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

Summary

Episode Summary: Next Level Pros #133 – "Increasing 30% Year Over Year with No Marketing? Will It Still Work?"

Release Date: December 26, 2024
Hosts: Chris Lee, Carter, Josh
Guests: Carter and Josh from Urban Oasis

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Introduction

In Episode #133 of Next Level Pros, host Chris Lee sits down with Carter and Josh from Urban Oasis, a thriving landscaping and outdoor construction business based in Texas. The episode delves deep into Urban Oasis's remarkable journey from a humble mowing company to a booming enterprise projected to close the year with $6.3 million in revenue. The discussion explores their growth strategies, marketing approaches, financial management, and the challenges of scaling without traditional marketing.

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Business Journey and Growth

Carter and Josh share the inspiring origins of Urban Oasis, highlighting their transition from a mowing business started in high school to a comprehensive design and build outdoor construction firm. They recount how the COVID-19 pandemic provided them with the opportunity to pivot and scale their business rapidly.

Carter [04:08]: "We load up my parents' car with materials from Home Depot, install a pathway based on YouTube education, and our first client was thrilled. That initial success led to a chain reaction of referrals and word-of-mouth promotion."

Starting with minimal resources and leveraging existing relationships, they managed to generate significant growth organically. By the summer of 2020, they achieved nearly $400k in the first six months, and this momentum continued, culminating in a forecasted revenue of $6.3 million for the year.

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Marketing Strategies

A central theme of the episode is the effectiveness of affiliate marketing and referrals over traditional paid advertising. Urban Oasis has predominantly relied on word-of-mouth and partnerships with designers, pool builders, and homebuilders to fuel their growth.

Josh [00:15]: "Marketing is scary."

Despite their success, Carter and Josh acknowledge the untapped potential in Quadrant Two (Paid Advertising). They recognize that increasing their investment in paid marketing could amplify their growth exponentially.

Carter [07:28]: "A lot of our growth has come from partnerships and referrals. We're looking to explore paid marketing more seriously in the coming year."

Currently, their marketing spend is minimal, with less than $1,000 per month allocated to advertising. Chris emphasizes the importance of scaling their marketing budget to align with their revenue goals.

Chris [44:18]: "You're spending about 1% on advertising, but you should be allocating 5-10% of your revenue. For a $6 million business, that's $300k to $600k annually."

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Financial Insights

The hosts dive into the financial health of Urban Oasis, examining their gross margins, net margins, and break-even points.

• Gross Margin: Approximately 58%
• Net Margin: 22%
• Break-Even Revenue: $279k per month

Carter [01:54]: "We're at 22% net margin and 58% gross margin."

They discuss how increasing their revenue through paid marketing could significantly enhance their profitability. Josh points out that even optimizing their current team and processes can lead to higher margins without proportional increases in overhead.

Josh [51:25]: "If we maximize our current team, our margin would instantly go up."

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Scaling Challenges and Strategies

As Urban Oasis contemplates expanding to 10 cities across 3 states, Carter and Josh discuss the complexities of scaling their operations without diluting their brand or compromising on quality.

Carter [15:39]: "Scaling to 10 cities requires robust management and standardized processes to maintain our reputation."

They weigh the benefits of deepening their presence in existing markets versus spreading thin across multiple locations. Darrell, a guest contributor, advises focusing on deep penetration in current markets to build a strong foundation before branching out.

Darrell [27:33]: "Going deeper into your current markets can lead to better margins and more efficient systems."

The conversation also touches on the logistical challenges of managing multiple crews, maintaining quality, and ensuring consistent customer experiences across all locations.

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Pricing and Profit Margins

Urban Oasis has experimented with adjusting their pricing strategies without negatively impacting their conversion rates.

Carter [52:53]: "We increased our prices by 10%, and our conversion rates remained largely unaffected."

Chris highlights the strategic advantage of incremental price increases and their direct impact on profitability.

Chris [53:04]: "Charging an extra dollar can increase your net profit by 12%."

This approach allows Urban Oasis to enhance their margins while delivering high-value services that justify the higher prices.

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Team Culture and Internal Processes

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the importance of team culture and internal communication. Josh emphasizes the role of mentorship and the benefits of being part of the Next Level Pros community.

Josh [60:33]: "Having mentors is extremely important. It helps us break out of our echo chamber and get fresh perspectives."

Carter shares how integrating core values and mission statements into their daily operations has strengthened their team dynamics and overall company culture.

Carter [60:46]: "Our team now not only understands our mission and values but also embodies them in their interactions and work ethic."

This cultural alignment fosters a cohesive work environment, enhancing productivity and employee satisfaction.

