Local Market Monopoly

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Eric Kehmeier: 10 years ago, I'd say that there were three things that we needed to do to secure a network, user permissions, firewall, and antivirus. And it was pretty easy. We now have anywhere from probably eight to 12 different layers of security. Now on top of those things that need to be put in place,

: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies. The most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: All right. Welcome to the call. It's Clarence Fisher and man, I'm so excited about who we have this week. His name is Eric Kehmeier. He owns the big 800-pound gorilla-managed IT services company in our market. And I've been actually trying to get him on for awhile, but he's super, super busy. And I'm going to tell you why. Some of the, just some of the accomplishments that they've been able to accomplish under his leadership is maybe listed on the Inc 5,000. Not only that the Inc 500 also Dale SMB partner of the year, they made that the BBB customer excellence and customer service Tulsa's fast 40. They'd been listed for four years, got the employee's choice award as Tulsa's best places to work. Also the best places to work in Oklahoma and our entire state. And I could go on and on and on. I have had the pleasure of seeing him present a couple of weeks ago on employee engagement and some in the notes that I took notes after notes, after notes, page after page, he's just a wealth of knowledge.

Clarence Fisher: And anytime that I get to sit and meet with them, have lunch with them, I do so. We want to welcome to the call to the show, Mr. Eric Kehmeier . How are you, sir?

Eric Kehmeier: I'm doing great today. Clarence, thank you for having me.

Clarence Fisher: Thank you for showing up. So tell us about IBT and how you're helping your client.

Eric Kehmeier: We do a, it's quite a lot of question. There's quite a bit that we do, but primarily the goal is to take care of things so that they can do their jobs. I joke around a lot that nobody calls us happy because they have a problem. It's our job to make sure they're happy when they get off the calls with us, got to solve those problems so that they can keep doing what they need to do for their business and their staff.

Clarence Fisher: And what kind of, when we talk about IT, support your they're outsourcing their it to you?

Eric Kehmeier: So the majority of the time where we fit really well is for small, medium businesses that necessarily don't have a budget for IT, staff, in their employment. What we bring to the table is a lot of people don't have the budget or can afford it, person, until they're 50 or a hundred employees, but we bring a team. So for what a small business, small, medium businesses can do, they have, we're an outsourced help desk where also the field engineers that need to come on-site got escalation to engineers that can be able to dive in deeper to higher-end technical problems. We're also their project implementation network, administrators, basically anything from replacing the keyboard to help them budget for their technical purchases over the next three years.

Clarence Fisher: Any other advantages that you found that maybe a company could have from hiring? This sounds like a lot. It's just kind of just to hire you, and you take care of everything.

Eric Kehmeier: Well, and that's the best-case scenario, but I like to think that, you know, we have some really good relationships. And what I see works well is when a client sees and sends an extension of their team, an example of something is I'm going in and doing some training for a client staff at the end of the call, the client asks, Oh, by the way, I know this isn't really in your ballpark. But the owner of our company asks about what we. With a copy of your right, we'll use everything as far as permissions on computers. Do you have anything that you might be able to help guide us with that? So we'll absolutely, we have templates. We're not the lawyers, but here are templates that you can use as far as if you need to add it to your employee handbook on what they can and can't do with the computer. So it can be anything from, Hey, I need to fix a problem that happened in outlook or this installation of an application is not working well. I need to deploy five new workstations or how do I get this cloud application to work correctly? There are projects. I joked it could be anything from installing a keyboard to migrating to the cloud or when installing redundant systems, sorry, none of that sounds flashy or sexy, but what it basically boils down to is keeping the business operating so their teams can do their jobs.

Clarence Fisher: And so when you're thinking about, well, let me ask you, cause you've probably heard it all. What are some of the things that people are thinking that aren't necessarily true about your industry?

Eric Kehmeier: Well, my favorite one to discuss is the Saturday night live skit where there's, the computer tech move get out of the way. You know, sadly, there are probably people that are, that are like, that may not realize it, but with our staff, it's about the customer service side of that. You know, we're not just there to fix it. We're there to fix it in a nice way. We only see half the side of it. A lot of times, you have to ask the right question, is this, what are you trying to accomplish? Not this one thing is not working correctly because in the technical world, there's a lot of jargon, like a lot of other industries and probably one of the best things that our team does is interpret that. So we need to know today what the outcome is they're trying to accomplish, not, Hey, this thing won't work well, maybe that's not the right thing.

