Protect Your Business from Cyber Threats With Shawn Dandridge

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. What’s up, guys? This is Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show one eighty five, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have back on the show, Sean Dandridge, who is here to show you the ways that your laundromat is vulnerable in ways that maybe you didn’t realize you didn’t even understand. So we’re gonna jump into that with Sean right now. But for today’s quick Fastlane tip, make sure that you are signed up on our email list. Go join the free, online community we have going on over there and make sure you are getting in there because we’ve got stuff going out every single week. They’re gonna help you improve your business. So head over to lawnmowerresource.com/join and sign up for a free membership over there and come get the benefits of joining our community.

Jordan Berry [00:00:50]:
Alright. Alright. Let’s jump into it with Sean Dandridge.

Jordan Berry [00:00:54]:
Alright. We’re back on with Sean. How’s it going, man?

Shawn Dandridge [00:00:57]:
Good. It’s nice to be here yet again. I’m I’m looking forward to it.

Jordan Berry [00:01:02]:
My I mean, listen, I have two regrets in my whole life, and one is waiting this long to have you back on. And two is in our last episode, we talked about launching a podcast together and we haven’t done it yet. So those are my only two regrets in life at this point

Shawn Dandridge [00:01:18]:
in time. Well, we’re pretty close. We’re doing another episode, and I know the last one was very fun. We talked about how my laundromat was destroyed three weeks after I bought it from a storm in Dallas. Like, could you have any worse luck? So I’m I’m glad to be back with you. It’s always a good time, and looking forward to what we have to talk about today.

Jordan Berry [00:01:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll leave a link in the show notes page for anybody who wants to go back and listen to that train wreck of a experience you had. But it was a really fun episode. We had a really great time, so I’m super excited about today. And, you know, before we jump in, in case anybody hasn’t listened to that last episode, give me like a thirty second spiel of you and your background and how you got into the business.

Shawn Dandridge [00:02:05]:
Yeah. Let me give you my thirty second elevator pitch here. So, Sean Dandridge, like I said, former laundromat owner. I don’t own any stores today, but my passion has always been technology. So that’s what brings me here today. In my day to day real life, I’m a senior technology executive. Fortune 500 companies worked at a couple of those where I manage enterprise networks and telecoms for, like I said, Fortune $500,000,000,000 corporations. And how I got here with you today is I did buy a store a few years ago and the first thing I noticed is the intersection of technology and laundromats.

Shawn Dandridge [00:02:49]:
It was, very far apart. There was no intersecting. So, you know, you buy a bunch of equipment, a bunch of IoT equipment, which is the Internet of things, which is basically means interconnected equipment that you could control from your phone, like your nest cameras and all that type of stuff. And what I noticed very quickly is they can sell you all of it, but no one can really give you any guidance on how to set it up, manage it, or install it. So that’s how I came up with the idea of laundry tech to kinda help bridge that gap between owners who have no idea about technology and owners that want to use technology and people that just sell it.

Jordan Berry [00:03:35]:
Yeah. And it’s a huge gap, right? Like, that’s a that’s a big gap. And, you know, I talk all the time and with other guests and stuff, too. And we’ve talked, you know, not on the podcast a lot of just, you know, even since you bought your first one in the last five years, like, technology has been sort of pouring into this industry in a lot of different ways. But what has not been following suit is kind of all the things you you were talking about, like, you know, how do we how do we set it up? How do we install it? How do we make sure that we’re protecting ourselves, our businesses, the money we’re managing, our customers money, our customers, you know, credit card information, like all that stuff.

Shawn Dandridge [00:04:17]:
Right.

Shawn Dandridge [00:04:17]:
Is even even our our security cameras and our our Internet, you know, public Internet and private Internet, like all that stuff. Like, I mean, we’re talking nobody’s talking about any of that part. And, you know, just as as technology continues to roll out, that stuff is going to be more and more critical for our businesses. So that’s, I think, what we’re here to talk about today, right?

Shawn Dandridge [00:04:45]:
Yeah. And this is the stuff that runs your business, how you make your money. But as you get more interconnected, this is you depend on this stuff. So what used to be a novelty, we’re offering free Wi Fi used to be just, you know, a thing just to pull customers in. You have to have the Internet in your store now, not just to offer free Wi Fi, but to run your actual business. So I I think, you know, it’s kinda lost on laundromat owners because technology has been so nonexistent in the space forever. So as more I call it technology creep as as it creeps into your daily lives and your daily operations and you upgrade machines and they essentially tell you if you don’t have an Internet connection, cannot operate this, you’re you’re gonna have to start making some hard decisions and upgrading this network infrastructure that you have. And, I think that’s where we’re at.

Shawn Dandridge [00:05:40]:
I think owners are realizing that now. I think they’re interested in this stuff. They just don’t know where to go or what approach to take because there there’s no one size fits all. What works for your store may not work for mine and not may not work for the guy down the street. So it really has to be tailored to what you’re looking to get out of a solution, How much you’re willing to spend, of course. And what are you what are your goals for your business?

Shawn Dandridge [00:06:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Which is huge, right? Well, let’s I mean, let’s talk technology, just for a second. And you know, I know you’re coming from you’re coming from, you know, corporate I. T. Over here and we’re talking mom and pop stuff. And, you know, a lot of this stuff. I mean, listen, even something as simple as Internet can be overwhelming the complex to the the layperson.

Shawn Dandridge [00:06:32]:
It is. It tells you you could have 10 different choices based on Internet providers. And what a lot of people don’t realize because you would never know this unless you’re in IT, there’s really only might have 10 choices, but there’s only two or three underlying carriers that will supply even those two or three. But you would never know that. You if you just see the cheapest price on the top, oh, that’s what I’m gonna go with. But even picking an Internet connection, there’s a lot that goes into that because you should know those underlying carriers. Well, not you, the customer, but someone that you consult with or, you know, a IT expert to say, don’t go with those guys. They have aging infrastructure in this area that you’re in.

