Case Study - A Deck Builder's Roadmap From $1M to $15M+ In Yearly Revenue
Deck Bros, a deck-building company in Omaha, NE
Table of Contents
A lot of contractors are trapped in a cycle of never ending work that doesn’t really make them feel accomplished: crushing it in the summer, starving in the winter, and praying for word-of-mouth to keep the lights on.
Luan Nguyen, owner of Deck Bros was no different. He was doing $1M a year, which is a respectable number for most, but a “ceiling” for a man with Luan’s ambition.
He didn’t want a “busy season.” He wanted a market monopoly.
Back in 2021, he cleared about a million, but growth was shaky, and a million wasn’t enough for his financial freedom goals.
When he told us he wanted to double his business, we gave him a price tag: $100k investment.
To the average contractor, that’s a year’s salary. To Luan, it was the buy-in for the next level. He didn’t flinch. He knew that you can’t build a $10M+ empire using $1k-a-month “marketing hacks.” He stopped playing defense and started playing for the win.
What started as a plan to double his business quickly evolved into a total market takeover. The $100k was the spark that ignited a $15M explosion.
To get to the Porsche and the $15M dashboard, Luan had to murder three “industry truths” that most of your competitors still believe:
LIE #1: Deck building has to suffer in the winter
Truth: Seasonality is a choice. If your phone is silent in January, it’s not the weather. It’s your lead flow.
LIE #2: Word-of-Mouth is Enough
Truth: Word-of-mouth is a gift; Paid Traffic is a weapon. You can’t scale a business on “hope.”
LIE #3: Marketing is an Expense
Truth: Amateurs see a bill. Titans see a multiplier. If you put $1 in and get $10 out, how much “expense” is too much?
Being the “best craftsman in town” is the bare minimum, it’s not a business strategy. While you’re perfecting your miters, the world has moved on. If your ideal clients can’t find you on their screens, you don’t exist.
Luan stopped trying to be the best builder and started being the best CEO. He traded the “safety” of the old ways for the freedom of a $15,000,000 reality.
The Story Contractors Have Been Sold (and Why It Feels Like a Prison)
For years, contractors are sold the same “prison” sentence: work your hands to the bone in the summer, hoard cash for the winter, and pray for referrals to keep the lights on.
You might call this a business plan. In reality, it’s a trap. It’s a life where your family’s future rests entirely on whether or not the phone happens to ring. But Luan started to wonder… What if he could build a business so dominant it created its own weather?
He then realized the hard truth: A craftsman is at the mercy of the market, but a CEO is the market.
In a world of “homeowner indifference,” you cannot wait for clients to find you. You must have a system that creates demand from scratch.
The $15,000,000 Reality
When you stop playing by the old rules, the “off-season” becomes a myth. Imagine a reality where:
- January is no longer a dead month: While most builders are staring at a silent phone, Luan’s phone is ringing with clients ready to book for spring. In January 2026 alone, Luan cleared $554,000 in sales while the snow was still on the ground.
- Hustle is replaced by legacy: Your crews are scheduled months in advance, and you aren't worrying about cash flow. You're creating a secure, abundant future for your kids because you decided to play a different game.
- Freedom is the new norm: You take family trips not because you finally had a good month, but because it’s simply Tuesday and your business engine doesn't need you to hold the wrench.
Luan shares his thoughts on how we’ve been his trusted advisors in this growth process.
You don’t have to keep living in the feast-or-famine cycle. If you’re ready to escape the craftsman’s trap and take control of your future, click below.
Step #1: Building An Unshakeable Brand
For years, we’ve talked to contractors who think a brand is very easy to create. You could print some t-shirts, wrap the van, and call it a day.
That’s a comforting thought. It’s also the most dangerous assumption in today’s market. That old definition of a brand could be the very reason why your business is stuck.
Let’s be honest: your logo doesn’t build trust.
Your truck wrap doesn’t close deals.
Why?
Because a brand isn’t what you create. It’s the story people tell themselves about you when you’re not in the room.
It’s the gut feeling a homeowner gets when they see your name. A subconscious signal that they are making a safe, smart choice for their family. You can’t create that feeling with a logo from ChatGPT. It’s built from something deeper.
When Luan started Deck Bros, he was a master craftsman, but homeowners couldn’t feel that commitment to quality before they actually got to meet him.
His brand was just a name… and that’s the craftsman’s trap: trying to build an empire alone, armed with nothing but a hammer and good intentions.
Meanwhile, the market has changed. Today’s homeowners are paralyzed by the fear of making a bad decision. They don’t need “options”; they need certainty.
And certainty isn’t built with wood and nails; it’s built with psychology, sociology, and a deep understanding of human emotion.
That’s what we did for Luan. We built him a story of trust that homeowners could see and feel from their very first interaction.
Luan’s premium business cards
Deck Repair Ad
Deck Replacement Ad
A strong brand is the difference between chasing leads and having the highest-paying jobs in the city chase you.
It’s the difference between being a contractor and becoming a CEO who can take month-long trips to wherever he wants, leaving behind a thriving business and a legacy for his kids.
You have the skill. You have the ambition. But you cannot build that story alone.
Step #2: Creating The Omnipresence Machine
A powerful brand is a great start, but it doesn’t pay the bills on its own. The real challenge for most contractors is getting homeowners to notice them in a market flooded with noise.
Standard marketing agencies will try to sell you “SEO” as a confusing mess of backlinks and technical jargon that feels like another expensive void to throw money into. But you aren’t in the business of keywords; you’re in the business of getting jobs and dominating your city.
Our philosophy is simple: You don’t wait for demand; you create it.
