Michelle Accardi WINs by Unlocking Growth

In this engaging episode of the WIN podcast, host Carrie Richardson sits down with Michelle Accardi, the dynamic CEO of LionGard.

They discuss Michelle's unique approach to leadership, the importance of working in your flow state, and how LionGard is making strides in the cybersecurity industry. Michelle shares insights into the transition of leadership from LionGard’s founder Joe Alapat, the company’s core values, and the significance of urgency in achieving business goals. Listeners will gain valuable perspectives on growth, the challenges of running a business, and the exciting upcoming event, RoarCon.

Episode Highlights:

• Michelle Accardi discusses the transition of leadership at LionGard and the impact of founder Joe Alapat’s vision.
• The concept of working in your "10X" or flow state and its importance in business success.
• LionGard's journey to becoming a full-fledged cybersecurity company.
• The introduction of a new core value at LionGard: a sense of urgency.
• Details about RoarCon, LionGard's first major event, and its significance.
• Michelle’s personal insights on growth, leadership, and maintaining a positive mindset.
• The importance of building relationships and networks in the MSP community.

Guest Quotes:

• "If you ask a fish to climb a tree, you're not going to get very far. Put people where their talents are best served." - Michelle Accardi
• "Being in your flow state means doing activities that are easy and fun, bringing out the best in yourself." - Michelle Accardi
• "We’re a cybersecurity company with a cyber risk dashboard that shows cyber posture tied to cyber insurance controls." - Michelle Accardi
• "I love to grow the business. That's what excites me." - Michelle Accardi

Links and Resources Mentioned in the Show:

• LionGard
• RoarCon Event Details
• Keynote Speaker: Eric O'Neill
• Mentioned Companies: Pax8, NTIVA, The Purple Guys, Ergos, Meriplex

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Carrie Richardson: . Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Carrie Richardson. I'm a partner at Fox and Crow, and today I'm your host of the WIN podcast, What's Important Now?

[00:00:08] Carrie Richardson: And today we're asking that question to Michelle Accardi, the CEO of LionGard. Thanks for joining us, Michelle. How are you doing? 

[00:00:15] Michelle Accardi: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on today. 

[00:00:18] Carrie Richardson: I'm glad that you could make it. We interviewed the founder of LionGard Joe Alapat a few weeks ago, and we talked about the transition.

[00:00:26] Carrie Richardson: Joe had some wonderful things to say about your leadership style and the transition. I wanted to hear your side of the story. So welcome and let's get started. 

[00:00:35] Michelle Accardi: I had really big shoes to fill. Let me first say that Joe is a phenomenal founder and visionary and continues to be an incredible visionary here at LionGard.

[00:00:48] Michelle Accardi: A lot of CEOs who are coming in are looking to move out a founder. When I came into LionGard, what I saw was, here's this incredible visionary But he's not stepping into [00:01:00] his 10 X . 

[00:01:00] Michelle Accardi: Being able to have me work in the areas where I Excel we're going to take LionGard so much further building on the initial vision. 

[00:01:11] Michelle Accardi: A lot of times people think that there's a recipe book that they have to follow when they're doing succession planning.

[00:01:17] Michelle Accardi: I've found that's not the case. I really believe that you have to, look at the skill sets of everyone that's in an organization and figure out, can you leverage those skill sets to make you go farther? Put people where their talents are best served.

[00:01:33] Michelle Accardi: If you ask a fish to climb a tree, you're not going to get very far. That's really what I did . there were many talented people here, including Joe. Where can I unlock the value that they have? That's worked really well for us. I'm super lucky, to have Joe as a partner in the business. 

[00:01:51] Carrie Richardson: So talk to me about that concept of the 10 X. 

[00:01:55] Carrie Richardson: But when you're talking about being in 10 X, what does that [00:02:00] mean to you at LionGard? 

[00:02:01] 

[00:02:01] Michelle Accardi: I like calling it being in your flow state. When the activities that you're doing are, easy and fun and you're able to bring the best of yourself and ultimately that drives good outcomes.

