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Dispatch #011 | Infrastructure and Talent
Turn bold bets into controlled wins.
Mike Gorski
August 12, 2025
8 Min Read
“Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.”
IT.
For most of my career, those two letters historically meant Information Technology. Servers, networks, help desks, and the poor guy in the corner quietly fixing everyone’s email.
But somewhere between the startup trenches, client firefights, and late-night whiteboard sessions, I realized the real meaning of IT.
Infrastructure and Talent.
This didn’t come to me in some zen moment on a beach. It came out of frustration. The kind that builds when you watch the same movie play out on loop.
Here’s the plot: Someone has a solid product or service, maybe even a local stronghold. They’ve built enough to win small battles and now they want to storm a much bigger hill.
Scale to multiple markets, franchise, or challenge an entrenched industry leader.
The vision is solid. The ambition is real. But the plan is missing the backbone.
Bold moves require infrastructure. Systems that can be deployed anywhere and still perform under pressure.
Intake, operations, compliance, payments, follow-ups, reporting all need to be hardwired so the machine runs the same in every theater of operation.
And bold moves require talent, not warm bodies, not “good enough for now” hires.
Qualified Operators who can build that infrastructure right the first time, maintain it without babysitting, and scale it when the mission demands it.
The bigger the problem, the bigger the resources required to solve it. That’s just the math.
You don’t fix a multi-million-dollar challenge with a minimum-wage budget.
Yet over and over, I see the same flawed mindset: the belief that you can pull maximum reward from minimum risk.
There are ways to be shrewd. Absolutely. But at the end of day, leverage matters.
Of course you can buy tools and learn new skills. But if your only leverage is yourself, you’re boxed in by the hard limits of time and energy.
The goal is to use the highest form of leverage. The one that unlocks every other resource. I’m talking about leverage that once accessed can get you all the other important resources (time, money, knowledge)
I’m talking about Talent.
The right relationship can open doors to funding, technology, networks, and markets you’d never touch alone.
But top-tier talent doesn’t show up for whatever you think is valuable. They show up for what they value.
Immediate Cash. Performance pay. Equity. Ownership in the outcome.
Whatever that value is, it’s your job to find out what it is and provide it. Otherwise best of luck on your continued hunt for finding leverage.
Infrastructure and Talent. IT. That’s the engine behind every bold bet worth making.
And fortune favors the bold, especially when they’re smart enough to bring the right crew.
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the world.”
TL;DR | Quick Brief Links
Mission Debrief: Vacation Mode = Shutdown Mode
An agency owner called us with a simple, painful truth. If he goes on vacation, so does his business.
The infrastructure was there. Basic automations, a CRM, some reporting, but no one to keep it running when he stepped away.
The second his phone went dark, communication slipped through the cracks. Follow-ups stalled. Customers got impatient.
It’s the trap a lot of owners fall into. They think having the system is the win. But without talent to operate it, the system is just a fancy screensaver.
And here’s the kicker, even when you do find the right Operator, someone with that “Figure it the fuck out” mentality, it’s still your job as the owner to equip and empower them.
Without the right access, context, and authority, even the best talent can’t move at full speed.
What We Did:
✅ Reviewed the existing setup to identify every process that relied solely on the business owner to move forward.
✅ Implemented clear ownership assignments for each client touchpoint, supported by automation triggers.
✅ Placed a trained Operator on retainer to run and maintain the infrastructure. Even when the owner’s out of pocket.
✅ Built a full Operator briefing kit with SOPs, escalation paths, and the authority to take action without waiting for approval.
🔥 Tactical Takeaways:
Infrastructure without talent is an expensive paperweight.
The right Operator can keep your business moving when you step away, but only after you’ve equipped them with the tools, information, and decision-making power they need.
Freedom for the owner is built on trust in the Operator. Trust comes from preparation.
Operator Pro Tip:
📌 If your business stops when you do, you don’t own a business. You own a job with overhead. Build the infrastructure. Hire the talent. Then get out of their way.
There’s a systemic lie that too many business owners buy into and that is the idea that you can pull maximum reward from minimum risk.
It’s the dream of “passive income” without putting anything meaningful on the table. The fantasy that one clever piece of software or a “set it and forget it” funnel will buy you freedom.
Complete bullshit.
Risk is part of the operating environment. The difference between getting steamrolled by it and turning it into momentum comes down to how you manage it.
That’s why we run everything through the Risk Lifecycle:
1. Risk Onboarding - Defining the bet, setting exposure limits, and building guardrails before the first dollar moves.
2.Risk Management - Monitoring leading signals, adjusting posture, and keeping the system operational under pressure.
3.Risk Offboarding - Exiting clean, capturing the win or the loss, and recycling assets into the next mission.
Each phase can have one or multiple approaches depending on the mission. The key is designing a Risk Mitigation Strategy for each.
At RevForce, we’ve applied this directly to our Training Academy.
