August 17, 2025 • 41 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show, AOL announcing that they will be
discontinuing their dial up at the end of September, and
I said, who still has an account? And Kyle writes, Zar,
I still have an AOL email. I use it as
my burner for online shopping, had it since probably nineteen
ninety seven. Now I think you can still use your emails, right,
(00:23):
you just can't do the dial up. Somewhere somebody is
using dial up. Roy Marsh, along with his brother Rob,
was the creator of Everyone's Internet, which was a going
concern in Houston. I met Roy at the height of
his philanthropy and he would kindly invite me to places
(00:45):
with him, and it was like match, there's only a
few people in town that spend money at auctions and
he and Mac. You know, it's like when they do
the fatted Calf at the rodeo that there's only a
few people bidding. You know, a couple of planeff attorneys
that have hit big cases and want to get in
the news. And then there was Roy. And you'd go
to these sports memorabilia things and he would just if
(01:06):
something didn't sell, he'd just buy he bit against himself
spend crazy money He's one of my favorite I don't
get to see him much, be course, I don't see
anybody anymore. It's one of my favorite people in the world.
I just adore this guy, Roy Marsh, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you, Good morning, Broy.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Did I ever tell you in the stories we didn't
know about each other. I once traveled the trans Saharan
Highway in an old funeral coach with all the signs removed.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Get out.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I've been through the desert in a hearse with no name.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So you have it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You get massages, do you, Roy? Well? My massage therapist
was having the most difficult time working on my back.
She asked, on a one to ten scale, how stressed
are you? And I said, honestly, only point two And
she on it and said that explains that you're two tenths.
(02:05):
We might do this all morning. My wife says it's
disgusting to pee in the shower. I suppose I should
wait till she gets out. Well, you sound very peppy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
In this hour. Was this because I told Ramon that
I would play the straight band today.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
As opposed to the rumors about Roy Marsh have been confirmed? Uh? Roy,
you know, I know I know we've talked about this
on the air, but before we get to internet and
dial up in the go go days and how awesome
you are and how much I adore you, take us back.
You and your brother an interesting and interesting thing. Although
(02:49):
I've seen this more often than maybe people would expect,
you and your brother take us back to how Booper
booper beeper boutique started, because before we can talk internet
and dial up, we have to talk about the beeper
phenomenon of the eighties and you guys rode that wave.
So take it away.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh yeah, well that started when my father and brother
were working for another cell company and their accountant something
von Whippenstein that was his actual last name, crashed that company.
(03:30):
So they had to do something. So they started their
own little company over on Bengal and got into the
beepers just by happenstance. A salesperson came in said, hey,
you know, you really ought to add this to the
cell phones. Yeah, and they did it. So I think
(03:58):
I got fired or something from a job and like
Pads like, well, you know, you can come work for
slave wages, and so I joined them. But at that
point beepers were just they were professional you know doctors. Uh.
So we were like, let's take it to the masses.
(04:20):
Let's use radio to approach people. Hey, folks, this is
something you can have access to and radio is a
perfect way to reach people where you have active listening,
(04:41):
like the Michael Berry Show. So that grew from one
little store to I think at one time we had
twenty five stores across Texas and Louisiana. Uh. But we
were we were seeing that cell phone were gaining in
popularity and people were starting to let their pagers go
(05:07):
and go with the new technology. So our technology provider says, hey, listen,
we know the internet. You guys know selling, why don't
we go together and start an internet company dial up
(05:29):
access And that was the genesis of everyone's Internet. Put
up a couple of hundred thousand dollars EE, or actually
one hundred thousand dollars each got going, started advertising on
(05:51):
TV because my brother wanted to get the free Super
Bowl tickets from the of the TV station. TV did
nothing for us. Then Russell and Marshall Williams had results
came in and said, hey, listen, you need to be
on radio, and you don't. It's not just any radio
(06:15):
you need to be live endorsement radio. Now, the difference
in a live endorsement spot and an avail, which we
were taking broad Rotator a veil. You're buying leftover inventory,
so you get it cheap, and it may run at
six am, it may run five pm, you know somewhere
(06:39):
in that slot that you bought. But they convinced us
to spend I think it was either five or six
hundred dollars for a live endorsement for k Oel and
I'm I'm against it. My brother and father they're they're like, hey,
we got to do something. You know, we're not you know,
(06:59):
we signed up one hundred customers last month. We need
to do better than that. And so you know, we're
listening that that first morning it's supposed to air, and
I hear the spot and I hear, you know, they're
going on it's forty five seconds into fifty seconds and
(07:21):
they're trying to fill time on the sixty second spot
and boner pops up. Yeah, eb one, it doesn't suck,
And I'm about I think I for my brother's office
was across the bullpen and I don't know what I threw,
(07:43):
but I'm sure I threw something yelled cursed. But before
I could get over there, the phones just blew up
and the guy, uh, the guys were right live Endorsement
Radio works. It we blew up Houston and from that,
(08:06):
you know we've got into the web hosting whatever. But
it was an incredible ride. Our people did amazing things.
