From Side Hustles to Software Success: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Robin Alex

0:00That's cool. And I think going through what you went through too, you can relate so much more. It's just, I do think that's good for kids in terms of choice. Not being forced down one of those paths, you know, is definitely going to allow you to be able to be who you want to be much, much more, which is really cool.

0:21So I am very, very excited to have you here today. Guys, High Level is one of the coolest platforms that we have. And I get it mixed up, Robin. Is it GoHighLevel or HighLevel? So the actual company is HighLevel, but domain is GoHighLevel.com. It's a lot cheaper. So yeah, right? So when we're talking about the product, do we say GoHighLevel or do we say HighLevel? Whatever is easier for you to remember it. I mean, at the end of the day, we want you to put your own brand on it and call it whatever you'd like. Okay. I always say Go because I guess because that's the thing. But so I want to first introduce you.

1:02We have a little intro that goes, so people have already seen that. But I'd like for you to kind of introduce yourself, tell your story a little bit, and then let's dig into the entrepreneurial journey. Yeah. Yeah. So my name is Robin Alex, one of the co-founders here at HighLevel. We are an all-in-one AI-powered CRM platform tool. And really what we've done is taken all the different software applications that most businesses need and use. And we said the biggest problem is you have 15 different applications. Not only do you have to figure out how to glue it all together, but now you have to maintain and monitor all that.

1:41So what we've done is put it all into one place, made it super easy to use. And then we allow you to put your own brand on it. And many people who typically set this up are marketing agencies or digital citizens in many ways. So they're out in the world actually representing the software as their own, which it is. And they're able to monetize against it. Yeah, and we do that. So we've got a whole iteration for people who want to acquire businesses, and we call it Epic Business Suite, but it's high level all the way in the back. And it's been really cool to watch because I maybe – well, actually, I have so many things I want to ask you.

2:19So first, let's talk about your personal entrepreneurial journey, and then let's talk more about high level. How did you get involved in the world of being an entrepreneur? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if there was anything special to like dip my toes into it. It was just something that was born in me, I guess, and bred in many ways. I mean, I was the kid, you know, selling candy to all my neighbors when I probably shouldn't have been, you know, selling CDs for friends, you know, with music and stuff like that, which is totally not the right thing to do. But, you know, 15, 20 years ago, that was the thing.

2:57But, you know, over time, I started a company at the age of 17 selling game servers online. So games like Counter-Strike, you know, Battlefield 1942, I actually created a decent sized business. And actually, I ended up selling it because my grades weren't that great at university. So my parents pressured me to sell it or really to close it down. I ended up selling it, not realizing that was an acquisition that someone took on. And the crazy story about that is the company that bought it actually was acquired by a company who then sold it to Rackspace, who's not a publicly traded company. So it's cool, you know, tangentially to be like, wow.

3:32That's your baby, right? I mean, it was kind of, yeah, that's super fun. You know, two or three degrees of separation from that. And, you know, being 18, 19, 20 years old, you just don't really realize there's a bigger world that's out there. It's just kind of in the mode of means to an end. How did that go in terms of the, like with the parents? Because I think that's a big thing these days is that the world has changed from go to school, you know, then go to college and then get a degree and then go get a job. There's so many more opportunities and so many things you can do. And, and I think a lot of parents have had a hard time adjusting to that.

4:08How did that work out for you? And how did they kind of end up dealing with it? Yeah, so it's tough. So, you know, I come from an immigrant family, you know, my parents both came from India, and came to the United States. And, you know, they come in with a typical immigrant mindset of, we came over to the United States to make a new life for our kids, and to give them opportunities that they didn't necessarily have. And, you know, that really comes down to, you know, they're going to have, you know, my dad was a mechanic and my mom was a nurse and they worked extremely hard. And they just looked at it and saying, you know, I want our kids to succeed.

