Community-Driven SaaS: GoHighLevel CEO Shaun Clark Discusses Human Connection In Business

we're changing the way software is sold it's never been done before if you're an agency owner you probably heard of go high level there's a software called high level today I am psyched to be joined by Charlie Morgan on the go high level high level is perfect for you it's called high level of go high level it is part of our ethos without our community we wouldn't be here so what we did instead is say okay well what we're going to do is we're going to go with the human first and just import them into your B high level of he and human beings value connection with other human beings over and above and one of the things I noticed is um you mentioned earlier that you inspired by your co-founders um could you tell us more about how you met them and how do you guys like decid to part up sure yeah so uh my first co-founder and CTO uh run he and I I hired him for his first job 12 years ago and uh I worked with him relentlessly for five years and then he quit and went someplace else um and then we lost touch and we reconnected um and so you know we and then oh and then from there we we we we built a bunch of stuff while I was still running invoy Shera and I got to kind of watch his work ethic and his commitment and see that he was still always the person that I had known him to be so again let test the time right um I saw him when he was younger I saw him was a little older and he was still just as fired up as always and uh just as hardworking as always so I love that um and our third co-founder you know it started with a coold call and um but you know it was literally years of him for free literally for free so no equity no pay uh the fact that I would say it was it was better than free because he was literally running a marketing agency but he kind of shelled that I mean he still kept it running but he was paying his own personal money and time to travel all around with me promoting high level with no prise of anything um and it was really a testament to his character um so again you know while not as much I didn't know him as long as I I I knew Veron it it was an incredibly extraordinary sort of commitment and he not only worked really hard but he you he he he gave us every connection that he'd ever made over a lifetime of being in the ageny space uh it was a and it was a great example of the type of thing I would recommend people do and it's hard right because he had to take a risk on us just as we had to take a risk on him right but it you know for for us it got to a point where it was just embarrassing like I can't believe we have give this guy Equity you know we should quickly solve that um so we did but you know it it's uh you know it depends it could be a long time or could be a big sacrifice but it's also something to be very wary of I cannot tell you how many people I've met who you know I I I think of it like falling a lot like you know there's that effervescent initial period oh we're going to partner together G to be 5050 and we're gonna da d da and then literally a year later they hate each other so you know um my only my only my only piece of advice there is you know plan for the divorce before the marriage make sure that it's very much documented who gets what and how it's all going to break up if it breaks up and and all that so that way if it happens uh you're ready for it um but you know outside of that maybe just don't get into partnership too quick until say you've got a lot of uh history with that person there are many companies that uh that struggle to almost build an ecosystem where they can attract top talent have have you done it so with your co-founders and you attract people to even work for free how have you managed to build that ecosystem up L only happen with a co-founder guy up front don't don't get me wrong but um but we certainly had people work for us for way less money than they could have made elsewhere um but I think that's part of it right so like it's all about the journey I mean we we are here because we do things differently at least that's the way I perceive it and we try to look for people who are sort of Misfits like us I mean I think that's half the fun of it I mean I found I've I've I often say the better the LinkedIn resume the worse the person for us um you know I think what all of us all of us experience this right and you know you go out in life and it starts from early shood you get into school and you're sure of told like there's this grading system and you follow the rules and you get you get a good grade it's it's imprinting right and and and if you just s tail it out the further you go the the the the more stuck in you get and so and then if you think about changing the world change the world is about taking it was about doing something that is radically different um because you believe in it and because you think it's better um and but I will tell you it is also it is also the path of mockery and uh suain um just people there's if you think about it we're sort of um think about it as a species okay we're we're a tribal species so if you go back fast far enough the reason we didn't all die because we got eaten by lions and tigers and bears is because we we were tribal right we fed up we grouped up that's the way in which we were able to overcome Superior um species that were equipped to kill us all that holds very strong in our history and as you pull forward right yeah maybe it's not lines and tigers and bears but we still have that all imprinted in us so when you try to go off and do something different and and new you're like saying I want to leave the village and go live by myself like people like don't do that you're going to get killed by the lion or the Tiger or the bear