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Health IT leaders ensure your healthcare facility is equipped for the future with strategic venue partners. SVP specializes in developing robust, scalable wireless infrastructure tailored to the unique needs of healthcare environments, enhance patient care, streamline operations, and meet the growing demands of digital healthcare with reliable connectivity.

Visit this week, health.com/strategic venue dash partners today, and transform your facility's wireless capabilities with SVPs innovative solutions.

Bill Russell: Welcome to This Week Health. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

Now, onto our interview

Sarah Richardson (2): (Interview 1) Welcome to our executive interview with Justin Marin from Strategic Venue Partners. In today's episode, we are honored to welcome him. He's the visionary founder and CEO of strategic venue partners with a [00:01:00] rich background spanning finance, marketing, renewable energy, and wireless solutions.

Justin has been instrumental in building wireless connectivity under his leadership, SVP has emerged as a leader in providing wireless infrastructure as a service. Ensuring venues across various sectors from healthcare to hospitality are equipped with cutting edge connectivity solutions.

Justin's forward thinking approach has not only addressed current connectivity challenges, but has also positioned SVP to anticipate and meet the evolving demands of our digital age. Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Marron: Sarah, thank you so much for having me and happy St. Patty's today to you. I mean, obviously I'm rocking the green today. I know these aren't date specific podcasts, but it is St. Patty's Day

Sarah Richardson (2): and the only reason I'm not wearing green is my only piece of green clothing is a Christmas dress, and it just somehow was not gonna be able to explain or pull that one off today. So you got my like red Christmas sweater instead.

Apparently

Justin Marron: this is good. Apparently St. Patrick didn't, would like green either. He wore blue. There's a whole bunch of, misnomers about that whole deal Anyway,

Sarah Richardson (2): think we're good. So let's [00:02:00] jump in. Yeah. Because I wanna talk about your founding vision and what inspired you to establish SVP and also how did you have a diverse background like yours?

GMT20250317-210324_Recording_avo_640x360: Yeah. Influence

Sarah Richardson (2): both your mission and direction where you've taken the company.

Justin Marron: Yeah. No, I appreciate the question. So I'll start back from the beginning, because influenced where we got to. effectively at a school, I worked in the financial world and the joke was if the window's opened, I would've jumped out. I learned a ton while doing that. but I really wanted to do my own thing. I really wanted to get into infrastructure. I wanted to develop infrastructure, but also develop infrastructure that had a service to it. so not just, like a power plant, but something , that had a service component to it as well. we spent, I really kicked off and cut my teeth in the wireless space, building cell towers all over the country and rooftop sites. And during that timeframe we saw the migration, and the tax incentive dollars flowing into renewables. And so this jersey kid originally was all over west Texas in the upper Midwest building.

Wind turbines everywhere. we followed the next wave of incentive dollars into solar, and built solar across the United States as well as Hawaii. but the truth [00:03:00] was, I wanted to get back into wireless where I really cut my teeth originally. I knew there was a tremendous amount of growth. To be had in the, in-building space. but the reality was the business had to be prosecuted differently. the way it currently worked just didn't make sense, and I knew that if we formed SEP and we started with a program that really solved all the problems and really aligned all the interests of those involved.

And what I mean by those involved, right? So take hospitals, wireless carriers other healthcare technology providers, and of course us, how can you align all those interests at once? And so everybody at the table was happy with what was going on. And I really think that our offering does that. When you take it even a step further or a step back, I should say, and think about like wireless carriers, right? And think about communication and coverage. If you own a high transportation area, like a train station, right? The wireless carriers will pay you to be there because they need to cover those folks. The difference though, is. If you own a hospital, you have the same requirements, you're open 365, [00:04:00] 7 days, whatever it is, 24 hours and all day long. And you have not only coverage requirements, but you also have data throughput that you need to put through.

And as technology's change, these systems are gonna migrate and become greater and greater and stronger, and stronger and stronger. And there needed to be a way to really. offer a service to folks that made sense for everybody. And so that was part of the genesis of can we come to market?

Can we do it differently? Can we show everybody at the table that they're all getting value, and they're all getting the proper service and everybody wins. If that's the case, right? You can check all those boxes. Then everybody's like, yeah, this does make sense. let's keep going, let's keep talking.

