in these issues and for seller carrier the carrier loves us absolutely I think we’ve been whenever we put our mind so we’ve been always in the top three with any carrier or number one or the mainly top three or number one with any carrier but you know one thing I always say is we just stopped selling because you were working so well it’s very It’s very simple, it doesn’t have to be emotional. We did not stop selling carriers because they were doing so well. So we’ve done a very good job and with the guidance of Matt Hardy, we’ve diversified. Even though we’re all exo guys, and actually we started off selling a lot of exo communications and they’re a wonderful partner carrier, but we diversified and we did a really good job with CW Telecom, Level 3, our cable practice. And Matt saw that movie coming 13 years ago and we did a good job and we’ve done a good job of depending on the climate of the industry, moving our business around. but you remember our model is a little different there’s some guys in geographic us that do a great job that our customer facing as well um that what we do is when we’re in front of the client we’re hands-on we see the issues we see the procurements we see the cadence of these procurements uh and the technology who’s delivering it the best at the end of the day technology is great and technology is a lot different than it was eight nine ten twelve thirteen years ago phil but now it’s obviously a lot more cloud-based software-based gui-based our decisions are based off that price and circuits and access I think now is you know we if we get a good name or bad name I think everybody appreciates and respects us I think and that’s why we consistently won for over 13 years I don’t think anybody’s ever gonna say that you know we didn’t know what we’re talking about we didn’t work extra hard we weren’t responsive we didn’t earn a penny that we made or our partners most importantly our partners have grown their businesses in the last 13 years I think that’s the most important thing is that the partners that we have who helped us build our business, you know, trust us. You know, because we’re also like a bank, right? From a fiduciary standpoint, we’re paying partners out. That’s a huge trust component. They also trust us with their customers. Because let’s be frank, what we’re selling really is not a huge moneymaker. Over time, it still balls us into making a lot of money. But the MSPs, those guys from the big boxes, you know, this is just really a rounding error what we’re selling. And if it’s destructive, it’s just a fair relationship. And I think that’s what’s so key in our business is that we have so many of those people that bring us into opportunities to trust them. Even when things go wrong, they always know we’ll do the right thing. I think so. That’s the number one thing about us. I’m not saying we’re better than any other master. They’re all great. Our model is just different in that way.

Speaker 0 | 10:52.173

That’s a good point. I mean, there’s a lot of things to speak to there. One, people just saying that telecom has horrible customer service is true. 38%. 38% of Americans say that telecom is and has the worst customer service. That’s a statistical fact. So that means more than a third of America we’re working in an industry that more than a third of America Says has the worst customer service So if we’re bringing to the table that layer that they that that’s creating that 38% then great That’s number one. We’re filling a large gap there By just providing outstanding customer service. So number two So that if that’s the biggest problem if that’s one of the biggest problems that customers are facing is just terrible customer service, maybe just delve into that a little bit. What are some of these problems? What are the biggest problems that you see a business facing on a daily basis? In the telecom, it’s really technology and cloud now. It’s really voice data and cloud services. But what are some of the biggest problems that you’re facing? Maybe just the top three that you’ve dealt with this week.

