UnHacked - Cybersecurity Made Simple for Small Businesses

Justin Shelley (00:03)
Ha ha ha.

What's up guys? I don't even know what episode we're on. I think it's one five. Does that sound right?

Mario Zaki (00:16)
I think it's 106.

Bryan Lachapelle (00:17)
It it

it will work, whatever one you decide is what we're doing.

Justin Shelley (00:21)
It's one six. Mario wins, I lose.

Bryan Lachapelle (00:24)
You're losing everything today.

Justin Shelley (00:26)
I know. And and listen, Brian be and just so the audience knows, Brian's like, What are we talking about today? I'm like, I don't know, and hit record. that's where we're

Bryan Lachapelle (00:35)
Ha ha

Justin Shelley (00:35)
at. I don't know what fucking episode it is. I don't know what we're talking about.

Bryan Lachapelle (00:39)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (00:39)
Brian knows even less about what we're talking about. Mario claims he's done the homework, so we're gonna let him lead off with this thing. Mario, what are we talking about today?

Mario Zaki (00:48)
AI containment.

Justin Shelley (00:48)
Exactly. Exactly.

AI. shit. sorry, I forgot to mute my phones. listen, here's so I sent that out and I had a topic. We might talk we might dabble with it. And Mario Amin is like, nobody's gonna want to listen to this. Like, all right, then pick a new subject. And what subject did you come up with, Mario?

Nothing. Crickets, exactly. So we're talking about locusts.

Mario Zaki (01:10)
crickets. We're going to talk about crickets.

Bryan Lachapelle (01:13)
I mean that's a pretty good

subject. Crickets are pretty yeah.

Justin Shelley (01:18)
Here's where we're going. what I've noticed, so over the last few weeks, where we've been talking about AI breaking out, going rogue, how we're gonna contain it, if the world's going to end, some of the positives. That was last week. That was a good episode. we've actually had an increase in feedback from our loyal audience. And I was I've been intrigued by this. Most of the feedback, some of it's positive, but most of it is just an absolute

Distrust, fear, afraid of the man, afraid of the government, afraid of the corporations. I guess that's the man. And and so I just want kind of freeform today. I want to talk about, first of all, yes, the homework that I gave you guys. Do we need this hardware containment? And we can talk a little bit about what it is. It doesn't matter because it's kind of brand new, and I don't think it's is it even in production, Mario? See, so it's just kind of a concept.

Mario Zaki (02:11)
You know, I think it's more of a theory, yeah.

Justin Shelley (02:15)
Right. So

NVIDIA, right? Isn't that who's putting this out or claiming to or talking

Bryan Lachapelle (02:19)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Justin Shelley (02:20)
about it? Right. Okay. So you can tell how much I've read up on this. I actually did read and then I forgot because that was like more than 10 minutes ago and everything's changed since then. so let's start with this topic. Do we need hardware containment? Is that the answer? Do we need containment at all? Is it all hype? And I know this some of this is repeating, regurgitating, but Brian has missed a couple episodes. So Brian, we're gonna be looking for your take heavily today. And then I want to talk about

This this is one that we've hit on over and over, but there's a little bit newish information. Are you guys familiar with and or fans of Mike Rowe?

Anybody? Anybody?

Mario Zaki (03:00)
The former Dato guys with Pax8 now.

Justin Shelley (03:04)
Mike Rowe. Dirty jobs. Deadliest catch.

Bryan Lachapelle (03:08)
yeah. yeah. I yeah, I got a photo

with him at the last producer's club or a couple of producer clubs ago. Yeah, actually.

Justin Shelley (03:12)
Exactly. Okay. What

what's his big rant?

Bryan Lachapelle (03:17)
Dirty jobs.

Justin Shelley (03:18)
He he he's he's an advocate for manual labor or

Bryan Lachapelle (03:22)
Yes.

Justin Shelley (03:23)
trade skilled trades and how we I I believe this wholeheartedly. We took a whole generation and told them they didn't need to work with their hands, they needed to go to college, they need to sit at the desk the rest their lives. And unfortunately too many people took that advice, and now now the

Bryan Lachapelle (03:38)
Far too many.

Justin Shelley (03:39)
unemployed people are the ones with degrees.

whoops. Sorry about that. Right. Our bad. Our bad. and so this is

Bryan Lachapelle (03:42)
Yeah. And and we have no skilled labor. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (03:48)
Sorry.

Justin Shelley (03:49)
this is what I read today from micro allegedly said. 'cause it's a news article. Who knows whatever is said. I don't believe anything that I read anymore. but allegedly he has information that says that the the shortage of labor is is changing. So that's all I'm gonna say.

Let's

dive in. We're gonna go back to point one. Actually, let's do some quick intro. I don't know if we should even still do intros because everybody knows who we are. But Yeah, we're gonna do something.

Mario Zaki (04:16)

episodes? Yeah, we're good.

Justin Shelley (04:20)
Okay, so Mario, you better know Mario. Brian, do you want to say anything about who you are? I didn't think so. All right.

Bryan Lachapelle (04:24)
Nah, everybody knows me.

Justin Shelley (04:25)
Good. With that, do we need containment, hardware containment on AI? I'm just throwing it out there and I want to hear you guys' take.

Bryan Lachapelle (04:35)
right, I'll I'll start first. I think it's necessary to have containment. Whether hardware is the right approach for me is a little bit sketchy because they always like they always come up with workarounds and hardware is one of those things is once it's in place you can't go and change it, right? It's there. It's it's manufactured into the into the into the parts and the components. So yes, if they can find ways of

of containing and making sure we have containment with hardware, great, but what happens when that containment is bypassed with new versions who found a flaw in the way the hardware

Justin Shelley (05:15)
Right.

