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- [00:00]
A
You're about to meet Luis. He runs an online store that sells railing. Although he's doing two and a half million dollars in revenue, the problem is that 81% of his customers are coming from a single source, which is Google Ads. If that changes or stops working, his business could be in very serious trouble. So first we're going to dive deep into the business and then we're going to break down all the tactics that he and you can use to scale. And at the very end, we're going to check in with Luis one year later to see if those tactics actually helped him scale.
- [00:23]
B
Hi, Alex. My name is Luis. Laura, the the owner of Optimum Works. And we are a railing company and we sell a variety of railings online. And who we help are homeowners, contractors and designers. And here are some of the examples
- [00:37]
C
below of some of the products we make.
- [00:39]
A
Sweet. How much money you make?
- [00:41]
B
Currently we're doing 2.5 million in revenue, 384,000 in profit, and our net margins are 15%. And our LTV to CAC is one to one.
- [00:52]
A
Okay, so something's weird there, obviously. So what do you want to have happen?
- [00:58]
B
I'm trying to build the best railing company in the US and I want to 10x revenue growth and double profit.
- [01:03]
A
That is an ambitious goal. So how do you get customers?
- [01:07]
B
All right, currently we're getting them through paid ads. And 81% of our customers are coming from Google Ads. And we spent about $21,600 a month on Google and we spent on Meta, $4,500 a month. And we have a couple other sources of traffic below.
- [01:24]
A
So what's the issue? What's the problem right now?
- [01:26]
B
We spent over 300,000 in marketing last year. Our CAC is high and it actually doubled from last year. And our conversions are too low.
- [01:34]
A
Got it. So you have a conversion rate issue. So any other problems that you're dealing with besides that?
- [01:40]
B
Another problem is that not enough customers are repeat buyers. It's only about 10% and we want
- [01:45]
C
to increase our LTV so you have
- [01:47]
A
a different customer mix. So you've got DIY guys and you've got designers, you've got contractors, but 70% of your business is DIY. What percentage is custom versus like just normal off the rack stuff.
- [02:00]
B
70% are just like handrails and like stuff that people buy directly on our website and then 30% are custom orders.
- [02:07]
A
What percentage of sales are coming from people buying on the side versus a phone?
- [02:12]
B
The last time I checked, it's about like 10 to 20% on, on the phone.
- [02:16]
A
All right, so many ways to make money here. So I'm going to do this a little differently than I normally do. Instead of giving you like a lot of different things, I would like to just give you like two or three things so that you have a high likelihood of actually doing it that have the highest impact on the business. But fundamentally I think that we could probably fix a lot of this with like two things.
- [02:38]
C
Okay, great.
- [02:39]
A
All right, so why don't you go over this way and then we'll, well, we'll do some live breakdowns. Let's pull up the meta ads. Okay, so this is the only ad that's running right now. All right. Are you running these or somebody else running these?
- [02:53]
C
I have a marketing agency that works, that I work with and they're doing like the ads, but we've definitely scaled down on meta and we're only spending like 1 or 2000amonth right now. But we actually use a post purchase survey and over 90% of our customers are saying they found us on Google.
- [03:10]
A
Okay, got it. Well, that's good to know. Yeah, let's do Google real quick. Okay, so CACD LTV there doesn't make sense because it says your LTV is lower than your CAC unless you're losing money. But it doesn't sound like you're losing money. So something's wrong here. What I'm seeing here though, is that we have a clear data attribution issue. For me to say, hey, let's spend more on Google or let's spend less on Google, it's like, I have no idea. We don't have any data, so we have numbers, but they're not useful. We have to get the attribution because you're at a business where you are spending money on ads, you're making money, but you have no idea where it's really coming from besides your post purchase survey, which says Google. But when we look at the Google stats, it says you're losing money. So here's my red flags, right? So number one is you're showing LTV to CAC of 0.41 to 1, which makes zero sense because that would mean that every month you would just be actively losing money. And since 80% of your sales come from Google traffic, then I would say 80% of your revenue should be losing, losing money, on which you're not. So there is an alternative possibility, which is super, you know, this is possible, which is that the agency that's doing this for you has no idea what they're doing. And you're just getting a lot of referral traffic from people who've bought stuff from you in the past. And you're actually just functionally blowing money out the back end and not really getting many more sales. I would like, if I wanted to get. If I were. If I wanted to be a ballsy, ballsier person, I would consider looking at shutting off all the ads and seeing how sales change.
