From Break-Fix to MSP Evolution: Brian Weiss on Surviving Security Incidents, Building Culture, and the Future of AI in IT

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian Weiss (00:00):
Do you have the dog bark filter on over there?

Steve Taylor (00:03):
I wish.
So today's, today's going to be realinteresting because, uh, my mother
in law's here and my brother inlaw's here, which means they brought
their dogs, which means, uh, barking,

chaos.
It'll be great.
I'm used to that.
I just locked my dogs out so thatthey don't get to interrupt me.
But, um, I'll have your dogs.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you'll hearbarking and it'll be great.
Um, so speaking of dogs,you, do you breed dogs?

I, we did during COVID.
Yeah.

Oh, so you're done with that now?

Yeah, it was a lot of work.
We bred Frenchies.
And, and really we started cause we didn'tfeel like we could afford a Frenchie.
And we, we thought, hey, ifwe breed one and then have
puppies, it'll pay for itself.
Yeah.
And, uh, we, so, yeah, we wentdown that route, and, and, and what

(01:08):
happened was, really, my wife startedworking for iTech, our company,
and then it was, like, impossible.
Because it is, it is, especiallyfor Frenchies, they're, they
require a lot of human, uh, contact,human hours to take care of them.
They're not just puppies you can haveand leave in a garage or wherever

(01:29):
and expect them to raise themselves.
Um, but it was a great learningexperience, that's for sure.
I bet,

yeah.
And I, and I'm sorry, guys, I've knownBrian for years, so he and I can just
start talking, you know, cause that'swhat we do, but, um, everyone, this
is Brian Weiss from iTech Solutions.
Welcome Brian.
Can you, can you give everyone a littlebit of background on, uh, you and your
company and maybe, maybe that'll helpthem understand why we're talking today.

(02:00):
Okay.

Yeah, um, I, well, we started iTech in 05, before that
I was an independent contractor.
Uh, and before, well, shouldI start way at the beginning?
Sure.
I started on computersin high school, actually.
In my senior year, I had my onerequired period, and then I went around
fixing computers the other periods.

(02:22):
So, I guess you couldcall me a teacher's pet.
The teachers loved me becauseI fixed their computers.
Um.
And so right out of high school, Igot a job at a little mom and pop
shop, computer, computer stuff, itwas called, kind of a cool name.
And they service residential, they alsodid businesses, we built computers, right?

(02:43):
That was, I think I was buildinglike three computers a day, you know,
trying to do multiple ones at a time.
I got paid as an independentcontractor there, so I got paid
half of whatever they billed hourly.
So if I could build three computersat a time, I'm technically
multiplying my hourly rate by three.
It was good and bad, right?

(03:05):
It wasn't good to be having thatmuch money when I was that young.
Cause I looked back and I was like,I could have invested that better.
Um, I ended up buying a lot of a DJequipment, uh, cause I became a DJ
and, um, I just spent it having fun,you know, in my, in my twenties.
But, uh,

you're supposed to do that in your twenties now, right?

I guess.
What, you know, sure, why not?
We, I was with that, I was with themall in PopShop for about three years
and helped them grow to three stores.
I guess what I quickly realizedis there is this conflict between
working on a residential computerversus what I called commercial

(03:48):
back then and, and like a businessuses their computers to make money.
And residential, back then Ithink it was MySpace, right?
They're checking MySpaceon their computer.
And so, you know, if Timmy's MySpaceisn't working versus a computer
can't get business done, you cansee how there's a conflict there on

(04:10):
which one should be worked on first.
So, I came up with this idea oflet's create a commercial service
department is what I called it.
And I took a group of engineersand we hired a couple more.
I called them technicians back then.
And, and we kind of justfocused only on businesses.
And so that, that was good.

(04:30):
It helped them bring in a steadyset of income that they're getting
versus residential service.
It's like you're waiting for theircomputer to not work and them being
willing to pay money to fix it.
And this is back in a day where computerswere 2, 000, maybe 1, 500 if you're lucky.
So people would buy them andjust run them into the ground.

(04:52):
I mean, I guess there's stillthat much depending on what,
what ones you're buying.
But the idea of, of, of life cyclemanagement and proper maintenance,
no matter how many times we usethe car analogy of changing the
oil, they just didn't get that.
So typically residential and even businessbreak fix, you know, if you're in that
industry, they're not really callingyou unless they absolutely need you, but

(05:14):
we helped them grow from one to threestores and, and I needed, I guess, I
don't know if I called it this back then.
I needed to be more process based.
There's, there's things happeningand slipping through the cracks
that I was coming, trying to comeup with new ways to prevent, right?
Which is a process.
And again, I'm young, and youknow, so I'm just learning as I go.

(05:36):
I'm more of an engineerthan I am a business minded
person at that, at that time.
And what happened is I would comeup with these new processes, and I
would, I would follow them, and I'dget my engineers to follow them.
About half the time, mainly becausethe owner wouldn't follow them.
So there was like, there wasn't buyin from the owner of the company who's

(05:59):
ultimately paying the paychecks, and Ifelt like I didn't have the ownership
around maybe management, I guess.
Um, and, and, and our, the clients I haddeveloped a good relationship with, right?
Um, and, and they seethese mistakes happening.
And I'm the one kind of steppingand saying, Hey, we're going to

(06:19):
prevent that from happening again.
I'm working with the team on that,but then they'd still happen.
So, um, we, you know, along theway, not being the business minded
person I was, I was also told, Hey,if you help me grow my business,
I'll give you some ownership in it.
So I'm thinking alongthis lines of, Oh, cool.
I might have some ownership.
Well, three, three and a half yearslater, after I helped them grow and

(06:43):
open these stores, which I put in alot of work, I never got paid for it
because I was an independent contractor.
I only got paid for the billable hoursspent on clients, so, you know, I'd
work hours setting up a new store,checking, you know, doing inventory,
uh, coming up with new processes, um,that wasn't paid, I wasn't on the clock.

(07:06):
And so I put in a lot of myown kind of sweat, equity, into
helping this business grow with theidea I might get some ownership.
And at the end of the time, the threeand a half years, I was basically told,
Oh yeah, you can have ownership if youwant to buy in to the, to the company.
And, and, and for me, I'm good enoughat math to understand, well, the

(07:28):
time to buy in was when you're at onestore, not when you're at three stores.
And, and I asked the question of,well, does the, does this new employee
we just hired two months ago havethe same opportunity to buy in?
And he goes, yeah, of course.
And I was like, Oh, so I get,I get, I don't even get like
a special deal when I buy in.

(07:51):
Um, so it was that, it was actuallyan emotional time for me cause I was
good friends with the owner, goodfriends with the clients, caught
between a rock and a hard place whereI'd put all this sweat equity into
helping build something to be better.
Didn't have full control ownershipwise around trying to make better
processes and I'm seeing thingsfail that I couldn't help fix.

(08:13):
So I made the hard decision tojust leave and go off on my own as
an independent contractor at 20,how old was I, 22 years old and
and I was also DJing at the time.
I started DJing when I was 21.
I'll get to that in a bit, butthat was a hard conversation, you

(08:37):
know, I even cried and and left.
Now I knew These clients didn't dependon the business, they depended on me
and our team, and, and the clientsweren't under any type of contract.
There wasn't even that type ofsophistication with this company.
It was really just a breakfix, call us when you need us,

(08:58):
and more relationship based.
So when I left, you know, I told the ownerthis, I was like, hey, I gotta inform
these clients I no longer work for you.
I'm gonna tell them in this letterthat they are a client of yours, and
I want them to try to use you movingforward, but They're likely not going
to have the same level of service.
And what does that look like?

(09:19):
You know, that's part of the harddiscussion I had with the guy.
And um, so sure enough, I sentprofessional letters letting him know
I could at least give him a chance.
Don't feel like you're just goingto jump ship because that makes me
feel even worse that I'm leavingand taking clientele with me.
That was definitely not somethingI wanted to be some sort of

(09:40):
apparent thing I was trying to do.
Well.
What happened was, I was kind of arock, uh, at that, at that place, and
four of the technicians that workedunder me left at the same time.
And so naturally, the clients aren'tgetting the service that they would hope
they would got, and almost immediately,several of them followed me, and now

(10:04):
I'm an independent contractor, workingout of my garage, doing computers.
And that lasted for about, um, threeyears, three and a half years, and
You know, I was making decent money.
I think I was doing like 75 granda year, 22 years old back in
those days was a lot of money.

That's a lot of money.

Um, again, didn't spend it the smartest.
I should have been buying property.
When I look back on it,I was like, buy property.
I think I was always intimidated though,to be a homeowner or own property.
I just didn't feel likeI had that maturity.
In me or didn't understand the game.
Well, as far as that's

how I was too.
Yeah,

you know, you're kind of just like, is that me?
I don't know, but Ihad fun with the money.
Um, and especially DJing,bought a lot of DJ equipment.
I DJed from 2000 to 2008.
Um, started out with, uh,started out with turntable ism.
Actually, that's what got me into it.

(11:05):
My buddy of mine had aturntable and he was scratching.
I was like, wow, that's,that's kind of fun.
And, And, and got heavy into that,and then underground hip hop kind of
followed that, and then it was likedrum and bass, you know, house music,
kind of doing college parties, and thenI started doing clubs, downtown bars

(11:26):
in San Luis Obispo, there's kind of abig college scene there, so, um, what
I, what I realized is no one wants tolisten to my music, so, so I quick,
I, I kind of pivoted and I realized,alright, if I'm going to make money
doing this, what does that look like?
And I got into top 40 music, naturally.