Bryan Lachapelle (05:16)
was designed? Now you're back to square one, where not only do you not have containment, but the hardware you've deployed is obsolete. Right? And so that's my concern is that unless you find a way of keeping the hardware up to date or have it

the ability to be flash, but then again if you can flash it then you can bypass it. So it's like a catch twenty two, right? I don't know. I think containment's important. Whether it's software or hardware though, that is definitely a a a solid question. I think it could be a combination of both.

Justin Shelley (05:51)
Yeah, what are your thoughts?

Mario Zaki (05:54)
Mean I do agree with Brian I think it just really depends on the hardware that you're you're talking about where you're putting it because you know We're talking when we're talking about AI We're talking about you know, most of the stuff that we're creating is on a cloud somewhere now are these guys that are hosting the cloud are they gonna get that hardware, you know, and are you gonna check to see our

Justin Shelley (06:19)
Or are they gonna lie about it?

Mario Zaki (06:21)
yeah because

You know, we're vibe coding. We're putting stuff on, you know, online and different things and creating bridges and stuff like that. Hardware. If you, if you find a hardware or configure hardware that is going to work, I think it's going to take a very long time for everybody to adopt this. You know, like, you know, every data center, every business, every whatever.

needs to that to purchase this configure it, they have to, you know, has to be managed has to be updated. That I mean, we're, guess it's equivalent to, you know, firewalls now, you know, like, you know, every office, every place has firewalls, you know, but I'm sure it took a you know, there's still a lot of places that we've I've seen that are still just using the basic ISP, you know, is ISP now going to build that into their heart to their system? Like where

Where is this going to go and who's going to deploy it? Who's going to monitor it? Where are you going to get it from? How long is it going to take? You know, I don't think it's something that will be easily deployed within the next two to three years.

Justin Shelley (07:34)
So in in AI technology terms, like dog years, you know, that's like two to three months. But okay, so good point, solid point. And I'm actually fact checking you as you talk. I've got I've got AI. I'm like and basically everything you guys said is it fits. It's like this is the common the the thoughts, the concerns. So we have not come up with anything new here.

I I really think if this is gonna work, it's gonna work when we bring it in house. And that's kind of been my position for, you know, like eternity. I think I've been talking about this for like two whole weeks now. I I think AI's coming in house it when you really want it to be secure. And in that case, I might want some hardware guardrails and something that I know is there and something that I can update and and maintain myself and replace if need to, you know, if if if that's what it takes. I do think that in the business environment, especially.

We have to rein in these vendors. I'm anti vendor right now. They're they're owning everything. They're controlling everything. They're stealing everything. What was the newest thing that was leaked?

Damn it. I'm forgetting. But there, but there's a new leak. Something, something broke out. This isn't agentix stuff. It's just stuff you put into your AI is getting leaked out. so I I really want mine right here beside me in my little makeshift server room until

I get

Mario Zaki (09:01)
you

Justin Shelley (09:01)
my own data center. I don't know. okay, so any any other thoughts on this? Because then we're gonna we're gonna just move on to the next subject here.

No? You said your piece. Good. So let's talk about we're we're going to in a roundabout way come back to the they took our jobs concept. And I'm really mad that you guys aren't South Park fans because we should all be like making rooster noises when somebody says that. You guys don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? God damn it. God damn it.

Bryan Lachapelle (09:31)
Sorry, man.

Justin Shelley (09:32)
Go watch South Park. Google they took our jobs and South Park and watch a clips. That's your homework. So there's there's a

This this fear, like I said, and I I'm getting comments on it on our social media posts, mostly on the short video clips, where where people will say, you know, one was like, hey, this is a great take. and it was something about my comment where I said that I believe that AI takes away some of the the boring jobs, the the stuff we don't want, anyways, and elevates us to do better work. That's that's been my personal experience. And I will admit, I spent probably about six months in in a real state of fear and dread, wondering about my own job.

My company, my industry. Is it going away? And and it's not the first time I've been afraid of it. This this has been going on forever. It just iterates. and it's somebody was like, Yeah, that's a that's a great perspective that it we can do better and more fun work, the stuff that we like. Paraphrasing obviously. but the other comments are are more negative. And it's like, I just don't trust the the government or something like that. I'm like, Yeah, I don't know. And it's like,

I I remember what I said and they come back and like, no, the corporation's this, the corporation's that. I'm like, dude, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about you taking AI and elevating yourself, making your life better. Quit outsourcing your destiny. Quit telling up letting other people dictate what you do, what you can do, what you want to do. Like, god damn it. Take control of your life. so

Mario Zaki (10:58)
Completely agree.

Justin Shelley (10:59)
pause there. Any thoughts? I'm going somewhere this, but I just Okay.

Mario Zaki (11:03)
I completely agree. think,

you know, we've talked about it. I think it's going to happen, but more stuff is going to come along.

Justin Shelley (11:10)
Yeah. Okay. So here's the one I didn't really think of, didn't see coming. the the micro comment that I mentioned earlier. The and and this is directly tied to AI because guess what? We need a lot of data centers. This is a big political thing. Everybody's been

Bryan Lachapelle (11:27)
yeah.

Justin Shelley (11:28)
pissing and moaning about building data centers. Like, good lord. Every time we try to make progress, everybody's got a bitch about it.

