UnHacked

Alright, guys. We are liv

on Facebook and YouTube. YouTube is struggling today. I don't know what's going on there, but, anyways, welcome everybody to episode 21 of unhacked. And today we are gonna talk, we're gonna talk about money. We're gonna talk about, budgets.

We're gonna talk about, well, cybersecurity and productivity on a budget.

Money, money, money, money, money.

And well, so we we tried this one before, and I didn't like I didn't like my attitude on it, honestly. So we cut that one, and we're gonna try again today. I've and I'll be honest. So I've had I've had a lot of conversations, tough conversations with clients recently, about getting equipment upgraded and and useful. Right?

Productive. And, so yesterday this is this is a brand new story. Yesterday, I'm meeting with the project manager of a multimillion dollar company, and his computer's kinda tanking. You know, it's it's 3 plus years old. It's low end specs.

When they bought it, it wasn't a great great piece of equipment. It's out of warranty and it's acting up. And the the biggest problem that I've got, my biggest concern is that it's, it's not running security updates. Right? So this is, this is a security problem.

Plus it's a productivity problem because, as he put it, when he was talking to me, he's like, I've been dead in the water for 2 days. So, you know, when when we're looking at somebody of this importance who's down, we're talking hard cost in the 1,000 and 1,000 of dollars. Right? So that's kind of, it's just, I guess, an illustration or a a reminder of why this topic's important and the mindset that needs to go with it. So that's what we're gonna break down today.

We're gonna talk about, total cost of ownership, what that means, how you define it, how you calculate it, and and how you make any, you know, useful assumptions off of that. And we're gonna do it both on hardware costs, and also we're gonna dabble, you know, bring cybersecurity into this as well, which, will be a little bit more I don't know if abstract is the right word, but maybe, you know, not not quite as easy to calculate as as hardware costs. I've got good formulas for those. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Before we get into it, though, let's make quick introductions.

Mario, if you wanna go first and then Brian, and I'll bring it home.

Hello. What's up, everybody? You should know me by now, but Mario Zaki with Mastech IT. We are located in the New Jersey North Jersey, right outside Manhattan area, servicing the entire state area. And today is celebrating our 20 year anniversary.

Oh, congratulations. The thank you. I bought the entire office, like, catered lunch today,

and they're

all now stuffed and too lazy to answer the phone. So don't call.

I mean, maybe y'all just deserve a day off. Yeah. Jeez. Congrats, man. Seriously.

Yeah. Not very many people make it to 20 years. That is a huge, accomplishment. Yeah.

It really

is. Yeah. And, you know, it the last 5 have been, like, on the up. So thank God, you know, blessed and great team. And, everything is rolling in the right direction.

So

Yeah. Haven't the last 5 on the way up during COVID and everything else, I mean, that's that's, that's a huge accomplishment.

COVID, it was actually big for us. COVID and not to cut off from Brian Stein, but COVID was good for for us because we work with a lot of government offices,

and

they they had money that they had to burn during that time. So Oh. They were just buying

Good old government. Government. God, I love them. Alright. Let's change subject fast before I just burn this piece.

Brian Brian, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Yeah. Brian Latchbaugh with B4 Networks based in wonderful Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. I like to say that I help business owners get rid of the frustrations that come with dealing with technology. But more importantly, I help them get 1% better in their journey towards all things IT, whether it's cybersecurity, or, just using technology to, be a have a strategic advantage in their in their business.

Ryan, you forgot the 1% better every day. You just said 1% better.

1% better every day. Yeah.

Every day.

Every day. Every day, we gotta look what what what can do today to get 1% better, and that's, yeah, that's what it's all about. Right? What if you have

a bad day and you go, 2% backwards? Do you have to make it up in 3%

the day after that? No. No. You know, you it's not that you're going to get 1% better every day. It's that you're you're trying to figure out what you can to get 1%.

Yeah. Because Yeah. Leo, you can do these big, huge, giant pushes for anything in in life. Right? But, like, you know, example, like, what the topic we're talking about today.

I could replace every computer in my whole office and and get a 100% better tomorrow. But, man, is that ever painful. Right? Versus I can replace a computer every week for the next 52 weeks if I have a 52 office, you know, computer office. That would be a whole lot easier, right, impact wise.

So

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, for me personally, it it seems like more of a mindset than a you know, it's Yeah. Like, always be looking for that way to make make small improvements.

So Mhmm.

The other thing about it though is, I mean, now we're really off topic, but, it's, you know, much more than 1% isn't sustainable. We can make these big big pushes, but eventually, you run out of you just run out of gas. So Yep. I do love your motto. I I don't use it like you do.

Oh, well, no. It's it's been something that's been on my mind for a long time. It it really kinda started with, Darren Hardy's book, and I can never remember what, what the title of that was. But anyways so, alright. I am Justin Shelly with Phoenix IT Advisors.

We do work in both the Dallas Fort Worth Metro and also Northern Nevada. And I'll tell you my passion. I've said this before, but, I love technology, but my true passion is just business. It's and so I love today's topic because and why it is so frustrating to me is because we've gotta look at bigger pictures. The the mindset of just cutting costs is dangerous, especially where technology is concerned and really especially where cybersecurity is concerned.

