431- IT Is Your Revenue Protector w/ Kevin Neureuter

431-Kevin Neureuter
Host: Michael Moore
Guest: Kevin Neureuter
________________

Michael Moore: Hey folks, this is Michael Moore and I'm here with Kevin
Neureuter, director of I t for DiMarco Group. Welcome to the program Kevin.

Kevin Neureuter: Thank you.

Michael Moore: So, it's interesting. I was, looking over stuff and everything
like that and I saw that, you, are part of the DiMarco group. can you tell me a
little bit about the DiMarco group and what they do?

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. The DiMarco Group is a company in Rochester. They
actually have like four or five different companies. Rochester, New York. And
they do real estate, construction. They own Admar, which does equipment rental
and they also do, property management as well.

Michael Moore: The whole host of things.

Kevin Neureuter: Oh yeah.

Michael Moore: That has to make for an interesting, I t director position there.
There's a lot of stuff that you're gonna have to control and, kind of in and out
different, hats multiple days. Right?

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. It's one of those things where it's difficult to not be
reactive, but you should always be proactive instead of reactive when you're in
it.

Michael Moore: Yeah, one hundred percent. Let's talk a little bit more about
that. if you're going to be, in a spot where you have to keep switching on which
hat you're hitting, hey, I'm going to go with these people this time. How do you
handle that? How do you work through the reactive and turn it into proactive?

Kevin Neureuter: It's pretty difficult and sometimes it can be kind of
frustrating, especially in family run businesses where like if the family calls,
you got to go do this thing, right? but I find that setting aside time on the
calendar specifically is one of those things that helps. it's funny how many
people don't use their calendar in places like this, but for me, it's like I
live by my calendar, so I'll have time blocked off. I even have a, every week on
a Friday at three thirty, I have a time blocked off for a weekly reflection so I
can reflect on how I've done in the past week. And then, kind of it's kind of
like doing a journal, right? And you're saying, here's how I did it in the last
week. Here's what I can do better next week.

Michael Moore: I like that idea. they actually in many, books and, business and
such, they actually promote that time to sit there and reflect. because it
allows you to kind of clear out what you've done and then look towards what
needs to be done. Nice. well, tell us a little bit about, yourself first and
then we can get into a little bit of what you do. So, how did you get into it?

Kevin Neureuter: there's a lot of guys who Wanted to do it since they were
young, or they played around with this stuff when they were younger. I fell into
it. so I was always into gaming, right. and I was always taught by my dad about
certain things about it, but by the time I got into it, I didn't know any of
that stuff anymore, from back in the nineties. So, I started in supply chain and
I was in that for seventeen years. but in twenty eleven, the company that I was
working for was a federal contractor, small one, the program manager and the
vice president both passed away in the same year. And that left us without any
leadership. And I was the youngest person there. So they were like, hey, guess
what? You're the youngest one here. Have the computers. It's like, Okie dokie.
And so I ended up, finding out that everything was pirated and they were running
on old XP systems and stuff like that. So I ended up doing a complete tech
refresh. Got a new server. They had this really old red hat server, no UI, no
nothing. and they were actually running the network off of old coax with the BNC
connectors. so I did a complete tech refresh, not knowing anything. Right. I was
green. And on top of that, they're like, hey, we need a new database. They were
using DBAs three and they were like, the government suggested, maybe we use this
access thing. I was like, I don't know what access is. So I went back, I was
like, oh man, in high school, I took Visual Basic in SQL and that's what I need
to do to code things in here. But I had to do a complete refresher. So I
relearned Visual Basic for applications and SQL. all within the space of like
six weeks.

Michael Moore: You packed it in there.

Kevin Neureuter: I did, man, it was a crash course. My mom's a software
engineer. And so I leaned on her pretty heavily for it.