So we've got to build data centers. Elon's gonna build them in space. God bless. Go do your thing, Elon. the rest of us are gonna stay on Earth and build these things and they're gonna consume a lot of power, they're gonna consume a lot of water, they're gonna make everything ugly, they're gonna write all this stuff. but what they're also doing that isn't really getting talked about is creating jobs. And here's the fine print. They're creating job openings. And when they can't get people to work for them, what do you do?

Guys, if you can't find a good employee, what do you have to do? What's what's your basically your only thing left?

Mario Zaki (12:08)
and do it through AI.

Bryan Lachapelle (12:09)
Import.

Justin Shelley (12:11)
You gotta pay more money. You gotta pay okay, you're

Bryan Lachapelle (12:11)
Immigration. yeah.

Justin Shelley (12:14)
right. You're right. Well, wait Brian, we're from America. We don't believe in that. We we built a bunch of walls. Immigration. We we built a bunch

Mario Zaki (12:19)
I missed it, what did Brian say?

Bryan Lachapelle (12:22)
That's an immigration. We need people.

Justin Shelley (12:24)
of walls to keep people out so they can't do these jobs. And unless you Canadians wanna come

Bryan Lachapelle (12:29)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (12:30)
down, I think that border is still kind of open. I don't know. I don't I don't follow politics. I really don't. I hate politics.

Bryan Lachapelle (12:32)
Nah, nah we're good. We're good.

Justin Shelley (12:37)
so yeah, so we've got this massive job shortage.

And when what's happening is they're pulling labor force, they're paying better because AI will not be stopped. whatever your tenpoil hat says about that, it won't be stopped. And so we're

we're

Bryan Lachapelle (12:50)
It won't.

Justin Shelley (12:50)
pulling jobs from the housing market. Like construction workers aren't going and building houses anymore, they're building data centers. Like, my god. Anyways, long way of saying the problem we have with AI right now is exactly what I've been saying: it's creating more jobs, it is not creating less jobs, it's not taking jobs away, and you

I mean a lot of it's I wanna say I don't know. I wanna I don't know how where I wanna say if it's skilled or unskilled. in construction, there's both. And and you can learn these trades relatively quickly. So that's that that's it. I'm throwing that out for discussion and you guys are gonna have to step up and and discuss because I've

Mario Zaki (13:30)
Alright.

Justin Shelley (13:31)
said all I've got to say and we're only thirteen minutes into this thing.

Mario Zaki (13:33)
I think in the last 12 months based on and I don't have solid proof for numbers, but just by being in the industry and stuff like that, I think AI has created more jobs than it has taken away. I mean, there's certain markets that are probably like maybe the marketing market is probably, know, thinning down because you can do a lot of AI, you know, yourself with marketing. But in the most part, it has

jobs so far that it has taken away.

Bryan Lachapelle (14:07)
I I would concur. there are a pile of jobs that have been created due to AI. But what I really think is happening is more of a shift. Just like everything else, the highly repetitive tasks that can be automated are being automated and those were performed by I don't want to say low skilled but lower skilled requirements, right? you know, things like

Data analytics used to be done by data analysts. They're very highly skilled, but like it's very monotonous work. Now that could all be done instantly with with most AIs. but what you said, Justin, is essentially true. Like they're we're creating a pile of jobs, not just only in dealing with AI, but building out the AI data centers and and the things that go along all the the the jobs that come from all of the manufacturing and I mean they're they're

They're needing so many chips and so many parts right now that those those jobs are being created like crazy. They're not being created.

Justin Shelley (15:07)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (15:07)
A lot of the cases they're not being created here in North America. They're being created overseas. but there there are tons of jobs being created even locally on how to deal with AI. How do you consult with AI? How do you implement AI? and they're not replacing jobs. The the ones that have been replaced are typically like very low end customer service and very repetitive

data entry jobs. but otherwise I haven't seen a whole lot of jobs being completely eliminated because of AI.

Justin Shelley (15:39)
I see the fear around it, but I haven't met anybody. And and I haven't even met companies. Okay. I

Bryan Lachapelle (15:43)
Yeah. No. I bet one person. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (15:47)
you know, and statistic anomaly, but like there isn't, there is not an there's there's an outcry, but it's fear based, it is not fact based. There have been layoffs that have then been walked back, and I I I get it. Like some jobs are going away. There's there's and I think programming developers, that's an industry that's very interesting.

And and I've seen that one kind of ping pong. Dump a bunch of people. I wait wait. We need you guys back. You know, like that kind of stuff going on. but I I don't know of, and maybe I'm just straight up ignorant, but I do not know of an industry that has just been annihilated by AI yet.

Bryan Lachapelle (16:30)
No, what what I'm seeing is more, you know, hey, you know what, we're able to improve our performance and our ability to get more done with less using AI. So we're not gonna hire the next person that we would have hired. But we never got rid of anybody that was already working with us. Right? So for example, I know of some law firms where the the law clerk who

puts together all of the the briefs or puts together the information for the lawyer. maybe they don't need as many of those. So they're not hiring another one. They're still growing as a firm, but they're not hiring extra hands to be able to put together all of the information because that information is being put together a lot faster with the existing people they have. Right. And I'm seeing that across most industries that we're consulting with. People are not losing their jobs, but they are certainly not hiring net new people.

first of all, even if they try, they probably wouldn't be able to find a whole lot of people because even though we're requiring less of of those individuals, there's still skilled labor and so there's still a lot of knowledge required in order to do that job. And those if if they were skilled before, they would have likely had a job already. Right? Like the the the it i for me it's looks like it sounds like it's shifting a lot of the jobs towards more skilled work to be able to understand

how to use AI, how to use it properly and make sure the output is correct versus the lower skilled jobs.

