GoHighLevel’s CEO Explains the Easiest Way to 10X Local Sales | Shaun Clark

Well, first of all, Sean, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I've been such a big fan of yours for so long. And just for those who don't even know what GHL is, can you just give us a 101 of what this tool is and what it does?

Gosh, that's a good question. I always— these days I just call it like an all-in-one marketing and CRM system, which is kind of underplaying it. But the idea is to have kind of all the features and functions you need to run and market and grow your business all in one spot. So instead of having to buy 6 or 7 different apps and try to string them together. You know, it's just kind of a one-stop shop. I think that's kind of the best way we, way we think about it.

Yeah, there's literally like hundreds of features inside of GHL. It's like, what do you need? You know, there's like membership, there's review management, there's AI voice agents, chatbots, literally anything you pretty much need to run marketing.

Exactly. That's the problem. You could, you could sort of list off features for about an hour if you want to. And that's I think, but I think it's more, it's what's really important is that it can hopefully provide you, you know, enough value initially, but also the faith to know that you're also gonna have all those other things as you move down the line, as you expand your business, you're not gonna have to go outside of HighLevel to find some critical tool to kind of grow and take that next step.

For sure. For sure. So how did you come up with the idea to start HighLevel?

Oh, good question. So I had a prior SaaS company in the accounts receivable automation space, which basically meant I sent automated invoice reminders for small businesses. And through that, I grew that to about 1,000 small business businesses directly and just got an opportunity to meet and learn from a lot of them. And they all kind of needed something very similar, which was they all wanted more customers. And so when it finally came time to kind of start that new venture, that was kind of the goal in mind. Now, to be fair, You know, we started HighLevel 1.0 and really initially tried very hard to sell directly to those small businesses. And we very quickly found that it was hard to do because they would say, yeah, we need these features, we love these features and all that, but we just don't have time to learn them or action them in our business. And that was very discouraging to a couple of software engineers because it wasn't like they needed another feature. It's just like they needed time and we couldn't really code out time for them. So Luckily for us, we met a lot of great people, but more, most importantly, we met an agency owner who's now our 3rd co-founder, Robin Alex, who had an agency and really kind of brought forward this idea of, look, if you want to help these small businesses, you really need to help the agencies because these folks are already helping implement software and services today so that we really focused on that market and on helping those people. And that's really kind of what brought us to where we are today by helping the people who help the small businesses.

So when you were building GHL, give us a sense, like, when did GHL start and at what point did you get it to profitability?

So about 7 years ago, and we were profitable pretty much from inception. So we've always run a profitable business, and I think this was what sets us apart in SaaS. And, you know, the key to our success really has been how we develop the product. So, You know, leading into kind of not only how we build, but what we build, you know, we really don't see ourselves as the people responsible to come up with the next idea. We really put that back on our customers and we, because we feel like our customers are kind of the experts, right? We are really here in the service of them and they're really telling us, look, this is what we want you to build next. Specifically, this is how we want, these are the things that are important about how you build it. And we feel like we've done this consistently through our whole history. And that's kind of what has led us to when you ask like, well, why this product or why this combination or why this in this way? It always leads back to we have a public ideas list where customers throw out features. We have public town halls where we get on Zoom calls with customers around different topic areas they're interested in so that the dev and product teams talk to them on a weekly basis. So there's lots of ways that we try to, to speak to our customers to really understand their needs. And then we feel like our, our job, our mission is to then just build what they told us that they needed in the way they told us they needed it.

So what was the first couple of features that you built into GHL? And how were you like, because, you know, obviously there was the development cost and cost of developers. How did you, how were you able to be profitable from day one?

Well, first, the, so the first feature that we built was lead follow-up, automated lead nurturing really is what you want to think of it as because our original customer base were Facebook ads people. who were running ads on behalf of small businesses and then getting fired for it. And the reason really was that they would run these ads and collect these leads and put them on a spreadsheet and they'd hand them over to the business owner and they'd be like, see, I look at all the leads I got you. Yay, I'm a winner. But the reality is those business owners weren't turning those people into customers. And the reason why is because they'd run an ad, you know, like, oh, get a free teeth whitening at the dental clinic. And someone would come in and they'd fill out the form, but no one bothered to follow up in the first 5 minutes or less. And get those people booked into an appointment. So we automated that initially with SMS and that was our big kickoff feature and it really was like a game changer for these businesses who were running Facebook ads or these ad agencies. And so, and being that Varun, my other co-founder and I are both software engineers, you know, we were able to be profitable mostly because we didn't value our time and we wrote all that code. So for us, it wasn't about hiring a dev team, it was about being the dev team. And really, again, just, and this has been a hallmark of our business, you know, really continuing to think, well, what are we good at? How do we get better at it? And what are we terrible at, more importantly? And how do we never try to get good at that at all and instead find other people who are good at it and find a way to, you know, kind of link up with them, create a system and a process where, you know, we're incentivized, they're incentivized, and everybody's winning in that equation. And so sales and marketing has been, you know, kind of one of those areas we were terrible at and we, feel really good about never getting good at and working with the best and brightest out there to do it. So that's kind of how we've operated our business since day one.

That's interesting. And we'll definitely dive deeper into that. At any point during GHL, was there like major roadblocks that you faced and, you know, throughout the inception to now?

Every day. Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of things. I mean, I could I remember times when, you know, initially, you know, sometimes it's the fear of the unknown, like, well, what's going to, we always ask like, what's going to take us out and how do we kind of plan for that? I remember early on we chose a technology called Firebase, which we're still on today. And there was a time when if there was a, the database and if there was a missing index, there was no way to know that. And if you know anything about databases, indexes are like a way for you just sort of radically speed up really common queries. And we got to a point where our entire customer base, the entire app was like super slow and everyone was complaining and everyone was like, ah, this sucks. And if this continues, we're all quitting. And turned out there was a missing index. And I remember I was on a family vacation and I was literally in the, like the wee hours of the morning sitting in the rental car going, you know, like desperately trying to figure this out. And it, you know, and so that was like, and we were lucky Google came swinging in and said, oh, you guys are missing this index. And like 5 minutes they fixed the problem. But that was literally months in the making. So there's a lot of things like that that come up. You know, we have all kinds of roadblocks. Scaling a team is really tough and challenging. And how do you get, you know, how do you get the next person through the door to really understand the culture in the way that you want them to so that they're building, you know, the app that you've always felt like you were building before. So I think there's constant struggles and roadblocks. They change over time, but there's, you know, it's never easy.

