598: 21 Little Life Upgrades for 2024

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1:19What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show, part of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, because your nine to five may make you a living, but your five to nine makes you alive. One thing we're always asking, and I imagine you are too, is what little tweaks can we make to improve our lives and improve our happiness? Bjork Ostrom called it the 1 % infinity habit on the show years ago. The idea that stacking up these small incremental improvements and doing that consistently can lead to some impressive compound returns over time. I'm going to be sprinkling in my own little life upgrades throughout, including the one purchase that inspired this whole episode, and include a bunch of suggestions from friends of the Side Hustle Nation community as well.

2:01These are roughly divided into three categories for the sake of alliteration. Those are hustle, health, and home. We're going to kick it off with some hustle slash home office slash work-related upgrades. This is Steve over at MyWifeQuitterJob.com, and a great new upgrade that I just bought not too long ago is a portable teleprompter. Now, I make a lot of YouTube videos because it takes me forever to film a video. Unless I have it scripted, I need a teleprompter. But the problem is, is the one that I currently had is gigantic. It's big and heavy. It goes on a tripod. But then I found this one on Amazon that was super light.

2:39It came with its own carrying case. And I recently just went to Maryland to visit my mom. I took the teleprompter along and I was able to film full YouTube videos on the fly. and that has greatly improved my productivity. Now, I'm not sure which one Steve bought, but the one I have is a Jacques Hopkins recommendation and that was the Parrot Padcaster, I think it's called. It was around a hundred bucks, prices subject to change, of course. And how it works is you load your script onto the Parrot app on your phone and then you use this little Bluetooth remote to control the speed, like fast, slow.

3:13It's definitely improved my YouTube workflow. So if you're struggling to make more videos, I think a teleprompter is a no-brainer addition. Hey, SiteHouseful Nation. It is Tyler from Creator Site Income. A few years ago, I got more serious about creating content. I wanted to do great YouTube videos, and so I decided to create a studio in my basement. So I put up the two-by-fours, put up the drywall, built special lighting into the ceiling, put in cabinets and bookshelves that were interchangeable and really set up a really cool studio, but it was a ton of work. And when I was finished, I didn't love how it looked.

3:51Well, I tried things out, different backgrounds and different arrangements for a few years. And then this last year, I did an upgrade that was really awesome. I went onto Amazon and for 10 bucks, I bought a canvas backdrop that photographers use. I started with a wood panel one and then I got a brick one. And so in total, I spent$20 and I simply laid those out over my background where I had electrical issues and other things. And so I was able to hide up problems that I had on my wall. And I simply have this canvas that looks fantastic and it's easy to switch in and out. And that's now my new backdrop.

4:34The other cool thing about that is because I bought it on Amazon and I'm an Amazon influencer, I actually did a review on the Canvas backdrops. And because people are now purchasing those on Amazon after watching my video, I'm making a commission off those. So it actually was free for me and continues to pay me through the Amazon influencer program. So nice little upgrade in my life where I could improve my video backdrop. If you want to learn more about Tyler and about the Amazon Influencer program, please go back and check out episode 562 from last spring on the show. Super inspiring stuff. Again, the easiest money that I've ever made online came from my first few weeks as an Amazon influencer and it's been very passive ever since then.

5:18But the thing here is whether or not it's a canvas backdrop in your case The thing here is in the habit building world There's something called the 20 second rule where if you're trying to build a new positive habit You want to reduce the friction to start that thing. So it takes 20 seconds or less I guess this is what researchers have found like that's the cutoff And I think that's what tyler's done with his new studio setup if I want to make more videos How do I make it easier to hit record? And similarly if there's a habit you want to stop add some extra friction in there So it takes longer than 20 seconds.

5:49So your brain ends up asking itself, do I really want to go through all that extra trouble? My name is Shannon Weinstein, and I host the Keep What You Earn podcast. In addition to serving as the owner of the Keep What You Earn company, a fractional CFO service for growth-minded founders. One upgrade I've made this year is my effort to connect. I'm making a conscious decision to attend more events and grow my network this year. This, of course, involves upgrading my wardrobe out of sweatpants chic and into more professional attire. Now I'm really looking forward to upgrading how and where I'm seen in 2024.

