AI Tools for Agencies: The Smart-Idea Culture That Scales Teams Fast

When your agency grows fast, the pressure grows faster:  clients, team, tech, everything scaling at once. The temptation? Add more tools, more systems, more noise. But growth without stability eventually breaks.

That’s why I sat down with Kelsi Navalta, Director of Affiliate Programs at HighLevel, the leading white-label marketing platform for agencies. Kelsi is part of a smart-idea culture, where AI tools for agencies don’t replace people, they realign them toward what really moves the business forward.

In this episode, we talk about the systems, mindset, and leadership shifts that let her scale a 22-person affiliate team serving 8,000+ affiliates without losing clarity or speed. You’ll learn how to use automation wisely, create space for human connection, and lead teams that think, decide, and grow on their own.

If you’ve felt the strain between innovation and burnout, this conversation will show you how to build sustainably, scale intentionally, and lead with wisdom in a world obsessed with “more.”

Books Mentioned

• The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

Connect with Kelsi Navalta on Instagram @KelsiNavalta to learn more about her work with HighLevel’s affiliate team and the systems helping agencies grow smarter, not harder.

And if you'd like to try out HighLevel, here's a 14 day free trial. Catalytic Leadership runs on HighLevel, and I highly recommend it. 

I want to invite you to check out the Committed Mastermind, a community I help lead along with world-class leaders like JC and Karen Hite, Vinnie Fisher, and Jonathan Mast, plus incredible mentors like Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, and many others.

This is for entrepreneurs who want to build a thriving business without sacrificing their faith, their family, or their health.

Check out the Committed Mastermind at https://committedmastermind.com/

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Transcript

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Meet Kelsey Navalta

Dr. William Attaway 1:21

It is such an honor today to have Kelsey Navalta on the podcast. Kelsey's the director of affiliate programs at HighLevel, the leading white label marketing platform for agencies. Prior to High Level, she worked as an influencer and affiliate marketer across multiple platforms before leveraging her experience to grow and optimize the company's affiliate program. Kelsey, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Kelsi Navalta 1:46

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. When I met you in Cancun at another event, I was taken away by the topics that you were talking about, and I'm very honored that you wanted to have me here.

Dr. William Attaway 1:58

100%. I know you're going to add a lot of value to the conversation today.

Intro 2:04

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author, and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway 2:26

Particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Kelsi Navalta 2:32

Yeah, um, I don't think leadership came easy to me as a kid. I was always really quiet, really shy. My parents tried to put me in positions where I would start to flourish in that environment. And when I was in college, I joined a sorority and I ended up really liking the recruitment and sales aspect of things. I was studying biology at the time. Obviously, I'm not doing biology in my day-to-day anymore. But it was really that time at the sorority that inspired me to want to work with people more and wanted to use my skills and put them to good use. And so I found high level on

Early Leadership Roots

Kelsi Navalta 3:10

Craigslist and I applied. Yeah, back in the day when we were putting job listings on Craigslist. And today, I would like to say that I I don't really think that there was a singular thing that made me into a true leader. It was just having great people surrounding me and being inspired to act similarly to them, picking up here and there things that resonated and then continuing to grow.

Dr. William Attaway 3:35

So that's really good. So where did you start at high level?

Kelsi Navalta 3:39

Yeah, I was a creative manager when I first started at high level on the agency side. And then as high level created and grew the affiliate program, they needed somebody to step into that affiliate role. So after about six months, I switched teams and then I've been on the affiliate team ever since.

Dr. William Attaway 3:54

You know, most of our listeners are going to be very familiar with high level. It's the CRM that I use for my company and so many of our listeners as well. But for those who may not know, what is high level?

Kelsi Navalta 4:06

Yeah, high level is an all-in-one

Role Shift Into Affiliates

Kelsi Navalta 4:07

sales and marketing tool. For many people that may have used it in the past, especially since so many of your listeners are in the agency space. It's really continued to grow over the past five, six, seven years. And so nowadays it is AI, it's social media posting, it's Instagram DMs, it's courses. It's not just the all-in-one agency item that it was before. It's really been able to encompass a lot of different digital needs for a lot of people in different niches. So we're happy to continue growing, happy to continue serving small businesses through agencies. And we're just excited to keep on adding whatever agencies need.

