← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
How GoHighLevel Became the #1 CRM for Agencies | CEO & Co-Founder Shaun Clark Explains #234
00:57:48
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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you studied computer science at Oregon State and leveraged those learnings to co found a tech enabled answering service known as Answer Connect. If you realize that small business owners struggled to collect payments, leading you to create the invoice collection automation business Invoice Sherpa, where you realize the only thing small business needed more than payments was new customers. Leading to his founding of the innovative, revolutionary CRM Go High Level. Your name can only be the incredible ingenious Sean Clark. Welcome, sir.
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B
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
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A
Is it all true?
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B
I hope so. Sounds right.
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A
You know, but when you go to large language models, sometimes they create things that don't exist. I've had that before. It's telling you something about somebody that's not true, but I think I heard all of that. No, that's all accurate on a podcast.
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B
Yeah, you got your facts brief, so that's good.
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A
Awesome. Well, here, here's, here's the opener for today. Sean, why is it so important to embrace the customer or user community when you're building a company?
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B
Well, in our case, I mean, you know, it was pretty awesome because we got an opportunity not just to serve a customer base, but also to serve a customer base who knew what they wanted and what they wanted built. And so for us, it gave us an opportunity to really work with a collection of experts. So instead of us trying to figure out what they needed or wanted, they already knew all of that. And so all we had to do was sit back and listen and we got an opportunity to do what we like to do, which is build a lot of software.
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A
I find it interesting in listening to you speak at the Genius Network a couple months ago about the various ways that you engage your community, but it just makes so much sense. And I think company builders oftentimes get caught up in our own genius attacks, thinking we've got the answers and we are going to tell people what they need and we're usually somewhat over the target, but then the refinement that you can get from engaging customers early and I'd love to hear more about your community that you have around the product and the different ways that you leverage the interaction with them.
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B
Yeah, so, I mean, I, maybe I'm lucky because I don't consider myself genius at anything, but our community is, you know, the best marketers on planet earth. And you know, they've long needed what we, what we've worked together to build. And you know, I Cannot tell you how many people I've met who've said, you know, I've always wanted it to work like this, or I always wish people, you know, the person who wrote this feature would have thought about these aspects. But, you know, when you really focus it on a community who knows what they're looking for, you know, you can make magic happen. So, you know, instead of selling to everyone, we really focused in on the marketer. And the marketer knew what, you know, you know, even something simple like a website builder, they know what's important, what really matters, what really creates conversions. And it's really designing around those objectives that creates a totally different platform. And we have a great community. They're very collegiate people by nature, so they're very much sharing with each other, sort of see each other as competition. So, you know, we. We're really lucked into a lot of really natural, you know, sort of formations in the community writ large that we could just sort of, kind of take advantage of. And it's been, you know, huge for us. It's the only reason we've been here. I often say our community is our secret sauce. So, you know, as fun as it is to build the tools we build, without the community, we wouldn't be here.
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A
So did you build website out, meaning starting at the destination and then figuring out how to land people there versus starting at the. At the front end of it and then figuring out how to get people to a website?
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B
Gosh, that's a good question. So, you know, we had really, we had a whole different vision initially. We really wanted to help small business owners get more customers. Like, like you said in the intro. But it's the path by which you get there that was radically different for us. So initially we did what everybody else probably tries to do. We sold. We tried to sell to the small business owners themselves. It from my previous business, I knew about a thousand of them already, so I sort of had a nice little advantage over most people. And initially it seemed pretty bright because we would do the demos and people would love them and sign up for the software, but then, you know, two weeks would go by and then they would call and they would cancel. I mean, they canceled. You know, it was at the time, which is myself, my other co founder, both software engineers, you know, we'd sort of say, well, what the heck? You know, like, did the demo not, you know, does the real software not match the demo? Or what's the deal? And they'd say, oh, no, it's really. It did. It's great. It's everything we thought it would be, except we just don't feel like we have the time to implement this stuff, learn this stuff, et cetera, in addition to what we're already doing, which to two software engineers, about the worst thing you could say, because we couldn't figure out a program any more time. So. But lucky for us, what happened was we got a cold call from a marketing agency who had a co customer in common with us, and he got on and he asked us to show us what we were doing. And it was radically a different experience. So not only did he understand it, he had tons of really great advice on simple things we could do to make it better overnight, immediately bought it for a bunch of his other customers. And then over time, he took us on this sort of journey of, hey, if you really want to help the small business, you need to help the people helping the small business. And that for us was the big aha for us was, hey, there's this whole underserved or unserved community of marketers out there who are sort of slaving away in the dark on behalf of their small business customers and no one is building anything for them. So we literally pivoted and said, look, that's just what we're going to do. We're going to focus on those folks. We're not going to sell small business directly. We're going to work with the people who are making those people successful and really draft behind them, listen to them, serve them, make them our audience. And, you know, that's just what we've done over the last eight years.
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A
Yeah. And that's really where I use the word innovation in the opening, because the way that you went to market, and I've seen it in other business models, I've seen it in telephony, so where, you know, telephone systems would be sent to implementers and they would implement those into their systems. You're really partnered with the, with the specifier or the. Or the recommender. So it's not the first time, obviously, that that model's been used to deploy a product or a service. But for people that are listening today, both of them, would you to talk just a little bit about if they don't know what go high level is?
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B
Sure.
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A
And am I saying the product name exactly right?
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B
Oh, sure, yeah. We don't care. We're. We're agnostic.
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A
All right, so go high level.
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B
Yeah, high level. Go high level. All right. That CRM, we'll take it, whatever you want to call it. Got it.
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A
You know, most people are going to be available, familiar with Salesforce. Salesforce with a, it was a real early SaaS. I was an early adopter to Salesforce. I went to like the third Dreamforce convention.
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B
Oh, that's cool.
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A
Marc Benioff was walking, walking amongst us. There was 3,000 people there. Top shelf liquor, lamb kebabs between every one of my fingers. It was just, it was, it was obnoxious. And he saw, he had the vision and he was going. But what we did with that product was, was so innovative about it is we were able to use the native tools within Salesforce to bend it to our will and create objects and workflows that we, you know, you just couldn't get out of the box anywhere. Totally. And so when people are familiar with that and maybe HubSpot and some of the other CRMs, where does go high level fit in in a way that people can understand it?