You know, with the dial up you had to send
out a disc that's right, So I mean at first
we were buying, buying blank this, popping the software and
(08:28):
sending it out in a playing mailer.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Roy Marsh was the co founder of Everyone's Internet. If
you're over the age of forty, you know what that is.
Otherwise ask your parents 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 you know whether they'll ever turn those off?
(08:56):
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 an email from a bail bondsman that said
(09:20):
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. Please tell Hotshot that Hood from Forest
Hills says, Hello, that's Hood Mowerman, mechanical designer at Okena's
(09:45):
an advanced ocean systems company at eleven nine eighty nine
b FM five point twenty in Houston. Wow, do you
remember Hood? Oh yeah, that's how he signs it name,
so it must be his real name. It is all right,
Let's go back to Beeper Boutique because we glossed over that.
(10:09):
You don't have any meetings or anything due me.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, you know, I'm old people.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
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
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 (10:37):
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 Lufkin.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
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 (11:13):
Oh? Okay, economics of it was let's see, we probably
paid like thirty bucks a unit and twenty or thirty
bucks a yet and then sell it for with a
year's worth of service for like one hundred and twenty bucks.
(11:34):
Uh so we paid uh, let's say twenty thirty dollars
for the pager, two dollars a month for the service,
and we try to get posts to pay. Yeah, it
was pretty good mark up.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Was there aayment plan or was it all up front?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh? No, you could pay That payment plan was twelve
bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh yeah. What year did y'all start that?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Uh? That was Dad and Roberts started probably about ninety
two ninety three. I joined ninety four and it we
(12:18):
probably when did we sell that, We sold that probably
two thousand.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And what did y'all do? Would you guess in gross revenues,
your best year.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Best year was probably close to maybe close to a
million dollars.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
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 (13:01):
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
(13:24):
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 (13:43):
Did y'all ever think about getting into the cell phone business?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
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 so on cell phones, but the
the cell carriers, their contracts were written to you had
(14:10):
to 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 (14:30):
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
(14:51):
bought out Houston Sailor, and then the building just kind
of went derelict, which surprised me. I always thought that
it was such a great building, right next to the
HR headquarters. Did you foresee cell phones being as powerful
and ubiquitous as they are now?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
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 pagers.
(15:34):
You know, great great insight on my part, huh uh.
But you know, that's it's all. It's all a matter
of price.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
All right, so you sell Beeper boutique and you around.
I guess two thousand you start Everyone's Internet.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
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 de Lotti.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Oh yeah, I worked with Rita, Rita and David.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
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 share with?
Hold on second, Roy marsh founder of Everyone's Internet's our guests,
this is the Michael Barry Show. So y'all started in
ninety nine? How long before the Everyone's Internet that we
heard everywhere was booming? What was that moment where you said, okay,
(16:39):
this dial up Internet? Did you call it dial up?
