642: 50+ Tools and Apps to Work Smarter and Get More Out Of Your Side Hustle

24:25But this is a place to host your courses, a place to process payments for those, you know, host the sales pages, all sorts of kind of like an all in one tool for courses. Yes, I also use Teachable and I host my podcast moguls course on that. So that's a course where I teach aspiring podcasters how to launch and monetize your own podcast. And it's been really great. It's a seamless experience to go in, set up the modules, then you get the replays when we have our mastermind calls, you can send people to the checkout sales page there. Or if you do another like funnel type of website, which I'm sure we'll get to, you can still just send them the info to get registered and get started with the course on Teachable.

25:08So I really like Teachable. Yeah, they've been around forever. There's a bunch of different LMS or learning management system type of tools. Right. Pros and cons to all of them, but it's been working fine over here. Yeah, what you'll find with tools is the switching costs. You have to really make it worth it for someone to want to switch their whole workflow and take their content over to another platform. So I don't think any other course provider has made the switching costs worthwhile. Yeah, it's got to be, it's going to be have to be a significant feature improvement or significant cost savings to unravel all of that.

25:45And that was what it was for, for ActiveCampaign. It's like, really, we've got hundreds of different forms. It's all these integrations. And to their credit, ConvertKit is like, hey, we'll do it for you. And they did. So it's like, okay, the next one on the I guess a couple on this list are going to be SEO related. And the first one for me is Ahrefs. It's A-H-R-E-F-S. This is the leading keyword research tool and has been for a long time for anybody serious about ranking their content in Google, all the serious SEO people, you know, friends, colleagues, people in the industry tend to use this one.

26:18And they recently came out with a starter plan that was like a third of the cost. And it's like, oh, okay, that's the one that I need. Cause it's like, oh, it's always kind of a little bit expensive for what we were using it for. And it's the same thing where it's like, well, the ROI is definitely there. If you can get a piece of content that the keyword topic you discovered through Ahrefs and you created that content and you got it to stick, it definitely pays for itself. But like, it definitely also pays for itself if it's a third of the cost and the feature set didn't really change. So really cool to have discovered that just recently.

26:50Oh, I like that. Another one that, you know, I for SEO was really doing the basic of using a a WordPress plugin. And I think it was called Yoast. But there's a new business that my husband and I are starting. So I'm going to take it a step up and actually use, what's it called? Ahrefs? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for that. Because again, I want to start out by knowing, okay, what can we rank for? What are the top searches for this? What are the suggested searches? So what exactly does it do for you? So one of the cool things you can do is plug in a similar or a competitor site and see what pages of theirs are doing well, what pages, you know, what kind of keywords that they have created content for.

27:30And it's kind of like this opening spark of inspiration being like, oh, that's an interesting, I never would have thought about that. And then the other kind of use case is we've got all of these different keyword topics now or ideas, you know, that we could create, and then you punch them all in and it'll tell you the approximate search volume or traffic potential plus the estimated difficulty of each one. And so we're naturally sorting by, you know, which ones have the most traffic potential and are the easiest in theory to rank for. There was something else I used for that. And for some reason, oh, I've used SEM rush tool.

28:04Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had to look that up. Definitely use SEM rush. Okay. The other SEO tool that we've been using is phrase. It's F-R-A-S-E. This is a little bit nerdier, but it works in a couple of different ways. First, you can input a new content idea. hey, this is the article that I want to write. And it pulls in, you know, the top 10, 20 search results that are already in Google for that topic and says, if you're creating this article, this is what Google already thinks is the most valuable content. So you can help kind of build your outline based on that. And the second way you can use it is to say, well, I already have this article on topic XYZ, but it's, it's due for a refresh.

28:42And it works similarly where it's like, well, you know, your, your content mentions this phrase, you know, twice, but the top 10 results mention it four times. So you might want to increase like really granular and kind of like, I don't know if that's really if that could be considered AI, but it like just kind of helps you try and figure out what where the gaps might be in your content. So you find that you need that on top of a ref. That's interesting. Yeah. So a trust more for the like the general seed ideas for content. And then this is like helping you build out the outlines or improve existing content.

29:13And you could use chat GPT for this probably. Yeah, I was going to say, I think I've been, since I've been using ChatGPT, I've been kind of defaulting to it, but I absolutely am going to test them out. I don't know if I want to pay for all of it again, though. Our next section is productivity tools. And all of these are productivity tools in one form or another. But for me, the top one, the first tab that gets open every day, probably a bad habit is Gmail. It's like one inbox to rule them all. If you email me, nick at side hustle nation.com, it'll come into that Gmail inbox. And you've got all of these, you know, filters set up where, you know, newsletters go over here and, you know, affiliate sales notifications go over here.

29:53And then, you know, personal stuff goes into this folder and, you know, PayPal receipts go into, you know, this accounting type of folder. And so it's kind of that one central inbox to really, to really rule them all. Gmail has been holding me down since the beginning of SideHustle Pro. And again, one inbox, if you email me at hi at sidehustepro.co. It's going there. And it usually is sometimes I do my calendar before Gmail. But yeah, that's definitely one of the first places I'm in each day. Probably a bad habit. But it's, you know, 15, 20 years old at this point, it's gonna be hard to break.

