How StayBusy Reached $2,700 Average Job Value and 200 Grand Slam Offer Customers in Early 2023 (Interview with CEO Carter Olive)

Intro and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, his family's painting business did $2,700,000 in revenue, but he said, guys, I wanna go after a 9 figure deal. Let's make this a marketplace for any home services. Car detailing, painting, you name it, cleaning, they'll do it. He put together a $97 grand slam offer for folks in Vancouver to use his app to get nine their whole condo clean for $97. 200 people took advantage of that in q one so far this year in 2023.

00:19He's hoping to do 5,000 jobs completed this year, and those jobs he completed by over 1,500 contractors who ideally start making a living on his app, staybusy.ca. Hey, folks. My guest today is Carter Olive. He helps homeowners get things done quickly by easily hiring contractors for jobs around the house. He's a two times founder in a golf addict. Carter, you ready to take us to the top?

Golf and Tiger Woods Banter

Carter Olive

00:40>> Yeah. Let's do it, man.

Nathan Latka

00:41Alright, man. Is is Tiger ever gonna be back to his his old form or no? Is that guy gone forever?

Carter Olive

00:47>> I saw him limping into the Genesis Invitational this week, so I'm hoping he can scrape that one last win, but we'll see. I mean, he's got the passion. Right?

How Carter Got Into Home Services

Nathan Latka

00:57Yep. Yep. We'll we'll see what happens. Alright. So talk to me about the business. How did you get into this space? Were you doing a bunch of manual work yourself or your family's in the business, or how'd you how'd you come across it?

Carter Olive

01:08>> Yeah. So I started in the space doing painting, actually. I was grandfathered in through a family member. They owned the business. They were just a boomer who was retiring. Looked to pass on the business to somebody, And I was like, sure. I'll do it. I didn't wanna be a painter. I've got a finance background, but decided to take a look at the numbers and just jump jump right in. Shortly after taking over the business, I realized

01:35>> that there's really no technology in the

Nathan Latka

01:37Wait. Wait. Carter, before you tell us that story, since you're a finance guy, what were you most concerned about looking at the numbers at the start?

Carter Olive

01:45>> Accounts receivable.

Nathan Latka

01:47Okay. Interesting. Alright. Now tell the rest of story. We'll come back to accounts receivable in a second.

No Technology in the Trades Space

Carter Olive

01:52>> Okay. Cool. But yeah. No. Really just realized there's no technology in the space, and there were just so many cool startups that were happening. Uber at the time was one that was really eye catching. And then I went to Dubai to meet with a friend of mine who is a startup incubator, and there's a great company out there called Urban Company. And basically, what I wanted to do is I wanted to take what these other companies

Launching StayBusy as an On-Demand Marketplace

Carter Olive

02:19>> were doing and just see if it was applicable to the Canadian market. So we launched, on demand home services. So you can hire anything from dog walkers to plumbing to painting, simple services right at the at the, you know, mobile touch of your fingers. So that's what we've been doing. We're niching it in Vancouver. The way that we're bringing it to market is we're doing a lot of direct mail, which is a little bit nontraditional for

02:49>> SaaS and

Nathan Latka

02:50Carter, real quick. Hold on. Hold on one sec. The the website today focuses on painting, but you just said I mean, are you are you more broad today than what your website says?

Carter Olive

02:58>> Yeah. Yeah. I know the painting is the way that we launched it. So we launched it as a painting service offering more, but we're actually currently changing the text and just revisiting that landing page because more has become more popular, I guess. Yes. We just decided to focus in on one service rather than telling everybody that we do everything.

Services Offered and Monthly Volume

Nathan Latka

03:18Yeah. No. No. I think that's great. And there's text on the site. I imagine it's old, but it says you're doing 500 paintings per month per excuse me, per month. What's that updated today? Are you still doing about 500 a month?

Carter Olive

03:30>> Yep. I would say about 500 a month, but more so just spread out across the services channels. So I wouldn't say that it's more it's 500 painting. It's more just 500 services that we're booking. So

Nathan Latka

03:41And what is actually what are the what are the big what are the top three today? Paint painting, and what are the other two?

Carter Olive

03:46>> Oh, housecleaning, for sure.

Nathan Latka

03:48Interesting. Okay.

