Arnav Sharma

Software Engineer building AI agents and automations. I share what actually works, including what doesn't. Stay tuned :)

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

One private equity backed HVAC group has closed 7 acquisitions in 2026 alone. HVAC, plumbing and electrical, across 5 states.

7 companies probably means 7 phone setups, 7 CRMs and 7 ways of following up a lead.

The rest of the PE buyers have paused deals to focus on "operational performance". From the software side, that phrase usually means merging all of that into one system.

If you bought 7 home service companies tomorrow, what's the first system you'd merge?

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@RareGraceland Thanks brother!

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

One week of learning HighLevel in public, with the real numbers.

Posts: 11. Quote tweets: 18. Replies: about 15. Followers: 10.

Best post: the 3 things you need before the 3 blocks of missed-call text-back. 25 views, 2 replies. The posts that ended on a question got answers. Most of the rest didn't.

Built: missed-call text-back, then 2 fixes on top of it. Broke: it texted my own test calls.

Next week: A2P registration, so the texts can actually reach US numbers.

Nothing here is impressive yet. That's why I'm writing it down.

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@roughneckactual real line per demo is smart. the bit i'd plan for is what happens to that number after a no. at $1.15 a month in highlevel it's cheap to keep, but if the agent's still answering it in 3 months someone's calling a dead demo

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@ecomchasedimond for a local service business the welcome email is usually a text, the one that goes out after a missed call. same 4 rules apply. from what i've seen #2 matters most there, nobody reads past the first line on a phone

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@alxberman same rule on the sms side. in the us no text reaches a lead until the sending number is A2P registered, and most people find that out after building the whole follow-up flow. register first, build second

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

"generic and a lot of work to customize" matches my first week tbh. the missed-call trigger doesn't even show up until you buy a number inside it, no hint. but generic is also why one setup works for a roofer and a dentist. the setup work is what that costs

[Imeh @imehbryant]

.@boardyai set me up with a California wholesaler whose group of about 50 operators all runs on GoHighLevel. Unprompted, he told me: "I'm not impressed with GoHighLevel."

He called it generic and a lot of work to customize. He also mentioned that the average person gets frustrated just setting it up, and adding capabilities costs extra.

So I took a screenshot of a Zillow listing and dropped it into LotLine. Beds, baths, square footage, living square footage and the listing photos all came back as a structured lead.

"Wow, that's powerful."

The call was booked for 30 minutes and ran an hour. He's starting a trial, and he asked me to get the person who pays for the group's GoHighLevel account on it too. We're setting up a Zoom with both of them. 🤝

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

i'd bet the sticky note is the callback list. "missed call, sarah, gutters, ring after 3". funny part is it's the easiest thing on that whole stack to automate, and the last one anyone does

[Genesis Pro @GenesisProio]

Average small business tool stack: a CRM, a calendar app, three spreadsheets, a form builder, and a sticky note that's somehow the most important one.

We'd quite like to replace all of that with one system. Except the sticky note. The sticky note stays.

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@RareGraceland Thanks! My g

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

Day 7. HighLevel shipped a new workflow action this week, Add Internal Comment. Added it to my missed-call text-back.

Now when the text goes out, the workflow also drops a private note on the conversation: missed call, text sent, waiting on a reply.

Took 9 minutes. Most of that was getting the caller's number and the call time into the comment with custom values.

Tested it with 3 calls. All 3 notes showed up in Conversations, visible only to the team.

Small thing, but whoever calls back now knows what already happened before they dial.

What would you put in that note?

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

Everyone says reply to leads within 5 minutes. Nobody says who replies at 8pm on a Sunday.

The cheapest answer I've found is the one I built on Day 5. Missed call, wait 30 seconds, send a text. 41 seconds end to end in my test.

The catch: in the US no text reaches a lead until A2P registration is approved, and from what people are posting that can take a few tries. Start it before you need it.

Then a human still has to pick it up on Monday. That's what the internal comment from Day 7 is for, so whoever calls back knows what already happened.

How does your business handle Sunday calls right now?

