758 Liongard's Roar: Michelle Accardi and Brook Lee

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, managed service providers, tech enthusiasts, yeah I can't say that word right. Anybody that's got an interest in tech or is running an IT business, we try to provide you stories, tips, and tricks to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This is the Wednesday live show, our weekly live stream sponsored by our friends over at NetAlly and we'll chat about them a little bit later.

I'm going to have a bunch of shows coming up about the NetAlly tools, specifically the CyberScope and the EtherScope, great tools, everybody could have them in their bag. But I want to start off today's show with a very special shout out and show some love to a vendor. Now you ask Marv, how are you going to do that?

Well I'll tell you how I'm going to do it. I'm going to shout out to a rep that called me today, this morning, of course it's January, it's the start of the year. We are in the midst of all those vendor follow-up calls, hey you told us to wait until next year to reach out to you, it's next year.

So we've been dodging a lot of those calls, but today while my office manager slash wife was out at a doctor's appointment I had to pick up the phone and it was a new rep from my old friends at CyberFOX. I'm not going to say the rep's name but I am going to commend her for doing an absolutely fantastic job of saying, hi, I'm new and I'm just calling to follow up and to check up and if you don't want me to call again that's fine, if you're using another tool that's fine, I'm good, talk to me. And I said oh, very nice, very refreshing, and I liked it.

So we talked for another three or four minutes and I asked about getting a shout out to my other friends over there, I'm not going to mention their names either, but listen CyberFOX folks, I've been trying to get you guys back. Just because I picked another vendor doesn't mean I don't love you, but your rep today, fantastic. I want to show some vendors some love and that's what I did.

So great, great, great. I also want to give love to a junior today. As many of you know, I work with several subcontractors and I work with one client, actually there's two, but one client in particular that has a junior on staff and my office co-manages there.

So what that means is I manage the network, I oversee everything in terms of the servers, the protection of the workstations, all their cyber protection, their secure remote access, and junior is on site at their main office and his job is to be the first line of customer support for the end users, take care of things like mice and keyboards and printers, help them with their zoom meetings. He also does some website stuff, but in this particular case, I probably should have let people know. So this company goes through juniors a lot, so this is a new junior.

He's been there, I don't know, four months maybe, and I found out two months ago that junior didn't know how to install a printer. So this morning, I get a request from their admin, AJ, that one of the billing people is complaining about their printer and they want it swapped with another printer in the back that's not being used because this office has about 40 people, but there's only like five or six that are in the office every day because they are co-whatever the term is, they're hybrid. Most people work remote.

It's a law firm, so attorneys don't think that they have to come in or do anything, but they send their support staff in. So the billing department is there. They have an HP printer.

It's old and all their printers are old, by the way, but nonetheless, they're there. Two of them are completely unused. They've actually been off for eight or nine months and I send junior an email saying, hey, can you swap these printers and get it installed?

I was worried because two months ago, when I found out that he couldn't install a printer, I ended up having to do it myself. So I wanted to see if he had learned. So I sent that request at, let me, I'm going to pull up the email trail so that I can be very exact with this, so you guys don't think I'm exaggerating.

So I sent him the email request. Where is he? Junior.

There we go. Sent him the email request at 10 53 this morning. And the first thing he did was ask me, what are the IP addresses?

I had to refer him to an earlier email that we had where I had given him all the IP addresses of all the printers, which he probably could have found out if he knew how to run a network scanner, but, nonetheless. So that request, what did I say? 10 53.

[Brook Lee]
So at 1 37, he sends me a message. All right.

[Uncle Marv]
I swapped the printer in such and such as office. I said, okay, how does she like it printing or whatever? And he responds, he's out of the office today.

I said, okay, but did you install the printer? He says no. So I asked him to go back and actually install the printer.

And then he sends me an email at 4 0 8 PM. I installed the printer and I did a test page. So I don't know what he did all day.

I don't watch junior, but it was just a pitter patter in my heart to actually see that he was able to figure out. I don't know if he had to Google all day or whatever, but he got a printer installed and from 10 53 AM to 4 0 8 PM. That was his day.

So again, not always a bad junior. This is a good junior story. I'm glad that he figured it out.

So, all right. So most of you are probably here because you saw the guests that I have. So let's go ahead and bring them out.

And the first thing I need to do is change up my thing here and get glasses so that I can read my intros because they deserve it. So I have coming up to the stage, Michelle McCarty, CEO of LionGuard, a 2024 CRN Women of the Channel. And of course that honors her leadership and influence in the technology industry and new to LionGuard, Brooke Lee, Vice President of Community and Channel.

And I understand in your new role, Brooke, that you're going to lead initiatives to strengthen community engagement. Does that sound about right?

