April 1, 2025 • 51 mins
Your small business is vulnerable to cyber attacks whether you realize it or not. In this eye-opening conversation, IT expert James Sanford reveals the shocking truth that companies like yours face dozens of digital attacks daily—even if you're "just a handyman company" or small service business.
James takes us through his journey from solo IT consultant to managed service provider, explaining how the cybersecurity landscape has dramatically evolved from annoying pop-ups to sophisticated ransomware operations that can completely shut down your business. With remarkable clarity, he breaks down complex security concepts into practical advice using colorful analogies like "putting alligators in your digital moat" that make cybersecurity accessible to even the most tech-resistant business owners.
The most valuable segment comes when James outlines the five essential security measures every business needs: a proper firewall, endpoint detection and response software, password management tools, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive backup solutions. These fundamentals form a solid security foundation that can protect your business from the most common threats without breaking your budget.
What truly stands out is the paradigm shift James describes—moving from reactive IT support that only fixes things when they break to proactive management that prevents problems before they impact your business. This approach not only improves security but dramatically enhances productivity by eliminating those frustrating technology disruptions that kill your team's momentum and waste valuable time.
Don't wait until you become another cybercrime statistic. Take the first step toward protecting your business by implementing these essential security measures today—because the cost of prevention is always less expensive than recovery after an attack.
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
But what if you change that mindset to your
customer that I want to haveless of those break-fix
incidents because those aredisruptive and I can't control
them?
But if you start thinking aboutproactive maintenance, hey,
let's look for the top things wesee go wrong with a PC Monitor
(00:20):
for them.
And what if we can self-healthose issues?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
monitor for them?
And what if we can self-healthose issues?
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari where I help guide you to
avoid those traps, pitfalls anddangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
(00:46):
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Alan, here we go again.
Everybody's listening.
I'm getting all kinds offeedback here lately from people
about all right.
One of them really sucked, butit was my sound quality on one
(01:08):
of the episodes, and so Chrishad to go back to podcast school
to get his audio fixed back up.
But he's back and we're goingto be back rocking.
Now here's some of the coolfeedback we've gotten.
Alan is I listen to yourpodcast every week, got that one
.
Your podcast every week, gotthat one.
Hey, buddy, I was justlistening to your podcast and I
(01:29):
wanted to give you a call andtell you, man, I really love
that episode talking about someof the topics that we've had as
of late, which had been kind ofcool and so that's been kind of
fun.
I love that kind of feedback, sowe're getting some really good
feedback.
Of course, I got the radio giggoing now and we're really
starting to hit our stride herein Atlanta, where we're only
focused on home servicecompanies here and helping
people in their home improvementstuff.
(01:49):
But today I've got a reallyexciting guest.
I am excited about this onebecause there are so many
different ways we can go withthis guest, but I asked him to
focus in on something that Ithink is important to all of us.
So I have my IT guy here todayand I have James Sanford who
(02:13):
takes care of all of ourinformation technology and all
of the safety that we need tohave in this new crazy world of
cybersecurity.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Man, you're just getting right into it.
There's no dad jokes, no puns,no what you did this weekend no
Vegas.
That's what happens when wehave a dry podcast.
All right, so everybody, youdidn't even no what you did this
weekend.
No Vegas.
That's what happens when wehave a dry podcast.
You didn't even ask me what Idid this weekend.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
All right.
So here's the problem.
Usually, alan and I gettogether in the afternoon and
it's bourbon four o'clock, Imean bourbon five o'clock, as it
were.
But today we're doing this oneduring the day to accommodate
some different schedules but tomake sure that we're getting out
some great episodes, greatcoverage.
And you're right, I didn't talkto you about my big daddy
weekend, so I will tell you Ihad a proud papa moment this
(02:50):
weekend.
You did, I did.
My daughter has walked with herwhite coat in her PA school.
Congratulations, thank you.
Very exciting.
And one of the things I got inthe comments on Facebook was hey
, she's one step closer togetting off the payroll.
And of course, she's home todayand I just got done approving a
$2,000 expense on her vehiclebefore she takes off to do her
(03:13):
first rotation.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
They never leave and I've told you the story about my
wife's father's father who, at13, his dad said time for you to
leave the home, head down tothe docks in Portland and seek
your adventure At 13.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I know right.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
What are we doing?
I don't know.
We're coddling our children.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's not healthy.
These kids are 26.
They need to work in the docks.
That hits a little home forsomebody.
She's 26 and not off thepayroll Whoa.
And what are we doing?
That's right, you can't seethis because we actually have an
extra special person in theaudience, but she's not going to
be on the podcast.
We have James' daughterSavannah, who has recently
joined his company, and inliterally one hour she blew my
(03:53):
mind on AI, on what the heckshe's doing.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
But we're not going to talk AI today.
Savannah, that's not that hardto do.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's true.
I mean AI.
That's a lot of syllables.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I mean it's at least two letters.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I think it's actually longer than your password.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So we're going to get into this, guys.
Man, this is going to be somuch fun.
Cybersecurity James Sanfordthanks for joining us today.
Like I said, we can go in somany different directions.
He's done so many things inthis business in terms of
automation, scaled withouthaving to add staff.
Oh my God, hello, you don'thave to add people.
Oh, I need that one.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, Until they build robots that can you know,
do construction.
I think you're screwed withthat Not happening.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You have to have labor.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
So we could go that way.
We could talk about all thestuff they're doing with AI, so
we'll probably end up havingJames on.
But today, man, I wanted tofocus on what James has done,
because no more than at leastthree different times he has
blown my mind on cybersecurityand stuff that happens.
And here's the thing, right,when we all get started.
I started with a laptop, a flipphone and a camera, right?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
The good old days, the good old days, right.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So I had my laptop, which was a client server-based
CRM system.
I was pretty cool, except theclient and the server were all
on my laptop, which was in mytruck, which was driving around
with me every day, and so I hadthat.
And then I had a flip phone andthen, as I've grown to where we
are today, where we have theAtlanta and the Athens division,
(05:28):
I've got a server in the officebut we're all on the web now,
right, but I have voice over IP.
I have all this other stuffgoing on, and I let one of my
ladies go work from home, and sowe set up a computer at her
house and she happened to bedoing all of our payroll, all of
our books.
She's a threat, oh my god, sheis a threat.
(05:51):
So james, james, there's a leak.
He says he, he, uh.
He says hey, um, chris, uh, can, can we do?
I think he said vpn.
I forget exactly what he said,but we need to do something
about this computer.
I'm like why he goes.
It's getting attacked 90 timesa day to get into our.
I said, but we're just a littlehandyman company.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He goes oh, that's like the Matrix.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
With the little Right .
So, james, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Well, thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to get to behere and talk to you guys.
Nice to meet you.
Yeah, nice to meet you.
Sorry, it's not over a bourbonWell I agree, but you were
missed last week.
I mean not by Chris, no heactually got a little
sentimental.
I listened to it, I did.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
By the way over this weekend I was at a big, fancy
wedding in LA.
It felt like I was in a movieand I heard maybe the greatest
seven words I've ever heard inmy life um, you're three
thousand dollars short on yourminimum at the bar, oh, my god
and then, and the night hadalready kind of wound down and
(06:57):
so we're like bring me the,bring me the bourbon list.
Cousin brad was like bring methe wine list and the next thing
, you know, champagne foreverybody.
It was.
And I was trying to be goodthat night.
That went to hell and all of asudden my brother-in-law showed
up and he's like, okay, we're tosix bucks.
And he just shut it down.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So we made up the gap you made up the gap.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
We made up the gap.
Wow, you know things that youdo for family, somebody has to
do it.
Oh, my God, that's awesome.
I was in the right spot.
You know opportunitypreparedness, all those things
that go into.
You know performing.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I'm proud of you.
You pivoted well, I did.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You had a problem presented and you found a
solution.
I was a solution provider.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Well, the other solution was to use someone
else's credit card to keep going.
No, to pay the whole thing.
No, no, that's not as fun.
Oh yeah, but yeah no, it was.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It was already prepaid.
So, oh my gosh may as well hitit so you had, you had, you were
in la with cousin brad.
Did they mention that you wereon a podcast, that you were a
celebrity when you're out there?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
yeah, that was it was part of the wedding vows and
then.
But cousin brad and I did getto play a little round of golf
and uh, at his country club athis club.
That is so, you know.
Nicholas redesigned it right.
There's a couple holes whereit's almost like 11 at augusta
where they you know, they say if, uh, if you actually hit the
green, I missed you know,because you're supposed to hit
front, right right out on.
We had a couple shots like that.
(08:19):
You know, I haven't touched astick in a while and we ended up
uh coming from behind.
I tied it on 16 and cousin bradput the knife in their heart
and we went up one up, uh wenton 18 there we go.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Nice, now that's a big trip.
You didn't have a big daddyweekend I was just over here
buying in the store, doing thepodcast trying to help people,
educate them a little bit aboutthis and that, so all right,
let's get into.
So james sanford started teamspring.
Uh, when did you start that?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
gosh savannah uh 99.
She was born 26 years yes ago.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What's this, what's this?
That's, uh, bourbon light, uh,that is that.
That, and I cannot perform amiracle.
I cannot turn that water intowine.
You keep drinking water, alan.
We're gonna keep you going andwe'll almost stay on track,
almost so, 26 years ago, youleft the corporate world and
started.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Well, I didn't initially just jump ship.
So what happened was I was partof the dot-com era, you know,
building enterprise softwareblue martini, different other
products and when she was bornand then her brother was born a
few years later, I was like,every time I come back from the
West Coast, every week they lookdifferent.
You know how the kids grow soquickly.
(09:30):
And it just got to the pointwhere you saw the writing on the
wall with the dot bomb andyou're thinking gosh, I really
want to do something on my own,my own consulting company, my
own something.
That entrepreneurial instinctkicked in ever since I was
little.
I mean, my brother and I wouldgo on the beach in Savannah and
get shells and drag our littlewagon around and sell them
(09:51):
things like that.
So we even created detectiveson the spot dots for the Hardy
Boys, and so we've always hadthis little inclination that we
wanted to own our own thing.
So I initially started doingcustom software development.
That was eTech Software.
That was the initial name ofthe company.
(10:12):
Everything was e-something backthen.
So around 2006, I finally leftthe corporate world and went in
full force.
That is the hardest thing isjumping ship.
That first step is absolutelythe most terrifying until you're
off the boat, until you'redoing it yourself and you have
(10:34):
to perform.
You have two little children, awife, you have to perform.
And so then it turned into okay, I've got all these great
programming gigs, you know,building out CRM systems and
workflows and things like that,but you're always hunting.
You're always hunting for thatnext thing.
So at that time then customerswere asking for tech support.
(10:54):
It was starting to get to thepoint where the Internet is now
a very stable thing.
It's not Earthlink, you knowdial up.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Talk about being at the right place at the right
time, Like I was at that bar.
I mean his customer.
The whole world is expandingand you happen to be right there
and know what you're talkingabout.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, and so at that point I'm like you know what?
There should be a monthlyrecurring revenue component here
.
If I'm going to have to supportsomebody, we are supporting
them, we're charging them anhourly rate.
And so then I thought, well,maybe we come up with plans
silver, gold, platinum where youget two hours a month, four
hours a month or six hours amonth, and then anything above
(11:36):
that you get built in a littlereduced hourly rate.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
But at the time nobody had that idea, nobody
Right.
So you didn't say well, saywell, listen, I'm gonna put you
on a subscription program.
