The Secrets to Building a Successful Business With Shaun Clark

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Welcome to your daily Google News.

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You're about to watch an interview with the co-founder of High Level

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Sean Clark who is easily, I think, one of the most disruptive and powerful

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leaders in the entrepreneurial space.

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I'm kind of obsessed with this guy.

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A lot of hero worship going on.

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You're gonna see that in the interview.

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I pander excessively, but the guy deserves it.

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He's brilliant.

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He's humble, he's impactful.

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He's effective, he's really worth your attention.

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I hope you enjoy, I gotta tell you, I've never said this to your face.

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I only say it behind your back.

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Only Bob my back.

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You're one of my entrepreneurial heroes.

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Like what you did with high level and then also just who you are.

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'cause there's a bunch of people that have really good ideas.

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But I was on an interview with you recently and somebody introduced

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you as the founder of High Level.

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You instantly corrected them and you said, how about co-founder?

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Yeah, definitely co-founder, not founder.

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Dude, there's so few people that would spend so much energy correcting something

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that is an error in their favor.

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But that one thing that's kind of you on every level of analysis, like

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always playing fair, always trying to do the right thing, always stopping

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the conversation to like clarify.

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And I'm not trying to pander for a moment, but I want anybody who's listening,

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if you want A leader to follow, if you want somebody to look to, like this is

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how you run an organization, it's Sean fucking Clark, That's a bridge too far.

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But there you go.

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Humility is just a good example.

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Too many people, I've listened to a lot of people in life say how

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they did it all themselves, had some, a small amount of success.

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. First of all, I think they're all liars.

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But that's not fair.

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I don't know them, but I will say that's definitely not true for myself.

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I certainly would not be here without many, many, many, many, many, many people.

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My co-founders, my customers my partners, my affiliates, and my team.

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Like just so many people.

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I.

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Have come into our world to help us out.

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it would be a foolish lie to say that somehow I did all this.

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it's laughable at best.

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And that's before we even talk about things like luck

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randomness and so forth and so on.

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So, I don't know.

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And I wouldn't be here without the hard work and the love and

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the sacrifice of so many people.

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And so I just have to pay homage and respect to that at every turn.

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I love it, man.

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Let me ask you, so this is something I respect about you, but I do

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question the sustainability of it.

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If I go into the Facebook group right now, the high level Facebook group, am I gonna

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see you answering support tickets still?

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so it's a little different.

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the way I think about this, right, is there's a team at every turn.

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So like there's absolutely a team and a structure and

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KPIs on every channel, right?

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But the reality is, that feel like my job is to.

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Sort of survey the land and just see if there's smoke from any place.

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And if that smoke is starting to turn into fire mm-hmm.

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Because my team's amazing.

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But sometimes elevating something that is, I can sort of just perceive or I think,

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or my gut says that it's gonna turn into a bigger issue or is bigger already.

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, people are gonna say like, X doesn't work or this isn't

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happening for me, or this or that.

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And I like to look at it and first say like, a, is this A global issue that

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just maybe my support team doesn't yet know about, and can I race this to

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the top and get this someplace faster?

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That's one piece of it.

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The other piece is, maybe something is not a bug or a something that's broken, but

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maybe it's just like a persistent issue.

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I see.

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And then they're like, Hmm, you know what?

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I need to get this to the product team because Yeah, while it's technically

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possible, it's not easy, it's not fun, and people are complaining about it a lot.

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That just tells me we're not doing our job to make it easy enough.

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So it's just sort of trying to help be like the forest of the trees guy.

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you'll absolutely see me in Facebook and.

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I think the way I do it is I try to solve the problem in the instant for the person,

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but I also try to glean the lesson away and see, solve the problem of problems.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Like how can I more globally?

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And then sometimes it's just education, like I have a great team.

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Like I get to tag product managers on posts and then they'll come in

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and actually a answer questions and B, take the lessons away.

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So a lot of today's traffic direction for me, but it's super

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important to stay on top of all that.

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Where's high level going?

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in my mind, you conquered the marketing world as a SaaS product scale is only a

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matter of time from a breadth perspective.

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Yeah.

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the big bad AI bug is here.

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People can make code with their minds, What do you see from a directional

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standpoint is the next step?

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the thing is, as a software engineer, I've lived a world of abstraction, right?

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So, whatever code you write in today is fundamentally an

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abstraction on top of code that people used to use that was harder.

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So AI literally is just in my mind, radical expansion of that abstraction, but

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it's still placed to the same construct.

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So it's like I got a chainsaw, whereas before I was using handsaw,

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it just lowers the cost of production.

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But that should radically advance what's achievable from a practical standpoint.

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So you should be able to actually produce more things that faster

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that people need, that's great.

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That just means we can go faster.

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That's really what it comes down to.

