Tools That Sleigh, Productivity All the Way

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

In this episode, host Tyson Mutrux shares his top tools, gadgets, and resources that boost his productivity and well-being. Covering everything from health aids like the Chirp Wheel and Back Pod, to office and recording gear, AI-powered software, and business management platforms, Tyson offers practical recommendations for both personal and professional use. 

Listen in for actionable insight to streamline workflows and enhance daily operations.

• 1:06 Health and Wellness Tools
• 3:02 Google Docs Dark Mode and Chrome Extensions
• 6:42 Microphone Accessories and Lighting
• 8:37 Favorite AI Tools and Browsers
• 14:30 Zoho and Case Management Software
• 16:36 Notebook LM and Video Transcription Tools
• 17:34 Presentation and Video Editing Tools
• 18:36 Agent Building Platforms and Communication Tools
• 21:27 Automation and Whiteboard Tools
• 23:41 Trial Resources and Background Research 
  
  

Key Takeaways:

• Health and wellness tools for back and rib pain relief
• Office and recording equipment for video production and podcasting
• Software and AI tools for productivity and organization
• Communication tools for team collaboration and messaging
• Data analysis and insights tools
• Presentation and video content creation tools
• Workflow automation and integration solutions
• Financial management tools for expense tracking
• Language interpretation services for multilingual needs
• Resources for improving writing and sales skills

Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:02 This is maximum lawyer with your host, Tyson Matrix.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:11 Welcome back to another episode of Maximum Lawyer. I've got a fun one today because we're gonna be talking about my favorite toys and tools and resources to use. Kind of think about this. This is so close to Christmas that like, you know, Santa reaching into his sack and like, picking out the favorite toys, right? That's that's the that's kind of what I'm doing. A lot of this is going to be super random, by the way. super random. I took I went around my office and took some pictures of some things. I've got one thing here right next to me that I will mention. If you're just listening, I'll just. I'll talk about it. But, I'll talk about some, some softwares and other AI stuff that I like to use, but, I thought it'd be kind of a fun one to, to go over, let's go like, start with something like super, super basic, like, health wise. So, there is my favorite.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:06 This is I'll tell you, this is super random. I do have issues with my back. And so it's, you know, to help keep my back. Okay. This chirp chirp wheel, I don't know if you if you've ever heard of it. There's been there's a lot of commercials they have for it, but the the chirp I've got the three different sizes. And it's one of those things where I can hop on it, my back will be hurting, and then I'll hop on it. I'll be good to go and I'll be completely fine. It's it's amazing. they're the they're the ones that run the commercials where you can. They've got the microphone next to the person's back where you can hear it popping. It is. It is better than than the commercials, I'll tell you that. It is so amazing. another one I don't have, I don't have here. It's at home, but the back pod. Christopher Nicholson recommended it. I was having some awful back pain, and it it was like it was coming from my ribs.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:58 My ribs kept going out of place. He recommended the back pop back pod. It was gone in a week. It was amazing. I'd been dealing with it for like three weeks. Amazing. This is not all going to be, you know, about back in health and all that. So, keep keep listening. If you were looking for a wall mount. So a wall mount for your monitor. All right. because I like for, my MacBook or not, my MacBook, my iMac. I have that Mac. It's wall mounted right now. It's actually desk mounted, but it's it has no stand. So it's got to be mounted. And there is a amount that I found on Amazon, it's North Biu. And you'll see it's got the NB almost like the New Balance logo but it's not. It's North Bayou. It is a really, really strong mount wall mount really really like it. What I am talking to you through right now, what you're looking at if you're watching this is the Elgato teleprompter or Elgato Prompter.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:02 That is what I like to use when it comes to this. It's tricky though, if you are, if you are watching, you're going to see why it's tricky. So if I can't put a Google doc onto the screen because if you're watching right now, it see how it washes out my face. So if it's really, really bright, you can't have it. So I'm looking at myself right now in Riverside, which is a it's a it's a darker screen. So you can do dark mode in Google Docs. It's not built. It's not a built in feature. That's another thing. There is look in the plugins. So I don't I don't actually know the name of this, but there is a plugin I, I got sick of it so I stop using it. But there is a plugin that if you want to have dark mode. So on your Google Docs, as opposed to just that white screen and the black text, it'll give you white text and the black screen. So it's not as bright, really really good.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:54 So I do I do recommend that. Speaking of. I told you something is going to be super random. So when I'm like some extensions that are on my actual chrome, I'll give you, I'll give you my favorite one. There's two favorites. One is dub. So dub. I actually canceled my dub subscription. It's you can actually send video messages to people because I had stopped using it for a little bit. And then they gave me an incredible deal. So I went back and used me. And dub is a great company. I actually think they're really, really amazing. So check it out. inbox when ready though. This is what allows me to open up my emails and not see anything. Okay, all I can, I can see, like the search bar and everything so I can search it so I can look for a specific email. But when I open my email, I don't see all those messages. It's amazing. Okay. Freaking amazing. That is really, really awesome.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:48 I highly recommend that. All right. So some of the another thing I went and took around, I took pictures of when it comes to my office was, Mac Studio. So the computer I'm on right now. The what I shoot the majority of the podcast on is Mac Studio. Get them on eBay for cheaper so you don't have to buy it. It's not a cheap machine, okay? It's like a use. I think it was still like 3000 or $4000. Not cheap. But if you buy like the souped up version, like I have a brand new, you're spending way more. But if you want to produce, if you're wanting to produce, you know, videos and then have the editing and all that done on it on this computer, it's probably more than what you need. But it's it's amazing. It doesn't miss a beat. There is no there is no stuttering. There is nothing when it comes to the watching of like videos or having a bunch of tabs open. And it's none of that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:39 It's everything's wonderful. always buy a bunch of ramp to the when it comes to microphone, I'm using the Shure mic S.H. make sure you use the get the USB one I yes I do have a the other kind that's got the other plug. I don't know that something CR or LSR or something like that. I've got that one. But if you and I've got that at the other of my other desk over there. So I've got multiple stations for recording set up in here. The one over there, it does require an audio interface, which I do have. That's one that I took a picture of to because, the I don't I don't remember the actual name brand, but it's the volt 276. So volt 276. Really good audio interface. If you just need something for yourself, it actually does allow you to to record up to two microphones. So that's pretty good. but for sure I have the. Sure. it's I've got the SMB and then something seven or something. But those short any of the short mics really really good.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:42 I also have a travel mic also really good that allows me it hooks up to a swing arm, which I'll talk about swing arms too. but it also has its, has a built in stand in the case. That's what makes it really, really handy. I also what I'm using right now is in Elgato, the Elgato Swing Arm. And that's really good. It's I think it's the only one they that they offer. So the other site really, really good. It goes up and down side to side. That one's awesome. So the Elgato Swing arm and then if you want more of a traditional one the other one I have is Gator Frameworks. So that's what holds the microphone. By the way if you're wondering what a swing arm is that's what holds the microphone. So the Gator framework's very, very durable. I've had others and I've got the Samsung Samsung Samson I do have those as well. I've got a couple of those really really strong. Those are more of the traditional one. They look more of like a traditional one with like the metal framing, everything.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:41 The Gator Frameworks has that more of like that tube tube look to it. it looks nicer, I think, but the other one is super strong. I've had ones. If you're going to be doing a lot of recording, I've had them where they they exploded on me. The spring exploded and shot up and almost hit me in the face. Luckily it didn't hit me in the face, but, so that's that's a good one. So we got the sure mics lighting. So right now I'm using some box lighting that I got on Amazon. They're like eight by eight square. Like you can find them. They're they're pretty standard I don't know the brand. Those are pretty standard. But I also have the lume the lume cubes at another station over there where I record that you can't see, but you can hear me talk about Lume Cube. It's got, they've got these are these, lights that are circular and they're on these arms that are just a lot of different ways, and it allows you to adjust the warmness of them and the brightness.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:37 They're really handy. And I only have I only have two over there. Right. What I'm looking at right now I've got three and they're they're on stands. And so these are, these are a little bulkier. The ones over there. Just a couple small lights that go on my desk. really, really simple. so that's a that's when it comes to recording. I think that maybe all the things I took pictures of that I'll share at the moment so that. That's good. Excellent. All right. Let me see what else we have when it comes to software. So let's talk about software. I, let's talk about AI. Right. favorite favorite AI tools. My probably my favorite is bolt. So bolt not new. Not new. You can build a lot of cool things with it. So that one's good. Bolt dot new. I've done some trainings in the guild on bolt, however, and I've always been. I feel like people are like either like a Claude person or a Gemini person or ChatGPT.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:36 Traditionally, I've been ChatGPT. I like ChatGPT. I use a lot with I love perplexity, that's another tool. So perplexity is a I have the perplexity, Max. So I've got the top plan. Love it. It's got the email integration built in, where it organizes my emails and and gives in drafts responses that are in my tone. Awesome. So that's another tool. I do like ChatGPT. It's really good. There's a lot, a lot of things that are great about it. There's got the built in agents. You also have Atlas as the browser. I've found myself going with multiple browsers. I will use the Perplexity Comet browser. I think it's amazing. I also think that the Atlas browser for ChatGPT it's more streamlined. I also think that's amazing, but I also think the Gemini, the built in Chrome browser, the Chrome browser with the built in Gemini tool that you can move around the chat window is also amazing. I think that that one's a really cool one too. So I, I, I recommend the the Chrome one.