Yeah, that's interesting that you said scaling the team because GHL has such a big team and it has some of the best support that I have ever seen. And I was just saying that, but like anytime, 24/7, 365, even on Christmas, anytime during the day, if you, if If your software is not working, you can jump on a Zoom call with someone. I've never seen a software company that has been that dedicated to customer service. So how did you really instill that culture? And when new people come on, how do you ensure that they are like, learn everything about the software so that they are able to—

Well, I think a couple of things. So early on, you know, we struggled with this like any other software company. And I have always been proud of the fact that I am not a very creative person, but I am really good at stealing other people's great ideas. And so I remember walking into like a Verizon store and, you know, one of the things I thought was kind of cool was, you know, they had the same issues that everybody has, which is like, you're always going to have a limited number of experts. So what do you do when like you have a rush at the store? You know, how does that work? And I noticed what they did is they would immediately greet you as a human being and that person would like check you in. And while that person didn't actually give you any help, they certainly made you feel heard and seen. And then they would sort of put you in a queue and you'd kind of know where you were at. And so, you know, while everyone wants instant help, given that that is not possible, I think the reality is it at least gets you in that process. So I thought that was cool. So I was like, well, how can we replicate that? And Zoom was the best way to do that, right? And then the other thing I noticed is When you're sort of in a waiting room with other people, you tend to socialize and, you know, talk to other people and sometimes even solve some of your own problems, right? And so that was kind of a fun way to do it. So I just thought, let's replicate that. And it worked really, I think it's worked really well. And I think it also humanizes the experience. Most people, I think with customer support, they tend to reach out when they're in a difficult situation. And I think oftentimes both on both sides, It can get lost that like you're talking to another person, they're trying to help you. So I think if you can humanize that experience, I think it goes better for everybody.

100% for sure. And when you're hiring for these customer support reps, like what does that process or SOP look like? How do you get all of them trained?

I have no idea. So early on, I knew I wasn't any good at that either. And so I actually had worked with a guy, in my previous business who was awesome in support. And so he was our first official hire actually. His name is Ian and he still runs customer support and service to this day. And what I loved about him is he was willing to jump on the phone and make things happen and talk to customers. And I think leadership comes from the top. So it was really just about carrying that spirit through. And again, to me what matters is that we don't change the underlying principles, which is no, you're not gonna hide Behind a phone. You know, we, it's funny, we even, we don't even offer a phone number because we like, I, I wish I could get rid of the stupid phone number. People actually ask for the stupid phone number. I would put everybody on a Zoom call if, you know, in fact we have like chat and stuff. I would get rid of chat if I could, but people just actually demand it. But in reality, it's just about like when possible, get on a Zoom call, which is as close to face-to-face as you can with a customer. And as long as we do that, that's really all that matters. You know, and you've asked, you know, we have like all kinds of training and onboarding and this and this and this and this. But, you know, I don't think that you can really do a better job than anybody else in those aspects. But what I think you can do is connect people. In fact, I think we could all sort of think of a customer service situation where we were faced with a person on the other side. We're trying to get help from them. It was very clear that they didn't have the answer and they were kind of new, but we could just sort of see that they empathized with us and were committed to getting us support and help. And that made all the difference, right? And so for me, it's about— that's the most important thing about our culture. And as long as that's being upheld, I think everything else will fall in place.

That's good. That's good. And I love that you said you had no idea because you as a CEO don't have to know everything. You had to find the people with the right skill set to fill in the gaps. And it's not all about like, you know, you're— you had to be the expert at everything. So I love that you said that. So as we mentioned earlier, GHL has like hundreds of features.

Yeah.

You were starting your own GHL agency today. What would be the top features that you would offer and what would you go out to small business owners and say your USP or unique selling proposition?

Totally. So I would start with one feature, inbound voice AI. I would sell specifically to local businesses because Even back all the way back when we had no opinion on this and I was just talking to agencies, the local agencies always had the lowest churn rates. And the reason it wasn't because they were experts. And in fact, it's really fun because being an expert is actually a really, is really not as important as people make it out to be. It sounds really good on paper, but in reality, if you have to choose between local and, and, you know, like specialists in a niche, I would go local every time because you can create connection. And that connection is the thing that creates the trust and the long-term sort of customer relationship. So I would start local. I would do inbound voice AI and I would, and the pitch would be simple. Look, every single day you miss phone calls. I don't care if you, if you think they're just at night, that's cool. I'll take it. But the reality is you miss calls all the time and those are not people calling in to like check on the weather or see how you're feeling. They're people calling in to actually give you money. And now AI is good enough that it's, it's not gonna sit there and, and, you know, and have a full-on conversation. In fact, we don't want that. We just want a receptionist-style feature. And that's exactly where voice AI is really good. Now I can call in 24/7, 365. It tries to ring you first. If you don't pick up, it automatically rolls over to the AI and the AI will do the basics of, you know, explaining services, booking appointments, really taking those people down the funnel. And this is really a great way to take a bunch of leads and a bunch of inbounds that you're missing today and turn them into real customers right there. Bingo. That is worth a lot of money to you as a business. That is what I would do. I'd multiply that out times hundreds of businesses in my local community. I would charge $297 a month because I think most businesses, one call turned into a customer is worth that every month to most businesses. I probably wouldn't focus on flower shops or low margin businesses. I would focus on home services and tire shops and really boring, but very moat having businesses, very sustainable businesses. And, and I, right there, I think I could get myself to literally millions in revenue every year, and I could always do more from there and go from there and expand from there. But that's exactly where I'd start.

Wow. Would, would you do any other, like, once you get them in on that one fee?