Carter Olive

03:49>> Housecleaning was the third one. Car. Car detailing. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody just wants to get into a nice clean car. I mean, you're in a condo building. Right? So

Nathan Latka

03:59Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this, we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

04:23your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

04:47get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

05:09not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

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05:56if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

06:23the interview. So I guess, look, it's a marketplace. You have two things you gotta figure out. How to get consumers to click, yes, I want house cleaning or car detailing or painting. And then you've gotta go get go round up people that can do car detailing and reply instantly when someone pushes a button in your app. So let's start with the supply let's start with the supply side first. Where do you go find a 100 card

06:43detailers in Vancouver that are ready to respond to your consumers'requests in the app?

Finding Contractors via Facebook Groups

Carter Olive

06:48>> Facebook groups. Easy. Interesting. Facebook groups, just contact I mean, this is like some tricks of the trade that I had to use, but just contacting admins and getting their respect and just being integral and empathetic towards, like, the group the group posting rules. Mhmm. And then just reaching out to people and letting them know what you're doing, looking letting them know that you're looking to network and just have these coffee conversations. And then on the other

The $97 Grand Slam Offer and Direct Mail

Carter Olive

07:15>> side of things, like, getting people to click to click yes, right, and book that service. Alex Hormozi does a great piece on offering something for free or offering something way cheaper than what it's worth. So that's how we got people to say yes is we use direct mail to just basically send them a grand slam offer. Which grand slam offer? Was $97 for a full condo clean. It was under a $100 to get your whole condo

07:43>> cleaned. People were just like, oh, that seems like a no brainer. And it was. Right? I mean, for 9

Nathan Latka

07:50for under a $100. Guy, though. How do you make the margins work? You gotta find cleaners in Vancouver willing to clean a whole condo for under $97 and and still have room for your margin.

Carter Olive

07:59>> Yeah. In the beginning, though, you don't like, in the beginning, really, we're just trying to break even. Like, we're just really trying to get the trust because we want the app to be sticky.

Nathan Latka

08:08Mhmm.

Carter Olive

08:08>> Right? We want people to trust the app and continue to use other services. Right? So it's really just like the implementer, the first click that we're trying to get. And it's really not about making a margin so much on that first click. But again, to like house cleaners, all these sorts of services. Right? Like, they offer, you know, low end production.

Nathan Latka

08:31So, Carter, how many folks took you up on that on that grand slam offer?

200 Bookings in January 2023

Carter Olive

08:36>> Well, in the we just did this grand slam offer starting in January, and then we had 200 people in the first month.

Nathan Latka

08:44Wow. Okay. And then and then were you able to break even on all those 200 cleans?

Carter Olive

08:50>> Around it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, obviously, you go above and beyond to just go the extra mile to satisfy the customer, and that's something that we encourage people to do regardless. Like, we're trying to build the brand here. We're trying to build service.

Nathan Latka

09:05Was that mean, one of the key points of what Alex talks about in his book, $100,000,000 offers, is, you if know, you get $97, that's great. Get some in the door. But if you can drive up the average cart value because you upsell card detailing and other things, that's great. So, I mean, when you look at the 200 that took the grand slam offer, did they all pay only 97, or did anyone upsell to other things?

Carter Olive

09:24>> So what we're currently working on right now is, like, how can we upsell through the application, right, and keeping these people as contractors. So that's, I think, one of our challenges at the moment is, like, we want people to increase their purchasing. We want them to purchase more services through the application, but we just don't know exactly what are the most demanded services. Because if we put in the application, we do this, this, this, this, this,

09:52>> and you can purchase this, this, this, it's almost overwhelming, and people don't really know what they're getting. So really just trying to simplify the product offerings, and that's where we're trying to find, like, the next thing that we wanna offer, the next upsell that's a grand slam.

Nathan Latka

10:07How well, eventually, you can't keep doing grand slams where you break even. Like, eventually, you need to make a margin. Right? So I guess, do you empower the the contractor that you hired to go clean the condo? What do you pay them? About $97?

Carter Olive

10:22>> Yeah. Pretty close.

Nathan Latka

10:23So you really make no money there. Do you empower the contractor to upsell the client on the spot? Like, can the person doing the cleaning upsell car detailing on the spot?

Carter Olive

10:34>> They can. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:36How do you get them to do that? And did did any of them do that for the first 200 cleans?

Carter Olive

10:42>> So some of them did, but where we are finding a bit of not, not trouble, but we're trying to bring these people on as independent contractors, so that they can continue to like work for themselves, but also, you know, work under our branding. So that's something that we just go back and forth with a little bit, and we're just trial and erroring as we go. More or less, though, we're really just trying to

11:10>> give people like, we wanna be also SaaS, which is a little tricky because we would love to eventually begin charging these contractors to be a part of our platform, if that makes sense. And that's where we're hoping to see the margins increase a little bit more, if that makes sense.

