That Time We Talked To Tachus Internet Provider (Part 2)

This is episode number 104 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you could join us for part 2 of our episode with Takis.

That is right, number 2.

We were having so much fun, we just had to do it again. Yeah.

Well, you know, sometimes you wind up doing a show and you think, man, this is gonna be really good. And then it goes on and on and on.

Well, because it's fun. We're having a good time.

It was really good. Great information.

And we could have kept going, honestly. I mean, we talked a little bit after the show when we got done recording this one. And, uh, we, I mean, we, we did talk for longer. We just didn't, we didn't capture it. We got some good stuff. We just didn't, we didn't record that.

Yeah, no, we didn't. But, um, all that being said, I think that many of you who listened to last week's episode, you're like, man, there's some other things that I wanted to know. Yeah, well, guess what? Here's your chance. That's what this episode is gonna be. So that's right, we're gonna go ahead and, uh, and, and let you in there. But before we do that, we got a couple of things we want to, want to talk about first.

Yeah, just, just real quick, we want to give a really cool shout out to our new friend Lauren Fox. I don't know, is this, is this in shot?

It is.

Okay, so this is a coaster that he, uh, he sent to us with a little, little note on the back that's just for us. You can't see that. Um, but, uh, it's, it's our logo on a coaster. And, uh, next week we'll actually show you the big sign that he sent us that he made for us. Super, super cool. Lauren Fox, uh, I don't know if we don't have a link. I don't know if he has like an Etsy shop. Lauren, if you have an Etsy shop or, or something like that, Let us know what it is so that we can put the links in the show notes. So if people wanna go, you know,

get something printed on wood, and this is like cut, it's like textured. Yeah, super, super cool. And we'll show you the sign next week, but really, really cool. We got to talk to him online and he's doing some really, really neat stuff. So thank you, Loren.

That's right. Well, listen, thanks for tuning into the show today. We're gonna go ahead and let you in on the second half of our conversation, the part 2 of our conversation with Takis. Thanks for downloading the show.

Enjoy. Yeah, so I guess the next logical question here is what, what makes one router better than the other? Because there's so many things on the market and, and you talk to so many different people and they're gonna say, hey, go with this one, go with that one. I'm gonna tell you every time, you know, if you, if you have a, a large house, go with the mesh system. Um, and people that may not know what that means is basically, um, You've got a router, but then there's other access points that you put in your home and you don't have to switch what's called an SSID, which is just basically your network name. You don't have to switch network names in order to go

to a different device in your home and have connectivity. So it's true full house expandable options. But maybe you don't need that. Maybe you have the option of putting the router in the very middle of your home and you can use something that's not quite as expensive and maybe you only need one router instead of a mesh system that has multiple access points. So the question becomes, what makes one router better than the other then? It's another tough question because there's a very long-winded technical answer to that. And I'll try to come up with some better analogies than what I've come up with so far. But, you know, in summary, the hardware inside is— they're different. So one thing to keep in mind is And I'll come back to answer

that in a second, but I think I might preface the answer with wireless works like sound. It is sound. It's just sound that we can't hear. Yeah. And you think about if you and I were inside your home having a conversation in the middle of your living room, we don't have to talk very loud. We hear each other very well. And we continue the conversation and I walk down the hall upstairs and go into a closet and close the door. I close the door. I can't hear you, you can't hear me very well. Right. Right? That's how wireless works. It works just like sound. So the more walls you have, the more wireless devices you have that

are also making noise. I mean, think about it this way. Again, I'm in your living room having a conversation with you. We can speak very clearly and we hear each other, don't have to talk very loud. Then all of a sudden we get transplanted in the middle of a heavy metal concert. with everyone yelling, you and I can't hear each other very well. That's what happens whenever you have more wireless devices within your home that are all yelling at the same time. It's noise. So all those things you have to consider, and that's why the mesh systems work so well, is that you don't have a single device that's talking back and forth to your other devices. You kind of spread that out. But, you know, what makes— kind of circling back to

what makes one device better than another, It's the components that are inside of it, the number of antennas, the— using the voice and sound analogy, how loud they are, how well they can hear. And, again, I feel like I'm saying this more than I should. I hope this is kind of making sense. 'Cause I can't think of many other analogies, but other than you have to think that wireless devices, they communicate via sound that we can't hear, and the better devices can hear better and yell louder. You kind of get what you pay for, don't you?

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'll just give you an example. My Eero mesh system, It's a— it's the Eero Pro router with 2 beacons that you can plug into other places in your house. So basically there's 3 access points. It's like $400. So it's not cheap to get that system. That's today. Now it may be, you know, depending on when you're listening to this, it could be less expensive in the future. But you could also go buy a $100 router. or maybe even an $80 router, and would it do the job? Well, it all kind of depends. And I think one of the things that people need to kind of determine is what do they need out of their router? I mean, for Craig and for me, when we've got children at home, we need some

filters and we need the option to lock down or pause our internet or to, you know, put content filters And, you know, so that, you know, our children don't get to things that they don't need to be getting to. Certain, certain routers give you the opportunity to lock some certain parts of the internet down where others don't necessarily give you that option. So, you know, knowing your family and knowing the way your internet is being used, I think makes a big difference in which router is going to be the right one for you. So it's not a blanket answer. But you do, you get what you pay for. If you find a cheap router and someone tells you it's great, well, they're probably wrong, frankly.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, up to a certain point, you know, I can say that I have worked with some commercial or enterprise, quote unquote enterprise-grade wireless devices, wireless access points. And they weren't really any better than some others that were much more economically priced. But I can say that if you go out and buy something off Amazon for $50 or $60, I would say the range between $50 and $500, you absolutely get what you pay for within that range. You go over and above the 500 mark, you're paying for a name, you're paying for marketing, you're really not getting much for your money over and above that.

