670 LionGuard's CEO Michelle Accardi

[Uncle Marv] (0:28 - 2:40)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers where we try to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. We are back with another Wednesday live show. We do this every week as best we can.

Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, you're free to join in, hang out, comment in the chat, ask questions, do whatever you can. Tonight we are joined by LionGuard CEO Michelle Accardi. She will be joining us and promoting a brand new event in the channel and we'll see how that goes.

If you are new to the live show here, whatever happens, happens. I will say this, this is the second time I've been on the air today because earlier I did a review of the Pax8Beyond and the IT Nation Secure conferences and we reviewed Swag. If you haven't seen that, check it out.

The link will be in YouTube just like everything else. Of course, you can listen to it on your pod catcher or check everything out over at itbusinesspodcast.com. And if you don't know, now you know.

The best Swag winner, CyberQP with their That's Hot sauce. And Cynthia Schreiner actually joined me and we chatted about how the sauce came to be as a Swag item at the conferences. So check that out.

Of course, you can also check out other shows. We are in the midst of IT Nation Pitch It, so we're doing tons of vendor profiles. So those shows are coming out.

I have put out the last of the live shows from IT Nation and Pax8, so we're going to be smooth saving for this summer. I'll be bringing in some MSPs and chatting about stuff. But as I said tonight, it is all about the lion.

So let me bring out Michelle Icardi, CEO of LionGuard, and she's got the great background. Michelle, how are you?

[Michelle Accardi] (2:40 - 2:49)
I'm great. Hey, did you know that Cynthia is actually a LionGuard alumni? She got her start in the channel at LionGuard.

[Uncle Marv] (2:49 - 2:50)
I did not know that.

[Michelle Accardi] (2:51 - 3:03)
Yeah, so the great swag that she puts out, she set us on our path with great swag as well. So we love Cynthia. Great, great, great channel friend to us.

[Uncle Marv] (3:04 - 3:08)
Okay. I thought you were going to try to take credit for her doing the swag that she does.

[Michelle Accardi] (3:08 - 3:13)
No, no. I'm the beneficiary of her bringing great swag to the industry.

[Uncle Marv] (3:14 - 3:19)
All right. And she's your neighbor there on that side of the coast as well.

[Michelle Accardi] (3:19 - 3:34)
On Tampa, that's for sure. I'm in Sarasota, Florida. LionGuard is mainly remote, but we have a big group of people in the Tampa Bay area, and then Houston, which is where our headquarters is.

[Uncle Marv] (3:35 - 3:50)
Well, speaking of Houston and the headquarters, let's get this out of the way. Behind you there on your backdrop, the Come Roar With Us, your first ever event that you're putting on. Let's talk about that.

[Michelle Accardi] (3:50 - 4:26)
Yeah, super excited. Our inaugural user conference was called RoarCon. So if you're interested, it's happening July 23rd to the 25th in Frisco, Texas at the Dallas Star, which is the Dallas Cowboys training facility.

It's a pretty awesome venue. I am super excited about this, not just because it's our inaugural event. We've got a great pre-conference education happening on the 23rd, but we've got a phenomenal keynote speaker.

I don't know if you know who Eric O'Neill is.

[Uncle Marv] (4:27 - 4:27)
I have heard the name.

[Michelle Accardi] (4:28 - 5:22)
Yeah. So he is the cybersecurity expert, FBI operative that brought down Robert Hansen, who was the Russian mole within the FBI. So great, great insights from his perspective, having been in the government, having really seen what cyber risk is from an insider perspective.

And I'm just really excited. He's been great. He's really been out there as we've been promoting RoarCon, interacting with LionGuard partners and prospects who are interested.

Super, super great. I'm also, if you haven't, if you didn't know that they actually made a movie about that called Breach back in 2007. And my big question for Eric is going to be, did he get to choose Ryan Phillippe to play him in that?

[Uncle Marv] (5:25 - 5:42)
I seem to remember that, but I seem to think that it was kind of, there was another movie that was out big around that time. And this, for some reason, got plugged into this whole idea that it was like a copycat or something like that. Does that sound right?

[Michelle Accardi] (5:42 - 6:08)
Potentially, potentially. I'm not quite sure on all that history, but he's got a phenomenal background and I'm really excited to have him keynoting. And then we're going to have a technology track as well as a thought leadership track with some of the very best and largest MSPs in the industry.

Antiva, Purple Guys, Mirapex. It's going to be a really great event.

[Uncle Marv] (6:09 - 6:40)
All right. So I know that you've asked me now, I think three or four times to make the trip out there. And for two reasons I cannot.

