In this episode of The Best Dam Podcast, Jill sits down with the multi-talented CJ Sattler, the strategic mastermind behind isp.net and a seasoned professional in the internet service provider industry. Together, they pull back the curtain on the world of telecommunications and explore how a basic plan of infrastructure and technical persistence can transform a chaotic, high-stress environment into a highly manageable roadmap for bringing next-generation connectivity to our community.

The discussion dives deep into the high-stakes world of modern business operations—from starting a local technology company at just 15 years old during the AOL dial-up era to adapting to massive operational changes like scaling out advanced networks across Southern Nevada. CJ also breaks down the eye-opening results of his unique training methods, sharing how he balances advanced software development and AI automation with helping beloved local businesses and rural school districts thrive right here in Boulder City and beyond.

DISCUSSION

1. The Evolution from Dial-Up to Middle Mile Network: CJ explains how a business born out of a desire to play with blinking machines in 1995 quickly scaled from an early entertainment website and dial-up setup into a fully realized, multi-data center middle mile network built to safely meet the region's growing high-speed demands.
   
   
2. The Core Philosophy of Infrastructure Persistence: Rather than allowing technical failures to disrupt daily operations, the network operates on a strict blueprint of controlled variables and redundant rings, allowing engineering teams to establish a foundational sense of stability before moving forward.
   
   
3. The Data Center and Power Advantage: Drawing on his extensive background running data centers, CJ brings a deep understanding of thermal dynamics, cooling protocols, and rapid energy evaluation to his daily operations as AI technology dramatically scales power requirements.
   
   
4. The Automated Customer Sentiment Reality Check: Unlike standard systems that evaluate technical performance in a vacuum, modern monitoring software reads user sentiment instantly. CJ highlights how reading a client's voice data and transcribing calls dictates successful handler interaction.
   
   
5. Integrating Software Development and AI: To break down operational barriers, CJ utilizes his decades of software programming experience to introduce automated features and real-time tools that actively level out the team's workload and improve efficiency.
   
   
6. The Structured Rerouting and Maintenance Routine: Warning against the trap of leaving clients with overstimulated or completely down networks, the operations center facilitates a strict cyclical routine of proactive monitoring followed by dedicated, low-impact downtime fixes.
   
   
7. The Mentorship Power of the Tech Team: CJ points out a heartwarming shift in company dynamics where highly specialized Cisco-certified engineers naturally step in to teach network design, manage security, and resolve complex issues for businesses in a real-world environment.
   
   
8. High-Stress Rehabilitation via Mobile Deployments: For remote events that cannot safely access public utility grids or large cellular networks immediately, CJ implements specialized trailer setups and battery systems to effectively redirect high-speed signals into productive, stabilizing focus.
   
   
9. The Exhaustive Monitoring System Standard: To ensure every piece of equipment is a right fit and completely safe, the facility conducts exhaustive monitoring of over 20,000 separate points to figure out each tower's baseline comfort level and design a positive path toward healthy uptime.
   
   
10. Navigating Unregulated Service Standards: CJ fiercely maintains a high standard of open communication, choosing to limit his security features to physical network separation while leaving content blocking entirely to individual IT operators to honor the highly sensitive regulatory needs of clients.
    
    
11. Collaborative Main Street Alliances: Emphasizing that there is no true competition when supporting local development, CJ highlights his seamless, on-the-ground collaborations with neighboring tech professionals like Larry Archuleta's DAM Computer Medic.
    
    
12. The Unbeatable Value of Community Trust: Jill and CJ highlight how vital earning and maintaining the trust of devoted subscribers is to the community, reinforcing that when individual local businesses adapt and support one another, the entire town elevates together.
    
    

LEARN MORE

isp.net: Explore their full lineup of customized high-speed internet, commercial phone systems, and 365-day technical monitoring options. https://isp.net/

Boulder City Chamber of Commerce: Head over to the Chamber website or stop by the office to discover how joining the local network can help jumpstart your business marketing and connect you with trusted industry experts. https://www.bouldercitychamber.com/

EVENTS

Get ready for the local Art in the Park and Train Museum gatherings in Boulder City throughout 2026, proudly supported by community partners like isp.net who champion family-friendly environments.

KEYWORDS

CJ Sattler, isp.net, Broadband Engineering, Data Centers, AI Automation, Commercial Telecommunications, Network Security, Boulder City Chamber of Commerce, The Best Dam Podcast, Podcast Interview

#CJSattler #ispnet #BroadbandTech #AIAutomation #TelecomExpert #BoulderCityBusiness #SmallBusinessSupport #TheBestDamPodcast #PodcastInterview

Podcast Transcript

Jill: All right, listeners, today we have a treat. We have Mr. CJ Sattler, and he is the CEO of isp.net, and, one of our wonderful partners here at the Chamber of Commerce, and also provides us with our internet and telephones. And so thank you so much for being here today. I cannot wait to get to understand you a little bit more.

