Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals everywhere. If you support businesses of any type, any size, we're here to help you do that better, smarter and faster. One of the things that I like to do is talk to other professionals in the area, and I especially like talking to fellow Florida men. That's what we're going to do today. I have Reginald Andre, the CEO and founder of Ark Solvers. He goes by Andre. Yes, you're in the house, sir. How are you?

0:00:50 - Reginald Andre

I'm doing good. Thank you so much for having me.

0:00:52 - Marvin Bee

Well, thanks for being here on the show. Of course, we wanted to do this in person Andre is from Miami, right down the road but both of us had a heavy schedule this week, so we're doing it by Zoom.

0:01:05 - Reginald Andre

That's right, it works too.

0:01:06 - Marvin Bee

All right. So, Dre, we met well, was it about a year ago now, at one of the. I think it was the app. Was it the app River One or the HP One?

0:01:15 - Reginald Andre

I think it was the HP One.

0:01:17 - Marvin Bee

HP One. Okay, down on your neck of the woods.

0:01:19 - Reginald Andre

Yes, yes, yeah. We met first time. I had never heard about you and I was like oh man, we started following each other on social media.

0:01:27 - Marvin Bee

Yeah, and you've got a company down there, Ark Solvers, that you started. What was it? 2010? Yes, and for folks, if you want to know how to grow a business, Andre has certainly done that. You went through a stretch where you guys were considered the fastest growing business. What? Three years?

0:01:49 - Reginald Andre

in a row Yep, three years in a row fastest cybersecurity and IT growing business with the South Florida Business Journal.

0:01:57 - Marvin Bee

All right. So what was that growth like? So when you started, was it just you and you blew up, or how did it all go?

0:02:04 - Reginald Andre

Well, my story starts actually from how I even started with through CompUSA, if you remember CompUSA, CompUSA.

0:02:13 - Marvin Bee

Oh my goodness, that's going back.

0:02:15 - Reginald Andre

Yes, yes. So that's kind of how I got started. That's in the tech field. I was going to school to become an English teacher and one day this guy comes in and he buys a shopping cart after shopping cart after shopping cart full of items, and at the end of the sale he asked me to like hey, can you set this up for me, because it wasn't like. You know how we have the Geek Squad Best Buy. When they're coming to your house, they set up everything. So he gives me his address and I said sure, I can go ahead and set up everything for you on the weekend. And that's when my journey in IT started.

0:02:50 - Marvin Bee

All right, Well, that sounds a little bit like me. I was working at a store. We did not do on-site service and customers always wanted us to go on site and do stuff for them, and I finally said to the owner there's probably some money out there. So here I am, 27 years later, still going strong. Now let me ask you this. So you were going to school to be an English teacher?

0:03:14 - Reginald Andre

Yes, I was going to school to become an English teacher. I love it. I still have that passion for kids and giving back to the community.

0:03:22 - Marvin Bee

But you were working at a comp USA store.

0:03:24 - Reginald Andre

Yep, it's down the street from my house and I needed to. You know, my mom is a first generation Haitian American, so she couldn't afford to put me into the traditional university, so I had to pay as I went to school.

0:03:38 - Marvin Bee

All right, Gotcha. Now, regular listeners aren't going to understand this, but was the store that you were at? Is that the one at the Glades interchange?

0:03:47 - Reginald Andre

That is correct. So yeah did you go there.

0:03:49 - Marvin Bee

So I went there. Oh, okay, this is going to sound horrible. So back in 1989, we needed I was president of the student government at Palm Beach Atlantic and we needed a hard drive for our computer. At the time we had two five and a quarter inch drives, but we knew that we needed a hard drive. So I drove from Palm Beach down to that store and spent $300 for a 40 meg hard card.

0:04:27 - Reginald Andre

Wow, wow, I didn't even know the store was there Back then.

