Do You Own A Business Or A High Stress Job

If you’re the one who always has to “come in and do the close,” that’s not leadership leverage, it’s a trap. We dig into the real reason it happens: the clarity, language, and strategy that make your solution sell are locked in your head, so your team fills the gap with jargon and guesswork. That confusion shows up in proposals, presentations, and sales calls, and it quietly costs you time, trust, and revenue.

We walk through a practical NotebookLM workflow designed for founders, CEOs, and small business leaders who need their team to communicate like they do without constant approvals. The core is a three-part system: a secure vault for your proprietary method, consistent outputs that match your brand voice, and story structure that makes buyers care. We connect the dots to StoryBrand and the hero’s journey so your customer stays the hero and you show up as the guide with a clear plan.

To make it real, we demo a Route 66 Plumbing example: generate a brand style guide from your website using Palmelli, clean it up with Gemini, paste it into NotebookLM custom instructions, then feed in Google Business Profile reviews to capture the customer’s words. You’ll hear what changes in the “before vs after” outputs, how to revise weak lines fast, and how this approach helps your business scale without you being the bottleneck. Subscribe, share this with a leader who’s stuck doing every close, and leave a review with the one part of your messaging you want to systematize next.

Transcript

From Closer To Visionary

The NAC Gap And Stress Loop

Storytelling That Actually Converts

Vault Consistency And Story Pillars

Route 66 Plumbing Demo Setup

Build A Brand Style Guide Fast

Use Reviews For Customer Language

Before After Story Assets In NotebookLM

Lead Better Scale Faster Closing

SPEAKER_00 0:06

All right. So we're moving you from from the bottleneck to the battle either, right? So you may you know you've been in the middle of a session and maybe you got uh a call and these people say your salesperson, they say, Hey, I need you on this project. We need you to come in and do the close, and we need it, it's at two o'clock. We need you to help close it. Now, part of you feels great, you know, that your ego is uh being the closer has always been around, but you know, you'd like to be visionary and you'd like to know that folks that you've got on your team can step in and do these things because if you have to be in the room to make the magic happen, you don't have a company. You have an expensive, high-stress job. And so the problem is this NAC gap. You know, I've been watching my VIP clients and they're leaders of incredible companies and they struggle with this. Um, they have a unique solution that shifts the paradigm for their um the companies that they work with, but in that solution and the NAC is explaining it, it's all trapped in their heads, and and the leader has to step in because there's a clarity gap, and they don't have the battle plan that's in your head. And so they don't have the words that resonate, you know, the customer's aspirational desires, and then they default to guessing, and guessing costs millions. And and so the solution is what we're going to do today is a notebook framework, it's a three-part. So today I'm gonna show you how we stop this and how we're going to build a system that's based on three pillars that see um that transform, you know, I've seen it transform my VIPs. You know, they've they've got this vault of their genius and they have this consistency, and they've got these custom instructions that are gives them the brand voice and the structure, and it's infusing the rules of story. So your team can stop needing you to be the hero. And by the end of this, I'm going to show you how to take that gut feeling out of your head and put it into a battle plan that empowers your team to close the deal without you. So let's move you from a closer to a visionary. All right, let's dive in. And so, you know, this is the problem that I see happening. We got three leadership killers. You know, the leader has everything in their head, and it's stressful, and every decision falls onto that leader to make the, you know, everything bubbles up, the buck stops with the leader. And so they have to approve everything that your team's doing, especially in these high-stakes conversations, or you have in the case of my VIPs, they've got a lot of money riding on a yes or a no. And so, you know, they have to be in that room because so much is at stake, but everything's in here. And so you want, you want, you know, you you want to get out of spending hours and editing drafts and having the team bring it to you for your approval. You want to get over here. So today I'm going to show you how to get over here, how to put your brand style guide into your custom instructions so that every asset that your team produces already on brand, on style, has your DNA baked in. And so now you're getting to be more of a visionary instead of a oh, you know, you got to come in and be