SPEAKER_03 0:00

What is the purpose of cybersecurity in Chura? Should every business have cybersecurity in Churas? Like what is your take on that? How does that work? Yes.

SPEAKER_10 0:11

The answer to that is absolutely yes. So that's kind of where we started on this whole cybersecurity journey, you know, years ago was we were um we had cybersecurity tools and and probably about eight years ago, nine years ago, everybody cybersecurity insurance was a big thing, and everybody's trying to get cybersecurity insurance. Well, the insurance companies just knew, hey, if we can charge people and get money for it, let's Harold, Craig, Justin, your NATO? Protected. That's kind of one just in the one meeting.

SPEAKER_09 0:45

So today we have Craig, and then we have Craig's head of operations. Yeah, Nashville. The Nashville office. Okay, amazing. So I guess to get started, if you guys want to tell us a little bit about your business and what you do, it's really interesting, and then we can get into it.

SPEAKER_10 1:00

All right, so we are a cybersecurity company uh that manage and maintain other companies' networks. And so we are handling their business so that they can do what they're getting at.

SPEAKER_09 1:11

That's a very very concise. Um have you done this before? Oh, very yeah, very concise. Now uh we actually it's interesting because we met you because we're looking for IT support for our business for white glove CPAs. And um what intrigued us so much about you guys is like obviously you have that white glove level of service that we um like and uh obviously we offer ourselves. But also um I liked how thorough you were, I guess, with our meeting. So you were able to actually explain everything for us and um really interesting.

SPEAKER_10 1:47

So we've been doing it for almost 20 years. And so we have been building and building, and there's been depth different evolutions to the business. And that's kind of one of the things that our biggest last evolution is you know, being thorough, being documented, having enough proactive time to do the things that a lot of IT companies kind of think slip through the cracks. So that's kind of one thing that for the past seven years we've been kind of working on that model, and it didn't happen overnight. Um but we have a great team, uh, we have great processes in place, and that's kind of what it comes from.

SPEAKER_09 2:20

Yeah, no, that's interesting. And I think being proactive is a big thing for us too. And I can see like how in the IT world with hackers and with AI and like all of the crazy advancements, you know, how important that is for I mean every business, right? From like CPA firms to like law firms to like construction companies, right?

SPEAKER_10 2:37

You guys probably well nowadays everybody when we started we were just I would say we were an MSP managed service provider um 20 years ago. And back then you needed a firewall on antivirus, and that was it. And and now I tell people we're we're more a security company trying to stop bad things from happening because there's it's it's not that the the threat hasn't changed a lot, it's just who has access to it. And so, like at White Glove, you have to have that personal experience. So we're not trying to be that IT company for everybody, we are a specific niche, um, it's mainly regulated industries. Everybody needs services like we do, but when it comes to security protection, proactiveness, um certain industries like CPA firms and doctors and lawyers, they absolutely need to have it. And that's kind of where again, we're not trying to be a fit for everybody just like White Club, we want to have our specific niche.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, so how how competitive is the IT market for the order? Is that a competitive business? I know there are south ends a lot of company, and I guess how do you differentiate from the competition?

SPEAKER_10 3:45

Well, so let me answer the first question. Competition, yes, there they not only does the tools and and AI that we'll talk about later give people abilities to do a lot more. Um there in our sector, there are just a lot of companies to do it. Uh, one of the things they're that they're trying to come up with is regulations. Like for CPAs, you have regulated CPAs, you have lawyers, people have to cut past bars um to handle sensitive data. Well, for MSPs, it's almost like the Wild Wild West. You don't know when you're dealing with an IT company, you don't know if it's a company like mine that's been around for 20 years at 30 engineers and three locations, or you're dealing with a kid that's in the in his mom's basement. And and so um it really, it's it's I don't want to say it's saturated, but there are a lot of people that are out there providing IT services. Now, where companies like mine differ is we've kind of elevated that we're more proactive, we have more resources, we have more people, so that we have the ability to be proactive and not sit back and wait for clients to ask us for things um beside protecting the network, which which we do, beside uh meeting with them, we're doing strategic planning. And I think a lot of IT companies are missing that where they're meeting and and we're partnering with companies like White Globe, a CPA that, okay, where are you at now? Where do you want to be three, six months from now? And what tools, especially with AI, we can talk about AI all day. Yeah, what what tools are they using and where do they want to be? And how do we leverage technology, which is just a tool, but how do we leverage that technology to get them where they want to go?

SPEAKER_09 5:22

Yeah. I have a quick thing. So, and you probably saw this if you lost a little episode a couple of episodes. So we did a solopreneur to enterprise journey, okay? So, from my perspective, on the outside looking in, it looks like you've made it to that enterprise level where you could fully step out today and not be relied upon. Is that true?

SPEAKER_10 5:42

I wish I could say no, it's not true, but yes, I think uh uh I have we have been working that like I said, there were two main evolutions in the past 20 years. Um, I think you and I talked about this for EOS uh entrepreneur operating system, it's a way you manage your company and get everybody rowing in the same direction. It's a phenomenal program. Um we started that 13 years ago and then we moved into this newer model where um we're being much more proactive. And and at that point, when I first started, I was like, I can do everything myself. And that was probably one of my biggest mistakes was thinking that okay, I can handle I can hire a couple people and I can do most of the work myself. Um and that's just not sustainable. So um I first started, I got myself a leadership team, which Justin is is on our leadership team. Um, everybody's held accountable. Every single person, even our HR person, has metrics that they're held to. And we had different weekly meetings that everybody reports in their numbers. Um, so I feel that I could leave for 30 days and the company would just run. The the company would it would just run without me because I have a CEO, I have a COO, director of operations, you know, it and so I would hope they would miss me. Now I do provide uh my my title is actually director of business growth. So that's kind of growing the business. So I guess if I left, I don't know how much I don't know who'd be focused on the business growth.

SPEAKER_09 7:08

Your CEO probably would find it hire someone.

SPEAKER_10 7:10

You can hire someone.

SPEAKER_09 7:12

I have a few more questions about that, and then I'll let Joaquin. He hasn't a lot that he wants to talk about. He's really excited about uh this uh podcast today. I mean Jet.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yes, all right, yeah. All right, um, okay.

SPEAKER_10 7:24

So can you tell me about the can you tell me about the name? I'd love to hear about it. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_09 7:30

So interestingly enough, we when we first started our business, you know, as one does, you make a lot of mistakes. Like when we first came together. And one of them was considering taking a percentage of ownership from clients to do their work for free. We're never gonna do that. We never did it. We never did it because so we created, we wanted to create a holding company to hold that equity rather than it being us, right? So then uh and we wanted something that was I don't know, allowed us a little bit of privacy, but then also just something that kind of was in line with us, H and J. Okay. So we went through like a lot of uh like discussions with AI for this name, a lot of hard work, you know. And then uh we really liked Harrow and Jet. I thought that was interesting, and it kind of it's funny because like my name is pretty short and like simple, and then Harrow is more complex, and then his name is like longer, and people always have trouble with it. And so Jet is like a good alternative, anyway. So that's uh I think they're both cool names again.

SPEAKER_10 8:32

I think if you're Jet. I think Jet with some glasses, I think I'm you know, but I'm an IT, so how cool can that be?

SPEAKER_03 8:38

I need to wear some of those glasses just in past.

SPEAKER_10 8:41

That's pretty cool. So hilarious.

SPEAKER_09 8:43

Um, but yeah, no, thanks for asking that. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_10 8:45

Yeah, so I've listened to some of the podcasts. It's it's really I like how you're you have a unique approach. You guys have great chemistry together, and you guys have a unique approach where it's just you're not talking about a particular sector, you're not talking about um healthcare, legal, education. I mean, you are talking about the business growth and how people get to where they are, and just like you said, you you learn, you learn from your mistake, and I think all businesses go through that. Like I we definitely we definitely went through it. And again, that's why they think the first five years is the toughest, is because five first five years is probably where you're gonna make the most mistakes. And I know you can as far as how like I'm gonna do everything myself, I'm gonna hire, fire, promote everybody, yes, and that's great. Until you have 15, 20 employees, and then all I'm doing is doing that. So then you hire an HR person. So um, but I think if you learn from your mistakes, that's kind of what makes you a successful entrepreneur. And I by no means think that I'm there. We have in the ZOS model, it it we have 10-year plans. So we have 10-year plans of how to keep the company sustainable, how we're gonna grow. Yeah, so it's about business growth. So learning learning from your mistakes. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_09 9:54

Yeah, no, that's um that's exciting though. So for the first five years for you, like how did you feel during that? Like, did you was your mindset like, okay, I'm gonna build this enterprise, or was your mindset more like I'm so stressed every single day, like, or I want to build a foundation? Like, where would your heads face that?

SPEAKER_10 10:10

So I was blessed, uh I'm foreign military. So uh born and raised in Philadelphia, and then joined the Navy.

SPEAKER_05 10:17

Thank you for your service.

SPEAKER_10 10:18

I appreciate it. Thank you for the yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:19

Navy's my favorite.

SPEAKER_10 10:20

Oh me, mine too. I would say my son just got commissioned as second, my oldest son just got commissioned as second lieutenant. So now the Marine Corps may be my favorite. Yeah, even though it's Navy, Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_08 10:30

I think yeah, I should, I should also let the Army accept.

SPEAKER_10 10:32

And the Army's good, and then my youngest son, he's a he's a junior in uh in college, but he's also he's wanted to become an accountant, so I may want to talk to you about internships.

SPEAKER_07 10:43

He can come right on the podcast.

