I don't believe that AI will replace a good employee. I think it will enhance a good employee. What I do think AI will replace is lazy employees. Unfortunately, you have to hire really eight to 10 VAs to get one good one. we have a motto. It's one team, one dream. All right, guys, Remote First Podcast, HighLevel Speaker Series. Today, we have a special guest. Right now, of course, I'm sitting with guests from HighLevel Summit this time who are going to be speaking from October 26th to 29th. My guest today, he has been actually my host in Vegas earlier this year with GHL Assembly. That was an awesome experience. Apart from that, he has a long list. You know, of course, started from Army, corporate, went to Gold's Gym, started a franchise, and then of course came to HighLevel that is his current cup of tea right now you're doing GHL Playbook agency support white label suites you know and of course last but not the least you are a Raiders fan I just found that out so tell us a little bit about yourself Dakota how are you engaged with high Man, my whole world is involved in HighLevel, brother. Like everything I do is HighLevel related in some way, shape or form. I've started as a SaaS company back in 2020. Fell in love with HighLevel back then. Did really well with that. And naturally, we just kind of transitioned into support actually what happened was we transitioned into onboarding because we we had we were doing our own onboarding back then and and naturally we become friends with other agency owners and one of them approached us one day and was like hey who do you use for onboarding and i was like i do my own and it kind of just explained like our process and our philosophy behind it and what was working well and he's goes well can you do my own boarding I was like, no, I'm not white labeled. I'm only doing it for my SaaS company. And he goes, well, how hard would it be for you to white label it? And I was like, I don't know. I actually have to think about that. So we tried it. It went really, really well. And he referred somebody else to us. And next we had two clients and then we had three clients and about three or four clients into it. One of them goes, hey, can you guys also do my support? and I was like, no, we don't even do our own support. We were using another third party, and that person goes, why? If you already have a team, why are you using a third party? And I was I don't know, actually. That's a good question. We just signed up for the year, and we were still using it. So they challenged me to see if we could somehow convert onboarding into onboarding and support. We had a lot of hiccups. A lot of things we had to figure out, like chat widgets and things of that nature and ticketing and support tickets. And we just started growing. Early on, it was like four or five of us doing support. I remember we would take shifts in the middle of the night. Like I'd work for three hours and then tap somebody else on the shoulder like, all right, you're up. It's your turn. And then I could go sleep and so forth. So that way we could be able to offer it 24-7. And now we've just grown pretty massively. So I'm going to ask you one thing, like onboarding, everybody struggles with. And at what point, you know, you say onboarding, you were really good at it because you were doing it for yourself. But, you know, at what point onboarding stops and the support starts? Because you said now you're doing onboarding and support. Because onboarding period, people think it's kind of a honeymoon. Is it the first 15 days? Is it the day you just start your package? That's the onboarding ends and onboarding actually happening before you start. So what is the gray area? when does support start and onboarding ends well support's always going on that's a great question by the way supports like everlasting you have to people get stuck naturally you know they the integrations break or you know something of that nature or they want to send emails they don't know how and you know they don't live in it day to day like you and i do and so you know they'll forget. They knew how to send out a workflow email two months ago, but they haven't done one in a while. So then they log in for the first time in a couple of months and they have to figure it out all over again. So support never really, there is no start and stop. It starts right from the beginning and it's constant. As far as onboarding go, I think one of the bigger things that we do different is we view onboarding as like a 10 to 14 week process. so a lot of agencies you know oh I got their account set up and I got their payments and the calendars linked and we're good to go they can just now log in and figure it out where we take a different approach where for the first four weeks we meet with them one-on-one every week for four weeks and then at the end of that four weeks we do a handoff to weekly training so we offer for 10 weeks of weekly training, three times a week, where they can hop into a Zoom room and there's an instructor who's teaching a lesson. Like, for example, this week might be funnels and websites. Next week might be SMS and email marketing. Week after that could be AI employee, right? So every week there's a different topic and they can hop in at any point and start taking that lesson. The challenge for us is that when we decided to white label that, it was like, okay, we're going to have hundreds of agencies logging in and we don't want them talking to each other. And we don't want them like, I'm from this