[Brook Lee]
That is correct. That's my thing. That's what I'm really good at.

[Uncle Marv]
Yay. So, ladies, hello. How are you?

So, Michelle, we got you here for a full show. You're not getting up from some table and running around a restaurant trying to screenshot everybody and say hello.

[Michelle Accardi]
No, you've got me sitting down in one place. I'm not at home, though. I'm not in Florida.

Of course not. I'm in Houston today with some of my best colleagues and visiting some partners. So it's exciting.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And, Brooke, this seems like it's going to be our customary spot to get you on in January.

[Brook Lee]
I know, right? It's the start of the new year. We got to get things off on a good note.

I mean, there's no better time to be on the show.

[Uncle Marv]
That's true. Although next year, I hope it won't be at a new place.

[Brook Lee]
No, it won't be. It will not. I'm pretty happy.

I'm pretty happy. I think this is a very good spot for me.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. All right. Well, Michelle, let me start off with just some general questions because LionGuard has been simply on fire, en Fuego, as some people like to say, integration after integration.

And of course, you hired freaking half the channel in the last three weeks. What's going on?

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, you've said it, right? We are on fire. We've caught that fire.

We have really spent 2024 building. I've been here about 20 months. We've been building this foundation to enable LionGuard to really unlock incredible value, operational efficiency, and visibility across the tech stack for MSPs.

We even convinced you to join us as a customer. So we're excited about that.

[Uncle Marv]
You weren't supposed to say that in public.

[Michelle Accardi]
I'm sorry. I wasn't supposed to say that in public. But I'm most proud of, again, getting folks like you engaged in the platform.

And one of the things that I've seen is that how do you engage people in the platform? You show them, you teach them, you get to have them hear from others in the community. And so I wanted to bring the best and the brightest.

That's why I lobbied hard to get Brooke here. I lobbied hard to get Dave Powell here as our CRO. And salespeople like Marcus McNall and Tim LaRocque, some additional regional account directors who just recently joined us.

I wanted to get those people who are technically adept, really understand the MSP channel. They're not here to sell you something. They're here to really teach you and show you what the value that you can unlock by using a tool like LionGuard to help you get that visibility across the tech stack and give you a sense of risk mitigation because we're really helping you to secure that attack surface across your customers.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, it is good to get people that others in the industry like and trust and respect. And I appreciate what you guys are doing there. It definitely shows that you're heading in the right direction.

And yes, I, in full disclosure, everybody, I am utilizing LionGuard. And I don't know, four or five months in, although I did have to admit to Michelle earlier before the show, I've apparently I've not completed my onboarding.

[Michelle Accardi]
Yes, but you said you're using, you haven't completed our onboarding steps. That's us making sure that everything is going perfectly for you.

[Uncle Marv]
I've got all my inspectors in; I've got it connected to 365. I got it connected to my on-prem Active Directory servers. I've got it connected to my domo, my Synology.

I've got it going.

[Michelle Accardi]
Look, we appreciate that. But I will say, can I tell the story of how you wound up becoming a LionGuard partner?

[Uncle Marv]
You can tell it and I'll correct any mistakes you throw up there.

[Michelle Accardi]
Barb sent me an email and he says, can you get me a partner to show me? I don't want a salesperson to call me. I don't want a demo of a salesperson.

Can you please just have a partner that you, and so I was like, sure thing. And I emailed over, Rick Harbor over at Decision Digital, and he was awesome enough to show Barb. And by the way, I'll tell anyone else, you don't want to talk to a salesperson, you don't have to.

We'll get you with a partner. It's no problem.

[Brook Lee]
We got plenty to pick from.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. I appreciate that.

And listen, I'm not your average MSP. In fact, I'm not even to some people, a real MSP. I'm a boutique MSP.

Brooke, you brought that word up last week when you were on with Bardissi. I heard that.

[Brook Lee]
Because I don't have a problem with the boutique MSPs. I really don't. A lot of people hate them, but I mean, if you're profitable, if your clients are happy, if your employees are happy and everything's just running along smoothly and you're good in that space, who cares?

Who cares? Literally who cares?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So yeah. And I was in a situation where, listen, I don't want to go through the sales song and dance thing.

I'm busy. I'm running my MSP. I'm doing the podcast.

I've got some other stuff that I'm working on. And I'm in a situation where I want to talk to somebody who's actually using it in the wild as an MSP. Tell me what you like.

Tell me what you don't like. Show me something. And that's all it takes for me.

[Michelle Accardi]
I think it's all it takes for everyone, right? I was an MSP, right? I've sat in those shoes.