- [04:35]
C
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the only way to find out.
- [04:37]
B
But I mean, but I don't want,
- [04:39]
A
like, again, I don't want to, like,
- [04:40]
B
if we, like, like last year, you know, we spent, you know, like, 21,
- [04:46]
C
like, thousand a month average.
- [04:48]
B
And this year we've been spending 40,000. And our. And our revenue has doubled that data
- [04:55]
A
of we spent more and we made more. Yeah, that tracks, but it's not being tracked.
- [05:00]
C
Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [05:02]
A
And so that's. So based on that, I would be like, all right, well, something's working. And when you spend more money, you're making more, but we have no idea. And so it allows us to do zero optimization. And you're at the point of the business, like, you want to get from 3 to 10, 10 to 10 to 100. You have to know these data like the back of your hand.
- [05:19]
C
Yeah, definitely. I'm at that point where it's. This data is the most important thing right now.
- [05:24]
A
Like, you kind of have a blanket strategy of like, well, more people find out about me, more people buy, which I'm all for. No, I mean, like, I'm game for that.
- [05:30]
C
Yeah.
- [05:31]
A
But now we have to be more. As you get to colder, colder audiences, we have to be more targeted with the spend.
- [05:36]
C
Totally.
- [05:37]
A
If we were to reimagine the business, I think that. And to be clear, I don't want to break the business. Obviously, it's making money. There's nothing wrong with the business, but I would probably optimize for DIY plus custom. And the reason I'm thinking that is for a number of things. So number one is you already have a strong foothold and DIY number two is that they're less price sensitive than the other buyers. Which means, like, even though the ticket and can you pull up the customer data real quick? So if you look here, right. The, the average order value. So if you, if contractors were like $20,000, I'd be like, all right, well, maybe we should look harder at that. But you're, you're, you're, you're really close in terms of Average order value.
- [06:15]
C
Yeah.
- [06:16]
A
And so there's no real benefit to going to these highly price sensitive people who are clearly shopping you between a bunch of different sources versus the people who are like, I think this stuff's dope, I want to buy from them. Which is, I'm guessing, what the DIY people are more similar to.
- [06:29]
C
Yeah.
- [06:29]
A
Right. And so the basically, like, if we think about this from a strategy perspective.
- [06:35]
C
Yeah.
- [06:35]
A
If you sell to the contractors and designers, you're going to be more and more of a commodity for them and then they're just going to be shopping you out between a bunch of other shops that do the assembly and whatnot. Whereas DIY we can drive more gross profit because we could easily take the 873 and probably bump it to a thousand and we have the same average order, but our gross margin would be so much higher.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And that's where I think the magic is. So it's like, even if we have the same average order or close to it, we could sell way more of them and the gross margin on each might be double or triple because the margins are thinner in the business.
- [07:07]
C
Yeah.
- [07:08]
A
That's where I think that, like the overall, like, if I own the business tomorrow, I would probably reorganize it so that it's just like, this is the home for DIY railings and it's showing all the cool stuff you can do for customers. And then people are just like, basically opting in, booking a call, and at the end of the call we can solicit the sale.
- [07:25]
C
Yeah.
- [07:26]
A
And I think you set that agenda at the very beginning, which is like, hey, we're going to go through, you know, these things. So it would look like this. So it would be, you know, custom. They click the button, this thing goes here. They put in their, you know, form.
- [07:39]
C
Yeah, One step funnel.