Clarence Fisher: It's it seems like that you probably run into, cause I run into this a lot is as far as there's a lot of people in my industry are not the best at breaking down these complicated ideas systems. Like you said, we have our own jargon, but putting it in a way that someone else can understand someone who hasn't spent so many years messing with the technology that we've messed with. I mean, is that something that you talk with your people about to be relatable? You know?

Eric Kehmeier: Well, it is something that I can probably use an example of, you know, a lawyer, highly educated person, but it's not a good use of his time. Is he capable of figuring out how to make a computer program do something the right way? Well, absolutely, but that's not what he spent years going to college for. And that's really not what his job is. His job is to work for his clients and what he needs from us is to enable tools so he can do so. Another example in business is that business owners have to have really good general knowledge about many things. I know a lot about a little bit of everything, right? I have to be knowledgeable about taxes, but I use an expert to do the heavy lifting, right? They are there, but I'm still responsible for it in the end. I try to leverage a marketing expert, but I need to be well rounded enough to help with decisions. So I leveraged just like other consultants, their expertise to help guide my decisions. And a lot of times with our clients, it's my job or our company's job to provide them with the correct business information so that they can make a valid decision for their business their aiming for.

Clarence Fisher: What are your, what, what's the, what are the biggest issues right now that businesses are facing as it relates to, to IT support?

Eric Kehmeier: Well actually supports broad. You know, the times means having the right systems in place. One big thing that we always try to do with clients is to help them budget. We can't write their budgets, but we can help them know how and when to replace certain systems. I'm one that says nobody likes surprises. That's one of the benefits of our services. Their budget is monthly. You don't like to have that surprise. Here's a $2,000 invoice when it wasn't expected. The same thing goes with helping them budget. They may not necessarily know that a certain system may only last them or is only warrantied for three to five years. Well, they should know that they need to replace that within three to five years. Budgeting IT is actually quite simple. It just needs to be the right information handed to them. But a lot of times, what we see is it's expensive to wait and let it break.

Eric Kehmeier: And it is kind of a mentality to, you know, if you do the oil changed in your car, it'll drive for you, you do the regular maintenance or replacements. It will keep up. That's one of those things that we do because the manufacturer, but also a key point is around security and backups. That's a hot topic any day of the week. In our current times, backups, I always say, if we don't have backups, we're not doing a job. Number one, because on a computer system, the most important thing is a client's data. So we need to make sure that that's always in the case are always taken care of. Cause it's basically an insurance policy and that's one that you have to have in place because of security concerns. Security concerns have been something that is just escalating in the world. We're in today 10 years ago, I'd say that there were three things that we needed to do to secure a network.

Eric Kehmeier: And it was user permissions, firewall and antivirus. And it was pretty easy. We now have anywhere from probably eight to 12 different layers of security. Now on top of those things that need to be put in place, it's a little bit more complicated and that's sad that we were in that world today. One of the facts that I share in my cybersecurity presentation is the data for the money from selling data. So anything from cybersecurity breach has surpassed that of drug trafficking and that's reported as of, I believe two, three years ago by the secret service.

Clarence Fisher: Wow.

Clarence Fisher: So security is a huge proponent for small businesses now more so than ever because breaches these attacks, they're not just going after fortune 500 companies anymore and sad thing for small businesses. We're not fortuned 500 companies that can afford to protect things like with the budgets that an enterprise company.

