The Modern CFO podcast is designed to illuminate the hard work that is behind the scenes in financing next-generation ideas and technologies, as well as acknowledging the developing role of senior financial professionals, and the tools they rely upon.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Modern CFO podcast. As always, I'm your host, Andrew Suske. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Dallas Clement, president and CFO of Cox Enterprises. Dallas, thank you so much for hosting here in Atlanta. I'm really excited for the conversation today.
Speaker 2:Andrew, thanks for coming down. Appreciate it. It's a rainy day here in Atlanta. We appreciate you traveling and, going to visit with us.
Speaker 1:Well, it's an incredible campus, and just the energy of the environment, it's been really fun to be here.
Speaker 2:Today's employee appreciation day. So we have, on a Friday, we have a number of folks here, and our employees are so important to us. So you came on a good day.
Speaker 1:I wanna kick off this episode by talking about some of your early career decisions and what you were most passionate about in media and what led you to Cox initially.
Speaker 2:Sure. Happy to do that. So I was born in Florida. My dad was a doctor. I had no notion as to what business was.
Speaker 2:I majored in math, so, again, no notion of business. And I went to Harvard, and lots of folks at that time left and went into consulting or investment banking. I went to investment banking. That's where I really learned aspects of finance, but I didn't like the environment. And so I went to graduate school, went went out to Stanford, and got a degree in engineering economic systems, which is like industrial engineering.
Speaker 2:And afterwards I said, don't want to go to consulting, don't want to go to investment banking, want to work for a company. And the kinds of companies I liked had some technology, some sort of interesting business model. I was particularly focused on media and communications and sent back then, there wasn't the Internet, so I sent resumes out. And I, also happened to send a resume to a search firm. And through that search firm, I got connected to Cox and landed here just shy
Speaker 1:of 34 years ago. So when you were first, introduced to Cox, did you know how large of an enterprise it would be? Some of the CFOs I talked to, they go into the big four consultants to get a lot of different types of exposure. But, as a company that's this big, there are so many moving pieces. Did you know that going in?
Speaker 2:I did not I wasn't aware of Cox at all when I started, and Cox is was a lot smaller then in 1990. I think it was about 1,800,000,000 in revenue. Today, we're about 23,000,000,000 in revenue. At that time, the biggest businesses were radio stations, television stations, newspapers. And in the local markets where Cox operated, they were all branded the call letters of the radio stations and then and then the television stations or the name of the newspaper.
Speaker 2:So the Cox brand wasn't out, so I had no knowledge as to Cox at all. The only business that was branded Cox was Cox Cable back then, but I wasn't in any Cox Cable markets, so I had no exposure.
Speaker 1:Who are some of the influences you had early on at the company that influenced the longevity of your tenure here?
Speaker 2:I because you navigate a career, you're always trying to balance the people you're working with, the culture, the opportunity for learning and for growth. Are you having fun? And I, like like I think many people, tried to evaluate as best I could all of those early on. I think it was the overarching culture of Cox that was established back from the founding a 125 years ago that was a contributor. I also really enjoyed the people in the cable group.
Speaker 2:I started in the cable group according to Jimmy Hayes, the CFO at the time, and really enjoyed working with him. And I worked very closely with the head of the cable group, Jim Robbins. At every turn, they gave me opportunities. They trusted me. And so I was exposed to a number of things early on and had fun and was learning.
Speaker 2:And at every chance where there might have been a decision to leave, I made the decision to stay.
Speaker 1:Wanna talk about how the business continues to evolve. Recently, there is some major news around, multibillion dollar acquisition, and it's interesting to see the continued passion and diversification of different, areas of the business. What were the different focuses over the last few decades that you've seen have been successful in terms of diversifying the focuses of the business?
Speaker 2:So as I said, last year, we had our 100 and 25th anniversary. And what's interesting is I went back and looked at what the business looked like in 1985. And in 1985, the traditional media business was television, radio, and newspapers, and that was about a $1,000,000,000 in revenue. Cable was about a 100,000,000 in revenue, and Manheim was about a 100,000,000, 200,000,000 in in revenue. And newspapers was the largest portion of the media business in 1985, represented over half of that $1,000,000,000.
Speaker 2:The business has, transitioned and transformed many times over the last 100 and 25 years. And part of our paradigm is we're willing to take risks on new technologies, new business models, even if it competes with ourselves. We don't develop new technologies. We'll embrace technologies. We also will not take undue risk on leverage in financial engineering.
