Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Delaware County, PA (Delco"") and the surrounding Philadelphia Metro Region.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Jeff Fuqua's IT Guys LLC, Guide to Cost-Effective IT Management and Repair
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jeff Fuqua's IT Guys LLC, Guide to Cost-Effective IT Management and Repair
When small to mid-size businesses can navigate IT landscape needed to run their business with savings and top technology, business grows faster. In this episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, our host Bob Blaisse chats with one source of that savings and technology, Jeff Fuqua, the founder of IT Guys LLC. Jeff is a trailblazer in computer consulting in Delaware County, Pennsylvania and the wider tri-state area. Jeff opens up about how his company empowers small to mid-sized businesses with strategic IT planning, implementation and management. Discover why outsourcing IT services is not just an option but a necessity for staying secure in the age of cybersecurity concerns. Jeff shares how his team leverages remote management tools to ensure systems are both efficient and protected, underscoring the essential role of IT support in harnessing modern technology's potential.
But IT Guys LLC doesn't stop at business solutions. Jeff brings the expertise of his IT Guys LLC to homeowners too, whether a business owner or not, to help local residents with affordable and accessible computer and Internet connectivity repair services. Whether it’s a simple PC fix or upgrade, or a complex computer networking or security issue, Jeff and his team are committed to extending their support across the Philadelphia metro region and beyond, even reaching into New Jersey and Delaware. Learn from Jeff’s emphasis on regular system maintenance, like firmware updates, to extend the life of older systems, and secure data against hackers. This episode paints a vivid picture of how IT Guys LLC has become a cornerstone in the community, offering flexible and reliable IT solutions to meet both residential and commercial needs.
Website: www.itguysllc.com
Call: 484-453-8642
--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond... The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
Good Neighbor Podcast With IT Guys
Speaker 1Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor Podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Blasey.
Speaker 2Welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. My name is Bob Blasey and it's a pleasure to have you listening, downloading the Good Neighbor podcast, as many of you do, on a weekly basis. We usually have several or more episodes of the Good Neighbor podcast even in a week. This week I think we've got two of them in the production line and so we'll probably have two more coming. It's a fun evening, it's a fun daytime.
Speaker 2However, we're doing this a short podcast to bring you good neighbor businesses. We call it the Good Neighbor Podcast, delco, because we're from Delaware County, pennsylvania, the southeast corner in Pennsylvania, right below the city of Philadelphia and just above the state line for the state of Delaware. Our county is called Delaware County and we lovingly refer to it as DELCO, and you probably hear that term even nationally. These days. A lot of things coming out of Delco, pennsylvania. In fact, we've got one of the presidential candidates meeting tonight, just right now in fact, probably only a few miles away, even close to our guest here today. But let me bring up to the stage our guest, jeff Fuqua, from the IT Guys. It's a business, I think. As IT Guys we can kind of imagine what they do. But let me bring the stage, jeff, and say hello, jeff, welcome to the program.
Speaker 3Thank you, Bob I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2Jeff, when I saw that you were nominated to be a guest on the Good Neighbor podcast, it was exciting to me because this is a subject that touches us all one way or another. You know our brainpower, our ability to kind of handle IT issues ourself when we know we're just kind of like out of our domain expertise and we need an expert. Jeff, if you could let us know and I apologize if I might've said your name wrong Do you pronounce it Fuqua Fuqua?
Speaker 2Yeah perfect, wonderful Well. Thanks, jeff, and your business is called the IT Guys LLC, but I only see one guy, so maybe we start with that. How did the IT Guys come into existence, and is there more than one of you?
Speaker 3Well, there is more than one of us. I will tell you this. We started out about 19 years ago and IT Guys is a computer consulting company and we support small to mid-sized businesses throughout the tri-state area and obviously very strong in the Delco region, and we have been doing this for a long time and we are a fairly small business, but we have six to 10 engineers and technicians at any given time and it's a wonderful thing. We love the area and we love doing what we do IT services.
Speaker 2Well, let me ask then, because that can mean a lot of things. But I think we'll start from the perspective of you're being in business a long time now and having clients long held. My thought about why that might be is because people trust knowledge, they trust the person who's the answer man, they trust the IT guy, you know. But a lot of companies can't afford to pay for an IT guy, or they've had one but he's gone and what they're really looking for is one that won't go. So they choose to outsource, say their, their IT issues.