So, today, I'm I'm really excited about this, and I hope I can say it in a way that is meaningful and can be heard by our audience, and not like, you know, the one of my tried to do before I was kind of upset about a conversation I just had. And I I think I came across a little bit, well, less than professional. So, we're we're gonna do a retake on it. But here's the thing. So, and I I mentioned this last time as well.

I grew up with not a lot of money. Right? We had 9 kids in the family. My parents busted their asses. I will never say that they didn't do everything that they could, you know, but but money was tight.

And so there was just this mindset of cut costs, cut corners, and it was survival. That was a necessity. But then I've also seen, some version of it, and I don't know, maybe it's a generational thing. We, you know, our our parents, our grandparents were lived through the great depression. And so they're they're you can you can get so fixated on cutting money and cutting costs, cutting expenses that you actually end up spending more money in the process.

And and that's really kind of the where I wanna take a a spotlight today and shine it on that and show people show our audience how you can make an investment that pays for itself, and we can prove it with math that it can actually be cheaper to spend more money upfront. But overall, we want a better outcome. Right? And we and we need some expectations there. So, one of the I'm looking at my notes and okay.

So I I've gotta come back to that conversation I had yesterday where the guy, you know, he's frustrated and he's he's been down for 2 days, and I'm looking at it. And I I got his computer back up and running. It's fine. Right? But it's, again, it's 3 years old.

It's out of warranty. It's, it's struggling. It's seen better days. And I told him, I'm like, you can you can get a little bit more life out of this if you want, or we can put something in here that's high performance, that's got a 5 year warranty that, you know, checks all the boxes, and we can get you screaming. And, like, I'd like to get a little bit more life out of this one.

So that was kind of it's fine. It's it's his decision. But this is this is what I wanna break down is, did he save money by doing that? And and let's do the math behind it. Now, Brian, this, even though I'm passionate about this concept, you kind of brought me to a really cool way of doing the math on this.

So, we're gonna before I go there, I want you to kinda just think about that, that cost per hour that you talked about. And then, Mario, I want you to first talk about total cost of ownership. Can you just kinda describe, you know, in in your own words, but what is what is a total cost of ownership where technology is concerned?

Well, it's it's, you know, when you essentially are buying, like, a computer or a a car or, you know, stuff like that. There's going to be things that come along with it. It's going to, you know, when you like, for example, like a car, there's gonna be, you know, you're buying a used car. You're gonna have to do some maintenance on it. You're gonna have to do brakes and all that stuff.

When you're when you're coming, when you're purchasing, a computer, you know, it's it's so hard to explain this.

Well, let me let me bail you out if you want me. So Yeah. Look at here's I wanna I wanna throw an example out there because I I use Uber quite a bit when I'm traveling. And and I see people with these relatively nice cars, that I'm I'm assuming. Right?

I I don't know this. I don't talk to them about it. I'm assuming that they're driving because they usually have full time jobs. And then this, they're doing to make the car payment so they can have a nicer car. So this is an example where I'm going to make an assumption that they are not contemplating the total cost of ownership of their car.

They're looking at a car payment. So that is that something you wanna take and run with? Or Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's it there's a lot more involved with it. It's not just like the your monthly expense for just like your lease or for your, you know, your outright purchase of the computer or or the phone that I'm sorry, or the car. It's the the stuff that comes along with it.

You know, the, maintenance, the upgrades, the, the protection of it, the user using it, you know, like the the employee that's using it. If it's if it's running slow, if you buy them like an I three processor with 4 gigs of RAM, The you know, just getting on, like, Google is gonna take them, like, 5 minutes. You know? So the the what when you invest in that, it's also what else comes along with it that slows it down or or speeds the whole process up. You get them, you know, a rocket of a computer or a rocket of a car, you're gonna get from where you wanna go from point a to point b a lot faster, which means they're gonna be more productive.

You know? Not that I'm saying it rockets for for for cars, for people, for your boys. But, you know, it's you know, if if you're if it's gonna give them trouble, that's all money. All the time is money.

Well, and one of the things I look at so back to Uber, when I when I jump in, anytime somebody shows up with a Tesla. And again, I'm making a lot of assumptions, but I'm I'm guessing that they're not really looking down the road to that $20,000 plus battery replacement that might have to happen. Right? So they might be able to make a payment, but then what happens when their battery dies and and it's not under warranty? Because they're really just, you know, using their car a lot more than most normal people would use their car because we're driving all the time.

So if you factor that in, I could probably do the math to make the case that they're not making money at all

Right.

Driving their car for Uber. They're they might actually be donating their time and money to charity. Right?

And I think Absolutely. But unless they get really big tips.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, Brian, tell let's let's talk about your the math that you do. When you're when you're talking to your clients about buying hardware, how do you, how do you present that?

Well, there's there's of things because I've I run into clients who often and I listen. I love my clients. I I I I I mean no disrespect of this, but I I, you know, a lot of times, it's it's a very narrow mindset. Like, hey. You know, it's gonna cost me $2,000, for a net new computer, including installation.

You know, I can get the same one from Best Buy for half the price. Right? Well, no. You can't because that one from Best Buy is gonna be older technology, less less you know, it might not have a good warranty. You'll probably have to go and source it yourself.

You have to go pick it up. If there's a problem with it, you gotta bring it back to that place. And and so there's there's all those components of even if they want to replace a piece of hardware, buying it through through us, although it might be slightly more expensive, comes with its own set of benefits. Right? If there's a problem, I'll just swap it out and, you know, all sorts of things like that.

