Vit Muller: 00:00:00

what does a normal day in the life of Robin Alex look like these days?

Robin Alex: 00:00:04

it's hard to describe what a normal day actually is the closest I got

Robin Alex: 00:00:07

to normal is when I'm home and, trying to do the same things over and over again.

Vit Muller: 00:00:10

How do you manage the pressure and stay sharp all the time?

Robin Alex: 00:00:13

I mean, part of it is I definitely don't think about it.

Vit Muller: 00:00:15

so I mean, aside from high level, like what do you

Vit Muller: 00:00:17

enjoy doing outside of business

Robin Alex: 00:00:19

that's really what I'm trying to figure out these days of,

Robin Alex: 00:00:21

what's my new side quest, what's my new side mission?

Vit Muller: 00:00:23

Can you take us back to that like moment when

Vit Muller: 00:00:26

you,  Shaun and Varun met?

Robin Alex: 00:00:28

Shaun called me like

Robin Alex: 00:00:29

Hey dude, can you, are you free to jump on and call me?

Robin Alex: 00:00:31

I'm gonna show you something.

Robin Alex: 00:00:32

I was like, yeah, first off, who is this again?

Robin Alex: 00:00:34

And he's like, Hey dude, Can you get on Zoom?

Robin Alex: 00:00:35

And I was like, fine, hold on.

Vit Muller: 00:00:37

building a company with Shaun and Varun, how do the three

Vit Muller: 00:00:40

of you like divide responsibilities?

Robin Alex: 00:00:41

we try not to divide, with hard lines.

Robin Alex: 00:00:44

I think that's the number one thing.

Robin Alex: 00:00:45

The way that we've really built it is creating what we call a founder's office.

Vit Muller: 00:00:52

Hello everybody.

Vit Muller: 00:00:53

Welcome to another episode on the High Level Experience Podcast.

Vit Muller: 00:00:57

Our guest today is someone who has a quietly shaped the entire agency

Vit Muller: 00:01:03

software ecosystem without most people realizing just how deep the story goes.

Vit Muller: 00:01:09

He's an operator through and through someone who didn't start in

Vit Muller: 00:01:12

marketing hype or venture capital, but deep in the trenches of IT

Vit Muller: 00:01:17

infrastructure and technical operations.

Vit Muller: 00:01:20

From working as systems administrator and IT analyst to building his own

Vit Muller: 00:01:27

ventures, he spent years seeing how businesses actually run behind the

Vit Muller: 00:01:33

scenes, the messy stack of tools, the broken workflows, and the constant

Vit Muller: 00:01:40

struggle agencies face trying to scale.

Vit Muller: 00:01:43

What's fascinating is that long before high level become a movement,

Vit Muller: 00:01:47

he had already been building and scaling digital businesses,

Vit Muller: 00:01:51

including his agency, Innovate Fast.

Vit Muller: 00:01:54

That experience gave him a front row seat to one of the biggest

Vit Muller: 00:01:58

problems in the agency world.

Vit Muller: 00:02:01

Talented consultants trapped trading time for money while juggling

Vit Muller: 00:02:06

dozens of disconnected tools.

Vit Muller: 00:02:07

Instead of accepting that as the norm, He helped build something that flipped

Vit Muller: 00:02:13

the model entirely, A platform designed to turn agencies into SaaS companies.

Vit Muller: 00:02:19

Today that vision has helped thousands of agencies break through the six

Vit Muller: 00:02:25

figure ceiling, build recurring revenue, and create real systems

Vit Muller: 00:02:30

that scale without needing to become software developers themselves.

Vit Muller: 00:02:34

Please welcome to the show, co-founder of HighLevel - Robin Alex.

Robin Alex: 00:02:44

Thank you for having me on.

Robin Alex: 00:02:45

That was a great introduction.

Vit Muller: 00:02:47

to have you on, Robin.

Vit Muller: 00:02:48

Thank you.

Vit Muller: 00:02:49

Appreciate it.

Vit Muller: 00:02:51

When I was planning for this interview, mate, I, I definitely

Vit Muller: 00:02:53

was like, I was like, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions about high

Vit Muller: 00:02:56

level and like the stuff that goes under the hood and we will, but I'd

Vit Muller: 00:03:00

like to start with you as a person.

Vit Muller: 00:03:03

what does a normal day in the life of Robin Alex look like these days?

Robin Alex: 00:03:07

it's hard to describe what a normal day actually is these

Robin Alex: 00:03:10

days, but, when I'm home, I like to, just start my day, super early,

Robin Alex: 00:03:14

hit the gym, around five, come back, shower, then take the kids to school.

Robin Alex: 00:03:18

and then, after that get home and then it's just nonstop calls.

Robin Alex: 00:03:22

really trying to focus on not only, making sure that we're

Robin Alex: 00:03:24

pushing the business forward, but.

Robin Alex: 00:03:26

Working with our teams and then being able to connect with customers.

Robin Alex: 00:03:29

just trying to chase that every single day.

Robin Alex: 00:03:31

then the evenings, of course spending time with the family and, repeat and recycle.

Vit Muller: 00:03:36

and repeat.

Robin Alex: 00:03:37

yeah, it,

Vit Muller: 00:03:37

to Friday or you go like every day.

Vit Muller: 00:03:39

Every day.

Vit Muller: 00:03:40

I'm hustling.

Robin Alex: 00:03:40

yeah, every day I try to pull that off.

Robin Alex: 00:03:42

of course the kids don't go to school every day, but, try to keep some

Robin Alex: 00:03:45

sort of routine, on the weekends, it's a little bit lighter, but

Robin Alex: 00:03:47

I'm still around, still messaging.

Robin Alex: 00:03:49

I'm on my phone quite a bit, messaging customers, people that

Robin Alex: 00:03:52

reach out to me and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:03:53

Just making sure that I can get them the help that they're looking for.

Robin Alex: 00:03:55

But, all in all, things haven't changed that much, from my day to day.

Robin Alex: 00:04:00

'cause I've always done this.

Robin Alex: 00:04:01

I guess the only difference is, traveling a lot more.

Robin Alex: 00:04:03

we're doing a lot of events and speaking and things like that, but the closest I

Robin Alex: 00:04:07

got to normal is when I'm home and, trying to do the same things over and over again.

Vit Muller: 00:04:11

Okay.

Vit Muller: 00:04:12

I mean, that sounds pretty intense.

Vit Muller: 00:04:14

I can't imagine the weight of like responsibility and the, obviously the

Vit Muller: 00:04:20

scale of the business that you guys have.

Vit Muller: 00:04:23

How do you manage the pressure and stay sharp all the time?

Robin Alex: 00:04:26

I mean, part of it is I definitely don't think about it.

Robin Alex: 00:04:28

like I, I don't do the zoom out of, the big part of it.

Robin Alex: 00:04:32

I mean, being in the business, something that, that I enjoy, Shaun

Robin Alex: 00:04:36

and Varun both enjoy as well, right?

Robin Alex: 00:04:38

Like when we talk about building product, or helping customers or doing

Robin Alex: 00:04:40

things, that's really our sweet zone.

Robin Alex: 00:04:42

If we can do that all day, every day, that's where we would be doing it.

Robin Alex: 00:04:46

as far as, the pressure, I think, when we know the stakes are high, we

Robin Alex: 00:04:50

wanna make sure that we're doing good for our customers and making sure

Robin Alex: 00:04:53

that we're making the right decision, which goes into how we build and

Robin Alex: 00:04:56

what we wanna accomplish for them.

Robin Alex: 00:04:57

And We wanna make sure that we're building the best products, really

Robin Alex: 00:05:00

in the lane of helping our customers.

Robin Alex: 00:05:01

And then through that we wanna make sure that we're making the right

Robin Alex: 00:05:04

decisions for our team members.

Robin Alex: 00:05:05

And we understand that there's definitely a yin and yang in making

Robin Alex: 00:05:09

sure that we're, when you make a decision on one, it can affect the

Robin Alex: 00:05:11

other, but we wanna make sure that we get, find a happy medium at all cost.

Robin Alex: 00:05:15

but, we try not to think about, as the company gets bigger, the stakes

Robin Alex: 00:05:18

are higher, but we just try to keep it and compartmentalize it to make

Robin Alex: 00:05:23

it feel small every single day.

Vit Muller: 00:05:25

Otherwise it'd just be like, just too heavy, wouldn't

Robin Alex: 00:05:28

Yeah, exactly.

Vit Muller: 00:05:29

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:05:30

okay, so I mean, aside from high level, like what do you

Vit Muller: 00:05:32

enjoy doing outside of business

Robin Alex: 00:05:34

that's really what I'm trying to figure out these days of, what's my new

Robin Alex: 00:05:37

side quest, what's my new side mission?

Robin Alex: 00:05:39

just because we've been so busy, we've been traveling quite

Robin Alex: 00:05:41

a bit and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:05:42

And then, my kids are getting older, so running them around.

Robin Alex: 00:05:44

my son, he's now, he's about to turn 10 and so his activities after school that

Robin Alex: 00:05:48

are getting a little bit more serious such should say, he is getting into to

Robin Alex: 00:05:52

soccer and, he has other afterschool activities and just making sure that

Robin Alex: 00:05:56

I'm there for him and my daughter.

Robin Alex: 00:05:57

She's coming into to age of her own and starting to get into, things

Robin Alex: 00:06:01

on the weekend, birthday parties, friends and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:06:04

So right now, that's just where I've been spending a lot of my extra time.

Robin Alex: 00:06:08

but I'm also keeping my eyes open on what other side quests I can go on.

Robin Alex: 00:06:13

short of the AI side of things, but I kind of put that close

Robin Alex: 00:06:16

to the work side of the world.

Robin Alex: 00:06:18

but outside of that, just the kids these days, kids and family.

Vit Muller: 00:06:21

have you spin up your own Claude Bot yet?

Robin Alex: 00:06:23

Of course, it's, have my own, Claude bot, the open claw

Robin Alex: 00:06:27

I've been playing in, Claude Cowork.

Robin Alex: 00:06:28

just trying to spin out different ideas, different concepts that I've reached out

Robin Alex: 00:06:33

to friends who have different businesses and Hey, let me just see what happens

Robin Alex: 00:06:37

if I unleash this in your business.

Robin Alex: 00:06:38

What would it do?

Robin Alex: 00:06:39

and just seeing the cool crazy things that, that it's able to accomplish.

Robin Alex: 00:06:42

And then, the other thing that I've been really trying to do is

Robin Alex: 00:06:44

push our team in trying some of this newer technology of ai, right?

Robin Alex: 00:06:49

As we get into the agenda side of things.

Robin Alex: 00:06:51

I think we're as a company, mostly internally, we're definitely big

Robin Alex: 00:06:55

on AI where we can leverage it.

Robin Alex: 00:06:56

But, just like the rest of the world, everyone's focused on AI

Robin Alex: 00:06:58

from a gen generative perspective.

Robin Alex: 00:07:00

You get it, you, you get AI sitting on top of some existing data or

Robin Alex: 00:07:04

knowledge base and it's starting to respond and give you answers and

Robin Alex: 00:07:07

things like that, which is all great.

Robin Alex: 00:07:09

And I think those are.

Robin Alex: 00:07:10

Great version of it, but now we're kind, in this new agentic world.

Robin Alex: 00:07:13

And then the accessibility of being able to pull it off over the past

Robin Alex: 00:07:17

three months, with open claw and what clawed and or anthropic and,

Robin Alex: 00:07:21

open AI and everyone's releasing perplexity, just release some new tools.

Robin Alex: 00:07:25

It's making it very easy for the average consumer or the

Robin Alex: 00:07:29

tech consumer, I should say.

Robin Alex: 00:07:30

actually I'd probably change that to the prosumer, right?

Robin Alex: 00:07:33

to have access to these tools to try doing more complex activities without

Robin Alex: 00:07:37

the need of understanding codes or MCPs or, rag databases and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:07:44

It's just you just a ask to go.

Robin Alex: 00:07:48

In some cases you give it a statement and it tries to create a problem and then goes

Robin Alex: 00:07:52

try to solve the problem and it's going on its own to figure out how to solve it and

Robin Alex: 00:07:57

go get other tools to be able to solve it.

Robin Alex: 00:08:00

like being in, in a world like that is definitely new.

Robin Alex: 00:08:03

And then getting comfortability to the team.

Robin Alex: 00:08:06

What the world is shaping up and what the opportunities look like.

Robin Alex: 00:08:08

That's really where I'm spending a lot of time, with my team now.

Vit Muller: 00:08:11

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:08:12

I've got a bunch of questions to ask you about ai.

Vit Muller: 00:08:14

we'll definitely get to that.

Vit Muller: 00:08:15

and I see that's a topic obviously struck a chord So you started a career deep

Vit Muller: 00:08:19

in IT, infrastructure, systems, admin, technical services, support, lots of that.

Robin Alex: 00:08:26

Helping businesses with tech.

Vit Muller: 00:08:29

helping businesses with tech?

Vit Muller: 00:08:30

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:08:31

how did that technical background like shape the way you approach

Vit Muller: 00:08:34

building software today?

Robin Alex: 00:08:35

I wouldn't necessarily say that it was

Robin Alex: 00:08:39

like my background that I built.

Robin Alex: 00:08:42

I think it was something very innate and natural to me in the sense

Robin Alex: 00:08:46

of, as I was growing up, I was really fascinated with computers.

Robin Alex: 00:08:49

I was very fortunate to have, my dad, he was, he was always a bleeding

Robin Alex: 00:08:53

edge kind of guy where he wanted to make sure that, I got the new, 3 86

Robin Alex: 00:08:56

computer and now he was hesitant with me playing on it and stuff like that,

Robin Alex: 00:09:00

but, letting me have access to it.

Robin Alex: 00:09:02

And then I've always been fascinated on how do you take, when you have

Robin Alex: 00:09:06

tools at your disposal, how do you actually build something with it and.

Robin Alex: 00:09:13

It's one thing for you to kind of curate an idea in your head, but I've always

Robin Alex: 00:09:16

been one of I wanna do it to where I can see someone's smile, so let me go

Robin Alex: 00:09:20

ask them what their problem is and let me see if I can do it on a computer.

Robin Alex: 00:09:23

Can I accomplish this?

Robin Alex: 00:09:24

And so at a young age, I was like, I mean, and back then, it's ooh,

Robin Alex: 00:09:27

you know, you're handwriting this.

Robin Alex: 00:09:28

Let me see if I can type this out on a document and let's get it to print.

Robin Alex: 00:09:30

Like very simple rudimentary stuff, which it is like, of course

Robin Alex: 00:09:34

nowadays that's what people do.

Robin Alex: 00:09:35

But you know, progressively as I've gotten older, it was always that, like I love

Robin Alex: 00:09:40

playing video games and so did my friends and they all wanted to get a game server.

Robin Alex: 00:09:43

And I was like, perfect.

Robin Alex: 00:09:45

I read about this through the in installation guy that you can set

Robin Alex: 00:09:48

up your own server and I see these ones, lemme go try it because my

Robin Alex: 00:09:51

friends will be the actual test case and becomes essentially a case study.

Robin Alex: 00:09:55

Now, I didn't use these terms, but that's what I, in my mind, it's like,

Robin Alex: 00:09:58

ah, I can actually make people happy and I get to play around with tech.

Robin Alex: 00:10:01

and ultimately people would pay me.

Robin Alex: 00:10:03

And that's how grew that business.

Robin Alex: 00:10:04

And then.

Robin Alex: 00:10:05

As I would get older, you start helping in solving other problems, leveraging

Robin Alex: 00:10:09

tech and just the nuances and technology along the way just got, gave me the

Robin Alex: 00:10:14

opportunity to get my hands on things.

Robin Alex: 00:10:16

getting in the technology side of, the world.

Robin Alex: 00:10:18

You get to set up servers, set up different applications,

Robin Alex: 00:10:22

do the implementations there.

Robin Alex: 00:10:23

and then that got me into the digital marketing side, helping people get their

Robin Alex: 00:10:27

online presence to, Ooh, what's this new thing about Google ads or Facebook ads?

Robin Alex: 00:10:31

I don't know, but let me run something for your business and let's see what happens.

Robin Alex: 00:10:35

And, anytime I go down a rabbit hole, it's, I gotta get it to the

Robin Alex: 00:10:39

finish line of what I promised.

Robin Alex: 00:10:40

So somehow some way, even if it, requires me to put money outta my pocket to

Robin Alex: 00:10:44

figure it out, I will figure it out.

