Chamber Chat: JOINK

Hear from the CEO of JOINK as we explore how fiber internet is transforming our region. With a strong focus on community and local engagement, JOINK is more than just an internet provider—they’re a partner in progress. Join us to learn how their work is supporting local businesses and strengthening the communities they serve.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Chamber Chat. Today we are very excited. We have Matt Van Housen with Joink here today. And I'm sure people are seeing your trucks all around town. So, Matt, tell us a little bit about you to start.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Sure, sure. So originally from Lawrence, Kansas. So I'm a Kansan by heart. I'd been there for about 40 years, 40. And then the last uh 50, oh more than that, a little 10 years ago, my family and I moved to Sarasota, Florida. So that's where that's where we're all based. But I am the Terra Hope now with the company, and I've been here for the last about 18 months. I'm here 26 of 30 days a month. I go home usually one weekend a month to kind of catch up on things. It's helped when your kids get to college.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Because you you become much more of an empty nester. My wife's good about coming up here to see me as well. So uh nope, uh that that's my background. University of Kansas. I'm a CPA, I'm also an attorney.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So I I went to school way too long. I'm sure some of those jobs will become obsolete as AI continue. It does progress.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

It does continue.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So I'm I'm glad I got those behind me already.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah. So uh what brought you, I mean, what was kind of the the trajectory that brought you to joink? Sure. Um, because you know, you think about CPA and attorney, and oh, here we are in, you know, that branding.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, so I started over 20 years ago in the fiber world, and uh my first position was I was a chief financial officer and a general counsel for a fiber company.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I did that for multiple years under a private equity ownership, and then I left that to work with uh another construction company outside the private equity world, and then I jumped back into the private equity side. Uh I was looking for something in the Midwest. I just really, really enjoy the Midwest. Florida's great, it's hot.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

It is.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

And based on my pale skin, it doesn't take much for me to start turning crispy. Um and I've always enjoyed the Midwest area, and somebody contacted me and said, hey, we have this opportunity we'd like to you look at. And uh came to visit the folks here and hit it off. And I love the community, I love the area, and it's been a good transition.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Well, good. So your office is actually based in Terre Haute, correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Okay, so we're in Terre Haute. We also own a sister company in Taylorville, Illinois.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So I I go between the two. I'm in Indiana a lot more. The executive team's in is in Terre Haute. Uh, and Taylorville, like I said, they're they're a little bit smaller than the Terre Haute operations, but they're still very integral-wise.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

And then you guys just came to the Danville area, Hendricks County area, just recently. How recently was that? That was sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So we started in Hendricks County roughly five months ago. We started in Avon and Danville at the same time. So we're in Avon, we're in Danville doing construction. We just started Mooresville and we're in Brownsburg now.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

So when you say that, so tell us like somebody's wanting to get your services. What do those services look like? Sure. And you know, what's the difference between you guys and somebody else?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Sure. So we are pure internet. I mean that we're the service you want when you're doing streaming, you're you're doing your gaming, your your home connectivity. That's what we do. Um, we're not cable, so we're not gonna we're not gonna provide channels and lineups. Uh, we're moving away from that. And you can even see in the cable industry, they're moving away from that. Uh-huh. They're having trouble keeping subscribers because people are getting away from traditional cable. I think about my own home now. Uh I'm embarrassed to say, but I think we've got Netflix, YouTube TV, Disney, Hulu, Apple TV, and yet I have no cable service because I can get anything I need from YouTube TV, generally is what I'm on while watching sports. So that's where a pure internet play. Now we're internet, so when we're fiber internet, so fiber internet runs over glass. Glass is what's in those little tubes, which allows data to transmit extremely fast. Um, light speed. You compare that to what cable is, cable uh most times runs over copper.

unknown 4:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

And copper, while it transmits, is very, very slow. It's limited in how fast copper can move a signal. That's why you see people moving, that's why the fiber's taken over. Ever everything's fiber, nobody's putting in copper. Uh that's a legacy uh technology that no one's going to no one's going to use. It's too slow for what we need today. So as you think about your family, or I think about my family, um, the whole world is connected now. And it used to be that like when I started off, I'm gonna date myself, it was a big deal to get a 10-meg service. Well, now everything's in gig service, which is a thousand megs. Right. And then most of our offerings are gonna be anywhere from a thousand gig, or sorry, one gig, we'll just call it one gig, up to five gig. Which right now, does everybody need all that? Not today, but will they need it very shortly? Absolutely. Especially if you game, if you've got gamers in your house, gaming's a huge uh internet drain, or I should say, uh a data drain. From that point, uh, as your homes become more connected, you're gonna see more and more need for uh bandwidth. So that's what fiber provides. It's unlimited bandwidth. In fact, the only thing that stops the amount of bandwidth is the electronics on the end. Okay. Fiber itself is almost unlimited bandwidth, or not bandwidth, but the the speed is unlimited.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

