[23] – Open Discussion: All Things PSA and the Future

Welcome to PSA Impact, your podcast for all things PSA, RMM, and MSP. With your hosts, Rayanne Buccianico and Chris Tim. Learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency within your MSP business. Let's listen in. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of PSA Impact.

With your hosts, myself, Chris Tim, and my co-host, Rayanne Buccianico. We are an independent PSA podcast series designed to help MSPs all over the world on all things PSA. You can get your questions answered by Rayanne and myself, and learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool, manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency within your MSP. You can get in touch with us via all the socials, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and we'll put some links to those in the show notes. And today we're gonna have a little bit of fun.

I'm gonna kind of, you know, fire some questions off at you. I know you had some questions for me. So we'll kind of do this in a bit of an interview style with each other, and, you know, let's see how it goes. Yeah, I thought, you know, maybe just having a, you know, a fun little conversation and, you know, talking about, you know, your perspective on things, my perspective on things, you know, without any particular topic, it's gonna kind of be like a Seinfeld show, you know, it's a session about nothing, everything. Exactly, exactly.

So, you know, let's talk about MSPs, right, about the right size of MSPs for using a PSA tool. So I hear this question so many times, or I see so many, you know, people on forums saying, I'm too small for a PSA, what's the right size, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought it'd be really fun to kind of get your take on it and, you know, what you've heard out there and what you would respond to somebody if they asked that kind of question. Yeah, so here's my theory on that. And I have talked to so many MSPs, probably just like you have, that, hey, I'm just, you know, one man shop and I don't really have a PSA and we don't really, I don't really need that.

That's just overkill for what I need in my business. And so at that point, my first question is, well, do you own a business or do you really just own a job? Because if you're going to treat your company as an actual business, you are going to need the tools to be able to scale and do it effectively. And without the PSA, I would think, you know, yes, you can run from place to place and you know how much you're going to bill your customers and you can, you know, memorize the transactions in your QuickBooks to send out the invoices every month and all of those things are fine. But at some point you have to decide, is this where I'm going to stay?

Do I like where I am or do I want to go someplace further? You know, and what does further look like? You know, so are you going to try and automate things? You know, do you maybe want to bring on more accounts or increase your fees? You're going to need standard procedures and systems in place in order to do that.

And I think the PSA is the great place to start. What were your thoughts on that? Absolutely agree. And you know, I think you and I have had these kinds of conversations before anyway. And I know, you know, a lot of people kind of think the same thing as we do, right?

In terms of any serious business owner, any serious, you know, small one man shop MSP that wants to grow, I think absolutely needs to have a PSA tool, right? And there are a number of PSA tools out there that are actually designed for the one and two man shops, right, that are designed specifically with that sort of size company in mind. And you know, here's a story I always tell people when they ask me that question. You know, when I used to run my MSP business many, many years ago, I started out as everyone else does, as a one man shop. And you know, I would go out to customers, I would go and do the work.

I'd write the time down on a piece of paper, I'd come back to the office, I'd lose the piece of paper, I wouldn't know where it's got to, whatever the case might be. Or if I did have the piece of paper there, at the end of the week, I'd come back and I'd try and enter all of this stuff into QuickBooks. And I would just be scratching my head saying, I have absolutely no idea whether I've done two hours, five hours, 10 hours. And for those bits of paper I lost, I would just go, you know what, sorry, I'll just charge them five hours, two hours, three hours, whatever the case might be. Until I actually put a PSA tool into place, right?

And then it allowed me to track my time so much more accurately. And I was then able to literally click a few buttons, as you know, right, running an approve and post process, and it would just chuck all of that stuff straight into my QuickBooks, everything would be done, and my invoicing would pretty much be done and very, very accurately. You know, whereas before, when I had those little bits and pieces of paper lying around, sometimes it would take me an entire weekend to do billing because I'd be scratching my head, I'd be, I'm sure I was at a customer on Tuesday and I don't actually know how long I spent there, all of that kind of stuff. So I think, even for a small one and two man MSP business, if you wanna be effective as a business and you wanna run efficiently, you absolutely need to have some kind of PSA tool in place, like you say, to kind of scale your business or to be any kind of serious business. You know, you said a couple of points there that, you know, you do not have to jump right into the ConnectWise or the Autotask PSA.