Michael Moore: it's amazing how many stories I hear of people in it that land in
it without trying. they just get thrown into it. Hey, you're the IT guy now. Go
ahead and do that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that ends up always being, a
case for a good amount of people that, that were in it. they either, just kind
of got there. Right, right. but what doesn't get said is what you said, which is
the amount of work it takes to once you get there to really get on top of it,
right? Not just to understand it, but to actually move forward and push to get
better and stay in it. I mean, that's one of the things I think maybe we can
chat about a little bit is how do you stay in it? Right? Because it is a moving
target.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. It's one of those things where if you don't stay on top
of it, you get left behind. But I wasn't actually planning on staying in it.
when that company lost the contract and another one won it. I was like, well,
crap, I need to go. Maybe b find a different job. And I was looking supply chain
and I was like, all right, my title is supply chain manager. But I never went to
school. I never went to college. And so I come out of there not knowing
anything. So I was like, well, I guess I better go get a degree. So I went to a
community college for business administration with a concentration in supply
chain management. And then, at that took a long time from twenty eighteen to
twenty twenty four because I was doing it part time. and then I went into
Syracuse University where I'll be graduating at the end of this year with a
bachelor's in business management.

Michael Moore: by the way, let me, let me pause you there. I'm slightly jealous,
that you were able to go to Syracuse University. many people might not know
this, but I grew up in North Syracuse. That's good. So you, took it on your own
to go through and, get yourself a business degree, nonetheless. Right. Which I
think is a really, really good move. my degree is a business degree. It's
management information systems. which was in the business school actually
started in computer science. And then I switched to business. and I'm glad I did
because I think as we're going to hear from you, there's probably a lot of stuff
you learned in business school that still hold up to today.

Kevin Neureuter: Oh, one hundred percent. And even, learning from, my experience
in supply chain that held up to today, you wouldn't think to yourself, well,
supply chain translates into it, but it's really helped me. when that other
contractor won that contract, I was working as a supply chain manager still for
that one. And then they were looking for an IT guy, and the program manager was
like, hey, you know, got an I.T. guy over here, right? So then I became
corporate I.T. instead of just for the program, I became the IT manager there
and still doing the supply chain stuff and the IT management and, completely
refreshed their stack down at headquarters in Reston, Virginia. And then I ended
up leaving there to go into the public sector. I was like, okay, this is cool. I
want to go to the public sector. Right? I ended up becoming a director of it for
Orleans County up here. And I was that for a couple of years. That was such a
cool experience. And I learned a ton and enough to know I didn't want to be in
the public sector anymore.

Michael Moore: I was going to say, I mean, it had to be an amazing experience,
but also one you probably don't want to relive.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah, I don't want to relive that. And, so I was like, I want
to get back in the private sector. And I landed at DiMarco when I was at the,
county, they didn't have an inventory. So I spent like six months putting
together an inventory of their stuff, a very complete it was awesome. That comes
from my supply chain experience. they didn't have a true IT budget. The one that
I came into there was just, it wasn't great. The guy before me was retired in
place, so he didn't really keep up on it. So my business experience comes into
there with putting together the budget, and I put together a very good budget
that ended up, I shared it with other department heads who were newer and
started to kind of mentor them, right. And say, here's what you need to do for
this budget stuff, because they were thrown into it. Like everybody's thrown
into it. So I took my accounting and finance classes and put those to use.
Right. and when you're in these positions as a director or a CIO or a VP, you're
not doing it stuff. You're running your own mini business, right? Your IT
department is your own mini business. And it has to align with the
organization's goals. And IT people a lot of times struggle with aligning the
department to the business goals because they're like, cool, new technology,
let's do this. Let's spend all this money. And sometimes it's not about spending
the money on the new technology. It's about what will make this work for the
organization. What does the organization need to sell more? What does the
organization need to manage their properties better? It's not about let me
refresh the server stack. Let me refresh the network. It's about what can I do
to help the owners meet the goals for their organization.

