How Core Values Drive IT Excellence

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to Cherokee Business Radio. I’m your host Joshua Kornitsky professional EOS implementer. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by the Community Partner Program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business, supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org. And a special note of thanks to the title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc.. Please go check them out at diesel. Com. Well, welcome back for another episode. I’m thrilled to share with you. I’ve got in the studio with me, Chris Chao, co-founder and president of Centerpoint IT. Under his leadership, the company has earned accolades, including being named the best IT service in Atlanta in 2024 and landing on the Inc. 5000 list. Chris brings a really strong finance and business mindset to managed IT cybersecurity, and he focuses really and truly on simplifying the complex technical challenges for businesses so that they don’t have to understand that. Well, welcome, Chris.

Chris Chao: Good to see you, Joshua. Thanks for having me today.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s really exciting to have you here in the studio with us. Um, can you tell me a little bit about your background? Tell me about the the journey that led you to Centerpoint?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, I’m a non IT guy in the IT business. I’m a finance guy.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a rarity.

Chris Chao: Yes, it’s a rarity. It’s, uh, I’m seen to be a celebrity when we go to conferences with it. People, they ask me more finance and accounting questions, and that’s funny Did anything. Uh. But, uh. But I’m a serial entrepreneur of, uh, founded several businesses. And, um, kind of a funny thing about the entrepreneurial journey. I’ve had some wins, some losses, you know, learn from all of those. But, uh, Center Point, we’ve been doing this for about 20 years. Really? Yes. And, uh, so my, uh, my, uh, co-founder, uh, Fred, as a former CPA. So we’ve got a couple, two finance guys finding it, founding an IT company, and we’re both serial entrepreneurs. And what we found is we couldn’t get good IT support and the businesses we owned. And we said what a great opportunity to, you know, fill a gap and a need for businesses to say, hey, listen, let’s just make the it’s, uh, situation simple, right? For, for for businesses that are, you know, under 500 employees and, uh, and make them feel, hey, listen, they matter. Uh, and, um, and, uh, you know, the, the level of customer service is that, you know, that they’re getting is is something they can feel they can feel good about.

Joshua Kornitsky: So that’s really the the magic of a successful entrepreneurial endeavor is finding that niche that nobody’s in. Uh, how valuable, though, because you shared it with us. How valuable are the failures in your journey?

Chris Chao: Oh, wow. You know. You know, certainly a hey, sometimes you win, sometimes you you learn. Right? So it’s, uh. It’s true. And certainly, you know, you know, I’ve had a I’ve had a seven figure failure. You know, and, you know, it’s those struggles, you know, some of the days I, you I don’t know if I can get out of the bed today, you know, that sort of thing. And you kind of work through that. And it really just takes the fear out of it. Once you kind of work through those failures and process it and learn from them. Uh, you know, I think it just makes you a bolder but also smarter. Right? And in making those, those risks and also getting the right people around you, uh, to, to speak into your life and say, hey, listen, you know, hey, you know, here’s some good wisdom on some things. And I’ve been blessed to have, uh, several good mentors that come alongside me through the years and, uh, and good friends that will speak into me. And I’m willing to accept that and in humility and and learn from those things because it’s just, you know, not only, you know, you know, you can learn your own lessons or you can learn from other people’s, uh, you know, journey as well.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, that’s the saying I’ve heard is that a smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from others mistakes.

Chris Chao: Amen to.

Joshua Kornitsky: That. It just takes. In my particular case, I had to. It took me a long time to find wisdom. I hadn’t watch a whole lot of mistakes and make a whole lot of mistakes. Um, but you said something interesting that you and Fred both come from a finance background. How did you. Well, first of all, if you’ve made the the best of it in Atlanta, I guess you’ve cracked the nut that is providing the the right quality of service to in order for your your customers to appreciate the work you’re doing. But how did you and and Fred, presuming he too didn’t have a strong IT background. How did you conquer an industry that you understood the the math of so to say, but didn’t have the skills or abilities yourself? Because most often it’s the entrepreneurs themselves that that put the shovel in the dirt, right?

