Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What if you could save 12+ hours per week in your business? Being a solopreneur sometimes focuses too much on the “solo” part: doing all the jobs, figuring things out yourself, and spending too much time in your business. But we didn’t start out own solo business to spend all of our time at our desk.
We did it because we want freedom: to travel; to spend time with our family; to watch a movie in the middle of a week day. That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists.
Each week, host Joe Casabona talks about how you can build a better business through smarter systems and automated processes. He does this by bringing on expert guests, and sharing his own experience from years as a busy solopreneur parent — so that being a solopreneur feels…less solo.
With every episode, you'll get insights, great stories, and 1-3 actions you can take today to improve your business processes and spend your time the way you want.
My grandfather came over to the United States from Italy in 1949 and worked in New York City for much of his life here, primarily in construction. Both he and my parents moved out of the city, though I wouldn't say they moved upstate after he was retired. But he continued to do home projects as I grew up. And for as long as I could remember, he had this big metal toolbox.
When he passed away in 2009, he gave that toolbox to me, and I still have it and use it to this day. In fact, most of the tools in his toolbox, pop had for years. When he found something that worked for him, he held on to it and took care of it.
There was a hammer in his workshed that my brother has now that has to be as old as me. In fact, the hammer is a pretty good analogy for our digital tools. It's a basic device, but there are lots of variations, purpose-built for specific tasks. Does that sound familiar?
Back in November, I posed a question, “When do you burn all of your processes down and start over?” I was in the middle of changing a bunch of my tools, both in the name of budget and in the name of feature set. So I thought I would take this time towards the end of Q1 2024 to check in and talk about the tools that I'm using.
Now, you can find a fully written to-be-read article in the show notes for this episode. You can also find a bunch of the tools and resources that I mentioned in the show notes for this episode. You'll find them in the description of whatever app you're using or over at [howibuilt.it/slash411].
In the members-only show, I'm going to talk about yet another monumental shift I am making, and that is possibly, possibly changing the name of this podcast. But for now, let's get into the intro and then the episode.
Hey, everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without spending too much time on it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and each week, I bring you interviews and case studies on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management, and effective content creation. It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs.
By the end of each episode, you'll have 1-3 takeaways you can implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business or with your friends, your family, reading, or however you choose to spend your free time.
Okay. So let's start with the hardware.
Happily, my hardware hasn't changed in a little while. I'm still using my 2 Stream Decks, my Mac Studio, and everything else that you see on my desk, which again you can find in the show notes. One of the major changes or the one major change is I just picked up a 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. My M1 was getting a little long in the tooth because I cheaped out on RAM, and I just use it a lot. And I was also feeling pretty constrained by the 13-inch screen. Plus, I couldn't pass up that beautiful midnight color. But that's really it on the hardware side of things.
Yeah. I have an Apple Watch Ultra that's the 1st generation, and I upgrade my iPhone every year because I want the best camera. As I record this, we're waiting on bated breath for new iPads. But, honestly, I'm very happy with my hardware stack right now.
So, let's actually move into the software side of things, starting with the podcast production tools.
So, in November, I mentioned I was jumping ship in a few places. The first was swapping Airtable for Notion for my podcast planner. I've done that. I am now on the Airtable free plan and haven't logged into that in a while. And I've continued to use Notion for a number of other things, like my VA tasks, my CRM, other content tracking, and I even have a family space for school things and all of the manuals for the various pieces of appliances and hardware that we buy
I like Notion, but there are a few things that I miss from Airtable. The biggest is something that I used all the time. I wish that when you are highlighting 2 rows and then you drag down, I wish that Notion would learn the incrementation pattern and apply it. So just to explain that a little bit, if I have, I'm sorry, I said, rows. I mean, I meant oh, no. I meant rows. Okay. So if I have 2 rows and one has March 1, 2024, and then the next one has March 2, 2024, I could highlight those 2 and then drag down in the column, and Airtable figures out that I'm doing sequential dates. This also worked on a weekly basis. And so I would have a bunch of podcast episodes without air dates, and I would just write the first two and then highlight and drag, and my whole schedule would be filled in. The same thing goes for podcast episode numbers. Notion doesn't do that. It just you highlight and then drag and it copies, you know, a lot like Excel does. There are, like, formulas you can do, but it's just, it's not the same. I really wish that Notion would steal this feature from Airtable.
