Intro 0:01
Introduction audio cues
Azhar Siddiqui 0:23
Alright, Shaun, Shaun Clark, welcome to the show, I'm really excited to have you here, because high level’s have been a cornerstone of what we've been doing at RepStack? What a lot of our people are doing on a daily basis with their clients, who are mainly digital marketing agency owners. And, you know, so it's so exciting to have you because, you know, you kind of bring everything together for the agency owners, and you know, you give our guys a platform to play around. And even on our side at RepStack, I like to say that we have a pretty robust marketing department, we're booking a tonne of discovery calls between 60 to 100 a month. And you know, our sales and marketing engine is obviously high level as well. So we know before we send anyone, we're using an internally as well. So welcome to the show, Shaun. And so excited for having you on this call today with me.
Shaun Clark 1:28
Oh! Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Azhar Siddiqui 1:31
That's awesome, man. And, you know, I think I laid out my plan for you here, what we try to do is that other digital marketing agency owners as listening to us, we try to show them what we're doing inherently, you know, as RepStack, even though we're doing something different, but we're still an agency providing service to other agency owners. And you know, we have a marketing department, we have a sales department, and we have a retention department. And we try to hold on to the clients that we close. And, you know, the exciting thing that I'm seeing over here in front of me 2019, you guys were at, from one of the podcasts I listened to you guys were at 900 users. And 2021. The last I've seen, it's approaching 15,000 users. So that two-year journey, you guys must have done something crazy to go from there, or was this completely organic? Or what happened in that two-year span?
Shaun Clark 2:30
Yeah, I mean, I think we're really lucky. I think it was very organic. I mean, we have an awesome customer base, who I think is, you know, generally communal in nature, right. So you know, I'm sure there are lots of other industries like I could imagine if we were selling the plumbers or something, the average plumber isn't talking to any other plumbers on any given day. And so it sort of makes it difficult for word of mouth to take hold, in the same way. But I think marketers are, you know, a digital citizen is one of the big things and be just more communal, they sort of I don't think they see each other as sort of cutthroat competitors. And I think they're willing to, they want to share, but they also want to learn, and it's sort of like a journey, where if I'm a marketer, I want to do my thing, but I also want to learn about what others are doing. And so it just naturally leads to people talking. And so I think, if you have a solution for a marketer, it's very likely if it's a good one, that it can make its way around to other marketers in a very organic fashion. And very quickly as well, because it's digital, in terms of how marketers tend to talk to each other. Don't you have to wait for the annual conference or the, you know, the local regional show? I mean, it certainly happens, but it's way more digital than a lot of other industries, which is great for us.
Azhar Siddiqui 3:45
Yeah, no, that's good. Like, you know, if I'd be that lucky. Well, I think a lot of cases we have been, I shouldn't say that. But you know, this is phenomenal. Like, you know, people would dream about having growth like this.
But that would have also brought challenges with it as well. Right? Taking your base customer base, what I think one of us calculated what 15,000% or something like that. Over the two years.
Shaun Clark 4:12
My math is like saw. I'll trust your math.
Azhar Siddiqui 4:15
You and I both man I was relying on some other people, but like, well, what were some of the things that you guys had to like, adjust as this rapid growth came your way?
Shaun Clark 4:26
Yeah! So I mean, I think for me, I'm more of a product person. I'm a software engineer by trade. I really enjoy that. And I'm very focused every day on new features and upgrades and what are we adding to the product, but as you scale a team, inevitably, you've got to change how you operate. So all of a sudden, it's not the team members wasn't important before. They're absolutely important. But the difference was, there's a small enough team that I'm talking to these people all the time and we're just naturally kind of interacting. But like you, as you grow and as you scale it you all of the sudden hiring becomes almost the most important thing that you can do. Because you just run out of your own personal ability to meet with everyone talk to everyone and make sure everyone is happy and on board with this or knows where you're going, or whatever the concern might be that day, you need to make sure that you're able to project that out into a larger organization. And so all of the sudden hirings becomes just way different and way more important than it was before.
Azhar Siddiqui 5:24
So you tend to work with a set number of people now instead of everyone in the company, and is that what you're doing right now?
