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Hey everybody, welcome to the Approved

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Perspective Podcast powered by Approved

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Social. Super excited for today's podcast episode.

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We have Robin from Go High Level, super

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pumped to talk about with Robin about his

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product, and also let him share some

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insights into how did he get here, where

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were the struggles along the way, some of

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these things that we've, we've uncovered

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with these other podcast episodes that

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we've had super excited to have you Robin.

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Thank you for having me on. What made you say, you know what, I'm

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going to do this podcast.

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It's you, I can't say no to you. I truly appreciate it.

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So real quick intro for Robin and then

0:41

Robin, I think if you could just give

0:45

yourself a little bit of an introduction

0:45

as well.

0:48

Robin and I connected because we're both

0:48

founders of SaaS products.

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Robin has two other founders along with

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him that created high level and it's just

1:00

a fantastic marketing and sales CRM of

1:00

sorts that can power your business to do

1:06

just. tremendous things. I've seen some really, really great

1:08

testimonials for it.

1:11

And a lot of the people that we have on

1:11

this podcast, Robin, have actually been

1:15

like, Oh yeah, I use that. Uh, that's what I use in my business.

1:18

So it's really cool to see how ubiquitous

1:18

it's becoming and, and in this world

1:23

specifically, uh, you see a lot of, a lot

1:23

of interest there.

1:27

But the thing that I'll say about Robin,

1:27

it stands out the most to me is his

1:30

willingness to invest in others and spend

1:30

a lot of time doing that.

1:36

And you know, today he's got a very

1:36

successful business with lots going on.

1:41

And he is sitting down with all sorts of

1:41

folks to help me and others learn more

1:45

about the journey of being a SaaS founder.

1:48

Robin, thanks for doing that, man. I appreciate it. What made you, what made you so open to

1:50

sharing, sharing this, this wealth of

1:56

knowledge you got. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's

1:58

necessarily a wealth of knowledge.

2:01

It's more of, I'll tell you my war stories

2:01

and, you know, do what I say, not as I do.

2:09

Yeah, exactly. You know, I'm always going to open book

2:10

from that perspective.

2:13

And you know, here's what I saw and take

2:13

it, you know, if you like it or not.

2:20

And I always say, you know, it's only

2:20

worth the penny.

2:24

Penny for the call and then it's up to you

2:24

to make it worth more.

2:28

Cause words don't mean anything without

2:28

action.

2:31

But that's who we are, it's who I am and

2:31

what we've kind of translated down to our

2:36

team as well. It's just always listening and always

2:37

finding opportunities to help.

2:41

I think there are a lot of founders, a lot

2:41

of company, CEOs and things like that.

2:46

You kind of put yourself in this world of

2:46

you're supposed to provide some level of

2:51

value and then Hmm. immediately try to figure out how to be

2:53

the authority.

2:56

So much so that you get away from being

2:56

close to the customer.

2:59

You almost have to be in the ivory tower

2:59

and let your, your team handle it.

3:05

And I think that's where I see a lot of

3:05

people failing and actually it gives

3:08

opportunity for other people to come in

3:08

and provide true value.

3:11

Um, and you know, that's what's for most

3:11

of us, I hope it's what got you in the

3:17

business was helping. And so why, why find ways to get away from

3:18

that?

3:22

And so I always find that. quite interesting how people build the

3:23

narrative of, you know, you've been doing

3:27

this for so long, now it's time for me to

3:27

step away.

3:29

It's like, well, did you get in it because

3:29

you love it?

3:32

And if not, I think there's something

3:32

fundamentally wrong.

3:36

Yeah. And are you looking to, I mean, like, do

3:36

you just want to retire or did you enjoy

3:39

this whole process? Because I know for me and for you, like, I

3:40

think this is sort of what wakes us up in

3:45

the morning. What we're excited to go do is to serve

3:45

our clients and make a better product, but

3:50

also the team that we work with, the

3:50

excitement of a new problem that you're

3:54

experiencing that changes from day to day.

3:56

Like digital is changing.

3:58

AI is changing everything. Right.

4:00

So you've got a lot of things that are

4:00

happening right now.

4:03

How do we pivot to stay on top of it?

4:06

to serve our clients and at the end of the

4:06

day also continue to make a salary and pay

4:10

our employees and everything else. You have a yeah.

4:14

and I was gonna say, and you know, that's

4:14

honestly how we grow our business by being

4:17

close to the customer because we don't

4:17

have to make up anything or predict the

4:20

future. They'll tell you exactly what they need.

4:23

And when you talk to five customers and

4:23

there's kind of a consistent theme, like,

4:27

hmm, maybe I should build them because

4:27

this is what people are asking for.

4:32

And not only does it build better

4:32

adoption, builds better engagement, and

4:35

people are willing to pay you more because

4:35

you're solving a problem that they have.

4:40

Yeah, exactly. And it's funny that you bring this up

4:41

because in one of the podcast episodes

4:44

that I watched beforehand, you gave some

4:44

advice to entrepreneurs and you said, hey,

4:50

secure your first customer and let their

4:50

feedback shape the product.

4:56

And I was going to bring that up later in the episode. But because you've we've kind of naturally

4:58

gotten into it.

5:01

You know, I think that was some advice,

5:01

honestly, early on, then we started

5:04

talking where you go, hey,

5:07

Go out there and today, because you are a

5:07

smaller organization right now, go out and

5:12

talk to the people that you can talk to. You personally, as the CEO, can make the

5:14

time and effort to go have these

5:18

conversations that could be critical to

5:18

the growth and development of your

5:23

product. Instead of just sort of going forward

5:25

thinking that you got everything in line

5:28

and everyone's gonna give you the feedback

5:28

saying what the customer is wanting,

5:32

doesn't always happen. You gotta be ear to the ground.

5:35

as you're getting started with that. Well, I do wanna get into a little bit

5:37

more of this in a second, but before we

5:39

do, why don't you tell everybody just a

5:39

little bit about your story, about how you

5:44

got started here. Yeah, going back, it's almost been a

5:47

decade now, but of course, years ago,

5:53

close to 20 years ago, entrepreneur sold a

5:53

company at the age of 18.

5:59

Didn't realize I was actually creating a

5:59

quote unquote an exit, but had to sell a

6:03

company. It was an online game server company and

6:04

within college and my parents were like,

6:07

yeah, this internet money is not real. Stop it, get out of it.

6:11

And I was just like, well, I have customers and stuff. Let me sell it to somebody else so that I

6:13

can keep on with school.

6:16

But you know, from there working for

6:16

different.

6:19

they said, hey, here's the deal. You've got it.

6:21

We'll keep helping you with school or

6:21

whatever it was, but you got to get out of

6:24

this business. Is that what happened? And it wasn't even so much so of we're

6:26

going to keep helping you if you're in

6:30

school. Why are you doing other?

6:33

Yeah, you need to be focused on school. You know, I am Indian and so we definitely

6:35

have a strong parental advisement in

6:42

education. You know, either you need to be an

6:42

attorney, you need to be a doctor, you

6:45

need to be a nurse, engineer.