Mario Zaki (17:59)
Yeah, I mean, even internally with us and Mastec, we have not let anybody go and we're doing a lot with AI. You know,

Bryan Lachapelle (18:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mario Zaki (18:08)
for anything that has just slowed down our hiring process, instead of hiring like our average, like two technicians, one or two technicians a year, you know, we've kind of slowed that down just because, you know, my existing guys are able to be a little more productive with, with the items that they have to take care of, you know, it's

You know, I don't have things falling through the crack now, you know, that may have happened because it's human nature with the assistance of AI, less things fall through the crack. It is providing a better service for our customer, our customers, but we haven't necessarily needed to let anybody go because we started using AI. You know, we're just probably hiring slower.

Justin Shelley (18:57)
Do

you guys remember the the fear when the cloud became the that was the buzzword, everybody's talking about the cloud? And and this is I'm sure I've said this before, this is repeat, but that was the fear in the chat rooms because we didn't even have Reddit back then. But it was like, what are what are we gonna do? What are we gonna charge clients for anymore? And I

Bryan Lachapelle (19:11)
Yep. They're gonna take our servers. What are we gonna support? Yeah.

Justin Shelley (19:18)
I really think we've got some version of that going on. doing a little bit of research while y'all were talking.

there so there is a true impact. The heaviest impact falls in early career professionals aged twenty two to thirty. And I have heard that brought up. I haven't seen the statistics to back it up, but I've heard that as a concern. Do you guys have any information on that? Any thoughts on it?

Mario Zaki (19:42)
So the

Bryan Lachapelle (19:42)
Well I maybe

Mario Zaki (19:43)
22 to 30 that the hiring for those people has slowed down. Okay.

Justin Shelley (19:48)
Slowed, right.

Bryan Lachapelle (19:49)
Yeah. Which it lines

up with what we were just saying, right? Like myself, Mario, I didn't hear you say it, Jessica, but we're s we slowed down on our hiring process. We're keeping the existing

Justin Shelley (20:00)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:00)
employees we have employed. We're doing more with less. That does mean though that any any individual who's coming into the job market, right, they're not getting jobs. There's not a whole lot of jobs posted. And so

even in you mentioned software development, there's still a very huge requirement for software developers, but experienced ones who can use AI and understand how and what the code is

Justin Shelley (20:26)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:26)
supposed to look like to verify that everything's correct and v everything is you know secure, they're not bringing in brand new, inexperienced people to do that. So I think it will cause a little bit of a a bump in the road, as they say, for for the future when we have a lot of people

Justin Shelley (20:44)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:44)
who are now

Or when we do get run into the situation where we need to start hiring again and we're growing beyond what we can do with AI, we're not gonna have the skilled workforce to bring in because those those individuals haven't had the opportunity to learn, right? All the junior developers, all the junior people that we would normally be hiring right now and training them up, they're not being hired and they're not being taught. And so I think we're gonna have a a a blip in in four to five years or even ten years where we're gonna be desperate for skilled and experienced people, but they're just not gonna be around.

Justin Shelley (21:16)
That's a good point. Very good point. I I

Mario Zaki (21:18)
Yeah,

I think also with the industry, you know, shifting towards AI, I think a lot of these people that have graduated within, you know, a few years, they haven't learned what, you know, what, you know, they could have learned in school with AI, you know, they're still learning how to program normally and stuff like that. But I think, you know, universities and stuff like that, because, you know, like, just for us three, I mean, I know

You know, we're probably late to the game, but you know, for us, the re we've been using AI for, know, the way we we've been talking about it on the show. We've been doing it for less than a year. So,

Justin Shelley (21:56)
Right.

Mario Zaki (21:57)
you know, so it's not like we were just that late to the game that, you know, people are learning it in school. This is all like fairly new one, two years on a broad basis like it is now that people are just not learning that skill set in school, you know, so.

Bryan Lachapelle (22:14)
Mario, we are

not late to the game. I hate to break the news to you, but in in coaching forty other MSPs, like five

Justin Shelley (22:21)
They're not using it at all.

Bryan Lachapelle (22:23)
in five five of them are using doing what we're doing, you know, vibe coding, coding our own applications and using AI to the extent we are. When I coach and I say

Justin Shelley (22:30)
And worse their no, go ahead, you finished. Sorry.

Bryan Lachapelle (22:33)
I was gonna say when I coach them and I explain how I'm using AI to speed up the sales process, to quickly identify areas that I missed. So like I'm coaching myself.

in my sales process as I'm interviewing clients or potential clients, I'm using AI to coach me on things I missed because I'm I'm able to use AI to listen to all the calls and listen to the transcripts and and and it has the entire process I'm supposed to follow. Nobody else is doing that. Like it's it's it's net new for the majority of the people I'm coaching and and we're not we're not late to the game. And I would I would hazardly guess the majority of businesses

Mario Zaki (23:07)
the story.

Bryan Lachapelle (23:08)
are in the same vein. They're not late to the game. We are all early adopters still.

Justin Shelley (23:11)
Well, it's interesting because

this is the world we have chosen to live in. I find myself doing this all the time. So I assume everybody lives here. And when I go out and talk to people about AI, they they're all everybody's using it to some extent. What are they doing with it? They're they're basically using it as a Google search. Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (23:24)
They're chatting with it. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (23:26)
A Google search, a therapist, a a friend. But yeah, it it because we s we are in a circle and it's not even just the three of us, we could extend out to like the 10 or whatever companies that we meet with every every week. We're all doing but

A and I'll throw this out there. It was just yesterday in that meeting. If you guys remember, one of our

Bryan Lachapelle (23:50)
Colleagues.

