Announcer: 0:00

The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beastly Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their business into reality through his innovative work and the forward-focused form. Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the lessons they've learned and the stories behind their success. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a little fun. Now let's dive in.

Marc Bernstein: 0:40

Good morning, America. How are you? We are here in sunny Philadelphia today. And um, but it was not so much yesterday. Yesterday was a nasty, cold, rainy day. And I'm here with our guest today, Darek, who I'll formally introduce in a minute. But um interestingly, when we we always do pre-interviews and the topic of seasons came up. And before I looked at the notes this morning, I was thinking of making that our topic of the day anyway, because you know, seasons, the climate seasons to me are very interesting. If I had my druthers, and this is no offense to our guests today or to anyone in Philadelphia, but I would be in sunny southwest Florida right now, and without this whatever burgeoning cold it is that's coming up on me, or allergy or whatever it is. And you know, so so seasons are but on the other hand, I would not want to live there all the time. I like the change of seasons, and as does our guest, and we were talking about it. But there's also seasons can mean other things as well. So what do you think of, Darek, when you think of seasons?

Darek Hahn: 1:49

Oh, gosh, there's so much. I mean, obviously the weather changing seasons. I I came from California where there's kind of one season. Right. And uh coming out here and being here for almost 30 years now, I love the the change of seasons, the fall, the spring.

Marc Bernstein: 2:04

That's interesting because a lot of people like long for I always thought I'd retire to California, but I get it now. I I like the change of seasons myself.

Darek Hahn: 2:11

Yeah, I I joke now that I go back to California, it's really brown. You don't realize that it rains, it's green for two weeks, and then it's brown again. Right. Um, but there's also seasons of life. My wife and I are entering that later season of life and starting to think about, you know, retirement and what's that look like and all the different seasons I've been through through my life. It's pretty uh it's an interesting journey, let's just say.

Marc Bernstein: 2:32

I I was thinking about that as well. I even think there are seasons throughout the year that aren't necessarily related to the weather seasons. You know, I f I find there's almost like cycles that I go through that when I have higher energy and high ones lower energy and time.

Darek Hahn: 2:48

I was thinking tax season. Tax season. There you go. That's a lower energy time.

Marc Bernstein: 2:53

Yeah, we have that one in our business as well. But also, you know, time, you know, uh there is a time, you know, that what's the um was time of the season, but the other one, Pete Seeger song, um Turn, Turn, Turn. Oh, yeah. You know, to everything there's a season from the Bible, that kind of thing. And I think there's the right time and wrong time to be doing certain things. And I kind of try to tune into that in business as well as my personal life. Like, is this the right time to be doing that? To me, that's right.

Darek Hahn: 3:21

I have a struggle as a founder. Typically, we have a struggle with that because we we can get excited about new things. And I I need the people on my team who are very grounded and go, not the right time.

Marc Bernstein: 3:31

Uh you're like me, like a quick start, probably. I don't know if you know that. Like like we've we've found some other similarities in the few minutes that we've been able to talk. Yeah. So anyway, this is Darek Hahn. He's founder and CEO of Affin AffinIT. AffinIT. AffinIT. I but I just wanted to make sure that it's it's capitalized IT, so it's affinity, but uh he's it's an IT company, and he's soon to be published author of Team We. So uh Darek is a relation-driven technology leader focused on building a team of amazingly talented, customer-focused people who understand the importance of the personal connection in all we do. Darek's goal for his new company is to help clients change the relationship to IT, bring it into the business as a value add rather than a value drag, which is interesting, coming thinking about that in our own business. And tech debt, D-E-P-B T debt, is real and he can help you see it in your own company. Owing to technology, I guess that means, which is kind of interesting.

Darek Hahn: 4:36

Yeah, it's it's the the idea that the money we don't spend on tech costs us a lot. We have a client that lost a million-dollar contract because they didn't do a $40,000 upgrade and they couldn't meet the client's demand. The client wanted to go with them, and they couldn't meet their demand because they were still using spreadsheets and things like that.