Shawn Dandridge [00:07:15]:
You should probably go with these guys. And that’s things you don’t know until you buy it and it doesn’t work and you’re down on a Saturday and you’re not making any money.

Jordan Berry [00:07:24]:
Yeah. Well, nothing is more for, you know, as somebody who, you know, has an online business over here. When I was in Europe a couple of summers ago, I was in some spots that didn’t have great Internet. And, you know, there is nothing more frustrating than having the wrong Internet for your needs. It felt like I was back in, you know, in the late nineties with my dial up Internet waiting for things to kind of load up. So

Shawn Dandridge [00:07:52]:
it’s like you’re disconnected from the entire world and nobody knows you exist anymore.

Jordan Berry [00:07:57]:
That’s right. That’s right. It’s not a good feeling, man. Not a good feeling. Yeah. Well, I mean, you talked about sort of interconnected thing. Like, what do you what do you mean by that in the context of laundromats, right? Like, we’re I’ve I’ve been really talking a lot about technology because I’m really trying to convey to owners like, hey, this stuff is here and more is coming. And if you don’t keep up with it, you’re going to get left behind.

Jordan Berry [00:08:27]:
But but the learning curve can feel really overwhelming for a lot of people. So can we just start with like, what do you mean by interconnected technology, in the context of a laundromat?

Shawn Dandridge [00:08:39]:
Okay. So interconnected, simplest, you know, definition is everything connects together. But in the terms of a laundromat, that’s say you buy brand new shiny washers and dryers, And they the sales guy comes to you and he says, oh, yeah. You can control these things from your phone. You don’t have to be here. If you have a problem, you don’t need a, you know, you don’t need anyone here to fill out a slip of paper and leave it in the box for a refund anymore. So what that means is, okay, I have these machines. I have to connect them to a network, which then connects to a point of sale system or some type of payment system, which then connects to my Internet connection there.

Shawn Dandridge [00:09:20]:
And then me as the operator, I probably have an app or something on my phone that connects back to the laundromat so I can access these systems to see how much money I made, how much if I have any problems. So just right there, you have a connection between the the washers. A you have a switch or some network stack somewhere in your laundromat that connects to the outside Internet, and your phone is connecting back that that stack in your laundromat. So you have a lot of different elements there that you have to take into account to one secure, two to make sure they all work, and three, you have to provide this continuous service to your customers to ensure that they can use this technology, this systems in your store, whenever, 20 fourseven or whenever you’re open.

Jordan Berry [00:10:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. And as as all this, you know, I mean, we’re seeing this in our houses, too, right? Like, as more of this kind of technology comes out, it’s it’s like the the blessing and the curse of technology. Right? One of the things we talk about is you know, technology gives us the ability to manage from afar to not have to be on location a lot. It gives us the ability to collect and analyze more data. It gives us, you know, the ability to provide a better customer experience, be able to solve problems kind of remotely, like all these things are and manage more locations more efficiently. Like all these things are, are all the benefits of technology. But then there’s the other side, which is kind of what you’re getting at, is something has to manage all that technology and make sure it’s all working together properly and make sure the people who should be using it are using it and the people who shouldn’t be accessing it are not accessing it.

Shawn Dandridge [00:11:14]:
Right.

Shawn Dandridge [00:11:14]:
Right. That’s exactly right. So, you know, there’s a couple of different elements to that. Could someone go out and possibly do this themselves? Yes. I mean, you you know, YouTube University. I could go out and buy my own router or switch and do this myself. Yeah. You could.

Shawn Dandridge [00:11:33]:
But are you really gonna do it in a way that’s gonna protect not only your business and your source of revenue, but also your customers? Because what a lot of small businesses think is, oh, I’m just some little store on the corner. Hacker doesn’t care about me, which is not true at all because, you know, if you just break it down into common sense, am I going to go after enterprise corporation that spends $10,000,000 a year on security? Or am I going to go after a little shop over here that has five or 10 stores that spends nothing? And I could, you know, proposition them for ransomware of, hey, pay me a thousand dollars or I’m going to shut down your store. So I’m probably going to go over there and do a thousand dollars a hundred times and spending all my time over here with billion dollar corporation who’s probably going to stop me before I get any useful information.

Jordan Berry [00:12:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that’s where I mean, it can kind of feel a little overwhelming, right? It’s like, okay, how do we how do we, you know, not not that we’re competing with corporations or corporate America, but how do you know, how do we get that kind of protection when I’ll just be frank, like, I think most of us don’t understand a lot of this stuff. And and we’re talking about very, very basic stuff right now. We’re talking about Internet connections, right? That’s that’s all we’re talking about, basically. Right. So, you know. I think it gets really overwhelming to even like, YouTube University.

Jordan Berry [00:13:09]:
Yes. And I do think that, you know, probably some people listening to this right now will be like, you know what? I need to do a better job of this in my business, and they’re going to go out on YouTube University or whatever, or maybe they know it, and they’re going to implement some of these things we’re talking about on their own and they’re going to be able to figure that out. But even knowing like what things to figure out is overwhelming, I think, for a lot of us.

Shawn Dandridge [00:13:37]:
And a lot of that is, you know, every use case is different. It’s not you can do some cookie cutter things, change the default passwords. Everyone can do that. Right. But but

Jordan Berry [00:13:49]:
Change your default passwords, people. Please. Yes. I

Shawn Dandridge [00:13:53]:
I can’t tell you. I I did an experiment when I first bought my store. I just drove around Dallas to different laundromats to see what could I do. It was scary. It was it was very scary that it that most more often than not, the default password was not changed. And more often than not, the default password was sitting on the counter to a access my free WiFi. Here it is. And, you know, the big problem with that is, yes, the WiFi is a a service you offer to your customers.

