Announcing Foojee Email Security+

A first of its kind. Made for you.

Today, we are announcing a brand new kind of product from Foojee. The email security game has changed, and we knew we needed to re-think our approach to address this growing risk for our clients. I'm incredibly proud of our team for the dedicated work they've put into this new product, and I'm excited for you to experience it for yourself.

Phishing scams have not only become more sophisticated over the past four years, but are getting worse with the onset of AI tools. This problem has gotten so bad that we have spent over two years testing the most advanced solutions available to protect our clients, and to also protect us! Foojee stands by the promise that we use the same tools that we offer our clients.

Part of the reason for our excitement is that for the first time ever we've partnered with a long-time friend, and cybersecurity firm to offer you a 24x7x365 security operations center (SOC) where your security incidents will be identified and isolated around the clock.

We are calling the new service Foojee Email Security+. There are so many security features that we had to add a plus sign.

In addition to offering a first-ever 24x7 SOC, we've selected a best-in-class cloud service that will provide several layers of security to protect your entire business (not just email):

1. AI-powered phishing protection to detect anomalies in all email: incoming, outgoing and internal.

2. Best-in-class spam filtering and quarantine.

3. Malware, ransomware, and phishing protection in your cloud storage. Supported services include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

4. Email links are re-written to ensure your entire team is always clicking on protected URLs. 

5. Account takeover prevention. (We detect suspicious logins and account activity.)

Best of all, configuring Foojee Email Security+ takes almost no time, and doesn't require any operational interruptions for your team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if my company currently uses Foojee Filter, the existing spam filtering service?

• This is an entirely new service from the ground up. You will be contacted to discuss when you can migrate to Foojee Email Security+ and if your pricing will change. Foojee will no longer offer Foojee Filter after September 30, 2024.

How long does it take to implement Foojee Email Security+?

• We can create your email security environment in one business day. However, we are offering this service on a first come first served basis, so our Delivery team will schedule the earliest available date with you.

Will implementation cause downtime?

• No. Implementing this service is done entirely with cloud administration tools. Your team will experience no downtime.

How long will it take for me to see the results?

• Some features like URL link protection are enabled immediately. However the AI-powered phishing filtering may take up to five days to process and learn your unique email messages.

Is there a quarantine report?

• Yes, your team will receive an email everyday at 3pm notifying them which emails were quarantined, and which emails have been marked as spam. You can configure as many daily email reports as you like.

Will this require a long-term contract?

• No, this service is being offered on a month-to-month basis, just like our other services.

What requirements must my company meet to use Foojee Email Security+?

1. In order to leverage our advanced analysis and 24x7 SOC, your business must use Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

2. This service requires a five user minimum.

How soon can I expect notice of a security incident?

• Foojee guarantees a security incident response of 30 minutes. You will also receive an incident report of what actions lead to the incident, and what steps were taken to neutralize the threat.

There's been a sea change

We're in stormy waters.

There has been a 400% rise in cyberattacks worldwide in just the last 3 years. Why? Well, oddly enough, covid is to blame. 

Crime rings across the world suffered revenue losses when offices closed and everyone started working from home. This caused them to look for other revenue opportunities. What resulted was a global surge in scamming operations from the same organizations that run human & drug trafficking.

So your curiosity is not unfounded. We are living in an unprecedented time in human history where bad actors have global reach. And it’s not slowing down. The game has become more than cat and mouse. A more accurate metaphor is an tsunami of threats in our digital communications. How can you protect your business from the persistent risk?

We’ve thought long about the tides that keep rising, and we’re prepared to take a significant step to protect our clients from these growing forces.

A change for the better is coming soon.

Hiring for a New Role: Client Success Manager

It's with tremendous pride we announce a brand new role, and job opening at Foojee! We're looking to hire our first Client Success Manager. This milestone is a direct result of the shift we made 8 years ago to focus solely on being the best outsourced IT provider for small business. By pulling all of our efforts toward one vision, we've been able to go beyond just "tech support" to offer in-depth expertise and leadership to all areas of small businesses Apple IT.

For example, when you hire Foojee, you are now hiring an entire IT department complete with security protocols, HR procedures, equipment purchasing, continuing education, and oh, and our amazingly talented and charming help desk!

With this growth, we've now reached a point where we can have a dedicated team entirely focused on client success. This team will start as one person, and will serve as the point of contact exclusively for our Foojee Service Plan members.

