 And it's live. I think make sure I get that I got to move the microphone get things in focus. I Have a finite well, I always have a finite amount of time But maybe it's a little more finite today. I am going to the MI. Well, I got two events I got an event today, which is gonna be the IT and the D event that I'm gonna hit and then after that I'm going to the MI sec for Michigan security event. So that's kind of exciting I'm happy to see a cyber security event that's happening turn it off my space heater real quick. There we go. It's making noise Going to a cyber security event here in Michigan and that's exciting that we're having those here It's been a minute. It matter of fact, it's been like three years I don't know how many minutes three years is but a lot of minutes since we've had an event here so they pull it up just to give some context of things and happenings around that I'm going to and that's going to be to do Both events. Oh There's so many things I send. Where is the one I'm looking for? There we go. I'll share these out real quick. Some of you might be followers of both This is the MI sec calm. It's I'll I'll actually drop the link in here for anyone wants to know what we got a schedule with some good speakers If you don't know who Doug song is he's amazing co-founder president of the song foundation also known for several other things which is going to also include things like the Duo security if you've heard of duo security, so he's the keynote CTF 313 captured a flag securing enterprise against AI threats. There's gonna be some interesting talks There's also a lot of interesting people there So that's always one of the reasons I go to go, you know, have a conversation with all these people But this is the link to the website just in case you're not familiar with it But if you're in Michigan, I think there might still be tickets available. This is over in Lansing, Michigan Where they're holding this tomorrow. I know that's short notice, but This I'll that's where I'm gonna be going I had there tonight because the from where I have to drive from I don't really driving there in the morning I have to get up too early and drive too early and it's just easier to leave at night and be right there at the event So should we play well you would you would learn Jason just how much I suck at CTF so Yeah, I one of these days I should sit down and get good at CTF. I think that would be a Good task for me. It's always on my to-do list. I've gone with friends like I'm always fascinated by other people doing it But yeah, it's cool. They have a CTF event. I'm excited just to have something here so close I you know, we travel to cyber security conferences, but it's not always the It's not always as close as it is here in Michigan That's my to-do list for 2024 is try to hit a lot more cyber security events. So Let's see here Greetings from Seattle. Happy onions. Send you an email about yesterday's video. Let me look They had a couple of video comments That I wanted to get to I watched recent security in video and asked this before no use response security. Oh, yeah, let's talk about security in real quick You have a good question. I'll read this one right now. So we can start with some questions Let's see here. I watched your recent security in video and asked before with no good responses Security provides a good prompt for this But security okay, is there a brand of smart switch that provides VLAN trunking tap ports, etc That you would trust for redundant multi-man deployments to go on the WAN side Connect all routers to WAN modems and provide trunking tap ports failover, etc And that you would trust a vendor enough to run the WAN side on the firewall. I mean Cisco If you have enough knowledge to configure the enterprise equipment and we'll throw it out there like, you know Cisco things. I'm sure it can be done. Well To be able to do port mirrors Usually though you're tapping all of the internal stuff with security young and not necessarily the WAN side that's yeah, I see Jason's already taping it here and Yeah, you don't want to be on the WAN side, that's that's the bigger thing you you're generally port mirroring all your Internal stuff not external because internals where you really need the information because you need to know what system is going to So having just the WAN side information isn't really enough. It's going on the inside going Where is this host reaching out to? Well, if you're on the other side of the firewall, you kind of lack some of the information Yeah, so you can collect on the WAN side. And yes, we do run Security unions we have some of those in CNWR. So yes, Jason's very familiar with them. And like he said Our span our span and span is fun. It's a matter of knowing how to configure it Trust me Jason knows how to configure it So that's that the other event in case you're not familiar with this one if you're in the Detroit area IT in the D It's been around for a number of years. It's run by my friend Bob Wattenspiel And Randy helps them out with that. They're they're just kind of IT meet-ups. There's there's no agenda or anything like that They're just tech people beating up at a bar. You don't have to drink but sometimes people do but yes Our span to VMware is fun. Yeah, our span to VMware definitely Even even more complexity when you're setting things up. So definitely I Hopefully that answers your question there I would cut to ITD, but I have to do rain gutter regatta tonight for the scouts. So When is the conference in Grand Rapids and that one is called GERCON and I don't know when the schedule it just happened. It was in September, but GERCON is the one you're looking for For that particular conference. That's going to be this one. I didn't go this particular year But I do plan on tending next year for sure. Is there a proxy manager? Yes, Christian Lampa does some good videos on a tool to help manage You don't really want a proxy SSH, but there are tools for managing that It's a little different. It's not SSH. It's just centralized management for control of it Kimmer the name of the tool he is. I know if I look him up. He's done a bunch of videos on it. It is called It's a pretty neat tool. I'm teleport. That's the one he uses a lot. So If you look up Christian Lampa's videos on teleport, I Mean yeah, you could proxy some of this with because you're just passing it along there But I don't always know why you want to proxy it Usually people start with I want to proxy it But usually the question is you want to secure it and manage it better And if you look at something like teleport and he's got like teleport with traffic and things like that the He's got a few different videos on teleport Teleports better for like if you wanted to essentially manage everything and control It is similar to like a bastion or a jump box where you can have central control of everything That's usually the thing people are trying to wrestle with if I had to guess A whole lot of show mentioned firewalls and services your linux hosts firewall with web GUI somewhere to pf sense um I mean if you're using the ui Yeah, I mean there's ip tables um like jason points out here, but there's Um, you can get a front end for the ufw on ubuntu and control it. It's not a web ui really um You're you really don't I mean, I guess you could I'm trying to think of the tool um You can use it in houston os or uh Cockpit as it's the called so cockpit actually gives you control if you're looking for a web ui of a Existing server to control the underlying firewall. I haven't used it in forever webman I think has a tool for managing it There's not I mean there's probably some projects out there But I don't think there's anything like natively built in but if you're looking for something like cockpit It's kind of cool because you can manage uh Some firewall rules from cockpit. I don't usually do it kind of like jason said you could just set it up from the command line It's you're usually not I mean you're usually just controlling a few ports on there and opening them up to select things so because of that You know, you don't I don't always think of putting a web ui on top of it Hold on someone asked the question here. Is there a firewall for raspberry pi? Well, if you're running linux on the raspberry pi, you'll just use the linux firewall for it So, um, it's not any more complicated than that so to speak Um, let's answer another question before I roll. I don't know where this video goes So I figured I'm gonna do it here. I did a quick office tour It's a few minutes long But in case someone wants to know what the cnw or offices look like Um, I I've been editing it but I'm trying to make it like there's it feels like it needs more to it But I figured I could share it here for people that were wondering and while the video's going I'll keep just answering questions. Uh, but uh, there's a question that also came up about which gpt We're using and if jason's still on here Uh jason, what gpt were you using? Is the question because we me and you were kind of talking about that on one of the live streams that we were You spun up an internal gpt and I know we talked about it, but I never asked you which one you used So that is a, uh Question if you want to throw it in there Okay, it was private gpt. So that is someone