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The Agency Hour
Why I Won't WordPress Anymore (A HighLevel Perspective)
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To start a new website now, and I'm a WordPress guy, right? I've been using WordPress since 2007. I would find it really difficult to open a hosting account, install WordPress, because I know that I'm just going to come up against headache after headache and things are going to break. I would probably just do it all in high level. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast. This week we're joined by Sean Clark, co-founder of High Level. In this episode, we discuss why I won't WordPress anymore. That's right. We explore the process of owning leads through the entire life cycle. Creating a world that you control in terms of community, pre-built proposals, creating content using AI and all of the exciting radical changes that are coming to High Level. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the agency hour, the one and lady Sean Clark from High Level. Hey Sean, how are you?
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Do you when you're on podcasts or webinars, do you like when when the record button hits, do you kind of put on your voice? Do you put on your well now I'm on in someone's podcast or someone's webinar and you kind of put on a bit of a performance? I noticed that I do.
SPEAKER_01I do the same cheesy intro, but other than that, no, then I just fall apart after that. That's all I got.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. What is the what is the cheesy intro?
SPEAKER_01Oh, like, hey, like, great, thanks for having me. Great to be here. I don't know. That's like the only thing. It's always the same thing.
SPEAKER_00That's it. And then we're just winging it from there on in. Now, for those who've been living under a rock for the last three years, uh, I know you've told this story a hundred times. You've at least told it a hundred times to me. Uh, who are you and who are you? And what is high level and how did it start? What it's it all about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think these days actually, so high level, you know, I used to say, well, it's the all-in-one sales and marketing platform kind of thing, but I actually think today it is it is sort of a revolution in the making where we're helping people uh start businesses, make a lot of money, um, scale up their existing businesses in a way that they never thought possible, um, all through all through software, certainly, but more importantly, enabling them to use that software to create a business versus just use a tool. I think that's really what's different about us um these days, more than almost anything. Um and I got started because some crazy marketing agency dude called me and said I should stop selling software to small businesses and instead I should sell software to agencies. And it turns out that agencies are these radically amazing people in the world who get very little credit for what they do because they operate mostly behind the scenes. But once you know that, um, you can then you you can really start to peel back the onion and and help help those people. And if you really want to help small businesses, you really want to help agencies because truly those are the people that are doing the work behind the scenes to make those small businesses successful by and large.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 100%. I mean, I I've always thought of agencies as a distribution channel for what you do. Like we we uh impact agencies who then go out and impact their small businesses. And I feel like the impact that we have is magnified because our channel is agencies. We only deal with agencies and then they pass that on. They pay it forward if you like. So um, you know, I'm just gonna give this some context for people who are listening. If you imagine something like Infusion Soft, HubSpot, Active Campaign, Sharpspring, all those kind of marketing automation, pipe drive, all those sales uh tools, Calendly, ClickFunnels, uh, WordPress for blogging. If you imagine all of those things rolled into one hosted software as a service platform that you can use for your own agency, but you can also resell as managed services to your clients, or you can white label the thing and sell it as a SaaS platform to your small business customers, right?
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. There you go. That is definitely a good nuts and bolts way to describe us.
SPEAKER_00You should hire me, Sean. Uh recurring revenue is recurring revenue is the holy grail of all business models. We know that. I've been saying that for over 10 years now because it gives you predictability, gives you cash flow, allows you to understand when you can hire someone because you've got that predictable, uh predictable cash flow coming in. And the problem with the agency model, as we know, is that um most, you know, the lifespan of a client is sort of three to six months working with an agency and then they'll fire them because they're not happy for whatever reason. And so you're if whatever occurring revenue you build up, you're always dealing with churn. Whereas the software piece with high level, if you're selling software, it becomes really sticky and it's uh you know harder for the client to cancel. So even if they cancel the managed service side of it, you've still got them as a software customer.
SPEAKER_01So you don't even really need me here, you got it.