As the founder, the reason I'm truly thrilled with this job opening is because this role is my personal favorite of all the roles I've played over the years. Building authentic relationships with each of our clients is the fuel that fills me with energy, even at the end of the day when I come home to my family. Our clients are our inspiration, and why Foojee exists. We are going to be intentional to ensure we select the perfect person for this role. This person will exemplify Foojee's devotion to seeing small businesses succeed. They will thrive on collaborating with leaders facing critical challenges in their business. And they'll be filled with inspiration when they get to work with our clients, because our clients are the absolute best. 💫

Who's This Position For?

If you love listening in conversations, and understanding cause-and-effect in friendships and teams, you're going to love this role. If you love asking the artist questions to understand the art, you're going to thrive here.

Client Success means you are the advocate for Foojee's clients. You seek out feedback, and opportunities to help, and you're resourceful to meet their need.

Relationships require nurturing. Whether it's a child, a marriage, a friend, or a client, the best relationships are intentional. So while spontaneity and connection are a beautiful a part of relationships, those connections can only exist if there is an underlying effort to maintain the relationship. Your objective will be to maintain a consistent communication cadence with each of our Foojee Service Plan members.

Your compensation (more on that below) will have a revenue growth component. So this position is a great fit if you are naturally motivated to retain existing clients, and seek opportunities where Foojee's product offering can help their small business.

What Qualifications Do I Need?

To meet our minimum requirements, you should really have 1-2 years of experience in client success management. When you join, you'll also attend the incredible one-week workshop called GrowBIG by the Bunnell Idea Group (shoutout to Mo & Darla 👋). https://bunnellideagroup.com. We've used their business development methodology for over ten years, and regardless of your background, it's an incredible experience, and will help you understand how Foojee builds authentic relationships with our clients.

If you have more experience than this, you should still apply. Our compensation package can be modified to account for experience.

What's The Day-To-Day Like?

As far as the actual work goes, you’ll be working directly with Foojee clients over phone, email, and video calls.  Our clients are primarily small businesses, so you're delving into IT needs with owners, office managers, and operations leaders. You may not know all of the answers, but you're resourceful, calm, and enjoy finding the solution.

You will have a quarterly goal of providing a business review for 25% of your clients, so that you are maintaining at least one review per year per client. We do things a little differently at Foojee by not requiring long-term agreements. That means we earn their business every month, and they are *choosing* to work with us every month. We build amazing relationships with them, and we can't wait for them to meet you. This role will be a significant contributor to maintaining our clients' documentation when new information is gathered or changed. Examples of documentation include updating company contacts lists, device changes, new procedures, organizational changes, re-establishing relationships with new key players, etc. 

We're basically an IT-department-in-a-box for small businesses. And with that comes a wide array of responsibilities. However, over the past fifteen years we’ve streamlined every single app we use, and we'll ensure you have a working knowledge of all of them. Most of our clients use the exact same set of apps, networking equipment, and cloud services (Kandji, Meraki, Google Workspace, and Office 365 just to name a few). This allows us to consistently deliver excellence, and provide a reliable service to our clients.
  
We've got an interesting balance of solo work and team work. Much of your work will be independent, and that's why we are looking for someone who is comfortable with a good degree of autonomy and responsibility. Having said that, our team is pretty spectacular. We know that we are better together, so we're always helping each other problem solve and improve. Iron sharpens iron. You'll meet once a week for our virtual team meeting (currently there are 10 of us). You'll also take part in the bi-weekly (every other week) Delivery meeting that surfaces issues and goals among our engineers and Director of Operations. Throughout the day we use Basecamp for internal communication. We’re big fans of leveraging asynchronous, long-form communication which promotes a more calm work environment. Sure we have group chats for each team, but how we use them is a far cry from how most companies use Slack. We don’t expect you to see or engage with everything. If it’s important enough, we use long-form memos in Basecamp rather than blasting a group chat.

This role will report directly to our COO. It's a unique role, and we've decided it deserves direct communication to the COO. You will be collaborating with our Director of Business Development frequently for product knowledge, client history, and best practices. You will also work hand-in-hand with our Director of Operations and the rest of the Delivery team because they will have the latest interactions with our clients. Since this is a new role at Foojee, we will lean on your experience to help us establish best practices for client success management.

Working in our field is thrilling with a new adventure everyday. However we believe a calm work environment with clear accountability helps create a long-lasting burnout-free career. In fact, one of our core values is Create Calm, and we are evaluated on all of our core values during our performance evaluations. This is the same core value that has influenced our 37.5 hr work week, and our palatable 9-5 work hours. We truly only work 9-5 Monday through Friday unless there is an emergency, and I can't remember the last time that happened.