SPEAKER_10 10:45

I think it's it's important. Again, I I feel that everybody should join the military at least two years. I learned so much from the military, but then when I got out of military, I worked for two really good companies, and and both companies really taught me a lot. But I kind of either I say this, and some people take it the right way, wrong way. I'm a great employee. I'm that employee that shows up. I'm the the military gave me a work ethic that I'm gonna show up early. One of our sayings at bachelor's early is on time, on time's late. So I show up early, I put in 150%, and I stay late. That's great for employers, not so good for the employee. And so what I did is I was, I was at my previous company, and I always get awards and I always get raises, and everything is working. Well, I tell people I had a I had a newborn son, and so the problem is I would leave before I got up and I'd get home after he after he went to bed. So I turn around, he's four years old. And I was like, whoa, this is you know, I was getting everything, but I didn't have balance in life. And so that what the reason I started Bachelor was I really I wanted to have balance. And it wasn't I I loved two things. I love serving people and I love technology, and that's the peel I've always been in. So I'm like, all right, let me start this company, let me find other people that had that same passion. And so I was blessed because having that balance was so important in my life. And so I meet with new team members and I say, look, if you have a daughter, you have a son that's playing baseball, and I found out you missed, you know, a game because of work, you and me gonna have problems. So it'll be like that. Yeah, so in the beginning, it really it's uh it it was challenging because I still had that work ethic. I still, but I didn't have a team built. And so for the you were asking the question is what was the hardest part? Hardest part was building that team. And so um, and yeah, we've we've worked on it, and so I had a uh we have a great leadership team, but it takes time, it takes time to build that leadership team. But then once you do, it's amazing results.

SPEAKER_06 12:44

So especially if they if you can get them that be in line with your priorities and like yeah, like you said.

SPEAKER_10 12:50

Well, we had talked about that earlier, about faith, you know. You know, faith for me, faith is first, family second, business is third, and that's kind of with Justin, with all my top people. Now, again, you don't have to be faithful to work as Ashlar. We absolutely make that clear. Um, but the top tier, it's it's about you know loving other people and taking care of your employees. And so I feel we've since day one, I tell people this, you know, we have unlimited vacation, unlimited sick time. We you take as much sick time, you take as much vacation time as you want. We've had people in the past take a month off and go to Europe. And so people are like, uh, well, don't people abuse that? Well, not if you got the right people. If you have the right people in place, they they really don't. And most a lot of my employees, if you make the environment where they want to work, sure. So we have some employees, we have to make them take vacation. Or like, hey, you haven't taken a vacation in like, you know, oh yeah, go go somewhere. So yeah, but if they say love what they do, you know, they only tell you when they need it.

SPEAKER_09 13:45

Yeah, well, and then my grandpa, who like if you've heard podcasts, probably heard me talk about talk about all the time, um, he's my favorite person, but he's my army. Um, that's why I probably should say army's my favorite. He watches this later, he's gonna be like, why haven't they been? No. But so but his thing is them, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, right? And like a lot of what you said, like military, right? He he had that same thing. He's like, if you're he taught me that when I was really young, if we were ever on time, he's like, You're late. Like 15 minutes early or nothing, or like don't even bother showing up.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

So Justin, how's it how's it at our office as far as reviews?

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, I mean it's the same. We join meetings early. We've got it's like you join right at a time, you say, Well, is it ever you want, you know?

SPEAKER_10 14:28

So yeah, but it also leaves in the military. We all we have, you know, in case something happens, you want to make like in case you get lost, in case your car breaks down, be prepared. Um, and so if you leave early, that's what I tell them like if you leave early, give yourself enough time. If something comes up, you you my saying is adapt and overcome.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 14:45

Uh that's actually an army phrase. So fire fire for effect. Fire for effect and adapt and overcome are my two favorite army sayings.

SPEAKER_09 14:52

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Mr.

SPEAKER_09 14:53

Faith's and you're saying about faith, so fire doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

That's what I was saying. It's one thing he doesn't know too, is in Nashville you always have to leave early too because of traffic.

SPEAKER_09 15:00

So uh you never, I mean, there can be traffic at like 7 a.m. on a Saturday if I want to get to the stage at all. You know, um, but I want to talk about your cup for a second. Okay. I thought something in the case.

SPEAKER_10 15:10

So this is this is my cup, and what it says is it says, treat everyone like Jesus sent them to you. And this is a friend of mine that I'm part of the uh small peer group, uh Christian group that meets every Saturday. Um, and he said it, and it just resonated with me. And again, so uh I tell people faith is first. So I put faith first, uh family second, and everything else is third. And and things just fall in line for faith. If you just if you treat people like you want to be treated, you know, if you do nice things for people, nice things happen. And so, and I've been able to surround myself with other like-minded people that that had that same. So, really at our office, and we have this environment, this culture that everybody really wants to help everyone else. And it's there is I I don't feel, and Justin might attest to this, there's not a hey, I want that person's job, or I if I help this person, that makes them better, makes me I'm like everybody wants to help everybody out.

SPEAKER_06 16:07

Yeah, um makes everyone's jobs easier.

SPEAKER_09 16:09

It does, yeah. We preach on that often. So I'm really curious about how you is it in your like employee hiring process, and and this is probably like for a lot of people who watch it, hopefully business owners and my grandpa and his mom, um, our 11 listeners, um, be helpful for them to hear and learn. But um, but I guess like how do you like do you have a certain tool or process where you find the perfect person that kind of fits like foundationally what you're looking for?

SPEAKER_10 16:36

So EOS is part of that, and and where EOS starts is you have your core values. So what's some of our core values? Humbly confident, put others first, honesty, integrity. That those are our core values. Um, and we started probably about seven years ago, kind of we had that shift seven years ago, uh, where we don't when people apply for a job of batch technologies, we don't ask them a single technical question. We're we're assuming that if you're applying for a technical job that, you know, obviously you went to school for, so we can see that resume, or you know what you're doing, where we ask questions are about you know the core values, you know. Tell us about the last time you were humbly confident. Give us an example when you quit someone else first. Um, I think if you can find the people with the right core values, we can teach them technology. And this is my favorite saying my favorite saying is just because your core values may not align with us doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you're not a right-fitted bachelor. So since we've done that, we have like as business owners, you know, you're always looking for that rock star. You're always looking for our last I want to say 12 hires have just been rock stars. Not all, all, not all of them stay. They that I'm like as business owners, you know, some people come and and they learn and then they move on. And that's kind of where I feel my job is. My job is if if you come and stay with bachelor, great. If you come and learn something and improve your life, then that's great too. But it all revolves again, the core values. And like I said, we have weekly meetings, we go over core values, uh, we have uh quarterly conversations with every single employee, and we and and it's not a review, it's just hey, how you do it? How and managers meet with their team members, and it's a really unique way of approaching it where you're you're talking to them at the same level, you're like, okay, how are you doing? You know, what can I what can I be doing better to help you? Yeah. And so it creates that culture. So, like in IT, and that's kind of where we do a lot of proactive stuff, so we're fixing things when they're small so they don't become big. Same thing with employees. When if you talk to them and and they're having issues, and usually a lot of issues that affect employees aren't work-related. Usually they're out of the office things, they're having issues, they're having car problems, or having relationship problems. And if you can communicate with them and talk to them, you know, it it helps out. And I think that's probably been one of the biggest changes for us is you know, having those coolly conversations and getting everybody having metrics. And and I was just talking to a potential uh employee this morning, we were having a uh conference call um and we're and seems like a rock star. Awesome people want to be measured, subpar people don't want to measure. And so if you talk to someone and say, Hey, how do you feel about me measuring you? If they're like, you know, kind of hesitant and they don't want to be measured, it's usually call them. We we have this book, uh Ride the Bus that you either have someone riding the bus, walking, or running. And so usually the the riders don't want to be measured, but the runners absolutely want to measure every metric because definitely like the call I had this morning, she was awesome. She's like, I want to know the metrics so I can crush her. And that's kind of people I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_09 19:43

So absolutely that's good feedback. That's that's a good question. We're gonna add that to our uh you know uh intake for no boys. Yeah, that's interesting. So a little bit more about your soulpreneur direct when you were when it was just you or just your core team. What are I guess a couple things, like truth or things that you would have done differently, like from what you know now?

SPEAKER_10 20:04

Well, I definitely would have started off not trying to do everything myself. I would have find experts in certain areas, I would have find, but it's challenging again for entrepreneurs, you're starting budget.

SPEAKER_08 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 20:15

So we start with two people, is me and my partner in Montgomery, uh Daniel, and three companies. And that was it. So we start with three companies, and and so I wish I could have hired an HR person. So there's a balance. There's not a magic, there's not a magic solution, but as you grow, you want to be looking for. So we're already strategically looking for, okay, what are we gonna need six months? What do they need a year from now? I think where where I made a mistake early on was I waited until I needed something, and then I started looking. Okay, we're big enough to have an HR person. Let me start looking for an HR. Well, I should have been starting a year before that, saying, hey, what are we looking in this role? And so if my biggest mistake is waiting until something we were in need of something. And so looking ahead and saying, so us, we're planning, okay, where's bachelor going to be six months, a year from now? What's that staffing look like? And with this EOS model, we're actually looking 10 years down the road. Okay, what's our growth look like 10 years from now? What's our plan? What's it look like? You know, how many employees, how many offices? And so just strategically planning for it prepares you to be ready for it.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

So something else I want to add to that is that team you're talking about getting a place, whether it's your partner when you start the business or it's teams you're building around you, want to make sure your vision's clear with them too. Um, make sure they share in the same vision for the growth of the business long term, because you can hire an employee to be just employee. But if you're bringing on a partner or you're bringing on that early, you know, leadership team, you want them to share that vision with you in order to you're all going the same direction. You're all kind of rolling the same same direction, brother boat. That's right, but you're also going for that same goal as well, whether that's one year, five year, 10 year goal, whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_10 21:52

And and that's an awesome point that we have quarterly. So so part of this EOS model I keep talking about is the leadership leaves. Every quarter we leave for a day. And we leave, we either come up to Nashville or we go all together. All together. We leave the company and we spend an entire day in the conference room by ourselves. And then once a year we go away for two days and we're not distracted and turn all our phones off. And all we're doing is focusing on the business, where we are, where we work, where we're going. And then once we have that, we make big decisions, and then we come back when we have an all-hands meeting. So every quarter we have an all-hands meeting and we go through it. And the last slide of our all-hands meeting is people in uh rowboats. Uh, what are the rowboats called? The the big boats and everybody, I forget what they're called. For Philadelphia, where they it's the rowing, I don't know what's called the sport of rowing. So they whatchall, we we end the end the presentation with the picture of 10 people in a rowboat all rowing the same direction. And we tell them this is what we want. We want every single person here pointing the right way, seeing where we're going, and everybody rowing the right direction. And so you give vision to everybody. And I was being military, it's kind of a need to know basis. So in the ZOS model is opening up and showing in the numbers, showing them where we're showing financials.

