🧠More Direct, No Warm-Up -What to Sell in 2026 (And What to Stop Selling Immediately)

I’ve been staring at 2026 like it owes me money… because if you’re still selling the same “everything for $297/month” offer, it probably does.

The big shift isn’t another new feature. It’s the way people buy changing under your feet. This week’s newsletter is basically my line-in-the-sand for what actually matters: what to sell with GoHighLevel, where AI is headed, and how to stop getting dragged into the messy middle where everyone competes on price and vibes.

Because that middle? It’s friction. It’s churn. It’s you spending your life “justifying the retainer” instead of building something people keep.

What’s working (and what I’m betting on) looks more like a barbell:

• Low ticket for speed, volume, and fast wins (especially for beginners who need momentum)

• High ticket for hands-off, white-glove, “just make it work” buyers

• And nothing in the middle unless you enjoy being compared to 14 other agencies on a spreadsheet

And here’s the part you’re going to hear me repeat all year:

We’re moving from mass production to mass personalization.

Not “personalization” like “Hi {First Name}” in an email. I mean real, context-aware, this-was-built-for-you experiences—powered by the same AI that’s already creeping into everything you touch.

You’ll see it in stuff like ChatGPT Health, where the whole point is tailoring advice to your actual metrics. That’s not a random feature. That’s a preview. The tools are being trained to understand individuals better than your CRM ever will if you keep using it like a spreadsheet with feelings.

And if you think this gets less competitive… plot twist: it gets more competitive.

Because the next phase is ads inside the AI layer—ChatGPT, Gemini, all of it. That means the “algorithm” you’re trying to win doesn’t just rank results… it gets influenced by money the same way Google did. The game becomes: who controls the recommendation engine—and how you position yourself inside it.

So here’s what I want you to lock in as you read the newsletter:

Are you building something low-ticket that helps the masses move faster…
or are you selling a high-ticket, white-glove offer where the buyer wants zero friction and maximum results?

Pick a side. Commit to it. Build around it.

Me? I’m going heavier on low-ticket going into 2026—more workshops, more playbooks, more “take this and go make money with it” assets—because momentum is the first thing most people are missing (and honestly, it’s the hardest thing to fake).

So yeah… strap in. The writing’s on the wall, and it’s not subtle anymore.

Stop Selling the Middle (What Actually Works for GoHighLevel Offers in 2026)

If you’re still trying to sell “everything for $300 a month,” 2026 is going to be an expensive lesson.

Not because GoHighLevel stopped working.
Not because AI “took over.”
But because the middle is getting absolutely crushed.

What’s happening right now is something Matt called the barbell effect—and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

You’ve got:

• Very low-ticket offers doing great

• Very high-ticket offers doing great

• And the mushy, “kinda helps with everything” middle getting squeezed until churn matches growth

That $297–$397/month offer that tries to do CRM + automation + AI + reputation + vibes?
Yeah… that’s the danger zone.

The agencies actually winning heading into 2026 are doing one of two things (sometimes both):

• Making it ridiculously easy to say yes

• Or making it ridiculously easy to not want to deal with it yourself

Let’s break down what that looks like in the real world.

Low-Ticket That Actually Converts: AI Website Redesigns

This one’s quietly printing money because it removes friction almost entirely.

Instead of pitching a website redesign, agencies are:

• Rebuilding a business’s site before asking

• Sending it over and saying, “Hey, we made this—want it?”

• Charging anywhere from $500 to $1,500

No retainer. No long sales cycle. No funnel gymnastics.

What makes this work is how fast it is now:

• Design the site in tools like Lovable

• Clone or rebuild it inside HighLevel’s new AI website builder

• Deliver something that’s 80–85% perfect in a fraction of the time

Teams are literally opening calls with:

That’s it. That’s the pitch.

It’s low pressure, low commitment, and feels more like feedback than a sale—which is exactly why it works.

High-Ticket Is Shifting to Reputation + AEO

On the other end of the barbell, things get more premium—and more interesting.

Businesses are waking up to the fact that:

• People don’t just Google anymore

• AI models are deciding who gets recommended

• Reddit, forums, and community chatter matter more than ever

This is where Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) comes in.

Not SEO in the old sense.
This is about shaping how a business shows up when someone asks:

That includes:

• Reddit presence and social proof

• Google reviews plus video testimonials

• Managing how the brand appears across places AI pulls data from

This isn’t cheap—and it shouldn’t be.

