Are you an agency owner on a quest for game-changing strategies to propel your business to new heights? Imagine uncovering the very strategies that have enabled Chase Buckner, Director of Product Marketing at HighLevel, to transform his career from a high school English teacher to a key leader driving the success of one of today's most powerful CRM platforms for agencies. His journey and insights promise to revolutionize how you approach growth using HighLevel.
HighLevel isn't just a CRM; it's a catalyst for agency success, equipped with essential tools like CRM management, customizable form builders, community platforms, social media planners, invoicing systems, and advanced workflow automation. Discover firsthand how HighLevel's innovative 'skateboard model' has redefined user adoption and profitability in today's fiercely competitive digital landscape.
Throughout our journey together, Chase underscores core principles of humility, profitability, and aligning passion with business goals—principles that resonate deeply with agency owners navigating the challenges of growth. Whether you're scaling your operations or enhancing client satisfaction, this episode is your gateway to actionable strategies and profound insights.
Join me as we delve into Chase Buckner's narrative, a journey that promises to unlock the game-changing strategies you need to accelerate your agency's growth with HighLevel. Let's embark together on this transformative exploration and pave the way for your agency's success.
Ready to Finish 2024 Strong? Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results.
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
Free 30-Minute Discovery Call: Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.
Are you an agency owner on a quest for game-changing strategies to propel your business to new heights? Imagine uncovering the very strategies that have enabled Chase Buckner, Director of Product Marketing at HighLevel, to transform his career from a high school English teacher to a key leader driving the success of one of today's most powerful CRM platforms for agencies. His journey and insights promise to revolutionize how you approach growth using HighLevel.
HighLevel isn't just a CRM; it's a catalyst for agency success, equipped with essential tools like CRM management, customizable form builders, community platforms, social media planners, invoicing systems, and advanced workflow automation. Discover firsthand how HighLevel's innovative 'skateboard model' has redefined user adoption and profitability in today's fiercely competitive digital landscape.
Throughout our journey together, Chase underscores core principles of humility, profitability, and aligning passion with business goals—principles that resonate deeply with agency owners navigating the challenges of growth. Whether you're scaling your operations or enhancing client satisfaction, this episode is your gateway to actionable strategies and profound insights.
Join me as we delve into Chase Buckner's narrative, a journey that promises to unlock the game-changing strategies you need to accelerate your agency's growth with HighLevel. Let's embark together on this transformative exploration and pave the way for your agency's success.
Ready to Finish 2024 Strong? Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results.
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
Free 30-Minute Discovery Call: Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.
I am thrilled to be here today with Chase Buckner. Chase is the Director of Product Marketing at High Level, the all-in-one white-label sales and marketing platform for agencies. Prior to joining the team at High Level, Chase and a partner built a full-service agency from scratch that they grew to over seven figures in annual recurring revenue. Chase, I'm so glad you are here. Thanks for being on the show.
Chase Buckner:
Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to chat.
Intro / Outro:
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive.
Dr. William Attaway:
Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway, I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, who may not be familiar with you and, heaven forbid, may not be familiar with High Level Talk a little bit about your journey and your development, particularly as a leader.
Chase Buckner:
So my journey is kind of interesting because I did an early life pivot. I went to college to become an English teacher, so I taught high school English for two years and had an early life crisis of you know. I don't think I'm ready to commit the next 35 years of my life to this regiment. Really wanted to see the world. Long story short, came up with this idea to drive across the country and then drive from California to Costa Rica with a friend of mine over six months. In that time I had to learn how to work from the road, so I was an early sort of digital nomad and that's what got me into digital marketing. A friend had started an online refurbished cell phone store shop, and so I started cutting my teeth in the marketing world there.
Chase Buckner:
And fate stepped in. We never got further than Puerto Vallarta, mexico, where we spent the majority of our trip, due to my laptop charger got fried. It would maintain my charge but it wouldn't raise it, so I couldn't unplug my computer and, uh, you know, I was like I gotta order a new charger. We can keep going when it gets here. It took six weeks for the thing to arrive and we had fallen in love with the city, so we just spent the rest of our trip in puerto vallarta. At the very end of our trip, I met my wife, um, so I never left. I've been in mexico ever since 2009 and.