(11:46):
Top 40 R& B, hip hop, I think iswhat I called it back in the day.
It was like the, the pop station.
Wild 106 was our local, isstill our local radio station.
And so I started buying records at therecord, I was always a turntable DJ.
And, and the, I'd get these mix recordsthat were easier to mix together.

(12:08):
And, uh, And then it kind ofjust blew up because we didn't
really have that in that scene.
I was one of the first kind of DJs on thescene, if you will, in our, in our town.
And there used to be like lines out thedoor and they'd charge, uh, you know, a
door charge and I'd get a cut of that,which was more money I didn't need.
I think my, my biggest night I madelike 2, 000 DJing for four hours

(12:33):
just because of all the peoplewith the door money they'd pay.
Um, and then, yeah, and then Igot into the, and then I started
DJing at the radio station.
You know, I do the fiveo'clock traffic jam weekends.
So I had kind of a full plate where Iwas doing IT during the day, DJ at night.
You know, and, or on theweekends, and then I even got into

(12:55):
weddings, uh, doing DJing as well.
But it was 2005.
I'm getting to, I'm getting towhere we were starting out now.
Um, and feel free to interruptme cause I tend to monologue.

No, this is good, man.

Um, or if you want to dig into something deeper, let
me know if I'm moving too fast.
Um, 2005, my clients, so I wasgrowing and I needed employees.
And I realized, okay, I can't bean independent contractor anymore.
I need to start a business.
And one of the technicians that hadworked with me at ComputerStuff, when he

(13:32):
left, at the same time I left, he wentto work for a web development company.
And by the time I had wanted to startiTech, he was their lead web developer.
And I was just kind of like puttingall these pieces together in my head.
My clients needed websites.
I didn't want to do this alone becauseI had no idea how to run a business.
And I, and I respected theintelligence of this guy that,

(13:54):
you know, became a web, a lead webdeveloper while I was doing IT still.
And, um, I also had this, I had, I wassick of dealing with clunky desktop
apps, and I had this idea that, youknow, things should be web based, really.
Internet connections were fast enoughat this time, where we can really
start putting applications hosted inthe web, that we have a web browser

(14:19):
interface that's a lot more lightweight.
To, to work with and more mobile,if you will, from a remote
workplace, uh, perspective.
So, uh, and then one of my largestclients, um, was part of this as well.
So it was basically, he wasthe investor, silent investor.
I brought in a bunch of clients.

(14:39):
My other business partner, I guess hebrought his website knowledge at the time.
But we formed this company and thenreally what he brought was, you know,
was the IP of what we were runningon originally because he helped
develop all the initial software.
So we developed all our toolsinitially and, you know, ticket
system, billing system, passwordmanagement, documentation system.

(15:04):
We had it tied into QuickBooks,desktop, so we could bring everything
in from a billing perspective.
So we, we started this company in 05and, and because I brought in a decent
amount of clients already, the focuswasn't really, hey, let's grow IT.
And again, mind you, 2005,we were still break fix.

(15:24):
Um, it was more, uh, let'sget web development going.
And mainly because I had all theseclients that needed websites, too.
They kept coming to me saying, Hey,do you know who can do our website?
We're ready to have a website.
You know, I think this was aboutthe time where the dot com boom was
kind of over, but people realizedI do need at least a website.

(15:45):
If I don't have a website, whoam I as a business type of thing?
And so we just started landingall these website deals with our
clients, pumping out websites.
Our investor came from themarketing and jewelry industry.
So he had a lot of connections thathooked us up in that area where we
even developed a survey platform.

(16:06):
That he was using for market research,um, web, web really took off.
And by 2008, when the recession happened,we had five employees on the web
department and it was still just me on IT.
Because, you know, hey,IT is running itself.
We were focusing on, on web.

(16:28):
And now the recession hit and this waslike our first kind of like, oh, this
is what it's like to run a business.
It's not all roses.
There's, there's problems you runinto, and it was really our first
time we had to reinvent ourselves.
Not that we didn't inventourselves at inception, but,
um, we had to pivot for sure.

(16:49):
Because a lot of our income from webreally was coming from the diamond and
jewelry industry and marketing, uh,industries, which are probably the first
thing to take a hit during a recession,like people pull back their marketing.
You're not buying jewelry,I would imagine, right?
Right.

(17:09):
Um, and, and so, and we didn'twant to let go any, any employees.
We've, you'll understand as I tellmy story, we've never really let
go employees during the hard times.
It's always been us kind of stepping inand weathering the storm, if you will.
Because we, we do havesomewhat of a family culture,
which has its pros and cons.

(17:32):
I like the pros more than the cons.
Um, and, uh, and we've alwaysbeen small enough to where you,
it's easier to maintain that.
When you get big enough, it's hardto maintain that type of culture.
Um, so we pivoted.
I realized IT is not goingaway during a recession.
We realized, how are we going tochange web to be more recession proof?

(17:54):
So with web, we pivoted to e commerce.
We built our own e commerce platform.
This is before Shopify was a thing.
You know, what, I don't even thinkWordPress was really a thing back then.
Um,

not really.
I mean, it was, but not, notthe way it is today at all.

Yeah.
Cause we, we had developed ourown CMS platform as well, you
know, cause we didn't have like aWordPress to, to fall back on per se.
And, um, so because we had builtour own CMS, I skipped over that.
We're like, Oh, let's buildour own e commerce platform.
And because the idea there is clientsthat are making money with their

(18:32):
website, even during a recession,are still going to want to pay to
maintain and manage their website.
Um, that's also, um, around the time,well it was a little bit later, we had one
of our clients that had a SaaS platformthey had developed, we didn't call it
that back then, but they were doing CEUs,Continuing Education Units, and we had

(18:55):
built out a learning platform for them,where they could deliver the content,
and issue the credits, and then theyhad a licensed professional that would
create the content, um, so on the websitewe started diversifying, right, like.
How can we focus on things thatare going to have recurring income
and then same thing on the IT side?

(19:17):
How can I get recurringincome on the IT side?
I didn't know anythingabout the MSP channel.
I don't even know if it reallyexisted in 08 too much, but

Probably not.

Looking back, that's maybe when we could call ourselves an MSP
because I went to my clients and I said,hey You're paying us X amount per year,
on average, that's X amount per month,and um, I actually took about a three
year span and averaged it out to be morerealistic, and how about if we put you on
the support plan that's fixed price permonth, and then that way I have income

(19:53):
to be able to grow with, and not worryabout going out of business, is literally
the discussion I was having with myclients, because I had a good relationship
with them, they wanted me to succeed.
I could scale easier.
I could know when is the next time tohire the next employee and then, and
then I'm helping them eliminate peaksand valleys in their expenses around IT.

(20:14):
And that was probably the first time Ieven got into lifecycle management as
a thing, where we're not waiting forthings to die before, before they get
replaced because now I'm, I'm holding,You know, the, I'm holding the bag when
it comes to how many hours I'm spendingon a, on a client's infrastructure.

(20:34):
And if they've got really old equipment,that's going to require more hours.
And so we got into this idea of, ofnot letting them age older than five
years and kind of setting up that plan.
And then that's when webought our first tool.
Before this, we were, we developedall our own tools and that was an RMM
and it was primarily because we didn'tfeel like we had the sophistication.

(20:59):
You know, from a, from a dev perspectiveto develop an RMM, an agent that would
run on a Windows operating system, wewere, we were still very much kind of
web based development that we were doing.
Everything we developedwas on a LAMP stack.
It was Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.
So that was our expertise.
You know, the minute you start gettinginto an agent, you know, running

(21:22):
on Windows, you're like C like it'sa different programming language.
So, so we ended up getting anRMM And, and back then they were
sold as a perpetual license witha follow up maintenance per year.
So I think we dropped like65 grand for this platform.

(21:42):
And then yearly after that, I thinkit was like, it wasn't much, maybe two
or three grand a year for maintenance.
And, and, and we even cameup with our own branding.
We're like, this is called iTechNetManage, you know, we're selling
you, we, we, you know, on theinvoice, it had to look a certain way.
So NetManage was, was our kind of.

(22:02):
Our RMM and monitoring and everything,and remote access, and then we created
iTechSafeBackup, is what we called it,and that was like our backup service.
And then for the support model, wecalled it iTechSentinelMaintenance.

(22:24):
Sentinel is, I think Matrixis where we got that from.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Sentinel is not the greatest thingto use when it comes from the Matrix,
but, um, uh, I think Sentinel's

great, man.
Like it sounds like, uh, Idon't know what it, when I hear
Sentinel, I think of X Men.
Do you remember the X Men cartoon?
I think of those big.
Scary machines.
I'm like, man, if you're runningone of those, you're probably good.

Well, and so the funny thing too, is working at the
radio station, I've always had allthese different things going on.
They, they had me doing a lotof gigs that I didn't want to do
because they paid like minimum wage.
And I said, how aboutwe trade advertisement?
Right?
So I get, we had all this freeadvertisement and we even ended up
doing the radio stations websites.
So we'd get like three to fourcommercials a day on the radio station.