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But I still think our mission hasn't changed radically much, which is

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how do we create a business model?

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How do we continue to disrupt an existing industry?

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Because I think of it as.

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Whether it's cheaper to produce or, I mean, 'cause it was already

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getting cheaper to produce, but let's just say, even tomorrow, let's say

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all software is free to produce.

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It certainly will not be free to run.

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It will not be free to support, and it will not be free to implement and create

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what it's really meant to do, which is.

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It's actually meant to affect an outcome in the world that

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helps somebody in a tangible way.

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And that is a concert of so many things.

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Right?

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in the past, that has been the domain of highly funded startups

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that are very tribal and their whole mission is to own the world.

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They're very like, me, King of the hill kind of structure.

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Right?

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And I think for us it's about, wait, how do we disrupt that concept?

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How do we take the thing that was hard to create before the software and put

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it in the hands of the people so that we can arm them with the same tools I.

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therefore they can create the same type of businesses that were only

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the dominion of these like large, radically well-funded startups before.

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So to me, it's all about continuing that disruption and ai, if anything, just

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makes that faster and easier for us.

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You know what I love about your analogy as far as it being an

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abstraction is you have the coding language and then you have the code.

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That's an abstraction of the coding language, but what you've built

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high level is an abstraction.

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We get to use to code whatever it is that we want.

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So it gets very meta very quickly.

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It's kind of like a Russian doll.

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Like it's an abstraction on an abstraction, on an abstraction.

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And then we get to take it.

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Those of us that don't know how to code.

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And within the confines of what you provided in high level, do that again.

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Yeah, exactly.

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I fell in love with software as a teenager because I saw its ability

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to truly affect the real world, and that fascination has not changed.

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What has changed is I've learned that the software unto itself

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does not create the impact.

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it's a tool that then needs to be harnessed by somebody who can learn

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it and who can add to it, and who can put it into effect for someone else.

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And that hasn't changed, and I don't think AI will.

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I think AOL will make that better and easier, but not, it's like everyone

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sort of sees some of these things as zero or one motions, but the

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reality is it's, percentage game.

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So it's really more like maybe it's 20% better or 30% better.

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And that's great.

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That just means you can do 30% more than you were doing before for the same price,

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And hopefully help other more businesses.

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And so for me, it's still about how can I help people build a business?

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How can I help people make money?

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And how can I do it in a way that harnesses the power of these tools?

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brings it together with their creativity to create that outcome.

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So to me, that's the same mission, but I would say like just sticking to our

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entrepreneurial roots has been a big.

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Learning.

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not knowing what you know until you get there and then along the way having a lot

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of people tell you like, you know, what does it look like when you grow up, right?

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And all of a sudden you're like, well, I guess I'm supposed to wear

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suits and ties every day or whatever.

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I don't know.

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Like, people give you weird advice and it's because that's

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just the common concept.

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But then you start to do that, and then you realize like, , what got me

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here was like, It wasn't like that.

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And you're like, so why is it that I can't just keep being who I was?

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Yeah.

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If I listen to everybody, I would've just rebuilt Infusionsoft.

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Yeah.

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I think it's just about realizing like, actually you can scale this to

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whatever level you want, and you can still be that person you always were.

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And you can still do things differently even if you have really big numbers.

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I think is more the learning that.

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, we've created, certainly some things have to change.

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Don't get me wrong.

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It's impossible to keep up with everybody, but at the same time you also

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can't be so rigid in your structure.

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You destroy creativity.

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And it's not just your creativity, by the way.

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It's your peoples, right?

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Your best people who are thriving under this old model, all of a sudden

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you thrust them into this new model, and at first they're all like you.

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They're like, okay, I guess that makes sense.

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I'll try it.

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And then all of a sudden you find out like, oh, well we were gonna do this

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amazing thing, but you see there's this new policy, and you're like,

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what the heck are you talking about?

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Policy schmo?

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Like, we're doing the great thing.

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So anyways, it's just going back and saying like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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We gotta get rid of all that garbage.

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you just find people do weird stuff.

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Like people have a tendency, and I think it's human nature, like if

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there's some like pain point they're running into, they'll be like, okay,

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how can I get rid of this pain?

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And that's just how they think.

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but then if you look at the consequence of that, for example oh, well I'm

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gonna take this pain, I'm gonna transfer it to the customer, and

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I make the customer bear the pain.

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Now they don't think of it like that, but that's the consequence

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of getting rid of the pain.

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easy example is like we have these zoom rooms and people are like, well

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how do you, bring people into the zoom room and how do you like, make

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sure that you get the next person in the right order and this and that.

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And so someone's like, oh, I know we'll get Zoom conference edition or something.

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And what it does is you see, when you come in, it puts you in a queue and

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then it'll pull you outta the queue.

