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Welcome to our podcast, where we dive into everything Go High Level—from mastering the basics to tackling the most complex tasks. I use GHL daily in my business and rely on Google NotebookLM to stay ahead of the curve, keeping up with all the latest GHL features, tools, and innovations. This podcast is powered by AI, fueled by the research and insights I personally curate to bring you the most valuable and up-to-date content.
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Welcome to the deep dive. Hmm, let me uh, let me ask you a question to kick things off today. Are you a digital marketing agency owner who's, you know, constantly trying to make your CRM accurately reflect the the messy, highly complex reality of your client's real world businesses? Yeah, that's a struggle I see all the time. Right. It's like, if you've ever felt like you're trying to shove a square peg into a round hole when it comes to organizing client data, you are in exactly the right place today. But, uh, before we get into the meat of it, I have a massive update for you. Oh, this is a good one. It really is. Right now, you can get a free 30-day Go High Level trial. 30 days. You heard that right. 30 days. That is double the standard trial length, and the link to claim it is waiting for you right now down in the show notes below. So, go grab it. It's an incredible offer, especially, um, considering the sheer volume of new capabilities we're about to cover today. The architectural shift in some of these updates is, well, it's gonna fundamentally change how agencies structure their client offerings. That is exactly what we are focusing on today. Our mission for this deep dive is a big one. We have a stack of the absolute latest Go High Level updates from early March 2026. A very big stack. Yeah, massive. We are gonna unpack these sources and extract the practical, highly actionable takeaways designed specifically for you, the agency owner. And to help me do that, I'm joined by our resident expert, the voice of reason, who's gonna, you know, help us connect the dots on exactly why these updates are absolute game changers for agency scaling and client retention. I am ready when you are. And I'd say the overarching theme I'm seeing across all these updates is a massive shift. We're moving from agencies just being a provider of uh marketing services to becoming an indispensable foundational operational partner for their clients. Okay, let's unpack this with the biggest update on the board. Custom objects and flexible associations. Huge. Right. For the longest time, CRMs have been entirely obsessed with people and businesses. You have your contacts, you have your companies. That is the standard architecture. But what if your client's business doesn't just revolve around people? Right, because a lot of them don't. Exactly. What if they need to track things? We are talking about treating things like properties, pets, projects, subscriptions, or even like insurance policies, as first-class CRM records. What's fascinating here is that this moves agencies completely beyond a people only CRM. Think about it from a real-world perspective. Okay. If you have a veterinary clinic as a client, in the past, you might have tried cramming a pet's medical history, vaccination dates, breed, all of that into a standard contact field meant for the human owner. Oh, man, you end up creating these incredibly cluttered Frankenstein-style records. Exactly. It becomes an absolute nightmare to filter through, report on, or, you know, trigger any meaningful automations from. Yeah. Custom objects means the pet is now its own distinct record, living right alongside the human. Yeah. They get their own fields, their own life cycles, and their own automations. Okay, I get giving the pet its own record. That makes logical sense for organizing data. But how does that actually help me as an agency owner make money? If the pet is just, you know, floating out there as a custom object, how do I connect it to the actual sales deal I'm trying to close for my client? That is the million-dollar question, and it's exactly why Go High Level released the flexible associations update right alongside custom objects. Because having a custom object is useless if you can't tie it to revenue. Exactly. You can now link opportunities, which are your deals, directly to these custom objects. And it's not just a basic rigid link. The architecture supports one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many relationships. Hold on, I need an ELI5 on that. Explain that to me like I'm five. For those of us who aren't database architects, what does a many-to-many relationship actually look like in practice? Sure. Think of it like a spiderweb instead of a straight line. Okay. Let's look at real estate. One buyer might be looking at five different houses. That's one-to-many. But simultaneously, one specific house might be looked at by five different buyers. Right, that makes sense. That's many-to-one. Exactly. When you combine those, you get a many-to-many relationship. The CRM can now actually visualize and manage that entire web. You can create up to 10 unique labels per pair of objects. 