Shawn Dandridge [00:14:28]:
It gets them to dwell longer in the store. That’s great. But a lot of things that the the biggest security threat that I’ve seen with that is not only are you giving them access to your free WiFi, you’re also giving them access to your point of sale systems because they’re all on the same network. And that’s, you know, network basics one zero one. Everything should be segmented. So your payment system should not be able to talk to your guest Wi Fi. Your guest Wi Fi, your payment system should not be able to talk to your security system. And that keeps some bad actor from gaining access using laundromat one hundred and twenty three as your password to just sitting in there and doing whatever they want to because no one’s really gonna question anybody on a busy Saturday.

Shawn Dandridge [00:15:14]:
They’re just sitting over in the corner with a laptop. He’s doing whatever he wants to and could have all types of files that are sensitive in nature on you these computers. And all it took me was coming in the store and saying, hey, what’s the Wi Fi password? And now I have access to everything.

Jordan Berry [00:15:34]:
Okay. So before everybody panics, like, what what’s the what’s the solution in that? I I think a lot of people listen to this being like, what are you talking about? Like, that’s exactly how I’m set up, that, you know, one, I’ve got one system for everything. So what’s the solution for that in that scenario?

Shawn Dandridge [00:15:53]:
So that’s actually very easy to solve. So what we offer here at Laundra Tech, we we have routers and switches that will segment your networks for you. So I know most people can, you know, oh, I just went to Best Buy and bought me a wireless access point. Yeah. That works for the application that you’re trying to do, get connectivity to your machines to the Internet. But as far as security, they’re they’re not built for that. They’re built for, you know, your house. And quite honestly, even, you know, residential technology shouldn’t be doing that now either.

Shawn Dandridge [00:16:29]:
But what we’re offering is enterprise grade networking solutions. So what that means is your Internet connection connects to a firewall. A firewall is is exactly what it sounds like, a wall between you and the outside world. So your Internet connection connects. We set up settings that limit what people can access. We segment your network for you. So wireless over here, point of sale system here, security cameras here. And these networks will never talk to each other.

Shawn Dandridge [00:17:03]:
So if one guy, you know, is on your guest Wi Fi and he’s snooping around, he’s just gonna see other iPhones and Androids, which are of no value to him. So that that is the most basic thing we can do. And also enter enterprise grade Wi Fi. So instead of having okay. If you want Wi Fi, here’s our password. We we have a cap it’s called a captive portal. So what essentially it does is it makes you sign up. It makes you give credentials.

Shawn Dandridge [00:17:32]:
So it’s not just anyone with the password that gets on it. I will know your name, your email address, and your device ID. So if you do do something malicious, I can come find you or I have enough information to at least give to the police to say, hey. I got this information on this guy and, you know, through databases that the cell company keeps. It’s not hard to track you down if I have your phone device ID. So and, you know, that limits probably a bad actor from coming in there if you have that type of stuff.

Jordan Berry [00:18:04]:
Is that is that part of the services you offer of, like, if somebody does do something malicious, like, you personally will come find them? Because you’re a scary looking dude. And if I put a poster up that says, Hey, you do something crazy on my on my Wi Fi. This guy’s coming to find you.

Jordan Berry [00:18:21]:
That that might be, off the books type of service we can offer, but officially, no, that is not part of the plan.

Shawn Dandridge [00:18:28]:
Okay. Because if you’re

Shawn Dandridge [00:18:31]:
close enough, I might can do something for you.

Jordan Berry [00:18:33]:
That’s that’s hilarious. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that that, you know, just. Just, you know, talking about that one small thing, right, is, you know, I think a lot of owners are just are doing exactly what you’re what you’re saying not to do. Right. Of just here’s here’s the password. And, you know, even, you know, I know you sign up with Spectrum or kind of whoever you can get a router that you can can allow you to partition. And and sometimes maybe they might help you set that up.

Jordan Berry [00:19:10]:
My experience is varied with the amount of support that you get on that kind of thing.

Shawn Dandridge [00:19:14]:
Yeah. Most of those guys, the support that you get, they’re they’re reading from a script and they really don’t know the advanced settings or or even what your situation is because if they’re not there with you and they don’t know what you have there and what you’re you’re really trying to do, they’re just gonna tell you, oh, yeah. Set up you can create a guest Wi Fi and a employee Wi Fi and everything’s great. But a lot of times, those two networks share the same, like, really technically or but same IP range. So what that means essentially, what that means is they’re on the same network. They may have two separate names, two separate passwords, but they’re the same network at the end of the day. So that doesn’t really help you. It might make you feel good because you have a, you know, Jordan employees and Jordan’s guest, but it’s all the same thing.

Jordan Berry [00:20:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Well, okay. I mean, listen, we’re talking about our basic building block of our businesses now, which is Wi Fi or Internet. Right. Like what other. I don’t know.

Jordan Berry [00:20:21]:
Like what other kinds of things do we need to be aware of here? What other kinds of things do we need to be paying attention to on the tech side, either to help our businesses run more efficiently or, you know, on that security side of things?

Shawn Dandridge [00:20:34]:
So I think, you know, once you what a lot of small businesses don’t realize is once you enter the accepting the credit card payment systems arena, you’re you’re under a whole different set of rules. There’s regulatory compliance that you have to comply with. It’s called PCI, and that’s and that means payment card industry standards. So in order to accept a credit card, Visa, Mastercard, you have to comply with some of these basic things to keep customer data safe. And, you know, one of these, every every service is different, but they all have a basic questionnaire. Like, when you sign up for their service, they ask you, do you have a router? Did you reset your default passwords? And you have to click yes yes yes I did to these. And more often than not, the people clicking yes to those first probably have no idea what they’re clicking yes to because, I mean, if you go out and poll a hundred laundromat owners and ask them what is a firewall, you would you would probably get a hundred out of a hundred that would fail. So so so you’re just click you’re agreeing to these things that really open you up to legal liability.