Dr. William Attaway 4:50

You know, that that's been something that stood out to me. I first met Chase at an event we were both speaking at. And uh I said, yeah, so this is for agencies. I said, so it's not really for if you're not an agency. And he said, Oh, no, no, no, no. He said, This could, this could really help you. And we switched over. It took a little time to migrate. But moving over from Active Campaign and all the other tools we were using uh saved us immediately over $200 a month on our tech stack. So I was I was interested already. I was like, okay, that that's that's you got my attention. But the fact that every week your developer teams are rolling out new things. Every week they're making it better. Every week, week in, week out. I don't know any other product that does that.

Kelsi Navalta 5:33

Yeah, I think that the environment, like the digital marketing environment, is just growing and evolving so quickly

What HighLevel Is Now

Kelsi Navalta 5:39

that we have to continue to grow and adapt alongside the market for all of our users. But um you had a little phrase in there, and that's the side that I kind of want to emphasize is we're not just growing the product, we also want to grow stability. We want to improve the product as well. And so we have different pods of teams who focus on different things. Some focus on new items, some focus on making sure that when a software changes their APIs, we like adapt to that as quickly as possible. So now that high levels continue to grow, we're still trying to maintain that speed while also now I uh focusing a ton on stability. And it's been a really interesting process over the past few years because I didn't really think about stability that often, but now it's definitely become one of the core things that we have to make sure we maintain.

Dr. William Attaway 6:28

That was one of my big takeaways from the level up summit last year. The focus on, hey, you know, we have been adding, adding, adding, adding. For the next bit, we're gonna focus on stabilizing and making this as strong a platform as we can. And I was so impressed with that because really so much of our culture is around more, more, more, more, more, more features, more like and stability can go by the wayside. And that really reflected a maturity and I would consider it to be excellent leadership to say we're gonna make sure this is something where we're building a foundation that is going to take the stories that we're going to add in the years ahead. And I thought that was so, so smart.

Kelsi Navalta 7:08

Yeah, I think that maturity is the perfect adjective to describe what it took to make that decision. Because I think even like separate from tech, everybody gets really excited. It's really addicting to add something new to your business. But sometimes things are just working and you just need to let it simmer and you need to like walk away, go touch grass. And so that's right.

Dr. William Attaway 7:29

I love that.

Kelsi Navalta 7:30

Yeah, we've been getting more people telling us that we need to focus on stability and we completely agree. So now we're trying to balance both where it makes sense.

Dr. William Attaway 7:38

So good. Yeah, AI is the topic du jour in agency world, especially. It's not going anywhere, it's not fad. Uh,

Features vs Stability

Dr. William Attaway 7:45

this is here to stay. And you have some unique perspectives around AI, you know, in light of what you guys are doing, but also you as a leader. What can you share about what you have learned on this topic and and where you see this going?

Kelsi Navalta 8:00

Yeah, I think that um when I look on my TikTok feed, there's two opinions on AI. It's gonna take over the world or it's the worst thing to ever experience. And sometimes there's overlap, right? Right. But in reality, I feel like AI is both more and less than both of those opinions. There's been so many things that AI can do that I never expected could be automated. And then there's some things that I feel like are just intuitive, but we can't figure out how to train it. We'll put entire teams on it and it's not working. And in a in a lot of ways, I really like that because AI's been able to automate the monotonous things. And then it's been able to give us freedom to focus on the stuff that makes business relationships human. And so the way that we're we've been leveraging AI in high-level S tech is what can we do to make it so that whoever's working at your front desk doesn't have to say, yes, we're open till 5 p.m. 20 times a day. You know, how can you make that experience better for the customer as well? Like they don't want to have to call and wait for somebody to call back just to see what your hours are. But then at the same time, when that person is actually interested, when they are wanting to walk into the business, how can you free up more time for that person to actually talk to the qualified customers? That's the balance that we've been seeing AI be able to scale people's businesses to. So it's not a replacement of anybody, but it's more of a realignment of what actually makes the business relationship work.