You're doing subscriptionsbefore.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Netflix was even thinking about it, maybe a
future seer.
It was really.
Really.
It started to get to the pointwhere, okay, I've got some
momentum here, I've got somecash that I can at least have,
knowing it's coming in eachmonth.
So at that point technology isstarting to really blow up.
There are ways to remote intocomputers, there are ways to
automate things associated withtech support, and so I bought
(12:16):
into an enterprise softwarepackage called Kaseya that
allowed me to remotely monitorand manage my customers'
machines.
So I can now turn a reactivequestion hey, my computer broke
into.
Hey, I see that your harddrive's getting full and fix it
or call them before they can'twork anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So that is part of the subscription.
You came up with gold, silver,platinum, yeah, and you started
selling people on it.
How was the original adoptionwith that?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, I went slow to begin with.
Right, the typical startupentrepreneur is everything has
to be just absolutely perfectbefore you introduce it to a
customer, and everything isnever perfect.
So I started it with justputting the agent, those tools,
on the machines, because ithelped me not have to drive over
(13:07):
to your office or somebodyelse's office and as a one-man
show, I still had littlechildren that I, okay, I can
watch them, honey, while you goout and go grocery shopping.
Well, you know, and not if Ihave to have an emergency and go
help somebody.
So then that started becomingmore and more prevalent.
I still, I mean, at that timethat was an $80,000 investment
for a one-man company to buythis.
(13:29):
It was considered enterprisesoftware.
There was no cloud version ofthis.
I had to have a server in myhouse, in my basement, that
these agents would check intoand we would just manage it, and
then slowly I'd charge, and wewould just manage it, and then
slowly I'd charge.
You know, whatever it was, thatbase package.
Well gosh, now suddenly virusesare coming in and being more
(13:51):
prevalent.
I mean, you know, 25 years agoyou didn't even really hear of a
virus.
No, you know.
And then until one day I'mlooking and I'm clicking on
something and suddenly all thesepop-ups keep happening.
They're very, I mean, they'rejust annoying.
Right.
At the time they were justannoying Right, and all you had
(14:17):
to do was download things likeViper or McAfee or, you know,
trend or any of those reactiveantivirus tools.
And so I'm like, well, weshould have some component of
security.
Yes, there's this.
Let's ask for managed security.
Then suddenly, oh gosh, allthese servers that everybody
have, all these small businessservers that Microsoft came out
with, that had their ownexchange server for email, their
own shared volumes and thingsof that nature.
We need to back that up.
(14:40):
So again, my thought was it hasto be perfect.
How am I going to do this?
Well, I was like my businesscoach at the time, and I think
everybody needs a business coachIf you don't have somebody that
you can look up to, no matterwhat level higher than you.
It's so important.
I said, well, it doesn't haveto be perfect.
Can't you just drive over?
You only have 10 customersDrive over on Mondays.
(15:00):
Swap the little USB drives.
I was like days, swap thelittle USB drives.
That's a great idea and I maybeI can get my friend Jay to do
it for me.
But so at the time it slowlyprogressed.
And when I say slowlyprogressed it, you know we went
from 10 customers to maybe 12 to, you know, and now we're at 50
and manage a thousand computers.
Then it turned into it wasgetting annoying doing two hours
(15:21):
and then billing somebody foran extra three because they had
more questions, and then gold.
And then it was gettingannoying doing two hours and
then billing somebody for anextra three because they had
more questions, and then gold.
And then it was constantlygetting to the point where I'm
getting.
I'm spending a lot of timeanswering questions about
invoices and what's included andwhat's not, and so I finally I
think in 2010 or so said youknow what I'm not taking any
(15:41):
customers that aren't on our allinclusive plan.
I'll lower the rates a littlebit, but I want to take the
billing aspect.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So in 2010,.
You said I will work with youif you buy my subscription, but
I will not just come set up acomputer for you.
Correct, and that was in 2010.
That's why I'm writing thisdown for the timeline.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I met you in 2014, I believe.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I already fully vetted this as all-inclusive one
plan.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That's really a tipping point in a business life
when you can actually beselective on who your customer
is.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, yes, it is and it isn't.
I still was taking up peoplethat had four machines or five
machines.
Now our average customer is 15.
Our biggest customer is morethan 50.
It, you know, it's all relative.
You know, at the time that wasplenty of money for us, it was
just one salary.
Um, then it became the nextfirst hire who do you first hire
(16:35):
?
And then it was an assistant,because nobody is going to
everybody's like, oh you need tobuy us.
Hire a salesperson, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So until that point, in 1999 to 2010, you were still
a solopreneur.
You were by yourself, doing allthis with no help.
No help, wow.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Okay, no vacation no sick days Right.
Yes, that is correct.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, All right.
So in 2010, you started asubscription-based business and
did this, and then you startedselecting and putting your
shingle out for this, and thisis now what we've learned to
call.
The industry term is Managedservice provider MSP that's what
we like to call it here.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Alan MSP.
What is this?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
He started saying these things like, well, I'm a
managed service provider.
I'm like, well, I don't knowwhat that is.
And then, sure enough, what doI hear now out networking, you
know?
And how many contacts, how manyemails do you get?
Guys, you probably are gettingall these emails too.
Hey, we can be your IT guy, wecan be your managed service
provider.
And you're like, well, I don'teven know what the hell that is.
You know, I'm just a handymanor I'm just a knife sharpener.
(17:38):
I'm just a, I'm just an autodetail where you guys are.
These are all the two guys whocalled lately.
So how do you explain managedservice providers?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Okay, so prior to managed service providers it was
a break-fix model, Just likethe automobile.
You're trying to do proactivemaintenance on it so your
daughter doesn't break down downthe road.
Typically in the past, dadswould just get an AARP.
What is it?
(18:07):
Aaa card?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
We started talking about the fact that I'm 55.
He was looking at you when hewas thinking.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
AARP hey, easier You're a capital A.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So yeah, it was reactive break fix.
My computer broke, I took it tosomebody, fix them, charge them
an hourly fee, bam.
But what if you change thatmindset to your customer that I
want to have less of thosebreak-fix incidents because
those are disruptive and I can'tcontrol them?
But if you start thinking aboutproactive maintenance, hey,
(18:43):
let's look for the top things wesee go wrong with the PC
Monitor for them.
And what if we can self healthose issues?
Like if I see a hard drive getsbelow 20%?
Some of the things I can have ascript do is go and clear out
cache, clear out temp files,clear out things that then I
don't have to get involved with.
(19:03):
So the ability to automate thattransforms you from a break-fix
to a proactive managed serviceprovider.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We are proactively managing things so let's go back
to Chris's progression in hiscareer.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
He's got computers managing, I'm gonna have PSD if
we go the way.
I got what's going on with thatwater.
It, it lit up.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
This is what my daughter has decided I have to
drink now.
That is the not-so-great thingabout having your child work for
you is she's healthy and I'mnot.
This is what Savannah Molecularhydrogen, molecular hydration
water.
So it puts I don't know magicin the water.
Why did it light up?
(19:45):
Because it can charge and it'llbubble up.
So it's, and then it sinks totell you, this is riveting
podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It is we are not, we're not.
We can't even explain it.
But all right, we'll put thatin the show notes well, and then
?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
molecular hydrogen water and the other thing you
need to look at is plodai.
It's a digital transcription.
Oh, I got it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've heard about that , you keep giving me crap.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I'm going to ask him what he thinks about your
password.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
No.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
The home password.
The home password.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You can't share that with everybody.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
This goes out to seven times the universe we can
give an example.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Savannah just asked for it, so we know yeah, so we
know he's already in trouble.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
We're going to go back to see.
James is talking about thisproactive stuff and I think as a
business owner or somebody inbusiness, you don't get what he
was putting down.
Let me tell you what the painlooked like when I wasn't doing
what he's talking about.
So at the time when I met James, I realized we were outgrowing.
The Chris is the IT guy andChris was the IT guy.
(20:44):
The Chris is the IT guy andChris was the IT guy.
And again at that point we hadgone to a different software
package that was quote-unquoteweb-based.
But what was happening was everyday at about three o'clock, the
computer would just get reallyslow and Chris would be out
selling his ass off.
Come back in the office and I'dhave one lady out back smoking,
one lady out in the fronttalking on her phone and the
(21:06):
other lady beating the mouseagainst the wall because nothing
would work.
And I'm like man, it happensevery day at three.
I don't know what's going on,and but it didn't.
Obviously that didn't happenlike day one, right, of course.
It just kept happening.
You know, little times one dayit would happen, next time it
wouldn't, and then we would loseour internet and then we would
lose our internet and then we'dhave to get Comcast involved.
And then we're starting thatwhole world getting Comcasted
(21:28):
and I'm chasing my tail all overthe place trying to figure out
what's going on and it's justnot working.
And I met James and at the time, again being cheap, I was like
I'm thrifty a frugal.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So you got James as a provider before he decided to
have standards on who he wouldwant as a customer.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
It's true, I was really broke.
I had just gotten remarried.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
You were desperate, I was desperate, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And a guy who's been on our podcast, wayne Sugar,
introduced me to him, so we hadto play the friend card.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
He got ready to help.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And he said he's going to look like an ass, but
he's really kind of a nice guy.
So that's how James came towork.
When is that going to happen?
The nice thing doesn't happen,bro.
So so James got involved andhere's what he did.
He says let me put my agents onhere, let me do these things.
And all of a sudden all thosethree o'clock problems started
to go away.
Then the voice system startedto work the right way, and then
(22:20):
we figured out that Comcastwasn't really providing the
circuit they were supposed to beproviding, and then we had to
get a different one.
So all these things.
At first I went, oh man, Ican't afford.
You know, at the time I think Iwas doing it on my own.
I would say it cost me like$500, okay.
And he was like well, this ismy program, this is what it is,
(22:40):
and for the machines we had atthe time.
And then I'm like oh, I got it.
And then Wayne said you need todo this.
So I was like yeah, and sothat's when it happened?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, it took you a solid nine months to make a
decision.
You don't act that way anymore.
No, we both have changed a lot.
And our business acumen hasgrown.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Chris can make a really quick decision when it's
like fun and lifestyle oriented.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Hey, if I was at that bar dude I'm talking we would
have had some fun with that one.
We would have been lining stuffup.
It probably would have been anepic viral video.
But going back to that, that'scalled evidence.
What was the?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
three o'clock thing.
Was there a particular TV showon Somebody?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
watching porn.
What's happening?
It was the fact that, wherethey were, the circuit that
Comcast or whatever provider itmay have been, spectrum, I can't
remember at the time wasunderserved in that location.
And so what happens is they'llsay, yes, we have internet
capability for you.
But what happens is, yes, theyhave it, but cable is one little
(23:40):
pipe down, and if you have 50people on the pipe, great.
If you have 500, you're stillsharing that same bandwidth,
whether you're paying for this,that or the other.
So what we found was, at threeo'clock, there were people
trying to keep awake watchingvideos or maybe not YouTube back
then but a lot of bandwidth wasbeing consumed and we had to
(24:02):
put Comcast on notice andeventually we got a new circuit
and then you moved.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
And and then you moved.
I've kept the circuit sense,but one of the things that we
thought about at the time wasthat we were at the end of this
line in Comcast.
In between the beginning ofline the end of line were a lot
of houses and apartments and alot of kids came home from
school at yeah, we get on getonline and start doing their
thing and we would lose it.
that's what.
(24:26):
So, yeah, so we end up havingto go to a t3, not a t1, and uh,
we've.
