Our world is fast-paced, with everything accessible in a single click. The growth in connectivity is made possible by high-performance network companies like ExteNet. ExteNet is the largest privately held communications infrastructure provider in North America. Their CEO, Richard Coyle, focuses on growing and improving the operational, financial, and market position of various types of businesses. On this episode, Rich joins Carrie Charles to discuss his vision of building top-performing teams that exceed expectations and take personal responsibility for their career growth.
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The Rebirth of ExteNet: Bringing a CEO’s Vision to Life with Rich Coyle
I am so glad that you are with me because we are going to learn more about the largest privately held communications infrastructure provider in North America. They have been in the space for many years and that is ExteNet Systems. I am excited to have with me a CEO that I highly respect. He’s also the new CEO of ExteNet and it’s Rich Coyle. Rich, thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks, Carrie. I appreciate you inviting me.
I met you for the first time at Metro Connect in Miami. I remember you were kind to me. I know a lot of people are not that kind to staffing professionals sometimes but you are kind to me. You treated me with so much respect. I’ll never forget that. Ever since then, I’ve had much respect for you and I’ve heard many great things about your leadership. I’m looking forward to having this chat but let’s start with the story of Rich Coyle, how you got from where you were to your seat now.
I appreciate it meeting you and I feel at any time you meet people for the first time, you want to make sure people see you as a person first. I appreciate the kind words but I always want to treat people like people and develop a relationship with them so thank you. I’ve had what I would call a very interesting issue. I’ll try to give you the compressed version.
I started out from my college. When I learned early on with my parents, where we were, we were not financially well off is the way I’ll put it. I’m not complaining but that was the reality. For each time I was going to go to college each year, I would drive over to the college and beg the registrar to give me some type of financial aid. If they would give it to me, I’d go. If I couldn’t, I’d have to find a different place.
I started out at Iona College in New Rochelle and then I went to St. John’s University in my second year. I went to the City University of New York, Queens College. I finished up there and had a great time. I also learned the value of working hard and for what you’re going to earn. I held multiple jobs during that time. I worked midnights and days in United Airlines on the ramp to pay for my college but it was something I wanted to do and I wanted to earn.
I’ve held that throughout my career. When I first came out of college, I graduated with an accounting degree and started in the financial world. I worked in the financial world first couple of years and then my wife and I made a decision to move out to Las Vegas from Queens, New York. Her parents had moved out. We moved out and I came out without a job, which was not a fun thing to do.
I got hired by the power utility company. I knew I paid for a power bill. That’s about it. I started in their HR department, believe it or not. I rose through the ranks in a pretty fast fashion and became the VP of Finance and chief risk officer. I was one of the youngest officers at Sierra Pacific Resources. Our CEO in the late ‘90s, Mike Niggli, approached me and said, “We want to take our retained earnings and start a telecom company. Would you be interested in going over and running it?” I was like, “All right.” I never did it before but I’ll learn.
We started a company called Sierra Pacific communications. We built a telecommunications company in Vegas and Reno. Everybody wanted to divest to the telecom company. We ultimately sold to a company called American Fiber. Dave Rusin, at the time, was a CEO. I went to work for him. I ran operations. We had telecommunication assets in seven states and were not too dissimilar than a lot of companies in the mid to late 2000s. They came along and said, “We’re building this big company. We want to buy it.”
They bought us in 2010. I went to work for Dan Caruso and John Esculano at the time. They asked me to run OSP in the west. We joined in September 2010. I started doing that. In October 2020, the board approached me and asked me to run all of their OSP. I did that for the next three years and through sixteen acquisitions. We were growing the asset fairly quickly.
In 2013, I made the decision that I wanted to try something different. I left Zayo. I was approached by Scott Stevens and Walker Simmons over at Pamlico. They were starting a company in Southern California called Wilcon. They called me up and said, “We’re going to start this. We want to make a fiber company in Southern California. I know Jon DeLuca.” I had not met Jon before.
Jon and I met and we hit it off great. He and I went to work together. He was the President and CEO. I ran all of the operations. Over the next two and a half years, I’ve probably learned the most and had some of the most fun I ever had, learning from this small fiber company. In 2017, it was sold to Crown Castle. By then, at about the same time when we were selling Carrie, it was Crown and believe it or not, ExteNet were the two finalists trying to buy us.
