How Curaytor CEO Jimmy Mackin grew Curaytor to $11M revenue and 500 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is Jimmy Mackin he's the CEO of curator a fullservice digital marketing company focus on helping listing agents get more listings in seven years the company SC over 10 million in annual curring revenue has been featured in Forbes hington post USA Today and other outlets in 2019 Jimmy co-authored exactly what to stay for real estate agents A bestselling book design to help agents with common critical and difficult questions they face he's also host with water cooler over 115 episodes in 8.5 million minutes watched the go-to resource for a lot of folks in the industry Jimmy you ready to take us to the top yes sir excited to be here I'm excited you're here too so so just be clear this is a this is really a service business and you're just now thinking about what to launch in SAS is that accurate well no I would I would describe us as um technology empowered uh Professional Services so we've always been we've always had a technology component a curator in fact I think we initially started probably about 50% of our clients were just relying entirely on our technology uh but over time we've uh We've really focused on the services aspect of the business to help scale and help really deliver value uh the way we think about it maybe it's not traditional for your audience but the way we think about it is not is not software versus Services we think about it as a solution which is how do we use technology and how do we use services to deliver an actual solution for the customers so when it's appropriate we'll use software when it's appropriate we'll use services but at the end of the day it's all about just getting results for the clients and last year in 2020 if you break down your Revenue from Tech enabled Services versus pure SAS what percent went with each so yeah so we uh well when we started the year we were 80% um SAS and 20% services and a huge Initiative for me was to to balance that number out now I know for the VCS who maybe watch these these these shows they're they're going to say it's going to affect your multiple but for a boot Trap Company like our like us like that's not something that's really on our radar so I wanted to get more of our customers using our softare our services so last year we ended with 50% of our customers who have a professional service and 50% who just rely entirely on our Tech platform interesting okay let's just focus on SAS for a second what what was Mr last month um 780 780,000 yeah and how many customers were paying that well we have sorry I'm sorry how many pay you total yeah we have like between 480 and and 500 CLI okay so this is expense I mean uh I mean $780,000 in Mr divided by 500 customers I mean this is this is sort of a midmarket as you know Enterprise he play at $1,500 a month average contract size yeah we're we're a premium service uh we work you know in real estate the industry that we're in the top 10% of real estate agents sell 41% of all homes sold in the US we're not Nathan there's two million agents in in in the US that have a license we're not interested in working with the botom 90% the part-timers the ones that sell two or three homes a year we want to work with sort of the entrepreneurs who actually have a business who are trying to grow who need the support and uh and resources to to make that happen so for us we we focus on the uh what would be considered not even mid-market for us it's really considered sort of the top tier Enterprise in real estate and if you're doing $780,000 a month in Revenue last month where were you about a year ago so we can understand growth well we were probably around the same point um you know when we uh we at our at our bottom during Co gez we got down to like probably $495,000 a month in Mr um and that was obviously on the back of the real estate market shutting down and and we lost a lot of customers very quickly we lost a lot of Revenue very quickly um more on the software side than on the services side but it it it hurt nevertheless um and so what we've done over the last really six to to eight months is get us back to where we really needed to be and focused on everything we could do to innovate to get ourselves in a position where we were essential to the customer uh so we were able to essentially kind of get back to where we were which is like in some respects for us um something we're really proud of and felt like was a massive success yeah how did you do that though did you just resign are you resigning people up that churned during Co or are you getting new customers altoe well so the strategy you know I think a lot of people forget you know what it was like in March because now we're February it feels like a lifetime ago right um but the thing that became so obvious to us the number one lesson we had in Co was very simple is that we absolutely had to be essential we had to be Netflix we couldn't be hulo or peacock or quby you know I saw an article recently on the LA Times Nathan that said uh and I think you got a kick out of this they said uh streaming companies like HBO and Disney are exping this phenomenon called churn and in the article they went on talk about how um you know 46% of consumers in the last months are going to cancel a streaming service and so for curator when we started to think about our value proposition we started to realize very quickly that we needed to get closer to the customer and more importantly closer to the cast register so what we did uh to get us from being at 495 back to where we are today is we understood that we had to say okay we have to innovate and so we had to focus on what is the value proposition that customers really need right now we were primarily marketing but it it had to be advertised in because advertising for our clients uh a much faster time to Value so we we shifted our Focus to entering into the real estate advertising Market which is you know1 19 billion Doll Market the biggest player in the space is Zillow uh they're the dominant player and we said we're going to provide a an alternative to Zillow and we're going to help our clients get an Roi on their advertising spend in conjunction with our marketing services and that was a huge driver of growth for us and and more importantly it allowed our customers to quantify very easily what the ROI of curator was which is ultimately the goal for any company like us okay so $780,000 a month Revenue today about a $9.3 million run rate 500 customers paying I assume you guys are profitable since you're bootstrapped is that accurate yeah so when uh when I took over as um CEO uh when was that October of 2019 um so October 2019 the first three months we were hammering cash we burned upwards I think of around $690,000 in cash in the first three months uh in the last five months or last four months excuse me we've made over $550,000 in cash that's that's L I'm sorry that's great yeah well you know we're really proud of it because it's largely due to just operational excellence just like you know H it's it's the way we think about it is playing offense and defense at the same time you know and I think I think this is again we're pretty simple as a bootstrap company but I think in a lot of cases when you're comparing yourself constantly to other fast growing SAS compan companies you tend to overinvestment of being a bootstrap company is to be conscientious of what is a long-term investment that you can make that maybe or maybe not will play out versus what you know what what do you need to do now to actually make money to keep the uh keep the doors open what what is the economic relationship between you and Chris Smith I believe Chris founded the company what back in 2013 yeah we're co-founders so we're equal Partners okay oh W so he gave you 50% of the company when it came in in 2019 no so Chris so Chris and I co-founded the company together so we were together on on yeah on day one yeah I see I see okay so you guys just split it equal 50-50 day one and then you took over our CEO 2019 yeah so we actually have a third partner at curator so it's it's one third one third one third with the three Partners we have a silent partner who is involved in the technology at the beginning who now Ste back steep back from the business I see so what was a big change in 2019 and you just taking over CEO yeah well you know one of the things that Chris and I realized um well first off I think for anyone who's watching right now who is a Founder uh my advice is very simple is that the relationship you have with your co-founders is maybe the single most important thing that you need to work on to ensure that you can actually build a sustainable business um and the relationship I have with Chris is just phenomenal it's someone who I've always admired and respected and someone who I've always used as a mentor and a sounding board and so in 2019 for Chris and I uh it became really clear and obvious that the company needed a single voice and a single leader and that transition from a Founder to a CEO is a really difficult transition for most people to make you know Founders Nathan you know this already because you're in this space like Founders have all of the power but none of the responsibility or accountability uh and so you know you you you can...