Speaker 2:And so early on, the company is willing to go from newspapers into radio, one of the first players in radio, one of the first players in the broadcast television, one of the first players into cable, and then got into automotive because in our media businesses, the largest local advertisers typically were automotive. So we were familiar with automotive, and we had an interest in Black Book and so got into Manheim Auctions in the 19 sixties. Fast forward to the start of the Internet, and the newspaper group realized classifieds were gonna go away. And so who better to start an online automotive classifieds than Cox? Because we had Manheim.
Speaker 2:We knew classifieds, so we started Auto Trader just after the formation of the Internet. Within the cable group, when I started in 1990, all we offered was analog video. And as technology evolved and we started introducing fiber into the network and started activating the return path so that signals could go from the house up into the network, We started offering telephone service, digital video service, and then, broadband Internet service, and those businesses exploded. And what I like to say is they started birthing their own children. So on the video side, you had high definition.
Speaker 2:You had DVR. You had video on demand at interactive program guide. On the data side, you had different speed tiers. You had your home page. You had home network, like, home networking.
Speaker 2:On the voice side, you started with circuit switch, then it moved to voice over IP. And for all of these, we can serve not only residential, but also commercial. And so that business saw so many different opportunities for organic. Cox is willing to embrace that effect. Early on, we were the first to embrace offering residential telephone to our customers and and a lot of our peers, all of us.
Speaker 2:So it's been a huge transition and transformation. And what we typically have done is we take the cash from the business to generate. We invest in our core businesses to keep them relevant and competitive in the markets they serve. We invest in adjacencies to those, and those adjacent investments can be organic or inorganic. But we like adjacencies because we can leverage the machine of the core business, the network, the employees, the customers, the machine, and that will derisk and hopefully enhance the likelihood of success of an adjacency.
Speaker 2:So as an example, an adjacency in cable might be getting into wireless, getting into commercial services, and so we're doing all of those. For Cox Automotive, an adjacency might be trying to address what's happening in the EV market and being a large player in the EV market, helping maintain large fleets and things like that. So we're we're looking at that. But over time, we've also said we need to plant seeds in diversification, and you asked about open gov. And so we try to be as smart as we can, and and we recognize what we're good at, what we're not good at.
Speaker 2:We don't develop new technologies. We embrace technologies. And so our strategy team looks at a variety of areas and says, hey. Which segments of the overall economy are embracing technology? Is there likely the dislocation happening?
Speaker 2:Opportunities for us to get involved, opportunities for the long term because we always think long term. And we develop a thesis. We test that thesis. We go talk to folks. We participate in conferences.
Speaker 2:We talk to players, management teams, venture capital, private equity. We try to figure out who the best players are within that strategic segment that we've that we have targeted, and then we go see if we can get involved and if we can invest or acquire, etcetera. And OpenDev is an example of public sector software, which was the thesis, and we talked to a bunch of folks. And we liked what OpenGov was doing. Lots of cities and municipalities, as they started to embrace technology 10, 20 years ago, a lot of their technology is on premise, and they've been very slow to move to digital and supporting mobile apps or moving to the cloud or embracing AI.
Speaker 2:And Opendove started 12 years ago as a cloud based SaaS company, and that makes it a lot easier for cities and municipalities to provide to their constituents the latest and greatest. So 3 years ago, we got involved by making a small investment in a company. And then 2 years later or a year later, the infrastructure bill happened, and OpenGov realized they didn't have an asset management module that was robust enough to meet the needs for cities and municipalities, but they were aware of a company called Particle that had a wonderful cloud based SaaS asset management module, and the existing investors weren't ready to underwrite that investment. We said, we love it. We'll partner with you open gov to go acquire that business, and that increased our ownership stake in open gov and allowed us to work and see even more what Opendhub does.
Speaker 2:And and when we do these diversification investments, we really we look for the the tailwinds, but we also wanna make sure we trust the leadership. Leadership is so important in those businesses and in all of our businesses, and we really appreciate and respect Zach Bookman and what he's done and his vision for the future. And so we were excited when, quite frankly, he intimated, hey. It might make sense for us to work more closely together going forward, and we were able to come to terms on something that worked well for us, worked well for him, and worked well for the prior shareholders.
Speaker 1:How do you think others can take the model that you're explaining around patient long term focus when their public company CFOs have to answer to shareholders and these adjacencies are less obvious? What would you tell, other CFOs who are trying to communicate, all of the new potential adjacencies that either AI is unlocking or that are newly available to them?