Right.

But, you know, so that would be my 2 cents. And I can say that we have had, just like yourself, Kevin, we've had many, many, many clients that have raved about the Eero Pro mesh system. You know, it's not cheap, but it's a set it and forget it. You know, you buy it, you're done. Yeah. And you don't have to worry. Wireless becomes a non-issue at that point. It does. And, and, and there's some really cool things that I can do with my phone. Like, I'm, I'm 30 miles away from my house right now, and if I want to pause the internet at my house, I can do it. And, uh, you know, that's a,

that's a nice little feature. I mean, that, you know, we, Craig and I talk about, about family life quite a bit and how important our families are. And, you know, you can set your internet to work at certain times and to not work at other times. And you can really, you, with the eero, I can see every single device that is on my, on my internet, um, router, on my router that's connected. And I can set each one of them to a different profile, and each one of those profiles can have their own content filters. So, you know, if I want, if I want my daughter to have, you know, if I want her internet to shut down at 8 o'clock at night, but I want my

son's to shut down at 6 o'clock at night, I can do that. And it doesn't come back on until I tell it to. So there are a lot of things that You have the ability to do with some of these systems that others don't give you the ability to do. Now, some people are going to listen to this and go, look, it's just me and my— it's my husband and my wife and or whatever. It's just 2 of us living at home and we don't really do anything but watch TV and answer phone calls. Well, maybe you don't need all of that stuff, but kind of knowing who you are and what you need in your house, I think that kind of goes to what speeds you

need. you know, all that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, all of it kind of plays into how you're using what it is that you have, and that's going to determine, you know, what you need, you know. And, and how— I mean, going back to your analogy about the, you know, being in your house and then, and then moving over to the rock concert, um, if I'm, if I'm understanding what you're talking about You know, moving over to like the rock concert, it doesn't necessarily mean that just because you're logged in to that Wi-Fi network doesn't mean that the other networks around you aren't creating noise. So you don't necessarily have to be logged into those

networks in order for them to be, you know, deterring your speed and slowing things down and making noise. They're still there, especially in these neighborhoods where these houses are, you know, are so close together. Am I hearing that right? Yeah, yeah, you are. I mean, kind of add to that, you know, people living in apartment homes or condominiums or townhomes. Yeah. They have a lot of wireless challenges because their neighbors are talking over their wireless within their home. So yeah, you get it. With a wireless router, gosh, we could have a whole other segment just talking about wireless. But you are correct. I mean, So in other words, it's not necessarily a good thing that all those other networks are showing

up like on your phone that you're like, what are all these other networks? That's not necessarily a good thing. That's just noise being created. No, it's not a good thing. It's a bad thing. Yeah. It's good to be in the sticks. Yes. To a certain degree, which by the way, we need to get you guys out to my neighborhood because one of the challenges of the Homeowner Show is that the internet is terrible in the studio. Yep. I wish I had a dollar for everyone that said that. I'd probably be living on an island somewhere at this point, but— Hey, I would love to help you get to that island. Well, so— I'd love to bring internet to your neighborhood. Yeah.

Yeah, we'd love to get there.

Come on. Yeah, and I'll kind of speak to that for a minute. Like, one of the things you talked about is that y'all create your own infrastructure. You're not piggybacking off of anybody else. So, for example, whenever y'all came into our neighborhood, You had to get a certain number of buy-in from the homeowners to say, yes, we will preorder this before you would be willing to spend the money. I can't even imagine how much money it takes to put down the infrastructure to lay all of that fiber cable. And just to kind of, kind of put this into perspective, um, y'all had a major problem that happened, I don't know, maybe 2 and a half or 3 months ago. At the corner of 105 and

Walden Road. Do you remember what I'm talking about? Oh, absolutely. There was a drilling company that was there doing work for another utility. Yeah, another utility company came in and started drilling without knowing what they were drilling through and drilled right through the backbone of that entire area, correct? Correct.

Yeah, so that's correct.

So let me put this into perspective for everyone. So I didn't know what happened. Everybody, like Nextdoor and the Facebook community pages were all blowing up. You know, I don't have any internet. What's going on? What's going on? And within about 30 minutes, maybe 45, we get a text from TACUS that says, Our, our main backbone has been cut. Like, they— there's like a— and we got a text and an email with like multiple paragraphs explaining what had happened and that they were going to get it back online as soon as possible. This took roughly, if I remember correctly, roughly 6 hours to fix. Am I right on that timeframe? Do you remember how long it took to fix?

Yeah, that's about right.

It was down from about 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock that morning until about 4:45. Yeah, you know, we had to replace about a half mile of cable.