and so in this day and age what that needs for a lot of people is they just get put down when they say we're I'm going to go do something weird and and different so uh for us um that certainly was the journey and continues to be in oddly um but you know you you kind of like that because then it helps you hire better look for The Misfits like look for the other people are weird like you uh and you tend to find the better people the people have the better resumes they tend to be the more you know stuck in their ways and the people who are going to kind of bring baggage and like sort of some more traditional methodology of whatever um and honestly that's not how you change the world that's that's that's the past not the future how did you deal with the criticism yourself like did it impact you a lot at the beginning or what criticism people saying oh you may fail you may not um accomplish what you want well this happens all the time this doesn't change just because you're super successful and you you're kicking butt don't worry there'll always be some haters out there that's how that that's how life Works uh oh no I take it super personally and it hurts my feelings but you know uh at some point you just you just got to keep pressing forward I mean it's not it's not it doesn't I mean for me anyways it does I mean I've met people by the way who say it doesn't impact the at all and I and I always Envy those people but that's not me I mean I I I I I don't like getting put down myself but you know uh but it doesn't ju but you know it's sort of one of those things where just because it just because people do it just because they just because it hurts it doesn't mean they're right just you know just because they're kind of jerks but you know at some point you have to decide like who you want to be right what type of conviction do you want to have like are you and are you going to succumb to the crowd and and to the opinions of others or are you going to chart your own course um and again just look at any other Innovation that's come before at some point that person was a weirdo or a freak or wrong or crazy or whatever um you know and that's just how it goes in fact I mean there's all kinds of great stories right like famous artists who you know they weren't famous until after they were long dead but before that they were just nut nut jobs who you know people thought were untalented hacks right um so you know lucky for me I I didn't have to I didn't die before um I I found some suc you talk a lot about uh changing the world has that always been a vision you've had do something that's that changes the world sure why why the heck else to do it I I I could have gotten paid a lot more this whole time I mean up until recently probably but uh to to to not I mean plus it's just fun to do things you want to do I don't know I mean I don't like tiing I don't like being told what to do so that's never gone well with me so I just never figured I'd work out well in traditional employment and so it's much more fun to T your own force and when you do you get an opportunity to paint your own picture right and so you get to decide how how you want to see the world and go at it that way and and so long as I think that you keep in mind that your mission is to help others and you really keep that as your North Star you can you can change the world for the better and I mean I'm not putting rockets on the moon don't get me wrong I'm not confused on that point I'm not saving anyone's life but I do think we're changing the way of software sold and the way in which uh businesses are using these tools and the way in which this is getting out to the world and I think we're democratizing it in a way that it's never been done before and helping people uh in a way that's never been done before and to that to that extent I'm thrilled I have an opportunity to do it what does goai level have prepared for his for its users in the near future this is always the this is always the best question the boring answer because it's like more of the same man it's like going to see we don't we don't wake up every day and think you know what we're we're Super Smart Genius people you know what we're going to do today we're going to use our genius to tell our customers what they should expect that's never how we've operated and never how how we will operate we're do the same thing well we're did I'm just going to turn that on you and be like hey man you tell me what up what do we need to do for you and that's how we're going to operate now I can say things like well we're going to come out with you know ad publishing next week and you know uh you know we we were coming out with f of objects this this quarter and we're going to do inbound voice AI here by the end of the quarter and you know all kinds of things right but none of those are driven off of our brght ideas all those were driven off the Brad ideas of our customers so you know what we're going to do is continue to watch the world evolve and watch our customers who we who we very much feel are the experts at their craft and we're going to do what we've always done which is align our resources behind what's important to them and make sure that as as these innovations that are out in the world become things that they actually can use to help their customers we're making them part of the system we're making them seamless we're making them easy and just adding them to the toolkit so they can always rely on us as that One-Stop shop for all the things they need in order to do what it is that they do to change the world well I've heard you talk a lot about customer service is almost as important as um as a product itself how have you like implemented that in go high level to have such a strong customer service first