But when it comes to how I I justify actually replacing the computer, versus just keeping the old machine in place, I always come back down to what is the biggest line item on your p and l statement. Right? For every single business I've ever seen, the biggest line item on the p and l statement is not not Is

computer costs. Computers. Oh.

Yeah. Right. It's it's not insurance. It's people. Right?

Payroll is the biggest line item on anybody's P and L statement. By a lot. The average, yeah, the average employee costs us anywhere from $250 to $500 a day, right, depending on what kind of industry you're in and how much you're paying people. That's a huge cost. Right?

And so I like to take a computer and break it down into how many hours that they're going to be using it throughout the year and comparing that to someone's salary. So, for example, the average computer all in including licensing installation, configuration, and and the cost of the computer, let's just pretend for a second it's $2,000, you know, for for that computer. The average person the average computer will last between 2 to 3 year. I recommend 3 years. Right?

And some people might be saying, well, no. I keep mine for 4 or 5. Well, you can, but, again, productivity. Right? How much more productive will a person be if they had a new computer?

So you take a look at that and you break down a $2,000 computer into the amount of hours that you can generally use a computer or an employee will be using a computer. And for most of us, that's 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, or 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, you know, 52 weeks a year. And so you just you you essentially do the the math breakdown on that. And so if I were to do that real quick and just, like, take $2,000, right, we take $2,000, and we're just gonna divide it by, 3 years. We're gonna take that number.

We're gonna divide that by 52 weeks. We're gonna take that number and divide it by the average 7 hour workday. And maybe I did my math a little off here, because this number seems a little bit on the high side. Let me just redo that again.

What are we doing it? We can average a a work year is about 2 1,000 hours.

Okay.

You take 52 times 8, you've got 2,080. And then you take about 80 off for time off, say, you know, vacation, whatever else. You paid about 2,000 hours per year.

Right. So you're looking at about 33¢ for for your average computer all in. Right? And and I'm not talking about, like, high end laptop or, you know, engineering laptop or anything, but, you know, typically, if you have a need for those things, those engineers will cost you a lot more. So 33¢ per hour for the average computer, and that's assuming you're only using it for those those those those hours.

Maybe you've got 2 shifts, whatever the case may be. An employee will cost you 200 plus per day. Right? So, you know, you you look at the productivity. If they can even get 15 minutes better pro productivity out of that workstation, their your already ROI is is is already better.

Not not factoring in employee frustrations, not factoring in the fact that they got a call, you know, outside of the environment, like, maybe to their IT provider, and or, you know, just in general complaining to their neighbor about how slow their computer is, not factoring in the fact that listen, I've gone to places like banks and and sales places buying a car, and the guy behind the counter is like, oh, this computer, it's always giving me problems. And so now I'm looking at this, you know, I'm let let's say at a BMW dealership, and I'm hearing this guy complaining about a computer. And I'm thinking, jeez. This BMW dealership can't even afford to buy their people computers. So now that changes my opinion on on the business itself.

Right? So you've got all these different factors playing in other than just the total cost of ownership because employee turnover you know, listen. If I worked at a place that that computer wasn't working well and I've constantly having problems and my boss isn't willing to invest in me and then my my my job to make my life a little easier, I'm out. There's tons of employers that will be willing and more than happy to get me the technology that that I need to do my job, and you're gonna have to now have to find another person. I know we're probably gonna touch on that, so I'm probably jumping ahead.

But You usually do, Brian.

You usually do. I apologize.

No. But that's actually this year. I I love that example because I had and and I've got clients. I mean, we'll have the whole array of conversations with the same client on on this subject. And in one case, we're saying, you know, spending freeze.

We're not buying anything. And then in the next case, we're bringing on an employee who we you know, is one of the higher end employees, and they're like, do we have any spare laptops we can give them? Like, yeah, here's what we've got. And they look at it and they go, shit, I'm not giving that to this new employee. What's that say about us to them?

Yeah.

You know, and so now all of a sudden, we're we're we're shifting that mindset a little bit on, you know, where we really wanna cut these costs. So Exactly. Mario, any thoughts on this? Yeah.

Yeah. I actually no. Go ahead, Brian.

I was just gonna say we talked a little bit about PCs, but this applies across the whole gamut of things. Right? It's not just PCs. It's all the

Absolutely. Yeah.

Office. Everything that we deal with. Phones, you know, PCs, manufacturers' equipment, chairs. Yeah. Like, all of it.

So How many times do

you see people on these broken down office chairs and their backs hurting and, like Embarrassing.

Yeah. We we actually have a client that ends up, every time they hire somebody new, they just say, okay. Let's take out of take one of these old computers out of the closet and set them up to use this new computer. And the new boy is coming in. He's like, okay.

Well, you know, I'm starting. I'm working right here in the corner. I'm even I'm sitting here on like a stool, and you're giving me a computer that's taking 15 minutes to to boot up. Even though we that computer was a computer that somebody couldn't use anymore. So we're, like, let's replace it.

They replaced it. And then they took that old computer and just put it in a closet. I'm like, you don't need to hold that in the closet. Let's just take it out back and smash it with a hammer. You know, like, literally, like, take out the hard drive, smash out it, and then might as well smash off the rest of the thing out.

