← Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
How to Optimize and Automate Your Home Service Business
00:57:19
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You can look at like, how can I optimize this? And then you bring in a solution to say, okay, now how can I automate this? That's one of the core issues ways people view technology. It's just something that it's a black box. If you bring it in, it suddenly just works, right? It's the people that have to make it work. Technology is just a tool. Automation is just a tool. AI is just a tool. It's that culture that has to change inside your organization of how are we going to implement this, do technology as a tool inside our organization and how are we going to make that change our culture, the way that we work around here? And that takes leadership and buy in from the entire organization.
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Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.
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Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities, nurture the leads and book
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them into sold systems before your team arrives to help you grow your business.
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Hey, I'm Krista with marketstorm and we work with home service companies across the country. Quick question. If another H vac or plumbing company in your area starts influencing homeowners before
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they ever hit Google, who gets the first call?
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By the time someone searches plumber near me, they've already been researching the problem. We use AI to detect those early intent signals and put your brand in front of them. So when they do search, your name already feels familiar.
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Visit Marketstorm AI or text us at 213-575-5448. Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett and we actually don't have Josh with us today on today's episode. But I am so excited to be able to ask and I'm not going to be interrupted by Josh. That's going to be real nice, nice calm conversation. We have Nathan Whitaker on the show with us today and we're going to talk a little bit. We're going to talk technology, a little bit of it. Let's be honest, it can go anywhere. But we're going to, we're going to start off with some technology type things. With that being said, could you give a little bit about your background and how you got into doing this at in 1995, I mean, you must have been what, three or four years old then?
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It feels like it, so. Well, thanks for having me on Tersh. And. Yeah, absolutely. A little bit about me. I've always been a computer nerd. We got our first computer as a family in 1982. It was an Atari 800XL. My brother and I love playing on it and learning about technology. We decided to start the business in 1995 in my brother's garage. While we were both in college, we just built computers for families and friends. We had a couple of business clients we were working with and helping them with their computers. But it was basically, you know, started out to put us through school and eventually got my bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science. You know, the company's grown quite a bit since then. We have about 75 employees across 55 states. And, you know, my focus now is very different. You know, I'm running and leading a company, leading strategy, helping other businesses implement technology strategies inside their businesses. And I often say I didn't learn this in computer science school. So I definitely learned a lot after, you know, going to school about how to really implement technology correctly inside of businesses and really making businesses work well through these technology solutions.
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So with that being said, obviously a softball question, but I really would be amiss if I didn't ask, how have things changed since 95 to 2025? Wow.
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1995 was when Windows 95 came out.
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Oh, yeah.
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And it was. So when I started, it was Microsoft DOS, and then Windows 3.1 was kind of becoming popular. I remember Windows 95. Windows 95 came out, and it was, you know, kind of the start of the. The Internet. More and more people were getting connected on the Internet. You know, there's this whole controversy, you know, with Internet Explorer was, you know, integrated with Windows 98 and Things. I mean, I. It's hard to say what has not changed. You know, it's like everything has changed.
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I know. One thing is good, though. We don't have those disks that come in the mail with the AOL.
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It's like, I mean, I'm still using my 10 million free hours of all the disks that I got. That's hilarious.
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I was like, man, I'm rich. I got all these discs that are coming in the mail now.
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Yeah. I mean, if you even get a computer today with a CD drive, you know, you can't even find them.
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I was about to say, I don't even think I have one. I have three surfers here, and none of them have CD ROMs on them.
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I mean, I just, you know, in Our personal lives. I. My son, who's a teenager, wants to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order, chronological order. And so we've been going through that, and I just, you know, after we got done watching the Hulk the other night, I sat there and like, you know, even in the last 10 years, you know, being able to just go onto your TV and click, I'd like to stream this movie. And it's instantly available. I mean, it just. I worked at one of my summer jobs. I worked at Blockbuster as a teenager as one of my first summer jobs.
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Rewind.
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Yeah, yeah. VHS tapes. And, man, it's. It's just like. I'm sure we're sending people on some nostalgia lanes, but it is. It's like technology is accelerated so fast, and it continues to accelerate and change all aspects of our lives.
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Absolutely. So with that being said, let's transition into. I know that you give a lot of talks and. And have convers on, like, what people are doing with technology and talk a lot about leadership, but what. What are some things that, like, your CEO, or not even CEO, just anyone in the company is doing that's wrong with technology that they should, like, I don't know, improve, because not out of, you know, intentional neglect or even, you know, malicious or intent or anything like that, but what would you say? Or do you have any ideas?
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You know, I. It's maybe not a specific problem, but it's an overarching thing, is, you know, there's a lot of solutions out there and a lot of different technologies available. And I see one of the problems that especially business owners and leaders of organizations, they listen to a, you know, a speech at a conference, and they bring back a technology and they say, well, let's find a problem to implement, you know, this new technology to do. And. And it's backwards, right? So I think that's really what. What organizations need to do is, is look at different ways that they're operating and say, how can I improve this operation? And then go on and search for technology to help them do that. And so I see a lot of technology initiatives fell inside organizations. And this was, you know, from 1995 or to 2025, it doesn't matter, is, you know, you're buying a solution and you try to implement it, and it doesn't solve a problem. It makes matters worse. It makes people's jobs harder or more difficult or whatever it may be. And then. And then it never really solidifies inside the organization. You end up throwing it out or you do things manually or different Ways. And so I think the core issue that companies need to figure out is what, what can they solve incrementally inside their businesses and then find a solution to, to produce that solution.
