How to Build a GoHighLevel Agency Team: The First 3 Hires You Need

: Nicholas Papp
: September 23, 2026

Building a GoHighLevel agency can get complicated pretty quickly. At first, you might be setting up accounts, building automations, finding leads, taking sales calls, onboarding customers, and answering support questions yourself.

That might work with your first few clients, but it becomes difficult to scale.

So, what should a GoHighLevel agency team actually look like? More importantly, who should you hire first?

I recently caught up with Arham Abid, founder of GHLStarboys, for another episode of High Level Chat. Since our last interview, Arham says GHLStarboys has grown to around 375 team members and more than 1,200 customers.

We talked about the people an agency actually needs, including GoHighLevel experts, $3-per-hour appointment setters, marketing support, project managers, and AI-trained team members.

Arham also shared a simple formula for the first three hires he recommends to new agency owners.

Watch the full conversation below:

Building a GoHighLevel Agency Team Starts With Your Offer

Before you start hiring people, you need to know what you’re selling.

This sounds obvious, but HighLevel gives you so many options that it’s easy to make things too complicated. You can offer reputation management, lead follow up, appointment booking, database reactivation, AI services, websites, automations, and dozens of other services.

Arham recommends starting with two simple questions: Who are you selling to, and what are you selling them?

For example, you might decide to work with HVAC companies and help them follow up with old leads. Now you have a specific customer, a specific problem, and a specific service.

That’s much easier to build a team around than simply saying, “We sell GoHighLevel.”

Your First Hire: A HighLevel Expert

You might think the first person to hire would be someone to find customers. Arham actually recommends starting with a HighLevel expert.

The reason is simple: before you bring in more customers, you need to be able to deliver what you’re selling. A HighLevel expert can help set up accounts, build workflows, create automations, handle reputation management, build follow-up campaigns, onboard customers, and support your clients.

This means you don’t have to personally build everything inside HighLevel. Arham even describes this person as your potential “future CTO”. As your agency grows, your HighLevel expert becomes someone who understands how your services are built and delivered.

GHLStarboys also uses dedicated team members rather than constantly moving people between accounts, so the person working with your agency gets to know your business, your offer, and the way you work.

If you’re looking specifically at the virtual assistant side, we’ve also covered HighLevel VA services from GHLStarboys in more detail, including the types of support available and how the service works.

Your Second Hire: An Appointment Setter

This is where the $3-per-hour offer comes in.

Arham explains that GHLStarboys’ $3-per-hour role is the appointment setter. The HighLevel expert is a separate position, priced at around $4.50 per hour under their package structure.

The appointment setter’s job is to help start conversations with potential customers.

They need to understand who you’re targeting, what you’re offering, and how you want to communicate with prospects.

You can then take the actual sales calls yourself, particularly when you’re starting out.

I think this is an important distinction. You don’t have to hand your entire sales process to somebody else. The appointment setter helps you get in front of more potential customers while you focus on learning how to sell the offer.

If you’re still deciding which tasks make sense to delegate, our guide on how to hire a GoHighLevel virtual assistant covers what to look for and where a VA can fit into your agency.

Your Third Hire: Marketing Support

The third part of Arham’s formula is marketing.

Once you have someone helping deliver the work and someone helping start sales conversations, you need more people to discover your agency.

Depending on your business, marketing could include your website, SEO, content, paid advertising, or even improving how your company appears in AI search.

You don’t need to hire an entire marketing department at once. The idea is to add the help you need as the agency grows.

That gives us Arham’s simple Three First Hires formula:

Hire

What They Help With

HighLevel Expert

Builds and delivers your service

Appointment Setter

Helps you start conversations with prospects

Marketing Team

Helps more potential customers find you

Arham specifically identifies these three areas toward the end of our conversation

Who Manages Your GoHighLevel Agency Team?

This was one of the parts of my conversation with Arham that stood out to me.

As I told him during the interview, “I want to be the owner. I don’t want to be the manager.”

Hiring more people isn’t necessarily going to make your life easier if you then spend all day managing them.

GHLStarboys addresses this by putting a project manager above the team. Arham describes this person as the supervisor who helps manage the HighLevel expert and any other specialists you might need.

As the agency grows, you might need an SEO specialist, media buyer, AI expert, or someone else for a particular project. The project manager helps coordinate those people rather than leaving the agency owner to manage everything.

For me, that’s an important part of the model. Outsourcing isn’t particularly helpful if you simply replace doing all the work yourself with managing everybody who does the work.

We’ve previously taken a closer look at GHLStarboys as a GoHighLevel fulfillment team and how outsourced fulfillment can help agencies handle more client work without building every capability in-house.

What About AI?

AI is becoming another part of running a HighLevel agency, but you don’t necessarily need to become an AI expert yourself.

Arham says GHLStarboys is training its HighLevel experts on AI so they can help agencies work out which AI services might make sense for their customers.

I like this approach because it keeps the focus on what the customer actually needs.

Instead of deciding that you’re suddenly an “AI agency,” you can look at your existing offer and ask where AI could make it better. Maybe it improves follow-up, helps qualify leads, handles conversations, or creates a new service you can offer.

The business problem comes first. AI is one of the tools you can use to solve it.

How Do You Grow the Team?

You don’t need five HighLevel experts when you have two customers.

Arham says one expert may be able to handle up to around 15 SaaS customers, depending on what your agency is selling and how much work each customer requires.