Michael Moore: You hit a major point that actually is super relevant today,
right? Because we've got new shiny tech, you know, right? We've got AI, and it
keeps growing and getting bigger. And then the question that you pose is great,
we got new shiny tech, but how do we put it to use in the business? Right. and I
feel like a lot of organizations are leaning on it to figure it out. Right? and
I think that, a lot of people are going to hear this and immediately go, you're.
Yes, you're right, how do I take new shiny tech like AI, right. And marry it to
the business goals and the business objectives and the mission of the business?
And then how do I make it work from a monetary standpoint with the budget,
right? you're hitting on an old concept that is just continues to prove that
it's such a relevant concept.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. And I think a big aspect of that is I'm a huge proponent
for compliance. I know that that's a dirty word to a lot of people. they're
like, oh, it's unneeded work. But honestly, one of my truest beliefs is if
you're doing the work the right way, if you're following best practice, the
compliance aspect comes easy. and in this case, I ended up getting the ISO
twenty thousand certification for Centuria and CMMi level three for services. So
this was to run the service desk. And I've brought that through. I've brought
decision analysis resolution matrix and project documents and all of the stuff
that I learned from the ISO twenty thousand that I thought initially, like,
well, this is bogus. So the whole crap ton of work that I've got to put together
here. but then I was like, oh this just makes so much sense. And once you start
doing it, the processes go faster, they make things more efficient. And then you
can lean back and say, okay, this is why I made that decision, right? And it all
ties into the business. And in this case, with the AI, gather your requirements,
right? That's step one, gather the requirements of what does the business need
and then say, well, AI can meet this or maybe it can't, right? But either way,
you need to come up with a plan for how it's going to be treated. Otherwise, you
get shadoweye and everybody's going to have it. You can't just say, you know
what, no AI, because then people are going to pull out their phone and use
Gemini, right?

Michael Moore: Well, AI, the funny part about AI is that it's essentially shadow
anyway, right? So governance and compliance are huge in trying to rein it back
in, right? I mean, AI is meant to allow anybody to generate and create what they
want. And that means anybody in the company. So now you don't have to wait for
it. they know from a business standpoint what they want. They talk to their
chosen AI and the AI goes, yeah, here you go. Right. but the question that you
posed, it's all shadow AI, right? and there should be oversight, there should be
a compliance and there should be governance over all of it. not to slow it down,
but to put the guardrails up that need to be up and allow it to, allow people to
continue creating, but continue creating with oversight and making sure that
they're creating the right way and not jeopardizing any of the, processes and,
items and stuff in the, company that would, jeopardize the company at all. So
Yeah, I completely agree with you here. this is such a big part of it. let me
ask you a question. when it comes to your role, right, which is a leadership
role, as you mentioned, the further that you get away from the IT stuff, right?
As you progress through leadership, right? you're more hands off than hands on.
Well, what part of your role since you started very hands on? do you really like
a lot? Right, right. because it sounds like you started to lighten up when we
started talking about compliance and stuff. Right? So tell me a little bit about
the roles and stuff like that that really get you going.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. I gotta be honest. I love the sheets and spreadsheets. I
nerd out over them. It's great. Like Excel is so powerful and you can do so much
with it. so when you say get further away from the IT aspect, when we get into
these leadership positions, you're one hundred percent right. So you have to
have your outlet somewhere, right? One of the things that I always ask people
that work for me or that I go to hire is if they have a home lab because having
a home lab means that you're putting in the time outside of the organization to
stay sharp and to stay learning. I've got a full server rack in the basement. Of
course, I run my own business on the side. I have a small managed services
company and, that's another thing. I've been running that since twenty fourteen
and you just built that up and you're always learning. You never know
everything. and I can use my business acumen from my side business in the role
that I'm in right now as a director of it. when an MSP is telling me, hey, I've
got this. And like, I can tell if they're blowing smoke because I've been there
and I can tell like, I know who you're working with. you're like, oh, I got this
from Ingram Micro and here's this. It's like, well, guess what? I use them too.
So I'm familiar with what you're doing here. Right. but it's getting into the
spreadsheets, the budgets, laying everything out, organizing it, the compliance
aspect of it, the ISO twenty thousand. I lean heavily on that and I love it
getting processes in place because small companies and even mid sized
organizations that are run like small companies don't have processes. They want
processes. They just don't know how to get them. And that's what the frameworks
are there for. You get the ITIL framework, you get the ISO twenty thousand
framework. They're there for a reason. So when you pick a tool like an ITSM,
you're doing your ticketing system, you're doing your arm, all this other
shenanigans, make sure that you're following one of the frameworks, the ETL
framework is going to make your job easier. It's going to make it so that you
can present, reports to executives in a way that makes sense. And then you can
actually take these metrics and improve the processes. It's a circular thing,
right? You put the process into place so that you can then improve the process,
find more efficiencies. And that's how you run a successful business and a
successful department.

