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The Marketer’s Toolkit isn’t just a podcast—it’s a behind-the-scenes look at how top GoHighLevel (GHL) users are building smarter, scaling faster, and creating systems their clients actually use.
At the heart of it all is Tom Bristol—the brilliant mind behind The Marketer’s Toolkit. Known for his out-of-this-world support, rapid innovation, and uncanny ability to solve GHL’s most frustrating gaps, Tom has become a beloved creator in the GoHighLevel community. His Toolkit gives SaaS builders and agency owners the edge they need to rise above the noise.
In each episode, you’ll hear real stories from Toolkit users—creative founders, niche SaaS pros, and accidental agency owners who turned a system into a sustainable business. From intuitive dashboards for neurodivergent users to automated onboarding that scales with heart, these stories show what’s actually possible inside HighLevel.
🎧 Hosted by Virginia Scheuer, co-creator of the In the Spotlight YouTube series and long-time Toolkit power user.
Whether you're building a SaaS from scratch or refining your white-label GHL experience, this podcast delivers clarity, community, and copy-paste strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
Brought to you by The Marketer’s Toolkit
Virginia Schauer [00:00:00]:
Welcome to in the Spotlight, a marketer's Toolkit special where we highlight members of the toolkit, what they're doing in their SaaS, how they're using the toolkit. You're going to get an inside look at the back end of the marketer's toolkit and at the same time get some maybe great ideas for your business as well. If you're on the fence of joining the marketer's toolkit or you're in there and want to see more features, or you're just someone out there that are looking for ideas for your business, you are in the right spot. My name is Virginia Schauer and I'm your host. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Will Winter, the COO of AgentCRM, a company that mastered the art of pivoting purely a marketing agency and moved into SaaS and now serves thousands of insurance clients with cutting edge automation solutions. Will is going to share how Agent CRM scaled by leveraging Go high level. The marketer's toolkit, of course, and an unstoppable mindset for problem solving and team building. So buckle up for insights on automation, leadership and the secret to scaling fast without losing your mind or your hair.
Virginia Schauer [00:01:11]:
So let's get started.
Will Winter [00:01:13]:
Agent CRM. We focus on insurance. Kind of by mistake we ended up having Alex Branning specifically had a 20 year history of marketing and when Covid came around there was a big shift in the insurance space. You could now sell over the phone or over the Internet. Previously, regulations were about being in person and we had this huge history of marketing which we did some, some blogging about and sharing results and some of it was insurance. When Covid happened, all these insurance agents found us online organically. We started to notice, oh my goodness, there's a lot of insurance agents that need what we're doing, which originally was just marketing. And we did something called the giveaway funnel where we launched an ad for you to a landing page pre qualifying questions, but largely hey, you want to win a free Outback steakhouse gift card? Give us your contact details.
Will Winter [00:02:06]:
And we were using five or six different tools for the fulfillment of the marketing campaign and we used clickfunnels, a few other things as well. And someone on our team said hey Alex, you need to check this out. Go high level could probably reduce the number of tools we need. So we ended up getting Agent CRM was the thing we white labeled it as, but it was originally only the fulfillment engine for the marketing campaign. And over the next year or so we started to realize people don't just need marketing. They actually want the CRM to manage their leads as well. And that was the beginning of a shift towards being a SaaS company rather than a marketing company. We still help people with their marketing a little more like a we work with you, but we've completely pivoted our business model to SaaS instead of marketing and to insurance agents specifically, because we just had this, this whole organic shift because of what people were coming to us.
Will Winter [00:03:06]:
We didn't say, hey, we want to be an insurance software. It was like, oh, my goodness, I guess this is what people want and there's a need. Let's pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. And now agent CRM. We've been doing this, I think one of the first white labels on GoHighLevel, because we jumped in right away. We saw this tool. That was what we needed. And fortunately, we've hitched our cart to the right horse because Go High Level is continuing to develop.
Will Winter [00:03:31]:
And now they're the giant that they are, but are originally Go High Level. If you looked at the screenshots or you looked at the videos of the original stuff, it was powerful back then, but compared to where it is now, we're glad that we're on the SS GHL for our business. That's kind of the background of what we're doing today.
