Mike Capuzzi: Welcome back to another insightful episode of the author Factor podcast. My guest today is Tracy Hardin. Tracy is the founder of Next Century Technologies, an IT managed services provider located in Lexington, Kentucky. Earlier this year, I helped Tracy create her What You Need to Know About IT Without the Geek Speak book series, which is up to two books as of this recording. Tracy, welcome to the show.

Tracy Hardin: Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, first of all, I appreciate you're very busy. I know we had to get this scheduled, and I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your day today. And I was really looking forward to this. Tracy, I loved working with you. I just, you're like, for me, like, you're like an ideal client. You were serious, you were quick, you focused, and now you're doing stuff with your books. So we'll talk all about that. But I, I just barely touched on your background and your business and how you help clients.

Mike Capuzzi: Can you share a little bit more for my listeners?

Tracy Hardin: Sure. I'm a nerd through and through.

Mike Capuzzi: Maybe that's why we got along. We're too nerds.

Tracy Hardin: I was in computers in high school and went into computers in college because I thought they were easy, might be a good career choice. And it was. I got my bachelor's in computer science from the University of Kentucky, and then I went on to work ten years in the corporate world managing computer networks, and went on my own in 2001 and started my own business. And I was on my own for twelve years. Then my word of mouth marketing, that's the only way I marketed, outgrew me and outpaced me, and I had to start hiring people. So now I have a team of eight folks here in Lexington, and we manage it for all kinds of different businesses. When you've done as long as I have, you meet a lot of people in a lot of businesses. We have a tv station, insurance agents, lawyers, medical community banks, financial firms.

Tracy Hardin: We have a company that does explosives, I mean, veterinary clinics. So a lot of different sectors. And I really enjoy watching these people use technology to make their businesses work.

Mike Capuzzi: And I have a background not specifically in it. I've worked with clients over the years, Tracy, with folks in managed services. And it's always intrigued me because I think a lot of local businesses, I mean, you are local business owners serving local business owners, though you do, and can have clients around the country because of technology, but just for someone who's listening. So I'm thinking there's a lot of business owners that think, well, either they don't know anything about what you do and how you help them, right? And they just of hope and pray nothing happens. Or maybe they think they're too small. Is there a cutoff, Tracy, when it comes to outsourced it services? You know, someone's too small, or is it really, anybody who's running a business should really be talking to someone like you.

Tracy Hardin: Anybody that has a computer in their business should be talking to somebody like me. And there are exceptions, but nobody's too small to be hacked anymore. Everybody's got a story or they know somebody now. And some of the smallest businesses I work with handle large amounts of money and especially around the construction industry. And they know it. So you can, you know, they're going to try to get in the middle of those, you know, conversations where you're wiring money to and from customers via email, and they're going to try and get the middle of that conversation and have you wire it to the wrong place. And I actually have seen that, and I actually talked about that story in my book. And, you know, it was a tiny company with two people in it, but they were moving massive amounts of money and they lost that and they sent it overseas.

Tracy Hardin: I think the FBI got most of it back. It was not a client of mine, but they were doing business with one of my clients, and that's how I learned about it. So let's just say that the hackers don't care what size your business is. If you have money, they are interested.

Mike Capuzzi: It is amazing. And even when we work together, I was, and I'm pretty tech savvy. I was amazed about, you know, when I was reading your books and learning about what you do and how you serve clients. So by all means, if anybody is not really watching what they're doing when it comes to their computers, you're going to make an offer later for they can get your books on Amazon, but check out Tracy's books. So let's talk more now about your book author journey, because based on your nature, you didn't publish just one book, right? Right away you came out the door with two, and you made the interesting decision, which I really applauded, which is this idea of a book series. So you're at two. Maybe there's going to be three, maybe four. You know, who knows? But I love the title of your book series, what you need to know about it without the geek speak.

Mike Capuzzi: Tell me a little bit more about that because I think that really resonates with me, at least.

Tracy Hardin: Well, that's. That is what my business is about. I've always been really good at talking, talking and explaining very complicated technical things in the simple way to clients that they can understand. That's the key to my success. So putting that into a book, it just made sense. That's why it was so important in my books. I had a glossary. If you're going to talk it, you need to know what the words mean.