Tyson Mutrux 00:10:36 I think all of those are really excellent. Excellent. But I can tell you that Google's Google Studio, let me make sure I'm saying that. Right. Because I I've been calling it, Gemini Studio, and I'll make sure I'm calling this the right thing so you can find it. So Google AI studio. so I have been calling it the wrong thing whenever I've said Gemini Studio, but it's there's so much wrapped up into it. I was talking about this on the Guild live show earlier. Man, it is it. I feel like it took this massive leap. Google and Gemini took this massive leap over ChatGPT, where ChatGPT had gotten out to a pretty strong lead. And ooh, they have this horse race is strong. It's a good a really good horse race. But Gemini has so much it replaces bolt. I took I kid you not, I took some of the really cool things I built in bolt and I said, create a prompt so I can build the same thing in another. LM gave me the prompt, so, even gave me the code.

Tyson Mutrux 00:11:39 I put it over into Google AI studio, and it built a better thing than what I had built over in Bolton. Had spent hours and hours on it. It's really incredible. Really, really good stuff. So Jeb and I, if you're not using Google AI studio, thank you to Jeremy Danielson for turning me on to that. excellent. Speaking of Jeremy. Jeremy Danielson, another one of my favorite things is, I so Jeremy had told me about. He had gone to see his brother who was having a surgery. Hopefully that's not sharing too much information, Jeremy, but, he has a Tesla. And it was. He used, full self-driving FSD to take him from his home in Iowa to, I think I believe it was in Indianapolis, and it did all the driving the whole way. And I was kind of skeptical because people I have blue crews in my Ford truck. And so it does okay on the interstate. It's self-driving on the interstates, but it it definitely requires my intervention a lot.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:40 I went and test drove a Tesla and fell in love. And so I'd say one of my favorite toy right now. Like, if it's like I'm on a point to one thing, it's my Tesla model X and it is amazing. I can just say, take me home. It takes me from where I am at home. It pulls in the driveway. Everything it does does the parking. I don't do anything. It is it. You're not even gonna believe me when I'm telling you this. I'm telling you. Go test drive one. It's the most incredible thing I've seen. It is so amazing. It pulled over. There was an ambulance coming towards us. It was the day after I got it driving nighttime outside, ambulance coming. It pulled over. It pulled over to the side of the road. It was like. It was like it knew what to do. And you can adjust the settings on how aggressive you want it to be. Incredible. Okay. I'm just telling you. Incredible.

Tyson Mutrux 00:13:29 I get nothing from telling you how great it is. It's amazing. So check it out. Well worth the price tag, is all I'm saying. So impressive. My dad is an old school mechanic. Okay. He is a, you know, turning wrench mechanic. gas powered Dodge, Mopar. Kind of a guy. All right. That's who he is. And he wants to now get a self-driving Tesla. Okay. He has been anti electric vehicles ever since I've talked about getting one. Ever since I've had my truck. Even though he's not Pooh poohed it, he's talking about it's nice and everything. He's still. He's still, Not. He wants. He wants the gas powered. Right? Not anymore. That's how that he is able to convert. a guy that's been working and turning wrenches on gas powered automobiles, that's made his entire living off, that wants to convert him. So anyways, enough about enough of that commercial. so let's see, let's talk about some, some softwares.