4:45And by them succeeding means you got to get a degree. They need to be an engineer, doctor, attorney, you know, basically that professional degree and that success to them. And so when they see me not only going to college to, you know, in their mind pursuing these things, but here I am actually in the dorm room running a business, it's counterculture to what they've thought. And even in their circles and friends and community, that's the traditional path. And that's actually what I grew up in as being Indian. And so that was why there was a lot of pressure in me selling it. But, you know, I think the challenge that I had, even when I sold it, was I'm still an entrepreneur at heart.

5:20So I kind of felt like I was running this, you know, two lives in many ways of like, I still want to make my parents happy. So I'm going to have that, but I'm still going to always have something on the side and, you know, still going to try pursuing both. And that's honestly what I did from that point on. And it wasn't until, you know, probably 15 years ago where, you know, I still graduated college just to check that off of my parents' bucket list to make sure that I did that. But at a certain point, they just realized that he's always going to have a business. Like, there's nothing that we could do to deter it.

5:56And then once they saw that I was actually able to produce substantial income and take care of the family and things like that, I think they realized that, you know, it's not as bad. And I do think that the culture of the world, right, having different opportunities, different businesses has shifted quite a bit to where it's very mainstream now, where if you honestly don't even have a side hustle, what are you doing in life? which I think is also bad right like and that's the problem with the world that we're at we always shift to the extremes grind grind mentality right where you always have to be doing something no days off it's yeah that's not necessarily good either you know it used to be that you know there are certain people that are business owners and then it's also great to be an employee and we used to live in these extremes of like two different things but now everyone shifted to the other side where if you don't have a business if you don't have a side hustle if If you're not opening up EINs every single day, you are a failure.

6:47And I think that's horrible as well, right? Like, it's just, it's funny how the world shifts in that way. It always swings back and forth. Now, do you have kids? I do. I have a son who's seven. He's about to turn eight next week and a three-year-old daughter. Okay. And you're driving them to be doctors or lawyers, right? No, I'm kind of, I'm open to anything and everything. We are, they're young, so it's really hard to tell. And they're things that they enjoy just daily. But, you know, we are watching what kind of toys they play with and what do they like to do, you know, just through normal conversation.

7:19I think my daughter actually might get into something in the medical field. She always leans into the toys where it's like, oh, let me check your heartbeat and stuff like that. And my son, you know, he's into music and, you know, beat making and stuff like that. So maybe college is not the right answer for him. But, you know, I'm open to any and all ideas. I don't think there's a one size fits all for everybody. That's cool. And I think going through what you went through too, you can relate so much more. It's just – I do think that's good for kids in terms of choice. Not being forced down one of those paths is definitely going to allow you to be able to be who you want to be much, much more, which is really cool.

7:56Okay, so you sold your business. Now you are businessless and in college not really loving what that's like. What happens next? I definitely had an existential crisis at that point. I needed to figure out how to get my grades back up because I was on the academic probation list and stuff like that. So I was like, okay, let me concentrate on that. But then I just felt like I was not doing anything productive in life at the same time. But by luck, I had a friend there who was saying that they got a job at a company and they were looking for interns and they heard about me selling this company. And so they really wanted me to join.

8:32So I was actually an intern for them and developed a piece of software that, you know, helped grow that business. And it was actually a part of Oracle. I'm sorry, it was under SAP and we were doing Oracle third party support and stuff. So I got to learn big business culture and it definitely gave me exposure in how businesses actually run, not kind of from the startup perspective, but more established businesses. and then unfortunately you know the software that I was building and things like that created a large lawsuit I mean you know when you get Oracle and SAP fighting it doesn't end too well and so unfortunately that company folded which led me back to being a true entrepreneur again and this is where I got into IT consulting and in IT consulting it you know I typically leaned on small businesses that's what I really understood I could talk to a business owner really understand their pains and needs.

9:29And at that time, businesses were spending an absorbent amount of redoing their IT closets, servers, equipment, things like that. You know, they spend north of six figures in adding that infrastructure. And at the same time, they were spending absorbent amounts in new websites, their digital marketing landscape and things like that. I would typically lean on, you know, helping the business on the IT side, the technical, you know, servers and things like that. And because they had a trusted relationship with me, they would get these quotes and bids on the digital marketing side saying, hey, you know technology.