And they're like, no. No. We'll keep it in case we need it. And then 2 weeks later, we get an onboard. They were like, oh, yeah.

They're gonna use this computer. Like, is then what ends up happening is, like, a couple weeks later, the employee can't get their work done, so they have to swap it out. We take, you know, an hour or 2 of their time to log in or we, you know, go in there or move them, you know, and then they have to sit there and wait for us to finish transferring all their data to another computer. But the but the old computer is so slow that it takes an hour or 2 to do it. And we're like, you know, there's times where we're like, listen, we this computer cannot be reused

again. Yeah.

You know? And, you know, like, it that's that's forget about what we, you know, what we have to go through as ITs. Okay. No. You know, fuck us.

Alright. But I'm talking about the employees. You know, like, these guys, if if you're if you're literally giving them, you know, like, okay. Here's a piece of garbage that you're gonna work on. You know, welcome to the team.

You know, don't be surprised when 2 weeks later, they give you the resignation.

Yeah. I've actually I'm I'm working this into our because we're we're redoing a lot of things internally at our company. And one of the things I've built in is, when an employee is terminated, we collect their equipment and we evaluate it, and we may or may not return it to service. And, you know, and it's a decision that's made mostly by us also, you know, Well, we allow the clients to set their own standards to an extent, but, there there is a cut a cut off where if if you don't wanna replace it, then it's not going to be on our service agreement, and we're gonna charge you by the hour to to service it. Right?

We'll just Right. Remove it from contract. And now, so Mario and Brian, you both kind of talked about, emotional costs, we call it, right? Which would fall under because there's really kinda 2 categories. You've got hard costs, which you can do with math and, dollars.

And then you've got these soft costs, which, they're still real. They're just hard to calculate. So, Brian, where you're talking about getting 1% better every day, and yet you've got employees who are just angry because their stuff doesn't work. They're they're getting this subliminal message of, you know, we care. We care air quotes.

Which is not not important enough for me to invest in.

Yeah. But you're sitting on a broken chair, and your back hurts, and your computer won't boot up, and it freezes all the time. Oh, and and by the way, you're, you know, responsible for 1,000,000 of dollars of revenue for the company. You know? So it it's harder to, calculate those soft costs, but they're still very real.

Yeah. And I really wish there was a way to to calculate the emotional cost, you know, translate that into dollars. Because when you've got you know, when you have a bad day, I do it. So I I'll just tell on myself when when things aren't going great. Now listen, I've last few years have been rough for me, so I've I've gone through a lot of stuff.

But all it takes is one little, you know, the the straw that breaks the camel's back to where I can literally just sit and stare at my screen for hours because I'm not in a place where I can work productively. Now I own the company. I've got a lot of responsibilities, and I've I know ways to get myself out of that. But if I'm an employee where I don't feel like the company cares, there's no real reason for me to try. They're not trying.

Man, I can blow off a day, a 2 days or a week. No problem. So, there there is a direct cost to these soft costs.

Just hard to calculate.

It it is. It it's hard to calculate, but I think that there's value in at least talking about it so that there's some awareness around it. Right? And that's that's kind of the hope for this conversation. One thing and and Brian, you did say this, and I will I I don't know that I have a because it's something I've just started doing.

It's kind of a test program, but I'm starting to buy computers that do come with a a really quick return for warranty. No questions asked through this company, and, mandatory 5 year warranty. So I can take this total cost of ownership and now stretch it out over 10000 hours, and I can get my cost per hour down to about 20 to 30¢ depending on the equipment. Yeah. I mean, it's is that is that what I came up with?

20¢. Yeah. For for so, you know, go back to that project manager, and I could give him a state of the art high end upgraded, you know, everything he needs in a computer, like and like you said, with we'll throw a new monitors or let's throw in a UPS, a battery backup to make sure that the power spikes don't kill it. All these things with the quick turn warranty, for 20¢ an hour. I could admit I changed this guy's life, but it didn't happen.

You know, it's like, okay, but when that computer dies, we're gonna have a conversation. I'm I'm not gonna have it today, but we will have that conversation soon. Alright. So what else what else do we wanna talk about as far as TCO or hardware costs? And then once we've got that cleared up, these are kind of final thoughts before we transition in cybersecurity.

Well, I will touch on one thing, and that's I think we had just really quickly touched on it before we got on the call, but I think it's important to have a conversation here with live with everybody on on the call here. And that is, there are times where, a client will have and and our listeners might be in this boat. They have an agreement with a a managed service provider, and there's this this misunderstanding of of, you know, value for money when it comes to, a provider like us, and that is, you know, we have this older computer. And so as a business owner, why would I care how much time, it takes you to fix it because I'm on this unlimited service agreement anyway. Right?

So, you know, it doesn't benefit me as a business owner. I'm pretending I'm the client. Right? It doesn't benefit me as a business owner if my, you know, if if I if you have to spend 2 hours on this this computer, every month to fix it, well, there's a couple things. 1, every time your employees are calling me and my team, they're not working, and they're actually getting more frustrated and more, irritated by having technology that doesn't work.

And so not only are they not earning you dollars when they're on the phone with me, they're not getting their job done. They're getting that frustration that's adding on and piling on over and over again. But, secondly, you know, every business owner will go through this process internally and say, okay, we've got this customer and the lifetime value of the customer is x and the amount of work and effort we put into this customer is y. And if y is higher than x, then, you know, something's gotta change. We've gotta, you know, increase our price.

