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We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady, the show where we help online creators like you build a calm business, one that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an un-boring business coaching program, and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.
[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show.
Hello.
[00:00:38] Caroline: Whoa, buddy.
[00:00:43] Jason: Is it beautiful?
[00:00:44] Caroline: Mm hmm.
[00:00:45] Jason: Is it beautiful? Okay.
[00:00:47] Caroline: Really beautiful. It was... I did not know you were starting.
[00:00:50] Jason: Of course.
[00:00:50] Caroline: Okay.
[00:00:51] Jason: That's just the way I do things.
[00:00:53] Caroline: At a frequency that was aggressive. I will just say that.
[00:00:56] Jason: Aggressively, like, nice on your ears?
[00:00:59] Caroline: Delightful. Aggressively delightful.
[00:01:00] Jason: Aggressively delightful. That's...
[00:01:02] Caroline: Hey, guys, what's up?
[00:01:03] Jason: Go ahead.
[00:01:04] Caroline: We're aggressively delightful, and this is our first hit single.
[00:01:08] Jason: Uh huh. Finish it off.
[00:01:09] Caroline: Frequency.
[00:01:10] Jason: Nice. Speaking of first hit singles, I've really been enjoying Bush's Glycerine lately. You ever just get down a rabbit hole on Spotify?
[00:01:20] Caroline: Honestly, like, if I ever need to turn my day around, I'm gonna have you say the word, Bush.
[00:01:26] Jason: And Glycerine?
[00:01:27] Caroline: Glycerine.
[00:01:28] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. That is a rabbit hole that I went down. Also, I remember seeing, I think it was an Instagram reel a while ago of someone saying, like, you ever try and make a song radio on Spotify? And she's like, hey, here's some songs. And you're like, oh, okay, that was cool. And you make another radio. It's like, hey, here's some songs. But it's the exact same songs basically. It's like, okay, no, but, like, it's a different artist. So, like, can I have a song radio of that? And it's like, yes, here are some songs. It's just like the same list over and over.
[00:01:55] Caroline: This is where algorithms... The limitations of algorithms, where they're like, our data has told us that you like these things, and you're like, hey, hey, hey.
[00:02:04] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:04] Caroline: I did. I do. I do what I did.
[00:02:06] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:06] Caroline: I would just also love to, like, integrate some discovery and some...
[00:02:10] Jason: I just made a... I just made a Leon Bridges playlist.
[00:02:12] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:02:13] Jason: And you put Mighty Mighty Bosstones in it. And those two things are like, I like... I liked Mighty Mighty Bosstones when I did the Blink 182 playlist. But I'm on Leon Bridges, and I want something like Teddy Swims to go with that. And it's like, but don't you want Mighty Mighty Bosstones in here? And you're like, no, buddy, I don't want that. All right. I think this curtails nicely into these seven magical tools, which, how many of these are AI? One, two, three. Three and a half?
[00:02:40] Caroline: Well, isn't everything AI now, Jason?
[00:02:42] Jason: Everything actually already has had algorithms for the longest time. But anyway.
[00:02:46] Caroline: Yeah, different algorithms are not necessarily AI, right?
[00:02:49] Jason: Oh, can you hit him with the hook? Like the big hook?
[00:02:52] Caroline: Okay.
[00:02:52] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:53] Caroline: Stick around. And our last tool, we'll tell you, is the most recent one we found that is gonna completely transform our business.
[00:03:02] Jason: Is both.
[00:03:03] Caroline: Both of our businesses.
[00:03:04] Jason: Yeah. No, actually...
[00:03:04] Caroline: No, but seriously.
[00:03:05] Jason: The last one.
[00:03:05] Caroline: No, but seriously. The last one is a tool that we just recently found, and we are changing a bunch of things in our businesses to use it.
[00:03:15] Jason: We're changing everything.
[00:03:15] Caroline: Which we'll tell you about. We just thought this would be a fun episode. We've done a lot of, like, very education heavy episodes lately. We just wanted to share some fun things that we have found. And, you know, it's not a full episode about AI, but truthfully, some of these things are powered by AI. And it feels like we're in a moment right now. If you're a business owner listening, I don't know if you feel this the way that we feel this, but it definitely feels like this big shift is happening.
[00:03:43] Jason: I've been telling you this for a while. Did you have more to that? I didn't want to interrupt you.
[00:03:47] Caroline: No, thank you.
[00:03:48] Jason: I have been saying this to you for a while, but I don't think I've said on the podcast, I think we are really moving into the done for you era of online business. And I know it has kind of felt like that for a while. Like, you sign up for a software tool and, like, it should do a thing for you. It has a jobs to be done, blah, blah, blah. But, like, a lot of times, you still have to do the job. It just helps you do the job faster or whatever. But I really do feel like we are really moving into this phase of, hey, I need some Instagram reels. Machine, go make me some Instagram reels with, like, these parameters and, like, great, now I'll go post them.
[00:04:18] Caroline: Yeah. And this episode is not for us to debate whether that is a good thing, whether that's a bad thing, whether we think, like, what we think the future of the creator economy is. Like, you've listened to plenty of those episodes, and we have plenty of those discussions on a regular basis. But to say that we have formed any type of, like, I think the people out there that are like, this is gonna change it in this way. I'm like, y'all, we are in the Wild West. I don't think anybody can say what is gonna happen 'cause just everything's new.
[00:04:44] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:45] Caroline: So that's just for us to have a little bit of humility and say, we're not on here trying to tell you that we know exactly where things are headed. What I do know is that Jason and I have had this conversation many times. The posture that we are trying to maintain is a balance between maintaining a level of openness and curiosity to where things are headed, because I do think that in business, if you are shut down to technology changes, you're gonna be obsolete. Like, you have to remain open to evolving. So there's a little bit of, like, I don't ever want to be the curmudgeon that's like...
[00:05:19] Jason: We'll never get on social media again.
[00:05:21] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:05:21] Jason: Like, we do say those things often to ourselves, but...
[00:05:25] Caroline: But we try to stay open, because I think you do have to change with the times if you want to adapt and evolve and be a business owner for the long haul. And in that same breath, we also don't just want to get carried away by the tide. So much so that we, you know, devoid our work of the human touch and the creativity and the just everything that we bring to it. Like, I don't want all of these changes to just make me suddenly lose the heart and soul of what we're doing. So I think that's where we are with things, is we're constantly trying to be... have our eyes out for, like, what are tools that can help our workflows? What are things that can help us, especially as a two person team, basically, um, do things more efficiently, do things in a way where we can maximize our time? Yes.
[00:06:10] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:10] Caroline: And also, let's not just get so carried away that we try to automate every single aspect of our business.
[00:06:15] Jason: Great. Uh, I think to make this episode even more fun, what just came to my mind was, uh, we, all of us, you listening to this, us, doing this thing of online business together.
[00:06:25] Caroline: Great.
[00:06:25] Jason: We're in a game of Mario Kart.
[00:06:27] Caroline: Okay.
[00:06:27] Jason: We're all in our little carts. Uh, I will be Toad. I'm a little mushroom guy. Who are you gonna be?
[00:06:32] Caroline: I will be Bowser.
[00:06:34] Jason: You're gonna be Bowser. Fantastic. You all can pick your favorite characters at home. Feel free to send us an audio message with your favorite character that you'd like to be and also remind us what you like about this podcast so that we can include that little audio message in our 200th episode, which is coming up very soon. Go to podcast.wanderingaimfully.com if you want to submit a little voice note and memo about this podcast. And we'll share it and we'll talk about it and celebrate 200 episodes. But getting back to my Mario Kart metaphor, we are on our little carts, and we're on the little course of online business. Does this really want to make you play Mario Kart tonight?
[00:07:04] Caroline: Absolutely.
[00:07:04] Jason: Yeah. We'd have to dust it off. But these tools are like the turtle shell that you get. They're little question mark boxes that you get.
[00:07:12] Caroline: Okay, that's not a turtle shell.
[00:07:14] Jason: You get a green turtle shell sometimes.
[00:07:15] Caroline: Oh.
[00:07:15] Jason: You get a red turtle shell.
[00:07:17] Caroline: I thought you meant like that you run over the turtle shell. That's when you spin out.
[00:07:21] Jason: No, just these are the things you get. These are... you get them in your inventory.
[00:07:25] Caroline: In your inventory.
[00:07:25] Jason: In your inventory. And I think that the the way to think about these things is they all serve a different purpose, you know. Some of them are offensive tools, some of them are defensive tools, some of them are, when you fall behind, you're like, I just... how am I going to get ahead? It's that first place killer. That's the one. That's just that blue turtle.
[00:07:39] Caroline: Should we do an entire AI tools course just with this theme?
[00:07:44] Jason: Absolutely.
[00:07:44] Caroline: Okay.
[00:07:45] Jason: Fantastic. So if you want to just think about that little metaphor the whole time that we're here and we're talking about this, I think what you brought up is great. And we use this phrase often in our household, which is the curiosity corner.
