November 10, 2025 • 50 mins
Martin Lachance is the founder and CEO of Citara Systems, a Massachusetts IT services firm keeping businesses fast, secure, and frustration-free since 2001. With 20+ years in the industry, he’s driven a 97% client retention rate by cutting IT issues and delivering rapid support.
Born in Canada and raised in the US, Martin earned accounting and finance degrees from Northeastern, worked at Delphi Internet in the early online era, and later led engineering at Toast before launching Citara.
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Born in Canada and raised in the US, Martin earned accounting and finance degrees from Northeastern, worked at Delphi Internet in the early online era, and later led engineering at Toast before launching Citara.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin helen Er.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Happy Monday, everybody. Thanks for joining in again today. I
am Kevin Hallan Ann and welcome back to Winning Business
TV and Radio on W four c Y dot com.
We're streaming live on talk for TV the number four
talkfortv dot com, and of course we're in We're live
on Facebook at Winning Business Radio as well as we're
(01:12):
available after the live show on many platforms. Pretty much
wherever get your wherever excuse me, you get your podcast content.
That's YouTube by Heart, Radio, Spotify, Apple, et cetera, et cetera.
The mission of this show, Winning Business radio and TV,
as regular viewers and listeners know, is to offer insights
and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others,
(01:34):
right to learn best practices. Those are the how tos,
the what tos, the what not tos, and to be
challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others.
Who are those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders
and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
(01:55):
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has had some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So while we all have to get our
nies skinned once in a while, I like to say
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to me small and
(02:18):
medium sized businesses all the way up to the fortune fifty.
I've seen some of those companies win, a lot of
them actually into varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've
had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the
highest performing people around and with some who probably should
have found other professions and my own businesses. Over the years,
I've had lots of success, but some failures too. I
(02:40):
like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences. So, yeah,
you're going to hear from me, but mostly I want
you to hear from our guests, those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today is no exception.
Today my guest is Martin le Chance. He's founder and
CEO of Satara Systems. Here's Martin le Chance is the
(03:02):
founder and CEO of Satari Systems, a Massachusetts based IT
services firm that's been keeping businesses running, fast, secure, and
frustration free since two thousand and one. With more than
two decades in the industry, Martin has led Satara to
a ninety seven percent client retention rate by doing what
most IT firms can't, and that's cutting client IT issues
(03:25):
listened by seventy percent and answering helptic desk tickets. This
is almost unheard of in about three minutes flat, but
Martin's story starts long before Satara. Born in Canada, he's
such a nice guy. He moved to the US at
age nine, eventually earning degrees in accounting and finance from
Northeastern University. He got hooked on computers in the early
(03:48):
nineties when the Mosaic browser brought the Internet to life,
and his first tech job at del Fi Internet in
nineteen nineteen ninety four gave him a front row seat
to the dawn of the online age. From there, he
helped lead engineering at Toast Technologies before striking out on
his own to build a different kind of IT company,
one focused on real outcomes, not excuses. Outside of work,
(04:12):
Martin's a husband and proud dad of four kids, and
he's happiest when he's fly fishing, golfing, or flying RC helicopters,
not an easy thing to do, usually after finding a
great spot for dinner with his family. Martin. Welcome to
Winning Business Radio. So glad to have you.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Thank you very much, Kevin. That's a great introduction.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Appreciate that, and I did. We'll get to this so
people understand I used the first one, not the Lucy one,
because I thought it just had a little bit more
richness to it. And we'll get to Lucy in a
little while. People will learn about Lucy. So let's start
close to home. Tell us about your family.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Ah, my family. Let's see, I have the pleasure for
having two children in college, the third one coming next year.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Pleasure.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Yeah, so yes, And so my son is in Maine,
my daughter is in South Carolina. They are loving it.
And then I have, you know, two more on the way.
Family is great. Yeah, can't can't say enough good things.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
What are the older two studying?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So my son is in the psychology field, my daughter
will be a nurse.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh, very good, very good, huge shows to nurses.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
And my third one has decided on radiology.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Oh wow, fourth one not yet.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
So as I get older and things fall apart, that's right,
I have go to's.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
That's why I'm glad one of my daughters got an
athletic training degree. I just pulled something all about tell
us about your your much much I'm sure better half?
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Ah. Yes, my wife of twenty four years, wonderful, wonderful mother,
and and she is also hard at work. I've been
together for a long time, and you know, she enjoys
working out as I do. She actually competes and she's
(06:20):
very serious and very driven.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Talk about her competition. Is it a CrossFit or something
like that?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, it's it's a let's say what. There's so many
different categories and I can't think of it at the moment,
but it's it's not like the bodybuilding.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Okay, it's fitness fitness related for sure. Wow, So you
can't you can't go to you can't let let it slide.
If she's doing that, right, it's not that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
That would be wrong. And honestly, if I didn't go
to the gym, I but they would be a struggle
every day, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, I get that too, I get that too. All right.
So you you were born in Canada whereabouts.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Shell Brook, Quebec, Yes, you know, And I always thought, oh,
the whole world, the whole country speaks French. No, no,
just one province really, and that's where I lived, and
so that's between you know, kind of Montreal and Quebec,
and moved when I was nine. Did not speak a
(07:32):
word of.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
English really, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
So thrown right into school. So if you're surrounded by
another language. You learned very quickly.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I didn't plan on asking you that. But what was
that like? Total immersion? For sure?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Yeah, I remember very little. Certainly remember lots of kids
making fun of me because kids.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Are kids, and you had an accident in any language.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, but you know, you learn very very quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I hope you still keep up the fluent French.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I we were forced to speak French at home. So
I have, you know, two siblings, and so at home
we were forced to speak French to retain as much
as possible. Now it's mostly like I have cousins in
the area, et cetera, and my brother and we speak,
but it's more like Franklish. It's like half and half
(08:33):
kind of a thing.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, that's funny. You moved to where from Canada? And
what was behind that move? Family move? Probably?
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yes, so my father. So my father was a doctor
and you know, socialized medicine, et cetera. You decided, oh,
time to leave Canada, moved to Maine. So I lived
in Maine, in Lewis in Maine, Oh yeah, La Maine,
Lewist and Auburn right for many, many years until I
(09:08):
moved to Boston to go to school in Northeastern.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
And that's the next one. What were your early interests?
And I noticed that your degrees are accounting in finance.
How did you get into that?
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Right? You know, you're eighteen years old and somebody says,
what do you want to be? And my concept was
I knew I wanted to be a business owner, and
I didn't really understand what that meant. Of course, the
boy if I learned that the hard way. So I
thought accounting in finance, and that's not really what you need.
(09:45):
You know, you can have people that help you with
those parts you need, sales and marketing and market analysis
and entrepreneurship, that's really what you need. So I went
into it the wrong way. But the intent was to,
you know, to run a business. No idea, what.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
How did you get that bug? That's early? To have
that bug?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I really have no idea. I couldn't tell you. I
just decided, Oh, I'm that's what I.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Want to do. That's cool.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Why because I didn't have anything. I couldn't say, oh,
I want to be a doctor or a lawyer. And
my father was dead set against us being going in
the medical field.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Why was that.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Just became highly regulated, and you know, I'm sure various
reasons I didn't know about, but he certainly steered us
clear of that.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I noticed you took a little geology.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Too, Yeah, which was actually my favorite.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I took some believers you did. I did electives. We
did some really cool field trips to western mass to
see the strata of the of the rs. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
That was the most fun of all the classes I
was taking at school. But I wanted to get the
most out of every class. So you know, this is
you know, this was it. But clearly accounting was not
my world.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
So it The question then, is how do you go
from accounting to the IT world? Your first job after
college seemed to well, a professional job was as a
help desk technician, where you have to know a lot.
