- Command Post
- Posts
- Dispatch #018 | Loose Lips & Lost Logins
Dispatch #018 | Loose Lips & Lost Logins
Clear Communication Is a Force Multiplier
Mike Gorski
September 30, 2025
8 Min Read
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic."
I knew we had a problem the moment she said, “We just need to connect the funnel to the funnel.”
Now, I’ve heard a lot of strange tech jargon over the years. But this wasn’t a rookie. This was a GHL agency owner selling systems to large well established companies.
And she was using “funnel, pipeline, workflows” interchangeably. Not just in passing, but as a core part of her project explanation.
The kicker? She didn’t even realize it.
The client was confused. Her tech team was even more confused. And I was sitting there watching the whole thing fall apart.
Not because anyone lacked tools or talent but because somewhere along the line, we all started treating language like decoration instead of equipment.
That brings me to the second fire I walked into this week.
We had just onboarded a client from another service provider. Standard extraction mission. Until it wasn’t.
This handoff had all the charm of a hostage negotiation. No one was yelling, but the tension was thick.
The previous provider swore they weren’t trying to “hold accounts hostage.” The client nodded politely like they agreed. But when we requested credentials for domain registrar, DNS, email platform, social media logins, etc. nobody could give a straight answer.
Turns out, the client was the owner the whole time. They just didn’t know it.
No password manager. No protocol. Not even a basic list of what they had access to.
It was like watching two kids fight over a toy, only to find out the toy belonged to the dog.
And there I was part Operator, part parent, untangling a mess that could’ve been avoided with one simple discipline, clarity.
In speech. In systems. In ownership.
And that’s the mission this week. Not another tactic. Not another feature.
Just two simple questions,
Do you know what you’re talking about?
Do you know what you actually own?
The longer you stay fuzzy on either, the more likely it is that your business will bleed time, money, or trust and sometimes all three.
"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
TL;DR | Quick Brief Links
Mission Debrief: The Funnel That Wasn’t a Funnel
The call started simple enough.
An agency owner was mapping out her client’s build. The lead capture, nurture, deal flow. But as she walked through the process, something felt off.
“So once they go through the funnel,” she said, “they land in the pipeline, and then we build the funnel stages so they can track progress…”
Hold up.
Did she mean pipeline stages? Or funnel steps? Because those are two different things.
Except she didn’t know that.
She’d been using the terms interchangeably. But not just on this call, but in emails, onboarding docs, and even client meetings.
That meant her client didn’t know the difference and neither did her junior technical fulfillment team who were trying to build the system. They were running in circles, building features that didn’t match the original spec.
This wasn’t just a bad brief. It was a terminology time bomb.
Our team stepped in with a full process mapping session.
We rebuilt the plan from the ground up identifying where leads actually came in, when conversion events happened, and how to separate marketing flows from sales stages.
The difference was immediate.
Forms fed into automations.
Automations led to booked calls.
Booked calls dropped into a pipeline with real triggers and tasks.
Not just semantics but systematiclly driven.
✅ What We Did:
Conducted a full discovery session to clarify process phases
Redefined "funnel" vs. "pipeline" vs “workflow” with visual maps and assets
Rebuilt lead flow automation with correct trigger logic
Designed a deal pipeline that reflects actual sales activity
🔥 Tactical Takeaways (For Business Owners Seeking Service Providers)
Words are instructions. Get them wrong, and you’ll build the wrong thing.
Use “funnel” for marketing flows, “pipeline” for sales stages and “Workflows” for automation actions.
Don’t skip discovery. Clarity upfront saves weeks of backtracking.
Service providers: push back when the language is wrong. You're not being difficult. You're being precise.
You’d be shocked how many business owners don’t know where their DNS records live.
Hell, some don’t even know what DNS is just that the website “works,” and the emails “are sent and received.”
But here’s the problem, when the relationship between a client and their service provider goes sideways and trust me it will, those unknowns become liabilities.
That was the case this week.
We stepped into a handoff that was less “pass the baton” and more untangle the hostage situation.
The client thought the outgoing provider owned their assets.
The outgoing provider was certain the client already did.
Neither could produce a single credential without backpedaling, guessing, or passive-aggressively blaming the other.
Here’s the reality of this situation, not knowing who owns your business systems is like not knowing who holds the deed to your house.
You might live in it, pay the bills, and mow the lawn. But if push comes to shove, who actually holds the legal keys?
This isn’t just a tech problem. It’s a chain of command problem.