I know the pain that you feel. And so as a vendor CEO now, what I hope that I can bring to anyone, and that's exactly why I brought in Brooke, because it's not about selling. It's about providing value.

Just show me how you're actually using this technology. What type of value are you getting from it? Just real talk, no BS, and driving the product forward.

And that's why I think, honestly, Marv, that's why we are on fire, because we're not about selling. We're about really providing real value and getting real feedback from the community about what they need in the solution and bringing the right technical resources to bear.

[Uncle Marv]
So, Brooke, I mentioned that show you were on with him. And yeah, so boutique MSP, premium MSP, blah, blah, blah. There was a section, and you know what?

I did not take a note. I wanted to ask you something right around there where you started talking about the services that MSPs provide and how we should all be, you know, working towards that goal. And forget the names.

Forget what you call yourselves. Are you doing a good service to your customers? And are vendors doing the right thing in enabling MSPs to do that?

And I appreciate that conversation. So, thank you.

[Brook Lee]
You're welcome.

[Uncle Marv]
So, how are you going to do that over at LionGuard?

[Brook Lee]
So, a couple of different things. Number one is, Michelle and the team and the leadership here, they give me what I call a decent amount of runway, because I'm not a salesperson. I'm not a marketing person.

I'm an IT person, a degree in computer science, and I'm like hardcore MSP, hardcore tech. But what I can do is I have sort of a unique skill set. There's only a handful of us out here, I say, that have it, is because I've worked in an MSP directly for almost 10 years, and then I went and consulted and rebuilt a ton and then worked in those MSPs, I know what happens every single day, day to day.

And being able to work somewhere where we have a tool that will allow you to fix so many problems that you literally see every single day, and I can explain to you this problem, you're going to have this at least three times this week, this is how LionGuard is going to fix it. I can put like the rubber to the road. And also, another thing that I really like about LionGuard and kind of where one of the things I come into play is, how are the different ways that you can use the tool?

There's so many tools in our space that like one role can use it, one person, one whatever. And as a consultant, that's literally the first thing that I'm going to like, when I show up, I'm going to go in, I'm going to do a tool assessment, if you've got a tool that only one person in the building is using it, and I'm like, okay, there's like other tools out there that you can use it and six other people in the building can use it. I'm going to get rid of that tool out of the gate.

So I love being able to have a tool and I really guess where software is a service for a SaaS company. I really feel like that this is more of a solution type tool. It's not just like a one trick pony.

There's so many different things that you can do with it. And that's sort of where I come in is to show the MSPs, the owners, the service managers, the CEOs, whatever, how you can use this tool across the breadth of your MSP and all the different ways that it's going to be able to help. Some of the other things that I'm going to do is we are going to start back doing webinars once a month.

We're also going to start the pack backup. So we're going to have a pack here. I love doing those types of things because that's where I can really give back to the community a lot, getting a subset of our clients that are really hardcore using LionGuard.

And then how can I take what those people know, get their feature requests, what would they like us to see do next, give them early access to things. Again, being able to have that partnership that goes both ways. They give me information; I give them information and develop that relationship.

I think those are just critical in our space. Again, the webinars are going to be really great. I do them live, live questions, live chat, live everything, sort of bringing everybody up to speed on what's going on.

And then literally have some of the experts that we have here at LionGuard. I will say we're built a little bit differently. I did not realize before I came here how many people that have actually worked at MSPs work at LionGuard.

We have a very large group of people here that have worked at an MSP in all sorts of facets. I have not seen that many anywhere that I have been in the channel space that has this many people that are MSP people. So bringing those people onto the webinar so that you can ask those questions to the experts, maybe bring one of the onboarding guys on, one of the onboarding girls on, maybe bring one of the engineers on, one of the devs, whatever, to be able to just, like I said, be able to make it so that it's more transparent and that everybody kind of knows what's going on and that we're getting feedback from people and then we're taking action on that feedback when we can because I think that's a very important piece that you've got to have in any relationship between a vendor and a client that we have.

[Michelle Accardi]
All right. And it looks like you got someone who volunteered, Brian Weiss.

[Uncle Marv]
I want to go back to the point that she made about the fact that, you know, she didn't realize how many people working at LionGuard were actual MSPs. Is that something you guys are striving to do or is that just?

[Michelle Accardi]
No, it is part of the strategy, right? We were, one of the things that, you know, LionGuard was born out of an MSP, right? Joe Alapat, Vin Tran, they had an MSP.

They were looking to solve problems that they had when they had had their MSP. So the foundation of LionGuard is out of MSP. But then, you know, obviously I came in from running a very large MSP.

