Is AI really ready to run parts of your business, or is it just another overhyped tool that creates more confusion than clarity? In this episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast, host Patrick Lonergan, founder of Vital Wealth, sits down with Steven Saehrig, founder of Descent IT, to cut through the noise and explain what AI actually looks like when implemented correctly inside a real business. Rather than focusing on shiny tools or viral prompts, this conversation gets practical, strategic, and grounded in how entrepreneurs can use AI to increase efficiency, protect their data, and future-proof their organizations.
Patrick and Steven explore why AI is best viewed as a workforce multiplier rather than a replacement for people, how businesses should think about the true cost and ROI of AI adoption, and why cybersecurity must be the foundation before any automation is deployed. From real-world examples like AI-driven IT support and agentic workflows to the risks of bad actors using AI for phishing and fraud, this episode gives business owners a clear roadmap for adopting AI intentionally and securely. If you are a founder or executive wondering where to start with AI, how fast to move, and how not to get burned along the way, this episode delivers clarity, context, and actionable insight.
Key Takeaways
- AI is not a magic bullet; it requires intentional planning, investment, and follow-through
- The biggest opportunity today is using AI to augment people, not replace them
- Businesses should automate low-value, repetitive tasks first before moving to advanced AI
- Paid, secure AI tools are essential for protecting business and client data
- Cybersecurity and identity protection must be in place before scaling AI adoption
- AI-driven attacks are increasing, making employee training and behavior monitoring critical
- Companies that delay AI adoption risk falling behind competitors over the next 5–10 years
Episode Resources:
- Descent IT Official Website
- Anthropic Claude
- ChatGPT
- Microsoft Copilot
- Google Gemini
- Vital Wealth Strategies Episode 088
Resources:
Visit www.vitalstrategies.com to download FREE resources
Listen to the podcast on your favorite app: https://link.chtbl.com/vitalstrategies
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Follow on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklonergan/
Credits:
Sponsored by Vital Wealth
Music by Cephas
Art work by Two Tone Creative
Audio, video, research and copywriting by Victoria O’Brien
[00:00:00] What if the technology meant to make your business faster and smarter is also quietly creating new risks behind the scenes. And what if you could stay ahead of that curve instead of reacting after something breaks? Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today’s conversation is one I’ve been genuinely looking forward to recording.
I’m joined once again by Stevens. Steven is a friend of mine and someone I trust when it comes to technology. Steven is a client of ours, we’re clients of his at Descent it, and he’s our go-to resource for all things technology, security, and safeguarding systems that keep our businesses running as well as push them forward into the future.
Steven first joined us back in episode 88, and if you haven’t listened to that one yet, I highly recommend going back and starting there. Today though we’re building on that foundation, Stephen is back to walk us through the new technology descent. It has been rolling out [00:01:00] with a major focus on how they’re leaning into AI in a smart, practical, and secure way.
We’re talking about what AI actually means for business owners right now where it can create real leverage and where you need to be careful so innovation doesn’t turn into exposure. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clearer understanding of how modern IT and AI can support growth. Protect your data and reduce friction in your business without sacrificing security or control.
This is one of those conversations that can quietly save you time, money, and stress if you apply it correctly. And as you’re thinking about protecting and optimizing your business, I want you to also be thinking ahead if you don’t want another large. Unexpected tax bill catching you off guard. Now is the time to start planning heading over to vital strategies.com/tax to begin building out your 2026 tax strategy.
The business owners who win are the ones who plan before the year is over, not after the damage is done. Again, that’s vital [00:02:00] strategies.com/tax, and it’s the best place to start getting proactive instead of reactive. If you find value in this episode, and I know you will, please take a moment and leave a review for the Vital Wealth Strategies podcast.
It helps us reach more business owners who need these conversation and it allows us to continue bringing on high level guests like Steven. With that, let’s get into today’s conversation and welcome Steve and Sarah back to the show. Welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us. I’m excited about our conversation today.
I’ve got a good friend of mine and also our IT experts that, uh, we outsource our. It to Steven and I, I hear him, you know, chuckle a little bit ’cause he’s like, please don’t call me an expert. It’s really hard to be, uh, totally excellent at all of these things ’cause it’s constantly changing. But, uh, Steven and their team do a fantastic job for us, uh, a protecting us from, uh, we’ll call it cybersecurity attacks, and then also just making sure we’re, we’re operating efficiently.
Uh, but today we’re gonna get into the topic of AI and, uh, how you [00:03:00] can bring this into your business. And, uh, I’m really excited about this entire conversation. So Steven, thank you for, for joining us.
Steven: Oh, thank you for having me. I love, I love talking about this. This is such Yeah. Exciting area of it that, uh, is growing rapidly.
Yeah, this is gonna be fun. So I, I think about the entrepreneur and we, we look at, uh, just AI and it’s everywhere in the news. It’s, uh, I think fragmented. We can see AI showing up in, in so many different areas and it’s, I’ll also say poorly implemented. You know, there’s an endless number of of tools out there.
There’s overlapping. Um, you know, systems that are, it’s like, which, which one do I need? Um, you know, the, the team can also be overwhelmed with these things. Like, how do I even use this thing effectively? And then ultimately I, I, I see the automation and I think you guys do a great job of this. You know, I, I can submit a ticket and I’m interacting with an AI bot that is like solving my computer problem, which I actually think is wonderful.
You know, it’s not taking man hours and it can find me the right answer, just super, super [00:04:00] quickly. So I think, I think that’s great. And then also just thinking internally as an entrepreneur, it’s like, man, the pressure to keep up with AI and, and bring it in is, uh, it’s a lot. And I’ve also got just the day-to-day concerns with my, my, my business that, that need to be addressed.
Yeah. Uh, and then I’m also worried about, man, am I gonna delegate to this, this thinking machine? And am I gonna get, uh, uh, good, good outcomes? And then just being frustrated with. AI advice. You know, it seems like it’s can be very tactical. Sometimes it’s hallucinating. It’s not very strategic if I don’t do it well.
And so, uh, I’m, I’m looking forward to that. And then I just think about philosophically it should be, especially with technology, like I, I feel like speed is so important when we’re, we’re starting to implement these things. And, uh, I think in our conversation today, we’re gonna get into how it actually takes a lot of time, uh, a lot of resources to, to do AI well.
And so, [00:05:00] um, thank you for, for joining us and, and, uh, you know, kicking this, this AI conversation off. So, so where would you like to, to start? Uh, I, I think this would be, uh, fun to just dig into. Just AI and how, how you see it coming into, whether it’s the MSP space, you know, the managed service providers for, for it, uh, or just businesses in general.