Oh, sure. Yeah, I would, I would try to, you know, I'm trying to bring them through. Now, the most important thing I would do is I would create packages and I would never stray from those packages. So the, the biggest problem with the agency business and why it doesn't scale is because most of the time it's custom work, whether people like it or not. like, I'm going to make you a website and this and this and this and this. You just become like this, you know, consultant that tries to do everything. I'd create package A, package B, package C, and I'd never stray from those. But ultimately, my, I think where most people fall down isn't in the what's next, it's in the what first. And so I really want people to understand, like, it's very simple. It's one feature. It's right out your front door. It's get out from behind your computer. It's no, there's no magic cold email formula here. There's no, like, there's lots of ways you can like Spice it up. But if you're just getting started, like literally it's go to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, go to BNI meetings, think of business owners, you know, the community, like go, go, go, go, go start talking to people. And it's really simple. You're not trying to do anything other than soak up a lot of the remnant traffic that they're already getting. And again, you, these expansions are things like the web chat widget on the website also can be AI enabled. Same concept, right? Yeah. People come to the website every day, they have no clue, you know, that they just, Everyone has these fancy website services and about us and our history and profiles of our zillions of staff members. And most of the time it just comes down to like, hey, where can I click to like do something? And the web chat widget is beautiful because it's AI enabled, give a lot of answers, but also you can then lay claim to, aha, that was me. And so again, same concept. You turn one of those clicks into a job, into a customer every month, and boom, you've got them for life. They're going nowhere.

Right, right, right, right, right. So when you say you create those packages, what would your packages look like?

Well, I would start— so owning the front door of the business is always the most important thing. So I would start with every way I could do that. So again, inbound voice AI is the voice channel, right? We've got web chat on the website as well. And I would sort of keep walking down, like different businesses will have different things. So like, well, what about all the forms that come in? Am I getting all those in? You know, like where are all the different channels I can, I can own? Are they making outbound calls? Because I, I want to do those, all the, all the communications, right? That's really where I would start with. Then, you know, email marketing could be sort of that next piece. And then once you have that, that's where you want to start digging a little deeper. And every customer's different. You got to be careful. Like, what are the other things I can, I can sort of do an automated job of? Like, can I do automated social posting for them by having pre-done social posts that basically work for any business, just automatically going out. Because again, I don't want to be customizing everything for every silly business. But what I know is every business should be posting on social media. What can I do to automate that? Right? Do they have, you know, do they have their Google Business Profile set up? Because if so, that's another inbound channel that I could tap into, right? Do they have their Facebook chat set up, their Instagram chat set up? Do they have their— are they using WhatsApp if they're, you know, potentially outside the US, potentially, or Maybe even inside the US, do they have a certain population? You know, what are all those channels? And so I would create the packages around that. But the idea is, you know, how can I make sure that at the end of the day, while I might have some setup to do for them, when it's all said and done, I'm not doing anything. Reputation management's another huge one. Automating the reviews. I did this for our very first local business here in Eugene. It was a, it's an HVAC company. They had 12 reviews. They're over 1,000 now. Never talked to them, never touched anything, never set anything up after I set up them initially. They still pay us $300 a month and have for 7 years. So what are the things that you can do that you could? And again, those, those would be my packages and I would start to slowly, you know, push through and just figure out where am I not being custom? And again, what businesses I'm serving, some will be more techie. If they are more techie, you can let them in on website builders, funnel builders, workflow builders, try to get them as into it as you want, but just make sure that you're charging enough so that when they start asking questions, You have enough money to hire customer service to help them because it will all come back to customer service. No matter how easy the app is, people will always have questions.

Right? Absolutely. That actually brings me to my next question. Would you sell GHL as a service or would you sell it as a software, like your own white label?

Right in the middle. So not a soft, not soft, certainly not software and certainly not service. I, there's a guy out there, his name is Mike Kucha. I stole this from him. He calls it services at scale, but I think of it as A technology-enabled service. So the idea is you're going in and you're, first of all, you're pitching an outcome. You're never pitching a feature because it's, if people pitch features, that's where things go to die. Fundamentally, if you're trying to get into a software argument, they're going to say, oh, but I already have the software that does this and does it do it like this and this and this and this? And all of a sudden, just boom, you lose. Like there's no way you're going to win this argument because first of all, you're arguing with someone who actually doesn't know what they're talking about, but feels the need to actually pretend they do because they've spent money on a product. So do not go there. That is where these discussions go to die. Think about it as pitching and selling an outcome. And then when it all comes down to it, how you're powering that outcome is the technology so that you're not becoming a service because services are not scalable. Services are custom. Services mean just person hours. So you can't do that. So again, let's think about something simple. Social media posting. Traditionally, it's great. Let me go hire someone. They're gonna create a bunch of social media posts for you. And oh my gosh, that is a lot of custom work. Instead, let's just create a stock social post that could go on for any business that references an article that is publicly available on the internet and let's send it out for everybody. Okay, great. And a lot of people will say, well, yeah, but aren't other people going to know about those posts and doesn't that demean their value and this and that? And the answer is actually no, because the person it's designed to impact is the person who gets it and that person is going to see a really cool post That links to a really cool article and it's going to make that business owner look like they're, you know, they're paying attention and they're connected and it's going to scale beautifully. And there you are able to provide a $300 a month product versus a $3,000 a month service, which no one wants to buy. That's the other problem is the services are expensive and no one wants to pay for them. And then you're not selling a software feature because software is a tool that, that's like saying, hey, would you like to buy my hammer or my saw? No one wants that because you're just selling like something that's gonna require a lot of education and a lot of work. You're beautifully vibrating in the middle. You're selling an outcome that's powered by technology where you may have to again do the setup, but you aren't running it day to day. You aren't putting your hours into it every day.

Right, right, right. I love that. I love that you said that it's right in the middle. It's a, it, you're selling the end result to people and it's a—

That's right. That's right.

Like a productized, uh, service.