Justin Shelley (23:50)
God,

I'm colleagues there. I cohort in my brain. I knew that was wrong.

Mario Zaki (23:53)
You

Justin Shelley (23:54)
One of our colleagues kind of shut me down. He's like, we need to decide how much we're wasting our time using AI when we should be out working. Do you guys remember that?

Yeah.

Mario Zaki (24:03)
Yes, I do.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:03)
yeah. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna

keep doing the AI thing 'cause it's n it's it's generating massive results.

Justin Shelley (24:08)
Yeah. And we didn't even get to talk about it, but it yeah, it it is interesting. There's there's just this general fear of it in the in in some industries or some

I want to say class systems, but guess we can't talk about that kind of stuff anymore. skill levels, indust whatever, where we're afraid we're gonna lose our jobs. And then we've got companies who should be going full speed ahead and and they're afraid of if you know adopting it. And then you've got MSPs who are out there coaching their clients against it. And I've seen that happen. It's like, my God, are you

Bryan Lachapelle (24:41)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (24:42)
kidding me? You're out telling your clients not to use it and because you're afraid of it. That's terrible.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:48)
And and

yeah, and the majority of them are probably afraid of it because they haven't actually used it. Now th there's genuine

Justin Shelley (24:52)
They haven't done anything with it.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:54)
concerns surrounding it, yes. But right. Yeah. Like we're not gonna stop driving cars. Yeah, I was gonna say

Justin Shelley (24:57)
Like everything in life, by the way. I guess don't get in a car. Right.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:03)
we're not gonna stop driving a car because, you know, accidents happen.

Justin Shelley (25:06)
But please

put on your seatbelt and hopefully have a car with airbags.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:09)
Yeah, exactly. I

Mario Zaki (25:12)
And follow

the rules. That's same thing with AI. Sorry to cut you off. Follow the rules. You know, same

Justin Shelley (25:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (25:17)
security process.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:19)
Yeah. What I would recommend for any of our listeners, if you're if you're in the camp where people around you are saying, slow down, don't use it, be careful, you know, and it's doom and gloom, surround yourself with people who aren't like that. Right?

Justin Shelley (25:33)
Find better people.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:34)
You you are like you nailed it on a head, Justin. Our cohort, our our peers, the peer group we're in, is the only reason why I got so in deep with AI

Justin Shelley (25:43)
Same.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:44)
as I have, because

Mario Zaki (25:44)
Same here.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:45)
I saw one of you guys do it and I was like, well, if they could do it, I could do it.

And sure enough, I started doing it, right?

Justin Shelley (25:50)
And

we do this, this, this repeats because Brian, you're the one

Bryan Lachapelle (25:53)
Right.

Justin Shelley (25:53)
who brought AI to my attention a couple years ago on the podcast, I believe. And I'm just like, that's a bunch of hype. We've had AI since I was a boy in college.

Bryan Lachapelle (25:56)
Yeah. yeah.

Justin Shelley (26:03)
My professor was talking about AI, and I've

Bryan Lachapelle (26:05)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (26:05)
got an Alexa device. And she just heard me and she's gonna talk to me about it. I'm like, that's all AI. We've always been doing AI. And I didn't even have an idea.

Bryan Lachapelle (26:10)
Okay. And this is not the same.

Justin Shelley (26:12)
I had no idea what it was.

Bryan Lachapelle (26:14)
Yeah. So I think I think if if you're a business and you are looking to in explore AI and you're in a group of people who are anti AI, find yourself people who are s are pro AI, who know how to use it, who know how to work with it, surround yourself with those people because when you surround yourself with people who are successful, you will inherently become successful because it's it's like by via osmosis, right? You're gonna learn from them and you're gonna be one step ahead. So

Mario Zaki (26:43)
Yeah, any for you.

Justin Shelley (26:43)
And if you have a

Bryan Lachapelle (26:44)
That's

Justin Shelley (26:44)
if you're hiring I was if you're

Bryan Lachapelle (26:44)
us. Surround yourself with us.

Justin Shelley (26:46)
if you're paying an IT consultant or an MSP and they're telling you to not use AI, fire them today and call one of us. Go to unhackmybusiness.com in case you forgot how to get a hold of us. Dang

it.

Mario Zaki (26:54)
Yeah, and if you want to find I was just about to say that

Bryan Lachapelle (26:57)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (26:59)
You guys coming off twice and that's what I was about to say

Bryan Lachapelle (27:03)
All right, it's all you Mario, go.

Justin Shelley (27:03)
Okay, I'll mute everybody, Mario. It's all you. You got the mic. Go. Even

Mario Zaki (27:07)
No, it's too late. It's too late. I'm done. Maybe after the show.

Justin Shelley (27:07)
though it's too late. He needs a he needs a hug.

Bryan Lachapelle (27:11)
Are you gonna cry, Mario?

Justin Shelley (27:18)
guys. okay, so honestly, I I I think I've said my piece. And I I swear, I hope, I hope to all things holy that we'll be able to move on to better topics starting next week. but this one just keeps coming up. And and like I said, we're starting to get some very passionate feedback in our social media clips around this one. So I know it it's kind of resonating with people and I want to I don't want to beat the thing to death but I also don't want to leave things unsaid.

