Case Studies
Quick Facts:
Founded: 2010
Annual Revenue: $1-3M
Team Size: 11 FTE
Industry: Environmental Consulting
Struggle
Fourteen years into their journey, Integrity Environmental hit a roadblock.
- Their revenue had plateaued and they were struggling to grow. They could not figure out how to break through the $1M revenue ceiling profitably.
- They were struggling to balance capacity and workload riding the “feast or famine” roller coaster.
- They didn’t have clarity on what was wrong, or what to do about it.
- They didn’t have clarity on what was wrong, or what to do about it.
Shannon felt like she was trying to climb a glass wall, every time she felt like she had made some progress, she’d lose her grip and fall back a few paces.
After years of being stuck around $1M in revenue, she felt as though her business couldn’t scale any larger than it was in its current state. Despite that, it wasn’t clear what needed to change to go to the next level. It felt like the improvements in profitability couldn’t come from working her team harder, as they were already feeling the stress of high workloads, especially during peak seasons.
All of this uncertainty kept Shannon squarely in the driver’s seat, often having to subsidize this underperformance with her evenings and weekends, and being the bottleneck in decision-making around projects and people. Most years, she wouldn’t pay herself until the end of the year to ensure she had the cash flow required to keep the business going.
Everyone on the team was working hard, but it still felt like they had to keep tearing down and rebuilding their systems.
Shannon felt like she would never break through 7 figures without a radical change.
They have an incredibly hardworking team and a driven leader. Shannon was quick to realize that they were running on gut feeling instead of real data.
And that’s when she found us!
It was frustrating because I was working so incredibly hard, but not seeing any additional benefit. I just kept working and I was getting revenue, but it wasn’t growing. It’d be like building a house and every day you’d come back and the wall you just put up was torn down and you had to build it again.
Shannon Oeklers – Founder @ Integrity Environmental
Introduction to Parakeeto
In an attempt to “find the leak,” Shannon found the Agency Profit podcast in 2022 and started listening to all our previous episodes. And she used what she learned in the podcast to tune up her backwards numbers.
She realized that she had a services-based business, and her accounting was basically for products and goods sold. This explained a lot of the gray areas in her profitability.
“If I’m being completely honest, your podcast is so high quality it immediately improved my business. And I already knew. That for free, you made us better. So with that logic, it was really easy for me to say, imagine what this guy could do for some money”
– Shannon Oelkers
Engagement w/ Parakeeto
In 2023, Shannon approached us with the clear goal of getting the knowledge she needed to be more profitable. And while we usually help digital marketing agencies exclusively, we knew in our first call that we could seriously help Integrity with their revenue and profitability.
We understood that to really make the impact we love having in our client’s business, we’re going to have to tweak our onboarding a little bit to service them best.
After our audit, we found three key areas where we could improve the business:
- Data tracking and reporting
- Operating costs and billable rates
- Capacity forecasting & scoping
We knew it would work, but we saw positive changes in the first 6 weeks; Shannon gained the ability to engage in capacity forecasting, offering a forward-looking perspective on the business landscape.
“I think you guys will pay for yourselves by March of next year
Your team are master communicators, and I really appreciate the amount of thought and design that goes into every single communication with us, and you have an onboarding ramp, a through ramp, and an offboarding ramp, and it’s very clear, it’s just the right amount of information, there’s lots of reminders, and we felt very much that Parakeeto accepted us, And made the effort to fully onboard us instead of saying, well, we’re really meant for digital marketing agencies.”
– Shannon Oelkers
Results
In 15 months, we saw our vision board for Integrity come to life. Revenue shot up by 30% and profitability was up by 40%. For the first time, their profits were higher than their revenue.
Here is our #humblebrag list for Integrity:
- Revenue up by 30%, profitability by 40%
- Clear and goal focussed communication across the team
- Clarity on financial and time tracking data for Shannon, the founder
- Equipped now with the knowledge of exactly what levers to pull to be more profitable
“Honestly, it felt like I was finally a real business owner I, I can’t tell you how many years I felt like I was just playing at having a business because I didn’t know so many things, but I feel like now I have control of my numbers. I know what levers I can pull and push, and I feel like I have a lot more.”
Summary
In summary, Integrity Environmental knew a change to data-driven decision-making would have a positive impact on the future of the company and communication/clarity for their team.
Our process streamlined operations within six weeks, providing clarity in pricing, project scoping, and capacity forecasting. Over 15 months, the company experienced significant transformation: profits surged, revenue grew by 30%, and, for the first time, profits outpaced revenue growth.
The enhanced data visibility enabled the team to be independent decision-makers, and Shannon felt in control, armed with tools for navigating profitability.
“I didn’t think before that we were scalable…
And now I do think we’re scalable. I still have some systems to work out like sales, but, um. The core business system of how we operate and track our time and get reimbursed for the work that we do. All of that is a machine that’s working together now and has all the pieces in the right places. And so I feel like our ability to scale is going to do way more for us.
As far as revenue and profitability, they’re, they’re going to go up and it’s going to be easier and it doesn’t all rest on my shoulders.”
– Shannon Oelkers, Integrity Environmental
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