Shawn Dandridge [00:21:51]:
Because if there is a major, you know, hacking incident or major ransomware incident and you get a class action lawsuit against you, that could that could destroy your business because you are legally liable for what happens because you have chosen to accept payment cards as payment for your services. And I don’t think a lot of owners realize the ramifications of and the responsibility that comes with that.

Jordan Berry [00:22:22]:
Yeah. So one of the one of the reasons that, you know, after I mean, we’ve been talking about this, you know, this service that you’re you’re offering here, but we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years. Now, one of the, you know, one of the reasons I’ve been encouraging you to do it and wanted to have you on is because one of my goals for this industry is that we become we professionalize more, right? I think we’re doing that as an industry overall, like we’re professionalizing our industry more. And you threw out a term earlier that I feel like can feel overwhelming or. Something to a lot of owners, you said said something along the lines of having enterprise quality, security or whatever it was, enterprise quality, something right. And when I hear enterprise quality, I’m hearing, you know, big dollar sign, like you said, some of these guys will drop $100 a month. And it’s not even they don’t even like they could drop it on the ground and not really realize they lost it. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:23:26]:
It’s like not a big deal for them.

Shawn Dandridge [00:23:28]:
Grounding air.

Jordan Berry [00:23:29]:
Yeah, exactly. Grounding air. And, and, you know, obviously, like most, that’s not the case for most lawn or probably any laundromat. Right? Like, that’s that’s not going to be the case. Right. So, however, one of the, you know, going back to like the the the pluses and minuses of technology, one of the beauties of technology is that as technology develops, we as small business owners get more and more access to enterprise quality, enterprise level tools and resources at at a price point that we can we can incorporate into our budgets. Right. Like technology is deflationary.

Jordan Berry [00:24:12]:
So as prices come down, we have more and more access. I think AI is a great example of that. We have access to AI for free or very cheap, and can do a whole lot of things that we’re not really doing anything with most of us. But, but but that professionalism of, of this business, this is a huge piece of that, right? You cannot run a professional business, if you’re not taking care of your business’s security, your customer security, and you mentioned this PCI, right? Like I, you know, we were talking about it a little bit before we started recording and you were just kind of rattle off some of the questions. And I was like, I think most owners are going to answer no. Like, I’m not doing that or not. I don’t even know what that is right to a lot of this stuff.

Shawn Dandridge [00:25:03]:
Yeah. And you know, one of the questions is access to payment systems only by authorized employees. You know, one of those is if you only have one username and password that you’re given to everybody again, you’re you’re not you’re you’re not doing that. And the biggest one that I have never seen, written security policy for handling transactions. I don’t know a laundromat in existence that has that. I’m sure I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen one.

Jordan Berry [00:25:35]:
Yeah. I mean, it it’s gonna be a small, small minority. Right. I would tell you that.

Shawn Dandridge [00:25:40]:
Probably a large chain that’s owned by a larger conglomerate probably past that. But, yeah, you know, smaller ones that highly doubt it.

Jordan Berry [00:25:50]:
So, yeah. And so so what I mean, I, you know, I don’t I’m not trying to like throw you softballs here, but like, why? Why is this important to us? Like being able to check these boxes off and actually know what we’re checking off here?

Shawn Dandridge [00:26:06]:
Well, the first thing is you have to limit exposure to your own business because, like I said, you can be held fully liable for all of this stuff. Now the reality is if somebody, you know, that happens, they come in with stolen credit cards and they do laundry. Are are they gonna come after you? No. But if your payment processor is hacked and someone that has enough knowledge says, oh, I go to this laundromat around the corner, and I know they use that system. I can join this class action lawsuit too. You know? They start telling everyone that goes to your laundromat, hey. You go there. You can join too.

Shawn Dandridge [00:26:48]:
So eventually, you’re gonna get wrapped up into this, and you’re probably gonna get a subpoena in the mail that says, hey. I got 50 or 75 or a hundred of your customers since they got hacked on the Sunday morning that they used your laundromat. So a a lot of laundromat first, they don’t have the budget for, you know, litigation and lawyers to even go against one of these professional firms, which is all they do is do businesses and look for whatever violations that they can find. And I think the second thing is is just, you know, security for you. Peace of mind for you. You know that you’re doing everything that you can to protect your source of revenue as well as your customers, and you’re also rolling out the latest and greatest technology and not having I I guess the threat will always be there from these ransomware guys because they’re just relentless. But you’re less of a target if, you know, they see you. Oh, this guy really has, like, a firewall here that’s set up properly and he’s not using the Linksys password that came on the box.

Shawn Dandridge [00:27:56]:
So, like, I’m not gonna waste time with him. I’m gonna go somewhere else. So, basically, what you’re trying to do is reduce your your threat footprint of, like, you don’t want to be just the easy guy out there. There’s enough easy guys, so they’re they’re not going to bother you if you’re doing everything or a lot of this stuff that we’re rattling off here.

Jordan Berry [00:28:19]:
Yeah. And, you know, it’s

Jordan Berry [00:28:24]:
it’s,

Jordan Berry [00:28:24]:
listen, we’re seeing a lot of right now, like all over the place, we’re seeing a lot of like ADA lawsuits, right, where these lawyers, they just they find somebody and you know who they can use as a client and they go around to all these businesses, laundromats included, looking for any ADA violations. Right. Your your counter, your folding table is is not low enough for wheelchair access or your parking lot doesn’t have a handicap spot or doesn’t have one that, you know, has the space next to it so that a ramp can fold down next to the van or, you know, do whatever whatever. You know, there’s wheelchair access, you know, problems or whatever it is. Right. Like we’re seeing a lot of that happening right now all over, especially in California. And this is that’s kind of what we do over here. But we’re seeing a lot of that happen.

