How Parkbench CEO Grant Findlay-Shirras grew to $7.5M revenue and 1K customers in 2017.

park bench she came on about a year ago they've since like quadruple right going from uh going from 70 grand in Mr to almost 628 th000 in monthly recurring Revenue churns come down as well to 2.75 per month they did 1.9 million last year 6.3 ideally this year a th000 real estate customers who they are crowning the digital mayors of their city with their lead generation tool 90% gross margin paying about 676 bucks to acquire a customer that's worth 13 Grand to them with their team of 30 up in Toronto Amanda this is is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per top 5 and6 million he is on global domination we just broke our 100,000 un soul Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka this is episode 742 coming up tomorrow morning we Bo the founder of privacy.com joins us and the question is will this 28-year-old founder replace credit cards tune in to find [Music] out hello everyone my guest today is Amanda Newman she when she was 26 she became a realtor planning to specialize in Liberty Village Toronto she created a local website for the neighborhood she lived in uh for really to get a One-Stop shop for Local Deals events and news quickly other Realtors wanted what she had and she realized that the technology she created could easily be duplicated all across North America park bench the name of the company has grown from a single marketing idea into a multi-million dollar company with 27 employees and is growing at a rapid Pace Amanda are you ready to take us to the top yes I am very cool hello thanks for joining so last time I had you on it was January February March April it was May of 2016 at that time you had about 500,000 bucks raised you had 10 customers that were paying on average 2500 bucks per month so you're doing about 25 Grand that's uh this yeah know this is what you told me this is right out of your right out of your interview you were doing about 25 Grand in Mr is that not right no back then we were doing about 80 and our we sell upfront uh on average for about $4,500 okay well did you have multiple components of the business like this might have been just your SAS component what were you what were you selling up front so we build neighborhood Focus websites for real estate agents and we sell the entire package up fronts for around on average $4,500 for the whole year okay um I will go back and listen to what you said most of this data is is actually taken directly from your voice so maybe there was something special there but this is I'm just giving historical context so we can update all those in a second right so about 10 customers 500,000 bucks raised um you no we've never raised money you did not raise money no we might have to wait hold on hold on hold on oh I know what I did here I know what I did here you are right next to Amanda Parker and you are exactly right Amanda Newman that was my yes that's why I got confused you are totally right Amanda Newman so you guys were at 215 customers right your 2015 Revenue was about 880 Grand you had raised 125,000 bucks you had about each customer was paying about 350 bucks a month duing about 70 grand in monthly occurring Revenue 5% churn $400 CAC based up there in Toronto LTV of 20 months $7,000 LTV in terms of dollars eight people on your team is that all right that's all correct boom baby founded in 2014 so update us where is the business today and why don't you start by telling everyone who's new what your company does okay so we build neighborhood websites and we have a technology that Aggregates the local content so the events the deals the news and we sell the exclusive rights to those neighborhood sites to one real EST real estate agent per neighborhood then we teach them how to use that neighborhood website in order to go out into the community interview local businesses teachers professionals and feature their articles on that neighborhood site so they're adding a ton of value to the community and they're also building lots of relationships as they go so they can become a connector in the community they can they'll know the plumber they know the roofer they can connect everyone with their clients which is the key right for deal flow yeah so tell us where are you at today in terms of total customers uh today we have about over a thousand that's amazing so you forx you at 215 I think last time we spoke yeah so when we got back from 500 startups so last time we spoke I was actually in Silicone Valley um and we we got back from there they pushed us to take their money so we took their $125,000 and they made us go and invest in growth because I I remember last time we to we spoke when we invest money we make it back very quickly almost instantly so we took that money we invested a ton on uh Facebook advertising taught myself how to do a lot of digital marketing and we used one of the companies that was on here as well at espresso so um we did a lot of digital marketing to acquire leads so real we now we get about 60 to 100 Realtors a day contacting us um wanting to be the digital mayor of their neighborhood and to give you an update we got a 3,000 squ foot office there's now 30 employees um last month was may we did $628,000 in Revenue okay very congratulations that's exciting thank you yeah we just celebrated this morning that was our biggest month by far well yeah because that just I guess today's June 1st so yeah that just up so 628 th000 bucks now is that all monthly occurring or is there Professional