Leasing Cell Towers with Hugh Odom | 408

Chris Miles (00:04):
Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys! Welcome you out for a wonderful show. A show that’s for you and about you. Those of you that work so hard for your money. And you’re ready for your money to start working harder for you. Today! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Today! Not 30 or 40 gazillion years from now, but right now, right? So you can have that freedom. The life that you love. Being with those that you love. Doing whatever the heck you love, right? But it’s so much more than just you guys going out and creating freedom for yourselves, right? It’s about creating a legacy. About creating a life of meaning and purpose, because as you financially prosper, you can help others do the same as well. You can be able to be a force for good and bless more lives.

Chris Miles (00:47):
And that’s exactly the ripple effect I’m working to create through you guys as well. And thank you for allowing me to do that because man, with the thousands of thousands of you guys tuning in, sharing this and bingeing and doing everything you’re doing, it’s amazing just to see the impact that you guys are making the world as well, that I can never do myself. So thank you so much for being here.

Chris Miles (01:05):
Quick reminder, check our website, MoneyRipples.com. There’s great stuff on there as well. And as I mentioned before, there’s that ebook Beyond Rice & Beans, Seven Secrets to Free Up Cash Today. You can download for free. So check that out!

Chris Miles (01:17):
Alright! So today I’ve got a special guest that, you know, you guys know that often people will send me different guests either. If I know them personally, if I don’t, then I get pitched. Yes. Right? And so most people I get pitched, I will say no to, because I’m like, no, I don’t even know them. I don’t know who it is. The funny thing is this person pitched me somebody else. And I said, no, not really a topic moments will care for. And she said, well, Chris, how about this? And she throws me a little curve ball. And she says, you gotta check out this guy, Hugh Odom. Right. And I was like, okay, well is this a cell phone guy? What is this? You know, Dell marketing guy or whatever? So anyways, but as soon as I started to see the topics, I was highly intrigued, and I know this will be a show that you guys will not forget because how many guys wonder if you can actually start cash flowing things on your own property? This is something that we can do.

Chris Miles (02:06):
Like everything’s about finding hidden money, right? I find those hidden resources. And often we don’t know what those resources are. So you guys are going to absolutely love this. Now let’s, you know, about our guest Hugh here, you know, so Hugh is actually a former ATNT attorney. He was with them for over 11 years. And he’s also the founder and president of vertical consultants was it is a telecom consulting firm. That’s provided consulting advice for companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Disney, basically all the big giants you hear about as well as the government institutions like USPS, right? The United Postal Service and so forth and so on. He’s sharing his evolving story of how the telecom industry has become and will become more crucial, especially because of what’s going on with this pandemic, right? With everything that’s been going on. And he’s had a really unique spin. What goes on with this. As a founder, president of vertical consultants, he wants to demystify not only what is reported in the news, but it’s going on behind the scenes inside companies, just like AT&T Verizon and T-Mobile. And so he’s been a huge resource in media today. So Hugh, welcome to our show!

Hugh Odom (03:03):
Thank you very much for having me!

Chris Miles (03:05):
So tell us a little bit more, like what, how’d you start that background? And we talked a little bit before we recorded this show, but what got you into that telecom industry in the first place?

Hugh Odom (03:14):
Well, originally I was, I came out of law school. I was more into real estate and the financial side of legal industry. And about 20 years ago, I got tapped on the shoulder by, AT&T to possibly start working for them. I was based in Denver at that time and really was the first entry into the telecom world. And saw it as a huge kind of portal for things that were going to happen because kind of, it was one of those industries I knew it was going to continue to grow and what’s with the AT&T as you mentioned for about 11 years. And during that period of time, it just substantially grew more particularly the wireless side of the telecom industry group in that period. And then transition, as you mentioned, started Vertical Consultants back in 2010, because we saw an opportunity.

Hugh Odom (03:54):
A group of us saw an opportunity because we were working inside companies like AT&T Verizon and others. And we saw the disparity between the big telecom jobs and property owners of all types. We saw the disparity because those companies were using the resources more, particularly the land of property owners to put up their equipment, build out their infrastructure for the property, or if we’re getting a fraction of the value, they should be getting based upon the value that’s being derived by those companies. So we started that company and Vertical Consultants and really to kind of equal the playing field because we were the insiders of those companies. We knew what was going on in the inside. And one of the greatest advantages in, AT&T Verizon and T-Mobile has is they do this every day, a property under owner, no matter how sophisticated they are, really doesn’t know the inside information they’re looking at. So…

Chris Miles (04:44):
You know, if something’s a good deal or not, cause if that’s just not something to talk to about often. Right?