10 unique labels? Yeah, so you can label a relationship buyer on one side and seller on the other, and you can link up to 1,000 records per side. That is massive scale. So, if I'm an agency with a real estate client, I can link multiple property custom objects to a single opportunity for a buyer. Precisely. Your client's real estate agents get immediate at-a-glance visibility into all the properties a specific buyer's interested in right from the deal card. They aren't jumping between tabs or cross-referencing spreadsheets anymore. Exactly. And according to the sources, these associations aren't hidden away in some complex back-end menu either. They show up right in your opportunity details. They appear on your Kanban cards if you toggle them on via manage fields, and they show up in your list views, which means doing bulk CSV exports is incredibly easy. And just a quick side note, API support for this is coming soon too. Good to know. But let's keep grounding this in actionable agency use cases. Yeah. What about an agency that runs event marketing? Oh, it is a perfect application. You connect event custom objects with related sponsorship deal opportunities. Event managers instantly understand which financial deals are tied to which specific events. Oh, that's interesting. Or, going back to the insurance world, an agency can build a system where specific policies are linked directly to opportunities. An insurance agent can track the policy details, the quote amount, and the deal stage, all from a single view. Wait, I have to stop you there. This all sounds amazing, but it also sounds like a recipe for absolute chaos. How so? Well, if I let my agency team, or worse, my clients, create a custom object for every little thing they can think of, isn't my database gonna become just an unmanageable mess? That is a very valid concern, and it raises an important warning, do not fall into the trap of over-engineering just because you have a shiny new tool. Right. If a standard object works perfectly fine, stick with it. This is especially true if you need contact-specific features like bulk emailing. Do not build a custom object just to duplicate a standard contact object, simply because you want a specialized list. You should be using smart lists for that. Exactly. Custom objects should strictly be reserved for when the data fundamentally does not belong to a person or a company. That is a crucial distinction. Don't make it complicated just to make it complicated. Only build the spiderweb if you actually need to catch a spider. Well said. So we've solved the core data storage problem with custom objects and flexible associations. We can map out the reality of a business. But static data doesn't tell the whole story. It never does. What about the day-to-day interactions? That brings us to the notes for custom objects upgrade. Previously, notes were strictly confined to contacts, but now you can capture context, ongoing discussions, and manual updates directly inside any custom object record. This is entirely about establishing a single source of truth within a business. And the integration here is what really caught my eye. You can take an existing note or a brand new one from a contact or an opportunity and associate it directly to a related custom object record. If we connect this to the bigger picture of agency operations, the benefit is massive zero copy pasting. Yes. Let's say a sales rep is on a phone call and types out some negotiation notes on an opportunity card. With this update, they can associate that exact same note to their related property custom object record. So it just sinks over. Right. Now, anyone else in the business, maybe a property manager or a closing coordinator who opens that property record sees the exact same context without the sales rep having to type it twice or send an update on Slack. Imagine you're an agency working with an auto dealership. A mechanic does an inspection and logs a note that says, brake pads replaced, next service due in 5,000 km. Mhm. They can log that directly onto the automotive custom object, or, back to real estate, an agent does a site visit and notes, client prefers east-facing windows, right onto the property object. And all these notes are fully searchable by keyword. Yeah, you can filter them, you can sort them, you can find that exact piece of information instantly. It completely eliminates the silo effect. Yeah. When information is scattered across different departments or different software platforms, mistakes happen. Clients get frustrated. Definitely. When it's centralized and associated correctly, your clients operate faster, and they look incredibly professional to their own customers because everyone is quite literally on the same page. It's amazing how centralizing those notes prevents that silo effect. But having perfect notes doesn't mean much if your automated follow-ups are still relying on clumsy time-based delays. Which is how most people still do it. Right. Which actually perfectly tees up our next major section, automations and ads. Here's where it gets really interesting. We have two brand new goal events in workflows, invoice paid and review request clicked. These are brilliant. What we are seeing here is a fundamental shift from action-based triggers to outcome-based triggers. Let's break down how that actually works. Invoice paid pulls a contact forward in your workflow, the exact moment an invoice is marked as paid, or partially paid. Instantaneously. And review request clicked moves them forward the absolute second they click a review link. And you can even filter that one by the specific channel they used or the exact link they clicked. This eliminates all those