6:20If you missed it, definitely encourage you to check out the full episode we did with Shannon, episode 553. It was on how she built her side business to multi six figures while still working full time using free content on Instagram and her podcast to build her authority to build her audience. And Shannon is also the person who introduced me to the idea of creating a playlist quiz for podcast listeners to help direct you to the right episodes, depending on the side hustles that you're most interested in. Hustle.show, you've probably heard me plug it, but hustle.show is where to go. If you want to see that in action, you can answer a few short, multiple choice questions.

6:56Thousands of listeners have already tested it out and gotten their personalized playlists from that. And it's all something that I owe Shannon for the idea for. So big thanks to Shannon for sharing that last year. And I agree that getting out and attending personal or professional events rather is super helpful for building your network and strengthening relationships with online connections. I'm long past the point where my internet friends started to outnumber my local friends. And these events are the best chance that I have to hang out with them in real life, including many of the contributors on this episode.

7:30Now, the other thing that Shannon mentioned was upgrading her wardrobe. So my little life upgrade here, this is number four on the list, is last year I started ordering custom shirts from my favorite brand and style. I mean, we are living in a golden age of t-shirts with this super soft tri-blend material. None of this 100 % cotton stuff from the 1900s for me. I found that my personal favorite, the brand that fits best for me is called Next Level. And they're somewhat hard to find, but they're pretty common like in custom orders. So what I did last year was create a few custom designs and ordered four of these shirts in different colors through Printify.

8:06Now in total with shipping, I think it was less than a hundred bucks. And now I pretty much always have a super soft, great fitting shirt to pull from the drawer. And with some positive message or design that's meaningful to me, like the side hustle nation sign off slogan, make something happen or my brother's motto that every day is a bonus day. It's something I should have done years ago, because life's too short for crappy t shirts. If you've got a handful of those in your drawer, do yourself a favor, just donate them and rid yourself of that physical and mental clutter. Like if it is in the bottom quartile of your favorite shirts, if you were to rank order them, just lose them.

8:42If it doesn't bring you joy, you don't need that in your life. Hey, this is Rosemary Gruner with Busy Budger.com. And my favorite life upgrade this year is actually in my office. I got a cloud massager, which is for your feet and ankles. It's a large unit. It's really heavy. You can angle it up or it can sit like flat. You put your feet in it and it offers compression. First of all, like it squeezes your feet and your legs and your ankles so that like all the blood flow is like evenly distributed and you feel like, I don't know how to describe it other than like you feel like you were at the gym all day and not sitting at your office desk, not moving.

9:21But it also has like rollerball massage from the bottom of your feet. It'll like roll them. It also does vibration and it does like sway massage, like along with the pressure points. It feels so amazing to sit at your desk and have your feet massaged all day long. I cannot tell you. I wish I'd done this years ago. You have to try it. It's the best idea ever. Got to admit, this sounds like a pretty cool idea. And if you a lot of time at your desk could probably be a pretty easy purchase to justify. Thanks, Rosemary, for sharing that one. That's number five, the cloud massager. And here's John Jonas with number six.

10:00This is John Jonas from onlinejobs.ph. So the small upgrade that I made to myself this year was teaching one of my VAs, I call them OFS, online Filipino specialists, to respond to my personal email. So I've had her writing things for me for a long time, like social media posts or my newsletter, and that helped her get into my voice. But this was a really big step was to have her actually responding to my email. So I realized there's a bunch of stuff that I don't need to deal with in my email. I started having her write drafts for those things. So she would write a draft. And when I get into my email in the morning, I would know she had responded to things if there was a draft there.

10:41And so before it was sent, I could edit it or add to it or whatever it was, and then I would send it. And that way I just made sure that things were appropriate from me. But after a while of doing this, and I would also give her feedback, I would edit or change or whatever. And then I would make a video and say, hey, here's what I did to this email. You did a good job, but also this and this and this, right? And I did that a bunch of times. After a while, she got so good at it that I noticed I'm just clicking send on these things. And so I stopped having her write drafts and just started having her respond to my emails, which was a really big upgrade in my, one, my time spent dealing with email, the mental capacity that it required for me, because a lot of the things she's responding to are things that either require looking up URLs from the past because people want references to things or someone needs to know, how do I do this?

11:36Or where does this come from? And she'll look those things up for me and post them in the email, it just took away a lot of mental drainage that comes with dealing with email for me. And then also time. I just don't spend the time doing those things that I would have otherwise spent. So it's been a really, really big upgrade for my personal and business life. Mostly, I guess, for my business life, which then translates to personal because I just don't spend the extra time working. So a really big upgrade for me. Where are you spending your time? Does it give you energy? Does it grow your business?

