AM Show Hr 2 | Catch A New Wave, It's Everyone's Internet

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is on the air, AOL announcing that

(00:28):
they will be discontinuing their dial up service. We all
had a good chuckle in the office. What on earth
are they still doing with a dial up service in
twenty twenty five. Well, at the end of September it's
going away. A number of you emailing you still have
your old AOL accounts, which I presume will still be good. Ramon,
I must confess I don't understand technology. I don't know

(00:52):
you know whether they'll ever turn those off? Do they
make any money? Do you pay for those? Do you
remember when hotmail came out before Google? You had to
have a burner account, so you'd have a Hotmail account. Oh, yes,
you'd have a Hotmail account. Roy Marsh, along with his
brother Robert, was the founder of Everyone's Internet. I got

(01:15):
an email from a bail bondsman that said, where is he?
I need to serve him? Some old bill collectors, some
ex girlfriends and wives, but one fella hood writes Czar.
I know, Hotshot. That's what we called him when we
were kids. He lived in my subdivision back in Conroe.

(01:36):
Please tell hotshot that Hood from Forest Hills says, Hello,
that's Hood Mowerman, mechanical designer at Okenna's, an advanced ocean
systems company at eleven nine eighty nine b FM five
point twenty in Houston. Wow, do you remember Hood? Oh yeah,

(01:57):
that's how he signs his name, so it must be
his real name. It is all right, let's go back
to Beeper Boutique because we glossed over that. You don't
have any meetings or anything to.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Me. Yeah, you know, I'm old people.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay. I like to imagine you sitting on a bean
bag chair, eating smoking cigarettes and Captain watching Captain Kangaroo
and smoking a joint like my buddy Cody Johnston. That's
might not be your thing, but that's how what he's
probably doing right about now. Tell me about Beeper Boutique.
Tell me in the Go Go days, give me some
you said twenty five stories. I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, I mean, you know, we we were huge in Houston,
and we expanded to Dallas, Brian College Station, Austin, Corpus, Christie, Lafayette,
Baton Rouge. I think we were up even in oh yeah, Denton, Tyler.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So walk me through the economics what would that they
would buy the unit from you, and then they would
buy a service. What did you pay for that service?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Oh? Okay, economics of it was, let's see, we probably
paid like thirty bucks a unit and twenty or thirty
bucks yet and then sell it for with a year's
worth of service for like one hundred and twenty bucks. Uh.

(03:33):
So we paid let's say twenty thirty dollars for the pager,
two dollars a month for the service, and let's try
to get folks to pay. Yeah, it was pretty good
mark up.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Was there a payment plan or was it all up front?

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Oh? No, you could pay. Payment plan was twelve bucks
a month.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh yeah. What year did y'all start that?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Uh? That was Dad and Roberts started probably about ninety two,
ninety three. I joined ninety four and it we probably

(04:19):
when did we sell that? We sold that probably two.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Thousand and what did y'all do? Would you guess in
gross revenues?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Your best year, best year was probably close to maybe
close to a million dollars.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, and people were coming in. It's just crazy to
imagine because it's not that long ago. People were coming
in presumably most of them with no cell phone. This
was a way to be reachable when you were away
from your home or office. What percentage of people do
you think had cell phones.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
When we started, very small because they were so expensive,
and you know, in comparison, I mean this is you know,
we're talking back in the days of the bag phone,
the brick and you know, the huge installation in your vehicle.
So but that evolved very quickly. You know, the flip

(05:23):
pump motorally came out with the flip phone probably ninety
six maybe yea, and things started changing dramatically. You know,
costs of technology, you know, drops every year.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Did y'all ever think about getting into the cell phone business?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Oh? We had, Yeah, that's how they started out selling
cell phones. And but the uh and we did, you know,
we did, We did some cell phones, but the the
cell carriers, their contracts were written to you had to

(06:09):
be you had to be really good and to make
it work long term. And the pager thing was, you know,
so much, so much easier.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think I bought my first cell phone. I had
come to Houston nineteen eighty nine, so I must have
done it in maybe ninety one or ninety two. From
Houston cellul there on fifty nine at about ed Low,
across from Greenway Pousa. You remember that store, yep, yep.
And then that store became something and became something, became
at and t it kept flipping. I don't remember who

(06:50):
bought out Houston Sailor. And then the building just kind
of went derelict, which surprised me. I always thought it
was such a great building, right next to the har headquarters.
Did you see cell phones being as powerful and ubiquitous
as they are now?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, looking back, No, I wasn't that bright. But you know,
I thought they were toys, I mean, uh or not
necessarily toys. But I didn't see them. I didn't see
the price point dropping like it had for for pages.