Dr. William Attaway 9:38

You know, at the at the conference we were at, we heard Jonathan Mast talk about AI. And I had him on the show about a year ago, and we talked about this, and he said something I've never forgotten. He said, AI is not gonna replace people. People who know how to use AI will replace people who don't. And I thought that is a really great framing for this conversation around replacement because that's a lot, there's a lot of fear. I hear this not infrequently from people who are who have more than a little fear that that they are gonna be replaced. Leading a team of 13 that you have, you know, part of our job as leaders is to develop the people that we lead, to help them to grow and develop as individuals and as contributors to what we're trying to accomplish. When it comes to AI, how are you working with them to understand this is not a something you should fear, but instead something you should learn to leverage? How are you doing that?

Kelsi Navalta 10:32

Yeah, I think that uh I feel like when you lead a team, you always have to do it in two ways. You have to lead the technical logical route, and then you also have to lead them on an emotional level as well. Because a real leader is making sure that they're developing as individuals.

Dr. William Attaway 10:52

That's right.

Kelsi Navalta 10:53

And the reality of the situation is uh if people are looking at their job description and it can be replaced by AI, maybe they should look at how they're adding value in addition to that. I'm very lucky that my team has been very open

Choosing Stability As Maturity

Kelsi Navalta 11:10

and receptive to adapting to new tools so that none of them are in that position. But the question that I we always have asked each other is like, can AI replace XYZ? How can it replace XYZ? And it's hard sometimes to teach an old dog new tricks, but this is where we're continually challenging each other. Like, have you asked AI? Have you tried to do it with AI? This person did it with AI. And we'll do things like share TikTok, share LinkedIn posts where we're seeing how people are continuing to adapt and evolve to it. And so I think that by having an open conversation, you're able to lead them in those ways. But I also think that by role modeling it, by me showing, like, hey, I didn't know how to do this, but here's how I'm starting to figure it out, it also shows them that it's okay to be in progress with something as daunting as AI for some individual. So we've taken kind of that blended approach of showing them, but also like walking through it with them. And then also if like emotionally reassuring them, like if your job can't be replaced by AI, then we want you. Like you've done a great job until now. Why would why would we replace you? Unless you think you are replaceable, then why do you think that way? You know? And then and then we kind of just have an open conversation around it.

Dr. William Attaway 12:28

I love that. Do you sense fear on the parts of of team members or or others that that they are gonna be like phased out in view of AI?

Kelsi Navalta 12:39

No. Even on our support team with high level, yeah. Our support team is like a third of all of our hires. And we've been implementing AI on the front end for like beginners who usually don't actually have technical questions. It's usually like, how does XYZ feature work? And AI has just as happy of a customer success or satisfaction score as humans. But even with that, we're still having to hire, we're still having to grow, we still need a lot of humans. And so there's a lot of areas where AI has

AI’s Real-World Use Cases

Kelsi Navalta 13:10

been able to simplify the process, but we still need more help and more people on hand. And so, no, our team is very confident in not just the affiliate team, but uh the rest of our teams are very confident in the way that we're adding value. Of course, realistically, it's unless like people are not checked in and stuff like that. But we've been doing a really good job of tackling that.

Dr. William Attaway 13:35

I think that speaks to your leadership because you know, I think when people feel like they are seen and heard, they lean in. And uh a lack of engagement, not always, but so often, reflects a leader that is less than engaged with them. You know, people don't leave jobs most often because of pay or benefits or PTO. They leave because they don't feel appreciated. They don't feel seen and heard. And I think that what you guys are building at high level is remarkable. Yeah, you're you're the director of affiliate programs, and that is a part of high level that maybe a lot of our listeners are not aware of or are not a part of. 13 team members, 8,000 affiliates. That's not a small number. How do you lead that? And what are you seeing in that space right now?

Kelsi Navalta 14:24

Yeah, well, uh, to be honest, since I submitted the form to hop on your podcast, we've grown. So I think we're at like 22 team members now.

