Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Imagine you have sort of pre-done posts in, uh, different verticals that you can push out sort of automatically down line to every single one of your clients at scale. So think about it like this, does every plumber need specific, you know, unique posts, not really. They kind of just need good posts. So imagine you could create a library of posts in a particular vertical, and automatically push those down to all of your accounts based on that vertical. And you can use custom variables to semi customize those posts, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, that is happening this quarter. And I think it's gonna help agencies really scale up social media posting as an offering. Right?
Speaker 1 00:00:39 What was that? What was the social rotation thing that you just,
Speaker 0 00:00:41 Oh, so that's what this is basically. So they're a service that basically has created a bunch of like, this is like their pretend fitness page. Right? Got it. And these are all like fitness posts and they have HVAC posts and all of that. We're actually creating the same concept, but we're also gonna make it. So again, if going back in here, let's say this is an HVAC company and I have, you know, a hundred other HVAC companies. I can take all that, those posts and automatically push them down to all hundred accounts. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now I've created this incredibly scalable social media posting service. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that doesn't require that I create bespoke post every time, which means that I'm more likely to keep that client and offer a lower price point offering, um, for a very long period of time. That's much more profitable.
Speaker 2 00:01:23 If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the agency hour podcast brought to you by agency Mavericks
Speaker 1 00:01:32 Morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are around the world. Welcome to another episode of the agency hour live here in the digital Mavericks Facebook group. This morning's tunes are being brought to us by, uh, one of my favorite playlists on a new streaming service. Well, it's not new, it's new for me because I'm a bit of a laggard I've discovered this streaming service that a buddy of mine put me onto called title T I D a L. Everyone else is going. Yeah, no shit, Troy, uh, high quality streaming. It's fantastic. I love it. And this particular playlist is called study station.
Speaker 3 00:02:12 It's just,
Speaker 1 00:02:13 It's just in the pocket. You know, nothing really happens. It's just in the pocket. It's um, I love it. It keeps me calm and stops me from killing people during the day, which is always a good thing. Uh, now today we've got a, we've got a very, very, uh, special episode today. We've got a very special guest. Who's a very busy man and we're very lucky to have him here and he's gonna be showing us, first of all, talking a little bit about his entrepreneur journey and also showing us some very cool features and a very cool piece of software that a lot of, you know, and love. And if you don't, then you should get it amongst it. Uh, of course, I'm talking about high level and we're gonna be talking today specifically about a new feature they've rolled out, which allows you to manage all of your social media from within the high level and more importantly, manage your client's social media from within the one interface, which is awesome.
Speaker 1 00:03:04 Come and join the digital Mavericks Facebook group, because this, some people don't know this podcast is actually a live stream in the digital Mavericks Facebook group. That's right. We go live every week in the digital Mavericks Facebook group. And then we take the audio of this, uh, live stream and we repurpose it as a podcast. So if you are listening to this on your AirPods or your earphones or whatever, you listen to it on and you're not in the group, come and join the digital Mavericks Facebook group. All right. Without further ado, I would like to introduce our very special guest this week, uh, from go high level, please. Welcome Sean Clark, Sean, welcome to the show.
Speaker 0 00:03:43 Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 00:03:45 Thanks for joining us now for those let's just go back away, uh, for those that don't know and have been living under a rock, what were you doing before you started high level?
Speaker 0 00:03:56 Oh gosh, I was running another software company called invoice Sherpa.
Speaker 1 00:04:01 Oh, right. Oh no invoice, Sherpa. I think I used it for a, oh, you think I used, you
Speaker 0 00:04:06 May have, I don't know. I had a, I had a lot of agencies actually, um, as customers, so I was pretty, it was pretty cool, but uh, yeah. So then I, I sold that to a Canadian payments company.
Speaker 1 00:04:16 Uhhuh did invoice Sherpa. Did, did that integrate, uh, what was the value proposition for invoice Sherpa? So, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:04:23 So it integrated with zero and QuickBooks, which is what you probably, you were thinking. Um, and it would automate the, uh, reminders that would go out on invoices. Uh, because a lot of small businesses, I found, I found this out. I didn't actually know this, but a lot of small businesses go bankrupt because they're not able to collect invoices that are passed due. And so it sort of automate the collections process for those small businesses.
Speaker 1 00:04:44 What were you doing before invoice shipper?
Speaker 0 00:04:47 Ooh, I was running a really big answering service, um, but it was awesome. We had 400, 400 employees and built it up from scratch. That was a big, big operation.
Speaker 1 00:04:58 Did, did you, have you always been an entrepreneur and in, in business, like his business always been something that's fascinated you when, when did that start for you?
Speaker 0 00:05:08 Oh yeah. Um, gosh, I can't even remember my, I mean, I, I, my first business was probably in high school, uh, doing websites and fixing computers and kind of doing that kind of thing. So I've always been into computers and I've always been into business and always, you know, always running a, some, some kind of side hustle or, or something.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 Right. And so invoice Sherpa, was that the first, your first company that you started on your own?
Speaker 0 00:05:31 Yeah, on my own, my first company was, so I dropped outta college to start the answering service and I worked seven days a week for 12 years, but I had a co-founder, uh, on that business. And then invoice Sherpa was the first one I started just sort of from scratch from my kitchen table, all just me.
Speaker 1 00:05:46 Wow. How did you get the idea for invoice Sherpa? Like what, how, what,
Speaker 0 00:05:50 Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 00:05:51 Moment where you went ham, this need here that someone needs to fix this.
Speaker 0 00:05:55 Yeah. So I wish I was that smart. So what I did instead is, um, I, I created this business. It was called prompt appointment and it was supposed to remind people to like come, uh, to like to go to their appointment for their dentist or something like that. And I remember getting like spending six months writing all the code, and I went to this like, uh, tech, text startup meeting or something. And there's like this really, uh, the cool guy there that I really respected. And I ran up to him and uh, I said, oh, I gotta tell you about this great idea. And I told him all about it and he looked at me and he said, you know, that is a terrible idea. He's like a hundred other people have already done that idea that is gonna so fail. And I, and I was so brutal.
Speaker 0 00:06:32 I know. Right. But I was super, I cried for a minute and I ran away and, um, and, but I went, you know, so, but it was really interesting cause so I went to dinner that night with my wife and her friends and they were accountants and they said, and I told 'em the story and stuff. And they said, you know, um, we have a lot of clients who, um, you know, go bankrupt got outta business actually, cuz they can't get hit on their invoices. And I was like, and I'm like, yeah. So what, and they're like, well you should remind people to pay invoices on time. I'm like, well, that's a dumb idea who cares about that? You know? And so, uh, but I just said, I, I have nothing else to do so I'll try it. Um, and sure enough turns out it was really big, really big need.
Speaker 1 00:07:06 Wow. Uh, you, how long did you have invoice shepa before you sold it?
