This One Platform Could Replace Your Entire Business Tech Stack | Robin Alex

0:00From Geico Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing Thoughts broadcasting from your brain. Tonight's top worry. If something happens to your apartment and you need to, like, stay in a hotel and pay for it, that would be crazy, right? Art Palpitations has more. That would be crazy, Tammy, but you got surprisingly affordable renter's insurance through Geico, so it could be covered, giving you peace of mind. Aw, I love a story that ends well. Next up, love stories. Are they all they're cracked up to be? It feels good to worry less. It feels good to Geico. On today's episode of Right About Now, I have Robin Alex, co-founder of Go High Level.

0:36Yes, that marketing platform you've heard of, that your friends are on, that small business is on. Yes, here, right now on this episode. It's all in one. It helps you simplify marketing, sales, and ultimately processes and procedures to make these things run like clockwork. Robin is a super intelligent, nice, humble guy. It's an incredible episode right here, right now. I want you to go to one place, ask your question, whatever modality that you want, whether it's texting, typing, voice, Morse code, whatever you want. It comes back with whatever you want as the outcome. And you don't care how it works behind the scenes.

1:11That's really the world that I want to live in and what I want to help curate and build. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. no theory no fluff no shortcuts this is right about now with ryan alford robin what's up welcome to right about now thank you for having me hey man i'm ready to get high on your supply in the good way let's do it you didn't know we were gonna get into the the drug context right at the beginning like whoa what show is this no getting high on your own business getting high on what it takes to run a business, operationally, marketing, all that stuff.

2:00This is right wheelhouse, and I love it. I'm a longtime card-carrying member of High Level, and definitely a fan from afar from what you guys have built. So I'll share that first, Robin. Congratulations on building a very unique and diverse tool that's been a lifesaver for a lot of businesses. Thank you. It's been a fun journey. We get to see a lot of different ways that people want to use technology and things like that. And the way that we've always thought about it is it's all for one. There's 10 other people who are looking for the same thing. So let's go find them. We've definitely been able to take that mantra and expand from there over the past eight years.

2:32Give me some stats. Let's start there for the audience. Let's do from Robin Alex, co-founder of Go High Level. What are today's stats? Users, something impressive, how many versions? Give me some numbers, Robin, and for our audience. And then maybe your take of today, what Go High Level is. High Level is a AI-based all-in-one platform for businesses. our goal is to operate every single business that's out there, leveraging a partner of some sort. So having a marketing agency or a consultant or strategist that can really help the business owner succeed. That's how we want to get into every single business that's out there.

3:09In fact, so, you know, one of the new lines that we're talking about is we want to be the next version of Excel. Somehow, some way your business is using Excel and you don't know how it got on your computer. Maybe the IT company installed it or maybe when you bought a computer at Best Buy, it came with it there. Now, however it became ubiquitous, you're using Excel. We believe that that can be us and that is us for so many different businesses. And we're starting to build so many different tools to help you all the way from capturing new leads to having a website to nurturing your contacts and email blast text messages to closing them.

3:38So invoices, proposals, all the way to reputation management to now leveraging AI to helping with conversations. We've just gone so wide. And then as we're going wide, we're also going deep into making sure those products become world class and that it can help businesses. From there, some of our stats over the past eight years, started the company out with Sean and Varun, my other two co-founders. We're still in it, still enjoying it, still growing the business. We're at about 2 ,500 employees worldwide. We're all 100 % remote as a company, which is kind of unique. We were doing that before COVID.

4:06COVID just kind of helped us accelerate kind of the working from home and it made it okay. But at that same lens, no one likes to get a paycheck from my home address. We are setting up two offices. We just opened up an office in Dubai. We're actually reopening a huge office in Dallas that should open here in the next couple of weeks, about 20 ,000 square feet. Idea having a studio like yours in there that people can record content, host events. So that's kind of a big milestone for us. But company-wise, we're at about 180 ,000 customers worldwide, which represents a little over 2 million businesses around the world that use our platform today.

4:38About 4 to 5 million users worldwide. We're the second largest platform by user count in the world, second to Salesforce. course. We're growing. We're trying to get to billions of dollars in money that we're generating into our customers' pockets. We've always said we want to be a$10 billion company where we can help generate$9 billion into our customers' pockets. And then because we're doing such a great job, we'll do a billion dollars on our side. And that's how we'll be a$10 billion company. We're getting there. I think in the next two to three years, we'll be there. And now I got to change that saying, that new milestone.