(23:15):
And so the minute we brandedthose products, they're like,
on the radio, iTech safe backup.
Yeah, I still have all theold commercials we did.
That was a fun time.
Um, and so we, so thattook off fairly well.
Um, because now all of a sudden we'regetting guaranteed income, both on the
website, because we pivoted on the webtoo, we went from project based to,

(23:39):
to, you know, You know, we took whata typical project would cost, and we
divided it out by 12 months, and we'dmake it a monthly cost, and we'd get
them to renew it, you know, making surewe showed value for them to renew it,
and then IT was kind of the same thing.
So we, we shifted to this project breakfix income model to a recurring revenue

(24:02):
model during the recession, reallyusing it as a way for our clients to
help control their costs around thesethings they need, and then helping us.
Control Our Income, sowe can scale properly.
Um,
so, 2008, I'd say, 2012, andthen I hired my first employee

(24:24):
in 2008, for IT, I should say.
And, and we, we actually were able tostay two employees for about two years.
We hired, I had my brother comework for me for a little bit.
Um, 2012 is probably when we startedhiring more employees for IT.

(24:46):
Uh, we were, I almost want to, Ialmost want to call us kind of still
a lifestyle business back then.
We didn't, you know, other than buildinga brand, uh, brand equity, we weren't,
we weren't well versed in like scalingour company from a sales perspective.
And so, and we were just happy payingthe bills and, and keeping our clients

(25:08):
happy and, and in all fairness you getkind of comfortable when there's a steady
stream of income coming in every monthand it's paying, you know, it's paying
enough of your bills where you're nothaving to chase projects all the time.
Um, So 2012, we, we started rampingup, uh, Web even more, because the CEU

(25:30):
company that we started, well we didn'tstart a company yet, the CEU company we
were working with, we, we created a, anoffshoot of another company, Um, I think
they were called Quantum and we werecalled iTech, obviously, I know that.
Um, and so we put it together and wecalled it QTech, because that's, what do

(25:52):
you do when you take two companies, youthrow their name together, I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Um, and so we took their businessmodel, which we saw doing really
well, and we said, we're going torepeat that over and over again.
And so we did it in, in threeor four different industries.
One of them was pestcontrol, believe it or not.
I mean, CEUs, you could pick yourindustry, certain industries need

(26:16):
them, and it's just a matter offinding a licensed professional
that can write the content.
We're delivering the platform, andit's, it's really, that's what I
love about SaaS platforms, you know,if I own one myself, I should say.
They're mailbox money.
They really

are, yeah.

You do all the development up front, and then it's all about
how much market share can we get.
From, from here on out.
And so, we grew to, you know,the next three years we,
we focused on growing that.
Um, we hired more employees.
I'd say we were probably about, um, sixIT employees and maybe like seven web.

(26:57):
By the time 2014 15 rolls around,where now all of a sudden, they can't
keep up with our needs from an ITdepartment perspective around the
custom developed software that, that,that we had built for ourselves.
And we are starting to seethe roadmap just slow down.
This whole time, I, you know, mind you,we're also managing our own roadmap for

(27:19):
our products that we're using with ourclients, other than our RMM, to help
make things more efficient, bake moreprocesses, and as we discovered better
processes, it's like, okay, now let'sbake this into the tool, so that there's
less human error that can happen, uh,and the process is more repeatable.
And I want, I really wanted dashboards.

(27:43):
That's kind of my next step, because wewere starting to collect so much data, we
had, we had built this out enough to wherewe're just dealing with lists of data
everywhere, you know, all the differentfunctions in it produces a list of data.
And then what do you do?
You analyze it, you figure out how toadjust it, you're sorting it, you know,
what's the next thing I need to work on?

So you started chasing that coveted single pane of glass.

Yeah, I guess you could call it that, right?
I mean, the dashboards kind of giveyou a lot of data in a single view.
Yeah.
And then the idea is you drilldown to, to, to get to the list
instead of starting with lists.
And, and we had, we had even trackedfinancially how much work the dev
department was doing because wetracked them as separate entities.

(28:28):
My, I skipped over the factwe, we bought out my business,
our silent investor in 2008.
So it was just my, uh, web departmentbuddy that's running the department,
web department, uh, and me.
So I ran IT, he ran web.
And that we were kind of running themas separate companies and then we would
meet together like quarterly talkingabout how things are going and what

(28:51):
we're going to do with each department.
And, um, so on the books They wouldbill us for all the work that they
did for us because naturally hecould be doing cash projects instead
and that's exactly what happened.
It was like, hey, uh, do you want usto really do work for this internal
project where, yeah, you're giving usmoney, but it's just our money anyway,

(29:13):
so it's not like new money coming in?
Or, or do you want us to focus on thesecash projects where we can actually
grow and, and, and make more income?
And the natural answer was, okay.
It sounds like you've outgrown us.
Our money isn't worthanything to you anymore.
But on the books, I was spending about sixgrand a month with all the dev work and

(29:36):
roadmap stuff that they were doing for us.

That's not bad.

And so, but that was my budget, right?
To, Oh, I'm going to gofind off the shelf tools.
2015 is really when I first gotintroduced to the MSP channel.
Before that, we were kind of onour own island in the sense that.
Figuring out things on our own, notrealizing there's a community out
there of other people strugglingto do the same thing we are.

(30:05):
And, and, and so I found, I cameacross Autotask PSA at that time, which
just launched dashboards, and I said,That is what I wish my guys could do.
So I'm just going to get that.
Which, naturally, onething leads to another.
I've definitely, I'mdefinitely a shiny tool guy.
And, I mean, we weredeveloping our own tools.

(30:26):
I know the value in a good tool.
And we probably adopted four or five othertools along with it, including Centristage
back then, before Datto bought them.
And, um, and so within, within twoyears of, of adopting these tools,
we grew 50 percent on the IT side.

(30:47):
And then web grew tremendously too.
And so it, you know, it was like 2017.
Uh, we probably had, uh, wehad about 24 employees, um,
and we were, we were about 2.
8 million across the whole companyand, but, but, but we're at a point now

(31:12):
where I'm not relying on dev anymore.
You know, they're kind ofdoing their own things.
My partner and I wasjust meeting quarterly.
We're kind of running two companieswithin the same company and, and, and
we had different personalities too.
So it was good personalitiesthat balanced each other.
I'm more of a risk taker.
I'm more the, the life of the party guy.

(31:33):
My business partner was more,uh, reserved and kind of, uh,
did not like taking risks.
And so I was wanting to startmaking some moves that were a
little hard to convince him to do.
He was at the point where I don'tthink he even liked having employees.
Um, maybe, maybe I'm more ofa people person than he was.

(31:57):
You could say that too.
I don't, I don't want thatto come off sounding bad.
More outgoing.

I get it, man.
You know, some, some people are moreintroverted and would, would rather
just, you know, for, for lack of abetter term, they would rather just
be in mom's basement in the dark withtheir lines of code in front of them.

Okay.
You said it.
Yeah.
No, I like the introvert versus extrovert.
That's a good way to put it.

Yeah.

Um, I was definitely more extroverted, which extroverted people
probably tend to take a little more risk.
And, uh, he was, I was wantingto grow, grow, grow, and he was
more, I'm happy where I'm at.
I want to do more with less.
And um, so that's when wereally started talking about,
well, what does this look like?

(32:45):
Interesting.
Interestingly enough, we looked atour books and it was split right down
the middle with it and web to where wecould basically part ways, and we're
not really having to buy each otherout at all as, as far as value goes.
The funny thing is, the Q Tech company,kind of a third part, which was under

(33:09):
the web umbrella of the company.
So, you know, even though web and IT, QTech was under web, it was making more
net profit with a single employee thanboth of the web and IT were combined.
So I was like, ah!
I've always wanted a SaaS companyand you're telling me we're going
to split and I'm going to losemy ownership in a SaaS company.

(33:33):
So I, I, I kind of made himhang on for a little longer.
I was like, nope, don't want to split.
But it only took about another yearbefore I started, it gave me a year
to think about, like, what would it belike if I own this company on my own?
And I started realizing a lotof things that having a business
partner was holding me back.

(33:56):
You know, every, everydollar we made, we split.
Right?
50%.
That means every dollar we spentcame out of our pocket, 50%.
So, so not only, you know, am I, am Isplitting the income and every time we
spend money, it's got to be something weboth agree on to really spend it with.

(34:17):
Otherwise you end up with somekind of some bad blood there.
Like, Oh, you're spendingtoo much in this area.
You know?
But

the nice thing is with him being more conservative.
And, and less of a risk taker, you,you may have been more profitable when
you were with him versus maybe thenext two years after you guys split.
Maybe.

So, the answer is yes, but there's an outside force
that caused that, which I'lljump right into here in a minute.
Um, I will say that we did balance eachother well, and he taught me enough
about being conservative with money.
You know, because mind you, I came, Icame out of high school making way too

(35:02):
much money, you know, so I never, I neverhad the appreciation for money, um, it
just came too easy to me, and so, he,he, he taught me to be responsible with
money though, so when I did, when we didsplit, it's not like I just went to Vegas
and just started spending money left andright, like, you know, yay, I don't have a
business partner telling me I can't spendmoney, so, um, You know, I was, and I was

(35:28):
also very privy to what you're allowed towrite off and not allowed to write off.
So, I wasn't doing all these crazythings where I'm spending company
money that hasn't been taxed yetand, and trying to act like it's
going to be a write off for me.
Um, but we parted ways, ourlast year together was 2017.
That's also right when wemoved into a new office.