[00:07:55] Caroline: Yes.
[00:07:56] Jason: And it's very easy as a business owner to, especially as we are all getting older, that you kind of get set in your ways and like, hey, for ten years, I've done it this way. I've used WordPress forever. I'm never going to change to a different platform because this is what I know. You're going to get left behind. I'm not saying you can't be on WordPress. I'm just saying that, like, as we'll talk about in tool number seven, there are way better tools these days. And the way that we have always done things might not be the best way to accomplish those things, which I think as we talk about these tools, these are kind of the... I'm not gonna say game changers, but they are the things that are really helping us work more efficiently, and they're helping our little Mario Kart karts get the little boost of a mushroom blast of speed. They're helping us get that little red turtle shell that's like, oh, there's a boss to take down. Boom. And I can throw that red turtle shell.
[00:08:40] Caroline: And the last thing I want to say is, there's something also to be said for tools can also just make you excited to work on your business.
[00:08:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Caroline: They're not silver bullets. They're not things that are gonna solve all your problems. But we are two people who like to learn new things. We like to try new things. And sometimes a new tool can just be what you needed to, like, kind of get you re excited and reinvigorated for your business.
[00:09:05] Jason: Yeah. All right, so the tools that we are not going to talk about are ones that we have been using just for, like, a long period of time. So.
[00:09:11] Caroline: Right. Jason initially was like, it's the tools that run our business. I'm like, then we got to talk about Notion. We got to talk about Canva. We got to talk about all those things we use. And we were like, no, we've been using those for years. It's more about just things that we found within, like, the past year, I would say.
[00:09:24] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And I think there are actually more to add to this list, especially for, like, on the Teachery side of things, for the things that we use in our software application. But, like, those aren't as fun to talk about. So, like, who cares?
[00:09:34] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Jason: But let's talk about some of these ones that we have, like, really integrated or partially integrated, because there are some that we don't use as much, which we'll tell you what those are. And, of course, if you're listening to this and you're like, I didn't understand the name of the thing you said, because the name of, it's like, Fluben. And I'm like, how do I spell that? Is it with a ph? Is with an l? Is there silent h? Not only will we spell it, but I'll put it in the show notes. So you can just look at the show notes. We don't even have to spell it if we don't want to, because that'll get us in trouble. So it'll be in the show notes. The list of these seven tools, you can click through to them. Some of them may include an affiliate link if you want to use our link to sign up, and then if you just don't want to do that, you can just type it into your own browser bar, and then we don't get any money. And then we can't pay our bills. Then we don't get to eat delicious cinnamon rolls and all those things that we love. First tool. Carol, let's get into the big obvious one that probably everybody has at least dabbled with.
[00:10:20] Caroline: Yes, ChatGPT.
[00:10:22] Jason: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Caroline: Okay. When we first signed up for it, it was just... We were in the curiosity corner. We were like, what's all the hoopla about? Like, let's just see. And I remember testing it out and being like, okay, this is cool. Like, I... This is neat. This is definitely feels like a leap forward. But I was like, how often am I actually gonna use this?
[00:10:39] Jason: Can I bring up my first thought, which is very similar?
[00:10:42] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:10:43] Jason: I don't understand what I'm supposed to ask.
[00:10:46] Caroline: That was you?
[00:10:46] Jason: That was me when I first started.
[00:10:47] Caroline: Oh, really? My first thought was like, I have a million things I want to ask.
[00:10:50] Jason: I was just like, I already... When I think of something, I go to Google. But now I realized very quickly there were so many contextual questions that I couldn't even ask or that I would try to ask. I'd be like, oh, I just have to give up.
[00:11:02] Caroline: Yeah. The wild thing about ChatGPT is it really is about retraining your brain to ask better questions.
[00:11:08] Jason: It is, yeah.
[00:11:08] Caroline: Because we've all been trained on Google for the past ten years, and so you go and go, and you're like, you know that you're gonna have to go, like, three rabbit holes deep. So you do your most general query, then you find a thing, then you're like, then you get more specific. But in ChatGPT land, I can be like, okay, my favorite thing about ChatGPT is that you can give it so much information to play with, so you can be like, okay, this is just an example. It's a real way that I used it for our software business when I was really stuck in trying to come up with this data analytics plan, and I just had been down every rabbit hole of the tools and the research.
[00:11:47] Jason: It's also just a very complicated...
[00:11:49] Caroline: Complicated. And so I'm like, okay, ChatGPT, I'm like, imagine you are a data analytics consultant that I've hired, and you have taken the most knowledgeable things from... And then I listed out real people whose, like, content I had consumed, who were, like, experts in data analytics. I'm like, imagine you're like, a mix of this person, this person, and this person. Okay, now I've hired you as a consultant. It's like, I love the creativity of it because you can really just... It's like an infinite canvas. You can play with anything, and what it spits back out to you is so helpful, but it's only as helpful as what you put into it. And I kind of even like the creative exercise of, like, can I get really good prompts? Like, how good can I get it prompting it? Um, so I have been absolutely floored at how much we actually... I would say we use it every day.
[00:12:38] Jason: Yeah, 100% use it every day at this point now, because again, I didn't know what to ask it before, but now I'm like, I don't even know what to go to Google and ask anymore because I'm getting the answers. And actually, I added an 8th thing in our list here that I use now in tandem. That is actually more helpful than Google for me. But yeah, there are so many questions that are more complex and require more context that now I can ask ChatGPT, and I'm almost like, I'm like, there's no way that it's gonna be able to answer this question. And then it just spits back and answer. I'm like, oh, that's right, you have all the computing power in the world and like, all of the knowledge of the Internet up until like a year and a half ago. Of course you're going to be able to answer this question.
[00:13:18] Caroline: Also, in case you're wondering, we don't, we don't pay for ChatGPT 4.
[00:13:22] Jason: Right.
[00:13:22] Caroline: So we're on 3.5, and if you're like, well, how exactly are you using it? So, yes, I'm using it... The best way to describe how we use ChatGPT because I think when it first came out, everyone was like, it's going to write articles that are completely lifeless and all this stuff. And it's like, there's plenty of people doing that. Don't get me wrong, we don't use it to write things. We use it. The best metaphor I can give you is we use it to get clay on the table. So we use this metaphor a lot where, like, you have to kind of like, if you're like a potter, you put clay on the table and then you can kind of sculpt it into like, whatever you want to make it right. But for creative business owners, I think one of the hardest things is to just get clay on the table. It's like to write the shitty first draft, to come up with the bad name so that you can get to the good name of the thing, to just write the first couple paragraphs of your email newsletter so that you can just get into a flow state. It's like all those things. And so, like, every day, we're using it to get clay on the table for whatever the creative thing is that we're doing, to take a little bit of that heavy lifting off of our creative effort that we're putting forth. So if I know what I want to write a newsletter about, I will say, hey, can you give me some, like, expanded bullet points on... I know I want to write this newsletter. I want it to be titled this. I want it to be on these three topics. You know, can you write a four paragraphs...? Oh, I also love... Can you keep it to under 250 words? Because Jason and I, there's a cutoff. We're long winded, and so in our newsletters, there's a cutoff. And so we know that each section has to be under 250 words. So I never just, like, spit something out and then I take that and put it in our newsletter. Never ever do I do that. But it gives me enough to be like, oh, you know what? I don't actually like starting with that. I want to start with this kind of, like, hook instead. And so then I'm off to the races and I, as the human being, can write it. But, you know, not having that first draft is such a big kind of barrier to entry, especially if you're writing content like newsletters and things. So it's really helpful in that regard.
[00:15:15] Jason: I've got four ways to share how I like to use ChatGPT. Number one is to make me feel less dumb. So perfect example is, like, when we got my MRI back for my knee, the first thing we did was we put it in a ChatGPT. We're like, can you explain this to me? Like, I'm a five year old? And it was like, yeah, you have an ouchy in your knee and it's really bad, and there is a ligament that isn't there anymore. And, like, you need to have surgery to get...
[00:15:38] Caroline: Yeah, because it was in this, like, doctor speak that we could not understand.
And, like, this didn't exist when I had my first two knee injuries. And, like, it would have been nice to, like, have a full clarity of, like, what actually fully went wrong. So it's like, making me feel less dumb is always nice. Like, we'll get an email from, like, our accountant or whatever. Like, oh, you gotta, like, da da da da. And I'm like, I don't know what that means.
[00:15:55] Caroline: Exactly.
[00:15:55] Jason: I take it to ChatGPT. I'm like, hey, can you explain this to me like I'm a 17 year old?
[00:15:58] Caroline: Yes.
[00:15:59] Jason: And then it explains. It's like, you know, it's kind of like an adult, but also like, kind of like a kid. So, like, ah, okay, I get it. You know, that's my, uh, that's my intelligence level.
[00:16:07] Caroline: Love that. I didn't mean to interrupt all your ways, but I just thought of another way that I use it often.