Nathan Latka

11:24It's definitely a playbook. I mean, we've got a lot of hunters on that run marketplaces, like GetSpiffy and these guys, but it's really hard the first five years for the marketplace, and then they launch software that helps con paint contractors run their paint operation. Right? And you already have the upsell. Like, you can sell them directly because they're already in your marketplace, but it's really hard the first couple years to get it going. It sounds like

11:45this was passed down to you from family. When did the company launch? What was the first year?

Carter Olive

11:50>> StayBusy? Yeah. StayBusy's first launch was last year.

Nathan Latka

11:56So did you spin that out of the family business that's been around much longer?

Carter Olive

12:02>> Not really. The family business is more just like a commercial painting company. It's not technically it's not doesn't have any technology behind it at all. It was really just seeing a need in the market and wanting to create an awesome product, that had a higher opportunity. Right?

Nathan Latka

12:18I see. So v one of StayBusy was really to help the family business manage their own paint work. And then now it's like, well, now your family businesses aren't the only painters. There's a 100 other painters on the platform now.

Carter Olive

12:29>> Totally. Totally. It's more though to, like, even out like, going back to Hormozi too, like, he just talks about how sometimes you have, like, a level eight skill but doing a level four opportunity. Right. And if you have a level 10 skill and you're doing a level four opportunity, you know, your ceiling is so low. So we just wanted to be, or for me personally, I wanted to be in a space where I felt like I

12:50>> had a level 10 opportunity, to the point of, was just like, listen, like the painting company, yes, I can take it to 7, eight figures. But if I have an application that's really awesome and it's really changing the way that the space is going, that's like a 9 figure opportunity right there. So I wanted to start something, solve a problem in an industry that just felt dinosaur.

2022 Jobs Completed and the Painting Model

Nathan Latka

13:12So how many total jobs did you complete in last year in 2022?

Carter Olive

13:18>> We didn't actually complete that many because we felt like the year was a lot of testing.

Nathan Latka

13:23Mhmm.

Carter Olive

13:24>> We're testing How low it? Like like 10, a hundred, five hundred?

13:28>> No. We're we're a little higher than that. Like, I think we were totaling a thousand. Okay. But it still felt like it was more lead generation Yeah. We had a totally different model last year where it was more along the lines of just, like, okay. Here's a job. You know, here's a pay us a percentage. We didn't like that. Right? We felt like What percent? Thing. It just what percent are we charging people? We're charging 10

13:53>> Okay.

Nathan Latka

13:55So on a $97 clean, you would mark it up $10. That's your 10% markup.

Carter Olive

14:00>> Yeah. But we're doing painting. Right? So the jobs were, like, a 2,000, 5,000, 10,000. So that's where we were making money last year. But it just wasn't, like, reliable. Right?

Nathan Latka

14:12And What was the average what was the so of the thousand you did last year, what was the average project price?

Average Job Value of $2,700

Carter Olive

14:20>> The average project price was around 2,700.

Nathan Latka

14:23Wow. Okay. And that's cars, painting, car detailing, everything just averaged?

Carter Olive

14:27>> No. No. No. Painting only.

Nathan Latka

14:30Are all of the thousand from last year painting?

Carter Olive

14:32>> Yeah.

14:33>> Oh oh, I see.

Nathan Latka

14:34I see. Okay. So that's what is that? Is that 2,700,000? It's 2,700,000 in painting volume last year. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty I mean, that's pretty healthy. Interesting. So I

Carter Olive

14:44>> guess Again not rely it's was reliable.

14:49>> Right? Because, like, for us, like I mean, it was great to pump out our tires and everything, but just to, like, bring things back to reality, the model I didn't like because I couldn't rely on it. And here's here's the other thing too is, like, we're we're getting these leads. Like, we're paying to acquire these leads. Right? Whether it's through LinkedIn, like, using Duck Soup or whether it's Facebook using these Facebook groups, whatever. Word-of-mouth doesn't matter.

15:14>> But at the end of the day, like, we're only making money on the leads that we provide and if the contractor closes the deal. Mhmm. So that's where the struggle was is we were like, hey. Well, you know, we can't do we can't do a sales academy as well.

Nathan Latka

15:31Yeah. I mean, did you did you make money on the 2,700,000 last year of volume or no?

Carter Olive

15:35>> Oh, yeah. Of course.

Nathan Latka

15:37Okay. But but I mean, it's not It's terrible. What do you mean? I guess, I don't understand what you mean when you say you can't rely on it. I mean, if you sell the painting first and then you come back and upsell the car detailing and the full house cleaning and the cleaning happens every month. Now it's recurring. I guess, why do you feel like you can't rely on that stream?

