Shaun Clark CEO of Go High Level Interviewed by Joe Apfelbaum

many years, and I'm grateful that we've been able to be featured on the list as well. And many of our clients were on the list as well. And when I first heard of GoHighLevel and I tried it out initially, eh, it wasn't working that well and it was a little slow and blah, blah, blah. But then a client came over to me and he is like, dude, if you're not using GoHighLevel, I don't want to do business with you. And it was like a $20,000 a month opportunity. And I was like, okay.

Well, you gotta do it.

Now it's time to jump in. And so we kind of jumped in. And we went crazy with it and then just features start dropping and you guys are dropping more features and more features and more features and kind of how we roll. You're basically, you're basically, you're shipping product one after another and it's just incredible what you guys have built. So when I built my own software, I said, I want to integrate with GoHighLevel. And you guys have, especially with your new private integrations where you're like, you give so much access and you also give so much control over what you can access and what you can't access. I was like, Darn, this is a really good software and I want to get the word out for more people to start using it because it's so helpful and because now it's integrated with our technology, which is a sales assistant designed to help people be able to leave comments on LinkedIn and posts and be able to get contact data on any LinkedIn connection and use AI agents to research every person and then push all that information into GoHighLevel as their CRM.

That's cool.

So it fully integrates with the private integrations connected to a location ID, and then you just able to like, you know, do research, pull, enrich. We have 280 million emails and phone numbers. You push it into GoHighLevel, you could add them to a sequence. If, you know, you could automatically start automations from us automatically adding it to GoHighLevel. And then, you know, the next thing is having agents automatically just send things into GoHighLevel and then GoHighLevel can run workflows. So it's just very interesting. So I wanted you to kind of introduce yourself to my network. Mm-hmm. So people know what GoHighLevel's about, because a lot of people still haven't heard of it. You might have millions of users, And you might have tens of thousands of agencies that are reselling it right now. Um, but I personally have met your staff at many of the events that I've been to.

Yeah.

Like the AI Bot Summit and Speakeasy Mastermind. And, you know, wherever I go, I see HighLevel. And so I just want you to introduce yourself, tell everyone hello, tell everyone what you're about, why you started the company. Yeah.

Uh-huh. And what the mission looks like. Yeah. Uh, well, I mean, so I, I started HighLevel with, uh, my co-founder Varun, who's still our CTO. really with this mission of helping small businesses be successful. And, you know, early on we sort of assumed that in order to do that, you would want to make something for the small business owner. But we were very fortunate that early on we got essentially a cold call from a guy who was helping a co-customer of ours, and he was a marketing agency. And he radically changed our whole world because he really helped us understand if you want to help those SMBs, you need to help the people who are already helping them. And, you know, it started off as marketing agencies, but now these days it's, it's, you name it, it could be MSPs, it could be accountants, bookkeepers, consultants. I mean, there's a lot of people out in the world who don't really get the credit they deserve for being there, helping these SMBs do all kinds of things. And one of them is, you know, picking technology and helping set it up and run it. So fundamentally, he's now our 3rd co-founder, by the way, and our Chief Operations Officer. His name is Robin. But really, at the end of the day, that was kind of our mission. And when we found that we could better affect that outcome by helping people who are already doing it, we just totally pivoted the company and went in that direction. And we never intended to be a CRM or anything else. We initially just started life helping a lot of marketers go out and respond to leads faster because what they were finding is they were running ads and generating a lot of leads, but then those leads were just sort of left to die because The dentist or the doctor or lawyer or whatever wouldn't follow up. And they, and then of course they wouldn't blame themselves. They would blame the agencies and the agencies would lose the contracts. And so we automated that nurture process early on and really helped those agencies kind of cross that bridge. And sort of subsequent to that, you know, we just sort of grew the product along with what the agencies were already buying from other places. And we put it all together in one package. And today we're the 2nd largest CRM on planet Earth outside of Salesforce by users.

Okay, so you're the you're the can you share those numbers? Do you guys share numbers in terms of how many people are using GoHighLevel?

Somewhere. It's millions. I don't know the current number. Okay. But it grows every day. It grows every day.

So so so you guys you guys are the third you said the third largest CRM?

Second. No, no, second.

So outside Salesforce, you're the second largest CRM.

We have more users than any other CRM on planet Earth outside of Salesforce.

Are you guys do you consider yourself? Do you guys consider yourself a CRM? Is that what you—

I mean, we are now. I mean, I, the problem is I'm always asked to explain what we are. And so, and I have no idea. I mean, if you really know us, what you know is we have 500 features. So some people, some people use this as for, I know a guy who just uses our reviews platform and makes, you know, $10,000, $20,000 a month just selling reviews and doesn't do anything with the CRM. But, you know, so whether it's marketing automation or AI, you know, orchestration, there's all manner of things you can do with HighLevel. But It's just sort of easy, like when people ask us to compare ourselves, I suppose the CRM is probably the most, the easiest thing to explain.