The other is emailing with automation. So Airtable can automatically send emails. It can connect to your Google Suite account and, your G Suite, whatever it's called now, Google's, Google Apps, whatever, and send emails on your behalf. I didn't realize how much I relied on this until things started falling through the cracks, especially with my VA's tasks. Because when my editor gets an email, it's based on a status change in Dropbox. And so I wasn't really, I was relying on Zapier or Make for that. But when I would add a new VA task, I would have Airtable email my VA. So I had to create a new Make automation for that, essentially.
I also tried using Notion for all notes just like I had, like, a quick note section, and it just didn't work out. Like, there's there's something called, which adds shortcut supports for Notion on iPhone, but it's just like, I've decided this year that I don't need an all-in-one app. I'm going to use each app to its strengths, which is one of the reasons I'm doing this episode. It's so that I can kinda cover, like, how I'm using all of these apps. So that's Notion.
I'm also back on Riverside. I mentioned I was jumping from Riverside.fm to SquadCast since I was using Descript anyway. Well, that's out. I am happily back on Riverside, and it's for a few reasons.
One is the way each studio handles multiple recordings, way better on Riverside. In SquadCast, all of the recordings done in a room or a studio are lumped together, which means that if I want to download the latest interview, I have to find the right take and then pick my downloads.
Riverside handles each recording as its own discrete project, which is nice. There are also separate chats per recording in Riverside. Similar to recordings, a complete chat history is maintained in each SquadCast room or studio, and I don't like that very much because it basically means that the next guest can see what I was previously saying to another guest. And I just, I feel like that should reset, and that's just like the way that SquadCast has architected its rooms. So I feel like Riverside is a little bit more purpose-built for the way I use it.
And then finally, AI switching in video. I haven't fully rolled out video for this podcast yet, but I love Riverside's automatic speaker switching. I think it's really great, and it works super well.
But there's another reason I've switched back to Riverside. I'm not using Descript at all anymore, and we will talk about that right after this word from our sponsors.
All right. And we're back. What a cliffhanger. Right? So I'm not using Descript at all anymore. Descript is out completely. ScreenFlow, Logic Pro, and CastMagic are in. ‘
Back in December, I was creating a year-in-review video for rss.com and decided, kind of on a whim, kind of on a whim, to use ScreenFlow instead of Descript. I say kind of on a whim because I was in a bit of a time crunch, and I felt that I could do the edit faster in ScreenFlow. Every time I edit a video in Descript, I'm fighting with the app in some way. There's one thing I try to do that doesn't work out the way I think it was or would, and then I try to move something in Descript and everything blows up. And I just, I don't like that.
ScreenFlow is very straightforward and easy for me to use. And, honestly, it's a good thing that I did because we decided to make a change to the slides I used. So I created these slides and used them in conjunction with Ecamm Live to record the video and then edit in ScreenFlow. And there was an issue with a couple of the slides, and then we decided to make a change to the slides overall. And, honestly, I don't know how I would have done that change or those changes in Descript without reshooting the whole video. So then I thought if ScreenFlow does what I needed to do and does better, why am I using Descript at all for this? And, like, part of it was, it is nice, especially with audio only to scan a script and make the edits or find a cold open and make the edits. So I still decided to use it for audio content, until I purchased some audio plugins, which Descript does not support.
These audio plugins are isotope, from isotope, which is well known for audio plug-ins. And most apps on the Mac will support you being able, I say on the Mac, that's where my experience is, bringing in those audio plugins to affect audio inside their apps. But Descript doesn't. Descript is, I guess, a walled garden in that sense. They want you to use their features and nothing else.
So I moved to Logic Pro, and it's been pretty good. I still don't do heavy audio editing, so it's not like it's not that big of a deal for me. In fact, I'm gonna start sending my solo episodes starting with this one to my editor anyway. But since moving to Logic Pro, it's been pretty good. And like I said, I don't do heavy audio editing, but applying simple filters like breath control or like mouth declicking, is easy. Thanks to Izotope RX 10. And those audio they're called audio units. I called them audio plugins before. They're called audio units. They show up in Logic Pro. They also show up in ScreenFlow. So I can apply the same sort of processing to my videos without having to export the audio, change it in Logic Pro, and bring it back. Really, really nice.