How did you get there from accounting and finance?
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Well, so I was at you know, I was in accounting.
I was in cost accounting. To me, the worst possible
kind of accounting and I did not understand it. But
fresh out of school, I worked at a company up
in Nashville, New Hampshire, and they they had this the
system called the total Quality management as I recall, where
(12:04):
as problems arise within the organization. They developed teams from
all different departments and those teams work to solve different problems.
So I was actually put on a team to resolve
some problems that were related to it. And the director
of it happened to be in this group, and I
(12:27):
just got the bug. I was fascinated by the things
that they were doing in it, and he noticed that,
and so he put me into other groups that involved
some technology to it. And from there I had some
friends that a friend of mine had started working at
(12:49):
Delphi Internet and started the conversation and said, is there
anything I could do there? And that's essentially how I
was able to get in at the help desk level
of it and.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So tell people about Delphi. It actually became pretty well known.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yeah, interesting Delphi Internet back when the browsers were starting
in AOL and CompuServe and Delphi you know, did a
joint venture with m c I back when m c
I was was around, and we had a tremendous budget
(13:30):
and we could pretty much do anything. I was one
person in it for for this group, and we developed
I did not you know, I was in internal support.
But they developed a platform like like like the AOL
of you know that that you saw for a very
long time, and and they competed to be online, you know,
(13:54):
and we got to do things like we were the
first host for Major League Baseball. It was a wild ride.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That's pretty cool, all right. I just noticed the time.
We're going to take our first commercial break. We'll be
right back in about a minute or so with Martin
la Chance. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for
two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and
wealth management with a family feel for your closely held
(14:25):
family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning,
integrating your business planning with personal They will help put
your money to work and your mind at ease. Go
to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory services offered
through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the
best and family and let our family advise your family.
(14:48):
That's Best Inwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.
We're back. That was quick. Key takeaways from that first job.
There's a lot going on, a lot of growth, a
lot of innovation, a lot of new things which we
(15:08):
take for granted today. But what did you learn. What
would your key takeaways from that position or positions? Oh, man,
I know it's a big one.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Wow key takeaways? So well, you know, there was a
the joint venture fell apart and mc I actually went
backed out, so half the company was taken out and
I was left in the IT department by myself. So, uh,
(15:47):
I was bootstrapped into learning a lot of things in IT.
And that's at the time when when there was no
school for the for IT and for diructor. It was
programmed back then, so I had to lean on peers
(16:07):
and any resource I could find to help me along
the way. So I learned early on that a lot
of success actually comes from the people that you know
and who you surround yourself with.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, that's good. That's a good one, all right. Then
about three plus years later, you moved to Toast Technologies,
another company will become pretty well known. What went into
your decision to take that position and how did you
get it? So, you know, we.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Del Fi had an integrator. Back then there were no
managed service providers as they are today, so an integrator
and we had a relationship with them for product and
some service, et cetera. And they actually approached me to
run the integration business. So I could not pass that up.
(17:05):
That was a fantastic opportunity. And as as Delfi Internet
was being sold to Line one across the pond, I said, oh,
I need to jump on that. So so I went
over to Toast to head up the you know, the
the IT project division integration division, which was doing work
(17:32):
for clients projects and integration work for clients around technology.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
What were some of the early things you worked on?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Oh boy, some some things that people probably won't know here.
Citrix was a was a big thing. A Cisco back
then was tremendous. We did, you know, a lot of
Cisco integration work, VMware Uh not VMware NetWare Okay, okay, Yeah,
(18:05):
we did a lot of operating systems build out, a
lot of custom project stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
A lot of learning again right.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Uh, it does not stop in this field.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah, I bet all right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I always made fun of my dad, you know, because
he was dermatologist. He had to study fifty two hours
a year to maintain his license. And I said, I'm
not going to pick a feel where I have to
keep studying. And then I picked this fifty two hours
a month.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
That's a riot. Yeah, just to keep up right, all right?
So then in one you decided you'd start a company.
So take us back through that thought process and decision making.
What motivated you to do that? I know you told
us you wanted to, you know, be a business owner
when you were younger.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
But go ahead, Well, you know I was still young,
still learning a lot. Sure, but nine to eleven happened.
And when nine to eleven happened, lots of businesses struggled
and this was no different. So the market dried up
(19:23):
and the company was struggling. So the company shut down
and the client you know, not the entire client base,
but some of the client base asked what I would
be doing and I did not know, and they said,
we will do whatever you do. And I said, that's
(19:45):
not an awful way to start a business, not at all.
So I started with a ready client base and never
looked back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
And there was no non compete, right, nobody to compete with. Yeah,
that's a great situation. Is there a story or meaning
behind Satara?
Speaker 4 (20:05):
You have to be a client to find out.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Oh man, okay, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. When
you started, who did you how many people did you
employ or if anybody was it just you? At first
that was just me.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
And then there were two of us and yep, and
that was it.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
How many today?
Speaker 4 (20:31):
We are only twelve today, but we're adding about five
to seven a year now.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Wow, and that's mostly technical people, I would imagine.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Yes, And for us, you know, we grow largely by tech,
not by.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Labor, bringing in new skill sets or the ones you need.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Leveraging technology automation AI certainly now, which keeps your head
count lower. You can do more with a good tool set,
a good process, and some good folks.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
All right, we're going to get into AI in a
little bit, but first tell us tell the audience what
work you do. So I think there are number of
people that would understand managed it, but there are people
that may not also, and I believe that, So talk
about the work that you do and also maybe your
ideal client.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
So I think the easiest way to describe the work
that we do for non technology folks or for business
owners is we are the IT department for your business.
So there are certainly lots of businesses out there that
are too small to have their own IT folks on staff,
(21:57):
And then there are larger companies that have some IT
folks on staff, but there's too much technology, just cybersecurity
alone is you can't handle all of that by yourself,
even if you have staff. So we that's where we
come in. We for small organizations, we are their IT department.
(22:19):
So from the helped usk tickets to you know, architecture, planning, budgeting,
the future, et cetera. So that's essentially about us, all right,
ideal client. We are in the ten to two hundred
(22:39):
and fifty.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Size users headcount YEP users.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Yeah, and we we are we handle that size. We
are primarily in the fifty to one fifty space.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
And geography doesn't matter, I imagine.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Not anymore used to matter to folks. But since since COVID, right,
that's changed a lot. Not that we ever mattered, It
hasn't mattered for a long time for our ability to
deliver service if the technology is set up right. We
have clients now that I've had clients overseas. We have
(23:20):
clients now throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So it's probably more of a change for them to
not see someone on site than for you.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
How would you define it consulting different from managed I
T that's more planning, So We do consulting right as
part of what we do, but the managed.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Services are day and day out. Our technology is set
up in your environment, we're monitoring, we're helping with all
the day to day items. But then consulting would come
in where you're thinking about acquiring a business, or you're
thinking about expansion this or hey, we'd like to you know,
(24:12):
take a look at doing this with the website to
do this, that's X y Z. We're looking at a
new CRM, anything like that where the consulting comes into play.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
What they might need for infrastructure, the time to get
over to the new system, et cetera. Makes sense. Yeah,
how about a few examples of clients, like a profile
of a client and I don't know if success story
would be the right way to describe it, but you know,
(24:44):
maybe a couple of examples of clients in the work
that you do.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Hm profile of a client. Let's see, we have so
we have clients in different industries because everybody needs technology
to some degree, most companies that we run into. But
then we also have some verticals, so we have the
(25:11):
construction space for example, where we have I'll give you
an example. We have a client, Uh, seventy eighty users
in the construction space doing you know, remodeling and build
out large projects and a mix of of apples and
(25:33):
and PCs. What else could I uh?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So they would do design, they would do uh are
renderings or are they?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Yeah and so so yes, So we support all their
line of you know, so we're the department, So we'll
support anything that that they have on the technology front,
all the way to having let's say, maybe mobile hotspots
for projects. As you know, they sit at a location
(26:08):
for months and months and they need several people to
be connected, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Good strong internet.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yes, so we're we're used to that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Oh twich reminds me you have voice over IP systems
as well. Talk about that for the audience.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Voiceover ips so much fun. Pretty much everybody has that rights.
