“You’re such a tool”… is what I say to the tools I use, because that’s what they are!
That was weird, but it’s the topic I want to cover today. In this session, I share the next-generation software and services that impact how I work right now. These are the latest additions to my arsenal, and I’ve been blown away by how good they are!
Take mymind, for example. It’s like an AI-powered Pinterest board for your brain. It allows me to collect notes, thoughts, articles, images, and so on, all in one place. Behind the scenes, mymind is sorting through everything, creating relevant and easily-searchable categories. It’s incredible!
I’ve also been using 15five since stepping back into a marketing director role at SPI. This is a great way to maximize the team’s potential and keep everyone engaged and happy with the work we do.
I talk about ChatGPT today as well. If you haven’t already watched my Podcasting + AI = Magic video, you’ll hear about the time-saving use cases I’ve uncovered. Listen in on episode 668 for more of my thoughts on the AI tools that have been popping up!
Kubera, SleepWatch, and even Chess.com are also among the tools I cover today. So tune in and enjoy!
SPI 674: Tools I’m Using Right Now
Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he believes fail, is an acronym for First Attempt In Learning. Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn: You’re such a tool—is what I say to the tools I use because that’s what they are!
So, I don’t know. That’s a weird intro. Anyway, welcome in. I’m gonna be talking about some of the tools that I’m using right now in my business and in my life, and I haven’t done one of these roundup tool episodes in a while I was thinking about calling it Tool Time, but then, I mean, Tim Allen’s pretty cool and home improvement was an awesome show.
Al was the star in my opinion. But, and actually did you know that Brad, the kid, the older brother, played soccer in San Diego and I was in the same tournament as him. We never played against each other. There was a crowd around watching him, but I never actually saw him, but I knew it was him. Anyway, random tool time.
We’re going with tool time right now, so the first tool I wanna drop for you is a tool that I got recommended to by my friend Matt Wolf. Matt has recently created a brand new YouTube channel, less than year old with like over a hundred thousand subscribers really quickly gaining steam. Why? Because he’s talking about AI and he’s showing a lot of things with regards to tools like Mid Journey and ChatGPT.
I’ve been starting to explore AI a little bit more, and I’ve actually been using ChatGPT quite a bit to write email copy, write sales page copy, not copy paste, but to provide for me a starting point, right? No longer my staring at a blank screen, which is really nice. But this tool that Matt Wolf offered in a recent video is called mymind.
So, mymind and you can go to mymind.com and if you imagine a Pinterest board for your brain, right? Anytime you are on the internet or you can even take a picture or whatever, there’s an Android and iOS app, and I use the Chrome extension most of all, you save it, right? Just like you would with like an Evernote snippet or you know, you can highlight a quote and save it, all that kind of stuff.
But the magic works with the AI. The AI is doing all the categorization for you, right? It’s like that’s what the AI does. So over time as you collect these things, you’re gonna eventually have a search bar, or you have a search bar, or you can type notes in this as well. But essentially, the prompt when you go to your mymind page is search my mind.
And so imagine thousands of things of interest that you just aren’t organized. They’re, they’re like in your brain. And as I always say, your brain does a good job of coming up with ideas and creating things, but not really organizing them. Well, this can organize it for you. So my mind, and I don’t even believe I’m paying for it right now at this time, so mymind.com, I find an article, I find a picture, I find some accessory that I want to add on my vehicle.
Whatever it is, like I don’t have to tag it, I don’t have, you can tag it. It, it, like just knows, oh, here are like if like it, it’s just wild, right? It just knows how to categorize things for you to search through these things and it just analyzes all that stuff for you. So mymind, and yes, my mind is blown because of that tool.
So I’ve been using that. I had mentioned ChatGPT. I’m gonna add that to the list for me personally as well. Been using it sales copy, like I said, and, and the one thing I’ve learned, I do, I do have a video on my YouTube channel that you can check out on how to use it for podcasting, and you can type in What questions should I ask Tim Ferris when he is coming on my podcast?
You can teach at things. Here is a bio of the guest that’s coming onto my podcast. What are some innovative and engaging questions I can ask that may have never been asked before? You can offer ChatGPT a transcript after you upload that transcript or, or just copy and paste it. You can basically say, write me a summary of this, and boom, you got show notes.