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Yeah, I, I agree with that 100% and I've been guilty of that myself. I go to a thing and it's like, oh, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, this new technology out there. I'm like, all right, bet, let's do it. And then you bring it back to the company and first off you go to an expo or you go to a trade show and then the company, like the team, they know as soon as you come back, he's, here comes Tersh. He's gonna have some crazy ideas going on. We just, if we can just pacify him for about two weeks, three weeks, he'll forget all about this, these new angle technologies. Well, you sign up for a program that like you said, didn't actually solve a problem and then you sign like a one year contract with it and then you're like looking at your, your P and L and, and your balance sheet and you're like, hey, this expense here on this sheet, how is, what's our ROI on that? Oh, we haven't used that in three months. Like what, what the heck? Yeah, yeah, like, well, it didn't solve problems. It created problems. Well, not according to the speech that was on stage. That was going to solve all of our problems. And that was the silver bullet for the company. And in reality, it's like it goes back to when Josh and I are building out automations for people. And whether we're building an automation or teaching you how to build an automation, one of the things that we emphasize ahead of time, like just beat a dead horse on this one, is you must optimize before you automate, before you delegate. Because if you don't, if you automate or you implement a product with poor processes, then you're going to compound effect the, the poor optimization of your process. So you're just going to make matters way worse if you're trying to throw a software at a problem or the wrong software. I've been guilty of this where it's like, hey, this software has one of the features that might solve this pain point over here, but in reality it created three other workflow processes that caused that pain point to just magnify. If I would have just spent the time to optimize the process and figure out the pain points and deal with those and then maybe bring the software in here, I feel like it would go a lot smoother. And in my experience, that's how it happens. But if I don't optimize first, then it turns real bad real fast.
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A
Yeah, I would agree with that. I, I learned something. I don't know. It's been 20 years ago now. I went to a conference that they taught us how to do lean analysis of businesses. I really like the process because you, you sit down and analyze a business procedure or process on sticky notes and you define every step along the way and the time that it takes to do every step. And, and sometimes you identify one processes that you, that may be historical. You know, you're producing, you know, a report that nobody reads or, you know, you're saving some files that nobody cares about. And then, and then you, you can look at like, how can I optimize this? And then you bring in a solution to say, okay, now how can I automate this? So I like that a lot. The optimization and automation is really the, the goal of any technology. And you know, it's funny, like, over the years I've helped companies, you know, and even internally implement new systems and you know, the three letters that scare any business owner? Erp. If you've ever tried to implement like an ERP system inside your company, you know, it's always a great idea in the, in the beginning, and then it leads to so many problems in the end. If you haven't identified this, the problem that you're trying to solve and take it incrementally along the way to make, you know, make it work across your organization. So it's, it is, it is tough. You know, you got to be able to do it efficiently by paper before you can really, you know, make it automated.
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B
Yeah, that is very true. What would you say to somebody who is coming into a business that like, you're like yourself, you go into a company, I'm sure during the onboarding process they're like, hey, I need this problem solved, this problem solved. Like, these are my issues over here. And I think it should take care of all of it. How do you for one, come into the company and solve problems in a perceived proper time manner? Because like, like we could, we could say, hey, this process needs to be optimized over here and then wait six months and then it's like, oh man, I don't know if this is worth the investment because we're not doing. Things aren't moving as fast as I kind of imagined it would be. How do you figure out what needs to be optimized like say a GM's coming into a company or service manager and they're like, here, here's, here's the garbage. Figure it out.
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That's one of the core issues of ways people view technology is it's just something that will, it's a black box. If you bring it in, it suddenly just works. Right. But you know, it's, in the end, it's the people that have to make it work. You know, technology is just a tool. Automation is just a tool. AI is just a tool. In the end, it's people that make it, make it work. And it's that culture that has to change inside the organization of how are we going to implement this new technology as a tool inside organization and how are we going to make that change our culture, the way that we work around here? And, and that takes leadership and buy in from the entire organization. What I really like when I'm dealing with companies on major transformational change is having a champion inside the organization that really understands and leads the new process and really advocates for it across the whole organization. And that could be the CEO, it could be the gm, it could be one of the frontline employees. But somebody has to say, this is, this is the best thing for the organization. I'm going to take the bull by the horns and make it work across the organization, work with all the partners and stakeholders to make it work and make it stick. You know, that's, that's the biggest thing.
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Yeah, that, the exact opposite of what I was saying earlier about like, let's give them two weeks and then it'll go away. Like, you need somebody that's going to just keep going at it until it, you know, at least 90 days so a habit can be formed. Are you doing like, do you find that, and it's funny. I, I, I am excited to talk with you more because a lot of people assume that we're just going to talk to it, but we're going to talk a leadership. And, and I love the fact that you, that you talk a lot about leadership, but are you, are you seeing that the same, same person that champions all of the implementation or do you like, want to champion, do you want to try and find a champion for each department or does it matter to the size of the company? What's your take on that?