Tracy Hardin: And I'm looking, I'm googling, and they're all in the headlines. These words are in the headlines. And I'm thinking, these people don't know what these words mean. You know, what is a pen test? What is a risk assessment? What are those vulnerabilities? What's the difference? My book covers that and puts it in plain English. My goal is always to help business owners make better decisions in it for their businesses. I always want them involved in the decision making so they don't feel like they're getting scammed. Why is she choosing that software? Why is she picking that hardware? I want to explain it. I want to be transparent and listen.

Mike Capuzzi: What you just articulated is such a powerful reason why I would encourage folks to want to write that book, whether it's the first book, like in your case or in your case, first two books. But it is about being helpful first, right? It's about, you know, I always share this story about my grandmother. I won't get into it in this recording, but I have it on my blog. And all about trying to help before you sell. And books, specifically short books, right? Books that could be read in an hour, you aren't trying to teach everybody about cybersecurity or it, but just enough to help them. And then, you know, make the smart decision to reach out to you, but even if they didn't need to, they still got something from the book. So I really, I thought what you did there was very nice. And we decided as we were working together, instead of having one longer book, which might be less likely to be read, to break out the content, can you tell me a little bit more about both of your books?

Tracy Hardin: Sure. And that's what I did. I actually wrote it as one long book, but there was a natural break in it. And that break was the cybersecurity part. The cybersecurity is so huge now. It wasn't as big a deal in the nineties, it really wasn't. And in the early two thousands. But, you know, the viruses got more sophisticated, the phishing emails got smarter, the scams got bigger, and ransomware really was a game changer.

Tracy Hardin: So the cybersecurity part was quite a chunk. And like you said, I didn't want to make it a huge read. I wanted to put it in a small bite so the cybersecurity part definitely could stand on its own. And the other book is basically how I run my business and manage my it. Does it matter if I'm managing 30 clients or one corporation with maybe one, two, or ten locations? It's the same idea. So I thought to myself, if I was going to work for corporate world today, how would I run their it? It's like no different than I'm doing right now with my company. So that book is more for people that want to manage their it better. Maybe they have internal it or maybe they don't, or maybe they've outsourced it and they wonder, huh, I wonder if these people are doing it right.

Tracy Hardin: I wish I had a second opinion. I'll give you that second opinion in that book.

Mike Capuzzi: Yep. Yep. It was. It's a very well rounded sort of overview of everything and questions to ask and people to consider, team members and everything. So. But I want to go back to the cybersecurity book because that one to me was sort of scary. I mean, obviously the topic is and what can happen, just let's, let's leave our listeners with like one, and if this is not the right one, then you let me know and we'll look at another one. But this idea of phishing emails, I kind of know what that is.

Mike Capuzzi: But first off, phishing emails can affect anybody, correct?

Tracy Hardin: Anybody with an email address.

Mike Capuzzi: Okay, why don't you share, Tracy? A. What is a phishing email? And that's p h I s h I n g. Yes, I know. We've heard it. Most people probably they've heard it, maybe on tv, the news. I know Consumer Reports magazine talks about it a lot. But what is a phishing email? What does it look like and what are your recommendations about that?

Tracy Hardin: A phishing email is an email you receive from some sort of threat actor or bad actor whose intention is to get you to click on a link and supply some sort of information. And those emails can look just like legit email. They can be worded in perfect English. Thanks to AI. They have no problem writing these in perfect English. They'll steal the logos off of Amazon or your bank or any, you know, credible companies. They'll steal the logos and even put a signature on and they make it look like the real deal. And the idea is to get you to click it.

Tracy Hardin: And there's usually some urgency involved. You need to do this now. You know, I just got one from my American Express that said, hey, you know, we had a problem with your account. You need to click here so we can confirm you. And because your card's been shut down, that kind of stuff, there's always a threat and an urgency to it. And you click it, and then it's asking you for your username and password. Nowadays, you can click on the link, and it'll take you to an entire website. That's fake.

Tracy Hardin: That looks completely legitimate. And those are very scary because they're really taking the time. They may even buy a domain name. I think the one I got from this fake American Express was cardservices.com or cardservices.net. i mean, sounds legit to me. Those domain names are really cheap and easy to buy, so they're really putting some time and effort into these.

Mike Capuzzi: You know, Tracy, just last night I was reading an article. I forgot about this until just now, I was reading an article where it showed two different examples. A legitimate URL in an email, for example, and then a second one. So it was like an ab. And the question was, which, what's the difference, Tracy? And again, I'm pretty smart. I have a technical degree. You know, I'm on computers all day long. I'm looking.