CJ: It's a pleasure to be here.

Jill: So as I was learning a little bit more about you, I thought, "Oh my gosh, this kid has had a brain for this type of activity for so long," as you started this company at 15 years old. So impressive. And so I just, I couldn't wait to get to visit with you and get to learn a little bit more about you and understand, how that brain works because it's pretty impressive.

CJ: I appreciate that.

Jill: So e- explain to me a little bit more about what is isp.net? I am familiar with the services that we are utilizing, but what all do you offer?

CJ: So we are a internet service provider primarily, and we have, two data centers in downtown Las Vegas. That means that's where the internet's created, where we bring in all our fiber lines and mix them out, and then we transport them through our middle mile network that goes over the mountain tops to Boulder City and other places around southern Nevada, and then we beam the last mile into people's houses, businesses, and other locations.

We do internet in anywhere in Southern Nevada. And we, On top of that, we do, since we have our own data centers, we do a bunch of, services on top, telephones. We do, surveillance cameras. We do Wi-Fi. We do a lot of the casino Wi-Fis. We do, trade shows, like in the middle of the desert.

If someone like the Baja 1000 needs internet there, we'll bring out a trailer and batteries and just provide internet, high speed, up to 10 gigs or so in the middle of nowhere where you can do anything with it, whatever your imagination is.

Jill: That is incredible. And so in the process of creating all of this, I'm sure it just evolved. How did... What what did you start with? So at 15 when you created this, what level were you at that point?

CJ: Well, we're talking, like '95,AOL dial-up. So mainly, we had a data center, and we originally were, vegas.com back then.

So we were doing, Basically a entertainment site for Vegas, a website.

But we, also had an ISP where people would, dial up to our internet. This was basically, you had AOL and then you had internet, which was a little more advanced. But like AOL, you logged into and all the screens popped up. Back in the day with Windows 95 or 311, you had to just dial up and then you just had a empty screen, so it was up to you to figure out the applications and how to actually use the internet.

And that, was a little more complicated way back then. But, that's how I started. I met a guy that, at A-Tech, my, high school, I met a guy that was doing, making an internet service provider, and he needed someone to do all the technical stuff, and I did all the technical stuff. I've always been the computer guy, and he did the business stuff.

Jill: That is awesome. And back in school when you got started, did you always want to be an entrepreneur and start your own company? Or were you just as happy teching it out in the back room, helping somebody else out?

CJ: I just wanna play with the expensive machines that blinked.

Jill: That's awesome. You were in the right city for that, right?

CJ: Yep, that's it.

Jill: That is awesome. And so I would imagine that the services like you provide, like for the races out in the desert or special events that are taking place, we don't think about it, but you do get out into those places, and you need all of your services to be able to, create whatever that event is, produce that event, provide the services to the individuals that are at the event.

I can imagine that they are very grateful to have something like yours. And I guess I just really never thought about it, but you have to bring a whole entire setup out there.

CJ: Yeah, we have to engineer the link how to get to one of our assets that are on top of, mountaintops, usually with, towers.

If you ever look on around the city, you'll see some, little blinking lights at night, and those are, tower sites that are maintained by companies like American Tower, Crown Castle, and we figure out how to beam to up there. But, yeah, the events need internet just to take tickets. without communications or anything.

A lot of these sites don't even have cellular access. if they wanna stream, if they wanna do any kind of- communications with the outside world will, we can go set this up ahead of time and then they can use their venue just like it was in an actual covered office.

Jill: Yeah, that's great. That's amazing.

And so growing up in Vegas, you also probably saw the need that the casinos had, for security, for, having a safe network to make sure that it's, protected in their, within their own environment. Did you h- how did you see that playing out? Did you know that was gonna be a thing, and did you work towards that?

Was that, something on your mind, or were you just more worried about helping more of the residential and small commercial?

CJ: So that's, that's how we got started first was doing business stuff. when the internet came around, Ethernet, which is what everyone knows nowadays to plug in computers, wasn't the de facto standard.

There was all sorts of things. Nothing was 100% made for, Ethernet switches like you see now, a lot of this stuff was proprietary cabling. The phone system was a lot more involved, like T1 lines and, how all those interfaced. Just the stuff wasn't around and had standards like they do now.

We would do a lot of business internet and, dial-up and T1s for always-on devices, and that kinda just evolved into doing as more and more things became part of it, we just kept adding all these other things. Eventually, dial-up went away, and we bought a company called, first company in town that did wireless was called Lanwaves.

Jill: Oh, okay.

CJ: And they went out of business, and we bought their assets and kinda just kept doing it ever since.