SPEAKER_00There you go. Uh, I want to talk about some new features coming out because it does feel like you know, there once was a time where ClickUp was saying that they're one app to kill them all. And I feel like and I know high level's not gonna move into the project management space, I don't think, but in terms of sales and marketing. Right, in terms of sales and marketing, it feels like there are new features coming out every week. Um what's it being I want to talk about the features in a minute, but first of all, I want to talk about what's that being driven by, like the decision to roll out these features. What's that being driven by? And when do you kind of are you thinking, okay, well, that's enough for now, let's just take a breath for a quarter and not do anything new, or like what's the cadence?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean, definitely not gonna take a breath anytime soon. Um, I would say the biggest thing that's driven us to this point is our our customers, the our direct customers, the agencies we serve. And, you know, we've long since taken the position that we we sort of we say, you know, sell them what they want, give them what they need. So we we sort of feel like we're in this business of if the if there's a shiny object out there that we can use to catch an agency's attention, we're gonna build it and have it as part of the app. But once you walk in the door, we really want to get you on to the fact that the model that probably brought you to us is not the model you want going forward. If you want to make a lot more money and have a lot more scalable business, heck, even if you take the same amount of money, but you just want to go on vacation someday, um, it's a radically different world that we can help you get to, right? Um, now I will say we are moving, we're definitely starting to shift because we are definitely running out of features that agencies can name that are big. So lots of enhancements and existing feature sets and all that, but real big rocks, essentially, the way I think about it, um, of features. You know, we'll have communities out this uh quarter, which is a great example of an I think of very much as an agency-centric feature. But what's fun about that is it's opening the door to moving into the SB feature set. And this really speaks to that business model we're trying to help people grow because yeah, it's awesome that we've replaced all your tools, but how can we replace all the small businesses' tools? And now we're getting into stuff like invoicing and estimates and payments and mobile, mobile app payments, and stuff that really is not necessarily something even the agency will ever use. You know, maybe you're not running around collecting money on an iPhone, um, you know, tapping a card against the iPhone kind of thing, but all of your clients do this. And today may be using other products, but that's the whole point here. Why are they not using your product? And so we're starting to build out all of that stuff, and I think that's kind of a really exciting change in our direction.
SPEAKER_00It's funny because we moved out, we bought a house recently, and before we moved in, we've been doing some renovations in the backyard and the front yard. We've moved in now, but the renovations are still going on. Tradies are coming out on a regular basis, and they all use this thing called ServiceMate, which is SM8, is kind of the abbreviation. And I inter I interact with us. So what happens is I get a text message that says, hey, John's on his way, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah, reply here. And it's a link to ServiceMate, which then opens a little chat, kind of like a chat widget in my phone, and I I'm looking at it going, this could be high level. I'm surprised if it's not driven by high level, but if it's not, it could be. I wouldn't use that as an agency owner, but I I know tons of small business customers that would use that feature. And if it's integrated with their sales pipeline and their incoming conversations off their life, because what I get on the websites and I live chat people on the on their website, and then I'm sure that and then they turn up and they're processing the payment with the Square app on the phone, and I'm looking at them going, your admin's a nightmare, dude, because you've you're using like five or six things to try and keep this thing going. Um so is that kind of the space that you're looking to move into.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You got it. So it's it's just that simple idea that all of those features were really boring and were already in existence before we showed up, right? So we had to beat a path to those features through every marketing feature we could imagine and all the customer communications and all the agency specific stuff. So we've done a lot of that and most of that, and now we're moving on to that exact thing, which is, you know, again, what's fun about it is we've always purposely start purposely started with the front door and and we've left the back, the back of the house to the end. Because now, exactly like you said, we're bringing the lead in to start with, and now it's just owning them all the way through that life cycle. And yeah, we'll have so like the the tap to pay. That that's a perfect example. I had a guy come out, use square at my house, same thing. I mean, why use square when you can just use you know high level or whatever white label uh provider? And here's the great part about it it's simple, it's customer service. That person says, I have a question about this. I want to ask the local person who who sold this, you know, who sold this to me, and I and that's why I chose them because they were local versus square. I gotta either call that like that toll-free number and I gotta wait on hold, or I gotta open that ticket thing. It's like, oh, what a pain in the butt. I'm a plumber, I'm a whatever. I'm this kind of tradey, I gotta get back out, you know, to the next job or I'm not getting paid. It's much easier to deal with that local agency for this kind of stuff versus calling some 800 number.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Um so much to unpack here, man. I have all the questions, Sean. Uh, let's talk about the features coming up over the next quarter just to get people excited. I've got a couple of questions around that. So hit me. What's happening in what's happening in blogging?
SPEAKER_01So we have blogging now. So for those of you who are wondering, we have full blogging now, but we're upgrading it essentially to more of a first-class builder experience. This is very much the way that um somebody like a HubSpot would do blogging. So we're essentially doing it the exact same way, and it's just kind of making it a more first-class experience. Today, we use it as an element inside the funnel builder, and this is really allowing it to kind of pull out on its own into its old own builder. And this is, I mean, this is like a radical enhancement, but I'd say more or less it's it's an enhancement. It has some SEO capabilities and things that our current one doesn't have. Um, but otherwise, it's just a really cool enhancement on the builder. So that that is blogging essentially for the for the quarter.