SPEAKER_09 23:08

Is that kind of what you got to spray? Are you familiar with the open book model?

SPEAKER_10 23:12

So that's that's what we do.

SPEAKER_09 23:14

But do you do granular financials or are you doing an overview?

SPEAKER_10 23:17

Overview. So we don't get in the set salary stuff, but we do show salary. We say, hey, here's what pay here's what payroll is, here's payroll for everybody.

SPEAKER_08 23:23

And you do it as a percentage of revenue too. Okay. And percentage of revenue and number or just percentage of revenue?

SPEAKER_10 23:29

Percentage of revenue.

SPEAKER_08 23:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 23:30

So and then uh we show them where our expenses are, we're show them where we want to be. Hey, this is where we want to be at the end. We show them where we're at. Hey, was this a good quarter? Was it not a good quarter? And we talk about even uh, you know, everybody at Bachelor has a part to play, and we kind of explain that that the person answering the phone, that's that's we call them triage. They're answering the phone, they're just determining how severe the issue is and what department they go to. We talk about how efficient if they can be, how they directly correlate to financials. You know, if you can, if you can be this efficient and you can keep clients happy, you keep the revenue. Uh, so you tie every person to numbers. And again, the people, your your superstars, they want to be measured. And I think that, you know, I I've worked for companies where I feel I was a rock star, but there's no measurement. They didn't know, they couldn't compare me to the person next to me who might be watching TV. And so I'm working, they're not. And so I think that having those measurements is important.

SPEAKER_09 24:31

Yeah, I'm big on measurements too for employees. We've uh we've implemented a new, like actually um system within White Glove is we measure people on not only their quality of work and like the regular what you would expect, but then also we've added that we're gonna be doing this next uh we do twice a year, like um the managers meet with the employment every month, right? One-on-one, but then twice a year we do like a big overview, like with HMR and their manager. So the new thing that we're implementing for this next um review, I'm really excited about, is not only your regular metrics, but then also on our core value metrics. So like white list for value. So like they'll be rated A, B, or C.

SPEAKER_10 25:09

So how are you measuring how are you measuring one of core values?

SPEAKER_09 25:12

So basically one of them is proactiveness. So if we see that they're being proactive with a client, if they don't know that the client has this deadline or that the client may ask for this KPI or this report, if they're proactively providing it, proactively asking questions, preparing for the next month's close before the deadline, that's kind of where Okay.

SPEAKER_10 25:30

I asked that because we are using the program called Cruhu. And I will say Cruhu is awesome. So Cruhu is a customer survey. And so we originally got it because we want to know we deal with hundreds of calls every day. And so we want to know, you know, how you know how the conversation goes, how'd the client feel about it? We have all these metrics, like from our perspective of you know, ticket times and all these metrics, but we really want to know how the customer felt diagnosed. So when whenever tickets close at the end of it, it's a survey, it's a survey that has a happy face, a medium face, or an unhappy face. And so they have the ability to rank how satisfied they were. And then we're like, well, hey, we're doing this for our customers. Why can't we do this for our employees? So, what we do is that we tie it to dollars, each each we call them Kruhu bucks, and each crew buck equals a certain amount of money, and then you can exchange them for gift cards and trips or vacation or time off, a whole bunch of stuff you can do. But then we're like, okay, so every employee gets a certain dollar out amount every week to give away. They gave away to other boys, and so and it's great. We started this, and I wasn't quite sure how it would come over, but I'm like, you we get the best feedback from employees from other employees, you know how how you putting someone, how you putting someone first? We get an email. Hey, I was in trouble, and Lamar stopped what he was doing and help me out and walk me through, even though it was a senior engineer with awesome that he helped me. You know, Daniel did a great job. And and so it's the employees kind of bragging on the other points. And so that's kind of what it's like, that's one of the metrics when you say that at the beginning of every uh quarterly all hands meeting, we pick a core value. There's five of them, but we pick a core value. We don't say what the core value is, we give an example of an employee that demonstrated that core value. So obviously, for putting someone first, hey, hey, this is where uh uh Justin said that Lamar stopped what he was doing and put him first, humbly confident. This is where I had a problem, and Daniel, one of our senior people, stopped what he was doing and explained it to me. So we kind of and it really it's it's a good way of measuring you know what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_09 27:45

So I really like that. I I recently had an idea to do like uh anonymous surveys for employees, like to do for each other.

SPEAKER_10 27:52

Right.

SPEAKER_09 27:52

I like that better though.

SPEAKER_10 27:53

Yeah, and it is because other because what's neat is other employees see it and when they see it, you want to call yeah, they're they're called badges.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

And so, like we're saying we have you know, we use Microsoft Teams to communicate and everything. So there's a whole bulletin board of when people give badges and stuff. And so it kind of like you said, it's like a a wall of fame as to how many badges you can give. So once you go in the system and add like gift a badge to someone, then yeah, then it posts in that hey, so-and-so just gifted this badge to so-and-so for this reason. Uh so kind of like so it makes it work, it's like a bulletin board of employees shouting out at each other.

SPEAKER_09 28:24

I think our operations team is gonna be uh not happy after this. Uh I think this episode is gonna be kind of like, hey, we'll let all these things done.

SPEAKER_10 28:32

Well, let us know. That's kind of again, that's what I tell people about Batch or one of the things that makes us different, kind of like White Clove. You guys are premiere, you guys are, you know, you're not a right fit for everybody, but the ones you are, you handle their needs. You find out. And I tell people it might not be a TET-tal question. We meet with them and and and pull them around. Hey, this is what we not only do we, you know, as we've been in business almost 20 years, we support over 100 companies. So we're talking to 100 companies, yeah, several CPA companies, you know, so we can talk to what other CPA companies are doing, to our doctors. We can talk, hey, this is what you know, EMRs they're using. So we we bring that and and you know, beside handling the IT stuff, and I say the handling IT stuff is important, but also bringing the the other needs that business owners like you know, they need that they're like, Hey, I want to do employee, I want to boost morale. What do other companies do? Oh, Kruhu. Oh, that's awesome. Can't you tell me about it? And okay, and then we help them. If they decide to do it, then we help them implement it and kind of show like we've had people join our EOS meetings, our weekly EOS meetings, to show them, hey, this is what a meeting looks like. And then we help people implement EOS, and it doesn't do any for us. I'm like, there's we're not partners at EOS or anything, but again, it just it I feel this is my saying beside doing the technology, our job is to demonstrate the value add that Bachelor brings every day. And so it probably is gonna be technical, but it may not, you know. Obviously, keeping your network safe and doing penetration tests and making sure that everything's running the way it should, that's a baseline. That's kind of where we start. Okay, yeah, we're gonna do all that, but then okay, how do we help you? And that's why we talk to our clients like, where do you want to be two years from now? And we have we have a roadmap to help them get there.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Yeah, that's one of the things too. We do quarterly meetings with our clients called technical business reviews. Um like you was mentioning, and the questions that ask us during that is more uh operational, more so than technical. Because, like you said, if we have the reports, we'll go over, we'll talk about tickets metrics, we'll talk about response time, we'll talk about cybersecurity. Um, but one of the questions, like after all the reports are over, they're like, Okay, now let me ask you a couple questions. So a lot of the times, if there are new cut new companies starting out, like CPAs, for example, they'll ask questions like, well, what are the other CPAs doing that e does help? What are they doing for this? What are they doing for that? Um, a couple of the questions they'll ask us that sometimes are like right now it's AI based. A lot of AI based questions. And everybody's asking everyone's like, Well, what are other companies over there? How can AI help us? My cousin's sister says that she uses AI and it she doesn't have to work at all now. So, you know, so they're trying to sell internet lens. Yeah, they're asking us to be the the experts in the AI field as well now.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

So yeah, that's so cool. That was a lot of food. Interesting. That was a lot of food stuff.

SPEAKER_09 31:15

So yeah, very informative. Um, so back to that. I guess uh I have a couple things back to the solving her. Do you have anything else like on to build on the solo?

SPEAKER_03 31:24

Yeah, I guess I would love to uh so I get from the solopreneur enterprise.

SPEAKER_06 31:29

I have a couple more like the beginning phase, but anything on the beginning?

SPEAKER_03 31:33

Uh I guess the beginning phase uh question I would have. So you would be you have been mentioning couple management philosophy. You don't be mentioning EOS, right? Right. Well, what does that stand for?

