Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Jim Wilson is president and CEO of netsert Pro with
over twenty three years of experience in the IT industry.
Jim is a Microsoft Certified Systems engineer with a strong
background in computer and information sciences and support services, as
well as extensive knowledge of databases, business analysis, and new
business development. Welcome, Jim Wilson. Glad to be here. Well,
(00:27):
I'm glad that you're here. So explain to our listeners
what netsert pro does.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Okay, it's short for Network Certified Professionals. We handle everything
from wiring, communications, fiber optics, cameras, access control, but our
main focus is security. It's easy to fix stuff nowadays,
but it's hard to keep you secure. So we have
(00:55):
just over the years upped our games, rebranded and then
one of the oldest IT companies in Charleston.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So and you kind of answered it right there. What
are some of the biggest challenges that companies face when
it comes to their information technologies. I'm sure securities at
the top of the list.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
No, absolutely, the biggest thing you've got to worry about
is somebody clicking on a cat video. Be honest with
you of all breaches last year were in user errors,
so you know, training trying to protect them against themselves
is the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, you know, I find it so interesting and frustrating
that the scammers, the bad guys are so emboldened and
so technologically advanced and they can keep changing their mo constantly.
Thank God for companies like yours, because nobody else really
(01:51):
seems to care. It's just the wild wild West out there,
and when it comes to the Internet, it seems to.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Me right for sure. I mean, you know, most people
look at the bottom line and think of, you know,
it as an expense. We try to bring it into
us like a partnership. You know. We go to security
conferences every year. We bring the newest technologies, that kind
of stuff to be able to better protect our customers.
(02:17):
That's why most of our customers have been with us
my whole career.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
And I'm sure that you have to sit down with
employees of your clients and say, hey, look, stop clicking
on those cat videos and be very cognizant of what
you're clicking on, what attachments you're opening, what information you're sharing,
because there's all kinds of phishing enterprises out there to
try to get a hold of their information. And I
mean it must be a nightmare from these companies' point
(02:42):
of view.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah. You know, the funny thing is is until you're compromised,
or you know, somebody's compromised, it's the old put your
head in the sand and it's not going to happen
to me. But the people that really take it serious
are the ones that have been affected by cybersecurity breach.
It could be your general contractor that's building your house.
(03:06):
They got compromised and now your data is out there.
That's why there's so many new rules coming into place
to try to protect customers. You kind of got to
force their hand to do it. So I'd like the
NEST that's the uh, the government agency kind of oversight
for cybersecurity awareness that kind of thing. Yeah, and uh,
(03:28):
you know they're coming down with rules and and uh,
you know, the latest one is is CPAs are now
treated like a bank as far as their compliancy and
there's heavy penalties for not doing that. And until that
really started happening, a lot of people just that they
just look at that bottom line and there's like that's
just too expensive. Until it happens to you, then it's
(03:49):
not right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Then it's a serious problem, and then they see the
value of investing in that security. Right. So, you have
a whole list of podcasts on your website that help
you check out some of the latest technology and to
help you stay safe and protected.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
My partner actually takes care of that stuff for me.
Here's the thing, you know, Like I said, I'm just
old country boy from Texas, but I've learned to bring
in people waste smarter than me. You know, I was
just a shot computer geek and then to feed my
two kids, I had to I had to learn to talk.
But then I also brought in people waste smarter than me.
(04:28):
He really is our integrator, makes makes all that stuff happen,
and we're very proud of what he's done to kind
of bring us to that next level.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's a great way for people
in their spare time to kind of keep up and
if this, you know, has peaked their interest right now,
if they're one of those people that you're talking about
that are like their heads in the sand and they
haven't been paying attention to security issues, that's a great
resource for them to go and kind of, you know,
catch up and see what's going on out there and
(04:59):
stay abreast of it those issues. So tell us about
your journey. You talked about being a South Texas boy,
So tell us about your journey in starting netsert Pro.
