The argument in one line.
The self-serve SaaS model everyone tries to build first is the last thing you should build -- done-for-you gets you clients faster, teaches you what the market actually needs, and is the only foundation Level 3 can be built on.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You just signed up for GoHighLevel and are spending time on logos, white-label themes, or onboarding tours before landing a single client.
- You have fewer than 10 clients and are wondering why the self-serve model is not converting.
- You want a clear mental model for when to do work for clients, when to hand them the system, and when to build a fully automated product.
- You are evaluating niches and want a concrete example of what a done-for-you engagement looks like in home services or dental.
SKIP IF…
- You already have 30+ active HighLevel clients and are actively scaling -- this is foundational, not growth-stage advice.
- You have an existing large audience or email list and distribution is not your problem.
The full version, fast.
Most people who join GoHighLevel immediately try to build a self-serve SaaS -- a product where strangers find them online, sign up, and use the software themselves. The problem is that model requires distribution, proof, and testimonials that beginners do not have. The video breaks down three levels: Level 1 is done-for-you, where you solve one specific problem for a business using HighLevel on the back end and they never touch the software. Level 2 is done-with-you, where the client gets the system but you stay involved in training and support. Level 3 is fully self-serve, and it only works when you already have an audience. The prescription is to stop building and start selling -- one afternoon of calls to local businesses is worth more than six months of website polish.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:43
01 · The Setup
Noob reveals he has been building for three weeks with zero clients. Pro asks the one question that frames the whole video.
00:43 – 01:54
02 · The Three Levels
Pro introduces the framework: Level 1 DFY, Level 2 DWY, Level 3 self-serve SaaS. Noob is starting at Level 3 while technically at Level 0.
01:54 – 03:50
03 · Level 1 -- Done For You
DFY explained with home services as the example. Client never logs in. Simple problem-solution sale. Build one, get a case study, sell the second.
03:50 – 05:14
04 · The SaaS Fantasy
Noob pushes back -- he sees people with hundreds of SaaS clients. Pro points out nearly all of them built an audience first.
05:14 – 07:42
05 · Level 2 -- Done With You
DWY explained through the dental office example. Third-party support only makes sense at 30-50 clients, not at five.
07:42 – 10:10
06 · Level 3 -- The Dream
The self-serve SaaS model. Three qualifying questions: audience? proven offer? proof? Noob answers no to all three. The desert convenience store analogy.
10:10 – 11:54
07 · What Actually Happens
Most Level 3 starters end up doing DFY anyway -- but at DIY pricing, paying for unused tools. The cosplay CEO line.
11:54 – 13:14
08 · The Move
Stop building. Start selling. If selling feels scary, do research -- Google Maps, Facebook Messenger, real conversations.
13:14 – 13:50
09 · The Progression
Level 1 teaches you what you need for Level 2. Level 2 teaches you what you need for Level 3. You cannot skip it.
13:50 – 14:14
10 · CTA -- HighLevel Guild
Plug for the HighLevel Guild community. Free via affiliate HighLevel signup. Final line: ditch the SaaS, go get your first client.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Business owners do not wake up thinking they need a SaaS product -- they wake up thinking they need the phone to ring more.
- The done-for-you sales conversation is three sentences: problem is X, solution is Y, we make that Z together -- would you like to talk?
- Spending weeks on logos and white-label themes with zero clients is procrastination disguised as work.
- You learn more in the first two weeks of a real client engagement than in six months of building a SaaS nobody uses.
- Most people who try to start at Level 3 end up doing done-for-you work anyway -- but at do-it-yourself pricing.
- Paying for third-party support when you have five clients means paying someone to do something you should be doing yourself.
- The people selling you theme builders are making money off the idea that you will become a SaaS owner -- not off you actually becoming one.
- Self-serve SaaS works when you already have the hard part covered: an audience, proof, and distribution.
- Give clients the mobile app so they can respond to leads -- but never give them access to the workflow or funnel builder.
