Ten Top tips on how to start and build a successful HighLevel SAAS Agency

Thinking About Starting a HighLevel SAAS Agency and becoming a SAASpreneur?

Have you been considering starting a HighLevel agency (SAAS) after seeing the buzz online? Many online videos and discussions suggest that launching your own SAAS company using a white label version of HighLevel can lead to substantial earnings. While it’s possible, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme—it requires real commitment and a lot of hard work.

Is it possible to be successful? Yes, it certainly is.
Is it a quick path to wealth? No, it requires consistent effort.
Does it demand dedication and learning? Absolutely, on both counts.

To succeed with a HighLevel SAAS agency, you need a deep understanding of both traditional agency models and software as a service (SAAS) dynamics. Here are essential strategies and insights:

1. Understanding the Core Mindset:

• Focus on Long-Term Client Relationships: Building lasting relationships with your sub-accounts is crucial. Aim to keep subscriber churn to a minimum, such as around 5% per annum.
• Value Recurring Revenue: The stability of knowing how much revenue you’ll start each month with from sub-account ownership is invaluable. This stability is preferable to the uncertainty of sporadic, hard-won sales.

2. Differentiating Traditional SAAS and Agencies:

• Traditional Marketing Agencies Scale by Staffing: As client numbers increase, traditional agencies often scale by hiring more staff, which leads to higher operational costs and staff management headaches.
• SAAS Companies Focus on Product Development: Traditional SAAS companies invest significantly in product development, facing challenges like achieving product-market fit and securing funding.
• The HighLevel SAAS Agency: Combines the best of both models, offering high-margin services with lower churn rates. No product development to worry about (no product road maps of developers to hire and manage). It’s possible to scale the business with very few or no staff if you outsource functions like onboarding and tech support.

3. Offering Pricing and Packaging:

• Finding a Niche Market: It’s advantageous to target specific industries or business types, allowing you to focus your marketing and services. Utilize HighLevel “snapshots” to provide high value niche specific marketing systems, for instance a fully packaged sales and marketing system for cosmetic dentists.
• Setting the Right Price: Price your services ideally within the $300 to $500 per month range, balancing affordability for clients with profitability for your agency. Prices can be adjusted based on your chosen niche.

4. Understand the Software:

• In-depth Software Knowledge: Mastery of HighLevel is essential to support your clients effectively. Demonstrating how you use the software in your operations can be a powerful selling point. It’s a case of “eating your own dogfood”.

5. Agency Name and Branding:

• Transparency About HighLevel and white labelling: Do you talk to prospects and clients about HighLevel or do you keep it quiet. There are two schools of thought here. Some agency owners prefer to build their marketing around the fact that they have a niche specific software that they have built – and never mention HighLevel. Often then will charge much more than the minimum $97/mo. No problem with that. Or are you open about the fact that the software that powers your agency is a white label version of HighLevel. Being open about this means that clients can then look at the HighLevel website and see the price is $97. So you have to bear this in mind with your pricing plans. But being open about the software being HighLevel does have advantages – clients can look online for help with HighLevel and so reducing your tech support requirements, trust can be lost with clients if they later find out that your “unique” software is in fact a white label software (and other agencies will be keen to make them aware of this), over time I feel that HighLevel will become ubiquitous – (like WordPress has become vs. bespoke HTML coded websites) and everyone will know about and look for experts and agencies that specialise in HighLevel.
• Agency name and domain: You need to think of a good name for your agency. And one where you can buy the domain name. You need to think carefully how specific your name is – do you go broad  ie “Acme Agency” so you appeal to a broad range of businesses or do you go specific ie “CosmeticDentistryCRM”. The former is easier to sell to a broad range of businesses but it is hard to charge top dollar, the latter will appeal to dentists, it’s a more involved sales with fewer potential clients, but they pay more. There are cases where an agency will have multiple HighLevel SAAS agencies to appeal to a range of niche markets.