Yeah, I love that you guys have a solution for small businesses to be able to keep track of their leads, be able to do pipeline management, integration with ads, the full cycle all the way to the LMS, the learning management system, like, you know, adding the ability to have communities within there. The ability to do social scheduling as well is very helpful to our clients. The ability to have recurring posts, which is something that's rare, which is really powerful. So you can set up posts for the whole year and then just let it reoccur for the rest of life. It's like something that I haven't seen. Buffer doesn't have that. None of the other tools have that. So as an agency owner that has used dozens and dozens of new technologies every single month just to kind of explore what's out there for our customers, The fact that you guys are adding things like, you know, the ability to do vibe coding now, you know, where you can do React, full native React applications built in, hosted within the GoHighLevel interface is very powerful. The ability to have unlimited landing pages and connect your domains and subdomains, the ability to—

On and on it goes.

Yeah. IP addresses, multiple SMTP servers, like calling AI agents to be able to pick up the phone. And to be able to handle calls like natively. And the first, the first round that you had wasn't great, but then you guys connected to another provider and now it's amazing.

That's how we, that's how we always work. We call it the skateboard model. You know, you come out with the, the first version so people can kind of cut their teeth and, you know, we're big on feedback. So, you know, for us, it's less about us thinking that we know how to build the product and it's more about our customers telling us how to build the product. So our goal is to always get something out as fast as we can. And that first version is never perfect. Um, but that's what we love because then we can figure out, well, okay, what's, what's imperfect about it? And more importantly, what, what, what direction does it need to go so we can take it in that direction instead of working on it in the garage for a year and hoping that we take it out and it's perfect? Because it never works like that. Invariably, what we, we might think is the best version is never what our customers think.

So if somebody was listening to this and they're maybe an agency owner, or maybe they have a CPA accounting firm or managed services, why should they become a reseller of GoHighLevel in your opinion?

I mean, at the end of the day, what if you're in those businesses? You're already being asked to recommend technology. So I think for, for me, you know, it's simple. Who are you gonna recommend and why? So for HighLevel, of course, you know, you can white label it, which I think is an incredibly important part of what we do. So if you, if you don't wanna sell someone else's product, you can sell your own. You can mark it up and resell it at any price, which is awesome. And if you don't wanna do that, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, the commission structure is awesome and all, but I also think having all the tools under one roof, very powerful, having it be set up from the get-go for the provider like that. So instead of having to log in and out of, let's say, you have 20 clients logging in and out of 20 different systems. But HighLevel, you can just log in once and you can easily switch between all of your clients seamlessly without having to log back in. So there's a lot to managing all of that for your customers. And so it's just a simpler way to get that technology in their hands and, and to make your life a lot easier while you do it.

So you're the 2nd largest CRM in the world on planet Earth right now. And people are saying that SaaS is dead because AI— Oh shoot.

Dang it. Now you told me. It's all over. All right. Well, it was a good run.

What do you say to people that say SaaS is dead because Claude code and vibe coding and all that stuff? What do you say to them?

Well, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, I'm sure the plumber is gonna start vibe coding their own CRM. They're probably gonna run their own marketing too. I mean, you guys are done for. So I don't know. Yeah, Claude code for— that's just, just market my business. No, I mean, it's funny because being a software engineer, I've sort of seen these things come and go over the years. And honestly, what they tend to do, and I think this is what will happen here, is they just become the new engine on which Someone else builds, and the way I think about it is really simple. If today cutting down trees is axes, and tomorrow the chainsaw comes out, that's really exciting, right? Oh man, we can cut down more trees. But if you're not in the tree cutting business, you will have to decide to change your business and get into the tree cutting business now that chainsaws are available. Now, certainly some people will probably do that, but not many. So the you know, even the most adventurous of we have this really amazing customer group that I think of as being very cutting edge. And even there, what I'm watching is I'm watching some of the most ardent of these folks go out and cloud code themselves basically into burnout, because at some point it's cool. I mean, it's neat. Like, you know, hey, look, I bought a chainsaw. I cut down a tree. Oh, now what? Am I gonna keep doing this every day, or am I gonna go back to doing what I was doing before? Is this really giving me, you know, this is, this all stuff, this stuff all takes work. So at some point, even if you could do more of it with a tool, it's still that work. You still have to decide if that's what you're gonna do. And so it looks to me like most people are gonna burn themselves out on this at some point because they're gonna cloud code themselves into something that's cool on paper. But then all the other stuff comes in, like, how do I market this? And how do I sell it? And how do I support it? And how do I secure it? And how do I— you know what? Oh, and you know what? That API I was using, it changed. So I need to go readapt it and on and on and on and on. You know what? This is a lot of work, actually.

Might as well just use HighLevel, right?

