Larry Meador of Cavelo

[00:00:04] Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to August 28th. This is our final MSP Initiative, MSP Talk for the month. August 28th, 2025. Man, kids are already back to school. NFL season's a week away. Exactly one week away, actually. League opens up here in Philadelphia next Thursday. Primetime TV. Can't wait for it.

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[00:02:38] Without further ado, I bring one, the only Mr. Larry Meador onto the podcast. How are you doing, Larry? Oh, and you even say it correctly. I am so impressed. Thank you, sir. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely. Larry is known for being a Dallas Cowboy. No, he is not. That's what you are wrong. I live in Dallas. I see. I live in Dallas. Okay. Well, actually, Dallas is over there.

[00:03:06] I know you're Mr. TX Whiskey guy. That much I got. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That you got. But I am a New Orleans Saints fan. Ah, the Saints. You got it. Thank your team for their hospitality in February at the Super Bowl. It was busy. And the Super Bowl, Super Dome seems to have been upgraded since I was last there. It has. And Bourbon Street is always Bourbon Street. Interesting. Interesting. Mm-hmm. For sure.

[00:03:35] That's the PG rated version. Well, I, you know, as we're hearing about domes here in Philadelphia, Larry, right? Like, you know, your team has had a dome forever. And it's come in handy, you know, especially for non-football things like Katrina, right? But talking about a new stadium here in Philadelphia, and they're talking about a dome. And, of course, you know, people are maybe not happy about that because, you know, a lot of people think football should be played in the elements. But they want to host a Super Bowl here in Philadelphia.

[00:04:06] And, man, the airport in New Orleans for that Super Bowl in February is like a three-hour line to get an Uber. Oh, yeah. I can imagine. It's not a very big airport down there. It was absolutely loaded. So much so, I actually flew in the Baton Rouge and drove it. Well, George, come on. I just thought maybe you'd have a helicopter waiting for you at the airport to take you downtown. Come on. This is George. I know. I know. Ubercopter wasn't a thing.

[00:04:35] Well, Ubercopter wasn't a thing. You can fly from Newark Airport to Manhattan for 250 one-way helicopter. There you go. See? Ubercopter, right? So, anyway, I know. I'm a big football guy. And we're coming up on the NFL season, so I can't help but talk about it. But looking forward to that. It's always fun. Yeah, looking forward to seeing some of our channel friends out on the road here at some NFL games, which are highly televised, as you can imagine. And sometimes you even make it on TV.

[00:05:04] Sometimes you do. Sometimes. Especially if you're George Bardisi, right? I've made it on a few times. I have. And then, you know, your phone melts and your battery goes out and it's all good. But, Larry, for people who have not run into you around, you've been around for a while, let's kind of give you a quick background on yourself. And then we'll get into the topics of the day. Topics du jour. Yeah.

[00:05:32] So, like you said, I've been around for a minute or two. I've actually, I guess I'm getting ready to embark on year 24 in the MSP channel. Wow. You're a staple veteran here. You got it. You know, back in the day, I had hair. It wasn't gray, white, silver, whatever the hell you want to call this color of my hair at this point. But, yeah, that's what the channel does to you. Causes you to lose hair.

[00:06:02] Causes your hair to grow, you know, silver, gray, whatever. You know, all that fun stuff. No, it's, there's a reason I've been here for 24 years, and it's because I fell in love with the channel. It's such a unique place. It is so hard to describe what it is that makes this channel special to somebody that's outside the channel. They just don't get it. They don't get it.

[00:06:29] And I know this has probably been talked about ad nauseum, and I'm another one of those. This just, you know, I've just grown to love it. I actually came to the channel out of the retail channel. I worked for a couple of national consumer electronics retailers back in the day, both on the buying side of the desk, and then also jumped over to the dark side on the vendor side and started selling into retail.

[00:06:55] But from there, I kind of made the hop over to the MSP or VAR channel at the day. Now it's the MSP channel. So yeah, that's kind of how I got here. Well, it is definitely an interesting place. No lack of stories for sure. A little soap opera I feel like we live in on a regular. But I feel like maybe one of the reasons that the little sandbox that we all live in, which I call a sub-industry of the larger tech industry, you know, whatever you want to call it. That's what I call it.

[00:07:25] Yep. Largely overlooked because IT people are largely overlooked. It is not a loved profession. Actually, I have to go back and look. It's been a while. But at one point, it was the top three hated professions in all professions. And I was like, how? Why? Like, you're not throwing, you're not picking up the trash. Like, what's the problem? No, no, no. You want to know what it is? It's like going to the mechanic who's on one of the top three, by the way.

[00:07:54] And it's like, oh, you got this sensor that's broken. They have no clue what that sensor does. But your car's not running. So you just got to deal with it, right? Or one of the other top three, lawyers, right? You're like, I have no idea what you're saying. I'm like, what does that mean? Right? And like, it's when people have to deal with stuff they don't understand. Politicians and lawyers, those are the most hated. There it is. There it is. But we were up there. They're usually one in the same. We were up there. We were up there. And you know what?