Robin Alex: 00:10:46

'cause I promised you an outcome.

Robin Alex: 00:10:47

So I go down these massive rabbit holes and that's where things start.

Robin Alex: 00:10:51

really start pushing the deal for me.

Vit Muller: 00:10:53

Yeah, look, you're either learning or you're growing and if you

Vit Muller: 00:10:56

can in that process, make, money as well.

Vit Muller: 00:10:59

And it's like the perfect combo.

Robin Alex: 00:11:01

It's a good sign that you're going down the right direction.

Vit Muller: 00:11:03

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:11:04

and that aspect of the curiosity, speaking to an owner, figuring out what

Vit Muller: 00:11:08

the problem is, and then have that sort of a, because it's fun coming out of

Vit Muller: 00:11:12

something new and challenging the unknown and, the curiosity and the creativity

Vit Muller: 00:11:17

that we have and having a tool for that.

Vit Muller: 00:11:20

Back then, it was very limited, but there is definitely a correlation to,

Vit Muller: 00:11:26

at least from my own experience over the last five years of being a high

Vit Muller: 00:11:30

level, us high level user, seeing how you guys approach, how you always

Vit Muller: 00:11:33

approached the development of things.

Vit Muller: 00:11:35

you seem to ask what the problems are.

Vit Muller: 00:11:37

You seem to know.

Vit Muller: 00:11:39

For the most part, what we need as an agency owners, and then you build it.

Vit Muller: 00:11:42

that's the famous skateboard method, if you wish.

Vit Muller: 00:11:45

so it's good to,

Robin Alex: 00:11:46

Yeah, we definitely love, being close to our customers.

Robin Alex: 00:11:48

I remember in the early days, I was at vain in India and, we were reminiscing

Robin Alex: 00:11:52

and it was like ear early days.

Robin Alex: 00:11:54

It was just us three.

Robin Alex: 00:11:55

I would wake up and, we'd all three be on a Zoom call starting at 7:00 AM And

Robin Alex: 00:11:59

this was also during the pandemic, right?

Robin Alex: 00:12:00

So you couldn't really get outta the house anyway, so first thing I did

Robin Alex: 00:12:03

was get on my computer and hop on a Zoom call with two incredible guys.

Robin Alex: 00:12:06

And as we started picking up customers, we're just plugging away.

Robin Alex: 00:12:09

And then a customer would ping me or ping Shaun or Varun, and it's oh,

Robin Alex: 00:12:12

hey, someone's joining into the room.

Robin Alex: 00:12:14

They would join us to the Zoom room, and then they would tell us the problem,

Robin Alex: 00:12:17

and we would literally just start sharing screen and going through the

Robin Alex: 00:12:21

logs and trying to figure out what's on.

Robin Alex: 00:12:22

It's oh yeah, we see the problem here in the log.

Robin Alex: 00:12:25

We'd then open up the console and start really coding away live

Robin Alex: 00:12:30

on the screen to make the fix.

Robin Alex: 00:12:32

And that was us, from that perspective of, we want to build with our customers.

Robin Alex: 00:12:37

And the idea of the skateboard is that when you go out to market,

Robin Alex: 00:12:42

you have two, two ways to do it.

Robin Alex: 00:12:44

One is you can roll something out very quick and yes, it may not be the full,

Robin Alex: 00:12:50

equipped system, it's a skateboard, but now you get to iterate very quickly

Robin Alex: 00:12:55

and build up a lot faster versus you waiting, 2, 3, 4, 5 months and what

Robin Alex: 00:13:01

you think is like the perfect product.

Robin Alex: 00:13:02

And I put that in air quotes and then ultimately to realize that you have

Robin Alex: 00:13:07

to start iterating from there and start building and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:13:10

And, history has shown in many different use cases that the

Robin Alex: 00:13:14

people that roll up faster.

Robin Alex: 00:13:16

Typically succeed and, and the business world actually grows significantly faster

Robin Alex: 00:13:21

than the people that wait an extended period of time to then roll it out and

Robin Alex: 00:13:25

then start iterating the snowball effect.

Robin Alex: 00:13:27

When you have two people, kinda in that same timeline, the snowball effect

Robin Alex: 00:13:31

becomes so much greater, that they start, just moving and really running circles

Robin Alex: 00:13:36

around the one person or the one team that wait, waited at such a long period.

Robin Alex: 00:13:40

And so for us, that's the way that we've thought about it and it's,

Robin Alex: 00:13:42

something that we hold dear to us and we wanna get out as fast as possible.

Robin Alex: 00:13:46

And, the biggest thing is how do we continue to improve and iterate.

Vit Muller: 00:13:49

Is this some, this approach?

Vit Muller: 00:13:51

Did they come to you guys like naturally?

Vit Muller: 00:13:53

is that something that you've, you've seen in.

Robin Alex: 00:13:56

I will say it was something very natural to us, in the way that we've

Robin Alex: 00:13:59

always operated, but then over time people asked us to describe it and then, randomly

Robin Alex: 00:14:04

we stumbled on a, kind of an article that.

Robin Alex: 00:14:06

I kind of really put the way that we operate and put it on paper.

Robin Alex: 00:14:10

and no, generally we've always known about it, like as a general concept,

Robin Alex: 00:14:14

like I'm sure you've heard of things like being the agile methodology or like

Robin Alex: 00:14:18

all these things, like those concepts exist, but we just naturally always

Robin Alex: 00:14:21

just built and just rolled it out.

Robin Alex: 00:14:22

And we love when you get the incoming interest because

Robin Alex: 00:14:25

it shows that people care.

Robin Alex: 00:14:26

And now I can ask you very thoughtful questions and you can ask me very

Robin Alex: 00:14:29

thoughtful questions to get to the next step and make it better.

Robin Alex: 00:14:32

Versus, don't worry, at some point in the future I'll have this out to you.

Robin Alex: 00:14:37

I don't know when, but I gotta make it perfect.

Robin Alex: 00:14:39

And you're like, I'm just waiting here on the sidelines.

Robin Alex: 00:14:42

Let me know.

Robin Alex: 00:14:42

And then you're off doing something else and you forget about it.

Robin Alex: 00:14:45

Mm-hmm.

Vit Muller: 00:14:46

I like that it's rewarding.

Vit Muller: 00:14:47

It gives you opportunity to really stay in tune in touch with

Vit Muller: 00:14:50

the customers on regular basis.

Vit Muller: 00:14:52

one of the things I enjoy doing is, weekly open office calls,

Vit Muller: 00:14:55

hours, like for my own white level.

Vit Muller: 00:14:58

And, I always tell my customers like, Hey, you can, we've got self-help options.

Vit Muller: 00:15:02

Like we use HL Pro tools to help you out, knowledge base and all that.

Vit Muller: 00:15:06

Use those if you like, just wanna learn, find things yourself.

Vit Muller: 00:15:09

But if you wanna reach me, I'm a couple times a week I'm on Zoom and, and those

Vit Muller: 00:15:13

are like the best opportunities I find.

Vit Muller: 00:15:16

Like it's really rewarding as well.

Vit Muller: 00:15:17

It's just jump in on a Zoom call and how can I help you today?

Vit Muller: 00:15:21

what can I help you with?

Vit Muller: 00:15:21

What you trying, what are you trying to do?

Vit Muller: 00:15:22

Have you been trying to build something?

Vit Muller: 00:15:24

Oftentimes actually that rolls into a service because I show them and

Vit Muller: 00:15:28

then they're like, you know what?

Vit Muller: 00:15:30

Can you just do that for me?

Vit Muller: 00:15:31

Or can you guys do that for me?

Vit Muller: 00:15:32

And then we, we price it.

Vit Muller: 00:15:34

But, and that aside, just having that opportunity, it's, it's definitely.

Vit Muller: 00:15:38

I found it really works well with, understanding what my

Vit Muller: 00:15:42

customers want and, and keep them.

Robin Alex: 00:15:45

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:15:45

Again, and ultimately make customers happy, right?

Robin Alex: 00:15:48

Like the worst thing is the.

Robin Alex: 00:15:49

Build something that not only people don't want, but then building something

Robin Alex: 00:15:54

to where they're also not wanting and also making them unhappy along the way.

Robin Alex: 00:15:58

That's like the double negative that you don't wanna be a part of.

Robin Alex: 00:16:01

'cause the only way to make it a positive is not working with you.

Robin Alex: 00:16:05

And so I'm more on the side of

Vit Muller: 00:16:06

a balance.

Robin Alex: 00:16:08

It's, how could I just keep connected with you and just

Robin Alex: 00:16:11

build what you want or make sure I'm getting you the solution that you need.

Vit Muller: 00:16:14

Now there is also another element to it altogether, and that

Vit Muller: 00:16:17

is, our own personal, like how we're built innately, as entrepreneurs like.

Vit Muller: 00:16:23

It's something that I'm bottling with over the last five years.

Vit Muller: 00:16:26

I'm super nerdy and I'm just like a little bit obsessive perfectionist, right?

Vit Muller: 00:16:32

So I am that type of example of what you've mentioned out there.

Vit Muller: 00:16:36

It is don't, don't write down until it's perfect and get it out there.

Vit Muller: 00:16:39

there's not, of everything that I've done certain things really

Vit Muller: 00:16:42

well, but certain things, certain projects are like, they just take

Vit Muller: 00:16:45

way too long than they should have.

Vit Muller: 00:16:47

Do you know what I mean?

Vit Muller: 00:16:47

And I'm wondering to know what if that's, if you resonate, yes or no.

Vit Muller: 00:16:52

And or if you've come across people like I, I've come across people a lot in like

Vit Muller: 00:16:58

other agency owners who I speak to, some who just sign up and then they take ages.

Vit Muller: 00:17:02

They say buy, they buy one of my snapshot or somebody else's

Vit Muller: 00:17:05

snapshot and they're tinkering with it for a little bit too long.

Vit Muller: 00:17:08

Trying to make it really perfect and then you don't get it out.

Vit Muller: 00:17:11

and again, for me personally, I, I can get into those modes sometimes and

Vit Muller: 00:17:17

it's like I really struggle to let go.

Robin Alex: 00:17:19

Yeah,

Vit Muller: 00:17:20

have you come across that or people like that or

Robin Alex: 00:17:23

definitely.

Robin Alex: 00:17:23

I've run across people into that.

Robin Alex: 00:17:25

I think for me personally, I've always come to the conclusion

Robin Alex: 00:17:29

of what is actually perfect.

Robin Alex: 00:17:31

What is, and then the only way to find out if it's perfect is by getting

Robin Alex: 00:17:36

validation from an outside party.

Robin Alex: 00:17:38

And so what's the fastest way to figure out how close I am off the mark?

Robin Alex: 00:17:42

So let me roll something out and then let me ask, let me just start asking people.

Robin Alex: 00:17:46

And if what I try to do is ask the least amount of people to help close the gap

Robin Alex: 00:17:52

of what perfect looks like, so that when I'm feeling comfortable, that's

Robin Alex: 00:17:55

when I start asking even more people.

Robin Alex: 00:17:56

And that's the way that I've thought about it, And it comes down to

Robin Alex: 00:17:59

who am I to say this is perfect?

Robin Alex: 00:18:01

Because I know somebody else isn't gonna say it's not perfect.

Robin Alex: 00:18:04

And for me to win, I need them to say it's perfect.

Vit Muller: 00:18:08

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:08

it's not about me, it's about them at the end of the day.

Vit Muller: 00:18:11

and that gives you a bit of a proof as well that

Vit Muller: 00:18:12

you're on the right track.

Vit Muller: 00:18:13

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:14

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:14

and I also look at it as my personal satisfaction, my win of the day.

Vit Muller: 00:18:19

yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:20

Make somebody else happy or make them feel like I completed

Robin Alex: 00:18:25

something for them where they say it's perfect or it's done well.

Robin Alex: 00:18:30

that's what I enjoy.

Robin Alex: 00:18:31

Like I never say I built the Mona Lisa, or I built the masterpiece and

Robin Alex: 00:18:35

I've been focused on this because I don't know if it's good or bad.

Robin Alex: 00:18:39

I need somebody to verify and validate it for me.

Vit Muller: 00:18:42

No, that's true.

Vit Muller: 00:18:43

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:18:43

No, I, yeah, I've had those moments too, so it's a bit of a mix.

Vit Muller: 00:18:46

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:18:46

Going back to, so you like gaming, so you, back in 2003,

Robin Alex: 00:18:50

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:50

2000.

Vit Muller: 00:18:51

You remember back then, you had a company called Absolute Gaming.

Robin Alex: 00:18:55

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:55

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:18:56

I, I actually started it way earlier than that.

Robin Alex: 00:18:59

but you know, officially on paper, this was back in the day when, starting an

Robin Alex: 00:19:03

online business was very unorthodox.

Vit Muller: 00:19:05

Mm-hmm.

Robin Alex: 00:19:06

let's see.

Robin Alex: 00:19:06

If you're in Silicon Valley, you're not doing anything.

Robin Alex: 00:19:08

And then on top of that, I had no idea what I was doing.

Robin Alex: 00:19:12

the best way that I could accept credit cards online or e except

Robin Alex: 00:19:15

money, was through PayPal, right?

Robin Alex: 00:19:17

I remember when PayPal was the it way to transfer money, but you

Robin Alex: 00:19:21

had to know something in tech.

Robin Alex: 00:19:23

somehow being online was important.

Robin Alex: 00:19:25

you need to send money through PayPal when, and through that I started

Robin Alex: 00:19:28

receiving a lot of money to set up gain servers and I knew how to

Robin Alex: 00:19:32

use PayPal to buy the servers and data center and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:19:36

But had I had no idea on how to actually.

Robin Alex: 00:19:39

Spend money, from a day-to-day perspective.

Robin Alex: 00:19:42

'cause they didn't have credit cards and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:19:44

So I could it, so it was like this weird moment in, in life.

Robin Alex: 00:19:47

but what was funny is making decent money and then my parents really were

Robin Alex: 00:19:52

against me having an online business.

Robin Alex: 00:19:54

It was so unorthodox.

Robin Alex: 00:19:55

Not a real thing.

Robin Alex: 00:19:56

Must be drug money.

Robin Alex: 00:19:57

what is, it's fake, right?

Robin Alex: 00:19:59

It's on PayPal.

Robin Alex: 00:20:00

There is no real money here.

Robin Alex: 00:20:01

PayPal's not even a real bank in, in their mind.

Robin Alex: 00:20:03

and so I was failing outta school 'cause I was doing this in my dorm room.

Robin Alex: 00:20:07

So I ended up selling the company and getting out, just to, really appease my

Robin Alex: 00:20:11

parents and make sure that, I get the education that they really wanted to.

Robin Alex: 00:20:14

And, I always had a soft spot, from that perspective.

Robin Alex: 00:20:17

'cause my parents, they're immigrants that came here to, give us a better life.

Robin Alex: 00:20:21

And I felt like I wasn't.

Robin Alex: 00:20:23

living up to that story that they wanted to have, and not just my parents,

Robin Alex: 00:20:26

but just kind of the culture that I grew up in, in the Indian community,

Robin Alex: 00:20:29

that's the way of progressing, right?

Robin Alex: 00:20:31

your parents come here, you go to college.

Vit Muller: 00:20:33

a doctor or

Robin Alex: 00:20:34

yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:20:34

Be a doctor, be an engineer, a nurse like you, you have to have a first

Robin Alex: 00:20:38

degree and that's counter to success.

Robin Alex: 00:20:39

So I just thought maybe the business is more of a side quest and I need

Robin Alex: 00:20:43

to get back to getting on track.

Robin Alex: 00:20:45

but that was just also the times, that it was.

Robin Alex: 00:20:47

But yeah, that was 2003 that it really took off and, where I was really

Robin Alex: 00:20:52

operating it as a real business.

Vit Muller: 00:20:53

what did building online business like that, that

Vit Muller: 00:20:56

early teach you about internet?

Vit Muller: 00:20:59

About internet entrepreneurship, I should say.

Robin Alex: 00:21:01

looking back, it got me the ability to test out things

Robin Alex: 00:21:05

that helped me in the future.

Robin Alex: 00:21:06

I started dabbling in Google ads.

Robin Alex: 00:21:08

realizing that online communities, in hindsight, I made a lot of

Robin Alex: 00:21:13

online friends, people, I mean, back then it was super interesting.

Robin Alex: 00:21:17

I met a decent amount of people never have seen their face, right?