6:48

Aside of that, there's really nothing else

6:48

that exists.

6:50

You know, entrepreneurship, you know,

6:50

while that's great, only, you know.

6:55

only the Bill Gates of the world do it or

6:55

the Mark Zuckerberg, right?

6:58

You're not one of those individuals. So it wasn't something that they

7:00

necessarily looked down upon, they just

7:04

thought it's a safer bet. Being the engineer or whatever, so focus

7:06

on that. And when I was in school, you know,

7:08

internet money wasn't a thing, or at least

7:15

common, common thing, right? Like it was before influencers exist, it

7:17

was before Instagram, it was, you know,

7:22

there wasn't a lot of stuff online. and internet money was kind of fake in a

7:24

way.

7:28

And so, you know, from.

7:30

would point to Amazon and be like, it's

7:30

still taking so many losses.

7:33

I don't understand it. You know, okay. Yeah.

7:41

it's definitely a different time but from

7:41

there, you know, I sure work for different

7:44

companies was a DJ for a little while but

7:44

then you know somehow landed into some

7:50

marketing and Originally it was you know,

7:50

I was in IT.

7:54

I'm sorry. I have the new Apple Emojis or whatever

7:55

But but you know when I was doing IT

8:04

for different companies, I would also get

8:04

asked, hey, we're doing a big investment

8:08

in technology, not only are we spending

8:08

hundreds of thousands of dollars in new

8:10

servers, we're trying to update our online

8:10

presence because that's where the world is

8:15

shifting to. Can you look at these quotes?

8:17

Can you give us your feedback and stuff like that? And I just looked at it and was like, wow,

8:18

just a basic website for $30,000 or a

8:23

quick database? You know, is it like high ticket?

8:26

And you know, it's like, well, I could do

8:26

it for the same price and you already know

8:29

me, I already had that relationship for a

8:29

little bit less so I can come in on a

8:32

discount. And so I just slowly pick up these

8:33

projects and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

8:38

Um, you know, not only was I helping on

8:38

the tech side, I was really helping, you

8:42

know, from a digital marketing

8:42

perspective, really helping their online

8:45

brand. And so it was a very symbiotic

8:46

relationship. Um, didn't know what I was getting into

8:47

cause you get into scope creep.

8:51

There's a lot of create, you know,

8:51

creative opinions that go along the way.

8:55

Um, but you know, I enjoyed it for the

8:55

first couple, couple of projects, but you

8:59

run into the problem of feast and famine.

9:02

Right? You get a couple of projects and then once

9:02

it's done, it's done.

9:06

Even with scope creep and, and you know,

9:06

you don't realize how much you're losing

9:10

and things like that, but it was fun. But then when there's nothing lined up,

9:12

you're just like, yeah, you're just

9:15

looking around like, where do I go next? Um, and then from there, it was like,

9:18

well, what can I do?

9:21

Um, and that's when I realized like, if

9:21

you can get to the top of the, the funnel,

9:26

um, or as close as you can to the revenue

9:26

line is what I like to call it.

9:30

the likelihood of you having more of a

9:30

consistent business is actually a lot

9:33

easier than you going out because I'm not

9:33

really the salesperson, I'm more the

9:38

relationship person. So I had existing relationships.

9:41

I've already built out their projects. What else can I do?

9:44

Can I just help them get more customers? Can I get to that revenue line?

9:47

That's where I got into a little bit of

9:47

consulting as well as doing the Facebook

9:50

ads, Google ads, all those different

9:50

things, SEO.

9:55

And then I ran into another stumbling

9:55

block on.

9:58

These relationships I've built, they're

9:58

the best in their own industry.

10:02

They're going to be the best at being a dentist. They're going to be the best at being a

10:04

flower shop owner.

10:06

They know how to make bouquets. They know how to fix cars, but when it

10:08

comes to sales, very similarly, they're

10:13

really good at relationships. So referrals, they win.

10:16

But when you're doing cold marketing, they

10:16

don't know how to pick up the phone call

10:19

and ask for a sale. They don't know how to just pick up a

10:21

phone call and ask the customer, Hey, I

10:24

know that you're interested. Why don't we get you booked in?

10:27

So. It was an interesting point of, you know,

10:29

do we consistently go find new customers

10:33

or do we continue down the consulting path

10:33

that really helped them?

10:36

And really the consulting path was the

10:36

path that I went down.

10:40

And I remember sitting in a conference

10:40

room with my team of like, if we could

10:43

just build a software, we're building all

10:43

these automations out, but it's doing half

10:47

the work. Can we go beyond that?

10:51

And, uh, you know, we mapped out this idea

10:51

of a software product and, uh, we left it

10:56

on the whiteboard because he said, Oh, got to get back on calls, we got more

10:57

customers to deal with.

11:01

And maybe about two or three months later,

11:01

I got a call from today and my two other

11:08

co-founders. And well, it was actually a co-customer

11:09

who reached out to me saying, hey, these

11:13

two guys, they're trying to launch a new software. They really don't know what they're asking

11:15

for.

11:17

I don't know what they're asking for. They're asking for login and passwords.

11:20

I don't have it, you guys have it. Can you just call them and help them get

11:21

it scored away?

11:23

So I called them, we got it all figured out. And then I just started talking to them.

11:27

And we really hit it off on that

11:27

conversation.

11:29

And I was like, well, hey, what will have you want? Can you guys look at this idea?

11:32

Do you guys think there's anything here? What do you guys think?

11:36

How much would you guys budget for

11:36

something like this?

11:39

And they gave me an interesting response

11:39

saying, give us a couple of days, we'll

11:42

call you back. And I just kind of brushed it off because

11:44

I didn't know, when you talk to another,

11:49

someone who doesn't know the other person

11:49

on the line, maybe they represent a big

11:53

company, maybe they have a big team. Maybe I was just talking to the product

11:54

manager. I didn't...

11:56

really do a background on who they are,

11:56

what their initiatives are.

12:00

And they just said, give us a couple of

12:00

days, we'll call you back.

12:03

So I thought maybe they needed to run up

12:03

the ladder or they were gonna refer me to

12:07

someone else. You know, like, I just assumed everyone is

12:08

doing their own thing.

12:11

And then 8 a.m., three or four days later,

12:11

I got a call as I'm driving to the office.

12:16

It's like, hey dude, this is Sean. I was hoping we could jump on a call, I

12:18

wanna show you something.

12:20

I was like, well wait, who is this again?

12:22

What are we talking, like I just forgot

12:22

about it, right?

12:25

And then what the kind of thing was like,

12:25

give me 20 minutes to get into the office,

12:29

get situated, I'll call you back. I forgot.

12:32

And I'm in a conference room with a team

12:32

and we're just getting through our morning

12:36

huddles and stuff like that. And he calls me again. He's like, hey, you promised you were

12:38

gonna call me back.

12:40

What happened? Like, oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot.

12:43

Hopped on the computer and yeah, exactly,

12:43

right?

