¶ Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast #635 for Casual Friday, March 28th, 2025
Business Brain, episode 635 for casual Friday, March 28th, National Hot Tub Day 2025. We'll be right back. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas and we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brains and yours collectively. So that we can each keep living those charmed lives. Shopify.com slash business brain is one of our sponsors. That's where you can go to sign up for your $1 per month trial period.
And Mac audio.com slash brain are the folks at rogue amoeba, where you can go download trial versions of all of the software that we use to produce this show. You can use it to do all kinds of things. Coupon code brain saves you 20%, including transcribing on your Mac. We'll talk more about both of those in a minute. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And I'm still out here in Northern California. Happy Friday.
¶ March 28th: National Hot Tub Day
Happy Friday. National Hot Tub Day, man. Putting a hot tub in at our house was one of the best things that we've ever done. Lisa was just saying it to me last night. That's awesome. The reason that we really like it is it's one place where we can go, where we are at home, free of all distractions, electronics. I mean, certainly we can have music playing. We often don't even have that. But I can bring my phone out there. My phone's waterproof, obviously.
Have I? Yes. But most of the time, no. It's just nice to have 30 minutes where I'm either alone or we're there. We talk to each other. It's a great decompression kind of moment. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
We have one too. It's a game changer. Yeah. I do.
Yeah. I really like it. It really is. Yeah.
Yep.
And it's really nice in the winter to go out.
Of course.
Of course, yeah. That's so nice being outside. That's the best time. It's like, you know, 20 degrees and you can just enjoy the outdoors when it's, you know, not a time when it's normally nice to be outside. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
I have a lot to say about hot tubs, but this is not a show about hot tubs.
But it is National Hot Tub Day.
It is National Hot Tub. That's true. That's true. But hey, I want to share,
¶ More Gmail Tips
we typically have AI and automation, you know, discussions today. And I found a couple of Gmail tips that I didn't know about. That I'm sure they've been around forever, and I'm probably the last person to learn these tricks, but I'm going to share them here anyway because you just never know.
No, this is, we have a segment on MacGeekGub that we, it's our most recently added segment, well, not really, but called Quick Tips. And the whole definition of a quick tip is a thing that you don't even think about doing because it's something you know. And when someone else sees you do it, they go, wait, what? I had no idea. Yeah. And or conversely, you see someone else do that. And it's the wait, what? It's that kind of thing.
So there, and there's nothing wrong. We don't know what we don't know.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the first one's real straightforward. I use text expander apps, you know, every day, right? I'm expanding, you type a few letters and a whole, the whole paragraph magically shows up.
But I find I have a hard time sometimes keeping track of all the like abbreviations and everything yeah so i was like this guy and i'm in gmail for you know i have a bunch of gmail accounts i do different things with and i just didn't even really know before that gmail had built-in templates that you can create to respond and not only are they what i love about it is it automatically fills out the the the subject line and the content right so i'm going to respond and then if you if you tweak it
like as you develop a thing, you just click one little button to save it as the new template every time.
Oh, that's brilliant.
Yeah. So I don't have to like, oh, I want to go replace this. I want to do that. It'll just say like, you changed that. Do you want to save it as the new template? And I'd say, no, this was just a one-off or yes, this makes it better because, you know, we're constantly refining ourself, right? Yeah. And the way we communicate. So I, I can't believe I've only, I only implemented it a couple of weeks ago and I use it like dozens of times per day now. It's amazing. So Gmail templates, just
How much of your mail do you manage in Gmail as opposed to like in a client app on your computer?
80 percent interesting yeah yeah it works pretty well for me no
I it works well for a lot of people yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there's nothing i.
Like it it works great it works great uh another email gmail tip and i don't know if this is the case for other email clients you can tell me dave you probably know but gmail and my son-in-law told me this trick and i was like wait what how long has this been around and it is the concept that you can append so let's say you want to sign up for the Business Brain newsletter.
Yes, at businessbrain.show.
But you want to signify, okay, I want to track that email. We don't, of course, sell your data, but maybe you sign up for some other place and you're like, you know what? I want to know. So if it's like your email address is yournameatgmail.com, well, if you sign up for that newsletter, your name with the plus sign and some sort of indicator, like plus biz or plus, I don't know, if you bought a kayak, you could say plus kayak.
Well, that email is still going to get to you and you'll be able to track what happens to it. So if all of a sudden you start getting a bunch of spam from the plus kayak, you can go back to those guys and say, hey, jerks, you sold my data. Now I'm getting all this garbage. Does it work with every email app or just Gmail?