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Lessons and Conclusions

The episode wraps up with Carter and Josh reflecting on the insights gained from their journey and their participation in the Next Level Pros community. They recognize the untapped potential of paid marketing and the necessity of strategic scaling to achieve their ambitious $30 million revenue goal over the next five years.

Josh [58:35]: "Understanding our goals based on data and logic rather than just numbers is crucial for sustainable growth."

Chris reinforces the importance of a balanced growth strategy that leverages both organic and paid marketing while maintaining high-profit margins and strong team culture.

Chris [44:53]: "Paid advertising should be your number one generator for business. It drives direct traffic and allows precise targeting of your ideal clients."

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Notable Quotes

• Chris Lee [00:00]: "Paid advertising should be your number one generator for business."
• Carter [04:08]: "We installed a pathway based on YouTube education, and that initial success led to a chain reaction of referrals."
• Josh [00:15]: "Marketing is scary."
• Chris Lee [44:18]: "You're spending about 1% on advertising, but you should be allocating 5-10% of your revenue."
• Carter [52:53]: "We increased our prices by 10%, and our conversion rates remained largely unaffected."
• Josh [60:33]: "Having mentors is extremely important. It helps us break out of our echo chamber and get fresh perspectives."

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Key Takeaways

1. Strategic Marketing Investment: Transitioning from primarily referral-based growth to incorporating a substantial paid advertising budget can exponentially increase revenue and market penetration.
2. Balanced Scaling: Focusing on deepening market presence in existing locations ensures better margins and more efficient operations before expanding to new areas.
3. Financial Management: Understanding and optimizing gross and net margins, alongside strategic pricing adjustments, are crucial for sustainable profitability.
4. Team Culture: Building a strong internal culture with clear missions and values fosters cohesion and enhances overall business performance.
5. Mentorship and Community: Engaging with entrepreneurial communities and mentors provides invaluable insights and guidance for navigating growth challenges.

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For entrepreneurs seeking to scale their businesses effectively, this episode of Next Level Pros offers a wealth of practical insights and strategies, underscored by the real-world success story of Urban Oasis.

Transcript

[Chris]

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?

[Josh]

Yeah. I mean, that's good. Marketing is scary.

[Chris]

Like, Facebook's in revenue.

[Josh]

I mean, in my brain is like, oh, we can handle that very fast.

[Chris]

Right, Right.

[Josh]

But in Alan's, scary to think.

[Chris]

Yeah. And if you're not used to doing it, it would. It should be scary. Right.

[Josh]

We have two quadrants unexplored. I'm curious to see, like, hey, if paid Quadra 2 is the highest ROI, we've never nibbled at it.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Josh]

What does that mean? If we actually put a lot of our time and focus into quadrant two.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

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.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

So it really is a dominant effect. So I am very curious on that.

[Chris]

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?

[Josh]

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So thank you so much for being here with us, too. Very excited to be here, Carter. 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 a 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.

[Chris]

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?

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Cool. And what kind of margins are you running on that business?

[Carter]

We're at 22%.

[Chris]

22%. So 22 net. What is. So 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 add backs. You know, some of it's going into inventory or whatnot. Gross margins. What's what you guys? Gross margins right now.

[Josh]

So we're closer to like 58% on gross.

[Chris]

Okay, so what I am seeing, I just want to just check you real quick. It looks like I'm seeing a. A gross margin, about 40% or so.

[Josh]

Yeah, 58% cost of go sold. 42%. Got it, got it.

[Chris]

Sweet.

[Josh]

Sweet.

[Chris]

And so you guys have built this business. I know. Just kind of bootstrapped this thing from. From the ground up, right?

[Carter]

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Josh and I are originally just friends from middle school. 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. At that we went to college. So I went to UChicago, Josh went to A and M and then Covid hit and that brought us back home. So we were basically just sitting at home like, okay, we've got, you know, 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 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. 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 beg them for a Facebook review and say, hey, ma'am, please post this to your friends. We really want to do this. This is something exciting for our future that we could possibly, you know, 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, dude.

[Chris]

And what are you guys doing at this point? Like, what kind of jobs?

[Carter]

Uh, this is just pathway work. So basically, like installing, like installing just bricks to make a pathway, um, 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? We say, yeah, can you do masonry? Okay, sure. And we just start taking on jobs. And like I said, the. 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, people on the. On site to help us. So we had a few of our friends that luckily were in the area 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?

[Chris]

So the first couple jobs, are you guys doing this on your own?

[Carter]

Yeah, actually, the first couple of years, it was.

[Chris]

I mean, I'm saying you guys are physically doing the labor. Yeah.