of all I told you I used to do all the onboarding calls myself so when the CEO does onboarding calls and you you get hired as the first customer supp person it's hard for you to say that's not important and then when the CEO continues to talk to customers years later when he or she doesn't have to you also can never say it's not important so the first thing is you need to you need to demonstrate what you think is important every single day I think people look look to their leaders to demonstrate the value as much as talk about it so that's important second I mean I would say that I I'm a big pattern guy so I try to look for things in the world that I feel like have the same Spirit of what we're trying to achieve and then I just copy it because the other thing is I'm not very original so I'm not a very good original ideas guy I'm a very good hey that looks like a good idea let me use that idea kind of guy so on customer service one thing I noticed was um early on we have like a one to many problem right so like we have a lot of people signing up every day but how do you make sure they all get personalized service and support and one of the things I noticed is human beings value connections with other human beings over and above actual Solutions and what I mean by that is when you have a problem whether you intu it this or not what you're really looking for first and foremost is empathy you know yes you want your problem solved but if you had to choose between a person coming out and saying I really care about you I want to help you I want to get your problem solved or a support article saying that uh uh giving you all the answers most people you know while if you ask them that question they would say they take the support article but if you actually put that into an experiment in real life they want the human being the human being will give them a net uh piece of satisfaction and and and in then in reality getting support articles to people that are perfect having them go through them having them pay attention to all the details it's a very hard practice so what we did instead is say okay well what we're going to do is we're going to go with the human first so we looked for models in the world where we could connect people to people as fast as possible and so for me um there's I looked for like there's a cell phone store or brand here in the US called verzen you you uh and then like the the local cable company as a similar model but basically you walk into the store and they have a one to many issue too right so let's let's say you want to buy a phone or your phone's not working or whatever they only have so many employees right so what do they do what they what they did is they had this greeter so the second you walk in they're like oh hey welcome to the store let me get you all checked in so we can help you out so the immediacy of connectivity there huge now once they check you in you're you're still going to wait like 30 40 minutes to get held but there's a but there's a there's a big difference instead of saying like take a number go sit down and shut up they've given you the time of day they've told you that they care they're trying to they're trying to they're trying to get across to you look we want to help you they give you time expectations they do give you some value but more more than anything they you this this just sort of feeling and so we did the same thing with h we said all right how could we replicate this virtually and so we have like a zoom room that when you join you're immediately gred by Versa and their mission is to check you in um and tell you that we care and then you hang out in the lobby with a bunch of other customers like you would at the store and you get and thing is there's some social interaction right so instead of just sitting on hold like we value your call please stay on hold for another who the heck knows how long right you just start chatting with other people hey oh you're an agency owner what do you do or how do you use H whatever right so you just you have a more interesting experience and a more pleasant experience while you're waiting for that inevitable time that still takes just as long but you don't have to sit there alone by yourself wondering if someone actually cares and listening to some recording so for me that was super important for us to put put in place and and has been tremendous help to us it's difficult for like very technical people to to understand that sometimes the the most cost effective solution instead of trying to speed up your product make it better is actually making the customer support better I mean I think at the end of the day what what people need to realize is that everything is as sufficiently complex as it is like there's some band there but there's there's only so so much you can do to make something easier at some point everything has a learning curve and how we get through learning curves Can Depend right but if we think back on on our best teachers they tended to be the ones we felt like care about us the most wanted us to achieve the most wanted us to learn the most um they didn't fundamentally make the learning you know they made the learning more interesting or more bearable or more enjoyable but they didn't fundamentally remove the learning it was about how we went through the learning that mattered right and the things that we probably learned the best and and know the best and achieve the highest grades on or whatever probably tended to have the better teachers because you know again the the the thing you got to learn is the same it's just who the heck is bringing me through this and and how because and when I reach those moments where I'm frustrated or I'm things are difficult like what what do I get on the other side if I get