Sarah Richardson (2): Well, and it's important to have. Your availability for that always on wifi connectivity is an example, and not have it flowing through some of the same pipes as your clinician and patient data. And too often that's where hospitals get into a bit of a stuck situation and that you've got all this data going over the same pipes and that differentiation is such a win.

I think it's a [00:05:00] unique approach for you because you offer wireless infrastructure as a service. If you could, for our audience, elaborate on the model and how it differentiates from traditional infrastructure providers.

Justin Marron: No a hundred percent. So, so at STP, we're delivering on this demand driven opportunity for this critical infrastructure in what we call the underserved enterprise market, right?

We design, we build, own, operate, monitor, maintain, and upgrade this mission critical infrastructure over our long-term contracts. The key last part of that is we upgrade 'em, right? Because we know as we're talking right now, technology are gonna change, and that's all part of our offering. from an in-building perspective.

You mentioned wifi. we actually offer wifi even though we don't do it. And I'll tell you why. We've been asked numerous times across the country to acquire systems to put that in place. I think the next, migration really is gonna be to 5G and cellular and CBRS as you go down that path.

So. From a technology perspective we offer das distributed attendance systems, public safety systems, RTLS, [00:06:00] real-time location services. We've built out CBRS, like private LTE systems. we own fiber throughout all of our locations, as well as IPTV. We developed these projects under long-term fixed contracts.

They're typically 10 to 20 years, and we really lock the pricing in. So a healthcare, CIO and CFO sits down with us and they go, great. I know my price from today going into the future, and you are now taking all the risks and all the liabilities off my plate, and it's a fixed cost. from SVP's perspective, we target healthcare for sure.

That's our bread and butter, that's our favorite industry. We also have a lot in hospitality and gaming. We have a retail portfolio, but primarily nationally. and really the core prop, just to dumb it down, into simplify it is. it's really the delivery of an all-inclusive turnkey wireless infrastructure as a holistic managed service where we're effectively taking out the risk and liability.

We're changing a CapEx to OpEx. We're utilizing the best in breed OEMs, like we're [00:07:00] technology agnostic, so whomever they've used in the past. If they wanna keep using them, that's fine. we also will use their, their contractors , if they know what they're doing and they're capable, right?

We'll pull them in as well. but really the thought is, we're building these state-of-the-art systems today and then going into the future, I.

Sarah Richardson (2): So I wanna cover the sort of evolution of connectivity you've seen the demand for in building wireless change over the past decade. Yeah. I'm curious what's driving it, but also how you are staying in front of it if you're taking that risk on for your clients.

Justin Marron: Now that cellular's at 5G, we believe this is the right opportunity and the new opportunity to relieve these overutilized wifi systems in hospitals.

Not just for voice, 'cause the connectivity for 5G on wifi doesn't work as well. Anyway, I. but for speed throughput, and primarily it's for security. wifi is accessible right? When you have federally encrypted, signal source from the carriers that's very encrypted and very safe and secure.

I also was thinking about public safety. Public safety sometimes gets significantly overlooked, and that [00:08:00] controls your certificate of occupancy and those systems need to be maintained and certified annually.

Justin Marron: that's another area Focus. We have another thing, core wireless system. I mentioned RTLS. That's been installed in a lot of hospitals and that's continuing to grow and I think there's a way to jump on that. And then finally, I'll just touch on one last one.

CBRS is definitely the way of the future. We're at the forefront of it. We believe in it. and it's something that we're pushing to our clients with helping educate them on it and then letting them make the decision. like we're here when you're ready. Adding different technology to an existing system is not that difficult, because we overbuild our systems. and so for us to add different layers is not as challenging as it may seem.

Sarah Richardson (2): With that angle and the necessity truly for robust wireless infrastructure in healthcare today, what are some of the benefits and the wins that you immediately see when it comes to both patient care and hospital operations?

Justin Marron: Oh my God, there's so many. I'll give you an example of like technology, right? It's an anecdote I give to a lot of infrastructure investors, not to smart people in healthcare space like you and the others. But, you know, five, 10 years ago, if you walked into a [00:09:00] hospital, and you hurt your eye, a doctor would walk in with a clipboard and they would write down, what their diagnosis was, and then that would be transcribed.

And then they would potentially, provide a medication to you. and then billing would get that, and that invoice would be put out. So if you think about like the advantages of these type of technologies today, you go to the hospital and you hurt your eye. The doctor walks in, typically with a wireless device, almost always.