Marc Bernstein: 4:54

And you you're involved, I assume, in cybersecurity as well. And that is a big thing. I d I have a a good client, friend that recently their their their company was invaded by uh foreigners and uh it cost them a lot of money. You know, insurance covers it, but it just the deductible and just the immediate losses are you know I have a potential client I'm talking to at 2 30 today that had the same thing happen last year.

Darek Hahn: 5:19

Interesting. We do more of the physical, uh I call it physical, not like doors and things like that, but the physical hardware security, the monitoring, maintenance. There's a there's two components to security. Just like in accounting, there's two components to doing accounting. There's the day-to-day accounting, there's auditing. There really should be an audit function in cybersecurity, like somebody should be looking over your shoulder, and we it shouldn't be us. We shouldn't be looking over our shoulder.

Marc Bernstein: 5:45

I might want to introduce you to him. So, Darek, tell me your story. I know you're from Los Angeles and you grew up near Yosemite in the California desert regions. Sounds very romantic. Right. It wasn't that romantic. Not so much in reality. Um and uh but anyway, tell tell us your story. How did you find this business? How did you come to the East Coast? How did you just tell us a little bit about your story?

Darek Hahn: 6:12

So, in short, my I was born in LA. We we moved up to Yosemite when I was six, and my mother and father owned a real estate office. My mother ended up being a much better real estate person than my father and took over the office. Um, they ended up getting a divorce when I was in high school, but I got to watch her build that. And that's really I got the entrepreneurial spirit. Um, didn't even realize it at the time. Never wanted to be in a position where I had to worry about my income. So I didn't go down the entrepreneurship route. And then when I was more settled later in life, really found I was interested in startups. When I moved to New Jersey in 1998, um had left, got out of school and got an offer for a job out here. Figured I'd be here for a couple years, and that turned into five. And at five, I met my wife. Uh gotcha. Who's a Jersey girl. And there you go. And uh she's never let me leave. Um and I've I fell in love with it. And doing during that time I worked for a number of startups, and finally at one startup, I had had IT responsibility, whether it was I was doing it or hiring people to do it. And I met an IT company, ended up, left a startup, they offered me a part-time job doing um project management. That led to a full-time job, and five years later, me and three partners, four or five partners, bought the company from the owners. And that was Velocity, which we did the same thing, Veloc IT. Gotcha. Um, I always said if I ever owned an IT company, I'd have IT in the name. Um you did a good job of that twice. So, and we we ran it for five years, built it back up. They had lost a big contract, we built it back up, um, sold it for 8 million in 26. So we had it from 19, I'm sorry, 21. We had it from 2016 to 2021. And I worked for the company that bought it for two years, which was a cybersecurity firm. And they really struggled with integrate they integrated all six IT providers that they acquired as a division of the larger company, but they struggled with that um entity because cybersecurity tends to be project related and really one-time off projects, which is a different relationship. We as IT providers are in our clients every day. We're talking every day to the clients, whether it be the end users or the uh client contact. And they really struggled with that. And what I watched and why we formed AffinIT and why we called it AffinIT is that they they didn't understand the importance of the tech relationship. That one junior person who could be 20 years old, but they had the can they had the connection with the company. They were talking to the company, talking to the people, people trusted them. And so when we started to form AffinIT, we actually tried to buy our company back. That didn't work out. We had formed AffinIT already to do that, so we went ahead and just launched the company. And we were really focused on relationships, as you and I have talked about. I'm I'm passionate about it because I saw how important it is to our clients that they have a healthy relationship with their tech provider, and not a I don't know if you remember in the 90s there was the Saturday Live skip called Nick Burns. And I think it was I think it was David Dana Carvey, but it was just, you know, the his line was move. Right, right, right. Yeah, and and that's kind of the mantra the the mindset we have of technology. It's this thing over there and these people that we don't understand that do this stuff we don't understand, and then it works for us. And that's not a healthy relationship. And and it's part of the problem is tech people tend to be introverts and they don't communicate real well. Right. And the other problem is that business leaders are in a rush and they don't want to listen and hear the what's the truth is. So we have to find a common ground on how to communicate. So we're really promoting that with our clients today.