0:04:32 - Marvin Bee

So what, what a journey there. All right, so you, uh, thank you, wow, so you've got nice journey there Now, you, you. So you did that, but you had another company before, Ark Solvers.

0:04:45 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, so, so. So now I'm, the guy gives me his address and I'm going, you know, through the MacArthur causeway and I grew up in Miami gardens, which at the time was one of the most dangerous cities in South Florida, and my mom had never taken me outside of where I grew up. So now this is here, I am 20 years old, on the MacArthur causeway, overlooking, you know, south Beach and the boats and the cruise ships and the palm trees, and I'm like, oh my God, I had never been exposed to this.

0:05:18 - Marvin Bee

That's pretty nice over there, pretty nice.

0:05:20 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, that's the Miami that I would see on TV. But I'm like that's not my neighborhood. And so I go on the 17th floor and this guy has a beautiful view of the ocean and the marina. And after I set up all his computers, this guy comes in and says one of his friends comes in and says, wow, who set this up for you? And he's like Andre did. And he's like can you come to my house?

And in a six month period the guy that I met at comp USA is sending me to all of his friends to set up his, their computers. And this is like Windows seven days, so you know viruses and installing software with the CDs and things like that. And one day the guy that I met at comp USA, he calls me. He says, hey, Andre, I didn't tell you this, but I'm a retired 41 year old multimillionaire from New York and I know you're going to school to become an English teacher, but I want to start a business with you. Whatever you're making that comp USA, I'm going to double it and let's start a business together. I go to my mom and I tell her the story and she's like this is why I came to America. This is the American dream. Go for it, and I went for it.

0:06:29 - Marvin Bee

Wow, talk about a lottery ticket, almost huh.

0:06:33 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, yeah. So for we were the kings of Miami Beach. For you know, for nine years we had over a million in sales, everybody knew us and we had about nine employees. And you know, my business card says vice president. My email address said managing partner. But I went to my boss and I says, you know, there's nothing actually in writing that actually says that we're partners. And can we do that? So he told me yeah, no problem, Give me a couple of months and we'll get something in writing. And can you guess what he did, Marvin?

0:07:06 - Marvin Bee

Uh-oh, what did he do he?

0:07:07 - Reginald Andre

let me go. He called me to the door and he said I'm sorry, mom, I have to let you go. And this is working at this business for nine years, 18 hours a day with him. And, yes, he was the money man. He was the one that put the money in, but I was the one that was the company you know, and as I'm going to do the garage, you know, with literally $100 in my pocket, he didn't even give me the last pay, and this is 2009. This is rock and roll days where the money would come in and you would just spend it. So I didn't even give him savings. And I remember the quote from Rocky that says you know, it's not hard. Hard you get hit, it's how you get back up. And from there I started um, Ark Solvers, um, and that was about um almost 14 years ago.

0:07:55 - Marvin Bee

All right, and you guys are doing gangbusters down there. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on is you are not just thriving in business, but you're all over the news man.

0:08:08 - Reginald Andre

Yes, yes, Um, one of the things that we focus on in our, in our business, as far as marketing, is to be on social media. You know it's very important that. Um, you know, yes, we spend money on SEO and we do um ads and stuff like that, but there's free marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn and things like that. So, um, so that's one of the things I focus on All right.

0:08:33 - Marvin Bee

So before we get too far along, let me go ahead and Talk about the thing that made me reach out to you. It's been all over the news. People have been talking about it in our industry, the city of Fort Lauderdale, where I reside, and I probably should have Focused my marketing efforts on getting them as a client. They recently got hit with a fishing attack and ended up spending $1.2 million in the wrong way. And you were on, were you on both news, CBS and Channel 7.

0:09:13 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, I was on ABC, CBS, NBC and the local newspaper of mine hero.

0:09:19 - Marvin Bee

All right, so let's first talk about that and then we'll talk about the cybersecurity side of it. How did you get yourself to the point where all of the stations are calling you when it comes to cybersecurity?