It is. It is, but it's tech. The most important thing is that it's technology enabled because you need that technology engine to be turning over. Otherwise you can't scale it. That, I mean, my thing is I used to meet agency owners and one way or another, and this is, if you really think about most models in business, the reason some scale and some don't, it's just because of the fundamental economics of the model. The reason why there's like super agencies or the super agencies that exist, they're not radically more profitable because there's no leverage there. There's no scale as you get bigger. Because it's just more people and more people and more people and more, and people are freaking expensive. You know, it's sort of like, you know, and you can't, and then the worst part is as your business has ebbs and flows, people don't ebb and flow like, you know, power or equipment or something. Fundamentally, there's, you put a lot of work into building expertise and then it, let's say you lose your biggest client. Well, you're going to have to let people go, but then you're going to have to let people go that you invested a lot in and you can't bring them back very easily. It's just a nightmare. So this is where you need to have the actual end product be delivered by the technology. But don't sell it like a technology because people sell technology like a bunch of tools and no one wants to build the house themselves. They just want the house built for them. And that's what you're selling. You're just delivering it in a way that isn't, is going to allow you to scale a business and be sustainable. And also the most important thing is offer a price point that people will say yes to. And so this is how you always undercut. I mean, Again, take any of these services, social media posting or websites or whatever, you know, thousands of dollars versus hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars always win, right? Something that creates an outcome versus something you can create an outcome with, outcome always wins. That's why that middle wins every time.

Right? Absolutely. How important is it to white label? I see a lot of— the reason I ask that is because I see a lot of people like agency owners like freak out if they're logo isn't on it. But in your opinion, how important is that really to the end result?

I mean, so we, I mean, to be fair, we got here because of agency owners, right? So agency owners would tell us that they would go out and they'd take another competitor software product and they'd put their heart and soul into it to make it work. And then people would leave them for it, right? Now, in reality, I think it's true to say that you could take almost any product and if you were creating enough value, I think you would be hard pressed to be gotten rid of, right? Particularly that value comes in the form of new fresh stuff. So like new social media posts every month with email templates that match, that with a lander that matches, with Facebook ads that match, with Google ads that match, which by the way, you can now all do in HighLevel as a snapshot. But if you aren't doing that, and even if you are doing that, I mean, I think white labeling because it's so easy, I think it's a good thing because I do think at the heart of why we originally did it is still there, which is Disassociating people's focus on tools. So for example, if you think about almost every other outcome you purchase, you know, like you don't go to the dentist and say like, oh, what brand of, you know, of gauze are you using? And what, you know, I don't even know, even knows what the brands are because it, you know, you don't think that way. Or like with a home builder, you're not like, do you use Makita or using DeWalt? Because if you don't use DeWalt, I'm not hiring you. No one thinks like that. It's ridiculous nonsense, right? And so Why is it in software we're so hung up on what system people use? That's silliness. And so I think what we ought to do is allow white labeling because I think it furthers that disassociation. It devalues the importance of the tool because I think that is the fair thing to think about. Because what we all know is, you know, the, the right tool in the wrong hands equals terrible outcomes. And, you know, maybe an inferior tool in the best hands Creates an amazing outcome. So quite frankly, the tool is just a piece of the puzzle. It is not the solution unto itself.

It's how you use a tool too.

Absolutely. And I would white label and, and because I would simply say, listen, I'm the important piece of this puzzle here, not the stupid tool. So even if you know what the tool is, it's irrelevant here. Here's all the tools. Go for it, man. You show me, you just let me step aside and let's watch you work. More like watch you fail. Like, That's the whole point. I'm the important person here because I know how to take these tools and actually create something out of them. If the tools just did it all themselves, we— I wouldn't be here and neither would HighLevel, because guess what? A lot of these tools have been around forever. The fact of the matter is they actually take expertise to truly use to create great outcomes.

I love that. I love that. Now, there are, I think, 70,000 GHO agency owners already.

And counting. Yep.

Yeah, I think I saw the latest stats there.

Millions of users through those people, thank goodness.

Yeah, million. So for newcomers, it's a little intimidating because there's already 70,000 people who started their business on it. So is DHL too saturated at this point to run this?

I mean, see, that's the, that's the funny part about it. That's, that's like the worst way to think because the better way to think is every business I walk into, do they have all these tools in place? Of course not. Well, why not? Because what's missing? It's not the tool that's missing. Because as we already discussed, even before GHL showed up, these tools have been out forever. What's missing? You're missing someone to walk in the door and say, hey, I know you want this outcome. We're not stupid. We've both seen these outcomes. I know why you don't have this outcome for your business, because you don't have the time. Let's go all the way back to when we first started. The reason why HighLevel is the way it is is because that fundamental idea of time has not changed. Every small business owner is still running around doing the thing that they do, right? Being the best plumber, the best lawyer, the best dentist. Quite frankly, what we wish they would all do is continue to be great at what they do. Don't try to pick up marketing and accounting and, you know, and, you know, whatever, and logistics on the side. That's ridiculous. It just waters down what they really do well. Instead, what you need to do is walk in and realize you are the missing link. You are the person that's gonna help them take that business to that next level to create those solutions. So again, we make tools and I think we make great tools and I think we make all the tools you need. But most importantly, we make them in a way that's focused on someone like you coming in, picking them up and taking them all the way to the finish line on behalf of the business owner. We are not running around pretending that, oh well, if, you know, Joe Schmo just happens to know about our tools and boom, magic happens. That's how everybody else sells. That's how everybody else tries to play the game. We don't play the game that way.

That's so good. That is so good. You know, even a couple days ago when I was at like getting my haircut and then the hairdresser I was at, she was picking up the phone as, you know, she was half cutting.

Yep. I have that same situation. Yep. And you're like, what the heck's going on? Right? But you know why they do it? Because those people, because they're hungry, they want the business and they're right there, right? They're like, well, I love you, you're great. And I really wish I could sit there and be perfect for you, but I gotta get that next buck. So hold on, I'll be right back. Right? And we just sort of, as customers, kind of like, okay, you know, we just sort of let it go.

Yeah.

But in reality, we know that, you know, 2 things happen, right? That our experience suffers. You know, they probably still miss calls. There's probably still times when they're like, mid-whatever, and I just can't move. And so boom, they lose that business.

Yeah.

