I have more beginners that can win with what I have than anybody else, and I will die on this hill. Automation and AI come last, not first. Just because AI can do something doesn't mean AI should do it. Yeah, the robe is part of me, and I am part of the robe. All right, guys, welcome to Remote First Podcast, the GHL Summit Speaker Series. Today, of course, your host, Atul Siddiqui. I'm with Declan O'Reilly, the HighLevel wizard, coach, award-winning affiliate, running a SaaS agency. Basically, Declan started with training for his own team. So that's where I wanted to actually pick up before we start. but give us a little bit about your introduction. I met you in Manila. Also, you were on stage. You're again on stage in Dallas Summit. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey with HighLevel. Of course. So first thing I want to say, Athar, thank you for having me on. I appreciate your time. Yeah, it's been a great journey. It was great meeting you in Manila. So I essentially started this whole journey as a SaaSpreneur. And what happened was, and I still have a SaaS agency for the most part, but I started as a SaaSpreneur. And as I went, I basically was taking videos for my team, okay, because I was training them on GoHighLevel. And I was just putting them on YouTube because it was easier to send to them. So from there, I noticed some of the videos started to get traction. And then I learned more about affiliate. And it kind of branched out to being this whole kind of journey, kind of my accident almost. I mean, it was intentional, but it was very much I was trying to train my team. And from there, it just kept going. So training your team. So let's go towards your team. So what is your team size right now? And for me, we were in our Q4 planning session and everybody asked one big pain point. If you had a magic wand, you would disappear. I'm like to get people on board and get them up to the same level to my highest performing team members. So how do you do that for your team? And what does your team structure look like right now? Yeah, that's a great question. I have about three to four people right now, which they all use AI so heavily. I used to have a bigger team, but AI can do so much now that, you know, it's just it's been crazy. So I think the main thing is getting people dialed in. This has been my experience for a team is like a proper incentive. So they actually work harder than the regular hours. I call it flipping them from mercenary to missionary. You know, some people are just doing it for a little bit of money. The other people, they want to go further, which is a mixture of incentives and culture. From there, essentially having each person do a very narrow thing and then have them use AI a lot. For me, that's how I've gotten my team to just crank and do way more volume. And it takes time, but that's kind of how I've seen them really get dialed. dialed. And the other part you just said from mercenary to missionary. So now your team, I'm getting, you know, they're remote from all over the world. So how do you have, you know, mission driven team? So they're actually not remote. They are, but they're all Americans. Okay. They all live on the West Coast. So they're in my time zone. Okay. So everybody comes. So what's your team now um you know basically office structure so you're they come in they're all remote uh you have uh one office where everybody hangs out in the same place or how no so they they're they're remote but they're not vas so they live on the west coast they don't live near me we just have like zoom calls on me it's the only stuff we do but the thing i like about it is we're all on the same time zone i feel like when you're on different time zones it gets kind of mixed up and that's where we run into some problems, Zatar. I'm sure you can adjust to. Definitely, definitely. Just mixing up time zones, setting up calls or setting up podcasts with someone in Australia, that is just a mission and a half. So not getting into office, how do you keep that team culture? For us, it's something the same. Everybody is in one time zone, but we have daily calls, weekly calls, and then we have some live sessions. So how do you keep everybody, you know, the mission driven part is really important, right? And everybody's focusing for one single target as far as your team members of your fort and everybody in your team. Yeah, great question. So to keep culture going again, you need a mix of like a future promise, like, hey, you're going to get access to X, like, hey, we can grow together. So there has to be a future goal. If it's just mind-numbing, boring labor, again, you're going to have mercenaries. But if you say, hey, we can go further, you can potentially get raises and this and that, and you sell the dream, that will keep the motive. Then on top of that, you need a basic incentive structure. This is something I've learned from some other people that ran big roofing companies that did roofing sales. but they made every single job position incentivized and almost commissionized where it's like, Hey, you get this, but you also, if you do X, Y, and Z really, really well, you get a bonus. And the reason I like this is you get people working more. Like if you get the basic employees that I'm just going to work from Monday to Friday, these hours, it's kind of not realistic. Like you're, you're, you're, that's not how business really works now with AI can cover some of the positions, but I like people working all the time, But I want them to work. I don't want it to feel like they're forced. So when you give them the right