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And, we can measure stuff better and all this other stuff.

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And I'm like, wait, wait, wait.

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Hold on, hold on.

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But doesn't that mean like when I go into the Zoom room, like I'm like on

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hold I hearing hold music or something.

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They're like, yeah, yeah, but you see it's gonna be so much.

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And I'm like, no.

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See, that's the problem right there.

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sorry, denied because.

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I want this experience like you're walking to a physical store.

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Like I always say the Verizon store.

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You walk in and someone greets you and they're like, Hey, welcome to Verizon.

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How can I help you?

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And you're like, yeah, I'm here with my fb.

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You know you sold me some crappy iPhone.

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It sucks.

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It doesn't matter what you say.

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They'll be like, oh, no problem.

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Lemme get you all checked in.

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What's your phone number?

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And then you just hang out with other customers and like, and then they pull you

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in and they have like a check-in sheet so they kind of know when you came in and,

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then they have different categories for tech support and sales and this and that.

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Point is it works, right?

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It works in a really scaled basis, and I wanted to keep that model.

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you'll learn that that's the tendency of people.

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So you end up having to go in and be like, sorry, you can't do that.

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Because it's our job to feel the pain, not to push it off on the

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customer just because it's easier.

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What a beautiful quote.

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It's our job to feel the pain.

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. What features should we be most excited about?

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okay, so we started with marketing, like you said.

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Now we're really doing a couple things.

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to me it's about making sure that we can be a full operation system for

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every small business or every business.

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there's a couple things that I think are really big coming in.

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this quarter communities is dropping estimates and proposals are dropping.

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Mobile tap to pay on mobile is dropping.

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QuickBooks online integration is dropping.

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And then in Q three, we're gonna move on to e-comm.

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And the idea here is that, wait, e-comm as in like a Shopify alternative?

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Yeah.

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Like a Shopify.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Total full e-commerce now.

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Wow.

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Does Shopify, no, no.

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Now not comparing ourselves to Shopify, obviously, 'cause Shopify's big, but what

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we've learned in this journey, right?

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Is that at every turn.

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There's a tool that is broader and deeper, well actually not broader,

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deeper in every feature we produce.

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But that's because they're targeting the a hundred percent.

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We're really targeting the 90%.

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And what we realize is that I.

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There's a very small number of features that you have to do in any given

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category to truly help almost everybody.

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And the people that are sort of pigeonholed in one environment,

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they go really deep because A, I think that's just how it works.

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Right?

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Right.

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If you like, say, we're e-commerce, I.

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You're just gonna keep digging that hole deeper.

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But the reality is, the deeper you go, there's just fewer and fewer

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people down there that you can help.

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Because the number of people that need these radically complex,

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sophisticated, nichey, fringe features, there's one of those people.

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And the other problem with it is the deeper you go, the more you have to

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charge to actually dig that deep.

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the more in depth in your analytics or the more in depth your whatever, you gotta

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find someone who's willing to pay like 10 x more because it takes a lot more work.

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the farther down you go.

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Where are high level SA finding the most success, building their business?

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I know I've heard you say niche down on a local level before.

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Is that still your answer?

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Is there more?

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Absolutely.

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Because again, most of the people I'm talking to, I think this is the problem.

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I think that a lot of life is like you turn on the TV and

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you see the people at the top.

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and I think there's this, misperception here, first of all, I

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don't actually agree that you need to get to the top to be successful.

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In fact, I highly recommend, you know, Warren Buffett would always

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say, I like to play games where the average person does all right.

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Because at worst I think I'll do about average.

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and as a result, I'd rather do all right.

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I know that's not really sexy for most people, but the way I sort of think

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about it is, How many people can I get to $300,000 as a single owner operator

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business at a 90% profit margin in a year.

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if I can do that I feel really good because I've just put you at, call

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it 80%, 85% of more than the average American makes by a pretty wide mile.

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And you should be able to afford a house.

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You should be able to afford a car of, a really fancy car.

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Lots of vacations to Disneyland, all the stuff that hope makes people happy.

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And will some people ra take it radically higher than that?

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Absolutely.

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But I feel like if the, most of the people I talk to, they aren't at that, level yet.

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Call it 300 grand a year, let's just say.

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They're not at that level yet.

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And so I want to help as many people as I can get to that level.

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Because the problem is, if I tell you about people who are doing 10 million a

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year, it sounds super exciting from an advertising and marketing perspective,

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but those people had this journey that they had to go through, and at one point

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they made 10,000 a month and then, and then they made 30,000 a month, and then

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they made a hundred thousand a month.

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And if you're not there, if I don't step you through it, I think it's disingenuous

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I think it's not gonna help you.

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\ so yes, I would say focus on niche out on local.

Kasim: 00:13:15

And the reason why is because I think it's the fastest, easiest way to be successful.