[00:16:11] Jason: Okay, go ahead.
[00:16:11] Caroline: And this speaks to our, our number seven. But when I'm trying to do CSS on our website and something won't, like, the position won't do what I want it to do. Like, I'm pretty proficient in writing CSS, but everyone once in a while.
[00:16:25] Jason: You get tripped, tripped up.
[00:16:27] Caroline: Kind of stuck. You're like, why is that doing that? And so I use it to troubleshoot. So I'm like, hey, ChatGPT. I'm trying to create a div with three child elements, and I want them to do this. And I've set this to this. And my number three element is, like, stuck on the right hand side. Any idea what's happening there?
[00:16:43] Jason: Yeah.
[00:16:44] Caroline: And they're like, yeah, you might. You might need to set the parent element to blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, my gosh.
[00:16:49] Jason: Wouldn't know that. All right, so my other two are, like, kind of related, but they're kind of separate. So they're both involving big chunks of information.
[00:16:56] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:16:56] Jason: So, like, we have a survey that will go out to, you know, our audience multiple times per year, and it's very hard to get quantitative analysis on, like, a big chunk of, like, a hundred survey responses. ChatGPT is perfect for this. You just copy the hundred in. You say, hey, I'm going to give you 100 responses to this question. Can you just give me, like, a breakdown of the percentages of what people say?
[00:17:17] Caroline: The most common responses.
[00:17:17] Jason: Most common responses.
[00:17:19] Caroline: This is for, like, three response.
[00:17:20] Jason: Exactly. And, like, uh, just give me three key takeaways that I should walk away from this with. Oh, my gosh. It comes back in 7 seconds. And, like, I... What's really funny is I will never forget the first time that we did this. It made me think, do you remember the IWearYourShirt sponsor that I had that was the quantitative survey insights company?
[00:17:37] Caroline: Nobody.
[00:17:38] Jason: Oh, that was way back in the catacombs of business. But this was a company that you... That it's a very valuable company in its time that you could give all this data to. They would crunch all this, but it takes like a week because it's like you're sending, your emailing it, they got to go through it, they got to parse out, they put it in a PDF, whatever. ChatGPT gives back to me in 7 seconds.
[00:17:54] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Jason: So that one's great. The second part of that with big data is actually, I did this today, big chunks of data, not like big data, like big pharma was we do this accountability game in Slack and so we have 100 people who submit comments, but it's all mixed in with their messages and their avatars. And so last year when I was doing it, it took forever to pull out every person I would have to copy and paste or write them down or whatever. Now we just highlight this. You wrote a prompt that's really smart. And we call ChatGPT Tobor. In our house, it's robot backwards. We tell Tobor, hey, do this real quick. Give me this list with hyphens and like a nice format thing I can copy, boom, a list of 50 names with hyphens. I just copy it and then I move on with it. Such a great use.
[00:18:36] Caroline: You know, that just reminds me, if you want us to do a full episode, that is recommendations on like 15 ways you can use ChatGPT to make your business more efficient, let us know. Send us an email and hello@wanderingaimfully.com and we'll do a full episode because now that I'm...
[00:18:51] Jason: There's a lot.
[00:18:52] Caroline: About this, I'm like, there's so much and I'm really excited.
[00:18:53] Jason: I could go through. You are more of a power user than I am of ChatGPT, but I use it so much I could just go through my sidebar and be like, okay, I asked it to explain to me like what, like peptides are and like it explained to me like what, you know, these things are.
[00:19:06] Caroline: Oh, can I tell them the last best way that I used ChatGPT?
[00:19:09] Jason: Sure. But then I have my final one.
[00:19:11] Caroline: Okay. I set up my... I have an iPhone and it, I have the... one of the newer iPhones that has that, what they call the action button.
[00:19:18] Jason: Yeah. Wow, cool flex, bro.
[00:19:20] Caroline: What is it called? The action button?
[00:19:21] Jason: No, no, it is, I'm just saying you're showing off and you're just bragging about your iPhone 15. That's pretty cool, bro. Wow, great job.
[00:19:26] Caroline: Yeah, it actually makes me super cool. Okay. But it's important that you know that because... Anyway, you can set the action button to do different things. I'm super embarrassed now that you said that.
[00:19:37] Jason: Oh, really? No, it's fine. It's just a joke.
[00:19:39] Caroline: Did it sound like I was trying to flex?
[00:19:40] Jason: It's just a joke. Everyone, by the way, everyone has a smartphone at this point. It doesn't matter.
[00:19:44] Caroline: I don't think everyone does. But anyway, I set up my action button so that it goes directly to ChatGPT and it talks. It's a voice activated ChatGPT. And my favorite use case for this is, before, Jason and I would be driving, and we live in Portugal now, so we would drive by like an old church or something. And I'd be like, I wonder what that is? Or what's that landmark?
[00:20:05] Jason: And you just never get the answer to that question.
[00:20:07] Caroline: You just never know. And now Jason hates me now because I just literally, I hold down my action button like it's a freaking walkie talkie. And I have this, like, the kindest, warmest female voice who ever... She's my friend.
[00:20:19] Jason: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Caroline: This is not even Tobor. That's my other friend who talks to me. And she's like, can I help? You know, she's like, what can I help you? And it's not like a Siri robotic voice. It sounds like an actual person. And I'm like, hey, I'm in Portugal and this town, I just passed by a church. It looks like it's a pretty important landmark. Can you tell me what that might be? And she's like, sure. It looks like you might be driving by, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, how? We are living in the future.
[00:20:42] Jason: So I just asked Tobor for, like, I had this ongoing thread of like, hey, can you give me another way to make a V60 cup of coffee? And Tobor would be like, oh, yeah, this is like Tetsu Kayama's... I don't know. I messed up that name, but that's a person who, like, won a barista championship in like, 2023. Like, this is his winning recipe. It's like, marginally different than how I make coffee normally. But it just makes me excited because I'm like, okay, now instead of pouring the water for 30 seconds, I pour it for 20 seconds and then I heat it to 161 degrees instead of 190 degrees. What's going to happen? And it just feels very silly. But I just love it because it would take so much work to google those things and to, like, get through the ongoing list of, like, ads and, like, all those other posts that I think we're all seeing in Google now. It's like, it's so hard to get the information you want. I can just get it directly from my little consultant.
[00:21:28] Caroline: Yes.
[00:21:30] Jason: Do you have anything else for Tobor before we move on?
[00:21:32] Caroline: The last thing I just want to say, if you're listening to this right now, and your head is kind of exploding. And you're just like, I don't want to be in this era of things are happening at such a rapid rate. I totally hear you and I agree with you, and it's enough to make your head spin a lot of the time. But I think the thing that I would just offer up that I hope people take away from this is, yes, it's a little scary. Yes, everything is uncertain. It feels chaotic to live in a time where things are changing so quickly. And also, there is joy to be found in the new things that are the new opportunities that are being born every day. And I think both of those feelings can totally exist. And as a business owner, I think we are just trying to find that joy where we can. And our way of dealing with the chaos of it all is to just find delight in the curiosity of how these things can be implemented in our business. And I would be lying if I said that it isn't amazing and magical to feel like you can do more and you can be more creative. Like, creativity that already exists within you is just elevated and amplified by these tools. And I think that's what the promise of AI is.
[00:22:45] Jason: Yeah. So would you say that in the game of Mario Kart, ChatGPT is the ghost tool that you
[00:22:49] Caroline: get?
What does the ghost do?
[00:22:54] Jason: It steals from other people. So. But sometimes you get a really good thing when you steal the items. So, like...
[00:23:00] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:23:00] Jason: Like, I could steal a red shell from you if you have a red shell. I'm like, oh, cool, I got a red shell. But sometimes you ask Tobor to do something.
[00:23:07] Caroline: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:07] Jason: It would do a horrible job. So you get one single banana and you're like, oh, really? That's all I got? I think Tobor is the ghost.
[00:23:14] Caroline: Okay.
[00:23:15] Jason: In the items.
[00:23:15] Caroline: Wait, I really didn't realize. I don't know much about the...
[00:23:19] Jason: How you do as I...
[00:23:20] Caroline: Question marks.
[00:23:20] Jason: As I tell you, the question marks.
[00:23:22] Caroline: Just haven't played...
[00:23:22] Jason: Let's move into item number two, which is also an AI tool. And again, only I think, like, three of these are AI tools, but we're starting with the two of them that are.
[00:23:29] Caroline: Yes. Yeah. So again, these are the hot AI's on the block, you know?
[00:23:34] Jason: Yeah. Nice.
[00:23:35] Caroline: It's Midjourney, and that was one that I've really steered cleared off for a while just because, first of all, it's hosted in Discord and something about Discord, now I'm really gonna sound old, is, like, scary to me. I don't like being there. It feels like there's just a bunch of... I don't know why it just feels like...
[00:23:53] Jason: Hackers?