Robin Alex: 00:21:22

Like you're only chatting with them and maybe you hear their voice, on video

Robin Alex: 00:21:26

games, but you never saw their face.

Robin Alex: 00:21:28

being able to have kind of this outside network realizing that you

Robin Alex: 00:21:31

can actually sell a product and people will find you somehow some way, right?

Robin Alex: 00:21:36

it was almost magical in that lens of wow, I just put a website up and here I am in

Robin Alex: 00:21:43

this online community where I really know.

Robin Alex: 00:21:46

'cause back then it was, these chat groups on IRC and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:21:49

I don't know if you're familiar with that, but you're posting

Vit Muller: 00:21:52

ICQ is what I used to use.

Robin Alex: 00:21:53

Got it.

Robin Alex: 00:21:54

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:21:54

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:21:54

So there's ICQ and then there's this other thing where it was like,

Robin Alex: 00:21:56

almost like Slack, but this is.

Robin Alex: 00:21:58

Long time ago.

Robin Alex: 00:21:59

IRC, internet Relay channels, or message boards, like those were massive back then.

Robin Alex: 00:22:03

You post something on there, people would go to your website and people

Robin Alex: 00:22:06

would actually purchase something.

Robin Alex: 00:22:08

Like, how crazy is that?

Robin Alex: 00:22:11

And then the ability to actually make enough money to not only be

Robin Alex: 00:22:14

sustainable as a college kid, but then I'm buying things around the world.

Robin Alex: 00:22:18

I was getting servers in Luxembourg to, I had a server in Singapore.

Robin Alex: 00:22:23

what?

Robin Alex: 00:22:24

Like how crazy.

Robin Alex: 00:22:25

And then now looking back, I did all that through PayPal, right?

Robin Alex: 00:22:28

that was the main form of currency.

Robin Alex: 00:22:31

but that's, In the moment.

Robin Alex: 00:22:32

I'm not thinking about how crazy it is.

Robin Alex: 00:22:34

It's just like means to an end.

Robin Alex: 00:22:35

Someone's asking, there's a game, gaming clan or a GA gaming

Robin Alex: 00:22:39

team based out in Singapore and they one of the fastest servers.

Robin Alex: 00:22:42

I met them online and it's yeah, let me go set that up for you.

Robin Alex: 00:22:45

I used server, figured out how much I wanted to profit off of it and set up as a

Robin Alex: 00:22:49

PayPal subscription, just started billing and that was the hustle and grind mode.

Robin Alex: 00:22:52

But, years later looking back it's wow, how did I go down these rabbit

Robin Alex: 00:22:56

holes and how did I figure it out?

Robin Alex: 00:22:57

And what a world it was back then.

Vit Muller: 00:23:00

you've also had another company called Innovate Fast.

Vit Muller: 00:23:03

What lessons from running that company directly influenced

Vit Muller: 00:23:06

the creation of high level?

Robin Alex: 00:23:08

Yeah, so Innovate Fast was, interesting.

Robin Alex: 00:23:10

prior to that it was called RS seven Tech.

Robin Alex: 00:23:12

and then prior to that I was doing IT consulting, working for, another company.

Robin Alex: 00:23:16

but the real thing there was I was really helping small businesses.

Robin Alex: 00:23:21

They were spending a lot of money, not only with their infrastructure,

Robin Alex: 00:23:24

when you think of like setting up computers, deploying, 30, 50, 500,

Robin Alex: 00:23:28

a thousand computers, shipping them worldwide, people are really up

Robin Alex: 00:23:31

upgrading their networks, getting massive offices doing all their wiring.

Robin Alex: 00:23:35

You need to run all those back into data centers or

Vit Muller: 00:23:38

Getting all the Cisco phones.

Robin Alex: 00:23:40

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:23:40

You're doing all the Cisco phones, you're doing the IP telephony,

Robin Alex: 00:23:43

you're doing cameras, you're doing, these massive racks and network

Robin Alex: 00:23:46

switches and all this sort of stuff.

Robin Alex: 00:23:48

They're spending thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars, almost

Robin Alex: 00:23:50

millions of dollars in investment.

Robin Alex: 00:23:52

And at the same time, they were also spending significant amount of

Robin Alex: 00:23:55

dollars on how to get online, right?

Robin Alex: 00:23:58

Like, how do you make sure that your website is up to date and relevant

Robin Alex: 00:24:02

and make sure your.com is good.

Robin Alex: 00:24:04

So I started out on the tech side.

Robin Alex: 00:24:06

Working for a company, and really helping them grow that business.

Robin Alex: 00:24:10

And through that I built up a lot of trust and confidence with the business owners.

Robin Alex: 00:24:14

'cause, they're essentially handing you the keys to their network

Robin Alex: 00:24:16

and their, passwords and their servers and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:24:19

And we would just set up those infrastructures and they kind of looked

Robin Alex: 00:24:22

at it as look, if technology on the hardware, software side, obviously you

Robin Alex: 00:24:27

know everything else of technology.

Robin Alex: 00:24:28

when you think of digital marketing or websites or all these other things,

Robin Alex: 00:24:32

obviously you need how to do that too.

Robin Alex: 00:24:33

And I really didn't.

Robin Alex: 00:24:34

However, I was willing to learn, but I needed an outcome, right?

Robin Alex: 00:24:38

So I would wait until a customer would ask me and I was always

Robin Alex: 00:24:41

like, sure, I will figure it out.

Robin Alex: 00:24:44

And I remember the first one, I was like, I got this bid for

Robin Alex: 00:24:47

$50,000 to build a new website.

Robin Alex: 00:24:49

It's okay, let me see if I can do it for you.

Robin Alex: 00:24:51

And I would never ask for money or anything, but I

Robin Alex: 00:24:54

just this has gotta be easy.

Robin Alex: 00:24:55

as silly as it is, I was like, no one can figure this out better than me.

Robin Alex: 00:24:59

So then I would, spend my evenings and that'd be my side quest, trying

Robin Alex: 00:25:03

to figure out how to build it.

Robin Alex: 00:25:04

Then it turns into my, to my weekends, and then it, staying up overnight.

Robin Alex: 00:25:08

and then, it turns into what did I get myself into?

Robin Alex: 00:25:10

Because they keep adding more requests or more complexity,

Robin Alex: 00:25:13

or you come into a roadblock.

Robin Alex: 00:25:15

and, Google wasn't as strong as it is today, so you're kind of

Robin Alex: 00:25:18

figuring it out on your own, asking people and trying to solve it.

Robin Alex: 00:25:21

And I just got really good at that.

Robin Alex: 00:25:23

And that's what turned into the first version of Innovate Fast, where, I

Robin Alex: 00:25:27

would take customers that I met over time, helping them with their network.

Robin Alex: 00:25:31

They would ask me to help them with their digital market, really helping

Robin Alex: 00:25:34

them with their websites, and then maybe some database work and stuff like that.

Robin Alex: 00:25:37

really trying to help them, optimize where they could.

Robin Alex: 00:25:40

over time it got into what's this new thing with advertising?

Robin Alex: 00:25:42

How do we get more traffic?

Robin Alex: 00:25:43

How do we grow?

Robin Alex: 00:25:44

That's really where the business actually, quintupled very quickly.

Robin Alex: 00:25:47

'cause now it's no longer on a project by project basis.

Robin Alex: 00:25:51

It was more about, how do you stay close to the business and help them grow

Robin Alex: 00:25:56

from their revenue line perspective.

Robin Alex: 00:25:58

And so the statement I would always say is, how close can

Robin Alex: 00:26:00

you get to the revenue line?

Robin Alex: 00:26:02

And that's how you can help a business.

Robin Alex: 00:26:03

'cause if you are a part of their revenue generation, they will keep

Robin Alex: 00:26:06

you forever because you hold the keys to driving more business for them.

Robin Alex: 00:26:10

and that's really where we were really strong at Inva Fast.

Robin Alex: 00:26:14

'cause we would help them not only with their digital marketing, we'd help them

Robin Alex: 00:26:16

with all their advertising and making sure that we could not only drive the

Robin Alex: 00:26:19

leads, but then we needed to figure out how do you give the customer the leads

Robin Alex: 00:26:23

and then make sure that they act upon it.

Robin Alex: 00:26:25

So when a lead comes in, we realize that they weren't responding.

Robin Alex: 00:26:29

So let's set up some autoresponders, let's set up the email.

Robin Alex: 00:26:31

what if we can do it all the way to the phone calls?

Robin Alex: 00:26:34

How do we start ringing their phone line in their office?

Robin Alex: 00:26:37

Because every business owner is gonna be good at their business.

Robin Alex: 00:26:40

a doctor's gonna be good at being a doctor, they're not gonna be good

Robin Alex: 00:26:42

at closing customers or picking up the phone and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:26:45

Even when they have an assistant or a front desk, they're not gonna

Robin Alex: 00:26:48

be good at picking up the phone and saying they're gonna go do

Robin Alex: 00:26:50

some administrative work instead.

Robin Alex: 00:26:52

and so we needed to force the hand.

Robin Alex: 00:26:53

So we started building out all these automations and we got really

Robin Alex: 00:26:57

good at we created this tech stack.

Robin Alex: 00:26:59

It was like, for any business that we sign up, you need to

Robin Alex: 00:27:02

set up to 16 different products.

Robin Alex: 00:27:04

And I almost, essentially turned my team into this team of help the

Robin Alex: 00:27:09

customer sign up to these 16 products.

Robin Alex: 00:27:10

It's got the username and passwords.

Robin Alex: 00:27:12

Then we had this SOP of connect this into this and do this into this.

Robin Alex: 00:27:16

And then you're using tools like a Zapier using APIs, and all of a sudden

Robin Alex: 00:27:20

you're gluing together all these things.

Robin Alex: 00:27:22

And then while you set it up, this masterful Mona Lisa of the spider

Robin Alex: 00:27:26

web of all these different tools.

Robin Alex: 00:27:27

You gotta go back to the, your old client because an API broke

Robin Alex: 00:27:31

or a password broke on one of 'em.

Robin Alex: 00:27:32

So you gotta reconfigure everything again, right?

Robin Alex: 00:27:34

So now we became this consulting organization that's really setting

Robin Alex: 00:27:38

up all these different tools and we became this implementation

Robin Alex: 00:27:41

company, to, to a certain extent.

Robin Alex: 00:27:43

so much so that other agencies started hiring us, almost like as a white label to

Robin Alex: 00:27:48

implement this tech stack for them, right?

Robin Alex: 00:27:51

And so that's honestly what we did at Innovate Fast.

Robin Alex: 00:27:54

And it turned into, a decent sized business, but that,

Robin Alex: 00:27:57

those learnings, really is what we were able to encapsulate.

Robin Alex: 00:28:00

And, when I met Shaun and Varun, is really the problem statement that

Robin Alex: 00:28:03

we were solving for, and that's what we created high level with.

Vit Muller: 00:28:06

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:28:06

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:28:07

I mean, before high level existed, before thousands of agencies were building

Vit Muller: 00:28:10

SaaS businesses on top of it, it was that, it was the duct tape method.

Vit Muller: 00:28:15

but like, when was that moment for you when you realized the agency world

Vit Muller: 00:28:18

was like fundamentally broken and needed a completely different model?

Robin Alex: 00:28:22

I never took it as the model is broken.

Robin Alex: 00:28:26

I think the way that I looked at it was, Hey, the business is very complex.

Robin Alex: 00:28:32

We built this tool really to help my agency as the first one.

Robin Alex: 00:28:36

And I just felt so amazed that, Shaun and Varun, were able to come

Robin Alex: 00:28:41

up with a solution, from what I was, the problem and what I was able to

Robin Alex: 00:28:46

glue together and piece together.

Robin Alex: 00:28:48

I was like, man, you guys provided me so much success.

Robin Alex: 00:28:50

Let me go give this to other agencies.

Robin Alex: 00:28:52

'cause I think they're dealing with the same problem themselves.

Robin Alex: 00:28:54

and it was one of those things that I don't think agencies

Robin Alex: 00:28:57

even saw this as a problem.

Robin Alex: 00:28:58

I think all, many agencies, even today, many agencies feel like they, their

Robin Alex: 00:29:03

expertise and why they're brought on to help small businesses is to become

Robin Alex: 00:29:07

this technology implementer, right?

Robin Alex: 00:29:10

They're the technologist.

Robin Alex: 00:29:11

And to a certain extent, from a job security perspective, you are the

Robin Alex: 00:29:16

tech enabler of gluing 16 different products together, 17 different products

Robin Alex: 00:29:19

together, APIs and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:29:21

So I don't think that businesses or agencies actually saw this as a solution

Robin Alex: 00:29:28

to a problem because they thought that they were the solution to the problem.

Robin Alex: 00:29:31

but you know, I think once people got into it and understood what we were trying

Robin Alex: 00:29:36

to accomplish, that's where it started getting very viral and word of mouth.

Robin Alex: 00:29:40

And that's honestly how it grew.

Robin Alex: 00:29:41

It's wow.

Robin Alex: 00:29:42

You're spending a lot of time being the technology implementer.

Robin Alex: 00:29:45

How are you gonna grow your agency?

Robin Alex: 00:29:47

And so then it was like, ah, so here's how we actually solved it.

Robin Alex: 00:29:50

So let's go coach people on.

Robin Alex: 00:29:53

Take what you've been known for, put it all into one place.

Robin Alex: 00:29:55

Now you can get back to selling, and now this is how you can

Robin Alex: 00:29:58

actually grow your business.

Robin Alex: 00:29:59

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:30:00

It's the leverage aspect to it.

Vit Muller: 00:30:02

Can you take us back to that like moment when you,  Shaun and Varun met?

Vit Muller: 00:30:07

How did you guys met in the first place anyway, and that first

Vit Muller: 00:30:12

moment when this became an idea.

Robin Alex: 00:30:15

I was running an operating, innovate Fast.

Robin Alex: 00:30:17

Shaun and Varun, they have a fun story.

Robin Alex: 00:30:19

they work together, 15, 20 years earlier at another startup,

Robin Alex: 00:30:23

and in the call center space.

Robin Alex: 00:30:24

And so they got to build a lot of cool software.

Robin Alex: 00:30:27

even in, phone systems and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:30:29

ultimately both of 'em, kind of went different paths.

Robin Alex: 00:30:32

Varun went on to, to become an entrepreneur himself.

Robin Alex: 00:30:35

he was helping really create a family business with him and

Robin Alex: 00:30:38

his brother creating, squash courts, kind of, the game squash.

Robin Alex: 00:30:42

And so they have a lot of gymnasiums and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:30:45

and then at the same time, Shaun was building out another software

Robin Alex: 00:30:48

called Invoice Sherpa, which he was able to grow to a couple thousand

Robin Alex: 00:30:51

customers, all on his kitchen table.

Robin Alex: 00:30:53

Now, the biggest challenge that he had was it was a one man show

Robin Alex: 00:30:57

and he wasn't charging enough.

Robin Alex: 00:30:59

It, while you say you have a lot of customers, if you're not

Robin Alex: 00:31:01

charging them a lot of money, it's only enough to sustain himself.

Robin Alex: 00:31:05

He couldn't afford support and things like that, so he was nonstop working.

Robin Alex: 00:31:09

and, he got a call to someone wanted to acquire his business.

Robin Alex: 00:31:13

and so he ended up taking that deal.

Robin Alex: 00:31:15

and then he was, trying to figure out like what his next move was.

Robin Alex: 00:31:19

And he had a lot of experience helping small businesses with

Robin Alex: 00:31:21

invoice Sherpa 'cause he was helping them really recover dollars.

Robin Alex: 00:31:23

And so he got to hear a lot of their challenges and struggles

Robin Alex: 00:31:26

talking to many small businesses.

Robin Alex: 00:31:27

and so he actually reached out to Varun, to see if he wanted to work

Robin Alex: 00:31:31

together on, they didn't know what they wanted to work on, but he is

Robin Alex: 00:31:33

whatever it is, you're the best engineer that, that I've ever worked with.

Robin Alex: 00:31:36

Let's partner up.

Robin Alex: 00:31:37

So they started building different tools and so they, I think it was like a three

Robin Alex: 00:31:41

or four year period where they were building different software applications.

Robin Alex: 00:31:45

you'd hear about, and this was definitely back in that moment in

Robin Alex: 00:31:49

time where you would hear about one company that took off and everyone

Robin Alex: 00:31:53

is trying to build their version of it, like immediately right after.