(35:49):
You know, we kind of, uh, split.
And, um, and in, um, In March of 2018,we had our RMM that we were actually
moving away from, uh, because itdidn't support MFA without this crazy,
antiquated third party product that itrequired, that we did not want to deal

(36:12):
with, and we were about halfway movingour clients off of it before there was a
undisclosed vulnerability about said RMM,undisclosed, we didn't know about it.
Threat actors apparently knew about it,and we had half of our clients ransomed.
So, was I happy for the first threemonths that I was running my own

(36:34):
company and, and calling all the shots?
Yay!
But now I get to call all myshots during this crazy security
incident, and I'm, and I'm by myself.
So, so yeah, we did end thatyear at the negative 3 percent
profit margin, to your point.
Yeah, the minute that we split,I wasn't making money, but
it wasn't entirely my fault.

(36:58):
That was a wake up call for us.
I think what happened when I lookback on that is, you know, we
immediately realized, first of all,luckily, we were at our turning point.
So our recurring income paidfor all of our expenses.
Projects were more just icing on the cake.
And so that's one of themain reasons we survived.

(37:18):
The other main reason is therelationship we had with our clients.
We only lost one client outof the 35 that were affected.
Um, and, but I realized that I waswork, I immediately, the minute I
broke loose from him, I've got thismindset I want to grow, grow, grow.
This is back in the, you know, RobinRobbins is still around, but you know,

(37:40):
Robin Robbins like sell, sell, sell,get more clients, get more clients, get
more clients, and I realized, well, wow.
What am I doing to protectthe income we already have?
And what type of shared riskdo I have with my clients?
What type of risks does this incomehave of going away overnight?
Well, I quickly understood that.

(38:00):
Um, it wasn't really known that threatactors were targeting IT departments.
It was kind of a, uh, it wasa moment where it made sense.
Oh, yeah, of course they're going tocome after me because I got the keys to
the kingdom of a bunch of other clients.
Why wouldn't they?
But it wasn't talkedabout in the MSP channel.
It wasn't talked about in the MSP channel.
I was very involved in the MSP channelbecause all these products we adopted,

(38:24):
I naturally wanted to be on the partneradvisory boards with the idea that I just
got done developing my own products and Iwant to help them develop theirs better.
So we got a ton of good support from theindustry from a, from a how do we pivot
and prevent this from happening again.
But there was even our insurancecompany was not prepared for this.

(38:45):
This was like the early daysof when this started happening.
And when I called my insurance companyup, they literally just told me, um,
alright, well, we understand what'sgoing on, um, go ahead and remediate
it, uh, track all your expenses and,and get back to us when you're done
and, and we'll finish out your claim.

(39:05):
There was no, here's a legal team,here's a negotiator for the threat
actors, here's a security team, a SOCto come in, or a, you know, an IR team,
I should say, to come in and help you.
They didn't have any of that prepared,and I actually had to force them to find
a company for me, because I was goingto do my own remediation, but I wanted

(39:26):
them to bring in a company that verifiedmy remediation was, was up to par.
I wasn't a security expert.
I mean, we did firewallsand antivirus back then.
And, um, so they ended up bringingSolus Security in, back then, right?
I think that's kind of when Solus wasstarting, just getting started out.
They're much bigger now.

(39:48):
And, uh, they ended up verifyingeverything, but it took two weeks
to remediate and then probablyanother two weeks to kind of get
the wheels back on the bus, ifyou will, to start moving forward.
Um, but it, it made me, it mademe realize that I don't want to
take on new clients right now.

(40:11):
I need to like figure out how I'mnot going to go out of business.
And so it was, It was rebuilding thetrust with clients that, hey, this isn't
going to happen again because of X, Y, Z.
And what does that mean?
Well, really, I had to diveinto a security framework.
So CIS was the one that I gotintroduced to by Ryan Weeks.

(40:32):
He was a big help during that time.
Um, and, uh, really just tried tounderstand what do we need to do
to add more layers of protection?
Or even be able to, you know, detectbetter what might be going on so
we can respond better and mitigateoverall damage and We spent the next

(40:54):
two years really hardening our house.
I kind of sadly went crazy with tools Iwas like throwing a tool at everything
in the beginning before Ryan, you know,he's like come here Ryan Let me talk
to you about a security framework.
It's not all about tools, buddyIt's like, there's people and
processes involved as well.

(41:16):
And so it took me a little, you know, thefirst year, I think that's probably around
when, when we met, believe it or not.
Cause I remember going to some of yourforums with my big 40 layer stack.
Oh my gosh, that

list was insane, man.
I was

so proud of it though.

You really were.

I was like, here's my 40 layers that are going to prevent
this from ever happening again.
Man, I know ogres

are like onions, but man, that was a lot of layers.

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of it was me looking
for external validation too.
Cause I was just, I felt lost, you know,no one was, I was like, I was like, I
just shared everything about my, I wentto DattoCons and, you know, different of
any event I could go to, told my story.
I didn't want it tohappen to other people.

(42:04):
I was hoping to learnsomething along the way.
So I was just kind of an open book,just trying to, in a big sponge.

Yeah, I mean that, that makes perfect sense.
I mean, if you think about it, at thatpoint in your life, you were probably
experiencing some serious impostersyndrome, which I know something about.
You know, you, you had a, abig catastrophic event happen
that made you question, are weactually good at what we do?

(42:33):
Whether you said it out loud or not,you know, that's, that's probably
one of the questions that was goingthrough your mind at that point.
And at that point, you, you had afew different paths you could have
down, gone down and you chose thepath of, uh, you know, let me, let
me chat with my industry peers.

(42:53):
Let me, let me start makingsure we're protected.
And, you know, like you said, you,you might've overdone it a little.
But, um, I think there's somethingto be said about the fact that you
were trying, you know what I mean?
Like, you, you were taking securityseriously after that event,

which,

you know, unfortunately it takes an event for that to happen.
But, um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think thatspeaks volumes to your character, man.

Yeah, it's definitely some resilience.
Uh, I think you need that in our industry.
Uh, so it, um, It was, we just didn'ttake on clients for two years, which
kind of sucks because you get outof the practice of doing sales.
They say you should never stop selling.
I know, I know what that feelslike because the minute we

(43:50):
started selling again, I waslike, what, how do I sell again?
I'm talking to a new client.
How am I going to approach this?
And really, sadly, it wasall about cybersecurity.
So it was a lot of fear, uncertainty,and doubt and, and trying to scare
clients into using your services.
Otherwise, they, you know, they mightlose their business overnight and, and
that's not the right way to go about it.

(44:12):
Um,
um, you know, I

Sometimes, unfortunately, they, they kind of like They'll wake up
one night and go, did I just get scammed?
Yeah.
Now they're stuck in a contractthat they don't want to be in.

Yeah.
And I'll tell you other than, other thanjust the passion of, of feeling like,
okay, wow, I went from, you know, doingIT to help businesses be more efficient
and implement technology for efficiency,to now I'm using, I'm in IT to help

(44:49):
protect them from the threat actors.
You know, it may, it probably gave me a Ihad a different outlook where I felt like
a superhero that needed to save everyone.
And how do I save everyone?
Scare them about the villains.
Tell them how bad the villains are.
Um, so, I mean, it was educationthat needed to be made, but I think

(45:11):
in hindsight and even, even duringthat time, I started not liking it.
You know, it wasn't what Ioriginally got into IT for.
It wasn't cybersecurity.
That's not why I got into IT.
And really we're trying totalk clients into spending more
money to take conveniences away.
Um, so that, so thatwas a struggle, right?
It took, we still grew 15 percent grossrevenue year over year after that event

(45:35):
because we were really focusing on ourexisting client base and getting them,
their, their infrastructure hardened.
But at that negative 3 percent profitmargin, it took us two years to get
back up to our kind of target 10 percentwe had always maintained a minimum of.
And, um, So yeah, you know, two yearslater, we're, we're end of 2019 and

(46:00):
we're like, all right, this is ourlast year where we feel like we're
putting the pieces back together.
Right?
What's 2020 going to look like?
I don't know if anyone

2020 was a, was a fun

year.
Yeah.
So, you know, beginningof 2020, we got this idea.
We were all just optimistic.
We're going to do this.
We're going to do that.
We've got, we've got our stack,you know, down from 40 layers to
maybe, you know, 15, uh, causewe, we were all over the place.
We had this, you know, ideaof what things look like.
We had gotten plenty of feedback from,from peers in the industry where, where we

(46:37):
didn't feel like we were as crazy anymore.
Um, that, that was definitelysome humility, uh, that I went
through there, which is good.
Humility is good in this industry.
It helps keep you grounded.
That's something I'm focusingon today, even being grounded.
And, um, so 2020 rolls around.
So is my

son.

Yeah.

He's grounded.

Oh,
I'm trying to avoid that type ofgrounded, but, uh, and that, that
would come from my wife these days.
Uh,
the, so 2020 rolls around.
I'm trying to think back, you know, um,I remember like the early days of COVID.