Chase Buckner:
And I got a job as a webmaster I was no way qualified for that at the time with the biggest luxury tourism company in Mexico. And then I was like you know what? At a certain point I was like if I just had a developer, I could start my own agency. And shortly after I met a developer, we became quick friends, I quit my job, we started an agency and within a year we were out of business. That was an important lesson, because that was when I learned you got to figure out who you are and if you prescribe to the EOSOS rocket fuel integrator, operator, visionary integrator type of thing, we were both integrators and so it was like I partnered with the same type of person and we weren't helping. You know, we were the same and we had the same deficits. We didn't have a salesperson, basically, basically and I learned that about myself I ended up partnering with a guy named Matt Coffey, who was the exact opposite of me, and together we formed that duo and we went and built a seven-figure agency over the next six or seven years and at the end of that journey we were on the lookout for a tool and we got introduced to High Level.
Chase Buckner:
We were one of the first customers I knew right away it was going to be something that every marketer and agency on the planet would realize they would need, and I was working really closely with Sean in the beginning when I was building it out for our own agency. We had a lot of great conversations. He asked me if I would join the team and I jumped at it. So I went from customer to the team and I've worn a lot of hats since then and it's just been a crazy ride from there. It's remarkable.
Dr. William Attaway:
You and I had our first conversation when we both spoke at the same event in Tampa last year, and I remember talking to you and saying OK, so I get that high level is a different type of product and as I have become a customer and really have jumped in with both feet, that has only become more and more evident. A lot of our listeners may not be familiar with it, though they may not be familiar with high level. What is high level and what does it do?
Chase Buckner:
Yeah, so high level is an all-in-one sales and marketing CRM. So the premise was so, back in the agency days my agency days we used to provide a variety of services for clients, right, and in order to do that we would have to use six, eight, 10 different softwares and then tie them together through APIs or something like Zapier, and so that comes with a lot of pain, right, because there's just a million different fail points and stuff like that. So I feel like every agency gets to a point where they're like man, should we build a software that would tie all this core functionality into one place? Some agencies tried and, you know, burn a lot of money and realized how hard it is to build software. But Sean and Varun, they just sort of had that vision early on. And then they met Robin, the third co-founder, who was an agency owner, and he sort of helped them shift the mindset of it as far as hey, don't focus this on end businesses, like most softwares do. Focus this on agencies and marketers that know what they're doing here. And then they just started building out all the core functionality and over the past five years we've built everything in one place.
Chase Buckner:
So you've got the CRM to house all your contacts. You've got builders to build forms and surveys and websites to put them on. You've got the community builder in there where you can run communities. There's a social media planner in there, there's invoicing and all that's in one place. And then there's the workflow builder, which is my favorite, where you can basically automate things, so you literally like piece together automations that you want If this happens, then do this, or when that happens, do that, so to have it all in a one place. It just unlocks these things. That sort of weren't really possible in the past because it's all in one integrated system.
Dr. William Attaway:
And from a business owner's perspective, it's an incredible cost savings. Yes, and from a business owner's perspective, it's an incredible cost savings. I was able to stop spending so much money on all of these different products, and everything's under one roof and it all talks natively.
Chase Buckner:
Yeah, and that's something I mean. That's sort of like a philosophical discussion in the industry, I guess, because I think if you most software prices by user or by contacts in the system, yeah, so it's like, okay, you get one user for 19 a month and if you need more than that it goes to 50 a month, and then if you exceed a thousand contacts it goes to whatever, whatever. And that was always painful, right, because it's like, especially as a marketer working with clients, because the better job you do for your clients, the more and more it costs. So your client every month feels like you're nickel and diming them, but it's like, hey, we have to increase the cost to you because the cost of the tool keeps going up.
Chase Buckner:
And so High Level came around and from the early the inception, the founders just took this different track which is, hey, we're not going to price like that because and I don't want to speak for them, but from what I, you know, know of them over the years I think that they saw the future in that software would be commoditized and it wasn't going to be this wizardry that only a few people on earth knew how to do, like it was 15, 20 years ago and I think they saw that writing on earth, knew how to do like it was 15, 20 years ago, and I think they saw that writing on the wall and they were like, at a certain point, it's going to be way cheaper to build tools, so let's do flat pricing, enable people to have as many contacts and users in the system as they want and then enable people to white label it so marketers could actually start selling the system and the way that they customize it as their own software.
Chase Buckner:
And that's really what's changed the game. The pricing structure and the ability to white label it I think has been what has really powered our unprecedented growth over these past five years.
Dr. William Attaway:
You know, so many of my agency clients leverage that and are able to provide solutions for their clients that are far beyond what any of them could do on their own. You equip them, you enable them, you empower them to provide these solutions and make a difference in so many companies. So many companies. They never know about what you do on the back end.