That's just a staple now in all businesses. And we
so we do rollouts. We just had one and largely
now people have foregone headsets and handsets and they want,
(26:46):
you know, to go soft on their computer to a
soft phone because they're mobile because they have laptops ever
since COVID. So you know, handling the call routing and
the queues.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
And the degrading with integrating with CRM.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
CRM and many other yes, lines of lineup business applications.
And we just had one that there's only one vendor
that integrates with their software.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Okidding, that is until you introduce AI. All right, that's
actually a good transition. Uh, you know what, we have
two minutes before the next commercial. Let's do this. I
noticed you have a twenty year client, and yes, you
were able to bring you know, you're you're known for
(27:33):
bringing that response time down to an unbelievable threeish minutes
and a ninety seven percent retention rate. That's massive. So
how did this is maybe not a quick question, but
how did you do those two things?
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I care?
Speaker 3 (27:49):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I'm a business owner, so I built the culture around
just making sure we are over servicing our clients essentially,
very very white glove kind of thing, and and keep
them happy. It's it's much easier to keep a client
(28:13):
happy than to go find new ones. So let's let's
do a fantastic job and make sure we take care
of them. So we've we've have quite a few clients
in the twenty year mark.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And how did you get to a three minute? Three minute?
I said, that to my response time.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Yeah, so I uh, the way I set up the
delivery organization allows me to overstaff. That overstaffing means that
that folks aren't waiting a long time, which is the
number one thing that we hear from everybody is response
(28:52):
time in terms of their dissatisfaction with it. So I
wanted to make sure we handle that.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, I mean this should be obvious, but I'll say
it anyway. When a company's down, that's those are often
billable hours that are that they'll never get back.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Down, which is not as common, right, but every you know,
the average there's studies that show the average user spends
twenty two minutes a day every day working on a
tech issue. When you're paying your business owner and you're
paying payroll and somebody is tied up with a tech issue,
(29:33):
that gets expensive very quickly. You know, you don't see
the number. It's not like a line item invoice you get,
but it's pretty easy math. Yeah, So handling those interruptions
and removing the noise in the first place is really
the measure of it success.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
That's huge value right there. All right, let's take our
second break and we will be right back with Martin
La Chance. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for
two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and
wealth management with a family feel for your closely held
(30:13):
family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning,
integrating your business planning with personal They will help put
your money to work and your mind at ease. Go
to Bestwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory service is
offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join
the Best and Family and let our family advise your family.
(30:35):
That's Best Inwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.
All right, we are back with Martin the Chance. All right,
now let's talk AI and I want to get to
you have to use visuals, but just verbally, just to
introduce people to Lucy by Lucy.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yes, uh aptly name after the movie Lucy. Lucy is
just my personal AI, which, of course, if you've worked
enough with AI you can name your AI. Well, mine's Lucy.
(31:18):
So Lucy knows all about me. I've I've prompted and
coached Lucy to know my background and what I do
and what have you, so that anything I talked to
Lucy about is more relevant.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
So you've because we've had a little bit of this
conversation prior, you use AI more than what I would
say most and in better and more clever ways versus
just hey, let's load up chat GPT and let's come
up with a better email, or let's come up with
a better tagline. And I do that, right. I think
a lot of people do that proofread my my work
(32:00):
or whatever. But you use AI all the time regularly
and for actual reduction and time tasks and efficiency, et cetera.
How does go ahead? I'll let you do that and
I'll follow it up.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
It's it's funny. I was trying to teach my kids too,
to leverage AI as much as possible. And I have
a conversation with my daughter in college and she calls
me and asks me a question and I'm like, well,
did you ask GPT? And she goes, well, I'm asking dad, GPT.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well is a compliment? I mean, right, it's great, yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Right, But you know, I mean you and I didn't
grow up with the power that people have in their
hands now and add AI to that that that's that's crazy.
So you know we're in I T so at this point,
(33:03):
now we are working with our client base to leverage
AI to help them do things that in the past
was really not possible, generally cost prohibitive, tying different systems together,
creating automation for workflows and things that that was you know,
(33:26):
would have been a major endeavor in the past, is
now fairly easily done. So there there isn't a day
that goes by that I see a use of AI
that I am just blown away. We are really limited
by our own by our own uh view of the
(33:53):
world so to speak.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You know, I work with one of my one of
my guys here. We talked about this, what will approach
a problem? And we've learned to approach it differently and
to ask AI how it would handle it instead of
telling it what we want. It's a very different approach.
(34:16):
Really opens up your mind. So I look every day
online and I see how people are leveraging AI and
the ideas that they come up with, and I'm blown away.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Examples.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Wow, oh my god, you.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Know I was going to do that, right, I know,
I really didn't.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Uh, Well, provide examples of what you've done that are
not just again emails or marketing one pager.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Or yeah, so you know, I guess I have one
now where we have a client that approaches us and
says to us that they've had to switch from QuickBooks
desktop to QuickBooks online and they were forced to do
that by the parent company. And now they have an
(35:16):
additional forty hours plus a month of labor to reconcile
one thousand line items of credit card transactions that used
to go automatically in the system, categorized appropriately in accounts,
and now that is gone. And so we are leveraging
(35:38):
AI to automate the pull, the sort, and the pushback
into the accounts. And we can do that fairly, easily
and quickly and save them forty hours a month.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So creates a workflow. How do you like turn that
workflow on or will it always be on?
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Uh, it's really a decision. You can have it so
it's always on, or you can have it so it's controlled.
You know, that's something you learn about AI is before
you It's like, should AI answer all of my emails
for me automatically without me seeing anything? Probably not a
(36:21):
good idea, right right?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Right?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
So? But could you have AI draft responses to have
you review them, and then you review them instead of
having to draft them and adjust them. That would be
a better move.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
That's a big time safe certainly can be. So how
let's see, I was going to say, and also you
could filter out emails you don't care about. That takes
a little time to teach your particular AI who those are, right.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, there's a lot of prompting and coaching that goes
into this.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
For somebody, For somebody new, they probably don't know the
word prompt.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Ah, yes, the word. I'm sure you know the word prompt.
I do, right, So if you've used AI, that's one
of the first things you learn is how to guide
the AI into to really hone in and be more
specific so that which comes back in a response is
(37:26):
more relevant.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
So it's yes, it's being clear of your ask, right, Yes,
I was doing a I was playing with a one pager.