What did you call it?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Back then? We called it internet?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And we were crappy a start, but it was it
was what what that springboard was was Marshall and Russell
from ad Results and Live Endorsement Rate. Uh, you know,
starting out with cal Well then oh goodness, I can't
(17:07):
you know uh Ruin Ryan. Oh uh, Lance, and they
wouldn't lets have Lance and John Lancer, Aline, John Granado,
just Lance and John. Still John's still upset about that. Today.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
John shares grudges and and has an elephant's memory the
way I do. Uh. That's that's that's Did John have
somebody he was speaking for already?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
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
(18:01):
doing a deal with Paul Harvey. Oh well, and we
just didn't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Now forgive, you got to adbitate where y'all. So y'all
could handle a client anywhere, No, no, you have to
you had to have infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Uh you know, you had to have local dial up numbers.
They weren't going to or an eight hundred number. The
eight hundred number would talkt you too much.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Okay, So you had seven, one, three and another number
or that was it.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
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 (18:54):
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 (19:02):
I think we had? Uh? We had we had a
number of numbers that could hold certain amount. So if you,
you know, if you could get it on this number,
you had another number you could try.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
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 (19:34):
Oh? So wow, now now you're oh, you're pressing you
on this one. Not I got to 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
(19:56):
bucks a month, well then plus the compliance and regular
tory 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 we had an area with good with enough volume,
(20:28):
you know, other areas because you've got certain infra, you know,
fixed costs that if you didn't have enough subscribers to
cover those fixed costs, you know, you were losing money.
But for for Houston, you know, around two bucks and
selling it for you know, ten and it was a
(20:50):
recurring revenue model. Folks were you know, they were on
a a a automatic debit or whatever or hit the
credit card. So, yes, it was mailbox money is lovely.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yeah, subscription models everything. I mean, everybody's gone to that.
What do you think everyone's internet estimate gross revenues were
in your best year and roughly what year would that
have been?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Oh okay, everyone's Internet. Now we're going to include the
the web hosting okay, yeah, okay, and then we'll break
it out sixty million, oh wow.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Okay, and that was fifty nine percent profit.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
That was a little different deal because the web hosting
we had much higher 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
(22:01):
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
(22:22):
the in the community. I mean, you know, but we
we Hey, that art car parade was awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
That was awesome. That was What did y'all pay for that?
That had to be? Is that a million dollars?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Thousand, weren't they? I mean at that point because I
know that it was kind of a one man show.
The guy that was over off North Shepherd right at
the at the tracks there, and I think he'd think
for a few years there they were really struggling. Hold
on Roy marsh of everyone's Internet is there?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Guests, it's none for a girl and the boy make
Magabarri show.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Well, 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 (23:22):
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
(23:50):
uh we had the opportunity to resell yeah, because the
only DSL providers were you know, the phone companies and
dealing with the phone companies bipes. But we were like, hey,
(24:12):
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,
(24:35):
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
(24:57):
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
(25:20):
compete directly on that level.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
When you say the resources, do you just mean the capital?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
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.
(25:58):
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
(26:23):
the DSL, it was the capital, the knowledge of building
out that infrastructure, and we just it. It surpassed the
resources that we we felt we could get to without
risking everything.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
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 yeah,
that's my question.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
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
(27:27):
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
(27:51):
was coming in from a toga party at a Roman chalet.
We were on 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 dollar lease.
(28:20):
Now I understand we're we're barely cash flowing at this point.
And he's like, sign it was the was the message
I got. So you know, I'm calling and talking to
him and they weren't serving uh sweet ice tea at
the chalet and trying to piece through all of this.
(28:44):
But I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, Hey, we're gonna
we're gonna sell it for one hundred bucks a month, okay,
and it's only gonna you know, the lease only costs
US seventy dollars month, so we'll make thirty dollars a month.
(29:05):
I'm like, let's step through this. What what what will
it cost us besides the the lease payment to provide
that service. Oh, well, you know, we've got to have
(29:25):
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 load than embercent. I'm like, well,
you know, okay, so if it's fully loaded, you know,
(29:47):
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 going to cost us one hundred and
fifteen one hundred and twenty dollars a month. Yeah, but
we'll make it up in volume.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
That's actually an old business joke.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Uh you 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 he was very good at that. Uh.
So we get these in, we put them up, and
(30:40):
it goes. I mean, we bloke through them, we sell
them out. We leased them out inside of thirty forty
five days, get another load from a Cobalt, then another,
and then Cobalt gets bought by a competitor to kill them.