- [07:41]
A
Yeah, form. And then we can have their calendar. Right. And this can be together. Right. Because the calendar can take the form. Then after this we have a post or pre call, but post opt in video sales letter. And this is like, hey, this will give them price ranges. And then on the nurture, which you'll do via sms, here is basically you ask for bant, which is budget authority, need timing. And so that's just gonna be like easy little text messages being like, hey, just making sure you're the person, like, does your wife need to be on the call? Who else needs to be on call to make a decision? Just because. And I would just be like, listen, we're not a sales company, but I'm happy to hop on the call to figure what you need so we can get. So we can get your order in.
- [08:22]
C
Yeah.
- [08:22]
A
And we're really framing it as like, you're going to be buying on this call. So this isn't like a long sales process. Like, I'm just making sure that no one's wasting anyone's time. And then on the call. And so we'll get the card.
- [08:36]
C
Yeah.
- [08:36]
A
And I think that will allow you to one. Like, I could see a world where your DIY projects are 1300, 1500. Yeah, like, no problem. And then also you probably have like Klarna or a firm or one of those financing options.
- [08:53]
C
Oh, yeah. Like, Shopify has like, their own, like, financing.
- [08:58]
A
And so are you processing the customer orders through Shopify as well? Yeah, yeah. And so here it's like you could say, cool, do you want to pay? Like, I would just do ab in terms of the close, which is like, hey, do you want to use a credit card? Do you want to finance? Same to us. Same to you.
- [09:11]
C
Yeah.
- [09:12]
A
You know, which would you prefer?
- [09:13]
C
Yeah.
- [09:14]
A
And then that way you can just lock in on the call and it's like. And. And then like here you can also prep them saying, hey, I give a $200 discount for people who move forward on the call. And that's just because it saves us an administrative headache for taking more calls after that.
- [09:28]
C
Okay.
- [09:28]
A
So I tell them before they get on the call. So it's like they know they're going to buy because I just want. I don't want you on multiple calls. I think it's a waste of your time. And I think this process, we're just basically leaning into the people that are the least price sensitive that you already have the most of. And they're actually just dialing in the sales process here. And this is where I think you want to like, basically let them dream, which is I'd be like, hey, there's like, there's 101 railings that you can. That you can put into a house.
- [09:54]
C
Yeah.
- [09:55]
A
If you have a modern house, this is. Might be the type of look you're looking for. If you have this, this might be what you're looking for. If you have a. This might. And if you just have wild ideas. Let me show you four different wild ideas.
- [10:02]
C
Yeah.
- [10:03]
A
And I'm sure that there's custom ones, but the reality is that, you know that there's like three or four that, like, a lot of people just think are really sick.
- [10:09]
C
Yeah.
- [10:10]
A
Right. And then just show those ones in the video and you can give the ranges here and be like, obviously it's dependent like on shipping and whatnot. Like, I think that if you literally just follow this process, you would probably be somewhere in the 50 to 60% close rate range and we would probably double the average value of each customer.
- [10:28]
C
Yeah.
- [10:29]
A
So when we were talking earlier, you said you wanted a 10x. Well, just from hypothetical math here, we could probably double the close rate and more than double the gross margin.
- [10:38]
C
Yeah.
- [10:38]
A
Per customer. So that's a 4X.
- [10:40]
C
Okay.
- [10:41]
A
So for the VSL overall, so short for video sales letter for anybody who's curious, is that we want to have basically a hook hook at the beginning. So we go, we, we follow the same process for this as I do for like a YouTube video.
- [10:55]
C
Yeah.
- [10:56]
A
So we're going to have proof that we can help them. We have a promise and then a plan which is like, this is how, what we're going to cover in this video.
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C
Okay.
- [11:05]
A
Right. And ideally have some sort of picture or roadmap that displays these things. That way there's a visual of like, okay, this is what's happening. Real quick. I'm going to show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from 0 to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business. What the constraint feels like, like, what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this. And it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the links in the description, but you just go acquisition.com roadmap just enter info and it'll spit it right back to you all free. The hook is like, hey, have you ever wondered or like, have you ever looked at your railing? Be like, man, if I just change this, my whole house would look different. And this is probably super high ROI from a, from a home resale perspective.
