🐴 Lessons From the Horse (and My Daughter)

This week, my middle daughter reminded me of something I’ve been trying to teach her all along — but apparently needed to hear myself.

She’s been horseback riding for about a year now. And listen, horses are huge. Like, terrifyingly huge. As a parent, watching your little kid climb up on one is nerve-wracking enough. Add to that the fear she sometimes feels when it’s her turn to take the reins, and you get plenty of tears, hesitation, and shaky deep breaths.

Now, if you’re a parent, you know the dance: when do you step in gently and redirect, and when do you nudge (or push) them forward through the fear? This time, my wife, her instructor, and I agreed — she was holding herself back. She needed to push through.

So she did.

The first lap? Tears. Horse hugging the wall.
The second? Less crying, more steering.
The third? No help, just her guiding a horse on her own.

That moment got me thinking. I do the same thing in my business. I procrastinate, I avoid, I “busy myself” with easier tasks when I know there’s one scary, uncomfortable move I need to make. No tears (thankfully), but plenty of self-doubt and hesitation.

And just like my daughter, sometimes I need a little push. That came this week at my friend Matt Decino’s mastermind, where he asked the hard question:

👉 “Are you really growing at the rate you want — or are you holding yourself back?”

That hit me. Because truthfully, I’ve been scared of taking the reins too — posting more consistently, building out courses, scaling faster. So I made some moves this week to change that.

Here’s what I want to pass on to you:

• Progress takes courage.

• Sometimes it means crying through the first lap.

• But every lap gets easier — and before you know it, you’re leading confidently.

Ray Dalio has this line that sums it up perfectly:
Pain + Reflection = Progress.

That’s what my daughter showed me this week. That’s what I was reminded of at Matt’s event. And that’s the energy I want to carry into everything I share with you in this newsletter.

So buckle up — we’ve got tools, tips, and strategies ahead. But remember, they only matter if you use them. Sometimes you just need that extra little oomph to get moving.

👉 Speaking of tools that help you take the reins, let’s dive into this week’s HighLevel Insider update.

🎙️ HighLevel Voice AI Just Leveled Up — Here's How to Build a Killer Inbound Bot (Without Losing Your Mind)

You ever wish your receptionist could answer calls 24/7, crack a joke, qualify leads, and send links all while sipping a digital latte? Same. Well, HighLevel just dropped a major update to their Voice AI that makes that dream a whole lot more real — and this new tutorial walks you through how to build your own voice bot from scratch.Why This Update Matters

Why this matters:

If you're running an agency or coaching business, HighLevel's Voice AI can now handle inbound calls like a real pro — think of it as your AI receptionist, FAQ handler, lead qualifier, and sales sidekick, all in one.

And it’s not just a novelty. Done right, this thing can:

• Save hours of phone time

• Automate lead sorting

• Trigger workflows

• Deliver booking links or product info

• And even send you transcripts and summaries after calls

Here’s the lowdown on how to get it running (and sounding like it knows what it’s doing).

Access My Custom Voice Ai Prompt Builder By Clicking Here

🛠️ Step-by-Step: Building Your First HighLevel Voice AI Agent

1. Verify your phone number.
   You’ll need an A2P verified number to start — no number, no bot.

2. Create a Voice AI Agent:

   • Head to Settings → Voice AI

   • Go to the Agent list, click Create New Agent

   • Choose a voice (the tutorial prefers "Aaron" — apparently Aaron’s got that silky pro tone)

   • Give it a name (Jessica, in this case — but you do you)

   • Set business name, time zone, etc.

3. Adjust Advanced Settings (seriously, do this):

   • Conversation length: Bump it to 15 minutes (default is 5)

   • Response speed: Set to Normal — “Fast” cuts people off mid-sentence (don’t be that bot)

   • Idle time: 8 minutes is the sweet spot before it asks “Are you still there?”

4. Add a Custom Greeting:

   • Example: “Hi, you’ve reached [Company Name]. This is [Bot Name], how can I help you?”

   • Optional: Use custom values like {{contact.first_name}} — but be careful, prank names happen 😬

5. Create a Knowledge Base:

   • Crawl your website for content

   • Add FAQs manually (these are used before prompts or knowledge base content)

   • Upload Google Docs or SOPs if your info lives outside the site

   • Pro Tip: Match your FAQ text exactly in the prompt to avoid conflicts

6. Prompt Setup:

   • Use the free ChatGPT Prompt Generator included in the video (yes, he gives you a link)

   • Answer a few guided questions and boom: A killer prompt that makes your bot sound smart and human-ish

7. Create Workflows & Triggers:

   • Example: If someone asks about “done-for-you services,” trigger a tag + SMS with a booking link