We’re already seeing this sold as:

• $2k–$5k/month retainers

• Ongoing consulting + execution

• Similar to how Facebook Ads retainers worked back in the day

And there’s a bigger wave coming…

Google Maps is already testing augmented reality reviews.
Point your phone at a street and reviews literally appear in front of you. Menus. Directions. Social proof layered onto reality.

Once AR glasses mature, reputation won’t just be online—it’ll be ambient.

If customers go to the business, Google reviews become critical.
If the business goes to the customer, Reddit and AEO matter more.

Same reputation problem. Different execution.

The Sneaky Middle Escape: iMessage + RCS Automation

Then there’s the wildcard that fits perfectly into the barbell: phone-based automation.

A lot of service businesses don’t want:

• New phone numbers

• A2P headaches

• Complicated setups

They just want their iPhone to stop being a bottleneck.

So the offer becomes:

• Plug their iPhone into HighLevel

• Put AI between incoming texts and replies

• Keep their existing number

• No per-message fees

And again—you’re seeing both ends win:

• One-time setup offers around $500

• Fully managed solutions at $1,000+/month

Same tech. Different buyer.

RCS is only going to accelerate this with buttons, quick replies, and more AI-native messaging baked directly into phones.

💡Pro Tip

If you can’t clearly explain your offer as either cheap and instant or premium and hands-off, it’s probably sitting in the middle—and that’s where offers go to stall.

The takeaway is simple:
Low-ticket gets attention.
High-ticket captures value.
The middle just bleeds churn.

If you’re building GoHighLevel offers for 2026, don’t ask “what else can I add?”
Ask which side of the barbell you’re on—and how fast you can move people across it.

This Is How You Stop Clients From Ghosting After Onboarding

If your onboarding ends with “log in and explore,” you’re training clients to stall.

That’s not a motivation problem.
That’s a systems problem.

Most onboarding flows feel busy, organized, and professional… and still fail at the one job that matters: getting the client their first win before doubt sets in.

This build fixes that — by replacing “education-first onboarding” with output-first onboarding.

No hype. No theory. Just momentum.

Start Where Most People Get It Wrong: The Form

The difference isn’t AI.
It’s what you collect before AI ever touches anything.

Instead of a fluffy welcome questionnaire, the onboarding form asks only what’s actionable:

• What kind of business is this?

• What are they selling right now?

• What’s the actual goal?

• Do they have a website?

• What context would a strategist need on day one?

Nothing extra. Nothing clever.
Just inputs that can turn into deliverables.

Once that form is submitted, everything else happens without the client lifting a finger.

Zapier Isn’t the Brain — It’s the Conveyor Belt

Zapier’s job here is boring on purpose.

It:

• Catches the form via webhook

• Passes clean data forward

• Triggers actions in sequence

No conversations.
No looping logic.
One input → one response → move on.

That constraint is what keeps the outputs high quality.

The Real Upgrade: One AI Agent, One Job

This is where most people blow it.

They ask one AI prompt to:

• Fix the offer

• Write content

• Build a plan

• Think strategically

And then wonder why the results feel generic.

This setup splits the work across separate AI agents, each with a single responsibility:

• Offer Agent
  Improves or repositions the client’s current offer based on real trends.

• Content Agent
  Produces social posts the client can publish immediately.

• Planner Agent
  Builds a 30-day action plan focused on traction, not theory.

Each agent:

• Gets strict system instructions

• Receives only relevant form data

• Outputs once — no back-and-forth

That’s how you avoid AI “brain fog.”

Everything Drops Into a Client Folder Automatically

As each agent finishes, its output gets saved into a shared Google Drive folder created just for that client.

Inside the folder:

• Offer ideas

• Social post ideas

• A 30-day plan

• Optional AI-generated visuals

So instead of:

The client gets:

That shift alone changes retention.

The Quiet Power Move: The Email

The onboarding email doesn’t explain features.
It doesn’t link docs.

It points to the folder and says, in plain language:

Psychologically, that matters.

Clients don’t feel behind.
They don’t feel overwhelmed.
They feel handled.

💡Pro Tip

Onboarding shouldn’t teach people how to use your system — it should prove they made the right decision.

If your onboarding doesn’t create something tangible in the first hour, you’re relying on patience.
And patience is in short supply.

This setup replaces patience with progress.

That’s the difference between clients who stick… and clients who quietly disappear after week two.

