Andrew Bolton, CEO of Tech Rescue (US & Canada)

Can we talk about a business leader whose passion for pursuing a purpose is so obviously built into his DNA, like Andrew Bolton, the CEO & Founder of Tech Rescue? He indulged my questions about his history and experience with such thoughtful responses about his own philosophy about management and leadership as well as the future of our global community as a whole. We ended up speaking for almost 2.5 hours straight and I could talked to him for 2.5+ more. As much as he is flashy and charismatic, he’s got the numbers and knowledge to back it up and we could gain some takeaways from him to keep in our toolbox of knowledge to lean on later. 

We talked about everything from his philosophy of managing and fostering top talent. He had a great perspective that the cream will always rise to the top, so implementing incentive programs and a desirable culture to retain top talent is key. As is being a hands on CEO when needed. Is there a customer that needs to hear from him? He’s picking up the phone. Is there an employee that isn’t meeting expectations? He’s picking up the phone. In fact, that’s what’s setting Tech Rescue apart from its competition. It has actual employees working in a call center who share his same passion for helping people that will actually answer the phone regardless of the time of day, to provide tech support to clients. No chat bots. No waiting for an unknown about of time for a call back. Just a hard-working mother/son idea turned into a purpose-driven business providing a service to those in need of tech support of all kinds.

Andrew Bolton is a real-world example of good business karma in practice. He followed through on providing a service better than the competition, focusing on the people and community, and then the money followed. If you or someone you know is looking for on-demand 24/7 tech support, I would highly recommend Tech Rescue (you can also contact them via phone at 855-250-8586). 

In the theme of Capitalism for Good, he also gave a shout out to supporting the local Goodwill and Red Cross chapters both in your area and in other areas impacted by natural disasters. Giving back to the community, especially those needing true help and support is so important. 

Bonus shout outs to: Steve Schwartzman, Warren Buffett, Samantha Wollard, Meals on Wheels, Loving Hands, Sisters of St. Margarets. 

Reference: Tariff article on LinkedIn

Early and bonus shows as well as curated discussions and merch are available on Patreon.

Instagram | BioSite (with links to listen & more) | Blog & Transcripts

Listen to and watch the full extended interview on Patreon here. 

Transcript

Hey folks, thanks so much for coming to the Capitalism for Good Podcast. It's here where we'll focus on exploring how we both make and spend our dollars to benefit the greater good. Folks, today we have Andrew Bolton, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Tech Rescue, providing on-demand tech support 24-7 with real people, in real time, wherever you need it.

I am so impressed with Andrew Bolton. I'll be honest, we spoke for I think two and a half hours. I just had so many questions for him and every time that he brought up a different topic, it made me want to kind of understand his perspective on something else. I think that we've all got a lot of things that we can learn from him and his experience and his philosophy. So we go from management philosophy to impact on economy. We do a little bit of current events. We were talking, exchanging our experience in the past, all sorts of things. So we've paired this down in this version to something that is a little bit more approachable than the two and a half hour conversation. But I will be putting up the entire conversation on the Patreon as well.

So it will be accessible if you are interested in the entire thing. But I had a lot of fun really talking to him about his experience, how Tech Rescue came about, and how it's really kind of blowing the pants off of the competition. He and his company are really the real life kind of test case for business karma working in the real world. And I am excited to share the interview and his perspective with all of you. All right, Andrew, it's so nice to meet you. We're so happy to have you here.

Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got here?

So, to the audience, my name is Andrew Bolton. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Tech Rescue, a 24-hour customer service helpline for technology issues. And how we got here?

Well, I guess we should start from the very beginning. My grandmother, who recently passed, died at 97. She lived off of whiskey and coffee, black, straight. That's how the old war birds survived, is just nothing but ethanol. They don't have blood, they have ethanol. They drank wild turkey, 101, rare breed. So just straight up gasoline.

Yeah.

And when Facebook kind of became a thing for the senior citizens of the world, it allowed them to be in touch with family and friends across the world. We have still family in Ireland. We have family in Canada. My grandmother is extremely big into genealogy. She created this master archive, and it got so big that she forgot how to kind of work it. So we were dealing with some technical issues from that point on, which goes back almost 20 years. And then when Facebook came, she then had the ability to find people that she would normally have to go through the Library of Congress, go through records, and now she got to see the family tree in live, basically, in live form. So trying to explain friend requests and memes and likes and hashtags and those were comical events. And where the company finally had the spark was one night, my father comes into the kitchen with my mother and I sitting down for coffee. And he goes, how do you forward an email? My father is 77 years old. He has been around since when computers were the size of Cadillac machines with the punch card system. My mother went through school and college on the punch card system. So they've been around since the dawn of computers. And my father is asking me, how do you forward it? I looked at him and I went, how do you not know how to forward an email? Like your generation built these things. And he got fresher and walked away. And I'm like, all right, I'll go handle it.

And when I came back, I said, you know, there really should be something that you could just call. And my mother just looks up from her coffee, takes a drag of a cigarette and goes, is there? And I look at it and I went, I don't know. So we all have these. So I looked it up, about six, seven minutes later, I went, no, there really isn't. And she looked at me, I looked at her and she goes, how would you do it?