Well, exactly. And so, and wouldn't you know it, HighLevel is using the same tools. So at the end of the day, I think what's gonna happen is our team of, you know, of what is now hundreds and hundreds of engineers, they're gonna use the same chainsaws that everybody else can use. Just like, just like, by the way, a minute ago, you could have used the same coding tools before AI that we were using. It's not like these are secret tools. It's just that when you have hundreds of people working on your behalf and then turning around and selling it to you at a fraction of the cost of production, it's just economics. Like, at some point you have to decide what business are you gonna be in? What are you gonna do? And what, you know, and if, if that's coding, great. If not, that's also great. But, you know, if we can sell it to, you know, all of that outcome at the same, you know, at a much lesser price than you could ever even create it, let alone maintain it for. Of course you're gonna buy from us. So yeah, that won't change.

I love that. I love that you say that because people don't realize, being a CEO of a marketing agency and now a software company, people don't realize the barrier of entry to actually having a production-ready asset that actually has customers in 40 countries around the world, or you guys probably have customers in 200 countries around the world or whatever, but having multiple customers that have multiple inquiries every single day, training the customers on how to use it, having customer service, having tech support, dealing with churn, which is one of the biggest issues. You think you can just build a SaaS and not have churn and then think you're gonna be able to grow and your cost per acquisition for customers and so on and so on and so on.

Yeah.

Um, so it's like, are you building a SaaS or are you building a business? That's what I tell people. So if you're building a business, business is not going away. Maybe it's easier for people to build prototypes, but to build something at scale.

Yeah. And, and actually that, that is the positive around AI, I think. Um, you know, one of the best use cases I've seen of the sort of average person, I, I suppose, Is anything that is really static in nature, like let's say it's like a report and you've always been dying to make the report look a certain way or act a certain way or whatever, that's a wonderful use of Claude or Coder or any of these AI tools because fundamentally it's just a, it's a view on top of a dataset that you just couldn't get the providers to give you, which is reasonable, right? Because at some point, even the best report, I mean, there's probably some, I mean, we pay for some of the most expensive enterprise-class data reporting stuff. And it's still garbage and you still hate it and it still doesn't give you what you want the way you want it. And that I think is a wonderful example of where something like Claude can come in and really save the day or some AI tool because you want your own version of that, you know, specific to your— and it's very, it becomes very micro in the way you want to see it. And oftentimes it's funny because a lot of people don't know what they're doing. And so, you know, you can create sort of like the industry standard version of that report and you can you can sort of tell people why it's the better version and why it makes more sense and everything else. And you still have lots of people come back and say, no, I totally disagree, you're wrong, I want my version that's, you know, that actually doesn't make any sense at the end of the day. And at some point, what I love is AI Studio just gives you that ability, like, fine, that's cool, just whip it up the way you want to do it. And that's great. And it doesn't change. And that's the wonderful thing. And so that's a great example of where I think the average person can really make some hay with AI and do a great job because, again, they don't have to constantly maintain that report. It can just live there and work sort of continuously. Or maybe if it does get updated, you know, it's a couple times a year. It's not all the time. So that's a good example of, I think, where AI does a good job. I love that.

In terms of like the vision for GoHighLevel, as a CEO and co-founder of the company, where do you see the business going in the next 5 or 10 years?

Oh, world domination, pretty much. You know, you know, we want to be on every desktop of every SMB around the world and I think what's cool about it is we have the model to do it because, you know, we don't run around, you know, talking about our brand very much. We try not to do that. We really work through our customers. We see our customers as being the ones who are actually on the ground helping these small businesses achieve things. And our mission is to support those people. Our mission isn't to go out and try to help these SMBs directly. These are, you know, we make tools and we think we make great tools, but the tools that we use And the way in which we want them to be used is really in the hands of professionals. And the— and we find it quite ironic that, you know, when I say we, I mean my 2 co-founders and I and a lot of our team that, you know, people, the way software is sold today, it's like you run around and you try to like sell these tools to basically anyone who will buy them. And but in the real world, like, you know, if you want to get your house remodeled, you know, you can go down to Home Depot or whatever and buy all the same tools as your contractor. And get nowhere doing it. And yet no one seems to recognize that. And just because it's virtual and digital and easier to hit the buy button, that doesn't fundamentally mean that the outcome is gonna be any better. And if anything, we often find it's worse because that, you know, that belief that you can somehow will your way into a successful outcome, all, you know, while also being the best dentist in town, you know, that the sooner you figured out that that doesn't work, the better. And so for us, we know that's a true truism that's not going to change. And so our focus is, how do we help that person who's helping the dentist? Because that's how that dentist is gonna grow and do great and amazing. And I think what is hard to see on the outside is, you know, when you look at the most successful businesses in your area, they all have agencies. Like, they just don't tell you that. They never come out and say, oh, by the way, you know, I spend all of my time trying, like, being the best dentist, learning about the new technology in dentistry, of which there is a lot. I just walked in my dentist the other day and they have this really cool new 3D scanner thing that makes it so that when you get a crown, the crown always fits. It's awesome. But, you know, it took them and their team time to buy the tool, find the right vendor, learn it. You know, that's all time and energy, and it's put towards doing something that as a patient I really appreciate. But if you don't market off the back end of that and make sure that you're selling your services, All of that goes to waste, but you can't do both, right? And so I love that they're focusing on their profession, but I also like that they focus on having somebody help them really get the word out and make sure that they're continuously growing that practice so they can afford to do those things. So for me, it hasn't changed, and that model actually works well in the US, but it works actually in every country around the world as well because it's just a fundamental truism that That isn't gonna change tomorrow or 10 years from now.