Speaker 0 00:07:10 Gosh, I think four, four years maybe. Yeah. Four or five years. Um, yeah, so that, that, but it was just me all by myself, single owner operator kind
Speaker 1 00:07:20 Of the whole time you just had, you just ran it yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:07:22 Didn't which, which is not a cool, you know, it sounds cool, but it wasn't cool. Just means I didn't know how to charge appropriately. Um, and I didn't know how to scale. And so I, I, I felt very lucky. Um, when I got, uh, an anonymous, a cold call from a business broker <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:07:36 You know, it's interesting. I, I, I listened to bill to sell a little bit. Uh, John Warlow is fantastic. I just love John Warlow so much. Uh, and he he's written a, uh, a trio of books. I won't boy, you, the details he's been on my podcast and I just think he's such a great that's cool thinker to be around. Yeah, he's really cool. Anyway, he, he's got a podcast called built to sell radio and the thing he says is that the two reasons people sell their, the, the two most common reasons entrepreneurs sell their business is one for health reasons or because like them or someone in their family has a major health thing. And they're like, you know what? I just gotta slow down and I'm gonna sell this business. And the other is just a cold outreach from someone who wants to buy their business. It's really common. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:08:15 You know, it's funny was, you know, normally people say they hate cold calls, cold calls. And I probably say the same thing, but it was ironic. This guy said, you know, oh, uh, you know, I could sell your business. And I said, yeah, right buddy. He said, oh no, just, just name a price. It's your, you know, you name any price you want. And, you know, as if I sell it for you in the next six months, you know, you'll pay me X percent or whatever. Um, and I just sort of named a nutty price or at least what I thought was nutty. Uh, and then I think he came back the next week with three competing bids. So <laugh>, um, I clearly didn't ask for enough. I mean, it wasn't enough for me to retire or anything, but yeah, yeah, yeah. It was certainly enough for me to start high level
Speaker 1 00:08:48 And right. So nice segue. So how long after you sold invoice Sherpa, how long did you sit around for and practice a golf swing before you decided to start something you
Speaker 0 00:08:56 <laugh>? Uh, zero, um, a I don't golf and B um, I was already, I already knew that I wanted to do something different. I had to actually consult with the existing owners for a year. So, um, so I, I, I sort of had to kind of hold off, but, um, but I was definitely thinking very hard about it. So it took about a year just because I, I didn't wanna violate any covenants, but after a year I was free to do what I wanted. So yeah, about a year. And then I jumped back in
Speaker 1 00:09:21 And where did the, because, so you are not an ex agency owner, right? You've never not at all an agency. I don't
Speaker 0 00:09:27 Even, yeah, no, no, not at
Speaker 1 00:09:29 All. Right. So, so why, why agencies as an, as a, as a niche, as we say, here in Australia and why, and then why high level as a, as a, as a value proposition for agencies.
Speaker 0 00:09:42 Totally. So yet another lucky strike for me. Um, so in this, this time I got smart. So I actually started high level with a co-founder who still founder, who's still the second co-founder, his name is Varoon, he's our CTO. Um, but both of us are software engineers. And so we sort of thought, well, why don't we write software to help small businesses get more customers, which is something I learned from shirt. But I talked to my customers all the time. They said, Hey, we wanna get more customers. I said, great, let me write some code for that. And so we started creating basically what was like a reputation management plus two way texting platform, and then selling it into these customers. And they love the demo. They would buy the software, but then two weeks later they would call and they would cancel. And, um, I, I sort of like, I'm a fairly emotional guy.
Speaker 0 00:10:23 And so I don't really take that kind of thing lying down. So I just get on the phone and sort of yell at them. Like I don't get what, what's your problem? You know, you told me this was great. Like, I can't believe you're canceling. And they would say, oh no, no, no, we, we love it. It's just, and in fact, we even know we need it, but we just don't have time to learn it. And so literally in that moment, you know, it felt like, oh, that's it, we're done. Um, no, one's gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna go bankrupt or whatever. And, um, we got a call from an agency owner who happened to have a co customer in common. And I remember thinking, God, why am I getting on the phone with this idiot? He doesn't even pay me any money, you know, just wasting my time. So I got on the phone with him and, uh, not only did he understand the product, um, he was, he bought it for 80 other customers. Um, he introduced us to 13 agency owners that, you know, one of those people took us to their mastermind, sold us to 40 people, really opened our eyes and, and gave us the entire business model that we have today. Um, and, and lucky, lucky, lucky for us that guys are our third co-founder Robin, um, today. So it worked out well. Wow.
Speaker 1 00:11:24 Wow. So that was just a, that was a serendipitous moment where someone opened absolutely
Speaker 0 00:11:28 Hundred percent,
Speaker 1 00:11:29 How you guys are doing something really interesting, but you need to do it over here. And then, so then at some point you made a decision that your agency only, right. Like my understanding is that if I'm a dentist, I can't, I, it was interesting cuz when I signed up for my high level account, chase gave me the link and we signed up as a, as a partner. The, the account has to be approved, right. Because someone's looking at it going, hang on, this is a dentist in Ohio. We don't, we don't want your business go and sign up through an agency. When did you make that decision? And surely if I was sitting in the room, when you made that decision, I'd be, I'd have FOMO. I'd be like, hang on a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are we saying no to all these small business owners and just going through the through agency's distribution partners?
Speaker 0 00:12:07 Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I think, you know, we did it early on, um, and it, you know, it was definitely a leap of faith at the time, but what we really, what I, I, I, I really kept coming back to was like, I really wanna help the dentist in Ohio, but I can't see how I can use my skillset, which is creating software and features that, you know, this agency owner over here can quickly sort of SOP up and put out the field and create value for the dentist. But if I try to ever give this to any dentist, they're gonna be like, uh, sorry, I don't have time. Gotta go back, you know, to do my thing. And so what we realized was if you really want to help the dentist, know how you need to help the agency. And in fact, I would say every small business worldwide, the really good ones, the really on point ones, the ones that are scaling, the ones that are profitable, they almost all have an agency or something like an agency behind them and they don't talk about it. Right? It's not like that. It's almost like that a secret. They don't wanna tell anybody, but it's absolutely the truth. And so we realize like if you really wanna help the dentist in Ohio, you gotta help the agency who helps the dentist if that's really what you're after.
Speaker 1 00:13:09 Mm-hmm <affirmative> so another thing that's I find curious about high level is the feature set is amazing. It hasn't, I mean, it's evolved, right? It started out pretty lean and pretty basic and pretty, you know, a lot pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty rudimentary if I can say, but it's grown over time. You've been heavily inspired. And I, I, I use that, uh, diplomatically by other software platforms on the market, like the click funnels and the HubSpot of the world. Right? Totally. Um, the pricing, I find really interesting. The pricing is ridiculously competitive, but not only that, the pricing, the, the whole business model is structured in a way where I from day one, I'm profitable as an agency owner, I sign up for high level. I just need to resell it to like one or two clients really, and I'm in front. And then as I scale my agency, there's no additional cost for me to use high level with as many Suba. I'm curious about that because everyone I've spoken to over the years about pricing, SAS has always said that your, your pricing has to be elastic based on the usage. How did you guys come to that decision? And you know, what sort of thought process was behind that and how do you manage that in terms of your margins as you grow?
Speaker 0 00:14:27 Sure. Yeah. That's good question. So, um, you know, again, I would love to appear super smart here, but in general, we, we anchored our pricing around some of our early competitors. Um, but what was very clear early on is that it, it actually was a, a fine move. Um, what we were able to figure out is, you know, if you can make the agency owner profitable. So that was our first thing. Like how do we make sure our customers making money? Because if we can make them make money, we're gonna work out, you know, just fine. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And as time went on, what we realized was, is we were able to do that with this sort of flat pricing model. Um, we were profitable, our agency owners were profitable, they were scaling, they were putting more revenue in the, um, and, and they were reducing churn at the same time.
