Next Level Pros - #133: Increasing 30% year over year with no marketing? Will it still work?

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Welcome to a new episode of Next Level Pros! Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Josh Bucio and Carter Romero, the founders of Urban Oasis, a thriving landscaping and outdoor construction bus...iness based in Texas. In this episode, we dive deep into their entrepreneurial journey, the challenges they've faced, and their ambitious plans for the future. Apply to be on the show: https://forms.gle/hwDijQPFyKCEtHNs8  Highlights: "Paid advertising should be your number one generator for business. Where most business owners get it wrong is they pump the brakes on this once they get too much business” "Mentorship and understanding marketing are key for us." "If we increase the price 10% we're not losing 10% right? Which is perfect, like and, and that's a key thing for anybody to understand, that's watching this or listening to this, is just how valuable an additional dollar is to the business owner versus the customer." "Creating a strong company culture with clear values has been a big focus for us." Timestamps: 00:00 Paid Advertising as a Business Generator 02:20 Urban Oasis - Background and Growth 05:00 Early Days - Hands-on Work and Expansion 09:21 Deciding to Go All-In on the Business 12:06 Current Team Size and Challenges 15:48 5-Year Vision and Growth Plans 21:11 Marketing Quadrants and Strategies 25:00 Importance of Paid Advertising 32:23 Pricing Strategy and Profit Margins 38:46 Scaling Considerations and Overhead 47:39 Integrating Sales and Marketing 57:19 Lessons Learned from Next Level Pros Looking to scale your business? Want to learn directly from the same team that helped me sell my last business for 9 figures? Click this link below to check out how you can work with us. https://nextlevelhomepros.com/grow-home-service-vsl  Join my community - Founder Acceleration ⁠https://www.founderacceleration.com  ⁠ Apply for our next Mastermind: h⁠ttps://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⁠  Golf with Chris: h⁠ttps://www.golfwithchris.com ⁠  Watch my latest Podcast Apple- ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281S ⁠ Spotify- ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2 ⁠ YouTube - @thefounderspodcast

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Paid advertising should be your number one generator for business. Where most business owners get it wrong is they pump the brakes on this once they get too much business. 50 grand a month, does that scare you? Yeah, I mean that's scary. Marketing is scary. Like, business is done revenue. I mean, my brain is like, oh, we can handle that very fast. Right.
Starting point is 00:00:20 But Aiden Allen's scary, I think. Yeah, and if you're not used to doing it, it should be scary, right? We have two Quadrants unexplored. I'm curious to see, like, hey, if paid Quadrant 2 is the highest ROI, we've never nibbled at it. What does that mean if we actually put a lot of our time and focus into Quadrant 2? And then back to Darrell's point, like, it's a domino effect because we pay marketing to get clients, but then those clients are going to do our same concept, which is referrals.
Starting point is 00:00:46 So it really is a domino effect. So I am very curious on that. Everybody, welcome to another episode of Next Level Pros. Today we have Carter and Josh. They flew in here from Austin. Super excited to be diving in and talking about their business. They're building a pretty sweet business down in Texas. Urban Oasis is the name. It's a landscaping business, correct?
Starting point is 00:01:17 Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So thank you so much for being here with us too. Very excited to be here. Carl and I just flew in from Austin at a 4am flight. But yeah, so we, Urban Oasis, we actually do design and build. So it started more of landscaping and we've built it out to do outdoor construction. In general, that's what it's at now. Excited to kind of see where it's going. But over time, started as landscaping and now it's outdoor construction and in big terms, it's design and build. Nice. So you guys are on pace to close out the year right we're sitting in December close out about 6.3 million is that right? Right. Cool. What kind of margins are you running on that business? We're at 22%. 22% so 22 net what is so
Starting point is 00:01:59 for those that are listening and just understanding the difference so net is obviously what you take home at the end of the day, you know, considering ad backs, you know, some of that's going into inventory or whatnot. Gross margins, what's what you guys is gross margins right now? So we're closer to like 58% on gross. Okay, so what I am seeing, I just want to just check you real quick. It looks like I'm seeing a gross margin of about 40%. So, yeah, 58% cost of goods sold, 42%. Got it.
Starting point is 00:02:35 Got it. Gross margin. Sweet. Sweet. And so, you guys have built this business, I know, just kind of bootstrapped this thing from the ground up, right? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Josh and I are originally just friends from middle school.
Starting point is 00:02:51 And yeah, it's been a wild ride since then. We connected just through sports and our love for entrepreneurship. We were super good friends in high school, played sports together there, started a mowing company at that point. We went to college, so I went to UChicago, Josh went to A&M, and then COVID hit and that brought us back home. So we're basically just sitting at home like, okay, we've got 24 hours a day of time and we've got five hours of Zoom calls going on a day. We can put it on 2x speed and basically just
Starting point is 00:03:23 have the whole day of opportunity. So at that point, I'm just looking into, I'm just cleaning out a closet at that point and I come across a bunch of checks from our old mowing clients and I just call them down the list and I'm like, oh, hey, man, remember us, we did your line when we were in high school. And, you know, I called 22 of them. One of them calls us back and says, yeah, man, I've got a pathway for you. So at that point, Josh and I just load up my parents' car basically with materials from Home Depot. We don't know about this.
Starting point is 00:03:52 And we just basically go and install a pathway based on YouTube education and my parents' car. So yeah, we do that one. They're happy with the final result. We begged them for a Facebook review and say, hey, ma'am, please post this up to your friends. We really want to do this. This is something exciting for our future
Starting point is 00:04:09 that we could possibly carry on. They post us. We get one other person to call us. We go out there, we do a killer job. They post us and we go viral. So at this point we get 50 calls in a day. I'm out just doing what we do. Oh Josh. This is taking off Do you and what are you guys doing at this point? Like what kind of jobs? This is just pathway work
Starting point is 00:04:32 So basically like you mean stalling like installing just bricks to make a pathway putting down squares of sod in people's backyards just doing random and Yeah, like I said, we had no background in this we just wanted to be entrepreneurs and we were excited about it. And yeah, people started demanding new services of us. And somebody says, can you do turf? And we say, yeah. Can you do masonry? Okay, sure. And we just start taking on jobs. And like I said, the phone was ringing off the hook. And so we start calling our friends and say, okay, the first thing we need to do right now is get people on the on site to help us. So we had a few of our friends and say, okay, the first thing we need to do right now is get people on the on site to help us. So we had a few of our friends that luckily were in the area
Starting point is 00:05:07 that could help us out. We start driving around and find some contractors that can do stuff. We're asking landscape suppliers, you know, do you have anybody that you can point our direction? So the first couple jobs, are you guys doing this on your own? Yeah, actually the first couple years it was, I mean, I'm saying you guys are physically doing the labor and the first couple of years. Oh man, we did a lot of work. So beginning we were on our hands and knees Spreading manure in people's yards with zoom earbuds in getting called on and I'm telling Josh Hey, dude, please turn off the bulldozer. I've got to answer this question Love it cuz at that point to clarify we were still in school. Yeah, okay in a nap
Starting point is 00:05:42 He was in you Chicago. So while we ramped it up, Carter mentioned like, Hey, we have so much time in our hands. Sorry. So you guys, you guys moved back home because of COVID. Right, right. So that's right. Yeah. So yeah, right. So sorry, I was off track in the beginning. So basically to restart that Josh and our friends growing up, we went to high school together. Then we separated for college. I went to U Chicago. Josh was at A&M and COVID hits and they say you've got to go do Online school now we don't have a campus anymore. So that's when I moved home Josh moved home We're back in Austin and at that point I was bored
Starting point is 00:06:13 I was going through the closet calling the checks on our old mowing clients checks and That's when I was asking them. Hey, do you have any work for us? So at that point, yeah, one person called us back We did that job fast forward five years, you know, we had gone through hell and back building up a team of specialists and that kind of brings us to where we're at now. So how many, how many calls did you go through to get that one return? It was 22 initial calls and I got one guy and that job was 360 bucks. And then that spiraled into? That spiraled. And it was really lucky, lucky honestly because we just had really good vibes.