Dr. William Attaway 14:35

Holy cow.

Kelsi Navalta 14:37

Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway 14:37

That's amazing.

Kelsi Navalta 14:38

Yeah, they're I I really enjoy our team. Uh we're growing rapidly. Um, but your question was how are we managing that growth?

Dr. William Attaway 14:49

Right. How do you, as the point leader for affiliate programs, like how do you manage a team of 22, like as you as you look at this? Because a lot of our listeners are not managing teams that size yet. Or if they are, there are a lot of struggles with that. You know, 22 people who all are individuals. You don't lead them all the same. Like, how do you do that as Kelsey and an incredibly growing affiliate community that's looking to you and your team? How do you lead and manage that?

Kelsi Navalta 15:19

Yeah. Um, so our CEO at high level, Sean, he had a quote that said, a smart idea is a smart idea. Might have taken it from somewhere else, might have like got it inspired. But we use that day in and day out on the affiliate team. And what we mean by it is like, if there's a machine, you put in a dollar, you get out to, I'm gonna ask you to sit at the machine and stick a dollar in it every single day. I don't care if you spend $10,000, you got 20. And so I think that when we do training, it takes a long time to train up each team member. But we're able to scale so quickly because we encourage and provide resources and provide reassurement and uh all that jazz. But we ask people reassurance. We ask them, like, can you just make the smartest decision here? And in reality, if somebody has the same goal and if they have the same knowledge, even if they take a different path, they should still get to the result that you want. And so what we do is we continually tell people and we challenge them, like, can you find the smart solution in this scenario? And if they don't find the smart solution, like if

Leading Teams Through AI Change

Kelsi Navalta 16:30

they don't find something that makes sense, it either means that I didn't equip them with all of the resources and the knowledge or something's off. They don't have the same goals as me. They're not fully in, they're not fully here, like they're not the right individual. And so by challenging that, we've really been able to create a team that can manage themselves, manage up, manage down, manage to the side, have very transparent conversations. And then they're always able to challenge anything that we put in. Um, I try to never lead by tenure or or title. And if it's a smart idea, it's a smart idea, we're just gonna do it. And so the team is very much used to just coming up with good, authentic ideas that will actually fix the problems. And then um on the leadership side, we're really good with empowering them to do that, having a tight feedback loop and then giving them the resources to go execute it. If people are genuinely had a great idea with the best of intentions and it goes wrong, we clean it up with them. But we don't say, we don't like take the keys away from them. We have them try again, you know, like keep on going, try again. Like, what did you learn? How are you gonna fix this? And so it does take a lot of time to train up because so many people come from a background where they made one mistake and got in trouble and they got fired. But once we're able to coach people out of it, it's really awesome to see they're able to grow faster and make many more creative decisions than any one person would have been able to do alone. So that's how we've been able to continue to grow the team. I wouldn't be able to coach the team without the leaders on my team that are managers, the other director that we've got, and the people that are leaders without a title that are definitely role models and mentors that are developing their leadership skills. So that's how we've been able to continually grow.

Dr. William Attaway 19:42

You know, I love that that environment that you are creating. It's so intentional and it sounds like you protect it in a very powerful way. That environment where it's okay to fail. Too many leaders are not creating that. And if you are listening to this and you are zapping people the minute they screw up, you're missing an opportunity because you're creating a culture of fear. Kelsey, what you're creating is an environment where it's okay to fail forward. As long as we're moving forward, we're growing, we're learning, it's okay. This is an environment where that's it's almost expected, you know, because it's part of learning. Is that something you have always done, or is that something you've learned during your time at high level?