Mike Capuzzi: I can't figure out. I'm looking like it was like Citibank. Citibank.com, comma. Citibank.com. right? And as soon as I say this, you're going to know it. And I'm probably going to bastardize the pronunciation, but there was one letter. It was the a in bank. In the correct one, it was the normal English a.

Mike Capuzzi: In the one that was the bad version, they use a different language, a Cyrillic a, which is a different language, where the a is actually a different character altogether. Right? And the way. And they said they register domains is a different way of registering the domain, which that even though it looks like an a and then you look at it different, there's differences. When you glance at it, you're like.

Tracy Hardin: Oh, heaven forbid if you're on your phone, you'll never see that. Right? Yeah.

Mike Capuzzi: So I was talking to my 82 year old dad not too long ago, and he calls me afterwards, Mike, I just clicked on something. So we had to shut down everything, get new credit card, all that. You know, the spiel, if someone. Is there any advice, you know, you talk about in your book, but is there any quick advice, Tracy, because it's so prevalent, if what's the first thing someone should do. If you accidentally or you do click on this by mistake, or you should know you did and you shouldn't have, what's the first thing they should do?

Tracy Hardin: I'm a huge fan of turn off your computer and call your it person because I don't know what you clicked on. That's just it. I don't know if it's going to load a program like ransomware or if it's just, you know, it's. So when you say click on, I really don't know. I'm a little paranoid myself. So I'm always like, yeah, call your it person. Our policy is for our clients and I tell them this. I said, if you get any email, I don't care how insignificant it is, if it makes you worry, call us.

Tracy Hardin: We won't charge you. It won't waste our time. We'll spend the five minutes looking at it with you. Please. I would much rather do that than try to clean up a mess afterwards. And they take us up on it. I'm happy to say I'm getting them, well, paranoid and that's what I want them. And there's been a few things we've stopped and said, hey, yeah, that's not legit.

Tracy Hardin: Don't do that. So having a good it person, that resource that you can, you know, call your dad really should have called you first.

Mike Capuzzi: Yeah. And I'm not really an it resource either, though.

Tracy Hardin: But getting that second opinion, sometimes, that is just gold.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, he knows better. I've told him many times, you know, but. And he's, and he does everything on a phone, so that's. He doesn't have a computer.

Tracy Hardin: That's. That's tough.

Mike Capuzzi: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Hardin: That's really tough.

Mike Capuzzi: Yeah. Now, in your cybersecurity book, and I, I just want to mention this because I thought it was such a powerful offer, because in the books that we publish, as you well know, we always recommend making different types of offers to get people who are readers to engage with you in your cybersecurity book. You made an offer? Well, tell me about the offer you made, because I still don't quite understand what you do, but it sounded very cool when I read about it.

Tracy Hardin: It is really cool.

Mike Capuzzi: And this is an offer any of your readers can take advantage of?

Tracy Hardin: Yes. Yes, it is an offer. It's best if you have at least five computers. I will say that. Otherwise it kind of falls flat. But the offer is, it's a phishing simulator. And what we do, first of all, I have to sign a non disclosure agreement with you because it's legit. I'm going to find stuff, by the way.

Tracy Hardin: I just always preface it with, I could be see things like passwords and Social Security numbers and stuff. So we sign. We myself, I signed the nine disclosure agreement that I'm not going to tell the world. And then we run a phishing simulation. I send you an email with the link, and you share it with three to five people in your organization. All you guys do is click, one click. And then I give you the report of everything I found. And it is powerful.

Tracy Hardin: And I did it on myself. That was, you know, it's like, okay, there you go. The amazing. And we'll get passwords, and what we do is we get them partially redacted. So I'll get the first three or four characters of the passwords, so you'll know if it's yours or nothing. You know, you'll recognize it, and then we'll see. We'll tell you all about your network and the other devices on your network. And it's.

Tracy Hardin: I don't think people realize what you can get with one click. You get a lot. So the phishing simulator is really cool. It's a great educational product, and it's basically a type of pen test, a real basic level. Because what I'm trying to do is see how far and get your network. It doesn't break anything. We're not out to break stuff. We're out to see what can I discover? We've actually gotten into all of 365 tenants because the person was an admin and may not have known it.

Tracy Hardin: When you're an admin in 365 and I get your machine, you can do so much. A lot of power there. So the report is a real educational, and it is a free offer in the how to cybersecure your business. And Mike, I will offer it to all your listeners as well. The quickest way to take advantage of this offer is go to my website, nextcenturytech.com, and there is a contact us in the corner, and you can use that to request it or email me@tracyxturytechtech.com. and I'll be happy to work with it. I love educating people. This helps you be more secure.