like you know if I get nothing if I get no love no appreciation no empathy no whatever I'm going to put in about that same amount of effort into learning it versus if someone's like don't worry you can do it they're very encouraging and all that I'm probably going to get less frustrated I'm going to double down I'm going to learn it better I'm going to do better right so I think it's about that approach uh that you create that is important and so for us I could never imagine doing it any differently uh just because again I think there's a learning curve there's always got to be a learning curve uh and so you know yes can we make it easier and better sure but at some point that will run a ground of there's there's there's still going to be a learning curve so how do we have empathetic Hands-On best-of class sort of experiences when it comes to uh people learning this stuff now that you were talking about a learning cve um Anon and I are both part of um community that we're currently managing uh that's for people that are building SAS products plus a community around them and so um what advice would you give someone that's getting started or thinking about starting their own SAS business nowadays I mean I mean you should probably build it on top of high level because you know we can white label never good API and you know you could uh you could get a big jump start but uh I would say you know always talk to your custom like do what I did be on every be out every call um you know do every do all the setup do all the do all the work like get in there with your customer and really fight it out because at the end of the day if you're you're going to learn a lot because that's where I learned everything about my customer and where I continue to learn about my customer um and at the end of the day that's who I serve so I don't know why I wouldn't be D person I'm trying to help and then uh two you you'll get a lot of appreciation back right um and in those and you'll create a lot of early connections with people that will last a very long time I mean I have I I consistently have people I meet in real life like at our events and things who will say oh you probably don't remember me but when I first signed up four years ago you personally help set me up so there's a lot of that kind of cool stuff as well but I mean again if at the end of the day you say look I want to start a SAS app that you're really just saying look I want to help these people using software cool what do you know about those people how are you in there every day experiencing their pain and and and their difficulties so that you can create the best solution for those things so be in there with your customer every single day that is the absolute only way in my opinion you do it what is the main thing that do goal level to to point where it's at right now like what it's is it a feature is it a specific move specific decision that you made along the way or I mean definitely to the to the agency you know going after this model of helping someone help someone else um and aligning our interests with our customers so the way I think about that is you know a lot of a lot of people I feel like create a tool and sort of say good luck I hope it all works out for you but for us we aligned our interest with our customer which for me was if our customer fails we actually fail and when you do that all of a sudden you're way more interested interested in whether they succeed and so it's not just like here's a tool good luck it's like all right here's a tool now what else can I do to help can I create coures can I create lessons can I create really great customer service like what can I do to make sure you know how to use this tool to create an outcome what's some of thing that you would suggest to people to to be able to find those problems because essentially business is solving problems and you have to be very observant to find products in the market and I've spoken to many people who said I just can't find problems what's your advice to someone who can't seem to find you're not I mean there's no way you're talking to people then you're not I mean every business has a problem every day right like every that this is like in your I think what most people do is they sort of try to hang out around the outside it's like they they don't it's like uh and they try to like read and guess and this and that like you got to talk to people like you literally have to talk to people like you have to be inquisitive and try to understand their businesses and and it doesn't always to be like hey how's it going what's your biggest problem today it could start with like hey what do you do and why is that exciting to you what is it that you like like think about this podcast like just give yourself a reason to bug business owners and ask them about things that they're interested in and invariably it those conversations will lead into all kinds of things including a lot of problems and then over time you will start to see patterns and be like oh that's interesting I've talked to a thousand types of businesses and they all have the same problem or I've talked to this type of business and that specific typee of business has this specific problem like that's how you learn these things you got to get in in conversations with people I think that's the really powerful thing about building around a community is that you can get uh those suggestions that all those feedbacks of how to improve the products add new features directly from the pool of customers you guys are young so you probably know all these things but do you guys know Costco yes we like Costco so if you know anything about Costco you know so Costco so again I'm old so Costco didn't used to sell wine and now at least in the US I