Jordan Berry [00:29:20]:
And and I’m not necessarily saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing that we’re, you know, being pressured to be more ADA compliant because, I mean, listen, we need to we need to do everything we can do to, you know, help all of our customers be able to do their stuff. However, you know, we’re seeing it happen in a in a very predatory way where it’s it’s basically a money grab, right?

Shawn Dandridge [00:29:45]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:29:46]:
And. To my knowledge or I haven’t seen it yet. There’s going to be money grabs online. I mean, even even just ADA compliant being ADA compliant with your website, like 98% of websites are not ADA compliant. And guess what?

Jordan Berry [00:30:05]:
When you’re and this is

Jordan Berry [00:30:06]:
this is separate from what you guys do, I think. But but when you, you know, when you have a website that’s not ADA compliant, you open yourself up to the lawsuit. And now nobody has to drive around town to find out if you’re not ADA compliant. They can create a bot that drives around the Internet 20 fourseven looking for websites to roll up.

Shawn Dandridge [00:30:27]:
Right. And along the same vein of this technology, it’s gonna be the next frontier in this evolution of business easy money because they know that a lot of these businesses don’t have the expertise and probably don’t wanna spend the money to do it. So this is just gonna be easy stuff that they can just go after. And as far as small businesses, ransomware attacks are up 300% year over year. So the hackers know, oh, man. Why are we wasting our time on these big companies that probably aren’t gonna pay us anymore because they now have dedicated teams and ransomware insurance that and backups that, oh, I don’t have to pay you. I’ll just take these systems offline, rebuild them, and go on about my day. But there was a huge hack ransomware hack in 2023 of a big laundry manufacturing, I I guess, provider, we’ll say.

Shawn Dandridge [00:31:26]:
And they had no backup, no redundant systems, and they took tens of thousands of locations offline. They they rent equipment to, you know, apartment complexes and things like that. And they were totally shut down until they paid this ransom because they had no backups, no redundant systems, and they were literally at the mercy of whoever these hackers were until they paid. And they ultimately paid because they didn’t have a choice. So I think we’re gonna see a increase in that because they know that, you know, Sean’s laundromat on the corner probably doesn’t have, you know, redundant systems. And I’m gonna pay because this is what I do, and I don’t have another choice. So I think, you know, the ADA thing, this is just the next evolution into, you know, easy money grab for whoever’s there for the taking.

Jordan Berry [00:32:18]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And and I mean, I think it this is why this is like really timely for me. And why I was excited for you to come on is because this stuff is happening. Right. And, you know, I know with like the ADA stuff that’s been happening over the last few years, you know.

Shawn Dandridge [00:32:37]:
And let’s say it’s probably good. It’s probably you probably know someone in the laundromat industry that this has happened to, but it’s very underreported because who wants to be the guy that’s like, Oh, I got hacked That even in corporate America where I work at every day, there’s certain parameters that you can etch around it so you don’t have to report this to your shareholders. It it happens much more often to big and small companies than you realize, but just based on, you know, the legalese of getting around this stuff that you don’t have to report it. So it it’s probably already happening, and you just, you know, all these outages that some of these payment systems probably has, they’re probably not really outages. They’re probably dealing with some type of ransomware event, and they just don’t wanna release that because then, you know, all their customers are like, I’m leaving. Like, I’m not dealing with this.

Jordan Berry [00:33:31]:
You lose all trust. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:33:32]:
You

Jordan Berry [00:33:32]:
lose all trust. Yeah. And that’ll happen, too. And and, you know, what I was starting to say is a lot of times, you know, they’re not. They’re being smart about it, right? They’re not out there trying to bankrupt you. They’re saying, hey, $10.15, $20,000, you know, is what is what they’re asking for. And like these lawsuits or these ransomware events or whatever for these small businesses where it’s like, you know, they get a quick payday, you’re really like, Okay, listen, I’m gonna pay that much for a lawyer. I don’t know what else to do.

Jordan Berry [00:34:05]:
I’ll just pay it. And so it’s

Shawn Dandridge [00:34:07]:
just knowing you pay money.

Jordan Berry [00:34:10]:
It’s not gonna it’s not gonna bankrupt you. But you know, it’s gonna you’re gonna pay it. Right. And, and listen like that, that kind of stuff. Like you said, like, I think that stuff is happening a lot more than we’re hearing about, not just in our industry, but all all over. And we only hear about it when it happens to, like, Target or some. Right. Some massive credit card breach or something like that.

Jordan Berry [00:34:34]:
Right. But real quick, I mean, listen, we’ve been talking about all this. Can you just go back to the beginning just so everybody’s on the same page? Can you even just explain what is ransomware and was how does it work?

Shawn Dandridge [00:34:46]:
So how ransomware works is a, you know, technical parlance. We call them a a threat actor, a hacker. Everyone knows what a hacker is, right? A hacker finds a way into some system that, through some vulnerability, they can exploit. So whether that’s, a computer that hasn’t been updated as far as patching, you know, you get those notifications on your you update your Windows machine with the latest version of patching. And you just click, oh, no. I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna restart. So, eventually, that stuff’s become gets out of date.

Shawn Dandridge [00:35:21]:
Or you’re using, you know or we’ll go back to the the router from Best Buy example. Yeah. You buy that router in, you know, February. Usually, when you buy technology from a store, it’s already out of date because they ship it with a certain firmware, and usually, you’ll get a message that says, update your firmware because it’s out of date. A lot of people don’t do that. So hackers, this is what they do. They know these exploits. They know these vulnerabilities.

Shawn Dandridge [00:35:45]:
They know these versions. So they find you, gain access to your system, and essentially shuts you out. And they display a message on the screen that says, hey, if you want access to your point of sale system or your credit card readers, pay me $2,000 in Bitcoin. Send it to this address. And you literally can do absolutely nothing until you pay these people and they send you a code to unlock your system. That’s what ransomware is.

Jordan Berry [00:36:15]:
Yeah.

Shawn Dandridge [00:36:16]:
They’re holding your business for ransom.