Services mixed into that so that's just our entire Revenue so last month we sold about 150 Realtors uh they paid us up front for that and now they have a 12- month term got it what are they paying up front on average about 4,500 to 5,000 okay so so they're paying 5,000 bucks for the right to have be the digital mayor of your site you've created for a year yes got it um the other cool thing is that we now have a a 2.7 monthly turn so a lot of our clients more a lot more of our clients are staying with us you said 2.75 2.75 monthly churn y um that's about I think 65 70% um renewal rate yep oh you're talking so each year right you've got about call it 70 60 70% of people renewing as the digital mayor yeah yeah they're continuing with their sites which is amazing for a a company that charges you know4 to $6,000 a year and they have to annually right they can't pay monthly So when you say last month you did 62,000 bucks you had about 126 renewals at about 5 grand between 455 Grand right 126 new customers new customers yeah so not like some of a little bit of it was renewal um but the majority of it was brand new customers coming on board okay well with the turn and retention you just said 60% of those should have been renewal right uh so because they haven't gone through their entire year cycle yet right so some of them had come on months in months in advance or months before last year like well that's what I'm asking yeah that's what I'm asking the 628 Grand so I think this will help it clear it up the 628 Grand if you sold one $5,000 plan last month is that whole five grand included in the 628 yes okay got it so when I take 628 th000 divided by 5,000 yes right your average plan it comes out to 126 customers okay yes and what I was trying to figure out was of the 126 how many versus how many renewal yes about about 60% renewal 60% renewal is now yeah got it so call like 75 of those folks were renewal and you got about 50 of them were new okay yes yeah that's great yeah so look what I love about this model is like you don't I imag I mean what are you spending on CAC now uh okay so it's about $650 I wrote These down because I knew you would ask you knew I would ask by the way have you ever been on a show like this it's the best right the best I was excited so our uh cost to acquire is about 650 um and let me just pull it up here I love it when they come prepared this is great i' I've heard you chew some people out when they're not prepared so I didn't want to be one of them so that's about $650 to to acquire a customer and I have all your numbers what else what else do you give me what you have uh let's see um I have it right here I said I was prepared you got it great just to summarize why you're looking at that up so again $650 CAC on a $5,000 upfront payment they were recovering that immediately which is great 628 Grand last month in Revenue uh doubled their employees they're up to about 30 people now up there in Toronto so and the customers they've three or four xed up to a thousand yep okay so ready yep our our CAC is 6 uh 676 okay and our lifetime value of a customer is 4,5 oh no sorry our lifetime C our lifetime value I know you're going to ask is 13,163 you assume about a three-year life yeah yeah interesting um interesting so okay good so so 13,000 bucks lifetime value that's all we know right now because we've only been in business for three years one divided by turn right and getting an annual thing and then doing it that way yeah yeah that's not smart um that's how most people do it sometimes I can lie to you but that's generally the best way to do it um so here's my question to you right like you could be I mean what's stopping you from growing faster you have the cash Gap problem solved because you get paid back immediately like why not can you spend more money or you just don't know where to spend it at this point we don't know where to spend it so we're doing a lot of Facebook advertising um when the leads come in we've kind of capped out on how many leads we can get a day just I guess the Facebook algorithms the you can only put your your ads in front of so many Realtors a day and it's you can't just go from $65,000 a month ad spend to you know 200,000 and get double the leads it'll C it starts to get a lot more expensive per lead um less quality they start seeing your ads way too many times so we have to be like more strategic with the ad spend so what we've done right now is we're investing more in content so we want a lot more organic uh organic traffic looking at what we have and then going to our landing pages and filling out the the forms for us to call so that's what we're investing in now and what is the um so what are you spending is that the right number 65 Grand per month in ads spend on ad spend yeah Facebook interesting um cool and then what about Capital raised still the same just the just the 125 from from 500 and so I mean you did this a while ago you're either like selling to somebody right now or you're about to close a big round which one is it none come on Amanda believe you either we're just growing our business so let me let me ask you a question I'm going to ask you to be like a mean capitalist for a second right and if you think about building like your own personal wealth like you work hard for this right it's okay to think about this how do you think about how to like you pay yourself a salary I assume but like how do you figure out what to take from the business versus like should I go raise or should I sell like how do you think about