‘We talk about the tools. We talk about threats. We talk about uptime and Microsoft Azure going down and tickets exploding. What we never talk about is the human cost to the people doing the work,’ says Joe Ussia, co-founder of MSP Well.
In a conference breakout session, three channel executives stepped away from talk of tools, tickets and evolving threats to discuss burnout, panic attacks and the increasing mental strain behind cyber defense.
The new community, MSP Well, was formally launched at CRN parent company The Channel Company’s XChange March conference in Orlando this week, as a free peer-support network for any and all professionals in the channel.
“We were standing in a pool at an industry event, just talking about how stressed we were,” said Joe Ussia, co-founder of MSP Well. “I’m coming from the MSP side, James is coming from the vendor side. And we looked at each other and said, ‘Why has nobody done anything about mental health in the IT channel?’”
Co-founders Ussia, president and CEO of Infinite IT Solutions; James Mignacca, CEO of Canadian vendor Cavelo; and Miguel Ribeiro, founder of VBS IT Services, with a host of board members of familiar faces in the IT industry, said the initiative behind MSP Well is to address the “hidden human cost of cyber defense.”
“We talk about the tools. We talk about threats. We talk about uptime and Microsoft Azure going down and tickets exploding,” Ussia said. “What we never talk about is the human cost to the people doing the work.
“I’m a workaholic,” he added. “My friends tell me that all the time. I have this huge fear of things failing. So I obsess over the details. Are customer environments secure? Did tickets get responded to in time? Is everything running smoothly? Our customers rely on us to keep their operations running. That stress lands squarely on our shoulders. MSP Well is kind of like AA for stress. We need to remove the stigma around mental health so we can prop each other up as a community.”
And those mental health challenges don’t just affect individuals. They can directly impact job performance and the health of the business, contributing to slower incident response, higher turnover and experienced professionals leaving the industry.
During the session, Mignacca shared a personal story of how untreated trauma and anxiety almost derailed his life. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I had PTSD,” he said.
The stress eventually manifested physically when Mignacca went numb on one side of his body. He thought he was having a heart attack and quickly went to the emergency room. Ultimately, he wasn’t having a heart attack but a panic attack.
“I never realized a panic attack could affect you so physically,” he said, adding that he soon fell into a depressive episode.
“I couldn’t get out of bed,” he said. “People don’t realize, it’s not just a feeling. You physically can’t move. I was in my house alone thinking, ‘This is the worst feeling I’ve ever had.’”
For him, therapy became a turning point.
“Therapy is like going to the gym,” he said. “It’s not like you fix one problem and you’re done. Life has speed bumps. You need the tools.
“It’s about being vulnerable enough that others feel safe to open up,” he added. “When you do that, it’s amazing. You realize you’re not alone.”
Ribeiro shared his own story about how a severe concussion in 2012 left him bedridden with panic attacks.
“I couldn’t even speak for five days,” he said. “After that came severe panic attacks. My hands went numb, my legs went numb, heart palpitations, nausea. I thought I was dying.”
For a month, he went to the hospital multiple times a week, convinced he was having a heart attack. Like Mignacca, he too was having a panic attack.
“If you’re struggling with anxiety, stress or burnout, it won’t get better on its own,” Ribeiro said. “You need to take action. Being aware is the first step. Leveraging a group like MSP Well…that’s a huge mission toward helping others who are struggling.”
At the heart of MSP Well is the channel community, Ussia said, positioning the initiative as a place for peers to support one another.
“This community is you,” he said. “We’re here to help each other.”
Going forward, resources around MSP Well will include a Discord community, a blog, an anonymous call line and partnerships with certified counselors.
Travis Woods, CEO of San Francisco-based Fort Point IT, said seeing the room full of MSPs was reassuring.
“It shows that this is an issue that is shared among the community,” he said. “This is an opportunity to relate and help each other.”