Chase Buckner:
Yeah, but you're really making a difference there. I think the biggest differentiator has been well, the biggest impact, I would say, is churn. We really always talk about churn because when it comes to marketing the traditional services, like running ads for people or doing SEO, the churn rate is really high. It's typically over 60%, whereas the churn rate of software is really low. It's like 5% 6%. So when you enable an agency to roll out their own software offering, it starts to balance out their business and it becomes less of a roller coaster ride and more of a predictable growth.
Chase Buckner:
Roller coaster ride and more of a predictable growth and high level comes with a lot of quick win type of features that every business needs, like the missed call text back, right, like if business missed calls all the time. But what happens if automatically the system shoots a text back to the number that says, hey, sorry, mr Carl, how can we help? It just starts saving all this lost revenue and immediately the ROI is incredible. So any agency can keep doing what they're doing but then also say, hey, you know our CRM is going to do this, that and the other. One of these things is missed call text back. That alone people will pay you $2.97, $4.97 a month for.
Chase Buckner:
And now you're in the software game, and so we've seen a lot. It's been really fun actually to see a lot of agencies go from 100 percent traditional services to a hybrid. Or I've seen several agencies tell me we don't even do services anymore, we just sell white labeled software because because it turned so low, and you know it, obviously it's the king of all business models. That's why you see every company on the planet trying to figure out how they're going to roll out a SaaS offering. And yeah, it's been a game changer for sure.
Dr. William Attaway:
And you continue to make it better. This is one thing that I had heard about prior to becoming a customer and prior to hearing so many of my agency clients talk about their adoption. You continue to improve and make it better and the feature set just grows. It feels exponentially and I know that's probably an overstatement, but like there's just more. And hey, we're rolling this, hey, we're rolling this, hey, we got this new thing it's. You. Don't sit on your laurels and say, well, this is good enough.
Chase Buckner:
No, and that and that's been the mission from day one, and it's been fascinating to see. You know, when I first came in, I wasn't fully on board with this mentality, but I've since realized that it's absolutely been proven correct in that most software Well, first of all, most software doesn't make money right. Most software is in this cycle of get it to the point where you can get investment and then grow to the next point to get the next investment, and the whole thing is based on this future promise that someday this thing will actually make money right. So the founders knew they didn't want to do that. We've been profitable since day one. We've been bootstrapped. Their premise was hey, most software, 80% of the users only use 20% of its features. So all we have to do is focus on those core 20% of the top software that marketers use in one place.
Chase Buckner:
Yes, people will complain along the way that like, oh well, this thing's not sophisticated enough. In this other tool I can do X, y and Z, and that's true, in the other tool you can't. But do you really use X, y and Z? And if we can get it far enough, we'll get to this point where we can then start going deep in all of those areas or deeper, and that's what we call the skateboard model, and it's been something that's been really fun for me personally to buy into and to apply to other areas of my life, which is hey, don't sit around trying to make something perfect before you roll it out, because odds are you're going to miss and you just wasted so much time.
Chase Buckner:
Roll out the lowest version of it that you can, as fast as you can, and then let your customers or your community tell you so we call that the skateboard. Tell you does it need to turn into a bicycle or motorcycle, a car, a full blown monster truck, like? They will tell you how far you need to take it. And so we have our ideas board and that's the way we roll. We basically roll out a skateboard and then we listen to the community how far does this need to go?
Chase Buckner:
And and it's worked really well. And so it got us to the point where you know we were profitable along the way, and then private equity started, you know, throwing all sorts of offers at us no-transcript, I don't know quadrupled the dev team or something and the support team, basically, and then this year we ended up taking another investment that was much bigger from General Atlantic, which is one of the biggest PE companies in tech, and same thing. So basically now we're just building individually sized software companies in each feature set so that they can go deeper, and we're getting to those really minute minute XYZ type of features nowadays, which is really fun.
Dr. William Attaway:
If I could go back and talk to Chase 10 years ago and tell him hey, this is where you're going to be.
Chase Buckner:
What do you think that chase would say? That chase would be really stoked, and I'll tell you why. It's funny. I had a few friends that when I left on that trip they moved to California. One friend in particular moved, went to tech actually a couple of friends and I always kind of wondered what, what would happen if I would went to California, right, and gone into Silicon Valley, cause I've always loved the game of startups and whatnot. And that friend made some money, invested in his roommate's software.