Starting point is 00:06:46 Just hey, we do good work. I mean we're just trying to be outside really because everything was indoors and we hate being indoors. So we started doing that and then what really kind of universe, anything that you can call it luck, really brought us into this lady who posted and then that's what went viral is her post. And then at that point when we had people calling we're like, well, maybe this could be a real business.
Starting point is 00:07:08 But we still at that point didn't know if it was or not until we started actually like doing more jobs, starting to see a little bit more money come in. We posted on our Instagram personal Instagram. It was like, hey, who from who's here from our high school pretty much. So we started getting people up. What caused her post to go viral was she had a lot of followers or just a local person who had local friends that knew you guys? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:29 So we were actually physically working on that job and she respected that we were outside on our hands and knees. She happened to own a remodeling business herself. So I think she knew how to engineer the perfect review to get a lot of impressions. And she posted on an app called Nextdoor app, which has an element of virality that others may not and so it's all neighborhood driven so if one neighborhood hypes it up then the next few closer neighborhoods get that post expanded to them and so it went to 50 something neighborhoods and in those neighborhoods that's where the funds started ringing. That's awesome. Yeah it's
Starting point is 00:08:00 awesome. Year one what would you guys close the books at? How much revenue? So we actually started in summer of 2020. So for those six month period, it was about like almost 400K for the first six months. And then I guess if you would call that year one, that would be around that much. Cause we only had the last six months of the year. And at what point did you decide,
Starting point is 00:08:23 Hey, this is a real business. We're gonna start working on it. It was kind of honestly, natural organic growth that we only had the last six months of the year and at what point did you decide? Hey, this is a real business. We're gonna start working on it It was kind of honestly natural organic growth that we first had because we were excited to see money that at that point We've never seen before so we're like getting 40 grand a month. We're like, whoa, what this is nice What else can we do with it? The more we grew was more people called more services were into us. And Cordon and I have always been entrepreneurs literally since, I mean, in high school, we were 13 years old cutting grass instead of going to the mall.
Starting point is 00:08:50 So that whole time we've always had that back end entrepreneur, we've had other businesses that didn't work with COVID, but in our head, we saw landscaping not just like, oh, go work outside. We saw like, hey, it could be a business. How do we actually like make it into something bigger than that? But at what point did you decide to go all in on it, give up school, give up
Starting point is 00:09:10 those type of things? It's probably maybe probably March 2021. Really started really kind of cooking up where we're now hitting at that point, maybe 80 K per month. And then we're having a lot of people come in. So at this point maybe we have 10 people carting out of Seoul doing the labor and managing the jobs, ordering material, doing all that stuff. But I would say that around that point, I know exactly when we hit 100k on our first month, which I think was May 2021. So our first 100k month.
Starting point is 00:09:42 When you're doing this, I mean, you you guys are doing you guys are the salespeople labor Everything right right? Yeah, so you guys are making quite a bit of this is just turning the profit That was probably our highest margins. Honestly at that point it kind of yeah over time we grow into a business But yeah at that point we're doing everything and then we were just kind of get people out there to help us actually knew the jobs Yeah, I will say it wasn't an efficient process like we didn't have the best suppliers at that point We didn't know how to sell jobs correctly. And so there were elements of under bidding or under charging or overcharging in that time. So it was all over the place. It was super unpredictable. And say like that first three years, we had no idea how much we were
Starting point is 00:10:16 really making until the P&Ls came out. Yeah, for sure. So what point did you say, hey, we need more help? We need guys that actually know what they're doing. Or did you learn most of this just through trial and error? Or what was your like your biggest mentors in building this thing? Yeah, it was a lot of trial and error for sure at the beginning, just like knowing new services. I mean, not knowing.
Starting point is 00:10:37 So the first maybe two years was only landscape. So it wasn't too much crazy stuff. I mean, it's not rocket science. I mean, hey, put soil inside. I mean, hey put soil inside Like we learned that on YouTube and it was pretty easy to do But I've always had a really good personality on like really like talking to people and since I speak English and Spanish I was able to like really navigate into like finding guys to like really know what they're doing So at one point we had two guys that really know everything about landscaping.
Starting point is 00:11:05 Like they would do that in their own, but they didn't know sales. So that's when we kind of started seeing like, hey, this is a big niche, especially in Texas. There's so much work. Some houses are huge over there. So these guys know what they're doing. Carter and I are always been entrepreneurs and that kind of merged us into like, hey, let's get new services. How do we get that? Well, let me talk to everybody. So I'm always talking, talking, talking, trying to find who does the right kind of service. And that's kind of where it started. Very cool. Very cool. So fast forward to December of 2024 right now. Right. So you guys are pacing, going to be doing about six, two, six, three million this year, which is awesome.
Starting point is 00:11:46 Fantastic. Nice work on building that out. What are the biggest struggles that you guys are dealing with? How big is your team now? So our team right now, we have about 21 people that work with us. We now have architects, head designers, accountants,ants finance managers just a lot of internal Kind of back-end team members and then we work with a lot of Contractors and subcontractors so on a weekly basis we work with maybe 50 people for a week nice. So that's
Starting point is 00:12:23 That's the amount of employees like whatever. What are the biggest things that are that are holding you up now? I would say from my end, I do a lot of the admin work. One is getting the right kind of people into the team. We actually had maybe two or three hires that we just got into three months ago that we thought were going to be a great fit. But now actually seeing them implemented into the team, they just didn't work out. So finding the right people that would stay because we wanted them to stay, it was as NSU
Starting point is 00:12:48 been pretty challenging. Yeah on that on my end I would say it's the custom nature of our projects. Like it's kind of hard to scale whenever every project is so customized to the project to the clients needs. So you know if you're envisioning like a painting right, if you can just stamp the same template painting over and over, that's a lot easier to create a lot of paintings than a custom painting every time. So I'm trying to find a way to standardize some of the processes and the projects themselves within Urban Oasis. I think the commercial route is one that we definitely want to pursue,
Starting point is 00:13:16 the maintenance route is one that we want to pursue. There's a lot less interpretation within those sides. For sure, I mean there's a lot of different ways you can make money in that business, right? And so like really defining who you are, what you say yes to and what you say no to. So what are some things that you guys are currently saying no to that allow you to really focus on who urban Oasis is? Two small projects. That's one that we used to have a hard time doing.