0:09:33 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, so I have on my Google alerts hack you like. You know Google alerts for keywords cybersecurity, hacking, Miami Florida, all of these alerts and they came on my phone and I'm like, whoa, this is big. And of course, the city of Fort Lauderdale, like most people or most companies will do, is that if there's bad news, they're going to make sure that it's like at a, you know, after five o'clock on a weekend when the world is blowing up, and then they're going to be like, oh yeah, you know, by the way, this happened to us, so they published it around 551, that this is when it happened. And you know, 551, the news cycle is already. They already kind of know what they're going to be talking about.

Yeah but a 10 o'clock news. So when I got this, I was like, let me make a YouTube video on it. So 30 minutes later, I just did a YouTube video, which you call we call newsjacking, where I just take the article and I just put it in my own words and you know my own twist to it. And then the next morning I get an Insta message from our Instagram and it says hey, this is channel 10. We'd like to speak to you. So I immediately call him and he's like are you Original Andre? Did you?

You know, talk about this on YouTube is like yes, are you a cybersecurity expert? Yes, I am. Would you like to speak to us about what happened with city of Fort Lauderdale? Of course. And then, okay, come meet our news crews at, you know, at the, at in front of city hall, and Then from there we did that interview. And then, and then not even knowing that I was doing that interview because it wasn't live Then channel six call me, then channel four call me and then the news the newspaper called me all within like a two hours. So I'm just running around that day I put on different shirts. I'm so glad I was. I'm saved up and cleaned up. It was a, it was an awesome experience and yeah, so that's how I went about.

0:11:24 - Marvin Bee

All right. So you know those clips. They're only, you know, one or two minutes long. So there, really snippets and stuff, and they asked you for a list of tips For people to do so that they would not be hit. Now we should probably go back a step further and tell people how this happened to the city of Fort Lauderdale. Now, everywhere I've read it was pretty much something where there was a submission of an invoice from a well-known company and you know moss construction and I don't know if they're the largest, but they're huge and for some reason that invoice came in, got paid, and it wasn't until later, when they realized that the real Moss construction did not get that money, that they found out it was an issue. So Did you address that with them, or just the general tips?

0:12:15 - Reginald Andre

No, no, because I know I definitely addressed it. I said it. You know there was only one or two ways it could happen that that someone saw public records, that there was a big contract that the construction company got, and they went and you know, found an Invoice, you know, found that it's moss construction. They created a domain name instead of two s's, they created with one s or something that with that variance, and then from there found out who pays the bills at the city and went on the website. Okay, let's try and let's see. Or the second thing is there was a business email compromise. They were able to see what type of transactions was happening in these emails and that's what it, that's what it is. So I talked about both of those. But you know, talking about how this could have been prevented, I mean $1.2 million on an email to just say, hey, we changed our bank account and here's the invoice. Please pay in the fur someone on the other side of the city just to say, yeah, okay, no problem, we wired it, please confirm.

0:13:18 - Marvin Bee

Yeah, definitely some double checks that need to happen there, and we talk about this all the time with our clients. If you get a request From somebody by email, you need to call and verify. I mean it's, it's that simple in a lot of cases.

0:13:34 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, a phone call to them just Verifying, like you just said, it would have just resolved that whole thing. I have my cousin who works for World Caribbean and she says that you know they have vendors where they're paying that large amount. It goes to three people. Even though it's the same amount every month, it still has three people that verify before a million dollars goes out.

0:13:55 - Marvin Bee

Hmm, I Very interesting. So let's bring this a little closer to home. Most of us don't have clients that are sending out $1.2 million without checking. Your company is really known for being the cybersecurity experts and you know. You said 14 years you've had this company. How did you take that journey to get to this point?

0:14:22 - Reginald Andre

My feeling every day. If you want to know what not to do, you come talk to me. That journey started off with, like I had mentioned, $100 in my pocket in 2010. I had a crazy non-compete. I couldn't go after any of my past.

