Growing a Multi-Company Business: Using Carrot to Replace Cold Calling & Direct Mail with Qualified Leads
Josue Velney went from a first-time homebuyer to building a multi-company real estate and construction business. He had some early success with cold calling and direct mail, but things really took off when he discovered Carrot and the power of SEO and online leads. As he expanded his business, Carrot grew with him, providing the online marketing tools and training he needs to confidently scale.
4 companies
covering real estate & construction services
$1 Million+
annual revenue
$200,000 project
from one Carrot lead
Snapshot:
- Industry: Real Estate, Development, Construction, Demolition, Junk Removal
- Location: Somerville, MA
- Carrot Member Since: 2018
Carrot has grown from simply being a website platform into an important part of our overall business-development and lead-generation strategy.
Josue Velney wanted somewhere to park his truck on the busy streets of Somerville, Massachusettes. That seemingly simple challenge led him to owning a multi-faceted real estate business that spans realty, construction, development, demolition, and junk removal. Together, his businesses generate more than $1 million annually.
“One of my friends said ‘Whoever has the gold makes the rules.’ If you buy your own house you don’t have to worry about parking,” Josue explained. “So that’s what caused me to go through the journey of becoming a first time home buyer. And through that process, I went to so many first time homebuyer classes and looked at so many properties I became very proficient at it, and now I had a skill that I didn’t have a use for.”
Being a former Marine and fire lieutenant, Josue was used to being resourceful and putting his skills to work. So he sold that truck and began investing in real estate in Western Massachusetts before moving his portfolio closer to home in the greater Boston area.
Focusing on the Future of Marketing
When he launched his company in 2012, Josue relied on direct mail, driving for dollars, and cold calling. But it wasn’t something he enjoyed and didn’t produce the results he wanted to see.
“I did not like calling people who were wondering how I got their number, why I was contacting them, or getting upset because they did not want to be called,” he explained. “I wanted a marketing strategy that could attract people who were already looking for the services or solutions we provided.”
At the time, Josue’s marketing was supplemented by a website from a full service marketing agency. But that site never produced any “meaningful leads” or deals. He talked to others in the industry and learned it didn’t need to be that way. That a website designed to attract high-quality leads could be its own marketing channel, not just an online brochure.
“Originally, my goal was simply to have an online presence. At the time, I did not fully understand that a website could consistently generate leads and become an important part of growing a business. Once I learned that a properly built and optimized website could actually become a lead-generation tool, I became much more interested in Carrot.”
Josue learned about Carrot from another developer who listed it among his favorite real estate investing tools. At the time, that investor was spending $100,000 a month on marketing, according to Josue. The fact that he had such a large budget and was endorsing an affordable solution like Carrot got Josue interested.
“The thing that got me sold on Carrot is the fact that this guy had literally over $100,000 for marketing budget. He had unlimited funds. And he was like ‘This Carrot thing, it works.’ If you tell me that something works, I’m going to spend my money on it,” he said. “Carrot had a reputation for generating leads, and it was affordable. My thinking was simple: If I closed just one deal from the website, it could potentially pay for Carrot for years to come.”
Josue also liked that Carrot wasn’t just a website provider, it builds in progressive marketing strategies that help real estate investors and home service providers keep up with modern search trends. Right now that trend is AI search visibility. When Josue joined Carrot in 2018, the major trend was SEO. That focus on intentional, proactive marketing resonated with Josue.
“They always say about Wayne Gretski, he scored a lot of goals because he didn’t go to where the puck was, he went to where he thought the puck was going to be. And that’s what I really felt with SEO,” Josue explained about his decision to move to a Carrot SEO-optimized website. “I was like, ‘This is the future. Postcards are what our grandparents did.’ I was thinking, eventually everyone is going to be online, so if we can figure this out then we’re going to build a company for the future. In addition, if we continue to send postcards, people are like ‘I don’t know this guy, I don’t trust him.’ They’re going to go online and Google you and find you, so then it gives you more credibility. It was a sense of ‘OK, I think this is the future.’”
Carrot also offers regular training courses through live webinars and on-demand training that help business owners better understand marketing best practices. This education paired with a powerful platform gave Josue the confidence he needed to grow his business and try different marketing tactics.