They need those solutions. But you know what? It's not that those solutions aren't out there. They could be Googling on the internet, but what are they doing instead? They're sitting there doing what they do well and they're sitting there doing what pays the bills. And this is the other big thing. Most small business owners, and I know why, have a bias to action on things that make them money. And even if they know that they could invest time in something that would eventually make them money, they're just never going to do it. This is where the opportunity lies. It's your ability to come in and say, look, I can solve for this. I can help you give me a better experience while at the same time not missing those calls and getting them booked into appointments. And quite frankly, it's funny because I find, and I'm sure other people are the same way, there are lots of situations where I'd rather not talk to a person in order to accomplish that basic task. You know, booking my next haircut. Gosh, I don't want to have to freaking call. I hate having to call. It's ridiculous. Or I have a dentist cleaning I have to schedule. I don't want to call them. I just want to text them or whatever. Like preferably just shoot me a link. Like that would be the way to go. These are literal repetitive transactions I've got to book. And the only reason there's variability in the world is because of me, right? It's my schedule I need to map to their openings. I'm more than happy to do it because I know my schedule best. Just give me an easy way to do it. And fundamentally, that's where the opportunity lies to be a SaaSpreneur.

Right. For sure. For sure. So from what I'm seeing is a lot of people just are afraid to get started, like reaching out to the business owners, like sending that first email or the first DM. So, um, this is a 2-part question. Where do you find those business owners to reach out to? And then, uh, what would you say? Um, and how do you, how would you get over that fear of like—

Yeah, totally. Well, so first of all, the way to get over that fear is to experience it. Unfortunately, there's really no other way to do it. I think the hardest part about business for most people is that you're always going to be terrible at first. There's just no magic secret sauce, you know, silver bullet. Until you've had 100 bad conversations, you're not really going to have a good conversation because it's those 100 where you're really actually trying to learn and you're trying to find a way to learn in the best way possible. And there's lots of tricks. I mean, you could do stuff like you could pay someone and say, look, look, well, I'll pay you $100 an hour. Just sit down, give me an hour of your time. I want to ask you some questions, right? I'm not a big salesperson. I'm not a big outbound one-to-one. I'm more of a one-to-many type of person. That's why we have a whole help article on how to do the whole BNI Chamber of Commerce thing. You go in there, these organizations need educators. There's lots of other types of groups, by the way. So please don't think that there's just one type. It's probably 20 in your local community. They need open, honest, non-pitch education. So you go in there and you actually don't sell anything. You just give a pitch on all the great ways that you, that somebody could sign up with, you know, software like this, quote unquote. and, you know, and market their business online. And if you do a good job, here's what you're gonna show. You're gonna show that you have a lot of expertise on something and that, man, it's actually not easy. It's quite a bit of work. But at the end of the presentation, I promise you this, if you do a good job, people rush the stage and say, hey, wait, hold on before you leave. Would you be willing to do this for me? And all of a sudden you'll pick up your first 5 or 10 customers because you've given them an educational style pitch. You're not sitting there saying, and for the low, low price of $2,995, right? You're not doing that. In fact, those organizations, the best ones would throw you out if you tried. That is how I would attack these things. And it gives you exposure. It allows you to ride in on the credentials of an existing organization. So you get a little bit of trust, you get practice, all the, all the things. And then, you know, if you, there's millions of other cool things. Like I've seen one of the best campaigns I've seen is start a local YouTube channel called Local, you know, Chicago Experts or Local Chicago Business Experts. And you, the email doesn't say, Hi, I'm Sean. I want to sell you something. It's, hi, I'm Sean. I have a podcast. I'd really love it if you'd come on my podcast. I really want to hear all about your story. And local business owners and most people have egos and they'll jump on podcasts and they'll tell all about themselves and why they're great and everything else. And by the way, while you're there, you should sell them the system. And you also get yourself an opportunity to create some presence in your local community. You start to connect with other business leaders. Things will happen. So there's lots of different ways to go about it. But the reality is none of them are easy. None of them are simple. None of them are painless. There is no magic bullet here. You just got to get out from behind your computer and take action.

Right. 100%. 100%. And I think, you know, another way you can approach it is like when, when you're talking to businesses, just ask questions like, how many calls are you missing? And then like, it's almost like you're in the doctor's office. Um, doctors like, great question, and then they give you the solution instead of just being like, I'm a GHL marketing agency, and they'll be like, what's that? But if you just like, totally, I'm asking questions, and, and then, and eventually they will ask you, hey, do you know a solution to this?

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and yeah, and I, I think that's awesome. And if you say how many calls you're missing, and a lot of people will not know, and then you should always have a backup like, well, hey, did you know the average US business misses 10.8 calls a day? What if, how many, well, what's the average, what's the average invoice you send out to a customer? Oh, wow. Okay. So if you had 10 more of those a day times that much money, wow, that'd be like $10,000 a day. Is that, is that a meaningful amount of money? And right there, they'll very quickly make those connections, right? So you're absolutely right. And you'll learn about their other issues. They'll tell you all about their other woes. But what you'll find out over time is there's a pattern to these things. And what we'll really get good, but you'll know you're good When you can say, hey, do you have blah, blah, blah problem? And they're like, oh, how did you know? Like you read their mind. That's how you'll, you'll, you'll know you've gotten it. And the only way you get there is to talk to 100 businesses and find those patterns. And then they'll start to believe you. Because if you really want to make an impression on somebody, if you can pretend to read their mind, you will immediately create a lot of trust because they'll realize, oh my God, this person understands me and my problems. And the only way to learn is to really ask those questions and meet those other business owners who will tell you those problems from the questions you ask.

Yeah. Um, now the next question, like I've seen 2 camps about this. A lot of people say niche down, and then there's another camp that says, you know, I'm niche agnostic. Like, I believe in niche. What's your opinion on that?

I decided to split this one just so people feel good about it. I, I totally agree. The best niche is local. That's right. Niche down in local. Because if what Fundamentally, I think what people misconstrue is they believe humans are logistical, factual creatures because that's what we all say. We all believe about ourselves, but it's utter rubbish and nonsense. We are all— it's all psychology. So fundamentally, if you trust someone, trust trumps expertise every time because the fundamental problem is if I call you and I say, I've been in the dental industry for 3,000 years and I know every great dentist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You actually don't really know if that's true. You're not so sure you can believe me. If I'm not, if I'm not close to you, like you don't meet me, how do we create that relationship? How do you really know that I am such an expert? Even if I am, by the way, it's darn impossible to know versus the person who swings by and says, hey, how's it going? Oh yeah, by the way, wasn't that a crazy storm we had yesterday? Well, my tree fell into my yard. Oh, yours too? Wow, that's amazing. All of a sudden you create a connection that is just unbreakable. All of a sudden that person's like, well, you know, At least they have a similar experience set as me. Maybe I should trust them. And is that logical?