What motivated you to start the company in the first place.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Sure, you know, my dad always pushed me to be
an entrepreneur. Don't work for the other man. You've got
to make your own way. So you know, in the beginning,
I started I don't know, three or four different businesses
that I thought would make it. And then I was
a welder in the Navy, got out and was a
(05:31):
welder for a while there. But computers was a hobby
of mine. I really enjoyed it. It became it. It was
just natural to me. So I started tinkering back in
the dass days, round eighty nine with a computer and
just kind of grew it my knowledge and went to
work for Texas Department of Transportation for a season in
(05:54):
their IT department. I helped them write the automatic roll
out for whin It's two thousand for the state of Texas.
And then my wife is from here, so she's like,
all right, I'm going home. I hope you're going with me.
So I came back here. I was working at a bank.
Met a guy that knew somebody that did what we
do now. He was a consultant, told me the kind
(06:15):
of money he was making. He said, let's start our
own business, because we're better than these contractors we have
at the bank. And we did, and I actually went
on to the internet startup days. There was a company
called sale Net and I was doing their It lasted
about two months and they laid off half the company
because the internet startup phase kind of died. So I
(06:37):
was already doing this part time. So at that time
I decided instead of going to get unemployment, I couldn't
make that in a couple hours with what I do.
Let me let me just hit the ground running. And
now we'll be twenty five years old in February.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, great, well, congratulations on that anniversary.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Now you're a Microsoft sertifind Systems engineer. Explain to our
listeners what it takes to, you know, attain that title
and how through it is of a process.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, for sure, it's it's a lot of study. Back
in the day when I did it, I'm not even
sure what the requirements are anymore. There were seven different
tests you had to pay for. Everyone was another step,
and my ultimate goal was to become MCSC because there
was very few of them around. My partner at the
(07:26):
time and I both decided, you know, we were going
to reinvest in our company. We were both MCPS, which
is a single certification, and we were both novel administrators, so,
you know, seeing where Novell was going compared to Microsoft,
we decided to drop that line and just head headfirst
into the mc S world. But it's not even stopping there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
We do more continuing education probably than doctors. We're listening
to podcasts, security podcasts. We go to conferences every year.
We have peer groups all over the United States, and
we just recently got into compliance management, which is helping
companies make sure they're compliant whether whatever the field they're in,
(08:15):
there's different compliancy like if you're in if you sub
contract for balling, you need to be CMMC compliant. So
we actually help customers do that. We do security can scans,
that kind of stuff just let you see what's in
your network. Just recently we did a security can on
a network that we manage. But we don't manage the
a V and there was a known issue with a
(08:38):
AV appliance that it was end of life. The vulnerability
that we found is I'm sure you've heard of the
crypto locker viruses that will actually encrypt your your data,
your computers and you have to pay ransom to get
your data back and hopefully that that that crook is
going to give you your key, because I mean, you're
using bitcoin, so there's no way you could actually make
(09:03):
them do it. So we actually found a vulnerability when
we were scanning of this issue and nobody knew was there,
so we were able to, you know, take care of
that right away before it become an issue.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, I mean that's a huge threat. You know these
ransomware threats Now, I don't know if that's the biggest
threat you ever faced. What's the thing that blew your
mind the most where you're like, I can't believe what
I've stumbled upon here.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Well, ransomware was the biggest threat of my whole career.
It kind of changed the face of what your IT
providers should be, that they should be your they should
be your partner. And that's when we started bringing newer
and better technologies and what I really can't believe. The
biggest thing I ever saw was a customer, a long
(09:49):
term customer that actually left us and came back because
they realized grass was is greener. On the other side,
they would just throw away a computer when they would
get ransomware instead of letting us put our software on it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Oh geez.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So when the guy actually had to pay the ransom
because some kind of a job he was working on
had a twenty thousand dollars fine for being late and submittle,
they decided to, uh, let's just go ahead and do
let's flip the switch. Let's get over to we call
it managed Security services. Let's just flip the switch. Get
(10:24):
over to that. And I told him it's going to
be a couple of weeks of hell, because who knows
how your PCs are. We really didn't know until we
started running this software. So after a couple of weeks,
I text him, want to say, how is it now?