incentives plus the dream, they end up liking it and they're getting rewarded. And it doesn't cost you that much more, but it ends up, in my opinion, I have people working all the time. And it's really one of the reasons why not only I have a successful SaaS agency, but I was able to be number one as a GoHighLevel affiliate for months on end, winning all their AI promos, etc. Just like it's because I have a really good team that I believe no one else has. yeah let's go to your award- winning affiliate page so i went on your instagram saw your video first thing i saw right is i've been in a HighLevel ecosystem for six years on from your video i got more clarity i'm like man it's so crisp uh so you know having running the affiliate program being an award-winning what was the key starting from you know having your teaming a team training and then converting it into an affiliate, an award-winning affiliate program. Yeah, that's a great, that's another good tactical question. So to kind of shift, it's kind of weird. So the affiliate game is very different than the SaaS game because I was never a content guy. I never was, I never did content before. I couldn't say that, come on. No, I'm serious. YouTube is the first time I ever did content. So it was a big learning curve but when I started to learn what it was I realized I was missing out on so much Because it actually really interesting I saw a video of Alex Ramosi talking about how he only did paid ads and cold outreach for a long time And he said one of his biggest regrets was not doing content sooner because he broke down the math. And he's like, we make more money and spend way less doing this than paid ads. Now, obviously, you still want to do paid ads. But the idea was it was something I wish I did earlier. and for anyone watching like get on the content bandwagon earlier that's something that i really regret not doing because if i did i would be way further ahead no sir i think you know your content i see uh you have 42 000 subscribers uh you know on your HighLevel the ghl wizard page i think this you you got you're still way ahead so anybody starting right now you know i think and you're Also, in one of your statements with HighLevel on stage, you said you always pick one thing and you hit it. Yes. So what is that one thing in affiliate world right now? Because, you know, you've called out the affiliate program you're trying to hit right now because I know you're already at a certain benchmark. So what is the one problem you're trying to solve right now that you're saying, OK, everybody in your team, let's get this thing done? Yeah, that's probably the most important thing that any affiliate can focus on, which is what's going to move the needle. But more importantly, the way I see it is I've cracked a lot of traffic. I know how to bring the eyeballs in. I know how to convert. But the big thing that I believe I've done better than anyone else is getting my affiliates results. And I can prove this because I have more video testimonials and more wins than anybody else. I will go head-to-head on anyone. When I have more beginners, they can win with what I have than anybody else, and I will die on this hill. So what I'm doing now is I'm figuring out ways where I can even boost this further and help my students get clients even faster. And the two ways I'm doing that is one with some really high- powered systems that are going to help them even further. Land clients make it better if they suck at sales, etc. But the other leg of that is properly setting their expectations of what this journey is like. because half of the battle is getting them to properly work hard and understand volume and then actually do the shit that they're trying to do. So many people, they get caught up in shiny object syndrome. They get focused on this, focused on that, and they never get anywhere. So part of my mission right now is getting the right mindset, giving the right systems so I can have even more beginners win, whether that be mastering HighLevel or landing clients. That's my whole goal. that is what i believe in uh something similar to because we come on again on a planning session and everybody was talking about innovation but i'm like let's fix whatever we have because we're at a certain level we can just go get better and one thing i really wanted to call out i love i want to i don't want to miss my words is all your affiliate students right yeah that is that just changes the whole dynamic i also saw your energy change when i asked you and you talked about your students yeah that's that's that's an amazing thing so how do you uh you know and then you're also talking about giving away free clients to your students as a with a free partnership so how do you get to trust someone that who who are you going to do you know who are you going to put more focus on how do you have built that trust with your students yeah so that's that's the question a lot of people are always wondering because they're like you give away free leads how do you do this so first off that's not guaranteed to everybody i don't promise that They have to go through a specific filter. But the way I do it is I have some coaches in the group. So they give me feedback on students. But more importantly, I have to see that people are showing up month after month and they actually know the services and GoHighLevel. It doesn't even matter necessarily how good they are. I just have to see that they're dedicated because I have had students that come in where I've given them clients and they've dropped the ball massively. It's been disastrous. I