Andrew Bolton is the CEO and co-founder of Tech Rescue, a 24-hour customer support hotline that makes technology human again. With a background in sales, finance, and entrepreneurship, Andrew has built and sold multiple ventures. Tech Rescue provides real-time, real-person tech help for seniors and small businesses, no bots, no mazes, no chats. Founded with his mother two and a half years ago, the company was inspired by the tech struggles of his grandmother and father.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-bolton-/
Website: techrescue.io
Host: Richard Lowe | Guest: Andrew Bolton
Summary of Transcript
Richard Lowe: Hello, I am Richard Lowe and this is the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I’m The Writing King, and I’m here with Andrew Bolton. We’re going to have a conversation about our roots and how we become a little disassociated from them. Andrew, why don’t you give a little bit about your background?
Andrew Bolton: My name is Andrew Bolton. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Tech Rescue, a 24-hour customer support hotline that allows people to just make technology human again. We’ve become so far advanced that we’ve walked past humanity. At Tech Rescue, we bring back the human. When you have a problem, we’re here to fix it. Real time. Real help. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What I’ve found is that we have completely lost our humanity in ourselves. We’ve become so technologically advanced that we’ve gone past the point of actualization. A lot of our problems come from not being grounded. We don’t have that bedrock on which we can build anymore. In order to reach the stars, we’ve left the base of Earth and forgotten there’s gravity. We’re no longer standing on something.
Losing the Baseline
Richard Lowe: I see that all the time. Congress used to be able to come together and solve problems, like the credit union crisis. I’m not convinced they’d be able to do that now.
Andrew Bolton: When we look at policies and things being done by different administrations, you have to ask what’s the benefit. We as Americans have woken up to the idea that what we see around us isn’t in our favor.
Richard Lowe: Let’s avoid the politics discussion. But I’ll give you a business example. Business used to change relatively slowly. Now it’s gotten so fast that just a few weeks ago, the big thing was this tool. Now it’s that tool. These things are throwing business out of kilter because they don’t have a base to ground on. You start digital transformation in your business and you’ve got all these plans, but digital transformation takes years. How can you plan for years when tomorrow there’s some new wonder that obsoletes everything?
Plant Your Flag
Andrew Bolton: I ask for help all the time. I have a board of advisors and directors, and one of them said, “It doesn’t drive it home. Who are you? What do you do and why?” Over the past two weeks we had to go back to the beginning. As a CEO, that rubs the scales in the wrong direction. But unless you set that anchor chain and drive it into the core of what you’re doing, you’re going to get lost.
When we started this business, my mother and I, about two and a half years ago, we had an idea drawn out on a refrigerator with whiteboard markers. Now I’m on my 9th or 10th revision of my website. But where I want to guide somebody is to say: go back to what you started. Why did you risk everything for that one idea? That is your anchor.
For us, it was my grandmother and my father. There was nothing that could speak their language in their time and their need. My grandmother was a woman of drive and purpose. All she wanted was to get some help. She didn’t want to scroll through videos or schedule an appointment. She wanted it when she wanted it. And my father didn’t understand a lot of different things. I realized I don’t speak his language, but maybe somebody does.
I needed something that spoke their language. And bots don’t do that. A person does. “Yes, Mrs. Johnson. How can I help you today?” It revealed itself because I was open to it. Stick to what you started. Plant your flag. Plant that anchor. The path you’re supposed to use will reveal itself. What you’re trying to do is chase noise, and when you chase noise, you’re swatting at gnats in the air.
Staying Grounded as a Ghostwriter
Richard Lowe: That’s the approach I’ve taken with ghostwriting. My first inclination as things were changing was to broaden my offerings. Wrong approach. I write books. That’s what I do very well. That’s why I got into ghostwriting, because I have a passion for telling people’s stories in a way that other people can understand.
I just had somebody who published a book and sold 5,000 copies on the first day, over the weekend. I had a lady named Doris who held her book in her hands and said, “This is the same feeling I had when my first born was in my hands.” Those are incredible things for people to say.
Then I was thinking I had to broaden my base. I realized I don’t like writing blogs or case studies. They can pay the rent, but that’s not why I’m here.
Andrew Bolton: You’re here to paint a masterpiece.