0:14:38 - Marvin Bee

Oh my goodness, are you a non-compete?

0:14:41 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, yeah, 2010. So things were a little different back then and it was crazy. It was like a 20 mile radius and this guy he was. He had money, my boss had money, so he could make my life miserable if I even tried. So from there, I just had to come back to the hood, start knocking on doors. I went to Kinko's, I got some flyers and literally I just went on one of the major streets here and just went to the businesses and just offered my service because you know, although again he was the money man, but I was the one running the company, I knew how to run a company, I just wanted a little piece of the action and you know, he so to follow along that story, that's how you got back on your feet.

0:15:23 - Marvin Bee

How did you get into Managed services and cybersecurity specifically what? What point was that?

0:15:31 - Reginald Andre

So my journey has changed because what I started to realize about 5, 6 years ago was that Repair, computer repair, I T support was starting to shift into cybersecurity. And a quick example was I was starting to have customers you know, you have your basic web route or whatever those but they were starting to get ransomware and the tools that I had on their systems wasn't good enough. I was having great relationship with my clients and then I tell them I'm protecting them, but then their emails get happy because they didn't have, you know, dkm or SPF or whatever the case is. So also another thing is I noticed and at that time we were probably doing I don't know about 800,000 in revenue what I started to see was that the break fix business and the flat service business was going away. Perfect examples like how you look at the Uber to the taxi cab driver when you got the new Boy in town is the Uber and taking all the clients, and I was starting to lose clients because those clients were going to people that was talking about cybersecurity.

So I had to make a decision. I had about 800,000 dollars in revenue. Where about 500 of that was it break fix, and from there I learned something called the 8020 rule, where 80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients. And when I looked at it I was like, wow, the clients that are a pain in the butt, that dispute the bills, that don't appreciate you, that's like 80% of your, your, your clients, yeah, but the top 20 are the ones that, like you, give them an estimate. No, no problem, this is what we need. So I did a journey of about four years where I fired 80% of my clients, I let go of some staff, I downsize and I had to just basically shift my business, focus on that 20%. I raised prices and I became a premium service and not just a guy that can just come and fix your computer.

0:17:45 - Marvin Bee

Did you do this based on what I'm going to add, let's see the book the pumpkin plan by Mike Michalowicz.

0:17:53 - Reginald Andre

I have it right over here. There was two books that, yes, the pumpkin plan, exactly, yep.

0:17:58 - Marvin Bee

Yep, so okay. So that's because I've done that as well and you know, the numbers don't lie. I mean, I had we fired our largest client back in 2017. They were probably 30% of our business, but they were more than 50% of my time in aggravation. Yes, that's got to change.

0:18:23 - Reginald Andre

I love that book and there was another one called built to sell. Have you heard of that one?

0:18:27 - Marvin Bee

I have. I've not read it yet, but I have it. I think it's on a list of stuff I'm supposed to get.

0:18:32 - Reginald Andre

Yes, yes, but that one talks about how you know. The end game for all of us is to sell the business. Or you know, or if you have kids, you want to pass it down. But if you want to sell your business, you have to make sure that your business is sellable.

0:18:44 - Marvin Bee

Right.

0:18:45 - Reginald Andre

And those two a story of that. So that was another book. And then that's when I really although I was only about 33 at the time, but I'm still, you know as the visionary you got to think about where your business is going to be in 10, 20 years and, reading those two books, said you know what I got to change the business.

0:19:03 - Marvin Bee

Now I read somewhere your undergrad degree in business administration, right.

0:19:10 - Reginald Andre

Well, I'm a C student, Marvin. I went to the community college and I got a what they call a doctor's degree at a community college, and that's when you go to school for eight years and come out with a two-year degree.

0:19:24 - Marvin Bee

Okay, Well, you got the degree. That's all that matters.

0:19:29 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, so I have an associate's degree in business administration and then another one in network technology.