6. Marketing Your SAAS Agency:

• Marketing is Crucial: The success of your agency heavily relies on your own marketing skills. If you have no marketing experience or interest then a HighLevel agency is probably not for you. Start by leveraging existing relationships and mentioning your new offerings in conversations to secure early clients. Existing clients, lapsed clients and past enquirers are often a rich vein of new clients. Develop an affiliate marketing system to expand your reach. I was able to “bolt on” a third party affiliate program within a couple of hours – I have used Partnero.
• Sales Strategy: Have your marketing do the hard work, so that the sales just entails taking the order. You do not need to be a super slick sales person – discover the clients marketing pain points, show how the software can solve the issue – and the selling is easy. Use your own HighLevel account to do the marketing.

7. Specialization and Focus:

• Concentrate on Specific Features: HighLevel offers a myriad of functionalities. Focus on those that align best with your skills and business goals, such as sales funnels, sales pipelines, online courses etc.

8. Onboarding and Support:

• Effective Client Onboarding: Familiarizing new clients with HighLevel is crucial for long-term satisfaction. Performing the onboarding and tech support yourself at the start is a great way to accelerate you learning of the software. However ultimately outsourcing tech support and onboarding rather than employing staff can outsourced to third parties like Extendly – so freeing up time for marketing activity.

9. Handling Administration and Accounting:

• Streamline Accounting Processes: I know this is the boring bit but it is often overlooked and causes headaches later on. Accounting. It is very exiting setting up a new business and getting your first clients on board. As you add clients on board then Stripe will start collecting payments automatically for the monthly subscriptions and “pay as you go top ups” for sending emails and texts etc. And while it is great to see the payments flowing in on autopilot it can store up a future problem. HighLevel and Stipe make collecting payments easy. But at some point clients will want invoices and the tax man (IRS / HMRC) will want your tax return. So you could wait until clients want a VAT invoice and / or the tax return is due and then pass it over to your accountant to sort out. But if you have more than a couple of clients this will become a very big job to sort out. Don’t let this happen. Sort it out right from the start. Get a good online accounting package ie Xero, QuickBooks. Now at time of writing there is no HighLevel to Xero integration – there is a HighLevel to QuickBooks integration – (but I am not sure how good it is). Anyway I use Xero because I believe it is the best for accounting so what I have had to do is build out a number of Zaps in Zapier to accommodate pushing the Stripe payment details in Xero.This is quite a long 7 step Zap to do this. And I have the added complexity to accommodate three groups of clients – UK, EU and rest of the world in terms of VAT taxation. So setting up the accounting, so you can sleep at night, it takes a bit of thinking about and setting up.So what happens is as a payment is collected and the client automatically receives the invoice from Xero by email. And then all my accountant/ bookkeeper has to to is simply click to reconcile each invoice against the payment and stipe fees – this is simple. (Contracting out the book keeping is an example where I outsource that to an expert.)

10. Expansion and Scaling:

• Growth Opportunities: Once you have got your agency off the ground then your can look to further scale your SAAS agency, such as expanding into new markets, introducing additional features. For instance it is possible to “add on” extra services from the HighLevel community – for instance advertising services with UpHex. May be partner with other companies to offer services to each others clients. Once you become expert in the software and have built a portfolio of sub accounts then you yourself could look to bring in new agencies into the HighLevel community. HighLevel has a great affiliate program that offers in a 40% commission. It can become a business in its own right. And being a successful HighLevel affiliate relies on the same principles as bringing on your own sub account clients – you need to be an expert in the software and you have to proactively help your new SAAS affiliates to get started and nurture them.  With that said 😉 if you are interested in starting your HighLevel agency and becoming an affiliate of mine and getting help from me to start your own agency – feel free to book a discovery call and we can have a chat to ensure that a HighLevel agency is right for you and how I could assist you to get started. So is a HighLevel agency a profitable business? – most definitely. And all the affiliate Youtube and TikTok videos will confirm that. In my view this is an opportunity in a lifetime. BUT it has to be right for you and be warned it takes work and commitment to succeed. I trust you have found these top tips to setting up a HighLevel agency useful. I would be delighted to hear your feedback and answer any questions you may have – book a call for a chat.

Conclusion: So is a HighLevel agency a profitable business? – most definitely. And all the affiliate YouTube and TikTok videos will confirm that. In my view this is an opportunity in a lifetime. BUT it has to be right for you and be warned it takes work and commitment to succeed.

I trust you have found these top tips to setting up a HighLevel agency useful. I would be delighted to hear your feedback and answer any questions you may have – book a call for a chat.