Like where, where should we, where should we kick this off?
Steven: I think they’re twofold. I, I think let’s talk about businesses in general first. Um, because the MSP side of it is a little bit easier, but to discuss, but it’s not as clear, right? Because it’s a, it’s an area where everybody, including IT providers, are learning on the fly.
It advance rapidly advances its capabilities faster than anybody can keep up. I mean, just look at the news recently and you’re seeing Gemini do does this, Claude does this, copilot added this. And the features just [00:06:00] continue to exceed anybody’s expectations or piece or ability to learn. So in a business overall, I think it’s important about how to frame ai.
Into how it can help your business, what it can and can’t do. It’s not a magic bullet number one. Mm-hmm. Um, and, um, and how it can be helpful, but it, but it’s an investment.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, dang it, Steven, I was hoping you would just come on, turn it off here and give me the, the one magic prompt that if I just put it in all of my business problems went away.
So what’s
Steven: what’s funny about that is you can have one magic prompt. It just takes you hours and hours and hours of education to, to make that prompt effective. Um mm-hmm. So,
yeah. Yeah. No, that’s so good. ’cause I’ve found, uh, because we, we really like, I’ll say collaborating with ai. Mm-hmm. Um, but I’ve found we have to put really good, and we’ve started to create like a prompt to library, depending on the mm-hmm.
You know, the particular topic we’re working on. It’s like, okay, if this is a tax question, like here’s all of the detail that needs to go [00:07:00] into the, I’ll say the initial prompt before we start working on a project to make sure that it’s like got all of the right framework and it’s not hallucinating answers and it’s citing its sources and all those.
There’s other things. So I think that’s hits.
Steven: You hit the bullet, like you nailed that right there. Right? You, you have a specific use case with specific set of information and a specific prompt to get you the results with the highest quality output. Mm-hmm. And I think for businesses, that is the biggest area where we need to spend time and energy.
I, I’ll give an example. In my own business, I want to find a way to take all this data we collect on what issues are happening for you. Let’s say you, you’re submitting support tickets. That’s all data, right? Mm-hmm. We know how many devices you have. We know the security stack you have. We know what compliance framework say, comply with.
We know what capabilities they have. We know all the problems you submitted. AI can take all that information and give me recommendations and, um, recommendations, bolts for improvements for your business, and improvements that I need to make in my own business to better serve you. [00:08:00] But I have to give it the context of what am I trying to do and where am I gonna find all that information.
Yeah. Yeah. This is really good. And, and one of the things that we were talking about before we hit the record button, and, and maybe this is a good place to start with this, is you started, uh, mentioning the fact that you’ve got AI core values. Mm-hmm. And, and I think that’s a really fascinating thing, and maybe that’s where most businesses should start, is like, hey, let’s, let’s develop some, uh, some core principles around how we’re gonna use this tool.
So can you walk us through, uh, the thinking there, and then we can talk about how it applies to, to bringing this into our business?
Steven: Yeah. So I mean, just like most businesses have core values, mission statements, big BHAGs, all that good stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Um, when we started approaching ai, and maybe this is.
This is just me being a tech geek and loving stuff. Like I had all these cool ideas, like, oh yeah, I can do this. And we can automate that and we can, and we’re just shotgunning ideas all over the place.
Mm-hmm.
Steven: And so in order [00:09:00] to, in order to like kind of focus that energy and how we’re gonna make decisions and enable my team to be effective in development of how we’re gonna use ai, I felt that core values would be really important.
And we’re still still tuning these, but the core principle around them are, are basically, um, four, three to four areas. And I say three to four. ’cause one of ’em I think could, you could combine into just one. Mm-hmm. So let’s say I think ai, our core values are AI should enhance the team’s capability without adding cognitive load.
And, and that’s a fancy way of saying like, keep it simple, don’t overcomplicate. Right. Augment, but don’t replace, um, we need to preserve the value and eliminate waste. We were talking about before we started recording, like low hanging sh fruit, simple tasks, right? We need to just get rid of all that stuff that’s low value time and automate those components of my business.
Mm-hmm. Um, client outcomes first, right? Not every automation is, is gonna be directly related, but everything we [00:10:00] do should be in the service of delivering something to our clients, right? The product that we deliver. Um, and that could be through service, quality, improvements, speed, reliability, accuracy, whatever it may be.
Mm-hmm. Uh,
Steven: and then it needs to be transparent by default. Team members need to know that they’re using ai, ai but it’s not an active, I need to tell it to do something. It’s just part of their workflow. It’s just there behind the scenes. And I think that last one I probably should have started with because it is the most important thing
that you Yeah, yeah.
So it elaborate on that. ’cause I, I, I feel like that’s how. When we’re interacting with dissent and we submit a ticket, it’s just happening. Mm-hmm. Like, it, it just is there. And I, I don’t have to do something to interact with ai. It’s just like, it’s part of me a part of the process. Yeah. And I, I think it’s a, a beautiful thing.
That doesn’t sound easy though. It’s not like, how do you, how do you talk a little bit more about that piece? ’cause I, I think that’s, that’s fascinating.
Steven: So in order to, I mean the, the AI [00:11:00] bot that you’re talking to, right, is interfacing with our ticketing system. And it is, it is, has its own prompting and intentions around how it behaves with you, right?
Mm-hmm. So that’s one, build the experience you want your customers to have with your chat interface. But then that chat interface has to have access to all of the ticketing data, all the, um, remote monitoring data, all the security tools, and then it has to have access to all the logs. And so behind the scenes, which you, you guys don’t see is Jerry in our case, is.
Going and looking up your device, it’s going and looking up any changes that may have happened to your device, making sure that the, all the tools are loaded on your device. It’s checking to see if you’ve submitted any previous tickets that, that are similar to this and how we’ve solved them mm-hmm. And who solved them.
And then it’s correlating that all back with generative AI and making a recommendation to you to try something.
Yeah.
Steven: And there’s a lot of time and energy and integrations that happen behind the scenes that need to be developed and [00:12:00] tuned to eliminate the things you like. We don’t want it to hallucinate, um, you know, is this, this machine Patrick’s actually on right now?
That’s a question that has to be answered from our tools Yeah. To make sure we’re even supporting you in the right place. Mm-hmm. And so that, that alone took a couple, um, couple months to yeah. Tune and it continues to improve. Um, and the more we collect and feedback, the smarter it gets and the more accurate it gets.
And. So, mm-hmm. Which results in a product that allows you to interface and get the answer without a per waiting on a person to get back to you.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s the piece I love is like instant response. I’m like, this is, this feels magical. You know? Which is, which is really cool. Yeah. So I, I, I think we’re, we’re hitting on a thing here that is, uh, for the non-technical person to hear you talk about all of those, like, you know, what it’s interfacing with.