Tracy Hardin: It's great. I will tell you, the one thing we always find is people's passwords because they store them in browsers. Never store your password.

Mike Capuzzi: It's like deja vu when we had our calls. Tracy, you're scaring me again.

Tracy Hardin: I will find them every single time, and I will lay them out in a beautiful report for you, which means the hackers can too.

Mike Capuzzi: By the way, there's a third option, which is to go grab your book on Amazon, because I think as of the recording, the Kindle version is still $0.99.

Tracy Hardin: So, yes, the Kindle version is just $0.99.

Mike Capuzzi: Poor Tracy's book. Leave her a review. You know, all that good stuff. Hey, so let's talk about your use of books, because a, the books were just both published within the last few months, just very recent. You're doing a lot. And again, your local business owner oftentimes serving local businesses. And what are some of the ways, Tracy, you've been using the book so far?

Tracy Hardin: I have been handing them out at every in person networking event. I got a purse that I could stash them in. And the conversation hints around cybersecurity or concerns about cybersecurity. I take out my book cause it's written for the people I'm talking to, and it's got, chapter nine has a handy dandy checklist of things that you should look at for cyber securing your business. And I always tell people, hey, if you can just adopt one, two, maybe three things from my list, it will improve your security so much. You know, it's just about educating people about cybersecurity. So they get handed out a lot. I was at an event this morning.

Tracy Hardin: I handed out a dozen books.

Mike Capuzzi: Wow, good for you.

Tracy Hardin: Because people, you know, cyber security, it's like you, there's a lot of concern about it. The other way I use it is when I do a proposal for a new client, I bring the books with me, even if they don't go with my company. The especially the second book will give you some idea of what to expect from any it company, because one of the chapters in it is what does good it look like? So I talk about things that every it company should provide to their customers and or any IT department should provide to their corporation. This is what good it looks like, and there's, like several key items and areas. So the goal is, with these two books, you can go to your it person, or if you're interviewing a new it company and ask good questions. If you don't know what you don't know, hopefully after you read my books, you'll be able to go to your it person, say, hey, are you doing this? Why aren't we doing this? Or, you know, or if you're interviewing them, make sure that they do cover these areas.

Mike Capuzzi: Yeah. And what I also loved about both of your books. And you can see it right here in this. This is your first ever podcast interview. You're so conversational. You're so, you know, like you said, you have this skill of really just talking normally, not over complicating. And even though your books, I, you know, it's a heady subject for a lot of folks, just the way you wrote them. Very conversational, very easy to read.

Mike Capuzzi: So, yeah, I mean, that's the beauty I always say. These books are like little soldiers out there working for you, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they're out there. Even though a client may not pick up the phone or schedule a meeting with you tomorrow, even though you have one this week, you were telling me. So, congratulations. There. They're out there. And at some point when, you know, something happens and your book is sitting on their bookshelf or on their desk, and, you know, God forbid they on a phishing email and they don't have that protection, they're going to reach out to you.

Tracy Hardin: Yeah. The other way I'm using the book is I'm giving them to my customers. You know, that's. And so in getting them to ask questions, and that has happened, too. You were talking about other ways I've had them come in. You know, I had a co managed client. We help customers that have it departments already. And he was like, willing for ideas to improve his cybersecurity.

Tracy Hardin: Mean, I had just got the books the day before, and I said, oh, I have a book for you. And he did. He went through the checklist, and then he had these. Well, I want to do this one. I want to do this one. So handing them to existing customers.

Mike Capuzzi: And listen, a little tidbit there. Someone else on my podcast shared this and made it into my magic of free books, which was, if you're going to hand out a book to a customer, hand them two copies and just say, hey, listen, I'm going to hand you a second. And just in case they know somebody that you don't know, and I just. There's other business owners, you know, who could benefit from this. I'm gonna give you a second copy as a gift. And it's just a, you know, you don't have, who knows what may transpire from that. Tracy, before we wrap up here. Cause I wanna talk to you about what it's been so far.

Mike Capuzzi: Again, I know it's fresh, but I do wanna touch on. You and I are very similar technical backgrounds. More, you know, we're not flashy, hypey people. And I recall when we first met earlier this year, you were researching book publishers. You were talking, you were looking at different things. I'm going to ask you a loaded question. I don't typically do this, but I don't typically interview my own clients. What was the appeal? I mean, I know our pricing was fair.