Starting point is 00:13:42 We used to just want every project that we could get our hands on. That caused a lot of issues. $350. Yeah, no more of projects. That's one that we used to have a hard time doing. We used to just want every project that we could get our hands on. That's a lot of issues. $350. Yeah, no more of those. Yeah, what would you say is your smallest project you'll do? $10,000 right now. It's dynamic. We kind of adjusted just on a quarterly basis or so. But yeah, right now it's about $10,000. Last year our average project cost was around $26k and we're trying to get over 100k into next year. And a lot of that is word of mouth like we discussed earlier. Like if you do a really big project, they're going to tell friends that are in that similar niche and same goes opposite.
Starting point is 00:14:15 So once we start taking on more larger projects, we think that it's going to be easier to stay in that niche for sure. Plus now our infrastructure is able to hold that. Like we have now internal designers, architects, now we can incorporate pools into our projects, which that's a huge revenue change for us next year that we haven't done anything yet on that. So we're excited for that. And then, yeah, on the challenges side,
Starting point is 00:14:41 yeah, like smaller jobs have been pretty hard to handle just because of it's limited time that we have now. Like, hey, there's a hundred people that are interested from that maybe a couple say yes, but how many can we actually fit? To Carter's point, like it's getting harder and harder to, yeah, we need another crew, okay, that means another truck, another trailer, another foreman, we need more actual labor in the team. So it kind of compiles into, you know, everything we expand, then everybody needs to expand
Starting point is 00:15:10 per crew because we manage everything on a crew basis. So what would you say the the five-year vision is for Urban Oasis? Like who is Urban Oasis? What do they do? How big are they? Like what? Yeah, we actually had talked about this and we have meetings with our team to kind of always go over that and emphasize it. But our biggest, biggest mission for the next five years, we do have like a one, three and five,
Starting point is 00:15:36 but for the five year, we wanna be in 30 million revenue is where we're targeting and expanding to three states, 10 cities. So that's kind of like our big picture plan on how to grow that and then who we are. In general, like we have a ton of really really good reviews on. The experience that we provide to the client is a lot different. So when we first started and the kind of answer the question is, contractors in general and I'm talking in Texas because that's kind of where we're at contractors in general and I'm talking in Texas because
Starting point is 00:16:05 that's kind of where we're at has always been very like of a negative connotation where no one texts you back you have to text three people and then only one answers and then they show up late our whole whole entire mission since we started which is why we really grow out has been our communication is literally on point every time if we say hey our ETA is 105 p.m. we show up literally at 105 and we're there on point every time. If we say, hey, our ETA is 1 0 5 PM, we show up literally at 1 0 5 and we're there on time. We text the clients, we're always there. So the whole experience they get from one,
Starting point is 00:16:32 that communication and then two, the team that we actually like are growing are all very similar to us. Like we all have very similar values. Our energies are the same, very clean and presentable as always we try to do. So I feel like clients, especially high-end clients, feel really comfortable. Us being in their house for two months.
Starting point is 00:16:49 I mean, these are very wealthy people. They have their kids there. They feel safer with us in that kind of context. So on the big, big picture is 30 million in revenue getting to 10 cities in three states and then always providing a full design and build experience where the whole time the client knows, hey, these guys got my back. So that's kind of like who we want to portray at all times. So when you say 10 cities, is that like 10 different locations physically? Right. Yeah. Right. So 10 cities. yeah, I mean, right now we have Austin
Starting point is 00:17:25 in San Antonio and then Dallas is on the works. We actually have a couple of jobs lined up that I'm actually gonna go do myself in Dallas just to kind of get the infrastructure kind of set up. But yeah, it's cities right now. So Texas right now. So question for you, I mean, I love the goal of 30 million or whatnot.
Starting point is 00:17:46 Like why so many cities, I mean, at that many cities, it's only 3 million per location. Right, yeah, that's kind of a question about market share, right, like that we've had is do we want to grow three locations to 10 million or is it easier to grow 10 locations to 3 million? In our experience, the climb to 3 million was a lot easier than the climb from 3 million to 6 million. In our experience, the climb to three million was a lot easier than the climb from three million to six million. And that's a lot of a result of partnerships that we have. Like we'll work with different home builders or design companies or you know, whatever it may be. And we think that we can establish that group relatively quickly to get to three million per location rather than trying to build this out. Because we've we've
Starting point is 00:18:22 talked about it for sure. Like do we try to build us into the 30 million goal? It's possible, but it's gonna be super challenging. So that's kind of the logic there. We are open-minded though to deviating from that. We're brand new in San Antonio. We're starting Dallas here pretty soon. And so as we take root in those areas, we're just gonna.
Starting point is 00:18:38 So what do you view as the negatives of doing this strategy of going to 10 locations? Definitely the hiring and training is going to be a super tricky one. I think establishing a reputation is easier said than done. You know, a lot of these partners are nationwide and so we are banking on that a lot for this strategy. So hopefully our reputation kind of progresses with us in these locations and these relationships do stand but definitely something that's gonna be tricky Yeah, it seems like your your customers like a one-time customer most of the time. Yep. Yeah, we have I think we Calculated roughly maybe about five to ten percent of the clients come back for phase twos
Starting point is 00:19:18 But since we are a full design and build You do your job and then I mean you're not gonna add a second pool to your house or a second deck and outdoor kitchen. So usually clients either are one-timers, they do the entire thing or they're like hey my master plan is this we design that for them and then we do like hey phase one this year they kind of save get the budget up and then we come back and do phase two. But in general it's only one master plan per client. How are you guys getting most your new clients? It's word of mouth right now.. How are you guys getting most of your new clients? It's word of mouth right now. Yes. We're going to launch a marketing team. Um,
Starting point is 00:19:50 but we we've started it. They're just kind of compiling data on what the best marketing sources are going to be, but we're actually going to allocate a budget starting January and what percentage are residential versus like commercial projects? It's probably an 85 15 split 85% residential yet you're not doing any marketing. Correct. Right. It's probably an 85 15 split 85 percent residential right? Yeah, you're not doing any marketing, correct, right? So a lot of the other Kind of clients do come from a lot of partnerships that we have. Yeah, we have really good partners who are designers custom homebuilders
Starting point is 00:20:16 Pool companies that don't do landscape So we do kind of integrate with other companies and then we're kind of now their go-to for like hey I just design a beautiful three million dollar home, right, but they don't do the landscape. They only do the house, right? They're like hey urbanizes come in do everything outside get my COI and then kind of be good cool Well, let's let's jump over to the screen share I'm gonna share a couple things just based on what you've shared with me so far just to better understand So back behind you I got it Set up so like right now, you guys, so tomorrow,
Starting point is 00:20:49 we're actually gonna be doing a little bit of a workshop, right, so you guys are in town. We're gonna be covering a marketing workshop in which we dive in. And so you guys are hanging out a lot in quadrant three and four of marketing. So quadrant four of marketing. So quadrant quadrant four is
Starting point is 00:21:08 referrals So there's essentially four different types of marketing right so you got You got organic which is quadrant one You got paid which is quadrant two Quadrant three is affiliate. Quadrant four is referral. So you guys are basically all your business is affiliate and referrals. Is that correct?