Now you could teach it things about your audience and then ask questions as if it is a person you are speaking to, to learn about how to best serve that audience. It is wild. It is crazy. It is awesome. So I’m using that. I’m also using a tool called Kubera, and I have to thank Michael Stelzner from Social Media Marketing World for this one because he introduced it to me in a mastermind that we have been in for over a decade, together with Cliff Ravenscraft, Leslie Samuel, Mark Mason and Ray Edwards.
And he brought this tool to the table and it’s essentially like a mint.com or a Wealth Front. Not even like a Wealth Front, but more of a asset tracker and you can connect it to your banks, to your NFTs if you have any to your, your home. Like it actually knows the value of your home through like Zillow or Redfin.
And it tracks all this. And you can calculate your net worth and it calculates it, you know, down to the dollar. And you get a report every day on, if it goes up, if it goes down, you can see where there might be holes. You can do some really amazing things with it. And it is a paid tool. And the reason why I’m choosing to pay for this rather than using a tool like Mint or something like that, is because they don’t sell your information, right?
They’re, they’re not offering that data to anybody else. You’re paying to get access to this tool and the connections to all these things. And I find it just the most easily organized one. I also found that of all the ones that I’ve explored that are similar, it actually provides me the most connections.
I have a lot of different investments and other things across different financial institutions and whatnot and, and this connects to them all. And it even connected to my crypto things. I don’t have much crypto, by the way. And I think a lot of people would say, well, I don’t have much crypto anymore, but I never really had any, a lot to begin with, but Kuberak, if you end up using it, I think right now it’s like $299 a year, which is a little high for a asset tracker, you know, that’s definitely, you know, minus $299 is, is on there for using the tool now. I mean, it is a business write off, but no, it’s, it’s great. I love it and it’s working really well.
On the team, I have to credit Kristen on our team who is on the operations team, she is an amazing person. And she offered this tool for the team to use, and we’ve adopted it and I’m actually really liking it. So I’ve stepped back into the marketing director role recently, and so I have some people under me who report to me and I need to know and check in with them, not just for one-on-ones, but how are they feeling? I need to get a pulse and that’s what it’s called inside. 15five, This tool called 15five. Like 15, but the number is one five and then spelled out five f i v e. So the number one, the number five. Five. Little bit of a pet peeve of mine when domains and brand names used five and five. And what like how do you know if you spell it? How do you know if you don’t? Especially anybody who uses the number two in their business, like farm two table. Is it the number two? Is it t o? Is it T O O, T W O, the letter or, I don’t know. So anyway, 15five. 15five is a tool that allows you to, you know, manage your team and the entire team’s in there.
Matt and I have one-on-ones together, and then every director has those who are under them, available and you get, you get to check in with the team, you get a pulse every single week. You can ask questions to make sure that the culture within your business is, is the way it should be. And, you know, it’s never, always gonna be rainbows and unicorns, but I, you know, in the, the week and a half that I’ve used it now, I’ve really enjoyed it.
And it’s allowed me to really get in the heads of those who work for me. And it allows me to do what I can to make sure that their scores are higher and that they’re happy. And if they’re not happy, I’ll, I’ll know it now and I wanna make sure I know that so I can help pivot and, and adjust things to a point where, where they will be happy.
So shout out to the marketing team, by the way, you guys are awesome. Another tool, that I’m using that I wanna share with you is, and I have to credit Jeff, my trainer, from Total Body Construction for this one, it is called Sleep Watch. And this is an app that I use on my phone that connects to my watch.
And I thought people who slept with watches we’re crazy. Like, why would you do that? You’re going to knock yourself out in the middle of the night. And then I was like, who flails their arms while sleeping like that? Maybe I do. Sometimes I, I, I bet my wife would attest to that. Anyway, you sleep with your watch on, your Apple Watch, and this thing will track your sleep.
And I’ve used sleep trackers before. I’ve used the Aura ring. And they’re okay. But never have I gotten data like this. Data that goes really deep into my rhythms. My heart rate dips and it gives me a score. And what I really love about this more than the data that comes in, I mean, I love data for sure, but it actually asks me prompts midday, which normally I’m like, why would I get an app that interrupts me?
I mean, it’s not like a siren, but it’s a notification. It’s like, How is your energy right now? Right? Are you feeling really energized? Are you feeling a little bit tired or, or, you know, whatever. And so you answer these questions and over time it begins to learn a little bit more about the things that you do and why you are energetic or not.