Kasim: 00:13:19

Every agency I ever talked to prior to being a sapr, having

Kasim: 00:13:23

sapr in all of that, local digital agencies always had low churn.

Kasim: 00:13:28

I think it's 'cause they're able to create a lot of continuity, a lot of

Kasim: 00:13:31

trust, and they have a lot of connection to their community and it's really hard.

Kasim: 00:13:35

To fight against that.

Kasim: 00:13:36

If you're a dentist and you hired some guy in town, , maybe he's not

Kasim: 00:13:40

a dental specific niche marketer, but the great thing is he'll head

Kasim: 00:13:44

over to your dental clinic when you have a problem and sit down and

Kasim: 00:13:46

actually walk through it with you.

Kasim: 00:13:48

And man, that is worth a whole heck of a lot.

Kasim: 00:13:50

When the alternative is I gotta pick up a phone and sit on hold and this and that,

Kasim: 00:13:54

and hope I get the help I need and I'm dying here because the less time I'm.

Kasim: 00:13:59

Put my fa hands in someone's mouth, the less money I'm making.

Kasim: 00:14:02

So I have this really big pressure to get back in the

Kasim: 00:14:04

operatory and continue doing that.

Kasim: 00:14:07

Otherwise the lights don't stay on.

Kasim: 00:14:08

Yeah, the niche genre local is one that's, it's not a sexy narrative.

Kasim: 00:14:11

They're repelled by it, but gosh, man.

Kasim: 00:14:14

And that 300 grand a year, that's so achievable.

Kasim: 00:14:16

Exactly.

Kasim: 00:14:17

and then from there it's the corridor principle.

Kasim: 00:14:19

From there you identify the opportunity and then you chase that

Kasim: 00:14:22

opportunity and then, can scale up.

Kasim: 00:14:23

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:14:23

It's like what I always tell people, it's not a limiting factor.

Kasim: 00:14:25

Like, call me on the day you get a hundred local clients I'll show to show.

Kasim: 00:14:29

Take that to world domination.

Kasim: 00:14:30

and what really actually convinced me is only talking to hundreds of

Kasim: 00:14:34

local digital, I mean thousands of agencies, and then within that,

Kasim: 00:14:36

Hundreds of local digital agencies, and I always try to play the same trick

Kasim: 00:14:39

on every, sales call, essentially.

Kasim: 00:14:41

I just say like, oh, well, I bet you have a lot of churn and you know, 99% of them

Kasim: 00:14:45

or whatever, you know, a lot of times people like, oh yeah, how'd, you know?

Kasim: 00:14:48

But then the local guys just fall flat as a a, a pancake.

Kasim: 00:14:51

They'd be like, churn.

Kasim: 00:14:52

What's that?

Kasim: 00:14:52

Yeah, and I'd like, oh, don't you ever have a client quit?

Kasim: 00:14:55

and I'd get these weird responses like, well, I did have a guy actually, he was

Kasim: 00:14:59

like 85 and he passed away and his son or daughter didn't want to take the business.

Kasim: 00:15:03

So I guess we had some clients leave.

Kasim: 00:15:05

that response I would get would kill me.

Kasim: 00:15:07

Right.

Kasim: 00:15:07

so a, there's that stuff.

Kasim: 00:15:08

And then I've come across people who were in really big niches and

Kasim: 00:15:12

they were trying to do the Facebook ads thing and this and that.

Kasim: 00:15:15

And I gave 'em the stupid advice of like, oh, just go to your Chamber

Kasim: 00:15:17

of Commerce and do this trick.

Kasim: 00:15:19

And a couple of them were nutty enough to follow my advice and I've subsequently

Kasim: 00:15:22

followed up with them and they're like, I'm like, how are things going?

Kasim: 00:15:24

I'm like, it's amazing.

Kasim: 00:15:26

My life is radically changed.

Kasim: 00:15:28

And it's simply because they're dealing with local businesses who they can

Kasim: 00:15:32

connect with, who really appreciate them and they're being really successful

Kasim: 00:15:36

was whereas before they were drowning.

Kasim: 00:15:38

Dude, it's nuts.

Kasim: 00:15:38

If you go to your local B N I, I don't even like B N I, by the way.

Kasim: 00:15:41

Like I'm not, yeah.

Kasim: 00:15:41

Nobody likes this stuff.

Kasim: 00:15:42

It just works.

Kasim: 00:15:43

But yeah, if you wanted to start something, roll up high level, go to

Kasim: 00:15:47

your local B n I help people install follow-up sequences in their business.

Kasim: 00:15:50

That's it.

Kasim: 00:15:50

Bam.

Kasim: 00:15:51

You have an agency.

Kasim: 00:15:51

Totally.

Kasim: 00:15:52

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:15:52

I mean, always.

