How to Set Up Your HighLevel Account Properly (And Avoid Costly Mistakes)

A practical guide to getting your HighLevel location set up the right way from day one

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after onboarding our MarketerM8 clients, it’s this – the way you set up your location at the start has a huge impact on everything that comes after.

Automation, reporting, email deliverability, calendars, pipelines, AI tools – they all depend on the foundations being solid.

Yet most people rush this step, click through the defaults, and only realise something’s wrong weeks (or months) later when things don’t behave as expected.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to think about setting up your HighLevel account properly – and where most businesses go wrong.

What Do We Mean by a HighLevel Location?

Inside GoHighLevel, your location is essentially your working account.

It’s where all of your:

• Contacts

• Pipelines

• Calendars

• Automations

• Phone numbers

• Email settings

…actually live.

Think of the agency view as the control centre, and the location as the engine room. If the engine room isn’t set up correctly, performance suffers no matter how good your campaigns look on the surface.

Step 1: Get the Core Business Details Right

Before you touch automations or funnels, you need to slow down and get the basics right.

This includes:

• Business name and address (used across emails, SMS and compliance)

• Time zone (this catches people out all the time)

• Currency settings

• Default language

These settings affect email footers, appointment timings, reporting, and even AI behaviour later on. Fixing them after launch often means undoing work you’ve already done.

Step 2: Domains, Email and Phone Setup (Don’t Skip This)

This is where many DIY setups fall over.

To run HighLevel properly, you should:

• Connect a sending domain for email

• Create a branded domain (this is for any forms or calendar links to have your branding in the url)

• Set up phone numbers for calls and SMS

If this isn’t done correctly, you’ll see:

• Emails landing in spam

• Missed calls not logging properly

• SMS failures

• Broken automations

It’s not the glamorous part – but it’s one of the most important.

Step 3: Users, Permissions and Access

Another common mistake is giving everyone full access “for now”.

HighLevel lets you control:

• What users can see

• What they can edit

• Which pipelines and conversations they access

Setting this up early avoids accidental deletions, broken workflows, or sensitive data being changed without you realising.

Step 4: Calendars and Pipelines Before Automation

A lot of people jump straight into workflows.

In reality, you should set up:

• Your calendars (and test them)

• Your sales pipelines and stages

• Opportunity statuses

Only then should you build automations on top.

Why? Because workflows rely on these structures. Change them later, and automations often break silently in the background.

Step 5: Think Long-Term (Even If You’re Small Today)

HighLevel is incredibly powerful, but it’s also very easy to outgrow a messy setup.

When setting up your location, ask:

• Will we add more team members?

• Will we run multiple offers or services?

• Will we introduce AI, reviews, or paid ads later?

A little planning here saves a lot of frustration down the line.

Watch the Full HighLevel Foundations Workshop on YouTube

If you want to see this set up step by step, including live walkthroughs inside HighLevel, we’ve covered everything in our HighLevel Foundations Workshop.

👉 Watch the full Foundations workshop on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/@Marketer-M8

It’s ideal if you’re new to HighLevel or want to sanity-check your current setup.

Or Get Personal Help With a 20-Minute Discovery Call

If you’d rather have someone look at your specific account and talk through what you need, the quickest next step is a short discovery call.

We’ll help you:

• Spot setup issues early

• Avoid common mistakes

• Decide what to fix now vs later

👉 Book a 20-minute discovery call here:
https://www.marketerm8.com/book-a-call

Final Thought

HighLevel works best when it’s treated like a system – not just another tool.

Get the foundations right, and everything else becomes easier, faster, and more reliable.