He said, well, it's like a breath of fresh air.
Well good, good.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Now, you know, if somebody is under the threat of
ransomware and they're locked down, is there anything they can
do at that point or do they really just have
to pay the ransom and like you said, I hope
that they unlock it for you.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Right, you know, it's preparation on the back end. So
just you've got to go into it with everybody's going
to get compromised and hopefully it doesn't happen. But you
go in it with the mindset it's like, all right,
so what would that do to me today? If we
were to get compromised, would I'll be able to do payroll?
(11:17):
Would I be able to do a bid? So what
you have to do is you have to look of
what's the worst case scenario to happen. So we actually
have a new product now, it's called BCDR that's Backup
Continentity and Disaster Recovery. So what we do is every
machine that the company deems is a mission critical, it's
(11:41):
actually backed up in the cloud every two hours. And
the beauty of our stuff now is say you took
a lightning strike or you had a ransomware virus. You know,
a lightning strikes more detrimental because it's going to wreck hardware.
So ransomware, who cares? Swap a hard drive out, wipe it,
whatever you need to do, and then and you take
the backup that we have in the cloud, which depending
(12:03):
on the scenario, we can actually spin it up in
the cloud. So you could lose your whole company in
a lightning strike. You go by a cheap laptop, you
get into the remote services that we provide, and they're
able to function like they were doing two hours ago.
So it's all about the recovery after the fact. You've
got to be ready because it is so hard to
(12:25):
get somebody to quit clicking on cat videos.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
For some reason, those cat videos are so compelling. Yes,
the people that they just can't resist.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, they're so darn cute.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well that's true. So let's address people that are, say
you twenty five years ago, and you know they want
to they're working on a startup. They've got a business plan,
a great idea that they want to execute. What were
the biggest challenges that you faced as a startup enterprise.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
When you couldn't do everything. We started with two people,
two computer geeks, and then we once we outgrew being
able to do our own invoicing and quoting. Uh, we
brought my wife on board and she worked part time,
just helping himself with invoicing and that kind of stuff.
But you know the hardest step was jumping to that
(13:22):
first employee. That's a big expense, so it's very it's
very hard to figure out when to jump to that.
For me, once I got past the first one, it's
kind of a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
I had one of my bigger customers. I sat down
with him and I'm like, how do you handle sixteen
million dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
A week in payroll?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He said, it's all relative, don't sweat it. It will happen.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So what's what's the philosophy that that you live by
that drives you each day.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, let me tell you. You know, I treat my
company like family. So you know, I've had to fire
my family and it's just part of life. And I've
I've let him come back, and you know, that kind
of stuff happens. But my philosophy is family first, and
then I treat every customer the way I want to
(14:12):
be treated. I told you, guys, I was going to
be late this morning. I emailed you to let you
know I've done that my whole career for my customers.
And that's back before traffic. Because he's even bad in Charleston.
So if you even if you look at our office.
We bought a during COVID, which was a very rough
time to decide to buy real estate. We purchased a
(14:34):
nineteen forties house in right off of Main Street in
Munt's Corner, and we've been revitalizing it making it look
like it was back in the fifties. So you know,
it's a seven bedroom house. So even our office, it's
like family. That's their house they come to work to
every day. You know, I've got they've got video games
(14:55):
in there, and you know that kind of stuff because
we have a stressful job. I mean, like I tell
her one that works for me. When somebody is calling you,
they're already having.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
A bad day.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Let's let's make it good.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Absolutely So if somebody is you know, it has not
done anything and we're setting off alarm bells by having
this conversation of man, I really need to do something
to start protecting myself. What's the first step they should take?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Get a good antivirus slash get like the like for
home like Bitdefender is our go to. They have a
lot of good suites, including a new product that they've
put out. I'm assuming they're selling it to residential but
it's EDR endpoint detection and remediation. It does some pretty
(15:45):
good stuff like if it the texts that you have
something going crazy on your computer, for example, your the
files are being encrypted, so it's hitting a bunch of
files all at one time. It's in the background. You
don't know what's happening. You know, some of the software
out there can actually just lock it down and stop it.