don't want that. That's very bad. So what I go for is like I only go after students that I'm like, hey, this person, I see them showing up every week. I see them getting better. I see them, you know, potentially landing clients. Those are the people that I give the clients to because I know those are the people that can make this work, you know? Yeah, showing up. So from showing up, I want to switch a little bit because you are always talking about content. right here you're giving us your time right before you know two weeks before on the HighLevel uh event where you're going to be on stage and you do all these live uh things right live sessions for your students for your community uh so how important is that right so i know you have video you're talking about content you can drive it but how important is that live aspect of it and you know and what happens if you take it out yeah that's a that's a really interesting one because Because what I've noticed is when I stopped doing lives, because I've had other coaches take over when I've been very busy, I've noticed that a lot of people complain about it because they want to see me. But I also noticed that I'm one of the only people where you can actually talk to me. It's only for once a week, but I let the students come in. They can ask me questions. We do stuff, and I noticed two big things. So first off, it's not scalable at all, but I think that's the point. And I think part of the thing is people are always looking for how to make it scalable. How do we do the least amount of work possible? I don't look at it that way. I see how can I actually help my people? And there's so many people that come in. They're like, I'm so happy that I can talk to you. And I don't know, have you bought an online course before or a program? Yeah, all the time. Isn't it kind of tough when you buy stuff and you don't get to talk to the guy on the ads or the videos? You feel kind of like, yo, I'm talking to some other idiot. What is this? So I hated that when I got into this space. I hated it. It was always like, wow, we get sloppy seconds. And so I kind of made a promise. I was like, I'm never going to be like those guys. Even though this doesn't make me, let's say, a lot of money because I hop on this call once a week, this live call where I talk to the students and joke with them and help them out, the students love it. They comment on it. They talk about it all the time. They get a lot of value. I have people landing clients after I give them strategy. It's highly beneficial for them. And ultimately, I'm here to serve the people. That's how I got to number one is I give more than anyone else. So like I just want to go the extra mile because when I first got into the space, I hated what the gurus did where I never got access to any of that. And it's like I just want to be the opposite, man. I want to be what the people were expecting. Yeah, you basically deliver. And sometimes the power of show up, it's always not going to be easy. No hard things. And then, of course, you're prioritizing your people. Right. Because I know there of course trainings but with your trainings you doing customized That you know if yeah you would do the same thing it might take during the automations and questions and ticketing system a week two weeks you can do it in minutes right so there's no um basically substitute to that and that's your time again at your students free partnership getting one thing they need to do is just come with a drive i love the model right so and then that's how you can basically show the power of show up so on the other part on my now with again the ghl world we run here ghl success academy also a little bit of time to train people on how to do on the back end one thing that we have all the time is you know all the trainings and coachings keeping them evergreen yeah so i'll this is my pain point from jimmy morgan chase uh right so how do you because the trainings as soon as you're done uh you know within something you know sean is there every Monday, things are changing. And you have back at you with GoHighLevel. How do you do that? Right? How do you keep your trainings up to date? How do you stay ahead of the curve? So make sure your students are not spending on time on something that's already changed. Yeah, that that is something that I see that was one of the biggest annoyances with every course ever was that everything was outdated all the time. And people were too lazy to change it because they were so front and focused. Three things. Me, one of my employees, and AI. Between the three of us, we are constantly staying up to date with everything. I mean, that's, I'll put it this way, Athar. This is what I spent most of my time on, is staying ahead of the curve. Now, obviously, we help the people and do that, but because that's what I do with my YouTube channel. I'm constantly giving, I'm constantly putting videos out of stuff that the team hasn't even released. Like, I'm ahead of GoHighLevel. I am constantly giving stuff out like that, like that, like that. I'm just moving through it very quickly. So yeah, I'm always looking. I'm always looking at the new updates. I'm always playing with stuff. I'm always finding out better ways to do stuff. For example, I created an onboarding video recently that I don't know anyone in high level that's doing it. It's so advanced. And basically AI can do the entire step of onboarding and build everything. It can do everything. Like there's nothing you need a human for. And I'm the only one that's doing this because I literally play with these tools all day long. So I'm