You can start out with the Repair Shopper and the Tiger Paws and, you know, Synchro, you know, and there's a number of smaller PSAs out there specifically designed, you know, for the break fix or, you know, the smaller shops. And I've also heard the argument, well, I don't really need to track my time. Everybody is in an all-you-can-eat contract. So they're paying me the same amount of money every month, no matter how many hours I put in. So that's their reasoning for not even tracking their time against their customers, to which I would follow up with, well, how do you know at the end of the contract period whether or not you've made any money or if the fees need to be adjusted?

There's no way that you could know that unless you were tracking some form of profitability on that customer. Absolutely. And I mean, you know, a PSA tool allows you to obviously enter your burden rates in there. So what is the cost of your engineers? Or, you know, if you're a one-man shop, there's still gonna be a cost for you to be at the business, right?

So you're gonna enter what does it actually cost me to deliver the service to the customer from a point of view of my salary as well as any of the other services that I'm providing. So, you know, the antivirus and all those kinds of things, those all have a cost of delivering that service to the customer as well. So, you know, without running that through a PSA tool, it's gonna be very, very difficult to actually find out if you've been profitable with that customer or not. Like you say, I mean, you know, the customer could call you out 50 times and you could go 50 times in a month. You know, and you're driving, you've got fuel, you've got all these other costs, and they might only be paying you a few hundred dollars a month, you know, you're not gonna be profitable with that customer.

A PSA tool is absolutely gonna be able to give you that information, you know, really quickly and really easily. You know, sure, some of the bigger tools can do that a lot easier than the smaller tools, but, you know, some of the smaller PSA tools really do give you the ability to run those kind of reports out of there, or you can link it into, you know, some kind of business analytics or Power BI or BlackAge or any of those kind of tools as well, so. So let me ask you this. Do you think, if you were a small MSP and it's time for you to take your company to the next level, right? And you're just starting out or you're just starting to think about growing, which one do you go for first?

Do you go for the PSA or do you go for the RMM tool? You know, which is more important and why? Oh, I love this question. Again, one of my favorite things to talk about. Is it?

It really is. I don't think I've heard that line in like a couple of weeks. I've never said it, right? I've never said it before. You know what, and actually it's funny because obviously the PSA tool is the one to put in first, right?

Because that's, like we said, that's the one that's gonna run your business. That's the one that's gonna, you know, give you the profitability. That's the source of truth, right? Everything is gonna sit in the PSA tool. You know, any of those agents that you've got out there, any, you know, machines that you've monitoring for your customers, any of that kind of stuff is all gonna be brought in and fed into the PSA tool and allow you to build for all of that stuff.

So absolutely, I think, you know, the PSA tool should definitely go in first. However, the reality is that I think most people do actually end up having the RMM tool in place first because that's the tool that people actually use to deliver the service to their customers, right? That's what you're actually using to monitor people's machines. You're using that to do patch management. You're using that to, you know, deploy software, all of those kinds of things.

So the reality is, you know, the tools that you're actually using to deliver the service, you could potentially have those in first, and most MSPs actually do have those in first and then bring the PSA in afterwards to get all of that information into the PSA tool so that they can then, you know, invoice from there or track all of those items and what have you. Interesting. So my theory on this is the PSA comes first, right? So first you have to have your own house in order before you start, you know, branching out and doing all of these other things. Years and years ago, before such a thing as RMM tools, I would schedule backup jobs, right?

I would schedule a backup job on a client's computer. Then I would write a script that would send me a, you know, a quick email or a message that said, this backup completed successfully or it did not complete successfully. And what was the remote system I used? I'll bet it was something like GoToMyPC or some, you know, crazy, right, I'm aging myself now. But we didn't have RMM tools back then.