Virginia Schauer [00:03:51]:
That's awesome. I can vouch that I started, I guess, looking and doing, dabbling in GHL, not getting fully into it in late 2020. 2021. I think my subscription started in January 2021, and it really has exponentially gotten smoother. There's the features and everything are just well built now.
Will Winter [00:04:18]:
Yes.
Virginia Schauer [00:04:18]:
And speaking of which, layering, you still must have layers of things like the marketer's toolkit. And so what brought you to the marketer's toolkit?
Will Winter [00:04:29]:
Yeah, for us marketers, Toolkit, we, we were aware of it, but sometimes when you're in your business, you feel like, oh, I don't have time to dive into these things. So you kind of just let those things float on the sidelines. And then we entered into a partnership with someone who, they wanted to fulfill their snapshot and have it be supported on our agency, which they were using the Markers toolkit for. It forced us to. If we're going to have this partnership, we need Markers Toolkit. I guess it's time. Let's start a subscription so that we can make this partnership work. Partnership didn't even work out, but we ended up.
Will Winter [00:05:07]:
It was such A long process with this. And the one takeaway was, now we're using Markers Toolkit, which unlocks, I think, for me, if I was to tell people, why should you get Marker's toolkit? The two things are, one, everyone's using GHL these days, and so if you want to be competitive, you need to have the tools that are, you know, the pioneering tools that the best of the best. And Markers Toolkit adds on to ghl, so some core feature upgrades that GHL doesn't have. So if you want your audience to have better features, if you want your business to be competitive, you gotta use the latest tools that are out there. The other piece is more on the operational side, where as you start to scale, you experience the magnification of certain problems. There's some issues behind the scenes in support and account setup and onboarding and. And when you have five, ten people, it's okay, you can do it. But then you get 30, 40, 50, 100, 200, 300, on and on and on.
Will Winter [00:06:12]:
For us now we have 10, sometimes 15, 20, as many as 20 new trials per day. And to set up accounts at that scale has been such a nightmare. And so we've had to solve these problems that GHL doesn't have the solution for. And some of these things that we've discovered, things like the custom values updater from Marcus Tool Toolkit, and then things like the contact buttons with forms, have been so huge because we can create a smoother, standardized process that you save with some of these market toolkit features. You save five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes here, two minutes there, and multiplied by the number of users you have, that's been such a reclaiming of our team's time through many of these features.
Virginia Schauer [00:07:00]:
That's great. Do you have back by chance, would you be open to share your screen and share with us one of those features?
Will Winter [00:07:09]:
Yeah, definitely. Now, let me see. So there's a few things about. It's not just having access to the tools. You also need the team. If there's one tip I could leave our listeners, it's the tech, but it's also having people who know how to integrate it. Now, you guys have some optimization assistance, but what you guys have been awesome with Marker's toolkit is providing the tech that can be used in a few different ways or integrated in a few different ways. What we have here is our version of a custom value UpDater.
Will Winter [00:07:40]:
And with GHL, there's a few different ways you can do it, but the best option is with Markers Toolkit and what we have is a form. So this is a funnel, iframe funnel that every single account has access to and it's a funnel with a form hosted in our main account. But everyone has access to this customizer. So what they do when they're set up is we tell them yo, fill in your information, fill in your branding. So we've got here the logos, the brand color. Imagine I'm coming with my logo. I choose my file. Some of this is HTML code thanks to ChatGPT.
Will Winter [00:08:21]:
So we're taking pieces. We have an amazing team where if you get the right team back to my point, they can piece together the tools and it unlocks new ideas and then oh, we could do this and we could take that markers toolkit feature and plug it in this way. It's all the pieces together that have got us where we are. So let's just take a different one here. Hurley Insurance. So here's a logo that I use as a demo. Here's the. Let's click.
Will Winter [00:08:50]:
Gray and turquoise.
Virginia Schauer [00:08:53]:
I like how you have colors here too. So you can actually see the color.
Will Winter [00:08:58]:
This is all chatgpt here, this piece specifically.
Virginia Schauer [00:09:01]:
And it extracts the color for them.
Will Winter [00:09:03]:
It extracts the color from the logo. And then you can see here this was a huge piece brand call to action main and then we choose file. Let's make sure that we match them here. And now that's a different one. So this ability here to upload graphics in a form that's hosted on another site and synchronize it with like behind the scenes. There's so much nerdy things going on that Tom and team has done an amazing job. So upload the logo, hit next. So different pages on our customizer.