Jill: Oh, that's awesome.

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: Well, I am sure grateful for this service and glad that you offer it because we were one of those areas here at the Nevada Welcome Center, Boulder City Chamber, when we first moved in July of 2020, there were no services provided to us as far as traditional cable or, any of those types of access to internet or even Wi-Fi.

And so we were so grateful for the, the ability to have a part of your programming here. At that time, it was lv.net, and we were glad to have them, and I'm so grateful that ISP is now our provider because otherwise we would have nothing at this point.

CJ: Yeah. There's a lot of those stories, especially when, over here isn't that rural, but when you start going up through, northern Nevada or any middle Nevada or there's this little, in Death Valley, that breaks out to Nevada-California border that you don't even get a cell signal. But there's actually a lot of people that live there if you go through it, like if you take the Baker to, Pahrump exit.

Jill: Oh, yeah.

CJ: Yeah. There's a lot of people out there, and there's just nothing, like schools that didn't have internet. They didn't have any communications. They're just off the grid.

Jill: That is incredible. And so by providing this system, you are able to bring and create that network for those rural communities that have not had access.

CJ: Yeah. We're basically the people that brought in internet for the schools, so they could learn online and, just communicate and more and even have a 911 line 'cause

Jill: I was gonna say emergency services, I would imagine, yeah?

CJ: Yep.

Jill: And so how far, into the central Nevada or northern Nevada do you go right now with your services?

CJ: So we go up, a little past Pahrump, and then, we actually have a network in Reno that comes down

Jill: Oh, very good.

CJ: a little bit, but there's a, there is a section that breaks off between the two.

Jill: Oh, very good. I had no idea you guys were so widespread.

CJ: Yeah. We've been trying to stay in Nevada. We had networks in Seattle and San Francisco, but we, divested them and trying to stay mostly in Nevada just 'cause I like being able to provide a quality network and, people that we can get with our To have the same level of service that we can go to, anywhere we can drive to within the same day really.

Jill: I so appreciate that because so many companies, I don't know that it's necessarily greed and power. Sometimes I just think they feel like that's the next step, and they just outplay themselves, and then unfortunately they get to the point where they can't provide the service they once did.

And so people fall in love with the small hometown company, and then they just, they get too big for their britches, and unfortunately they just can't provide those services and it's really kinda disappointing. So thank you for that philosophy.

CJ: Yeah. Nevada's really the greatest place to do this because, it's constantly growing. So when I remember when I was a kid there was like quarter million people here.

Jill: Yeah.

CJ: So over the years there's always people coming in, so you don't I like to stay here just 'cause there's always growth, but there's always, You can do anything here. Like some of the biggest companies have come out of this state to, provide national services. But

Jill: So I am gonna ask you somewhat of a controversial issue. So here in Boulder City there's a lot of conversations about data centers, but you have operated one for many years. Your life experience tells you that not only are they necessary, right? they're gonna have to be someplace. Can you explain a little bit more about what your data centers look like, how they operate, maybe how they function?

CJ: Yeah. Our data centers are small compared to the new AI- data centers. But, so basically a data center provides a few different things that you're not gonna get in a regular building. One is cooling. These things, the temperature's gone up a little, but they always have to maintain a equilibrium of temperature, so you'll have redundant cooling.

So they'll take in, air, and then you have hot aisle containment where they're, the servers are gonna spit out all the hot air, and then you blow them out and then, you're gonna... You have to have redundant internet of course.

So that makes it, So you gotta have multiple fiber paths, but there's different tiers to internet and- or data centers and- Tier four means you have to have, separate, power paths. you'll actually have to have separate power lines come in. And along with internet, you have to have separate, manhole covers that you bring in internet. But everything's fully redundant. You can take any one part down and still operate, where just about every other type of facility you can't. It'll never run even with all the redundancy. So a data center means that any one point, whether it's security, whether it's network, whether it's cooling, whether it's power, everything's fully redundant.

Jill: Oh, that's interesting. And so then, like you said, there's different levels of centers, and the AI type are considered level

CJ: Those are specially built just for AI. They're- they're all level four. the difference is the amount of power they use. Like, you have cabinets in there that are standardized, units to put the servers in. And back in the day, you were using like, I don't know, five to 10 kilowatts per rack this cabinet. Now you're using like, 120 kilowatts per AI rack

Jill: Wow.

CJ: which is a lot. a megawatt's 1,000, 1,000 kilowatts. 

Jill: Yes. 

CJ: And if you look at every block for power, a block only has five to 10 megawatts per block. So when you go to get power for a certain type of building, you gotta see how much power is available. So these guys are building, data centers that are like multiple megawatts, like 500 megawatts even. And that's really the difference now, is the scale of power that they're using.