Oh my God. And then splice in at multiple points to get that back up and running. And y'all, yeah, it's just, that's crazy that in 6 hours you got out there You got half a mile relayed and got us back going. And then on top of that, you kind of took it a step further and like sent another email out saying, hey, we're very sorry. You know, this is not the type of service we try to, you know, we try to offer. And yet, you know, we had no control over this, you know, that sort of thing. I, you know, I can't imagine if that happened with some of these other companies, How many days we would have been without service because you just, you do a

great job. And I want to tell you from a consumer side, I thoroughly appreciate the fact that it only took 6 hours because that could have been a much bigger ordeal and you would have had a lot of people complaining, obviously, over something that you had zero control over. Yeah. You know, I appreciate that. You know, we look at it as what would, you know, since we started with a clean sheet of paper, we look at it as what would we want our internet provider to be like if we could start with a clean sheet and create a Christmas wishlist?

Yeah.

And that's what we've done and we're continuing to improve on it. Everyone around the office knows this saying from me is that I hate fire drills. I'd rather get a red light than a fire drill. And that was a fire drill. Yeah, yeah. You know, so to, to prevent the fire drills, we have been in the process, and you've probably seen some of the construction building around the east side of the lake to complete a ring. So in the future, you know, roll forward a little bit, If that were to happen again, which God hopes it doesn't, but if that were to happen again, we get a red light. We know it was cut. You know nothing happened.

Yes.

You continue to be up as if nothing happened, and we don't have to have everyone run out there to pull in half a mile of cable and splice in and everything else. We can worry about it tomorrow because no one's down. Yeah, so we're in the process of building that. That's beautiful. That's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, Kevin, we— Yeah, go ahead, please.

No, thanks for that. I mean, just to give you an idea of what, you know, what we've done in a relatively short period of time in the Lake Conroe area, we've invested over $15 million in the infrastructure in the ground.

Wow.

And so as you can imagine, we treat it like our baby, right? And we treat every single customer like Like it's our internet connection there. And so we pride ourselves on having a— on effectively delivering to the customer as close as possible, if not even better, than an enterprise-grade connection into their home. And so when you say enterprise-grade, that means 4 nines of reliability, 99.99% up all the time. And so because we know that people are working from home, we know that they are educating their children from home. And before COVID it's the same thing. Nothing has changed for us, but frankly, the magnitude, the gravity of what we're offering, the service that we're giving, you know, we

treat that really seriously. And to have something like that happen in the midst of a global pandemic when people are trying to work from home, when they're trying to wrap up the school year, this is in early May, I think you're referring to.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was something that really, We had already put in motion what Hal described. Quite frankly, we ended up probably building one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging areas to build a fiber network in the Houston area because of all the fingers there, right?

Yeah.

It's virtually impossible unless you go across a bridge or tunnel underneath the lake for 2 miles up along 1097 to create a loop. And so how do you do that? Well, there are a number of different ways you can. We're putting those in motion right now. We're really excited over the next few weeks, next couple of months to unveil what we have planned for our customers to really complete that. So that's why we said, look, that's not the service that we set out to deliver.

Yeah.

Even that 6-hour or 8-hour downtime that we had, As you can imagine, that's just, we wouldn't want that for our homes. And I don't care what people have gotten so far and what they're used to. At Stackz, we don't talk about everyone else. We talk about what we want to deliver and we wanna always be getting better, always improving. And so that's why we also gave a credit to our customers and said, look—

Good.

We're gonna treat you like you're a commercial customer. And if you're in a service level agreement with an enterprise, great internet provider, they provide service credits during outages if they occur, right? So if they do not hit their service level agreement, then you get a prorated amount. And so that's exactly what we did. We gave everyone a $5 rebate. It probably does not for a lot of folks. Some of them might've been impacted far more than $5, but at least we wanted to show, look, we're gonna put our money where our mouth is. We've not only invested in our network, but we've invested in you as a customer. And we want you to know that, you know, that we take this really seriously.

Well, I'll tell you this, like it made me go, I remember I told Craig about this. And if you remember, I said, they've got a customer for life out of me just for that $5 credit. I mean, it was you saying I'm sorry in a huge, huge way. And, you know, not only that, like just recently, Texas changed the tax laws for you guys. And we got an email saying that, hey, look, they're not charging internet tax like they used to. And so we're not going to keep charging you the same amount. Your bill is going to go down. It's that kind of stuff that, you know, I think we just, we live in an age where

people try to take advantage of people any way they can. And to have a company that is not willing to take advantage of, but rather say, you know what, the customer is our top priority. And without the customer, we have no company. That, that's the type of company that, that I want to stick with. So, you know, y'all are doing a lot of things right. And I guess I encourage a lot of people that don't live in this area, like, check out what your options are. You may be surprised. There might be another option. If you're not happy with the service you get, shop around and see what your options are.

Thanks for that, Kevin. And if TACUS— oh, I was just gonna say that if TACUS isn't in your area, go ahead and sign up online. You show up, you show up as a very important dot on the map. And so if we see a lot of those dots in any given area, believe me, I actually look at those dots every single day. And there's a story behind every single dot. And so there are some dots and some clusters of homes that frankly does not make business sense because at the end of the day, of course, We're trying to, you know, to make a profit and, and, and for this to be a win-win. Um, but, you know, at the end of the day, if, if there are enough dots that, that pop up, or we have homeowners associations or concerned residents

calling saying, hey, we would love to have TACUS there, believe you me, we would love to bring TACUS to you if we can.