12:47

And he was persistent and got on a call

12:47

and had built out.

12:52

You know, they had a lot of the pieces,

12:52

but it's more of how you use the pieces

12:55

and how you formalize it.

12:58

And, um, that was kind of the first

12:58

version of high level, um, and the sense

13:03

of what's there today. that conversation and basically said, I

13:04

know how we can make this happen.

13:10

Let's go do like a basic MVP and just sort

13:10

of, even without even really going into a

13:16

whole lot of detail with you about it, right? Like they didn't, y'all didn't have any

13:17

other meetings. This was, they just ran with it.

13:21

it. Yeah, I mean, it was very simple in what I

13:21

was asking for.

13:26

Not too complicated or anything like that,

13:26

but yeah, they built it and created a

13:31

couple of, you know, a basic version. And to this day, we still follow this

13:33

method.

13:35

We call it the skateboard model, and you

13:35

can actually Google it.

13:38

There's actually a lot of people who have

13:38

written about it, but it's basically

13:41

saying, how fast can you build a

13:41

skateboard so that someone can get on it

13:45

and get from point A to point B? Because...

13:48

The second that you get someone on there,

13:48

you'll realize what's working and what's

13:50

not. And you continue building the handlebars,

13:51

you put bigger wheels on there and

13:54

eventually it'll turn into a race car. But you can't get there until you get

13:57

someone on it.

14:01

And at that point it was like, okay, well,

14:01

let me try it.

14:03

Let's get our first customer. So we just called that co-customer that we

14:04

had.

14:06

We implement it for you and see what

14:06

happens.

14:09

And so we did that amazing success. I was like, okay, well, let's get it to a

14:11

few more of our internal customers in the

14:15

agency. Immediate success.

14:18

And then I was like, guys, you guys are

14:18

bringing me so much value.

14:21

I want to return, you know, the, the value

14:21

that you guys are bringing.

14:25

Let me refer you to, uh, 20 other agencies

14:25

that I know.

14:28

And I was like, but here's the deal for

14:28

you guys to get them.

14:34

I need a special offer. If you can do that, I can get them

14:35

immediately. And so they gave me, you know, we put

14:36

together a, um, a special deal, a lifetime

14:41

deal for those individuals and agency

14:41

owners, right?

14:44

They say yes to everything. They love great deals, but.

14:46

Yeah. Very few of them had the time or energy to

14:47

get across the finish line.

14:50

So the 2013 came back and actually did it.

14:53

And here it was the pitch. Hey, you know me.

14:57

I'm not here to be BSTU or anything like

14:57

that.

15:01

I've been working with these two other guys. We created a cool software.

15:04

It worked great for me. We want to test it out on you.

15:08

Use it for the next 30 days. And if you don't like it, no harm, no foul

15:09

walk away.

15:14

If you like it, it's a thousand dollars

15:14

for life and it's going to be 297 a month.

15:19

And all of, you know, the 13 went through,

15:19

got to the finish line and they all

15:23

bought. And, um, from every single one of the 13

15:24

and then.

15:28

that's a great script. Right? I mean, Robin, that's such a simple, like

15:29

great example of don't go out and

15:33

overthink what you're going to write to

15:33

these folks, make it clear, make, show the

15:38

value, Hey, this worked for me.

15:40

I, you know, I have an agency, you know, I

15:40

do work in a similar space.

15:44

All right. Cool. We're on the same page now.

15:46

Now go. And honestly, like, I just want to give

15:47

this to you for free to try it out.

15:49

Let's see if it helps you. And if it helps you, great.

15:52

You get a special deal. If not, you know, whatever you've you try

15:52

tools all the time in this space.

15:57

it's not an unusual request.

16:00

Yeah, a hundred percent. And, you know, we got one of those

16:01

individuals, a good friend of mine, he

16:05

actually just sold his agency and saw the

16:05

value in this product and he was becoming

16:09

a business coach. So he was like, actually guys, if you guys

16:10

want to do more, I want to invite you guys

16:15

to an event that I have in January and you

16:15

guys can pitch it.

16:20

So, you know, out of the three

16:20

co-founders, one is in Qatar, one is in

16:23

Oregon and then, you know, me, so Sean and

16:23

me, Sean who's in Oregon and me flew out

16:28

to San Diego. Varun dials in through Zoom and literally

16:30

on the flight there, I'm creating landing

16:34

pages and a new website.

16:37

And Sean and me kind of sit in the hotel

16:37

room the night before like, all right,

16:41

well, what are we going to talk about? It's like, I don't know.

16:43

We'll just do a demo of the product. And we got into the room, we pitched and

16:46

Varun who's dialed in on Zoom is just

16:52

smiling on camera. We do the pitch in about 20 minutes.

16:55

We run through it very quickly and the

16:55

room is silent.

16:57

We're just like, okay. Well. I was fun, I guess we're gonna sit down.

17:01

And people were like, wait, we got a

17:01

couple more questions.

17:05

So then all the questions started coming

17:05

in and then people were asking like, hey,

17:08

can we buy an annual version of this? And so I was like, oh, sure.

17:12

And I just kind of sneak away to the

17:12

computer, added the product and asked

17:15

people who are signing up. Varun, who's the small one on camera,

17:17

people probably didn't realize it, but his

17:22

hands are moving off camera because he's

17:22

actually emailing out welcome emails for

17:27

everybody. Oh my God.

17:30

Yeah. No automation set up.

17:33

It's just, you're just running and gunning

17:33

and getting it going.

17:36

Yeah. Right. And then from there, we just made sure

17:37

that everyone hit.

17:39

So at that event, we had 20 people in

17:39

person, I think 20 people virtually.

17:43

And, um, I think 39 of them bought onsite

17:43

and the 40th person bought like a week

17:49

later because they got FOMO because

17:49

everyone's talking about it.

17:52

And, um, we just made sure that all 40 of

17:52

them had an exceptional experience to

17:57

where. Us three were onboarding every single

17:57

person and getting to whatever point of

18:02

success they were looking for. Some of them just needed to make sure they

18:03

get logged in and cause they want to

18:05

figure it out. Others wanted us to help them set it up.

18:08

Some of them needed strategy, things of

18:08

that nature.

18:12

And of course we're getting feedback along the way. People are like, Oh, it'd be great if you

18:13

can build this or what about that?

18:16

Or what about this use case and things like that. And we were just quickly building those

18:17

features at the same time.

18:21

But one of the most powerful things was

18:21

once we found that we got to a point of

18:26

success, we just asked. Two questions, well, actually three.

18:31

It's did we get you to a point of success?

18:34

You know, in different ways, right? You just natural conversation.

18:36

And once you can get them to smile and do

18:36

an, you know, head nod of yes, we're like,

18:40

perfect, do you know two other people that

18:40

would love this software?

18:44

Or it could find use in it. And in our market, everyone is in, you

18:46

know, different trade groups or agency

18:51

groups or coaching programs and things

18:51

like that.