(07:33):
You know, great great insight on my part, huh uh.
But you know that's it's all. It's all a matter.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Of price, all right. So you sell Beeper Boutique and
you around. I guess two thousand, you start Everyone's Internet.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
No, no, we started, we started Everyone's Internet. The first
customer we had came on around December one of nineteen
ninety nine, for nineteen ninety eight, and that would I
don't know if you remember this name Rita Delatti.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Oh yeah, I worked with Rita, Rita and David. Yeah, yeah,
Rita was one of our in the archives. Yes, Rita
was a job share Do you remember a little bit,
tiny blonde girl who was she a job shover? Hold
on second, Roy Marsh, founder of Everyone's Internets, Our guest,
this is the Michael Barry Show. Come on, are you

(08:31):
describing Roy Marsh's career? What what are you doing? White
out story of Houston businessman who debauchery rivaled Caligila, rise
and fall Roy Marsh. That was his choice, Roy, not mine,

(08:51):
by the.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Way, pretty appropriate.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
I don't like boring people. That must be why I
like you. I like people who have rises and falls.
And so we're in between afterwards. So y'all started in
ninety nine? How long before the Everyone's Internet that that
we heard everywhere was booming? What was that moment where
you said, okay, this dial up Internet? Did you call

(09:16):
it dial up? What did you call it? Back then?

Speaker 2 (09:19):
We called it internet? Okay, And we were crappy to start,
but it was it was what what that springboard was
was Marshall and Russell from ad Results and Live Endorsement Radio.
You know, starting out with cal Well then, Oh goodness,

(09:41):
I can't you know Ruin Ryan, Oh Lance, And they
wouldn't let us have Lance and John just Lance, Lancer, Aline,
John Granado, just Lance and John. Still Johns still upset
about that today.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
John shafes grudges and and has an elephant's memory the
way I do. Uh. That's that's uh, that's did John
have somebody he was speaking for already?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
No, No, they just they just didn't want both of
them for whatever reason. Uh. But it was that, you know,
it was the live endorsement component that you know, people remembered.
It was you know, the we came very close to

(10:35):
doing a deal with Paul Harvey, and we just didn't
have the infrastructure.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
No, forget where so y'all could handle a client anywhere.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
No, No, you have to you had to have infrastructure.
Uh you know, you had to have local dial up numbers.
They weren't gonna or in a hundred number. The eight
hundred number would cost you too much, Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
So you had seven, one, three and another number or
that was it.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Oh No, we had numbers you know wherever, you know,
in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth. Uh, we were in
California for a while until you know, it just wasn't
productive for whatever reason. The advertising, the live endorsement out
there didn't work.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Now, don't. I don't know the business, and I don't
remember well enough. Did everybody have the same number or
did each person have a number?

Speaker 2 (11:37):
I think we had? Uh? We had. We had a
number of numbers that could hold certain amounts. So if
you know, if you couldn't get it on this number,
you had another number you could try.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, forgive my lack of knowledge on the subject, but
did you did you buy a certain bandwidth? Who do you?
What was the product you were selling? And what was
the cost of good sold for that?

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh? So wow, Now now you're oh, you're pressing me
on this one. Not I gotta tell you at some
point I'd be lying, well, most points, so I'll just
make it up. So we were, you know, ten bucks

(12:31):
a month, well then plus the compliance and regulatory fee,
which just happened to be the same amount as the
sales tax. Yeah. Uh, And it was costing us probably
all in all done, maybe two dollars a month when

(12:53):
we had an area with good with uh enough volume,
you know, other areas because you've got certain infra fixed
costs that if you didn't have enough subscribers to cover
those fixed costs, you know, you were losing money. But

(13:15):
for for Houston, you know, around two bucks and selling
it for you know ten and it was a recurring
revenue model. Folks were you know, they were on a
a a automatic debit or whatever or hit the credit card.