Michael Moore: I think that's great. And I think that, bringing up MSP is really
interesting because, the managed services space, it really teaches you about
outcomes, right. because if you're not providing outcomes for your clients,
right, you're not going to have any more clients, right? I mean, that's, it's
pretty much how it works in managed services. Right? So, I really feel like you
can draw a little, piece to that that outcome based, stuff. How do you, work
with your team to create outcomes, in the space for internal. Right. It, right.
how do you translate that?

Kevin Neureuter: so I am a student of a few different people who I'm sure you
know about is, David Green from Hobby Lobby, the CEO. Mhm. Dave Ramsey, the,
owner of Ramsey Enterprises. and obviously I spent a lot of time learning from
leadership there. It's all about a vision and a goal. If you want outcomes, you
have to have a vision and you need to portray that vision to the people that are
working for you and they need to buy in. If they don't buy in, you don't have
movement. You don't have outcomes at the county. when I started there, coming in
from the private sector, selling to the, public sector, I come into there and
it's like, great, I'm here at the public sector now. The legislature is like, we
want some of your private sector stuff into here. The people who work for the
public sector don't want to do that. They're there for a reason. And so when I
start to bring in these private sector things like frameworks and compliance,
they're like, well, we don't want to do this. But eventually if you lay out your
vision, get one of those giant whiteboards and just draw all over it, right? And
you get excited about it, get the buy in from your people, they'll get excited
about it, and then they'll start to drive towards your vision. And the outcomes
come from your people buying into your vision. If you go into a department, you
try to lead it, you go into any business, you try to lead it without a vision.
You're spinning the tires. You got nowhere to go.

Michael Moore: Right, I think that's fair. it's a great way to kind of look at
it. It's interesting to me, when we start talking about your beginnings, right,
of where you got dropped into it had to by yourself learn it, you had to become
very technical very quickly. Right. and then we started talking a little bit
more and we learned that, you, have had to, you're like, well, I'm going to keep
that going. I'm going to continue being technical with your home lab. But then
I'm also going to make sure that I, work on my leadership skills and hone those
with, compliance. And I'm going to learn these frameworks. on top of that, I
learned you're a business owner, right? for a managed services, by the way,
which is a very difficult thing to do. I mean, I have three plus years in
managed services experience, right? And so I'm well aware of the challenges of
the managed services space. it's a highly competitive industry. it is a tough
and it's very, very unforgiving of mistakes. Right. anybody that goes into an
MSP to work. Right. and you see that on their resume, you should really, really,
if they toughed it out for a few years, that person is gold. Right? so, having a
managed services is, as your side gig is amazing that you have that. so let's
talk a little bit about when you made the jump from just being the technical
person, right, to someone that is, thinking like a business owner.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. I think when you learn that you don't know everything is
when you come to terms with that, right? I started my business, I was green, so
remember I took over the it in twenty eleven. I started my business in twenty
fourteen. That was not long enough for me to know what I was doing right. I had
to screw up a lot of things before I could actually go forward. I've, completely
ruined some video cards for customers, but the trick is the customer service,
right? You build it on relationships. like you said, the MSP space is pretty
unforgiving, right? And I know that as somebody who not only is an MSP, but I
manage MSPs from DiMarco Group. We have one there. Yeah. and then I lean on
relationships, I lean on partnerships. One of the things I learned from my
supply chain days, your vendors are not somebody that you're like, go do this
for me now. And that's it. Right? It's a partnership. So you build it like a
partnership. If I'm dealing with an MSP, even if I fire them, I fired an MSP
from Centuria when I took over the it for corporate HQ there. I was like, okay,
well, I could do this internally and they're not really keeping up anyways. So I
fired the MSP, but then I get other ones that are selling me my Sophos gear, and
I form a relationship with that buyer who is also an MSP. If I ever need to lean
on them, I could, and being an MSP isn't always about give me fully managed.
Sometimes you want to co-manage, right? Sometimes you're just there to help
somebody. And that's where the relationship and the partnership comes in. And
this is where the business ties in with the tech aspect.

