It's Costume with the Daily Google News, and I'm here with Rob and Alex, who think probably has one of the hardest jobs in the digital world. you're the co founder of High Level, which is the fastest growing, most disruptive marketing software that I've ever seen in my entire life. do you guys consider yourself a martech? is that a pejorative to you? Are you okay, me? yeah. We're definitely in the Martech space. That's us. we're not a Martech. We're automation. We're systems. We're process. So I don't want to improperly slap a label on it. I'm a huge fan of GHL, if you're watching or listening to this and you haven't used high level, you don't even have to click on my affiliate link. You should, but you don't have to. This thing is the amount of features. Available for the money is insane already right out of the gate. But what's Impossible to fathom is y'all don't charge per instance And that's what I think really disrupted the entire game. Like most software companies kept the monetization on their end. Y'all moved the fulcrum of monetization. So an agency can buy high level once, for the grand total, like 500 bucks a month, if you want the nicest, fanciest version, and then they can resell it to as many people as they want hundreds, thousands of customers and keep all the money. Like it's you equip people to be SAS companies themselves. It's an unbelievable vision. how did that happen? Did you set out to do that or was that by accident? It was something you fell into. definitely it was something we fell into just overall through the whole thing. So prior to high level, I was running an agency and when I met Sean Averroon, the other two co founders. were trying to figure out how to take the software and really get it out to the masses that's the vision, right? The more users you have, the more adoption you'll get, the more money, the more revenue to doing more things. And I always looked at it from the agency perspective. What would I want in that perspective? And I always hated the more that I bring The more I'm getting taxed, is how I always looked at it. And then once you hit a certain point, you get this like weird decision point of now I'm spending 3, 000 a month, 5, 000 a month, and now they're wanting me to sign a longer agreement. Do I really want to spend a long agreement? Or at that point, you now start playing the field again, right? before I commit to it, let me see what else is out there. And at the end of the day, it's all about adoption and usage. So we've always just started out from that point. And It was just us three doing onboardings and stuff like that. So we were just happy people were just coming onto the platform and we were just heads down. Just keep doing that. Just keep getting more and more at the top. and we never really thought about expansion on the back end. or how to expand. And instead we just got public fanfare of This is awesome. And we're like, okay, so why stop? Just keep going. And, luckily for the three of us, greed has never taken over a sense of our mindset We've always, been believers on if we can make the world successful, it will come back to us. in some form or fashion from a positivity perspective, monetization and things like that. And so we've never looked at trying to disrupt it from a per user model or contact. And I think where people go wrong is you look at companies that's out there that's been doing it for a long time. And either you follow the textbook method, which is what they're doing. And that's the only way to succeed. And people are scared to go the alternative route. And so we basically said we looked into it or, we fell into it from the get go. Why change if it's working and Oh, we figured out how to be, cashflow positive or profitable. We're making money along the way. why stop. so that was honestly how we started and we just kept it going into this date that's us and we're owning that lane that no one else wants to touch. Dude, I love that. How do you manage the downside risk of a customer scaling beyond their worth? I know you have customers manage their own, email, like Mailgun or Twilio or whatever. So those would be variable costs that you've been able to push back on the agencies, which is brilliant. But just storage space. if I go take down high level, maybe at 100 clients, that's not so many snapshots but at 100, 000? and I know you have to have agencies that get there. is there a point of Hey, I got to knock on your door and charge you for your own AWS instance or something like that? over the years, uneducated doesn't realize that data is such a high variable commodity that cost is. Relatively inexpensive, really, an average account could be, a couple of megs or a couple of gigs at most, on the high end and, when you have a great development team and things like that, we're always looking at improving and optimizing and stuff like that, but just not the gate data is a lot cheaper than you expect and, we have the advantage of. We're trying not to predict the future and what we build. It's looking at great products that's out there and rebuilding it, retooling it in the lens of an agency. We don't come in with a lot