- Level 1 is built on conversations; Level 3 is built on Level 1 and 2 -- not on guesses.
- The convenience store in the middle of the desert is technically great -- the problem is nobody walks in.
- Done-with-you only makes sense at 30+ clients when the support load exceeds what you can handle alone.
- Driving product adoption is harder than doing everything for the client -- churn is higher when the software is not fully automated for them.
Start where clients are easiest to close.
WHAT TO LEARN
The sequence matters more than the model -- done-for-you is not a consolation prize, it is the only path that builds the proof and experience that makes everything else possible.
01The Setup
- The gap between building and selling reveals itself in the first question: how many clients do you have?
02The Three Levels
- Most beginners are solving a Level 3 problem -- distribution and self-serve conversion -- while at Level 0, before a single client exists.
03Level 1 Done For You
- Clients pay for results, not software -- a business owner who wants more phone calls does not care which platform you used to make that happen.
- The done-for-you sales conversation is short because it is about one problem, not a product demo -- that simplicity is why it closes faster.
- Giving clients access to more of the platform creates more support problems, not more value -- limit access to what they actually need.
04The SaaS Fantasy
- Third-party support and white-label infrastructure are Level 3 investments; bringing them in at Level 1 is paying to look like a business before you have one.
05Level 2 Done With You
- Driving product adoption is a harder problem than doing the work yourself -- churn is higher when the client has to log in daily and the software is not fully automated for them.
06Level 3 The Dream
- Distribution is the hard part of self-serve SaaS, and it cannot be bypassed by a better onboarding flow or a cleaner logo.
07What Actually Happens
- Most people who skip to Level 3 end up doing Level 1 work anyway, but at Level 3 pricing and overhead -- the shortcut costs more than the long way.
08The Move
- When selling feels uncomfortable, research conversations with real business owners are a productive substitute -- they reveal what to build before you build it.
09The Progression
- The natural progression from DFY to DWY to self-serve is not a ladder you climb -- it is evidence you accumulate, and each level requires the one before it.
- Every real client engagement teaches you what the market actually needs -- months of building a self-serve product with no users teaches you nothing.
- A case study from one client is the asset that gets the second client -- the software build is not the asset.
Terms worth knowing.
- Done For You (DFY)
- A service model where you build and operate everything inside HighLevel on behalf of the client. The client pays for results and does not log into the software.
- Done With You (DWY)
- A hybrid model where you give the client the core system and automations but train them on daily tasks like calendars and conversations. Requires active product adoption.
- Self-Serve SaaS
- A model where clients find the product online, sign up, onboard themselves, and use the software independently with no ongoing involvement from the seller.
- Speed to lead
- How quickly a business responds to a new inbound inquiry. A common done-for-you automation is a workflow that contacts a new lead within seconds of submission.
- Snapshot
- A portable package of HighLevel automations, calendars, pipelines, and templates that can be imported into a client sub-account to give them a pre-built system.
- White-label
- Rebranding a software platform under your own name and logo so clients experience it as your proprietary product rather than GoHighLevel.
- Distribution
- The ability to get your offer in front of people who might buy it -- email lists, social audiences, referral networks. The missing ingredient for most self-serve SaaS attempts.
- HighLevel Guild
- A paid community run by ItsKeaton focused on building a HighLevel agency, accessible free via an affiliate HighLevel signup or via direct payment.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
11:03
“Stop building. Start selling.”
11:39
“You trying to figure out what color to make your website and your app and which third party support company to hire is just procrastination disguised as work.”
09:29
“You've basically built an automated amazing convenience store in the middle of the desert and you're wondering why nobody is walking in.”
11:44
“It's literally cosplay. Like, you're dressing up like a CEO when you have zero clients.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogy
00:00Dude, check this out. Come here. I signed up for HighLevel three weeks ago.
00:04I've been working nonstop on my website, and my logo is almost done.