30:26One tool that I layer on top of Gmail is a software called SaneBox, which is kind of a smart, like first level filtering, where for everything that comes in, it decides like, does this need to go to your primary inbox or does it need to go into kind of a secondary, less important inbox? And it's remarkably good at that. And you still have to go check the secondary inbox. They call it sane later. It's like, it's not urgent. You can look at it later. And you still need to go and clean that out. And you can train stuff. You can drag it back and forth. But I've been a customer of theirs for a lot of years.

30:59And they filtered out thousands of messages at this point that were less important and stopped cluttering up the main inbox. Ooh, I think I need that for my personal. know, I used to use Boomerang a lot more and even for like sending later, but obviously you can do that now just via Gmail. And what I find with the inbox is I just want to be able to see everything first. I don't want it to go like sometimes things would go to filters and I wouldn't even, I don't know. I just want to make sure that I'm seeing everything, but I do have my inbox divided starred on top and then on red. And so it's nice because once I've read and addressed it, It's blank.

31:36I don't have a I don't like keeping a huge inbox at all. And then but starred lets me know what I need to get back to. And that's my simple system right now. And then everything has I have a ton of filters. So I do organize by all right, this email goes to address this goes to I even have things like email examples. And I'll do that by name of the influencer or content creator. And I'm like, oh, I like this email. So I'll save it in their special inbox for me to go back to and review. Yeah, take inspiration from somebody else rather than starting from that blank page, rather than starting from scratch.

32:13Exactly, exactly. You mentioned Boomerang as a good Gmail add-on. The one that I've been using for a long time is called NudgeMail, where it's like, this isn't important today, but I want it to resurface in a couple weeks. You just CC or forward that message to like twoweeksatnudgemail.com. And it like brings it back to the top of your inbox. Or if you, you know, sent a note to a sponsor or a client and you want to make sure to follow up with them in a few days, you can say like just CC or BCC. Maybe you don't want them to see it like five days at NudgeMail.com. Like any commonly expressed time frame, it'll resurface that into your inbox.

32:51So that's been a cool, helpful tool as well. Oh, I like that. Next on this list is a clipboard management tool. I'm on PC. So this is ClipX. which allows you to like saves the last 25 things you copied onto your clipboard, which is like just one of these like little desktop productivity tools. I've heard that CopyClip is the Mac alternative, but this is something that I use all day, every day without even thinking about it now. That's so interesting. So why do you want to remember what you got? Maybe I'm scared for someone to keep track of what I copied. Yeah, it's like I'm pasting the URL and, you know, then I copy something out and then I, oh, but it was like three copies ago.

33:34I want to paste that thing again. It's just like, it's remarkable how often that use case comes up. That's true. That is true. Like when I'm writing an email, okay, I wanted to have my podcast, my Apple podcast link copied. Oh, but now the last thing I did was YouTube. So, all right. Okay. You've convinced me. Maybe I will add this on. Is that a Chrome extension or it's another like separate thing to do as an add-on? That's a desktop free, I think, free software for PC. And then CopyClip, I want to say, is the Mac alternative that people have mentioned. Okay. I do have a Chrome plugin or Chrome extension for you next.

34:09And this one is called Magical. This is custom keyboard shortcuts. And so use this all the time. Like if I hit SSS or something like that'll, you know, type W HTTP, you know, www.sideoscillation.com. Like you get tired of typing this stuff out over and over again. Yeah. You kind of create these custom keyboard shortcuts for the stuff that you type out all the time or like M M asterisk or something. That's like the, you know, schedule once link, like meet me dot. So, you know, use this all the time as well. And so that's been really helpful. that's so cool you know nick i thought i was productive but you you weren't putting me on to a whole different level i thought i was doing something with command c command v right well those keyboard shortcuts okay no i don't have a keyboard shortcut tool yeah it takes you know takes a minute to set up but you feel like just a productivity ninja when you you bang these emails out you know right away i like that And I think they probably have a paid plan, too.

35:10Oh, speaking of that, one thing I forgot to mention about Gmail, I also have a lot of saved templates inside of Gmail. So that saves me time with responding to people. And I also have that for my VA. So my VA has a sub email under SideHustlePro and then everything from email pitches to prospective guests to responses to people who pitch us and different things to say to sponsors or all kinds of things. We've made up all kind of templates so that we can just plug and play and not have to keep reinventing the wheel for each email. And it speeds up the reply process. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's great.

35:48That's great for sponsor requests, for guest pitch requests. Like, oh, you can, for the sake of sanity, I'm funneling guest applications through this form. You know, here's the link. And yeah, because you get, it's the stuff you end up typing out over and over again. Right, right. Over and over again. Anything over and over again becomes a template. All right. My next productivity tool is my personal creation. It's called the three question journal. Every night it is going to ask you, what'd you get done today? Right? Like kind of a mental brain dump of all the things you crossed off your list.

36:18It's going to ask you what you're grateful for. And it's going to ask you how you're going to win tomorrow. What are your top priorities for the next day? And this is something created last year, I want to say, and has been kind of a daily habit ever since then. And it helps me feel more on top of it. Helps me honestly kind of do that, you know, shutdown routine. Like, okay, you know, it's, it's out of here and it's onto the page. And then when I get to work the next day, it's, well, this is what yesterday Nick said was the top priority. So let's go knock those out first. And so that's been really helpful.