Jill: And so are you seeing in the future, I'm not asking you to forecast, you don't need your, your little ball but I'm wondering, do you see in the future the requirement that's gonna be needed for each new data center that's created for them to also create their own energy?

CJ: Oh, 100%. If you look at turbines, those are what makes energy. They're I think they're sold out till 2030 if you need a- a big, turbine to make power even. I know, Tesla and SpaceX are actually making the turbines just so they can make the energy so that they can have the power for their data centers. And Wells, they're also talking about putting satellites into space just like a fully contained rack essentially in space that communicates by lasers and comes down so they don't have to use any of the land here.

Jill: Oh man, that's incredible. I did not know that. So I find him fascinating anyway, and I think it's not at all shocking that Elon would come up with his own way to create his own power, to create his own, all of his own stuff. So that is, makes a lot of sense.

CJ: Yeah. Here you need batteries and everything to make sure the power doesn't go down. If you get in a certain orbit around the planet, you always just the sun's always available, so you don't need to have extra batteries and everything. It's just cooling is the problem because there's no air to send the, heat out of, so you have to use like IR to, bleed off all the heat.

Jill: Heat? Oh, interesting.

CJ: So you need like a football field worth of, coolers to get the heat off of those racks.

Jill: Wow, that's incredible. well, it has been a huge topic of conversation here, and so it's interesting to be able to speak to somebody who actually has centers and are utilizing them. And, obviously you're fully aware too of all the pros and cons, and so thank you for sharing a little bit of your information on that. So what would you say is your favorite part of what it is that you do?

CJ: I like my favorite part is when people can't believe that we can bring 10 gigs of internet into somewhere. Like, for instance, I met a guy that has a, A facility that he has off-road vehicles, he has a shooting range, and it's a pretty big facility outside of, not Searchlight, but some other city. And, he wanted to do online shooting where you could go on the internet and shoot things online.

Jill: Really? 

CJ: Yeah. 

Jill: How cool.

CJ: And he... But he needs... The latency has to be really... That's the amount of time it takes for a signal to get from somewhere to somewhere, and he couldn't believe that I could get it down to two milliseconds from where he is in the middle of the desert over to the internet, where he would be able to actually shoot something live and get customers that could use his range over the internet and do these type of sporting things. it's the wow factor that I find interesting, and bringing stuff to people that don't believe that you could do it, especially I could do it, the next day 'cause I had all the infrastructure in place.

Jill: That is incredible. and the infrastructure isn't inexpensive. I mean, you know, you have that kind of a... To have that inventory, to be able to provide that service immediately, man, he must be one of your... You must be one of his favorites.

CJ: Yeah. Around town we have about 150, we call them POP sites, points of presences, which are towers or rooftops that we broadcast from, and each one of those is, a separate, lease that we have to maintain. So it's like we have 150 locations essentially throughout the Vegas Valley or in the Southern Nevada.

Jill: And that's what interconnects everybody and provides the umbrella of 

CJ: Yeah, correct 

Jill: canopy. That is incredible. I appreciate that, and I know that may be some small version is what we have here

CJ: Exactly.

Jill: that helps here on the lakeside.

CJ: Yeah. If you see down, like we go down to the... There's a bunch of people that couldn't get internet at the lake that live in, communities down there, and they're asking us to get there. So with your help, we were able to bring internet to them where they can stream and watch TV and everything, just like they would at any other kind of

Jill: Yeah.

CJ: place they stay.

Jill: I really appreciate it. So- I'm happy that we can be a part of that because that's a big deal. And so have you ever, I would imagine within your work you've had a lot of aha moments because as thing as technology advances so quickly, you're probably having those on an annual basis or daily basis. So do you, can you think of something that really has stood out in your mind that really made you go, this is an aha moment"?

CJ: In the past year or so, like AI, we've been writing the software that does everything and automates us for about 20 years. 

Jill: Wow. 

CJ: I started when I was in high school, and it really, everything that happens goes through our software. When someone calls up to our office, it gets a caller ID, goes, looks up their account record, pings the client's data, sees the quality of connection. It brings up any of the past information we have on them. It actually transcribes the call and checks for customer sentiment if they're getting angry or anything. It does a lot. But AI has allowed us to build all these new features in at incredible pace and, all the stuff that used to take me weeks, I'm able to do in hours now.

Jill: Wow.

CJ: Like we have a full-time programming team of, five people that have been developing this for a long time, and but the amount of development that I'm getting now is I feel like I could say, "Hey, just copy this," and with-within the next week I'm able to get my ideas out in actual, a beta form that we can test.