(47:19):
Right.
You hear about the news first.
Coming from China, you're like, Oh,China, that's not going to come here.
Like, Oh, is that real?
And, uh, pretty, before you know it, it'shere, you know, I think it was like mid
February, end of February, we started,you know, getting affected in our area.
Now we live in California.
So if there's going to be any mandates,you know, coming from the government,

(47:41):
they're coming in California firstout of any other state, probably.
So we, we saw it right away.
You know, we, we had these newOSHA rules we had to follow.
Um, I, uh, I've never tried to bringpolitics into my business with my clients
or employees, so we had to definitelywade the line of like, hey, we respect

(48:05):
whatever you believe, you know, butwe got to follow these OSHA rules and
yeah, COVID, if you get COVID, you'relike at home for, I think it was two
weeks back then, or maybe a week.
Like you can't.
I think it

was two.
Yeah.
Yeah.

And it's like, stay away, you know, and, and that sucks.
Cause we had a great culture thatwas really in an office culture.
Uh, we were lucky that we hadmigrated a hundred percent to teams,
even for our phone system by then.
And so we, we pivoted to allof our meetings being virtual.
We started, we started this.

(48:40):
I Tech Cares meeting, whichwe still have today, actually.
Monday morning, uh, half an hour,uh, Friday morning, a half an hour,
where you're on the clock, andyou're, you're not supposed to talk
work, and it's just kind of a checkin, water cooler time, if you will.
The idea of Monday waslike, how was your weekend?
What'd you do?
You know, kinda, trying to, Stay,keep the, the, the team connected

(49:06):
outside of just work topics.
And then Friday.

Cause, cause you guys are, you're all remote now at this point,
you know, like you said, you had this inoffice culture and now thanks to COVID
everyone's working from home and you beingin California, I mean, again, we don't
have to talk politics, but I think youguys were stuck being home the longest.
Um, and, uh, And yeah, I mean,I, I think the, the iTechCares

(49:32):
thing, I think that's great.
You were, you were trying to promotethe camaraderie between all of
your, your team members still.

Yeah, I think it worked well.
I mean, we still have itand they still enjoy it.
Um, we are excited.
We just bought an office that we'regoing to be moving into in January.
We're going to kind of do a back tothe office, uh, After what, 25 years,
5 years remote, and then we're back inthe office, I'm looking forward to that.

(50:02):
Why?
Yeah,

why go back to the office?

Um, so when I, when I think, when I think about it, you know, the
problem we have right now is there'sway too many meetings, virtual, internal
with our team, and the meetings, um,cause a delay in getting work done.
Typically, because there's thingsthat need to be discussed in the

(50:27):
meetings to move the ball forward.
And, it's harder to, if you're allworking in the same office, and
there's something small you need totalk to, talk to someone else about.
Typically, you're looking for achance when they're not in front of
their computer, or walking around,or you notice they're free, and
you're just walking up to them.
Hey!
Got five minutes?

(50:48):
Let's talk about this real quick.
When you're remote and you don'thave a visual on your team, you know,
you're, you're kind of in your ownisland and you're, you're having to
ping them on Teams, which by the way,we have developed very good Teams
etiquette at our company where wedon't constantly interrupt each other.
We're respective and, and, and, or, or setup a small meeting or do this or do that.

(51:11):
But we're, we operate on a triagedispatch model now where Everything
gets scheduled out for our engineers.
So their, their, their schedulesare typically all, all full anyway.
So the only time you have forinternal communication are these
scheduled meeting times that alwayshappen on this one day of the week.

(51:31):
And so it, it causes things to backup that wouldn't normally back up.
And then you're trying to crameverything into a single meeting, right?
When things are top of mind in themiddle and you're in the office, you're
There are a lot quicker and easier totalk about when you've when you've got
something top of mind You know you needto talk about and it's got to wait for
another meeting What are you doing?

(51:53):
Maybe making a note about it on an agendaso you know you talk about it But it's
like warming up a car you get into themeeting and you got to warm up that car
to remember all those things That you werehoping to talk about just on a whim and
so it takes longer, you know and and And,luckily, we have AI now, so it takes very

(52:15):
detailed notes, but before we had AI, itwas even harder, because unless someone
was taking good notes in the meeting,things would be forgotten, and then
there'd be even further delays caused.
Um, there's, there's also an aspectof the type of culture we have,
it's kind of a family culturethat we like to promote and have.

(52:36):
And could you imagine livingwith your family remotely?
You wouldn't be living with them, right?
It would feel like a different family.
If you only saw each other onvideo and you had to schedule
time with each other all the time.
So, so there's a human aspect, asocial connection that you really
lose when you're a remote company.

(52:57):
Now there's some lines ofbusiness where that's acceptable.
I mean, if I had a dev company where allthey did is lines of code all day long,
how much interaction do you really need?
When you're a customer centriccompany and you deal with people all
day long and trying to keep peoplehappy, you know, that's going to

(53:20):
affect the quality of service if yourteam can't be around each other, you
know, physically on a regular basis.
If they're hindered by technology toprovide a better quality of service in a
customer centric, you know, environment.
Um, these are just thingsI've noticed, you know.
It can be done remotely.

(53:42):
It's not the type of culturewe want to have, though.
It hinders it, I feel like.
I don't know.

So, you've brought up the term engineers a few times, and
I want to dig into that a little bit,because I remember seeing an argument
somewhere, and I don't remember whichforum it was in, that MSPs should not
be calling their technicians engineers,because an engineer is something that

(54:14):
You had to get a, you know, certificationor a degree or something to get.
And sure, there are software engineers,but an engineer is a special term,
and the guy that's working onfirewalls is probably not an engineer.
What are your thoughts on that?

(54:34):
Have you ever thought about that at all?

Oh yeah.
My brain's a storm of ideas.
It thinks about things all the time.
I mean, we used to callour employees technicians.
Microsoft I mean, we'vebeen through the gamut.
System administrators, uh, networkengineers, um, you know, level
3, that's still kind of used.

(55:00):
I think, I think where I fallback to engineer is really
high level in how we think.
We think like engineers,regardless of what our role is.
Our brains work like an engineer.
My brain still works like an engineer,even though I'm supposed to be a CEO.
So I get into the weeds sometimes.
Which I like, I like getting in theweeds, but really a CEO's role is

(55:23):
to not be in the weeds all day long.
You know, so, um, you know,engineer, I think of it as we,
we want to know how things work.
We understand that thingswork based on a process.
We reverse engineer things all the timeto understand how they work better.
Um, you know, technician to me,why we got away from that is, it's

(55:48):
almost a little demeaning to me.
for listening.
From the value that, that my employeesactually bring to the table on the service
delivery machine, machine, uh, department.
I was thinking machine because what Iwas going to say is technicians typically
are working on some sort of machine.
Right?
Like I think of like a cartechnician, for example.

(56:09):
Like you wouldn't call a mechanic anengineer because the motor's already
been engineered to work a certain way.
And they're more of atechnician working on the motor.
Right, but, but when you thinkabout it, we're not dealing with
out of the box solutions thatwork like a fixed motor in a car.

(56:31):
We're dealing with an operatingsystem, line of business, software
that runs on the operating system.
Let's talk about the drivers thatthe operating system needs to use to
interface with the hardware, whichis a gamut of different types of
hardware we run into all day long.
So we're really having to engineeraway To keep the computer running

(56:54):
with a bunch of different movingpieces that aren't always the same.
And, and when a problem happens, we haveto reverse engineer why that problem might
have happened to understand it better.
Um, so I don't know.
That's, I don't know if that's theanswer you're looking for, but in my
head, as I'm talking about it off thetop of my head, that's kind of where

(57:16):
I fall in why I call them engineers.

I don't think I'm looking for.
A particular answer.
I just wanted to get your thoughts on it.
I don't, I don't, uh, I don'treally have a dog in this fight.
I don't care one way or another.
Um, Well, you do have

some, you do have some dogs that your, uh, family brought over.

They're, they're, they're, they're fighting.
Yes.
Um, you, you mentioned earlier that,you know, you, you were kind of running
a, a lifestyle business at one point.
I, I would argue that you still are.
And hear me out.
I think every CEO is running a lifestylebusiness to a certain degree, because

(58:02):
look at what, what these, what thesepeople are doing, you know, like, look
at, uh, look at, look at Mark Zuckerberg,look at the house he lives in, and all
the, and all the cool stuff he does.
I mean, that's, that's a lifestyle.
Now, he Probably works hisass off like 80 hours a week.

(58:26):
Like he probably livesto work at Meta, right?
Um, and that's okay.
Cause that's.
You know, his family has accepted that.
That's, that's his lifestyle.
You know, you've got acertain lifestyle too.
I don't know how, how, how much youwant to reveal to the public about your
lifestyle, but you know, I, you know,you, you've done well for yourself.

(58:48):
You've got nice things and, um, I don'tthink there's anything wrong with that,
you know, whether you're running a 120,000 company, or a 3 million company, or
a 10 billion company, it all could be alifestyle business depending on how you
as a person are kind of looking at things.

Yeah, I mean, I think any business owner is running their
business so that they can maintaina certain personal lifestyle.
I think where I was using the termearlier is, is your business itself
big enough to maintain a lifestylethat you're happy with to where

(59:34):
you're not really caring to growand scale it and make it better.

Gotcha.
Okay.
Right?
Do you think there's something wrongwith people that, that are at that point?
Yeah.
Yeah.