(13:36):
So yes, it was mailbox money is lovely.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, subscription models everything. I mean, everybody's gone to that.
You know, I don't remember. I don't remember paying things
by auto pay on the bank, so at least for me,
I'm usually late to the trends. But you said on
the payment, I could see if you had their credit card,
you could run their credit card. You couldn't do direct

(14:03):
auto pay. Then could you like where you could just
ding the account or could you.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
I think that we had the ability to. Ah, okay,
you know, but here again you know I'm old, and
I think it means tough.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Oh hold on, hold on, you got it? Did you
bleep it? You bleep it? Okay, what do you think
everyone's Internet estimate gross revenues? Worry in your best year
and roughly what year would that have been?

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Oh? Okay, everyone's internet. Now we're going to include the
the web hosting.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Okay, yeah, okay, then we'll break it out sixty million,
oh wow, okay, and that was fifty nine percent profit.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Uh, that was a little different deal because the web
hosting we had much hire infrastructure costs. We had you know,
we had to buy servers and yeah, that was a
funny story there. But so, you know, sixty million in

(15:15):
revenue and probably can you know, eight eight or ten
million a year in cash flow from operations and then
then you take out the stupid stuff we did in

(15:37):
the in the community. I mean, you know, but we
we Hey, that art car parade.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Was awesome, and that was awesome. That was what did
y'all pay for that? That had to be? Is that
a million dollars?

Speaker 2 (15:53):
No? No, it was it was cheap, you know, because
they were hustling and it may not have been more
than one or two hundred thousand, But weren't they.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
At that point because I know that it was kind
of a one man show. The guy that was over
off North Shephard right at the at the tracks there,
and I think he'd I think for a few years
there they were really struggling hold on Roy Marsh of
Everyone's Internet is our guess. It's one for a Girl
and the boy make Laberry's Show. Roy Marsh is our guest.

(16:28):
He was the co founder of Everyone's Internet. Roy, What
was a moment that you started to see that there
were problems that there was a replacement for dial up?
And what was that?

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, uh, kick grief. You know, high speed internet access
was new before we started dial up, but probably about
two thousand, yeah, two thousand, DSL became in vogue, and uh,

(17:11):
we had the opportunity to resell, you know, because the
only DSL providers were you know, the phone companies and
dealing with the phone companies bytes. But we were like, hey,

(17:33):
our customers are demanding it, so we'll try and do
the SL. Problem is you don't control the fulfillment. And
they nearly killed us. I mean, you know, is they'd
say they'd be out to somebody's house on a certain date,

(17:56):
wouldn't show up for whatever reason. They were not the
nicest of people, and so that reflects on us our business,
you know, you know, they're seeing that AT and T
employee or that AT and T fulfillment or Southwestern Bell

(18:18):
and that was reflecting on us and we just we
couldn't do it. But it Yeah, so it was probably
about that time frame, and knew that we we didn't
have the resources to go and create the infrastructure to

(18:41):
compete directly on that level.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
When you say the resources, do you just mean the capital.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Capital is one thing, but intellectual capital is quite a
different thing. And our guy, our guy was good, Randy Williams,
our technical guy was incredible. Give you an idea of
I mean, he tried to hire somebody, you know, a
a first lieutenant and I remember the last guy hired.

(19:19):
His resume was a book that he had written and published,
and about two months into his tenure, he just didn't
show up one day and about six months later we
got a package in the mail with his keys and
employee card. So but on the you know, on that

(19:44):
the DSL, it was the capital, the knowledge of building
out that infrastructure, and we just it it. It surpassed
the resources that we we felt we could get to
without risking everything.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
And risking everything is preparing for the next phase yet again,
as you did with internet after Beeper, and you weren't
sure what that would be or you weren't sure if well, yeah,
that's my question.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
No no, no, no, no no. The the web hosting and
managed server business that was my brother. He had bought
some gizmo, a Cobalt server, got it in, started playing
with it and realized that you could ease it had

(20:47):
it had a user interface that made it that made
it functional and and scalable. So he was always one
very impetuous and when he wanted something, he wanted it
right then. So I got a call from him. I

(21:11):
was coming in from a toga party at a Roman chalet.
We were on an advertising junket. So I'm rolling in
about two three o'clock in the morning and I've got
a forty page facts from him, and it's a million