agency. I'm from this agency because, you know, not everybody discloses that it's high level. So we had to figure that out. And so what we did is we just created a webinar. And in that webinar, we lock everybody down. They can't turn on their cameras. They can't turn on their microphone. They can only chat back and forth with the host and a co- host. And the person who's hosting the training is using a demo style sub-account. So, you know, they usually in the beginning will tell them, hey, this is a demo account. We created it for demonstration purposes only. So don't mind it if it looks a little different than yours. This is created just for demonstration purposes. And then they can, when they have a question, they can chat back and forth with the host and the co-host and they can answer. It allows us to offer that training without breaking the white label barrier. So I have actually a couple of questions just from your answers, right? You said 24-7. Now that is you're going through, that sounds like agency support and white label suite, right? Both of them, it sounds like they're on 24-7 support. So how do you manage that? And if someone's on Tuesday night at 12 AM is texting, you know, are you going through the AI or who's answering to your clients at that time? Well, another great question. So we have a team that is about 70 people large right now, and they all work different shifts. Some of them work in the middle of the night, some work during the day. But recently, because we acquired White Label Suite in March of this year. For the last four or five months, we've been building out our own, because now we have a dev team, right? So before we didn't have our dev team. If we needed to build something, we'd have to hire a contractor to build it. Now that we have a dev team, it's like, what can we build? And so we built a support software of our own before we were using a third party and we would just pay them monthly. And we're really limited on what we can do. Now with our own software that we've built, it is AI first. So what happens is we've trained, we call them Wally, right? So Wally is essentially the first barrier that they come in, they chat with Wally. If at any point Wally gets stuck or they request a human being, it transfers live to an attendant who's on the back end. And then we have a whole team of people who just basically go in and start helping them. What we have found is that because of this new software that we built, which is called My Support it allows us to handle literally 67% of the chats that are coming in are handled by Wally without ever having to be turned over to a human. So the human element is allowed us basically to streamline that or the AI element has allowed us to streamline the conversations and just have a small team behind the scenes that are there when a human person, a human is needed. So this kind of protects your team from the basic, you know, what do you call your boot or you restart your computer kind of questions coming in. And that's what it means. I think your philosophy that you just called out, anything that comes in, you let AI handle it. And what is the threshold at one point you say, OK, well, let me have some of my team member take over, you know, from AI? Yeah, a couple of different things actually happen. Number one, if the person ever, ever request a live agent at any point, that's one threshold. If the AI feels like it's not answering the question because it provided an answer and then the client comes back and like, no, it doesn't seem right. Then it will hand off to a human automatically. And then behind the scenes, it just pings whatever team member is next up and they get a buzz on their end and starts to ring like a phone. So they know, OK, I have to answer this and then they take over. okay so next obvious question for me is now you know you have awards in the back you have agency support for HighLevel you have white label you know you acquired a company you're touring all over and then you have a team all over the globe how do you keep your team connected how do you you know because you have one mission you have one drive how do you keep that everybody's aligned to, you know, Dakota's mission? Yeah. Well, we have a philosophy and we have a motto. It's one team, one dream. Everybody learns it when they first come on. And we live by that one team, one dream over. We're all one team. We all have one dream. And so as far as balancing them, well, I mean, I can't take the credit for that. Luckily, we have done a great job of hiring and training very good team leaders that manage their perspective teams. So we have a director of, excuse me, I have a chief technology officer, that's Kyle. He oversees everything that's technology, including support. And that's both for both companies, White Label Suite and for agency support. And then we have a director of support who handles the support team. We have a creative director who handles all the creative department. We have an onboarding director who handles the onboarding team. We have assistants, executive assistants that manages all of them. And then, of course, my wife is the COO. So she basically runs all of the operations. So without those people in place, we would not be able to do what we do. It would just be way too complicated. And they're all very talented. And then you have, you know, you said basically who, not how. So that's Dan Sullivan is saying, you know you need to not figure out to do everything just see who is best at it yeah bring them in and