asked if we were using private gpt So they I can I can actually reply simply yes If I were starting out on msp, what would be good customer profile look like and what services should I offer void server network maintenance overhauling You know, you don't want to offer things that you're not good at and you should really spend a lot of time on our business technicalities Uh, because that's where we talk about the business side of the msp. So like and subscribe. It's uh Easy to find I always keep it linked in the description You can also go to laurence.videos to get there. That's where we talk about all that stuff. We do our live streams Not absolutely regular, but we try to do them on tuesdays, but uh, throw questions in the comments on there But it customer profiling is really hard because it kind of depends on your skill set Like if you're skilled in a certain area Then leaning towards that area is where you want the customer profile There's the customer profile for me may not be the same customer profile for you. So Yeah, just like jason says great business technicalities topic. So We're trying to keep the business stuff over there because I think it's it's a great A lot of good talking points and we don't mind answering all these questions. Um me jason brett chitom We're definitely on there a lot talking a lot. There's a there's a good library available to you of msp insights There's some older videos where I interview some Random different people who have exited their msp. So that's one side of it There's a ton of videos that jason and brett chitom have been putting together just talking about the business side of things Yeah, like right now our profile is uh, 15 to 150 endpoints We have customers that are on different spectrums of that But if you looked at like a a good fit for us the customer can have between 15 and 150 endpoints on there So that's a real broad. Here. Let me roll the video Tell me if you like it. Tell me if you hate it. It's one of those things that i'm not sure because it's Doing just a office tour is definitely off topic for my usual Videos, so it's trying to figure out where that would go. Uh, we bought this building probably about two years ago We've been in it since I'm gonna give it a second just to catch up But we're standing out in front of building. We just filmed this uh about a week ago So there's The building's actually got a basement a middle floor that we only show part of because it's definitely way under construction And we show some of the top of the building But yeah, I'm gonna let this roll and I'll answer any questions on here But you know we talked through just in case you're curious where I work or where Jason works Put a good amount of money into it. The first floor is still kind of a wreck. Uh, yeah, we occupy the second floor Yeah, so let's uh take a look inside here actually we're gonna go Our address if anyone's just wondering where it is we're trying to do some osit to save you the trouble cnwr.com Now we won't talk too much about this lower floor. This is That's all of giant structure zone. Yeah, it's a big construction zone right now So how many square feet are on this bottom floor 5400 5400 so 5400 square feet on the bottom floor That's just all under construction For way longer than it should be We have this really nice hole in the wall though. Yeah, there wasn't a hole and then they're doing work So the eventual plan is this wall here, uh, which is open because actually we can see around the corner Yeah, it's cinder block. So they're cutting a door. They're cutting a door path in there It's a process. Yeah, this is a process. We're walking through out there But we're gonna go where all the work happens upstairs and gotta show you what the offices look like here We have a fancy conference room Yeah, it's uh, so right now it's got a little Lenovo room system in it. I'll probably eventually replace it with a logitech. It does the job We need a bigger conference room table Ikea conference room table They stopped making it So my original plan was to just get more middle sections to make it longer You can't anymore. So now I got to get a new conference room table. Ah, you got it. Well, let me sure we can hunt one down somewhere Yeah, probably Going back to the fire over here. Well, uh, we're not going to talk about Jason's cable management But feel free to play them in the comments. Oh, yeah, feel free Hey, you're welcome to come down here and cable management cable manage it for me too because I am a form over a function kind of guy or a functional reform and It works. I mean when I first seen this it's almost south of merger. Yeah But it was okay. We can we can deal with it was uh, it is an acceptable thing. It's um It was it's clean. So when I hooked it all off It was clean and I had it tucked away pretty well and then I got a new dock And trying the cable tray is too small. Yeah, so trying to get everything on the cable trays. It just doesn't work Of course, he gets the corner office the cool office. It's not bad though. I like he's got It's a nice office. No, I'm actually laughing because of what's in this office as we have another conference room I I'm laughing about it though. No my heaps Yeah, yeah, what this is right after the web pee vulnerability, but this is secondary conference room I like that. We have acquired one of these if you're not familiar with Backdoors and breaches. Look it up. This is awesome. Very cool stuff. I acquired this at mspg con. I did ask We didn't just acquire we needed to ask for permission. I would have just acquired, but uh, we filled my gas the people told me no Well, you were like, well, it's already in my car. Yeah It's already my suitcase. It's already in my suitcase coming back. Uh, we'll not show what's on the boards over there So far no unlocked computers. Uh, so eric used to sit here and when matt lee was here He definitely went in the kitchen with his computer unlocked and ended up on linkedin So we always said we needed to hire another bret Yes, so let me Literally, this is the other bret that you made. Uh, see the uh, also working in sales. So we'll we'll let him do his thing here Then we have uh, some more people working over there Watch the kitchen blur. Actually, I think the stuff that uh, marcia is up is probably fine Okay. Yeah, she works on that. Uh, you know, me and second story So you should get to look out the windows and stuff Where did all these buddhas come from because this is uh, you'll experience that Probably the one and only time because we're too big now There's a hibachi place where we'll do our christmas party this year We actually just booked it and this buddha is a drink the drinks is not great But you get a buddha, but it's a rite of passage that you get a buddha So it's part of the rite of passage everyone has to get a buddha coming in here Now this is the lab where we're sorting a few things out here Yes, so me and jason this is a pretty big project for a data analytics Essentially, I would say they have to crunch a lot of numbers all these cards go in this machine Which by the way, this machine is how many watts idle was it? It was with the with the gpu's in it. It was running like 800 Yeah, 800 watts, um sitting at the post screen We got some mvmes here. We got is it sass drives and then mvme, right? Yeah, correct. Those are sass ssds the mvme slots are empty, I believe but it supports them I think it's got a terabyte of ram in it and the cards are now the reason they're out is because There's some challenges. There's it won't boot. Yeah, it's not booting. So we got a it just came in It booted once and then decided it wasn't going to go anymore. So That's how that's going. We can't say the name of the client. So I put top secret on there But uh, yeah, this is Boy, this is cool when it's done. I'm pretty excited about it I'm a kid in a candy store. I still you know, we were talking about it The hardware not being exciting. It's somewhat exciting. It is time. It's a gig Yeah, hunter gig network because the only way to get that much data back and forth is to that And that 45 drive server that's on the bottom that is the 45 drives xl 60 Those are also hunter gig hunter gig hunter gig over a petabyte of storage in that So that actually works fine. The 45 drive server is fine. This is the one we're trouble shooting for right there Sanging out. Yeah, this is a studio in progress. That's going to move It's going to progress somewhere else because employees. Yeah, we grew too big We grew too big. So back there's the main area. We thought everyone would fit there. They don't so some of them are here And here and then another desk here, which means the studio is going to Get moved to the basement to the basement over here go to the hole the hole. Oh, they block it They block the hole. No, I bet you they didn't I bet you it's not screwed it. Oh, is this screwed in? It looks like they screwed it in. Oh man, we're going to unscrew that Oh, wow, these cement screwed it in That's okay. Yeah. Oh, well that was a dungeon that goes to it actually goes under the street Well, we're under the street just now. So we can walk up. We can walk up here I'll get there's more lights. So the edge of the front of the building is right here Okay, yeah, so this is the front of the building. So now