Speaker 2:Over the course of the last 34 years, I've recognized that there's 2 different flavors of CFO. There's a CFO that is more controller type, CPA oriented, and then there's a CFO that's more strategic. As I said earlier, I was a MAP major. I don't have a CPA. That's not my focus.
Speaker 2:I have folks on my team who have CPA and make sure we get our numbers straight. I'm more strategic and more critical thinking, and I think what the CFO can do is help the team, help the CEO understand what are options available for growth in organic, inorganic. Given those possibilities, how do you prioritize given the balance sheet of priorities? And make sure the story is consistent and you're setting yourself up well for success. Whether you're public or private, you wanna make sure you have a good story.
Speaker 2:And then depending on how far the adjacency is, it may make sense, like we do, even if you're public, not to take a huge bite and introduce more risk, but maybe take a small bite along the way. And you always, as CFO or capital allocator, wanna appreciate and understand the upside, but also make sure you're balancing the risk and the downside as best you can.
Speaker 1:How does the family business world impact your relationship with the company? Does it provide a unique culture? What kind of dynamic does it add to the business?
Speaker 2:As you said, Cox is private. It was started by James Cox a 125 years ago. It's remained in the family for those entire 125 years. It's still a 100% owned by by the family. What I would say is the values have been consistent from day 1.
Speaker 2:And in the governor's will, he said, do right by the employees, your customers, do right by the communities that serve in the family, the shareholders will be fine. And and that that that value set is pervasive across and creates a really strong foundation. Every business, depending on where it is in the life cycle, its competitive needs, etcetera, has a different culture, but all based on that foundation. And so when you can go back and look at instances historically and my boss, Alex Taylor, who's 4th generation, is a student of the history of the company and the family. When you reach a fork in the road now, you can go back and look at, analogous cases as to, how the family decision makers back then navigated those choices, and everything turned out alright.
Speaker 2:And so you can get more comfortable on decisions you're thinking for the long term and and trying to do what's right and having confidence that it's gonna turn out alright.
Speaker 1:Talking about patient long term focus, what's most exciting to you in the business looking out 3 to 5 years?
Speaker 2:When Alex Taylor came in, he wanted to be very long term oriented. And focused on future focused 2030, which is want to grow, to show up well for all of our stakeholders by 2,034. What I get excited about and he he would love to have 3, 4 huge businesses in 2034 that are generating a lot of revenue and growing dynamic and operating businesses, and I completely respect that. I'm trying to figure out how to navigate from where we are to there. And the way I think about it to manage risks and to optimize opportunities is managing a portfolio of options.
Speaker 2:And so I would like to think that my job over the next couple of years is continue to invest in our core businesses. I find adjacencies to help those businesses transform and be competitive and relevant and growing, but also plant seeds in a variety of companies. And for those companies, we'll have a 100% ownership and some will have less than a 100% ownership. And and so we'll have more and more of those over the next 3 to 4 years pursuant to the strategy. And as we move out of 10 years, I hope to have a portfolio and be making decisions on capital allocation on where we wanna put more capital and where we might make hard decisions to pull back.
Speaker 2:And we do make hard decisions. And in 2019, we made the hard decision to sell our radio and television business. And sometimes in any good garden to manage for the long term, you have to print. And so we'll make those decisions. We don't take we don't take them lightly because it impacts people.
Speaker 2:And lots of these businesses are have been part of our history for a long time.
Speaker 1:I think it's a unique advantage as you mentioned earlier to be able to look back in time as to how decisions were made either culturally or just financially. Do you have any advice for folks who are navigating global instability and, macroeconomic situation that feels more volatile for the first time.
Speaker 2:What's interesting, I was just looking at CNBC and the Fed president from Richmond, Tom Barkin, was on talking about how productivity is pitching up. He made the comment that he looked back to just the 1st year before COVID, and he compared to now. It's clicked up a little bit, but it it it's not the same trajectory as you look at last year, this year, 22 to this year. I think the point being that we have all managed through a lot of crazy change and volatility since we went home for COVID in March of 20. And and I think the lesson learned is always trying to do the right thing, managing the risk, making sure you understand what are the existential risks, and what do you do to minimize those.
Speaker 2:Be very smart about the risks you're intentionally taking, and let them play out and be patient and be balanced. And I think if you have a long term mindset, you understand the downside risk, you make calculated investments for the future. They're not all gonna be right, but we certainly had some that haven't turned out right. But if you do the best, yeah, then you just trust the process, trust the team.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the pandemic and all of that change, did you learn anything unique about either your relationship with work or culture of the company?