18:53

And everyone has somebody that they talk

18:53

to, right?

18:56

they're a buddy of somebody, birds of a

18:56

feather flock together.

19:00

And we would always ask for two, knowing

19:00

that if we got one, we're, we're dollars

19:05

up. And, uh, everyone would be like, yeah, I

19:06

actually do.

19:08

Um, let me actually, you know, yeah, you

19:08

should talk to, to Preston Cohn or XYZ

19:14

person, we're like, perfect. Well, we also know that we're in the

19:15

online space.

19:17

Hey, do you think that they're on online right now? Do you think we can invite them into the

19:19

zoom room?

19:21

And surprisingly, a high portion of those

19:21

be like, yeah, actually let's bring them

19:25

in. And we would just. Yeah.

19:27

be a warm intro through Zoom.

19:30

And then from there, we would just start

19:30

the demo, and normally the original person

19:34

who did the referral might jump off. They'd be like, oh guys, hey, I got

19:36

another call. You guys keep going, we'll talk to you

19:38

later. So now back to doing a one-on-one call

19:39

with that individual, the new individual.

19:45

And in some cases, I mean, there were

19:45

times where we couldn't get ahold of them,

19:47

so they're like, oh, I'll just start a

19:47

Facebook message, group thread or a text

19:52

thread or whatever, do the warm intro.

19:54

But we did that with every single person.

19:56

and we keep that model today. it on the call.

19:59

So you're going, well, if they're not

19:59

available for the Zoom, could you go ahead

20:03

and send them an email or a text or

20:03

something?

20:06

You're asking it to be done now.

20:08

And if that person has already given you

20:08

the agreement of, yeah, I'm happy with

20:11

this, this is a good situation, more than

20:11

likely they're going to return the favor

20:16

to you and go, yeah, it's not that hard

20:16

for me to send my buddy a message over at

20:20

whatever agency. Exactly.

20:22

I mean, I think that's the most important

20:22

thing is when you get a sense of momentum,

20:28

you keep the momentum going. So if they feel like they're getting

20:29

progress and they say they got to their

20:33

version of success, you want to keep that

20:33

momentum going.

20:36

Don't you want to give success to others?

20:39

And so there, yes, can I ask for two more

20:39

people?

20:44

And if they give you one, that's great.

20:46

And then asking for, okay, now can you do

20:46

the warm introduction?

20:49

or even a hot introduction where they come

20:49

on the Zoom call.

20:52

So those are the three things and that

20:52

allowed us to hack our distribution model

20:57

very quickly. Yeah.

20:59

And I love it because this is like a very

20:59

natural, very organic way to get started.

21:04

And I think it goes so well with like the

21:04

skateboard approach that you were talking

21:08

about earlier, like it's so much easier to

21:08

build a skateboard than going out and

21:12

building a bicycle or a dirt bike or a

21:12

car, right?

21:16

So start with something that you can build

21:16

and iterate and get out the door quickly.

21:22

But along that same idea is the organic

21:22

growth aspect of it.

21:26

And that was something that when we first

21:26

talked.

21:28

And I said, Hey, what do you think? Should I focus on the website?

21:31

Should I focus on this? If it was that you said, Hey, Preston,

21:32

focus on talking to people and getting

21:37

actual meetings with folks that you can

21:37

have and say, Hey, here's what our product

21:41

does. Can we offer this special deal for you?

21:44

Can we get it set up for you? Can we implement this for you?

21:47

And, and then move forward into the

21:47

product and move forward into the website

21:51

development later on as you need to refine

21:51

it or whatever, but it's, it's good enough

21:56

for now. But I think there's a lot of questions for

21:57

most people who are listening now about

22:01

that because you can build something that

22:01

is super shitty or you can build as an MVP

22:07

or you can build something that actually

22:07

has real value.

22:10

In, in the, at the beginning stages of

22:10

this, you went to them and they had

22:14

questions and they had, you know, it was

22:14

obviously a detailed enough MVP.

22:19

That it did a lot. Can you just describe like some of the

22:20

basic features at that time?

22:23

Yeah, I mean, it's the parent syndrome,

22:23

right?

22:27

You have the prettiest, ugly baby in the

22:27

world.

22:32

Right? So, you know, when you talk about like,

22:32

can you build a shitty MVP versus a, an

22:36

amazing MVP, remember your customer knows

22:36

none the otherwise.

22:39

And in fact, it's not your decision to

22:39

find out if it's shitty or good.

22:45

It's your customer's decision. actually kind of why you're offering it to

22:46

them. Yeah.

22:49

Exactly. And the faster that you can get it in the

22:49

hands of more people, the quickly that you

22:54

can make adjustments and iterate faster.

22:57

You know, I find it so silly. Like we're actually working with a vendor

22:58

right now and they have their software

23:02

application and we asked them to make a

23:02

couple of changes and like, well, we'll

23:05

need to put it in our pipeline. Oh, we'll bump it up to top of a pipeline.

23:08

So expect two weeks for us to do all this,

23:08

this work to get it done.

23:12

And we're just like, it's a small little change. We just want to modify like something on

23:14

the footer.

23:17

And she just rolled it out very quick

23:17

because that's what we would do.

23:20

And, you know, in a way we feel like

23:20

you're, you're slowing down innovation and

23:25

you're slowing down the ability for.

23:27

Engineers and developers to get things

23:27

out.

23:30

When you build that cadence, it just

23:30

becomes this flywheel effect of slowness.

23:35

Right. It's well, you see, I can wait another

23:36

day. I can procrastinate because my deadline

23:37

isn't until this Friday, which means that

23:42

Friday, I know that there's another two

23:42

week cycle, so maybe I can actually skip,

23:45

skip it out until Monday.

23:47

For us, it's, hey, Preston, you're the

23:47

engineer, talk to this customer.

23:52

Oh, they need that fix, get it done now

23:52

because when one person says it, 10 other

23:57

people are feeling it. So if you're confident in what you're

23:58

delivering, why can't you just make the

24:02

change now and all things are solved? The customer's happy, you take that, you

24:04

cross that off your list.

24:09

Everything is good, right? And we win.

24:12

And so that's what I, I mean, I just find

24:12

it so silly and that's what we do as a

24:16

company is just quick. bias to action.

24:19

It's funny that you say this because I

24:19

worked, um, I worked in some political

24:25

areas where, uh, speed was money, right?

24:29

If we would put out a landing page, we

24:29

might need it out in a few hours.

24:32

And so you needed to be able to design,

24:32

create copy, get legal approval, you know,

24:38

and create then all the resources behind

24:38

to push it ads and everything else to get

24:43

it out the door very quickly. And it's.

24:46

It's sort of very rewarding to make

24:46

something fast and get it out the door and

24:50

get it working. And sometimes there were spelling

24:51

mistakes.

24:54

Sometimes there were images that got cut

24:54

off incorrectly.

24:59

There were things that sort of were errors

24:59

that in normal marketing speak, we would

25:04

be very upset with. The creative directors would not be happy,

25:05

right?