10:01Can you review this and just give us your opinion? And I would just look at these and basically say, you know what? They're charging that much money. I can probably do it myself and probably do it cheaper. And it'd be a great win. And that's where I started getting into digital marketing. And that's when you start learning about scope creep and all the different challenges associated to that when you take on a project that you probably shouldn't have. But it gave me a lot of exposure and a lot of battle scars along the way. And I learned about Feast and Famine, right? You pick up a big project, you get the scope creep and all that.

10:35But once the project is done, you don't have anything else coming in the door. And so immediately I shifted into, well, how can I keep helping the business there? And that was, you know, of course, recurring revenue some sort of way, which I knew how to do on the IT side, but on the digital marketing, how do you do that? And that's where we got into more performance marketing, right? So digital ads, Facebook ads, Google ads, and all that. And it's really how close can you get to the revenue line? If you can really help a business grow, they want you to stick around forever. And so through that transition, that's where I spun up a marketing agency.

11:08and we ran that for about eight years or so grew to about 25 people around the world representing about 200 or so customers so decent size but this is actually what kind of led us into high level today where it's the problem that I always had was I can walk in help a business and generate them a ton of interest whether it's leads contacts and appointments and you know all the typical things there. But the problem is the business owner was always going to be the business owner. You know, the dentist is always going to be the dentist. The flower shop owner is always going to worry about flowers.

11:43They're not going to call people. They're not going to try booking appointments. They're not trying to close over the phone. That's just not them. And it wouldn't matter how much effort our team did. We did incredible work. We would still be the person on the chopping block saying, I signed up to you. You're supposed to give me money or make me money. And we're looking at it as saying, well, we gave you everything up to the 90 % mark. You're supposed to get the last 10 % to make that happen. And it was just a weird crossing. And so I was sitting at a crossroads of how do I grow the business from here?

12:15Is it, you know, we just need to get aggressive with sales to make up the difference there. So I got a whole bunch of fireworks going on. But on the other side of it, it's can we solve this as a problem? So my team actually mapped this whole thing out on a whiteboard of, you know, when you generate a lead, how do we automatically do text messages? How do we do campaigns and things like that on behalf of the business? So it could be on autopilot. And we mapped it out, you know, four or five hour jam session. Then we're like, wow, it's a lot of work to build this. Let's sit on it and we'll get back to it later.

12:46And we just sat on a whiteboard for a couple of weeks. and then by complete chance, I had a customer reach out to me saying, hey, there's these two guys are launching a new software. They need access to things. I don't know. I'm the business owner. I don't know how to give them login and passwords and things like that. Can you talk to them? So I gave them a ring, gave them access. And then we were just talking about the software of what they're doing and things like that. And I was like, hey, can I show you guys something? So I ran into the conference room, took pictures of it and showed it to the two guys who are actually Sean and Varun, my other two co-founders today.

13:23And they looked at it and said, actually, give us a couple of days and we'll get back to you. So when they said that, I just kind of took it as they're just brushing me off. Like, you know, you don't know who you're talking about. They could be working for a megacorp for all I know. And it's just a project manager. And, you know, there's like, whatever, we'll just say, let's call them and we won't. But three, four days later, Sean calls me. And I remember this clearly. It was like 8 a.m. in the morning. I was driving into the office and let's get a call. And I was like, who is this? What do you want?

13:52I just thought it was a cold call. And it was like, hey, it's Sean. We spoke the other day. I want to show you some cool things that we did. And I was like, okay, yeah, give me a little bit of time. I'll be in the office in about 20 minutes. Get to the office and completely forgot about it. Get in my coffee, talking to the team. He calls me back around 10. And it's like, hey, you told me you're going to call me back. What's going on? We need to get on right now. Jump on a Zoom call and they had actually reconfigured the software that they created to kind of follow in the flow that I needed. And that was kind of the first genesis of high level and what we see today.