Yeah, I, I, I— one thing I'll add to that for those that are— sorry. No, no, go ahead. Concerned, we do not, we do not sell your information. We do not use it for marketing other than If we decide that we see— or if we see that there is enough interest in an area, then we will send you an email and say, hey, we've opened it for signups. Other than that, that's it. So, for those that are afraid to put in their information, give out their email, we do not sell your information. We take privacy very seriously. And the only thing that it does, it shows us that there is an interest in the area and that we

should consider building there. So, I just thought I'd throw that out there as well. No, that, that, that actually is probably helpful to folks to want to, to sign up to, to put that, that dot on the map. You know, I mean, for, for, for guys like me, I mean, I, I tell people all the time, I think when my wife and I moved into the neighborhood that we're in now, we brought the median age down to around 77. Um, and you know, it's like these, you know, it's, it's difficult to move new technology in, into neighborhoods like what we live in. because it's, it's a little, you know, like, like you guys had kind of alluded to earlier, this is, this is kind of a

difficult area because it's traditionally kind of rural, a little more country, uh, than, you know, like inner city Houston, anywhere north, anywhere, I mean, anywhere south of 1960. It's, it's a much different community than, than, than those areas, even though we're kind of in the Houston area. But one of the, one of the big complaints I hear from people, like in my neighborhood in particular, and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna continue to push you guys to To get those dots up on the map is that most people say that, you know, they're, they're sort of living under these monopolistic regimes of internet providers where like, you know, I don't, you know, like even though the service sucks, I only have one choice. And so I've got to keep going back to these people and I can complain

even though they're not going to do anything. And I'm just kind of curious, is, is that kind of what you guys are fighting against is, is sort of these And I'm not necessarily saying monopolies are inherently evil or anything like that, but a lot of people just don't have any other options to pick from.

Yeah, that's right. And especially if you're in rural areas too, depending on the— it's called a census block, right? And depending on the area where you are, a lot of these companies, these telecom companies are getting paid money by the government to give the bare minimum there. And it's not a knock on that.

Sure.

Yeah. As long as they're serving you with FCC-defined broadband, which is 25/3, they're eligible to collect that money. But as with all those, it's nameplate capacity, right? In a vacuum. But then you start putting people on the network and suddenly it bogs down. But But yeah, I mean, there are options. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that in a lot of these areas, or in fact, all across the United States, they have a quote-unquote monopoly, but they also have access to satellite TV. I actually come from the satellite TV world, or excuse me, the satellite broadband world.

Okay.

And so you can actually get 25 by 3. Now, granted, if a strong storm comes through, it's probably gonna interrupt the signal, but quite frankly, outages are far less.

Okay.

Right? They might be a little bit more intermittent, but the outages are far less there. In fact, I'm also a co-founder of a company that's delivering a satellite. We're actually launching a satellite next year up in Alaska. Talk about one of the most challenging regions in the United States to do that, but satellite internet works. And if your only option is a 10 megabit per second DSL connection, a 10/1 connection, which is very common for DSL. Quite frankly, you can get a 25 to 50 megabit per second satellite internet connection and pretty much cut the cord and have better speeds. It comes with its own challenges, but it at least is another option that's always up there. So

just for what it's worth.

Sure. And that kind of leads me into a little bit of what we wanted to talk with you guys about. I mean, because like we are, we are in the middle of, you know, having our kids be at home for school. Everyone's having to be on their own device. You know, mom and dad need a break, you know, to, to Netflix and chill or whatever it is. I mean, like, so like we're using the internet more probably than we ever have in the history of the internet, which I mean, like was, was probably going to happen just because of, you know, progress and In every technological progress. But like, what are some tips that you guys might

have for folks at home? You know, aside from, you know, obviously signing up for TACUS, what are some tips in order to make that experience better at home for people? And I think I've heard one already, which is like hardwire as much as you can. Um, what might be some other suggestions that you guys have for homeowners to, to better improve I think you heard also what Hal said earlier about investing in the hardware too, right?

So in addition to hardwiring, you get what you pay for generally within that $50 to $500 range that Hal mentioned earlier in this podcast. And so that's definitely something else you can do.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say is hardwire what you can, Invest in decent for what you can't hardwire. You've got to go wireless. So invest in a decent wireless mesh system, some you know similar to Eero or Eero Pro mesh. There you know there there's some other things you you have to consider, like you know stucco. If you ever seen a stucco home get built, it almost looks like chicken wire that they put up. before they put the stucco on. Those are the worst because those are like little antennas inside the walls that just interfere with the service. So maybe buy 2 eero Pros, you know, just to cover that house. Hal, you're singing my love language right now, man. You and I could probably riff on stucco homes for a couple hours,

my friend. Is your stucco by chance? It is not, no. No, no, no. If you've listened to any, Old episodes, like my house is weird, but it is not stucco. So it has its own issues though. Yeah, those are the things that you can do to help. Another thing that you can do is if you don't want to spend the money on an Eero Pro system, spend $400 or $500 on it, I'd suggest— the problem is I was gonna say suggest getting someone who knows how to configure wireless properly. Out of the box, most routers are set at the slowest setting. You can get, you know, more devices on wireless at the same time. Again, I'm kind of going down the technical path of wireless, which, like I said, I could do a whole show on that.