we're to the sidewalk. Yeah, we're under the sidewalk It's the sidewalk. Yeah, I mean it's and then that hole went underneath it. I just thought that was really cool So, uh, so when we when we bought this building there were 20 rooms down here. They had people down here. There were desks and stuff because So we came down the one Ingress there's also one back there. There's one there and then one directly outside. So you actually can occupy down here It has four egresses The Toledo computer museum. Where are we? Yes I've after we went to, uh, vcf, um, the vintage computer festival We're I was talking about this. I'm like, we all have vintage stuff We have a big space that we're probably not going to occupy with employees We don't want to send anyone to the dungeon But this seems like a fun place to have all this. So leave your thoughts and comments on that down below. I'm curious Yeah, we uh, I've got a couple of axes and some old sgi stuff some sun stuff And like I said, there's the water intrusion is really minor. There's pumps and everything in here So we're in a big metropolitan area. It's not like a flood zone or anything like that This is downtown city if you look up the address, but um, we have ideas for this and Maybe if we finish remodeling it upstairs when that gets done training things might happen events might happen We we're still stirring on it. Um, if you have some incredible idea and you want to be our neighbor Reach out to us as long as you're not, uh bar or food service Oh as long as you're not noisy would be the thing. No, he's okay to a limited extent It's more of a sprinklers and hoods and stuff. I don't want to mess with any of that. Oh that too. Yeah, there's there's um If you're if you're a good neighbor, you're just an office building or something Yeah Reach out to us on that. I don't know if you want to be in downtown Toledo, but it's a cool kind of cool place And there's nothing wrong with downtown. So I love this city. I like it. It's and we're not far from Detroit for those of you Wondering so All right, that was a quick tour of the building here That we call our home leave your thoughts and comments Let me know if you like videos like this or Once while I think it's kind of fun to do because even looking back at like an old videos from 2017 When I toured the office and one day we'll look at this one and be like remember in 2023 Look at that old video of what that place, you know, what our place used to look like Yeah, I'll send you some uh before pictures too if you want to drop a couple men. I I have some Yeah, I didn't take any that I was here Before this building was finished and it it's amazing. The transformation has gone through the basement even like it's just just stuff everywhere It's a mess. All right. Thanks So someone someone knows uh You're you're probably closer in age to me If you know who clinger is and you're talking about Um clinger or tony pakos tony pakos is close. So if you are looking for a reason to come visit this in Toledo I haven't been to tony pakos in forever. I really don't know if they're as good as they used to be but they were made famous by mash in a 4077 so Oh, yeah, if you want to send me some of the before pictures, I mean I can publish this video On the channel. I just figured I'd share it with all the live audience here You know, it's one of those things I can share um Will you be moving the lts lab? And yes, yeah, we are gonna that is the goal It's probably gonna happen in december. Um, I'm gonna start building and they have a lab there But we're gonna make it bigger because I have a lot more space and I have a lot more stuff So we're definitely gonna be um Running that uh, we do not run our own mastodon server I I chose to join I have a mastodon incidents on info sec exchange I just kind of let them handle it. I just didn't feel the need to try to run my own instance and keep it up to date We have so many things we have to keep up to date. We didn't really want to add one more Um, but I will share this with you for people wondering let me See if I can play the video Or a good one here So let me at least make sure there's no customer stuff in this video real quick as long as I have a video too Yes, all right Website that's not secret Yep, no customer stuff. So So I'm gonna ask you what's going on in the Detroit office. Let's show you what's going on in the Detroit office And you know, what should I do it this way? You know, I think it plays better if I do this let me do it this way. We're gonna push it to uh stream yard Let me see if I can present it Present video file download This is the current status of the Detroit office. There's a lot of projects there. That's why I haven't really done any videos there We have a lot of ubiquity stuff there So this is the like I said current status of it So yeah, this is what project deployments look like and I got to do some videos just talking about how we do that some behind the scenes um there's This is why I haven't done a lot of videos there I think we need a few more cameras Maybe maybe just a couple more So, yeah, there's there's a lot here And then that's just in this part there's still more in another in the other lab area. So give you an idea um I thought I had one more. Maybe I don't know a picture of it There's there's just too many things there right now. So it's kind of a uh Remove from studio. There we go And that's not all of it. We still have equipment there. We got equipment at our Toledo office Um, we do a lot of project work that's for an msp. We this is why it says on cnwr. It's we say cnwr msp and it consulting Um it consulting is a big part of what we do which also means helping customers design and build projects So there's a lot of this extra stuff going on all the time at the at the cnwr offices So technically our detroit office is now a cnwr office as well Toledo is our big building and where the majority of people are But we also have a handful of people that work remotely. We have staff that are all the way like in kentucky Um, so and we have a few other staff that just don't really come to the office They have they just work remotely. So not even everyone is there. You're just seeing like parts of it Um, because of the way we work When you have so many access points, you can't access them when you have so many access points, you're tripping over them Where do you find clients that need so much stuff? What do they do at the risk of uh on the business channel? A lot of this so we have a lot of existing clients. Um I think that number might be it's over we have over a hundred businesses that are contracted with us So sometimes they need projects. So there's one source of it is our existing client base The other source is youtube. I'm not gonna lie youtube is how people find us This is a you know, very common thing people find us from youtube when I say click that higher spot on our website that is constantly being filled out uh for new projects and we have a reputation in the market so People who know us we've got people who've been booking us for years We have other it companies that contract things out to us We have other it companies that just reach out to us for you know us to handle some project for them That's fine. Those are all different consulting things we do I think the managed numbers in some way like a hundred. Okay We have to look at the contracts, but between after the merger and everything right now We have between 135 and 140 businesses that we're managing it for so kind of give you an idea So these companies some of them are we said we like 15 to 150 We definitely had people on north of 150. There's also some that are weird We have manufacturing that may not have a giant office staff But also has a big building where they need more they need Wi-Fi across the building But that's more for devices not for a thousand people working there. So there's different splits from that How much come from referrals? You know referrals are a pretty strong business We could probably this is a good business technicalities topic as well that we can talk into Where do our leads come from how much is from referrals? Because one of the things people don't always do is think about not upselling your clients But doing your qbr is doing your talks with the clients We've talked about this on business technicalities and figuring out where their gaps are How can you make them more efficient with technology? You're not doing it selling them for the sake of selling them You're selling them with the purpose of trying to make them more efficient more secure update their security posture Look at their insurance forms This was a discussion like make sure that clients who filled out insurance forms have the security that they checked Yes to on those boxes. That's probably a really important thing where if you find out the client checked. Yes, you're like Probably should let the client know before there's an incident. You know, you said you had multifactor You said you had all these things but you don't have them So you should probably put all these things in place, you know, these are Ways it's not like I said the goal isn't to sell for the sake of upselling It's to increase their efficiency or increase your security posture as a company So there's a lot of that does come through