I still have the t3 today, butuh, since we've gotten this
fixed, this is one of thosethings where you don't realize
it until you think about it andas you think about it.
I haven't had a three o'clockdisruption like that ever again.
I've had Comcast go down, maybetwice, but I would tell you now
(24:51):
, with having a service provider, I wasn't at the office it was
like a Saturday night and I gota text message that came from
his system saying your power'sout.
The power company didn't tellme no, but they did.
They said, well, they set yourservers offline.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And this wasn't an easy.
We've realized it.
It was.
How many times was I out theremaking the Comcast guy stand
there with me and asking thequestions Well, that doesn't
make sense because of this, thisand this.
Oh well, you know, no, let'stry it on this laptop directly
and let's try this.
And so now the tools havegotten to the point where I can
tell so-and-so is watchingYouTube videos and so-and-so is
(25:30):
playing Spotify.
And it's exactly the time yousaid things were slowing down.
And it's, by the way, thismachine and this person and this
iPhone, big brother, baby,that's right, big dog.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
But what it's really helped.
Help me understand how YouTubehelps your job performance.
Questions you know on yourone-on-ones.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I will say that one of them is help.
Here's another stat.
Here's a mind-blowing stat Ijust saw on TV they said that
the Gen X and millennials 90 I'msorry, 75% of workers will
watch TV while they're doingtheir work during the day.
I'm like, do what?
Look at my daughter going.
I'm like, do what.
(26:11):
I'm like this isn't Final Four.
This isn't like the start ofthe NCAAs, which is supposed to
be the lowest productivity timeever.
I was like you've got to bekidding me.
So we went and looked it up and, sure enough, so I did have to
ask one of my csrs.
so help me understand I said sowhat are we watching today on
your phone, through our, throughour internet?
(26:31):
with the little grin yeah, Isaid what are we watching today
on our phone?
So, but but that's the kind ofstuff you know when you go back.
I don't want to talk about thisone too.
So performance of your company,you know it's, it's a cost, you
know, and to have that cost, Idon't even think about it.
I mean, you get all these emailguys I know you do, and I get
approached at least weekly aboutsomebody who wants to get a
(26:53):
free quote on it, quote unquote.
Or you go to a networking groupand they're like, hey, can we
come over and just give you afree analysis?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I'm like, yeah, I I actually it's not even worth my
time right now.
Well, that's why we doquarterly business reviews with
you.
I mean, the thing is, it's onething to be at your revenue
levels, but if you go back tostartups and thinking about the
things you can do, this isn'tjust about let's talk about
where you started with.
Well, I'm just a littlehandyman company.
(27:22):
Why are they looking at me?
They're now.
It's not the pop-ups, it's noteven just the ransomware, it's
the email attacks.
I mean, you've gotten it nowwhere I know you're out of the
country, and I say why is therea valid login from Ethiopia when
I know Chris was at his officefor 25 minutes ago when I left
there.
We get that constant securityoperations center monitoring and
(27:46):
I'll get a phone call in themiddle of the night.
James, there was a valid loginin Costa Rica for
so-and-so-and-so.
Oh, yes, that's valid, becauseI got an email from him that he
was going to be out of thecountry.
We have rules associated whereyou can log in where you can't
log in.
But think about this theaverage business that has five
people or less, or maybe 10people or less, or just a solo
(28:09):
entrepreneur, they're not goingto be able to spend a ton of
money, but there are some thingsthey can do to protect
themselves.
And so you get to your level.
You're going to have a managedfirewall.
We're tying that event log andthe event log of your computers
and the event log of your emailand the event log of everything
(28:30):
you do into a securityoperations center that is going
to 24 by 7 US-based.
Monitor it and record thoselogs for a year.
So if you are breached then wecan turn it over to your
insurance company and prove thatyou did what you said you did
on your application, becausethat's half the battle you hit.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
You done two things.
Let's go with that.
The last one first.
So just getting ready to do myinsurance renewal, and at the
back of my insurance renewal iscybersecurity protection and
they had.
I had to show them that I hadan MSP so that they could
provide me this protection andobviously charged me less
premium.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's true, and the more you can report on it and
actively show hey, when I helpyou, it used to be they just a
business owner would send me thepolicy and I'm supposed to fill
it out.
Well, I can't take that riskanymore.
You're responsible for acertain level of risk.
I can help you mitigate thatrisk and I can report on how
you're doing it.
(29:25):
But ultimately, if the city ofAtlanta can get ransomware, if
all these pipelines and youcan't throw enough money at a
small MSP like me in a sizerevenue, you are to say, James,
can you 100% protect me?
No, it's layers of security.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So let's go to the next thing, because you's
bringing this one up ransomware.
Why would anybody ransomware me, and what the hell does that
mean?
What's that?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
mean.
So ransomware is an evolutionof the virus and the ability to
lock down your computer.
So basically, what they'redoing is taking a bet that you
want your data back.
So bad, you'll pay for it.
We've encrypted it and unlessyou pay it with Bitcoin that
can't be traced.
(30:10):
Well, first of all, don't payit, because the minute you do,
they will unencrypt it.
However, they got it in therein the first place hasn't been
solved, so they'll re-ransomwareyou.
I had my customer in Savannahwhich is Coastal Grading.
They're a great company.
It's been sold a long time ago.
But they had a friend, acompanion company, that got
(30:32):
ransomwared.
They paid the ransom, boughtnew computers, put everything
back on.
It got ransomed again.
They expected the insurancecompany for their cybersecurity
to pay for those new computers.
No, you also got to look atwhat your policy if you have a
cyber insurance policy will payfor.
I know I'm birdwalking there alittle bit, but ransomware is
(30:55):
where somebody's clicked onsomething or somebody's
downloaded something that are acomputer.
Or you've had a child at homethat's got Minecraft and they've
downloaded something to makethem cheat at Minecraft that
happens to have malware or a badpayload or something in it and
they're playing on your workcomputer and you happily go to
work, not knowing that your kidwas using it for gaming.
And you open up and suddenly higet to your files.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
This is crazy, right.
So I was asking him.
I'm like, well, what will theydo?
He said, well, they'll holdyour files.
Now you can't work, and sothey're going to ask for a
number and they know that youcan't go anywhere else and
you're going to have to go backto them.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That's right, it's evolved and it used to be.
They'd say we want $500,000 or$50,000.
Now what they do is they getinto your systems and try to
move laterally across the board,everything from your cell phone
to your.
They don't.
Now they've seen you log in.
They see you have a $20,000bank balance, pretty regularly
they're going to ask for $15,000.
(31:57):
If they see you have $100,000,they're going to.
But it's not just that.
They've started to realize,well, a two million dollar
ransom isn't going to be paidfor this guy.
He could probably pay 15 or 50or whatever.
But more importantly, it's whoyou're doing business with right
, because if they can trick yoursystem and this happens all the
time you have 12 tabs open andone of your employees clicks on
(32:22):
a fake email, logs in, suddenlythey have access to every login
on every one of those tabs.
So think about the tabs youhave open on your browser.
It might be your bank, it mightbe your CRM.
It might be your QuickBooksonline?
It might be.
Yeah, Boats, boats, boats.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
I have 18 open right now.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So if you were to click on that, they have access
to all of those systems.
So suddenly you'recommunicating with your attorney
or you're about to close on apiece of property.
They see that there's a oh,you're buying a piece of
property in Captiva and so, andso, suddenly, they'll interject
themselves into that email chainwith your signature.
(33:03):
Looks like it came from you, itmight even have been from you,
and they've got hidden rules inyour Office 365 that are moving
anything from this to a hiddenfolder and you don't even know
that.
So and so is not there clickingon replying oh yeah, I'll give
you an updated wire instruction.
And suddenly that money foryour down payment or whatever,
(33:24):
whatever.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
This is making my blood pressure go up.
I mean, I'm so uncomfortableright now because you know, to
be honest with you, when westart talking about computers
it's blah, blah, blah, pop-ups,blah, you know.
But this is how close are we tobeing able to hit a button and
nuke them back?
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well, I can tell you this If I had my laptop with me,
it's in the truck, but I canactually get in and pull up
Trusted Toolbox and tell youevery attack down to the
apartment building or the citythey're in.
Oh, so we can trace them nowCan't do anything about it other
than block that IP address orblock.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Chris knows some people that can do some things.
Yeah, that's a differentpodcast.
No, it's this podcast.
Yeah, it is my podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I've asked too, and he said, no, you can't do that.
I said where are these 90attacks coming from?
He goes, yeah, I know wherethey're coming from.
I said, all right, let me haveit.
He goes.
I can't Give me the address, so, but all right, so we have that
here at the Trusted Toolbox.
Trusted toolbox.
But if I am a smaller guy,let's say I've got three or four
people, what, what should?
What preventive measures shouldI take before I decide to go
yeah and and take the leap intoms 100 paper and courier pigeons
(34:30):
.
Thank you, thank you capitalaarp, yeah get off my lawn kids
savannah's watching the moviealready.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, we.
We've already lost her.
She's gone Long gone.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
She's planning dinner .
So before you, you'll know youneed an MSP.
When, just like you mentioned,chris, when it comes to the
point where you're spendingenough time that it's preventing
you from proactively working onyour business, employees will
hide behind the tall grass.
And so things like productivityis the point where I'm smoking
(35:08):
at the back.
The internet's not working, Imight not take a smoke break.
Oh, my printer doesn't work.
They will find every excuse notto do their job, and then
they've taken that monkey andput it on your desk.
So at that point, when you'redoing too many balancing of
monkeys, that's when you knowyou need to invest in a third
party.
Somebody that has the abilityto multitask and has a team of
(35:29):
people that are can help youwith your IT needs.
But to start with, if I was abrand new startup I just read
E-Myth Mastery, one of myfavorite books, michael Gerber
and you take the leap of faithand you say I'm doing it the
first thing I would invest in isa firewall.
You know you'll see people athome using their Comcast modem
(35:51):
thinking that that's going toprotect them, and it doesn't.
It just doesn't.
Comcast isn't in the businessof protecting your data.
They just provide you apipeline to get to a certain
place.
So a firewall is very important, and that can range from a few
hundred dollars to somethinglike we've got in place with you
, which is monitored andproactively managed, and several
(36:16):
thousand dollars versus aNetgear or a WatchGuard, or
WatchGuards are managed as well,but those ones you see at Best
Buy Okay.
So that's better than nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So good, better, best , you're saying that's good,
it's okay, let's at least get afirewall, and let's at least
change the default password fromadmin.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Admin or your password of password A.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
B, C, D, E it's actually 1, 2, 3, 4.
I just had a heart attack.
You're gonna have to change itbefore this airs.
That's so funny, I love it so,yes, that that.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So now everybody can hack into everything for me, no,
come on.
I mean, my passwords are allover the place.
But um, how many passwords?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
well, that's actually that comes into number three on
my list, all right go.
But so the firewall isbasically.
Just think about it, as youjust built a moat around your
castle right, got it, so you'vegot a better.
It's better than just havingthe castle walls up, which is
good, but you need a moat.
Well, at that point, the nextthing is replacing those
(37:17):
Alligators in the moat, that'sright, We'll call that EDR.
That used to be antivirusEndpoint detection and response.
I'm getting computers, Chris,Did you hear that?
So the second thing is and thisis I'm trying- to, I make fire.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Good job, alan.
Go back to coloring yourcrayons.
Gronk, chunk, ronks, makesparky.
I get computers, alligators andbutts.
Hey, I got it and he comes upwith EDR.
I'm like, I'm trying to I'mactually trying to write down
EDR, because I don't even knowwhat it means.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
It's shorthand for alligator Detection and response
.