Jordan Berry [00:36:19]:
Yeah, literally. Yeah. Dirty business. Dirty business there. Yeah. Well, and it’s. Listen, it’s not it’s not something that’s ever talked about. But I mean, I think it’s happening already and it’s going to happen more and more as we rely more and more on technology.

Jordan Berry [00:36:37]:
Again, that sort of blessing and curse of technology. There’s we’ve got to make sure we’re buttoning everything up, running, professionalizing our business. And that’s a huge, a huge part of that. One thing we’re talking about, too, before we before we hit record here is we’re just kind of talking about the industry in general. And you were mentioning I agree with you. And I’ve said this before too of like we see this industry starting to consolidate more and more, whereas there’s less and less onesie twosie store owners and more owners owning more. I mean, can you just talk about like, okay, let’s say I have a portfolio of ten, twenty, 50 laundromats, like, talk to me about everything we’re talking about right now in that context, if I’m that if I’m that store owner, I’m that company that owns that. What do I need to be thinking about? Or if that’s my goal, right? I asked I did a survey.

Jordan Berry [00:37:36]:
I’ve mentioned this before I did a survey before and was like, how how many laundromats do you want to own? And overwhelmingly it was 10 plus laundromats. It was like 80 something percent. So I said, I want to own 10 plus laundromats. Right. So if that’s my goal, what do I need to be thinking about with all this stuff?

Shawn Dandridge [00:37:52]:
So, you know, just based on the economies of scale, the more you own, the easier this kind of gets because you can kind of cookie cutter it and you can centralize a lot of these things. So, for example, my, you know, background is working in these major companies that have, you know, two, three hundred, three thousand locations. We could centralize a lot of this stuff. We would have what we call, you know, at a remote office or a laundromat that somewhere we could have, you know, your typical router, your switch, and your your Wi Fi, your your access points. But as far as the security of all of it, we can centralize that into a a data center. We can have our advanced, you know, intrusion protection, which looks at all the traffic for malware, which is basically a virus and things like that. It can expect the traffic before it sends it back out to the Internet. So as you move up in in stores, you can actually centralize a lot of these things.

Shawn Dandridge [00:38:56]:
You can can take advantage of having these 10 stores by, you know, using this technology that traditionally is for enterprise. But, you know, now I think where the price points are at on a lot of this stuff, if you have a large, you know, footprint like a 10 or 20 stores, this is where you would see the best benefit for your money. And as far as security, you could do more things like inspect the traffic, do role based access. So John can’t have the same access as Susie. That’s a, you know, just a tech in a store that folds laundry. Like, why does she need access to the point of sale system when all she does is wash laundry? Or if you have a manager, they have access to everything, but you have an assistant manager that you may have give access on certain days or things like that. So you can really start to segment things as you expand and centralized what your technology stack and what your security is.

Jordan Berry [00:39:59]:
So do I like, if I own one, maybe two, maybe three stores, I mean, is this something that I need to spend any time on or how much time or, like, how how important is it if I own, like, one, two, three stores?

Shawn Dandridge [00:40:13]:
I think at the store level, it’s still very important. I still think you said fortify what you have. I would still recommend a, you know, enterprise grade firewall, a switch, and enterprise grade, you know, wireless access points. Because that a lot of that security that we were just talking about centralizing, you can do at those locations. It may not be as robust as, you know, like full fledged enterprise in a data center redundant systems and things like that. But what I’m trying to do, if I have one or two or three stores, I’m just trying to stop you from taking me completely down. Even if you log on to my guest WiFi and find some exploit or, exploit an update or you somehow get into my point of sale, you know, VLAN is what we call it. That’s a separate network.

Shawn Dandridge [00:41:06]:
Okay. You may take down one or two computers or if I have a monitoring service, which we also offer, I can see. I was like, oh, this is app unusual activity. This is abnormal, and I can set it off for you. So you may affect one or two computers or one or two credit card readers, but you’re not taking down my entire store and costing me a day or two of revenue. So you’re really just trying to limit how much damage they can do in some short amount of time before you’re able to either, you know, cut off Internet connectivity, kick them out or remedy whatever situation you have going on there.

Jordan Berry [00:41:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that the is that the is that the basic like if there’s a basic building block or basic kind of packages that, you know, just those things like the enterprise quality router, the switch, like, is that the basic building blocks? That’s kind of what I need here.

Shawn Dandridge [00:42:01]:
That’s kind of one on one. Yeah. Instead of, you know, just having your your disc consumer stuff off the shelf, I need something that I can do advanced security features on. So that’s the captive portal for the WiFi so I can collect your information. That’s separating the network so I can give you separate networks for your payment systems and your guest WiFi that’s remote monitoring. So I don’t have the expertise on my staff to monitor this stuff, but I know that someone in some operation center is looking at my network. So you know it is not only goes back to security, it it can monitor your critical applications or critical devices. So if you have a hundred credit card readers and someone in that operation center sees one that goes offline, they’ll call you and say, hey, you know, I just saw this go offline.

Shawn Dandridge [00:42:59]:
Can’t necessarily troubleshoot the payment card reader from, you know, but they can tell you, oh, I saw it go offline. Can you call the store? Or they can call the store if that’s what you want and say, hey. I saw machine seven go offline. Did did lose power? Did someone unplug it? Did someone tampering with it? So very quickly, you’ll know that, hey, I have a problem somewhere. Let me go look. Or even if you don’t have someone in the store, you can at least access the security cameras and look. And you may see some guy climbing over the back of the machine doing whatever, but at least you know now. And then someone in that operation center can say, okay.

Shawn Dandridge [00:43:36]:
We can turn off that port to that machine because we don’t know what they’re doing. Maybe they’re trying to plug something in to get access to the payment network. So just things like that. Again, you’re just trying to limit your exposure to these bad actors of what they’re trying to do before they destroy everything.