of going through your own clients and making sure that they're efficiently set up And then referrals are a big part of it referrals are all over the place when it comes to um The youtube stuff it can be something really small setting up a single vpn to That technically that project with the storage servers We've done a couple of those now for some big customers like really big customers Where the project is scaled up quite a bit. So it varies a lot Can I be the company mascot? I don't know if we're looking for a company mascot right now Anyone in the austin area? Yeah, austin is not a bad place. Yeah, that's actually where the people from pf sensor I think they're in austin. I have to look that up neck gate the people behind pf sensor in austin now A couple of things I would talk about on security the uh Well, we'll get to that second. Do you have partner with other companies for expertise reasons filling knowledge gaps? That's pretty frequent filling knowledge gaps with internal it teams. That's a common thing Sent a shared pick to the group. All right group group which Oh, I imagine In slack. I'll assume did I close slack? result To to to Oh your google account got it. All right that I can find google photos. All right There we go, I can view that these are some other uh construction photos Oh, wow The um, I'll pull I'll pull the all wow for just a second. I just want to make sure there's nothing in here that I'll assume jason vetted it, but I'm just double checking before I throw it all up on here What a difference all right now we can share it We'll start at the beginning on this. This is pretty cool Because you can't get more Old looking than this for some of the office stuff. I mean These are I mean this is still some of this still exists in that middle floor It's just all like the old 1980s, uh office look Wow There's the hole That's the hole we were trying to get into Because we you can go in there and you're under the street and there's old steam pipes or something in there. It's kind of novel So much Like all this stuff. This is what they tore down a lot to get the place looking like it does so Yeah, this is This is what some of the upstairs Wow Yeah, seeing it raw like this. I'll add these in um To the other video man, it's It's a lot Because they had to redo h-back stuff This is just wild. It is kind of neat seeing all this too Keep the hole for the interns Man this is I've never actually looked at all these before I was there When it was closer like I was there in the middle Sometime when did I first visit this place? About this time. I remember it looking like this having some scaffolding a lot of stuff Because not all the flooring was done This is I think when I seen it roughly here when they were starting to sand floors and stuff So much so many changes I do like that they kept this I really like this foyer we have This is just really nice looking. I think it's cool that they kept all that I didn't realize they restained all that that looks really nice Coming together I'll burn through a few more was almost to the end cabling The office with one person in it Yeah, they moved in in the winter. So yep, that's the last photo that's on here. So They rebuilt it completely because it didn't meet code. Yeah, I was there was so much that needed to be done there I'll catch up a little comments um I think we have that one dentist in allen park still. I think they're still a client, but I'm not sure Oh, no, and um, my dentist is still a client. So yes, we actually have two dental If we still have the one in allen park, but the one in river view, um, as far as I know, we still service the dental office in river view So we actually do have um Dennis Um, do you recommend separate network cables for vm vlan? So same machine different vlan for certain vms Don't completely understand the question Um I mean vlan share like you're taking one cable and Partitioning it if you will to have vlands on it. So you do share bandwidth So if you have an opportunity to not have vlands and have individual cables You don't have the shared problem. So maybe that's more ideal, but I'm not exactly sure if that's what you're asking I need someone to wire my house for 56 gig cables. No, I'm not I'm not the wiring Our dentist good clients generally something only one to two. Uh dentists are not necessarily good clients dentists are often Clients that don't like spending money, but it varies you you may find one that does and you may find one that's Like willing to put the effort in um, and some may not Now me and Jason are completely agreed on this because people ask me about running cable and Yes, uh They we don't like doing it like can I crimp a cable the answer would be eventually and it's not going to be pretty this There's a I have been managing cable projects for over 20 years when I worked in corporate IT I outsourced it then I never liked crimping cables. I just never found joy in it. So Um, I it was one of those I understand why to outsource this So once I was able and in charge of things I quit doing it and became the person who hired someone else to do it Uh, wondering if it's more secure to place VMs and a certain network port on the server Is more secure or if one cable vlan tag with traffic is good enough I mean if you put things on individual discrete ports You have less a chance of messing up, you know, I did this with some of this Some of the servers I have I stuck them on a separate port and bound them to that Instead of a vlan, there's no way to go in and switch to that vlan from Like the unify because somebody asked like why hey I don't why one of my switches isn't unified because I said it doesn't have to be That particular network is only for production servers So no one if they were to get in my unify controller could swap to that vlan Uh, so yeah, there's some layers of security if you do vlan's right, they're good Uh, but by the way the s and vlan stands for security So security doesn't come from the vlan the security comes from all the rules you put around it But obviously I talked about this before where if you misconfigure it and you're sending all the traffic down one And someone has the ability to vlan hot by grabbing all the traffic off that line There's a risk you could face um that you wouldn't face if they're individualized So there is a level of security, but so much of it comes down to properly configuring things We don't perform repairs on laptop time used to you but the people who Uh who to it the one that's youtuber Yeah Yeah, the um board level stuff like You know who um rossman used to do a lot of it rossman has other topics He talks about more now, but yeah board level work is never I used to do it when I had an electronics repair store but I That got rid of in 2009 was how long ago I used to do like board level electronics Then we just did laptop repair, but I dumped retail in 2019 like we just decided no more retail in 2019. So Uh, which computer hardware vendor your favorite clients windows desktop PCs I think lenovo is a solid product. We do a lot of lenovo. The laptops are great. They're reliable You can get good warranties on them. Uh, I I don't hate del that much. Um But a lot probably more lenovo than del today. I have like del servers in the past I've always liked the easiness of finding parts for dels If you look at like a del r640 Or the r630s or any of those, you know common ones It's nice. How easy it is to find parts for them if you ever need to if it goes beyond its warranty life But yeah, lenovo doesn't make bad for windows and desktop computers Dentists are all liars. I don't know about that I don't like to generalize them I work in hospital and the recent security problem is that all hospital equipment companies want to have team viewer any desk rust desk and And uh, not our open vpn Yeah, hospitals are tricky They're all tricky technically. There's just so many issues But a couple topics and I'll zoom into this I'll drop the link in for anyone who wants to just see it and you don't have to be signed in to see this So copy link to post I'll throw this in here Del raid controllers versus hp raid controllers. The answer is neither I wouldn't do del or i I don't like their raid controllers. This was a discussion. It just came up the other day where People are trying to get the most performance out of their del running true nas and they're talking about flashing the raid controller And my answer is i wouldn't run that in production. There's a reason we like things like super micro boxes or 45 drive systems Or ix system specifically if you want high performance, they're all lsi But sometimes depending on the del model you get they'll have different firmware on there is long But if you go with the standard lsi like if I were to build a nas server I would prefer not getting a doll or an hp My controller here company is concerned Lenovo thinking they have security back doors your thoughts. That's a myth I'm gonna go with myth there. Lenovo is a pretty damn big company for them I mean don't trust the load they give you load it clean Set it up with your master image for your client or however you have that set up So I wouldn't trust necessarily what they ship you. Um Lenovo's definitely had junkware like all companies have in the past But that's that's a lot of