Think of it as antivirus onsteroids Used to be.
You'd have antivirus and thedefinitions would come down once
a week or whenever.
Edr is the advanced version ofthat, where real-time your
activity is being scanned.
If there's a malware or a badpiece of software, it's called a
(38:08):
PUP Potentially UnwantedProgram Something that you might
have clicked on and said, yes,you know how impatient we all
are.
I've done it.
You log in, click, click, click, yes, yes, yes, give me what I
need to know.
I've got a phone call in 10minutes that one.
So EDR is the next Plan onspending between $3 and $7 per
person on something like that.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
For a basic level of EDR.
So I've got to put a firewallin.
I need to get an endpointdetection response.
Give me a name on that one.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
We use Datto EDR, but there are things like Huntress.
There are countless goodversions.
That sounds good.
Get that one.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
That does sound sexy.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It gets to the point where you can lock down to
nothing called Threat Locker,where it is a zero-trust type
application where nothing istrusted unless we approve it
ahead of time, but an EDR, evensome of the decent manufacturers
.
Now you don't want McAfee.
Some of these are just crap.
They just come on the homeedition computers.
(39:10):
Do your research, Don't expectto spend more than $7.
At that point you're going toget into where you have a
security operations centermonitoring for things a little
bit more proactively than justthe software trying to do it's
true, because I mean, if youwould have said, what would you
do?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I was like, well, I knew they're norton and I knew
mcafee.
That's the only two names Iknew.
Right, but I don't have to knowthat stuff anymore.
But now he's saying he'sunlocking it for you.
You know to tell you what to do.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So firewall, put your alligators in your moat for
alan that's called edr and thenthe next thing is you put oil in
the moat and light it on fire.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
That's why I can't wait to hear what number three
is.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, I think the third Wow.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No no, guess it's a whole new level you haven't even
reached the wall yet Wait tosee what's coming.
Wait to see what he does withthat thing, I think the password
manager is the most importantthing.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Next, things like LastPass.
There are so many passwords andthere are so many times where
we'll do a scan on the dark weband we'll see that Chris has
used password as his passwordfor 93 websites or whatever
complexity, and then you forgetthem having something that is
encrypted Capital P password andthe at sign for the A Weird Ooh
(40:23):
, uh-oh oh here, I didn't evengive that one up, and now he's
gotta go to teach my passwordagain.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Don't worry, I've got you what?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
all right, so last pass, last pass is a good one.
There's others.
There's there's a quite a few,and all of them have been
breached at one point of theother.
Theoretically, I'm justmentioning that one.
There's a lot of others.
Just something to manage yourpasswords where it's not a
spreadsheet or a note on yourphone, because my wife keeps her
passwords and notes on herphone.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
So we don't do that at the Trust the Toolbox, we
just use sticky notes.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I think sticky notes are the most secure thing I've
heard so far in this podcast.
No, actually.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I think his rates are going up far in this podcast.
No, actually I think his ratesare going up, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
So what's funny is I said, hey, james is coming over,
and I used to go to cindy.
I'm like, hey, I think it'stime to get rid of those posted.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
They're faded, the color's gone.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, and she put a bit in her drawer, one that we
don't lock.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I'm like that's awesome I think that, I think
that actually kind of works.
No, actually everybody no no,no, so you said something.
Sorry, I'm going to digress alittle bit.
What is the dark web?
I mean, it sounds so ominous.
It's where the mafia hangs outand all the Russians and all
that stuff.
Basically, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So it is a version of .
I'll try to make this as simpleas possible.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Alan sport rock.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Don't forget the oil and the alligators.
I got flaming alligators.
The listeners were on it withthat.
Okay, great, I've lost my trainof thought.
What's a dark web?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Okay, so think of the Internet where you can Google
anything you want, all right,yeah.
Now if you provide a VPN or ahidden tunnel to another version
of the Internet, that's a darkweb.
It's where your identity isstolen and they sell your
(42:14):
credentials.
Perhaps you may have gone to alot of this happens to a lot of
people.
They'll go to Chewycom orOfficeDepotcom and Office Depot
hasn't protected your usernameand password, right.
They get breached and suddenlyyou'll see, oh, on the news,
blah, blah, blah, I got breachedand they've lost your social
security number, your creditcard information.
It doesn't take just one ofthose Like Office Depot is going
(42:35):
to give a username and maybe apassword.
Well, that's a starting pointfor them.
So then, what these brokers dofor pennies.
I could buy 15,000 names andsocial security numbers and
medical information on the darkweb for a penny a piece.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Why don't you just do that for your customer list,
Chris.
That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
I've already done that for her.
Okay, how do you think I gotthe new truck?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hey, you do have a nicer truck than Chris does.
What is that?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Oh, a nicer truck than chris does.
What is that?
Oh, I haven't seen that man.
I was already.
I was already in here gettingready for the podcast.
Sorry, no, seriously it's so.
Just think of it as the badguy's home.
Everything's for sale, whetherit's drugs, whether it's weapons
, whether it's.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I mean, I'm making this very simplified, but not
enough for alan, but for ourlisteners they're getting it but
it's just not easily found, Imean, it, it.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
It is if you're a bad guy and you can think about the
way sophistication apparentlyI'm not a bad guy, no, I'm not
either, if they spent half theirtime, half of this time,
getting a real job.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I know I know there's really brilliant, so for a
password manager.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Think between there's free versions.
Last pass has a free versionfor your family and the nice
thing about that is you can putin your Gwinnett water all the
things that if somethinghappened to you your Facebook,
your phone pin it's encrypted.
Your wife would be able to login and see all of those things
if something happened.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
It's just being you know All right.
So, man, we're running out oftime.
This stuff is so good, allright.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
So, man, we're running out of time.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
This stuff is so good , all right, so one, two, three.
What else do you have?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Multi-factor authentication hey, you almost
did your password One, two,three, four, five, six, seven.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
So multi-factor authentication.
It's upside down.
Everybody hates it.
Everybody finds it completelyannoying to have to go to your
phone, get a text message thatsays type this in that's the
base level you want for yourbanking or anything important.
I got out of that one.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
You broke me.
You love that one, didn't you?
I broke out Multi-factorauthentication.
So I have that.
We have that because we haveOffice 365.
So they're the kings of thatone right now, right.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, yes.
However, do you have it on yourability to remote in and look
at your files?
Do you have it on your phonesystem?
Do you have it on all thedevices that you can turn that
on?
It's a pain.
You should then get a tool likeduo or microsoft's authie or
authie, and then microsoft hastheir own, and what will happen
(44:52):
is it'll it'll instead of textmessaging you, because now we
can clone phone sims, right, sowe can make a fake version of
your cell phone.
Wow, the bad guys can not me.
Wow, right, so then I'm a goodguy.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
I think he can, I think he could be a bad guy.
I know he's just choosing to begood.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
He's chosen the right path.
You have chosen wisely.
It's like a paladin.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
But what happens then ?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
is.
It's a push notification tothat application.
That's tied and encrypted andagain, that's simplified.
Last thing backups, thing,backups.
All right, here we go.
That's what I wanted to get tothis at the very, very minimum.
Think about your office 365,your email, your files in the
cloud dropbox, one drive, any ofthe e-folder, any of the data
(45:35):
services.
Consider yourself a renter andthink about renters insurance.
Microsoft Office 365 is thereto provide you the apartment.
They're there to make sure theapartment's interable.
If something happens and itburns down, they have to replace
the infrastructure.
What happens to your stuffinside there?
Make sure you have cloudbackups.
(45:58):
Make sure you at least havesomething if you're a one-man
show and don't have a server,things like a Carbonite or
anything that will cloud backupyour laptop if you don't have
what you have in place.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Wow, All right.
So in Alan's case, what wouldhappen there is that the oil
alligator oil on fire would comeinto his place and blow it all
up.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Alan's case.
He's going to be at the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
He's going to put a plank down for the guy that
looks like you know FreddyKrueger, to bring in the
groceries and leave it down.
That's right, alan, all right.
So here's.
Here's an example of whybackups are so important.
Also, it's not evencybersecurity, it's not.
It's just some of youremployees can get ahold of a
file and delete it reallyquickly and then they go.
Hey, chris, can't find ourprice list.
Where'd it go?
I can't do anything.
Where's my price list?
(46:47):
I'm like, well, it was rightthere, let me go.
Where is it?
Well, I went in there andgrabbed it.
I'm like did you grab it?
Or did you hit the D button fordumbass?
D delete dumbass and thatDelete dumbass All in the same
sentence?
That's an innocent issue.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
What about something more along the lines of you have
somebody in your QuickBooksthat's doing your state Sales
tax Sales tax, for instance butinstead of paying it
electronically to the and thishappened to somebody I know, a
customer their person wasrouting their state unemployment
tax.
It's shown in QuickBooks thatthey paid it.
(47:24):
They were routing that moneyinto their personal bank account
.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Now, obviously, they got caught.
You need to fire youraccountant right now.
No, my accountant's not doingthat?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Your bookkeeper?
Yeah, no, oh, okay, are theydoing that?
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
But here's the point.
Can't you tell I don't either,if you have done right.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You can go back months and potentially you've
done accounting.
What was the P&L then versusnow?
At least you have the abilityto go back, even if you're just
to have one computer, carboniteor something along those lines.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
We're going to have to skip the four questions.
I know we are this is great.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Guys, as we wrap this one up, you're figuring out
there's a lot of little thingsyou can do on your own.
But if you want to go to amanaged service provider, I
don't think you're going to findit as expensive and you can
actually cost justify it quickerthan nine months that Chris did
.
Let me speed this up for you.
It definitely was a helpbecause it took me out of the.
Well, I need to get a newlaptop for a guy, all right.
(48:21):
Well, I need to get a newlaptop for a guy, all right,
chris, what did you used to do?
Well, I used to go look at BestBuy, then I go to Costco and
then I go see if I can get adeal with Dell, and then I'm all
over the place and then I getthe one.
That all, basically, is just aweb appliance.
Isn't that good?
And those guys?
So now I just say, all right,this is what I need.
And they go okay, set it up.
They buy the laptop, they getit cheaper than I could have
(48:42):
gotten anywhere, and I don'tcare, because it's all set up
and it sits right there and theguy can start working day one
and I can start training him ontrusted toolbox shit as opposed
to how do we set up a computershit.
What a massive time saver.
It really has been a massivetime saver for me and peace of
mind, a lot of peace of mind,because we did get hacked.
You know, our email gotcompromised years ago.
That was me, no, but that again.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
It happens still every day.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah, so you guys closed it down quick and then we
had to go back in.
Everybody had to get passwordeducated again.
And now good news is all mypasswords.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
What is it?
It's apparently didn't stick9876?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Apparently didn't stick.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I'm going to throw one off on you.
Don't forget the L.
But that's an upside-down.
7.
Oh, multi-factor authentication.
Chris has got it going on, I'mgoing to use the upside-down 8
in my password.
There you go.
I love it All.
Right guys, this has beenawesome, Like.
I said we could have gone allover the place.
We got a little taste of howJames started his business and
scaled using technology.
We'll get him back on talkabout AI and scaling in the
(49:45):
future, because I think it'd beawesome to have you come talk
about that.
But in the meantime, this issomething that if it's happened
to you, you know it's a big dealand it's a pain in the ass, and
it's happened to me, and not ina big way, just in little
things, and that's made me gowow, I don't ever want that big
thing to happen.