Robin Alex: 00:31:56

It's if they just made, $600 million, what is 1% of that?

Robin Alex: 00:32:00

So I'm gonna code up my version of it and see if you can get it.

Robin Alex: 00:32:02

And they would build that up and, they wouldn't get significant

Robin Alex: 00:32:05

amount of traffic into.

Robin Alex: 00:32:07

So they built stuff, ServiceMax Pro, which is like helping like a jobber

Robin Alex: 00:32:11

or a ServiceTitan, competitor to building an invoicing application.

Robin Alex: 00:32:17

kind of like what QuickBooks does, to they built a reputation

Robin Alex: 00:32:20

management software, kind of like Bird Eye and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:32:23

And they were just trying to figure out like, how can

Robin Alex: 00:32:24

they help businesses in this?

Robin Alex: 00:32:26

Anytime they got a business on there, the business would ultimately cancel

Robin Alex: 00:32:29

because they would always say, this is a cool tool, but I need more customers.

Robin Alex: 00:32:32

what can I do to help and more customers?

Robin Alex: 00:32:35

And so through that journey, I think they were slowly fizzling out.

Robin Alex: 00:32:38

they were both, not making any revenue in the business, and they had spouses who,

Robin Alex: 00:32:42

were, think of your household, right?

Robin Alex: 00:32:44

Like when you're being supported by someone else, it gets a

Robin Alex: 00:32:45

little, a little stress stressful when no, no money's coming in.

Robin Alex: 00:32:48

but we had a very fortunate moment where.

Robin Alex: 00:32:52

They were prospecting and they happened to have hit one of my customers that I

Robin Alex: 00:32:55

had and they were trying to implement the reputation management software.

Robin Alex: 00:33:00

And that customer was like, Hey, this looks like a really interesting tool,

Robin Alex: 00:33:03

but they're asking me for usernames and passwords and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:33:07

I don't know what they are.

Robin Alex: 00:33:08

You're my digital agency.

Robin Alex: 00:33:10

Can you contact them?

Robin Alex: 00:33:10

Can you talk to them?

Robin Alex: 00:33:12

and get them access?

Robin Alex: 00:33:13

And so of course, I got on a phone call with them, didn't know who

Robin Alex: 00:33:16

they were, didn't know, you don't know who's on the other line.

Robin Alex: 00:33:18

They could be working for a conglomerate.

Robin Alex: 00:33:21

They could be working for, a billion dollar company and you could

Robin Alex: 00:33:24

just talk to a project manager.

Robin Alex: 00:33:26

but I got on a call with  Shaun and Varun, and, got the access

Robin Alex: 00:33:29

to what they were looking for.

Robin Alex: 00:33:30

And then I was like, can you guys see a demo?

Robin Alex: 00:33:31

what exactly is this?

Robin Alex: 00:33:32

what are you trying to do?

Robin Alex: 00:33:32

And what is it?

Robin Alex: 00:33:33

Like they went through it and I was like, oh, this is really interesting.

Robin Alex: 00:33:36

but can it do this, and this?

Robin Alex: 00:33:38

And they're like, yeah, we can make that happen.

Robin Alex: 00:33:41

and I was like, yeah, but you know, if you do this, and this, lemme show

Robin Alex: 00:33:43

you what I'm doing in my agency.

Robin Alex: 00:33:45

And what was fun about that is a couple of weeks prior, my team and I were sitting

Robin Alex: 00:33:49

in our conference room at the office and we mapped out our whole business.

Robin Alex: 00:33:52

Remember like we took 17 pieces of software and we were like mapping it out.

Robin Alex: 00:33:55

what would it take if we created one software to doing this?

Robin Alex: 00:33:58

We had it on a whiteboard, we never erased it.

Robin Alex: 00:34:00

And I remember being on a call with these guys and I was

Robin Alex: 00:34:02

like, Hey, hold on one second.

Robin Alex: 00:34:04

And they're like, okay.

Robin Alex: 00:34:05

So I ran into the conference room, took a picture of it, put it back

Robin Alex: 00:34:09

on the Zoom call, and they saw it.

Robin Alex: 00:34:11

ah, we get it now, we get it.

Robin Alex: 00:34:12

Cool.

Robin Alex: 00:34:13

this is really interesting.

Robin Alex: 00:34:14

give us a couple days and we'll call you back.

Robin Alex: 00:34:16

And then, when somebody tells you that first time you're meeting

Robin Alex: 00:34:19

them, like I said, you don't know who they are, what they're up to,

Robin Alex: 00:34:22

what company they're working for.

Robin Alex: 00:34:23

I just kind of took it off as end of a call, whatever, they may

Robin Alex: 00:34:26

or may not call me back, they're gonna pitch me later or whatever.

Vit Muller: 00:34:28

Oh,

Robin Alex: 00:34:29

you don't know if there's anything there.

Robin Alex: 00:34:31

So then.

Robin Alex: 00:34:32

Lucky enough for me, the incredible  Shaun and Varun,, Shaun called me like two

Robin Alex: 00:34:36

days later and I remember I, I was in the car, it was like 8:00 AM central time.

Robin Alex: 00:34:43

And I was driving to the office, getting to the office there, and I got a call on

Robin Alex: 00:34:47

my phone like, I don't know this number.

Robin Alex: 00:34:49

was it, I remember answering Hello?

Robin Alex: 00:34:52

And they're like, Hey dude, can you, are you free to jump on and call me?

Robin Alex: 00:34:55

I'm gonna show you something.

Robin Alex: 00:34:56

I was like, yeah, first off, who is this again?

Robin Alex: 00:34:58

you're calling me like your friend.

Robin Alex: 00:35:00

And, he's oh no, this is Shaun Clark.

Robin Alex: 00:35:01

Remember we spoke a couple of days ago and we're gonna show you

Robin Alex: 00:35:04

something, about the software.

Robin Alex: 00:35:06

and in my mind I thought they wanted to, it's yeah, lemme get on a call.

Robin Alex: 00:35:10

What, whatever.

Robin Alex: 00:35:11

And, we, I hung up the call and was like, I'll call you back in 20, 30 minutes.

Robin Alex: 00:35:14

Let me get situated and then we'll get on.

Robin Alex: 00:35:16

I just thought it was like they're calling me as a sales call.

Robin Alex: 00:35:19

They wanna do a thorough demo of their product and maybe

Robin Alex: 00:35:22

they're trying to sell me.

Robin Alex: 00:35:23

It's okay, here we go.

Robin Alex: 00:35:24

Of course I get to the office, get my morning coffee, talking to the

Robin Alex: 00:35:27

team, completely forget about them.

Robin Alex: 00:35:29

get rolling through the day.

Robin Alex: 00:35:31

And then I remember being in the conference room and look at my

Robin Alex: 00:35:34

phone and it's that number again.

Robin Alex: 00:35:36

It's oh yeah, here they go, but just still trying to do this sales call.

Robin Alex: 00:35:41

So I have to put my phone over and then it goes off again.

Robin Alex: 00:35:42

And I was like, let me just answer this call.

Robin Alex: 00:35:44

Hello?

Robin Alex: 00:35:45

And he's Hey dude, where are you?

Robin Alex: 00:35:46

we wanna show you something really cool.

Robin Alex: 00:35:48

Can you get on Zoom?

Robin Alex: 00:35:48

And I was like, fine, hold on.

Robin Alex: 00:35:50

So I get up and then I get on the Zoom call and  Shaun and Varun kind of built,

Robin Alex: 00:35:55

they were able to mock up a lot of what high level is today in many cases.

Robin Alex: 00:35:59

And, one I was like, is this real?

Robin Alex: 00:36:01

I built software and stuff in the past, like just no way.

Robin Alex: 00:36:04

You spun this up in two days.

Robin Alex: 00:36:06

and so I thought it was like maybe just graphics or like

Robin Alex: 00:36:08

an image mockup or something.

Robin Alex: 00:36:10

And they're like, no, it actually works.

Robin Alex: 00:36:11

Like we can test it out.

Robin Alex: 00:36:12

It's are you serious?

Robin Alex: 00:36:13

let's do it.

Robin Alex: 00:36:14

let's go hook it up to, one of our customers, that we were onboarding.

Robin Alex: 00:36:17

So we hooked it up and meet next day we're like, oh my gosh, this is all working.

Robin Alex: 00:36:22

Let's go back to that customer that we have to co customer

Robin Alex: 00:36:25

up for that amazing success.

Robin Alex: 00:36:27

And then, I was like, oh my gosh, I wanna buy this for all of my customers.

Robin Alex: 00:36:29

Like I have 80 customers that are prime for this.

Robin Alex: 00:36:32

What price would you give?

Robin Alex: 00:36:33

And then on top of that, I think I can help you guys.

Robin Alex: 00:36:35

Like I know other agencies dealing with this problem and I

Robin Alex: 00:36:39

wasn't doing it for any money.

Robin Alex: 00:36:40

I was just like, oh my gosh, this, you guys just did something really amazing.

Robin Alex: 00:36:43

I think there's a lot of people that they don't know that this is a

Robin Alex: 00:36:46

problem for them, but let me show it to 'em and I think they'll get it.

Robin Alex: 00:36:49

So I started to pick up the phone and calling them, call, other agencies,

Robin Alex: 00:36:53

we, I called 20 different agencies.

Robin Alex: 00:36:55

Everyone said, yes, they're interested or whatever.

Robin Alex: 00:36:57

13 of them actually fell through.

Robin Alex: 00:36:59

And really the ask was like, Hey, looking at this new software, I think it solves a

Robin Alex: 00:37:02

major problem that people don't realize.

Robin Alex: 00:37:04

Would you be interested?

Robin Alex: 00:37:05

You can try it out free for 30 days and if you like it, I'll give

Robin Alex: 00:37:09

you a one-time exclusive offer.

Robin Alex: 00:37:11

You just pay us a thousand dollars and you get it for life, and if not,

Robin Alex: 00:37:15

you don't have to pay us anything.

Robin Alex: 00:37:16

Close your account out.

Robin Alex: 00:37:18

No harm, no foul.

Robin Alex: 00:37:19

All 20 of 'em said yes.

Robin Alex: 00:37:20

The 13 that did it, they loved the product and they started getting on

Robin Alex: 00:37:25

Zoom calls all the time with us and just asking questions and we were

Robin Alex: 00:37:27

just helping them, figure it out.

Robin Alex: 00:37:29

And then at the end of the 30 days, all 13 of them paid.

Robin Alex: 00:37:33

And I was like, oh my gosh.

Robin Alex: 00:37:34

It made money.

Robin Alex: 00:37:35

And then from there it was like, all right, how do we get more?

Robin Alex: 00:37:37

And so that's when we started really pushing it.

Robin Alex: 00:37:39

We got invited to an event and then, it started getting viral

Robin Alex: 00:37:43

in all the different communities.

Robin Alex: 00:37:44

And, it from that moment on is really where the birth of high level really

Robin Alex: 00:37:49

spun out and where we're today.

Vit Muller: 00:37:51

Wow.

Vit Muller: 00:37:51

Can, I mean, can you imagine if you didn't pick up that call?

Vit Muller: 00:37:54

I mean, that, that really, that's, that, that's that critical moment.

Vit Muller: 00:37:58

if you, because it really, it took like your experience based on what you said.

Vit Muller: 00:38:04

You all came in with different strengths and together you,

Vit Muller: 00:38:07

that's the combination there.

Vit Muller: 00:38:09

that's the secret sauce to me, like what I'm hearing.

Vit Muller: 00:38:12

I think really, I really believe it.

Robin Alex: 00:38:14

it is not I don't know the right word.

Robin Alex: 00:38:15

It's like karma or whatever you wanna call it.

Robin Alex: 00:38:17

I mean, just pure luck that we were all able to really connect at that right

Robin Alex: 00:38:21

time, the right place, and really lean in.

Robin Alex: 00:38:23

And, to this day we have an incredible relationship.

Robin Alex: 00:38:26

And, I've just been so fortunate and lucky to have two, two great partners

Robin Alex: 00:38:30

to, to work with and, go to fight for our customers every single day.

Robin Alex: 00:38:33

and it's been the same since the very beginning.

Vit Muller: 00:38:35

With building a company with  Shaun and Varun, how do the three

Vit Muller: 00:38:39

of you like divide responsibilities?

Robin Alex: 00:38:41

I, we try not to divide, with hard lines.

Robin Alex: 00:38:44

I think that's the number one thing.

Robin Alex: 00:38:46

The way that we've really built it is creating what we call a founder's office.

Robin Alex: 00:38:50

from a, it's hard to put it on paper, but we call it a founder's office, and

Robin Alex: 00:38:55

we try to look at it as there's problems every single day, who's the closest to the

Robin Alex: 00:39:01

problem, and who's willing to solve it.

Robin Alex: 00:39:04

And from that perspective, it's year up.

Robin Alex: 00:39:06

Can you go chase it and solve it there?

Robin Alex: 00:39:08

Now that's, how we kinda look at it, like when you think of like people

Robin Alex: 00:39:12

who have very defined roles, they're probably great in their lane, but

Robin Alex: 00:39:16

in reality there are things that, kind of fit in between two roles.

Robin Alex: 00:39:20

Where businesses fail or businesses have issues is when

Robin Alex: 00:39:24

who's covering for those gaps?

Robin Alex: 00:39:26

Who's picking up the ball there?

Robin Alex: 00:39:28

And when you create these very defined lines of Nope, you only focus on this

Robin Alex: 00:39:32

one thing and this one thing only, do not come into my fiefdom or my world.

Robin Alex: 00:39:37

that's where problems exist.

Robin Alex: 00:39:38

And so for us, we just kinda look at it as we're a founder's office, we're one unit.

Robin Alex: 00:39:41

we're all trying to chase the same thing.

Robin Alex: 00:39:43

We're all trying to do the same thing.

Robin Alex: 00:39:44

like we're all figure out the problems now.

Robin Alex: 00:39:47

I'll probably say like where our strengths lie and where we end up.

Robin Alex: 00:39:51

I like talking to the team.

Robin Alex: 00:39:52

I love talking to customers.

Robin Alex: 00:39:54

I love trying to figure out ways to create solutions.

Robin Alex: 00:39:56

So I'm definitely more on the front end.

Robin Alex: 00:39:58

But, I have a very technical background.

Robin Alex: 00:39:59

I love talking to our product team and all that.

Robin Alex: 00:40:01

Varun, he's always with the engineering team and tech team

Robin Alex: 00:40:05

and really trying to build out the solutions and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:40:07

But just as much he talks to customers just as much as I do,

Robin Alex: 00:40:10

trying to understand, what is the problem and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:40:12

same thing with  Shaun.

Robin Alex: 00:40:13

Shaun has an engineering background, so he is always talking to the team on

Robin Alex: 00:40:16

products and stuff, but very much so he's in our Facebook group talking to

Robin Alex: 00:40:19

customers, trying to get them solutions.

Robin Alex: 00:40:21

so it's not that we were so like, here's our defined line.

Robin Alex: 00:40:26

we have parts that we enjoy and run, but we're, we try to be everywhere and we run

Robin Alex: 00:40:30

it as one unit and that's how we operate.

Vit Muller: 00:40:33

Yeah, it makes sense and, it makes it work like a team.

Vit Muller: 00:40:36

And also, there's this book like Extreme Ownership, like taking responsibility.

Vit Muller: 00:40:41

And I think in that scenario where everybody's got their own

Vit Muller: 00:40:43

lane, it's then people will never take responsibility over anything

Vit Muller: 00:40:48

that's outside of the lane of this.

Vit Muller: 00:40:50

yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Vit Muller: 00:40:51

why it works the way it works for you guys and in general, I believe it too.

Robin Alex: 00:40:55

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:40:55

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:40:55

I think the biggest thing there when you talk about extreme responsibility, where

Robin Alex: 00:40:59

people get that wrong is it extreme res responsibility within my defined box?

Robin Alex: 00:41:05

Or is it extreme responsibility?

Robin Alex: 00:41:07

And the perspective of the box doesn't exist, it's the company or the umbrella

Robin Alex: 00:41:13

that as an organization we need to all have extreme responsibility

Robin Alex: 00:41:17

to getting to the outcome.

Robin Alex: 00:41:18

And I think that's where people get it, get that big disconnect

Robin Alex: 00:41:21

and where, problems start ensuing.

Vit Muller: 00:41:23

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:41:23

Because at the end of the day, it's for the best interest of

Vit Muller: 00:41:25

the company and the customer.