different companies Lenovo had some really crappy stuff But that's been like five or six years ago and it wasn't on their business class PCs It was on their consumer PCs if I recall correctly Super micro pf sense is great. Yep But And this is very true right here all the vendors outsource to manufacturing to the same vendors overseas So much of this stuff is just made by foxcon. You know foxcon It's designed in the u.s. Apple is primarily I think all made at foxcon uh, so yeah Had to flash my h330 because it did not like zfs and proxmox. Do you run hardware raid anywhere? Not much anymore. It's not as Not zero, but I don't prefer the hardware raid I like zfs because you consider I mean it's still Linux underneath like synology Is that a hardware raid to you or if you're talking about what's built into the board? I mean, there's times when it's convenient to Get a server with You know, even if it's just a mirrored system in it That's a hardware raid that for a small business that if it's their need There might be some of those out there. Um, I think we have a couple clients like that that are just running You know a basic raid because it's just a windows domain controller on prem that connects a few things That they need. Um, it's probably not worth building out some extensive thing for that, but It kind of it's kind of varies But the security posts I want to talk about real quick here And I really like this. This is a kevin bowman's quote And see if I don't think I can make this any bigger But the cyber security reality we all live in now as teenagers are running around in Organized crime games with digital bazookas. They probably have a better asset A better asset inventory of your network than you do and they don't have to wait four Weeks for 38 people to approve a change request to patch one thing And you know, I was reading kevin bowman's and I linked all this there and I dropped a link To this linked in post in there If you think patching critical If you think that patching critical public-facing infrastructure with 24 hours is not a realistic goal then tell me why And this is where I've just kind of riffed this morning on this because despite of all the security awareness We have in 2023 all the fancy new tools we have all the celebration of coordinated government takedowns of threat actor groups Cyber crime gangs are on the rise hitting more companies and making more money than ever this year Ransom wears bigger in 2023 and I don't see that slowing down just yet You need to be able to identify and patch something like Citrix bleed within 24 hours If you cannot there's a very real possibility that this isn't the ideal product fit for your company due to the level of risk It poses you need to rethink the architecture and look for solutions you can manage because there are thousands of these systems out there still unpatched and This is what essentially kevin bowman's title was is the lock bit ransomware game has assembled a strike team to breach banks law law firms governments And I don't see these stopping anytime soon and it's kind of a spicy take on it I know i'm pushing it really hard in terms of you need to be able to do this But this is kind of the reality we're facing right now of these companies They have a target pain in their back. This old software was not designed security first I don't think security was really deeply in the minds of the people They were thinking of how do we make this stuff accessible? How do we make this infrastructure so people can remotely access it with all this? Um tooling that Citrix made back then the reality is it's not standing the test of time And these companies are slow to move off it move. It's the same thing You start looking at all the vulnerabilities that we found in move it each one of these large things And there's still vulnerable move it servers out there today people still haven't patched it And I think we're just going to have to have a reckoning either The wrecking ball of ransomware is going to just blaze a hole through these companies until they finally kind of go I guess we should stop using Citrix and move it and start looking at modern solutions for these modern problems You know things like overlay networks better ways to do things and this is not easy These companies are deeply embedded with these systems. They're workflows for thousands of employees These are not tools used by the mom and pop business with four people. These are large enterprise tools Which makes them all that much more of a target for these ransomware actors So it is just one of those things that I kind of threw out there kind of became popular on linkedin But I just I'm trying to think of what's going to happen in 2024 You know making some predictions here and I just see ransomware getting worse There's just not enough government effort or ease that which the government can do something about these people It's not that simple It's it's high in the sky to think the government can just solve any of these problems And that's where some of these challenges come in. I mean, we'd all like to see it happen That's not realistic right now. So it's one of those You know security's gonna have to get better and this was a discussion we had at our management meeting today It was just like how do we still provide good security at some of these small businesses because they're not getting in the news because knowing No one really talks about it because of why would they I've said this many times your company's probably Not too small to be hacked but very likely too small to make the news and now it's not usually spearfishing They don't spend a lot of time targeting because of the efforts involved But hey, if they ever fix the corporate world, trust me, they're going to come even harder Uh after a small business world, that's just where they're going to go They're they're they're doing ransomware for money and right now The whales of the companies the large companies they keep hitting are definitely, you know, where they're targeting But it's still some level of targeting the less skilled actors that can just throw out mass amounts of phishing And find some small business who still has rdp open on an unpatched system from Who knows how long ago in how do you keep some of them secure? I mean we really we still pop into places when we're meeting with small businesses Where they'll have rdp open or want it open and we're like no you don't do this and But how do you keep managing these small companies and not create a burden for them? This is you know, some of the stuff that the middle market that me and CNWR is in of how we manage these clients. How do we keep them being secure? So yeah, it's uh It's a lot to think about It's a big task at hand and I'm always trying to put it out there Discussion so I can talk amongst the security community to Collectively think about how do we handle these problems? How do we keep getting better at it? How do we win? because so many of these things are really You know just big challenges and I still You know, man, I have some friends that work at them really big companies Which means they have like my friend. He's he's responsible for about 200,000 endpoints. Maybe more Um, but he he has to be very careful because they're publicly traded There's a lot of information that he can't talk about but obviously over a beer we talk about things sometimes and you're just like Yeah, he deals with still people in the organization that don't understand why things should be closed Why ports and there are other co-workers. There are other technical staff Um, some of them have a lot more gray here than me, but they're still working there and still going What do you mean? I can't open rdp and uh, yeah, it's amazing just the level of Lack of awareness. I don't know. I don't want to call these people dumb At this point though, it's willful ignorance I'm not going to call you dumb But you you have chose if you think it's safe to open all these things to the public internet on an old server You have become willfully ignorant at this point. You are ignoring every notice possible on this topic Yeah, um, that's a good business technology tops. We have a good amount of veterinary manufacturing um other net It varies a lot. You end up learning the line of business software You know, and if you can speak to the client's line of business software, you're kind of in they're like, oh cool You know what dentix is. Oh cool. You know, that's a nice thing to have To know some of their line of business applications Cognitive dissonance. Yeah Yeah, you know lawyers are also challenging. So I see I agree with Tom. I find dentists to be uh Demand most and want Want to spend less than nothing I just spent a referral who is a young dentist and doesn't want his server 2008 replaced It isn't the problem with a lot. It's not just dentists. There's just some people have that mindset and you have to try and figure out, um How much effort you're going to put into them? Maybe you can convince them Maybe you can make them understand they'll come along for the journey and understand technology and And start updating things and then you have the people who go Why would I do that and they just start they try to make the well my car still runs I'm like, yeah, but your car isn't faced with