🧰 Tuesday Toolbook
I'm going to admit something that still bugs me a little...
For years I had no real idea what I was spending to run my business.
Not because I don't watch money. I watch money. But software doesn't hit you all at once. It's $97 here, $297 there, $49 for the thing you signed up for on a Tuesday in 2017 and forgot about. Different cards, different billing dates, nothing ever landing in the same place.
In 2019 I finally sat down and added it up.
Nine logins. CRM, email, funnels, forms, scheduling, call tracking, review requests, text messaging. Almost $2,000 a month. And none of them talked to each other, so I was also paying in leads that fell through the cracks between them.
I have never enjoyed a project more than the one that came next.
I killed them. One by one, canceled, off the books, all of it rebuilt inside a single platform called HighLevel. Total game changer.
One of my Mastermind members put me onto it that year. Told me it had swallowed most of his stack. I filed it away the way you do when someone recommends software, then ran my numbers and went back with a lot more questions.
One login running the CRM, the funnels, the email, the calendar, the texting, the review requests. Everything my nine tools were doing separately, in one place, actually talking to each other.
There's a specific kind of satisfaction in watching a subscription disappear off a statement.
That $2,000 went away. And that was the small part of the story.
A few years later I built a software company on HighLevel technology. Our brand, our product, our support team, sold to business owners across the country. It grew into a multi million dollar SaaS company, landed on the Inc. 5000 list in 2024, and was acquired earlier this year.
I didn't have to build the technology. It was already there. I just had to build the business.
My team is building custom voice agents and AI chatbots for clients right now, all on top of HighLevel. Because they're built where the CRM already lives, they sync perfectly with it. The agent answers the call, the contact record updates, the pipeline moves, the follow up fires. No connectors, no middleware, no praying the handoff works at 9pm on a Saturday.
Seven years on the same platform and I have never once gone looking for a reason to leave.
Now the AI is here too. Still one platform, still a fraction of what nine of them cost me.
That's today's tool. ⬇️
Twenty Days Left...
They're running their Summer of AI right now. The whole AI suite is free through August 31. AI Studio, where you describe the site or the campaign you want and it builds it. Ask AI. Workflow AI. Funnel AI. Email AI.
The AI agents are the part worth moving on. Switch them on before August 31 and your free window starts from that day, not from the deadline. Same voice and chat agents my team builds with. Activate this week and you're running them free well past Labor Day.
Speed is king!
P.S. See you inside The Growth Stack later this week — "So… When Did Your AI Tech Stack Double?"
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