And that was an interesting question. And I said, all right, give me a minute. Ever since my grad school days at Harvard, everything that has stainless steel or white plexiglass or glass has turned into a whiteboard. So the kitchen table, the refrigerator, windows, everything I can write on has been made into my whiteboard. So I start making notes on the whiteboard. I start doing this, doing that. And about 20 minutes later, I'm like, all right, let me explain. And she goes, you think you could do it? And that's a challenge word. And I said, let me see. So a couple of days later, I had a business plan put together and she goes, all right, let's do it. And I went, you serious?

And she goes, yep. I'm like, okay. So we started Tech Rescue. We just, we LLC'd. We came up with the name. We came up with the color scheme. We're American made. We're based here in America. We run our call center out of South Carolina. Our sales team is out of Vernon, California. Our back end development team is out of Las Vegas, Nevada. Our sales team is out of, I mean, our call center is out of South Carolina. And I myself am based out of North Jersey. So we're American made. We're American sourced.

We cover the Northern Hemisphere right now. We're in Canada and the United States. So Tech Rescue is this. You have a problem. You can't connect your Bluetooth. You can't get your printer. You can't get your fax. You can't get this to work. You're frustrated. You're annoyed. You're calling me because you've gotten to a point where you... Like, I can't do this anymore. So the person that's going to come on the phone is going to be irritable, understandably. And that's part of our standard operating procedures. So my interview process is a little bit different. So right off the bat, we take a look at your background. We take a look at your resume. And then what we do is we basically throw fastballs at you.

You're not dealing with a pleasant client. Pleasant client is a fantastic phone call. Where I'm going to judge you and where I'm basically need you to be is in that situation when you have somebody that's frustrated, you have somebody that's forgetful, you have somebody that rambles on, you have somebody, your worst case scenario. I want to see how you handle your worst case. That's where the proof is in the pudding.

How are you fostering it with those that do have it, that you want to keep on like, okay, here's your gem of an employee, perfect fit? Because I can only imagine, it takes a specific kind of patience, especially when it is your family member, to be able to separate those emotions and be very patient and kind and walk people through. So when you find that in employees, what's your philosophy to foster that?

You know, that's a really nice question. And because I get to sit in the captain's chair, I've taken a page out of Steve Schwartzman and Warren Buffett's book along with Jack Welch. I let people who do their jobs very well do them and lead. So Samantha Wallard is our managing director and project manager on The Call Center. She has a very good eye and feel for talent. And I trust her judgment because the 15 employees that I have just alone in The Call Center that run three shifts for 24-hour coverage, their review performances are top-notch.

Their customer satisfaction ratings are four stars and above. I let her handle all of that. What I instilled for this year is that we have incentive programs. So if you're a five-star review, one of the great things I love about her company, BPO, which is located in the Carolinas, is that we can instill incentive programs for every one of our direct employees. We have bonus structures coming out. We have, you know, we're fairly small, so like we're doing the very best we can. So we have like the Amazon gift cards for a couple hundred bucks. We have some prizes here and there, which mostly consists of monetary value. I don't like to do the... Listen, everybody gets cup holders and everybody gets a T-shirt. Nobody cares.

Right.

I know what you really want. I know what you need.

That's why we're all showing up to work every day. At the end of the day, it's the dollar. I have gas cards. I have Amazon gift cards. I try to make it work for the both of us.

So if we keep on track with our current trajectory, we can start rolling out some incentive bonus structure. I want to make it fun to work for me. One of the biggest things I ever grew up in my side in my career is that I've had really great bosses and I've had really awful bosses.

And I really was kind of broken hearted when things happened in jobs that I really enjoyed doing. I really, it really bothered me.

How do you keep it stable with all that fluctuation? Like we were talking about right now, it's so unpredictable. How do you build the stability in while trying to be adaptable? I know that that's such a big giant million dollar question.

It is and it's not. So one of two things you could take, there's one or two options. You can take your own opinions and your own standpoint and stand 10 toes down and be defiant or be, like any good business, look at the market, look at the weather, look at the ocean that you're sailing in and make a rational, smart decision.

So one of the things that's a hidden gem for Tech Rescue is because we're American made, we're American sourced, we have American workers, we are red, white and blue as it can be. We are apple pie, baseball and pickup trucks with lift kits. We, it doesn't get more American than this. We are leaning into the fact that we're American made. We're leaning into the fact that we're not paying overseas tariffs. We're leaning into the fact that, you know, every person that you get on the phone is somebody here in America. Now, is that right or wrong? I don't care. I got employees to manage. I got, I have operational expenses. Right.

At the end of the day, it's working.

At the end of the day, it's working. At the end of the day, we can look at expansion plans later on. It's not something that's completely off the table, but I have to look at the macro market as a whole and say to myself, all right, even if America is slowly starting to stabilize, what about the rest of my markets?

Who can afford me?

Can we rabbit hole that for a second? Yeah. So if your target population, as I understand it, is often your older aging adults that may or may not have fixed incomes, maybe their current financial situation is changing and looking really volatile at the minute, and there's also this, like you said, they were often here for the dawn of technology.