the closer. You know, the the there's this communication fog, the story gap. I've seen my leaders, they struggle with explaining it, and and they this jargon just bubbles in. And you you've been there, you're using too much jargon, and your the person you're talking to, they don't have your experience, they don't have, they don't know all of these terms, and so they're confused. They're not sure how what what that means, and so they won't make a a decision, a yes decision, until they're clear on that. And oftentimes they don't ask clarifying questions. And so your your content needs to honor the rules of story, and so Notebook LM is just naturally wired to be one of the best storytelling uh systems I've ever seen. I come from the world of story brand, and there's this hero's journey. And the truth is, most of us put us as the hero in the story of the the person that's considering us, but really they're the hero in their story. They just need to see us as a guide that can move you to the success that you're dreaming of, right? Well, notebook, so unless you become an expert storyteller and go through this, then your content's gonna fall short. Your presentation's gonna fall short. And notebook L. Michael's wired to nail it. And so you don't even have to ask it to use a story brand framework, it already naturally, you know, the hero's journey. I have this uh document that I show all the time, and this is a hero's journey. This is, you know, the the your prospects here, they have a problem, they try to solve that problem, and they don't get that problem solved. And so this is generally they're they're right here when they meet you and they're considering a solution because they've tried to get it to work and it doesn't work. And so when they meet you, they see the plan, they get determined, and they start to see where they're going to get here with your solution. So this is the hero's journey, and your content needs to honor that, needs to your brain just needs and appreciates content that's in the form of a story. A notebook LM just nails it without any any uh uh coaching whatsoever. And then, you know, you've got to be pulled in, and you you're the one that, you know, like I was talking at the beginning, you always get pulled in. We got this problem, we need you to come in and solve it, and that's nice, but you see the handcuffs, you're you're trapped in just being um having a job or having this where you always get called in. And so you're wanting to set up your team, you're wanting to scale. And so today I'm gonna just show you how uh notebook LM is the path for you to get out of here. So this is this is what we're doing. Notebook LM has the vault. Most it's the secure vault. You know, most of my VIPs have these unique um proprietary, even patented solutions. And so the last thing they want to do is put it out in the AI world and and everything gets stolen, get uh copied. They've paid, they've they've invested in this. And so Notebook LM offers you the security to vault your information so that it's not shared with the world, and it's not shared to train the models. It offers you the consistency of all the material that's being produced in the presentations and the proposals, in the onboarding, whatever the communication of materials that are needed to ford the relationship, then all of this keeps it consistent, your voice, your tone, your brand, your and then honors the rules of story. All right, so I'm gonna share my screen. So today, so I recently I've had to uh had to have a plumber come in and and do some work, and so I'm gonna use them as an example of how you can build this out and what it looks like. So let me introduce you to Route 66 plumbing. All right, so I needed I needed a plumber, and um I happened to to know the owner, and so I called them and they came and took care of that. But you know, they did a great job, but I'm using them as an example, and we're gonna go and look at Notebook LM and we're gonna see how um we can create a system that vaults your information, makes the voice consistent, and then uses the rules of story to present the information. Okay. All right, so let's go here. So I'm gonna move over to here. So first of all, inside of notebook lm, I have a I have a um I have an empty notebook. So we're gonna bring the information in. And just like those cooking shows, you know, where they show you how to prep it, then over, then they put something in the oven, then they pull out the the end um the results. So this is our the results that we're gonna pull out of this oven. All right. So we're we've got these resources. This is your secure area. So when you pull these things in, we're gonna pull in the information, all right. We brought in some documents, we brought in some reviews, we brought in some images. So I'm gonna show you how to do that. Whoops. So let's go over here. So, in in here, if you haven't worked with Notebook LM, it's a free tool. Now, I encourage you to to you know to dig deep and pay the$20 a month for the professional version, but you can sign up for free and it provides