Kelsi Navalta 20:25

It's definitely something that I learned at my time with high level. Before high level, I used to try and like hide my failures. I would try and fix it before anybody could catch it. But the leadership at high level was very forgiving in that they always forgave because I always fixed it. And so I tried to create that same environment for my team too. And it's working out really, really well. It did take a lot of time though, because I think that, especially in the beginning, when um, because I I very much thought of the affiliate program as my baby. And so when I added my first team members, I was freaking out. I was like, this is my business and this

Confidence In Human Roles

Kelsi Navalta 21:04

is not going the way that I wanted. And I think that as a leader, you kind of have to realistically look at it and you have to have an honest conversation with yourself. Like, do you want to do all of this? Or like, what are you willing to give away? But when you're willing to give it away to somebody, you have to be willing for them to make mistakes. Ironically, it wasn't like a business teaching that got that to click. Somebody was talking to me about door dashing your groceries. And they were like, Well, the thing is, is that when you door dash your groceries, you have to be okay if they don't get your bananas just as yellow or green as you want them. But you have to be okay because you're not going to go pick it up yourself. And somehow that's what made it click for me is okay, if I hand things off to somebody, I have to be okay with getting a slightly different result. If I'm not okay with it, then I gotta find time to do it. And if I can't find time to do it, then I gotta find figure out a way to be okay with it.

Dr. William Attaway 21:58

One of the secrets of delegation. You know, I I heard uh a leader say one time that if another person on your team can do something 80% as well as you would as the leader, you have to delegate that. And man, I pushed back on that so hard. I was like, 80%? That's like a C. C work? No, no. They got to be at least 90%. At least 95, really. That's when I'll delegate. But you know, the further I get into my leadership journey, the more I realize how true that is. 80% is where they start. And I've got to give them the same opportunity to learn and grow that I had. If I don't give them that opportunity, they're gonna stay where they are. That sounds like the environment you're creating.

Kelsi Navalta 22:43

Thank you. Yeah, I would give a ton of credit back to the team, though. As individuals, they started at that 80% and then they've taken it to a place where it goes beyond my expectations, beyond where I had it. And I think that a lot of people give me credit, but I try and share as much with the team. So if anybody is listening to this that knows the affiliate team, they are doing some amazing things. And I

Scaling The Affiliate Team

Kelsi Navalta 23:08

really give a lot of props to them too.

Dr. William Attaway 23:10

And that's great leadership. You are doing some amazing things. You just paid out how much in commissions?

Kelsi Navalta 23:15

Uh, for the first time ever, September 2025, we paid out six million dollars in commissions to all of our affiliates. So that's money in the pockets of everybody that's promoted high level in the past.

Dr. William Attaway 23:27

Wow. That's remarkable. Again, I'm not aware of any other company that is as generous as you guys are with the affiliate program and what you're building. And how high level is growing and scaling, I think has astounded anybody who's been watching the last few years.

Kelsi Navalta 23:44

Yeah, by the time people are listening to this, we'll probably be past um 150 million in lifetime commissions. We're on track to hit that October 2025. But at the end of the day, we'll keep doing it because we wouldn't be where we're at without our affiliates. Um there's an article called A Thousand True Fans. And it's talking about how to get your top customers into your top fans. Yes. And what the affiliate program has allowed us to do is it's allowed us to convert those top fans into our top sellers as well. And so we don't have a sales team, but who who better to sell than people who genuinely like the product that would advocate for it, that would share it with their friends? And that's the model that our affiliate program's been able to emulate for us.

Dr. William Attaway 24:36

That's so good. Uh Kelsey, how do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team's gonna need you to have? I mean, you have to lead at a higher level today than you did a few years ago. And that's only gonna get bigger as the team grows, as the company grows, as the number of affiliates grow. How do you stay on top of your game?

Kelsi Navalta 24:58

Yeah, um, it's definitely very interesting because I was talking to my manager about this and I told him I felt like I got a promotion from being a director at a tiny company to a director at a big company, which is literally kind of what happened in a lot of ways. With the culture that we've built around a smart idea is a smart idea, I learned so much from the team daily. They teach me how to continue to adapt to their different personalities, things that are occurring, things that they're patterns that they're seeing with their affiliates constantly. But separate from the tech industry, I love to consume not just media. I love to read books, I love to watch shows, I like to watch TikToks specifically from different industries. There's so much that I've learned about how to create a community from watching Netflix documentaries on K-pop groups and cheerleaders and other things like that. And you don't need to watch those, but I think that when you try to learn tangentially, at the end of the day, we're all just humans trying to improve ourselves. There's so many awesome ways that people have continued to improve themselves in so many different industries. And so just trying to constantly be on a learning journey is the way that we've continued to adapt.