So that's where that's where editing happens now. Again, these are purpose-built apps. ScreenFlow is built to edit videos, and Logic Pro is built to edit audio. It's not trying to be a bunch of things, which does leave me with transcripts.
And so in my newsletter, I wrote about how I'm using Castmagic more. And that's the tool I've decided to go with for automatic transcripts, which my VA then cleans up to make them fully accurate. I also use Castmagic for surfacing good clips for the cold open. Something that I think it does pretty effectively is give you time stamps for when certain things were said. And so I do still take notes, and I'll write time stamps on when I think a good cold open will, happen when it's been said, but CastMagic is really good for that. It's been a few weeks, and so far, I'm really happy with the results. Again, all of this kind of purpose purpose-built tools, that's the idea. Right?
My grandfather would have never used a screwdriver as a hammer, right, or like a Swiss army knife for box cutting. Right? He had a box cutter for that. So, I'm adopting the same sort of philosophy this year, and it's been really good.
So now let's move into productivity tools. My tools are mostly unchanged here. I did switch back to things 3, which I've been really enjoying. The simplicity of the app is unmatched, and I've gotten used to it. I've gotten used, I've gotten used to its organization and the limited views, which, again, I think are really good. And you can do a lot more whizbang stuff with OmniFocus, but, honestly, I just want a place to keep my tasks, and I wanted to surface the things I wanna do that day on the day. So, you know, I didn't like it at first. I want to see more, but dare I say, I've grown to like the limited views in things.
One thing I wish it had better, or one thing I wish it had was better support for web automation. So, you know, when a guest books, I have a task sent to things to remind me to do the post-interview summary, but there's no date attached to it, and it just ends up in the inbox. I would love if I could automatically put that into the How I Built It project with the date assigned for the same day as the recording, but things doesn't support that. If you can email stuff to it and it ends up in the inbox, then you have to organize it later.
But if I ever get my PushCut server working, right, the reason that the whole reason I bought my Mac Mini was to have an always-on PushCut server that Pushcut isn't working on in the or Pushcut in beta is not working on my Mac Mini, and they can't seem to figure out why. But if that ever gets working, it won't be an issue. Right? Because then I can just push all of the information to Pushcut and execute an add-to-task shortcut for things. So, anyway, that's a long way of saying I love things 3. I love how simple it is. I just, I wish it supported web automation a little bit more.
For note-taking, right, I mentioned that I had a short stint trying to use Notion for quick notes, but I've leaned fully into bare notes for note-taking, and I love it. It's my brain dump area, idea capture. I'll highlight things in the browser and then share it into Bear Notes. I'll add links I wanna share over on podcast workflows. Really great. I love it. It's highly customizable. It supports markdown really well. The keyboard's really nice, and it's got great shortcuts and dictation support too. So it's really like all I could ever want in an app for note-taking, at least.
For all things calendar, I'm still using Fantastical and Calendly. Fantastical is the goat, and there hasn't been a compelling reason for me to move from Calendly wherein I have considerable technical debt. So no reason for me to move from Calendly. Fantastical, I can't ever see myself leaving unless all the other apps get way better at supporting 20-plus calendars.
For email, I'm using MimeStream on the Mac and Spark on iOS. MimeStream is just a straight-mail client.
Like, it's everything I've wanted in a mail client for a long time. It doesn't have any, like, whizbang, AI features, today's screens, and it just shows me my email. I love it. Once my stream has an iOS client, I'll move to that. But in my approximation, Spark is still better than the mail app and every other mobile mail app. But, again, once MimeStream has an iOS client, I'll move there. Its support for Google's email services is great.
And on Spark, I feel like I've had some deliverability issues. Right? I would send an email from Spark from my personal domain, and it would end up in spam. Plus, Spark has integrated a lot of other features that I feel are unnecessary in an email client. I don't need AI everything everywhere. Like, I can write, guys, I can write an email. I think that's, like a basic skill that we should all have. And then, like the today screen thing that I think they, like backpedaled on, but and I just they're trying to do too much with it. I just want an email app.