So if I were to look at a map of Danville right now, um, kind of are there certain areas that you guys are really hitting, or are you guys trying to pretty much cover the entire Danville area?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

It'll be the entire town. But any town we go into, we do the entire town. Um, we try to avoid uh overbuilding existing fiber plants that make a lot of sense for the customer or us. Um, but most areas in Danville do not have uh buried fiber. Uh in Avon is the same way. So in all those communities, we will have buried fiber in each of those communities throughout.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

So one of the things you know our chamber is really focused on is economic development. Um so what are some things that obviously adding this can help in our economic development in some of our development areas?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Fiber greatly increases home, not say greatly, it increases home values. Now, it increases amount in five years, it's going to be just a necessity. You're not gonna have neighborhoods that don't have fiber. What you're going to see over the next five years is you'll have 98 to 99% of all homes in the United States will have fiber. It's just that critical.

unknown 6:47

Um, so it allows you, it allows enterprise businesses to come in because they've got the speed and connectivity they need.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

It allows other corporations, it allows hospitals to be able to transmit data better. And then again, as we're seeing the increase in AI and the need for that connectivity and that kind of data, um, it's going to make internet or sorry, bandwidth even more important, and having that fiber in the ground is critical. The other thing about what we do is all our fiber is buried. So unfortunately here in the Midwest, you know, tornado seasons right around the corner, and when you're on the poles, uh you will lose connectivity, and the ability to restore those is often hindered because you cannot restore those poles with fiber until the power's been restored. There's a certain corner in which it goes. Well, everything we do is underground, so power will take us out. Now, granted, we have battery backup systems that we sell to customers that that are that keep up that keep them live for a couple days. Um, but you don't have to worry about your internet going down, it's underground. And that that's the beauty of buried fiber.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

That's great. So if um if someone wanted to learn more about joink, what is the best way for someone to learn about your services or what you guys offer?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yep, joink.com, you know, just the the website will have everything somebody needs. There's an ability to sign up there. Uh you can figure out if if you have service today, if it's available where you are. Uh, you can sign up for pre-interest, we contact you to let you know when you're going to be, when we're going to be in your area. The rate plans are right there. You're what you're going to see is as we're building, we release information into uh each of the cities. We'll do it through the press, we'll do it through uh you know Google, you know, uh Google stories, and then eventually we'll send out door-to-door people to solicit interest. Uh, it seems old school, but that's still the most common way. It is the most common way that people uh sign up our services through door-to-door. If they do the e-com, the good news is if they just sign up electronic, if they sign up online, it's in our system and we will not go bother them with door-to-door. There you go. So one avoidance is about the service.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

You don't want somebody knocking on your door. There's no way to go about it. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

It even amazes me to this day how many people are so used to doing everything electronically, but yet door-to-door is still the most common way to receive uh service. It's it's interesting to me.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, I think until you have somebody in front of your face, you don't really think about it. Like it's it's fine, it's whatever, you know. And I think I think seeing the work going around going on around the county, you know, around town and the county has kind of sparked some interest, I will say that.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Oh, yeah, some good, some bad. I mean, yeah, the the thing about the thing about underground fiber is um, you know, we're always making sure we're legally in the right-of-way. The folks here at the county or the city have been great. We uh we work with Barry Lofton.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Um, he's very good, he's an advocate for fiber, he knows the value it brings to the community. But as you do that, what you know, we have to we have to, what it's called boring, so we have to go under the ground, we have to come up and and run our fiber through our hand holes. And when we do that, there are areas that we disrupt. If there are areas we disrupt, contact us. Um, I'll even uh give you something to put on the website later on about contact us versus putting this individual's information out publicly. Right here, I'll do it, I'll do it uh on a website, you guys can see it. But we always restore yards. If somebody has a problem, contact us because we will go out, we hydrose it, we will put down straw. Thankfully, right now, this is the best time of year to be digging because things repair itself very quickly in the spring. I really don't like when we uh are digging or boring in the wintertime because it's gonna stay bad from October till April. Everything's gonna grow. So it's very important to us that uh we're not destroying your property or your arms. We try to be very good about that best we can. But but we will we we will make things worse, we make them better, but we always fix them.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So, what are benefits that you would sell a um a business looking to switch to to you guys? Um what you know, one of our commercial It's speed and reliability.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