25:08

And yet they performed very well. They actually would work in some cases.

25:12

those ads or landing pages that had small

25:12

errors on them would perform better than

25:18

ones that didn't when we were running an

25:18

A-B test and testing these things out.

25:21

So getting it out the door quickly,

25:21

sometimes you go, ah, I'm making mistakes,

25:27

blah, blah. Try to avoid those as much as possible.

25:30

However, get it out the door.

25:32

And I heard somebody tell me before I read

25:32

this, if you've made your product perfect

25:39

before you've released it, you've probably

25:39

spent too much time

25:43

on the product and you're probably going

25:43

to find out there's areas that you

25:47

overworked and you overspent and maybe

25:47

features that are just going to be sitting

25:51

there as little bricks in the core

25:51

paperweights.

25:55

I mean, a hundred percent. I think the other thing that we found, you

25:56

know, from a tier share your perspective

26:01

is, you know, earlier we were talking

26:01

about like, spend your time talking to the

26:05

customer. They will lead you to the promised land in

26:06

many ways.

26:11

When you find a bug or you find a new idea

26:11

or a new issue, um, that you could find a

26:17

solution for and you build it very

26:17

quickly, you end up building.

26:22

Culture and community very quickly.

26:25

Mm-hmm. because they feel like they're involved,

26:25

their input matters.

26:28

And when you're able to cross that bridge

26:28

there, you actually reduce churn because

26:33

they know that they can come back to you

26:33

for more.

26:36

They know they're using the product

26:36

because you solve their problem.

26:40

But if you just kind of sideline it, you

26:40

are risking churn because they're like,

26:44

well, Preston is no longer taking my

26:44

calls.

26:48

He doesn't press it. And the team doesn't want to listen to me.

26:52

They have a major issue. They told me that they'll fix it.

26:55

sometime, maybe they will, maybe they

26:55

won't.

26:58

I'm gonna go somewhere else where I'm

26:58

actually valued.

27:01

I'm gonna go somewhere else where they're

27:01

actually listening to me.

27:05

And I'm gonna go somewhere where it

27:05

doesn't feel like they're taxing me just

27:07

to get what I need across the finish line.

27:10

But if you kind of flip that narrative,

27:10

you're talking to the customer, they're

27:14

gonna tell you and guide you where you

27:14

wanna go.

27:17

When they have an issue, you're quick to

27:17

fix it.

27:20

Now it doesn't feel like they're being

27:20

taxed anymore.

27:23

They're investing. into a better product that's going to make

27:25

them more money, or solve a big problem

27:28

for them. Right, see how the model changes

27:30

significantly just by doing those quick

27:33

actions. And get the thumbs up.

27:36

Yeah. Model changing thumbs up.

27:39

No, I think that's, I think that's huge. And, you know, I've also worked in

27:41

organizations where it's taken a month or

27:45

more to get a landing page out the door

27:45

from, and it's the same type of landing

27:49

page and, you know, you go, man, these

27:49

businesses are shooting themselves in the

27:54

foot. And this is what happens when you start to

27:54

scale. You do have to build these processes out.

27:58

I get it. But sort of that culture, that idea of

27:58

what you're talking about, which is, you

28:03

know, the customer and that relationship between

28:04

you and the customer.

28:07

It doesn't have to be, oh, this is a

28:07

product.

28:10

So therefore there is no relationship or

28:10

this is a tool.

28:13

There's no relationship. There is a relationship there, especially

28:14

if you want to build, build brand

28:18

ambassadors, people like some of the folks

28:18

that we've talked about for, for high

28:23

level that are out there every day, loving

28:23

the product, talking about it all the

28:27

time, and those are the folks that you

28:27

want.

28:30

Because as, as we know, people who have

28:30

negative experiences with our products,

28:35

they're going to go tell a lot of people,

28:35

people who have positive experiences.

28:39

They're not going to tell as many

28:39

typically, unless you're able to build

28:42

that brand ambassador in, in that person.

28:46

Um, and I think that's what you guys seem

28:46

to have done very well over at high level

28:50

and just being able to say, say like, this

28:50

is the product.

28:53

Cause when you talk to somebody that uses

28:53

it or, you know, they're all about it.

28:58

And it's a huge part of.

29:00

of what they're suggesting because it's

29:00

working for them.

29:04

But I think, I mean, I think this is a big one. I just wanna hammer the home of this point

29:06

that you've been making, which is, if

29:10

you're out there and you're creating a

29:10

product and you think you need to go out

29:14

and build all of these features and things

29:14

and get it perfect before you get it out

29:19

the door, don't do that.

29:21

Go ahead and stop, take a break, revisit

29:21

what you're looking at, what you're

29:25

building. And go maybe talk to someone right now, go

29:26

talk to an, uh, one of your ideal clients,

29:31

um, and see, Hey, do you like this idea?

29:35

Is this good? Are we going the right direction?

29:37

It's going to feel vulnerable. You're going to feel like you might've

29:38

made a mistake and maybe you wasted time

29:42

development, money, whatever.

29:44

But trust me, it's going to make a big

29:44

difference longterm.

29:48

If you go ahead and take that break now and go look at it. Would you agree with that Robin?

29:52

And I think the ones that lean into that

29:52

mindset not only helps you build that

29:57

community, it's helping you quickly get

29:57

the largest people in echo chambers out

30:05

the gate because they're the first ones,

30:05

right?

30:07

And people love being first movers. They want that story.

30:10

I was the first to help Preston or the

30:10

first to help Robin.

30:14

And it becomes their product in many ways,

30:14

or it becomes their solution.

30:22

And they're the best people to tell you

30:22

who there are more people that need that

30:27

solution. You need to go now talk to these two

30:28

individuals.

30:31

And so that that's why, you know, there's

30:31

no such thing as a perfect product.

30:35

There's no such thing as a final product.

30:38

It's always in beta. And so once you get over your ego,

30:44

Just release it and go. true. Yeah.

30:48

And, and you're, you're a hundred percent correct. It's hard, man.

30:51

I mean, I'm sitting here going, yeah, you're right. He's totally right.

30:54

But it is hard, you know, because you do

30:54

have a feeling of when I released this

30:59

thing, I want it to be perfect. I want it to solve the problems that I

31:00

went about trying to solve, but you don't

31:05

get there the first time you get there

31:05

incrementally.

31:10

I think it's that feeling of what I

31:10

deliver to the world has to be perfect,

31:16

but it's not your judgment call to make. And I think that's what you have to

31:18

remember. And so if you just go out with, with

31:20

something faster, you can get it to

31:25

perfection without having to guess.

31:28

And I think that's the difference that you

31:28

go into your version.

31:32

You're trying to predict that it's going

31:32

to hit right out the gate.

31:35

And I, our model is.

31:39

We have no ego. We're, we're not throwing out any bad

31:41

product. It's here's just kind of a very basic

31:42

version just so that we can start a

31:47

conversation with somebody, get them into

31:47

the app and tell me what, what else we

31:53

need to build to make it useful for you.