One is I'm already committed to another conference that same week and I'm on public record as saying there's too many conferences. I can't go to them all. But the second reason is I've already made my trip West of the Mississippi by going out to PAX 8.

So you're going to have to secure me before next year in order to make this happen.

[Michelle Accardi] (6:40 - 6:58)
Do a better job of that next year, Marv. This was our inaugural and is our inaugural event. I am quite sure that you're going to be jealous when you see all the great pictures and what have you, but I have no doubt that you'll make do where you are on the other coast.

[Uncle Marv] (6:59 - 7:02)
That's a slap to where I'm going. I can't even see where I'm going.

[Michelle Accardi] (7:02 - 7:12)
No, no, not at all. Look, everybody's, everyone's got, look, these events are all, you know, again, I don't think that there's a, there was no shade being thrown.

[Uncle Marv] (7:13 - 7:33)
Listen, the industry is big enough to support all these conferences. And, you know, not to say that there's not a ton in the, you know, in the Texas area. I mean, the Midwest kind of gets left out conferences or there's a ton on the East coast.

People try to do them on the West coast. So spreading these out across the country is a good thing.

[Michelle Accardi] (7:33 - 7:34)
So yeah, I agree.

[Uncle Marv] (7:35 - 8:14)
I see how that goes. All right. So we've got some people joining us here.

Let's see. We've got somebody from the people from LinkedIn who are joining us. I don't know if we have a question for this, but what's the topic of discussion?

I don't know. We're just going to chat. This is the first time I've had Michelle on for a full podcast without like dragging her as she runs down the hallway at one of the conferences here.

So we get to chat a little bit more in depth. So why don't we start with the, it's the usual place to start, I guess. So you've been, you've been there at LionGuard just over a year, what are we 13, 14 months?

[Michelle Accardi] (8:14 - 8:15)
Yep. Just about that.

[Uncle Marv] (8:15 - 8:19)
All right. How has it been the first, the first year?

[Michelle Accardi] (8:20 - 10:57)
It, well, first it's phenomenal. So the technology at LionGuard is really a game changer for MSPs. So, and I say that because as you know, Marv, I came from being an MSP, you know, I was a CEO of a large PE back rollup, a company called Logically.

We, we had done essentially 14 acquisitions and integrated them. So having come from that experience, when I saw the capabilities of LionGuard and understood how it could help me better manage my business as an MSP, I got really excited about it. So, you know, we, we really characterize ourselves as an attack surface management platform.

And for those who don't, aren't familiar with that term, Gartner came out with it back in 2022 and the enterprise has sort of adopted that, but it's just starting to come into the MSP nomenclature. But essentially what it is, is it's about automating IT asset inventory so that you understand what the attack surface is, and then understand what's changing in the configuration state. So that's one of the things that LionGuard does uniquely well is that we look across the cloud network and endpoints to understand what's changing in configuration state that can create risk and exposure for your business.

Some of that could be through cybersecurity risk, and some of it could just be through, you know, mistakes that people are making that you may not be aware that are leaving you vulnerable. And then we take all that information outside and enable us to alert within to PSAs and, and such, but we take all that information and we put it into a cyber risk dashboard that's tied to cyber insurance controls for you to be able to show you, your customers what their cyber posture is, and continuously have that monitoring. So it's a really incredible capability that I think touches every aspect of an MSP, because obviously you can't onboard customers if you don't well and do it fast and efficiently if you don't know what the IT asset inventory is, you can't secure them if you don't have that information, and, and then ultimately you can't have a great account management if you, if you're not able to show them in a very easy to understand way what their cyber posture is, where they are, and what good job that you're doing as an MSP.

So I think LionGuard really enables all of that.

[Uncle Marv] (10:58 - 11:34)
All right, so we've talked about this briefly from time to time. I'm going to dig a little deeper into some of these things. The first thing is asset management, because one of the things that we've looked at before with other products is that yes, they'll tell you what the devices are, you get the name, IP address, blah, blah, blah, but how deep into the inventory does it get?

Does it bring back, you know, model number of CPUs and, you know, manufacturers, HP, Dell, you know, system information, CPU, memory, hard drive, all that stuff?

[Michelle Accardi] (11:34 - 12:14)
All of that stuff. It's, it's, it's deep. It's, it's wide and it's deep.

I mean, we have over 85 integrations to date. And then in terms of how deeply we go, all of those things. So, again, it's meant to give you real insights that you can leverage across your business, whether that's for billing reconciliation, whether that's for mitigating cyber risk, because you actually just need to know what, what version you're on in case there's a zero day vulnerability that comes out, being able to track all that, that all of that information is, you're able to get to via LionGuard.