Like, I don’t have a, I don’t have a prayer personally of making my software do all of that stuff. Right? Like, [00:13:00] I, I need to go, you know, bring somebody in either as a consultant or hire them full time or work with a firm that does this type of thing. So. Mm-hmm. How do we, how do we go about, ’cause I, I, we were also mentioning like, you know, there’s, there’s things that Steven can do that only Steven can do as far as the business is related.
And then we get down to the. The, the bottom of the list, and they are simple tasks that any functioning human being can do. Mm-hmm. Um, and those need to be the first things that we automate and we sort of work our way up that, that food chain from the simplest to the most complex things. How do we go about, I’ll say identifying where AI is a good use and then go, cool.
I really wanna automate this thing. Like, yeah. I don’t even know where to start. Yeah.
Steven: Yeah. I think, I think sitting down with a consultant, and even most IT companies can help. I mean, we, we do it for ourselves and we leverage that to help our company, our clients utilize AI in their business, or at least [00:14:00] build a plan on how they can utilize ai.
And, and it depends on the maturity of the business and it depends on the quality of the underlying data, uh, in your business. Right. So for me, I have structured systems with structured data and a defined process. That is a great use case for RPA robotic process automation, which does not require generative ai and then AI being large learning models, chat, GPT, Claude, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. To take all that data and make intelligence decisions around that with an instruction set that we’ve provided it. Right?
Yeah.
Steven: Um, so as a business, depending on what you do and how you do it, it drives what tools we should be using, what integrations are required, and how much time and energy is needed to go from low hanging fruit to high value agentic ai that’s robotically doing things for you in the background.
Um, and so I think with that, it, it takes a conversation to determine what are the problems we’re trying to solve. [00:15:00] Mm-hmm. I mean, half the conversations I have are literally are just evolving that one topic. What are we trying to automate and get off my plate? And most people don’t know. And, and that’s okay.
’cause it takes somebody else to ask, answer those questions or ask those questions. That gets you thinking about it. I don’t always think about the right tax things and you help me with that.
Right? I
Steven: need to do this. Yeah. What does that mean? And you’re like, well, you da da da, da. Right? Mm-hmm. So, uh, I think that’s, that’s half the battle right there is defining what the problem is.
So you talked about a little bit too there about like how you use it. Um, planning, like planning is a different approach. Asking questions, example, lemme give you a better, a good example. Mm-hmm. I had a client ask me how our security stack comp compared against, uh, compliance framework. And I could spend a lot of time going and reading the entire compliance framework and a lot of time reading all my tools.
And all I did was say, here are all my tools and all what the services they provide. Here’s the compliance framework. Tell me where I’m overlap, what am I [00:16:00] missing? Mm-hmm. And it gave me a great one page outline. Covered partial gap identified. And broke it all down of what I could do to close the gaps or what the client needed to close the gaps.
That’s a great high value item. That would usually only be me that I now need. Yep. Now I can delegate to somebody else to do using a AI as to augment that.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s great. And like, for example, I was doing the same thing with some legal documents recently. You know, it was like, I I do not wanna read this 40 page document, you know?
No. And I, I may not even understand all of it, so it’s like I loaded it into chat. I started asking it, uh, some questions and like create a summary for me. And then I gave it a bunch of context to understand the situation. And then I was like, okay, what are, what are the key issues we need to resolve here?
And it was like, it was so useful. Uh oh yeah. It took, it took it from a probably a two or three hour project down to a 30, 40 minute project. And I was like, man, this is, this is, uh, this is good stuff.
Steven: And what you do with that is you [00:17:00] make a skill. Or your, your prompts right. To continually learn all those lessons.
Because every time you interface with ai, it’s learning something. Now we gotta remember that. Yeah. And, and so that’s, I spent a lot of time in that area.
Yeah. And, and so I, I, I wanna take a slight tangent, uh, here or slight offshoot mm-hmm. Uh, on this, this, uh, because one, one thing I just mentioned was I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to load, uh, personal information into, we’ll call it the, uh, the free AI tools, right?
Yeah. Don’t, don’t do that. Like we, we’ve, we’ve got, we’ve got a number of paid tools that we’re only putting things in, and we’ve got structure around the, the data security and that type of thing. So can we just talk a little bit about, uh, there’s so many different flavors of AI right now. You know, you, you’ve mentioned a bunch of ’em, Claude, um, chat, all of those.
Can we talk about like, is there a, is there a best and, uh, should I be using. The, the paid version, the free version, uh, in [00:18:00] my business to, to make, you know, uh, business moves. Yeah.
Steven: Yeah. So the, oh, well, I mean, from a general perspective, always use the paid version. Don’t use the free version. Free version.
You’re basically training their AI public data. Do, do not, you know, if you’re asking it to make you a recipe for tonight’s dinner, cool. Use the free version. Yeah. But if you want to do anything with any kind of IP or just business process client information, always on a paid version, and depending on your compliance requirements, might, would depend on what version or level of paid plan you need.
Okay. Yeah. So, uh, all pan plans are paid and, and there’s a whole level we haven’t talked about, which is local AI on your own, PC running on your computer, that’s not publicly running. Um, out there, that’s a whole nother option, but let’s not go down that road yet. The, because that’s a whole nother level, but the um mm-hmm.
Paid versions always. With some rules around what you can and can’t feed it, [00:19:00] shouldn’t feed it. Um mm-hmm. Following your compliance for your business. Only you can answer that question. The, there are, there’s many flavors of AI and there are lots of people out there saying, this one’s the best, this one’s the next level.
And I think it comes down to the use case that you’re trying to achieve with it. As a tech company for us we found that Philanthropics clawed code and clawed desktop models did the best for us in the context of the type, the types of data we were asking it to ingest and review. It had the best knowledge base and results coming out of it.
We tried chat GBT and co-pilot and a couple other models and it didn’t, they did good. Mm-hmm. It was just easier for us to get Claude going as personal just in our own business. And I think it depends on where you are in your business and what you’re trying to do. If I were gonna try and make fancy Word documents, co-piloting chat, GPT are.
With generative ai. If I’m trying to deep UHT [00:20:00] program or understand deep log analysis, I’m using Claude for that, or Gemini. Mm-hmm. And if I want to, I mean, you guys see SOA out there making all kinds of crazy videos. I’m not asking Claude to do, you know, generative video creation, right?
Mm-hmm.
Steven: So I think it’s always about the task you’re trying to achieve and having the version.
