In this solo episode of Million Dollar Grit, host Julie Chenell introduces the concept of "hub tools"—software platforms where she centralizes the majority of her data so that AI can extract long‑term value. She contrasts hub tools with transient, experimental tools and outlines five decision criteria she uses when choosing a hub tool: (1) product longevity and reputation (category king status), (2) ease and frequency of integration with other systems, (3) privacy, lightweight nature, scalability, flexibility, and overall ease of use, (4) automation potential and time‑saving capabilities, and (5) how readily new customers or clients can adopt the tool. Julie illustrates each criterion with concrete examples—Google’s suite (Chrome, Drive, Workspace, etc.) as a long‑standing hub, Slack for ubiquitous integrations, Obsidian for private, flexible knowledge storage, FG Funnels as an automation‑rich business operating system, and Zoom and Voxer for client‑facing ease of adoption. She explains why AI agents like Claude or ChatGPT are not hub tools for her, emphasizing that data should reside in a portable, controllable hub rather than in a specific AI. Practical workflows are described, such as feeding an Obsidian knowledge base into Claude for client onboarding, and leveraging AI‑enhanced features in Google Gemini, Zoom, and Slack. Julie warns against the “shiny object” trap of constantly chasing new tools, advocating a disciplined approach to selecting a few core hubs that can grow in value as AI capabilities improve. The episode concludes with a recap of the five criteria and a list of her current hub tools, reinforcing the strategic advantage of consolidating data in platforms that will become increasingly AI‑enabled over time.
Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie Chenell, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there.
Hey everyone, this is Julie Chenell. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. I want to do a follow-up episode to the one that I did last week or whenever it was about Obsidian and Claude Cowork because there's something coming up for me, and I think it's pretty relatable. It's this idea of, "What tools do I bet on? What tools do I bank on?" And I'm feeling this because I spent the last 2, 2.5 years really building out a knowledge base inside of ChatGPT and feeling like it worked pretty well in there, but now I've done all this work and I can't easily extract it. And I, I don't like that feeling. And I don't actually feel that way about Google, even though I've been using it forever. So what's going on here when it comes to picking the tools that you want to bet on? I've coined this term hub tools because I'm noticing that with AI and all of the abilities that we now have to extract insights, if you have a hub tool that has a lot of data, it's automatically more valuable once you attach AI to it. Let me give you an example. Let's say that you are someone who exclusively uses Google Drive and every month Gemini, which is Google's AI, keeps getting better and better, and you've got 10 years in Google Drive. And once Gemini can extract information from Google Drive as a whole, which it already is doing, now you have access to insights and patterns that you never had before. Now, contrast that to someone who uses Google Drive but also uses iCloud, also uses Dropbox, also uses OneDrive or whatever, and their, their stuff is in all— it's scattered. Now it's harder to extract those insights because it's across 4 tools and This is one of the reasons why HubTools, that's what I'm calling it, is so valuable. If you can pick the right tool in which to put the majority of your data because of how valuable that data is when it's manipulatable. I don't know if that's a word. Okay. The struggle is now every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, there's a new browser, there's a new AI, there's a new something that you want to try. And I'm really resisting the urge to try every new thing because I'll get nothing done. But I'm also trying to discern when there's like a key moment where I have to pay attention. And that's sort of what happened with Obsidian and Claude. You know, I ignored Claude until the noise got so loud. I was like, man, I should pay attention to this. Same thing with Obsidian. The noise was so loud. I was like, okay, let me dive into this. And I realized, wow, this is actually a fantastic hub tool. Because of how it saves your data and how it interacts with something like Claude or any other agent. And you might be feeling this way as you're looking at your various tools. So what I wanted to do today is talk to you about the decision-making questions I ask when I decide whether or not to make something a hub tool so that I'm, you know, making an investment of time and energy to put my data somewhere with the hopes that it's leverageable over time. There are 5, 5 decision makers that I point to. Now, the first has to do with the length of time the product has been the category king or the reputation of the product. And this kind of hearkens a little bit back to the days of ClickFunnels. You know, you may have heard me tell the story of us migrating off ClickFunnels and You know, it's— you can never quite know for sure what's going to be a category king for the long term, but you want to look at things like, you know, the leader, the vision, the venture backing, the length on the market, things like that. Okay, so for me, I would say probably the tool that represents this the best is Google. I feel very comfortable making Google a hub tool, and I have for many years, because of the length of time. We've seen how company works. We