fig. 20 · case study · client since mid-2024
High Flow Drainage: revenue doubled in a year. Then the problem changed.
A real Kansas City drainage company, real numbers, and the honest version of how it went, including the part where fixing one problem created a better one.
how it started · a flooded basement
In 2024, a corner of my basement flooded every time it rained. I got estimates from half the waterproofing companies in Kansas City. One owner, Caleb, spent a full hour teaching me how water actually moves around a foundation: French drains, perimeter drains, gravel, fabric. Best explanation, best customer service, and the best price. I hired him, and his crew fixed it.
Here's the thing: his company was excellent and almost invisible. It took me real effort just to find him online. So I emailed him fifteen marketing ideas, free, because the business deserved them. He called back with the sentence that started this studio: “I don't have time. Can I just pay you to do it?”
what Caleb sells, drawn the way he explained it to me
fig. 20.1 · year one: not enough leads
First problem: the phone was too quiet
Caleb was the salesman, the scheduler, the estimator and the designer of every drainage plan. Marketing lost that fight every day. So we rebuilt the digital side of the business around jobs he was already winning:
- The website, rebuilt: with 20+ service pages, one for each job the crew actually does. Each page is a door a homeowner can walk in through from a search.
- Self-booking: customers see open slots and book, cancel or reschedule themselves instead of playing phone tag with the owner.
- The review pipeline: a thank-you gift basket and a follow-up system. Reviews went from 34 collected over five years to 80 within months. Today about 7 of every 10 jobs leave one.
- Findable by AI: when homeowners ask ChatGPT who fixes wet basements in Kansas City, High Flow comes up. That's deliberate, and it's where local search is going.
- Physical marketing: truck stickers, yard signs, and a bifold pamphlet that turns a 20-minute French drain explanation into a picture a homeowner can hold. Customers love it.
The result: leads up 4× from 2024 to 2025, and revenue doubled past the million-dollar mark in the first year. Average sale price rose about 15% too, because a business that looks as good as its work gets to charge like it.
fig. 20.2 · year two: too many leads
Second problem: the phone got too loud
This is the part most case studies skip. Fixing lead flow created a new bottleneck: estimates. A drainage estimate took 2 to 3 hours of an expert's time on site, and the calendar backed up six weeks. Nobody with a flooding basement wants to wait six weeks to learn a price.
So we built the Instant Estimator: scan the yard, and a priced plan comes together in about 30 minutes instead of hours. The demo film plays in the hero on the homepage. That's what working with one builder long-term looks like: the job isn't “a website,” it's whatever the current bottleneck is.
fig. 20.2½ · the mechanics, since you'll ask
How the review pipeline actually works
There's no dark pattern in it. When a crew finishes a job, the customer gets a thank-you gift basket, a real one, assembled and delivered, because Caleb's instinct was to thank people and my job was to make that instinct systematic. The follow-up that asks for a review rides along with it. People who just received a gift and a dry basement write reviews; it turns out that's the entire secret.
The same principle runs through everything on this page: none of it is a trick. Self-booking works because nobody enjoys phone tag. The service pages work because a homeowner searching “buried downspout repair” wants a page about exactly that, not a homepage about everything. The estimator works because a same-week answer beats a six-week wait even when the price is identical. Automation just makes the considerate version of the business the default version.
fig. 20.2¾ · if you run a trade business
Three things that transfer to any trade
- Being great is not the same as being findable: High Flow was the best drainage company in Kansas City before I ever touched it. I know because I hired them as a regular customer. The work didn't change; the findability did, and revenue doubled. If your calendar depends on word of mouth alone, you're leaving the same gap open.
- The owner's hours are the scarcest resource in the building: every system above exists to give Caleb hours back: booking that runs itself, reviews that collect themselves, estimates in minutes. Ask where your own week actually goes; that answer is the build list.
- Fixing one bottleneck reveals the next one: leads were the problem until they weren't, and then estimating was. That's normal and healthy. It's also why I work as an ongoing partner rather than a one-project vendor: the business keeps evolving, so the systems have to.
Plumbing, HVAC, roofing, landscaping, remodeling: the details shift, the shape doesn't. A trade business wins on trust and response time, and both of those can be engineered without making the company feel automated. Nobody who books High Flow online feels like they talked to a robot. They feel like they hired the one drainage company in town that respects their Saturday.
fig. 20.3 · the numbers, plainly
2×
revenue, year one · past the $1M mark
4×
leads, 2024 to 2025
+15%
average sale price, from brand perception
7 in 10
jobs now leave a review (34 total to 80 in months)
30 min
estimates, down from 2 to 3 hours
20+
service pages, each one a search door
on the numbers: the owner asked me to share growth percentages and the million-dollar mark rather than raw dollar figures, and to name the company without linking it. fair both ways; these are his books, not mine.
If your business is great at the work and quiet online, this is exactly the situation I like.
Book the free 20-min audit →or see what I build around Kansas City