[Josh]

And the first couple of years, oh.

[Carter]

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. Like, I've got to answer this question. Love it.

[Josh]

Because at that point, to clarify, we were still in school.

[Chris]

Yeah, okay.

[Josh]

I was in A and M. He was in uchicago. So while we ramped it up, Carter mentioned, like, hey, we have so much time in our hands.

[Darrell]

Sorry. So you guys. You guys moved back home because of COVID Right, Right.

[Josh]

So we.

[Carter]

That's right. Yeah. So, yeah, right. So sorry. I was off track in the beginning. So basically, to restart that, Josh and I were friends growing up. We went to high school together. Then we separated for college. I went to uchicago. Josh was at A and 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. 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.

[Darrell]

So how many. How many calls did you go through to get that one return?

[Carter]

It was 22 initial calls. And I got one guy, and that job was 360 bucks.

[Darrell]

And then that spiraled into that.

[Josh]

Spiraled. And it was really lucky, honestly, because we just had really Good vibes, just, hey, do we do good work? I mean, we 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. 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 personal Instagram was like, hey, who from, who's here from our high school pretty much. So we started getting people up.

[Darrell]

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.

[Carter]

Yeah, yeah. 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, 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 phone started ringing.

[Chris]

That's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. Year one, what, what did you guys close the books at? How, how much revenue?

[Josh]

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 because we only had the last six months of the year.

[Chris]

And at what point did you decide, hey, this is a real business, we're gonna start working on it.

[Josh]

It was kind of honestly natural, organic growth that we first had because we were starting to see money that at that point we've never seen before. So we're like getting 40 grand a month and 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 Cornet have always been entrepreneurs, literally since in high school we were 13 years old cutting grass instead of going to the mall. 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?

[Chris]

But at what point did you decide to go all in on it? Give up school, give up those type of things?

[Josh]

It's probably, maybe, probably March 2021 really started really kind of cooking up where we're now hitting, at that point, maybe 80k per month. And then we're having a lot of people come in. So at this point, we have 10 people. Carter and I are still 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.

[Darrell]

When you're doing this, I mean, you guys are doing. You guys are the sales people, the labor, the everything. Right, Right.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Darrell]

So you guys are making quite a bit of this and just turning a profit.

[Josh]

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 would just kind of get people out there to help us actually do the jobs.

[Carter]

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 underbidding or undercharging 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 really making until The P&Ls came out.

[Chris]

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So at what point did you say, hey, we need more help, we need guys that actually know what they're doing or. Or did you learn most of this just through trial and error or what was your, like, your biggest mentors in building this thing?

[Josh]

Yeah, it was a lot of trial and error for sure, at the beginning. Just, like, knowing new services, I mean, not knowing for 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. 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 knew everything about landscaping. 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.

[Chris]

Very cool. Very cool. So fast forward to December of 2024 right now. Right. So you guys are pacing. Going to be doing about 6,263 million this year, which is awesome. Fantastic. Nice work on. On building that out. What are, what are the biggest struggles that you guys are dealing with? How big is your team, Val?

[Josh]

So our team right now we have about 21 people that work with us. We now have architects, head designers, accountants, finance managers. Just a lot of internal kind of backend team members. And then we work with a lot of contractors and subcontractors. So on a weekly basis, we work with maybe 50 people per week.

[Chris]

Nice. So that's, that's the amount of employees. Like, what are, what are the biggest things that are that are holding you up now?

[Josh]

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 great, 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, like, would stay because we wanted them to stay, it was as ns even pretty.

[Carter]

Challenging 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 client's 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. The maintenance route is one that we want to pursue. There's a lot less interpretation within those sites, for sure.

[Chris]

I mean there's, there's a lot of different ways you can make money in that business.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

And so like really defining who you are, what you say yes to and what you say no to. So what are, what are some things that you guys are currently saying no to that allow you to really focus on who Urban Oasis is?

[Carter]

Two small 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 a lot of issues.

[Chris]

$350.

[Carter]

Yeah. No more of those.

[Darrell]

Yeah. What, what would you say is your.

[Carter]

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, like we discussed earlier, like, you know, if you do a really big project, they're going to tell friends that are in that similar niche. And same goes opposite. 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.

[Josh]

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, 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, actual labor in the team. So it kind of compiles into, you know, everything. We expand. Then everybody needs to expand per crew because we manage everything on a crew basis.

[Chris]

So what would you say the, the five year vision is for Urban Oasis? Like who, who is Urban Oasis? What do they do? How big are they? Like what?

