Knowledge Base / Owners
Owners' Room
For Burney and Asad: how the money actually works, the numbers worth watching, where growth comes from, and the strategic bets. Sensitive by nature; keep this section internal.
Unit economics: the build opens the door, subscriptions are the business
A one-time build sold alone is a job. A build that converts to hosting and care is an asset. The math per client:
Year-one revenue per client, by what they take (illustrative)
What this implies operationally
- Attach rate is the metric that compounds. A 10-point improvement in hosting/care attach is worth more than 10 extra builds, with zero extra build labor.
- Deliver-day is the sales moment. Trust peaks when the client sees their live site; that's when care and SEO close. It's scripted into delivery (see Management, Template 4).
- Churn on subscriptions is the quiet killer. A care client canceling after 3 months was a discount, not an asset. Care must visibly do something monthly (the pulse edits + report), or it cancels.
- Build margin discipline: Starter must stay under ~2 production-days of effort to be healthy; that's what the starter kit, design library, and process pages protect. Every hour saved in production is pure margin at fixed prices.
The KPI board (check monthly, minimum)
| Area | KPI | Healthy looks like | Watch out when… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Leads contacted per week | Consistent volume per seller | Volume swings with mood; pipeline starves 3 weeks later |
| Quote → close rate | 25–40% on qualified leads | <15%: qualification or pricing objection handling is broken | |
| Free mockup → close rate | 50%+ (it's our strongest close) | Low rate = mockup quality slipped or wrong segment | |
| Production | On-time delivery rate | 90%+ against SLA dates | Two slips on one project; same root cause twice |
| QA escapes (bugs found by clients) | ~0; each one gets a checklist line | Any form/lead-capture escape: treat as severity 1 | |
| Recurring | Hosting + Care attach rate | 60%+ of new builds take at least hosting | Sellers skipping the delivery-day script |
| MRR (monthly recurring revenue) | Growing every month even in slow build months | Flat MRR + busy builds = we're running a treadmill, not a business | |
| Subscription churn | <3%/mo | Cancellations citing "we never hear from you" | |
| Reputation | Referrals per delivered site | Every happy delivery asked for one | Zero referral asks logged = script not being used |
| Public reviews | Steady trickle, all real | Never buy or fake reviews, under any pressure. One faked review can undo the brand |
Growth engines (in order of current leverage)
Outbound to no-website / weak-website local businesses
The lead-gen pipeline targets US trades where the OWNER answers the phone. Rules that matter: verify "no website" by Googling name + phone before any outreach (registry fields lie), and prioritize recently founded businesses; they're deciding about a website right now.
The free-mockup wedge
Build the homepage before they pay: near-zero risk for the prospect, massive conversion for us. Works via PlutoPixels as the mockup brand feeding LlamaMakers builds. Keep mockup turnaround under 48h or the wow evaporates.
Content/SEO engine on llamamakers.com
The automated SEO crew (keyword research, blogs, audits, outreach drafts, weekly reports in F:\llamamakers-seo). The "I bought a domain, now what?" content gap is ours to own: every host ranks for it with DIY answers; nobody answers "let someone do it for you". Blocked on: connecting Search Console/GA4 and publishing the approved drafts.
Referral flywheel
Structural, not hopeful: the referral ask is scripted into delivery day and the day-7 check-in. Consider formalizing a reward (one month of care free per closed referral) once volume justifies it.
Our own site as the demo
llamamakers.com IS the portfolio: the vibe switcher is the single best sales asset we own. Which is why the audit findings (dead lead forms, duplicate content, missing services prerender) are revenue bugs, not cosmetic ones. Fixing our own funnel is a growth project, arguably the first one.
Competitive landscape (the honest version)
| Competitor class | Their pitch | Where they beat us | Where we beat them |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify) | "Free/cheap, do it this weekend" | Price floor, instant start, massive ad budgets | The customer's 20–40 hours, template sameness, slow plugin-stacked results, zero done-for-you |
| Marketplace freelancers (Fiverr, Upwork) | "A human for $300–$3,000" | Can undercut on price | Consistency, accountability, maintenance after launch, a real company behind the site |
| Local agencies | "Full service, strategy included" | Enterprise trust, big-budget clients we don't want anyway | Price (5–20x ours), speed (weeks vs days), and nobody's nephew has to sit through their meetings |
| AI site generators | "Type a prompt, get a site" | Novelty, speed, near-zero cost | They ARE the template problem now. Hand-coded, no-AI-tells design is our moat; lean into "a human designed this for your business" as the generators flood the market with sameness |
Standing decisions (so we stop re-litigating them)
- Price integrity: public flat prices, no haggling. Scope moves, price doesn't. Only owners can approve an exception, and the default answer is no.
- No fake anything: no fabricated stats, reviews, case studies, or "AI expert" claims anywhere. Honesty is a positioning choice, not just ethics: our whole pitch is "the web industry lies to beginners; we don't."
- Quality bar over volume: we'd rather ship 3 sites a week that pass the full QA gate than 6 that generate care tickets and refunds.
- Brand rules are law: no emojis, no AI-tell layouts, no repeated images, real fonts, every build mined from the Design Library. These are the visible proof of "custom".
- The two-question delivery ritual (care plan + referral) happens on every single delivery. It's where the business model actually lives.
Risk register (review quarterly)
| Risk | Blast radius | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Key-person dependency (production runs through Burney) | High | This KB + starter kit + checklists ARE the mitigation: process on paper, not in one head. Keep them current. |
| AI generators commoditizing "a website" | Medium | Sell outcomes (leads, speed, Google) not pages; double down on taste, custom design, and done-for-you service that generators can't fake. |
| Subscription churn from invisible care | Medium | Monthly visible pulse: edits done, report sent, one proactive suggestion. |
| Reputation hit from one bad public review | Medium | Escalation table + refund stance: unhappy clients get resolved before they get loud. |
| Tooling/supply-chain compromise poisoning client sites | High | Audit-before-install policy, scripts disabled on install, verify after. No exceptions for "it's popular". |