So I'm actually I'm all for it,I like it, and when I see
people trying to kind ofcrisscross in our world, in my
(50:08):
business, I'm like no, no, yougot to get back in, you got to
do this thing the right way anddon't open those stupid emails.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
And what are you watching today, alan?
All right guys.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I'm watching my water bottle.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
This is a great episode Alan the cool water
bottle.
I really like that water bottle.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
You know what Echo?
It's like the Fountain of Youth.
It's a high-tech water bottle.
Screw that we're going back tobourbon next episode.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
All right, guys.
If you put bourbon in it, whatwould happen?
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Oh, healthy bourbon.
Healthy bourbon, we love it, Ilove it when they say healthy
bourbon.
But what if you change that mindset to your
customer that I want to haveless of those break-fix
incidents because those aredisruptive and I can't control
them?
But if you start thinking aboutproactive maintenance, hey,
let's look for the top things wesee go wrong with a PC Monitor
(00:20):
for them.
And what if we can self-healthose issues?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
monitor for them?
And what if we can self-healthose issues?
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari where I help guide you to
avoid those traps, pitfalls anddangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
(00:46):
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Alan, here we go again.
Everybody's listening.
I'm getting all kinds offeedback here lately from people
about all right.
One of them really sucked, butit was my sound quality on one
(01:08):
of the episodes, and so Chrishad to go back to podcast school
to get his audio fixed back up.
But he's back and we're goingto be back rocking.
Now here's some of the coolfeedback we've gotten.
Alan is I listen to yourpodcast every week, got that one
.
Your podcast every week, gotthat one.
Hey, buddy, I was justlistening to your podcast and I
(01:29):
wanted to give you a call andtell you, man, I really love
that episode talking about someof the topics that we've had as
of late, which had been kind ofcool and so that's been kind of
fun.
I love that kind of feedback, sowe're getting some really good
feedback.
Of course, I got the radio giggoing now and we're really
starting to hit our stride herein Atlanta, where we're only
focused on home servicecompanies here and helping
people in their home improvementstuff.
(01:49):
But today I've got a reallyexciting guest.
I am excited about this onebecause there are so many
different ways we can go withthis guest, but I asked him to
focus in on something that Ithink is important to all of us.
So I have my IT guy here todayand I have James Sanford who
(02:13):
takes care of all of ourinformation technology and all
of the safety that we need tohave in this new crazy world of
cybersecurity.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Man, you're just getting right into it.
There's no dad jokes, no puns,no what you did this weekend no
Vegas.
That's what happens when wehave a dry podcast.
All right, so everybody, youdidn't even no what you did this
weekend.
No Vegas.
That's what happens when wehave a dry podcast.
You didn't even ask me what Idid this weekend.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
All right.
So here's the problem.
Usually, alan and I gettogether in the afternoon and
it's bourbon four o'clock, Imean bourbon five o'clock, as it
were.
But today we're doing this oneduring the day to accommodate
some different schedules but tomake sure that we're getting out
some great episodes, greatcoverage.
And you're right, I didn't talkto you about my big daddy
weekend, so I will tell you Ihad a proud papa moment this
(02:50):
weekend.
You did, I did.
My daughter has walked with herwhite coat in her PA school.
Congratulations, thank you.
Very exciting.
And one of the things I got inthe comments on Facebook was hey
, she's one step closer togetting off the payroll.
And of course, she's home todayand I just got done approving a
$2,000 expense on her vehiclebefore she takes off to do her
(03:13):
first rotation.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
They never leave and I've told you the story about my
wife's father's father who, at13, his dad said time for you to
leave the home, head down tothe docks in Portland and seek
your adventure At 13.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I know right.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
What are we doing?
I don't know.
We're coddling our children.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's not healthy.
These kids are 26.
They need to work in the docks.
That hits a little home forsomebody.
She's 26 and not off thepayroll Whoa.
And what are we doing?
That's right, you can't seethis because we actually have an
extra special person in theaudience, but she's not going to
be on the podcast.
We have James' daughterSavannah, who has recently
joined his company, and inliterally one hour she blew my
(03:53):
mind on AI, on what the heckshe's doing.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
But we're not going to talk AI today.
Savannah, that's not that hardto do.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's true.
I mean AI.
That's a lot of syllables.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I mean it's at least two letters.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I think it's actually longer than your password.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So we're going to get into this, guys.
Man, this is going to be somuch fun.
Cybersecurity James Sanfordthanks for joining us today.
Like I said, we can go in somany different directions.
He's done so many things inthis business in terms of
automation, scaled withouthaving to add staff.
Oh my God, hello, you don'thave to add people.
Oh, I need that one.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, Until they build robots that can you know,
do construction.
I think you're screwed withthat Not happening.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You have to have labor.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
So we could go that way.
We could talk about all thestuff they're doing with AI, so
we'll probably end up havingJames on.
But today, man, I wanted tofocus on what James has done,
because no more than at leastthree different times he has
blown my mind on cybersecurityand stuff that happens.
And here's the thing, right,when we all get started.
I started with a laptop, a flipphone and a camera, right?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
The good old days, the good old days, right.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So I had my laptop, which was a client server-based
CRM system.
I was pretty cool, except theclient and the server were all
on my laptop, which was in mytruck, which was driving around
with me every day, and so I hadthat.
And then I had a flip phone andthen, as I've grown to where we
are today, where we have theAtlanta and the Athens division,
(05:28):
I've got a server in the officebut we're all on the web now,
right, but I have voice over IP.
I have all this other stuffgoing on, and I let one of my
ladies go work from home, and sowe set up a computer at her
house and she happened to bedoing all of our payroll, all of
our books.
She's a threat, oh my god, sheis a threat.
(05:51):
So james, james, there's a leak.
He says he, he, uh.
He says hey, um, chris, uh, can, can we do?
I think he said vpn.
I forget exactly what he said,but we need to do something
about this computer.
I'm like why he goes.
It's getting attacked 90 timesa day to get into our.
I said, but we're just a littlehandyman company.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He goes oh, that's like the Matrix.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
With the little Right .
So, james, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Well, thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to get to behere and talk to you guys.
Nice to meet you.
Yeah, nice to meet you.
Sorry, it's not over a bourbonWell I agree, but you were
missed last week.
I mean not by Chris, no heactually got a little
sentimental.
I listened to it, I did.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
By the way over this weekend I was at a big, fancy
wedding in LA.
It felt like I was in a movieand I heard maybe the greatest
seven words I've ever heard inmy life um, you're three
thousand dollars short on yourminimum at the bar, oh, my god
and then, and the night hadalready kind of wound down and
(06:57):
so we're like bring me the,bring me the bourbon list.
Cousin brad was like bring methe wine list and the next thing
, you know, champagne foreverybody.
It was.
And I was trying to be goodthat night.
That went to hell and all of asudden my brother-in-law showed
up and he's like, okay, we're tosix bucks.
And he just shut it down.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So we made up the gap you made up the gap.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
We made up the gap.
Wow, you know things that youdo for family, somebody has to
do it.
Oh, my God, that's awesome.
I was in the right spot.
You know opportunitypreparedness, all those things
that go into.
You know performing.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I'm proud of you.
You pivoted well, I did.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You had a problem presented and you found a
solution.
I was a solution provider.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Well, the other solution was to use someone
else's credit card to keep going.
No, to pay the whole thing.
No, no, that's not as fun.
Oh yeah, but yeah no, it was.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
It was already prepaid.
So, oh my gosh may as well hitit so you had, you had, you were
in la with cousin brad.
Did they mention that you wereon a podcast, that you were a
celebrity when you're out there?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
yeah, that was it was part of the wedding vows and
then.
But cousin brad and I did getto play a little round of golf
and uh, at his country club athis club.
That is so, you know.
Nicholas redesigned it right.
There's a couple holes whereit's almost like 11 at augusta
where they you know, they say if, uh, if you actually hit the
green, I missed you know,because you're supposed to hit
front, right right out on.
We had a couple shots like that.
(08:19):
You know, I haven't touched astick in a while and we ended up
uh coming from behind.
I tied it on 16 and cousin bradput the knife in their heart
and we went up one up, uh wenton 18 there we go.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Nice, now that's a big trip.
You didn't have a big daddyweekend I was just over here
buying in the store, doing thepodcast trying to help people,
educate them a little bit aboutthis and that, so all right,
let's get into.
So james sanford started teamspring.
Uh, when did you start that?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
gosh savannah uh 99.
She was born 26 years yes ago.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What's this, what's this?
That's, uh, bourbon light, uh,that is that.
That, and I cannot perform amiracle.
I cannot turn that water intowine.
You keep drinking water, alan.
We're gonna keep you going andwe'll almost stay on track,
almost so, 26 years ago, youleft the corporate world and
started.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Well, I didn't initially just jump ship.
So what happened was I was partof the dot-com era, you know,
building enterprise softwareblue martini, different other
products and when she was bornand then her brother was born a
few years later, I was like,every time I come back from the
West Coast, every week they lookdifferent.
You know how the kids grow soquickly.
(09:30):
And it just got to the pointwhere you saw the writing on the
wall with the dot bomb andyou're thinking gosh, I really
want to do something on my own,my own consulting company, my
own something.
That entrepreneurial instinctkicked in ever since I was
little.
I mean, my brother and I wouldgo on the beach in Savannah and
get shells and drag our littlewagon around and sell them
(09:51):
things like that.
So we even created detectiveson the spot dots for the Hardy
Boys, and so we've always hadthis little inclination that we
wanted to own our own thing.
So I initially started doingcustom software development.
That was eTech Software.
That was the initial name ofthe company.
(10:12):
Everything was e-something backthen.
So around 2006, I finally leftthe corporate world and went in
full force.
That is the hardest thing isjumping ship.
That first step is absolutelythe most terrifying until you're
off the boat, until you'redoing it yourself and you have
(10:34):
to perform.
You have two little children, awife, you have to perform.
And so then it turned into okay, I've got all these great
programming gigs, you know,building out CRM systems and
workflows and things like that,but you're always hunting.
You're always hunting for thatnext thing.
So at that time then customerswere asking for tech support.
(10:54):
It was starting to get to thepoint where the Internet is now
a very stable thing.
It's not Earthlink, you knowdial up.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Talk about being at the right place at the right
time, Like I was at that bar.
I mean his customer.
The whole world is expandingand you happen to be right there
and know what you're talkingabout.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, and so at that point I'm like you know what?
There should be a monthlyrecurring revenue component here
.
If I'm going to have to supportsomebody, we are supporting
them, we're charging them anhourly rate.
And so then I thought, well,maybe we come up with plans
silver, gold, platinum where youget two hours a month, four
hours a month or six hours amonth, and then anything above
(11:36):
that you get built in a littlereduced hourly rate.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
But at the time nobody had that idea, nobody
Right.
So you didn't say well, saywell, listen, I'm gonna put you
on a subscription program.
You're doing subscriptionsbefore.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Netflix was even thinking about it, maybe a
future seer.
It was really.
Really.
It started to get to the pointwhere, okay, I've got some
momentum here, I've got somecash that I can at least have,
knowing it's coming in eachmonth.
So at that point technology isstarting to really blow up.
There are ways to remote intocomputers, there are ways to
automate things associated withtech support, and so I bought
(12:16):
into an enterprise softwarepackage called Kaseya that
allowed me to remotely monitorand manage my customers'
machines.
So I can now turn a reactivequestion hey, my computer broke
into.
Hey, I see that your harddrive's getting full and fix it
or call them before they can'twork anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So that is part of the subscription.