That is a huge gap from we're going to invent something from its outset to what we have right now in like AI and virtual reality. That's wild, like in trying to keep that target population in mind when it's so needed to have someone to help them kind of walk through that big jump, but yet their income situation might be a little questionable right now. How are you balancing like keeping that price tag reasonable with like, you're really truly filling a deep need and a deep gap in our community?

We are as low of a price as we could possibly be. I'm taking that into effect. Yeah.

So in our country, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of about just shy of 77 million Americans that fit within the senior age group. On record from the last census, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 400 million registered residents. Registered.

Now, if we were to take into... Now, this is pre-Donald Trump immigration policy. I would estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of around 405, 410 million people are in this country, somewhere around there.

I would say top number around maybe 430 registered and unregistered. Of that population, we would be looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of around 115 million possible incomes. Basically, 115 million potential clientele in that demographic.

From that number, we've been slowly acquiring slow portions of that percentage point. We know right now that families are going to be hit very differently in the next couple of months. We estimate, and I have my tariff article up on our LinkedIn page right now that explains that if we are not careful and Congress and the Senate do not pass the tariff restriction ban on the White House, on the executive branch, we're about anywhere between three and a half to four months away from a recession.

And you say to yourself, well, Andrew, how do you think that? Well, easy. According to the Department of Labor and the Department of the Interior, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of about just somewhere in the neighborhood of around 175 million registered businesses in America.

Not all of them are mom and pops on Main Street. A lot of them are at home, basement, garage, seller, people who knit on the side, they're registered businesses. They're selling their stuff on Etsy.

They're selling their stuff on Amazon. They're selling their stuff on eBay. They're selling their stuff on all these different platforms and making a small but sustainable income.

Not everybody is looking to be Mark Zuckerberg. Not everybody is looking to be a Jeff Bezos. They're very happy, you know, making their knickknacks. And I say knickknacks not to be insultive. I say knickknacks in certain...

To be like a who's it, a what's it, a thing.

A broad umbrella spectrum of goods and services that are provided in the United States. Out of that number, they're already paying an Amazon listing fee. They're paying a percentage point to Amazon.

They're paying the shipping cost usually, or offsetting that to a customer. And if they're offsetting it to the customer, that customer now is paying the tariff plus shipping, plus the markup price that they had to do for Amazon as well. We're looking at anywhere between a 75% increase to 150 to 200% increase, depending on the goods and service product that you're buying.

Well, how many people are going to be doing that versus the price of milk, the price of gas, the price of orange juice? I would say for at least us, the next seven months is not going to be business as usual. And we understand that we have some clientele that we're not going to be able to acquire.

And we understand that. And it's unfortunate, but much like anything else, if this is something that's considered a luxury, I didn't think it was. I got very upset when one of our advisors said, oh, you're a premium luxury service. And I said, excuse you? And this was a roundtable Zoom conference. And he said, we were classified as a service, a luxury premium service. And I said, help is not a luxury service. Let's get that completely clear.

Yeah.

Help is not a luxury premium service. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's where I draw the line in the sand. That is where I'm standing 10 toes down on this. We are not a luxury service.

And I will be adamant in this defense. Help is not a luxury service. Statistically speaking, 73%— and this is coming from the Pew Research Group, New England Medicine of Journal, Caltechs, a study from Caltechs, PhD study in terms of senior care— 73% of seniors, anybody 65 and older do not know how to use modern-day technology. We have outpaced our senior class within just the past 10 years, right? So I'm 36. I grew up with the first generation of cell phones, the Nokia 257, all right? The most indestructible phone that has ever existed since the dawn of time. I have been there from the very beginning, from the sidekick flip up to the Verizon White Chocolate phones that had the slide up, which was one of my favorite phones.

You really hit my nostalgia here. I am 35. I am your same demo here.

I remember when the Razer first came out. I remember when the very first touchscreen phone came out. I remember when BlackBerry came out with a touchscreen and everybody hated it. It was the most god-awful. And I think that's what killed BlackBerry, to be honest with you.

Yeah, because it was setting itself apart from the iPhone.

Exactly. They made the biggest mistake in the world, which was trying to keep up with something that they were not qualified to do. They would have lost market share eventually, but they would have maintained a baseline with people that liked typing on the BlackBerry. I loved my BlackBerry. I loved my BlackBerry.

Yeah, and the little roller ball, yeah.

No, I actually didn't have that one. I actually had my BlackBerry with the crystal in the middle.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was like a heat sensor that was your mouse pad. Because the roller ball got covered in crap and you had to bring it back to BlackBerry to take it out, and then you saw the gunk that was inside your phone.

Uh-huh. Same thing with the mouse pad with the roller ball and you had to clean it out every once in a while.

Yeah, yeah. But in regards to the statisticians, in these past 15 years, we have passed this generation by about 50 years, technology-wise.

And we had the advantage of so much of my school career was involved technology, like going to computer class, going to typing class, like writing book reports, but learning how to do it with online technology or formatting and all that stuff. Like, I learned in school how to use technology.

So a study was recently done with Pew that said that 26% of seniors are comfortable with today's technology, which includes Chad GDP, Google's new voice command, Alexa. People are still not comfortable with Alexa. I mean, there's the SNL skit, Silver Edition.