Sometimes that means you need to go. I think your next question would be around the lines of like, well, how do I get access? Like paying for all these models, it’s costly.
Mm-hmm.
Steven: Um, and there are some aggregators out there that you can buy, pay one subscriptions and utilize a bunch of different models for the same subscription in the same security context domain, which is depending on your business and in your situation is may, it may be something that you want to evaluate because you can build workflow automation using different models for different tasks, all in the same platform and in the same
domain.
Got. Okay, that’s great. And so now I want to, I’m gonna come back to bringing this into our business. And, and I think about, we read the headlines, uh, [00:21:00] hey, basically everybody’s gonna be out of a job ’cause AI’s gonna take over. Right? Yeah. Uh, and the amount of time and energy it takes to like, make AI do very simple things, I think it’s gonna be a minute before we’re, you know, replacing whole, whole positions.
One of the things that you mentioned, um, was you’re making pretty significant investment in AI in your organization to help you run more efficiently. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s something that people sh we should have a dialogue around. Like, you know, what would be great is if I just could go pay a few bucks a month to have a, have a subscription to ai and then all of a sudden it’s replacing, you know, a hundred thousand dollars employees.
Yeah. I think we’re we’re a ways from that. Oh yeah. Um, so, um, I think it’d be worthwhile to talk about the investment you’re making and where you’re seeing some of the. Opportunities and then just we, then we can talk about how that relates to, to different business owners and you know, where they should start with, with this process as well.
Steven: Yeah. So the investment is significant and it’s, it was [00:22:00] significant investment upfront before we even started realizing results. Um mm-hmm. And because like anything you build, like if anybody’s ever built a house or, or worked with a contractor to build a house, like there’s the foundation and then there’s the framing, and then there’s the insulation, and then Right.
You’re not getting to paint till way down the line. Right? Yeah. Um, and ai, similar in the sense of you have to understand your business and its data flows and processes, then I can get the right products in the right tools, which the combined with the right people mm-hmm. To implement that. And so from our own perspective, we’re, we’re investing a significant, you know, 20 plus percent of revenue into just people to workflow, automate and design how and what we’re doing.
On a daily basis and how it inter interacts with our clientele and, and how it benefits the business. Right. We’re following those core values, right? It needs to be transparent, it has to have client outcomes. We have to preserve the value and we need to augment, not complicate.
Mm-hmm.
Steven: Um, and I think what I found is so far in the businesses I am, [00:23:00] I am just now getting to the point where we’re realizing a, a, a foundation where we can scale from where I don’t need to add more people.
Mm-hmm. So could you say that that’s not, you know, that’s taking jobs, I guess if you wanted to slice it that way, I need to hire less people to do the same outcomes as other IT companies, but I also had to hire higher skilled, highly specialized people that are falling into the r and d bucket that aren’t billable.
Right. Yeah. So I’ve
Steven: increased my cost on one side and saved a little bit on the, on the, you know, service delivery side.
Basically, yeah. But we’ve seen this since, I’ll say the probably before this, but the, the easy one is the, the assembly line, right? Mm-hmm. Like it is more efficient to build things on an assembly line than it is to have a bunch of guys and gals standing around, you know, putting a car together by hand.
Uh, and so that, that cost jobs when that happened. But the, the cool thing about our economy is people, people retool, they [00:24:00] find new ways to, uh, provide value. And I still think when we look around and, uh, you start looking at some of the jobs data, it’s, there’s still not enough people to do all the work that, you know, is Yeah.
Is available out there. So it’s, it’s not like we’ve got, you know, double digit unemployment that, you know, uh, is caused by AI right now.
Steven: Yeah. I mean, if any, I think we’re years away from any kind of AI where. Where you think that it’s as good as a person. And, and I think that’s where I, I really wanna invest more time and energy into is the, I really believe in the augmentation of people in the daily workflow because a technician on the front line that’s doing service tickets who has had Jerry collect all the information, given him the error messages done, a pre-analysis is now in much more focused and targeted, effective person who’s also learning and advancing their careers faster without having to spend hours manually reviewing everything.
Yep. Yep. So [00:25:00] it makes them more efficient with their time and more effective and they learn faster. Um, and so Absolutely. And I found that when it’s successful, they get really excited about it. So they’re not like, oh, a AI’s here to take my job. They’re like, this thing is really helping me do my job and do it better and faster and I can help more people because I hire people that believe in helping people.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I love this. This is, this is great. So the, the next thing that comes to my mind is as an IT firm, you’re equipped to have some of your internal folks develop these things for you. I’m thinking of it from my point of view, and this goes back to our previous discussion, our podcast episode, which is great.
Everybody should go listen to, by the way, that I shouldn’t go hire an internal IT person because they have a very limited skillset. I should hire a, a firm that has like super broad skillset and then I, you know, I just bring the, the technical expertise as I need it and I save a [00:26:00] ton of money and I get better outcomes.
Like, that’s the best solution. So mm-hmm. Reach out to Steven at dissent IT and get your it, you know, dialed in if you’re doing it in-house. Okay. Uh, now back to programming. So when I think about that from a, um, an AI perspective, if I go hire a, a. Somebody that’s like proficient in ai. I am, I’m just trying to figure out how do I get this going in my business because I’m, let’s, let’s pretend I’m, I’m ready to make the investment.
I see it’s gonna cost me, you know, laying that foundation’s going to be fairly expensive now, but the ROI on that mm-hmm. You know, if I, my team can run farther faster, you know, because they’re, they’re not, they’re effectively not having to like, you know, sweep up the mess they made. There’s a robot like cleaning up the mess, you know, on the floor and they can just keep working.
You know, that, that, that’s better, right? Mm-hmm. Like, it’s taking these low level tasks that just don’t add any value to anybody’s situation off their plate. So, um, [00:27:00] how do we, how do we bring this in? How do we like, ’cause we, we’ve talked about, yep. We, we. We do an assessment, we, we talk to somebody that’s sharp, that can help us, like figure out where we could automate first and then how do we execute on that?
Because that, that, I feel somewhat lost on how to pull that.
Steven: Yeah. I think everybody is actually, uh, how to execute it because there, there aren’t enough people in the AI space that understand how to implement, how to, oh, lemme rephrase that. There are a lot of people in the AI space, the people in the space that also have the experience of IT, security, IT infrastructure, business operations, and what really matters, what outcomes really matter to the business that they’re working with.
Right there, there are very few people that have all the skills required to provide that expertise to a company. Mm-hmm. And so I think you really do need to engage with partners, with, with your IT partners and, and, and we’re all walking into this space or running into this space to figure out how we can mm-hmm.