SPEAKER_00One of one of the things that I was talking to Max about before you turned up pre-show is uh I I'm gonna start some new projects. I've got a studio here, we do some music projects and stuff. I'm also gonna start my own little private coaching thing just to coach other coaches who coach coaches uh because that's fun. And uh if if I was to start a new website now, and I'm a WordPress guy, right? I've been using WordPress since 2007, I would find it really difficult to open a hosting account, install WordPress, because I know that I'm just gonna come up against headache after headache and things are gonna break. I would probably just do it all in high level. And the probably the number one reason I would do it is because the integration between something like blogging, funnels, forms, and calendars. Like I drag an element into the page and choose the calendar I want to show, and all of that is integrated into the CRM and the customer record on the deal pipeline. It's a note, like I'm not I'm not trying to spruk, but what I'm I am, I guess what I'm spruking here is like you know, I didn't know what the word means 10, 11.
SPEAKER_01Like that is a new earth.
SPEAKER_0013, 14 years of WordPress experience, and I'm like, I I just can't, I just can't make a case for it anymore. It's just so disconnected, right?
SPEAKER_01Um Yeah, and and you know, I we you know, oddly enough, we actually have WordPress hosting, imagine that, as a feature. Um, and and we did sort of like A, because kind of a nod to the past of what you're saying, right? Um, and also a nod to those who are just sort of religious about it. Um But I would say that's true, right? You you if you it it's if if for whatever reason you're not an elementor fanatic, um, you know, and that's like the only thing you can use, if you're open to something else, it does create this big unified, sort of seamless end-to-end experience where you're not having to jump in and out of apps or plug Zapier in and hope it all works. Like you sort of get rid of all of the uh the ins and outs like that, and you create just a much more seamless process.
SPEAKER_00If I never have to look at Zapier again, man, it'll be too soon. Um, because you know, one of the reasons that we ended up with high level and the journey for us was like Infusion Soft and 13 other apps, and then we went to HubSpot to try and minimize the apps and ended up with more and costing us 50 grand a year, and then we come to high level. Right, and and the reason we came to high level, I mean, look at your browser tabs open there, it's just disturbing. Uh, the reason we came to high level is because I want to minimize the amount of browser tabs I have open, not only in my browser, but in my head. It's like I don't want to have to think about which website do I need to go to to track that thing. I just want to have it all in one place.
SPEAKER_01And well, there's a lot of stuff there also that you can automate when it's all like that. So, like, think about things like um like attribution. So you're running, you're running traffic to you know, content, and that traffic's coming from different places, and then later on down the road, it's converting into leads and it's in your sales pipeline, and eventually you're hopefully selling stuff, right? And then at the end of it all, you want to sort of say, wait, where am I getting the best traffic from? And so when it's all seamless like this, you can actually do ROI attribution and you can say, Well, this amount, like this, this, these sales, which I consider the best sales for whatever reason, because they're more money or they're more profitable products or whatever, I can see that they were tied all the way back to that ad or that traffic source. And that's very powerful because now you know just dump more money in that traffic source and out popped the type of sales that you're you're looking for versus trying to guess or weed through your seven different software platforms who probably aren't handing that data off nicely to each other.
SPEAKER_00And you know, if there's one thing that I wasn't even really aware of but blew my mind when we got into high level, is you look at a customer record card and you can see the journey that that person's taking on your websites or your funnels where the high-level code is, right? And you go, all right, so they engaged with that thing, they downloaded that lead magnet, then there was a text, then there was a call, then there was an email, then they booked in, then they had the call, then they converted. It's like that's customer journey mapping based on real data, not based on some kind of workshop theory that people come up with. Because all those workshops are great in theory, but unless you've actually got the data on how customers are interacting with your content and your team, then you you're kind of guessing. And I've never been able to find that, even in the HubSpot world. Like I've never been able to find because things are so disconnected, right?
SPEAKER_01So I totally totally agree with that. You're absolutely okay.
SPEAKER_00So so blog that's blogging. What else is coming out this quarter?