Eric Kehmeier: So it's gotta be affordable. And my joke too is I can never promise a hundred percent security to anybody. The only way I can secure a laptop is to basically glue every report on the laptop shut and give you an expensive paperweight. So that's the explanation I give because what we have to do is we have to balance out security with productivity. So anytime you lock things down, the security does get a little slower. It has more to do so that can impact productivity. And nobody likes the old saying of I walk in the office and boot up my computer, go get a cup of coffee, spend five minutes, joking the watercolor, come back and wait a couple more minutes before I can log in, right? That's a slow computer. You can't do anything, but you still need to be secure. And I'm probably one of the key components to that is educating your staff. The statistic is like 47 to 53% of all breaches and small business are due to employee error. And that's, that's really hard to fight against because I joke about it. If a hacker doesn't have to go through what you see in the movies of hacking through firewalls and doing all these things. If your employee effectively opens up the back door and lets them in

Clarence Fisher: Just doing our every day, regular computer usage, right? I mean, we use Gmail a lot, drive a lot. You know, there's nothing and maybe I'm not, we're not huge enough to have all of these. I don't know. At what point should we worry about, well, I guess we're always going to be worried about cyber security, but at what level do you see it being a real issue.

Eric Kehmeier: Every level and that sadly, and it is something that everybody's going to have to deal with on even a personal basis. I look at protecting my daughters, even though they're very young. Now, one of the biggest things is to slow down just a little bit. Don't open emails from people you don't know, don't put open attachments because like I said, they've made a lot of money on this. So they've put a lot of time, effort, and energy into it. And they're very deceiving. You know, we look at a lot of them and we even have training and tests that we can do for clients that you can do this cost-effectively. A lot of these security services have become more cost-effective in the last few years because it's hitting more small, medium businesses. But the biggest thing is using a little bit of common sense and slowing down. I may joke about this, but I don't have a rich uncle. I never knew about it in another country. That's wanting to send me millions of dollars in the hair. I'm not going to find out the email because I didn't know about him. How did you know my email?

Eric Kehmeier: So there are certain things of with small businesses, you know, firewall technologies, if you don't do business outside of the United States, blocked those countries. IP addresses basically only allowed to do business within the United States. And a lot of small businesses do things locally within their own state and sometimes cross state borders, but they don't necessarily a lot of work outside of the country. Common sense. One big thing I would tell people is don't just look at what the name on the email says it is. Look at the actual address and they've gotten really good at this though because they'll even use like a period in the wrong spot to make it look like about email. They'll use another symbol that kind of throws it off so it looks legitimate. But again, until a lot of people, it's not paranoid if it's real. So if you do get something, ask somebody to double-check, look at the address that your IT department or your it company to have them double-check.

Eric Kehmeier: There's other measures that people need to put into place too. I use an awful lot of monitoring services for me personally, but for business, there are different things that your banks can do to protect or something called positive pay. Because a lot of times they try these wire transfer schemes. So positive pay is something that only allows your bank to approve checks that are to nonvendors. So that's another way that people can't whitewash your checks or do anything of that sport. There's not a lot of small. If you're a two-man shop, if you're 20 man shop, if you have an event happen and you're down or can't access your information for two days or a week, how do you recover from that? And that's putting in business now it's not a natural disaster necessarily. We have those to worry about too, but this is becoming way more impacting on a weekly basis to small businesses that we do need to protect those and learn how to protect yourselves.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. And I mean, thank you for everything that you, everything that you shared going through that I think that's going to be very helpful for not only me,, but our listeners and things that we can take to kind of mitigate the fears that we have because you know, the more prepared you at least try to be the less anxious you will be. So when it comes to, what are some of the obstacles that the perceived obstacles that you see that might be preventing the small businesses to seek the help of a managed IT service provider like yourself? I mean, we know, so you've given us all of this and you go around and you share this information. And even beyond that, I'm sure people are like me. And they say, well, I really should get somebody who's job is only this. So I don't have to worry about it. But what are the other perceived obstacles that they may have in hiring and hiring a service provider?

Eric Kehmeier: Probably one of the biggest obstacles is understanding the cost and the expected value. And I think a lot of businesses, in general, have that problem. I think if you don't communicate the value correctly, everything is viewed just by cost. I think a lot of people when it's something that is technical, no I've done that. Doctors. They can speak over my head quite a bit. And when you don't necessarily understand it, it's easier to kind of fear it and have a perception of it's going to cost a lot. You know, I joke about something with my daughter. I thought it was going to be $40,000 and it was nowhere near that. But my perception was to lean towards the worst. But I think a lot of times, especially in IT it's, well, if it were to cost me to hire a team, it would be an outrageous amount.