That's what ours does. So even something as small as
(16:07):
I don't know, if you've ever held down the shift
key too long on your Windows device and it pops up,
do you want to turn on sticky keys? Our software
will actually let you know that that happened and throw
an alert on our dashboard and let us know you've
done that change, because it's a change to the operating
system and the way the operating system looks at that
(16:29):
current time. So that's probably been the biggest revolution in
the last twelve to twenty four months for us to
actually get us to the next level of protection. We've
started rolling it out the first of this year. We'd
like to wait till something is a little more mature
until we roll it out, because when you manage over
(16:50):
a thousand computers, you don't want to crash one thousand
computers on one day, right, So we've been rolling this
software out and it's been eye opening stuff that you
don't even know what's running, like somebody downloads a game.
It looks innocent enough, but it's been known for tracking
your cookies and selling them. So now you've got a
(17:10):
tracker on your system knowing what you do. So they're
going to try to sell to you, whether good or bad.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Now, if people are interested in exploring your services further,
where should they go? Who should they contact? Is it you?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It would be my office. Our main phone number is
eight four three six zero six six ' two five
five and somebody will be able to help you there,
or netsirtpro dot com. That's short for Network Certified Professionals.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So netsirtpro dot com. Correct, Jim Wilson. Interesting talking to
you today, and thanks for the protection that you provide businesses.
I mean it is certainly important for not only those
businesses but our economy. So thanks for being with us
today on CEOs. You should know, yes, sir, it's good
to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
You've been listening to iHeartRadio CEOs you should know heard
every Tuesday and Saturday morning, right here on this iHeartRadio station.
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Jim Wilson is president and CEO of netsert Pro with
over twenty three years of experience in the IT industry.
Jim is a Microsoft Certified Systems engineer with a strong
background in computer and information sciences and support services, as
well as extensive knowledge of databases, business analysis, and new
business development. Welcome, Jim Wilson. Glad to be here. Well,
(00:27):
I'm glad that you're here. So explain to our listeners
what netsert pro does.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Okay, it's short for Network Certified Professionals. We handle everything
from wiring, communications, fiber optics, cameras, access control, but our
main focus is security. It's easy to fix stuff nowadays,
but it's hard to keep you secure. So we have
(00:55):
just over the years upped our games, rebranded and then
one of the oldest IT companies in Charleston.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So and you kind of answered it right there. What
are some of the biggest challenges that companies face when
it comes to their information technologies. I'm sure securities at
the top of the list.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
No, absolutely, the biggest thing you've got to worry about
is somebody clicking on a cat video. Be honest with
you of all breaches last year were in user errors,
so you know, training trying to protect them against themselves
is the hardest thing to do.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, you know, I find it so interesting and frustrating
that the scammers, the bad guys are so emboldened and
so technologically advanced and they can keep changing their mo constantly.
Thank God for companies like yours, because nobody else really
(01:51):
seems to care. It's just the wild wild West out there,
and when it comes to the Internet, it seems to.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Me right for sure. I mean, you know, most people
look at the bottom line and think of, you know,
it as an expense. We try to bring it into
us like a partnership. You know. We go to security
conferences every year. We bring the newest technologies, that kind
of stuff to be able to better protect our customers.
(02:17):
That's why most of our customers have been with us
my whole career.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
And I'm sure that you have to sit down with
employees of your clients and say, hey, look, stop clicking
on those cat videos and be very cognizant of what
you're clicking on, what attachments you're opening, what information you're sharing,
because there's all kinds of phishing enterprises out there to
try to get a hold of their information. And I
mean it must be a nightmare from these companies' point
(02:42):
of view.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah. You know, the funny thing is is until you're compromised,
or you know, somebody's compromised, it's the old put your
head in the sand and it's not going to happen
to me. But the people that really take it serious
are the ones that have been affected by cybersecurity breach.