SPEAKER_10 31:45

Entrepreneur operating system. EOS. Entrepreneur operating system. And it's just it's a free, it's a free system. The guy wrote right the guy wrote a book about it.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

And and how did you find out about that? And then like how long, how long into the business, how many years into the business you decide to implement that, and why you decided to implement that?

SPEAKER_10 32:06

So I had a friend, yeah, we call him EOS facilitators. Now, there's two models you can use for EOS. You there's the books, everything's free, you can get the book and you can read it, and then you can try to implement it yourself, or you can hire a what we call an EOS facilitator. I really don't want to turn into an EOS ad, but um, you know, so I had a friend that said, hey, he's a facilitator. He's like, hey, I have this program, I want you to come in 45 minutes and hear what I got to say. So I went and talked to him. I said, Man, that is all the things he said as a small business owner, you know, having accountability, having metrics, having everybody row in the same direction, all the things I wanted. I was like, I want that. And he's like, All right, well, here's how much it costs for me to facilitate. I'm like, hmm, okay, I can do it myself. So I said, Let me do it myself. He said, Yeah, you're gonna do it for three months and then he came and you're gonna stop. He's like, I'm telling you right now, you can do it three months, you're gonna stop, and then you're gonna come back. I'm like, all right. So I read the book and I tried to do it for three months, and just like he said, life got in the way, and and I started, you know, we started not having meetings, and then we actually hired an EOS facilitator. And what his job was for two years, he would come to our office every week and he would sit in that 90-minute meeting and he would make sure we have rocks, we had to-dos. You know, if you in the beginning, you come and you kind of get to-dos, which are supposedly the most important thing that you're supposed to work on. Then when we first started, people would come and have the rocks wouldn't be done, or half their half the rocks wouldn't be done, their to-dos wouldn't be done. Yeah, and he's like, No, he's like, Look, don't come to this meeting if you don't have your to-dos done. And if they're not the most important thing, don't make it a to-do. And so it took us almost two years. When I say it was a long journey, yeah, it took us two years to get everybody into it. Um, so we did that, and it was we first started a leadership team, getting the leadership team, and that's kind of what our facilitator focused on was getting our leadership team to do everything you're supposed to do. And that took about two years. And then afterwards, the facilitate facilitator's like, All right, I'm done. I mean, you guys are good, you're hit all your rock, you have your metrics, you got them, you come to meetings, your to-dos are done. The meetings last 90 minutes, they start on time, they end on time, you're having efficient meetings, and then he's done. And then our job was to teach our employees how to do it, and so it probably took another five years. So by me, it by no means is it a quick fix. Sure. But it took us, you know, probably seven years from start to finish to get from from not having these meetings to now every single person. And the key is getting employees to like the meetings, they come to meetings and they see so an example would be a one of our a level one person who's a person who just started a bachelor, they can suggest something in their meeting and it can roll up into our meeting. It he can make an idea, a suggestion. And so it really it's just getting, like I said, run everybody run the same direction. Um, and once you do that, and you were talking earlier about me taking off at 30 days, you know, uh we talk about the whole point of EOS is for it for the owner to be on a desert island and be able to get a fax once a week. What are the critical things that need to be measured and reported on that he can look at this one report and know the company's going the right direction? And that's kind of what everybody reports on. It kind of rolls up. So if I wanted to, I could leave and I would look at this once a week report. I could say, okay, that's doing oh, wait a second, or some areas here we're gonna approve on. So but yeah, it really it's like I said, if there's there's two big evolutions in 20 years, one was EOS, and the other is this new model we did. And now AI is gonna be the third day.

SPEAKER_07 35:35

Yes, yeah, and I think AI will be a big one for every as a it's going to be it, it's gonna be huge.

SPEAKER_10 35:42

And and so currently, right now, so we actually one of the things we're working on is again, we support a lot of different companies, and everybody's on this AI journey at different stages. There are some people that don't use AI, there are some people who use it to have spell check or rewrite emails. There's other people that have created bots to do sophisticated stuff. So our job we feel is to find out where they're at in their journey and just kind of help them along. Um, the first thing you do is you start off, you have to have a policy. You have to have policy for your employees because your employees are using it, and especially the CPA firm or regulated industry, we tell people the reason you want a policy is because you don't want employees putting personal identifiable information into a free version of chat GPT. And and I forget the guy's name, but there was a uh a uh movie star that was building a house, and the contractor who was contract build the house put the blueprints in AI and the blueprints got out. And now everybody has a copy of this guy's safe room, you know, everything about this guy's new house he's gonna build is like everybody knows, and just so the key is to come up with that um the the explanation of hey, this is what our policy is, you know. And and I tell clients if you have uh Office 365, you already get a paid version of Copilot, use that, start, start with that. Um, but AI is going to uh it it's there's gonna be some big things coming down the next six months to 12 months. There's really gonna be some big changes, and and I think it's positive changing. I think just like the it we're right now where we're at is kind of uh, you know, I'm not sure if you remember when the internet first came out, and you know, you did be prior to Google, you know, prior to Google internet came out. And so you had this great tool, you're like, okay, I know it's powerful, but you know, I can do a bunch of stuff, but you know, what can I do? You're talking about malls online. How am I gonna buy stuff online? Like we we we didn't see that how we're gonna do it. AI is kind of in the infant stages, so we're pre-Google uh for AI when it comes like the internet, so it's a huge powerful tool. Um, and people just uh what I recommend is just get comfortable, just get use it, start somewhere, start, you know, and I tell people and when we use the word hallucination, the the big problem with AI is AI doesn't know what AI doesn't know. So if you ask it a question and it doesn't know, it literally just makes stuff up. And and so it's gotten much better, but it still hallucinates. I tell people you don't use AI to get the answer, you use AI to help you get to the answer. Or you don't use AI to save you two, three hours a day, you use A and I to save you five, 10 minutes 20, 30 times a day. And so rewriting emails or just looking over stuff. I'm like, it's it's a powerful tool. Just tell people to start using it.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Yeah, that would be awesome.

SPEAKER_09 38:31

What would be, I guess, um this is a question we get this from client, and I and I can see this being a bigger concern, I guess, with clients. Like, obviously, everyone's using AI. We don't do client information in AI, however, like obviously we use it for emails, right, etc. And like say, hey, pull up my list from my calendar, things I need to do. We use like the otter AI, which is great for meetings, which you you met otter, she's nice, very friendless.

SPEAKER_10 38:57

She shows up on dials. She shows up show sharp early. It's from it's the it's the auto attendant that in in, but she shows up right on time.

SPEAKER_09 39:05

If she can show up a couple minutes early, I I've you know, she she's missed out on a couple of things, but maybe because I'm in the meeting chatting away. I'm like, oh, there she is, you're late. So no, um, that's interesting. So I guess do you have anything to say, or would you have any advice to clients or business owners, people who go to CPA firms, or go to you guys, or go to uh law firms for advice? And like how would you, I guess, describe or explain the use of AI with an accounting and law firm?

SPEAKER_10 39:35

So accounting and and we'll just say regulated industry. So most regulated industries have personal identifiable information they have access to. Everybody has important information. Uh, the first place you start is like I said, the policy because your employees are using it. If you if if you don't have anything, employees are using it. And and most employees, if they do something wrong, it's because they're just not educated on what they should do. So the first thing you do is you start off with a policy. Hey, and and I tell people, like I said, our policy is very simple. Hey, we're gonna give you co-pilot, we're gonna give you co-pilot. It's it's we're paying for Office 365, you had it, it's secure. You put something in there, it doesn't leave, it's called a tenant, it doesn't leave arc in it. So it's all within bachelor. If you don't like our co-pilot, if you like grog, if you like chat GPT, it's fine. You can use that. You just have to show us that you're using a paid version. And what we're working on from the IT perspective is we have uh, and this kind of one thing separates, we have a dedicated AI team that that's we're you know, that's all they do is work on AI, figure out how to use AI for bachelor, and also figure out for CPA firms how can CPA firms leverage AI. Um, but it comes to telling them that or one of the things we're trying to come up with is how do we determine if somebody is using a paid version or free version in your office. So let's say you become a client and you want to know, hey, Craig, we want to monitor our network and we want everybody to use a paid version of AI. How do we know if they're not? And so we have a our AI is actually working on it. And so currently, right now, what we're doing is we're actually blanking out all uh personal death on information. So if you put any social security number into an AI, you don't really need to see that social security number. You you know what it is, but we have a program that will blank it out. So not AI doesn't know what it is, so but the next step is kind of reporting hey, you have two or three users that may be using a free version of AI. But um, I get it starts off with the the policy because employee employees they want to use it, they know it's powerful. It's and for the employer, it's great because like I said, it will save your employees two, three minutes 30, 40, 50 times a day.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 41:46

And so um, so that's kind of where I would say start. And so we're actually it's funny you mention that, we're actually doing a huge AI webinar next week.

unknown 41:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 41:55

So I'll I'll send you the link to that. That is that is gonna be a webinar that's gonna focus for businesses. We're gonna talk about uh guidelines and and putting orders up. And and I'm not sure if you heard about that the open AI that they asked in a question, they removed some guidelines, and it went and hacked another company. And that's that's the biggest, that's the biggest problem is the AI, it's it's powerful, but it doesn't know like it's not yeah, it doesn't know it's not supposed to do something unless you tell it. And so if you say go find this information and don't tell it any parameters, it's gonna do whatever it has to do. And if it has to hack into the company to get it, it will. So that's really the and we won't get into it, it doesn't have empathy for human beings, too. So we won't get into that fact. That's it. Yeah, but again, it's it comes up to guidelines, and and that's kind of what the webinar is gonna be about is for businesses. Okay, now that you have AI, now your team's using AI, now that you have guidelines from you as AI, what are the the guidelines that you got to set for AI? What are the questions? Hey, like, what are you gonna tell AI, hey, do this, don't do this. Hey, if I ask you this question, I don't want you going over here to this my competitor. I'm like, so it's it's setting up those bounds, those boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

It's definitely the wider west.

