Before he was leading a fast-growing managed service provider, Ray Coffin led soldiers. As a former Platoon Sergeant and Tank Commander in the Vermont Army National Guard, and later Master Sargeant and network security instructor, Coffin spent more than two decades mastering discipline, accountability, and teamwork—the same principles he now applies as president of All-Access Infotech. The New Hampshire- and Vermont-based MSP he founded in 2008 is growing 20% year over year.
In this conversation with MSP Success, Coffin shares how those early lessons from the field translate into practical growth strategies for MSPs, the importance of peer groups for growing business acumen, and why he believes an AI-driven future offers some of the biggest opportunities yet.
MSP Success: What are the top three growth indicators that you use to measure your company?
Ray Coffin: One of the growth indicators is monthly reoccurring revenue, obviously, and then the second one being our project services, and then our gross profit.
MSP Success: What’s one secret to your success over the past few years?
Coffin: Being in the TMT peer group and networking with other members has been the biggest success [factor] because they always offer up what I call the “blind spots.” You’re not really seeing something and somebody else will say, “hey, did you try this?” All of a sudden, it’s like whatever you were stuck on or didn’t think about starts working.
MSP Success: Have you found that peer advice has had a measurable impact on your growth?
Coffin: Yes, absolutely. When I first started, and this goes way back, pre-TMT, [a peer helped with] trying to think about what a managed services plan would look like and then figuring out what a contract would look like. I had the idea, but some other people had already started doing it, so they had helped us grow and build that model and filled in some of the areas we didn’t quite understand.
We joined the TruMethods TruPeer peer group two years ago to understand more on the operational side. We did get plenty of information with TMT about marketing and campaigns and other business areas, but working with TruPeer, we started to see how to build a service delivery organization. That was important as the next stage of growth.
MSP Success: What were some of the biggest challenges related to your growth over the past year or so?
Coffin: Some of the challenges that we’ve seen are not just customers taking longer [to close deals]. We also saw bigger national MSPs come into this rural area and start to market and work with some of our clients because they seem to have a different appeal. So that was a challenge. People are always a challenge, finding talented people. And then the last biggest challenge that we’ve had in this area is the migration of small businesses. They’re just closing up, moving elsewhere, or they become more boutique or micro businesses. So [a business with] 20 people in the office before, now with automation and cloud tools there could be five people in that same office today. That’s a trend that we’ve seen in our market.
MSP Success: What have you been doing to combat those challenges?
Coffin: We’re certainly looking at automation as one of the ways that we’re working to address that challenge. Being more mindful of the costs for our tool sets is another. And then marketing into other areas outside our normal small towns and trying to look at different verticals or different areas that may be experiencing growth.
MSP Success: Has there been a vendor or a tool that’s been instrumental in getting your business to where it is today?
Coffin: I don’t think there’s any single tool that I could point to as the reason we’ve gotten to where we are today. Working one-on-one with the operational training team through TruPeer has been incredibly valuable in helping us establish the right KPIs for our service delivery. That, in turn, has given us the insight to ensure we have the right staffing levels—and it’s been immensely helpful in moving our business forward.
MSP Success: Who is the most impactful business leader whose techniques or leadership style you might try to emulate and why?
Coffin: We have our team read [Jocko Willink’s] Extreme Ownership; it’s part of our core values. [With my military background], Jocko is probably the one that would be the most influential. I wish I had his style. I do like his material and holding people accountable and setting up delegation. When you have a challenging issue, you try to remain calm, work out the details, get your people to self-manage and hold themselves accountable.
MSP Success: Are there lessons that you learned in your military service that you apply to your business?
Coffin: Yeah, you’re never done. I’m never done. Sometimes you just have to keep moving, take action, work with others. Don’t misjudge people you work with. There might be some surprises; sometimes you get the answers from people you wouldn’t expect.
And don’t pass up on opportunity; a lot of that is tied back to training that I did in the military. You’re always trying to better yourself; you’re always trying to keep seeking knowledge. Those are things that they instill in you early on.
MSP Success: Is there a lesson you learned that really helped you with your growth?
Coffin: Yeah, it’s a tough lesson, but hold yourself to the standards that you put out there. If it’s something we need to bill for, we bill for. You want to do right by your client, but you can’t give too much away. The other part is make sure you maintain multiple relationships within your customers. Make sure that more than one person knows what services you provide, what value you provide. So when the key player that you’ve been working with leaves the business, you still have an inside advocate or a champion of your services. They know what you do. Make sure that when that key player leaves you have a process in place to re-onboard yourself.
MSP Success: What advice would you give to MSPs that are just getting started in the business?
Coffin: I would definitely be thinking AI and cloud first. In an AI or cloud-first economy, and you’re new, you don’t have the same restrictions that some of us have that have been in business for a long time. Explore those new opportunities and build different types of solutions and packages based on how the companies are doing business today. There’s going to be a whole different set of solutions in the way we approach the problem of supporting small business.
I’m really excited about AI. I think it’s the biggest game changer that’s going to come along. I’m hoping to be able to instill that excitement in my team and the customers we work with.
If you missed our last MSP Spotlight, see From Metrics to Filet Mignon: How Doug Bates Builds a Purpose-Driven MSP