Speaker 0 00:15:10 Right. And then the, the end business owner was actually growing and doing well. So like everyone was sort of winning in the equation. And, you know, at the end of the day, we, we were able to, you know, get out of a lot of the traditional costs of a software platform, um, which is something I think a lot of people don't realize, but most software companies are not profitable. And the biggest reason why is because the cost of sales and marketing is huge, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, and as an agency you're already out there selling, you already have customers, you already have this model that's profitable for you. And you're just adding us on. But as a software company, I'm able to kind of ride on your coattails into that customer. And I don't have to pay for that. And so it allows us to save a ton of money and honestly, redirect a lot of those resources towards engineering product and really focus on things. That'll help grow the platform. And as you, as an agency owner, you're gonna save a lot of money. Like you said, right outta the gate, you're, you're gonna save money just by replacing what you already are using. Probably let alone before you even sell it to your first client.
Speaker 1 00:16:07 Uh, now I imagine that some of those insights have been realized organically over the last couple of years, as you've seen
Speaker 0 00:16:16 All of them. <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:16:17 Yeah. So, so like, how do you roll the dice? Like, I don't know when high level started, but let's say it was three years ago. How do you roll the dye three years ago and go, well, you know, screw it. We're gonna do flat pricing and, and just hope that this doesn't bite us in the a,
Speaker 0 00:16:29 I mean, you know, it's calculated risk, right? Um, it's, you know, it's sort of saying like, if we're gonna do this, how do we do it in a way that's different, because if we're not gonna be different, then why be here? Um, and you know,
Speaker 1 00:16:41 You know, if we're not gonna be different than why be here, that is gold right there. And a lot of people don't, a lot of people don't understand that the whole differentiate unique value proposition, the whole point of that is that you have to be different and it has to be something unique and it has to be valuable. Right? Yeah. Now that just comes from experience. That just comes from like talking to people at conferences and pitching a great idea. And having someone you really admire say, that's a terrible idea, Sean, don't waste your time. Absolutely. That really damages your ego. And then you have to go back and regroup and reset. Right.
Speaker 0 00:17:11 Right. Yeah. I mean, what I learned from that though, was, you know, what we did is we, and we still do this to this day, but early on, we were very quick to listen to our customers. Right. So we sort of took the position, like, you know, we are here to serve, so who are we gonna serve? And, and how are we gonna, and how are we gonna serve them? And what, you know, for us, we're good product people. We're good engineers. And we serve great marketers. So how do we create a system around them? And what we found right is marketers are like the unsung heroes of small business. So these sort of underappreciated individuals who, you know, kill themselves to help their clients and get zero credit for it. Um, and, and, you know, win or lose. And so at the end of the day, we, we really wanted to make sure that we credit a product around them. And I think that was just the mission from day one. And we sort of thought, well, you know, well, here's, here's some pricing, we'll figure everything else out later. And, you know, sort of like just set the north star to be value and see where we go. And, you know, lucky for us, it worked out great. We didn't end up having to change our pricing. We were profitable as a company. Um, we were able to serve our, our customer base well, and for us, it really worked out.
Speaker 1 00:18:12 Mm. And you fast forward to a few months ago, you raised money for the first time. How long ago? Five, six months ago you raised your first.
Speaker 0 00:18:20 Yeah, I think it was November or something. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right.
Speaker 1 00:18:23 Um, at, and again, that conversation doesn't happen likely that's not something that you just decide over a weekend. That's well, I mean,
Speaker 0 00:18:30 We, we, we disclosed the raise five or six months ago, but it, it, it had been nine months in the making. Mm mm. It's an incredibly arduous, long, difficult, horrible process that I wouldn't recommend anyone go through ever. And I didn't have to do a 10th of the work.
Speaker 1 00:18:48 Right. So why did you, why did you raise the money?
Speaker 0 00:18:51 You know, um, we kept, I kept getting calls from all kinds of crazy VCs and private equity people and all this other stuff left right. And center. And I got sick of sick of it. And I thought, you know, let's just try it out. Like what the heck we can always say, no, let's learn something. Let's, you know, let's go through this process formally. So we hired an investment bank and we just sort of said like, you know, what's the worst, right? We're like, we don't have to pay anybody any money unless there's, you know, unless they bring us something. So let's try that and let's see who's out there. Let's, you know, let's think about, you know, valuations. We were insane. Um, so we were like, well, you know, what's the absolute worst. So we just went for it. Right. And then what we realized eventually was, gosh, you can really accelerate.
Speaker 0 00:19:32 Like, what we have is amazing is the first thing we figured out, like, everyone we got on the phone with was like, this is the craziest growth we've ever seen. This is amazing, you know, all this stuff. Um, so that, that was nice for the ego, but you know, what was also cool is very quickly thereafter. They were like, oh, except we don't wanna give you any money because we don't understand this model. You have, it's crazy. It's nuts. How do you do flat pricing? How do you do affiliate? I don't even, and we're like, I don't get it. We're profitable. You can see the financials. Like we don't really care. Cause we don't understand the model. We'd love it if you were just unprofitable, but we got you. And it was so cool to watch those people drop out cuz we're like, aha. That's how we know we're doing something. Right. Yeah. And then finally, when we did end up selecting somebody, it was because they loved the model. They didn't want us to change our pricing. They were ecstatic to be along for the ride. They took a minority position. So they didn't have no control over the company. Um, it was really, really, really great. It worked out and we could take the funds and just use it to accelerate what we already knew was working.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 Mm. Two questions and pardon my ignorance. I know you disclosed. How much do you raise? Have you disclosed what the valuation was when you raised that?
Speaker 0 00:20:36 I think so, but yeah. It's like, uh, I think it's quarter of a million or something or wait 250 million, sorry. Quarter of 1,000,000,050
Speaker 1 00:20:43 Million. Wow. Wow. That's dude. That's dude. That's amazing. Like congratulations. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:20:48 I, we wouldn't be here without, I mean, we wouldn't be here without our customer base though. Right? Like this is literally, I think this is so such a reflection of how awesome the people we work with are and why, why, what we're doing is different. Right. I, I, I definitely think as a reflection of, of our community as much as it is for, for anything we ever did.
Speaker 1 00:21:06 Mm. Second question is, did you know what you were gonna spend the money on before you raised the money? Were you like, okay, if we get some money, this is what we're gonna spend it on.
Speaker 0 00:21:13 No, no, no. Because, and in fact this was like the most important part of the whole process. So, you know, we ran onto a lot of people who want, who did wanna at the end of the day, give us a check. But most of them were like, here's money now go do stuff. And we're like, yeah, but you know, because you know, what you gotta realize is everybody's learning, right. And everybody is at a certain level. So while I could say I've in business, my whole life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've never raised a, I've never run a billion dollar company, for example. So you know what we were looking for as a partner who had a game plan who had a playbook, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so what we ended up doing is saying, oh, the money's great. But we also, so this particular private equity firm, what they do is instead of stuff in the board with a bunch of, you know, tie wearing finance money, people who don't know anything, they put a bunch of operating partners who turns out they've sold their companies for hundreds of millions to IBM or they've, you know, sold them to.
Speaker 0 00:22:05 So and so for such and such. But the fact of the matter is they actually have run the ball. They've played the game, they know how to take hits on the field. So when you ask them like, Hey, we have this really sticky situation, or we have this new thing. We're thinking about like, when their advice comes back, it's actually good advice. Not, you know, crappy. Oh yeah. At my Harvard MBA class, my teacher told me this, like, it's none of that nonsense.