It it's definitely speed and reliability. So what like I said, we offer everything from one gig to seven gig on the one gig side. By the way, we for most places we lock prices for three to five years, depending on what we're what we're selling. So that gives them budget security. I I don't know about you, but as I've watched gas prices over the last 30 days, I would like my gas prices to be stable for the next five years.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Unfortunately, that's not happening. No, and then also you have a local presence. So when you call us, you will I can tell you this 85% of the time we will talk to somebody in Terre Hot or or um Taylorville. Okay, 15% of the time you're calling our after hours. We have we have to have a third party handle it so they're not local, but we're available and then we send people out. We take pride in making sure that your service is up and running. If you have an issue, we we will get to it within 24 hours. We have to because the internet is no longer a luxury. Yeah, it's a commodity. I mean, I I'm not trying to dismiss what we do, but it's being commoditized. It's it's you have options as a as a customer, which is great. Um for us on our on the business side, it's it's uh I'd like to have a monopoly, but first off the illegal, and then second side, I mean um it's not good for the consumer, it's not good for the environment, but economic environment. So from our perspective, uh critical that we keep the consumer happy. So for a business. The other thing about businesses too, depending on uh the nature of the business, we have the ability to put forth what we call redundant services. We can bring in one side of the building, go out another, connect a different part of the plant. So if any part of the plant does go down, the other part of the plant stays open. So that way they always have connectivity.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Oh, that's nice.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

That's very important for businesses. Yeah, you cannot do that with aerial. You can do it with a buried underground better because we can I can connect in different parts of my service, but it's more difficult on the aerial side.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

That's very cool. I never thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Hospital hot, for example, hospitals has to have it, they have to have redundant networks.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Okay. Are you a Hendrix? Are you guys in Hendricks yet? Uh not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

That'd be one of our goals.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Okay, a great member of ours. So we appreciate them very much. Um, so rural areas. So what is the plan to expand? Um, I know a lot of our um our followers are from uh let's say the Coatesville Heritage Lake area, um, kind of that that area. What what's your what's your plan for expansion beyond where we're at now?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Well, what's interesting about a lot of those locations is the federal government over the last 15 years has been a strong advocate for getting fiber to those communities. So depending on what's available now in those communities, some of those communities may already, I won't say be covered, they may be covered through what are called next level connections, okay, which is a grant program. They don't have to apply to it, it's already been handled. There's also another program called BEAD started. So some of those folks may be receiving connectivity eventually through those programs, which over the next 24 months, I'd have to look at to figure out where everybody is and what their density is. For us, it's a mathematical equation. It's so for example, we may go into a neighborhood where we may be going along and we'll be like, hey, that neighborhood only has three houses, it's a mile build, the economics doesn't work. But if all three sign up and and you're like, oh, wait a minute, we can make this work because we judge everything on based on being able to get to a 25%. We assume we're gonna get 25% of a neighborhood and we go in, maybe 30%. We want to do more than that. But certain areas, if if we have people express interest and say, hey, me and my neighbors are here, we're all agreeing to sign up, you guys can come, it makes it a lot easier for us to look at that and build it then in those situations.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

So someone could sign up or potentially say, Hey, we're interested. And so then it would ping you guys. Well, it might not be available right now, but if they go on and say, hey, they're interested, then that then that shows up on you. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, we map it so it hits our internal system. If they go online and they're check availability and it says not available, provide your information. Another tip, type your address slowly. This thing auto-populates for you. And if you type too fast, it actually will skip you. Um, put your address in there, and then it puts it on the website or tells us on our back end maps, hey, here's where you're receiving interest, and then we look at that to figure out where we're going next. Goal this year is we're gonna spend, you know, just under $100 million in building this year. So we've got capital to spend and we're trying to figure out, make sure we build everything out. Like this year, our focus is Avon, Danville, Plainfield, Mooresville, Brownsburg. Great. We'll have all those done in the next, I don't know. Each each county's different or each town's different. Danville should be done in the next 90 days. Oh wow, that's quick. Yep, 90 days. Um, Avon, I would say the next 120 days, Brownsburg, 120, 150 days, Mooresville, 120 days. They're all simultaneously being built right now.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

