George the Geek

George the Geek Fractional CTO. I save your company money by weeding out the subscriptions you don't use or need, and make your tech stack work its best for you.

08/17/2026

Agencies: your best client isn't your biggest client.

$9k/mo retainer, zero complaints, pays on time, refers constantly. That's the 6-person shop.

$45k/mo 'partnership' that emails at 11pm, questions every invoice, and demands 'alignment meetings' that eat 6 hours a month. That's the 200-person brand.

I watched a 30-person agency nearly collapse because leadership kept rearranging everything for the big client, while the $9k/mo client — who funded 3 salaries — got 'we'll circle back'.

The math that saved them:
- 1 hour/week on the big account = 4% of revenue in time
- 1 hour/week on the small account = 11% of revenue in time

They rebalanced. Big client got a clear SLA. Small client got white-glove service.

Guess which one renewed for year 3?

Revenue is a scoreboard. Margins are the game.

08/15/2026

Las Vegas businesses: your backup isn't a backup if it's in the same building.

I walked into a 89119 warehouse office last month. Their 'backup': an external drive plugged into the same server running QuickBooks, email, everything.

Fire, flood, or ransomware = the drive dies with everything else. One event, zero recovery.

We moved it offsite. 40 minutes. $8/mo for encrypted cloud storage.

Small business reality check: most 'backups' I see in Vegas are a good intention, not a plan.

Quick test: unplug the server. Can you still get your files? If the answer is no, you have a habit, not a backup.

Anyone else seen a 'backup' that wouldn't survive one unlucky afternoon?

08/13/2026

Agency owner: 'We can't scale. Every new client means hiring 2 more people.'

Then I looked at their ops. 31 tools. 9 of them did the same thing.

- 3 CRMs (one per account manager, nobody synced)
- 2 design feedback tools
- 4 spreadsheets tracking the same 6 KPIs

Every handoff had a 'wait, where's that file?' moment. New hires took 6 weeks to get up to speed — not because the work is hard, but because the knowledge lives in 31 places.

We cut it to 14 tools and 1 source of truth. Ramp time dropped to 2 weeks. Same headcount, 30% more capacity.

The scary part: this agency is better than most.

How many tools does your team use to do one job?

08/12/2026

Found another one: a dental practice paying $2,100/mo for a 'managed IT' contract that covered 2 desktops and a printer.

Breakdown of what they actually had:
- 1 MSP agreement: $1,800/mo (auto-renewed for 3 years)
- 1 'cloud backup' add-on: $200/mo (backing up to a server that didn't exist)
- 1 'premium' antivirus license: $100/mo (2 seats, 9 employees)

Total: $2,100/mo. Actual value delivered: maybe $250.

The kicker: the contract required 90 days written notice to cancel. They'd missed the window by 11 days.

I see this pattern everywhere. Small practices sign one bad vendor agreement and it compounds for years.

What's the most you've ever paid for tech you didn't need?

08/09/2026

Why mid-sized agencies need a Fractional CTO (not just an IT guy).

You don't need a full-time CTO ($200k+/yr).

You need someone who can:
- Review your tech stack quarterly and kill redundant tools
- Vet vendor proposals so you don't get oversold
- Build integrations between your CRM, project management, and accounting systems
- Train your team on security best practices
- Be the technical voice in client pitches when they ask "how do you handle our data?"

That's Fractional CTO work. 10-20 hours/month. Strategic oversight without the full-time salary.

Most agencies have an "IT guy" who fixes printers and resets passwords. That's not the same thing.

Your tech stack is probably:
- 30% redundant tools doing the same job
- 40% underutilized features you're paying for
- 20% manual work that could be automated
- 10% actual productive use

A Fractional CTO fixes that ratio. Typical first-year savings: $30-60k in software waste alone.

That's the pitch I'm testing this month. We'll see if it resonates.

Hi, I'm George, and I'm a lifelong geek and have been in IT for the past 22 years.One of the trends I've seen in the las...
08/08/2026

Hi, I'm George, and I'm a lifelong geek and have been in IT for the past 22 years.

One of the trends I've seen in the last several years is the move away from software a company can host on their own for a single fee, to cloud-hosted SaaS software that is charged every month, for every seat.

For software as important as team communication, this can prohibit many companies from even looking at this kind of solution. If a software charges you $20/mo and you have 20 employees, that's $400 a month and $4800 per year. Did you plan on budgeting that much for software just for internal communication?

You probably already have web hosting that can run something, which is why I wrote free, open source software called LVChat and LVChat Messenger. If you're geeky and love open source stuff, you might enjoy my github repo (updated almost daily) at https://github.com/repairgenie/lvchat

You can also access the free public server at https://chat.lasvegasbestinternet.com (Once there, clicking How to Install will give you download links for the desktop apps and instructions on how to install it on your chromebook or mobile device)

If you're not and you want it set up for your business, the software is free but I charge for installation, support/maintenance, and hosting if you need it. You can reach me at [email protected]

08/08/2026

How we saved a 100-person agency 20 hours/week on reporting.

Before: Account managers manually pulled data from Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and HubSpot. Then copy-pasted into PowerPoint templates. Each client report took 2-3 hours.

For 15 clients, that's 30-45 hours/week of manual labor.

The fix: Built a simple Looker Studio dashboard connected via API to all four platforms. Automated PDF generation every Monday morning.

Implementation time: 2 days.
Ongoing maintenance: 2 hours/month.
Time saved: 20 hours/week.

At $100/hr billing rate, that's $2,000/week in recovered productivity.

Annual value: $104,000.

The account managers now spend that time on strategy calls and creative reviews instead of data entry.

Sometimes the most valuable tech project isn't flashy. It's just connecting systems that should've been talking all along.

08/05/2026

I audited a marketing agency's software stack and found $6,800/yr in waste.

Here's the breakdown:
- 2 email marketing platforms ($180/mo wasted — they only needed one)
- 3 project management tools ($140/mo wasted — Pick one)
- 1 SEO tool nobody used ($99/mo wasted — Cancelled in 2 minutes)
- 1 social media scheduler with 2 seats but only 1 person posting ($20/mo wasted)
- 1 analytics platform duplicating Google Analytics ($50/mo wasted)

Total: $489/mo = $5,868/yr.

Plus 2 unused Adobe licenses ($480/yr).

Grand total: $6,348/yr.

They paid me $250. ROI: 25x in year one.

I don't say this to brag. I say it because this is the norm, not the exception.

08/02/2026

Sunday thought:

The best thing about running my own practice is the same as the worst thing.

Every decision is mine.

When a client doesn't act on recommendations — that's on me for not making it easy enough.
When a week is slow — that's on me for not creating enough visibility.
When a post hits — that's on me for finally getting the message right.

There's no boss to blame and no team to hide behind. Just: did you do the work or didn't you?

This week: I did the work. Some of it landed. Some of it didn't.

Next week: more of the same. That's the deal.

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89109

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+17029056444

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