Chase Buckner:
And then, like a year later, I saw this headline and I was like how do I know that software? And it had been purchased by LinkedIn. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's the software that Ryan invested in. So I called him and I'm like, dude, are you a millionaire right now? And he's like I literally just saw that two hours ago. And he's like I think I have to sit on LinkedIn stock for a while. But technically, yes, I think I'm a millionaire. I was like gosh man, like what have I done? You know, like I'm down here in Mexico trying to build this agency, and I kind of thought that it was like an if else situation right, like one or the other. And so if I could tell that person trust your gut, it's all going to work out. You know, here I am in the place that I want to be, and I also ended up working in tech for one of the hottest startups in the world and it all just came together, that's awesome.
Dr. William Attaway:
You are a continual learner and anybody who's ever heard you speak understands that, because it just flows out of you. You know the team that you lead today needs you to lead at a higher level than where you were three years ago, and three years from now that's going to be even more true. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up as a leader with the new skills that your team is going to need you to have in a year, three years, five years from now?
Chase Buckner:
Yeah, that's a great question and that's something that I honestly try to work on every day because I guess I'm a natural leader as a natural teacher type of person. But, like in the world of high level, when I came in I was really an individual contributor. Right, I came in as a content creator. I created a lot of the early educational content. Every event we go to, I meet somebody who says I watch all your videos. I've seen so many videos. I feel like I know you right, which is so cool.
Chase Buckner:
But as we grew, it got to a point where it was like, hey, you're not going to be able to move mountains individually anymore. You need to figure out how to multiply yourself. How do you take what you can do and pass that on to five views under you and then together you as a team can move a mountain, and that honestly, I won't lie there was a time for me when that, before I came to that realization myself, it was kind of a little painful and um, but then I had. I had a conversation with another friend who's actually here in Mexico and Guadalajara, who runs a tech incubator.
Chase Buckner:
And um and I was like, yeah, you're right, that's exactly it.
Chase Buckner:
Like I used to be able to literally just move a mountain with a video that I could make, and now you know we're.
Chase Buckner:
I think at that time we were whatever 600 people company and this and that, and it was like, yeah, you have to make a choice. Like you either have to move on in your journey as an individual contributor or you need to transition into a leader and really focus on that. And so that's what I've been doing is trying to figure out how to be a better leader and how to suppress that instinct of, okay, here's a challenge or a goal or an objective, Okay, I know how I'm going to execute that. I want to start executing. And it's like no step back. You need to give that objective to the team, give them the freedom to make some mistakes and not micromanage them and try to, you know, give them the skills and pass along the knowledge that I have to create more creators. And it's a journey, for sure, every day, you know, I'm trying to get better at that, but it's definitely a totally different skill set for sure.
Dr. William Attaway:
It's a hard turn to make and this is why so many people choose not to make it. Yeah, I watch this all the time with business owners who they touch everything right, and even agency owners they touch everything and as they find success and have to hire people to help with fulfillment, it is very difficult to shift from a business owner mindset to a more CEO driven mindset where you delegate. That's a skill.
Chase Buckner:
It's totally a skill and it's what I think is interesting is neither way is wrong, right? I think now I'm more sure than ever. Like when I was back at the agency, one of my gripes with Matt, my partner, was we never sat down and said, okay, what's the end goal, what's the number, what's the whatever Are we trying to do? We want to build a team of a hundred that makes you know, $10 million a year, or a hundred, whatever. What is it? We never did that because I was always like it's not about how much revenue, it's about how much profit we make. Like, let's figure out how much money we want and let's like get there and go no further, right. And so I was very much in that mentality. And then when I joined High Level, I joined it because the product was so inspiring for me, because it was the tool that I wanted most in my life, right.
Chase Buckner:
So I remember in the early days you know it was going well and again, we were making money the whole time and it was like that first investment was sort of a crossroad and it was like do we want to just keep chugging away and build a really great, profitable company, of whatever size, or do we want to really go for the fences here, take investment, hyper hire and really try to build one of the biggest companies in the world?
Chase Buckner:
And I think if you asked me honestly at the time, I would have said let's just keep on on trucking and do what we're doing. But I think the majority opinion was no, let's go for it. And yeah, along the way I've had to sort of make those decisions of like, yeah, I'm going to work on myself in this way because I want to stay on this rocket ship and I want to see what it's like at those heights and experience that and have both those experiences in my life. And so it's been fun and challenging, and every day. Yeah, I'll be the first to admit I'm still very early on my journey as a corporate leader, I would say for sure.