14:22And took it. I was just amazed. Loaded it up to a couple of customers that we had in the agency. Immediate success. And then I went back and I was like, hey, I want to buy this. Can I, you know, I want to pay you money for the software. Can I go ahead and get it for a lot of our clients? So we ended up doing that. And then I was just so grateful where I was like, guys, you guys did something that I didn't think that could be pulled off in this short amount of time. Can I get you access to more people? And so I just started making phone calls and giving them introductions and things like that. And, you know, from there, that was kind of the genesis of high level that it is today.

14:57And then Shana Varun were like, hey, you got to jump on board with us and take this to the next level. And so from there, we still kind of hold the same model. And, you know, here we are at year six now doing kind of the same thing that we've always done, serving about 60 to 65 ,000 customers around the world, 500 ,000 small businesses. That's growing, you know, a team of close to a thousand people around the world. It's the numbers are crazy and shocking, even as I say it. That's why I'm like slow to saying it, because it just doesn't even feel real. but we're doing some incredible things, you know, and just helping as many people as we can.

15:36You really are. It's very cool. And it's been cool to see that you kind of talking about feature creep. We, you know, there was a lot of talk as you kept adding features, like, man, these guys are going to blow up. How can you keep adding all this stuff? But my goodness, it, it all seems to be, you know, it all works out. So it's, it's really amazing what you guys have put together. So you kind of did one of the things we teach, which is a consulting for equity deal. I mean, you got the marketing and the – and do you do coding or anything like that or is it – Well, I've done development in the past and when you create something and then go through a lawsuit, it kind of tames your capabilities a little bit.

16:18So I don't tell a lot of people that I have a development background, but I know development and, you know, definitely on the product calls, definitely trying to help push the company forward and all that. It's a super helpful background, right? Even if you're not the one that's actually sitting in, you know, you apparently have to wear a hoodie when you're coding. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, my other two co-founders, they're far better than I am. And Varun, he's the best developer you'll ever meet in the world. You said, so they're far better at that. But basically, so you generally help drive BizDev.

16:53They basically, their primary lane is ProductDev, right? Yeah, so those three co-founders, I mean, we're definitely unique in how we've grown the business. We don't necessarily have like true dividers in what we do. We call it, you know, we have a founder's office. It's just kind of us three. Our hands are on everything. You know, all three of us, product calls every single day. We're trying to make sure that the product is being pushed forward. all three of us handle customer calls. You know, we're talking to customers every single day. We're all on executive calls, figuring out financials and things like that.

17:24Now, there are some things that we take ownership and accountability on, but we kind of look at it as there's no one else to pick it up. So if somebody is busy, I'll go ahead and jump on that landmine to see if I can take out that problem there. But, you know, we're definitely all hands on everything as much as possible. Okay. That's kind of cool. And then what would you say are some of the biggest challenges? I want to get to the news that you've got that you talked about when we got on, but just to kind of help folks see as part of this journey, what were some of the biggest challenges that you feel like you faced and how did you deal with them?

18:00Yeah, I think in the space that we're in, there's always people looking for a story and a narrative of why we're doing something or, you know, is there an ulterior motive and things like that. And I think that's very unique in the digital marketing scene more than, you know, traditional spaces. And so that was always a challenge in making sure that we just kept our blinders on in the sense of, look, at the end of the day, we're as legitimate as we can. We're just developers, like just let us build product, you know, the storylines and the narratives or people trying to create drama and things like that.

18:36It's just interesting. I'd say that that was always an interesting factor in how we've grown the business because what people are trying to do is trying to direct you to being typical to what every other company has done in the past. And we always wanted to carve our own lane in the sense of we want to do something so unique, something so different, even the way that we do our development roadmap, it's community driven. It's something that we've asked our communities to do. We don't want to have to reinvent the wheel or try to create something, you know, try to predict the future. It's, Roland, just tell me what features that you want.