Chris Chao: Yeah. Yeah. You know, in our previous businesses, before we found a center point, we were in the periphery of the technology space. Uh, but got not in the IT support space, so. So, you know, we’re in that area. We kind of knew the, you know, knew some of the needs and some of the people there. And, uh, and once we started investigating over a couple of years, we’re like, wow, there’s a great opportunity here. And so what we really went out initially is, hey, let’s put together an all star team, right? Uh, the right kind of people again. And people that were customer service focused. I mean, that’s what we look for in the IT business. A lot of people are looking for technical, technical, technical proficiencies. But we’re saying, hey, number one, hey, uh, do well, our customers enjoy working with with this, this, this team member. And once we did that, then we weren’t worried about the technical piece of it. And then beyond that, just Fred and I, uh, just going through in the, in the IT space, most people are trying to do the latest, greatest technology. We were saying, okay, let’s get good processes and systems in place that are repeatable.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Chris Chao: And let’s build a company culture around that. Again around values, vision and mission that says, hey, listen, we’re going to make it simple for our clients. We’re going to we’re going to be a trusted partner, right. We’re going to, you know, and build those around and build that into our culture and hire people based on a cultural fit, not not a technical fit.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and so obviously, as an iOS implementer, core values speak to me directly. It’s it’s the heart of it. And I know you run your company on iOS, but before iOS, just in general, how did core values factor in for you? Is it. Can you help us understand that? Because I think that you’ve put your finger on something that I’ve heard a lot on the show, that a lot of successful businesses are seem to be understanding that if they put the culture ahead of the profit, it seems to work out really well.

Chris Chao: Right. Right. Well, absolutely. I mean, so really, I mean, a business, you know, in, in, in all the businesses I’ve owned and been successful with. And the ones I haven’t been, I haven’t, you know, I had to learn this lesson. It’s about people and it’s about the right people and the right seats. Right. So, um, it’s really understanding what you want when I ask, you know, people, hey, what do you want? Most people don’t have an answer. They haven’t really thought about it. And, you know, in this particular instance, the right people. What what did we what we identified the right people. And we actually started testing for personality profiles, you know, cultural fit, understanding who we were and who we wanted to be and aspired to that and, and and drove to that.

Joshua Kornitsky: So with the team that you have, uh, do you have a lot of turnover?

Chris Chao: No, actually we have almost no turnover, which is great. So, you know, good, good healthy culture, uh, you know, it’s fun to go to work with.

Joshua Kornitsky: And, and that and the reason that I asked that question is because I think you’ve just hit the nail on the head. Right. If, if, if you’ve hired people that align to the organization’s outlook, its goals and its values, in all likelihood you’re going to have people that are happy to come to work every day.

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: So thank you for sharing that perspective. I’m curious, though, because I am an old IT guy from a long time back. Not not. Nothing current to offer the world today other than as a consumer. But having borne witness to the last 20 years of technology, how have you seen it change from the from the owner’s side of a support business? What’s been some of the big shifts you’ve seen over time and if you’re willing to. Where do you think we’re headed?

Chris Chao: Yeah, yeah. You know, when we first got into this business again about 20 years ago, get really the needs were pretty basic, right? So again, they just needed, you know, responsive IT support. Um, the basic tool sets were having if you had anti-virus, a firewall and patched things occasionally, everything worked right. Right. And and now it’s now what we find is we’re in a, we’re in a situation again. We’re going to cloud, you know, how do you leverage the cloud. People want to do a lot more consulting. Salting. Right. And as you have a distributed workforce, certainly post-Covid. How do you secure that environment in, you know, where it’s distributed. And so there’s all kind of multiple layers of security tools and things like that that we’re getting into and doing a lot of, say, security consulting now and uh, and putting those buttons and those things. That’s one of our growth areas, really just rapid growth areas. Uh, because the, you know, the threats are that the threats are getting, you know, pretty intense.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, let me ask you, because that that’s a that’s certainly, uh, something that’s in the news all the time and, uh, usually not for good reason. Yes. Uh, and if your company is impacted, not yours, if someone’s company is impacted by a security concern, it has a tendency to to, at the very least, be life altering, if not life ending. Some organizations. So so what are some of the the services you’re able to provide now that that a small business may think, oh, this doesn’t apply to me.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people think, hey, listen, these things will just kind of take care of themselves, right? So, uh, you know, and, uh, sticking your head in the sand and being an ostrich is not going to work. Uh, you know, and, you know, a small business, a lot of times I hear the statement, hey, listen, we’re just a small business. Who’s going to bother with us, right? And try and try to, you know, compromise our security. Well, that makes you a perfect target, because even a small business, you know, they can be a six figure ransom. It can be whatever those things are. And there’s usually some and it can be disruptive and even business ending. Right, right. So what we sell say, hey, listen, as a small target, you’re an easy target. If you’re not doing the things you want, you know, you’re supposed to be doing again, patching things, having, you know, multiple layers of security. You want to be the least attractive target for cyber thieves, so they’ll move on to somebody else. And so so really, you know, it’s one it’s about peace of mind. You know, people want to know hey. And that’s what I hear once people kind of understand it. Hey I do like the peace of mind. They also see that if they aren’t having all these issues and they’re taking care of the maintenance of it, just like you would on a car, hey, everything runs better, you know?

