Ep. 192 Craig McKesson, Chief Commercial Officer at Takanock | Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast

Speaker A: That is, that is going back to the irony. You know, a lot of the information that people have comes from YouTube videos that they saw. And it's just, you know, we have to make that connection that all of those things that people do on a daily basis from, you know, uh, ordering a ride share to create, you know, every time you click for an E Commerce order to work, um, with your financial institution, any of those things that make our daily lives better are all enabled by this type of digital infrastructure. It all needs to work together, um, uh, to continue to grow. One of the examples that I used at a community open house just a week or so ago was just think about how frustrated you get when you get that spinning wheel, uh, because you're waiting on an answer or your app isn't going through. That's why we need data centers in all of these different locations to minimize that latency and make sure that those applications perform. And so when you're able to communicate things just in a very simplified way, uh, and concise way, that makes sense, um, a lot of people start to realize, okay, I get it. I may not like it, but I understand, and, um, I'm willing to accept it. Hi, this is Craig McKesson from Techanic. You're listening to the Data Center Go to Market podcast.

Speaker B: Hi, it's Joshua Feinberg, host of the Data Center Go to Market podcast. And today I'm welcoming a longtime industry veteran thrilled to have joining me today, Craig McKesson, a data center developer working on some exciting projects in the U.S. craig, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thanks, Joshua. I'm excited to be here and looking forward to having a great conversation.

Speaker B: Likewise. So you mentioned when we were planning this interview that one of your biggest challenges is overcoming community misconceptions about data center developments. Can you give us a little bit of context, especially given your background coming from the data center operator and real estate side?

Speaker A: Sure thing. I think, as anybody in the industry knows, um, there's been a lot of misperception around data centers. Uh, we've had a tremendous amount of growth, and quite frankly, with that growth has come a few problems. And so we found that in order to effectively engage with communities in an open and transparent manner, um, we've been able to overcome a lot of the fears, um, help educate people and ultimately, um, try to align. I think as an industry, one of our biggest challenges is really taking a step back and aligning on all of the good things that we're doing for communities, all the good things we're doing to enable both The US and the global economies, all of those things. Digital infrastructure has really become the fabric of the global economy. And so I think as the more we can educate people that uh, we have aligned with different technologies, different cooling technologies like closed loop cooling to eliminate water use, doing things to mitigate air and noise and things like that, um, the more successful we'll ultimately be and um, be able to actually continue to this absolutely incredible once in a lifetime growth pattern.

Speaker B: It seems like too that some of these community development problems have gotten most pronounced in the last couple of years. Early on in the life, uh, of this podcast, a little over two years ago, I remember I was speaking to a marketing leader from Cyrus one. And at the time she was describing how in addition to the normal buyer Personas that people think about when they're selling hyperscale and selling colocation, she was talking about the idea of building a team or a dedicated position on community stakeholders. And it wasn't just the community stakeholders that show up at the events with a lot of tough questions. It was like educating and building trust with elected officials, regulators, utility companies. I know you come from a similar kind of background in a leadership role at T5 for a number of years. Is that something that caught you off guard? A little bit of how to systematically approach this and just curious how what kind of, um, thinking you've brought to figuring out the whole go to market strategy with now in addition to the traditional stakeholders, all of these additional voices that want to weigh in.

Speaker A: Well, you know, honestly Joshua, I think it's, you know, it's part and parcel to the incredible, you know, evolution of our growth. You know, when I started in this business, we would do a, ah, 250kW deal and high five each other. It was a, it was a big deal. Right. I think the first data center we built at T5 was 6 megawatts and it took us a couple years to actually lease it. Right. As you know, things evolved from um, enterprise wholesale colocation into even, you know, the emergence of, call IT Cloud 1.0. The sites really weren't that large. They could kind of hide in plain sight. The community didn't really notice what was going on. Um, now I think especially with the rise of AI, now you're starting to look at kind of campuses where 300 to 500 megawatt is kind of table stakes and some growing over to a gigawatt. Those types of developments need a lot of coordination with the local communities to make it work on so many levels. And so I think those Data center operators who started to really kind of be at the forefront of those larger scale developments, saw the need to partner with, educate and just kind of be present with the local elected officials, understanding kind of the pulse of what's happening in the different communities and make sure that they were aligned in terms of how they were progressing their developments. And so I think we've all learned that that's incredibly necessary now. And at the Canik, we're taking a pretty unique approach and looking at what are some of those problems that are out there now, um, especially around power and then how can we come in and start solving those problems, bringing our own natural gas, um, co located generation capabilities that ultimately end up solving some of those needs. And so when we lead with a solution like that that matches what a lot of, uh, the different communities are pushing back against, um, it helps the local elected officials, the planning and zoning boards, uh, the city councils, uh, it helps them actually um, show that they're listening to their constituents and pushing and working with the developers to create a win, win situation.