SPEAKER_01All right, so let's jump into communities because that's exciting. So putting me out there using like a circle SO or something like that. We use that. But basically, this is I think the I think the root the root version of this was hey, I have Facebook groups, I don't like them because you know Mark Zuckerberg is controlling my world, and so I want to have a world where I control it. And so that's literally where communities came from. So now we're adding communities, so as you can see, this looks very similar to some other community products, which is not um certainly by design, we're very inspired by them. It'll be part of our membership. So we have a full memberships builder like a Kajabi or whatever, or teachable or something. Um, so communities sort of seem like a are kind of a natural plug into that. Actually, though, I we actually got a two-for-one special on here. I don't have a way to, I don't, well, I'm sure I could show it. I don't know how to do it at the moment, but um, we're also launching a customer portal. So the idea is that if you serve back to the tradies, if you get a bill from the trade and they says, hey, go on my website and pay the invoice, the the customer portal will serve for that. Or can you go upload pictures of your you know your busted toilet or whatever it might be? Like you can go do that. But membership or sorry, communities will be part of that. Um, and they'll be sort of one of the first items that we launch. But um, so we'll get that, but we also get this really cool community thing so people can start to kind of create their own private groups.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Um, your process looks like that you come up with an idea, you design an interface, then you develop it. Is that yep?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yes. Well, mostly what it is actually is we look at the ideas list, we look at the top voted items by our customers, and then we take those off and we've we go off from the world and we say, Hey, well, what are you currently doing to fix to satisfy this need? And we look at the products that are out in the market, and then we say, okay, cool. Um, well, let's not reinvent the steering wheel. You know, if it's round, it works, it's been around for a long time. Let's create our version of it. And then boom, we come out with um essentially the the same thing um and with the same sort of rough functions and features, mostly designed around what uh what our customers have told us are the most important things as far as that feature goes.
SPEAKER_00Just on blogging and communities, how customizable is this stuff in terms of the design?
SPEAKER_01So, and I mean, all we always MVP this stuff. So the problem with that is like when you ask these questions, it's sort of like a very static y kind of like like it assumes a static state. So the the reality is it'll be as customizable as people want, but you can kind of see we've learned a thing or two um over the years, and so you can see out of the gate, we're already asking about branding colors and favorite icons and cover images and some of this other stuff. So there'll be some basic customizations out of the gate, and then I suspect we'll we'll sort of allow custom CSS and JavaScript for those people who just want to shoot to the advanced, you know, kind of super custom world, and then subsequent from there, we'll no doubt come out with themes and uh and sort of enhance that. And we did this with memberships as well. They started off as like one theme, that's all she wrote, and now I think they've got three or four, and you now you can customize like 40 different attributes. So eventually we'll go probably that deep here as well.
SPEAKER_00Uh, my insight about this stuff over the years is that you you should just go with what happens out of the box because every minute you spend waste, every minute you waste trying to customize it is a minute you're not spending on acquiring more customers. So I don't customize shit these days. I'm like, great, it'll look great out of the box, it works on mobile, let's go. I'm with you.
SPEAKER_01I'm with you. But you know, you but there's a you know, you run into you know, this this is selling what they want, give them what they need, right? So people say, Oh, I absolutely can't move forward without being able to change the font, you know, spacing or something. You're like, all right, so you give them the darn font spacing, one person uses it, and then you move on.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Uh all right, so that's blogging that's communities.
SPEAKER_01What else is uh how about proposals? This is designed sort of to really solve for two use cases, right? So one use case is um uh I need to create a proposal because I'm an agency or a service business where I'm basically, and I think of the difference between proposals and estimates as really a proposal is a bunch of fluffy stuff plus the estimate at the bottom showing you what you're actually gonna buy. And then the estimate is the kind of thing you get from the plumber because you know what a toilet replacement is and you don't need a you know a song and dance about it. But so, anyways, here's how that would work. So you come in, I don't know, select recipients isn't all that exciting. Cool. So you got the proposal builder again, full builder situation here. Um, this one's modeled after something like a Panda Doc or something. Um, so you'll be able to come in, build this thing out, you build your great proposal, and then eventually you throw in, here we go, the estimate element, and then that becomes where you're really pricing out your packages, you're adding discounts and taxes, payment schedules. If you want to do like, you know, uh, whatever, break it up into payments, that kind of thing, uh, and and so forth and so on. And then you're actually able to then send this out either again as a full proposal or just as the estimate piece, it's all in one spot.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. So again, as an agency, this replaces something like better proposals or bid sketch or any of those tools. And as a small business customer, it replaces so the trade, so the agency can use it to sign the trade, and then the trade can use it to sign their customers.
SPEAKER_01Yep, and so we'll have QuickBooks Online integration uh for this this quarter, and uh by votes, it looks like we'll have zero out next quarter, which I think you probably use if I had to guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's Australia, it's a kind of an Australian-New Zealand centric product. Exactly. Wow, super interesting. Um anything else? I mean, I feel like Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we've got, oh well, I mean, let's see here. We should go, we should go back to Figma and just poke around. You know, this is like to me, this is like kind of like it's like being able to open Christmas presents early. Well, actually, let's talk about what you're gonna get. Let's talk about AI.