Hugh Odom (04:48):
Exactly! And that information has been hidden from property owners for so long. And our jobs to get it out there. And very simply I tell property owners, don’t worry about what’s being offered to you, understand what you’re offering AT&T or Verizon. That’s really where people get mixed up. They get so focused on what’s being offered to them. They don’t understand what they’re get in return. If I get you to buy something for $2, that’s worth $10 to me is a good deal for me. Right. So that’s really the Avenue we try to work with with property owners to understand value and understanding exactly what they’re agreeing to exchange as well.

Chris Miles (05:25):
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. Cause it’s kind of came on my mind recently because my wife and I were out for a walk one day and we’re just going along the trails, you know, like the paved trails that we have going through the city and we start walking by this farm and right in the middle there, humongous cell tower to sit right on their property. Right. Horse, property, and everything. And I thought, well, that’s interesting. I’ve never noticed that there before. Right. But I mean, it’s, it’s there plain as day. And I remember my kids saying, what’s that I’m like, well, that’s a cell tower. Like, well, why is it there? I’m like, I’m sure it’s somehow, you know, the company like AT&T or whoever just said, Hey, now we’ll pay you money just to put this on part of your land, you know? And, and they’re like, well, how much they get paid? I have no clue. So here you are. Right?

Hugh Odom (06:08):
That’s right. So that’s really, you know, the people go around their neighborhoods or towns every day and they kind of see these cell towers, but they kind of blend to the landscape some aspect, or they don’t realize what actually is going on there and understand and why that site was chosen let’s say AT&T and Verizon chose that site. And what the true value is. And they then understanding, well, hold on, is that land owned by AT&T? No! 90 plus percent of all land being used is leased by companies like AT&T or Verizon from a property owner. And that property owner is paid up a rent. The problem with that scenario is that what an AT&T and Verizon, whoever wants you to do is very simple. If they come into a property or they want you to agree to a rent, an escalator and a term.

Hugh Odom (06:55):
So if you read those three things over that period of time, your number’s fixed how much you’re going to get paid, right? Your rent, your escalate, your term. So think of it this way, no matter how much additional value AT&T gets from that property over, let’s say a 20-30 year period. You’ll never see a penny. It could be the best cell site in your city, in your town, in the entire United States. You’ll never see another penny. So think of it like an oil and gas lease. If I came out to you and I wanted to lease your land, I was Exxon. And I told you, I want to lease your land. I’ll pay you this much money per month. This escalator, this term, you would say, well, how much are you gonna be able to get from my land? I’d probably go on the first question you ask. The property owners who release out cell sites. Don’t ask that question. They just go, well, how much rent can I get? They don’t understand the utility transaction. It’s not structured correctly. Most of most times when a property owner is to enter into that deal.

Chris Miles (07:44):
So who would be like the ideal candidate? You know, like for those listening right now, who would be the person that says, Hey, this might be perfect for me. Or maybe this is something that would create great value for a telecom company. What are the telecom companies look for that say, Hey, we’re willing to actually do something on your land.

Hugh Odom (08:00):
Well, that’s an interesting question. Cause it’s transitioned so much over the years. Initially when cell tower first getting built, we all were being built out for coverage. Okay. Cause we did, they had to build up coverage, but that’s kind of taken hold and that’s done right now. The big issue is capacity. And you talk about 5G and things of that nature. So to kind of narrow it down, you’re looking for areas where you’re having highly concentrated usage and that’s transition. Usually you think, well Metro areas or commercial areas, but you think about it. What we do now versus 10 years ago is nobody has a landline at home, right? So you have these, you use your cell phone. So when you go home at night or whenever, especially right now, we’re all home from a lot of country. Is it you’re using your cell phone.

Hugh Odom (08:43):
Well, to answer your question more directly areas where there’s restrictions of use for build out a site. So think of it like a, a neighborhood, a commercial area that’s kind of near a neighborhood. We do have a lot of self storage, a lot of schools, a lot of churches. Why? Because those usual properties are in areas where neighborhoods are built around those things. And so there’s limited availability of other sites to put a cell site on. Okay. So really understanding again, as I said before, understanding as a property or what you’re able to offer a tower company an AT&T and Verizon. Understanding what their limitations are in that area. So if you have a property that is kind of distinct where there’s not a lot of other possibilities to, for somebody to build a cell site because of restrictions from permitting to, you know, residential surrounding it. That becomes more valuable. And that’s something that you may have an opportunity to have a cell site on your property.