Not only help ourselves, but help [00:28:00] our clients. Um. So I think once you, I think you should absolutely engage with a consultant that you trust, right? Mm-hmm. To help you define what problems you’re trying to solve, what tools are available to help you solve them, and then build a plan with you to implement.
And that can be, hey, it’s partially cons, uh, outsourced with these people inside your organizations that are my champions that are gonna run mm-hmm. These components of it, or I need to hire in and what kind of person do I need to hire in it? It depends on your business. And do you wanna be 80% self-sufficient in this area?
Because I don’t think you’re gonna start there. It’s gonna start with completely dependent on consulting and then it’s gonna move into, okay, we’re getting good at this as an organization, let’s, we’ll take on 20%, 40%, 80%, and then you kind of work your way up. Um, most companies I’m talking to now about it want to build the knowledge in house.
Um, but they realize it’s gonna take a year or two of working with knowledgeable companies on how to make that happen. [00:29:00]
That
Steven: and, and help answer the question. Yeah, I’ll absolutely.
No, no, this is, this is really good because I, as, as we’re talking, I’m, I’m starting to see, um, AI skills are probably going to be similar to computer skills.
Like you just have to know how to use AI to do this job effectively. Like if somebody shows up to any one of our organizations and doesn’t know how to use a computer, it’s like, you’re just not a good fit here. Right? Like, uh, well, think
Steven: about, think about your, the kids that are in school now that have access to these tools.
I mean, even in when I, I mean, I’m not that old, but old enough where cell phones weren’t a thing in school, right? Yep. And, and now we have cell phones in school, and now we have generative AI in school. Mm-hmm. Like it’s part of their everyday life. The kids are using AI to help them do their homework, right?
Like it’s part of their life. They’re gonna go, those people are gonna enter the workforce at some point if in years, and, and realize that business has to have these tools, otherwise they’re not gonna operate. How did you do this before? [00:30:00] So, yeah. I, I guess I think if you’re not doing it, you have to do it.
Yeah. Your employees are gonna expect it in the future.
Yeah. So I, I see here, like, uh, and I think of all the people listening to this, some of ’em are probably licking their chops going Cool. Yeah. Like a marketing agency. I could have an AI implementation agency. Right. It could be, you know, long-term engagements.
It could be short-term like you were talking about, and then eventually you, you lay the foundation and then your team can kind of run with it. Uh, I could see you, you know, spinning up, dissent. AI integration is a part of, uh, the, the work you’re doing. ’cause I think you’re, I think the, a ai, the IT space is well positioned to go Yep.
We’ve got the people that understand the, the technology that can mm-hmm. You know, uh, enter into a, a. A workplace and go, yep, let’s, let’s understand your, your opportunities, and then here’s where, [00:31:00] here’s our rollout plan. You know? Yeah. Here’s what it’s gonna take from time and energy and money. So
Steven: I wanna, I want to touch on that for a second because I do believe that ai, that is a hundred percent true.
The MSPs out there that are doing really good work are the best positioned to do it, and they’re investing in it anyways, and they can help you with it. Mm-hmm. Um, but I think it takes entrepreneurs and business owners to understand like, this is, this is a cost, this is an operating expense that you, you really have to take on.
If you want your business to be successful in 2030. We need to be laying these foundations now and partnering with MSPs to make that happen. Because if you’re not, your competitors are, and they’re gonna, you’re gonna fall behind.
Yep. Yep. Well, and I think about that, um. And let’s just use a high level, you know, let, let’s say I’m paying somebody a hundred grand a year.
Let’s, let’s say, ’cause here’s, here’s where my brain’s at. Okay. I’m like, I could go hire a hundred thousand dollars a year person to help in my business in some [00:32:00] capacity, right? And they’re, they’re gonna have an ROI, that’s why we hire people. Mm-hmm. We pay them X and they produce x plus something. Right.
Um, uh, our workforce in general should be doing that. That’s, that’s the only way businesses make money. So when I think about that, I’m like, okay, if I could spend the same, and I don’t know what my budget should be, you were talking about, you know, 20 plus percent of revenue. It’s like, okay, that’s, that’s a pretty healthy number.
Mm-hmm. If I’m spending, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know, a quarter million dollars, a half million dollars a year, like that’s a lot of money going into this technology. But as a. As a business owner, here’s how I think about that. Right? Like, let’s, let’s, let’s keep the math simple at a hundred grand.
If I put a hundred grand in mm-hmm. But it, it allows me to free up $25,000 a year in, uh, workforce capacity, right? Like, uh, I don’t need, I can hire [00:33:00] the next person slower because my team can run farther faster. Mm-hmm. Um, I really like 25%. ROI, like, I’m, I’m making 25 grand a year on my a hundred thousand dollars investment.
Like, great. Yeah. I should probably be really excited to make that next a hundred thousand dollars investment. So I don’t, I don’t know if I’m thinking about it the right way. I don’t know how we can help business owners quantify that number, but that would be a, that would be an interesting, like, uh, I,
Steven: I quantify it this way and, and I don’t think about it as a cost savings mechanism on people.
I guess in the end when you’re looking at the books. Yes. Right. I think. AI is a workforce multiplier. And if I’m, if I’m hiring a, an a hundred thousand dollars person without ai, I have a hundred thousand dollars person. If I hire a hundred thousand dollars person with ai, I may be able to recognize 125 to $150,000 worth of value outta that person just from salary.
Like if I went hired, I, I moved their skillset higher. But not just for that one person, I’m moving the skillset for the entire [00:34:00] organization farther. So I’ll, we’ll use a couple best in class metrics for IT companies, right? If a best in class, perfect world is 500 devices per service desk employee, right?
Under support, I’m able to get to 900 with ai, right? So that’s a significant increase in capacity in a person. Augmented by ai, not replaced, but augmented by ai. Sure. And so, and then that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a significant increase of capacity and capability of the people on the team across all areas of the team.
I’ve had my developers that are coding this stuff, say, these tools make me three times more efficient and effective. Yeah. Right. Not that I don’t know what I’m doing. Yeah. It just does it faster and instead of writing it all, I’m, I’m, I’m editing and correcting and tuning and getting to a product way faster.
So we’re able to iterate and grow faster, which then gets those benefits out to all the team members faster. And then I’ve made them all, [00:35:00] every day. Yeah. 5% better, 10% better. Yeah. And better being like more effective.
Before we get back to the episode, let me ask you a quick question. If you’re leveraging new technology, ai, and smarter systems to grow your business, are you giving that same level of attention to your tax strategy? Or are you still hoping it all works itself out by the end of the year? The reality is this, the faster and more profitable your business becomes, the more important proactive tax planning is.