Kasim: 00:15:53

People always ask me like, oh, well, what feature?

Kasim: 00:15:54

I'm like, missed call, text back.

Kasim: 00:15:55

I just, my favorite.

Kasim: 00:15:56

because you can tell the story.

Kasim: 00:15:57

Like have you ever called a business and had 'em not pick up when you

Kasim: 00:16:00

were trying to buy something?

Kasim: 00:16:00

Yeah, all the time.

Kasim: 00:16:01

Bingo, There's your opportunity, right?

Kasim: 00:16:03

And how many of those, and I was like, how?

Kasim: 00:16:04

And it's really easy, the math, like how many of those missed calls for a business

Kasim: 00:16:08

do you think you need to turn into a customer to pay you 300 bucks a month?

Kasim: 00:16:11

And for most businesses it's about one.

Kasim: 00:16:13

maybe it's two, , the flower shop or something.

Kasim: 00:16:15

Maybe it's six.

Kasim: 00:16:15

I probably wouldn't sell to the flower shop, although you can.

Kasim: 00:16:18

again, for most businesses it's one or two.

Kasim: 00:16:19

And what do we know?

Kasim: 00:16:20

We know these people miss like a hundred calls easy every month.

Kasim: 00:16:23

People get calls all the time and they're out doing what they do.

Kasim: 00:16:26

So it's very simple and again, it's just not sexy, which is why it , there

Kasim: 00:16:30

are very few coaches that coach it and very few ads that pitch it.

Kasim: 00:16:33

'cause everyone's like, wait, isn't that easy?

Kasim: 00:16:35

And the answer is like, yeah, it is actually pretty easy.

Kasim: 00:16:38

You ever play with the Swiss Army pocket knife?

Kasim: 00:16:39

Heck yeah, man.

Kasim: 00:16:40

Who didn't have a Swiss Army knife.

Kasim: 00:16:41

All right, good.

Kasim: 00:16:42

loved Swiss Army knives as a kid.

Kasim: 00:16:43

I used to collect them.

Kasim: 00:16:44

you get to a point to where there's a Swiss Army knife that gets so thick

Kasim: 00:16:47

it doesn't fit in your pocket true.

Kasim: 00:16:48

You know what I mean?

Kasim: 00:16:48

Like, it's just like, there's just too much shit on this.

Kasim: 00:16:50

Yeah, When do you.

Kasim: 00:16:51

Cry uncle, like when does high level have too many features?

Kasim: 00:16:53

It's unwieldy.

Kasim: 00:16:54

It no longer fits in my pocket.

Kasim: 00:16:55

\ Well, actually,, a couple of things.

Kasim: 00:16:56

So from a practical standpoint, as an agency, we're already there.

Kasim: 00:16:59

the biggest mistake people make coming in the door is they

Kasim: 00:17:00

think they need to learn it all.

Kasim: 00:17:01

Right?

Kasim: 00:17:01

Right.

Kasim: 00:17:02

I sort of say like, it's trying to eat the whale, it's not gonna work.

Kasim: 00:17:04

so we're already there from that practical sense.

Kasim: 00:17:05

Now, what's cool from a feature standpoint on my end is I

Kasim: 00:17:09

think that we are, big rocks.

Kasim: 00:17:11

Big rocks.

Kasim: 00:17:12

Were small rocks, right?

Kasim: 00:17:13

So big features, I'd say we're probably two quarters away after this quarter

Kasim: 00:17:18

I'm probably missing something, but maybe let's just call it two

Kasim: 00:17:20

quarters away from all the big rocks.

Kasim: 00:17:22

Basically where if you give me a business, I can show you how

Kasim: 00:17:25

to run that business end to end.

Kasim: 00:17:27

From high level now, things will come along, things will change.

Kasim: 00:17:29

Like there'll be new social media networks or there'll be new forms of communication,

Kasim: 00:17:33

this or that, blah, blah, blah.

Kasim: 00:17:34

but they'll add into an existing construct.

Kasim: 00:17:37

And my goal, my mission is that for every, small business, medium business,

Kasim: 00:17:41

like I'm talking the the 30 million small businesses in the United States, which is

Kasim: 00:17:45

the vast majority of, business, 7.5% or something, whatever it is, 90%, we can run

Kasim: 00:17:50

those businesses in the app end to end.

Kasim: 00:17:52

That's kind of the mission.

Kasim: 00:17:53

And there'll be some like, let's go back to the dentist example.

Kasim: 00:17:56

I don't think we'll have that tooth picker thing ever, but Yeah.

Kasim: 00:17:59

The periodontal chart.

Kasim: 00:18:00

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:18:00

But I mean, I think at the end of the day, like that's,

Kasim: 00:18:02

probably where we'll leave off.