That's an actual real thing. That's an actual problem that we are facing every day at Tech Break. Let's see.

The average senior in 2023 spent $989 on wearable technology, the iPhone watch, the Garmin watch, earbuds, the virtual realities. We've seen the spending of seniors has increased in video gaming by 582% in the past five years. There are two major, major celebrities.

Grandpa Sniper, who's on YouTube, who's a world famous veteran of Vietnam, or I think it was Korea, where he was a sniper, a real life sniper, and he's just murking kids online, just demolishing them. And there's grandma Firehands, who is in that same, I think, game sphere, but she has one of the highest kill counts ever. Yeah, they spend, they have increased their spending in this technology by 582% in the past five years, where we're really seeing real, I mean, we're getting gaming questions, believe it or not, where we're seeing increases 30% in 2023 to 50 to 44.5% in tech health.

So seniors who are not able to make it to a doctor's office are using technology health into it. And the scariest number that we have right now is there's about 15% of our population, which we consider about 175 to 195 million Americans or residents of America that do not have access to home care of any kind, whether that's internet, whether that's telehealth or we're dealing with, we're dealing with over almost just shy of 16% of a population that doesn't have access to. That alone is something that we're trying to work on, trying to figure out how.

So we're trying to partner with Meals on Wheels, Loving Hands, the Sisters of St. Margaret's, all these communities on Facebook, all of these, we're part of 198 Facebook groups in the Senior Care Center. We have a maximum of 200 that Facebook allows, or I should say meta allows. So we do everything that we can to try to reach out to small groups, remote groups, that say, hey, listen, we have a service here that can help.

As long as you have a telephone line, or a Bluetooth connection, or Wi-Fi, we can get to you. We can help set up your doctor calls. We can help set up all your information.

Our call center is HIPAA compliant. So they are working for telehealth. They are working for Verizon.

They are working for AT&T. So we have a massive, massive resource at our disposal for our clientele. So I'm gonna be a little bit, I'm gonna be a little bit naughty on your show.

Do it.

One of the, one of our master plans, and it's not even the money, like the money, in the terms of the business aspect, I'll say this from my board and I'll make them happy. One of our master plans is to be partnered with somebody like Garmin, or partner with somebody like Apple. Apple has the technology on the new smartwatches that are coming out next year that not only read your heart rate, but from what we've been told, that there is a microscopic needle that would be able to do blood testing in terms of diabetes.

If Tech Rescue were to partner with somebody like Apple or Garmin that has that technology, that 24-hour customer technology support, one, with HIPAA compliant, would allow that information to be accessible to doctors, be accessible to emergency care, would be, it's a seamless transition that makes sense. You have the tools that's monitoring your heart, that's monitoring your blood.

It's already telling you whether or not you have AFib, which is one of the biggest indicators of strokes. And if you could catch that and you could show your doctor in real time, hey, I'm currently in AFib, we need an appointment, like invaluable.

Well, how do you set that up? Well, call Tech Rescue. We'll set up with your primary care.

You have these insurance websites and these links and portals to healthcare providers that are vast, that are complex, that are time consuming. You have to pull up past records. You have to do this.

Why? Why are you stressing yourself out? For our monthly subscription, we're taking that off your hands.

So we don't just deal with your Bluetooth connecting. We deal with how do I set up my gaming console? How do I set up my PlayStation?

How do I set up my... We have clients asking us how to set up our World of Warcraft username, password, how to sync my old game to my new game. You would think that I'm dealing with grandma just trying to get her pictures to download.

No.

Grandma's got to have a hobby as well.

I...Heck, I need some of that IT support sometimes. There are so many times that weird things happen and I'm like, okay, I'm not equipped for this. I need someone to help here.

So, one of my favorite calls, and unfortunately, I legally can't play it because it would make you laugh. A client just signed up, 72 years old, was asking how to set up his nebulizer for medicinal marijuana.

Grandpa's got to get some relief. Got to relax a little bit.

I listen to this phone call and I give our team a lot of credit.

But that's a real thing.

But you would think, you would think you have this notion of what I'm getting calls about. No, I get calls about everything. Technology has gotten to the point where washer machines are Bluetooth connected to home systems.

We have made home technology so complex. You have your locks, your washer, your dishwasher, your smart refrigerator that you have now these cameras inside the refrigerator that project out so you don't have to open the refrigerator to see what you have. That same camera that's showing you inside is now showing you on your phone what you have in your refrigerator when you're going shopping.

I'm setting that up for clients. We are setting up everything. We have made our lives so integrated yet so complicated.

And the only thing I'm afraid of is if somebody were to shut off the power switch, my entire business goes out the window. Not to mention the fact that we go back to the Stone Ages, but we have...

But also heating and air conditioning, your lights, your garage door opener.

Yep. Sprinkler systems, our home lighting system. I've had to write the standard operating procedures with our partners.

That's mostly now most of my job every day, is writing new standard operating procedures, because what happens is I get a phone call.

Yeah.