Will Winter [00:09:32]:
It's not just one form, it's multiple forms on multiple funnel steps. And they see it as the customizer. But now what we've done is every single website, every single, every single email is now instantly. Let's check this out. You can see that teal that we just did and Hurley's insurance. So the pre made websites and emails are now instantly customized. Every single asset. Now you see here testimonials.
Will Winter [00:10:00]:
If I was to do testimonials, same thing. And for some people like A2P we give them this website, they fill in the customizer and we attach a domain for them so that all they have to do is submit the link and it's got, you know, even the form is, is using the customizer super professional right out of the box. And this wouldn't be possible without the tools for Markers toolkit because this pushes and references custom values. Like if I, if I go into the custom values, that's where it's going to push this and it shows the previous submission, which is huge. So they can see what they've entered in or not. That was one of the, the major features here.
Virginia Schauer [00:10:43]:
That's huge. It is absolutely huge to be able to do that without having to code it in.
Will Winter [00:10:51]:
Now some of this stuff is so, so obvious that these kinds of tools should be CRM basic, but High Level's version of, I believe they have like your brand kit or like your logo. It doesn't implement well and it's not, it's not a streamlined process. Now what we've had to do is we use this tool and then we have to build things like if I showed you the website quickly behind the scenes now we've had to build intelligently. It's not just, hey, use the customizer and you're good. You have to take these tools and strategically weave them together to create a streamlined system. So the website behind the scenes there is so much work you can see here. Custom value, this button here, if I found the color, the color itself is a custom value instead of color.
Virginia Schauer [00:11:45]:
Right.
Will Winter [00:11:46]:
So all of these different pieces have to weave together and we're creating shortcuts or we're creating a fast lane to clients or users getting up and running. The speed to value is the huge challenge in the software business, especially go high level where it feels like the tech demands are already high enough as it is. But then there's also regulations that come out like a 2P and TCPA. And for us in insurance, we've got 20 other acronyms that they have to remember about CMS regulations. That's for like Medicare and ACA. They have their own regulations. And so the bar feels like it keeps getting higher and higher and higher and. And we have to find tools like Marker's toolkit that will allow us to navigate these changing regulations or tech hoops that people have to jump through.
Will Winter [00:12:39]:
How can we get them even faster results, get them set up faster, get them easier access to the system. That's where Markers toolkit has been a huge piece of that.
Virginia Schauer [00:12:50]:
Absolutely. Can you talk to us more about what you did with custom values and a 2P registration?
Will Winter [00:12:57]:
Yeah, big thing with GHL there's so many partners, there's so many businesses that it's been cool how a whole ecosystem of businesses has evolved from go High Level as a business. So our A2P snapshot. It started originally with a snapshot we got from Extendly. Actually they were one of the first few people that really mass Produced a great A2P snapshot. Super basic. It was like a banner. It was a form, three lines of text and another bottom banner. But for those who have been with us, 2023 was when A2P started.
Will Winter [00:13:33]:
And it feels like every three or four months A2P changes. So what you as a business, whoever is watching has to remember is that you got to stay up to date and you got to continue, oh my goodness, the number of tweaks you got to make. And we refresh our assets every time. We're constantly checking what causes rejections and what do we need to adjust in our snapshots so that things like the forms, that's huge. Where you need have specific things. I showed some of them previously. Even stupid things like maybe you know this Virginia, but the phone custom field, it cannot be a required custom field.
Virginia Schauer [00:14:12]:
Right? Right. I just found out that's the stupidest thing ever. So I'm like, why does this keep getting rejected? And it was because it was a required field.
Will Winter [00:14:22]:
But it's so stupid. Like, I mean this is one of the things that makes you pull your hair out trying to do marketing and supporting users where you really have to learn and educate yourself. Because if you can't do it right, then your whole agency or your agents are screwed.
Virginia Schauer [00:14:37]:
Absolutely.