Sometimes it's an iPad, and they'll literally come up and they'll scan your eye with a new AI type of system. Like, I see you shaking your head this right. It will diagnose the problem. It'll suggest medications to your doctor right then and there, which they can select, which gets immediately sent to your local pharmacy.

Before you put your shoes back on your invoices are already going to your insurance company, right? If it's been properly coded. And so these are just some anecdotal type of scenarios of how these systems are changing healthcare and the reality is. It's also an indicator of how much data throughput's gonna actually have to come.

Right? And if you follow the technology [00:10:00] news, all you hear about is massive amounts of data centers being built. These data centers are being built to handle that type of throughput and that type of, information that's gonna come through. But the end user needs the proper wireless system in order to propagate these signals in order for those systems to handle that type of technology.

Sarah Richardson (2): I've worked in hospitals for, and casinos for 25 plus years and there were things you would say you can't make it up. There's places where implementing these solutions, especially in large venues, is gonna have some of those. You can't make it up scenarios.

What is one that you're willing to share and how do you overcome them? You go do your recon for a new client and you're like. Okay. Wow. What are some of the things that you love to overcome? Because they're hard. ,

Justin Marron: so there are more than a few, right? We've had, I'm smiling 'cause I've, I'm thinking about some of the war stories, but.

You know, we've had some of our healthcare partners say, here are the drawings of our locations, right? Get to work. So this is pre getting to the site. We start our design work, we start thinking about the [00:11:00] systems and what the right thing to build is. And we design systems, let's say running fiber and cable, throughout parking garages, connecting buildings, et cetera, only to show up to the location to find out that parking garage was ripped down three years ago.

And so that's one issue. Other issues are, oh, don't you know, there are six more subterranean floors that were not part of these drawings or, think about leaded walls, for example, that were not part of those drawings. I'm just thinking about the, like, the little minute details as far as the design's concerned. Another issue uh, and we just roll with that, right? It is what? It's, another issue where, that you see in healthcare, especially in older locations, is asbestos. like where the healthcare partner says. There's no asbestos in this location. And then you start pulling cable and building out the systems and the next thing you know, you find asbestos, right?

And then you gotta mitigate that system. You gotta mitigate that problem and then continue work and make sure it's a safe work environment.

Sarah Richardson (2): And all of those scenarios are probably places I have worked, even though we've not done an implementation together. You have implemented at one of my previous locations, hence a bit of that sticky [00:12:00] factor with us.

How do you prepare for what's coming next? And we've mentioned 5G and some others, but when you think about what it takes to either upgrade or integrate some of the new enterprise developments and these bigger environments, how do you know when the right time is to upgrade a client and how are you educating them about the things they need to be considering as well?

Justin Marron: Yeah, I think it's a few things, so, so. The first thing we like to do, and I know this sounds cheesy, maybe, is we just sit down and listen. Like, what are you guys thinking? What are your issues today? What are you thinking about the future? And then we start designing in our head like, what the system could look like and what it could potentially do. then we reach out to our technology partners and say, this is something we're gonna do. What's cool next? What's coming next? Like, what else should we be thinking about to go talk to them about? and mind you, we're not selling their service. We're not taking commissions on those other services we're just saying.

A company X, Y, and Z does these things, here's their number, call them. We think they're reputable. but we effectively build our systems out. And I joke about this on steroids, right? So when you think about fiber and what's needed for fiber, which is the backbone of [00:13:00] all this, we pull so many strands of fiber because we know.

The data throughput's going to be needed there. We're pulling it, vertically, and then of course horizontally because the second part of that when we were talking about the upgrade path is we know antenna identification's gonna have to come. So when technology like wireless, which sounds like it wouldn't make sense, but as a technology gets better, you would think you would need less and less of it.

The reality is you need more and more of it. You need more and more of a line of sight to that antenna. Right. Or to that device that's propagating the signal. especially in building as these systems migrate and get stronger and faster, et cetera. So, and the last part of that is we think about our partners and their core operating business.

And the last thing we wanna do after going through building out a whole system is have to go back and disrupt them again, right? And say, Hey, we're here again. We're pulling cable in the ceilings, we're pulling cable vertically. You know, that just, doesn't leave a good taste in their mouth. And so we would [00:14:00] rather take the bet, right?