Shaun Clark 5:34
Yeah! It's becoming a much more formal boring organization, but for very good reason. You know, so I mean, initially, when you're first going, well, first of all, you start off and no one knows what you're doing or cares. And you don't even know if anybody is ever gonna care. And so you move from that stage sort of through realizing wait a second, we've got something and then you're very like every single day you're in it, you're working on it, you know, and it's really a focus on expansion, right? And then as time goes on, as you create something that's a little more robust, a little higher quality, really there's a shift, because all of a sudden, customers will say, Well, you know, I do want those new features, but I would actually rather have it be more stable, or be faster, or be more consistent in its delivery, right, then necessarily have another a new feature that might impact or negatively, you know, hit the performance of a previous feature. Well, that requires a whole different type of thinking, right, and a whole different type of organizational structure. And so it's really just that transformation away from just, oh, yeah, jump in the code, start hammering away, once you get it, just go ahead and launch that bad boy out there to hundreds of 1000s of customers and hope it all works out like you move from that, to you know, no, you know, we have to have three levels of QA and I have to go through an engineering manager and product manager and design team and in order to ever see the light of day, it's a totally different, you know, mode of operation.
Azhar Siddiqui 7:05
Yeah, it's slowed down for sure. If you don't mind sharing with us, Shaun, what's the size of the internal team now that you guys have?
Shaun Clark 7:13
Oh, gosh, I've lost track. I think it's about 160 people. But I mean, we already have a hiring plan for 2022. I think we're gonna add about another 150. Team members, just assuming things are exactly the sort of status quo growth. If it accelerates, we'll expand that out of it. But yeah, we'll have another 150 people hired this year.
Azhar Siddiqui 7:36
That's awesome, man. Because I think that's the news I got as well is, which has been talked into town is, you know, the funding round that you guys raised?
Shaun Clark 7:47
Oh, yeah.
Azhar Siddiqui 7:48
And so I'm guessing that a lot of that cash is going to go towards hiring this amazing talent?
Shaun Clark 7:54
Yeah, absolutely! I mean, you know, we're really well past the good pass. This is a good idea phase, we're really on that. Yeah, this is a smoking grant idea. We just need to get it out to everybody. Phase. And so you know, we're a billion-dollar company in the making. And it's just the really the difference between where we are today. And that Mark is simply just a lot of really good people, continuing to help us do what it is we've been doing, and expand out the way we've been expanding. So it's all about hiring now.
Azhar Siddiqui 8:24
So that's an interesting point that you just raised, or you just made a statement, a billion-dollar company in the making. So I'm thinking, Are you sticking with the digital marketing agency niche that you guys are working with right now? Or is this going to be open to even small businesses, which is, I think, how you guys started out initially, right?
Shaun Clark 8:48
Yeah. So no, we're not changing anything. So I mean, it's true to say that, you know, what got you here isn't gonna get you there, and a lot of different places. But one of the things that absolutely is fundamental to our DNA is who we work with, and why it's the why that matters, right? So we didn't pick digital marketers, because we thought it was a good business idea or something to that approach, what we really we came to realize, and by the way, I get reminded of this all the time, is that you know, the end business, you know, whether they can or what have you, they should not be trying to learn to be that professional digital marketers. It's a big mistake for them. And, you know, we definitely have, you know, I've definitely come across business owners who try to sort of shoehorn this into an ever-growing list of things that they do, and they're always just bad at it. And it's for good reason. It's a real skill. It's something that takes dedication, time, and energy and not just one time also, it's a continually changing sort of thing, right. I think for some reason, there are lots of vocations where people sort of accept this no one says, you know, I'm gonna learn to be a dentist on a weekend, and I'm going to sort of doing it casually. And, every so often I'm gonna do some fillings.
I might pick up some general surgery and start to like, you know, let's do some gallbladder stuff on the side, no one would ever accept that. In fact, there are licensing, and laws that keep people from doing it, right. But even in other things, accounting law, you name it, there's just sort of this implicit recognition, I think, even like building a house, right? It's something, I can tell, I can go out today and say, I'm a home builder and try to get people to hire me, there's some implicit assumption or recognition that experience counts, you want to see what people have done, you expect that person to just do that one thing, continuously improve their skill set all those things, but for some reason, marketing, doesn't yet have that level of respect. But it doesn't change the fact that is still the way it is. And the people who try it on their own, they just always screw it up. And most of the time, those people are small business owners. And so for that reason, we only want to work with digital marketers, because we know that those are the people that can use these tools to the greatest effect. And if our goal is to really help the small business owner, which it absolutely is, it needs to be guided by the hand of a professional digital marketer, otherwise, all selling directly to a small business is just a waste of time.
