Automate Everything

Business Brain, episode 635 for Casual Friday, March 28 National Hot Tub Day 2025. 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 BusinessBrain is one of our sponsors. That's where you can go to sign up for your $1 per month trial period. And MacAudio.com 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.

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. And 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 we rarely. 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. It's a. It's a great decompression kind of moment. Yep, Yep.

We have one. We have one, too. It's. It's. 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.

Oh, of course, of course.

Yeah. So nice being outside. It's like, you know, 20 degrees. Yeah. 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 talk say about hot tubs, but this is not a show about hot tubs.

But it is National Hot Tub Day.

It is national tip. That's true. It's true. But, hey, I want to share this is. 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 MacGeek 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. 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, 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, whole paragraph. Automatic 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.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To respond. And not only are they. What I love about it is it automatically fills out the subject line and the content.

Right.

So I'm going to respond and then 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.

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 say, no, this was just a one off. Or yes, this makes it better because, you know, we're constantly refining ourselves. Right. And the way we communicate. So I, I can't believe I've only. I only implemented it a couple weeks ago and I use it like dozens of times per day now.

Huh.

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%.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, it works pretty well for me.

No, 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. Another email Gmail tip. And I Don't know if this is the case for other email clients. You could 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. @businessbrain, show.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 your name gmail.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's 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.

Standard. Ish.

I don't want to say that it's like everywhere, but most email. Yeah. Providers allow that. Now the downside to it being a standard is that spammers can figure that out. Yeah. Look and say, all right, well go in and cut the plus. Right, of course. 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, you know, Dave plus Business Brain at should go into a different folder, get a different label filtering. Yeah. Super cool. That's cool for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I just thought that was interesting. It's little small things that have a big impact on your time. Like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to you talking about Autumn more automation here on this episode because I'm definitely reaching the peak now of my time with the, with my current business and I was like, man, I have to automate this. I have to stop and automate this more. Yeah, this was one, one way that.

Oh, it's a great way to automate things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. You know, selling merch for my other podcasts and even my other businesses 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 powers 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 7. Except this one doesn't take coffee breaks or demand stock options. And hey, if Shopify could run my whole life, I 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.comshop businessbrain all lowercase. Go to shopify.com businessbrain to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com businessbrain 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. It's not magic, it's our sponsor, Rogue Amoeba. Their powerful Mac audio tools make producing this podcast possible and really helps us sound delicious. It's enjoyable. I use audio Hijack to record and process every single episode. If I can hear it, Audio Hijack can record it. And now with their new Whisper AI powered transcribe block, it even creates transcripts faster, more efficient, and all locally on my Mac. No cloud nonsense. Then there's Farrago, which runs our theme music and sound effects with the press of a button. Because nothing says pro podcast like hitting a jingle at just the right time, right? You know, you gotta be able to do that loopback. It's my secret weapon. Routing audio between all apps. Like some kind of virtual switchboard operator from the 1940s, only way faster. And then off the mic on my non podcast Mac, I'm using sound source to control the volume of every app and control the volume of those speakers that the Mac can't control the volume for. It makes it work. Look, if Rogue Amoeba made kitchen appliances, I'd probably have them running my blender by now. But until then, they've got your audio and mine covered. Visit MacAudio.comBrain to grab free trials of everything and save 20% with code Brain through May. That's MacAudio.com brain level up your audio and start living that charmed. Life, folks. And our thanks to Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode. All right, before we get into what will be Friday today, I wanted to share a review that we got from. Yeah, from KDU472. Of course. This was. You can leave your own review at Businessbrain show slash review. And Katieu472 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 Shaman Shannon. Sorry. 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. 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, of course. Yes.

Constant reminder. I tell people stuff I post on X. I'm like, I'm talking to myself when I'm saying language matters. And this and this and this. It's like, I'm just like repeating that. It's like a.

It's an affirmation drilling into our heads. That's it.

Yeah.

That's why we do it.

That's awesome. Thank you for the review and be sure to send us an email. Feedbackusbrain 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 back book.

Amazing. Thank you.

Cool.

For Friday today, I've been thinking about a lot of things, and one of the best things we can all do is to limit distractions, limit things upon which we need to spend brain power every day. And, well, we. 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 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. 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 1am I haven't turned 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 got to 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 lift it on. Because it's going to turn itself off. Yes, 100%.

Yeah, it's, it's clearing space in, in your head, right?

Yes.

You're, you just, it just takes up space and it's like, you know what, there's a, there's that old adage, right? If, 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, 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 do, I gotta get that done.

Yes, I gotta get that done. Oh man, oh man, that's the worst.

So, you know, the more I can offload automating with reminders, automating my calendar like that. Automating my calendar. Giving up, making appointments changed my life.

Letting others make appointments on your calendar in. With parameters that you've set.

You have to really drill it down and.

Yes. Which service do you use for that?

I use Calendly.

You do?

Okay, yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of them.

Yes, of course, yeah.

And. But setting parameters of different types of calls, I can't tell you 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 cut here, book it, schedule it. So I'm sure. Unless of course, you can just jump on a call right now.

Yes, but. 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. 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 because there's a whole funnel and a whole automation. Automation's involved in that.

I was just gonna say that's also not manual, right?

No, because when someone books a call for me, a paid call, there's a sequence of things that happens for them before our call starts. And because I want them, I'm trying to already have some credibility. Right. They already paid me for. Because they. Presumably 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 the most. That's the most simple example. Your lights or you're.

Yes, start with, 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 I can be your friend. Like if you're, 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 macgeek 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. Yeah, 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. 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, my son in law and daughter gave it to me. It they 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 think, wait, it shouldn't be in my office.

No, you don't need to see the light.

It needs to be down at the house. It needs to be. So it's down at the house. So that when that 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, once you do a few of these, it will become habitual and, and I've got lots of things to talk about in terms of things you want to habitualize but habitual do that. Awesome. On another episode. So yeah, automate your life and have the AI have chat GPT help you with that. It's good at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Thanks for hanging out folks. Feedback BusinessBrain Show. Send us your favorite ideas for automation. We'll share them on the show. Absolutely. Yep. And you know, make sure to, to go to BusinessBrain show review so that you can sign up so you can send in a review and sign up to win that MacBook. Yeah.

Thanks for hanging out. Have a great weekend later.

Keep on living that charm life would.