There was no such thing as, you know, at one place where everything, you know, happened. I would log into the customer server and I would do the patches myself, you know, or I would schedule those, you know, and I would run the scripts and, you know, and get all of the work done. But everything that I did all happened on, and of course back then it was on my timesheet, right? So I would have my little timer and I would track my timer and say, you know, who I worked on, when I worked on them and for how long, and I would post it directly to my timesheet so that I could bill it out to the customer. So, you know, my vote is still for the PSA first because, you know, once your internal house is in order, then that gives you the ability to bring on new and additional tools to become more efficient and effective.

Oh, absolutely. And I agree, you know, don't get me wrong. Absolutely, I think that a PSA tool, you know, like I said right in the beginning, a PSA tool is definitely something you should put in first, but I think the reality is that a lot of MSPs don't have a PSA tool in first because, you know, the very first thing they do is they want to make sure that they've got a tool to deliver the service, right? Got a tool to do their remote takeover, to do the patch management, to do all of those kinds of things. So, you know, certainly not saying it's the right way or the wrong way, but certainly it's what people do.

And I think I'm fully on board with you. I'm 100% that, you know, if I was to start all over again, if I was to run an MSP business, the very first thing I would do is I would put the PSA tool in from day one, because that then allows me to build my process around that and become, like you say, more effective, more efficient, all these things. And then I would think about all the other tools that I was gonna be implementing in there. So it's funny you mentioned about, you know, some of those remote tools you used. I actually, I remember having this conversation with somebody that I was the RMM tool, right?

I used to actually physically go to my customer sites and physically look at their servers and go, you know, this server's running out of disk space or this antivirus is running low. You know, I would actually do the visits to the customer sites. I just wouldn't be doing it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like an RMM tool is doing. But, you know, I was the RMM tool, right? I would be the one actually physically keeping an eye on the system and making sure that everything was ticking over nicely.

So, yeah, it's interesting that you say that. So another question to then ask you in terms of, you know, PSA tools encourage automation within the MSP for them to be more efficient at helping customers. You know, if an MSP was to build an automation plan for their company, what do you think the core components for that automation plan would be? The core components of an automation plan. This conversation could probably go on for quite some time, right?

So when we're talking about the automation plan for an MSP, we have a bunch of different aspects that we need to consider. So we've got the service desk automation, right? Ticket comes in, it has to get automated through workflow rules or whatever, and routed to the proper person or department in order to, you know, take care of the problem, whatever the problem is. If the ticket comes in from the RMM tool, for instance, you know, there was a failed backup or a failed patch, you know, so somebody needs to see it, recognize it, and fix it. Or if the customer opens up the ticket, who does that customer belong to, or does it belong in tier one, tier two, or, you know, tier three, depending on the complexity of the problem.

So on one hand, you have to have your service desk as a core component of the automation plan. And that's going to include things like workflow rules, and, you know, the ticket categories, and the ticket automation, and the dispatching and the calendaring of all of the service desk. Another piece of the automation plan also will be service delivery to the customer, right? And that's where the RMM tool comes in. You're going to schedule your patches, but somebody has to review and approve those patches.

You know, we've all learned the lesson of, you know, the automated patching, and, you know, and here comes a bad antivirus definition or bad patch from Microsoft that brings a machine or, you know, 20 to its knees because nobody ever tested or even reviewed those patches before you let them loose on the customers. So there has to be some sort of automation plan that once those patches are approved, then they get rolled out, you know? So I think you're writing scripts for onboarding new employees, right? So the RMM tool really is a key piece to make sure, you know, that you can push out the agents, you can, you know, connect your Active Directory to your PSA. And so those are some of the main core components that I would say for an automation plan.

What would you add to that? Yeah, I mean, there's, wow, there's a lot in there. And, you know, certainly I would say that, you know, you can add to that things like, you know, IT glue for your documentation side of that, because you've got to document all of that stuff, right? So you're going to need some kind of, you know, other tools are available. I obviously mentioned the IT glue.