Tyson Mutrux 00:14:30 I, I've talked about Zoho before. I love Zoho. I think Zoho is great. We've we've built our entire case management system on top of Zoho. so through Zoho Creator. So we have Zoho Creator and it's bolted on. The user can't tell. So our people can't tell when they're looking at it. That has been bolted on. But what we've done is we've built a product that's built on top of. So it's built out of Zoho Creator, and we build it on top of Zoho Projects, which is also even by itself if you're just to use a platform, a project management platform. Zoho projects by itself is really amazing. It's really, really good. you know, if you want some. This is one I've. It used a whole lot lately, but to make videos and videos. Cynthia, that's why I talked about Cynthia a long time ago. A few years ago, I think. Actually, s y n t h e s I a this is where I'm reaching into the grab bag.

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:26 I'm I'm looking through all of my, different diff for my, my different tabs, my book bookmarks and everything. But because I want to kind of give you, like, sort of pull back the curtains just a little bit and show you some of the things that I, that, that I, that I love. from a like when we're talking about, giving assessments to employees. I really like Colby. We use the Colby index. During the leadership meeting earlier today, we were actually talking about a particular team member. And what is there, I see well, what's their Colby score? It's something we use on a regular basis. And so we I think, Colby, it's a really good, really good tool. okay, so here is and this is kind of fun. I forgot about this. There is an article it's Writers Write Co and it's 60 words to describe writing or speaking styles. This is a really handy article because if you want to write something in a specific style, it gives you a bunch of different words you can choose from and and allows you to better form your prompt, formulate your prompts.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:36 Some of you may not need that, but I can tell you it's it's a pretty handy thing. All right, let's let's look at another thing. Oh, I can't I can't help it. I gotta mention notebook. LM notebook LM is amazing. A notebook LM is. They've been adding so many different features to it. You can use mind maps. You can. I use it to help prep for mediations and depositions where you just plug the stuff into it, and it helps. it does a podcast for you. It'll do a video for you. It it is really, really amazing. So notebook LM is one of my favorites. You it's I have it as marked as YouTube detects, but it's actually you video to text so you video to text comm. You can take a link from a YouTube video, put it in here and it will actually create a it'll it'll create a transcript of it. I have the paid version, which I think it was like a I paid one time. So upgrade to Pro I'm clicking on this now.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:34 Create a Pro and convert without limits. And let's see one time payment of $50 I think whenever I do did was like 10 or 20. It's gone up a little bit. But you. You just put in the, the video, any video turns it to a transcript. That's a really I think that's a really helpful one that we use. gamma okay. So gamma dot dot app I think is what it is. Gamma is a really good one to create slides. All right. So gamma gamma dot app. So it creates slides. It's really amazing. So I highly recommend. Gamma gamma is a you can have the free version. Now I did have the paid version. And then I backed it off to the I forced myself to, to actually not go with the paid version because I was depending on it too much, I think, to a fault. And so I said, okay, we gotta stop doing this opus clip. This is one where you can take your full length videos, convert them to, smaller videos, but then also post it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:18:36 That's a really good one. really like that? Oh! Power drill. I forgot about power drill. This is what I need to. I need to use this one more often. So power drill is one that allows you to take and upload your data. And really the AI analyzes it for you and you can dig really deep on the data. You could probably do things that are similar with other LMS, but it's built for this and that's why I like it so much. That's a that's a really good one. Sky reels I'd use for a little bit. I've kind of fallen out of love with Sky reels, so I'll, I will skip that one. so I have a the way my windows are set up, I've got it when it comes to er the my bookmarks, I've got AI and then I've got AI to test underneath that. And oh before I get to AI to test n8 n if you want an agent building platform n8 N by far, to me it's the gold standard. It's the best, but you can do.

