How Relahq CEO Mike Land grew to $5.2M revenue and 2.5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is Michael and he's the founder and CEO of a company called ela and in the URL is relay hq.com a cloud-based digital marketing platform for real estate agents & brokers Mike our brokers Mike are you ready to take it to the top absolutely all right so tell us about the company what do you guys do and how do you make money so real it provides a platform for real estate ends real estate marketing professionals to generate their digital marketing presence instantaneously basically and it's all kind of focused around marketing their listings and driving leads to their listings and generated websites on lightly jenkanz through facebook print materials everything that you need to market a single listing okay and what's the revenue model are people busy kind of a peer place task company or what yeah I mean at its core it SAS we have individual subscription plans that agents can sign up for and so there's monthly fee for that and then there are some add-ons you know we we offer integrated Facebook campaigns through Facebook we have printed materials that you can order so there's some different options that agents or customers can can pay for along with their with their monthly subscription and we work for individual agents large brokerages and then associations for realtors so or user basis kind of split between those majority of our agents are actually the majority of our accounts are from the local realtor associations and so they buy those in volume and they provide those to all the other members is a member benefit and then we've got a good chunk of people that have or that are in the real estate marketing segment where we've got either marketing agencies real estate photographers and they bring on all of their agents into the platform and they're the monthly cost per agent at those volume at those volume levels is a lot lower than our you know our single agents sign up plans what would you say I know you have a lot of different cohorts but if you just look at the SAS revenue what would you say the average kind of customers paying per month for the individual individual plans our average customer values about 80 about okay well cus customer left anybody is different than kind of monthly are poof's is that what they're paying per month about 80 bucks right okay about 80 bucks and let's put this on a timeline when did you launch the company we launched it in March of 2016 okay and give me some context where were you at that point you just leave a big firm and why not do your own thing or what yeah so interestingly enough I started out in real estate commercial and residential real estate back in 2004 and did that through the recession you know at the at the bottom of the recession I decided it didn't want to do that commission based work anymore in real estate specifically so we got into or I started at marketing and development agency so custom software marketing websites apps and we did that from about 2008 up until about 2017 and reloj is kind of a side project for us because we had a lot of real estate based customers through the agency and so we're doing all of these repetitive tasks for for their marketing efforts for digital marketing efforts so it kind of took a side a core group of my developers and we put this together and kind of soft launched in the middle of 2016 it started to catch a lot of traction towards you know that year so we basically now are focusing only on on rila sounds great and we now what have you scaled to today how many customers are on the platform so are close to 20,000 customers the majority of those are with the realtor associations that buy in volume and the marketing companies that are servicing you know thousands of customers at its time so what is that how should we think about that 20,000 is that like number of seats or is it number of agencies or what number of actual real estate agents using the platform okay to market their services and their listings now on the if you go to the home page and you look at the agent plans that we offer on a monthly basis we've got about 2500 of those subscriptions and that that's that's where our average monthly revenue per customer is just for those plans at about 80 now when we talk about what the average is when you look at the realtor associations and the large marketing firms it's it's a lot lower than that obviously because they're doing you know big bulk deals that have the longer term commitments so so I mean can I take the twenty five hundred customers times the $80 ARPU to cut it back in and assume you're doing about 200 grand per month in revenue would that be accurate yeah just on those individual agent plans alone and then you know with with the the associations and the marketing agencies and marketing professionals you know we've got a whole chunk of revenue that's coming from that is that SAS or is that more professional service it's all SAS it's all you know I essentially you know yearly commitments to have all of their their agents be able to access the platform and use it so so where are you guys so 200 rounds kind of a minimum but we're guys now give me a sense of what you're at all in last month total revenue um I mean I were approaching for the year close to four so four million okay you know in other words that's the run right you're approaching yeah okay great that's good and give me sense of growth so what were we had a year ago well I can tell you from 2016 in March to 2000 assembler 2016 in December we did about thirty thousand dollars in revenue in 2017 we were at about four hundred thousand in revenue and then we just really just Pataki's because we were able to build these these relationships with some of the associations and get them to sign on and bring all of their agents and then really you know real estate the profession itself is very social they're just a very social type of person that wants to be a real estate