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I think it depends on, you know, the implementation, you know, how broad is it across the organization. So again, you know, if you're trying to implement ERP system, a new, you know, enterprise resource planning system that it touches everybody's work, then, you know, then somebody high up in the organization, your. Your finance manager or your CEO maybe needs to be the champion. But if it's something like, you know, that really is just affecting sales and marketing, you need somebody in your sales and marketing department that's, you know, focused on that and can make it work, but really believes in the. In the solution, believes that it will solve the problem and it's going to take the. As Jocko Willick would say, extreme ownership to make sure that, you know, it. It's successful.
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B
Man, it's been. It's been years since I read that book. I. I read it when it first came out. I really need to read it again. It's. And I read it and then I listened to it, and I got completely different things out of it. Having Jocko actually work through it all. I just had. I went to a conference a couple months ago, and he was a speaker there, and I was like, man, that
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guy's energy is crazy.
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Yeah, it is.
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He has a new book, the Economy of Leadership, that is really good. I don't know if you listen to that one.
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I actually, I have a copy of it, a signed copy of it from that event, but I haven't cracked the. It's not. It's still fresh. I haven't opened it up yet.
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Yeah, you know, in the. In the scheme of extreme ownership, he talks a little bit about, you know, some of the mistakes that they made in writing the book and some of the things that they've learned, you know, as they've been teaching that methodology over the last, you know, four or five years since the book came out. And, you know, it's, you know, where people can take those things wrong inside their organization. You know, that the aggressive. You know, what, Be aggressive or aggressive first. I can't remember exactly what he says, but, you know, that. That's, you know, that could be taken to extremes. And so he talks about that. It's like, you know, you don't want to take any of these things. You don't want to take extreme. To the extreme.
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Yeah. But the thing about it is, is when you listen to the book, though, it's like you're. You're pumped up and you're like, all right, we got this. I'mma treat. Yeah, I'm going treat the whole company like they're steel Team six or something. Dev group. Let's go. And then all of a sudden, you can, like, obviously different personality types react differently to that type of, let's call coaching of the organization. And then all of a sudden you're running off some A players on your team because they're like, ah, nope, I'm out. I'm not, I'm not one for doing push ups and stuff during our break times.
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Yeah, I think, I think he dives into that and dichotomy leadership so. Well, yeah, we went on up on a little tangent there, but it's cool.
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Yeah. So like, what, what type of, I guess, leadership principles have you found? Like the most effective whenever, whether it's like within your company or other companies that you're helping. And now when you go into a company, do you explain to them, hey, you know, this is an IT company, but I'm going to look at leadership as well, like how you're leading people and how to help you do that. How does that work?
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Our company, you know, we go at it a few different ways. We have, um, because we're big enough, you know, I can't be involved with every, every company. So, you know, we have technical account managers that are trained to, you know, speak the same thing, talk about business strategy, implementing technology solutions to meet their business goals. And so, you know, they're meeting, you know, quarterly or monthly or even sometimes weekly with different businesses depending on their growth stage on how to, how to make technology work for, for them. And then, you know, we, we try to put out information, whether it's through webinars or the podcast that I have. I recently wrote a book that really talks about, you know, things that CEOs need to know so that they can talk to the IT people well enough because that's, that's one of the scary things I think that leaders have is, you know, leader at the top of the organization often has to deal with so many different parts of the organization. You know, they might have gotten into business because they were really good at a trade or craft. You know, whether, you know, for me, you know, it was technology. I love technology as a complete nerd. But as the organization's grown, I've had to grow as an individual. And that's always one of the scary things is, you know, you mentioned you work with a lot of trade, you know, H vac people and things. You know, you might have gone into it because you were really good tradesmen, but now, you know, you got your accountant coming to you talking about finance, you got your IT person talking to you about automation and cybersecurity and all this stuff. And you know, you have HR person saying, you know, this guy did this and you know, it's like what? And then there's all these laws you have to abide by, and federal reporting
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standards let you expand from one state to the other. Like, we're at the Georgia, South Carolina line. So then, like, let me go over into South Carolina, and all of a sudden the laws are completely different, or at least half different.
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Well, at least you have easier states. We're in California and Nevada. Oh, yeah, that's a whole different country. I love California. We working there. But it is certainly a whole different nature in different states, depending on where you're at. So it is. It's hard, you know, being a leader of an organization and, you know, requires a lot of demand. So, you know, we try to provide information so you can speak the language and understand what people are talking about and speak on terms that that could be translated because, you know, as. As geeks, we. We talk a lot of acronyms and we throw a lot of terminology that makes no sense. You know, the green room. We were talking before about, you know, people's heads explode when you talk about these things. And it's often the case.
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B
So what led you to say, hey, there's a problem in the communication path between your leadership, your CEOs and us. So I'm going to take the initiative to ease that gap there. Because we know, and maybe your experience is different, but a confused mind says no. Typically, like, that's traditionally this, like the buzzword or the buzz statement. A confused mind says no. So do you find that with a CEO? I feel like a CEO is going to have a little bit more of, like, the willingness to say, hey, I don't understand that. Can you explain it a little bit better? Or something like that? But otherwise, I mean, I feel like there's some CEOs that might come in and be like, I can't look weak. I can't look like I don't know everything, so let's just roll with it type thing, share how you even got to where you're at and knowing to even put out this information.
