How This Deck Builder Went from $1M to $12M+/Year by Creating Demand Where None Existed

Case Study: Deck Bros, a deck-building company in Omaha, NE

Luan Nguyen, the owner of Deck Bros, was a master deck builder, but every winter, his phone fell silent.

He was trapped in a cycle many contractors know all too well: feast in the summer, famine in the winter. He had the skills, the ambition, and the drive to build an empire, but something was working against him.

He tried everything he was told would work.

He poured thousands into advertising and direct mail campaigns, only to watch the money evaporate with nothing to show for it.

There’s a story that most contractors tell themselves. A story that follows these rules:

These rules might feel true for you, too. They’re part of the story you’ve been told for years.

They create a sense of certainty, and certainty feels safe.

The problem is, this safety is an illusion.

The game has changed.

While you’re busy perfecting your craft and being the best at what you do, the world outside your job site quietly evolves.

The old rules that once guaranteed a full pipeline (like word-of-mouth, a good reputation, and seasonal demand) are no longer enough to secure your future.

Being a great builder is excellent, but it’s no longer enough.

You can be the best craftsman in your city, but that won’t matter if your ideal clients can’t find you.

Relying on old ways in this new environment makes you invisible.

This creates a new, uncomfortable truth…

The path that got you here, the one that felt safe and reliable, will not get you to the life you’ve always dreamed of.

The one with the freedom to take month-long trips, help your team provide for their families, and leave a real legacy for your family.

That old path is now the riskiest one of all.

Luan felt this disconnect. He knew something was fundamentally broken, but he didn’t know what or how to fix it.

He was caught in the craftsman’s trap, and the walls were closing in.

He was ready for a new path.

Spoiler alert: Forget the $10M Luan mentioned, he’s now at $12M in 2025 alone, with 3 months left in the year.

The Story Contractors Have Been Sold (and Why It Feels Like a Prison)

For years, contractors have been told the same story: work hard in the summer, save for the winter, and pray for referrals.

You might think this is a business plan, but it feels more like a prison.

Maybe you’ve felt this too:

Every time you think about payroll, it feels like you’re hauling a stack of lumber on your shoulders that never comes off.

You don’t even notice your jaw tightening until it aches.

The whole business, your crew’s hours, your family’s future, it’s all riding on whether the phone rings.

Even in the summer, when work’s rolling in, the peace is thin. In the back of your mind, you’re already bracing for the winter.

It’s like a hum in your chest you can’t turn off, a low buzz of nerves that follows you home and makes it hard to be fully present at dinner with your family.

Luan was living in that prison.

But he held a different belief, a quiet question that kept him up at night:

What if the seasons didn’t have to control his bank account?

What if he could build a business so dominant it created its own weather?

These questions are the difference between being a craftsman and being a CEO.

A craftsman is at the mercy of the market; a CEO is the market.

This is the new truth that changes everything: Your biggest competition isn’t just other deck builders; it’s homeowner indifference.

In a market with low search demand, you can’t wait for clients to find you. You have to create them.

Imagine for a moment what life looks like when you start becoming the go-to deck builder in your city.

It’s the middle of January, snow is on the ground, yet your phone is ringing with clients ready to book for spring, deposits paid in full.

Your crews are scheduled months in advance.

You’re not worrying about cash flow, and instead, you’re planning which new truck to buy.

You’re taking your family on Disneyland trips not because you finally have a good month, but because it’s simply Tuesday.

You’re not just building decks; you’re building a legacy.

You’re buying a new house every year and creating a future for your kids that is secure and abundant.

This is what happens when you decide to play a different game.

It’s the life Luan Nguyen is living right now.

But this is something that doesn’t just happen to you while you freeze in your tracks, thinking about the troubles of next winter.

You need a new system. A system that does more than just find leads. It’s a system that creates demand from scratch.

When Luan came to us, he had the skill and the ambition.

He was the hero of his own story.

He just needed a map and a sword.

We gave him both.

We showed him a new truth: You don’t get to $12 million/year just by being the best deck builder. You get there by building the best deck-building business.

And that requires a blueprint. A marketing plan that becomes an economic engine designed to do one thing: create demand where none existed before.

Screenshot from Deck Bros’ JobTread – September 2025

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:

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.

It’s the reason competitors are stealing your jobs, homeowners are haggling on price, and the winter months feel terrifyingly quiet.

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 great deck builder.

But homeowners couldn’t feel his commitment to quality before he even showed up.

His brand was just a name. That’s the craftsman’s trap.

You’re the best at what you do, but you’re trying to build an empire alone, armed with just a hammer and your good intentions.

Meanwhile, the market has changed.

Today, homeowners are overwhelmed with choices and paralyzed by the fear of making a bad decision. They need certainty.

This is where your old beliefs fail you.