No, plus addressing is a thing that is a standard, if you will, ish. I don't want to say that it's like everywhere, but most email providers allow that. Now, the downside to it being a standard is that spammers can look and say, all right, Well, go in and cut the plus. Remove the plus. Right, of course.
That's probably true.
But it is helpful. I use it, yes, you can use it for finding out who sold your address with the caveat I just mentioned. However, where it's really helpful is knowing that, okay, the thing sent to Dave plus business brain at should go into a different folder, get a different label. Filtering. Yeah, it's super helpful for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, I just thought that was interesting. It's like little small things that have a big impact on your time. Like, you know, I'm looking forward to you talking about more automation here on this episode because I'm definitely reaching the peak now of automation. My time with my current business. And I was like, man, I have to automate this. I have to stop and automate this more. And this was one way that- Oh,
It's a great way to automate things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. You know, selling merch for my other podcasts and even my other businesses
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used to feel like trying to juggle flaming swords blindfolded. But then I started using our sponsor Shopify. And now it's so smooth. It almost seems like Shopify is secretly reading my mind. They're not, but it's so good. Nobody does selling better. Shopify power is the number one checkout on the planet. And with shop pay boosting conversions up to 50%, it's like having a virtual salesperson working 24 seven, except this one doesn't take coffee breaks or demand stock options.
And hey, if Shopify could run my whole life, I'd probably let it. Maybe it could handle that secret underground moon base I've been planning. Anyway, upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash businessbrain, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash businessbrain to upgrade you're selling today. That's Shopify.com slash BusinessBrain.com. And our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode.
You know, sometimes we get emails asking us how and why this show sounds so good.
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Level up your audio and start living that charmed life, folks. And our thanks to Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode.
¶ KDU472-BB Review
All right. Before we get into what will be Friday AI today, I wanted to share a review that we got from KDU472. Of course, this was you can leave your own review at businessbrain.show slash review. And KDU472 says besides. Oh, the title of the review, five stars on point all the time. Besides new ideas on how to use AI, Dave and Shannon often simply remind us of things we should be doing. It's great to have them there to nudge us and steer us when we are heads down in the weeds. Love it.
Thank you for saying this, first of all, KDU472, and thanks for sending that in. And because we included this review in the show, and we include all the reviews in the show, you are now entered into our drawing for a MacBook this year. So thank you for that. You get that out of the show. And I'm glad, like, that's the reason we do the show. Right. But as I say at the beginning, it's for all of us. So it's for you, certainly.
But the goal is that Shannon and I get to join you in getting that exact same benefit out of the show. Because we nudge ourselves. I learn the most. Of course. Yes. It's a constant reminder.
Yes. I tell people, like, stuff I post on X, I'm like, I'm talking to myself.
Oh, yeah.
When I'm saying language matters and this and this and this. It's like, I'm just like repeating that. It's like an affirmation.
It's an affirmation. Drilling it into our heads. That's it. That's why we do it.
That's awesome. Thank you for the review. And be sure to send us an email feedback at businessbrain.show. So we have your email because we don't get that in those reviews. So we want to make sure you, in case you win that MacBook.
Amazing. Thank you. Cool. For Friday Eye today, I've been thinking about a lot of things.
¶ FridAI: Automate Everything (your lights, your workflows, everything)
And one of the best things we can all do is to limit distractions, limit things upon which we need to spend brainpower every day and everything. Well, we need to limit the things upon which we spend brain power. There are those things that we do every single day. And if you can automate one of those, even if it only takes you 30 seconds, 30 seconds times 365, you know, this stuff adds up. And so my advice here for Friday Eye this week is to automate everything that
you possibly can. And really, it doesn't have to be super complex. Even just turning on and off your lights is something that you can do easily with automation. You get smart home lights, you install them. They're really easy. You can use your, you know, if you have the Amazon A lady or the Google G lady or the Apple S lady, they can all do these automations.
So it's like oh yeah it's sundown i have my outdoor lights come on and at 1 a.m i have them turn off because we stay up pretty late but you know all of like that was one of the biggest things it was like oh shoot yep oh i'm in the middle of something this is where it really pays off i'm in the middle of doing something i realize oh it's dark outside i gotta go turn the lights on so that the lights are on. Now I've taken myself out of whatever I'm doing.
I go, I turn the lights on. Sure, it's 30 seconds to get up, go turn the lights on, sit back down. But it's 15 minutes of refocusing to really get back in the zone and I don't have to do it. And then it's, you know, before bed, I get into bed, it's like, oh shoot, the lights are still on.