36:47So 3qjournal.com is a redirect link, another one of those vanity domains where you can get redirected over there. Yes, I love that. So I also have a tool that I use for productivity. So I started this back in 2016. It's called the Goal Getter Action Plan. And it's essentially my approach to managing my goals for the year. So I break it down into 90 day sprints and AKA, you know, 12 week sprints where instead of focusing and looking at the year as like this huge, oh, I got to get all this done. And I didn't make up the concept of 12 week sprints, but the way I break it down in the Goal Getter Action Planner helps people who don't meet their goal to recalculate.

37:34recalculate. So I think that's the thing I've noticed for my listeners. That's the thing that stops most people is this feeling of beating yourself up. And that's normal. It's part of the process to not get things done. So how do you recalculate? How do you reshift your goals so that you actually get things done? So that has helped me a ton to not waste time on like that mental roller coaster and just say, all right, let's pivot. So similar to you, I look at my calendar. That's where I keep. So once I break the sprints down into quarterly goals by 90 day sprints, then I break it down into monthlies.

38:11And so each night I'm looking at, OK, what did I get done? What do I need to shift around this week? So it just keeps me going one foot at a time, just keep swimming. And you can get more of that over at SideHouse of Pro.co slash GoalGetter. We'll link up the GoalGetter Action Planner. Very cool. More tool talk with Nicaela in just a moment, including the calendar and team collaboration categories. Plus my favorite new find of the year that's helping me speed up video creation right after this. Are you still overpaying for wireless? It's time to say yes to saying no. At our partner Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no.

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40:35Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. You did mention the calendar. That's our next category of tools here for me. Two tools work in conjunction with each other. First is Google Calendar. And then the second one is ScheduleOnce. This is like the booking management link where, you know, somebody wants to book a podcast interview. Somebody wants to book a intro call, right? You have these different categories set up. We have heard from the AppSumo crew that TidyCal is, you know, a one-off, one-time purchase instead of a annual subscription for ScheduleOnce.

41:18But, you know, ScheduleOnce is already integrated into a bunch of different systems, including these keyboard shortcuts. So it's, that's what I've have stuck with by Google Calendar and in ScheduleOnce for that. Really the thing with Google Calendar is like the time blocking where in ScheduleOnce will allow you to do this too. I'm only taking meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays, right? I want like bigger, deep work blocks of time the rest of the days. Yes. I, I use Google Calendar and Calendly. So Calendly, that's originally I started using that just to have my guests be able to book and see, select from all the options I had on my calendar.

41:56And now I use it for everything as well as my VIP coaching calls with like VIP branding or podcasting clients. I use it for quick informational calls when I interview people to hire them for SideHustle Pro. It's all run through Calendly. And then of course it syncs with my calendar so they can only schedule when I'm available because I also block off my calendar for various life things or yeah, deep work sessions and all that. Totally. I will hand it to Calendly. Much better looking interface than ScheduleOnce. If you want to care about presentation a little bit more, Calendly is the one to go with there.

42:31Oh, yeah. The next category on our tool list, resources list is for graphics and video. And so the common one that everybody probably uses at this point is called Canva. This is C-A-N-V-A. This is YouTube thumbnails. This is digital product, like making workbooks in here. This is sometimes custom blog graphics. This is super easy to use. And they've added on all these kind of cool, you know, photo editing, image enhancement, AI type of layer, like really, really powerful. Like that's another one of those where it's like, it's really, I'm just grateful that this exists in the world and makes life easier.

43:12Yes, absolutely. Canva is A1. If you're a side hustler doing any kind of creating graphics for your business, you need to be on Canva. I use the Canva for my presentations, for webinars, for creating quick eBooks. And sometimes I even purchase templates on Etsy. So let's say you're not finding what you want inside of Canva. A lot of times you can go onto Etsy and say, you know, ebook, or you want a new slide deck, aka presentation slides, and then they create a Canva version. So you can just, once you purchase, download it, and then upload that template to Canva and start working by customizing it to your brand colors.

43:53And I do that a ton, because sometimes I'm just looking for something fresh, whether it's graphics on Instagram, you talked about Instagram growth, or anything, I sometimes purchase a template and then move it over to Canva. Yeah, for sure. There's a screen recording tool that I use for online courses, for demo videos, for tutorials, for virtual assistants. I use this all the time. It's called ScreenPal. It used to be called Screencast-O-Matic. I think there's still a free plan, but super affordable. This would be an alternative to Loom. This is just, I don't know, one that we use almost daily to kind of create that type of process library type of content that's internal facing to the company, but also external facing content where it's like you want to do a demo of some tool that you're using and put that up on YouTube.

44:40And it's like really, really helpful to have. And I also use their built in editor for a lot of video tools, too. It's like it's it's very basic. Like if you are used to After Effects or some like, you know, real official video editing software, you're gonna be like, what the heck am I doing? But it's the one that I learned. I still use either Loom or QuickTime. QuickTime, I've been defaulting to a lot more because Loom has been a little bit glitchy. Sorry, Loom. So I need to check out ScreenPal. Why do you like it more than Loom? Did you ever try Loom? Yeah, I used Loom up until like the limit of the free plan.