That's cool. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah, we want to be out of your hair. Trust me. We we don't we don't like being disruptive.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

I think, I mean, I think for the most part, I would from what I've seen, you know, it's you know, been I it's gone fairly smoothly, in my opinion. Um, you know, I I you know people have mentioned, hey, I've got holes in my yard, you know, so but I think you've just given a solution to that. It's you know, we're gonna give somebody to that they can call and say, hey, got a hole in my yard, come fix it.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

And we've refill the dirt, we throw seed, we put straw down, Mother Nature usually takes care of the rest, especially this time of year. I mean, in fact, this next week is supposed to be rainy five days, so great.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I didn't see that.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Great for uh seed, not great for seed for everything else.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yes, not for golf or you know, all the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Or even us building because mud's not our friend either.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Oh, yeah, no, I can imagine working in that. Um, you guys have become very involved in our community, um, at which I think is amazing that if you're going to do business in the community, get involved in the community. Um, but what's what are some of the things I know you guys have sponsored our concerts, you've sponsored, I believe, our golf outing, you've sponsored just about everything we've put out, you guys. Um, but what are some other things that you guys um support in different communities that people don't know about? Because I feel like you guys do put your guys yourselves.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Oh no, we do. I and Terre Hope, we do our treat giving where we adopt several families every year at Christmas. Um, you know, we started we try to stay really close to uh like local law enforcement. Uh unfortunately there are some times where they need us. Yeah, those aren't good events. You know, we get subpoenas that where internet activity is taking place that's not good, and we want to make sure they've got an outlet with us, they know they can contact us. I will say that our team, when those happen, uh we're we're back to law enforcement within an hour by the time we get a request. Those things are critical to us. Um, we're very involved in almost every chamber and in cities that are large and have chambers. It's I know the term is used, I would say it's used almost ad nauseum, but you want to be a partner in the city where you are. You want to be supportive of the community, you want to be supportive of the schools. We do a lot of stuff with schools. Uh in fact, I'm sponsoring an esports team right now and you know, two in Illinois right now.

unknown 18:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Um so we want to be involved in any way we can because we're gonna be here. We're gonna be here long-term fiber. I mean, there is no shelf life or fiber. Like it's gonna be in your ground forever.

unknown 18:57

It's not there's not gonna be new technology technology on the horizon. Uh we have an office opening up uh in Avon.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

It's gonna be on the uh towards Dandle side that opens up in about 30 days. Uh, people will come in and see us. So we're always excited to help with schools, charity events, fundraisers, auctions. We've done about everything that I can think of.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

I I like that you know, as a business, you are getting involved in the community. Um one of your employees, Matt Rowe, has been to have been to so much and and connected so much. And um, I teased him the other day, I waved at him at one of the events. I was on the other side of the room and I gave a big wave, and he was like, and he goes, Kelly, I'm so popular. I can't, you know, and I'm like, I get it, Matt. I get it. Oh, we have to do it in some ways.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

No one knows who we are. I mean, even though we're only in Terre Hot, that that's you know, it's only 71 miles. That's what my phone said today when I took off to come here. But no one knows who we are. And you have to get your own name out there so they understand that you're not just coming in and then we're leaving the town, we're building and leaving. No, I mean, every crew that's working right now is from this area. Um, so we're we're heavily invested. In fact, the employees we're hiring right now are being hired from the Danville Avon area to help service customers on a go-forward basis.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

So are you our hiring then? So yeah. Okay, all right. So we'll put that out there. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah, yeah. Uh we we're always needing more technicians. Um, actually, there's several roles. I mean, go online, uh, whether it's sales, whether it's technicians, uh, we're at social media right now, is one of our job postings right now. There's there's a lot going on. We have roughly 225 employees, so we're a decent sized company, and uh we're gonna have to continue to grow in order for us to scale the way we need to grow over the next you know several years. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Well, how far, I mean, how I mean, because I feel like you guys are growing pretty quickly in this area. Um, as a company, how how how much have you guys grown just since you've come on?