Not at all.
It's the heart of America.
Lifestyles, small businesses,that's the heart of America.
And it's typically where you get thebetter quality of service because
it's more relationship based, right?
The minute you try tostart growing and scale,
I would say at least half the time you'restarting to leave that, that relationship.

(01:00:09):
You're, you're, you're, maybeyour clients are turning more
into numbers than names, right?

Steve Taylor (01:00:16):
Now, what would you say, um, gosh, I want to tread
lightly here, and it's, it's not you.
So we know a guy who I feel like probablyis just running a lifestyle business.
But keeps telling himselfthat he wants to grow,
but also at the same time, he justkeeps falling further and further

(01:00:41):
behind when it comes to IT knowledge.

Brian Weiss (01:00:47):
Yeah, um, you know, I've been there before.
I mean, especially in the earlier dayswhen I first started iTech, I had no
idea what it was like to grow a business.
I just thought, hey, now that Ihave a business name and I can hang
my shingle up that I'm a businessthat I'm just going to grow one day.
Right?
Without even having to learn how to grow.

(01:01:10):
And, and it really took me, you know, arecession, a security incident, COVID,
the great resignation, which I didn't talkabout, where we lost half of our staff.
Um, and it took, it takes thosehard pains to, to really get, give
yourself humility that maybe youdon't got this and maybe you need to

(01:01:31):
rethink what it, what it really meansto, to, to grow and run a business.
No one's just going to hand you money.
Because you have a business name, orbecause you have a set of skills that
you might be overconfident about even.
Um, I, you know, in my mind, in mymind, what I've learned, so what I've

(01:01:55):
learned up until today, and wherewe're going with our business, is, and
especially in the IT industry, there'skind of two convergences happening.
You're either gonna fall in line witha commoditized model, which means
you're not really offering much morevalue than, than your competitor.
who's also commoditized, and it's,and it's a race for market share.

(01:02:18):
And how are you gettingthat market share, right?
Um, or you're actually developingsome real IP that's differentiating
yourself from your competitor.
And, and the MSP channel has donea great job at commoditizing MSPs.
So we've stepped away from the MSPchannel a bit because the intellectual

(01:02:40):
conversations I've been trying tohave about the things I'm learning
and the direction I want to go with.
With our company haven'tbeen welcomed too.
Well They've been hit with criticism,you know, and and and a kind of a you're
doing it wrong And why would you do that?
You know, we're a Microsoft first shopSo there's a lot of like why you put

(01:03:03):
in all your eggs in one basket Right?
And I'm like, well, it's better than 20different baskets with all these half
baked MSP channel products that I knowfirst hand really are half baked and
they're not getting better because I'vebeen on all the partner advisory boards.

Sure.
Now, now, hold on a second though.
So you say you're a Microsoftfirst shop and there's nothing
wrong with being Microsoft first.
Um, The, the part that I wouldcaution you in, um, when you, when
you think about the fact that allof your eggs are in one basket,
they're all in the Microsoft basket.
Okay, so, if you were to look at,um, let's just say a company that

(01:03:44):
rhymes with Matto, and, uh, you putall your eggs in that basket, right?
And then they get purchased by acompany that rhymes with Keflaya,
and, uh, and, and now your eggs arein a basket, you don't want them in.

(01:04:04):
So I get that because rightnow what's happening in the MSP
industry is, is there's a lot oflike consolidation happening with,
with a lot of the MSP products.
And I think the reason for thatis, um, Uh, let's, let's be honest.
You know, a lot of these companiesare startups that the CEO has a goal.

(01:04:28):
He has, he has a goal of, Iwant to get this valuation.
I want to sell it for thismuch, and I'm going to, I'm
going to make a big nest egg.
Right.
And when you look at companies likeMicrosoft, you know, they're, they're
much larger, they're more established.
They're not looking for an exitbecause they're already a publicly
traded company, so I get that.
But let's look at another behemoth.

(01:04:52):
Okay, of a company, and I'm notgoing to say Apple, CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike is not anMSP first company, right?
They are, they are a company that'spublicly traded, and there are many
MSPs that had their eggs all in thatbasket, and when CrowdStrike had

(01:05:13):
that big crash, a lot of MSPs kindof weren't, weren't a pickle, right?
So, that's, that's my only, That'smy only thought, is it doesn't
matter if all of your eggs arein an MSP basket or an enterprise
basket, shit can still hit the fan.

Yeah, I would say from, uh, with the studying I've done about security
frameworks and around cybersecurity.
First of all, I want to pointout that competition has ruined
cybersecurity, in my opinion.
Antitrust laws should have neverbeen allowed to be passed by the
EU, or the EU Commission shouldhave never forced Microsoft to open

(01:06:00):
up the kernel the way they did.
A good analogy is, you know, uh,and it's not CrowdStrike's fault.
They just took advantage of a marketthat was there to, to compete with, you
know, uh, other third party securitycomp, uh, products, where Defender wasn't
really up to par back in the day anyway.
for listening.
Right?
But, if you look at how far Defender'sgone, and you look at Defender as the

(01:06:22):
secret service who is protecting thepresident, we shouldn't really have a
situation where third party securitycompanies are saying, no fair, I
should be able to protect the presidentat that sensitive level as well.
It creates single points of failure.
And I think to your point, no matterwhere your eggs are, how many different

(01:06:43):
baskets they're spread in, whetherthey're in one basket or not, Really
what we have to start looking at iswhat are our single points of failure.
And that's really what happenedwith the global outage, is there
was a single point of failure.
Now, could there be a singlepoint of failure with Microsoft?
Of course.
Microsoft could come out with aDefender update that did the same

(01:07:04):
thing that CrowdStrike would.
However, it's Microsoft's kernel.
So who are you going to trust that'sgoing to come out with an update that's
not going to cause a kernel issue?
Is it going to be a third party company?
That's growing on the stock marketand has capitalism at its back to try
to make numbers to compete with otherthird party security products, right?

(01:07:29):
You know, the minute you startgetting competition in cybersecurity,
that's when walls start going up.
People aren't sharing information.
What about IOCs?
Indicators of Compromise?
Why are third party security companiesHaving indicators of compromises of threat
actors that they're not sharing withother third party security companies and

(01:07:50):
they're IP to drive up their stock price.
Do you think a state in California,or a state in the US, if there was a
criminal in California that went overto Nevada, California is going to be
like, sorry, we're not going to shareany information about that criminal
that just entered your state becausewe've got IP we need to protect.

(01:08:13):
Because it helps us be worth more moneyfrom a security standpoint, right?
So, you know, it goes up all the wayup to capitalism, I guess, right?
And the fact that this wasallowed, uh, in cybersecurity.
So, but, but it's, letme use another analogy.
So, why are we Microsoftfirst, Defender first?
Now, they can't do everything.

(01:08:34):
We augment Defender with, withThreatLocker, shirt I'm wearing, right?
I love third party security products.
That don't try to displace or competewith Defender, because if you've already
got a bouncer inside the room withyou, why are you going to fire that
bouncer to depend on a bouncer that'soutside of the room that has to ask

(01:08:55):
Microsoft for permission every timejust to come in the door to protect you?
Right?
That's another single point of failure.
Different from the kernel levelwhere third party security has
to maintain permission with theMicrosoft operating system or even
Microsoft 365 tenant to Protect you.
There's an, there's an Azure Enterpriseapp for any third party security

(01:09:19):
that is a single point of failure.
If you had an insider threat or athreat, threat actor that gained high
enough level of permissions, they coulddelete that enterprise app and blind
your third party security product.
So, so when I think about a stoicapproach, I knew you were wanting me
to get to this, is, is we really needto avoid, avoid the FUD, the fear,

(01:09:43):
uncertainty, and doubt, which isreally the smoke and mirrors the truth.
That you see in cybersecurity aroundwhy one company says they're a better
security company than the other, andthey're competing with each other
when really they should be sharinginformation so that we can rise the tides.
Or on the opposite side, fomo.

(01:10:03):
Fear of missing out something you maynot have yet that you feel like you need.
Like my 40 layers of securitythat I jumped to , right?
Where now I've justovercomplicated my life.
And maybe added, like, several layers,single points of failure, and all these
things I'm not even thinking about.
My threat landscape's bigger now.

(01:10:24):
You know, I got 40 vendors I'm workingwith versus 15, you know, that's a
bigger threat landscape to manage.
So, so my idea with the stoicapproach to technology is, uh, and
you look at a security framework, Itdoesn't care about users and devices.
Really, those are cattle.

(01:10:44):
Uh, I never tell a human they're cattle, auser, a user account, let's call it that.
User accounts and devices from asecurity, um, framework aspect,
they don't care about them.
Now, if you're storing data on a device,then naturally it cares about that, but
now you're understanding where I'm going.
All it cares about is data.

(01:11:07):
And so where does all your data live?
And the users and devices aretypically vectors to that data.
So, the more applicationsyou use, I also blame Apple.
I'm in a blame game today,if you haven't noticed.

Now hold on a second, you leave my beloved Apple be.