[00:08:22] It's a shame because I feel like, and we've all seen it, right? And you've been around for a long time. And I've lived it for a long time, too, on the other side. But, you know, the late nights, the vacation calls, the constant triaging and fire putting out, right? Like, it is a tough industry. And I don't know, Larry. I always see the internal IT people fight up against the people who work at MSPs and vice versa, right? They, like, seem to not get along. Yep.

[00:08:54] And you see people move from both sides of the aisle back and forth, right? And I guess the challenge is, and I'm curious to get your thought on it, is, like, seems like a lot of internal IT, and not all are critical, but a lot of internal IT, like, IT jobs, the speed is slower, right? It is. Like, one client, it's one pool of people, like, you're not, you know, dealing with, you know, the barrage.

[00:09:19] And then on the other side, it's, hey, there's a lot of clients that you got to deal with all day long, but it's, every day is different, right? Like, you're not dealing with the same problem every time. And so there's a little bit more challenge there. And then in the middle of both of those themes, and I'll stop and let you kind of tell me what your thoughts are, is, well, as an MSP, historically, I know Paul Dippel has since retired, but he would say, I called him Dr. Doom. Sorry, Paul. Wasn't meant to be against you. Just always told things that we didn't want to hear.

[00:09:48] Back to the doctors, probably being up on that profession list that we don't like. A lot of MSPs just weren't profitable, right? They were working, working, working, working, working. But at the end of the year, when you looked at the bank account, not good. So how do you measure all of that up now in 2025? Because seeing the industry, I mean, I don't know if the industry is shrinking. I don't know if it's growing. I don't know if it's just too, you know, we always hear M&As happening in the background and like people always, you know, shifting between these two aisles.

[00:10:16] So like, where does it stand from your view in 2025? You know, having done this for a long time, and incidentally, I've actually never been on the MSP side of the table. I've always been on the vendor, solution provider, whatever, for the dark side, whatever you want to call us. I've seen a lot of change. And I think a lot of what you just said is true.

[00:10:41] But right now, I think, you know, in the past, well, I guess really since right before COVID and especially after COVID or the pandemic or whatever the heck we want to call it. You know, I don't think there's a better time to be an MSP because I do think that we've seen this major, what's the word I'm looking for?

[00:11:11] You know, just a major flip-flop or a major change from being one of the hated professions to all of a sudden being not just – and I talk about this all the time when I talk to MSPs. You know, if you look at yourself just as an MSP and just as an IT company, you're selling yourself short because you're not just an IT company.

[00:11:37] I mean, IT has embedded itself into every function in any type of business. And you really, you know, the MSPs that are listening or watching or whatever, you know, you guys, I hope, are positioning yourself as a business advisor, a trusted business advisor if you've been doing business for or with your clients for a long time.

[00:12:04] Because, you know, technology empowers businesses. And where would any business be? I don't care if it's an automotive repair shop. I don't care if it's a dentist office, an accounting office, a retail store. Without technology, without IT, where would those businesses be?

[00:12:27] And most of those small to medium-sized businesses don't have a corporate IT team. And if they do, like you already said, I actually came before I was in the retail channel and before I was in this channel, I worked the help desk for a very large – well, same – one of the consumer electronics retailers. That's where I actually started my career in IT, if you want to call it. I worked the help desk.

[00:12:52] And like you said, you weren't in a hurry to take care of anything because you had a secure job and all the people you were supporting didn't know what the heck you did. They just know you came and fixed things. So there was no hurry. As an MSP, you better hurry because now small businesses can easily go find somebody else that's going to do things. So, you know, I just – right now, I just really think there probably hasn't been a better time to be an MSP.

[00:13:21] And look, I also know those guys and ladies, not just as – I use guys kind of wholesale. But, you know, anybody running an MSP right now, it's a hard job. I don't think I'd ever want it. But boy, if you position yourself right, you can do very, very well for yourself. That's fair.

[00:13:43] I mean, I think the challenge now, if we just fast forward to the modern day, and I can't help but talking about it because I bring it up because it's the, you know, the new marketing of the day, right? It's like, oh, but AI is just coming to replace my job, right? And it's like, okay. Okay.

[00:14:38] It's like, well, I don't think they replaced full bodies with AI. I think what they did was they took people and they moneyballed those jobs, right? Like they took somebody and said, hey, with this new tool, I'm going to increase your capabilities by 10%. And then you take that 10% times so many people and that's where you see this accumulation of, well, I'm going to cut people because the 10% increase across all these other people together, you know, gets me my efficiency.

[00:15:06] And I didn't think about it until that was said. And I totally see it, right?

[00:15:39] When I talk to people outside of this tech industry, Larry, they do not want to talk to the freaking computer. They do not want to talk to the answering machine. They do not want to talk to the auto attendant. They want to scream agent into the phone until they get to a human being. And man, they get kind of ornery fast. I'm one of those too. I mean, I just called FedEx the other day trying to fix a problem with some shipments and trying to get through the frigging phone tree.

[00:16:09] That was ticking me off because it was like, I just want to speak with the representative. None of your prompts are going to be dealing with what it is that I need to talk to your representative about. But I couldn't get past those damn prompts. And so you're right. People get ticked off at that stuff. But, you know, look, there's the side of the fence that AI is going to take my job.

