0308 | Justin Esgar

What's up? I'm Justin Escar from VirtualConsultingGroup.com and you're listening to EA Interviews, EA Interviews Episode.

308, Inspiration, Transformation, Success Stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to capitalize on your idea? Have you ever wanted to grow your business, leverage technology, maybe even make your own software? I know I have, and that's why I'm excited to have Justin Escar on today's episode. Author, speaker and CEO. I'm going to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Justin Eschar. Justin, how are you feeling today?

I'm good, how are you? Thanks for having me, Mario.

I am feeling excellent and I can't wait to ask you some questions. Have a good time and just hear what you're up to because you've accomplished so much and it's just astonishing what you've accomplished. And I know when I was starting my software I had so many questions and you know, you've done your own and there's so many things, things you're helping people with. Why would you say someone should leverage technology?

Oh, I mean, that's a pretty big, bold question to kick off with, right? I mean, you have to leverage technology. Especially in today's world. There's such great ways of doing what I call capitalizing on your idea, taking that idea, bringing it to fruition. And even if you don't know exactly how to do it, you can leverage technology that's out there to make what you want possible, whether it's a new piece of hardware, a piece of software, something that can revolutionize the world.

Is there anything that you've come across that you have not been able to capitalize on with some technology or software?

I mean, I've only been beholden to the cost of things, right? Like I haven't been able to create the Pee Wee Herman breakfast machine that you saw in Pee Wee's Playhouse or something like that because the amount of money it takes to build such an item that. But that being said, I Don't think so. I mean, honestly, you know, they always say, like, money can, can, can buy anything. That's actually true. When you're trying to come up with a new idea, you might be limited by that, but there are a lot of ways to get something accomplished for not as much money and still be able to get, you know, 80% of your idea built.

Excellent. What would you say is the biggest problem most people are facing that you come across, that they come to you talking about or you hear?

Well, as a technologist, one of the biggest problems is just goal setting and how to come up with that idea. It's two parts here. One is, how do you come up with a good idea? Everybody's always been like, oh, I have an idea for an app. But you never actually really thought that through. So my thought process on what makes a good idea is what is something that you need that, you know, other people need. Right. Coming up with a new idea for like a silly little game or something like that isn't really what's gonna make or break the app world or make you a lot of money. So coming up with those ideas and you have to come up with a lot of bad ideas in order to come up with a good one. Right. I'm sure you went through a lot of different iterations and ideas before you came up with the idea for this show. How you're gonna produce it, which tie you're gonna wear, things like that. All of that kind of comes into play. The other side of that is setting goals. What do you want to accomplish? I talk a lot about setting big goals, but then figuring out how to set micro goals to get to that bigger goal. So it's really kind of like a two part system there.

Yeah. It's funny you say that. I don't think anyone's ever brought up my tie before, but it's actually a column on the spreadsheet for the show, so I'm not wearing the same one on every single episode.

See, you built a system and systems work. I love systems like that.

And also, yeah, when I was developing the show, and also my software, I developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically in under five minutes.

Oh, nice.

There's a lot of stuff to consider. And I know you created something to do digital signatures before Adobe and DocuSign.

Yeah, so that was a long time ago. We've done that. We used to have an app called Sign My Pad. It was one of the first digital signature apps on the iOS store. You used to do what we call an analog signature in a digital frame, meaning you actually drew your actual signature on a document. We got a lot of press coverage when we had it out. We were written up by a couple magazines. We got into a fight with Apple because that's what you do. We've since stopped making those apps for consumers, and now we focus on apps for other IT consultants, because that's what my primary job is.

Have you always been exclusive to Apple?

Yeah, hardcore. Ever since I was born. When I was five years old, I came home from Florida with my mom after visiting my grandmother. And on my dining room table, my dad had bought an Apple IIC and I loved it. And my mom didn't because my mom saw the bill for $12,000 and got mad at my dad for buying it without talking to her. But honestly, that kind of just set me for life. I mean, after that, I had a Mac LC2, I had a Mac clone. I secretly went to the dark side and did Windows for a little while in college, but afterwards came right back to the Mac. Have always been a big Apple fan, and that's what our primary company, Virtual Computers, is. We're an Apple consultant, so we handle all clients, outsource it for clients who have Macs.

So if someone wants to set what we're talking about up in their business, what is something they they aren't even thinking of that, you know, will be a problem.

You mean in terms of setting up, like, technology or trying to build apps and such?