- [12:02]
C
Yeah.
- [12:02]
A
So just changing the railings in house. There's a recent report that came out that showed that like railings from an aesthetic perspective only cost a fraction of what they add in home value. And so the way I think about it, railings are basically free. Wow. Oh, wow. Right? Yeah. What a great, what a great, what a great Anchor. Right now you might be wondering, like, how do I, you know, how do I think about, like, buying a railing? And so it's like, there's actually four steps. You know, it's a. Buying a railing. There's the, you know, the materials. There's the, you know, the number. There's the hook into the wall, the whatever, you know, like, you know. You know, whatever those steps are. Yeah, right. And so you go for each of those at the end of this. So you're going to go through that whole process. Right. And at the end. So we'll put this. This is still in the intro. Yeah. I'll explain pricing because everyone's gonna be like, oh, my God. Because so that way it'll keep them. Cause they're like, oh, I want to know the pricing. I'll explain pricing and kind of like set expectations for delivery times and things like that. Right?
- [12:56]
C
Yeah.
- [12:57]
A
And. And so then you go through this, which is kind of like the meat of the video. And then we go into price ranges and expectations. And I would still say cover this here, which is like, hey, like, obviously, these things, they are free in terms of the fact that they can add value to the house in excess of what they cost, but they obviously cost money. We're made here in America or whatever it is. So, you know, come to the call knowing what your budget is, because then that way, like, I don't waste your time with, like, making railings out of diamonds, which we can do, by the way. You know, you make a joke. Authority, which is like, okay, if you have your wife or husband who needs to be on the call, I'd recommend you guys do it together. Because sometimes you got one person who has the taste, another person who handles the money. Like, you want both of you guys on the call. And then from a need perspective, they're here, so you don't have to cover that one. They have pretty high intent of watching railing videos. And then it's just timing, so it's like, hey, and also, I just want to know basically, what's your timeline in terms of getting it installed and if we were to, you know, get it. Get it shipped out to you, like, how fast do you need it?
- [13:55]
C
Yeah.
- [13:55]
A
Right. And I like thinking, like, how fast do you need it? Because that way we can try and push the urgency in the sale.
- [14:00]
C
Yeah.
- [14:00]
A
To get them to buy. But basically, this is it. So it's like we have our. We have our hook at the beginning. We have our proof, promise, plan, picture, and then we set our expectation to open Loop to the end. We have how you pick the hand railing. And then we say, cool, now that you like that. If you're like, if you're like, I'm not sure. It's like, that's why we have the call. Because listen, it's an important decision. It's going to, you know, change the way your house looks. And I've done this a lot of times and I tend to, you know, I can shepherd you through this process really well.
- [14:24]
C
Okay.
- [14:25]
A
And that's it. In this video, probably you could be looking at, you know, five to seven minutes.
- [14:29]
C
Okay.
- [14:29]
A
Doesn't have to be a long video. And that's it. And then we just have our, have our text, our texts that we're sending afterwards, which we're really just looking for personal info again. And then reaffirming these, which is like, hey, just to make sure. What did you say your budget was? You know, are you going to have your spouse in the car? Whoever makes the decisions and in terms of timelines where you're looking for. Okay, cool. So I'm looking forward to call later today and yeah, we'll move forward at the end of that call. I honestly only want to give you this because I think that's the only thing that matters.
- [14:59]
C
Yeah.
- [15:00]
A
Because I could, like I said I could give you 20 more things, but I'll give you one more. Okay, I'll give you one more. This is all I'm going to do. Give you one more. Which is the long term nurture. I think it's probably worth building this out. How big's your email list?
- [15:17]
C
Like 10,000.
- [15:19]
A
All right, so if you have basically a 10,000 person list, you had the original problem that you're dealing with, which is that you don't have a lot of repeat purchases, right? Yeah, I don't think that there's like, I don't want to force continuity in this business. I don't think that's really the play. I think that what we can do is try and consistently market so that the next time they do an expansion, we're the first ones they look for. But the only way that we can do that is just through consistent long term nurture.