Somebody from Provisors in Chicago sent me her one pager
and I like the format and I've got a boring
one and I thought I should probably update that. So
(37:52):
I scanned her her one pager, including the graphics, right,
just scan it right in there's a PF And I said,
I asked, this was just jet chat GIPT, I said,
create a one pager for me and it's my instance
of JATCHEPT. So it's starting to get to know me
(38:13):
over time. And I also said, and use a sand
What was the phrase I used, Uh, filter it through
the lens of a Sandler trainer. Yes, And it really
did a nice job because I said Sandler trainer.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, you told it. Essentially, it's an expert in a field, right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
And that thing goes out, it finds I mean, I
could ask now Sandler related questions and it does a
really good job because it's gone out many times and
found those resources and can speak the Sandler quote language right, right,
use terminologies, et cetera. So what's something that everybody should
do like tomorrow using AI? Use it?
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Put it on your phone. I have conversational AI while
I drive around in the car.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
And of course I'll be driving around and I'll go
I'll see something and I'll go, hey, tell me about this.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, And I learned a lot of things along the way.
And it's just a conversation with Lucy.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Uh, she's just another question there. Oh, everybody is using
AI now and they're in some cases not aware that
they're using AI. Obviously, outbound calls from certain telemarketing firms.
You could, you can tell, but you know the delay
and there's a beep. It's a weird tone. It's it's
not like an answering machine tone, but it's like you
(39:46):
can hear the loop when it clicks over to somebody live.
And I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying, you know,
they should fix that. Uh you can uh, oh if
when you call into tech support, whether it's no, excuse me,
anybody in customer service right, your bank, really, anybody that
(40:07):
people call my doctor's office now you can schedule an
appointment over the phone.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yes, yeah, and certainly bots when you go to get support, right.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I've used one the other day for I forget what
software I was on. But oh, actually I was putting
a survey together in survey Monkey, and I wanted to
know this little funky little thing and I asked, and
there I get the answer. You know, I could have
found the answer, but it would have taken me probably
half an hour. Instead, I asked the question in about
(40:44):
five seconds, says go here, go here, do this do that?
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yes, absolutely saves. It's a tremendous time saver for us.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
What are are you starting to monetize that consulting. Yes, yes,
and so that's a reason why people may want to
reach out to you. In addition, of course, if they're
not happy, what are some of the let's get back
go back to IT managed services and that list of things.
I want to read this. Actually I was going to
(41:18):
do it and I forgot. So it's it consulting managed
IT services. That's the broad category technical support on a
particular tool or server or hardware, software help desk. You
talked about that network support. Cybersecurity. I want to get
back to that one for a minute. Email and spam protection.
(41:39):
I think everybody knows what that is, voiceover IP, phone,
cloud services. I think people most people know what that
is now Microsoft Office three sixty five since using that
a number starting using that a number of years ago.
I can't imagine not having Microsoft Office three sixty five
server support. I want to ask you a couple questions there.
(42:00):
Vendor management that's I think underrated. Instead of them having
to make in those make those calls or getting their research,
you do it back up a recovery and data recovery.
Get back to cybersecurity. What do people need to know
that they may not.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
That's actually the question is, so we have a third
party that we work with and one of the things
that we do is will run a security test for
a company and it's not really us, We just you know,
we're facilitator. So it's a third party test. Every single
(42:43):
time I have run this test, it's eye opening and
it's what you don't know. It's what most people don't know.
And so we'll have people tell us, so, well, we've
never been hacked, Well, how do you know? How do
you know someone hasn't already been in your environment? Maybe
they didn't find anything. They just let the door there
(43:04):
and they'll come back and check later, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
So so the the well, hold on, I'm just a
small company. Nobody cares about me.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
And that used to that used to be true.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
It was security by obscurity, right, but it's everything's automated
now and now with AI it's it's much worse. It's
you know, script kitties as they're referred to as folks
that you know, are looking to do make money, do
things ransomware et cetera, malware, but they don't really know
(43:44):
how to code. They don't they don't have that knowledge
base or what they do now is they just leverage AI.
So what used to be, you know, sort of a
really low level, rudimentary kind of thing is now actually
far more sophisticated and really damaging, you know. So, so
(44:04):
the obscurity three, the obscurity component no longer. So I
have a ladybug that just landed on me. So that
obscurity thing, it just it doesn't matter anymore. Everyone is
a target. Everything is automated. It's done by the millions.
(44:25):
We have a few companies just in the last month
that we received phone calls from very small companies they
had already been ACKed.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Well, and all it takes is well, I know the
answer to this. I think the weakest part of security
is what of a company's security is what.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Credentials?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Generally the office joke from Michael Scott is the computer,
what's your password? Incorrect? Why because the computer said, my
email has said correct. But it's people not being clever
enough to get the same password for everything, right.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
It's people rhyming in the end, right, Yes, people clicking
on things and that they're not supposed to. And there
was an article a company in the UK seven hundred
employees one hundred and fifty eight years in business. They
just closed their doors because of one password.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Wow, so well, actually the louver theft.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Oh that's a password.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
What was the password? Didn't they publish it? Love? I
thought that's what it was going to be because they
were laughing about it. Yeah, passwords love, unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Yeah. I didn't actually read it, but that's what somebody
told me.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
I'm like, Yeah, I had a client for a while
where U I had an email address for that client
because so I could use Johanna Black. It's the messaging
and scheduling appointments with each other was much easier for
having an internal address. So I had to go through
(46:14):
their IT training and they would send out you didn't
know this, but they would send out little test emails
to see who would click on it every once in
a while. So I kind of learned just so I
wouldn't get embarrassed not to click on stuff.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
You know, that's part of what we do. You know
that the current statistic is nineteen point eight percent of
folks click on things employees click on things they should not.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Wow, it's that that to me seems well, now, I
couldn't have said that a few years ago, but that
seems basic but still happens.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Oh, and it's it's only going to get worse just
because the AI sophistication now is there's no misspellings, there's
no you know, it looks legit. It's that much harder
to discern from real.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
All right, final question here, this is an easy one,
and we've talked about this a little bit, but who
in the viewing and listening audiences should reach out to
you be specific? And why should they do that? Because
you a couple of categories, right, Who should Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Anybody that wants to know what they don't know, which
is generally around security and their security posture. If they
care about their business and their reputation and not being
hacked and they want to know what they don't know,
they should reach out. And then I would also say
(48:02):
two other things. It's so many those folks that are
unhappy with their level of support their response time there,
which is the number one thing we hear still today,
you should reach out. And then anybody who's looking to
leverage AI in their business, great conversation to have.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
I'm going to add a word, demystify AI. And they
want to figure out how it can work for them
rather than just oh let me just see what chat
GPT has to say. I'm on lunch break. All right,
Well this has been great. I hope it's been good
for you too. Thank you for being here. I know
you're really busy. I appreciate you taking the time for
me and for the audience.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Well, thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate being on here.
Thanks for thinking of me.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
My pleasure, my pleasure. I will see you soon, and
thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show
about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about it,
reach out to Martin. If you've got sales challenges, reach
out to me. I don't know if I can help
you or not, but you can find me at Kevin
at Winning Business Radio. We'll have a brief conversation and
(49:17):
we'll figure out if there's some way I can help you.
We are Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training and
we develop sales teams into high achievers that could be
a very small team or a large team. And we
develop sales leaders, managers, directors, vps into true coaches and mentors. Listen.