[00:23:54] Caroline: Yeah, feels like I'm with hackers and I'm not, but, like, I just don't know. So you get into Midjourney, and it's like, join this Discord and, like, join one of these channels, and you're just with, like, a bunch of people, and everybody can see your prompts. I don't like that either. I feel very... I feel very, like, prompt demure.
[00:24:08] Jason: I have a question for you.
[00:24:08] Caroline: What?
First of all, you've also learned how to now bring your own, like, Midjourney chat into your own chat now so you can do yourself. We, like, saw a video of a guy showing this. Oh, so you don't have to be with anybody else. Do you ever join other online groups? I'm now realizing this about you. Like, have you ever been in another Slack channel?
[00:24:26] Caroline: Why would I? If there's any time I'm gonna spend in a Slack channel, it's gonna be ours.
[00:24:30] Jason: I know, but, like, you never joined another one?
[00:24:31] Caroline: I'm not a group joiner.
[00:24:32] Jason: That's what I'm gonna say. Like, have you ever joined any other Facebook groups?
[00:24:35] Caroline: And do you know why this is? I have a hard enough time maintaining relationships with the actual human beings I'm related to, with the actual friends that I, like, love, and with all my heart. Like, I have a terrible time trying to maintain relationships, and I put a lot of effort into it, and I don't have the time to be feeling responsible for communicating in other forums.
[00:24:58] Jason: Yeah, I just... I find this very interesting. I'm now discovering this about you. Like, I don't think I've ever known you to join, like, an online group of any kind where you've, like, chatted with other people. I'm not saying that as a criticism.
[00:25:08] Caroline: It's... I'm not taking it as a criticism.
[00:25:09] Jason: I'm just saying now I understand why logging into Midjourney must be so tough for you. You just see these other people.
[00:25:16] Caroline: It's very, like, don't look at me.
[00:25:17] Jason: Exactly. Like, we have a introduce yourself channel in our WAIM community Slack. And there are some people who like... brave souls, who are like, I never introduce myself, but I'm just going on a limb here because I hear this is a safe space, and we're like, oh, that's so great. Do you think you'd introduce yourself?
[00:25:30] Caroline: I would. That's why every time, every WAIM Weekly where we tell people to introduce themselves, have you noticed that every time I stop and I'm like, I know this is scary. I know this is hard for some of you because that's me.
[00:25:41] Jason: Exactly. Okay, let's get into how we're actually using Midjourney.
[00:25:43] Caroline: Don't look at me.
[00:25:44] Jason: I'm going to start off by saying the Mario item, and then I'll repeat it, the Mario Kart item, because I can tell you for certain what it is. It's the green turtle shell. Because half the time that you use this tool, Midjourney, it is a complete mess, which is exactly like the green turtle shell. You shoot that thing forward or backward, and you think it's going to do a great job, and it just goes bounding off the walls somewhere else. And that's 100% what happens, because we did the Calm Business Encyclopedia last year, and we used Midjourney to, like, spin up a bunch of images and things for all the different letters. And I remember when you were trying to get a magnet and it could not make a magnet.
[00:26:18] Caroline: If you can get Midjourney to do a magnet, send it to me.
[00:26:22] Jason: Yeah, just a red magnet with silver tips.
[00:26:24] Caroline: It can't do it.
[00:26:24] Jason: It cannot do it.
[00:26:25] Caroline: First of all, I've never loved you more than when you have really committed to a metaphor. Like, it's just very attractive to me. So thank you so much. But also, yeah, so Midjourney, we don't use it that often because we still love to use tools, like, you know, where human beings have created the graphics. So, like, we'll still go on Creative Market and look for things.
[00:26:49] Jason: Yeah, I mean, we pay $10 a month for Midjourney, but I think we still probably pay, like, between Canva, Creative Market, Icons8, and a couple others, we still, like, we pay, like, pay probably ten times more every month for paid creator tools.
[00:27:04] Caroline: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:04] Jason: And so I just... I bring that up to be, like, Midjourney is not replacing, like, all of the, like, creative work that we're getting.
[00:27:10] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:27:10] Jason: It's just the way I look at it, too. I didn't mean to cut you off, but, like, I think Midjourney is, like, it's the artistic task that you want that, like, it's so hard to hire someone for. And even if you hired someone for it, it would be so difficult to explain to them. Like, okay, you've seen Lord of the Rings, right?. You know, Gandalf. He's, like, the older elf character. Okay, great. Now, my husband, we also had an idea of, like, we want his head to be on the body, but here also, instead of him holding a staff in his hand, if he could hold, like, coupons that, say, 50% off, that would be really great. And I know that you could literally describe that to an artist, and they could make it happen, but the amount of back and forth thing that you would have to do to get that right. Midjourney can get it done. Granted, it's a green turtle shell, and it's going to miss a couple times, but you just keep firing that bad boy away, and you end up getting what you want, and it's like a disposable image that we're never going to use again in that instance.
[00:27:58] Caroline: It's fun to use. It's fun to try to come up with the prompts. It's also fun sort of for, like, cementing your own visuals in your own mind. And so I... Like, for instance, we have this little brand character, Iggy, the idea monster, for our software business Teachery and...
[00:28:16] Jason: Which we originally paid for on Creative Market.
[00:28:18] Caroline: Yeah, we originally bought illustrations and bought a license for on Creative Market, and I even reached out to the artist to see if she could... We needed a lot more to see.
[00:28:28] Jason: We needed more Iggy.
[00:28:29] Caroline: More Iggy. And she wasn't available. And so I'm trying to think in my head how we can evolve this character forward and kind of take the monster idea, but in my mind, I was like, okay, is it more of a sketchy vibe, like a character concept art, or is it more of an inky vibe, like someone drew him with a black pen? Or is he...?
[00:28:47] Jason: Like a Monsters Inc vibe?
[00:28:48] Caroline: Yeah, exactly. Or is he like a Pixar vibe? Yeah, exactly. And so I went to Midjourney to try out all these different... sort of different variations of Iggy. And it's not helpful to go to an artist and be like, I don't really know if I want it sketchy.
[00:29:04] Jason: Exactly.
[00:29:04] Caroline: Or I don't really know if I want it inky. I don't know if I want it, like a 3D thing or I don't know, you know? And so it's just helpful to go to a place where you can kind of cement what the visual is in your own mind.
[00:29:12] Jason: I could also see it too, especially for, like, this use case of solidifying in, like, okay, this is what we want the character to look like. Now let's take that to an artist and say, who, like, does that style? And be like, hey, can we, can you help us? Like, we would love to pay for your time to do XXX with this character. And that would be really hard to describe to Midjourney. Like, okay, we need this character to be jumping. We need this character to be on rollerblades. We need this character to like... And, you know, the roller blades are gonna end up looking like horse hooves or something. And you're like, again, green turtle shell just bounced off the wall, like, did not hit the target.
[00:29:41] Caroline: So again, it's not a replacement. I think it's just a facilitation tool.
[00:29:45] Jason: Yeah.
[00:29:45] Caroline: And I... Yeah. For example, like, for our WAIM of Stones game, which is our accountability game that we did this year, we wanted to do it in a movie theme, and I had this very specific vision in my head. So last year we did these gemstones. You get a WAIM-finity Stone every month that you complete the goals. That's how the game works. And they're just all, I bought those on Creative Market. They're all just like, sort of like vector illustrations of little gems. Right? They're different colors. But this year I was like, it's movie. We did a movie theme. And I'm like, I want a gemstone in the shape of, like a little Monopoly game piece for each movie genre. So it's like, for Rom-Com month, I wanted a gemstone in the shape of a heart. For adventure month, I wanted a gemstone in the shape of, like, a cobra, like in Indiana Jones. I wanted a little...
[00:30:32] Jason: All these little shapes.
[00:30:32] Caroline: For disaster month. Yeah. Did you think that that might exist? Has anyone ever thought of that before? Turns out no, they have not. And so I used Midjourney to come up with illustrations of all of these gemstones, and it took a lot to get the perfect look of what I was looking for.
[00:30:48] Jason: But it would take a lot to work back and forth with an artist, too.
[00:30:50] Caroline: And the final result was just incredible. And it's, it's a creator's dream to be able to think of a thing and be able to use this tool in order to deliver that to your audience.
[00:31:01] Jason: Yeah. I think that my favorite part of Midjourney is the fact that I look over your shoulder and see some of the atrocities that are coming back, and I just get to laugh hysterically. But then, like, it... you'll work through it and you'll end up with something that's awesome. It's just like, okay, cool. Like those, that's the thing that, like, we just conjured up in our brains. Like, we're gonna throw it and use it away in email for, like, one time and then, like, that's it. So, um. All right, so Midjourney is the second one. Green turtle shell for Midjourney. Ghost item for ChatGPT. Let's move into the third one, which is one that we actually, uh, were excited about when we first got started. I think we've been a little bit colder on it, but I think it might be coming back into the fray with some of the content things that we're going to start doing in the next couple months.