Chris Miles (09:40):
Interesting! Very interesting! So give us an example of someone who’s done this recently. Maybe like they went through USA, Hey, help, consult me, figure out what’s the best way to do this. What kind of numbers do they see?

Hugh Odom (09:50):
Well, the big thing is, you know, we work with property owners. I said over the last 10 years. In the last five years, our average increase in rents have been about 300%, 300%

Chris Miles (10:02):
I bet you the other place are being worse. Right?

Hugh Odom (10:05):
Yeah. So, but the thing about is you’re saying, depending on different factors, you know, some cell sites are getting paid as little as a couple of hundred dollars a month and there’s some cell sites getting paid $8,000, $9,000 a month. The big thing is that understanding again, the characteristics of your property. But here’s the thing, as I said earlier, let’s say somebody comes out to you and says, I want to offer you a thousand dollars a month to put a cell tower on the property. And I’ll escalate that 3% per year and 25 year term. Well, that’s great. But what happens is they’re getting you to focus on that number. What our job is to get you think bigger. Because what I want you to do is get the number right today, but put a structure in place. If I agreed a thousand dollars a month or $2,000 a month or $500 a month or $3,000 a month, that’s the number on day one.

Hugh Odom (10:54):
I want to put a structure and to make sure as a value for AT&T or Verizon goes up. And I’m sharing in that value. So we talked about people is, rent is not financial structure. It’s a derivative of the financial structure. So first is identifying that number, getting around a one and then making sure just like an oil and gas lease, if the production increases, some of that flows to you. Yeah. Right? So structure, we talk to people about structure, structure, structure, and understanding of the entity utility agreement you’re entering into. And not so much a real estate agreement, even though you’re leasing space.

Chris Miles (11:28):
Now, does it have to be a minimum lot size or whatever for a tower to be built?

Hugh Odom (11:31):
Now it depends on the situation of course, but no, we’ve. We have clients who have leased as little as 500 square feet and have some, at least up to 10,000 square feet. But controlling that square footage is critical in negotiations because when you’re negotiating a cell site lease, you’re negotiating three big playing cards. I call them. How much time you provide the tower company? How much space? But also configuration of space. You give them because if you limit the amount of space, they may have to come back to you in the future and you renegotiate for more space, right? So that’s Time, Space and the last is Use. What you allow them to do inside that space? If you can limit what they can do to some degree, is I call it a gatekeeping device, they’ll reach a gate and we reach that gate and have to come back to you to get through it and you can renegotiate. So it’s all about that structure and reentry and being able to reenter and re revalue based upon what they’re doing.

Chris Miles (12:25):
So if there’s other sites around you, you could possibly have the advantage over, even though some of those other sites, too?

Hugh Odom (12:30):
Correct. Especially with 5G. That kind of transitions in 5G. 5G people will contact us all the time now and say, it’s 5G going to replace traditional cell towers? And we say, no, what 5G is, is a diversification of existing cellular networks. So what’s going to have to happen. So think of it this way. If you have a cell tower, let’s say a quarter mile down the road from me. What’s going to have to happen is you’re going to build all these small sites around that, that larger site, or build another semi large site around there to densify that network. What you’re doing is you’re filling in holes. Basically, you’re making it. So you, in doing that 5G provides increased speed, lower latency gets you a lot different things that are not available now. So to answer your question, yeah. You can have a site right next door or down the road that could be available for a cell tower in the future.

Chris Miles (13:17):
Wow! Interesting! Yeah. I’m waiting for them to get more cell towers where I am, where we run a mountain top with, seriously, like a few thousand other people. And we got one towerthat we share.

Hugh Odom (13:27):
Yeah. Well, you know, the thing about is, it’s a business too. So there’s a return on investment, right? So with the tower company, so he would call us all the time, say I have, we have horrible coverage. And I said, no, I wish I could get you something tomorrow. But it’s just, they’re saying, how many people are we serving out there and go spend this much money to put something out. But the thing about that is here’s the other part of this, where we are in the world today compared to we were a couple of months ago, there’s going to be a huge push internally by the companies, the corporate entities, but also by the government to provide coverage for everybody, because we’re going to need it. This is kind of the difference in where we live right now. If you’re able to get wireless internet and wifi service versus others who don’t have or have it. So if you’re living in the middle of Nashville, like I do, I have no problem, but you’re living in the middle of South Dakota. You may not have access. And so I think the government’s going to mandate some of these companies to build out and that again, provides opportunities for property owners.