Compensation And Benefits

• $65,000 On Target Earnings (OTE)

  • $45,500 is your Base Salary, equivalent to 70% of your OTE.

  • $19,500 is your Bonus Potential, equivalent to 30% of your OTE.

  • Your compensation is not capped. For example, if you exceed your Bonus Potential, the bonus continues on a linear scale.

• $40/mo iPhone reimbursement

• $60/mo Mac reimbursement

• 67¢ per mile (gov't standard) travel reimbursement, paid monthly.

• 37.5 hours a week. We’re trying to trim the fat at work so we can go play.

• 3% matching retirement plan.

• Partial reimbursement for health insurance.

• $100/mo wellness stipend. You solve client challenges for a living, so we think it’s important to take care of yourself on a regular basis: gym membership, massage, any wellness service.

• Work from home.

• A calm work environment where productivity is protected.

• No useless meetings. Time is too precious. Let’s use our work hours to do meaningful work, and leave ample time for friends and family.

Apply

Our deadline for applying is very soon: April 12, 2024. Interviews will begin within that time, and the role may begin as early as April 22. But we’re far more interested in finding the right person, so we can be flexible on start date. To apply, just shoot us an email at jobs@foojee.com with the following.👇 (You’re welcome to send your resume, but it’s not required.)

1. Why you'd like to work at Foojee.

2. An example of a recent client/customer solution that you're especially proud of.

3. A mock email reply to a client that sent a request (below). Feel free to ask for clarifying questions and then either offer a solution via email or offer times for a meeting.

Hi Foojee!

We just noticed that your invoice is billing us for 22 seats when we only have 21 people, and we've only had 21 for the last 3 months. Also, we are getting lots of phishing emails and are concerned about our email security. Does Foojee have anything to protect us from phishing emails? Also we are hiring 3 people next month and I forgot the process of getting them new Macs. I know that's a lot but I'm at my dentist appointment and just needed to get the ball rolling.

Thanks!

We look forward to reading your email!

-Lucas

Nine iOS 17 Features for Work

On Friday, September 15 Apple made iOS 17 available for everyone. It’s easy to miss some monumental new features, but that’s why we made this! Check out our team’s favorite nine features you can get today for FREE on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

New iPhone 15 Pro Features for Small Business

There are plenty of outlets to get the highlights of Apple's fall iPhone announcements. But we wanted to save you time and share the iPhone changes that matter for small business!

Why Foojee is For Small Business

If you're reading this, it's very likely you're part of a small business. And that's no accident.

Like many of you, we started Foojee looking for business anywhere that would help us grow. After nine years into the business, we decided it was time to grow roots, and go all in with one specialty. But why?

Let me tell you! In fact, there are four reasons why. Watch below. And tell me if this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

On Employee Monitoring

More often than I’d like to admit, we get asked for advice on how to spy on employees while they’re at work. The reason behind their question is usually for understandable reasons: they want to ensure employees are being productive on the clock (which is kind of a futile effort anyway). But we think there’s a better way, and a better perspective to take. So we’re going to share it.

Foojee does not support employee monitoring of any type. While there are products on the market that offer many ways to monitor employee activity, they violate human privacy, are intrusive to the operating system, and often result in inconclusive data.

In scenarios where the company’s goal is to hold employees accountable for their work, Foojee has found other practices to be significantly more effective, without violating human privacy.

In our constant pursuit of designing a better future for small business we want to champion best practices for IT, security, and small business management. After being in business for over 15 years, and working with hundreds of businesses in different industries, we want to elevate best practices for creating a productive, accountable work environment. So if you're looking to create a culture of accountability, trust, and high performance, here are some of our favorite methods we practice at Foojee.

1. Daily check-ins to review completed work. We use Basecamp and our ticketing system to keep record of activity and tasks completed.

2. Setting weekly goals or scorecards for work. This can either be project-based goals, or metrics-based score cards. When all parties are aligned on what success looks like, great team members are eager to meet, and even exceed expectations.

3. Getting feedback from your customers directly. Sometimes this can be a phone call directly with the customer (I'm sure they would love to share their thoughts!), and sometimes you can do this digitally. We've created a simple rolling 60-day survey to our clients so they can help keep us accountable with how we're doing.

4. You can't motivate employees. You can only hire motivated people. This is why we place an incredible amount of effort in our 5-part interview process. One of the core values we look for in candidates is "Make it Better". We want fellow team members to have a natural desire for self-improvement, and to make their work a better place to work. If your team members aren't compelled to do great work, then no policies or monitoring will change that. They're probably not a great fit for your team.