Let's start with the setting up the technology, because I know all businesses have a problem, and it's one of the reasons I created the show, because, you know, there's all these businesses out there that I want to help, but I don't have unlimited time. But essentially I knew I had the limited connections, and I was like, well, I can bring the best of the best to people and get their questions answered, and it doesn't always have to be me, which is great. So I, you know, that's a form of leverage. But inevitably, we both know that, you know, the success, straight line thing, it's like, here's what you expect success to be, and here's what it really looks like. What would you say are some of the top things that people should expect? They might not even be thinking of if they're going, okay, let's retool the business, let's talk to the team, and in the next three months to six months, we're going to revamp this based on what Justin saying. So that way everything's more Efficient going into the next quarter.

So considering everything that's happening in the world right now, one of the big things for technology is communication, right? So, I mean, everybody lives on zoom and on Slack and teams and stuff like that. But we need to consider what's going to happen when potentially the world opens back up and. And you can go back into your office. So the question that I've asked a lot of my clients is, are you going to continue your lease? Right. A lot of my clients are in New York City. Rent is expensive. So are you going to continue your lease? If not, are you going to go to a completely remote and stay remote like you are now? Are you going to do a hybrid? So that takes into play a lot of different things, because prior to the pandemic, a lot of my clients had on premise servers, and so we had to move them to servers in the cloud, get their files out there so they could access them from their home networks. Okay, well, now they're home. Now we have to secure those home networks. And now we got to talk about cybersecurity, which is a big thing, especially Apple consultants in general are finally catching on to that cybersecurity wave and thinking about things that you, as a business owner may not be thinking about. One of the big ones is dark web monitoring. Is your data out there that you don't know about? About 80% of the Internet is considered the dark web. So, like, your credit card information or your passwords might be out there. You need someone like myself or another IT professional scanning for that information to make sure that your data is safe. So there's a lot of different angles. We can go with this. Right? Are you staying remote or are you going to hybrid? How do we manage cybersecurity in any of those forms? And how do we increase productivity despite the fact that now your staff could be scattered across the entire United States or further?

You said 80% of the web is considered the dark web.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love using the analogy of an iceberg. Right. So if you saw an iceberg, you'd be like, that's a big iceberg. But what you don't see is what's under the ocean and just how much bigger that iceberg is. Right. So what's above the ocean, that 20%, that's what we consider regular Internet. You know, your google.com, your website, my website, anything like that. Then there's that middle layer. Anyone that's behind a paywall. So your subscription sites like the New York Times. Right. Example and Then everything else underneath all 80% of it is considered dark web. Now that doesn't mean that all 80% is like horrible death defying stuff, but.

It is, it just means unaccessible.

Google searchable basically is considered dark web.

Yeah, that's interesting. What would you say is the biggest threat to home security.

From a technical standpoint? That sounded like a Brinks commercial or something, but.

A home security. No, not home security network. Oh my gosh, really?

Cybersecurity.

There we go. What is the biggest threat to the cybersecurity on a home network?

Honestly, it's the fact that especially for somebody who's working at home, someone who's working at home isn't going to be behind properly managed equipment. Right. In your office we have a robust firewall that has all of these three letter acronyms that control things. Intrusion detection systems, intrusion detection prevention, endpoint, scanning. All of this stuff that your home router that you got from your cable company doesn't have. So not that like people always say, well you know, no one's gonna hack me, who am I? They're not hacking you because they know who you are. They're hacking you because they can or they just want to. So home users, especially if staff are working from home, those homes user systems need to be bumped up a little bit to be at least 20% better, 30% better than they are now to get them closer to a proper security standard. There's things you can do to the computer, there's things you can do to the firewall, you can put a new router in, things like that. But there is that wide gamut between your administrative assistant sitting at home on our cable modem directly connected to their laptop, versus when you know, someone's working in the office that's on a very, what we call a hardened firewall that an IT professional had put in.

Do you think air gaps still have their place in security? Or it's overkill in most instances.

You can't really work from an air gapped computer anymore because everything's in the cloud. How are you going to get to your data? How are you going to get to your servers? How are you going to get to your, especially in the Mac side, How do you get to your font servers? You need to download fonts from. You can't do that from an air gapped machine. So yeah, air gap does work in certain security instances, but not from a working perspective. Okay, good call with the air gap. I like that.