No.

But is it, is it that exactly how we operate as humans? Absolutely. That is 100% how we roll. And so if you can capitalize on that for the good, that is how you should do it. It doesn't mean you're trying to do anything wrong. It's just you're recognizing that if you're serving people who are local business owners already doing so in the most current frame that they reference, which is, think about it. Their customers are local and believe it or not, so are most of their suppliers. In fact, dentists are a good example. There's a company called Patterson Dental. They're multinational. I think they may be publicly traded. They're billions of dollars in revenue. But the way they present to their customers is a, is a person who drives up in a van every day and says, hi, I'm the local Patterson guy. I'm here to deliver your gauze and your chairs and your this and your that. But the, and so the dentist feels like it's a local sale, but in all reality, it's their megacorp. It's just that that's how they know, they know to present to that local business because they want to be successful. They want to create trust. They want to have a connection.

So how did you find this niche of like local and tailored all of GHL to that versus being like, you know, we're going to, because I see so many businesses do, we're going to, you know, target everyone, local and midsize and enterprise and everything. That you have?

Well, I mean, I just, in general, local is the biggest by a long shot. They also tend to be more innovative. They tend to be better stewards of the community. They tend to pay better on average. And I think they tend to be more innovative. You know, I mean, I've certainly met a lot of people who work at large corporations and I just don't like them in general. It's like, it's a lot of groupthink and a lot of politics and a lot of like, how do we maintain status quo? And I personally, I just don't enjoy any of that nonsense. So I just didn't want to focus on it. This is a personal thing. So, I mean, I'll, I, and honestly, it's a smaller market and it's a very expensive market. It's just one of those things where sales cycles are very long. They're very expensive. It often is about who you know, not what you know. I mean, there's really, they don't really give a lot of opportunity to new people. So it's just a hard thing to break into. And honestly, I think it's sort of like, well, what do you do for a living? Well, you know, I sort of help mega corp continue to be boring and maintain status quo. I don't know. That doesn't seem like, that doesn't, isn't the story I wanted to tell about myself. And I certainly didn't want to enable other people to tell that about themselves. So do we, but we, you know, we do serve a huge number of businesses, including some megacorps, I'm sure, but we do it through our agencies. We do it through the people that we serve. And, and, you know, again, when we talk about how to get started, it's always local. And I really, this point was always hammered home when I talked to agencies, the agencies that I talked to when I would, when they were local, and this goes back to me learning, When I would say, well, what's your, you know, I would sort of say, oh, you guys must have a lot of churn. And they'd say, well, no, we actually don't ever lose customers. And I'm like, huh, that's weird. Why are we on this call? Why aren't you interested in HighLevel then? And they're like, oh, well, we have a share of wallet issue. Like we've sold them marketing and now we need something else to sell them. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. So I learned that. But what I learned is agency after agency after agency who said, I am a local agency, they never lost customers. They just never lost them. Yeah, they were in the services business. No, it didn't scale very well. And no, they didn't have really high profit margins. And I was able to help them with that. But what I wasn't helping them with is keeping the customer. They had no problem with that. And so if you start there, you'll benefit in the same way. You'll just scale better. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. I even have like one customer who's a flooring company and, you know, you, you just build the features once and it was an AI chatbot and I'm still getting $500 per month for it.

Oh, there we go. See, and that's the whole point. And the other, and I think that's a really great example because the other thing is I think people over-engineer this stuff. They think, okay, it's gotta be 200 features or nothing. And the reality is it can be one feature and it can last forever because fundamentally, as long as that value prop continues, you're not going to get replaced. And so yeah, maybe you, you want to build it up to 2 or 3 to create a little bit more of a moat or what have you. But the reality is, is as long as you're consistently delivering value, You know, at that level, you're not going anywhere. And frankly, you kind of want to stay at $300 to $500 a month. You want to be a utility bill for most of your customers. This is the other problem that agencies always had, even when they did crack into the $3,000 a month bank. You're just a big expense every month. And that business owner's like, how do I get rid of this? It's so painful. They don't look at the value. They look at the pain. They look at the price point because they're always money conscious. So if you're at the top of their list for an expense, They cannot wait to get rid of you. And the second you give them an opportunity to do it, they're going to toss you out. But if you're the utility bill, if you're the light bill, the power bill, and you're right there with that, you go nowhere because they just never get rid of those.

Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, yeah, that absolutely. Now, now I want to talk to you a little bit about like GHL and how you run it as a CEO. Sure. So how do you decide what are the new features that you're going to build into GHL and what are some some of the things that we can expect to come out in 2025?

Sure. Well, a couple of things. It's going to be super important. So we have a bunch of product managers who own their parts of the app, and they, they don't decide what to build. They actually go to that same ideas list I told you about earlier, and they go to the product town halls, and they literally get their orders from the customers. And they are all about taking those products and incrementally moving them ahead based on what customers are seeing in the market today. And when we talk about our customers, We think about the agencies we serve. We think about the SaaSpreneurs that we serve. So it's really less about trying— what we, what we really try not to do is jump too far ahead. So the other thing is you said 2025. I don't know. The reality is we only move a quarter at a time because we wanna be uber flexible. And I think a good example of this is if you think about AI when it first came out, it was all about content creation. And while I certainly think content creation is still there, Is that the hot new thing? I don't think so. I think it's all about chatbots and voice and all of that. But had we locked that sucker in for a year, we'd have the best content generation no one uses on planet Earth because that's the point. Fundamentally, it's about being super flexible. And what we found, and the way we found this was what we watched our customers, you know, they went out and they tried content generation and they're like, oh, this is cool. This is neat. I can sort of see myself using it. But it wasn't like, oh man, this is the most amazing thing ever. But then slowly over time, we started to see the communication channels drip in and they're like, this is it. This is really working. And so we're able to then pivot and say, all right, boom, that's what our team's going to do. We're going to come in and give you guys the tools that you're asking for here. And in this case, it has switched because of that. Now, generally in 2025, I'll tell you thematically, we're really focused around UI/UX. We're really focused around simplification because we've been spending the last 6 years just building features like going out of style. So we want to spend some time, you know, really smoothing it out. So that's one big thing. I also think we're going to go more and more into operations because we see an opportunity for things, you know, think boring stuff like time clock systems and routable jobs for service companies and some of the nichier sort of products features where we're big enough now that if we come out with it, I think we'll help enough people that it's worth doing. So none of that, but again, all of that is very customer driven. We'll do crazy things like on the voice side, we'll probably now have a way for you to put hard phones on the desk. And so you replace the phone system of a lot of the businesses that you're serving. So a lot of the sort of, you know, operational things that I think what it does is help make HighLevel more of an all-inclusive system. So just any of those little points where right now you're like, oh, but we still have to get a phone system or we have to get, you know, a job management system or whatever. We'll round a lot of that out. But then on the new feature side, I think most of it is about AI at the moment. But again, we listen to our customers, we follow our customers, we do what our customers ask us to do.