   • Another for Udemy course promotion

   • Pro Tip: Number your workflows (e.g., AI01, AI02) for sanity later

8. Send Transcripts & Summaries:

   • Create a follow-up workflow that emails you:

     • Call summary

     • Transcript

     • Duration

   • You can even feed the transcript back into ChatGPT to get action items or notes

9. Upgrade Your Agent (if available):

   • Make sure you’re using the new Retail AI platform — more accurate, more stable, and just better

   • Check if the “Upgrade” option appears under Agent Goals

10. Turn it into a Booking Bot (Optional Advanced Move):

• Add booking behavior to the prompt

• Add action: Book Appointment

• Set your calendar and number of available slots

• Boom. Now Jessica’s also your scheduler.

💡 Pro Tip: Don’t Just “Set It and Forget It”

The secret sauce to a great Voice AI bot? Iterate.
After testing your bot:

• Read the call transcripts

• Adjust your prompt based on what didn’t land right

• Keep refining until it sounds natural and doesn’t miss key info

Think of it like training an intern. First week’s rough, but by week three? They’re running the front desk like a pro.

Voice AI is finally starting to feel less like clunky automation and more like a real extension of your brand — if you take the time to train it. HighLevel’s update makes it super customizable and powerful for real use cases.

And let’s be honest — if you’re not at least testing Voice AI in 2025, you might be giving your competition the edge without realizing it.

🍌 The Banana That Edits Thumbnails?! Meet Google Gemini’s Nano Banana (And Why You Should Care)

Okay, full disclosure: when I heard the name “Nano Banana,” I assumed it was either:
a) a Mario Kart power-up,
b) a smoothie flavor, or
c) a joke.

Nope. It’s Google Gemini’s newest image-editing model, and holy crap, it slaps.Let’s break down how this Real OG tool is changing the AI game for coaches, course creators, and anyone whose calendar looks like a game of Zoom Tetris.

This thing is a game-changer for marketers, creators, and business owners who need fast, high-quality visual content — and don’t want to spend hours in Canva or pay a designer for every little change. Whether you're creating thumbnails, headshots, children’s books, or even AI-generated videos (yes, really), Nano Banana is bananas in all the right ways.

Here’s what went down in the full test (and how you can actually use it in your biz).

🧪 Real-World Tests: What Nano Banana Can Do

Let’s start with the crazy stuff. The tutorial tested this thing live — image by image, prompt by prompt — with some pretty wild asks. Here’s what it nailed:

• Turned a regular photo into a Superman costume

• Kept facial structure and hand position nearly perfectly intact

• Aged the subject by 10 years (accurately AND gracefully)

• Swapped outfits, backgrounds, lighting, even facial expressions

• Put the subject in a banana suit and nailed the text: “I love Nano Banana” 😂

• Created thumbnail-worthy images in one shot

• Made a children’s book character consistent across multiple images

• Turned those characters into a mini animated video playing on a beach

• Restored old photos, created headshots, and added objects like coffee cups and sunglasses… all with one-click prompts

💼 Practical Use Cases for Marketers & Agencies

Now let’s talk business. Here's where Nano Banana gets seriously useful:

• Rapid thumbnail creation
  Say goodbye to “meh” thumbnails that tank your CTR. Feed in your PNG, describe what you want, and Nano Banana gives you studio-quality visuals in seconds.

• Custom client headshots
  Dress them up, change backgrounds, even fix lighting or age them gracefully. No photographer needed.

• Children’s books & brand mascots
  Want consistent illustrations for a storyline? Feed Nano Banana your character once, and just keep refining. Total game changer for creatives.

• Video generation from images
  Gemini's VO tool can now animate characters in real scenes with movement, water, laughter, etc. (Your inner Pixar animator just got a budget-friendly upgrade.)

• Instant mockups for products, clothing, social media posts, or even office signage.

• Team content creation
  Your design team? They’re about to get a whole lot faster — and maybe even take a lunch break for once.

🧠 The Secret Sauce: Prompt Engineering

Here’s the kicker — you don’t need to be a prompt genius to use this. In the video, they simply typed stuff like:

• “Put me in a formal suit, keep my pose and face the same.”

• “Add sunglasses and change the background to a sunset beach.”

• “Make me fly like Superman.”

• “Insert a coffee cup in my hand.”

• “Age me 10 years, but keep my facial structure intact.”

That’s it. The results were shockingly good.

💡 Pro Tip: Always Start with a Clean PNG

To get the best results:

• Use a clean headshot or body photo with a solid background

• PNG format works best (transparent background if possible)

• Give the AI one character and build from there

• Re-feed the “best version” to preserve consistency in longer projects (e.g., books, storyboards, series)

Also: Don’t skip the weird ideas. The banana suit test? Legendary.