[00:02:17] Michelle Accardi: And those outcomes are 10X what they would be if you were, Not working in your 10 X. Joe has been always a incredible product visionary. That's how he started the company. So putting him into that role and enabling him and taking the shackles off of all the other extraneous things, enabled us to round the corner and come back to a founding principle of LionGard being a cybersecurity platform, which had gotten lost, over the years. 

[00:02:49] Michelle Accardi: Now we are a full fledged cyber security company with a cyber risk dashboard that shows folks their cyber posture tied to cyber insurance controls.

[00:02:59] Michelle Accardi: And [00:03:00] I don't know if we would have gotten there unless we could get folks back into that flow state. 

[00:03:05] Carrie Richardson: What is Michelle's flow state?

[00:03:07] Michelle Accardi: I'm all about growth. I'm having the most fun when I'm out building the business, building the partner ecosystem, building good relationships at my board level, building new relationships with MSPs and enterprise. I love to go grow the business. That's what excites me. 

[00:03:27] Michelle Accardi: the things that don't excite me are, Dealing with operational challenges .

[00:03:31] Michelle Accardi: I'm lucky. I have great, CFO a great chief marketing officer, a great, chief sales officer in the business, to partner with that makes my day so much easier and, makes me so happy to be in the role that I am here at LionGard.

[00:03:47] Michelle Accardi: We had five core values. when I came into LionGard, listen and learn, our ability to adapt, execute as a team, focus on visible progress, teach, and [00:04:00] lead, and

[00:04:01] Michelle Accardi: I added the next one, which was really all about sense of urgency. There's this great listening and learning culture here. There's also focus on, providing that visible progress. What I didn't see was. us prioritizing and leaning into a sense of urgency, 

[00:04:20] Michelle Accardi: We've, recently added, a chief sales officer, Jason Macias, and a CMO, Stephanie Weigel, they absolutely embody sense of urgency. I already had that With Joe and Vin and others on the team showing that at the executive level, so people can model it for the rest of the organization. Then rewarding it when you see it happening.

[00:04:43] Michelle Accardi: We do awards on a monthly basis for each of our core values rewarding that behavior when we see it. One of the most challenging things to do is to, add a new core value and to make sure that everyone is adopting it.

[00:04:57] Michelle Accardi: We're still on that journey and path. And I think we'll always be . [00:05:00] we're also a listen and learn and adapt type culture. so we'll continuously learn and show \ visible progress along the way. 

[00:05:09] Carrie Richardson: Tell us a little bit about RoarCon. It's the first LionGard event and it's coming up pretty fast 

[00:05:14] Michelle Accardi: It's about a sense of urgency, right? Ultimately it's been a vision of the company to have, this conference for a long time.

[00:05:21] Michelle Accardi: Why aren't we doing it? We have the partners we have this ecosystem of additional vendors who want to come in . So let's do it. It's a good example of sense of urgency where everyone rallied around that idea. we're super excited about it.

[00:05:36] Michelle Accardi: It's July 23rd to the 25th happening in Frisco, Texas. We're really excited about our keynote speaker Eric O'Neill, who is a cyber security expert and was an FBI operative who ultimately uncovered the mole in the FBI, Robert Hanson and helped put him away.

[00:05:57] Michelle Accardi: we have great sponsors, folks like Pax 8, [00:06:00] and a of other vendors who are coming in and giving us resources to help on a thought leadership track as well as our technical track.

[00:06:09] Michelle Accardi: that's really meant to educate, all of our partners and, prospects. it's going to be a really great event, and it's going to be a more intimate event. This is going to be a place where real networking can happen.

[00:06:22] Michelle Accardi: Real conversations about real business challenges. Folks may not know my background, but, I led a very large roll up MSP. That was PE backed previous coming to LionGard. So it's going to be an opportunity to have real conversations about the challenges that growing MSPs have. How, do we deal with these cyber security risks? How do we monetize and grow our businesses and focus on that profitability? Using a different lens than I think a lot of folks come at it from? A lot of people will come at it [00:07:00] from. I have to cut my way to, better EBITDA.

[00:07:03] Michelle Accardi: But I have a different perspective. I think you can grow your way there. And I'm really excited because we've got a of MSPs that are going to be joining us, who are using a growth play versus just a cut play, companies, like NTIVA, The Purple Guys, Ergos, just a tremendous amount of companies who are going to talk about what has worked for them, Meriplex.