Will Winter [00:14:38]:
Things like that. Things like for custom values, if we're talking about how the toolkit integrates and I've been talking especially about the custom values because this is one of the most valuable features for agencies, especially for us that we've experienced. But the bar for a 2P is higher than ever now. And a lot of agents don't have compliant websites. They don't know the little things like phone number can't be required or you have to have all these checkboxes or you have to have a terms and conditions link. So what we've done is we've created what I showed you, super polished professional website. And if they fill in the customizer, they have something that is a 2P kosher. So things like terms and conditions, we give them pre made terms and conditions pages.
Will Winter [00:15:26]:
It integrates with their branding so that when someone from the campaign registry, they're the people who review it when they go to the link and they say is this a legit person? They're going to see a website that is super polished and super refined because it's got, you know, their, their face that's another custom value. We have a section where it's an image of their face and, and that's also in the customizer. Upload a profile picture, upload your logo, upload your brand colors, what is your name, what is your business name? If they fill in the customizer, the website's ready to go. So they don't have to design the website. The other thing too, I don't have to design their website. I don't have to go in and set up. All I have to do is say, hey, I've got a new user. So here's our process.
Will Winter [00:16:10]:
A new user signs up, they tell us what insurance product they're doing and it creates a ticket and it says, hey, Obi, go and connect a domain. We use a sub domain. We've purchased a whole handful of domains. We connect a subdomain to the funnel that we've built for them and we just tell them, go fill in the customizer. And when they go through the training on A2P, we teach them, just copy this link, Boom, you're done. Just make sure you copy these text examples. Shortcut. And our success rate, huge for a 2p.
Will Winter [00:16:39]:
I mean, you, you, we're talking super recent March. Everyone was freaking out because a 2P changed again. And if you looked on the high level stuff, everyone was just pulling their hair out because it felt like no one was getting applications. And we had a little stint of that. But we learned quickly, we pivoted. And the site that we showed you was one of the reasons why we were able to come out of that Nightmare zone of A2P real quick and start to see really strong, consistent results again.
Virginia Schauer [00:17:05]:
I think that's wonderful. And one thing you pointed out is like, you have to be nimble, you have to be able to pivot quickly. And it sounded like from the beginning of your agency's conception, you pivoted and pivoted until you found, oh, insurance is what's needed. Or so that's just so important. And I think that when people come into sas, sometimes they think this looks, it'll be residual income, you know, and I, I can like pull my hands off of it.
Will Winter [00:17:37]:
No, you know, the. Pick your niche. There's a great quote. The niches are in the rich or the riches are in the niches. But the other thing you'll have to consider is what is the, the knowledge of your users? You gotta support them sometimes you gotta baby them. And if you've, if you've ever had frustration answering the conference we were at last week someone came up to us and they said, will, I just wanna thank your team so much because they have so much grace answering stupid questions. Cause users who don't even know how to make a phone call and it's like there's the phone button, but for them, you know, it's, it's learning, it's a learning curve. I get that.
Will Winter [00:18:11]:
But we also have for our niche insurance. The reported failure rate for insurance agents is 92%. 92% of people who get an insurance license will fail within the first few years. So that might tell you about the challenges of the insurance industry and it also might tell you about the work ethic of the kind of people who try insurance. It might tell you about the discipline or technology. There's a bunch of things that it could give you clues on. But the, the takeaway is that our users, a lot of them really rookie don't know how to run a business, potentially don't have any. 50% of our users have never had a CRM before, period.
Will Winter [00:18:51]:
So that's where it comes back to using tools like Markers Toolkit where we can use features, they'll allow them to fast track their setup because they lose steam if they're in the setup phase too long. And so we want to use all these different tools we can support services we've used extendly in the past. All these things, you daisy chain together your GHL tech stack or your GHL partners and you make sure that you're using these tools so that you can help users and also help yourself as the other side too.
Virginia Schauer [00:19:21]:
Yes, exactly, exactly. And I was thinking about that setup piece of the puzzle and making sure they're set up for success with the marketers toolkit. Do you use things like buttons or set up the homepage to be your own homepage instead of the dashboard, or are you utilizing it for maybe the opportunities section? How are you using it for their setup?
Will Winter [00:19:44]:
For their setup we have a few different tools. The customizer is the big one. The other piece is a tool we've integrated that we had to build out as well ourselves. So we've cut this conglomeration of things because really for those who are watching trying to build their agency, it's about solving problems. You find a problem, you solve a problem. And Markers Toolkit will have a lot of the missing pieces. One of the pieces we needed for setup was also a form, a checklist form that integrates with. Maybe I can share that as well actually.