It could be your general contractor that's building your house.
(03:06):
They got compromised and now your data is out there.
That's why there's so many new rules coming into place
to try to protect customers. You kind of got to
force their hand to do it. So I'd like the
NEST that's the uh, the government agency kind of oversight
for cybersecurity awareness that kind of thing. Yeah, and uh,
(03:28):
you know they're coming down with rules and and uh,
you know, the latest one is is CPAs are now
treated like a bank as far as their compliancy and
there's heavy penalties for not doing that. And until that
really started happening, a lot of people just that they
just look at that bottom line and there's like that's
just too expensive. Until it happens to you, then it's
(03:49):
not right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Then it's a serious problem, and then they see the
value of investing in that security. Right. So, you have
a whole list of podcasts on your website that help
you check out some of the latest technology and to
help you stay safe and protected.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
My partner actually takes care of that stuff for me.
Here's the thing, you know, Like I said, I'm just
old country boy from Texas, but I've learned to bring
in people waste smarter than me. You know, I was
just a shot computer geek and then to feed my
two kids, I had to I had to learn to talk.
But then I also brought in people waste smarter than me.
(04:28):
He really is our integrator, makes makes all that stuff happen,
and we're very proud of what he's done to kind
of bring us to that next level.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's a great way for people
in their spare time to kind of keep up and
if this, you know, has peaked their interest right now,
if they're one of those people that you're talking about
that are like their heads in the sand and they
haven't been paying attention to security issues, that's a great
resource for them to go and kind of, you know,
catch up and see what's going on out there and
(04:59):
stay abreast of it those issues. So tell us about
your journey. You talked about being a South Texas boy,
So tell us about your journey in starting netsert Pro.
What motivated you to start the company in the first place.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Sure, you know, my dad always pushed me to be
an entrepreneur. Don't work for the other man. You've got
to make your own way. So you know, in the beginning,
I started I don't know, three or four different businesses
that I thought would make it. And then I was
a welder in the Navy, got out and was a
(05:31):
welder for a while there. But computers was a hobby
of mine. I really enjoyed it. It became it. It was
just natural to me. So I started tinkering back in
the dass days, round eighty nine with a computer and
just kind of grew it my knowledge and went to
work for Texas Department of Transportation for a season in
(05:54):
their IT department. I helped them write the automatic roll
out for whin It's two thousand for the state of Texas.
And then my wife is from here, so she's like,
all right, I'm going home. I hope you're going with me.
So I came back here. I was working at a bank.
Met a guy that knew somebody that did what we
do now. He was a consultant, told me the kind
(06:15):
of money he was making. He said, let's start our
own business, because we're better than these contractors we have
at the bank. And we did, and I actually went
on to the internet startup days. There was a company
called sale Net and I was doing their It lasted
about two months and they laid off half the company
because the internet startup phase kind of died. So I
(06:37):
was already doing this part time. So at that time
I decided instead of going to get unemployment, I couldn't
make that in a couple hours with what I do.
Let me let me just hit the ground running. And
now we'll be twenty five years old in February.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, great, well, congratulations on that anniversary.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Now you're a Microsoft sertifind Systems engineer. Explain to our
listeners what it takes to, you know, attain that title
and how through it is of a process.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, for sure, it's it's a lot of study. Back
in the day when I did it, I'm not even
sure what the requirements are anymore. There were seven different
tests you had to pay for. Everyone was another step,
and my ultimate goal was to become MCSC because there
was very few of them around. My partner at the
(07:26):
time and I both decided, you know, we were going
to reinvest in our company. We were both MCPS, which
is a single certification, and we were both novel administrators, so,
you know, seeing where Novell was going compared to Microsoft,
we decided to drop that line and just head headfirst
into the mc S world. But it's not even stopping there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
We do more continuing education probably than doctors. We're listening
to podcasts, security podcasts. We go to conferences every year.