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A
Yeah, I think. I think the biggest shift for me was five or six years ago, as we were talking more and more about cybersecurity and things that we need to do to keep companies safe from ransomware attacks, from social engineering attacks, phishing, things like that, and saying, you know, what we did 10 years ago no longer works. Today, we need to implement new technologies to keep your business safe. And we go in and talk to business leaders, and they would say, kind of like you were saying before, well, I don't See the value in spending 50% more on it to implement these cybersecurity solutions. I'm not going to do it. And then, because we were talking about implementing, you know, two FA and, you know, all these acronyms, we were just throwing out acronyms at them saying, okay, sso, whatever.
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B
I just had to sign up for that last night, actually.
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And so you. And then they say, well, I don't need it. You know, I'm good. And then. And then you read in the headlines, you know, this company was hacked and. Or this small business was attacked. And you find out, you know, and we work with people and say, well, you know, this is preventable. Why are companies not willing to pay, you know, a few extra dollars for this solution that will keep them safe? You know, it's. And I realized in that conversation that we were just talking over people's heads and we needed to do something different, have a different conversation. And so we've revamped the way that we do things. And the way that I talk to people. People is, is, you know, coming up with solutions to, you know, one allowing them to see problems that they may not see inside their organization, but, you know, talking to them on a language about solving those problems. And in the end, you know, business owners want to drive dollars to their bottom line. They want a bigger paycheck. You know, they want to, you know, provide bigger paychecks for their employees. And the only way to do that is, you know, by, you know, being more effective in the marketplace, generating more dollars for organization and keep the costs down. So anytime you talk about raising expenses, you know, that's less dollars in their pocket. So that the conversation needs to end up being, this is, this is going to save you money in the end. This is going to produce more revenue for you and, or keep your profit safe inside your company. And so that's, that's, that's the shift that we had.
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So what I hear you saying is that we can't just download the was it John McAfee antivirus and be good. No.
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In 1995, you could.
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B
I don't know if I could download any product that he was in that. Hello, home service professionals. Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook ad outperforming my other ads or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to CallRail.com sbmpod and try it for free.
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Today's episode is powered by Cirrus Systems.
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Sara is all about removing the clutter and unnecessary touch points to run your home service business profitably. They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically
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and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
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B
Get a tech upgrade for your business at. Get Sarah Tech Service Business mastery At what size would you say a company like really needs to start looking into it? Because like our audience that's listening to this, they really could range from one guy in the truck doing, you know, a half a million to a million dollars in total revenue a year to, you know, 100, $150 million a year company.
- [26:27]
A
So there's different things that different sized organizations need to implement. And the cool thing is today you can do a lot yourself and be self served. You know, for five or less employees, you really don't need an outside IT firm. You can really take care of a lot of the stuff yourself. A little bit of research, a little bit of time and you can implement the right things. And there's, you know, just some basic technologies and basic tools that can be implemented by anybody to really ensure safety. One of them I mentioned is 2fa or two factor authentication. Ensuring that all your accounts are secure by using 2fa. It is annoying as hell. You know, nobody likes it, right.
- [27:11]
B
Especially if you have a VA that lives in Philippines or Eastern Europe and then they're like, hey Tersh. Or get on Slack and they're like, hey Tersh, I need the code, I need the code. And then it's like, here's the code. And then like 10 minutes later they see the notification, they're like, too late, expired. Listen, another one, I'm like, oh gosh.
- [27:31]
A
But I, I mean that's the number one security thing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, right now is, you know, good passwords, using a password manager for your passwords and then two factor authentication. But you don't need us to do that. You know, anybody can download LastPass and, and turn on 2fa. I mean most companies are now requiring it for bank accounts and you know, social media accounts, email accounts, things like that. Cloud is awesome. I mean, you know, you Mentioned Slack or, you know, if you're a Microsoft, you know, shop, you know, using Microsoft 365 and Teams. I mean, these are tools that used to take a lot of technology to implement and work and now they're, you know, it's, it's an app that you sign up for and it's working tomorrow. So, you know, for small organizations, you know, call it under five people, under 10 people, you can do a lot of this yourself with not a lot of time, but once you start getting up into about 10 people, one, you shouldn't, as an owner, shouldn't be focusing on it. You need to focus on the most important thing inside your organization is leadership and setting the strategy for your company. And, you know, the complexity increases. You might, you know, want to incorporate a line of business application that, you know, automates billing and, and automate service and ticketing and things like that. And there might be some compliance that comes into it. You know, you need to do state reporting for, you know, labor standards or, you know, I don't know, you work.
- [28:54]
B
I mean, that sounds a little bit like an HR situation. Would you work with an HR company, like to get that stuff like straighten out?
- [29:03]
A
Yeah, you can outsource, definitely outsource that kind of stuff.
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B
Okay.
- [29:06]
A
But again, it increases the, the complexity of your organization and that's when really bringing in an outside firm to help you, you know, piece all those things together to make it work and then, you know, using maybe some automation to, to improve service like you guys do. And yeah, that's when you really need to start looking outside of what your capabilities are for experts that can help you implement it. So I'd say, you know, 10 is kind of the threshold that we find.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. I could see that. Totally. You mentioned LastPass. Is that your favorite password keeper?
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A
It's the one I've used for a long time. There's others out there. LastPass1Password is another good one. It's, you know, more enterprise focused. What you don't want to do is allow your web browser to save your passwords. It's the most insecure thing you can do.
- [29:56]
B
Now if, if you have Google, like Google Chrome that saves it, you need to turn that off and delete them all out of there.
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A
Yes.