00:10I have a bunch of really cool work flows that are gonna make it so easy to sell this. And literally, all I'm waiting for is my logo to be done and just a few other graphics for the website. And then I'm ready to launch.
00:22That reminds me. What is your launch plan, by the way? What do you mean?
00:27I mean, like, once the site's done, how are you gonna get customers? Well, I'm gonna post about it, but I'm also setting up, like, this automated onboarding video tour so people can just sign up.
00:38Many clients do you have right now? None, but I don't if not the point. Stop you right there because you are trying to do the hardest version of this.
00:48It's what everybody does when they sign up for HighLevel, and it's the reason most of them never make money. Well, what do you mean?
00:56I mean, there's three levels to this whole thing. Okay? And you're starting out on level three when you're technically not even past level zero yet.
01:05You need to start with number one, and you're attempting to do level three on day one. What do you mean?
01:12Like three levels? Yeah. And by the end of this video, you're gonna understand why level one is the actual easy money that people talk about.
01:22Level two is where you actually grow, and level three is something that you and most people have no business attempting until they've done levels one and two. So what's level one?
01:34Level one is done for you, d f y. This is where you go find a business, you talk to them, you figure out their problem, and you solve it for them using HighLevel.
01:46They don't log in. They don't build build anything. They might not even know there's a desktop app, but they pay you because you're getting them a result that they weren't getting before.
01:57But that sounds like an agency. Like, I'm not in the business of trading time for money like all those agency owners. And this is exactly the mindset that's keeping people stuck.
02:07HighLevel is a tool. The plumber, the HVAC contractor, the dentist, the tree trimmer, they don't care what software you're using.
02:17They don't wake up thinking, wow. I really need a nice SaaS product. The business owner wakes up thinking, I just need the phone to ring more.
02:25And you make it ring more for him, and then you charge him for it. And you deliver it using high level on the back end. But doesn't that depend on me doing everything?
02:35Like, I'm trying to scale here. Okay. Slow down.
02:39You have zero clients right now. Scaling is not your problem. Getting your first client is.
02:45And this is what nobody tells you about done for you is that it's so much easier because the sales conversation is so much simpler when you're not talking about features and, hey, I'm gonna replace everything in your business, and you're gonna be able to use this awesome software. You're just saying problem is x, solution is y, and we can make that equal z together.
03:07Would you like to talk about it? Okay. But, like, what does that actually look like day to day?
03:13So you Let's take home services as an example and tree trimming as the sub niche within that.
03:20You go talk to some tree trimmers and figure out what their problems are and then you build a simple solution using HighLevel that solves that problem. It might be speed to lead. It might be like a call connect workflow.
03:34It could be Google review requests. It could be voice AI or chat AI if they're running ads, any of those small little services that solves a specific leak in their current business.
03:48And then you sell one client, you get a case study, and you use that case study to sell the second client. And they never log in to the software? Like, I spent so much time building this.
03:58Maybe, and I mean maybe, you give them the mobile app so they can respond to leads every once in a while. But they're not in the workflow builder.
04:06They're not in the funnel builder, they have no business being in there, and every time you give them access to something else, one of two things is gonna happen. Number one, they're never gonna use it, or number two, they are gonna use it and then they're gonna break it and you're gonna have more support problems than you want.
04:23But, like, this still feels so small. I see all these people with, hundreds of SaaS customers completely do it yourself where they sign in and build everything themselves for $800 a month.
04:35Yeah. But how many of those people do you think started by building a software that people could just go to the website, check out, and sign up with everything themselves?
04:46Literally, maybe five of them, and all of them had a massive audience that they launched to. Most everyday run of the mill successful high level agencies got really good at solving a run of the mill everyday problem for a specific niche, and then once they got to 30 customers, 50 customers, a 100 customers, they started getting into the economies of scale in level two.
05:10Okay. But when does level two come in then? Level two is done with you.
05:16This is where you give the core system to the client, but you're still involved in supporting them and actually using that on a day to day basis. To be honest, if you're in home services, you may never get to this point because you'll still be building so much on behalf of the clients, but if in a different niche, this may make a lot more sense.