Speaker B: Have you seen any really good examples so far, regionally or nationally, where associations and groups of local elected officials are systematically getting up to speed to what they need to know to be better stewards and better, asking questions? I know for a long, long time the general public has looked nationally at Congress and often wondered, um, how it's possible how elected officials in this, in the uh, Senate and the House, when they bring in like Mark Zuckerberg or they bring in um, Sasha Nadella, like the levels of literacy versus being completely off the reservation, seems like there's a big missing part of that. Is any better at the local level or is it largely what we see nationally?

Speaker A: I think there's a gap, right? I mean, I think there's definitely, um, those that are within this ecosystem that there can kind of be an echo chamber. And I think it's super, super important really to, you know, get out in the community and do some open houses and kind of hear what people are asking. You know, there are some questions that come up that you have no idea where they're coming from, but you can look them in the eye and say, hey, no, this is exactly what we're doing. This is how we're solving your problem and speak to them kind of at a human one. On one level, uh, I think it really does start to make a difference.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: and that really does start at the local level. Right? Everything kind of starts local and spreads up, uh, upward. And so especially in kind of those power constrained Tier one markets that have experienced a lot of growth. That's where you're starting to see this groundswell of, hey, we don't want this data center here, we don't want any more development here. And unfortunately, the irony is a lot of this ends up spreading through social media, uh, within a lot of the platforms that we enable, uh, that spreads to other areas, um, that aren't necessarily kind of seeing the big picture. I think the more we can communicate some of the benefits that actually go down to the local community, whether it's in forms of tax revenue and other different benefits to the community, um, that's what we need to do as a, uh, as an industry to help, you know, align with, with, you know, the local politicians and the local leadership.

Speaker B: Interesting. I mentioned right before we started recording that about, I, uh, guess about four months ago now, I attended one of these community town hall meetings in South Florida where I live. And I was, there's about four or five hundred people there. And needless to say, most of the people that were in the room were emotional to say the least, and not really giving the people on the stage, which was a representation of Palm beach county municipal government and fpl, the local utility company and the developer, really even a chance to say their part. And ironically, if they had just simply used their favorite generative AI tool, they could have said like, hey, what are some good questions to ask the community affairs person from the local utility company that we should be concerned about for our homeowners association? But it's, this is the challenge with all of us.

Speaker A: That is, that is going back to the irony. You know, a lot of the information that people have comes from YouTube videos that they saw. And it's just, you know, we have to make that connection that all of those things that people do on a daily basis from you know, uh, ordering a ride share to create, you know, every time you click for an E commerce order, to um, work with your financial institution. Any of those things that make our daily lives better are all enabled by this type of digital infrastructure. It all needs to work together, um, uh, to continue to grow. One of the, uh, examples that I used in a community open house just a week or so ago was just think about how frustrated you get when you get that spinning wheel, uh, because you're waiting on an answer or your app isn't going through. That's why we need data centers in all of these different locations to minimize that latency and make sure that those applic perform. And so when you're able to Communicate things just in a very simplified way and in a uh, concise way that makes sense. Um, a lot of people start to realize, okay, I get it, I may not like it, but I understand and um, I'm willing to accept it.