Speaker 1 | 12:02.852

Well, the climate today is different than it was a year ago, right? With all the mergers and acquisitions, we have a lot of larger carriers that are merging. You know, network translation issues, merging of, you know, different accounting systems, billing platforms, internet work, the employees and the way they work as far as network grooming, that causes a lot of problems and issues. Post-expeditivity, there’s so many different platforms out there, so many different integration points, so many different people. important is taking technology taking the acronyms I feel with what we do we all deal with a lot of project coordinators and so many of them speak in acronyms and three-letter words that none of the clients understand that becomes what that does is it snowballs five six more emails a phone call that’s unnecessary it’s just really doing things right the first time is really big so you know if we are the bad boys at Polycom that’s fine once they help those fellows do the right thing take care of your customer and I would tell you Phil that The reason why we are successful is because we do advocate so hard for our customers that we make the right decisions for our customers. So I will say one of the biggest problems right now is the consolidation, technology consolidation, understanding, being aware of who offers what. Our model is different, right? There are a lot of people in our business that do sell a lot of cloud computing stacks and compute with our MSPs, very similar to the drift that we dealt with seven, eight years ago with a lot of our PBX vendors when voice started becoming sold transactionally. I think IT is a different perspective. Most of the stuff that I see day in day out are customers are virtualizing to the cloud with their innovators or MSP partners, their MSP partners or innovators or IT consultants, and they’re looking for multiple diverse internet connections. So the days of needing an MTLS to one provider to handle fully managed layers resources gone, STWAN has been revolutionary in our space, which is great for all of us because now clients can source that’s the greener connectivity that’s where they kind of need a group like us to source based on address locations after the building that’s deepest with cost effective and also stable internet connectivity and then layering all the different clouds back on top one being telephony and you and i both know and i know you love it passionately i love it um it’s hosted telephony right it’s moving these phone systems to the cloud understanding that the phone is just an aesthetic but the integrations of all these different applications certain business uses and doing proper discovery I meet a lot of different partners that only sell one care one boy provider I don’t know how you could do that and do right by the customer so that’s one part is really kind of understanding our business and we at CSD and all I’m asking you doing a really good job with this but we’re putting together tutorials many universities on cloud computing stores hosted voice but in the day with our model because we have so many different conduits of how we get our business whether it’s you know of course the real estate partner architect like av vendor cable vendor pdx vendor and a pdx vendor obviously we’re not talking telephony uh hosted voice and msp we are really dancing to the cadence of the customer I think we learn more in our model because depending on the nature of the lead, we are always walking into different discovery points and discussions, which is really fun for us. From a customer service standpoint issue, I think that’s something that, quite frankly, certain carriers and different assignments or different parts of the decade, they perform better. You know that. I think we all move our business based on our comfort and feel with each customer and really the success of these implementations.

Speaker 0 | 15:39.859

Now, from a customer’s… perspective, a customer that may not understand our marketplace, that may not understand the industry well, even a lot of maybe upper market kind of medium to enterprise level customers that don’t understand that this world even exists and are used to parading in a parade of direct sales reps to present to them. And then you and I both know that those direct sales reps are not going to be around for more than two years, the average lifespan of a direct sales rep. sales rep I believe it’s 1.6 years and in telecom that’s probably even a longer probably even that’s probably a long time so what do you have to say to customers that might make the mistake of saying that well we don’t need a middleman or we don’t need a reseller you know that are just kind of quick to not understand really what we do you know what do you have to say to those customers because and then also from the perspective of the vendors well you know the vendors don’t care that we’re saying telecom has bad customer service why don’t they care they don’t care because we actually benefit them um so maybe just speak to that for a few seconds yeah I mean I think the distribution channels for