Chris Miles (14:27):
Yeah. Here’s another quick question for you too, is he has a, I mean, naturally, you know, when we grew up, we would make fun of people. If they grew up underneath power lines, if they did really weird things to say, did you grow up under power lines as a kid? Right? How does the whole cell tower thing work with people in the proximity? Cause I’m sure there’s a few people wondering, Hey, is it going to be safe to have something that close to me admitting, you know, waves or emissions or whatever. Right?

Hugh Odom (14:52):
Well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, I’m not a doctor. So I can’t prescribe what’s going to be exactly the health risks with different people. But I would tell you, the years in the industry is the radiation from a cell site is different from radiation you get from x-rays and things like that. So it’s not a harmful radiation unless you’re constantly exposed to it. That’s number one. The second thing is most cell sites are a hundred feet to 150 feet in height. So you’re not right there next to it. It’s above you. It’s not going to admit. Don’t climb up there and hug the antenna. The only thing that would tell you that basically gives us concern. And we work with property owners. If you see buildings with cell antennas on top of those, okay, and people are living in those buildings or working in those buildings, what we help negotiate for our property owners and what we for the building owners. And we promote this is to have language in those agreements to say, look, you need to provide us constant testing that says the radiation frequent, the radiation being admitted is safe for people working in this building. That’s something every building owner should do, because that is sitting there in very close proximity to people versus a cell tower, which has, you know, a hundred feet, 50 feet above the ground. Usually not right next to somebody.

Chris Miles (16:06):
That’s a great point, too. You brought buildings as well, right? So if you don’t have land, you’re saying even without the building, commercial building potential, you could even have a cell tower on that. Huh?

Hugh Odom (16:14):
Yeah. Commercial property owners are some of our biggest clients. We work with. Some of the larger shops are developers and self storage and other hotels and things of that nature. So there, if you have a building, no matter if you’re a large hotel or you have a small business. That is available to put things on your roof or attach to the side of your building, and again, with the 5G build-out, you’re going to see a lot more of that because you don’t need the height as a traditional cell tower. Number one for 5G. And secondly, the equipment footprint is a lot smaller. So you can fit it in neck, on top of a building, or even on the side of a building, it almost looks like a large toolbox kind of that size. That’s as big as it is on those, those little sides.

Chris Miles (16:54):
Interesting! Wow!

Hugh Odom (16:55):
So it’s a lot of opportunity. It’s, look. We have right now in the United States, about a half a million cell sites. Okay. United States. By 2025, there is projected to have over another million to million and a half built. Okay. So tripling what you currently have. So the reason being is you have to build up to have any technology. As we discussed before they have any technology available on your phone, you have to have the infrastructure to handle that technology. And to have 5G and all these things we’re going to, and all this capacity that’s needed. You’re going to have to build the infrastructure. It’s like building more roads. If you’re going to have more cars on the roads, you have to build more roads or widen the roads to handle the traffic. And that’s, what’s going to be, have to happen with 5G and then the increased capacity needs that we’re going into.

Chris Miles (17:48):
Awesome! Hugh, this is fascinating stuff! I love it! Like let’s get my juices turning. So, now, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and say, Hey, Hugh, I need to know like, if I’m a good candidate for this and how we can make this work, what’s the best way so we could reach out to you or, you know, be able to get more information?

Hugh Odom (18:03):
Well, you can go to our website which is, www.CellTowerLeaseExperts.com or our VerticalConsultants.com or contact us via phone, which is (877) 456-7552. We welcome you to contact us, ask us questions. We’re happy to see if your property is available for a cell tower, or if you have an existing site that you’re leasing out, we can help you get more rent and better overall terms as well.

Chris Miles (18:30):
Awesome! Well, I love it. This is cool stuff. So again, thank you so much for your time and your expertise here. This is such a cool topic.

Hugh Odom (18:37):
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

Chris Miles (18:40):
So everybody else, Hey, we’re going to put those links in the show notes for you guys. You can check that out, but, Hey, if this is something you think that could be utilized in your situation, reach out to them, you know, just find out what you can actually do in a situation like this. I mean, it’s such a cool thing. So anyways, guys, I’ll be making a wonderful and prosperous week. I hope you make some great value today and you become the Rippler that the world deserves. Go and make it a great week. We’ll talk to you later.