Eric Kehmeier: And I'm going to have a portion of that. Well, if that's all you look at, that's true. You can say that it's, it would cost a hundred thousand dollars to have one employee, two employees to do X, Y, Z. The hard part when you have those, is that, that value you expect all of it to be done for you because you don't necessarily know the intricate details of all of it. Right? Best way. I kind of relate this to my own learning experiences back when I first hired. So I was a marketing and I was like, okay, here you got, I hired my first salesperson. You can do it all. I didn't understand that there was inside sales, outside sales, account management, marketing, a lot of components to it. So I think one of the biggest things that a small-medium business needs to do is take a little bit of time to get educated in the broad sense of what it is that would the expectations and the outcomes that you should have.

Eric Kehmeier: Because from my point of view, neither parties should want to be having any types of surprises. We send an executive summary report to a lot of our clients, and it's one to two pages. It's not technical jargon. My mother was a school teacher. So I like putting it on the grade scale. If you get an 87%, no, you got to be, if you're going to have 95%, that's a watch the trend. If it goes down, ask why is it going down? Is there something that you need to do? You know, it was hard-drive-based, filling up. You need to do the cleanup. So it's best from my point of view when somebody comes in and understands the partnership because it is something that I can't tell somebody how much to spend on their equipment, we have to work through it together. They can assume that we're just going to solve every problem under the sun when we don't know how to problems that they're having. So that communication is key.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. And I can totally see that again, we have kind of similar models when someone is wanting to hire. So there's somebody say, okay, why don't I bring my own person? You said, one person or two people. So I've got my own person, that's going to handle IT. And a lot of times, you know, being a digital marketer early on, there were some clients that have, they kind of even grouped me in that, in that like our email isn't working are, you know, and I'm like, I have no idea why you're email not working.

Eric Kehmeier: I love this question. So I think where you're going, I guess I need to let you finish. I joke because my mother's a retired school teacher and my brother was a software developer. So the best way that I've ever heard her explain it was my brother writes the programs. I fixed the hardware and the programs to make sure that the software can work. Now, that's her language of that. So when applying it to the one, man, a lot of times we do that because it's like, well, let's be honest now in the homes, I think everybody can hand their iPhone or anything to the kids and they'll fix it right. Well in a business, you know, having one man that and do a financial analysis of technology, forecast, what the business is doing in the next five years, install a workstation, do a server migration troubleshoot the problem.

Eric Kehmeier: These aren't the same individuals. There are a lot of people that can do that, but you get a split personality and it's kind of the, when you're everything to everybody, you're nothing at all the time. And they also say master of none, right? So what, we, we have a really good team that works well together, but they also can specialize so they can focus on the tasks that need to happen, where I've even been in the positions before saying you do realize I have no idea how to do software development. I have no idea how to do website development. I know that's probably one of the things that I would say is a benefit to what our company does. We will tell you what we don't do because it's nobody's benefit to kind of misleading that. But the one thing that we try to do is if it's something that we don't have capabilities to do, we'll point you in the right direction to help give you guidance.

Eric Kehmeier: Cause we do have an understanding of the technology. So we have a lot of clients with websites. We don't do their websites. We know that we need to point their domains here. It needs to be backed up as to integrations, other things we can help assist with that. So you have to work with a team of people to get it done. And sometimes that team's not just within one company, it's multiple companies.

Clarence Fisher: What inspired you to do this?

Eric Kehmeier: I've been in the IT industry, I guess since I was 17, 18, What aspire me to start IBT is I wanted to do basically something for our clients that was beneficial at the same time to really work with the team that we have. I love win-win. And somebody asked me this the other day of what's my passion. I wake up every day to go into the office to try to improve the lives of my staff and all the employees so that it impacts their families.