But ultimately what we've seen is that, again, if you want to make customers successful, you have to have walked a mile in their shoes or have an understanding of that. So when we are hiring, we're hiring specifically for people who have MSP experience and or have been in and around this industry servicing those MSPs for many years. You're going to find our account managers come out of some of the some of the largest and best MSPs.

You're going to find our regional account directors come out of MSPs or vendor community where they've been with MSPs for 10, 15, 20 years. It is something that we look for in the talent that we bring to bear here at LionGuard.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. That's good because that was one of the things when I, after I talked to the partner and I got my, I don't even know if it was account manager onboarding. I don't know if there were two people and they were both MSPs.

And to be honest, that's something that I like. And this is going to sound bad, but it does get frustrating when a salesperson calls me. And it's one thing if they're new to the company, but if you're new to the space, it is going to be hard to sell to somebody like me.

I've been doing this 25 plus years, 28. And it's not that I have anything against somebody new to the space. We need more people in the space.

But I want to talk to people that if I asked a question, I need to have an answer that has something behind it. And I know that that's not always possible. Some of the best salespeople were not techs, did not come out of being an MSP.

So I get that, but I do appreciate when they are.

[Brook Lee]
So that's another one of the things that Michelle has tasked me with is to help with sales enablement here at LionGuard. We actually had a training today. A gentleman that works here named Jeremy, he does trainings with the sales staff and they asked me to hop on the call today.

And we had a phenomenal training session. Like people were asking questions. Hey, I had this person, this MSP asked this question on this call.

I'm not really sure about that. Again, making those people better. And this is something that they do at LionGuard every single month without fail.

Again, and this was my first time sitting in on one of these sessions and it was phenomenal. And the energy that's in the room and everybody's really engaged and people are asking questions and giving help and all that kind of stuff. That's what I think just really levels us up here at LionGuard for sure.

[Michelle Accardi]
It is the best culture of any company I have ever worked with, led, for. It is truly a special place. And I think it's because we all come from that MSP community, which I also think is a really special, hyper-connected, collaborative space.

So it's awesome to hear that Brooke's feeling that already here at LionGuard.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice, nice, nice. Let me do this. Let me use this as our natural break.

And normally I would be talking sponsors here, but the only committed sponsor that I have has been NetAlly. That's not to say that others aren't ready. I've got two invoices out.

I've got some verbal commitments, but money's not in hand. So I will say that NetAlly is probably the tool that I talk about the most. And it is my, I don't want to say my daily driver, but I have two go bags.

I have my regular bag with my tools, my screwdriver, my network stuff, whatever. And then I have my NetAlly bag. That goes with me to every single appointment.

So if there's anything you should know that one of the things is you should not ever run into a networking problem that you're not ready for, and you can do that with a NetAlly tool. As I mentioned, I'm going to be doing several, I don't know what I'm going to call them yet, tutorials, reviews, or stuff like that. And the biggest request I got last year from listeners is you talk about the tools, but you don't show them to us.

So I'm letting you know that I'm in the works with NetAlly. We're going to show you the tools. We're going to go through the simple features, the things that'll get you money right off the bat.

And then we're going to go into some of the advanced features. So if you've got a customer with a very troublesome network, you can do some advanced troubleshooting with the NetAlly tools. You can verify cable.

You can test cable and make sure that if a cable is supposed to do 10G, you can prove that it does 10G. So that's all coming down the road. And we're going to get those sponsors back on.

Rhythms is going to be our sponsor for our offsite events. They are going to power my internet. So when I am at a conference, or I am at a show like the Florida Man Gangs, that, whoops.

[Michelle Accardi]
Definitely don't put me up for that. Come on.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm so messed up with my thing here, but the Florida Man Gangs, coming March 1st, I will be there and Rhythms Box will be powering my internet and going through, I have no idea what I'm doing there. They don't, I don't think that they know. It's just.

[Brook Lee]
That, but that's Steve, that's Steve's company. He'll be fine. He'll wing it.

I know him.

[Uncle Marv]
I do not trust Steve at a Florida Man event. Steve will probably hop the fence to try to get in the games himself. All that, where is I going with that?

To say, yeah, I'll be at Florida Man. Oh, I'm going to be at Zero Trust World at the end of February and Rhythms will be powering my interviews while I'm there. And then we're working on others to be a part of the sponsorship of the IT business podcast.

So that was very jacked up sponsor.

[Michelle Accardi]
That's probably one of the most fun sponsorship segments you've done. Come on. That was great.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, let me sip from my mug. That doesn't have a sponsor yet.

[Michelle Accardi]
We have a verbal commitment.

[Uncle Marv]
We're working on it. All right. So let's go back now and talk more about this rocket ship of a year, which I think it's going to be two years because you guys did a ton of stuff last year.

