How Zachary Kinder Runs a Zero Trust MSP (EP 968)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IIT Business Podcast coming at you live from Orlando here at Zero Trust World 2026. And I've got another interview scheduled here. This folks is a first time guest, somebody I met last night at the reception.

His name is Zachary Kinder from Net-Tech  Consulting and we're going to chat a little bit. Zach, thanks for coming by. It's my pleasure.

So you're here at Zero Trust World. Now, how many times have you been here before? So this is my fifth Zero Trust World. It would have been the sixth one if my son hadn't been born on the day of the conference.

Really? Yeah. Was that last year? No, in 2021. Okay, so you're still holding that grudge.

Yeah, no, no. I would have been to all six. Okay.

Yeah. All right. You know.

So you must be a big ThreatLocker partner to be coming to this that many times. 100%. So let's see.

So all six. So you would have been, did you start with them in the beginning? So we signed with ThreatLocker in 2020. 2020.

Okay. During the year of our COVID. Yes, the year of our COVID indeed.

The year of our COVID. Yes, sir. That's correct.

I mentioned you guys are out of Irving, Texas. Actually, to correct you, we're actually based out of El Paso. I live in Irving.

Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah.

How far apart is that? It's about a 10-hour drive. 10 hours? Yeah, 580 miles. Okay.

How big is your MSP? Our MSP has about eight employees. Okay. Fully remote? We have two in Dallas, and we have the remainder are in El Paso.

Okay. We support clients all over the country. So it really just depends.

We don't really care where the client is. If they need excellent customer service, we're there. Okay.

So why don't we go ahead and do the dog and pony. Tell me how you got started and how you ended up here. Yeah.

So I've been in customer service all my life. Your whole life? My whole life. I mean, from a ... Well, not my whole life, but my whole professional life.

I started as a tier one support rep for AT&T Outsource. Oh, that must have been fun. It was fun, actually.

Yeah. I really enjoyed that job. AT&T? Yeah.

I have heard great things about working for them, especially on that side. Yeah. Well, it was weird.

It was actually singular wireless, if you remember that name- I do. ... from back in the day. Yeah.

Yeah. So I was outsource support for that, and then I got a job doing DSL support back when AT&T decided to re-onshore it back to America. Okay.

Nice. And then from there, I found my MSP at the tender age of 21, and I've pretty much been here ever since. I've worked every position, and now I'm the president.

Were you receptionist at one point? Absolutely. You were? Absolutely. Nice.

Take the calls. Yeah, everything. Okay.

I've done the marketing. I've done the business development, the engineering, the whole shoot. So tell me about that transition from AT&T into an MSP, because that doesn't sound like a normal job.

It definitely was not a normal job. My college roommate at the time was the senior engineer at this company, and through virtue of knowing him and getting to know his boss, who was a bit strange, he would come to the house sometimes just to mess with my friend. What? Yeah, it was weird.

It was a bizarre situation. This doesn't sound like a typical MSP. But I got to know him over time, and so when the position of a level one technician opened up, I was already in the pipeline of candidates, because I wanted out of the call center.

I wanted to work on computers, because by that point, I had already had a background in computers. I mean, my first operating system was Windows 3.1. I remember when my compact PC had a four gig hard drive, 28 megs of RAM, and like a 700 megahertz processor. That was awesome back in the day, you know? So the opportunity to touch computers and work with business, like, yeah, that's what I want to do.

Okay, very nice. Yeah. So you got in as a level one tech, and you said you've been through every position now.

The position of owner, is that in there? Are you a partner with the company now? I am a partner with the company. Okay, nice. Yes, sir.

Yep. Very nice. Yes, sir.

So what is, I guess, your target market? Do you have an avatar? Do you have a vertical you guys specialize in? You know, it's interesting that you say that. I used to say for the longest time that our target market was the one that would pay money. But as I've really started to really look at and focus, okay, who do we serve? And our biggest verticals is transportation and car dealerships.

Really? Yes. Okay, that's a different one. Two reasons.

Well, many. But car dealerships and transportation are very time sensitive. With transportation, you have to have uptime, right? If the systems aren't up, they can't ship, right? And with car dealerships, if their systems aren't working, they can't sell cars.

And so my team is very, we're very responsive. And so what we've noticed is that those customers really need, they need responsive. Because this whole concept of, oh, submit a ticket, oh, it's not in the SLA, oh, this, oh, that.

They don't care about that. It's their service and they want it now, right? And so, yeah, so that's kind of, so again, if you'd asked me six months ago what my vertical was, I would tell you, I don't know, but I really have been soul searching lately and I've realized that that's who we serve and are starting to at scale. Okay.

So let me ask you this question. Please. What about body shops? Not, we had a body shop, but.

The reason I asked you that question, I, that was one of my verticals when I first got started. Okay. I actually met up with a guy that sold paint for PBG to the body shops.