Virginia Schauer [00:20:19]:
Yeah, that'd be great.
Will Winter [00:20:23]:
Okay, let's see here the entire screen. So here's another tip. You've got to determine as well what are you charging and what are you able to provide at that level. Can you see here activator, Is that visible?
Virginia Schauer [00:20:38]:
Yeah.
Will Winter [00:20:38]:
Okay. For us, our industry, a lot of agents, insurance agents, they're either given a free CRM by their agency. Now free it is what it sounds like. You don't get much for it, but their mindset is a CRM should be free or there's a lot of really low cost ones. So for us, we've chosen to sell at the GHL minimum advertised price, which is currently 97. We have to determine what level of service we can give at that level. We have a lot of, of, of support channels. But for some of people who are watching, you can afford to do a lot more hands on work because you're charging massive setup packages.
Will Winter [00:21:20]:
But as much as possible for us in our level, we're trying to create a seamless setup experience. So that means the customizer, where you go do it, here's your homework, fill it in, it's super easy. Now if it's one on one experience, you can charge top dollar for that. We can't because of our industry. But what we've done here is we've created training modules where we've broken it into phases. And this is a form that synchronize with a contact profile in another sub account. So that required some development and API work because techie for a second the local storage will save this checkbox for two days, but then it will vanish. So I can't see my past progress.
Will Winter [00:22:08]:
So we wanted something where they could track progress and what they would do is watch a training video and we host this on YouTube so they, they can go in here and then they could actually go.
Virginia Schauer [00:22:19]:
This module thing, this pop out is the marketer's toolkit.
Will Winter [00:22:24]:
This one is not specifically.
Virginia Schauer [00:22:26]:
Oh, okay.
Will Winter [00:22:27]:
I talked to Tom, like Tom, I need this. And he's like, I know I'm getting on it but sometimes I'm like Tom, Tom, Tom. I feel like I'm harassing him so much. But really it's like you gotta solve a problem for your business. And there's a lot of things I don't know that the marketer's toolkit already includes. This was one that was super important to us. And there's some things that you gotta push the tech to see, you know, how far you can really get it right. Like I mean this here required some work.
Will Winter [00:22:52]:
So I'm sure at some point this will come out from Marker's toolkit as well. But the ability to use a pop up in the automation section, this is actually a huge tech challenge. For some reason, often pop ups will disappear when you go to the automation section. So following along so many things, you got to figure out what is the problem trying to solve. For us it was how do I, how do I effectively guide users on how to use our system and self serving options?
Virginia Schauer [00:23:26]:
I hear you. Even GHL's support button would disappear in workflows sometimes.
Will Winter [00:23:36]:
Yep, yep.
Virginia Schauer [00:23:37]:
And so I mean even their stuff disappears.
Will Winter [00:23:41]:
Yep. Or you get other support widgets where stuff is blocking stuff. It's always like find a problem, solve a problem. But as you mentioned, some people think, hey, SaaS is running in the background and I can, you know, collect some money. It we're always trying to figure out what is the next thing we need to figure out. How do we optimize? How do we optimize? How do we. You want to get to that next level and you want to serve your clients well too, which means you're always innovating. Big feature I want to give a shout out to, especially because it's more recent, is the pop up feature.
Will Winter [00:24:11]:
I don't know if you guys have had a conversation on one of these interviews yet about that, but one of the killer features is the ability to shove a pop up in front of everyone or segmented audiences screens. So they log into the CRM and then it's like, hey, did you know? And you can point them. You look at email open rates. If you can get like 50% open rate, you're decently happy. But the ability to have every single person who logs in see that pop up for a designated number of times on a marketing level. Two years ago we had our best. We used a very dumbed down version of this from someone else. You guys have taken this such a next level.
Will Winter [00:24:54]:
But we did one of our best Black Friday seasons by using a pop up because we could, you know, four times show this four times to all users and an image will click to a link so you can actually say, hey guys, check this out. Or if a 2P comes out, that was actually the original thing a couple years ago was, my goodness, A2P is going to be a nightmare. This was July 2023 and we're like, how do we make sure everyone knows about this? Because this will shut down your texting if you don't do it. And again, another situation where you're like, this is obvious that I should have this feature. Come on, ghl, like, why don't you have this yet? And they've got a million other features. So thank, thank you, ghl. But some of these features that we as agency owners feel, man, this is so essential. And then partners like you guys have filled in the gaps with what, what feels like it should be obvious.