Speaker B: Coming from the perspective, your perspective 10 years ago where you're running revenue and commercial for a traditional data center operator, probably at the time you thought we're thinking about buyer education and I imagine things like blogs and YouTube and webinars and all downloads and everything were a reasonably effective way of reaching different kinds of IT stakeholders and other kinds of business stakeholders. And that's still for sure something that's in use with data center operators. If anything it's even more pronounced and self driven journey. But how do you think about buyer education from the standpoint of like these non traditional buyers where essentially you're getting in some cases getting pulled into B2G business to government, in some cases you're getting pulled into the consumer side of this. What is a developer like Takanak be? What do you think about when it comes to all these different segments and Personas to be able to have reasonable coverage on.

Speaker A: That's a great question, Joshua. I think you have to think about the universe of people who are either our influencers or our buyers. Right. And some of the traditional methods, whether it's social media posts or LinkedIn posts or however you want to do it, different blogs, I think they're great for brand building and awareness. Um, but these projects have gotten so large and there's such uh, a large capital investment associated with them. The people who we are working with on a daily basis are very sophisticated and they understand a lot of that. And so I think we have a tendency to really push on, publish the problem first and then come with a solution. And so understand speed to power is your number one constraint. You can't deploy your GPUs and actually run your business unless you can get infrastructure built and deployed. And that's not going to happen unless you can get power. And so we're working very hard to make sure that we are leading from the front to make sure that whether it's the leasing teams or it's the energy teams within colocation partners or hyperscale end users understand that we have an ability to bridge that gap in a way that works closely hand in hand with utility partners and uh, ultimately provide a resource to the grid and be a long term partner. And so it really just comes down to understanding what that problem is, understanding what matters most to that person that you're talking to understanding, matching the kind of the message to the Persona, uh, and then solving that need and then learning what that next stage of the process is and continuing to move up the chain.

Speaker B: Do you find when you look at these non traditional, when you have these conversations with non traditional stakeholders that they have an idea of what self generation is all about, what alternate energy is all about? I mean from the perspective of traditional colocation data centers, it's only really been in the last two or three years that behind the meter and self generation and everything has become a big issue in the US do they get that a lot of the concerns that they have are less relevant when they're not talking about traditional utility grid?

Speaker A: That's where the education comes in quite honestly, because I think there is, there's still a lot of misperception around behind the meter, right? And so you know, there's the nuance of uh, true behind the meter islanded power generation. And then you know, what we're doing is kind of this combination where we're behind the meter for a period of time until the infrastructure gets uh, finalized and completed, at which time then we'll become a utility or a grid resource in front of the meter, if you will. And so I get goes back to that education and showing people that these are the trade offs and the advantages to each. Um, um, but it doesn't necessarily come naturally. I mean I think you have to think about it. You know, there's a certain solution for a certain use case. If you are in a very rural area, um, that doesn't have a lot of very robust infrastructure, maybe a behind the meter solution is a better answer, um, assuming it fits with different regulatory environments. However, if you're focusing in on kind of a Core Tier 1 Data Center Market now, you're dealing probably with you know, a ah, need for significant infrastructure upgrades. There's uh, capacity constraints, there's things like that. That's where you can come in, work closely with the state regulatory environments, the utilities to say hey we can actually help you solve some of these capacity problems that you have, um, get them kind of on your side in the whole process, um, and kind of work toward finding a common ground solution. So I um, think the, you know, the takeaway there, you gotta partner early, you gotta be willing to roll up your sleeves, do the work, answer the questions, uh, and iterate over and over and over until you come up with the right answer.

Speaker B: Almost seems to me if you use like a conference analogy that you could have potentially three or four different tracks of people in the same room. And you're trying to find a common denominator of what's relevant and what resonates with each as opposed to giving like one general message. And in the case of the community groups, you're probably not finding too many IT executives who are going to be the traditional tenants, whether it's uh, anchor or more traditional, colocation or hyperscale. But how do you figure out really what is going. How do you read the room to know what's going to add value, what's going to resonate, what's going to win them over?