agent so we were able to do really well and just kind of word-of-mouth on social media being active in in certain social media groups and being able to get the word out and it kind of spread so our growth you know from 2017 or 2018 has been well so Mike I wanna make sure I get these numbers right so you said in 2017 you said total revenue is 400 grand or in December of that year your run rate was 400 K total revenue in in 2017 was a little over okay God and today you're doing about 340 grand a month which is a four million dollar run rate is it accurate yeah okay so that's more than 10x in under 16 months it's been it's been huge so okay I just want to make sure that before because I want to ask question about how you did that but I want to make sure I'm I'm categorizing this correctly first you've grown 10x in six months from 400 K to four million in ARR yeah I mean close to it okay and you're what York reading miss Chu is these big bulk deals that you've done yeah I mean you know we have the associations that we've partnered with you know have eight 8,000 agents at a time right but also you know our user base our individual agent plans you know really really spiked because we again were able to kind of get be active in the community and show the base bike it's been just kind of a progressive kind of influx since towards the end of last towards the end of 2017 in the last quarter of 2017 is when we really started to see a spike and then it just kind of spread like wildfire but what might be like cause like I see I want it this is incredible growth but if you don't know why it happened you just got lucky and I and I think you know why a little bit of luck involved with that too I you know I think what what really sets us apart too in terms of the competitive space is you know we saw an opportunity in real estate marketing as a whole in that they're always they always seem to be you know three four years behind in terms of technologies that they're using design trends and everything that was out there looked like it was built you know three or four years ago so we brought a really fresh look to our platform and as an agent you can come and build out your digital marketing presence for a listing there with your website with your brochures and it looks like you've paid multiple thousands of dollars for this and you could be paying $59 a month so we've really been able to separate ourselves from our competition in terms of the quality of our product and that's where we saw the opportunity initially because like I said from the agency side we were doing this on a daily basis for summers and we we said okay let's make this available to everyone in the industry you know and so we're working every single day adding new features improving what we have and adding more value to our customers and our customer base and in the industry as a whole I think really appreciates that because up to this point it's it's the other service providers or the other platforms really haven't progressed or done that yeah like just because I mean it's one thing to have the best product it's another people it's another thing to have people know you have the best product and get them to pay for it right so like your basically your tummy is in 2017 you did four and regret in total revenue which equates to about 30 grand a month you're now saying now we're eight or nine months into you know obviously 2018 you're doing ten times that 330 grand a month so you must have signed us a ton of these bulk 8,000 seat deals with these associations that would you credit that that's where the growth has come from yeah I mean that's where a lot of the growth has come from and the side effect of that is what happens is we have a ton of agents from these associations now using our product and you know we've been able to get recognition you know from other agents who see that and they they say okay well you know where did you get that website right yeah so and we've been able to grow through that we've been able to grow through again being active on social media and in you know certain social media communities that agents are a part of like what you're talking LinkedIn group Facebook groups LinkedIn group Facebook groups yep I mean there's there's a couple there's actually one pretty large Facebook group a private group that's all agents and so you know we've we've been in there and we've been able to listen to concerns from agents and address those and provide solutions for those where the other companies or service providers have it got it and like I said the industry as a whole if you're a realist agent you're a very social type of person so we're sorry I don't I mean I get all this but like even word-of-mouth that this is this growth is not a credit this is a credit to some sounds like you a business violent person going in and brokering massive deals not responding one-on-one to Facebook comments and a private group oh yeah absolutely yeah okay the the agency are sorry that the I guess towards the middle of 2017 we really focused on our efforts in in bringing on large brokerages yeah and providing both deals for them going out for the association's and so those really paid off what's your what's your team size today we've got about five full time people five okay and and have you bootstrap this to raise capital it's all bootstrap it's all bootstraps okay so I mean look again we're super impressive you have five people and you're not even four million a are I mean that's almost a million bucks an AR per employee which is through the roof when you look at average is that I look at especially on a bootstrap basis right so in terms of CAC what you're paying to acquire these customers what is your CAC fully diluted it's a pretty low I mean we're in that thirty five to forty dollar range did you acquire an eighty dollar bond customer yeah so your payback is instant basically first month what about churn turns critical and this kind of company what's your turn it's it's kind