We are here for small businesses. We know the challenges of growing (and just maintaining) a small team. And we’re committed to designing a better way to run a small business. If you’d like to discuss what that means for you, shoot me an email. I’d love to hear from you: lucas@foojee.com.

Best Practices for Passwords in 2023

It's 2023 and passwords are still the most vulnerable (and frustrating!) part of your security environment.

So if there was ever a Foojee seminar where we could gather all of our clients (from all states) and give you a brief overview on how you should be looking at passwords in 2023, here it is! How long should a password be now? Is there something more secure than passwords? What's SSO? Find out below!

Looking for a Help Desk Engineer in Atlanta

This post is to announce that we have an opening for a Help Desk Engineer in Atlanta! We're accepting applications until March 20, so don't hesitate, and let your pals know if you think they'd be interested!

Who's This Position For?
If you're the guy or gal in your circle that everyone asks for Apple tech advice, this role may be for you. The Help Desk Engineer is our entry level support role on our Delivery Team. It's where you can get your career started in IT. Our technical career track generally progresses like this:

1. Help Desk Engineer

2. Engineer

3. Sr. Engineer

4. Principal Engineer

Being on the front lines allows you to learn core technologies in iOS, macOS, security, networking, and general IT practices. While you've got to have a knack for technical work, you've also got to love human beings. We love to delight folks. It's part of our bigger vision to design a better future for small business. So if you like to guide others to success (and see a smile on their face) you should apply.

What Qualifications Do I Need?
To meet our minimum requirements, you should really have 1-2 years of working with Apple technology in some form or fashion. Our Help Desk Engineers all complete official Apple device training upon joining the team, and grow their career by completing specialized certifications.

If you have more experience than this, you should still apply. Our compensation package can be modified to account for experience.

What's The Day-To-Day Like?
You'll be taking care of requests coming in from our hundreds of clients every day (many from other Foojee Cities). For this role, expect at around 50% of your work to be remote, and 50% client side. (While we offer roles in other locations from time to time, this is an Atlanta-based role.) You can work from your home office, or a coffee shop. When you're on site, you're driving across Atlanta metro. This means you've got to enjoy driving, and that you have a few podcast subscriptions or audiobooks queued up. As far as the actual work goes, you’ll be working directly with clients, either over the phone, using remote screen sharing, or email.  You may not know all of the answers, but you're resourceful, calm, and enjoy finding the solution. Over the past fourteen years we’ve streamlined every single app we use, and we’ll train you on all of them. Most of our clients use the exact same set of apps, networking equipment, and cloud services to make troubleshooting consistent. (CrashPlan, Watchman Monitoring, Kandji, Meraki, Google Workspace, and Office 365 just to name a few.)

We've got an interesting balance of solo work and team work. Much of your work will be independent, and that's why we are looking for someone who is comfortable with a good degree of autonomy and responsibility. Having said that, our team is pretty spectacular. We know that we are better together, so we're always helping each other problem solve and improve. Iron sharpens iron. You'll meet at least once a week for our virtual team meeting, and likely collaborate on tickets with the Delivery team throughout the week. Yes you have your individual career aspirations and responsibilities, but we’re all here for each other to help achieve a common goal: to design a better future for small business.

Compensation And Benefits

• $50,000 Full Time or more depending on experience.

• $40/mo iPhone reimbursement

• $60/mo Mac reimbursement

• 65¢ per mile (gov't standard) monthly travel reimbursement.

• 37.5 hours a week. We’re trying to trim the fat at work so we can go play.

• 3% matching retirement plan.

• Partial reimbursement for health insurance.

• $100/mo wellness stipend. You solve client challenges for a living, so we think it’s important to take care of yourself on a regular basis: gym membership, massage, any wellness service.

• Work from home and client offices.

• A calm work environment where productivity is protected.

• No useless meetings. Time is too precious. Let’s do meaningful work, and then let’s rest with friends and family.

Apply

Our deadline for applying is very soon: March 20, 2023. To apply, just shoot us an email at jobs@foojee.com with the following (we don’t read resumes):

• Why you'd like to work at Foojee.

• An example of a recent Apple-based solution you provided or recommended to someone.

• A mock email reply to a client that sent a request. Feel free to ask for clarifying questions and then either offer a solution via email or offer a time to have a remote or on site appointment:

"Hi Foojee! I've noticed for the last couple of weeks that my calendars are broken. Calendars from my Mac go to my phone, but when I make an appointment on my phone, they don't go to my Mac. Can you please help? I'm going out of town in two days and I need this to work!"

We look forward to reading your email!