Speaker 1 | 16:54.844

instance I’ll use insurance and wealth management you know essentially they’re brokering different carriers themselves or mutual funds they’ve been around people deal with brokers people deal comfortably with commercial real estate brokers all the time So essentially everybody’s a broker or something. I mean, I deal with government bars, 8A, minority owned, just traditional government, MSPs or just bars in general are more than an MST. An MST is more hands-on, more complicated. A lot of the bars are just resellers of Red Hat, Nimble, you know, wherever they can get their hands on. Cisco, right? And they’re marketing it up and they’re selling it. In our world, we’re actually not white-linguing anything, right? So we’re just, we’re selling it. Our job is to procure the best solution. have the highest acumen, support the business, see it through implementation, not just kind of, you know, sell something through budget at the end of a quarter. And if it takes self-life and that’s okay, that’s what’s our muscle. I think we want to see it win and install. And our job is to make sure the best price is also procured a lot of times. A lot of times that’s quite frankly what it is. So I would say that we’re not the middleman. I would say that really we’re your liaison to understand what all the care that you don’t pay for. We’re paid by the carrier, so there’s skin in the game for all of us. And this goes for all the agents, quite frankly. Anybody competing with someone that is white-labeled or doing anything like that, I think this is what’s great for us. I always like to explain this to the customer. I think it really does help explain how we get paid because they understand that. They understand that we’re representing all these different options, and we’re suggesting based on trial and error who we think is best based on implementations and success. Right? That means something here. As long as we’re giving multiple options, we’re objective, we’re talking about it, I think that’s one thing for the customer. So the middleman, you know, I don’t know, I don’t really get offended by that term, but there’s a way to kind of describe it and explain how it’s different in our business. So I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re a middleman. As far as customer service goes, I mean, we have pain in the car spaces and advisory meetings with carriers all the time. And they know when things are going bad and they know when they will be put on the sideline. We’re not selling them as much and everyone is friends. you know we all come back to them when they stabilize their network so it’s part of our business um i do think that if customer service was a lead in all these carriers they probably would they be less and less of us out there because that’s part of our business is to be that level of service not just the right to business and nothing against anybody else but i do think that’s one part of what we do at csd is that our model is made to actually stay involved and engaged as much as we can and to assist and be there after the sale or i think some other models more just writing the business on the wall and not supporting it as much. And I don’t know that for certain, but I do believe that we are more engaged. I think when someone knows, hey, it’s a Phil Howard deal, Ali Daru, Chris Martin, they know when someone’s evolved. Like our competitor here, I would say locally, we have a competitor here who’s in a deal. No one ever says the master they go through. They have to say their name, for instance. And that’s a good thing, I think, that you’re engaged and you care. So that’s… As far as the middleman’s part goes, hopefully I answered that question clearly enough. I don’t think it’s that difficult of a discussion or an obstacle to get through if people just understand it.

Speaker 0 | 20:11.340

I think that’s a great answer. I’ll ask you one more question. What do you see happening in the industry over the next five years? How do you see, let’s just pick telecom, for example. I like talking about PBXs because people are still buying them. But what do you see, where do you see telecom, maybe even the phone system? Will the phone system still exist five years from now?

Speaker 1 | 20:37.094

It’s funny. I got a lot of close friends who are PBX owners. They may hear this, and I love those guys a piece. I do think, Phil, I truly do think, and some of the voice providers, a lot of my friends, they’ll get acquiesced to this. I do think there’s still a market, and there will be a market for on-premise PBX. I do think based on the ROI for certain businesses, depending on the speed level and the staff they have, I do think that if you rationalize some of these numbers and pay them a pen, it does make sense to have an on-prem PBX. Sometimes. I do think that, you know, between now and 2022, millions and millions of businesses are going to transition to hosted voice. And it’s what 70 or 80 percent of our business is every month, right? In the last three, four years is moving phones because people are moving. People are just moving off one voice provider to another voice provider, moving off an ancillary on-time TV and PDX for many different reasons. One, to do it from a financial standpoint, it’s a lot more responsible. I think ongoing scalability we don’t have to talk about all the values there But I do think that’s where this business is going is that really the next beautiful years and funny that Jeff pearl Maybe you got everybody in the industry knows Jeff. That’s a great guy I get along with Jeff have a lot of respect for Jeff But Jeff once said to me a couple years ago at our CSP holiday party here Washington He was in town and we had him there. This is before he started his own master agency, of course And good for him. I hope he does well he said to me he’s like it’s unbelievable what the opportunity is for all of us this was two years ago how much was the right feet transistor will always old TVX that are out of these clients sites we’re gonna be transitioning between now and like four five six years but you must do it right you must do right you just can’t hang on to one boy provider just sell them you gotta stay diversified you guys stay in a little cool you gotta stay objective and talk to each customer because it’s not just going to be voicemail email movie to the cloud for free patches upgrades. There’s going to be so many different applications and APIs and integration points and workflows customers need, and every business is specific to that. So you need to be patient, you can’t just rush it, and you really need to sit down and talk to each customer and sell the right solution. And by doing that, we within CSP all have to get as good or as better as our competition in knowing what each provider can do. And part of that is a lot of customers, I see my customers and your customers still, they get… excited to get demos against this requirement list and punchdown list you gotta meet these requirements and they want to see the workflow but when they get to adoption how many people truly about 85% of those features that they wanted so bad now you don’t see as much but you know what they remember Phil packet loss white noise latency and how the implementation work and customer service and a lot of