Speaker 2:Well, cultural company, I didn't learn anything new because I knew we would do the right thing for our employees to keep them safe. I had never done a Zoom call or a Teams call prior to COVID, so I think all of us learned that. I think well, I'm very proud that we showed up for our customers, for our employees. I'm very proud how the team showed up to manage our expenses at that time because we did have some revenue impact because especially, automotive things were closed down, etcetera. I I I think we have learned that we are resilient and a little bit not a surprise.
Speaker 2:We've been around a 125 years, but the last 4 years have been a lot of change. And I think we're very confident and happy with how resilient we are and how we showed up for our customers. So in the case of Cox Automotive, when things shut down, dealerships shut down and while our customers were earning no revenue. And so we went to them and said, okay. So as not to have you churn off our software services, We will cut the the rate in half for the time being until you open up and get your feet going.
Speaker 2:And the market really appreciated what we did to try to find that middle ground with our customers, and I'm really proud that we showed up. And it really has underscored our relationship with our customers and our employees.
Speaker 1:Josh, I'd love to learn more about the role of sustainability at Cox Enterprises and how it's evolved over history
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. So as I've shared before in the governor's will, he said do right by the communities that you serve. And Jim Kennedy, who was CEO for a number of years, 3rd generation family, Alex Taylor, who's CEO now, 4th generation. Both are big outdoorsmen and so very focused on the environment.
Speaker 2:And Jim Kennedy started Cox Conservers about 15 years ago, and Cox Conservers' mandate was how can we make our businesses more sustainable. Early on, it was focused on carbon. Over time, it's evolved to water and waste, and we've had big goals. In in fact, we are celebrating 0 waste to landfill coming up here next in the next couple of months. And so we've been working diligently, across all our businesses to reduce the carbon footprint, look for green sources of energy, take advantage of solar, where and how it makes sense, etcetera.
Speaker 2:We have a team that's about 30 to 40 people that report up into me that have been very focused on that. About 5 years ago, Alex Taylor said, gosh. Can we punch above our weight? Can we do more in that fine businesses where we can really drive a larger impact versus just our operating businesses. Can we own businesses that do the same?
Speaker 2:So we started about 5 years ago. Similar to our whole diversification, developing a thesis around different segments within clean tech and sustainability, and then having conversations, deciding where are interesting areas. And so today, we have a big focus on controlled environment agriculture bought a company called Mooji that does fine crops in greenhouses, next generation greenhouses, and a company called BrightFarms that is doing next generation greenhouses for leafy greens. In fact, this year, we'll be opening up 3 next generation leafy green greenhouses to support the United States. And what's so nice about that is right now, leafy greens that we eat in Atlanta probably come from California, and California is either in drought or too much water.
Speaker 2:So a lot of it is ruined. And then once it's picked, it's gotta be transported all the way to to Atlanta. One of the greenhouses we're gonna be opening up is down in Macon, South Georgia. And so it'll get here, more quickly. It'll take less time.
Speaker 2:It'll be fresher. It stays on the shelves longer. It's a win win for the environment, for grocery stores, retailers, and for retailers' customers. So we're excited about that opportunity in controlled environment agriculture. We also happened on a plastics recycling business using pyrolysis and called Nexus Circular, and we have been supporting that business for a number of years.
Speaker 2:We're in the process now of validating a generation 3 reactor and process to take hard to recycle plastics, so not the Dasani bottles, the Coke Dasani bottles, which are easier to recycle, but film, grocery bags, things like that are harder to recycle and using paralysis to intensely no oxygen to melt down to the base oil that can go back in a circular economy into the crackers to create new plastics, and we're excited about that. We also made an investment in a solar company that helps businesses and helps, communities build solar and finance solar, something called BSD, and so we're a minority investor in that business. So we're very excited about it. It's an important part. It's very much aligned with our values.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite parts of every podcast that I do is I ask, what's one thing that you feel is just underestimated in the world today? And it doesn't have to be business related, and I just think it's a fun opportunity to highlight the unique vantage point of CFOs that I speak with.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I guess what I would say to that answer, I think people continue to underappreciate that everyone comes to a conversation in different context, and people don't take enough time to level set on the context they have, their history, their perspective versus what you may come to the table with. And if you spend the time time listening, asking probing questions, opening questions, communicating, I just know people tend to be very reasonable. So what I would say is it's just good old fashioned communication.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I really like that. I often say people should hit that back button when they're listening to Mhmm. Listen to something again. I would definitely recommend it.