I got to know Marc Ganzi during that process. He asked me to join his firm DigitalBridge, to be an operating partner. Once I finished with the integration of Wilcon into Crown, I left Crown and then I went to work for Marc at DigitalBridge. That was a good time for me. I got to spend a lot of time over in England and Canada, looking at assets as they were building out their fund and looking at fiber assets. Marc approached me and said, “Have this entity ExteNet.” This guy, Jim Hyde, “We’d like you to go over and run it.” I went over on labor day as the Chief Development Officer. The idea there was I was going to do an assessment of the company.
I did the assessment of the company and then in December 2018, Marc and the board asked me to become COO of it. I ran that and then this past July 2021, the board asked me, “Would I be interested in taking on the CEO role on an interim basis. See how I could do and see how they thought I was doing.” In December 2021, they asked me to become the permanent CEO.
As you can see, in all different areas, I always was willing. I believe that I could demonstrate my hard work and the effort that I put into it and I can grow into it. I also learned that I wanted to be able to treat and have employees have the same type of experience. I give people the opportunity because I was given the opportunity. I always wanted to pay that back.
Rich, there are many great pieces of what you said but this whole idea of growing into something. I noticed that you said a few times, “I didn’t have the experience here but I said yes, anyway,” or, “I was ready for something new.” That excitement about taking on a new role or growing into it and then now paying it back to your team.
When you meet people for the first time, you want to make sure they see you as a person first.
I remember when you were named CEO of ExteNet and people celebrated. I talked to many people from ExteNet and they were so excited. It’s exciting and I want to talk a little bit about your vision, philosophy, where you see the company going, the people aspect and the human aspect because this is where you shine and your team loves you. Let’s start by talking about simply what and who is ExteNet? Who do you serve your services, products and so on? We’ll give an introduction first.
We are a privately held company that provides communications infrastructure to our customers. In the traditional sense, we offer outdoor and indoor services. What do I mean by that? For outdoor, we offer small cells, fibers, C-RAN hubs. We will build and operate all of those. On the indoor, we’ll build out the infrastructure, own that infrastructure, put in a DaaS system, put in a wifi system. Even now, as the industry is changing, we’re looking at private wireless. Our customers, the obvious, are the big three, the MNOs.
We offer services to the healthcare industry. Through the pandemic, hospitals became a big point for everybody. Several years ago, we had no hospitals. Now we have eighteen hospitals that we’re providing services to. We have the hospitality, the casinos, the convention centers, the hotels and also the other area that we do a lot of work in is the sports and entertainment venues. We have a lot of sports venues that manage and operate around the US as well.
You’ve been in the industry a long time. What changes have you seen in the 5G ecosystem over the past several years? How does this set ExteNet up for growth?
It’s a very interesting time because if you go back to 2020, we are on the cusp of 5G. Here we are several years later, I would say is we’re on the cusp of 5G. A lot of it came from the C-band auction but not so much. I wouldn’t say what changed but it was more of a delay. The focus was more on getting that capacity and put that capacity out there.
From our standpoint, it gave us the opportunity but honestly, Carrie is to focus on ourselves and figure out where we needed to improve. We needed to focus. We had an indoor business but we were there. We spent the last several years building up an indoor business that can benefit not only the MNOs but the real estate owners themselves.
As you talk about 5G and you get closer to that phone with all the apps, your signal is going to have to get closer. Outdoor is going to be crucial but so is indoor. With that change and that mindset of the way in which we have to have the infrastructure ready, we’ve spent a significant amount of time building up our indoor business and ensuring that the outdoor we’re there and ready. The indoor now is we’ve been spending a lot of time and effort with the real estate owners and the MNOs to ensure that we’re meeting their needs and there as well.
Talk a little bit about your technical solutions for enterprise and this core product that you developed.
Let’s talk about a sports venue. We won the San Antonio Spurs. It’s a great win and a great organization. We’re happy that they chose us. We’re going to go in there and help them do is make sure that their customer experience is ideal every single time and every single customer that walks in there. We’re going to put in a DaaS system and bring the carriers in there so their customers have the experience.