You came up with gold, silver,platinum, yeah, and you started
selling people on it.
How was the original adoptionwith that?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, I went slow to begin with.
Right, the typical startupentrepreneur is everything has
to be just absolutely perfectbefore you introduce it to a
customer, and everything isnever perfect.
So I started it with justputting the agent, those tools,
on the machines, because ithelped me not have to drive over
(13:07):
to your office or somebodyelse's office and as a one-man
show, I still had littlechildren that I, okay, I can
watch them, honey, while you goout and go grocery shopping.
Well, you know, and not if Ihave to have an emergency and go
help somebody.
So then that started becomingmore and more prevalent.
I still, I mean, at that timethat was an $80,000 investment
for a one-man company to buythis.
(13:29):
It was considered enterprisesoftware.
There was no cloud version ofthis.
I had to have a server in myhouse, in my basement, that
these agents would check intoand we would just manage it, and
then slowly I'd charge, and wewould just manage it, and then
slowly I'd charge.
You know, whatever it was, thatbase package.
Well gosh, now suddenly virusesare coming in and being more
(13:51):
prevalent.
I mean, you know, 25 years agoyou didn't even really hear of a
virus.
No, you know.
And then until one day I'mlooking and I'm clicking on
something and suddenly all thesepop-ups keep happening.
They're very, I mean, they'rejust annoying.
Right.
At the time they were justannoying Right, and all you had
(14:17):
to do was download things likeViper or McAfee or, you know,
trend or any of those reactiveantivirus tools.
And so I'm like, well, weshould have some component of
security.
Yes, there's this.
Let's ask for managed security.
Then suddenly, oh gosh, allthese servers that everybody
have, all these small businessservers that Microsoft came out
with, that had their ownexchange server for email, their
own shared volumes and thingsof that nature.
We need to back that up.
(14:40):
So again, my thought was it hasto be perfect.
How am I going to do this?
Well, I was like my businesscoach at the time, and I think
everybody needs a business coachIf you don't have somebody that
you can look up to, no matterwhat level higher than you.
It's so important.
I said, well, it doesn't haveto be perfect.
Can't you just drive over?
You only have 10 customersDrive over on Mondays.
(15:00):
Swap the little USB drives.
I was like days, swap thelittle USB drives.
That's a great idea and I maybeI can get my friend Jay to do
it for me.
But so at the time it slowlyprogressed.
And when I say slowlyprogressed it, you know we went
from 10 customers to maybe 12 to, you know, and now we're at 50
and manage a thousand computers.
Then it turned into it wasgetting annoying doing two hours
(15:21):
and then billing somebody foran extra three because they had
more questions, and then gold.
And then it was gettingannoying doing two hours and
then billing somebody for anextra three because they had
more questions, and then gold.
And then it was constantlygetting to the point where I'm
getting.
I'm spending a lot of timeanswering questions about
invoices and what's included andwhat's not, and so I finally I
think in 2010 or so said youknow what I'm not taking any
(15:41):
customers that aren't on our allinclusive plan.
I'll lower the rates a littlebit, but I want to take the
billing aspect.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So in 2010,.
You said I will work with youif you buy my subscription, but
I will not just come set up acomputer for you.
Correct, and that was in 2010.
That's why I'm writing thisdown for the timeline.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I met you in 2014, I believe.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I already fully vetted this as all-inclusive one
plan.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That's really a tipping point in a business life
when you can actually beselective on who your customer
is.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, yes, it is and it isn't.
I still was taking up peoplethat had four machines or five
machines.
Now our average customer is 15.
Our biggest customer is morethan 50.
It, you know, it's all relative.
You know, at the time that wasplenty of money for us, it was
just one salary.
Um, then it became the nextfirst hire who do you first hire
(16:35):
?
And then it was an assistant,because nobody is going to
everybody's like, oh you need tobuy us.
Hire a salesperson, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So until that point, in 1999 to 2010, you were still
a solopreneur.
You were by yourself, doing allthis with no help.
No help, wow.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Okay, no vacation no sick days Right.
Yes, that is correct.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, All right.
So in 2010, you started asubscription-based business and
did this, and then you startedselecting and putting your
shingle out for this, and thisis now what we've learned to
call.
The industry term is Managedservice provider MSP that's what
we like to call it here.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Alan MSP.
What is this?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
He started saying these things like, well, I'm a
managed service provider.
I'm like, well, I don't knowwhat that is.
And then, sure enough, what doI hear now out networking, you
know?
And how many contacts, how manyemails do you get?
Guys, you probably are gettingall these emails too.
Hey, we can be your IT guy, wecan be your managed service
provider.
And you're like, well, I don'teven know what the hell that is.
You know, I'm just a handymanor I'm just a knife sharpener.
(17:38):
I'm just a, I'm just an autodetail where you guys are.
These are all the two guys whocalled lately.
So how do you explain managedservice providers?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Okay, so prior to managed service providers it was
a break-fix model, Just likethe automobile.
You're trying to do proactivemaintenance on it so your
daughter doesn't break down downthe road.
Typically in the past, dadswould just get an AARP.
What is it?
(18:07):
Aaa card?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
We started talking about the fact that I'm 55.
He was looking at you when hewas thinking.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
AARP hey, easier You're a capital A.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So yeah, it was reactive break fix.
My computer broke, I took it tosomebody, fix them, charge them
an hourly fee, bam.
But what if you change thatmindset to your customer that I
want to have less of thosebreak-fix incidents because
those are disruptive and I can'tcontrol them?
But if you start thinking aboutproactive maintenance, hey,
(18:43):
let's look for the top things wesee go wrong with the PC
Monitor for them.
And what if we can self healthose issues?
Like if I see a hard drive getsbelow 20%?
Some of the things I can have ascript do is go and clear out
cache, clear out temp files,clear out things that then I
don't have to get involved with.
(19:03):
So the ability to automate thattransforms you from a break-fix
to a proactive managed serviceprovider.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We are proactively managing things so let's go back
to Chris's progression in hiscareer.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
He's got computers managing, I'm gonna have PSD if
we go the way.
I got what's going on with thatwater.
It, it lit up.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
This is what my daughter has decided I have to
drink now.
That is the not-so-great thingabout having your child work for
you is she's healthy and I'mnot.
This is what Savannah Molecularhydrogen, molecular hydration
water.
So it puts I don't know magicin the water.
Why did it light up?
(19:45):
Because it can charge and it'llbubble up.
So it's, and then it sinks totell you, this is riveting
podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It is we are not, we're not.
We can't even explain it.
But all right, we'll put thatin the show notes well, and then
?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
molecular hydrogen water and the other thing you
need to look at is plodai.
It's a digital transcription.
Oh, I got it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've heard about that , you keep giving me crap.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I'm going to ask him what he thinks about your
password.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
No.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
The home password.
The home password.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You can't share that with everybody.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
This goes out to seven times the universe we can
give an example.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Savannah just asked for it, so we know yeah, so we
know he's already in trouble.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
We're going to go back to see.
James is talking about thisproactive stuff and I think as a
business owner or somebody inbusiness, you don't get what he
was putting down.
Let me tell you what the painlooked like when I wasn't doing
what he's talking about.
So at the time when I met James, I realized we were outgrowing.
The Chris is the IT guy andChris was the IT guy.
(20:44):
The Chris is the IT guy andChris was the IT guy.
And again at that point we hadgone to a different software
package that was quote-unquoteweb-based.
But what was happening was everyday at about three o'clock, the
computer would just get reallyslow and Chris would be out
selling his ass off.
Come back in the office and I'dhave one lady out back smoking,
one lady out in the fronttalking on her phone and the
(21:06):
other lady beating the mouseagainst the wall because nothing
would work.
And I'm like man, it happensevery day at three.
I don't know what's going on,and but it didn't.
Obviously that didn't happenlike day one, right, of course.
It just kept happening.
You know, little times one dayit would happen, next time it
wouldn't, and then we would loseour internet and then we would
lose our internet and then we'dhave to get Comcast involved.
And then we're starting thatwhole world getting Comcasted
(21:28):
and I'm chasing my tail all overthe place trying to figure out
what's going on and it's justnot working.
And I met James and at the time, again being cheap, I was like
I'm thrifty a frugal.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So you got James as a provider before he decided to
have standards on who he wouldwant as a customer.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
It's true, I was really broke.
I had just gotten remarried.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
You were desperate, I was desperate, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And a guy who's been on our podcast, wayne Sugar,
introduced me to him, so we hadto play the friend card.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
He got ready to help.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And he said he's going to look like an ass, but
he's really kind of a nice guy.
So that's how James came towork.
When is that going to happen?
The nice thing doesn't happen,bro.
So so James got involved andhere's what he did.
He says let me put my agents onhere, let me do these things.
And all of a sudden all thosethree o'clock problems started
to go away.
Then the voice system startedto work the right way, and then
(22:20):
we figured out that Comcastwasn't really providing the
circuit they were supposed to beproviding, and then we had to
get a different one.
So all these things.
At first I went, oh man, Ican't afford.
You know, at the time I think Iwas doing it on my own.
I would say it cost me like$500, okay.
And he was like well, this ismy program, this is what it is,
(22:40):
and for the machines we had atthe time.
And then I'm like oh, I got it.
And then Wayne said you need todo this.
So I was like yeah, and sothat's when it happened?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, it took you a solid nine months to make a
decision.
You don't act that way anymore.
No, we both have changed a lot.
And our business acumen hasgrown.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Chris can make a really quick decision when it's
like fun and lifestyle oriented.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Hey, if I was at that bar dude I'm talking we would
have had some fun with that one.
We would have been lining stuffup.
It probably would have been anepic viral video.
But going back to that, that'scalled evidence.
What was the?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
three o'clock thing.
Was there a particular TV showon Somebody?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
watching porn.
What's happening?
It was the fact that, wherethey were, the circuit that
Comcast or whatever provider itmay have been, spectrum, I can't
remember at the time wasunderserved in that location.
And so what happens is they'llsay, yes, we have internet
capability for you.
But what happens is, yes, theyhave it, but cable is one little
(23:40):
pipe down, and if you have 50people on the pipe, great.
If you have 500, you're stillsharing that same bandwidth,
whether you're paying for this,that or the other.
So what we found was, at threeo'clock, there were people
trying to keep awake watchingvideos or maybe not YouTube back
then but a lot of bandwidth wasbeing consumed and we had to
(24:02):
put Comcast on notice andeventually we got a new circuit
and then you moved.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
And and then you moved.
I've kept the circuit sense,but one of the things that we
thought about at the time wasthat we were at the end of this
line in Comcast.
In between the beginning ofline the end of line were a lot
of houses and apartments and alot of kids came home from
school at yeah, we get on getonline and start doing their
thing and we would lose it.
that's what.
(24:26):
So, yeah, so we end up havingto go to a t3, not a t1, and uh,
we've.
I still have the t3 today, butuh, since we've gotten this
fixed, this is one of thosethings where you don't realize
it until you think about it andas you think about it.
I haven't had a three o'clockdisruption like that ever again.
I've had Comcast go down, maybetwice, but I would tell you now
(24:51):
, with having a service provider, I wasn't at the office it was
like a Saturday night and I gota text message that came from
his system saying your power'sout.
The power company didn't tellme no, but they did.
They said, well, they set yourservers offline.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And this wasn't an easy.
We've realized it.
It was.
How many times was I out theremaking the Comcast guy stand
there with me and asking thequestions Well, that doesn't
make sense because of this, thisand this.
Oh well, you know, no, let'stry it on this laptop directly
and let's try this.