I'm trying to come up with some good questions because there's all these things, you know, if someone has a serious issue, I know there's someone listening that's like, you know what? We just got attacked last week. This, that, the other thing. And it's like they'll be listening to this or watching it, going, okay, what can I be doing? And I'm thinking, you know, what would I do in that scenario? I remember, like, when the hard drive failed or, you know, the computer wasn't working perfect, or. Or just the signal wasn't coming. You're paying for one level of service and you're getting another. I called up the Internet company, and I was like, I need you to run fiber from the pole to the house, because, no, I need this. You know what I mean? There's all these different things. And the next thing is, do you remember when Linksys started doing the. The routers and no one was switching the passwords on them?

Yeah, they still do. I mean, I know of a website. I don't want to mention it, but there's a website out there that you can go and search for, like router or webcam, and it'll just pull up all of the routers and webcams that it can find on the Internet that have default usernames and passwords, and you could just, like, peer in on these people's webcams or peer in on people's routers. Like, security is so big.

I'm smirking because you said, I don't want to mention it, but can you drop it in the chat?

Yeah, I'll drop it.

I gotta get my autocorrect to stop working. That's the website right there. So you can do anything that you want, but I'm not gonna be responsible for it.

I didn't see anything. I'm in the middle of live streaming a show.

Wow.

Streaming users is a big thing, right? In terms of the company who just got breached or whatever it is. A lot of the time that that happens is because your users aren't trained on what to look for. So, something that we do to keep in mind. Just a little backtrack. Right. Virtual Computers, the company I own is our IT management company. We take care of companies with Macs. I also do consulting for other IT firms, helping them navigate and grow their business to match what I can do. One of the things we do at Virtual Computers is we do phishing training for end users, which means we send them phishing fake phishing emails to see if they will click on the link, enter a password, download a zip file or something to which then we go up to them, you know, with a ruler and we slap them on the hand like don't, don't do that. And we make them do training and all this stuff to get them to recognize, you know, oh, Maybe that, that FedEx tracking URL for a package I never ordered isn't real. Right? And so training the users to spot those things is a good first line defense against problems like encryption wear on the PC or getting malware on your network or things like that. So training your users, it's very similar to getting a security system in your home, right? Like you want to be. You got to remember every night to go downstairs to your front door and you type in your four digit code. And like you've trained your mind to do that. So you have to do the same with your, with your staff. Train them, don't click on things they don't recognize. Make sure their passwords are complex. Use a password manager. And if somebody asks you what your dog's name is, don't tell them.

Yeah, I love the password manager. I've been using LastPass for years.

I love it. I don't want to say a savior, but it will save you if you need something, which you always will. And as far as typing in the password like you're saying the home security system, what do you think of the ones that you can remote control everything. I mean now everything with WI fi and the Internet of things and all these different things, how often should you be changing your password?

You mean, you know, honestly, there used to be that theory that you had to change your password every 90 days. But that, that, that was a, they've since like the governmental agency that's in charge of like standards of passwords. I said no, that's not even true anymore. Honestly, you don't really need to change your password at all. If, if, if you have Multi factor authentication on, if you have a second device that has a code with it, whether it's a text to your phone, you're using a piece of software like Authy or Duo, or you have a little RSA key that has like the numbers on it. If you have that Secondary factor authentication two Factor authentication mfa, depending on how the website reads it, you don't, you probably, and I don't want anyone to sue me, so don't hold me this one. But you probably don't ever have to change your password if it's super complex, which means it's. The math works and you have that two factor authentication on you are going to be in that 99.99% safe realm that you'll be, you know, that you don't have to worry about changing your password.

Do you think most people are getting hacked or the security is breached because of actually getting past the two FA and the firewalls and all these different things? Or is it they just left it underneath the computer, like, written so they don't forget it or gave it away to someone.

This is a true story. You guys can look this one up. But like, the Hawaiian missile defense system went on high alert because the guy was on a zoom call just like this, and behind him was a computer. And on the computer with a post it note with the password to the system on it, like, it's. The only reason people get hacked is if you have bad passwords and you have bad practices around those passwords, right? Don't expect someone to come in. If you write it on post it note and you stick it on your keyboard, the IT guy will be like, don't do that. But, like, unless someone breaks into the office, that's not that big of a deal. But if your Facebook password and your email, and everybody knows your email at this point, and your Facebook Password is password or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or your full name, like, expect that to be broken into, right? Complex passwords, two factor authentication, and you'll be good to go.

Not laughing at the missile defense thing, because that's very serious. It's just hilarious to me how, how silly some of this stuff is in every industry. Like, the thing that sticks out to me was, what was it, Blu Ray or dvd? Sony spent millions of dollars for security and digital rights management. And then all it took was someone with a Sharpie to wrap it around the side and it, like, broke it.