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B
Is that what you're saying? Okay, so if you're using LastPass and Google Chrome, do away with Google Chrome stuff.
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A
Yes.
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B
Okay.
- [30:12]
A
You can let the Google Chrome remember your bookmarks and you know, websites you're visited. Keep that across all your programs, but don't let it save your passwords because that, that is easily easiest thing to crack on a computer.
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B
Really. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Totally. The pin number is just too easy to figure out. I mean especially if the one thing LastPass sometimes just fills in the spots completely wrong and then it, then it's got the thing underneath it and I'm like, I can't see the drop down. I can't click the. Sometimes I want to punch LastPass. But it's definitely good though.
- [30:47]
A
It's a good system. I think LastPass1Password Bitwarden is one that's coming up. I haven't used Bitwarden. I use. We use and recommend 1Password as an organization, but you know, I've just been using LastPass for a long time.
- [31:04]
B
What for? For a small to medium business, what security risk do you see? Like that's just blatantly obvious that like, hey, other than the Google Chrome password
- [31:16]
A
keeper thing, business email compromise is still the number one on the FBI's list over and over again. So, you know, most attacks are coming in to small businesses through email, you know, and it's. Unfortunately your employees are the ones clicking on the bad links or the owners
- [31:34]
B
and then putting their password in. And it's like, oh man, on a daily basis, I mean not even daily basis, probably an hourly basis. I feel like I get an email telling me that my Facebook ad account is in violation of something, something, something, and click this link to reset your password. Okay, right. And it's like, I don't understand personally and I'm not on your, in my, your side of the world, so I'm not like, I don't understand why, but you would think that they could figure some of that nonsense out. The spam, the ridiculous amount of just phishing. It's just crazy how many phishing reports that I see in a day.
- [32:24]
A
I recommend having a third party email protection system that's AI driven because a lot of this, these new emails you're getting are produced by AI and they're much better and they're getting past older filters. We highly recommend. Whether you're using, you know, Google Apps or Microsoft 365 of having a third party security system that's monitoring and fixing your emails. And I, I mean I've, I've had my same email box for 30 years and the amount of spam and phishing that I get on it, you know, because I'm on every list out there, that could be. Is incredible. But you know, it's reduced, it's almost Perfect. Now that you don't get false positives
- [33:11]
B
or false negatives, what would you recommend using?
- [33:15]
A
So we. We use one called Avenon. It's a little difficult to set up. And this is where you get into the. Probably need a consultant to help you out with it. There's others out there. You know, Barracuda, they're Sentinel one. There's. There's ones that are really good, too. And it's a combination of different tools and things you have to implement. But again, this is where it might be more difficult for an owner to implement these technologies because they're a bit complex to get implemented.
- [33:49]
B
How have you seen the AI? We'll call it AI. I mean, we know it's like machine learning and that stuff. How have you seen that affect the IT world?
- [34:02]
A
So on the good side, you know, it definitely improves automation. There's just a lot of new technologies coming out that. That really our vendors are implementing. You know, there's. There's just a lot of people out there that are implementing some really cool things inside their products. You know, integrating the generative AI, you know, as we were talking about before the show, you know, implementing ChatGPT technologies to produce better content, better workflows, things like that. On the cybersecurity side, though, we're seeing that the hackers are doing the same thing, and they're becoming better at phishing because you can send AI out to, you know, scour a CEO's Facebook profile, LinkedIn. That immediate. Yeah, yeah. And suddenly they're sending you emails that are very targeted at you. You know, it might be a business contact that you know about and have. And it. It's legitimately written. Like, they would write it with information that's garnered, you know, off of, you know, history that you posted online.
- [35:07]
B
Oh, I need to tell you about this one that happened yesterday. Josh, actually. And originally I'm sharing this is because he made a post on Facebook about it. So I know that he's okay with sharing it, but someone actually went and put a proposal, like, it looked like a proposal from Relentless Digital, which is Josh's digital marketing agency. And the reply to email was literally Josh's email address. And then it said@mail.com like m a I l.com at the end of the reply. And like, everybody that I talked to, I literally three people texted me almost instantly because they didn't have Josh's cell phone number. And then others messaged him on Facebook. And so, like, as soon as I sent him a text message, he was like, I Know, I'm already getting bombarded by it. I don't know what it is, but it was sent out to a ton of people, people that weren't even his clients, but they knew him because of social media, I guess. And it looked very, very real. And so, like, he's. He's having to deal with all of that now. Like, that's one of the things he's doing right now is figuring out how the hack happened, where stuff's coming from. And, and it's crazy. Like you said, the AI side of component, component side of things made that look very, very real. And it was very personalized to each person, too. So, like, I got three different messages, like screenshots sent to my text message, and all three of them were different, and it was personalized for each person.
- [36:47]
A
And I was like, yeah, an AI could generate that like that, you know, that is what I mean. It would take a programmer a long time to write a system to do that and to gather that information. AI can learn it and spit it out in. In seconds. And that's.
- [37:03]
B
How do we, how do we combat that there?
- [37:06]
A
I think you got to use AI to combat the AI. You know, you have to use these AI detection tools to, you know, detect, you know, things.
- [37:14]
B
Is that what these other, the programs you're mentioning, do? They detect AI?
- [37:18]
A
They do, yeah.
- [37:20]
B
What if you. What if. What if, like, a. A marketer is using chat GPT to come up with content and they're just sending it out that way? Is it a technical?