[00:07:28] Michelle Accardi: So I'm super excited just to hear their stories and to share some of the things I did well, when I was in that role and some of the things I didn't do so well. so people can avoid those kinds of pitfalls. 

[00:07:40] Carrie Richardson: It's really exciting for LionGard to have a CEO that understands intimately the challenges that MSPs face when trying to grow their business.

[00:07:52] Carrie Richardson: You've got this unique perspective of having led a very large national MSP and then [00:08:00] moving those skills over to a vendor. Being able to say no, that would not have been valuable to me.

[00:08:05] Carrie Richardson: This must be an incredible resource. 

[00:08:08] Michelle Accardi: It is. My background has always been on the vendor side previous to having joined, logically where I was CEO and the experience that I got from being on the board there and then being CEO there, I could not replace with a 1000 marketing consultants, ultimately, Sitting in the hot seat, feeling the challenges of cyber security risk, feeling the challenges of how to improve feeling the challenges of how do you deal with workforce?

[00:08:41] Michelle Accardi: That is coming together because there's a lot of acquisition and integration also doing that on the heels of a global pandemic. I just got such a great perspective of what it's like to try to grow a business. And so I try to bring that to my team.

[00:08:58] Michelle Accardi: We've got a lot of folks [00:09:00] on the LionGard team who come from MSP backgrounds. it's one of the things I think we've done uniquely well is to grab people who have specific skillsets. and have that experience as being an MSP to make sure that we're building content, that serves the market that we're going through, which I think is different than a lot of other vendors who, may think that they understand the personas, in the MSP, whereas our team lived the MSP. There's so much convergence in all industries happening. In the MSP industry, you have MSSP and MSP coming together and some levels of convergence there. You have technology service brokers coming together and selling, cybersecurity into, into what used to be old telecom basis.

[00:09:47] Michelle Accardi: I feel very blessed to have had the experience that I've had in a of these different channels, in my 28 year career, and then to be working with some of the very best who [00:10:00] also had experience running, MSPs and other technology channels.

[00:10:05] Michelle Accardi: One of the things that I'm proud of having brought to LionGard, we want to sell to partners the way they want to buy, whether that's, in an annual contract, whether that's in a month to month contract, Whether they want to focus only on the cloud, or they want our complete solution, we have flavors for everyone, and enabling that flexibility because different MSPs may do things in different ways, and we want to help them grow, and then also, using the experience that I had and that Joe had and building out monetization kits to help 

[00:10:39] Michelle Accardi: mSPs not just treat cybersecurity like something that they can't monetize because it can be monetized. Making money is not a dirty word, which is one of the other things that I find in the MSP community. People feel bad about, asking their customers for a price increase We have to teach MSPs how much value they [00:11:00] provide, and give them the tool set that enables them, to continue to grow.

[00:11:05] Michelle Accardi: I'm really passionate about that. I'm happy that we've got some really great LionGard partners who are doing it today. And for them to tell that story at roar con around how they're growing their business. 

[00:11:17] Carrie Richardson: Yeah, there is a great platform available out there called MSP CFO. And I have seen clients roll that out and discover that they were actually paying to be the IT support for some of their legacy clients.

[00:11:31] Michelle Accardi: It's fear. So it's one of the things is I will find so many MSPs are driving on a mindset of fear. Instead of an abundance mindset?

[00:11:40] Michelle Accardi: There is an ability for you to go after more, if you change your mindset, and I know that sounds very simple, but it's actually really hard to do, how do I teach people to have that abundance mindset? I have to have an abundance mindset, I have six children that come from, I'll [00:12:00] say different backgrounds , three stepchildren and three adopted children.

[00:12:03] Michelle Accardi: So much of my focus for them has always been about how do I get them to see the world, in a positive light versus a fearful light of what might be taken away from me. And I can say, I have, three of them successfully out of high school, one out of pharmacy school, one working in public health is all been about, perspective and it's the same thing I try to bring to my work life is that, if you bring a perspective that there's an abundance of opportunity and there's abundance, you're going to teach your customers how to grow, 

[00:12:34] Michelle Accardi: And enable them to grow based on the IT support and the cybersecurity capabilities that you're giving them that keep the risk off of them. You're giving them abundance. 