manual checks and that complicated, messy, extra branching logic agencies used to have to build. Oh, yeah. You know the old way? Wait three days, check if they paid. If yes, go down branch A. If no, go down branch B. Exactly. Now, it is based on real, tangible outcomes. Let's talk about the business value of that. How does an agency owner actually sell this to their client? Let's use the review request clicked trigger as an example. For an agency owner, your biggest enemy is a client waking up one day and saying, I don't know what you guys are actually doing for me. Yeah, the dreaded retainer cancellation. They cancel because they don't feel the value. But if you build this new trigger into your standard client snapshot, the exact second a customer clicks that review link via SMS, your client's phone can ping with a notification. Oh, wow. You are providing them with a hit of dopamine, proving your ROI in real time. Oh, that is so smart. They literally feel the marketing working. The customer clicks, the client gets an alert, and simultaneously, the workflow automatically pulls the customer forward to a thank you plus referral add step. That is working smarter, not harder. It proves your agency's worth every single day. Speaking of proving your worth, let's jump over to the ad manager updates for Meta Lead Gen. The platform now has Meta ads parity. You can select conversion locations right at the ad set level. This is huge for media buyers. You have three choices: Instant Forms, which is the default, Website, or a hybrid of both. The hybrid option is the real stand out feature here. I need some clarity on that. If you choose website or hybrid, the sources say you need to select your data set, which is your pixel, a conversion event, and a destination URL. But why does hybrid matter so much? What makes it better than just running a standard website campaign? Because it lets the algorithm do the heavy lifting. That hybrid support allows both the native lead form and the external website URL to exist as conversion options within the exact same ad. Okay, so both are running at once. Yes. This lets Meta's machine learning engine dynamically optimize which version to show to which specific user, based entirely on their historical behavior. Fascinating. If Meta knows user A always fills out forms but never clicks away to websites, it shows them the form. If user B prefers browsing landing pages, it sends them to the site. So it's adapting to the user's preference in real time. Exactly. And this gives agency media buyers massive flexibility to drive a significantly lower cost per lead, or CPL, for their clients. It brings the Go High Level platform so much closer to true Meta ad manager parity. Meaning your media buyers don't have to leave the CRM to get top-tier ad performance. Right. Lower CPL is the magic phrase for literally any agency owner listening right now. All right, we're moving into the final stretch, quality of life and reporting. Lower CPL is great, but let's talk about saving time. First up, dashboard date picker and filter persistence. It sounds like a small change, but it has a massive impact on daily workflow. I can relate to the pain this solves so deeply. Previously, every time you refreshed a page, your filters reset. But now, the system remembers your date ranges and filter selections on a per-user basis. Finally. If you change a widget drop-down, it persists. If a saved filter gets deleted by someone else on the team, the system smartly defaults to the first available option instead of breaking. And if you share a report via email, it sends a snapshot of the exact values at the time of generation, so future changes don't mess up your past reports. Think about the friction this removes. How much time do your account managers waste resetting filters to past 30 days and selecting specific pipelines every single time they open a client's dashboard to check daily performance? Oh, it adds up to hours. It's a tedious and annoying process. This removes that friction completely. Your reports stay consistent, and your team reclaims those lost minutes. Next on the list, let's talk about the competitor analysis update in the reputation tool. You can now manually add virtual businesses to track. You use virtual addresses, service areas, or URLs to add them. Why was this such a big deal? Because previously, the system relied heavily on physical Google Maps locations. If a business didn't have a brick-and-mortar storefront, they were incredibly hard to track in the software. Right. But reality has shifted. Agencies represent plumbers, roofers, and mobile detailers, service area businesses that go to the client. Or they represent franchise brands operating remotely, or e-commerce brands that are online only. And now you can track their ratings, benchmark their reviews against competitors, and track their keyword share just like a traditional physical store. That opens up entirely new niches for agencies to offer reputation management services. It expands your total addressable market instantly. We've got a few more critical updates to unpack in a lightning round. Let's talk about export email data. You can now export your stats for all campaigns, workflows, or bulk actions to a CSV via a secure email link that stays valid for 30 days. It is fantastic for deep dive performance analysis and end-of-month client reporting. Totally. But I want to move to the assign-to-user fix in split traffic workflows. What