Kasim: 00:18:03

But the nice thing is even there, to be honest though, I think this is why we have

Kasim: 00:18:06

a great open a p I and we love developers and integrations because I do think

Kasim: 00:18:10

actually what will happen in a practical sense is we'll link up with medical, HR

Kasim: 00:18:13

and dental specific stuff and we'll help those people actually acquire customers.

Kasim: 00:18:18

And the agencies again, who are sapr, will just plug two solutions together.

Kasim: 00:18:22

And those are in very niche specific instances.

Kasim: 00:18:26

Where we wouldn't wanna play probably anyways.

Kasim: 00:18:29

So I guess that's kind of the way I think about it.

Kasim: 00:18:32

the high level web builder, just outta curiosity, is that on the

Kasim: 00:18:34

vine, are you gonna rebuild?

Kasim: 00:18:36

Is that We just came out with a brand new UI for it.

Kasim: 00:18:39

Did you?

Kasim: 00:18:40

Yeah, it's in you turned it on in labs and all that good stuff.

Kasim: 00:18:42

No, actually, in fact, what's really cool about the builders,

Kasim: 00:18:45

we've unified the experience.

Kasim: 00:18:47

So the builder from.

Kasim: 00:18:48

And you're seeing this roll out.

Kasim: 00:18:49

But basically think about it like this, the builder for the the email

Kasim: 00:18:51

builder, the blog builder the website builder, the funnel builder and

Kasim: 00:18:56

there's something else in there.

Kasim: 00:18:57

Memberships proposals and estimates.

Kasim: 00:18:59

All of those builders are all sort of essentially becoming a unified builder.

Kasim: 00:19:04

So from a ui ux experience, they'll be the same.

Kasim: 00:19:06

Obviously they have different components and this and that.

Kasim: 00:19:08

But yeah, we've radically upgraded that recently and we're kind of going through

Kasim: 00:19:12

that motion right now and slowly deploying it out to various parts of the app.

Kasim: 00:19:16

Dude, I gotta pay more attention.

Kasim: 00:19:17

That was my only beef ever with the high level feature set is I just didn't like

Kasim: 00:19:21

the web builder now that you saw problem.

Kasim: 00:19:24

Yeah, I'm all in now.

Kasim: 00:19:25

I, I'm clearly I need to join the cult.

Kasim: 00:19:27

I'll get the shoes.

Kasim: 00:19:28

That's right.

Kasim: 00:19:28

You gotta drink the Kool-Aid, man.

Kasim: 00:19:29

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:19:30

How do we help you, Sean?

Kasim: 00:19:31

Somebody's watching this.

Kasim: 00:19:32

They want to back the high level play, become an affiliate, is one.

Kasim: 00:19:35

I'd say who, like, who are you and what do you want to do?

Kasim: 00:19:37

Like, so do you know a lot of 50% of my, my audience are agencies?

Kasim: 00:19:40

I mean, obviously the affiliate side is great.

Kasim: 00:19:42

If if you know other agencies, you should definitely affiliate.

Kasim: 00:19:44

But if you're an agency, you should become a sapr, because what I would still say

Kasim: 00:19:48

is, Even outside of high level, quite frankly, I think if you look at the

Kasim: 00:19:52

way the world is going, being a pure play service business is just tough.

Kasim: 00:19:56

it's always been tough, but I think it continues to get tougher.

Kasim: 00:19:58

And if anything, technology is very much against you.

Kasim: 00:20:00

Like you could see like on the website side, right?

Kasim: 00:20:03

There's all these people today that are doing like AI website builders, right?

Kasim: 00:20:06

And today, I'll be honest, they're terrible.

Kasim: 00:20:09

In my opinion, the ones I've seen, although ironically enough, of course

Kasim: 00:20:11

we're working on one too, but but the realities, they're gonna get

Kasim: 00:20:14

there, They're gonna get good fast.

Kasim: 00:20:15

Yeah, really good fast.

Kasim: 00:20:17

We've already rolled out, we just rolled out AI image creation.

Kasim: 00:20:20

In high level.

Kasim: 00:20:20

We already have AI copy.

Kasim: 00:20:22

We'll have an AI bot here actually at the end of this quarter.

Kasim: 00:20:24

So in two weeks.

Kasim: 00:20:25

what are we doing?

Kasim: 00:20:26

We're arming, we're continuing to arm people with tools that help,

Kasim: 00:20:29

and in our case, it's agencies.

Kasim: 00:20:31

Help them create things faster.

Kasim: 00:20:32

But this really starts to grind back against the service business model.

Kasim: 00:20:36

Anyways, this is what I would say is like really understand that and

Kasim: 00:20:40

really figure out your solution.

Kasim: 00:20:41

I would say of course, become a saer 'cause I'm biased.