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Oh, uh tremendously. So we've I'm just doing the math here, we've more than doubled our size in the last 16 months of where we were. Wow. And then if we finish our plans this year the way I expect us to, then our total growth over the last two years will be 200 plus percent growth.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Are you seeing any growing pains or your just nothing that the customer would notice, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Or or is it, you know, there's nothing I I'm just thinking, there's nothing nothing customer impacting comes to mind. Uh-huh. The biggest growing pains are probably some some of the similar growing pains that you guys see in the Anvil area, where it's growing around you so fast that you probably don't have all the infrastructure in place you need, the people you need, the systems you need. We're no different. We're just a microcosm of that.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

So you look at us about, you know. Know, I always we're always looking at processes, we're looking at different different ways we should go about handling challenges in front of us. We're building so fast that we put a strain on municipalities. Okay. I mean, uh Poor Barry. I mean, we we are submitting stuff to him all the time, and he's doing a great job getting back to us and keeping us uh you know rolling. But imagine us doing that to every community we're in. Yeah, and there's also communities that we go into where they're smaller, they don't even have a permit process.

unknown 22:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

So you're having to like invent one for them to help them. And then internally, you you realize for just as an example, as you've as we've doubled and tripled our growth. Well, you went from having you know X number of customers to 3x, well, then you need that many more people in the call center, you need that many more technicians, you need that many more people to be hands-on. We we pride ourselves because we're smaller, we have to pride ourselves on service delivery. So when you have an outage, it's a big deal to us. When we are in your home, we make sure that that employee that's in your home is one of our employees. We don't subcontract that. That's that's a joint employee. If there's a problem, contact joint. Um, our guys have been doing this a long time and they're very good at what they do, but we have to differentiate ourselves somehow. Because again, I made the comment to you earlier, fiber in itself is a commodity. So you have to differentiate yourself on something. Yes, there's only what's their way to do it. It's price, speed, and quality of service.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

So you talked about um some of the grants for the rural committee communities, um, as a state, because one of the things we focus on here is advocacy for for our businesses. Um, are things at the state or federal level that affect you guys um, you know, in your in your business?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yes. Uh, you know, I have not seen as much, well, the state can, yeah, actually. One of the one of the things that we're seeking the state's help with has been on, we have a lot of issues with our locate processes. So anytime we go to build your neighborhood, we have to have somebody come out and locate the existing infrastructure that's there, whether that's water, sewer, cable, other telecommunications, whatever it may be. Um we have to follow those laws carefully. But we also don't want to be impeded, we don't want to be impeded, I think it's word, uh by inability to get locates down. Okay. So we work with the state trying to figure out how do we change the 811 processes to make sure that, hey, when we call something in, somebody's out there within the statutory guidelines to make sure that we can do our job. We will never build a locate, we don't operate that way. But we also want to be as least disruptive as possible to your community. So we got to get in and get out fast.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Um, within the states, I don't see a lot of legislation right now, especially in the Indiana side, that's going to negatively impact us, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Great.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

They're advocates for the fiber, they're advocates for connectivity. It's been fine. Federally speaking, they revamped the Bede process. That has not been detrimental to us in any way. We're trying to be sensible to the taxpayer, though. So, for example, there are some BED awards that we won in the last year where we've contacted the state and said, hey, we know you're gonna pay us to build this, but we're not gonna build it because somebody's already built there and save the money. Oh, it doesn't make sense. While we could we could technically, I mean, under the spirit of the law, we we should let them know. Right. I know some people don't, we do. We don't overbuild somebody that's already there. And we contact the state, let them know, hey, take that off the map, let those people know that there's service available, and we we won't build those areas.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

That's smart. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah, it's my taxpayer dollars too.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah, agreed. Um, all right, so just kind of wrapping up things. Um, what's one leadership lesson that you've learned that others can benefit from?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Sure. I don't take things personally.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

I just don't. Uh I don't lose sleep over conflict or over challenges. I know it's not about Matthew. I know that that when I'm not getting located, I'm not sitting back going, I'm gonna go on Matthew today, or if I'm not getting a permit on time. I just don't take things personally. And I don't take personally when when you're having to make decisions, when you're objective in your decision making and you're objective in how you go about conducting your business, it makes it much easier to at least for my world, to run operations and run a company, is to remain objective. But I just I just don't take things personally.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

That's impressive. That's very impressive. I um I wish I could do that more sometimes. Um yeah. Was there something that you I mean, was it just a switch that you decided to do, or or is that just kind of the way that you've always been?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