We're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have
(49:37):
a conversation. Thank you as always to producer and engineer Wan,
thank you want for another job well done. Be sure
to join us next week Monday, November seventeenth, We'll do
it all again. Until then, this is Kevin haleanin.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
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For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
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Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(50:14):
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let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin helen Er.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Happy Monday, everybody. Thanks for joining in again today. I
am Kevin Hallan Ann and welcome back to Winning Business
TV and Radio on W four c Y dot com.
We're streaming live on talk for TV the number four
talkfortv dot com, and of course we're in We're live
on Facebook at Winning Business Radio as well as we're
(01:12):
available after the live show on many platforms. Pretty much
wherever get your wherever excuse me, you get your podcast content.
That's YouTube by Heart, Radio, Spotify, Apple, et cetera, et cetera.
The mission of this show, Winning Business radio and TV,
as regular viewers and listeners know, is to offer insights
and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others,
(01:34):
right to learn best practices. Those are the how tos,
the what tos, the what not tos, and to be
challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others.
Who are those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders
and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
(01:55):
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has had some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So while we all have to get our
nies skinned once in a while, I like to say
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to me small and
(02:18):
medium sized businesses all the way up to the fortune fifty.
I've seen some of those companies win, a lot of
them actually into varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've
had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the
highest performing people around and with some who probably should
have found other professions and my own businesses. Over the years,
I've had lots of success, but some failures too. I
(02:40):
like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences. So, yeah,
you're going to hear from me, but mostly I want
you to hear from our guests, those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today is no exception.
Today my guest is Martin le Chance. He's founder and
CEO of Satara Systems. Here's Martin le Chance is the
(03:02):
founder and CEO of Satari Systems, a Massachusetts based IT
services firm that's been keeping businesses running, fast, secure, and
frustration free since two thousand and one. With more than
two decades in the industry, Martin has led Satara to
a ninety seven percent client retention rate by doing what
most IT firms can't, and that's cutting client IT issues
(03:25):
listened by seventy percent and answering helptic desk tickets. This
is almost unheard of in about three minutes flat, but
Martin's story starts long before Satara. Born in Canada, he's
such a nice guy. He moved to the US at
age nine, eventually earning degrees in accounting and finance from
Northeastern University. He got hooked on computers in the early
(03:48):
nineties when the Mosaic browser brought the Internet to life,
and his first tech job at del Fi Internet in
nineteen nineteen ninety four gave him a front row seat
to the dawn of the online age. From there, he
helped lead engineering at Toast Technologies before striking out on
his own to build a different kind of IT company,
one focused on real outcomes, not excuses. Outside of work,
(04:12):
Martin's a husband and proud dad of four kids, and
he's happiest when he's fly fishing, golfing, or flying RC helicopters,
not an easy thing to do, usually after finding a
great spot for dinner with his family. Martin. Welcome to
Winning Business Radio. So glad to have you.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Thank you very much, Kevin. That's a great introduction.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Appreciate that, and I did. We'll get to this so
people understand I used the first one, not the Lucy one,
because I thought it just had a little bit more
richness to it. And we'll get to Lucy in a
little while. People will learn about Lucy. So let's start
close to home. Tell us about your family.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Ah, my family. Let's see, I have the pleasure for
having two children in college, the third one coming next year.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Pleasure.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Yeah, so yes, And so my son is in Maine,
my daughter is in South Carolina. They are loving it.
And then I have, you know, two more on the way.
Family is great. Yeah, can't can't say enough good things.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
What are the older two studying?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
So my son is in the psychology field, my daughter
will be a nurse.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh, very good, very good, huge shows to nurses.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
And my third one has decided on radiology.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Oh wow, fourth one not yet.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
So as I get older and things fall apart, that's right,
I have go to's.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
That's why I'm glad one of my daughters got an
athletic training degree. I just pulled something all about tell
us about your your much much I'm sure better half?
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Ah. Yes, my wife of twenty four years, wonderful, wonderful mother,
and and she is also hard at work. I've been
together for a long time, and you know, she enjoys
working out as I do. She actually competes and she's
(06:20):
very serious and very driven.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Talk about her competition. Is it a CrossFit or something
like that?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, it's it's a let's say what. There's so many
different categories and I can't think of it at the moment,
but it's it's not like the bodybuilding.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Okay, it's fitness fitness related for sure. Wow, So you
can't you can't go to you can't let let it slide.
If she's doing that, right, it's not that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
That would be wrong. And honestly, if I didn't go
to the gym, I but they would be a struggle
every day, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, I get that too, I get that too. All right.
So you you were born in Canada whereabouts.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Shell Brook, Quebec, Yes, you know, And I always thought, oh,
the whole world, the whole country speaks French. No, no,
just one province really, and that's where I lived, and
so that's between you know, kind of Montreal and Quebec,
and moved when I was nine. Did not speak a
(07:32):
word of.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
English really, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
So thrown right into school. So if you're surrounded by
another language. You learned very quickly.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I didn't plan on asking you that. But what was
that like? Total immersion? For sure?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Yeah, I remember very little. Certainly remember lots of kids
making fun of me because kids.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Are kids, and you had an accident in any language.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, but you know, you learn very very quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I hope you still keep up the fluent French.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I we were forced to speak French at home. So
I have, you know, two siblings, and so at home
we were forced to speak French to retain as much
as possible. Now it's mostly like I have cousins in
the area, et cetera, and my brother and we speak,
but it's more like Franklish. It's like half and half
(08:33):
kind of a thing.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, that's funny. You moved to where from Canada? And
what was behind that move? Family move? Probably?
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yes, so my father. So my father was a doctor
and you know, socialized medicine, et cetera. You decided, oh,
time to leave Canada, moved to Maine. So I lived
in Maine, in Lewis in Maine, Oh yeah, La Maine,
Lewist and Auburn right for many, many years until I
(09:08):
moved to Boston to go to school in Northeastern.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
And that's the next one. What were your early interests?
And I noticed that your degrees are accounting in finance.
How did you get into that?
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Right? You know, you're eighteen years old and somebody says,
what do you want to be? And my concept was
I knew I wanted to be a business owner, and
I didn't really understand what that meant. Of course, the
boy if I learned that the hard way. So I
thought accounting in finance, and that's not really what you need.
(09:45):
You know, you can have people that help you with
those parts you need, sales and marketing and market analysis
and entrepreneurship, that's really what you need. So I went
into it the wrong way. But the intent was to,
you know, to run a business. No idea, what.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
How did you get that bug? That's early? To have
that bug?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I really have no idea. I couldn't tell you. I
just decided, Oh, I'm that's what I.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Want to do. That's cool.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Why because I didn't have anything. I couldn't say, oh,
I want to be a doctor or a lawyer. And
my father was dead set against us being going in
the medical field.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Why was that.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Just became highly regulated, and you know, I'm sure various
reasons I didn't know about, but he certainly steered us
clear of that.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
I noticed you took a little geology.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Too, Yeah, which was actually my favorite.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I took some believers you did. I did electives. We
did some really cool field trips to western mass to
see the strata of the of the rs. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
That was the most fun of all the classes I
was taking at school. But I wanted to get the
most out of every class. So you know, this is
you know, this was it. But clearly accounting was not
my world.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
So it The question then, is how do you go
from accounting to the IT world? Your first job after
college seemed to well, a professional job was as a
help desk technician, where you have to know a lot.
How did you get there from accounting and finance?
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Well, so I was at you know, I was in accounting.