believe they're the largest seller of wine in the United States and they may well be the largest seller of wine by the way in the world and how did that happen exactly because they asked their customers like hey what else do you buy and they're like oh I don't know wine and but I'll tell you when they first came out wine people like oh my God Costco sells wine that's the dumbest thing ever well let me tell you something oh that was a genius move and they didn't guess right that wasn't like oh I'm the CEO of Costco I know I'm a genius let's carry no they just ask their customers and the same thing does I mean they sell at least in the US they sell vacations they sell air conditioning systems they sell Roofing I don't know this all kinds of crap because they know their customer right they know their customer is like a homeowner right they know their customer tends to be um a married family who has kids and bl they know their customers and so they sell all the stuff their customers buy and to the extent that they change that mix it's all driven off the back of customers they don't spend a lot of time guessing and I guarantee you in fact i' I'm I've been fortunate enough to go to Costco and um different countries and even different states and it's amazing how different is like a Costco and Hawaii has a ton of Asian food because there's a lot of Asian immigrants to Hawaii versus somebody like my local Costco here in Oregon doesn't doesn't have any of that stuff and again I love it it's just customer-driven right you want to carry the things that your customers want to to to eat now personally I wish they'd move some of the Hawaiian stuff over here because it's really good but um apparently I'm other than one vote so which I'm not but maybe someday but I guarantee you go to Costco in China or any other place radically different mechs but all off the back of customers and not in your rep that's the whole point it's Community right I love it SE it's really what we think and what what we talk with on every single day that we work together we we're like more clearing this so if you had to finish this um episode giv advice one piece of advice to the people listening today what would it be oh I say go go get after it like I mean I mean if I look back on my history I wish I had started earlier and I I felt like I started pretty early but I mean I would they I would also just say anticipate anticipate failure anticipate a hell of a lot of it too um but you know you don't fail until you quit right um so I would just say you know get out there and just keep moving and moving and moving and moving and just keep continue to Pivot and and realize failure fail failure does not mean you're a failure it just means that you know something something that you're trying isn't work as you just need to try something else I mean it's just quite quite easily that that that so I mean that's probably more than one piece of advice but that's exactly what I would recommend who inspires you Sean who is someone you see and go okay if it's business or just life in general is there someone where that you look up to I mean heroes are hard to find um you know I'm big Warren Buffett fan um and Charlie wer fan Charlie just recently passed Warren will unfortunately pass at some point in the near future in his 90s um so I think from there I mean I think what is what is difficult is I think I find that Heroes tend to be closer to home than they used to be because I also think that we live in a day and an age where it's it's easier to pretend to be something you're not and so you really got to know a person to be inspired by them so you know I would say that my co-founders are very in inspirational to me um and you know I have several customers that I know very well about are inspirational to me and when I say that it's because I know not just who they are as my customer but I also know who they are as people I've hung out with them and other families like I've gotten to know them truly as who they are and I can see that you know there's no there's no pretending there there's no um you know there's no uh YouTube presence and then a totally different person um outside of that so I I find that you know as you go forward here's are incredibly important that is one thing I will say just make sure you pick the right ones because I think the ones that are super flashy and iny face tend to be the wrong ones because there there's a reason they're trying to be flashy right they're trying to sell you something cultivate an image whatever uh you know and while it it doesn't make it easy I definitely think uh finding the right ones um are is is very very very critical because as you look to take advice from people you really want to take advice from people who you know I I tend to think of them as they tend to I mean if you don't know them very well they should be really old old people tend to be like great because if you've been doing the same thing for a long time it's like why I like Warren Buffett it's like he's boring he's old you know but yet he has a great reputation he's had a great reputation for a very long time he's done the same thing for a very long time so just it's hard to you know if you've done something for a very long time it probably works right versus if somebody just recently popped into existence uh it's very hard to know maybe they're doing something in the moment that's actually incredibly impactful but is that going to sustain is that something if I adopted that habit for myself 30 years from now is that habit still going to fly I don't not so it's nice to find things that have still DET test the time so but I do think hers are very important so I I do recommend people find them just be careful um B having Heroes that are out to sell you sou play