[Uncle Marv] (12:14 - 12:27)
All right. So, the attack surface management, now let's talk about, you know, not just reporting what that cyber posture is, what about remediation? I mean, are there things that you can actually fix?

[Michelle Accardi] (12:28 - 13:37)
So, we take a least privileged approach. And the reason we do that is because we are touching your entire system, whether that's cloud, network, or endpoint. So, what we like to do is partner with RPA vendors.

So, think the Roost, PIA, those types of, of automation vendors, because we, we want to make sure that that action is only where you want it so that you don't wind up with what we've seen happen with some RMMs, etc., that have gotten, had, you know, been affected in the past. We really try to take that least privileged access approach. We really want to make your tier, your, your, your, your, your, your tier one engineers, essentially give them the capability and access to things as if they're tier threes, but without any risk.

So, they can solve, so they can solve problems on first call, do first call resolution versus you having to have expensive resources. We're really democratizing, I like to say, your data so that it can be leveraged across your business to make you more efficient.

[Uncle Marv] (13:38 - 13:49)
Okay. And you mentioned that there's real-time monitoring and behind the firewall type stuff. So, it sounds like there's going to be an agent installed somewhere, right?

[Michelle Accardi] (13:49 - 14:21)
So, depends. And, and let me, let me explain. So, what, there is no agent for the cloud elements, so for domain, email, etc.

But when you are going down to the endpoint network, then there is an agent that would be deployed. But there are large swaths of value that can be gotten without having to deploy an agent. All of those external attack surface areas that we're able to, to scan without having an agent.

[Uncle Marv] (14:22 - 14:24)
Okay. We're talking Azure AD type stuff.

[Michelle Accardi] (14:25 - 14:25)
Correct.

[Uncle Marv] (14:25 - 14:30)
All right. Now, you keep saying email, so what are we monitoring when it comes to email?

[Michelle Accardi] (14:30 - 14:42)
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, your, your, again, your, your, all your domains, SPF Algards, DMARC, DKIM.

[Uncle Marv] (14:42 - 14:48)
Oh, so it, when mail is not delivered, people find out, they know why.

[Michelle Accardi] (14:48 - 14:51)
Correct. You can go in and see that, we'll see what's changed.

[Uncle Marv] (14:51 - 15:10)
Okay. So, how, how often do the checks happen? If we're talking about being able to do configuration change recognition and stuff, is this something that is truly real-time or is it, you know, in stages like five minutes, 20 minutes, an hour?

[Michelle Accardi] (15:10 - 15:41)
What it's doing is, so, so unlike, what it's doing is doing deep inspection up to three times a day, ultimately, and then it is actually documenting that into an audit trail that goes back 18 months. In terms of that, so, so I like to call it near time, not really real time. It's near time, but ultimately giving you that 18 month look back, you know, Microsoft 365 AD only gives you a 30 day look back.

With us, you get 18 months.

[Uncle Marv] (15:42 - 15:44)
All right. Can it be longer?

[Michelle Accardi] (15:46 - 15:57)
There's nothing that limits, right now, that's how we've set up our, we've configured it, but there's nothing that would necessarily make us not able to do it for longer if there was a use case need for that.

[Uncle Marv] (15:57 - 16:09)
Okay. All right. Now let's talk about the fact that you guys, you know, announced Leo recently.

So how has that been going and how does Leo actually tie into what we're doing here?

[Michelle Accardi] (16:10 - 17:12)
Sure. So Leo is our generative AI support agent that essentially stands besides our partners and helps them with any of their support needs. So whether or not they need updates on tickets or need to understand how to do something, it will essentially, it's already been trained on all of our documentation, as well as many of our integration partners' documentation.

So it can really pull back and help to explain how to use all the great data that we have in the system. It also can be used to generate new reports. So let's say there's a metric in our, that you want to be able to build that isn't already in our database, which is metrics are the, what we call our reporting aspects.

You can ask it to build you a new metric. So those are some of the cool capabilities within the platform itself and within Leo.

[Uncle Marv] (17:14 - 17:14)
Interesting.

[Michelle Accardi] (17:15 - 17:38)
Yeah. It's a great tool. We're finding that, you know, not only is it helping partners, but it's also helping us increase partner satisfaction because you can get your questions answered immediately.

No, there's no lag time. And if you don't find the answer that you want, you can immediately get pushed through to a human who can help you.

[Uncle Marv] (17:39 - 17:43)
All right. So was LionGuard around when you had your MSP?