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Yeah, no, that, that is, that is so valuable, like, in my mind, that that takes the investment value. It’s almost hard to calculate how valuable that is. Um, and, and it makes me look at it, go, I’m, I’m ready to throw all the money at it. So, so,
Steven: yes, mark, I’m, I’m just
Right, right. Yes, absolutely. Like, let’s, let’s like be really intelligent.
Let’s, let’s engage with a consultant that can help us do this. So just, uh, I’m, I wanna be careful of this. I don’t, I don’t wanna put you in a position where you’re like, no, that’s not what we do. But let’s say I call Steven up [00:37:00] and I’m like, Steven, I, I want to do a $5,000 like roadmap engagement for. Uh, vital Wealth on how we can implement, uh, ai.
Mm-hmm. I want you to take me through a process there. I’m happy to pay you organizationally, those dollars to like understand where our opportunities are and then once we’re through that roadmap, like now we’ll have an understanding and then they’ll, there’ll be like an implementation piece beyond that.
Like, I’m, I’m like a, I’m a ready buyer. Yeah. Like if somebody knocked on my door. Yeah. And, and maybe that’s you as we’re standing here and you’re like, Hey, we’ll do that for you. Like, pat, how do talk to
Steven: me? I don’t, I don’t even ask. What’s that? What are we, we, you’re selling yourself to me right now,
Scott.
I am. I am. So, I’m, I’m, I’m really like ready to, to engage in this process. Is that something dissent is willing to do? Are you willing to do it on a limited basis because I’m Yeah. I’m ready to like, take the invoice and send you the money.
Steven: Um, yeah. I, I would say we’re ready to do it on a limited [00:38:00] basis because unless, and to be.
Fair about it, like we’re a startup, right? Does. Mm-hmm. So startups have limited resources and, and I, and here’s, as an organization, a lesson I learned this year that I think is important to share with entrepreneurs, especially ones looking to leverage ai. Um, there’s no shortage of cool things to automate and how do you leverage the tool?
And I need to be very protective of the time that I slice away from development into our spa, into ourselves. Yeah. So I do it for our clients in a limited capacity, uh, especially in the planning and, and design phases of it, because every minute I take away from them developing what we’re trying to do with descent mm-hmm.
Extends the development time for descent overall. Right. So, limited engagements, we will, we definitely look to help our clients and, and Sure. We, like I said, I hire people that want to help. That comes from me too. Mm-hmm. Like, I want to help people. So it would be very hard for me to say, no, pat, let’s go, you know, figure [00:39:00] out how AI can help your business.
I’ll, I’ll do that for a, a limited set of companies, but Sure. Um, it’s, it’s very impactful and very helpful to the organizations that we work with. Um, but it’s also very eye-opening to understand all the things that have to be done just to get ready. Yeah. And one thing we didn’t talk about that I think is important is understanding.
When we say ai, there’s multiple levels of ai. There’s AI in the way you were talking about it with reviewing a legal document. Then there’s agentic ai, and then there’s gonna be, you know, semi-automated agentic ai, meaning like it’s doing things without me, with me approving it. And then there’s like fully automated AI where it’s just doing it without anybody doing like touching it.
Right? Yeah. Um, those are different levels of maturity as your business. Mm-hmm. And your processes mature.
And would you say, uh, so Jerry is your AI agent. Mm-hmm. Um, so when I submit a ticket mm-hmm. Is that, is that Agen AI working? Uh, there, is that an example of that? Like
Steven: It is, it’s, it’s a bit of, it’s a combination of generative AI [00:40:00] and agent ai because it is interfacing with other systems to collect information and bring it back.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then there are the, the next, there’s some really cool stuff we’re working on for the next evolution of like, um, uh, automating software installations. Um, automating, um, uh, I don’t wanna go too far into it. There’s a lot of cool things coming ’cause it, when you have the right foundation and the right people and the right plan, when you get those things aligned, there are the, the possibilities of what you can do are very endless.
They’re endless. You can’t, you’ll always find a use case.
Sure. Yeah. And the thing I love about dissent is you were born with ai, right? Like your organization has been. Growing and implementing and developing AI from the beginning. Mm-hmm. Which I think is different than a firm that’s been around for 20 years that’s now going and, and they’re, they, they’ve got size and scale and bureaucracy that it’s really hard to, [00:41:00] even if they’re an IT firm, it’s hard for them to adopt and, and bring these technologies in where you’re, you’re sort of small enough to go, yep, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do this.
Yeah. And this is how we’re gonna do it, and we can try it and we can, you know, have some success. We’re gonna have some things that don’t go well, we’ll learn from those and, and continue to grow. Where a large organization may not be willing to take those, those same risks. So when I think about that, I’m like, man, you’re uniquely positioned to, you know, do this well.
Yeah. Sort of get ahead of the, the rest of the marketplace. And then also you understand what, you know, me as a business owner needs to like, bring it into my business and go. So yeah, I think that that’s cool.
Steven: Being a ent, ai or we’ll say ent ai, like vision first. And which is funny about this whole thing, is like I had this vision 20 years ago when I first started working in it, in the MSP space.
Uh, and now it’s being realized ’cause the tools and technology are here, but being AI first from the ground up, um, [00:42:00] has been eyeopening to, to all the points you just said. But it also opens doors for me with vendors that are looking to service the MSP space and thus service the clients that we serve.
Mm-hmm. Using an AI first model. Like ev all the vendors that we use are all going into AI and they all, several of, we’re working with several of them on product development of how, what we do on the front lines, supporting the clients and how we utilize their products to support that and how that can all be seamlessly done in the background is, has been a eye-opening experience.
Yeah. And, uh, and very rewarding because we can impact the, the entire space of how IT services are delivered.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. So we, we, we, you started talking about the different levels of AI and we wandered away from that. Can we come back to that? Uh, because I don’t, I don’t fully understand all the things you just said.
Okay. You know, [00:43:00] um, so can we, can you just explain, uh, maybe those different levels and then how those are playing out in the marketplace?
Steven: So, or,
or could play out in the marketplace?
Steven: Yeah. There are lots of people talking about this and, and, um, let’s, let’s talk about it a little bit. I, I’m not an expert in the, the levels.
Mm-hmm. Because every time you think there’s a level, like there’s another level added, like it’s just developing so fast.
And they over, they overlap, like you talked about, you know, your Jerry is like a combination of a few of those things. So they’re gonna be sitting in different spots on the spectrum and probably, you know, all, all mixed together to some, to some extent.
