Chris Goetz

Helping growing SMBs turn IT from friction into leverage. MSP founder sharing practical takes on ops, cybersecurity, and strategic IT.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Most SMBs don’t have an IT problem.

They have a business alignment problem.

What shows up as a “tech issue” is usually:

• unclear priorities
• reactive spending
• invisible operational friction
• security treated like an afterthought
• systems that were never built to scale

Good IT should do 3 things:

• reduce drag
• reduce risk
• increase decision speed

If it’s not doing that, it’s not strategy.

It’s overhead.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

A ransomware negotiator just pled guilty to helping the ransomware gang. CISA leaked passwords to the open web this week. If you're waiting for things to settle before building a cyber plan, they aren't going to.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

By 9am, a well-configured SMB tech stack has pulled overnight data, sent client reports, flagged issues, and triggered follow-ups. All before you opened your laptop. Is yours doing that?

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Two technology strategies: Efficiency AI keeps you safe. Opportunity AI helps you grow. Most SMBs only have the first one. Their competitors are building the second.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

TechCrunch named the 5 growth drivers for small businesses in 2026: AI, automation, platform consolidation, speed to market, operational efficiency. Most SMBs are running one. The leaders are running all five as a system.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@Shpigford @johnhelmuth_ 🤣
Your alpha-level prompt caught me off guard and almost made me spray my coffee

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Anthropic just said a 100-person company using AI is doing the output of 100,000. Your 5-person team could be doing the work of 50. Most SMBs are paying for these tools and using 5% of them.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

A ransomware negotiator just pled guilty to working for the gang. Your IT partner has admin access to everything. Are you sure about them?

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

AI phishing does not look like spam. It looks like a message from someone you trust. Your spam filter has no idea.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

The SMBs outpacing competitors right now are not better funded. They are faster. That is a technology and process problem, not a budget problem.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@themishra4402 Proctology

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@DavidOndrej1 Screw that. Where is my flying car. Been hearing about those for decades.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@petergyang Bro... What's the first rule of Agent Club?...

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@CaptainInsightX All of it... That's like a car salesman asking me how much I want my payment to be... Zero bro...

Quick recap:
Memory=all of it
Desired new car payment=zero

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@petergyang Standards are great. Everyone should own at least one set.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Copilot. That should be the first thing to go. Absolutely horrible if you've ever whiffed of Claude, ChatGPT, etc.

One more pro tip. Have your favorite LLM write a script for you to disable fast startup. You'll thank yourself later when you're rebooting to try to fix a problem and not finding that the OS actually went into a hybrid hibernation state instead.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

I'm hoping this is satire. We have many examples in our own company where we leverage AI to either augment or replace human labor with great results and at a price that is no where near a blended hourly rate that we forecast from.

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

I would be way more bullish on AI if it actually worked and was actually replacing real humans at scale.

Nothing is changing and we’re being lied to that a revolution is underway.

The tools don’t work! They are expensive! And high maintenance.

Dot com bubble 2.0.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Buying AI software is not the same as using AI. Most SMBs have learned that the hard way.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Anthropic just entered the small business market. If your AI strategy is "we will figure it out later," later just got a deadline.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

Enterprise AI ROI collapses under $40M token budgets and 50,000 employees. For a 15-person team, the math is simple: does this save time and prevent costly mistakes? Yes. Next question.

[Chris Goetz @goetzcj]

@AlexFinn For the next unlock have hermes set up a local honcho stack in docker to use as it's memory instead of the default .md file. AI powered, dynamically loaded, continuously refined memory. 🔥🔥