Dr. William Attaway:
You know, I think a lot of people listening who have seen you online have observed and said, oh wow, that's amazing, that's inspiring. And the temptation is for somebody to look at that highlight reel of your journey and say, oh wow, yeah, well, chase has never he's never struggled with the things I struggle with. He's never, he's never had the obstacles that I have to deal with. His journey's just been up and to the right. If they were to say that to you, what would your response be?
Chase Buckner:
Oh man, of course. Of course it's been a rocky road right. Agency life is about as rocky as it gets, and I often tell a story. One of the worst days of my life was when we were running the agency and because the churn is so unpredictable in that world that we lost, I think, one or two clients in the same week, and one of them was like our biggest client, and so basically Matt and I were talking and he was like look, we can either fire this many people or we can all take a 50% pay cut until we dig out of this hole. And we both agreed we didn't want to have to fire anyone. So then I had to go deliver the message that, hey, in order to keep the band together, we're all going to take a 50% pay cut until we dig out of this together. We're all going to take a 50% pay cut until we dig out of this together. And that was brutal. I'll never forget that.
Chase Buckner:
And so I've been through things like that, and I've been through things that I never would have imagined myself being willing to go through, which is like, as a company gets really big, you get HR, you get all this stuff that comes along with it. That's in no way related to the stuff that you want to be doing every day. Um, you know relationship stuff with people on your team that are under you and this and that, and you know things, just things that you never imagined having to deal with. Um, and it's like, yeah, yeah, this is all part of the gig, like if you want to get to those levels at companies of those size, it's part of the game, and for me it's been, it's been really interesting.
Chase Buckner:
If I'm totally honest, I got a title of director when we had 50 people right, like I don't think there was.
Chase Buckner:
Back then it was like, yeah, whatever, like you're a director, because we have to give everyone titles. Honestly, now I feel like I'm still trying to legitimately earn that title, because I think if you went and looked at directors at companies of our size now, I don't know that I'd be qualified to get that job there. But at the same time, it's all relative. But yeah, I try to keep reminding myself of that, of like, hey, there's always room for growth here, and if you want to play in this league, you have to choose. And I remember your talk from Tampa, which really resonated with me Everything's a choice, right? So I have to wake up and choose this annoyance or whatever these things that I don't really want to do in order to continue to climb at these heights, and it's not always fun. For sure, I can tell you that it was way more fun when I just used to get to wake up and make videos about whatever I wanted to make a video about, you know.
Dr. William Attaway:
That's so true. You know, as I listen to your story and so much of what you have learned and encountered so far, I'm struck by something that just popped out, and I know our listeners picked up on this. It's what I call a teachable spirit. It's the humility that you approach this with. You don't come into this like, hey, I got all the answers, I know it all, I got it, just come to me, I'm the answer man, I know it all, I got it, just come to me, I'm the answer man.
Dr. William Attaway:
You approach this with a teachable spirit and that is what differentiates high capacity, truly catalytic leaders from those who don't lead at that level. And I just want to call that out and affirm that, because that's something that we talk about a lot, because it matters, and it's a choice that you get to make out a lot because it matters, and it's a choice that you get to make. Keying back into that idea. You get to choose whether you're going to approach what you do with that kind of a spirit, with that kind of a posture, and I see that in you and I think that is something that trickles down and affects your team and really begins to affect the DNA of the whole company.
Dr. William Attaway:
And that's true for every leader listening.
Chase Buckner:
I appreciate that and I'll pass those flowers on too, because I think that humility culture comes from the top, and so Sean, robin and Varun are all the same way, and that has been a big part of the reason why I joined the team and why I'm still on the team is because they've proven to me that, no matter how big you get, you can still maintain that level of humility. And you know, our product calls are my favorite part of the day. They're super early in the morning and every day it's with one of the product teams and it's where the you know where the iron is forged, I would say. And those conversations often get really passionate and heated and it's just always brings a smile to my face when you hear you know, sean, go, you know what, you're right. My idea was super stupid. Like you've got the data to back up your opinion, you're right, we're going with that. And it just reiterates that, right, we're going with that.
Chase Buckner:
And, um, it just reiterates that right, like and, and I think that you would agree, your favorite people on earth are like that, and in the world of marketing, it's a real shame because there's this um, you know, it's a money culture and I think a lot of that comes with, like this phony alpha mentality where you can show no weakness and you have to know everything, and it fake it till you make it and all that kind of crap which you know.