Here’s the risk: once a recruit graduates, they could take the entrepreneurial leap on their own, bypassing us entirely.
The mitigation? We’ve built a system where Operators continue to leverage our infrastructure, even after graduation.
Think of it in terms of a traditional transition from employee turned business owner.
As an employee you’ve got a floor (the safety net) and a ceiling (the hard cap on earning potential.) You’re safe, but you’re contained.
In pure entrepreneurship, there’s no floor and no ceiling.
Unlimited potential, but you can also fall as far as you climb. And unfortunately the fall is way more painful (emotionally and mentally speaking) than the physical climb.
We built a third option.
In the RevForce model, there’s a safety net, but it’s not free.
A person pays for access and utilization. On the upside, there’s no ceiling and the earning potential is performance-based. The better you perform, the higher the caliber of contracts you get, and the more you earn.
It’s a meritocracy.
No favoritism. No corporate pecking order based on titles. If you deliver results, you keep getting fed higher-value missions.
If you don’t, you “see yourself out.” That’s not cruelty. It’s simply how you keep a high-performance environment clean, fair, and effective.
Infrastructure and Talent. IT.
One without the other is wasted potential. Together they turn risk into a controlled, repeatable asset.
Time for your recon drop.
This is Actionable Intelligence that matters, globally and inside the HighLevel war room.
GPT-5 Hits the Field & the Field Hits Back
OpenAI just rolled out GPT-5 and it’s not an incremental patch, it’s a capability jump.
Think of it less like a version update and more like recruiting an entire team of Ph.D.-level Operators who never sleep.
Key upgrades:
Ph.D. Level Reasoning: Altman says it’s like having a think tank in your pocket. Complex, multi-step reasoning now feels more like collaborating with a human expert than talking to a machine.
Sharper Accuracy: 45% fewer factual errors than GPT-4o, and roughly 80% fewer than earlier models. Fewer hallucinations mean cleaner intel for mission-critical tasks.
Next-Level Coding & Agentic Execution: It can debug, build full apps, and run multi-step “agent” tasks with minimal prompting. Superior value for dev teams and automation-heavy environments.
Improved Health & Science Performance: Scores higher on medical and scientific benchmarks. Still not a doctor, but a better research partner.
Safety & Transparency Upgrades: More robust red teaming, safer responses to risky prompts, and improved clarity on reasoning steps.
Microsoft Integration: Already live inside Copilot, Azure, and dev toolchains. If your ops run in Microsoft’s ecosystem, this just expanded your arsenal.
Despite the hype and feature update came a significant backlash from the community of users.
The rollout wasn’t clean.
In a Reddit AMA, CEO Sam Altman admitted GPT-5 initially “seemed way dumber” than 4o due to a failure in its new real-time router. The autoswitcher deciding when to use faster vs. slower “thinking” modes. This bug made the model underperform until it was patched.
User demand to bring back GPT-4o was so loud that Altman said they’re “looking into it” for Plus subscribers. He also promised doubled rate limits for Plus as the rollout stabilizes.
Then there was the “chart crime”. A live presentation slide showing a lower score with a taller bar, instantly memed across the internet. Altman called it a “mega chart screwup,” but the damage was done.
The takeaway for Operators:
GPT-5 is still a major capability upgrade, but like any new deployment, first-wave turbulence is real.
If you adopt early, keep redundant systems in place until performance is battle-tested in your environment.
Resources:
More HighLevel Feature Releases
Here are my top three choices from this week’s HighLevel Feature drop:
Workflows: GTP-5 Model Support is Live
The newest models of GPT-5, GPT-5 Mini, and GPT-5 Nano will be available to select from when building workflow automations.
Just a heads up, there are charges associated to the usage and output tokens set by OpenAI.
GPT-5
Input: $1.250 / 1M tokens
Output: $10.000 / 1M tokens
GPT-5 Mini
Input: $0.250 / 1M tokens
Output: $2.000 / 1M tokens
GPT-5 Nano
Input: $0.050 / 1M tokens
Output: $0.400 / 1M tokens
App Marketplace: Usage-Based Pricing (For Developers)
App developers can now set a per-usage price on their Marketplace apps. An app can have a usage-based price for three modules.
This model significantly improves both developers' and agencies' earning potential on the Marketplace.
Reputation Management: More Review Platforms
10 new review platform integrations that allow you to monitor, fetch, and manage reviews from even more sources directly inside Reputation Management.
Doordash
UberEats
BBB (Better Business Bureau)
WeddingWire
The Knot
Thumbtack
TrustRadius
Yell
GoodReads
Caring
📺 Want the Full Feature Breakdown?
The Local HighLevel Hangouts are coming to a few new locations.
Here are 2 that will be hosted within the next 30 days along with the Level UP Conference details.
#1 HighLevel Hangout | ORLANDO, FL | August 14, 2025
#2. HighLevel Hangout | NEW YORK, NY | August 19, 2025
#3. 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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