31:56

And then from there you can go on. But if you try to build too many things,

31:57

thinking that the next step after using

32:01

the product is this, well, you're going to

32:01

get a lot of, yeah, but what about this?

32:05

What about that? And you just.

32:08

I find know, the speed of innovation changes

32:09

quite a bit.

32:12

Yeah. I find that as soon as you release your

32:13

product, people are going to tell you what

32:15

you need to add to it very quickly.

32:18

And then you have to be able to have the

32:18

wherewithal to bring that information

32:23

together and go, okay, this is a, you

32:23

know, a problem that all of our customers

32:27

are facing. And like you said, move quickly on.

32:29

Trying to make a different change. We, you know, originally released sort of

32:31

an MVP version of the product and the

32:36

feedback was, Hey, we need X, Y, and Z

32:36

from

32:40

All of the beta testers, pretty much

32:40

everybody was like, this is what we need.

32:43

Great. We were able to then go build that

32:44

product.

32:46

And now when we go talk to agencies, I'm,

32:46

I really don't get that feedback anymore.

32:51

When I'm talking to folks who are thinking

32:51

about the product, they go, okay, well,

32:54

it's got all these things. Cause that is already sort of taken off

32:55

the tube.

32:58

So when, when you've transitioned from,

32:58

Hey, we built this MVP product to, Hey, we

33:03

are, you know, a large company, how many

33:03

employees you guys have?

33:08

Several hundred employees, right? You're at. Yeah, I think by the end of the year we'll

33:09

be a little over 800 people worldwide.

33:14

You're at 800 people worldwide.

33:16

This is a, it's a big business, dude.

33:20

That's fantastic. It's so exciting.

33:22

And, and this is like, this is, um, you

33:22

know, not, we're not putting you on a

33:26

pedestal pedestal, but we're using, I hope

33:26

you know this, but like it's good for us

33:33

as folks who might even, we might even be

33:33

the same age, might be older, younger.

33:36

I don't know, but to be able to look at

33:36

other folks and go, okay, this is

33:40

possible. There is ways to do this.

33:42

You can build a business, whether you want

33:42

to build an 800 person business or not,

33:45

there are ways to grow and scale, but

33:45

transitioning from, Hey, I've got this MVP

33:50

product where I'm moving quickly to, and

33:50

now I have 800 people.

33:56

And I still want to maintain that same

33:56

level of relationship with the client so

34:00

that we can move quickly. Can you just give one or two tips or

34:02

maybe, maybe just an idea of like, how do

34:07

you maintain that in your business today?

34:11

Yeah, it's definitely tough. I think, you know, we get, as you start

34:13

growing a business, you start walking down

34:18

a weird, or you get to a weird crossroads.

34:22

Either you continue doing what you're

34:22

doing, which feels very uneasy because

34:28

there's that lingering thing in the back

34:28

of your mind of this statement that's out

34:33

there, what got you here is not what's

34:33

going to get you there, but I'll tell you

34:38

that who says that's not true.

34:41

Right. And for us, the reason that we have 800

34:42

people is because we've never stopped

34:47

doing what we started with. Every single customer that comes in, we're

34:48

still onboarding.

34:51

We're still asking those same questions. We're still doing the same exact things

34:53

that we started.

34:58

Now we could easily go down the other path

34:58

and try and do that in air quotes.

35:03

Try the scalable methods where you try to

35:03

do more in app things and you try to

35:11

you know, different levels of support and

35:11

you try to tax your customers for more.

35:16

The problem is you're trying new things.

35:19

And so when you have momentum and you

35:19

create the flywheel, why stop the

35:23

momentum? And I think as entrepreneurs, what, what

35:25

the issue really is, is that it feels like

35:32

it's boring by doing the same thing and

35:32

trying to scale that up versus you

35:36

starting over and trying a whole new

35:36

method that sounds fun, right?

35:40

Maybe we can try this new thing. Maybe we can do this other thing and make

35:41

like, you're just, you're starting to talk

35:45

like a gambler in many ways. Right.

35:48

I'm trying to make a bet on this a hundred

35:48

percent, but you know, we've kind of.

35:53

at least, if you're gonna go take risks,

35:53

you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you might

35:56

have that. Yeah, the bigger the risk, the bigger the

35:58

reward, right?

36:00

And I kind of look at it as, well, I've

36:00

already figured out the reward.

36:03

How do I do that reward even faster with

36:03

more people?

36:06

And so that's why we've grown where, you

36:06

know, we're just creating that flywheel

36:10

and we haven't stopped now is the most

36:10

efficient and things like that.

36:14

Um, you know, we have 800 people, so, so

36:14

it's probably not, but it is working and

36:20

we are extremely resistant in changing the

36:20

model because

36:24

Mm-hmm. no one has come to the table saying, I can

36:25

kind of come back to the gambler model,

36:29

can you guarantee me that we can keep the

36:29

same momentum, the same culture, the same

36:35

community by changing? And unless if you're willing to, you know,

36:38

down that hill, I'm not willing to change.

36:46

Yeah. Well, and I think like, like you've said,

36:48

you know, through this episode, I mean,

36:52

you've built a relational business with

36:52

people who in a lot of ways, most people

36:57

think of it as non-relational when you're

36:57

talking about software or SAS or whatever.

37:03

And I think, you know, we've talked about

37:03

some strategies off air that you guys use

37:08

to make that happen with Zoom, with other

37:08

ways

37:15

Uh, communicate with them, touch base with

37:15

them, solve their pain points, help them

37:20

install, you know, an integration or help

37:20

them do certain things to make sure that

37:24

they are going down the right path of

37:24

using the product and everything else.

37:28

And I think that's a very different

37:28

approach, but when you're looking at

37:31

lifetime value and you're looking at, um,

37:31

churn, I mean, it's gotta be a massive

37:38

improvement compared to some of these that

37:38

are just cold emails going out, reminding

37:43

you to. read up your bill or whatever it is, you

37:45

know what I mean, versus what you guys

37:48

have. Yeah, I mean, we have a saying internally,

37:49

you know, you sell people on what they

37:52

want, but then you give them what they need. There is this narrative of a consumer

37:54

going into a SaaS product and it's

37:59

supposed to be self-serve, it's supposed

37:59

to be easy and anybody can solve it.

38:04

So we give you that perception. If you come to our website, you know, it's

38:05

a pretty old website.

38:09

We haven't updated it because we're scared

38:09

of any change because it's working.

38:12

Right. Um, but when you come in, you definitely

38:13

can walk in with that self-serve

38:17

mentality, that it is actually a very complicated

38:19

process in getting, because we're

38:23

replacing 20 different products, right,

38:23

and figuring out the strategy behind it.

38:28

So we force you to get a Zoom call as soon

38:28

as you come in.

38:33

And by force, I mean, like we're sending

38:33

you emails, we're calling you, we're

38:36

texting you, asking, can you come in,

38:36

please?