SPEAKER_00Let's let's talk about chat GPT.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, sure. So uh, well, so on the AI front, we've got the image AI which is coming out.
SPEAKER_00Max and I were playing around with Midjourney yesterday. It's the first time I've used Midjourney yesterday, and we're far unbelievable. That thing is just incredible. I'm convinced there's a bunch of humans behind the scenes drawing those pictures because just incredible.
SPEAKER_01Um, gosh, where am I? How am I gonna show this to you? Oh, but I've got um, so what we're gonna do next week is uh is launch essentially essentially the same concept, although Mid Journey is not Mid Journey is not available as a straight API yet. So we're gonna start with DAL E because that's available. And so we'll be able to bring that out. Every place in the app where you see um uh like social media posting, for example, or in the media library or something in the app, inside the social media posting, for example, and now instead of saying, you know, use something in the media library or whatever, you can say create image using AI. A little fancy window pops up, you tell it what you want, you pick a uh image style or whatever, and boom, cute puppies pop out, and then you choose your puppy. And that's it, and you're good to go. So then that's it. And then it also drops in. So we have a new section already launched because we have content AI on the um, so I guess it for those of you who don't know, we have content AI generation for the text already across the whole app. Um, so there's a section now where it shows you all of the content that you've generated um already, and and so you can go back and like use it later, right? And so the same thing goes for images, of course. Um so you'll be able to come back in here and see all that. Uh, and then of course, um in the media library, which we have across the app, uh we've added this ability to hit create image using AI, and now you can use AI to create images, same way you just saw, but into media library it goes versus a social media post.
SPEAKER_00Wow. How do you how do you communicate? Because I know every time I log into high level, there's something new that I haven't I'm not aware of, right? Because like you know, we're all busy. How do you how do you what's the Cadence for communicating. I know you make a hundred videos every day about stuff that's happening with high levels. How do you make sure the message gets through? How do you how do you communicate that to your customers so that I I think that's impossible.
SPEAKER_01So I mean I mean the problem that we run into is I just know that no matter how hard we uh you know we shout, and no matter what we do, there's just always going to be a finite limit to the number of people that know it exists. And I think it's about fill, it's like it's getting it out first to those hardcore users who really are paying attention. And we find that those people do a decent job of then taking it out to, you know, more and more and more people, right? And and then from there, a lot of times, you know, just because let's just say you didn't make chainsaws yesterday, now you make chainsaws as part of your tools that you make, right? Um, then it's also about, well, that's cool, but how do you use that? And so we rely on really our customers to come in and say, hey, uh, I'm gonna try this out and see what I can do with it. And then from there, they are really packaging it up and taking it down to another audience and saying, Hey, yeah, there's this tool, but let me show you how to use it to create this outcome, right? So it is, it is more of an organic process, I would say, that that takes sometimes months, if not years. Uh, and so I still I still run into customers now who I ran into somebody the other day said, Oh, I've been there for three years. And I said, Oh, would you know about this? And they said, Oh no, I had no idea. Um, so I thought, oh well, yeah, just shows how hard it is.
SPEAKER_00Because your home, the home page on the high-level website, I don't feel like it's changed in a long time.
SPEAKER_01We are AB testing a new version, just so you know. But but but it still doesn't, it and I just don't think it can do justice to the feature set. I think it's more about just saying, hey, listen, we have what you need to be successful, come over here and then we'll talk about specifics later.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Um, and also I think you know, what what I like about this though is that it's a it's a lesson for all of us is that don't spend too much time faffing about with your home page. Just make the product freaking awesome and get it into the right customers' hands and they'll do the work for you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. And I think that what you would really find is, you know, I I think it's about getting getting the right customers who can, you know, really help you evolve the features and understand the vision and all those good things because I think that's where the value really comes in. And it's just it's just impossible. Like these are the new mobile payment screens where you can do tap to pay, which I think are gonna be amazing. Um so that's like that's like the complex version. But here's the simple version like, hey, 546 bucks, what do you want to do? Tap to pay or enter the card. Okay, I'll do tap to pay, you know, blink. And for those of you who don't know, you can use iPhones now and you can like put the credit card on the phone. You don't need a reader anymore. Um, and now and that's it. Now you don't that now that square reader goes away. So this is coming out this quarter, and I think it's gonna be killer. Um, but you know, yet another feature that will take time for people to to adopt and know it know it even exists.
