1578: Cybersecurity and AI for Small Business Growth with Ephraim Epstein

Robert Plank 0:00 Ephraim Epstein is here from fit solutions, dot biz. They are a rapidly scaling it services cyber security and AI integration firm that helps established businesses protect themselves with 24/7 defense systems. And they transform operations through advanced automation. So we're going to find out all about what that means for you as a business, as a company, how they can help you, and all just how, how this amazing man, individual, has built an incredible business and and what makes them stand out in that wonderful marketplace. So How the heck are you today? Friend,

Ephraim Epstein 0:37 Yes, thanks for having me. Robert. I appreciate being on, yeah, doing well, another busy Wednesday. A lot going on, I'm sure, same with you.

Robert Plank 0:47 Yeah, another day in paradise. But it's always good to try to try our best to keep up with AI, and then also the, just the cyber security, and, you know, my firewall getting hit from China and the botnet, it's always kind of scary. And so if someone says, okay, am I in the right place? Am I listening to the right person? Like, who do you help? What kind of problem

Robert Plank 1:08 do you solve? So yeah, we solve basically three problems. When we started the business, we started in IT services. That was my background, of course, that dabbles in cyber security. Because part of it, a big part of it, is cyber security. And so we were, we just, you know, started from the ground up, supporting companies with their their IT support, day to day activity support, and then on the strategic side, you know, in some of the bigger technology business problems associated with that. And then we around 2016 we launched our cyber security offering, started doing penetration test testing as well as 24/7 monitoring. So the monitoring was a big hard lift, because you have to staff 24/7, and that was, that was a big lift for us, so, but we did it. We stuck with it, and that's been very successful for us. And then in about a year and a half ago, we started also doing a lot of AI implementation. So it's not it's been another natural progression of, you know, the technology services space that we're in.

Robert Plank 2:29 Very cool well, you're solving some unneeded problems. And I was in more like corporate America about 20 years ago, and sometimes I was shocked at how maybe flimsy the protection was back then, right? And so I'm curious about, has you, have you seen anything that shocked you when you're rolling, like, when you mentioned things about, like, the 24/7 monitoring, or like, like, do you see just kind of scary holes, gaps in the infrastructure when you jump in the first time.

Ephraim Epstein 3:05 Yeah, I think it, I think the natural thing, as you know, and I I understand, because I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a business owner. Business owners take risks. Otherwise we would not have the businesses that we have. And so taking risks is inherent in something that has to be done. But as you know, as you start to have something to lose, you start to have to be a little more strategic, and that's where sometimes mistakes are made. And what I what I see on the cyber security front is, you know, just last week I had a chiropractor. He had, like, three locations, but still, I mean, three is not one, but it still wasn't like a huge operation. And his whole, his whole operation got shut down, and it was a pretty advanced cyber attack that where they got access to his email boxes, his server infrastructure, uploaded all the PII data of All the patients did leverage ransomware. So it was blackmail, slash ransomware, slash, you know, full disruption of the business. And his sentiment was like, well, we're too small. Like, How is this even happening? Like, why are they, you know, go after us. And I'm like, You're the perfect the perfect target. And I think there's a failure to understand how these criminals operate, and basically they have full time jobs, just it's like cold calling, right? You just keep cold calling. Cold call. Cold calling, you're going to have some people pick up the phone, and then you have some people buy. Same thing with with criminals. They keep every day monitoring LinkedIn, monitoring websites, doing scanning on the network, on the internet, and they're going to find gaps. And you know, LinkedIn is one of their best tools, because they can see everyone post when they got a new job somewhere. So they can leverage that to, you know, impersonate that person. They can buy dark on the dark web. They regularly buying credentials, testing credentials against existing logins. And yeah, they go after the giant companies like MGM Grand and all these big ones. But just as much a small company is, you know, it's hunting rabbits and hunting, you know, moose, you know, you still need the rabbits to eat. So if they can make a few $100,000 to a few million off of these smaller businesses, it's, it's good business for them, and they absolutely take it.

Robert Plank 6:05 geez. Well, it's a little frightening just how developed it is, right where they can buy these lists, and they can treat it almost like a, like a sales prospecting. And just like you know, see how much the leads have warmed up, so to speak. And so as far as, like, those, those best practices, that that we can do about that. Or maybe, like, what you and your team do you always hear about things like, you know, two factor authentication, or have backups or change the passwords. But like, what do you say? If someone says, Well, all these things you describe right about the dark web and the ransomware, like, how do I protect myself? Or what should I even be aware of jumping into this?