5:05We're going to be a$100 billion company. Or we're going to be like, well, maybe we should end it or revise it. So we're like SpaceX. We need to be the next trillion dollar company. And this is how we're going to do it. So I need to work on that. But nonetheless, you know, our goal is how can we help as many small businesses as possible and help them thrive? Because if they can thrive, they're going to help their communities grow, create impact in their own world. We want to be part of that journey. Congrats on the success. I'm sure I can already tell you're not the pat the guy, pat yourself on the back guy.

5:30But like that's it's really impressive. The numbers. I mean, I've been in business. I understand what everything you just like what it takes to build a company with that many employees, with that many processes, that many systems. The revenue impact is having for companies. Sometimes, and I do this myself, like I'll look at numbers and we get glossed over. There's so many numbers in news and business that we just think, oh, a billion of this and a million of that and all that. No big deal. Well, go sit in a room with 200 people and look around and go, how many people that is? It's more than you think.

5:572 ,500 employees. Go sit in a mini stadium with that and go, wow, these are all GoHalo employees. Oh, we're trolling up 9 billion in business for business, helping them generate it. So, dude, congrats. I'm serious. That's a lot to be proud of. To that point on not being pet on the back, I think for Shumpert and I, we try not to think about the numbers too much. Today's episode is sponsored by Vented. I'm not somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about my closet. Honestly, I rotate through the same five shirts, a couple pairs of jeans, and maybe two jackets. But somehow my closet was still packed.

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8:26You guys got to know what BHAG is. Big, hairy, audacious goal. You guys had one. Now you got to make it even bigger. We try not to get too in the weeds of the numbers, just trying to soak it in, only because it is scary knowing that there's a lot of people that are reliant on you. And we definitely know the importance of it. But when you kind of back it into the numbers, it's like, oh, my gosh, these are crazy numbers. I definitely believe that we're lucky and blessed. We take it very seriously in what we do, and we want to make sure that we're doing right by everybody. As the numbers get bigger, the decision making definitely gets a lot more challenging.

8:57to making sure that you're making the right decision because you have so many people that paychecks for people's livelihoods and even down to our customers, their businesses are fully reliant on our platforms. It gets more challenging the bigger that we get. Robin, you brought agencies in. I can see marketing is complicated, but you made a move at a certain point that really went towards agencies and or consultants as a way to sell high level in. What was the learning that drove that? What sort of spun out of it? I actually was a consultant for many different businesses coming in from the largest of largest businesses, being a consultant there, all the way down to joining an MSP and helping businesses and small businesses with their IT infrastructure and things like that.

9:35And then from there transitioned into becoming a marketing agency. Take the title out of the equation, marketing or managed service provider or whatever it might be. At the end of the day, mostly in the small business arena, the business owner started the business to provide a service to be value add in their community. A dentist wants to be a dentist. Doctor wants to be a doctor. Mechanic wants to be a mechanic. The plumber wants to be a is still the core reason why they got into the business to deliver that service. Whenever they need other services to help empower and accelerate their business, they always call somebody else, just as much as they're being called.

10:06The best way from a technology perspective for them to get successful outcomes is by calling somebody. I have always been that go-to person. When I took a step back, I got into other networks, going to conferences or other places and just started to realize, wow, there's so many other people like me. And to your point, marketing agencies, it's kind of a tribe of our own. And then there's the IT space, you have MSPs. Then they think of other industries like accountants or bookkeepers and things like that. So when we started, we looked at it as, hey, businesses need help with their marketing. They try to do it themselves.

10:36They typically fail out. Then they start calling somebody. When they call somebody, the likelihood of success drastically increases. How do we make sure that we're the go-to product for those individuals? And how do we make it a no-brainer? So what we decided was, not only are we going to give them the tools, We're going to give them the ability to give it to them at a reasonable cost with so much value that they can resell it for whatever they like because they're the ones doing the hard work. And then on top of that, putting their brand on it, have the ability to resell it for whatever they want with their own IP and create that lock of their specialty into helping that small business.