Speaker A: Yeah, Joshua, I think you just hit the nail on the head. You got to read the room, you got to understand who your, um, audience is in every conversation, even within. At the sophisticated buyer level, you have certain technical conversations for certain members of different teams and you have higher level, uh, risk oriented or capital markets oriented conversations with other constituents. There same goes when you're at, uh, a community outreach meeting. You have to just be able to understand what is the makeup of, uh, the questions that are coming at you and be able to look people in the eye, let them know that you're listening, understand what they say or what they're asking, um, and then answer the question in a kind of a very natural way. But to your point, there is no one stop, one size fits all type of answer. Uh, even if you're explaining the same solution, you just have to be able to figure out how to break it down differently depending on who your audience is.

Speaker B: Looking back at your career, have you found one overarching GTM fundamental one rule of thumb with figuring out how all this works that still holds true today?

Speaker A: Yeah, early, early, early on in my career, um, uh, I had a leader that kind of said, hey, everything you do comes down to two questions. What matters most? And so what? And so it sounds pretty simple, but if you kind of think about any situation, especially sales situation you're in, those two questions kind of put it all together, what matters most to the person or people that you're talking to, and then what's the so what of what you're saying? So make sure you understand what people want to know and make sure you answer their question in a way that meets that need. And so that's something I think anybody who's been on my teams over the years has heard me say over and over and over, um, that if you can't answer those two questions in the email that you write or the post that you put out there on social media, Go back to the drawing board and figure it out. Do it again.

Speaker B: So if we think about, if we're looking at this through the 2010s lens, this would almost be like the who we help section of the website where there's a different page for the IT executive, a different page for the cfo, a different page for the managed service provider, whoever else you were looking to win over the. So what for them? The specific angels for them?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's going to be different, right? I mean, I think these buying decisions as I talked about earlier, I mean, they go up to the highest levels of our customer companies as well as the end users. Right. These are multi billion dollar decisions, uh, that are being entered into and going on people's balance sheets. And so each one of those stakeholders along the way is going to be concerned about whatever it is that they're concerned about. Right? So that's what matters most to them. And so you have to make sure that you're answering those questions, uh, consistent with what their needs are. Otherwise it's not going to resonate and you're likely not going to be able to move to that next step. And so I think it's incredibly important in any go to market kind of context to be able to go in at different angles and different levels with different messages that ultimately support whatever your solution is. And I don't care where you are in the value chain or the supply chain, it's going to be the same process, right? Ultimately, somebody's going to be making a decision, but they're going to be influenced by probably a whole team around them. And so you kind of have to get all of that consensus around that team so that the person making the decision feels confident that they're making the right one.

Speaker B: Most data center GTM teams are flying completely blind. 83% of your buyer's journey is happening before they even speak with someone from your sales team. The Data Center Go to Market podcast is powered by DCSMI M. We've studied over 1900 industry leaders to build a diagnostic framework that identifies exactly why deals fall apart and revenue stalls. Stop guessing and start benchmarking. Subscribe now to our weekly data center GTM briefing at, uh, www.dcsmi m.com briefing. Again, that's DCSMI m.com briefing. B R I E F I N G. Have you found in these conversations now that as people are more widely adopting generative AI, their patience for close but not exact is different than it was today? It's like we were talking just a few moments ago about the idea of taking people down potentially three different navigation paths on a website. But now with generative AI, they can get someone, okay, I am a mid career utility regulator in the Midwest and average community size, this population struggling with this kind of utility, uh, bottleneck and for the most part they're getting these answers from generative AI. Does that make it more difficult for you to have relevance? Does it make it more hard, uh, more difficult for you to be able to hire people on your team that can actually add value? Is it shifting to the point where everyone needs to be an expert now and there's really not a lot of room for, uh, entry level folks in this industry to build careers slowly and ramp up over time?

