830: Worth Every Penny: My Most Loved Purchases of 2024

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2:01I have been doing some of these for over three years every single day. I'm like, that is like a dollar a day, less than a dollar a day when I break that down. And so for me, again, it's not only the results, it's the enjoyment of the process that has really, really, really been transformative. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven figure online business that feels even better than it looks all from my house in small town, Minnesota with my family.

2:39Here we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered.

3:18This is the Gold Digger Podcast. If you and I were hanging out for coffee, you know that I'd be sending you a follow-up text loaded with links to everything I couldn't stop talking about. From my favorite podcast, to the book I couldn't put down, to the documentary I just watched, and of course, my favorite products. I am someone I literally cannot help myself. When I find things I love, I have to share about them. So today I'm switching things up a little bit and telling you about my all-time favorite buys, the things that I use every day, the little joys and the must-haves that truly have made a difference for me.

3:56And here's the really fun part. I reached out to the brands that I'm mentioning in today's episode and pulled some strings to get you exclusive offers. So not only can you shop my favorite things, but you can also save while you do it. So just check out the show notes for all of the links and the discounts made just for you gold diggers. Okay, let's do something a little different. Let's have a little fun today. Let's pretend we're sipping coffee and talking about the things I bought and absolutely love and how I use them in my daily life. Here we go. When all your marketing team does is put out fires, well, they burn out and they burn out fast.

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5:10Visit hubspot.com slash marketers to learn more. That's hubspot.com slash marketers. Okay. I so wish that I had epic visuals for today's episode, but I'm going to do my best to be a really good describer. If any of you ever watch the cooking shows on like food network and they're describing the food and you can almost taste it, even though you're not actually putting anything in your mouth. That's my goal today. I want to just be a really good describer so you can understand what I'm talking about. So I broke this up into four different categories. So I have impulse buys that changed my life, surprising finds, the ones I keep repurchasing and worth every penny.

5:50And I will say that this covers a wide range of price points of products and of things. So let's start with impulse buys that changed my life. These are three things that I bought that were bought on a whim that have turned out to be amazing. And dare I say life-changing. Okay. So the first one, I'm going to thank the Instagram ads for this one, because I got served ads for this for months and I wasn't totally on board with it, but I was kind of curious about it. And so I finally pulled the trigger. What is it? It is called the skylight calendar. Maybe you've seen ads for this. Like me, maybe you're getting targeted for the same things, but essentially what it is, is it is a framed screen that shows a visual calendar.

6:35So imagine like your Google calendar on a beautiful screen. And it's kind of like a frame TV screen where it's matte. It's not shiny. It's not glossy. And it's beautiful. Like the presentation of it is actually really pretty. You could put it up on your wall. You'd have it on your desk. Like you could have it anywhere where you need a visual reminder of what is happening in your life. And we have ours in our pantry. I literally rearranged my entire pantry for this. And it was so funny because at first Drew was not totally on board about it. Like he didn't really understand it. And now it has become this stable for us.

7:10So here's why I love it. It is a visual calendar for us. And I feel like for the last few years, life hasn't been super busy in terms of kids activities and spirit days at school and days off or holiday breaks. And all of a sudden we started realizing like, whoa, if we are not putting things into our calendar, we are forgetting about them. We're running late for them. And Drew and I were having these like constant conversations of like, Hey, what do you have going on today? And every single day I would like have to pull out my phone, pull up my calendar, walk him through my day. Most of the time he wouldn't retain that information, bless his soul.

7:47And then we would be like trying to communicate during the day as like what's going on, who's doing pickup, what time is the chiropractor appointment at, et cetera. So what is beautiful about this is you can import in as many people's calendars as you want. So Drew and I both have our calendars imported in. So he has important things like garbage night and recycling night. I have important things like podcast interviews and meetings. And what's beautiful is, is that it's this awesome visual for us where we can see exactly what we have going on for the week. We know what the other person is doing.

8:19We can divide and conquer with our schedule. We know what's coming up for the kids. It has been so nice. An unexpected thing that I am absolutely loving about this purchase is that for my ADHD, a lot of times I feel anxiety with the unknown. And so if I am not constantly looking at my calendar, I'm like not exactly sure where my energy is going to go this week, or is it a really busy week or is it a lighter week? And so having those visual reminders of like seeing certain wide open days on the calendar, like that gives me breath that gives me rest and pause. And then seeing some of those busier days, knowing like, I got to have a meal plan.

8:56I've got to be ready to go. I need to communicate the extra support that I might need during those days. And so it is just saved us the daily debate of like, what do you have today? What's going on today? And then it's also kind of just showed us like when we have busier weeks, like, Hey, maybe we should be food prepping on Sunday afternoon because we've got a really busy week. What is our meal plan? Like even on the skylight calendar, they have this upgrade that you can get, which we got where you can plan out your meals. You could plan out your grocery list. So again, like if you are someone who needs visual cues, visual reminders, or you need to have like one organized space for your family, I am loving this.