[Michelle Accardi] (17:44 - 17:56)
It was, it was around. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it at the time. It was the best kept secret from me.

And, and I'm disappointed about that because it would have made my life so much easier.

[Uncle Marv] (17:56 - 18:01)
All right. So, well, I was going to ask how you did it, but we don't have to go back that far.

[Michelle Accardi] (18:02 - 18:06)
I didn't do it. And I, I, I suffered the consequences of that.

[Uncle Marv] (18:07 - 18:25)
All right. So let me ask you this from a CEO perspective. Now you've dug into the weeds quite a bit.

Most CEOs don't do that. What are your top priorities and goals for LionGuard? Have you, have you like solidified them now that you've been there more than a year?

[Michelle Accardi] (18:26 - 20:10)
Yeah, I would say I, I, I have definitely some short-term and some long-term goals. And obviously I will, I'll, I'll, I'm going to use my woman card and say, I have the right to, to change my mind at some time in the future. But, you know, our top priority is, you know, fully putting ourselves as the leader in the attack surface management space for the MSPs and the enterprise and driving, driving growth.

Growth is really important, not just for us, but for our MSP partners. And I'm really focused on how we drive, drive that growth for our partners. And I, I think there's so much pressure put on MSPs from an EBITDA perspective these days, like, Hey, this is how you have to have, but there's two, two ways to get to EBITDA growth.

There's through cutting, which I think everyone is sort of sick of having to do the chop, chop, chop. So I'm really passionate about how we teach MSPs to monetize their tech stack and grow through that and grow their EBITDA, not just through cutting tools, but through monetizing their tool sets. And how can they use things like LionGuard to help, help with that, help with the monetization strategy, as well as an efficiency strategy.

So that, that's from a, from a, from a, you know, what I'm hoping to get accomplished with LionGuard. I think building out a more fulsome attack surface management, exposure management capability is where we're going to go long-term from a product strategy perspective.

[Uncle Marv] (20:11 - 20:41)
All right. I'm going to push back a little bit here. I'm going to ask this question.

So some people are getting sick and tired of hearing about EBITDA only because EBITDA kind of points to the fact that you're looking for an exit strategy at some point. Some people aren't ready for that. They just need to be able to run their business now, more efficiently, more effectively, more profitably.

So is there a way to look at that without it being EBITDA based?

[Michelle Accardi] (20:42 - 21:39)
Oh yeah. Growth, profit. I mean, just growth, just growth in general.

I mean, look, look, I'm, and, and look, I don't get excited about EBITDA. I get excited about growth. To me, it's when, if you're a passionate visionary technologist, the reason you hopefully got into this business is to actually help your customers do the same thing.

So enabling them with a tech stack and capabilities that not only help you do your job better, but help your customers be better protected and also be more efficient in what they're trying to accomplish. That's what it's all about. That's, and that's, that's the growth winning formula.

Unfortunately, we don't see enough people being focused on growth there. I see a lot of folks who are focused on what can I cut? You know, how do I get a fit more efficiencies, but not thinking about strategically, how do I grow?

[Uncle Marv] (21:39 - 22:17)
All right. So helping MSPs grow is one thing. How does LionGuard grow?

I mean, here's, and here's the reason I'm asking that question. Something popped up in the chat about how you're funded. I wasn't really going to quite go there, but of course, you know, M&A is a huge thing.

Private equity stuff is getting huge in the channel stuff. I can see LionGuard as something that somebody might want to come along and say, Hey, why don't we, why don't we acquire this and bring this into our stack? How does, how does that fare into your, into your long-term strategy?

[Michelle Accardi] (22:17 - 23:47)
Well, we're already VC and private equity funded. So our two lead investors are Updata Partners and TDF Ventures. And frankly, it's a really great relationship.

It's not a short-sighted relationship. And I think it's, you have to choose your, your funding partners very carefully. Liongard’s got some great ones.

So I'm thankful for that. Ultimately, and I'm reading some of the what's in the, in the chat, you know, ultimately how we think about growth again, you know, we're primarily an MSP focused company. We have generated our leads, if you will, by going and being a part of the MSP community and the technical ecosystem.

Now we are finding that there are enterprise level companies who are needing the technology LionGuard has that may or may not be using MSPs, which always try if they, if that customer wants a managed attack surface solution, we're teaching MSPs to provide that. We were at RSA this year. We actually even put out a press release about, you know, enabling partners to step into creating a managed services practice around managed, managed attack surface.

So that's sort of how we approach the market in terms of lead generation and how we, how we think about growth.