And even things like, you know, I, I remember waking one day and feeling pretty groggy. So I, I tapped when I woke up, like not really feeling rested at all, and it was like, Hey, did you do anything the previous day or did you eat anything or drink any alcohol? And I was like, well, I had a couple beers for dinner.
And then I made the connection to my head after the next time I was like, okay, well, okay, I’m gonna have a beer with dinner this next week. We’re out with friends getting pizza and I’m gonna have a beer, I’m gonna enjoy myself and I wanna see how I sleep. And lo and behold, both nights that I slept poorly were nights after I drank alcohol, and then I looked at the data even further and noticed that my heart rate dip, which it should always dip while you’re sleeping, was almost nonexistent. In fact, there were moments where it actually went up while I was sleeping, and so I’m beginning to make connections there and it’s like, okay, if I have an important thing the next morning, no, alcohol.
Right, so things like that are, are really interesting. And, and so, you know, I’m looking at my phone right now and that app is right front and center because it’s, it’s been really, really helpful. There are some other apps that I use, Duolingo. I’m trying to learn, learn Japanese. I might head to Japan this year to attend a Pokemon event.
That’s where the world championships are gonna be. Oh, you know, an interesting one that I’ve been using a lot, which maybe doesn’t necessarily have to do with business, but it does have to do with joy, if you will, and that’s chess.com. I don’t know where this came from, but all of a sudden, at least here in the US, I don’t know if it is the same around the world, but there was this like huge wave of people playing chess.
So much so that my son came home from school one day and was like, dad, we played chess at school. And I was like, Wait, you’re in middle school and you play chess, like you want to play chess? And they’re like, yeah, it’s what we play at lunch. And everybody’s playing on chess.com on their phones together.
Cuz yeah, my son’s at that age now where he has a phone, so he was like, can I get chess.com? And I’m like, okay, we can get, it’s free. And then there’s like upgrades to get the puzzles and I’m like, oh this is like educational. So I think it would be worth. Anyway, we got ’em the puzzles and he’s rating really high, which is nice.
And you know, I still haven’t let him, i, I’m not gonna let him ever beat me. He still has not beat me. Although I do have to say, and I wanna like cement this into this audio right now for in the future when he listens to this randomly. Actually, I’m gonna talk to him right now. Keoni, you’re 13. Remember when we went to Cheesecake Factory for, I think it was Mother’s Day?
No, it wasn’t Mother’s Day. It was somebody’s birthday. We went to Cheesecake Factory. And like we had to wait like two and a half hours. So we ended up playing chess together while we were waiting. And we were playing a game, you had me pinned, bro. You were going to win. And it would be the first time in Flynn family history that a son would beat a father.
My dad never let me win, by the way. And still to this date. And then your timer ran out. Your 10 minute timer ran out. And I remember specifically cuz your mom was watching over my shoulder, you chasing me down, and I was just moving my king away, away, away. And then all of a sudden the pop-up said, you lost for you.
And I won. Be on time. That’s the lesson. Anyway, thank you all for listening in today. Just, just a fun little episode here. What are some apps that you are using? What are some tools that are really helpful for you right now in whatever it is that you’re doing? If you’re in the All Access Pass or inside of SPI Pro, share away cuz I love hearing about these things.
Also, just a huge congratulations to everybody in the All Access Pass. At this current moment in time, we’re right in the middle of the YouTube from Scratch Accelerator and Accelerator inside of our All Access Pass, right? Because All Access gives you all access. You get access to all of our courses.
However, just information alone isn’t, isn’t it? You need guidance. You need pathways through them. So Ashley and our team who we hired specifically for this purpose, she rounds up people and says, Hey, we’re all gonna go through this course together at the same time. I’m gonna give you the lessons to watch by when.
And there’s office hours. You can come in. They’re optional, but let’s get through it together. Success rate is so much higher than just the online courses alone. So anyway, SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. It’s open right now. There’s accelerators happening all throughout the year. You don’t wanna miss them.
If you wanna actually move forward in your business, SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. Please, if you want to succeed in an online business, I’ve never been this forward with how much something we’ve created can absolutely change your life and help you. SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. The team, the courses, the community.
This is proven stuff now. I’m so confident that this is the number one resource in place to learn online business. Hands down, SmartPassiveIncome.com/allaccess. Have that be the tool that you use and share. Thanks everybody. Take care. I appreciate you. I’ll see you the next. Peace.
Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!