If, as a solopreneur, you currently spend more time clicking back and forth between ChatGPT, Claude, your Google Docs and some note app than earning real money — then stop. A few days ago Google rolled out an update in the Gemini account that looks unspectacular at first glance but is a genuine game changer for your workflows: You can now create your notebooks directly in Gemini and work in them there.
Note (as of July 2026): Google has renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook. Product, features and your existing notebooks remain unchanged — only the name is new. In this article I keep using “NotebookLM” because the term is (still) the more common one.
The problem: tool chaos is not a strategy
For more than two years I have been warning on my channel against blindly chasing every AI hype. The sad reality: most self-employed people now have 20 or more AI tools open in the browser, pay for four or more subscriptions — and are completely overwhelmed. Quite honestly: That is not business growth, that is self-sabotage. Another tool here, another tool there — instead of looking properly, once, at what you concretely need.
Exactly this problem is what the new update solves: it reduces the cognitive load in your head.
What the Gemini update changes
Until now NotebookLM was a fantastic but isolated island (if you do not know the tool yet: What is NotebookLM? explains the basics). You uploaded your documents there, worked with them — all great. But as soon as you wanted to write a quick email about it or search the web, you had to leave the island.
Now Google has connected the island to the mainland: your thinking partner — the AI — now sits in the same window as your daily business questions. And that brings us straight to the three workflows.
Workflow 1: the real voice filter — your business DNA notebook
If you have been on the market for a while, you bring something no AI in the world can generate on its own: your own voice. Before we go into detail, you need to know a concept running behind the scenes at Google: E-E-A-T. It stands for four English terms:
- Experience — lived experience
- Expertise — subject knowledge
- Authority — authority
- Trustworthiness — trust
When AI search engines evaluate content today, they filter mercilessly by these four criteria. The problem of many young AI gurus out there: they may have theoretical expertise — but they lack the first E, real lived experience. You, with your 15, 20 or even 25 years of practice in the market, have that E in abundance. But if you simply tell ChatGPT “write me a LinkedIn post”, the AI smooths your valuable experience into generic mush.
So in the new Gemini you do the following: you create a notebook and call it “My business DNA”. There you upload exactly these three things:
- transcripts of your best client workshops,
- two articles you genuinely wrote yourself — not the AI,
- your current mission statement or an offer PDF.
Then you open this notebook in the normal Gemini chat window and enter this prompt:
“Act as my editorial thinking partner. I want to write a piece on topic XY. Scan my stored notebook for my real personal case examples. Formulate three core messages for me following the inverted-pyramid principle that hit exactly my pragmatic tonality — without typical AI adjectives.”
And then this happens: Gemini accesses exactly your first E — your real experience —, blocks hallucinating from the open internet and writes with your stance. That is no button trick, that is strategic brand leadership. And many still leave this potential lying on the street.
Workflow 2: the interactive client dossier
This workflow solves one of the biggest time sinks: preparing for a strategic first call. Believe me, I know how many hours go into it if you want to do it really well.
Until now it probably looked like this: someone books with you — a lead is born. You open their website, click through LinkedIn, take notes on a slip of paper — and find it under the keyboard three days later. 25 minutes of precious lifetime gone, usually more.
With the update you build the interactive client dossier instead. As soon as the appointment is in the calendar, you create a temporary notebook for this lead in Gemini and drag in via drag & drop:
- the PDF of the completed pre-call questionnaire — I recommend sending a questionnaire before every booking,
- the text of the client’s current website,
- your own methodological guideline.
And then you ask your thinking partner:
“Compare the pain points from this client’s questionnaire with the messages on their website. Where are the logical breaks? Which three precise questions must I ask in the first call to give them immediate strategic clarity?”
In just 45 seconds you have a dossier on the table that is better grounded than what some consultants deliver after three days of research. You walk into the conversation with confidence, listen, advise — and the machine has done the legwork. The example refers to a classic consulting business, but you can adapt it to any area of the online business: questionnaire, comparison with the website, and looking where the gap is.
Workflow 3: your single source of truth
The third workflow is the decisive lever — namely when you don’t just want to keep busy but genuinely get into action and grow. Because growth rarely fails from lack of diligence. It fails from friction loss. If your knowledge sits in Notion, your documents in Dropbox, your prompts in Apple Notes and your AI on ChatGPT, you lose cognitive energy every day merely searching. Here too I know what I am talking about.
By integrating the notebooks into your Gemini account, you make Google your single source of truth. You build exactly three fixed core notebooks:
- Notebook A — products & strategy: price lists, terms and all documents containing your products and your business strategy.
- Notebook B — content recycling: all scripts and notes — everything you have in concepts that you would like to create content from.
- Notebook C — audience: client research and their pain points.
When you then sit down at your desk, you no longer open a thousand tabs — you open one tab: Gemini. There you open your notebook and simply say: “From last week’s video I put in here, I need a content idea.” Done.
The true superpower: it forces you to tidy up
The development is not slowing down — on the contrary, it feels like you can barely keep up. And every update promises you: “This is the thing without which you will never do proper business again.” But the decisive part is not the AI. The decisive part is your knowledge of your own processes.
The true superpower of this new Gemini feature is the fact that it forces you to tidy up first. A notebook only works with clean, structured documents. It forces you into systemic thinking. The AI leads you to where it really hurts — but exactly through that it also relieves you. The heavy lifting, the heavy data processing, the AI takes over. And in contact with people you can listen more again and lead better. You can be more you again.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Gemini update change about NotebookLM?
Until now NotebookLM was an isolated island: uploading documents and working with them was wonderful — but for a quick email or a web search you had to leave the island. Now you create your notebooks directly in Gemini. Your AI sits in the same window as your daily business questions.
What belongs in the business DNA notebook?
Three things: transcripts of your best client workshops, two articles you genuinely wrote yourself, and your current mission statement or an offer PDF. That way Gemini accesses your real experience instead of producing generic texts.
Which three core notebooks do I need for the single source of truth?
Notebook A: products & strategy. Notebook B: content recycling. Notebook C: audience with client research and pain points. Nothing more — three fixed notebooks instead of a thousand open tabs.
Conclusion: it is not the AI that decides your growth
It is not the AI that decides your growth — but how well you know your own processes. The Gemini update takes the searching, the clicking back and forth and the legwork off your hands. But the structure behind it comes from you. And now I am curious: when you open your browser tomorrow morning — how many open tabs grin at you? 5, 15 or even 30?
If you are saying: “I want to end this tool chaos and finally use AI strategically for my business without being run over by the technology” — then come over to our free community “KI — aber richtig”. There we exchange exactly such substantial workflows: free, practical and at eye level.
If you want to build workflows like this regularly: That is exactly what we work on in my AI Business Community — with monthly live calls, on real cases from the participants’ businesses.