[00:16:34] But then there's also the side of the fence that, you know, and I think I'm on this side of the fence. AI is not going to take your job unless you don't start learning AI and learning how to use AI to make yourself more efficient, make yourself more valuable to the organization. And look, I'm fully aware. Sometimes you work for a large corporation. You don't have any control over.

[00:17:01] I've got two sons that are software engineers for a very large bank here in the U.S. And they sit on the opposite side of the AI fence that I do. They're like, no, AI could replace us very quickly and we're going to be looking for a job. And I keep trying to convince them, no, you need to learn AI. You need to learn how to use AI to make yourselves better, make yourselves more valuable and all of that. But at the end of the day, they're like, dad, we're just a number. We're just a number at this organization.

[00:17:29] There's not a whole lot that we're going to be able to do to make ourselves more valuable because it's not ever going to be seen by the people that need to see it. And so I get that. But if we're talking about the channel and we're talking about MSPs, MSSPs, vendors, solution providers, VARs, all of that, you know, I do think that AI, even though it's been around for a long damn time, a lot longer than most people realize,

[00:17:59] I do think it's going to make us more efficient. It's going to make us better. It's going to create some new things that we've never seen. It's going to, it may help reallocate some resources. You know, you may end up having your first line tech support be totally run by AI, like I know many companies are doing. And it's just one of those things. I think it is what you make it.

[00:18:25] If you're afraid of it and you're not going to embrace it, yeah, you're probably not going to like it. But even me, you know, I'm older than most of the folks in the channel right now. I've started using AI quite a bit and I've been absolutely blown away at how it's made me better at some things. So I use it all the time and I'm starting to use it for things that I never thought I'd use it for. And it's, it's, it's really pretty fricking cool.

[00:18:52] If you get down to it, you don't agree. I can tell by the look on your face. Listen, I'm all about the bleeding edge. And quite frankly, you know, I feel like 2015, George and 2025, George, slightly different opinion. 2015, George would say, let's go open up a new toy, rip off the paper, open the box and let's just see what happens.

[00:19:21] Right. And like, by the way, that 2015, George is still there. But 2025, George is like, hey, I don't mind. I'll do this. I'll definitely open up the box and start playing with it. But I need it to be a little bit more baked first so that I'm using my time wisely. There's a very, that's very valid. I don't argue with you on that. And so like, what I'm seeing is the people who have been like day zero person trying to play with it.

[00:19:49] I just haven't seen enough to be like, all right, now's a good time to open it up. Because what I feel like is that it's not scalable in its current form. And so that's what bothers me right now. And then the other part is, I mean, I know I've always been in small, medium business land for my entire career. And I appreciate that. I don't know how well I would have done in corporate America.

[00:20:13] But I've always learned that a lot of this level, the size of company, the size of business is a relationship game. Right. And it's like, hey, create good experiences, deliver on what you say and, you know, good things will happen. I feel like the impersonalization that comes with this type of tech doesn't cater well to this layer of business.

[00:20:40] And so I could be totally wrong, but I feel like when I swear, true story, Larry, I was in an airport and, you know, we frequent airports, me and you and a lot of other people often. And I was just going into one of those like, you know, stores to grab, you know, a pack of gum and, you know, Coke Zero, whatever. And this lady was trying to like do the self-checkout and she was having a problem. And, you know, this person finally comes to try and help her out. And I was just listening.

[00:21:09] I was trying to check out next to her. She's like freaking, you know, it's like freaking computers, AI. It's like, it sucks. And then the lady coming to help her is like, yeah, they don't get it. Totally get a crash. It sucks. And I was just, I literally wish I had just recorded that conversation because it was just two regular people and they were just complaining about it. And I'm just like, well, you know, whenever you design something now, right? 2025, George, as a person in the chair, right? Check signer seat is like, hey, if you're going to create something, you need to work backwards from what you're, you're the user.

[00:21:39] What you're building is going to see, right? The experience of it all. And if the experience is that, that is not good. No, you're absolutely right. You're not going to get any raving fans from that experience. I'm curious. What age group were these women in? That is a good question. I would say the person at the checkout was probably in her late 40s, early 50s, if I had to guess.

[00:22:07] And the person coming behind her to help her, probably similar age bracket. Interesting. Interesting. And that doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me. I mean, you know, I hear that from people my age. I hear it from people older, people, some people a little bit younger and stuff like that.

[00:22:21] But it's, have you done the, any of the airports you've been in had these new, I guess they're Amazon powered stores to where you scan your credit card before you even walk through the turnstile. Then you just go in there and you pick up whatever the heck you want. You don't check out, you just walk out and it supposedly reads everything. Now, yeah, that one, I'm still kind of going.

[00:22:51] Did you hear that that was a debunk? That it was a bunch of people watching cameras actually doing the checkout? I did not. I did not. And that it really wasn't AI? They just said it was AI? I was wondering about that because I was kind of like, this is kind of weird. The first time I came across one, it was the only one that was in the terminal that I was in. I was like, okay, I guess I got to do this. I went to one in London. I was at an event in London and I went and I'm like, oh, this is cool. You like beep your credit card to get in.