Mike Capuzzi: I think you like that, the value that you got from us. But if someone's listening to this and is thinking about writing that first book, now that you and I have published two books for you, worked together to publish two relative to our service, our book format, you know, our recipe for a short, helpful book, what would you tell that person?

Tracy Hardin: It is a long process. Writing. It was obviously, you know, time consuming, but it is a process, and it's really great to have somebody like you to sherpa it because, oh, my gosh, there was so much that I just was ignorant about when it comes to publishing a book. So you had the experience. You have done other it related books for people I knew, and that was important, too. I have seen your book and from another person, so that was helpful, too. You've done it technical books before, so that meant a lot to me as well. But just your knowledge and stuff, because I tell you, I've been lost.

Tracy Hardin: It's just there's so many little moving parts. I look back and say, I think writing it was the easiest part.

Mike Capuzzi: Amen. You know, I coach that all the time. Yeah.

Tracy Hardin: And you guys did a great job in helping with the COVID design. I, like, I had no idea. I just said, I'll get out of your way. You tell me what you think and you come out the great cover design. So that's, that's what I was looking for.

Mike Capuzzi: Yeah. And listen, you, like I said, you were very quick, but yes, all that work you had, the manuscript for the book was pretty much done before we started working, and then we decided to break it up and you tweaked it a little bit. So, yes, your investment time was. That's why you were so fast. I mean, you signed up and you had two books done within less than three months, published books on Amazon. So, you know, nice job there. So as we get ready to wrap up, I know it's new, but you are a now multi book authorization. You've created this book series.

Mike Capuzzi: What has it meant so far, Tracy, to you, whether it's you personally, whether it's how clients prospects perceive you, what's it meant to be a book author?

Tracy Hardin: It's great. I didn't it wasn't like, I don't have a story like where it was a dream of mine. It was. I had just written so many articles over the year, and then suddenly I'm like, I've been at this for over 30 years. And to write a book and put it all down on paper, you know, at my age, it's just suddenly really appealed to me. I just was like, this would be great. I can hand it to people in so many different ways. I can tell people even beyond what I've been doing with these little articles.

Tracy Hardin: And the limit, limited exposure I had before. Now I can give them books, and people light up when they see a book. They love that. Just the other day, as an event, and this lady was selling her book, I said, you want trade books? We just traded books. I signed her, she signed mine because she had a little book, too. So it's great. I'm very proud of them. They look fabulous.

Tracy Hardin: It's been more than I can imagine.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, and you're, again, at the beginning. We'll stay in contact, and I think you've got, you know, a lot of opportunity. I think there's gonna be a lot of good things happening, you know, podcast, guesting. Again, it's not maybe your sweet spot, but for what you do and how you serve clients and the fact that you can serve clients from wherever your topics are so important and are so timely and unfortunately, are never gonna go away. You have a lot of opportunity there, Teresi.

Tracy Hardin: So, yeah, I actually have one other thing. You're talking about how to use the book. How I'm using the books is I've talked to our local chamber of commerce, and we're gonna do a class based on the cybersecurity checklist.

Mike Capuzzi: So awesome.

Tracy Hardin: Those are, you know, public speaking. I've done that on and off and done other classes, but having the books is just.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, make sure when you do that. Cause I know you've read the magic of free books, or at least you have a copy and you've gone through it. But a little tweak to that is, you know, an afternoon with the author of. It's an afternoon or an evening with or something. Claim that author status and use that when you're marketing this thing.

Tracy Hardin: Oh, okay.

Mike Capuzzi: So just that little tweak of an exclusive presentation from the author of the two books, yada, yada, yada. So, anyway, we can always talk about that offline, but, Tracy, you mentioned it. But just, again, share with our listeners. Where can they get your books, and what's the best way to learn more about you and your business?

Tracy Hardin: Well, both my books are on Amazon right now, and there's a paperback in the Kindle version. Kindle's ninety nine cents. And it, I'll probably leave it there for a couple more months. My goal is to get in as many hands as possible, not to make, be a millionaire off these, but to educate as many people as I can. The best way to find out about my company is to go to our website, which is nextcenturytechtech.com or, and you can reach me, Tracy Trac yextcenturytech.com as well. A, and I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook. We got presence there. And we're always posting on those platforms as well.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, Tracy, again, I enjoyed working with you. It was nice to see you today. And thank you for your time.

Tracy Hardin: Thank you. Mike.