Jill: That's incredible. And so as you have been so involved with AI for such a long time, really. What do you see as the future of it? Do you... it's almost hard to fathom. It's like internet was when we were young, and it was kind of like this, it was something everybody was so nervous about. "Oh, we don't wanna touch that. Oh, we don't wanna get involved in that." And then we all have to on a daily basis. AI, I don't think people even realize just the spellcheck, you know on your systems is AI. And so I don't think people realize it, but will they just baby step into it and it'll just become part of their everyday life, or what do you see? What is your what do you forecast?

CJ: So I have a lot of contacts in my phone of specialty people. I got, a bunch of friends that are doctors, lawyers, and quite honestly, I'm not gonna call them and bug them on a question anymore just 'cause I, my, my phone has more information than I think they would even have and be able to solve things quicker without bugging them and trying to describe it just by taking a picture and asking, hey, what the problem is. 

I used to send a lot of documents to our legal team to figure out what are the problems, but it's, I get a much better, more comprehensive review of everything now. And if you think about the just having the world's knowledge and the best things in the pocket where you can just ask anything at any time, everything that you do in normal life, you get a lot more leisure time that you don't have to sit there doing contract review. 

You don't have to, if you're able to see the world's best opinions, especially 'cause, yesterday there was a new model drop called, Mythos from Claude that is better than anything that's ever and but that happens every six months. 

Jill: Yeah. 

CJ: Six months ago, I think that The models got smarter than just about anyone you can call. Now, with yesterday, when I was playing with it this morning, it seems like it's actually smarter than anyone that would be out there now. Like I have my, wife is Polish, and she 

Jill: Yes 

CJ: and her mom stays with us and doesn't speak English, but I'm able to talk to her real time in Polish, and I couldn't learn that language even if I wanted to for and but I'm having fluent conversations with her now that AI is a thing. It just enables everything. If you have a dream, you can do it in no time and get a, get it out there and anything you can think of.

Jill: That is incredible. And like you just spoke about Claude, I was gonna ask you, do you have a favorite model or format?

CJ: at our office, we actually have a, month I send out an email about the AI usage of what all my employees did with AI. And, I don't write it. AI writes it, of course.

Jill: Yeah.

CJ: But We have a-- We use Google, and it gives us a report over who uses AI the most, and it ranks everyone and who doesn't use it at all, how many days people are at limit. for but every model has its strong suits. Like general questions, Google's usually good enough. My programming team, they wouldn't use anything but Claude. But, there's a bunch of other things like Composer and things that are cheaper models 'cause Claude's really expensive.

Jill: Oh, is it?

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: Yeah, you can tell I haven't played in that. There's too many. There are. I can't keep track of them all. And

CJ: everyone's good at one thing or two things.

Jill: Yeah. Yeah. And everybody that I ask, they all have different favorites, and they've just gotten used to it. And so I think I just got started in chat, and I it, it just has been easy 'cause now I've got all my history in there

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: just, But anyway, I know that's not completely your world, but you just have so much experience in it. Thank you for answering those. So I know that, in your life, it seems like sometimes behind the scenes, y-you may just be all about tech and thinking in those terms, but I would imagine you've had some pretty funny experiences also in your world of profession. Maybe something that related to a trade show or any of those types of activities. You had shared a little bit about, being at a trade show and, you had perfect setup and then a big plane came in, and it got positioned right in front of Oh where you guys had line of sight.

CJ: Yeah, we do the... There's a convention in town called NBAA. That's where, all the planes come in for people to buy them, and they look at a Bombardier and, Learjet and all these guys. And we set this up in advance, and we work with the, the executive airport in the North Las Vegas to get, all our network right because, again, there's no way that you can provide internet access or Wi-Fi out in these little tents that they're trying to sell to, their customers. 

So we set it all up and, everything's ready, and then someone goes and parks a plane right in front of us, and now we have to go reposition the whole trade show that we spent the past day. But usually we have enough resources, so we can do fix anything and just know how to... with all technology, you just gotta learn every- all the constraints and how to work around them to get things back up as quickly as you can. Everyone's always gonna screw up, but being able to fix it on the fly, that's what really separates people.

Jill: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And so what else separates ISP.net from other providers?

CJ: Really it's speed. We're able to move, if you ever put in a order with, AT&T or any of the big guys, you can get install windows up to years long- that they gotta build out, and sometimes they won't even come through. With us, we're able to provide it, the next day or something. Like, with all this infrastructure we have, we're always able to provide it the next day. We also go the I like to think we go, as far as we can the extra mile. I mentioned we did AI sentiment. We have a guy that's grading all these scores and goes over every call that, is a red flag. And we'll I get calls all the time from our customers, and I follow up on them and find out what's wrong, so and then we'll change a process. 

So in a big corporate world, this would take forever to actually happen. But because I can see these things, I can get them, what's happening f-live from our customers. every time I get a feedback of something wrong, we'll go in and, In fact, after this, I have my executive management meeting that I go through all the things and check all our processes for different departments and anything we can change to make our, service better and friendlier and happier and be able to, Happen quicker.