Azhar Siddiqui 11:16
Yeah, no, that makes total sense. There is a lot of sense there, just because I've seen so we're working with any plus agency owners right now. And, you know, the most successful agency owners that we're seeing on a daily basis, Shawn, are people who have a really good niche, identify, and you know, they stick with that particular niche. You know, there are so many examples that I can just, you know, start counting right now. But having that niche, we are an example of a company that has grown rapidly. And the more we've drilled down into our niche, which is digital marketing agencies, the faster we seem to be going so I totally agree with that. And so many of my guests, you know, they're running different digital marketing agencies at different levels and things like that. And they bring up the same point, whether we want to talk about it or not, that having that niche and really being dedicated to it. Is a game-changer. So yeah, no, that's, that's amazing. So far. I'm so excited today. I think I'm having a fanboy moment as well with Shaun over here. But one question, Shawn, I had, I wanted to just before we dive into how you guys are doing your marketing, sales and how you're retaining clients, 15,000 of them? That's a big challenge. You know, I would quickly want to talk to you, I think one of your first businesses was an answering service. And looks like you guys had big numbers there. You're managing a lot of people. And what was this? Like? What were these people based in the US outside? What were you guys doing in this? In this business?
Shaun Clark 12:57
Yeah. So I mean, it was a very simple business, I loved it to death, and it still is a spark spot, my heart, you know, we were really taking inbound phone calls for, you know, by the time I exited 5000, small businesses in the United States, all through remote agents, but all US-based agents. We had an office in India, though, and we had 200 employees, they're all doing back-office, software engineering, all kinds of other clients sort of service-related tasks, no one on the phone with the clients directly. And it was just simple. It was, you know, helping these small businesses catch all of the calls, they would miss every single day that when they didn't miss the call would result in business for them. And when they did miss the call that result in no business for them. It was an incredibly simple business on its face. You know, it's very hard to manage 400 employees at a distance, particularly back then when it was a very odd thing to say that you had employees that didn't work in an office, but all that to say it was fantastic. I loved it to its core. It was a really fun business to begin.
Azhar Siddiqui 14:05
That's awesome! So you kind of made remote work cool. Before you know it.
Shaun Clark 14:10
Yeah, we were doing remote work when no one was, I mean, I think, you know, yeah, at the time, I remember, we were trying to find, you know, other people who had done it. And the other big thing was the equipment. So like, you know, trying to find every phone system you bought back then it was like, Okay, well, we're gonna go put it in your server closet, and you know, you're gonna have battery backups and all and we're gonna run wires to the desk and all this and we're like, no we need something that's going to use the Internet and Voice over IP, and it's all gonna work. And in fact, the one we ended up using was a product. Actually, that was secret at the time, but it's now been released. It was actually an Amazon product. And what Amazon had done is they basically created their own in a house phone system, and they have eventually released it as like it's called Amazon connect, I think now, but the trick they used at the time, which was brilliant, is because VoIP was still in its infancy stages and wasn't that great? Well, what they would do is they would actually call a phone line and then hang the phone line open. So basically, you just pick up the phone. And then what they would do is they would keep that phone line open all the time. And when you went to go connect to call, it would just basically bridge your conference in on that phone line. And so because it uses the sort of existing phone network of quality was fantastic. I'm certain they've already transitioned away from that. But that was one of the tricks they had to do. Because you know, the connectivity was fine for the scripting and for some of the agent interface kind of stuff, but the phone calls just you couldn't get consistent quality. So that's how they were able to work around it.
Azhar Siddiqui 15:32
That's an amazing man. And just FYI, for you, we are a 100% remote companies Well, obviously, but it's not that obvious in you know, where we're setting up right now in Pakistan, for example, the culture is to have these big, massive offices and fill in these offices with these people coming in, and just be like really micromanaging and things like that. But you know, the type of person we wanted to bring to the table again, was, you know, we wanted to let them work from homes. And part of the reason because we did that, we're able to attract a really good amount of females to RepStack. I think we're at over 55% females right now. And we're so proud of that, and had we not done this remote thing wouldn't have been possible. So I really connect with the remote work that you guys did early on and made it look so easy. And you know, once it's done properly with the right people, I think you know, you can look the other way, and you can expect your people to do what they're supposed to be doing.