I was in cost accounting. To me, the worst possible
kind of accounting and I did not understand it. But
fresh out of school, I worked at a company up
in Nashville, New Hampshire, and they they had this the
system called the total Quality management as I recall, where
(12:04):
as problems arise within the organization. They developed teams from
all different departments and those teams work to solve different problems.
So I was actually put on a team to resolve
some problems that were related to it. And the director
of it happened to be in this group, and I
(12:27):
just got the bug. I was fascinated by the things
that they were doing in it, and he noticed that,
and so he put me into other groups that involved
some technology to it. And from there I had some
friends that a friend of mine had started working at
(12:49):
Delphi Internet and started the conversation and said, is there
anything I could do there? And that's essentially how I
was able to get in at the help desk level
of it and.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So tell people about Delphi. It actually became pretty well known.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yeah, interesting Delphi Internet back when the browsers were starting
in AOL and CompuServe and Delphi you know, did a
joint venture with m c I back when m c
I was was around, and we had a tremendous budget
(13:30):
and we could pretty much do anything. I was one
person in it for for this group, and we developed
I did not you know, I was in internal support.
But they developed a platform like like like the AOL
of you know that that you saw for a very
long time, and and they competed to be online, you know,
(13:54):
and we got to do things like we were the
first host for Major League Baseball. It was a wild ride.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That's pretty cool, all right. I just noticed the time.
We're going to take our first commercial break. We'll be
right back in about a minute or so with Martin
la Chance. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for
two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and
wealth management with a family feel for your closely held
(14:25):
family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning,
integrating your business planning with personal They will help put
your money to work and your mind at ease. Go
to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory services offered
through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the
best and family and let our family advise your family.
(14:48):
That's Best Inwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.
We're back. That was quick. Key takeaways from that first job.
There's a lot going on, a lot of growth, a
lot of innovation, a lot of new things which we
(15:08):
take for granted today. But what did you learn. What
would your key takeaways from that position or positions? Oh, man,
I know it's a big one.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Wow key takeaways? So well, you know, there was a
the joint venture fell apart and mc I actually went
backed out, so half the company was taken out and
I was left in the IT department by myself. So, uh,
(15:47):
I was bootstrapped into learning a lot of things in IT.
And that's at the time when when there was no
school for the for IT and for diructor. It was
programmed back then, so I had to lean on peers
(16:07):
and any resource I could find to help me along
the way. So I learned early on that a lot
of success actually comes from the people that you know
and who you surround yourself with.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, that's good. That's a good one, all right. Then
about three plus years later, you moved to Toast Technologies,
another company will become pretty well known. What went into
your decision to take that position and how did you
get it? So, you know, we.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Del Fi had an integrator. Back then there were no
managed service providers as they are today, so an integrator
and we had a relationship with them for product and
some service, et cetera. And they actually approached me to
run the integration business. So I could not pass that up.
(17:05):
That was a fantastic opportunity. And as as Delfi Internet
was being sold to Line one across the pond, I said, oh,
I need to jump on that. So so I went
over to Toast to head up the you know, the
the IT project division integration division, which was doing work
(17:32):
for clients projects and integration work for clients around technology.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
What were some of the early things you worked on?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Oh boy, some some things that people probably won't know here.
Citrix was a was a big thing. A Cisco back
then was tremendous. We did, you know, a lot of
Cisco integration work, VMware Uh not VMware NetWare Okay, okay, Yeah,
(18:05):
we did a lot of operating systems build out, a
lot of custom project stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
A lot of learning again right.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Uh, it does not stop in this field.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah, I bet all right.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I always made fun of my dad, you know, because
he was dermatologist. He had to study fifty two hours
a year to maintain his license. And I said, I'm
not going to pick a feel where I have to
keep studying. And then I picked this fifty two hours
a month.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
That's a riot. Yeah, just to keep up right, all right?
So then in one you decided you'd start a company.
So take us back through that thought process and decision making.
What motivated you to do that? I know you told
us you wanted to, you know, be a business owner
when you were younger.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
But go ahead, Well, you know I was still young,
still learning a lot. Sure, but nine to eleven happened.
And when nine to eleven happened, lots of businesses struggled
and this was no different. So the market dried up
(19:23):
and the company was struggling. So the company shut down
and the client you know, not the entire client base,
but some of the client base asked what I would
be doing and I did not know, and they said,
we will do whatever you do. And I said, that's
(19:45):
not an awful way to start a business, not at all.
So I started with a ready client base and never
looked back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
And there was no non compete, right, nobody to compete with. Yeah,
that's a great situation. Is there a story or meaning
behind Satara?
Speaker 4 (20:05):
You have to be a client to find out.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Oh man, okay, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. When
you started, who did you how many people did you
employ or if anybody was it just you? At first
that was just me.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
And then there were two of us and yep, and
that was it.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
How many today?
Speaker 4 (20:31):
We are only twelve today, but we're adding about five
to seven a year now.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Wow, and that's mostly technical people, I would imagine.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Yes, And for us, you know, we grow largely by tech,
not by.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Labor, bringing in new skill sets or the ones you need.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Leveraging technology automation AI certainly now, which keeps your head
count lower. You can do more with a good tool set,
a good process, and some good folks.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
All right, we're going to get into AI in a
little bit, but first tell us tell the audience what
work you do. So I think there are number of
people that would understand managed it, but there are people
that may not also, and I believe that, So talk
about the work that you do and also maybe your
ideal client.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
So I think the easiest way to describe the work
that we do for non technology folks or for business
owners is we are the IT department for your business.
So there are certainly lots of businesses out there that
are too small to have their own IT folks on staff,
(21:57):
And then there are larger companies that have some IT
folks on staff, but there's too much technology, just cybersecurity
alone is you can't handle all of that by yourself,
even if you have staff. So we that's where we
come in. We for small organizations, we are their IT department.
(22:19):
So from the helped usk tickets to you know, architecture, planning, budgeting,
the future, et cetera. So that's essentially about us, all right,
ideal client. We are in the ten to two hundred
(22:39):
and fifty.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Size users headcount YEP users.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Yeah, and we we are we handle that size. We
are primarily in the fifty to one fifty space.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
And geography doesn't matter, I imagine.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Not anymore used to matter to folks. But since since COVID, right,
that's changed a lot. Not that we ever mattered, It
hasn't mattered for a long time for our ability to
deliver service if the technology is set up right. We
have clients now that I've had clients overseas. We have
(23:20):
clients now throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So it's probably more of a change for them to
not see someone on site than for you.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Yes, yeah, yes.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
How would you define it consulting different from managed I
T that's more planning, So We do consulting right as
part of what we do, but the managed.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Services are day and day out. Our technology is set
up in your environment, we're monitoring, we're helping with all
the day to day items. But then consulting would come
in where you're thinking about acquiring a business, or you're
thinking about expansion this or hey, we'd like to you know,
(24:12):
take a look at doing this with the website to
do this, that's X y Z. We're looking at a
new CRM, anything like that where the consulting comes into play.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
What they might need for infrastructure, the time to get
over to the new system, et cetera. Makes sense. Yeah,
how about a few examples of clients, like a profile
of a client and I don't know if success story
would be the right way to describe it, but you know,
(24:44):
maybe a couple of examples of clients in the work
that you do.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Hm profile of a client. Let's see, we have so
we have clients in different industries because everybody needs technology
to some degree, most companies that we run into. But
then we also have some verticals, so we have the
(25:11):
construction space for example, where we have I'll give you
an example. We have a client, Uh, seventy eighty users
in the construction space doing you know, remodeling and build
out large projects and a mix of of apples and
(25:33):
and PCs. What else could I uh?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So they would do design, they would do uh are
renderings or are they?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Yeah and so so yes, So we support all their
line of you know, so we're the department, So we'll
support anything that that they have on the technology front,
all the way to having let's say, maybe mobile hotspots
for projects. As you know, they sit at a location
(26:08):
for months and months and they need several people to
be connected, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Good strong internet.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yes, so we're we're used to that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Oh twich reminds me you have voice over IP systems
as well. Talk about that for the audience.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Voiceover ips so much fun. Pretty much everybody has that rights.