Jill: That's awesome. And so AI's even helping the customer service satisfaction side of things as well.

CJ: Oh, yeah. If someone wants a feature now, we're able to implement that. Since we are writing our own software, we're often able to, if someone wants like a I know you use our phones, right?

Jill: Oh, absolutely.

CJ: you're gonna have a cool feature rolled out in a week or two that you'll have a live display of all your agents up there, and you'll be able to see who's on the phone, who's talking to what, and have a, see all the calls through your dashboard and see everything going on like a call center.

Jill: Oh, that's cool.

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: I'll be watching that instead of doing my work.

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: It'll keep my attention. So what do people never see about their internet connection on the back end that most people don't even realize?

CJ: The maintenance.

Jill: Oh, yeah.

CJ: Yeah. There's always something that has to be upgraded. There's always something that has to be changed. There's always some kind of throughput problem. There might be a security patch. And, no one sees the 5:00 AM call 'cause it's windy and lightning struck something that we gotta go fix, and we have all sorts of things that are monitoring our network. We monitor about 20,000 points at all times, whether how much throughput's going through it, the latency, if there's any alerts. 

But, anything that happens goes to our network operations center, and they'll figure out what to do, whether it's, something that can be put off for a little 'cause everything's built in, redundant rings, so we could break that ring and fix one part of it while we do something else. But, no one ever sees when we're rerouting traffic and, fixing something that got burnt up because, Hell, the other day we had a lightning it wasn't lightning, it was, the wind was causing something to vibrate and cause it to fall down. 

But the, 'cause it'd just been out there so long, and on top of these mountains there's so much wind. But, we were able to get it fixed without anyone really even noticing, and there's a lot of maintenance that goes into this that just have checklist after checklist. Every mountaintop has five to 10 kilowatts of batteries, battery backup that allows us to fix things, 'cause power here is pretty iffy.

Jill: Yeah. If, we learned that the hard way here at the, chamber because during construction they were putting in new, all the new electrical lines that were coming from the city to the new center, and didn't even think about it, wasn't even on my radar. I knew I wasn't gonna have power in the building for, the morning, but didn't think about the fact that it was gonna take internet down for everybody on the lakeside. And so thankfully the battery was doing just fine. No problems, no issues, and your guys came out and they set a generator up and no issues there either. But it was, like, not something I was thinking about, and didn't even think to call you guys. And so anyway, I was grateful that the battery is there. Those, some of those redundancies are built in so that it wasn't an issue. But yeah, we were getting a little anxious there- worrying about that kind of stuff.

CJ: The battery technology's come, it's night and day from what it was just a few years ago. 'Cause of the heat here, when I had lead acid batteries, you just never knew when they would fail. With lithium batteries it's, get, it's a lot more scientific when you can calculate what the runtime will be and see everything, the status of every cell in there. It's a lot more I got a lot more insight to what, how long it would last, to know how long I have till I need a generator out somewhere.

Jill: and I didn't even know there were batteries in there. I mean the station is so small. It's like this, it's just the size of a television. It doesn't even seem that big.

And so I was impressed that all that stuff was happening back there and I didn't even realize it. So the behind the scenes, you are right, I am grateful that you guys know what the heck you're doing, 'cause I just wanna be on the outside, have great service. And we've never had any issues. I think we've only had to replace a modem or something one time, 'cause it just overheated in the back room. 

CJ: Wow. 

Jill: So we just reset the temperature with the air back there, and it has been great.

CJ: Good.

Jill: So I, I am a testimonial. It has been phenomenal. Very grateful for it and, very glad that we had your service, 'cause otherwise we'd have access to nothing. So

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: I am happy about that. So can you share with us something maybe that most people don't know about you? Maybe something about your professional life or something that you, that's, nobody else knows.

CJ: I have the most structured life in the world. I do the same thing every week. I do jujitsu on Saturdays and Wednesdays. I play squash on Thursdays. I play golf on Sundays, and then I take my kid to the, train or Wally Wombats on Tuesdays and then the dog park.

Jill: That's awesome.

CJ: That, that's my life is the same thing every day.

Jill: You like routine.

CJ: I like routine.

Jill: You know I don't think there's anything bad. that's kind of me, and then I get a little bit... I have to learn to be a little bit more patient when things throw me off my routine, 'cause I feel like, "Oh, don't move my cheese." I have a plan, and you need to stay with my plan. So if my day planner gets messed up, I get kind of 

CJ: Oh, yeah. 

Jill: a little hinky about that. But anyway, I love that. I think that's great. And, and so you said you take your, is it son or daughter?

CJ: Son, yeah.

Jill: To the train?