Shaun Clark 16:36
Well, it forces you to manage to performance versus managed by walking around with this sort of work.
Azhar Siddiqui 16:45
Yeah, with a stick in your hands.
Shaun Clark 16:46
Yeah! And again, I think it is challenging initially, mostly because I think it creates a mental shift. But you know, at the end of the day, it does force you to think, okay, how do I scale wibbly start to target people's performance, which I think is great for the business and for the person because then you don't nitpick a bunch of stuff, that doesn't matter. And you really focus on the things that are core and key to getting the job done. And you sort of are also able to share in that with the employee, you can say, look, you know, here's what I want you to accomplish, I have to define it in a way that's sort of measurable, because I can't just stand behind you and decide if I like you that day, or I like what you're wearing, or I think that the cologne that you've chosen smells good.
Like all that stuff goes out the window, right? You really have to think about, okay, what is this person doing for me, but then the same thing for the employee, they know what they're expected of. And if they accomplish it, maybe they can accomplish it in ways that you would never have been, you know, sort of imagined. But now it doesn't matter. You don't have to think about it, and they can be creative. And maybe that can be a benefit to them. Some people can accomplish their work and half the time and you know, gain back some of their free time. And you know that that helps you as a business and helps them as a first.
Azhar Siddiqui 17:57
Yeah, that's so true. Shaun, on to the last question for you on this note is now you guys are planning to double up your workforce this year, and you know, managing 300 people, a good chunk of them are based in the US, and I'm sure some of them are going to be overseas as well.
Shaun Clark 18:16
A huge portion of our staff is in India?
Azhar Siddiqui 18:20
Awesome! So, you know, it's just maybe a rhetorical question as well. Is there a difference between how you treat a person who's hired in the US versus in a different country?
Shaun Clark 18:32
No, absolutely not. Oh, so we opened an office in India many years ago with the answering service and my current co-founder. I met him in that business. And I was talking to one of my product managers also in India yesterday. And you know, I think that I feel like we understand, I almost feel like I know a secret that other people, like almost, most people don't yet understand. So there are phenomenally talented people all over the world who just happen to be born in a different country than me. And lucky for me, I know that because what we do is we just take huge advantage of it. So we go to India, we pay top dollar, we are in the top quartile of job pairs there because we are not there to find cheap people. We are there to find amazing people. And if you look and it's funny, because I was talking to my product manager, if you look in the US, if you look at the top leaders of some of the largest companies in the United States today, many of them are brown. The CEO of Google, I'm pretty sure he isn't necessarily from Ohio. I saw an interview on Bloomberg with the president of Ford North America. Not a white guy, definitely born in India. And by the way, that's amazing. His whole job is responsibilities to roll out the brand new Ford f150 Lightning, you're talking about the most iconic Brand New American brand and motors, their top-selling vehicle by the way, and has been for like 40 years or something one of their biggest profit centers, and you know, and but the point is that it has nothing to do with where you're born, it has everything to do with your capacity. In fact, I'm a huge fan of Warren Buffett and one of his highest level sort of Lieutenant guys runs his entire reinsurance business, which is incredibly difficult business also, not from the US, so on, and on it goes. And so, I mean these are really famous people who you can find out the world. But in my organization today, I mean, incredibly brilliant individuals. And I just feel so lucky that other people haven't figured this out yet. Because we will have a lot more competition.
Azhar Siddiqui 20:45
Well, there you go guys, I think Shaun just gave us his biggest secret. And that, you know, maybe a lot of people don't know that. But until they find out, we're gonna make sure that you know, we find the best talent doesn't matter where they're located, as long as they can do this job perfectly. It's a win for us, a win for the clients that we're working for.
And why not right, we get to like, it's such a huge, you know, when I'm thinking one of the rewards, and one of the why's is, you know, we're 170 plus people right now. And we're providing, you know, a level playing field where sometimes this is not possible. So there's so much more when you think as you think right now, Shawn, that you go into these other areas on the globe, and provide these opportunities there, the repercussions are like, we don't even see them right now. But the secret's out, if you want to try that, I think it's a great way of building an amazing team these days, there's no reason especially post COVID. So yeah, this has been amazing, Shawn, what I want to do now is that quickly move into, you guys are doing amazing, obviously, in terms of revenues, in terms of the clients you guys have, I want to see if there are a couple of different couple of main things that you guys are doing on the marketing side, which is now starting to pull in more and more agency owners. I know, it's been a lot of organic, but is there anything that you guys are actively doing on the marketing side to polish?