Speaker A: That's another great question. And um, ultimately I think it creates more opportunity. Quite honestly, the use of these tools is on one hand it's a bit of an equalizer because anybody can go into their favorite model and put in their query and pretty much get pretty close to, you know, whatever answer they're looking for. But the same goes, I think, you know, for people on the selling side at any level, right. And I think, um, you know, I think it's incredibly important at kind of the more junior levels to be able to get in. I think generative AI will help people come up to speed faster. Right? You're going to be able to, you know, your learning curve is going to be a little steeper and probably a little faster. But if they're able to do that in conjunction with, you know, a mentor, working with somebody who is a little bit more senior to help them craft the right queries, know what questions to ask, how to approach things from a different perspective. Um, I think what it ends up doing is it level sets the, uh, kind of the technical information. But at the end of the day I'm a big believer that people still buy from people. And so there's relationships involved. And I think you have to, you know, you have to have your technical chops, you have to understand what the buyer or how your solution fits them. Uh, but at the end of the day you have to understand what that buyer is all about as a person, right? And how can you make that person, how can you make that person's life easier, they're more successful in their job, whatever it is, that way to solve whatever problem it is that they're going to solve. And so instead of coming in, there's nothing worse because I think, uh, you and I could probably relate to this when we're young in our career, they give you that book and said, all right, here's a bunch of phone numbers, go call them and try to get meetings. There's nothing worse than being that junior guy and saying using canned lines to try to cold call somebody and get a meeting that just doesn't work. And it's definitely not going to work today. Um, so being able to use tools like generative AI to kind of understand, do your homework, understand what the kind of, the missing needs are of the customer, uh, and then apply whatever it is your solution is to that call or getting that meeting. Now it becomes useful because none of us really have time to take meetings that aren't going to move the needle.

Speaker B: Thinking even just in preparing for these kinds of meetings where 10 years ago you're going to meet with the CTO, uh, of a mid sized manufacturing company, so you spend a few minutes looking at his or her LinkedIn profile, you read a little bit about the about page or recent news page on their LinkedIn company page or on their website and probably reasonably good to go. Now if you were doing the same exercise, doing the same meeting prep for that same kind of meeting, for sure you'd use a generative AI tool. And if you think about on the community side, like what would I have done 10 years ago to prepare for a town hall, you'd probably check the local newspapers, uh, website, read back articles that have anything to do with community development and pushback and activism, activity, activism. You'd probably look for some Facebook groups, some from Twitter X archives, some Reddit threads or something like that. But now you can really go to your favorite generate generative AI tool and say, uh, do sentiment analysis. What is this community going to care about? Where, where is their consensus? What are they divided on? Whether they historically supported, whether they historically fought back. It, it levels up tremendously.

Speaker A: It certainly does. And I think, and that's what I mean by using that as a tool to level up kind of your technical knowledge, but then apply your personal knowledge or your team's knowledge and your solution to help solve those problems. Because now you can actually go into that meeting knowing that their top three hot buttons are X, Y and Z. Well, I don't need to talk about A, B and C if they care about X, Y and Z. And you can keep it right on point, uh, that way, which is much more effective and it helps keep people engaged because it's what they care about and it's not just a bunch of superficial noise.

Speaker B: Greg, when you look at your peers across the industry, what do you see as a go to market playbook that's starting to fail? It's losing a lot of steam, but others are in denial about it and they keep going full steam ahead as if nothing's changed.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think I'm a big believer in the you must be present to win, right? I think you need to be out there. You need to, um, again, go back to the people, buy from people. You have to form those relationships. You have to that trust level out there. I think, you know, where people are doing more and more of their prospecting and their, and their selling, if you will, just virtually, um, even, you know, through, you know, zoom calls or just via email. Um, I think people especially coming out of, you know, you know, Covid and everything else that happened, people have gotten a little, you know, tired of that and they want to have that human interaction again. So, um, I think getting out there is incredibly important.

Speaker B: Do you think when it comes to the face to face contact, do you see people being precise enough or are they so starved for the human contact and the face to face that they're okay settling for going to an event where they're, uh, maybe only 5 or 10% of the attendees line up with the people they really want to be meeting with?

Speaker A: I think that's another fair question, right? I think there's no doubt there are a lot of conferences in this business, right, Especially this industry. And I think if you really want to make it effective, you got to do your homework, figure out which of the conferences are going to be the right audiences for you and your solution and your product and then align to those. I mean, you can get totally wrapped around the axle and just go to conference after conference after conference and ultimately say, well, I've done all this time, I've been really, really busy, but I don't have a, you know, a prospect list to come out of it. Right. And so that to me is kind of a fool's errand, uh, as opposed to saying, okay, whatever level you're at in an organization and whoever you're selling to, do your homework, understand which of the conferences are going to actually draw those people and do your homework beforehand. Reach out, be proactive, um, set meetings, don't just kind of expect them to happen. Um, that's how you make it work. So I think we've all been victim of, hey, let's just be busy to be busy. But at the end of the day, that doesn't help, uh, fill your book of business at all.