Chase Buckner:
Come look at a company like high level and who leads it, and there'll be the first person to admit when they're wrong or what they don't know. And it's actually the fastest way to success. When you get people in a room and it's like, okay, what don't we know about this challenge that we're trying to figure out? Okay, great, we're not going to assume anything in that direction then, because none of us are confident that we know that. So let's focus on what we do know and then figure out how we're going to fill in the gaps. And it's been awesome to be a part of a team where that's the culture.
Dr. William Attaway:
A leader who lets the best idea win instead of their idea. That's right. That's the way to go. One thing that I ask every guest is you know, as a continual learner, is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey, one that, if the people who are listening hasn't haven't read that book yet, you would say, hey, this was a game changer for me. For sure.
Chase Buckner:
So, man, I don't really get a ton of time to read, and when I do, it's usually for pleasure. Um, I, usually, when I get this question, my answer is rocket fuel, because that was very eye-opening for me. Um, yeah, if you haven't read it, you should read it. It'll really help you solidify things about yourself. And then, um, it gives a lot of clarity around what comes with that categorization, like, for example, when I read it and realized, oh, I'm in this relationship, I'm lucky enough to be in this sort of partnership where there is a visionary and an operator and integrator present. But I didn't know that, according to the book, the integrator gets the final say, and so that gave me a lot of confidence and permission to go back to our business and say, hey, I've been sort of holding back about a couple of these things that were decisions that we're making or whatever, and now I'm confident that I'm the one that should get the final call on this, and you know what I mean. So it really changed a lot for me.
Chase Buckner:
There, a book I started reading that I know I'll finish at some point is the StoryBrand book. So good, yeah, the StoryBrand book. And then there's a book called the Hero's Journey. That's a much older book, I believe, but I do think as we head into this world of AI generated content, original content, original stories are going to stand out even more, and I think learning how to tell a great story is going to be a really valuable skill moving forward, and so I definitely want to refine that part of my game as I move forward, for sure.
Dr. William Attaway:
Chase, this has been so fascinating. You know, often people will walk away from a conversation like this with one big idea, one big takeaway. If you could define what you want people to walk away from this, with what would that be?
Chase Buckner:
Great question and I don't know the context right. Are we talking about like business or life or whatever? Um?
Dr. William Attaway:
yeah. What would you leave entrepreneurs and agency owners with from your journey?
Chase Buckner:
I would say a couple of things. One, figure out who you are. Read that book, um, and? And don't feel pigeonholed, right. Oftentimes I've I've played both roles and and it's really more about like understanding in the relationship I'm in right now, what role am I playing? And it'll bring a lot of clarity to you there.
Chase Buckner:
Um, to focus on profitability. Nothing else matters. Um, don't get caught up in this, this mindset of you got to raise money and blah, blah, blah. Yes, focus on building something that actually makes money and forget the idea of perfection. Roll out a skateboard, as painful as that may be, because that's how you start and that's how you grow from there In life. I would say, you know, it's weird because I would always shy away from this type of advice or whatever, but it has played out in my life. If you're young and you're listening to this, following my heart did literally take me to everything that I wanted, and so, as cheesy or as weird or as woo-woo as that may sound, if I didn't, I think about what I might be doing and where I might be doing it, and I just can't envision a better scenario than the one I have right now. So I would say, yeah, listen to that little voice inside of you and actually have the courage to follow it.
Dr. William Attaway:
I know people are going to want to continue to learn from you, chase, and stay connected to you and learn more about high level, if they don't already. If they're not already in that ecosystem, what is the best way for folks to connect with you?
Chase Buckner:
For sure. So my two most active networks are Twitter, where I'm WC Buckner William Chase Buckner is actually my full name and then on Instagram, I am webbing the surf. So that's a domain I picked up a long time ago. I thought it was a pretty cool metaphor for my life and my career, and so I'm going to be building that channel up there. So, yeah, I'd love to connect. If you're interested in checking out High Level, there is a 14-day free trial. You just go to gohighlevelcom. Or if the doc over here has an affiliate link, you should go through his link for sure, because he's the man and he deserves that credit.
Dr. William Attaway:
Always appreciate that. We will have those links and my affiliate link in the show notes. So thank you for that. Fantastic, of course. Chase, thank you so much for your generosity today and your transparency and talking so much about your journey so far and what you've learned. It's been so helpful, I know for me and I know for our listeners. Thank you for your generosity.
Chase Buckner:
Absolutely my pleasure. I can't wait for the next time we get to hang out in person.
Dr. William Attaway:
Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.
Dr. William Attaway:
My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.
Intro / Outro:
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