Vit Muller: 00:41:27

so otherwise it's just too narrow minded view.

Vit Muller: 00:41:30

and not looking at the full picture.

Vit Muller: 00:41:32

granted, we're all people, we all have, different like characteristics, whatever.

Vit Muller: 00:41:38

so there can be disagreements that can happen.

Vit Muller: 00:41:40

you like.

Robin Alex: 00:41:41

yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:41:41

I mean, disagreements are natural.

Robin Alex: 00:41:43

I think the, between  Shaun, Varun and I, disagreements happen all the time and,

Robin Alex: 00:41:46

we're not gonna lie or anything like that.

Robin Alex: 00:41:48

but none of it ever gets heated in the perspective of taking it personal.

Robin Alex: 00:41:53

it's always been, disagreements on how we wanna approach a solution to a problem.

Robin Alex: 00:41:58

and it comes down to like different perspectives on,

Robin Alex: 00:42:01

how, what is the best decision.

Robin Alex: 00:42:03

the ones that become the most heated or the most vocal about

Robin Alex: 00:42:06

is, when it affects a customer.

Robin Alex: 00:42:08

what is the best way that we should solve the problem?

Robin Alex: 00:42:10

How should we look at it?

Robin Alex: 00:42:11

because.

Robin Alex: 00:42:13

Everything it is can be very binary.

Robin Alex: 00:42:15

It's like very domino effect.

Robin Alex: 00:42:16

You make one change here, it affects something else.

Robin Alex: 00:42:19

And so trying to figure out the right alignment there, but it's never been

Robin Alex: 00:42:22

something where you take direct shots at someone from a personal perspective and

Robin Alex: 00:42:27

let your ego get ahead of you and like you have to be right, or anything like that.

Robin Alex: 00:42:31

It's, we're all trying to chase what is the best answer for

Robin Alex: 00:42:34

our customers and for our team.

Robin Alex: 00:42:36

And as long as you have those two in mind, disagreements

Robin Alex: 00:42:39

happen, but you just move on.

Robin Alex: 00:42:41

and in many cases the nice thing of having two two outta three is, there's always

Robin Alex: 00:42:45

one who gets to be the deciding factor.

Robin Alex: 00:42:48

and we've never, back to that point, we never taken it personal.

Robin Alex: 00:42:51

So if I have a situation where I lose the battle, I never take it as a

Robin Alex: 00:42:55

personal loss, I always look at it as you two feel more stronger about it.

Robin Alex: 00:42:57

I'm gonna support you guys, but you guys have to run, lead on it.

Robin Alex: 00:43:01

'cause I don't have that same conviction or that same passion and that is

Robin Alex: 00:43:04

perfectly fine, but I need to win.

Robin Alex: 00:43:07

With my team, so I'm gonna make sure I give you the support, all the resources.

Robin Alex: 00:43:10

Like I'm not gonna gate keep anything like you guys need it.

Robin Alex: 00:43:12

You guys know it way better than the way that I'm seeing it.

Robin Alex: 00:43:14

You guys see a lane that I'm not seeing and then there's other

Robin Alex: 00:43:18

times where it's like, I'm the one championing something and I need

Robin Alex: 00:43:20

someone else to come on my side.

Robin Alex: 00:43:22

And the other, the one who doesn't is I mean, you get, you have to run

Robin Alex: 00:43:25

it, but whatever you need, go get the, get to the finish line, go win.

Robin Alex: 00:43:28

I just don't see that same length and that is perfectly fine.

Robin Alex: 00:43:31

Like you have to realize that is perfectly fine, but we all wanna win.

Robin Alex: 00:43:35

And I think that's the biggest win for us.

Vit Muller: 00:43:37

Was there ever a moment when you had a disagreement over

Vit Muller: 00:43:40

like a bigger strategic decision when it was a bit of a stalemate for

Vit Muller: 00:43:45

a while than before you figured it

Robin Alex: 00:43:47

N never, no.

Robin Alex: 00:43:48

we try not to let things sit, like we just try to make the

Robin Alex: 00:43:52

decision as quick as possible.

Robin Alex: 00:43:54

the other philosophical thing that we look at is the faster that you

Robin Alex: 00:43:57

can make a decision, right or wrong.

Robin Alex: 00:44:00

Back to the skateboard model.

Robin Alex: 00:44:02

You start driving down this it's like you're driving on a highway.

Robin Alex: 00:44:05

I don't know if this is the right exit, but should we take it or not?

Robin Alex: 00:44:07

Should we take it?

Robin Alex: 00:44:07

All right, we're just gonna take it.

Robin Alex: 00:44:09

The second that you take it, you start realizing if it was

Robin Alex: 00:44:12

the right decision or not.

Robin Alex: 00:44:13

And guess what you can do?

Robin Alex: 00:44:14

If it's not the right decision

Vit Muller: 00:44:15

Pivot.

Robin Alex: 00:44:15

I can get back on the highway again, right?

Robin Alex: 00:44:18

But if you just sit on the highway, and then you miss it and you start

Robin Alex: 00:44:21

second guessing yourself, and then you pass two exits, five exits, 10 exits,

Robin Alex: 00:44:26

30 exits, and you're like, oh crap.

Robin Alex: 00:44:28

You know what?

Robin Alex: 00:44:29

I think we were right.

Robin Alex: 00:44:29

Let's now go turn around.

Robin Alex: 00:44:31

Like how painful is that?

Robin Alex: 00:44:33

You wasted 30 minutes or an hour, right?

Robin Alex: 00:44:35

So that's why we actually don't have a lot of st mates that last long time.

Robin Alex: 00:44:39

Usually it's like, all let's just decide and go, we'll figure it out later.

Vit Muller: 00:44:44

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:44:45

Good.

Vit Muller: 00:44:45

So it's just learning, like swallowing that bitter pill every now and then,

Vit Muller: 00:44:48

and like for the benefit of the business and not just move fast, innovate.

Robin Alex: 00:44:52

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:44:52

And even from that perspective of swallowing the pill, like I said,

Robin Alex: 00:44:54

when you don't take a personal, there isn't swallowing the pill.

Robin Alex: 00:44:56

It's like someone in the room's gotta have the right answer.

Robin Alex: 00:45:00

So if you two feel like that's the right answer, let's go.

Robin Alex: 00:45:03

there's no ah, shucks, I lost this argument.

Vit Muller: 00:45:06

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:45:06

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:45:07

Okay.

Vit Muller: 00:45:08

Alright.

Vit Muller: 00:45:08

Yeah, I like that.

Robin Alex: 00:45:10

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:45:11

so it probably feels unorthodox, but that's honestly how we operate.

Vit Muller: 00:45:14

yeah, I mean, I'm just like, I was asking some of these questions

Vit Muller: 00:45:17

that I come, I come up with there just maybe my own personal experiences, when

Vit Muller: 00:45:20

I've worked with somebody and we butt heads and I don't know, like maybe I had

Vit Muller: 00:45:24

that feeling like, ah, like a bit of a disgruntled, but I guess that's ego and

Vit Muller: 00:45:30

learning how to keep it in check as well.

Robin Alex: 00:45:32

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:45:32

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:45:33

I mean, I think it's that feeling that you don't always have to be Right.

Vit Muller: 00:45:37

yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:45:38

I think that's the way that I personally get it.

Robin Alex: 00:45:39

I don't have to be right, but I wanna have the ultimate win.

Robin Alex: 00:45:44

And the ultimate win doesn't have to come from me.

Robin Alex: 00:45:48

we're a team, we're a unit.

Robin Alex: 00:45:49

And if the team has to win, not me personally.

Vit Muller: 00:45:53

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:45:54

Yeah, that makes sense now.

Vit Muller: 00:45:56

High level, amazing platform.

Vit Muller: 00:45:59

I mean, I got hooked the first time.

Vit Muller: 00:46:01

I light my eyes on it, so many really cool tools.

Vit Muller: 00:46:04

you same experience before then I ran no agency.

Vit Muller: 00:46:07

I was duct taping things.

Vit Muller: 00:46:09

So it's amazing product.

Vit Muller: 00:46:11

What you guys build is incredible, all in one, constantly evolving,

Vit Muller: 00:46:16

always releasing new stuff.

Vit Muller: 00:46:18

But high level isn't just the software, it's really become a community.

Vit Muller: 00:46:23

Was that always part of the strategy or that evolve kind of organic.

Robin Alex: 00:46:28

it definitely the community has something that, that's grown

Robin Alex: 00:46:31

organically from the very beginning.

Robin Alex: 00:46:33

one is using my personal network and everyone kind of knew each other and we

Robin Alex: 00:46:38

would put everyone in a Facebook group together to, because it was like, what's

Robin Alex: 00:46:42

the best way to communicate with everyone?

Robin Alex: 00:46:43

This was before, we started using Slack, and Slack was early days back then.

Robin Alex: 00:46:47

it was like, do we put everyone in a Google Chat?

Robin Alex: 00:46:48

It's no, everyone's on Facebook.

Robin Alex: 00:46:49

Let's just put 'em.

Robin Alex: 00:46:50

Actually, we didn't even put them in a Facebook group.

Robin Alex: 00:46:52

We put them in a Facebook chat group, right?

Robin Alex: 00:46:55

And then in that chat group, that's where everyone was talking and communicating.

Robin Alex: 00:46:59

And that's where we had the Zoom call.

Robin Alex: 00:47:00

And we actually renamed it as high level support.

Robin Alex: 00:47:03

'cause we couldn't afford a help desk system, right?

Robin Alex: 00:47:06

So it was just, we didn't wanna check emails.

Robin Alex: 00:47:08

It was like, oh, just use this as live communication.

Robin Alex: 00:47:10

What's better than talking live and helping, our customers?

Robin Alex: 00:47:14

And then what happened was we got it up to 200, and then we started

Robin Alex: 00:47:18

getting alerts from Facebook saying, you need to shut this down.

Robin Alex: 00:47:21

We're closing down the Facebook group concept and you need to create a

Robin Alex: 00:47:24

Facebook, I'm sorry, the Facebook chat.

Robin Alex: 00:47:26

You need to create a Facebook group and that's gonna be the next version.

Robin Alex: 00:47:29

So that's when we started putting people on the Facebook group.

Robin Alex: 00:47:32

And then from there, that community.

Robin Alex: 00:47:35

Organically, more people started joining in and being a part of that.

Robin Alex: 00:47:38

And of course, we're a part of it.

Robin Alex: 00:47:40

We're communicating, we're talking to people, we're commenting on posts.

Robin Alex: 00:47:43

And then from there, it's just started to continue to evolve to where people started

Robin Alex: 00:47:47

asking like, Hey, who else is in my city?

Robin Alex: 00:47:49

Let's start meeting up.

Robin Alex: 00:47:50

Let's start talking.

Robin Alex: 00:47:51

Let's start going, to other masterminds together.

Robin Alex: 00:47:54

let's get it embedded there.

Robin Alex: 00:47:55

and then we started doing events and, the events was definitely the, the

Robin Alex: 00:47:59

opportunity to bring everyone together.

Robin Alex: 00:48:00

And then, from there, now we're starting to create local chapters.

Robin Alex: 00:48:03

We're doing events around the world.

Robin Alex: 00:48:05

so now we're putting, we're trying to put gasoline on the community and trying to

Robin Alex: 00:48:09

make sure that it continues to strengthen.

Robin Alex: 00:48:10

But to be honest, it started organically.

Vit Muller: 00:48:13

Would you attribute that to be like this, the main

Vit Muller: 00:48:16

part of your marketing initially?

Vit Muller: 00:48:17

Because I've never seen you guys really, like the other companies,

Vit Muller: 00:48:21

the big competitors there, going all in on ads, for example and all that.

Vit Muller: 00:48:24

I don't think that in

Robin Alex: 00:48:26

We, we,

Vit Muller: 00:48:27

watching high level

Robin Alex: 00:48:28

yeah,

Vit Muller: 00:48:29

it was all.

Robin Alex: 00:48:30

our model was always word of mouth.

Robin Alex: 00:48:32

we've never been the ones that, that says we're the best sales

Robin Alex: 00:48:35

company or the sales organization.

Robin Alex: 00:48:36

That's not us.

Robin Alex: 00:48:37

And even early on, we just couldn't afford ads, right?

Robin Alex: 00:48:39

so every money that came in, we wanted to put it back into, I mean,   Shaun, Varun

Robin Alex: 00:48:43

and I never took a paycheck for like the first 18 months, never took a dollar.

Robin Alex: 00:48:46

The company, it was like, you know what?

Robin Alex: 00:48:47

We need to keep going, so let's go hire a, another engineer.

Robin Alex: 00:48:51

Let's go hire someone to help us on support and all that.

Robin Alex: 00:48:53

So we just kept putting that money back into the company and keep going that way.

Robin Alex: 00:48:57

so we could never afford running ads.

Robin Alex: 00:49:00

And, running ads requires testing, which means that you need to have a budget.

Robin Alex: 00:49:03

'cause it could, you just light the dollars on fire if it goes wrong, right?

Robin Alex: 00:49:07

you only get one chance with it, with the money.

Robin Alex: 00:49:09

So we just didn't have the budgets there, so we never really sold.

Robin Alex: 00:49:11

So what we would do is just anyone that we supported and spoke to, we would

Robin Alex: 00:49:16

just ask, Hey Vit, now that we got you to success here, or set you up, do you

Robin Alex: 00:49:21

know anyone else that would like this?

Robin Alex: 00:49:22

And you would immediately be like, oh yeah, I know Bob's

Robin Alex: 00:49:25

actually online right now.

Robin Alex: 00:49:25

Let me invite him in because everyone, it's an online com online culture, right?

Robin Alex: 00:49:30

everyone kind of knew each other.

Robin Alex: 00:49:31

You're chatting with someone somehow, some way and conveniently well enough.

Robin Alex: 00:49:35

You're like, oh yeah, he's jumping into the Zoom.

Robin Alex: 00:49:37

You would invite them to the Zoom and then we would start talking about

Robin Alex: 00:49:40

the product and the cool things.

Robin Alex: 00:49:41

And you're like, alright, I gotta jump to another call.

Robin Alex: 00:49:42

You would drop off.

Robin Alex: 00:49:43

And now we're just talking to other person, we're like, let's just do a demo.

Robin Alex: 00:49:45

Let me just show you what we're doing.

Robin Alex: 00:49:47

And people would just be in shock and they're like, lemme try it.

Robin Alex: 00:49:48

Lemme see what happened.

Robin Alex: 00:49:49

And they would come back and love it and keep going.

Robin Alex: 00:49:51

And we just do the same thing.

Robin Alex: 00:49:53

now do you know someone else?

Robin Alex: 00:49:55

Do you know someone else?

Robin Alex: 00:49:56

And it just spider webbed out from there.

Vit Muller: 00:49:58

it's the ultimate litmus test in a way, like the litmus paper.

Vit Muller: 00:50:02

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:50:03

So it gives you the right color.

Vit Muller: 00:50:04

are you healthy?

Vit Muller: 00:50:04

You're not, you, so yeah, I believe this is like the best approach to any business

Vit Muller: 00:50:09

is look after your customers so well.

Vit Muller: 00:50:12

Ask them for feedback.

Vit Muller: 00:50:13

If the feedback is great, then ask them for a referral.

Vit Muller: 00:50:17

And if they give you that referral, then you're doing things right

Vit Muller: 00:50:20

and then you could basically generate more customers that way.

Vit Muller: 00:50:25

and because they are referring and they are giving you good feedback, then

Vit Muller: 00:50:29

that also looks after the retention.

Vit Muller: 00:50:32

So yeah,

Robin Alex: 00:50:33

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:50:34

believer in that.

Robin Alex: 00:50:35

when I think about, value as a whole, I've always been, the

Robin Alex: 00:50:39

person on, I wanna make sure that I'm giving you so much value that

Robin Alex: 00:50:42

you're willing to throw your wallet at me ' cause I'm not charging you enough.

Robin Alex: 00:50:45

And the way that we grew our product, is very inexpensive, is definitely

Robin Alex: 00:50:49

value driven, just built in 'cause with all the tools and features there.

Robin Alex: 00:50:52

And so if I'm able to help you with that last mile of setting it up properly and

Robin Alex: 00:50:56

solving that problem that you had in your business of complexity, taking,

Robin Alex: 00:51:00

5, 6, 10, 15, 20 different applications and now it's all into one place and it's

Robin Alex: 00:51:04

working and we're only charging you a hundred bucks a month or $300 a month.