The truth is, Nano Banana isn’t just another AI toy — it’s a productivity rocket for creatives, agencies, and marketers. And yeah, it’s still got some quirks (like AI always does), but for a free tool inside Google AI Studio?

This is next-level.
And it’s only getting better.

🤖 AI Is Moving at Ludicrous Speed — Here’s What Actually Matters

Look, I get it. Every time you blink, there's another model, another update, another tool that promises to change your life, write your emails, walk your dog, and make your coffee. The AI news cycle is officially unhinged.

So let’s make this simple.

I watched the demos, parsed the headlines, and filtered out the fluff. Here's what actually matters to marketers, creators, and business owners from the last two weeks of AI madness — with a focus on what you can use and not just geek out about.

📊 Claude Just Became Your Virtual Assistant (Like, Actually)

Anthropic's Claude now lets you:

• Create and edit Excel sheets, PDFs, Word docs, and even PowerPoint slides directly in chat

• Transform dense PDFs into ready-to-go slide decks (yes, even ugly math papers)

• Pull live data (e.g., comparing Nvidia vs. Apple stock) and output fully formatted spreadsheets

👉 Think: Proposal templates, reports, sales decks — all without touching PowerPoint. Just paste your doc and ask Claude to make it pretty (or, functional at least).

🎧 NotebookLM Now Makes Podcasts About Your Data

Google’s NotebookLM is seriously leveling up. It now generates:

• Deep dive audio summaries (like a podcast version of your content)

• Brief overviews (TL;DR in 2 mins)

• Critiques (AI plays Simon Cowell and gives feedback)

• Debates (Two AI hosts argue both sides)

Great for:

• Internal team training

• Client explainers

• Turning content into marketing assets without writing a thing

Want your webinar notes turned into a podcast by robots? Welcome to 2025.

🧞‍♂️ Meet Seedream: China’s Answer to Nano Banana

Just when you got used to saying Nano Banana with a straight face, ByteDance dropped Seedream 4.0 — a serious image-editing model that:

• Applies outfits to people using example images (yep, like a digital stylist)

• Merges image elements across photos

• Transforms group shots with background swaps (e.g., add NYC skyline at night)

It’s slick, but faces still get a bit janky. Nano Banana still wins for quality + cost (it’s still free), but Seedream is a strong second.

💻 Warp IDE: AI Coding That Doesn’t Suck

Warp is a new AI-first coding environment that actually… works. You can:

• Tell it what you want to build (in plain English)

• Run multiple AI agents in parallel (build, test, deploy)

• See side-by-side diffs, QA changes, and stay in control

Basically: it’s ChatGPT for devs, but with version control and no “let me write spaghetti code and pretend it compiles.”

🖼️ Ideogram’s New Style Transfer Is Almost Magical

Ideogram AI now supports:

• Style reference input (upload an image, match the vibe)

• Prebuilt styles (minimal, emotional, surreal, etc.)

• Combines your prompt with your chosen visual style

Real-world magic? Not yet. It’s more “cool demo” than “client-ready.” But great for moodboarding, branding concepts, and design inspiration.

🧪 Real-Time Video Generation Is Here (Sort Of)

Several tools (like Morphik and Google’s VO) are experimenting with live video generation from images:

• Move parts of an image → see it animate in real-time

• Create motion keyframes (ish) and auto-generate transitions

• Still janky, but kinda hypnotic

Usefulness? 🤷‍♂️ Limited right now. But the second this tech stabilizes, you’ll be making promo videos with just a click and a shrug.

🔊 11 Labs Loops Sound Effects Now

11 Labs rolled out:

• Higher quality sound effects

• Seamless looping

• Instant audio like crackling fire, waves, ambient cafes

Great for:

• YouTube B-roll

• Podcast intros

• Ambient website audio (if you’re that kind of marketer)

Also: yes, it generates the Wilhelm scream. Because AI is fun.

🛒 Amazon Lens Now Makes the Real World Shoppable

The Amazon app now lets you:

• Scan anything you see IRL

• Auto-search for it (or similar) on Amazon

• Add to cart without knowing the brand

It’s Pinterest-meets-Shazam for products.

🎧 AirPods Now Translate Live Conversations

The new AirPods Pro 3 now:

• Translate live, in-ear, real-time across multiple languages

• Let both parties speak in their native tongue — and hear responses in their own

Future: confirmed.
Language barriers: cancelled.
International client onboarding? Much smoother now.

🧠 ChatGPT Updates Worth Noticing

Free plan just got juicier:

• Projects (aka folders for conversations)

• Larger file uploads

• Branching (return to any previous message and fork from there)

• Project-only memory (finally! Scoped context FTW)

If you’re not organizing your prompts with projects yet, you’re living in chaos. Just sayin’.