Will Winter [00:25:45]:
There's so many essential tools that you guys like, fill in those gaps for us with. But for us now we can say, hey, target people with this specific segment and show this pop up to this audience. Whether it's marketing, whether it's timely news. If we're trying to push them to calls, we do group coaching calls and we're trying to increase the show rate for that so we can show these pop ups and actually say, hey guys, check it out. We're not trying to harass them. So you use these tools wisely. With great power comes great responsibility.
Virginia Schauer [00:26:16]:
Exactly.
Will Winter [00:26:17]:
But the ability to direct people's attention strategically to the right notices, calls to action and more. Yeah, of course texts, of course emails. But the pop up feature has been one of the best ways to grab attention for our entire audience or segmented users to push them in the right direction.
Virginia Schauer [00:26:36]:
That's awesome. Yes. The announcements, like having those announcements where you want them to be and then you want to see the announcements is key. Thank you for bringing that up because it is, is a key feature that we want to have out. So thank you for that. Is there any other feature that you want to point out? Do you have like contact buttons that you use or contact buttons?
Will Winter [00:26:58]:
Definitely. I'm just going to bring anything special.
Virginia Schauer [00:27:00]:
You do with your login, like your, your. We.
Will Winter [00:27:04]:
We've done a login page modification through another coder. We haven't explored what you guys have yet. I'd love to dive deeper in. Yeah, let's come back to optimization. I'm missing a lot of stuff that.
Virginia Schauer [00:27:15]:
I'll have to get on another call. I'll. I'll send you my link for that. Totally.
Will Winter [00:27:19]:
Okay, let's talk about contact buttons because that's one of the things that I, I think there are some versions of this out there, but I believe that Markers Toolkit has the best iteration of this now. Client features. You could use contact buttons for client features like, hey, click this button to add a tag which can trigger a workflow or click this button to open a pop up which you can fill in a form. We've released some features to our users, but the biggest value for me. Let me share my screen again. We'll jump back Here, here's another one too. I believe this blurring privacy feature is also from you guys, right?
Virginia Schauer [00:27:56]:
Yes, it is.
Will Winter [00:27:56]:
If you're recording YouTube videos. YouTube makes me pull my hair out. I keep saying that. Pull my hair out. SaaS appears to be a business where you lose your hair, you upload a video and it's all dummy data. Like you can upload fake contact lists, but even if it's fake, YouTube will still flag it.
Virginia Schauer [00:28:14]:
Oh, that's funny.
Will Winter [00:28:15]:
We're creating all these contact, we're showing off features and just trying to educate users. And then YouTube flags it stupid. Okay, so we'll look here at a contact now. One of the challenges I faced for our team was inconsistency in following SOPs. And our team has a written documentation of what should happen. For example, after you do a one on one call, send the link to them, make sure they have the recording link. And that wasn't consistently getting done. So what we did was we created a contact button form waiting for post, call tracking.
Will Winter [00:28:52]:
Now it automatically is going to pull in the contact information. So I even hide the email because I don't care about the email it's going to submit, which is awesome. So Alyssa does a call. She tells us how many hours we charge. We sell banks of hours. So she used up one hour and then she pastes the loom link and then she can leave some recordings and then if there was homework for them. Yes, list the homework, send reminders. So now my team has a really easy place to remember and it's part of their process.
Will Winter [00:29:22]:
Just fill in the form. You don't have to remember. Go here and update the hours here and fill in this custom field and change this. You fill in the form and it triggers the emails, it updates the hours on file, it sends off the link. If there was homework, it's going to list that in the email and in different places, different actions or different types of calls, you know, even support simple things that we can do is sales. We do sales fulfillment through here as well. And we say, hey, check off the box, you know, which package did they buy? And we just train our team, use the form and we make it simple for them. You could feel like your team is dropping the ball, your team is a bunch of idiots.