- [37:33]
A
It depends on if it's malicious or not, but yeah.
- [37:35]
B
Oh, yeah, like, not. Not malicious, just like, straight taking, like our podcast episode, throwing it into Cast Magic, and then coming up with a weekly email announcing our podcast episode, but nothing malicious at all in there. Would it detect any.
- [37:52]
A
It would detect it as promotions, just like it would detect it as a not malicious spam, but it's still spam. I mean, you know, so what us as marketers do, we spam, you know, and it's the funny thing is, you know, we use the same tools to, you know, these AI tools, like List Kit or some of these other tools to get names of email addresses, verify them, you know, warm them up so that we can send emails. I mean, hackers could do the same thing to get access to your accountant to wire funds. You know, they'll. They'll warm it up, send emails, like start a communication, you know. Really? Yeah.
- [38:31]
B
I mean, yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, that's. That's crazy, man. The. The amount of time as A business owner that you need to put up these safeguards and you're already putting out like legitimate fires in your business. We're all guilty of that. Like, we're firefighters and stuff. And then next thing you know, you're being bombarded with it things that you're like, it's just an email. Like, I don't need to call the IT guy about this. Like, I don't need to notify Nathan that we did this stupid thing over here and all this other stuff. And next thing you know, it's like, hey, why is our checking accounts overdrawn? Like, oopsie.
- [39:11]
A
Yeah. Who wired a hundred thousand dollars out of the account? Oh yeah, I received this invoice and you told me to pay it. I didn't do that.
- [39:19]
B
No.
- [39:20]
A
You know, and we see that and that's what pisses me off. It's, you know, again, it just, it makes me mad.
- [39:28]
B
Yeah.
- [39:29]
A
Like, just, I, I mean, there's just a certain portion of our population that's just evil. I mean, they just do bad things.
- [39:36]
B
I mean, what is it? I mean, other than stealing your money? Like, is that the only intent? I feel like if these people would put forth as much effort in being malicious as they would, like if they honest work effort, they'd be just as successful. I, I believe, anyways.
- [39:55]
A
Probably.
- [39:56]
B
Probably. I mean, they just have fun doing it.
- [40:00]
A
Yeah, I think some of them do. It is lucrative. I mean, the average hacker can make, you know, $80,000 a month doing these type of, you know, and just using scripts and tools that we're talking about here to attack us. So, you know, it's, it's very lucrative. It's a lucrative business. And that's, and a lot of it, they're not US based. I mean, these are, you know, foreign actors. And then, you know, to larger companies, these large attacks are, are, you know, government sponsored because.
- [40:33]
B
Yeah.
- [40:33]
A
You know, you have getting secrets.
- [40:36]
B
Trade secrets and things.
- [40:37]
A
Yeah. And. Or, you know, it's just a lot of money that they can get and they just want to punish our country. You know, we, we have a lot of enemies and you know, globally, more each day. Yeah.
- [40:49]
B
So have you seen. Oh, I can't think of his name. There's this kind of pretty popular white hat hacker. He's white hat now on like Tick Tock and social media where he's kind of like shares ways that he's taken people's information. Like I watched one video of his and he was like, never log into the airport WI fi because like, I can literally have this device, and I just. I spoof the Internet like it's the airport's WI fi, or I can spoof your WI fi at your house. And then all of a sudden you think you got logged out. So you're logging back into your. What you perceive as your WI fi, and it's. You're actually logging into my program. I saw my hardware, and now I have all the information off of your phone instantly.
- [41:40]
A
Yeah, I don't. I don't know who you're talking about. The one that I like listening is. His name's Kevin Mitnick, and he's been interviewed a lot. He's since passed away, unfortunately. He died a couple of years ago. But he was one of the original social engineering guys. You know, he social engineered his way into big companies like IBM and Motorola, you know, these big enterprises. He used these social engineering techniques to get in and access to trade secrets, mostly because he just wanted to hack cell phone companies and get free, you know, free phone service and Internet service.
- [42:13]
B
I mean, I pay like 700amonth for Verizon. Like, I would be a hundred percent okay if somebody taught me how to hack into Verizon. So I did hear that.
- [42:23]
A
I don't want to hear that.
- [42:24]
B
You didn't live stream that one. FBI, just ignore that one. No, I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. But it's this guy here, actually. He has a product that's like Life. Not Lifelock, but, like, it's a monitoring service also that they kind of created because of even taking images. I didn't even know this, but you. You take and like, reverse image search yourself. And then all of a sudden, there's images and information about you on the dark Web. And then it's like, I get notifications all the time. My AOL account that I have, I was making fun of the AOL disc. I still have an AOL account. And I don't check it or anything for. I haven't for years, but, like, my college tuition, things were on it. So every now. And I'll get like, some random notification from, like, Georgia Tech or from Arizona University. And then it's like, that's the only reason I really keep it. But I get notified all the time that it's been exposed to the black, to the dark Web. And I'm like, all right, well, what do I do about that? Like, I don't care about anything to do with that account, but I know there's gotta be some sort of sensitive data on it, especially since it's I've had it since probably I was 15 years old or something.