as many security vulnerabilities where it's being attacked as much You know what I mean? So it's they you gotta try and find the right analogy so let them understand why these things Need to be done because we have some people who are really You know on top of it you find clients and it's not necessarily the vertical they're in just some clients are better at it Some clients some people are just like they understand technology is is what they should be doing and what They should be thinking about from a security standpoint Lawyers love loopholes and uh exploits. Yeah Uh, let's see Non-dentist healthcare seem to least understand that they have HIPAA things dentists seem to think it doesn't apply to them Yeah dentists think they don't have HIPAA. Um, that's true Uh, I work at a winery the best place to work period Uh got so done with the vcs doctors and lawyers as clients. Yeah, there's some you know In manufacturing is one of those ones that varies a lot some manufacturing companies are very forward thinking and some are not Um, some are very much a pain just every you cringe even because we have a couple that still call for like some break fix things We do it I cringe when they call because they they they've completely by the time they call us it's a bigger disaster than it should have been and uh, they've done something to make that disaster worse by the way one of them it's uh What did they do one of the times I'll just this is a fun war story from them. I get a call and Uh, I'll tell Jason who this is later, but I think he's already put them on credit hold But I get a call from them Because they're like, hey, I don't know. It's not you need to fix this. I was like, really? I said, did you see if you paid the bill? And uh, the person that worked at the time she she's like Come on, tom. Why would you say that? I'm like, because you know me money I bet it's a pattern of behavior. She texts me because she had myself and she texts me like, I don't know three hours later Yeah, they didn't pay the bill. I was like, I told you I said I told you it's a pattern of behavior It's they don't like paying the bill anywhere. The place is a I can't believe osha I hasn't shut them down. I think they've gotten in trouble because they cleaned it up last time I went to the went onsite to the place it looked better But sometimes you just you can spot patterns of behavior Uh Oh, let's see. Oh, let's see. Oh, yeah, the citrix net scaler Uh yeah More citrix news more citrix news. Yeah more bad news for citrix. So We we should probably do some follow-ups jason like just talk cyber security about some of this old crusty software You know me and jason jason's going with me to the hacker thing tomorrow. Maybe me and him will uh, Record a video on that as a topic Uh, because these are we can record a quick one while we're there because we're probably going to meet some Interesting hackers and find some stories there to share. Uh, that's kind of why one of the reasons we go to these but Yeah More more bad citrix Oh, man I think this might be jason sending me some stuff in slack right now. I think this might be some good topics. Um To cover I'm all for it I like walking through some of these. Um I walked through and one two vlog there's days ago. I think it was I walked through what happened at cisco With their cisco and cisco talos was very good at writing up and debriefing it So you can read all of that and I talked about it And it's I think it's really interesting going through how clever and how complicated some of these attacks are But it's also showing when you find sometimes a root cause and in a cisco one It was the agent that makes control to the system Basically set to listen to all because no one expected to get past the proxy in front of it to Randomly send commands to it. But so cisco fixed it that way if you got past the proxy Which I think was engine x on there. Um, it wouldn't just accept commands blindly. It's a really interesting write-up But these are some of those problems Oh neat. Um, this is something that we have a partnership with too. We should talk about this jason at some point in time as well um, some of our relationships we have with the uh Things we're working on behind the scenes. There's actually a lot that uh jason's very involved then and he's brought me And some of this too. So there's a lot we can talk about where where we get some of these insights from or what we're doing And how we're trying to help because me and jason aren't just I'm I'm mostly doing things on youtube But behind the scenes jason does a lot of things follow him on linkedin. You'll see him at contia participating and working on Initiatives that we want to help to make the community better So I think just that in general jason is you know, anything we can publicly disclose on it is uh interesting But then just talking about you know, how we're involved and maybe a broader topic of how other people can get involved Maybe it's a good business topic as well. Like how you can get more involved in cyber security I as not just a Worker but as a government participant one thing i'm really impressed with is our government's kind of I'm not going to call it full 180, but we'll just say that the government is substantially improved CISA and their involvement and the way they engage with the community has become Much much more positive than it ever has been and I think it's just because The the old people are gone and the young people with better ideas are Now putting them now in places of power and doing some smart things to see how the government can enhance because looking at protecting US citizens is part of it But that means looking at threats that come in and being able to publish some of this information and share it with people so it's uh There's And there's a lot. I mean me and jason both participate in jason much more so than me In working to shape kamtia Being and participating on boards. Yeah Well, the old people are still there. Well, they they haven't all gone from attrition just yet So that's a um Yeah, this this is one of the reasons that we You know does the community involvement we have gets us a lot of insights We don't just use those insights to protect our clients We like to share that knowledge as much as we can publicly to help raise the bar for the ecosystem that we participate in This is one of the reasons me and jason prior to us merging We're still and we still continue a close friendship with huntress because they are very committed the same way They are highly committed to a lot of community involvement. I'm always excited when I see huntress You know getting some recognition in high-profile cyber security podcasts or news write-ups Um, it's just a good thing because they care a lot about the community seren and that's near and dear to You know all of our hearts. It's kind of a mission. So to speak at cnwr things we talk about is you know What what do we do? What's our why? Why do we do it? Let me think about that? So Uh, do you guys at cnwr for your monthly managed service client except credit cards? Our more just wait for a check every month Um, I believe people pay you a variety of ways. Um check credit a ch Um jason can I don't know what the breakdown percentage is on that? So kind of it's a mixed bag. I will tell you that Um, I it's no because he inherited my clients and my clients were a mixed bag of how they paid Yeah More auto pay with a ch just uh, bacon the fees into your expectations. Yes That's kind of the answer You really want as much as a bit automated because if you if you have clients that hand write checks still and some do Even some really big customers That's a sign that they may not pay their checks on a regular basis and then It's you end up spending you have to think about the time that you spend chasing money. It is expensive. So It's like I don't need there's someone else. Yeah Technically, uh, he's right. We we are big enough that we have people dedicated to the task of the money collection process So and I'm so happy. It's not me. That that was a massive relief for it not to be me anymore after we merged the company Taking checks as payment isn't very risky. It's fine. The nice thing about checks is there's no fees on them Not here in uh, there and I completely understand this for sure Uh checks in europe has been gone for decades. Yes My european friends are like, what do you mean check? Like I remember those things. So that's definitely, um Yes, definitely a thing that is it. That's a problem. Yeah, there's um It takes not a lot of having to chase people or to a rote 3 fee anyways. Yes um, we don't so It didn't voice in just nice. I use it for Specifically how I bill someone who I sell an ad to but for the msp we moved all of that to um the cnwr side and there's just no way for um It wasn't tenable. It wasn't a realistic Manageable system to keep it in invoice ninja once we scale as we said earlier, you know, once you have 135 clients and a lot of services You just kind of need to stick it in something like a the connectwise manage system, which I don't love connectwise manage But I it's the it's we use it. I think because it sucks the least I I feel like that way some of the tools Um, but there's not easy ways without building things yourself and maybe some path in the