Did you, when you launched, did you right away get into resellers as the first wave of trying to get customer versus other ways?

Well, good question. I mean, not, we never, we don't think, I mean, yeah, reseller is kind of a funny word. So no, I mean, we just said, okay, we're gonna focus on agencies and, you know, we found that agencies were very collegiate and You know, we early on stumbled into making, having a really good affiliate program because then what we found was that, you know, people, we had people with audiences who would then be willing to share. But, you know, we wanted to be respectful to that. Like, oh yeah, you've developed this really amazing audience. You have 1,000 people there. You work your heart out to create value all the time. And we really, and you are now using HighLevel and you want to promote it. Well, great. Let's give you a 40% recurring commission for life on anybody you bring in because You know, we want to say thank you to you for, for taking your reputation and putting it behind our product. So, you know, but we've never changed since then, really. I mean, we don't— it's funny, it, you know, you sort of say as your first, but really it's, it's, it's not. It may be, it's our first and it's our only. It's the same way we do it today. We haven't changed anything. We don't run ads. We don't— no BDRs, no SDRs, no AEs. We don't, we don't have a sales team. We don't run any of that nonsense. We just, uh, we just ask our customers to recommend us to other people and we say thank you for doing so. And that is the way we sell our business today, as much as it ever has been.

Um, in terms of like nurturing the agencies that are currently reselling yours, what do you, what are you currently doing for them so that other people that might be resellers right now or might be agencies that wanna jump in, how do they kind of connect with you guys and build a relationship? Are there special communities?

These days there's like a gajillion ways to do it. So we have ongoing live virtual events. We now have, We have ongoing physical events. In fact, this week we're doing a big affiliate event in, in Dallas where our headquarters is. We have all kinds of documentation and videos and, and then you get, and then we have an individual team member that you get assigned to when you start promoting so you can ask them questions and on and on. So there's 10 different ways that you can connect with us if you're promoting us. But the fun part is it is, it is radically simple. I mean, it's very simple to do. You don't, you can sort of take the opposite track. You don't have to talk to us at all. And, you know, in order to do these things, anybody who signs up for HelloBook automatically becomes an affiliate whether they like it or not. But you don't even have to sign up. There's a signup page on our help docs or whatever where you can do that. We try to make it super easy and we don't wanna put a lot of friction there. But for anybody who does have questions, does need help, there's a ton of ways to get involved and get connected.

Is there any recognition that you give people if they are your number one reseller or whatever? I know there's something called the—

Yeah, we have the Commander's Program where we bring people together. And we give them all kinds of special gifts and cool stuff to say thank you. We also put out, we do this monthly, but we put out a monthly board of who's on the top. And then, yeah, we bring everybody together at our big annual event in October in Dallas and we do a special event just to celebrate our top affiliates.

Amazing.

Amazing.

So you have an annual event in Dallas where people come together and you have how many people usually?

Oh yeah, that's our big annual sort of conference or whatever. Well, we capped that event. So that's the funny part. So, you know, I've been to big events, we've all been to big events. And the problem is at some point, if you get too big, they're very impersonal. And I don't want to go to an impersonal event and I don't think anybody else does. So I think we cap it at 1,200 people.

Okay.

And our mission is super simple. You know, for me, it's we bring in the best speakers on planet Earth for this industry. And I've And I've seen this happen in other events. The problem is the biggest thing is when that person comes in, you're excited and you listen to them and then they immediately hit the exit as soon as they're done. Like, that sucks. So for us, we cap that event size because we want those speakers to hang around and actually want to be there. And that's exactly what happens. So, you know, after they're done speaking, you know, they're gonna go to the— they're gonna go to an afterparty, they're gonna go to the lunch, they're gonna do the— they're gonna hang around because they wanna actually see other people there that they know. And that's really the focus of that event. So, you know, we cap it at 1,200 today. But, but yeah, it's our big annual event and I think it's end of October.

Do you guys have local chapters for cities that are getting together?

We've been starting this up actually. This is really cool and I can take no credit for it, but I love it. There's a ton of these. I don't even know where to find the list, but they've been doing this all over the place and it's been really fun to watch because, yeah, if you can't make it out to the annual event or you're not sure yet, Um, it's always fun to do something local. So I think they've done, I don't know, I think about like 15 of these now. But yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll keep carpet bombing the, the world with these and continue to, to put them in every, uh, city we, we can. Um, but there's an entire team working on that and it's really cool to watch 'em work.

Amazing. Amazing. Is there any like major challenge that you have that people can help you with? If I have a community of 50,000 people that might, might see this thing, how can people help you out? What's up?