But get someone who knows how to configure them properly. Right. Because if you have just a handful of devices, there's some changes you can make to it just to significantly speed up your, your your throughput on the wireless side. But, you know, those, those are just a few things I can think of. And if you're with TACUS, do you, do you guys have techs and help desk people that can, can help you do that? You know, we do to an extent. We focus on, on providing fast, reliable internet service, right? Not being all things to all people tech.

Right.

Related, uh, you know, our technicians will, will do what they can to help as much as they can, right? But, you know, there's a point where, you know, they've got to kind of hand that off to someone else. And, um, we just launched our new website on Friday of last week, and, uh, we're really revamping it. We had a— the old site had an integrators page where, uh, our customers could recommend IT people to help, and we'd post them on that page, and there was a rating system where the customers could go in and rate them if they've used them and put in blurbs about, you know, their experience with them. I, you know, as TACUS goes,

we don't really want to recommend any particular one because we may have 10 that are great, 10 that are awful. We just don't know.

Right.

And don't want to, you know, make a bad recommendation. that could reflect poorly on us. So we're trying to build this ecosystem where our customers can kind of rate these integrators. I use the analogy of if you want to buy a set of headphones on Amazon, you're not going to call Amazon and ask them which ones they recommend. You're going to go do a search and find out what all these people have rated and reviewed and make your decision based on that. So that's what we're trying to build. And, you know, in the meantime, while we're revamping that piece of the site, you know, customer service and tech support should be able to, to, you know, give you a

list of those names that you can, you know, make a decision on your own as far as which one to go. But yeah, I mean, you know, we tell our folks, do what you can as much as you can, but, but at some point you've got to have someone that they can hand that off to. Yeah. And it's probably not difficult to find someone in your area with a simple Google search to find someone that can help you with that, or maybe a YouTube video or two. Yeah. Post something on Nextdoor. You'll get 500 responses with 500 different names. Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I'm going to circle back around to something that Kevin was talking about earlier with kind of looking over the, the well-being of your kids while they're at home and they're, they're on the internet, which, you know, it sort of exposes them to a certain degree, uh, to, to certain elements of society and, and different things like that. And there was, there was a news story I was reading, and Carter, I think you'll, you'll kind of appreciate this. I think you were telling me earlier you used to, uh, to host a show about current events. Uh, a news story I was reading earlier, earlier today was this psychologist who was commenting about a new Cardi B song, which I'm, you know, apparently she's a musician, um, that, you know, had some— That's

up for debate. That's right. Had some inappropriate lyrics that apparently a lot of kids were listening to. And this, this psychologist was giving some tips as to like how to, you know, talk to your children about these lyrics that they're, you know, potentially hearing on this new Cardi B song. And I think articles like that would sort of concern a lot of parents as to what they're exposing their children to by allowing them to be on the internet for school, that they also have access to things like YouTube and iTunes and music and streaming and all these different things that they can sort of wander into. What are some ways that You know, and obviously

there's a multitude of things, and this may not be like your area of expertise, but like, what are some ways that you guys know of right off bat that we can help, you know, protect our children from certain elements of the internet? Because we know that there's not great elements out there.

You know, as you may probably know more about this than I, A little bit.

You know, as you mentioned, many of the wireless devices, wireless mesh systems, routers have, you know, if you spend a little more than your $50, $60 on a router, they'll have some of those services built in. You know, just like you mentioned, Kevin, with the ERA system. One, and I'm not— promoting or recommending it, um, not, not for any reason other than, you know, I don't want someone to go buy it and say, well, you know, Hal Ataka said it was great and it didn't work for me. But I'll say that, uh, I, at my— I have a— I have 2 daughters, uh, 10 and 12. Okay. And, um, you know, they're right in the thick of that age.

Yeah. So, uh, I have a device called a Disney Circle.

Yeah.

That may not be for everyone, but it works well for us. Yeah, we've talked about those before. And they, again, you're looking for a content filter, it does a pretty good job. Yeah, I mean, I like it because you can set limits. You can, you know, set the— you know, one of the things I really like is you can set rewards. Yeah. You know, if they do certain things, you can turn the internet on and off. You can block specific applications. You can pause the internet. You know, it gives us the control that we need to, you know, do the best job that we can to keep them out of trouble. You know, kids are resilient and creative, and,

you know, I hope they don't find a way around it, but thus far it's worked. Well, and like, you know, again, like, you're not necessarily promoting that that device, but the fact that the CEO of an internet-providing company has a device like Disney Circle for his kids at home should speak volumes to everyone listening to this episode right now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's a device to check out and make your own decision. As I mentioned, it's worked well for me. I could hit the pause button. Well, They're probably in bed right now, given the time. But you know, if we had done done if I if I demonstrated at the beginning of the show, if I hit the pause button, you'd hear two screams. Ah, the internet!