Robin Alex: 00:51:08

And that's it When I ask that question just to help me, do you know anyone

Robin Alex: 00:51:13

else that wants to run, you feel almost obligated to making that happen because

Robin Alex: 00:51:18

we've saved so much money for you.

Robin Alex: 00:51:20

And that's honestly the way that we've operated the business and

Robin Alex: 00:51:22

always thought about we gonna make sure that we're putting 10 connects.

Robin Alex: 00:51:24

The value that, that you're buying from us.

Vit Muller: 00:51:26

Yep, definitely.

Vit Muller: 00:51:28

high level pricing structure is interesting 'cause it doesn't just price

Vit Muller: 00:51:32

the software, it actually encourages agencies to evolve their business model.

Vit Muller: 00:51:37

Kind of feels like that.

Vit Muller: 00:51:38

It's, especially with the SaaS mode, the agency pro plan, when you design the

Vit Muller: 00:51:44

pricing tiers where you're intentionally trying to, I dunno if it push is the

Vit Muller: 00:51:47

right word, but, move them towards building recurring SaaS revenue rather

Vit Muller: 00:51:53

than staying purely service-based.

Robin Alex: 00:51:55

No, that was just learnings over time.

Robin Alex: 00:51:57

So when we rolled it out, we were trying to figure out

Robin Alex: 00:51:59

the best way to price it out.

Robin Alex: 00:52:00

And, most products at the time was either a hundred bucks a month for, limited set

Robin Alex: 00:52:04

of features versus, a higher tier and to get you more features, of course, right?

Robin Alex: 00:52:09

and you try to gate it, but we could never figure out the best way to

Robin Alex: 00:52:13

provide a limited set of features.

Robin Alex: 00:52:15

The only thing that we could figure out is, we work with agencies and they work

Robin Alex: 00:52:18

with many different sub-accounts, right?

Robin Alex: 00:52:22

Or many businesses.

Robin Alex: 00:52:24

So what if we just gate that?

Robin Alex: 00:52:26

and so we have a low tier one because people wanna do it themselves, right?

Robin Alex: 00:52:30

And so that was the small tier, which is the nine seven.

Robin Alex: 00:52:33

And then it was like, we'll still give you all the tools there.

Robin Alex: 00:52:35

And then at the 2 97, we knew that many businesses have, 20 different

Robin Alex: 00:52:40

businesses that they represent.

Robin Alex: 00:52:41

So make that $300 a month.

Robin Alex: 00:52:43

And that was it.

Robin Alex: 00:52:44

So we only had two plans for the first couple years, and then through that

Robin Alex: 00:52:47

what we realized was that people were adding a new line item to their fees.

Robin Alex: 00:52:51

They were actually operating it as a SaaS company.

Robin Alex: 00:52:55

And they were trying to hook it up to other tools, like to Stripe and

Robin Alex: 00:52:58

trying to, manage the subscriptions.

Robin Alex: 00:53:00

And then we'd get the ask the idea on, Hey, how do we, someone doesn't pay.

Robin Alex: 00:53:05

How do I lock them out of their account?

Robin Alex: 00:53:07

Because I would love it, because, when they see that their account's like

Robin Alex: 00:53:10

they're gonna pay me my invoice, right?

Robin Alex: 00:53:13

They, it's not free access and stuff like this is interesting.

Robin Alex: 00:53:16

So we, by listening to the customer, we started building what we call SaaS mode.

Robin Alex: 00:53:19

So that came out like two or three years later.

Robin Alex: 00:53:21

And I think that was the linchpin to really take on converting

Robin Alex: 00:53:24

people from being just an agency who has this multi-tenant software

Robin Alex: 00:53:27

to now being a SaaS company.

Robin Alex: 00:53:29

And, I think it's super important for businesses and, something that a lot

Robin Alex: 00:53:34

of businesses are really leaning into mostly as in the new AI revolution

Robin Alex: 00:53:37

that we're going in right now.

Vit Muller: 00:53:39

It's a perfect flywheel.

Vit Muller: 00:53:40

I remember that moment.

Vit Muller: 00:53:41

It was 2021, somewhere in the middle of 2021 when you guys released it.

Vit Muller: 00:53:44

And later on I jump and upgraded to that.

Vit Muller: 00:53:47

but yeah, it's a perfect flywheel.

Vit Muller: 00:53:48

Like the way I like it, what I like about it is in my own business, like I

Vit Muller: 00:53:52

can be, I can play different storylines to businesses, different markets.

Vit Muller: 00:53:56

I can go, Hey, we're sales first, and then you help yourself out and we are

Vit Muller: 00:54:00

here for you and we'll support you.

Vit Muller: 00:54:01

And if at any time you need us to do anything in your account, and

Vit Muller: 00:54:05

that's where our agency services come in, vice versa, you can play

Vit Muller: 00:54:08

the other way and then upsell that.

Vit Muller: 00:54:10

So it's, it's great.

Vit Muller: 00:54:11

But what I'm curious to know, do you think, do you think that the way you

Vit Muller: 00:54:15

guys have the SAS plan structured now, that's is that the perfect, or do you

Vit Muller: 00:54:19

think there's room for new innovation?

Robin Alex: 00:54:22

I mean, I think what's interesting is we don't get a lot

Robin Alex: 00:54:25

of pushback on our pricing model.

Robin Alex: 00:54:27

people love it, back to that point to, we wanna be on the side of we're

Robin Alex: 00:54:30

providing out the box, 10 x, a hundred x value that you can't get anywhere else.

Robin Alex: 00:54:35

I think that puts us in a great position.

Robin Alex: 00:54:37

I think if you look at a lot of other competitors in a lot of other products,

Robin Alex: 00:54:41

they have different pricing models, right?

Robin Alex: 00:54:43

Where they focus on per seat or per contact or things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:54:48

And, the new thing now is per use.

Robin Alex: 00:54:50

And we've done that since the beginning with the lead connector,

Robin Alex: 00:54:54

so as you use your text messaging and things like that, you just pay

Robin Alex: 00:54:56

as you go, in whatever you use.

Robin Alex: 00:54:58

And so you have the opportunity to fluctuate and come down

Robin Alex: 00:55:01

with the all the other ones.

Robin Alex: 00:55:02

It's once you get up to a certain amount of contacts or amount of users,

Robin Alex: 00:55:06

they won't let you downgrade, right?

Robin Alex: 00:55:08

And so we give you the most flexible, and actually this is becoming more of the

Robin Alex: 00:55:11

standard play that people are expecting as we get into the AI revolution.

Robin Alex: 00:55:15

They only want to pay for the utilization that they're using there.

Robin Alex: 00:55:18

And so we were already primed and set years ago and actually

Robin Alex: 00:55:22

probably first to market with this pricing model before anyone else.

Robin Alex: 00:55:25

And now everyone is trying to transition into a.

Vit Muller: 00:55:28

It makes perfect sense.

Vit Muller: 00:55:29

And I've kind of come to that same conclusion.

Vit Muller: 00:55:31

the way I've priced my plans was initially like, 'cause like you have

Vit Muller: 00:55:35

that if something is available to you sometimes, like it just, you

Vit Muller: 00:55:39

just tend to use it the way, it's like it gives you that opportunity.

Vit Muller: 00:55:42

Like I'm talking about the SaaS plans where you can select which features

Vit Muller: 00:55:46

to unlock, which features to, to not unlock and do the tier based.

Vit Muller: 00:55:50

And I, that's how I did it originally.

Vit Muller: 00:55:51

And then I realized, you know what, I'm probably just creating a ton of friction,

Vit Muller: 00:55:55

like the indecision for customers because they don't really know those.

Vit Muller: 00:55:59

Features yet.

Vit Muller: 00:56:00

So how are they supposed to pick?

Vit Muller: 00:56:02

So I got rid of it and then I just made it based on how many user seats.

Vit Muller: 00:56:06

So are you a small, are you growing, are you scaling?

Vit Muller: 00:56:09

And if you're scaling, you get unlimited.

Vit Muller: 00:56:11

And if you're just small, you get three seats.

Vit Muller: 00:56:12

And the middle, I with six seats, I dunno if it's the best number,

Vit Muller: 00:56:16

but that's kind of how I do it.

Vit Muller: 00:56:17

So now all I have to decide on is just okay, how big, how many seeds do I need?

Vit Muller: 00:56:22

it's pretty simple.

Vit Muller: 00:56:22

how many people do you have?

Vit Muller: 00:56:24

but more, I think there's a new evolution coming as well for me.

Vit Muller: 00:56:28

Like I'm, I've been thinking about it for a while, is where I'll

Vit Muller: 00:56:31

just get rid of the seeds as well.

Vit Muller: 00:56:33

And I'll just have, have it even simpler.

Vit Muller: 00:56:35

Like monthly, annual, because.

Vit Muller: 00:56:38

I'm on a 4 97, so I've got my markup, so that's where the money's at as well.

Vit Muller: 00:56:42

So that, so if I help them, doesn't matter how many people they have, if

Vit Muller: 00:56:46

I help them grow further, I'll make more money anyway on a rebuilding.

Vit Muller: 00:56:49

And I don't have a huge markup anyway, but,

Robin Alex: 00:56:52

yeah.

Robin Alex: 00:56:53

but you know, the great thing about the markup and all that, people don't

Robin Alex: 00:56:56

feel like you're taxing them because you're delivering them outcomes, right?

Robin Alex: 00:57:00

of course you're gonna spend more money because you're doing more texting, but

Robin Alex: 00:57:04

the more texting actually generates more communication, more engagement

Robin Alex: 00:57:07

ultimately leads to more customers.

Robin Alex: 00:57:10

The worst thing for any business is not having any engagement

Robin Alex: 00:57:14

or any phone calls coming in or text messages coming in, right?

Robin Alex: 00:57:17

So they don't feel like it's the end of the world if

Robin Alex: 00:57:21

they're willing to pay for it.

Vit Muller: 00:57:22

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:57:23

speaking of the end of the world, just having fun here.

Vit Muller: 00:57:25

ai, so there's.

Vit Muller: 00:57:27

Obviously a massive shift happening right now.

Vit Muller: 00:57:31

Unless you guys are listening.

Vit Muller: 00:57:33

Unless you've been living under the rug.

Vit Muller: 00:57:34

There's lots happening.

Vit Muller: 00:57:36

Vibe, coding, all that.

Vit Muller: 00:57:37

Some people are saying maybe AI is going to kill SaaS entirely.

Vit Muller: 00:57:41

From your perspective, building high level, is AI killing

Vit Muller: 00:57:45

SaaS or is it transforming it?

Robin Alex: 00:57:47

we're on the side of transforming SaaS.

Robin Alex: 00:57:48

I think, we believe that, there's two different parts

Robin Alex: 00:57:52

of AI that we're focused on.

Robin Alex: 00:57:54

There's AI for you and AI with you.

Robin Alex: 00:57:57

And so where the world is shifting to is, there's the Aunt Jemima effect, right?

Robin Alex: 00:58:03

Like you wanna make pancakes if you go out to the store and get pancake mix and

Robin Alex: 00:58:08

all it says is just add water and then you make it, did you really make pancakes or

Robin Alex: 00:58:13

is it giving you the effect that you make pancakes because you didn't get all the

Robin Alex: 00:58:17

20 different ingredients to make it and properly measure it out and everything,

Robin Alex: 00:58:20

all you did was just add water.

Robin Alex: 00:58:22

So when we think about that with high level, we have AI with you where you're

Robin Alex: 00:58:25

able to use a lot of the tools that we have from an AI perspective where you

Robin Alex: 00:58:28

can help, from a generative perspective, help create social posts, help create,

Robin Alex: 00:58:33

building a website and things like that.

Robin Alex: 00:58:35

So a lot of our tools and things makes it easier for agencies who are not really

Robin Alex: 00:58:40

ready to be fully trust AI blindly.

Robin Alex: 00:58:45

I don't know, I just turned it on.

Robin Alex: 00:58:46

AI is kind of operating on its own.

Robin Alex: 00:58:48

Who knows if it's gonna do what I promised to deliver to my customer, right?

Robin Alex: 00:58:50

I don't know how many agents are this.

Robin Alex: 00:58:52

So we have this AI with you model.

Robin Alex: 00:58:54

Now we have this other one that's AI for you.

Robin Alex: 00:58:57

And this I think is really kind of the other revolutionary part.

Robin Alex: 00:59:00

It's taking a lot of the SaaS concepts and really putting it from an AI perspective.

Robin Alex: 00:59:04

So within high level, right?

Robin Alex: 00:59:05

You can actually create it to where, when messages come in from a form

Robin Alex: 00:59:10

or someone, opts into something, they can then, communicate manually.

Robin Alex: 00:59:15

Then we started putting conversation AI in into place,

Robin Alex: 00:59:18

which you can eliminate the human.

Robin Alex: 00:59:19

And now AI is handling it for you.

Robin Alex: 00:59:22

It's essentially an agent there, right?

Robin Alex: 00:59:24

So that's it.

Robin Alex: 00:59:25

AI for you.

Robin Alex: 00:59:26

Like we're just giving you the agent to handle that.

Robin Alex: 00:59:28

It's outta the box ready to go.

Robin Alex: 00:59:30

Then you know you're gonna think about AI voice.

Robin Alex: 00:59:32

If somebody is calling into the business, you would have to have

Robin Alex: 00:59:35

a human pick up the phone, right?

Robin Alex: 00:59:38

And most of the time they miss the call.

Robin Alex: 00:59:40

They're too busy, they're after hours or whatever.

Robin Alex: 00:59:43

And now with AI voice.

Robin Alex: 00:59:45

You can actually have an AI agent, an AI receptionist actually answer

Robin Alex: 00:59:50

the call and actually have a full conversation with someone.

Robin Alex: 00:59:52

And the technology and features that's coming out there is

Robin Alex: 00:59:55

getting incredibly well done.

Robin Alex: 00:59:57

Like you can, you can't even tell that it's AI anymore, right?

Robin Alex: 01:00:00

Like the voice, the accent, the pauses, the way that you

Robin Alex: 01:00:03

communicate the emotion behind it.

Robin Alex: 01:00:05

Like it's starting to pick up those senses now.

Robin Alex: 01:00:07

So we're bringing in those tools.

Robin Alex: 01:00:09

And so that's really the way that we're really shaping up the product, is like

Robin Alex: 01:00:11

having the AI with you and the AI for you.

Vit Muller: 01:00:14

What's gonna be very interesting is as we tend to give feedback

Vit Muller: 01:00:18

to you guys, and that's how it works.

Vit Muller: 01:00:20

The ideas board on all that, and this platform keeps evolving, We're all trying

Vit Muller: 01:00:24

to make it easier for ourselves as well.

Vit Muller: 01:00:26

it's getting very close to a point where, it's already happening where you

Vit Muller: 01:00:29

can just get a client to fill up the form and then just, have an AI agent.

Vit Muller: 01:00:34

Then it gets that passed on to lovable or vibe coding.

Vit Muller: 01:00:38

Other vibe coding platforms, spin up a website.

Vit Muller: 01:00:41

so the amount of effort on our end is like reducing.

Robin Alex: 01:00:45

I think the effort is changing, right?

Robin Alex: 01:00:49

It, you're gonna be able to, from an effort perspective, you're gonna be able

Robin Alex: 01:00:53

to be more thoughtful and actually deliver the outcome that you promise at such a

Robin Alex: 01:00:57

faster rate with more consistency, right?

Robin Alex: 01:01:01

Because AI is gonna be able to do it with you, so you get to solve there.

Robin Alex: 01:01:04

Then from the value extraction back to the consultants or back to the agency

Robin Alex: 01:01:08

or the technology implementer, right?

Robin Alex: 01:01:10

Like that, we were talking about this, what we call the SA preneurs.

Robin Alex: 01:01:14

The bigger value is you're able to adopt a customer so much faster than

Robin Alex: 01:01:19

you have ever done before, which allows you to get back on the boots, on the

Robin Alex: 01:01:23

ground to go find your next customer.

Vit Muller: 01:01:25

I hope that's gonna be true going forward.

Vit Muller: 01:01:27

I just hope it's not gonna be the other way where, over time there's

Vit Muller: 01:01:30

gonna be products in the market that are like so turnkey that you

Vit Muller: 01:01:35

just, do you know what I mean?

Vit Muller: 01:01:36

Like

Robin Alex: 01:01:37

I think there's a world where that, that might happen.