You added a ton of integrations. You guys have already announced some stuff this year. Two things that I was thinking about that isn't even the newest thing.

You've got advanced automated documentation and cyber asset discovery. And then you have this whole asset inventory. It sounds like that's a separate thing, is it?

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, it's all part and parcel, right? What we like to say is that you automate asset discovery and asset inventory, right? You need to discover it before your inventory and keeping that up month after month, day after day, hour after hour.

But the incredible thing is LionGuard now, again, we're in private beta on the advanced automated documentation and on the asset inventory for devices and identities. Ultimately, you can come right into the platform now. There's a dashboard for all the user identities that you're managing.

You can look and say, what systems are they tied to? And there's a little logo next to the shows every system that, are they dormant? Are they active?

Same thing for devices in one place. To me, that's mind boggling to be able to get all that information. I have to go in three different systems and try to figure that out.

Having that right there, having the ability to click in and understand what configuration changes have happened and just be able to dig deep into the data right away is super exciting. When you think about how that can help you from a documentation standpoint as well, from the perspective of being able to push things into IT Glue with our advanced automated documentation, which we're actually going to be renaming once it goes public. It'll be IT Glue, IT Pro Sync.

We're excited about that. That'll be coming in and essentially allowing all that asset information to sync into core assets in IT Glue.

[Uncle Marv]
Let me ask this question. At the risk of offending a vendor, is that going to be a part of the network inspector and is it going to take the place of like an Auvik or a Domotz where it's actually going to go out and discover?

[Michelle Accardi]
It is going to do some discovery, but we're not at this point. We're a 10x ecosystem player. We love all of those folks.

They still have value. Our value is giving that visibility across the stack and then enabling you to have that configuration timeline. Those are things that those tools don't have.

Again, I think we're not 100% there on the network, all the things that an RMM and an NMM would do, but this is a tool that, again, gives you enough monitoring capabilities that when you're trying to onboard a customer, what a time save to have to have a lightweight, easy, you don't have to install 9,000 agents to make this thing work, to auto-discovery. It's going to be a pretty exciting solution from that perspective. We like to be an open ecosystem.

We believe there's room for everybody.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I was going to say, because I did connect all my Domotz boxes too.

[Michelle Accardi]
Again, I think that there are purpose-built tools for certain things. What we do is give you the complete visibility end-to-end, which is something that not all of these solutions can do at the same level. I think the other piece of this is, again, our ability to have configuration change detection to show you what's changing in configuration, not just log data and such.

It's really important. My sense is our ability to continue to play nice in the sandbox and get all those integrations, what's going to give you as an MSP more value because we're really, again, connecting this entire ecosystem into one tool for your visibility.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I do like seeing all the stuff there. Like I said, I've added all my stuff.

My RMM is there. My Domotz is there. 365.

What else? Everything's, well, not everything. Almost everything is there.

[Michelle Accardi]
That is the value of LionGuard. Again, I think the thing you should, is how do you get more operational efficiency out of all your tools by leveraging LionGuard.

[Uncle Marv]
Here's the question. This goes to some degree beyond your attack surface management platform that you've been touting, right?

[Michelle Accardi]
I think it actually is attack surface management. Could you think about where attack surface starts, right? Attack surfaces, what is in the asset inventory?

Have you discovered everything that's on the network? If you don't know that core piece and automate asset discovery and asset inventory, you certainly can't secure an attack surface. It's the first part.

Then it's vulnerability, getting the vulnerability data and lighting up that asset inventory. Again, having that configuration change detection to show you where the risk is, helping you understand your compliancy to different frameworks like CIS and NIST. You're going to see all of these things coming out, which again, I believe are what's really going to catapult us as we go through 2025.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Brooke, it's been a week. Did you understand all that?

[Brook Lee]
I am deep into the LionGuard Academy, which I absolutely love, by the way. I cannot wait to be on the road telling people about that. That is some next level training that we have at LionGuard.

I haven't seen anything like this except from places that are really, really big like Microsoft, like NHP, like whatever. Again, these are full on. You can take courses.

They have learning paths. You can get certifications. I am deep into the LionGuard Academy at this point.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'm assuming there will be a test at the end of the week.

[Brook Lee]
Yeah, because I'm trying to get my certified LionGuard administrator thing by the end of the week, get that knocked out and get that checked off the list. Number one, I want to be able to speak intelligently on the product, but I also want to be able to tell people about the academy and what you're going to be able to get out of it. That's the resources that you have when you're a LionGuard partner.

Again, I think there's just a lot of people that don't realize the things that we have out there to help you be successful with the solution. I want to be able to just rock and roll through all that. The documentation that we have out there for our partners is unbelievable.