You start talking about there are POS systems. From the minute they hit that parking lot to come in, they want to order their food. They want it fast and in an expedited way. We’re looking to design a system whether it is the DaaS or the private wireless. Whether for the Spurs, T-Mobile or for Verizon, their custom customer experience is top-notch. That’s what we try and look. We’re developing solutions for the customers.
What do you predict will change in either your workforce with ExteNet or maybe the workforce in total because we have this push toward the software-defined networks and this convergence is happening? Have you seen a change in your workforce in the past couple of years?
Traditionally you have your fiber group and you have that team that works there. Your DaaS group is more of your RF engineers. We’re finding is we need to bring in more than your basic fiber guys and your RF guys. We need a complete balance, IP engineers and be able to figure out how do we ensure that the solution that we’re are going to give is not only good for now but it’s future proof. The future keeps coming faster.
One of the things we’re realizing is we have to be dynamic. We’re out there looking for dynamic people that are open to learning. I keep harking back to the way I was. I want that type of energy from the people that are coming in. One, I always look for people that are smart than me. The second is who has that drive, integrity and work ethic to get us where we want to be. We’ve had to transform our company but bring in other expertise. We’ll see a lot of that and it’s going to continue to evolve over the next several months.
You talked a little bit about transformation and every great company has challenges. They have to overcome them to get to the next level. You think of some of the greatest comebacks in history like Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Netflix. I know that ExteNet has gone through a transformation in the past several years. In fact, you’re experiencing a little bit of the rebirth of ExteNet now. What challenges have you overcome as a company? Where are you now?
I’m happy to explain it because it’s why we are where we are now. Why I’m so proud of the employees the most is we haven’t taken a step back. We did a leadership round table and what we said is, “I coined it. I own the truth.” We had to own our truth of what we weren’t good at. We weren’t good at delivering to our customers, one, the solution they asked for and two, the time that they asked for it.
We did it focused on our processes and platforms. We went through every one of our processes and fixed it. We made sure we broke down internal silos to help us work because that was the other part. I’m a big believer in transparency, collaboration and communication. It has silos that go out the window. We needed to do that.
Focus on yourself and figure out where you need to improve.
The second thing was the platforms. We had to improve and had to go out. We went out, partnered with a site tracker and have a great project management tool. We know what’s going on at any given point, all the way down to the node. That’s been beneficial for us. We needed to look inward in order for us to improve. Candidly, the customers were not very happy with us, particularly the MNOs. I think, hope and hear from them now that they were happy with us. It’s showing because they’re trusting us and give us more business and that I tribute to the hardworking effort of our employees.
Rich, you have a vision for the people and culture for the new ExteNet. Can you talk a little bit about that?
This is what I’m probably the most passionate about. I was a very big believer in diversity, telecommunication, even electric utility when I first got there. It’s been an area where it’s hard to see women excel and I’m probably the proudest that I have by far the best women in the industry working in our company.
On the operation side, I have a woman, Mary Jo Madden, who runs OSP for us in New York City. She can hold her own against any construction firm and knows her business. Patti Paulo, she’s running a lot of our operations, planning in operations. It’s important that when we take a look at bringing and becoming a good company, you have to start with the people.
I’m a big believer in culture. I keep saying that a good culture will be a great strategy any day and you have to be it. You start with every single employee and make sure we are all working towards the same common goal. I start that with, I’m a big believer in diversity as well. What’s going to make us successful is bringing in people with different thoughts, experiences, cultures, everything different. That’s what makes us good. I like to spend a lot of time, focus and energy on that.
We’ve created a DEI committee that I chair. I find it amazing to hear people and different women’s stories in our organization. I want to focus on bringing up a lot of women in the industry as well as minority males because that’s another area that we don’t have a lot of. I want to be able to bring them to the table, not for anything else. It’s going to make us a better and stronger company as we move forward.
I can hear the passion in your voice around that, Rich and It’s so important. I agree with you. Kudos to you for making that a priority and it’s going to serve you well, especially with the bottom line. It always does. There’s a business case for diversity. There’s a people case but there is a business case too. That’s amazing.
We’ve heard so much about the Great Resignation. We hear about it all the time about people leaving their jobs by the millions. One of the number one reasons people leave is because we hear in staffing that, “There is no growth. I don’t see a future here. I don’t see myself in leadership. There’s not a lot of development going on.” What is your plan to develop leaders and give people a career path that they can get excited about?