We have peer groups all over the United States, and
we just recently got into compliance management, which is helping
companies make sure they're compliant whether whatever the field they're in,
(08:15):
there's different compliancy like if you're in if you sub
contract for balling, you need to be CMMC compliant. So
we actually help customers do that. We do security can scans,
that kind of stuff just let you see what's in
your network. Just recently we did a security can on
a network that we manage. But we don't manage the
a V and there was a known issue with a
(08:38):
AV appliance that it was end of life. The vulnerability
that we found is I'm sure you've heard of the
crypto locker viruses that will actually encrypt your your data,
your computers and you have to pay ransom to get
your data back and hopefully that that that crook is
going to give you your key, because I mean, you're
using bitcoin, so there's no way you could actually make
(09:03):
them do it. So we actually found a vulnerability when
we were scanning of this issue and nobody knew was there,
so we were able to, you know, take care of
that right away before it become an issue.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, I mean that's a huge threat. You know these
ransomware threats Now, I don't know if that's the biggest
threat you ever faced. What's the thing that blew your
mind the most where you're like, I can't believe what
I've stumbled upon here.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Well, ransomware was the biggest threat of my whole career.
It kind of changed the face of what your IT
providers should be, that they should be your they should
be your partner. And that's when we started bringing newer
and better technologies and what I really can't believe. The
biggest thing I ever saw was a customer, a long
(09:49):
term customer that actually left us and came back because
they realized grass was is greener. On the other side,
they would just throw away a computer when they would
get ransomware instead of letting us put our software on it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Oh geez.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So when the guy actually had to pay the ransom
because some kind of a job he was working on
had a twenty thousand dollars fine for being late and submittle,
they decided to, uh, let's just go ahead and do
let's flip the switch. Let's get over to we call
it managed Security services. Let's just flip the switch. Get
(10:24):
over to that. And I told him it's going to
be a couple of weeks of hell, because who knows
how your PCs are. We really didn't know until we
started running this software. So after a couple of weeks,
I text him, want to say, how is it now?
He said, well, it's like a breath of fresh air.
Well good, good.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Now, you know, if somebody is under the threat of
ransomware and they're locked down, is there anything they can
do at that point or do they really just have
to pay the ransom and like you said, I hope
that they unlock it for you.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Right, you know, it's preparation on the back end. So
just you've got to go into it with everybody's going
to get compromised and hopefully it doesn't happen. But you
go in it with the mindset it's like, all right,
so what would that do to me today? If we
were to get compromised, would I'll be able to do payroll?
(11:17):
Would I be able to do a bid? So what
you have to do is you have to look of
what's the worst case scenario to happen. So we actually
have a new product now, it's called BCDR that's Backup
Continentity and Disaster Recovery. So what we do is every
machine that the company deems is a mission critical, it's
(11:41):
actually backed up in the cloud every two hours. And
the beauty of our stuff now is say you took
a lightning strike or you had a ransomware virus. You know,
a lightning strikes more detrimental because it's going to wreck hardware.
So ransomware, who cares? Swap a hard drive out, wipe it,
whatever you need to do, and then and you take
the backup that we have in the cloud, which depending
(12:03):
on the scenario, we can actually spin it up in
the cloud. So you could lose your whole company in
a lightning strike. You go by a cheap laptop, you
get into the remote services that we provide, and they're
able to function like they were doing two hours ago.
So it's all about the recovery after the fact. You've
got to be ready because it is so hard to
(12:25):
get somebody to quit clicking on cat videos.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
For some reason, those cat videos are so compelling. Yes,
the people that they just can't resist.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, they're so darn cute.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well that's true. So let's address people that are, say
you twenty five years ago, and you know they want
to they're working on a startup. They've got a business plan,
a great idea that they want to execute. What were
the biggest challenges that you faced as a startup enterprise.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
When you couldn't do everything. We started with two people,
two computer geeks, and then we once we outgrew being
able to do our own invoicing and quoting. Uh, we
brought my wife on board and she worked part time,
just helping himself with invoicing and that kind of stuff.