9:36So this was totally an Instagram ad. I bought it. I am loving it. I love walking into my pantry and just seeing what we have going on. It is pretty enough that you can have out. you can upload photos. So it could literally be like a photo frame. If you want, it's very customizable. And it's just something that is unexpected again, an impulse buy that I will argue changed my life. So if you are in a very busy season or you need a visual calendar, I often think about when we were growing up, we had this one cabinet and my mom would always tape our calendar onto it. And she would handwrite in everybody's birthdays and all the different activities.

10:10And then she would color code it with highlighters. It's basically like that, but for our generation. So skylight calendar, absolutely love it. As a reminder, I have coupon codes and things and links. So just check out the show description in the show notes for those things. Okay. The second one, I've talked about this on my podcast numerous times. It's called the RO box. This is in our pantry as well. And let me tell you, our pantry is not that big without we're talking about this. It makes our pantry sound huge. It's not, but this is the white box that is aesthetically pleasing. It's a white box with a beautiful wood top.

10:45And this is where we put our phones away. And this box, I will tell you, it has absolutely changed our lives. It has changed our relationship with technology. It has changed the way our kids see us with technology. If you are someone who wants to get off of your phone more, if you are someone who doesn't want to be on your phone in front of your kids, if you are someone who wants more intimacy with the people in your life or the people you share your home with, and you need help setting boundaries, this box is it. So what's really cool about it, it's this beautiful box, but inside of the box, it has chargers for all of your devices.

11:21I keep my headphones in there. And then I also obviously keep my phone in there. We use this box a lot. So the kind of house rules that we've created is when we are with our kids, our phones are in the box. And so when we wake up in the morning, our phones are in the box. They don't come out until the kids leave for school. When the kids come home from school, the phones are in the box until bedtime. We have just created a lot of beautiful routines around it. We sleep with our phones in the box and here's what happens. So when you put your phone in the box, it tracks how much time you are off of your phone.

11:53Not only does it track how much time you're off your phone, it tracks and has you almost gamify being off of your phone. So not only do you get asked like, congratulations, you just got back two hours of your life. What did you do with it? Where you can track, like I had a meal with my family. I read a book. I spent time with my kids, like whatever that is. But you also get to see how your other members of your household are doing with it. So Drew and I often have contests of who can keep their phone in the box more. And we can, we get pretty competitive with it. Like it's actually really fun.

12:25And so the founders basically kind of gamified being off of your phone to give you the same dopamine hits that you get for being on your phone, but for being off of it. And so it's just created a more tech free screen free environment for our family. And we love it so much that we will literally like travel the box with us to places just because it's such a part of our habits. And we recognize when we don't have it, we aren't as good at being off of our phones. So the RO box again is amazing. And one thing to note too, is they just created an app where you can track your time off of your phone and you don't need the pretty box.

13:03And so it's basically like you can flip your phone over and if you use their app, it'll track the time and you can do, you know, contests with your family members or things like that. But I will say we have tried just doing it in that method. And the box for us is the game changer. It's just like a universal place out of sight, out of mind. And I love having it like in our pantry because it's just like, if you see somebody going into the pantry and they're not actually getting food, you know what's going on. And so it's easier to call out and it's just more out of sight, out of mind. Okay. The last impulse buy that I am loving right now is a weighted vest.

13:40Okay. Hear me out on this. So I walk on my treadmill every single day. I love working on my treadmill. So if I have a lot of like copy to review or plans to look over. A lot of times I'll do that. Also, if I have calls internally, like within my company, I'll walk on the treadmill for my meetings. And I love it. I have been so consistent. I mean, even this week, I think I walked six out of seven days this week for at least a half an hour. And a lot of times what I'll do is I'll do the 12, three 30 workout, which is incline of 12, three miles per hour for 30 minutes. Now I have gotten my endurance up a ton through doing this so consistently.

14:20And so now I can walk at almost four miles per hour at the same incline for the same amount of time. So I was trying to think of ways to like make walking a little bit more interesting to add a little bit more resistance and a weighted vest has actually been so, so good for me. So I just bought a weighted vest on Amazon. There are a million different weighted vests out there. I just Googled weighted walking vest for women. I got a 12 pound vest and I love it. And it's funny because the other day I went into the gym and Drew was using it for his workout. And I was like, Oh, don't get it all sweaty.

14:52But I noticed that not only do I burn more calories when I'm walking, but like, it is so good for women. When you do research on like osteoporosis and bone density, having resistance on your bones is one of the best ways to make sure that you are not losing bone density as you age. So I texted my mom, my mom has a walking vest now. So that is just one of those impulse buys where I think I saw a reel about it and I was like, hmm, I'm going to give this a try and I'm loving it. Okay. So to highlight the skylight calendar, absolutely love the visual is so helpful. Our RO box is the phone box that I've talked about a million times on this show.

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17:52So the first one is monday.com. And I talk about this ad nauseum on the show, but I just wanted to sum it up in here because I could not live without monday.com. I know that's a bold statement, but it's true. Okay. So what is monday.com? It is a project management system. And it is so wild because I think about when I first had Coco, she's going to be sick soon. I literally was running my business out of Google docs and random notes and like notes in my phone. It was kind of chaotic. And I'm not going to lie. It was a mess. It was, it was embarrassing. And when I hired Marissa, who's like my right hand gal, she has been with me over the last almost six years.