(21:37):
dollar lease. Now I understand we're barely cash flowing at
this point, and he's like, sign it was the was
the message I got. So I'm calling and talking to
him and they weren't serving sweet ice team at the

(22:01):
chalet and trying to piece through all of this, but
I'm like, okay, wait, wait, yeah, yeah, okay, Hey, we're
gonna we're gonna sell it for one hundred bucks a month. Okay,
and it's only gonna cost you know, the lease only
costs us seventy dollars a month, so we'll make thirty

(22:23):
dollars a month. I'm like, let's step through this. What
what what will it cost us besides the lease payment
to provide that service. Oh well, you know, we've got

(22:43):
to have data center space or co location space, and
then we've got you know, we we've got to have
an uplink to the Internet, and we've got this, and
we've got that. And he was giving me real numbers
and I'm like, well, you know, uh, okay, so if

(23:04):
it's fully loaded, you know, we've got we've we've sold
out the six hundred servers. We're at one hundred percent
occupancy in the space that we've got. It's gonna cost
us one hundred and fifteen one hundred and twenty dollars
a month. Yeah, but we'll make it up in volume.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
That's actually an old business joke.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Uh you know. And I'm my eyes are rolling in
the back of my head, but I know I'm dealing
with my brother. So I didn't sign it, so he
signed my name instead. He was uh, he was very
good at that. Uh uh. So we get these in,

(23:57):
we put them up and it goes. I mean, we
bloke through them, we sell them out. We leashed them
out inside of thirty forty five days, get another load
from a Cobalt, then another, and then Cobalt gets bought

(24:17):
by a competitor to kill them. So then we have
to pivot and we start sourcing our servers from Dell,
who became a huge supplier to us, and that's why
Dell ended up making a number of charitable donations in
Houston around that period of time.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Were you dealing with Michael directly or who were you
dealing with?

Speaker 2 (24:41):
No, I wasn't dealing with anybody. I was just you know,
they were speak which, Hey, somebody had to.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Let's discuss your debauchery because you were living large for
a little while. Hold on, Roy marsh of Everyone's Internet,
Gay and the girls all get pretty At closing time,
when you're listen to the Michael Berry Show. With the
news that at the end of next month AOL will
be terminating their dial up internet service, we raised the

(25:11):
question why are they still providing dial up internet service?
So we had to call Houston's greatest dial up Internet
service from back in the day, Roy Marsh. Roy, you
were talking about web hosting and I think it was
a wake up call to people. I knew that Amazon

(25:35):
was in the web hosting business, the AWS wing of
that company, because I have a friend named Brian mcmackinn
and he builds warehouses and at one point they were
trying to figure out a way these servers get so hot,
as I know, you know, and so there's big money
in these in these warehouse farms. My friend named Jason

(25:57):
Long and he has a company called land Bridge that
ended up selling for I mean, it ended up going public.
I don't know that. The multiple of earnings was so
crazy for people buying. And the basis was it was
a land play, an oil play that was really, you know,

(26:17):
how many acres you need to put these these to
store this data, this equipment for this data. And he
had it with the surface when he was drilling underneath.
But my buddy brob mcmckin Bill's warehouses for data centers
and and he's made a fortune doing this. So when
Trump was deplatformed by Twitter and he went to before

(26:41):
it was Truth, what was the other one ramon Jason
Miller had, do you remember Rebel or Huddle or something?
He went to an alternative and so Amazon Web Services
cut them off. So now all of a sudden you realized, Oh,
this whole web hosting is controlled by Amazon and a
few others. This is a big, big, big deal. I

(27:05):
found myself fascinated by the back end of all of
this thing.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Oh it's crazy. So when we were doing it, we
would lease out a server, and then that customer would
section out that server to a couple of others who
might sublease it. So I'm trying to think what year

(27:33):
it was, maybe two thousand and four. A story appeared
in the Chronicle. It was it had originated at a
low power AM station on the West Bank, New York.
Times in Washington Post had picked it up, and then
the Chronicle picked it up from there, and it was

(27:54):
that Roy Marsh and Everyone's Internet were hosting terrorist websites,
and Roy Marsh was connected to George Bush, and so
they're trying to embarrass Bush from it. What they didn't
know is that that was that terrorist website, and yes