Dr. William Attaway 26:15

Well, I think that teachable spirit is what has brought you this far and what will take you way farther. You know, that willingness to learn from anybody in any field and any discipline, like there's always something you can learn if you approach it with a teachable spirit. And I I love that in what you're deciding, what you're describing there. I think that's that is something that I hope every one of our listeners adopts for their own because that will make a difference.

Kelsi Navalta 26:40

Yeah. It's uh it's the quote of you have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Dr. William Attaway 26:45

That's right.

Kelsi Navalta 26:46

You know. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway 26:48

So true. So true. Well said. You said you like to read. Is there a is there

Culture Of Smart Ideas

Dr. William Attaway 26:52

a book that has made a difference in your journey that you read and thought, man, uh I would love to recommend this to the leaders who are listening.

Kelsi Navalta 26:59

Yeah, I uh there's so many books, so many books. But the one that I uh encourage my team to read the most often, and I encourage them to read it again, is One Minute Management.

Dr. William Attaway 27:12

Yeah.

Kelsi Navalta 27:13

Have you read it?

Dr. William Attaway 27:14

I have. That's a great book.

Kelsi Navalta 27:15

Yeah, it's so short, yet so effective. It is instantly actionable. I felt like it was an easy read, but you really have to implement the things that it says. But in terms of getting things up and running and immediately having impact, I felt like that was an amazing book. And when I see people are on the leadership path, that's the first book that I recommend that they read.

Dr. William Attaway 27:39

I love that. That's excellent. We'll have that link in the show notes. Perfect. Kelsey, uh, last question I have for you. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and solve one problem in your leadership, what would you love that problem to be?

Kelsi Navalta 27:55

Yeah, in uh my leadership, I read an article, it was like a year and a half ago, saying that most overachievers don't believe in themselves. And I thought that was really interesting because it really got people to like the reason why they said most overachievers don't believe in themselves is because they have to have this tendency to want to prove everybody wrong. They want to continue to grow, they want to continue to do that. But what I've realized is that also when you teach overachievers how to believe in themselves, there's also this level of gratitude where they're able to grow because now they're feeling confident about everything. And that shine from within is like really awesome to see in the team. But I've noticed that even then, imposter syndromes, like it'll keep popping up for those overachievers, myself included. And I see it with my team, and it's baffling to me because they achieve so many things and then the smallest thing they'll get hung up on. So even with the culture that we have of a smart idea is a smart idea, even though people don't get in trouble, there's still this fear on like, am I doing a good enough job? And if you knew how to fix that, the amount of things that I feel like would be changed within our business, or if you even knew how to accelerate it, it'd be amazing to see because I think we do a great job, but I I definitely want to see how we could continue to improve upon that.

Dr. William Attaway 29:26

That's an excellent one. And I think every leader listening is going to resonate with that. I think we all struggle at different points. And that is that is something I work with a lot of clients on to help them get out of their own way when it comes to what they believe about themselves and about the world around them and about the people around them. I think it's so important that we do that inner work. I'm with you. I wish I wish I could snap my fingers. That's a little longer process,

Building A Safe-To-Fail Environment

Dr. William Attaway 29:53

but it is possible. Yeah. Kelsey, it it's been so great to talk with you today. I'm so grateful for your time and the expertise that you brought into this conversation. I know our listeners are gonna want to stay connected to you and continue to learn more from you and about what you're doing. What's the best way for them to do that?

Kelsi Navalta 30:12

Yeah. If they've got Instagram, Kelsey Navalta is my tag. Um, I made it just related to high level things. So you can find me there. And then in there, I post links to meet with a team, chat with me directly, all that jazz. But that's definitely where I'd send people first.

Dr. William Attaway 30:32

Awesome. We'll have that link in the show notes. Kelsey, thank you. So grateful for you today.

Kelsi Navalta 30:37

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.