CJ: He just likes this, the mall train. I'm sure you've seen them at the malls, those things that

Jill: I have. And you need to bring him out here to Boulder

CJ: Oh, yeah.

Jill: to the train, actual train.

CJ: We go every, at least once a month there.

Jill: Oh, that's awesome. 

CJ: Yeah. Saturday mornings. 

Jill: Very good. our grand opening out here will be September 17th. Oh. So we're very excited and looking forward to the new museum.

CJ: I'm sure he'll love it like none other.

Jill: It's gonna be beautiful, and Dr. Christopher McMahon is the director, and he's putting in the displays right now, and has put so much thought and effort into it, and it's just gonna be absolutely amazing, and I'm very excited. So can you share with us a little bit more about what book you might be reading? Are you reading any books right now? 

CJ: I probably finished it. 

Jill: So I would imagine you could probably write a book. I think one of your favorite authors you had shared with me before was Chuck Palahniuk? 

CJ: Oh, that's the guy that wrote Fight Club. That's my favorite my favorite book ever. 

Jill: Your series? Oh, that's awesome. 

CJ: Yeah. Yeah, everything he writes is really mind-bending.

Jill: Well, I am not familiar with that, but I am definitely gonna look it up. We have a business book club, and we're always looking for great solutions. So I, Ah. I would love to look at that because it sounded like in your experience with, what you had read, that it waited. He had to hit rock bottom before he realized that was really a liberating moment.

CJ: Oh, yeah. That's all the movie's about. Everyone thinks it's about fighting, but it's a lot deeper than that.

Jill: Yeah. It's, that's pretty cool.

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: And so can you share with us maybe a little lesson that you learned from your mom or your dad?

CJ: My mom always, She was a school teacher here.

Jill: Oh, really? Good.

CJ: And, she's the persistence. always never give up on anything. that's really my whole philosophy in life is you can figure out eventually. It's just how many brain cycles and how much time you wanna spend on it, and that's really what separates people is how long they spend on a problem to fix it. And it is not just fixing the problem, it's the journey that you do to you learn so much just trying to go after everything, especially things you don't know. That's the only way I've been able to do this business is, there's so many different, specialties involved in it. It's not just the mental, it's also the physical. 

Just learning how to do construction. we're, if you think about it, we're more of a construction company than any, than a technology company. 'Cause we're constantly building. we gotta make sure every antenna on a rooftop doesn't move in 120 mile per hour winds. We make and you gotta also know all the mechanics around it because you have to know what the, what it's made out of, the metal fatigue, the, how much it's gonna rock, what kind of, throughput you're gonna get.

There's just a lot of specialties, and if you don't learn all of the nuances of everything, you're gonna find things that baffle you, and you're gonna think it's magic. And learning and persistence is the difference between knowing something and thinking it's magic.

Jill: Oh, I love that. And you are, you're in the construction/manufacturing technology. It's a little bit of everything. Everything. And then you got the customer service side of it, too, because you do so much with the businesses and residential.

CJ: Yep.

Jill: and you also have to be in the people management because I know Larry Archuleta is one of the installers here in Boulder City. We are so grateful for him and his assistants as well. And so you've got your hands wrapped into a little bit of almost every industry.

CJ: Yeah, I have a really good team, though, that's, I'm not really the people person, as you can probably tell. I like playing with all the fun parts, but I got a good team that's able to, deal with all the lower level management, stuff that I don't really like to do.

Jill: Howard Hughes always said, "Surround yourself with people smarter than you."

CJ: Yep.

Jill: And it sounds like you, built into that philosophy the way that

CJ: that's for sure 

Jill: you operate your business. Yeah, that's great. so is there anything else that you'd like to share? Maybe something, that you want people to know about the business? Maybe something new that's coming out, like you shared a little bit about the telephones?

CJ: Yeah. One interesting thing that we've, been working on is, for over past five years is, we're talking about telephones and, like Wi-Fi and, we've made a box that is controlled by our software, and this magic box, depending on what kind of hardware you want, if you want door access control, like those card readers

Jill: Yeah.

CJ: that box is able to go and provision each port for whatever different service, and it's, automatic. So we're able to bring down the cost of all these cool features down to small business so that they can have the Wi-Fi, the phones, the access control, even, temperature and water monitoring are popular items now. And, this used to be all specialty companies that you'd have to go to. You'd get a really expensive, at least five-digit quote to get it done. We're able to do it on a really small monthly fee, and, we try to bring it down so that it's attainable by anyone.

Jill: Oh, that's great.

CJ: 'Cause if you think about, who accesses a door, that means that you need to rekey a door every time someone leaves or something 'cause you don't... You keeping control of all your keys. But if you have software that you can go in and just take someone out with a card key, enables you a lot more who can come in at what hours. 

