April 21, 2026

I've coined a new term: hub tools versus software. And what is the difference? Software is a tool that you use to get something done, right? For example, Basecamp is a project management tool that I use inside of Funnel Gorgeous. Hub tools are the core softwares that you use as a hub for your data. And the reason why this is so important now is because of AI, because of what it can leverage. For example, if you've been putting all of your stuff in Google Drive and then Gemini, which is Google's AI, is getting better and better, you're going to be able to get and extract insights out of your Google Drive way easier than someone who is using Dropbox and OneDrive and iCloud. You need to pick the right hub tools. And I used ChatGPT as a hub tool for 2 years and then regretted it for a bunch of reasons. And so I'm thinking more strategically now about what tools really should be hub tools and which are just software. Now I go into this in depth on my podcast, Million Dollar Grit. So if you head to milliondollargrit.com, you can hear all about what I'm thinking and what questions I'm asking to decide whether something deserves a hub tool status. Google is a great example of a tool that has earned hub tool status, and I use all the Google products, and the better Gemini gets, the more insight and leverage I'll be able to get out of that tool. So I'm choosing that as a place to put my data. But most recently, and on an earlier podcast episode and on social media, I talked about how I have moved from ChatGPT over to Claude, but Claude is actually not a hub tool. I'm not gonna just make the same mistake again. Instead, I'm building a private, scalable, flexible, easy hub tool for my personal knowledge that I can point at any AI later, and I'm using a tool called Obsidian. If this is something that you wanna learn about, you can head over to funnelgorgeoussociety.com. I did a 2-hour workshop and the replay is in there. But what are some other hub tools? Well, FG Funnels. FG Funnels is my business operating system. Google products are also a hub tool. I also consider Zoom and Slack hub tools because there's a tremendous amount of data that can come out of my team communication as well as all of my calls. Obsidian, which is my new hub tool that I think is going to stand the test of time. And then I have a hub tool that I kind of regret, but I'm not going to give up and that is Voxer. And Voxer actually is not a great hub tool because the data is not easily extracted, but it's kind of too little too late for me. I'm going to go ahead and stick with Voxer because it's easy for my customers, but I did have to hire someone to help me figure out how to extract all that data. Think carefully about the tools that you choose as hub tools versus just any old software subscription.