[Uncle Marv] (23:48 - 24:41)
All right. Let me take a quick moment just to let the listeners and viewers know if you're actually watching this show that is being streamed on multiple platforms. So some of these questions are coming in on LinkedIn.

So if you're over on YouTube, the Facebook or X, you may not be seeing them. So that's why when we answer questions, if you don't see them in the chat, that's why. So we're on multiple platforms and LinkedIn seems to be our little active place this evening.

So thank you all for participating. So let's kind of round out that. And, you know, we've talked about being MSP centric.

LionGuard has a, a strong partner ecosystem. And you mentioned partnering with, you know, some of the other vendors in terms of integration and stuff. What does the LionGuard community look like and what are some of the initiatives there?

[Michelle Accardi] (24:41 - 25:49)
Oh, sure. So, you know, I like to call it the 10X ecosystem and we have over 85 integration partners within our platform, everyone from Microsoft to, you know, frankly, just, just SonicWall, Cisco, you name it. We're, we're really deeply integrated.

And we believe that it's not just enough to have the integration, you actually have to deeply partner and create go-to-market motions together that provide additional value. And so that's where we focus. Figuring out where our MSP partners, where these businesses are need to, to have, you know, better insights into their data and better monitoring.

And that's where we go. And then we partner with distributors, folks like Pax8. So Pax8 is going to be the, the platinum sponsor of RoarCon coming up.

So, you know, so it's not just about the technology partners, but also about the distribution partners as well.

[Uncle Marv] (25:50 - 26:16)
All right. So let's swing that around to people that are not partners like me, who, when I look at LionGuard, I'm like, well, I already have that in my stack. I have this in my stack.

I have some of the things that you would say to people like me to say, look, yeah, we do that too. And we do it better or we do this better because I noticed that you guys also do some automated documentation.

[Michelle Accardi] (26:16 - 28:34)
Yeah. So, so I think the key thing is, you know, you'll have something that might be in one stripe of, and I'm going to use an example because I've actually spoke. So some folks might say, well, you compete with SaaS alerts, for example, which ultimately is actually not how Jim Whippy and I've actually, we actually view ourselves as quite complimentary.

You know, they're looking at just those SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365. We're looking across the stack, not just 365. We're looking at the network.

We're looking at the end points and we're giving things into a context of a cyber posture. Whereas they're looking at, okay, how do I just remediate this one level of, of solution, which is again, a valuable thing, not, not downplaying that in any way, shape, or form. But what we're doing is looking across and then able to give you a cyber posture tied to cyber insurance controls, which is not something that you're getting out of SaaS alerts or anyone else.

Again, doesn't take away the value that they provide, but that's, that's very different than what we do. You know, we're not just looking at one thing. We're looking at things holistically and giving you the capability to sell better.

So one of the things that we do is we enable MSPs to actually go out and do better lead generation because you can run an external domain scan and our dark web monitoring on potential prospects, pull back a report. We don't charge you for the first 30 days of adding a new environment when you're a customer. So you can actually go out and prospect with that information.

Or if you're engaged with a prospect and they're to allow you to do a deeper inspection, you can go out and do a risk assessment or get a full understanding of everything that they have in their IT asset inventory to make you better in terms of onboarding those. So those are all differentiating things. You know, you might have to have 15 to 20 different tools to do everything that you're doing with LionGuard and pulling it all together into one vision.

[Uncle Marv] (28:34 - 28:51)
All right. Well, I was just about to say, when you talked about all the things you did with the Cyber Risk Dashboard, configuration, change detection, asset inventory, user account management, DMARC, SPF, email, automated document. I mean, that sounds like a lot of stuff.

Sounds a little pricey.

[Michelle Accardi] (28:52 - 29:39)
It's not pricey. I would tell you it's very inexpensive. You know, the MSRP for this solution is around $45 per customer environment to get all of that value per month.

So it's a very inexpensive solution. We're always willing to work with MSPs. We have month-to-month pricing as well as annual commitments.

So we'll work with you how you want to work. That's one of the other benefits of LionGuard. Extreme flexibility because we know where MSPs are coming from, given myself, Joe Alapat, and others in the organization have all come from MSPs.

[Uncle Marv] (29:40 - 32:00)
All right. I've had you talking a lot. So let me let you take a break here.

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All right, Michelle. So one other thing that I didn't prepare you for and I just noticed, you got a podcast.

[Michelle Accardi] (32:02 - 32:12)
I do, I do. In the Lion's Den. It just launched.

Yes, yes. And you'll have to be my guest in the Lion's Den.