45:15And the cool thing about Loom is that it will provide you a transcript of the video where this tool is not, or at least on the pricing tier that I'm at. I think I'm probably grandfathered in at some low rate. But Loom absolutely is a viable alternative, too. And similarly, I also record tutorials for my team to, you know, just walk through the process of how to do something. And eventually, because I've recorded so many, we need to go back in and probably, you know, get transcripts, put those in chat GPT and update SOPs. Yeah. The other one, just for screenshots and actually for like full scroll, if you want to capture like the whole website, not just what's visible.

45:54I use a Chrome extension called Awesome Screenshot. And what else is cool about this is you can kind of do real time markup of it where in the editing window, you can crop that image, you can add circles and arrows and text. And we use that for a lot of like product review content on the website where, you know, we point to you can cash out for gift card. You kind of highlight that section on the screenshot. And I don't know, that's something that ends up getting used quite a bit. Or just like even if it's just like customer support, like here's what we're seeing on our end. capture the screenshot, send it over.

46:25I like that. What's that called again? Awesome screenshot is the Chrome extension. All right. Next tool, video tool that we've been loving this year because it's really, really cool. It's called Pictori, pictori.ai. I want to say this is upload your script. And there's probably like different script creation tools that are in there. But for us, our typical use case would be upload the script, upload the voiceover, and then it pulls in hundreds of stock footage clips. Like it turns this into a really visually compelling type of video. It adds captions. Oh, yes, yes. And some of these videos that we've done have had 10 ,000 views.

47:04Like they're out there on YouTube making money. And this would have taken hours and hours and hours of a video editor's time. I love it, yes. Yeah, this has been a cool addition just to speed up video production process. the bottleneck is still in the scripting, which we've talked about. And working with some chat GPT prompts, I want to turn this blog post into a compelling video script. Can you help me get from A to B? And it's not quite there yet, because it's still me narrating. And we've, you know, experimented around with some AI narration. It's like, ah, it's not quite, not quite there yet.

47:37No, not quite. They're not quite there yet. I've tried, I think it's what, 11 labs for that. And And it's scary how good your voice can be. But by the time you set up everything, there's still some, you know, things to work through. But what I wanted to say about what you just said, the scripting part with ChatGPT, what I found helpful is when you really have to approach it. And I got this from my sister and my husband. Like, this is like an intern, you know. And so it's going to be a back and forth dialogue. It's not like people think, oh, just give me a list of great prompts. And I'm sure you don't think that.

48:10But a lot of people are like, oh, let me just get the prompts that you got. But actually, you're having a conversation. I usually start every experience of writing something and I'm like, hey, GP, how's it going? It's the Kayla here, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I'm like, here's what I want to do. And then we go back and forth and it gives me the first draft. And then I'm like, no, that sounds to this. I give it examples of my writing and I say, what I'm trying to do is this. And so it takes a while, Nick. But by the time we go through this process, we get to a good place. And then you can take that script and tweak it to what's not, or as you're reading it, of course, adjust it organically.

48:48But I can definitely say I think you can speed up your script process with AI, with ChatGPT or Claude.ai. Check those out because it's been really, really helpful. It's not going to give you the first pass you're not going to be impressed with. You still have to workshop it like it's a person, an employee. Yeah, that makes sense. And the more the more you can prime it and you've got enough body of content on the Internet where it knows it knows who you are, it kind of knows how you would speak and your personality. And it's the same thing. But I find it's still faster, even after we've gone through that whole conversation, than me like sitting down and like having to download what I'm thinking and create a script from scratch.

49:29Yes, for sure. I've got a discount code for Pictory. It's NSHN20, like Nick, Side Hustle Nation 20. We'll get you 20 % off, I think, over there. We'll also link that up in the show notes. Really cool tool. I'm going to try and put together kind of a demo video of like our typical use case and share some of the results that some of those videos have gotten. It's like, well, some of them are earning views and dollars every day. And it was like, you know, what it will typically do is, you know, me for the first five or 10 seconds, hey, we're going to talk about the best items to flip for a profit.

50:00Or we're going to talk about side hustles for introverts. I don't know, some of these examples where we use these use this tool, but, you know, talking head intro for three seconds, five seconds. And then, you know, the rest is kind of pictorial generated with those stock footage. Right. I love that. And we were talking about this before we started recording how as I was going through your YouTube channel, I'm like, you know what? I can do some of these as well, because there are lots of little mini things people ask me. And I'm like, through looking at your channel, realizing I need to do one of these, just quickly explaining how something works or how a side hustler can set up your email list and tag people or, you know, that's just shooting out an example.

50:40But I love what you do there. So I think that's so smart. Some of that Q &A content has the longest shelf life where some of my best performing videos are like how to keep your Dropbox from taking up your local hard drive storage. I saw that. Yeah. this video is probably 10 years old and it's just you know it was probably created with screen pal and it's like here's you know a two minute video and how to get it done but it still it answers the question so anytime people are asking you questions i think it's important to make a note of that because that could turn into content for you yeah yeah all right real quick the other one on the graphics and video category is pexels p-e-x-e-l-s this is just you know free stock photography and where that's where you're sourcing a lot of the images we've got a deposit photos license or you've got bought like a hundred pack off AppSumo a few years ago and still are working through those as well.