Then we have to pivot and we start sourcing our
(31:06):
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 (31:16):
We were you dealing with Michael directly or who were
you dealing with?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
No, I wasn't dealing with anybody. I was just you know,
they were a total speaking which, Hey, somebody had to.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Let's discuss your debauchery because you were living large for
a little while. Hold on, Roy marsh of Everyone's Internet Guys.
The girls all get pretty at closing time when you're
listening 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 a question, why
(31:52):
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 was in
(32:13):
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 Long
(32:36):
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,
how many acres you need to put these these to
(32:58):
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 he's made a fortune doing this. So when Trump
was deplatformed by Twitter and he went to before it
(33:19):
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.
(33:40):
This is a big, big, big deal. I found myself
fascinated by the back end of all of this thing.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
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 of what
(34:10):
year 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
(34:32):
was that Roy Marsh and Everyone's Internet were hosting terrast
websites and Roy Marsh was connected to George Bush and
so they were trying to embarrass Bush from it. What
they didn't know is that that was that terrorist website.
(34:54):
And yes there were terror websites. That terrorist website was
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,
(35:16):
you don't care, 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.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Fortunately, maybe it was that Mia Khalifa was showing up
in your search history.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Well there was other things showing up there too, uh so.
But fortunately with because we were you know, so so
well known and so connected, Russell and Marshall form ad
results got on the phone and were able to potentially
(36:02):
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 (36:13):
You keep up with Russell Marshall.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
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 (36:33):
Maybe yeah, they both sold out. Marshall, okay, spends 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,
(36:55):
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 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 in five,
(37:17):
I was doing a weekend show. It was an hour long,
awful show about real estate.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And real estate. Yeah I remember it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
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 Martinez 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 that's it's more than that now if you want
(37:50):
to do some home improvement or whatever. But back then
that was a pretty penny and I just didn't have it.
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
(38:12):
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
(38:33):
them ever since, and we have stayed. Dear, dear friends.
If I'm in Colorado. 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
(38:56):
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
(39:21):
radio worked for them only because at the time they
don't exist anymore, but add 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 he is.
I'll call him back. This was I'd been on for
a few years, those guys. They were amazing, Roy marsh
(39:44):
I could share stories with you forever. I love and
adore you. You've been a dear, dear friend of mine
for many others. Great to hear your voice and your
awesome stories. And we didn't even get into your colligular lifestyle.
Gumm it, We'll do that next time.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I never I never did botch nobody. O.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
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 lane, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I'm sorry I didn't have time for her the night
that he and I had dinner with uh who's the
guy that always had the block cookie monster and yell
ming at y'all's restaurant in the back room, and that
you had to you had to climb up and get
in the chairs with the chairs with the ken Bab Matombo.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
That wraps our Sunday bonus podcast this episode anyway, and
if you enjoyed it, send me an email Michael Berryshow
dot com is the website Michael Berryshow dot com or
Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com and if you could
put a nice little review doesn't have to be long,
that you liked the podcast, you appreciate the fact that
we're doing extra shows for you. Extra podcasts on Sunday.
(40:51):
What you'd like to hear more of five star reviews
go a long way to move us up the rankings,
and we appreciate that. We appreciate that, is it ego?
Oh yeah, yeah. We like to be ranked high. We
like to be a popular podcast. We like to have
more people listening. It gives us an opportunity to have
a greater influence in hopefully helping to save this country.
And you are a part of making that happen. I'm
(41:14):
on Facebook, you buy me there. I'm on Twitter, you
find me there. I'm on Instagram. I'm not as active
as I'd like to be there. And you can learn
a lot more about our show by our merch send
me an email, sign up for our blast, all of
our website Michael Berryshow dot com. Okay, that's a lot
of requests for me. Let me just take a moment
and say thank you for supporting our show, listening to
(41:35):
our show, and supporting our show sponsors who are our
partners on this show. So for Ramon Roeblist, the King
of Ding, Jim Mudd, the creative director Darryl Kunda not
with us long enough to have a title yet, and
the executive producer for whom we all work Chattakoni Nakanishi.