There's a bunch of them out there that do the same thing. But, you know, some kind of tool like that, right? And then of course, you know, like you said, in terms of the PSA, there's a whole bunch of automation that's built right into the PSA tool itself. So, you know, right from when an alert comes in from the RMM tool, those, you know, how it flows all the way through the PSA tool, and you can automate that obviously then into different queues and different statuses, all those kinds of things. So even just within some inside the PSA tool itself, you know, there's a whole bunch of automation that you would do without even thinking about all the other core components outside of it.

So I have another fun question for you. Okay, speaking of the RMM tool, so we've got a lot of MSPs and they all rely on the RMM tool, right, to manage the multiple endpoints. What are your thoughts on whether or not the RMM tool is now a primary target for ransomware attacks for MSPs worldwide? And if so, if you do think that the RMM tools are a primary target because, you know, that's how a hacker can touch so many endpoints so quickly, all they have to do is get into one MSP's RMM tool. But if you do think that is one of their primary targets, do you think that that might be the end or the beginning of the end of RMM tools?

Wow, a lot of questions in there. Yeah, and I think, it's okay, it definitely is a target. And I mean, we've actually seen, you know, stories in the news recently about, you know, ransomware attacks on MSPs customers. So, you know, and some of those have been delivered through RMM tools, they've been packed into all that kind of stuff. So absolutely, I think they definitely are a target.

Is it the beginning of the end? I wouldn't say so, because I think, you know, most of the RMM vendors and, you know, MSPs themselves as well are always, well, at least we like to think we're always one step ahead of those hackers, right? So, you know, for every time one of those, the hackers or some kind of ransomware hits that, you know, we're always ahead of that, patching it, looking at other ways to secure those systems, all that kind of thing. So is it the beginning of the end? Probably not, because I think people will always need to use that kind of tool in order to deliver services to the customers.

Or you can go back to the old days, like I used to do and physically visit your customers and patch their machines in person or, you know, have somebody on site to do that. And that's just not cost effective for an MSP to do that. So absolutely, I definitely think those tools will still be around and I don't think they're going to go anywhere anytime soon. You know, I kind of agree with that. I mean, as of today, and this is, you know, 2020, I don't even know what we would replace them with, right?

Because the days of RDP are behind us. You know, nobody is opening up RDP because we've obviously learned that that is one way that people like to gain entry into the systems and that becomes really difficult to secure, even with a VPN. So people will still need to use some sort of remote management in order to be able to service their customers. You know, years ago, when we had GoToMyPC or, you know, remote desktop that, you know, we could just open up a remote desktop session, you know, type in an IP address and never give it another thought. Those days are gone.

So even though there are plenty of people out there probably targeting the RMM tools, because we've seen it, there have been a number of hits on MSPs and they gained access to their RMM tool. All of them, if they're not already, they should be enforcing multi-factor authentication so that you can't just get in with a password, you know, and your password should never be password one, two, three, four anymore, right? You know, so we can't use the same passwords anymore. We've got to have more secure systems. And I think that, you know, the IT community has really rallied around to make that happen.

So I'm with you. I think, you know, RMM's still gonna stick around for a few more years until somebody comes up with some other way to, by osmosis, patch a computer without touching a keyboard. Absolutely. You know, you mentioned multi-factor authentication and I think, you know, 90% of the tools, or certainly the good ones out there nowadays are actually forcing people to use some kind of MFA, right? So, you know, certainly the PSA tool, so, you know, ConnectWise or the task, you know, on the RMM sides, they're all making it mandatory now.

So, you know, you can't even use those tools without having some kind of two-factor or multi-factor authentication turned on. So, you know, and I think that's really good for the industry, right? Is everyone is securing these devices a lot more and securing these applications a lot more. So yeah, I think it's a long way off before we see these tools disappear. And, you know, but the good old days, I remember those good old days of like, go to my PC and all these kinds of things.

And those were fun times. But, you know, I definitely think times have changed a lot since then. So, a slightly random question, kind of actually completely, slightly off topic of what we've been talking about at the moment, although it is still kind of PSA type stuff. I've been interested in getting your thoughts on live time entry. So, you know, in terms of entering your time in real time, so to speak, right?