When you look at the employee proposition, you got to balance attracting and retaining employees. We’ve tried to balance that. When I got the CEO position, I had to start over with my leadership team. We were able to bring in Saroosh Ahmed, our new CFO and Monnie McGaffigan, our new CRO. I wanted to also be able to take the employees that are inside the company and find ways to advance their careers. We balanced that out as well.
I feel it’s very important that if you’re going to bring an employee in, they got to feel that they’re getting new more than a paycheck and maybe a bonus. You got to be able to show them what is their growth path but you have to ask them. You can’t assume anything. That is key and that is what we’re starting to do. You have to be able to incentivize them as well.
You talk about great resignation. One of the things we’ve learned is that a simple paycheck is not enough. We are looking at how do we enhance the compensation experience for total compensation experience for the employee. I want our team to focus on building up within as well as bringing in new. For example, Monnie McGaffigan came in and now running the sales force. She’s doing an amazing job. She’s assembling a whole new team. She’s building within and bringing in new. Watching what she’s doing over on that sales side is going to help set us for a path forward.
Rich, I heard you say communication and I think that leaders miss this piece because you said something that we ask our people, “What is your career path?” We don’t assume. It’s brilliant because that’s what we need and the transparency piece. You’ve been transparent on the show now. You’re walking your talk and I honor that. It’s going to take you far. I’m excited to hear it.
I’ve heard amazing things about your leadership. I know many people at ExteNet, one of my favorite companies. We’ve staffed for you for a long time. I’ve heard great things. I want to know about your leadership principles and what do you believe in. What principles do you instill in your leaders or talk about? I want to understand you as a leader and I want to learn from you too. What’s your secret, Rich?
I build it on the foundation of transparency, communication and collaboration. That sounds so cliché. If you do it and you live by it, it works right. When I was a COO, what I could tell you is at any given point in time, I know my leadership team. If I wasn’t able to attend something, they could attend it on my behalf because we were aligned with each other. We understood where we were going and where we bit. That is the key foundation and hard work. I want to lead by example. I believe in hard work and integrity will get you there.
If the employees see that and see that you’re living what you’re saying, they’ll believe in you and follow you. They don’t want to hear the buzz words and all these big plans. They want to know, where are we going? How are we going to get there and do I have your back? My other real big principle, Carrie is I’m not a micromanager. I want you to be successful.
I’ll support you. I’ll give you not only the responsibility but the accountability. I’ll let you do your job and that’s critical because if you don’t do that. They lose trust and get frustrated if you’re constantly on top of them. It doesn’t get easier as you go up the ladder. You have to learn and I’m evolving all the time. I’m learning in this role. I’m learning all the time. I reach out to people, to you and to whoever can give me advice. Now that I’m a CEO, what should I be doing differently? What am I doing right when I’m not doing right? I look for feedback from my team to let me know.
Leadership is built on transparency, communication, and collaboration.
You trust your people. They trust you but you trust them first. That’s huge because a mistake that leaders make is they don’t trust and as human beings, we can feel that when someone doesn’t trust us to do what we know to do. That’s huge. I’m curious when you’re hiring a leader, what do you look for? What are some traits?
I would look for you to worry about the resume. I don’t look at the resume. Hopefully, Marc doesn’t hear that. He will get upset. I’m asking you, give the qualified people. Now I want to meet you as a person. Exactly what you’re asking is what I ask. What makes you tick? What makes you successful? What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? We’ll talk about the business but I want to see what type of person you are. Do you believe what I believe? Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to you, me and the company. When I’m interviewing people, that’s what I do.
The other thing is sometimes when we look at those resumes, we give the resume so much weight. The person sitting in front of us and all we can think about is what we’ve read. It’s used the way that we’re viewing them. I love that of not even looking at anything and having that experience of that person be the first time that you talk to them and making those assessments at that moment because you’re right.
Leadership is so much more than experience. It’s who they are, their soul and what they believe, also that alignment with believing what you believe. It’s their alignment with the ExteNet culture, DNA, passion and who ExteNet is. You want to make sure that it’s aligned. I’m going to copy that or I’m going to do that too. That’s one of the best strategies I’ve ever heard. Let’s talk about your vision for ExteNet for the next several years. What are you most excited about? What drives you? Where are you going? Where are you and your team going on this rocket ship to the moon?