And so while, yes, customers are on an unlimited service agreement, you know, as business owners, in IT, we're we're also looking at, you know, how are we going to make sure that we stay profitable? Because, listen, we're all in this for for for for a reason. You know? Yes. I wanna help get people get 1% better, but we're not gonna do it for free.

Right? We have to earn income. In fact, you want your IT provider to be profitable. If they're not profitable, they're gonna cut corners. And when you start cutting corners because they're not profitable, then you are in danger of being noncompliant or or or having cybersecurity incidents because they're having to cut costs, and usually where they cut costs is not having the personnel or and or the resources to be able to help you when you need it.

So just bear that in mind when you're looking at all of the variables. Yes. You can get unlimited service, so who cares about this older computer? But there's all these other things that should be considered as well. The fact that, you know, unproductive employee on your end and potential price increases on on the agreement when it comes up for renewal.

Right. Mario, thoughts on the hardware before we switch to cybersecurity?

Yeah. And and, you know, we talked about this last time. You know, we get our I I get a lot of emails. So no. I don't wanna say a lot.

But, you know, like, at least, like, once every 2 weeks, I'll I'll get a client that says, we have a new employee starting, like, you know, next week or, you know, we wanna upgrade this or that, and they'll send me, like, a link. And it's still like a clearance item at Best Buy. And it's like a laptop for like $3.350. And I'm like, you know, I'm like, first of all, this thing doesn't even have, like, an SSD hard drive or it doesn't you know, this is an I3 Processor, you know, or it it's just like a old model. Like and I always tell them, like, listen, you know, you've heard the expression, you get what you pay for.

This you know, with computers and stuff like that, it's it's same model. If you you're if the if it's you're trying to buy a computer for $300, $350, you're gonna get versus, like, a computer that's like say $1500. You really are gonna get that percentage. You're you're only get you're gonna get 1 5th of the of the the speed. You're gonna get 1 5th of the warranty, you know, or you're gonna you know, if you get this computer and it breaks down on you in, like, 6 months, you're gonna have to take it back to Best Buy.

They're gonna keep it for 3, 4 days while this high school kid tries to, like, figure out what's wrong with it. And you're gonna be out of out of use with it for for almost a week, if not more. So one thing people have to realize is just like everything else, you will get what you pay for. You know? Occasionally, yeah.

Sometimes you can get, like, a bulk discount or, you know, something like that. But when you're buying garbage, you're gonna get garbage performance out.

And the what what I love on that scenario that you just presented because the the numbers that I've been kicking around and Brian as well have been the total cost of the computer. But now what you're talking about is the difference in cost between a a good quality computer that will do the job and do it well. And, the back of the warehouse and you you said I3 and and not SSD hardware, which by the way, for the, business owners out there that don't give a shit about this stuff, that just means it's gonna be slow. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So we take the price difference that you gave, which was about $1,000, and you divide it out over 3 to 5 years, and and you're talking pennies per hour. And, you know, what I like to do is say, okay, your employee comes to you and and says, hey, boss, can I get a 20¢ per hour raise? And and that's all. That's all I need.

I just you know, I'll I'll be happier. I'm gonna do a better job here. Just gonna make my home life better. Just I just need 20¢ an hour. This isn't even it's really not even a conversation.

Times 5 times more work.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's that's a hard way to calculate this where we can just show the true value. But then, you know, the other thing, the the example I started with where you've got a a project manager who is responsible for, you know, like 1,000,000 of dollars a year, and you take one day away from them and, you know, divide that over the life of a computer. And and mathematically, I can show you that it is cheaper to spend more on your computer.

Right?

And that's that's kinda what I wanna transition with because I don't know that I can really do that with cybersecurity. It's a different type of expense. But where hardware investment is concerned, mathematically, I can prove that it is cheaper to get better equipment and that, you know, that's going back to the title. This is productivity on a budget. We're not sitting here saying spend more money and get less.

We're not even saying spend more money and get the same. We're saying spend more money and get exponentially more than you invested. Like, throw your money in the stock market, and you're gonna get 10 x return on it. That's a no brainer. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here.

So

Spend it smarter.

Exactly. Right. So now let's go into cyber

before you go before you go into cybersecurity, the other thing is too, when and I'm pretty you know, what we do with our customers, if you buy your own equipment, you're responsible for your own warranty. So if you go out and buy it from a from from, Best Buy and the motherboard fails and you want us to fix it, we're gonna tell you, okay, the motherboard shot. Send it back to wherever you got it from. Right. But you didn't get it from us.

You're now responsible for taking it to them. And now you're down more. When you buy it from us, we're assuming the responsibility. So we're gonna You're gonna swap it out. Yeah.

We're gonna swap it out with another one that we have in stock or we'll take care of the because all the warranties that we get is next day of hardware delivery. So it will Right. That hardware will be at your door or our door the very next day. So we're taking the responsibility.

Yeah.

We're calling Dell and hopping on India and explaining to them everything that we did. And they're gonna, you know, they're you know, we're saving you that frustration. But when you buy it on your own and you're going out on a budget, we're not responsible for that hard work.