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B
Yeah. So I mean, I used to say we were sort of right behind HubSpot, but these days we're actually starting to take a lot of their customers. So I'd say we're, we're very fast on the run to supplant HubSpot because you know, fundamentally we are not an enterprise play. So Salesforce, to your example there, they did a fantastic job. Now I totally give Mark Benioff credit for seeing the future and establishing that. But very quickly, you know, all they went market, they went into enterprise and that is why they are where they are today. HubSpot, for their part, trying to kind of go after Salesforce. But you know, we are very much on the S and the M side of the SMB and we're very proud of it traditionally the big issue here. And from a product suite perspective, we are all those things. So. And in fact I, you know, I'm a software engineer, but I, I'm the first to admit, you know, our products are not anything you haven't seen before. Really what makes us innovative and special is we have a lot of them up in one app, I'll tell you that. I mean, I would say pound for pound we probably have features than anybody else. And, and, and a lot of our success has been helping our customers go from seven apps to one app. We also have incredibly, we have flat pricing, so we don't per seat pricing or per contact pricing or per user pricing or any of this nonsense or our pricing models are all unlimited pricing. So that's been super innovative. But honestly, altogether, I would say the biggest thing we've Done is our go to market through our partners. Because really when you look at the, if you look at HubSpot or Salesforce or us, we all make tools. And the way I think about that. Right. Is like we make hammers and saws and everything you'd find in Home Depot. But you know, at the end of the day if you, you and I, I don't know about you, but myself, if I go buy every tool Home Depot has, that doesn't mean I'm going to be able to build a house. But you know, if you find a great contractor, that is, that's the opposite. Right. They can probably buy a tenth of the tools in Home Depot and build anything right with it.
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A
Right.
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B
And what I think underlies that is the truth that an expert is needed to really make these tools do awesome things. And if we really look at the end customer here, we look, really look at that small business or the medium business, even the enterprise for that matter, they are not buying, buying outcomes. They really want to see something come of it. And if you don't have a plan in place to make that happen or a person or whatever, then you're in trouble. And what we found is with our community, these folks are marketers and they're not just marketers. There's like a big bucket. But you know, some are amazing at, you know, marketing, real estate, some are amazing at marketing, you know, turf, turf replacement for your lawn, like on and on and like, you name it, they know it. And some of these people have been in these industries for 30 years. So really what our mission is is to help enable those people with these tools because the people they serve, they're looking for outcomes and that's what makes us different. We're really focused on helping the end customer get the right outcome through our partners. We're not just interested in selling a bunch of tools.
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A
Yeah. So at Homefront Brands we're a middle market company and even so, or maybe more so, the frustrations of integrations is endless. So we have preferred tools and we're, we're, we're a five brand company. We have individual brand teams, we've got a layer of some centralized services, centralized execs, executive. So things get spun up because each of the brands, although we are franchise brands and we're property service brands, they're all different. There are different tech stacks in each brand because we have a fencing brand, so we need a fencing estimator and then we have a fencing, all these different tools that are specific to that industry. Right. So now we're trying to get some, everything coming to a data lake, but the way it gets there is going to be different from each brand. And we are constantly dealing with integration. So now in your use case, you're dealing with a marketing company, you're dealing with a marketing agency. They have a small business, they have a million dollar company that's going out and spraying fertilizer on lawns. They're not going to have a tech, they're not going to have a CFO or a CTO or, I mean they're not going to have the technical people. Right. But they just want the leads and they want the business and they want to track it and they want to know how did their, how do their advertising dollars spend and did we, did we maximize every lead that we got in an automated, you know, automagically, as I like to say. So in that situation, you know, you can take the decision out of the small business owner and they find a marketing company that they like. The marketing company comes in and says, we can't integrate with your DOS system that your son built in 1987. You know, it's, we, we can try. Was probably not going to get there. We're going to leave, we're going to let the airlines continue to run the DOS based system.
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B
Right.
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A
And, and then, and they say, but like if you just, we have this tool, it's, and I'm not gonna, I don't know how to frame your pricing because I, I, I'll let you do it. But to me, extraordinarily reasonable. Reasonable, easy, easy to under, it's low risk because you know, you get into one of these other CRMs and they're going to charge you by the records and all of a sudden, you know, we have something blow up and it's like, oh, I just got an $11,000 bill last month because our record count went up to 100,000. You know, you're not, you're not. So it's a lower risk. So small business owner is going to be more comfortable and then it's by the way, out of the box, all set up, integrated with their marketing company. It took a day.
- [12:24]
B
Yep. Fair. Yep. And, and yeah, and those marketing companies are able to take all of, you know, all the assets that they want to deploy and they can infuse them into that account on signup. So you're not starting with a blank slate. That's the other problem with any, any of these other products. You know, you're going to log in and nothing's going to be there except some test records if you're lucky, nothing specific to your industry. And so it's great when you work with a marketing company is they can put all those social media posts, those email templates, those website designs, those funnel designs, those follow up sequences all pre canned in there. So the moment you walk in the door, it's all ready to go for you. And I think that's a very again focusing on getting that out, that outcome that business owner doesn't care about, you know, an amazing set of tools, they care about more customers. You know, I always say, you know, it's 2:00am on a Christmas morning, you know, a new lead comes in, are you able to automatically book that person into an appointment? And if not, you've got a hole, you've got a big hole in your bucket. Because most companies, that's where they lose most of their business. You know, we say capture, nurture, close. So everything to capture, everything to nurture, everything to close. Capture's obvious, it's forms, it's all this other stuff, but it's the nurturer where the money gets lost. Because fundamentally if I say, if I raise my hand and I say I'm interested, I always say even if you have a monopoly on your product, you don't have a monopoly on my time. So I'm going to have that window of time where you can close me into that sale. But if not, life's going to come at me and distract me. And if you don't have that entire process of nurturing automated to get me down to the next step, I'm going to just move on. And most of the time you don't have a monopoly. I'm going to move on to your competition because what's driving my outreach is often some need that I need to fill and you better close me otherwise you're going to lose your business. So really for us it's a focus on turning those leads into those customers or into those booked appointments is off to the next step and making sure you do that in an automatic way.
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A
How do you think about integrations? What do you, what do you allow? How easy is it?
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B
Oh yeah, I mean we have, we have hundreds of them that we've built. We have an open API, we have, you know, we're integrated with all the major like zapiers and makes of the world. But you know, we've gone farther these days we have a full agentic builder but we're also on N8N and we're, and we have a ChatGPT, we have an MCP server, so we're available there. So we love, we love integrations and we love playing well with others. You know, we have a lot of people who, you know, we're their plus one. You know, we're not trying to say, oh, you have an existing system, you got to throw us out. No, no, don't do that. Keep your existing system. But whatever it is that you need from us that you don't have today, let's go ahead and just, you know, you can plus one and with, you know, a price, a price of, you know, 97 bucks a month is very, very easy to get to a place of value or a business owner doesn't feel like they're getting robbed. And ultimately over time, you know, our hope is that you'll do more with us because then all of our plans, you get all of our features. So that's another fun thing. We don't charge by feature. So. But you know, if not, that's cool too. You know, we are, you know, the more the merrier. The ways, is kind of the way we think about it.