[00:12:44] Carrie Richardson: If you can manage six kids, you can lead a business.

[00:12:49] Michelle Accardi: They're not going to get an argument for me. Some days are easier than others. I always have to keep that positive, frame of mind, because, if not, things can cripple you along the way. 

[00:12:59] Michelle Accardi: For [00:13:00] MSPs, they're going to hit challenges, but they've got to, feel the fear and do it anyways, in terms of, making sure they're monetizing their tech stack, making sure that they're making some tough calls around how they staff.

[00:13:14] Michelle Accardi: I'm a big proponent of looking at alternative staffing models, looking at how AI augments, where offshore makes sense. these are, difficult things for someone who may be running a mid-size business to think about, Hey, I've gotta change my business model so that I can, reach the success targets I want.

[00:13:34] Michelle Accardi: But leaning into those things, leaning into how do you, best. empower your teams to lean into their own 10 X and figure out where are the things that you don't need to lean into that aren't the urgent and important. and getting those off your plate and your team's plate. that's a big part of, just driving to have a successful outcome as an MSP.

[00:13:58] Carrie Richardson: Oh, I agree with you on [00:14:00] that one. There are companies that just lean in and figure it out. Everybody has the same resources and amount of time available to them. So what do you think the defining factor is

[00:14:09] 

[00:14:09] Michelle Accardi: there's always access to resources and such, but I do believe it's mindset. I think if you want to find a way you can find the way you're going to have to do hard things. And I think That's a challenge, sometimes, unfortunately, you've got to look at your team and say, is this the right team that's going to get me to the next level?

[00:14:29] Michelle Accardi: Having those open, honest and transparent conversations about where people's 10 X is, and their 10 X may be with the organization, or it may be outside of an organization.

[00:14:39] Michelle Accardi: And that's okay. one of the hardest things for MSP leaders who start these things thinking, Hey, I'm a tech who, was really successful in helping my customers, But if you want to grow, you've got to get all the right people around you.

[00:14:54] Michelle Accardi: and if you've got the right mindset and you articulate, this is the goal that we have for the company. If [00:15:00] your goal is, Hey, this is a lifestyle business and, we're not going to grow that much. That's fine. Understand that's then where you're going to stay. if you want to be a high growth business, then it takes a different level of work and sense of urgency and focus.

[00:15:14] Carrie Richardson: What are your best tips for maximizing value when you're attending a trade show, LionGard or otherwise? 

[00:15:24] Michelle Accardi: Make relationships while you're at these events. there's great information that will be shared in every session, but build personal relationships.

[00:15:34] Michelle Accardi: Talk to someone new, ask people how their, solving problems that you're dealing with. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. I built my entire career frankly, out of building networks of people whom are much smarter than me, who've solved problems and.

[00:15:52] Michelle Accardi: Don't be afraid to just go out there be vulnerable, ask questions, and listen, listening, [00:16:00] learning, sharing your own experience. That's how you get the most out of these events. 

[00:16:04] Carrie Richardson: That is something that I have seen in the MSP community. People are very giving of their time and their talents.

[00:16:12] Carrie Richardson: And if you recognize early on that people aren't there to like you can always steal an idea, but you can't steal execution of an idea. Sharing with people what you're doing doesn't really damage your plans. It might help them with theirs. But what are the odds that they're going to execute on that plan?

[00:16:32] Carrie Richardson: the identical way that you are it's next to zero. 

[00:16:35] Michelle Accardi: Yeah, exactly. I always say again, it's this abundance mindset. If you're worried that someone's going to steal everything then you're not in abundance of mind. If more able to be open and transparent, you may learn that other people have solved problems that you're dealing with, and that can help you execute much more quickly, in the future.

[00:16:55] Carrie Richardson: we say if your stuff isn't worth the stealing, you probably shouldn't be publishing it 

[00:16:59] Michelle Accardi: That's the [00:17:00] truth. 

[00:17:01] Carrie Richardson: Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. Ian is very much looking forward to participating there.

[00:17:07] Carrie Richardson: I wish you very much success in your first event and of course wild success as the leader LionGard. Thanks for joining us on WIN.