Yeah. So this this change that we've made recently, actually bypasses the part you just talked about where you're talking to the the their employee, Dell's employee or whoever in another country, and you've got language barriers, and they've got Yeah. Processes that they have to go through to validate the work that we've already done. Like, we know it's a motherboard. We know it's a hard drive, and yet we still have to fight with their support to get that turnover.

We might get a overnight delivery once we've agreed on the problem, but it can still take us a day or 2 or 3, right, to go through those jump through those hoops. This manufacturer we're starting to use now, it's a no questions asked. They they only work with IT companies, and they trust our diagnostics, and we can call up and say, hey. I need a hard drive. They just turn a hard drive.

So that's we're we're taking, you know, again, that downtime. We've just we've gotta get rid of that. I don't ever wanna see a project manager telling me, I've been down for 2 days. Jesus. Yeah.

Let's not do that. You're you're worth too much money to be playing this game over a few $100. So okay. Now let's take this, a little less tangible and and talk about cybersecurity, but I still think we can calculate, I don't know about TCO doesn't exactly apply here, but it kind of does.

Yeah.

But we can take the cost to secure an employee and divide that out by by hourly wages. Right? So, and and Brian, Mario, do either of you guys have a a service agreement that is just security?

Yes. I definitely have a security only, agreement, where we just provide, the not the base level, like like, a a reasonable amount of security and everything else is a la carte.

Do you do you mind sharing what a cost per employee per month is for that, your your basic security package? Is that something you can share?

I mean, typically, it's it's it's comb combination of computers and users, but if if you had an equal number, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of, 50 to $70 Canadian. So, you know, $1 US or something like that.

It's not that bad. It's not that bad.

I know.

Mar Mario, what about you? Do you have something like that?

Yeah. So we I mean, we're we're doing the per computer, and we're charging about $40 a month per computer for security only. Yeah. Probably just backup and stuff like that.

So similar. Let's let's go at 50. We'll we'll take a round number, and you divide that by 22 days in a week or in a month. Right? 22 workdays.

And then divide that again by 8 hours per day. And and we can come up with a a rough cost per hour for security of about 30¢. Alright. So if we take that and we add it to the computer, call it another 30¢, and I'm estimating high here, really. You know, maybe it's a total of 60, 70, even, god, even call it a dollar an hour, right, per employee where we can take them and make them productive and we can protect them.

Like, these the the hardware costs, if somebody really wants to cut corners, I mean, god bless. Go go do you because you can get through that. But if you cut costs on cybersecurity, this is a different game. Right? This is this is something we can't tolerate.

This is not something where I'll say, okay, user, Then, you know, we're just gonna charge you by the hour when things go bad. Yeah. No. We don't do that. I'm gonna say goodbye.

Yeah. Best of luck. Do not call me when when the Russians break into your network.

Yeah. Right. At at the end of the day, like like, when you get breached and you you you're the one who actually brought this up once upon a time, Justin. When you get breached, it it it is one of the only crimes that I can think of. There's another one, but I won't mention it.

One of the only crimes I can think of that the victim is blamed. Right? You got breached. What did you do wrong? What didn't you do?

How didn't what what what, like, what were you that incompetent? Right? And at the end of the day, 2 things will happen. They'll they'll either include the IT provider. Even though the IT provider did not have an agreement to do that, support that level of of IT expertise, or, you know, they'll they'll they'll bring you up in a in a lawsuit anyway.

And so from my perspective, you know, I want to behave like a doctor and or a lawyer. You know? There's a certain level of professionalism that I have to bring to the table and the ability to say no. It's not like, oh, you're not gonna do cybersecurity, so therefore, like, you're bad, and so I don't wanna deal with you. It's you're you don't wanna do cybersecurity.

You don't take it seriously. That is beyond my control to be able to, deal with at that point in time, and it would be unprofessional of me to continue working with you. Right? Because I know as a professional that you need these things. And if you don't wanna do those things, it's not that that I don't wanna work with you.

It's like I I realistically, ethically can't.

So Yeah. It's like yeah. It's just exactly what like, what you said. If you go to a doctor and you tell him and he's telling you, well, you need open heart surgery or you need to take this medicine or you need to lose some weight. And you tell him, no.

It's unethical. It's like, okay. You don't have to do any of that stuff, but still pay me your money. You know? And if you happen to have a heart attack, you know, it wasn't my fault.

You know? It's we're we're not gonna do it. We're not gonna put our asses on the line if you're not willing to put, you know, put in what you need to do.

Yeah. And while we can't do the same mathematical equations here, what we can do though is say that for 30¢ an hour, the that cost and I'm not gonna say that's a small cost. I get it. When you've got a lot of employees, this stuff adds up. I know that.

But if you cut that cost and you get breached, I mean, where the the cost comparison, a, it's either absurd and painful and, like, devastating or, b, it's game over. Right? In a lot of cases, it's not just painful. It's not just difficult to recover. It's game over.

If you get breached and the breach is bad enough and you weren't prepared enough, you're out of business. And now, you know, you're you're dusting up off your resume and all your employees are trying to figure out how they're buying Christmas presents for their kids, you know. So, a lot a lot is on the line here. But again, so so coming back to the topic because I'm not, this isn't a sales pitch. I don't want anything here to be construed as, hey.