Because I do believe that the the message that should be shouted from the rooftops or, you know, whatever you want say is positive. But the only thing we hear in the media is fear and negativity. And I hate that. And so I I want to be the voice of reason here. I I think that in our, you know, that's generally speaking, in the technology industry, I think we can all do better. I think that, you know, it it's it's on us to elevate this industry. I don't think

You know, there's there's a lot of ways where we're not doing a great job. And this is this is one of many where, you know, if you're if you're telling your clients that to be afraid of I AI, like go get a different job. This is our world. Like this is what we do, is technology. And if technology is advancing, you better latch onto that and figure it out. But Jesus Christ, if you're gonna run away from it, go get a different job. Go run a different business. That is my message to the industry.

Mario Zaki (28:45)
Yeah, I want to add something to it you know Justin you you talked about it for a couple episodes now and you mentioned it again and being in this episode your anti-vendor, know and

Justin Shelley (28:56)
I am, yes.

Mario Zaki (28:57)
You know, we're kind of in the similar boat as well, you know, obviously, you know, we talked several times a week about this but one thing that I have realized that you know, or what I'm doing is You know, it's not easy to bring on new customers sometimes

You know, you can go, you know, weeks, months, you know, without bringing a new customer would, know, sometimes you may lose a customer, but not bring in somebody, you know, we all sit there and want to bring in new customer because we want that extra thousand, 2000, $5,000 a month. But what's just as good as getting a new customer that's going to pay you that is being able to save that money, you know, from, from going out at a, know, of your bank account.

You know, so if we can create something a You know, we get to save money B we get to do it our way the way we want it to operate, you know and see we get to own it Okay, we don't have to have somebody else own it and worry about somebody else You know dropping the ball. Yes, you have to follow the guidelines follow the rules secure update all that stuff But if you're able and we've done it, you know when I'm in the process, thanks to Justin

of creating our my own, you know ticketing system if I can save a couple thousand dollars a month on this system, you know, that's just as good as bringing in a new customer. That is a couple thousand dollars

Justin Shelley (30:28)
Yeah, it it's better because it's pure bottom line, right? When you bring in a new customer, you you take all the expenses out of that and maybe ten to twenty percent makes it to the bottom line. But when you cut an expense, one hundred percent of that already lives there. So you cannot save your way to wealth, but when you save money, it it goes right to the bottom line. So it's kind of nice. Yeah. I

Mario Zaki (30:55)
I

I disagree. My wife's credit card wasn't working for a few weeks, you know, so she couldn't get onto Amazon,

Justin Shelley (31:02)
All of a sudden you were rich.

Mario Zaki (31:05)
you know, and I was dragging my feet getting it replaced. I almost saved myself the wall for it there.

Justin Shelley (31:12)
I hope she doesn't listen to these.

Bryan Lachapelle (31:14)
I will leave that one alone.

Mario Zaki (31:15)
Hahaha

On that note.

Justin Shelley (31:20)
All right,

guys. yeah, on that note, gotta go make sure we're all

Never mind. I I I'm gonna go there because you brought it up. The this software that's being developed that you know that you're you're mentioning that I'm doing and you're kind of following the the way. I don't know. I started off by my my original rant was that I was tired of somebody else owning my stuff. So if their system goes down, there's nothing I can do about it, and I just have to explain it to my customers because it's passed through, right?

They're trying to use something that's not available anymore because the vendor, for whatever reason, I had one where there was a a billing misunderstanding. Like they've got my card, they just wouldn't charge it. and I mean, I it took me a week to get them well, it took me a day to get them to take my money. Don't worry, they got that sorted out really fast, but they wouldn't turn the system back on for like over a week. And that pissed me off. But then it happened again about a month later. I I think it was just the very next billing cycle. I'm like, I that's it, I'm done.

And I I just shut that shut that account off. They own what my like my this wasn't data, but it was the a process in my business. And I'm crippled because they can't get their shit figured out. So it's it's not just the money, Mario. You're right. It absolutely is that. I have cut a large amount of my monthly expenses by developing some stuff in-house. But the way I can make it sing and dance the way I want it to sing and dance is mind-blowing. The the the

Bryan Lachapelle (32:52)
You get rid of all

the complexity that that they had to build in for the the obscure case of the one

Justin Shelley (32:57)
Yes.

Bryan Lachapelle (32:57)
client that needed it and nobody else uses it, but because it was a big client they put it in, but now it's just bloated and and it's a fat it's a fat hungry cat and you're stuck having to deal with, you know, hundreds of pages configurations and you're like, I don't know how to use this dang thing. When you build it yourself, it's yeah.

Justin Shelley (33:14)
So the the point the

point that was brought up yesterday, which was, you know, I don't and and it's valid. Listen, I'm not I'm not beating on the guy, but it, you know, how much time do we really want to spend building stuff when there's products out there, you know, you could be doing other things. And I agree wholeheartedly. Here's the catch. The software that I am replacing right now, I have spent about a month building it and it already does 10 times more than the other software that I had for three years and kept trying to get it to do what I wanted it to do.

And couldn't. It's the but one of the most complex, versatile, like you said, it's supposed to do everything for everybody, but good lord, trying to figure out how to make it do it the way you want it done. It's like every page has, and I'm not even kidding, one settings page for one feature in that software might have 10 tabs, and each tab might have a hundred settings. And you just have to scroll through them and try to find the one goddamn checkbox that you're looking for, and you do that, and then you find out

There's a different page that has similar configurations that you've got to go check. And then you check that one and it halfway works. Then you got to go back and do something on the first page. It's just like, holy shit. Where I could, I know you do. And yeah, yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (34:22)
We call we use the same software, it we call it inception. It's inception. It's like you're you you're ten levels deep

before you're like, I can finally get it to work now that I went ten levels deep. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (34:32)
The funny

Justin Shelley (34:32)
Whereas I

Mario Zaki (34:33)
thing is you

too got me on that same software and now we're all about to leave.