you with um most of everything that we're going to do today. Okay. So you're going to bring in your resources. So this is where you would upload files. So, you know, in the case of Route 66, so I I brought I brought in some information. Before I do it, let me explain this information and how I created it. So, first of all, we wanted to we want the structure and we want the uh the security, we want the consistency, and we want the structure, right? So notebook LM has the story making structure all built in already. So we're gonna bring in what do we want? We want to bring in the brand style guide. And so one of the best ways to create a brand style guide is to use Palmelli. It's a free Google Labs tool, and you just pop in and you get started. So in this case, um you can come in and create all sorts of material. Let's see if I've got this. So, what we're wanting to do, let me just explain Palmelli right quick. You go in and you create the business DNA. And in this case, let's reset this. All right, so now we're gonna bring in, we're gonna bring in the uh the website address of Route 66. Now, what this is doing, it's pulling in all of the brand, um, it's creating what it calls the uh business DNA. So we're gonna be able to see it's gonna take a few minutes, but it's crawling through that website, and so it's it's getting your wording, your style guide, your colors, your fonts, and it's going to create all of this information just from crawling your website. Now, why is this important? Well, we're gonna bring that in and we're gonna put it into uh we're gonna use, we're going to use yeah. So in a minute, uh while it's producing that, I've already done this before, and so here's what we did. I brought in just screenshots from that report and that information that Palmellia is creating, and I put it in here, and I put I just went to Gemini, all right, and I put it in here, and I've asked for it to give me a brand style guide. And so it's pumped out this information just from looking at those images, and so it's created this beautiful you know, marketing teams or marketing agencies can will take several weeks and charge you a lot of money just to create this piece that we're doing here in just a few minutes. So this is still running, and we'll go back here. So in this in this, so I gave it to Notebook LM. It created these items. We're coming over back to our notebook. Remember, we have a blank notebook, and this is the number one lever. Um this is like a VIP tip here. That over here you'll see this is a blank notebook, but we're gonna put in here. This is how we configure the output that uh notebook LM is going to produce, but there's a custom section here, and when you put in, just paste that information in here from from uh where let's see if we can make this bigger. Nope. So all I did is paste that information that uh Jim and I produced from looking at the screenshots of the images produced by Palmelli. And I'm gonna click save. So let's go back over here. All right, here we have the output. I want you to look at this. It's got their logo, it's got their font style, it's got their colors, it's got their tagline, their brand values, brand aesthetic, brand tone of voice, and the business overview. And then it's got all the images that it could find in the website or that were relevant to the brand style guide. And so what I did is I took the uh screenshots just to make it easy. I went in and just took a screenshot of those of the aspects of this. So I just you could I couldn't screenshot all of it. So what I did is I just did a screenshot like this of those items. Then I scrolled down and then I did another one. Okay, so I just took these screenshots of the the um information that was necessary to capture all the aspects of the brand stock guide. I came over to Gemini, and Gemini's excellent. You can just go and upload those files from those uh screenshots. So that's so just for a matter of demonstration, I brought those in, and you see how they brought that information in. And all I did was say, give me, you know, I just said that same prompt, basically. Um yeah, so I just gave it that prompt, told it to produce it, and it's just going to produce the same thing, okay? Then I copied that, I brought it over, and again, I put it in this custom area, and it produced this beautiful, succinct brand style guide. And what does it say? All right, so let's just go read what it this is easier here. So again, it's produced it right here the master brand style guide, produced from what? Just putting in a uh your website address into Google Palmelli. This is free, by the way. Screenshotting the these items, giving it to here and asking it to produce a style guide. And so it's telling me that Route 66 is locally owned. It's in the Amarola, Texas Panhandle. These are details that are very important right now. Modern Retro Americana, modern Metro uh Retro Americana, visual style guide. Here's their colors, their tone of voice and personality, core brands, special services. And so all I did was we again bring it over here, and that's