SPEAKER_00And so it just integrates with Stripe, is that the way it works? Yeah. Right. I mean, this is a massive pain in the ass problem to solve from a compliance point of view, right? I mean, you guys must have jumped through all sorts of hoops to get this feature.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we, I mean, we had to get, I mean, obviously, Stripe has permission from Apple to turn it on, and then you have to go to Stripe and get them to add you to the beta to turn it on. And I'm sure eventually it'll be available to everybody. But again, the power of it will not be the feature itself. The power of it will be that it's just sitting there, um, it's ready to use, it's easy, it's all in one spot, and it'll nicely integrate with everything else, right? So um, in fact, we just launched the payment received uh workflow automation trigger today, which allows you to do stuff uh that is custom whenever you get a payment. And you know, we already have lots of payments for invoices and funnels and text to pay and all this other stuff, and this will nicely roll into it, but then again, as the agency, you're now able to come in and put on top of all of this your stuff that you know is important to help your clients.
SPEAKER_00How do you um uh sidebar here? How do you educate agencies on how to use this stuff and the best practices around it?
SPEAKER_01We're about to do this actually, and we've started to go down this road. So a couple things. One, we just launched our first five-day challenge where we're taking one feature, which is tech, which is miss call text back, which is this thing where you call the business, they don't pick up, and it automatically texts them back the person back and says, Hey, you know, would you would you like to book an appointment or whatever? Essentially tries to capture that person so we don't lose them. Um, so we we did our first version of that, and it was awesome because people would go out and actually get customers. Because what we've realized is it's not about the features. So, like we have so many features now, it's they're impossible to teach. So it's really about, and honestly, nobody really judges you based on features. They they sort of say they do, but they really judge you on do I make money or not. So we're coming out with a course called the SaaS Preneur course, it's gonna launch in June, and it's literally that design. It's hey, listen, here's how you walk out your front door, here's how you walk up to a business, here's how you sell one thing, create money for yourself, and then from there, this is how you do that 10 more times or whatever, and then you know, continually add more features, charge more for it, and bam, now you have a SaaS business.
SPEAKER_00Love it, love it. Um, okay. So um, what else? What other questions do I have for you? I have all the questions, Sean. I have all the questions. Um in terms of the how do you how do you how many features do you kind of commit to rolling out a quarter and how and how do you manage the the decision making like and the FOMO of going, well, I really want to roll this out, but the team has said no that has to wait because this stuff's more important. How do you know when you've bitten off enough in a quarter?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it is based on, well, sorry about the macronizer. Um, it is based on first it's just capacity. How many engineers do we have? How many existing features do we already have? And then from there, it's it's it's really less about what I think, it's really about what our customers think. So we have a we have an ideas list. The ideas list is hey, listen, if you're a customer, go in, put your idea up there or vote for hopefully at this point. Hopefully, everyone has put out your idea that you had, maybe not, but get votes for it. And the ones that have the highest votes win. And then we just choose, we literally just go down that list and choose. And then um, because a lot of the these days, again, back to the fact that we have almost any feature you could imagine. Um, it's really about making sure those features have all of the all the substance that that people need them to have in order to be effective. Um, and then from there, we we what we try to do now is one big feature a quarter, maybe two, depending. And some are in the middle of that. They could be big enhancements, which for some people probably feel like big new features, but might tack on to something we've already got. Um, but like communities is a good example. I'd say that's a big feature for us. Um, I like tap to pay, and to some people that'd be a big new feature, but technically it's just an extension of payments, right? So it just all depends on who you are and how you see it.
SPEAKER_00This is all available, by the way, at ideas.gohighlevel.com. Is that right? That's right. Yep, that's the most up-to-date.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and it'll show you our roadmap too. So once an idea has been pulled out and it's being worked on, you can see that. So we're very transparent. Then we have like a monthly town hall meeting where we set we invite anybody to come, and then all the developers do a presentation with slides and everything of, hey, here's what we're working on, and hey, here's where it's at, and hey, here's what we've committed to for the rest of the quarter. So we're really transparent in you know what we're working on and where we're at with it.