of bloatware. We're building efficiencies out the gate because agencies are telling us exactly what they want. So out the gate, it's a stripped down version. There's not a lot of bloatware, a lot of sizing behind it that's going to create a lot of tension for us. And so from that perspective, it's been easy for us to scale and keep the overall infrastructure relatively small. I love that you just said, we don't try to predict the future. not just compelling, but what a brave thing to say. and I see that in high level. You're absolutely right. It's we're not trying to tell you what's coming. We're just helping solve the problems that are happening right now. Yeah, we're in the trenches with you, old analogy was, we're just gonna wait until someone punches us on the chins, and, we need this now, What's nuts is how quickly you roll that shit out. I've seen you guys in weeks, hey, I need the thing, and then all of a sudden, two weeks later, okay, it's shipped. took me, I tell the story all the time, it took me 18 months to get HubSpot to let Appointment booking resolve in a separate thank you page so I could track them in Google Ads 18 months a year and a half when somebody schedules an appointment, instead of a confirmation message, I need a new, and I had to go through the remediation, and the impact team, and the analysis, and the cost to benefit ratio, they put me on calls with people. I was an agency partner at the time, was like, all right, they're doing me a favor, and I need this. Took a year and a half. Y'all would have had that in 48 hours. how do you ship so quickly? How do you even manage a process like that? two different school of thoughts. When I work on something, it has to be 100 percent perfect, 100 percent thought out. And I'm thinking through every single use case before I ship it. And then there's the side of, if you just roll it out too early, people will complain, people are going to be frustrated. You're impacting support and things like that. And the perfectionist looks at our model and they're basically saying you're half assing it. And for us, we're basically saying, reality is. 80 percent of usage comes from 20 percent of the features. Yeah, we're going to come up with that and immediately get feedback on where it's not working and what it can improve versus you spent the next two years trying to build this amazing product. And at that point, by the time you get it out, either it's no longer relevant, no longer important or where's the magical customers that's going to come use it now doesn't exist right. They already found another solution because they needed it two years ago when that was the hot trend or whatever, for example, threads, that came out a couple of months ago, we were the first. social planning tool that had access to that, that was building to that. Oh, how cool. I didn't know that. So what for like social scheduling social posting and stuff like that. And there's going to be other platforms that's trying to make sure they go through all the edge cases and stuff like that, but. When that came out, it was a rush from all the agencies of I need to be there. I need to have a tool that can help me there. So are you willing to wait two years to have your perfect integration or, in the meantime, we know it's not fully thought out. We don't know all the edge cases, nor does anyone. So we're just like, bring it on and we'll figure it out. But in the two years, We've already got mass adoption along the way. definitely a different model and we call it the skateboard method, there's a lot of articles from that methodology, but for us, it's, the 80, 20 rule, 80 percent of usage comes from 20 percent of the features. And then from there, the people that maximize that 20% Usage will continue to add for more and they'll tell us and they'll give us that direct feedback. And now it's bite sized updates for the next iteration of it. Where do you see high level? I know you said, I don't try to predict the future. So I understand that from a feature perspective, but as the leader of organization, you guys are big, no matter how you slay you when you have 600 employees, did I get that right? 750 750 employees, 3 million end users. Yeah, MUAs, right? So that's active users that's on our platform. So what's your vision for high level moving forward? Like you flash forward three, five, 10 years, do you want to see happen? I want to see us continue building a bigger ecosystem to where we own, anyone attached or associated to high level is basically a 10 billion ecosystem, if not greater. And, the number that we like to put out there is 9 billion going into other people's pockets. I love that that's development partners, service providers, value added whatever, resellers, those types, anybody that's touching high level, because you're a part of our bubble, you're making money and think about it. even our model, we use the agencies for distribution model. They get to the small businesses. And as long as the agency is using our tool, they're going to help that small business. Make money and provide impact in their communities. And then you have the secondary partners and the