—

The AI Updates That Matter Weren’t on the CES Floor

CES is basically a warehouse full of “look, this toaster has Wi-Fi now” energy—meanwhile the real AI moves are happening quietly in software where it actually changes how you work (and how your customers buy).

Here’s what jumped out from the biggest updates outside the CES hype machine—and how to translate them into marketing and business advantages without needing a PhD in “NVLink 6 photonic scale-out whatever.”

1) ChatGPT Health: Convenient… and a little dystopian (in a useful way)

The headline is simple: ChatGPT is moving toward becoming a personal health assistant by securely connecting to medical records + wellness apps (Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, etc.). The promise: better context, better answers, better prep before doctor visits.

What it means for business/marketing:

• We’re watching AI shift from “chatbot” to trusted interface for sensitive life decisions.

• If people get comfortable asking AI about their bloodwork, they’ll absolutely ask it about which agency / contractor / clinic / accountant to hire.

• Expect the “AI recommendation layer” to become the new first impression.

Real talk: the moment health data gets involved, privacy concerns become a feature—not a footnote. If your marketing touches anything regulated (health, finance), your trust signals matter more than your ad spend.

2) NVIDIA’s “AI factories” push = more compute, more adoption, more competition

NVIDIA’s vibe is clear: demand for AI compute is so high they can’t crank out GPUs fast enough, so they’re pitching the future as “AI factories” (aka data centers with better PR).

You don’t need to understand the specs to get the takeaway:

• AI is getting cheaper, faster, and more accessible.

• The barrier to building advanced automation drops again.

• Your competitors will ship “AI features” whether they’re ready or not.

Marketing implication:

• Differentiation won’t come from “we use AI.”

• It’ll come from what your AI does, how reliably it does it, and how quickly it creates outcomes.

3) Lenovo’s “Kira” is the real trend: modular AI across devices

This is one of those “sounds boring” announcements that’s actually a big deal.

Lenovo’s Kira assistant isn’t married to one model. It’s modular—mixes on-device models with cloud models (Microsoft/OpenAI via Azure), and syncs context across your phone and laptop.

Translation: we’re heading into a world where:

• Your AI follows you across devices

• Your context follows you too

• And the “best model today” becomes the default behavior

Business takeaway:

• The future isn’t “pick ChatGPT or Gemini.”

• It’s pick the workflow, and let the system route to the best model behind the scenes.

That’s also how lock-in gets sneaky: not with hardware… with habits.

4) Local video generation is getting scary good (and wildly practical)

The LTX2 bit is the sleeper hit: video + audio generation running 100% locally on your own GPU, with open weights + training code.

Why marketers should care:

• Local = faster iteration + your IP doesn’t leave your machine

• Less “burn credits, regenerate 10 times”

• More customization through fine-tuning

If you run an agency, this is the direction for premium creative:

• Custom brand style models

• Faster content cycles

• Less dependency on “whatever the platform changed this week”

5) Gmail in the Gemini era = AI adoption goes mainstream (whether people like it or not)

This is the one that’ll sneak up on everyone.

Gmail rolling out AI summaries, “Help me write,” suggested replies, and inbox prioritization means AI stops being a “tool you try”… and starts being a default behavior inside the place you already work.

Marketing implication:

• Email speed goes up (good)

• Email quality becomes more “same-y” (bad)

• The winners will be the ones who sound human while everyone else sounds like a polite robot with perfect punctuation.

Also: clients will respond faster… but expect you to respond faster too. That’s the deal.

6) Google TV + Gemini: AI is becoming the interface for everything

AI overviews for shows. Searching your photo library by asking your TV. Changing brightness by just saying “make it dimmer.”

It’s not about TVs.
It’s about a pattern: AI becomes the control layer for devices, apps, settings, and decisions.

Which means your customers will start expecting:

• “Just tell it what I want” experiences

• Less menus, more intent

• Fewer steps everywhere

7) Meta smart glasses: features are cool… demand is the bigger story

Teleprompter inside glasses. Handwriting input (yes, that’s as weird as it sounds). Navigation expanding.

But the real signal: demand is high enough that Meta is pausing launches in multiple countries (including Canada) because of inventory limits.

Marketing angle:

• Wearables are turning into capture + assistant devices.

• “Real world context” (location, what you’re looking at, what you’re doing) becomes input for AI.

• That’s going to reshape local marketing, attribution, and reputation management.

8) Meta drama: when the AI org is messy, output gets messy

The Yan LeCun / Alexander Wang / Meta reshuffle stuff matters because it highlights something most people ignore:

AI progress isn’t just research—it’s leadership, incentives, and culture.

