My coaching client, Laura, recently told me that she saved more money than she spent on my coaching because I helped her simplify and consolidate her tech stack. And now I want to do the same thing for you, too. I have put out a free tool called the Tools Audit. It will help you determine what tools you use, how much you're paying, and where you can consolidate and eliminate to simplify what your small business tech stack. You can go to streamlined.fm/tools to get your free tools audit today. That's streamlined.fm/tools.
Recently, I was trying to share my work Google calendar with my wife so she would see it on her phone, so that she knows what appointments I have and when we have free time for her to schedule whatever family-based or personal-based things.
And as I'm trying to do this, I am giving her access, checking her phone, looking here, looking there. I had to find some secret page to show like what calendars were delegated or something to the device. And I just thought, man, this should be way easier than it actually is. It should not be this hard to share a calendar with my wife to get it to show up on her phone.
How many of you have had this feeling where you've built something for your kids, used an app, tried to sign up for something, and ended up spending too much time fighting it? Things should not be that hard. And when you spend your day fighting the tools that are supposed to help you work, you are wasting your time. Which is why I want to talk to you today about why gear matters.
Hey everybody, my name's Joe Casabona. Welcome to the Streamline Solopreneur, a podcast that helps solopreneurs save time in their business so they can take time off without feeling guilty or worried that their business is going to crumble.
Today, I want to talk to you about why gear matters. And I have said in the past that gear does not matter. But the context is important here. When I have said that, I have said that to podcasters or hopeful podcasters who want to go off and spend $2,000 on gear for a show that hasn't launched yet. And in that context, that sort of gear doesn't matter. Get yourself a decent mic for a hundred bucks, get yourself a good pair of headphones, plug both of them directly into your laptop, and you have everything you need to podcast. You don't need the most expensive microphone, you don't need a giant interface. You don't need the greatest of all great things. You need enough to get you started.
But when it comes to your business and your daily operations gear, that is the hardware and software actually matters a great deal, because getting the right gear will save you time to help you focus on your actual work. And this example I used earlier about, you know, fighting Google Calendar to get it show to show up on my wife's phone. This has future ramifications, right? If she schedules things without knowing when I have to work, now we have to rebook, or I have to move my schedule around. If there's a conflict with her schedule, her work schedule, I have to move my schedule around, and then I am unable to get my work done, or she's unable to get her work done, or whatever it is that either of us wanted to do in the time that we thought we had Free.
On a maybe like a day-to-day level, right? If I spend my time fighting software that is supposed to help me, then I'm not spending my time in work. And a really good example of this is when I was a Web Developer, everybody had their opinion about which hosting platform you should use. Now, I've had several hosting platforms sponsor me in the past, in the very recent past, as a matter of fact.
So I'm not going to name names, but there is, there was a couple at least that I have used that made it harder for me to do my job efficiently. They loaded things slowly. Features were inexplicably blocked by my ad blocker. Features that should be free ended up being paid. And so I had to either find a workaround, or I had to go and shell out the money for this thing that only one hosting company charged for. And so instead of something taking me an hour, it ended up taking me two hours, which I either had to bill to the client or eat right and eat up that time. And I could have asked them if they wanted to switch, but they told me that they liked their hosting provider, and so I wasn't going to, on the other side of it, right? If they were comfortable with that hosting provider, I didn't want to cause undue stress to them by imposing something that they didn't like, because then I was adding time to their day. And so we worked out an arrangement. I explained everything that happened.
But the point is the tool was bad for what I needed it for, right? I think the same thing could be said for a lot of AI tools. Like, you think you're gonna prompt it one way and get an answer, and then you have to spend time fixing it when ultimately it would have been faster for you to just write the damn thing yourself. That's neither here nor there. This is not an AI pod. This is not an AI episode. This is really about the tools, right? You have a really slow laptop that takes you forever to do something. Your phone is really old or can't capture voice notes the way it used to. You have a backup system that doesn't work, and so you lose data. And now you have to spend time trying to recover it or find it somewhere else.
When you have bad gear, when you have bad tools, it takes time away from your core mission. So the gear really does matter. But as a lot of my clients know, and I'm sure a lot of you know, finding the right tools can be tough, especially when there seems to be, you know, a dozen tools that all claim to do the same thing. How do you know when you should or what tool you should use?