constantly updating that, and then my team is taking my updates and just refreshing the trainings like crazy. So the trainings are like updated weekly. That's why people love my community so much is that everything is constantly the newest thing. And I'm going to tell you this right now. It's not easy. Like that's what people don't understand. There isn't an easy way to do this. People are looking for like the automated process. It doesn't exist. Yeah. So it feels like, yeah, the way you do, you know, trainings up to date to make sure your students are ahead of the curve is hands on living, breathing, eating, sleeping. And one thing is HighLevel is, you know, you have to get your hands dirty. You've got to go under the hood. You know, it's like I say all the time, you want a mechanic who has just watched 10,000 videos or you want a mechanic that has a dirty shirt uh oily shirt and he has you know oil under his nails that's what HighLevel is you gotta go in and get it done and you're doing it like and you're on this other part of it um hands-on part right how do your um students as far as you know they have any hands-on trainings uh within your training program or it's just mostly watch and learn or is it any you know workshops also it's a lot of workshops so there's a live call every single day a different coach so the way they do it is they basically have a community where they ask questions and by the way they get all of this for free it's all free they get a community where they ask questions and get motivated they then have all these videos where they basically go through they learn HighLevel but then from there there's all the assets too so snapshots, AI prompts, everything's already built out. So they watch the video, then they have the stuff already built. So I've already solved all of their tech issues. So they watch video, they build, but then while they're doing that, they then hop on the calls every day to fix their HighLevel systems and then sell people. And it's just that cycle on repeat. And that's how I think they get really good results is because they're getting a mix of technical and then action. And my coaches are all trained not only to be like specialized in the HighLevel because they have agencies, but to tell the truth. Like they're constantly saying, you got to work hard. You got to prospect all the fucking time. Like they're telling them these things that they need to know, because that's a big problem. And this, Athar, or for anyone watching is like, the sooner you just state the facts and tell the truth, the better your affiliates or whoever's going to do, because part of the problem is they just don't get what's going on so if you tell them like hey this is not get rich quick you have to put in the work the sooner they understand that the sooner they actually put in the work so that's the way i have it structured and so far that's the best way i've seen it done maybe maybe you don't date it but that's the newest trainings best resources best tools and then implementation and repeat that cycle again and again and again i think that's the community and where is your community basis mostly facebook HighLevel uh youtube and what is the size uh of your community right now so the community is in GoKollab which is high levels uh community builder which i think is better than Skool um so we have GoKollab and i think we have 5 000 affiliates in there okay so other thing is you know so you're giving away free snapshots all the coaches your students come in and they just got to put in the work and they get through the system what i've learned by you know i'm big fan of coaching so anytime you go do coaching i would tell to my listeners to anybody who's listening is definitely go for coaching because anybody that's from your coaching team they have they have their own agencies and now they have coached so many people and anybody coming in they have a single agency most of the times yeah if something's working from someone else copy paste is usually you know a little bit of snapshots a little bit of customization here and there but most of the times copy paste works right and that's where coaches like declan right we need who have proven systems in giving out this and i think it all your system is built on your students win that when you win everything is pay uh you know paid for it free partnership you giving over snapshots you giving over the coaches coaches You giving away live trainings Only thing you need from your students is coming in raise their hands and show up Is that right? What I've seen? Pretty much. Yeah, it's very, it's very simple. That's all free. No upsells. That's pretty awesome. You know, that's a really great system. So let's build it on. I know you've talked about a lot about AI. I'm putting it on anybody that's coming in Because for me, from the staffing agency, I get to hear that a lot. What do you see right now within your team or within your own systems, right? What is the AI versus human debate right now? You have four people there. You already said they're very, very AI heavy. What do you think right now as far as, you know, you would be two people? How would that go as far as, you know, the debate is concerned? Yeah, AI is a weird one because in certain areas it's really good. in certain areas it's not um my thing is just and i always say this like just because ai can do something doesn't mean ai should do it if it can do it better than a human absolutely but i recently had one of my employees who came in and was trying to use ai to do everything and it was a terrible job because he thought he's