[Josh]

Yeah, we actually had talk 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 f next five years, we do have like a 1, 3 and 5. But for the five year, we want to be in 30 million revenue is where we're targeting and expanding to 3 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 kind of answered the question is contractors in general and I'm talking in Texas because 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 ground has been our communication is literally on point every time. If we say, hey, our ETA is 1:05pm we show up literally at 1:05 and we're there on time. We text the clients, we're always there. So the whole experience they get from one that communication and then to 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 is always we try to do so. I feel like clients, especially high end clients are feel really comfortable us being in their house for two months. 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.

[Chris]

So when you say 10 cities, is that like 10 different locations physically?

[Josh]

Right, right. So 10 cities. Yeah. I mean right now we have Austin in San Antonio and then Dallas is on the works. We actually have a couple jobs lined up that I'm actually going to go do myself in Dallas just to kind of get the infrastructure kind of set up. But yeah, it's cities right now, but so Texas right now. So.

[Chris]

So question for you. I mean I love, I love the goal of 30 million or whatnot. Like why, why so many cities? I mean at that many Cities, it's only 3 million per location, right?

[Carter]

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. 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 3 million per location rather than trying to build this out. Because we've, we've talked about it for sure. Like do we try to build us into the 30 million goal? It's possible, but it's going to be super challenging. So that's kind of the logic there. We are open minded though to deviating from that. You know, 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 going to.

[Chris]

So what do you view as the negatives of doing this strategy of going to 10 locations?

[Carter]

Definitely the hiring and training is going to be a super tricky one. I think establishing a reputation is easier said than done. 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 going to be tricky.

[Darrell]

Yeah, it seems like your, your customer is like a one time customer most of the time.

[Josh]

Yep. Yeah, we have, I think we calculated roughly maybe about 5 to 10% of the clients come back from phase twos. But since we are a full design and build, you do your job and then I mean you're not going to add a second pool to your house or a second deck and outdoor kitchen. So usually clients, either our 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.

[Darrell]

How are you guys getting most of your new clients?

[Carter]

It's word of mouth right now. Yes, we're going to launch a marketing team. Well, 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.

[Chris]

And what, what percentage are residential versus like commercial projects?

[Carter]

It's probably an 85, 15 split.

[Chris]

85% residential. Yet you're not doing any marketing.

[Carter]

Correct.

[Josh]

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, 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 designed a beautiful $3 million home.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

But they don't do the landscape, they only do the house.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

So they're like, hey, urban oasis, come in, do everything outside, get my coi and then kind of be good.

[Chris]

Cool. Well let's, let's jump over to the screen share. I'm going to 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 we're actually going to be doing a little bit of a workshop. Right. So you guys are in town, we're going to be covering marketing workshop in which we dive in. And so you guys, you guys are hanging out a lot in quadrant three and four of marketing. So quadrant, quadrant four is 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 and quadrant four is referrals. So you guys are basically all your business is affiliate and referrals, is that correct? 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 it may be. Right. And they don't want to do the project for your typical high end stuff. How much of your stuff is for builders right now?

[Carter]

Maybe 10 or 15%.

[Chris]

So not huge?

[Carter]

No, not huge. We try to diversify. We don't want anyone taking a big chunk of that.

[Chris]

Right. So a lot of your affiliates, you said, are just design companies. What else?

[Carter]

Pool builders, new home builders. Yeah, I think that's the primary.

[Chris]

Buckets. Nice, nice. And then referrals. What percentage is coming from referrals?

[Carter]

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.

[Chris]

So when I think about your strategy of getting to 30 million, you know, I think what you're saying is correct that the first 3 million is pretty easy to get to with your current strategy from, from a marketing standpoint. Right. Because you, 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, the cool thing is, is like you have all these other avenues to be able to go and market that you're, 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%, right?

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Right. And so like there is a huge opportunity. You're right now you're in. You said what, Austin and where?

[Carter]

San Antonio.

[Chris]

Austin and San Antonio. Just those two cities. Correct.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Okay. And those are, you know what, an hour away from each other.

[Carter]

Yeah, hour and a half.

[Josh]

An hour and a half. Yeah.

[Chris]

Okay, got it. So Austin and San Antonio. What's the population of Austin?

[Josh]

Well now with the outskirts, so it is Austin and a one hour radius.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Josh]

So that compiles like a lot of cities, not just Austin, just to clarify.

[Chris]

Yep.

[Josh]

But yeah, maybe 1.2 million.

[Chris]

Okay. So it's even bigger chat GPT that for us. Let's, let's see what, what they've got. So population of Austin metro and population of San Antonio metropolitan. Be interesting to know. So you know, when I, so when I hear 1.2 million and you know the target is only 3 million per location, I think like man, there's, there's a lot more, 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, you talked about downside of like having 10 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 just for it to exist. And, 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 analysis is so, so, so important. Like for example, how much, how much fixed cost do you have that you have to cover every single month right now. Do you know?