then second question again from the same one you know people across the world or even if they're in the same country or the same city right now everybody's remote how do you bring new talent in now you have a 70 people in your team that's a big team for even digital marketing c size right so it's a big team how do you bring people in and then you know set them okay you got to start performing up to the benchmark of your high performers that are currently there What's your learning curve to bring new talent in? Ooh, so what's worked really well for us is about two years ago, we started an internship. So essentially, it's an eight- week internship. So they go through an internship for eight weeks. And the reason we started this internship is that, you know, back then we were hiring people who claimed to have a lot of experience with HighLevel. And the challenge that we kind of came across was that, number one, it's difficult to really gauge somebody's expertise in HighLevel until they actually get in there and you can start seeing what they're doing. And often people are like, oh, I'm a HighLevel expert. And then you get them in there like, bro, you don't understand the difference between a sub account and an agency. And that really actually happened. We had somebody who was HighLevel certified and they didn't understand the difference between an agency and a sub account. So we created this internship to try to grow our own people. And one of the requirements is that, number one, it is free to them, but they have to fill out an application and go through an interview process. They don't get paid for this eight weeks because we're providing all the tools, we're providing all the training. Exactly. And then at the end of the eight weeks, they take a final exam. And that final exam is done live with their prospective team leaders. and so they have to go in and actually demonstrate basically that they can do some of the more basic things inside a HighLevel and if they pass then they get a certificate that they can take to anywhere they want to go like this says they went through an eight-week internship with agency support for HighLevel and it shows basically what grade they got things about nature and they can use that to help them get a job some of them progress and actually we offer them a position. Usually somewhere in the ballpark of about 30 to 40% of the ones that pass will offer a job to. And using this model, it's allowed us to grow really quickly and to grow our own people internally so that we don't have to break bad habits. You know, in the gym industry, one of the challenges is that a lot of people bounce from gym to gym, like they'll work from one gym, They don't like it. They go to another one. And it's that kind of thing. And we would often not hire people that had gym experience because they usually had bad habits like what we'd have to break. And we wouldn't figure out what those bad habits were until they came on board. And we take the same approach with Agency Support where we don't want to break bad habits. We'd rather create brand new habits from the beginning. And the internship has worked out great for us in that aspect. So most agency owners have this concern. We're also in, you know, remote staffing business is that in any time we have people across different time zones. First, there's not going to be synergy, but also how am I going to track them? You know, everybody, of course, you're training them. You have so many assessments. So how do you know if someone is doing what they're saying they're doing? What kind of, you know, oversight do you have for your employees? Yeah, great question, actually. And we've struggled with this off and on over the last couple of years. And, you know, we've tried implementing tools that take screenshots every, what, 30 minutes of what they're doing, that kind of stuff. But ultimately what works best for us is really two things. Number one, we trust them first and what we also verify, meaning that they clock in at eight o'clock in the morning, they clock out at five, they take an hour break. We have a whole clock in and out system that they have to follow. If they don't follow it, they don't get paid. It's your responsibility to clock in and out. And then what we do is we audit what work is being done throughout the day. Usually what we have found is that auditing the actual work that's being done is the easiest way to determine if they're actually doing it. And if for some reason we suspect that somebody's not working, then we'll just flip a switch and turn on the system that starts taking screenshots. And we don't have to do that very often. Usually we can determine if somebody's working or not working. And then we have just to have a conversation with them. Like, hey, dude, what's going on, man? You've clocked in two days in a row and you've completed one task. And they're usually pretty honest with us. And we just come up with a game plan to fix that. If we feel like they're lying to us, which doesn't happen that often, but if we feel like they're lying to us, then, hey, that's a no, that's a no- go. We're just going to be done. If you can't be honest about the work you're doing, then we can't trust you and so forth. And we'll just part ways with them. Unfortunately, you have to hire really eight to 10 VAs to get one good one. Yeah, it's basically, and then as you say, you get better at it, especially if the systems you've built, at the end of the day, it has to be trust you need to make sure you're able