“Carrot made digital marketing much easier for someone like me who did not originally know much about websites or SEO. Through the training, webinars, and resources, I learned how to build an online presence and compete for top positions in search results. That education has been just as valuable as the websites themselves.”
“I really do believe that having an online presence is not going away.”
Growing into a 7-Figure Business
Moving to a Carrot website fixed Josue’s online leads problem.
“Today, we receive leads in our inbox every day,” he reported. “Carrot has become a consistent source of inbound opportunities across our businesses.”
But the big change came when he tackled a rehab that went so terribly that he ended up having to take a contractor to court. That experience made him realize there’s opportunity to expand into home services with the integrity and quality underpinning his realty business.
“I realized I could make money buying real estate, but lose it very quickly if I didn’t have the right team to manage the construction project. So I got my construction license.”
When the time came to turn construction into its own Velney-branded business, the choice for launching a new website was clear.
“When I started my construction company, I was like ‘I’m not going to a different [website provider.]’ I had already done the Carrot trainings. I was like ‘I can build this on Carrot.’”
Josue launched one of the first home services websites on Carrot — an industry Carrot now natively supports.
He now has sites for Velney Realty, Velney Construction, Velney Development, and Velney Task Force 1 (his demolition and junk removal company). In a three month period, those sites generated a combined 1756 visitors, 95 high-quality leads, and had an average conversion rate of 4.48%.
And some of those leads have turned into extremely high-paying contracts.
“My demolition company, in month three or four we got a lead to do a small demolition. A $5,000 demolition project turned into a $10,000 demolition project, turned into them saying why don’t you just take the whole project, which ended up being a $200,000 project. And that was all from an SEO lead from Carrot.”
“That is what makes Carrot so valuable to me. You never know what one inbound lead can become. A relatively small lead can develop into a much larger opportunity, a long-term client, or even business in another division of our company.”
Part of what makes Josue’s leads such high quality is the time he puts into his websites and how he uses them. He details his processes on the sites and refers people to that content to ensure they’re a good fit to work with his companies.
“If somebody reaches out to my construction company, I literally follow up and say ‘This is our process’ and link back to our website, because now it’s educating them,” he explained. “What I’ve found is that by using SEO and your website correctly, you can actually prequalify a lot of clients so you’re not getting tire kickers. You create this very nice funnel of qualified leads.”
His SEO-focused approach to his websites also lets him capture new leads with niche needs. He was once approached to help a commercial space under a stop work order get their project back on track. That situation made him realize that there are likely others dealing with this same issue and no idea how to fix it. So he decided to capture those leads with his site.
“I said, ‘Well, if this person has this problem, how many other people have this problem?’ So I wrote a blog about it. I have had over four closed leads from that one blog. That’s so much value when you think with that mindset.”
Carrot: More Than Just a Website
By now — eight years after joining Carrot — Josue is fully bought into SEO and the Carrot local lead generation platform. For him, the results speak for themselves.
When asked what he’d do without Carrot, Josue responded:
“I’d be broke. Honestly, I don’t even know. I guess I would be using a different marketing stream. But for me, SEO is like gold. Carrot has grown from simply being a website platform into an important part of our overall business-development and lead-generation strategy.”
Working with the Carrot team has helped him take his businesses to the next level and gives him a solid understanding of marketing that helps him get ahead of the competition — without getting another degree or professional license.
“Trevor and the Carrot team still do webinars and are always educating you on ‘this is how you do it.’ You could probably learn everything Trevor does on YouTube, but Carrot just streamlines everything because you do a lot of it for us. I believe joining Carrot is a no-brainer. My return on investment has been through the roof—no pun intended!”
But it’s about more than just SEO or even the Carrot platform.
“You learn so much from Trevor and the Carrot team, but you learn so much more from everyone else in the Carrot community,” he said. “Carrot isn’t only about SEO and websites, you really learn a lot about real estate and everyone else in the Carrot community becomes part of your ecosystem. I wouldn’t be where I am without Carrot and the relationships I’ve formed because of Carrot.”
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