[00:31:44] Caroline: Wow. Teaser.
[00:31:45] Jason: And this tool is Castmagic. And Castmagic is the best way I can describe it is basically like ChatGPT, but you're giving it audio and video files, and then it's basically like...
[00:31:56] Caroline: It's like Descript and ChatGPT.
[00:31:58] Jason: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Caroline: Kind of.
[00:31:58] Jason: Um, the best part about it is that Caroline gave it AI prompts to do certain tasks. And so now, like, I'll upload, let's say, the audio version of this podcast and the AI prompts are already there. So it'll just, I'll just upload it and then I just click the, like, use the AI prompts that we already wrote. I get ten titles for the podcast episode. I get three written descriptions that I can choose from. It gives me a bunch of chapters of, like, when it thinks, and it doesn't do a great job of the chapters, but, like, it's at least a starting point for, like, here's some things that we're talking about.
[00:32:29] Caroline: Clay on the table.
[00:32:29] Jason: Clay on the table. I give you a full transcript, like, all these things, and it's, I am giving it the red turtle shell in Mario Kart because it's very precise. It's like we told it to do a thing and you did the hard work of the actual prompts to start with. But, like, now that we have it, it's a red turtle shell. It is always going to hit the person in front of us, and it's going to go through the tunnels, it's going to go around trees. It is going to be precise and hit it. So that's why I really like Castmagic, because there's no kind of guesswork. Like, Midjourney, I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to get. ChatGPT, half the time, like, I don't know what I'm going to get. This one, I'm like, I know exactly what I'm going to get. Something's going to be good enough. If not, I can just hit the replay thing, but I rarely have to.
[00:33:04] Caroline: Yeah, and we should also say it uses AI to transcribe. So we have a person, a human transcriptionist, but being able to start with kind of the raw materials is also just like, cuts down on a lot of time as well, so that the person isn't literally just listening and transcribing, it's more editing.
[00:33:22] Jason: Yeah. And I think that there are some features that are coming out with Castmagic. Like, I think that it's called Studio is their feature that can take from your audio or video files that you add and create, like, Instagram content or TikTok things. And, like, they're even starting to do little animations. And I think this is actually a very interesting use case for this, but I'm just curious how, like, it doesn't usually have, like, a video component. And I know there are already tools. Like, we looked at one a while ago, a year ago, I think there was a, like, video spelled in a weird way that basically, like, you put in a video and it would just clip out a whole bunch of different things. I'm sure the people listening to this who create content know that there are many tools that do that, but we don't, so we don't know those. But I think that there's something very interesting about having that in a tool like this. And I could see them getting to that place and it could be very helpful. Anything else we use Castmagic for? I think, again, like, it's a very precision tool. Like, there's not a lot of, like, extra guesswork that goes into it.
[00:34:13] Caroline: Yeah, we haven't used it to its full capability. But again, if you do any video or audio content and you want to repurpose that content or places to summarize it, to write descriptions, to write... Write me a blog post based on this short audio recording.
[00:34:28] Jason: Yeah.
[00:34:29] Caroline: It can do things like that. So again, it's really for your audio and video creators.
[00:34:33] Jason: Yeah. Also, if you use Descript, I think you can get a lot of the same thing in Descript. So if you're already using that, I would just see if Descript can do what you're trying to do, because they are trying to kind of, like, do the exact same thing.
[00:34:43] Caroline: Yep.
[00:34:44] Jason: All right. That was the red turtle shell. Very precise. Hits the person in front of you, you get to pass them. Now you moved up a place. Congratulations.
[00:34:50] Caroline: Great.
[00:34:51] Jason: Next up, I've talked about this application multiple times. Caroline gets bored that I talk about it so much. I say that it's a bitch. I don't think she really cares. But it's Screen Studio.
[00:35:01] Caroline: Yes.
[00:35:01] Jason: And I absolutely love Screen Studio.
[00:35:03] Caroline: We love Screen Studio.
[00:35:04] Jason: Screen Studio is a screen recording application where it also records your video if you want it to. But the absolute best part about it is that it tracks your mouse and will add in zooms and other effects. It's super high quality, so you don't have to do, like, screenshots, you don't have to re record b roll, you don't have to put anything on top. It just follows you around. And then in the edit afterwards you can remove those, add those, you can add padding. You can change your video thing of you to be smaller. It's just a really, really well designed app and what used to take me like 2 to 3 hours to record a demo video, edit it together, do some zooms, like re record some things, they look higher quality. It takes me maybe 30 minutes.
[00:35:43] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:35:43] Jason: It is a huge time saver. There's no AI to it right now that I use whatsoever. It is just a video editing app, but it's a one time pay app as well, which is absolutely wonderful. And we use it all the time. We're about to start using a lot more because we're going to start redoing the help docs for Teachery.
[00:35:57] Caroline: Yeah, we are going to use it a lot in the summer and fall of a lot of the content things we're going to do for Teachery. But it's just an example to me of a perfect tool where they, it's a very specific use case and something that uses software to give you a very high quality output with so much less input.
[00:36:17] Jason: Yeah.
[00:36:17] Caroline: You know what I mean? So it's like recognizing that people were doing tutorial videos and like the more software takes over the world, the more tutorials you're going to need. And they just do it really well. So, and you can also do like custom little backgrounds and gradients.
[00:36:28] Jason: The thing that I think Loom does really well is just like, it's so fast to like record your screen, see your video and you're there. But Screen Studio is like, well, I want this to look a little bit more polished. So you can do these beautiful backgrounds. They have a full library. You can choose your own gradients, you can upload your own images. Then you can shrink down the overall video that you recorded a little bit so you see that background. You can add a nice drop shadow. Like it really just looks very professional.
[00:36:51] Caroline: Yeah, it's like if you are going to publish this front facing to your audience in any way, I think Screen Studio is the way to go. If you're doing it just for collaboration or asynchronous communication, Loom is the way to go.
[00:37:03] Jason: Oh, asynchronous. Nice. Buzzword right now these days. Buzzword. Okay. I'm going to give Screen Studio... By the way, highly recommend trying Screen Studio, everybody. I love Screen Studio. It is the single mushroom item. It's just a boost. It's just like, it gives you a boost and you're just like, oh, I just want to record this video? I want to look better. Boom. Just like, boom. Just popped out a little mushroom boost.
[00:37:19] Caroline: Do you have enough of these items?
[00:37:29] Jason: I don't think so, but go ahead.
[00:37:32] Caroline: You're going to have to come up with new ones.
[00:37:33] Jason: You're next here.
[00:37:34] Caroline: Okay. Number five is not an AI tool. And some of you are going to be like, yeah, I've been using it forever, is Tally.
[00:37:43] Jason: We've even mentioned it. And when we did the Calm Business Confidential.
[00:37:46] Caroline: Because we love their story and we're biased to husband and wife or spousal...
[00:37:52] Jason: SaaSers.
[00:37:53] Caroline: SaaSers.
[00:37:54] Jason: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Caroline: Tally is a form builder that is basically think of Notion as a form builder. So it's built on blocks and you can create any type of form that you can think of very simply and very easily. And to be perfectly honest with you, we have been using Typeform for probably ten years.
[00:38:16] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:16] Caroline: Like a long... When Typeform came on the block and you could, you could brand your forms, they were the alternative to Google forms and everyone was like, yeah, this looks a hundred times better.
[00:38:27] Jason: And their name of their company wasn't SurveyMonkey, which was like the other form builder, which wasn't even a form builder. It was just like...
[00:38:32] Caroline: I forgot about SurveyMonkey. Yeah. But so we just never looked at another form builder for years because we were happy with Typeform and we've kind of ridden the wave as they've improved the product and everything. But just for this time around, we did a survey recently and I thought, I've heard so much about Tally, like, let me just give it a try. I mean, the big thing with Tally, too, is that it's free.
[00:38:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:38:50] Caroline: And they have a pro plan that you can upgrade to, but for the most part, a lot of their features are free. So I got in there and your girl loves Notion.
[00:39:00] Jason: Yep.
[00:39:00] Caroline: And so once I got into Tally, where it was building forms just like Notion, it just was delightful. It was a delightful...
[00:39:08] Jason: Blocks and the little, like, commands.
[00:39:09] Caroline: It was a delightful experience. It was for somebody who, you know, is already creative and just wants to be able to build what they want to build. Um, it was a fun experience to use. There was a little bit of a learning curve because there's like, certain things that are different and you have to, like, it's like, I don't know, do I just create a title or do I connect it to a question? All these things. Uh, but it was, it was fun to use for the first time. And I think we are going to probably transition all of our Typeforms over.