Bolton, this is Samantha. Hi, Samantha, how you doing? We have a client that's asking this. I'm sorry, what did you just say? They want to incorporate their entire backyard sprinkler, lighting, and they're connecting it to their, they basically have One Home. One Home is a project plan that is an app that you can run your entire home on. Well, I've now had to discover how to work that. I've now had to learn how the system works. Most of my time is reading about other companies and how we help that.

So to all you other companies out there, you're welcome. I've been learning a lot about you and I'm trying to make your life easier, surprisingly. I'd like some royalties, by the way. I'm just saying.

I mean, I could go down that whole rabbit hole as well of just healthy competition and the way in which that, in fact, can benefit businesses. I mean, I understand there's so much unhealthy competition, but like... Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

There's no such thing as unhealthy competition. There's just competition.

Because especially if you use it in a good way, like if you are using it to beat your competitor, you're trying to be better. What you got there?

I've got an holistic reports on every single one of my competitors. I know who they are. I know who their executives are. I know what they had for breakfast. I know about a kid, and I'm not going to give him credit because that's not the right thing to do. I know of a kid across the big ponds who's trying to do exactly what we're doing. I have his lunch number. I know everything about him and the four people that work for him. I know if you're in business and you don't know anything about your competitors, I hate to say it, but you're not going to do well. I know everything that there is to know about the five big competitors, and I can say this. They may be bigger than me, but they can't even come close because they're limited to the South Texas and the Southwestern regions of the United States. They can't go overseas because of the restrictions on insurance and the banking system that they have over in Europe, and none of them are 24 hours.

They have YouTube libraries. They have As Call Needed. On my Instagram, I picked a fight with one of them because they said they'll call you back in five minutes.

They still haven't called me back, and it's been about three weeks.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, by the way, hey boys, I'm still waiting for my call back.

I mean, that's the easiest thing. Something that I am also super passionate about is like, your reputation in word of mouth leads to your stability, reduces your costs because then you've got free advertising. Because if you just do what you say you're going to do, that can set you apart in today's world. Yeah. Hey fellas, I'm still waiting for my phone call. It's been since March 21st.

Alright, so if you don't want to wait from March 21st to April 13th, call Tech Rescue.

But that's my point. See, this is where young entrepreneurs, your reputation is everything. If you're going to say you're going to do something, you do it. Because guess what? You have somebody like me in your competitive space that's going to test you. I'm using your failure as a marketing ploy.

Because guess what? So this was three minutes and 54 seconds. It says, you will get a call back within five minutes. Here was down to 29 seconds. I'm sorry, now I have to call you. Which means that you don't have anybody ready. You don't have a call center. You basically collected my number, collected the message, and you're going to get back to me when somebody actually reads that sheet. Sorry, fellas, you can't beat me.

I put the money and I put the work where it was supposed to be, and that was helping people. So I actually have people.

How did you decide to put people in helping people first.

Oh, because I've smashed keyboards. I've ripped phones out of walls. I've basically, I pretty much have destroyed half of an apartment just waiting on hold.

I don't like robots. I don't like mazes. I don't like press one, and then you have to wait 30, 40 minutes just to get somebody on the phone.

No, it drives me nuts. So I said to myself, no, like when you call somebody, I expect a phone call. So Tech Rescue came that.

I've gotten approached by many, many software companies telling us that we can create these chat voice bots, that we can create, you know, the, you know, I'm like, no, well, you'll save over 30% on your app. I don't care. That's not the point.

Well, and I would argue that the purpose of your company in part is because those chat robots are not working. You can type in your question online, you can ask Siri or whatever, but then when you don't get the answer and you're super frustrated, you need someone to call to say, I don't get it, please help.

Yeah, or you type in the question and it gives you a range of options. And then like, well, was it in the library? I don't need to go through your library to find out whether or not you can do something.

That's why I'm here. I'm on the chat because I need help. If I knew what I was doing, I'd be doing it.

Exactly. And this is why I got upset when one of our board members said, like, you're a premium service. I said, no, help is not a premium service.

I'm sorry. I'm going to argue that to the very end. Help is not a premium service.

What's next? $1,000 a month subscription for 9-1-1? But the one piece of advice that I got, which served us well and still serving us well, is we are not looking at the profit.

We are looking at the mission. So my idea is this, and it wasn't my idea, but it was given to me and what we hold true as a core value. If you are doing good work and you are doing good for somebody else, the money will follow.

If you just do good work, eventually it will all take place. If you are looking to chase something for a dollar, you are going to be fighting the dollar. But if you focus on the mission, then the mission in itself is more important than anything else.

The money comes later. The money absolutely comes later. And it took a while for us to start being profitable.

And yeah, there were some rough moments, because who likes spending money out of pocket? But that only affected us when we were having our bills come in. It wasn't something that we were thinking about.

We were listening to calls. We were hearing the tones of voices, the level of concern and understanding what was a major concern to people, what was a little less minimum, what was more of an annoyance, what was, oh my God, this is a five alarm fire. We were more concerned about the mission and how we can help better.

And we kept improving and we kept working our call sheets. We kept working our scripts. We kept working everything to the point where we realized that we're not really in business.

We're more in the business of serving. We're a service. And we're here to serve people.