51:31But, you know, wherever you can kind of find the image to illustrate what you're talking about, sometimes it's there, sometimes it's Pexels. Yeah. You know, I actually use Canva for my images these days. I used to use Pexels, but nowadays I'm on the pro plan on Canva. So, and oftentimes I'm looking for Black women, women of color, just more like niche things. I shouldn't say niche, but I want specific things. And Canva has actually a really good library of images, even when I'm talking about podcasting, different type of podcast studios. So I use it for that. And when I need other stock photo things like imagery for social, I have some apps that I use for that.

52:09Like Templi is one of them and Vixor. I've also tried. Well, I don't know those. We'll link those up too. Oh, yeah. OK, our next category is team collaboration. And for me, this starts with secure password sharing. For me, that's LastPass. Again, been a customer for years and years. This company is maybe a little bit embattled with, I don't know, security breaches. Anyways, it's been fine for me. It's been good for me. I know, knock on wood. And same thing with the switching costs. It's like, at this point, I don't know. I was thinking with LastPass for now. But yeah, the password breaches have been a little concerning.

52:44I don't know where the tipping point was, where it's like you had so many different logins to keep track of. And it's like, how are you ever going to remember all of this stuff? And so just, you know, offload that mental clutter. It doesn't have to be LastPass, but if you don't have a password manager, like that's an absolute must have. Yes. And for me, the password manager, it wasn't so much like I was forgetting passwords anymore. But once I started working with the team, I was definitely not comfortable giving someone else my password. so whoever invented this concept thank you so that i can get them to log in places but they're not seeing my password kind of our next stage of this is a you know the family share plan mainly in like in case of emergency is bryn going to be able to access the stuff that she needs to and you know without because i think it's like you know the laptop is like biometric or it's like hope you know just want to make sure like you know in in one secure location you can unlock everything she needs to unlock.

53:45That's last pass for the team secure password sharing. We have make.com, which is formerly IntegraMAT. This is an automation tool that connects different apps and services in your life. And so an example use case would be if somebody enrolls in one of the courses on Teachable, Make will automatically send their information over to ConvertKit. If somebody buys one of the workbooks, make will make sure that they get appropriately tagged and automatically triggers that like file delivery email. If the podcast editor uploads a episode to like the final audio folder in Google Drive, it triggers triggers an email to the show notes writer like, hey, another episode is ready for you to go, you know, listen to and summarize.

54:31Here's the link to it. And so it's kind of removes me from that process in a lot of ways and just like, you know, makes it, it makes it happen automatically. Ooh. So I've used Zapier for that. And as we're talking about this, you just gave me an idea of new automations that I need to set up for my team when like I'm done recording in Riverside, for example. So I, I love that we're having this conversation, just getting so many new ideas. Yeah. Zapier was, was using them for a long time. And then they wanted to like double or triple the rates. And I was like, really, guys? Like, you know, come on.

55:07And that was one where it's like, yes, there's a learning curve. Yes, there's a switching cost. But I didn't have so many automations. It was like, yeah, we can figure this out. Yeah. I found this support, the make support, like pretty well, too. And they've got lots of knowledge base articles. Like if you want to do a specific thing, they're usually pretty helpful on getting that set up. The next one here is Asana. This is, you know, I still have my like pen and paper to do lists, but as the team has grown, as the complexity of the business has grown, despite, you know, trying to stick with the mantra of, you know, simplicity first, Asana has been really helpful for keeping track of tasks and deadlines and due dates and who's responsible for that.

55:47You know, I've used Asana, Basecamp, Trello, and I found that I'm really not into these yet. I don't know what it is. It just kind of overcomplicates it a little bit for me, but I know at some point maybe I'll revisit or someone will make one that I really vibe with. but right now we have our communication via Slack. We're not using a project management tool. I've only used those when I'm usually working with a brand, right? Giving them deliverables and things like that. So that's when Asana has been most helpful. Yeah, there's a learning curve to all of these. And the challenge is you open it up and it's blank.

56:25Yeah, I know this is going to be super powerful, but I got to figure out how to make it work for me. And it's cool that it's all customizable, but it's like, you know, some level of onboarding or guidance would be helpful for sure. And that's why there's whole businesses built around selling Notion templates and, you know, people have done really well with that. All right. I have a virtual assistant service that I've been a customer of for years, and this is called OK Relax, which might be my favorite name for a VA service. They do, you know, I'm on my fifth, sixth, seventh assistant through them, but they've all been really reliable for like dedicated, you know, recurring tasks.

57:01Early on, it was, you know, running reports, installing lead magnets, doing company research, blog post formatting. I think they've been a helpful addition to the team and pretty affordable service too. I also use a VA and not through a service, actually through just a referral. And we've been going on, I want to say maybe like almost five years now. So yeah, finding a good one, a good person is really priceless. Yeah. Keep them on the team for sure. Yes. The other kind of agency service or productized service that helps out on the website side of things is called ZenWP. And I consider this kind of my on-call, on-demand website insurance, where if something breaks with WordPress, you want to make an adjustment, but they help out with all that stuff, especially instrumental during the last redesign, refresh of the site.