Yeah, absolutely, dude.
One of my favorite things, I'll stay with lights and this requires no coding. There's no AI involved except maybe to find the right one for you but in my garage i put up these lights that are motion sensitive so that every time i walk in my garage the lights turn on and when i leave the garage after whatever a minute yeah they turn back off, I never thought that would make such a difference, but it does. It's like, oh, did I leave the light in the garage on?
Yes, I absolutely left it on because it's going to turn itself off. Yes, 100% of the time.
Yeah, it's clearing space in your head, right? Yes. Because it just takes up space. And it's like, you know what? There's that old adage, right? If you can do something in less than two minutes, just do it. Just do it
Right away because you're already focusing on it.
Yeah, you're already thinking about it, and if you can get it, you can get it done, because the more you churn it and think about it, and like I have this thing, you know, wake up super early, like four in the morning, and I'll sit there like, oh, yeah, I gotta get that done.
Yes. I gotta get that done. Oh, man.
Oh, man.
That's the worst.
That's the worst. So, you know, the more I can offload automating with reminders,
¶ Using Calendly to automate appointments on your calendar (use different types of calls!)
automating my calendar, like that, automating my calendar, giving up making appointments, changed my life.
Letting others make appointments on your calendar with parameters that you've set.
You have to really drill it down. Yes.
Which service do you use for that?
I use Calendly. You do, okay. There's a, yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of them.
Yes, of course.
And, but setting parameters of different types of calls, I can't tell you how, how amazing it is because if you've got your, I don't know, I even use it personally. I'm like, Hey, let's, yeah, you want to come here, book it, schedule it. So I'm sure, unless of course you can just jump on a call right now. Yes. Right. Right. You, you know, I book or I send out links, like here's a 15 minute call. Yeah. Here's a 30-minute call. Here's an hour.
And then, I mean, it just, once I send it, unless I'm looking for that client to hire me, that's different.
That's different.
That's different because there's a whole funnel and a whole automation. Automation's involved in that.
I was just going to say, that's also not manual, right?
No, because when someone books a call for me, a paid call... But there's a sequence of things that happens for them before our call starts because I want them – I'm trying to – I already have some credibility, right? They already paid me for – because they pay on my calendar. When they book that call, Calendly handles the payment. And then it also automates information I'm going to send to them to prepare for the call.
So yeah, the more you can automate, and that's the most simple example, your lights.
Yes, start with something simple and see the value of it, and then let that be the thing that leads you to do more and more and more. And AI can be your friend. If you think, crap, how would I go about automating this? Well, certainly there's podcasts that you can ask about that, you know, and like my Mac Geek Gab podcast, we get those questions all the time. But ChatGPT, like the AIs that are out there, they're really good at teaching you how to do these things.
And what's great about it is when they're wrong, you find out immediately because you go and you implement, okay, this is how I automate this. That didn't work. Go back to the AI. Tell it, that didn't work. Here's what happened instead. And it'll say, oh, of course that happened instead. Said, I gave you the wrong instructions. Here's the right instructions. You can ask questions about why it did that, but you know, yeah.
Yeah, so I got, for Christmas, I've got this like neon on-air sign, right? So when I'm recording, it says on-air, so everybody would know. Nice. And then, but yeah, but they also, my son-in-law and daughter gave it to me, with a smart switch. Yeah. So when you select, I go to podcast in my Focus on the Mac, there's a shortcut that turns on that light and so i had it in my office and i was like wait It shouldn't be in my office.
No, you don't need to see the light outside.
It needs to be down at the house. It needs to be. So it's down at the house so that when my wife's like, oh, what's the timing? She doesn't have to look at the calendar. So you go, oh, you're on a call. So anytime I go on a call, anytime I change that, then you could see it. So ask yourself, you should be in your head. How can I automate this?
That's it.
Constantly.
Once you do a few of these, it will become habitual. And I've got lots of things to talk about in terms of things you want to habitualize but we'll do that on another episode so yeah automate your life and have the
¶ Business Brain 635 Outtro
AI have chat GPT help you with that it's good at it definitely, thanks for hanging out folks feedback at businessbrain.show send us your favorite ideas for automation we'll share them on the show absolutely make sure to go to businessbrain.show slash review so that you can sign up uh so you can send in a review and sign up to win that macbook yeah thanks for hanging out a great weekend later keep on loving that charm life would you.