to do it it is more human to human what we're seeing at RepStack right now you know we were working with a lot of digital marketing agencies sas businesses yeah now more people are redefining themselves as ai agency but everybody is now doing ai so you know what are you doing why i'm building an ai agency what do you do or i build ai bots for businesses right so that is a big big team so coming from that to you right what is something that you have in last, I think, a year and a half or two years, that's big boom. So what has changed for you? What is, is it AI versus human? It is AI and human, you know, what is your, what is the biggest thing that you're doing on AI right now in Dakota? I love this. And we're seeing the same. A lot of people are pivoting towards that AI model because it's, it's a new shiny You know, like when the internet first came out Many years ago, a lot of people became web designers and that was big back then. And it's starting to happen. It's already happening in the AI space. So like number one, don't believe that AI will replace a good employee. I think it will enhance a good employee. What I do think AI will replace is lazy employees. So like in like I'll give you an example, like in our world. Right. You know, we have level one, level two, level three technicians. Right. if we might have 20 level one technicians and out of the 25 of them are handling 75% of the chats that are coming in and the other 15 are, you know, just, you know, doing whatever they do and so forth. So by implementing AI into our support, what it's allowed us to do is to go to those 15 people and go, man, hey, what's going on? Like these people are running circles around you and so forth. And now when we implement AI as a area, AI first and support, then it allows me to go to those 15 people and go, hey, man, you're not stepping up. I don't need you anymore. You know, I kind of think. But the 15, but the five people that were doing really well, they still have jobs. They're they're behind the scenes assisting the AI and taking over and that kind of thing. Right. So the AI is essentially replacing the lazy ones and helping the stronger ones. yeah it's just basically you know you stand out like a sore thumb literally at RepStack we were doing eos it is it has rocks that you take three months and now for last you know one or two quarters i've been telling my team there's nothing on this planet that can take three months right now yeah right everything is you know so it was rocks to do's and you kind of i'm like everything is being done as a to-do we just do it faster and everything just comes out you know what is coming in and what is not, you know, going out. One question I got from your question again, you know, so you're big on coaching. You have a lot of people coming in and you've seen in and out. What is the one thing that right now the agency owners that, you know, that come to you and they're starting out, what is the one biggest mistake they're making right now? Of course, there's a shiny object syndrome. When they're starting off, what is one thing, what is the trend with new agency owners? Man, you have a lot of good questions. I love this. So I think probably the biggest one that I see the most is somebody sold them the dream of HighLevel and what it had the ability to do. And there's a lot of people surprisingly coming in because they heard a little bit about AI or they heard a little bit about HighLevel and they want to create an unmanned, faceless, automated AI agency that doesn't require them. Like someone convinced them, hey, I'm going to give HighLevel 500 bucks a month and somebody is going to build me an entire system and I don't have to do anything. Like I can just turn it on and it's going to generate money for me over and over and over again and i surprisingly see that a lot and i have to they take tell them to take a step back like that's not gonna work and you know there's work that needs to be involved right you need to have a solution you need to be able to solve pain points somebody's got to be able to provide that solution what happens when it breaks and has a hiccup you know oh my ai is going to fix it yeah it doesn't work like that there still has to be somebody behind the scenes there's got to be a face of the company there's got to be a brand who's going to do marketing who's going to do the sales you know all that kind of stuff well they'll go to a landing page and they'll buy yeah that's not going to work there's got to be some sort of human interaction still and i was blown away the first couple of times i've heard that and i've heard it a lot in the probably the last six to eight months of people who are just like well i bought HighLevel i can hire you i can hire you to build it right and and it'll just start making money i'm like yeah it doesn't work like that it's like you know the charging you know sun's charging what you have you just put it out solar panels and just i think it's telling expectations right the expectations are not coming and they are of course you if you search for youtube right now for high level you'll have you know same as ai there's like coaches upon coaches and some people you know they try to to tell you but with HighLevel we know you have to get under the hood yeah now you have to get your hands dirty the other part that most people also know that you know okay you're if you have 10 000 hours or if you have a niche that you've picked for a real estate agency right so you're gonna have to be expert in