0:19:35 - Marvin Bee

Okay, well, where I was going with that is when I graduated. That was my degree Okay, business administration and I had no intention of being a tech or being in the IT industry, and of course, that's where I ended up, and it seems as though those of us that have a business mind seem to do well in understanding what we need to make sure our business survives and that we structure it the right way. And it sounds like you've done that, even though you had to go through your pumpkin plan period. It seems to have served you well for where you are today. Now, when we were talking in our pre-chat, we were talking about the marketing of the business. Mm-hmm, I know that you've listened to a few of my shows. You probably haven't listened to a lot, but the world knows me as no marketing Marv, so I'm not out there pimping myself and doing all of that stuff. You are, but I think a lot of your stuff actually comes from your heavily involved in things that have to do with the seven figure MSP group, right.

0:20:46 - Reginald Andre

That is correct, yes.

0:20:47 - Marvin Bee

All right. So I'm going to be completely honest and open here. I am not involved with any of that. I did reach out to Chris Weiser once to have him on the show and he got busy and couldn't be on. I myself probably could not see myself doing any of that, but it works for some people. There are a lot of people out there that say it doesn't, but you're a person that says it works and you're doing it, so tell us a little bit about your marketing strategy that has helped you, specifically when it comes to being one of the fastest growing for three years straight.

0:21:28 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, so with the seven figure Chris Weiser program there's a lot of things. It's like drinking from a firehose. But one thing that they talk about is that there's so much noise when someone picks up their phone and they're going on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, there's so much noise, and how is it that you are now on top of their mind. So one of the things that I do is that if I'm your client excuse me, if you're my client, I friend you on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on all of the social media platforms, because one day you may leave to go to another job and I lose contact with you. And there's one thing if I called you 30 times a month, you would block the time, block me and say don't ever contact me again. But if I post 30 times a month and I'm just, you know I'm not saying bye, bye, bye. It's kind of for Gary Vee, if you've heard of.

0:22:26 - Marvin Bee

Gary Vee yeah.

0:22:27 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, there's a book that's called Jab Jab Jab Right Hook. So, on my posts, it's very, very, it's not fake, it's real stuff, but it's very. I'm not thinking the word, but basically what I do is I post about my family, I post about my religious, I post about that, but then maybe for every four posts I post one post about my business, about cybersecurity, and again it's. The idea is that I'm not putting in your face bye for me, bye for me, bye for me. I'm just saying Reginald Andre, family man, you know going out with his son, you know on a vacation, bye for me. And I found that that's worked because I've had a lot of old clients, and not necessarily the owners, but you know the assistant manager or just someone, and then I'm friends with them, and then you know they leave six months later like, oh hey, I'm always seeing your posts, how's your kids doing? I've never talked to them about my kids. And then all of a sudden, hey, I'm over here now. Can you help me?

0:23:37 - Marvin Bee

Yep, you're definitely all over the LinkedIn. I see you there. I was going to ask you and this is not a normal question that I ask my guess, but in your I forget what the name is the tagline under your LinkedIn man of God, husband, father, entrepreneur, cybersecurity and you put in that order.

0:24:01 - Reginald Andre

Yes.

That probably resonates a lot with your clients it does because it just shows what's important to me. You know, I'm Technical, I can walk the walk for a little while, but after that I'm a C student. I've hired a student to handle the technical work. No, and that's important for me because I my last, my last marriage.

I've been married to my wife now for eight years, but prior to that there was a lot of late nights and there was a lot of weekends and there was a lot of things that were just not in Priority and that caused one of the reasons why, you know, things didn't work out. So as I've matured in my life, I realized that you know a client calling at eight o'clock at night because they have. I mean, yes, sometimes it's, it's a valid reason. But you have to set boundaries and you have to make sure that what, what matters to you the most is taking care of and, especially as we're getting older and we're starting to go to more funerals, you're realizing that man, life is short and your son and your children and your family is they're either going to remember that you were never there because you were always working, or they're going to remember that you were there, and that's the balance that I'm trying to do so and it's obviously it's a struggle, not to say.