Speaker 1 00:22:27 So in the, in the biz, that's called smart money. Right. You took money with some brains behind it instead of just taking a bunch of cash. Um, did you, how I'm curious before we talk about uni feature that you're rolling out, which I'm sure you're very excited to talk about as am I, uh, but before we get there, how, what I'm curious about is how, you know, sometimes I get, I get caught in, I, I, I've had to kind of retrain my brain over the years to come from a scarcity mentality, which I think we're all born with the scarcity mentality. Right. I think it's in our DNA is to protect whatever we have and to try and keep whatever we have to look after our tribe. And I've spent 10 years brainwashing myself through, you know, reframing the stories in my head and positive self talk and positive affirmations.
Speaker 1 00:23:10 And I, I, I gotta say I, I owe a, I owe a massive debt of gratitude to a couple of people. One mainly Brendan Bashard, who's like this great info marketer who sells online courses. And as a, as a coach, I discovered him back in 2010 and just listening to his stuff, he really taught me to, to back myself and to, and to champion myself, right. Because no one else is gonna do it. No one else is gonna come to you at two o'clock and a Tuesday afternoon and goes, Sean, you're doing an amazing job, man. Just keep going. Don't quit. Right. No one else is gonna do that because no one gets that's true because no one gives a shit about anyone except themselves. Right. So I've had to spend a lot of time reframing my mindset to keep going and roll the dice and invest and, and just keep doing it when no one's listening.
Speaker 1 00:23:55 And no one cares because I now believe I have an abundant mindset and I believe it, it, it is an abundant world. And if I just keep creating value for people, even when no one's listening that eventually it's gonna pay off turns out that's true. What I'm. But I, I, I also sometimes still get stuck in going in, in slipping into that kind of self limiting scarcity mindset. Right. Sure. What I'm curious about from someone who's raised money in is had evaluation of a 250 million business and from where you've come from, how many times, or, you know, have you noticed over the, the years that you've had to elevate your thinking and that Sean Clark today thinks about things in a way that Sean Clark five years ago, just wouldn't, didn't have the capacity to think about those things because of your experience and what you've been through.
Speaker 0 00:24:44 Yeah. That's a good question. Uh, you know, I had some, I mean, I've had a lot of failures along the way. I think people don't like to talk about that. Right. But I've brought, I mean, I've been, you know, when I exited my first business, I basically had to surrender all of my ownership. So I got nothing on that deal. And I basically got down to zero and I think I pretty, pretty much got out with, uh, without getting sued is probably that is the best I got outta that deal. Um, and so ultimately those were incredibly scary times. Um, and, but it, it, it also showed me that you could, um, you could re I could rebound from that. And also, I mean, I, I, I don't have, like, I've heard really great inspirational stories. I mean, but for me, it's, it's, it's been a lot of fear.
Speaker 0 00:25:27 <laugh> driving the heck outta me every single day. Um, but because, but I think there's something to that, you know, when you don't have a backup plan, when you don't have plan B it's, it's hard not to just move forward. Right. Um, but I've also tried to surround myself with people who are long term thinkers. So, you know, I'm a big fan of Warren buffet. I've gone to Omaha, Omaha to see him seven years in a row. Um, wow. He's, he's not sexy. He's not exciting. No, one's gonna put him in a music video. Um, but you know, when you see people have been doing the same thing for 40, 50, 60 years, they're in their eighties or in their nineties, his partner, Charlie Munger is, um, I've been to see him. And, um, he has his own little thing that he does. Um, you just sort of start to think about the long game, right.
Speaker 0 00:26:08 And I start to always think, you know, today's loss could be, tomorrow's win and try to frame things in that regard. And then as you go along trying to take calculated risks. And I always think about the idea of margin of safety. So it's like, you know, in everything you do just put up a margin of safety in there, such that if it fails or when it fails, <laugh>, um, that it's not gonna take you down to zero. Um, and I think you'll do okay. I mean, most people, um, I think tend to, to, to put too much risk on the line to really like max it out. And if that failure occurs, you're, you're done going down to zero is a hard to be. So I guess some of that has really informed my thinking and really changed how I operate as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 00:26:49 Like everyone who put their retirement fund in a crypto right now would be shitting their pants if they don't have some other money in some works somewhere else. Um, when you say, when it's really interesting, when you say fear has propelled motion, I used to run a lot, right. When, when I was a little bit younger and my knees weren't so fragile, I used to run,
Speaker 0 00:27:07 I know the feeling I, that I was on my cross country team in my high school. I ran like crazy until my knees stopped working. <laugh> yeah.
Speaker 1 00:27:13 And I listened to podcast a lot when I run. And I remember running once, and I remember actually having this kind of out of body conversation with myself, like there was this like this, I, I, I have conversations with myself all the time. Right. And I'm with you. And I refer to myself and I refer to myself as Troy all the time. Right. It's a weird thing. But anyway, there's, there's actually a lot of research around talking to yourself in the third person in the present tense, which is really powerful. Anyway, I remember having a conversation myself, like, dude, what are you running from? Or, or why are you running? Are you running towards something? Or are you running away from something? And there's a big part of me. That's like, yes, I'm running away from the possibility that I'm gonna end up homeless. Right.
Speaker 1 00:27:51 And with nothing or living in a trailer park. Right. Because, you know, I dropped outta university and went to a shitty public school and a, you know, working class part of town came from the wrong side of the tracks and all that kinda stuff, which is a story I keep telling myself. Right. Uh, and you know, it's like the self-made man. I came from nothing. I didn't have a silver spoon in my mouth and I kind of wear that, that badge with a little bit of pride. But, uh, so, so there is that definitely running away from not wanting to end up with nothing. Right.
Speaker 0 00:28:18 How bill you, I dropped outta college too. So I understand.
Speaker 1 00:28:22 And, and, and I've kind of had to realize over the years, that for me anyway, there needs to be, I'm also, I also have to remind myself that I'm running towards something, because if I just, if I just it's like people that it's like people that have an addiction or something. Right. And, and then they, they, they're not engaging in the addiction, but all they do is talk about the fact that they're not engaging in the addiction. Right. It's like, oh, wow. I haven't like, I haven't bet money on the races for like, and all they do all the time is talk about the fact that they're not gambling. Right. Well, they're still in the grips of that addiction because it's still owning their mind space. So I've, I've had to kind of try and reframe my mind to say, okay, yes, I am running away from that fear, but I'm also running towards an aspirational future.
Speaker 1 00:29:03 And I've kind of needed to redress that balance. James has got a really interesting question here in the comment. When does fear ever become confidence? Like how do you, how do you get enough confidence to, to say, I can try this, even though I'm terrified I can try this. And if it doesn't work, I'm gonna be okay. Because, because it's not only, it's not always about financial, right. It's, it's also about having egg on your face because we are online entrepreneurs. We are very public with what we share. I mean, we here in a podcast live streaming in a Facebook group, the 12,000 people, very, very vulnerable about our no pressure, our journeys, right. No pressure. Um, but if you try something and it doesn't work, you can also just be embarrassed. It's not just about losing money, but you can, you can end up being a bit embarrassed as well. So how, at what point do you go, look, this is scary, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Speaker 0 00:29:53 Yeah. I mean, I, I guess I sort of, I mean, I, I, it's funny, we, I, I feel a lot of connection with your story there because, you know, I mean, I, I didn't, I came from a middle class, but a single, single mom, only child, um, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, watching my mom hustle hard, she, I mean, she had a college integration, mechanical engineer, so I got lucky she had reasonable resources, but, but a woman in a man's field, a lot of those things. And so I felt like I was always, um, running from something as a kid. Um, and, and, you know, I'd never had the same stories, all my other classmates and all of that sort of felt like an outsider. So really felt like I was always having to prove myself. Um, and I don't know, I, I, I think from an early age, I was always sort of got the impression that I was sort of a, an outcast of sorts.