12:13Is there something else you'd rather be doing instead? Could you profitably delegate it to someone else? I've been trying to peel back my time from certain tasks lately. And I say lately, but it's really been a decade long ongoing process and trying to build some better systems around those things. So I can focus my energy on the higher level stuff that I enjoy more like creating episodes like this. Now, the first step is being honest with yourself on where your hours are going. We've all got 24 hours in a day, 168, you know, something hours in a week. So first being honest with where your hours are going and then following the eliminate, automate, delegate framework to help free up more of your time.

12:51John was last on the show a few years ago. We did this full episode on how to hire your first virtual assistant. That is episode 343 in the archives. Still very much relevant today in onlinejobs.ph. his company, his site remains the leading site to connect with qualified work from home assistants in the Philippines. I've got lots more little life upgrades coming up right after this. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call, it's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications.

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15:24Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. Hey, this is Jacques Hopkins from piano in 21 days.com and the online course guy.com. And my little life upgrade over the past few months is the introduction of a treadmill desk into my daily routine. Now, before you jump to conclusions, Let me explain why this has been a game changer for me. I have always been skeptical about the whole treadmill desk thing for two main reasons. First, I assume they were just like prohibitively expensive. But after some research, I discovered that what you actually need is a walking pad and not a traditional treadmill.

16:08And I found a great one on Amazon for around$200. And there's even more affordable options than that. So remember, walking pad, not treadmill. And then the second reason for my hesitation was the idea of just walking all day while working, which seemed just quite daunting. But here's the thing. You don't have to walk all day. I set my walking pad at around 1.5 miles per hour, so not crazy fast, and only walk during specific work activities and when I feel like it. So like checking email, just basic stuff. You won't find me recording content while walking, at least not yet. and no more than probably an hour or two per day.

16:46The rest of the day, I'll work either sitting or standing, depending on how I'm feeling. For example, you caught me right now sitting. The walking pad is pretty light and easy to move out of the way when I'm not using it. And you can even find ones that fold in half. So this simple addition to my daily routine has been incredibly impactful. Not only has it allowed me to easily surpass 10 ,000 steps a day, but also just injected a new level of energy and productivity into my work life. So it's a small change, but it's one that has brought a significant amount of joy and health benefits. This is where we transition to our health upgrades section.

17:22And I love how the lines start to blur between this stuff. Is a treadmill desk a work hack or a health hack? There's lots of data to correlate the number of hours you spend sitting with all sorts of negative outcomes. And we kind of inherently know the more we move, the better off we're going to be health-wise. So starting last year, I set the goal to walk a mile a day because I noticed a lot of the days my step count was embarrassingly low, like 3000 steps or something. It's been quite a few years since my last treadmill desk treadmill bit the dust. So I might have to revisit Jacques' walking pad idea because I used to routinely rack up 20, 25, sometimes 30 ,000 steps in a day.

18:00But my work was also a lot more monotonous back then, if that's a thing. like I found that for more creative thinking tasks, I needed to, okay, you know, push, pause, stop the belt, and then either just use it as a standing desk or go sit down. But back to the mile a day thing, easy, simple, no cost upgrade. That's going to be number eight on this list, because in my case, as luck would have it, it's about half a mile to the kid's school. I usually walk to pick them up in the afternoon. We rode our bikes there in the morning. And I mean, I used to always ride to pick them up too, which took five minutes or three minutes, you know, it was really fast.

18:33Walking takes about seven minutes longer. Like that is the threshold of like, well, I don't have that kind of time, right? Call it 15 minutes round trip, 15 incremental minutes a day to get moving, add a bunch of steps to the step count with the added benefit. If I can get them to ride slow on the way home, I get to hear all about their day. And that's a pretty cool time that we have together. Now, the other habit from the start of last year was what ultimately became the three question journal. So I'll give that a plug here too. It is a nightly habit, a kind of shutdown routine type of habit of writing down, what did I get done today?

19:07What am I grateful for? And what are my top priorities for tomorrow? Really simple, really easy habit that has definitely made a positive impact on my personal happiness and just being able to kind of shut down at the end of the day, this kind of like final brain dump and start off tomorrow strong. So 3qjournal.com is the direct link to go check that one out and see if that might make a good addition to your life as well. Hey, this is Chad Carson from the podcast and YouTube channel, Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson. Last year, I started tracking all of the food I eat with a free app on my phone called Fitbit.