Okay, here's one criticism that I'm hoping you can't argue with.
Apple came out with this commercialthat they thought was great, and it
kind of was fun at the time, but nowI'm looking back at it and I hate it.
They taught a whole generation thatthere's an app for that, right?
So you have this generation thatcomes into the workforce and
wants to do more with technologyand maybe they're not getting the

(01:11:48):
support from their manager or IT.
And they're just finding their ownapp to solve their problem and that's,
therein lies shadow IT is anotherthing we're battling with today.
So how many apps are you using?
And where's all your data dispersed?
And how big is your threat landscape?
And how do you build asecurity framework around that?
Well the easiest thing to do is totalk about it in users and devices.

(01:12:14):
We're not gonna, we're not gonnacare about where the data is.
And by the way, it's hard to sellsecurity with a data centric focus.
It's a much different conversation and,and how do you even price that out?
It's much easier to say, our,our, our service costs X amount
per user or X amount per device.
Now go scale with that, right?

(01:12:35):
It's really a commoditizedapproach to security in my opinion.
And, but when the minute you starttalking about data, it's like, whoa, So,
we can't even give you a price yet untilwe understand where all your data is.
And, and first we got to figure out allthe apps you're using, you know, and
then we figure out where your data is.
And then we understand, okay, what isthat going to cost to actually secure?

(01:12:56):
Well, the next logical stepis, well, there's user accounts
and devices accessing thoseapps that access that data.
So there is some, there is somereasonable aspect or there's some
reasonable thought in that approach,but it's not really the core thing
that a security framework needs to.
Protect.
So a stoic approach would be, let's notjust throw more tools and more layers of

(01:13:21):
security so we can sleep better at night.
Let's understand, do weeven need all these apps?
Do we even need our datadispersed in the way that it is?
What's the value that we'regetting out of doing this?
Other than the fact we just allowedthis to get out of hand because
everyone and their mom at your companydecided to go get an app that they

(01:13:43):
thought was going to help them.
When really there should have beenmore leadership, a better leadership
approach and oversight to makesure we're trying to keep all the
horses in the In the stable, right?
Um

That's good, man.
So, the only thing I want to say, youknow, on the Apple stuff is I'm torn.
You know, you said earlier you hatethe EU and all their antitrust stuff.
I'm torn, okay?
On one side, I agree.
I think that if they keep goingafter Apple for things, they're

(01:14:21):
going to ruin what makes Apple Apple.
Yeah.
Yeah.

100%.

But, I gotta say, I really love that I've got USB C
on my iPhone instead of Lightning.
And I love that I now have RCScommunication, whatever it's
called, uh, so I can, I can do richmessaging with my Android friends.

(01:14:46):
Um, those losers, uh, but, but on, youknow, at the same time, like, you know, I
don't love that they've made it so in theEU, you can use a third party app store.
Like, no, that, that's stupid.

Yeah.
I, some of those I agree with.
I mean, some of them I wouldn'tconsider security, right?
I mean, lightning port versus USB C.

Yeah, I don't think that was for security.
I think that one was, they were,they were trying to make it so that,
uh, I don't know why it mattered.
I really don't.
I think they were trying to makeit so that way all, all, uh,
consumer devices were standardizedacross the same type of port.

And they should be, because I hate carrying multiple chargers.
I love Apple devices.
Well, I should say I like iOS.
I started out with with appwith Macs in high school.
That's all I knew and workedon before I got involved with
delivering business services in ITwhere no one was really using Macs.
Now I love Windows and Microsoft, butI use iOS for mobile and I really don't

(01:15:59):
trust Google is, you know, at all,especially a lot of the stuff I've
been reading lately, uh, paper thatRobert Epstein put out, uh, with his
project, um, really opened my eyes.
That's, I knew you were going to say that.
Different, different Epstein.

(01:16:19):
God, that name's gotsuch a bad connotation.
It

really does.

Um, so I don't, I don't want to get into the Google stuff because.
They might take your podcastdown if we get too deep into it.
Uh, they've been knownto do things like that.

I'm not scared of them.

Come at me, Google.
No, don't say that.
You need to take the stoic approach.

No, honestly, um, so, so I, I'm torn on Google.
I love Google Workspace, uh,much more than Microsoft 365
and not from an administratorperspective, from a user perspective.
Okay.
From an administratorperspective, I think.
Microsoft is much more secure and, andhas much more capabilities, but from a

(01:17:11):
user perspective, Google, Google is likeApple to me, where it's, it just works.
You know what I mean?
Um, so I really, you know, I say,come at me, Google, but I like Google.
I don't have anything against you guys.
Um, we are, no, please go ahead.

One thing I'll point out there is that Google
started in the web, right?
And Microsoft didn't.
So Microsoft's been building theairplane while they're flying it,
getting it out to a web platform.
So it's, it's natural that you're gonnanot have as seamless as an experience
as you might feel you get from Google.

(01:17:50):
So I think we shouldunderstand that as well.

Yeah, that's fair.
Well, hey, we're, we're like wayover on time, but I have one last
question, Brian, and it's a fun one.
Are you still wearing your AI necklace?

No.
What happened?
So I actually, so I,I, I found another one.
I found actually twoother ones that I ordered.
Why am I not surprised?
And I'm going to try them out.
This one was just too expensive.
It was like 19 bucks a month and Iwasn't getting the value out of it.

(01:18:26):
Like I was wondering like, why can'tI just open up Copilot on my phone
and use that instead or have it recordand then transcribe or whatever.
I mean, it is nice to have it onyour neck, but it was too expensive.
I actually reached out to the CEO.
And had a conversation with him about it.
And why does

that not surprise me either?

Because I was trying to understand why is it so expensive?
And, and maybe, and I evenpointed out these other options.
I was like, why wouldn't Igo use these other options?
You tell me what's differentabout your product.
That's going to make me wantto stick with yours because.
It's brand spankin new, so it'snot, it's not perfect, and you're
already charging this much money?

(01:19:08):
Like, you're charging the same amountthat I could pay for Copilot, or, or
MetaAI, or a lot of these other AIs that,that, uh, that give me a lot more value.
And, uh, and his, the only thing hecan come back with was, he keeps all
the, you know, he doesn't use the datafor any training, so it's all private.
And then I was like, so,you're selling this AI model,

(01:19:30):
how are you training it then?
If you're not using any of the trainingfrom all your end users that are sitting
here, literally training your AI for you,and how are you going to grow a better AI?
How are you going to make it smarterso that it improves over time?
He didn't have a

good answer, did he?

Well, they're, they're doing their own training.
But they're not usingcrowdsourcing for training.
And, and, and in my, really, in myopinion, all AI should be open source.
You know, like I don'ttrust open AI at all.
The fact they started out nonprofit,open source, now they're closed
source and they're all about profit.
I do not like that.
You can't see how they'retraining their AI.

(01:20:10):
It's behind a curtain.
And, and so I think AI really needs to beopen source, uh, as far as the model goes.
Um, but you can't make asmuch money off of it that way.
Um, so I'm okay with, withsharing my training data if I
know it's going to improve the AI.
Um, you know, I'm still battling with, youknow, well, what data is it collecting?

(01:20:33):
What data is it not collecting?
And understanding that better becausethere's a lot of things that could
be said just for a placebo, you know,button that you're pressing, you
know, telling yourself it's, it'sprivate when maybe it really isn't.
But in all honesty, we've got.
Alex is out there, you know, we've,we've got our phone listening to

(01:20:54):
us all day, not going to get intowhat Google's doing because I don't
want your podcast to get banned.
That stuff is already happening, right?
And if, and I'm using AI to help cutthrough a lot of the narratives about
whether or not that stuff is happening.
And the problem is when you have a closedsource model, that's for profit, it's

(01:21:15):
driven by special interests, it's drivenby people wanting to make more profit.
These people also want narrativesto continue that might be false.
And so, you start to trust even usingthe AI in the first place of whether or
not you're getting factual data back.
You know, is it going to be just likea Google search, where you're searching
for something that you know is thereand it's purposely not coming up?

(01:21:37):
Um, so, so yeah, back to,back to your question.
I got rid of that one.
I did have a talk with the CEO to tryto figure it out a little bit more.
I'm trying out these other two ones.
These two other ones with a stoicapproach, um, but I love that idea.
Now these other ones, one ofthem's completely free, which tells

(01:22:00):
me they're probably collectinganything and everything, because
how do you offer a free service?
The other one charges you perminute, which is even more expensive.
So it's like, hey, I'm leavingyours that's unlimited 19 a
month, because I like this otherone that charges me per minute.
It doesn't make sense, right?

So, I, I gotta say, uh, have you used Fathom, that AI
recorder for Zoom and all that?

Love that company.
Um, we stopped using Copilotfor our meetings, because Fathom
has a better hyper focus arounddelivering value for meetings.
And so we've moved to thatin our company for now.
Um, I've got a meeting with them nextweek to talk about, uh, A lot of security
questions that I have to see whether ornot we would refer this to our clients.

(01:22:47):
We're kind of POC ing it right now.
But I even invested in thecompany in their last series.
And I've talked to their CEO and developeda relationship with the CEO as well.
So, I love what they're doing.
100%.

I want Fathom for my life.

Yeah.

I want Fathom on a necklace.
You know, I want to be able to haveit, uh, you know, and this is me just
spitballing, you know, push a buttonto start and stop meetings, or what
have you, so that way it can summarizedifferent parts of my day for me.
Because, man, I love it.