Speaker 0 00:30:38 And, and so I always felt like, well, <laugh>, you know, I'm, I'm not fitting in any way, so I'm gonna have to find my own way. And I think, um, that, that propelled me to always move in a different direction. And then, you know, again, the fear of not having a backup plan wa watching what it was like at, for a single parent to sort of, you know, uh, get by, um, and just saying, you know, look, I don't want that for myself. How do I free myself from that? And, you know, starting off, um, thinking about at the college and all of that, and I would've completed it, like had I not started my first business, but I was always an entrepreneur because I felt like it could give me a lot of freedom. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> and, and I, but I think that absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:31:18 So the question was, you know, does that fear ever lead to confidence? I mean, I always thought I could do it. Um <laugh> but, you know, I also always thought I could fail too. So it was, it's always a war, you know, between those, those two feelings of saying, well, you know, can you do this? Well, of course you can. Um, but a lot of it is soldiering through some very difficult times that don't have a predictable end to them and sort of trying to remind yourself, like, you know, this is just part of the journey. If it, if it was, you know, if it was so easy to take this road, everybody would do it. Um, and there's just gonna be parts that, that are, that are crappy and there's not much you can do about that.
Speaker 1 00:31:56 Yeah. A hundred percent. Do you, you said you surround yourself with long term thinkers. Do you surround yourself with people who help you with your mindset and, and with not, not the business side of things, but actually help Sean Clark as an entrepreneur and as a business?
Speaker 0 00:32:09 You know, I, I try, um, I I'm, I'm an engineer, so I'm a little zeros in one. So, um, you know, I tend to be, I tend to be cautious on, you know, delving too, too much into, you know, sort of my, you know, sort of like lifestyle coaches and all that, because it's just not my Mo, but I respect it. I get that each person does their own thing, but, you know, I have some fantastic co-founders and I'm very lucky to have them. They've really got us to where we are and got me where I am. Right. And so, and I love them because they're so great at the things that I am so terrible at, and they're willing to call me out on the things that I do wrong. And so I think just having good friends around you is super helpful. Um, and I think that to me has been the most valuable part of this journey for me. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1 00:32:53 Awesome. Love it. Hey, we're gonna move gears in a minute and talk about the social media feature in high level, but I just personally wanna thank you for, uh, going on this journey with me having this conversation with me. It wasn't scripted. You didn't know I was gonna answer these questions. You probably didn't know what to expect, and I really appreciate your candor. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 00:33:09 I think that, you know, to be quite honest, I think as an entrepreneur, I mean, I see a lot of the, I mean, I think a lot of the pressure is to, is to look invincible and to look like you've got all the answers and to look like all of that. And I'll be the first to tell anybody I I'm here out of if, if nothing else, a lot of luck, um, and you know, and, and a lot, and a lot of, you know, and a lot of difficult scenarios and situations that I couldn't honestly have told you at the time were gonna work out anything in, in absolute, utter bankruptcy and failure. And I think that's something to understand is part of the journey. And if you can, can live with that, if you can push through it, um, and deal with it, then you can do great things. But, you know, I think it's, it's terrible and, and, and so misleading to, to advertise anything other than, right. So I, I always like to talk about the hard stuff,
Speaker 1 00:34:01 Especially, you know, if you especially agency owners who live on the internet, right. We spend all day looking at the world through these last screens and all we get is the highlight reel of everyone. Else's perfect life. And that is totally bad for your mental health. Right.
Speaker 0 00:34:20 Utter nonsense most of the time too. It
Speaker 1 00:34:22 Is absolutely bullshit. And it just makes you feel inadequate the whole time. It just makes you feel inadequate. Like we're not good enough. Absolutely. Um, so, okay. Let's pivot to, to talking about, uh, this is a feature, a new feature in high level that I'm very excited about. Um, by the way, I like, I, I was hesitant about high. I'd been hearing about high level four, a good 18 months, chase. And I had been trying to connect I'd person. I'm I'm gonna be completely transparent. I'd resisted it because I had seen, for me, it was like this, like thing that was built on affiliate marketing, it, it felt like this really exclusive club full of bro marketers. And I just did not wanna be a part of I'm like, I just did not wanna go even near that. Right. Oh
Speaker 0 00:35:04 Man, that's funny.
Speaker 1 00:35:05 And not through no fault of anyone's it was probably my own kind of FOMO and my, and my own fitting, like an outcast and going, well, you know what, like what GAO mark said, I never wanna be part of a club who would have me as a member. Right. <laugh> right. So there was, I resisted it for a long time. And then eventually that
Speaker 0 00:35:22 Is so funny cuz it's like the exact opposite of what I feel like we represent
Speaker 1 00:35:26 <laugh> yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. And it's, it's interesting. Isn't it it's like when, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So then chase and I got on a call and he kind of started to demo some stuff for me. And I'm like, holy shit, this is a, this thing is amazing. This is exactly what I've been looking for in the 18 pieces of software that I'm paying, that it cost me north of 50 grand a year and you are telling me I can do it all for what that's amazing. And I can actually close half the browser tabs that I've got open and just manage it all in one space. This is incredible. So we started using it and um, and it's been amazing. It's been, uh, you know, a game changer for us. And so you guys feel like, I feel like you're releasing new features almost on a weekly basis these days. Uh, you've rolled out social media management or social media posting, walk us through. Sure. Walk us through why walk us through the value proposition of this feature. Yeah. And why, why this feature now?
Speaker 0 00:36:20 Okay. Yeah. So like it's, it's super boring, but super important. Right. So like, I always think about it from the perspective of, okay, what, what tool does the small business owner need, right. Or what, what outcome really. And so does every business need to post on social media? Absolutely. And so as a result, um, you know, what, what are they doing right now? Well, they're probably going out buying a social media posting platform from, you know, who knows who <laugh> and that person is getting is getting rich off the deal, but where, but really who's doing all the hard work behind the scenes, right? Like, first of all, who recommended the tool, probably an agency who's actually running the tool, probably an agency. Right. And so it's just an obvious thing that needs to be added to the toolkit so that the agency can show up and say, Hey, listen, I have the tool you need. So you can pay me instead of, you know, X, Y, Z social media posting company. And I can also make it work for you. So I can, I can help you in both regards, right? So I can fundamentally deliver a truckload more value by you going with me and my tech versus, you know, X, Y, Z, social media posting, you know, software company that that's all they're gonna sell you as a tool. And, you know, and it, it not gonna help you actually make it do anything.
Speaker 1 00:37:36 And this is, this is so, so for those in the comments, by the way, we're talking about a piece of software called high level, uh, the URL is go high level.com. If you wanna sign up under our affiliate link, I drink a very expensive coffee. And so the affiliate commissions that we make from high level helps me buy ridiculously expensive coffee, because
Speaker 0 00:37:54 That, that's why I would say absolutely click that link, cuz I, I wanna make sure your coffee supplies not run dry
Speaker 1 00:38:00 Because I live in Melbourne and, and the coffee is expensive. So go high level.com/troy. Now, if you do sign up using that link, we actually have a snapshot that we, uh, use and that we teach for the sales and marketing process. But here's the thing, here's what I love about high level. And here's the problem I think with software is that there are all these pieces of software that solve very specific problems. And typically what happens is software company starts out. So, you know, being super niche, solving one very specific problem, right? Think about sprout social, which is social media management, right? They solve one very specific problem. But then in order to get that in order to get that piece of software and the Intel that you have in that piece of software to talk to another piece of software like Pipedrive, for example, if you are using Pipedrive to do your sales pipeline, in order to get your social media management tool, to talk to pipe drive, you need to plug it in with something like Xavier or, or, you know, tray or automate or one of those tools.