Marc Bernstein: 9:55

So it's interesting, some parallels to our um business. We talk a lot about commitment and integrity or core values, but the commitment part is we only want to work with people that are as committed to the relationship as we are. So we talk about that up front. Yeah. Meaning that, you know, how do we communicate? How do we you know, if we if if you know, we'll be very responsive to you if you're my client. But you know, I need you to be responsive to me too, because if we're gonna help you move forward, we're gonna help you get this stuff done. So we work on agreements up front. And it sounds like you're doing something similar to that.

Darek Hahn: 10:30

You mentioned that uh we have one client that I just had a call with yesterday that I had to have a hard heart with about and say, look, you're struggling because you're there's a complete disconnect from the business and IT. And it's partly because the IT person who left who we took over for, but it's also partly the business. Where the business is making decisions and doesn't include IT in the discussion.

Marc Bernstein: 10:50

Look, and today, how important is that? Like without IT, we won't even get into we've had many shows about AI and where that's all going, but you know, we don't even know how many people will be employed three years from now, right? So technology becomes you know be beyond integral to the business, right?

Darek Hahn: 11:10

And it's moving so fast it's hard to keep up with it. And that's our big thing is about foundation. If your foundational relationship is bad and you're not cleaning up things, when we get to the whole AI discussion and deeper into cybersecurity, which AI is going to bring more of those issues, your foundation is on sand, you're you're gonna have issues. I mean, this is a company that lost a million-dollar contract. Their foundation was built on sand.

Marc Bernstein: 11:35

Right.

Darek Hahn: 11:36

And so we're our our big thing is we're pushing to get people to move from being built on sound to be built on bedrock so that you can make healthy decisions, but you have to have a healthy relationship with technology and your provider or your internal team.

Marc Bernstein: 11:48

I can see where you're a good storyteller. You have a lot of good metaphors, which is with sand is I mean, it's it's uh it's very helpful to understand it that way. I like the bedrock idea. Uh I just a little diversion, by the way. You have something else in common with Bruce Springsteen besides marrying a Jersey girl. Oh, really? The horse farm in Central Jersey. Yes. I just had to mention that because and we'll get to that.

Darek Hahn: 12:11

My wife may may uh ask us not to talk about it because we might jinx it. But we can talk about it.

Marc Bernstein: 12:18

Well, it was on your it's on your dream list. We could just talk about that anyway, right? So we'll so we'll get to that in a little bit. Uh so tell me about obviously so you started AffinIT and um and then and you started it and it was just a straight ride up, right? It's just like real easy. Right. This is my you know, this I I tend to do this too much. It's almost like a running joke every week now, but but because it because entrepreneurs, everybody laughs, you know. Actually, I had one one person in cybersecurity who who's become a friend who was on the show in Florida, and she said, No, it was really a straight ride. I'm like, You're kidding, it's like out of 150 shows that I've done, one.

Darek Hahn: 12:58

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein: 12:59

And she did have a pre-s very early into cybersecurity, nobody else was doing it, kind of fell into it. But then I said, I know you had something. And I said, I know you sold your company. Tell me how that went. And she said, Oh, because they brought money people into the company, and then that's where her challenges are so everybody's got something at some point. So um, so what were your challenges? What did they look like?

Darek Hahn: 13:24

So, I mean, this this time around. So the first time around, it was just not knowing what we were doing. Right, right. When you're fumbling around and you've not done it. The company was already learned a lot of it. Oh, I did, and and our whole team did. The the issue for us was the company was already in existence. So when we bought it, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 people, and we should have laid probably five people off immediately because they had lost that contract, but they didn't resize the company. We bought it unknowing what we should be doing, and we struggled for a year, year and a half. Um and on top of that, we didn't really have a good enough sales and marketing plan at that point. I we should have built that out more deeply beforehand. Um but we fumbled through it, we made it through, we had revenue, so that was good. And um then when I was uh with with this company, it was we had an agreement, we thought we were gonna buy the old company plus the others back, so we had a whole plan that was much bigger. And then we had to scale that back and really get to my non-compete in it a year ago. And so once that non-compete in it uh just go full board on sales, which we've done pretty well. We've we're gonna hit profitability in less than in just about a year. That's pretty amazing, actually. And and we're excited because we now have some real good growth plans over the next couple years.