We're here trying to get you to spend money without getting, you know, more than your value back in a, in a return. And where, you know, we've talked about this in a lot of episodes before. We, we try to figure out how to coach business owners on what's the best bang for your buck. What's the best investment in, in time, money and effort where cybersecurity is concerned. And, you know, we've said this before, back in episode 16, we talked about the the importance of a cybersecurity culture in the business, right?

And I would still say that. I'll say it again. If you really just wanna make the best, you know, the hedge your bets the best, spend the least amount of money and get the most result out of it, it's a mindset. It's a culture. It's, you know, teach your people, reward them for pointing out anything that they see that that could be, improved where security is concerned.

You know, I've I've used that example of the city government back in Texas. I I don't wanna use their name too many times. I'm afraid their lawyers are gonna come after me. But you know, where they actually punished and and like, silenced the IT guys who came in and said, hey, we've got problems and we need to fix them. Man, we gotta do better than that.

Right? So just just a little plug for culture. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that front, but I really do think this this is where we can help you get the most out of your investment is is this culture piece that a lot of time gets forgotten. Uh-uh.

Yeah. It it's when you're when you're bringing you know, you go up to an employer, like, listen, you know, and you happen to know, you know, because your IT person told you, like, listen, you know, John Doe's computers approaching 3 years, 5 years, whatever it is or 7 years, you know, maybe it's, you know, we're getting alerts that his computer is running low on disk space or, you know, he's full on, you know, using all his RAM all the time. When you go and you just tell him, like, hey. Listen, John Doe. I'm gonna go ahead and upgrade your computer.

Just reach out to the IT guys. Let them know what you want them to back up and stuff like that. That guy is gonna be thrilled because that wasn't probably something he was expecting. He's happy. He's now happier to come into work because he's gonna feel like his job is gonna get a little easier.

He's gonna be more productive, and he's probably gonna be a little more upbeat, that that he's gonna have a new computer. You know, everybody wants something new. You know? So it their your employees are gonna be thankful for.

Right.

And then there's also one other thing that I don't know if you're you're gonna mention this or not, but, you know, tying cybersecurity and hardware together, you know, October of 2025, Windows 10 is gonna be end of life. So you're you know, the majority of those computers out there that are Windows 10, they're not able to be up graded. A lot of them can be upgraded, but the ones that are not going to be able to be upgraded because they don't meet the minimal hardware requirements of like an SSD hard drive, a TPM link, you know, in there and at least say 8th generation I5 or I Processor, those computers will not be, you know, able to be compliant. They're not they're gonna be end of life. You can't update when Microsoft will not release any updates for them.

Security tools are going to start support stop supporting them.

Yep. And

then you're back to the whole cybersecurity thing. Like this computer it's like almost having a computer on your network right now running Windows XP or running Windows 7. You know, we don't allow it. When we when we onboard somebody and there's a Windows 7 machine on there, like, that's gotta go. Or

Yeah. It comes back to the ethical thing. Right? It'd be beyond ethical of you to leave it there because it's a it's a security risk and a huge security risk.

Yeah. So that's gonna be just the same, you know, Windows 10 in in in next year. And and what we're doing now with a bunch of our clients is we're trying to, you know, we tell them, like, alright. These computers are, you know, Windows 11, so they're good. These are Windows 10, but only half of them can actually be upgraded to Windows 11.

These other half, you have, you know, a year and a half to replace them or a little under a year to replace them. You know, if there's 12 of them, let's do 3 per quarter or, you know, once a month, you know, something like that. And this is the time where you need to start doing because if you wait until, you know, August or September of 2025 and you tell your I. IT guys, hey, I need 10 new computers. Well, guess what?

The rest of the world needs, you know, 10 new computers as well. So the price is either higher or the demand or we can't get it.

Availability is gone. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah. Very, very true. Alright. Guys, I think we we're just about ready to bring this one home. I'll I'll give both of you a chance for some some final thoughts, closing arguments, and and then we're gonna wrap up.

We'll introduce next week's episode, and and we'll go ahead and close out. And, Brian, I'll go ahead and start with you. Any any final thoughts here?

Yep. So like all of my closing, it's always gonna be about being 1% better. And if we treat, upgrading technology with the same mindset of being a little bit better every day, now this one might be more like a little bit better every week or a little bit better every quarter. It's a lot easier to budget and plan for incremental, increases, or incremental changes in your your business with regards to physical hardware technology, than it is to try to do it all at once. Right?

If you're if you're going to be replacing every computer in your office all at the same time, first of all, it's gonna cost you a small fortune. There's gonna be all sorts of of issues that could potentially creep up with different people having different problems at different times versus if we were just replacing, you know, 1 computer a week or 1 computer every month, and now only 1 user is impacted. Right? And there's arguments for both, but I've always been, of the opinion that incremental changes is a lot better than than mass changes. It's a lot less painful.

And you can usually learn, you know, oh, I've replaced Bob's computer this month, and we ran into this problem, this problem, and that problem. Well, let's add those to the list of things that we don't have to worry about or that we we we verified next time so that we're getting, again, 1% better for for the next one. And you get to a point eventually where everything is documented. Everything is is is is, set up properly from day 1 with a checklist, and, now everybody's happy because you're not running into all these issues versus if you do it all at once, you're only making that change once every 3 years across your entire user base, you know, all sorts of things will go wrong. And then there's no fixing it for next time because the next time is 3 years down the road.