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A
In building a team to support this. As I think about it, you need less of a sales team.
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You need less sophisticated, you need less sophisticated sales account management and things like that because you, you have a very simple business model. Agencies understand it. They sign up, they build, they build what they need and then they custom suited for whoever it is they're serving and then they deploy it into the customer. And I like business deals that are simple math. And you have simple math.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I like to pride myself in saying we don't actually have a sales team.
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A
Right?
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B
Yeah, we don't. And, and you know, again, really looking at how life really works, most of the time, you know, we will, we will. We can look ourselves in the mirror and say, you know, we're, we're, we're not going to be good at everything. But for some reason when we, when tech companies come on the scene, they sort of take the opposite approach. Like, no, no, no, we're gonna, we're gonna be selfish and own it all. We're gonna be the best salespeople and the best account managers and the best software engineers. But I think the reality is, is that, you know, if you really, truly look out in the world, even if you had unlimited money, I always say you could not buy the creativity that, that people will come up with on their own. And so I think that we've taken the approach that, you know, we want to find a way to work with that person because, you know, just as they are, because. And we do not under any circumstance want them to be under control of us because they are so creative in their own right and they're doing such amazing things. We just want to work with them and find a way to be part of their world and let them continue to be. To be prosperous and creative. And if we can find a way to, you know, if we do a great job, and this is actually how it works out in the real world, is we do a great job building a great tool. We don't have a problem with them trying to get them to use it. They're going to want to use a great product, right? And then we just create a world where, you know, like, if they like our product and they promote it, it becomes part of their revenue stream and everybody's winning and they're not out there promoting something they don't believe in because they use it. You know, it's makes our. The people we work with, it'd be a lot easier probably to just buy commercials on everybody's podcasts and TV stations and everything else. But the reality is, is we never like working with people who don't use our product because, you know, at some point I'm a terrible salesperson, but at some point I disappear. And, you know, if people have questions and the person that they're listening to can't answer them honestly, it's just not worth it. So for us, it's really important that the people we work with across the board use our product because they know our product, they believe in our product, and they can speak to it. Because it's. It's not just the tool, it's all the strategy that goes with it. It's all the other stuff that you got to do to make it successful. And truly, we aren't ever going to be those people. It's really. We work in concert and partnership with our customers to really deliver that message and honestly to deliver those results.
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A
So thinking about how you harness the thinking power of your community, would you say it was more organic? Meaning there's this swirl of community and the new ideas, the innovations, the new use cases are kind of swirling. They're getting shared, maybe getting shared online in your community. Or is it more a specific methodology where you are out there seeking and harvesting these things in a more intentional manner?
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B
Very intentional. I mean, it's certainly. I mean, to be fair, it all started very, very much, you know, random, right? But when you start seeing randomly awesome ideas, you really don't want to lose them. And so what we have is we have a, an ideas board for all of our customers where they vote up all the ideas they want to see based on product category. And our product managers jobs are to go in there and literally sort by votes and build from top to bottom. And that's exactly how we do it. We have live town halls. Every product team will put on a live zoom call and any of the customers who want to show up will get a report on. Here's what we're working on this quarter. Here's what we're thinking about for next quarter. What are we missing? What do you think? Tell us what we're missing. And they are very much trying to harvest those ideas from the best of our best customers. So we're incredibly intentional about it. We have our product managers in our Facebook group, which is a customer only Facebook group. And you know, anytime they see somebody say, you know, I have an issue with this or an idea about that, they'll say, great, here's my booking link. Grab a one on one call with me. Let's get on and talk about it. Because, you know, again, we know our customers are going to show us the way they have since we started, and that will always be the case. So our mission is absolutely to go and harvest out the best ideas and make sure that those make it back out into the product for everybody.
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A
I've heard you share a story about walking either into an Apple Store, Verizon store, and.
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B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
The customer service model was something that you found a way to emulate online with your company. Can you share a little bit about that?
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B
Well, yeah, just like every great idea I've ever had, I probably took it from somebody else. You know, I, one of my, you know, you got to know your strengths and weaknesses. One of my weaknesses. I'm not a very creative person, but man, my strength is I can, I can sure see other people's good ideas a mile away. So, you know, it's, it was really about, yeah, how do you emulate this idea that, you know, so the Verizon story, story is, you know, walk in, there's somebody there that immediately greets you and checks you in. And while they don't immediately help you, they give you attention. And I think from a human perspective, you know, we all crave attention and we all, we just want to know that, like we're being sort of taken care of at some level. And so I felt like that was such a cool model. And yeah, I got, I had to go wait 30 minutes for somebody to actually come out and help me. But in the meantime I could do other things. And I knew that, you know, if I want to go around the corner, get a cup of coffee and then a little buz buzzer for me. So there's just a lot of positive to it versus some of the other experiences. We just like wait and you like walk around anonymously and hope someone notices you or sees that you're the next person. So I was like, well, how can we do this? You know, to make it as personal as possible. So we did this with zoom rooms. You jump into every. All of our support is now, is all done live on zoom. And you jump into a room and you say, hey, I got a problem. And they check you in and they, and somebody comes out into the lobby, as it were, to grab you and take you into a one on one zoom room and solve your problem. And you know, that's how we, we do it from, from the, the time you sign up all the way through to the end of time. So that, that never goes away.
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A
Customers though, get put in a room to wait with other customers. Yes. And what, what happens in there? Because they, they can all talk to each other.
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B
Magic. Magic happens.
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A
That's where the magic happens, right?
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B
Oh yeah, 100%. So, you know, again, our customers, many of our customers know a lot better than our, our support team, a lot better than me. And so, you know, just like any other was, you know, a couple of things. So one, you know, the fun part stories are always like, I've seen business partnerships come out of those, those interactions and things because people get to know each other, right? And it's really cool. And, and then sometimes people will find out that they like live down the street from somebody else in the room. So these are kind of fun things. Right? But also they'll help other customers because, you know, maybe you have that problem a month ago and you can save that person a, you know, a 30 minute wait or whatever it might be in order to get, to get in and out of there quickly. So you get a lot of really awesome. Again, we have very collegiate folks and so they're very nice to each other. So they share, they care and I think everybody's better off for it. But yeah, if it just so happens that nobody, nobody in the room can randomly help you, we'll always have a team there to help you. 24 7, 365.