Eric Kehmeier: And I think the ecosystem is if I'm doing that, then they can improve the lives for our clients and their employees so that we make an improvement in our community. So it's one step at a time, but I love going in and thinking a little bit differently about things with what a company is supposed to do for their own people. And I love to see how our team can impact our clients for positive. We get a lot of kudos and compliments from our clients that could be as simple as one of our team, late at night, walking out an employee of our client. That was dark. It was just a nice thing to do to save the day from restoring a file or quite frankly, making a printer work before a lawyer has to run out to a court. So there's a lot of joy in that. And the, see it's duplicate with the decisions our team makes every day is really satisfying.

Clarence Fisher: Cool. You said you've been in IT since you were 17. So between then and now that you're 21. So between then and now, is there any lesson that you can share that you learned early on that kind of still impacts the way that you do business right now?

Eric Kehmeier: Absolutely. Our team knows it and we always talk about our core values and I love it. One day, one of my most senior people, he's been with us for 10 years and I've known him for almost 20. We were just discussing core values and he goes, I don't know why you're having so much trouble, you know, writing those down on a piece of paper. We've always had our core values. Please simplify upon me says, no matter what the situation, you always do, the right thing. That's not always easy, but I'm one of those guys that I don't lose sleep at night. Cause we do the right thing. Now that sounds simple. But you know, we, if a client overpays us right in the refund if the hard thing on the right thing to do is to tell a client, no, then that's the right thing to do.

Eric Kehmeier: Now we do it in a nice way, but I learned that a long time ago, he said, that's not really an IT trick, but it's customer service thing. And I think that's one of the rare things of as a consulting business. Sometimes that's what a client needs us to do. Not in a harsh way, right? Here's what we're wanting to accomplish. Can we do it this way? Well, you don't have to be crashed. We can say no. Here's why, and here are your options, but this is something that we can't do for you because that would almost hinder your business in the wrong way. So that is a guiding compass for us. That goes a long way. In 20 years in the industry, I've worked for enterprise companies and I've worked for small businesses. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I love the small business world though. Cause I feel like there's a satisfaction that I get from seeing an impact on the positive we can do for other small businesses.

Clarence Fisher: That's big, that's big with you. It seems really the ability to help small businesses. Not only that but then also I find in speaking with you, this dedication to your people that are fighting with you.

Eric Kehmeier: Absolutely. We're a company of many people. I can not do everything that we can do together. And we have that team mentality and that's the same thing again, is my team jokes. I can answer the phone and do the help desk. And we've attempted that before, but that's not what I'm doing on a daily basis. And they do it better than I do. So the joke is to not let me answer the phone because that's better service to the client.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah.

Eric Kehmeier: But they also know that I'll jump right in there with them if that's what they need.

Clarence Fisher: Cool. So what do you think the most important question that a small business owner should be making or asking themselves if they are considering bringing on?

Eric Kehmeier: Well, one of the things that I would say, how did they view their company and what are they're trying to accomplish? An easy way that I say to look at this is to look at the company and say, how do you view technology? If you're bleeding edge, cutting edge, wanting to maintain or trailing edge, you can be one of those four items and where you are in the president. And that's fine, the way that we view clients. I don't want somebody that is okay. Trailing or bleeding. That new technology is out there by that. I mean, it's so new that nobody knows how supported even the vendors are not necessarily in a release it's beta or it's the word custom, that's always expensive. Trailing edge means you're basically waiting until things are breaking and hoping that somebody can be a Superman and save it. And for us, what I look for is if you want to be maintaining or cutting edge, leverage the technology so that you can get a competitive advantage and what your business is doing or in your market, that's who we want to look for because we can support those things.

Eric Kehmeier: We can make those decisions that will help as a business do more, but that needs to be a decision based upon the leadership of that business. And it's okay to be in maintaining because maybe we had a down year, but I'll be the first one to say that different companies and consultants may have different points of view. But I use an example of, I'll never tell clients that it's okay to have a server for 10 years when the manufacturer will only warranty it for six, when Microsoft will only let you have the license for six years, the longest period of time, you should expect those six years for your business to stay competitive and fast. It might be better to have that every four or five years, but these are decisions that I can sit there and say, I present you with the information. I can even give you the quotes, but if they don't want to pull the trigger on it, there's still going to be behind the ball. So it needs to be a decision of a lot of times, making sure that the technology is in line with what their mission and their vision is as a company, what they're wanting to achieve.