I'm like, I'll tell you this. Social engineering. I have friends in security companies and, like, the social engineering stories I hear from them are amazing because that's the thing. This is a true story. I had a client who was telling me one day about, you know, his. His uncle's dog. And I was like, oh, really? What's the dog's name? And he told me, and I was like, what was your uncle's name? And then I got into his, like, Microsoft Office account. Like, I was like, realize the conversation that you're having with somebody, right? Don't lead them into things that they can then guess your passwords from, right? It's very easy to find out somebody's mother's maiden name. Never make that a security Question from the dropdown, right? What street did you grow up on? Well, you can look that up. What elementary school did you go to? Well, they're all yearbooks from 1980 to now are online. So don't put down like, choose security questions that are very hard to guess or even fake the answers.

When someone says, what was elementary school that you went to? I make up something and I have it recorded in my. I use one password and it's very similar to LastPass, but make something up. That's not true. That's another way to protect your data from password hacks and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's astonishing. Some of those questions and the info. And I remember to your point of the. The dark website and everything.

I remember this one that someone engineered about four or five years ago. They took all the data from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and you could literally just go there, type in the users at whatever name you didn't even need to like convert it. Like the Facebook ID back in the day. And it was like, here's where they walked through the week, here's what they checked. It was taking the Foursquare data too, where you're checking in, triangulating it, and just printing it out on a map. Just like. And I was telling my, my friends with kids, I was like, turn off the this. And I was checking all their phones. I'm like, from a creative standpoint, I give the people credit because it's not rocket science from a. I actually care about my friends and family. I'm like, let me see that thing. And I, you know, tweaked out there. They had no idea. And it's like, yeah, this is a serious issue now.

And now, now you're. Now your viewers are sitting at home going, I'm never leaving the house. I don't want anyone to get any of my data.

It's not as bad as not a hard decision lately.

Well, that's true, right? I mean, the news doesn't make it sound any better either. Right. You see stuff happening on the news that Facebook breach all this information. The fact is, is like, just have like a hair more smarts about what you're doing with it.

And you'll be significantly better. Right. Like, even if you put in 5% more effort, you will net a 50% better result in your security. Use a password manager. Use your two factor authentication.

Wait till the password's actually green on the thing instead of just going, well, that's too hard to remember.

I love when I use my password manager to make a Password. And then I go into the password manager and the password manager then goes, this is a weak password. I'm like, you made it, not me.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing. But I mean to the point of the social engineering, you know, in the fishing and that's with a ph. For anyone that was curious earlier, we're not talking about ocean fish.

But people just put all kinds of stuff. They just. On their profiles. What they're like, well, I don't want people to see the year I was born. They can figure it out. Or I don't want them to see the year I was born because they'll hack my whatever. Because, you know, what's the year? People just, I know that's a password thing. But then every year on their birthday they're like, oh, happy, whatever. It's like, well, if the year is whatever it is minus that age. You know what I mean? There's people put so much data out there and it's like, well, I don't want to be on. I'm not going to name a social network because everyone has their proclivities too. Yeah, well, I don't want so and so to have my info. And it's like, so stop advertising it.

Yeah. And you gotta remember like a lot of that information is less about the social component of it and like more about the company being able to provide you better ads. Right. Like the reason the big blue company needs your birthday is so that way they can provide you ads that are relevant to you. Right. I'm turning 41 soon. Do the math people. And I'm gonna get ads about refinancing my mortgage. Right. I'm not going to get ads for, you know, college. College or. Yeah, or SAT prep or anything like that. Right. That's the only reason why. So knowing that they have that information, you need to do what you can to protect it. So yeah.

1.

Password or password manager. 2. Factor authentication. Set your security limits.

There's a great website out there called have I been pwned? P W N E D dot com. It's a super simple website. You can just type in like your name or your email address and it'll give you some basic information about where some of your data has been leaked. Now that's not a site that like IT professionals like I use to provide this date the proper data. We have other tools that we provide a lot more.

Data to end user. But it's a great place to get started and you'd be surprised. I used to do a presentation for parents on safety of the like, safety of children on the Internet. And I had a woman one time who came to me and I did free dark web scans and she had me type in like all three of her email addresses and she was fine. And she goes, can you just type in my husband's? And I was like, sure. And like, sure enough, there were like 60 hits. And she's like, oh, I'm gonna go home and yell at him.