Speaker 1 00:38:57 And then there's always a disconnect with the data integrity. And then you've, you know, we're back to square one where we've got multiple tabs open. We are paying stupid amounts of money for tools that just don't talk to each other. So what I love about high level and I've been looking for this for years is a tool that allows me to run my business almost entirely in one, in one platform right now, the thing that high level doesn't do. And I don't expect it to do is project management and, and task management. And that's not what it's about. It's a, that's true. It's a, it's a sales and marketing platform that allows me to get all of my leads into a sales pipeline, nurture them, get on the phone, text, email, phone calls, record those calls all within the one platform, close those deals, manage my deals through my pipeline and social media management.
Speaker 1 00:39:43 And it also integrates with my GMB and does my review reputation management and social media management is the perfect, uh, obvious fit for me because it's a marketing channel. And I can take those people that are engaging in social media and put them straight into a, a deal, a sales pipeline, have a conversation, take the conversation offline, get 'em on the phone, turn 'em into a client. So it makes, I'm glad that you're not trying to do project management yet. Maybe you do that in the future. I don't know, but I'm glad that at the moment it is a sales and marketing platform, which has, I can tell you has eliminated about 12 pieces of software that we use in the business. So walk us through. And as an agency, it makes sense because I go to my agents, I go to my clients and say, Hey, we are generating these leads for you, uh, where, you know, you're getting on the phone, you're closing deals. We wanna scale up one of the ways that we can do that without spending more money on ads is to really engage our community on social media instead of using buffer or Hootsuite and trying to plug that in via Zia, let's just do it all within the app and have all the data we need in the one place. So walk us through the value proposition of how social media posting works within high level.
Speaker 0 00:40:49 The first thing I'd like to say is like, as an agency, I would love it. If, instead of you finding a way to get your client to pay more money to these companies, why not have your client pay you <laugh> for the same software, right? That's the, that's the big idea for me, you know, if we jump in a high level here, which hopefully you can see, um, you'll see that, um, you know, we, this is social media posting, so yeah, it's awesome. It works like every other social media posting platform you've ever seen. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> um, you, it's not designed to blow your mind from a tech perspective. You can come in, you can choose your social media accounts. I am a horrible social media poster. So mm-hmm, <affirmative> um, uh, I apologize ahead of time, but you could come in, you can add in, um, you know, you can add in your cool stock photos here. This guy looks happy. Um, you can, you know, you can preview Google, my business, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, all that stuff. That's awesome. Um, if it's GMB, for example, you could have call to action buttons. Um, so all of the things you're sort of used to, you can post immediately, you can schedule the post
Speaker 1 00:41:50 Schedule, all
Speaker 0 00:41:51 Of that. We
Speaker 1 00:41:52 Can schedule posts into Facebook groups.
Speaker 0 00:41:55 Yes. Facebook that's true. Facebook groups and Facebook business pages. So, um, all of that stuff, right? But the goal here from my perspective is yes, we wanna make it super easy for you as an agency to come in and manage all of this. Again, it's a multitenant system. So we're easily able to move between lots and lots and lots of sub-accounts. Our clients can log in and see this. Our clients can see, you know, what are the scheduled posts and approve them. They can look at all the recent posts, all of this stuff. As agency owners, we can have our, our team in here and they can easily move between accounts and do all of that work. And all of that is super awesome when it comes to just simplifying your life, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's all part of the, like, this doesn't cost any additional money.
Speaker 0 00:42:36 It's part of the base pricing of every plan inside high level. Um, there's no limits to number of posts and all that, but at the end of the day, the bigger thing I want everybody to realize is that, you know, every small business owner needs to have social media posting. Now whether they buy a tool and try it themselves is one thing, whether you are doing it exclusively just for them, and they have no idea, it exists is another. But my goal is to get every agency to kind of do both right, sell the tool and sell the service. So you've got two bifurcated revenue streams. So if they leave you on the service, if at any point they say, you know, your social media posting is great, but we want to take it in house. You don't lose the customer. Right. You retain them on the technology mm-hmm and social media posting is just an obvious, easy addition.
Speaker 1 00:43:22 Mm. Couple questions. Can you manage comments and I'm sorry to do this.
Speaker 0 00:43:26 No, no, you're good. You're good. So comments are
Speaker 1 00:43:30 About this one. I'm just off the cuff, if
Speaker 0 00:43:31 Comments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are great questions. So, so the roadmap right now is making sure we've got all the channels and all that. And then the next step is, uh, is actually, and this I'm actually kind of, uh, excited about here. So I'm just gonna choose that it's not specifically social rotation, but I'm just choosing this as an example. Cause it's exactly what we're, we're rolling out. The idea that imagine you have sort of predone posts in, uh, different verticals that you could push out sort of automatically down line to every single one of your clients at scale. So think about it like this, does every plumber need specific, you know, unique posts, not really. They kind of just need good posts. So imagine you could create a library of posts in a particular vertical, and automatically push those down to all of your accounts based on that vertical. And you can use custom variables to semi customize those posts, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, that is happening this quarter. And I think it's gonna help agencies really scale up social media posting as an offering. Right?
Speaker 1 00:44:33 What was that? What was the social rotation thing that you just,
Speaker 0 00:44:35 Oh, so that's what this is basically. So they're a service that basically has created a bunch of like, this is like their pretend fitness page. Right? Got, and these are all like fitness posts and they have HVAC posts and all of that. We're actually creating the same concept, but we're also gonna make it. So again, if going back in here, let's say this is an HVAC company and I have, you know, a hundred other HVAC companies. I can take all that, those posts and automatically push them down to all hundred accounts. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now I've created this incredibly scalable social media posting service mm-hmm <affirmative> that doesn't require that I create bespoke post every time, which means that I'm more likely to keep that client and offer a lower price point offering mm-hmm <affirmative> um, for a very long period of time, that's much more profitable.
Speaker 1 00:45:16 Mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, I'm gonna ask you a curly question, because this is perfect world scenario for me, uh, comment in Facebook groups.
Speaker 0 00:45:23 Yes. Those are gonna be coming to conversations right after that. So I think those will actually come out this quarter.
Speaker 1 00:45:31 This is epic because one of the things that like, oh, uh, I have to just stop and let that sink in for a minute because so one of the things that I wanna do is I wanna get comments in groups into a sales pipeline, into an opportunity. Like that's the thing without having to get people to go through some kind of opt-in or sign up for a thing. Like I just wanna manage those conversations and go, Hey, let's create an opportunity for this person. Uh, that is, that's a game changer. That is a game changer for agencies who are offering group management for clients who have large communities and large groups.
Speaker 0 00:46:07 Yeah. So then the other thing is we're gonna build this into, so if you've seen the workflow builder, right? Yeah. So we're gonna be able to build this into the workflow builder. So if you've seen, you know, this is sort of your kind of active campaign, HubSpot style workflow builder. But imagine instead of this being triggered off of a call or something like that, you can actually trigger it off of a Facebook comment. Mm-hmm <affirmative> or post comment, Instagram, whatever. And now you can start to automatically reply to those. Do you know, give, give offers and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 00:46:33 Oh my God, that's amazing. I cannot wait for that wind coming.
