How Lcptracker CEO Mark Douglas grew Lcptracker to $31M revenue with a 150 person team in 2024.

yeah my name is Mark Douglas I'm uh CEO of LCB tracker we're a uh labor compliance software as a service company for uh large construction projects across the country we manage over uh 200 billion dollars worth of projects that are active in our system now we have um over 2,000 clients um many of them are government agencies but also U large contractors and subcontractors oh there we go so I'm sorry I have a bad disc so I've got to have a little chair here to uh work through this but uh but I'm going to talk to you about operations how we operate as a company and I think this is a little different than a lot of the presentations because it's going to be about how do you build a business over 20 years and I did it all bootstrapped uh I'm going to be talking to you about culture strategy and value all with a Twist around operations a little bit about us we were $1 million in 2011 and we're $25 million this year uh 100% bootstrapped zero debt uh we plan for profits of one to two million every year and all the rest goes into our growth plan uh that's how we've done especially really well over the past six years in fact uh we've been within 1% of our uh annual revenue goal and annual expense U targets each year for the past six years um what I like to talk with the first is really your why it's your vision uh I think this is probably the most important thing you do and it's got to be super clear uh and I'll be talking you about the how or um the way you do it and then uh your Cornerstone is your culture that will develop all this um our why statement is empowering people to build better communities and how that works out is it's really external and internal I believe you have to have it both inward facing for your employees and external towards your clients um it's how we base the premise of all our decisions so is it something are we helping a community are we helping better families are we helping uh an individual it it it's our guidepost for everything uh the risk Carlton why is we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen and what they believe is the workers the maids everybody they believe that they're ladies and gentlemen that are serving the people coming into their hotel as ladies and gentlemen so it's it's an external and an internal uh why it's very effective see our software helps our clients hire Americans into a construction career into apprenticeship programs uh into uh a carpentry job into to a plumber's job and often these are disenfranchised workers they're formally incarcerated or foster care our our our um clients often have targeted work groups where they want to hire a big group of people uh a project LAX is A4 billion project we have and they're targeting about a thousand people to be hired from uh formerly incarcerated or foster care or or or in poverty in those areas so that's a big part of what we do and so it's and we we've we help our clients hire those folks and so this is how we help them build a career into their life which helps their community so it all fits together in our in our vision and our plan um really what's also very important is you have to have your destination you have to tell people where you're going and our and our plan is we want to be the Sole Provider of Labor compliance and workforce management solutions for all public and private Construction in the United States and and that's our 5year plan um we've got about 20% of it now and then what goes right along with that are core values and behaviors and we have two simple words with that and the reason we have that is because it also is the The Core Balance of where your people are going to be thinking and how you want them to embody their their work and their lives at your company so we made it really simple give and do it and so each word represents a something the G represents give with a passion and purpose I for live with the utmost Integrity V for provide value in every engagement e for cultivate a culture of excellence and on the do it side is dedicate yourself to comp completing your tasks o for take ownership and I for we Inspire and encourage innovation and T for think before you react so we everything we do as regard is to promote those values and those behaviors within our culture so after you have that all established um you're going to be uh looking at strategy the second thing is this is something I think we do most and I think this is probably the most important thing you you can take away from what I would have to share with you is our strategic planning process um the first thing we do is we have a six-month strategic planning process that starts in June and ends in November and um the board sets the first three top priorities in June which are the company priorities and then in July each department does their SWAT and they set their priorities aligned with the company priorities in August we do Manpower planning with the financial model and then in September we lock in the kpis we do usually four to six top objectives that will align with the three priorities and then we publish our first financial model which is going to be the model that's going to be the resources required to deliver the top objectives that the Departments are planning and then in October we do a financial model that's final and we publish it and then in November we have an execution meeting where everybody comes to the table they present what they're going to deliver that year and then we all sign off on it so we have a very systematic approach we start in June we end in November once one one thing a month and we get it done and it's super effective like I said we've been 1% on target with expenses and revenue uh every year for the past six years so what does that look like for 23 for LCB tracker well our top three priorities that the board came up with was digital Marketplace product strategy and scalable platform and so we drove that down into the department level and we said okay how do you help us do this and so the top five objectives came out of that and the first one being what we call Project Monarch and that's what we is a rewrite of one of our core software products re-platforming because it's uh it needs it um and that aligns with uh the product strategy under number two and number for Salesforce and net Suite we had to do a major infrastructure upgrade to to move to our scaling we want to scale a lot faster and we had a lot of problems with um Salesforce and net sber I was in fact I was a number 700 customer for Salesforce back in another business and I rolled that uh license over so I'm I'm like a very early adopter of Salesforce so we have to actually rewrite that a lot of that software and that falls under scalable platform form and then we have uh we had a reporting backlog a huge reporting backlog so we put a big effort into fixing that and then also uh what we call CSO which is our customer service offering which is going to coincide with a whole digital Marketplace offering our products that can be bought online a lot easier than we currently sell them so those are that's how it rolled out so what we have each department do and each um top objective we get an owner for that and we get a um a senior executive owner and a manager who will own those projects and we have them develop milestones and deliverables for the year and we manage this on a monthly basis they come back to the whole team the whole management team gets to see how are we doing on those objectives each month it's an hour meeting everybody does it six seven minutes but they report how are they doing by Milestone by objective for what they're doing and this is a great way to hey did did we resource you properly to get your objectives done or are we behind and so every month and so we're almost we almost always deliver everything unless we have some kind of contingency that that happened but this is a great way it's very simple very simple chart but you can really keep your company on track with uh delivering your your objectives and then we take it down a step further and we have a kpi some kind of measurement for everybody in the company that's all directed up to the goals of the person I know this is a bit of work sometimes but you got to measure this either weekly or monthly don't so the minimum we do is a monthly kpi review of everybody every department and it's super important you have this involved because then that'll keep you on target for your your your plan as well and then just as important is that financial model so every department is empowered to have their own budget their own resources and um we've aligned that into the financial model and my CFO meets every month with the department head and they look at the budget are you on target with your kpis your objectives do we hire your resources are you in Target with your expenses and it gives you a little bit of flexibility to roll because you're you're able to then if you're having a bad quarter you can go well let's slow down the hiring and then maybe relax on some of the objectives because that gives you the ability to still maintain your number one goal which is your profit right and then the final thing under strategy is obviously you all know this we have to develop great software so I just wanted to share a few things from my experience on what I think are really important aspects to developing great software um we have this thing...