19:38I'm sure there's other free ones out there like that. But the reason this has been very helpful for me is kind of like when you track your spending, either personally with a personal budget or with your business budget, when you pay attention to everything that's coming in. And then if you track it in an app, it can actually show you charts and show you how many calories you've had and what your macros of protein versus carbs versus fat look like. it really could make a game out of it. And I started paying attention as I ate it. And so like little snacks that, you know, I would just like eat three handfuls full of walnuts or something.

20:06And that seemed like a good idea, but then you see how much that is. And maybe I've already eaten that five times a day by looking at the app and just paying attention to it. It changed my behavior around nutrition, around losing a little bit of weight. And I just found that really powerful because I've done it in other parts of my life with my money, with my business, with my business goals, but I'd never done that with my nutrition. So I recommend it if you're looking to lose a little bit of weight or just get healthier and feel better about what you're eating, simply paying attention to it seems to make a big difference, or at least it did for me.

20:35What gets measured gets managed, right? I found similar results from using MyFitnessPal, similar app. It just keeps you honest about portion control. It makes you more conscious about what you're putting into your body. And it's probably going back to that 22nd rule by just adding a little bit of extra friction. Do I really want to eat that thing? If I'm going to have to be honest and log it in the app. Now, for whatever reason, I have had a hard time doing this consistently for more than a few weeks at a time. Starting out, motivation is really strong. I start using it. I start feeling better.

21:05And then the habit dies off. I stopped doing it maybe because of that little extra friction. And it's probably less than five minutes a day in total, but still a challenge for me to really make it a sticky ongoing habit. And so if you have any tips or strategies on that front, I'm all ears. But thanks to Chad for sharing that. That was number nine, use a meal tracking app or a food tracking app. Little life upgrade number 10 is to cut out sugar. This is from Vincent Puglisi, and we didn't get a voicemail clip for this one. But a few months ago, he committed to cutting out sugar and bread for a year.

21:38And I assume fruit is still allowed, but he's cutting out refined processed added sugar in addition to bread. And he said he's noticed a few positive changes as a result, including weight loss, increased energy, increased overall mood or improved overall mood in clearer thinking. And he says, most importantly, clothes fit much better. Now, aside from the weight loss, kind of hard to quantify these things, but whether it's placebo or not, probably worth an experiment. And we consume way, way, way more sugar than our ancestors ever did with lots of negative health consequences as a result. So maybe worth an experiment doing that.

22:15Going cold turkey might be a pretty dramatic lifestyle change in some cases, but maybe you can combine Vincent's tip with chance to start to track your own baseline intake and then work to reduce that and just take notice of how you feel. Another food-related upgrade I wanted to share, and this is number 11, was finding a great spice to add to roasted vegetables and probably other stuff too. The vegetables are just my primary use case. the one that we've been hooked on is called Silverwater Secrets, which may not do you any good because it doesn't appear to be for sale online, but it was a gift from a local store or restaurant in Port Townsend, Washington, I think.

22:52But the broader idea here, find one that you like because for probably less than 10 bucks for a six month supply, you're actually going to look forward to eating the healthy stuff because the spice makes it taste so much better. Definitely a low cost game changer and we'll need to restock soon. Hi, my name is Jade Weatherington of teacherjade.com and Teacher Jade's Writing Academy. One small upgrade I gave myself over the last year was related to my fitness and health. So I have consistently been working out with a trainer for the last three years and I have very specific body goals that I want to reach.

23:27And in order to reach those goals, I also had to change the way I was eating. So I have started working on that and again, been consistent and having good health means that everything else in my life falls into place. I also started taking dance classes. So I do that three days a week and I'm going back to my sword fighting lessons, which is one day a week. So that's been the upgrade, taking care of my physical, which then helps me take care of my mental, which helps me take care of my emotions. Dang, sword fighting lessons. You don't want to mess with teacher Jade. She's going to cut you down.

24:08But she's right. If you don't take care of your body, where are you going to live? And you can't show up as your best self if you don't feel good. So I consider health the foundation that really everything else has to be built on top of. It's the lead domino. So that wraps up our health category with number 12, hire a professional, get some outside expertise, get some coaching, wherever you want to go, odds are someone has walked that path and can help you get there. If there is a shortcut, I think it's mentorship. And even if you feel like you know what you should be doing, you might find that by paying some money for someone else to tell you what to do, all of a sudden it becomes much more real and much more urgent.