But I think if we have a baseline, you know, here’s the 1 0 1 version of like what AI is really capable of, I think it gets our brains moving in the right direction to go. All right, cool. I can, I can see how this works. So
Steven: let’s just basic, I mean, let’s talk where the AI boom really started, right? With, or, well, where I think it [00:44:00] publicly mainstream was adopted by is when chat GPT really took, hit the ground running with, with what?
Three Chapter B two three. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s like generative ai. I ask it a question, I give it some information, it gives me a result. It analyzes data. I’m, I’m very active in its tasks. It’s informational back and forth, conversational back and forth between us. That’s generative ai, you know. Not even at, in the beginning, not even making documents,
right?
Mm-hmm.
Steven: Um, and then you got this little sub phase in the middle now where it’s, I’m interacting back and forth, but it can actually produce a document for me, right? Or read a spreadsheet for me. Uh, yeah. Very simple use cases.
Yep.
Steven: Then you get to more agentic ai, which is the next level where I’m asking it.
I’m giving it information and giving it prompts, and now it has the agency to go and do things for me on my behalf, right? Mm-hmm. So it could be, oh, we were talking about Jerry. You give Jerry a problem, it goes out to other systems and says, [00:45:00] gimme Patrick’s computer, it, gimme the logs from Patrick’s computer.
What problems has Patrick had on this computer before? And that’s interfacing with our systems and collecting that information, and then using generative AI on the results to bring it back and make the interface that you’re talking to smarter. So that’s like agentic component of it, where it’s it’s doing things for me.
Yeah. But it’s not doing things that are unapproved, I’ll say from a security perspective. Risky, right? Mm-hmm. It’s not making changes on your computers for you, it’s telling you, Hey, open the Bluetooth settings. Click on this menu. Right? It’s walking you through it. The next, the next version of this is gonna be agentic ai, where it can then go effect change on the end user for the end user.
Mm-hmm. Not just show, tell you what menu to click. Open the menu and click it for you. And, uh, and drop. It Just released a browser plugin for Chrome yesterday that can automate your browser. And I played with it today. Go [00:46:00] to Google and draft this email and it opened up Google. Mm-hmm. It logged, it didn’t, you can’t log into the accounts.
I logged into my account and then it drafted my email. Put the two in there, put the from subject, drafted the email, click send. I didn’t touch the browser after putting my password in. Right? So. You know. Amazing. So at some point that’s gonna go far. One more step is like, okay, now even log in for me.
Yep.
Yeah, because I think about this and I think of a simple thing that, uh, is not terribly complex, but I, I flew with my daughter to Houston. Mm-hmm. And I think of the, but before that, my other daughter had a wrestling tournament, and so I was like, all right, I, I want to go to the tournament and then I have to drive to Chicago, and then I gotta make my flight and, and I need car and hotel and all these other things.
Like I would love for ai. Like none of it’s hard, but they have to go, all right, what is your calendar? Okay. What is the drive time to get there? [00:47:00] How much margin do you need to get through security? And all these other things? And like, I would love for it to just be like, here’s the three ticket options that, you know, make sense for you.
I’d be like. This is amazing. ’cause I’m spending an hour trying to put all these pieces together and I would, I would love for the, the machine to go, Hey, I need to go to Houston on Tuesday, but I’m doing this. And it, I don’t even have to tell it, it just looks in my calendar and knows like, okay, it looks like these are the best options for you.
Yeah, that would be, that would be incredible. And I’m looking forward to the time when, you know, I can start to leverage AI to do those.
Steven: I would say on the, it’s on the fringes right now. Like you can get mm-hmm. You can do that right now depending on your risk tolerance there, you know, there, there are interfaces inside these models to book you a Airbnb, you know?
Mm-hmm. Go on, uh, open table and book a restaurant. Um, so it’s there, it’s coming. And I think the more we use it and the more the vendors like, uh, you know, all the big names Google, everybody are investing into what it can and can’t do within [00:48:00] its security domain. They, they have to take this into, you know, into the context because.
Let’s use the ticket example, for example. Like the things that work to solve your problem may not work for other people because of the specialties of your business. And the AI model has to understand that and not use data from client A for client B, ’cause we don’t want that, right? So there’s a lot of work still being done in that area and I think it will eventually get to the point of level, um, kind of like self-driving.
Like there’s gotta be a, a level four where you just ask AI to book your trip to Chicago and it knows all of those things for you because of your per, it’s called the contact intelligence or contact memory, content, memory. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Steven: So once it understands all that, and it can save it and understands it, context, context management is one of the limiting factors of AI right now, of how much you can remember before the quality degrades.
So it’s, it’s coming. You’re good [00:49:00] there? Mm-hmm.
Good.
Steven: Love it.
Um. Other, other levels of AI we should be be talking about just so we we are aware. Yep. Other levels. Jesus. No, I think
Steven: right now that’s about enough. Anybody can comprehend.
Yep. Good.
Steven: Because there, there are probably, there are more levels, but they’re not, they’re not defined
real.
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven: They’re not really real yet. I think agent AI is just starting to hit, like if you were like, where are we on the map? If there’s one to five, and I can’t even remember what five is, we’re like at two and a half of the way through the roadmap right now.
Sure. Okay. All right. Steven, thank you for that.
That overview of where AI is, is sort of headed. That’s, that’s exciting. Can we talk a little bit about, uh, maybe the risks associated with the bad guys using ai? Like what are they doing to, to try to attack me? Uh, because I, I think the good guys are using AI to, to develop things and grow and be mm-hmm.
Have positive impact. The bad guys are going, Hey, there’s also an opportunity here to uh, uh, go [00:50:00] be nefarious. Yeah.
Steven: I mean, the simplest, the simplest answer is AI is also enhancing their ability to execute at a higher quality and faster. So if we just take the most common attack vectors like email, right?
Yep. Um, the, the Nigerian prints for, you know, wanting to give you a million dollars was obviously spam before, but now AI has enabled them to craft that message with much better grammar, much better results because it understands how we work. Like a, it’s not a hundred percent, but it’s drastically better.
So I think it, it really forces organizations to start if, if, if you weren’t proactive before you, absolutely. Proactive now in identity protection in your business for all your employees not mm-hmm. Like personal credit card identity being your entry ID logins, your Microsoft, your Google logins, and, uh, looking at behavior analysis through [00:51:00] tools that we’ve, like, companies we partner with.
To do that for us. Like, Hey, you don’t normally log in from Nigeria. Why are you doing it? Now we’re gonna block that for you, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Steven: Um, the quality of the messages coming in where AI is now defending against AI messages to identify phishing attacks, um, yeah. But the one that always is overlooked, but is the most, uh, important is now gonna be training of employee cybersecurity training and doing, you know, micro habit five minutes a month or five minutes a week, training topics on how to recognize what’s going on or what you’re being presented with.