So

Right. Alright. Mario, final thoughts.

Yeah. Well well, you know, just like what, you know, Justin Brian said earlier, like, we're not trying to get you guys to spend more money, or we're not saying, oh, you need this high end, like, Lamborghini of a computer. You know, it it could be an I5 processor. You know, we're not telling you you need an i7 or an i9, which is the higher end of processors like an engineer would would need or somebody working with like a high, you know, graphics or architects or something like that. You know, it may just be an high 5 processor, you know, it's not every, you know, we don't just sell one type of computer that we set for everybody.

But if it's if the computer is obsolete or old or it doesn't have, you know, I keep coming back to this whole SSD hard drive. It's a world of difference. You know, when those hard drives spinning this hard drives, it's equivalent to a long time ago when somebody would come into the office in the morning, turn on their computer, and then go and be able to brew a full pot of coffee, wait for it to brew, then they can have the coffee come back to it and their computer's finally on. It's equivalent to like that. Like, you know, the SSD hard drives, you push that button and within 30 seconds, you're able to work.

So it's stuff like that that, a, will not make sure you your computer compatible for Windows 10. And, b, it just slows down, you know, your employ that employee now can't get to, you know, start working until an hour into their day. So if you're paying up $30 an hour, that's $30 right there that you're that you paid them just for them to wait and brew a cup of a pot of coffee. You know? You can get a box of Joe from Starbucks cheaper than that.

I

I am really glad you mentioned that we're not trying to sell people a Lamborghini. And and here's what I'm gonna say to that. What if I could sell you a Lamborghini for pennies per hour? What if you could upgrade your 1978 Pinto for a brand new Lamborghini, and the total cost was 30¢ an hour? That is kinda what we're saying.

We can we can change your world by giving you the right equipment, giving your employees the right equipment. We can change your world for pennies per hour. So I I love that Lamborghini, thought, Mario. And there's a little bit of a twist on on what you said, but and, no, we're not selling you, you know, something of of that cost. But Stop blaming.

Not even a not a picked up one.

I'm just saying, like, the value you get out of this investment, it's crazy that this is a place where where we're cutting corners because it makes such a dramatic difference when you have the right equipment to do your job. So, I said earlier that I couldn't really do, a good calculation on on the TCO or whatever was security. I'm gonna correct that too. Actually, when we use averages, when we bring statistics into it, which we have to do with the hardware as well, I can we we can easily demonstrate that the cost that we spend in cybersecurity more than pays for itself in in the reduction of loss that will come when you get hit with a a cyber incident. Because if you're not doing it right, you're gonna.

It's not a it's not a what if. It's a 100% chance you're gonna get hit eventually if you're not doing this right. So Yeah. You can. We can demonstrate in both cases.

So back to the the main point of the this episode today is, we do want to spend the least amount of money and get the most value for it. It's just that, unconventionally, sometimes, we have to change our mindset and think different to get that value out of it, and we do have to spend a little bit more upfront. Mhmm. But overall, that cost is lower. The cost in in hardware, it's literally lower to buy, you know, better equipment and have it last longer.

And it's more of a soft cost, but it's way cheaper to spend some money on cybersecurity than it is to lose your entire business. So, that's that's kinda what I've got, guys. Next week, we are going to talk about oh, damn it. I lost my notes.

While you look for your notes, I'll I'll add one thing. Yeah. I eat my own dog food. I replace my personal computer at work, at least once every 2 years, if not more often, because I know that the value of a better computer will pay for itself in months rather than than years. I I would rather have, and and I would do it for my entire staff.

Like, we've replaced our computer consistently every 2 years for the past, you know, 10 years, and we just offload the rest as used equipment on eBay or whatever the case may be. But, you know, we're always upgrading our own systems because we know that productivity is what's the biggest, benefit to our organization. So eat your own dog. I eat my own dog food.

Same here. Same here. When we get a new employee, we I have them go back into the into the closet, and I'm like, alright. Show me what you could do. Take a computer off the top shelf.

That's the expensive ones. Make it, set it up and and and start working. You know, we don't, you know, we don't give them used equipment or old equipment or, you know, something that we found, you know, in one of our client's closets and say, okay. Here's your thing. Do your thing because we I know the faster he works, you know, faster the computer is, the faster that he works, the faster he gets the tickets.

And the more clients that we're able to service faster.

Alright. And with that, I did find the title of next week's episode, which is cybersecurity for the road warrior. We're gonna we're gonna talk about what you need to do, to plan for travel, both domestic, international, because they're different things, and and how you protect yourself, how you protect your bank accounts, and and maybe even down to how to not forget to bring enough pairs of socks. I I I have annoying checklists for everything, and that's one of them. So we're we're gonna get into that.

Just, you know, a reminder, upcoming episodes are always on our website, unhacked.live, as well as, you know, that's where you can go to schedule a free assessment where we will evaluate your cybersecurity. We will evaluate your technology as well, you know, and and look for opportunities to, Facebook. We've got, the Unhacked podcast on Facebook, Unhacked podcast on YouTube. Watch us live as we record Thursdays, or you can always find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever the hell else you listen to podcasts. That's all I've got, guys.

We'll see you next week. Take care. Thanks for being here, guys.

Thanks, everybody.