SPEAKER_10 43:11

It well, that's what it is right now. Again, it's just if you picture, remember the internet when probably Google, they were afraid of it, they didn't know what to do with it. They knew it was this powerful tool, and that's kind of where we really are right now. It's just we are in the infant stages, maybe adolescent stages of of AI.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Um number two, there's there's companies behind each AI model. Sorry, those companies have their own. Yeah, they're one of those days out. They want to die in there. And they want bigger, faster, and more users on it as quickly as possible. So they're gonna l lessen those guidelines as much as possible to make it more uh appeasing to more people, you know.

SPEAKER_09 43:44

So uh a follow up question to that.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 43:47

So what would you say, I guess, and and would you say that it's a valid concern um businesses and clients of ours or it other CPA firms being concerned with CPA firms using AI?

SPEAKER_10 44:01

If they're using a closed tenant, no. If again, if you're using the paid version of uh uh co-pilot, then it's closed up in your tenant, you're putting questions in, it's not being shared. And I will say the problem that we've run across with like chat GPT is even if you pay for chat GPT, you got to go two sub-layers down to check a box that says, hey, don't share my information. So you could go pay for chat GPT, and unless you check this specific box, it's still being public. But I would say again, as long as you're using a closed head, then no, I I tell my regulated industries it's it's just like you typing it in Outlook. You know, you're typing back and forth your kind of in in Outlook. Same exposure. Yeah, same exposure. I mean, can can someone get to it? I'm like, again, anybody can get to anything if they want. And that's kind of you know, a big thing nowadays is with AI, and and that's kind of with our response time. One of the things that we're challenged with is, you know, it used to be uh they hackers would set up bots to go try to hack in other companies. And let's say they hacked in at two o'clock in the morning, which is a bot that hacks in, the person doesn't know it, so the person's still asleep, so they don't realize they've gotten in until you know four or five, six hours later. So several years ago, if the time needed to identify when a compromise happened was was kind of long. I mean, you had an hour, two hours before anything bad happened. Really, so we're talking seconds now. We're talking with the use of AI, if someone has a bot, and this is a problem, is and I I don't a 12-year-old could set up a bot to try to hack into a company at two o'clock in the morning, and and if it gets in, it runs all these commands and it does all these things right away. That and and the hacker's still sleeping. And so that's our response time. So we've kind of gotten it down. This is we've gotten it down to about six minutes. We have tools that if someone gets into the network, we have ways of isolating that machine, identifying it, rolling back. And I will say, people, some people say, Oh, two minutes, that's great, or six minutes, they say that's great. Other people say six minutes, that's forever. Like hospitals, like we we partner hospitals, hospitals' response time are like four or five hours before they know. And so that's good. You'll you see these things on where hospitals are compromised. And ransom and they're they're paying through this. It just it's about it's about having the right tools in the right place and having people monitor. But but that being said, you know, the bad guys using AI to try to get in, we're using AI to protect networks. So kind of it's it's it's we're using the same tool coming from two different ends. So I think answer your question is a real long answer, but I would say as long as they're using a closed tenant, which means they're they're paying for a version of AI, then I would not be concerned about my my CPAs, my doctors, my lawyers using AI with, but we also always want to be cautious when you're putting in personal identifies.

SPEAKER_09 46:55

Yeah, at this time we don't put any of that in there, obviously, but um I can see that being an issue.

SPEAKER_10 47:00

Well, that's why the tool we're using, which I can talk to you. If the tool we're using, is awesome because it detects like let's say you copy you you're doing someone's return or something, and you want you copy a bunch of information about them and you want to you want to throw an AI. Using this tool, when you throw it in there, if it recognizes a social security number, it blanks it out. So it automatically, so it's almost like a double check. Like you might you might put a page in and not realize at the bottom of the page might be someone's social security number. Well, the tool we're using automatically identifies it and blanks it out so even the AI AI doesn't see it. Because to give you the answer that you need, the AI doesn't need the social security all right.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Uh one thing I also mentioned too, you said keeping it in the paid tenant obviously is the best way to go. But the next step would be that policy he mentioned before. And we have on our policy on the very bottom of it, basically it says any AI content used must be re-read with human eyes. Because, like you were saying, sure, AI will just make stuff up if it doesn't know, or it will throw in stuff that doesn't make sense or doesn't get the full context of whatever you're trying to say. And if you also on Chat GPT or Copilot, you have different chats, right? Different conversations, it might start pulling from a conversation you were talking about with client A in this email you're trying to write to client B, and then you've accidentally shared client data or names on on non-purpose. So uh reviewing what ChatGPT, co-file, whatever AI spits out is is probably the number two policy.

SPEAKER_09 48:27

Yeah, it's definitely not perfect. And like that's why like sometimes we get the concern or like the gist in the business world and the professional services world that clients, if you're using AI, you know, you should be giving them a discount, right? Like, have you guys experienced that or heard about that? But again, like it's that level of expertise and like experience, right? That you're paying or not really the work, so like reviewing, like you said, you know, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 48:51

A follow-up question to that. Uh what is the purpose of cybersecurity in Chura? Should every business have cybersecurity insurance? Like, what is your take on that? How does that work? Yes. Sorry.

SPEAKER_10 49:06

So the answer to that is absolutely yes. So that's kind of where we started on this this whole cybersecurity journey, you know, years ago was we were um, we had cybersecurity tools, and and probably about eight years ago, nine years ago, everybody cybersecurity insurance was a big thing, and everybody was trying to get cybersecurity insurance. Well, the insurance companies just knew, hey, if we can charge people and get money for it, let's offer it. So, you know, the cybersecurity questionnaire eight years ago was one page long. Hey, do you have antivirus? Do you have a firewall? Does someone monitor nowhere? All right, good. Here's cybersecurity insurance. Well, the problem is all these compromises started happening and the insurance companies got overextended. So what the insurance companies did, insurance companies don't like losing money. So what they started to do is like, all right, we're gonna double, triple, quadruple people's insurance rate and and charge them more.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

So you need to call them.

SPEAKER_10 49:55

It would not be quite, we're just we're just gonna charge more. So um, so we heard from this real quick that our clients are calling us, hey, we just got dropped, or hey, our our cybersecurity insurance. We had one large company, it it went from probably $30,000 a year to 140. A lot of our larger lawyer, like just insane, like a like insane jump. And so we called the insurance company, it was like, hey, what's going on? And so they told us. And so we did is we partnered with about four major insurance companies, said, Okay, what do we need to offer our clients to for our clients to get the premium insurance for cybersecurity? Like, and they listed, you know, we need MDR, EDR, SOC, we we need one all these things. So instead of it being a one-page document, it's now a four-page document. So we actually built our cybersecurity stack around what the insurance companies were asking for. So the nice thing about our clients is you know, if you have bachelor security stack, you call your insurance company and say, hey, yeah, checkbox, check, check box. But I will tell you that I have I've been in situations where something bad has happened and the company has had cybersecurity insurance, and it's you know, it's it's a bad situation, but it doesn't get worse. I've had other companies that they have a situation, they don't have insurance, and it gets worse. Yeah, you know, and and you're so especially if something happens and personal identifiable information is exposed and you gotta start doing uh the uh you make announcement basically and having to alert them of the of the breach at that point. Yeah, and then you gotta do credit monitoring for all anybody like so how many clients you have, but if if you had to do credit monitoring for all your clients, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 51:38

I worked at a law firm, pretty big law firm back in the day, and that that happened.

SPEAKER_10 51:41

It wasn't really and so with the insurance company, that's kind of things that you're not really, you know, covering the breach and and recovering from the breach, you know, I would say that that's costly, but not insanely costly. The ad stuff you have to do afterwards, the the reassurance, the you know, that's where it gets really expensive.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Yeah, and you also consider too cyber insurance covers. So you think, okay, cyber insurance covers like it's not I get hacked or breached, but what about if you get hacked or breached and your server goes offline, you can't function, you your business doesn't run for a week. Okay, well, cyber insurance will cover that loss of income there too. Whereas if you didn't have cyber insurance, you just lost that income, right? You're you can't get reimbursed for any of that downtime.

SPEAKER_10 52:23

And it's kind of like auto insurance. If if you have a good driving record and you don't rack a lot, you don't have a lot of speeding tickets, you know, insurance is reasonable. Yeah, if you speed and you don't you have a lot of tickets, and same thing for insurance. If you don't have these tools to protect your network, the costs are astronomical. You're like, I can't if but if you have the tools in place, they're in it of aligned to budgets of whatever the size of company, they're usually within line.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Always related to health insurance, and it's when you went to auto auto insurance. But um I think goodness is fancy, I'm not having it.

SPEAKER_07 52:53

Hey, for an entrepreneur, even if you're healthy, health insurance is out.

SPEAKER_10 52:57

That's why I didn't use health insurance, by the way. So you can use health insurance.

SPEAKER_05 53:01

Yeah, when you're an entrepreneur on a health insurance.