Speaker B: Yeah, We've kind of mapped out on this whole thing that a three day conference with a day of travel on each side and a day of load in time and two or three days of getting ready and two or three days coming back. The three day conference ends up being two weeks. You do that 24 times a year. And there's your year.

Speaker A: There's your year. Yeah, there's your year. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, there's a big lesson learned there. Right. And you know, and even if you're not exhibiting, if you're just, if you're going in and just as an attendee, I do think it's, it's incredibly important again to just do your homework, understand who you're going to meet with, make it count. That's the takeaway. If you're going to have this opportunity, you know, the people you're meeting with, you owe it to them to make it count as well.

Speaker B: I think sometimes too when people's FOMO instincts are kicking in, they look to some of these larger companies where they're actually in a lot of Fortune 1000 companies. They have the luxury of having a full time data center evangelist and it's that person's entire job to be on pretty much every panel, be present at every conference, supported by a multi six figure investment at the conference vendor exhibitor. Um, but that's just usually not practical for midsize company with a few dozen or even a few hundred employees.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. Not only is it not practical, but a lot of the time you're probably not even reaching the right people. And so, um, I think it's incumbent upon every sales or revenue team to work closely. If you're a larger organization, you've got a marketing and events team to make sure that you're lining things up and you're doing it the right way. Um, I've been fortunate enough to come up through my career always being in a kind of very entrepreneurial, young scrappy companies, you know, kind of starting at the ground floor and making it happen. And so, you know, I wasn't, you know, in this and I still, I'm still not in a situation where you have this whole big support system around you to kind of just enable you. It's like, oh God, if I got to put all this work into it, I might as well make it count. So we'll do it, right.

Speaker B: I've been forecasting for a while that I think we're going to see a resurgence of micro events, inexpensive grassroots events held in Conference rooms and classrooms with a couple dozen of the, the perfect right people on the attendance list. Do you think we're on the right track with seeing that? Do you think we're headed down that path or do you feel that there's so much capital coming into this industry that people really aren't that concerned with precision right now?

Speaker A: I think it's gonna be a blend of both. I do think there's a place for some of the larger scale conferences that draw a lot of people and a lot of excitement and interest because there's a lot of good information that's shared there. However, I think whether it's the small roundtables or the private networking events where you can pull in leaders or decision makers at the appropriate level and Chatham House rules to say okay, let's help solve a problem together and let's share some ideas about how we're um, dealing with different things that are impacting um, the industry. Whether it's something technical or you know, kind of going back to you know, what kind of community outreach are you performing and what kind of feedback are you getting? How are you solving it? Those are the types of things where you start to build that kind of trust, um, and relationship that ultimately is going to lead to some other opportunity down the road. I mean I think, you know, I think one of the, one of the traps that people make in this business is they're always trying to go after the sale. Um, I'm kind of a believer that the sale is going to happen at some point when the stars align and if you do the right thing along the way. But yeah, I think those micro events, um, and those targeted groups of uh, kind of little problem solving events are much, much more valuable um, than just going out to every conference every other week.

Speaker B: I see with some of the tech and facilities companies I speak with that they're precise enough that they literally have like a dream 100, 200, 300 accounts where there's 8, 10, 12 people in each of those accounts to worry about getting in front of thousands of people when there's really only a few hundred that really matter. This is a challenge of capital efficiency and unit economics. And uh, I think right now things are just moving so fast that everyone's trying to capitalize on momentum and they'll figure out the capital efficiency and, and cost uh, of acquisition and things like that later. But it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's definitely a space race right now or no pun intended, right. The Space race. But you're right, I think it kind of goes back to understanding, doing your homework on those organizations, whoever your target organizations are. Understanding the decision making chain, um, where you fit in from a peer to peer relationship and then how you can leverage other people on your team, uh, to get to the ultimate decision maker is super important. Um, but it's a, yeah, it's, it's, it's not a dialing for dollars type of business, that's for sure.