Kasim: 00:20:44

But you need a model that is, you're selling a box product and if you're

Kasim: 00:20:47

selling services and you're doing a lot of custom creation of stuff, ooh, watch out.

Kasim: 00:20:52

Because I think AI has a, big play there.

Kasim: 00:20:54

And I think eventually most businesses are gonna expect.

Kasim: 00:20:57

A fully built website with copy, with custom graphics and everything

Kasim: 00:21:01

else, all built in about 60 seconds.

Kasim: 00:21:03

Just describing it into a box.

Kasim: 00:21:05

And then if anything, we're gonna even go beyond that where you don't even

Kasim: 00:21:08

have to know really how to describe it because someone else will somehow figure

Kasim: 00:21:12

out how to help you do that as well.

Kasim: 00:21:14

There's already prompt libraries for chat.

Kasim: 00:21:16

G P T.

Kasim: 00:21:16

There you go.

Kasim: 00:21:16

You can pick a couple bucks.

Kasim: 00:21:17

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:21:17

It's unbelievable.

Kasim: 00:21:18

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:21:18

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:21:18

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:21:18

and so I think that's kind of where we head, and again, I still think

Kasim: 00:21:21

that creates opportunity for agencies.

Kasim: 00:21:23

it's just about selling a different product, and again, I don't think

Kasim: 00:21:25

AI is a solve all for problems.

Kasim: 00:21:28

It just solves some problems really well.

Kasim: 00:21:30

And I think it should make this model more efficient and better and easier.

Kasim: 00:21:35

Because you can focus on the things that AI can't do, which is

Kasim: 00:21:37

quite honestly sitting down and helping people achieve things.

Kasim: 00:21:41

Not necessarily sitting at your desk like drawing something in

Kasim: 00:21:44

Photoshop or you know, copywriting, copy Smith, you know, wordsmithing.

Kasim: 00:21:48

There it is, wordsmithing something or you know what I mean, like less of

Kasim: 00:21:51

the old school put it together kind of methodology that will just be automated.

Kasim: 00:21:55

And then you can sort of focus on the more practical sense of, all right, we

Kasim: 00:21:57

got the website, that's great, but now how do we get people to visit it and what do

Kasim: 00:22:01

we do when they get there and how do we make sure that when they get there that

Kasim: 00:22:03

we capture them and then we automatically follow up with them and this and that.

Kasim: 00:22:06

That's where the, in my opinion, the future goes.

Kasim: 00:22:09

Yeah, I have my affiliate link in the description, so make

Kasim: 00:22:11

sure you use my affiliate link.

Kasim: 00:22:13

Absolutely.

Kasim: 00:22:14

If you're gonna share a link, make sure you share my affiliate link.

Kasim: 00:22:16

That's right.

Kasim: 00:22:17

Sean, you've got a big event coming up, right?

Kasim: 00:22:19

Heck yeah.

Kasim: 00:22:20

Well we have, yeah.

Kasim: 00:22:20

So we have actually a sold out event next week, but we have

Kasim: 00:22:23

our annual event in October.

Kasim: 00:22:25

So it's the Level Up event.

Kasim: 00:22:26

And what's fun about this event?

Kasim: 00:22:28

So we did it for our first time last year and it was perfect.

Kasim: 00:22:31

So we're not gonna do anything different.

Kasim: 00:22:32

Which is we sold out, so we're not gonna increase capacity 'cause that's good.

Kasim: 00:22:36

the way we did this event is really simple.

Kasim: 00:22:38

We made it so that it's not about us.

Kasim: 00:22:40

So the goal was can we bring the most amazing marketing sort of people to this

Kasim: 00:22:46

event where it's like so, so many great speakers and so many great attendees that

Kasim: 00:22:50

if you don't even know who we are or like us, you'll show up just, for those people.

Kasim: 00:22:54

And, and actually that's what happened this last year was great.

Kasim: 00:22:56

I met some people who were like, I kind of had heard about you guys, but

Kasim: 00:22:59

I didn't really know what you did.

Kasim: 00:23:00

But then I found out so-and-so was gonna be there.

Kasim: 00:23:02

So I came and I was like, that's perfect.

Kasim: 00:23:04

And it's small enough that whoever that big speaker is on

Kasim: 00:23:07

stage, They're also gonna be at the bar after their talk, right?

Kasim: 00:23:10

So you actually meet them and talk to them and have a meaningful conversation

Kasim: 00:23:13

with them versus some 5,000 person event where, those speakers just wanna

Kasim: 00:23:17

come in, do their thing and get the heck out because it's a zoo anyways,

Kasim: 00:23:20

and they're just not interested and it's not, cohesive and not fun.

Kasim: 00:23:24

That's awesome.

Kasim: 00:23:24

If people wanna attend the event, where do they go?

Kasim: 00:23:26

go high level, level up something Level up dot go.