🧾 Microsoft + OpenAI = Still Complicated

Despite Microsoft owning 49% of OpenAI, they:

• Issued a vague “we’re still friends” press release

• Are also flirting with Anthropic and investing in their own models

• Are trying to stay independent (because everyone’s worried OpenAI might implode again)

TL;DR: expect Microsoft GPT by next spring. Just a vibe.

💸 Meta’s Buying Its Way Into Realism

Meta:

• Partnered with Midjourney for artsy AI images

• Then bought access to Black Forest Labs for hyper-real imagery ($140M deal)

Basically, Meta is trying to own both styles — the Instagram-filtered world and photorealistic deepfakes. So… sleep tight?

⚾ AI Called an Actual Baseball Game (And Won)

An actual team — the Oakland Ballers — used AI to:

• Set the lineup

• Manage pitchers

• Call pinch hitters

They won. The AI manager beat the humans. You know where this is going.

🤖 Robot Dishwashers Are Now a Thing

The Figure humanoid robot (Amazon-backed) can now:

• Do laundry

• Fold clothes

• Wash dishes

Wall-E predicted it. We laughed. It’s happening.

💡 Pro Tip: Pick 1 Tool This Week and Test It Hard

You don’t need to chase all the headlines. Just pick one:

• Use Claude to build a deck from a sales script

• Use VO3 to animate your next blog hero image

• Use Amazon Lens on your competitor’s retail display

• Generate a podcast from your latest content doc in NotebookLM

AI is no longer about hype. It’s about usefulness.
And right now, it’s more useful than ever.

“Pain + Reflection = Progress.” – Ray Dalio

Okay, I know this isn’t usually where we go in this newsletter — we’re here for tech, tools, AI, and marketing magic — not economic theory or hedge fund wisdom.

But I watched this recent Ray Dalio interview, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Why? Because while we’re all racing to keep up with the latest AI tools and algorithm updates, Dalio zooms all the way out — like, 500 years out — to ask a much deeper question:

Not the marketing cycle.
Not the product cycle.
The civilizational one.

And yeah, it sounds dramatic… but the way he breaks it down actually grounds you. It’s not doom-and-gloom. It’s more like:
→ “Hey, here’s the pattern. Now play your hand wisely.”

So let me give you the short version — not because we’re suddenly an economics newsletter, but because understanding the game behind the game?
That’s pretty damn useful no matter what business you’re in.

🧭 Perspective Shift: Ray Dalio on Cycles, Risk & Resilience

This isn’t fear porn. It’s a framework.

Ray Dalio — legendary hedge fund founder and author of Principles — sat down with The Diary of a CEO for a wide-ranging, jaw-dropping, yet oddly grounding conversation about the future of society, money, and power.

But instead of screaming “We’re doomed!”, Dalio invites you to zoom out and ask a deeper question:

🔁 History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Rhymes (Loudly)

Dalio's thesis is based on 500+ years of economic history. According to him, societies move in ~80-year “Big Cycles” — and we’re at the late stage of one now.

He outlines five major forces that shape the fate of nations:

1. Debt and Money – When debt outpaces income, systems crack

2. Internal Conflict – Wealth gaps → trust gaps → chaos

3. Geopolitical Tension – Rising vs. declining powers (hello, China & US)

4. Nature’s Role – Climate, disease, disasters

5. Human Inventiveness – The wild card (tech, AI, etc.)

America and the UK?

🧘 But It’s Not About Doom — It’s About You

Dalio makes it clear: The real question isn’t “Will the world collapse?”

It’s:

He suggests:

• Know your nature – Align your work to your core personality

• Stay financially flexible – Don't anchor yourself to immovable assets

• Diversify your risks – “A smart rabbit has three holes”

• Invest in learning – Especially from pain (his favorite equation: Pain + Reflection = Progress)

• Pursue meaningful work + meaningful relationships – The actual ROI on life

💡 Big Takeaway: Play the Right Game, at the Right Time

Dalio views life like a series of seasons:

• Early career? Optimize for learning

• Middle years? Build leverage

• Later years? Focus on legacy + service

🧘‍♂️ Bonus: The Power of Stillness

Dalio credits transcendental meditation as one of the most important tools of his life. It helped him navigate loss (including the tragic death of his son), clarify thinking, and stay calm during global chaos.

He reflects often on this principle:

⚙️ Why This Matters Now

In a world increasingly shaped by AI, politics, and unpredictable shocks…

Dalio isn’t offering predictions.
He’s offering a lens.

Let this be your reminder:

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Keep watching, keep learning, and keep moving forward!!

Nuno