Starting point is 00:21:39 Right. Right. And so I mean, affiliates are fantastic relationships. Now, depending on what industry you're in, those can sometimes be more expensive than, you know, because you have to give like some big discount to a builder or whatever. And they be right in what they don't want to do the project for your typical high end stuff. How much of your stuff is for builders right now?
Starting point is 00:22:09 Maybe 10 or 15 percent. So not huge. No, not huge. We try to diversify We don't want anyone taking a big chunk of that, right? So a lot of your affiliates you said are just Design companies. What else? Cool builders new home builders Yeah, I think that's the primary buckets nice Nice, nice. And then referrals, what percentage is coming from referrals? Probably 40%. Maybe not necessarily from referrals. I would say the 40% is just our online presence in general, people going to the websites, people telling their friends or Google reviews, whatever it is. So when I think about like your strategy of getting to 30 million. I think what you're saying is correct
Starting point is 00:22:47 that the first 3 million is pretty easy to get to with your current strategy from a marketing standpoint, because you have like this established bucket of affiliates that you know that you can go and to get the low hanging fruit up to 3 million per location is probably fairly easy. Now, the cool thing is like you have all these other avenues to be able to go and market that you're missing out on, especially if 85% of your business is to end users, which is B2C, right? Directly to the consumer, you said 85%.
Starting point is 00:23:26 Right, yep. And so, like, there is a huge opportunity, right now you're in, you said what, Austin and where? And San Antonio. Austin and San Antonio, just those two cities. Correct. Okay, and those are, you know, what, an hour away from each other?
Starting point is 00:23:41 Yeah. Hour and a half. An hour and a half, yeah. Okay, got it. So, Austin and San Antonio, what's the population of Austin? Well, now with the outskirts, so it is Austin and a one-hour radius. So that compiles like a lot of cities, not just Austin, just to clarify. Yep. But yeah, maybe 1.2 million. Okay. San Antonio's even bigger. Chad, GBT that for us there. Let's see what we've got.
Starting point is 00:24:06 So population of Austin Metro and population of San Antonio Metropolitan. Be interesting to know. So, you know, when I hear 1.2 million and, you know, the target is only 3 million per location, I think like, man, there's a lot more opportunity, especially if you can figure out how to market and sell to these people and You know the the downside I know you talked about downside of like having ten locations is like training and different things like that But I'll tell you even more is like just straight-up overhead costs when when you're talking about locations you have to have manpower at every single location
Starting point is 00:24:47 just for it to exist. And overhead, the downside of overhead, is you pay for it regardless of whether or not you make sales. Right, right. And so every single location adds drastic amounts to your break even, right? And understanding your break even right and
Starting point is 00:25:10 Understanding your break even analysis is so so so important like for example How much how much fixed cost you have that you have to cover every single month right now? Do you know yeah break even and actually we got this from Darrell that we started like really analyzing our break even we're about 279k. 279,000. That's for us to breakeven. Okay. Right. So in revenue per month we have to hit 279 to be at, I get zero profit. Okay. Got it. Got it. So city-wise we're at 2.47 million in Austin and 2.7 in San Antonio. So how much in Austin? 2.5 and 2.7 2.5 2.7 and that's all Metro Those are metros Yeah, so first of all, that's good news. Good news. You thought it was 1.2 is 2.7
Starting point is 00:25:54 Check Austin, I'm sure it's that. What's that? Check Austin. Oh, that was 2.5 Austin Oh down like Austin Austin by itself. Oh It should be close to that one, right? But Metro's all right. I'm a chose what you cover, right? Right? Yeah It was what we cover. Yeah, I mean we're not on here to say hey gotcha, but like to understand Oh, right. Right. Well twice the market cap. Yeah So I mean two and a half million people right like what you guys are currently doing is essentially a dollar a person right now And so the the question question is how do you get
Starting point is 00:26:26 that up to you know three or four bucks a person across the board and really just understanding like what it takes to get there. But yeah like so you said you're at 270,000 on your on your break fixed? Yep. Okay. I think too, you know, I'm not saying you guys should do one or the other, because it's up to you guys, but you know, when you start to spread yourself out into multiple markets, when you have more, when you can go deeper in the current markets you're in, it kind of sets you up to like spread out your mistakes
Starting point is 00:27:01 in a way that are harder to identify. Where like, when you have fewer markets, you're able to clean up your systems and really identify what's working well. Because it's awesome to have multiple markets so you can kind of compare them against each other. But when you start adding them, right, if you could go deeper, you would
Starting point is 00:27:17 end up having better margins as well as better systems and processes. And since you guys have such a good name brand, it gives you more control over building that brand as you go deeper into the current market stream. For sure, for sure. Yeah, that's such a good point. And the reality is, is like,
Starting point is 00:27:36 even though a lot of your customers are one and done, right, with the average customer moving every seven years and that, and most move within their same metropolitan, right, like that amount of recurring revenue is actual, you know, a real thing for sure. You know, and the thing I've learned in entrepreneurship is like a lot of times we make decisions based on ego. I don't know if you guys ever find yourself in that in that camp?
Starting point is 00:28:06 Maybe. So let me just tell you like some of the mistakes that I made early on in entrepreneurship was like I did things to impress other people. You know like locations, that sounds cool right? Like more locations. Like a lot of times when we're very egocentric, we'll do things based on more locations than more money, right? Because it sounds bigger, it looks cooler, right? Like, oh man, here I am, interstate, you know, I'm gonna fly into my location up in wherever, you know, it is. And so a lot of times that type of mentality really taints our decision-making. Instead of making decisions that are best for the business, we make decisions that are best for our ego. You guys ever find yourself
Starting point is 00:28:56 doing that? I think maybe naturally, yeah, I think it happens. I mean, we just keep progressing and then we're reaching you in benchmark so we've I mean never seen or had experience with so well I think I could see see that. Kardon and I have never had like issues with like I mean Kardon and I both worked on in our hands and actually did the work ourselves like everything we've asked people do we've done in our own kind of landscaping company yep and in general like I mean landscape doesn't really sound too cool, but Courtney and I never really cared about that. Like, we're very low key, honestly. A lot of people
Starting point is 00:29:29 know what we do. For sure. But I could see like, yeah, it does sound cool for our team to say, hey, we're in 10 cities. Oh, for sure. And me and Josh like to have those conversations too. Like, oh yeah, we're flying out here for a podcast. This is awesome. Or like whatever conversations we have that have to do with entrepreneurial benchmarks. And I think this is one of those maybe like, oh yeah, we have a huge team. We've hired so many people this year. This is awesome. And it's more of just like scratching this itch as entrepreneurs that we've always had.