That's just a staple now in all businesses. And we
so we do rollouts. We just had one and largely
now people have foregone headsets and handsets and they want,
(26:46):
you know, to go soft on their computer to a
soft phone because they're mobile because they have laptops ever
since COVID. So you know, handling the call routing and
the queues.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
And the degrading with integrating with CRM.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
CRM and many other yes, lines of lineup business applications.
And we just had one that there's only one vendor
that integrates with their software.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Okidding, that is until you introduce AI. All right, that's
actually a good transition. Uh, you know what, we have
two minutes before the next commercial. Let's do this. I
noticed you have a twenty year client, and yes, you
were able to bring you know, you're you're known for
(27:33):
bringing that response time down to an unbelievable threeish minutes
and a ninety seven percent retention rate. That's massive. So
how did this is maybe not a quick question, but
how did you do those two things?
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I care?
Speaker 3 (27:49):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I'm a business owner, so I built the culture around
just making sure we are over servicing our clients essentially,
very very white glove kind of thing, and and keep
them happy. It's it's much easier to keep a client
(28:13):
happy than to go find new ones. So let's let's
do a fantastic job and make sure we take care
of them. So we've we've have quite a few clients
in the twenty year mark.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And how did you get to a three minute? Three minute?
I said, that to my response time.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Yeah, so I uh, the way I set up the
delivery organization allows me to overstaff. That overstaffing means that
that folks aren't waiting a long time, which is the
number one thing that we hear from everybody is response
(28:52):
time in terms of their dissatisfaction with it. So I
wanted to make sure we handle that.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, I mean this should be obvious, but I'll say
it anyway. When a company's down, that's those are often
billable hours that are that they'll never get back.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Down, which is not as common, right, but every you know,
the average there's studies that show the average user spends
twenty two minutes a day every day working on a
tech issue. When you're paying your business owner and you're
paying payroll and somebody is tied up with a tech issue,
(29:33):
that gets expensive very quickly. You know, you don't see
the number. It's not like a line item invoice you get,
but it's pretty easy math. Yeah, So handling those interruptions
and removing the noise in the first place is really
the measure of it success.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
That's huge value right there. All right, let's take our
second break and we will be right back with Martin
La Chance. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for
two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and
wealth management with a family feel for your closely held
(30:13):
family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning,
integrating your business planning with personal They will help put
your money to work and your mind at ease. Go
to Bestwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory service is
offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join
the Best and Family and let our family advise your family.
(30:35):
That's Best Inwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.
All right, we are back with Martin the Chance. All right,
now let's talk AI and I want to get to
you have to use visuals, but just verbally, just to
introduce people to Lucy by Lucy.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yes, uh aptly name after the movie Lucy. Lucy is
just my personal AI, which, of course, if you've worked
enough with AI you can name your AI. Well, mine's Lucy.
(31:18):
So Lucy knows all about me. I've I've prompted and
coached Lucy to know my background and what I do
and what have you, so that anything I talked to
Lucy about is more relevant.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
So you've because we've had a little bit of this
conversation prior, you use AI more than what I would
say most and in better and more clever ways versus
just hey, let's load up chat GPT and let's come
up with a better email, or let's come up with
a better tagline. And I do that, right. I think
a lot of people do that proofread my my work
(32:00):
or whatever. But you use AI all the time regularly
and for actual reduction and time tasks and efficiency, et cetera.
How does go ahead? I'll let you do that and
I'll follow it up.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
It's it's funny. I was trying to teach my kids too,
to leverage AI as much as possible. And I have
a conversation with my daughter in college and she calls
me and asks me a question and I'm like, well,
did you ask GPT? And she goes, well, I'm asking dad, GPT.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well is a compliment? I mean, right, it's great, yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Right, But you know, I mean you and I didn't
grow up with the power that people have in their
hands now and add AI to that that that's that's crazy.
So you know we're in I T so at this point,
(33:03):
now we are working with our client base to leverage
AI to help them do things that in the past
was really not possible, generally cost prohibitive, tying different systems together,
creating automation for workflows and things that that was you know,
(33:26):
would have been a major endeavor in the past, is
now fairly easily done. So there there isn't a day
that goes by that I see a use of AI
that I am just blown away. We are really limited
by our own by our own uh view of the
(33:53):
world so to speak.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
You know, I work with one of my one of
my guys here. We talked about this, what will approach
a problem? And we've learned to approach it differently and
to ask AI how it would handle it instead of
telling it what we want. It's a very different approach.
(34:16):
Really opens up your mind. So I look every day
online and I see how people are leveraging AI and
the ideas that they come up with, and I'm blown away.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Examples.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Wow, oh my god, you.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Know I was going to do that, right, I know,
I really didn't.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Uh, Well, provide examples of what you've done that are
not just again emails or marketing one pager.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Or yeah, so you know, I guess I have one
now where we have a client that approaches us and
says to us that they've had to switch from QuickBooks
desktop to QuickBooks online and they were forced to do
that by the parent company. And now they have an
(35:16):
additional forty hours plus a month of labor to reconcile
one thousand line items of credit card transactions that used
to go automatically in the system, categorized appropriately in accounts,
and now that is gone. And so we are leveraging
(35:38):
AI to automate the pull, the sort, and the pushback
into the accounts. And we can do that fairly, easily
and quickly and save them forty hours a month.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
So creates a workflow. How do you like turn that
workflow on or will it always be on?
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Uh, it's really a decision. You can have it so
it's always on, or you can have it so it's controlled.
You know, that's something you learn about AI is before
you It's like, should AI answer all of my emails
for me automatically without me seeing anything? Probably not a
(36:21):
good idea, right right?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Right?
Speaker 4 (36:24):
So? But could you have AI draft responses to have
you review them, and then you review them instead of
having to draft them and adjust them. That would be
a better move.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
That's a big time safe certainly can be. So how
let's see, I was going to say, and also you
could filter out emails you don't care about. That takes
a little time to teach your particular AI who those are, right.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, there's a lot of prompting and coaching that goes
into this.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
For somebody, For somebody new, they probably don't know the
word prompt.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Ah, yes, the word. I'm sure you know the word prompt.
I do, right, So if you've used AI, that's one
of the first things you learn is how to guide
the AI into to really hone in and be more
specific so that which comes back in a response is
(37:26):
more relevant.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
So it's yes, it's being clear of your ask, right, Yes,
I was doing a I was playing with a one pager.