57:53I don't, it's kind of painful. It's like there's a lot of months where like, I don't bother them at all. And it's like, well, there was my monthly fee down the drain. But when you do have something that comes up and that's why it's kind of like the insurance policy, if something breaks, you know, you have somebody on your team who can can jump in. I like that. I formally would just go to like my host customer service, but that is a good investment. Okay. Next under team collaboration and communication is Mint Mobile, who has been a sponsor on the show. This is the affordable wireless service provider.

58:21I've been a customer since 2019. Don't do a lot of phone, you know, direct phone calls. I use Google Voice as well for some business calls, but this is really handy to have at an affordable rate. So you use this for your self-service overall? Yes. Okay. So I, yeah, I do have a Google Voice as well. And then outside of that, Verizon is who I use. And as the business grows, we've had OpenPhone as a sponsor on the show like just under different different use cases at a certain point you kind of outgrow your outgrow your personal cell phone you gotta you know route things to different ways and you want to especially if you're doing different marketing channels and you want to make sure what what channel is working well i want to have a dedicated phone number for that and and everything so but mint mobile has been my my wireless provider i'll just include that um on this list because you know as their slogan says you know friends don't let friends overpay for for wireless the other team collaboration tool that i am in all day every day is google drive and this is sharing blog articles this is sharing like production docs for different episodes it is kind of home base for a lot of different files and reports and just templates is where we house our process library for you know all the things that are going on inside hustle nation i was kind of a latecomer.

59:36I was on, you know, using Dropbox for a long time, but the functionality with Google Drive is a whole lot better. Even use it for collecting survey responses, job applications, and then sharing files amongst people on the team. Yeah, I use both. So primarily Google Drive for team-related files, but Dropbox for really large files like episodes, all the backups and things like that. Yeah, it's amazing how affordable extra gigabytes of storage are, you know, just having having that backup. And I think there's a WordPress plugin. I should probably look up which one it is. But like, you know, so the host, WPX, takes daily backups of the site.

1:00:11But we also like a little bit of redundancy wouldn't hurt, you know, since that is, you know, the whole base, the bread and butter. And I think that gets backed up to Google Drive daily or weekly. Oh, interesting. All right. We're on to the podcasting section now. And the first is, well, how do you, is one question, well, how do you record remote interviews? And we're recording this on Riverside, Riverside.fm. This is a browser-based recording tool that allows for remote interviews. It takes, I think, really clean audio. It records video. It records each side independently. So if there's voiceover IP lags, you know, theoretically, it's got a good backup on each individual's local hard drive.

1:00:48It's been probably a year and a half using Riverside. Sometimes we have some technical challenges, but overall, it's been pretty reliable. Same here. I've been using Riverside now, I want to say maybe since 2021 and it has been very reliable. I love Riverside. I'm actually creating, it's almost live, a course with them called Ultimate Guide to Video Podcasting. So when it's live, you'll go over to sidehustlepro.co slash video podcasting. All right. And I'm just going through basically, yeah, everything like my at-home studio in my closet and why it's so seamless. I love it because I love virtual podcasting.

1:01:26I am not ready to go into a studio every single time I do an episode yet. And I'm able to see the guests, they can join easily, they don't have to log into anything. And I can see their equipment to make sure, you know, their sound is okay, that the recording is uploaded. And I just think it's so, so smart and adaptive. Yeah, a couple recent guests were local. And it's like, well, I guess we could have recorded this in person. But it's like, no, I'm not set up for that. Like, let's just stick with the process, stick with the system here. I also record a direct backup into Audacity, and that ends up being the track that we end up using from my side of the audio.

1:02:04This is audio editing too, where I can record the ad reads and the commercials and just do that directly. I've been doing everything in Riverside, like my ad reads, course reads, everything these days. Okay. It's become really powerful. They have these AI snippets that they'll generate. It does transcriptions, which allows us to cancel our subscription to the other transcript tool. There's been some consolidation, some tool swap, like trying to trim down the commitment of monthly subscriptions. Yes, it's taken over a lot. Like you said, show notes before my social media manager was writing those manually.

1:02:44And now we have a base to start with and then we customize it. So it's just sped up our processes so we can then focus on other big picture items. Yeah, there is another transcription editing tool that we do keep on the payroll, and that is Descript, and primarily for video editing. And when I first used it, I think Joe from Stacking Benjamins was the first one to be like, you gotta try this. You first experience editing video by editing text. You know, this is where the conversation went off the rails. We're gonna just strike that out of the transcript, and it deletes that section of the video.

1:03:17You're like, this is like magic. Magic. And it makes it so much easier for video editing. If you have an interview, if you have even just a talking head type of video where you want to, it'll do the transcription and then you can start editing it that way. Use that for first pass. And my video editor uses that to create the video version of podcast. Yes. I love that actually about Riverside, but I also do have Descript because I still like it as a video editor for non-podcast things when I just quickly want to upload something and do some editing. Yeah, one cool use case was, we talked about 11 Labs for their, you know, professional voiceover, you know, upload hours of your audio, and it comes back pretty, pretty good, actually.