Or should an MSP retrospectively add their time at the end of the day? And I see you smiling on this. I mean, obviously people can't see us, we're on video, but I get a chuckle every time somebody asks me that as well. So, it would be interesting to get your take on what you think of live time entry, so to speak. So, this one is a fun question to answer.

So, thank you for that. Okay, so here's my thought on live time entry. And I'm just gonna use real live experience with this. I have the best intentions of entering time into my timesheet, and if I don't do it when I'm doing it, then, and if I wait till even two hours later, it's like, oh crap, who was I working on? What did I do?

How long did I do it for? Why didn't I write this down? You know, and now I'm going back into my calendar. Who did I talk to between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock? Oh, right, right, right.

And you know, and I might have done five different things during that 10 o'clock hour, and I'd be lucky if I remembered two of them. You know, that would be a successful day. So, I am a huge proponent of real time entry. Also, in addition to that, I would have to say that I am very task oriented, right? So, I know that I've got 20 things that I need to do today, and if I have those 20 things in my work list, then I can start to check them off one at a time.

I'll open up the time entry, I'll do the task, I'll close out the ticket, I'll move on to the next ticket. You know, that really helps keep me focused. I mean, my ADD will kick in, and I'm reading an email. Next thing I know, I'm on Reddit or Facebook, and wait a minute, what was I working on? You know, and back to my work list I go.

So, that work list and those tickets keep me focused and on task, and that may not work for everybody, but it sure works for me, because I would not, under any circumstances, try to remember. And people that try to reconstruct their time sheet at the end of the week, you know, like, okay, now you have 40 hours that you have to remember what you've done, you know, and good luck with that, but there's no way that I could do it. Yeah. Oh, I agree, and you know, I think, I think for any MSP, right, entering your time in real time or live, whatever you want to call it, you know, at the time you're doing the work is absolutely essential, right? Because, you know, how can you track your time accurately unless you're actually doing it here and now?

Like you said, you can't go at the end of the day, look in your calendar and go, well, you know, I might have blocked out a two hour meeting, but actually I was only on the call for an hour and a half for the customer. So you're never going to be able to accurately capture your time if you're not doing it there and then in real time. And, you know, I hear this question from so many MSPs all the time, and it's like, they can't seem to get it into their engineers' heads that, you know, time needs to be entered now. And like you say, you know, you've got the ticket work list set in products like Autotask, which is, I mean, it's an awesome feature because it sits, you know, on the right hand side of your screen, you can pop it out in a new window, your timers are just ticking, you know, you can pause them, you can do whatever you need to do. And, you know, so it's almost like there's really no excuse, right?

Because your timers are all there and everything that you're doing, every bit of work that you're doing has those timers there. And it's just a matter of stopping and starting the timer and then capturing that time. So, but it seems to be something really, really difficult for people to do. So it's really interesting to get your take on it. And I know, you know, a bunch of other people in the industry, you know, what their thoughts on it are.

So I'd be very interested for people to kind of contact us via our website. We have a system there where you can leave a message. Tell us what you guys think, right? In terms of, you know, how do you do it? Do you struggle to get your engineers to enter time live or should we call it real time, time entry, you know?

And do you guys as MSP owners, right, have problems with entering your time in real time? Because I think it's something that everybody seems to struggle with and yet the tools have the ability in there to make it so easy for us. And don't get me wrong, I'm, you know, I'm obviously not sitting here saying I'm perfect because I'm exactly like you are, Ray. And from time to time, you know, I sit down and I say, I have the timers ticking, but then something triggers me and I'm off on Reddit or I'm off on Facebook or somebody sends me a Teams message and I'm responding to that and the timer's still ticking and then I forget and I go for lunch and I do all these things. And so we're all the same and I think it's human nature.

But, you know, the tools are there, you know, right in front of us making our lives so easy to do. And I think people should actually start to use those a lot more. I cannot tell you how many times I've come in in the morning only to find that a ticket is still open and calculating time. And so now I've got 16 hours and the best I can do is what time did I leave the office yesterday? And I try to, you know, visualize the clock in my car.