Speaker B: The where they fit in has been a really interesting dynamic to observe over the last couple years too. I see a lot of chief commercial Chief revenue officers hiring career IT professionals and engineers onto their teams. Even if those folks have never been on a sales team in their entire career. Because when the IT person refuses to meet with anything, anyone else besides another IT person, like that's your ticket. That's what's getting you past the bouncer rope. And the savvy, less technical account executive will go to the meeting and make sure that that resource is always sitting next to them. Or if they're hosting the breakfast seminar, the lunch and learn the webinar, that's kind of like their internal version of a Gartner analyst that gives them some credibility with that Persona.

Speaker A: 100% agree. I mean, I think that's, that's, that's exactly right. I think, you know, what we're ultimately selling is an incredibly significant, not just a significant investment, but it's an incredibly complicated solution. And so there are very few, call it just salespeople that will bring the technical, enough of the technical side to really be able to push that conversation. But if you bring whether it's somebody with significant IT experience or uh, management operations experience or energy experience to the table now you can have the best meetings I've ever been to when you've got two energy people, boom, just having a mind meld on some crazy policy issue, uh, or ways to solve different problems, uh, speaking in acronyms that you've never heard of before. And you come out of it and they're both nodding and smiling and say, hey, this is, this is a great solution. Let's go, let's move this thing ahead. That's, ah, not something that a typical salesperson is going to be able to do on their own. So um, I think that's where ultimately check your ego at the door, figure out who the best people on the team are, um, bring them to the meeting. That's why there's 11 people on a football team.

Speaker B: When you walk into these community meetings and you're trying to conceptualize and plan to prepare. How do you think about what that actual decision committee is, both who's in the room and who's not in the room, who ultimately you're going to need to win over. And is there a certain way that you think about ranking them? Like a primary, A secondary? Like how do you figure out where to spend your efforts?

Speaker A: I don't think you always know go when you go in. And I think part of it is, you know, a little bit maybe that comes with the experience that comes with maybe setting an agenda before a meeting, uh, you know, being able to get as, do as much of that homework ahead of time to kind of understand maybe what their needs are. Because I think the more you understand what their needs are, then you can align certain SMEs or subject matter experts, uh, to make sure you're covering all points of the conversation.

Speaker B: So a lot of it is trying to figure out if they, there are potentially blind spots in your team's expertise and making sure that you're bringing the right contractors, consultants, channel partners, whatever it is to fill those gaps.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, I feel like it's a little bit repetitive, but I kind of keep going back to the fact that we nowadays, because you can level up with things like, you know, generative, um, AI to get some of the answers. I think you have to do your homework, you have to do some of that work up front to uh, really probe and find out what it is that they're trying to solve and then make sure you're bringing the right team to solve that problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's almost like if you had to be bilingual or trilingual before speaking it, speaking finance, speaking real estate, now it's truly multilingual.

Speaker A: It is multilingual. Yeah, I mean it's multilingual. Um, but the beauty is you've got something that can help you at least get 80% of the way there.

Speaker B: Craig, what do you think the next 12, 18, 24 months is going to hold for someone like yourself that's growing the commercial side of a data center development company?

Speaker A: Uh, I think it's going to be crazy hair on fire growth. Quite honestly, I don't see this, uh, stopping anytime soon. I think the challenges are going to continue to grow. I think ultimately it's going to come full circle back to the first topic that we talked about. I think we as a data center industry need to come together and be better communicators, um, get the word out of what are some of the benefits of digital infrastructure? What are the benefits to different communities? How are we doing things more sustainably and doing it in a way that can coexist, um, with different, um, communities. And so ultimately there's going to be a lot. It's going to take a lot of work, uh, but it's also going to result in all of us needing to really work together to make all of this continue to grow. Uh, and that's going to be a challenge. I think everybody's just kind of running as fast as they can right now. Um, but at a certain point, you kind of have to slow down, look around, be aware of your surroundings, uh, and then align on how can we kind of keep this thing going.