what this says here. So I've saved it. So what have we done? We've taken this now, and anything that we produce in the chat or over here in these asset generators will honor the brand style guide. Why is this important? You've got a whole team, you've had marketing, you've tried to do social media campaigns and you've hired someone and brought them in, but it just doesn't look right. There's a lot of back and forth. We've just resolved that. Okay. We've just taken a lot of your hard work and investment and quickly put it into a tool that is a master storyteller, and now it knows the output what the output needs to honor it. It's in your brand voice, your style guide, your your font, your colors. So now we need to bring in these sources over here. And so one of the things that I did is if you go and you look, if you go and Google um plumbing in this area. All right, so here's Route 66. This is called a Google Business Profile. This is cool. This is basically an approved website that is um a structured, um, structured way to tell Google all about your business. Well, one of the things that uh is happening is, and we use that, we look at all the reviews that a business has, okay? And this is a a shortcut for your brain to go, all right, 678 people have reviewed Route 66. On average, they have a report 4.8 um um rating. So most folks have a good experience, right? Well, this is interesting because if we are expecting the content to speak, and what's one of the things that we um as a leader, we use jargon, we refer to things in our vernacular and not the end user's vernacular. Guess what? You can come over, you can look at all the reviews, and you can see where I've copied, I've done this, but um you've got all of these reviews, and what do we have here? Um, we have we have someone that is an end user referring to the services in the end user's words. Well, what more could you ask for is to get content in the end user's words and get it into your system so that this is producing more um the story in their words. So I copied a bunch of those. So I just came in and I just copied a bunch and I brought it over and I put it into a document. And here we go. So we've got all the reviews in a document. Not only this, this is a tip, by the way. Um they reply to every review. This is huge. So you're getting to you're getting to participate in this conversation as the business. But they're talking about Jacob, they're talking about Ryland, they're talking about um um they're talking about. Talking about the folks that showed up, okay, they're giving scenarios. This is this is beautiful content, right? And so when you come in here, that's one of the things that you would want to do. So you want to upload these items. So um I'm looking for it. Here we go. So so we just brought in that document of all the reviews. Brought that in. The next thing you can do, you can bring in, you can bring in um the website. So we would just pop in their website address. Let's go get that right quick. This website again is going to bring in all of their brand style guide, their you know, all even more information. So you can see it's crawling that and and putting that in there. And then the next thing we want to do is let's let's say, all right, now we need we need to prepare for a presentation. So if we go over and look into here, I did this. Um so these are the items that I pre-baked, so to speak, right? So I I went and got some images of their trucks. So you can look and see what their trucks look like. So I brought those in, and I just wanted to um bring that in and used Palmelli to clean these up and give me some ever uh different versions other than the ones that were on the website. Palmelli has uh can create campaigns in another episode. I'll go through that. But you see, modern pipes, old school care, and then look at this. Is Wolflin home hiding a legacy arrest? See how we protect Amarillo's history. So this is pretty cool in that you can bring in these branded uh items that you would have paid an agency um a lot of money to to brainstorm and and it'd be hit and miss. So we've got we've got the um the reviews, but then next we have a story. So we need to tell a story. So let's pretend that we need to do a presentation or we need we need to do um a narrative for a commercial or maybe a a billboard or whatever it may be. And so we can use we can use uh Gemini to write a story for us that um tells a little bit about a scenario. So again, this is just Gemini. We're using it as a uh storyteller. What are we doing? We're creating the storyboard, and then we're gonna use Notebook LM to create everything on brand, on style for us. And so what I did was I took some of those reviews and I put I put them in here and I asked it to just create a story. All right, so basically I said um I said um, you know, it this uh tool interrogated me a little bit. So I answered, who's the audience, what's the call to action, um, what's the villain in the story? I brought those in and it gave me a story. All right. Again, remember, what does your brain crave? Information