Michael Moore: I think that was a great answer. I think you're right.
relationships are such a huge part of it. whether they be internal
relationships, whether they be partner external relationships and, there's such
a big part of getting stuff done. and I've, through my career, I know I've,
counted on, relationships to, help me out with some tough spots, and, sometimes
you're like, well, I don't know where to go with this. And, let me source the
environment. It's nice actually, that, You've Been Heard is such a good,
actually spot for these types of relationships because, you can have your, like
minded folks that you're able to source from and be like, hey, I'm running into
this problem. Help me, so it's actually really nice. And, it's actually, good to
do things like this. We're just chat it out and go, oh, yeah, no, I've been
there, I see it.

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. I'm a huge fan of the model here, right where we've got
the community to do this with. and leaning on the relationships aspect of it. I
was on a fireside chat, for the National Association of Counties. It was myself
and a rep from spectrum and we were talking about the partnership and moving
from CapEx to OpEx and stuff like that. And, getting really in depth. But it was
really just a couple of dudes talking. right. And, we find these relationships
and some of the weirdest places. I play a text based browser game that I used to
play in the early two thousand called Kings of Chaos. Right. And, one of my
buddies on there is an I.T. guy, he's from South Africa. He lives up in Ireland
now. And him and I shoot stuff back and forth. What are you doing in your home
lab? What are you doing in yours? And then. Oh, hey, I'm having this problem at
work. Have you ever seen this? Right. Lean on the relationships. It's not only
from communities. It's not only from going to conferences, which another great
place to get relationships. but you can build them in your gaming community. And
we bounce things back and forth.

Michael Moore: It's so many good ways to do that. how do you work and speak with
the owners right of DiMarco group. Right. That's who you interface with. how do
you work with them and help them understand, the, it challenges and really get
them to, understand what your needs are and how you can be more proactive and
not reactive.

Kevin Neureuter: it's a fine balance between sales and customer service and,
being genuine. Right. So at the Marco group, like I want them to succeed. So if
I want them to succeed, I have to go in and not be a salesy guy. I can't be a
pushover either, right? But you also can't rail against things and you have to
be like, you know what, I get it, DiMarco. This is your organization. I'm going
to present you the options you choose. Yep. Right. I'm doing all the hard work
to get these options put together on a decision analysis resolution matrix that
I got from the ISO twenty thousand. Put the whole thing together, bring it up to
them and say, here's the information, there's highlights. Here's my synopsis for
what I would recommend. They're all weighted. If you don't like the weights, we
could change them. You choose their organization. So as long as it's not
something security related, they lean on us for the security, right? They lean
on us like, hey, I don't ever want to end up in the papers.

Michael Moore: what do you think is one important idea you wish, that, every
executive would understand about modern it.