[Josh]

Yeah, break even. And actually we got this from Daryl that we started like really analyzing our break even. We're about 279k.

[Chris]

279, 000.

[Josh]

That's for us to break even.

[Chris]

Okay.

[Josh]

Right. So in revenue per month we have to hit 279 to be at. I get zero profit. Okay, got it, got it.

[Darrell]

So city wise, we're at 2.47 million in Austin and 2.7 in San Antonio.

[Chris]

So how much in Austin?

[Darrell]

2. 2.5 and 2.7.

[Chris]

2.5. 2.7.

[Josh]

And that's all Metro.

[Chris]

Those are metros, right? Yeah. So first of all, that's good news. Good news. You thought it was 1.2, and it's 2.7.

[Josh]

Check Austin. I'm sure it's that. What's that? Check Austin.

[Chris]

Oh, that was 2.5. Austin.

[Josh]

Oh, down. Or like, Austin. Austin by itself. Oh, it should be close to that one.

[Chris]

Right. But Metro, right? I mean, Metro is what you cover, right?

[Josh]

Right. Yeah, is what we cover.

[Carter]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I mean, we're not on here to say, hey, gotcha, but like, to understand.

[Josh]

Well, why is the market cap. Right.

[Chris]

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 is, is how do you get that up to, you know, three or four bucks a person across. Across the board and really just understanding, like, what it takes to get there.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

But, yeah, like, so you said you're at 270,000 on your. On your. On your break fixed.

[Josh]

Yep.

[Chris]

Okay.

[Darrell]

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 in. 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. You would 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 markets you're in.

[Chris]

For sure. For sure.

[Josh]

Yeah. That's such a. Yeah, good point.

[Chris]

And the reality is, even though a lot of your customers are one and done right, with the average customer moving every seven years and most move within their same metropolitan, that amount of recurring revenue is actual a real thing, for sure. The thing I've learned in entrepreneurship is 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, maybe. So let me. Let me just Tell you, like, some of the mistakes that I made early on in in entrepreneurship was like, I did things to impress other people. You know, like locations. That sounds cool, right? Like. Right. 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 going flying to my location up in wherever, you know, it is. And so a lot of times that 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 doing that?

[Josh]

I think maybe naturally. Yeah. I think it happens.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

Like, I mean, we just keep progressing, and then we're reaching new benchmarks that we've, I mean, never seen or had experience with. So I could see. See that car. And I have never had, like, issues with, like, I mean, Card and I both worked on in our hands and actually did the work ourselves. Like, everything we've asked people to do, we've done in our own kind of landscaping company. Yep. And in general, landscape, it doesn't really sound too cool, but Cord and I have never really cared about that. We're very low key. Honestly, a lot of people know what we do for sure. But I could see, yeah, it does sound cool for our team to say, hey, we're in 10 cities. Oh, for sure.

[Carter]

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 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, 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.

[Chris]

Right, right. Do you know. Do you know what the compounded annual growth rate is going to take to get to 30 million? Have you. Have you calculated that?

[Josh]

Yeah, on that one.

[Chris]

Well, and what I. What I mean by that is, like, so you guys have grown 25 year over year. Right.

[Carter]

And so just last year, just last year, it's been 75 since inception.

[Chris]

Okay, okay, so it was 75 since inception, and then it was 25% this next year do you have. Do you know what it's going to take for five years to grow to 30 million?

[Josh]

No.

[Carter]

40%.

[Chris]

So I think it's. I think it's less. A little bit less than 40%. But like, Daryl's calculating here real quick. But the. The important thing to understand is like, just picking a number out of a hat is like, you don't want to. Right. Like, one of the things that we. 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.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

You probably heard me talk a lot about this.

[Josh]

Yeah, that was.

[Chris]

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, at that percentage? What do you have to.

[Darrell]

38%.

[Chris]

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 you guys did this year? What?

[Josh]

Right. I think how we did it, I guess, in our own brain and what kind of made sense, we analyze 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 3 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, hey, 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?

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

So that's kind of how we did it in our own heads. And that's how we did the math on the 30 million.

[Chris]

So.

[Darrell]

So, because the math makes. The math makes 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.

[Josh]

Right.

[Darrell]

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 because they scaled and their expenses were kind of out of whack because they're spreading themselves so thin 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, your skilling process.