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure, that that makes sense. And let me ask this question, because it’s something I used to hear all the time. Um, you know, we get our servers are hosted at Microsoft, our servers are hosted with with Google Cloud. They take care of all of that, don’t they?

Chris Chao: Yeah, I wish so. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So disaster recovery right. They you know, they you know, if you read the fine print, uh, they, they don’t they don’t guarantee the backups. So if you aren’t doing your own backups, you know, would be a good example. Uh, they’re not doing your security unless you set it up. So those are fun things. You know, you got, you know, people kind of take for granted.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, right. Because because I’m not thinking about, um, using a, a Google or an, uh, a Google hosted workspace or a Microsoft hosted exchange or office 365. I’m saying if I’ve got servers of my own that are hosted at Google or, or with with Azure, those virtual machines, right? They don’t come with any protection or updates or anything, do you?

Chris Chao: Yeah, they they don’t. They give you a blank slate. And so they’re giving you a hey, here’s here’s your environment. You’re responsible for all those other things. And yeah, and you know, even how you access those kind of, you know, those cloud resources, uh, you know, now now, you know, if you’re not having some sort of multifactor or some sort of encrypted transfer or those kind of things, that’s where we’re seeing a lot of that, a lot of the compromises where they’ll get into into that remote session, they’ll get into your resources. And then now they’re starting either get your data, your customer data, or they’re using that to do nefarious things. And, you know, and those are all things you can you can button up with some, you know, just some smart tools and a few few layers of security.

Joshua Kornitsky: How important do you think it is with with the people that CenterPoint works with, with the client center point works with, um, is the education aspect because.

Chris Chao: Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: If I, if I don’t know what I don’t know, I imagine I can pay you to teach me or at least know it for me to help protect me.

Chris Chao: Absolutely. You know, and we mentioned core values earlier in one of our core values is just having the heart of educators, because that’s a lot of what we do. Uh, because, again, we’re dealing with businesses and to know what they know. And they do what they do. And so they, you know, they want to be educated, but, you know, but they don’t want to be the experts. So our, our, our focus is even from the, the technical level or engineers, they take the time to explain, hey, here’s, here’s what’s going on. Here’s why you want to do this. Here’s here’s the next step. So they have a good vision, a good roadmap for, you know, what they’re doing and for the future. And I think most people understand that okay I understand why people just yeah. Hey what’s the why here. You know and then and then what’s what’s the what. And and once we explain that, it’s usually a pretty good, uh, you know, pretty good conversation. It’s a good relationship going forward. If they value that.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds like. Is it more of or is it a one size fits all or or is it more tailored?

Chris Chao: You know, there’s some things that, you know, everybody’s got to have. And, you know, we’ll say that’s just the entry level, you know, to, you know, to get into the game. Uh, but but beyond that, usually is a love of customization to, uh, you know, what is their risk? What is their security, uh, exposure or things like that. And so what we try to do is customize that, you know, and what what risk are they willing to take on what risk they want to eliminate? Uh, you know, and even asking a question, simple question. Hey, what does downtime look for you? Is that is that, you know, is five minutes of downtime life ending, you know, for your business or is it, hey, that’s just a minor inconvenience. So, you know, we can customize that so they can, you know, something they can afford that also meets their business, you know, initiatives and needs and SLAs.

Joshua Kornitsky: And is that something that that idea of understanding the value of the downtime? Excuse me. And I’m sure that’s because you come to it first and foremost with a financial mindset, um, not to reduce everything to dollars, but when you’re looking at the operation of a business, there is a dollar value associated with everything you do. That’s right. Is that something that’s often in the forefront of the the folks you you meet with? In other words, are they thinking about that or is that something you helped them understand?

Chris Chao: Yeah, we usually have to pull that out, you know. And once you once you start talking about maybe the last year or two and you just kind of see what’s been going on in their business, things come to the forefront of their mind. Oh, wow. Yeah. We did have this issue. We did have multiple issues. Hey. How much time did that that that eliminate, you know, how much inconvenience how many people were impacted. Right. How many customers you know were impacted. So I think once they kind of do the math, they’re like, oh, wow, I really do need to be paying attention to these things. They just never, you know, skipped a beat and said, hey, let me think about this.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I think that’s got to be a big value add, because one of the challenges that entrepreneurs across the world deal with is the fact is understanding what is important. And if it costs you 20 grand to be down for a day, it’s probably worth looking into ways to be proactive about that.