(41:55):
I say thank you,
The Michael Berry Show, AOL announcing that they will be
discontinuing their dial up at the end of September, and
I said, who still has an account? And Kyle writes, Zar,
I still have an AOL email. I use it as
my burner for online shopping, had it since probably nineteen
ninety seven. Now I think you can still use your emails, right,
(00:23):
you just can't do the dial up. Somewhere somebody is
using dial up. Roy Marsh, along with his brother Rob,
was the creator of Everyone's Internet, which was a going
concern in Houston. I met Roy at the height of
his philanthropy and he would kindly invite me to places
(00:45):
with him, and it was like match, there's only a
few people in town that spend money at auctions and
he and Mac. You know, it's like when they do
the fatted Calf at the rodeo that there's only a
few people bidding. You know, a couple of planeff attorneys
that have hit big cases and want to get in
the news. And then there was Roy. And you'd go
to these sports memorabilia things and he would just if
(01:06):
something didn't sell, he'd just buy he bit against himself
spend crazy money He's one of my favorite I don't
get to see him much, be course, I don't see
anybody anymore. It's one of my favorite people in the world.
I just adore this guy, Roy Marsh, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you, Good morning, Broy.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Did I ever tell you in the stories we didn't
know about each other. I once traveled the trans Saharan
Highway in an old funeral coach with all the signs removed.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Get out.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I've been through the desert in a hearse with no name.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So you have it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You get massages, do you, Roy? Well? My massage therapist
was having the most difficult time working on my back.
She asked, on a one to ten scale, how stressed
are you? And I said, honestly, only point two And
she on it and said that explains that you're two tenths.
(02:05):
We might do this all morning. My wife says it's
disgusting to pee in the shower. I suppose I should
wait till she gets out. Well, you sound very peppy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
In this hour. Was this because I told Ramon that
I would play the straight band today.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
As opposed to the rumors about Roy Marsh have been confirmed? Uh? Roy,
you know, I know I know we've talked about this
on the air, but before we get to internet and
dial up in the go go days and how awesome
you are and how much I adore you, take us back.
You and your brother an interesting and interesting thing. Although
(02:49):
I've seen this more often than maybe people would expect,
you and your brother take us back to how Booper
booper beeper boutique started, because before we can talk internet
and dial up, we have to talk about the beeper
phenomenon of the eighties and you guys rode that wave.
So take it away.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh yeah, well that started when my father and brother
were working for another cell company and their accountant something
von Whippenstein that was his actual last name, crashed that company.
(03:30):
So they had to do something. So they started their
own little company over on Bengal and got into the
beepers just by happenstance. A salesperson came in said, hey,
you know, you really ought to add this to the
cell phones. Yeah, and they did it. So I think
(03:58):
I got fired or something from a job and like
Pads like, well, you know, you can come work for
slave wages, and so I joined them. But at that
point beepers were just they were professional you know doctors. Uh.
So we were like, let's take it to the masses.
(04:20):
Let's use radio to approach people. Hey, folks, this is
something you can have access to and radio is a
perfect way to reach people where you have active listening,
(04:41):
like the Michael Berry Show. So that grew from one
little store to I think at one time we had
twenty five stores across Texas and Louisiana. Uh. But we
were we were seeing that cell phone were gaining in
popularity and people were starting to let their pagers go
(05:07):
and go with the new technology. So our technology provider says, hey, listen,
we know the internet. You guys know selling, why don't
we go together and start an internet company dial up
(05:29):
access And that was the genesis of everyone's Internet. Put
up a couple of hundred thousand dollars EE, or actually
one hundred thousand dollars each got going, started advertising on
(05:51):
TV because my brother wanted to get the free Super
Bowl tickets from the of the TV station. TV did
nothing for us. Then Russell and Marshall Williams had results
came in and said, hey, listen, you need to be
on radio, and you don't. It's not just any radio
(06:15):
you need to be live endorsement radio. Now, the difference
in a live endorsement spot and an avail, which we
were taking broad Rotator a veil. You're buying leftover inventory,
so you get it cheap, and it may run at
six am, it may run five pm, you know somewhere
(06:39):
in that slot that you bought. But they convinced us
to spend I think it was either five or six
hundred dollars for a live endorsement for k Oel and
I'm I'm against it. My brother and father they're they're like, hey,
we got to do something. You know, we're not you know,
(06:59):
we signed up one hundred customers last month. We need
to do better than that. And so you know, we're
listening that that first morning it's supposed to air, and
I hear the spot and I hear, you know, they're
going on it's forty five seconds into fifty seconds and
(07:21):
they're trying to fill time on the sixty second spot
and boner pops up. Yeah, eb one, it doesn't suck,
And I'm about I think I for my brother's office
was across the bullpen and I don't know what I threw,
(07:43):
but I'm sure I threw something yelled cursed. But before
I could get over there, the phones just blew up
and the guy, uh, the guys were right live Endorsement
Radio works. It we blew up Houston and from that,
(08:06):
you know we've got into the web hosting whatever. But
it was an incredible ride. Our people did amazing things.