Richard Lowe: I’m an artist. I’m a creative. I’m here to help people with their message.
AI Cannot Replace What You Do
Andrew Bolton: Can you write a book in no time flat with AI?
Richard Lowe: I could write a crappy book in a couple of days.
Andrew Bolton: Can you tell a story better than AI? Can you paint the imagery better?
Richard Lowe: I can get to the heart of the person that AI can’t get to. That’s what I do.
Andrew Bolton: There’s something about you that is instinctual that AI can’t do. You have the ability to find the well, tap it, and bring everything out.
Richard Lowe: I make their idea blossom. I’m only worried about AI cutting out the low-end stuff. But I’m not interested in the low-end. Anybody can do the low-end. Your competition is huge down there.
Andrew Bolton: Rolls-Royce doesn’t advertise. But you know they exist. AI can do a lot of things. But what Tech Rescue is, is not that. No matter what offers we receive for integration or new configurations, I don’t care. Because there’s something about being on the phone with somebody, reassuring them that they’re not crazy. Their problem is a problem because they called me.
The Human Touch in Customer Service
Richard Lowe: Some of the best customer service I’ve gotten is when I call and almost immediately get to a human. Within five minutes, I’m connected to the right person, a third-level tech, who resolves my problem. That company has my business forever. On the other hand, the company where I spend 30 minutes getting through gateways? I’ll be bailing on them as soon as I can.
Andrew Bolton: I have a line in bold red print on the first page of our Standard Operating Procedure: “This is somebody’s most important person.” Somebody signed this person up for my service. They matter to someone. Treat it as such.
Richard Lowe: I managed two help desks at Trader Joe’s, one for the warehouse and one for the stores. In my standard operating procedure, I said: these stores are calling you and they’re hot. Something’s broke. It may be the same stupid question you’ve gotten 5,000 times, but it’s not to them. They need help, and you need to show some empathy. If you can’t do that, you can’t have this job.
I told them: the store is the most important thing in the world to you. I don’t care if the CEO of Trader Joe’s is calling you, the store is what’s important. You deal with them first. Because the CEO is not going to blame you if you put him on hold for the store. You get one customer angry and that steamrolls. Suddenly you have a hundred customers angry because you fumbled that call. Learned that the hard way, of course. The best lessons are learned the hard way.
Going Back to Basics
Andrew Bolton: We as businesses have basically put the consumer as an integer, a classification, an analytic standpoint for us to measure quantifiably. That’s great for large data and marketing campaigns. But that is not how you handle loyalty. That is not how you establish trust.
That person, that one integer, is a person. They have rent. They have food. They have a life. If you forget that, you’re going to hollow out the base on which your business stands. Business owners: go back to basics. We need to go back to center.
Richard Lowe: And I started my business to be a ghostwriter. So why was I trying to do cybersecurity? I am a cybersecurity expert. I could be a CISO. But that’s not my passion. So I decided to pick something I could do very well, and it’s done very well for me because of that.
Andrew Bolton: But are you passionate about it?
Richard Lowe: Storytellers get to do something that goes back to the dawn of time. What did we do as a species? We started around a campfire. We told stories. We are social animals.
Andrew Bolton: We love a story. Why do we know Achilles? The Battle of Thermopylae? The Odyssey? Ancient Chinese myth and lore? We are a people that started around stories. And you are an architect of our society that continues a tradition that dates back to ash and stone on cave walls. We told stories. We lived our experiences through song and interpretation. That’s how we spread our culture over the past hundred thousand years. You are that legacy. You are the continuation of the foundation, from bedrock to parchment to quill to text to digital and forever.
Final Thoughts
Richard Lowe: Is there one thing you’d like listeners to take away?
Andrew Bolton: It’s amazing what you’ll find out about yourself and the path if you sit down, shut up, and listen. We have too much volume going on. When that volume turns down, the echo gets a lot louder. And it’s amazing what you find out.
Richard Lowe: This has been the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I’m Richard Lowe, The Writing King. You can find me at thewritingking.com. And Andrew already sneaked his contact info into the conversation. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Andrew Bolton: It was an absolute pleasure. And who knows, maybe there is a story later on to tell. But I have to go achieve it first.