No, it was a switch. So I was really struggling, probably doing the math 15 years ago, maybe. Uh, I was struggling at work where I felt out of control. I felt like um things were mounting and piling on me where I was I was struggling. And I decided to actually see a therapist to be like, hey, I need somebody to help me work through this. Because my wife's sweet, you know, the best advocate in the world. But you don't, it's like when you tell your children they're beautiful and they don't believe you, and then someone tells they're beautiful, like, oh, they said I was beautiful. You're like, I know. I say that all the time. Um, I went to a therapist and he's like, I want you to read this book. I can't remember the name of the book. If I remember, I'll tell you. Um, and it was all about redefining and reassessing information as it's coming at you.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

And it almost drives my family crazy how little I get worked up about things. Um, in general, I just don't, even family stuff, like family dramas, not internally, not my immediate family. Right. But things I'm like, hey, you don't know what's going on in their world though.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

You don't know what caused it. Like, I don't honk at people, I don't get mad when I'm driving. It's not about me. They're not those things that happened, they weren't doing it to upset me. At least I don't think they are. Um they're just not. They've had a bad day. I've tried to put myself in their shoes. I've become more empathetic to people around me and this and the and the challenges they have in their own lives. And the therapist really put me on the right path of not taking things personally. And I and I live by that, and I think I'm a much better leader because of that.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

I think that's great advice. I really like that. If you think of the book, I really want to know.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

I will tell you. I'll get when I get back, I'll see it at home. I just can't run the own, but I'll find out though and let you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Okay. Um, anything else you want our listeners to know about you or joink?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

No, just that we're we're partners in the community. Contact us if we're failing to uphold the standards that I'm talking about here today with you. Let us know if especially the yards. I mean, people are very prideful of their of their lawns and they should be, and let us know. We we will go fix those things. And I I think about some of my relatives that I have that that their yards are like they're children.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

And when somebody's come in and scarred their child, they want their child to be, you know, fixed. So uh we're here for the long haul. I'm excited to be in your community. Uh, it it is a wonderful city that we can see the growth here. Uh, when I look at a lot of the Indiana communities that we built in, I want to say that Avon Danville are probably two of the fastest growing areas that we've built ever in our history. And we're excited to grow with you guys as you get bigger and you know, you need you need help where let us know.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

It's been interesting the growth. Um, you know, it in in some respects, I think, you know, we have the growing pains of, oh my goodness. Um, but um also just really working to keep the integrity of that small town charm that we have. Um, because you know, we do some amazing things on our square and um some great events and concerts, local, you know, free local concerts. So those are things um, you know, they think that will continue as a chamber to really um help promote and and through our community, but you know, definitely the economic growth, um especially you know, as we're trying to entice businesses to move here, um, that 3% tax um really does help relieve some of that 1% household income. So, so yeah, so that's one of the things we're focused on here.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

And you'll start to see uh you'll one of the things you're gonna start to see in a lot of communities is because of the increasing demand of AI, you're gonna start to see more what they call hyperscalers and data centers, small data centers coming in in order to be what they call it on the edge. Communities like Daniel Avon will thrive by having more of those little data centers and hyperscalers coming in. And what they need is connectivity and they need power and they need a community supportive of what they can bring to the community. You're gonna see more of those coming through, I'll guarantee you, over the next 12 months.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

You know, we met with um the CEO of Hendrix Power, he came and spoke at our um chamber meeting, I guess it was last year, last fall. Um, and I think there's a lot of misconceptions about data centers and and the and the strain that they're gonna put on um our power and and those kind of things. And I he didn't I didn't after speaking with them, I didn't feel like that at all.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, they need power and they need water. Those are their two big events. And if you can handle those, they bring jobs, they bring high-paying jobs too, by the way. Um, you're just gonna see them popping up all over the United States. We we get bids all the time sent to us from uh agents or brokers saying, hey, we're looking at this area, this county, what would it cost to build fiber there? And we're talking massive amounts of fiber. So but order to stay ahead, though, and for your children to stay ahead and your children's children stay ahead, you're gonna need that level of connectivity. That's just where we're going, whether we want to embrace it or not, we're gonna have to get there.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Well, and I think so many people, like my husband, are now working from home, and and it's you know amazing to have reliable internet that he's able to do that, or else he'd actually have to go rent an office somewhere. So it's it's been great. So thank you so much for coming in. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Yeah, and hopefully we can do this in a few months when we get completed and we can start talking about future things we're doing and love to do it again at some point.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

That would be great.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Thank you.