Speaker 1:That's a great answer. Thanks for sharing that. One thing I was really excited to talk to you about today is some of the frameworks and playbooks. You mentioned the hypothesis testing strategy of diversifying investments, whether total acquisitions or smaller investments. Are there other playbooks or frameworks that you've seen other CFOs adopt that work really well?
Speaker 2:A comment I always make is that I'm happy to copy paste. If someone else is doing something really well and it's working well for them, there's no reason not to bring it in to what's a Cox and copy paste. So I'm always looking for good ideas and good thinking. I can't think off the top of my head of someone that I have done that with, but it's just an ongoing perspective. What I can tell you is that you have to evolve and you have to be open minded.
Speaker 2:And in every conversation, I take something something away, and I'll give you an example. I've been in a company 34 years, and I've been involved in a variety of investments. And when I was cable division, I realized that if you make a $2,000,000 investment or a $5,000,000 investment into a business, there's a certain amount of work to be done. And and let's say it gets the 10 x return on that investment. For a venture firm, that's a huge home run.
Speaker 2:For a company our size, a 10 x return on a 5,000,000 investment, that's $50,000,000. It doesn't move the needle for us. And so I was very negative on doing those early stage investments. Fast forward to today, I do think technology is evolving more quickly now. And you can get McKinsey or another consulting firm to give you a primer on artificial intelligence as an example, which you really won't know or appreciate how it's going to disrupt your business, other businesses, unless you see how the early stage companies are actually using it and actually disrupting.
Speaker 2:And so we started a fund here to invest in those early stage businesses. It's called Socion Ventures. And we started key is to get exposure to have early stage companies are actually using the latest and greatest technology to disrupt. What I've noticed in the market is a lot of venture firms and early stage firms start with a venture firm, and then they realize, gosh. I've got 10 businesses in the firm.
Speaker 2:2 of them are doing really well. I don't wanna let them go out of here, and so they start an opportunity fund. So when they start the opportunity fund, they focus on those top 2 out of their venture fund. And so if you're not in the cap structure early on, you may never have a chance to to to talk to the company or or be invested. So by by having the associate and fund, we're in the conversation, might even be in the cap structure, increases the likelihood that we'll be invited to the table and help with our strategy.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing I would say is we try to look for opportunities for our teammates to get involved with these to either be either mentor or be on the board, etcetera. And it just allows people in a variety aspects, Cox, to be exposed to this, disruption, this innovation, and hopefully bring new ideas to what they do every day.
Speaker 1:Outside of the formal process of hiring at McKinsey, where do you go for your continuous learning? Either reading or talking to these new investment teams or these younger portfolio companies. What's an example of somewhere you go for new information?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say that there's a particular place. As you might guess, a company that's as large as we are, as diverse as we are, we have a variety of relationships. And so I'm always meeting with external folks. And and in each of those conversations, it's what are they doing to help us, and how can I help that relationship be more effective? But in those conversations, I always ask them, hey.
Speaker 2:What are other folks doing, and what are you what are you doing? What are you seeing? And that increases my intelligence and and and my awareness. That's part of my learning process. I'll also when I talk to leaders here let's take the tax department as an example.
Speaker 2:It used to be the best leaders were were the operating p and l leaders, and and I'm I'm trying to move away from I think leadership can come anywhere. And I think even a tax leader can be, quote, a p and l leader because, number 1, they they have to execute on their team, find good talent, and plan for succession. To they have to optimize the structure so that we can optimize our taxes, and they should always understand what's happening in the external market about how efficient are they as a tax department for a $23,000,000,000 revenue company, but, also, what are best practices? What are others doing in terms of embracing technology, etcetera? As an example, again, within tax department was the first department, about 7, 8 years ago, really leaning in on RPA within our organization.
Speaker 2:And so I believe innovation can happen anywhere, and I really hold our leaders accountable for being the expert in their domain. And expertise isn't just executing internally. It's also being aware of what's happening externally. And so every time I talk to our leaders, I learn something new about what's happening in innovation, what's happening externally in their particular area, and that helps my learning. And then I, like lots of leaders, read papers, read journals.
Speaker 2:There's lots of digital newsletters, including Axios, which we which we own, and and I get smarter every time I read those stories. And so it's a tapestry of a variety of places where I I get more shoes of learning.
Speaker 1:Do you have any advice for aspiring CFOs?
Speaker 2:If you look at the CFOs or automotive CFOs of of our cable business and and then myself, the way to, at least in our organization, become a CFO is over the course of your career, not think about the career ladder. Think about the career jungle gym. And so don't be afraid to take laterals. Don't be afraid to move into a different business. Don't be afraid to move into a different discipline.