SPEAKER_10 53:04

So but I'll tell you one of the nice for for a beginning, this is one thing speaking of just uh for health insurance and uh someone who's just starting, pay for your employees' health care. And the reason I say that is we we started that day one, we pay 100% of the health coverage for employees. We started day one, and as we grew, like we pay a lot of money for health care now, but we've never seen that money. It's always been part of the budget, we've never really had it. So, so when we first started, it was pretty small and and it's grown. But because I've always done it, I've really never missed the money. And I'll tell you, for the employees, that's probably one of the best benefits when employees come in and they're like, that's for our health coverage. Like, that is it, and it just feels it shows we care about them. So I don't know the health coverage is is crazy. That's why I didn't use it. I use car insurance because I'm a good driver. I do auto sake, I don't, I quit, I put my, you know, uh, I don't speak.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

Usually in business, I think it goes I live in the in the professional world. Uh, you know, you normally business insurance is really cheap, then cybersecurity coming both done and then professional liability insurance. Yeah, it's really expensive. That's right. The professional level insurance. But I have found that cybersecurity, I at least for our business, cybersecurity, it's reasonable compared to like professional, professional liability.

SPEAKER_10 54:22

It is, and there's a lot of companies, insurance companies, that will have it also as part of the umbrella. Like most companies have their umbrella insurance and they'll kind of have like a side where, okay, well, part of your umbrella also includes this. Um, but it I do think it's reasonable.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

I think I use I use the health insurance as an example for uh like when you go get health insurance, you have to go to physical, right? The doctor has to check you, I'll make sure you health angle four, they'll insure you. Yeah. We that's what we could do is is from a cyber perspective. We do a network audit or network scan uh where we determine if your is your network healthy. You know, is are you up to up to date with your antivirus, your your firmware versions, that sort of stuff. And then that cyber insurance comes in and says, Yep, you checked all these boxes, we'll insure you. And so they we use them or use that as an example, but they lean on us several times of the year. Clients calls it, hey, it's time for our cyber insurance removal. Can you come to do our our uh health check?

SPEAKER_10 55:14

Mail check, and we'll do it. They send us a form, we fill the form and say, Okay, you gotta we can't sign it. It can secure forum, but you we fill that form, they send it and they keep their clothes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 55:22

That that's it, you said a health check. We actually um I want to hear how common that is in your industry in a second, but we actually do a health check too for all of our clients. We don't take a client on until we do a health check. And we understand like all of their like historical, like where they are right now, and then we won't take them on unless if it's not clean and correct, we don't take them on unless we can go back and fix it. Um, so that's interesting. So what do you guys do about that?

SPEAKER_10 55:48

So the full ESF, what are you looking for? I'd be curious to know what a CPA is looking for to I wanna know if my company's healthy. Like, what are you looking for to pick up a client? Because I know you're not you're not for everybody, but you're very, you know, what are the things that you're looking for? Uh healthy, healthy company, uh growth company, like what are I mean, not necessarily.

SPEAKER_09 56:07

It's just making sure that their their foundational accounting is appropriately set up and correct, and especially industry wide or industry-wise, and then um and kept up with how often is it act, is it properly reconciled? Are there proper accounting done? Is their balance sheet messed up? Are there weird stuff going on? Um then same for the we go back and look at the taxes and we'll say, okay, is there were all the deductions done properly? Like does everything make sense here? And just look for red flags in those areas. So it's not necessarily the business, more the financial aspects of it. And then we um give them for free. So anyone who wants to become a potential client for free would do this and we give them a um report at the end as hey, here's all the areas that are I don't think we've ever had a time where there's not been anything.

SPEAKER_10 56:49

Well, so and that's kind of the way we are that we're not really like we've gone into companies and and it has just been bubble government updates. Yeah, so we're not we can fix anything. What we're looking for is we're looking for, and I tell people, this is my question. I talk to everyone, I say, do you look at technology as a competitive advantage over your competitors, or is it necessary? Do you have it because you need it? And it's kind of a trick question. I'd say there's a lot of older medical professionals that say, Well, I have it just because I need it, or I have it because I have to have it. I don't want to have it. I don't want that person to client. I literally turn people down because they A, they they they don't appreciate, but when I make recommendations, I'm looking out for them. I need for them to be receptive. I'm I'm only not trying to sell you something, but they're trying to protect you.

SPEAKER_09 57:35

Yes, yeah, but we are the exact same way. So we have some clients who they have no accounting systems, we're like, okay, give us the data, like we can set it up. They don't want that, they just want to do tax, but we're not gonna help you. We can't do taxes without understanding the data knowing when it's properly done.

SPEAKER_10 57:49

So we're kind of aligned the same way. It's it's more about are they receptive? So so you guys are experts in CPAs, we're experts on IT. If like I have a CPA, and and I'll tell you, you know, you have a good CPA when he just sends you an invoice, no details, no nothing. He just sends you an invoice and I happily pay. I just I'm like, okay, hey, the IRS is not calling me, you're doing your job. Uh that's kind of my CPA relationship is if he tells me something, I'm gonna do it because I have 100% confidence in him. And that's kind of with technology, and and again, I think that's where we really, as far as an industry for MSPs and uh where we need to go. And I know there's they're talking about this in DC about coming up with you know a certified MSP. What does a certified MSP look like? And we really because right now it's really the wild, wild west, and so but you know, that's kind of some like I'll be honest, we had a client that we picked up that they were sold a server and it was empty. There was no there was a power supply. There was literally nothing in the server except power. So the server wasn't doing it, and so because there's no regulated, there's no regulation, so we've kind of got a bad rap that I I see why people think that, but if we go and we talk to someone and they're open, receptive, and again, it doesn't if they we gotta we if we have to make a bunch of changes, we don't want to make them all right away. We we have one, two, three year plans. Hey, this is how we get your company healthy. If they're like, hey, we want to do that, then we want to partner with them. If we have someone that says, Hey, I don't want to replace computers, yeah, I want to use all the computers I can for like if someone says I want to use my computers for as long as I possibly can and never replace them, they're not a good fit for us. Because seven years, eight years down the road, the technology has changed so much that the newer computers are so much, it's gonna make you more efficient. It's yeah, I'm not trying to replace it because of me.

SPEAKER_09 59:31

I mean, it can be harmful to their clients and that employee, right? I mean it makes their life more difficult than yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Question about that, uh just to just to dull down on that, usually the the way we explain of why we do the health check, I would love to also hear you your point up beyond that, but why you you educate me about IT. So usually we say, like, hey, if you want like tax planning or advisory work, we need to start from the foundation up. You know, the foundation of any tax world, any advisory is accounting. If we don't have good numbers, we cannot do advisory, then like we do the hero shape to make sure the accounting is good, to make sure everything is set up right. Like if you're using personal bank accounts or business expenses and we don't have QuitBooks or anything like that on accounting and system, it's going to be really hard to do accounting, and then like, hey, we first need to do this accounting to be able to get you up here. And then, like the same thing for taxes. If we if we want, if if a client wants us to do a tax return for them, I'm like, hey, we need to make sure the accounting is right. That's why we review it, and then from there we go to advisory. How is that ladder in IT? Like, what is the very minimums you need to have? And then, yeah, we can come in and help you get there. Like, what are the different ladder? Like, what would be the advisory world versus a structure or foundation? Yeah, you need to go through this step to go up.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Well, I'd say it also depends on, of course, the client's setup as far as if they have servers in house, if they have everything cloud hosted, you know. Yeah. But ultimately, everything starts nowadays with internet, right? You've got to have a redundant internet or reliable internet connection.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:06

Is that easy? Is that easy to get everybody like everybody gets?

SPEAKER_10 1:01:10

So we we usually most people have like a fiber line for their primary and they'll have like a uh cable motor for their backup.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:17

So that's that's the questionable part is the backup. So class that have everything hosted in the cloud, everything's a website, everything's online. We my first question is is do you have a backup internet? And most of that is like, what is what does that mean? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

If everything is reliable in that internet connection, internet, right? Okay. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

Um and like you were saying, it doesn't have to be this super massive fiber line. You could use just a hotspot, just something so you can still access, send an email to all your clients, say, hey, we're having some technical issues, you know, something as long as you got some form of communication at that point, you're good. But that's kind of a baseline, right? You've got to have a good solid internet connection with a firewall. So something between you and the outside world to kind of help filter that traffic and lock it down. Awesome. Again, depending on them, you were talking about you know, clients coming in saying, I don't want to touch anything, I don't want to do anything. Um, we've had experiences where clients have bought new servers, but then everything is still extremely slow. They're like, Well, what's going on? Well, they have a a switch that only allows a hundred meg throughput or Wi-Fi is only doing a hundred meg throughput, whereas this the server is set up for 10 gigs of throughput. You know, so there's kind of a bottleneck there. So, like you said, we don't want to come in and just start replace everything, start these giant projects. You want to kind of structure it out to where, okay, if you replace this because your Wi-Fi is slow, don't forget you're also going to need to replace this and this, because if you don't, that's gonna be the slowness of the bottleneck, the kind of choke point there. So we we work with clients to kind of help plan out that project and build it out. And like you were saying, when we onboard them, we do kind of a health check as well. We will come through and do an assessment of saying, okay, here's everything we see that needs to be upgraded. It's 10 years old, five years old, outdated. If you replaced these few bare minimum things, yeah, you could double your speed, your you know, hopefully your client or your employees' efficiency. And then that would be the bare minimum to get you working. And then over the next year to three years or whatever, we'll budget for these different uh replacement projects to get you to industry standards or best practices. Oh, so cool. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:13

So backup internet, firewall, you know, obviously you need software protection, you know, from that. So that's kind of baseline. And that's kind of what we do. We come in and and we do an onboarding that we do a 30-day onboarding that we come up with all these things and we come up with a roadmap. And again, uh something and like we we require you have to have an enterprise firewall, period. If if you don't, if you if you don't want a firewall, uh, enterprise firewall, you can't be a climber. So we have you gotta have backups, you have a buyer, you have to have our tools. Foundational stuff you have to have these basic foundations, and then we kind of talk about okay, how old are your machines? How old are the laptops, how old are the computers, you know, how old the switches. So we document, and that's kind of one of things we're really big on documenting. We document all this stuff and then we come up with a plan. We say, okay, here's what, just like Justin said, okay, you have to have these things, these things are non-negotiable, have to have them. Having newer computers, it's kind of a negotiable. I mean, depending on how old your computers are, but how you know, do you can we replace them a year from now, two years from now, three years from now? And we kind of demonstrate to them if you were to replace them, this is a return on your investment, you know. And and I the analogy I use is you know, dual monitors. Like before we had dual monitors, we have we use dual monitors and we're like, this is awesome. And we go to some clients and say, Hey, would you like dual monitors? No, I don't really want to. Hey, let me just give you one. Let me give you a dual monitor, let me use, let me let you use it for a week and then see how productive you are. And uh, 10 out of 10 times, like, hey, we want that. The same thing for computers when they replace it and they can see how efficient they are. Again, it's not us trying to sell computers, it's us saying, Hey, we our job is to make you more efficient.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:50

Yeah, to set you up, yeah, exactly, exactly from the IT level. So, so yeah, it's funny how complimentary, I guess, IT and like howling can be anything else on that.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:58

I have a little bit of a if you have the accounting friends that want to sell IT companies. I do feel about accounting friends.