05:37What do you mean about the niche? So think about dental, for example. If you're working with a dental office, you've got the dentist himself or herself, and then you've got the front desk people.
05:46They're the ones that are actually using the software. They've gotta know how to use the calendars, the conversations, and maybe a few of the other manual tasks that you have to do every day inside of HighLevel.
05:57So what you would do for them is package a snapshot that has all of the automations that they need inside of there, the calendars and the text templates, and then you would train them on an ongoing basis on how to actually use that. And that's harder than done for you. Why?
06:14Well, because you have a training component now, and it's up to the client to actually adopt the product. And driving product adoption is actually much more difficult than just doing everything for the client.
06:28It's its own problem. It's its own set of solutions that you have to come up with for it, and your churn is gonna be higher if you're relying on them to actually use the software every single day when it's not a 100% automated for them.
06:42So would this be where, like, third party support companies come in? This is where they start to make sense for some people.
06:50If you've got 30 to 50 dentists on your software and the front desk people are asking questions about how to use it every day and they reach out to you every single time for every single question, your time is better spent trying to get new dentists on your software. So you could hire a third party support company.
07:10They come in. They can answer those level one support chats so that if anything needs to get escalated, you actually have time to help with that. So if I get five clients and I'm paying for a support company, you're paying somebody to do something that you should be doing yourself.
07:28If you only have five clients, you should know all of them by name. They should be able to message you, and you should be taking care of their needs on a done for you basis.
07:38Done with you doesn't come into place until you have dozens of clients. Okay. So now we're at level three which is what I wanna build anyway.
07:49Yeah. The thing everyone is trying to build because it's what gets sold as the dream. This is where the client finds you.
07:56They sign up on your website because it's so compelling and amazing. They onboard themselves using your knowledge base and product tours, and then they start using the software in their own business every single day, give you amazing reviews, tell all of their friends, and there's no long term commitment from you, and you .
08:16Yeah. But that's the dream. Right?
08:17Passive income, recurring revenue. Yeah. But let me ask you something.
08:21Do you have an audience? Not really. I mean, I have a few 100 followers.
08:26Do you have a proven offer that you've sold to more than 10 people? No. Do you have case studies, testimonials, or proof that what you do actually works?
08:36I mean, not really. Then who is signing up for this SaaS? Like, genuinely, who is making it to the checkout page and actually putting in their credit card?
08:46Because you just told me you hadn't thought past finishing your beautiful website. And I'm not making fun of you. This is where most people are, but the dream that's sold around this skips past the hard part that most people don't wanna face.
08:59What's the hard part? Distribution. Getting eyeballs.
09:03If you're Dean Graciosi and Tony Robbins and you launch a high level SaaS to your massive email list and literally everybody on earth that knows you, then, yeah, build a self serve SaaS because you've got the hard part taken care of already. But you with no testimonials, no proof, and no idea where your next client is coming from have basically built an automated amazing convenience store in the middle of the desert and you're wondering why nobody is walking in.
09:30So it's not that the model itself is bad? No. It's actually great.
09:35It's just that it's the last thing you should build, not the first. And here's what's really happening.
09:41Most people try to start here where you are and end up doing all the done for you work anyway. They can't get the self serve sign ups, so they eventually just go out and start doing prospecting and closing people one on one. But they don't change their pricing, so they're doing done for you with a do it yourself price point.
09:59And they're paying for a bunch of extra tools like third party support, white label knowledge base, and white label onboarding tours that nobody's actually using. Ouch. I'm not saying it to be mean.
10:10I'm just saying it because I see it every single day. People spending weeks trying to make their website pretty when they should just be spending the afternoon calling 10 to 20 businesses and starting conversations. Because the reality is the afternoon of calling people could get your one client closed that actually covers your high level subscription, and then everything after that is profit.
10:31So the white labeling, the, like, knowledge base, the custom theme that I've put in there, you're saying none of that matters?