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A
Do you have an idea of what percentage of issues get solved before they ever get to one of your support people in that room?
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B
Actually, that's a great question. I have no idea. But I do know my bet is a tremendous number because I can certainly see it in the Facebook group. And the Facebook group is very similar. A lot of people will say, hey, I'm just having this issue. Has anybody ever seen this? Or you know, and the best ones are, the ones that I know are almost better off in the Facebook group where it's like, it's not like a technical issue. It's like, hey, I'm trying to serve this type of business or I'm trying to achieve this certain type of outcome for this person. Has someone else done it? And it's really beautiful to watch people come in and give this great advice that's based on expertise, experience. And it's more than just tech. It's strategy. It's many other things. It's not just, you know, click this button or hit this dropdown. It's a, it's a, it's a much more rich and full experience.
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A
And to be clear, the people that are coming in for support, are they more on your agency, partner, representative side or are they end users?
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B
No, I mean we, we support our customers and our customers are the agencies or we have a, we have a group of saaspreneurs who, you know, aren't traditional agencies that, where we've sort of taught them to go out because another big part is the ability to white label and resell high level. So we have a lot of people who go and do that. And so again we support them and they support the end custom because again our, our belief, and my belief is unwavering on this. Even if we could tell every business owner how to click every button to do whatever it is that they wanted to do, they don't actually know how to achieve their outcomes. And honestly, the more time they waste doing it, the worse they get at the thing they're already really good at. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
I always give the example of the dentist, you know, like if you sit down the dental chair and you're ready to get your filling done, if the dentist says, you know, I haven't really been doing a lot of dentistry recently. I've been really working hard on my marketing and of learning about this funnel thing and Google Ads. All right, nevermind, let's, let's get drilling. Like I just don't think that's an enthusiastic feeling you're going to have. You really want that dentist to focus on their craft, but you also, you know, you want them to do well, as a business, so it's, you know, they need to be working with a competent marketer and not trying to be a marketer on the side. It's not a side gig kind of, kind of thing.
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A
Intentionally or unintentionally, you've built a solutions focused environment versus a complaint centric environment and people are working together and are.
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You know, as opposed to having an end user customer calling and screaming at you saying it doesn't work, you've got people that are saying, how do I make this work? How do I make this work better? Yeah, or what, what am I, what am I, what, how am I not holding my mouth? Right. So how has that business model impacted your ability to attract and retain talent?
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B
Well, I mean, yeah, I certainly think it's helped. I think we brought out, we bring a lot of people in from our community over time and I think that also is really cool because it not only shows that they are excited about being part of the team, but they also come in with a lot of sort of tribal knowledge that you can never, you know, you couldn't put in a training course. You couldn't, you know, you can't put on a resume or a job posting and get anybody who's qualified. There's just something so special about that, that. And so for, for us, that, to me that's the coolest part of it is that we're able to, to bring people through who, you know, really want that opportunity because you find people who are on different spectrums. Like for me, I'm very technical. You'll find like lots of technical people who, they don't, they don't want to be good at sales. That's not their deal. But man, they love setting systems up or making them work or, and all of that. And so we love it when we get people like that from our community to join our team. It's pretty neat to watch.
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A
You had 12 years at answer Connect. Yeah, you, you left there. Yeah, that was, that was fun. And, and then Invoice Sherpa though.
- [25:58]
B
Small team, just me.
- [26:01]
A
That's what I thought.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah. Just me. Yep.
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A
Built a, built a company and had a thousand users. Yep.
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B
Yeah, that was, yeah, really good. Good experience. Good, good, good, Good lessons too. Like don't, don't run a company by yourself. Really bad idea.
- [26:15]
A
What happened to Invoice Sherpa today?
- [26:17]
B
I have no idea. So I sold, originally I sold 90% of it and then eventually I sold the rest of it. I got to a point with that, with that business where I Personally. And again, back to the whole, I'm not very creative. I didn't have a vision on how to take it bigger than I had taken it. It was awesome because it served a lot of small businesses and helped them do amazing things and I helped people not go bankrupt and I helped people make a lot more money than they were making before. And that was exciting. But I couldn't figure out, you know, I was an add on to QuickBooks and Xero is where I got most of my customers. And you know, I had programmed myself sort of up against a wall because again only employee. So I'm doing customer service and I'm doing coding and you know, it just got to a point where it, I think I, it was clear I was in over my head. And so lucky for me, somebody who had a bigger vision came along and wanted to buy it and to give me an opportunity to kind of say okay, well what did I learn from that? How do I take that on? And, and you know, one of the first things I did of course is get an amazing co founder and of course I now have, I now have three or two, excuse me, two others. There's three of us and that original marketing agency who had cold call us that is now the third co founder and has been now for many years. And so it's, I just fact I just got back from a trip with those two yesterday and so it's always awesome to, to see them and hang out with them.
- [27:32]
A
So you were 20 getting into the Answer Connect business? Thereabouts.
- [27:35]
B
I was, yeah, I think I was 18 or 19. Yeah, I was, I was in college at the time.
- [27:39]
A
Okay, so you, you got into a partnership situation there were there for 12 years. Then you get into invoice, you, you took your learnings there and you went to invoice Sherpa and said I'm gonna, I'm gonna run this business all by myselfie. And you grew it and had success with it. How did you take those partner and single operator learnings into how you structured a go high level? Because you know, observationally, I mean I built a company by myself for 25 years all by myself. I had partners and I bought over the first 10 years of the business, I bought the third partner out and the final partner out in 2004 after 10 years. And that unlocked for me the ability to change models and to commit to a bigger business. They just didn't have the risk tolerance, they didn't have the vision. And I converted then to a franchise model and over a 10 year, period, opened up 240 locations in 37 states, sold that in 2019. And that was hard because while I had an executive team and I. And I did have them with some participation equivalents, there was. I mean, I was 100% of the cap table and 100 of the risk and 100 of the debt and.
- [28:50]
B
Sure.
- [28:50]
A
And say what you want to, you're really alone when you're the one that's writing the checks.
- [28:54]
B
Yeah, 100%.