Robin Alex: 01:01:40

The products will exist.

Robin Alex: 01:01:41

The challenge though, is discoverability, who's gonna find these products?

Robin Alex: 01:01:46

Who's the person that's going to feel confident to go blindly implement it?

Robin Alex: 01:01:52

is the dentist gonna blindly go seek this product and blindly implement it

Robin Alex: 01:01:57

and go, do they have the time to do that, monitor, manage, and maintain it?

Robin Alex: 01:02:02

So then they rely on what we call the SaaS entrepreneur, the consultant.

Robin Alex: 01:02:07

The person that they call, in every technological shift in the world, right?

Robin Alex: 01:02:12

so think years ago when internet was taken off, people were trying

Robin Alex: 01:02:16

to call some, they didn't know how to create a website, so they were

Robin Alex: 01:02:19

calling someone trying to find someone.

Robin Alex: 01:02:21

Can you build a website for me?

Robin Alex: 01:02:22

The next technological shift when social media was taken off, I don't know.

Robin Alex: 01:02:26

I have a business, I need to get on social media somehow, some way.

Robin Alex: 01:02:28

Can someone help me?

Robin Alex: 01:02:30

So you call somebody and then they just do the work to make sure that

Robin Alex: 01:02:34

you have an online presence, right?

Robin Alex: 01:02:36

Then there was the other shift of paid advertising.

Robin Alex: 01:02:39

I know I need it, but I don't have the time.

Robin Alex: 01:02:41

I'm gonna call somebody.

Robin Alex: 01:02:43

Maybe it's an agency, right?

Robin Alex: 01:02:44

Like a consultant, a technology implementer.

Robin Alex: 01:02:46

They're always calling somebody.

Robin Alex: 01:02:48

Then you have software.

Robin Alex: 01:02:49

We need someone to, we need a CRM, we need a workflow automation, we need all this.

Robin Alex: 01:02:54

Let's call somebody to doing it, right?

Robin Alex: 01:02:57

And typically there it's this layer, the sapr layer that we call, you're at high

Robin Alex: 01:03:00

level, but it's that technology implement.

Robin Alex: 01:03:02

It's the same people, the same technology implementers.

Robin Alex: 01:03:05

Now we're at the world where small businesses who are probably the

Robin Alex: 01:03:09

ripest today to implement the technology is the small business.

Robin Alex: 01:03:14

it's the mechanic, it's the dentist and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:03:16

Because they wanna find leverage as fast as possible.

Robin Alex: 01:03:19

When, it used to be like you go sell to the mega companies, you the Fortune 500.

Robin Alex: 01:03:24

The problem is people are concerned about their jobs.

Robin Alex: 01:03:27

They have, job security issues.

Robin Alex: 01:03:29

They have 12,000 people that are, they don't know what

Robin Alex: 01:03:31

they're doing there, right?

Robin Alex: 01:03:32

So they're protecting their own and then you have security concerns 'cause

Robin Alex: 01:03:36

it is trying to protect their job.

Robin Alex: 01:03:38

and they wanna do a good job, right?

Robin Alex: 01:03:39

So it's very slow to innovate there.

Robin Alex: 01:03:42

But when you can go to the small business who is ripe and ready for it,

Robin Alex: 01:03:46

that is where change is gonna happen.

Robin Alex: 01:03:48

But the problem is they don't have time nor the confidence or

Robin Alex: 01:03:51

the expertise to implement it.

Robin Alex: 01:03:53

So this is where the agency layer, this distribution layer never goes away.

Vit Muller: 01:03:58

I definitely am noticing ai, it's starting to, the interest

Vit Muller: 01:04:02

is building from businesses that I talked to that I went to network the

Vit Muller: 01:04:06

other week, spoke to, like a little mastermind table with people, SME space.

Vit Muller: 01:04:13

They are now talking differently than they were talking like a year ago.

Vit Muller: 01:04:18

Now they're asking, it's not about, the hesitation against ai.

Vit Muller: 01:04:21

Now it's more about the problem of, I don't really

Vit Muller: 01:04:24

know how I would implement it.

Vit Muller: 01:04:26

Do you know what I mean?

Vit Muller: 01:04:26

last year was like the curiosity, but definitely a hesitance for the most part.

Vit Muller: 01:04:31

It's what I got.

Vit Muller: 01:04:32

And now it's yeah, I mean we, we're now at a process of what we know

Vit Muller: 01:04:35

that we need to start looking at it.

Vit Muller: 01:04:38

We just dunno how we dunno where to start.

Vit Muller: 01:04:40

So yeah, it is, we're at a perfect spot.

Vit Muller: 01:04:42

All of us SPRs.

Vit Muller: 01:04:44

it's amazing.

Vit Muller: 01:04:45

Robin, I've also reached out to community and our listeners for this interview, and

Vit Muller: 01:04:50

I asked them if they could ask you some questions, what they would wanna ask.

Vit Muller: 01:04:56

Would it be okay if like we run through a couple, I don't know if we're gonna go

Vit Muller: 01:04:59

through all of 'em, run out of time here, but, so I'll start with the first one.

Vit Muller: 01:05:02

This was, the question that I was gonna ask you anyway, and it

Vit Muller: 01:05:06

was just confirmation that is a real issue with other agencies.

Vit Muller: 01:05:10

this

Robin Alex: 01:05:11

yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:05:11

Can you gimme one quick second?

Robin Alex: 01:05:13

Sorry.

Vit Muller: 01:05:13

Yeah, mate.

Vit Muller: 01:05:13

yeah, sure.

Robin Alex: 01:05:14

Sorry, somebody just came the door, but yeah, go ahead.

Robin Alex: 01:05:17

Let's go.

Vit Muller: 01:05:18

This is an Australian high level community.

Vit Muller: 01:05:20

As the platform continues to grow globally, how are you thinking about

Vit Muller: 01:05:24

Australian market specifically?

Vit Muller: 01:05:26

for example, many businesses here, especially those working with defense,

Vit Muller: 01:05:30

like I'm in Canberra and there's a lot of small businesses that have

Vit Muller: 01:05:33

deals with defense or government.

Vit Muller: 01:05:35

Or other regulated industries like, healthcare aged care.

Vit Muller: 01:05:38

They require the data to be hosted locally within Australia.

Vit Muller: 01:05:42

That requirement can sometimes make it really difficult, to then actually

Vit Muller: 01:05:46

do any business with those businesses.

Vit Muller: 01:05:48

So it's regional data hosting something high level is considering as part

Robin Alex: 01:05:54

Oh, a hundred percent.

Robin Alex: 01:05:55

So it's actually a very big project for us.

Robin Alex: 01:05:58

we have so many distributed services distributed, the way that our

Robin Alex: 01:06:02

infrastructure is built, we have to figure out how to make sure that we get

Robin Alex: 01:06:05

the right data in the right locations.

Robin Alex: 01:06:08

you being a SaaS preneur and the way that the world works, we don't know.

Robin Alex: 01:06:13

Like you may have a customer in Australia, you may almost, you can

Robin Alex: 01:06:16

also have a customer in United States.

Robin Alex: 01:06:19

Now if we try to data centralize it, you're actually affecting your business

Robin Alex: 01:06:23

for that US customer and vice versa.

Vit Muller: 01:06:26

has, it has to be based on a sub-account basis, but

Robin Alex: 01:06:29

YEE Exactly.

Robin Alex: 01:06:31

And so that's what we're, that's why we have to rebuild the architecture

Robin Alex: 01:06:35

of how we have our data centralization and then all the microservices to

Robin Alex: 01:06:38

interact with each other, right?

Robin Alex: 01:06:40

and so that's where, but that is actually something that is underway and what

Robin Alex: 01:06:43

we're actually trying to solve for, with a size and capacity of our business.

Robin Alex: 01:06:47

We do get this, request quite a bit.

Robin Alex: 01:06:48

And you have, in other regions, like in the European market, you have GDPR,

Robin Alex: 01:06:51

you have, other, for us to do, work for government agencies or, teams

Robin Alex: 01:06:56

that are selling to government, groups or nonprofits and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:06:59

They have their requirements or financial right, like they have

Robin Alex: 01:07:02

data security requirements as well.

Robin Alex: 01:07:04

So we are moving into that world from a data integrity perspective.

Robin Alex: 01:07:08

I think by the end of the year we should be in a closer world into that.

Robin Alex: 01:07:12

but that being said, in the meantime, I mean, we do follow the right processes.

Robin Alex: 01:07:15

We have all the legal paperwork.

Robin Alex: 01:07:17

It's a saying that we are an American company and while you're

Robin Alex: 01:07:20

in Australia, we follow all the appropriate laws, that make it

Vit Muller: 01:07:24

you just got SOC two qualified

Robin Alex: 01:07:26

E, EE.

Robin Alex: 01:07:26

Exactly.

Robin Alex: 01:07:27

so we have all the operational methods so that you can't operate today.

Robin Alex: 01:07:30

It's only gonna get better once we release kind of the new architecture

Robin Alex: 01:07:34

and we start, separating the data there.

Vit Muller: 01:07:37

So you're think around at 12 months mark, where this

Vit Muller: 01:07:39

could become more vi viable for

Robin Alex: 01:07:41

That's the hope.

Robin Alex: 01:07:42

yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:07:42

that's what we're focused on.

Vit Muller: 01:07:44

Okay.

Vit Muller: 01:07:44

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 01:07:45

high level has scaled incredibly fast and with that comes challenge of

Vit Muller: 01:07:47

building and maintaining great support teams in the sales world where there

Vit Muller: 01:07:52

can sometimes be a very high turnover in frontline customer support roles.

Vit Muller: 01:07:56

How do you approach building and retaining a strong support team at the scale?

Vit Muller: 01:08:00

High level is operating.

Robin Alex: 01:08:02

So the interesting thing about that statement is

Robin Alex: 01:08:04

we actually don't have a. Large turnover issue overall at high level?

Robin Alex: 01:08:08

I think, we really focus on, kind of our core strengths, like remote first.

Robin Alex: 01:08:13

we are a very community driven business so that we wanna make sure that all of

Robin Alex: 01:08:17

our employees are a part of the community.

Robin Alex: 01:08:19

it's not like the company plus the community.

Robin Alex: 01:08:21

It's no, as a community altogether, including our employees are a part of it.

Robin Alex: 01:08:25

and that really translates into our culture and, how we think about

Robin Alex: 01:08:28

the business and, so we make sure that our culture is very strong.

Robin Alex: 01:08:31

And as long as you're living by those expectations, we don't see a lot of people

Robin Alex: 01:08:35

leaving and it's very easy to weed out the people who are not following the

Robin Alex: 01:08:39

culture of how we're going the business.

Robin Alex: 01:08:40

And they kind of self-select the help.

Robin Alex: 01:08:43

But just generally speaking, we retain more than, at a significant

Robin Alex: 01:08:46

amount, even on the front lines.

Robin Alex: 01:08:47

Now, when we talk about skill level and things like that, we, the hardest

Robin Alex: 01:08:51

challenge is our customers will always be smarter than our team.

Robin Alex: 01:08:56

Our customers will always be smarter than the smartest person here at high

Robin Alex: 01:09:00

level, because we are not talking to the customers we are, you know what I mean?

Robin Alex: 01:09:06

The customers is, we're not talking to your customers.

Robin Alex: 01:09:08

You're the agency.

Robin Alex: 01:09:09

These are your customers.

Robin Alex: 01:09:11

We're not trying to figure out where the na, like how do we build the next trend?

Robin Alex: 01:09:15

What we're trying to figure out is where the trend's going.

Robin Alex: 01:09:18

So this, so we're always like, as we're never gonna be on the bleeding

Robin Alex: 01:09:22

edge of cool concepts, we're waiting for the signals from the community to

Robin Alex: 01:09:25

say, Hey guys, TikTok has taken off.

Robin Alex: 01:09:28

You need to build these tools.

Robin Alex: 01:09:30

So we're waiting to get that validation.

Robin Alex: 01:09:32

Then we start building.

Robin Alex: 01:09:33

we're not at the point where.

Robin Alex: 01:09:35

we can see around the corner of wow, there's this new up and

Robin Alex: 01:09:38

coming social media platform that's gonna be released in two weeks.

Robin Alex: 01:09:41

We should go ahead and start building it 'cause we're hoping

Robin Alex: 01:09:44

that it's gonna take off.

Robin Alex: 01:09:45

It's no, we don't need to predict the future.

Robin Alex: 01:09:46

Let's wait for people to figure it out.

Robin Alex: 01:09:48

And then they'll tell us how to solve it and go.

Robin Alex: 01:09:50

So from that, our customers are always gonna be smarter than us.

Robin Alex: 01:09:52

So making sure that we have a team that not respects that, but then also is

Robin Alex: 01:09:57

learning every single day to match up to the expectations to be the true support.

Robin Alex: 01:10:02

'cause we want to make sure that we can give you the resources.

Robin Alex: 01:10:05

because our product is very unique.

Robin Alex: 01:10:06

It's not a one feature or one defined way to use our platform.

Robin Alex: 01:10:12

It is truly a platform in the sense of it can be a white canvas and you can,

Robin Alex: 01:10:16

you, as the technology implementer, you as the consultant, you as the agency

Robin Alex: 01:10:21

can really whip up and map out the perfect solution for your business.

Robin Alex: 01:10:25

And just like anything else, you can cut up an onion 20 different ways.

Robin Alex: 01:10:30

It's, and come up to the same outcome.

Robin Alex: 01:10:32

That's what high level allows you to do.

Robin Alex: 01:10:34

And so that's where complexity comes in.

Robin Alex: 01:10:35

So we have to make sure that we're training and making sure

Robin Alex: 01:10:37

that we build up our support team to be able to support that.

Robin Alex: 01:10:40

And one of the biggest things, and I was actually on a call with our team,

Robin Alex: 01:10:42

is how do we make sure that we're leveraging AI along the way for our

Robin Alex: 01:10:46

teams to not only be at co-pilot, but even help supporting our customers?

Robin Alex: 01:10:51

Because the biggest thing is consistency, because it's, you can build something

Robin Alex: 01:10:56

in many different ways When you come to support and you talk to me and the answer

Robin Alex: 01:11:01

that I give you, and then somebody else who has the same problem, if they go

Robin Alex: 01:11:05

in and get a different answer, that's where problems start existing, right?

Robin Alex: 01:11:08

it's not consistent on why is it not the same answer every single time.

Robin Alex: 01:11:12

But if we have AI kind of helping and collaborating there, I think we

Robin Alex: 01:11:16

can build that up and that allows a little bit more consistent of

Robin Alex: 01:11:19

experience and consistent outcomes that we can deliver for our customers.

Vit Muller: 01:11:23

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:11:24

Oh, great.

Vit Muller: 01:11:24

I mean, I've never really had a huge issue with support.

Vit Muller: 01:11:27

I've submitted a lot of tickets, that's for sure.

Vit Muller: 01:11:29

but that's just goes of the, with the platform of that scale.

Vit Muller: 01:11:33

Another question that came up from the communities around bringing on investors

Vit Muller: 01:11:36

when high level partner with firms like Peak Equity and General Atlantic,

Vit Muller: 01:11:40

how did that change things internally?

Vit Muller: 01:11:42

did it affect how you and the other co-founders make decisions,

Vit Muller: 01:11:46

or have you been able to maintain same level of control over,

Vit Muller: 01:11:50

over the company's direction?

Vit Muller: 01:11:52

Like how do you balance, investor expectations while still protecting

Vit Muller: 01:11:56

the long-term vision of the company?

Vit Muller: 01:11:58

is, I guess what I'm

Robin Alex: 01:11:59

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:12:00

when we made the decision, so we were bootstrapped from the very beginning,

Robin Alex: 01:12:03

of the company all the way to 2021, we've never needed a single dollar

Robin Alex: 01:12:08

to keep the lights onto the business.

Robin Alex: 01:12:09

It.

Robin Alex: 01:12:10

And so that, that's an important piece.

Robin Alex: 01:12:12

We've been profitable since the beginning, so we've never struggled

Robin Alex: 01:12:15

with cash flow and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:12:17

And that was, a lot of it was due to the fact of how we

Robin Alex: 01:12:19

operated the business, right?

Robin Alex: 01:12:20

We never even took a paycheck for the first, year and a half.

Robin Alex: 01:12:23

a lot of it was just, putting the dollar back into the company, which allowed

Robin Alex: 01:12:26

us to make sure that we operate, we actually didn't know how to operate with

Robin Alex: 01:12:29

a negative cashflow business, right?

