Every business owner I meet at the Menifee Chamber asks me the same thing: why now? Why start a managed services company after thirty-five years at places like Intel, AWS, and a half-dozen security firms? The honest answer is simple. The small businesses I see around me — the family-run restaurant, the four-attorney firm, the sixty-employee manufacturer — are getting served badly. And I think I can fix that.
A quick career arc, translated
I started young. RadioShack electronics kits when I was five or six. A Sinclair 1000 home computer at seven, programming in BASIC with two kilobytes of memory because that was all the machine had. From there, an Atari 800 in middle school, then Apple Macs, then DOS, Windows, and eventually Linux when I got my first real industry job in the early 90s.
That first job was answering support calls. Customers calling in with broken systems, lost data, things that were supposed to work but didn’t. I did that for years before I was ever called a “systems engineer.” I think it’s the most important credential I have. It’s where I learned what most IT vendors never quite learn: customers don’t care about your technology stack. They care about whether their stuff is working, and whether you’ll be there when it isn’t.
From there: a security focus starting in 2003, long before “cybersecurity” was a buzzword. Enterprise architecture roles at Intel Security and Vectra AI. A couple of stops at security and identity startups. And since 2022, a Senior Solutions Architect role at AWS — where I’ve been deep in cloud architecture for some of the largest organizations in the country. I had my first AWS account in 2008, when there were exactly four services on the platform. I mention that not to brag — I mention it because it’s the simplest way to say I’ve been at this a while, and I’ve watched most of the trends come and go.
Why I think SMBs are getting served badly
After thirty-five years in technology, I keep seeing the same pattern with small businesses. They get one of three bad deals.
The first bad deal is getting talked down to. The IT person speaks in acronyms, can’t explain why a recommendation matters, and treats the owner like they’re the problem rather than the customer. That’s a fast way to make a business owner stop asking questions — and not asking questions is exactly what nobody should ever do about their own technology.
The second bad deal is getting oversold. There’s a whole class of IT vendor whose business model is selling the most expensive option, calling it the most secure option, and counting on the owner not knowing the difference. Small businesses don’t need enterprise-grade everything. They need appropriate everything.
The third bad deal is getting ghosted. The IT vendor is responsive while they’re trying to win the contract, and disappears when something actually goes wrong. Owners I talk to have war stories about this — outages on Friday afternoons with nobody answering the phone, recurring problems that never get fixed, calls returned three days later, sometimes never.
I started SimonSaysSystems because I think small and mid-sized businesses in our area deserve better than that.
What Simon Says Systems does
Plain English: we run the technology side of your business so you can run the rest of it.
That looks different depending on who we’re working with. For an established office — say a CPA firm or a law office — it’s day-to-day support, security, backups, email protection, and the steady work of keeping things running without drama. For a manufacturer or warehouse, it’s networks that don’t go down at 3pm Friday and shop-floor systems that talk to each other reliably. For a new buildout — a restaurant, a bar, a retail space — it’s the full low-voltage stack: cabling, networking, WiFi, phones, cameras, door access. Done once, done right.
What I won’t do: scare you into buying something. Talk over your head. Sell you a problem you don’t have. Disappear when you need me.
What I will do is help you stay connected and stay secure. That’s the whole job, and it’s why our motto is Simon Says: Stay Connected. Stay Secure.
If we meet at the Chamber
Bad WiFi is the most common complaint I hear from owners — dropped video calls, dead spots in the warehouse, guest networks where the password is the same one that was first set up at the place before this one. So for fellow members of the Menifee Chamber of Commerce, I’ll come out personally and do a real WiFi site survey. Heat map. Coverage gaps. Network separation review. A written report you can keep. No pitch attached. No cost to you.
A couple of others while we’re here:
– A buildout walkthrough if you’re signing a lease on a new space. I’ll walk the building with you before you sign and flag the IT decisions that’ll cost or save you thousands.
– A shop floor or office system inventory if you’ve got older machines running things you depend on, and you’d like a plain-English risk assessment without the fear-mongering.
These are limited to fellow Chamber members. It’s how I’d rather start most relationships — by being useful first.
One concrete thing this week
If you’ve read this far, here’s what I’d actually like you to do. Send me a question. Any IT question. Something a vendor told you that didn’t quite sit right. Something at your office that’s been bugging you for months. Something a peer mentioned that you’d like a second opinion on. I’ll answer in plain English, no sales pitch, even if the answer is “you don’t need to do anything about that.”
The email is hello@simonsayssystems.com.
Looking forward to meeting you.
Simon Says: Stay Connected. Stay Secure.
— Craig Simon