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C
Okay.
- [15:51]
A
And I think that will compound like a snowball, like it'll just keep building up. And I'll bet you like you have, I mean, you're doing two and a half million. How old is the business?
- [15:57]
C
It's five years old. And like I barely went full time two years ago.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah. Okay, so if it's five years old, and you have a 10,000 personal listener doing two and a half million dollars. Like, that list is probably a very good list.
- [16:08]
C
Okay.
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A
Because that's a really small list relative to the revenue.
- [16:10]
C
Yeah.
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A
And so basically I would like you to just commit to two times per week sending an email to the whole list. And I just wanted to do one is a before and after.
- [16:22]
C
Mm.
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A
And the other is cool shit.
- [16:26]
B
Yep.
- [16:27]
A
And if you want to have a third, which you can rotate like, you know, this could be the. The next week you do. This one is an faq, which is what are the most common questions that people ask that don't buy.
- [16:37]
C
Yeah.
- [16:38]
A
So it's like these are like bait. And then this is like overcoming the concern that you immediately have because you're like, oh, I do want that. Be like, ah, but who's doing the install? Or like, how. How much is shipping? How. Like just these normal random questions that people probably. You already know that 20 questions people ask.
- [16:52]
C
Yeah.
- [16:52]
A
Just take all 20 questions and just rotate them.
- [16:54]
C
Yeah.
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A
Throughout the year. Just like kind of rotate them consistently.
- [16:59]
C
Yeah, you could do that.
- [17:00]
A
But that's it. Like, if we just do this and then every email I would structure. So we've got our subject. That should be an E. There we go. And then underneath, we're going to have some sort of immediate reward. So if we can. I like to do really cool quotes. What do you think? Like, something immediately like, that would be sweet. Like an image.
- [17:22]
C
Well, for like a new email.
- [17:24]
A
Yeah. For like following this framework, like rail transformation. Okay, cool. So we would just do probably a picture here. Should be like, check this out. Because the thing is, people who are like, want to improve their home, it's kind of like porn for them. Like, they're just like, they get super obsessive with it.
- [17:38]
B
They love it.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah, no, exactly. So it's like, check this out. We point to this thing and then I would just have my CTA or FAQ about this linked here. But the point is that we want to give them a link and then a PS discount or joke. Just something that's like, you know, friendly, fun, whatever it is. And I think that you can basically model this as the structure that we use in the emails. Because these people, they're going, if they love this stuff, then they're going to open it up just to see, you know, what's going on. And then that's like, that's what's gonna bring people back in.
- [18:14]
C
Awesome. So 80% of people are like, you know, purchasing directly on the website and like, you know, they're just filling out the checkout and like their card info and, you know, proceeding with the order. And the other 20% that we're doing, like custom railing orders is like they fill out like a custom order form and they put all that info. Yeah, once they fill that out, you know, we make sure, like if they have all the correct info, then we'll proceed with the quote and we'll get like an email that they filled it out with all their information and then we'll send them the quote within like 24 hours.
- [18:53]
A
So where's the customer clothing?
- [18:54]
C
Yeah. Custom orders.
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A
It's so small.
- [18:56]
B
No, and we have it.
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C
So.
- [18:57]
A
Yeah.
- [18:58]
B
Where we actually get a.
- [18:59]
C
Also a good amount is that we have it on our. On our most popular railing.
- [19:04]
A
Okay.
- [19:04]
C
Yeah.
- [19:05]
A
Let me see, let me see.
- [19:06]
C
It's in the same product. Yeah, that one. But it. So it's. Yeah, it's underneath.
- [19:12]
A
Is that on all of them?
- [19:14]
C
That is on the. The best sellers. That's it.
- [19:17]
A
Any reason to not put it on all of them?
- [19:19]
C
No, we should put them on all of them.