Now, when you're implementing these new features in terms of like project management side, are you using like a Scrum Agile approach then? Like where you're doing a 2-week sprint, you get the feature? Yeah.

So I want to be careful. I am a hater on formal systems, but in general, like, do we have sprints?

Yes.

Is it, are they agile in nature? Yes. Do we, do we, do we have full, have we drank the Kool-Aid fully on any one of these, you know, Scrum religions? No. Just because we don't have, but it's definitely, it's definitely a how fast can you move? How we use what we call the skateboard model, which totally stole from someone else as well. But the idea is we always start features in their least usable form because what we found is a couple of key things. One, a lot of people will tell you they need the world when in reality they don't. So it's very important to get it to other people's hands because A, even if they can't fully utilize it, they can often utilize it to some extent, which is great. And then perhaps most important, the sooner you hand it over to people, the sooner they can reflect back and tell you what's wrong with it. And as you incrementally move, you move right towards the product they were asking for or they really, really need versus the product they described to you in 2 sentences, which may or may not be something that, you know, you, you can't really go like, oh, I'm gonna take the next 6 months, I'm gonna put my head down, I'm not gonna show you anything, and then it's gonna pop out and be perfect. That never works. So we always try to get it out quick and then incrementally move. And add stuff, right?

Yeah, I've definitely seen that. Now I'm gonna ask you a hard-hitting question here.

Go for it.

Okay, so one of the biggest criticisms of GHL is that it does a lot, but it doesn't do everything. What would you say to that?

Well, I mean, that's true and false. I mean, there's lots of things I would say, like, you put our funnel builder toe-to-toe with almost any funnel builder out there, and I'm sorry, that's just wrong. We We crush it. The longer a product has been out, the closer I would say it is to best in class. And so, but in terms of, and then the newer the feature is, absolutely right, 100%. And there's 2 reasons for that. One is I would say that the vast majority of best in class systems are radically underutilized. So while it's cool to say you have gajillions of social media posting features, you go show me The feature coverage and the user coverage. And I bet you, your features look like this and your coverage looks like that. So the reality is, is that 20% of the features do about 80% of the list. So 20% of the features is all that really matters in order to win most customers. So that's how we roll. And then also we want to build the best product that the customer wants. So the sooner we come out with it in any form that's usable, we know we're going to get criticized because it doesn't have this and it doesn't have that. We're okay with that. Because we want to get to the product that people actually want. Many, many, many, many, many companies, both today and in the future, we will surpass mostly because they spend a lot of time going deep on stuff that honestly almost no one uses. So it's a waste of time. And really people value having a basic version of this and a basic version of that that talk to each other without Zapier in the middle, which doesn't actually even work because it loses half the data most of the time. It doesn't keep things congruent than they would having 2 amazing best-in-class systems that are hooked up by something like a connector, like a Zapier. And then they end up buying 10 products and trying to sew them all together. It just doesn't work.

Right. Obviously with the success of HighLevel, there is people looking to replicate your business model. The biggest one I've seen is probably Zoho. They don't do an agency model, but they have, you know, created a whole suite.

Yeah, that's right. That, that, oh, I think you just found their flaw there.

Yeah. So, so, I mean, I'm sure competitors will come in. So as more people enter the market, how do you plan to stay ahead and, and like still foster this sense of innovation within your team?

Well, I mean, I think that we're going to keep doing what we've always done, which is stay close to our customer. You know, again, I think if we serve the people that are out in the market the best, we'll always win because Fundamentally, it's not about, and there's lots of people that, that before you ever existed, had everything we didn't. They had lots of money and lots of people and lots of experience and a big product suite. And yet here we are. And I think the difference is when you don't spend a lot of time sitting in your ivory white tower pretending that you're a genius and you know everything, and instead you work hard to enable your customer to be successful. I think fundamentally that's how you win. Again, we do not wake up every day and think we know exactly what we're doing. We say our customers know exactly what they're doing. Let's focus on them. The other big thing I think that's important is we have created a business model around this. Our customers should be making money by using our product, not the other way around. I can think of no other product that says, hey, here's how you resell us. Here's how you mark us up. Here's how you make money with us. Zoho and HubSpot and any of those people, they're like, Go ahead and ask them how, hell yeah, show me the markup settings. Show me how I'm going to make money off this thing. They're going to look at you like you're crazy because they don't think about that stuff because they don't care whether you make money or not. In fact, they don't care if you're successful. They just care that you pay them. And fundamentally, we take a different position. We look at how do we make you money? And if we're not making you money, we, we track this internally, by the way, and we score ourselves based on it. And if we're not making our customer money, we're not doing something right. And we have that as a core value. All these other companies don't. And until they do, and good luck with that, fundamentally, we're always going to side with our customer, not side with our investors or our internal bank account or our, you know, committee on whatever versus those other people that could care less whether you make money. We, we care a lot.