Wow. Yeah, I just, I just checked it out and it's kind of funny because it's like, you know, we're talking about doing all these things to make sure your email and all these are safe. And it's like the first thing it asks for is like, what's your email or phone? It's like, well, what if I don't want to type it in?

Yeah, yeah, it's tough.

No, but thank you for this. All joking aside, have I been pwned? I'll make sure there's a link in the.

Show notes for your, your episode and everything. So I want to ask you about your biggest success story.

Sure.

It's debatable for me really, because I've had such great success running an Apple consulting agency, virtual computers. But at the same time, I got a lot of media coverage when I was doing the app thing. And then on top of that, I started a conference for the business side of IT consulting, which has grown significantly and we're going into our seventh year despite the pandemic and everything. So, you know, it's hard to determine which of my children I love the most, as they always say. Right. My consulting company, you know, I started from the ground up in 2008 and we just acquired a company in Iowa. We're like expanding. We just literally this week opened an office in Miami. So, like, there's a lot of great things that are happening there in terms of my software, you know, yes, we stopped providing, we stopped making client based software like Sign My Pad isn't available anymore. But when it was available, I mean, Apple wrote about it without even talking to us. Like, that's a huge thing for us. I have a friend who was in Miami who was a lawyer and like opposing counsel was like, hey, have you seen this piece of software? And she's like, yeah, my friend wrote it. Like it got out there. So that was huge for us for a couple of years. And then the conference, you know, having never done a conference before, knowing nothing about doing them, starting it from, from, from scratch in 2015 and still having it going now still having great speakers, having content that help other IT consultancy grow. Like from their business perspective, all of them have been huge, huge successes for us.

Well, congratulations on that. And it's impressive what you've done and it's one of the reasons I definitely said yes on the having you on. So we're going to do. I got one more question for you before we thank our sponsor and go to the imperfect action round. But I might have to change it. But I am going to ask you this is the wheel of whatever.

You want, yellow or black?

Yellow.

Where is that? Yellow. This one? There we go.

Sure.

So my question for you is.

Who'S a company you think you could get into security wise?

Who's a company that I could get into?

Yeah. Who do you think is like a well known.

Hack into?

Yeah.

No one. I don't have that skill set.

Okay. I figured I might have to switch it. But who do you think you could help better protect?

I could help better protect every small to medium business. If you're a client under 50 and you don't have internal IT, we can help provide you the best in security. Dark web scanning, phishing, training, backups.

Content filtering on your network, security for your staff at home. That's our bread and butter right there. So yeah, small to medium business, preferably if you have Macs, but we could do PCs, that would be who we can protect.

Okay, excellent. Because I know there's so many businesses out there and we're joking about a lot of this because I've gone through some of it and upgraded our own over the years and just I hear stories and it's like, it's funny to hear them because it's like this is worse than a Hollywood movie, but this is real. So anyone that's listening to this, sincerely, reach out to Justin. I know he was talking about just doing some preliminary stuff and get something done because it's kind of like the insurance on your car. If you don't, you know, if you don't have that, it's. I'm thinking of the Chris Rock joke. He's like, shouldn't I call it in case? Because in case doesn't happen, shouldn't I get my money back? But the reality is when you need it, you want to make sure you have it because if you don't, I mean it's. We put money into marketing, advertising, leads, gen closing, selling all this other stuff and it's like it doesn't take much to. I mean if you have a password that is literally password, it's Kind of like, well, I don't really feel that bad for you. You didn't have 10 extra seconds.

So it could be worse. You could have password one or password. Oh, by the way, here's a quick tip for anyone who's listening. Stop using exclamation marks in your passwords. That's the number one special character that's used amongst passwords. So just, just stop. Just stop using it. There's no if, ands or buts about it. Just stop using the exclamation mark.

What should you use? Because now I'm going to have to like put in the longer.

Literally any other character. Literally anything other character. A lot of passwords are like something, something, something, exclamation mark because it's the easiest one to do.

Right?

So many people use one or whatever it is. Just stop using it. Use any other character or put a character somewhere in the. In the word.

I literally want to throw in the longer advertisement versus the shorter one now and switch one. I'm thinking of. Thank you for that.

Okay, we're gonna thank our sponsor and come. I'm gonna go with the medium one. We'll be back. Just keep enjoying it. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori.

I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody.

I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy, and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Justin, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Let's do it.

