Can you compare selling GHL (GoHighLevel) versus selling automation services built with tools like Make.com or NN, explain why you don’t run ads when promoting the ‘buy’ side, and clarify the difference between selling GHL as an affiliate/reseller versus selling your own automation solutions?
He explains that GHL is like a peg leg—it does many CRM functions well and gets you up and running fast, but it limits flexibility and articulation compared to tools like Make.com or NN, which act as glue and extensions of his own workflow, letting him build anything. He prefers those because they integrate seamlessly with his business, whereas GHL feels restrictive. He also notes that selling GHL often involves an MLM‑style resale model (buying a license and reselling sub‑licenses), while selling his own automation solutions means selling his expertise and custom‑built systems, which is fundamentally different from affiliate sales.
So, should I build and manage automations for clients using GHL or do it all myself? It depends. I think GoHigh Level is an awesome platform that gets you about 80% of the way there. If you're running naive offers or something like home services, you don't really need much more than 80%. You could get to 80% and then focus on getting as many leads into that pipeline as possible, say through ads. And honestly, you could crash. We have a lot of businesses that do crash. One business I worked with until recently, Dental Media Corp., ran everything 100% through Go High Level and they're making a couple hundred grand a month. They started about a year and a half ago, two years ago, and had a big run-up, working with dentists running simple offers. I've also worked with dozens of other businesses. One of my old roommates, actually one of my best friends, ran up a GHL sub-account business, which was pretty interesting. And even a big home services company I work with, doing a few million dollars a month, was on GHL until recently. So you can do really good things with GHL. However, if you're in a very high competition industry where the additional 20% is margin you can squeeze, optimizing a speed-to-lead system or adding extra functionality can be valuable. I like going above and beyond that because I think I can bridge the gap between 80% and 100% and make a bit of arbitrage, which is ultimately what business is.
Yeah, plenty of experience. My SaaS, Clarvo, is actually built similarly to GHL — a lot of our clients were using GHL, which is part of why we thought we could do better and turned it into a call-specific speed-to-lead solution instead. My old roommate also tried running a GHL white-label startup for a year, so I watched him work in GHL daily — he actually learned to code by customizing it. So yeah, you can definitely figure GHL out.
Don't get me wrong—you can do this; there are no hard rules in business, you can bend any rule you want. If you productize an automation for resale as a template and sell the outcome as an offer, you're no longer really an automation agency; you're an Outreach agency. You build one system, execute it well, and sell the outcome—you're selling cold email and LinkedIn Outreach, not automation itself. A community member named SOD did exactly this, scaling to $80,000 a month in revenue, with the vast majority of profit coming from this approach (minus some LinkedIn Outreach). It's totally doable; you're just shifting the essence of your business from automation agency to Outreach agency. Regarding one‑time versus subscription revenue: one‑time revenue looks like big spikes (e.g., January, February, March, April), while subscription revenue shows a gradual, predictable increase in monthly recurring revenue that eventually outscales the spike model if the trend lines favor it. Each has pros and cons—subscriptions give you a stable base minus churn, while one‑time gives big upfront cash but requires you to resell each time. What I usually recommend is to start with one‑time revenue to spike your cash flow quickly, stockpile that money, then reinvest it into a recurring service for growth. That way you get the best of both worlds: a big initial spike plus the ability to invest in growth and email systems, eventually recouping through the recurring model. This works for any service business model—get the big spike, then use that cash to fund growth. You’ll also benefit from referral opportunities and similar advantages that come with the early‑stage burst of work.
I understand the concern about friction, but GHL isn’t as cumbersome as it seems. The onboarding process is relatively straightforward, and once a client adopts the platform they’ll stay with it for a while, leading to recurring revenue. However, I believe there’s more opportunity in building a general‑purpose automation platform rather than white‑labeling an out‑of‑the‑box CRM. That’s why I suggested focusing on broader solutions.