Ephraim Epstein 6:45 Yeah, for sure, the two factor authentication is an absolute must, like especially for email logins, things like that. But now it's even getting to the point that the texting of the two factor authentication, especially for email, is starting to not be good enough, so you'll want to use an authentication app in our monitoring. I mean, every week, probably in the last three months, we had on our of our customer base. I'm not just talking the whole wide world, just our own customer base. We had, I think, 18 incidents of criminals getting into our client networks. All of them had multi factor authentication set up, but they have it with texting, so it's really easy for them to impersonate that, and they have some hacks on that. So that's, a really kind of a big deal now, and just something as a business. It's the number one data breach that we see is into their office, 365 or G Suite. That's that's the number one we see. And then, from then, from there, once they have access to the email addresses, that kind of opens up a lot to them, because they can start reading, understanding the business, understanding transactions that might be happening, figure out who the players in the company are. So if they get access to last week, we dealt with a prospect that came to us. They had gotten into the CEO's email box and noticed wire transaction information that needed to happen from from his inbox. They provided the wire instructions to the county department, of course, to for legitimate charge, but of course, to the wrong bank account, so that that's very common. It's a classic. It's a classic one we see all the time.

Robert Plank 8:48 Wow. I mean, that's, yeah, that's crazy. So it's like, they get a little bit of access, right? They get into that email and look at what are the patterns, and then try to impersonate some of that to, like, get more access or get money funneled out. And so it seems like there's definitely the the need to get the other side built up in this arms race, so to speak, right? If they're using automation, they're using AI tools, or having people jump in and think, now we need to have the good side, like fit solutions, balance it out and kind of do that, do things on defense. And so as far as you kind of like raising awareness about some of this and getting the solutions you provide to the right people, have you had any difficulty struggles growing the business?

Ephraim Epstein 9:34 Yeah, I mean growing the business is full of challenges, obstacles, things you haven't foreseen. But for me, I've learned that opportunities are wrapped in problems, and so always looking, whenever I find a problem, saying, how, where's the opportunity in this? How can I turn this into an opportunity? So that's been something that's been that served me well, kind of a lesson I got from one of my mentors, and it kind of shifted my thinking, also, like shifting my belief on what's possible and and like just having that absolute the ability to learn from failure and never treat failure as failure, but treat it as a stepping stone towards success. So you know, as I approach the growth of the business, we've been able to overcome incredible obstacles. But by by, you know, just not giving up, I've been able to grow that now. How we've done that? It's, you know, a lot of it has just been, I would say, a combination of sales efforts, networking efforts, referral, word of mouth, doing excellent work, and then, you know, that would be the lesson I'd give to any business owners. You have to put put yourself, you have to do excellent work that you have a golden reputation that precedes you, because that will naturally get you referrals and also allow you to keep your customers and repeat customers, and then from there, you also just have to learn some basic skills, like selling, getting to getting in front of people, getting in the right rooms, meeting the right people, because if they don't know who you are, you know they can't, they can't do business with you.

Robert Plank 11:42 Very wonderful. That is some excellent life and business advice, and it probably runs counterintuitive to what our natural comfort is, right? It's comfortable, so to speak, to shy away from problems, let others solve the problems. It's comfortable to kind of stay in your own safe space, but you're saying, Well, if you want to get to that top 1% of people, then figure out a way to mentally enjoy solving problems, working on problems, and talking to the right people and playing that numbers game and knowing that well, you know, I have to stand out. And a lot of what I do, I won't get thanked for, won't get noticed, but if I make too many mistakes, that gets noticed. So I need to to solve the problems and talk to enough people that way they want my solution and what I provide. And I think that you know anyone that does kind of any sort of like technical programming, it like we enjoy the seeing this crazy technical problem in front of us, and you get it solved, and you get get that feeling of satisfaction. So we should chase that. And so you mentioned a little bit about some of these AI tools, these AI solutions, and that's always exciting, right? And so is there anything that you think you might tell us about, like, what's happening these days with with AI and IT infrastructure and cyber security.

Ephraim Epstein 13:05 So, so from cyber you said, from cyber security or AI side?

Robert Plank 13:13 From Ai, just what? What do you feel like? Excites you with the work you do, as far as AI is concerned.