[00:39:34] Jason: Yeah, we... I think we're definitely going to. We've been paying for Typeform annually because it's one of the few apps that we're just like, yeah, I mean, we just use this all the time. It's the post purchase survey that lives on the thank you page after someone joins WAIM, which is incredibly helpful way for us to get information. Also, pro tip, if you're listening to this and right now you do not have a survey on the post purchase page of when someone buys something from you, please create one because you get the best information and it is the most filled out survey you will ever have. And it's right at a time of someone purchasing. So you can ask them, like, what was the number one thing that led you to buy? How did you find this? Like, what, what was the final, like, straw that broke the camel's back that you said, like, yes, I need to buy this. Like, those are the things that are so helpful for you to learn. So, yeah, we will definitely be switching everything over before our Typeform subscription renews. But, yeah, I think Tally for me gets the three red turtle shells.
[00:40:26] Caroline: Okay.
[00:40:26] Jason: Because it just, it can accomplish exactly what you want it to accomplish very quickly.
[00:40:32] Caroline: Almost too good to be true.
[00:40:33] Jason: It's almost too good to be true. I get three of these. Not just one. I get three red turtle shells. And you're like, yes, please. I could just keep firing these things off. And it's just like, execute my plan. Execute my plan. Hit. Hit Yoshi, hit Donkey Kong.
[00:40:45] Caroline: I also do. I do love supporting, like, small team business.
[00:40:49] Jason: Yeah, exactly, and we...
[00:40:50] Caroline: Out there doing it.
[00:40:51] Jason: We will end up paying for it once we migrate over just because...
[00:40:54] Caroline: We'll be pro users.
[00:40:54] Jason: Yeah. If anything, like, it's just to say, like, hey, we appreciate this product that you built. And, like, we were paying Typeform more money than this. So, like, we were already paying this money. Here, have this money. You know, it's just a nice way to... Um, I want everyone listening to this to know I am writing down what items I've given these things.
[00:41:08] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:41:08] Jason: I don't know if I'm going to include that in the show notes because it might not make sense, but I am writing them down so that we have a record of them, which is very stupid.
[00:41:16] Caroline: Thank you so much for letting us know.
[00:41:18] Jason: All right, next up, we have two more. And then I added a bonus one. So we actually have three more.
[00:41:22] Caroline: Okay. The next one is a tool that I found out about many, many months ago and remembered that I had a free account for it. It is a tool called Whimsical.
[00:41:31] Jason: This has been around for a while, hasn't it?
[00:41:33] Caroline: Yeah, probably.
[00:41:34] Jason: Yeah.
[00:41:34] Caroline: But, okay, so Whimsical is the best way I can describe it. There's a lot of these sort of, like, whiteboarding tools out there now. You know, I think the COVID era where people were, like, remote working and having to collaborate and stuff like this was a big category that got opened up. And so. But I am a very visual thinker, and so actually, that's not even true. I need different things for different ways that I like to think. So, like, sometimes I'm, like, super into making lists. Sometimes I need paperless. Sometimes I need Notion. Sometimes I need, like, I'm just all over the place because my brain is going in a million different directions. But I like that about myself. And so the other day, I remember I found Whimsical because we did a coaching session where we were telling people how to break down projects into smaller pieces. And one of the steps in the process was, like, basically write down all your ideas, right? And I knew we have lots of WAIMers whose brains are all different in our WAIM Unlimited. And so I wanted to give different options for people whose brain or brains are different than mine. So I said, here's a list option, here's a mind map option. And Whimsical was the tool because you can do a free mind map in there. I was like, here you can use Whimsical, and also you can embed Whimsical into Notion, which is really cool. So if you want to brainstorm, like, and you're a visual person, this is a great tool for that. But the other day, this is about three weeks ago, I was, like, in the shower or something, and just, I felt like my ideas were going all over the place, and I was trying to think of, like, how do I explain this? And blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, yeah, I have that, that tool that's just, like, a mind mapping tool. And so I get into Whimsical, and I make this, like, whole flow chart. And then now I am just, I am on a flowchart tear. I've just been making, like, all kinds of, like, I actually have this, like, giant mind map going, or, like, flow chart going of... and I'm going to keep it for the entire year as we build Teachery, every single thing that we, like, decide across the entire year, I've been writing down. So, like, we have, like, one main track that's like, okay, then we did our, you know, customer surveys. Okay. Then we found out. We didn't have enough people to do customer surveys. Then we pivoted to audience research, and I have all of those as steps in the process. And you see all of my, like, little side journeys. And so I can't wait to film that Screen Studio video going, taking people through that journey and being like, look, like, this is the messy. This is the visual representation of the messiness of trying to grow a business. And when do you ever get to see that?
[00:43:55] Jason: Yeah.
[00:43:55] Caroline: You never do.
[00:43:55] Jason: Never. I also think it's gonna be such an interesting video to take someone through that timeline and be like, here was a plot twist, and, like, here was a decision that we made, and here was a moment when, like, it branched off from our original plan, and now, all of a sudden, like, we actually went on a different journey.
[00:44:10] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:44:10] Jason: And so I think it's gonna be very fun to watch that. Boy, imagine if we'd had that for the past ten years. Would have been fun. All right. I have not used Whimsical at all, so I don't have a ton to add to it. I've just been privy to you showing it to me when you've put it all together, but I'm going to give it. Well, unless you have a certain item you'd like to give.
[00:44:27] Caroline: I would just love for you to take this metaphor.
[00:44:29] Jason: First of all, I'm going to ask you this question. How many bananas do you get when you get the multiple banana item? How many trap track behind you?
[00:44:36] Caroline: Three.
[00:44:37] Jason: I thought it was five.
[00:44:38] Caroline: Is it not?
[00:44:38] Jason: It's three.
[00:44:39] Caroline: Oh, it's three.
[00:44:40] Jason: Yeah. I thought it was five. Now it makes sense.
[00:44:42] Caroline: Five is so many, bud.
[00:44:42] Jason: I know. Now it makes sense too that you get three turtle shells, you get three bananas. It makes sense. For some reason, I thought it was a lot more like this long tail of bananas that you always had behind you, but I I think about it as it's versatile. So you could throw the bananas forward, you could drop a banana behind you. You could hang a banana off your butt in case someone's shooting a turtle shell at you.
[00:44:58] Caroline: I would agree with that.
[00:44:59] Jason: It's versatile, but it's not, like the best tool either, you know? Versatile, not the best. Three bananas. All right. I think I have enough items to finish out this entire thing, which is fantastic.
[00:45:08] Caroline: I'm so happy for you.
[00:45:10] Jason: All right, so the item. Not the item, the program, the tool that we alluded to at the very beginning of this. We have two more to tell you. The one that we're going to talk about now is the one that we started with. And then I had a bonus to finish with that I added while we started recording. This is one where we both kind of fell into this tool. I remember looking at this tool probably like three months ago and just being like, that looks cool. I don't understand it. I'm moving on.
[00:45:36] Caroline: And then when we did this, we surveyed a bunch of designers in our audience for Teachery's market research, and we had this one question that was like, what tool do you use that you absolutely love using? It's like a delightful experience, and we wanted to see what type of software people are positively responding to. And this came up several times, and it wasn't the most, by any means.
[00:45:58] Jason: Just a couple.
[00:45:58] Caroline: But I was like, oh, I should check that out.
[00:45:59] Jason: Yeah.
[00:46:00] Caroline: And it's Framer.
[00:46:01] Jason: Yes.
[00:46:02] Caroline: And if you haven't heard of Framer, Framer is basically a tool that allows you to... think of Figma, which is, if you're a designer, you'll know what Figma is. But it's a design tool that allows you to, like, create designs and do prototyping. But Framer allows you to basically do a design like Figma, but publish it to the web.
[00:46:26] Jason: And not only publish it to the web, as you're building and designing it, it is publishing to the web. So that's the crazy part to me, is, like, there's nothing you have to do to have code written. Like, it's just absolutely wild.
[00:46:37] Caroline: But you do have to. You have to hit publish.
[00:46:40] Jason: Publish. But I'm just saying, like, there are many other tools where you, like, oh, I'm designing and whatever, and then, like, okay, now I have to go in and, like, make all the code part of it work. This is, I'm designing and I'm building boxes and I'm putting things over here, and I'm adding images and I'm adding text and I'm doing this and I'm adding gradients and all this. And, like, I'm. It's a full design. And then I literally just hit the play button, and now it's a website.
[00:46:58] Caroline: Yeah. And I honestly, I remember coming across Framer when we were deciding to move the Teachery website, the marketing website, not the application to Webflow. And I know there's, like, a big, like, Framer versus Webflow kind of, those are the new big kind of players. And I think... I don't remember. I think I had some experience in Webflow, so I just thought, and I think some of the things that I had read was like, Webflow does more and it has more and so I just...
[00:47:25] Jason: It does.
[00:47:25] Caroline: It does. And so I was like, okay, well, I don't want to feel trapped by, like, a more simple tool. Like, I want to go to the tool that has, like, the most capability because I was afraid that we would find ourselves down this road where we would need something else and then we'd have to switch and blah, blah, blah. So I was afraid of that. But now, having played around with Framer, I'm like, oh, it is so much. This is where you just have to know your business, like, better than the person recommending the tool to you because I'm like, yeah, but for us, the most important thing is that I'm a designer and I'm also the person running all of our marketing, and I need to be able to spin up pages the most quick way possible.