- [43:39]
A
There's been so many data leaks out there from government to, or, you know, private enterprise that your information is available on the dark web for people to access. I. You just have to go with the assumption that your name, birth date, Social Security number, maybe even bank account information is available for somebody to buy on the dark web. And so you have to, you have to do everything possible to protect that. And luckily, you know, I think the banks do a pretty good job about generally protecting accounts. You know, you should have something that's monitoring your Social Security number, you know, your credit, if somebody's trying to file credit against you, you know, the Lifelock or Experian or something to protect your, your information. And from a business standpoint, you know, just having, you know, alerts set up on bank accounts, you know, the financial front is really what hackers want to do. So having those alerts set up to have a notification.
- [44:38]
B
What about. So like, you, you mentioned Experian and stuff for our personal credit. What about business credit? Like, how do you protect that?
- [44:48]
A
Dunham Bradstreet, I think, okay, dme, yeah. Gonna set up a DMB account and, and monitor that for.
- [44:55]
B
Is that the really the only way to do that? I mean, I think so, yeah. DMB sometimes is a pain.
- [45:01]
A
I don't disagree.
- [45:04]
B
Okay. I'm glad we're on the same page there because I've had some run ins with D and B, but then it's like, whatever. It's almost like Yelp at this point, like Necessary Evil. But yeah, I think, you know, the
- [45:18]
A
other thing you want to maintain as a business is your, your general reputation online, making, you know, sure that you own your Google by business accounts on your social media profiles and you're monitoring those.
- [45:31]
B
Do you recommend setting up like, like a. I can't remember the name of it. It's a, like a Google alert. I think that might be what they call it now, the Google alert, where it's like keyword alerts. So like, yeah, I've set up a couple of them, like for company names and then for me and I set up one for like Josh. The problem with Josh though, is there's a famous baseball player named Josh Crouch. So like, I'll get notifications regular basis where it's like, Josh Crouch, baseball did this and did that. And I'm like, dang, Josh, you famous. Like you. You're all over the place. It's, it's easier for me, even though I have a weird Name it. But would you recommend people doing that or something similar to that for their company as well?
- [46:24]
A
I think that's more advanced for sure, but.
- [46:27]
B
Oh, okay.
- [46:27]
A
Is it?
- [46:28]
B
I don't know.
- [46:29]
A
I think, I think you, you know, there's certain things that really take care of the 80% of issues. You know, the two fa, email security, employee training. We haven't mentioned that. Yeah, but really, you know, training your employees, I talk about like two factor across your organization, especially on the financial side. So if you're, you know, if you have an accounts payable person or account, you know, somebody is at your organization that's handling your finance at all, you know, don't you, if you ever, if they're ever going to ACH or wire or pay something, you know, they should not confirm that via email or teams message or Slack message. They need to pick up the phone and verify that. That's what they should be doing. You know, to both vendors and to you.
- [47:18]
B
Like you're saying, like, if, if it's the accountant or the bookkeeper, instead of taking the word of the CEO via email, they should pick up the phone and say, hey, just confirming this is.
- [47:29]
A
Did you do that?
- [47:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
- [47:32]
A
Same thing. You know, we see like, direct deposit fraud was a big thing not too recently. I, I, I think it's still there, but I don't see as much of it. But you'll get an email from an employee that say, hey, I just changed my bank account. Here's my new routing information for my direct deposit. And if your HR person just puts that in. Now the payoff point, we've had that,
- [47:51]
B
we did that a couple of times and we had one employee who changed bank accounts like four times. And I was like, first off, it was a red flag to me. Like, why is this going on? But then, like, I definitely, because of, like, I would have just felt toxic, like had some toxic feeling going on initially. So, like, I was on a zoom call with her and I was like, hey, are you sure you want to change this over? And she's like, yes, absolutely. Okay, I'll leave it at that. But yeah, you're right, it, it's very easy to get that email from an employee and be like, all right, like, I'm so busy. Yeah, I'm so busy doing this stuff. I'll just knock this out real fast and boom, ADP this. And then now, next thing you know, they get it like Friday, they're like, hey, why didn't I get a check deposit this week? And I'm like, I show you do right here on adp and you log in ADP and they show that they do. And they're like, wait a minute. My checking account is not right. Like, oh, crap.
- [48:49]
A
What hackers do is they. With. Through social engineering is they're trying to make you take quick actions. They. There's always a sense of urgency. There's. They know you're busy and they're gonna. They're gonna do something in a way that seems legit, and they're gonna make you take quick action on it. You know, hey, you know, payroll's coming up on Friday. And you. I. I just set up a new account. I've closed my other one down. So can you update that? So. And it looks legit. And so I think it just takes a moment to slow down, to take actions. And training your team members, your employees to just slow down when there's critical points in the work, whether it's financial or making big decisions. Just take a moment to slow down and ensure that that decision is right will save you a lot of heartache down the road. And I think that's a good advice, not just in technology but in all aspects of the business.
- [49:43]
B
Very true. I agree. 100. Do you cover any of this stuff in your book?
- [49:48]
A
We do. Yeah. A lot of it is. Is in the book.
- [49:51]
B
And what's the name of the book again?
- [49:53]
A
The CEO's digital survival guide.
- [49:56]
B
A Practical Handbook for To Navigate the Future. That's it. Yeah. I nailed it. I got dyslexia, but I still did it. I challenged myself. Trying to read things on. On stage is the absolute worst. Like, I'll get on stage and do a presentation and try and read something. And Josh is, like, just looking at me, waiting. Waiting for me to fail instead of helping me anyways. That's cool. So really quick, though. I want to re. I want to circle back to the. To the email just in case we have a listener. That's like, I don't. I don't. I'm not familiar with those programs for just a smaller company. Is. Is the Gmail security aspect of things not good enough?