The documentation, Jeremy was showing some of that today on our call when we were teaching some of the people in house, our internal training, that documentation that somebody created, it was apparently created with two teachers, a group, that company. It is amazing documentation. Again, that coupled with the academy, coupled with all of the people that work here that are available to get on the phone, we can get on a call.

I was on a couple of calls this week. They're literally, share your screen, click here, do this, this is how we're going to fix it. That kind of stuff is what really gets me excited to be able to go out to the events, to the shows, to all that kind of stuff and just talk to people about all the different things that we're going to be able to do to ensure that you're going to be successful with the tool.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, you mentioned that certification. Michelle, what's the goal and purpose of that in terms of getting MSPs certified on these LionGuard?

[Michelle Accardi]
We believe that the more people that we have certified, first of all, helps you become more sticky. The selfish thing is the more you learn about the product, the more you're using the product, the more likely you are going to stick with the product. That's the selfish piece of that.

The other piece of it is we find that MSPs, while we see this as an attack surface management platform and a platform that can help you from an operational efficiency standpoint, we believe that if we can help you understand the use cases and how to actually get in there as an administrator, you're going to actually get even more out of the product and your ROI back is going to be tenfold if you're deep into this product. Oftentimes, we'll have MSPs that will come back to us and say, we've taken the administrator course, we've implemented what you've said, but you know what?

I actually think that there's a way that I can use this data to help me in an XYZ way, which is something we didn't even think of. The deeper folks get into the solution, the more that they can let their creative minds go wild around additional areas of value. And we know our MSPs love to do those types of things.

They want to extract value from what we know already, but they also like to get creative.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So that means I'm allowed to make suggestions?

[Michelle Accardi]
Absolutely. I think you have a second PAC member there. I know, right?

[Uncle Marv]
No.

[Brook Lee]
Come on, it's going to be fun and we're going to have special swag.

[Uncle Marv]
No. Because if I listen, I already said yes to you guys once. If I say yes again, you guys are going to have me flying out to Dallas and Houston and all this stuff.

And I've already got a trip west of the Mississippi plan. So speaking of travel, we're switching gears here again. Tell me about RoarCon from last year.

Was it as successful as everybody made it sound?

[Michelle Accardi]
Look, I think it was a success for us, but we also had a lot of lessons learned. We had hoped that we would have more attendees than what we did have last year. I like to say we got a little bit of; we called it cloud strike because we were dealing with a crowd strike incident, which was taking out a lot of the airports and there was a hurricane.

So there were some people who were supposed to be there who didn't make it, which was a disappointment. But I think the content that we provided, having Eric O'Neill there as someone to talk about security and having been in the FBI, I don't know if you know Eric O'Neill, but he caught the first Russian spy within the FBI. So he was a phenomenal keynote speaker.

We learned a few things that I think we're going to do better this year as we embark on, we're going to have two RoarCon this year and it is going to be done in a hosted guest format. It means we're not going to ask the MSP partners who come to this to pay. We're actually going to pay their way.

They're going to come as our guests to be educated, to learn, to have the networking, to learn and hear from luminaries in the industry. And it's going to be a very intimate 80-ish partners, five sponsors where we really go deep on things and let our partners and prospective partners learn from each other. So we're excited about that because that's what we heard out of the last event.

Essentially, we heard that people want to learn from their peers. They want to have more in-depth conversations, not just a five-minute conversation at a booth with someone. So we want to give them that experience and all the fun that we had at RoarCon last year, we want to bring that, but we want to give it in a highly educational and fun atmosphere.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so I hear what you're saying. I like that. Does that mean that there's not going to be a big old concert at the end?

[Michelle Accardi]
We didn't have a big concert at the end of this one. Okay, that's fine, that's fine.

[Uncle Marv]
Those conferences that have the concert, yay. I don't need a concert at every conference. I do want time to speak with my peers.

I do want time to have longer sessions, more meaningful sessions. So I like that idea. Are you going to do that for both conferences?

Yes, we are. And is it going to be East Coast, West Coast?

[Michelle Accardi]
Yeah, so we're still working on some of the logistics, but that is sort of the premises that we would have one more West and one more East. Okay. First one happening in April.

Oh, okay. No, I think it's in May. It's in May.

May, that's right, May. Wait a second, let me get my calculator. You're holding me accountable.

That's excellent, Brooke. See, that was a test.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Is that the East Coast one?

[Michelle Accardi]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
Is that going to be in the Tampa Clearwater area?

[Michelle Accardi]
No, that's in Houston. I was going to say, that one's in Houston. Houston.

It's east of the West Coast.

[Uncle Marv]
West of the Mississippi.

[Michelle Accardi]
Yes, that's true.