You can have cameras that watch them. It gives you a lot more flexibility for not only access control, but audits, who's able to see who's where. So we're able to get traces of everything, like especially with all, the We're in downtown Las Vegas, right? So we, There are a lot of homeless and a lot of vandalism that occurs. So we have tools with, AI facial scanners if it's not one of our employees. we have AI speakers that actually yell and say things that, based upon if you're not in our database, it'll tell them to get out, and this area is a restricted area.

Jill: That's incredible

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: I had no idea.

CJ: Yeah, there's a lot of cool AI stuff coming out that we're providing.

Jill: So I need to speak to you a little bit more later about the new suites at the visitor center. So we have 14 suites. They just have normal door locks and, the same thing with our chamber building. But we are looking to. I was interested in how expensive it might be to do a card reader system, so you have a little bit more control. 

CJ: Yeah. 

Jill: And as those 14 different operators come and go, or their employees come and go, I would love to have access to be able to shut that key card off versus

CJ: Yeah.

Jill: having to worry about getting a key back.

CJ: Yeah, it's a great utility that a lot of people don't realize is... It used to just be, pretty high-end buildings 'cause you needed special wiring. You had this old computer in the back that was doing it, and then you had certain people operate it. But nowadays, it's just part of a, door system that, it works over what we were talking about earlier with Ethernet. all these things are just IP devices that, we create a separate secure network for them, and we're able to control them through our software, and it's all pretty, ubiquitous to everything we do.

Jill: That's incredible. Yeah, I definitely wanna talk about that. That's a for sure thing. And something we really didn't touch on, but you mentioned it, a secure network. So what about cybersecurity? How is isp.net providing its, in its different clients the cybersecurity? Do you have education on it? it... What... How... What do we do about cybersecurity?

CJ: So everyone. We have a room full of Cisco-certified network engineers. We probably have more Cisco-certified people in one room in Southern Nevada than just about anyone that are all trained and know how cybersecurity works. But we do all the, Features of a network, we make sure all new devices are in its own, they call them VLANs, virtual networks, that nothing else can be in there. And then we have sensors and firewalls to tell that. But, as an ISP, one of our things is our job really isn't to secure people's network, because if we go in and block things for them

Jill: Yeah.

CJ: We wanna sell unregulated internet access. So if we block too much or we block anything really, It's up to the customer to know what they want.

Jill: Got it.

CJ: they have... Like you mentioned Larry Archuletta. 

Jill: Yeah. 

CJ: That's the guy that should go in and block, all the stuff, and he's good at it. I know Larry for many years. And, it's the person managing the network, 'cause if I start blocking stuff, who am I to say that something's good, something's bad? 

Jill: Yeah. 

CJ: I don't know what your network needs are.

Jill: Well, I will say, again, DAM Computer Medic, that's Larry's company, we, have him on retainer because- it is something that we definitely need and so we consider him our IT person 'cause we don't know what we're doing. 

CJ: Yeah. 

Jill: We need that, that professional side of it. So I'm glad that you surround yourself, again, with smarter people and people that can provide those types of services, and give people the freedom so that you, like you said, you aren't controlling it. It's up to them to make the choice.

CJ: Yep.

Jill: I love that. Okay, so here's the embarrassing question for me that I always get so uncomfortable asking this. But, how, what is your experience with the Boulder City Chamber and Boulder City in general? Have you had a positive experience?

CJ: I know I had to figure out how to get internet here, and that took a while because you're, like, on the cusp of something that you wouldn't be able to really see, but I've been able to work around to get a signal here. So I've known about you guys for a while. And then we work with the government a lot. 

Jill: Yeah. 

CJ: And they, I know you guys are very involved with their... I, my sales guys and staff, I don't- I like doing the tech stuff. That's and they do the soft people stuff, so they- they just said, "CJ, we gotta join this." And, I know you guys do great things, and, Boulder City is such a great little community that I like to support anything that, like this. I've been coming here as a kid, and, coming out and just spending a day in Boulder City for the car show. My mom used to drag me to the, Art in the park art show every

Jill: Yeah. 

CJ: every year. And I'm like, "Oh, we gotta go buy," and I'll just at least see you have the peanuts that 

Jill: Yeah 

CJ: the crunchy peanuts I like to have.

Jill: That is awesome. So we're glad that... We're glad you could have some entertainment out here. and I'm so glad that you bring your son, because that's pretty special. 

And what memories you're creating with him.

CJ: Yep. He loves the car show too. He loves cars and trains. That's his thing.

Jill: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll make sure he knows about all of them.

CJ: All right.

Jill: Thank you so much for being on the show. We are so grateful to have you, and so grateful for your knowledge, your talent, and your skills, and thanks for sharing those with us.

CJ: Thanks for having us. it's been a great time, and really appreciate it.

Jill: Thanks.