[Chris]

But so there's, there's a few things that you have to make sure that scale. One is like your pay structure, how, how you actually pay and then your management and, and what it's going to take to manage that kind of growth.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Because to Daryl's point, growth requires more management. Right. Like just because you can do 3 million in one location, when you have 10 locations doing 3 million, that's going to require a whole lot more management then you know.

[Carter]

Right.

[Josh]

One, you can 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.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

So we're also not super attached. Especially like yeah, us and I working with, with Chris and Daryl, like 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 a kind of corporation not just like hey, go do. Yeah, go do grass.

[Darrell]

I guess I think too one thing that I think I, I see in this is like if you guys can get your businesses to 10 million of location and scale that you're pro, you're, you're going, you guys are 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 replicate that.

[Josh]

That's true.

[Darrell]

Is going to be significantly more valuable than just being able to pick up just like the cherries on top.

[Josh]

Like the low hanging fruit.

[Chris]

Yeah, the low hanging fruit is like only, you know, so valuable. Right.

[Josh]

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 Carter's closing hopefully like a huge deal that we've never really messed with on the commercial side, which we know how to do it. 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.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

If that does hit.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

So how do we also calculate that? We're just kind of going with, with the curve, I guess.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah. 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? These, these big projects or whatnot. 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, where, when, when customers think of your company. Right. So when they, when they think of Urban Oasis. What is Urban Oasis? Right. It can't be like Jack of all trades, everything in, in landscaping. It's like these guys specialize in doing X.

[Carter]

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. And it's like we gotta draw the line somewhere.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Carter]

And I think where that line is is outdoor living spaces. So we want to be a one stop shop because there are a lot of people that pay for convenience in this world. You know, you want to be able to go to a restaurant and order your whole plate from one restaurant. You don't want to, you know, a la carte from different places. So we're kind of that for outdoor living spaces.

[Chris]

I love it.

[Carter]

We're not going to, 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 because they're all just turnkey outdoor living spaces.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Cool. And as long as you feel like that is simplified enough, then, 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 it's the, 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 like, well, if I actually owned the countertop company and I. Oh. And I could hire a few guys to be able to create the, the actual woodwork of it and I could own the painting company as well that comes in and does the work. 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.

[Darrell]

I think 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 of a sudden, 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 focused on, you know, the things that really drive your business to, to change and morph into something even bigger than you imagined.

[Chris]

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 100 million last year and net EBITDA. They, they were like 1.2% and like cash was like 0.6% or something. So like 600 grand on, on $100 million, right?

[Darrell]

But if I were to ask you, like, would you love to do 100 million, have $100 million in revenue business? Everybody outline, heck yeah.

[Chris]

Right?

[Darrell]

That would be 100 million is awesome. But then it's like, well, what profit do you get, right?

[Chris]

And, and you know, it's, it's interesting like if you run a highly profitable business, like if you can figure out how to net out 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, the profitability.

[Carter]

Totally.

[Chris]

And so going back, I think just from like a, a, like a practical standpoint, just you guys have an incredible opportunity to dive into your organic and paid marketing within, 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 plate, I'm going to 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. 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, you know, the business is like, well, I don't even know if I'm making money off of this.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Like, right. That's literally most people' paid strategy. And so what I would encourage you guys to do, and obviously you're here for tomorrow, right? We're going to be diving into this specific, 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 TikTok 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? Like befores and afters.

[Josh]

Like I mean we love this, I.

[Carter]

Mean people on TikTok while back.

[Chris]

Yeah, so, so you did a little bit organic. The problem with when you go, when you go viral on like an organic type thing is it doesn't hit any of your target audience right now. 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, you know, a $200 job for me in South Africa?

[Darrell]

I don't think so.

[Josh]

Yeah, overhead.

[Chris]

And so like although organic is good, paid is different, right? Because you can target your audience, you can be able to get the exact ideal client profile we call nice cp. Right. And so when I'm looking at your guys's business, like 85% residential, no paid, you're doing zero paid advertising right now, is that right?

[Carter]

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.

[Chris]

So you're spending less than a thousand bucks a month.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Right. And so where a business of your size should be said Spending, you know, anywhere from like 5 to 10% of your total revenue on. On paid advertising. Right? And so, yeah, so I mean, you can do the math of 6 million, right? Like at 10% or like, let's call it 5%, 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. And the reason I bring this up is because right now you're formulating strategy of like 3 states, 10 cities, 30 million without ever really 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.

[Darrell]

It actually sets up your company for having this ability to trial and error and not have to worry about your business falling apart if it doesn't work.

[Josh]

Right. All right.

[Darrell]

Do you guys have a Runway that most people don't? You've put into 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 you really have everything stacked in your favor to really figure out the organic and paid side, which from there, like upward and onward. Right?