Oh yeah. So we we have similar tantrums in our home as well. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Well, you know, we we've covered a lot. Is there anything about TACUS that we haven't covered that you think our listeners may be interested in hearing? 2 things I think I'd mention is, because we get asked this a lot or we see comments on it, you know, Craig, I believe you mentioned— I don't know if it was Craig or Kevin that mentioned You know, we open areas for signups. We do, we do take a $20 signup fee when we do that. And to be very clear, that's just to make sure there is a demand. It keeps the 15-year-old gamer from going out and signing up, you know, 500 or 1,000 of his neighbors and, you know, hoping that we come build

it. So it's just, it's a small commitment that we ask of the residents within the neighborhood. So that we can make a large commitment within the neighborhood. And, you know, anytime we have an area that's open for signups, we have a goal that we need to reach to make it make sense. And if we reach that goal, we build it. If we don't reach that goal, then we refund everyone's money. We're not out to take anyone's money. It's solely just as a validation to make sure there's a true demand. So— A deposit, if you will. And then the other thing, I don't Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it goes towards your first month service. So it's, it's not, um, it's not that you're losing the money. It's just,

it's just a confirmation that, hey, you really want us to come build it. And, uh, we want to make sure you're a person. Exactly, exactly. You know, and, um, you know, the way we look at it is once you're installed, you know, there's no contract, there's no, uh, No cancellation fee. It's a month-to-month service, and we have no intention of ever raising rates. As you've seen, the rates have gone down, not up. That's right. And, you know, I just, I just hopefully for those that are like, who's TACUS? I've never heard of this company. They're just another shady internet or telco provider. We're really trying to change that perception.

Yeah.

And, you know, we appreciate you giving us this opportunity and Kevin, you being a customer, and glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely. Most definitely.

Thanks, Kevin.

Sure. Well, we, like I said before we started this, we cannot let you get away without going through something we call our Final Four. The Final Four. That's right. Final Four questions we ask each one of our guests. So we're gonna go through each one of them. We'll try to make it speedy because I know we've been doing this for a long time. Hal, we are gonna start with you. How about that? Yeah, you guys might be setting the record for like longest Homeowner Show episode and like it doesn't feel like it, but like it's creeping up there for sure. Yeah, it's such good information, man. I mean, I think we— this is gonna be a well-downloaded episode, I believe. So

Here's the first question. Hal, we're gonna start with you. What's the must-have tool you won't leave your house without? Um, you know, I want to give you the cliché answer and say it's my cell phone, but I think that's a given. I'm not gonna stray too far from that answer, and I'm probably gonna say my Apple Watch. Oh, there you go. All right. We actually have not gotten an Apple Watch before, but I think that's actually a pretty good answer. I agree. I've actually been using— I have a wife. I use the flashlight function on mine a ton now.

Wow.

Yeah. You know, I'm not familiar with that function.

I've seen it on there.

I haven't used it. I'll check it out. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, well, I mean, I don't know how many attics you crawl around, but like, for me, it's, it's really helpful. I used to climb around a lot when we first started, you know, but hopefully my days of climbing around an attic is far behind me. There you go. If you've got 50+ employees, you got plenty of other people to crawl around an attic for you. Exactly. But you know, if they need my help, I'm available.

But Kevin, we've gotta— yeah, Kevin, we've gotta hold Hal back sometimes. He itches to get out there in the field.

He wants to go.

All right. We can't have our CEO doing that. No, right.

That's right. Well, Carter, how about you? What's a must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

Gosh, I would say my wallet because I can get whatever I need after, you know, as I leave the house.

There you go.

That's just because I wear the CFO hat at TAC. It's, you know, having cash on hand is always on my mind.

Yeah.

Definitely.

All right, cool. Second question, what's a job you've walked away from? Hal, we already gave you the disclaimer. I'm gonna let you go whichever way you want to with this, but what's a job you walked away from? Probably the most memorable one, uh, was April 7th, 2000. It was the, the last day I was employed by someone. Oh, um, and you know, that was a, you know, I was standing at the cliff looking over the edge and I said, leap. And I thank God every day that I did. Amen. You know, it's led me here tonight. And, you know, that was probably the scariest, hardest decision for you to make. And it's— I can't say that it's been fantastic and without

any sort of turmoil. But, you know, as Carter knows this phrase well, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

Yeah.

That's right. That's right. You know, for those that are considering it, uh, making the leap, especially in this, this, uh, global pandemic with the job market the way it is, uh, there's not a better time in my opinion. That's right.

Yeah.

Give it a shot. All right, Carter, you're up. What's a job you've walked away from?

Kind of a similar story, Kevin. Um, I've been kind of on the entrepreneurial side of the financial world for several years, but had the pleasure of co-founding several different companies. Obviously, Tachys is one that I'm just over the moon over. But back in 2014, I had left my previous job at a a financial advisory firm in Houston and had co-founded an energy technology company here. We capitalized the company with a little bit of equity that we had raised in March of 2014. As those in the oil and gas sector will remember well, the bottom fell out in the price of oil, in June of 2000— June, July of 2014. And so, I went for about a year and a half as a pure entrepreneur. I'd always kind of talked about it and always worked with

entrepreneurs before, but I'd never done it myself and unpaid, struggling. And then, I made the decision at the very end of 2015. We had just had our second child at that point, my wife and I had. And then I left that job and I figured, you know what, I'm already scraping the bottom of the barrel, so why don't I start my own firm and actually put into practice the financial world and the entrepreneurial world together? And that's actually because of that, I started my own firm called Continuum Technology Capital, and that's how Hal and I met.