Will Winter [00:30:02]:
Or you could say, hey, maybe I made it too difficult for them, maybe I'm asking too much. And I can create shortcuts, I can create simplified processes that now I've been playing around with different things here. So there's lots more things that we're trying to push the tech for what can we use these for? Not just, hey, it's a contact button with a form. But how can I integrate that with an automation that can do this and can trigger that? Using these tools together can streamline your process.
Virginia Schauer [00:30:35]:
What's great is that you can do this per location. Location. And so your location is, is here. You have these buttons up here. But not necessarily all of your sub accounts has those buttons.
Will Winter [00:30:47]:
Exactly. Yeah. Now we, we've experimented with, with different features for different accounts. Now one thing you again have to weigh out. I have all these features from Marker's toolkit. What am I going to charge to customize it? The custom work is what you have to evaluate because I can do custom buttons on every single sub account or what am I going to charge to do that? Or for us, the way we do it is we have, we serve insurance agents, we have agencies with multiple agents and they say, hey, here's some of the things I want. And they pay a bigger package. So we're willing to set up special buttons based on, you know, a group sort of location.
Will Winter [00:31:26]:
That's like a location is what we call them in Markers toolkit. Right. So they might have a few extra buttons, but we're charging the right amount. So you're going to want to feature this into your thing. What buttons should everyone get or what buttons or what. What do I want to charge to set up these extra features for people? Those are things that we've had to figure out like, okay, now I've got new options and what do I do with it strategically?
Virginia Schauer [00:31:49]:
Exactly. Yeah. You have the location and then the location groups in the customizer. So you can put, you can make one location group just have one sub account in it or you can put that location group for maybe a SaaS plan. One SaaS plan has this or one customized group of people that are sub agencies under another agency or something like that.
Will Winter [00:32:11]:
Yeah. And even sub account specific logos. That's been pretty cool too. This is kind of funny with, with some businesses, some of it, it's, it's branding, some of it's a little bit vanity, I assume where people want their own logo on the sub account and it means a lot to them. And it has become for some of our plans a selling feature where we actually give them the option, especially for agencies who pay a bigger setup package. We will put your logo and that's the ability. You know, we talked about contact buttons, but there's a lot of things you can tie to clusters or location groups. Location IDs.
Will Winter [00:32:48]:
So you say all of these people are a part of this agency. Make sure they get these buttons, make sure they get this logo. Bunch of other cool things you can customize on a group location basis, which has been huge. Definitely for us. Like an agencies, those represent, you know, if I'm selling one off accounts, that's, that's great. But I want to collect clusters of contracts. I want, you know, one, one grouping. We had a guy that brought us 70 accounts.
Will Winter [00:33:17]:
Just one, one sale brought us 70 accounts. So they're all in his agency and he wants to give his branding and reinforce his business in there. Potentially wouldn't have gotten that opportunity if we hadn't been able to sell on this idea of hey, you can actually brand this the way you want.
Virginia Schauer [00:33:33]:
That's so it's so valuable and inexpensive. If you think about like marketers toolkit is like pennies compared to the value that you get.
Will Winter [00:33:42]:
Yeah, I mean I'm going to try to sell this thing for you. I know that people who are watching this may or may not. If you're watching this and you have Marketer's toolkit, you're going to find some ideas to implement. If you're not watching this, I have no, maybe I need to start getting commission from you guys. I have no monetary incentive. I am such a believer in Marketer's toolkit and you know, like the amount of time, whether it's new features that you can add that will increase what you can sell or for our team, probably per month, we're saving two to three times the subscription cost in man hours. So how much time is it taking you to do those things? I would have to pay, you know, va. You could pay a VA between, you know, six to twelve dollars an hour.
Will Winter [00:34:26]:
US Multiply that by the tasks that have to be done that could be offloaded to like a customizer. You know, setting up a 2P that takes time. And if you're able to create these shortcuts, you're saving or you're redeeming time that you can reinvest in other things. A2P is such a waste of time, but it has to be done. And if we have these tools that allow us to save time, create shortcuts, can create consistency with SOPs, all that stuff, it's a no brainer choice for us. Now we love you guys and what Smartcoast toolkit's doing, how it's helping us scale.
Virginia Schauer [00:35:03]:
Thank you so much for coming on. I have another question for you because I mean you Obviously are so incredibly successful in your SaaS over the past years, you know, making it what it is today. What are you the most proud of that you've done in your business?