marketplace partners who are building integrations and tools not only compounding that effect of helping downstream to the small businesses. cascade all of that together. There's a lot of opportunity here. And, 1 of the things I'm excited about is. Down to at an employee level, we're creating a certification program. And so I want people. To go out in the world saying I am now high level certified, please hire me because I'm officially certified or vice versa. Think about LinkedIn or indeed. com. People are like, I need a high level administrator. So now I see that all the time my mastermind. That's one of the biggest asks if from a resource perspective used to be everybody wanted a media buyer. and I would get those calls, obviously, but now everybody wants a high level person and it's not even a quite, it's like a ubiquitous truth. They're all using it. Everybody's using high level. Like you guys have just penetrated the highest levels, anybody who's really doing marketing well as using high level one way or the other. Yeah. And, one of the ideas early on was how do we make it feel like it is truly yours? Yeah. This is where we came in with the white labeling and, all those features out the gate because. The more that you feel like it's yours, the more attached you are, and the more conviction you have in delivering the solution to your customers. I'm gonna lob a grenade at you that I've heard lobbed at me, and this isn't something I believe by the way, but let's just play devil's advocate. there's too many people using high level, there's too many agencies that know, the cat's out of the bag, the market's saturated, a bunch of people are letting, free snapshots, they're just giving away the farm, gig is up. How do you respond to that? it's a great question. So I think what I see in the market is a couple of different angles. new businesses, so the U S chamber of commerce put out a stat, that they look at sick codes and EIN generations every year. There's roughly about two to three, maybe 4 million new EINs generated. So new business entities. Since COVID, that's accelerated to almost 6 million, and I think they're predicting 7 million new EINs being generated this year. Now, sure, some of them are shell companies and blah, blah, blah, blah, but what they are seeing is new businesses starting up. I think from a generational perspective, a lot of people pre COVID were working for large corporations, or think about just your local service business, some guys, a plumber working for a large plumbing company. starting to make a little money, maybe through COVID and stuff. We're seeing this transition where people are now saying, you know what, I'm going to go out and get my own truck and be a one person show to grow my own plumbing business now. So there's a lot of opportunity for the new generation. So I think there's opportunity there. I think the other opportunity that I'm also seeing is. years ago, the first generations of CRM people that were, coming into the working world and their careers and they're implementing act Salesforce, HubSpots and, infusion softs and all these great platforms. And they've been building on it, but those individuals who are doing the work, right? A decade ago, 15 years ago today, they've either left the company, they moved up the organization. And so that knowledge transfer is not gone. And so now the new generation coming out of college or young career individuals are coming in, looking at it saying, oh, the system is so antiquated. It's built on the trends back then, right? Where you had different solid newsletters or old school websites and stuff. And they're looking at it saying, either we have to hire an outside consultant to rebuild this whole thing, or let's start from scratch. And guess what, the easy tool is us and you can put your own brand, so that's where our USP comes in. So I think there's a ton of opportunity on that lane or really those 2 lanes just. By easy nature. So the opportunity is just never ending. What pisses me off about the people that make that claim, because I hear it all the time, as a reseller, I hear people like, Ah, I can't go resell high level, everybody else is doing it. no, temp, it's a canvas that you get to paint on. what are you putting in your, like have an agency for Montessori schools, so I created a high level instance that's built specifically for Montessori. Montessori funnels, automation, follow up. Sequences, Like it's all just Montessori. You could never in a million years just hand a Montessorian, a high level app and say here, same thing. It's not. So where people are being short sighted is you guys have done such a good job of saying here, customize this for any niche. And until every niche in the world has at least 10 instances, because everybody wants variety, nobody's ever going to be able to convince me that high level is saturated. Yeah. And love that angle because reality, right? People need features, or they think they need features, and I think they're lying to themselves. What they're really looking for is an outcome. And I'm seeing a lot of people get out of the traditional agency space, and they're just