Chris Chao: Absolutely. You know, and we get called into and we’ll say security emergencies as well. So we’re kind of coming in remediating and and doing those kind of things and, you know, that’s after the fact.

Joshua Kornitsky: So even if I’m not a client, I can pick up the phone.

Chris Chao: Yep, yep. So we we do that for clients as well. And I say new clients. It’s, um, a good way to meet new clients when they’ve got an emergency. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Good. Good and bad.

Chris Chao: Yeah. Good and bad. Get to know each other really quick. Um, but but, you know, when we see those situations where, you know, again, they maybe haven’t thought about these kind of things and put things in place, it’s usually just more, you know, say more catastrophic, you know, and it takes a lot more time to recover, uh, if they can at all. So that’s, you know, we try to get people hey, listen, let’s let’s get the let’s get this out to folks. Let’s get people thinking about it. And, uh, and, uh, you know, putting some basic things in place.

Joshua Kornitsky: So if they’ve taken the right steps and they’ve taken, uh, presumably the right proactive guidance, does it mean a life without fear or worry or it just means a well protected organization?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, I’d say we’ll go with well protected, uh, because, again, nothing in life is, uh, guaranteed. Sure. And certainly it security falls.

Joshua Kornitsky: In that because there’s something new nobody’s thought of already happening somewhere.

Chris Chao: That’s right. And a lot of times some of your threats are internal. And you know, hey, you know, how do you take care of those kind of threats where you have people within the organization either. Sometimes we’ll say being being careless, okay. You know, would be or sometimes it could be malicious. And so, you know, are there, are there, you know, safeguards in place to take care of that, you know, and, and, and those sort of things. So those are things that, you know, even even in a well-run IT organization, you know, some of the larger ones we deal with might have, you know, you know, maybe a staff of six people or something like that, you know, we can come in and be that, that extra set of eyes and ears and use AI tools and, and other people watching that so they know instantly when things you know or you know, are looking, looking fishy.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so I don’t want to ask about malicious intent because malicious. And if someone’s bent on doing that they’re going to find a way to do bad. So tell me, can you give me an example of something that might be, uh, an accidental or an unintentional security, uh, breach or opening, because I think that’s the kind of thing going going under the, the mantra of I don’t know what I don’t know someone who’s hearing this right now, what’s what’s an example of something that can happen without it being, you know, ignorance or unintentional.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say, you know, the most common threat we see today is, is business email compromise, right. And that a lot of times that’s coming in from some email phishing. Right. So so again somebody an actor is trying to get you to, you know, click on something, do something, those kind of things. And yet again, not malicious intent on the employee. A lot of times the trouble is the most helpful employees are usually the most susceptible because they want to be responsive quickly. They’ve been.

Joshua Kornitsky: Asked. That’s an interesting thing to keep in mind.

Chris Chao: It is. And you know, and you hate to see these folks with big hearts. Yeah. Hey, listen, I just wanted to help out and do this, and I clicked on that or I did that. And, um, and so, you know, so training and, you know, that’s one of the places we try to start, start with our clients is, hey, let’s just get on a regular monthly training rhythm. So we kind of show your employees, hey, how to recognize, uh, some of the threats. Um, because, again, your your most vulnerable, uh, spot is your people again. And if you invest in them and you show them how to do that, it’s amazing. We can go. I think, you know, from a stat perspective, I love numbers. You know, I think when we go in to test people on phishing campaigns, 70, 17% of people click.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, so it’s a service.

Chris Chao: You are it’s a service. So so we will we will, we will we’ll call it fake fish people and uh, our clients and we’ll train them. And then when we do the training it goes down to sub 1%. So it takes I mean, so you’ve just shrunk.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a pretty uh that’s what’s the word in shrinking of the exposure.

Chris Chao: Right, right. Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Taking it from the side of the barn to the front of the car.

Chris Chao: That’s absolutely. So so again, we’re putting him into that. You know, we’ll say it a safe environment so we can train them and teach them. And when they do click on stuff, we can we can just teach them. And again it’s not something that’s going to be catastrophic at that point. So.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, sure. And if you’ve got the if they’ve worked with you to put the the prioritized right protections in place, then even if it gets all the way to somebody, once they click on it, there’ll be the right protections in the backside to make sure it doesn’t do what it intended to do.

