From hospital hallways to HighLevel: The rise of Active Solutions, a 250-client automation agency

Ashton managed an Anytime Fitness location while still in school and understood gym owners, their challenges and the pressure they felt to generate predictable leads. So he launched Gym Closers to help gyms grow through Facebook ads and simple systems.

To deliver that service, he needed a CRM that gym owners could use easily. One place for leads, notifications and follow-up. That is when he began using HighLevel.

He signed his first gym client before he even knew how to use the platform, then learned it on the fly. HighLevel quickly became the backbone of his delivery because it gave his clients a way to manage the leads generated by his ads.

For a while, the agency grew. Then momentum stalled. Ashton drained his savings and even sold his car to keep going, but it wasn’t enough. Even with a powerful all-in-one marketing solution like HighLevel, Ashton realized he needed to up his sales skills.

Instead of quitting, he took a high-ticket sales job and spent 90 days mastering the craft. He saved around $8K and returned to Gym Closers.

This time, the spark caught. He poured his savings into ads, signed eight to ten clients and watched revenue climb. The agency hit a $50K month and he hired a small team.

But one slow month dropped revenue from $50K to $12K and the entire team had to go. With no recurring revenue, every month started from zero. Ashton knew his business model had to evolve.

The moment ChatGPT and HighLevel collided

When ChatGPT-3 launched, Ashton became obsessed. He stayed up late testing prompts and looking for a way AI could solve a real problem for his clients. He realized he could automate the back-and-forth of lead nurturing so his clients could book more calls with less effort.

The next question was where to build it.

He tested HubSpot and Salesforce but neither platform had the flexibility he needed. HighLevel was the only system with the webhook triggers and automation tools required to connect ChatGPT to real conversations.

The result was one of the first functional conversational AI systems built inside HighLevel. It nurtured leads, booked calls and handled the follow-ups most clients usually ignored.

Ashton began running ads targeting gym owners. But the leads coming in were chiropractors, coaches, marketers and HVAC companies. They all wanted his solution.

That’s when he realized he didn’t need to niche by industry. He needed to niche by capability. The combination of ChatGPT and HighLevel created a solution that almost any business could use.

Active Solutions: The agency that outgrew its intended purpose

Almost overnight, Gym Closers evolved into a systems company that used HighLevel to rebuild a client’s backend and give them a sales engine that worked.

In mid-2023, Ashton rebranded the business as Active Solutions with a bold promise: to rebuild, optimize and automate clients’ CRMs in under 14 days.

HighLevel gave Ashton the tools to automate, customize and create a repeatable process for every client. Instead of juggling platforms, he could build everything in one place and make adoption easy.

The early days were lean. The team was small. Just Ashton, his fiancée Angela and two team members in the Philippines. They lived on very little and reinvested almost all of their income back into the business. They focused on fast implementation and building a service that clients would want for years.

Growth followed quickly.

$10K months became $30K.

$30K became $60K.

Then $70K. Soon six figures became the baseline.

The breakthrough came from standardizing fulfillment inside HighLevel. Ashton built pods, created training systems and tightened onboarding. Every bottleneck became a process. Every process created more capacity. As automation matured, the agency scaled without losing quality.

Active Solutions crossed 150 clients, then 200, then 250. Clients didn’t just stay. They referred. Momentum took over.

By the numbers: the momentum behind the rise

Active Solutions is now one of the fastest-growing CRM automation agencies in the HighLevel ecosystem. The numbers tell the story of a company that built its foundation on systems, not luck.

• Team Size: 24

• Active Clients: 250+

• Monthly Client Acquisition: 40–50 new clients

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $120,000+

• Peak Quarterly Revenue: $498,505 (Q4 2025)

• Quarterly Growth Trend: Consistent acceleration across 8 consecutive quarters

• Core Offer Price: $1,497 for first 30 days, then $697/month

• Primary Acquisition Channels: Facebook Ads (80%), YouTube (20%)

These numbers are not vanity metrics. They reflect a scalable business model, supported by a platform designed to grow with it.

Five lessons any agency owner can steal today

1. Don’t anchor to a sinking model

High tickets delivered short-term highs, then sudden crashes. Recurring revenue created stability and predictability.

2. Feature niche before you niche by industry

Gym Closers hit a ceiling. Active Solutions broke through it by tying the offer to a capability, not a specific audience.

3. Systemize before you scale

Pods, training tracks and repeatable fulfillment didn’t happen later. They were built early so growth never broke the business.

4. Speed is a strategy

Ashton and Angela moved fast, learned fast and reinvested fast. Momentum rewards motion.

5. The product is the brand

When an offer works consistently, clients stay. When it works exceptionally well, clients refer. Referral momentum is a growth engine no ad platform can match.

Active Solutions isn’t a comeback story. It’s a compound story.

This agency was not built on luck, timing or a single viral moment. It was built from a long string of small decisions that compounded over time. Each one slightly smarter, braver or more committed than the last.

A $1.50 raise became the catalyst.

A gym that never scaled became the training ground.

A late night with ChatGPT became the breakthrough.

And today, a 250-client CRM automation company stands where a burned-out hospital employee once stood.

For Ashton, the mission is simple. Build systems that help entrepreneurs win faster and easier with far fewer scars than he collected along the way.

Why HighLevel became the backbone of the breakthrough

Active Solutions scaled because Ashton found a platform that could grow with his ideas rather than slow them down. HighLevel became the foundation he could build on from the early Gym Closers days through the birth of Active Solutions.

HighLevel gave Ashton a single place to manage leads, build automation and create the systems his clients depended on. It was the first tool that let him turn a service into a repeatable product.

Later, when Ashton saw the potential of conversational AI, HighLevel became the only platform flexible enough to support the automations he wanted to build.

It powered his first AI workflows. It handled the pipelines, follow-up, attribution and client communication. It helped him standardize fulfillment, enabling the team to scale beyond 250 clients without sacrificing quality.

HighLevel did more than organize the agency. It amplified it. It turned Ashton’s vision into a system and that system became a business thousands of entrepreneurs now rely on.

Active Solutions grew because the vision was big. HighLevel made the execution possible.