Starting point is 00:29:53 But I think we could definitely hone that in and check that box while also doing super meaningful targets. Like if we switch it to revenue instead of number of locations, I think that would do the same thing. Right. Right. Do you know what the compounded annual growth rate is gonna take to get to 30 million? Have you have you calculated that? Yeah. Chat GPT on that one. Well and what I mean by that is like so you guys have grown 25% year-over-year? And so just last year, it's been 75 since inception.
Starting point is 00:30:26 Okay. Okay. So it was 75 since inception, and then it was 25% this next year. Do you know what it's going to take for five years to grow to 30 million? No, 40%. So I think it's a little bit less than 40%. But like, Darrell's calculating here real quick, but the important thing to understand is like,
Starting point is 00:30:53 just picking a number out of a hat is like, you don't want to, right? Like one of the things that we teach in creating like a vision and direction for the business is not only have a big number, but have a roadmap of exactly how to get there. You probably heard me talk a lot about this. Yeah, that was good.
Starting point is 00:31:11 And so like with that, you have to have details like, okay, what does the annual growth rate have to look like? And what does it take to be able to grow at that percentage? What do you have to? 38%. Okay, so it's like a 38% growth and so right now you've experienced a 25% so what changes do you have to make in your business to be able to scale at 38% which is you know close to double what
Starting point is 00:31:39 what you guys did this year what right I think we did it I guess in our own brain and what kind of made sense, we analyzed and say, hey, what have we done? That's what we're using as, hey, this is what's true. How we did that is saying, hey, per one city, and we did it all by cities, and that could be locations or however we, I know we talked about maybe doing South Austin, North Austin, but to three million, we can get to that. How many of those can we do per year? And then if we do that in five years how many cities could we accomplish? So that's kind of how we ran the math. It wasn't really like a
Starting point is 00:32:13 percentage base I guess of how we're talking about it. So we just said hey with what we have and what we've done in the past can we replicate that concept? Right. So that's kind of how we did it in our own heads and that that's how we did the math on the 30 million. So because the math makes the math make sense right and that's a simple way to look at it. I think what's challenging though is when you start to scale your business with that many employees and that you start to find things that are a lot harder to manage at that level to get the same profit right. We've had a lot of people where they're three times the size they were, you know, three years ago, but they're making no money
Starting point is 00:32:49 because they skilled and their expenses were kind of out of whack because they're spreading themselves. So then now, once again, there's there's ways to grow without doing that. And that's where going back to what Chris says, having this five year plan where you really think through your skilling process. But so there's there's a few things that you have to through your scaling process. But. So there's a few things that you have to make sure
Starting point is 00:33:08 that scale, one is like your pay structure, how you actually pay and then your management and what it's gonna take to manage that kind of growth. Right, because to Darrell's point, growth requires more management, right? Like just because you can do three million in one location, when you have 10 locations doing three million, that's going to require a whole lot more management than, you know, right?
Starting point is 00:33:34 One, one, right. You can't pass the management. Yeah, that's, that's a good point. And I guess in our heads, like we've never been tied to something. Like if you had this conversation with us two years ago, we probably would have had a different answer. Right. So we're also not super attached especially like yeah us and I working with with Chris and Darryl like
Starting point is 00:33:50 also through the program I'm with you guys has really changed like our approach. So we've never really been then tied down to it. Our big concept is just saying hey how do we make landscaping a real business and that kind of corporation not just like hey go do yeah go do grass I guess. I think too one thing I think I see in this is like if you guys can get your businesses to 10 million a location and scale that you're probably you're you're getting you guys worth a ton of money right and I think I think finding a way to like make your business go really deep into each market and then be able to escape that.
Starting point is 00:34:26 That's true. It's going to be significantly more valuable than just being able to pick up just like the cherries on top. Like the low hanging fruit. Yeah, the low hanging fruit is like only so valuable, right? Especially if you're... Just one thing too on our side. Like I said, this conversation just in general has grown crazy from when we first started to where we're going. Because right now, like cars closing, hopefully like a huge deal that we've never really messed with on the commercial side, which we know how to do it.
Starting point is 00:34:54 I mean, we've done commercial like it's just the high ticket price, which I guess would be like the higher end in fruits. If we do that, then next year we might already be in 12 million in Austin, right if that does hit right So how do we also calculate that we're just kind of going with with the curve, I guess Yeah Yeah And and so I mean that brings up another another topic is like what you are and what you aren't right? Like and maybe this is what you are right? The these these big projects or whatnot
Starting point is 00:35:23 But if it's not the thing that you specialize in, like what do you specialize in? And so, because, I mean, money is made when you create a specialty and you are the go-to location business for that particular solution, right? Where when customers think of your company, right? So when they think of urban oasis,
Starting point is 00:35:47 what is urban oasis? It can't be like jack-of-all-trades, everything in landscaping. It's like these guys specialize in doing X. Right. Yeah, and that's something that I think we've had a bit of a challenge discovering about ourselves because as we start projects, one thing leads to another and eventually someone's asking if we can build their house. It's like we gotta draw the line somewhere. Yeah, and I think where that line is is outdoor living spaces.
Starting point is 00:36:13 So we wanna be a one-stop shop because there are a lot of people that pay for convenience in this world. You know, you wanna be able to go to a restaurant and order your whole plate from one restaurant. You don't wanna, you know, a la carte from different places. So we're kind of that for outdoor living spaces.
Starting point is 00:36:25 We're not gonna, we don't have any plans to do any of the major construction stuff, but there's not really any limits to outdoor living space projects. So to Josh's point, like these huge seven figure jobs in the pipeline, we'll take them cause they're all just turnkey outdoor living spaces. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:36:40 Cool. And as long as you feel like that is simplified enough, then go for it. But, you know, as Josh, me and you talked about before, like, you know, you can make money doing anything, right? Like literally, the biggest challenge that we have, I mean, for those that are watching and listening to this, as entrepreneurs, is saying no, right? Like if we, because we can see value creation in anything, right, like I look at this desk and I'm like, wow, if I actually owned the countertop company and I, oh, and I could hire a few guys
Starting point is 00:37:15 to be able to create the actual woodwork of it, and I could own the painting company as well that comes in and does the work and da-da-da. Oh, and this is you know I mean there again there's opportunity in everything there's opportunity in creating cell phones there's opportunity in selling water there's opportunity in you know being sound producers whatever and so just really understanding exactly what makes Urban Oasis different than everybody else and not just a one-stop shop.