1:03:59Well, Dscript has something similar called Overdub. And the use case for me, we were traveling, didn't bring, you know, the podcast setup, didn't bring the microphone with me. And they said, oh, the advertiser requested a change from this script that you recorded to this script. And it was like, one line was different, or, you know, just a few words were different. It's like, oh, you know, let me try. Let me punch this into Descript overdub. And it's like, OK, you know, for just a few seconds of audio, like nobody would know the difference. Like that was really cool. Like it didn't have to do a full setup and recording and reupload and like all this other nonsense.

1:04:32So definitely a cool tool to have in your tool belt. As far as the editing of the show itself, like the, you know, after recording production side, my editing service has been podcast fast track since 2016. Like it's like right before my oldest son was born. And it's been a big net time saver and, you know, focus your energy on what you're most excited about, creating the content, connecting with awesome people. Like the looking at those little waveforms for the first three years of the show is like, ah, there's got to be somebody. And on top of that, like, I just didn't know how to do it very well.

1:05:02And like, yeah, so they help out with all that. Same boat, same boat. I also outsource editing and it's just never something I loved. I use, well, actually my editor pitched me back in 2016 and we've been working together ever since longest team member. That is still crazy to think about, Chris from Podshaper. Very nice. Yeah, there is something to that where maybe that's the side hustle opportunity. If you can figure out audio editing and maybe you use some of these AI powered tools, you get a client that sticks around. If they're going to keep doing the show, that's a very sticky customer. You know, long, long, long, long lifetime value.

1:05:37Yeah, exactly. And start pitching people. Don't be afraid. Like, don't just wait for them to come to your website. Look, look for podcasters. Podcasters are always looking for, you know, a good deal. So, you know, work on your pitch. All right. We'll link up a pod chaser as well. And then last one in the podcasting category is megaphone. This is the new or new ish within the last year or so media host for the show. This is Spotify owned or Spotify powered that allows for dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog. Seems to be the direction that the industry was going. And that's been another good addition or another good shift over to Megaphone.

1:06:11Definitely more expensive than what I was paying with Libsyn, which is noticeable. But again, the ROI is definitely there. Yes, I am on the ACAS podcast network. So I'm on ACAS platform, which also seamlessly allows for dynamic insertion. I believe they might have been the first ones to do that for independent podcasters. Before that, I was on Libsyn for a long time and love Libsyn as well. Super user friendly. The team customer support was always very, very responsive. So I actually have a code for Libsyn Hustle Pro if you want to try it out because it's the first month and a half free. Very nice.

1:06:48We'll link that up. Yeah, Libsyn was absolutely awesome for the first, you know, probably 10 years of the show. It's just, again, one of those bills that comes up every month and you're like, I am getting such an amazing deal. You know, it's similar to the web hosting. We're like, yes. Yeah. No brainer. Yeah. I was really like, I had no idea. Like media, you need a media host? What I thought iTunes, you know, in the early days, maybe iTunes hosts, I didn't even think about it. And it was 15 bucks a month, you know, starting out. And you had it been 25 or 30, like, legitimately, the show might not exist.

1:07:20Like, what am I, what am I committing myself to? I just have to keep paying this for forever. And, you know, over time, it's like, Oh, no, no, this is a very, very low cost to pay to be able to reach thousands and thousands to people. Right. Yeah. One really important point that I should have mentioned at the top of the show is that neither of us started here with, you know, dozens of different tools and monthly subscriptions. Like we started off doing the editing ourselves. We started off doing the graphics ourselves, you know, very free, very cheap, like trying to do the, you know, the minimum viable product and then layering on complexity and cost and team members as time has gone on because it may be intimidating.

1:08:01You start doing the math in your head of like, well, this is an annual subscription. This is a monthly subscription. And it might sound intimidating, but it's like, no, no, no. We've added that cost and complexity as the businesses have grown. Yeah, exactly. Now we've got the money category, which I think is our last one here, if not the last, but maybe one of the last. The new to me bookkeeping software, you know, FinTech and Plaid integrations have opened up a bunch of these different services. And one of the cool ones that I found and actually made the switch for bookkeeping this year was to Kik.

1:08:32I think it's Kik.co. Oh my gosh. I literally just saw an email about them and want to try them. So tell me about your experience. Yeah. So this, you know, syncs with all your different accounts and it kind of gives you that, you know, real time, you know, picture, but also the monthly snapshot of income and expenses and probably will save a thousand, 1500 bucks a year compared to the other thing. And the cool thing is like, if you don't have much expenses, it's actually free. And so if you have less than I want to say 25, depending on when you're listening to this, and you know, it's a fintech startup.

1:09:03So like your plans change all the time. But if you have less than 15 or $25 ,000 in annual expenses, I think you can actually use it for free. And it's really cool. And then they have annual plans on top of that. I was the person who kept bookkeeping as one of my tasks way too long, way too long, because I was that weird person who got that little dopamine hit of logging the income on the spreadsheet, like almost in real time. Like what a colossal waste of energy, even though it felt good, even though it felt good. And still missing stuff. Like we're not accountants, we're missing stuff. We don't know other things we could like.