Shaun Clark 22:23
Yeah, so it definitely has been more organic than anything. So but I would say that you know, I guess the way we've tried to approach our marketing is, you know, how can we help other people expand out their businesses, and if we can do that, can we find a win-win, you know, where, by helping them, we can help ourselves. And so, you know, we try to work as much as possible with people who already have existing audiences. Because, you know, we understand that in the world that we inhabit, we're just one piece of it. So we don't think of ourselves as the sort of end-all-be-all. And I think this is where a lot of organizations kind of go off the tracks. And I don't think they definitely do it purposefully, in all cases, although I think some of them do. But I think it's you just sort of naturally assumed you've got to cover the whole 360 degrees of marketing and sales. And so for us, we say now, you know, at the end of the day, we're like this really good toolset that kind of leads us really good information products kind of glued together. And those different information products, you know, in the form of how to run a marketing agency, how to scale an agency, those sorts of things. There's a huge variety of those that are out there that are very functional, work great, and are owned by a lot of other people. And so we're like, how can we kind of put these two together and help that person who's a teacher also create a revenue stream for themselves. And so that's kind of how we've approached our marketing overall. You know, as we've gotten larger, we've done things like we were at traffic and conversion. Last year, we'll be there again, this year, we started to do a couple of shows, we'll probably be starting to do a little bit more on the paid ad side a bit. Still, we're definitely experimenting with those sorts of channels. But I would say I'm way more focused and interested in finding like-minded individuals who already work for the audience that we're trying to serve. Not just because I think it's an easier way to get to a lot of those people. I also think there's just this idea that again, back to kind of this collegiate environment, you know, we're just one piece of the puzzle. So how can we make sure when we show up on the scene, we are doing so in a cohesive manner and not just using our ideas, but also using many ideas for other people.
Azhar Siddiqui 24:35
So that's something you know, Josh Nelson is my coach. And, you know, he brings this up from time to time that, you know, the fastest way to a million-dollar agency is a joint venture and or a strategic partnership or you know. It's been true for us, man, like, we are so humble like, you know, right from day one, we signed up a couple of joint ventures we've been growing them steadily. And now we're at a point where, you know, we've been able to get this break where we're ahead of the curve, we have some revenue coming in now we can apply that to our own marketing, and start doing things exactly what you just mentioned, the Traffic and Conversion conferences coming up, I believe in San Diego and September. So we're planning on being there. So hopefully, I'll get a booth right next to you. And, then there's the Ad World coming up as well. I think we're signing, that's only virtual. But we're going to try and do that one too. Are there any other conferences that you recommend?
Shaun Clark 25:40
Yeah, we're very early on the conferences, and I have a general, I sort of take the track of like, assume you're going to not make a dime. And you'll do great. I set a very low expectation, I think of it very much as a branding exercise. Now, every business is different. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I know people who have really good conference strategies, I used to be in the online women's shoe business at one point, and I will tell you don't shoot shows are where shoe brands make all their money, but they're cutting orders on the floor, right? So for us, though, we're a software company, we're there just to have a presence to meet people to connect with the customers we already have. I assume nothing comes out of those conferences.
Azhar Siddiqui 26:23
But Shawn, on the other hand, you know, if I'm looking at the marketing engine, you're running before that during the conference, and you know, that that's kind of how we're going to be playing that as well as that, you know, we're going to warm up our audiences, you know, leading up to the show after that, when we have age, you know, engines like that on software's like high level in the background, marketing, automated, then, you know, I think it becomes really easy for guys like us to go to these conferences, and just have a good time. And, you know, answer as many questions as you can.
Shaun Clark 26:58
Absolutely! And I actually think your business stands to do better than mine on a revenue basis, because you have a higher armpit, right? It doesn't take, you could just do the math, how many people you have to sign up versus how many people I have to sign up to get to the same level, right?
Azhar Siddiqui 27:12
I did that yesterday.
Shaun Clark 27:15
Yeah, here we go. So I think that math can actually work out really well for you. But I don't think that means that we're not going to more conferences, I love going to conferences, only because it's an opportunity to meet people I think we otherwise would never meet. And I think that's important. And at our size, we will probably go to three or four of them. But I will say the only one we've done so far was Traffic Conversion, it was fantastic. We'll probably do two or three this year, assuming COVID hopefully abates as we go later into the year. And I think it'll be great.