Okay, I think I got into my car at 5.45 and so I'm gonna put in 5.30 as my stop time here for this particular ticket or, you know, whatever. But it happens, we're all human. Absolutely, absolutely. I think, you know, somebody should invent some kind of integration with big like, you know, fist that comes out of your screen and punches you in the face. Not you, but, you know, MSP, right?

As soon as you step away from your computer and haven't pressed the pause button, there's a, you know, one of those big spring loaded boxing gloves that kind of punches you in the face and tells you to capture your time, right? You know, we were just talking about that. I would love to have some sort of timer that like a bell goes off. Okay, you have been working on this task for 60 minutes. If you're still stuck somewhere, you know, stop what you're doing and go seek some help.

You know, there should be some sort of like alarm, you know, that how many texts do you know will, you know, go down a rabbit hole trying to solve a problem, you know, and not know how to get themselves out of it. And then they end up spending three or four hours, you know, trying to solve something that if they had just spoken to maybe a workmate, they could have solved the problem together a lot faster. So, but that would, I'll put that on my auto task wishlist for some future update. All right, so last question I have for you. All right, now I need you to get out your crystal ball for this because we're gonna kind of talk about the post COVID era vendors.

With all of the vendors, you know, merging together and turning into these big conglomerates, where do you think that's gonna leave the MSP in a post COVID era? Interesting question. Personally, well, I think this industry is gonna end up being, you know, there's three or four big vendors that are gonna pretty much own everybody, right? There's gonna be, and that's already happening, right? You've got these kind of three massive vendors that pretty much buying everybody else up.

So, and I think from the MSP space, I think we're gonna actually start to see that a lot more, you know, within the MSPs themselves, right? So you're gonna have, you know, the bigger companies potentially swallowing up the smaller companies, you know, and we're gonna end up in some kind of this new normal we kind of always talk about where there's gonna be, you know, not lots of small little one and two man shops running around, although there's a huge need for them. So I'm not saying they shouldn't be there. There's absolutely a need for them. But I think we're gonna see, you know, a lot more of those smaller guys kind of merging together and working together and potentially some of the really bigger guys getting together and, you know, either swallowing up those smaller guys or merging together.

So we're gonna have this industry where there's potentially gonna be, you know, three or four big vendors and then maybe 10, 12, maybe more, but you know, that kind of amount of really large kind of MSPs and then everybody else around that as well. So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting topic to talk about. And, you know, I certainly think if I can just expand on this a little bit as well in terms of, you know, all of these big vendors, right, they're all putting on all these events, right? So we're seeing all these events being canceled. So the likes of DattoCon and the likes of the CompTIA ChannelCon events, or certainly for 2020, I think pretty much they're gone.

And I think the future of these kinds of events will actually start to go online as well now. So I think even post COVID, how many people actually wanna go into a room with thousands of people coughing and sneezing on you, you know, even a year or two later, right, when everyone is supposedly better and everyone's had the, you know, has been injected or the vaccine or whatever the case might be, right? I still think people are gonna not wanna go into a room with thousands of people in those scenarios. So it's interesting times to see what will actually end up happening with those events as well. You know, I agree.

I'm not sure how anxious anybody, and as much as, and you hear the road warriors out there, they're like, oh, I can't wait to get back out and, you know, see all of my friends and, you know, and start traveling again. I know that I had a number of travel plans this year. You know, I was gonna go to DattoCon and I was doing all five of the Channel Pro shows this year, you know, one in different cities. And I am going to miss the travel, but I'm not sure how quickly the world will rebound from this, even though you may be out on the road, I don't know how many of your friends are gonna show up and hop on a plane and wear the masks to get onto the plane and, you know, keep your face, you know, covered for three hours while you travel across the country. I don't know how many people are gonna be interested in doing that.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the wearing of the masks, of course, but, you know, it's incredibly uncomfortable. It's hard to breathe, you know, unless you're a doctor that you, you know, or some medical staff that you have the right type of mask. You know, some of the cloth masks makes it very difficult to breathe, and I'm extremely claustrophobic and the masks just sent me into a panic. And so, you know, I find them very hard, you know, to sustain. So if I, if it means wearing a mask at DattoCon, I'm probably not gonna go to DattoCon, you know, as much as I love seeing all of my friends and all of the vendors and all of the shows and everything, I think it's a fabulous event.