When trust breaks internally, you get:

• talent leaving

• roadmap chaos

• “massaged” results

• product whiplash

If you’re betting your business on one vendor, keep your workflows portable.

💡Pro Tip (steal this):
If you want to “AI-proof” your marketing strategy, stop building around tools and start building around interfaces.
Email interface (Gmail AI). Search interface (AEO / AI recommendations). Device interface (assistants across phone/laptop/TV).
Whoever owns the interface owns the customer’s next decision.

And the prediction I’d put money on:
By the end of 2026, “ranking on Google” will matter less than “being the answer” inside AI assistants—because that’s where people will make decisions without ever clicking a blue link again.

Lovable Just Ate Your “Custom Dev” Offer (And It’s Not Sorry)

If you’re still selling “custom builds” like it’s 2019, you’re about to get undercut by someone with a prompt, a credit card, and way too much confidence.

This whole segment is basically a live cage match between the new wave of app builders—Lovable, Bolt, Base44, and Replit—using the same prompt to see who actually delivers. And what jumped out isn’t just “which tool is best”… it’s what this does to your offers, your delivery speed, and your client expectations.

The core move they’re testing is simple (and honestly, kind of genius):
Build one strong PRD-style prompt → run it through every builder → compare output speed, design quality, and “can I actually ship this?”

Because the real game isn’t building apps anymore.
It’s building fast enough that your competition can’t even finish logging in.

What actually happened in the head-to-head

Here’s the pattern that matters:

• Lovable keeps winning the “first impression” fight

  • It consistently spits out the most polished UX/UI from a cold start.

  • It’s the easiest to iterate in (which matters more than people admit).

  • It’s the most “teach this to a beginner and they won’t cry” friendly.

• Base44 surprised people with design + speed

  • Came back fast.

  • Output looked more thought-out than expected.

  • Still needed direction on the reporting/export side—but it was competitive.

• Bolt looked quick… then faceplanted on function

  • In their test, it produced something that looked okay, but lacked basic inputs.

  • That’s the worst kind of failure: pretty and useless.

• Replit… took its sweet time

  • It was still “thinking” while the others were already collecting form submissions.

  • Biggest concern wasn’t even speed—it’s lock-in and portability:

    • “How easily can I take this app out of the platform and put it into production?”

    • If your data is trapped, your margins get trapped too.

The offer implications are spicy

This is where it stops being a nerd debate and becomes a money conversation.

They casually drop a few absolute offer nukes in the middle of the tool comparison:

• $500 websites “designed for you already” (low ticket, low friction)

• Full onboarding apps that generate a PDF + store it (productized service)

• Funnel builds with 3 pages in one prompt (landing → calendar/order → thank you)

• A/B testing setups + admin dashboards inside the app builder

• SEO and ranking wins once exported properly (Next.js)

And the biggest strategic theme they keep circling back to:

• The market is turning into a barbell:

  • low ticket, fast volume offers

  • high ticket, “hands off, do it for me” offers

  • the mushy middle gets squeezed

Which means if you’re still trying to sell “everything for $297/month”… yeah. Good luck with that.

The boring detail that changes everything: portability

The best line in the whole thing (from a business standpoint) wasn’t about UI.

It was this:

• “How easily can I take this app out of the vibe coding platform and put it into production?”

Because if you can:

• sync to GitHub

• move it to Vercel

• connect it to Supabase directly

• and stop paying “credits forever”…

…you’re not building apps. You’re building assets.

And assets are how you stop being a freelancer and start being a business.

💡💡Pro Tip

Most people are using these builders like they’re toys. The advantage goes to the person who treats them like a factory.

Here’s the workflow that prints results:

• Use a PRD prompt generator (like their Prompt VC flow) to create the “spec”

• Run the same spec through 2–3 builders

• Pick the best front-end output (usually Lovable)

• Export to GitHub and deploy outside the platform

• Use Supabase webhooks (not front-end webhooks) for security and spam protection

That last part is sneaky important. If your webhook is exposed in front-end code, you’re basically inviting chaos to dinner.

The bigger takeaway is simple:
this is the end of “we need a dev team” as a default excuse.

If you can ship a usable onboarding app, a funnel, a lead magnet tool, or a mini-SaaS in hours… the offer game changes. And the only real question becomes:

Are you selling the build… or selling the outcome?

Because the build just got cheap.

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

Nuno