You know, with the dial up you had to send
out a disc that's right, So I mean at first
we were buying, buying blank this, popping the software and
(08:28):
sending it out in a playing mailer.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Roy Marsh was the co founder of Everyone's Internet. If
you're over the age of forty, you know what that is.
Otherwise ask your parents 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 you know whether they'll ever turn those off?
(08:56):
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 an email from a bail bondsman that said
(09:20):
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. Please tell Hotshot that Hood from Forest
Hills says, Hello, that's Hood Mowerman, mechanical designer at Okena's
(09:45):
an advanced ocean systems company at eleven nine eighty nine
b FM five point twenty in Houston. Wow, do you
remember Hood? Oh yeah, that's how he signs it name,
so it must be his real name. It is all right,
Let's go back to Beeper Boutique because we glossed over that.
(10:09):
You don't have any meetings or anything due me.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, you know, I'm old people.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
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
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 (10:37):
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 Lufkin.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
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 (11:13):
Oh? Okay, economics of it was let's see, we probably
paid like thirty bucks a unit and twenty or thirty
bucks a yet and then sell it for with a
year's worth of service for like one hundred and twenty bucks.
(11:34):
Uh so we paid uh, let's say twenty thirty dollars
for the pager, two dollars a month for the service,
and we try to get posts to pay. Yeah, it
was pretty good mark up.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Was there aayment plan or was it all up front?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh? No, you could pay That payment plan was twelve
bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh yeah. What year did y'all start that?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Uh? That was Dad and Roberts started probably about ninety
two ninety three. I joined ninety four and it we
(12:18):
probably when did we sell that, We sold that probably
two thousand.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And what did y'all do? Would you guess in gross revenues,
your best year.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Best year was probably close to maybe close to a
million dollars.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
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 (13:01):
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
(13:24):
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 (13:43):
Did y'all ever think about getting into the cell phone business?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
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 so on cell phones, but the
the cell carriers, their contracts were written to you had
(14:10):
to 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 (14:30):
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
(14:51):
bought out Houston Sailor, and then the building just kind
of went derelict, which surprised me. I always thought that
it was such a great building, right next to the
HR headquarters. Did you foresee cell phones being as powerful
and ubiquitous as they are now?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
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 pagers.
(15:34):
You know, great great insight on my part, huh uh.
But you know, that's it's all. It's all a matter
of price.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
All right, so you sell Beeper boutique and you around.
I guess two thousand you start Everyone's Internet.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
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 de Lotti.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Oh yeah, I worked with Rita, Rita and David.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
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 share with?
Hold on second, Roy marsh founder of Everyone's Internet's our guests,
this is the Michael Barry Show. So y'all started in
ninety nine? How long before the Everyone's Internet that we
heard everywhere was booming? What was that moment where you said, okay,
(16:39):
this dial up Internet? Did you call it dial up?