that and now you're gonna learn HighLevel also now you're gonna make yes the work has got to be done nobody's gonna come and make you rich you got to put in the hour. 100%. Spot on. Yeah. So that's, you know, from HighLevel side, we'll move towards your tour right now. I just saw on your Facebook, right? It's a lot of travel. You're going to be in HighLevel in 10 days. And aside from that, you have another tour going on, which is GoHighLevel Playbook Sales Summit. Five cities, five events, Dallas, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle. So what is this about and why do you have to be out there you know in this time of remote world? Yeah so different people go to different things right some people go virtual some people prefer in person what we notice is that because we've been doing GHL assembly with Andy and you were there for a couple years now and it's just a different crowd when it's in person. And we noticed that they're more intentional. They're definitely more aware and they're more active. When you are on a Zoom and you're virtual with 150 people or whatever it may be, naturally people have their cameras off. They're juggling. They're checking their email. They're talking to people who are coming in the room. And they don't focus. I've had conversations with people who were on a three-day Zoom where we did a summit. And they're like, hey, do you think you could cover this next time? And I'm like, what are you talking about, man? I had a whole hour training that covered that exact scenario. Oh, you did? Right? Or it's in person, you know, they're very intentional. They're paying attention. Also, it allows us, because it's a smaller environment, to literally reach our hands out and help them and get them involved and answer questions and that kind of thing. so so that's why we decided to kind of hit the road and and do those those things and so far the events have been great we have another one in portland and and seattle in december and we're looking forward to it i love the intentional part you brought up right it's in person and of course we have remote we have webinars we have zoom we have facebook youtube but once you get in the same room and i was in ghl assembly i loved the people you got and everybody that was on the stage was just there giving value yeah there was no single sales pitch it was just active listening going on yeah and everybody opening their books you know what was helpful for them and where they have been failing right a lot of people always go to these events and they share okay this is good this is good but we know we failed 10 times before this one thing work right and that's in your group i found that people were opening up where their failures were and that really tells you how the community was really really strong yeah same thing about the community last question for you and now you know we're going into from your community to the HighLevel community you're going to be there on stage this time october 26th to 29th so real quick for our people i don't want you to give away too much but what are you going to be bringing to the stage? What are you going to be talking about on the summit this time around? Well, I don't know if HighLevel has told me I'm not supposed to say or not, but I'm going to tell you anyways. So I might get in trouble here. So we're not going to be talking about like the good, the bad. We're not going to be doing any of that. We're not going to be promoting like, here's who we are. Here's what we did. Here's what makes us great. We're just going to go right into sales. So I'm going to be teaching the nine steps to closing any deal. Literally the nine things that have to happen during any sales presentation, whether it's a webinar, in-person, one- on-one, a Zoom, it doesn't matter if it's a phone call, I'm going to teach the nine steps that you have to take in order to get that deal to close. I think you have hit the nail you know right in the head because you just said you know you've been having people coming to you and say okay HighLevel ai set it up make me rich same with us now those people that are coming to you to build HighLevel they also come to us they're like okay i have built HighLevel everything is done but you know all the leads are here how do i talk with the people i'm like you pick up the phone and call yeah right so everybody's coming for sdrs so this is i think the need of the hour, then of course, everybody, you know, they can come, you can set up your HighLevel, you have help, you have people, you know, like white label suites, you have agency support, but at the end, you got to be the one pick up the phone and call. And if you're having trouble, or it's hard for you to do sales, tough luck. You got to do hard things first. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Spot on. You're not wrong. It's surprising to me how many people don't want to get out there and sell or don't have experience in it. And we have to plug in somebody to help them. Amazing. Can't wait. I'll definitely check your session. Until then, come check out our booth also. We're going to be on the floor. I'm going to be speaking on the 28th also. That's awesome. Again, thanks a lot for your time, Dakota. Everyone, make sure to take time. Go watch. Go see on the HighLevel Summit, Dakota on his nine-step sales process. Can't wait to hear it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you, man. Thanks again for being on the podcast, man. My pleasure. thank you for having me i appreciate you