How Lcptracker CEO Mark Douglas grew 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 we call shiny objects in the company and we really got to stay away from shiny objects stay focused on your goal that's a huge thing I'm probably the biggest culprit that has created problems for shiny objects um I've gotten a lot better at it um uh be laser focused on your core offerings uh don't take shortcuts on your architecture that's a huge one I've learned um if you do it's going to cost you a lot of rewrite um I I think the number one issue today and going forward if you if you're not aware of it is you got to be security not only cyber security but data security states are passing laws for privacy and there's going to be huge lawsuits if you're in if you're doing business in California you have any private data you got to follow all kinds of new rules for your privacy data I think if if you're not paying attention to that really look deep into that privacy data is a huge thing coming um Virginia Colorado I think another state is just about to pass something uh and then I also believe you got a properly staff your product management teams your QA your engineering and and dedicate them to each product line don't cross them over to different products you'll get a lot more efficiency when you keep them on one single product line um and then you got to give the development team some margin they often don't have any margin that's their biggest gripe they getting too many shiny objects and then they can't get done what they want so I think those are my big top things about how how you develop great software so let's jump into number three creating value and I think this is a um a huge impact that we have with our customers and we we have a about a 97% uh return on our C ARR return customer year annually some of my customer been with me since uh you know 12 15 years um the first thing you got to do is you got to create value with your customer you got to give that customer experience but I don't mean just with your software I mean with your people every single touch point that you have with a customer has to be creating value so when the accountant talks to them when the support person talks to them they can't just be like get them done they they got to feel value they're they're not going to remember what you did for them they're going to remember how you made them feel um we have a uh a thing at the company we call fanatical support we have no rules on on the amount of time a support person will take with a customer they will talk to them about their kids and you know we don't completely encourage that but they literally there is no rules we don't judge them by the amount of time or the number of calls we do surveys on them all the time and we judge them by the happiness Factor how happy are our customers and that has paid huge dividends we have a great reputation with all of our users and they just they just love our company because they feel I mean you know frankly we have a lot of things that don't work that great in our software I mean our software is great but there're things that bug our customers and we can't fix them all at once so but they don't ever complain about us because they love how we treat them and I think that's one of the most important things you can do is treat your customers with extreme value uh I I mentioned the RIS Carlton the RIS Carlton gives $2,000 to even the maid and they're authorized to spend that on any customer there in their hotel to make make sure they're happy um that's that just shows you that you know you go to a rich you know you're going to feel good about being in that place right that's that's the attitude we try to give our our uh our employees and our customers um and engagement being with your people in person is the I found that to be our biggest success we go to seminars we show up onsite at their client site we drive you can't do it for a lot of the small customer I understand but if you got major customers you got to go meet them you got to meet them where they're going you go to their trade shows you you have have dinner with them what whatever you can do to build relationships and the second thing is taking care of your employees um you know I'm sure you all take good care of your employees but uh we have Phantom stock program we have a 401k one of the things we do on our 401K is we have instant matching we don't have um vesting period what I'm trying to do is do the same thing Empower communities to build people to build better communities which includes my own people so I want to enrich them as quickly as possible the faster they're financially healthy the faster I'm going to grow because they're more settled they you know I don't lose them um we do staff Retreats uh we have an annual staff Retreat where we bring everybody in the company to a hotel for three days and we Network and we enjoy each other I have I every department does their own Retreat um we get together we make sure there's bonding and relationships and holidays we have a 3.6% churn rate the the average SAS company is 14% so it's it's if you do right and you Empower you you build and take care of your employees you're going to keep them a lot longer and it's a lot cheaper to keep employees and then Empower your people and um the the talk yesterday about transformational management is you've got to let your employees run the business you've got to have um them keep it's really about the kpis the measurement and planning and getting them that plan and then letting them run with it um you got to have a really flat uh structure so that you don't have a lot of decision making at one level and then everybody just follow suit um the the Navy Seals are arguably the best run organization in the world they almost always win and uh they have no more than six people reporting to any one person and every seal in in the field can make decisions as needed so you have to have decision- making all the way down the level as low as you can in the in the chart and then and then um one final thing I think I I I'd give you the C i' call it the CE warning label talked about The Shining objects I don't know about you guys but anytime I come up with an idea and I talk to people about it they start to go off and run like they I want to build it I'm like oh no no I didn't say I didn't say go build it um so I just say be careful about how you approach your staff especially as you're getting bigger um now that I'm you know bigger and bigger now um it's it's harder because they really think everything I say I they want I want done and so I I'm I'm a little bit more careful about that so I call that the the warning label uh so the three three key takeaways I'd just like to leave you with is start with your why be really really focused have a purpose and a vision and a passion on your why and then talk about how you're going to do it how you're going to build your software to do that and then talk about the destination where are you going Elon Musk is going to what is he going to do he's going to make the world on renewable energy right and he's GNA also land people on the Moon I mean he's got this he's got this destination where all his people are like focused on it and he's kind of making it happen to some degree um strategic planning I gave you a really good outline six months that is super powerful do do do some kind of six-month plan it's really easy to accomplish because it's once a month um I I I love that and then again create the value for your clients for your employees and everybody you touch so thank you [Applause]