Marc Bernstein: 14:42

You mentioned too, I mean, uh one of the other issues with this company was limited capital, limited staff, those things as well.

Darek Hahn: 14:50

The good news is that I have a bunch of employees who are not with us right now, but were with us before, but want to be with us again. So good. All they need to do is land clients, and then they'll be I I don't have the issue that a lot of IT providers have, which is finding talent.

Marc Bernstein: 15:05

Finding people, about lots of companies in general these days. Yeah. Um by the way, this is a really good place to take a quick break. We're gonna listen to a commercial about affinity, and we'll be right back on Founders Forum.

Announcer: 15:15

Are you tired of fighting with your technology or worse yet, your tech team? AffinIT fixes that. AffinIT is the managed IT partner that puts relationships first. They learn how your business works, then build the right tech foundation to support it. From cybersecurity and cloud solutions to network management, device protection, and 24/7 support, AffinIT keeps your business running without the headaches. Do you know if you are AI ready? Do you know what questions to ask? Because technology should help you thrive, not slow you down. Stop dealing with outages, slow systems, constant cyber worries, and a team that is not in line with your business goals. Get the confidence and protection your team needs every day. Book your free consultation now at AffinITMSP.com. That’s AffinITMSP.com. Start a better relationship with your IT today.

Marc Bernstein: 16:10

We're back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Darek Hahn. And Darek, so we're talking about challenges and and when you started AffinIT. Um and you you had with Velocity, the previous company, you had some lessons learned as well. What when you when people meet, you know, they have these struggles and they get through them. Your business is pretty good right now and you're working on making it even better. What what strengths did you develop, you personally as a leader and as a company, um, to deal with those challenges that you have had in the past and the ones ahead?

Darek Hahn: 16:43

I I think I would say that it back in the past in the Velocity days when we first started there, is I had a bit of the imposter syndrome. I had never been a CEO, I'd never owned a company, I I didn't have any of that experience. So I thought I had to know things. Right. And I didn't really have to know things. And when I got over that, our company really started to succeed because I stopped trying to act like I knew what the heck we were doing. Well, it made you more open to possibilities, right? And more vulnerable, and now I'm more of a vulnerable leader. I'm more open to other people's views, more open to um the strength of our team and knowing what their roles are and everybody working together as a team, and that my job is really to be the uh we we have one of our clients is a symphony orchestra in Princeton. And I always think of the conductor in that really my job is to be a conductor and make sure that parts are all working together and that I'm not I don't have to um I don't have to know everything.

Marc Bernstein: 17:44

So I have I have uh visualizations that I carry around with me. And for many years I wanted to build the the perfect financial services company and I have this picture that I still have of like a string octet. Um and it says, and there's a quote in it, I think it was from like a success magazine or one of those kind of things, it says synergy where the sum is greater than the parts. You know, and an orchestra obviously is a great example of that, or a string string group. Yeah. And uh so I so I've used that one myself. And you know, coming from a um family of conductors, Leonard, you've heard of my uncle Leonard. I'm kidding. I'm joking. Wow, I didn't know that. It's a joke.

Darek Hahn: 18:22

You snuck that one in on me.

Marc Bernstein: 18:24

It's a joke. You wish it was. I always wal stay for the credits in the movies, and the music in movies, and I'm a musician, I was a music major, so I feel it's in my blood somewhere because there's an Elmer Bernstein who's done a lot of film scores. There's a lot of Bernstein's in in music. So I can get away with that little lie once in a while, but but I always have to tell people the truth, of course. By the way, so we're talking about vulnerability and leadership. And if you don't mind me asking this, I think your personal journey has to do with addressing vulnerability as well. Do you want to talk about that at all?

Darek Hahn: 19:01

Uh sure. I'm I'm open to talking about it.

Marc Bernstein: 19:03

Um so you're uh you're in recovery, I know that, and I know that's part of your leadership style. How does that play into your vulnerability as a person and as a leader?