and the rules of a story. So let's shortcut this. So we're gonna go in here, and I had this is I'm gonna show you the um, I'm gonna show you the presentation. Before I brought in the master brand guide that I showed you how to create, and the after. Okay, so let's look at this. So basically, just so you know, I asked it to um create a story or or I brought in that story, the modern pipes. Actually, I brought it. This is the one that it created first. Okay, so this is a story that it produced for me. And so when your house is other plans, so I brought this in and I asked it to create just retell a story in a graphic novel, basically. And so it took that information, but notice immediately it's good, it's way above average, but we don't have our branding, we don't have our colors, but we got we got the bones of a great story, all right? So it shows our hero, the homeowner, he's got a plan, he's gonna take care of all these things, he's relaxing and enjoying the day, and then uh-oh. Remember, remember, remember, this is where we are. We're all of a sudden now in the story, we've gone from nigh status quo to uh-oh, something's wrong. Okay, then the typical experience trying to call, who do we trust? How do we make a decision? They called Route 66, they're on their way. Here's the plan. Okay, so it did above average. It shows you this is amazing. You would have paid a lot to get someone to produce something. This did it in just a few minutes, all right? So this is not bad, but let me show you the after. After we brought in the master prompt. All right, we where do we put it? You put it right here, the master prompt. So now it pulled the images from the trucks. It titled it the panhandle chronicles. This is the Amarlo, Texas panhandle, right? But we still have the bones of the story: modern pipes and old school panhandle care, right? Then it then this is awesome. Uh, these are actually older homes in the Amarlo area. It's not an actual home, but it it knew to create content that relates to the end user, to the prospect. These are this is how the look and feel of the homes are in the older areas. But then this is a typical newer home, it's out on the prairie, but it's got the character we love, but then the 60-year-old pipes, and you see that it's weaving in the narrative. So now we've got this going on, we've got the dilemma. The real villain isn't just a leak, it's the silence on the other end of the phone when you wonder if anyone show up before the garage floods. We're booked. Please leave a message or jargon. I thought this was funny. It's likely your polybuty lean manifold pressure valve. Enter the mentor, Route 66. Now, some of these things, there's a couple of details in here that I would take out. But you see, the the leveling up of the output. Isn't this excellent? And just a matter of moments, anybody on your team giving an assignment to know but your notebook LM, the content is being produced in a where? In a safe structured area, on brand, on voice, honoring the rules of story. And so in this case, let's say that we wanted, I saw a piece here that I would want to want to revise. You see this, the 60-year-old rebellion, we don't, that doesn't make any sense. Well, look, you can click revise and tell it to take the the 60-year-old out. Take out the sixty year old bread box. Then I would generate a revision right there, and so it's doing it. So look, we've we've gone, we've gone through, we've set up the security, we've got the consistency, and we structured the story by using some free Google tools. And so now we put you in the driver's seat as a leader, you can move the vision, all the stuff off in the top of your head into a place that your team can be set up as for success. They can create content that makes their client the hero, right? And then you're being relieved, and you can rest assured that you're being a good leader and you're setting your business up to where it can begin to scale. It's amazing what Notebook LM can do. And so today's just start solving the problem of the leader of my VIP clients. See them, they get energy, they get excited, and their team gets together and they brainstorm and they create these assets a day or two before, and they walk into a presentation of confidence on brand and knowing that they're communicating that clearly to their users, to their prospects, to their potential partners. And so this is just a great way to be a leader, set your hand for success. So if you like these, you're getting uh value, be sure to like and subscribe, okay? And also uh let me know if there's something you need help with. You've got my QR code up here. You can scan it. Maybe you are that VIP, maybe you're relating that you've been fighting these battles, and you want a little help, you see how you can do it yourself. But obviously, we can do it faster. We can add in some things that maybe you would miss. It's a reply, reach out, use that QR code, connect with me. I'm Steve R O Y Brown. You can do this, all right. We'll see you next week on another episode of AI Make Simple. That's a wrap.