Speaker 0 00:46:37 Oh, that by the end of this quarter, I think that's at most a month and a half.
Speaker 1 00:46:42 That's epic. That is epic. Um, Wow. Hey, I just need a minute to process that <laugh> no seriously like there for if, if you, for those of you who, for those of you who are really active in Facebook groups or manage groups on behalf of clients, you understand what Sean just said for the it's like, you know, for those of you who have kids, you know what I mean? If you don't have kids, you can't
Speaker 0 00:47:03 Possibly exactly. That's
Speaker 1 00:47:04 True. So that is an absolute game changer. That's amazing. Um, here's a question for the, if I've never managed social media for a client and I'm a little bit antisocial, I'm like, oh, I don't wanna manage social media for clients. What's the fastest way for me to learn how to manage social media for clients in a kind of efficient and effective way to actually help the client get results without me having to spend the rest of my life, looking at Facebook.
Speaker 0 00:47:27 Brilliant. So thi this is back to that whole library concept. So again, everybody's gonna be different on this. And I think there are probably really good examples of where this is not accurate, but I would say for the vast majority of local business, really what you're trying to do is say, listen, no, one's gonna read your fellow social media page really, or they're certainly not gonna spend a lot of time on it. What they're gonna do, just kind of gut check it, right? Like, does this look good? Are there consistent posts? Are they quality great moving on? Right. And so I think the biggest thing you can do is just offer them a library essentially, of, of updated fresh content, right? So you're not even necessarily even having to do the post, if you don't want to, or you can have kind of somebody like a VA or something, ultimately just kind of do the scheduling.
Speaker 0 00:48:06 But the idea is listen for a low price point. And I personally try to like say for 300 bucks a month, we'll do your social media posting. And what does that mean? That means in that vertical, I'm gonna take an existing library of content and I'm just gonna schedule it to get posted, let you know that it's there. Um, and we have the approval flows and all of that coming out. So you, that whole notification system will be automated. Wow. So then your client just goes in, they look at the post and they just choose like, do you wanna make an edit? Do you wanna cancel the posting? And if they don't do anything, it just auto post itself. And the idea there is again, what, how much time are you spending making posts pretty close to zero? Cuz we don't want you making posts. You're just literally saying, all right, this is the plumber pack. Boom. This is a plumber account. Put it in that account and go right. Very scalable.
Speaker 1 00:48:50 Wow. That's amazing. Um, and, and how, what about reporting? Like if a client says I'm paying you this 300 bucks a month to manage my social media. I don't know if it's working. How do you, how can we prove ROI?
Speaker 0 00:49:03 Yeah, that's a good question. Right. So I think the pro I mean, I, well, a couple things, one, it becomes, I think it's a price point question more than anything. Right. So that sort of argument comes up mostly when people are charging a lot. So if you are doing the spoke post it's about translation, right? So yeah, you can show reporting like number of clicks and, and all this other stuff. But personally I think most people hire us as agencies to create customers. So for me, I would drive them into something. Right. So what's the, what's the, you know, what's the landing page or what's the offer that we wanna give and that's because high level has a funnel builder and has a CRM and has all of those components mm-hmm <affirmative> we can actually, in a sales pipeline, we can actually show that full journey. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's personally how I would, I would kind of go at it from a, from a reporting and ROI perspective. Yeah. Um, but I'd also think over time you really wanna create a posting scenario. That's relatively inexpensive. So you don't actually have to get into a ton of those conversations if at all possible.
Speaker 1 00:50:05 And again, not, not to, not to treat up the details here, but if I can show, can I show, Hey, in the last 30 days we've had this many people sign up to this opt-in page for a webinar and they came from the social media posting that we are doing. Absolutely. We're gonna be able to track that kinda
Speaker 0 00:50:18 Activity. Yes, yes, yes. You can do that now.
Speaker 1 00:50:20 Whoa, whoa. That's amazing. That's great. Absolutely. What I love in the we've moved all our funnels by the way, into high level, for that reason so that we can click on someone's record card and see the journey that they've been through to get on a call and the funnel that they've came through, that they've actually come through.
Speaker 0 00:50:35 Yeah. A absolutely. And it's, it's always tough, right? Because different people are different. Like I bet you get a lot of interaction on your posts, but for the average plumber, they're not gonna get anything. No. Right. That's right. I mean, I'd be shocked, but, but do they need a good looking social media page? Absolutely. Right. It's
Speaker 1 00:50:50 A credibility indicator, right?
Speaker 0 00:50:51 Yes. It's a credibility indicator. Exactly. So I think as an agency, you have to figure out who you serve. Right. So if you're serving like a really active Facebook group, then yeah. It's landing pages and attribution and, and really showing funnels and, and showing the, the pipeline and showing opportunities and conversions and all of that. So that's totally possible. But if I was serving plumbers, I would try to do none of that and just say, Hey man, here's a great looking posting situation for a very affordable rate that you can't get anywhere else. You're welcome. <laugh> um, cuz that's really what we're trying to do. Here's bill credibility. Now let's talk about doing something else, somewhere else. Like for a plumber, I would say, Hey, it's a, it's a GMB situation, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> let's talk about how many calls are we getting off your GMB? How many conversions are we? How many missed call, text backs are we doing? Like that kind of thing. That's where I'd focus for ROI for that kind of business. So I guess it depends on who you serve.
Speaker 1 00:51:39 Instagram is also very popular with tradies. We call 'em tradies here. Not home contract.
Speaker 0 00:51:44 Yeah, that's right. I, I do know that actually. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:51:46 Yeah. Instagram's really popular with tradies. They do, especially, uh, especially people like landscape architects. Yeah. Bathroom remodelers. They do before and after shots on Instagram, they make little that's little IG stories. So Instagram can, can be, can be good. Um, what should I have asked you about the social media posting feature that I haven't already,
Speaker 0 00:52:05 You know, again, this is like, well this is in, in basketball, you know, this, we call this like a two pointer, right? Like the whole idea here is not to, you know wow. You with amazing features, the idea is to make this just a layup, right. It's something where yeah. I can now create, this is another opportunity to create value that where I can create both software revenue stream and a services revenue stream. Right. Which makes me even more sticky. It's sort of like, you know, the old it's like the, with a bank, it's like, if you can get a, on a checking account and a home loan and a car loan, like at some point they can't leave. And this is just one of those things where, you know, we, we, every small business should be on, you know, posting to social media, um, you know, and, and whether you're helping them or they're doing it by themselves, there's great revenue for you there. And if you just go as far as to look at, you know, somebody like sprout social or whatever, you can see how much money is in that business. So there's a lot of money on the table.
Speaker 1 00:52:58 Mm. Uh, what are you most excited about over the next 90 days on the high level roadmap?
Speaker 0 00:53:03 Ooh. Uh, well, blogging is coming out. I'm pretty excited about that. So we'll add another feature, uh, to the list. Uh, we've got a big funnel upgrade, actually, that'll be, uh, and website upgrade. That'll just sort of happen behind the scenes, but we'll get a lot faster funnels, which I'm pretty ecstatic about. So, um, and I think that'll, we'll see some really good increases in conversion rates. Uh, so that, that to me is, uh, a pretty big, big one. We've got invoicing, uh, coming to mobile, which is awesome. Um, we've got it currently in the desktop and we're definitely at speaking about tradies. You know, I continue to think, uh, making sure that we're addressing again, I want you to be able to walk in as an agency and, and again, sell the solution. Right. So sell the, the service that they need, but also sell the technology that they need to operate their business. And so, yeah, I think invoicing estimating that kind of thing, um, is gonna be huge in that, in that arena.