future We build some custom thing because everything else sucks But that's not our today and that's not our task to try to build something that doesn't suck So we try to find the thing that sucks the least it's at least. That's my feelings on it most of the time A bloomer has connectors for set in a one and cross check any plans for a huntress connector. Or is it not needed? I don't really think a huntress connector is needed. Um with bloomer for enrichment So I probably not We do connectwise manage, uh, now we're using connect booster once we go to qbo will move away from connect booster Yeah, uh, there's still quick books online and connect booster some of the other connecting tools That's a good business technicality topic is just like how the back end runs. It's small things. It's complicated But yeah But it's also how you invoice over 400 000 dollars a month So that's that's just the reality of it if you want to track 400 000 plus dollars a month There's there's a lot then we have all the project billing and everything else But you just have a regular invoice flow. It adds up a lot Huntress did a webinar the other day with kyle and I got me thinking of the next client Is getting our stack without sent a one and only used defender huntress, you know I can me and jason just talked about this I can't imagine at some point there could be a future If you have the client on the higher level of the office 365 with the better defender. Yeah, I'm not going to lie Huntress is heading there So we if you had to if you forced me to choose my favorite cyber security product I don't hesitate to tell you it's going to be huntress for you know for endpoint stuff And huntress just makes such a really solid product. We've we've had Really our engagement with them The things that they have caught has been consistently proven to us I'm not a big fan of qbo, but it works and I don't manage it. So I'm More of a fan since I don't manage it Ah, yes, you need arnold chasing money sucks Yeah, that's just part of what we do It's Is what it is. Um, it's just you know the fun path of how we got here Uh, and you know me and jason both have interesting stories because some people have asked me and I feel like it's just self indulgent But I don't know leave a comment or answer it here You know if I should do a how did tom get where he is now you can't copy and paste my career And it just doesn't work that way But I don't mind talking about my adventures in it and uh jason too has a story I mean jason's been working in tech since he was like 17 working for a giant isp Which is actually part of the origin story of cnwr So I think the origin story stuff is kind of fun I'm interested in it myself, but I always feel like just talking about it on my channel feels just like a self indulgence of this But I try to maybe I'll put something in there Um because I have I bounced around a lot In the tech space for a while. So You know, I I have no problem answering any questions about it I just try to make sure that I bring forth some level of Knowledge or education to people like how could it be helpful because you can't just copy and paste someone else's career But maybe there's something I did that you would think oh, maybe you should do that too Like I just went around knocking on doors to find the tech places because there wasn't really internet when I got my first tech job Well, I mean it was I was on bbs this and things like that in 1995 That's when I started working in tech and that's a long time ago. It wasn't like you applied online Matter of fact, most places wouldn't have an apply online option back then that was not even if it was a computer store So yeah, the world has changed a lot and it's kind of fun reminiscing because I have pictures and Details from things I did and I mentioned, you know, I for a number for three years I had almost almost four years. I had a board level electronics repair store So there's a that was part of a thing I did adjacent to all the tech things I was doing yeah Maybe interesting for younger people to see how you got in and see how you have to work at it and stuff Yeah, you know the only um, I've only had really two three if you got my apprenticeship in a machine shop in high school um My vocational training in high school is I didn't do college was working in a machine shop as an apprentice Working lays and stuff like that. Um, but I also at night even while I was in high school. I delivered pizzas Um, which the most amazing thing to my kids is I delivered pizzas before there were maps Like on their phone and navigation system. So I delivered it before like auto mapping was a thing So you had to memorize the grids for things. My my son was actually impressed by that. He said That I could remember all the addresses Oh, yeah, this is a point too. Um Let's see over a hundred chart of accounts. Yes, there's a lot. I don't know how it all works anymore Um, I understand it in concept actually I helped design part of the accounting system So I learned double entry accounting. I read a book on it so I could understand it So I could help write an accounting system back in 2001 uh as a project well expand an accounting system I should say and build some automations. So there's actually a lot of um things I did a long time ago that I carried over a lot of that knowledge I didn't know I would need that knowledge later to understand how chart of accounts work But it came in handy when I started running a business So yeah, there's there's a lot of behind the scenes Uh, yeah, and I added more complexity cnwr was bigger than me when we merged And I brought in some different complexities to sort everything out, but yeah, it's and we're still continuing to grow as a team It's really cool Delivering technology the time lunch story heartwarming new uh direct to netflix film about becoming an msp demigod I don't know about that But I do have I even have um, you know, I've never applied I haven't applied for a job Since the last time I applied was the guy said, do you know what you're doing? I've never actually filled out a job application oddly enough Um, but I even have here Like this is my corporate offer letter when I worked at a company called elpis So yeah, I still have all my documentation paperwork. Uh, I keep everything for reasons. I can't explain it all um My tax returns I mean, these are from I I have all the stuff related to when I worked at these companies. It's reached over. This is all in my uh Uh drawer alpis companies long gone and uh, yeah It's been a long time. I'm not a great employee. Yeah, I can I can kind of relate to that I might I might resemble that Uh So true But me and Jason get along really well probably because we're both not great employees We'll say that but yeah, if I if I do it, I'm gonna What does it? What do the kids say these days? I'm gonna bring the receipts because I have my employment contracts I have everything so I can actually like show you Um, like the whole history of all this stuff What bothers me is how much money I made back then I I won't lie made a lot of money back then and I'm kind of it took me a long time Here's here's some advice if you know how I don't here's the thing I will preface some of this with if your goal is to Gather wealth don't do what I did I did dumb When it comes to that I I made so much money in corporate. I was an idiot for leaving it I thought I could run a business and I eventually ran a business But it cost me a ton like the story is not of business success You see success because I ran it for 20 years. I eventually found success uh for You know, I mean just I could show you the contract if anyone was curious what I was making back then I had to add it up uh Hold on where's the calculator? Because they gave me a weird rate of how it worked back then so Time uh What was it? um Because this is when I started there. This is my first offer What was this? Um Wait, I did this completely wrong. So it's Dollars I gotta get the dollar signs. Yeah But I think it was 70 000 I made when I started 60 000 Why is it worded so weird? I just I'm gonna google it hold on Yeah, 70 000. Okay. I was right about that Here I'll I don't mind showing it because I blurred out. I don't bob was my offer letter signing me. I mean, this is like You can see They paid me they wrote it up as 34 out of 34 dollars an hour But this was my Uh first part and it went up from there by the time I left I was making six figures And by the way, look at the date at the top. This is when I started May 11th 1999 which technically I worked as a contractor for them in 1998 So I made I started out good in corporate because I did some cool things for them as a contractor And then you gotta remember though if you adjust for inflation, that's 1999 money Um, I don't know what's that adjusted 20 years later. It's got to be close Like today a hundred thousand dollar year offer would be what that's like and then it ramped up from there Um for what I made they expected a lot out of me. I lived there. I was working non-stop But I was also like 20 I was also like 22 years old. So Yeah It's it's not a bad wage and everything else But like I said, I have all the details for all the stuff I can you know show you all the things I did back then. So it's about 130,000 nowadays. Yeah I had a good run