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

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 should be spending 30 to 60 or whatever, 25 to 50k a month.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

Because next year, hopefully revenue goes up, then. Yeah, where can we go? I mean, that's what I was saying. Like, we just. It's hard to plan when it just changes so fast because what if that quadrant two pushes more than quadrant four, Right.

[Chris]

I mean, which it should. Right. Like, 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?

[Josh]

Yeah. I mean, that's good. Marketing is scary.

[Chris]

Like, that's based on revenue.

[Josh]

I mean, that in my brain is like, oh, okay, we can handle that very fast. Right?

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

But in that one's scary to think.

[Chris]

Yeah. And if you're not used to doing it, it would, it should be scary. Right. But, but when you, once you understand the science of it, that like, okay, if marketing is 10 of my revenue and I'm doing, I'm. So what I'm looking at here on your financials, I see actually only, only 1%, you're spending 50k. It says advertising and promotion. So what, what does that incorporate right.

[Carter]

Now that might be like yard signs and flags at our shop and stuff like that.

[Chris]

Right. Which, which is part of, which is part of marketing. But it's more branding related 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, that means I'm going to get another 5 million. Right?

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

And so obviously any business owner in their right mind, they want that.

[Josh]

Right? Right. So what's the percentage usually from paid marketing?

[Chris]

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 temp. About half of that is attributed to marketing and a half of that's attributed to sales. Which I know you guys don't have like a huge sales team or anything built out either.

[Josh]

Right. So maybe that's another thing because now. And that's another challenge. Okay, yeah, let's try that. But then what do we need more sales guys.

[Chris]

Right?

[Josh]

Right. We only have three people right now that do that.

[Chris]

So, so like need for that. So when I, 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, because those two things, those drivers marketing and, and like having a high performing sales team, all of a sudden you can flip this thing on it 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. By going door to door, you can do paid advertising. You come in, you close across the, 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, in the room. Because right now your sales department consists of who?

[Carter]

Yeah. Me, Josh, and we've got two other sales reps. Yeah.

[Darrell]

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?

[Josh]

That's a good point.

[Darrell]

So by increasing your paid advertising, if that became one of your biggest pieces, your referrals are going to tag along with it. And so you're going to increase your referral business as well, right?

[Josh]

You parlaying the lead. Yeah, that's a good.

[Chris]

And the, the, the other thing to consider here when we're talking about 10 cities is guess who doesn't scale?

[Josh]

Me and Carter.

[Chris]

That's right. That's right. And so, you know, 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. Like you, your team can scale if, if you have good systems for recruiting and training and everything else. But the reality is, is you're not going to get the same type of production as you will from an owner that's sitting right underneath their nose. And so like, these are all things that you have to consider, especially when you're talking about like multiple locations, but man, huge opportunity from a marketing and sales standpoint. But also this also goes back to like, I mean, all this is tied together from like creating like the five year plan and, 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?

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

Which means you have 42% gross margin. Okay, if I do, if I 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 10 to 15% in everything else. Right. What is that? What does that leave us with? That only gives us 7% net margin at the end of the, at the end of the day.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

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 sale. A big sales team and, 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 I need to do to my, my top line numbers to be able to get. Be priced in.

[Josh]

Right?

[Chris]

Yeah. Have you guys thought through a lot of this?

[Josh]

I think for us one thing that we've always struggled with and we actually hired a couple of people 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 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. So if we did that, even adding the 20%, I feel like it would still be a higher margin than what it is today. 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 at what point?

[Chris]

Yeah. So you're, you're referring to more like utilization rate, like utilizing your fixed assets or your fixed labor which is like you got this management in place or whatnot.

[Darrell]

Right.

[Josh]

Like if we, if we maybe had the same team, better systems and do say 700k a month, then our margin would instantly go up already.

[Darrell]

That's the other thing too.

[Josh]

On your, that's kind of like a.

[Darrell]

On your financial. You guys are doing cash basis, right?

[Josh]

Yes, cash basis.

[Darrell]

And I think one of the things that would really help you guys know your numbers better on a month to month basis is going accrued because then you're assigning the, the revenue with the work cost.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chris]

The expenses are tracked directly. Yeah.

[Darrell]

And that was, I mean we, we were same thing.

[Josh]

Right.

[Darrell]

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, we kept going. Right?

[Josh]

Yeah, that's kind of.

[Carter]

No, I agree with that.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Carter]

Because we're trying to create this bell curve of revenue to profitability.

[Chris]

Right.

[Carter]

Like okay, when we have too little revenue, we're not going to make any money. When we have just. Right. We're going to make a lot of money and when we have too much revenue we're over utilized 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.