11:07That was actually the big aha moments and value that we brought out to the world. And we started out with marketing agencies and then we've continued to expand that. Now IT companies leverage our platform to now business strategists, to bookkeepers, to accountants. At the end of the day, that plumber, they don't have a full Rolodex of like, oh yeah, I got a website person. I got a social media person and all this. They're just like, I don't know. I have one person that I help with or two people that I help with. I'm going to call them and maybe they might have a contact or maybe they'll help me directly.

11:33That's how we've just continued to expand. But I definitely believe that every business needs a supporting cast of somebody to help them get to success. And that's where we serve that market. When you stop worrying about whose name is on the jersey, they start selling a lot of shit. No one's going to represent their brand, but their own. Exactly. They benefit. You benefit. There's a lot of reasons for brand and all that. I'm a brand guy. I get it. But there's a time and a place where you get out of the way, especially when you're becoming the ingredient of success for these businesses. That's what I think.

12:01When I think of GoHolo, it's an ingredient brand in a way. The business success ingredient. I'm writing tech lines for you here, Robin. It was always kind of like that. It enabled so many other things, bringing so many complicated tools together and then enabling a lot of things to talk to one another in the right ways. And it always is sort of like that key ingredient to client management, for sure. I can see the natural transition to the other layers that you just said, whether it's IT or accounts or whatever, because that back end, that operational support and the systems, because any business, if you don't have systems, you ain't going to get very far.

12:35You ain't going to scale, that's for sure. 100%. And that's where having the software really be the backbone behind it. But you need someone to go in and configure the software to match up to the business. Whether or not you have technology, if you don't have a blueprint that to create that system, it's going to be very difficult to scale. And the business is going to rely on you and the age old question, let's say the better version. What happens when you win the Powerball? What's going to happen to that business? And you want to make sure that the business stays on forever. I've went as far as I can go without bringing up AI.

13:02Robin Alex, co-founder of Go High Level, one of the, if not the largest small business ingredient brand, whatever we want to call it, it's a big player and it's software and we have AI, the world, the land of AI. What is Robin Alex's opinion? I'll get specific to some of the things we talked about pre-episode, like to high level and all that. I'll follow up with that. I more want your perspective on AI real versus myth versus promise versus reality. I'd love your take. There's a couple of different things to go down the path of. One is AI as a tool is super interesting and has a lot of potential to change humanity.

13:40The misread is how fast the world is going to adapt and change with AI. And I think there's a massive echo chamber in San Francisco right now of, hey, all these new models are coming out. They are going to take over the world. Everyone's about to lose their job. You need to now start building your bunker and hide because the world's about to fall apart. To your question on fact versus myth, I do believe that the models are getting smarter and they have a lot of capabilities and give us a lot of opportunity. There's the 1 % who need that capability. And then on top of that, we'll figure it out and use it.

14:15But I don't believe that we're there yet. No one has come up with the ideas or no one has figured out how to leverage the tools to be able to create those massive outcomes. Think about the 99%. Our average use case is so minimal that it's not changing the day-to-day behavior. Before AI, it was, what do you do? You go straight to Google and you just search, find me a plumber or, hey, I have this weird red dot on my skin. What's going on? The only thing that's different is maybe there's a small percentage of people now going to chat GBT to ask that question. But it's still just a new version for the average human, just a new version of Google in many ways.

14:48And in fact, it's always the interesting Thanksgiving conversation. You go back to visit your family and ask, hey, is anyone using AI? I don't think that a lot of people will say yes in the perspective of are you actually paying for a paid subscription and using AI to change your day to day habits? If anything, they may have a subscription. But like I said, it's no different than just Google and what they were doing before. What was also interesting this year was, remember how they were talking about everyone's jobs going to be replaced, so go ahead and fire everybody. And then Q2 rolls around.

15:16Whoops, we need to rehire more people because we need people to now manage the agents and creating all these outcomes. And then you look at the stock market and things like that. Nothing is really fundamentally changed. The world is same, same, but different. Just now you have this new cool drill in your toolbox. That's really how most people are looking at it. the world hasn't moved on just yet. But I think the opportunity is there. Just the mystery is how fast the world is going to shift. I would imagine with that take on it, that your numbers reflect that not a lot's changed. Thinking about the marketing applications of it, I would have thought that companies like yours would see increases in some things and dips in others.