there. It was interesting Yeah, it's uh I I started off on the right foot that's how I was able to get the business And by the way, this is how much I made it to the business. It was just like Down down down I had I had like $10,000 years and you're like, well, how can you live on $10,000 a year? I'm like because I used to make a lot more and then I burned it all I went through all of my money. So my story is not one of uh, I started a business and made more money I started a business and just and and I lost my ass, you know, I liked uh Richard Branson when he says he figured out how to be a millionaire running an airplane company You start with a billion dollars and then you can become a millionaire running an airplane company So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how do you go from making a hundred thousand dollars a year to uh, living below poverty? I started a business man. It was it was a great strategy This is why I tell people I hate my job's not a business plan. Well, I hated my job Only really hated there was a lot of problems and I started a business. So So it's just like I have all this there's plenty of story I can put into all this because there was a lot of things I did But hey, that's life and I do have to go though because I have uh, yeah Yeah pulling 36 hour shifts without sleep. Um That would kill me now. Oh, yeah, I I was working pretty steady even before I worked at this company Um, I was pretty steady work in 70 80 hours a week non-stop I was able to my parents moved away on me. I didn't move away from my parents. They moved away from me Uh when I was young my parents when they bought a house in the middle of nowhere And they moved they offered to let me live with them in the middle of nowhere And I was already making money. So I said no Yeah, pretty much everyone's advice and starting an it consulting MSP company prepare not to make money for five years. Yes Yeah, that's very Yeah, there's just it's very different when you start a business Um, some people are lucky and work hard and align right and I see luck There's you people don't want to ever think you're lucky. It's a combination of luck and preparedness Um being in the right place at the right time How did I even meet elvis? How did I get there? I actually didn't apply they found me Um because I did some work for them and they were kind of amazed by the work And they brought me on as a contractor and I still had my other job at another computer place So I was working two jobs even even when they started paying me all that money I still work two jobs. I was like I couldn't work this many hours. I don't have any kids I don't have no. What else am I going to do? so It's um Yeah, so I'll put that together. I guess it seems like some people are interested in it Like I said, I don't want to just be self-indulging talking about it But I want to maybe bring interesting But at least there'll be a reply video for a time someone asked how'd you get here tom? click and You know the nice thing is because it's the merger with cnwr is like one more chapter in where I'm at in life So I think it's kind of a nice point right there like come in full circle to I still legally have an entity that runs that owns laurence technologies, but I no longer Myself run the msp or it side. I'm just a consultant if you will I still technically consult but I and I do have share ownership in cnwr, but jason I'm glad it's him running it because i'm done He's he's the he's in charge of everything now, which i'm completely fine with you you see me smiling about this This is by design People are like did you have trouble letting go? No, I was really ready to let go I I wanted it to go to good hands. I didn't want to just walk away from any of this I like being involved in it. I don't like the business aspect anymore. I'm really burned out in business It's I have I have stuck jason with all the problems But he's decided he's decided himself to become president of this company. Uh jason has We me and jason talk about this because as we've become known in the industry There are companies that want to poach us to work for them doing media or cyber security or whatever And they will pay us a lot of money to do so but both me and jason know it will not be our path to happiness But this is why you shouldn't find it follow us for financial advice if you want to get rich Then you would follow a different path because there is There is a um there's always rules. I mean sure someone wants to give you a dumpster full of money but That always has strings attached to it. There is no free lunch. There are always rules and things. So that is a uh consideration That me and jason's one reason we get along with thinking kind of along the same lines We we appreciate our freedom more than If you quadruple this and I even like that linus brought this up himself a linus tech tips I'll ever hate the guy whatever in terms of his content. Um, but I think he made a good point He says, you know if someone were to buy his company outright now He hired a ceo, which I think he dragged his feet too long to do but hey, that's a different topic but in reality He wanted to maintain levels of ownership and control because the moment you surrender it and he had a hell of an offer I believe he said he had been offered a hundred million dollars for his company But he knows that would come with incredible strings attached To how things operate. So it comes down to your happiness. That's one of the things It's always been important to me uh Is that there's more freedom more happiness and being able to do the things that make me happy rather than Just making a lot of money, you know, you get to make no money pay the bills. I'm I'm not poor You know, I live well. I have a nice car. I got a nice house But um, there comes a point where if you tripled my income But you put a ton of rules on me and you told me I can only create this narrow focus of content that you told me to Create and you'd remind me that you're paying me some absurd amount of money to create the content that you've desired Me to create I would be less happy creating content. Therefore. I don't do that I'd rather be here talking about whatever we want Oh fun stuff. Well, I'm gonna wind it down here. My son needs a pizza. I need to go get to an event and uh Yeah It's just one of those things like the analogy of linus. Yeah, it it just comes down to some of that But leave your thoughts and comments and all that. Um, we and jason will definitely check out the business channel We post uh, well jason more so than me But I you have some more plans to get some more videos out on business tech reality stuff But there's a plenty there's a library we've created of business videos where we dive and talk about these topics You know, there's a lot of insights. We're just sharing to help the community. That's our goal I don't even I don't have a book to sell you or anything on how to be a better msp We're not shilling uh that maybe one day we'll shill some training of some sort. I don't know Um, or maybe some forms or something we'll do because we do have to monetize the channel because it turns out the channel's Um, losing money by the way right now, but this is all those things you get to do I take money I make over here and put it over there to help the community It's just how things work sometimes Uh three four years go ahead and decide to go to the business or tech route. I chose business time chose tech I still say takes as much as I can because it's my happy case. Yes, uh, jason's still very technical That which is awesome. So Hopefully that all makes sense. Uh, I'm trying scaring us from starting a business. It's not the goal I want people to be aware when they start a business that it might suck So if you are aware that it might suck to start a business, you'll think more carefully about starting a business Entrepreneurship is oversold by people who like to write books about entrepreneurship. That's the reality of it. So If the person says entrepreneurship is right for you buy my book and tell you why buy my entrepreneur coaching class to tell you why Be suspicious of that person. Um Uh How is the channel losing money business technicalities is losing money because there's no ads No monetization on it yet and I pay an editor uh and our time So there's no compensation for our time we put into it And paying I I have someone editing that because I don't have time to edit that one So every video has a cost with the editor on it. That's how that's how that channel the business technicality one loses money Um, this channel makes money. So that's a good thing. This channel makes money. The business makes money So we can afford to put money in other places. So Something like that So, all right. Well, thanks everyone This has uh been always always a joy talk to all these people and everyone and I like to see the comments and posts and all that But hey hit me up on the socials at laurencesystems.com Hit me up on the forums forums is a great place. I talked about that linkedin message earlier So I'm available on linkedin. Uh, I'm still on twitter for now Just not much engagement there anymore But like I said laurencesystems.com is easy place to find whatever socials are available when you watch this video All right, and thanks