Okay. And it was through the paint company, it was this big whole convoluted thing. So I ended up at one point, I had probably 50 or more body shops that I would support.

Okay. So the paint company would pay for the computers and the servers and all of that stuff that ran their estimating software and all of that. And I think I did that from, I don't know, 99 till about 2006 or seven.

Okay. About the time the crash was about to start happening and the paint company is like, we can't be paying for computers because it takes too much in paint to get there, you know, recoup their costs. Right.

And then what happened is body shops would just get the next best deal from the next best paint company. Right. And so they said, well, we're not going to do that.

Well, then body shops didn't want to pay for the service. And I'm like, well, then you're not going to get it from me. So I walked away from a ton of body shop business.

I still have one that pays me direct and all of that stuff. But some of those body shops were in the car dealerships and I was looking for a connection because I'm like, man, if I'm in the body shop, why can't I get the car dealership? And a lot of times they were separate. They weren't even the same ownership.

Right. Yeah. So.

I hear you. Now, we definitely, definitely don't have a lot of body shops. Okay.

All right. I have a question for you. Are you still in the game? Are you still on MSB? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Well, if I could make, I mean, if you want to get into more car dealerships. I don't know. Okay.

I got some advice, but you know. Yeah. I don't know.

It's all about the referral networks. But yeah. I got a nice little niche where I'm at right now.

What's your niche? I deal with attorneys. Okay. Interesting.

We have a few attorneys. Yeah. I wouldn't call it a niche though.

Yeah. Most people don't. Yeah.

You're a very patient man. Yeah. It's fun.

Actually, I got one attorney that's been emailing me all day because her printer doesn't work and she doesn't want to go through the process to talk to you guys. She wants to talk to you. Well, not even that.

No. It's like, listen, we've opened up ThreatLocker for you. Do your installation.

Blah, blah, blah. But then she waits and waits past the hour and then tries to do it and it's not working. I'm like, I told you to do it at the time we took them and just frustrating.

She's a princess. There's definitely a sense of, I'm not going to use the word entitlement, but I think what it is in an attorney's world, their hourly rates are so astronomical that for them, it's like, you know, it's like, I'm, I'm the most important. I'm this, I'm that.

And then when you try to like make them bend to your will and to your timing, they're like. Here's the thing though. It's, she'll send a request and say, Hey, can you do this after hours? I'm like, no, you're not going to be available after hours.

Well, it's not even that it's, you know, we have it set up to where a lot of their logins are MFA, right? So I need them to be available to help with that and, and to test it and to test it. That's the whole thing I want to, I need for you to test it as soon as we're done to make sure it works. Right.

I don't have time. Well, then, okay, then it's not going to work. Right.

So, but yeah. And they want you to be available as soon as they call. But as soon as you have time, they're not available.

A hundred percent. Oh, that's the frustration. That drives me nuts.

But you know who's like that too is car dealerships. I can imagine. Bad.

I can imagine. Yeah. Now, most of that is based on, let me think.

So when I was dealing with the auto body shops, most of the car dealerships, their computers were basically the finance department. Have you guys expanded more? Are there more computer things in the, in the dealerships? Oh, absolutely. You have to worry about, well, first of all, at the head of the snake, you have to worry about the network.

So that's arguably the most important aspect because a lot of dealer management systems are tied together with IPSEC tunnels and all that stuff. And then, you know, you have the service drive, so they have to be able to service the cars. You have the finance department.

They have to be able to finance the deals that the sales guys convince them to make or to convince the customer to make. And then the sales guys' computers have to be working because if they can't do that, then they can't pull credit. So there's so many aspects going on.

But I would say printing. And the other big thing. Printing.

Printing is a big one. Yeah. Their printers have to work.

And then the other thing is passwords. Everybody forgets their passwords and then they don't want to follow the process or they are doing the process and they're mad that their ticket is taking, you know, 20-30 minutes to get responded to. It's like, it's what you agreed to, like SLA and then that's when, you know, oh, I know Zach because we were cool that one time and I got his cell phone and now I'm just going to call him.

You know, which is fine, but it's like, it's frustrating. Yeah. I don't give out the cell phone.

No more. Yep. That's right.

No more. That's right. Actually, I'm going to, I won't say their name, but another MSP was trying to reach me and they were, they were texting, but they were texting the number on my business card, which is a regular office line.

And I'm like, dude, that's not a text line. What a shame. Why aren't you like everybody else? Why can't you put your cell phone number on the card? I don't want people calling me at two o'clock on a Sunday to fix their mouse.

That's right. That's right. Yes, sir.

All right. Well, Zach, tell me what you, let's, let's do this because this is a ThreatLocker event. My show is sponsored by ThreatLocker.

Tell me what you guys are liking about it most and have you adopted any of the new recent stuff in the last year? So we are disciples of ThreatLocker. We started with ThreatLocker six years ago. All they had was application control, storage control, and ring fencing.