(28:17):
there were terror websites. That terrorist website was like four
or five customers removed, okay, and that Homeland Security had
come in and said, you can't take it down for anything.
You don't touch that you they don't pay, you don't care,

(28:40):
you you you will not take them down. And so yeah,
I'm a there, I am in the Houston Chronicle. I'm
a terrorist supporter. Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Fortunately, maybe it was that Mia Khalifa was showing up
in your search history.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Well there was other things selling up there too, uh so.
But fortunately with because we were you know, so so
well known and so connected, Russell and Marshall from ad
Results got on the phone and were able to coppidentially

(29:24):
explain the situation. So the story got pulled. So started
out at six am and by noon it was off,
but it was still out there.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
You keep up with right down Marshall.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I haven't seen them in forever. They had they built
you know, they went from live endorsement radio to influencers yep,
and built a huge business. And I think Marshall sold out.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Maybe yeah, they both sold out. Marshall okay spins about
forty nine point nine percent of his time in Aspen
now where he has built a mansion. And Russell had
moved to Tyler on the Lake. I mean he had
the biggest, baddest house at Tyler living on the lake,

(30:17):
and I think he's got you know, he's the man
of action, right. He couldn't, he could, He couldn't survive
on that. So they moved to Dallas because the kids
were there, and now he's he's moved back. I texted
them during our first break and said, you were the
last person left who still has anything nice to say
about them. I don't know if I ever told you
my Marshall and Russell story, but when I started radio

(30:39):
in five, I was doing a weekend show. It was
an hour long, awful show about real estate.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
And real estate. Yeah, I remember it.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Oh, it was the worst. And the only reason I
did real estate instead of general talk was I was
trying to monetize the talk Angle and Eddie Martine and
you know, he ought to be ashamed of himself for this.
He's supposed to be my friend. He charged me ten
thousand dollars for Sunday morning ten am to eleven am.
Well it's more than that now if you want to

(31:12):
do some home improvement or whatever. But back then that
was a pretty penny and I just didn't have it working.
I was on city council and so I said I'll
figure it out, and so Marshall and Russell took me
to dinner, and somehow they found out about it and
they said, what's that he charging you for that? I
said ten thousand dollars. They said, we'll talk to him.
That's too much, and I said, would you please? And

(31:34):
they said they called back. He said, good news and
bad news. Eddie won't budge. He's got a budget to
make good news. We'll pay for it. Well, you know,
as was I do. I didn't have any listeners, and
they were an ad. They were a live endorsement seller.
They didn't need my endorsement. I did endorsements, but they
didn't generate any money. And I have loved and adored

(31:55):
them ever since, and we have stayed Dear, dear friends.
If I'm in college, we always go to dinner with
Marshall and his wife, and I know all his kids
and it's a blended family. And then his son married
my friend Jimmy Pappus's daughter. Jimmy's the mayor of Bunker
Spring Valley, Hedwig or something one of those communities, and

(32:18):
his son married Jimmy's daughter. Yeah, Marshall Williams and Russell
Linley are a big part of why I get to
do what I do today. Dear friends, wonderful, and obviously
the fact that you brought them up five times and
that you remember how important they were to your business.
I have had businesses tell me that that live endorsement

(32:43):
radio worked for them only because at the time they
don't exist anymore, but ad results, and that they pushed
them to do that. You know, one time I needed
to talk to Handy Russell picked up the phone and
called him, and Handy picked up and he said, I'm
in a meeting. Tell Michael, I know who is I'll
call him back. This was I'd been on for a
few years. Those guys, they were amazing, Uh Roy Marsh,

(33:06):
I could share stories with you forever. I love and
adore you. You've been a dear, dear friend of mine
for many days. Great to hear your voice and your
awesome stories. And we didn't even get into your colligular
lifestock gumment. We'll do that next time.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
I never I never did botch nobody.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
From Well could you tell him what? I never mind.
He's got people to explain terms to him. You don't
have to worry with learning the language, you know. I'm
sorry I didn't have time for the night that he
and I had dinner with uh, who's the guy that
always had the block cookie monster and yell iming at

(33:46):
y'all's restaurant in the back room and you had to
you had to climb up and get in the chairs
with the chairs with cook what was it the ken
Bae Matumba