Juan Soto, President of IT Impact and a 14-time Microsoft Access MVP, joins Beyond the Numbers to talk about what happens when a business's own software becomes the thing holding it back. Juan got his start as a plant manager at a Chicago ice cream ingredients company, building a custom database just to prove the dollar impact of his own process improvements — and it worked well enough to launch his career.

Decades later, IT Impact helps companies around the world get more out of the data they already have, often replacing $5,000–$10,000 vendor reports with tools that cost a fraction of that. He and Chris get into why "spreadsheets are wonderful, but they're not a database," what a real disaster-recovery test actually looks like, and the financial mistake Juan made waiting too long to start saving for his own retirement.

🔑 What You'll Learn

The plant-manager story behind IT Impact: how one custom database proved roughly $150,000/year in savings

Why Juan asks clients "is your software holding you hostage" — and how ERP vendor lock-in quietly drains cash

The disaster-recovery test every business should run: start a clock and see how long you'd actually take to recover

Why he trains new AI users to "treat the AI like a colleague" for a week before judging it

What Juan wishes he'd known about retirement savings before waiting until his 30s to start

🔗 Links & Resources

IT Impact: itimpact.com

Access User Groups: accessusergroups.org

Juan Soto on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juansoto

#DataStrategy #MicrosoftAccess #SmallBusiness #AI #BusinessTechnology #EverettWealthSolutions

Everett Wealth Solutions is a Registered Investment Adviser in the State of Illinois providing fiduciary financial planning and asset management across the nation.