And I gotta say, the Internet's an interesting place. Even in. In that moment, like, you know, we did the sponsor and everything, I think there's bots already reaching out to me. I'm not even joking. I look over and I'm like, who's this friend request? I'm like, really? Really? What did we say here? That they probably were auto transcribing live.

Whatever. Change your email password immediately.

That's.

That's my only advice for you.

Jeez. Okay, we're doing the show. And bump. Buh, buh. And the first question is.

What is.

What is the first question? I'm having so much fun. You're awesome. What is the fastest path to the cash?

Work hard, hustle, and.

Get your friends to buy everything. No, actually, the faster path of the cash is, honestly, it's asking for the money. I've done this a couple times where I've literally gone on Facebook and I was like, hey, can anyone PayPal me a dollar and I'll walk out of the day with like 50 bucks. Right? Like, they don't question it. Ask for the money, and that'll get you the money. That'd be my.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who. They have great skill sets. They're just afraid of the sales or they have no problem talking. But the closing and actually getting to the next step, I feel that's when you can actually start helping someone because they're not really receptive to, you know, they could be talking to 15 other people.

Right? And we, you know, you watch a lot of these big YouTube stars and big names that are out there that are, you know, very in your face about sales. And I'm not like that in any way, shape, or form. But unless you ask to close the deal, it'll never happen for sure.

And I also want to add in there, you shouldn't have people talking to 15 people and you're in the mix. You should have the positioning and expertise and authority properly done. That. My point was just if you like Justin saying, if you don't ask, they're not. You're never gonna get it. So number two, what's the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way they should fix it, they.

Should stop using my competitors and use me.

You know, the big thing, especially for us as technologists, is people in companies, especially the small to medium business, they put technology and technology coverage on the back burner all the time, right? They think that they need to put more money into marketing or more money into sales and they forget that if they don't have working technology, they don't have any ability to make those sales or do anything. And we do a lot of work with nonprofits and nonprofits, no offense to them, are the number one group that do this, right? They don't want to spend the money on technology because their money that's coming in is meant to be helping people, right? Whether it's helping children with brain tumors or medical or work or even just like, you know, a hospital in Paris or some sort of like culinary institution, whatever the case may be. All of those donations are meant to help something, right? So they never think about it. But the fact of the matter is if they don't put a line item on their budget for technology security and data and things like that, like, they'll never be able to keep doing what they're supposed to be doing. So stop putting technology at the bottom last on your list. That would be what I say.

I agree 100% and I'm thinking of some. I've had people on the show, there's a large portion who have their own non profits and I've had some people nonprofit specialist in past episodes. I can link that in the show notes as well. But the thing I'll say to them and you, everyone knows I'm always upbeat and positive and this and that and. But I just got to say this because sincerely, if you have a data breach with a nonprofit, it's. It's hard for a large company that has 50 years of branding and stuff to turn it around and issue an apology and maybe cover lawsuits and all that. But if you're running a nonprofit and heaven forbid you are breached, you're really not going to be able to help anyone, regardless of what it is. So what is it? Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of problems or something? Don't wait till you have the problem. Whatever the analogy is.

Yeah, you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. It doesn't matter. Stop putting technology last people.

There we go. Number three. What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Be awesome.

Don't just look at customers as numbers. Realize that they're humans as well. Right. And get involved with what they're getting involved with. So for us, one of the great stories that I like to tell is whenever one of our clients staff has a baby, we send them a onesie that says, I don't cry when I spill milk. I just call virtual computers with a picture of like a milk bottle pouring over a laptop. Right. It's a small gesture, it doesn't cost us a whole lot of money. And it creates that touch point with the human. Right. Saying, we recognize that you brought a baby into this world, which already is a major success, and we want to just recognize you as a person. We want to recognize you as a human. And it's not just about whether or not your computer works or you can get on Zoom, but here's a little something from us to show our appreciation to you.

Excellent. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Mine.

I was just reading Zombie Loyalist by Peter Shankman. Masters of thinking big, I think is what it called extreme ownership. And I actually just found this really new app, this great app, I think it's called Headspace, where you can get like an entire book in like 10 pages. Basically it pulls all the major components out. So if you don't have a lot of time to read, like I don't have a lot of time to read a long book and I find very easily when I read. But I can read 10 pages and get the major gist of a book using this app. So I think that's a great way to do it too.

Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing everything you have. It was a lot of fun. Where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah. Go over to www.virtuaconsultinggroup.com and from there you can find our consulting company, work with me, check out some of the apps that we do have and find out more about our consultation.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Justin. It's been a pleasure. All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24, 7 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now, once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.