Azhar Siddiqui 27:43
Nice, Ad Word is coming up in May, I believe. And I think we just bought our contract from them yesterday. So just a heads up on that one. That's amazing. On the marketing side, I think, you know, strategic partnerships, and just now starting to do you know, these conferences, and you guys I think are going to crush it over there as well. But a lot of word of mouth, focusing on the core, which is making sure the product is really great, right? I think that's where you guys are really investing.
Shaun Clark 28:18
Yeah!
Azhar Siddiqui 28:20
On the sales side, Shawn, how big is the team there? Now? Do you guys need to do anything there? Or is it fully automated?
Shaun Clark 28:27
Yeah, so I mean, early on, we actually did have a small sales team. And, you know, when we looked at it, at the end of the day, you know, our, our salesperson turns out to be almost more like a cashier or an order taker. Not really, because we don't really do sales in the traditional sense. For us, we will have somebody, we were sort of thinking of them as customer success, but really early on in the funnel. So more, you know, people coming to the website, asking questions, or calling in and sort of wanting to talk to sales, quote, unquote, but they won't be a salesperson, you know, we're more there to try to answer questions. You know, again, the people we work with are different in the sense that, you know, we're trying to help them shift their business model, not necessarily introduce them to something that they haven't seen before on the tool side, but lucky for us, the tools that we create, the goal, actually for them is to look exactly like the tools that they're already using. It's simple to change the business model under which they're operating. And so for us, we don't really need a traditional salesperson.
Azhar Siddiqui 29:35
Okay! So that's a great problem to have, you know, you go from all these people coming in, and this is how I signed up. Well, you know, I found out from my coach that this is the best system 100 Other people were using it in that network. And you know, I just went on, did some of my due diligence, went on with my credit card signed up, and haven't looked back. So you know, I can understand where you're coming from on the sales side. Now on the retention side, now, you know, you guys have 15,000 people, and I'm sure you guys want to maintain, you know, retain the ones you guys have while you continue to add more clients. So what's the strategy there like?
Shaun Clark 30:16
So that is actually where we have the most challenge, right, so while it's great to say that, you know, understanding what it is that we do on a surface is easy, but then when you move into the platform, it's a massive platform, and everyone's gonna come at it from a different angle, and have a different goal to success. So you know, a lot of software applications, it's easy, you go to their getting started guide, and they do one thing. And so it's like, Okay, we'll do these five steps. And then, you're successful, right? But for us, it's like, you know, you could do a million things in our app. And a lot of times, that's actually what causes the biggest issue, people will come in and get stuck somewhere. So for us, it's about the big focus being customer success. And so we have, oh, gosh, I think that's one of our biggest areas of hiring. We're shifting to a, we originally had a one on one customer success model, but what we found was that you know, everybody is going to be ready for customer success at a different period. And so we've actually shifted to more almost thinking like a retail store. It's funny, the way we thought about this was I went into a Verizon cell phone store a couple of months ago. And it was really interesting, because, you know, there's someone up front who could greet me, and then they would put me on like a waiting list. And then 30 minutes later whenever I would get somebody there, and but I could do this anytime they were open. So basically, called seven days a week, if I needed help, right, I could go into this physical location. And I had this really weird circumstance where it was a pain in the neck, it took a week to get the service going, because of all these issues, and I think I visited the store like four times. But what was great is, I never had to worry, like, I could just go in, I knew what to expect, I got the help I needed. And there was always a person there to help me through the process.
And it was on-demand, right. So like, if I was busy that day, or you know, I thought I was gonna go on at 10 am. But I had something come up, I could go in at 2 pm, right. And so what we're doing is shifting to that model virtually, where it's like, Oh, welcome to High Level, when you're ready, anytime, you know, within these business hours, jump into the Zoom Room, and boom, someone will be there to greet you. And then we're just gonna fill it with 40 people or 100 people or whatever it takes, then we'll sign you out as you come in the store, essentially. And then you can get help kind of on-demand. That's really been a big focus of ours. And so far, it's been a phenomenal success.
Azhar Siddiqui 32:34
Yeah, no, that's when I started out with you guys, I think you guys also offer a wide job service where one of your specialists can come in and set up things for you.