Speaker 2When, when you say that you have a company that's a client, is it? Is it? It might be all of the above, but is it as simple as Jeff we have? We were going to replace some computers. Would you, would you bring your guy in here and get them loaded up with the softwares we need and get them hooked up onto our little network you've built for us? I'm sure it's kind of in that category, or is it we? We got struck, we got a virus, we've got to get this cleaned. Can it be that kind of IT support? Or is it even help desk, meaning that we need remote help for our workers when they're working from home to give them the answers for what's happening to their computer, even remotely.
Speaker 3Well, I think you touched a little bit of everything there. You're absolutely right. What we do is from a consulting standpoint. We do strategic IT planning, implementation and ongoing management, whether it's support via the phone, whether it's on-site email, direct connections. We use RMM software, which is remote management software. We can actually connect directly to your system or your server and operations and fix them on the spot most of the time and, if need be, we can always deploy a representative or technician of IT guys to come on site and handle your needs on the fly.
Speaker 2Well, when we talk about business needs and people would say you know, if it was a corporation they'd have an IT guy, or a very large company they might have their own IT guy. But coming downstream of that, but really looking at the far opposite end, say I'm a business and I have my computer I take home, or I have people that work with me here in this office where they're working remotely for me. But at some point every small business says we've got to take security seriously, or we now have five computers and we got to start, you know, writing, capitalizing these computers and getting them out and getting new ones in when the time comes, or we have to worry about now being hacked, and so it's a serious issue. What kind of virus software do we get? Virus software do we get? At what stage, jeff, do you find your clients, the small clients? How small is small? Or at what point does a small business say you better take this more seriously and get yourself?
Speaker 3an IT guy. Well, that's it. Right now, anybody is really in a position of discomfort out there with cyber crimes, ransomware attacks, antivirus or viruses and things like that. So what happens is, if you have a business, a small business, and you have one, two or many more employees, and if you have a computer and an operation that saves data, you're it's of the utmost importance to have support and IT guys, a consulting company, and that's what we do every day.
Speaker 2We support I would think too, Jeff, that you probably are the one that has to deliver some consulting truth, meaning that, look, Mr Customer, prospective customer, I have to tell you that you're exposed. You're exposed the way you're doing it, or you're even legally exposed. Do you know that you? That would be gross negligence, because you've left this exposed and you got to fix it. So, in other words, sometimes you're there, you're the rescue guy, you're the IT lifeguard, you're the wizard of IT, you're the help desk simple problem, but anybody usually knows that. But even this person didn't know that. So you're the answer man. But, Jeff, at what point are you actually having to instruct business owners that you really do have to take this more seriously because you're now exposed legally because of what's going on here?
Speaker 3Well, you know, it's a great point. We often have meetings where we sit down with ownerships or CFOs of businesses and simply tell them the honest truth and straight right in their eyes and say listen, here's where we stand right now with your operation. You have some outdated servers. These are no longer supported by Microsoft. Therefore, here's what we're putting ourselves in. You're in a very vulnerable position and that's why we need to protect you with, whether it's the different antivirus agents, the malware agents, all these things come into play. Your firewalls, your updates these things are all so important to an operation because the last thing they want is to get a ransomware attack. And I want to tell you it is not pretty and it will shut you down. And it could shut you down for days, to weeks, to months. And I always look at the customer and I say listen, how many days can you afford to not be able to access your data?
Speaker 1Yeah, wise advice.
Speaker 3Right, and what would that do to your business?
Speaker 2So it's pretty straightforward it would be, and sometimes it takes a professional to look somebody right in the eye and say you've thought it, you've thought of it yourself. Other people have told you. I'm telling you now, and maybe I don't even want to get involved too much because there's that much exposure for all of us that have our hands on this equipment. Here we're talking to the owner of IT Guys LLC, and they're based in Havertown, pennsylvania, which is in Delaware County. You can check them out on the web if you'd like. The IT address is just as the name sounds itguysllccom. We'll take you to their website and you'll get a chance to learn more about the residential and commercial.
Speaker 2So we've talked a lot about commercial and before we jump off commercial, I do want to just ask you, on the subject of everything we've already kind of said, what higher level business applications have we not mentioned? Would you, if someone wants to take their business into a level of new software that would say do I don't know commerce or some kind of data management, that they're just not at that level yet? Are you recommending software and recommending ways of doing business, or are you more so in the hardware and LAN? You know, networking, access, security side of IT?