0:25:25 - Marvin Bee

I don't work nights and weekends sometimes, but I try my best not to yep, I get that and we're in a similar situation in the sense that I don't have children as young as you, but the wife and I work together here in the business and she's been gone for the last week because she's up visiting her mom and it's that's something important to her that she has to be able to visit family. Her mom and dad are getting up there, so having that time Is important to her. So I've had to. I've had to suck it up a lot this week, which was one of the reasons I couldn't have you come here. I'm just I'm just running around and too busy here. Another thing that you do on your LinkedIn is you. You know, you mention all the stuff you put on there, not just the family stuff, but you are very active in the community. You were doing something at Broward College. There was. You got recognized for something. What was it? The pillars.

Yeah 2023 conference. What? What is that?

0:26:25 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, the pillars conference that we recognize, with a very nice group of people, padrinos restaurant and then author architect or, and basically it was speaking about the power of now and how you're supposed to live your life further now. And it was at the pillars hotel in Fort Lauderdale, beautiful, and it was to the students and community. And you know, remember when I told you I was going to school to become an English teacher? Yeah, so one of the things, though, that because my I pivoted my career, is that you know, Marvin, you're probably never going to have a client that calls you sincerely to say, oh my gosh, Marvin, thank you so much. You know, you helped me and I was able to make another million dollars because you kept us up and we never got cyber-attack.

But for me, I have that itch. I have that itch of like being in my heart someone that wanted to teach. I'll never get that experience of going to Target and then someone saying, hey, Mr. Andre, remember that one time, when I was in seventh grade, you, you just told me something you probably don't even remember, but this changed my life. Meet my kids, meet my wife, thank you so much, and I wanted to teach that what that's what's really in my heart. So I guess that's kind of like a you know how, like you can have grandparents and they'll take your kid for a few hours and then they're like give it back.

So I think that's the same thing for me where I'm involved in the community. I can't do it full time, but that's just the way to get that itch of giving back. So that's why I'm involved, because I do truly care about our future, especially being a. You know, growing up in Miami Gardens, no father in my life, a lot of different things that could have Turned my life, and if you look at the block that I lived in the Miami Gardens, my four friends are, and to all respect to them, but either they have the dead end job, they're dead or they're in jail, and I want to be sure that, especially in my community, I I help as much as I can.

0:28:30 - Marvin Bee

Well, that is fantastic. I Was going to make a comment when you said it earlier Miami Gardens. People realize you know who I am, my background, and when I say I don't want to go to Miami Gardens, people are like, oh, that must mean something, it's uh, I mean it's much better. Now let's say that Much better much better but back then I never wanted to get lost in certain areas of Miami. And because of that.

0:29:00 - Reginald Andre

I was in downtown Miami. My office was there for many years and I said I need to bring it back. I need to show the community and the kids that I mentor there that you can't have a business here in Miami Gardens. And I did that and I even purchased a house in Miami Gardens.

0:29:15 - Marvin Bee

You know what I did not pay attention to, that I we had talked about doing an MSP cribs at your place. I didn't realize that I know. The problem is you've got You're, you're all over the place. I mean you're in Miami Gardens, I mean you're in Miami Gardens, but you, you're in Miami, you're in Fort Lauderdale, plantation, Hollywood. So you, you are around and you know Pretty much an example of listen folks, if you want to grow your business, it can be done, even in a place like Miami, as big as Miami is. One of the hardest things that we have down here is, you know people are fighting to get to the bottom lowest prices out there. Um, you know, trying to do managed services for 30 dollars an endpoint.

0:30:00 - Reginald Andre

Yep, yep.

0:30:01 - Marvin Bee

Killing us out here.

0:30:03 - Reginald Andre

Yeah, yeah, because, um, you know, we have an influx of an international community and what? Cybersecurity is not regulated. So someone can go to Kinkos and say they print me a hundred cards and all of a sudden they're cybersecurity experts.