Speaker 0 | 23:31.392

I connected with this guy the other day. We got on a conversation. He’s like, oh, Phil, I wish I had talked with you two months ago because we just signed up with XYZ Cable Company for 400 seats. And it was just a matter of when you migrate from a Nortel BCM or whatever your PBX is, anyone that comes into your showroom to show you a product and demo it is going to look amazing. It doesn’t matter. They’re all going to look. amazing because they have caller ID. And, you know, it’s just, you don’t have to write on a piece of paper behind your phone buttons anymore. And that’s what people don’t get is that you could show anyone any general VoIP presentation nowadays and it’s all going to look amazing because they’re all going to have a thousand features.

Speaker 1 | 24:21.313

And so I tell a lot of my MSP partners it’s important we go through this and they see it with their client. The client wants to see the different workflows and different demos. well why are you showing me demos because there’s different guis and interfaces it’s funny i have customers that love certain platforms then another customer will hate that platform it really is you know the iron of the holder they look at the platforms and they fall in love with it we both know based on the relationship the deployment the implementation the back office support the engineering obviously the pops and what they invest in their network who’s going to do a good job right and a lot of i think with providers sometimes they’re they’re all very

Speaker 0 | 24:59.044

very very good even on top of that even on top of that we know who might be good now but might be bad tomorrow because they might go up for sale in six months the whole the whole back office

Speaker 1 | 25:11.024

the whole back office might get completely liquidated or you know migrated over to some other company and everything goes completely downhill from there and or you pour a lot of business on them they can’t handle yeah so it’s a lot there’s a lot of there’s a lot of different reasons but more to the point of I got you know give kudos to Matt I’ll never forget and we all love excellent and frankly you know without Excel I was learned our technique our practices you know kind of what you know Excel sort of out of this and learning how to cold call knock on doors and sell those solutions that was great I mean that that caused all so much and we’re forever thankful for the opportunity they gave us and obviously as a channel partner we rewarded them and reciprocated for allowing us to work there and learn in this business and we gave them so so much business but after a while when we certainly understand the business and understand that we have to be responsible for our agents or fiduciary standpoint and our clients and partners so ours is a three-stack approach right you got our agents get the pay We got partners that bring us opportunities and our clients, we’re working with, we have to diversify. We have to really sell to providers. So we’ve seen this a lot of different ways. And I think it’s something that has brought a lot of attention to us in a good way. I do think the reason why you hear our names is because we do gain the trust of a lot of our partners. And a lot of our partners bring opportunity stuff for a reason. And they know that there’s different fiduciary models. if they want to run the meetings themselves, they will probably take the issues out of it, just do the proposals and sit through four or five voice demos and do all the network designs. They know that people get more points and money, but, and similar to us, if we give them an MSP lead, I gave an MSP partner a lead, I didn’t even know this, but they were building $24,000 a month. In our world, that’s 125,000 MRC. Never had a deal like that given to me, so I just literally sent a lead over the fence and an MSP partner was making $24,000 a month. in recurring services. So again, I think our model works. I think we do a lot of the heavy lifting and the work. Because quite frankly, this takes a lot of focus, a lot of time, and frankly, you need more than 24 hours a day to really do this well. I think we’re getting better. We’ve added so many more resources within CSG. From a marketing standpoint, we’ve done fantastic. I think Matt and Dave have done an amazing job bringing on new talent, Randy, Devin. wheel Emily Sarah later runs operations I think our managing partners have done a fantastic job we have great partners outside of our major partner model that have also helped us grow our business and I think we’re we’re setting up the way we added you I think a cornerstone of all things is fantastic I think Phil if you remember first time you and I actually met I was quoting you at air spring where was the air band or if

Speaker 0 | 28:06.676

Hey, fun job man.

Speaker 1 | 28:08.917

Yeah, but we’re quoting you. I think you told me Curt Island and our team sold a deal and Similar, you know any channel name.