Ephraim Epstein 13:19 Well, the thing that's exciting about AI is, so I've been in the IT and cybersecurity space, like, basically my entire career and the entire longevity of fit Solutions has been in that space. And, you know, I'm speaking, those are necessities, right? It's like electricity, like water in a building. Those are things you must have. They're not necessarily things, but they're expenses. They're expenses. They're not, I don't view them as a business owner. They might help with productivity. They might help with, you know, not having a huge reset of some loss, but they're not necessarily adding revenue to the bottom line. In rare cases, maybe, but generally, when we're just talking about, keep the lights on support, it is not directly in. It might impact revenue, because if people are down, they can't operate, but it doesn't lower costs, usually, and it doesn't add revenue. So those are things you know, when we go to a sales cycle, that certainly, whether that's that statement is 100% accurate or not can be debated, but that is definitely the way that when we go to sell the way they view it, they see it as a budget line item, like, how can I balance cost in service and and get the best service? Now with AI, it's kind of a paradigm shift, because it's similar to. Like selling something like a sales program, because it's going to add revenue to the company, or it's going to reduce labor costs. And so that's the when we started the AI thing. I said, I only want to attack the AI problem from labor cost reduction number one, or if it can add revenue, that's the other one that that we could entertain. But the number one is labor cost reduction. Number two is, is revenue addition, and because everyone's jumping in the AI game, we're in the services space, not we're not actually a software platform or AI platform. We are implementing AI platforms, of the many different options out there. We are implementing them and doing advanced implementation to reduce labor in a business and so it's a lot easier for a business owner to see the value in it, because they know the processes of their business, and if they can see how a particular AI solution, or if they're like this, if this could exist, or if AI could do this for me, instead of five People, I could go bit down to two in this department, right? That's an example. Now that is a tangible impact to the bottom line. Same thing, if it's like on the sales side, like, hey, if, if we could, you know, generate revenue in some way that it would pay for itself, and above, it's a no brainer. And so those are the kind of the problems that we've been attacking with AI, because that's how I was thinking about it. And so when you know everybody was hot to trot on AI, they still are. It's like the number one topic, I feel constantly being talked about, but when it first was kind of really coming mainstream after chat GPT release and every, you know, all the news articles we're talking about, all these jobs that are going to be lost and stuff, I said, Well, I want to actually see which jobs have been lost by AI, other than, you know, coders, because they don't need as many coders, I want to see an actual job that has been lost Now, mind you, that's not today. This was two years ago, so it was actually a little harder than you would think to actually have found use cases where companies were like, Oh no, we don't have these staff anymore. Now AI is doing it. So that was where the opportunity was, and it still is, in my opinion. And when I started looking like one of the first AI deployment cases that we did is we started really getting into SMS texting. Because the thing about SMS texting is you could buy these chat bots for a couple 100 a month. But anyone that chats with them, a knows they're not talking to a human pretty quickly and B once they actually are communicating. Let's say it did think it was a human. Can actually do the things a human can do? Can actually do tasks within their OET, within their, you know, line of business applications, or whatever it might be. So that was the challenge. And we, we were able to start doing some advanced deployments around SMS texting, where it could actually, you know, fool the vast majority. So in the high 90 percentile, people think they're talking to a human and then actually do tasks. So not just conversate well, but actually do things. So someone thinks they're talking to a human, and it's doing things like a human, that is a case where it actually reduces labor, and it can also increase the amount of output, because, you know, how many text messages can a human text conversations if they were full time sitting there, texting with clients, let's just say, on some account service thing, and a lot of people like texting. In fact, text to phone is 10 to one. So 10 to one someone will read and respond to a text and pick up a phone call, and 100 to one to email. So people, I don't know anyone that's not texting about business, so everyone's texting all the time. So that was a huge one. And second, unlike AI voice, AI voice is getting better. It's getting pretty good, but you still know you're not talking to a human pretty and once again, once you start feeling that way, whether it's you know, real or a man. Imagined. The thing that is real is the participation drops off dramatically. And with the text, half of you know, in my opinion, over half of the success depends on them thinking that they're talking to a human.

Robert Plank 20:23 Sure.

Ephraim Epstein 20:24 So if they think they're talking to a human, they're going to engage and you're going to have way high on the customer service type stuff. It's about around 74% when, when we know they think it's a human and it's customer service. Now, obviously, if it's a sales activity, it drops in percentage, but I'll give you an example, like we do hotels. So hotels will we've set it up kind of like a concierge. If you ever stayed at like a five star hotel at a resort destination, a lot of them have started implementing like real human concierge. They'll send you like a What's up or text message, and you can text them anytime you want a reservation at a restaurant, you want room service, you want to ask a question, you want them to make you a massage appointment at the spa, like any of that, though, that they can and will do. So we've basically built AI versions of that, and we basically fool them without outright lying to them, but we do a lot of things to fool them so they think they're talking to a human but it can actually do every single one of those tasks. And the engagement rate is 74% so 74% of guests actually have conversations, and we found that most guests actually prefer to text and ask for that spa appointment or ask for a room cleaning or ask for water to the room more than they would rather pick up the phone. So more people will text it once they have the concierge then pick up the phone, even though they could still pick up and call the front desk anytime or walk up to the front desk, they'd rather just text it. And so that's an example of like heavy labor reduction across hotel chains and higher customer service experience as well.