[Uncle Marv] (32:12 - 32:18)
All right. So tell us what got you to do that and what's the goal there?

[Michelle Accardi] (32:18 - 32:43)
Yeah. I mean, again, I think the goal for me is just to spread best practices around how to best leverage your tech stack, how to learn from others who've been there and done that before. I started off the podcast with Chris Blackman.

I don't know if you're familiar with Chris.

[Uncle Marv] (32:43 - 32:44)
I know Chris, yeah.

[Michelle Accardi] (32:45 - 33:16)
Yeah. So Chris and I had a great conversation just around how diversity affects MSPs and how you should be leveraging that into your business in order to get the best outcomes. It was a great conversation.

I try to take on meaty topics that may be avoided by others, but I like to really create some excitement in my podcast.

[Uncle Marv] (33:17 - 33:26)
All right. So are you going to leverage the fact that you are one of the women of the channel honored by CRN for 2024?

[Michelle Accardi] (33:27 - 34:39)
Well, I always leverage that. I'm honored that CRN has continued to bestow that honor upon me. One of the things that I am actually doing a little differently is that we're actually launching, and it's not just me, we're launching a women's executive networking group for MSP women specifically called MSP Mavens.

And that's happening on the 25th of July. We're doing it on the tail end of RORCON. We've got a LinkedIn group called MSP Mavens.

Anyone who's interested in joining myself and a group of female executives who are either supporting MSP senior executives or have been MSP senior executives to really talk about the hard and meaty stuff and create a network, much like have been out there for years and years for others in the industry, creating that senior level network, not just about bringing up those underneath, but really giving us a peer group.

[Uncle Marv] (34:40 - 34:46)
All right. So is there a place where ladies can go on your website and sign up, or is there another link that you can give us?

[Michelle Accardi] (34:46 - 35:08)
They can come to, they go to LionGuard.com backslash RORCON to register for RORCON to get part, to be part of MSP Mavens, which is separate. There's a LinkedIn group simply called MSP Mavens. Simply ask for, you know, to join and I'll be happy to have you just DM me and happy to have you join us.

[Uncle Marv] (35:09 - 35:28)
And a note from the chat, Chris says ROAR. Women hear me ROAR. All right.

So yeah. So folks head over to the LinkedIn group and ask for permission to join. Is it something where they can find it on their own or do they need to be referred to by somebody?

Is it one of those private groups?

[Michelle Accardi] (35:29 - 35:36)
I think they can find it on their own. They may not be able to join without DMing though. I think it's findable though.

[Uncle Marv] (35:36 - 35:57)
Okay. All right. So folks sign up for RORCON, MSP Mavens, the women executive MSP group.

That all sounds pretty good. So sounds like you've had a really busy, what, 13, 14 months, whatever we said it was.

[Michelle Accardi] (35:57 - 36:31)
Yeah, it has been, and it's not slowing up. I just, you know, came off seven weeks on the road. So I'm, you know, trying to hit as many events as possible to meet as many partners as possible.

I really believe it's in this community and helping to both, you know, impart all the knowledge that I got from being an MSP, but to learn and continue to learn from those in the industry. So it's been good, but I'm actually liking that I have a week and a half home before. All right.

[Uncle Marv] (36:32 - 36:35)
How many events do you think you'll make this year?

[Michelle Accardi] (36:37 - 36:52)
Oh, well, out of what Jay McBain says, there's what, 270-ish events. I don't know. I would say I'm making five a month probably.

So probably 60 events a year would be my, you know, somewhere between 60.

[Uncle Marv] (36:52 - 36:56)
So you're nowhere close to, you know, the likes of Henry Tim.

[Michelle Accardi] (36:56 - 37:02)
No, no, I don't think I'm there yet. I don't think I'm there yet, but I can aspire.

[Uncle Marv] (37:03 - 37:19)
All right. Something to shoot for. All right, Michelle.

Well, I think that's it there. Any other, I asked about Leo. So everything's out there.

We talked about RoarCon. Are you ready to Roar?

[Michelle Accardi] (37:19 - 37:21)
I'm definitely ready to roar.

[Uncle Marv] (37:21 - 37:26)
Tell us your Florida man story. This is a Florida man or random question time.

[Michelle Accardi] (37:26 - 37:26)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (37:27 - 37:28)
You said you had a story.

[Michelle Accardi] (37:29 - 38:15)
Well, I was, I do have a story. So just from, so I have a 19 year old daughter who decided to go out last night to celebrate with a girlfriend and they decided to get an Airbnb in Tampa, Florida. They went, they stayed successfully and they went to leave this morning.