Shaun Clark 32:45
We still offer that service. Absolutely! We still offer that for sure, but that's a paid-for option. And it's five hours of custom development and setup and all of that. And for the right person. In fact, for everybody, I still wish everyone would do that. But I still think they're just gonna be a lot of people who are going to come in and say, Oh, well, it's software, right. So I can figure this out. And then you know, kind of thing, they start on it, they get confused at some point. And so you just need an easy way to say like, oh, you're confused, great, jump into the Zoom Room, they'll help you out.
Azhar Siddiqui 33:14
Yeah, and I, by the way, when for that service, it makes it a lot easier to just get started with something brand new. And then my team members just, you know, they plug in with them. And it's really nice, clean handoff and just avoid so many issues that you know, you don't need to have. So no, that's great. Shawn, why one more question on this side on the retention side is, so is there like different teams for people who are onboarding like onboarding specialists versus people who are responsible for the long term clients, like, client success managers.
Shaun Clark 33:48
Well, no, I mean, we're a little different there. So there are two main teams are Success and Support. And the idea really, is that the first 90 days is that critical section where you know, you're really learning and you need to understand a lot more of the sort of in-depth kind of concepts in the system. So that's really a successes job, and then after the first 90 days that you know, the likelihood that you need, that level is pretty low. So then we move on to support where it's more like, Hey, I'm trying to, you know, do this one specific thing. I'm trying, you know, can you tell me what I'm missing here, or like this isn't working or, you know, sort of more of like a QA kind of approach. But even there, we'll transition to kind of that Zoom Room concept for support as well. Just because we find that those kinds of one on one fit, you know, face-to-face interactions are superior to, you know, emails and chats about, we're going to shut our email channel down. So if you try to email support in the next month or so, it's going to spit back say sorry, this channel has been shut down, click here to jump into the Zoom Room instead, you know, that kind of thing. But for us, it's really just success and support as two different teams.
Azhar Siddiqui 34:52
And there's no when it comes down to the Success and Support Teams. Is there like a culture of Maybe if the client needs it, are they actively maybe saying that maybe you should go with this plan instead of, you know, I think $100 Where you guys start out and then a $300 plan and a $500 plan? Are these guys like you actively? upselling?
Shaun Clark 35:18
Yeah, absolutely! So it depends on where you're at on your journey, right? So like everyone, in my mind, everyone can get to the top plan and make way more money. I always say like, if you're paying us more money, then you're doing something wrong. So I think that is absolutely the case today, and always will be the case. And I think that everyone should get there. But we understand it's a journey, right? So when you first walk in, the goal of success is to identify who you are, because some $97 accounts are truly $97 accounts. I'm a single-owner-operator agency, I just got started, I have no customers, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me? And then some people are no, I'm actually an agency in disguise. I just want to kick the tires, and I'm hearing the 97. So success identifies those people. And then you know, for the 97, let's get you the 297. Because that's where you should be. And then over time, the idea is, oh, you're on the 297. Great. Have you thought about SAS? Have you figured out how to sell this on a recurring basis? You know, Oh, you haven't? Great. Let's educate you so that we can get you there. Because again, you know, what we want to do is, you know why absolutely believe what I said, I think you can make way more money. By being on the SAS plan and selling a SAS, I get that on day one. That may not be where everybody's at. So we want to make sure that we bring you up, but we bring you up at the right time at the right rate and make it appropriate so that at no time do you say what am I paying for I feel like I'm getting taken here. We want it to be an amazing journey across the whole time.
Azhar Siddiqui 36:45
We're at the $300 plan. My director marketing's here Mashood, if you know, I think, you know, if we need to move up to that other one because I know you get your own app branded to yourself. And you can use it for your, you know, branding, with your clients and things like that, why not? Right. And that's where we're heading this year as well, providing a lot of value to our clients, you know, customized training modules, and things like that. So that is definitely going to come in handy for us. My last question, Shaun, before I let you go is regarding, you know, you guys have built such an amazing community around High Level, it's extremely vibrant, you know, I'm on many of your Facebook communities. And one of the things because it's also related to us, you know, on the virtual assistant's side, and you know, people who've kind of build up their businesses around High Level, providing support to agency owners, or whoever it might be using High Level and, you know, giving out their expertise in building our landing pages setting up High Level and things like that. And I know you guys have a job post for High Level as well, where people can post and things like that. But just on the top of your head, how do you think about, you know, when these companies are coming in, and they're providing the independent services and things like that? Because you know, I'm sure you're not in the capacity of saying that goes with this one or that one, that battery is a major issue for you. But is there a way for people like maybe agency owners who are looking for help out there to kind of find out what rule of thumb should be I need to hire a High-Level expert?