Kasim: 00:23:29

We'll have a link in the description of that too.

Kasim: 00:23:31

I'll track that.

Kasim: 00:23:31

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:23:31

Level go high level.com.

Kasim: 00:23:32

I just found it myself.

Kasim: 00:23:33

It's October 23rd, so you have plenty of time to sign up.

Kasim: 00:23:36

Yeah.

Kasim: 00:23:37

I strongly recommend that I've gotten more juice out of events than I

Kasim: 00:23:40

think any other expenditure of a day.

Kasim: 00:23:43

'cause wow.

Kasim: 00:23:44

I mean, everybody's just there and they're primed, you know what I mean?

Kasim: 00:23:47

They're kind of in that, Hey, let's connect and be open in creative mode.

Kasim: 00:23:51

Sean, super appreciate you, man.

Kasim: 00:23:52

Last words to you, sir, anything else you wanna leave our, subscribers with?

Kasim: 00:23:55

I mean, I think it's an exciting time.

Kasim: 00:23:56

, I really do.

Kasim: 00:23:57

I think there's a lot of opportunity out there, and I think that if you

Kasim: 00:23:59

are agency, it's a great opportunity because I think that AI, again, and these

Kasim: 00:24:03

technologies are not limiting your growth.

Kasim: 00:24:04

they're improving your growth.

Kasim: 00:24:06

It's just you have to reimagine how your business works and

Kasim: 00:24:08

realize that it's no longer about.

Kasim: 00:24:10

Custom bespoke work, which you hated anyways, quite frankly, because it meant

Kasim: 00:24:14

you couldn't go on vacation to a much more scalable model and being able to utilize

Kasim: 00:24:18

things and tools that, quite frankly, five minutes ago weren't available to you.

Kasim: 00:24:22

Right?

Kasim: 00:24:22

They were only available to people with a lot more money and a lot more funding,

Kasim: 00:24:25

but now they're in your hands and you can do some amazing things with them.

Kasim: 00:24:28

You just gave me a whole business idea as we're speaking.

Kasim: 00:24:31

Man, I love talking to you, Sean.

Kasim: 00:24:32

I get fired up.

Kasim: 00:24:33

What's your diet like?

Kasim: 00:24:35

Random stuff.

Kasim: 00:24:36

I mean, well, I just ate McDonald's, like I was terrible.

Kasim: 00:24:38

I would eat a Sausage Egg McMuffin meal in the morning and then two hours later

Kasim: 00:24:42

I'd walk back and I'd get another one, and then I would have Taco Bell for

Kasim: 00:24:46

lunch and then Taco Bell for dinner.

Kasim: 00:24:47

But that's just 'cause I'm lazy.

Kasim: 00:24:48

But then eventually I started to get a little overweight.

Kasim: 00:24:50

And so when I met my wife, lucky for me she helped me change all that.

Kasim: 00:24:53

But now I would say I live in Eugene, Oregon.

Kasim: 00:24:55

We're a bunch of crunchy granola folks around here, so I eat a lot of like.

Kasim: 00:24:58

beans and rice and avocados.

Kasim: 00:25:01

A lot more vegetables than I used to.

Kasim: 00:25:02

A lot less meat than I used to.

Kasim: 00:25:04

But I don't really.

Kasim: 00:25:05

I don't really ascribe to any specific particular diet.

Kasim: 00:25:08

where's your energy come from, dude?

Kasim: 00:25:09

Because I've never not seen you exactly like this.

Kasim: 00:25:12

Oh well, I mean, I get excited about what I'm doing.

Kasim: 00:25:14

I mean, I would say being part of this and watching change happen

Kasim: 00:25:18

in the world and being able to be part of someone's story of that.

Kasim: 00:25:21

To me is very exhilarating.

Kasim: 00:25:22

And it's always what I hope to do in my life.

Kasim: 00:25:24

you know, it's not perfect every day.

Kasim: 00:25:26

It has its ups, it has its downs but at the same time, net, you see so many people

Kasim: 00:25:31

having really positive outcomes in their life because of something you're part of.

Kasim: 00:25:34

And don't know, that's really pretty cool and it kind of keeps you going.

Kasim: 00:25:38

Yeah, that's inspiring.

Kasim: 00:25:39

Sean Clark, the co-founder of Go High level, right?

Kasim: 00:25:43

Always a pleasure, brother.

Kasim: 00:25:44

I hope I get to have you back.

Kasim: 00:25:46

yeah.

Kasim: 00:25:46

If there's anything I can do for you, Sean I feel like me and the

Kasim: 00:25:49

rest of the entrepreneurial world owe you one, so I don't think so.

Kasim: 00:25:53

If you're watching, I shoot a video every day, like come and

Kasim: 00:25:55

subscribe and I'll see you tomorrow.