From a Broken Website to $40k/month: How Returning to Carrot Saved REI Branded Home Buyer

Carrot is definitely fixing my business. I’m not going to listen to anybody else ever again when it comes to the website. The only people I’m going to listen to is Carrot. I love everybody at Carrot. I don’t even know why I left.

George Anderson of REI Branded Home Buyer in Spokane, WA, joined Carrot in 2022. At the time, he primarily focused on flips, but over the years, flipping houses took its toll physically and mentally. In 2025, George hit a wall. Frustrated and tired, he wanted to move away from flipping and focus on wholesaling.

“I was doing developments and flips, and it was very hard on my body. There was a lot of pain. I was doing most of the flip stuff myself. Once I got to CarrotCamp last year, I came back and said to myself, ‘This is no way to scale my business if I’m working on tile or windows or roofing.’”

Since realigning his business to focus on wholesaling, REI Branded Home Buyer has closed 16 wholesale deals in the first half of 2026 (compared to four deals in all of 2025).

Unfortunately, that success almost stalled out before it ever got started.

The Mistake That Almost Ruined Everything

As George took a critical look at his business model, some people convinced him he needed a new website.

“I was told by two people who were close to me that our website looked the same as everyone else’s. At the time, we weren’t really doing much in revenue and I was ready to try anything and everything. These two people talked me into moving the site over to WordPress to get it looking different.”

While George enjoyed working with Carrot, he listened to his friends and moved the site to a company that provides custom WordPress sites and support services like backlink building. He paid $7,000 for the new site and $500 for a backlink package. He was immediately disappointed. On top of that, he struggled with the new website provider who didn’t seem to listen to his concerns or take responsibility for their work and the end results.

“When the [new] website went live, I was like, ‘This is garbage. Nothing in here states anything about what we are as a company.’ It was just one incident after another with them.”

While his Carrot-hosted site reliably ranked number three for his main target keywords, his ranking “took a massive hit” with the new site.

“I was very, very displeased with the results.”

Luckily, the solution was clear.

“I had another person [who’s familiar with Carrot] during this process say, ‘What in the world are you doing? Why did you take your website away from Carrot? Everything that you put into it is now gone.’”

And even better news … everything he put into his Carrot site over the years wasn’t gone.

Getting Back to What Works

Within two months of having the new site, George decided to move back to Carrot. The transition was fast, and he started seeing improvements in a few weeks.

“I took back control of the website and Carrot [had saved] everything. We were able to get everything back up. It was running just fine. We saw our rankings jump back up within about a month and a half.”

To help him regain his rankings and generate leads quickly, George also started working with Keith Sant of SEO Meets REI (an approved Carrot SEO vendor). Within three months of returning to Carrot, he has several “really, really good leads from Carrot” and closed a Carrot-generated deal for $36,000. 

“Carrot is definitely fixing my business. I’m not going to listen to anybody else ever again when it comes to the website. The only people I’m going to listen to is Carrot. I love everybody at Carrot. I don’t even know why I left. I was having a crisis and was willing to try anything and everything.”

Winning His Market with a Fraction of the Budget

Before moving away from Carrot, REI Branded Home Buyer ranked number three for the “Spokane home buyers” keyword, including his Google Business page appearing high in the rankings. By mid June 2026 (a few months after returning to Carrot), they’re the second recommended business in Google search.

This is particularly impressive when you consider their main competition.

“There are two people in this area who spend about $100,000 a month on marketing, and it’s hard to beat that. We’re number 3, and we’re probably spending around $8,000 a month right now.”

George attributes a lot of his ranking success to having good reviews.

“People are really, really diving into our reviews and going, ‘Yeah, you’re the only company in the area that has a perfect 5-star rating.’ We have 83 5-star reviews right now.”

Understanding the power of a good review, George and his business partner make it a point to provide stellar service to everyone they talk to and actively solicit reviews.

“We give everyone we work with, even if we don’t buy their house, we give them a little card with a scan code on it and say, ‘Hey, did we help you out in any way, shape, or form? Even without buying the house, how did we treat you?’” And almost every single time we do that, they give us a review right there on the spot.”

He’s also branching out into other advertising channels, moving into local TV commercials, which “has really gotten our phone ringing.” Right now, TV ads account for about half of their marketing budget. He anchors all this marketing to his website and tracks the results with Carrot’s built-in analytics. 

“We’re really pushing people toward our website with our TV ads. We’re starting to see in our Carrot analytics a large jump in people visiting our website.”

Things have been working so well, George is looking to increase his monthly marketing budget from $8,000 to $20,000 — still a fraction of his competition. (Not to mention the fact that his Carrot site costs $99/month versus the $7,000 custom site!) And through it all, he’s keeping his Carrot site at the heart of his marketing efforts.

“Carrot is definitely a huge pillar in our business right now. Don’t leave Carrot. Just don’t. It was a mess, it was a nightmare when I left Carrot. I should have never left.”