Speaker 1 00:53:52 Mm. Uh, Jude love, uh, in Sydney here left a comment, uh, ask a question. Any chance of adding a help desk for clients
Speaker 0 00:53:59 That is absolutely on the roadmap for sure. Um, wow. I'm trying to think here, um, where that lies in the list. Oh. And then, uh, I think it'll probably be in Q4 cause we're gonna do, we're actually gonna crack it affiliate marketing software next quarter. So we'll actually affiliate tracking.
Speaker 1 00:54:16 Wow. Um, how do you <laugh> how many developers have you got right now on the team?
Speaker 0 00:54:21 Uh, I think it's 70, but we're gonna be at 120 by the end of the year.
Speaker 1 00:54:25 Fuck. Like, yeah. Do you, how do you sleep? Do you sleep well and often?
Speaker 0 00:54:31 Um, well, yes. I mean, I mean, I, I can't help but do that because I'm, I'm, I'm terrible at operating without any sleep, but, uh, you know, some nights are rougher than others, but in general I do fine. Yeah. Um, but I've got, again, I, my co-founder is our CTO and he's way better at it than I could ever be. Um, and so lucky for us, you know, we've got that and, you know, we have just, this really it's really about it starts to really become about the team. Right. Um, yeah. But yeah, it's, for us, it's really product and engineering that we're scale.
Speaker 1 00:54:58 And I can tell you, we, I, I have, I've had many conversations with many agencies who have three developers and they can't get those three developers to move in the same direction at the right time. How do you get 70 developers working on the right thing at the right time and all moving in the same direction?
Speaker 0 00:55:11 Yeah. I mean, it, it is a big orchestration. Um, I mean, I mean, this is, is sort of like one of those things where, you know, you'd be amazed behind the scenes, you know, all of the different processes and procedures and, you know, we have a full product management staff. I mean like, oh gosh, I don't know, like 10, 10, 10 product managers now. And you know, these people sit down and they map out the feature, they map out all the rules, they map out all the, what happens if you click on this button, you know, what does it do and how, what does it say? And all of that, why, um, all of that before engineering gets a hold of it, and then you have the QA on top of that. So, you know, it's a very, very, very big system. Um, but you know, it, it, it works. Um, and we have some phenomenal engineers. So I, I think that also helps.
Speaker 1 00:55:49 When was the last time you wrote any code?
Speaker 0 00:55:51 Gosh, sadly, quite a while ago, but you know, I was never very good at it. I mean, I loved it. Don't get me wrong, um, in sort of like, um, but, but you know, it was very early on, you know, my co-founder was like, could you please stop submitting code? Cause I just, it just breaks and I have to fix it. And it just takes hours to, you know, it's like, could we just, could we just agree that you're not good at this? And I'm like, okay, fine. So I'll go find something else to do. So, you know, that's
Speaker 1 00:56:15 And you're on a, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:56:16 I know. I know. Just go to the podcast, man. You know, <laugh> Here. I
Speaker 1 00:56:21 Final question. We are very close to we at some point we'll be back out in the states, probably in California to run one of our live events. Will you come and hang out with us?
Speaker 0 00:56:31 Heck yeah. I mean, that's a great thing about, I love California. I'm I'm just due north <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:56:36 Yeah. Awesome. Love it.
Speaker 0 00:56:37 I'd love. I'd love to be
Speaker 1 00:56:38 There. I'm definitely gonna take you up on that. All right. I also just wanna give you massive props, dude, because what you have built at go high level is, is inspirational to me as an entrepreneur, it helps me, it inspires me to think bigger and go, what can we do? And how can we add more value to our clients? And, uh, I'm gonna, for the next few weeks, I'm gonna be saying two things. Well, what would Sean do? And if Sean can do it, I can do it. So, uh, the rest of my team and are terrified because I'm, I'm going bigger and better
Speaker 0 00:57:04 Again. <laugh> yeah. Right. Well, you know, I, we wouldn't be here with, without people like you and, and I have tremendous respect and humility, um, for everything that you, you you've done for us. So I just am super thankful to be here.
Speaker 1 00:57:17 Yeah. Well thank you for, for coming. I really appreciate you doing this and we'll definitely get you back on the show at some point and absolutely date next we'll hook up in real life. That would be great. Oh, I
Speaker 0 00:57:24 Can't wait. That'll be
Speaker 1 00:57:25 Awesome. Sean Clark. Thank you very much, man. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 0 00:57:28 All right, bye for now.
Speaker 1 00:57:30 Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean Clark from go high level. What an inspiration, the software is incredible. Go and check it out. If you are an agency and you want to add more value to your clients and you wanna be able to demonstrate ROI and you want to increase your recurring revenue, go high level allows you to put an amazing technology piece into your business that you can resell to your clients, completely white labeled your clients cannot sign up for a high level account because they're not agencies. The only people that can sign up for a high level account are agencies you can, and for a flat fee, you can then resell it to as many clients as you like. You can have unlimited recurring revenue selling high level as a software solution, and then also bundling services on top of that and managing your client's sales and marketing for them.
Speaker 1 00:58:21 You normally get a 14 day trial with high level, but they have very kindly offered a 30 day free trial to anyone who signs up with our link, which is go high level.com/troy-dean Troy, hyphen Dean go high level.com/troy hyphen Dean. You'll get a 30 day free trial to kick the tires, have a look at it. And um, if you do continue on, as I said, we do make a bit of affiliate commission, uh, with that. And you'll also get our snapshot loaded into your high level account, which means your sales pipeline, your automations, your emails. A lot of that stuff is gonna be taken care of, uh, because we've built it once. And we can just import that into your account with our snapshot import, uh, feature that they have in high level. It's a great piece of software. Sean's an amazing entrepreneur. That was such a great conversation.
Speaker 1 00:59:07 Uh, it inspires me to keep going and to think bigger about what we are doing here. And it inspires me to keep producing episodes of the podcast because that was just an incredible conversation. And I'm just so I feel so lucky that we have the opportunity, uh, with the technology that we have these days where I can have conversations with people like that all over the world and share those conversations with our audience. So thank you again for being a part of it. If you're listening to this as a podcast, as I mentioned, come and join the Facebook group, it's called the digital Mavericks Facebook group. Just go to facebook.com and search for digital Mavericks and join the group, answer a couple of questions to make sure that you are a human being and not a lunatic and that you agree to, you know, be respectful and then we'll let you into the group and you can hang out with a whole bunch of other agency owners.
Speaker 1 00:59:49 I think we're just over 12,000 members in that group now, which is amazing. All right, I'm gonna bounce outta here and head down to the new studio to do some more scoping out because we are so close. So close my friends to moving into our new custom built, uh, studio space where we are gonna be creating content for you guys. More videos, more training, more podcast, uh, more everything. Uh, it it's, we're gonna be running our hybrid live events outta that space. It's an amazing space max and I were in there yesterday, scoping it out and it's just, we just cannot wait to get in there. So I'm gonna head down there now and, and do some more work in there. And I look forward to seeing you all again and speaking with you all again next week on the agency hour by for now.
Speaker 2 01:00:28 Thanks for listening to the agency hour podcast, subscribe at apple podcasts, Spotify podcast, audible, and wherever you like to listen, you can catch all of the agency hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/agency Mavericks. Or you can get involved, check out our free digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.