And then finally, and I need to do a bigger write-up on this, but Timeery has become an important app for me. I've been time-tracking everything. I'm learning a lot about where I spend my time. And I'll probably, for members, start doing, like time tracking reports every so often just so you can see how I'm using it.
So if you do wanna become a member, you can sign up over at [howibuilt.it/join]. Today, I will talk about my process for renaming this podcast. But in future episodes, I'll be talking more about these kinds of productivity things. You'll also get every other interview, ad-free and extended. So great reason to sign up, support the show, skip the ads, and get more content. Why not?
Okay. So wrapping up here, let's talk about other apps that should get more time is basically how I'm wording this section. There are 2 other apps I wanna mention here before closing out. I put them here because I do wanna do longer write-ups on both of them if this episode and the accompanying article do well. Right? There's a lot of stuff I wanna talk about in this realm. I think it's really fun. And I think that you know, in keeping with the mission of the show, I want solopreneurs to spend their time on the right things, and switching task managers every 3 months is not the right thing, but finding the right task manager is the right thing. Right? Like, if you find something that works well with your brain, you can build a system around it. So that's why I'm doing this episode, if I didn't, you know, communicate that properly earlier. Anyway, so I wanna do longer write-ups on each of these.
The first is Arc, which has become my full-time browser. It's Chrome with a much more modern design and feature set. And there are a lot of things I love about Arc, but I think my favorite feature is the profiles for tab groups. I no longer need to log in to multiple browsers to be logged into different accounts. So I have my rss.com tab group where I do all of my rss.com work. I'm logged into Gmail in my rss.com account. I'm logged into Reddit in my rss.com account. And it's just nice and siloed off, and I don't have to worry about mixing up social accounts or anything like that when I'm in that profile, which is orange. So it's like a good visual cue for me.
And then, you know, in other profiles, I'm logged into my personal YouTube account where I watch my YouTube videos and another one I'm logged into my professional, ‘YouTube channel’ account where I can manage my channel without, again, having to log out of a bunch of stuff. So it's really nice.
And then the other feature that I really like is automatically routing specific websites to specific tab groups. So all social media sites, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, Mastodon, get automatically routed to the distractions tab group, which is the last one in the list, which means that I really wanna have to go over there to see it. So it's just nice. Everything all the social media stuff is siloed off there. Anything that ends in /wp.admin goes into my primary tab group so that, you know, that's kind of like where my work is happening. And so that's where I want those to be. So really nice. I absolutely love it.
The other thing other app, I guess, that I wanna spend more time on here is ChatGPT. And I know it's not earth-shattering that I'm using ChatGPT. But 6 months ago, I used it somewhat randomly and vowed that I'd never pay $20 a month for it. Well, I am paying $20 a month for it. ChatGPT has been super valuable in a number of ways to help me with podcast planning, writing, fact-checking, image generation, and more. So I'll definitely be doing another episode on my ‘State of AI apps’, and Chat GPT will be the centerpiece of that.
So that's it for the state of my apps more or less. There are a lot of little utilities I'm using. And if you wanna hear about those, let me know. You can, say hello @jcasabona on most social networks or email me joe@casabona.org. There's also a feedback link in the show notes. So, let me know. Do you wanna hear about the utility apps I'm using, like the little menu bar apps on my computer, and how I'm using them?
This episode does cover the Lionshare of what I'm using, and what I'm in every day, I guess. Like, that's this is the stuff. I didn't mention Ulysses, which is where I write, but, you know, again, Lionshare are these are the apps that I use.
What about you? Let me know what your favorite apps are or what you'd like to learn more about from my process. I'd love to hear from you. Again, you can go to [howibuilt.it/411]. There, you will find all of the links for everything I talked about, the article that I wrote for this episode. You can leave feedback, and you can become a member if you wanna get these episodes extended and ad-free. And you wanna hear me talk about time tracking and renaming this podcast. But that's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to our sponsors.
And until next time. Get out there and build something.