walking into a business saying, How can I augment you needing to hire a new person or augmenting your staff by just building some automations? Because a lot of the day to day operational work, a lot of it is centered around sales and marketing. And a lot of it is just administrative love that comes from the sales and marketing, right? I gotta send out a PDF to somebody or send an email internally about this payment that needs to be made with an invoice and stuff like that. if you just go in with that mindset. Every business owner needs to optimize, and they want the ability to not have to hire for more. They want to automate it, simplify their process so they can get back to doing what they enjoy. The dentist wants to get back to being a dentist, not sitting in front of their computer trying to figure out how do I process this invoice or run this credit card payment, or teach my front desk staff how to make the phone call. If that can be automated, it makes your life so much easier. If you look at it being more of a solutions provider or technology automations provider versus the traditional agency, I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And now you can always back into the traditional stuff when the time is appropriate, but it is a wide ocean of opportunity on the automations and, just bringing the tool, being that artist for these businesses. You mind if I get a little personal with you? Yeah. So you're a young guy, you're a co founder of a SaaS company. On a meteoric rise. I'm pretty sure that's the literal dream, like in the eighties, everybody wanted to be a movie star in the nineties, everybody wanted to be a rock star in the 2000, everybody wanted to be a pop star. Like we're now in the era where everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, but SAS is the pinnacle. It has the highest valuation. It's what everybody wants to go to. you're at the top of the mountain that sits atop all other mountains. I guess that's my question. It's like, how does that feel? you just wake up every day This is awesome. what does that even resonate or land? Or it's not something you think about? I try to think about it, but it just doesn't register. one of those from the outside looking in, it looks great, but from the inside looking out, it's like, Nope, I got a customer messaging me right now. Let me go help them. Yeah, I'm just answering support tickets and doing my job. think that's what makes us a little different because we're in the trenches and we enjoy it. We're not trying to chase that vision of being the top. I think we just got there only because of the organic and echo chamber that we created of the value that we're bringing. It's not like we're aggressively like, you know what, in three years we're going to be at the top of the mountain and then looking at the ivory tower down below in our executive suites, we just never had that as the vision. It was just, if we do a lot of great work, a lot of people will like it and by chance we'll do well behind the scenes. Dude, you guys are, not to pander, it's unreal just how authentic y'all are and the decisions you make. there's authenticity is great, but if it stops it action, it's like, all right, you're just being authentically a prick now, but you guys are. authentic, and then also making decisions that really are, in the best interest of your end customer, which is so unusual. It's a ubiquitous lip service. Every company says it. Y'all are the one of the very few I've ever seen really do it all the way. So for whatever that's worth, I super appreciate you. somebody's watching or listening to this last words to you, what is it you want them to do? What's the call to action? talk to Kossum and, get onto highlevel. com and get a trial and see if the product will help your business or talk to an agency that leverages it. And I think there's a ton of value that you can improve your small business in the world. Yeah, I've got. and a half businesses built on top of high level. I say half because it's not solely dependent, but that's, what's cool about it. You can say Oh, okay. I need a little bit of this and not so much of that. And it's a fun little building block. super appreciate being here with me, man. I'm a big fan. If you're watching, listening, go check out high level, my affiliate links in the description, Robin's badass. You have to make sure you go to the high level of event. Actually, it's probably sold out. Isn't it? we actually sold out two days ago, a month early, which is really wild. That's great. you missed out on the high level event, but I'm sure there'll be awesome recordings. have some cool recordings and stuff that we'll put out there. If you can't make it, we'll make sure that you see it. Yeah. My business partner, Perry Belcher, he's speaking there. I think Steve Sims is speaking there too, right? spoke last year. but we have a lot of cool speakers. I think 38 speakers that's going to be there. Oh, that's awesome, dude. Wow. That's great. I can't wait watch the live stream and I appreciate you, Robin. And if you're watching this, comment, subscribe, and I'll see you tomorrow. All right. Thank you