[00:23:19] It does like one of those like $1 holds like the gas station does, right? And you go and like, you just walk around, pick up whatever. And then when you walk out, it just charges you. And yeah, apparently it came out that like they were, it was like 200 people watching security cameras, you know, in the store. So, yeah, and I was just like, well, that kind of debunks the whole thing. Yeah, that's AI creating jobs. Right, exactly. And then, you know, and then there's been other stories like that where like companies said that they were building AI, but it really wasn't AI at all, right?

[00:23:48] They were just using the marketing. So, you know, just like anything else, right? There's a little bit of wild, wild west happening right now where like a little snake oil definitely is being sold. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, back up two or three years, all of a sudden AI is just on everything. And I have to laugh because I didn't pay any attention to this, but I like to play a lot of golf. And I was just looking at my golf clubs. It was actually earlier this week. And I took a look at my golf clubs and on there it says AI designed.

[00:24:17] And I'm just like, really? You know, it's just a marketing term in some ways, in some ways for sure. I, you know, as somebody who's, you know, had a bunch of small businesses, I totally appreciate the big brand companies with super marketing budgets setting the discussion with their fund. Totally get it. Totally understand piggybacking on it. Got it. Nothing wrong with that.

[00:24:46] But also can understand where there's a little bit of smoke and mirrors here that can end badly. Mm-hmm. And so that's where, you know, for the people on the IT, internal IT side who are like not fans of MSPs, back to that sentiment. It's like these guys promised the world. They say they're doing all this stuff proactively. They say they're the best thing since sliced bread, but we don't see that. Correct. Correct.

[00:25:14] So, I mean, I think, you know, AI, yeah, it's real, but, you know, there's a lot of hype out there too. And I think over the coming couple of years, I think the hype will die down and the reality of it and real world applications will take over. And I guess that's the wrong phrase to use when I talk about AI. That's going back to Skynet and all that fun stuff. And who knows?

[00:25:44] Maybe it will take over. I mean, supposedly we got this damn spaceship heading towards us, you know, at hundreds of thousand miles an hour and all that stuff that's supposed to hit in October. I don't know about space, but I know that I think it was Japan or China that came out with a robot that can like, you know, incubate a human being. See, I hadn't heard of that one, but I know Japan's doing some pretty crazy stuff with some of this. I was like, is this a crossover between the Matrix and Terminator? I don't know what's going on. It's getting kind of scary.

[00:26:12] It's funny how, you know, what was once fantasy for those of us that have been around and, you know, seen the Skynets and the Terminator and all of these things. Or if you happen to be a Dean Kuntz fan and read any of his books, you know, all this stuff was just fantasy. It was make-believe. And all of a sudden, here we are in 2025. And it's amazing how you can kind of take a look at these things compared. And it's like, wow, some of this stuff's actually starting to come to reality.

[00:26:42] Well, for whatever it's worth, it is absolutely crazy how much stuff we did see in the movies that did come to reality. Right? No doubt. You know, like the current Tesla is pretty, maybe not Kit from Knight Rider. It's not doing turbo boosts, but there's a lot of tech in Kit that kind of is supposed to be the Tesla, right? Or, right, the Dick Tracy watches. My Dick Tracy watch. The tablets from Star Trek, right? Like now being the iPad.

[00:27:10] Like, haven't quite gotten to Transporters yet. Like, that would be, that would be cool. And like, warp speed, not so sure. But like, there's a lot of stuff that, fast forward 20 years, actually came true. I'm still waiting on the Time Machine DeLorean now. Yes. Yes. That would be fun. That would be very fun to just travel back and forth in time wherever you want to go. I mean, you could break some things. You could. You could.

[00:27:36] But I mean, you know, I can remember, and of course, if there's anybody, you know, 30 and below watching or listening to this, they probably don't have any clue who Dick Tracy is. But, you know, it was a comic book character, a private eye. And he had this watch that, you know, talked to him, did all kinds of stuff for him. And it was like, you know, yeah, that was all fantasy. And now look what we all have on our, well, not all of us, but most of us have on our wrists now. And it's hard.

[00:28:05] You know, I like my other watches that are not smart watches. But man, I miss my smart watch when I'm not wearing it. Because, you know, I can get a text message while we're doing this. And I can just look down and see who the text message is from. If it's anything important or driving down the road. Anyway, sorry, I'm off on a tangent. But. Convenience is definitely part of it. But the difference is, is like back to, I know I'm going crossing themes here, right? It's like, hey, 2025 George versus 2015 George.

[00:28:34] 2025 George loves tech. But is it consistent and reproducible tech? Can you generate the same outcome on a regular so that you can rely on it? Right. That's not the same thought I had 10 years ago. No, no, you're absolutely correct in that. I had never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely correct. Yeah. So like the iWatch, yeah, the battery's on and you got a signal. You're going to get that message on your phone every time, right? So like, definitely appreciate the convenience factor there.

