Nearly all small businesses using AI tools say it's made them more efficient. That's all good and well, but we need to ask what those businesses are doing to protect themselves while they adopt it. Most SMBs we talk to in the Lower Mainland have employees using AI tools daily, but very few have clear policies around what data can be shared with those tools, how outputs should be reviewed, or what platforms are actually approved for business use. That gap between adoption and governance is where the risk lives. Not because AI is dangerous, but because without guardrails, sensitive client data ends up in places it shouldn't and employees develop workflows that are hard to secure retroactively. We put together a free Employee AI Usage Policy template to help with exactly this. Comment "template" and we'll send it over, our gift to the business community!

"We don't do development work" - A conversation that happens way too often Had another chat this week where someone assumed we build software. I get it - "IT company" can mean a lot of things these days. So let me be crystal clear about what Raxxos actually does: We're your on-demand IT support department. Think of us as the tech support team you wish you had in-house, but without the overhead. Here's what that looks like in real life: • Your internet goes down at 2 PM and your team can't work → We fix it • You need 10 new computers set up for your growing team → We handle it • Your server is acting up and slowing everything down → We diagnose and resolve it • You want to prevent tech disasters before they happen → We monitor and maintain your systems We're not building apps or websites... Rather, we're keeping your existing technology running smoothly so you can focus on running your business. If your team has ever lost hours to a computer problem that "someone should really look at," that's exactly what we're here for. Business owners in Surrey, Langley, etc: We are still offering that first fix free (up to 2 hours) if you want to see what proper IT support looks like. And yes, we pay for referrals!

Nearly all small businesses using AI tools say it's made them more efficient. That's all good and well, but we need to ask what those businesses are doing to protect themselves while they adopt it. Most SMBs we talk to in the Lower Mainland have employees using AI tools daily, but very few have clear policies around what data can be shared with those tools, how outputs should be reviewed, or what platforms are actually approved for business use. That gap between adoption and governance is where the risk lives. Not because AI is dangerous, but because without guardrails, sensitive client data ends up in places it shouldn't and employees develop workflows that are hard to secure retroactively. We put together a free Employee AI Usage Policy template to help with exactly this. Comment "template" and we'll send it over, our gift to the business community!

"We don't do development work" - A conversation that happens way too often Had another chat this week where someone assumed we build software. I get it - "IT company" can mean a lot of things these days. So let me be crystal clear about what Raxxos actually does: We're your on-demand IT support department. Think of us as the tech support team you wish you had in-house, but without the overhead. Here's what that looks like in real life: • Your internet goes down at 2 PM and your team can't work → We fix it • You need 10 new computers set up for your growing team → We handle it • Your server is acting up and slowing everything down → We diagnose and resolve it • You want to prevent tech disasters before they happen → We monitor and maintain your systems We're not building apps or websites... Rather, we're keeping your existing technology running smoothly so you can focus on running your business. If your team has ever lost hours to a computer problem that "someone should really look at," that's exactly what we're here for. Business owners in Surrey, Langley, etc: We are still offering that first fix free (up to 2 hours) if you want to see what proper IT support looks like. And yes, we pay for referrals!

The bar is SO low in most workplaces that young engineers have a huge opportunity. That is not me being negative. That is me telling you where the opening is. A bunch of people show up and are just .... there. They wait. They complain. They need 4 reminders. They avoid the weird problem. They do the exact task but never think through the actual outcome. If you are in your first engineering job, you don't need to know everything. You need to be USEFUL. Show up early. Ask better questions. Take the ugly task. Write things down. Follow up before someone asks. Find the person w/ the problem and make their life easier. Do that for 6 months and watch what happens. Your first year is not about proving you are the smartest person in the building..... It is about proving you can be trusted. That trust compounds.... GO earn it!!!

Lately, I've been reminded how fast things really change in business. Just when you think you've got it figured out, things flip... markets shift, old leads resurface after years, and new opportunities pop up from places you'd never expect! If there's one lesson I could send to my old self, it's this: never stop marketing, keep your pitch constant, and always have an iron in the fire. And whatever you do... don't burn bridges! So many of my deals have come from people I'd never thought I'd see again... sometimes 5-10 years later!