like we're saving time but we actually weren't we were wasting time because it was terrible so it's like yeah if ai can do a better job and do more of it then Absolutely. If it can't, just have a human do it because there's this people now that are trying to automate everything with AI. It's like automate Slack notification or whatever. They want to automate everything, and they're automating stupid stuff. Only if it is beneficial and it legitimately saves us time. That's the way I see all AI, and I test it ruthlessly. So it's like if it works a lot and it doesn't mess up, we'll use it. But if it keeps glitching out, we just have humans do it. It's just the easiest way to do it. I think that's why your coaching and training program is working so much because your philosophy is not B2B, not B2C. It's people to people. It's B2B. You're all about humans. I like that. I like that. You know, I just figured it out. I'm like anything that I'm saying, you're more people- oriented, you know, right in face, being showing up, I guess, live, right? That's not an easy commitment. So yeah, I like that. That's an interesting answer, right? Most of the time, you don't want to conquer the world with AI. Do small little things, make it efficient. Because right now, also with AI, you look online or Google search. I also told it to, I think my team last time, that everybody's an AI coach now. You're like, I mean, it just came out and now it's just all these AI coaches. So you've got to go step back, do it a little bit, keep doing what you're doing and improve Move on it if you can. Right. That's all. Still humans. I'm all for it. Make your humans more empowered to use it a little bit. All right. So last thing I want to ask you about, actually, second last is you talk about in Manila, the self-scaling system. Right. What is it? You know, if you want to tell us. And of course, it's about getting more affiliates quicker. How would you explain it to our audience? Did you say self-scaling or self-selling? self-scaling right oh scaling yeah so what the presentation was on and yeah that but that's what you talked about in manila just in a nutshell right what was that uh how would someone make a self-scaling system that sounds like a lot of automations a lot of it does it does so if you're going to do it on youtube and i have i'm going to be talking about this at the summit so make sure you guys watch the replay because the level up because i'm going to i'm going to walk through it But essentially the way it works is you have a basic process where you're mixing human and AI. So for example, you're coming in, doing what the human does, doing what the AI does. But after a while, once you get something working, you then try to automate every step of the way. So like properly automating as much as your YouTube video production as possible, then automating all of the outreach, emails, texts, video ideas. But I think the key thing that I'm constantly telling people is like automation and AI come last, not first. Everyone's going, let's just automate this. It's like, dude, we don't even know if this shit works. Like this is so stupid. It's asinine. So what I tell people to do, I'm like, all right, go in, figure out videos that work, figure out what hooks work, figure out the proper affiliate CTA, figure out what email cadence and outreach works. And once you have all of that fine-tuned and you really hammer it in and let the concrete settle, so to speak, you then go in with AI and automation, and you just automate the entire process. And that's really what I'm going to be showing at LevelUp this year, going in-depth on that. And that's really what I think is the best way to do it because I'm seeing so many people – like you would be shocked at the amount of people that will come in, and they just start automating right off the get-go. It's crazy. and that's you also already answered my last question that you know what you're going to talk about and that i also believe right automating or ai stuff is a journey you cannot start at the end that's the end of it you cannot build it in the beginning you have to do it i say you know first you do it and then it happens manually you have to have get your hands dirty then you maybe create an sop sometimes an sop is just a handshake right you do this i do this and then once you get it done, dialed in, then automations come on small bits and pieces. Well, that was all really interesting. Really, really good to have you on a remote first podcast, Declan. Thanks again for your time. And then hopefully we'll see you in Dallas on stage talking about your affiliates, talking about your students. And one last question before we go. I know it comes with being the GHL visit, but is that part of your gown? And that's why you wear the robe. It is. Yeah. I always wear the robes. It's, it's a bunch of different reasons why I'll take too long to answer, but I, I do wear the robes. Actually. I also do wear them all the time when I'm not even on camera. You know, it's funny. I had, I had some people come visit me, um, that are from the HighLevel team. And I walked out in a robe in my car to get coffee with them. And they go, you actually wear robes. I was like, I do. I do. It's a real thing. So yeah, the robe, the robe is part of me and I am part of the robe. There you go, guys. Thanks a lot again, Declan. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having on our podcast. And I'll see you in Dallas on October 26th to 29th HighLevel summit happening this year. Likewise. God bless you, Athar. Thank you for your time. Thanks a lot, man. Take care.