Okay. Cool. Very cool. Awesome. Yeah. All right, next question, number 3. How do you wind down at the end of a long day, Hal? Is adult beverage an appropriate answer? Absolutely. Yes. No, only kidding. He's already wound down. I'm winding down right now, Hal. All right, I wish I could say I was joining you, but, uh, We'll save that for a later date. Yeah, for a later date. Yeah, I mean, you know, on occasion I might have a glass of wine or something like that, but I'm fairly boring. My end-of-day unwind, I have an iPad that I will either read, you know, go to just meaningless websites to read stuff that doesn't matter. Or sometimes I'll do, I'll do, you know, just technical research on, you know,

the industry to kind of see what's going on. Any of which will bore me enough to make me go to sleep. So— Yeah. I would say I read a lot, but I just, I can read 2 pages and either I have to go back and reread those 2 pages or I've just fallen asleep. Yeah. I'll do audiobooks, but that's kind of the boring answer. I'm actually intrigued. What's in the queue in the audiobooks these days? I don't really read fiction. There's a, you know, a guy that I've kind of been reading a couple of his books named Simon Sinek. Oh yeah, I love Simon. Who I find, yeah, I find interesting. So I've read a couple of his books recently and— Which one did you finish most recently?

Begin with Why. Yeah, dude, that's a fantastic book. Yep. Yeah, I'm anticipating reading. I think it's Leaders Eat Last. I think is the most recent one that's come out. Yeah, I haven't started it yet, but I'm really interested in in you know consuming that one. Ha ha ha ha ha! That's right. I can be punny. Okay. Hey, all right. Moving on, Carter. How do you wind down at the end of a long day, buddy?

Well, I've got a little bit of a commute. Fortunately, it's a reverse commute down from The Woodlands at our headquarters here in Tacus to my home in the Galleria area. But what I love to do is to try to make the dinner with the kids. We've got 3 kids now. My oldest, Owen, is 8 years old. He just turned 8 last week. And one of his first questions that he always asks to me when I sit down with him at the table is, hey, Dad, how many installs did Tacus have today? And so it's always tons of fun. Yeah, it's always tons of fun to talk and hear about their days. And even, you know, as any entrepreneur, it doesn't

matter if you have, if it's just you or if it's, you know, leading a team, you know, a large team, we all have the same challenges, the same struggles, but family just puts it all in perspective.

Yeah.

And, you know, just the ability to kind of step back, that's when I begin to unwind. Unfortunately, you know, my getting home is a little bit later and later these days, just with everything else, all the other exciting things happening at TACUS. But, but that's something that really I hold, you know, I hold really near and dear to. And if there's, you know, there's only one thing that I will, you know, I just won't sacrifice, and that's family.

Yeah. Good. That's, that's a good place to be. Craig and I definitely toot that horn as much as possible. So we're behind you on that 100%.

You have to be intentional about it, right? Because it's one of those things that you can eschew and it's really easy to do that, to put that aside. But if you don't make it a priority, it's not gonna happen.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even this right now, I mean, here it is. I mean, it's late in the evening and we're, Greg and I are kind of just like, look, we're not going to do anything until our kids go to bed. Like, we're— a lot of times we start our podcasting after our kids go to bed because they're important. And so we don't want them to ever feel less than because we both work, we got jobs. And so, you know, kind of is what it is. All right, last question. You're through the homestretch. Here we go. Number 4. Number 4. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received, Hal?

Wow.

I've received a lot. I've been very blessed to get to know some great people, some great business leaders, and I've paid attention and listened and had a lot of really good advice, but probably the one that resonates most with what I've been doing for the last decade or so is focus on the customer experience. And this isn't really advice that someone told me, it's just I kind of picked it up, I guess, is focus on the customer experience. Don't worry about the money. Hmm. Don't worry about the technology. Focus on the customer first. And then and think about what that should look like and wrap the tech around that. And by doing that, the money's just going to naturally happen. And that's probably the best advice

because that's what we're doing today is we're a company that— we're not a charity or nonprofit. But, you know, we're out to, you know, keep happy employees and, you know, acquire the best talent possible and retain them. And that costs money.

Yeah.

So, you know, we've got to make a dollar here and there, but that's not our primary focus. Primary focus is, you know, the end-user experience and make that the best that it possibly can be today and improve on it tomorrow. So, you know, best advice is, like I said, focus on the customer and the customer experience and wrap the tech around it. And don't worry about the money. Money will happen naturally if you do those first 2 things. So just real quick, am I hearing you right? Are you saying wrap the tech around it? Yeah, like take the customer experience and figure out how you can make the tech fit around that experience. Don't— Don't take a

technical product or service and say, okay, this is it.

Hope the customer likes it.

Right. Start with the customer first.

Awesome.

Yeah, no, I just want to make sure I heard you right. That's awesome. Yeah. All right, Carter, you're next. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received?

Yeah, that's another— that's a really tough parting question here. I would say it's slow down. I would say it's slow down. And it's ironic that we're in a— that I've co-founded a company that's so focused on bringing the fastest we can get, speed up and all that. But ironically, it's actually about finding time, right? And so when Hal talked earlier in this episode about the user experience, do you want to be waiting or do you actually want to be in control of your life?

Yeah.