It's our bet and it's our risk and our responsibility, to pull as much fiber as we possibly can fit into there, even if it's just dormant for a while. 'cause we know at one point it's gonna be used and that also will mitigate any future disruptions for those potential clients as well.

Sarah Richardson (2): And you don't get a lot of time to disrupt the, OR to run more fiber

through the environment for sure. So overdoing it to a degree makes perfect sense. I would love for you, Justin, to share one of your favorite stories about how you have truly transformed a client's operation or even the patient experience. I.

Justin Marron: there are a few that come to my mind. there's one example whereby we purchased an existing system, a healthcare group had gone down the road trying to do it themselves. They hired different consultants, they hired different construction groups and it just wasn't working all that well. and we showed up and I said. How about I buy this system from you and they said, well, we just paid for it a couple years ago, and , it doesn't really work that well, et cetera. And we're in a pickle, right? Like, we blew our budget doing this. It doesn't really [00:15:00] work. And I said, how much did you pay for it?

And they told me, and I said, here's a check. I'll buy it exactly what you paid for it. So you get your money back. I'm gonna fix this system. I'm gonna upgrade this system so it works properly. I don't wanna say save your necks. but that's how they felt, in that case, they were appreciative of that and we built the system out and they've been one of our best references, period.

Right? And we think about our business, we think about making our customers happy. other than working you guys, right? We really don't advertise. and we don't really market our business. I think you have to have the credibility in the space first and foremost from your clients.

And from there, we grow our business and they refer us to new business 'cause CIOs and CTOs sitting in one space have similar is issues in the other. And so that's really been our greatest way of transforming, client experiences, our own experiences, Of course, the last piece is the patrons, the doctor, nurses, and the administrators that work in there. we've had more than few. Send us notes actually when they [00:16:00] found out, when they saw like our 800 number, our email. Hey, thank you so much. I couldn't make phone calls in the stairwell or in there was, I'm thinking of one particular administrative woman and I'll save her name, but we have it printed out here in the office.

She wrote an email and she's always said she would always sneak out and talk to her daughter. And she's like, I didn't wanna get in trouble with my boss, so I would always go in this back stairwell. And it was like the kid was a little younger, immature. So she was always making phone calls and she's like, it never worked.

And I'd have to run downstairs. And I was always in trouble trying to get back to my desk. And she goes, now I can call from anywhere. I can call from under my desk. I can call from the stairwell. And it was just a personal, like, anecdote. I was like, that's so cool. I told my guys, I'm like, print that out.

Put that on the wall. like, don't advertise that. But that's something that's, that makes us feel good that we made someone's day better, at least in the space.

Sarah Richardson (2): Well, and to your point, CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, you pick your healthcare information technology executive, they call each other and ask one another about how they are solving problems.

So you're not out the big splashy marketing campaign 'cause you're coming to one of our [00:17:00] summits or one of our dinners, you're talking about your technology and everybody sitting there has an awareness factor and then they start talking about these things amongst themselves and you get this group of 15 people who are like, wait a minute, hold on.

Mean I just give it to you and Paul or Beau will be like, yeah, like you gotta be kidding me and HIMSS, y'all did a great tour of a local casino that just has the most modern, amazing impact on what it is you're endeavoring to do. And hospitals and casinos worked in, both of 'em in Vegas have that always on level of necessity and it's important across the continuum.

And you do that for your clients.

Justin Marron: You're talking about Resorts World, obviously you were there. that, that's an excellent example. Resorts World was the largest news casino being built in Vegas. Obviously you have experience in Vegas. they could have gotten, first of all, they had multiple billions of dollars in cash, which they invested , into the building. They could have bought a system, they could hired a team to do it. They had gone down different roads in the past and we laid out like, look, here's [00:18:00] our service.

We're gonna cover everything. your subterranean, your stairwells, your towers, which were normally not covered, the podium, like the gaming floor area, and they started thinking, wow, what are the other things we could throw onto this system? And we worked at them on it. Do you know they don't have room service.

They use their cellular system in that location and people call from the rooms to order food from the restaurants in the location that get brought up. And so it was a massive cost savings that they didn't even foresee when we said, we're gonna cover everything and this is how it's gonna work, and we're gonna bring all three carriers, day one.

And they're like, this is awesome. Right? And this is a, you take healthcare for example, this is a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate. And they were like, we love this, and you guys go do this. And that was honestly, Sarah. That was one of our first deals, one of our first systems that we built out was one of the biggest in Vegas, it's almost 20 million square feet now.