And over the summer, I did record an episode about like, how do you know when it's time to switch tools? This was Episode 497 where I talk about how to figure out if you should switch tools. But how do you figure out what tools to use in the first place? Do you go with a recommendation? Do you just try a bunch of stuff?
So the first step is you want to put some thought into the tools you're using. And when you pick a tool, stick with it, right? And you're probably already using a bunch of tools. So how do you know if those tools are worth it? Well, I do have a free tools audit that you can download over at streamlined.fm/tools. It has a list of a bunch of common tools, and then you can add your own. And then you are going to rank them and determine which ones you should keep or get rid of. There are a couple of questions there to help you. So you can get that for free over at streamlined.fm/tools. There will be a link in the description or in the show notes.
But you want to put some time and thought into the tools you're using. I'll get to that in a minute. I want to give a couple of examples first, though. First is a piece of hardware that's really important to me, the Stream Deck. I know I talk about the Stream Deck a lot. I have a page dedicated to my or on my blog to the Stream Deck and how I've configured it. But the Stream Deck is something that, I have three. Let's say they cost me $300. They save me countless hours every week because instead of having to memorize keyboard shortcuts or type in URLs or find the right app to do the thing I'm trying to do or copy some text into an app to then paste it somewhere else, I can control everything I need to control with my Stream deck. And so I push a button, and it happens.
And the thing that illustrated this the most for me, how much time it really saves me? There was an update a while back that kind of broke the Stream Deck and made it unusable. And it really, I really struggled for those couple of weeks where they were broken because I came to heavily rely on on the Stream deck. And so I saw how much time it actually saved me because I would push a button and it wouldn't work, and then I'd have to go do it the manual way. And when I'm away from my computer, when I'm on my laptop, and I'm trying to do something that I would normally do on the Stream Deck, it does take me a little longer. So the Stream Deck saves me a ton of time. This is hardware that has been well worth it for me because I don't have to memorize a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts or actions I can just push a button that is mapped to an icon, or really a button place that I just have memorized.
The same thing goes with my Rodecaster Pro 2. I have the Rodecaster Pro 2. This is overkill for most people, but because I'm trying different microphones, because I'm trying different headphones, because different settings and things like that, the fact that I can always keep my main microphone on the same exact settings while testing other stuff is huge to me. It saves me that annoying problem of, like, trying to reconfigure my recording setup. Right? It's kind of like. Like, there are cars that will remember the mirror settings and the seat settings per driver. I wish my car had that. My wife is taller than me. She likes to sit, like, further back from the wheel than I do. And so when we drive each other's cars, we, or whoever is driving the van, we make those adjustments, and then we have to readjust. Right. Your recording setup, if you don't have a good setup, could be the same way. So, those sort of things save me a ton of time.
The same thing goes for, like, ecamm Live, which I have scenes mapped to my Stream Deck and Tella. With both of those, I can easily record videos without having to edit a bunch of stuff, which is good because if I had to, I wouldn't produce as many videos.
And I have seen how important YouTube is to my content strategy, especially since I'm not on any other social media anymore. So the combination of the Stream Deck with ecamm or Tella really makes my content, my video creation process, feasible for me as a solopreneur.
And the last tool I'll mention is Todoist. Do you know, full disclosure, we had a brand deal together where I created some user-generated content for them, and they're boosting one of my posts. But I love Todoist. I've used, Todoist is like I have used them for a long time, and then left them for some other app. But I always keep coming back to Todoist. And the features and their ramble feature, which is what this UGC was around, it just makes using the app so much easier. When I need to switch context or brain dump, I press a button on my lock screen, and it all goes into Todoist, so I don't lose context. Those are really important to me. Those have improved my day and my work so much.
So, how do you find those tools? There's a little bit of trial and error, right? But here's how I think you can figure out what tools you should use. First of all, audit the tools you're already using you're using for free over at streamlined.fm/tools. Definitely do that.
Then audit your time to see where you're spending too much time, right? Like and, and look at how long it takes you to do a task. Make note of little frustrations in your workflow. So, for example, when I was trying to share that calendar with my wife, I found this page and now I've bookmarked it because I do keep having to go back there from time to time. So I bookmarked it. So now I know I don't have to go looking for it. I just have it at the ready. Because also if you Google it like doesn't come up. It is very strange. The only place I have found it linked is inside Fantastical like Google wants you to use their calendar app. So, anyway, make notes of little frustrations in your workflow.