(01:23:28):
I, I love Fathom.
It has, it has made mylife a whole lot easier.
The only thing I think it's missing,it, for me at least, is the ability
to like, link up to a to do appof some sort to take those action
items and put them in my to do list.

That's, that's a great idea for Fathom actually
as kind of a next product.
I would say, I definitely don't likeit that it's listening all day long.
That was the other one that I got rid of.
It just listened all day long.
There was no stop start to it.
Like, unless you went in, I guessyou can go into the app maybe
and disconnect it or something.
I like the idea of, cause I run mylife based on a calendar, and so

(01:24:11):
I've got two things where AI couldunderstand when it should be listening.
One of them is, look at my calendar,and have me tag a few things.
Which time frames in my daybased on my appointments.
I want you to be listening and then Iyou could also do it GPS based Right.
So maybe maybe you're running a bunchof errands and you don't want it to be

(01:24:35):
running based on a GPS Location, right?
That would be another thing I'dwant to have because I don't really
like the idea of having to rememberto start stop at all the time
But that would be the the fallbackright and that's that is one of them.
I ordered it is a start stop button Um,the, the other thing I'm intrigued about

(01:24:56):
is I just bought the new Apple watch,uh, the Ultra 2, and I'm interested
to see what type of AI capabilitiesthat might have, because I also like
the idea of just having it on mywrist, and being able to flip up, or
something, or give it a command, Imean, commands are kind of clunky, maybe
press a button on my watch, you know.
With Apple

intelligence, realistically, you're not going to see anything
truly useful out of it on the watchfor probably until February, March.

Yeah.
That's what I was reading.
There wasn't really anything out ofthe box yet, but I at least wanted to
get the hardware, the new hardware,because my old, my old watch is,
it's like three generations older.
They wouldn't even give meany trade in value for it.

I'm wearing a Series 7 right now, and, uh, it's fine.

Yeah.
And then I got the new iPhone 16 as well.
So, I, you know, while I'mtrying out these necklace type
watches, You know, AI devices.
I feel like ultimately it's going tobe something I want Apple to handle
for me, because I've already gotan Apple watch and an Apple phone.
So what might Apple come out withif there is a necklace or if it

(01:26:07):
can just be part of the watch?
Um, I, the future I see withAI is there's not going to be
one huge all encompassing AI.
There's going to be, you know, personalAI, like ideally everyone has their
own personal AI that knows everythingabout them and also acts as their
gatekeeper to share information, shareinformation with other AI or humans.

(01:26:31):
And so you become almost symbiotic withyour personal AI because it's got to know
everything about you to truly protect you.
It can't know less thanthe threat actors AI.
Um, and then you're going to havelike, you know, the company you work
for is going to have a business AI.
In my mind, that's Microsoft.
They're really the leadersright now in AI that's really

(01:26:53):
good at business applications.
So then, so you go to work for yourcompany, and you set up a relationship
between your AI and the company'sAI, and your AI knows what to share
and not to share, but it's automatinga lot of the things you'd have to
do normally from a personal level.

(01:27:14):
Microsoft MFA for example, right?
I mean is that even gonna be even a thing?
We'll be passwordlessat some point in time?
I hope.
You know right now we're moving totokens, but maybe, maybe your token is
your watch and your AI at that point.
Your own personal AI is your token.
Assuming it can't be duplicated.

(01:27:34):
That, that's where maybe somethinglike blockchain comes into play.
Who knows?

Oh man, I thought I was out, I thought I was over here at blockchain.
I thought we were done with that buzzword.

It's got, it's got some usefulness to it.
I'll tell you what, I'm moving a bunch ofcash over to USDC, uh, digital currency.
I get 5%.
You know, I get a monthly report of thisinterest I'm getting that I was definitely
not getting with my savings account in mybank, that, you know, they, the bank, by
the way, even though you see your moneysitting in the bank account, it's not

(01:28:11):
really there, you know, if they leavemoney in the bank, they're not doing
their business model properly, they'reimmediately lending on that money, so it's
a really fragile system we have right now,so I do think digital currency, which uses
blockchain technology, So you're not goingto stop hearing about it, uh, is going to

(01:28:31):
help balance, uh, you know, the bankingsystem in the future, and in fact, every
big bank I know of right now is comingout with their own digital currency.
Um,
I don't know, we're goingoff on all these tangents.
What was the original question?
AI necklace.

I think the original question was, do you
guys get hurricanes in California?
No, we were talking about theAI necklace thing and, uh, no,
you answered the question, man.
So I appreciate that.
And.
And we could talk about AI probablyfor hours, but we're not going to.

(01:29:11):
And I, I do want to, um, Beforewe sign off, I want to say one
last thing, and it's, uh, you, youmentioned earlier that you're okay
with AI using your training data.
And I just want to clarify that you'renot saying That you're okay with AI having

(01:29:33):
open access to all of your confidentialdocuments and your IP and all that stuff.
You're just okay with themhaving access to the training
data, which is very different.

Thank you for clarifying that because that
could be taken out of context.
You are correct there.

Yeah.
And the last thing I need is foryou to be on a soundbite somewhere.

Yeah.
Well, they'll take soundbites anyway.
I mean, we've got, um,all right, last thing.
I'm working with astealth company right now.
They're in stealth mode, I shouldsay, uh, where we're doing, we're
setting up vishing because I'vedone enough of these podcasts.
You have, uh, threat actors aregoing to be able to copy our voice.

(01:30:19):
And literally call people we know andget them to try to do things with a
normal phone call, where the personreally thinks they're talking to us.
And, and so, that's going to be thenext revolution, I think, when it
comes to security training, is thisidea of, are we preparing everyone
in the world for getting a call outof the blue, that could even have a

(01:30:41):
masked phone number, that looks likethat person's phone number, sounds
like them, where they're going to getsucked into doing something they regret.
Right.
Um, so that, that's, that's onething too, to, to understand is, you
know, our data's already out there.
We've all got a digital footprint and,and when, when AI, when the threat actors

(01:31:05):
really start harnessing AI, no humanSOC, no human IR team is going to be
able to keep up with the advancement.
We're going to have to use AIourselves to protect ourselves.
And it's got to know enough about usIt's got to know more than the threat
actors AI knows about us, ultimately.

That's, that's a really interesting thought, but, um, great.
Now I'm going to have nightmaresabout people using my voice.
Thanks.

Well, and they'll get to videos too, pretty soon.
Videos are a little easier totell that they aren't real, right?
Mm hmm.

Did you see that video of Arnold Schwarzenegger doing,
uh, that, what was it, an 80s song?
I don't remember what one.

I haven't seen that yet.

I think Kyle Christensen posted it.
Oh.
One of the cybersecurity guys posted it.
Will Brooks, that's who posted it.

Okay.

I'll find it and I'll put it in the show notes because
now it's going to bother me.
And now he's going to get at least threemore views on that post thanks to me.
Alright.

Is it weird that I actually want to get a Neuralink as well?

You know, I'm torn.
I'm, I'm really, I'm between wanting oneand thinking that's the mark of the beast.
So, I, I totally I want to beable, especially because I've
got these neck issues, right?
So I'm totally all about like, whatcan I do to, I don't know, make my

(01:32:48):
life easier if, if the rest of my spineand the rest of my bones all seize up?
You know, am I going tobe stuck in a wheelchair?
Am I going to, am I going to, I won'tbe able to do this into that thing in
the side because my neck doesn't move.
So, you know, how, howcan I control this stuff?
So trust me, I'm, I'm all about.

(01:33:08):
Uh, embedding technology into me, I'mjust not sure if I want it to be Elon
Musk's technology because he justseems to have gone off the deep end.
And I don't even mean politically,okay, we'll just skip all of that.
He just, I don't know, something about,like something, a switch was flipped.

(01:33:34):
Around the time he bought Twitter ormaybe even just around the time of
the pandemic, you know, he, he startedmanipulating the, the stock market and,
you know, Dogecoin and all that stuff.
And, and then he, then hebuys Twitter and then he just
kind of went off the deep end.

Yeah, I see that as him, uh, pointing out vulnerabilities
that we are taking for granted.
Oh,

sure.
And, and I'm, I'm all about that.
But, um, you know, because, becauseyou look at, uh, look at what John
Stewart and Stephen Colbert did,gosh, was it 20 years ago now?
When, when they made a superpack?

Yeah.

And all that stuff.
Uh, and, and Stephen Colbert wasrunning for president and John
Stewart was running a superpack.
And oh, it was, It was,uh, it was fantastic.
It was very eye opening, educational,and I feel like they revealed
some vulnerabilities in thepolitical system, if you will.

(01:34:42):
So I'm, I'm all about people findingcreative ways to educate the masses.
I just, uh, I don't know if he wasintentionally trying to educate as much
as he was trying to Take advantage.

Well, maybe by the time I get a Neuralink, I can just
ask my own personal AI if it'ssafe, and then it'll let me know.

That'll do it.
AI would never lie to you.
or, or anything.
Yeah.
. Brian, this has been awesome man.
Thank you so much for coming onhere and having a chat with me.
I can't wait to do it again where maybenext time let's just dive into AI and
make that be the conversation next time.
Man.

I'd love that.
I'll, I'll get my notes arranged bettertoo, so I'm not thinking off the top of my
head as much when it comes to ai for sure.
Yeah.

All good.
Cool.
Yep.
Have a good one, guys.

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