Kevin Neureuter: Oh, the main thing is we are not a cost center. We are revenue
protector. every executive everywhere sees it as a cost center. Even if there's
somebody who is technologically savvy and they want their company to go forward
and use the new technology, like AI, like the cloud, right? They still look at
you like, oh, you're asking for all this money. Where is my value coming from?
So you can't say, okay, business development is going out and making you money.
Your operations guys are making you money because they're working on the
projects. It is not ever going to make you money. We are going to protect your
revenue because if you don't invest in this stuff, it's going to come back and
bite you later tenfold. Yep.

Michael Moore: I think that's a good way of looking at that, revenue protectors.
really is a good way to think of it. not all IT departments are going to be
revenue protectors. it's the good ones. Let's get into our segment of it, what
it's going to look like eighteen months from now, right? So if we're looking
eighteen months ahead, and I'm going to keep this one general because I want you
to just comment on whatever you think and you can go over a bunch of different
tangents. I'd like to see what is the future look like in it eighteen months
from now.

Kevin Neureuter: It's going to be messy. and it's that's okay. and I say that
because, I t needs to be aware of, the political landscape, the world landscape
and what's going on in the world, right? So they need to be aware of the AI.
They need to be aware of the stocks, of all of the threats that are out there.
And because of the volatility of the world, it is about to become extremely hard
because, working in the public sector, I have some very good insight into the
real threats that are out there. So these are coming. They're in our systems and
we just need to be prepared for the cleanup. And I say that because like, yeah,
it's great to have the tools to protect against things, but there's always going
to be a smarter person out there than us, right? There is always going to be a
better tool. And the way that AI is used, we can use it as defenders, but we
have guardrails. The bad guys don't have guardrails. They don't have the moral
compass to stop at a certain thing, right? They're going to outmaneuver us. So
we need to just be ready to clean up and make sure. And this is going to be so
cliche. Make sure that you have your backups and your disaster recovery plans
because you're going to need them.

Michael Moore: Yeah. it it is tough. and, we do keep saying out there, it keeps
getting harder and harder, right? the mere fact that a while back, people were
like, I just need antivirus. And now people are like, you don't have EDR and SIM
and, MDR set up and you don't have an Itdr. And all that's not being protected
by a twenty four seven SoC and I could keep going, but yeah, the mere fact that
someone looks at you and goes, you don't have all these things, and, it's almost
as commonplace as asking for antivirus. It shows you what landscape we're in.
Right?

Kevin Neureuter: Yeah. Let's look at ten years ago when we were telling people
that, free antivirus was okay on your personal computer. Right now, there's no
way like I would never tell a customer. You know what? Go get this free
antivirus. I'm gonna be.

Michael Moore: Like, absolutely.

Kevin Neureuter: Not. Yeah.

Michael Moore: Think about it this way. Right. What's the major security that's
out right now. it's called zero trust, I mean, that moniker didn't come up for
that is one hundred percent what they're doing is not trusting anything. I
really hope that's how people should be looking at everything now. Really,
honestly, they should be zero trusting everything. Mhm. So, with all the stuff
that's out right now, everything you look at should be. Hold on. I have to
verify you. I don't trust you.

Kevin Neureuter: It's a trick because you have to be aware. Mhm. And you have to
be respectful of where the world is and who is out there that's smarter than
you, that's stronger than you, that doesn't have these guardrails. You have to
respect them. But you can't be afraid because if you're afraid, then you are
paralyzed. And if you can't pivot, then it's just going to get worse. And if
you're in a leadership position, you cannot be paralyzed. You have to be able to
pivot.

Michael Moore: Great words. Kevin, thank you so much for being on the program, I
appreciate it. folks, this is Michael Moore. I've been here with Kevin
Neureuter, director of I t for the DeMarco Group. Really appreciate you having
you on here. And, really hoping, have another conversation.