Darek Hahn: 19:12

Aaron Ross Powell, you know, it probably goes a little bit to the book, because that that's a lot about what the book's about is you know I was hoping you would go. So I I realized after selling Velocity and restarting AffinIT how m how important all the people were in my life. And it some stuff that happened with my wife and I went through cancer in 2012 and she supported me through that. And and watching all the other people that stepped up. We had a moment we came down to Philly to U pinned for treatment and had a moment there where she recognized how important the recovery community was to us in that period. And I always get a little emotional about it because it really impacted her life significantly because she had a rough upbringing and got to see that there were people out there that supported people and that tr helped people. And I had that happen to me in my early twenties. I was 23 years old when I got in a lot of trouble. Cleaned up my life. People helped me change my life. I went back to school. I got a college degree. I moved to New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. My life changed dramatically. And through all of that, start to look back in that instance with my wife, how important all those people were, and how much we don't really think about that. And they're small little people. And some people who were, I would have thought were not good, that actually made change my life. I mean, I got in trouble to a point where I I spent some time in jail. And in that process, you would think I hate those people or those people are bad. They changed my life for the best. And they are the most important people in my life. So today, when I look at our team, it's it's about all those people are important. Even if we if we struggle with a client, they're important to us for us to learn. If we struggle with an employee, if I struggle with a teammate, um they're important for me to learn. So all those relationships are important in my life.

Marc Bernstein: 20:56

So I'm big on the Trevor Burrus, you know, I think about mentorship, and I've had a number of mentors, but I don't recognize them all the time because some of them were toxic mentors. Yep. Or some of them were a mix of both. So I always say I learned what to do and what not to do, and all that's important.

Darek Hahn: 21:13

I would say my early business career from 2000 to about 2015, I had a lot of toxic leaders and leaders that were not good. I learned a lot about myself and those working with those leaders.

Marc Bernstein: 21:25

Aaron Powell Well, and you learn a lot about yourself and back to Team We, learn how to deal with other people in a way that's appropriate and that is, you know, that it's a win-win as opposed to uh what a lot of toxic leaders do, where it's it's a win for them and not necessarily for the people around them.

Darek Hahn: 21:42

Trevor Burrus And that that is what the book is all about. It's really uh I I shortened it. It's not the typical recovery program, 12 steps, it's the eight-step program, really for normal people. And and it's really about how can I get an eight-step program for normal people. Because you need less than us recovering people.

Marc Bernstein: 22:00

Um they're not you don't want to call them not normal though, right? Yeah. Poor people, right? Anyway, but it got any. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Darek Hahn: 22:06

It's a ner uh in recovery we call people normal who don't have their addiction. Oh, is that right? Okay. Um but in it really it's uh it's about how do you create that environment. I always think about back in the 50s, and there was all of the Quantas Club and the Lions Club, and and those clubs are pretty small now and they're kind of dying. And those were where you went to create your relationships and your friends and your connections. Right. Rotary Club. Yeah, they all exist, but they're much smaller than they used to be. Right, right. And it's people aren't getting involved in those things and they're suffering. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Marc Bernstein: 22:38

Look, even churches and synagogues, and you know, people weren't people aren't congregating like they used to, you know, in general.

Darek Hahn: 22:45

It's kind of well and we've lost that connection. And I think part of it is social media has created this us versus them kind of mentality. And and that's what I'm really trying to do with the book. I actually have a second book coming out. I've already started working on it, which is gonna be Team We also, but it's more about leadership.

Marc Bernstein: 23:02

So as a tech guy, just thinking about something you said for a second. I years ago, you know, around around the turn of the century, there was 2000 is the turn of the century, um, there was a lot of talk about, I forget the books, but they were talking about high touch, high high tech, high touch, forget what the books were called. But it said the more technology you have, the more you need the touch part. You need to, you know, you need the people part. And as you mentioned, we seem to be losing a lot of that. But I'm feeling like, especially without getting into politics and without getting what's going on in general in the world right now, that I starting to feel a turn the other way again. You know, it's starting to feel like people need people now, and it's starting to starting to come back. Do you feel that?