personal wealth creation I mean the way that I think about it right now is just being happy so at this point I can pay I can pay myself whatever I want I can buy whatever I want I can basically do whatever I want and I'm happy with it and I don't have to raise money I don't have to sell the company and at the same time I love the people who I work with so we've created a really tight Dynamic we're all family here we hang out with the with all of our employees after work on weekends we take them on Yachts we just we do a lot of things that if I was to sell my company for $100 million I would do those things so I feel like I'm I built a business in a way that we make money we have a product that is really that helps people um and I'm just we're just kind of living the way that we would anyway so what are you guys at right now in terms of gross margin um I have that number for you as well our gross margin uh so our gross margin is over 90% yeah I I was I was thinking it was going to be very high and I imagine the costs you put above that are really just like server expenses merchant processing fees things like that exactly exactly yeah um interesting so if someone came to you and said hey Amanda we want to put I'm making this up $2 million in the company uh at you know I'm going to also make this up at a66 10 six at a $30 million pre-money valuation right do you take a deal like that it would have to depend on the person who who strategic if it was super strategic let's Willi so yeah so if I was just gonna say Keller Williams so if it was Gary Keller said to us hey I'm going to give you x amount of dollars for percentage I would I would take that because I want to have more access to real estate agents and I want to be able because the fact is the more Realtors who know what we do the more buy it y so someone like that putting their stamp of approval on it saying that I love what this company is doing um I I would take that have you looked at exp so like there is a finite Market here there's only so many cities that you can have a digital mayor of now it's a huge number obviously if you look at the whole world but have you looked at building out other kinds of software for real estate agents now that you kind of own a large chunk of them yes so um good question and we have because it's kind of like a funnel so what we now have um about over a thousand Realtors who like our product and they trust us we have really great account managers that actually work with our clients every day if they need to so our customer support and our coaching is one of the the best things about our product so we now have the ability to up upsell or offer more products so we are starting to offer things that that real estate agents need so they can have all of their Marketing in one place so we can if they want lead generation we know how to do lead generation so we've started another kind of like subsidary where we can do the lead generation for them we can do Facebook marketing we can do the website design and stuff like that um we call it baller marketing become a local leader I love it you guys are very you guys are a very hip Cool brand what do your parents think about this my my parents are entrepreneurs from from the beginning so they're all on board what's your mom do so right now so my mom and my dad they sold a company about 20 years ago it was a um a water Bottling Company then they started investing in real estate so they have commercial real estate buildings that they just manage that's great have you started investing like personally in the commercial stuff or the residential stuff or good question so we we were talking about that it's one of our our things that we're talking about now is do we take our profits and invest in real estate or do we just go all in and say let's just take what we have and just continue to to invest in parkbench you know open an office in Australia or go to the UK and open an office because at this point our best return is investing in our ourselves y the only thing I mean I I battle this question for like all the time and the only reason I ever take money out of business is just to diversify because the best return if I'm only comparing like IRL returns it's in myself exactly exactly so that's why we we've actually we talking about this yesterday my dad was in was in Toronto so my dad actually lives in Kenya he has a foundation over there lives he was in for the day stopping over to go um to his other house and foundation in Mexico my dad's a very interesting human so because he's like the real estate guy you I should have I should have him on we'll talk about real estate you should absolutely have him on he's probably one of the most interesting guys you've ever met he just came back from a monastery this is a side note so I saw him yesterday he looked he was dressed like a monk in Toronto walk down the street I was like that's amazing dad for toron now that's amazing no I L to have him on what's your mom and does your mom do the real estate stuff too yeah so my mom so uh they both do it together so they just like basically at this point there's collect checks from do you have brothers and sisters I have a brother what's he do so he's older than me but he he's an academic so he's just been in school his entire life and now he just is he jealous of you no no me and him are really good friends would you ever hire him maybe would he ever work for you probably awesome all right demanda good stuff here a great story you're on we'll have to have you on in another 