Somebody from Provisors in Chicago sent me her one pager
and I like the format and I've got a boring
one and I thought I should probably update that. So
(37:52):
I scanned her her one pager, including the graphics, right,
just scan it right in there's a PF And I said,
I asked, this was just jet chat GIPT, I said,
create a one pager for me and it's my instance
of JATCHEPT. So it's starting to get to know me
(38:13):
over time. And I also said, and use a sand
What was the phrase I used, Uh, filter it through
the lens of a Sandler trainer. Yes, And it really
did a nice job because I said Sandler trainer.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, you told it. Essentially, it's an expert in a field, right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
And that thing goes out, it finds I mean, I
could ask now Sandler related questions and it does a
really good job because it's gone out many times and
found those resources and can speak the Sandler quote language right, right,
use terminologies, et cetera. So what's something that everybody should
do like tomorrow using AI? Use it?
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Put it on your phone. I have conversational AI while
I drive around in the car.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
And of course I'll be driving around and I'll go
I'll see something and I'll go, hey, tell me about this.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, And I learned a lot of things along the way.
And it's just a conversation with Lucy.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Uh, she's just another question there. Oh, everybody is using
AI now and they're in some cases not aware that
they're using AI. Obviously, outbound calls from certain telemarketing firms.
You could, you can tell, but you know the delay
and there's a beep. It's a weird tone. It's it's
not like an answering machine tone, but it's like you
(39:46):
can hear the loop when it clicks over to somebody live.
And I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying, you know,
they should fix that. Uh you can uh, oh if
when you call into tech support, whether it's no, excuse me,
anybody in customer service right, your bank, really, anybody that
(40:07):
people call my doctor's office now you can schedule an
appointment over the phone.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
Yes, yeah, and certainly bots when you go to get support, right.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I've used one the other day for I forget what
software I was on. But oh, actually I was putting
a survey together in survey Monkey, and I wanted to
know this little funky little thing and I asked, and
there I get the answer. You know, I could have
found the answer, but it would have taken me probably
half an hour. Instead, I asked the question in about
(40:44):
five seconds, says go here, go here, do this do that?
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yes, absolutely saves. It's a tremendous time saver for us.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
What are are you starting to monetize that consulting. Yes, yes,
and so that's a reason why people may want to
reach out to you. In addition, of course, if they're
not happy, what are some of the let's get back
go back to IT managed services and that list of things.
I want to read this. Actually I was going to
(41:18):
do it and I forgot. So it's it consulting managed
IT services. That's the broad category technical support on a
particular tool or server or hardware, software help desk. You
talked about that network support. Cybersecurity. I want to get
back to that one for a minute. Email and spam protection.
(41:39):
I think everybody knows what that is, voiceover IP, phone,
cloud services. I think people most people know what that
is now Microsoft Office three sixty five since using that
a number starting using that a number of years ago.
I can't imagine not having Microsoft Office three sixty five
server support. I want to ask you a couple questions there.
(42:00):
Vendor management that's I think underrated. Instead of them having
to make in those make those calls or getting their research,
you do it back up a recovery and data recovery.
Get back to cybersecurity. What do people need to know
that they may not.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
That's actually the question is, so we have a third
party that we work with and one of the things
that we do is will run a security test for
a company and it's not really us, We just you know,
we're facilitator. So it's a third party test. Every single
(42:43):
time I have run this test, it's eye opening and
it's what you don't know. It's what most people don't know.
And so we'll have people tell us, so, well, we've
never been hacked, Well, how do you know? How do
you know someone hasn't already been in your environment? Maybe
they didn't find anything. They just let the door there
(43:04):
and they'll come back and check later, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
So so the the well, hold on, I'm just a
small company. Nobody cares about me.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
And that used to that used to be true.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
It was security by obscurity, right, but it's everything's automated
now and now with AI it's it's much worse. It's
you know, script kitties as they're referred to as folks
that you know, are looking to do make money, do
things ransomware et cetera, malware, but they don't really know
(43:44):
how to code. They don't they don't have that knowledge
base or what they do now is they just leverage AI.
So what used to be, you know, sort of a
really low level, rudimentary kind of thing is now actually
far more sophisticated and really damaging, you know. So, so
(44:04):
the obscurity three, the obscurity component no longer. So I
have a ladybug that just landed on me. So that
obscurity thing, it just it doesn't matter anymore. Everyone is
a target. Everything is automated. It's done by the millions.
(44:25):
We have a few companies just in the last month
that we received phone calls from very small companies they
had already been ACKed.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Well, and all it takes is well, I know the
answer to this. I think the weakest part of security
is what of a company's security is what.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Credentials?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Generally the office joke from Michael Scott is the computer,
what's your password? Incorrect? Why because the computer said, my
email has said correct. But it's people not being clever
enough to get the same password for everything, right.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
It's people rhyming in the end, right, Yes, people clicking
on things and that they're not supposed to. And there
was an article a company in the UK seven hundred
employees one hundred and fifty eight years in business. They
just closed their doors because of one password.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Wow, so well, actually the louver theft.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Oh that's a password.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
What was the password? Didn't they publish it? Love? I
thought that's what it was going to be because they
were laughing about it. Yeah, passwords love, unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Yeah. I didn't actually read it, but that's what somebody
told me.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
I'm like, Yeah, I had a client for a while
where U I had an email address for that client
because so I could use Johanna Black. It's the messaging
and scheduling appointments with each other was much easier for
having an internal address. So I had to go through
(46:14):
their IT training and they would send out you didn't
know this, but they would send out little test emails
to see who would click on it every once in
a while. So I kind of learned just so I
wouldn't get embarrassed not to click on stuff.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
You know, that's part of what we do. You know
that the current statistic is nineteen point eight percent of
folks click on things employees click on things they should not.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Wow, it's that that to me seems well, now, I
couldn't have said that a few years ago, but that
seems basic but still happens.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Oh, and it's it's only going to get worse just
because the AI sophistication now is there's no misspellings, there's
no you know, it looks legit. It's that much harder
to discern from real.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
All right, final question here, this is an easy one,
and we've talked about this a little bit, but who
in the viewing and listening audiences should reach out to
you be specific? And why should they do that? Because
you a couple of categories, right, Who should Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Anybody that wants to know what they don't know, which
is generally around security and their security posture. If they
care about their business and their reputation and not being
hacked and they want to know what they don't know,
they should reach out. And then I would also say
(48:02):
two other things. It's so many those folks that are
unhappy with their level of support their response time there,
which is the number one thing we hear still today,
you should reach out. And then anybody who's looking to
leverage AI in their business, great conversation to have.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
I'm going to add a word, demystify AI. And they
want to figure out how it can work for them
rather than just oh let me just see what chat
GPT has to say. I'm on lunch break. All right,
Well this has been great. I hope it's been good
for you too. Thank you for being here. I know
you're really busy. I appreciate you taking the time for
me and for the audience.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Well, thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate being on here.
Thanks for thinking of me.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
My pleasure, my pleasure. I will see you soon, and
thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show
about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about it,
reach out to Martin. If you've got sales challenges, reach
out to me. I don't know if I can help
you or not, but you can find me at Kevin
at Winning Business Radio. We'll have a brief conversation and
(49:17):
we'll figure out if there's some way I can help you.
We are Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training and
we develop sales teams into high achievers that could be
a very small team or a large team. And we
develop sales leaders, managers, directors, vps into true coaches and mentors. Listen.
We're not right for everybody, but maybe we should have
(49:37):
a conversation. Thank you as always to producer and engineer Wan,
thank you want for another job well done. Be sure
to join us next week Monday, November seventeenth, We'll do
it all again. Until then, this is Kevin haleanin.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Top four Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(50:14):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Haleanan and Winning Business Radio
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