Yes, do we want to maintain profitability and do we want to keep going? Of course, but as we focused more on the customer's needs and addressing the issues and trying to make somebody feel like, hey, we hear you, we understand. All right, it's a problem.

Okay, we're here, all right? Time to put out the fire, sit back, relax. You made it. You made it ashore. You made it ashore. We're here to help. We're here, like the name says, we're here to rescue you. We focused on that, and everything else started falling in line. We now are building our cybersecurity. So we're gonna be an all-encompassing company. That should be done in the next couple of weeks. We're beta testing it right now.

So we're not looking to take on Norton. We're not looking to take on anybody else. We're just making sure that you are protected.

So when you call, your email, your telehone number, your identity is protected. And if there's an issue, it's all encompassing in our service, saying, I want people to have the feeling when they subscribe to Tech Rescue, is that you're trusting your family with us. And I take that seriously.

This is not just a customer. This is not just a number on a screen. I don't get an email about account number so-and-so.

I get Mrs. Johnson. I get Mr. Samuel Smith. This person, this location, something, something Arkansas.

This is somebody's meemaw. This is somebody's pawpaw. This is somebody's father.

Somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's brother. I take that very seriously. So when there's a concern, you get a call from me.

I will call, not the company. I will call you personally. And if there's a problem that we can't solve, I want to know about it.

And I'll say, this is Andrew Bolton, CEO of the company. How can I help you?

Yeah.

How can we, but how can I help you?

Yeah.

I take responsibility. So if there's something that is not being done by the company, I'm the last person that is going to handle it because the buck really stops with me.

Yeah. Your reputations on the line.

Exactly. I take every call and every member seriously because I'm putting that much stress on my employees that your issue is my issue. And I take that personally.

And if you don't take that personally, you have no business working for Tech Rescue because somebody is trusting me with the most important people. And this is in their standard operating procedure in big, bold letters. There's the tech...

So the document is a... It's basically like a standard folder, right? Like one of these, where it has everything that I have.

And in big, bold letters, inside the document, after the cover and the welcome page is that every call is from somebody's most important person in their life. That's in big red letters. Every call is from somebody's most important person in their life.

If you don't take that to heart, then I'm sorry, you have no business working here. And I'm not trying to be mean, but I take that personally. That's somebody's someone.

Yeah.

And if you don't take that seriously, then you have no business here.

Yeah. I think it's important to like fit is important. And if that is your mission and that is what you're driven by, then it's probably one of your most important pieces as a leader is to make sure that everyone across the board is also keyed in to that same mission.

This is the core, but that's the core of our culture. That's why we started this company is that this is who we are as a company. This is our identity.

And if somebody can't, as the kids say, vibe in that type of scenario and that type of culture, then this is not for you. And that's fine. There are plenty of other jobs.

And those who rise to the top will get rewarded. And I look forward to at the end of the year, I'm looking forward to seeing with the incentives that we have planned out, with the initiatives that we have rolling out, given the economic market starts to stabilize, please, please, Mr. President, please, I'm begging you. Yeah.

And everyone else in the room. Yeah.

If we can get ourselves out of a situation where we're not playing a Mexican standoff with everyone on the planet, we might be able to do some really good work. And that's really what we're looking for is there's a lot of people worldwide that need help.

So when you were talking about your board executives and how you would put together that group of people, can you talk a little bit about, like, what types of people were you looking for? Is it well-rounded? Are you looking for certain, like, elements of experience?

Because we talk often about, like, the importance of knowing who you surround yourself with and what those people bring to the table. Is that a part of the calculus when you were searching out those folks?

The first thing that we were looking for is one expertise, right? You had to have come from a... You had to come and done it yourself.

You started something by yourself, bootstrapped it, and made it work. Because the best lesson I ever got was from Harvard with Dr. Watson's class, is that success is individual, failure is universal. We all know the 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb.

Edison found the one. So, you ever remember that game when we were kids, mine? You know, when you click on the little box?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then at the end of it, you see where all the landlines are? If you take that approach and listen to other people, you start marking the dots where they failed, this failed, that failed, this is why, this is why. And you're like, okay, you're now painting a map, and eventually, you'll start to see your path, and it's never straight.

It's upside down, crisscross, circle back, but eventually, it's the right path. So people came to us in the right circumstances with the right path, and I took pieces from here, pieces from here, pieces from there, and asked questions. So my board of advisors gets our quarterly updates, our monthly updates.

I get phone calls from everybody at different times. They have an idea, somebody else has a different idea. I sit down and I listen to it, and I pick somewhere in the middle of where we want to be.

And to answer the question of who came in, if somebody could see the vision that I laid out, and they say, I like it, I like what we're doing, then that's a conversation I want to have, because you now have vested interest in it, because you see the value in it, not in terms of a monetary aspect, but the value in which the services we provide. And if that resonates with you, you're going to be emotionally involved. And if you're emotionally involved, that means you're going to give me your best effort.

And if you're giving me your best effort, I give back exactly what you give me. And that stacks on top of each other, because you're having these ideas, you're having these conversations, the what if this, the what if that. What if you tried it this way?

What if you tried it that way? All right, and you have people in the kitchen that are invested in dinner. That's the best way I can describe it.