18:32Her first order of business was to get a project management system up. Now there are a lot of different project management systems. There is a sauna, there's base camp. I have used a lot of the different ones through different contractors that we've worked with, but monday.com is the winner in my opinion. Now here's why I love it. And I want for you to listen to this because I don't want you to make the same mistake I made. I did not have any sort of project management system. I would basically log on and be like, what the heck do I need to do today? I know I need to do a million things. I don't even know where to start.

19:04I don't know what needs to be done. I don't know who's waiting on what. I don't know where our projects are at. And so if you are a solopreneur, meaning you do not have a team, I would strongly recommend getting onto a project management system. It doesn't have to be Monday. It could be any project management system now so that when you grow a team, you have processes that you can pass along and it is just a part of the culture. I am proud to say that now, years later, monday.com is like our life force in my business. It is where people will literally put tasks on my to-do list so I know what needs to be done.

19:41I can literally hop in and see what each team member is working on, what they've got on their plate, when the deadlines are. You can leave comments in there. You can drop files. You can drop voice memos. You can drop photos. And it has basically become this place where we organize everything. So I could go right now, and it was funny. I was on a coaching call the other day with a client and she asked me for something and I sourced a document from 2022 from a specific launch that happened in spring. And she was like, how did you find that so fast? And I was like, oh, we have everything organized.

20:14And I showed her the organization and her mind was blown. And she was like, I spend like 20 minutes a day just trying to find the right documents. And so project management system, again, unexpected because years ago, I think when I look back, my ADHD felt very confined by system and structures. And as I have gotten to learn more about myself, and as frankly, my life has gotten more full and busy as a mom, I now rely on systems and structure. I am not afraid of them. They do not feel constricting. They feel like freedom to me. So monday.com is literally something that we could not live by. And what's beautiful too, is there's a lot of different integrations.

20:53You can integrate it into Slack. You can connect it up with different platforms that you're already using. And it is just, I mean, it is amazing. And I will say that there are so many capabilities within that we probably aren't even using it to its fullest potential. And it is 1000 % worth every single penny. Okay. The next unexpected item that I did not know I'd love. So we started working with this team. It's called be creatives and it is a video editing service and we use it to edit our podcast videos and to create our reels. But what's amazing about it is that they can edit any video content into any format.

21:33And I was out there. So you might remember at the beginning of this year, I decided I'm going to give YouTube a try. Didn't love it. Maybe I should do a whole episode about my experience with that. Didn't love the platform. And it was so much extra work, but we started realizing like we have all of this video content. We don't even know what to do with it. We don't know how to slice and dice it. Like we're not even using it in a way that's actually effective. And I didn't know how to find a great video editor that would consistently work for me that wouldn't cost a million bucks. And so what's amazing with be creatives is when you work with them, you have a dedicated editor, you have unlimited edits and revisions, and they have super fast turnaround times.

22:17And so what is awesome about it is basically we have created this workflow now where I can record a podcast, then we can upload that podcast. So they can edit the entire interview for us, like get it ready. So before I was paying hundreds of dollars to have an entire interview edited for YouTube. And now this is part of the unlimited content that we get with be creatives. And then they help splice and dice and create multiple reels for every single episode. And so it's basically like you have a whole agency and a dedicated editor at your fingertips without paying a million dollars. And so I have absolutely loved working with them.

22:57I I love our editor. They are also helping us brainstorm new ideas of how to make our content more engaging. So they've been bringing different styles to us. They've been asking us like, Hey, can we get this type of B-roll? Like we can literally log in, see the status of every single project, see when it's delivered, request revisions. Like the whole platform is so streamlined that I can log in. My podcast producer can log in. We know exactly what to do and they understand our style. And so it takes a minute to get your style sorted out. And once you do, you are off to the freaking races and it is like rinse and repeat.

23:34So it has just been such a blessing. And I feel like before we were recording video for our podcast and not using it anywhere. And so with be creatives, now we have the YouTube video. We're not paying separately for that. Like I was prior. So we're saving hundreds of dollars every single month. And then we also are getting unlimited social clips and it's a fast turnaround time. So I just have really, really enjoyed working with them. I think that they are awesome at what they do. And what's great is that they're working with a lot of different creatives. So they're seeing what's resonating, what's working.

24:07And so with them, you basically have your own editor, this dedicated person who is helping you with unlimited edits and revisions, spinning things around really fast in terms of their turnaround times. And it's a very affordable in my opinion. So I am absolutely loving be creative. Okay. The last thing that I will say is somewhat surprising and I guess more so unexpected is superhuman. So this is an app and you might remember earlier this year, I interviewed the founder of superhuman. Her name is Mimi Bouchard. It is such a great interview. If you missed it, we linked it in the show notes. It's one of our most popular episodes and Mimi taught us about this idea of activation.