see what it does. And so that means I use Chrome, I use Google Chrome, I use Google Drive, I use Google Workspace, I use Google Calendar, Google Photos, Google Tasks, all of that. And I'm pretty comfortable making that a hub tool. And as I've been watching Gemini get better and better, like just the other day I was in Google Drive and I noticed that Gemini was now able to start extracting patterns and stuff from various folders of documents. and I thought, oh my gosh, this is just going to get more valuable over time. I'm waiting for the day when Gemini is like completely embedded in the Google Calendar. I haven't seen it yet. Okay, the second decision maker is how often and how easy is it to integrate into everything? And you know how there are those tools where you sign up for a new tool and you go to the integrations tab and it's like, oh, you can integrate with Google, right? It's like, it's totally integratable with everything. And one of those tools that is that for me is Slack. Slack. I don't know if Slack is going to last forever, but Slack, to me, there's a connection for Slack in every tool imaginable. So for us, our team communications is pretty much tied to Slack. That is where our team comms live, and there's a lot of extractable data. I mean, I can basically connect Claude to Slack and I can ask it to look in a channel and see what's going on. I can learn about my employees' performance and things like that. So that an important thing to look at. Is there a connection everywhere for this particular tool? The third decision maker— decision-making question that you want to ask is how private, lightweight, scalable, flexible, and easy is it? And this is why I moved to Obsidian. And I am a lover of Apple Notes. I've been an Apple Notes user, and honestly It was private, it was lightweight, it was scalable, it was flexible, and it was easy to use. It was, you know, synced across all my devices. It wasn't hard. It was one click in, but it was not something that I could then point my AI agent to in any sort of organized fashion. And it was saving the notes in some weird Apple Note file spec that would not be easily transferable. And this is ultimately why I decided to make Obsidian a hub tool. And it is a hub tool for my personal knowledge base where I can make Claude or any other AI agent that I want to use infinitely more intelligent with the context that I'm giving it. All right. Number 4, how well does it automate and save me time and energy? And this is an example. I'm going to use FG Funnels, right? So FG Funnels is my business operating system. It's where all my customer data lives. It's where I email, it's where I text, it's where invoices and contracts— and it is saving me a tremendous amount of time. I've been, you know, running a million-dollar mastermind for the past 7, 8 years. I've had FG Funnels for 6 of those years, and it has eliminated so much headache and time and money. And one of the things that I also would say about FG Funnels is that it integrates into everything, right, with an open API. So it crosses off that as well. And it is also basically a white label of HighLevel. And I would say that that company, from a marketing automation standpoint, has the, the biggest reputation and the most longevity, um, over time. So that would also be, um, part of question 1, right? Length of time the product has been the category king and its reputation. And so FG Funnels is a hub tool for me. And then number 5, which is an interesting one if you work with customers with your tools, is how easy is it for all new clients and customers to adapt to? This is something that I've noticed with, for example, when people are like, oh, join my Discord channel or join my Telegram channel. And I'm like, oh my gosh, those are so hard for beginners. And so for me, 2 hub tools that I continue to use are Zoom and Voxer. Now Voxer is probably the weakest hub tool I have because it is not, uh, easy to integrate into anything. Like, it's not. And I had to like ask my CTO Tatiana to help me build something so that I could extract the incredible amount of data that is in there. And this is a really good example of a hub tool where I'm not going to change. I'm not going to like leave Voxer because the ease of it with new customers and clients just unmatched. And Voxer has slowly started to make some improvements, so I'm, you know, I have some hope that maybe the company will, you know, continue to, to do well. But it's just so easy to adapt to, and there is so much data there that I'm unwilling to move. Zoom is another one, and I, I use Zoom with Fathom, but I know Zoom's own AI is getting pretty good as well. But just imagine, like, all the team meetings you have and all the hot seats and all the whatever it is that you do on Zoom. And as AI integrates into Zoom, how much data you're going to get? Well, it's harder if you've got some on Zoom and you've got some on, you know, Google Meet. And I, you know, someone could really make the case to me that Google Meet is probably maybe the better tool since I'm such a diehard Google girl. But Once you pick a hub tool, it's really hard. Sunk cost fallacy kicks in, right? So to kind of recap, the 5 decision makers that I'm using are length of time the product has been the category king, um, and its reputation. Number 2, how often and easy is it to integrate into everything? Number 3, how private, lightweight, scalable, flexible, and easy it is. Number 4, how well does it work to automate and save you actual time and energy? And number 5, How easy is it for all of your customers and clients to adapt to it if you are using that tool? The hub tools that I have settled