Speaker 2:Because every time you do that, you are exposed and experiment different leadership, a different dynamic, a different different challenges, different opportunities, and that all becomes part of your skill set, part of your portfolio such that you're better prepared in these higher tier leadership positions to think critically, to think long term, to think about the risks. Yeah. These are the aspects I talked about before. And if you've seen them in a variety of places, you better appreciate all of the possibilities in these key, decisions, in the leadership roles.
Speaker 1:What's an example of a time that you went through adversity through your career or an example of a major win, and did they have any overlaps?
Speaker 2:What's interesting, that question is a little bit different than the question I typically get from folks in internally, which is what keeps you up at night? And my answer is always I have 4 daughters. And the reason I say that is I try my best to have really good teammates, good leaders, and I trust them. And we engage. And it doesn't mean they're gonna make every decision correctly.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean every decision will be a success. But over the long term, if you trust your leaders and you have good leaders, everything's gonna be all alright. So I I don't spend, relative to work, lots of sleepless nights. Your question was a little bit different. And as I think, I I spent 20 years in our cable group, the first 10 finance oriented positions, the next 10 product and strategy oriented positions, and then 5 in automotive and now 9 in Cox Enterprises.
Speaker 2:And if you say, okay. What's the role that I learned a lot and grew a lot? I I would say when Cox Communications went public in 95, we had a decision to make. Do we hire someone externally who knows investor relations that doesn't know the management team, the culture, or the strategy, or you have someone internally who knows those and teach them investor relations. And and so I was the Mikey of Cox.
Speaker 2:Let's get Dallas to do it. It'll do anything. And so I was thrust into investor relations land and and picked up coverage on 26 with 26 different sell side analysts, helped our CEO and CFO pull together presentations, manage conferences, etcetera. I learned so much. In that role, you can be a traffic cop and hand off questions to the resident expert, or you can, over time, start to take those questions on your own because you've been you've been in it.
Speaker 2:And if you exercise your critical thinking, your communication skills, you ask questions of the resident expert, and you understand it. Once you understand it, you're gonna understand it better than the sell side analyst calling you, and you can start to do that. And so I became a valued partner to our shareholders and the analysts, and I learned a lot. Back to what I said before, learn how to communicate, learn how to influence without giving the exact answer. Because in the world of financial disclosure, you can't give the exact answer, but you can talk about the risk that someone has who's overthinking where you're gonna end up or the opportunities someone may have missed if they're underappreciating where you think you're gonna end up.
Speaker 2:So that was a really valuable role for me in in my sort of transition. And then the role that was challenged for me was also our cable group, and we're launching wireless today. We tried to launch wireless several times. And in the mid 2000s, I was responsible for wireless. And it was hard for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2:Number 1, it was a difficult relationship with our CIO at the time, and he and he and his team were developing the billing platform for our wireless offering. And it wasn't on track, And fingers were pointing in multiple different directions, and and that was hard. And I wasn't necessarily an expert in it. And so trying to figure out what questions am I not asking, how can I communicate, etcetera, that was hard? As we were looking to get into wireless, the iPhone launched and we didn't have access to the iPhone and so all of a sudden it caused you to second guess your strategy about getting into wireless because you sorta had a feel that this iPhone thing is gonna be critically important for new wireless customers, and we didn't have access to it.
Speaker 2:That was probably the hardest situation in my 34 years. I've got this really unique opportunity to
Speaker 1:be here today on employee appreciation day. For people who are interested in more about the culture of Cox, where should they go to learn more about the company, the history? And because of all the different divisions, I'm sure you're actively hiring most of the time.
Speaker 2:We have a website, so you can always go to the website, and that, does a really good job of sharing a bit of our history, sharing a bit of what we're doing. Websites, no matter how dynamic they are, they may not fully embrace the culture. I think in terms of the culture, someone's really interested. They gotta come on campus, and they gotta visit with folks. And we're always happy to talk to folks and visit.
Speaker 2:Yes. You're right. We are hiring, and those positions are publicly available, and people can look at our website and get and link to the the job opportunities and look at those and always happy to get resumes from great qualified folks. Excellent.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Dallas. It's been a pleasure to get to know you. Think you did a great job explaining the the culture, the route to becoming CFO, and all the success that you've brought into the company.
Speaker 2:Andrew, thank you so much for coming down, and I appreciate our conversation this morning.