That's, that, that is huge as a company culture that not just customer-centric, but making sure your customers are successful and making money. That's, That's such a big differentiator. Now, going forward towards 2025 and, you know, beyond the next 5 years, how do you plan to grow GHL? Like, whether, you know, is it still through affiliates or what is like, you know, on the—

Oh, 100%. Because the affiliates to us are different, right? So affiliates to us are our customers, and it's really our customers telling other customers customers about us and educators and people using it as a base for bringing their value into the world. And so I don't see anything wrong with just making that our only model because again, I've seen a lot of other companies. I've seen some companies actually who had really successful affiliate models change them. And it was just, I think it was just a tragedy. I mean, they destroyed a lot of great people's lives who had worked very hard to build their businesses for them. I refuse to do that. And I also think that if you really are doing a great job, this model is the best because what you're saying is like, all right, I'm going to create the best product so that someone else out in the world will actually take it and represent it as the right way to achieve an outcome out in the world. They'll like put their reputation behind my product. That's an incredible thing. And it really focuses you on the right goals, right? It says, I'm gonna make the best product, not I'm gonna buy the biggest Super Bowl ad. I'm gonna hire a celebrity who can really pump me up in the face of consumers. Like it, it really aligns your direction with the right direction, I think, and aligns your incentives with the right incentives to create an amazing outcome, not to spend a lot of money on ads.

Right. So the growth path of GHL is through more affiliate like that.

100%. I want every single person out there that is an authority on CRM, social media posting, any kind of the software that we do to be saying, no, no, no, there's just one choice. It's HighLevel and it's because it's a great product and because they do all the things that they do the way they do them. And I want that to be the story that we're telling because it's the truth. Again, not because we can buy lots and lots and lots of ads or, you know, some people have free accounts so that they have big numbers and flip some percentage. Like, no, those just seem like a lot of games. I would rather just people go out and say, hey, you should use this because it's the best. Oh, by the way, I'm here to also impart some additional value to it to help you get started. And for that, I might get some value, but that's the whole point. I'm doing something, I'm doing something cool, right? I'm helping you. I'm giving you amazing value that otherwise you could never get. So I'm also a part of this story. I'm also creating value here and everybody is winning all the way down. And it's not just because some salesperson beat you to death with cold email and cold calls and tell you Yeah, absolutely.

So that brings an interesting point. So there are so many THL affiliates now, and a lot of all the affiliates try to stand out, you know, with their own courses, snapshots, etc. What are the best ways that you see that, because it's, you know, there's already a lot of affiliates, what are the best ways to stand out as an affiliate?

Be yourself. I mean, ultimately, the best way, if you're not attracting people, the goal should be that you're attracting people that know nothing about us. You're not tagging on to us, we're tagging on to you, right? Again, you're the star, you're the person on stage, you're the person creating the value, and you're not selling HighLevel. You're selling an outcome to the person you're speaking to, right? And it doesn't matter whether you're a course creator or a fitness guru or a, you know, or a plumber or a tire shop. It doesn't matter. Fundamentally, it's about what are you bringing to the world? What is your value? And yes, we are a part of your story. We're a tool that you're helping people build on top of. But yet again, we are not the secret. We are just a part of the entire package. And again, without you, we don't exist. We don't do well. We're not doing anything. We're just a bunch of tools. You're coming in and showing people how to take those tools and create the magic.

That's perfect. That's awesome. Now, turning our attention a bit to like personal life, and I know this is a lot— this next question is something that I see a lot of successful entrepreneurs like yourself. Kind of struggle with, how do you stay motivated now that, you know, you have all this money in the bank and, you know, probably money's not an issue anymore, but how do you still have that drive?

Oh, I don't know about that, but I will say, I will say watching other people succeed is really inspiring. You know, watching people achieve their own personal outcomes is awesome. And I, you know, I haven't forgotten my roots. You know, I'm, you know, only child, single mom, you know, very much, you know, middle-class kid and very lucky in many, many ways, but watched a lot of struggle from my mom and really wanting to help other people escape that same struggle in their lives. And the more we can create a democratized model here, the more likely we are to be successful. It's Like all good democracies, it won't be easy, it'll be messy, and it won't be perfect, but it'll fundamentally give people the opportunity to achieve something that they want to achieve. And when they do it and I see it and we hand out awards every year and the awards list gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, it's incredible to watch. And so for me, that's the biggest thrill of it all is knowing that we're actually making a difference in people's lives in a positive way and helping them do the things they want to do and achieve the dreams they have. You know, it just continues to remind me it's a win-win way more than people often try to make it out to be.

That's amazing. Last question here. I know you're probably really busy. I know you're very busy with probably thousands of, I think, Helena, it's a couple of thousand employees now, right? So how do you balance that with your family, you know, your kids and everything else?

Well, let's see. I only have one, a 12-year-old boy named Jefferson. And it's, and, you know, it is always a struggle for sure. But I also think, you know, it gets out of balance. You do your best, you know, you have to align. I mean, I'm very lucky. I have a spouse who has been part of this journey, has been, you know, been together for a long time, very supportive of me, would not be here without her. But fundamentally, it's about having that foundation, but also just realizing that it's a lot of imperfection along the way. I mean, some days I work too much, some days I probably don't work enough. Like, who knows? But I think it's, again, it's just about the core values though, right? It's like, I will always be there for whatever it is that's important to my son, no matter what, you know, and within reason. But sometimes But even sometimes then, you know, the things that aren't the most important things of the year for him, I might not be in town. And I think some of that's also important because it shows that sometimes you got to sacrifice to make amazing things happen. So, it's trying to strike the balance as best you can, but also realizing that you will be imperfect in striking that balance.

Perfect. And then as we wrap up our podcast interview with you here today, what are 3 advice you would give to our readers? Or another way to word this would be, if you could go back in time, what are 3 pieces of advice you would give to yourself?

Gosh, start earlier. Be confident in your own abilities to learn and don't feel like you need to depend on others to be successful. You have everything you need To be, you know, to be ultimately successful in your own right. And, you know, always remember, you know, you don't lose until you quit. It doesn't matter how many times you fail. The goal— failure is just telling you that, you know, maybe you found the wrong, you know, you found the wrong direction, but you need to, you know, you need to back up and find a new direction. But, you know, you don't fail until you quit. So those are the 3 pieces of advice I'd give myself for sure.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Um, well, Sean, I want to thank you so much for hopping on. There's so much.

Yeah, this is great.

Um, and I'm sure everyone listening would have benefited a lot from, from all your wisdom and advice. Um, so thank you again so much for hopping on.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome to be here.