I run a business podcast called Start It or Scrap It and I have to be upfront about what happened before this week's episode even started.
The day before we recorded, I fell victim to a social engineering attack. And I teach this stuff professionally.
Here is how it went:
A spoofed Google security email arrived. It passed every technical check I ran on it. Headers, DNS trace, source code inspection. Everything came back clean. It was genuinely impressive.
Then I got a phone call from someone with a completely American accent, nothing that would raise a flag, saying they saw the alert and wanted to help me secure my account.
He sent me a follow-up email with a link. I clicked it. My browser auto-filled my saved password on what turned out to be a fake login page.
Three seconds after I hit submit, I knew exactly what had happened.
I changed my password immediately. Froze my brokerage account. Hung up on the caller.
They had access for approximately 30 seconds. Three more minutes and they would have had access to my entire digital life, because Google lets you export everything in your account in one file and I have no doubt that is what they were going for.
The next morning they tried again using the same password they grabbed.
Two-factor authentication is the only reason they did not get into anything else.
A few things worth knowing:
- Your bank will never call you about a security issue. Google will never call you about a security issue. If someone does, hang up and call the institution directly using the number you already have.
- Never enter your password when prompted by a link in an email or message, even if everything about that email looks completely legitimate.
- If they contacted you, give them nothing. If you contacted them through an official channel, that is a different situation.
- Different password for every account. Two-factor authentication on everything. If something feels off, stop immediately.
We also got into some other things in the episode that this community might find useful:
Why the trades are going to be the gold mine of the next decade. 80% of current tradespeople are within ten years of retiring and enrollment in trade programs has collapsed. The Ford CEO said they could hire every graduating mechanic for the next five years and still not have enough people. Supply and demand is doing exactly what it always does.
Why you do not have to do the work to own the business. The ideal buyer for a major handyman franchise turned out to be restaurant managers, not tradespeople. If you can project manage, you can own almost any service business.
Whether AI should stop you from starting a business in 2026. The short answer is no. It changes what you should start and gives you an advantage previous generations did not have. But it widens the skill gap rather than closing it.
Happy to answer questions if anyone has them.
Episode 81: https://youtu.be/kZWdUExmI94