As we’re getting through this whole transformation building this leadership team, we’re all in line with the same vision. We want to make sure that we’re ready to catch that 5G leap and grow it. I’m excited about the possibilities on the infrastructure side. I love all the talks of all the different technologies and ways in which the customer experience is going to evolve. We want to be part of that. We want to help and be there to give that solution to whoever that person or company is delivering that in use customer. That’s what excites us. We believe that we’re positioned in ourselves to be part of that way.
That’s what I’ve been hearing and we always hear buzz in the marketplace. We always get the real scoop. Everybody always tells me what’s going on and that’s what I’m hearing, positive and uplifting. I’m hearing all the good things. Are you hiring right now? We need to know. Everyone wants to know, where do I go to work for ExteNet? Where can I find out about the jobs? You could call us but that’s Broadstaff.
We have our website, ExteNetSystems.com and take a look there. We are hiring. There are a couple of opportunities. They haven’t publicly announced them yet but there are some big opportunities that we’re working on. We’re going to need teams. We’re going to need everywhere from project managers, construction managers, project coordinators and engineers.
It’s an exciting time for us. We have about 350 employees and growing. As we expand into new markets, we’re going to need new teams there. There are a lot of exciting things happening. I’m excited about having it. I want the best and brightest people that want to have a good time and enjoy the work and people. I want you to join our team.
I have to end with this. This may come as a surprise to you. Sorry about the surprise because we didn’t talk about this before. What I heard is that you, in all of your internal meetings, by telling a dad joke and then what happened is the team started creating memes and sending out memes to each other. It becomes this big thing but everybody looks forward to the end. They don’t leave a meeting because they want to know what the dad joke is going to be appropriate? You have to tell us a dad joke to end this show.
I do tell dad jokes and I do get a wide range of responses back but I think it’s fun. We have so many serious things going on. It’s good to tell a joke. I’m going to tell a joke. I’m going to set this up a little bit. We did deep dive. I do quarterly deep dives. The whole entire company comes for each market and we all go through the market and do a deep dive. In the end, we tell jokes. We got done with it. I told twenty jokes over a week. There was one joke that stood out and I explained it to everybody. My niece’s seven-year-old daughter. Savanah told me this joke and mind you, all the adults love this joke. Hopefully, I don’t kill this show. Here goes the joke. Why didn’t the toilet paper cross the road?
I don’t know. Why?
It kept getting stuck in the crack. I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of feedback.
Rich, everything that I’ve heard about you is spot on, how amazing you are and your heart, who you are as a leader, what you’re doing for this company and for all the people of ExteNet. I want to thank you for coming to the show. It’s been a pleasure and an honor. This will be one of my greatest episodes. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. I was nervous in the beginning.
I’m always nervous in the beginning. You take care.
Take care.
Important Links:
- ExteNet Systems
- Metro Connect
- Sierra Pacific Resources
- American Fiber
- Zayo
- Pamlico
- Wilcon
- Crown Castle
- DigitalBridge
- Broadstaff
About Rich Coyle
Rich became the President and permanent Chief Executive Officer in December 2021, after being named interim Chief Executive Office in July 2021 and Chief Operations Officer (COO) since December 2018. As the COO, Rich was focused on designing and implementing business operations to support the strategic direction of a customer-centered organization. Under his leadership, ExteNet cemented its position as the leading private owner and operator of small cells and fiber networks by delivering three consecutive years of distributed network infrastructure growth. Alongside, Rich has always focused on promoting company culture & vision, with a goal of building diversity, equity, and inclusiveness across the organization.
Prior to ExteNet, Rich served as an Operating Partner at Digital Bridge Holdings LLC. Previously, Rich has also held leadership roles at fiber infrastructure companies, including Wilcon and Zayo Group. Over the twenty years in the industry, including telecom and utility companies, Rich has focused on growing and improving operational, financial and market position of the companies. Rich has an accomplished record of developing strategic and tactical initiatives to maximize long-term growth and enterprise value through a combination of streamlined operations, cost reductions, efficient capital investment, and financial structuring.
Rich has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the City University of New York – Queens College. He is a recognized public speaker and participates in various thought leadership events.
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