And so now the tools havegotten to the point where I can
tell so-and-so is watchingYouTube videos and so-and-so is
(25:30):
playing Spotify.
And it's exactly the time yousaid things were slowing down.
And it's, by the way, thismachine and this person and this
iPhone, big brother, baby,that's right, big dog.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
But what it's really helped.
Help me understand how YouTubehelps your job performance.
Questions you know on yourone-on-ones.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I will say that one of them is help.
Here's another stat.
Here's a mind-blowing stat Ijust saw on TV they said that
the Gen X and millennials 90 I'msorry, 75% of workers will
watch TV while they're doingtheir work during the day.
I'm like, do what?
Look at my daughter going.
I'm like, do what.
(26:11):
I'm like this isn't Final Four.
This isn't like the start ofthe NCAAs, which is supposed to
be the lowest productivity timeever.
I was like you've got to bekidding me.
So we went and looked it up and, sure enough, so I did have to
ask one of my csrs.
so help me understand I said sowhat are we watching today on
your phone, through our, throughour internet?
(26:31):
with the little grin yeah, Isaid what are we watching today
on our phone?
So, but but that's the kind ofstuff you know when you go back.
I don't want to talk about thisone too.
So performance of your company,you know it's, it's a cost, you
know, and to have that cost, Idon't even think about it.
I mean, you get all these emailguys I know you do, and I get
approached at least weekly aboutsomebody who wants to get a
(26:53):
free quote on it, quote unquote.
Or you go to a networking groupand they're like, hey, can we
come over and just give you afree analysis?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I'm like, yeah, I I actually it's not even worth my
time right now.
Well, that's why we doquarterly business reviews with
you.
I mean, the thing is, it's onething to be at your revenue
levels, but if you go back tostartups and thinking about the
things you can do, this isn'tjust about let's talk about
where you started with.
Well, I'm just a littlehandyman company.
(27:22):
Why are they looking at me?
They're now.
It's not the pop-ups, it's noteven just the ransomware, it's
the email attacks.
I mean, you've gotten it nowwhere I know you're out of the
country, and I say why is therea valid login from Ethiopia when
I know Chris was at his officefor 25 minutes ago when I left
there.
We get that constant securityoperations center monitoring and
(27:46):
I'll get a phone call in themiddle of the night.
James, there was a valid loginin Costa Rica for
so-and-so-and-so.
Oh, yes, that's valid, becauseI got an email from him that he
was going to be out of thecountry.
We have rules associated whereyou can log in where you can't
log in.
But think about this theaverage business that has five
people or less, or maybe 10people or less, or just a solo
(28:09):
entrepreneur, they're not goingto be able to spend a ton of
money, but there are some thingsthey can do to protect
themselves.
And so you get to your level.
You're going to have a managedfirewall.
We're tying that event log andthe event log of your computers
and the event log of your emailand the event log of everything
(28:30):
you do into a securityoperations center that is going
to 24 by 7 US-based.
Monitor it and record thoselogs for a year.
So if you are breached then wecan turn it over to your
insurance company and prove thatyou did what you said you did
on your application, becausethat's half the battle you hit.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
You done two things.
Let's go with that.
The last one first.
So just getting ready to do myinsurance renewal, and at the
back of my insurance renewal iscybersecurity protection and
they had.
I had to show them that I hadan MSP so that they could
provide me this protection andobviously charged me less
premium.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's true, and the more you can report on it and
actively show hey, when I helpyou, it used to be they just a
business owner would send me thepolicy and I'm supposed to fill
it out.
Well, I can't take that riskanymore.
You're responsible for acertain level of risk.
I can help you mitigate thatrisk and I can report on how
you're doing it.
(29:25):
But ultimately, if the city ofAtlanta can get ransomware, if
all these pipelines and youcan't throw enough money at a
small MSP like me in a sizerevenue, you are to say, James,
can you 100% protect me?
No, it's layers of security.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So let's go to the next thing, because you's
bringing this one up ransomware.
Why would anybody ransomware me, and what the hell does that
mean?
What's that?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
mean.
So ransomware is an evolutionof the virus and the ability to
lock down your computer.
So basically, what they'redoing is taking a bet that you
want your data back.
So bad, you'll pay for it.
We've encrypted it and unlessyou pay it with Bitcoin that
can't be traced.
(30:10):
Well, first of all, don't payit, because the minute you do,
they will unencrypt it.
However, they got it in therein the first place hasn't been
solved, so they'll re-ransomwareyou.
I had my customer in Savannahwhich is Coastal Grading.
They're a great company.
It's been sold a long time ago.
But they had a friend, acompanion company, that got
(30:32):
ransomwared.
They paid the ransom, boughtnew computers, put everything
back on.
It got ransomed again.
They expected the insurancecompany for their cybersecurity
to pay for those new computers.
No, you also got to look atwhat your policy if you have a
cyber insurance policy will payfor.
I know I'm birdwalking there alittle bit, but ransomware is
(30:55):
where somebody's clicked onsomething or somebody's
downloaded something that are acomputer.
Or you've had a child at homethat's got Minecraft and they've
downloaded something to makethem cheat at Minecraft that
happens to have malware or a badpayload or something in it and
they're playing on your workcomputer and you happily go to
work, not knowing that your kidwas using it for gaming.
And you open up and suddenly higet to your files.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
This is crazy, right.
So I was asking him.
I'm like, well, what will theydo?
He said, well, they'll holdyour files.
Now you can't work, and sothey're going to ask for a
number and they know that youcan't go anywhere else and
you're going to have to go backto them.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That's right, it's evolved and it used to be.
They'd say we want $500,000 or$50,000.
Now what they do is they getinto your systems and try to
move laterally across the board,everything from your cell phone
to your.
They don't.
Now they've seen you log in.
They see you have a $20,000bank balance, pretty regularly
they're going to ask for $15,000.
(31:57):
If they see you have $100,000,they're going to.
But it's not just that.
They've started to realize,well, a two million dollar
ransom isn't going to be paidfor this guy.
He could probably pay 15 or 50or whatever.
But more importantly, it's whoyou're doing business with right
, because if they can trick yoursystem and this happens all the
time you have 12 tabs open andone of your employees clicks on
(32:22):
a fake email, logs in, suddenlythey have access to every login
on every one of those tabs.
So think about the tabs youhave open on your browser.
It might be your bank, it mightbe your CRM.
It might be your QuickBooksonline?
It might be.
Yeah, Boats, boats, boats.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
I have 18 open right now.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So if you were to click on that, they have access
to all of those systems.
So suddenly you'recommunicating with your attorney
or you're about to close on apiece of property.
They see that there's a oh,you're buying a piece of
property in Captiva and so, andso, suddenly, they'll interject
themselves into that email chainwith your signature.
(33:03):
Looks like it came from you, itmight even have been from you,
and they've got hidden rules inyour Office 365 that are moving
anything from this to a hiddenfolder and you don't even know
that.
So and so is not there clickingon replying oh yeah, I'll give
you an updated wire instruction.
And suddenly that money foryour down payment or whatever,
(33:24):
whatever.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
This is making my blood pressure go up.
I mean, I'm so uncomfortableright now because you know, to
be honest with you, when westart talking about computers
it's blah, blah, blah, pop-ups,blah, you know.
But this is how close are we tobeing able to hit a button and
nuke them back?
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Well, I can tell you this If I had my laptop with me,
it's in the truck, but I canactually get in and pull up
Trusted Toolbox and tell youevery attack down to the
apartment building or the citythey're in.
Oh, so we can trace them nowCan't do anything about it other
than block that IP address orblock.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Chris knows some people that can do some things.
Yeah, that's a differentpodcast.
No, it's this podcast.
Yeah, it is my podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I've asked too, and he said, no, you can't do that.
I said where are these 90attacks coming from?
He goes, yeah, I know wherethey're coming from.
I said, all right, let me haveit.
He goes.
I can't Give me the address, so, but all right, so we have that
here at the Trusted Toolbox.
Trusted toolbox.
But if I am a smaller guy,let's say I've got three or four
people, what, what should?
What preventive measures shouldI take before I decide to go
yeah and and take the leap intoms 100 paper and courier pigeons
(34:30):
.
Thank you, thank you capitalaarp, yeah get off my lawn kids
savannah's watching the moviealready.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, we.
We've already lost her.
She's gone Long gone.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
She's planning dinner .
So before you, you'll know youneed an MSP.
When, just like you mentioned,chris, when it comes to the
point where you're spendingenough time that it's preventing
you from proactively working onyour business, employees will
hide behind the tall grass.
And so things like productivityis the point where I'm smoking
(35:08):
at the back.
The internet's not working, Imight not take a smoke break.
Oh, my printer doesn't work.
They will find every excuse notto do their job, and then
they've taken that monkey andput it on your desk.
So at that point, when you'redoing too many balancing of
monkeys, that's when you knowyou need to invest in a third
party.
Somebody that has the abilityto multitask and has a team of
(35:29):
people that are can help youwith your IT needs.
But to start with, if I was abrand new startup I just read
E-Myth Mastery, one of myfavorite books, michael Gerber
and you take the leap of faithand you say I'm doing it the
first thing I would invest in isa firewall.
You know you'll see people athome using their Comcast modem
(35:51):
thinking that that's going toprotect them, and it doesn't.
It just doesn't.
Comcast isn't in the businessof protecting your data.
They just provide you apipeline to get to a certain
place.
So a firewall is very important, and that can range from a few
hundred dollars to somethinglike we've got in place with you
, which is monitored andproactively managed, and several
(36:16):
thousand dollars versus aNetgear or a WatchGuard, or
WatchGuards are managed as well,but those ones you see at Best
Buy Okay.
So that's better than nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So good, better, best , you're saying that's good,
it's okay, let's at least get afirewall, and let's at least
change the default password fromadmin.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Admin or your password of password A.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
B, C, D, E it's actually 1, 2, 3, 4.
I just had a heart attack.
You're gonna have to change itbefore this airs.
That's so funny, I love it so,yes, that that.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So now everybody can hack into everything for me, no,
come on.
I mean, my passwords are allover the place.
But um, how many passwords?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
well, that's actually that comes into number three on
my list, all right go.
But so the firewall isbasically.
Just think about it, as youjust built a moat around your
castle right, got it, so you'vegot a better.
It's better than just havingthe castle walls up, which is
good, but you need a moat.
Well, at that point, the nextthing is replacing those
(37:17):
Alligators in the moat, that'sright, We'll call that EDR.
That used to be antivirusEndpoint detection and response.
I'm getting computers, Chris,Did you hear that?
So the second thing is and thisis I'm trying- to, I make fire.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Good job, alan.
Go back to coloring yourcrayons.
Gronk, chunk, ronks, makesparky.
I get computers, alligators andbutts.
Hey, I got it and he comes upwith EDR.
I'm like, I'm trying to I'mactually trying to write down
EDR, because I don't even knowwhat it means.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
It's shorthand for alligator Detection and response
.
Think of it as antivirus onsteroids Used to be.
You'd have antivirus and thedefinitions would come down once
a week or whenever.
Edr is the advanced version ofthat, where real-time your
activity is being scanned.
If there's a malware or a badpiece of software, it's called a
(38:08):
PUP Potentially UnwantedProgram Something that you might
have clicked on and said, yes,you know how impatient we all
are.
I've done it.
You log in, click, click, click, yes, yes, yes, give me what I
need to know.
I've got a phone call in 10minutes that one.
So EDR is the next Plan onspending between $3 and $7 per
person on something like that.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
For a basic level of EDR.