Robert Plank 22:21 Very nice. Well, these are exciting times to be alive, and some of these solutions that you talk about like, we take it for granted. We almost expect to be able to text. But even, you know, like 10 to 15 years ago, it would have blown our mind if one company did it. So you have to wonder if some of these nice to haves become kind of the expected standard and how we'll have to keep up, but these are some just amazing insights you have where with with AI, I'm sure you and me both have this problem of like, getting lost in the weeds. Right when you're trying to learn about AI or sell AI services, it's so tempting to just get lost in the word salad of it all. But when you say, Well, hey, what does AI actually do, reducing the labor, increasing the revenue, then that's an exciting selling point, and that's something that's easy to explain, right? Well, if you otherwise had to have a team of humans, 24/7 man in the phones answering the text, versus if the machine can do it, or if it only takes one human just monitoring all that, versus 10. Hey, that's really exciting. And then when it can pay for itself, when someone like you and your company jump in and update things, and then it's like, Whoa, it's way more streamlined, way more cost effective. Well, hey, that's what we want. And so you've given us a lot of ideas, possibilities, solutions here, but if someone here is listening, and they say, Okay, how do I know if fit solutions, dot biz is right for me? How do I know if I'm the right company for them and I have the right problems for them to solve? Like, what's the answer to that? How do they know if they're a right fit for you?

Ephraim Epstein 23:55 Yeah, that's a good, good question. It depends what problem they're trying to solve. I think the easiest is always the conversation to see if, if there is a good fit in what we do and the problem they're trying to solve. But, you know, we invite them. We invite them to check us out online. Look at our Google reviews. Look at our case studies, you know. And we do have kind of a large suite of services, but they're all in the technical services space, so they're all kind of complementary. And we basically have the three teams that specialize in their three areas. So AI cybersecurity, if they need a cybersecurity team, and it if they need it projects or an IT team.

Robert Plank 24:43 All right, AI cyber security and it. So if that fits the bill, if you say, hey, I really could use some help with that. I'm lacking in it, or I need to replace the team, then the website is fit solutions, dot biz and the phone number. Four is 888-339-5694, that's 888-339-5694, you can go to that website, fit solutions, dot biz. Click around. Get educated. Check out their social media. Check out their reviews. There's a contact form to go there where you can get in touch, set up a meeting and see if it makes sense, as far as them solving some of the problems for you, whatever those might be. So as we're headed to fit solutions, dot biz, it's time for the scary part of the show, Mr. Ephraim here, where we try to stump you and try to put you on the spot by asking about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

Ephraim Epstein 25:47 Well, a lesson that I learned was not to get too distracted as a business owner, as a entrepreneur, away from the main thing, and if you are going to add, like, a second revenue stream, which everybody wants to do, make sure the second revenue stream is complementing the first revenue stream. So in our example, I the second revenue stream I ever added was a CrossFit gym, completely non complimentary to my IT business. Absolute disaster. I mean, it was great gym, but financial disaster and time suck and disaster, that was a valuable lesson I learned. So after that, I learned from that, then when I added a second revenue stream that was cyber security, that's complementary to it. Now our third revenue stream is AI complementary. Right now, I've expanded another revenue stream in the IT in cybersecurity space, but in Central America, once again, complimentary. So they have to be symbiotic. They have to feed each other, if you start trying, you know, you're in, you know, tech development, and now you go into creating a restaurant, it's not a good it doesn't work very well usually. And your main thing will start to suffer, as well as the side hustle. So side hustles are not really great. Focus on the main thing, become amazing at it, and then crush it. And then, once you can do that, you can add something complimentary to build out and strengthen what you do, versus just, you know, this offshoot and both things suffer.

Robert Plank 27:39 That's extremely wise. You think about the slowness of the customer list growing, and about when you're doing like the publicity being known for certain things. If you're known for three different things, three different customer lists you run at a time in the day, right? You're too split-focused. But if you have these complimentary businesses, then that makes a lot more sense, and that can make your entrepreneurial ADHD work for you. And so if you're in one of these businesses, say you're similar to that chiropractor with three locations, and you need to have your IT AI cybersecurity figured out, then get in touch with fitsolutions.biz. Go to that website, get educated. 8883395694, and we're so glad that you made the time to talk with us today, Ephraim, and educate us and give us these wise lessons so fitsolutions.biz go there. You'd be glad you did, and I'm really grateful that you came to the show. So thanks for being here.

Ephraim Epstein 28:38 Awesome. Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Robert Plank 28:41 All right, hey.