[00:47:59] Jason: Yeah.
[00:48:00] Caroline: And so it's magical.
[00:48:02] Jason: It's pretty, it's pretty wild. And as someone who is not as technically savvy as you are, like, you have mastered Figma. And I know you probably won't necessarily feel like it's that way, but, like, outside looking in, you've mastered Figma. And watching you work in Framer, like, you just have such an understanding of how that works. I'm just like, hey, I know Photoshop 3.1 very well. I could do a marquee super quick.
[00:48:25] Caroline: But you said you were going to learn.
[00:48:26] Jason: I can feel I... But that's what I'm getting to. So, like, this is one of those where, for those of you listening to this episode, especially if you made this far, and you are so resistant to change like I am, and it's hard for you to adapt new technologies or adopt new technologies. Um, I am with you on this one. This one feels very difficult to me. But I have told myself I need to learn this one. And the reason being is because I was going to refuse to learn Webflow because the interface is garbage. It is absolutely ugly.
[00:48:54] Caroline: That's actually what caused all of this, is that I, like, did all this work, like, trying to get our CMS built in Webflow or whatever, and I was all excited to show you, and then you were like, you go, that's what I have to edit the things in? I was like, well, no, you can edit in something else, then bring it in there. And you were like, that bums me out, man. And I was like, I mean, you're right. I agree with you. But I feel sad because I just worked on that, and then it sat with me more and I was like, no, he's right. Like, we're gonna be in here all the time.
[00:49:19] Jason: All the time. And you and I do think that's like, point of this episode is find the tools that you feel good using that motivate you to work on your thing. Like, we've talked about this for years. This is like, small phrase, like, find your motivators. So it's like, if you want to start a habit of being more active, buy the pair of Nike shoes. Like, invest in a thing that you're gonna be like, I want to put those on. Those look cool. It's gonna get me outside. I'm gonna go. Not saying that you should constantly spend to, like, make sure that you're motivated to do things, but there are certain times when it does do that. And I think for us, again, like, why this tool is going to be so impactful for us and why it's going to be so helpful is we can make changes in Framer quicker and without the help of a developer more than we ever have before. And I think that's a game changer in our ability as business owners. And I look at this, like, when Squarespace came along and, like, you could design a Squarespace site.
[00:50:08] Caroline: Oh, it's huge. Yeah.
[00:50:09] Jason: That was a game changer for us and being able to spin up...
[00:50:11] Caroline: Any idea that we had.
[00:50:12] Jason: Exactly.
[00:50:13] Caroline: We would just go, oh, I can just make a Squarespace site.
[00:50:15] Jason: And I actually, I give Leadpages a lot of credit because I think they were like the... what did we just say a minute ago? That was kind of like this, like, Typeform doing branded forms was like a shift in, like, a very small niche of the Internet. But, like, branded forms, I think Leadpages was a huge shift in, like, website building. And that has really, like, evolved into, like, where we are now with things like Framer, where it's amazing, the site that you can spin up quickly. And also, I'll just say for those of you who are able to learn a new program, which is very difficult, the thing that you are going to absolutely love about Framer, which is the thing that I have already been playing around with a little bit, you can install this Chrome plugin, and you can just highlight other sections of other websites. It, like, gives like, a blue outline. You copy it, you bring it back over to Framer, and now you have that exact, all those things from that website.
[00:51:03] Caroline: The layout that you can adapt to your own design.
[00:51:06] Jason: It's incredible.
[00:51:07] Caroline: It's wild. The possibilities are endless. I can't believe it took us this long to do it. And now I think we are even sold on probably moving over our entire WAIM site to it as well.
[00:51:20] Jason: I think. I think we are literally at the place. Like, you've been playing in it in such a short amount of time, and you have showed me, like, our full sales page completely redone in 15 minutes. Granted, it's not perfect, but, like, it took us weeks of consistent work to build our sales page. You rebuilt it in 15 minutes. Like, the things that we will be able to spin up with WAIM, the ideas, the new homepage is, like, without having to have a developer to help us push code, without having to worry about, like, is a plugin going to break when we do this? Like, that's the biggest thing for me, that it's a hell yes for WAIM is like, yes, we need to move to it just so we can do this.
[00:51:52] Caroline: And I'm not saying these tools are perfect for everyone. Not. Not at all. That's the whole point of this is we're not saying these tools are the best tools. We're saying these are the right tools for this moment in our business and what works for us. And I hope it just gets you excited for, like, what's out there. Like, I know for me personally, when I have my head down working on the business, I don't have time to go investigate all these new things that are popping up all the time. And we, you know, we've just been in that place recently because we've been in this huge shift. And kind of when you're already making shifts, you're, like, looking for those changes. And so my hope is that if you're not someone who has the time to go look around for those things, this gives you a list of eight things that you can investigate and be like, oh, that actually would really help my business.
[00:52:30] Jason: Yeah. I'm going to give Framer the blue turtle shell from Mario Kart. It is the first place killer.
[00:52:36] Caroline: You're not going to give it the star?
[00:52:37] Jason: Oh, that's a good question.
[00:52:39] Caroline: You're invincible.
[00:52:41] Jason: That is a good question. Okay.
[00:52:42] Caroline: Invincible.
[00:52:43] Jason: I think you're right. I think you're right. You know why? Because the next one, the bonus one, is the blue turtle shell.
[00:52:47] Caroline: Okay, perfect.
[00:52:47] Jason: So the Framer gets the star. You're invincible. You just get to do whatever you want. You're fighting this light here.
[00:52:53] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:52:54] Jason: But you look kind of like, it's like a beautiful moment.
[00:52:56] Caroline: Oh, really?
[00:52:57] Jason: You're lean, one eye fully in. Caroline has, like, a strip of light coming in, and, like, this would be an Instagram moment we could post.
[00:53:03] Caroline: Really?
[00:53:03] Jason: You'd be like, it's just me in my podcast studio. Just sharing my thoughts.
[00:53:07] Caroline: I think I like this little eye.
[00:53:10] Jason: Okay. I don't know what that's from, but I liked it.
[00:53:13] Caroline: Anyone who's on TikTok/ Instagram reels will know what that's from.
[00:53:16] Jason: Oh, I'll get it in two years then.
[00:53:18] Caroline: Okay. Yeah, you'll hear it in two years.
[00:53:20] Jason: All right, my last one. This is a bonus. This will be somewhat quick. This one gets the blue turtle shell because... And that is very appropriate. This is the Arc browser app for the iPhone. Now, when I first heard of this, I was like, guys, why are you making a browsing app? Like, it doesn't make sense to me.
[00:53:38] Caroline: I told you about this.
[00:53:39] Jason: I know you did. And I... We love Arc, the actual browser. That would've been a whole other tool we could have said in here. Like, the browser itself for your desktop is absolutely phenomenal. It has changed the game for us just in, like, being able to manage our browsing experience on the web. Highly recommend it. But for this episode, the tool that is, I'm, like, so excited about is the Arc browser app. And very simply, what it does and why.
[00:54:03] Caroline: The iPhone app.
[00:54:04] Jason: The iPhone app. Very specifically, what the Arc browser iPhone app does is, I think it's just called Arc Search is the actual name of it.
[00:54:10] Caroline: Okay, probably.
[00:54:10] Jason: Arc Search. It will. You'll ask it a question like, what is the best sourdough discard recipe? This is the extra sourdough starter that you have in the fridge that you just don't want to throw away, but you have extra. You don't need it. You're not making bread this week. And instead of Google giving me nine results that are ads that people have paid for and then three results that are absolute trash, and then, like, one is the recipe that I want. But the blog... The woman wrote a blog post that's like 400,000 words long about her family, and they were at this farm, and there was a goat. And then I'm like, I just want the recipe, ma'am. I don't need this story.
[00:54:45] Caroline: Ma'am.
[00:54:46] Jason: The thing I love about Arc Search is that it will basically go to the web and it looks for the top results. Then it gives you an answer based on what it thinks is the best result from all of it.
[00:54:56] Caroline: No, no. It makes a page for you.
[00:54:58] Jason: It does make a page for you as well.
[00:54:59] Caroline: I just want to describe this for anyone who hasn't used it.
[00:55:02] Jason: But I will say, like, at the very core of it, it gives you a better answer based on the question you're looking for.
[00:55:07] Caroline: I agree, but I like that it basically pulls together all of these resources, and it makes a page for you. A one pager. You know what a one pager is? It's this. It's a one pager for the web.
[00:55:18] Jason: But it's fantastic.