Carter Olive

15:53>> Well, it was just more so, like, we felt like we couldn't rely on it because it was costing us so much and we couldn't like, we weren't doing the selling, if that makes sense. Like, we were having the contractors do the selling on our behalf.

2023 Goals: 5,000 Jobs and 1,500 Contractors

Nathan Latka

16:06Mhmm.

Carter Olive

16:06>> So we were sending them over. We were like, listen. Like, this is your job. Go give the estimate. Go give the price. Right? And then if you close the deal, we receive that commission.

Nathan Latka

16:14So what's your goal this year in terms of projects done?

Carter Olive

16:19>> In terms of projects done, we're probably looking at I don't know. I would love to do, like, 5,000, honestly.

Nathan Latka

16:26And how many would be painting things?

Carter Olive

16:27>> To verify the model. Not as much, if I had to guess, because we're focusing solely

Nathan Latka

16:34on Carter, not as much as in a number. What's your number? How many of the fat 5,000 you think will be painting?

Carter Olive

16:40>> I would probably say 500.

Nathan Latka

16:42Interesting.

Carter Olive

16:43>> Give or take.

Nathan Latka

16:44Don't like painting even though that per job price is much higher than $97 cleaning job.

Carter Olive

16:49>> But the reason I don't like painting I I actually hate painting. I don't like brushing or rolling. So many things go wrong in painting. It's not simple.

Nathan Latka

17:00Like, like what?

Carter Olive

17:01>> It's not a simple.

17:03>> Paint gets spilled. Client doesn't like the color. If you have other trades in the project itself, right, it affects your margins because the efficiency timeline is stretched out. There's just so many things at play, like material costs. You just can't accurately

17:23>> guess the material costs. Right? It's in between 10% or 15%, Right? Depending on what materials you use, sometimes it's more expensive, less expensive.

17:32>> It's just not it's just it's not a simple service. Yeah. So for me, yeah, project costs are higher, but it's just in terms of, like, output, it's just so much more work. Better to say, go clean the house. You know?

Nathan Latka

17:46Go get go get I your don't I don't mean to rush you, Carter. Just we're we're about out of time here. It's a quick show. Real real quick. On the supply side, how many contractors do you think you'll pay at least a dollar this year to complete all all the jobs?

Carter Olive

17:59>> Oh, 1,500.

Nathan Latka

18:01Okay. So one so 1,500 to do 5,000 jobs.

Carter Olive

18:03>> So one contractor can do know, ideally stays on your platform, can do multiple jobs?

18:10>> Yeah. That's right.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Life Advice

Nathan Latka

18:11Interesting. And well, hey. Listen. One day, you hopefully, you know, have 10,000 contractors and you can sell them a SaaS product, and that becomes a 9 figure exit for you. We'll see what happens. But in the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Carter Olive

18:25>> Oh, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Horowitz.

Nathan Latka

18:29Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Carter Olive

18:34>> Alex Hormozi.

Nathan Latka

18:36Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building StayBusy?

Carter Olive

18:42>> Duck Soup, the Google extension.

18:45>> Yep. They're actually, they just came on. They just broke $7,000,000 in revenue. They're growing quickly.

Nathan Latka

18:50Number four. How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Carter Olive

18:53>> Eight.

Nathan Latka

18:54And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Carter Olive

18:57>> Single. That's not true. In a relationship, but not married.

Nathan Latka

19:02Yeah. Good correction there. You don't want you know, they hear this. That's not good for you. Alright. Last question. Oh, sorry. Second to last question. How old are you today?

Carter Olive

19:11>> I'm 26.

Nathan Latka

19:12Last question. Something you wish knew when you were 20.

Carter Olive

19:19>> That well, that's a good question. Something that I knew it doesn't get easier. It gets harder, but it does get worth it.

Nathan Latka

19:27Guys, his family's painting business did $2,700,000 in revenue, but he said, guys, I wanna go after a 9 figure deal. Let's make this a marketplace for any home services. Car detailing, painting, you name it, cleaning, they'll do it. He put together a $97 grand slam offer for folks in Vancouver to use his app to get nine their whole condo clean for $97. 200 people took advantage of in q '1 so far this year in 2023. He's

19:47hoping to do 5,000 jobs completed this year, and those jobs he completed by over 1,500 contractors who ideally start making a living on his app, staybusy.ca. Check it out. Carter, thanks for taking us to the top.

Carter Olive

19:58>> Awesome. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Nathan Latka

20:00One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live, the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM Central.

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21:09for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

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