Justin Shelley (34:36)
I know. Now we're

all leaving it.

Bryan Lachapelle (34:39)
I'm not switching any time soon, but it is it is brutal. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (34:41)
Yeah, hang out with us and you will. Listen, we're all meeting

up back in Nashville in three weeks. I I

Bryan Lachapelle (34:47)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (34:47)
three weeks.

Justin Shelley (34:48)
bet Brian comes away vibe coding his own software. We'll see. We'll

Bryan Lachapelle (34:52)
I won't yeah, I don't know about

Mario Zaki (34:53)
Listen,

Bryan Lachapelle (34:54)
that.

Mario Zaki (34:54)
it's

it's a big undertaking and like I mentioned,

Justin Shelley (34:56)
It is.

Mario Zaki (34:57)
you know, there's several reasons why You know looking at and I only looked at yours for a few minutes and I'm like, you know what? Fuck it. Why

Bryan Lachapelle (35:05)
Let's do it.

Mario Zaki (35:06)
not? Yeah, you know, what do I have to lose a couple days worth of sitting there playing with you know tools that I like playing with anyway, if anything

Bryan Lachapelle (35:15)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (35:16)
it just you know, like It just I figured let me give it a try. Let me see. Let me bring in my data

I have 10 guys that I'm going to have tested. If they tell me it's a piece of shit, it's a piece of shit. And, you know, we, stay with where we are, but I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm taking in there, you know, that's the other thing is I've talked to all 10 of the guys and said, what do you hate the most about the software and what do you like the most about the software? And now I'm able to address, you know, the likes and dislikes because I'm creating it from the ground up, you know, and

You

know, a couple of them mentioned stuff and I'm like, holy shit, that would actually be pretty cool. And the system that we all are using, it's our Justin, you were using, it didn't have it. They're like, why, why, why doesn't it just have it? And this, this is one of the most advanced systems on the market. And I came from.

Justin Shelley (36:10)
That's lacking

one of the most basic features needed in the MSP world. I'm dispatching, scheduling. Like

Bryan Lachapelle (36:15)
What feature is that? Now I'm curious. yeah. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (36:19)
a ticket comes in. What do you do with it? Drag and drop it onto somebody's day. Like that should be it. And in fact, I'm automating that, so I don't even have to do that much, but but this one won't let you do it. And you Google it, you YouTube it, you AI it. Can't be done. Can't be done. It's just insane. That

Bryan Lachapelle (36:36)
I had I had one

problem where I couldn't change one tiny little thing. So when when I send out emails from from my system, I wanted it to show that when I when I'm emailing it shows as if it's coming from me, even though it's a sales at address. No, that can't happen. It you can't, you know, you can't replace the who it's coming from address with your name, even though you can actually do that. Like like there's nothing technically stopping you from doing other than the fact that the

Justin Shelley (37:02)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:02)
software doesn't let you do it.

Justin Shelley (37:03)
They won't let you.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:04)
And so

when I email out now to my prospects, it's sending it out as, you know, sales at B for networks or sales, you know, B four network sales team. And it's like so impersonal. And

Justin Shelley (37:12)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:13)
if you were vibe coding that, that's a one second fix. Like one second fix. Yep.

Justin Shelley (37:15)
Done. It's one sentence. Yeah.

Yeah. You type one sentence and it's done. Maybe you walk away for five minutes. Yeah. That's

Bryan Lachapelle (37:22)
Yep. And I I physically can't do it. I am barred from changing that setting.

Justin Shelley (37:26)
that is exactly what tip the boat for me, Brian. So be careful. Be careful when you say you won't do it. and now and

Bryan Lachapelle (37:30)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know. I know.

Justin Shelley (37:33)
and I'm gonna we're we are gonna kind of wind this thing down, but since we're already on this tangent, what I set out to build, I had functional in a weekend, but it's like everything that I do.

It's like, my God, I can do this. my God, I can do that. Holy shit. I can

Bryan Lachapelle (37:49)
Yeah. It's iterative.

Justin Shelley (37:51)
I have my entire business now running in one system, one platform that used to be five. Now I'll tell you where I get scared is I'm starting to do the financial part of it. And I'm starting to send out invoices and integrate with QuickBooks and you know, that kind of stuff does have me a little bit uneasy. I will, in full disclosure, say that. But I've got I've got some training I'm taking.

that addresses that specifically. And you know, 'cause I I'm not gonna just go in recklessly and and do stuff. So one more example of where now AI is making me up my skill set, up my abilities, and do more with less. There we go, guys.

Mario Zaki (38:28)
Yeah, pass that

training along because I'm going to be probably working on that in like a week or so.

Justin Shelley (38:34)
I'll I'll

shoot you the email. I like seriously we should all probably be on it. It's about security around vibe coding and and I'll even give a plug, even though they hopefully they don't care. The I'm always talking about CIS, Center for In Internet Security and the CIS controls and whatever. That's who's doing this webinar. And talking about and as a product, you know, they're trying to sell a product that basically hardens your vibe coding. anyways, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go check it out and

If the product's good, maybe

Mario Zaki (39:02)
Yeah, I

Justin Shelley (39:03)
I do. Maybe I buy another goddamn vendor. I've cut enough off. Maybe I'll bring this one on. I don't know.

Mario Zaki (39:08)
Yeah, I mean, there's certain things,

there's certain things that I'm not going to touch. You know, I'm not going to touch,

Justin Shelley (39:12)
Right.