38:39

Because we know the success rate is

38:39

significantly higher because this is what

38:42

we've done from the beginning. But some people just can't let off the

38:44

fact of, well,

38:46

Every other software itself serves, so I

38:46

should hear.

38:48

So we try to play that balance there. Um, but the relationship is really what,

38:50

what wins long-term and, you know, we've

38:55

tried to, we've definitely flipped the

38:55

model because I think other software

38:58

products and you've come in as a new

38:58

software founder, you look at, you know,

39:03

scalability comes in as the first, first

39:03

question, but it's relationships that keep

39:08

the customer around and it's what, you

39:08

know, pays the bills, um, not the product

39:13

in itself. Right.

39:16

And, you know, when you are starting out

39:16

like us versus you, you know, don't be

39:20

afraid to get out and talk to your

39:20

potential customers or your current

39:24

customers. I mean, you know, if you've got under a

39:25

thousand customers, 500 customers, you

39:30

could break it down over six months, year

39:30

three, whatever, you know, break it down

39:35

and make a direct communication with those

39:35

people.

39:38

I think. I think it was you in one of our earlier

39:39

conversations where you gave me that

39:44

advice. You said, Hey, you know how many customers

39:44

you have?

39:46

Well, go talk to them because you, this is

39:46

like one of the few opportunities now

39:53

where you can talk to every customer that

39:53

you have.

39:55

It's probably not going to happen down the road. It's probably going to be where you're

39:57

going to have to do sort of bulk things

40:00

like a podcast or an event or whatever.

40:02

So use this time to really drill down and

40:02

talk to who your customers are now.

40:08

And I think that's That was just great advice.

40:11

And we want to skip it because I think in

40:11

some ways we want to feel like we're maybe

40:16

above or beyond it now. We don't need to do that.

40:20

Um, but it's not necessarily about that.

40:23

It's about building that culture for your

40:23

employees to see in model after, but also

40:29

building that relationship with someone

40:29

who could be.

40:32

potentially a brain ambassador. And that's how you grow your business.

40:34

I mean, you went from offering it to those

40:34

select group of people for that lifetime

40:40

offer and those people becoming, I'm

40:40

assuming brain ambassadors who were

40:44

fricking happy as clams that you solve

40:44

their problem, gave them a great deal and

40:49

they were able to share that with others

40:49

and that's, you know, looking at you

40:53

today, fast forward today, you go.

40:55

That was a fantastic strategy.

40:57

We don't need to necessarily get away with

40:57

it.

40:59

If you're a founder and you're short on

40:59

cash and you can't go out and spend tens

41:04

of thousands of dollars, hundreds of

41:04

thousands of dollars and add spins in

41:06

marketing budget, start by doing something

41:06

very basic like this and do outreach.

41:13

Maybe even start a podcast or something,

41:13

right?

41:15

Like you can have these relationships

41:15

start to form by doing something like

41:20

this. And so there's a there's a great way for

41:22

you to be able to model after these

41:25

things. Well Robin I want to take a quick second

41:26

and look at something that's in the news

41:30

today and I think this is really

41:30

interesting because What we're seeing now

41:36

is global Google searches for brands with

41:36

social purpose is up by 133 percent Says,

41:49

you know Basically we're looking at people who are

41:50

going, I want to work with brands that

41:54

have a social purpose.

41:56

What are your thoughts on this as we go

41:56

into sort of this world of, uh, of.

42:02

Of tools, SAS products, and you've got

42:02

folks that maybe they support some social

42:08

purpose. Maybe they don't, maybe they're very clear

42:09

on that.

42:11

Have y'all taken a stand on that or y'all

42:11

do any sort of social work like that?

42:16

Yeah, I mean, we definitely within our

42:16

community, we do workshops and things of

42:21

that nature. And really try to empower more people

42:23

because I'm a firm believer in referrals

42:28

and seeing testimonials of people actually

42:28

winning is more powerful than the claims

42:33

from the product themselves. Right? Like I built this crazy hammer.

42:37

The hammer is going to solve all your

42:37

problems.

42:40

Me saying that doesn't go as far as

42:40

Preston, you coming in saying, Hey, I

42:44

bought this camera from Robin. look at all the cool things that I've

42:45

done. That goes a long way.

42:48

And so we empower those individuals to

42:48

come in.

42:50

We do workshops, we do different lessons

42:50

and stuff online, webinars and things like

42:57

that. But then also in person, we actually just

42:57

hosted our large event as well.

43:00

And that was actually our second time

43:00

doing that.

43:02

And it brings everyone together, not only

43:02

to learn from these individuals, but also

43:07

from the opportunity of just building

43:07

that, continuing to build that community

43:12

because now you're empowering everybody to

43:12

have a voice.

43:15

And so it's just creating larger and

43:15

larger echo chambers everywhere you go.

43:19

Right. And there's different ways to do it. Obviously you can, you can do the Tom's

43:21

approach where you're sending shoes out to

43:27

somebody, or you can do the community

43:27

approach where you're helping educate and

43:31

grow businesses. Where they're out actually providing for

43:32

people's family, you know, their employees

43:37

and everything else. You're literally making an impact on, on

43:38

them.

43:41

And I know that, man, people love your

43:41

events.

43:43

I've heard some great things about. both of the events that have happened.

43:48

And you just came off of finishing once,

43:48

you're probably still recuperating off of

43:54

that. Lot of good energy there.

43:56

Yeah, I mean, yeah, 100%. You know, we had about 800 people that

43:57

came in from around the world.

44:00

And, you know, yeah, I mean, that's

44:00

another 60 people.

44:05

So just direct attendees was about 800.

44:07

It was definitely fun because we got to

44:07

learn about the businesses themselves,

44:10

what they're doing. Now we're talking to people face to face.

44:14

And, you know, people are, what was fun

44:14

about it was we had 800 people.

44:17

We sold out of tickets about two months

44:17

early.

44:20

We had another wait list of about 650

44:20

people that didn't get a ticket in time.

44:26

And people were pushing us to go bigger

44:26

and bigger and bigger.

44:28

And I'm trying to push back because when

44:28

you go bigger, you won't be able to have

44:32

that face-to-face and opportunity to talk

44:32

to people.

44:36

We were walking around the event. We were shaking hands, talking and

44:37

listening to stories.

44:39

So I think it was very important for us to

44:39

continue doing that.

44:44

But very similarly, if the. you know, it's just more opportunities to

44:47

get in front of our customers, talking to

44:50

them and understanding who they are and

44:50

building that community.

44:55

Yeah. I think that when you're able to look at

44:57

building a community with your software

45:03

and you guys have done this well, I mean,

45:03

who can you think of?

45:06

Russell Bronson's there's so many

45:06

different people that you can look at.

45:09

They built more than just their products

45:09

or offers or whatever.

45:13

They built a community of people and they,

45:13

you know.

45:16

course, Russell is a great example of

45:16

doing it in segments and doing the one

45:21

funnel channel challenge and this and then

45:21

Facebook groups where people are in

45:26

community together, growing it together.