Starting point is 00:37:45 I think I need to add that too. It's like what is more, right? A lot of times like we we see something and it's more than we thought and so we're like okay what's next? What's more? And the catch or the challenges is more locations. Is it employees? Is it profit? Is it you know, and sometimes that more that we're searching for is kind of off the Mark of where we started and all some yeah, you do have more of a business and you've got all these locations But you could be making way more money and you could have a way better lifestyle If you were to go deeper if you were to focus on your systems if you're a folks on You know the things that really drive your business to to change and morph into something even bigger than you imagined.
Starting point is 00:38:28 I mean I'll give you, Darrell kind of hinted at this a little bit earlier but I mean one of our there's a guy in our community where you know they did a hundred million last year and NetEbda they were like 1.2% and like cash was like 0.6% or something. So like 600 grand on a hundred million dollars. Right? But if I were to ask you, like, would you love to do a hundred million, have a hundred million dollar revenue business? Not an outlet.
Starting point is 00:39:00 Heck yeah. Right? That would be... A hundred million is awesome, but then it's like, well, what profit do you get? Right. And you know, it's interesting, like if you run a highly profitable business, like if you can figure out how to net out
Starting point is 00:39:13 margins of 30% on 10 million bucks, right? That's a whole lot less work than running a hundred million dollar business that, you know, with a fraction, a fifth of the profitability. And so going back, I think just from like a, like a practical standpoint, just you guys have an incredible opportunity to dive into organic and paid marketing
Starting point is 00:39:37 within your markets. And like when we're talking about going deep, like that is the place. Most people do not compete in the paid space or Compete well, right most most people hire out their marketing, right? They bring in an external agency They don't understand their strategy. So they hire somebody they say hey take this off my plan I'm gonna pay you X amount of dollars to to be able to get this done They don't really know exactly how they're going to be able to bring in new clients.
Starting point is 00:40:05 And so then that agency, which probably doesn't know a whole lot about their business or industry or whatnot, they attempt it, they get a little bit of return, but since there's not good tracking, the business is like, well, I don't even know if I'm making money off of this, right? That's literally most people's paid strategy. And so what I would encourage you guys to do, and obviously you're here for tomorrow, right? Like, that's literally most people's paid strategy. And so what I would encourage you guys
Starting point is 00:40:25 to do, and obviously you're here for tomorrow, right? We're going to be diving into these specific topics like how do I hit all four quadrants, right? The organic, the paid, the affiliate, the referrals. And so, because paid is typically where you can get the majority of your market penetration where you really get direct traffic tied in whether that's pay-per-click through Google and inquiry based type stuff or that's Facebook or YouTube or tick-tock or whatever else. Like you guys have a really cool way to go and get paid. Because first of all, what you guys do is the stuff that goes viral on organic and paid platforms, right?
Starting point is 00:41:15 Like befores and afters. Like, I know we love those. I mean, people- It went viral on TikTok a while back. Yeah, so you did a little bit organic. The problem with when you go viral on like an organic type thing, is it doesn't hit any of your target audience, right?
Starting point is 00:41:32 Now all of a sudden you got somebody in Africa that's sweet before and after, and they're like, oh man, cool stuff, can you do a $200 job for me in South Africa? I don't think so. Yeah. Overhead womanize. Yeah. You know a $200 job for me in South Africa. I don't think so And so like although organics good paid is different right because you could target your audience you can be able to get the exact Ideal client profile we call an ICP, right and so
Starting point is 00:42:03 What I'm looking at your guys's business like 85% residential No paid you're doing zero paid advertising right now, is that right? We're doing some experiments with it. I don't think we're getting much result. It's more teeing us up for January when we have a real budget. Right. Yeah, less than a thousand a month right now for sure. So you're spending less than a thousand bucks a month.
Starting point is 00:42:20 Yeah. Right. And so where a business of your size should be said, spending, you know, anywhere from like five to 10% of your total revenue on, on paid advertising. Right. And so, so I mean, you can do the math of 6 million, right? Like at 10% or like, let's call 5%,
Starting point is 00:42:43 you're spending anywhere from 300K all the way up to 600K, which is how much a month? Like 50. 25 to 50 grand a month, right? So you guys are, you know, 2% of where you should be, right? Of like your total spend. And so like you have an incredible opportunity. And the reason I bring this up is because right now you're formulating strategy of like three states ten cities thirty million without ever really
Starting point is 00:43:14 Exploring the number one thing that should be driving your business, which is paid advertising Right and so but first of all congratulations the fact that you guys have been able to do it through affiliate and referrals I think a lot of companies suck at that It actually sets up your company for Having this ability to trial in the air and not have to worry about your business falling apart if it doesn't work, right? All right You guys have a runway that most people don't You've put in the hard work and now you have a company that offers a good product because people don't get referrals based off of crappy work so
Starting point is 00:43:47 you really have everything stacked in your favor to really figure out the organic and paid side which from there like upward and on the right right yeah that's actually our plan because we've never really explored it like what you're saying like hey I mean if yeah we're should be spending 30 to 60 or whatever 25 to 50 K a month, right? It was next year. Hopefully revenue goes up then Yeah, where could we go? I mean, yes. Well, I was saying like we just it's hard to plan when it just changes so fast because what if that
Starting point is 00:44:16 Quadrant to pushes more than quadrant for right? Which it should right like you paid advertising should be your number one generator for business right because You in most where most business owners get it wrong is they pump the brakes on this once they get too much business Right instead of growing the operations or doing the things that to be able to fulfill on that they pump it they get scared They see the numbers like oh, that's too high right like 50 grand a month does that scare you yeah I mean that's good marketing is scary like this phase done revenue I mean that made my brain is like oh we can handle that very fast right right
Starting point is 00:44:57 yes but in Allen's scary to think yeah and if you're not used to doing a it would it should be scary, right? But once you understand the science of it, they're like, okay, if marketing is 10% of my revenue and I'm doing, so what I'm looking at here on your financials, I see actually only 1%. You're spending 50K. It says advertising and promotion. So what does that incorporate right now?