But you know the hardest step was jumping to that
(13:22):
first employee. That's a big expense, so it's very it's
very hard to figure out when to jump to that.
For me, once I got past the first one, it's
kind of a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
I had one of my bigger customers. I sat down
with him and I'm like, how do you handle sixteen
million dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
A week in payroll?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He said, it's all relative, don't sweat it. It will happen.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So what's what's the philosophy that that you live by
that drives you each day.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Well, let me tell you. You know, I treat my
company like family. So you know, I've had to fire
my family and it's just part of life. And I've
I've let him come back, and you know, that kind
of stuff happens. But my philosophy is family first, and
then I treat every customer the way I want to
(14:12):
be treated. I told you, guys, I was going to
be late this morning. I emailed you to let you
know I've done that my whole career for my customers.
And that's back before traffic. Because he's even bad in Charleston.
So if you even if you look at our office.
We bought a during COVID, which was a very rough
time to decide to buy real estate. We purchased a
(14:34):
nineteen forties house in right off of Main Street in
Munt's Corner, and we've been revitalizing it making it look
like it was back in the fifties. So you know,
it's a seven bedroom house. So even our office, it's
like family. That's their house they come to work to
every day. You know, I've got they've got video games
(14:55):
in there, and you know that kind of stuff because
we have a stressful job. I mean, like I tell
her one that works for me. When somebody is calling you,
they're already having.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
A bad day.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Let's let's make it good.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Absolutely So if somebody is you know, it has not
done anything and we're setting off alarm bells by having
this conversation of man, I really need to do something
to start protecting myself. What's the first step they should take?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Get a good antivirus slash get like the like for
home like Bitdefender is our go to. They have a
lot of good suites, including a new product that they've
put out. I'm assuming they're selling it to residential but
it's EDR endpoint detection and remediation. It does some pretty
(15:45):
good stuff like if it the texts that you have
something going crazy on your computer, for example, your the
files are being encrypted, so it's hitting a bunch of
files all at one time. It's in the background. You
don't know what's happening. You know, some of the software
out there can actually just lock it down and stop it.
That's what ours does. So even something as small as
(16:07):
I don't know, if you've ever held down the shift
key too long on your Windows device and it pops up,
do you want to turn on sticky keys? Our software
will actually let you know that that happened and throw
an alert on our dashboard and let us know you've
done that change, because it's a change to the operating
system and the way the operating system looks at that
(16:29):
current time. So that's probably been the biggest revolution in
the last twelve to twenty four months for us to
actually get us to the next level of protection. We've
started rolling it out the first of this year. We'd
like to wait till something is a little more mature
until we roll it out, because when you manage over
(16:50):
a thousand computers, you don't want to crash one thousand
computers on one day, right, So we've been rolling this
software out and it's been eye opening stuff that you
don't even know what's running, like somebody downloads a game.
It looks innocent enough, but it's been known for tracking
your cookies and selling them. So now you've got a
(17:10):
tracker on your system knowing what you do. So they're
going to try to sell to you, whether good or bad.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Now, if people are interested in exploring your services further,
where should they go? Who should they contact? Is it you?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It would be my office. Our main phone number is
eight four three six zero six six ' two five
five and somebody will be able to help you there,
or netsirtpro dot com. That's short for Network Certified Professionals.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So netsirtpro dot com. Correct, Jim Wilson. Interesting talking to
you today, and thanks for the protection that you provide businesses.
I mean it is certainly important for not only those
businesses but our economy. So thanks for being with us
today on CEOs. You should know, yes, sir, it's good
to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
You've been listening to iHeartRadio CEOs you should know heard
every Tuesday and Saturday morning, right here on this iHeartRadio station.
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