Sterling Solutions

Sterling Solutions Most privately held businesses grow revenue faster than systems. By the time someone thinks about selling, IT infrastructure is a liability, not an asset.

It comes down to one thing: technology should serve the people who use it, not the other way around.

07/08/2026

A follow-up on something I wrote back in April about federal privacy legislation.
I said then to watch for the word "preempt" in any federal privacy bill. A bill introduced this spring taught me the word itself is optional.
H.R. 8413, the SECURE Data Act, describes itself as "a national framework for consumer privacy rights." Section 15 handles the states in a single sentence: no state may "prescribe, maintain, or enforce" any law that "relates to" the Act.
"Maintain" is the word doing the damage. It means existing laws get erased, not just future ones blocked. California, Illinois, Virginia, Colorado, Texas. All of them.
And there's no exception clause for state laws. The same bill carefully lists a dozen federal laws it preserves. The drafters know how to write that list. They didn't write one for the states.
The bill also repeals the Video Privacy Protection Act, one of the few federal privacy laws that lets you sue. Its replacement gives you no right to sue at all.
Europe's GDPR works as a floor. Member states can exceed it. This bill works as a ceiling, and it sits lower than what half the country already has. This is the "tell" that the legislation is not written for The People.
Bill text: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8413
One question worth asking your representative: why does this bill protect twelve federal laws by name and eradicate state leadership?

06/28/2026

Month 2 close-out reflection (across all 4 verticals): the operator-time honesty IS the differentiator.
Vendors who skip it produce regret. Operators who name it build trust.
The free assessment reflects this in every vertical. Real numbers. Sometimes "stay where you are" is the answer.
Month 3 starts next week. Theme: full-stack builds. Same honesty.
https://success.build/risk/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-sun-facebook-f2&utm_term=bofu

06/28/2026

Sunday open thread: what's the most-frustrating thing about working with vendors in your industry?
Pick one. Just one. The one that, if it changed, would make the industry meaningfully better.
I'll share mine: hours estimates that don't match the actual work. Most vendors quote 30-50% under what the project really takes. They know. Clients know. Everyone treats vendor numbers as starting points rather than commitments. The whole industry runs on the assumption that nobody is telling the truth about timelines.
If one thing changed in my industry, that'd be it.
What's the equivalent in yours?

06/27/2026

Behavioral health practices: Month 2's last thought.
The operator-time honesty IS the differentiator. Vendors who skip it produce HIPAA-adjacent regret. Operators who name it build trust.
The free assessment is built around this. Real numbers. Honest reads. Sometimes "stay where you are" is the answer. Always plain English.
https://success.build/risk/behavioral-health/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-sat-facebook-f2&utm_term=bofu

06/27/2026

A behavioral health clinician asked me last quarter: "Why should I trust your numbers when every vendor I've talked to has lied about the time it would take?"
Fair question. Here's the honest answer.
When I built my own AI stack starting in 2023, I underestimated the operator time by about 30%. The first three months took longer than I'd planned. Some of that was genuine learning (you can't avoid this). Some was decisions I revised (also normal). Some was the unpredictability of new infrastructure (definitely normal).
I came out of that thinking: if I'd been billing a client for this work, the only honest move would be to share the real hours, including the wrong turns, and let them decide whether the result was worth it.
For behavioral health practices, this honesty matters more than in most industries. HIPAA exposure cascades. Operator-time gaps in BAA review cause real audit findings. "I thought the vendor handled that" is a sentence that has cost practices six figures.
The vendors who don't share real numbers train clients to expect deceit. The clients eventually figure it out and build buffer into every estimate. The relationship becomes adversarial.
The vendors who share real numbers, including the wrong turns, build a different kind of relationship. The client knows what's actually happening. Trust accumulates. When something does go wrong (and something always does), the conversation is "what do we do now" rather than "did you lie to me earlier."
Our free assessment for behavioral health practices reflects this. The numbers are real numbers. The build-vs-hire-vs-contract recommendation is sized to your actual practice. The discovery-call conversation includes the operator-time honesty up front.
Sometimes the assessment ends with "your current vendor stack is fine, here's how to document it for OCR." That's not the assessment failing. That's the assessment working.
https://success.build/risk/behavioral-health/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-sat-facebook-f1&utm_term=bofu

06/26/2026

Mutual carriers and cooperatives: when you hire an operator for the platform layer, the three traits that matter most.
1. **They tell you what they don't know.** Operators who claim to know everything are dangerous. The honest answer to "have you done this exact thing" is usually "I've done something similar." Trust the operator who can name the gap.
2. **They write things down.** Documentation maintained as the work happens is the asset. The operator who keeps everything in their head is a single point of failure. For a mutual, this is doubly important: members expect explainable infrastructure.
3. **They prefer simple over clever.** The right answer is usually the boring one. `docker compose` before K8s. `cron` before exotic schedulers. Markdown files before complex tools. The operator whose work you want to inherit.
For mutuals specifically, add a fourth:
4. **They understand the member-ownership posture.** A mutual operator works for the members, ultimately. Decisions like "do we install this AI feature" have a member-trust dimension that doesn't apply at a stock company. The operator who recognizes this without being told gets the role.
The free mutual assessment includes a hiring-spec sketch with this mutual-specific layer.
https://success.build/risk/mutual/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-fri-facebook-f1&utm_term=bofu

06/25/2026

Credit union sovereignty assessment, W8 capstone:
• Stack scope for your charter type and staffing• Build-vs-hire-vs-contract sketch• 6-12 month ramp aligned to examination cycles• Examination-binder deliverable shape preview• Honest read on whether sovereignty is the right answer now, or a tightened vendor-contract posture is the better interim move
Free. 30-min call. Written assessment within a week.
https://success.build/risk/credit-union/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-thu-facebook-f3&utm_term=bofu

06/25/2026

Credit unions: the operator-time question intersects with the examination posture in a useful way.
NCUA examiners increasingly want to see:• Documented vendor relationships with current contract terms• In-house understanding of the data flows• Change-management documentation• Incident-response procedures specific to the platform
A managed-everything vendor approach gives you a one-line answer to each question: "ask the vendor." That answer is increasingly insufficient.
A hybrid approach (partner-supported in-house operator) gives you the documented answers natively. The work produced IS the examination binder.
The free CU assessment includes an examination-binder shape so you can see what the deliverables look like before you commit.
https://success.build/risk/credit-union/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-thu-facebook-f2&utm_term=bofu

06/25/2026

For credit union CIOs: the operator-time honesty for the sovereignty stack lands here.
If you've spent Month 2 reading the sovereignty story and the cost-reveal posts, you've already seen the math. What you maybe haven't seen yet is the realistic ramp for a 50-200 person CU.
The ramp:
Month 1-3: Partner deploys the stack alongside your IT lead. Heavy collaboration. Documentation produced as work happens. Examination-binder material populated.
Month 4-6: Your IT lead takes over routine operations. Partner handles platform changes and major work. Weekly working sessions.
Month 7-12: Your IT lead runs the platform. Partner is on retainer for change-windows, examination prep, and on-call backup. Monthly check-ins.
Month 12+: CU owns the stack. Partner is available for specialized work and examination support.
This is the realistic pattern for a CU. It matches how NCUA expects vendor relationships to be documented. The deliverables from the assessment + ramp are exactly the artifacts an examiner asks for.
The free CU assessment scopes this for your specific CU size, charter type, and IT staffing posture. No sales pressure. No managed-service lock-in pitch hiding underneath.
https://success.build/risk/credit-union/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aiwithaj-month2-week8&utm_content=aiwithaj-m2w8-thu-facebook-f1&utm_term=bofu

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