Jordan Berry [00:43:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s good stuff, man. I think that that is, like I said, man, I just I don’t hear anybody talking about that hardly ever. And, I just I think it’s important now. And it’s only going to become more and more important as we go forward, you know, with our with our businesses and especially as you know, so many of us, our goal is to build a build a portfolio or build a really large pickup and delivery business where a lot of revenue is coming through our our payment systems, whether it be like online payment systems or or in store payment systems. Right. And, you know, what’s the saying? More money, more problems, right? Like, yeah,

Shawn Dandridge [00:44:39]:
and I’ll I’ll even go even more basic than that, even before we even get to the firewall. What if you have a you know, you have a store that does a million 5 in revenue a year and you have a single Internet connection that depends on this entire business? So in in my industry, we call that disaster recovery or Doctor. What do you do if some guy runs into the light pole outside and don’t have Internet? That happens all the time. So are you just gonna be down for two or three days or a day and lose all this money? Or at at the basics of it, you can incorporate some type of cellular design device, four g or five g, on top of your Internet primary Internet connectivity. So if it goes down, the firewall is smart enough to say, oh, I lost my primary Internet connectivity. Let me switch over to this four g or five g device. And no one would be the smarter in the store. I mean, all of your systems would still work.

Shawn Dandridge [00:45:42]:
You could still process payments. You could still remotely manage things. So just basic stuff like that before you even get to, like, this high-tech other stuff. This is just strictly revenue protection that probably every business that is heavily dependent on the wider Internet should have.

Jordan Berry [00:46:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. And listen, I know. All of this can feel very overwhelming, for a lot of people. This this is very like, you know, some of you guys listening are like, Yeah, no problem. I’m already doing all this stuff or I am not doing it, but I should be. I know better. I’m going to implement it.

Jordan Berry [00:46:21]:
And some of you guys are feeling like this is super overwhelming. Like, I don’t even know where to start. But, listen, Sean and I are going to do a live Q and A number one where you can come and ask more questions if you’re, you know, kind of one of those no bad question Q and A is right. So if you don’t even know what we’re talking about, we can back it all the way up to the basics. If you want more advanced stuff, you can talk with Sean about that. Like this is an opportunity to figure out how to safeguard your businesses for the right now, but also as we kind of move forward. So make sure you jump onto that Q and A that we’re going to do. But also, Sean, like if people want more information about this stuff, where can they go to learn more about what you guys are doing?

Shawn Dandridge [00:47:07]:
Yeah. So we have a website, of course, try laundry tech Com That has a lot of good information on there. You can also schedule a thirty minute free consultation with me. And we can and we’ll just go through what do you have. I’ll just ask you pretty basic questions like here. Like, what do you have as far as technology? Do you have a point of sale system? Do you have, you know, washer and dryers that are connected to some type of payment system, or are you looking at that for the future? If we can map out IT strategy for your business, you know, whether you’re there already and you’re just looking to upgrade to fortify what you have or if you’re just looking for something totally new.

Jordan Berry [00:47:50]:
Yeah. Link will be down below also. And you can listen at the very least, go do go do a free consultation call with Sean and find out, you know, what what do I need to do? And then you can determine, is this something I do YouTube University and I do it myself? Or is this something where it just makes sense to offload to the people who know what they’re doing? Yeah. You know, and then worry about growing my own business. So, dude, I appreciate you coming on. Not only listen. Forget about that. I mean, I do appreciate you coming on, but I I really appreciate you investing some time into thinking about this for us as we move forward as an industry.

Jordan Berry [00:48:40]:
And, you know, I know you probably won’t be the only player in this in the long run. But listen, you’re pioneering something that I don’t see anybody else doing, on a wide basis. And I think it is super important. I would not have you back on if I did not think it’s important. So I do I mean, I do think it’s really important stuff here. And so I appreciate you thinking about that, applying your expertise to our industry, which is huge and and, you know, trying to push us forward, help us professionalize our businesses. I really do appreciate that, man. Thank you.

Shawn Dandridge [00:49:13]:
Yeah. I definitely appreciate you having me on. And, you know, although, you know, we’ve been talking about, you know, the whole security landscape and, you know, routers and switches and all that stuff. But we go down to the basics too. If you just need some cat five cable ran for some cameras, you know, when I had my own store and, you know, I know how to do this stuff, but some guy that’s just bought a laundromat, a zombie mat that has absolutely nothing, and he’s looking for this stuff, it’s like, where do you start? Where do you find these people? So we can even as far as putting a jack for CAT five cable, we can do that nationwide anywhere. So it’s not just this fancy, you know, full stack IT stuff too. We we do the easy stuff too. You know, cables, email setup, or you need a domain name, Bob.

Shawn Dandridge [00:50:03]:
We could do that stuff for you too, but I I think the stuff that’s really gonna see a return on your investment is investing in a little bit better equipment mix for your laundromat. And one thing we didn’t touch on is with this whole Wi Fi thing. A lot of people are missing out on value very valuable information when they give out this Wi Fi for free because you have a captive audience there. You have someone that’s using it that’s probably gonna be bad. So, you know, in our captive portal, we like I said, we capture a name, email address, and, you know, device information. So you can use that if you do have a marketing team or marketing arm or marketing firm that you use. You can download this list and say, Hey, I know these people come here because I have them on my Wi Fi system. Market to them, send them a 5% off or 10% off coupon for Wednesday.

Sean Dandridge [00:50:57]:
You know, whatever slow day or whatever you want to do. So not only are you getting this this, you know, full stack IT thing that’s gonna protect you, but you’re also getting free marketing data that you don’t have to pay anybody for because you already have these people coming into your laundromat. So there’s there’s a lot of other elements to this too that just not only from an I. T. Side, but something that can also grow your business as well.