You can’t build certainty by yourself. Certainty isn’t built with wood and nails; it’s built with psychology, sociology, and a deep understanding of human emotion.

It requires a different kind of blueprint. One that transforms your business from just another option into the only choice.

That’s what we did for Luan. We built him a story of trust that homeowners could see and feel from their very first click.

A strong brand becomes the difference between chasing jobs and having jobs chase you.

It’s the difference between being a contractor and becoming a CEO who can take month-long trips to Vietnam, leaving 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 Demand From Thin Air

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.

Luan’s old marketing agency was playing by the old rules: run some ads, hope for clicks, and pray for leads. It felt like “throwing money into a black hole” because it was a game of chance, instead of being a game of strategy.

We knew we had to play a completely different game.

Our philosophy is simple: You don’t wait for demand; you create it.

In a market with low search volume, you can’t just show up where people are already looking. You have to get in front of them before they even know they need you.

This is where most marketing agencies get it wrong.

They’ll sell you “SEO”, which seems like a confusing mess of backlinks, keywords, and technical jargon that feels like another black hole to throw money into.

But you’re not in the business of SEO. You’re in the business of getting jobs.

Imagine for a moment that every time a homeowner in your city even thinks about a new deck, your company name is the first one they see. Not through random ads, but because you’ve become the undeniable local authority.

That’s what we did for Deck Bros.

We didn’t just “do SEO.” We built an omnipresent machine.

Because 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.

And that’s one of the steps that led Luan to gain 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 told it’s a necessary evil, this huge unknown where hard-earned money disappears with little to show for it.

This fear is real, and it’s based on a painful truth: when done wrong, marketing is just a cost.

But here’s why these contractors are looking at it all wrong. And this is why this very fear is keeping their business small, stressed, and seasonal.

When you’re a contractor being billed for an ad campaign that isn’t bringing in leads, you feel like you’re losing three important things:

This fear of loss is a powerful force. It keeps good, hardworking contractors trapped in a cycle of “playing it safe,” believing that avoiding the risk of ad spend is the smartest move.

What made Luan the deck king he is today is understanding that you can’t save your way into building an empire.

When done right, ad spend is a multiplier. In 2025, Luan poured $320k+ into ads. That push helped fuel the $12M run his company is on, and the growth isn’t slowing down. He adopted a new philosophy:

You’re not buying ads. You’re buying data.

Every dollar spent teaches the algorithm more about your perfect customer, making your future ad spend more efficient.

You’re not buying leads. You’re buying time back.

A system that brings qualified jobs to you frees you from having to chase them yourself, allowing you to focus on building your business, being a leader, and being present for your family.

You are not risking money. You’re creating certainty.

A predictable system for generating jobs eliminates the stress of wondering where the next project will come from.

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.

Snapshots from Deck Bros’ custom-made ads dashboard. The higher the spend, the stronger the pipeline.

Step #4: Shifting to the CEO Mindset

For most contractors, every dollar spent on the business feels like a risk.

It’s money that could have gone to a family vacation, a down payment, or a college fund.

This scarcity mindset is the invisible cage that keeps businesses small. It’s built on a single, powerful fear: what if I lose this and can’t get it back?

This fear is real.

But it’s also a choice.

Luan was once trapped in that same cage.

The breakthrough came when he stopped thinking like a contractor and started thinking like an investor. He learned the fundamental secret to wealth: you don’t just work for money; you make money work for you.

This is the mindset of abundance.

Abundance isn’t about having millions in the bank; it’s the belief that every resource you invest can be regained and multiplied.

Luan is making money, that’s true. But the transformation is about a different kind of wealth that he created for himself and those around him:

This is the ultimate return on investment: an expansion of life’s possibilities.

When you invest in a system that removes limitations, you’re no longer trading your time for money.

You’re trading money for a life with more choice, more freedom, and more control.

That is what we build at Contracting Empire.

We don’t just get you leads.

We help you be fully present with your family, whether at Disneyland or at the dinner table, without the background hum of fear.

Conclusion

For years, the rules of the contracting game have been clear: the winter will be slow, your market has a ceiling, and your role is to be the best craftsman on the job site.

You’ve followed those rules because they felt safe. But that safety comes at a cost: your time, your peace of mind, and your freedom.

Luan was playing by those same rules. But one day, he made a different choice. He decided to stop being the craftsman who was a victim of the seasons and start being the CEO who created his own.

That single decision is the only thing separating you from the life you want.

It’s the moment you realize your business isn’t just an exchange of your time and skill for money.

It’s the moment you decide to build an asset, an engine that works for you, creating security for your family and giving you back the freedom to be present in their lives.

This isn’t about marketing tactics or a “secret” trick.

It’s about a new identity.

You already have the skill. You have the ambition. The only thing you’re missing is the decision to leave the old rules behind.

If you’re ready to become the contractor who controls his own destiny, we’re ready to show you the way.

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