[00:55:19] Caroline: It's fantastic. And you just get to scroll through and be like, okay, great. We had a friend who was coming in town, and I knew she loves art history, and she loves little coffee shops. And I was like, hey, what's the best...? What are some great places that I can take my friend who loves art history in Lisbon when she comes to visit? And it was, like, scrolled through all of these different listicles and everything and gave me a little one page of, like, here are three cafes that have art, you know, things that I think she might like. I was like, okay.
[00:55:46] Jason: Yeah, love this app. I think it's fantastic. Also, it's actually been really helping me shop online, which sounds very weird. I don't shop online a ton. What is the thing that we had trouble buying here and finding, like, a good...?
[00:55:58] Caroline: Yes. A new... You didn't like our linen comforter. It was scratchy.
[00:56:03] Jason: Our duvet covers.
[00:56:04] Caroline: Duvet covers.
[00:56:04] Jason: Excuse me. Please understand our home decor. I didn't know what a duvet cover was until we started dating, by the way. I also just used a comforter on my bed. I didn't have a duvet cover, so I just laid with a comforter on top of me. That's how I slept.
[00:56:19] Caroline: We're not even gonna get into right now how when we first started dating, you told me you were not a top sheeter, and then you changed halfway through.
[00:56:24] Jason: But now I'm not a top sheeter again.
[00:56:26] Caroline: Yeah, exactly 'cause I told you.
[00:56:27] Jason: We sold all of our stuff, and it was one of our stuff.
[00:56:29] Caroline: You basically catfished me. You said you were a non top sheeter, and then halfway through our relationship, you said, no, I think I do want a top sheet. And I said, too late. I already chose you based on the fact that you two did not want to top sheet.
[00:56:40] Jason: That was also a great episode of our podcast where there were a lot of people who came out, and they were like, I'm pro top sheet. I'm not. Anyway, back to my search with... with Arc that was very helpful. We bought some duvet covers. They ended up being the most scratchy, uncomfortable burlap sacks you could ever sleep under.
[00:56:55] Caroline: Both. We bought two because we're European now, and we really like the idea of two twin comforters, not a shared one.
[00:57:01] Jason: Yeah.
[00:57:02] Caroline: And they both came. They were from the same website. They were the same color, they were same skew, and they were two completely different colors and two completely different textures.
[00:57:10] Jason: Yes. So this was a bummer. We also spent a lot of time trying to research and find. This is like a crazy first world problem. Obviously, it's not a big deal. But we spent a lot of time and, like, we got a bad result. And we looked through all the websites. We do these things. So I went to Arc Search. This was like two weeks ago. And I was like, oh, let me see if Arc can help me solve this problem. And I said, can you please find me the softest duvet covers available in the EU? Because if you just search Google for softest duvet covers, you're going to get all the ads for all the ones in, like, US or whatever. And sure enough, the top result was a company that looked pretty legit. And I was like, okay, I'm going to trust this and just see it. I bought them. I didn't even tell you. I think I... We picked a color because that was about it. I was like, what color do you want of these? They showed up and...?
[00:57:53] Caroline: Fantastic.
[00:57:53] Jason: They are fantastic. They are soft.
[00:57:55] Caroline: I actually, after sleeping on it for like three days, I was mad that we...
[00:58:00] Jason: Bought the burlap sacks?
[00:58:02] Caroline: Yeah. For like a year, we slept on those. And I was like, we should have just switched.
[00:58:05] Jason: Uh, I also used it recently for finding protein powder 'cause I was like, okay, asking Google a complex question again, it's not good, but, um, I can't use Tobor because Tobor is not going to give me the most up to date answer. So this is a good, like, in between of, like, what are the, like, the healthiest, highest rated protein powders sold in the EU that are low in calorie? Sure enough, I got three results and I was able to go to the website.
[00:58:29] Caroline: Like, he's just a man who wants to duvet cover and a protein powder. You know what I mean?
[00:58:33] Jason: And a cinnamon roll, please.
[00:58:34] Caroline: He just... Those... These are the things he wants. He's a simple man. He doesn't need much. He just needs a little protein and a duvet.
[00:58:42] Jason: All right, so that gets the blue turtle shell because the Arc Search, it literally gets you to a direct result when you're trying to find an answer to something.
[00:58:49] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:58:49] Jason: Which is not something that Google does anymore. And I really do think that, like, in the next couple of years, we will all be phasing out using Google, which is wild to think about.
[00:58:57] Caroline: Okay, now here's something funny that I hesitate to bring up because it could cause a fight, but I feeling kind of...
[00:59:03] Jason: Okay. Frisky?
[00:59:04] Caroline: Frisky. So I think I should go for it.
[00:59:06] Jason: And we're at the end of the episode. So it's only the true cinnamon rollers.
[00:59:07] Caroline: You mentioned in this episode that you are not someone who... You're someone who's pretty resistant to change.
[00:59:13] Jason: Yes.
[00:59:14] Caroline: Technologically speaking.
[00:59:15] Jason: Yes.
[00:59:16] Caroline: And I would agree with that statement. How many of these things do you think that you would have adopted and started using if it were not for me?
[00:59:22] Jason: Okay, let's go down the list very quickly. I would. I say I would have used ChatGPT.
[00:59:27] Caroline: You would have come around to ChatGPT.
[00:59:28] Jason: I would have come around.
[00:59:28] Caroline: I will give you that. But I definitely got us up there early.
[00:59:32] Jason: Yeah. Yeah, you did. Midjourney. Not a chance.
[00:59:34] Caroline: Not nobody.
[00:59:35] Jason: First of all, I...
[00:59:35] Caroline: Cuz Discord.
[00:59:36] Jason: Cuz Discord.
[00:59:37] Caroline: Cuz hackers.
[00:59:37] Jason: First of all, I log in. I have, like, multiple Slack channels. I'll join groups. I like doing it, but I don't want to be in Discord. This is too... Too difficult. I have to install a server. I don't want to do that. Yeah. So I'm not. I wouldn't have done that.
[00:59:47] Caroline: You don't have to install a server.
[00:59:48] Jason: I... It feels like you do. Feels like you do. I have to get a rack.
[00:59:52] Caroline: Oh, you know, they do call it a server.
[00:59:53] Jason: Exactly. Castmagic. I think, uh, I probably just would have skipped it, to be honest. I probably would have skipped it, so I would skip that one.
[01:00:01] Caroline: Do you remember why I found that? Because you were, like, you were hemming and hawing about...
[01:00:07] Jason: My duvet cover.
[01:00:07] Caroline: How much work it took to get the description and write the blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, I can fix this for you.
[01:00:12] Jason: Fantastic. Great job.
[01:00:13] Caroline: Thank you.
[01:00:13] Jason: Uh, I believe I would have found Screen Studio because I found Screen Studio. I think I would have found Tally because I found Tally. Because I found Tally.
[01:00:20] Caroline: You did find Tally. But would you have started using it?
[01:00:22] Jason: I would have started with Typeform.
[01:00:25] Caroline: Right, exactly.
[01:00:26] Jason: Don't. Don't care about Whimsical whatsoever. So skip.
[01:00:30] Caroline: Three...
[01:00:31] Jason: And three bananas. Framer. Man. No, because it's just so difficult, like, in my brain. It hurts my brain even to learn it now.
[01:00:38] Caroline: Think how many things exist out there that you would never find.
[01:00:40] Jason: Arc Search. I'm not gonna actually give you credit for it because I told you about Arc browser.
[01:00:45] Caroline: No, you didn't.
[01:00:45] Jason: Yes, I did.
[01:00:46] Caroline: No, you didn't.
[01:00:46] Jason: No. I get full credit for Arc browser. We can look at our install.
[01:00:49] Caroline: We can look at our install.
[01:00:50] Jason: All right. Let's do it. Let's do it.
[01:00:51] Caroline: Can't wait.
[01:00:52] Jason: We'll follow up next week. All right. This episode, a little bit of a different one. Very fun. I think it just sharing these tools and learning about tools. If you have any awesome tools that you think we should know about that have just changed the game for you.
[01:01:06] Caroline: Yes, tell us.
[01:01:06] Jason: Please send them through to us, hello@wanderingaimfully.com.
[01:01:08] Caroline: We're in the tool curiosity corner right now.
[01:01:11] Jason: Love it. Just trying to learn new things and use new things, especially AI tools that are actually helpful, like, not a one time use. You're like, oh, that was cool. But, like, I'm using this consistently, and it's solving this problem.
[01:01:20] Caroline: I think this is also just like an emotional coping mechanism for living in this era of intense change is I'm sort of just like, it's like surrender. I just have to, like, surrender to the moment and just, like, ride the wave and just get excited about it because otherwise it makes me feel like...
[01:01:35] Jason: More robots and more algorithms. That's what we say. All right, that's it for this episode. Again, if you did listen all the way to the end, you are a true cinnamon roller. Send us a message through podcast.wanderingaimfully.com. The little blue icon. Leave a little note what you love about the show. We'll share it in our 200th episode. And we appreciate you being here.
[01:01:53] Caroline: Thanks for listening.
[01:01:54] Jason: Bye.