Will Winter [00:35:18]:
I think for me it's team. My background, I actually was pursuing pastoral ministry. I want to work in a church. And I met Alex doing ministry school. And at the end of ministry school, Alex said, hey, I want all your time. I was doing a little bit of part time stuff for him. I had a scripted webinar and I had to wrestle with this because it felt like a fork in the road where I was going this way. And Alex was saying, hey, here's the red carpet.
Will Winter [00:35:46]:
I want you to be my coo. Come with me on the business adventure. And I had to wrestle with that for a bit, but I felt like this door was being opened for me and I had to see, okay, what do I do? How do I feel like I've got a sense of calling. Like God has called me to, to invest in people. And I don't care about insurance, I don't care about insurance agents, I don't care about this industry. But I started to see my ability to develop people. Dan Martel has a great quote. If anyone is in the SaaS industry, hopefully you know the name Dan Martel.
Will Winter [00:36:18]:
He says, build the people, the people will build the business. And we found that our ability to do big things is connected to the people on our team. The customizer that I showed you was a result of finding and training the right people and learning how to lead them effectively. Because an idea starts here and then Shiraz adds his piece and I add my piece and then of course we have to pull Tom in because we're stuck and we don't know how to do the next piece. But leading people and developing people, I would hope, and I'd like to believe that businesses could be greatness incubators or greatness factories where we find these people. And a lot of the GHL world, we are working with people in Pakistan, working with people in Philippines. Philippines. Maybe it's a North American employee as well.
Will Winter [00:37:04]:
But you find people and you give them opportunities and you train and support them and they become something bigger than they ever thought they could be. Training them to believe in themselves and train them how to lead calls effectively, how to, how to teach and communicate. When I, when I die and end my days on this earth, I'm not going to look back and say I did some cool tech stuff. I'm going to say, Astrid is a dynamic leader because of What I was able to do with her, Alyssa, I helped to unlock her potential or these sorts of things that you gotta find the right people and train them. I can't even do much of the Marcus toolkit implementation anymore, but I've got someone like Muhammad on my team who he is brilliant. He's a genius. And we keep giving him opportunities and we keep pulling him into things that the people piece of the business. You gotta find out how the heck do you hire? Right.
Will Winter [00:37:56]:
That's a challenge on its own. And then how do you train and support and develop people that will help grow your business? But also it's a whole lot more fulfilling when you look at the people as the outcome. I want to build big business. I want to make a ton of money. But I hope that I can make a difference in people's lives. Specifically our team, for one.
Virginia Schauer [00:38:15]:
That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. Is there a place where people follow you for tips and things like that? Do you end do any of that?
Will Winter [00:38:26]:
Definitely. Check out our YouTube channel, Agent CRM. You can find a lot of things that we've done. Maybe you're going to take inspiration for how we set up some of our automations. For me personally, Will J. Winter on Instagram is my handle. And I'm even just rolling out training. Like, how do I.
Will Winter [00:38:44]:
How do I lead teams? Because a big part is how do you train people at a higher level? If you've got someone taking phone calls and they're not communicating effectively, that's your reputation as a business owner. And where do you find the resources? My hope is to create resources for training people on some of the skills, honestly, you wish you learned in school. But I don't know what they're teaching us these days. So leadership skills. That's what I'm personally all about. Will J. Winter on Instagram.
Virginia Schauer [00:39:14]:
Awesome. Awesome. I hope, I know that a lot of people will get so much value out of this and will want to follow you and learn more about your leadership skills. Obviously you know what you're doing.
Will Winter [00:39:26]:
So sometimes, sometimes I wonder.
Virginia Schauer [00:39:29]:
But I think we all feel chaotic. Right? Like, we all feel like we don't know what we're doing, but we do. Like, honestly, like you do.
Will Winter [00:39:39]:
Yeah. Yep.
Virginia Schauer [00:39:41]:
You're your own worst critic, but you really are. You really are. Well, thank you so much for being on today and. And we'll see you around.
Will Winter [00:39:49]:
Yes. Thank you so much, Virginia. And for those who are watching, get your dang Markers toolkit subscription and use it. I'm preaching to myself, too. So many features we need to unlock. Thank you for having me on to share about what we're doing and.
Virginia Schauer [00:40:03]:
Yeah, okay. Thank you.