- [50:48]
A
You.
- [50:48]
B
You would recommend something else? Like, not necessarily like a. Was it. I put a Von Avon Avidon.
- [50:56]
A
Yeah. So when you're buying, let's say, Google Apps or Microsoft 365 out of the box, you sign up for it, you set it up, it's out of the box. Those companies are more interested in protecting their infrastructure than protecting your data. They do sell additional products that are in advanced security. So Microsoft has Their defender add on, I think it's like $2 per account a month.
- [51:24]
B
That's cheap. Is that, is it actually going to do. Provide protection?
- [51:28]
A
It provides. I don't think it's as good as a third party protection, but it's much better than the one out of the box. So I would say minimally, you know, spend the extra couple of dollars per mailbox to have that additional protection, that advanced security.
- [51:44]
B
Whenever we put something like that in place, should we expect the spams to just go away or not?
- [51:52]
A
100%.
- [51:53]
B
Okay.
- [51:53]
A
Not 100%.
- [51:55]
B
Like, are they still going to go into a spam folder?
- [51:58]
A
Generally, yes.
- [51:59]
B
Okay, so they are going to still go to spam folder. So you still going to have to check your spam folder Because I'll say I have one, one account, one of my Gmail accounts. I feel like on a daily basis it's a hundred emails in the spam folder before I even get started. And I want to just go in there and like click apply all and delete. But then, you know, there's that one random email that's not supposed to be there that you need to go check and make sure like you pull it out of there, which is. That sucks.
- [52:31]
A
And then you got to train the system. You know, the, the. If you mark it as not junk, then it will learn next time. It is a perfect. I mean, there's false positives, false negatives all the time, but it's certainly a lot better. One, one note about, you know, any of these systems that are for free, you know, outlook.com or gmail.com, if you're using that for your business, if you're getting anything free from a large company, they're making money off of you one way or another.
- [52:56]
B
So you are the product.
- [52:57]
A
You are the product. Exactly. And so it's really important, I think, for businesses to grow a little bit and just spend the extra few dollars on buying these, these mailbox accounts or whatever it may be. Any, any software that that's free. I, A lot of software companies offer freemium, which is cool. You know, you can try it out and then, you know, you start paying, you know, a month down the road or something like that. I think that's a great, great method. But yeah, if you're getting it permanently for free, you're the product.
- [53:29]
B
Yeah, 100%. People like Facebook and like even like social media platforms and they're like, they're like, oh yeah, this is safe or whatever. And I'm like, no, like if, just like you said, if if it didn't cost you anything, then. Then you are the product. They're selling your data somewhere. Like it's, It's. It is what it is. Like they got to make money somehow. It's not free. Aol. What is not aol. AWS servers. And that's what it is. Aws, right?
- [54:00]
A
Amazon Web Services.
- [54:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah, I was. Man, I was having a brain fart. Yeah. Like, that stuff's not free. It's not even cheap. So for them to store data online in the cloud, like, they have to pay for it somehow. So they're selling some sort of product.
- [54:14]
A
Yeah. And the companies are sharing information back and forth. And I mean, it's great for marketers, you know, you know, the desires and interests and everything. You can hyper target your. Your. Your ideal client.
- [54:26]
B
It's scary how much data you can get as a marketer or a hacker or whatever. Like if you have Having good intentions or having malicious intent, it's. It's kind of scary how much information you can get. For sure. Yeah. I really appreciate. I didn't. I can't believe it's been as long as it has. I could still ask you a gazillion more questions. For those who are listening, can you share again the name of your podcast, where to find it, your book, and where they could learn more about you?
- [54:55]
A
Sure. So, Nathan Whitaker. It's my name. It's spelled a little bit differently. Find me best on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn.com search search me up. The company is Stimuli Stimulus Technologies. We have a podcast, Stimulus tech talk. We produce generally weekly, unless we're on holiday or something. Yeah, but you can find us on all the platforms. YouTube, Apple, Podcast, Spotify, all the big platforms. And we talk about, you know, all things technology, AI, cybersecurity, business processes. On that. We have different guests and I speak a bit. And then the book is available on Amazon. But I'd like to make a special offer. If anybody wants to connect with me on LinkedIn and then just send me a note after connecting with me that you saw me on this podcast, I'd be happy to send you a copy of the book. An actual hardback copy, not just a digital one.
- [55:47]
B
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's special. Y' all just feel special. Y' all hanging out. And it looks like the 55th minute here, so if you hung out to then. Got it. No, I'm just kidding. I'll make sure we make this available in the show Notes. And I really appreciate you hanging out with me and answering some questions that are probably remedial for you, but just it's fun to bring them to light and and just have that conversation. Again, we don't think about as a business owner because like I said earlier, we're putting out fires all day long. So just slow down and to help keep yourself safe, keep your company safe and stuff like that. So again, I appreciate it.
- [56:28]
A
It's fun. Lots, lots of great questions, a good discussion.
- [56:31]
B
Appreciate it. If anybody has any questions at all, don't hesitate. I will put Nathan's information in the show notes and as always, you can reach out to myself or Josh and I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. Until we talk again. Next time. We'll see you later.
- [56:47]
A
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.