So I've got to put a firewallin.
I need to get an endpointdetection response.
Give me a name on that one.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
We use Datto EDR, but there are things like Huntress.
There are countless goodversions.
That sounds good.
Get that one.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
That does sound sexy.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It gets to the point where you can lock down to
nothing called Threat Locker,where it is a zero-trust type
application where nothing istrusted unless we approve it
ahead of time, but an EDR, evensome of the decent manufacturers
.
Now you don't want McAfee.
Some of these are just crap.
They just come on the homeedition computers.
(39:10):
Do your research, Don't expectto spend more than $7.
At that point you're going toget into where you have a
security operations centermonitoring for things a little
bit more proactively than justthe software trying to do it's
true, because I mean, if youwould have said, what would you
do?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I was like, well, I knew they're norton and I knew
mcafee.
That's the only two names Iknew.
Right, but I don't have to knowthat stuff anymore.
But now he's saying he'sunlocking it for you.
You know to tell you what to do.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So firewall, put your alligators in your moat for
alan that's called edr and thenthe next thing is you put oil in
the moat and light it on fire.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
That's why I can't wait to hear what number three
is.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, I think the third Wow.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No no, guess it's a whole new level you haven't even
reached the wall yet Wait tosee what's coming.
Wait to see what he does withthat thing, I think the password
manager is the most importantthing.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Next, things like LastPass.
There are so many passwords andthere are so many times where
we'll do a scan on the dark weband we'll see that Chris has
used password as his passwordfor 93 websites or whatever
complexity, and then you forgetthem having something that is
encrypted Capital P password andthe at sign for the A Weird Ooh
(40:23):
, uh-oh oh here, I didn't evengive that one up, and now he's
gotta go to teach my passwordagain.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Don't worry, I've got you what?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
all right, so last pass, last pass is a good one.
There's others.
There's there's a quite a few,and all of them have been
breached at one point of theother.
Theoretically, I'm justmentioning that one.
There's a lot of others.
Just something to manage yourpasswords where it's not a
spreadsheet or a note on yourphone, because my wife keeps her
passwords and notes on herphone.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
So we don't do that at the Trust the Toolbox, we
just use sticky notes.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I think sticky notes are the most secure thing I've
heard so far in this podcast.
No, actually.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I think his rates are going up far in this podcast.
No, actually I think his ratesare going up, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
So what's funny is I said, hey, james is coming over,
and I used to go to cindy.
I'm like, hey, I think it'stime to get rid of those posted.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
They're faded, the color's gone.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, and she put a bit in her drawer, one that we
don't lock.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I'm like that's awesome I think that, I think
that actually kind of works.
No, actually everybody no no,no, so you said something.
Sorry, I'm going to digress alittle bit.
What is the dark web?
I mean, it sounds so ominous.
It's where the mafia hangs outand all the Russians and all
that stuff.
Basically, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So it is a version of .
I'll try to make this as simpleas possible.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Alan sport rock.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Don't forget the oil and the alligators.
I got flaming alligators.
The listeners were on it withthat.
Okay, great, I've lost my trainof thought.
What's a dark web?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Okay, so think of the Internet where you can Google
anything you want, all right,yeah.
Now if you provide a VPN or ahidden tunnel to another version
of the Internet, that's a darkweb.
It's where your identity isstolen and they sell your
(42:14):
credentials.
Perhaps you may have gone to alot of this happens to a lot of
people.
They'll go to Chewycom orOfficeDepotcom and Office Depot
hasn't protected your usernameand password, right.
They get breached and suddenlyyou'll see, oh, on the news,
blah, blah, blah, I got breachedand they've lost your social
security number, your creditcard information.
It doesn't take just one ofthose Like Office Depot is going
(42:35):
to give a username and maybe apassword.
Well, that's a starting pointfor them.
So then, what these brokers dofor pennies.
I could buy 15,000 names andsocial security numbers and
medical information on the darkweb for a penny a piece.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Why don't you just do that for your customer list,
Chris.
That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
I've already done that for her.
Okay, how do you think I gotthe new truck?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hey, you do have a nicer truck than Chris does.
What is that?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Oh, a nicer truck than chris does.
What is that?
Oh, I haven't seen that man.
I was already.
I was already in here gettingready for the podcast.
Sorry, no, seriously it's so.
Just think of it as the badguy's home.
Everything's for sale, whetherit's drugs, whether it's weapons
, whether it's.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I mean, I'm making this very simplified, but not
enough for alan, but for ourlisteners they're getting it but
it's just not easily found, Imean, it, it.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
It is if you're a bad guy and you can think about the
way sophistication apparentlyI'm not a bad guy, no, I'm not
either, if they spent half theirtime, half of this time,
getting a real job.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I know I know there's really brilliant, so for a
password manager.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Think between there's free versions.
Last pass has a free versionfor your family and the nice
thing about that is you can putin your Gwinnett water all the
things that if somethinghappened to you your Facebook,
your phone pin it's encrypted.
Your wife would be able to login and see all of those things
if something happened.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
It's just being you know All right.
So, man, we're running out oftime.
This stuff is so good, allright.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
So, man, we're running out of time.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
This stuff is so good , all right, so one, two, three.
What else do you have?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Multi-factor authentication hey, you almost
did your password One, two,three, four, five, six, seven.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
So multi-factor authentication.
It's upside down.
Everybody hates it.
Everybody finds it completelyannoying to have to go to your
phone, get a text message thatsays type this in that's the
base level you want for yourbanking or anything important.
I got out of that one.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
You broke me.
You love that one, didn't you?
I broke out Multi-factorauthentication.
So I have that.
We have that because we haveOffice 365.
So they're the kings of thatone right now, right.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, yes.
However, do you have it on yourability to remote in and look
at your files?
Do you have it on your phonesystem?
Do you have it on all thedevices that you can turn that
on?
It's a pain.
You should then get a tool likeduo or microsoft's authie or
authie, and then microsoft hastheir own, and what will happen
(44:52):
is it'll it'll instead of textmessaging you, because now we
can clone phone sims, right, sowe can make a fake version of
your cell phone.
Wow, the bad guys can not me.
Wow, right, so then I'm a goodguy.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
I think he can, I think he could be a bad guy.
I know he's just choosing to begood.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
He's chosen the right path.
You have chosen wisely.
It's like a paladin.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
But what happens then ?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
is.
It's a push notification tothat application.
That's tied and encrypted andagain, that's simplified.
Last thing backups, thing,backups.
All right, here we go.
That's what I wanted to get tothis at the very, very minimum.
Think about your office 365,your email, your files in the
cloud dropbox, one drive, any ofthe e-folder, any of the data
(45:35):
services.
Consider yourself a renter andthink about renters insurance.
Microsoft Office 365 is thereto provide you the apartment.
They're there to make sure theapartment's interable.
If something happens and itburns down, they have to replace
the infrastructure.
What happens to your stuffinside there?
Make sure you have cloudbackups.
(45:58):
Make sure you at least havesomething if you're a one-man
show and don't have a server,things like a Carbonite or
anything that will cloud backupyour laptop if you don't have
what you have in place.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Wow, All right.
So in Alan's case, what wouldhappen there is that the oil
alligator oil on fire would comeinto his place and blow it all
up.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Alan's case.
He's going to be at the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
He's going to put a plank down for the guy that
looks like you know FreddyKrueger, to bring in the
groceries and leave it down.
That's right, alan, all right.
So here's.
Here's an example of whybackups are so important.
Also, it's not evencybersecurity, it's not.
It's just some of youremployees can get ahold of a
file and delete it reallyquickly and then they go.
Hey, chris, can't find ourprice list.
Where'd it go?
I can't do anything.
Where's my price list?
(46:47):
I'm like, well, it was rightthere, let me go.
Where is it?
Well, I went in there andgrabbed it.
I'm like did you grab it?
Or did you hit the D button fordumbass?
D delete dumbass and thatDelete dumbass All in the same
sentence?
That's an innocent issue.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
What about something more along the lines of you have
somebody in your QuickBooksthat's doing your state Sales
tax Sales tax, for instance butinstead of paying it
electronically to the and thishappened to somebody I know, a
customer their person wasrouting their state unemployment
tax.
It's shown in QuickBooks thatthey paid it.
(47:24):
They were routing that moneyinto their personal bank account
.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Now, obviously, they got caught.
You need to fire youraccountant right now.
No, my accountant's not doingthat?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Your bookkeeper?
Yeah, no, oh, okay, are theydoing that?
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
But here's the point.
Can't you tell I don't either,if you have done right.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You can go back months and potentially you've
done accounting.
What was the P&L then versusnow?
At least you have the abilityto go back, even if you're just
to have one computer, carboniteor something along those lines.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
We're going to have to skip the four questions.
I know we are this is great.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Guys, as we wrap this one up, you're figuring out
there's a lot of little thingsyou can do on your own.
But if you want to go to amanaged service provider, I
don't think you're going to findit as expensive and you can
actually cost justify it quickerthan nine months that Chris did
.
Let me speed this up for you.
It definitely was a helpbecause it took me out of the.
Well, I need to get a newlaptop for a guy, all right.
(48:21):
Well, I need to get a newlaptop for a guy, all right,
chris, what did you used to do?
Well, I used to go look at BestBuy, then I go to Costco and
then I go see if I can get adeal with Dell, and then I'm all
over the place and then I getthe one.
That all, basically, is just aweb appliance.
Isn't that good?
And those guys?
So now I just say, all right,this is what I need.
And they go okay, set it up.
They buy the laptop, they getit cheaper than I could have
(48:42):
gotten anywhere, and I don'tcare, because it's all set up
and it sits right there and theguy can start working day one
and I can start training him ontrusted toolbox shit as opposed
to how do we set up a computershit.
What a massive time saver.
It really has been a massivetime saver for me and peace of
mind, a lot of peace of mind,because we did get hacked.
You know, our email gotcompromised years ago.
That was me, no, but that again.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
It happens still every day.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah, so you guys closed it down quick and then we
had to go back in.
Everybody had to get passwordeducated again.
And now good news is all mypasswords.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
What is it?
It's apparently didn't stick9876?
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Apparently didn't stick.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I'm going to throw one off on you.
Don't forget the L.
But that's an upside-down.
7.
Oh, multi-factor authentication.
Chris has got it going on, I'mgoing to use the upside-down 8
in my password.
There you go.
I love it All.
Right guys, this has beenawesome, Like.
I said we could have gone allover the place.
We got a little taste of howJames started his business and
scaled using technology.
We'll get him back on talkabout AI and scaling in the
(49:45):
future, because I think it'd beawesome to have you come talk
about that.
But in the meantime, this issomething that if it's happened
to you, you know it's a big dealand it's a pain in the ass, and
it's happened to me, and not ina big way, just in little
things, and that's made me gowow, I don't ever want that big
thing to happen.
So I'm actually I'm all for it,I like it, and when I see
people trying to kind ofcrisscross in our world, in my
(50:08):
business, I'm like no, no, yougot to get back in, you got to
do this thing the right way anddon't open those stupid emails.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
And what are you watching today, alan?
All right guys.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
I'm watching my water bottle.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
This is a great episode Alan the cool water
bottle.
I really like that water bottle.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
You know what Echo?
It's like the Fountain of Youth.
It's a high-tech water bottle.
Screw that we're going back tobourbon next episode.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
All right, guys.
If you put bourbon in it, whatwould happen?
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Oh, healthy bourbon.
Healthy bourbon, we love it, Ilove it when they say healthy
bourbon.
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