Sarah Richardson (2): And yet, to your point, you've got more and more people signing up across different industries, but that all the time perspective and the fact that you can literally give it to somebody else to manage and to deal with, and you can focus on [00:19:00] areas. your team will say it's LoDo, like let someone else do it.

Like has to happen, but nobody really wants to do it in-house. And now it's a fixed cost. It's a 10 plus year agreement. The CIO and the CFO facilities teams, they're just aligned on the fact that this is something that works. And I look at it like this, it's one less thing to worry about and there's plenty to worry about.

Justin Marron: it's funny you say that because I remember when we kicked off, I remember going to meet with CIOs and I asked them about their plans, about their long-term. Full lifecycle management of different systems in their healthcare group. And I said, talk to me about CAT scans.

I'm gonna do the whole thing. Tell me about x-ray systems. Great. Tell me about your landline. Here are all my plans. They're pulling, binders off the shelf. I said, tell me about the fourth utility I. And they looked at me like fourth utility. And I said, yeah, I mean you have water, gas, electric, wireless is your fourth utility, right?

What's your plan for that? And these are folks that managed large portfolios of locations, not one, twosies which is fine too, but [00:20:00] multiple locations. And they all started looking around the table at each other like. Do you have the, do you have this plan? it was interesting that they hadn't thought about it.

And then we said, here's our plan to take this all off your plate and it's gonna have fixed costs and you're not gonna have to worry about this again. And here's our plan. because your plan is our plan. Right? And they're like, this is awesome. like this is the utility we have to be thinking about.

We love the fact that it's all encumbered and inclusive and you guys are now gonna deal with this. and I remember this quote from this, CIO said, I have 74 things in my desk and this was 75, so now I'm back to 74. and it was like, great, like, thank you. And to your point, it just, it's, they're outta that business and they're back into focusing on, their core business, which we should all be doing.

Sarah Richardson (2): Let's just cast the crystal ball into the future because you have aspirations for SVP. And then you also need to stay ahead of infrastructure, wireless things that are coming.

How do you take all of that knowledge, prepare for it, but also meet your clients where they are in any given moment?

Justin Marron: Yeah, no thank you. look, the sky's the limit for us, honestly. we [00:21:00] have excellent partners from our initial sponsors and Tiger and recently we took on Brookfield as a minority investor.

I dunno if you saw on the news, but we did a private placement and got investment grade rated and we have amazing debt lenders beyond that. So. From a capital perspective, we're set up to keep going, you know, up right. And up until the right, as I like to say. and our growth's been off the charts and we want to continue to do that.

We want to continue to expand with our existing clients in healthcare, expand to different clients in healthcare. There are other verticals that we do focus on and we'll grow into further in hospitality and gaming. And we have a retail portfolio and higher education, and there's a whole bunch of applications where this is applicable. And the final piece, of course is we have an awesome team. Like we've built a great culture here. We have amazing people. like we're only talking because of the fact that like we were able to recruit and bring on the most amazing people that actually make SVP work. Like Paul and Beau you're talking about. these are the real rock stars of our company. And something that I guess that I've said this, to my folks here and you guys, you would get this and the healthcare folks would get this. I want SAP to [00:22:00] become like synonymous, in the enterprise wireless connectivity as a service market.

No different than like Epic, right? With like healthcare data records. Like people who aren't even in healthcare just hear Epic and they go, oh, I know what that is. like I almost want that for us, some level that type of success. and as far as staying ahead, we are super tight to all like the different OEMs out there and the carriers, and we know what technologies are coming. And not only do we do it, but we're contractually obligated, right? With our clients to ensure that they have the best state of the art type of systems that are working off today's technologies. And of course, we're looking into the future. We know what the next technologies are coming and we build our systems.

And what we don't know, we don't know, right? So we protect our corner by overbuilding, right? And so when those do come, we're ready for 'em.

Sarah Richardson (2): Thank you for all that you're bringing to our industry and beyond.

Justin Marron: More importantly, we're so happy we found you and thank you for what you guys do. we've gotten so many referrals out of everything we've done with you guys, that it's just, it's been amazing.

Sarah Richardson (2): For all of you tuning into this executive [00:23:00] interview with Justin Marin from SVP, thanks for listening. That's all for now.

Thanks

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