SPEAKER_10 1:05:05

Yeah, they're there lots of that's uh here's what I tell people. I guess big one here is prosely. Yeah, so I like it. I like it. Well, it's a T when and CPA firms open IT because I tell people um CPA firms are good, so they're good, they're good at being CPAs or accountants. Yeah. Do you want your account also be doing your IT stuff? I guess. So again, whether you use bachelor or someone else, I would I would not use a CPA firm that does other things that isn't in their link. Why why do you think is that what do you think you see a lot of accounting firms are studying IT because it's an easy it's an easy if you have an accounting firm, let's say one of our larger accounting firms has two, three, four hundred clients. Yeah, it's just an easy, hey, they have computer needs too. So it's kind of like them going to their well of clients and saying, hey, we can also provide this service. And so it's kind of an easy, they already have a base uh relationship relationship and so I just but I've seen it that again it's good or bad uh if you're gonna have someone do IT have someone that focuses only on IT or it's uh I agree with you and it's interesting it's almost like conflict of interest right because it's almost like hey you're kind of taking advantage of your like well there's there's actually a law there's a law passed that it's for audits if you provide audits to yeah you can't provide IT services yeah and do audits for your company so again there and so if the government's coming and say hey this is a little shady here makes sense yeah some of them like I bet they flop they probably start and they realize like how hard it like you we've started like not IT settler like we we've tried different things we're like yeah this is not our wheelhouse and that's kind of the the big thing for us is we stay in our lane we are cybersecurity we are I'm gonna tell you we are cybersecurity experts manage respond you know cannot have people build websites I have super smart people that's not our late we don't want to build websites and I think that that's where a lot of companies like White Glove and Bachelor of Technologies when you stay in your lane you become experts.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:09

And it kind of goes back to that I think it was on one of your podcasts I heard you know you don't want to be the the jack of all trades master nine you either want to be the master of your perfect okay so then our next segment this is like a new thing that we are starting it's called WG Education that WG Academy we've kind of done it on a couple of um episodes so this one's going to be more cybersecurity related since we have our cybersecurity guests here. But we'll do a little bit of um accounting mixed in um and kind of talk about like complementary things. So I guess one of them is going to be obviously like IT services is an expense which is a tax deduction.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:48

So that's definitely something that we want to recommend to all of our clients and obviously like businesses with the advancement of technology and AI usage like I see a huge benefit of that. So um anything that you want to add to that?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

Equipment costs, right? Okay. Server replacement, switch replacement, all that that's saying again you can what's the term where you kind of asset depreciation what are depreciation those percent um typically you know hardware we replace recommend replacing every three to five years for computers you know five to eight years for servers that sort of thing so it's a depreciating asset. So I mean exactly something they could run up as well.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:25

Yeah yeah well there's um no but okay so what are a couple things that you have on your side that are I guess cybersecurity related education or maybe a couple ways that people can identify if they have the right IT firm versus so how can you tell if you have the right IT company uh they they talk to you they communicate to you they give you the reports but they're also invested in in your success and so there are a lot of companies that they will pull just reports and they'll just come out once a month and they'll show you the reports and we kind of call it Captain Obvious whether they're showing you reports that they could have just emailed you are they invested in your success are they helping you look at your goals what I tell people is technology and and it's my industry technology is a tool it's just like a car. It gets you from point A to point B. How do you leverage that call? What kind of car do you need? If you're driving out the country you may need a different car than if you're driving in the city. Technology depending on what you do is kind of the same thing you got to find the right tool to help you do your job and a lot of IT companies forget that a lot of IT companies feel like okay they're like have technology for technology's sake. And so what we do is we come in like I said the first month we spend a month on boarding not just to learn the networking but to learn how processes and procedures how that company functions and how they're leveraging technology because we really feel like we need to understand the processes that the company uses to be able to make recommendations for the technology.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

There was one as an example there was one healthcare client at an older lady at the front desk she would go she would take um a scanner she would scan in a copy of an ID and then she would go to the multifunction scanner and scan into her email address and then she would take it and then she would save it from there. And it's like she took two extra steps and she could have just scanned it straight to a computer in the first place. And like you were saying we wouldn't have known that they didn't ask us come in and approve that but I was there and saw in a computer we saw her do it and I'm like hey yeah you could say you a step or two here if we just you know I showed her how to do it. So like you're saying that first month is kind of understanding the day-to-day workflow from that client's perspective as to what they do or how they utilize their technology that they currently have um and then we make those recommendations on approval and then I would also just ask questions ask questions ask them how how are we protected what software we're using um again you don't have to understand we have seven different tools in our security stack you don't have to understand every one of them but I can talk about each one I can talk about each tool why we have it why we justify it um and so if you just ask questions um and and do you have that I use the comfort feeling when you leave a fright when you leave a Friday at five o'clock do you have a comfortable feeling that your network is secure or are you just assuming hey my IT company has it like our companies we we talk to them enough we give them enough information that they know that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_10 1:11:21

I I go in a lot of companies and ask them into like well no my te company is handling it. Well as a business owner I know they're handling it but you should still have an overall sense like my for my accounting my my my CPA like he does all my reports for me but I still kind of look it over I still look what he's doing. No if you're profitable or exact yeah I'm looking exactly that's a per ex it's a per that's a great example is I know I'm profitable so I'm just not assuming hey we're running a good company or I'm like so I see the numbers and he talks to me. He comes out and I have reassurance that hey he knows what he's doing. So and um if you ever have questions we do it most companies do it there's nothing wrong with getting a second set of eyes looking at your network if if any one of my clients said hey is it okay if I have someone else looking to that worth absolutely you know have them come in and like we're our tools will tell us if you have someone if you have someone come in the network to look at it I'm gonna know right away.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

So but yeah if you want to have a second set of eyes but again we we give our clients enough information I don't think that's in 20 years I think that might have happened once that we just we had a new it was it was a new CEO that came in and said hey I'm taking over I just want to have a second set of eyes we're like sure and they came in and they're saw all the tools we had and you know we they they said hey we do we don't put all these security tools in place and he uh explained the security tools why you have them like okay I know they may be less and if you want to go with them that's fine this is why we have those tools it's not for us it's for you and we do want to keep it I have a lot of respect for that CEO for doing their due diligence though on full cycle because a lot of them don't let them come in they assume your due diligence on their employees not the elsewhere right yeah you said you mentioned something about like you know your client asking you questions I guess how do you deal with clients that you know they're just running they just running a business that's really busy and IT is the listing or the or they have oh yeah you know they just pay you for that like if they don't ask you question it it sounds like you're you also do a quarterly meeting with that it's that's a great thing that's a great question. How do you create that product differently so how come do they do they have to come from the client also come from you all?

SPEAKER_10 1:13:25

That's one of our initial questions we ask when we're onboarding clients that's one of the things do we have access like you have point of contacts um it could be an office manager a person at the front desk and then you have decision makers to be a client of bachelor we have to have access to your decision maker and with some clients we meet with them quarterly some may sometimes we meet with them bi-yearly sometimes we meet with them once a year but we have to have access to the decision maker and what that tells me is if if if they don't give us access just like you said then they don't value us. They don't see the value I'm like I'll be honest my my company and our software is saving your company you know people are trying whether you know it or not people are trying to hack into your company yeah my job is to save your company if if someone's trying to attack in if you don't see the value I don't really want you as a as a partner of mine because what one of our sayings is we're partners not providers. We don't want to be a line item like your internet bill we want to be that provider to help you get to the next stage well if you don't want to have a conversation with my team at least once a year to talk about you know what we're seeing from our side you probably are the right fit for us in a sense and so we really with with our clients we require you know again with some clients some clients I meet with business owners every quarter. Every quarter we meet we talk we have conversations where we go we have larger companies that maybe the the CEO or the CFO doesn't need to be in every quarterly meeting but it's a minimum once a year. It's once a year if and if they don't and we've separated people that they don't want to meet with because I can't if I can't like if I'm talking to a person that can't make a decision I'm saying hey you mean oh place this replace this and they keep getting told no you know it you can't explain on why I get well I don't like I don't want the exposure. I don't want the exposure if I'm telling you to replace something and you don't replace it and then you get hat what are you going to come and blame me by you you may not but you may not but if word gets out hey batcher was their IT company and that's what I was talking earlier. There's a lot of it with CPAs and with IT companies you have a lot of exposure if something happens yeah you know everybody kind of knows and so that's why we want to lock down the network as down as possible.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

I guess my philosophy on that I feel is like if a business owner has a growth mindset you know at least they would give the like two buys on at least one meeting.