- [28:55]
A
I mean. And then with my homefront brands, I took a different approach. I went out to find the very best people that I could partner with in terms of executive team, brand presidents. And then we've grown, I think, much faster, and maybe it's done more than I could have ever possibly done on my own, but of course, I've given up some equity to do that. So what were. What was your thinking going? And did you. Did you, when you started the product? Well, first, I mean, did you start it with the vision of it getting where it is today, or did you start with kind of a more a smaller use case? Oh, yeah.
- [29:30]
B
And then.
- [29:31]
A
And then how did you choose a partner and, you know, how did you think about that process?
- [29:37]
B
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I would be. I mean, I. If anybody in my shoes stood here and told you that they knew that they were going to be where they are, they're just lying to themselves or lying both. So, no, I mean, it is radically larger than I ever imagined to be, and it's crazy to think that it's just getting started. But I knew out of the gate that I wanted a partner because it was absolutely lonely doing it by myself and very, very hard because, you know, I don't care how big you get and I don't care what, what, what accolades you achieve. You're going to have some really crappy days, whether you like it or not. And, you know, I pride myself in saying that I have a lot of things I'm not very good at, and I have no intention at all of getting better at any of them. I hope to continue to be terrible at them all for the rest of my life because I think that it leaves a lot of room for the things I do well. And to the extent that you don't do something well, you would be wise to find somebody who is awesome at what it is that you do poorly. And that is exactly what I did with this business. I would say what I learned from my first partner business is who you choose as a partner is extraordinarily important. And I would also say impossible to do with any sort of foresight in terms of perfection. We are all human. We are all going to do our best. There are unexpected things that happen. So when I first went into partnership on this business, I learned from my first partnership, which is, you know, the divorce is messy, and unless you plan for it ahead of time, there are going to be a lot of hard feelings and they're going to be a lot of, you know, broken, sad, sadly broken friendships. And the best thing you can do if you really want to partner with somebody is tell them how they're going to get out when they, when they hate you and they want to get, and they want to be done. And so that was something I, I really learned from my first partnership. So in this business, that's exactly what I did. I said, hey, I'm super excited about this opportunity, but here's the deal. Here's what you get when you get it and when you're tired of this and you want to go, this is exactly how you get out. This is exactly what you get when you get out and is exactly how it's going to go. And it was one page, and I'm not a lawyer and I, you know, and all that, but I wanted to really make it clear because when I was in that position myself, I didn't have that. And it made it incredibly difficult. And when really push came to shove, you know, people get angry with each other and there's a lot of arguments and there's a lot of, there's a lot of vengeful tactics. And so I didn't want any of that. And so fortunately for me, you know, things went great. And that document is, you know, long, you know, water under the bridge, but I thought it was respectful to do. And I think it also helped, you know, helped that person know what the deal was and they felt good about it. And so we didn't really have to think about it. And we were able to put our heads down and work very hard while still doing it. But, you know, it's, it worked out and, and it's been awesome.
- [32:25]
A
Good disagreement, good agreements up front, head off, bad disagreements down the road.
- [32:29]
B
Yeah, a hundred percent.
- [32:30]
A
Because everybody goes into it with their expectations and they're vastly and wildly different. And even one page is better than a hundred pages and it's a hundred times better than zero pages.
- [32:41]
B
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you 100%. But, you know, I'll tell you that that came from a lot of hard knocks. So, I mean, it's Kind of hard to, you know, it's hard to explain to people. And it's the, you know, the sad truth is I have seen, you know, at least 100 people since we started this business sort of do the same thing. They come to me, you know, sort of excited, oh, we're going to merge our agencies together. We're the best of friends. And then a year later, they're just mortal enemies and they're trying to rip it all apart again. And, you know, I don't blame them for doing what they did. And I've seen some great partnerships just like I have with my partners, but. But it's just understanding that, look, you know, great things can happen, but so can terrible things. So just write it up to begin with so everybody's happy or at least knows how they're going to get out, knows what their deal is and doesn't feel cheated at some point, you know, in the end, which is. Tends to be where it goes if you don't do it right.
- [33:28]
A
Is your main metric users?
- [33:32]
B
No, not really. I mean, yes, it. There's definitely. That's definitely like a tangential. But we look a lot at revenue per customer generated because we don't want to sell tools, we want to sell outcomes, even for our customers. We want our customers to build a business around our product because if they have a good business, their customers are going to have a great business. So for us, it's really making sure that they're making money off the features that we're putting out. That to me is. And this is why we don't have per user pricing or per feature pricing or anything else, because we're not really there to like, trick people into, you know, getting, getting on board with something. We really very much believe that we, you know, like, we just put out two new big features today, and they are absolutely representative of what our customers asked us to do. But what will tell me they're being successful is that I see our customers go out and make sales based on those. Those features. And so for me, it's really about revenue generated per customer.
- [34:27]
A
How do you size the business? I'd love to give the audience just a sense of what I heard at the Genius Network in terms of the growth that you've had and just, you know, whether it's users or anything like over the last years and then where.
- [34:40]
B
You guys are about 3 million in businesses today. I mean, we're actually larger. We're larger than HubSpot by customer count. I mean, we're second only to salesforce wow. These days.
- [34:51]
A
Yeah, that's absolutely incredible.
- [34:53]
B
International, Very much so. Countries or something. And you know, that was without trying. So. And again, it owes everything. I owe this all to my customers. I take no credit for this. But what we are doing is learning from that. And very quickly on the warpath, we put in a lot of translations and then you learn very quickly that translations are only a drop in the bucket. You also got to do taxes, you've got to do payment methods, you've got to do all kinds of things. But we, we have a huge force of people now dedicated solely just to making sure that we're able to sort of rise to the international occasion and give the same exact level of opportunity outside the US as we have inside.
- [35:31]
A
The US when you go to a new country, do you retain local people there in advisory or do you hire local people there? How do you do it?
- [35:40]
B
Good question. So we're on that journey today. So one thing that's we've already noticed is with our model, you name a country, I've already got lots of people there who know who we are, who have figured out a way to jury rig what we have into something that's working for them. So we absolutely go to those people and say, okay, what can we do to make your lives easier? And that's more on the product side and the technical side. Right. Then what we did is we, we actually do, we do a lot of events around the US and this last year we went and we went international. So we went to Dubai, we went to the uk, we went to. There's somebody else in there I'm missing. And what we did learn is feet on the street are particularly for events and things is really important. So what we'll see in 2026 is probably small offices in lots of different countries. And mostly because, you know, just if you've ever traveled the world, you realize it is impossible to explain to people the, you know, the fundamental nuances of your country. And that is just from a visitor's perspective, when you have somebody who lives there and born there or has lived there for a long time, they understand just what the rules are. And it's very hard to kind of do that at a distance. So for us, I think it's going to be important that we have at least some amount of local representation regionally, if not locally, in all major markets.