Speaker B: What do you think is going to separate the winners from everyone else over the next couple of years? If I think about what you were doing 10 years ago, what you're selling, colocation or hyperscale, there's for sure direct competitors, indirect competitors. You're definitely going up against other companies with a lot of these development projects. I sense that a lot of times the biggest competition isn't another developer, it isn't another operator. It's just simply figuring out how to get the community behind this initiative.

Speaker A: I think that's where it goes. Right? I mean, I think we're going to start seeing now this shift and the way the industry is growing, I think over the last several years, and probably for the next three to five, we're going to continue to see, uh, a lot of growth around AI training. It's a lot of these larger campuses that are happening. You know, those are the. Seems to be kind of the, you know, the typical deal structure that we're seeing now. But we're also now starting to see this shift toward inference. Right? And so inference is going to be a little bit of a different model. It's going to be closer to communities. Um, you know, it's going to be a smaller footprint, um, but it's going to be kind of the shift back to, you know, high telecom density, high power density, uh, smaller, uh, footprints as well. And so that, to me is now you are going to be able to say, hey, I'm just going into this rural area and I'm not going to bother anybody now you're going to have to really start working closely with your local communities and your local utilities to show them that you're going to do this in a way that is supportive to their overall goals. So I think we're seeing, uh, a lot of people out there. If you peel back what we do at simplest level, a lot of people say it's powered land. Well, there's a lot of people out there that are, uh, hand waving about powered land, but they don't have all the components to actually make it work at the end of the day. So that starts to leave a bad taste, I think, in people's mouths. And so that's where you're going to start seeing, I think some, um, whether it's consolidation in the industry or some of these players end up dropping out because the capital, um, requirements are getting very, very strong in terms of long lead equipment, in terms of utility deposits, infrastructure, uh, upgrade deposits, things like that. And so there's definitely going to be, I think, uh, kind of a reshuffling of the deck chairs here a little bit here over the next couple of years. Um, but ultimately I think that's going to be good for the industry as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. The capital intensive nature of it is going to definitely force a lot of consolidation. If I think about the size of companies that I was working with 10 years ago, a lot of like, almost what I'd consider mom and pop operators and service providers and things like that, and nearly all have at some point exited just out of pragmatism. And you can start to see that even when you go back and you look at companies over time and you see, oh, on this LinkedIn company page, they merge, they require you just constantly see these announcements. So, uh, if we thought there was a lot of that going on before, it seems like it's going to by necessity accelerate even more.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it almost, it almost has to, right? I mean, I think, you know, but again, I think, you know, the universe of buyers now is a lot different than it was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. You know, when we, you know, we're starting T5, we were looking at the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 customer base, right. And so the way you had to go to market, the way you built your brand, how you sold, was entirely different than kind of the pretty small pool of buyers that you're talking about now. And so that smaller pool of buyers, just in order to sustain their own growth, is going to continue to optimize their supply chain and their vendor chain as well. And so I think there is going to be a rationalization of the entire market. Um, and there will be some, obviously some winners and some people that aren't.

Speaker B: Craig, this has been really cool. Fascinating to get your perspective as someone that, um, came up through your career working on the operator on the service provider side, a little bit on the real estate side, and now 100% focused on development. And in particular, to hear firsthand what it's like being the, uh, developer representative at some of these community meetings and what it takes to actually move these initiatives forward. If someone wants to reach out to you or follow what you're working on, is LinkedIn a good place to start?

Speaker A: LinkedIn's a great place to start. And, um, yeah, I look forward to, you know, engaging in constructive conversations out there. And, um, Joshua, I really appreciate you having me on the podcast. Uh, I think it's some fascinating discussions and, um, wish you all the best.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much, Craig. Really appreciate you joining me. I've been speaking Today with Craig McKesson from Tacanak. Pronounced that correctly.

Speaker A: Uh, Takanak. Takanik. You know, it's part of our branding to make sure it's a name that people don't quite get right, but then they always remember.

Speaker B: And Craig's based in, uh, Atlanta. Um,

Speaker A: Tucanik is actually based in Traverse City, Michigan. Uh, I work out of our Atlanta, uh, office.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Thanks so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

Speaker A: Likewise. Have a great day. Thank you.

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