[Uncle Marv]
That's my line, the Mississippi. All right, so you got to come east of the Mississippi for October. Sounds like a good month in Clearwater.

[Michelle Accardi]
We will put it into the powers that be in our marketing group.

[Uncle Marv]
Trying to help you.

[Michelle Accardi]
Thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
If you come to Florida, I'll be there.

[Michelle Accardi]
Excellent.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Let's see. What else is new?

There was something else. Well, let me ask this. We talked about, Brooke and stuff.

I was going to ask you, why David Powell? Why'd you go steal him?

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, David Powell is amazing. Number one, I really feel that, again, having someone who's a cultural fit to LionGuard, who really understands the MSP community, who understands distribution at the level that David does, and that has the maturity in having been a CRO of multiple companies. There's not anything not to want in David Powell.

He's just fun. He's a guy you want to go spend time with, but he's just so super knowledgeable, and he makes everything seem very simple that is very complex, which is something that I think us, and I say us as MSPs, right, because I still think of myself as that. Sometimes we don't do that, and his ability to really simplify things to a level to help MSPs understand how they generate revenue from tools like LionGuard, I think is, he's, I don't know of anyone else who could do it the way that he can, and so, so excited about having him here.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. You guys were on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for the second time in a row. What does that say?

[Michelle Accardi]
That says we're growing well, right? That's what that says, and it also says that Deloitte can't be our accounting firm. That's the other thing.

All right.

[Uncle Marv]
What are you looking at, by the way? Are you trying to get a drink already?

[Michelle Accardi]
Nothing. I'm not looking at anything. I'm looking at my CFO who's in the other part of the room here with me.

We're all in Houston today, like I said.

[Uncle Marv]
Do they want to be on the show? I mean, are they trying to sneak in here?

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, I do have Vin Tran sitting next to me. He's the co-founder of LionGuard and now our head of user experience, so.

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, Vin. How are you?

[Michelle Accardi]
And then Mayank, you want to say hello? Are you there? I hope I didn't lose everybody.

[Uncle Marv]
Yep. We can see. Hello there.

Welcome to the show.

[Michelle Accardi]
Thank you. So Mayank also has only just joined us about 90 days ago and has been an amazing addition as well.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Anybody else new there that you want to get on camera?

[Michelle Accardi]
Well, Stephanie Weagle is about six months in as our CMO, so we've got a tremendous, amazing team here. And yet we still are building on the awesome foundation that Vin and Joe Alapat, Joe's here as well, not in the room, but here with us in LionGuard. And it's so much fun just building this all together.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Very nice. All right.

So we are coming up to the part of the show that fans love so much, listeners love so much. And I did not ask you guys to do anything for it because I have a very special deal with Florida Man. So our Florida Man segment this evening, of course, I mentioned earlier, I will be at the Florida Man games March 1st and it will be fantastic.

But you should also be watching the Florida Man series on Netflix. It is, it's pretty funny and it's all real. It's not a fake Florida Man show.

But one thing, let's see, comment from the chat here, Brian, where's the pet lion? Assuming you guys will at some point have a cage with a lion there at the office.

[Michelle Accardi]
George is in his cage right now. Our lion George is not in the office.

[Uncle Marv]
I thought it was Leo. I thought the name was Leo.

[Michelle Accardi]
Leo is our AI support chat capability is Leo. George is a lion. We have eight Georges, so you can pick which George you'd like to see.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Michelle Accardi]
One through eight that go to different shows.

[Uncle Marv]
So in lieu of several Florida Man stories, I've got two quick things I want to show you. We had a couple of weeks at the end of the year where we did not do Florida Man, but in honor of 2024, Florida has released its annual list of rejected personalized plates. And as you can see there, they rejected Hawk Tua, Only Fan, Turd, and LMFAO.

And just to let you know, there were actually three versions of Hawk Tua that were submitted. I will have a link that you can go and see all, I think it was something like a hundred and something plates that were rejected. Some of them are R-rated, it's X-rated, so you can go and see the list yourself.

And this next video that I want to play for you, I've mentioned his name before. He is America's favorite sheriff. Michelle, you know who I'm talking about?

[Michelle Accardi]
Oh yeah, Grady Judd.

[Uncle Marv]
Grady Judd. And I did not realize dude has a YouTube channel where he does morning briefings. And so I am going to have a link not only to his channel, but to this gem of a video right here.

[Grady Judd]
Done this job my entire adult life. And occasionally you run across something that you go, come on man, that really didn't happen. But it did.

I mean, he even admitted it. And here's what happened. He said, well, you know, I had just some sexual frustration.