Speaker 0 | 28:16.182

It was a wireless microwave man. It was fixed wireless microwave. Hey,

Speaker 1 | 28:20.525

and the technology is still out there man. It’s trying to get up and running. But so, it’s a great technology. So you were there and I’ll never forget and Dave and I go, I think I got this really sharp guy. He’s well-ridden, well-spoken, want to give it a try. I tried so hard. I mean And so I, you and I met for coffee, the Starbucks by Bobby Vance Steakhouse, New York Avenue, same, same steakhouse. And I’ll get back to where that was. Um, and I, and I, I got, this is kudos to you. I sat there and I looked at you and I sit down and I go, Phil, I’m probably not going to sell you where you are. Let me repurpose you to a carrier where we could actually use you. You remember that conversation?

Speaker 0 | 28:58.589

So we had the easiest interview I ever walked into. just so you know i never told this but and i won’t mention any names but when i walked into that interview the the vp that was interviewing me said you know i don’t even know if i should be asking you any questions i feel like you should be interviewing me that’s

Speaker 1 | 29:20.180

what they said that’s amazing so i brought you was fortunate enough to listen to me and say hey what do you want to do place the swear canada you want uh and and obviously i think at that point we were present club winners advisory winners in broadview and we got the business moving with you and so we’re forever fortunate and grateful for that phil um i think dave made an amazing amazing choice and having you lock down the northeast for us um if you can replicate what we’ve done which i no doubt that you will i think we’ll have our winning ways and yeah i mean that’s your point i think our model is different no better than any other master um it’s worked right um and the only good things happen to bad people for the last 13 years it’s This model has really grown and we’re doing things, we’re constantly learning. Things are changing every day in our industry so I think taking time out from the day and just reading 15-20 minutes. what people are doing what carriers are doing our carriers are suppliers like the chaos they’re very important um and there’s a lot of great people at those carriers um so a lot of it is just educating our clients because when we’re in front of our clients especially with our model we have to understand what we’re doing and who can do what and i think that’s the biggest piece of our business so with that if there comes you know obviously advocacy for our client and our partner that’s bringing us an opportunity remember there’s a partner that’s being effective and they made a recommendation to bring us in the carrier looks bad and we look bad they don’t bring us business so hopefully i just want to be this thankful circle so people see the why in it that’s really important um you know other than that really i think um i think 2018 is gonna be a great year for us we’ve already started we just got back from our crisis club trip unfortunately unfortunately you weren’t able to be there phil um you made it you made it absolutely you made it and then you just couldn’t come for personal reasons um and i think yeah

Speaker 0 | 31:10.664

When I asked my friends who could watch Seven Kids, they all said to me, Phil, I don’t think there’s an amount of money that you could pay me to watch Seven Kids so that you can go on your president’s trip.

Speaker 1 | 31:21.090

Yeah, I don’t think there is. God bless you. God bless you for that. But yeah, I mean, hopefully, you know, as far as like the industry, middleman, our differentiating factors at CNSG, technology where it is. I think I’ll hopefully answer a lot of those questions. I do think that things are changing. I do think we can learn from other masters as well. Everybody’s doing some really cool things. I don’t think it needs to be a competition. I think there’s enough business out there for everybody, which is the most important thing. I will just say this though, and it’s important. And the carriers always end up becoming our friends and some of the best carrier friends we have will say, Hey man, your friendship is too important to me until we’re stable. Don’t sell me because I don’t want to risk you or your partner that’s super cool but someone can put you know take take the money part out of their pockets and say hey the relationship is more importantly right now the friendship I’ve known these guys for 20 years when they say so like that that means a lot being there when there’s troubles I mean anybody can take orders and high-five and love you when you’re selling them but when there’s issues and trouble tickets and outages that’s so much so much more important to guys like us because then we can trust that person we know they’ll be there and what they don’t realize is even though they’re getting beat up they’re actually going to get more business because they took care of us. So that’s really important, I think, to me and my partner base and referral base and our group. And I think that’s really it from my end. So I don’t see any more questions.

Speaker 0 | 32:49.047

No, man, that’s great. Thank you very much. I’m gonna let you get back to your family and you have a great night. We’re going to do this again.

Speaker 1 | 32:54.569

Thank you, my friend. Appreciate it.