- [36:57]
A
It's amazing how tone deaf foreign businesses can be. I was in a partnership with a company that was providing a consumer product to the United States. They wanted to do it in a franchise model. They had forecasted some million units that were going to be sold into the United States in the year. And the product absolutely did not work for the US Market. It just was the biggest. It was the biggest whiff in terms of just. And I really don't want to. I honestly do not want to talk in any specifics about it, but I mean, I think they sold 10,000 units maybe or less than 10,000 units when they wanted to sell a million. But it was. The product didn't work. I mean, they had to go back to the drawing board and they had to modify the product to operate in the, in the US and this was a company that was some $5 billion in the global leader inside of it.
- [37:48]
B
I'll never forget the story of Procter and Gamble going into India and they thought they could sell their big jugs of soap, only to find that nobody buys it that way. Many people buy, you know, a week's worth at a time because they're getting paid on a daily basis. So they don't have a lot of money to outlay. And they, and, and then all the stores are much smaller, so they don't have the shelf space for these massive soap jugs.
- [38:11]
A
Right.
- [38:11]
B
So they got obliterated when they went into that market. It took them five years to, you know, to come back in and just sell much smaller quantities. And then they did great. But, you know, again, every country is different, but if you don't live in those countries or you haven't spent any time there, you're just not going to understand that perspective. And so I just think it's, it's super important to recognize, recognize the local differences. And that's what makes the world fun. Right? Different cultures and different ways of living and different ways of operating. And so. But as a business, it's super important that you sort of treat those with respect when you go into those markets.
- [38:41]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Because if they, I mean, it's. You don't even get me at all. That's what they'll tell you. You just don't, hey, this product's, this product's great, but we have to pay taxes this way and it doesn't do it, so we can't use it.
- [38:54]
B
Yes, exactly. It's all those things. And so you. I, I sort of think, you know, I sort of think about it. I try to change the mindset of my team. Like, we're going to go international, but the reality is like, no, we're going to go local just in those markets. No no one from, you know, if you live in Germany, you don't think, oh well, that, you know, this product's going, coming, coming global. To me, no, they're like, no, like this is just local to me. So you've got to meet them where they stand and it needs to show up just like every other brand that started in that market. And I think the only way to do it right is, is you know, we're not gonna have massive teams in these markets and I don't think it's necessary, but we're certainly gonna have at least two or three people who can, you know, just sort of tell us what's up. And you know, when somebody local has a question or has a, has a need, that's urgent, like I wanna be able to meet them where they stand. You know, I wanna meet them in their time zone on their, in their language, with their customs and do a good job for them.
- [39:46]
A
Yeah. Sean, what has the impact been of AI specifically on your product release cycle?
- [39:55]
B
Well, I mean, I'm proud to say I think we're on track to do like a trillion tokens throughout open API. AI is infused in everything we do. But what's, I'm quite proud to say is that we don't sell AI like some sort of amorphous pie in the sky solution. What we've done is again, working with our customers. We've gone back and said, okay, how can we create business impact? And a really simple example is inbound voice AI. We have a kick butt product where if you're a plumber, a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, you know, you get a call and you're out on a job site doing your thing and you miss that call. You know, we'll ring your phone three times and if you don't pick up, we'll roll it over and AI will pick it up and AI will book the call. And that product is crushing it right now. And it is a good example where you can get really nerdy on how AI powers it. The models and this and this and this. But guess what? The actual end customer does not care. What they are enthusiastic about is the calls they were missing are now being turned into customers and they are making a lot more money as a business. So does AI power that? Absolutely. But again, we are not going out and selling AI it's just part of the stack. And you know, we have a full agentic builder very similar to what OpenAI recently released and several other people. And now our agencies are going in and building agents and some of Those agents are serving businesses, which is awesome to see. And then some of them are, we have, you know, agents, agencies would come to the past and say, good news, I'm doing really well. Bad news is I'm out of time and I need help. What do I do? How do I hire a big staff of people? Now they're going in and using the agents to help themselves and they're scaling their own businesses. And so, so we have, there's not a part of our app that does not have AI. But the most important part that I'm proud of is that we are spending a lot of time creating saleable products that our customers can use to create real business impact for their customers. Because I honestly believe that no small business owner cares about AI on its face. Sure they've heard about it and sure they're excited about and this and this and this. But on a day to day basis it's meat and potatoes, right? It's how can you save me money, make me money, save me time? Like, what are you doing for me on that? And if you can do that and AI powers it, well then great. But if you can do that and AI doesn't power it, I don't care either. Like, I want an outcome and it's the biggest thing we tell our customers all the time. Like, we talk tools because you use tools, we make tools, but you sell outcomes. So don't talk about tools to customers because they don't care.
- [42:26]
A
Yeah, I just want the whole. I don't care about the drill bit.
- [42:29]
B
100%, I just want the whole.
- [42:30]
A
Yep, yep. Observationally, there was a lot of single single use type technology tools maybe 12 months ago, AI voice, customer journey, nurturing, booking, all of this stuff. And then what I've observed in the last six months is every single one of these companies, once they learn how to build an AI, are going lateral and becoming all in one solutions. Where's that going to go? Because it. So at the end of the. I have a curve, I'll ask you a question at the end.
- [42:57]
B
Sure, sure.
- [42:58]
A
And it'll be a curveball. And the curveball is if, gun to your head, you had to start a new business that you're in but you're not in it right now, what would it be? I'll ask you at the end. Almost every answer is it would be an AI this or it would be an AI that.
- [43:11]
B
Yeah. So I mean, I guess I, having been a software engineer my whole life, I have a little bit of a different perspective on this. I have Seen, sort of. I, I've changed code languages several times and the big reason I always changed and so did everybody else I knew was it took the thing I did before that took time and made it it automatic and it was like, whoa, this is so cool. I can go do the thing I wanted to do faster now. And I don't see AI as radically that, that much different.
- [43:35]
A
Okay.
- [43:36]
B
I think that it allows you to crunch through a lot of the same problems that you were just doing manually before a lot faster, which should enable you to move on to something higher up the stack that is probably more meaningful. So for me, I think it is a means by which one can solve problems in the same way at that coding has always been. And I think that is exactly what this does. So, you know, if you think about it, I think it's just an extension of the tech stack and just makes your ability to deploy solutions faster. But I don't think it fundamentally changes. It may enable some of the solutions to be better, that's for sure. But, you know, sort of standing alone in its own right and try to sort of sell it with the AI flag. I mean, that is just sort of a flavor of the month kind of thing. That's an investor thing. You know, that's a, you know, that, that's just sort of like what's out in the world at the moment. But, you know, over time, I think it will absolutely be a core technology, but it won't be a thing unto itself. It'll just be like a really cool tool that you use to build a lot of stuff.