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:38 There's a lot of people that might say, you can go with gems or Gemini Gems. That's another thing you can use to build out, agents. But I like Naden, but one that I had in the AI to test category. It's still there that I need to move over is bolt. I knew that was my AI to test super base was there. I would I would move that over. But the thing about bolt that now you can do in Google AI studio, they're very similar. You if you look at cursor lovable, they do the same thing. Okay. So if you're wanting just to find the one that you like the most and just go with it. All right. So that is that one. I guess I'll kind of mention things like this. Like we use like for our phone system, RingCentral. At some point we'd like to switch over to Zoho Voice, but we're waiting to make sure that it everything is working well when it comes comes to that. We use all the Zoho products.

Tyson Mutrux 00:20:30 I'm not going to mention all of the Zoho products, but a lot of really good ones. Here's a really I don't know how many of these. How many people might need this? Especially because AI you a lot of these intake AI intake platforms, they have all these different languages built in. So keep that in mind too with this. But if you need an interpreter we use a service called lamp lamp interpreters. You can do all the booking and payments and all that online. Really really good. Highly recommend it. We use Twilio. Twilio is one we used for sending out text messaging. That's an important one to us. We are QuickBooks users, so I know there's love and hate. We use build. Com so two parts to build comm both for payments. But we also use Divi. So Divi is now owned by Bill comm. And so that was that was great. That was something that was really good for us that it syncs those two. So it's Divi is like a your company credit cards.

Tyson Mutrux 00:21:27 You can you can do all your, you know, you can view it almost like a line of credit, but it's not. It's they got to be paid off like your credit card. So I can't remember exactly what they called, but that's actually pretty. It's pretty handy. So that's something we use for that. Let's see. Birthday buddy. this is been using birthday buddy for a while, but I've got a re. Hook it up, birthday buddy. Bday buddy. I, I can't remember who recommended this. I think Jay Ruane might have recommended it years ago. And that's what we're. It wishes people a happy birthday on Facebook. But it's it's pretty cheap for that. I like Zapier. Zoho Flow does very similar things with Zapier for automations. that's that's pretty good. used to use Miro, and now there is another one that I am going to draw a blanket. I always forget the name of it, but it is. It's. I'll try to think of it by the end of this, but Miro is, We replaced it with board mix.

Tyson Mutrux 00:22:37 So this is one where board mix is it's a it was a one time fee. Super cheap. And board mix is amazing. I highly recommend if you want like workflows. an AI powered online whiteboard. It is. So so Alex Bain, he recommended this to me about a year or two ago. So much cheaper than Miro, but it's really good. It's essentially ripped off. Miro is what it did, but it's it's still pretty good. let's see what else might people like to hear about. And then I'll kind of wrap things up. But, let's see, we've I'm trying to get through all of the, the quick stuff. Oh, you know what? If you want to learn how to write a sales letter and see if this is still active. Yeah. It is. So this site is really active. You're talking about free like writing lesson when it comes to writing like a sales letter, the Gary Halbert Letter. Newsletters. This is one I've had for years. I'm talking I probably had this for 15 years.

Tyson Mutrux 00:23:41 Really handy if you want to. Some some examples on a on a sales letter. So the Gary Halbert aa Halbert letter forward slash newsletters super good Gary helper's like a I think he's passed away I think hopefully that's if that's not true. I'm so sorry Gary Halbert but I'm pretty sure Gary had passed away years ago a really good copywriter. So that's something I recommend. That's a good one. And then let's see if I can give you a few more. Oh, if you want like visuals DQ global. It's a really good when it comes to visuals for trial. High impact visual Litigation strategies is another one that I really like. a lot of you trial lawyers are going to like CVN Courtroom View Network. That's really good when it comes to, watching. You can watch live trials or recorded trials. So that's kind of fun. try and see if there's anything else that people might want to see. We use tracers for doing some background research on people. So that's a good one. But, I think that's it.

Tyson Mutrux 00:24:47 I, I've covered a lot. I don't know if we're gonna have a list of this in the show notes. I don't know if we if we hopefully we can. We'll do that for you. Hopefully. But if not, I'm sorry, but hopefully you took lots and lots of notes. But, those are some of my toys. Those are not all the ones I like. I there's lots and lots of others that I could probably recommend, but this will be part one, I guess. I don't know if there's gonna be a part two, but maybe it's some maybe in a couple of years I'll do a part two, but that's all I have. I have a wonderful, I guess week. I will talk to you all next week. So everybody.