12 months and get another update many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every BB SAS CEO that I've interviewed if you want to get access to the database I've created with year-over-year growth rates customer accounts margins and many many other data metrics and data points you can go to Gat ka.com here's the thing though this that database I keep it to myself it's so freaking valuable and to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true Advantage I'm only letting 10 companies on each month so we're full this month but you can go to g.com to get on the waiting list for next month and look there's big people on the waiting list I mean the biggest VCS you've ever heard of you've probably heard of them they're big private Equity billions and billions under management so it's an impressive waiting list go get on now at get lat.com okay top tribe I have to tell you many people go Nathan you came out of nowhere your website's growing so fast how' you do it the answer is simple so I use host skat I don't know if you guys know that but use HostGator and the reason I do they have like about 4500 free templates I can use cuz I don't code they've got a great e-commerce plugin and guys I bug the heck out of their support they've got 247 support which I love so what I've done is I've worked with them you guys know I make great deals if you go to hostgator.com naathan you can sign up get your own domain for 30% off and a 45 day money back guarantee okay again I make great deals for you guys go to hostgator.com to grab that now let's wrap up here with the famous 5 number one what's your favorite Business book all right so I honestly don't read that much that's okay my what I am so I when I do see books I download them and then I read like a couple pages and then I I stop what's the last one you downloaded what's it called let me show you I think it's called Secrets Russell Brunson yeah.com Secrets it's about funnels and it's it's starting to be good I'm sure I won't finish it number two is there CEO you're following or studying um so only one and I really don't follow or really even look at anyone else but Gary vaynerchuk I'm actually wearing his sweater say hustle oh that's so funny but I follow him because he what he is doing is he's documenting everything that he does and the funny thing is so we just hired a videographer to follow us around 24 hours a day so we're documenting everything inside the office 24 hourss a day great content strategy yeah and it comes out every Friday it's called behind. parkbench.com oh I love that we'll have to put the show notes and then in a year from now we're going to have like a documentary about it's called journey to a billion I love that our goal is to get to a billion I love that number three what's your favorite online tool like host skater um I would say docu sign because when I see docu signs come back it means that we've just made money yeah that's good number it's a good reason number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night uh 7 to 9 okay so pretty good and what's your current situation married single you have kids I have a fiance and we started the company together and he's right over there oh my gosh it's amazing you guys work together oh yeah we started the company together how do like kill each other everyone asks us that and I honestly think the reason we're so successful in in a short period of time is because we are together 24 hours a day there's no turning off when people are sleeping we're working do you guys do you guys ever like flirt in the office um sort of but no like it's like do you do you actively like turn it off it's 8:00 between 8 and 6 no flirting don't wink at me like nothing yeah like I act I'm actively like I'm like don't that's funny okay so no kiddos yet and do you mind asking me asking how old you are I'm 30 okay so last question take us back 10 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew um I would say to to start writing down my goals because as soon as I started actually thinking of my goals and writing them down I started getting what I wanted and I never really did that when I was 20 I was just kind of all over the place um but as soon as I started actually focusing I it's like the you know law of attraction I learned the Law of Attraction and then all started to work out I love that hey before I wrap up I forgot to ask this last year total revenue last year was 1.9 and the year before that was what um8 840 840 good and what do you think you'll do this year uh 6.3 you're pretty confident in that yeah if not more you're on track yeah we're oh well we're well on track yeah okay good like that's our current run rate right now would be would be a 6.4 yeah 6.3 y very cool there you guys have it from Amanda Newman of parkbench she came on about a year ago they've since like quadrupled right going from uh going from 70 grand in Mr to almost 628 th000 in monthly recurring Revenue CHS come down as well to 2.75 per month they did 1.9 million last year 6.3 IDE this year a th000 real estate customers who they are crowning the digital mayors of their city with their generation tool 90% gross margin paying about 676 bucks to acquire a customer that's worth 13 Grand to them with their team of 30 up in Toronto Amanda thank you for taking us to the top thank you if you enjoyed Amanda today go back and listen to Todd yesterday he tells us how he sold his first company for $15 million and why and how he's tackling the healthcare patient doctor relationship in his new startup