Clarence Fisher: So we've done the kind of internal reflection figured out what type of company we are. And now we're going to move forward and find a manage IT service provider. What's the most important thing that I should consider when I'm evaluating the said IT, service provider?

Eric Kehmeier: Wow, that's a loaded question. That's a good one. Well, the most important thing is going to be relative to those people. A lot of times people don't look for IT until they've had a pain point. So one thing to address is the pain point to it, as bad as it sounds cost comparison and a value comparison because, in managed IT, it's just like with many other things, you may have one company say we're doing the same things at the top level, but it includes much more. So somebody could say I'm half the price, but they don't really do the same thing. So make sure to dress as your needs. And the comparison I say is I need a car. Well, a Pinto and a Lamborghini or both cars. Well, if I'm just going to go from point a to point B five miles every day, then the Pinto fine.

Eric Kehmeier: If I'm getting ready to race on a racetrack and my living is around that car, I need the Lamborghini. So that is where the car is a car, but not every car does every function. I may need a truck to do the job. So I'm not answering the question in it's this right here. But I would say there are three levels that have to be addressed. Does it fit in the business? Is it going to help you move your business forward? And does the cost-value equation equal your needs? A lot of times on the cost side of things, well, we've all seen that ad the triangle where it's good, fast, and cheap, right? And then it says, pick two. Well, if you're good and fast, you're not cheap. If you're fast and cheap, you're not good. Right? So it is knowing that you get what you're wanting to accomplish out of it.

Clarence Fisher: It makes a lot of sense. So it's not a just run out and make that decision. This is kind of a, this is an involved process.

Eric Kehmeier: It can be. I mean, I would love to say that it's, that we can make it easier, but a lot of times too, there's the trust factor too. You know, the clients like to do business, they know I can trust. And there is a trust factor that comes into this. We've been in business for almost 12 years. Not going anywhere. I live here in the community and we want what's best for those. They can come to visit our staff, you know, walk through our office, handshake and meet the people. A lot of times, it's good to see a face behind a phone. 90% of what our business does anymore is remote. But that FaceTime, you still have to build relationships. The same way I would with my CPA and my lawyer. You're nurturing that because you're putting in an awful lot of responsibility on those consultants.

Clarence Fisher: True. So how does someone find out more about you, Eric and IBT

Speaker 3: If you want to find out more about me, you can always email me personally. I've got a lot of information on LinkedIn as well. So feel free to connect there for IBT. Our website's probably the best resource or contact for our team. Just [email protected]. That's probably the best way to get in touch with us. Or our phone number is nine one eight seven seven zero eight seven three eight.

Clarence Fisher: Are you reading anything right now?

Eric Kehmeier: Well, I've got a two-year-old and a one-year-old. So the wheels on the bus are very popular at my house. That's probably the last book I actually read, but I was reading the perfect day formula and I listened to a lot of audiobooks, audiobooks that I've been listening to Multipliers.

Clarence Fisher: The Perfect day formula. Is that about? I can't remember.

Clarence Fisher: I think I've seen that. I'll check that out.

Eric Kehmeier: I was interested in that one with two young girls and juggling everything that we talked about in the Lifework world. Wow.

Clarence Fisher: Are you getting some good insights from it?

Eric Kehmeier: I'm one of those guys that I kind of flipped back and forth between books. It's one that I was getting some good insights and then I was in the other book. It was a blue ocean strategy. That one was definitely intrigued me.

Clarence & Eric: Excellent. Okay. So we've got a blue ocean strategy, perfect day formula. And what was the kid's book or movie wheels on the bus wheels on the bus? All right. We got to do. All right, man. Thanks for coming by the show I call you Eric and, um, I really appreciate it.

Eric Kehmeier: Well, it's been a pleasure. Clarence definitely had fun and I'd be happy to do it again.

Speaker 1: All right, well, Hey, you got it right here. We will catch you next week. Remember to go out and do whatever you have to do. Not whatever you have to do, but grind so that you can own a block.

: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ClarenceFisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.