What did you call it?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Back then? We called it internet?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And we were crappy a start, but it was it
was what what that springboard was was Marshall and Russell
from ad Results and Live Endorsement Rate. Uh, you know,
starting out with cal Well then oh goodness, I can't
(17:07):
you know uh Ruin Ryan. Oh uh, Lance, and they
wouldn't lets have Lance and John Lancer, Aline, John Granado,
just Lance and John. Still John's still upset about that. Today.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
John shares grudges and and has an elephant's memory the
way I do. Uh. That's that's that's Did John have
somebody he was speaking for already?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
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
(18:01):
doing a deal with Paul Harvey. Oh well, and we
just didn't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Now forgive, you got to adbitate where y'all. So y'all
could handle a client anywhere, No, no, you have to
you had to have infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Uh you know, you had to have local dial up numbers.
They weren't going to or an eight hundred number. The
eight hundred number would talkt you too much.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Okay, So you had seven, one, three and another number
or that was it.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
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 (18:54):
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 (19:02):
I think we had? Uh? We had we had a
number of numbers that could hold certain amount. So if you,
you know, if you could get it on this number,
you had another number you could try.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
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 (19:34):
Oh? So wow, now now you're oh, you're pressing you
on this one. Not I got to 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
(19:56):
bucks a month, well then plus the compliance and regular
tory 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 we had an area with good with enough volume,
(20:28):
you know, other areas because you've got certain infra, you know,
fixed costs that if you didn't have enough subscribers to
cover those fixed costs, you know, you were losing money.
But for for Houston, you know, around two bucks and
selling it for you know, ten and it was a
(20:50):
recurring revenue model. Folks were you know, they were on
a a a automatic debit or whatever or hit the
credit card. So, yes, it was mailbox money is lovely.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yeah, subscription models everything. I mean, everybody's gone to that.
What do you think everyone's internet estimate gross revenues were
in your best year and roughly what year would that
have been?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Oh okay, everyone's Internet. Now we're going to include the
the web hosting okay, yeah, okay, and then we'll break
it out sixty million, oh wow.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Okay, and that was fifty nine percent profit.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
That was a little different deal because the web hosting
we had much higher 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
(22:01):
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
(22:22):
the in the community. I mean, you know, but we
we Hey, that art car parade was awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
That was awesome. That was What did y'all pay for that?
That had to be? Is that a million dollars?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Thousand, weren't they? I mean at that point because I
know that it was kind of a one man show.
The guy that was over off North Shepherd right at
the at the tracks there, and I think he'd think
for a few years there they were really struggling. Hold
on Roy marsh of everyone's Internet is there?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Guests, it's none for a girl and the boy make
Magabarri show.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Well, 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 (23:22):
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
(23:50):
uh we had the opportunity to resell yeah, because the
only DSL providers were you know, the phone companies and
dealing with the phone companies bipes. But we were like, hey,
(24:12):
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,
(24:35):
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
(24:57):
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
(25:20):
compete directly on that level.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
When you say the resources, do you just mean the capital?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
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.
(25:58):
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
(26:23):
the DSL, it was the capital, the knowledge of building
out that infrastructure, and we just it. It surpassed the
resources that we we felt we could get to without
risking everything.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
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 yeah,
that's my question.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
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
(27:27):
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
(27:51):
was coming in from a toga party at a Roman chalet.
We were on 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 dollar lease.
(28:20):
Now I understand we're we're barely cash flowing at this point.
And he's like, sign it was the was the message
I got. So you know, I'm calling and talking to
him and they weren't serving uh sweet ice tea at
the chalet and trying to piece through all of this.
(28:44):
But I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, Hey, we're gonna
we're gonna sell it for one hundred bucks a month, okay,
and it's only gonna you know, the lease only costs
US seventy dollars month, so we'll make thirty dollars a month.
(29:05):
I'm like, let's step through this. What what what will
it cost us besides the the lease payment to provide
that service. Oh, well, you know, we've got to have
(29:25):
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 load than embercent. I'm like, well,
you know, okay, so if it's fully loaded, you know,
(29:47):
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 going to cost us one hundred and
fifteen one hundred and twenty dollars a month. Yeah, but
we'll make it up in volume.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
That's actually an old business joke.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Uh you 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 he was very good at that. Uh.
So we get these in, we put them up, and
(30:40):
it goes. I mean, we bloke through them, we sell
them out. We leased them out inside of thirty forty
five days, get another load from a Cobalt, then another,
and then Cobalt gets bought by a competitor to kill them.