[00:29:04] Let's flip directions a little bit. Tell me, you know, about what's happening at your company right now. What's got you excited there? Why does it help current day IT MSP company? No, good question. So I am the channel chief at Covello. I actually joined Covello at the end of January this year, 2025.

[00:29:33] Had known about the guys for the past two or three years after having sat on a panel at an ASCII conference with one of their sales guys. And he and I hit it off. And next thing I know, I'm having lunch with their whole team a couple of times at various events. Became friends with the CEO, James Manyaka. And then the opportunity came at the beginning of this year where I had been actually kind of backing up just a little bit. I had been after we had become friends.

[00:30:02] He had asked me, I was like, look, you know, we haven't really tackled the channel from an event perspective yet. And I think we kind of need somebody that's, you know, got some seasoned experience at that. Would you be an advisor to us? So I said, yeah, I'd be glad to. So during 2024, I kind of advised them a little bit along with a couple other friends. Just kind of telling them, you know, here's where I think I would spend my marketing dollars from an event perspective to get yourself known.

[00:30:27] The opportunity came in late January of this year for me to join the team as the channel chief. And so now I'm kind of running with the events and all of that. But Covello is probably out of all the moves that I've made over the past five or six years, this one, I'm really, really excited about it. Because I feel like I've just jumped on a rocket ship right before we're, you know, heading out to space. We got lots of opportunity out in front of us.

[00:30:55] And what Covello is, and it's fun. You know, I've actually been on the road for the past 10 straight weeks at various events and all of that. And excited to be home for a few days before I hit it again. But one of the things that we ask when I go and talk to the MSPs is how many of you have heard of Covello? And it's kind of fun because, you know, if I got a room of 20, 25 people, maybe one or two people raise their hands. And it doesn't bother me.

[00:31:22] It's what I expect because people don't know who we are because we haven't been out there, even though the company's been around since 2020. They've kind of been, you know, under the covers, under the desk, whatever you want to call it. And they only did six events in 2024. Six, maybe seven, actually. So they really weren't out there. This year, we're going to close the year after doing 27 events. So people are starting to know who we are, which is a good thing.

[00:31:50] And people are starting to know what we do, which is, you know, this is a long-winded way of me getting there. But we're part attack surface management and we're part data security posture management. So what we do is we combine basically five different modules into one singular platform.

[00:32:12] And it's really kind of under the theme of, you know, you as an MSP, how do you protect what you often can't see? And what I'm talking about is that sensitive data. And, you know, MSPs have a whole wide variety of tool sets out there. Most MSPs are, you know, probably have 10, 15, sometimes even more vendors that they do business with. Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:39] So we're really here and we often lead our speech with this is, you know, if after hearing what we've got to say, we can't help displace two or three of your vendors and bring it all into our platform, you may not want to talk to us. But that's what we're all about is consolidating that tech stack. Because how do you protect what you can't see? Well, we're going to show you where all those assets are on your computer's network, whether it's in the cloud, whether it's on-prem, whether it's an approved device, whether it's a rogue device.

[00:33:08] Anything with an IP address, we can go out there and find very, very easily. We're going to show it to you on a fantastic interface that we've got. From there, we're going to dig in and find out, okay, where's all the sensitive data? We're going to go across the entire environment. Once again, whether it's in the cloud, whether it's in SharePoint, whether it's in Salesforce, whether it's in Box, Dropbox, whether it's on-prem, on a network server, anything. We're going to go show you here's where all your sensitive data lies.

[00:33:36] Then we also incorporate the IBM cost of breach analysis so that the MSP can now put real-world dollar figures against this sensitive data. And, George, did you know that if you had a breach tomorrow, here's what you could be on the hook for. You have $12 million worth of sensitive data. Here are your most at-risk devices. I'm going to pause you right there.

[00:34:03] Whatever crazy formula you have to determine the value of data, some insurance company underwriting person somewhere would love to have that calculator. Because isn't that the number one big question about, well, we don't know who you get it, and we don't know how much their data is valued at? You got it. You got it. And so, I mean, we use – it's a good sampling using the IBM cost of breach analysis.

[00:34:29] But we also allow you to go in there and put your own values on that data if you need to. But, you know, we're giving you a good benchmark. But now that we've shown you where the assets are and we've shown you where the sensitive data is, this is the one that really gets a lot of people. We can also show you who in the organization has access, has had access, who's been moving it around, where it has gone, and that's the eye-opener.

[00:34:53] For most of these MSPs, you know, your clients tend to think, oh, I know where my sensitive data is and I know it's locked down and I know these are the only people that have access to it. All of a sudden, we run a report or the MSP runs a report and puts it in front of the clients and you may think you know where the data is, but here's where it actually resides. You've got multiple copies of this particular file all over the place. All of these people have access to it.

[00:35:19] And to see the eyeballs go wide is kind of an understatement. It's shocking to many of these clients when they see this information. So now that we've shown you where the data is, who's got access to it, what we do then is we also have vulnerability management built into the platform, but we can take a different look at it. You know, there's tens of thousands of CVEs out there and some of them you want to patch immediately. Some of them you don't need to worry about that often.