It's, I'm gonna have to think long and hard about that. And I think more so for you guys, actually, because, I mean, obviously, you know, over that side of the pond, right? I mean, your country is humongous. And so for you guys to go from one side of the US to the other, you've gotta get on an airplane and fly, right, and you've gotta be in the air for at least six or seven hours. You know, at least in the UK, you know, we're so small, we can, although it's not that easy to drive around and park, but, you know, it's easier for us to get somewhere in very short space of time, a lot easier than it is for you guys.

So, you know, I think certainly, although most people in the UK just, you know, they do take trains and they're always on some kind of public transport because it's incredibly difficult to find parking in the bigger cities and all that kind of stuff. But I think it is easier because we're a smaller country, it's easier for us to just get in a car and go somewhere. So, you know, some of the events that are at places that are out of the bigger cities where parking isn't so much of a problem, I think we'll start to see a lot more of those as well, certainly in the UK. But I think, yeah, from a US perspective, I mean, you guys, you know, you're traveling all over the place to every other state or all over the place all the time. And, you know, it's not so easy for you guys to just get in a car and drive from one state to the other because it takes you three days to get there.

So, you know, so I think, and I think people will still do it though. I think there will still be a lot of people that will just, you know, they love going to events and I'm one of those people, I love going to the events because I love seeing people face to face. I'm really disappointed that I couldn't get a chance to go to DattoCon this year because I really wanted to kind of have a beer with some people, you know, and just shoot the breeze and chat. And, you know, you and I are looking at each other now over Zoom on camera, but it's just not the same, right? It's not the same as actually being there face to face, having a beer with somebody.

So I think that there is still a place for those, but I think there'll be a lot less and there'll be a lot less people wanting to do that. And it's difficult to drink a beer with a mask on as well, so. Yeah, that's very true. And you're probably right, you know, maybe there won't be 3,000 partners at the next DattoCon or the next IT Nation. And maybe the Channel Pro and the ASCII events where, you know, you're really limited to, you know, one to 200 people per show and you have these little micro shows, you know, all around the country.

And, you know, Datto used to do that. They used to call it Datto Roadshows, you know, where they would go to these different cities, you know, and bring in the partners that were local to that city. And, you know, so for the next couple of years, perhaps the live events are going to look like that more than the big 3,000 partners, four-day event, you know, Microsoft Inspire or CompTIA's ChannelCon and, you know, all of those enormous events, you know, maybe they just don't get on hold for the next couple of years and then they start to branch out and perhaps, you know, do the micro events and the roadshows. Yeah, I mean, I sincerely hope not because I, you know, I do love traveling myself, right? And this year, actually, I had set aside that this was going to be the year of travel, right?

We were going to come to DattoCon, we were going to go to ChannelCon, the CompTIA event, and all of those have now been canceled. So we're kind of not really going anywhere or certainly not for the remainder of this year. So who knows what will happen next year? You know, hopefully we'll get a chance to come over because, you know, you guys have all the fun, right? That's where all the cool events are and all the big events.

So, you know, we've got to come over there at some point and get back to normal, whatever that looks like. Hopefully next year. Absolutely. Oh, Rae-Ann, this has been so much fun talking about all this stuff. It really was.

You know, it's really cool to kind of interview each other and get each other's thoughts on these. So, you know, if there's any of our listeners out there that want to comment on this, you know, as we always say, we do have all the socials. We're on Facebook, on Twitter. You know, if you go to our website at psaimpact.net, you can actually leave us a message. So if there's anything you want us to talk about or anything you want to discuss or anything you agree with or disagree with, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

We'd love to know what you guys think. So, you know, yeah, reach out to us. So really, Rae-Ann, all that's left for me to say now is your PSA is the key to your MSP success. So go out and make an impact on your world today. Thanks, everybody.

Bye. Thanks. Cheers, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on PSA Impact. We hope you've learned something and that you'll join us next time when we answer new questions posed by our listeners.