SPEAKER_00Uh, this is powered by Kenny. It's ideas.gohighlevel.com, and it's got all the different categories, and then it's got the Kanban board of basically, you know, ideas, you know, in consideration, in progress done. Uh, membership community is here, I can see. And there's lots, I mean, there's so much interaction in this stuff. There's so many votes, there's so many comments, it's a great conversation. So if you're a high level user or you're or you're not a high level user and you want to be part of this conversation and kind of influence what the team at high level are doing, then ideas.go ideas.gohlevel.com is the place to uh check that out. We'll put a link in the show notes to that. Um man, the summit. Talk to me about the summit coming up in October.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So we did our first one last year, and you know, I I'm I always have reservations about things like this because I don't know anything about them, but it was a smash hit. Um just way bigger than we imagined it to be. And I think it really owed to the fact that we started from the get-go of trying to make an event not about us, but about the industry that we're in and the people that inhabit it that have all of the expertise and provide so much value to people. I sort of I say to my team, listen, I want to make it so that even if you hate high level for whatever reason, you'd want to still come because the people that are gonna be there presenting are worth seeing by themselves. And so that's the way we we looked at it, and we're gonna do it again this year. Um, we're also limiting the attendance of the event um to, and I think it I think it was 800 last year and it's 800 this year, because specifically what we found is there's this tipping point, right? Where you show up, there's big names and there's big crowds, and then you could never meet these big names because there's so many people, it's impossible to see them. And at eight about 800, believe it or not, if you said, hey, I'm dying to meet Frank Kern or something, you can meet Frank. Um, he'll be there at the bar and you can talk to him. And you know, you probably are not gonna get an hour and a half of the man's time, but you will get to actually meet him. And if that's your hero, then you then you get to meet your hero. And and I think that's what's cool. And more importantly, you also get to meet other people who are actually doing what you're doing, or at maybe a stage above you or a stage behind you at the same stage you are. There's just more interaction and networking. And I felt like a lot of people left that event saying, Wow, I know exactly what I'm gonna go home and do right now to advance my business. And that's the kind of event we're looking for. And so, yeah, we'll have it again, I think, in October. Um, so I think it's levelup.gohighlevel.com if I had to guess.
SPEAKER_00It is levelup.gohighlevel.com. It's October 23 to 26, 2023, at the Statler Hotel in Dallas, Texas. I'm hoping to be there because we're running our event in Virginia the week before. Um, hoping to get a few days in Manhattan before I come down to Dallas for the event. If all goes well, I do have two young kids under the age of six, so anything can go sideways between now and then. But I am planning on being there, which is going to be super exciting. I just want to, this there's a lot here, right? And a lot of people are listening to this going, okay, well, this is very exciting, but how do I get started? And we've talked about this a little bit before in, I think, in one of our live streams in our Facebook group, but just tell people if they want to get started with high level, obviously, we'll put uh a link in the show notes, then go and check it out. But what once they're in and they're established, what's the first thing they should do in like the first seven days to start getting traction with high level so that they can see, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna get an ROI on this.
SPEAKER_01Get on get on Zoom with our onboarding team. We have a team of human beings who will get on Zoom with you and onboard you. Imagine that. And they will they will walk you into value immediately. Now, of course, if you say, Well, I don't like talking to people and I just want to do this all myself, then what my advice is always the same, which is like pick one thing, pick one thing that's gonna create value for you, or even better, I think, honestly, your clients, and go achieve that one thing. Because the idea here is to is to is to show yourself that, hey, listen, I can get enough value from one thing to pay the monthly fee for this because I can see the hope, but I'm not gonna sit here and waste my time trying to learn 50 things before I execute, take pick one thing or two things and execute them. And then you can always just keep going, right? But at least you can say, well, worst case scenario, I'm already getting sufficient value here. Um, so that's that's the big thing. But I I love our onboarding team. We have real people who do that. And then after you convert, we also have what's called the success team. It's like a yet another group of human beings who will get on and help you like do anything that you want to do. So we have lots and lots and lots of people just dying to help you get going, um, all sitting around for free. So I think that is what I would recommend these days.
SPEAKER_00It's nuts. What's the low-hanging fruit you think for an agency? What is the most common one thing they can go and pitch to clients to get some clients on?
SPEAKER_01Miss Call Text back. Hey, do you ever look do you ever miss phone calls? I mean, of course you do. I mean, and you and you just look from the consumer perspective. Ever call a business and they have not pick up the phone? Oh, well, heck yeah, all the time. Okay, great. Well, what if when those calls hit, instead of them calling your competitor because that's what they're doing, instead you're texting them back and saying, hey, I'm on the phone with another client or whatever. People respect that, that makes you feel busy, like you're doing something. Do you need to X, right? And most of the time is you need to book an estimate, or do you need to book a time to come in, or do you need it, you know, whatever? And the answer is always yes. And then you can do a lot from there. But here's what I always say to people if you take one miss call and turn it into a customer for 99.9% of businesses worldwide, that's worth the monthly fee right there, that one extra sale, right? And even if it's not, it's two, it's three, it's a very low bar. And missed call text back can get you to get to that value for that customer very quickly.