You know, we think, you know, at the end of the day, we think that the fun part about our model is it's all about continuing to deliver a great product. We feel like we have this aligned set of incentives where it's not about having a better sales technique or a better ad strategy or a better whatever, better pricing schema. It is really about being sort of the Costco of the industry, right? So we want to have the best deal in town for, you know, a really great product. And so for me, that's what we focus on every single day. And so at the end of the day, you know, people, I think, who no matter where you're at in kind of the, the, the ecosphere, I think at the end of the day, adopting us at some level is really positive for yourself, but also for the people that you serve, because I do think that you're gonna deliver a very high quality product to them at a price that's incredibly reasonable. I mean, we have flat pricing. We don't do per contact or per user or any of that nonsense. And so fundamentally, you know, I think if, if at the end of the day you need this type of technology, you should adopt us because I don't think you'll find it. You will not find a better deal out there for what we offer. And I think that's to me what's important about who we are is that we stay very true to that model no matter how big we get, no matter what features we add. You know, we're gonna be going into project management this year. We'll have ticketing this year. So there's a lot coming into that, into the app, but at no point will we be, you know, comparably more expensive than any other alternative. And as exciting, it'll all be in one stack, so you won't have to run around buying 6 or 7 products and trying to stitch 'em together. So for me, it's just about sticking to that vision and that mission.

Wow. So you're adding project management like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, that type of technology, which is amazing because that definitely It is very clear that it is, you have some task stuff, but it's not really, you know, where, where you need it to be as a marketing agency.

But that's the next, you know, that's the next direction we're going to go. We, we had to add a lot of, we have Ask AI coming out, um, uh, in on June 1st for subaccounts. We have it already for all the agency users, but it's incredibly powerful. It's sort of that, you know, that sort of AI copilot where it can now build almost anything you can imagine for you. And, uh, you know, it's sort of Claude code inside HighLevel, as it were. And, and so that product will come out first and then the— and that'll be a big release and we'll have a big summer promotion coming out here June 1st around AI. So that'll be pretty cool. And then we'll— and then through the summer we'll release tasks and not tasks, but product project management, which will include a lot more tasks and ticketing and so forth all the way leading up to our big October event.

Do you have a particular feature that's your favorite feature? I'll tell you mine first so you can think about this.

Yeah, I do have one.

But oh, you do. So my favorite feature is when I'm in the sauna, let's say I go to the gym, I'm sitting in the sauna, and somebody tells me, and I'm having a conversation, someone's like, what do you do for a living? I said, do you have your phone? He says, yes. I said, can you text the word demo to 973-841-8868? And the guy's like, hang on, hang on. And then you see everyone pull out their phones in the sauna, and they all type in demo to 973-841-8868, and they get a reply with a LinkedIn post.

The next thing you need to do is just, Say, hey, scan this QR code, that'll make your life easier.

But I love getting, I love getting their cell phone number into my system and then getting a response. And then I use my AI to enrich who that cell phone number is and get their email and cell phone number, all their information. And then boom, I know who the person is. I know everything about them. So what's your favorite feature in GoHighLevel?

Yeah, I mean, it's the, it's the one we launched with, which is, you know, the lead nurturing, which now is all AI-based, which is even cooler. But it's just a simple idea. It's sort of exactly that concept is, you know, you know, I sort of see it from like the, hey, I'm out in the world, I'm running an ad, I'm paying money to bring in and all this, and then people register. And then, yeah, from there, it brings— it takes that person from that initial response all the way through to, you know, that next really tangible step, like booking an appointment. And, you know, it really— I mean, it's a game changer for small businesses. And, you know, we have it on inbound calls now so that if the business doesn't pick up, AI does. But it's really just the lead nurturing. I really love the ability to take a sort of what is like in that moment, like you said, a phone number, an anonymous person who may, you know, have, you have some small grasp of, you know, they, they, they registered for the free teeth whitening ad or whatever it is, but then being able to take it from there and bring them all the way to a, you know, some really actionable step for a small business owner, which is often a booked appointment, being able to watch that happen over text. And all, and these days now with AI being very, it was cool before when it was just like, hey, you Do you want to book an appointment? And someone's like, sure. And we knew that sure was a yes because we had machine learning back then. That was, and that was amazing enough. And you'd be like, great, here's a link to our calendar, grab a time that works for you. Like that right there was like, you know, just see the number of people who would do that was phenomenal. But now AI just sort of takes it to a whole nother level because people can ask every question they could imagine. But then the, you know, but the AI now is smart, right? It like knows how to ask for the sale and ask for the booking. So it's gotten a lot cooler, but it's definitely the lead nurturing, the lead follow-up, still my favorite feature.

I love that. And so many businesses, I mean, I own several homes in different areas and so many businesses that I call as home services businesses, they still don't use this technology. They don't answer text messages, they don't answer voicemails.

Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, the vast majority of businesses still don't use this technology and that's the fun part about it. I think that's such a huge opportunity. It, you know, to me it feels very similar to when like websites first came out. You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, yeah, sure, it's probably hard to explain. But, but, you know, but once you did, I mean, it was a huge, you know, sea change in the world and everyone was running around trying to find— and it is actually a great example of how SaaS is not dead. You know, you know, when websites first came out, there were lots of website builders and things. But guess what? Every small business was like, oh yeah, that's cool. Can you build me a website? And I think it's very similar. I think a lot of people are like, oh, oh, cool, I can cloud code, blah, blah. Yeah, that's great. Anyways, can you Use AI to answer my inbound calls when I don't pick up? Can you use AI to, you know, carry on text messages and help me get to sales? Like, that's what they're gonna look for. They're gonna look for people who can actually make that happen for them. And so I do think that's where we're going.

And any agency owner that's worried about their agency going outta business or people doing their own marketing, get to know GoHighLevel, get it, become an expert at it. And I'm telling you right now, you're never gonna worry about where your money's gonna come from. Because every small business owner in the United States or even in the world needs to have this type of technology. And because the pricing is so competitive, because you get all-in-one unlimited contacts, unlimited everything for a small monthly fee, it's— and you can have a scalable amount of subaccounts. So if you get to know the system, and it does take a lot of effort, energy to learn the system, which is good for the agency owner, because if a small business owner signs up for a a GoHighLevel account, they log in, they're just gonna literally instantly die. They're gonna have a heart attack. Yeah. Yeah. But an agency owner that gets to know the lay of the land and you spend 1,000 hours in the system and you know backwards and forwards how to make lists and how to set up pipelines and how to set up the AI agents and how to set up knowledge bases and how to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the application, how to set up domains and landing pages and funnels and everything, you will have a competitive advantage over most agency owners out there that are not doing this. And even, even if you still want to use ActiveCampaign or whatever, because you like that better because it has features that you like, still use that, but still get to know GHL, connect it with your make.com, connect it with your Zapier, and then connect it with your other tools and make it part of your world because it's so much more powerful. I even tell people that are currently using Zoho or whatever it is, I said, get a GHL account just to kind of mess with it. And I'm ha— and I'm also happy to give people accounts just to mess with it. Like I'm just saying, here's an account. Go ahead, use it. Try to figure it out. If you need support, pay me. But if you don't need support, try to use it under my subaccount. See what happens. So that's, that's a powerful thing that you can give people as a gift as well. If you're a provider, like a bookkeeper or whatever, like as an added value. I know people that have courses and they're saying the course business is going out of business, but the only reason they retain their membership in their courses is because they throw in a GHL account. Then people are like, oh, just for the GHL account, it's worth it for me to pay you $1,000, $2,000 a year. To be part of your system. So that's a really, really interesting retention tool, um, to be able to lower your churn for your memberships and your courses and, and your agency in general. You know, after someone wants to stop doing marketing with you, if you're already integrated with your, with your, uh, GoHighLevel into their business, now you keep the customer. It lowers churn. As an agency owner that serviced over 1,100 clients over the past 20 years, I can tell you churn is the biggest problem. Every client you get, you're gonna lose. So, um, so this, this really does solve for that.

Well, and also, I mean, it, it, it being an agency has traditionally meant very bespoke custom work. And this allows you to scale in a totally different way because now you're not doing— you're using technology to power those outcomes instead of your 2 hands on everything. And so now you're not so limited in how, how far you can go. I mean, I used to meet a lot of owner-operator agencies that got to 5 clients and then You know, they sort of got this hamster wheel where, you know, you lose a client or 2 and then, oh, I gotta go sell again. And then, oh, now I gotta fulfill again. And oh, I lose 2 again. And just on and off, on and off, on and off. Because they were both the salesperson and fulfillment person. And fundamentally, this changes that whole paradigm.

100%. And here's one thing I heard somebody tell us in January. I was in a room with 500 people, um, and the expert in front of the room said the following. He said, guys, you are no longer marketing agency owners. You are now technology installers. And that, I got the chills when he said that. I got the chills when he said that. I was like, I'm a technology installer. I've always, where have you been all my life? This is what I wanted. I didn't, I don't wanna prove results. I don't wanna prove results. I want when a guy calls you up that you, that you have an AI pick up the phone, that you have a text message response in the sleeve. And then I get the credit when you close a deal based on your own reputation. That's what I want. I wanna be a technology installer.

I am 100%. I agree with that because it all, it is true. I mean, I always thought if I, if someone forced me to be a marketing agency, I would want to be one where I didn't have to ask my client permission to do anything. Like, I would just want to do everything on their behalf because they, they, the whole point is they don't know what they're doing. If they did, they would do it, you know, they would do it themselves. And but fundamentally, they're off being the best plumber in town. So just you sit over there and do your plumbing. I don't tell you how to do it. I'm gonna just feed you customers. Because fundamentally you don't want— but you know, that's, that's the trick, right? The issue is when you charge them thousands of dollars a month, it doesn't matter how great you're doing, they just can never see it. They just don't get it and it sucks. But when you bring the price tag down, that's really the hot button issue for them. And fundamentally that's what this allows you to do. So it's a huge game changer for churn.