That's it. That's it. And, and this is a controversial take, but it's a true story.

I remember telling Danny, I don't know how we're going to be able to afford, insert Blake Fender here and you guys at the same time. And Danny, almost under his breath, said, you don't made for the. And I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, well, think about it.

Whatever doesn't stop, we will. Or no, I'm sorry. Whatever defender doesn't stop, we'll stop.

Okay. And I'm like, at this point I was like, you're right. So I called, I, I, I put in the notice to my guys, I said, Hey, we're no longer going to be, we're going to be uninstalling XYZ vendor from 900 end points.

And we're going to put threat logger on it. And we locked it down in two weeks. It was an absolute disaster.

Of course. Helpdesk blowing up. It was insane, but I'm glad we did it.

Would I do it the same way now? Absolutely not. A lot more thoughtful. To your other question about the new modules.

Absolutely. We have every module. Okay.

So you're using detect, you're using the user store. Everything. How are you liking them? I like it.

Cause I'll be honest. I don't have everything. What are you, what are you, I have, I have the basics.

What are you holding off on? Well, what are you not sure of? It's not that I'm not sure. I did hear somebody who was an early adopter of detect and said that it needs some tweaking. And so I, I personally don't like where detect you personally don't like to what I'm sorry.

I don't like to jump on things. First gen. When it first comes out, let people work out the bugs and then bring me on later.

So for me, it's, you know, I'm all about, I have a penchant for this and it's both good and bad, right? Cause it's, it's, it's paid off in a sense that, you know, here we are with ThreatLocker all these years later. So that's pretty amazing. But I have a penchant for, if I believe in a vendor, even if the product's not ready else to probably buy it just because I want to, and I want to get the super awesome price, right.

And I want to be able to support them and, and, and, and have that not leverage, but like just like, Hey, remember when I took a bamboo on you all those years ago, like you need to make this right or whatever. Like that's, it's all capital, right? You build capital over time, but to your original comment about detect, yes, when it first came out, it wasn't that great where it became amazing though, is when they put the MDR team behind it. Okay.

When the MDR team started managing detect, it was like, Oh, perfect. I don't have to manage it. And when there's something they'll call.

Nice. Yeah. Very nice.

Yeah. So that was the game changer. All right.

I'm about ready. I just got to talk to my rep. What are you using for MDR right now? I can't say.

Ah, okay. I know. Are you happy with them? Are they awesome? So the short answer is I'm not unhappy with them, but yeah, it's, I'm not over the moon.

Do they call you when stuff hits the... No. Vendors don't call me. Oh, that's... Actually, let me rephrase that.

My current vendors have learned to stop calling me. I see. Because I'm like, I'll call you when I want something or need something.

But if it's two in the morning and stuff's going down with your client, you want to get that call though. Well, that I would love to get. So here's one of the things.

So I, this is a true transparency folks. For those that listen to the show on a regular basis. I did try out two products last year that I simply was not happy with because one version that I got enrolled, I liked the dashboard.

I liked it. It was finding stuff and I went to go play with it and they're like, oh yeah, this is the light version. You're not allowed to play with anything.

I'm like, what? That's not right. I'm like, so it's like, so I got to go to the full version, which the whole reason they pitched the light version was to kind of get you in the door and stuff like that. And I'm like, okay, well you should have said that in the beginning rather than, you know, do this dog and pony show and say, okay, well can I see the next product that they were bringing out? And they're like, oh, it's not ready yet.

And I'm like, you've been advertising it for a year. What do you mean it's not ready yet? So that kind of tainted my opinion there. So I go through a thing where I don't like to trial products the first half of the year.

So I'm kind of waiting till the second half and lining up the companies I want. But ThreatLocker, I'm telling you, ThreatLocker detect would, you know, make that search null and void. Right.

Yeah. Totally do it. Awesome.

Okay. Yeah. And then I hear, and I don't know exactly, but I hear something really cool is coming tomorrow that will blow your mind.

Don't, don't, don't raise the bar like that, Zach. It's going to be good. I know we don't know each other that well, but I'm the type of person I'll be like, you got me all hyped up for that.

Yeah. Right. I'm excited about it.

You'll see. All right. It'll be good.

All right. Well, Zach, it was great to have you. I'm glad you decided to come on.

My pleasure. Are you happy now? Absolutely. It wasn't as bad as you thought, was it? No, it's actually really cool.

I'm kind of excited. I think I might go be podcasting now. You know? Let's go.

Zachary Kinder folks from NET-TECH Consulting. Real people, real protection right now. There you go.

You're not wearing the hat that you have on your LinkedIn profile. I'm not wearing the hat. I'm wearing it because the reason why it's that hat is made of polyester.

Oh. And it is so hot. So unless it's wintertime, I don't wear that hat.

Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.

All right, folks. That's going to do it for this episode here at Zero Trust World in Orlando. We'll be back with more.

We'll see you soon. Holla.