Then we have to pivot and we start sourcing our
(31:06):
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 (31:16):
We were you dealing with Michael directly or who were
you dealing with?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
No, I wasn't dealing with anybody. I was just you know,
they were a total speaking which, Hey, somebody had to.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Let's discuss your debauchery because you were living large for
a little while. Hold on, Roy marsh of Everyone's Internet Guys.
The girls all get pretty at closing time when you're
listening 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 a question, why
(31:52):
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 was in
(32:13):
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 Long
(32:36):
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,
how many acres you need to put these these to
(32:58):
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 he's made a fortune doing this. So when Trump
was deplatformed by Twitter and he went to before it
(33:19):
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.
(33:40):
This is a big, big, big deal. I found myself
fascinated by the back end of all of this thing.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
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 of what
(34:10):
year 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
(34:32):
was that Roy Marsh and Everyone's Internet were hosting terrast
websites and Roy Marsh was connected to George Bush and
so they were trying to embarrass Bush from it. What
they didn't know is that that was that terrorist website.
(34:54):
And yes there were terror websites. That terrorist website was
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,
(35:16):
you don't care, 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.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Fortunately, maybe it was that Mia Khalifa was showing up
in your search history.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Well there was other things showing up there too, uh so.
But fortunately with because we were you know, so so
well known and so connected, Russell and Marshall form ad
results got on the phone and were able to potentially
(36:02):
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 (36:13):
You keep up with Russell Marshall.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
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 (36:33):
Maybe yeah, they both sold out. Marshall, okay, spends 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,
(36:55):
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 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 in five,
(37:17):
I was doing a weekend show. It was an hour long,
awful show about real estate.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And real estate. Yeah I remember it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
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 Martinez 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 that's it's more than that now if you want
(37:50):
to do some home improvement or whatever. But back then
that was a pretty penny and I just didn't have it.
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
(38:12):
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
(38:33):
them ever since, and we have stayed. Dear, dear friends.
If I'm in Colorado. 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
(38:56):
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
(39:21):
radio worked for them only because at the time they
don't exist anymore, but add 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 he is.
I'll call him back. This was I'd been on for
a few years, those guys. They were amazing, Roy marsh
(39:44):
I could share stories with you forever. I love and
adore you. You've been a dear, dear friend of mine
for many others. Great to hear your voice and your
awesome stories. And we didn't even get into your colligular lifestyle.
Gumm it, We'll do that next time.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I never I never did botch nobody. O.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
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 lane, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I'm sorry I didn't have time for her the night
that he and I had dinner with uh who's the
guy that always had the block cookie monster and yell
ming at y'all's restaurant in the back room, and that
you had to you had to climb up and get
in the chairs with the chairs with the ken Bab Matombo.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
That wraps our Sunday bonus podcast this episode anyway, and
if you enjoyed it, send me an email Michael Berryshow
dot com is the website Michael Berryshow dot com or
Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com and if you could
put a nice little review doesn't have to be long,
that you liked the podcast, you appreciate the fact that
we're doing extra shows for you. Extra podcasts on Sunday.
(40:51):
What you'd like to hear more of five star reviews
go a long way to move us up the rankings,
and we appreciate that. We appreciate that, is it ego?
Oh yeah, yeah. We like to be ranked high. We
like to be a popular podcast. We like to have
more people listening. It gives us an opportunity to have
a greater influence in hopefully helping to save this country.
And you are a part of making that happen. I'm
(41:14):
on Facebook, you buy me there. I'm on Twitter, you
find me there. I'm on Instagram. I'm not as active
as I'd like to be there. And you can learn
a lot more about our show by our merch send
me an email, sign up for our blast, all of
our website Michael Berryshow dot com. Okay, that's a lot
of requests for me. Let me just take a moment
and say thank you for supporting our show, listening to
(41:35):
our show, and supporting our show sponsors who are our
partners on this show. So for Ramon Roeblist, the King
of Ding, Jim Mudd, the creative director Darryl Kunda not
with us long enough to have a title yet, and
the executive producer for whom we all work Chattakoni Nakanishi.
(41:55):
I say thank you,
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