10:40I'm saying none of it matters yet. They don't care about the colors of your app because they probably shouldn't even be seeing the desktop app anyway. They don't care about the white label knowledge base because you're gonna be doing the work for them.
10:54And you trying to figure out what color to make your website and your app and which third party support company to hire is just . Alright.
11:05This feels like a personal attack. Good. Because the people selling you theme builders and the fact that you need white label support for your clients with zero clients are just making money off of the idea that you have that you're going to be a SaaS owner.
11:21But it's literally cosplay. Like, you're when you have zero clients. So what's the point?
11:27Okay. But at some point, you do need that stuff. Right?
11:31At some point, absolutely. Invest in the brand, make things as seamless as possible, make it so that you can close 20 clients a month instead of just four.
11:40But that's a level three problem, not a level one problem. So what's the move then?
11:46Like, somebody's watching this. They're just like me.
11:50They feel personally attacked by everything you just said. What are they supposed to do? Stop building.
11:56Start selling. And if selling feels scary, then just do research.
12:01Walk out your front door, get on Facebook Messenger, get on Google Maps, and just start talking to people. And be upfront about the fact that you're doing research research on the x y z business model, and you want to see if they'd be willing to have a chat. Figure out what their day to day problems are.
12:16Sometimes they'll tell you. Sometimes it's kind of coded in what they're saying, and then build a simple solution in high level that actually solves that problem. It's not gonna be nine times out of 10 what your favorite YouTube guru told you to sell.
12:29It's going to be whatever your niche actually needs that they will say yes to. Okay. That's level one, and then here's what happens after that.
12:39You close your first client, and you learn more in the first two weeks of setting them up and getting results than you would in six months of building a do it yourself SaaS that nobody actually uses. And what you'll learn is the things that they actually need, the things that they lie about, the things that they tell the truth about, and all of this will support the infrastructure that you build to then go to level two and level three because they're built on experiences, not guesses.
13:04So level one helps you build level two. And level two teaches you how to build level three. You can't skip this natural progression.
13:13You can try, but you're just gonna end up back in the same spot six months later, but you're gonna have spent a bunch of money on tools you don't need, and you're gonna be demoralized. Look.
13:23If you're watching this and you realize you may have skipped a step or two, that's okay. Most people just need somebody to sort of tell this message to them in a way that resonates so that they can start working on the right things. If you want a clear path on how to actually do this, everything from picking a niche, building an offer for that niche, getting sales meetings, having sales conversations, delivering for them, retaining them for a long time.
13:50We cover all of that in my community, the HighLevel Guild, which you can join 100% for free by signing up for or upgrading to the next level of HighLevel with my link. There's also a direct pay option available if that's better for you. All the links for that are down below.
14:04Please stop building a software company and start building a service that uses software. Ditch the SaaS. It can come later.
14:12Go get your first client.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Three weeks in and the logo is almost done. The Noob has workflows, an automated onboarding tour, and a vision -- the only thing missing is clients. The Pro asks one question that collapses the whole plan.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:08model
The Three Levels of HighLevel
- Level 1: Done For You
- Level 2: Done With You
- Level 3: Self-Serve SaaS
A progression model for GoHighLevel businesses. Each level requires skills and proof built in the previous one. Most beginners skip to Level 3, which is why most fail.
Steal forany positioning video or course framing the right starting point for a new service business
03:01concept
The Problem-Solution-Result Sale
The done-for-you sales conversation in three sentences: problem is X, solution is Y, together we make that equal Z. Simplicity is the point -- no features, no software pitch.
Steal forcold outreach scripts, DM templates, sales call openers
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
13:40product
“We cover all of that in my community, the HighLevel Guild, which you can join 100% for free by signing up for or upgrading to the next level of HighLevel with my link.”
Soft and well-earned -- lands after 13+ minutes of genuine value. Affiliate angle disclosed implicitly; direct pay option also offered.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
Visual structure at a glance.