Mario Zaki (39:13)
you know, the, the security tools, you know, I'm not trying to replace, you know, our antivirus. I'm not trying to replace our, you know, remote management software, you know, stuff like that. I think if we sit there and try and try, try, can probably get it, but I don't want to, I'm not interested at the moment. I'm not interested.

Justin Shelley (39:34)
I was gonna say

not yet, but I'll I'll tell you this. I was, and I probably said it before, but I was I used to code all my own stuff from scratch by hand. I don't mean AI, because this was like 20 years ago and more than 20 years ago. I was coding my own RMM before I knew what RMMs were. Honestly, before I knew what security really was. I mean, I was I I was like, cool, I can make this little thing that lives on their workstation, and then I can send a message to it to run a script.

It's

as far as I thought. And I I never even built it. It it got to the point where I'm like, there's all off-the-shelf stuff. I don't have to spend all this time developing. I quit doing it. And then I've been frustrated ever since. And so I'm glad that now I'm building my own stuff again. But you're right, Mario. There are places where we have to at least be very careful, go slowly, eyes wide open. but we have better and better tools now. So I don't know how long that lives. I don't know how long it is that we say, I can't do that anymore. We'll see. We'll see.

Mario Zaki (40:30)
Yeah, at least in 2026. We'll see what happens in 2027. You know, I do know,

Justin Shelley (40:35)
Two whole months away.

Mario Zaki (40:36)
I do know somebody that has built something on top of their existing one. I don't know if they replaced it yet, but they do have like two running at the same time. you know, and either they're doing it slowly or they're just kind of having something compliment the other.

Justin Shelley (40:55)
Yeah. Interesting times, gentlemen.

Bryan Lachapelle (40:59)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Justin Shelley (41:01)
on that note, let's go ahead and wrap this thing up and then listen, I'm gonna put this out to the the listening audience. And honestly, Liana, you're gonna have to catch this line and make a social media clip just about this. let us know, audience, what is it that you guys are concerned about? What would you like us to address?

I know I'm brilliant and I come up with these fascinating topics every single week. but it'd sure be nice if there was a little help in the universe. Tell me what you guys want us to talk about. so far we've gotten kind of lucky. The audience continues to grow. I appreciate everybody who listens and who provides feedback. Keep it coming. We're gonna keep this thing growing and we're all gonna get smarter. And my ultimate goal, and this is just gonna kind of become my mantra, we need to elevate our industry.

And and that is kind of my personal mission statement right now. We've got to do better as as technology industry. So guys, final thoughts, key takeaways. Say your goodbyes, whatever it is. You got thirty seconds each. Mario, you're starting. Brian, you're going, then we're out of here. Mario, take it away.

Mario Zaki (42:04)
Yeah, mean, listen, it's we've talked about it for months, you know, everybody should be at least willing to try it. But, you know, the first thing that they need to keep in mind when they do, you know, start vibe coding or, you know, setting up their own thing is security. You know, security should be the first thing that they need to think about before they actually, you know, put anything to, you know, before they start typing or the first thing that they start typing has to be

all the security measures that they want in place. After that, you know, you just keep up with it, you know, make sure that you're not keeping the password, you know, that it came up with that you're changing passwords, you have like two FA and, know, if you're putting the system, you know, online and stuff like that, same security measures that any other software is typically using right now, you need to have that in mind and

If you're not sure of what to do, visit, you know, unhackedbybusiness.com and you'll get more information.

Justin Shelley (43:10)
Thank you for the blow. Brian.

Mario Zaki (43:10)
You

Bryan Lachapelle (43:12)
I'm gonna keep it very, very brief. If you're not sure if you have anything in your business you can automate using AI or creating your own little applets, give us a call. Visit visit the website, reach out to one of us. We will help you. the majority of us have the ability to walk you through it and or just create whatever it is you're looking for for you. That's it.

Justin Shelley (43:38)
Yeah,

yeah, and and I might rephrase a little bit what you said. Basically, look at where your pain points are, look at where your bottlenecks are. Don't even worry about if you think you can do it with AI or not. And that's that's our that's our problem. Make that our problem because

Bryan Lachapelle (43:49)
Right. Yep.

Justin Shelley (43:51)
that's that's what we do. So find out where you're frustrated.

Bryan Lachapelle (43:53)
That's right.

Justin Shelley (43:54)
And and like where I'm gonna add to it is like I didn't even know where I was frustrated until I started doing this stuff. I didn't know how frustrated I was with all these vendors and all these integrations that

Or not even integrations, but double entry. I gotta do here, and then I gotta go to a whole different thing and log in and do something else there. And to log in, you got two factor authentications. You gotta get your stupid phone. It's like, good God, what took me an hour before I can do in 30 seconds. So that's that is the kind of life-changing stuff that we are doing internally. We do for our clients and we can do for you. So reach out, unhackmybusiness.com, and all three of us will we'll we'll put our heads together, we'll solve all your problems for. We'll solve the entire world's problems. That is our promise to you guys. With that.

Bryan Lachapelle (44:33)
It's done. They're already solved. It's already done.

Justin Shelley (44:36)
We are getting the hell out of here and we'll be back next week. See you guys.

Mario Zaki (44:40)
Bye guys.

Justin Shelley (44:47)
Now

Bryan Lachapelle (44:47)
Unhack.

Justin Shelley (44:47)
you're back to d now now Mario's back

Mario Zaki (44:49)
On the Hatch.

Justin Shelley (44:50)
to dancing.