on are FG Funnels, Google products, Obsidian, Zoom, Slack, and Voxer. Does that mean those are the only tools I use? No, I use a lot of other tools. I have subscriptions up the wazoo, but I am differentiating between a software tool and a hub tool because the hub part of it is what I think is so important for the age that we're heading into. And, you know, the other day I, I had a new client, um, and I went over to Claude, and, you know, I've got my new Obsidian Claude brain working, and I, I said to Claude— I launched Co-Work— and I said, hey, you know, read my work-life wiki, read my About Me folder, and then I want you to look at this new client onboarding, and let's talk about a good plan for her. And it looked at her stuff, and what it did was, because that work-life wiki that I have basically has categorized 20 or 30 thought leadership articles that I've written, it started placing her in all of my different frameworks. So it was like, okay, based on this article you wrote, um, she is here in this path. Based on this teaching you gave, she is here. I didn't even ask it that. And I was like, this is the power of a hub tool, because I took the time to extract that stuff out of ChatGPT, extract it off of the internet, stick it in Obsidian, and now that agent has that, that data. And so HubTools are operating that way. And I know for a fact, as the co-founder of FG Funnels, that AI is becoming more and more embedded. It's an AI operating system for business owners. And so you will be able to manipulate a lot of that data. Google products have Gemini, and Gemini is getting more and more, you know, powerful to be able to extract and interact with data in Google. I also am using Gemini in my inbox now tremendously. Obsidian is the, is the private, easy, scalable thing that I can point to any AI agent. And I just want to stop here for a second and, you know, people might question, well, what do I put in Obsidian and what do I put in Drive? It's a great question. And what I have worked out is that Obsidian is where my brain's ideas live. And then, and then obviously the AI is organizing it. For its own reference point. And then I put in outputs the gold, right? The gold that I come up with. But a lot of times that gold has to turn into something, right? So for example, yesterday I was working on new homepage copy for Funnel Gorgeous. So I was in Claude, I was working on it, I got it done, I put it in Google Drive. Why? Because the team needs to access it. But I also just grabbed a copy and I put it in my outputs because I thought, man, this is a great this is going to make a great wiki for what Funnel Gorgeous represents. Okay, so that would be an example. And if you think about Zoom, Zoom is also having AI integrated, right? And if you use a tool like Fathom or something like that, it already has that. Slack is getting AI integrated. If certain plans on Slack, plus it can connect with any AI agent, like right now, you know, you can connect it to your Claude Chat and it can just look into your Slack for you. And then Voxer, which again, the weakest link here, but it is, um, putting AI into the app over time. I don't know that I would hitch my cart to that horse if I was starting in 2026, but it is what it is. Anyway, there are tools that I have not tried, and I think that I'm going to stick with the, I'm not going to try them unless the noise gets so loud that I cannot ignore it. And, you know, for example, ChatGPT has come out with its own browser called Atlas. You know, Meta has integrated with Manus, which kind of like took over the world, and Manus right now integrates with Instagram differently than any other AI tool. I've like dabbled in them. They are not hub tools for me. They are interesting tools that I'm checking out, but again, I'm differentiating between software that you're playing with and HubTools where you're like, I'm hitching my cart to that horse and this is where I'm putting all my data. Another one that I am paying attention to, but I have not taken the plunge is Perplexity Computer. And I don't, I don't know. I, I'm going to just kind of sit back because I feel like Perplexity is new, is way newer. And I feel like if they figure out something really amazing, why wouldn't Google just do it? You know? And, um, And so some people might be asking, why is Claude not a hub tool for you? Why did you not put Claude? And that's interesting because a hub tool is where my data lives. And I actually don't really want all my data to live in Claude because that is the same problem that I had with ChatGPT is if someday I decide that Claude isn't right for me, I want to be able to carry it with me. And so that means that I am absolutely using Claude every day, but all the data that I want to keep is in Obsidian. So if I'm building a Claude skill, okay, I am taking those instructions and I am keeping it in Obsidian because I do not ever want to have to be beholden to a particular AI. And that is why I did not include Claude as a hub tool, even though I am absolutely using it every day. This is, I think, going to be the difference between people who just jump from tool to tool to tool to tool, stay scattered, and don't necessarily get that deep, deep insight, and people who say, "You know what? These are the MyHub tools. This is where my data is going to be, and I'm going to move on from there." And I hope this was helpful. It's a little bit of like an organizational, um, episode, but I think it's really important. So anyway, if you enjoyed it, please let me know. I love to know what is most interesting for you all, and I'll talk to you soon.
And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.