Robin Alex: 01:12:31

If the money doesn't exist, why are we spending something that we don't have?

Robin Alex: 01:12:34

and so when we brought on first, when we brought on, peak in 2021,

Robin Alex: 01:12:37

it was the height of the market.

Robin Alex: 01:12:39

we were getting a lot of inbound inquiries.

Robin Alex: 01:12:41

Not that we were looking for it, but everyone was here starting to hear about

Robin Alex: 01:12:43

us, and they want to get to us early.

Robin Alex: 01:12:45

And we decided, you know what?

Robin Alex: 01:12:48

Let's go through this process.

Robin Alex: 01:12:49

Let's see what happens.

Robin Alex: 01:12:50

' cause we needed a lot of consulting.

Robin Alex: 01:12:52

'cause we've never grown a business to that size and that level.

Robin Alex: 01:12:55

and it was an interesting time in the world, right?

Robin Alex: 01:12:58

This is when the pandemic was kicking off, or deep in the pandemic in 2021.

Robin Alex: 01:13:02

The markets were going crazy.

Robin Alex: 01:13:04

What are people seeing out there?

Robin Alex: 01:13:05

Can we get free consulting through that?

Robin Alex: 01:13:07

we had three, 400 people th toss their hat in the ring saying that

Robin Alex: 01:13:11

they're interested in our business.

Robin Alex: 01:13:12

And 99.9% of them all hated our business model.

Robin Alex: 01:13:16

I'm like, there's no way this can last.

Robin Alex: 01:13:17

This does not make sense.

Robin Alex: 01:13:19

And they would all give us a playbook and saying how we need to change our

Robin Alex: 01:13:21

business and how we're doing it wrong.

Robin Alex: 01:13:23

And we'd all kinda screw you.

Robin Alex: 01:13:24

Like you don't know what you're talking about.

Robin Alex: 01:13:25

Like you're talking to us because you have the interesting business.

Robin Alex: 01:13:28

What have you done?

Robin Alex: 01:13:29

and so we basically.

Robin Alex: 01:13:31

What was interesting with Peak at the time, it's, we needed help and not

Robin Alex: 01:13:36

in operating the business, but a lot of our back office functions, right?

Robin Alex: 01:13:39

Like we needed to strengthen up our, HR teams, our, for us to

Robin Alex: 01:13:43

scale and grow, we needed to put some operational, shifts there.

Robin Alex: 01:13:47

And Peak was very deliberate on look, you guys have an incredible business,

Robin Alex: 01:13:51

but that's not where you need problem.

Robin Alex: 01:13:52

You need help on kind of back office, financials and CFO and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:13:56

And we got really good advice and then, we continued to grow and then very

Robin Alex: 01:14:00

similarly we oh, through that we had a lot of people that joined the company

Robin Alex: 01:14:04

early on and took a big bet for us.

Robin Alex: 01:14:06

And in 2021, it allowed us to provide liquidity for, a lot of our team members.

Robin Alex: 01:14:12

they got a great bonus out of it and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:14:14

So that was really the primary, functions of bringing in peak at that time.

Robin Alex: 01:14:18

and Hamon is a minority investor.

Robin Alex: 01:14:20

We wanted to make sure that we maintain control.

Robin Alex: 01:14:22

We are running the day-to-day operations.

Robin Alex: 01:14:24

We are making all the decisions every single day in

Vit Muller: 01:14:27

Good.

Robin Alex: 01:14:28

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:14:28

In 2024.

Robin Alex: 01:14:30

we wanted to continue making sure that we're living up to the story

Robin Alex: 01:14:33

for our employees in that you came on early, there's other opportunities

Robin Alex: 01:14:38

that you could have taken, but you can need to stay on this.

Robin Alex: 01:14:39

We wanna do good for you.

Robin Alex: 01:14:41

So we wanna make sure that we can bring on, an opportunity to bring on another

Robin Alex: 01:14:45

investor who can give us even more leverage from kind of the back office

Robin Alex: 01:14:49

experience as we're growing into a bigger company as we go into global markets.

Robin Alex: 01:14:53

Who are the contacts?

Robin Alex: 01:14:54

Who are the right players, access is super important, right?

Robin Alex: 01:14:58

for us working with companies like Google or Open AI or having relationships with

Robin Alex: 01:15:03

other partners and things like that, having, people like POD in General

Robin Alex: 01:15:07

Atlantic, who has an even bigger.

Robin Alex: 01:15:09

partnership, that's what we were looking for.

Robin Alex: 01:15:12

We were not really looking for a lot of guidance and assistance in

Robin Alex: 01:15:15

transforming the business in any way of like how we're operating or

Robin Alex: 01:15:18

pricing models and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:15:20

Like that's something that both of them are very keen to say.

Robin Alex: 01:15:24

You guys need to operate it.

Robin Alex: 01:15:25

You guys are, majority stakeholders in the company and they're very aware

Robin Alex: 01:15:29

that, we have to be the one to push it because that's where the value comes in.

Robin Alex: 01:15:32

but having them ha has been great.

Robin Alex: 01:15:34

They've given us, a lot of visibility on where we can, strengthen

Robin Alex: 01:15:38

or, it's like strengthening your core in many cases, right?

Robin Alex: 01:15:41

you gotta make sure that you're trying to build up that six pack and, for all

Robin Alex: 01:15:44

your financials or your hr, when we're going global, how do we make sure that

Robin Alex: 01:15:47

we have our legal structures correctly?

Robin Alex: 01:15:49

because those are the areas that become your blind side,

Robin Alex: 01:15:52

because that's not our experts.

Robin Alex: 01:15:53

And so that, that's where  Shaun and Ver and I really lean on

Robin Alex: 01:15:56

them to help us, on that front.

Vit Muller: 01:15:58

you're at that corporate level basically.

Vit Muller: 01:16:00

That's what it is.

Vit Muller: 01:16:00

So like you have to have those traditional

Robin Alex: 01:16:02

those contexts, those relationships and things like that.

Robin Alex: 01:16:05

And that's not where we like being, but we have to at the size that we're at.

Robin Alex: 01:16:10

And so having those partners have been great.

Robin Alex: 01:16:11

And, they're minority investors and, they wanna support us as best as, they can.

Robin Alex: 01:16:16

And they've done a great job on that.

Robin Alex: 01:16:17

But, from a day-to-day perspective, operating the business and where

Robin Alex: 01:16:19

we're going, that's all  Shaun Vernon, me and our team.

Vit Muller: 01:16:22

I love it.

Vit Muller: 01:16:23

No, it makes a lot of sense.

Vit Muller: 01:16:24

you, there's a responsibility.

Vit Muller: 01:16:25

You're massive company and that infrastructure back office is included.

Vit Muller: 01:16:31

It's gotta be solid and we need to feel comfortable so that we know that 'cause

Vit Muller: 01:16:35

I'm responsible over my own customers and they're relying on that platform now.

Vit Muller: 01:16:39

So yeah, there's a lot of layers of dependency and, yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:16:42

So thank you guys, for doing that.

Vit Muller: 01:16:44

It sounds, It's a no brainer, but it has to be done that way.

Vit Muller: 01:16:49

these last couple of questions, I'm just gonna bundle them into one thing.

Vit Muller: 01:16:52

It's just related to B2B, regarding security, and flexibility for B2B space.

Vit Muller: 01:16:58

So specifically, for agencies working with corporate clients, you know that

Vit Muller: 01:17:05

they need more granular control over email synchronization because of the

Vit Muller: 01:17:09

fact that you have inbox that's universal and it's run directly in high level.

Vit Muller: 01:17:13

It also means that the email, you might use it for marketing, but people

Vit Muller: 01:17:18

will reply and they might reply with something personal, let's say example

Vit Muller: 01:17:22

of an aged care business, right?

Vit Muller: 01:17:24

from trying to do work for them.

Vit Muller: 01:17:26

if there's any marketing coming in, that's fine, but now if that person

Vit Muller: 01:17:29

replies to marketing and starts talking about their, something that's sensitive,

Vit Muller: 01:17:33

that shouldn't be part of that channel.

Vit Muller: 01:17:35

Will high level have some sort of ability to choose which conversations get logged

Vit Muller: 01:17:40

onto CRM and which remain private.

Robin Alex: 01:17:43

Yep.

Robin Alex: 01:17:44

Yeah, so we are actually, underway, but you know, we're trying to figure

Robin Alex: 01:17:47

out the best way to, to roll it out.

Robin Alex: 01:17:49

and the struggle is that, we've been running the business.

Robin Alex: 01:17:52

People are used to the platform for the past eight years.

Robin Alex: 01:17:55

And so we have to be very, we have to figure out a way to make sure that

Robin Alex: 01:17:59

whatever changes that we do from that mind space of like you are used to

Robin Alex: 01:18:02

the platform being a shared inbox and things like that, how do you make sure

Robin Alex: 01:18:05

that you interweave it where it makes sense for the next iteration of it?

Robin Alex: 01:18:09

And then, to your point on the personal inbox or the personal messaging it

Robin Alex: 01:18:12

needs, see with the right person knowing that today most businesses operate with

Robin Alex: 01:18:17

having yet another separate inbox, right?

Robin Alex: 01:18:19

You have a Gmail account or Office

Vit Muller: 01:18:21

It's hard to get rid of it.

Vit Muller: 01:18:22

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:18:22

right?

Robin Alex: 01:18:22

And then you we're trying to add this other layer.

Robin Alex: 01:18:24

So what we're trying to figure out is how do we roll out basically

Robin Alex: 01:18:27

independent, user inboxes, with that high level and then, have the

Robin Alex: 01:18:31

ability to lock it down, that way.

Robin Alex: 01:18:33

so it's definitely underway and something that we're working on.

Robin Alex: 01:18:35

So hopefully by the end of the year, we'll be ready to go there.

Vit Muller: 01:18:37

the other one is obviously Microsoft.

Vit Muller: 01:18:39

it feels like you guys are more lean towards, like Google products also.

Vit Muller: 01:18:43

I mean, you have Outlook integrations, but there are, there's a room, right?

Vit Muller: 01:18:47

Like other competitors have those Outlook add-ins.

Vit Muller: 01:18:51

Have you heard, have you seen those

Robin Alex: 01:18:53

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:18:53

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:18:53

You're talking about the desktop add-ins?

Robin Alex: 01:18:55

the challenge there is, even Microsoft said that they're decommissioning

Robin Alex: 01:18:57

Microsoft Outlook desktop.

Robin Alex: 01:18:59

and they're going full web there.

Robin Alex: 01:19:01

So it's not that we're, oblivious to it.

Robin Alex: 01:19:03

I mean, one, we need to create kind of the separation with the

Robin Alex: 01:19:06

inboxes and stuff like that.

Robin Alex: 01:19:07

But then, we will see how that plays out and how many customers actually use it.

Robin Alex: 01:19:12

because you also have to change habits.

Robin Alex: 01:19:14

Up to this point, they've been following other pro practices, or

Robin Alex: 01:19:18

they just kept their Office 365 inbox.

Robin Alex: 01:19:20

They never plugged it into any other source of truth.

Robin Alex: 01:19:23

So now you gotta coach and educate 'em in something new.

Robin Alex: 01:19:25

So we're gonna be paying close attention as we roll this out to see the best

Robin Alex: 01:19:28

way to, to make it all make sense.

Vit Muller: 01:19:32

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:19:32

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:19:32

I mean, it's, it, until then, obviously it's gonna be very limiting for certain

Vit Muller: 01:19:37

industries to fully utilize high level in that B2B enterprise space.

Vit Muller: 01:19:40

So it's, it could open up a new market for you guys.

Robin Alex: 01:19:43

Yeah.

Robin Alex: 01:19:44

A hundred

Vit Muller: 01:19:44

yeah, you're on top of it.

Vit Muller: 01:19:45

I don't have to, I don't need to, I don't need to drill, grill you on this.

Vit Muller: 01:19:48

So thank you for all the answers, mate.

Vit Muller: 01:19:50

We are at the, we're at the end.

Vit Muller: 01:19:51

final question for you.

Vit Muller: 01:19:52

If you could go back at the very beginning when you and the team were

Vit Muller: 01:19:56

just sort of starting high level, what advice would you give yourself?

Robin Alex: 01:20:00

it's a good question.

Robin Alex: 01:20:01

what advice would I give myself?

Robin Alex: 01:20:03

I think it would just be more, I don't know if necessarily know if

Robin Alex: 01:20:05

it'd be, Advice, but more of a pep talk in a sense of what you're doing.

Robin Alex: 01:20:09

Just keep going and, if I could go back and change anything, I

Robin Alex: 01:20:13

wish that we were documenting the milestones that we hit along the way.

Robin Alex: 01:20:19

we, I definitely enjoyed the ride that we got here, but are there memories of it?

Robin Alex: 01:20:23

Are there any pictures of it or are there snapshots or anything like that?

Robin Alex: 01:20:29

There's not a lot, right?

Robin Alex: 01:20:30

we were just savoring in the moment and just, all right, we're done.

Robin Alex: 01:20:33

Let's go, let's keep going.

Robin Alex: 01:20:34

And we just kept running.

Robin Alex: 01:20:35

it's we're sprinting.

Robin Alex: 01:20:36

It is kinda the internal term that my, my team likes to use.

Robin Alex: 01:20:39

And we haven't stopped sprinting.

Robin Alex: 01:20:41

And so there's no time to, to relish the moment.

Robin Alex: 01:20:43

And I wish I was better about that.

Robin Alex: 01:20:46

And, if someone told me that along the way, that would've been really fun

Robin Alex: 01:20:49

to, to look back and see the journey.

Vit Muller: 01:20:52

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:20:53

yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:20:53

Because you can get caught in a moment, right?

Robin Alex: 01:20:56

And we're definitely living in the moment and

Robin Alex: 01:20:57

enjoying it every single day.

Vit Muller: 01:20:59

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:21:00

Guys, for anyone listening, if, if you wanna try Hal, if you're not Har Haah,

Vit Muller: 01:21:04

or if you wanna upgrade, We've actually partnered up with the team, so to offer

Vit Muller: 01:21:07

you an extended 30 day trial plus a bunch of resources I personally provide.

Vit Muller: 01:21:12

I built some pretty, pretty cool snapshots and not just me posting, but I

Vit Muller: 01:21:16

actually hear some good things about it.

Vit Muller: 01:21:17

getting that validation from others, it's how I built my products too.

Vit Muller: 01:21:20

so I provide those resources, to help you get results faster.

Vit Muller: 01:21:24

I'm a fellow high level.

Vit Muller: 01:21:25

I run my own sales.

Vit Muller: 01:21:26

I'm in the trenches.

Vit Muller: 01:21:27

I don't just sell snapshots.

Vit Muller: 01:21:29

so yeah, if you're interested, head over to, I'll have to plug that link later.

Vit Muller: 01:21:33

I just got a blank.

Vit Muller: 01:21:34

but there's a link and then you guys can, can do that.

Vit Muller: 01:21:36

Robin, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Vit Muller: 01:21:40

Thank you for sharing the, the insights and, and what's happening

Vit Muller: 01:21:44

in the company and where it's going and just, just being awesome.

Vit Muller: 01:21:48

You Varon  Shaun, you guys doing amazing things.

Vit Muller: 01:21:51

Rest of the team, they're all amazing.

Vit Muller: 01:21:54

and everybody has the best interest in heart.

Vit Muller: 01:21:57

I've been with high level for, five years.

Vit Muller: 01:22:00

I've been to two Level Up events.

Vit Muller: 01:22:02

I love the product, and I like where it's going, so thank you.

Robin Alex: 01:22:07

Yeah, thank you.

Robin Alex: 01:22:08

we're gonna be doing more things together, buckle up.

Robin Alex: 01:22:09

Let's go.

Vit Muller: 01:22:11

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:22:11

Guys, thank you so much for listening to today's episode

Vit Muller: 01:22:13

on the high level experience.

Vit Muller: 01:22:15

If you've enjoyed today's episode, then please share it with other fellow

Vit Muller: 01:22:18

agency mates and high levelers that you think would also benefit from listening.

Vit Muller: 01:22:22

For show notes, links and extra tips to help you grow your agency

Vit Muller: 01:22:24

or your SaaS with high level, please go to high level experience.com.

Vit Muller: 01:22:29

Thank you and have a great rest of your day, everybody.