exactly changed here? In split traffic workflows, the system now validates users at runtime. It automatically skips deactivated or deleted users, so leads don't accidentally get routed to an empty inbox. Why is that validation happening at runtime so important for an agency? Because agencies frequently manage clients who have high turnover sales teams. People quit, get fired, or change roles constantly. In the past, if an agency forgot to update a complex round-robin workflow when a sales rep left, valuable new leads would be assigned to a deactivated user. They just sit there. Those leads would sit there unworked, getting cold. The client would blame the agency for bad leads when in reality it was a routing error. This update acts as a critical safety net. It dynamically bypasses the missing user and keeps the lead flowing to an active closer. That is a massive stress relief for agency owners. Okay. Up next, sticky notes 2.0. In the standard builder, you can now add images, logos, color-coded branches, and rich text annotations directly onto the workflow canvas itself. This is one of my favorite updates purely from a scaling perspective. This is absolutely perfect for agency standard operating procedures or SOPs. Think about when you hand off an account to a new virtual assistant or a junior team member. Instead of forcing them to read a separate disconnected 10-page Google Doc explaining how the workflow logic functions, the SOP is visually mapped out right inside the automation. Yes. You can put a giant red sticky note with a logo right next to a crucial trigger that says, do not alter this branch without manager approval. You literally cannot miss it. You're documenting the logic right where the automation lives. It drastically reduces onboarding time and human error. And speaking of reducing human error, let's look at the new AI builder to-do list. After the AI generates a workflow for you based on your prompt, the to-do list automatically surfaces all the specific actions or triggers that still require human input before you can hit publish. It forces quality control, which is exactly what you want when you are scaling operations. AI is incredible at building the skeleton of a workflow, but it obviously can't authenticate your specific Facebook integration, or know which specific sales pipeline you want a deal dropped into. Right. Before this, you might have an AI build a massive 20-step workflow, and you'd have to hunt through every single node to find the ones missing credentials. And you'd always miss one. Always. You'd publish it and realize two days later that the workflow was broken. Now, it literally hands you a checklist. You click the item, it highlights the exact node that needs attention, you plug in your credentials, and you are good to go. No more broken workflows accidentally going live. It bridges the gap between AI generation and actual functional deployment. Finally, just to round out the tool set, there's been a massive rollout of new templates. We are talking new web, email, form, survey, and social templates spread across major, highly profitable niches like legal, financial, home services, and health and wellness. Oh, that's great. It just dramatically accelerates your time to market when you are setting up a new client. You aren't starting from a blank page. It's another tool to get your clients to that aha moment faster. So, what does this all mean for you? Let's take a step back and summarize. We have covered a tremendous amount of ground today. We started by redefining CRM reality, moving beyond just people and companies to tracking custom things like properties and pets and linking them to revenue with flexible associations. Yep. We discussed implementing shared notes across those objects to completely eliminate the silo effect. We looked at how hybrid Meta ads are driving down your CPL using machine learning, and how automated goal events trigger based on real-world outcomes, giving your clients that immediate dopamine hit that proves your value. Every single one of these updates points in the same direction. These tools empower you to build highly customized, intricately automated, and infinitely scalable systems. They transition your agency from just being a replaceable vendor providing marketing services to becoming an indispensable foundational operational partner for your clients. When you build their entire operational reality into your CRM, churn becomes virtually nonexistent. That is the ultimate goal. Now, before we wrap up, I need to remind you one last time, do not forget to grab that free 30-day Go High Level trial. Don't sleep on this. We're talking double the standard trial length, so you have plenty of time to test all of this out. The link is sitting right there in the show notes below. I strongly encourage you to click it right now and start experimenting with custom objects today. Get in there, break things, figure out how the spiderweb works, and see how it fits your agency. I will leave you with this final thought to mull over as you explore those new tools. If you can now model absolutely any complex real-world relationship in your CRM without writing a single line of code, what entirely new, highly complex industry is now completely open for your agency to dominate? Ooh, I love that. Think big, everyone. The ceiling just got significantly higher. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive and we'll catch you on the next one.