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@cleanwithmike the realtor channel has a side effect nobody warns you about. once a few realtors trust you, the calls start landing while you're mid-clean. i'd guess that's where a lot of new cleaning businesses lose jobs to whoever picked up first

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

the decline option is the bit most ai receptionist greetings i've seen skip. "this call may be recorded" and straight into questions. if the caller says no, the agent needs somewhere to send them, a human, a callback or a text. otherwise it just hangs there

[Cody Wise @CodyConsultant]

"Canada is one party consent" answers the Criminal Code question and nothing else.

Your AI receptionist still has to tell the caller, state a narrow purpose, and offer a way to decline being recorded.

Voice ID in Quebec needs a filing 60 days out.

https://t.co/FtLQfOJYcF

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

the part i'd add is the phone. a second profile means a second number, and if both ring the same line nobody knows which trade or which area the job came from. a separate tracking number per profile, landing in the same crm, answers both

[Noah Igler @noahiglerSEO]

All 5 of the biggest home service companies we work with are adding a second trade and a second market at the same time.

Their main Google profile was built for one trade in one area.

This is how we're setting each one up, and why Google makes it hard:

> HVAC company pushing into plumbing (sewer lines, water lines, re-pipes) and a new suburb
> Plumber adding furnaces and heat pumps while it grows into the metro next door
> HVAC company adding plumbing and a second location
> Roofer building out retail replacement next to its insurance work, plus showrooms in a new state
> Plumbing shop going after drains, excavation and water treatment on the other side of town

Google makes both hard. A profile's main category tells Google what it does best, and the map pack favors whoever is closest to the person searching. An HVAC profile 20 minutes away struggles to show up for "plumber near me," even after you add plumbing to it.

The setup:

> A separate Google profile with a DBA focused on the new trade, at a real location where your best jobs in that trade already come from
> Service pages for the new trade with real job photos, linked from the city pages where you'll run that work
> Review asks that mention the new service, so the new profile builds proof in that trade
> Google Ads on the big tickets in the new trade (sewer lines, re-pipes, new systems) while the organic side catches up

One HVAC company we work with opened a satellite office with its own profile. It returned about 10x its cost in its first 6 months.

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

Block's new voice AI was built by 6 researchers on one rack of GPUs, and it never read a single word of text.

It laughs, interrupts, and finishes your sentence when you blank.

For a business phone line, that brings back the question I think matters more than the voice.

Does it have to tell the caller it's an AI?

Recording a call already needs consent in a lot of places. I'd expect AI disclosure to go the same way, and the more human it sounds, the more it matters.

Would you rather be told up front, or not know?

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

8 leads to 4 sales is a 50% close. the number i'd want next to it is how fast the first reply went out to the 4 who didn't buy. i build forecasting for cleaning franchises and one-time to recurring moves next month more than anything else, so those 2 conversions matter

[Jacques H. Bastien @JacquesHBastien]

Man, shout outs to my team!

I took a quick look at our cleaning business' Ops Dashboard from yesterday.

8 leads, 4 sales, 10 cleans, $3,035.

Not our biggest day and def not our smallest.

But what I’m most proud of is that I’ve barely touched our company Slack or Quo all week.

Plus, what this dashboard doesn't show:

- 2 cleaners were hired
- 2 customers converted to recurring

Also things like...

- 1 cleaner called out 1 block from the job site
- 1 cleaner was fired
- 2 cancellation fees were charged

And more.

All without needing me to weigh in, approve, or do it.

Again, shout outs to the team!

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

the dentist version of this pitch is "you'll stop losing the calls that come in while you're with a patient". same missed-call text-back underneath. it just never says agent

[Hamza Automates @hamza_automates]

Unpopular opinion: local business owners don't want "AI." They want fewer headaches. If your pitch has the word "agent" in it, you already lost the dentist.

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@MasonRaySanders good list. the pipeline, invoices and conversations rows can mostly fill themselves in ghl if they're set up right (i think, still learning it). hours promised vs capacity is the one i'd expect to stay manual

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@thecopyroad from what i've seen that's usually the end-of-turn setting more than the model. it waits too short a silence before it decides you're done. testing with a real person who pauses mid-thought catches it, a script read out smoothly never does

[Arnav Sharma @arnavshr09]

@ai_for_success branding, finances, insights, and nothing about the phone. from what i've seen that's where a local business actually loses the job, the call at 2pm nobody picked up. that one never shows up on a dashboard