Speaker 3Well, the good news is we do actually tap into all areas. Because we're dealing with that small to mid-size range, we have to support all of it. So we have plenty of software options, but really what we get into is the whole gambit and covering anything from the network. We do anything from the small end stuff, from break fix, repair stuff on PCs all the way up to the high end with IPsec, tunnels, routers, firewalls and all those good things. So a little bit of everything, bob.
Speaker 2Well, will it dip down to the residential level at all? Will you help Mrs Jones with?
Speaker 3her computer if she stops by your office. Absolutely, we do take walk-in customers and what we do is we have a good layout in terms of the pricing. It makes it very affordable for the residential customer to come in, deliver, drop off their system at any given time. We don't even charge an initial fee to evaluate the system, so we will call the customer back and let them know exactly what that price is going to be and what the job is going to entail.
Speaker 2Well, let me ask that question because so many years now have passed that we saw the rapid operating systems like Windows come out with new platforms and we've seen computer our drives increase dramatically and the speed of processors increased dramatically over the last 20 years. Would you say that these days, somebody that thinks they're having problems with their computer is, you know, as simple as it's old, or you really should just get a new one? They're cheaper now. Or is it more like they're just not keeping up with the cleansing of the computer or the simplest things that could be done to maybe change out a processor and keep the same computer? Tell us a little bit about the residential side, where we see that more often, and how many people are leaving old computers around that really could be in service or working with a computer. That's just way too old time to get a new one.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. I think what it comes down to is what. What is an individual doing on that device? What are they going to do? Are they just browsing the Internet? Are they using Microsoft suites and office things? Are they using third party applications such as QuickBooks or some of these other applications that are very important for financial things? So it depends on what the individual is utilizing it for whether or not they can continue to maintain an older system.
Speaker 3I think the biggest thing when they do decide, hey, I don't necessarily want to get a new system, they can upgrade, stay upgraded, keep their firmware updated, keep all your Windows updates. All these things are very important. Obviously, one of the most important is your antivirus protection, those things. If you're happy with the speed and performance, we can do things like tweak it, we can clean them up. There is a lot of things that you can do. And then if you find out that your system is just not keeping up with some of your software and things like that, well, there's certainly alternatives and different ways to look at it in terms of upgrades.
Speaker 2Jeff, it's been remarkable We've heard most recently here on the residential side, simple, good advice, but also on the commercial side that it ranges from a simple number of units and networking and wifi and and you know land and type of networking that's needed to make your business run, all the way up to some really big high applications that businesses need to have kind of a resident and expert expert in residence service, an IT guy, but they can outsource it and they can outsource it to the IT guys. Jeff Fuqua and his team. Jeff, you're traveling, I'm suspecting, when times require it, heading into the city of Philadelphia or Chester County, bucks County, even Philadelphia.
Speaker 3We do, we do, we delve into New Jersey and Delaware as well, so we will go anywhere if it makes sense and both parties agree. It's a wonderful thing that we have that option.
Speaker 2Well, if you're a residential homeowner and you're having trouble with your computer and you live in Delaware County or Montgomery County probably those two counties are closest to Havertown, pennsylvania right there on Darby Road, the main road going through Haverford Township IT guys are right at 1907 Darby Road in Havertown and they'll look at your own home computer, fix it up for you, walk it in the door and Jeff has suggested that they can make progress, that you have been stuck getting that computer fixed or getting it to the next level. But, more importantly, if you're a business owner in the Delaware County area and beyond, in the collar counties of Philadelphia, chester County, montgomery County, bucks County, the city of Philadelphia, new Jersey state of Delaware, the IT Guys LLC, led by Jeff Fuqua, really is the business to kind of look for and look to for expertise. If you don't have your own in-house IT professionals on hand, this can be the outsource professional that you've been looking for. Check them out on the web at itguysllccom or give them a call 484-453-8642.
Speaker 2Jeff, we want to thank you for not only sharing your expertise with the people of Delaware County and beyond, but to share it with our listeners here today on the Good Neighbor Podcast. No doubt. Your business is a good neighbor business, because we all have computers at home and we work with computers in our business, so there's really nobody that you can help, and you've helped a lot of us here today. Thank you for being a guest on the Good Neighbor podcast.
Speaker 3Bob, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745.