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- Dispatch #010 | Married to the Mission
Dispatch #010 | Married to the Mission
12 years, one war room, zero fallback plans. Why great companies are built on even greater relationships.
Mike Gorski
August 05, 2025
6 Min Read
“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”
Twelve years.
That’s how long Jaz and I have been marching together through marriage, startups, shutdowns, setbacks, and seasons that tried to break us.
Twelve years of choosing partnership over pride. Mission over mood.
Twelve years of building things most couples wouldn’t even dream of attempting.
We cut our teeth in direct sales, working with two of the top 50 leadership experts in the world.
For a full decade, we traveled the Midwest giving talks, running seminars, and teaching leadership development to companies in cities we barely had time to learn the names of.
Then came the agency years.
Branding, copywriting, design, SEO, full-stack builds, and software integrations for startups and SMBs.
We learned the game of digital revenue from every angle by actually doing the work, not just talking about it.
Somewhere in that chaos, we became the owners of Campfire Coworks, a co-working space for founders, freelancers, and remote workers to collaborate. We watched partnerships spark and businesses scale over whiteboard sessions and endless drip coffee.
And through it all, we moved.
We worked from beaches in Thailand, sipped tea in Dubai, chased the sun through the Carolinas, and inhaled the altitude of Colorado’s spring air.
We made this life by design. Fueled by ambition, curiosity, and just enough stubbornness to keep going.
But I would be lying to you if I didn’t talk about the hardships.
There were losses. Losses that literally brought us down to our knees.
Close family members passed. Medical emergencies hit without warning.
Clients ghosted. Accounts dried up. Credit cards maxed out. Hope ran thin.
And yet, somehow we endured. All because we had one rule: We can quit, just not on the same day.
When Jazmin was on the edge, she’d say, “I already quit today. You’re up!”
Basically that would my cue to suit up and carry the weight until the wind shifted.
Next time, it’d be my quitting day and Jazmin would armor up and drive the mission forward.
That’s the real power of relationships.
Not the highlight reel. Not the Instagram quotes. It’s the grit between the glory.
The unspoken pact that says we’re not stopping. We are simply taking turns holding the line.
Twelve years, one mission, and we’re just getting started.
“Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary things. It means doing ordinary things with extraordinary commitment.”
TL;DR | Quick Brief Links
Mission Debrief: Chaos Contained. Efficiency Engaged.
This wasn’t some wild edge case or dramatic tech meltdown. This was a regular Tuesday.
Another agency owner came to us with a familiar problem, an under utilized system pieced together inside their own HighLevel agency account.
The usual suspects were all there:
Leads slipping through cracks
Automations stacked like Jenga towers
Reporting dashboards that told more lies than truths
They didn’t come to us because things were falling apart.
They came to us because this is just what growth looks like. Messy, nonlinear, and full of blind spots.
Most people never call for help. This one did.
And they got back time, clarity, and a real system that could scale.
What We Did:
✅ Audited the agency’s existing HighLevel setup to identify automation loops, logic failures, and workflow redundancy.
✅ Migrated all core assets into a new sub-account with a clean slate and no data loss.
✅ Re-architected the most critical automation sequence using best-practice workflow logic.
✅ Integrated real-time dashboards for visibility, accountability, and forecasting.
🔥 Tactical Takeaways:
This is the norm. Most agencies build fast. Few build well. That’s not a character flaw, it’s a bandwidth issue.
Don’t confuse movement for momentum. Just because your system is firing doesn’t mean it’s functioning.
If you’re managing clients inside a cluttered agency account, you’re playing with fire. Isolate. Streamline. Control.
Operator Pro Tip:
📌 You don’t need to be broken to get better. Smart Operators optimize before they stall.
Preventative maintenance isn’t sexy, but it’s what keeps you in the game.
By the time Jaz and I hit a decade in business and marriage, one thing had become painfully clear:
Most businesses don’t fail from lack of vision. They fail from lack of execution.
We’d seen it up close where scrappy founders with good ideas crushed under the weight of disconnected tools and bloated tech stacks.
A CRM here. A calendar there. A payment app leading back to a broken email sequence.
No shared logic. No process control. No unified mission in serving the customers.
We weren’t looking for a tool. We were hunting for a platform. Something modular, expandable, capable of scaling not just businesses but economies.
So in early 2022, we put boots to pavement and started benchmarking. Not casually but strategically.
Like any good Operators, we built a 4-point rubric to evaluate our next move. We weren’t just looking to implement software, we were looking to build a future around it.