[Darrell]

Sorry, you're saying that as you increase price, it doesn't impact your conversion.

[Carter]

Right. Definitely not proportionally. So if we increase price 10%, we're not losing 10% conversion rate, which is perfect.

[Chris]

And that's a key thing for anybody to understand. That's watching. 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, to the whiteboard where if it was a hundred dollars 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. So I mean, it's just such a drastic difference.

[Carter]

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, 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, 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.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah. And this goes to one of the core strategies and principles that we always teach 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 going to 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, our business work.

[Darrell]

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. They can't afford to.

[Chris]

Right.

[Darrell]

They can offer the product that you ask 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. 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.

[Chris]

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, I need to. I need to implement that.

[Josh]

I think for me personally, the biggest one, I would definitely say is the 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, and 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 knowing what goal should be based on data or logic instead of just like. But here, numbers out.

[Darrell]

Here's the 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 doing 30 million in San Antonio.

[Chris]

Right.

[Darrell]

Then all of a sudden you have. You have a ton of money to go and scale this thing even faster.

[Chris]

Right.

[Darrell]

And so that's. That's kind of the catch 22 is like, you might actually be able to scale faster into 10 cities by going deeper.

[Josh]

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Right.

[Carter]

That totally makes sense. Yeah, I'm kind of on the same five. Is 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 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.

[Josh]

I mean, also, we're super blessed that we have Texas being crazy right now with bunch of people moving into the city, becoming one of, like, the biggest.

[Darrell]

Cities in the U.S. you guys are thinking. Governor Newsom.

[Carter]

Thank you, Elon.

[Josh]

Now leaving all the.

[Darrell]

Now all the people leaving California and the till.

[Carter]

Oh, yeah, that was huge. Definitely in 2021, that was everything. It was like, think. Yeah, half of our business came from. From Californians coming into Texas.

[Chris]

Literally.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chris]

So what I, what I'm hearing you guys say, so I have listed on here, I so really like reevaluating the map of what it, what it looks like to get to 30 million.

[Josh]

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 never nibbled at it.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Josh]

What does that mean? If we actually put a lot of our time and focus into quadrant two.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

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 going to do our same concept, which is referrals.

[Chris]

Right.

[Josh]

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 start. I studied entrepreneurship in A and M, but I mean, they taught me some stuff on books.

[Chris]

They've.

[Josh]

No one has taught me anything based on, like, actually growing a business besides you guys. So appreciate it. Excited to see that.

[Chris]

That's. That's a good testimonial. We appreciate it. So, so I have, I added. So I have go deeper, basically deeper per location than implement a paid marketing strategy. Right. And so I, I think, you know, those, those three things, you know, just addressing those could. Could, you know, drastically impact the business and the direction that you're going to be going. And so appreciate. First of all, thanks. Thanks for your time, but thank you for the testimonial. Wrapping it up with the, the end of this episode. Can you share with guys, like, what you've been able. How being a part of Next Level Pros and part of our elite group and how that, how that's impacted your life? Yeah, yeah.

[Josh]

It's been a crazy journey because I've been listening to it for, 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. I have always been more of the explorer and Carter's more like, structured. I'm always like, everywhere. 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, Cora and I just talk about it, but both of us are in the, I guess in the same level echo chamber. Right? Echo chamber. So, yeah. 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. 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.

[Chris]

Love it.

[Josh]

Yeah, those are probably the biggest things right now. Culture has been my number one focus and it's been amazing. So awesome.

[Chris]

Tell us a little bit more about that. Like what it. What are some things that you learned from our community that you've impacted on your culture?

[Josh]

So I guess the biggest thing I've learned is just saying, like, hey, who is Urban Oasis on outside facing and inward facing? We've always really pushed on like, hey, Urban Oasis to clients is like this clean, perfect 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. And they 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. Like, that's something I just integrated maybe three months ago. And now, like, 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 had. I have an executive assistant who now helps me, like, I guess employ new people. And now he's pitching what I pitched him which is the same core values, the mission statement and division. So now people like saying that like without me even saying it's awesome too.

[Chris]

So cool like having a nice little replication of yourself.

[Josh]

Right? Right. So I was like dang that's cool. Like he's like now me I love it.

[Chris]

I love it.

[Josh]

That was awesome to see.

[Chris]

Well appreciate you guys jumping on the 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 we are more than happy to dive into them. Just leaving on the the comments in the comments section and as always for those that are looking at getting more from the next level community go on over to go next level pros.com you can test out being a part of our weekly calls for only 47 bucks. Once again go nextlevelpros.com until next time.