- [44:37]
A
Yeah, Like, I mean, the way I've looked at this is it's like dropping the baking soda in the vinegar and you get this big fuzz up. Right. We're in the middle of the big, the big fuzz. And then everything's going to calm down a little bit and that's just going to be the way it's going to be from then on. I don't think, you know, until the robots come get us. But that's coming. I mean, yeah, yeah. So, but I think, you know, so I look at. And then the question is, is, is, is there going to be.
- [45:06]
Like, there always seems to be a smaller number of winners in the tech space because there's, there's, there's a million startups right now to do a thing and every kid, I mean, we, I, you know, I have a promotion team around my, this podcast, around some of the things I do ip, I've got a small team and we had an AI expert on that was great. His name was Jeff Woods. It was on the podcast. I sent it out to all of our employees and I said, tell me how you're going to use what we learned on this podcast in your job. Mandatory assignment. They all sent it back to me using the tool and methodology. So they had great responses coming back to me and they were like, this is going to change my job. So like in one week we've, we've, we've, we've raised our capabilities and then one of the people went out and built a tool that actually incorporated it. And then now the comp, we are using that within the company here.
- [45:53]
B
So that, that's exactly what I think this enables people to do do. It just, it creates accessibility. I mean, you know, I just, I, you know, I watched it. I, I just ran into a guy the other day who is creating a weather model for his business, using it. And it's not the, it's not the AI doesn't know how to what, what it is he needs. He has the expertise and the experience. He feeds the data and he's training it to give it him back the analysis that he needs, but his analysis that he knows what it's supposed to look like, so it's him that makes that magic happen. But then that model, once it's created, will be given out to thousands of people and they'll be able to make really good safety decisions based on that. But, you know, AI didn't do that. He did it. He just did it with a really cool tool. Right. And you know, and I think this is just about, you know, an evolution of the tool set. I think it has very little to do with it by itself. Does not do much, in fact. Fact, you know, it's funny, in the investor community, I was just at an investor meeting yesterday and there's this big fear like, you know, AI is going to supplant some of the sort of traditional SaaS companies. But I think it's just foolishness because the number of people are going to whip up their own tools, you know, they're going to be extensions and deviations. But you also need all the data. The data is what makes it magical. Like if you don't have, you know, and if you look at the AI startups, I agree with you. I think they, I think that there are millions of them. I think most of them will get decimated, but not because, you know, not because these are bad ideas or whatever. But I do agree that like you said with the, with the vinegar, you know, it just, it's a utility, it's going to become a utility scale concept. Sort of like saying, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to build a cloud computing company today. Everyone would say you're crazy because, you know, that's like trying to compete. You're going to say you're going to compete with Google and Microsoft and Amazon. Right. I think AI becomes very much like that. It's a utility level thing that you will get as part of the Google cloud stack or the Microsoft Azure stack or the Amazon AWS stack. And yes, there'll be new, competing, better models, but at the end of the day, they will all be utility scale if they're going to fundamentally compete. And so, yeah, I think if you're using AI to create outcomes, you are going to do awesome. But if you're trying to sort of like somehow compete with an LLM or something, you know, good luck, that's not going to work. Yeah.
- [48:07]
A
And so I, I built, I've started building my own tools in chat and my own GPTs. And, you know, and then you build one and you're like, oh, okay. And then the next one you build quicker, next one you build quicker. Then I get on the phone with some consultant, right? And they're like, well, we can do this for you and we can do this for you and we. And, and now I'm thinking, yes, you can, but I can probably take a good whack at that myself in about 15 minutes.
- [48:29]
B
Yeah.
- [48:29]
A
So.
- [48:30]
B
And I think, but if you think about that sort of in holistically, I think in this moment there's a lot of, ooh, I can build that. But we're all going to run back into this thing that I think most people don't like to talk about, which is time. So at some point, what I think it is very likely that if those consultants are smart, they're just going to go do what you're doing and then they're going to sell it back to you for pennies on the dollar and they're going to find, and it's going to reduce the pricing behind this, these outcomes to a place where you're going to say, you know, I could absolutely build that myself, but you know what? I don't want to, and the price you're asking me to pay is cheap enough. And then the other fun thing is they're going to be on that job always. So as that part of the world changes and shifts, they're going to update the model that model is going to get better and you're going to be the beneficiary of the outcome, but at a price that, you know, we're just in this funny middle section. I think today where you're absolutely right, you can go out and build a better outcome for yourself today for a lot less money because they haven't gotten onto the fact that that's what they should be doing. But I think that's where the world goes. You're just going to get right back to the fact that the thing you paid a lot of money for yesterday is now a tenth of the price because there's AI behind powering that outcome. But you're winning, they're winning. Everyone's winning at the end of the day in my book, because now we're just getting that same stuff for a lot less money and probably a lot faster.
- [49:51]
A
Yeah. And it's helped us to sort out who the vendors are that are likely to win. If they've been in the business for a long time, they've got a huge database set behind it, they've got a huge user base and that what they've done is just, they've taken a really good product and a really good idea and then they've been very smart about applying the AI to it and, and making the product even more valuable. Well, you know, we, I have 260 franchise owner groups and we buy technology for the whole banana. Right. So we've got to make sure that, number one, the price is going to fit inside the tech stack or if it's something we want to invest in because we think it's going to drive revenue. So we've got the economic consideration of it. But you look at these things and it's like this one appears to be the same as the other one. This one, the A was built in somebody's bedroom last week and, and they're trying to charge you, you know, $75,000 a month for it. And you know, these other people are, are, you know, it's just, you know, it's within the product that they already have and they've got the, but it's on the surface, you know, they, they kind of do the same thing. So I, I think to the point is, is just again, don't panic. Don't, don't over. I mean, I've been in business for 35 years now, you know, and it's like these, these things come and then you kind of like Google, you got to sit back.
- [51:08]
B
Yeah.
- [51:09]
A
And you gotta, you know, Google is notorious for sitting back, maybe letting somebody else be the first mover inside of a space, and then coming out with a tool like Sora, that just is the best thing going. And they weren't first, but they don't have to be because they own the data and ultimately they can shove it in front of your face better than anybody.