Our 4-Point Rubric Measurement System
1. Product-Market Fit
Was this platform actually solving real problems in the marketplace or just shipping features to look busy?
Leadership Integrity
Who was steering the ship? What was their long game? And were their values aligned with how we wanted to operate?
Compensation Model
Could we not only implement the product but also build services, offers, and actual revenue streams on top of it?
Community & Support
Was there a robust partner ecosystem? Could a motivated team plug in, learn, and scale fast without gatekeeping?
Our HighLevel Findings (as of 2022):
✅ Over 1 million businesses already powered by the platform
✅ Founders with a proven track record of scaling tech companies
✅ 40% lifetime affiliate commissions for partners and resellers
✅ A thriving community with:
70k+ Agencies
50K+ YouTube subscribers
Multiple Facebook groups with 10K+ members each
And a soon-to-launch Certified Admin Training Program
But this wasn’t just a business decision. This was mission alignment.
From the beginning, Jaz and I had a fire to help people gain access to real economic engines. Not gimmicks, not grindset platitudes.
Vehicles people could step into, learn to operate, and actually drive toward a life of freedom.
We didn’t just want to teach people how to earn. We wanted to train them how to build, how to master the machine, not be crushed under it.
And here’s the truth we discovered. Most businesses say they need “IT” but it’s not Information Technology they’re missing.
It’s Infrastructure and Talent.
You don’t need another app. You need the architecture. You need the Operators.
Our journey across sales, software, and systems wasn’t random. It was reconnaissance.
We weren’t just impressed, we were all in.
This wasn’t software. This was Infrastructure and we just needed to train the Talent.
Time for your recon drop.
This is Actionable Intelligence that matters, globally and inside the HighLevel war room.
💰 The $1.5B Offer Refusal 🙅
While the media hounds chase headlines about billion-dollar buyouts and stock-heavy compensation packages, something much more profound is happening in the trenches of AI.
This week, a TechSpot report confirmed what many of us in the Operator class already knew:
Top AI talent is turning down Meta’s $1.5 billion offers and building on their own terms.
You read that right.
Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Andrew Tulloch and Mira Murati from Thinking Machines Lab with eye-widening deals tied to Meta’s new “Superintelligence Labs.”
They both said no.
Not out of spite. Not out of arrogance. But out of something most empires fail to account for: Mission alignment. Creative freedom. Tactical control.
These aren’t isolated acts of rebellion. They’re part of a broader shift we’re watching unfold in real time:
Small teams are going leaner, not larger.
Visionaries are choosing mission over megacorps.
Builders are saying no to the Machine and yes to freedom, ownership, and impact.
The most talented people on Earth aren’t being outbid. They’re becoming “unbuyable.”
Resource: AI Engineers reject Meta’s $1.5 billion offers to build on their own terms
More HighLevel AI releases of 2025
Here are my top three choices from this week’s HighLevel Feature drop:
Conversational AI: User Control Permissions
Move control over which team members can view, manage, or configure your bots.
Funnels & Websites: Testimonial Element
This new element in the page builder offers a more flexible, brand-friendly way to display client feedback with multiple layouts and complete customization for styling controls.
Media Storage: New API Endpoints Adde
Dual Token Support Now Available.
You can now authenticate with either with PIT (Personal Integration Token) or JWT (JSON Web Token) which was previously the only supported method
View all Newly Added Public Endpoints HERE!!!
📺 Want the Full Feature Breakdown?
The Local HighLevel Hangouts are coming to a few new locations. Here are 3 that will be hosted within the next 30 days.
#1. HighLevel Hangout | ATLANTA, GA | August 7, 2025
#2 HighLevel Hangout | ORLANDO, FL | August 14, 2025
Registration Coming Soon!
#3. HighLevel Hangout | NEW YORK, NY | August 19, 2025
Registration Coming Soon!
#4. LEVEL UP 2025 | DALLAS, TX | October 13–16, 2025
Alright Be Honest, How’d I Do?
Your opinion matters to me.
Seriously. I don’t write this newsletter because I’ve got nothing better to do.
I do it because I am hell bent on building REAL value for you.
Did this Dispatch deliver? Or should I call in an airstrike and start fresh?
Drop a comment or leave some stars
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Mission Accomplished – Tactical, tight, and ready for deployment
⭐️ ⭐️ Needs Reinforcements – Some hits, but it’s limping
⭐️ Mission Failure – Absolute FUBAR
Until next week,
Stay Frosty!
Michael
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