of difficult to calculate that a lot of its low I mean we're we're growing we're not losing customers right so what happens though with real estate agents who are using our platform if you don't have a listing right I at this point you're not really going to use our platform and so what we see a lot of times is we'll have customers pause their accounts for three or four months and then they'll come back and they'll stay on for the next year right and so we see that a lot so it makes it difficult for us to calculate the term but you know we're growing every month we're not losing by about how much I don't have the numbers off the top of my head I mean at this point I well I don't know yeah I don't know like come on you you're you're freaking sales gotta use to be more my commissions the fact that you're telling me you don't know what how much more revenue during growth I don't believe for two seconds so how much how much new revenue are you adding per month like 10 grand a month 30 grand a month um it's kind of tapered in the last couple months I mean we really literally had just a hockey stick growth towards you know the end of 2017 beginning of 2018 and so obviously you know going months a month isn't going to we're not gonna stay at a 15 to 20 percent sure growth rates so we already think you'll be in December this year it's tough to say I mean I hope hopefully we have some pretty big opportunities with the national brokers in the industry where we've been able to build an integrated API and a feed that would basically automate the entire process in terms of marketing all of their listings in their inventory and so please close I mean are we talking you're gonna go from three thirty a month right now to 400 or 500 or a million what do you think best case I it's tough to say I mean yeah I mean we could if we could close a couple of the large brokerage deals we could we could get close to five million this year but those deals are those take a while to put together so how long is that sales cycle typically the brokers it's about six months for the for the for the realtor associations and that takes about a year got a minimum good for milling today at about three thirty three hundred thirty grand per month if you get to five minutes about 416 417 grand a month so you know healthy growth it's a little bit of a stretch go but we'll see what happens let's let's wrap up here Mike with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book the last business book I read was in 2008 and it was actually the 4-hour workweek and after I finished it it that's when I went and started my first company the agency so I haven't had time to read cookbooks since then number two is there is there a CEO you're following or studying uh yeah I'm tracking Robert Rifkin of compass number real estate agency number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business intercom number four how many hours of sleep to get every night six and what's your situation married single kiddos I will be married in September Oh excited very congratulations no kids thank you no kids alright and how old are you 35 35 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh man learn to program right now don't wait learn by the way are you and any are you looking right now at raising capital to hire more developers yeah I mean I we we you know we have enough I think to hire enough developers to get to the next step I think we have enough capital on our own to do that but I've you know we've always kind of gone back and forth on on whether or not to raise to raise money and I think in our situation we want to find a really strategic partner that in in the real estate world that can help us grow through the national brands and make it happen in that sense so yeah well what do you think what I mean you have to look at your money to see if you can hire developers if you if you have five employees all right I imagine and you're doing 340 grand a month you got to be taking it crapped into the bottom line there should be plenty of margin there to bring on additional developers absolutely yeah um you know we've we have five full-time employees we have a couple of developers that we reach out to on a contract basis from when we need kind of specialty stuff you know but when we have the agency I had 25 24 time employees and overhead at that point was I you know something that I really didn't like when we look at the end of our monthly numbers so you know I'm okay and we've been really fortunate to have a really strong team and the core group that we have now does really well so you know I think bringing on extra or additional developers we're gonna be cautious with and make sure that we vet out those those individuals where you where are you putting all those problem in look again let's say you have a hundred grand per month in total headcount you still have 230 grand there and free cash should go into the bottom line where are you putting that money are you just kind of using yourself and then putting in other investments personally are you reinvesting in the business somewhere in an expense I don't know about or what you know I we have some growth plans and we're deciding where to put that money so there's different opportunities that we have in the space that are directly rated related to what we're doing with rila and then somewhat related so you know so right now it's just building up on your base we're just building it up and trying to you know figure out the next best step of that all right guys there mm Mike he would have learned a program earlier on against launched rila HQ back a couple years ago in 2016 bootstrap serving about 2500 customers just past four million bucks in ARR that from just 400 grand about 30 grand per month in an monthly recurring revenue just a year ago so so pretty explosive growth they're actually team of five full-time CAC is about 40 bucks payback period less than a month Mike thank you so much for taking us to the top thank you