Shawn Dandridge [00:51:23]:
Yeah, which is huge. And, you know, I mean, even that even that sign up page, I mean, you can kick them automatic. I mean, think about like, I don’t know. I’ve been flying a lot lately, but like, I go on an airplane Wi Fi, right? When when I log in, it kicks me to one of their pages where they’re trying to sell me stuff.

Shawn Dandridge [00:51:40]:
They’re trying to sell your car.

Jordan Berry [00:51:42]:
You know, like, I mean, you can do that same thing, you know, with your business to write. You have it when they sign in first kicks, kicks them over to someone that promotes your stuff or a service that you offer. Or you can even sell that page if you want to as like an advertising page. So when people log in, you know, tide sends you money or whoever, right? So there’s lots of things that you can do marketing wise, with a lot of this data, too. And we’ve, you know, probably not for a long time, actually. But we’ve talked about that as being a huge missed opportunity for a lot of laundromat owners right now. And I think a big part of that is a lot of people don’t know how to set that up. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:52:21]:
So now you’ve got your solution on how how to do that.

Shawn Dandridge [00:52:26]:
Yeah. Like I always say, it costs nothing to look. So come on over. Get the free phone call. You might like what we say. You may not, but at least, you know, you’ll I guarantee you, you will leave more educated about this stuff than when you came, even if you do absolutely nothing with us. And, you know, sometimes that’s the best you can hope for that, you know, you may hear something that may trigger something. It’s like, oh, yeah, I heard that crazy guy talk about that and let me go do that or see about that.

Shawn Dandridge [00:52:53]:
So, you know, just come by the page, give us a try, sign up for a free thirty minute consultation and let us see what we can do for you.

Jordan Berry [00:53:01]:
Are you the crazy guy in that or am I the crazy guy? I don’t know. Maybe a little bit about Yeah. Yeah. Well, 5050, I live or die. Yeah. Awesome, dude. Well, hey, listen, I appreciate it. Make sure you guys join us for the live Q and A.

Jordan Berry [00:53:16]:
We’re gonna be talking tech and security and kind of all this stuff delving into your questions. And if you’re a total as my son, I don’t even know if he says this. There might be a cooler word now, but he used to say noob. So if you’re a total noob and all this stuff, listen, this is a perfect place for you. If you’re not a noob, but you’re looking to level up your system, level up your security, maybe you’ve got multiple stores, something like that, and you want to know what options are available. Come to that Q and A, and then head head over to trylaundrytech.com and book that call with Sean because at the very least, you’re gonna have a good time hanging out with Sean for a while. Yeah. I always do.

Shawn Dandridge [00:53:56]:
Not a bad guy.

Jordan Berry [00:53:58]:
Yeah. Well, unless unless you need to be. Right?

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:00]:
Yeah. Unless I need to be

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:01]:
on the

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:02]:
service on the side, you know,

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:03]:
you’re gonna

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:04]:
be a bad guy that I can I can do something? Can

Jordan Berry [00:54:07]:
be. Awesome, dude. Well, listen, let’s let’s recommit here to our, our podcast so that next time when you come on, we can lament again that we didn’t start.

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:21]:
Yeah. Fully committed at this point.

Jordan Berry [00:54:23]:
Me too. Me too. I am 100%. So look out for our new podcast, coming out probably in the next month or. Six hundred. I don’t know.

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:33]:
Eight hundred years or so.

Jordan Berry [00:54:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, again, I appreciate you, you know, for one, thinking about all this stuff for us and providing the service, but also, dude, I just appreciate you as a person. Thank you for coming on, hanging out with us.

Shawn Dandridge [00:54:47]:
Yeah. I always appreciate you. Love the platform. Love what you’ve done with Laundromat Resource, and I remember when you first started this thing and it it I was like, man, that’s a great idea because, like I said, we were talking before, there’s still even today, the information that should be out there is not out there. And I think you and your team are doing a great job of just kind of putting that in one place, offering services for people before they make these half a million million dollar investments in things they really don’t know a lot about other than what they’ve seen online. And, you know, you’re you’re always gonna see just the good stuff, not the bad stuff. We were talking about, Yeah. The guys holding up the piles of money and and like I said, that’s literally thirty minutes or an hour out of the entire week.

Shawn Dandridge [00:55:34]:
So what else happens during that week? That’s what you don’t know, and I think you guys do a great job of offering services and, you know, setting up consultations and consulting to help people, like, really determine, is this what you wanna do before you commit this amount of money and this amount of time and effort to something like owning a laundromat?

Jordan Berry [00:55:55]:
Yeah, I appreciate that, man. And, I mean, biggest shout out goes to people like you who come on the on the podcast sharing their their stories, their experiences, their services that they’re offering, try to help make the rest of us better at what we’re trying to do. And, and to the team, too. I mean, we got a really great team, a lot of great coaches, consultants, and, you know, obviously, like the support behind all that the admins and all that. So a lot of great stuff, man. I really appreciate that as well. And, let’s do this again sometime.

Shawn Dandridge [00:56:24]:
Looking forward to it. Let’s not make it three years this time or two and a half or however long we

Jordan Berry [00:56:29]:
can do. Well, at the very least, we’ll hang out in a couple weeks of that q and

Jordan Berry [00:56:32]:
a with the rest of you guys listening. And, we’ll see you guys then. Alright. Hope you enjoyed that episode with Sean Dandridge. And, listen. We have got to start thinking of our little businesses as companies. We’ve got to start thinking of them that way, and we’ve got to start acting that way. We’ve been talking about professionalizing our businesses and our industry.

Jordan Berry [00:56:55]:
This is a huge aspect of how we need to be doing that. We need to

Jordan Berry [00:56:59]:
be take care, taking care

Jordan Berry [00:57:00]:
of ourselves online and having the right technology to help us properly manage our business. So huge shout out to Sean for thinking about that for us as an industry. Super excited that he’s doing that. And, hey, reach out to him if you think that that is something that you would like some help with. Alright. We’ll see you next week. Peace.