And so especially as we're speeding up as a company, as we're growing, expanding, and pressing on the accelerator, I'm also— and I'm sure Hal has found this as well, we're blessed to have just an amazing team that allows us to leverage ourselves and allows us to— less load is concentrated on any one person. So it really allows you to take a step back, gain perspective, and slow down a bit. And, I also slow down with prayer.

Other people do different ways.

I slow down by working out in the morning as well, kind of having alone time. And so, that's what it's all about. It's about kind of— I think that's really how you gain your perspective and make sure that life just doesn't consume you because you know what? If you allow it to, it's going to. Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely.

Yeah. And that's why Carter and I make a fantastic team.

Man, I—

There is no Florida Mike— there is no Florida Mike Accelerator. No, I'm right there with you because I think— I think a lot of people, you know, will— will tell you that I don't have time for that even though they say that they would completely recognize that the thing that they're avoiding is the thing that would probably be the most healthy for them to be engaging in. You know, and so the best thing they could do is to slow down and participate in those things, whether it be working out, whether it be praying, whether it be meditating, whether it be, you know, focusing on a good diet, all those different kinds of things. Just to take the time and slow down would just increase their ability to speed up the other aspects of their

life further on down the road. So that's a good word, man.

Yeah, it's kind of like what my wife, you know, says to me.

She's so amazing.

But she says, it's not that you didn't have the time to do it, it's that you didn't make the time.

There you go.

And it goes back to intentionality, right? Be intentional with your family, you'll make it happen. You'll find ways to carve out time. And so that's just, that's what it's all about.

Yeah, I tell people all the time, listen, you make time for things that are important and you don't skip those things. And so at the end of the day, what you're telling me you don't have time for is something that you just don't find important. And so, if you find it important, you'll find time for it. So, so yeah, that's that's that's good good stuff for sure. For sure. Well, we might need some other advice.

Yeah.

Enjoy the journey. Don't don't focus so much on the on the goal. Enjoy the journey.

Yeah.

Oh boy. That's that's for sure. It's got a lot to tell you, man.

Yeah.

And and that's the thing. Like there's bumps in the road, man. There's potholes. and there's obstacles and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, are you making positive headway? And if not, what stood in the way? Are you enjoying what you're doing? And if not, find something else.

Yeah. Both Hal and I have some very formative entrepreneurial experiences that define where we got to today. It's kind of like one of the first things I said to Hal was, I don't partner with any entrepreneur who hasn't already failed, right? Because I don't want you to fail with me, right? And, I'm not here to fail with you. And so, let's take what we've learned today and let's make something of it. But yeah, we are the sum of all of our parts and we can't help it. So, embrace it. It is all about the journey. Use the bad for good.

Yeah. And that's good stuff. Y'all are, uh, very wise men. I, I, I appreciate y'all taking the time to share those, uh, bits of wisdom with us. But believe it or not, there's a secret 5th question that Craig always pulls out. So— That's right. And it's because it's the only question I can remember. It's true. It's true. And, and the question is, is probably the most important of the show, is if people want to find out more about TACUS, My answer would be website, Facebook. Yeah, I wish I could say town hall because we unfortunately can't do those today.

Right.

But, you know, normally when we go in a neighborhood, we try to find a place to do those, to talk more about it. Those aren't occurring today for obvious reasons. What is that website address real quick? Oh, tachus.com. Okay. T-A-C-H-U-S.com. And we'll link all that up in the show notes. You know, of course, you know, your podcast, The Homeowner Show.

There you go.

That's it. Exactly. That's the best place to get Tachus information. But absolutely. Other than that, go to the website. It's gonna be in the show notes.

You've got 2 hours of unfiltered, uh, TACAS info here on the Homelander Show, so we appreciate that.

No, I mean, like, yeah, absolutely. It's mutually beneficial, guys. I mean, that's one of the reasons we do this too. It's like, absolutely, you're, you're getting information out to people, um, in a way that you're just not gonna spend 2 hours on the phone with a, with a customer most likely. But this is an opportunity for them to essentially have gotten 2 hours on the phone with you to fully understand what you do, why you do it, how you do it, what makes you different, um, and all those sorts of things. And, and at the end of the day, that, that's a big part of why we do what we do. So— Yeah. Thank y'all for taking the time, uh,

to, to talk, call in, talk with us today, spend your time, um, kind of explaining a subject that I think everybody in the world, they have to have this. It's just how are we going to get it? And even when we get it, we don't even necessarily know what we have. So I think this was a very, um, a very informational podcast, and I think it's something that's going to be really beneficial. So thank you both for taking the time. Uh, we look forward to seeing— I specifically as a customer look forward to seeing what all you do in the future. Um, I'm excited to be on the train and, uh, look forward to to kind of being on the journey with you

guys. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Craig.

It's been an honor being on your show and congratulations on your great success today.

Thank you.

Well, listen, if you haven't already out there, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. Thank you for all of you that are frequent listeners. Tell a friend about us. Go rate us and review us, man. That would be awesome. And, uh, go find us on YouTube even though Craig and I are ugly.

That's right.

You, you, you can see us if you want to. Go find us on YouTube. Um, we're on all your major podcast platforms as well. So come find us. Thank you for listening to the show. Uh, we're here every single Tuesday. And until next time, we will see you later. See ya.