It used to be that for $599 a month, I would write a blog post every week, write an article, put them in directories. I don't know if you remember social bookmarking sites. That's what I—

Oh, you've gotta remember that. Like digg.com or whatever.

And so I would, that's what I would do for SEO and SEM and so on.

Yeah.

And now you can charge $500 to $1,000 a month and just give them access to a technology with support, which is incredible, the fact that you can do that. And so Sean, thank you so much for creating this company and making my peers in the world of the agency and in the world of SaaS be able to have a solution to be able to bring the bacon home for their families. You're literally helping and your focus is right because you're creating entrepreneurs. That's what you're doing. You're not just, you're helping people be able to not have to worry about, you know, doing all the things that I did when I built my SaaS company a couple of years ago. Like it is so much drudgery to work with developers and to, it's one of the hardest things in the world to actually get product shipped. And you guys are shipping, shipping, shipping, shipping. And if I could just sell— and I can just fulfill and I could just help customers. That's a really big help for a lot of people that are not interested in doing all the backend stuff.

I'm with you. And it's a fun, it's a fun split because I would say the same thing, right? I have no idea how to market. I, you know, I couldn't market a cold drink on a hot day. So, you know, fundamentally it's great to get, be able to work on the things that I enjoy doing and to see and be part of the experience and the, and the journey of all of these amazing folks. So, I, I'm just excited to, excited that we get to partner like this and we can create amazing outcomes for people.

Um, do you wanna share anything about yourself personally? What are you most passionate about? Is there anything that you like to share about your family or about life or about things that you're really excited about?

Uh, I mean, I, I, I certainly am excited about, I, I mean, I have a 13-year-old son, so every day is exciting for me. Um, but super passionate about, um, you know, uh, HighLevel and what we're doing and the, the way that we've been able to go out in the world in a positive way. And just to see the fact that we can, we can, you know, everybody can sort of win here. So many people, like you said, are entrepreneurs and they're growing businesses and they're really being able to do things in their lives and for their families that they never thought they would. And to be part of that journey and to be some, some in some small way helping them is a really fulfilling feeling.

I'm teaching my 15-year-old son how to use HighLevel right now. So I tell, does your son already use it? Your 13-year-old?

Yeah, he just actually used AI Studio, closest first customer. So I'm very, very thrilled to see that. Wow.

Congratulations.

All off cold calls, by the way, to his credit. I, as a parent, I'm sort of down, like, I sort of hear him in the other room and I'm sort of cringing because I know how hard it is, but he is a powerhouse. And so he, you know, he did a great job. He just called people and said, hey, I have a, you know, I want to send you this website I did for you and I'd like to see, get your feedback and all this stuff. And, you know, and he just did it enough times that Someone said yes, and he used AI Studio to whip up a new website in 5 minutes, and they loved it. So yeah, it's pretty cool.

I'm gonna tell my son to watch this to get inspired himself. He hasn't closed his first client yet, but he has been calling people. I want him not to give up.

So yeah, that's— yeah, that is the— that is the trick. And the thing I always try to remind my son is you're always the worst at the beginning, and that's what's tough about it. It's less about what you're saying, it's more about your delivery. And you're not— you're not going to get good at it until you do it 100 times because it's Because people can hear your confidence.

Yeah.

And that's really, that's really what they're hearing. They're not hearing the words, they're hearing the, the, the confidence. And when you get to a certain level, you'll just tip. And it's hard to know when that'll happen, but it, it's certainly not gonna happen on your first, you know, whatever it is, 10, 20, 30 calls. It takes time.

You got to the, you got the business to a certain level of success where you don't have to worry about growing the business. The business is gonna grow. It's gonna grow exponentially. So in terms of like some businesses, when they're just starting, it's really hard to get their first million or their first $10 million or whatever. Oh, hands down. It's always the hardest at the beginning. Right. So no matter what you do now that the ball is rolling, is your intention to go public? Is your intention to get acquired by private equity? Is your intention to, to, to buy other companies? Like, what's your—

what's your private equity? Sounds like a bad deal. I don't like— I mean, we have, we have, we have some private equity on the board and they're very lovely people, but they would be the ones we have anyways would be the first ones to tell you they have no clue how to run this business. So, so definitely not. And if— and I like those guys and I've met plenty of ones that are idiots. So No, no thanks. I'm not gonna let private equity run the company. You know, we're not— I wouldn't say we'll never acquire anybody, but it's a funny thing when you're in the business of writing software. It's weird to get really good at it. It's really weird to think, you know, oh well, oh yeah, that software over there, man, that's amazing. We'll really buy that out. We can never whip that up ourselves. Not to say never, it will happen, but it's not— we're definitely biased the other direction. And then as far as going public goes, you know, I would go— I would go, and this is the way I sort of think about this holistically, like I want to do right by my customers and my employees. So how can I best serve them? And, you know, if going public, I felt like it was in the best interest of those people, then I would absolutely do that. You know, I think about— I don't think about it from a money perspective. I think about it, you know, I think the biggest effect of going public could be the marketing perspective. Going public is, for whatever reason, despite the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with success. And in fact, I can point to many companies who go public, They need the money desperately to keep the lights on. I do think that people are excited by it and they think it's a big mark of success. And if I think that's going to help our reputation in the world, I would absolutely do that. Today, in the moment, I would say it's a poor decision to go public because unfortunately a lot of really great companies are having to try to prove a negative, which is how are you not going to get destroyed by AI? And despite coming out with like record earnings and things, they're getting just murdered in the markets over it. And so it feels weird. I would hate to go out and have our stock price get obliterated on day 1 because then people would say, yep, see, I told you those HighLevel people are just fly-by-night. You know, they can't even have a good IPO, you know. So it's got to be the right time for the right reasons. But, but whatever that is, that's what we'll do.