In a market with low search volume, you cannot afford to just show up where people are already looking. You have to be everywhere. We didn’t just “do SEO” for Deck Bros; we built an omnipresence machine that placed them in front of every homeowner in Omaha before they even knew they were ready to buy.
We didn’t just capture the attention of people looking for a deck builder. We put so much useful information in front of the homeowner before they even knew they wanted a deck that we turned Deck Bros into a local expert. They became the answer to every question their customers were asking.
When you become the answer, you’re the go-to choice. This is how Luan gained absolute control over his market.
Homeowners in your city are searching. Will they find you, or your competitor? Claim the top spot.
Step #3: Turning Ads Into A Money Multiplier
For most contractors, the thought of spending money on ads brings a knot to their stomach. They’ve been conditioned to see marketing as a “necessary evil”, a black hole where hard-earned money disappears with nothing to show for it.
That fear is the “ceiling” on your business. When you view marketing as a cost, you play defense. You spend your life trying to “save” your way to wealth. But Luan realized the truth: You can’t save your way into building an empire.
The Multiplier Effect
In 2025, Luan poured a little under $400,000 into his ad machine. To an amateur, that looks like a massive expense. To a CEO, it was the spark that fueled a $15,000,000+ revenue run.
To reach the $15M level, Luan had to adopt a new philosophy that his competitors are too afraid to embrace:
You’re not buying ads. You’re buying data.
You’re not buying leads. You’re buying time back.
You are not risking money. You’re creating certainty.
This is the shift from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance: the belief that what you invest can be regained and multiplied.
Luan doesn’t fear spending the money because he has a system that has proven it will bring back millions. The fear disappears when the process is predictable.
Money is simply a tool.
You can use it to buy a fancy new truck, or you can use it to build a machine that brings you endless decks to build.
The choice of how you spend it is yours.
The Shrinking Percentage
Most contractors never reach their ultimate financial goals because they take their foot off the pedal too soon. They don’t realize the fundamental truth of scaling: The more you grow, the less you have to spend to keep growing.
Think of your marketing like a fire. You need a heavy dose of fuel at the start to get the flames to catch. But once that fire is roaring, it creates its own heat.
When Luan started, he invested 10% of his revenue ($100k) to build his foundation. As his brand became the “undeniable authority” in his city, that percentage began to shrink:
| Year | Yearly Revenue | YoY Growth | Marketing Budget | Marketing Budget % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $1,000,000 | – | $100,000 | 10.00% |
| 2022 | $3,000,000 | +200.00% | $150,000 | 5.00% |
| 2023 | $5,200,000 | +73.33% | $175,000 | 3.37% |
| 2024 | $8,800,000 | +69.23% | $230,000 | 2.61% |
| 2025 | $15,000,000 | +70.45% | $500,000 | 3.33% |
Today, Luan’s marketing spend is down to just 3.33% of his revenue, because he wanted to add fuel to the fire and really increase his investment.
Proper scaling doesn’t just make you bigger; it makes you wildly more profitable.
Step #4: Shifting to the CEO Mindset
For most contractors, every dollar spent on the business feels like a personal sacrifice. It’s money that could have been a family vacation, a down payment, or a college fund.
This scarcity mindset is an invisible cage. It’s built on a single, paralyzing fear: “What if I lose this and can’t get it back?”.
While this fear is real, it is also a choice. It is the exact barrier that keeps small businesses small.
Thinking Like an Investor
Luan’s ultimate breakthrough didn’t happen on a job site; it happened in his mind. He stopped thinking like a contractor and started thinking like an investor. He learned the fundamental secret of the top 1% of contractors: You don’t work for money; you make money work for you.
This is the abundance mindset, the unshakable belief that every resource you deploy can be regained and multiplied. Because Luan has a system that brings in an unlimited amount of leads, he has the confidence to take bold action.
The Ultimate Return on Investment
Luan is making massive revenue, but the true transformation is the “wealth of life” he has engineered for himself:
- He bought back his time, giving him the freedom to take month-long trips with his family.
- He created security, building a legacy by buying a new house every year as a passive income stream.
- He achieved freedom, training a sales team to run the business for him, turning his company into an asset that works even when he isn’t there.
The End of the “Hum of Fear”
When you invest in a system that removes limitations, you stop trading your life for a paycheck. You trade money for choice, freedom, and total control.
At Contracting Empire, we don’t just “get you leads”. We build the infrastructure that allows you to be fully present outside your business, whether you’re at the dinner table or on a beach.
You’ve spent years building everyone else’s dream. Isn’t it time you finally built your own?
Conclusion
For years, the “industry standard” has been a set of invisible shackles: accept the slow winters, respect the market ceiling, and remain the best laborer on your own job site.
You followed those rules because they felt safe. But that “safety” has a price tag: your time, your peace of mind, and the freedom you promised your family when you first started this journey.
Luan Nguyen was playing by those same rules until he realized they were designed to keep him small. He burned the bridges to the old way of doing business. He stopped being a victim of the seasons and became the architect of his own $15M+/year reality.
The Blueprint of an Empire
This multi-millionaire identity shift happens the moment you decide your business is no longer an exchange of your physical time for money, but a high-performance engine that works for you.
When you cross that line, your world changes:
- Your calendar is full in January because you built a system that cleared $554,000 in sales while your competitors were waiting for the snow to melt.
- You don't "save up" for a trip; you take month-long journeys to wherever you please because your business is a self-sustaining asset that runs without you.
- You are no longer "just a contractor." You are a pillar of your community, building a dynasty that will provide for your children’s children.
The only thing you’re missing right now is the engine to carry that ambition to its logical conclusion.
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