- [19:20]
A
Dude, let's put this on all of them. Yeah. All right, so in order to do this, I'm going to make this kind of like, up here. All rails have the custom flow, and so this custom order should then lead to here. Now, this little click thing is basically a right. Because this is one source of getting those clicks. One of the other things I want is. So there was a banner that I saw, it said free something and then it disappeared. Okay. Free shipping in the usa. I would have a banner across the top that has custom designs available.
- [19:59]
C
Okay.
- [20:01]
A
And make it sticky. So the one that you have currently disappears. Like, let's keep it sticky across the top. Which one is the Google? Are the Google Ads linking to this one?
- [20:11]
B
Yeah, the Google shopping ads are going to that one.
- [20:14]
A
And that's what you're spending your money on?
- [20:15]
C
Yeah, most of my money. Yeah. On those. Yeah.
- [20:18]
A
Okay, so just going direct.
- [20:20]
C
Direct to the listing.
- [20:20]
B
Yeah.
- [20:21]
A
I love these little testimonial things at the bottom. That's really nice. Okay. I honestly, like, this is all I want you to do. I don't think you need to do anything else because if we like, if we just do this right, you're probably looking at like a 3 or 4x. Like, I just, like, I don't, I don't want to overcomplicate this. Like, you have this. You have this. The right customer. Like, the reason this is so straightforward to me is because everything is aligned. You have the best customer that you have the most of, that's the least price sensitive, that is the most obsessed with this type of product, which leans itself towards custom anyways. And so it's like cool. And this also from. Okay, does this work for long term strategy? Yes, because if you can do more custom stuff, and we know that it's not that custom, but it's enough custom that they feel special about it. And I think part of the pitch is like, listen, you don't wanna have the same railings as your neighbor down the street. And of course they would be so horrified of that, but who gives a shit? But somebody else might. Nobody's into railings, but. And then we add the nurturing so we can bring customers back. That's it. That's all we would do in terms of doing this in order. I would set this up first, I put these on second because basically it's like we have to have the system in place. Then we drive traffic to it. We already talked about this is still the video. Then you use this script. Then we add in our lead, our long term nurture. Because now we're getting more leads through and we're converting more people, but this gives us more long term follow up. And I think this, you just run in parallel because this is the stuff you're going to do. This is just somebody else. You're going to write a check and you're going to get somebody else to do it.
- [21:50]
C
Awesome.
- [21:51]
A
All right, got it. Rock and roll. Perfect. Easy peasy. So it's been almost a year since we filmed this episode with Luis. My team jumped on a call to check in on his progress and I'm going to watch it live.
- [22:01]
B
So from the time we shot that episode of Cash cows, it was April 2025 and we were currently doing 2.5 billion in revenue with 384,000 in profit right now to this day in March 2026, for the past 12 months, we've done 3.6 million with 540,000 in profit. So we've grown our revenue by 44%. Out of all the changes we discussed, that had the biggest impact on profit. It was optimizing for custom orders. That has become now a way bigger part of our business and it's become 50% of our business. So once we fixed attribution, we discovered we had campaigns that were breaking even. So what we did is that we took the money out of the losers and put it into the winners. So once we raised prices, our close rate is currently at 20% and we have triple the amount of leads custom orders submitted. The advice that made the biggest difference was optimizing for custom orders and improving the custom orders page and improving the sales process when it came to taking those custom orders. Alex, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your help and wisdom. You've completely changed my business, and you've got me out of the swamp, So I commend you for that. And I know it's only up from here, so thank you and I wish you well.
- [23:22]
A
So, first off, that was awesome. I love hearing the 44% increase in a year. That's badass. And to be clear, this is all because of Luis actually taking action on this. It's not because of me or some sort of magic. We looked at the orders that were making the most money. We put more resources towards those ones. One of his differentiators, that he had this custom thing that a lot of other people in his space don't have that ability to do. We double down on those things, served higher customers on a higher level, and obviously, he reaped the profits. So, you know, kudos to you, Luis. Appreciate you. And, yeah, so you follow the steps, and the stuff actually works. So, yeah, go. Go do that. Go do what you just saw in this video, and hopefully you reap what Luis did and even more.
- [24:02]
B
Sam.