And as they walked out of their Airbnb, someone was driving away with my daughter's friend's car. So they literally got their car stolen from in front of an Airbnb. And apparently the police found it about three blocks away in front of someone else's home.

So, you know, only I would say in Florida, could you have your car stolen and returned to you all in one day?

[Uncle Marv] (38:16 - 38:21)
So here's my question. Was it really a theft or was it a friend playing a joke?

[Michelle Accardi] (38:22 - 38:34)
I think it was a really a theft based on what my daughter has told me. Cause there weren't, they were over an hour away from home. So I don't think they had many friends in that particular area.

[Uncle Marv] (38:36 - 38:44)
And it wasn't a situation where the thief got in the car and looked at it, said there wasn't enough gas to get me where I needed to go.

[Michelle Accardi] (38:44 - 38:45)
That may be possible.

[Uncle Marv] (38:50 - 39:10)
Right. Okay. So before I do my story, I want to ask you, did you get your, uh, text alert or email, uh, letting you know that you can come to the city of Fort Lauderdale to see the spectacular celebration for the Stanley cup champion, Florida Panthers.

[Michelle Accardi] (39:10 - 39:12)
I don't believe I did.

[Uncle Marv] (39:14 - 39:16)
Cause you know, cause you know, we won.

[Michelle Accardi] (39:16 - 39:26)
I did. I, you know what? I have not kept up.

I hate to say it. That's my sport, football. No, not, I haven't been, uh, been following hockey as closely.

[Uncle Marv] (39:26 - 39:39)
All right. Just to let everybody know the Florida Panthers are Stanley cup champions. They defeated the Edmonton Oilers in game seven, two to one.

And, uh, we've already dipped Lord Stanley's cup in the ocean.

[Michelle Accardi] (39:41 - 40:02)
Isn't it interesting that Florida seems to be dominating in hockey in recent years, whether it was Florida has won three of the last five or three of the last four Stanley cups. Yeah. It seems, it seems crazy to me where, where, where we can have no natural ice, uh, that we are the winners, but that I love it.

I love that.

[Uncle Marv] (40:02 - 40:12)
I know. Uh, so my wife Kim is from Cleveland and she just doesn't understand how Florida is good in a winter sport.

[Michelle Accardi] (40:13 - 40:26)
Well, I think it's just that the kids don't want to have to go outside to do hot sports. And so they better figure what we got to be really, really good growing up in this sport so that the professional run, I don't know.

[Uncle Marv] (40:26 - 40:36)
I don't know. Just do like we do in every other sport. We just, we just bring talent down.

I mean, whatever it is, football, basketball. So we do what we got to do.

[Michelle Accardi] (40:36 - 40:37)
It's true.

[Uncle Marv] (40:37 - 40:46)
All right. So I've got three stories here. I'm going to ask you to pick a number between one and three, and that will be the story I read for this evening.

[Michelle Accardi] (40:47 - 40:48)
Okay. Let's go with number two.

[Uncle Marv] (40:49 - 40:52)
Number two. Oh, I was hoping you pick number one.

[Michelle Accardi] (40:53 - 40:54)
Well, I can pick number one.

[Uncle Marv] (40:54 - 42:06)
That's okay. Nope. Nope.

You can't take it back. So here's what I have got to say. If you live in the state of Alabama, don't be coming to our beaches.

And here's why. Three young men from Birmingham, Alabama, tragically drowned after being caught in rip current during a nighttime swim at Panama city beach in Florida. The incident occurred Friday evening around 8 p.m. near the watercress condominiums. They got caught in a rip current. And for those people that don't understand, rip currents are narrow and powerful water underflows so that if you're standing and as the wave goes out and you feel like your feet are being pulled from under you, that's what that is. So these men were being observed swimming, and apparently they got caught in a huge undertow.

And there was a search and rescue operation, but by the time they were found, they were all unresponsive and later pronounced dead at local hospitals. So that's how we weed out tourists. It's either shark attacks or undertow.

[Michelle Accardi] (42:06 - 42:13)
Yeah. I tell you what, it's not been a good time to go to the beach in Florida, at least up by the panhandle it seems.

[Uncle Marv] (42:13 - 42:24)
No, it has not. So that's why I was hoping for any other stories. There were so many stories.

I mean, murder has been the theme for the last five days.

[Michelle Accardi] (42:24 - 42:29)
So I was trying to find other nice uplifting stories, Marv.

[Uncle Marv] (42:31 - 42:43)
Well, it was that or the 20-year-old kid who flew from Jersey to Florida to attack another video game player with a hammer.