Example of how I'm using AI. I ran a marketing consultation yesterday where we were brainstorming a new offer. Place laptop between me and client, fire up Cluely, interview them for 20 minutes. I paste the transcript into Claude Code and while it's cranking, we build a launch list of 1,000 contacts in lemlist. Then in 5 minutes we are reviewing what it produced, a landing page draft, outreach scripts, and pricing structure. Make some small changes, paste landing page code into Wordpress, paste the outreach scripts into a Lemlist sequence, ready to launch. 3 years ago, would've taken at least a week of back & forth with designers and other subs. Now we launch within an hour of having an idea.

The bar is SO low in most workplaces that young engineers have a huge opportunity. That is not me being negative. That is me telling you where the opening is. A bunch of people show up and are just .... there. They wait. They complain. They need 4 reminders. They avoid the weird problem. They do the exact task but never think through the actual outcome. If you are in your first engineering job, you don't need to know everything. You need to be USEFUL. Show up early. Ask better questions. Take the ugly task. Write things down. Follow up before someone asks. Find the person w/ the problem and make their life easier. Do that for 6 months and watch what happens. Your first year is not about proving you are the smartest person in the building..... It is about proving you can be trusted. That trust compounds.... GO earn it!!!

Lately, I've been reminded how fast things really change in business. Just when you think you've got it figured out, things flip... markets shift, old leads resurface after years, and new opportunities pop up from places you'd never expect! If there's one lesson I could send to my old self, it's this: never stop marketing, keep your pitch constant, and always have an iron in the fire. And whatever you do... don't burn bridges! So many of my deals have come from people I'd never thought I'd see again... sometimes 5-10 years later!

Example of how I'm using AI. I ran a marketing consultation yesterday where we were brainstorming a new offer. Place laptop between me and client, fire up Cluely, interview them for 20 minutes. I paste the transcript into Claude Code and while it's cranking, we build a launch list of 1,000 contacts in lemlist. Then in 5 minutes we are reviewing what it produced, a landing page draft, outreach scripts, and pricing structure. Make some small changes, paste landing page code into Wordpress, paste the outreach scripts into a Lemlist sequence, ready to launch. 3 years ago, would've taken at least a week of back & forth with designers and other subs. Now we launch within an hour of having an idea.

88% of ransomware attacks in 2025 targeted small businesses, not enterprise companies or government agencies; but companies with fewer than 100 employees. The most common assumption we hear from business owners in the Lower Mainland is that they're too small to be worth targeting, but the data tells a different story. Attackers specifically go after smaller companies because the security gaps tend to be wider and the payouts tend to come faster. The encouraging part is that most of these attacks exploit basics that are fairly easy to address: lack of or un-tested backups, no employee cyber training, and no network / device monitoring. You don't need an enterprise-level security budget to close those gaps, you just need someone keeping an eye on things proactively so problems get caught before they become incidents. If you're not sure where your vulnerabilities are, we're happy to do a quick assessment and give you a straight answer. Also, we created an Employee AI Usage Policy template as a gift to the business community. Comment "template" and we'll send it to you.

88% of ransomware attacks in 2025 targeted small businesses, not enterprise companies or government agencies; but companies with fewer than 100 employees. The most common assumption we hear from business owners in the Lower Mainland is that they're too small to be worth targeting, but the data tells a different story. Attackers specifically go after smaller companies because the security gaps tend to be wider and the payouts tend to come faster. The encouraging part is that most of these attacks exploit basics that are fairly easy to address: lack of or un-tested backups, no employee cyber training, and no network / device monitoring. You don't need an enterprise-level security budget to close those gaps, you just need someone keeping an eye on things proactively so problems get caught before they become incidents. If you're not sure where your vulnerabilities are, we're happy to do a quick assessment and give you a straight answer. Also, we created an Employee AI Usage Policy template as a gift to the business community. Comment "template" and we'll send it to you.