15:56Has that been the case? We've definitely seen an increase in AI utilization as a concept. But back to my points on it just being a new drill in your toolbox, business owners and the reason that you use software and technology is to still get the same outcome. Hey, I need more leads. I need to turn those leads into contacts by engaging them. And then I need to turn those contacts into customers. So help me generate more money and maybe I can speed up the speed to lead. When a lead comes in, how fast can I talk to them instead of me hiring another front desk person to pick up calls after hours? Can I leverage AI?

16:29We are definitely seeing increased usage, but the outcomes haven't changed. The game of business hasn't changed. I need more customers and I need more money. So make that happen for me. That's the fundamental difference of, yes, AI could probably do it all, but business owners just need the small little changes to actually change their day to day. I have to remind myself of that a lot of the bubble and vacuum that I live in. Being in the industry and being on the side of digital and software and things like that, I had to come back to earth. And I think you brought me back to it a little bit. The other 99%, I don't know that I'm in 1 % or that my companies are, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

17:03Being in the bubble, right? Like you'll be on social media and people will show their whiz bang like, oh yeah, and created all these flows and it connects into this model and then switches over to this other model and does all these 10 other things. And then they create this crazy technology stack of doing different things. And maybe they plug into high level, maybe other tools or whatever. And it's this massive build. And you ask, who bought this for you? What are you implementing it for? And they never tell you that side of the story. that no one exists because of business. At the end of the day, it just says, I don't know.

17:31I just need five more customers because I'm a roofer. I can only handle five more customers in a month. So can you just make that happen for me? I don't even know how the mousetrap works. I just need a mousetrap. Yeah, exactly. Or the mice. Yeah, patch that hole for me. That's all I care about. Yeah, exactly. Talking with Robin Alex. He is the co-founder of Go High Level. GHL, got to get it on. GHL, like a beta blocker, like my cholesterol. all. Got to get that GHL to up. That's a funny thing. I do want to figure out how to become that business pill, that special ingredient for every business.

18:03That's an ingredient, you know, your daily dose of GHL, baby. Hey, we got to get how many of this or how many milligrams of that. I can see it on the back of the label.

18:19This episode is brought to you by High Level. Make sure to check out the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial. If you run a business, you know leads rarely arrive when it's convenient. A call comes in while your team is helping another customer. If someone reaches out, but the follow-up gets delayed, an invoice sits unsent, or a promising lead gets stuck in the wrong stage of your pipeline. I've built enough businesses to know that growth has a way of exposing every gap in your systems. That's why High Levels Voice AI and managed AI agents caught my attention. High Levels Voice AI can answer incoming calls, qualify leads using information from your website or uploaded documents, and even book or reschedule appointments.

19:00When your team is busy, Voice AI can keep that conversation moving instead of letting a potential customer slip away. Then, high-levels, managed AI agents can handle multi-step actions across your CRM. They can update pipeline stages, send invoices, and execute follow-up sequences across SMS, email, and social. That means fewer repetitive tasks for your team and a more consistent process for every lead coming into the business. For me, the real value of AI isn't adding another complicated tool. It's using technology to handle the work that slows your team down so your people can focus on building relationships, serving customers, and growing the business.

19:36If you're ready to create better systems and get more from every opportunity, use the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial. What's the biggest challenge that GoHighLevel solves for the average small business and the agencies or others? With all the technology, we talked about AI, we talked about you got marketing, you got all these things. And yes, at the end of the day, they want more customers. They need more customers. They want to retain more customers. But what is new or different about 2026? Any nuances that make it different today for those customers of yours? Definitely there's slight changes, but not drastic changes.

20:10In the perspective of, to your point, businesses want more customers. They want to make more money. They want to grow through marketing. I think the fundamental difference now is because the proliferation of AI. People are raising their hands more than ever saying, I think I need AI because I don't want to get left behind because I heard the stories back in the dot-com bubble. I heard stories back the social media bubble took off. Now AI is around here. I probably need to jump on this bandwagon. Can someone just help my business grow? And maybe you can throw in some AI so I can at that dinner party, I can brag that, oh, yeah, I have AI in my business.

20:39But at the end of the day, it is just basically the blocking and tackling. People want more money, more customers. Now, how you accomplish it, that's fundamentally changed. And there are some opportunities before you have people that's calling. And if your line is busy or if it's after hours, how do you respond to those individuals? Because human behavior is you go to Google or maybe not try to be teen or like, give me the best plumber that can come fix my problem. You call the first one. If they don't answer, you're automatically going to the second person because you just need to talk to someone now.