0:30:16 - Marvin Bee

Yeah, so we were going to talk a little bit about you know the way you do manage services and fees and stuff, but I like where this conversation is gone in terms of the emphasis that you put on community and doing things the right way. Is there a message that you would like to get out to other IT business owners about you know persistence and doing things right. Do you have words of wisdom that you want to share?

0:30:48 - Reginald Andre

Definitely. I've had scenarios where, quote on quote, my competitors are quoting jobs and they're cutting corners and in our industry it's easy to cut corners. I've seen where people have purchased refurb servers and computers and sold it to the clients as new. I've seen where estimates that says you know they're providing cybersecurity but they're doing like no phishing testing, like they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing and going back to undercutting. So I would say that sometimes not sometimes, but all the time it's always worth doing things the right way because it's going to come back to you. It's going to come back and that's something that I know that when I sleep at night, yep, I may not be the cheapest, I'm probably going to be the most expensive one, but I sleep at night knowing that I'm doing the best to protect my customers and not my bottom line.

0:31:44 - Marvin Bee

You made a point earlier about customers not really showing appreciation.

You know we get very few thank you and in our line of work, especially from the businesses because retreated a certain way.

But an example that I'll share with you is last holiday was it was right after the holidays, I think it was February or March A client called us up and said hey, we have an extra room on a cruise. We'd like you and your wife to join us. And this was a client that I forget, if I think it was like 17 years ago when I first met with them and didn't want us to do their support. They stayed with somebody else and, to make a long story short, we came back into their world and have been with them since. They are now my second largest customer and they're the type of customer like you mentioned earlier. When I make a recommendation to them they're like Marvin, whatever you want you do, because you have taken such good care of us and you know that's who we want as clients. Now you know we've got to do what we say we do. We've got to walk the walk, we've got to do things right, but when you do that, there are customers that will appreciate it.

0:33:06 - Reginald Andre

And there's plenty of customers out there that's going to appreciate it.

0:33:08 - Marvin Bee

Yeah, all right. Well, I think we're going to go ahead and end this here, because I've got more questions, but I think I'd like to regroup and maybe ask you for another podcast, one that we can do maybe live either at your place or mine and share a little bit more.

0:33:25 - Reginald Andre

Absolutely. I enjoyed one of the mugs back there and we'll drink some coffee.

0:33:29 - Marvin Bee

For sure folks. All right, Andre, actually, let me get this right, because it's Reginald Andre. Let me ask. Let me go ahead and ask. We didn't do this before and I've always, in the back of my mind, thinking why did you have people start calling you Andre instead of by your first name?

0:33:49 - Reginald Andre

So I'm French, Haitian, American and we a lot of times. You'll see that there's two first names.

0:33:55 - Marvin Bee

Two first names right.

0:33:57 - Reginald Andre

So just from high school, people called me Andre and it just stuck. My mom still calls me Reggie and Reginald, but for the most part, 95% of people call me Andre.

0:34:08 - Marvin Bee

Okay, All right. So Andre is the CEO of Art Solutions, one of the fastest growing cybersecurity and IT service providers in Miami, Florida. Doing it right, Andre. Thanks for being on the show.

0:34:24 - Reginald Andre

Thank you so much for having me.

0:34:25 - Marvin Bee

All right, that's going to do it. Folks, for this episode of the podcast, tune in to itbusinesspodcast.com, select your favorite pod catcher and sign up for these shows so you never miss a beat. We'll be back with a live show next Wednesday, 8pm Eastern, and that's going to do it. I'm going to have all the links for Ark Solvers and I think I need to find a link for the books, of course, the pumpkin plan, and I'm going to go find the Gary Vee book, jab Jab Jab, right Hook, so you can get those and put them in your library. Andre, thanks for those. We'll see you soon, folks. Holla!