It was really stupid. It was a dumb thing to do. Donald Calloway, who's 53 from Lake Wells, admitted that because he was trying to do the wow thing with a horse, a mare.

The mare was 28 years old. She said, no sir, I don't like it. We tried to interview the horse.

She said my 28 years of being a horse, no one's ever done anything like that to me before. And I hope it never happens again. That's right.

He tried to engage in inappropriate conduct with a horse, which is clearly against the law. Does Donald not know that a horse will bite you? The only thing I can figure, he's got a hitch in his giddy up.

Well, right now, he's out in the pasture in the county jail. Have a good day.

[Brook Lee]
Oh, Lord Jesus. What an amazing story. The horse was of age, at least.

Not the absolute best. Way to look at the positive, Michelle. Way to look at the positive.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, the age of consent, come on, not really.

[Michelle Accardi]
I'm teasing, I'm teasing. Hey, you chose the content for this segment.

[Uncle Marv]
How could I not? I would have had emails of people, why didn't you play this?

[Michelle Accardi]
That's terrible.

[Uncle Marv]
I will give everybody their own link. You can go and watch the morning briefings. He is hilarious.

The only sheriff that will tell people, come on, we encourage our people to shoot back.

[Brook Lee]
All righty.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. All right, well, ladies, thank you very much for hanging out.

[Michelle Accardi]
Thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
Was there anything that we did not talk about besides that brandy that you can't pronounce?

[Michelle Accardi]
A bourbon bramble? A bramble bourbon? I don't know yet.

I highly recommend. In any case, no, I think this was a lot of fun. Thanks again for having us on and looking forward to catching up here at another show soon.

[Brook Lee]
The first one we're going to be at is going to be, the big one is we're going to be out at Ride a Boom. We're going to have a pretty good team out there for that one, so come by and see us at the booth. We'll be there for that event, and we've got a whole team of people coming.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, sounds good. We will see you guys out on the road. I will make it an effort to see you guys specifically, stop by the booth, get some updated lion gear.

[Brook Lee]
We've got the cool stuff. I posted on LinkedIn today; I got my new employee-like welcome kit. It is some next-level swag in there, buddy.

I'm not kidding.

[Uncle Marv]
Swag I would like?

[Brook Lee]
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a shirt in there that is so freaking funny, and that's going to be like my favorite shirt to wear all the time.

[Uncle Marv]
So, something to look forward to for the swag award for 2025, maybe?

[Brook Lee]
Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

There was definitely some good stuff in there, and the backpack. I'm super picky on backpacks. Backpack was amazing.

Super great stuff.

[Uncle Marv]
By the way, Brooke, your former place, the swag that we got from them is in our guest area at the house, so that when people come visit, and they need to go to the beach, that is going to be part of their beach gear that they will go in the sand tan stuff, and the bag, and all that.

[Brook Lee]
The best swag is the stuff that people use every single day, and they look at it, and whatever. There is nothing worse than us as vendors buying swag, and it literally gets thrown in the garbage at the hotel and never makes it out. I love getting swag that people actually use.

[Uncle Marv]
So do I. So do I. All right, folks.

Michelle Accardi and Brooke Lee, both from Lion Guard, and thank you for not doing any Katy Perry references in regard to the title that we put out for the YouTube thumbnail, but that was a fantastic chat. Brooke, we're going to have you back on the show before next year.

[Brook Lee]
Great.

[Uncle Marv]
And Michelle will probably have you back as well.

[Michelle Accardi]
After I finish. I think Brooke's the winner.

[Brook Lee]
We'll do something midway. We'll give you a middle of the year update, what we got going on, cool stuff, where we're at, where we're going, all that.

[Michelle Accardi]
And you broadcast live.

[Uncle Marv]
There we go. There you go. I can do that.

[Michelle Accardi]
There's always a way. We will work together, Uncle Marv, on the right way to make that happen.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. All right. So thank you guys for coming on.

I want to thank those of you that joined us live. I know that Brian was there, Steve was there, Rahim, some other people, because on LinkedIn, it comes up as anonymous but thank you all for hanging out here each week on the live show. Head over to itbusinesspodcast.com and subscribe. Actually, it's called follow now. Click on the follow button, pick your favorite pod catcher. You can catch the audio shows that we have.

Those come out a couple of times a week. In addition to the live show, sign up here on YouTube, LinkedIn, or the Facebook, get notified when the shows go live, and click on the little sponsor button. And all the sponsors that are there, past and present, support them as they have supported the show.

And we try to support the vendors that support us. So with that, I'm going to say goodbye. Let's see.

I am here next week. I've got a conference. I confess, you guys don't care about that, but that's where I'll be in Orlando.

But I will be back next week for another live show, and we will see you then. Next time, Holla!