[00:35:47] So we're going to help you triage and show you which CVEs are causing the biggest risk to that customer's business. You know, let's say George has access to $10 million worth of sensitive data on his device. Yet John, who is a first level tech guy, has access to no sensitive data on his system.

[00:36:16] Your team doesn't want to spend time patching vulnerabilities on John's machine. They want to patch them on yours because that's where the risk lies. Then after that, we also have configuration management built in. So you can kind of set your baseline configs, you know, based off of the different compliance standards that you need to run, whether it's CMMC or anything like that.

[00:36:35] And we can help you track drift on those configurations and send out a ticket or an email whenever something drifts from the approved policy or the approved configuration that you've set. And so we do all of that in one platform. And that's what really attracts the MSPs to us. That's why I said we're here to help consolidate the tech stack.

[00:36:57] I mean, every tool that you've got has a cost associated with it, both in licensing, but in learning the product and getting support on the product. And oftentimes that data is siloed and it doesn't talk to the other applications you're using. And it costs the MSP a hell of a lot of resource time in trying to go out there and find this stuff.

[00:37:19] And that's what we're designed to do is just give you efficiency and also give you the ability to, you know, basically consolidate your tech stack, save a little bit of money in many different ways. And give you visibility that you've never had. Oh, listen, the visibility part is no joke. I mean, listen, it's like, oh, we got OneDrive. We got Google Drive. We got file shares. We got this. Yeah. Look at the logging and it's like, did you ever turn it on? Yeah.

[00:37:46] They're like, uh, and I was like, okay, if you assume it's on, how long are the logs there for? You got it. Yeah. Like Microsoft's probably not doing it for more than 30 days. Nope. Now what? So a lot of that, and then a lot of it is they've never gone to ask the question. So then they have to go open up a ticket with the vendor and mileage varies there.

[00:38:13] If it's Microsoft, it'd be a long time before you get the answer you want. You got it. And you don't have that time when you're dealing with a cyber insurance carrier after a breach or you're dealing with a regulator. You don't have that time. So, you know, that's one of the things that, you know, we bake into this is that, you know, we're going to give you the answers you need. We're going to give them to you fast and we're going to give it to you probably better than you're going to get it from anywhere else. Yeah. That's interesting. So. I didn't know you did all that. So that's cool.

[00:38:43] I mean, you know, I love the consolidation factor. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, things that overlap kind of, right? Totally get it. I feel like, you know, how do you position this? Like, is this more of a productivity tool from the MSP standpoint? Like, how do they cost justify it other than trying to save money by consolidating products? Yeah. So, you know, obviously there's some cost savings because you're consolidating products.

[00:39:09] But really, this is kind of a revenue generator for the MSPs because it can allow them to go out there and do risk assessments very, very easily. Matter of fact, we, you know, we've been like I just said earlier, I've been on the road for 10 straight weeks at many different events. And, you know, one of the things that attracted me to Covello, and again, this is a long-winded answer, which I'm famous at. But one of the things that attracted me to Covello was just the culture that they have built.

[00:39:39] You know, they were a former MSP themselves. They've built some products in the past that they've had tremendous success with that have been acquired by other very large names in the industry. But with this particular platform, it's refreshing to just see how we're approaching things and how we're treating the MSPs because we're 100% channel only.

[00:40:04] And, you know, lots of vendors out there throw the word partnership around. But at Covello, we really, really mean it. We're forming this partnership, this relationship. We realize this channel is based on trust and relationships. So we're going to deliver on what it is that we promise. And we actually incorporate roughly about 30% of our product roadmap is generated by ideas that we get from MSPs.

[00:40:32] So back to my original point of being on the road for the past 10 weeks, we've heard some really great ideas of people taking a look at us that had never seen us before that are like, wow, this is phenomenal. You know, the biggest challenge we've got is how do we sell this to our customers? You've sold me. I understand. But how do I go out and position this to my customers? So that got us kind of thinking and brainstorming with some MSPs.

[00:41:00] And as a direct result of this, we're going to be launching, still haven't really figured out exactly what the name is, but kind of like a one-time discovery assessment to where the MSP can go in there without having to purchase anything, run a one-time discovery assessment and be able to put this in front of their prospect or their existing customer and say, hey, look at what I've discovered.

[00:41:27] And what that typically does is it empowers that MSP to now drive revenue to remediate many of the things that our reports and our scans have uncovered for those clients. On top of that, you can also now all of a sudden start very easily doing VCSO services. I already talked about the risk assessments, compliance assessments, all kinds of stuff that's going to help drive revenue for the MSP.

[00:41:57] Interesting. You know, I feel like, and I'm sure you've gotten this question before, but I'm going to throw it out there. Personally, George's personal opinion, I am very weary of people who are like, oh, we're going to make you an MSSP overnight. And it's like, no, that is not real. Or if it is, I don't feel very confident or comfortable in that whatsoever.

[00:42:24] I feel like the reason I think that is, like this whole security thing has a lot of threads and strings connected to it. There's a liability level that goes up three, four, five notches on the ladder. There are a lot of MSPs. They just do not have the personnel inside their company to really confidently do this. And like, bottom line, it is its own knowledge set. It is its own specialty. Right.