So you don’t click that link or you recognize that that’s spam, that’s not a request to send money to another country. Um, that’s not really the CEO at three o’clock in the morning, right? That, yeah. Yeah. It happens way too often. And, and if we can just train and educate our employees, um, which are always our weakest link.
We need to, we need to spend time and money on it. It’s always the thing that nobody [00:52:00] wants to spend money on. Nobody wants to do it. They don’t wanna spend the money on the time it takes to do it, and they don’t wanna buy the tool to do it. It’s, it’s becoming required by cyber insurance companies for cybersecurity insurance.
And frankly, they’re the person that’s gonna click the link. So yeah. Need to educate them. I’m gonna, please do. That’s assuming you have the found a core foundation of security. I’ve, I’ve worked companies all the time that don’t have a, there’s two methodologies, right? There’s the cloud security component and there’s the device security component, and they need to work together.
And if they’re not working together, then we don’t have the foundation to make insurance or cyber insurance or cyber training beneficial.
Yep. Yeah. And that’s where I was gonna go. I was, I was gonna say, um, okay, so, so attacks are coming my direction and, and again, I recommend people go listen to our last episode.
It was great. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, uh, just on cybersecurity and, and all of those good things. But yeah. We can agree that tax are coming. And they’re also picking on like the [00:53:00] small, the small business owner. ’cause you know, they’re, they’re more vulnerable. Uh, yeah. Because they don’t have all of these pieces working together.
Steven: Well, AI is, is pointing them out.
Yeah.
Steven: AI is pointing out every company there is. Right. Like the, the model, the fact that they can go ask chat GPT who, who are my most, like, who all the businesses in Chicago. Mm-hmm. And gimme everybody in the one to 50 space and in this vertical that work, you know, use this technology.
Mm-hmm.
Steven: And they, they don’t even know your name.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. No. ’cause I think that, so I, I think of step one is get, get the security protocols in place and then step two, and I think this is an important thing too, is. Have good backups, right? Oh, yes. Like if there is a breach, you know, uh, the ransomware is real.
And, uh, it’s like, uh, so can you talk a little bit about, you know, let, let’s just use us as, as an example. Like, you know, [00:54:00] we’ve got lots of, uh, client information and all that other fun stuff. We have, um, you know, two factor authentication across the board. So the keys to the castle aren’t just sitting on my desk, so that’s, that’s awfully nice.
Um, but let, let’s say there is a breach. How, how am I getting my data back? What, what, what are we doing to like, make sure that we’ve got these, um mm-hmm. Sort of backups and so,
Steven: so one, we’re not gonna use the, the B word, but yeah, it, it would be very difficult in your case for what we provide to, to your company, it’d be very hap it’d be very difficult, not impossible, but very difficult for that to happen because it’s not just about, it’s detect, defend, recover, right?
We need to detect the actions before they happen. So what, what does that mean? That means we’re looking at behavioral analysis of. How your employees are using their computers, how they interface with the cloud environment, the, the, the, the things that they’re touching inside the cloud and the behaviors of where they’re connecting from and usual working hours.
Those all go into a, a collection. It’s all linked together for us. Right. Our cloud [00:55:00] security device security is linked together so it knows that Pat logged in from his computer, that the company owned device into his Office 365 account from a, a territory that he normally works from. Yes. Yep. Right. And so that’s de detection and defending blocking from happen happening.
Right. When we get to recover that is having the, the things that, like Office 365 backup. If I have servers in my environment, having local device spin up hourly backups that are encrypted and do change detection on a regular basis. Right. Like backing up every hour inside of my office. Mm-hmm. Being able to spin it up locally.
It comes down to your, uh, you know, recovery time objectives, but what that means to your every business. Is is different. Some people are okay with being down for longer than others. Some want no downtime at all. It, it changes the approach. It doesn’t change the security changes the recovery. It doesn’t change the security.
Um, so for, for me and for all my clients, we [00:56:00] put them into like, you must have the cloud security defense. Mm-hmm. And the device security defense and having a security operation center monitoring it 24 7 is invaluable. Like, it’s the lowest level of protection you should have these days. Mm-hmm. Without it, you can’t, you, you’re just not protected enough.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is great, right? So, yeah. No, and Steven, I appreciate all of this. This has been wonderful. I feel like we could probably keep this conversation, go and make it a two or three part, uh, series. I think there’s, there’s some key takeaways here. Yeah. Uh, a AI is, is critical. It’s going to be like computer skills.
If you don’t have ai. In your business, you’re, you’re gonna be left behind. Mm-hmm. It, it drives your, your organization farther faster. The, the, the multiplication effect on your, uh, your current team and how they can work more efficiently and effectively is, is just real. Um, and then, uh, I, I think about what we need to do to, [00:57:00] to take action on this.
Um, I’m gonna take one of these slots, but Steven’s willing to, to have a short conversation or have a long conversation with a short number of people, um, on how to, how to, how to really bring AI into, uh, the mix. So reach out to dissent it.com. Uh, they can get you, uh, sort of on that, that short list of, of people that they’re willing to work with there.
And then I also think, just going back to cybersecurity, like you guys do an incredible job with us on all of our IT and cybersecurity stuff. Uh, reach out to Steven and their team and they can, they can help, uh, use the small business owner, really get all of these gaps plugged. ’cause they, they. The bad guys are coming.
Uh, eventually they will, they’ll find their way in and it’s so much better to be on the front end of it versus the back end of it. So, um, Steven, this conversation’s been fantastic. Thank you for really just helping us lay out the roadmap for how we can bring AI into our, our organizations and, and use it effectively and, and really drive our, our businesses, uh, [00:58:00] uh, to different levels.
So is there anything else we should, we should talk about before we wrap up?
Steven: No, I think just your, your recap was perfect. The only thing I would possibly add to there, I would add to that mm-hmm. Is the AI journey is an intentional one, right? Yeah. You have to plan, you have to execute, and you have to follow through.
Uh, without that, you’re just wasting your time and money. So go into it fully knowing that it is a, it is a, it is a ta, it is a project, it is a thing you have to do, but it’s not a quick one and it’s not easy, and you need to be intentional with it. So.
I love it. Wonderful. Thanks so much, Steven. Thank you. I appreciate you, man.
We’ll talk soon. Alright, thank you. Alright, that’s going to wrap up today’s episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and spending part of your day with me here on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I hope you found real value in today’s conversation about AI and that it gave you at least one idea you can take back into your business and start using it right away.
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