Shaun Clark 38:38
So this is a good question. So one thing you're going to see is we're going to put a tonne of effort into this. So we're going to create marketplaces across, actually inside HighLevel to help promote people more directly. And I think we're at a point where we can do this really well. I think on the landing page side, we can create a landing page marketplace and people can sell that. I think there's a huge cause for snapshots. I also think there's a huge cause for people who are on the VA side, I guess, just sort of like the expert side, I would say the services side, the people side, I think there's a really good cause to also quit marketplace there. It'll be an imperfect system.
No doubt, I'm sure we'll get people will say, Oh, this person's terrible, this person is great, or this review is fake, and we'll deal with all that nonsense. But at the end of the day, I think that there are so many wonderful people who are doing great things. And I do believe again, this division of labor is key. You know, I'll run the agency owners all the time, who I feel like they could probably sell you know, ice to Eskimos as the saying goes, but you know, but couldn't set up High Level to save their life. And so they really and if they really just if I could just sort of unite them or connect them with somebody who could help them they would flourish in such a different way. But I am well beyond the point of being able to, first of all, I don't want to recommend one person over another because I think that is unfair. I honestly, there's no way I know, with any certainty who the good people are. And the bad people are because we have just such a tremendously large community now that there are so many people I don't even know exists. And so it is super important to me that people do, I do encourage people to work with and find someone to help them. I always say the same thing, like, you know, just called references. That's always my piece of advice that I feel like, no one other ever, you know, every time I hear a horror story, I always say, Well, did you get any references? And did you call them? Yeah? And the answer is always no. And I'm like, well, there's your I mean, you know, come on, give me a break. Like, at the end of the day, if you're going to engage someone who you don't know, it's super simple, ask him for the name of three agency owners like you that you can call and talk to it, the likelihood, you talk to three other people, and they say, Oh, they're amazing. And then they turn out to not be amazing. It's very low. And but otherwise, I think there are so many fantastic people in our audience that provide these types of services and are great at what they do. And that's why we like the community, right? That's why we want the community because we feel like, this is like a group effort, right? Everybody's good at what they do. Like, again, we're terrible at sales and marketing, we're proud of that. But because we think we're really good at product and engineering, because that's what we want to be great at. And we want to find a way to connect with other people who are great at the things we're terrible at. And I feel like that is the type of attitude everyone should take and think, you know, how do I arm myself with these other things that I need? And by working with other people who are great at them, so that holistically, I can be great at what I do.
Azhar Siddiqui 41:37
Yeah, and that's a part of the opportunity, when you're building a business like you are, that you know, these are added benefits, where you know, these entire economies are spreading out around this amazing software that you guys are focused on building. And then you know, all of these amazing people are doing so many amazing things, for the most part. And that's really inspiring. And hopefully, you know, we're on a very similar journey where, you know, we want to be doing something similar as well, but Shaun, this has been amazing. I really appreciate your time. I know you got a busy day. But you know, humbling, really nice talking to you.
Shaun Clark 42:21
It's great to be here. And I think what you folks are doing is amazing. So I appreciate all of the hard work that you're putting in. So thank you for not only thank you for having me but thank you for doing what you're doing, because I think you're making a very big impact in the lives of a lot of agency owners.
Azhar Siddiqui 42:37
Thanks, Shaun! I really appreciate that. And then on the 18th, I think we are invited to a spotlight session.
Shaun Clark 42:46
Oh, yeah, that's awesome.
Azhar Siddiqui 42:47
So I'm really looking forward to that one. I'm gonna bring my brothers or at least one of them with me as well. And we were kind of like a team, and we roll like that.
Shaun Clark 42:57
I love that, very good.
Azhar Siddiqui 43:00
Thanks for doing this man. And hopefully, we'll stop by and hopefully have a cup of coffee, my brothers and I.
Shaun Clark 43:06
Please do. I'd love to meet you all.
Azhar Siddiqui 43:10
Awesome, man. Thanks, Shaun for your time. Will talk to you soon.
Shaun Clark 43:14
Alright, bye for now, everybody.