SPEAKER_00And you can set up miss here's the thing I love about high level, right? You set up the missed call text back automation, you save it as a snapshot, you can roll that out to as many client sites as you like for the flat monthly fee. It's ridiculous. I again, I'm gonna say it again, I lose sleep on your behalf because I don't know how you do it. Uh, and you you set that up once, you can roll that as many times as you like. You can just offer that as a as a SaaS solution without doing managed services, so without doing a lot of client management work. Um, what's the typical price point that you see people selling uh go high level for as a SAS?
SPEAKER_01I mean, the ones the what we always talk about is $297 a month. And it's simple. We can get we can get that value, we can get you to that value anywhere. The only the people who try to undersell it, what they miss out of this equation is this day that is going to arrive where they're gonna have a hundred businesses depending on them for this product. And some of them are gonna call them every day and ask a question, whatever it might be, right? And they're gonna, and I'm I always want enough margin in their model to have another person besides them who can be there to answer those questions, right? And so I think you know, and so 297 is always the answer. It gives you a lot of ability to um expand the feature set as you go. It's it's a price every small business pays. I mean, if you look at a power bill or an internet bill or a cell phone bill or something, they're all around that amount. And so you just become part of the mix of a price point they're very familiar with. And so if you under, if you underprice it, you're just throwing money away for no good reason. If you go, if you go over that for your first step, then you get way too expensive. So I think it's about that price mock point where every small business can say yes to it. You can create a tremendous amount of value for that amount of money, and it's very scalable, right? It's very repeatable. It, you know, you don't you're not doing custom work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 10 clients, you're at three grand a month recurring. By the way, for those listening who are going, well, that's great, but I don't want to be tech support for high level. There are companies that will do white label tech support for your clients for a flat monthly fee, uh, which is, you know, again, very, very economical. You you sign two or three clients and everything's paid for and you're making profit at that point, right? So it's a bit of a no-brainer. We're huge fans. Uh, we are an affiliate for high level, we promote it. We've got a lot of agencies in our ecosystem that use it. We will put our affiliate link, full transparency, in the show notes here so you can go check it out. And uh at that point, you get a 30-day trial instead of a 14-day trial with us, and you also get our snapshot loaded into your account so you can take advantage of all the automations that we've built for agencies. Uh dude, uh, can you leak any news about any speakers at the summit yet, or is it too early?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think well, I don't but I've done my well, the problem with my team is they're smart enough to know that if they tell me anything, I'll tell everyone. So I don't know the answer, but if the answer is yes, they haven't told me yet. So but you know, I will um invariably they will be big. And then of course, we're also always always thinking about what other fun things we could do. Last year was robots. This year um I think we've got something to one-up the robots. So and the robots were a big hit. So we'll we'll see it. We're gonna have some cool stuff.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Love it. Sean Clark, thank you again for your time on the Agency Hour. Appreciate you so much and everything you're doing, man. Keep up the good work, and uh hopefully I'll see you in uh in Texas.
SPEAKER_01Sounds good. Thanks, guys. Talk to you later. Bye.
SPEAKER_00Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast and a massive thanks to Sean Clark. I always love catching up with Sean, and I'm constantly being blown away by how fast they're developing the features at high level and how much it's improving. I can honestly say that if I was gonna make a new website, which I probably am, I would no longer use WordPress, and that is something I never thought I would say. I'm all in on the high level. I'm looking forward to catching up with Sean when I'm out in the States later this year. We're going to Virginia for our MavCon event in October, and then I'm really hoping to be able to attend the High Level Summit in Dallas as well. Alright folks, don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. Now, if you're using High Level, uh then happy days. Well done, congratulations. If you're not, I think it's fair to say that the the case is fairly strong, but if you're on the fence, you can try it free for 14 days. Now, I actually don't believe that's enough time to really dig into the power of high level and what it can do. So if you use our affiliate link, you can try it for a full 30 days for free and also get our snapshot, which includes all the automations that we've built for our agencies, hotloaded into your account. Of course, if you sign up through our affiliate link, we get a small amount of commission which covers the cost of my fancy coffee beans. Now, more importantly, are you getting paid to close clients? Right now, we're guaranteeing you can get paid to close eight new clients in the next 30 days. If you'd like to chat with our team about how that works, click the link beneath this episode. Now let's get to work.