Starting point is 00:45:23 That might be like yard signs and flags at our shop and stuff like that, right? Which which is part of which is part of marketing but it's more branding related right rather rather than direct Marketing is what we call it. But like, you know when so you're spending about 50k a year where it should be, you know 600,000 but the cool thing is like when you dial in this budget and really come at it from a scientific approach, you'll start understanding that for every $1 I spend, it's going to equal $10 in revenue. Right. And so if I go and I spend another $500,000,
Starting point is 00:45:58 that means I'm going to get another 5 million. Right. Right. And so obviously any business owner in the right mind they they want that right right so what's the percentage usually from paid marketing yeah that's that's a that's a great great question so your marketing your marketing should be and I would say and sales so marketing and sales should be a total of about 20% in these type of businesses. And so usually about half of that is attributed to marketing and half of that's attributed to sales, which I know you guys don't have like a huge sales team or anything built out
Starting point is 00:46:37 either. Right. So maybe that's another thing. And that's another challenge. Okay. Yeah. Let's try that. But then what do we need? More sales guys. Right? We only have three people right now that do that,
Starting point is 00:46:48 so. So like, so when I see this business, like I get stoked, I'm like, 30 million, let's do that at one location, you know, like, because those two things, those drivers, marketing and like having a high performing sales team, all of a sudden you can flip this thing on its head, right? Because you can be generating sales in a variety of different marketing methods. You could be doing organic door-to-door sales where people are going out and looking for quotes, right?
Starting point is 00:47:18 By going door-to-door, you can do paid advertising. You come in, you close across the kitchen table or you do virtual. I know we've talked a little bit about like virtual sales and those type of things and getting like real high ticket closers in the room. Because right now your sales department consists of who? Yeah, me, Josh and we've got two other sales reps. Yeah. So here's the great thing too, right? Let's say you start pumping up the paid advertisement what also comes along with that it's the referrals which you guys are already good at right that's right so so by you know by increasing your paid advertising if that
Starting point is 00:47:58 became one of your biggest pieces your referrals are gonna tag along with it and so you're gonna increase your referral business as well. Right. You're part lane that lead. Yeah, that's a good. And the other thing to consider here when we're talking about 10 cities is guess who doesn't scale? Me and Carter. That's right.
Starting point is 00:48:16 That's right. And so although it's been easy up until this point to get $3 million in sales per location, you've had Carter and you in basically every single location. You guys don't scale, right? Your team can scale if you have good systems for recruiting and training and everything else, but the reality is you're not going to get the same type of production as you
Starting point is 00:48:44 will from an owner that's sitting right underneath their nose. And so these are all things that you have to consider, especially when you're talking about multiple locations. But man, huge opportunity from a marketing and sales standpoint. But also this also goes back to, I mean, all this is tied together from creating a five-year plan
Starting point is 00:49:04 and the way that you have Your your offer dialed in right because if there is not enough margin to be able to spend 20% on sales and marketing, you know, you don't you don't have a scalable business, right? And so then it goes back to okay What am I charging on the top line basis? Because like right now, from a percentage standpoint, you guys are charging 100%. You have 58% cogs, right? Which means you have 42% gross margin and I go and I allocate 20% to sales and marketing and then on top of that I see you know you guys have like
Starting point is 00:49:53 10 to 15 percent in in everything else, right? What does that what does that leave us with that only gives us? 7% net margin at the end of the day. Right. And, you know, which for a traditional construction business, that's very accurate, like 7%. The reason why you guys have been able to maintain a higher percentage is because one, Carter's doing all the sales, right? And you're not paying a big sales team and everything else and so it's like okay how do we restructure this that allows us to still hit those targets of 20% and so what do
Starting point is 00:50:36 I need to do to my my top line numbers to be able to get be priced in the same mark right right yeah have you guys thought through a lot of this? I think for us, one thing that we've always struggled with and we actually hired a couple people to kind of help us, mentorship side, and just like more finance oriented, is we've noticed revenue per month dictates that margin a lot because at a certain benchmark,
Starting point is 00:51:01 like I guess it's similar to maximizing our current team because I feel like our current team can still manage say upwards to like 700. Mm-hmm. So if we did that even adding the 20% I feel like it would still be a higher margin than what it is today. Yeah. Once we kind of pass the highest maximum point then yeah maybe it is charging higher prices. We're just kind of like stuck in that point, like what point should we... Yeah, so you're referring to more like utilization, right? Like utilizing your fixed assets or your fixed labor,
Starting point is 00:51:32 which is like you got this management place or whatnot. Right, like if we maybe had the same team, better systems and do say 700k a month, then our margin would instantly go up already. That's the other thing too on your financial, you guys are doing cash basis, right? Yes, cash basis. And I think one of the things that would really help
Starting point is 00:51:54 you guys know your numbers better on a month to month basis is going accrued, because then you're assigning the revenue with the work costs, right? The expenses are tracked directly. And that was, I mean, we were, work costs, right? The expenses are tracked directly. And that was, I mean, we were same thing, right? We started off doing cash basis. I mean, for a long time, it was like, as long as we had money in the bank account,
Starting point is 00:52:12 we kept going, right? Yeah. That's kind of important. I agree with that, yeah, because we're trying to create this bell curve of revenue to profitability, right? Like, okay, when we have too little revenue, we're not gonna make any money. When we have just right, we're gonna make a lot of money.
Starting point is 00:52:23 And when we have too much revenue, we're overutilized and we don't make money again. So assigning revenue targets to that profitability level is going to help us set the right numbers of revenue going into the next year and maximize that. But to the pricing question, yeah, we have also experimented with raising some prices here and there just in small samples just to see how it impacts conversions. Generally, it's unaffected. So yeah conversions kind of stay the same with that so it's something that we might look into especially because right now we're kind of sorry you're saying that as you increase price it doesn't impact
Starting point is 00:52:56 your conversion. Right definitely not proportionally so if we increase price 10% we're not losing 10% right which is which is perfect like and and that's a that's a key thing for anybody to understand that's watching this or listening to this is just how valuable an additional dollar is to the business owner versus the customer right like using this example coming back over here to the whiteboard where if it was $100 and you're taking home 7% at the end of the day, if you go and you charge the customer $101, you've increased their price by 1%, right? And your 1% goes directly to the bottom line, which has increased your net profit by 12%. Right?
Starting point is 00:53:42 So, I mean, it's just such a drastic difference. Totally. Totally. So yeah, super excited to continue implementing that and maybe make it our standard. I mean, especially because we find ourselves or we perceive ourselves to be high value landscaping company that's offering a lot more than the market average. Yet we're priced similar to the market average. So it's to us kind of justifying we just need to become comfortable telling customers, look, we're more expensive, but it's because we have these offerings that others don't. Yeah. Yeah. And this goes to one of the core strategies and principles that we always teach
Starting point is 00:54:15 that you don't have a true competitor. A lot of times when we go and we look at the marketplace and we try pricing according to the competition out there. We make poor decisions for our business versus actually doing what's best for our business, backing it up with the actual financial strategy and saying, okay, this is the structure that works and this is what we're gonna charge because we know that the market, one, will absorb this, they'll accept this, and two, this is the numbers that we need to be able to make our business work. I think also too, you got to realize there's so many businesses out there that don't really offer good quality because they can't.