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so who does CenterPoint work with? What? What types of companies.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. So so again, coming from the, you know, the heart of entrepreneurs, we we work for a lot of small businesses, midsize businesses. Um, you know, probably our, our average business is probably around 50 to 100 employees. That’s probably our typical. But, you know, sometimes we start with small guys and they grow and but I I’d say more than anything we’re looking for companies that hey, they recognize. Hey, listen, we need some help. They’re open. Open to ideas. Okay. And they’re really looking over time, not necessarily right away to get to best practices in their IT, support it, you know, security infrastructure. Um, and we try to do it in a way that customers can do it a la carte, and they can kind of work their way as. As their budget allows to, to get the right things in place over time.

Joshua Kornitsky: So if I’ve got an IT department, do I just fire them?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, you could because we we do all we do all of that. But most likely, you know, as we get larger in client client size, you know, maybe it’s like a 500, uh, user client will come in and fill a gap for that IT department that they, they say, you know what? We just don’t have the expertise in this area okay. And so we might say, hey, listen, let’s plug the security piece for you. Or maybe it’s a disaster recovery piece for you or just a consulting piece.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’re able to augment what they have rather than simply advise that they remove it. And and I gather that that’s an internal decision anyway.

Chris Chao: That’s right. And in fact, about 60% of our business is some sort of augmented, you know, not a full hey, we’re the IT department for everything we’re doing, you know. You know, maybe half or more, uh, you know, of their IT department. But again, just just partnering with them to make sure things run smoothly.

Joshua Kornitsky: How often do you have to send people on site?

Chris Chao: Gosh it’s funny. Back in the day, we used to have bunch of vans running all over the place and now it’s you. Gosh, I want to say probably 2 or 3 times a week, and it’s usually something they’re adding. Right. Uh, because it’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s just, you know, stuff just really doesn’t fail. And if it does, a lot of times things are disposable. We just ship another, you know, piece of hardware out and they plug it in and they’re rocking and rolling.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, I can’t thank you for everything you’ve shared with us. I do want to ask as as you kind of look back over the journey that that center point it has been on. Um, are there any moments that that stand out? So if someone’s listening to this and in full disclosure, Chris and I do know each other fairly well, and I know that he’s much more of a collaboration over competition kind of guy. But if I’m a newer IT support company or a managed service provider, what are some of the things that they should look out for that that are traps for them?

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. So so I you know, I would say for us, uh, you know, some of our breakthroughs have been in systems and processes and just making sure we have good repeatable systems and processes. And what you measure gets done. And one of the big measurables we’ve done is we measure customer satisfaction, uh, real time. And so we get probably about 600, uh, responses. Uh, we have one of the actually we have the highest customer satisfaction in our, in our, in our.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, best of Atlanta. I mean.

Chris Chao: In our business. Right. So which is great because we look at it and we coach to it and we reward to it, we gamify it and we have fun with it. So I think some of it is, hey, listen, let’s let’s just make sure we measure the right things and have fun.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds to me like you take good care of your staff and you take good care of your customers, and, and, uh, it sounds all the way around like it’s an organization. An operation that that is well worth engaging. Well, Chris, how do people get Ahold of CenterPoint?

Chris Chao: You know, I think the easiest thing to do is just go to CenterPoint itv.com and gauge us. We gauge a lot, quite a bit in LinkedIn. So just, just just look us up on LinkedIn. And several of us, I have leadership that I’ve passed the mantle over to. So I and but I’m still involved in the business. But I’m a little more of a coach and a supporting role.

Joshua Kornitsky: And clearly, you’re the spokesmodel.

Chris Chao: Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, that’s fun too.

Joshua Kornitsky: He’s in a tuxedo today.

Chris Chao: That’s right, that’s right. Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: We will also share all of the links to Centrepoint. It, along with a phone number in LinkedIn and all the rest when we publish the broadcast. Chris Chow, co-founder and president of Centrepoint. It. Thank you so much for being here with us today. It was a lot of fun and we all learned a little bit of something. And remember that Centrepoint was best of best IT service in Atlanta for 2024. They’ve already been on the Inc. 5000 list. Cybersecurity managed it. Really and truly they focus on simplifying the complex technology challenges for business. Thank you for being here today, Chris.

Chris Chao: Thank you Joshua. I appreciate the time.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s really been a pleasure. So today’s episode was brought to you in part by our community partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, please go to Main Street Warriors. And a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc.. Please go check them out at diesel David. This has been another fun and exciting episode of Cherokee Business Radio. I am your host and professional EOS implementer Joshua Kornitsky. Thank you for joining us and we can’t wait to see you again next time.