Amazing. Love that. Love that. Well, I really appreciate you coming on, talking to our community. We're almost at time.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Yeah, and it's great to also get to know you and see that we have some stuff in common, and I appreciate you very much. Is there anything that you want to say as we're wrapping this up? Any final words to the world, to the community, to the nations, to the gods of the world? What do you want to say? What's your message?

You know, I am just not that— I'm just not that amazing. I don't I don't have that kind of level of anything. I just put my head down every day and like to make the system better and come out with new features and, you know, see if I can help another person. So that's all I'm about and that's all I do.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much. One person asked a question. He said, what is the number one features? What are the best features that people can tack on to GoHighLevel in your opinion that GoHighLevel might not be doing? But that gives opportunities for developers to add functionality to GoHighLevel, in your opinion? Oh, yeah, sure.

So, I mean, so this is what's fun about our business. Don't ask me. Go to ideas.gohighlevel.com and you can see what our customers are asking for. And that is what they're— now, now be warned, that is how we build our business too. So our product management teams use those lists. Now, one thing I will say though, actually, if I really— if I had to be hard pressed to add something, I would add something in a specific business niche. That helps drive HighLevel closer to that niche, something that HighLevel will probably never do. Like, you know, if you said, well, you know, I'm gonna go and print an insurance add-on that helps insurance agents create, you know, get real-time— I don't know, see, I don't know the business of insurance— get quotes or something. I have no idea. That would be amazing. Or I'm gonna build it, you know, I'm gonna build a dental management EHR on top of HighLevel. That would be amazing, right? Things that really go in a very specific niche direction. That is actually how you're gonna create a long-term moat. And it's kinda like if you go look at Salesforce and the history of Salesforce, some of the best successful companies built on top of them, and they were very industry specific. And that's exactly what I would recommend people do. And HighLevel supports that. We're an entire product platform just like Salesforce, and there's an opportunity to do that. I don't like when people go out and build semi-generic things because the problem there is someday we probably will get there. But one thing we're never gonna do is build like a dental HR, right? We're never gonna build an insurance quoting system. But We, we, we support, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in any of those industries. So there's a really great opportunity. Oh, and by the way, there's a natural sales motion. We have all these agencies who have these customers who want these solutions. You can sell through them through us. And, you know, we don't charge anything for any of this, by the way. So, you know, if you're in our marketplace and you, you know, you sell 10,000 customers and you're making $10 million a year or whatever, We don't charge you a dime. So, you know, fundamentally—

You're not like Apple. Like Apple wants to charge you. No.

And we never will be. You know, we see that as, you know, the way I sort of see those things is I see those things as, as I feel really lucky when people do those things. I feel so fortunate that people do those things. They really bring value to the world. They bring value to us. They bring value to themselves. I mean, everyone is winning in that equation and trying to tax that is, I think, a fool's errand. So we don't do it and we won't ever do it.

Somebody asked one small follow-up question is, do you have a favorite tool in the marketplace that you love? For me, it's the Wave Dialer that allows me to do power dialing. I'm constantly using that. Do you have a favorite tool in the marketplace that you subscribe to or that you love?

No, I don't.

You love all your children.

No, I mean, at the end of the day, it's— again, I think that people ask this question and I appreciate that they do, but I really always want to get people to understand how we operate. It's not about me. And in fact, that is the point, that if it were ever to be about me, there would be a problem. We are in service of our customers. And so when people come to me like, oh, I want to talk to you, and I'm going to get in a meeting and tell you all about my great, amazing idea, I always say the same thing, like, please don't, because I'm not the person who has to love your idea. Our customers do. So there's like an open pathway to become a developer, to get an app in the Apps Market. You don't have to ask me. You don't have to call me. You don't have to know me. You don't have to make some special fancy deal with me. In fact, you're just wasting your time because at the end of the day, if you get in the marketplace and you're kicking butt and taking names, trust me, we'll come find you because we can see the install counts. We can do those things. We'll try to promote apps that are creating value and we'll know it based on what our customers think.

Not only— Amazing. Amazing. That is how we are different. Perfect answer. Thank you for wrapping this up. Appreciate you very much.

Yeah.

And we'll see you again on the next one.

All right. Bye, everybody.