Darek Hahn: 23:47

I do. I'm I'm I would joke. I'm not a real tech guy, I'm more of a business guy. Right. Because my team would tell me to stay the heck out of all the tech. But it's it I do think there is a shift, and it has to do with people recognizing what a cesspool some of the social media is. I mean, it's just some of the stuff that goes on there. It's just like, why are we even on it? Yeah. And if if I I have this great example of this, I think the older generation really struggles with new technology, obviously, because it's new, but they also get sucked in really easy. My mother would would forward things that I know her. She would never forward. And she would never think, well, it said it on Facebook, so I may as well forward it. But it but it but there's a lot of people out there like that. I don't even think about it, no critical thinking, just forward it. I was sitting in a diner the other day.

Marc Bernstein: 24:33

Well, we know that's how people get their news, so therefore, whichever algorithm you're part of, you're gonna get more of it. Right, exactly.

Darek Hahn: 24:42

But I was at a diner the other day, and I'm sitting in the seats, and there's some older gentlemen sitting at the bar at the coffee bar, and he says, one of them goes, Well, let me look at Google, and he talks into the phone, and Jim and I gives him a response back, and he's like, Well, this is the answer. There was no thought. Right. And and so AI is going to be doing even more of that to us.

Marc Bernstein: 25:03

I know. So, so hopefully, leaders like you and all of us entrepreneurs hopefully can help bring back the people connection and the the you know the real the re the real stuff, you know, as much as possible. Uh we there's so much more we could talk about, and we only have a couple of minutes left, believe it or not. It's unbelievable how this works, this show. But uh a couple things I did want to ask you. So let's talk about your future vision. So if this were December, which which it is now of 2028, three years from now, and you and I are speaking, and you know, what would have to happen in your life, life, business, personally, professionally, however you want to describe it, for you to feel that that was a successful three-year period in your life?

Darek Hahn: 25:48

I'll start with I'd be looking at retirement. Okay. Well, that's that's fair. Positive. Um, I'm really passionate about while we have obviously have number goals and um goals for the company. I'm really passionate about trying to help people change their relationship to technology and relationship to each other in that space, especially in the workspace where technology is this thing that's off to the side. It's it needs to be part of the business. And and it technologists needs to step technologists themselves need to step up and become part of the business. And that means they have to learn and grow and understand that they can't be this guy in the corner doing their work. They have to be able to communicate, they have to be able to work together with the other people in the business.

Marc Bernstein: 26:29

So to do that in three years is gonna be a challenge. So I challenge you when you say retirement. You know, my book, The Fiscal Therapy Solution, I talk about entrepreneurs, it's hard for them to retire. They sometimes it's rewire, you know, re-re-fire, aspire, whatever you want to do. But I have a feeling you're not gonna just stop there.

Darek Hahn: 26:49

You know, no, I'll probably stay. I've always talked about being a do-gooder, so I'll probably do something. I I won't be able to sit still. You need to have some purpose, I would imagine, right?

Marc Bernstein: 26:58

So we only have one minute left. It's unbelievable. They're they're signaling me. Really quick. Um a couple quick questions. Uh, if you could speak to your younger self, Darek, what would you what advice would you give you?

Darek Hahn: 27:10

Take the risk sooner.

Marc Bernstein: 27:12

I like that. And what would you like if you're talking about your legacy and what people will say about you when you're gone, what would you like that to be? That I care deeply for people. Nice.

Darek Hahn: 27:25

You want to say anything else about that? I just so many people have been so good to me. I hope I could just be an example of them. They're just wonderful mentors.

Marc Bernstein: 27:34

We have about 20 seconds left. What's your favorite book?

Darek Hahn: 27:37

Favorite book? Oh my gosh.

Marc Bernstein: 27:39

Or a book that you're reading now, or anyone.

Darek Hahn: 27:41

Um so I'm reading a history of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement right now called AA Comes of Age, which is really fascinating.

Marc Bernstein: 27:47

Oh, very I'll bet that would be grateful for all of you. And uh we'll look forward to talking to you again next week on Founders Forum.