45:29

Um, but I think that if you're a SaaS

45:29

founder and you're out there creating, you

45:33

know, your product, thinking about

45:33

communities, maybe not on the top of your

45:38

mind, uh, initially.

45:40

But if you can sort of understand that

45:40

they're all going through the same

45:44

problems, they're all experiencing some of

45:44

the same pain points and, and the

45:48

frustrations of running, whether it's an

45:48

agency or whatever business you, you know,

45:52

uh, you might be out there running.

45:55

Um, We all have similarities and we can

45:55

all grow and learn from each other.

46:01

And, uh, I think that's a, it's a very

46:01

powerful mechanism.

46:03

We talked a lot about that. today in this episode, uh, real quick.

46:07

So, you know, we've been going pretty good

46:07

here and, uh, we've got 46 minutes.

46:12

I do want to ask you though, there's,

46:12

there's a lot of change happening right

46:16

now, AI and machine learning and

46:16

everything that's happening.

46:21

And I feel like in the digital world

46:21

today, if you aren't on top of all of the

46:26

products and tools, or if you're not sort

46:26

of daily looking at these different

46:30

optimizations and, and products for your

46:30

company, you're sort of falling behind.

46:34

What are you guys doing to look at the

46:34

evolving landscape of what's happening

46:40

and, you know, continue to offer solutions

46:40

that make sense for your folks?

46:46

Definitely. I mean, AI is the big core of what we're

46:46

focused on in building.

46:50

A lot of it is just doing what we know

46:50

that customers are already doing.

46:52

Can we just provide more enablements of AI

46:52

to assist along the way?

46:57

So when you get at the funnel building,

46:57

you know, of course there's copywriting

46:59

when you get into social media,

46:59

copywriting, image generation, all those

47:03

are there. I think the next level for us and what

47:04

customers are really asking for is can

47:09

they leverage AI to basically build a

47:09

stack from A to Z all the way from top of

47:14

funnel from lead generation. to conversations, so we have conversation

47:16

AI already in the tool.

47:21

So it can conversate to book people on an

47:21

appointment, close them on a sale.

47:26

We have AI in booking calendar

47:26

appointments, which I just mentioned, all

47:29

the way to doing an invoice and doing

47:29

AI-driven reminders to get paid, then

47:34

doing review requests and doing AI-driven

47:34

responses.

47:38

And so now, can we take all those into one

47:38

and do it almost as an AI-driven prompt or

47:44

you know, something even cooler just by

47:44

understanding who your businesses are.

47:47

Maybe it's not prompt driven. Maybe it's more search driven.

47:50

So you post the URLs about your business

47:50

and it's like, Oh, well, you do this and

47:55

this kind of your, your style. So boom, here's not your business ready to

47:57

go.

48:00

I love it. So your strategy right now is, hey, let's

48:01

see how we can integrate AI into our

48:06

product and sort of elevate what we're

48:06

already doing.

48:10

Yeah. I mean, you're kind of the overarching

48:11

sentiment for me is give it about another

48:16

12 months at max and AI as a term is no

48:16

longer a thing.

48:22

It's more table stakes, right?

48:24

Like, of course there's AI, like, why

48:24

would you even build a software that

48:28

doesn't have it, right? So yeah.

48:30

So AI is just more of a thing. It's just a buzzword right now.

48:33

Um, but I think it's more about how do you

48:33

automate or how do you streamline

48:38

processes from A to Z? without anyone ever knowing.

48:43

Yeah. Cause right now every, you know, every

48:43

product is just wrapping chat GPT or

48:47

another AI essentially for their use.

48:50

Right. And so there's tons of tools coming out

48:51

that have all these things, but I think

48:54

what's going to rise to the surface as we

48:54

get down the road is going to be tools

48:58

like yours who did pivot.

49:00

They did integrate it quickly, which was

49:00

sort of a no brainer, but I'm sure some

49:04

are going to fall behind. And

49:07

I don't have to go now to three different

49:07

AI tools or software to go create that

49:12

thing. I can go to high level and I can get my

49:13

schedule done and I can do it.

49:17

So there's not some fancy AI tool out

49:17

there that's doing the scheduling that I

49:20

need to go set up. Right.

49:23

I can do all of that by connecting

49:23

products and other things within, within

49:27

high level. So I think that's, I think that's huge.

49:30

Well, Robin, I want to be respectful of

49:30

your time.

49:33

We've got a lot of things going on in our

49:33

worlds.

49:36

Tell us. anything you want to leave the people with

49:37

any cool events or products or things that

49:41

you want to talk about. The floor is yours for a second.

49:46

No, I think, you know, of course we have

49:46

high level and high level is, you know,

49:51

we're trying to take over in the agency

49:51

space and really just any marketer that

49:56

that's out there really looking for the

49:56

right tools, but we love our marketplace

50:00

and integrating with other tools such as

50:00

yours, you know, approve socials, doing a

50:03

lot of cool things and want to give a

50:03

shout out to you guys.

50:07

Thanks, Robin. I appreciate that, man. Yeah. We're excited because that's actually, I

50:08

sent, uh, you know, an email out recently

50:13

to a select group and, um, talked about

50:13

some of the future for us and go high

50:19

level integrating with you guys,

50:19

integrating with ad creative AI and just a

50:24

cup, there's a handful right now that

50:24

we're, we're working on currently.

50:27

How does that work? How does that look? And so I'm super excited when that

50:29

happens, and I'm waiting for this, when

50:33

that happens, I'd love to be able to talk

50:33

to, you know, your folks, but I don't want

50:38

to, we're trying to do the same approach. I want to provide value to them and to

50:40

you.

50:42

And so when we have that ready to go,

50:42

we're going to be super pumped to release

50:47

it and talk a little bit more about it. But I just think, you know, being able to

50:48

manage your ad creative, all of that

50:53

stuff, get approvals. Speed up the review process is huge.

50:57

We've recently done a case study on it.

50:59

And, uh, we've seen that about 40%

50:59

reduction in time to launch an ad campaign

51:04

using approved social versus not.

51:07

And so the momentum as you speak of is

51:07

growing, we're starting to see a lot of

51:11

cool things happen. And so now it's integrating with tools

51:12

like you that.

51:15

That have the audience that can continue

51:15

to grow us forward.

51:17

That's another strategy for folks to talk

51:17

about maybe on another podcast, but

51:21

If you're a business out there, you can go

51:21

make partnerships with other folks that

51:24

have your ideal customers. It's probably a good strategy.

51:28

Well, Robin, thanks so much for your time today, man. Guys, this is again powered by Approved

51:30

Social.

51:32

We just talked about it, but if you wanna

51:32

check it out, I'll give you a 60 day free

51:35

trial. Just send me a message and I'll give you

51:36

something complimentary.

51:39

And maybe we'll even sit you down and help

51:39

you implement the tool so that your entire

51:44

team can be integrated very quickly.

51:47

model after Robin and go high level.

51:49

And if you haven't go check out, go high

51:49

level.

51:52

Go high level. All right. Thank you, Robin.

51:54

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.