So, another example is using the Stream Deck, right? I would create all of my show notes in Notion, but you can't just paste from Notion to YouTube. And so I have an Apple shortcut that will convert the markdown I copy from Notion to a YouTube-friendly description, and I have a button on my Stream Deck mapped to do that.
When I want to watch something on my teleprompter. Right. Maybe it's Zoom, maybe it's like some webinar or Microsoft Teams, or Google Mee,t and I'm in the browser. So not Zoom. But if I'm in the browser, I push a button on my Stream Deck that will move the active window to my teleprompter and make it full screen. So like, these little things where I don't have to like drag it over and resize it save me a ton of time. And I have those in place because I noticed, hey, I now have to copy the markdown and either manually change it or paste it into a thing, which I Vibe coded a YouTube, like markdown to a YouTube description page that's on GitHub pages. But like pressing a button on my Stream deck means I don't even have to go to that. You can just run the shortcut. Right?
When I want to move a window from my studio display monitor to my teleprompter, instead of like dragging and resizing, I push a button on my Stream Deck that saves me a ton of time. So, audit your time to see where you're spending a lot of time, and then make a note of the frustrations in your workflow.
Then, and I want to credit Kronda Adair for this. She was on my podcast a while back. Create a job description for the app that you're looking for. So maybe you're looking for a CRM because you've noticed that, like, you're bad at following up. What is the job description of this app? For me, with Ecamm Live, you know, the job description was I want to be able to create videos that have dynamic overlays and switch scenes, without me having to add them in post-production. Is there an app that lets me do that? And I found Ecamm Live, and it's amazing and I've been using it for five years, and it's truly, my video output wouldn't be nearly as much without it.
So create the job description. It doesn't have to be like super formal, just like a list of things you need to do and categorize them by necessary and nice to have. Then find some tools. This is probably a thing you could use AI for. Like feed the job description or even like the description of what you're doing into AI and have it recommend stuff, right? And then try some tools. Pick the one that works best for you. For a lot of, And again, I try not to impose tools, right? Like, you know, I'm working with people, and I do a lot of stuff in Notion, and if they don't want to use Notion, they're like, do I have to I'm like, no, don't use Notion. If you don't want to use Notion, use the thing you're going to use.
So it's definitely a thing that needs to work for your brain. Try some tools. Pick the one that works best. And then, and this is important, stick with it. Don't just move from tool to tool to tool, because that is going to create more trouble than it's worth.
And I do have like a little framework for switching tools that I mentioned in Episode 497. But just to recap, it is. Does the pain of the, of the tool you're currently using outweigh the effort to switch? Right. So, if it'll take you five hours to switch, does using the current tool cost you six hours every week, we'll say, or every month? Right. Does the new tool have a feature you absolutely need? Is the level of effort to switch nearly zero? Because if it is, then you can just try the tool and see if it works better for you.
And then crucially, this is a really crucial one for me because I've been bitten a couple of times in the last year. Does the product have staying power? How long has it been around? Because if it's brand new, we don't know that it's going to stick around. I mean, like, not even Google products are safe from this, right? Google kills off products like their Game of Thrones characters. So, how long has the tool been around? And does the company behind the tool have a business model for it? So if it's just like it's free and it's going to be free, that's not good enough for me. I need to know how this tool is going to make money, how it's going to continue to make business sense, because if it doesn't, eventually it's going to go away.
So, there you have it. Tools. Really important. Put some time and thought into the tools you're using, because they can save you a ton of time every day, week, and month. And the framework for figuring out what tools you should use. First, use the tools audit over at streamlined.FM/Tools to audit the tools you're currently using.
And if you like them, take note of what you're doing, how long it takes you, and the frustrations in the work you're doing. And then create a job description and find a tool that fits that job description. Pick the one that works best for you and stick with it.
All right, that's it for this episode. Let me know what you think. What's your favorite gear, or what tools are you using? What tools are you struggling with? What are the results of your tools audit? Let me know over at streamlinedfeedback.com, that's streamlinedfeedback.com. I am working up a feedback episode.
I want to give a shout out to Kirsten, who shared her yearly her word of the year, but I've gotten a few. I have a little back catalog of feedback, so I will be doing a feedback episode. You can leave a voice note or fill out the form. Either one, but you can do that over at streamlinedfeedback.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.