1:09:39That's what I saw with that kick does that intrigued me because it's like, all right, they're catching things that you might not realize. And back to our earlier conversation about the Teachable team. So it's founded by another Teachable alum. So that's the other one I was talking about. So you have Carrie and Kick are both Teachable alum founded business. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Conrad. Totally. Yes. But no, it's pretty slick, really cool interface that you can. What bothered me about my old bookkeeping solution was you had to message your bookkeeper if you wanted to, like if something got miscategorized, like why on earth do they not just have like, yeah, that's what I'm struggling with right now.

1:10:17I don't like any of the ones I've tried. And I'm like, I need to find a better, more automated, more intelligent solution. Yeah, I was like, why? How come they couldn't just put a little drop down menu or like recategorize it? And I was like, you got to message them. And it takes three weeks for them to reply. It's like, really, guys, like the whole pitch was like, you know, AI, you know, intelligence software plus human, like, if you're not going to have the human part, like, what's even the point? Right. And I like a nice interface. Like I am an aesthetic person. I need a nice interface that I can drag, drop.

1:10:50And then I've also tried the human bookkeeper thing. And I don't like like you going off into the dark, whipping up spreadsheets, then coming back to me with a spreadsheet that I don't really like. I don't really like how you've organized information. So I'm still working through this process, Nick. So I'm going to give it a try. And then the other one, so that's on the business side. The one that I really like on the personal side is Monarch. And this is your personal net worth dashboard. This is monthly income and expenses. This is, you know, historical, you know, performance and, you know, the stock market at the time of this recording has been on a year long tear.

1:11:23So of course, like it's rewarding to log in and see that net worth number go up. But it's a kind of a cool interface as well with a customizable dashboard and you track all the personal side of things. And that's something that my wife and I both have access to where we can kind of get a get that snapshot or get that picture of the personal finances. Oh, I like that. Another one I'm taking note of. Yeah, that one has been has been cool. And a couple of guests have mentioned it, too. And I don't know, maybe there's a business. I don't know, maybe you can use it for business, too, but that's on the personal side.

1:11:52And then finally, on the affiliate tracking side, affiliate income tracking side, I've been using a tool called Affluent, which pulls in, I think it got bought by Impact, one of the affiliate networks, but it pulls in data from Impact, from Commission Junction, from, you know, Raketam, from all of these different affiliate networks. It kind of gives you a daily snapshot of your affiliate earnings and sends you an email every day, which is always nice to get. And lately that number has been like going down. It's like, well, but it kind of gives it gives visibility to it. And my only B is I really like that.

1:12:24And it saves time for month end reporting of like, you know, where did the income come from? How did these links perform? The only downside is there's no Thrivecart integration. There's no SamCart integration. Whereas like, it doesn't give you 100 % picture of what happened on the affiliate side, but it probably has 60, 70%. I'll look into that once. That's the thing I'm looking for, too, with the bookkeeping. It is so annoying to have all these different things where when, you know, you start out as a side hustler, like money is coming from different places, Stripe, PayPal, you know, all these different integrations.

1:12:58And I wish someone would just make an overall that just takes it all. And I don't have to be uploading spreadsheets from different places or also looking at this data in addition to this website's data. An AI solution is needed. Yeah. Now, if I'm able to get Lasso's performance tool working, I may be able to hit the cancel button on this affluent tool because I think there's some overlap in the functionality there. But that's it. I think we threw out 40 or 50 different tools, resources for you. That's it. Wow. Are there any favorites that come to mind that people ought to know about? One last thing I'll add is just social media management.

1:13:38So I like using a tool called Later right now to schedule out posts. Well, my social media manager schedules out posts across the different social media, SideHouse of Pro, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn channels, and we use Buffer for LinkedIn. Oh, okay. What was the first one? It's called Later, just L-A-T-E-R, later.com. Awesome. We'll add those in to the list. Well, what are you excited about these days? What kind of projects have you got going on? I know you've always got different things, following from afar, and curious to see what's coming up. Oh, yes. I am. I'm excited about this Riverside video podcasting course, especially after our conversation.

1:14:15I'm excited to get that out there and have everyone see how easy it can be to podcast right from home. Like, you don't need this huge fancy setup or studio. And so I'm excited to get that out into the world. And also if people want to continue learning from me and growing their podcast into actual revenue, then I'm excited for you to learn more about Podcast Moguls, which is my course and also mastermind group where we are independent podcasters who have scaled our podcast into repeatable revenue through various measures. measures. So we've done, we've had people who work with brands, but also people who have used their podcast as a funnel for their own business and to get more clients.

1:14:58So you can find out all about that over at SideHustlePro.co for podcast moguls. It's SideHustlePro.co slash podcast moguls. And like I said, once the Riverside course is live, it will be over at SideHustlePro.co slash video podcasting. I love it. In a partnership with Riverside. Well, now, Nikaela definitely knows a thing or two about podcasts. They haven't done it for years and years, 400 episodes of the Side Hustle Pro podcast. Go check it out and you won't be disappointed there. As for the links to all the resources mentioned, definitely check out the show notes for this episode. You can hit the link in the episode description.

1:15:32It'll get over there. I'll toss out a pretty link again, sidehustlenation.com slash Nikaela or slash resources. Both will get you over to the show notes for this page. Big thanks to Nikaela for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks again for supporting the advertisers that support the show. It really does make a difference. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen.

1:16:00And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.