- [51:28]
B
Oh yeah. 100. 100. Yeah. I think that what they're doing it. I mean, I was a little concerned there where, you know, they, they seem behind the eight ball, but you're absolutely right. I mean, they've caught way back up and then they, and then they bring everything else they've already got with it, they put it together and you know, then it's all of a sudden you're like, well, you know, those OpenAI folks are really amazing. They're awesome. But you know, there's. If we're starting to see the same outcomes over here with Google and you get all these other things and they're set up for good pricing and they've got, you know, discounts in place and all this other stuff all of a sudden, you know, and this is the war and this is the fun of new technology though, right? I mean, everything that comes out is radically expensive when it's super new. I mean, we're old enough to remember cell phones when they came out and all those other things. And so, you know, fundamentally that's just how the world turns. But then eventually it just becomes part of the tool set and everybody's got it and it's, you know, it's what kind of helps the world move forward. In my opinion, AI is just the next version of that. It becomes a new engine by which, you know, we drive the next level of innovation. But I, I don't really see it as some kind of like, you know, everyone loses their job tomorrow kind of thing. It will certainly reduce the cost of, you know, getting a lot of business done. So maybe there will be some middle, middle layers of friction that get reduced. But I think, think net Net, we're all better off for that.
- [52:39]
A
Contrary to popular expectation, I think we created138,000 new jobs last month in this country. That's what I saw.
- [52:46]
B
Did that come out this morning?
- [52:47]
A
Yeah, it's something. 118,000, 138,000. Yeah.
- [52:50]
B
In fact, the irony is, you know, everybody who says they're laying off because of AI, I think they're just using AI as a scapegoat.
- [52:55]
A
Right.
- [52:56]
B
You know, I don't really think AI is, you know, doing nearly that that much of a lift. Not that it won't eventually get there, but I don't think it's quite there today.
- [53:03]
A
Right. Outside of work. If you do anything outside of work, what's your favorite couple of little AI tools that you like to use?
- [53:11]
B
Well, you know, I've, I, I mean, I will say I, I, you know, I just continue to follow. And you try to utilize the models as much as I can, just so that I stay sort of abreast of what they're capable of outside of work. I try to push that. I try to use chat, GPT or, or Gemini in everything that I do. Even if I kind of know it, it almost, almost. It's always more fun when I know what the answer is because then I can really see if the model is how well it's, it's going. And so I think for me, that's, that's the important thing. Just so that I, I mean, I don't want to get, I don't want to get behind the times. And as I get older, I know that's, that's my bigger risk.
- [53:48]
A
Yeah.
- [53:50]
Sean, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or look at the product, where would you direct them?
- [53:56]
B
I would definitely direct them to YouTube because everything else is behind signing up. And if you don't want to sign up yet, I totally get it. So go to the YouTube channel. You'll see all the product. And you also get an opportunity, honestly, to learn from a lot of amazing marketers who partner with us to come on our, our YouTube channel and not only talk about the product, but actually show off what they're doing with it, which I think way cooler, personally.
- [54:18]
A
Does that just go high level on YouTube?
- [54:19]
B
And I love. We can't miss it.
- [54:22]
A
Okay, awesome. Well, look, it's. We're at the top of the hour. Yeah, I, I think what I'd like to do is just tug gently on the reins and turn this, turn this towards the barn here. But I do have a couple of questions for you. Sure. I've got a, I've got a curveball that I'm going to throw at you, and then I'm going to fastball straight down the middle. You ready?
- [54:42]
B
Really terrible at this. So that baseball, When I played baseball, I think when I played Little League as a kid, I hit the ball one time and it was so shocking to me, I couldn't run. So, yeah, go for it.
- [54:53]
A
Well, and thus the coding, but.
- [54:57]
There you go. Good times. All right, curveball. Gun to your head. Something you care deeply about. At tremendous risk. You have to start a business in the next 30 days, but it can't be anything that you're doing or related to what you're doing right now. Do you see any opportunities in the market where it would be a great place to start a business right now?
- [55:17]
B
Well, I would say, I mean, I guess this isn't related. I would, I would try to go and do what I've always done, which is help businesses achieve outcomes. So I walk out my front door. First of all, I'd stay local because I think it's the easiest way to connect with businesses. And I think businesses are dying for personal connection. And I would try to help them succeed by using some of the tools that I, that we build. And I would focus on boring, basic stuff, getting them more five star reviews, because I think that's going to drive a lot more business for them than, you know, than almost anything else. You know, making sure that when somebody calls them that there's always something to pick up. Otherwise they're going to miss a lot of that business. So, you know, for me, that's what I would do. I would go out and say, hey, you want more customers? I could show you how to do it.
- [55:57]
A
Awesome. All right, last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [56:07]
B
Start today.
- [56:09]
Don'T wait. I would say that's the lesson I've learned. You know, I see a lot of people and I can count myself here. You always think, well, if I only have this or I only had that, or, you know, that that thing I'm going to do is not going to be quite as good if I, you know, maybe if I found someone to help me. You know, the sooner you get out there and start taking hits, you know, yeah, you're always going to be the worst at the beginning, but the only way you get better is to, is to get going. And the sooner you remove the excuses of, you know, I need this or I need that, the better off you're going to do because you're going to get there sooner.
- [56:39]
A
Can't fail the launch. If you launch immediately.
- [56:42]
B
There you go. That sounds, that sounds much pithier than me, but.
- [56:45]
A
Yeah, well, that's what we do here. But man, hey, thanks for being on. And I just, I love the product. I'm so. I mean, you say 3 million companies.
- [56:55]
B
Yeah. Yep. And counting.
- [56:57]
A
That is just amazing. And what year did the company start?
- [57:01]
B
I just read it on a deck yesterday. 2018 is what it said. It's funny because my start dates will be different than other people's start dates because I've been doing this longer, you know, just depends on company. When the stripe thing was done. When Varuna, I first wrote the first piece of code. There's lots of ways you could demarcate it, but. Yeah, it's only been 2018.
- [57:17]
A
Yeah. And second largest in the world, thanks.
- [57:22]
B
To our customers, quite frankly.
- [57:23]
A
Well, you. You have an incredible humility. I was just so impressed with you when I got to spend that time with you in person a couple of months ago, and I just really honored that you came on here with us.
- [57:32]
B
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- [57:35]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Really enjoyed the conversation. So. All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna let us all get back to it. We got lots of customers to deal with. I'm Jeff Duden, here with the incredible Sean Clark, and we have been on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.