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Look, We Need to Talk About Your IT Strategy

I'm going to be straight with you: if you're still choosing IT providers based on who has the lowest monthly fee, you're leaving serious money on the table.

I get it. Every dollar counts. But here's what I've learned watching companies succeed and struggle; the cheapest IT option is almost always the most expensive decision you'll make.

The Hidden Cost that’s Killing You

The average small business pays between $120,000 and $1.24 million when they have to respond to a data breach. And 46% of all cyber breaches hit businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees. Most aren't sophisticated attacks—they're happening because disorganization lead to skipped security patches.

Here's a real example: A client budgeted $1,200 to set up a new employee. Final bill? $1,800. Why? Three separate visits just to get printer access and email working. That's a 50% cost overrun on something routine. Now multiply those "small" inefficiencies across every hardware deployment, every update, every security patch.

How Elite Businesses Think Differently

The businesses crushing it aren't asking "How do we spend less on IT?" Their mindset is on automation, accuracy, and a frictionless experience.

They've figured out that automation is a competitive necessity. Researchers found about an hour of daily work per employee could be automated right now. By 2030, that could be three hours per day. For a 10-person team, we're talking 10 to 30 hours of recovered capacity every single day. Companies nailing this are seeing 20-30% gains in productivity and revenue.

Three Places Where Cheap Becomes Expensive

Hardware: Stop buying equipment online and losing three weeks of configuration headaches. Fixed-price deployments mean hardware shows up pre-configured. One client automated their onboarding documentation—what took 45 minutes per new hire now takes 5. That's saving more than time, it’s building scalability.

Security: Cyber attacks jumped 180% since 2024, and business recovery takes an average of 287 days. Going cheap on security is like buying discount brakes. Elite businesses run layered security with proactive monitoring and track real metrics—intrusions blocked, compliance scores, threat response times.

Maintenance: Without proactive management, cloud costs spiral and vulnerabilities stack up. Smart businesses schedule maintenance, automate updates, and optimize costs. Systems stay current, security holes get patched before hackers find them, and budgets stay predictable.

The Real Math

Your current approach probably looks like:

• $800/month for basic support

• $2,400/year in emergencies

• $5,000/year in staff time on tech issues

• $15,000 lost to manual processes

• $120,000+ in breach exposure risk

Annual risk: $143,200+

Elite businesses invest differently:

• $2,500/month for proactive expertise ($30,000/year)

• Zero emergency fixes (prevented)

• Negligible staff time wasted

• $15,000 recovered through automation

• Minimal breach exposure

Net result: $30,000 investment that pays for itself through recovered productivity alone.

And unlike cheap IT, this compounds. Every automated process stacks. Every prevented breach saves exponentially. Every hour your team isn't fighting technology is an hour building your business.

Here's What I Really Want You to Hear

You've got talented people. How many hours per week are they losing to tech friction? Setting up equipment? Troubleshooting? Doing manual tasks that could be automated?

Forty-three percent of businesses report greater productivity once they embrace automation. Another 41% noted increased availability—teams had more capacity to focus on what actually matters.

Elite businesses figured out something crucial: you can't save your way to success with IT. But you can absolutely invest your way to a competitive advantage. They stopped trying to minimize costs and started maximizing what technology could do for them.

So here's my question: Would you rather keep trying to save $1,700/month and hope nothing breaks? Or invest that difference in building something that actually moves your business forward?

One option feels cheaper. The other makes you money. How much is waiting costing you?

Until next week,

—Jared 

Text Me: 314.806.3912

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