Business owners, I get it. You’re wearing a hundred hats. You outsource to people you trust. You assume they’ve got it covered. But delegation isn’t abdication.
If you don’t know where your domain lives, who manages your SMTP, or which admin controls your Google Workspace, then you don’t own your infrastructure. You’re renting.
And if that “landlord” gets upset, flakes out, or goes dark so does your business.
Time for your recon drop.
This is Actionable Intelligence that matters, globally and inside the HighLevel war room.
AI’s GDP Test Just Dropped And the Results Are Wild
OpenAI just released a benchmark called GDP val. Think of it as the SATs for AI, except instead of algebra and vocab, the test covers 1,320 real-world tasks across 44 occupations. We’re talking:
Manufacturing engineers designing mining equipment
Nurses creating care plans
Lawyers drafting briefs
Sales teams building forecasts
Developers fixing bugs
Each task was designed by human experts with an average of 14 years of experience. So, yeah not lightweight stuff.
The goal: Quantify how well AI can perform actual work. The kind of valuable work that moves the economy and then measure its potential contribution to GDP.
The Results:
Claude Opus 4.1 came out on top, beating or matching human performance on nearly half the tasks.
GPT-5 crushed accuracy and precision.
But even the best models still failed basic human tests:
Struggled with complex instructions
Created broken file formats (GPT-5 had a thing for black squares in PDFs)
Occasionally made stuff up with full confidence
Why it matters:
AI isn’t replacing your job but it is changing the nature of it.
OpenAI's researchers found that expert-reviewed AI output consistently beats starting from scratch so long as the AI-generated work was usable.
If you skip the edit and forward raw AI junk to your coworkers, congratulations you just created “workslop.”
That’s what HBR calls the $186-per-incident productivity tax where your polished looking AI doc gets passed around like a hot grenade, wasting everyone's time as they scramble to fix it.
Multiply that by hundreds of internal tasks per year and boom you're bleeding $9 million without knowing it.
Tactical Implications:
AI is your intern, not your replacement. It’s fast and cheap but needs supervision.
Editing is leadership. Don’t push unvetted AI work downstream.
Expert and AI beats either alone but only if the expert uses the tool, not the crutch.
Speed & Cost Advantage: AI completed these tasks 100x faster and 100x cheaper than humans. That’s not just impressive, that’s economically inevitable.
Resource: Measuring the performance of our models on real-world tasks
HighLevel | Weekly Feature Updates
Here are my top three choices from this week’s HighLevel Feature drop.
WordPress: New Customer Support Features
Book a Call with WordPress Customer Success:
Agencies can now instantly book time with our WordPress CS team, available across most time zones. No more back-and-forth. Get guided help exactly when you need it.
Direct Access to Product Townhall
WordPress customers can now jump into the HighLevel Townhall meetings directly, where they get visibility into product direction, early access to updates, and a seat at the table to voice feedback that shapes the roadmap.
WordPress Knowledge Base in-App
No need to hunt for resources. The full WordPress KB is now accessible inside the app, right where customers are working. This dramatically cuts down troubleshooting time and makes self-serve support seamless.
Funnels & Websites: Metrics for Geographics
Now you can drill down into states and cities to see exactly where your traffic comes from.
Geographic Dropdown: Switch between Country, State, and City views with a single dropdown.
Ranked Lists: See your top regions with traffic counts alongside the map.
Dynamic Heatmap: Interactive shading highlights high-traffic areas at any level.
Hover Tooltips: Hover over a state or city to see visitor counts instantly.
Total Visitor Count: Always visible and updates automatically as you change levels.
Dynamic Refresh: Map and list update in real-time when switching between country/state/city.
Website & Funnels: Traffic Source Analytics
Compare Paid vs Organic, track trends over time, and drill into specific days or channels
Channel Breakdown (Stacked Bars): Visualize daily traffic by Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, Other.
Hover Tooltips: Get exact counts on hover (e.g., Paid Search: 233,390 on Jan 27).
Date Drilldown: Click any day to filter the dashboard to that date.
Consistent Color System: Clear, accessible colors across all channels for fast scanning
📺 Want the Full Feature Breakdown?
Upcoming HighLevel Events
#1. LEVEL UP 2025 | DALLAS, TX | October 13–16, 2025
Tickets are unfortunately SOLD OUT
But if you have already purchased your ticket, Jazmin, myself, and the rest of the RevForce team look forward to seeing and meeting you in Dallas, TX, USA.
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
Reply