And yes, too many chefs in the kitchen ruin the pot, but at the end of the day, it's still my decision. So there's nothing wrong with hearing different pieces of advice, and you get a different perspective on somebody who's been there before. Because remember, this is also where a lot of entrepreneurs fail, is they get so involved in the company that, no, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Hold on, they're the ones that have done it before. You haven't had, you don't get to say anything. Yeah.

You still have to prove yourself.

Yeah.

So if you take that approach, which I have, which is, all right, these people know better than I do, let's hear what they have to say. And if you take an open mind, our company has moved. If everything goes better and things calm down, and the Odysseus arrow shot from the Odyssey, the arrow straight through the axis.

We're looking at IPO in seven years. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of about $5 billion valuation. That's what we got described as, which is why I don't like that equity conversation or the B word.

Because once I saw that, I went, no, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear that word, but it's there. It's in the universe.

It got said. So at $5 billion valuation, you say, well, the company is so rich. Yeah, but how much money do we need?

What about the charitable works that we can do? What about the education reforms that we can put into? What about senior tech and senior charity and works that we can do?

And all the work that we can do with that kind of money? I look at it this way. If we are blessed, and that would be the right word to use, if we're blessed to be able to have that type of revenue, mom and me are very good with the number that we have in our head.

It's like, all right, now we're retired, we're done. My grandmother, God rest her soul, always used to have a saying, anything after a certain number is just you showing off. That's been a core philosophy of our family.

Anything after that, you're just showing off.

And what's the purpose of it?

I mean, what? Jeff Bezos has got like what? Something like a half a billion dollar yacht.

He also has an ex-wife who's given away $19 billion.

She doesn't need $19 billion. And this is one of the funny things too, because I know you got the two other questions. When we use that word be, and I've heard this on the Joe Rogan podcast, and I heard this on another podcast, the average American has really no idea what a billion dollars looks like.

No, it feels like an arbitrary made up number.

Let me explain the power of a billion. A billion is a hundred, is a hundred, is a thousand hundred millions. Like it's a ridiculous number.

0.0111, 0.00001% of a billion dollars is almost a hundred thousand dollars a day in cash after taxes. Think about waking up every single morning and seeing 10 by 10 stacks of 10,000 bills, a 10 by 10 stack on your desk every single morning. You can't spend all of it.

Yo, yes, I can, okay, fine, prove it to me. You can get a McLaren in two days, or you can get a Bugatti in a month. Okay, you keep buying, you bought, you bought, you bought, you bought, you bought, you bought.

Eventually, you're gonna realize that your desk is getting over flooded with the stacks because every single day it's $100,000. And it just keeps piling up and you don't kno what to do with it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the movie American Made with Tom Cruise, where he's the pilot for the cartel, and he starts burying money in the backyard because he starts making more cash than he can spend it.

He owns every building in the town. He owns every business in the town, and they're all laundromats for the business because he has nowhere to put the money. That's what a billion dollars turns into.

And it's easy to see how it could be easy to lose sight of purpose and meaning in greater good and people if you have nothing to work and strive toward.

I mean, that's just more of a personal, that's a personality thing. I mean, you know, the saying that money changes people. I think money allows you to unlock the door to who you really are.

There's an old saying, you want to see who somebody really is, give them power.

Yeah.

You want to see who somebody really is, and you wonder why these kids have lost their minds. Give somebody an unlimited amount of money at a young age and see what happens. And look at what you see.

There you go.

I mean, I could make the cheesiest analogy here as a 35-year-old millennial woman. But what's the difference between the reputation of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift at this moment?

I have no idea.

Well, I would just say that Taylor Swift has a better track record.

Oh, yeah.

Well. Gathering a good reputation for herself. Not everyone likes her.

Not everyone likes her music, but she gets a lot less hate than I would say I have for Elon.

This is what I would say. I personally do not know Ms. Swift. I would say some of her music has gotten turned into metal that I absolutely enjoy.

Oh, yeah.

There's a band called Abertharn, and they do We're Never Getting Back Together, which is a banger, and I highly recommend Ms. Swift listen to her own metal versions of her songs. She probably does.

I was going to say, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't already. I mean, she comes from an emo background from like, from what I know of.

I think there's going to be a lesson to be learned in terms of her business standpoint. I mean, she has been a juggernaut in terms of her own corporate image, her own corporate identity, her own strategic planning. I mean, she is literally a juggernaut, and I honestly believe that business schools around the world should be taking lessons.

As much as Donald Trump, and I hate to say this, as much as Donald Trump's political background is going to be studied, because it should, because nowhere else in history of mankind has this ever happened, and this is not being political. This is just being observant. No one else in the history of American politics has ever gotten away with what we're seeing right now.

Insultive, combative, aggressive, testing the very laws of our democracy. And that's not saying good or bad or in between, just on a standpoint of just observance.

Changed the definition of a fact.

Yeah. If we're not studying this, we have a problem. And I think Taylor Swift and a few others, like Mr. Beast, I mean, yes, under the controversy and everything else, but you cannot deny his marketing campaigns.

You cannot deny his strategic campaigns. How somebody went from nothing to worth over a billion dollars. Now, grant you, Bitcoin and things like that, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. The fact that these tools are available now is the studying of now. And there's something to be learned.