Starting point is 00:54:51 They can't afford to, right? They can offer the product that you asked for and that's it. And so having the margin to give the best product you possibly can, customers appreciate way more, right? And I think you guys already deliver something above the market, which is why you guys get so many referrals. So just charging for that. Now you start to do all these marketing tactics.
Starting point is 00:55:11 Some work, some don't, right? So it's costing you, but the other end, it's like you guys have the profitability to be able to bear those costs. And so it just, at the end of the day, makes you a better company down the road. Based on what you hear us saying, just kind of this discussion, like what, what do you think, like, what are some mental changes or even some things you're like, ah, I need to, I need to implement that.
Starting point is 00:55:35 I think for me personally, the biggest one I would definitely say is the, uh, 10 cities. Yeah, sounds cool. I feel like definitely changing the mentality of what that means. I guess it's more revenue oriented should be your goal. And then how do we achieve that by dive deep into what we have? It does make a lot of sense for us to probably be in maybe three cities that are very close by which would be probably Dallas San Antonio in Austin So maybe like being the best in Texas is better than being okay in three cities or three states so I feel like for me just talking on this conversation like really
Starting point is 00:56:09 knowing what goal should be based on data or like logic instead of just like but here numbers out here's a reality what if you accidentally get there way quicker than you realize and all of a sudden you're doing 30 million in Austin you're in 30 million San Antonio right then all of a sudden you're doing 30 million in Austin, you're in 30 million in San Antonio, right? Then all of a sudden you have a ton of money to go and scale this thing even faster. Right, and so that's kind of the catch 22 is like you might actually be able to scale faster
Starting point is 00:56:34 into 10 cities by going deeper. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I'm kind of on the same vibe as Josh there. I wanna see how far we can take Austin based on this conversation and create a good infrastructure that we can just kind of copy the same vibe as Josh there. I want to see how far we can take Austin based on this conversation and create a good infrastructure that we can just kind of copy and paste. So maybe bringing Austin to 10 to 15 million
Starting point is 00:56:50 and kind of reevaluating the structure. Is this sustainable? Is this working really well in Austin? Okay, let's take these exact same positions and hire them into different cities and build that city now to 10 or 15 million or whatever it may be, 10 million, 30 million, whatever the market allows. I mean, also we're super blessed that we have Texas
Starting point is 00:57:10 being crazy right now with a bunch of people moving into the city, becoming one of like the biggest cities in the US. You guys are thanking Governor Newsom, huh? Thank you, no, Elon now. But in all the, now all the people leaving California and the Texas. New Sama Thank you. Not Elon now All the people leaving California and the till right. Oh, yeah, that was huge definitely in 2021 That was everything it was like thank you. Yeah half of our business came from from Californians coming into Texas a little literally Yeah, so what I what I'm hearing you guys say so I have listed on here
Starting point is 00:57:39 I so really like reevaluating the map of what it looks like to get to 30 million. Like yeah, it might be easier if we're saying that we have two quadrants unexplored. I'm curious to see like, hey, if paid quadrant two is the highest ROI we've ever nibbled at it. Yep. What does that mean if we actually put a lot of our time and focus into quadrant two? And then back to Darrell's point, like it's a domino effect because we paid marketing to get clients But then those clients are gonna do our same concept which is referrals, right?
Starting point is 00:58:08 So it really is a domino effect So I am very curious on that which we've never explored we have since We've been working with you guys really like dive deep into like not just our own personal knowledge that we have Yeah, we're just like trying to put ourselves back and say hey I mean, yeah, we I studied intra-productive in A&M but I mean they taught me some stuff on books. No one has taught me anything based on like actually growing a business besides you guys so. Appreciate it. Excited to see that. That's a good testimonial we appreciate it. So I have
Starting point is 00:58:40 so I have go deeper basically deeper deeper per location, then implement a paid marketing strategy. And so I think those three things, just addressing those could drastically impact the business and the direction that you're gonna be going. And so appreciate, first of all, thanks for your time, but thank you for the testimonial. Wrapping it up with the end of this episode, can you share with guys what you've been able,
Starting point is 00:59:11 how being a part of Next Level Pros and part of our elite group and how that's impacted your life? Yeah, yeah, it's been a crazy journey because I've been listening to it for a long time and then super lucky and blessed to be now part of the inside of the group. And I guess the biggest thing that I've been listening to it for a long time and then super lucky and blessed to be now part of the inside of the group. And I guess the biggest thing that I've learned personally, I've been the one kind of exploring.
Starting point is 00:59:30 I have always been more of the explorer and Carter's more like structured. I'm always like everywhere and he's like keep it linear and clean. But yeah, on my end is just like one, talking to people that are done what we want to do is one, having mentors is extremely important. Saying, hey, can I just talk to somebody about it? Because right now, like, Carl and I just talked about it, but both of us are in, I guess, in the same level. Echo Chamber.
Starting point is 00:59:57 Right. Echo Chamber. So yeah, having that kind of like guidance, mentorship is a big one. And then having specific things of like, hey, do you even have this? And then knowing what that actually means. Because in our head we go, oh yeah, marketing. We think putting signs out is marketing, but that's not even the tip of the iceberg really.
Starting point is 01:00:15 So I guess understanding fully that and being part of this amazing group, like just seeing like real change and like outcome really motivates like starting our culture with our own team and seeing the team respond back to it just kind of keeps making me want to do more about it. So love it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:34 Those are probably the biggest things right now. Culture has been my number one focus and it's been amazing. So awesome. Tell us a little bit more about that. Like what are what are some things that you learned from our community that you've impacted on your culture? So I guess the biggest thing I've learned is just saying like, hey, who is Urban Oasis on outside facing and inwards facing? We've always really pushed on like, hey, Urban Oasis to clients is like this clean, perfect
Starting point is 01:00:58 communication, best outcome on their design and build. But we haven't really focused too much on the inside team, which now like, every time I talk to some of the guys on the team, it's just like work related. I don't even know about their like family. Some of them are getting married, having kids, and now like everybody like knowing each other on outside of work has really like made us tighter. And then the second thing is like having people knowing our mission vision, our core values. That's something I just integrated maybe three months ago. And now every time we do our meetings or Google meets, now the employees know it. And probably the coolest thing out of everything to wrap it up is I have an executive assistant
Starting point is 01:01:40 who now helps me employ new people employ new people and now he's pitching what I pitched him which is the same core values the mission statement and division also now people like saying that like without me even saying it it's like awesome to like having nice little replication of yourself right right sounds like damn that's cool but she's like now me I love it I love it that was awesome to see well appreciate you guys jumping on the show You guys have been incredible being here and for the listeners and those that watching on YouTube make sure that you like Comment subscribe if you have any questions
Starting point is 01:02:14 We are more than happy to dive into them just leaving on the the comments in the comment section And as always for those that are looking at getting more from the next level And as always for those that are looking at getting more from the next level Community go on over to go next level pros comm you can test out being a part of our weekly calls for only 47 bucks once again go next level pros comm until next time

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