That means you can grow the team gradually. You might start with a part-time HighLevel expert, move to full-time as you add customers, and eventually bring in a second expert when the workload requires it.

It’s a much simpler way to think about staffing: add people when the work is there.

Don’t Sell GoHighLevel. Sell a Solution.

One of Arham’s best points in our conversation had nothing to do with hiring.

He recommends that new agency owners stop trying to sell the entire HighLevel platform and instead choose one useful feature or service they can become very good at delivering.

Most local business owners don’t need to know everything HighLevel can do. They want to know what you can do for their business.

Instead of saying, “We sell GoHighLevel,” you might offer a service that helps a business get more reviews, follow up with missed calls, book more appointments, or bring old leads back into the sales process.

That’s much easier for a potential customer to understand.

Database Reactivation Is a Simple Example

Arham uses database reactivation as an example of how this can work.

Imagine an HVAC company has hundreds of old leads sitting in its database. Some requested quotes. Others may have been customers in the past. Many simply stopped responding.

Instead of trying to sell the owner a complicated CRM platform, your agency could offer to help reconnect with those old leads and generate new conversations.

HighLevel is still powering the service, but you’re selling an outcome the business owner can easily understand.

Arham told me his own SaaS agency uses database reactivation as its initial offer before introducing additional services.

That same idea could be applied to many other HighLevel features. Pick a problem, build a repeatable service around solving it, and then build your team around delivering that service well.

Frequently Asked Questions About Building a GoHighLevel Agency Team

What is a GoHighLevel agency team?

A GoHighLevel agency team is the group of people who help an agency sell, set up, manage, and deliver services using HighLevel. Depending on the agency, this could include a HighLevel expert, appointment setter, marketing specialists, project manager, and other team members as the business grows.

Who should be the first hire for a GoHighLevel agency?

Arham Abid of GHLStarboys recommends starting with a HighLevel expert. The idea is to make sure you have someone who can help build and deliver your service before you focus heavily on bringing in more customers.

What are the first three hires for a GoHighLevel agency?

Arham’s “Three First Hires” framework starts with a HighLevel expert, followed by an appointment setter and then marketing support. Together, those roles help cover service delivery, prospecting, and generating demand for the agency.

What does a GoHighLevel expert do?

A HighLevel expert can help with tasks such as setting up client accounts, building workflows and automations, creating follow-up systems, reputation management, onboarding customers, and supporting client accounts. The exact responsibilities will depend on the services your agency sells.

Can you hire a GoHighLevel appointment setter for $3 per hour?

GHLStarboys founder Arham Abid says the company offers appointment setters starting at $3 per hour. This rate applies specifically to the appointment-setter role and should not be confused with the pricing for a HighLevel expert or other members of the team.

How many clients can one HighLevel expert manage?

Arham says one HighLevel expert may be able to handle up to around 15 SaaS clients, although the actual number depends on the agency’s offer, the amount of work required, and the complexity of each account.

Do I need a project manager for my GoHighLevel agency?

Not necessarily when you’re just getting started, but project management can become more important as you add people and clients. GHLStarboys uses a project-management layer to help supervise its experts and coordinate additional specialists, reducing the amount of day-to-day team management handled by the agency owner.

Can a GoHighLevel agency use AI without hiring an AI developer?

Yes. In the model Arham describes, HighLevel experts are being trained on AI capabilities so agencies can identify ways to incorporate AI into the services they already provide. The focus is on finding a useful customer application rather than requiring the agency owner to become an AI developer.

Should a new agency sell GoHighLevel itself or a specific service?

Arham recommends focusing on a specific service or business outcome rather than trying to sell the entire HighLevel platform. For example, an agency could specialize in database reactivation, reputation management, appointment booking, or lead follow-up and use HighLevel to deliver that service.

How can I get started with GHLStarboys?

You can learn more about GHLStarboys and book a call through GHLCentral at https://ghlcentral.com/ghlstarboys. Arham explains in the interview that GHLStarboys speaks with prospective customers before onboarding so the team can understand the business and determine what type of support is appropriate.

Ready to Build Your GoHighLevel Agency Team?

There isn’t one perfect GoHighLevel agency team for every business. Your niche, offer, number of clients, and the services you provide will determine how many people you actually need.

But I like the simplicity of Arham’s approach.

Start with the offer. Bring in a HighLevel expert who can help you deliver it. Add an appointment setter to create more conversations. Bring in marketing support as you grow, and then expand your team when your client workload actually requires it.

If you want to explore whether GHLStarboys could help you build that team, you can learn more and book a call through GHLCentral.

Learn more about GHLStarboys and book a call:
https://ghlcentral.com/ghlstarboys

Use code GHLCENTRAL to save 10%.

You can also watch the complete interview with Arham here: https://youtu.be/Hz8OKeSBGJI

And this is our first interview from 2025:
https://youtu.be/IL_oIL3nypA

Arham’s final advice in our conversation was simple: take initiative. You don’t need to have every part of your agency figured out before you start. Choose a problem you can solve, get your offer in front of potential customers, and build the team as you grow.

More About Building Your HighLevel Team

If you’re comparing different ways to add people and fulfillment support to your agency, these guides go deeper into some of the options discussed above:

HighLevel VA Services from $3/Hour: How GHLStarboys Helps Agencies Scale

GHLStarboys: GoHighLevel Fulfillment Team for Agencies

How to Hire a GoHighLevel Virtual Assistant.