So reputation for us is key, because once you lose it, you're working five times as hard to get it back. So my feeling is, is I am very aggressive. I am very stern on how we're presented, what we say, what we do, and the type of people that we allow to represent us, and the type of people that we allow to take part in what is it that we're doing.

As I said, every one of our calls is the most important person to somebody else. So if you don't take it that way, then you have no business working for me.

Yeah, totally, totally.

Number two and three.

All right, for your second to last question, this is a softball. It's, I don't think that we've really talked about, how do people go about subscribing and finding more about your services and subscribing and becoming a customer? Or maybe they just have questions.

So that's really easy. You can go to www.techrescue.io. All of our social media pages are on our website, so you can take a look at what we've wrote, what we've done.

Take a look at some Q family photos, things like that. And our 24-hour hotline is 855-250-8586. And yeah, somebody will pick up the phone.

Not leaving you hanging for two weeks?

No, no.

That sounds great. Okay, so my last question is, what's another business or business leader that you see out in the world that is making a positive impact that you would want to give a shout out to?

Wow, that's a really good question.

It could be absolutely anyone in absolutely any field. Could be someone you know personally. Could just be something that you are a customer of.

That's a really, really good question. I don't know of any particular profitary business, but what I would say is given what's going on in the world today, and not even so much the world, let's just keep it in America. If I could suggest anybody start doing anything is start donating to your local Goodwill, start donating to your local Red Cross.

I mean, we have the survivors of the hurricanes in Georgia, Louisiana, Florida. Florida is still ripped apart. This is one of my biggest problems with our country, is that Tampa and everywhere else is under construction, and we're not talking about it.

These people are still without homes. These people are still in the tornadoes in the Midwest, in the Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas area. Where's the help these people need?

Talk about infrastructure.

Where's the help? We're a help service, and we donate. We donate as much as we can, and not trying to bleed into the bucket.

But what I would suggest to anybody is if we just... I know this is going to be a little preachy, but...

That's my whole brand is preachy. We got to do better. Business karma is a real thing.

It's not even a matter of doing better, is that if you see something, say something, just start doing good. What's wrong with doing a little good? If you see somebody bake a pie, or bring an extra set of cookies in the...

The power of a good deed has been so taken away from us. Do you know how good just a little kindness for everybody out there? Look at what we've done over the past eight years and say to yourself, is this the way that we want to be going?

Or is anybody happy with what's going on? I don't care about your politics, I don't care about your religion, I don't care about what you're doing, I don't care about where you are. Just ask yourself and look around at your neighbors.

Is anybody really happy with what's going on? What is it more to just say something nice or do something nice? A little bit of neighborly love goes a long way.

We have done eight years of the opposite and look at where we are right now. We're about ready to go to war with each other. Over what?

Over what? Last time I checked, Kansas and New Jersey were still the same country. Yeah, you root for the Chiefs.

You may be dumb to do it, but then again, I'm a Jets fan, so I got no room to talk. But at the same day, the last time I checked, the red, white, and blue still flies over the state capitol. So you didn't vote for the president, or you didn't vote for this person, you didn't do that.

Okay, cool. Like, I'm gonna treat you differently because of it? A little bit of good goes a long way.

And I cannot stress that enough. If we all, I know it sounds so cliche, but all I have is evidence to go on. I have facts, I have data.

I have arrest records, police reports. I mean, you want to slice it and dice it any which way you want. We need to do something different.

And the way of doing something different is just one little small act of kindness. If somebody is a little short and you got an extra five in your pocket, you don't know what that person is going through. That person may be going through some really hard times.

And now maybe they're five bucks short. That gallon of milk or the orange juice, you know, the kids like orange juice, but I need coffee in the morning. Like, hey, listen, man, you know, nothing against, you know, I've been there, done that.

I forgot, you know, I forgot, you can say something. I forgot my wallet too at home sometimes. Here you go.

It's on me. Yeah.

Amen. I think that's a great way to end. I think that's also a really great example of, you can tell your passion, your drive, and what the purpose is that comes through, that not just drove your business, but really drives you.

Oh, I was a Wall Street trader. I was a Wall Street broker for years. Believe me, I've been there, done that, took the pictures and, you know, have the rehab facility built to prove it.

What did it get me? Yeah, it got me a couple of millions of dollars. It made me burn out at drugs and a whole bunch of other things that, you know, come with that life and a rehab facility.

And then what? You're back to zero. Now what? Go do it again? No, I got lost. And somehow, someway, we stumbled around and got to this place.

And you know what? Helping people has been better for me in the long run, not just in terms of financially, but my life. I don't question what I'm doing.

I don't question the decisions that we're making. I don't question whether or not the product that I'm pitching, do I really believe in it? Or is it great for the share prices that we're trying to hope for because we're trading around that company?

It's amazing what starts happening when you start thinking, all right, what are we really doing?

Okay. I have taken up way too much of your time. I appreciate this so, so much.

I wish you all of the best.

Thank you very much. And a closing statement, you know, just you focus on the mission. Don't take my word for it.

See what happens. You'll be surprised.

Yeah.