SPEAKER_10 1:15:44

Yeah and again so we sport over a hundred companies again we I think we've kind of let two go again because they just didn't want to invest the time and and again it has not I I'm I just I can't accept the ownership because that's what we do we we take on a client it's a partnership we take on ownership and responsibility for the network as and again I I don't want the exposure again if you're not going to listen to us yeah and and take our advice then we it doesn't mean you're a bad company goes back to it doesn't mean you're a bad company I just means we're just not a right fit.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:15

Our reputation like you said is on the line too like you said whenever you see the news you know this hospital got breached or this school recently got breached you know the first thing uh we always go to is like who's managing yeah we have uh similar it's funny because I've gotten feedback recently on this but we have let go of clients who um I did advisory for and I'll say hey here's the things that we need to do like to get you to level where you want or etc and they don't follow them so then we separate and they've come back and said hey I did this now like I wish I was done it then.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:47

So on that now I'll tell you really cool this is probably seven years ago again it I feel like we're well established again we have we have goals we're still growing um one of the best feelings so we talk about the EOS and I talk about our core values and the first thing is lining up all our employees to make sure they meet all the core values the next stage is making sure your clients meet your core values and so if your clients don't meet your core values you can you can run them go. And we had well what we one of our core values is is put others first humbly coming um and so we had a client that was calling and they always call and they'd be upset and they'd yell at my staff and so I had a conversation with them I said look this is our core value and and this is what we demonstrate to you this is what you need to demonstrate to us and you're not demonstrating this core value if you if you can't demonstrate this core value you can't be a client of ours. And so I I met and I went back and I talked to my team and I said hey team I just want to let you know I I we did this this is how we are and if this certain person calls and they don't let us know and he was good for about a month and then after that he called and he just blew up one of my employees and I went out and we let him go and it was it was a it was a decent sized client we let him go we fired them I will tell you I had some of my employees especially my team you know my my tier one who they're on the front lines they're like when your computers are broken you're gonna call your IT company they're probably not in the best mood uh but you can still be nice you can still and so I will tell I got so much I mean that raised the the morale in our office that they knew that no no single company is more important than any one of my employees. So from yeah and so it's a real bit yeah so so making our clients meet our core values it was a huge step.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:35

Yeah unfortunately which we've done that but without being like intentional so that that's really good feedback that's something that that we're gonna look into.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:42

We've yeah clients who call outrage and who we're doing for us we don't put up and so we do we do educate like I talk to my team members especially when they're new I come in and say look someone your computer's broken I'm like we have people that their computers are down they're losing thousands of hours and so emotions kick in and I tell them like look they're they're probably not yelling at you they're yelling at the city they're not mad at you they're mad to situation and so we do you the pass like if someone calls and they're upset and and we get it and I'll say whenever's happened usually they'll call back and they'll apologize and say look I'm really upset you can tell difference in someone who is who is upset and and is is mad situation or someone just upset and they're just want to yell at someone you you can kind of tell the difference.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:23

And there are people that always are upset and always are trying to find but I can't imagine I've never called my CPA mad I've always called you had I mean we've had a couple but the majority of the time I will say is because they did not provide us with documentation or information. So the biggest so the biggest thing that anyone can do right from someone at home just right just using their phone for uh Facebook for banking to someone a business owner right what's the biggest thing that they can do for perfect so uh this question I get a lot.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:52

Question I get a lot is what is the number one thing anybody can do if when they own a business or they're at home to protect themselves from threats and it's two factor authentication. And and two I tell everybody that two factor authentication is using your email and using your phone um using a thumb print and using a passcode is everybody offers it, your Google account, you know, work should be work should have it. We have two FA turn on everything that is the number one way to protect yourself is turn on if whatever tool you're using have two-factor authentication turned on. And what that does is it it not only protects you but let's say one of your passwords gets compromised as long as you're trying to log in you have your phone set up all of a sudden your phone starts dinging you know about it. If you don't have two faith no way of you knowing if someone's gotten your passwords or not so so setting up and tell everybody whatever tool you're using new Gmail um if you have an account with your obviously banking stuff like that if you can set up 2FA set up two two factor authentication. Yeah that's huge perfect yeah not great information what is it to the lazy people that don't want to do it that always early back is your is your bank is your bank account worth saving I'm like and that's have having having two FA I will tell you and we see this we see people who have two FA set up and and they call us and say hey for some reason my phone is dinging a lot oh someone just got your password and and so you you also want to kind of monitor like people like life lock they monitor your society number you want to monitor dark web that's one of the things we offer to our clients but you can if you want to do it yourself you can you just want to know if your if your password username are out there being sold um yeah two two factor authentication almost makes your password irrelevant that's not if you can be a simple password they still have to have that two factor authentication now we don't recommend that obviously you want to make it complex as well but it gives you double layers of security think about too how advanced AI is now you can you can give it a task to try to hack this password and in minutes it'll have your password figured out probably you know it's it's getting more and more frequent where hackers had access to all these power probably tools.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:08

Quick question a follow-up question to that what about for BC professionals business owners about housing and security assistants what are best practices about sharing password and giving access to your assistant secret system so in that scenario I would I would recommend a password vault.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:28

And so what a password vault is a password vault uh last pass is an example of one yeah um the nice thing about that um is you can share passwords without them knowing what the password is and so that so again you can share passwords and then not know what the password is it just automatically puts the password into whatever you're trying to get to so um again I would do that I another back to the AI and this is going to be you need to have 2FA for everything and I and I'm when you use this example you need to have it for communicating with family members because now with AI if you join us on our webinar I'm gonna start the webinar it's not me it is an AI version of Bray when when you see it you're it's it's gonna look exactly like me all they did I told my team I said go and get some recordings of me get some pictures from the internet and create don't tell me what it look don't tell me what it is don't start start this the the AI meeting with a virtual Craig I almost guarantee you will not be able to tell that's not me. And the problem is anybody anybody with looking at a skill can do that. So in the past we know of examples where parents have gotten phone calls from their kids saying they've been they get held ransom I was just talking to someone else about that and so and so we had to happen in Montgomery where you know that they got to call and it was a father to listen to daughter and he's like that was my daughter in the phone well it wasn't it was AI and a simple way in my family we have a passcode that it's it's something funny long ago that nobody knows it's not posted but if I need to prove it either one of my sons my wife calls me and it's something hey I've been kidnapped or something I need I need to prove that it's them I ask them what the passcode is and so that right there not only do I hear their voice that's the first authentication knowing that passcode is the second authentication and I hate that we got to do that but again it's just being aware of a threat is different than being afraid of a threat.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:19

And and if you know the threat then you can you can protect yourself something else you mentioned on the executive passwords too we definitely recommend any executive to have a what we call like a lower or non-elevated account. So you if you have an admin account great don't use it for anything except to log in as an admin. So for example my email address is just my name at WeRBT but I have another account that's my admin account. So just in case my email account that I use every day gets hacked they don't have full admin access. So that's something else to recommend is having two accounts for those those executives those administrators.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:54

Yeah and to talk at that point most most executives you can delegate authority you can get access to emails you can do everything without giving passwords you can give them grant them access to your mailbox your calendar all these things without them having to even know your password but but so login like I'm talking about bank accounts that they need to log in bank accounts stuff like that they might need your passwords and that's where I password comes in.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:17

Yeah I heard I have question so I've seen recently I don't know why like over the last two weeks I've seen a rise in AI ad spending like now like meals AI they're spending a lot like Mira is spending a lot of money putting meals AI I also see ads about Krog and Twitter like now with meals it sounds like a lot of they really want you to use it all of that what would you say about that?

SPEAKER_10 1:25:44

So I think it's a PR and again I did they obviously like Justin said earlier they won't use their product it's it's you know Microsoft that is they're they're all trying to compete for your business they all want it but I think right now it's a huge you see a lot of commercials for co-pilot um and and the benefits of copilot and the benefits of chat GPT um I think that the AI industry is getting um bad uh rat from yeah all the the power they're gonna use and creating the power plants and all that so I think it's a PR what they're trying to do is they're trying to counter that I think right now they're they're they're showing the bad buck and I think the reason you're seeing a lot of the advertising is they're saying hey look at all the great things we can do so when you hear about the data centers and you know that's why we're building data centers we're building data centers or power the AI. And so now in Congress there's a big you know who's gonna pay for it who's gonna pay for the power is it going to raise our power bill and so you have people on certain side that are saying hey this is bad the other people saying it's good and then most people just don't know but uh and so I think the AI companies are being proactive they're saying hey we're just gonna flood the market uh with all fault things why you know what you can do with it why you you know all these special things but so I think it's twofold. I think A they're trying to shine themselves in a good light and B, they're trying to get you you buy their profits.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:03

But just the analogy he used earlier about cars uh you've got all different manufacturers and you have all different models of cars and you also have some that have higher safety ratings than others. So the AI models are getting to be that point where it's like okay well this model can do this now look at this and this fancy uh feature we can do well this model is more secure it's locked down so it's getting to be like car advertisements right you've got all these different manufacturers but then sub models underneath that and so that's why it's interesting like how competitive we got really quickly because right because I guess yeah it was there was like chat GPT yeah and then there was like all these different forms like models of chat G and then there's Claw like you know every every guy's coming out with their own so it's interesting.

SPEAKER_09 1:27:43

Um okay well thank you Craig thank you Justin for joining us you want to end on your uh cool note uh stay cool stay protected batcher technology this is oh hey appreciate it thank you for having me just great spirits yeah thank you guys