[00:42:54] It's like me saying, hey, I tripped and fell. My leg's messed up. All right. I need to go to an orthopedic guy. Right. Like my general doctor is not going to be able to get me past a certain point. Right. Right. It's kind of like that. So, you know, at the end of the day, when you're kind of throwing that out to the MSP, how many of them are a little shy when they're like, oh, that sounds cool, but I'm not so sure I want to be on the hook for doing a security assessment. Actually, many of them are skeptical when we say this. And we're not.

[00:43:23] I want to back up. You said something that I don't, you know, just like you assumed I was a Dallas fan. I'm not a Dallas fan. I'm a New Orleans Saints fan. By the way, I apologize. I apologize. That's OK. That's OK. No sweat. We're not going out there and talking to MSP saying, hey, guys, we can make you an MSSP overnight because we can't because of what you just said. There's so many different pieces to becoming an MSSP.

[00:43:50] What we go out there and say is that we can give you the visibility that you want that you've never had in a singular platform. And that, you know, there is some skepticism there. But then when they go through either a demo or a proof of concept, if they've taken it one step beyond the demo, they come back to us and say, holy crap. You do everything you do everything you said you were going to do and then some.

[00:44:15] So that is why that in the culture that James and his team have built into Covello is why I made the leap to come over here. Because, number one, look, I'm in the twilight of my career. There's no hiding that. I'm hoping I've got another good 10 years in me. We'll see what happens.

[00:44:38] But, you know, I wanted to go to a company that I believed in the culture and I believed in the platform and the technology that we were delivering. And when I saw what we could do and when I talked and put this in front of some MSP friends of mine, because, you know, I've been around a long time. Every time I make a jump, which that's a joke in and in itself, but we'll come back to that in a second.

[00:45:05] Anytime I make a jump to another company, I go involve my MSP friends and just say, hey, what do you think of this company? And it's funny, I went to a few near and dear friends of mine that are MSPs that I know you are very close with as well. And they're like, oh, Covello is just another DLP. And I'm like, oh, I get it. But, you know, at this time, I was still trying to consider the job.

[00:45:30] I said, I think we're doing a little bit more than that, but I don't know enough to even be dangerous yet. So I don't think we're just DLP. And, you know, they said, well, you know, if you feel confident about it, let's make the jump. It's funny. Those MSPs set in on our pitch last month at one of the events that we were at. And all three of them came to me and said, holy crap, you were right. You guys do an awful lot.

[00:45:57] And all of a sudden, all three of them have said, we're very interested. Let's talk further. So that's why I made the jump over to Covello. That's why I'm so passionate and happy about it.

[00:46:10] I mean, listen, some of the best companies that I've experienced as somebody on the other side in the MSP chair came from MSPs who found a gap and started building something because they went out to look for an answer and they didn't like what they found or didn't find something wrong. So that's exactly what we did. You know, our founder, James, like I said, he was a former MSP. And he was like, you know, some of the solutions out there are crap. I can do this better. And.

[00:46:39] And what's been really cool is he's been able to keep, like I said, he started two or three different companies and had a lot of success with all of them. He's been able to keep his core team together from company to company to company. So these guys have been together for a long time. And it's hard to do. It is hard to do. You know that as a business owner. So that was very impressive to me as well. So all I'm going to say is stay tuned, my friends. Cabello's going places. You can either ride.

[00:47:08] You can ride the rocket ship with us or without us. All right. Well, let me let me use the last little bit of time. I'm going to flip the conversation. Where are we going? Why does it seem like the inability to get the knowledge of your solution out there? Is such an expensive problem to try and solve? That's a loaded question in and of itself.

[00:47:38] I had to think about that before I said it, but I think I said it well. It's we have two problems. One is our platform does so much. It's hard to consolidate it and make somebody really understand it and get it in a 30 second elevator pitch. I keep trying. I keep trying.

[00:48:00] And just recently, we kind of came up with, you know, I just said, what we do is we provide visibility that you've never had. It's like having night vision goggles. And you can now see stuff that has always existed, but you just never had the visibility to it. So we've started calling ourselves the risk visibility platform.

[00:48:23] In my opinion, it takes and I've learned this from some of the best in the business, Mr. Rob Ray, for example. You know, it takes three years for a company to really start having an impact and making some money in this channel because MSPs have been burned. They've been burned by some really big name companies. And it's happened more than once. And MSPs don't necessarily trust new vendors.

[00:48:51] So you've got to build a relationship. You've then got to earn the trust. Once you've got the relationship and the trust and you're delivering on what it is that you say you're going to do, that's when you start getting the brand name recognition. That combined with going to the various events, because let's face it, you have to go where the MSPs are. That's exactly why B-Voit does this. That's exactly why all of us do this.

[00:49:18] We go to the events because that's where the MSPs are. Even during COVID, you got creative and you created, I don't even remember what the name of it was, but you took the RV tour across America. You came right here to my backyard because I went and met some of you at a restaurant just about three and a half miles away from my house, close to AT&T Stadium. You had to go where the MSPs are. It's not cheap to go where the MSPs are, unfortunately. You can spend an awful lot of money.

