Technology you never have to think about. People you know by name.
Where I come from
I grew up around my father's buildings. Gene Leedy was one of the founders of the Sarasota School of Architecture: houses, doctors' offices, banks, schools and city halls in precast concrete and glass, with nothing hidden and nothing extra. What people remembered was how it felt to be inside: the light, the openness, the sense that someone had thought about how you would live there before you ever walked in. I did not become an architect, but I took the idea with me.
Show the structure. Waste nothing. Build it so it lasts.
Since 1995
I have been running technology for Florida businesses since 1995, from the same block of downtown Winter Haven, and now from our own offices in Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Miami. It started as iThink, one of the region's first internet providers, in the dial-up days. Running secure email for public companies and government agencies taught me the thing I have never forgotten: the businesses that need technology most are the ones that least want to think about it.
Protected Trust
The companies I started along the way became Protected Trust, and it runs on one idea. I wanted to build the Four Seasons of IT: the experience Isadore Sharp built his hotels on, and the same feeling my father built into his buildings. Treat people the way you would want to be treated. Know them by name. Be excellent at a few things, and never change them. When something goes wrong, you should not have to figure out who to call, or how we are organized. You reach out, and someone who knows you takes care of it, and whatever you bring us is ours until it is finished.
You should never have to explain yourself twice.
My father taught me the other half of it at restaurants. We never sat at the first table we were offered. The table by the kitchen door is that story, and the test we still use.
The people who stayed
Some of the people who answer that call have been with me since the dial-up days. That is on purpose. A client's team should be the same team five years later. Clients join us, and they stay. Our longest relationships go back more than twenty years.
Off the clock
I am a pilot, and I fly the way I work: checklist, preparation, instruments, and then the freedom to go anywhere. With my family, that usually means the real Florida, the places people drive past. I have spent most of my life on the Winter Haven Chain of Lakes, and some of it working to protect them. Ask me for a place. Better yet, tell me yours.
Ingram Leedy, Founder and CEO, Protected Trust. Winter Haven, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Miami.
What we hold to
And we are from here. We show up: for the Scouts, the Chamber, the trades, the schools. Where you will find us.
Who we are for
Medical practices, law firms, accounting and financial firms, and the businesses around them with enough at stake to want someone else worrying about this for them. Not everyone. We are not the least expensive option, and we are not trying to be. We would rather be the firm those practices mention to each other, because that is how we have grown for twenty-five years: someone had a good experience and told a friend.
For the record
Microsoft named us Surface Modern Deployment Partner of the Year in 2019 for setting every client up to one standard. We are a Microsoft Solutions Partner, and we are SOC 2 Type II audited; the report is available to clients on request.