[Michelle Accardi] (42:43 - 42:51)
That's a lot of effort to, you know, because somebody beats you in a game. I don't know. I don't know if I've got that energy.

[Uncle Marv] (42:51 - 43:15)
He was 20 years old. He told his mom he was visiting a friend he met through gaming. He flew to Jacksonville, took an Uber to a hotel in Fernandina Beach, and at 2 a.m. on Sunday went to the person's home, which happened to be unlocked, found the person and confronting him in his bedroom, hitting him in the head with a hammer.

[Michelle Accardi] (43:16 - 43:32)
That's a lot. That's a lot. But, you know, what is the state of the world right now, Marv?

These are the stories that are the headlines. I think we need to, you know, change it up and come up with some more harmonious things for the future.

[Uncle Marv] (43:34 - 43:39)
I don't know. If you want harmony next February, the Florida Man Games will be happening.

[Michelle Accardi] (43:41 - 44:09)
Well, I like to say, you know, it's so funny. I was born in New York but raised in Florida. And I used to tell my parents that when I grew up, I was like, I think you were trying to kill me when I was a child because my brother and I used to take inner tubes and put like plywood on top of them and like go Tom Sawyer style into a creek called Alligator Creek to go fishing.

And my parents didn't seem to have any problem with this, but somehow we made it to adulthood.

[Uncle Marv] (44:09 - 44:14)
So are you trying to make your own flotilla? Is that what it sounds like?

[Michelle Accardi] (44:14 - 44:29)
Pretty much. Pretty much. And I would ask my mother and she's like, hey, look, I was just a girl from Brooklyn.

I didn't know anything about alligators. I'm like, maybe sending your four year old and your nine year old out on that kind of a flotilla might not have been a good idea.

[Uncle Marv] (44:30 - 45:01)
Yeah. But I mean, you're of age at the, I mean, I'm going to fudge a little here with the numbers and stuff, but you grew up in a time where kids were expected to be outside. We were expected to do dangerous things.

We would ride our bikes and make ramps and jump over things. We would climb trees and jump from one tree to the other. We would play ball in the street with cars and traffic.

We're fine.

[Michelle Accardi] (45:01 - 45:26)
Yeah. I think we maybe need to transfer on a little bit more that way. I mean, ultimately I'm a strong believer that, you know, that which does not kill you makes you stronger.

And I could tell you, I couldn't control my twin five-year-olds if I tried. So they're getting a little more free range parenting like I had when I was a kid.

[Uncle Marv] (45:26 - 45:33)
Well, that's only because you're at the point now where you're like, I'm done. I've raised my whatever, right?

[Michelle Accardi] (45:34 - 45:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Probably true.

[Uncle Marv] (45:37 - 45:52)
All right. We're, we're steering into some deep waters here. People questioning your parenting skills on my show.

So, all right. So Michelle, thank you for coming on. Thank you for finally being able to sit down and have a long form chat.

[Michelle Accardi] (45:52 - 45:54)
Thank you so much, Marv. It's been a pleasure.

[Uncle Marv] (45:55 - 46:04)
And I will let me know when next year event is planned early so I can see if that becomes my trip West of the Mississippi.

[Michelle Accardi] (46:05 - 46:13)
Yeah. And, and let me know when I'm getting you the demo of the product so we can get you on board to be part of the Lion Guard partner family.

[Uncle Marv] (46:13 - 46:25)
So my stack is full and I don't evaluate till the end of the year. So we'll have to touch base. It'll have to be around that time.

[Michelle Accardi] (46:26 - 46:32)
So I'll call you next week. Thanks Marv.

[Uncle Marv] (46:32 - 47:01)
All right, folks, Michelle Icardi, CEO at Lion Guard, lionguard.com and be sure to head over to the website and sign up for RoarCon. If you're looking for a new conference to attend to, if you are a lady MSP exec, head over to LinkedIn and check out the MSP Mavens group and look for Michelle out and about. She's going to hit a hundred plus conferences this year, right?

[Michelle Accardi] (47:02 - 47:05)
Something like that. Thank you so much, Marv.

[Uncle Marv] (47:05 - 47:42)
Michelle, thank you much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching live or listening on your favorite pop catcher. Check out all the other shows over at itbusinesspodcast.com.

Subscribe, check out all the shows, whether they're audio or video. And we'll be back for a lot of stuff this summer with MSPs talking about their success and talking with vendors about all the things that they're doing to help us make our jobs better so that we can run our businesses better, smarter, and faster. That's it.

We'll see you next time. And until then, holla.