[00:49:48] You just have to spend it very wisely. And again, mark my words. This is kind of our coming out year, if you want to call it, because we weren't known before this year. But after this year, more and more people are starting to raise their hand when we're in those rooms. And when I ask, have you heard of Covello? And I absolutely anticipate as we go to events next year, we're going to see a lot more people raising their hand when we say, have you heard of Covello? Do you know what we do?

[00:50:21] Well, it's an interesting answer. I see where you're trying to go there. Yeah, I agree. It is expensive to go where MSPs go. I guess there's a larger question. Why do MSPs go where they go? But maybe we don't have enough time to dig into that one. We'll try that again another time. You got it. All good. If you told people, hey, it's August, September, October, November.

[00:50:49] I don't know why our industry has yet to fix this, right? They seem to jam six months worth of stuff into less than 90 days. Yep. Could somebody put the blender and spread that out? I don't know why. It's not better. But anyway, where will people see you over the next 90 days? Get your pens and pencils out, people. This could be crazy. Go ahead. Yeah, we're going to be all over the place. We start, like I said, I'm actually home this week and next week, and I'm thrilled.

[00:51:19] But we're going to CanITCon up in Kelowna, British Columbia, which is a beautiful part of Canada. So we're going north of the border to visit those folks. As soon as I come back from that one, and the next morning, I jump on a plane to go to MSP Summit down in Orlando, if I'm not mistaken. You didn't do your timeshare in Orlando yet, have you? No, I didn't. This year, it feels like I need to do a timeshare in Nashville or Denver because that's where I've spent most of my time.

[00:51:48] But anyway, MSP Summit. After MSP Summit, we will be at DattoCon, and we'll also be at the MSP Initiative Block Party, having a really good time. So we're looking forward to that. And after DattoCon, I believe the next one would be NextGen down in Houston with the channel company. After that, we're also going to be at TAG.

[00:52:16] I don't know if you ever have any TAG members come in here. Technology Assurance Group. You got it. That actually is at the same time as DattoCon, so we're kind of splitting forces and hitting both of those. One's in San Diego, one's in Orlando. Or no one's in Miami. Literally on the opposite sides of the country. You got it. You got it. And then I think the last thing we're doing this year would be IT Nation down once again in Orlando.

[00:52:45] Oh, no, I also forgot we're doing a producer's club for TMT somewhere in October. I can't remember exactly when, but that's in Nashville once again. Man, somebody. And what's your airline of choice? That, since I live in DFW and I'm about eight miles south of DFW Airport, I fly American exclusively as much as I hate it. But they do get me there. And, George, you understand this.

[00:53:14] When you get the top level status, you kind of tend to stay with that particular airline. So platinum, platinum pro? I am executive platinum at American. Executive platinum. Circle back. You got it. I have not made that concierge key, which is the mystery status that they've got. But, yeah. No, I pretty much fly American everywhere.

[00:53:40] And if anybody out there is friends with me on Facebook, you've probably kept up with my trials and tribulations with travel because everybody's like, I never want to travel with Larry because he's always delayed or his flight is always canceled. Thank you very much, American. Not my fault. Yeah, I can imagine. My story starts before I even got to the gate. That's where my story starts. Oh, yes. I've heard some of your stories before.

[00:54:05] Yours actually are a little bit more colorful than most of mine have been. Yeah, and I have it all. It doesn't matter. Although, I give everybody a tip on the way out of here. I saw last night that TSA has now announced family security check. Oh. And it'll speed through the families where you have a little bit less restrictions there. If only they could have done that for me 20 years ago. Yeah, I was like this. Yeah.

[00:54:34] Imagine all those people at MCO going to Disney World and like could be. I hate that airport. I hate that airport. Yes. Yes, I hear exactly what you're saying, my friend. That is a busy, busy zoo-like airport for all. If it weren't for I-4, I'd just fly to Tampa and drive. But then I-4 makes you kind of go, okay, I don't want to do that. Yeah, the traffic and the accidents on there could be crazy. So, for everybody listening to the audio version of this, you can find Larry online.

[00:55:02] M-E-A-D-E-R, Meder. That's how you spell it. You can do it on- D-O-R. Oh, I'm sorry. M-E-A-D-O-R. Sorry. Yep. See that? That's why I did it. I wanted people to like make sure they heard it right. So, you're going to find him online. He's on all the platforms. It will be easy to find. And then Covello, C-A-V-E-L-O. You got it. Dot com. Dot com. That's where you're going to find Covello. You'll find Larry at like, I don't know, every other industry event between now and December 1st.

[00:55:30] So, if you don't like stumble into him, just, you know, while you're there and he'll emerge probably at a bar somewhere near you. This session was absolutely recorded. You're going to find it at MSPinitiative.com, YouTube, the podcatchers, all that stuff. Like, download, subscribe, do all that good stuff. Larry, I will be seeing you between now and then of the year, my friend. Absolutely, George. This was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on. You always do a great job at this. And sorry I brought it down just a little bit.

[00:56:00] I know. Enjoy the NFL season ahead of you, my friend. You too. You too. All right, guys. Have a good one. All right. Have a good one, everybody. Bye. Bye.