19:09And if you can also get hundreds of other people saying the same thing? Well, of course we'll build it. Why wouldn't we build that? You just told me the answer, right? Like I don't have to do it. And that's very unorthodox. And so constantly trying to make sure that we create our own lane and not trying to get boxed into what every other person has done historically is always something that we've always had to fight against. That's really cool. And anything in terms of like staffing up, you say you've got about a thousand people, both remote and non-remote. I'm guessing you're hybrid. Is that correct?

19:44No, actually we're 100 % remote as a company. We do have an office in Dallas because the larger that we've gotten, people want to know that there's a physical address somewhere, but no one wants to come in for the record. No one ever comes in. They just want to know that there's a true mailing address. So when they get a paycheck, is there a corporate office? But we are a hundred percent remote. We've been remote even pre COVID and COVID actually just helped us on that side because then it became just more mainstream. But yeah, I mean, it's a thousand people, all direct hires. We don't outsource staff or anything like that.

20:14Everyone is a true high-level employee around the world. Okay, and then have you run into some challenges in terms of a management structure for that? And if so, how do you handle managing a thousand folks without having a thousand calls a day or 10 ,000? Yeah, so I mean, we have an incredible staff. I mean, I think we wouldn't be here without the team that we have and how we built it. A lot of it comes down to just understanding the basic technologies. We live on Slack and we live on Zoom. And everything is 24-7. Everything is readily accessible. And making sure that you just have open lines of communication to people is really the hardest thing but easy for us that I've seen.

20:59And when I talk to a lot of other companies and organizations out there, they're just shocked with how large that we've grown and we're still remote. And we just kind of we're in shock in the sense of like, why do you require people to come into the office? And the feedback that we get is, oh, well, you just can't get that collaborative face to face. And then when you drill into it, you know, what we've done here is my whole team, you know, around the world, they're literally on Zoom 24-7. And we kind of simulated that office. when you wake up, you log into the same Zoom room and there's hundreds of other people in there and teams are split out in a breakout room.

21:33So you can actually shift into another breakout room and start talking to someone or ping them on Slack saying, hey, yeah, exactly. Right. So it just depends on how you look at it from that frame of mind. But, you know, from how we've grown, we've definitely created hubs from a hiring perspective, just because I would love to hire anybody and everywhere around the world, but the bigger that we're getting, there's legality and taxes and things like that. So we've had to put structure in place, but once you get a good core team, it's more about making sure that the culture and ethics translates down.

22:08And when you empower those leaders of what the core foundation of what you want to build and it's embedded in them, it makes it easy for them to continue channeling that down. So the faster that we're hiring, we're making sure that that's a part of our model and making sure that we have great talent joining onto the team. That's really cool. Now you have all these things to help businesses, but it's, it's mostly marketing. Do you see getting into a zoom or slacky kind of thing in the future? We'll, we'll touch into some of those things like, um, you know, on the slack side, one of the biggest features that we get is can you tag internal team members, you know, like from a note or something like that.

22:46So we're going to dabble our way into that, that foray. It's always this weird balance of, is it worth trying to take over, you know, the slacks of the world? Like, is that worth the fight or just integrate and play? And we'd like to play on both sides in all reality, but we just listen to our customers. If they keep asking for more and more and more features into it, maybe we'll land there. But right now that's not it. And you've got a great base to start with. So that's exactly right. Exactly. So, you know, like I said, we don't try to predict the future. It's just if our customers are asking for that and we see a real reason of that being a need, we'll go down that path and we'll build it.

23:24Okay, cool. So now tell us about the kind of the going forward, the big news that you've got and what's happening from here with high levels. Yeah. So, you know, the larger that we've grown, you know, between Sean Vern and me and even our team, we don't have a lot of expertise, you know, playing in the big leagues, you know, whether it's going IPO or, you know, strategic acquisitions and things like that at this large of a scale. And so we've been fortunate enough to bring on a another minority investor who's General Atlantic. And so General Atlantic is one of the premier largest private equity firms in the world.